Well, as part of the problem, I'll say that maybe mixing together would be best. You shouldn't have to be using NPCs to bring the story along, especially all by yourself. It's been hard for me to post these past two weeks, but now that Easter has past, I should finally have time. Once I get my post up, we should definitely focus on something to bring all of the characters together. Maybe instead of the assembly, if we can get a teacher, we could have a class considering most of us have already written that we were skipping the assembly, unless it would be easier for all of our characters to just have a change of heart and just go to it.