Shankara spent a lot of his time in the human world, exploring the stores, balancing atop the cars and buses that drove by, overlooking the city from rooftops, and even frequently following humans around. Sometimes he enjoyed floating by their side, carrying on with an entirely one-sided conversation without a worry in the world. He usually tried not to stick around one town for too long because after a while, bad things would start to happen. There wasn't an exact timer on his perpetual bad luck, but he knew himself well enough to be able to balance it as well as he could. Sometimes, he was too little too late, and there would be a few sink holes, or a small recession, but for the most part, in the more recent years, he'd kept his head low and timed himself properly.
Just the same, he tried not to follow around the same person for too long or too often, but sometimes one person in particular would snag his curiosity and he'd lose himself in their company, even though he knew they were completely oblivious to it. He preferred the lonely ones, especially since they wouldn't go off and join a group of friends and make him feel left out with their chatter about topics he wasn't exactly up to par with. Shankara wasn't deeply involved in modern pop culture, but he knew certain basics, or more popular things.
It was during one of these times of following a human when everything went downhill--but, well, that was pretty much the only direction he knew, anyway. When bad things struck, Shankara was the last to react with any sort of shock or surprise. Of course, he would be more on edge, because once something started kicking off, it didn't take much to start a chain reaction that would make everything go from bad to worse, and from worse to downright terrible.
It was half-way through the school day and Shankara was blessing the students with the inability to focus properly on their tests for every classroom he passed through. In one, he'd actually caused the flag to fall off the wall and hit the top of the white board, which knocked one side of it onto the floor. It caused a huge stir in the class full of students who used it at an excuse to distract the teacher from droning on about some upcoming project, so he didn't feel too bad about the screw up. He'd learned over time that everything bad that happened wasn't necessarily, well, bad.
Just after lunch time, right when all the students had returned to class, something terrible happened. Shankara noticed it before anyone else; but, of course, he was fae. While the weather outside had already been cloudy, when a large group of various fae stepped onto the school's campus, an even larger pack of Mares at their backs, it began to pour. At first, the entire group concealed themselves with glamour, choosing to appear to the humans as humans themselves. Of course, a group of grown-looking men and woman suddenly storming the campus looked more suspicious than anything, and when they were confronted, that was when things started going bad.
The campus security was no match for a group of fae, and when the teachers realized the situation, they locked their doors, called in the police, and told the children to duck their heads under their desks, as if plastic and wood and metal would be enough to hold back the danger at hand.
Shankara stuck to the walls, avoiding the offending fae while trying to keep track of what they were trying to do. As he saw them separate to block off different entrances of the school, his first thought was, Mother Nature is not going to like this. But even as he thought it, he knew that Mother Nature would not involve herself with this. It was not her way. Shankara didn't know very much about the general situation. He knew his king, the Dullahan, was striking out against the human world, but for what reason, he didn't know. Nobody did, from what he'd heard being passed around in his own world. He'd heard of the disasters striking out in various parts of the world, but he never considered getting caught up in it. He couldn't help but wonder if his luck had brought it on, or if this was a situation established beyond the realm of his powers.
After studying the group of fae, Shankara noticed two of them at the center of it all, neither of which he recognized. An Oni man, two tusk-like horn jutted out from his head, eyes embedded in his blue-tinted hands, ordered the Mares on what to do and where to go. In response, the Mares circled each room, stalking down students who were unfortunate enough to be caught outside their classrooms.
It didn't take long for the police to arrive, but the second fae, a witch of some sort with paper-pale skin and no hair on her head, sat in the center of campus, criss-cross, and, Shankara noticed, a magical force blocked the officers from going inside the school. They were blocked off by an invisible shield, where many of them stood around it, appearing puzzled and panicked. All-in-all, Shankara would have to admit that the entire thing was very well choreographed. The group had very obviously planned out the details in their hostile takeover, for whatever reason they had for doing it, and he would have clapped if he hadn't been so terrified of being found out. While he didn't doubt that they, too, were Unseelie, he wanted nothing to do with the chaos they were obviously preparing to spread.
The worst of it started in the gymnasium on the bottom floor. A group of small children were trapped inside with not only the Mares, but a fae woman to watch over them. Shankara hovered outside of the gymnasium for a short time, peeking inside to find a woman he recognized only through her legends in the Unseelie world. Her name was Kuchisake, and she was making her rounds with the children, surgical mask secured over her split-open mouth. He watched her pace in front of the group of children, but she didn't seem to speak to any of them right away.
Not willing to stick around and make the situation worse, Shankara went up to investigate the upper levels. He knew he could have left, but he felt unwilling, a nagging desire to protect the humans he'd grown curious about pulling at his paranoid mind. Unfortunately, he knew there were many issues with that, and in his presence, things just may go from bad to worse over time.