Welcome to Gaia! ::

A neon pink post-it note was stuck to Harrison's door.

A lone, hooded figure awaited him the labs, one hand on their hip and the other holding a clipboard. "Well, you're timely I'll give you that." Though much less impressive in life, it was the same voice that had spoken to him while he lay "dead' in his pod. "The doctor felt that he was too busy to do a big demonstration and explanation for just one guy. So rather than killing me as an example, he's having me take you on a small field trip instead."

Nodding for him to follow, she began walking toward the pod that had previously held him, "Now, the place you're going? The natives call it Halloween, by the way. Anyways, it the home of the shadows. And those hell horse thingies that like to plague the island every so often. It's pretty much home to every bad and horrible thing that ever gave you, or anybody else, a nightmare. You're recruiter probably went over all this but those you come into contact with during this mission? Those are the kids. They'll come off as cute or friendly or you know...normal. Like regular kids, right? But don't forget that they are nightmares in training."

Opening the pod, she began to check certain parts, checking off boxes on her clipboard every so often. "With me so far, trainee?"

Under her hood, Clarice flushed a little at the reminder, she had just wanted to see what it was like to hold someone's future in the palm of your hand while taunting their helplessness and confusion. Dr. H always left with a smile after waking someone up and she'd just wanted to well...take it for a spin. Not that she was going to explain any of that to a newbie of all people and...he was thanking her? Well....well he should! Since she had gotten several rather terrible duties for her "pathetic meddling," this assignment begin one of them.

"Yes. You're welcome," she answered with as much authority as she could muster, checking off a few more boxes. "And I'll only neuralize you if you give me reason to do so." Actually the Doctor had taken away her access to that particular program, but nobody else had to know that she couldn't vegetize their brains at will.

"Alright, just about through here, where were we? Oh yes. Halloween. It's not like our own world, it's made up of well....FEAR. Notice my inflection? That is an allcaps inflection. FEAR....fear. Notice the difference? Keep that in mind, the natives will notice. Fear is an emotion, FEAR is the energy created by said emotion. FEAR in Halloween is the building block of creation. It's the ground, the people, the air that they breathe. Air that isn't exactly human friendly."

She began yanking fiercely on something, "Usually..." yank "...humans explode on entry..." yank "...we're a bit..." yank "...special, but..." SNAP! "Ohshi-" She stared at the piece in her hand for a moment, and then walked briskly to a desk and started rummaging through the drawers. "Um...so....right. We're special. So we'd last a few minutes before exploding. Officers tend to last longer, and the council can go for a painful, burning day or two. But where there's a problem, human ingenuity will provide..." she held up a roll of duct-tape triumphantly, "a solution!"

As she began re-attaching the part, Clarice continued, "Basically, Dr. H in all his terrible wisdom, created bodies that we could take over and control. During your Test you used what's called the C-type Golem. Made especially for testing candidates to off each other with a distinct possibility of clean resurrection." She paused a moment, before confiding, "You know the pain and blood and gore and all that? Those aren't part of the basic golem design, but the Doctor added them in. For fun."

She paused and thought it over for a moment, "No...but a little bit yes at the same time. Golems are what we'd have if ours was a magic-based world, rather than steeped in technology. They're forms made of certain substances, the one you used previously was made of clay, blood, bone dust and other, less pleasant items. Other than being really large, ugly figurines, they're capable of being animated. Through power and seals and symbols, and also by...well, some may refer to it as the soul, but I'm not really into that sort of thing." A loud, sudden bang, and she nodded in satisfaction, and checked off one last thing on her list

. "Anyways, the short and simple is: you go into the pod, you wake up in a temporary body in this other world. I'll be there to help you get started and give you your assignment. Clear?" She stepped back to let him climb in.

After making sure the trainee was secure, Clarice entered her own pod, and said clearly, "Begin sequence."

And the world somehow went darker, and then disappeared, a new one taking it's place. The sky was a soft, desaturated orangey colour, and a pumpkin shaped sun (?) grinned down on them from on high. They were in a clearing in the middle of a forested area, but the peaked roofs of building could be seen from a distance.








Upon opening her eyes, Clarice checked for boobs. Yes! Then she checked for decay, visible organs, various other "parts." All of which were missing. Double yes! But there was fur. Lots of fur. And her feet were....extremely large. Hobbits would gasp-large. Although her body...appeared to extremely small overall. Was she a hobbit? They didn't seem very nightmarish to her though. Checking her head she found...horns. Ok, So unless she was like, the Dark Hobbit of the Abyss, always a possibility, she was now a really small...Bigfoot.

Hearing the uncertainty in his voice, she huffed a bit, "Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and just ignore little person, just once...once...I'd like to get the sexy teen succubus body. Just once." The voice was a bit...growly, but was very recognizable as belonging to Clarice. She cleared her throat a bit in embarrassment. Way to lose your cool in front of the trainee. The sight of the lab coat didn't improve her temper any, either. "As you can see, we don't have much control over the way the golem shapes itself around us. Except maybe the Doctor. b*****d So you can end up as just about anything. Huge, tiny, male, female, other, alive, undead, the whole buffet of awful awaits you. This time you got pretty lucky, you're male...and a zombie. Which sometimes is uh...not so very fresh, as I'm sure you've noticed. So there shouldn't be too much you have to do to adjust, or cultural bits you need to know. Just stay away from fire. Fire bad, okay?"

The small monster searched the clearing, looking for something. "During your down time back at base, it would be a good idea to start studying more about the mythical creature of nightmare. Our library is pretty extensive when it comes to old fables and lore." Walking to a small patch of dirt, Clarice began digging with small, clawed hands. "Because that particular body won't be waiting for you the next time around, and it's a good idea to know whether a kelpie is trying to court you or kill you." Eventually, she came up with a small metal box.

Opening it she brought out a fairly morbid looking device that might look like a cellphone, from a safe distance. "It won't bite," she assured him as she handed it over and picked up an identical one for herself, "I made sure to ask the Doctor to stop ordering the once that bite." She paused a moment, "Okay so it may bite. Just keep an eyes on it and don't put it near any sensitive parts, right? Right!"

Dusting some dirt off of her skirt, she continued, "Normally we'll have liason meet up with in-coming groups, Hunters like Aria who know the area well and spend a lot of time over for covert missions. Or Dr. H who makes frequent trips over here for science. But since it's just a single straggler," she gestured toward him, "..they feel that just myself is all that's really called for. The phone works, in an admittedly odd manner, but should be easy enough for you to handle. The number of my own is the only one on there. If you run into trouble, text or call as you see fit. I'll give you a call to come back here near the end of the day, or if anything dire comes up, got it?"

Not waiting for an answer, she took out a notepad and a very lively pen and handed them over. "Now for your assignment: Dr. H has recently come into something of a craze over minipets. They're a bit like the regular creature here only....lesser. Like um...pokemon! Anyways, he's interested in what the students at that school," she nodded in the direction of the building roofs in the distance,"...have to say about these minipets. If possible, try to grab a couple samples, and at the very least try to take some decent notes on the subject."

She paused and thought for a moment.

"Oh and be careful." She thought that was all that really needed to be said. It's not like she was going to hold his hand in this. She glared up at him for a moment before relenting a bit, "If you find yourself in a pinch, just do the zombie thing, and you'll probably be just fine."

Replacing the box, and covering is back over, she started off in the direction opposite the school, "I have my own mission, so just be sure not to lose that phone, ok?"

Moments later, all that was left of her presence was a set of really large footprints in the dirt.

A flaming tail flicked back and forth to the beat of some invisible song on the path, followed by two legs that were clothed in a pair of shorts, knee socks and a pair of converse. Danny was heading over to the reaper dorms to bother Colette some more, when she noticed something shiny. Something very shiny. It was distracting it was so shiny.

The object was hanging around the neck of a zombie boil, one she hadn't met before (this wasn't exactly a huge surprise though. She hadn't met a lot of the students after all, and it seemed like there were new ones coming in every day!). Danny remembered from Malodore and Moure that all undead weren't exactly ... happy to see flames (she was catching on! She was!), so she didn't immediately rush in and tackle the boil to take his shiny. Besides, she was also learning that not everyone liked hugs. It was a very informative week for Danny.

So instead she just started walking along side him. At first it just seemed like she was matching his pace by chance, but after about a minute, it was pretty obvious she was stalking him.

Turning to him, she said, "Hi I'm Danny and you have something shiny around your neck. Can I have it?" Danny was really, really good at making first impressions it seemed. At least she didn't beat around the bush and butter him up, right?

Roch had been heading for the cafeteria (like usual, really) when he caught sight of Danny talking to a new guy. For a moment he stood there, weighing his options for a moment, food... meet a new guy... meet a new guy... food. "Jackdammit," he muttered, catching sight of something shiny hanging around the other boil's neck. He had almost made up his mind, too, he thought with disgust as he headed for the pair.

"Hey, Danny, who's your friend?" he asked, dropping a hand on the fire demon's shoulder. He looked at the boil curiously, frowning slightly. Sure he didn't know everyone, but wouldn't he have at least seen him going past at one time or another?

Nah, possibly not. "What's your name, new guy?" he asked, holding out a hand. "I'm Roch. I'm hopin' Danny here introduced herself before she started asking for your shiny thing," he added with a dry look at his best friend.