WHERE DID PHILLIS GO?! (ep. 6)

Summary
Diane and Eon both miss Professor Red's class. While Eon is waiting for Sypher to return — taking a nap, reading fare such as comic books and Garbo — Diane, who's really frustrated that she has lost the trust from teachers, notices a poster of her campaign for student president being taken down.

She doesn't like that.

She also sees posters of Heath's campaign defaced with mustaches: that makes her giggle.

A crumpled poster of hers on the floor sets her off; she becomes very angry at Heath, as well as worried for Ezra: if something is wrong with him, she'll find out. She find Heath chatting with twin unicorn jockeys, Ned and Ted. She starts a friendly conversation — she disapproves the drawings on his posters; she wants a fair fight. Heath doesn't believe her: he knows her friend Eon has been doing it, and he advises her to "Pick better friends!"Diane keeps on talking, she is a little bit flirty with the twins, even. She purposefully mentions Ezra and Heath is suddenly more friendly.

Diane then books it to class; Ezra is going to hear about Heath's insults regarding her friends: after all, Diane herself was being nice. On her way she stumbles upon Moira, who's fumbling with her books again. Diane cleans her glasses. Moira will vote for her, she's so good at talking to people and unlike other people who don't listen to her and walk away in the middle of a conversation Diane says "Cool, I'll see you around."and ... walks away to their Anatomy class — Eon's favorite class.

She meets Eon, who was going to tear down a poster. She's so angry at Heath she doesn't mind breaking character in public: "He insulted my best friend and he's totally trying to get in her pants at the same time!"But she tries to be friends with everybody and Getting better friends than everybody: I don't think it can be done! She will happily let Eon Be my dirt! but she herself must remain squeaky clean. After all, "Is there truly dirt that you can revel in, if there is no clean to compare it to?"They enter the classroom: it is suited for anatomy, with magic skeletons hanging, jars with body parts in them, a giant chest that looks like a huge cooler and a projection monitor floating in the air. There are three rows of three desks each, with a centerpiece on each meant to put something on it. It smells of magical formaldehyde. This windowless room is more simple than the elegant ones they've been in before.

Eon is fascinated; he likes things that are past their living moment: the more expired something can be, the happier he gets.

Diane goes sit on the free seat next to Heath — she asks fo her permission but doesn't wait for his answer; he has a girl on his other side. Eon sits behind them and Moira sits next to him.

Professor Oleander appears with a poof in a cloud of smoke. He wears black from shoes up to straight, pointed hat. He is middle-aged, looks clean and clean-cut; he has this horrible frown on his face, he is the grumpiest person the students have ever seen. Then he makes a real fancy black cat appear in a flash of sparks. This hands-on teacher are going to learn anatomy on his fellow felines. Black cats are not treated well, he got some donated to him and this class is going to treat them kindly because "We don't speak ill of the dead."He motions his hands, spins around and twirls, causing tiny hurricanes to appear around him and on each desk. A dead black cat appears on each of the centerpieces. Eon laughs; the teacher's eyes pierce into his soul: "This is no laughing matter!"The lecture starts, Professor Oleander points at body parts on the floating screen with a magic red dot. When he is finished, he instructs the witches to memorize everything for the upcoming test. It is important because many spells incorporate body parts that fuel them and can make them more powerful. Then he poofs away in his cloud of smoke and his cat sits on top of his desk.

Phillis was almost eaten by cats once and seizes the opportunity to get revenge on Eon's cat.

Eon and Diane use spells to learn more easily. Diane's lets her know just enough about a subject to expound and bullshit upon it. Diane is very successful, so much so that she starts showily helping the other students in a pedantic way. Diane and Heath one-up each other in helping the other students. Diane's competitive helping extends to other tables, in a Look at me, I'm so knowledgeable I'll help everybody kind of way. Eon's  is also a success: he very excitedly looks at the dead cat in front of him, uses the utensils at hand to move things around and memorizes the body in perfect detail.

The other students, though, don't do as well because Diane's helping by not helping is mostly a distraction that prevents them to figure it out for themselves and Eon's dissection grosses them out.

The class comes to an end. The teacher's cat jumps off the desk and goes to the middle of the room. Professor returns in a cloud of smoke again: it is now time for a quick test — a different one for each student. The test is about the cats they have just studied and not, as Eon hoped, about the teacher whom, he screams, he finds fascinating.

The teacher, whowe constant grumpy face is due to a disorder that prevents him from showing any emotions on it, just stares at Eon and gets started with the test because nobody else has anything fascinating to say.

Each student sees a scroll floating in front of them: the test.

Diane fills the form as quickly as possible. When she's done, she takes it, rollsit backup, and puts her quill on top of it, clearly signaling I'm done!

Heath puts his scroll down at the same time; he looks at Diane but pretends not to. Diane goes for a high-five; he has a moment of hesitation before he accepts it.

Eon, who's wrapping up his test, doesn't understand Diane is just playing politics.

Moira tells Eon how impressed she is that Heath and Diane were so fast. Eon thinks the test is pretty easy, whereas Moira is not sure she did well as she prefers open-ended questions to multiple-choice questions. She looks at her scroll one last time: she's mega-stressed out, but she's done, before Eon is.

Eon really doesn't know what was so hard; he starts whispering to her the names of all the parts on the cat ... except that he is not as quiet as he thinks he is. He finds himself muted before he finishes saying the second part; he's still talking but Moira can't hear anything anymore. The teacher poofs in front of him, behind Heath and Diane: "No cheating allowed!"Eon can speak normally again. He explains he wasn't cheating and "Give me another test, I know everything about this."Eon continues: he finished quickly because the test wasn't that hard. He apologizes for trying to help his classmate and puts his rubbish trashy arm over her shoulder.

Moira curls in when he touches her — not because he's trashy, but because she doesn't like when people touch her — and says: Oh, this is weird.

Professor Oleander has none of it: Please, keep it quiet here! He motions his hands and both Eon and Moira's tests disappear into smoke. He also disappears, and reappears at the front of the class.

Everybody finishes their tests. The class ends and the Witches scurry away. This was the last class for today.

Diane nicely says goodbye to Heath. He reciprocates and invites both her and Ezra to the pegasus jockey thing next Friday. Diane notices Eon in earshot and shoos him away before answering Heath:"That sounds great. I'll tell Ezra about it. She probably already knows, she's so smart, and cool, and good to know, and a great friend; I'm sure that she will know everything already. Well, I'll see you around."Another student asks him a question, which stops this conversation.

Eon asks Diane how she did; she thinks she did well. Eon starts naming every part perfectly well, while shoving the cat he took from the centerpiece on his and Moira's centerpiece in her face. Diane is not that impressed — Yeah, I know, I was there. — but is grossed out by the macabre display. She urges Eon to put the cat in his bag; he puts it in the pot of lard instead. Diane finds this even more disgusting, but it works.

It is not dinner time yet. Diane would go talk to Ezra now, but she hasn't seen her today, which is strange. Maybe Ezra is doing extra Magical Disco? She really enjoys this class, after all. Diane goes to the courtyard instead. It is her favorite place because that's where she can show off. Eon follows her; he'll find a trash can there.

Coming from the classroom, they are going through the large, intricate school doors that have designs on them and stained glass windows with gorgeously colored beautiful pegasi through which light shines with all the colors. There are two sets of door on each side of the big archway. The garden itself has the giant fountain in its center and a bunch of hedges with gorgeous, blue sparkling flowers that tingle a little bit; some of the flowers strobe lightly, changing colors. The fountain in the center has a smaller pegasus than the one that's way out past the archway. There are also benches and things like that.

Diane can't see anybody who was in Magical Disco with Ezra. She does see Ned, who’s on the wizbee team with her — Ned is on every team; sport stuff is the only thing he's good at.

Eon just wants to chill out in a trash can, his feet resting on the bench next to it. From there he watches Diana.

Diana waves at Ned, super-surprised. Ned looks behind him, and awkwardly waves back when he realizes she is actually waving at him. Diane already knows that he his kinda dumb — definitely not the brightest.

To be fair, Ned is really good at magic that's relevant to sports; he's also good at Magical Disco, that's what gets him through school. He's not bad at Anatomy either, because he knows about muscles and stuff; but there are parts of anatomy that he doesn't get. Advanced Alchemy and Herbology are not for him. He may be a little social-inapt; his twin brother is the charismatic one.

Diane starts the conversation: "Cool, so fancy seeing you here."She's just heard about Friday's event from Heath; she'll totally have to show up. She walked away from them, earlier, before Nell could tell her about it. She was gonna be late for class, she says.

Ned was in the Anatomy class too. Prodded by Diane, he says he's confident he got at least question right on the test. A supportive Diane says: "There were a lot of questions on the test; you got one of them right: that's good."Ned knows Ezra: she's on his wizbee team. She's really good and so is his brother; they all look up to him.

Diane finds that's great! and immediately turns her attention back to the point: has Need seen Ezra today, at wizbee pratice maybe?

Ned has to think twice before he can state there is no wizbee practice today. But he might have seen Ezra after Magical Disco; she was with the new girl — Sypher — whose clothes look really uncomfortable.

Diane keeps the same friendly tone before taking her leave:"She's uncomfortable, too; but she's awesome, much like her clothes. Look forward to seeing you on Friday."She is already walking away, looking at her spellbook, when he hails her back and walks over to her:"I was curious ... would you maybe, like, go to the Witch Ball with me, that weird fall thing?"Silence. Diane doesn't have an answer.

Ned keeps talking instead:"It's okay if you don't want. I just thought ... maybe, Ezra is going with Heath and then ... we could go together. I think Ted is asking someone else, so ..."Eon, meanwhile, is watching and laughing at this awkward situation, as Diane ponders if she's going to lie to Ned, because she doesn't like him. He won't dump trash on her, will he?

Diane suddenly tosses her spellbook and goes: ''Oh no! Oops! I dropped my spellbook .''

Ned, who is fast, catches the book in flight, except for a bookmark that went flying and a couple of pages that popped out. Eon for his part sends Phillis to the rescue.

Diane casts I Can Fix It! to gather everything up. She waves her hand around and the book is neatly ordered again. She wonders aloud: "How could I be so clumsy?"And then:"I'll see you maybe on Friday, right? For the heat?"Ned forgets about the date. Diane books it and is no longer in earshot when he realizes: "But ... you didn't answer my question."Ned walks away, trying to figure how to ask her again.

Diane, meanwhile, is panicking: "Somebody is gonna ask me on a date."Ned wonders whether he should talk to Ted about this.

Diane is walking away, confused about things: does she have romantic feelings for anybody?

Eon regrets it was not Phillis's turn to shine after all. Eon and Phillis are just chilling when Eon sees a tear ripping open and rippling on the side of the wall were there were flowers once; part of the wall looks like it's different inside where the tear is.

Diane goes to her phone, spams Ezra with messages.

Ezra doesn't respond.

Meanwhile, Eon uses Rubbish Memory again, this time to remember in detail what he's seeing on the wall. He manages to remember the tear, where it's at, how wide it goes, but not what he sees inside. He sees Diane walking; she's mumbling and furiously looking at her spellbook and her phone. Eon himself no longer have a working phone — he does have junk phones — since he gave his to Peonie.

Eon starts drawing with a sharpie Sypher gave him; he draws the shape of the tear on the back of the pizza box that doubles as his spellbook. Then he shouts: Diane!

Diane yells back: Where's Ezra?

Eon rolls his spellbook in a cone shape, and uses it as a loudspeaker to shout some more. He makes himself decidedly obnoxious.

Diane stops dead, looks over at him.

Eon points at the wall.

Diane walks over, finds an old receipt in her bag, ruffles it up and drops it in from Eon, so that he focus on it and shut the fuck up for a minute. "What did you see?, she asks."Eon describes the tear, then points at it: "It's right there!"Diane, who had not seen it, asks:"Why didn't you tell me?"She looks at it, and then returns to the more pressing subject:"Where is Ezra?"Eon buffs Diane with his spellbook. There is still rotten pizza inside and the pages are the grease mats under the pizza. On contact, Diane's hair spontaneously uncurls itself. Diane keeps asking questions:"Where is Sypher? Where is Ezra? Are they in trouble? There is another thing: nobody believes us. What do we do?"Phillis starts eating rotten candy Eon gives her.

Diane approaches the large — five feet wide, eight feet tall — tear and asks Eon to come here and look right here.

Eon does look at it, reluctantly: What?

Diane tries to get him as close as possible to this hole.

Eon won't: I don't wanna. Instead, he sends Phillis toward the wall:"Phillis, go check it out!"Phillis moves her feet, thus trying to catch the candy that went flying out of her hands.

Diane, failing to soften her landing with I Can Fix It! sends Phillis flinging even further, straight into the hole — which is what she wanted anyway.

Eon straightens up: "Where did Phillis go?""You threw her at a hole, Diane replies."Eon has none of it:"You projected her into it!""I did nothing of the sort; you threw your friend?, Diane counters."Eon corrects her: "Companion!"As Diane keeps talking, Eon is furiously flipping through his spellbook, thinking of what to do.

Diane prods him:"Go get her!"This he does, and in style: after flipping through his book, he just says Okay, props himself on the trash can, readies himself, and casts a new spell, Trash Drive, to skyrocket into the tear, ten to fifteen feet away and catch Phillis. He just shoots off, with trash flickering behind him: it's a magnificent spectacle. Eon is elegant; it's gorgeous; he soars through the courtyard into the tear, and does a somersault upon landing, all the while capturing Phillis and pocketing her into his jacket. It is a complete success.

Diane can't see him anymore; she is just stricken:  "Cool!"The tear closes and Diane is just standing there.

Eon looks around. It's dark. The two moons are up there in the sky. The sky looks different than normal. There are skeletal creatures flying, their weird, long snakelike bodies squirming through the sky. He is in the same courtyard he was in, but there is spiderwebs everywhere, the ground is cobbled and there are no hedges or plants nearby. Eon starts clapping:    "This is so cool!"The benches that once were there are no longer there; the archway looks very ruiny and the Jasper Jinx Academy sign is dangling. There are no trash cans, or trash, that Eon can see. There is a thin layer of dust.

Eon stands up after pocketing Phillis:    "What have you gotten us into now?"He starts roaming around, hits something: What was that?

Someone kicks Diane. She swats at the air.

Someone smacks Eon. He looks back and casts Terrible Rot at whatever it is.

It works; he flings that lands in the dust ... and nothing else happens. There is a trail where the trash has picked a little bit of dust. There is now this horrible stench around him, but only he can smell it — Diane doesn't smell anything.

Diane keeps feeling out; she's seen it before and she's going four touchies.

Eon backs up agains the wall he came through.

Diane doesn't feel anything besides the wall itself.

Eon heads back to his room. He reaches one of the doors to the rooms; the doorknob doesn't budge. A voice giggles at him. Eon mocks it by giggling back at it in a louder tone.

The voice taunts him:   "One of the doors works, one of the doors doesn't: which one is it?"Eon kicks the door and falls straight on his butt.

The voice laughs again:   "You're funny."Eon, just laying there, asks:     "Who are you? Where are you?"There comes the answer:"I am who I am and I'm where I am. But are you who you are and are you where you are?"Eon is confused.

The voice goes on:"Maybe I'll keep you; you're kind of fun. The other one was boring — asked the same questions over and over."Eon, still laying there, asks about his friend Sypher's whereabouts; she talks a lot, drinks a lot of zombie juice, zombie energy ... I've been looking for her.

The voice, again, is not very helpful:"Where could they be? I don't know; your friend I don't see."Eon is angry, and starts yelling: "Where is she?"The voice keeps its calm:"I love when everyone gets frustrated and makes it that much more fun."Eon tries to budge the doors; he's almost ignoring what he calls the spirit at this point, not knowing that it's still watching him. He eventually steps into the door and is back in his normal school.

Diane is looking around, texting Ezra and freaking out. She turns, sees the door open, and Eon is standing in the doorway.

Eon, turning back around, can see the courtyard now.

Diane wants to know what happened, what he just did.

Eon has nothing but Sup! to answer at first. Then he complains that was Diane just did to him — he is convinced this strange place was a prank of hers — was not fun.

Diane fishes a half-finished can out of a trash can and brings it to him, gently:"Here. Try this. Maybe this will help."Eon doesn't trust Diane right now: Is this another of your tricks?

It's definitely trash. Diane drops it on the ground. Eon takes it up.

Phillis briefly pops up when hearing the tale of Diane sending her through the thing. Diane looks proud, like, That is true, I totally did that. And, more importantly, she asks:"What happened in there?"To Eon, it was like an older future Jasper. Diane did the same thing before, but it's not right.

Eon also a creepy voice; he still thinks Diane was behind it.

Cool!, Diane says, ''To you I'm just a creepy girl. Have I ever rhymed at you?''

Eon still doesn't trust her, so she goes at it again: Eon, I don't rhyme; also I don't know what's in there. You have to tell me. Ezra is not talking to me [...] I've been through there; it is weird and if they're stuck I don't know what to do.

Diane talked to a guy, Eon assumes he talked to a girl. Eon still assumes, also, it's all Diane's doing — an illusion or something like that — and doesn't take it seriously. Before this experience, he did see Diane and Sypher reappearing in the server room but anybody can use a teleportation spell. He didn't see that first tear in the sky, or the things in the hallway, though: he thinks the others are just crazy. Eon still has his tinfoil hat.

Diane insists:"Eon, this is the stuff that we've all been talking about."Eon actually found everything was fine in that other world, which was less clean. This was more how he would like this school to be run.

Still, Diane asks:"Was there trash in it?"No, there wasn't, but he was looking for it. He puts his tinfoil hat back on and starts shouting, to create a commotion:"It's always going somewhere! It goes somewhere, people!"A couple people walk by; they can't get through the doorway because Diane and Eon are standing in the middle. As Diane tells it,"The door is closed!"Eon harangues them:"Where does your trash go? Is this your trash?"The people walk away — very fast.

Diane insists:"Door is closed! Go around!"They do.

Diane coaxes Eon back to the trash; she doesn't touch him; she knows he'd be upset because she is clean and that is rude.

Diane offers the trash and sits down on a bench next to it.

Eon recounts everything he saw and went through in apocalyptic movie terms; he can even give details about the skeletal creatures because of his love for anatomy. He didn't use Trash Memory in there, though.

Diane processes this, fully believing it.

Neither Diane nor Eon have seen Sypher or Ezra since early this morning. Eon has been looking for Sypher all day, he even asked the spirit about her. Diane has texted them both, but they're not here: Sypher posts on Instagrimoire, like, every two hours, even in class ... but nothing has come through since she posted a picture of Peonie and her plant earlier today. Diane thinks Sypher and Ezra are in the creepy hole, and she and Eon have to figure out how to get in there except ... no, they should stay here and try to save them from here instead.

Eon walks away, to check on the rip, while Diane is freaking out.

Diane keeps turning the problem in her head:"We can't trust ... We went to the headmistress already and she said there wasn't anything [...] We could go through, or we can't [...] I am not good at this, I am a people person."She yells.

Diane is having a breakdown.

While she is having a heart attack, Eon is touching the wall: the tear is not there anymore. He returns to Diane and puts his hand on her shoulder: "We'll find them, don't worry. If I know Sypher, she's probably charging her computer or looking for the Wi-Fi."Diane and Eon try to remember what the voice told them: if they return, they'll be trapped and someone might come through; therefore they need to open it for their friends, but not get trapped, and also not ... that guy, according to Diane, He was a piece of work: let me tell you what.

Eon is extremely confused now.

Diane continues her diatribe:"I know about people, and he was just a bad one — kind of terrible."Eon remains confused, as Diane is full-on talking to herself, finding comfort in knowing that this guy sucked; he was terrible. She finds comfort in her judgment of others and that's one of the only things giving her footing right now, because everything else is confusing. She concludes that:"I need a trash bat."Eon reckons I gotta go.

He won't: "Oh no honey, you're safe. They're okay, they know you."Eon insists, in a strange voice:"No, I need to go."Diane wants to convince a batcuum cleaner that they need to use their communication network to find the next tear and tell her immediately when they do. Problem is, the bats won't understand her unless she uses a Speak to Animal spell to talk to them. The bats, however, do like Diane, so finding one is super easy. She plans on using her Diane For President spell to supplement diagrams.

Diane actually finds two bats cleaning a spill in the hallway together. She draws in her book while the bats — with their big balloon bodies and tiny wings, they're kind of chunky — keep flying. They come sniff the book with their tiny noses, because they don't sense things through their eyes; they communicate with one another and look at Diane.

Diane makes a tear in the paper and opens it.

One of the bats puts its head inside the tear; it shakes around with its head stuck inside; the other one grabs it and pulls the paper off of it. The two of them look at Diane, one still holding the paper.

Diane walks away, as the paper eventually goes flying into the trash can.

Eon takes it.

Diane sits down, defeated. That's it; she's just kind of sitting right now: she doesn't know what to do. A teacher goes down the hallway.

Eon casts a new spell : Sniff It Out! to have Phillis sniff out a point of interest — in this case, any tears nearby. Eon explains what he expects to Phillis; she looks at him and scurries off.

The batcuum cleaners and Phillis are now running around, looking for this thing Diane and Eon have told them to go look for.

Diane is still sitting in the same spot when Eon returns to the hallway. She gets up and walks toward the Herbology classroom, where she finds a very long, tendrily and possibly rope-like plant. She takes it, wraps it around her arm and starts walking out of the room — not making any efforts to be sneaky about it, not even trying to keep Eon out — when Professor Del Astra asks her: "Why are you taking that?"Meanwhile, Eon, who has not followed Diane into the classroom, looks for trash in the hallway while watching guard.

Diane, creepily dead in the face, turns to face the professor: "Nobody believes us and I have to save my friends now."She moves to just walk out the door, while Professor Del Astra looks at her, confused about what Diane has just told her.

Diane is not in a good place right now: This is not a thing that she does; she's not a hero — she doesn't even believe half this stuff is going on —; she is there to make sure that the heroes ... she's a support character; this is not supposed to come down on her shoulders, but her friends are maybe dead or trapped in a void pool; and she is so far out of ideas that she is literally going to take a plant, throw part of it into a hole, and just hope it catches one of her friends ... like, maybe, like some kind of rope?

Diane walks out of the room. The door shuts, and it says:"Goodbye, Diane."Eon, next to the trash can, sees Diane carrying this large plant. The two of them move forward. Eon is going to say something but, all of a sudden, he's frozen and can't move. Diane is holding this plant and looking at him; she can't move either.

The two of them are standing still and time is standing still.