I am so totally cancelling my subscription to Orca Teen Magazine.

Psyhigh Students Save the Day!

By Dolphina McGuire, Orca Teen Magazine

Dateline: Psychic High School -- For weeks, this quiet, idyllic campus had been inundated by an influx of garbage in their waterways; plus a horrendous, otherworldly stench from their local watershed.

Thanks to the work of two dedicated students, both problems seem to have been overcome.

Psychic High School students Stephanie and Ashleigh (known on campus lovingly as the "Aquadarlings") were able to both mobilize the student body to reduce their output of garbage into the surrounding system of rivers and waterways (as reported in our last issue), and also single-handedly repel an invasion of Eldritch Deities.

"We did what any right-minded students would have done, in our position," said Stephanie, or possibly Asleigh, as they are difficult to tell apart. "We have a predilection for knowing what's right, and acting on it."

As previously reported, Stephanie and Ashleigh led a campaign for their fellow students - both those of the land and of the sea - to reduce the amount of garbage floating into the school's waterways. But what they hadn't expected was the discovery of an ancient nest of a previously uncatalogued species of Ancient One, or Elder Thing, in the school's lagoon.

"We don't really like to hang out [in the lagoon], because it's kinda dirty and stuff?" said Asleigh, or possibly Stephanie, "But when we found out what was going on down there, we totally needed to put a stop to it."

Naturally, girls like Stephanie and Ashleigh bring on their share of detractors, and classic shaming terms like "cultist" seem to be thrown around casually by haters on campus.

"They didn't do $@$%!" claims one such naysayer, who will go unnamed for her own protection. "They didn't clean up the garbage, and they were actually working with those &%%# creatures from beyond, or whatever. They were encouraging them! And recruiting students to become their evil minions!"

But the record is clear - the threat is passed, and Stephanie and Asleigh are to credit for driving this unmentionable, blasphemous horror away. Though how exactly they did it, they're too modest to explain.

"Let's just say the spirit of the girls and boys of the aquadorms at Psyhigh is strong, and together we can do anything!" said Stephaine. Or Ashleigh.

Resident Psyhigh Eldritch Deity expert @Blach was unavailable for comment, but it is believed this particular mindwrecking horror had been previously unknown. However, giant international seafood conglomerate Momokawa Fish Stick Company has been conducting research in the area, and may have information available at a later date.

I think I just did something really bad.

I'm in the Science Leaders of Tomorrow club - we meet every other Sunday afternoon in the reinforced bunker? We deal with all kinds of hazardous materials - corrosive acids, visual poisons, toxic alien algae - stuff a teacher is usually supposed to help you with. But we're allowed to handle it ourselves, and are responsible for its proper disposal.

I was in charge of Hazardous Materials for last month. Everything else I got rid of completely legally and safely, I swear!! I've got all the receipts - I can show them to you. But the containment unit for the anti-matter never arrived. It's like this mini-fridge they send you with a return address already on it? Except you have to pay for the shipping.

Anyway I was waiting and waiting for it to arrive, and the cardboard box I was keeping the anti-matter in was getting squishier and squishier, and if you stared at it long enough it looked like it was melting. And then the time-space around it was starting to warp in a super-critical way. And the "use by" date was like totally two months ago, so it was super ripe and I was getting really worried, and didn't know what to do...

So I dumped it in the lagoon.

I figured: it's deep! It'll be fine. But as soon as I had peddled the little paddle boat back to the shore and was tying it up then WHOOOM! there's this huge water-splosion, and like the entire contents of the lagoon became this giant mushroom cloud of water, straight up into the sky, and then comes smashing back down. On me. And probably you.

Yeah, that was me. And I totally apologize.

I want to take full responsibility for this, and say that the Science Leaders of Tomorrow had nothing to do with it. I am going to meet with the Dean right now and come clean. I know he'll be stern with me, but fair. Just like with the anti-time fluid spill, and the intelligent peanut allergy virus release, and Maxor, the galaxy devouring mega-worm.

I keep telling the other Science Leaders that maybe one of them should take over on the Hazardous Materials duty but they keep insisting I'm the best person for it. So I'm not going to let them down. Go Science Leaders of Tomorrow!!!

I just knew those sea-nymphs were up to something.

The AquaDarlings - Stephanie and Ashleigh - started to hold dances in the common area of the Aqua Dorm. Of course EVERYBODY wanted to go (gag!) so after a few I started spying. Ok maybe it was sour grapes but what I found out made it SO worth it.

I'm peering through the fake seaweed and dead band members and see that everybody there is doing this big chant, and Stephanie and Ashleigh are leading them. I thought, well, spirit-team rah rah rah, whatever. But they KEEP doing it and all the students are looking really drugged out and whatever language they're chanting in doesn't make any sense to me. And then Ashleigh brings out this giant weird spider-crab puppet and starts marching around and everybody follows them right out the door and down the canals. So I swim after them (from a safe distance) all the way down to the lagoon - where they all go under!

At that point I'm freaking out so swim back to get @Jenny Haniver but by the time I find her, everybody's back in the common area, dancing around like normal mer-person party, being COMPLETELY NORMAL!

WTF? Those AquaTwits are really driving me crazy.

MAINTENANCE REQUEST

ATTN: groundskeeper tom
SUBJECT: gnarly barf stench
LOCATION: lagoon

DESCRIPTION OF MAINTENANCE ISSUE:

i really don't like to remember what i saw at the lagoon, but i feel it's my duty to complete this maintenance request. you maintenance guys really ought to read it if you decide to go down there yourselves. but knowing what i know, i wouldn't go there without some serious backup.

it was a beautiful autumn day in the canals and retaining pools on campus, so i figured i'd swim on down to the lagoon. the sun was golden, the leaves are starting to turn, and the amount of floating litter is way down. keep it up, fellow students!

i knew the lagoon had been reeking, but figured it might have cleared up by now, with the rains and all. so i'm swishing around through the reeds and cool water and it didn't smell too bad, so i swim out to the middle and take a deep dive.

the sun through the water made everything green, and there's lake weeds and a bike and an old tire down there, like always. but there was something new - an opening in the lagoon floor, with stone pillars around it and steps going down. who needs steps at the bottom of the lagoon? was it some new maintenance passage?

i swam down, down, through the dark, feeling the sides of the tunnel with my fingertips as i pumped my tail as fast as i dared. eventually, i saw a glow ahead, and could feel a throbbing vibration through the water. i swam on.

i'll never forget what i saw next. a giant cave, like an amphitheater, lit with glowing crystals and filled with rows and rows of the ugliest fish people you ever saw. grumpy fish faces, with big glassy eyes and fangy drooly mouths, their fins wrapped around vicious-looking hooks and spears. they were banging their tools on the cave floor and bubbling out the most deranged, backwards song i'd ever heard in my life. the vibrations alone almost made me puke!

but that wasn't the worst of it. just as i was gaining control of my mind, IT appeared. i can't even tell you exactly what it looked like, because what it was just didn't make sense. giant, spindly, spiny legs, which chittered and unfolded too fast, then layers and layers of mandibles and fangs, opening and opening like some endless blooming fractal. and its eyes - enormous, dead, sinister, and too many of them, bobbing and dangling and darting with minds of their own...

i must have let out a sonar screech - still evolutionarily hard-wired into us, i guess - because suddenly the room turned on me - every glassy fish eye of the savage bass people or whatever suddenly looking my way. and then IT let loose with a brain piercing sound attack, and promptly crapped its pants.

well, it wasn't wearing pants, but it squirted out this thick black cloud that got everywhere at once and i smelled it and i totally lost my lunch. barfed out my entire tuna sandwich and chips.

but then somehow i was shooting up that tunnel (my turbo tail is way faster than those bumbling bass), through the lagoon, through the ditches and canals and back to the aquadorm faster than you can cast a line.

but i've still got that stink on me. i can taste it in my gills. so i did an hour or so in the endless pool to try to wash it out. i can still feel it on me, but i guess i've smelled worse.


REQUEST MADE BY: jenny haniver
DATE: september 21, 2015

Dearest chums,

As I was taking my brisk morning walk through the environs of our delightful campus, I had the terrible misfortune of walking down to the lagoon. Bloody hell what an ill-smelling, putrid, pongy pit of despair that is!

It reminded me of a spot of trouble we had back at the family estate once upon a time. Uncle Rebo was going through his cultist phase and spent all his time locked in the attic, gibbering to himself and moving furniture around. Didn't bathe for weeks. Then one night he broke out of the house and ran to the ancient stone circle in the nearby hills, where he conjured up some kind of unspeakable, writhing horror from beyond. It was loose in the countryside for some time, destroying crops and villages. Like an elephant, it was, but invisible, yet there were reports of giant tentacles of course. Gave off a smell just like down at your lagoon.

That was another case where the good old Forever Cabal came in to clean things up. What a bunch of proper gents they were. And ladies. In fact I think it was Miss Fortune herself who saved the day on that particular adventure, after the boys were driven drooling mad. Issue #47 I believe.

I do think it is something that @Blach could certainly help out with, either in identifying this foul abomination from beyond time and space, or perhaps fessing up to getting a little too enthusiastic with his extracurricular activities?

We sea-nymphs are supposed to stick together, right?

So why do I get the feeling the AquaDarlings - Stephanie and Ashleigh - get off on taking all my work and my promotion and making it their own?

If you've been to the Aquadorm lately you've seen all their "great" work decorating the common area. They took ALL the garbage and made it into a Jazz-age era shipwreck ballroom, so there's wispy walls of plastic bags knotted into phony seaweed decorations and a bloated drowned swing band orchestra made out of old hangers and garbage sacks. Somehow they even found real trumpets and saxophones in the trash. Sheesh.

And THEN what do I do but open the newest issue of Orca Teen Magazine and see a whole spread on them, and how they motivated "the whole student body at their school to take a stand for the environment"??!!! PUH-LEEZE.

They didn't swish their tails once to get all that trash collected, but they want to take all the glory?

I hope those girls know that this means war.

My nose brought me down to the lagoon, in all its horror.

Never before have I smelled such an insidious, loathsome, accursed stench. There were squid ink tentacles all over inside my sinuses trying to get into my brain. So I vomited through my nose and got out of there and rode my moped down to the Blooming Rainbow flower shop and locked myself in their flower locker for an hour. They let me do that.

It was almost like something @Blach talks about in his club. Or at least, it's like the smell they leave in the room when they're done, except the Eldritch Deities Funfacts club has more camphor and lime in it.

I definitely think @Eliot Silverskin should stay away from the lagoon because he wouldn't want to befriend those otters - or the hideous, blasphemous things they have become.

i think it could be the lagoon that @Lidia is smelling. do you smell that? it smells like a giant pig-rat died in there. i've been avoiding it for days but it's getting worse. it could even be like a sewer main broke or something - it's almost like raw sewage. what about the maintenance people? doesn't psyhigh have any? i mean, i'm fine with doing our part collecting garbage, but for something like this it seems like there should be some professional grounds keepers or something? but i never see them. where are they?

Orca ninjas go Rambo! Killer Whale, Killer Whale, Killer Whale, Killer Whales!

Ok I talked to @Jenny Haniver and maybe I was getting a little too energized about all of this. I mean, the death of the seas and the planet - no big! ;)

But seriously, going too hard too soon probably isn't in anybody's interest. I blame my self-radicalization on doing too many quizzes from Orca Teen magazine. For a crafty girls magazine they seem to have quite an editorial stance.

So for now it looks like we're going back to the arts and crafts plan. Jenny has some ideas about making cool parkas or something out of all that junk. @Blach, thanks for doing your part in the clean up and that's really sweet but you can just leave the garbage you've collected in the lobby of the Aqua Dorm and my underwater squad will grab it.

In the mean time, there does seem to be a little less crap floating around in our waterways. Keep it up, fellow Killer Whales!!