━ DENOUEMENT ( jerome clarke. )

47 ⊳ HOUSE OF EVIDENCE.

DENOUEMENT
xlvii. house of evidence
❝SOUNDS LIKE HELL.❞

NINA WAS GONE.

With bated breath, Sydney Anderson's eyes remained locked on the closed passageway in front of her, as though she was demanding it to open with her eyes – demanding it to return her best friend from its nasty claws, demanding it to return Nina Martin to the rightful place among Sibuna. Yet, it didn't. As tingling nerves crept down Sydney's spine, the unwavering wall didn't stutter; it didn't make a hiccup, nor did it jump slightly. Unwavering, the closed passageway stayed still – just like time did.

That was the case, of course, until Nina Martin's scared screech shattered the hold that time had on the members of Sibuna.

"Nina!" Fabian Rutter's desperate voice instantly called out, begging to be heard – thankfully, it appeared that wish was granted, as Nina cried out his name from the other side of the wall, "Nina, what is it?!"

"I think there's something in here."

In that instant, Sydney's blood turned cold. The tunnels had never been nice to the members of Sibuna – in fact, they had been the exact opposite. How many times had they almost died? How many times had their life been in imminent danger? How many times had they faced those threats together, rather than alone, and still almost lost their grip of life? How much time did they have before they lost Nina Martin? That final thought seemed to be the one that plagued everyone's mind, as they all turned to look at one another with matching expressions – widened eyes, lips slightly parted, pale skin: panic.

"Well, what's the plan? We need a plan! Tell me you have a plan!" Alfie Lewis, still stuck inside the lethal spiderweb of strings, asked Fabian Rutter frantically.

"Help! You have to get me out!" Nina sobbed; despite the wall separating them muffling her voice, it didn't help in muffling the fear that poisoned her tone, only making the members even more frantic and desperate to find a plan that would work.

Conceptualising just how much time that their leader had before the guillotine dropped was an impossible task. None of them on the other side of the wall had any clue what was inside the room with Nina Martin; they were just haunted by her terrified screams that continued to linger in their mind, forever reminding them of the threat that was waiting for the right time to strike and steal their friend from them perhaps forever.

"It has to be the big spider that holds the door open." Fabian concluded, taking the big spider from his back before hastily making his way towards the spider-shaped hole in the wall, not wasting even a single second as he expertly weaved through the web.

Fabian wasn't the only one weaving through the webs. The other web-walker, Alfie, made the decision to return to his friends at safety so that he could reassure them, carefully contorting his body to avoid the deadly strings until he made his way back. Ensuring his safety, Sydney Anderson and Amber Millington both grabbed a hold of him once he was out of danger, squeezing his arms tightly – he was there, he was with them, he was safe. Yet, their hands still shook, their breaths were still shaky, and their eyes still drowned with worry. Alfie was safe, but not everybody else was, hence why none of them were able to direct their eyes away from the sight of Fabian Rutter as he arrived at the spider-shaped hole and began to manoeuvre the spider legs into the correct positions. It had to work.

"Fabian!" Nina wailed, "Help me!"

"Okay, I'm nearly there." He responded, focusing intently on the task at hand as he began to repeat the phrase to himself, perhaps in an attempt to motivate or even convince himself, "I'm nearly there. I'm nearly there."

"Come on, Fabian!" Amber urged – every single second it took was a second too long, perhaps a second was the difference between life and death, and that was why all of them continued to cry out for the genius to finish the task as they simultaneously yelled, "Hurry up!"

So, he did. Within a matter of seconds, Fabian had finished putting all the spider legs into the right position, seemingly completing the task, and thus causing the other members to watch the closed passageway intently for the smallest sign of life – the sign that they had completed the task, that they had stopped the executioner from dropping the rope and sending the blade to the neck of Nina Martin.

"Come on." Amber whined.

Yet, there was no sign.

Nothing was happening.

Nina had been sentenced to death.

"No, don't do this!" Fabian roared, furiously slamming his hand against the spider which was meant to solve the task – instead, it had failed; they had failed.

Or, at least, that was what they thought.

Then, something caught their attention: the sound of low rumbling slowly beginning to consume the entire tunnels, getting louder and louder as it boldly demanded their attention, forcing the five remaining members of Sibuna to glance around confusedly. Though, the confusion did not last for long, their questions of what was happening being answered as the wires that threatened their lives began to snap back and disappear into the walls one-by-one, slowly disassembling the spider web that they were once the prey in and making them the master of it.

On faces once so defeated, jaws dropped and eyes began to sparkle with hope once more, small but soft smiles appearing on the faces of the members as they realised that they had successfully completed the task. They hadn't failed.

Proof of their success came in the form of Nina Martin, alive and well, as the passageway opened once more and she came sprinting out of the dark space that she once inhabited, throwing her arms around Fabian Rutter, who happily received her and squeezed her tightly - she was there, she was with them, she was safe.

The sentencing had been lifted.

The ex-couple held each other tightly as the other members in the room, with humongous smiles plastered across their faces, rushed towards them, and waited for their moment to finish. After a few seconds (which they now felt calm enough to spare, as though they had all the seconds in the world), the pair finally pulled back from their intimate embrace so that Fabian could catch the teary eyes of Nina and ensure that she was okay, to which she nodded in response. That was the cue for the other members to finally have their turn, with Patricia Williamson, Amber Millington, Alfie Lewis, and Sydney Anderson quickly grasping onto Nina Martin and pulling her into a tight group hug. She had returned to her rightful place beside them, and quite frankly, Sydney Anderson didn't want to let go.

One-by-one, the members began to pull away from the hug until it was just Sydney Anderson, Amber Millington, and Nina Martin – the first of which commenting, "Could you give us a warning the next time you want to be stupidly heroic and go into a dark, unknown tunnel alone?"

"Trust me," Nina finally let out the breath that she had been holding, sending a small smile to her roommates, "there won't be a next time if I can help it."

"Good. In case you forgot, worry causes wrinkles, and wrinkles make you look old, and I'm not a big fan of looking seventy at seventeen," Amber reminded them frustratedly, apparently forgetting that worrying about worrying causing wrinkles could have perhaps caused more wrinkles, "or seventy ever, actually."

Exchanging a similar glance, both Sydney and Nina amusedly rolled their eyes at their roommate's antics – they really should have expected a comment like that, but before they could respond to it, Patricia spoke up, "You seriously scared us for a minute there."

"Yeah, I think I almost had a heart attack." Alfie declared, dramatically holding his hand to his chest, and using his other hand to wipe imaginary sweat from his forehead.

"Me too." Nina agreed, a soft laugh escaping her lips – though, there was traces of panic that lingered in it, the girl evidently not over her experience in the tunnels.

Although, the leader's experience in the tunnel was most certainly not over. Unfortunately for them, they didn't have the option nor the luxury of abandoning the tunnels and turning in for the night, never to return – they had to complete the tasks, and the only way to do that was to go through the tunnels and discover what they held. That was precisely why, only a few minutes after Nina rushing out of the unknown space into the known safety of her lover's arms, the entire group entered the unknown space again, assuring themselves with the fact that the passageway was not going to close after they had completed the spider task. 

"Ew, creepy." The fashionista commented as the group made their way into the unfamiliar space and soon became familiar and acquainted with a creepy painting of a lion – the thing that Nina Martin had been so terrified of when she had been in the tunnels alone.

"Way creepier when you can only see its eyes... and you think it's alive, trust me." Nina informed them, looking as though she was reliving the memory as she shuddered slightly.

However, there was one member who was less sympathetic towards the American upon seeing what the source of her terror had been, and instead found the situation rather entertaining – that member, of course, was the amused Alfie Lewis, who confidently declared, "You seriously need to man up, Nina."

Instantly, Sydney Anderson's eyes shone with a mischievous glint, one that was strikingly similar to the glint that appeared in the eyes of Patricia Williamson as the two girls glanced at one another, noticing what the other planned to do and thus giving each other a small nod as their signal before they simultaneously yelled, "Alfie, behind you!"

A high-pitched shriek escaped the lips of Alfie Lewis, echoing off the walls of the tunnels as the poor boy practically leaped off the group and spun around in search of the non-existent threat. His widened eyes examined every nook and cranny of the room, whilst the rest of the members quietly giggled to themselves, finding the situation rather hilarious.

"Now who needs to man up?" Fabian asked.

"In case you didn't get it, it's you." Not being able to help herself, Sydney just had to rub the situation more in his face and made sure he knew exactly whom the comment was directed to, putting her hand on his shoulder with a faux-sweet smile covering her face.

Realising that he had been tricked, the anxious boy rolled his eyes before shrugging the amused female prankster from his shoulder and muttering, "Yeah, yeah, I got it."

Letting out even more laughter at the slightly annoyed (but also very anxious) expression plastered on the poor boy's face, Sydney sent him a mischievous grin before joining the rest of the members, who had begun to explore the new area in an attempt to figure out the next task – however, the blonde-haired girl soon regretted joining them as her eyes instantly landed on her sworn enemy:

"Chemicals, no labels."

What seemed like hundreds of old, vintage bottles filled with different liquids littered the low shelves, and Sydney Anderson, of course, had a very normal, appropriate, and understandable reaction to his discovery as she proclaimed, "Oh, I'm out."

Quickly turning on her heel, the blonde-haired prankster began to make her way out of the awful room – regardless, she didn't make it very far before the hand of Patricia Williamson tightly gripped her shoulder and forced the girl to halt in her rushed steps, turning her back around and making her face the dreadful room once more. Sydney felt that the chemistry bottles were mocking, taunting, and laughing at her – she was beginning to think that the spiderweb task was much better than whatever hell she had found herself in.

"Please tell me that you don't expect me to do chemistry." Sydney deadpanned, staring straight at each of the members of their secret group, all of whom seemed thoroughly entertained by the girl's distraught horror, in hope that they'd put her out of her misery.

Spoiler alert: they did not.

Instead, Patricia simply shrugged, "Well, good old Frobisher made it a task."

"Thanks again, Frobisher." Sydney bitterly grumbled, glancing up at the ceiling and therefore not realising that Patricia and Amber mouthed the exact same phrase simultaneously, having become used to the prankster complaining about Robert Frobisher-Smythe's terrible tasks, "Have I mentioned how much I hate that guy? Seriously, if I ever come across him, he's getting hit."

At that statement, Fabian instantly snapped his head to face the blonde-haired girl with disbelief (and slight amusement) plastered across his face as he had to remind her, "You're about a hundred years too late for that."

However, Sydney just seemed to wave off that 'small' complication, "Eh, details."

"This smells familiar; I can't quite put my finger on it." Nina spoke up after sniffing one of the chemicals that they were meant to be paying attention to, catching the attention of the group's genius as she held it out for him and inquired, "Does it smell like... Christmas?"

"You know, earlier... I wasn't scared - I was just on high alert," Alfie declared; he had been silent for a while, constantly glancing behind him and checking every dark corner to make sure that he was safe and sound as he continued, "which we should all be on, by the way."

"Uh, sure, whatever, Alfie." Patricia hummed.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, bud." Sydney spoke, patting him on the shoulder.

"Fabian?" Patricia called out for the genius, receiving an acknowledging hum in response to encourage her to continue, "Okay, this freaky lion head thing?"

Wanting to examine it further, a majority of the group members began to crowd around the 'freaky lion head thing', glancing at it with narrowed eyes before Fabian easily answered, "Sekhmet, the Goddess of Medicine."

"And you just know that?" Sydney questioned; her eyebrow raised.

He nodded.

Although, that still didn't satisfy all of the prankster's questions as her eyebrow only continued to raise further as she asked, "From the top of your head?"

He nodded again, though slightly more hesitantly.

"Wow, you're such a nerd."

Having expected a retort along those lines, Fabian Rutter's lips involuntarily turned up into a tiny smile despite him rolling his eyes at the blonde-haired girl, and then his eyes simply returned to examining the lion head that the members of the secret group were gathered in front of, just as Nina Martin approached and joined them in trying to figure out what the lion had to do with their next task – and she almost instantly noticed something that they had all somehow missed.

"Guys, look, there's openings in these..." Nina informed them, pointing towards the ground in order to direct their attention to what had caught her sight, "and there's this channel, and it leads to the door," Upon reaching said door, the leader let out a groan of disgust, "with some kind of goo on it - must hold it in place."

"So, we've got a big bunch of chemicals, six snake-y tubes that go down to this mixing jar that leads straight on to a door with a weird goo around it." Fabian summarised.

"So..." Nina began to theorise, wanting to solve the task as quickly as possible, "...maybe we put all the chemicals into the tubes, and, abracadabra, they magically open the door?"

She glanced at her ex-boyfriend hopefully, wanting the task to be as simple as that – however, the group had experienced enough and solved enough riddles to know that the tasks were never so simple, causing the genius of the group to correct her, "Could be, but I guess it has to be the right six chemicals."

"Okay, then." Alfie clapped his hands together, evidently eager to start as he went towards one of the shelves that held the vintages bottles on them and began to instruct, "Everybody grab a chemical, and then let's get-."

"It's a bit late for science experiments, Alfie." Fabian quickly interrupted before the eager male could get too carried away, hastily grabbing the bottle that Alfie had picked up and putting it back in its rightful place before he had the chance to accidentally drop it or begin randomly mixing it.

"Fabian, that might be the best thing you've ever said." Sydney exclaimed gleefully, not wasting a single second as she instantly turned around and began to head out of the awful chemistry task room without even checking that the others were following her; she simply just motioned for them to follow with her hand, "Let's go!"

"I don't think she was this happy to leave the tunnels even after she hit the webs." Patricia declared to the other members of the group, all of them watching the blonde-haired prankster practically skip her way out of the tunnels before the goth, alongside Alfie and Amber, began to follow along to catch up with her, whilst Nina and Fabian stayed behind for a few moments to examine something else.

Although, the prankster's happiness did not last for long as, the next day, she managed to find herself in another terrible place: Mr. Sweet's office.

It was as though the writer of her life was trying to torture her, Sydney thought. First, she was forced into a room filled with various chemicals and was tasked to figure out the correlating puzzle (meaning that her entire argument about how she was never going to use chemistry outside of school was now void). Second, she was then 'forced' (Jerome Clarke asked if she was coming with them and she couldn't exactly say 'no' to him, could she?) into the headmaster's office for something that was actually going to benefit the school rather than provide a hinderance to Mr. Sweet; she couldn't even pull a small prank on him! It truly was a terrible day for Sydney Anderson.

And, unfortunately for the blonde-haired prankster, it was only about to get worse as she, alongside Jerome Clarke and Alfie Lewis, were sitting down in front of their headmaster's desk and waiting for him to reveal more information about the important ping-pong competition that could potentially help them win.

"Now, uh, this should give you a sense of what you'll be up against in the ping-pong tournament." Mr. Sweet informed them, turning the computer screen to face the trio of students before pointing at it – well, more specifically, pointing at two people who had appeared on the screen, "And these are your opponents."

"I don't know. They don't look all that good-." Those were Jerome Clarke's famous last words, which were soon cut short from pure shock; it was as though he had jinxed them, with the blonde boy's eyes widening and his jaw dropping in awe at their opponent's talent, "Wow!"

"Oh!" Alfie cried out.

"Oh!" Jerome exclaimed.

"Oh no." Sydney groaned, her head falling to rest in one of her hands from pure exasperation; their ping-pong opponents weren't just good – they were amazing, making the sport seem like some sort of majestic work of art as the ball skilfully soared through the air to meet its match... meanwhile, Jerome Clarke and Alfie Lewis had never taken ping-pong even semi-seriously once in their lives.

"What?!" Jerome yelped - even Mr. Sweet's jaw had dropped in surprise from how skilled the two kids seemed to be at ping-pong; it was supposed to be a high-school competition, not the Olympics!

"Whoa!"

"No way. That is-."

"No."

"How?" Jerome questioned, in awe of the two ping-pong players who appeared to have an unfathomable skill at the game; it was unbelievable.

"I hope you are expecting a challenge." Mr. Sweet stated, causing Sydney Anderson to shoot him an irritated glare – 'challenge' was an understatement, but at least they had some time to prepare for the competition and improve their skills, "And your opponents have set a match date for three days' time."

Nevermind.

"But that's only three days away!" Jerome cried out, absolutely horrified.

"Yep, that's how days work... unfortunately." Sydney muttered, defeated.

"I don't need to remind you that if you lose, our sporting tradition, already in tatters, will be destroyed forever." Mr. Sweet gravely declared, his tone getting even more severe as he continued speaking whilst the three students looked at him in horror – he must have soon realised his error, as he took a breath and returned his normal 'sweet' tone before continuing, "That said, just remember to enjoy it and try your best."

"No pressure at all then, right?" Sydney sarcastically retorted; they were so doomed.

Yet, Alfie's morale hadn't seemed to have taken a major hit like the rest of the people in the room, as the boy's excitement soon took over him as he giddily turned to his roommate and declared, "Me and you working together and saving the honour of the school - it's gonna' be awesome!"

And perhaps they would have agreed with him, if he hadn't followed up his declaration by hitting a ping-pong ball so awfully that every single person in the room winced.

"What have I done?" Jerome contemplated, resting his head in his hands.

Whatever motivation and morale that the poor boy had prior was completely and utterly crushed, destroyed, broken, and shattered into a million tiny pieces on the ground so that they could be trampled on. To be blunt: he had no hope, and he made that absolutely apparent to Sydney Anderson as the blonde duo made their way over to their lockers once the group had finished having their hopes shredded by their headmaster (Alfie Lewis, of course, had attempted to hit a ping-pong ball to prove his superiority, only for it to go all the way down the corridor, causing him to chase after it).

"We are destroyed, ruined, absolutely obliterated – there's no chance." Jerome declared, his eyes still carrying the look of horror that had mixed with the ocean of his eyes the moment the ping-pong ball on the screen had begun ruling the air majestically.

"What did you say before?" Sydney inquired, before quoting the man's own words, "'They don't look all that good'?"

Instantly, a small scoff escaped the man's lips as he began to shake his head, "Okay, that was before I realised that they're basically Olympians!"

"They're not."

"They might as well be!"

"A lovers' quarrel, is this?" A familiar voice drawled, causing the blonde pairing to instantly grow quiet as they simultaneously snapped their heads to face the new addition to their conversation – of course, this led one member of the duo to let out a rather loud groan of annoyance.

"As if my day can't get any worse!" Jerome cried out.

"Wow, good to see you too." Damian Cyrus, looking as rebellious but as charming as ever, sarcastically smiled at the male prankster, before turning his head to the woman by his side, "It is especially good to see you, though."

"Is your only purpose in life to annoy me?" Jerome inquired.

However, Hathor House's rebellious resident appeared to ignore the blonde boy completely whilst his entire attention remained on Sydney Anderson, "I'm looking for a pretty photographer to take some pictures of me – any idea where I might find one? I'm an amazing model."

"Unfortunately, this pretty photographer is already booked." Jerome instantly declared, wrapping his arm around the photographer's shoulders whilst she allowed it to rest there.

Confusedly, Sydney glanced up at the blonde-haired boy, "I am?"

"You are."

"I am." Sydney agreed, sending a determined nod towards the rebel as soon as she had confirmation from the one who had his arm around her, not needing anything else.

"You're so convincing." Damian sarcastically retorted, an amused smirk plastered across his face whilst he shook his head at the pair that were so obviously in love to the point where it was sickening, "Really, it does not take an idiot to figure it out."

"Okay, bye-bye now!" Jerome grinned, ignoring whatever the dark-haired man stated and just excitedly waving at him, anticipating the moment that he would leave.

Not fazed in the slightest, Damian simply let out a chuckle and set his sights on Sydney once again, telling her, "If this booking ever cancels or... dumps you, as one might say, then you know where I am."

"Mara Jaffray might be available – call her!" Jerome instantly quipped, a large and toothy grin set upon his face as the unwanted male finally turned away and left them alone.

The moment that the duo had found themselves alone once again, Sydney didn't waste a single second before she turned to face the male prankster once again and confirmed, "I'm not booked at all, am I?"

"Well..." Jerome muttered, "...not exactly, but I'll think of something."

Thinking seemed to be a common theme of the day, because Sydney Anderson soon found herself among her fellow members of Sibuna, with all of them trying to think about how they were supposed to solve the next task. After a majority of the secret group members had left (or to be more accurate, after Sydney Anderson had bolted it out of there in a desperate escape from her worst enemy whilst the other members followed her), Nina Martin and Fabian Rutter had found some riddles and taken photos of said riddles in order to show them to the other members later and to solve the task together.

"Okay, these are the riddles Nina found." Fabian informed them, passing the members a tablet and swiping through the pictures that they took of the riddles.

As soon as the prankster's eyes landed on the riddle photos, the girl immediately winced, "Okay, I know there are more pressing matters here, but the composition of these photos is awful. Let me take the photos next time."

At the comment, Fabian turned to face the prankster with an amused look plastered over his face, "Would you have wanted to be in the room with the chemicals for even longer?"

"You make a point." Sydney declared, "Please, continue."

"We think they're clues to the different chemicals we need to use." Nina took the cue, diving into the more important and crucial topic at hand as soon as possible, "There are six funnels down the lion's mane, six of those, so one per snake."

"The first one, the taste of the Great Bitter Lake - that's a real lake in Egypt. The water's salty, so that makes it bitter." Fabian explained.

"So, the bitter taste is salt." Nina stated.

"Sodium chloride." Patricia corrected, putting a finger up in order to interrupt the members of the group, all of whom looked at her with disbelief thus causing her to elaborate on why exactly she said that when they knew she wasn't the fondest of science, "Sweetie made me copy out the periodic table a hundred times after that algae incident."

"Sounds like hell." Sydney grimaced.

"Okay, so we've got one - only five to go." Nina declared.

"That is way too many." The female prankster sighed, resting her head in the palm of one of her hands – having to solve six (now five) chemistry related riddles for something unrelated to education was not something she had on her to do list.

"You know what we could do?" Alfie started, briefly pausing his ping-pong practice in order to provide his suggestion to the group members, "We could bring samples of the chemicals up from the tunnels and try to identify them in the chemistry lab."

That was actually... a really good plan.

Perplexed but impressed, the members of the secret group all turned around to face the boy. The entirety of the conservation he had remained silent; the only noise that had derived from the boy throughout the discussion was the noise of a bouncing ping-pong ball that he had refused to stop playing with until he had finally entered the conversation with a piece of advice.

"You came up with that while bouncing the ball... really badly?" Fabian inquired.

"Yep." Alfie confirmed, taking the opportunity to begin practicing ping-pong once again, shooting the ball up into the sky – yet it didn't come back down.

Yeah... Alfie Lewis had a lot of work to do before he could even think about competing and succeeding in the ping-pong tournament.

And that was precisely Jerome Clarke's worry. As much as he wanted to have faith in his roommate and friend, there was no denying that Alfie had a noticeable lack of sporting ability (especially when it came to ping-pong), and the male prankster was not in the position where he could afford to lose the ping-pong competition because his partner was not the most athletic. That was precisely why, the next day, Jerome Clarke had dragged Sydney Anderson to the side (once she, among the other members of Sibuna, had grabbed some samples of the chemicals from the tunnels that morning), telling her to grab her camera and follow him, which she did without hesitation.

"So, is this what caused me to be so booked up?" Sydney questioned when they eventually came to a stop in the almost empty drama room, the pair of them stepping onto the stage.

"I told you I'd think of something – this is something."

"Are you going to tell me what 'something' is?"

"You may not approve of 'something'?"

"That's a great start."

"I know, right?" Jerome sarcastically stated, a grin plastered across his face until he noticed the look that he was receiving from the blonde-haired girl – a look that told him to inform her of what exactly what happening right then and there, which he quickly obliged, "Okay, listen, I cannot afford to lose this ping-pong match, and Alfie's sporting abilities leave a lot to be desired. So, I'm going to put up flyers asking people to try out to be my ping-pong partner."

That sounded reasonable enough – however, Sydney Anderson knew exactly how Jerome Clarke worked, meaning that she was fully aware that he had not told their best friend that he was attempting to recruit other members, causing her to ask: "And you think that's going to go well?"

"Of course! What could go wrong?" Jerome exclaimed obliviously, a grin still on his face – Sydney, however, absolutely did not have a grin on her face.

"Famous last words." The poor girl muttered, already envisioning how her day was about to go as soon as their best friend inevitably saw the ping-pong posters.

"I just need you, the beautiful photographer, to take some photos of the handsome soon-to-be ping-pong champion." Jerome explained charmingly, whilst striking some not-so-charming "strong" poses where he flexed his arms and smouldered towards the photographer.

Sydney suppressed the laugh that wanted to escape and simply rolled her eyes, hitting his arm so that he'd stop posing as she told him, "You're lucky I like you."

"I am." Jerome agreed with a lovesick smile plastered across his face – however, the girl it was directed towards didn't catch sight of it as she turned her back and began to prepare her camera settings for the photoshoot about to ensue.

Instead of noticing the infatuated smile and lingering looks being thrown her way, Sydney Anderson's eyes remained on her precious camera as she called out to the man from over her shoulder, "By the way, I had nothing to do with this!"

A few hours, thousands of pictures, hundreds of giggles, and some minutes spent in photoshop later, and the flyers (that Sydney Anderson totally had nothing to do with) were finally completed and ready to hand out to potential ping pong players. Of course, considering the fact that Alfie Lewis was unaware that Jerome Clarke was advertising for other potential teammates, one would assume that the blonde-haired boy would do it discreetly and away from their friend's prying eyes.

Nope.

He was handing out the flyers in a science class that he shared with said friend, because nothing said subtlety like recruiting people to be his teammate right in front of his current teammate's eyes! Shockingly enough, it had only been a few minutes of Jerome passing out the flyers and talking about ping-pong before Alfie's eyes had narrowed, shining with suspicion as the boy noticed that his roommate was talking to Eddie Miller.

Once finished with his conversation and successfully handing out some of the flyers, Jerome returned to the lab table and took his seat besides Sydney, his hand instinctively moving to rest on her leg whilst she sent him a soft smile; although, Alfie Lewis did not send a soft smile towards his roommate, and instead sent him a curious look as he inquired, "What's that about ping-pong?"

"Oh, nothing. Just shooting the breeze with good ol' Eddieo - right, Eddie?" Jerome casually dismissed, before sending the aforementioned boy a desperate look that screamed 'DO NOT SNITCH' as he casually walked past.

Being dragged into the conversation, Eddie confusedly came to a halt and stared at the blonde-haired boy before deciding that he couldn't be bothered to deal with his shenanigans today and simply went with him, bluntly stating, "Sure."

Despite his response not being convincing in the slightest (so much so that Sydney visibly winced – she really did not understand how so many people who lived at Anubis House were terrible liars, and yet that was all they seemed to do), Alfie seemed to let go of the topic and Eddie walked away to resume whatever he was doing prior – they were in the clear, for now.

However, Sydney Anderson knew that it wouldn't be long until Alfie Lewis figured out that Jerome Clarke was trying to replace him – after all, he'd have to be told that he wasn't taking part in the competition, and that's why the blonde-haired girl leaned closer to Jerome and whispered to him, "You know he'll find out at some point."

"Yeah, at some point – not now." Jerome responded, wanting to deny the truth and escape the inevitable for as long as possible.

"You're insufferable." Sydney muttered jokingly, rolling her eyes.

Despite the insult, the boy's devious grin widened, "Yet you're still here."

"You'd be lost without me." Sydney declared.

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps? I think that's a certain-."

"Alfie, you shouldn't mix chemicals if you don't know what they are." Mara Jaffray scolded, having glanced over from the other table that she was sat on and seeing him messing with random chemicals, causing the blonde pair to glance up from their conversation and look at what he was doing – and, yep, it didn't look good.

"Sorry, Mara. Very sensible... and very boring." Alfie responded, causing his two best friends to snicker slightly... until the boy began to pour the chemicals into the beakers, causing their snickers to abruptly come to a halt and their eyes to widen, whilst the student-turned-scientist added, "And I do know what they are."

"You do?" Sydney nervously inquired– as much as she loved her best friend and saw his intelligence more than anybody else, the female prankster was not aware of him ever paying attention in class and/or having some sort of affinity for science.

"Stinky green and lumpy orange."

He had no clue what they were.

"Alfie, what did I say?!" Mara cried out over the sounds of the pranking blonde duo chuckles of disbelief – even if the duo were extremely worried, neither of them wouldn't have had any chance to stop their friend as the liquids were already merging together, forming some sort of odd concoction.

Upon hearing the incredulous questioning of his classmate, Fabian Rutter's head snapped over to the table of idiots and his eyes instantly widened – within seconds, the man had dropped whatever he had in his hands as he rushed over to the table, asking, "Alfie, what are you doing?"

"Experimenting!" Alfie gleefully declared, his eyes and smile lit up in what could only be described in a crazed manner, him not having a care in the world as the chemical began to bubble and fizz – Sydney knew her best friend was insane, but she didn't predict this.

Almost instantly, the chemical's reaction was made prominent as a horrendous smell began to make its way through the laboratory and linger in the air, forcing the students to gag and cough as the disgusting scent demanded to be known. Sydney wasted absolutely no time in covering her nose in an attempt to block out the foul smell, but it was too pungent and was hard to miss – perhaps that was what alerted Mr. Sweet that something was not necessarily right, causing him to look up to his class and soon discover what had gone awfully wrong.

"Stop that at once, Alfie! It's incredibly dangerous!" The teacher instantly wailed, rushing over to the desk to try salvaging the problem; if Sydney wasn't so focused on trying to block the putrid smell, she probably would have found his distress rather amusing.

"What is going on here?!" The demanding voice of Victor Rodenmaar cut through the room, causing the students to snap their heads around and lay their eyes on the housekeeper present at the scene, standing at the door leading into the classroom.

"I have everything under control, Victor!" Mr. Sweet squealed.

"I beg to differ, Mr. Sweet." Victor argued, coming further into the classroom and examining the mess, "It appears to me that what you have here is a class full of dunces who should not be interfering in things they do not understand!"

"Bit harsh." Sydney muttered under her breath as the housekeeper took his leave, gagging at the appalling smell just like everybody else who was in the laboratory – people had resorted to covering their noses with their blazer sleeves or their ties, and Jerome was attempting to waft the smell away from him and Sydney using some paper (it was not working); despite all of this, the one who had caused the entire mess seemed to not care in the slightest, a grin still plastered across his lips as he examined his work.

"That was awesome sauce!" Alfie beamed, "If I was a crazy mad scientist, I could do this for a living - right, Mara?"

Mara Jaffray did not agree.

Career prospects were not looking too good for Alfie Lewis at that moment: his dreams of being a mad scientist were just as horrendous as the smell from the two chemicals he had swirled together, and his ping-pong partner was (unknowingly to him) trying to recruit a new one to take his place. Although, maybe the student/mad scientist/ping-pong player had a bit more luck than he initially thought, because the ping-pong try-outs seemed to have a few issues of its own... a specific issue that was extremely irritating to Jerome Clarke and went by the name of Damian Cyrus (or, as Jerome had mentally nicknamed him: the bane of his existence).

Upon casually entering the drama studio, it was incapable to miss the blonde-haired friends setting up a ping-pong table in the middle of the room and the few students who were waiting on the sidelines to try out – and that (alongside the general presence of Sydney Anderson, of course) was what piqued the interest of Hathor House's bad boy as he grabbed one of the posters and approached the dynamic duo, inquiring, "What's this?"

Jerome didn't even bother explaining anything – however, he did bother unconsciously stepping a little bit closer to Sydney Anderson as he responded, "Nope."

"Ping-pong partner, huh-?" Damian read the poster, a smirk on his lips.

"I would rather be ping-pong partners with Victor." Jerome declared, completely serious.

"What?"

"Oh, that could be a good idea actually." Jerome (in a slightly delusional state, one could argue, from focusing on ping-pong so much) said mostly to himself, before he glanced over at Sydney Anderson and asked, "Do you think he's any good at it?"

At that, Sydney's eyebrow quirked up as she reminded the boy of a small little fact, although many would have probably presumed it to be exaggeration, as she pointed out to him, "He's, like, a hundred."

"Old guys like ping-pong, right?" Jerome queried.

"Isn't that golf?" Sydney responded, the pair of them ignoring everybody else and going off into their own little world where it was just the two of them as they debated the general audience of different sports like the dorks they were.

Nevertheless, their world did (unfortunately) include other people, which allowed Damian Cyrus to wave his hands between the pair, snapping the two out of their bubble as he pointed out his existence, "Hello, I'm right here."

"Yes, I temporarily forgot and felt happiness for a moment or two. Anyways, where were we?" Jerome bluntly responded, quickly snatching the ping-pong try-outs poster out of the rebellious boy's hands before he continued, "Oh yeah, this. Your application is denied."

"I haven't even-." Damian began.

"Nope, bye bye!" Jerome hastily interrupted, not even giving the poor(?) boy a chance as he began to push the resident of Hathor House out of the drama studio and into the school corridors, gleefully waving him off before crumpling up the ping-pong poster and tossing it in the nearest bin, as though he was irritated at that singular poster for informing Damian Cyrus of his life.

Amused at his peculiar antics, Sydney Anderson approached her best friend with her arms crossed in an attempt to be disappointed (completely ignoring that, as soon as she was a close enough distance to Jerome, her head instantly rested against his arm comfortably), "He could have been the best ping-pong player ever."

Jerome shrugged, "I'll take that chance."

No words were needed between the pair. Instead, Sydney Anderson had a charming smile on her face as she cheekily rolled her eyes at the boy, before passing him the two ping-pong bats and making her departure, finding a seat near the stage and besides Amber Millington, who was watching the entire interaction over the top of the magazine the fashionista was reading. For a few seconds, Jerome stared after his childhood best friend with a small (yet besotted) smile, before he quickly snapped out of it and hastily began the ping-pong try-outs.

"Oh, come on!" Amber groaned exhaustedly, unexpectedly slamming her magazine down on the coffee table and therefore startling the photographer, who had jumped in her seat and snapped her head to face her roommate confusedly.

"Hello to you too, Amber." Sydney responded, bewildered.

"I never thought I'd be frustrated at having front row seats to my own personal rom-com."

"Oh, you do? Cool, I guess." The prankster commented, not realising that the 'personal rom-com' that Amber Millington had front row seats to was the romance of Sydney Anderson and Jerome Clarke, "What's the name of the rom-com?"

At that, the fashionista let out another irritated and thoroughly drained groan, picking up the magazine that she had been reading prior and burying her face in it – how could two people be so oblivious?

Yet, Sydney Anderson continued to remain utterly oblivious as she stared at her roommate with extremely baffled eyes, dumbfoundedly murmuring, "O...kay?"

Despite the perplexation that she felt, the photographer decided to ignore her roommate's odd behaviour and focused on her beloved camera, going through the settings, and making sure that they were what she desired before she started to take test shots. Whether it was a conscious decision or not, the subject of the photos remained mostly the same: a blonde-haired man whom she was quite familiar with. Of course, Jerome took the ping-pong try-outs very seriously; however, he also couldn't help but to pose for the camera a few times, his poses ranging from serious, silly, and smirking only to suddenly switch to shocked as his secret was finally out – Alfie Lewis had entered the room, and it didn't exactly take a genius to figure out what was happening.

"Dude! What are you doing?" Alfie questioned incredulously, eyes wide as they flickered between his roommate and the posters, "Are you looking for a new ping-pong partner?"

"Why would you even think that?" Jerome responded dismissively; Sydney simply sighed, resting her head in her hands.

Ludicrous, Alfie dramatically gestured to the ginormous poster beside him that had Jerome's face plastered on it, yelling, "It says, 'be my ping-pong partner'!"

"Ah." Jerome realised, his face dropping as he realised it was going to be much more difficult to get out of the situation than he originally anticipated, "Yes, I suppose I am."

"What about our deal? You gave me your word!" Alfie cried, evidently betrayed - Jerome hastily gestured to one of the many people trying out to play ping-pong, asking the contestant to give him a minute before the blonde-haired boy rushed over to Alfie, who was still howling, "This was my chance to shine!"

"Yeah, and you still might, but..." Jerome started, pausing for a second as he mulled over his words before continuing, "Look, you saw the other team - we can't take any chances, right? Come on, man, you're still on the list."

Thinking that had solved the issue, Jerome went to return to the ping-pong try-outs.

"No, I'm not!" Alfie bawled upon having read the aforementioned list – Jerome had not solved the issue whatsoever.

Instantly, the blonde-haired boy halted in his tracks, eyes wide and hands going up to his mouth as he realised the error in his plans – how could he have been so stupid?

"Yeah, um..." He mumbled, before rushing over to the list and hastily writing his roommate's name on it with scrawny handwriting, "You are now!"

At his behaviour, Sydney couldn't help but to roll her eyes, shaking her head as a slight chuckle escaped her lips; she had warned the blonde-haired boy that their best friend would find out eventually, and now he was reaping the consequences.

However, Jerome seemed determined to fix the issue and make sure that their best friend wasn't too upset about the situation, as he grabbed onto the shoulders of Alfie Lewis and began to encourage him, "Suit up, and show these losers (no offense)" At that last part, he glanced towards the many students trying out, before turning back towards his best friend, "how the Alf-Meister rolls."

And that somehow managed to motivate a once defeated Alfie, who seemed to have a surge of confidence as he barged past the other students who were trying out and got into position to compete, taking the bat from the person who was originally competing against Jerome and had been told to wait.

"Right." Jerome spoke, getting ready to serve until he noticed that all the students who were waiting to try out had gotten out of their seats and had begun to leave... probably due to the person running the try-outs calling them losers, "Wait, no, guys - what?"

Realising that none of them were going to return or provide an explanation for them leaving (although, Jerome was pretty certain he could guess why, even though he did tell them that he meant no offense by his insult towards them), the blonde-haired boy gave up and passed the ball to Alfie, in hopes that he had magically improved at ping-pong in the past day or so.

He had not.

Upon trying to serve, the ball hadn't even managed to bounce over the net and had instead hit the net, causing Jerome to blink confusedly, Sydney to wince, and Alfie to go into a fit of rage as he threw his bat, complaining, "Come on! You cannot be serious!"

"Alfie, what are you doing?" Jerome inquired.

"I'm demonstrating my passion!" Alfie yelled, throwing his arms around wildly.

"How about demonstrating a bit of aim?!" Jerome retorted, matching his roommate's loudness before casually calling out, "Next!"

Nobody took Alfie Lewis' place.

Confusedly, Jerome glanced around the room – there was literally nobody left, with all the prior students who were trying out having made their leave. It was basically a ghost-town, with only Jerome Clarke, Alfie Lewis, Sydney Anderson, Amber Millington, and two students in the corner with their head in a book who didn't have a care in the world about what was happening in the room.

"And the clear winner is Alfie Lewis! Yes!" Alfie cheered, his arms in the sky as he began bouncing up and down excitedly to celebrate his success.

Frustrated, Jerome angrily served the ping-pong ball, hitting it across the room. Putting Alfie on the list to try out wasn't meant to make him his ping-pong partner, it was meant to provide him with an excuse to choose somebody else! Alfie was meant to see how good another student was in comparison to him and realise that choosing someone else to be Jerome's ping-pong partner was the better idea. Instead, there was literally nobody else to pick, and Jerome Clarke appeared to be stuck with Alfie Lewis for a ping-pong partner. However, the ball that he had angrily hit across the room suddenly bounced back across the ping-pong table and returned to him in such a precise manner that all of them froze.

Excited cheers had quickly gone silent, eyes had widened, and the three best friends swiftly snapped their head to face the direction the ball had flown from.

"Wait, what?" Baffled, Jerome hit the ball once again.

Not even sparing a single glance towards the boy, Amber Millington – the fashionista who has always proclaimed to hate sports due to the sweating involved - used the back of her hairbrush to expertly hit the ping-pong ball precisely back towards him, all whilst keeping her eyes focused on the magazine that she had been reading this entire time.

Instantly, jaws dropped, shock plastered across everyone's face, and they remained completely still for a moment as they all wondered the exact same question – the question that Jerome, through a shell-shocked face, proceeded to ask: "How did you do that?"

Amber stared at him blankly, "Do what?"

"Do it again." Jerome demanded.

"Do what again? I don't know what you're-." Amber started – however, the fashionista was soon interrupted by a ping-pong ball flying towards her, and she didn't even hesitate before using her hairbrush (once again) to hit it back towards Jerome, before casually looking back towards her magazine and flicking the page over, as though the three other residents of Anubis House weren't looking at her as though she had just discovered the secret of life or some sort of ground-breaking cure to some medical disease.

Jerome stared, "You're amazing."

"Thank you, Jerome, but I already knew that." Amber, as humble as ever, responded; yet, a grin appeared on her lips as she continued, "You can say it to Sydney, though."

Not even bothering to respond to the latter part of the fashionista-turned-expert-ping-pong-player's statement, Jerome desperately approached her with one thing and one thing only in mind, "I need you to be my partner."

"Okay, this is not how my rom-com goes!" Amber angrily huffed, slamming down the magazine in a manner similar to a child throwing a tantrum as she spun to face the blonde-haired boy, "Say that to Sydney, but make it nicer and grander! You cannot have this be how you ask her out – and, gosh, wear better clothes too, both of you."

"Ping-pong partner, Amber." Sydney and Jerome simultaneously corrected the fashionista, the former of the pair rolling her eyes amusedly whilst the latter of the pair was solely focused on ping-pong and continued, "Please, I'm begging you."

"Oh, when you put it that way... no." Amber rejected, causing the other potential ping-pong partner to cheer as silently as he possibly could (although, his excited body movements was enough to show how thrilled he was at the rejection), "I got sick of ping-pong when I was under-thirteen county ping-pong champion."

"Under-thirteen county ping-pong champion?" Jaws dropped; the three pranksters repeated the fashionista's words in unison, eyes focused on her.

"Three years running." Amber added nonchalantly, as though the information she had already provided wasn't impressive enough.

At this news, the trio had very different reactions: Alfie Lewis seemed to do some sort of silent groan, defeat manifesting through his slumped shoulders and the frown on his lips; Sydney Anderson just stared at her roommate in awe, wondering how this information had been kept a secret for so long even with the fashionista living with them; Jerome Clarke appeared to have cogs turning in his head as he repeated the new information to himself as a mutter – really, it was obvious what the solution to his problem was if he wanted to win the ping-pong competition, which he did... extremely badly.

"Sorry, Alfie." Jerome stated, not sounding apologetic at all as he took the bat from his old ping-pong partner and took a step closer to the under-thirteen county ping-pong champion, even going so far as to get onto his knees; it was safe to say that Sydney snapped out of her shock and began to snicker at the boy, unable to control her laughter at the sight of him literally begging on his knees.

Yet, somebody begging on their knees was not enough to convince Amber Millington, who turned to stare at the boy before bluntly responding with: "No."

For some reason, the blonde-haired male had not expected to be rejected so easily – especially when he was on his knees begging, causing him to glance around confusedly for a moment as he was unsure what he was supposed to do next; however, an idea soon came to mind and a grin appeared on his lips, "For the fame, fortune, immortality."

Both Sydney Anderson and Amber Millington stared at him incredulously.

"Okay, it's none of those things," Jerome admitted, quickly coming up with another idea, "Amber, but I will make sure that you get to wear a really cute outfit."

"No offense, Jerome, but I have to insist you leave the outfits to me." Amber responded.

"Agreed." Jerome stated instantly – at that point, he was probably willing to do absolutely anything that the fashionista told him to do as long as she was willing to be his ping-pong partner, "So you'll do it?" She nodded, and that appeared to be one of the happiest moments in the male prankster's life as he joyfully cheered, "Yes!"

Reactions in the room were juxtaposed: Alfie Lewis slammed his hand against the ping-pong table and frustratedly stormed out the room, whilst Jerome Clarke continued to whisper 'thank you's to Amber Millington, causing Sydney Anderson to purse her lips together as she tried to contain her laughter at the desperate sight.

"Come on, Gerbil, let's go before you lose the slight remnants left of your dignity." Sydney encouraged him, making sure that the camera was secure around her neck and grabbing her bag before helping her best friend up from kneeling on the ground – although, it appeared that the man did not care in the slightest about his dignity, because he continued to cheer wildly even when the duo had left the room.

After an entire break of apologising to random students for the excessive cheering and the photographer attempting to calm down the male prankster, Jerome Clarke's arm was safely and comfortably around the shoulders of Sydney Anderson, causing their bodies to be impossibly close to one another as they made their way through the corridors of their school once again, whilst giggling at each other the entire way – well, that was until they entered the drama studio once more and a loud voice interrupted their miniature bubble.

"That was the shot of my career, and I can safely say that, because my ping-pong career ended when you chose Amber!" Alfie argued angrily, resulting in the blonde-haired boy removing his arm from the shoulder that he was comfortably resting against and wiping his hands over his face in exasperation – meanwhile, Sydney Anderson just nudged the blonde-haired boy forward, the pair of them (mostly Sydney) having come up with a solution that would hopefully cheer up their best friend.

"We need to win, Alfie - you know that. Yes, you might not be playing, but you have a better job." Jerome began – and, at the latter few words, his roommate's eyebrows raised and a hum escaped his mouth; he was intrigued, at the very least, "As Coach."

With that, Jerome presented the boy with a very shiny, silver whistle – one that the blonde-haired duo had rummaged through their drawers for during the break and managed to find underneath a stinky sock in the boy's room; yet, Alfie Lewis' eyes instantly brightened, instantly entranced by the whistle as he hastily grabbed it from his roommate, "I've always wanted a whistle, so shiny and whistle-y."

It certainly was 'whistle-y', because only a few seconds later did the boy put the silver whistle up to his mouth and blow against it, a loud sound instantly resonating throughout the entire room and causing the blonde duo to flinch at the sudden noise.

They already regretted their decision.

"Only the best for my coach." Jerome managed to grit out, though it was obvious that he was already irritated with the whistle that he had provided his friend and already wanted to take it back and smash the thing on the ground – however, he didn't do that; instead, he decided to leave before matters got worse, and sent a small glance over to his female best friend, knowing that she (for some reason) wanted to stay with Alfie, "See you later."

Hands against her ears, Sydney sent the departing man a small smile, chuckles falling out of her lips as she noticed him put a hand to his ear as he went into the corridor – the pair of them were probably going to end up with slightly damaged hearing after the ping-pong tournament, but the photographer thought that it was most likely worth it if it put a smile on their best friend's face... maybe. Regardless of the potential hearing loss that she could experience, Sydney still decided to sit beside her best friend and grinned at how happy he appeared to be about the whistle as he marvelled over it, even showing it to Amber Millington once she had entered the room and sat beside the two best friends.

Unfortunately for Alfie Lewis, the boy was unable to marvel over his whistle for much longer as Nina Martin and Fabian rushed into the room with not-so-happy expressions plastered across their faces, the two of them quickly taking their seats as the three already sitting glanced at them concernedly, waiting for one of them, which just so happened to be Nina Martin, to announce the bad news: "We saw Victor in the cellar mixing chemicals - he's brewing elixir again."

"Oh, that could be bad." Amber responded.

"Understatement of the year." Sydney groaned, resting her head against her hand as she wondered why their housekeeper would continue trying to brew the elixir after it almost went disastrously last year – hadn't Victor Rodenmaar learnt anything?

"How are the chemical riddles coming?" Alfie inquired, knowing that the only way the members of the secret group could proceed was if they figured out all the puzzles that they were given until they reached the very end of it all.

"I'm still stuck on 'sweet scent of mourning'." Fabian confessed.

Alfie nodded, and the group went silent for a few seconds, as though they were all trying to figure out what the riddle meant in their own minds – however, Alfie had something else in mind as he soon interrupted the silence, "Well, good luck with that."

With that, the boy practically leapt out of his seat and put his entire might into blowing the whistle that he had been provided straight into the face of Amber Millington. All of them winced, attempting to cover their ears despite it being way too late.

"Alfie, I'm right here." Amber reminded him, irritated.

"Jerome made me coach, and you've got training, so three laps around the school and squats and lunges - times twenty." Alfie informed the poor girl, who glanced over at the female prankster of the group in hopes for some explanation – instead, Sydney simply mouthed an apology to the girl, whilst the coach continued, "Go."

Not allowing the girl to refuse (unless she wanted her eardrums blown out), the boy continued to blow the whistle repeatedly with no hesitation, practically forcing the frowning fashionista to get up from her seat and begin jogging around the school. As if that wasn't torture enough, Alfie decided that he had to follow around behind her, still blowing the whistle repeatedly, to ensure that she kept up with her training. Even as the pair went into the school corridors and weren't in sight anymore, the sound of a whistle was still able to be heard – or perhaps that was just the ringing in Sydney Anderson's ear, which she was attempting to get rid of as Fabian Rutter and Nina Martin turned to face her expectedly, wanting some sort of explanation for what had just occurred.

"Don't ask."

The ex-couple shook their heads, realising that the prankster's response meant that the situation was probably too complicated to explain simply or that it was just better off for them not to know, and then the trio returned to glancing over the notes that Fabian and Nina had made, attempting to figure out the puzzle some more.

Of course, Sydney Anderson couldn't be away from Jerome Clarke forever – thus, she soon found herself among him once more as they were in the drama studio, with the boy practicing bouncing the ping-pong ball off his bat whilst she was sat down watching him, once again taking some photos with her camera. However, the peace was soon disturbed as a loud whistle screeched through the air, causing the blonde pair to jump out of their skin and the ping-pong ball to fly across the room.

Unsurprisingly, it was Alfie Lewis.

What was surprising, however, was when Sydney Anderson diverted her eyes from her friends and went to look back at her camera, only for her eyes to catch sight of two people (who were vaguely familiar, despite them not wearing the typical uniform) entering the drama studio and picking up the ping-pong ball. Confused, Sydney caught the attention of her two friends subtly pointed towards the newcomers, causing the two boys to turn around and notice the pair as well, walking over to them in order to take back their ping-pong ball; Sydney, the ever-curious soul, didn't hesitate in joining in.

"Hi, we're from the Wincott Academy." One of the newcomers introduced themselves, and it instantly made sense why the pair were so familiar to the female prankster; they were in the ping-pong video that they had watched which had made them lose all hope, "Just thought we'd say hi to the brave new challenger, aka the loser to be."

"Well, you're looking at him." Alfie responded smugly, clearly not realising that he had insulted his friend instead of promoting him – the 'loser to be' quickly motioned a stop signal to the boy in hopes that he'd take the hint, whilst the photographer of the trio sighed defeatedly; she already knew that the interaction was not going to go well.

"He just admitted his friend's a loser – burn!" The newcomer laughed with his partner, finally making Alfie realise the damage that he had done whilst Jerome pinched the bridge of his nose – that was not how he wanted to be introduced to his opponents.

"Well, actually, Jerome's so good that he once hit a ball over a roof and into an egg cup! And, another time, he saved a drowning kitten by hitting a ball and it clung onto it like a life preserver-!" Alfie spat out ridiculous stories, all whilst the prankster duo continuously signalled for him to stop – eventually, they realised that the boy was never going to get the hint, and the blonde-haired boy soon had enough and covered his mouth, forcing the clearly false stories to come to a halt.

"This is our coach. He loves the trash talk." Jerome explained, all whilst his hand covered Alfie's mouth and the boy continued to writhe around, clearly trying to continue his many ridiculous stories despite his words being muffled.

"A bit too much." Sydney added.

"You're obviously training to lose." The boy from Wincott Academy stated.

Making a fatal mistake, Jerome went to defend himself – although, in the process, he moved his hand away from the mouth of his best friend, allowing the boy (who clearly hadn't learnt from his mistakes last time) to speak up, "Well, he hasn't lost yet."

"Dude!" Sydney snapped, looking at the boy incredulously whilst the blonde-haired male simply sighed in defeat – internally, he was begging for a hole to swallow him up.

"Not that he will." Alfie quickly corrected – however, the damage had already been done.

Having a clear impression in their heads of what the competitors from the House of Anubis were like, the winning ping-pong duo quietly laughed, shaking their heads at the ridiculousness of the situation as they passed the ping-pong ball back to Jerome Clarke and walked away. They had seen enough.

"Thank you for that, Alfie." Jerome sarcastically bit.

Yet, Alfie didn't seem to understand that his roommate was not genuinely thanking him and was instead being sarcastic, because the ping-pong coach had a proud smirk on his lips as he replied, "My pleash', always happy to talk you up, buddy."

"That's what you call it?" Sydney inquired incredulously.

"Yep! That's why I wield the whistle, right?" Alfie grinned, quickly pulling out the silver and shiny whistle that he adored so much and putting it into his mouth.

"Oh, please don't." Jerome muttered, but the whistle-wielder blew into it anyways, the irritating sound screeching through the drama studio and causing the blonde duo to flinch before their friend skipped away happily – once he had left, Jerome turned to face Sydney with saddened and desperate eyes, asking, "Why did we give him the whistle?"

"To make him happy." Sydney answered with a nod, as though she was trying to convince herself that it was still the right idea and that they hadn't horrendously messed up by giving him such an irritating instrument that he seemed to be taking full advantage of.

"But what about our happiness?" Jerome cried dramatically, causing the blonde-haired girl to pat him sympathetically on the shoulder; safe to say, she couldn't wait for the ping-pong tournament to be over and done with.

It seemed to take over the life of her two favourite boys, Jerome Clarke and Alfie Lewis, as the latter had willingly gone to school early the next morning in order to make 'preparations' (whatever that meant), and the former of the pair was also going to shoot off early in the morning – however, the blonde-haired boy couldn't exactly leave and go ahead to school before talking to Sydney Anderson, could he? The answer to that was no, despite the female prankster having slept over in their room and the pair having cuddled all night, so that was what led to the blonde duo to being in the boys' room, with Sydney Anderson brushing through her wavy locks whilst Jerome Clarke was on his phone.

Though, the man soon dragged his attention away from his phone screen and glanced up to Sydney Anderson as he queried, "Have you seen the article posted on the school site?"

"You think I read?" Sydney retorted, scoffing.

"I think you read the juiciest scandal to ever come out of Anubis." Jerome replied, casually passing the photographer his phone with a website loaded up: an article from the school's website called 'Vera Devenish – A Liar Exposed!' – in the meantime, the pair used their silent language to communicate with one another, the blonde-haired boy taking the hairbrush from the girl and placing it on the desk before he began doing her tie for her.

"Mara wrote this?" Sydney asked quietly once she had finished reading, eyes narrowed at the expose piece lit up on the phone before she released a rather large and stressed sigh, "God, she's going to be in so much trouble."

"Yep. Probably the most shocking thing she's ever done, that goody-two-shoes." Jerome commented nonchalantly, a small smirk on his lips; he didn't necessarily care about the article at all or what the repercussions were – he just found it entertaining.

"Hey, Mara's been good to us – she helped you find your dad, didn't she?" Sydney scolded.

"Doesn't change the fact that she's a goody-two-shoes." The prankster responded with a shrug as he finished the girl's tie, gently patting her shoulder, "All done."

"She's still our friend, Jerome. Let's just hope she gets a detention, at most."

"Hold on, that might give her a heart attack." Jerome joked.

"Let's hope she never sees how many detentions there are on my record then." Sydney pointed out, causing the pair of them to laugh quietly among themselves, "I think the most surprising thing here is that you read the school news."

"Of course, I need to know the events happening around this place – best way to plan pranks and to scope out competition." Jerome explained; a majority of the time, nothing exciting was ever published on the school's website, but it did keep track of the various events happening around the school and that allowed the prankster to plan accordingly.

"Of course." Sydney chuckled, passing his phone back to him as the duo left his room, stopping by the entrance to the dining room and turning to one another, way too close for them to be labelled as 'just friends', "You sure you don't want to come to breakfast?"

"Nope, need to practice."

"Alright, I'll bring you something."

"You're a lifesaver." Jerome declared, unconsciously leaning over and kissing the girl's forehead before he went on his way, only glancing back just a few times to send a cheeky smile to his 'best friend' – in the meantime, Sydney sent him a soft grin, remaining in her spot outside the dining room for a few seconds after the boy had left before she finally made her entrance, seeing multiple residents of the House of Anubis already sat down.

Patricia Williamson, Eddie Miller, Fabian Rutter, Nina Martin, Amber Millington, and Mara Jaffray were already sat at the table, and the female prankster noticed that a few of the residents were reading a familiar article on their respective electronic devices whilst the writer of said article appeared extremely stressed and nervous, waiting for their response. Wanting to support her, Sydney Anderson didn't hesitate in sitting beside her, sending the nerd a smile in order to reassure the girl.

"You've read it, haven't you?" Mara asked anxiously, her tone hushed.

"Jerome just showed it me." Sydney confirmed with a nod.

Before the pair could speak more about it and the prankster could reassure her some more, Fabian interjected from across the table, "Mara, how could you write this?"

"Write what?" Amber questioned, clearly being out of the loop (a first for her, one would imagine, although the fashionista probably didn't ever scour the school news in order to discover her latest scoop) and thus causing the boy to pass his phone over to her.

"What if they close down the school site because of it?" Fabian quizzed.

"Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world." Sydney muttered under her breath.

"Chill, man." Eddie instructed, "The story was off the chain, it had to come out."

"Shocked face!" Amber exclaimed upon finishing the article, sending a look to the writer as she continued, "Mara, you destroyed her."

Glancing around at all of the residents, a majority of whom were staring at her with shocked faces as they wondered how she could have possibly written such a slanderous article, Mara eventually decided to take her stand and defend herself, getting up from her seat and confidently declaring, "I stand by everything I wrote, and I'm going to prove it."

"You go, girl!" Eddie encouraged, whilst the female prankster nodded in agreement with the statement and gave the nerd a subtle high-five as she went to leave.

Yet, Mara halted.

Victor Rodenmaar was at the doorway glaring at the poor student, his eyes roaring with thunder and a disgusting snarl apparent on his face; if looks could have killed, Mara Jaffray would have been long gone. Words weren't even needed to establish how furious the housekeeper was, and his stare alone was enough to make the room go silent and for the housekeeper's new victim to meekly sit back down into her seat, whilst Amber quickly passed the phone back to Fabian, not wanting anything to do with the article.

"There is to be a hearing today to ascertain the legitimacy, or otherwise, of a story which has appeared on the school website." Victor announced, stalking his way around the breakfast table, "I am instructing all Anubis House students to attend and hear the truth."

After directing another glare towards the article writing, the housekeeper made his leave.

"Sorry, Mara." Amber spoke up.

"Why a hearing?" Eddie questioned; they had to admit, it was odd and much worse than Sydney had anticipated – she had hoped that the situation would have been handled internally by Mr. Sweet, or that Mara Jaffray would have only received a few detentions and forced to write an apology/retraction statement.

"We're all behind you, it'll be okay." Amber comforted.

"We've got you." Sydney agreed, putting her hand on the nerd's shoulder reassuringly whilst everyone else nodded in agreement; they were all going to be there for her.

And with the support of the House of Anubis residents right behind her, Mara Jaffray regained a majority of the confidence that she had prior and stood up from her seat once more, making her leave once again whilst Sydney Anderson, Amber Millington, Patricia Williamson, and Eddie Miller followed – the three women ready to give their undying support to the nerd (the prankster among them also noticed that she hadn't ate much, so had picked up an apple alongside the food she had grabbed for Jerome, of course), whilst the singular man just came along for the ride.

Wanting Mara Jaffray to know how much she was loved and how much support she had, Sydney Anderson had hardly left the woman's side for a majority of the day, only really departing when the prankster went to give breakfast to her best friend (and informed him of the hearing which was compulsory for him to attend due to him being a resident of Anubis House), or when the nerd was speaking to Mrs. Andrews (who was apparently on her side) and Sydney felt as though they'd probably prefer privacy. Due to this, Sydney and Mara were once again seen together just before the hearing was due to begin, the former of the pair trying to make the nerd feel as confident and as comfortable as possible before she was due to face the enemy.

"Everything will be okay. You have your research, right?" Sydney asked, wanting to make sure that she was fully prepared before going on 'the stand' – really, the school had been a bit overdramatic in how they were dealing with the situation, putting on an entire 'trial' for something that should have probably been solved behind closed doors with a statement publicised after all the facts had been determined and the situation was finished.

"Yeah." Mara confirmed, fidgeting nervously as she pointed towards the stack of papers that she had put on her desk, telling the prankster, "It's all in here."

"You have all of us supporting you, okay?" Sydney reminded her.

"Thanks, Sydney." Mara replied with a soft smile – it was such a small statement, only eight words, yet it meant the world to the woman in that moment.

Something else that appeared to mean a lot to Mara Jaffray was Damian Cyrus (for whatever reason that was), who entered the room in his typical casual and nonchalant way, only for his eyebrows to furrow as he took notice of the peculiar layout of the room and the tension that filled it, causing him to approach the two residents of Anubis House and inquire, "What's all this about?"

"You don't know?" Sydney questioned disparagingly.

Completely ignoring the outburst of the female prankster, Mara glanced up at the rebellious boy and asked, "Have you seen my article on the school's website?"

"You think I read that junk?" Damian answered with a chuckle, as though he hadn't just insulted the website that the woman in front of him worked extremely hard on – although, he soon noticed his mistake upon witnessing how the prankster's face instantly soured and Mara recoiled, and he hastily covered his mistake, "I mean, no. I haven't had the time."

"Mara exposed our housemother for some pretty weird things, and now they're having a hearing to 'ascertain the legitimacy' of the story." Sydney briefly explained.

"I could be in big trouble if this doesn't go my way." Mara added, trying to make the boy from Hathor House understand just how serious the situation was; it wasn't everyday that the Amun Boarding School had a hearing over an article claiming that a housemother was putting dead people as her references and lying about her work experience.

"Hey, I'm in big trouble every day." Damian shrugged.

"God, you're utterly useless." Sydney muttered under her breath – she was beginning to understand why her childhood best friend wasn't particularly fond of Damian, although Mara Jaffray didn't seem to understand the dislike for him at all as she gazed up at him adoringly with her big, brown eyes, almost resembling puppy dog eyes.

"Could you stay and watch?" Mara asked hopefully, "I'd feel better if you were here."

"Uh." Damian hummed hesitatingly, glancing around the room and appearing to look for something or someone before he looked back down to his tutor, seeing the begging eyes that she was sending his way and shrugging, telling her, "I guess, sure."

Interrupting the constant flow of chatting, Mr. Sweet hit the gavel against his desk and forced everybody's attention to turn towards him as they began to take their seats (Sydney instantly moved away from Mara and Damian and found Jerome and Alfie, sitting beside them whilst she noticed Damian had gone to the back of the room, and the prankster assumed that he was going to watch from back there), the voices slowly simmering down until the head teacher's voice was the only one that sounded through the room, "This hearing has been called to determine the accuracy of an article written by Mara Jaffray about Vera Devenish. We should begin in a few moments."

"Hey, now's our chance." Nina Martin muttered as she stood up alongside Fabian Rutter, ready to make their departure so that they could explore the tunnels, and the rest of the members of Sibuna (minus Sydney Anderson, who wanted to stay for Mara Jaffray) quickly followed their leader and jumped up from their seats too.

"Be seated!" Mr Sweet commanded, causing all of them to come to a halt before he continued, "This is an official hearing. Could someone please close the doors?"

"Allow me, Mr. Sweet." Victor Rodenmaar volunteered with a smugly sweet smile, and whilst the members of the secret group took their seats once more, the housekeeper left the room and closed the doors behind him, making sure that Sibuna couldn't follow him.

"Quiet, everyone." Mr. Sweet eventually instructed once again, having noticed that the chatter had started once more and quickly shutting it down before the hearing began, "Mara, could you please present your case first?"

Following the instruction, the girl nodded confidently and took her stand, notes in hand and ready to refer to if/when she needed them – and, within seconds, she began her case against the housekeeper, "Miss Devenish, you worked as a clerk at Beacon Grove School nine years ago, is that right?"

"I wouldn't have put it on my resume if it weren't." Vera smiled.

"So can you explain why you are not in this photo-" Mara flicked the slides over, allowing everybody to see the photo that the student was referring to as she continued, "-of the entire kitchen team when they won the Award for Excellence that year?"

"I arrived at the beginning of the academic year, which starts in September. What is the date of that article, Mara?" Vera inquired with some sort of faux politeness.

At that question, Mr. Sweet turned to face the accusing student for the answer – however, Mara seemed to be stunned by this question, jaw dropped and hesitating for a few moments before she snapped out of it and glanced down, checking the dates before she slowly glanced up and confirmed, "April 20th."

"Five months before I arrived." Vera confirmed.

Instantly, all residents of the House of Anubis let out a loud groan – the hearing had only just started, and things were already looking bad for their fellow house member. With that worry in mind, Sydney Anderson fingers incessantly tapped against her legs; it only took a few seconds before a certain blonde boy took notice and laced their fingers together, allowing him to be her source of comfort.

Soon enough, Jasper Choudhary was taking the stand on the defence of Vera Devenish, the pair of them sitting beside one another as Mara Jaffray stood opposing them, "You recommended Vera for the job, but you told me you barely know her."

"She was a friend of a friend; I was happy to make the recommendation." Jasper clarified.

"Did you think it strange Vera was the only applicant?" Mara asked, eyes narrowed.

Perplexed, Jasper hesitantly replied, "I wouldn't know about that."

"Mara, I'm confused. Are you questioning Mr. Choudhary's character now too?" Vera confronted the student, almost scoffing at the teenager as she incredulously questioned, "Do you have any scruples at all about whose reputation you tarnish?"

Always ready to defend a friend, Sydney Anderson quickly went to jump up and argue against the housemother – however, Jerome Clarke was even quicker to squeeze the prankster's hand that he was holding, giving her the calmness that she required to not disturb the hearing and get herself into trouble along Mara Jaffray. As much as Jerome Clarke liked trouble, the hearing seemed to be a lot more trouble than it was worth – and, quite frankly, he didn't want to see Sydney Anderson expelled.

"I'm trying to establish how you came to get the job here and why." Mara explained.

"Mr. Sweet hired me - perhaps you'd like to interrogate him next." Vera sarcastically suggested, clearly irritated by the fact that her story was being questioned.

"I just want to know the truth."

The housemother scoffed, "In which case, I'm even more confused. I thought you were claiming to already know the truth when you wrote that article."

Hastily, Mara attempted to correct her mistake and fix her phrasing, but the only words that could escape her lips did so in the form of stammering, "No-. I mean, I did-."

"Let's stick to the facts, shall we? Or rather, the lack of them." Mr. Sweet interjected, his choice of words clearly showing what side he was leaning towards believing and thus causing the female prankster to sigh heavily and rest her head in her hands, dreading what the outcome would be for the Anubis resident, "Mara, please move on."

For a moment, silence consumed the room, everyone watching with intrigue as Mara carefully shuffled through her notes, preparing herself for the next onslaught of questions she had to ask in order to prove her point that the housemother of Anubis House was a fraud and that there was, at the very least, something suspicious happening regarding her.

"Your last job was as a housekeeper at Dewsbury Manor three years ago. Mr. Hendry was your employer, is that correct?" Mara questioned.

Vera agreed, "Yes."

"I spoke to a man there who told me Mr. Hendry died over twenty years ago." Mara revealed, causing everyone to glance at one another with widened eyes as they all wondered the same thing: how could a dead man be an employer?

However, Vera seemed to have the answer to that query because her expression didn't falter in the slightest - not even a single slither of surprise could be seen on her face as she calmly spoke up, "Mr. Sweet, I would like to introduce someone who will put an end to this nonsense once and for all, if I may."

Wanting the situation to be sorted as fast as possible and for the hearing to be over, Mr. Sweet was quick to agree to the motion, allowing the housemother to do as she pleased. So, Vera stalked to the back of the room, opening the doors that led into the hallway and revealing a man in a chair, whom she promptly helped to stand up and walk into the room where everybody could see him... including Mara Jaffray, who seemed rather confused at the man's appearance.

"This is Mr. Hendry," Vera declared, causing jaws to drop as everyone turned back to face the accusing student for an explanation, "and I think you will find he is very much alive."

"You?!" Mara wailed, shocked.

"Vera was with us for many years. She was a wonderful cook, and her chocolate cake: mhm, out of this world." Mr. Hendry described delightfully and enthusiastically, nothing but incessant and glowing praise tumbling out of his lips.

"But you told me Mr. Hendry was dead." Mara stated, stunned.

"I'm sorry, my dear, but I've never seen you before in my life." Mr. Hendry confessed.

"I came to see you, don't you remember?" Mara quizzed, desperate for some sort of explanation that would back up what she had been saying.

"Possibly." Mr. Hendry responding, humming slightly before he continued, "My memory is not as good as it used to be, but I can assure you, I do remember my own name."

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Hendry." Mr. Sweet spoke up, clearly finished with this witness testimony as the head teacher motioned for the man to leave the makeshift stand, which he followed without question.

"Mr. Sweet, I honestly-." Mara started.

"Enough."

"And I did go to-."

Slamming against the desk, Mr. Sweet bellowed, "Silence!"

Yet, the world was apparently against Mr. Sweet because, in his call for silence, the sound of random music suddenly began blaring from the speakers and a video soon began to play, capturing the attention of everybody in the room as they directed their sights to the screen where a video of Mr. Sweet was on full display. And, of course, it wasn't just any video of Mr. Sweet – it was a video of him dressed as a cowboy and doing country dancing, which was the funniest sight in the world to a bunch of high school kids; after all, it wasn't every day that they saw their head teacher on the dancefloor with a cowboy hat on. All the tension in the room dissipated as everyone fell into bundles of laughter, Sydney included – for a moment, the students allowed themselves to be distracted from the trial and to giggle as though nothing was wrong.

"Smooth moves, Mr. Sweet!" Alfie called out.

"You could call them 'sweet' moves." Sydney added amusedly.

"Oh, why didn't I think of that?!" Alfie light-heartedly groaned, though he still high fived his best friend for the, in his opinion, brilliant pun.

"Turn this off immediately." Mr. Sweet demanded – although his demands fell on deaf ears and giggling lips, causing him to take matters into his own hands as he rushed over to the screen and tried to rectify the issue, "Turn it off! Daphne, help me!"

Quickly jumping into action and following instructions, Mrs. Andrews hurried to the screen and tried to aid the head teacher in cutting off the video – after a long struggle and frantic tapping of buttons, the large screen displaying the yee-hawing Mr. Sweet soon cut to complete darkness, though the sound of boisterous laughter still remained, and the hilarious video was forever ingrained in the pupil's minds.

"We will take a short break." Mr. Sweet announced, clearly wanting to sort out the issue and get over how flustered and embarrassed he felt at that moment – it was then that Sydney caught a glimpse of the head teacher's face, and her laughs were suddenly caught in her throat as she realised that the situation was not good.

As soon as people began to move out of their seats, Sydney instantly leapt up in order to head straight for Mara, Jerome following right behind her until the voice of Alfie Lewis chimed up, "Let's go, dude. It's a tournament tomorrow, and you need practice."

Without hesitation, Jerome faced Sydney – not wanting to leave her for even a second without confirming that she was going to be fine and didn't require his help in any way, "You'll be fine?"

Sydney gave a nod of confirmation.

Despite this, Jerome was still hesitant – he knew that the female prankster cared deeply for the residents of the house, and he didn't want to ditch her if she was going to become incredibly stressed; with that in mind, he turned back to his roommate and compromised, "Ten minutes, that's all."

So, the trio parted ways, with two of them rushing to go and play ping-pong whilst the other rushed to comfort their housemate, although Sydney Anderson soon came to a halt as Nina Martin grabbed onto her arm, encouraging her, "Now's our chance, come on."

"I'm going to stay here." Sydney quickly denied, shaking her head at the group as she informed them, "I'm better here than down there – I hate science anyways."

Understandingly, Nina Martin, Amber Millington, and Fabian Rutter nodded in agreement; Sydney was right, especially since the prankster's expertise was not in science, but was instead in comforting people and being a ray of sunshine even in the darkest hours – so, the group left as a trio with Fabian giving a small request, "Wish her our best."

With that being said, Sydney had finally been able to rush over to Mara (who was already joined by Joy Mercer and Patricia Williamson) with no more interruptions, and the two girls shared a comforting embrace before the prankster sat down beside her, joining in the conversation between the three-turned-four girls as they sifted through the evidence.

"You should have checked your facts before you stuck them on the website." Patricia berated, her eyes examining all of the notes – of course, the purple-haired girl did not mean to berate her in an insulting way; it was only out of concern.

"I did!" Mara insisted, before deflating, "Well, I thought I did!"

Wanting to help in any way possible and save her friend's reputation and potential future at the school, Sydney did not waste a single second in grabbing the notes and the 'evidence' that was on the table and hastily began to look through them, hoping that something would stick out and be able to help the ongoing case – however, it seemed as though Mara had already used everything that she had, and there had been an explanation for all of it.

Frustrated, Mara began, "Maybe if Eddie hadn't-."

"What?! Eddie?!" Patricia interrupted ferociously, wondering how the newest resident of Anubis House was involved in the situation – and she wasn't the only one, considering the prankster had glanced up from examining the notes with curious eyes.

"Yeah. He basically called me a chicken." Mara confessed, and everything suddenly made sense.

As much as they loved the nerd, everybody knew that she was not the type of person to go against authority – nevermind spearheading a whole campaign calling her housemother a fake and a fraud who had lied about her past jobs and used dead people as references. However, Mara Jaffray was the type of person to get peer-pressured by somebody without even realising it – afterall, she changed her entire identity, got a makeover, and began acting like a rebel just because Mick Campbell called her boring... and that was only around a year ago. Mara Jaffray was the type of person to do something extreme in order to prove she was not the person everybody expected her to be, and it always landed her in trouble. This time, she had decided to prove Eddie Miller wrong.

"Oh, I'm gonna' kill that weasel." Patricia bit out with a growl, instantly leaping up from her seat and storming off with one goal in mind: hunt down Eddie Miller.

Meanwhile, Sydney had finished reading all the notes which were provided by Mara. There was nothing – not a shred of evidence not already thwarted that could have been used in Mara's defence. As the prankster put the pieces of paper back onto the desk, her eyes met Joy Mercer as the pair shared an unpleasant look, one that neither of them wanted to ever share... a look that screamed that Mara Jaffray was finished. Knowing that, the pair both wrapped their arms around the girl a little bit tighter, hoping that their reassurances would possibly be enough to ease the disappointment in her hurting heart.

"It's okay." Joy muttered.

"Where's Damian?" Mara wept.

"I saw him earlier." Sydney murmured (mostly to herself) as her frantic eyes instantly glanced around the room in search for the rebellious boy who was so desperately wanted by Mara – for once, the female prankster hoped that the boy from Hathor House was nearby so that he could comfort Mara in her time of need, but they were let down: he was nowhere in sight.

Eventually, everyone was sent back to their seats by the remaining teachers in the room as they hoped to get some sort of order before the head teacher returned. Unfortunately, that meant that Sydney Anderson couldn't remain by the side of Mara Jaffray – however, she stood at the very back of the room as she waited for the return of Jerome Clarke and Alfie Lewis, knowing that the pair were due back from their ping-pong practice soon.

"Silence in court." Mr. Sweet ordered, coming back into the room and getting into his seat – nobody even dared to mention or joke about the cowboy video, realising that the head teacher seemed more serious than any of the students had ever witnessed; that was bound to be bad for the result of the hearing, "I have listened to everything here today and have found no weight whatsoever to any of the claims against Vera."

"Quite right, and I hope you will deal severely with Miss Jaffray. Her claims were nothing more than the fabrications of a spiteful girl." Victor Rodenmaar bitterly commented, his words almost causing Sydney Anderson to jump up in defence of her fellow Anubis House resident and snap at the housekeeper – however, Mr. Sweet interrupted before she had the chance to.

"Be quiet, Victor! I am in charge here!" The head teacher commanded, evidently still reeling from his embarrassing video being shown in front of the entire school – Sydney suddenly felt a whirlwind of regret for even finding the video entertaining in the first place, now realising that its appearance probably impacted Mara's fate at Amun Boarding School, "The behaviour of the students of this school has reached an all-time low, and I will not stand for it for one moment longer!"

No, it was not good at all. Contrary to his name, Mr. Sweet's words were bitter and filled with anger; he had been pushed to his limit and it was time for him to be not-so-sweet, and Mara Jaffray was going to be his first victim. Nerves plagued Sydney Anderson as she continued to fret, worrying about the future of the person whom she was originally roommates with. Whilst she was never best friends with Mara Jaffray, the nerd had certainly been a big part of the prankster's life and had helped her out a lot. Prior to the love triangle between Mick Campbell, Amber Millington, and Mara Jaffray, there had been many nights where the prankster, the fashionista, and the nerd sat together on their beds and talked about their days: Sydney spoke about her most recent pranks and complained about the detentions that she received, Amber spoke about the dating gossip and informed the other girls about who was dating who around the school, and Mara chastised both of them for not focusing on their work whilst unwillingly giggling at their behaviour. Sydney really didn't want to imagine the House of Anubis without her.

So caught up in her own thoughts, memories of the nerd and the prankster hanging out together swirling around in the latter's brain, Sydney hadn't even noticed that Jerome Clarke had rushed into the room and made his return until she felt a comforting hand on her shoulder – she didn't even need to glance behind her to know who it was; it was obvious just from how it felt and the soothing aura that radiated from it. Instead, she put her own hand on top of his, lacing their fingers and holding on tightly.

"It is time for it to stop." Mr. Sweet insisted, appearing to be looking directly at Eddie Miller for some reason before he turned his head to finally address the student on trial, "Mara, you have attempted to ruin the reputation of one who wants only to look after you. Your transgression leaves me little option."

That was not good.

Intertwined hands gripped onto each other tightly.

"Mara Jaffray, you are expelled!"

▲▼▲

[31.08.2023]

NOTE: in all honesty, i've completely forgotten how to start off these things.

hi! it's been an extremely long time, and i am so unbelievably sorry for that. when i was last writing denouement, i had honestly lost all my passion for writing – i was just writing for the sake of it. i just wanted to pump out chapters as fast as i could and i loved when they had an absurd word count, and thus the quality of the chapters lacked severely. a majority of the previous chapters are just masses of description that isn't required, and it pains me to look back at. i probably would have continued this until the book finished, but then this chapter was accidentally deleted somehow, and i could never bring myself to work on it again at the time because it was painstaking to rewrite something i had already spent hours writing.

trigger warning for car accidents, suicide, and health issues in this next paragraph (the other paragraphs are safe)!

then, i began dealing with so much and hardly got a break. in the past year alone, i have been hit by a car (i'm completely okay; my only injuries were soft tissue damage and trauma and the doctors said it should have been a lot worse, so i was lucky), someone who impacted my life committed suicide, my family and myself have been dealing and still are dealing with severe health issues, and i have had to deal with a multitude of other awful things that i don't really want to delve into – this isn't even including what i was dealing with at the time denouement updates stopped. safe to say, i didn't exactly have the time to write a book that is around 10,000-30,000 words per chapter, especially with university work (yes, i am now a university student) being added on top of my already busy life.

in the past few years (and especially the past few months), i have re-found my love for writing and my style has changed, which i hope you can see and prefer in this chapter. so, i finally decided to revisit this book and my goal is to complete it, because i truly do love house of anubis, jerome clarke, sydney anderson, and most certainly all of you people who read, voted, and/or commented on the prior chapters.

i also made it so this chapter includes two episodes to give you more content and i tried to show pretty much all of the main plots happening right now, so nothing was forgotten, plus some extra sydrome scenes (although this chapter isn't the most syndrome-heavy due to everything else happening).

as of right now, i am unsure how frequent updates will be; i don't want to make a promise that i cannot commit to. this singular chapter took me so long to write that i genuinely do not understand how i used to write entire chapters in a day like what sort of insane person was i? however, i am determined to finish this book and show you the rest of sydney anderson's journey – so, buckle in, because it's a wild one (i already have plans for season three, and some scenes are already written out). i am also going to announce/tease here that i have also been working on two other hoa books in my absence, which aren't going to be posted anytime soon but probably will be posted after this book is finished or once we get to season 3 (depending on how much i've done), so enjoy that tease!

amber saying "i'm not a big fan of looking seventy at seventeen" is totally not foreshadowing the hexes, because when do i ever foreshadow? also jerome saying "old people like ping-pong" only for amber, who gets the old age hex, to be a ping-pong champion.

speaking of ping-pong, we will never know if damian cyrus is good at ping-pong rip. maybe him and jerome could have had a bromance (absolutely not).

sydney is a defender of everyone in anubis house actually! she can and will fight anyone and everyone who argues against her found family nvm expels them.

jerome making sure that sydney is okay before he even CONSIDERS practicing ping pong! that is his gf actually

i don't think i've written the words 'ping' and 'pong' so much in my LIFE jesus christ

the hearing scenes were kind of hard to write because obviously it's all mara stuff and not much sydney or jerome dialogue or even interactions so i tried to keep it as brief and not boring as i could whilst also having all of the dialogue.

also yeah damian is not good if you haven't already been able to tell and he's kind of replacing all the terrible jerome scenes.

oh, by the way, sydrome realising they're in love scene soon? perhaps... maybe... who knows? oh yeah, me, i'm the author.

i also recommend re-reading the book from the beginning (if you have the time and/or want to of course, i know this book is extremely long) because it's been such a long time since i updated so i feel like everyone has probably forgotten everything.

thank you guys so much for the support and love you have given denouement so far. i truly do appreciate it so much and thank you so much for your amazing patience over these past few years. i love you <3.