Welcome to Gaia! ::

One moment he'd been blinded, listening only to Stormy's voice and the small cries of pain she attempted to muffle (he heard them anyway), the next he was...

...sitting again, with Stormy on one side and Candace one seat down on Stormy's other side.

No. Not again. NO.

Gale wasn't entirely certain he could take another incident like the one that had happened back in the Sahara, Death meddling with their existences like a pawn on a chessboard in a game he was playing. The idea of having to go through the same thing once more with time repeating itself made him nauseated, and Gale reached over and took Stormy's hand, curling his fingers around hers.

"The hell just happened?" he muttered.

Finger nails dug into the wooden bottom of the chair she found herself suddenly perched it, that grip the only thing that kept her from falling to the ground with the sheer abruptness of the shift in reality. She had been dying, she'd felt it, her thin body had begun to tremble around the body that had pierced through her, and she hasn't been able to draw any breath. Everything had begun to fade to grey as all feeling fled from her.

They weren't dead though. She was starting wide eyed across the table at the young man she had just been so intimately connected with, thin chest raising and falling in shallow breaths.

There hadn't been enough time for her dress to soak with red, but there was certainly a hole high on her back and through her chest from breast to stomach. Nothing that exposed much beyond a thin line of tanned skin, but modesty was the very last of her worries right that moment where the damage to her dress was concerned.

She still didn't know what had happened. She'd got a look at the blade, and had seen a tall figure in Lucky's glasses, but the girl didn't know who had done it, or why. Who didn't even seem all that important until she knew why..

Lavender eyes were too wide, and a careful glance in her direction would show a spike that suggested she might have been about to cry if she hasn't been so damn stubborn. A tiny shift of her head showed Gnat was once again beside her, and she reached out and grabbed her friend's hand, squeezing it, the action hidden beneath the table. She didn't say anything, just cling to Natasha's handas she stared across at Lucky while Maebe tried to feed him a bun. When he sat if, glanced across at her, he'd find her look significant.

She had the urge to simply leave the table and pull the Life Hunter out of the room so they could talk about what just happened, but in the end she blinked, dropped her gaze to her plate, and hoped the way her hair fell his the single tear that rolled down her cheek.

Roland snapped back to reality, he had the miss fortune during the kraken things attack to be caught by falling chandelier and table chunks. When he awoke he was no longer trapped and sitting beside Lawr again.

"Sadly," he reached for a glass of water taking a long drink, "That is normal.... or rather a rare case...." He drank a bit more. "That. Was Insanity."

Roland shook his head, "Word has two meanings here. What we are for doing this job... and what that thing was. Insanity. Made... umm real. if that makes any sense at all."

Which it didn't.

Roland turned to his steak taking a bite finally. At least the food was good, assuming it was real and this was all currently happening and he wasn't actually dead under the table crushed to death like an idiot.

"It's a nice table. Not as nice as the perfectly round table our boss has."

And then Glenda was back at the table.

"Oooo-eee," she declared, "I dunno what they put in this sauce, but it's sure got a kick!"

She glanced over to Lawrence - Jan - with a wide grin. "I'll just bet, dear. Maybe the nice captain will pay you t'funk-sway this ol' place up."

Suddenly, tentacle monster. Big fight, some explosions, tentacles and poison and really, it just wasn't fair that his weapon got to eat more than he did, but maybe it was to be expected. They couldn't have nice things, after all.

And then, just as suddenly, there was no more tentacle monster, no evidence of any battle except for the state of everyone's clothes. Evan allowed himself a moment to feel something like smugness that he hadn't dressed up for this thing after all before fervently hoping that this wasn't going to be another endless replay of the Sahara.

"Are you ladies okay?" Evan asked Gnat and Peyton quietly.

It was like a vivid dream. One of her lucid ones, actually, because her body still remembered the aches of the poison and tentacles slapping her, and she definitely remembered the flash that had blinded Gale. And her dress--

...Oh. It was a bit torn up now, in the back where she'd been stabbed and a little torn on the edges. Crestfallen (but trying not to look upset because it was just a dress, who mourned clothes on the job anyway?), Stormy shifted in her seat a little and squeezed Gale's hand. "I'm okay," she answered both him and Candace with a distant look as Thane rattled with irritation in her head, trying not to think of the Sahara, trying not to think of people dying, screaming and broken, and then alive as if nothing had happened, just like she--

"Who was that talking?" she asked them, squeezing Gale's hand again to remind her of the present. "Going on about memories and a fight?" Her food, the salmon and onion rings with basil broth, was ready to be eaten and completely forgotten.

She eyed Gale's merlot and wondered if she could take just a little of the edge off.

"AWOOWOO-woo...?" Jerry nearly rammed into the table , elbows bumping water glasses as he aimed a weapon that wasn't there anymore...

He blinked, vision clearing and for a moment he panicked, his hair breaking free of it's careful part to stick to his sweaty face. Confusion was replaced by quiet acceptance as he stared at the drinks.

"Scotch, please," He rasped to a waiter before glancing back to Lawr and Glenda, his face contorting into a chipper smile. "Well... this is turned out to be a fun trip, right? And no swimming needed."