Morrigan Crow and the Ghostly Hour

Chapter 3: Disturbances

"Disturbances in the Gossamer, Wunder behaving unnaturally... We think this may have something to do with... The Wundersmith."

Murmurs spread throughout the crowd.

Thaddea coughed. (Francis tried his hardest to stay quiet.)

It was another C&D meeting at the Gathering Place. The amphitheatre was filled with Wunderous Society members of all ages whispering to each other about this unexpected meeting. On the stage stood some other random woman who was substituting for Holiday Wu because they fired her :D.

I'm kidding, she's actually away because she is sick or something. Or maybe it's because she needs a break, Morrigan wasn't quite sure with the details.

Last time Unit 919 sat near the back to, as Elder Quinn said, "observe". But now, since they already understand the purpose of the C&D and how it works, they can sit near the front to gain a better view. Morrigan was still a little annoyed about sitting near the front - she liked the back.

"But as I already mentioned, we cannot be certain about it, but we can always take precautions." she hastily added.

"What makes you think it's the Wundersmith?" shouted someone who looked a year older than Morrigan, "I mean, last time you thought that it was the Wundersmith you got it wrong."

"Well, that time it was probably just a malfunction or something," the woman at the front said. "But this time... it's a bit more concerning because it's not just Wunder that is behaving weirdly. It seems as if time itself has been disturbed."

"What do you mean?" asked another student.

"I mean that strange things have been going on around Nevermoor for the past couple of hours last night. Strange things like, different events in time replaying themselves. Like, if someone fell over, they would fall over twice instead of once. If a train crashed 2 years ago, it could crash again. If a bomb exploded 200 years ago, it could happen again. We are going to call them 'time bubbles'. But of course, they only go on for about 10 seconds before everything goes back to normal. Good news is that we've been able to hide these 'time bubbles', so that there isn't any mass panic.

"Now, the reason why we called this meeting so early is that according to our calculations and talented long range oracles, this is going to get much much more serious than originally thought so we need all the time we can get before school sessions start to plan a distraction.

"The next time it hits may be around tomorrow at about 10am, somewhere around the area of Courage Square. Does anyone have any strategies or ideas about how to contain it and distract people from it. Come on, let's start a brainstorm here."

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As Morrigan stood up to leave, her conductor, Miss Cheery, stopped her in her path. Usually Miss Cheery would be, as the name suggests, cheery but this time was different. The only time which Morrigan has ever seen her with this expression on her face was when she accidentally set the Wunderous Society's Proudfoot House station on fire. Morrigan knew that this wasn't going to be good...

"Morrigan, can you stay back please? The Elders want to have a talk with you."

Morrigan's stomach dropped. She hoped with all her heart that this talk wasn't going to be about a time travelling Wundersmith called Ezra Squall that somehow managed to travel 100 years into the future through the Ghostly Hours.

Even though the possibility of that was somewhat low, it didn't change the fact that Morrigan had a strange feeling it was probably going to have something to do with that...