You're getting nothing..... you're getting NOTHING!

You yell out support for Cameron, struggling in your bindings and rolling onto your front, but it's no good. There's no chance you can break them, and there's nothing scissor-like around right now. You might be stuck here, and just have to hope Cameron wins..... you could maybe roll away a bit, but they'd find you really quick, and you don't want to leave Cameron behind even if you can't really help him either way. Drat, why can't you just-

"meoooww."

You quit wiggling your wrists as you feel four fluffy paws gently land on your back. A puffy-furred tail sweeps across your bound arms as the paws gently start padding their way up you, purring.

Is this a cat? Why is there a cat? Why is there a cat on you, no less!

Once it reaches your shoulderblades, it stops and turns to face your backside. The fighting's still going on, and Cameron's clearly starting to slow down. This cat's ruining all of your chances!

It plops itself into a sitting position between your shoulderblades, orange tail flopping over your face and swishing side to side. Come on! You try to blow it out of the way, but it doesn't work, because it is a tail. You feel the cat's weight shift as it leans forwards and down towards your hands, before its mouth makes contact with the ziptie linking your wrist. With a few well-aimed nibbles, the link is broken, and your hands are free again.

It gracefully leaps off on your back and onto the carpet, tilting its head and staring at you expectantly as you slowly use your hands to push yourself up off of the ground. Its eyes are curious, and bright amber. Its fur is a pattern of oranges way more intricate than anything you've seen on animals before, except for its chest, which is instead a big, proud puff of white fur.

"meooowww." It repeats as you get to your feet. Your ankles are still stuck together, but after a swaggering confident walk and a few more nibbles, the cat's got that off too.

You stare in awe as it steps back from you, tilting its head and meeting your gaze again. It's weird enough that there's apparently a cat here right now, but the way it looks would be distracting under any context. As you run your eyes over its winding and weaving fur designs, it meows again, then turns to look further down the hall.

Hm? Oh, right! You look over too, and see that Cameron looks like he's in trouble. Two of the girls are holding onto his right arm, and Charlotte (who looks like she can actually fight (also, how come the rest of these girls are past first year at a Warrior school but aren't that good yet? What do they do with their time here?)) is trying to get in close to land some more punches to his body. He's fending her off with the threat of kicks for the moment, but it looks like some other girls are waiting to pounce and grab hold of his other leg, which isn't good!

Without a word of goodbye to the cat, you rush down the hall at top speed, right past Talia, calling out a battle cry that goes something like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA". The girls' heads turn to you in fear as you barrel through the outer line and make your way right towards tackling the two holding back his arm. Before you reach them, they both release their grips and run backwards, holding their hands up in a "woah, guy" position.

With the space cleared, you go back-to-back with Cameron and get your hands up in an attempted mimic of his fighting pose. It looks okay.

Charlotte looks absolutely steaming, and the other girls are all looking between each other with confusion in the little circle that they formed. Talia, still hunched over Penelope's prone form, growl angrily.

"Who did the ziplocks? Was it you, Henrietta?"

"N-no!"

Talia cradles Penelope close to her chest, and slowly stands her up. "Let this one go, girls. Penelope sprained her ankle." She looks at Cameron accusingly, and his posture sags apologetically a little bit. "Debbie, you're off the hook for now, but you just made a lot of enemies that you didn't want to make. If I were you, I wouldn't come back after this weekend. The Argent Sorority doesn't forget things like this!"

With that, the circle of girls all drop their fists, and slowly disperse down the hallway to follow where Talia walks Penelope. Charlotte looks back at forth between Talia and Cameron with gritted teeth, and you can almost picture her foaming at the mouth, but eventually she relents and follows suit.

"Ummm... th-that was- hey!" Cameron starts, turning to you, but then stopping and jumping when two of the girls brush over his arm with a fingertip as they pass.

Giggling to each other, one says "I felt that muscle, big boy.... come to play some time, mkay~?"

She gives Cameron a wink, and his face goes entirely red. The two girls giggle and carry on down the hallway, until eventually the slow-moving group turns a corner and vanishes. Hey, speaking of vanishing, where did that cat go? It was definitely here, right?

"S-sorry, Debbie, you just looked in trouble...." Cameron says eventually, dragging his gaze from the floor and rubbing the back of his head. "I didn't mean to make you enemies or anything."

You shake your head. "That was really cool of you, Cam!" You beam up at him, entirely shaken of the nerves and sadness you were feeling before all the stuff went crazy.{if CameronStory == True} "You really are good at punching stuff!"

His blush comes back, and he kicks his feet against the carpet. "O-oh, stop it....."{else} "How come you know how to do that?"

His blush comes back, and he kicks his feet against the carpet. "O-oh, well, I'm just sorta..... good at punching things, I guess. It's stuff like staffs from first period I've got to learn still."{endif} His face hardens again, and he looks back up at you. "Hey, I don't know what all of that was about, and you don't need to tell me if you don't want to, but are you going to be okay? They seemed pretty serious."

You shrug.

"Iunno!"

You'll probably find out later anyway. Right now, all you're really focused on is the fact that your burden's been swept away, and now you can go get ready for the weekend properly. Woop woop!