Event Pool Party Closed

With no luck, Emma decided to rethink her tactics and perhaps not even have one. After all, there wasn't some sort of map that magically updated itself by the second. She gave her current position another dive down in the water before going to look in another position in the murky lake. It was practically impossible finding an orb, but others seemed to find one, why couldn't she?

The brunette swam to the middle with no particular plan in mind, perhaps this was one of the things she had been overthinking. She wanted some of the delightful smelling barbeque. It was sweet and tangy, but most importantly, spicy. What good could have come out of the orbs? 

She ruffled her hands between seaweed and lifted up rocks underneath the surface of the water. It was more of a deadly scavenger hunt, ravenous creatures could pop out at any given time, but was she prepared? Not really, after all, you couldn't use wands in the water.

Finally reaching the middle of the lake, she began to investigate the waters after diving her head beneath the water. The search would go on for hours possibly, and she was growing impatient. Why couldn't she just find something extraordinary and finish the task?

ACTION: Search middle of river for orbs

Amadea was late, of course. She always managed to show up after the fun had began. As she headed toward the Great Lake, she wondered what the whole fuss was about. It seemed as though there was something going on. Amadea hoped she wasn't too late. 

Amadea was still quite terrified of the lake, if she was being honest. It wasn't like she didn't know how to swim. She was perfectly capable. It was just that she didn't know what could possibly be in the lake. While she knew the professors had been careful in roping off the portion that everyone was swimming in, Amadea couldn't help but wonder if there was a way for creatures to get inside the barrier. She had read about the dreadful denzies of the deep and couldn't get the image of some crazy monster out of her head. 

As she reached the shore, she saw people diving down under the lake, as if they were looking for something. When she got closer, she looked at the rules of the game, and realized they were looking for orbs. Amadea decided she would join in the fun. After all, it couldn't be too hard to find an orb, right? 

She headed into the water, going to a more secluded spot in the lake and began digging around under the sand and rocks. Maybe there would be one hidden in there.

ACTION: Search for orbs underneath rocks & sand. 

Evelyn absolutely adored pool parties. She loved to swim, and spending some time in the sun was her ideal way of spending the summer. Swimming was one of her favorite things to do during the warmer months, so when she heard about this party she was very excited. Evelyn knew she was excitable about a lot of things here, but that was magic, this was swimming. Two different levels of excitement. Both valid. Evie would have been more than happy to spend her time lazily swimming about, chatting with friends, but then she heard about a rumor that some magical orbs were scattered about the swimming area. That certainly got her attention.

Sure, it was just a rumor, but how great would that be if it were true? What else did she have to do anyway? She was already planning to swim, so this worked just fine for her. Sure, the Black Lake was home to all sorts of creatures, but she had faith that the Professors already took precautions.

Stretching as she approached the shore, the young Gryffindor grinned from cheek to cheek. Looks like lots of others had the same idea as her and had already gotten started. Since Evie wanted to swim anyway, she figured she could skim the lake bed a little bit further out. She was pretty confident in her swimming skills, so that wouldn't be a problem.

Casually making her way out into the deeper water, Evelyn dove under the surface. The lake bed wasn't too far off - it was just too deep for her to stand, but a few breaststrokes got her to the bottom, or even to shallower water if she decided she needed a break. Best safe over sorry. The young witch idly started to make her way across the bottom of the lake, scanning for anything that seemed out of place. She pursed her lips, gently running her hands over the sand as she moved. If something was just barely buried, she figured she should be able to feel it. After a little bit of searching, she surfaced for air before diving underwater once more, continuing her search.

Whether she found anything or not, she was loving this. She hadn't gotten to swim like this in a while.

Action: Search for orbs around the lake bed of the deep end of the pool area.

Midas was certainly hesitant to begin the game. He started out unsure, and decided to stay close to the shoreline. Unfortunately the shoreline happened to be the mos crowded area and a lot of the orbs that had decided to hide themselves away there had already been claimed. Of course, this did not mean the boy had no chance, he simply needed to work a little harder and a little longer.
Midas did not find an orb this round. Please try again.

The kelp and weeds that grew within the lake were a popular searching place for the children. With reason, though, as the plants were the most diverse and plentiful area for hiding. The swimming section was expansive and Angela seemed to find herself her own personal spot that had yet to be touched by other students griping for the orbs. As she pushed the kelp away with her hands she would see a small purple glow. Grabbing at it, she would find it would almost doge her palms, but soon she caught it. Opening her hand to get a glimpse she would see it had already disappeared and she kicked off to return to the surface for air.On her way up her sight began to dim, and rather quickly she suddenly couldn't see. Shocked, she opened her mouth to let out a shocked yell under the water, instead she let out a quick vibration. She could see again for that quick moment, but not like she saw with her eyes. It was as if she could feel everything around her, she knew exactly how far away that boy swimming near her was. She could 'see' the abandoned floating raft behind her. She may not be able to see the colors of the world, but she could see so much more.
Angela has succeeded her die roll and gained the ability Sonar. She is blind in her eyes, but can release a sonar vibration from her mouth, allowing her perfect, if not more impressive, sight. Time limit: 10 minutes. Any orbs found by her from now on will have no effect.

Eri has seemed to aquire a great balance between searching and breathing. During her second attempt she played her strengths of diving and goggles. She held her breath longer this time, not dangerously long, but enough to give her a more detailed look at her surroundings during each dive. Plus she relocated to a more secluded spot in the swimming section. Here she would have more luck. It did not take too long for her to spot a little blue orb in the water. Thankfully the water was a bit murky due to her rummaging in the mud, and the blue color stood out in the brown. She quickly grabbed it before heading back up to the surface for more air. On her way up, her arms peddling through the water, she gained speed dramatically and breached the surface much quicker than expected. Diving once again, confused, she realized she was swimming much faster and managed to stop for a moment to notice a tingling in her arms. She swam some more and realized her arms were moving ridiculously fast through the water, propelling her smoothly.
Eri Windstone has succeeded her die roll and gained the ability Spinners. With this ability Eri's arms move much faster through water allowing for dramatically faster swimming. Time Limit: 20 minutes. Any orbs found by her from here on will have no effect.

Luckily for the girl who was so worried about time, finding the pretty golden orb floating in the water came quickly after her first dive into the deeper depths of the swimming section. After only a few minutes her hand grazed the orb, almost without her even noticing. She saw, though, in the last second as it absorbing into her palm. Very quickly afterwards, out of the corners of her eyes she saw a bubble forming around her face. Quickly the bubble grew and encased her nose and mouth, formly sticking to her skin and allowing Emma and unlimited access to oxygen underwater.
Emma has succeeded her die roll and gained the bubble head charm. The charm allows her to breath underwater for its duration due to a bubble forming over the nose and mouth. Time limit: 15 minutes. Any orbs found from here on out will have no effect.

Although the orbs were notoriously difficult to find most of the time, they had the general decency to stay within the actual lake water. Yes, hiding under sand may be, technically, effective, but it was also be unfair and so digging in the ground would not generally end up with a success. Unfortunately, this was true for Amadea.
Amadea failed her die roll. Please try again.

Evelyn seemed very adept at this game and it wasn't too long before her luck won out. She found the orb rather quickly, glowing a flickering range of colors, and she quickly grabbed at it, happy to know the rumors she heard were in fact true. However it seemed the orbs may have been a little annoyed or disappointed in her quick find and she would be very surprised to find herself in an awkward situation. Before she could even think, she was suddenly transfored. She got way smaller and she could not breathe underwater, but when she tried to swim to the surface she found herself slow and her arms would not really move. Looking around at herself she realized she had been turned completely into a plimpy. She could breathe underwater, but for the duration of the spell she would be rather slow in swimming and, well, would look like a plimpy.
Evelyn succeeded her die roll and has been turned into a plimpy. She can breathe underwater, but her swimming is mainly the fluttering of tiny fins where her arms would be, or the pushing off of her stick like legs. Time Limit: 5 minutes. Any orbs found from here on out will have no effect.

Amadea's first attempt had been a failure, but it was okay. She hadn't expected to find anything right off the bat anyway. She came to the surface and took a deep breath, refilling her lungs with air and trying to think of a different strategy. It seemed as though some other people were searching among the weeds and other plants dwelling close to the bottom of the lake near the shore. It seemed like a good place for an orb to hide itself, though Amadea was uncertain as to whether there would be any left by the time she swam over. 

She decided to head out to the very edge of the swimming section, gazing down at the sand and plants beneath her. Maybe there was something hidden there. It was worth a shot, she figured. It wasn't like she had any specific strategy, and it seemed as though not many of the other students did either. Determined to find an orb, Amadea took a deep breath before plunging herself under the water and opening her eyes just slightly, trying to feel around the plants and in between them, looking for something that radiated a beacon of light. Hopefully she would find an orb. 

ACTION: Search for an orb in between plants at the edge of the lake. 

Amanda left her cabin and started walking towards the Great Lake. She wore a coral one-piece swimsuit that tied behind her neck. She had a light jacket on over her swimsuit and colorful flip flops. Her towel was draped over her shoulder. Amanda had sprayed on sunscreen earlier so as not to get burnt. All the time she had spent over in the UK recently had made her skin slightly paler than usual.

Amanda broke into a run, not wanting to miss anything. When she arrived at the lake, she gazed around, taking in everything. There were some picnic tables and a volleyball court. Amanda wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t the biggest fan of volleyball, since she felt that it was “too cool” for her. Back home in California, it was the sport that all the popular girls played. She sighed and set her towel down in the grass and kicked off her flip flops. Amanda shrugged her jacket off. She had heard that there would be some sort scavenger hunt for these magical orbs in the lake. That was more her area, as opposed to volleyball.

Amanda waded in the lake. The water felt refreshing against her bare skin. She went all the way in and dunked her head underwater. When she surfaced, Amanda began assessing her options. She could try and search for orbs in deeper water, but that would be quite difficult to reach the very bottom. Amanda decided to stick to near the shore and begin looking in the sand. Who knows what could be buried in this lake?

Action: search for orbs somewhat close to the shore in the sand

Swimming was lame. Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame. The lamest of the lame. Swimming was for losers who actually knew how to swim.

Okay, so it really wasn't lame- Ami was just salty that she sucked at swimming. As in, she would 10/10 drown if someone picked her up and threw her into the lake. She was pretty okay at floundering around and keeping her head above water, but wherever these orb things were, they were bound to be somewhere that required actual swimming skills.

She noticed that a couple of the students had already found orbs and stuff, which only made Ami self-conscious and lonely. No one else seemed to be on the beach or by the food- instead, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves in the water, splashing about or whatever. Maybe she'd join them, maybe belly-flop in off the dock...?

No thanks, she'd stick to dry land, for now. Tugging at her short, short hair self-consciously, she found herself wandering around without much to do. Noticing the empty volleyball 'court', she walked over, picking up the lonesome volleyball just lying there in the sand. Glancing around, she waved to a professor she'd never seen in a class, a young woman with pale skin and the same fiery hair that seemed to make up a majority of the school's population.

The professor would be one Professor Ayers, the youthful professor of Ancient Runes, who also looked like she'd slay on the volleyball court. Lonely and longing for some company, the Hufflepuff squared her shoulders and tried to look happy to be getting sunburnt. Approaching the professor, Ami offered the volleyball to her. "Would you like to play with me? The court looks rather empty... and I haven't played in a couple of months-" Lie. She'd played once before, in gym class when she was 7. "-so I might be a little bit rusty... but I'd be honored to play with you!"

Midas waded through the water, unable to find anything that was glowing. "Guess I wasn't lucky... huh..." Quickly, he reminded himself "Not unlucky! It was just a rumor after all. Who says there was any truth to it?" Maybe he was making up for the lack of success by convincing himself these orbs probably never existed. Maybe he was just pessimistic. Maybe both. Whatever? 

Midas began trudging back toward the shore. The water currently was up to his knees, getting the tips of his rolled up pants slightly wet. He grumbled slightly when he finally reached the shore. He bent down and unrolled his pants back down. He poked his head up and saw some other students poking around in the water as well. Maybe he should go search again. There could be something he hadn't discovered. Midas began walking away from the shore to grab his bag. 

However, while looking around, he noticed that a lot more kids were looking for these orbs now, and he heard a boy claim he saw a girl who shot water out of her palms and a girl who had a bubble around her head.  Maybe those were just interesting spells... or maybe... it was the "orbs"! He stopped right in his tracks and turned around. Searching a bit more couldn't hurt... right?

He waded through the water again, towards an area with fewer people which was much deeper, and seemed to hold a lot more hidden areas down in the underwater foliage. He held his breath and dived underwater to look for orbs.

The closer Kalani got to the bottom of the pool, the darker it got. Sometimes, she'd spot something flit away from her out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn't know if it was an orb or a fish or a creature. She didn't even know if the orbs moved, but she had a feeling they did. Every now and then she's spot another student swimming full speed towards something, and she was pretty sure that the only thing someone would swim at that fast would be an orb.

As she came down to run her fingers through the soft sand, she spotted something bobbing up and down to her left. She was needing to take a breath, but swimming up to it she quickly realised that it was an orb. It wasn't making much effort to move away from her, but she was still as quick as possible as she reached out and swiped her hand through it.

She didn't know what she was expecting. Maybe it would pop and all the magic juice would come out of it and go into her nose and ears. But it just faded away, almost creating the illusion that it had simply went away. She wanted to start rummaging around for it - maybe it had disappeared into the darker part of the pool - but her lungs were really starting to complain so she kicked off the ground and pushed up towards the surface. She didn't feel the tingle in her palms, too bothered with the tingle in her lungs.

She broke the surface, taking a gasp of air. Lifting her hands to move her hair away, the hair was instead forcefully moved by a blast of water. She mistakenly gasped into it, and was then left coughing as she looked around to see who'd done it, and then get her revenge. But there was no one within splashing distance. She pouted, brow furrowing, and went to push her goggles out of her face, only for the same thing to happen again. This time she cried out, forcing her goggles out of the way and looking around, expecting for someone to jump up out of the water and own up to their prank.

But nothing happened. That was when she noticed the tingle in her hands.

She stared at her palms, not seeing anything wrong with them on the outside. They were just as small and stubby as always. But as she turned her hands around to look at the backs, the water shot out of her palms and into water at such an amazing speed that it pushed her back a little. She cried out in surprise, but quickly laughed as she made the connection. How stupid could you get?

Testing, she pointed a hand right out in front of her. Just as expected, water poured from her hands, landing some feet away in the lake. She laughed and whooped aloud, then started to wonder. What could she do with this?

She started swimming back towards shore, every so often breaking the surface to not only take a breath, but to let water pour from her hands up as high as it could go into the sky. It was as if she was a whale blowing water from a blowhole. As she reached the shore, she let her hands rest as she looked around the water. She was looking for someone that she knew, someone that she could tease without feeling too bad, but if anyone she knew was there they were under the water or too far away.

She looked around, before spotting that the volleyball that had been on the pitch was gone. She turned around to see if it had maybe rolled away, then spotted a red-haired girl walking over to the teacher with it in her hands.

Kalani had an image of the ball getting fired into the air by a massive beam of water. Wouldn't that be a move!

She quickly rushed to find and put on her flip flops, then rushed over to the girl. She approached from side on so that both the student and the professor would see her coming, and then pointed to the ball with a smile. "Can I join in?" she signed, pointing to the ball again.

Her persistence favored the girl, and it seemed the orbs could not get enough of hiding between plants. Yes, it was a good hiding spot, but surely the orbs realized the children had caught on by now. No matter, it was good for Amadea anyway. She son saw a glowing purple orb and when she grasped as it, she was pushed back a bit. It confused her, the push did not hurt and it was not a hard push, it was more like the water moved and she moved with it. Yet the lake was calm, and the water was certainly not moving around anywhere else. However, she was running out of breath and she she quickly swam to the top of the water to get some air. She breached and breathed and then tried to figure out what she had gained by finding that orb. She could clearly not breathe underwater, and she didn't seem to be swimming any faster. While she was thinking she used her arms to stay afloat, and in their movements one arm and hand came to the top of the water, before pushing against the meniscus and going back underneath. At that happened, though, the water moved again. And now at the top of the lake Amadea noticed a wave come from her hands. It was as if she was pushing the water herself, forming small waves.
Amadea has succeeded her die roll and gained the ability Waves. With this ability she can 'push' water and form waves both above and beneath the water. The waves are small, but strong enough to lift and move people around them or even splash a little bit. Time Limit: 30 minutes. Any orbs found from here on out will have no effect.

Holding his breath just long enough, Midas saw the glimpse of some gold right before his air ran out. He quickly grabbed it before shooting his way back to the top of the water. He breached rather hard and quickly. He gasped for air, and then settles a bit, taking both hands to wipe his face and hair. As he put his hands back down to rest and float by his side underwater, he found them blocked by the water itself. Suddenly his palms could not break the surface of the water and instead acted like the water was a solid barrier. An idea coming to him quickly, he tried it out. The water was strong enough for Midas to push against it and he managed to pull himself out of the water, first one leg, his knee coming to rest against the top of the lake, then his knee pushed against the water along with his hands and before he knew it he was standing on the top of the lake.
Midas succeeded his die roll and gained the ability Water Walking. With this ability Midas can walk, run, jump, etc on water as if it was land. If he wants to go underwater she simply need to focus on the thought, and he will soon drop. Time Limit: 15 minutes. Any orbs found after this point will have no effect.