Welcome to Gaia! ::

Atticus waited for her to just take the damn candy before attempting to think of an answer to her question, but was quickly distracted by the small girl's face.

It only took him a few seconds to realize what was happening. "Hold on. Don't panic." At least his neutrality brought calm to bad situations. Gently, he turned the child around, taking her head in one hand and aiming it downward. Then, with the heal of his other hand, he struck her firmly (but carefully) in-between the shoulder blades. With any luck, it wouldn't take too many of these to dislodge that piece of candy from her throat. He'd have to remember this when he looked to candy as an easy way out.

As the two asked her if she required assistance, Riyo looked in-between the both of them, waiting for the punchline. At the sound of the puppies yip, she continued what she had been doing previously and gave the puppy a soft pet, though her eyes did not leave the two.

"If you don't mind..." She began, glancing from Neko's extended hand to the ground. "I've already had somebody play this trick on me... If you're gonna throw rocks at me or shove my face in the dirt, please go ahead and do it." Another cold and emotionless statement. Her black tail curled up around her stomach and stayed there, unmoving.

poke looked aghast at the girl asking her to throw rocks at her. She shook her head vigiously. "ah! nono we don't wanna throw rocks at you! we wanna help" She guessed that the other kids must have picked on her cause she had a tail. It wasn't uncommon for them to find kitty or doggy people and try to hurt them.

Her face changed, and she looked angry. "who were these kids that threw rocks at you? cause I'll go beat them up! Those meanies"

She then looked at neko who said he was gonna get food. "er...okay..." He knew were food was? maybe he could fish like her daddy could...but the lake is the other way...

Mitsu tilted her head up and closed her eyes as Atticus dabbed them dry. She listened to his reassurance nodding her head. It was still sad to know the candy was gone though. As he patted her on the head and made mention of the other children, Mitsu turned to look in their direction. That's right, there were other kids! Back home there was no one her age to play with, the youngest was Ginji, her brother, and he had nearly fifteen years on her and wasn't very good at playing games.

With new found enthusiasm, and the candy long forgotten, Mitsu began to trot over to the other kids. She was almost to the two girls with the puppy when she spotted one of the boys sitting alone by a tree. Curious she slowed and approached him looking at the sword he carried. "That's an awfully big sword. Can you really pick it up?" It seemed so out of proportion with the boy she imagined it would topple him over. Now that would be funny to see!

Once in her lap Tobi just melted into Riyo's embrace. Being a puppy he was already starting to get tired, despite the fact he had just woken up. He gave an exaggerated yawn and snuggled down, resting his head on the cat doll the girl carried.

As soon as Neko had vanished into the forest he was on high alert. He knew if he wanted to catch anything he needed to be fast but quite. His most likely game would be rabbit, and while they were tasty, they were extremely had to catch if they knew you were coming. Crouching down he started to look for signs that anything had been in the area. Tracks, broken limbs, disturbed leaves and plants, but so far he was turning up a whole lot of nothing.

Trying to move through the brush without making a lot of noise, he kept sniffing the air hoping to catch a whiff of something...anything. Moving a few more paces he suddenly stopped, hearing something not far off. Quickly he dropped to the ground and started to survey the area. Only a few feet from where he was hiding there was a large jack rabbit munching on some berries. Well, that was good luck. He could bring back the rabbit and some berries.

Holding onto his knife firmly he readied himself. Any minute he would jump up and pounce the rabbit. He visualized what would happen in his head, saw himself successfully slay the rabbit. But there was something odd about the air where he lay that was distracting him. It had an odd smell and now that he thought about it....it felt like the earth was shifting a little underneath him. Rising up on his hands only slightly, Neko looked underneath himself to see what was happening and froze on sight. The blood drained from his face and his eyes were as wide as saucers.

The creature he had managed to land on in his hast to hit the dirt coiled up and looked at him with an angry glare. Afraid to move he only stared at it until its tail began to rattle and it let out a hiss.

"SNAKE!" Neko screamed as he sprang to his feet. The rabbit he had spotted shot off into the forest when he yelled but that was the last thing on Neko's mind. In a mad rush Neko ran back the way he came, images of a large serpent with teeth the size of daggers chasing after him. He continued to yell the entire way back until he crashed through to the clearing right toward Atticus.

Don't blame them? how could you not blame someone if they were hurting you? poke didn't understand. Then the girl said it was her fault. "Your fault?" she repeated. "did you do something bad?"

Suddenly she saw neko come back screaming about a snake. Poke froze on the spot. For the boy to be screaming like that it must of been a really big scary monster snake. She looked to the area neko had run through, expecting to see the creature appear and attack them.

"we we w b-b-better go over t-t-to the adul-t-t-t" she managed to stammer to the kitty girl.

Neko hadn't managed to slow down yet. As soon as he averted his eyes from what might be behind him he was too late to stop. Atticus was right there and Neko crashed into him with the speed of fear. The knife he had held onto so tightly all this time went flying from his hand and landed almost next to the tree Atticus had slept under.

"Oooo," Mitsu was genuinely impressed that he could pick it up. "You must be very strong." Then there was commotion in the forest...something about a snake. "What's a snake?" Mitsu asked calmly, uncertain what it might be. "Is it a monster?" Must be for the other boy to be so scared.

As soon as Tobi drifted off into lala land there was nothing to wake him. There was only a slight flicker of his ear and a small twitch to his foot every once in a while as he fell deep into sleep.

"Lizard?" Okay...he was just making this up. Some strange fairy tail creatures like unicorns and dragons. "What's a lizard?" She asked skeptically. How was she really to know? She came from a cold climate where these things couldn't survive. But the boy seemed mad now, something about the monsters. People were monsters?

Blade simply blinked. This girl had him rather dumbfounded. Sighing with a hint of aggravation, he looked around to see if he could spot any lizards on the trees nearby, but there were none as far as he could tell.

"A lizard is a small, scaly reptile," he said flatly, hoping she wouldn't ask what a reptile was next. Then, overhearing one of the other girls stammering about snakes, he rolled his eyes. Sure, the things could be dangerous, but she and the scaredy-cat-boy were overreacting.

"No I'm not okay!" Neko sat up abruptly without so much as an apology. "There's a eight foot, no ten foot snake in the woods with teeth the size of daggers!" Never mind the fact the snake was no bigger around than the boy's thumb and under a foot...those were minor details. "It had these large scary eyes and a tongue at least a foot long!" In his panic Neko was taking in deep breaths of air and was very quickly light headed.

Just as Blade had feared the question was just on the tip of Mitsu's tongue. She made it half way through before the other boy's explanation for what he saw caught her attention. "Eight feet? That's like....this much." Mitsu stretched out her arms as far as they would go. Still curious to figure out what this creature was, Mitsu decided it was best to find out on her own. "I think we should catch it!" She exclaimed before she tried to clumsily climb over a log to enter the woods. It was a slow process with her short arms and legs.