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You wake up in a strange place again. Hasn't this happened before? You remember walking for a very long time; you remember being exhausted. You remember sitting down to rest -- just to catch your breath. You remember that it was warm and that you felt safe. ...You must have fallen asleep.

You wake up lying down. It's comfortable, if cramped: a soft featherbed that you could sleep in forever, it seems like. Still, eventually, you do open your eyes, and the wooden beams of a ceiling appear high overhead.

Looking around, you see that there are six other beds around you, and there are eight of you in total: two of you are doubled up in one of the beds, two boys. There are no windows here, but a gentle light suffuses the room even so. A wooden table sits the center of the room, topped with eight wooden cups and a wooden pitcher full of water. Artwork is mounted on the walls, giving it a lived-in feeling. The single door to the room is closed.

[So begins Stage One of the Storybook Woods region. Stages One, Two, and Three of this region are all potentially lethal -- please remember there is no gaurantee of your character's survival. Be mindful that in this stage you must post within 24 hours of your turn.

This portion of Stage 1 is a Meet and Greet period; nothing in this room will do you any harm. The door is currently locked from the outside -- however, as soon as you'd like to move into the live portion of Stage 1, any character may force the locked door and your stage will go live. On Friday, all threads that are not yet live will go live.

Feel free to explore this room. Any room-oriented actions you take, whether they be examining things, attempting to pick things up, and so forth, will generate a GM response informing you of the result, but again, the thread will not go live until characters force the locked door.

In general there is no specific posting order for the Meet and Greet portion of Stage 1, so you can exercise your discretion in deciding when to post and when not to; however, please try to give other people the chance to speak up as well! Further posting instructions will be given when the thread goes live -- please coordinate with your team members before forcing the thread into its live state!]

She did not even remember falling asleep.

One second she was walking down the road cautiously, Ame by her side as they were listening for the creaking trees, and the next they both decided they needed a well deserved nap. To be certain one was to keep watch while the other slept, and visa versa, but apparently both dozed off without a word.

Green eyes blinked and flickered open. She felt warm, comfy, safe for the first time in a while. Had her adventure truly been nothing more than a dream? A fantasy created by her mind, a illusion? It all felt SO real though. Disoriented, it took her a moment to realize that she was not in her rainbow colored sheeted bed, but someone else. She sat up fairly quickly, the blankets fell off her to reveal the white fuku, Lyra was suddenly more awake than ever. She had to admit she calmed down once she noticed the familiar face of Ame on another bed, but who were the others? Her eyes also lingered on the two-boys-one-bed scene, a eyebrow raised at them curiously. Yeah, definitely not in Kansas anymore folks.

She looked around at the other sleeping bodies, she did not know any of them. Were they all made up too? She caught a glint of the other conscious girls eyes and turned to face her- man the clothing some of these people wore was interesting, but she had to admit...serandites outfit was just plain CUTE.

Lyra gave a nervous yet friendly wave at the other girl- choosing not to speak up yet.

Serandite returned the wave with an awkwardness-- She had no problem waving to senshi before. In fact, one could even go so far as to state that Serandite was friendly in battle. But that was in battle. When she clearly had her weapon to defend herself.

(She was sure that Usagi wouldn't have been happy to wake up in a room with a senshi.)

Eyes darted towards another source of movement, eyes widening. She leaped onto Ametrine's bed with glee, forcing a hug onto the unfamiliar lieutenant. "Lieutenant Ametrine! I'mreallyhappytoseeyouherebutthere'sasenshi, Idontknowwhattodo, no weapon..she'sgoingtokillme!" Her words came out in a jumble, even though she barely knew the lieutenant. (She had only seen Ametrine at meetings and wondered at her strange garb.) Her voice wasn't very soft so Lyra was within hearing of Serandite's tumble of words. How Ametrine made it out would be a skill.

"Did you see Kremersite? Rhodizite?"

For some reason when he woke, he thought he'd been dreaming of the voice of Johnny King.

Hector came to groggily aware of two things: there were other eyes watching him, and he had woken up squashed next to Marlo and a bedsheet. One compounded the other. For the umpteenth time he reached for Devourer, didn't find it, and decided to put his head back down on the pillow.

Except --

He sat back up again, looking at their surroundings. A redheaded girl in a senshi skirt; two others, one pink-haired and one dark, which meant that it was a pack of girls examining his and Marlo's horrifying morning after. Better to face them rumpled and suspicious than lie back down and get smothered.

"Hector," he said. "Cavalier Hector of the court of the Imperium, royal guard to Prince Alexandros."

There were other people in the beds, still asleep, or --

-- or --

-- one familiar, pink-bunned hairstyle.

He was already standing. He was standing next to Marlo and his hands were shaking, and his finger recalled the memory of being broken. His face was pale with anger. He'd gotten the blanket from the foot of their bed and was absently (absently?) twisting it in his hands, cording it, tense and distracted with rage and obvious hate. The last time Marlo had seen him this bad, they'd been standing in front of a scalped preteen.

Hector looked like he'd seen a ghost. A ghost that was apparently not friendly and prone to singing and teaching children good moral values. Marlo didn't like that look. He also didn't like the fact Hector seemed ready to rip someone's throat out. "Hector." It was a calm voice. He looked at what Hector was looking at. A woman. "I think there are more important things at hand then your ex girlfriend." A sarcastic remark. Not the most helpful thing. A hand went to his shoulder. "Calm down." It was not really a suggestion, not really a command. I highly recommended suggestion. "Calm. Down."

He gave Lyra an apologetic look. "It's been a long day. Talking ravens, annoying riddles and..." He trailed off. "Nothing like walking in on an axe murder's cabin you know." They had an axe once. Not the best pun.

For the longest moment, all Ametrine could do was stare. Had Serandite really just blown her cover? Really? It took considerable control to keep her face blank, to keep from reacting overtly to both the captain's response and Lyra's as well. She was angry, frustrated that her carefully executed plan had been destroyed in one single moment. But that was that. She had to move forward from that point. That didn't mean, however, that she wouldn't remember how injudiciously Captain Serandite had behaved.

Still, she softened slightly, and hugged the other girl. She would have corrected the captain, but there was no point now. Lyra wasn't stupid. She'd picked up on what Serandite had said. Gravely, Ametrine glanced down at the bundle of energy in her arms, and raised an eyebrow. "No, I haven't seen either of them. I highly doubt anyone will be displaying undue hostility; we need to get out of here more than we need to fight one another."

First things first. She was in a situation here, one that seemed to involve a frightened (if you could call Serandite frightened) Negaverse officer, one who outranked her. Okay. Time to take stock of the situation. Clearly, Serandite was emotionally compromised, so she would need to take initiative here. "I do know what to do," she said calmly, keeping her voice as level as possible. "First off, don't panic. We can work without weapons. Weapons will only get in our way right now, as we're somewhat... out of our depth."

Yes, she was advising a superior officer, and while ordinarily that would have thrown her for a loop, she was somewhat familiar with this one, simply because the girl was... well, Kremersite's captain. "You heard what she said. She won't attack unless you attack first. I would suggest a diplomatic approach at this juncture." And wow, the formality. She only got that formal when addressing someone who outranked her, and Lyra might well notice the difference.

Then again, they didn't know each other terribly well despite having traveled together. Maybe she wouldn't notice. "I suppose we'll have to figure out why we're here, and how we can get out of here," she added finally, trying to understand exactly what the man-- the cavalier?-- was saying. Imperium? What was... who was Prince Alexandros?

Talking ravens. Of course. "My speculation is that we are somehow involved in another fairytale. It has not escaped my notice that there are seven beds."

If Serandite had known anything of Ametrine's plan, she would have rolled into a ball and kept her mouth shut. But she had naively interrupted the other's plans without notice and assumed that everyone knew the difference between negaverse and senshi. She would have sincerely regretted it and admitted that it was inexcusable for a captain to act so rashly. But one couldn't exactly be themselves after an encounter with skulls and apples.

She struggled to listen to Ametrine's advice, heaving a sigh as she did so. She took another sip of water, taking a seat on her own bed.

"No tea. Just water." The automatic reply was made when the question floated in the air behind her, Serandite turned around to count the number of beds.

"Woods.. Seven beds.. Just like Snow White, right? Although I'm sure she wasn't stuck in a room full of negaverse, senshi, humans or princes! I'm sure that dwarves would be much preferred at the moment." Serandite addressed the room in general, her cheerful note implied that she had gotten over her initial spazz attack. She looked around, her silent sentence obvious. You guys woke up?

Marlo's hand on Hector's shoulder had relaxed the cavalier only minutely. Maybe it would have worked, had Black Lady not sat up looking as though she were ready to rip Hector's scalp off in the same manner that he and Hector had found the girl in the hut. It was too much. He was already standing over the pink-haired girl with the blanket in one hand and his mouth an ugly snarl.

"What did I do?" he bawled. "You sold me out to your replacement daddy -- you'd planned that all along, hadn't you? Hadn't you? If I hadn't been such a dumb ******** with you none of this would have happened. You nearly killed my brother. You nearly got him killed." They were nose to nose, about to escalate into violence. "Know what I didn't say that I should've said? If your mama were here, your Highness, my bet is on her wishing you were dead too."