Black Waltz

[Deryk Bayard]

A skull stared at the walls of the school as 2:00 am passed by with every tick of the clock. The skull was only a cartoonish painting upon a black cap, fashioned like Link's most famous headwear. Just below the edge of the skull's teeth, a set of bright blue eyes scoped out everything the skull could see. Area was clear of lights and people. The cameras hit a blind spot here. And the wall between cameras was marked only sporadically with windows. The funniest thing was, this spot could easily be seen by day, being that it faced the street that the majority of students. It was the perfect first display.

PHS 259 deserved a higher class of enemy. Everyone focused entirely too much on fighting one another. The real problem was the school system itself. It was turning students against each other. Of course, even without the pillar system, the students would never join together to fight the system they seemed to hate so much. Without a untied force though, there'd be nothing to show that the system wasn't working as it could be. Students getting sent to the infirmary every day was kept within school walls. The PTA was a joke outside of elementary school. And the most resistant cases of students were sent to one place: The correctional facility. The world needed to see that the system was failing. Something that the school couldn't cover up, or at least not quickly. 259 couldn't fall though. Destruction of the school in it's entirety would simply be blamed on student gangs as everyone got transferred.

They needed a symbol.

Of course, symbols couldn't be created overnight. But images could. The skull-clad figure walked up to the school's wall calmly, a large duffle bag slung over his right shoulder. The skeleton seemed to be a recurring theme, as bones covered his hoodie and cargo pants. In the darkness, he might very well appear as nothing more than a jumble of bones and spinal cords. The only thing on him lacking the white bones was the bandanna over his nose and mouth, shielding all but his eyes from that which might spot him. The bag dropped to his side, clattering with metal as his left hand stroked over the wall. His canvas. He was only there a few moments, as if he were contemplating the wall itself. Quickly, he reached into his bag, a can of spray-paint finding it's way to his hand.

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Morning brought with it a new image for the city to see. Light shone on the fresh painting. It was a cartoon version of a scarecrow, at three-quarters view on both the vertical and horizontal. Clad in blue rags for a coat and gloves, everything from the waist down was but a simple stick. It's hat was a tall steepled affair in midnight blue, the very top of which was bent backward. It's face was simple brown burlap, with large yellow ovals for eyes, the brim of the hat cutting a good portion of the eyes from view. It was shaded, textured, and even coated in two protective layers. One was to protect the paint itself. And the other was to dissolve any paint that got laid over it in about six hours. It would be a persistent painting.

And it was signed...

S/Crow[/i]

[ovahlord]

A fresh new day, if you could call the sort of mornings in this place "fresh." That male approached the school with little a care, mask laid in wait at his hip, but for now he was breathing in the air, relaxing before another fun day of classroom blitzing came about. Deft hand rose, running effortlessly through those strands of blond, all the way to the back, stopping only to momentarily cradle his skull as he noticed the rather odd painting up ahead.. a scarecrow. " Who the hell is ...s crow?" Given he was new here, it would have come as no surprise that he had almost no bearing on the goings on around here. Green clad hands fell back to his waist, the other still frozen within the pocket of black twill trench. Headphones which hung from his ear in the familiar black tint would have been blaring out a rather loud techno song. Come with me.

It drowned out the sounds and comments of others around him, but it did not stop him from noticing the essentials, in that almost everyone was noticing it the instant they approached the school. "Hmm.." A low toned response to himself about the whole ordeal and he proceeded on, not a care in the world, but the damage was done, he would remember the image simply because he had not seen another scarecrow quite like it. Fingers unclasped that mask and he brought it up, slipping it down over his skull like the gloves he had on his hands. He locked the latch in the back and closed the titanium plate down over it sealing the entire thing to his face. Those blue eyes glanced now up towards the vivid image, quite close to it at this point.

A few other people were littered around him, all doing the same as he, staring up at this image. It was the first piece of decent graffiti he had seen, as most of the other crap had been names tossed about here and there, and not very good ones at that. He could respect it for the simple fact it had not been here, and whoever had performed the piece had done so swiftly and done quite a good job as well.."What the hell is the meaning.. " That racked his head, who did it, and why?

[Deryk Bayard]

Deryk arrived on the scene, scratching his head as he easily spotted the new pile of spray on the walls of the school. He'd never seen the mark on anything else in the city. It was certainly new. A new tagger perhaps, or a new signature for a fledgling who's work hadn't gone so well. Still, it was bound to get erased pretty soon, or at least painted over. He expected it gone in a short while. A day or two at least. And it'd probably get covered up while it was being worked on. Any respectable school would do so to help preserve any dignity it had.

Then again, this WAS 259. It might lack the need for dignity.

Like a lot of students, he looked at it only as long as it took him to get to the doors of the school. He even paused a little to look at the imperfections in lining and light sources. But he was looking at things at too technical a level for grading art. Art was more passion than science. That's why he'd never really been considered an artist. He just stuck to his numbers. And that was why he wouldn't be a suspect. How could he, a boy obsessed with tech and numbers, expect to have a grasp of artistic technique when he spent all his time playing computer games?