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CSU FILM STUDENTS MISSING FOR FIVE DAYS
Article by: Amber Park
3/6/20XX
California State University film students Jean Jacket, Lucky, Ghost, and Clover disappeared while hiking in the hills north of Pasadena on March 1st, 20XX. They were reported missing on March 2nd, 20XX, by their friends OJ and Emerald Haywood. Written messages provided by OJ and Emerald stated that the four equena intended to spend all day hiking, jogging, and exploring the hiking trails around Millard Falls. Haywood Eyewitness reports claim that they heard “a lot of wind in the area” and saw unnatural dust devils forming over the ridge line around 4pm that afternoon, along with “something that sounded like screams”. Authorities have noted that the mountains north of Los Angeles and around the Angeles National Forest area have had a rash of strange disappearances, and that multiple groups of hikers have gone missing within the last three months.
Authorities have not named any suspects in the disappearances, nor have police dogs been able to pick up a scent. The LAPD urges anyone with information on these students’ whereabouts to call as soon as possible.
ALIENS ARE REAL! I’VE SEEN IT!
Posted by: SeraphimBouquet
REAL EYES FORUM > Boards > Conspiracy > Aliens > UFO Sightings
3/4/20XX
ALIENS ARE FUCKING REAL! I SAW THE FLYING SAUCER WITH MY OWN TWO EYES! I know that sounds crazy but I was up in the Agua Dulce area doing some install work for some ranch or another doing security cameras and when I was driving back to the Fry’s I work at I fucking saw it! It’s real! There was like a big white disk flying through the air, about probably 200 feet in diameter or something huge like that, I couldn’t get a good look but it was flying across the ridge line and went into the clouds! I took a picture too!
[IMG]
[Alt Text: A grainy photo of an unidentified white streak near a cloud bank, passing over a mountain ridge]
I couldn’t get any more evidence of that, but I heard it! There was a weird clicking noise and for like half a second I swear my entire truck died right out from under me when this huge shadow passed over, and I think that was the aliens! That’s the UFO!!! The ship!! It’s real!!!!
I’m gonna go get more evidence, I’ve got another install appointment coming up soon, gonna see if I can get some real evidence this time!
ANGEL TORRES, 31, MISSING FOR SIX DAYS
Article by: Amber Park
3/14/20XX
Angel Torres, a 31 year old installation tech at Fry’s Electronics, suddenly vanished on March 8th, 20XX. He was reported missing by his supervisor, Flynn Bachman, after he failed to return from a security camera installation near Aqua Dulce. Subsequent investigation of Torres’ home revealed that he had intended to go searching for evidence of alien life in the hills outside of Aqua Dulce. His supervisor revealed upon investigation that Torres had also taken more camera equipment than was listed on the installation order, and stated that the missing inventory was only discovered long after Torres’ disappearance.
Authorities have since put out a general order telling all citizens of Los Angeles county to stay away from the San Gabriel Mountains entirely, and that they will do everything they can to find Angel Torres and every other missing person that has disappeared in the last three months.
Weather Balloon Weirdness?
Posted by: LochNessie412
WEATHER WATCHERS LOS ANGELES FORUM > Boards > General > Discussion
3/16/20XX
It’s weird that the LAPD completely cordoned off the mountains- I mean, it’s not like they can actually get everyone to stop going hiking, but it’s still fucked up that they did. I mean- I get it. A LOT of people have gone missing in the last three months- hell, a lot of people have gone missing in the last year! Scary stuff. But what’s really important right now is that I swear I saw some kind of gigantic weather balloon over Mount St. Antonio while I was um… well. Don’t think about how I saw that. Let’s just say I’ve got a really good telescope. Anyway, it wasn’t a shape of weather balloon I’ve ever seen before, but I’m pretty sure it exploded or something?
I tried to get some photos or video evidence, but I couldn’t really get my camera up in time and I swear my stuff all died for five minutes even though I totally charged everything up before I- well. Checked my telescope.
You get the idea.
Anyone else got any information about this? Anyone else see anything? I swear I’m not crazy, I genuinely saw something that looked like… a weather balloon? A weird kite? Some kind of… I dunno, weather phenomenon? And then there was an explosion and… I have no idea what happened. I just… weird, right?
Weird Cloud?
Posted by: Yamanin Zephyr
TRACEN STUDENT FORUM > General > Discussion
3/26/20XX
Did anyone see a weird cloud hanging over the school today? It was just sitting there in the same spot for hours! I watched it for the entire day and got yelled at in class and it didn’t move like a normal cloud at all! It just… sat there! I think at some point I saw something fall out of the clouds but that might have been a bird or something. Did anyone else see it?
[UNPR] on campus. [WRNG]
Posted by: Neo Universe
TRACEN STUDENT FORUM > General > Discussion > PSAs and Notifications
3/27/20XX
Something is here.
Scary.
Be careful.
Don’t go into the woods on campus
Posted by: Manhattan Cafe
TRACEN STUDENT FORUM > General > Discussion > PSAs and Notifications
3/31/20XX
Don’t go into the woods on campus. There’s something in there. For everyone’s safety.
Do not. Go into. The woods.
Whatever is in there… it isn’t like the normal things in the woods.
DO NOT GO INTO THE WOODS.
STAFF NOTICE: STUDENTS POSTING CONCERNING THINGS
Posted by: Inoue Hanako (Media Relations Junior Division)
TRACEN STAFF FORUM > General > Discussion
4/2/20XX
Has anyone noticed there are a lot of strange things being posted in the student forum lately? More strange than usual, I mean. Something about a thing in the woods? Should we be worried about that? It’s six months early for Halloween pranks, isn’t it? I think we might need to do a wellness check… or get the security staff to go looking…
Reply by: Akikawa Yayoi (Director) on 4/2/20XX
SURPRISE! There are things afoot that have not been foreseen! DECISION! Let’s see how this all plays out!
Reply by: Hayakawa Tazuna (Secretary) on 4/2/20XX
Oh dear…
Stay Gold would be the first person to tell most of Tracen Academy’s students that sometimes, leaving things up to the professionals was a good idea. They were national level athletes and were capable of a lot more magic than almost anyone thought was possible, sure, but aside from Manhattan Cafe and a smattering of others… well. Most of them weren’t equipped to deal with spooky things in the woods. Especially not the kinds of spooky things that had even Manhattan Cafe freaked out.
Stay Gold would know- in the breadth of her travels, in all of the sights she’d seen and remembered, the things that she’d done and experienced, the joys and defeats that she’d known… the mysterious and seemingly nonsensical path she’d walked… there were things out there that were beyond what most people could handle on a daily basis.
Things that were dangerous. Terrifying. Horrifying.
The kinds of things that made grown men shudder in fear, and made even the strongest umas in Tracen’s PMC quiver in fear because they just could not possibly handle the absolute fuckshit going on before them.
Now.
She’d be the first to tell everyone on campus to leave it to the professionals.
…
She was not a professional.
When it came to any kind of weird magical bullshit or mystical fuckery, the go-to person for that kind of thing was usually Manhattan Cafe, of course- the haunted girl was the one who knew the most about the occult when it pertained to things that were dangerous and terrifying. There was also Matikanefukukitaru, if one wanted slightly less horrifying news- fortunes of disaster or injury or a string of losses should the worst come to pass notwithstanding, of course. And beyond Fuku, there was Copano Rickey, whose feng shui practice was widely known on campus to be second to none when it came to getting results… in daily life and their careers.
Her lesser known ability to fire dragon shaped ki blasts was significantly more useful against the scary things in the woods, even if she couldn’t do it much or on a regular basis and often didn’t have a reason to do anything about it.
Most of the things in the woods were benign tricksters at worst, or maybe that one weird doppelganger of Fuku that occasionally showed up and did… strange things.
So, with three other umamusume whom Stay Gold could have asked to come out with her and another expert in all things unnatural in the form of Neo Universe sitting pretty in her dorm not half a kilometer away…
Why was she out here all alone?
Why was she on campus long after school hours had ended, when the only people that were supposed to be on campus were a skeleton crew of security staff and whichever umamusume thought it was fine to burn the midnight oil for the sake of their studies. And maybe Secretary Hayakawa. Stay Gold still wasn’t quite sure if the woman actually ever left campus. Director Akikawa did so, frequently even, but the secretary?
… No wait, that was stupid, she’d seen Secretary Hayakawa in a bar with that Light Hello lady a few times. Duh.
Her nerves must have been getting the better of her, because she was all alone in the fucking woods. The dark, spooky part of the woods that was far, far deeper and far more mysterious than they had any right to be when one considered that every single tree in these woods had been bought from a nursery and planted upon the school’s founding, and regularly had tree trimmers come by to make sure they didn’t go too far over the fence gate on the far side.
Hell, there was even a dirt path out here!
A dirt path… with… very fresh footprints.
Bare footprints.
Strange bare footprints that Stay Gold didn’t quite know how to quantify. They were distorted and sloppy and strange, as if whatever made them didn’t know how to walk right, and was shambling along partially on hands and knees, partially sprinting and partially stumbling back and forth. Was that an impression of an elbow? A knee? Was that furrow where something had dragged along the ground?
There were strange, almost brush-like marks on the trail too- something akin to a long series of faint but definite scratches around a slightly deeper scratch, only visible because it had rained barely a day ago and the mud was still pretty fresh.
There was a strange… hum in the air. The kind of thing that set Stay Gold’s mind on edge, made her ears flick like she could just barely comprehend some kind of sound at the very, very edge of her perception, made her spine tingle in agitation. Made her anxious in the kind of way that she hadn’t felt even once in this life.
Not a single damn time.
There had been moments where she’d been afraid, terrified even. But they were normal, easily explainable kinds of fear- even the supernatural ones had given her something clear and immediate to focus on, a goal or a way of getting out of there safely, the knowledge that whatever was coming her way was something that generations of other umamusume had already learned to handle in one way or another.
Fear went hand in hand with someone like her- an eternal drifter, someone with enough wanderlust that she regularly traveled out into the world without a plan just to see what would happen. The fear of falling, of slipping, of getting lost and not being able to find her way out. Of running out of supplies, of starvation, dehydration, infection, injury, death… the fear of being eaten by something that wanted to rip her face off because she just so happened to wander into their territory.
But this?
This electric tingle up her spine, this horrible feeling of dread…
It was the sensation of being in the presence of a predator so much larger than anything that would have naturally hunted down an umamusume, would have naturally hunted down the animal that she was before.
It was the kind of feeling she’d only dimly known as one of those four legged creatures, the kind of all consuming fear of watching someone die right before one’s eyes, helpless to stop it, unable to comprehend anything she’d just seen, helpless to understand what had just happened- just the feeling, the memory of wind, of screaming, of dust. A blurred shape in the clouds…
And this?
Stay Gold shuddered, narrowing her eyes in the dark, swinging her flashlight around ever so slightly to illuminate the path-
Tock. Tock. Tock.
The sound.
A horrible, resonant knocking, unfamiliar and strange, not produced by any creature she had experienced in any life bar one. The forest was utterly silent for the sound of her own breathing, and that horrible, slow-
Tock. Tock. Tock.
There, in the beam of her flashlight, just off the side of the trail, where the tracks in the mud gave way to grass and the smell of blood filled the air…
An umamusume.
Naked.
Bloodied.
Bent in an odd angle with strange posture, as if she didn’t understand at all what a bipedal body was supposed to look like.
A single, baleful eye with flickering green irises, an unnaturally dark, square pupil in the center.
A square iris. A square pupil. Flickering and flashing outward like the fronds of a leaf.
A threat display.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
A low, hideous moan- the kind of thing that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a whale, or a fog horn.
And then it moved.
Stay Gold screamed.
She’d never ran so fucking fast in her life, heaving for breath and sprinting clear back out onto the paved path like death was on her heels, that horrible clicking seemingly growing louder and louder in her wake with the sounds of crashing and stumbling and animalistic noises barely fit for any being’s vocal chords let alone something so human-like as an uma musume following in their wake.
She ran.
She ran.
She ran.
She ran.
Safety. There was safety in a covered roof, out of sight, out of the wind, out of the dust, out of the open. It couldn’t eat her if she was inside, it couldn’t hurt her if she was inside-!
SLAM!
Oh thank the fucking goddesses, she’d never been so happy to see Fuji Kiseki’s confused, worried, and disappointed face before. She’d see it a thousand damn times as long as it meant that thing wouldn’t fucking eat her!
“Stay Gold-san…” Fuji spoke, eyes sliding from Stay Gold’s form slightly to the left. “I know you like to wander out at night but you can’t just… bring… a date… here… like… is that blood!?”
Tock. Tock. Tock.
Shit.