Ayra Lilygrove
Saint Vivienne ~ Ayra's Room
11/16/2026
Monday - Night
"Hmmm..."
The young woman (?) makes a thinking sound as she stares at your face, those strange crimson orbs peering at you in a way that seems slightly... Off? Yes, there is still something vaguely inhuman about the way Aislynn looks at things, like a mimicry that's only about 90% complete, like a robot that doesn't quite get exactly why people behave the way they do on an emotional level and has substituted it with logic instead, nevertheless...
"Okay, from the top!"
...She pulls a white-board from nowhere, along with a colorful assortment of what seem to be markers.
It really is from nowhere too, looking for all the world like she just pulled it from the nothing just out of the range of your peripheral vision. On this board she draws a circle near the top of it labeled "Us," then turns back to face you with a pointer stick in hand...
"I'm aware it's a bit confusing, heck someone seems to have gone out of their way to make the exact details of why we're here as unclear as possible... But I can probably explain some of the good old-fashioned metaphysical bullshit, even if there are still some gaps in my memory."
She jabs at the "Us" on the screen, keeping her eyes locked on you the whole time.
"Ordinarily, we exist in the real world, material reality, we have a physical presence in the universe. That wasn't always the case however," so saying she sighs, as if she realizes this part is the beginning of a crazy part, before continuing on, "Back until near the end of what we consider to be 2008, you guys only had a... Spiritual presence... You were a paracosm of sorts, a world that could only exist in imaginary space, like uh... Characters in a story, I guess you could say? Or the inhabitants of a Dream World? But then there was a big event -one that's a bit too complex for me to explain right now- and during the course of surviving it, you all somehow manifested yourselves in material reality as actual people. In retrospect it shouldn't have been a surprise, reality is what humans dictate it to be, so if enough imaginary people decided that they were real when confronted with the 'reality' that they were not, it's only natural that they forcibly made themselves physically real, but I digress..."
She jabs at the "us" a few more times.
"That is your circumstance, this world wasn't 'real' until it suddenly was and your subsequent appearance inside of actual reality was taken as a threat by your creators. They wanted humans that were just half-real, people that could feel enough to generate reiki and serve as batteries, but not so real that they could ever actually break free from their imprisonment in the unconscious. Just minds and souls. These people are the 'entity' that is currently barreling towards us, or maybe they already reached us? Hard to say!"
So saying, she draws a bubble next to the 'us' labeled "Arcadia" before turning back towards you.
"We called em Arcadia. Guess you could say they're aliens? Well regardless, their whole civilization runs off draining the reiki from beings like you, so they made dozens of these 'imaginary' worlds filled with these 'half-real' people, put them in traumatic situations so the reiki generation is at max, and just constantly loop it over and over for their personal benefit, it's kinda gross right? But they're heavily dependent on the stuff, so if the flow of it were to slow down they'd be weakened by that, and this world is living proof that the 'imaginary' worlds can in fact become real if properly stressed, so the idea was to help the others become real, weaken the enemy, and gain allies in the process. One of those really morally correct wars you know? Hard to argue it's a bad thing to overthrow a society that literally feeds off suffering, right?"
She chuckles.
"However the problem is, those worlds aren't real in a physical sense. Their minds and souls certainly exist on some level, but there was no physical way to reach them... Or well, not one that we knew of, some of them managed to get to us just fine, but we couldn't figure out how to get to them in the same way, after all the physical can't just become imaginary... But then someone had the idea of using dreams as a medium to do it, dreams are a fantasy after all, and all you humans -even the half real ones- are connected via your weird collective unconscious, so symbolically it works out like dreams = fantasies = imaginary and thus, it became possible for us to reach them, in theory, while we are asleep. Dropping down to lower realities through sleep. The people that are supposed to do that were the X-Cross, and they were chosen as such because of... Preexisting connections to these doomed 'imaginary' worlds, which would make it easier for them to both get there themselves and bring others there with them... I think..."
She frowns.
"It makes logical sense anyway, at least as far as magic can be logical... But the exact circumstances of why we're here... I can't remember exactly who flipped the switch... I figure we got put in the 'past' to give us more time to do it, weave us saving the other worlds into our timeline so the world can't reject it, but all I can remember is everyone discussing what the plan was, not actually carrying it out... There's a big blank before I woke up in here with everyone else, like it happened without warning, so honestly..."
"The plan doesn't seem to have gone to plan. People's memories were blatantly tampered with as soon as we got inside, the option to leave is gone, time doesn't work right anymore, weird dream beings started going after us and I haven't been able to find Burroughs or the other two brats at all..."
---
Eva Ellet
Saint Vivienne ~ Strange Manor
11/16/2026
Monday - Evening
"..."
If she took offense at you blatantly avoiding the question, she doesn't say so with words...
No, her cat-like golden eyes simply peering at you through the darkness of the hall, the shadow tilts her head to the side in a way that was also much like a cat wondering what the human it's staring at is doing, but...
"Heh... I see..."
In the end she just makes that noise, before doing a slow turning examination of the room...
"Well, if we're in her head... A lot of stuff in here should mean something, so... If we could find her bedroom maybe?"
She frowns, before knocking on the immovable door.
"I sort of doubt this is where she slept... Or well, with all the bad vibes this door has, I hope for her sake it's not where she slept..."
For once, rather than giggling about some horrible trauma, the shadow actually seems to be sympathetic about it?
"Of course we don't know much about her, just like you said... So it'd be a bit of a blind search..."
So saying, she raises an eyebrow, and...
"We could split up and look around the other rooms? Meet up back here in say fifteen minutes?"
----
Cosmos Fairchild
LOVELESS, Sofia's Lab
Monday - Noon
11/16/2026
Some time and a somewhat deja-vu inducing car ride later, you once again find yourselves inside the depths of LOVELESS, a structure that seems to have taken a remarkably large position in your fate. Unlike the last time, Daniel doesn't stop to cook lunch at one of the smaller shops inside the mall, no, the man doesn't seem to be quite as worried about your health this time (after all, you're a bit more stable this around) and thus seems a little more willing to just lean on a certain rich friend of his when it comes to those sorts of matters, yes...
"She can buy us lunch."
...In spite of everything else that seems to have changed, Sofia and Daniel's bizarre friendship seems to still be entirely intact; he doesn't seem to doubt for a second that she'll agree to such a thing, just as how he walks straight to her office the same way he had done the last time, ignoring all the spatial distortions and reality warping, like he just inherently knew the right way to the princess's laboratory and indeed...
...You find yourself in the same security room as before, although just like last time, you can't help but think it's really just Sofia's laboratory.
But there are some differences.
Unlike the last time, the walls aren't covered in photos, newspaper clippings and maps... The walls are as clean and tidy as the floor this time around, although there are a few extra machines, not computers, but rather...
"Daniel."
Grunts Sofia.
...Exercise equipment?
A certain blonde princess is hanging from a pull-up bar by her legs, letting out small grunts as she does upside-down sit ups, a shockingly toned stomach and arms much more prevalent in the gym clothes she was wearing now than they had ever been in the much more princess-like clothing she had been wearing the last time you were here...
"And... A mystery person?"
She stops to look at you, smirks, then...
"Oh my, the day is already going in a strange direction..."
Keeps up her exercise routine, arms locked behind her head, but eyes looking back at the both of you each time she descends.
"I'm not sure what business the pope's daughter has with me, but let's hear it, what can I do for you, Fairchild Girl."
Well...
Even if she doesn't seem to remember...
She still seems to use the same term for you...
---
Blaise Pendragon
Brighter Days
11/16/2026
Monday - Morning
"V-very nice?"
For some reason, that particular comment about her legs gets a strange reaction out of her-! She seems to smile in a nervous sort of way, like she appreciated the comment, but the words that come out next are both whispered and well-
"But it's always seemed like guys don't like muscular girls..."
-filled with a strange sort of hesitance, or embarrassment-! Of course Yuriko has it all wrong, that's not how it is at all-! The thing that scared the other students about her was her resting I'm about to snap face, like she was pissed off all the time, but you knew that actually wasn't true at all-!
Another victim of judgement by appearances-!
Indeed, the look on her face now is pleasant enough-! Nervous in a cute way, hint of red, like she was feeling embarrassed for some hard to define reason-! She definitely had her cute sides, if other people couldn't see that, well, other people were just blind-! Still, she seems to take your assessment of your news to heart, stepping back and letting you into the main building, where a number of make-shift blanket tents seem to have been propped up in the living room around the television set, like the kids had been having some sort of movie night before falling asleep in the living room, a practice that was somewhat old-fashioned nowadays, but that was still alive and well in this just-as-old-fashioned building-!
Yeah...
It was a western-style mansion, a massive building of three floors that had been taken from the United Kingdoms under certain circumstances, or at least, that was how your old man had vaguely described it back in the day. There were a number of defensive enchantments on the building -enough that calling it a fortress might be just as appropriate as a mansion- but they weren't the sort of enchantments that saw you as a target of any sort, if anything, the warm feeling that washes over you as you enter is one that immediately pulls you into it's protection...
A home that watches over the young, a nest that can't be breached by those with malice in their hearts...
It was that sort of thing, but the inner workings escaped you.
Still-!
"Keep it quiet, they're still asleep."
Moving through the living room and up the stairs, Yuriko whispers this warning to you like she thinks your hyperactive self might burst into song and awaken the children-! Of course you probably didn't intend to do that, after all it would be a lot easier to say what you needed to say if the kids were asleep-!
No chance of being overheard then, this makes sense-!
Yes-!
Stairs lead to a familiar hallway, although that hallway...
...Leads to an unfamiliar bedroom!
Although of course it's unfamiliar, you're not the sort that makes a habit of going into girl's rooms-!
This would be a first actually! If you didn't count the gang's shared space as a certain vampire's room anyway-!
"Here."
Upon entering, a towel is already being thrown towards your head...
"You look like you've been out in the rain awhile, no need to catch a cold."
Says Yuriko from what looks like the bathroom attached to her bedroom.
Ah.
Thoughtful!
"So..."
Although once she's done that...
"What's this... Thing for my ears only...?"
She seems to get nervous again for some reason-!
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Originally Posted by Miss Sofia
