New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I woke from the previous dream and rolled over in bed. I had to go pee… damn. I didn't want to take the time for that, I'd just had a dream and I needed to take notes on it before I forgot anything. I sat up and grabbed my dream book, using my cell phone as a light, I took a couple rapid notes. Blake, moon bus, you're dreaming, bullshit. Ok… hopefully that would be enough there. I got up to go use the bathroom, patting the cute little kitty on my bed as I made my way around the bed in the dark. It seemed darker than normal. I opened the bedroom door to head for the bathroom… and there was someone standing there! I jumped about three feet, very surprised to see someone there at the door. I tripped over some crap on the ground and fell backwards onto my bed, great… there's an intruder and I fall backward onto my ass… not a good start. The guy in my doorway didn't hesitate at all, he seemed to be in a hurry. He called me Raven, said something about being in a hurry… the cat on my bed meowed… the man seemed to be staring at me for a bit, then he reached out and grabbed hold of me and pulled me through a portal. My first reaction might have been to resist, but in spite of the greeting, I wasn't sensing hostility, so I didn't resist.

The man and I emerged from the portal in a desolate place, the only visible life in the area were a group of individuals right around me, one of whom was the man who had grabbed me. I looked at the others, one of them was a beautiful white dragon… that one caught my attention so much that I didn't really notice the others as well as I could have… the dragon was pure white and so beautiful that she almost seemed to be glowing with light energy. I was staring at her, I had the feeling it was a female, when the man who brought me there said I was dreaming, do a reality check, and choose a better form unless I intended to meet Xildron as a cat… I finally recognized the man I was talking to, it was Walms, and apparently this had something to do with healing Xildron, so I would be using a healing spell on… wait a minute… hat he just said something about meeting Xildron as a cat? Who was he calling a cat? I looked down at my own hands… um… paws? Wtf? I was, indeed, a cat… not a panther… a kitty cat… so I transformed into my Assassin form, not needing to do a reality check to realize this was a dream. Walms said something to a couple of the others and then he was gone.

Ok… so what now? I looked around at the others there with me, none of them looked familiar to me, but they were clearly my allies now. I scanned the area for Xildron, and I found he was really quite close, he soon came into view, he was a dragon, and what a dragon! I can't really describe him, but here goes… I might be able to come up with a pic for later… he was a large dragon, shiny black scales that looked like flawless impenetrable armor, huge wings that looked like they were made up of many faceted jet black gems, four arms that ended in huge razor sharp talons, and heads… one, two, three, four, five… no more time to admire the dragon, he was attacking. I took flight and evaded the initial attack, as did everyone there with me, I remembered that I wasn't really here to help with the fight, I was here to focus my energy on the healing while the others took care of the attacks, so I just evaded the attacks and saved my energy to use on the healing spells I would use when the time felt right. Right now if I used a healing spell I knew he would just block it, and it would be a waste of energy. I could see the others had erected a force field of some kind around all of us, maybe to keep Xildron from leaving? Maybe also to keep enemies outside the force field from coming in, it appeared Xildron really did have an army out there trying to get inside to give him backup…

So I was staying out of the way as the fight was going on, which seemed like kind of a waste not to be helping in some way, but I didn't want to deplete my energy fighting when I would probably need it to heal Xildron. So instead of attacking Xildron, I used my first healing spell, I focused on Silver and Cold by AFI, and its effect of drawing some of the unstable dark energy off of Xildron into myself. I was getting large amounts of the dark energy now, it certainly wouldn't deplete my energy, I would have more than ever, and I was focused on stabilizing the energy as I received it. At first I thought Xildron was going to respond to my energy drain, but he was quickly occupied by attacks from the others. Unstable dark energy was something Xildron had an abundance of, and I was well into a third rendition of Silver and Cold before it started to become too much dark energy that I was absorbing, I would have to get rid of some of it somehow because I was having trouble keeping up with stabilizing it all. I couldn't safely do that here, though, because while my allies, Walms' kids, could absorb and use the dark energy, Xildron could also absorb it back into himself which would be counterproductive to the healing process. I absorbed more of his energy until it was at the point where I couldn't control any more, and then I did a quick portal, focused on locating a Templar base. The portal opened…

I emerged from the portal right over a Templar base, I could see the Templars below me going about whatever no good business they were currently up to, but I didn't take the time to watch the Templars for long. Instead, I just released a massive blast of the unstable dark energy on the Templar base, focusing it out as a blast of black flames that took the form of a huge fireball. The fireball descended on the surprised Templars, and before they even had a chance to fully register what was happening, there was a massive explosion of dark energy and their base was left as nothing more than a large crater in the ground. I wasn't sure if any of them had escaped, but if they had, they were surely looking at the crater gong, "What the hell was that?!" I had no time to survey the destruction of the Templars, I went right through the portal back to Xildron, which I hadn't even bothered closing when I had first arrived.

The fight was still going on when I got back, and it made me wonder if anyone had noticed I had disappeared for a bit there. I closed the portal and went back to draining excess unstable dark energy off of Xildron, the less energy he had to fight the others, the better. Since I had vented a large portion, I was once again having no difficulty stabilizing the dark energy as I received it. Xildron seemed to finally be weakening, the attacks of the others were getting through much more often now. It looked like they were trying to restrain Xildron, most likely so he would be unable to block the healing energy so easily. I saw the beautiful white dragon again, flying in towards Xildron, she was using some light energy to try to bind the huge black dragon. The others moved in and managed to immobilize Xildron, but it didn't look like they would have him immobilized for long, I got a telepathic message to heal him already, the message was from a woman, she said she didn't know how long they could hold him.

Ok… need a healing spell… but Xildron's base energy is dark energy, so the spell would have to just stabilize his dark energy, not purge it out, if anything it would be helpful to purge out any incompatible light energy for now… The first song I thought of was Touch My Heart off of the Devil Hunter Yohko soundtrack, but that normally uses light energy… so what if it normally uses light energy? Feed dark energy into the spell, it would use dark energy. All of those thoughts flew through my head in just a second or two, then I was focused on the song Touch My Heart and also on feeding dark energy into it. The song was playing loudly in the desolate land, spirals of energy erupted around Xildron… he tried one more time to get loose from the others before the spell had him surrounded in healing energy, and I saw one of Walms' kids, a male in a human form (I don't have them straight, so I'm unsure of this one's name), was hit by a blast of energy and knocked out of their formation, he was slammed to the ground where he made a large crater. I focused as much stable dark energy into the spell as I could do, and that energy, a dark flow of energy that looked like the normal golden healing energy with the one exception that it was dark instead of light flowed into Xildron. It looked at first like he was going to try to block it, but maybe he saw it was energy he wanted, or maybe he just didn't have the energy left to resist, but the healing energy got through.

The healing song was over now, and the others I had been fighting with were standing around Xildron, who was still an impressive looking dragon even though he looked a bit worn out. I looked to see if I could find the one who had been nailed by Xildron during the healing, but I couldn't see him. I wondered if he had been forced to leave before the fight was completely over. I also wondered where Walms might be, he would surely want to know that the healing spell on Xildron had been completed, though there would be no way of knowing for sure that it had worked until Xildron recovered at least some of his energy. He seemed calm now, but he might just be tired… The feeling I had was that the healing energy had done its job and Xildron would be ok now. I didn't have a chance to even try to check to see what effect the healing might have had on Xildron, this was the point when I woke.

Note: For the past several nights I have wanted to view the dream Walms said I had where I fought Xildron. So far I have not had any luck doing this, or at least not any luck recalling it. This night was different, though, I do recall viewing the dream and it was, indeed, an epic dream.

I was in my own living room sitting in the seat on the couch I always use typing away on my laptop. I was working on a homework assignment, but I needed to draw something… I wanted to get my drawing done on the computer, but I wasn't sure how to go about that. I was trying to draw with the mouse in a graphic program that looked sort of like MS Paint but had more features, like a stripped down version of Photoshop… I wasn't getting anything done at all. I sat there and pondered for a bit longer until I had an idea. I clicked on the screen and I got a popup saying I should buy medication to make my penis bigger… um… no need for that. I closed it and got two more popups… One for Viagra and one for breast implants… closed them. There were immediately more popups… 5 of them. First came, "Discover great sex!" The second said, "Run your own business from home!" The third said, "Erectile dysfunction is a thing of the past!" The next one said, "Are you suffering from ED?" Finally came, "Make your penis two times larger!" I was about to close those when I saw that with the order they had appeared, one on top of the others, only the first letter of each title was visible… D-R-E-A-M! My computer was trying to tell me something! I was dreaming? I did a RC and became lucid.

Ok… this was cool. I was in a lucid. Now to remember my goals. The first goal I remembered was to view the dream Walms told me about where I fought Xildron. I already had my computer on, so this would be easy. I logged onto my dream records on my computer and searched for the Xildron dream. Having found it, I double clicked it and selected to view the holo-record. This was going to be cool! The hologram played, I saw the dream from the perspective I had when I was dreaming it… the only thing was that it was a recording, so even if I thought I had made a dumb move, I was unable to do anything but watch the events unfold. Since I knew nothing serious had gone wrong, I relaxed and went with the flow of the dream.

At the beginning of the dream I was wanting to find Xildron, and I also remembered that Pablo had said maybe he could help with the tracking. I wasn't sure if that was true, but there is nothing to be lost by trying it that way at least once, so I opened a portal to Pablo's inner world. I stepped into a forest and found myself pounced on by a cute fox that clearly wanted to play. I called him Pablo and said I was there because he had said he could help me find Xildron, which was something I definitely wanted to do. The fox looked at me for a bit as if not understanding what I had said, then he looked disappointed, then he turned into his human form. He said I didn't seem to want to have any fun. I told him if he wanted, I could come back in a future dream for fun, but right now I wanted to find Xildron. I focused on opening a portal, directing the portal to track down Xildron as best as I could. It looked like Pablo was also focusing on something, though I couldn't tell on what. Finally a portal opened. I remembered being hit in the face by an energy blast last time I had tried to track Xildron, so I directed the portal a short distance away so I could get through it without being seen immediately. I thanked Pablo, told him he might want to stay there in his inner world for his own safety, while he couldn't be hurt in a dream, that didn't necessarily make it fun to get blasted to dust.

I went through the portal and emerged on what looked like a moon of some kind. I could see a planet in the sky, the planet looked similar to Earth but it had a ring around it. I looked around on the surface of the moon and wondered if Xildron was there. I scanned for energy sources and spotted one, so I followed the energy. I found someone in one of the large craters, I wasn't sure what he was doing, so I got closer to him to see if he was the one I was looking for. He physically matched the description Walms had given me. When I got a bit closer he turned suddenly and fired a blast of flames at me, apparently attacking before he could even know who was behind him. I used Whiplash to send the blast back at him, he absorbed the energy back and sent it back at me again. I formed Witchblade into armor to protect myself from the blast… or I tried to do that, but nothing happened. I looked at my wrist and saw there was no bracelet there, the bracelet that is my Witchblade was missing. How could it be missing when I never take it off? The blast of flames was strong enough to send me flying clear off of the moon and into space, in the direction of the planet with the man following after me.

I turned around to head back to the moon, but the man, who I had decided very well might be Xildron, was blocking my way with a wall of flames. Apparently he wasn't going to cooperate with a healing spell, I would have to get rid of some of his energy first, so I focused on the song Enter Sandman. The spirals of dark and light energy formed around Xildron, creating a large explosion contained in the center. There was another explosion around Xildron that cancelled out the explosion from Enter Sandman… I tried the more powerful version of Enter Sandman, which involves inserting a tiny piece of antimatter type energy in the center of the explosion, about the size of a grain of sand, but none the less it is enough to intensify the explosion formed there. So now the spirals of light and dark energy formed, I threw the grain of antimatter energy into the center of the exchange… normally I would get antimatter energy from Witchblade so I'm not really sure where I got the energy… and there was a much larger explosion.

This explosion clearly had an effect on Xildron, it pissed him off. He absorbed both the dark and the light energy from the Enter Sandman spell and came out of the explosion, tackling me and we shot through space towards the planet. It was clearly a live planet, I didn't want to fight on a live planet, so I opened a portal in our path that would take us to a place where it would be safe to fight without having to think about possible collateral damage.

Xildron and I fell out of the portal onto a barren planet, in a huge canyon with some impressive rock formations but no sign of life. It was too bad that we might destroy the rock formations, but at least there was no life on the planet that could get caught up in our fight. Now that there was no other living thing in the area I switched tactics to use Crush 'Em by Megadeth since apparently Xildron would absorb either dark or light energy, Crush 'Em creates a gravity based attack. The first wave of gravity pushed Xildron into a large crater, which seemed to surprised him a bit although it didn't seem to hurt him much. He was instantly came at me again, I sent another pair of gravity blasts at him… the first one pushed him against the canyon wall, the second one was from above and pushed him down into a large crater. He was going to come at me again, but I kept the waves of gravity coming… "Now I lay you down to rest, you'll never be more than second best, step inside, you're in for a ride, and we crush, crush 'em!" After a large number of the gravity blasts had pounded him into a rather deep crater I looked in and it seemed he was a bit disoriented. Maybe now would be a good chance for a healing spell…

I got closer to where Xildron was, he was just getting up and glared over at me, but by now I had already started the healing song I had chosen which was Silver and Cold by AFI. The song was having the effect of pulling off some of his unstable dark energy and replacing it with stable dark energy since I was certain his base energy type was dark. It looked like he was about to attack me when the stable energy started being returned to him, and then he stopped with a really puzzled look on his face. Did that mean it was working? It must mean it was working, he had definitely noticed something in the energy that was returning to him. I continued with the song, focusing a bit on stabilizing the dark energy I was absorbing, and the song was just about over when Xildron got a pissed off look on his face. He came directly in front of me and glared directly into my eyes, the healing spell had not done enough… there was still a lot of hate in there… he said he would know that energy anywhere. He said my mission to kill him would fail, he would send me back to the fool who had sent me… send me back in pieces. He grabbed hold of my left arm and powered up a blast of energy he had aimed at my face.

Ok, so apparently he still wanted to fight more and I was still up a creek without a Witchblade, so I decided to go the other way and use the dark energy to follow the Alex Mercer (from the game Prototype) archetypes I have developed in my mind… I used the dark energy and formed my right arm into Mercer's sword blade. I cut at his arm that was holding on to me, and he quickly released me when he was cut by the blade. So now we engaged in an intense and fast paced battle where he was using an array of physical and energy attacks and I was using the full arsenal of Alex Mercer attacks as well the armor Alex Mercer used in Prototype, the armor was hopefully going to replace the missing Witchblade armor. During this battle, however, neither of us seemed to be able to get the upper hand. I was glad I have been speed training with Vegeta or I probably couldn't have kept up! While I was mentally thanking Vegeta I must have let my guard down just a bit because I got hit by a large blast of energy and knocked into the wall, closely followed by Xildron, who was now demanding to know why… I felt Xildron probing my mind and I quickly blocked him out, but he had gotten a small piece of information… Xildron wanted to know why Walms had sent me to do his dirty work instead of coming to face Xildron himself. He called Walms a coward and said he would have to teach dear old dad a lesson.

Xildron was hesitating, apparently wanting some answers out of me which I had no intention of giving. I barely noticed that my energy was getting a bit unstable from the unstable energy I had absorbed from Xildron and from the fighting with so much dark energy that I'm not completely used to… Xildron was demanding that I say something… so I did, but it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Suddenly, the unreal silence was broken by a lament, a lament coming up from the deepest darkest abyss…" He asked what the fuck I was talking about, clearly confused by that seemingly random statement, "And from the seven gates of the dark fortress, the dead come back to life to face you… this is Hell!" Xildron gave me a look of anger and frustration, not expecting the effect of the spell he had willingly given me time to set up without interference… "Immortal fire, now rise, light my heart, light my way through the darkness, a guardian of space and time!"

A massive wall of energy erupted around Xildron and me, which took him by surprise. I guided the energy on a path to center in on Xildron, but it wasn't entirely stable… there was both dark and light energy in the wall of flames, they were mixing with each other and becoming even more unstable… instead of centering in on Xildron, the flames concentrated in the area all around Xildron, which included where I was, I had just been blasted by my own energy attack, how lame is that? I tried to get out of the path of my own immortal fire spell, I ended up right in front of Xildron. He said he would send me back to his father in pieces, my mission had failed. A portal opened behind me and Xildron absorbed some of the immortal fire energy and used it to push me through the portal, which closed behind me.

I was now in the air over a green forest, although I felt more like passing out than flying, It is extremely draining to release a large amount of energy and then get nailed by that same attack. I flew for a bit, and then felt that I was falling, but someone grabbed hold of me and took me in for a landing. I looked to see who it was and I saw it was Walms. Xildron had said he was going to send me to Walms, and he had done just that. I wondered how much energy Xildron had left, had he been able to absorb all of what I had put into the immortal fire spell? Was he still strong and ready to go or was he also about to pass out after that fight? I had no way of knowing.

I was trying to tell Walms that Xildron was coming and he was pissed, but I didn't seem able to make Walms hear me. He looked rather pissed off… was he mad at me? For starting a fight with Xildron? Whether he was mad at me or not, he was healing me, I could feel the icy cold of his stable dark energy flowing through me, I felt some better from that. I told him to be careful, Xildron was pissed. I saw no one had followed me through into Walms' world, there was a kid there… maybe Xildron wasn't in any condition to come through and get pissed at Walms right now. Maybe the fight had taken more out of him than he had let on. No matter what the reason, he had not followed me through the portal. Walms was saying something I couldn't understand, but then I was teleported and found I was in my own bed. I was still tired, I thought I had just woken up. I should take notes on the Xildron fight, but I couldn't find the energy to sit up and write the stuff down, so instead I just fell back asleep again. By the time I woke in the morning I had completely forgotten the dream.

The hologram viewing ended when I woke up, and I was on my couch with my computer. I was thinking it had been foolish to use an immortal fire when my energy was that unstable, of course that would lead to a highly unstable immortal fire spell which would be nearly impossible to control properly. Maybe if I put it together with Crush 'Em the gravity could pull the full force of the immortal fire to one target with more accuracy… maybe if I… but I didn't have time to ponder other ideas before I woke.

Note: Tonight I have noticed that my list of goals doesn't seem to be shrinking any even as I complete some of my goals… I'm adding them as quickly as I can complete them! First was to pick up MoSh and do some training with Vegeta, who has said I can use my WILD's for other things and try to train in a DILD, but I don't trust my DILD's to be consistent enough to make sure I get any training in. This training session was a lot like others, so I won't go into extreme detail, just to put we did some speed trials to continue increasing our speed, then trained with swords against each other, together against one stronger opponent, and together against a large number of opponents. Vegeta said both of us are showing a lot of improvement in a short period of time. Other goals included the continuing attempt at a shared DDO dream, finding Xildron, and the next task of the year which is showing humans how to make fire. My WILD was taken up with Vegeta, the rest of the night was fragmented, but here it is…

*Xildron*
I was lucid and I was working on my goal to find Xildron. I don't remember the beginning of this dream nor how I became lucid, and that really isn't important to the part of the dream I remember, anyway. I was in the break room at my school surrounded by other students. Dennis was bugging me. He was saying something about opening interdimensional portals in games. I told him I could open a real interdimensional portal, but he didn't seem to believe me. I really didn't care. Nick was saying there are only two dimensions to work with and he had already seen both of them. I also ignored Nick as I focused my mind on finding Xildron. I focused on the description Walms had given me about Xildron… I focused on both the description of the human Xildron had been changed into at the same time as I focused on the dragon he was supposed to be. I realized I didn't even know for sure what kind of energy he used, dark or light… I had been assuming Xildron used dark like Walms, but then again everyone knows what three words make up the word assume… ass-you-me. I focused more on the description and the situation than on the energy form since I wasn't sure. I was only vaguely aware of Dennis and Nick bugging me and asking what I was doing, I heard someone say I looked constipated… and finally a portal opened. That left the people around me all stunned. I ignored their stupid reactions and went into the portal, hoping to find Xildron on the other side of it. I exited the portal and had a look around. I barely got a chance to register that there was a red sky before I was hit in the face with a huge blast of energy that pushed me back through the portal. Witchblade formed instantly to protect me, but I was still pushed back into the break room of my school where both Dennis and Nick had been peering into my portal after me… and of course I crashed into both of them with intense force, slamming them through the next wall… and they had no Witchblade to protect them. I stood up and saw Dennis and Nick were sprawled at weird angles on the floor, they looked dead. My only thought was, "What the fuck was that?!"

*I Have a Gambling Problem*
I was supposed to go to school. I didn't feel like going. I had some extra time, and I wanted to do something else. The last thing I wanted to do was show up early for a class I hated. My ethics class was where I was supposed to be going, and it was the last place I wanted to go. I stopped at an arcade, thinking maybe there was a video game in there that might distract me for a bit and get me relaxed before I had to go to that horrible class. The arcade was huge, rows and rows of arcade games, all making beeps, buzzes, other strange noises, and loud music. I walked down the aisle and saw numerous games that I really wanted to play, but there was only one problem… the games were all so expensive! I had some money, but I didn't have nearly enough to get any significant play out of any of the games. Maybe one play and then I would be flat broke. I continued wandering through the arcade, feeling more annoyed rather than more relaxed as I had intended, and then I found a slot machine. Weird… I looked at a few of the units and noticed something weird about one of them. The cover to the wheels where the symbols showed up was cracked. It was just possible to get something in there… I was able to push a pencil through and move the wheels with the eraser part… and select what symbols appeared. Hmmm… I put some money in and pulled the lever. The colorful symbols flashed by on the wheels until they finally stopped, with a spot where I knew I had won nothing. I moved one of the wheels by one symbol so that I would at least win something. Money came out into the tray; it had accepted the new position as the final position even though I had cheated! I looked around and did that a few more times. Each time I did it I managed to win a small amount. I didn't want to get greedy with this since I was cheating, but it seemed they were also cheating by charging such outrageous prices for their games. I collected my quarters and then I stopped… I hadn't even thought about there possibly being video cameras there… what if I had been seen? Might security guards be coming for me even now? Shit! I practically ran down the aisles and between the game consoles and out into the parking lot, half surprised that I made it all the way. I got in my car and left, expecting to be followed at any minute…

*Down With the Sickness II*
I was at my new job, which strangely enough, was at a lab doing research work even though my education is in computer operations and game design. That didn't seem strange to me in the dream, though. It seemed completely normal. I was looking through a microscope, watching a virus… the virus was on the viewing slide with some blood cells.

Small pieces of the virus kept breaking off, and then those pieces touched another cell, that cell became a viral cell. That meant it spread very fast, and in almost no time at all it had consumed every single healthy cell on the slide. There were people who had this virus. My goal was to help find an antidote… a vaccine… something that could save those who were sick and prevent more people from becoming sick. It was one nasty bug, I had also discovered it is easily transmitted from person to person, or to other animals, through the air… it was airborne… and just inhaling a single cell could prove fatal since it reproduced so quickly. This virus was so easily passed from one person or animal to another that merely having the virus land on your skin can prove fatal since the virus immediately attacks the skin cells… I put on a biohazard suit and went into a treatment room where there were people with various stages of the disease, we were trying different treatments that looked promising, but nothing had worked. I returned to the lab after checking on the patients. When I took off my biohazard suite, I found there was a hole in the suit… right over the left elbow… there was no way I could have not been exposed. I looked at my arm, I was sure that was where the infection would start… and there was nothing to be done for it. I went to the sink and scrubbed the area with anti-viral soap… but I was sure that wouldn't help, my cells were already being infected, it was just a matter of time before I would die… or maybe not! My first thought was to just give up, but that wasn't going to happen. No chance. I would resist this sickness through sheer strength of will! I was not going to die!

Note: These are some dreams where I don't remember the entire thing from beginning to end, these are basically fragments that I remember.

*Damned Templars!*
I was in my front yard and I was lucid, though I don't know how I became lucid, I just was. I remembered the goal I had was to locate Xildron so I could try to heal him and change him back to his dragon form. The portal I opened was directed to locate Xildron, it took a few minutes, but it finally opened and I went into it. Everything was going normally until there appeared to be some kind of explosion right in the middle of my wormhole, and I was thrown out of it and onto a gray dusty surface like that of the moon. I immediately jumped up and looked around to see where I had landed. It didn't look like Earth's moon at all, there was a bright blue star shining in the sky, and I could see a giant ringed planet that the moon was orbiting around. Another thing I saw was that I was completely surrounded by Templars, several of them were chuckling at me, a few others looked annoyed, a couple of them looked like they were scared… Those assholes had interrupted my search for Xildron!

I was really too pissed off at them to think about what their reason for stopping me was, whether it was deliberately to keep me from reaching Xildron or if it was not related to that search. The Templars moved to attack me, and I attacked them at the same time, forming Witchblade into a sword and cutting the first couple that came at me clean in half. The ones who had been laughing were no longer amused, the ones who looked pissed were attacking me more aggressively, and the ones who had appeared afraid had actually turned around and run for it. I took care of the ones attacking me with a blast of flames that tracked in on each one of them. The Templars were all consumed in flames, tendrils from Witchblade reached out and grabbed the ones running away, wrapping around them and crushing them to death. Those stupid Templars always get in the way at the wrong time!

*So Very Angry*
Alicia and I were walking through the swap meet looking at the various things that were for sale there. Most everything I saw there was junk, something I wouldn't take home even if the seller paid me to take it. The reflection of sunlight off of metal drew my attention into a jewelry shop. Alicia followed me as I went inside to browse the items that were for sale within. Trash. That's what they were selling, shelves and shelves of trash, plastic rings, candy necklaces, kid's jewelry that was so obviously fake that it wasn't even funny. So what was it that had drawn my attention from so far away? Just then, I saw the sunlight reflecting off of a piece of jewelry on a display near the outside of the seller's stall. I went over and looked at what turned out to be a bracelet with beautiful blue stones around it. There was a second silver bracelet there that looked like a southwestern design. I thought I might want one of those. I wanted to browse a bit more. I looked around the rest of the booth, then came back to choose a bracelet, the blue one. Both were gone. I asked where they had gone. Alicia said she had bought them. Both of them?! She said yes. I got pissed, I was yelling at her and saying she had taken everything worth buying in the store. She said it wasn't everything… I asked the shop owner if they had any more decent jewelry. She said no. I yelled at Alicia some more about taking all of it, I was pissed… I yelled at her a lot more, told her she should give me one of the bracelets since I had found them first, hand over the blue one, you bitch! You selfish bitch! Alicia turned and left the store in tears, leaving me thinking I had been too hard on her over a small issue and wondering why I had gotten so angry.

*Don't Brush Your Hair With a Toothbrush!*
I was in an apartment with a man, I don't know who he was. I had the idea it was a temporary arrangement due to some natural disaster. I watched him get up one morning and go into his bathroom. He didn't close the door because he wasn't using the toilet. I saw he was grooming himself. He shaved most of his beard off, leaving only sideburns there. Didn't he know those were out of style? It didn't really matter. I wasn't the fashion police… The man made a strange face of frustration as he tried to get his sideburns to lie down properly and was totally unsuccessful, the more he messed with them the more they wanted to stand up. Finally he got a smirk on his face. He took his toothbrush from a drawer, wet it, and began brushing his sideburns with his toothbrush… um… yuck… I wondered why he was doing that, although it became quickly clear that the attempt was a success. He smirked as he made the hair lie down exactly how he wanted it to. He then proceeded to brush his teeth with the same toothbrush… definite yuck. I left to the kitchen to make some breakfast. A short time later, the man came out and asked if I could please fix him eggs, since I do such a good job. He smiled broadly… and all of his teeth were covered in rot… yuck! I told the man he shouldn't brush his hair with a toothbrush unless he wanted the lice to eat his teeth.

*Down With the Sickness*
I was in my bedroom getting ready to go to school. I rolled out of bed and went to the other room. I had my breakfast as usual, heated up a frozen egg, cheese, and sausage muffin, then went around and hugged on each of my cats. They were all soft, cuddly, and sweet as usual. There was nothing going on that even vaguely indicated this was not a completely normal day. That is everything was normal until I went into the bathroom to take care of doing my hair for the day. I noticed it looked strangely out of place, not like it normally does first thing in the morning. My hair is short, so there is usually very little to be done with it to make it look good enough for my liking. This time it was all hanging at weird angles… Oh, well. I would have to wet it down before I could brush it properly. I splashed water on my face and head, then started brushing my hair. Huge chunks of the hair were coming out on the brush! This continued until the entire crown of my head was bald, completely bald. The rest of the hair seemed firmly attached, but the crown of my head was bald! I tried hopelessly for a comb-over like some men try to get away with, then I looked at my scalp to see it was red and irritated, covered with strange soars. I could only stare at that and wonder over and over, "What is wrong with my body?" I was clearly quite sick, I didn't want anyone to notice, but I was sure I would have to see a doctor about this one.