24 scapegoat

Three days in with the stall dress up and stocking what stalls are selling or showcasing. Lea pitches in with the general decorations and signage. Mostly that she made sure there were tables with flyers, maps, and vouchers (some stalls have freebies like this).

Being followed around slightly out of her sight but given a wide space was normal. She has had to accept that whatever she or the kid next to her class has done, she is being singled out. She had suspected it was Seer kids, she wanted to be kind in the hope it wasn't for once.

The route circles around and she was back to her first table, everything was tossed. The table seemingly kicked to the floor. She picked it back up and all the flyers. Not as neat as before but better than thrown. She sighed that it was fruitless, that she can already see the next table the same. Already there was a nearby student for a club glaring around for who did it or was in charge of the leaflet table. She acts to leave for the next table and watched the one she fixed carefully. Right when she was a set distance, an imp came around and pushed it down. She turns around to return, yet now teachers were walking around making checks. She picks up the papers again.

"Yes, it explains everything." The teacher in charge growls and was angry at throwing the table back up. Two students were making complaints, they pushed her away and picked up the papers. Making it neat. She has nothing to defend herself about the tables.

"Shouldn't you be in lower school and not running around freely without supervision?" The teacher attempts to be professional but there was more than Lea was the assumed cause of. Lea has nothing to say because saying anything would make it worse. Even if she had anyone to blame, she wouldn't be believed or listened to. By her age, the teacher isn't even wrong about her needing supervision, "Don't you have a club?" The students of the area were instantly jolted at not wanting to take her in. They work quickly to scamper away from responsibility. The near stalls make themselves busier.

"Who would want a five-year-old?" She is bold and posed a more annoying growl, "The lower school students and the preschool don't want me either. If anything I am expecting to be expelled for whatever problem they want to assume. You being so stressed about the parent's arrival, you didn't want to deal with my problems. So I get it. I should be locked in some room and left. That's really what you expect out of me." She squares the best she can for her height with the teacher who was beyond mad that she hit the target and has the arrogance to talk back, "So where do you think I can go without being a problem? With supervision. Give them all a reason to throw me away." The teacher sighed in frustration holding their head, "This wouldn't be the last school to throw away me for things that aren't my fault. You are just another brick in among many teachers that didn't care. I don't act my real age and I certainly wouldn't want to spoil a wonderful time where parents and students get to see the best of this school. To honour the culture and diversity." Lea crossed her arms and just to stab her annoyance mocked the stance the teacher stood in, "What are you wanting out of me? I am not here to give my soul up for anyone like a demon or Clothus. What do you expect a child like me, a child being targeted because she's creepy, to do? What do I say? Should I be pointing the blame? How childish can it be?"

For that, the teacher was stunned silence, equally profoundly insulted for not being professional enough. She standing right here with arms crossed. So when the table behind her has knocked over again, she can't be blamed. The teacher blinks in the returned rage. Being mad but can't blame a little girl. She rightly planted that she's the target. So was it better to move the target away and let things be ruined elsewhere? She is the epicenter and yet it's not her fault.

"Go to the headmaster's office." Screamed with all the rage pent up. Lea didn't even flinch or let her emotions raise. This wasn't worth being sad over, there are worse things. Yet it does still sting, taking a deep breath to meditate on the sunken pain.

"Come on Loki. Everything here is no different. A prime example of why even an outcast will never be great in their control." She hugs the creepy scale bird, this bird has been helping all the stalls and was being loved by the other students, "Morpheus. Put the stick down. It doesn't matter." Another silky scale body out from under a table crawled up her legs and rides her back. As she is moving away, more reptilians appear and follow. Many simply came out of hiding and sank into her shadow. So much more work needed to be done, and now they aren't helping. There was one that was talking to a demon, whatever the concern was just brushed aside and it too came to sit on her shoulder. A bird of floating bones stares back in a glare for the failure to protect her. A stall started creaking and collapsed under the volume of imps that were laughing. They stopped and then screamed, running away from something else no one can see.

"Just how childish can you allow a bunch of children to not learn how inclusiveness works? They don't have to like working with people to work a job. This a lesson they all need to know how to survive working a real job in later life. Wasted opportunity." The pull of torn materials and a creaked-up porcelain mask, "Don't they tell you all to never judge a book by its cover?" It shot a tendril of cloth limb to smash a student's hand, taking away the dangerous item, "Letting students have such dangerous things." The item was shown and then turned into salt. The mask within torn cloth moves away.

"Who are you?" The teacher sounded glad there was someone like the mask around.

"Me?" The mask paused and was right up squaring the teacher in the eyes, "A little girl." Faded away out of sight, and was completely out of the picture.

"Yes, blame the only young student there is." The demon who was trying to talk trade with the bone bird, "You just stamped on a lot of work. That mask is considered among the dead to be highly hard to contact. A veteran. I better hope you might reconsider your choice." The demon snarls at having the salt affect them. Leaving quickly.

"Lea!" Lord J rushed up from a stall his working at, "I thought that you were helping."

"I just got blamed for knocking over all the flyer tables. Now I am sent to the principal office. Clearly, none of my reptiles, my mask, or I am of any help." She gets to move on, "You should just pretend to ignore me like everyone else." Lord J frowns at seeing her going onward.

"Good riddance." Some laugh, "I don't need a little girl outperforming me." Lord J throw things down and went to go join her. But he crossed paths with a disgruntled demon.

"If only anyone knew." The demon shivered in looking at where she went to.

"You mean Lea?" Lord J wondered in hearing the demon fine and speaking the same language, "Or do you mean her Sigil rank name?"

"Lord J." The demon sighed in annoyance, "I guess I did hear you were in the same class." Looking around seeking the shadows and frowns, "Have you seen her real mask? All Seers have a porcelain clay mask. Sometimes they are visible in shadows."

"She showed me that she has one." The demon shook.

"Her real one is much worse looking. Creak covered and with many chunky paints and chipped pieces." J shook in the replay, "That is the real Madam Mystic. This living girl is just a small piece of her. Even those pets fear the real her. They rely on her to touch our existence, not many beings have that power. Some of those creatures aren't from a dead realm or a living one. Such volumes of power she is."

"It was one of her creatures you needed to talk to? Don't you just attract them with bait?"

"No lad, they can't exist without her. They can't have bait if they can't reach it. That girl is more than any Seer. The real deal. Truly the myth among myths." The demon snarls, "And she allowed herself to be a little girl among humans. Just want would such a strong being want from this sort of life?"

Lord J watched the demon stagger with worry. Trying to seek a way to follow her through the grounds. The poor demon will be found later in the courtyard tree, hung and seeped of blood. J will be the last known person to have spoken to the demon commander, putting unease to the trial at court right now.

"I don't have time to sort of students." She was sitting in the waiting room in earshot of the shouting from the office. It only makes her hug Loki more, her face buried in the creature. There is a soft petting notion from Morpheus, gently patting her head like she does when they feel terrible. She felt a tide of her young body's emotions sweeping about her. She was genuinely crying softly, as no child should ever be the mock adult in a situation. She felt she had been too much of this need to be a strong girl when adults around her fail. A wreck of nerve and burdens of why she lets herself be a victim, even as she doing her best at doing things to not be. Being a good girl, doing things with manners, and just being a decent human. She came to finally stop some of the tears at least, crying was part of just letting things go. Once it was out of her system, she could return to being mature in front of others.

"Just leave them there." The headmaster pointed at the group of Seers and their friends along a wall. They all looked down and were wearing spell-preventing charms. Importantly everyone was holding their mask, it would seem they were instructed to.

"This is all the Seer and on record folks with ties?" A demon spoke confused.

"There is confidential information as to why not all the Seer-like students stand here." The principal snarls, "You are just going to have to look for them yourself. Those folks hide among the student body and do not make themselves publicly known. Even then there is someone that does and yet I am sure it is a lie."

"Which is?"

"That a Tricky Trickster is here. Some claim it to be a sham. Not many people come forward in claiming to have seen the real deal. We can't kill humans but we can drive away spirits who claim to take on the sham name."

"There lies the creak in cover." The demon looking at the Seer's masks lifted each one for a closer. When the demon finished, he made each student stand either behind or in the line, "The set behind me are either decoy, allies with weak mask bonds or just peer pressured into taking part with all this. A slightly lesser punishment for them." The demon came to the last child and noticed Lea sitting alone down the corridor. He went back to study the mask of this last child and makes a decision.

"So the lot of you that are standing right here. You are each a little schemer and know each other well to use schemes to advantage. The lower of you will have failed but the outcome tends to play out that it was part of another plan." The demon bunched them closer and the snobbery is cut clean of which sibling is against the other, "I just find it amazing that you all got played. Outplayed at your games. You wouldn't have been caught otherwise and not stood right here."

"The schemes didn't rely on each other to work. The tables all had talismans among the flyer to always mess up. Someone else had the imps to push them over. Among us was someone triggering bad small things around a target and haggling to instigate making it worse. We had even normal student stir things as they complained of stolen things."

"But none of us were going around stealing anything. The imps kept being in the wrong places. The teacher kept being detoured." Another snapped of how their plan failed, "Didn't even get to have the target covered in slime or trash."

The demon, headmaster, and principal sit back as the children admit slow of each other's crimes. The backstab of backstabbing. The demon pulls up a whiteboard, writing out the details and what part fails for which reasons. The big mouth slipped how the big mastermind had managed an illegal item into the school and complained about it being turned into salt. The students as an aide to the crimes looked at each other in a sort of wonder why they were separated from the other set since everyone had implications. The demon nodded at voices, hand rolling them to continue and just seeking how was the bright spark to summon reptiles. Since every plan failed by an unseen reptile and whoever had the reptile was likely to cause something so dire to the court which was the death of the demon army commander. It had to be a Seer as it was part of the last command anyone knew.

"We all may have used each other in schemes but we all had the common goal of having the target of these schemes be put down. To what level of depression or even expelling was depending on how many schemes worked and how many on-lookers were convinced it was their fault." The big brain has a way to twist this, "Regardless of age and we have no disregard for their future unless they die. Even then, death would be nice. This person somehow has many shared qualities and could put preform us in the qualities our family judges us for. On the way, we take out the competition."

"Who knew that this creep from nowhere was adept at craft in spellwork and commands an army of reptiles? They don't even use this army for what we would do, always to help and benefit all, and never thinks of protection for themselves. If were me, the reptiles would be my armour and I certainly would allow myself to be the target of torment. Use the reptiles to murder us all."

The demon-posed pen of that last part makes an interesting point. The Seer-like child they all hate isn't doing the schemes to harm others. It was all for wider benefits and all selfless. A née coloured pen is brought to mark why the reptiles would intervene in schemes if the goal intent is to benefit others. It was all in accidental prevented moves to protect other students, all these schemes were going to hurt more than just the target student. So the only set that worked in favour of the target being hurt were the ones aimed solely at the target, for bruising pride and having the target screamed at by teaching staff. The demon didn't even finish what that meant for the important reason of his purpose here. The target didn't intend for the commander of demons to get killed by the school's courtyard tree, it was apparent the target of all the bullies here didn't murder anyone around here. wipe away the pen's cap and place it. A whiteboard left to be stood back.

"The folks facing possible school exits are all of you. I do mean all of you." The principal snarls pointing at all these children, "No of you realize that it's not OK to cause this level of harm. It is not OK to have illegal goods in this realm. It is not OK to attempt murder or even a near massacre of many students. Breaking the school barrier, summoning imps and the determent of breaking many school ethics."

"What is the most disappointing thing of all is that you all failed to even attempt to know what or who you were facing. Did none of you do any background checks on your target? Not even one?"

"I did." The ring leader of them all, "Both attempt in human and asking demons. She is a girl from a poor part of the state. Transferred 3 schools. Has a history of learning difficulties boarding having traits on the spectrum. Her close family all have minor records of criminal records. Go back further and I was told off by my own family for some reason. Her grandfather has a tampered clean record, angel caused." The ring leader picked up something and throws it. A reptile in hiding made itself known and smiles at them all. Moving to coil into a mock human appearance and stare the room down.

"Do continue little thing... go on." It snickers.

"Your why all minor demons can't access sigil records." The reptile made a growl forcing the child to rethink the answer.

"I know about you. You keep records of myth ranks. Given there aren't records of recognition of myth ranks. Myth folks just so think that is so beyond a level of awareness that even small deeds cause large impacts." The demon bowing to the reptile being and for someone high ranks to double bend makes everyone else. The reptile rolls its eyes and clicked the floor so that it can stand.

"Anyways, do continue what you think you know. This the most information I had from about this being ever." The reptile shuffles to the wipe board, "The stolen illegal item was returned to the realms it was stolen from, saving an entire ecosystem to be saved. Each of the little reptiles you all see in cute small forms is monster acting tame. They aren't even in the category of slayers. Each has no reason to know the other. Widespread homelands that have no a way of meeting." taps a particular to some note, "The tree in your courtyard isn't what it seems to be. It is not a demon eater. Its presence has altered the court realm. That creature is a myth ranks itself... but yet it adores this little human girl. Such fascinating information."

"What happened to the original tree?"

"Oh, the corpse is being puppeted like clothing." The reptile shrugs, "The insides were eaten and now the myth took shelter in the shell. This has no impact on the human world's willow tree, which has seemingly been growing leaves and blooms for the first time in the ground's history. It became safer for students to be near the tree, the holy impact of putting such a mythical soul in protective measures." The reptile records keeper shook so uncertainty, "How does she do it? Had a God-like myth in one hand and the soul of an evil dragon on the other. To be loved by eaters of foul things and cherished. No fear by good souls." Posed open claws that wasn't to know more.

"This explains why an average demon can't assess her background." The demon here for the commanders death crosses arms.

"I know the demon your looking into the murder of. The false tree has grudges for what type of demon your little commander was. There is a method to speak to the dead demon or bring him back with ability to recall things. Not necessarily a demon anymore and would have to step down from his position like it or not." The reptile shows teeth in trying to do a human grin. It crosses a cold discomfort in seeing the shape of teeth.

"Decline. The commander is gone." Teeth put away.

"Poor ice woman. She likes collecting." The reptile unwraps itself, "A word of advice for three things. What you humans choose to do with the little girl will be the rise or fall of this school. How you come to handle her will be peer review for the other schools. You will be the example used in a future court for you failings or good deed." The reptile was adjusted joints to walk properly in the right form, "Second, she is a Seer. But you Seer have ruined everything you could do. You will never have her favor. No court will have her blessings and all crimes she tears down from the root will fall on you. Your generation are the last. The last of the golden age you had ignorance of. Your child will look at you being the faults." It moves softly to the exit, "Lastly. Madam Mystic has never in all universes ever been attached to one side. Her aligned ways are not the boundaries we mark. She is the moral of grey. So when the scale tips one way, there will be counter balance."

"All these good deeds she has done will look bad on us by some way." The headmaster looks at the board of notes, "I can't beleive we allowed a five year old to be a 1st grader."

"That was the good thing. You poorly handled her care, that was your bad. Letting a vulnerable student be targeted to the level of attempted murder." It is the last thing they hear of the reptile and sunk dread in the principal. He looks outside his window overlooking the preparation of the festival. A teacher in charge being approached by a school inspector. The inspector moves away and taken aside hy students to speak alone. Notes made and a clear expression was changed. It wasn't a good expression that the students didn't understand what they said was wrong, rather they thought telling the inspector would improve things for them. The principal taking a seat at his desk. The headmaster peers in how the inspector was coming this way. Looks at the children, adjusted collar.

What spooks them was knowing the inspector before entering. They spoke gentle and quietly, little steps hear moved away beside the assistant school secretary. Dawns on those in the room, that the target of all this bullying just overheard the full extent and reason for what should have happened to her. The whiteboard promptly rubbing out everything as fast as possible. Ran of time, can't even stop time to do it. The inspector isn't human but rather an angelic holy order. Here in the best interests of keeping the school balanced of good deeds. Their report will make waves to the state review of this school. Previous visits have been borderline and this case is a breaking point.