Sweet Diplomacy

"Dormi, could you open a hole to the basement? I want to lure all of the normal gremlins there."

In a few seconds, the ground silently opened up behind the gremlins. A set of stairs descended into the darkness below. With no dangers in sight, Aayla hoped out onto the ground. The gremlins started to hiss and greedily hold onto their desserts. She gently opened the box in her hands and waved a brownie in front of the grumpy little furballs.

"Look I have a brownie~! Have gremlins ever had brownies before~? Do you all like chocolate~? This has lots of chocolate~! They are so~ much better than yum yum cookies~."

<(* o,*)> The gremlins drooled at the thought of lots of chocolate.

Aayla carefully stepped over the carefully licked clean dessert boxes and went down the stairs. Some furballs scrambled to follow her down stairs while others focused on their food and the magical display of colors. As soon as Aayla stepped downstairs, Dormi anxiously began to work. An invisible force grabbed the box. It floated down the hallway with gremlins in tow.

She climbed the stairs again and grabbed another box from an open window. Aayla and the residents kept working while gremlins kept popping up out of nowhere. The residents distracted and calmed the gremlins, while Aayla lured them downstairs. A few of the gremlins had so enraptured by the lights that Aayla could simply picked them up.

Magic can only copy specific objects so many times before the objects start breaking down. The supplies of desserts could only last for so long. If only humans were eating them, then the supplies would have lasted for days. With angry gremlins, they only lasted for about an hour before dwindling. All of the sweets that Dormi made immediately went into the basement to keep the ones down there happy.

Aayla checked several times to make sure that the gremlins weren't sneaking out to get more sweets. With Dormi keeping watch, none of them left the basement. This just made Aayla even more confused. How many gremlins were there? They were like scarves being pulled out of a magician's sleaves.

After checking another time, Aayla quickly walked back up the stairs. For some reason, the skin on the back of her neck started to crawl. Then she noticed that the windows were closed and the normal gremlins were gone. The students made wild hand gestures as soon as they saw her. They started pointing towards the front of the building. When she turned her head, Aayla froze. A few of the rampaging gremlins were greedily devouring all of the sweets on the ground. They were only half as big as some that Aayla saw out front, but they were still as large as her. They jostled each other around and were eating their way towards the back of the building.

Everything became completely silent. Aayla kept her eyes on the gorilla gremlins as she gradually descended back down into the basement. When she stepped onto the floor, Aayla finally exhaled. Aayla never even realized when she started to hold her breath. Several minutes passed. A person appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Hey! Miss Glowery, it's safe to come up now."

Some student had decided to slip out a few more boxes while the gorilla gremlins moved on to another window. Eventually they ate themselves into a stupor and fell asleep. Everyone was stupefied. Was it that easy to calm down a rampaging gremlin? Those little gluttons! There were a few more close calls after that, but most of them were handled by Dormi and the upperclassmen.

The gremlins were eventually stuffed into their nest in the basement. A few of the third years created small lights for Aayla to set up in the basement. Finally, all of the little furballs were happily munching on sweets, playing games and thoroughly distracted. The few gorilla gremlins that refused to calm down were restrained by Dormi.

During this time, security finally arrived outside of the gate. It took almost an hour for them to get inside since they had to subdue the rampaging gremlins. The gorilla gremlins had physical strength and sheer numbers on their side which caused several problems. Not to mention that they had to track down the ones that escaped and save any students who were in the forest when the commotion started. Many of the most powerful gremlins had actually snuck outside the gate when Lysander started hurting their friends.

"Get your filthy hands off of me! Don't you know who I am?! I am Lysander Foryl, future head of the Foryl Family from Sarrasak. Those little rats attacked me first. I had to escape to protect myself! Do you know how much the country would lose if a talented wizard like me was hurt before he matured?!"

Lysander kept threatening to sue the security officers and insisted that the gremlins attacked him and his friends completely unprovoked. When Daren appeared with Chris and Junius, Lysander pretended to be especially aggrieved and wrong. Unfortunately for him, while Dormi can't act outside the grounds it can detect and monitor with crystal clear quality. Gremlins are actually listed as a protected species, so Lysander was arrested for several crimes including cruelty against animals, assault against protected magical creatures and public endangerment.

The residents cheered when Lysander and his horrible lackeys were dragged away. They had caused this entire incident and treated them like garbage for days.

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Ultimately, the blame fell mostly on two of Lysander Foryl's friends who were directly expelled. Lysander was merely suspended and transferred from the dormitory. Security was criticized for the poor response time and planning for Nafriton Residence Hall. Unfortunately, Ramona did get into some trouble since overall responsibility fell onto her shoulders as no supervisor was appointed yet. Alicia Rouse was appointed as the temporary supervisor.

The arguments about how to handle the gremlins and who would be the new supervisor were intense. Headmaster Marin stepped in to renegotiate the deal with the gremlins after Ramona told him about it. The gremlin issue was put on hold to see how the new deal went, but the conflict about the permanent supervisor continued.

Many other changes occurred due to this incident. For one, the empty music room was cleared out to create a separate security office. More officers and medical personal were stationed in the residence hall. After much discussion among the head faculty and staff, the student council would send members to live in the residence hall and upperclassmen would replace all of the first- and second-years for safety and transportation reasons. Underclassmen had long complained that about their travel times to campus anyways.

Daren and Chris were now known to be staying at the Nafriton Residence Hall. With several student council members also moving there, the applications to transfer to Nafriton Residence Hall exploded. Every ambitious third- and fourth-year wanted to climb higher up the social ladder by catching someone's eye. The better-than-expected conditions at the residence hall had long become common knowledge, so even nobles were willing to transfer, including The Butterflies. Especially The Butterflies.

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Early the next morning, the residents were lively with gossip and the latest news. They get to transfer into the best facilities on campus for free! Some were even offered cash for their place in Nafriton Residence Hall. Life was excellent. No more nights startled awake by gremlins. No more long commute times in the rain and snow. The stress from yesterday was all worth it!

As part of the deal to encourage upperclassmen to transfer, extensive renovations would be done on the building. Originally scheduled for winter break, they were pushed up to today and would last all week. Despite their moaning and groaning, the residents didn't particularly care because after the week was up, they would be transferring to much better rooms. Exclusive dining halls, better rooms, pools, private training areas and actual cleaning and laundry services. Most importantly, no gremlin roommates!

Workers under the supervision of Ramona and Deputy Downer delivered various materials and supplies later that morning. Residents, security and nurses alike were sent back to campus for the day. Even the Student Council members and resident advisors were kicked out. With nowhere else to go, Aayla wandered around campus.

An entire week passed. Aayla spent most of her time in Ramona's office or following her around. Ramona loved to gossip about the gremlin incident. The faculty had learned that the original deal struck with the gremlins was Aayla's idea. They were very pleased and liked having clever students. Ramona loved having an opportunity to boast about Aayla. Fortunately, Aayla was around to start pulling her back before Ramona dug more holes for Aayla to jump into.

Ramona was very happy that week. The residence hall was Alicia's problem, and she got to spend time with Aayla. Needless to say, Aayla was dragged into several more magic lessons. She became exhausted between the lessons and preparing for the mass transfer. Theo and Jacki helped, but Aayla kept getting pestered by various nobles trying to get certain rooms or live near certain students. She got so frustrated that she started putting them as far away as possible from whoever they wanted to live next to.

Oh? You want to live next to so-and-so? Thank you for letting me know for the fifth time today. Unfortunately, only rooms 112 and 248 are available. So sorry. Yes, I know who you are and no thank you my salary is already sufficient.

Aayla was sick and tired of this nonsense and wanted it to end as fast as possible. Thankfully, the Student Council came up with a lovely distraction for her.