Leo recognized a familiar soul in Jiri. And because of that grin on his face, Leo identified just a little of what might make some of his friends admit that they wanted to punch him.

"I heard the old groundskeeper actually looked like the movie Harry." Well, he hadn't heard it exactly. He had photo evidence of the guy. Youngish with a dorky hat and garden shears that were no doubt shink, shink, shinking away.

He actually hadn't been photographed lately. Maybe because Leo had reduced the point-value of photographs taken at the Bird Sanctuary. Or maybe it was because he'd been swallowed by the maze and still endeavored to cut his way out. Leo had slowed his trot while his brain worked overtime, but now that that mental image was cemented into his brainpan complete with sound effects thank you, Jiri, Leo put his nervous energy to work.

"Man, if one of us is going in, we may as well all go in, right?"

Leo jogged to catch up and tried to make himself an easy target for passes.

Maybe there were actual minotaurs? It was so far outside the realm of Leo's experience that now he sorta wanted to lose. On an academic level, at least.

"Doesn't mean that somebody won't go first, though!"

On a practical level, he maybe had a bit of over excitement that led to an over-application of speed that resulted in a minor collision with Jiri. Just a minor one, when the other boy had let down his helping-Alex guard. Because now Leo was helping better. He was clearing the field for the new guy. Yeah. Had nothing to do with the joke about sending in the human. Not. At. All.

Alex corked a brow at the suggestion of the things that could be in the maze. From minotaurs to ghostly groundskeepers who looked like Harry Potter. Honestly, anything that was in the maze was probably logical and firmly staked in reality. He didn't know why the other students felt the need to make up such things. The world was amazing as is.

...Maybe it was the same reason all the other kids seemed to talk about was movies and tv shows and video games. Their lives were so calm that they needed an outlet like that. His thought process was interrupted by Jiri addressing him.

"Alex, whoa, no fair sending in the human like that."

Alex grinned at that, straight face or no, he knew Jiri was teasing. For him this wasn't a competition, if he won it'd only be because Jiri and Leo would be too focused on each other to bother with him.

"Last person to get a goal is the first one in?"

He nodded in agreement, "Sounds good to me."

"Man, if one of us is going in, we may as well all go in, right?" And then Leo bumped Jiri, effectively clearing the way for him, "Doesn't mean that somebody won't go first, though!"

Well that was nice of him, though it seemed pretty cheap. He weighed his options, to take the shot or not take the shot. Besides that there was no guarantee that he would even make the shot. So...Kick the ball he did, too bad it glanced off the entryway and back into the field.

Jiri caught the ball on the rebound, resisting the urge to dramatically limp while he ran. There were no refs here to suck up to. One thing bothered him, though, and it wasn't Leo's helping.

What the heck had the ball rebounded off of? Leaves? He'd kicked enough balls into bushes to know that usually there was more crawling-in-after-them-and-getting-scratched-by-branches than this.

Jiri kept the ball closed and controlled as he jogged in, and took a shot. A perfect, dead center, high speed, no-goalie-in-sight shot. If a certain x-negative Hispanic needed some shouldering out of the way for him to make it, then clearly they were just instructing Alex on how to body check someone.

The ball went in. And promptly came back out at full speed, chased by a gust of wind that stirred up leaves from the ground.

"Umm," the Iranian teen said, enunciating each letter carefully for maximum clarity.

Ummmmm.

Yeah. That.

He wasn't going in first, but damn straight he was going in. Jiri didn't take that kind of physics from hedge rows.

Okay. Sooo not normal. But this was the Bird Cage. It was a Wonderland for abnormal. It would be disappointing if the mysterious hedge maze was normal. And just because normal was, like, a thing people often strove toward, didn't mean it was good or better or best.

It just meant that abnormal was, "Cool." Leo chimed. His logic-brain was in hyper drive. "What if we carry it in? Is it fundamentally opposed to balls or just the kicking?" Competition forgotten, Leo trotted after the ball and picked it up.

He dusted the pleather off and inspected a new greenish scrape that hadn't been there before. Maybe from bouncing off the hedge? Surely not from when Jiri made the goal.

Leo glanced at the other two. "I'm going in." This was the Bird Sanctuary. Not the actual Sanctuary where mutants actively tried to murderize humans. That meant that stuff here shouldn't actively want to kill him. In theory.

He tucked the ball under his arm and walked past the threshold to the maze. Only. The ball didn't go. It knocked right through the cradle of Leo's arm as if someone had hit it. The teen looked up at the other two from just inside the maze and went to grab the ball again. Some things, you just gotta confirm through repetition.

He watched as the other two boys started testing the hedge with the ball and every time the ball didn't go in. Almost like something or someone didn't want the ball to go in, it was accompanied by a gust of wind at one point. Part of him thought ghost or spirit. But what would a ghost have against a soccer ball of all things. He looked over the hedge, it seemed normal enough. Thick green brush trimmed to shape.

They weren't getting anywhere simply testing with the ball. Since the competition was forgotten perhaps he could take a different approach to figuring this mystery out. First a different visual would definitely help. So why not some animals with ultraviolet eyesight, for which dragonflies were always a good choice. He jogged over to a near by tree and quickly formed a small swarm.

Then with a simple mental command he had the swarm spread out to observe the phenomenon. He would have closed his eyes to focus in on it but his own eyes would have see some of it. Overlaying was a little hard but it was useful for weirdness like this.

Just like before the ball was forced out of Jiri's hands, though no gust accompanied it this time.

Leo was going all Scientific Method on this thing. Alex was going full mutant. Since he couldn't contribute to the latter without laying down for a nap, he stepped up to help with the former.

"You can see through their eyes, right? Or did I dream that?" He asked his roommate. Sometimes that happened, with the little details. "Let us know if you see anything. My vote's on the gardener getting a power growth and possessing this place."

He'd heard there was an alarming rate of people pretty much disappearing from the Mansion. So much so that they apparently didn't search too hard for people. So that could totally happen.

Jiri jogged back to the equipment shed, and brought back every type of ball he could find.

First things first: another soccer ball. Just in case the maze had something against that specific ball. Nope: the new one got tossed back out, too. All right. What about if he aimed over a side, not through the entrance? Yep, tossed back. Okay. That was pretty solid empirical evidence that hedges didn't like soccer.

Ah, but what about basketball? Jiri threw it in, but it was Leo's chest it came rocketing towards on its way back out. Heh.

Footballs: rejected.

Baseballs: returned to sender, fast pitch style.

Hockey pucks: ditto.

This thing was definitely not a sports fan. But maybe it was just anything? Jiri picked up a handful of stuff: a twig, some leaves, a dandelion head. They came fluttering back at his face.

With an air of great scientific discovery, he wiggled out of his shoes. The left got tossed back, but not his right. He couldn't even see where it landed, except that it had made a very distinctive getting-swallowed-by-a-bush sound on its way in.

"Oh come on. Give that back! Don't make us come in there!"

They were being trolled by shrubbery.

"Oof." Leo caught the basketball with his body as much as his hands. He had to take a couple steps back or risk landing flat on his behind. "The hedge packs a punch."

And apparently, the hedge ate shoes. "Toss the other one in. I mean, this is For Science!" And they needed the data. That was the first thing it hadn't sent rocketing back out. "Did you throw it softer?"

They had gathered pretty close to the entrance at this point, balls and pucks and other sports debris scattered far and wide. Leo sat his basketball down and attempted to step up onto the ball and balance.

Leo had crossed the threshold only as far as it took for the maze to reject the ball he'd kept under arm. He was willing to walk in slowly. Uh. After the bugs went in. Leo slipped and nearly ate it when he failed to balance on the basketball. "What do your bug eyes see?" What was that even like?

"You can see through their eyes, right? Or did I dream that? Let us know if you see anything. My vote's on the gardener getting a power growth and possessing this place."

He gave a nod of confirmation and sat down, closing his eyes to concentrate on the sight the insects gave. Ultraviolet was hard for the brain to process, it was different from how humans normally saw the world. But it gave a spectrum they would have other wise needed equipment to see.

As the other two boy continued to throw balls and then shoes at the hedge, it was easy to see what was going on. Every time the balls ricocheted back, there was a ripple on the surface. A flexible shield of some kind, bending just enough to fling the projectiles back with a good amount of force.

When Jiri's shoe got lost in the hedge, that's when he noticed something interesting.

"Oh come on. Give that back! Don't make us come in there!"

"Toss the other one in. I mean, this is For Science! Did you throw it softer?"

There was a soft spot in the shield, it rippled, but let the shoe through. This had to be a mutant. There was no other way to explain a shield around the hedge maze. He stood up, just as Leo addressed him,

"What do your bug eyes see?"

"It's a shield, thankfully view-able in the ultraviolet spectrum. Where Jiri's shoe went in is a soft spot. There's gotta be a mutant behind this, I'm definitely convinced now." Alex dusted his pants off and stepped closer to the shield, "So, who wants to go in first?" Not a moment after he spoke and anguished cry rang out from the hedge-maze, Alex jolting away from it at the sudden noise.

"Why don't you throw yours in for science." Jiri held his remaining shoe close, protecting it from further experimentation.

Fortunately, Alex had gotten the data they needed. A force field, huh? So was it to keep things out, or to keep things in--

The cry that rent the air was of such loss, such despair, as man can but hope to go his life without experiencing. Jiri stood rooted to his shoeless spot for a moment, before sharing a look with the two other boys.

"Men," he said, "We're going in."

With shoe in hand, he aimed for the soft spot Alex had seen. The hedge maze opened up to the right and left around him, the unkempt shrubbery towering higher than he could see. But the shout had been from... left-ish? Maybe? Without knowing what was around each bend, or how the path through this place really went, there was no telling. Maybe the fastest way to go left was really to go right.

An evil cackle boomed through the leafy stillness, followed by another heart-wrenching wail.

Left. Because they had to start somewhere.

"Alex, can you get us a bug's eye on the layout of this place?"

It was totally cheating, but it was for a good cause.

Leo was ready to throw his shoes in for science, no question. He was already on his way to sitting down when somebody screamed. Shoes were not what was needed. What was needed was a hero, or three.

> "Men, we're going in."

And then Jiri did. Successfully. How did he know? Oh. The shoe. Leo tried to aim for the same-ish area. He met a bit of resistance but with a little course correction he, too was in.

"Don't you know? In dungeon crawls left is right and right is wrong." Or maybe that was just a truism for DnD players?

A cackle and another wail marked their urgency. Leo bounced on the balls of his feet. "Left!" But Jiri was already on his way so he scrambled to keep up too. It was always left.

"Don't split the party." He muttered and checked back for Alex. Could he run and do bug things at the same time?

One of the shrubby walls twitched in Leo's peripheral vision. Were the walls moving?

"Men, we're going in."

Leo went in after Jiri, leaving Alex behind before he skittered in after them. His bugs followed, passing through with ease. The maze looked large on the inside, the hedges easily towering over them. And the mournful screams and evil cackling did not help this place feel any less foreboding.


"Don't you know? In dungeon crawls left is right and right is wrong."

Leo's comment was ignored for the most part. Though it did seem their fearless leader had taken the advice. Jiri was off like a shot, heading left and commenting over his shoulder, "Alex, can you get us a bug's eye on the layout of this place?"

Leo rushed ahead of him, shouting, "Don't split the party." Alex hesitated a moment before following after, signalling to his insect to take to the sky and spread out. "Right, um, it looks like we should go right up ahead."he stammered out. God this place made him feel nervous.

He didn't notice the twitch of the bushes. With his mind half focused on what the insects were seeing he couldn't focus on everything going on around him. Whatever it was he'd be too late to stop it.

(OOC: I dunno what you had planned for the bush, so I didn't want to intervene. But I give you permission to whatever that possibly separates the group and/or kidnaps Alex cause he's in the back.)