New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

2017, 08-24

Game of Dreams – Shadow Attack

Tyrion: I am riding on a horse. There is a wet bag over my head and my hands are tied in front of me. We finally come to a stop. When they remove the bag I look around to see where I am. None of it looks familiar, but somehow I know it's not where I'm supposed to be. I see some people around me that I recognize. There is a woman here with us, Catelyn Stark. I am angry at her because when I was playing this game as her I set a plan in motion. She has totally screwed it up. When I was playing as her I had clearly put into her mind that Tyrian Lannister (who I am playing as right now) did not try to kill her son. But she threw that out. When we start moving again they leave the bag off of my head. And then they untie my hands. Am I supposed to be grateful? A couple times when I have a chance to talk I try to tell Catelyn I'm not the one that tried to kill her son. I even try logic. If I was the one that tried to kill her son, why would I use my own blade? That would be stupid. I tell her I just left Winterfell after having given them a plan for making a saddle so that her crippled son could ride a horse. Why would I want to kill him and then make him a nice saddle? And then there was the story of how I supposedly got the dagger in question. I'm interrupted at this point, however, because we are under attack.

We are hugely outnumbered. We need every single fighter we can get. I am there, with two of men loyal to Tyrion. But none of us are armed. I tell Catelyn that we should all be able to flight. She doesn't want to trust me. I tell her that if some of us lose here then we all lose. These bandits will kill everyone regardless of family, we are in this together. Finally she gives us weapons. She gives my companions a sword at a bow, and she gives me a big ass axe. A big old battle axe. Now I feel more like a dwarf out of Lord of the rings. The enemies are approaching, and our archers attack first. I see that there was a minstrel with us who is hiding behind a rock. I looked out into the line of fire and I see that the arrows aren’t actually doing anything to the enemies. They are just bouncing harmlessly off some strange energy field around them. It looks like dark energy. But what would they be doing with dark energy? I know if someone doesn't charge our weapons with light energy then we're screwed.

I don't know how I will explain it, but I have to do something. I focus on the song Battery by Metallica to charge everyone's weapons on our side would light energy. There is some lightning and sparks pass to all of our side’s weapons. Everyone pauses, but there isn’t time to question now. They have to go back to fighting. The next arrows that our archers loose cut right through the dark energy field. I have also charged my own axe with light energy. That means we are able to hit the enemies, but it doesn't mean we can't be hurt by them. I am doing my best. It seems a bit awkward handling such a big weapon when I'm so small. I jump up on top of a horse’s head, not realizing I could even jump that high, and bury my axe in an enemy’s head. I take out another enemy that was right next to the first from the back of the first enemy’s horse. I jump down to the ground and the two horses run off to get out of the violence.

I am about to go after some more enemies when I hear a woman scream. I turn around and look and see that Catelyn is surrounded by enemies. It only vaguely crosses my mind to not do anything. Instead I go over there and bury my axe in the back of one of the enemies. A second enemy turns away from Catelyn and starts coming at me. That leaves him wide open. Catelyn has a dagger and it is charged with light energy. She slits his throat with it. The other enemy that was attacking her, and all of the others that are still alive, have decided not to stick around. They were probably figuring they were completely protected. But they weren't. At least not protected from me. I look around for a bit, several people have died. I wasn’t able to save everyone. Tyrion’s own people are among the dead. They weren’t really warriors, Tyrion hadn’t expected to have to fight.

One of Catelyn’s people is injured, Sir Rodrik Cassel. I am thinking I can heal him, but I don't want to make it too obvious. I look around and then pick up some dry leaves. They are harmless. I tell the Sir Rodrik and Catelyn that I have something that can help his wound. At first they don't want me anywhere near him. I finally convinced them when I tell say that if we get attacked again, we need every single fighter we can get. So they finally let me try. I put the harmless but useless leaves on the wound and tell him it’s a special herb that will help with healing. I also focus healing energy. The man says that he can feel the difference right away. This is the pain is going away. After I am done with that, one of the other people thinks that I should give up my weapons, but Catelyn says I am to keep them, we may be attacked again with little notice. I finish my previous thought. I couldn’t have won the dagger when my brother lost the joust because I never bet against my family. I lost considerable coin on that match. It is here I wake up.

01/08/13

Ratchet and Templars
I am in a strange place. I look around to see where I am. It looks like a futuristic city of some kind. There are cars flying in the air and robots intermingling with the people. Additionally, the people look like they are various races from various planets. I look around and watch the variety of people and robots, completely disoriented and confused. I turn around and start walking in a direction I feel drawn in. As I do so I almost trip over a smaller robot that happens to be standing right behind me. Oops… I look down at the robot and absently apologize and say excuse me. The robot is about two feet tall and has glowing green eyes.

The robot speaks, he says not to worry about it in a pleasant voice. I am still feeling disoriented, so I turn around to walk away from the robot and walk into someone else. I curse silently at myself that I really need to watch where I'm going. This time I have walked into an alien, though I guess I am not really certain that he is the alien… maybe on this planet I am the alien. The alien is covered in fur and has large pointed ears. He stands a bit shorter than me, probably about five feet tall. Some of his facial features look a bit cat-like, though his eyes are more human like, a bit larger than normal compared to the size of his face, and they are green. He is looking at me with a rather surprised look on his face. He says to watch where I'm going, but doesn't really sound upset. I tell him I'm sorry and then head off to my left after making sure I'm not about to walk into anyone else. I have been waiting for my head to clear, but it has in fact gotten worse. I have quite a headache, so I sit down up against a light pole not far off. I close my eyes and lean back against the pole. I wait a couple minutes for my head to clear, which starts happening. I hear footsteps in front of me and then I hear the voice of the robot from earlier. He says excuse me, then asks if I am ok. He says he couldn't help but notice my vital signs are not normal. I open my eyes and see the small robot looking at me, the covers on his eyes like eyelids give him a concerned expression. Somewhere in my mind I am becoming lucid, and my spontaneous response is that nothing about me is normal… but thanks, I'll be fine. The alien I walked into earlier comes up behind the robot and asks what is going on, he calls the robot Clank. Now I can see he has a rather long tail with a tuft at the end of it and is colored like an orange tabby cat. My head is clearer and now I am feeling more embarrassed than disoriented. I pull myself to my feet, willing my head to stay clear. Now the place smells like a fart. A rancid fart. I look around and see the alien is also sniffing the air. He looks over at me and is apparently thinking the same thing, because he says it wasn't him, he thought it was me. People around us are now pointing up, screaming, and running around. The robot and the alien look up, I hear the alien ask what that is. I look up and see a space ship hovering over the city. The smell gets worse, causing me to feel light headed again. There is a blinding flash of light and then darkness.

I regain consciousness to find I am hanging upside down. I look up and see I am suspended by an energy tether. Hanging upside down has caused blood to flow to my head, and my mind is now clear. I look around and see there are others there with me. The first one I notice is a large, stupid looking guy dressed in green spandex… ugh… Qwark… from the Ratchet and Clank video game series. He has somehow become tangled up in his energy tether. He is hanging like a fish caught in a net. I can't help but laugh at that. On the other side of me is the alien from earlier… Ratchet… and the small robot from earlier… Clank. Qwark struggles pointlessly and ends up even more entangled. He announces that he is almost loose. I laugh again. He gives me a dirty look and asks what I'm laughing at. Apparently Ratchet has noticed Qwark and is not happy to see him. He is pissed off that Qwark is still alive when Ratchet claims to have blown him to pieces. Qwark says he cannot die. He adds that when he gets loose he'll be the one to get out of there, while Ratchet and his little trash can will be stuck there. He wiggles some more and then ends up with his face practically up his own butt. I end up laughing more. He says he sees I can't take my eyes off of him… and he can't blame me considering how good looking he is. I think I might vomit now. He says we can get out of here together and go somewhere that we can be alone. I do vomit. Some gross dark reddish stuff splatters on the floor below. I wonder what the fuck I have been eating to puke up stuff that looks like that. It's moving. I can control it. Of course. It's biomass. My biomass. I am no longer human in the dream state, I am more like Alex Mercer… I am a virus.

Qwark has gone silent now and is looking at my vomited biomass with a grossed out look on his face. Ok… use the biomass. It forms a tendril and reaches over to a control panel at the edge of the room. I use the tendril to operate the controls and deactivate the tethers. Ratchet falls on his face. Clank drops slowly using a rotor like a helicopter. Qwark lands right on his head with a loud crack and falls over, dazed. His face is still practically up his own ass. I land on my face. My biomass returns to me and I reabsorb it. Ratchet gets up quickly and pulls a huge wrench type thing from… um… I'm not sure where from… and charges at Qwark with it. He completely ignores Clank saying maybe we should find a way out of here first and starts pounding the shit out of Qwark. For the first few hits Qwark doesn't respond at all, perhaps still dazed from landing on his head. When he finally does respond, he responds like a total wuss and curls up into a ball. Ratchet is telling him to get up and fight back! Qwark says he would but he sprained an ankle in that fall. Maybe they should arrange a match later… I ignore that for a bit and then I notice there is quite a bit of blood. That strikes me as odd at first… there's no blood in the Ratchet and Clank games… But this isn't a game. Ratchet is still pounding on Qwark, maybe even harder than before, and there is blood spattering everywhere. Clank seems a bit stunned and is keeping his distance. Is Ratchet actually trying to kill the idiot? Maybe… but he doesn't stay a bad guy. He'll always be stupid, but not evil. For that to happen he has to stay in one piece.

So I stand up and use a tendril to pull Ratchet off of Qwark. Ratchet turns around and starts attacking my tendril. Qwark peeks out of his ball hesitantly. Ratchet sticks his wrench weapon somewhere, still not sure where… hammer space? Up his ass? Then he pulls a large gun out of the same nowhere. I see that just in time to use a second tendril to take it away before Ratchet blasts a huge hole in Qwark's face. Ratchet reaches for the gun but my tendril pulls it out of reach quickly. Qwark is trying to get up but he seems to be pretty badly hurt and collapses again. He says something about a maniac but I can't quite understand him. Ratchet is telling me to let go of him. I ignore him for now, trying to think what the situation is. I hear a clanking noise by my feet. I look over and see Ratchet smirking at me. There is an explosion that knocks me against the wall. I look back over at Ratchet and see him throw another bomb in my direction, I use biomass to surround it and contain the explosion. Instead of a big boom this one makes more of a pop crossed with a poof. Ratchet is clearly pissed at me and asks who I am and why am I working with Qwark. I tell him I'm not working with anyone, and if he would cut it out for just ten fucking minutes I could figure out what was going on. Something is clearly not right, and I would have to figure out what had happened BEFORE someone gets pounded into a bloody pulp or blasted to bits. Ratchet tries to pull away from my tendril for a bit and then finally reluctantly says he'll stop attacking Qwark… for now. My tendril releases him. I look at the gun in my other tendril for a bit, wondering again where Ratchet had kept it before taking it out. I decide maybe I don't want to know. I figure he probably has several more anyway, so I return it to its owner. He puts it away and just glares over at Qwark.

I watch Ratchet for a bit longer to be sure he is going to stick to his word, then back to figuring out what is going on. Apparently someone from outside the dimension has been screwing things up. Who would do that? The first name into my mind is Robert de Sable. Templars. They have tried to screw up other dimensions before. By killing random Altaïrs, passing out dark energy to people who can't handle it. And he would surely be watching. "ROBERT!" I call to him, "ROBERT DE SABLE! SHOW YOURSELF, YOU FLAKEY CHICKEN-WUSS!" I get no answer, though everyone there is now staring at me. Qwark has managed to move around a bit to position himself so that I am between him and Ratchet. I give him my best version of Vegeta's "That's pathetic." look. Clank asks who this Robert de Sable is. I tell him that Robert is the one I think is responsible for this. A Templar bastard that loves fucking things up in other dimensions for some unknown reason. Well, this should be easy enough to fix. Just send everyone back to where they belong, starting with Qwark, since his presence is the most likely to create issues… and I don't want to look at him. I focus on opening a portal to where Qwark should be. Nothing happens. Damn it! They're blocking portals, now I am completely convinced it is Robert. Why do Templars always have to do things the hard way?

Qwark says something quietly to me about needing nanotech. I ask what that is, then I remember it is for healing. I say I got something better… but he'd better not do anything stupid. It occurs to me that I am doing something stupid by expecting someone as stupid as Qwark to refrain from doing something stupid. So after reiterating that I don't want Qwark to do anything stupid (as if repeating it would help) I use some healing energy on him. That gets me a dirty look from Ratchet but nothing more. It gets a very interested look from Clank. I scan the area to see if I can find any sign of Robert. I can sense his energy in the area. I am locking in on it when I see Qwark is doing something stupid. He has moved around the outside edge of the circular room a bit. I'm not sure if he is trying to get behind Ratchet or trying to leave the room, neither one is ok. I use a tendril to put Qwark on a leash around his waist. He pulls at the tendril but my virus makes me stronger than him. I comment that I guess expecting him to refrain from doing something stupid is expecting way too much. There is a definite pause before he gives me a dirty look. Ratchet seems amused, though.

Back to scanning for Robert. Found him. I focus on teleporting him into the room. That works. Robert de Sable appears in front of me. He looks at me in an annoyed manner. He asks if I have to stick my nose in everywhere it doesn't belong. I tell him he is the one that needs to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business. But there won't be any wasting time this time. Consume Robert and find out what the Templars are up to. I wrap tendrils all around Robert and prepare to consume him. But there is nothing there! Robert isn't really there, he is just an illusion! A hologram created from Robert's own energy frequency to make him initially look real. I ask if he is seriously too much of a pathetic chicken-wuss to come out and show himself. He says he knows perfectly well what I can do now, and he's not just going to let me do it. He says he is sorry he has to go so quickly, but he has other places to attend to. He says I can't be everywhere at once and then laughs before the image vanishes. I yell at him to come back here, you flakey jerk! But he is gone. Qwark says Robert must have been afraid to face him. It's a good thing I was holding him back or he would have showed that robber a thing or two. I repeat the name to Qwark… Not robber, Robert. Robert de Sable. And you might have killed him… he just might have died laughing. He looks at me blankly. I just roll my eyes.

With Robert gone, I try to open a portal. Still nothing. It looks like we'll have to get out of here the old fashion way. I access the computer. The good news is we're still in the right dimension. Different galaxy, but there is a wormhole within range that would get all of us back to Ratchet and the others' home galaxy. And there are ships docked in the landing bay that can make the trip since there's no way everyone can fit in my Fire Valkyrie. Well Ratchet and Clank would fit in the one extra seat… and I could always strap Qwark to the roof… my Penticon could surround him with a force field to keep him alive… I chuckle to myself, but that stops short when the dream seems to become unstable. Am I going to wake up now? Now isn't a good time for me to disappear. I have the idea that Qwark would ditch Ratchet and Clank behind if given the slightest chance, and Ratchet would blow Qwark to subatomic particles if he got his chance first… I focus and manage to stabilize the dream. I look around and see Ratchet is looking at me really strangely. He asks if I am ok, he said I turned transparent there for a bit. Clank says his sensors detected a dimensional anomaly, but it is gone now. Ok, well the other three can get home just fine using one of the ships in the docking bay. The only problem would be making sure they work together. I look between Qwark and Ratchet, I figure Clank would be reasonable about it. I know Qwark doesn't stay a bad guy throughout the series, he changes. So let's just make that happen a tiny bit sooner.

I focus on the song Touch My Heart to restore the spark inside Qwark to a flame, it isn't hard to do since it was intended to happen on its own anyhow. I think it's a good thing I can fix evil, now too bad I can't fix stupid. Usually a healing spell also affects the way others respond to the person I healed, but just to make sure I send some positive energy through Ratchet as well. Clank didn't seem to think anything about what I was doing to Qwark, but he wants to know what I am doing to Ratchet… I tell him it's a good thing, positive energy. Don't worry, it'll make him feel good. Clank watches closely, but doesn't say anything when he sees Ratchet has no negative reaction. Qwark looks disoriented, though. He is muttering something about helping Chairman Drek meant he hadn't become the hero he'd wanted to be, instead he'd been a villain… I comment if it means anything, I think he was more of a hindrance to Drek than a help. He seems to like that idea at first and then gives me a strange look.

I feel the dream slipping again, and I barely manage to stabilize it. Ratchet says it happened again, I almost disappeared. Clank says that was also when the dimensional anomaly returned. I tell him I know what is happening, it's no big deal, but I have to hurry. I have a computer chip in my head… and its going to download some files directly to Clank. Basically the location of the docking bay and how to get there while encountering as few of the aliens that own this ship as possible… I have a feeling they will be hostile when encountered. And also it contains the location of the wormhole back to their galaxy. It also has the location where they need to drop Qwark off to minimize the effect this mess has on the timeline. Clank seems to understand all of that just fine. Ratchet wants to know if I'm sure they can trust Qwark. I tell him I am a soul healer, I healed some negativity in Qwark's heart so yeah, he can be trusted to not be an asshole. I add that if I could only heal stupid then everything would be great. I am trying to think if there is anything else I need to do before I wake up, but then the dream becomes unstable again. This time I can't stop it… I wake up.

12/19/13

Ratchet and Clank: Assassin's Creed Version
I am in a strange place. I look around, but I don't recognize anything about it. It looks like a different planet. There are green plants, a flowing stream, and blue skies, but the plants look foreign to me. If it were just the plants then I might just be in a kind of forest I have never seen, but there are two moons hanging in the sky, and that confirms that I am definitely on a different planet. I have no idea why I might be here so I start wandering around. I walk over to the stream and look into the water. The water is so clear that I can see the bottom. It looks clearer than any stream I have seen in my waking life. I walk away from the stream and continue exploring. There are some animals that scurry out of my path before I get a good look at them. Without really thinking about it I call out to them that I won't hurt them, come back so I can see them. Of course they don't respond. I follow a path that runs alongside the stream as it goes through a canyon and into another clear area where there is a lake. I walk over beside the lake and sit down. Maybe Avalon is telling me I need to go somewhere restful and relax for a while. This place certainly looks like it fits the bill. I look into the water where I see some golden fish with long flowing fins swimming around. It is definitely very relaxing.

I hear a sound behind me but I don't pay any attention. I am too relaxed and the sound is pretty innocuous, so I am not alarmed. Then I get hit with a blast of unstable dark energy. The blast knocks me sprawling on my face. What the fuck? The effect of the unstable dark energy is that I am immediately pissed off. I jump to my feet and turn towards the source of the attack, ready to let loose an attack of my own against what I am assuming is a Templar. But there is no Templar… instead there is a rather short furry guy there. (Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank, but I don't recognize him.) He has large pointed ears and some cat-like features, and a long tail ending in a tuft like a lion. He is standing on 2 feet like a person and has a big gun in his hands that is pointed at me. He looks pissed off. My first response is to ask, "Who the fuck are…" but he fires another blast from the gun, also dark energy. Ok… now I think slicing him into pieces is definitely in order… but something inside me tells me that is just the unstable energy talking, he is probably attacking me due to being infected with the dark energy he is using. So I look away from him, reciting some Disturbed lyrics to stabilize my energy. "I've held on too long just to let it go now. Will my inner strength get me through this somehow? Defying a curse that has taken hold, never surrender, I'll never be overcome." I feel the dark energy stabilize and join my own supply of dark energy. The furry guy asks what I have done with some 'him' that I have no idea what he is talking about.

I send a tendril (Witchblade? Viral powers?) out to snag the gun away from him. That is unexpected and I get the gun easily. I look back over at the furry guy who now looks like he expects me to turn around and shoot him with the gun. No… he has enough dark energy already. Instead I start poking around the weapon to find the dark shard that must power it. The furry guy is making fun of me for not knowing how to use my own weapon. I tell him this thing isn't mine… I am not paying attention to him, and he pulls out a smaller gun and shoots the one I took from him. It explodes in my hands. I comment that I guess that's one way to get into it… My white Assassin's robes are now black from the blast. I turn them back white. The furry guy doesn't seem to know what to do now, so he resumes demanding to know where someone named Clank is. I find the dark shard in the wreckage of the weapon. It is a genuine dark shard, and it looks like someone deliberately made it unstable. Whoever gave this guy this weapon definitely doesn't care who he exposes to the dark energy, though he may or may not have been specifically targeting this furry guy.

I turn my attention back to the furry guy and ask him where he got the weapon and the shard. I use my Eagle Vision to scan him for dark energy. He has only a minimal amount of it in him. He should be ok. He says the same person that told him what I did to Clank… now where is he? I ask him if the person who gave him the gun bothered telling him that the energy it uses is very dangerous and will corrupt and destroy anyone and anything it comes in contact with, including the person wielding it? He seems to hesitate a bit at that as if maybe questioning the person who had given him the gun. While he is pausing, I add that I have no idea who this Clank person is. Maybe I shouldn't have said that because it seems to get him upset again. He said my friend has already given me away. I ask what friend? Did the coward even give a name before sending someone else off to do his dirty work? The furry guy pauses again, then says the person's name is Robert. I do a double take, then ask if he means Robert de Sable? He says I do know who he's talking about. He says Robert told him I have Clank, and he wants him back now! I can't help but laugh… which isn't good, it just pisses the furry guy off more… I force myself to stop and then say Robert de Sable is a Templar. And there's an easy way to tell when a Templar is lying… their lips are moving! Of course he doesn't know what a Templar is. I add that Robert himself is probably the one who kidnapped Clank!

Now that the puzzle seems solved to me, I call out to Robert de Sable. I am sure he must be in the area to see if his plan has worked. "He, Robert! Come out and show yourself, you chicken-wuss! And bring back Clank with you!" I get no response. The furry guy is looking around to see if anyone answers. I loudly call Robert a chicken-wuss a few more times. No response. I tell the furry guy that I absolutely did not do anything with his friend Clank… and if the Templar bastards did, I will make sure and get him back. I return to addressing Robert, "Hey, Robert, you chicken-wuss! Come out and play! Or don't you have the balls to face me?!" I tell the furry guy that is a common aspect of Templars… the lack of balls in the males. I say it loudly enough for Robert to hear if he is listening. I comment to the furry guy that when Robert first met my friend Altaïr, he shit his pants. The furry guy says he doesn't care about Robert and Altaïr, he just wants Clank back! I tell him Clank could show up at any time… Robert is probably scared of him. I say this hoping Clank is a little guy that couldn't hurt a fly so I will be implying Robert is a mega-chicken-wuss. I tell the furry guy that I'm surprised Robert had the balls to approach him! I've seen Robert running in terror from a kitten…

Finally it seems Robert has had enough. He comes from behind a strange tree and looks pissed. He says us Assassins are the ones that sneak around in the dark. I tell him at least there has never been an Assassin so afraid to do his own mission that he tricks a… um… I point at the furry guy, who seems surprised I've never seen a lombax before. I tell him I am from very, very far away. I continue taunting Robert, no Assassin is so afraid to do his own mission that he tricks some lombax into doing his dirty work while he hides in fear! I ask him if he really thought that dark energy gun would kill me. He is mad now, and he blurts out a lot. He says the gun wasn't supposed to kill me! He says I was supposed to blast that damn lombax into subatomic particles and feed my negative energy to grow to astronomical proportions… He says I have already said I wanted to do it, so why didn't I do it?! I tell Robert to lay off the drugs… I don't even know this lombax… however I'd be glad to blast Robert into subatomic particles… bit by bit until he produces Clank. Of course now the lombax is pissed off at Robert instead of me. Robert is ignoring him. Robert seems shocked that I say I don't know the lombax. He is having a child's tantrum. He says I was the one who was planning out a hundred and one ways to kill Ratchet the Lombax! Ratchet… Clank… I curse myself silently for not realizing the source game sooner, but then it's not even a game I have played!

I am trying to figure out the easiest way to find out what Robert knows about the location of Clank. Probably to just consume him. Take care of two problems. Find Clank, and no more Robert de Sable. Now to keep him distracted while I get a bit closer… I see the lombax… Ratchet… is now looking at me strangely, probably in response to Robert's claiming I was coming up with a hundred and one ways to kill him. I remember having negative energy last night, and that will often focus itself in seemingly random directions, but I have no interest attacking Ratchet now. I focus my attention back on Robert… slowly closing the distance between us. I have to manage to consume him before he can disappear like he has a habit of doing. I act like I pity Robert. I say he should know my negativity from waking life doesn't affect me in the dream state… you silly Templar. Now stop screwing things up in dimensions where he doesn't belong… which would be all of them! I see movement, Ratchet has disappeared from sight. That surprises me that he would leave without knowing if Robert has Clank. I decide it doesn't matter, I have ways of finding him if I recover Clank. Back to Robert. Move closer.

I get closer still. Robert says I might as well give up, all the Assassins should give up, there is no way the Assassins can… GAAH! Robert is on fire! His cape and robes flare up as if he was soaked in gasoline. What the… then I see Ratchet behind him pointing a gun of some kind at Robert. Robert turns around to see what just happened, blazing with fire, but no doubt being protected from serious harm by his dark energy. He is now raging at Ratchet, saying there won't be so much as a scrap of fur left… now! He's distracted! I rush at Robert and extend viral tendrils to wrap around and consume him. He turns and glares at me, calling me a fool and saying there's nothing I can do to hurt him! But I am already consuming him! It's working! But then there is an explosion of dark energy that sends me flying backwards to slam hard into a cliff. I hear him raging at me now. He says I need to keep my fucking freak tendrils to myself. I get up from the ground where I fell after hitting the cliff. I hear him laugh. He tells Ratchet that it is my fault that his friend is now scrap metal. He vanishes in a blast of black smoke.

Ratchet runs out to where Robert was just standing, yelling at him to bring Clank back and more than a few expletives that would increase the age rating of the Ratchet and Clank games if it was included. "Come back here, you flakey jerk!" I yell after Robert. Damn! Gone again! Ratchet is yelling at me now, wanting to know where Robert went, saying he has to get Clank back before it's too late! Find Robert. I use Through the Never focused on locating Robert and Clank. My portal is being pulled in two different directions and doesn't form. So Robert doesn't have Clank… at least not right now. Ratchet seems to be very worried about Clank, so I focus the portal on him. A portal opens. I see through the portal to where there is a strange looking robot that looks like it was built by idiots… maybe by Templars. I also see Clank there, though he appears to be shut down. The robot looks surprised to see my portal open. He looks through and sees me and asks who the fuck I am. I tell him that is not important… the important thing is that he hand over that little robot behind him. He says it's not going to happen. I get pissed off at this guy quickly. "Listen here, you clinking clanking clattering collection of caliginous junk! I am not in the mood to be fucked with! Now step aside or be recycled!" I send tendrils through the portal to wrap around Clank. I am pulling Clank through the portal when the other robot tries to grab him. Another tendril delivers an electrical shock directly to the robot making him let go. I pull Clank through the portal. I tell the robot on the other side to tell Robert de Sable that he'll have to do much better than this to get the Assassins to give up… and STOP FUCKING UP OTHER DIMENSIONS! He looks at me strangely and I hear him say, "Robert de WHO?" before the portal closes. I briefly hope I'm not the one fucking up the dimension by interfering where I don't belong…

Oh, well… it's too late to do anything about it now. Ratchet doesn't help my questioning the effect I have had on this dimension when he says someone named Dr. Nefarious was sure pissed. "Doctor WHO? Is he a Templar?" Ratchet looks at me strangely. I look at the lifeless Clank. I access my Penticon chip and tell it to do a diagnostic scan. The Penticon responds that this is a simple system re-start, but he can recommend a few upgrades. I tell him Robert's and my presence in this dimension has interfered with things enough already without him leaving a super-computer version of Clank behind. Just fix him. There is some grumbling from the Penticon. Ratchet asks if Clank is ok. I tell him Clank will be fine, as soon as he wakes up. A short time passes and then Clank wakes up with some strange noises and beeps. I tell Ratchet that his friend should be fine now. I know I am about to wake up. I wonder what Robert thought to accomplish with this little mess he tried to make… I am not sure, all I know is where there are Templars there will be trouble close behind. I wake up.

12/16/13

A Fool and His Grenade Launcher
It is dark outside. I am leaning up against an old broken down car. I realize I have fallen asleep. That's not good since I am supposed to be on watch. The city we're in is teaming with zombies and strange mutant creatures that would kill us without hesitation. My boyfriend Josh is lying in a sleeping bag right near me sleeping peacefully. I am completely non-lucid and unaware of my waking life. My name is Isabell. I watch Josh as he sleeps. I wonder if I should tell him the full truth about what I am, what is inside of me. No. I can't. He would leave me alone. Alone and cold, I can't face the idea of being left alone.

I hear a sound from the other side of the car. I peek out of our hiding place. The moonlight is enough to reveal there is a man standing in the street beyond our hiding place. I am even able to identify who it is. It's Alex Mercer. Josh and I have actually been making a point of staying in the relative vicinity of Alex Mercer. He tends to keep the number of zombies and mutants in the area to a minimum, and if he has noticed us staying near him, he has ignored us. I sit back down, I figure this doesn't require me to bother Josh. Alex will surely continue to not notice us or ignore us. But it seems my movements have awakened Josh anyhow. He sits up and looks at me he asks what is up. I tell him it's nothing. I just heard something and it is Alex Mercer. He still has two more hours before his turn. He lies back down and I lean back against the wrecked car, gazing at the stars. The sky is clear, the only sounds are the quiet movements of Alex out in the street.

I jump a little when Josh suddenly sits up. He says he has it! I ask what. I don't really want to hear his answer. Usually when he says that when he has a notably stupid idea. Of course I can't really complain since it was one of these stupid ideas for him to come with me when the Outsiders had started hunting me. I wish he was back home and safe, though that would mean I would be alone now and I desperately need Josh to keep my heart safe. Without Josh I would be nothing more than a... no... I'm not going to think about that. Josh says he has a great idea. I ask what. He says we'll get rich and then get some really secluded place to stay hidden, a safe and comfortable place. I tell him good luck with that. He looks through the window of the wrecked car towards where I saw Alex. He says Alex will make us rich. I tell him to go back to sleep... he's clearly not thinking straight. He says Blackwatch has offered a huge reward to whoever can kill Alex Mercer. I face palm. I tell him sure, just sit there and give Alex a dirty look for a while until Alex dies of boredom. Now go back to sleep.

I look back to the stars again, not paying attention to Josh rummaging in a pile of stuff we've collected. He pulls out a grenade launcher. He says he has this covered. Get the reward, set up a defendable hideaway with everything we could need. He says he will be able to provide a better life for me then, when we don't have to keep moving and running from the Outsiders. Now I'm a bit alarmed. I tell him to put that thing down, adding that he must be crazy. He says no, I saw what it did to that mutant... the grenade penetrated the mutant's armor and exploded on the inside, tearing the thing apart. I tell him to put that thing away now, I'll not have him running off on some suicide mission. Besides, it's safer with Alex around... as long as no one does something stupid and pisses him off. Something stupid like firing a grenade at him. Josh says it will work. He starts to go around the car and into the open. I grab him and pull him back. I tell him to not try it. Seriously. Don't do it. He looks into my eye for a bit and then goes back to his sleeping bag. He says if I feel that strongly, he'll think of something else. He sets the weapon on the pile of stuff and lies back down. I watch him for a bit longer. He shifts uneasily and then gets up again. He says he has to take a piss. He sounds annoyed at me. Oh, well. Better he be annoyed than have him run off and get killed by Alex Mercer. He disappears between two buildings to do his business behind a dumpster.

I look back to the sky. All is quiet. But Josh is taking too long... could something have happened? Zombies or mutants this close to Alex? It would be unexpected, but not impossible. I am about to follow him into the alley. I ready my energy. I am loathe to use it, dark energy. I hate the way it makes me feel, and it adversely affects the area. But if Josh needs me to use it to save him, I will. I start towards the alley when there is an explosion behind me, out in the street where I saw Alex. A Blackwatch attack? They're always trying to blow Alex up, always failing. I peek out into the street. Now it is silent. Blackwatch has never tried just one attack... Something inside of me feels cold, it's dread.

I look from my hiding place and see what I feared. Josh is out in the street waving at me. He yells at me that I should have believed in him. Alex Mercer is history. He comes towards me slowly. The moonlight reveals his I-told-you-so grin. There is movement behind him. I look beyond Josh and I see something surprising. Alex Mercer is in two pieces! His top half is about three feet from his bottom half. Then there's more movement. The two halves are moving, coming slowly together. I motion to Josh to hurry. He goes even slower, spreading his arms out like he's some kind of victorious hero. I point at Alex, who is now merging back into one piece. He looks and seems to freeze for a bit, unable to believe what he's seeing. I motion to him to hurry. He starts running towards me. He's too far away! He circled around a building to sneak past me and my objections. But he is almost here! He has almost reached our hiding place when a taloned tendril pierces his chest. I have a split second to see the stunned look on his face before he gets pulled back the other direction. Pulled back to a seriously pissed off Alex Mercer. I have no choice but to use the dark energy to get him back. I call on the energy, I feel it rising inside me. I stand up to get Josh back... but he's already gone. Alex has already consumed him. But so fast?

I drop back out of sight, collapsing to the ground beside the wrecked car. The dark energy subsides, replaced by an icy coldness. It's so cold. Josh is gone... why did he have to be such a fucking idiot?! Why couldn't he have just listened to me?! What the fuck was he thinking?! Blackwatch has hit Alex with volleys of missiles and grenades and rockets and it has done nothing! What is one stupid explosive going to do?! I'll tell you what it'll do! It'll PISS HIM OFF! It'll just piss him off... Damn it, Josh... you IDIOT! I'm not really angry at Alex... what else would be expected after Josh... that damn idiot... had literally blasted Alex into two pieces? Of course Alex is going to fight back. Nothing else would be logical. Why did Josh have to be so stupid? I am angry at Josh for leaving me to go on what he should've known was a suicide mission. He was really all I had. What would I do without him? My mind continues like that, I find I am crying. I am relieved that I still can cry. The darkness wouldn't take over immediately. Maybe it won't. Maybe I can resist it. Maybe I can...

I am distracted from my thoughts by movement right in front of me. I look up and see Alex is standing right in front of me, looking down at me. Shit... I curse at myself. I was so caught up with Josh being gone that I had forgotten something really important. When Alex consumes someone he gets the memories of the person he consumed. Josh knew where I was hiding... so of course Alex would know that now. I had needed to depart from the hiding place immediately and disappear into the night. Easily done in the night, but I hadn't moved an inch. And now it's too late. Well, at least I don't have to worry about the darkness consuming me, Alex will take care of that... I just lean back against the wrecked car, close my eyes, and wait. I don't really care what happens. Not a good sign. I find myself hoping Alex will hurry up and kill me before darkness fills my heart. Then I will never have to feel the cold. But nothing happens. I open my eyes and he is still there looking at me. Um... what happened? Is the darkness somehow visible and making me look like an oddity? Now I am just staring back at him. The moonlight is reflecting off of his eyes in a hypnotic way. Just look at those eyes... I shake my head quickly... what the fuck am I thinking?!

I am clearing my head when Alex finally does something. He puts his arms around me and lifts me up. I wonder what he is doing. I keep my eyes closed, but I feel us moving quickly, sometimes it feels like flying. This goes on for a short while and then it seems we are inside someplace. We go through a couple more doors and then Alex carefully lies me down on what feels like a bed. This is very confusing. He would know I was with Josh, so why am I still alive? I hear Alex speaking. He says since Josh isn't here to watch me he had brought me someplace that should be safe from the infected. Infected? Does he mean zombies and mutants? They had seemed like monsters. I'd never considered maybe they were sick or infected with something... Alex says he knows I tried to keep Josh from attacking, and he had assumed Josh was Blackwatch. Josh wasn't Blackwatch... though he had been dumb enough to think they would honor their reward even if he had succeeded. So Alex doesn't plan on killing me after all. It's cold, and I shiver. My sleeping bag is back at the hiding place. I feel Alex lie down beside me, close to me. Close enough that I feel his body heat. I feel him put his arms around me... all six of them?! No... four of those "arms" are tendrils, but those are warm, too. I am feeling warmer. I want to ask Alex why he seems to be helping me after what happened with Josh. But I am also very tired. Before I can manage to ask I fall asleep, a nice and peaceful sleep, and wake up in bed.

Note: During the day, MoSh said there was something wrong with Asuka, and he had a bad feeling she might die if something wasn't done as soon as possible. So the primary goal for the night was to heal whatever was wrong with Asuka, and that was my intent as I used my light / sound machine and slipped into a WILD…

I am in MoSh's inner world, which is right where I want to be to complete my primary goal for the night. I look around and see I am in the same place I am usually when I enter MoSh's inner world at the beginning of a dream. I don't figure now is the time to stand there looking around, so I go to the door and knock on it. MoSh doesn't answer the door, instead it's Data, and he lets me in right away, telling me that MoSh and Asuka are both upstairs in the bedroom. He says he has work to do on the shield. Before I can ask him what is wrong with the shield, he turns and leaves the room, heading down into the basement. I figure there is less importance on what Data is doing with the shield than there is on making sure Asuka is ok, so I head upstairs to meet up with MoSh and Asuka.

I find MoSh and Asuka in a bedroom, Asuka is in bed, apparently sleeping. Shawna is also there beside Asuka, and she looks quite upset, she is focusing on Asuka very intently, so much so that she doesn't even notice me enter. MoSh sees me enter and says he is glad I am there. He gets Shawna's attention by touching her on the shoulder, then points at me and says she should give me a chance to help Asuka. Shawna seems like she might cry, she says Asuka is really sick, but she can't quite get to the core of it, something that is causing the sickness keeps moving. MoSh tells her that he and I will make sure Asuka is ok, she should go rest, she has been putting too much energy into this. Reluctantly, Shawna finally leaves the room. Once the girl is gone I see MoSh doesn't look as optimistic as he had tried to look for Shawna, he says Asuka seems to be getting worse. He says it started a couple nights ago, but he had done a healing spell on her and she had seemed fine. But now it is getting worse again… and this time his healing spell wasn't working. He says he wants to take her to the healing glen, but he had wanted to wait until I got there so I could help with healing her. I tell MoSh that the healing glen would be a good place to do the healing, so let's go ahead and go there. MoSh picks up Asuka in his arms, she barely stirs, and is wet with sweat, she looks like she might be running a fever. I open a portal to the healing glen and MoSh follows me through it.

MoSh and I exit the portal into the healing glen, into the green grass area outside the Crystal Golem's cave, and I see the Crystal Golem is there as if he expects us. He says he sees we have a sick friend, and he is here to help in whatever way he can to heal her. MoSh lies her down in the soft grass, she stirs slightly again, but she does not wake up. I take a closer look at Asuka, and I see on some of her exposed skin that it looks like she has a tattoo… To get a better idea of what it is, I remove the rest of her clothes to find the tattoo is all over her entire body. The tattoo is black, and looks like a vine of some kind, with thorns on it. I sense dark energy from the tattoo, so I think that is very likely the source of the problem, or at least a symptom. The vines wrapped around her were emanating unstable dark energy. Scans done by my penticon computer show the vines aren't just around her, they are also growing through her body, she is pretty badly infected… it would take some work to get that shit out of her.

To get that strange shit out of Asuka, I start by focusing on drawing the dark energy out of those strange vine tattoos, pulling it into myself. The tattoos respond by coming to life, actually tightening around Asuka… the thorns somehow dig into her enough to draw small amounts of blood… Asuka barely stirs, though, it's not even enough to wake her. I get the idea it's more of a threat than to do any actual harm. So I change the method I use. Instead of just drawing dark energy out, I also focus on stabilizing it… and the tattoo vines loosen. The black tattoos also start fading, they aren't as dark… and soon they fade completely and are gone from sight. I wonder if that got rid of the entire problem, now that the strange vines are no longer visible. She doesn't look injured, the places where she had been bleeding are only tiny pricks, any bleeding has already stopped without me having to use any physical healing.

As I draw the rest of the dark energy out of Asuka, she sits up and yawns, stretching big, then she seems to realize she's naked and moves to cover herself. I immediately summon a kimono onto Asuka, it is the easiest thing to picture since that is often how I picture her, and she doesn't seem to be picky about what she is wearing at the time. MoSh is asking Asuka if she is ok, asking her how she feels, she says she just feels exhausted. While she is talking to MoSh I have my penticon computer scan Asuka for any remaining traces of dark energy. The computer reports that there is a tiny speck of dark energy still inside of Asuka, but the amount of energy in that speck is relatively insignificant. The computer reports that the level of dark energy in that speck is no higher than the ambient dark energy in almost every location in this plane, lower than many places. I am suspicious of that speck the computer reported, just like with a spark of an inner flame, all it takes is a tiny amount of unstable energy to grow into a serious problem. I tell MoSh that she seems ok for now, but I will want to take another look at her later, she needs to be watched to make sure whatever was making her sick doesn't come back. We don't want her having a relapse, after all. The Crystal Golem says he will keep an eye on her for a while to be sure it doesn't come back, then MoSh can take her home, as long as there will be someone there to watch over her. MoSh thanks me for helping, gives me a big hug, then he hugs Asuka close to him, muttering something about no one should dare harm Asuka.

I was in my inner world, in the area that has been set aside for the child, Dela, who I brought back from a place where everyone was convinced she was some kind of demon. When I found her, she was playing some rather nasty games with a couple of my DC's that had been placed there to keep her company. There was a male DC there, he was screaming and scratching at his own skin, and I could see something moving under there… just then he managed to scratch all the way through the skin on his arm, and in addition to blood coming out, a bunch of bugs came out, an assortment of bugs including beetles, centipedes, maggots, flies… a bunch of them… came out of the wound, his entire body was filled with the things… He was screaming in terror as more of them came out of his mouth, muffling his screams… There was also a woman there, she had a sharp knife and she was very slowly and deliberately peeling off her own skin. She wasn't screaming or making a single sound, but she had a rather realistic look of terror and pain on her face, especially for a DC. I had to double check the two just to be sure they were really just DC's, the small amount of energy they had was consistent with my own DC's. I dispelled the DC's and told Dela to stop doing that. Her response was that she was bored, and she didn't know any other way these dummies could keep her entertained. She added that it's not like they're really alive or anything…

Well, I couldn't deny that, but what I was hoping to do was help her get control of her dark energy so she wouldn't have the need to go around doing such things, at least not randomly. She would at least reserve the nastiness for those who deserve it. She said that since I had come, perhaps I would find some way to entertain her for a while… after all, aren't mothers supposed to entertain their daughters? There she went calling me her mother again… even though I wasn't really. It was almost like she read those thoughts, because she added that of course I was her mother… I had adopted her, hadn't I? Sure, I wasn't around much, but even that was more than her real parents had done, they had been too scared to be around her, they thought shutting her in the basement would keep them safe… but they had eventually learned. So how about me? She asked if I was too scared to fulfill my motherly duties, to spend a bit of quality time with her daughter? She said she also didn't like being kept in this place full of dummies, she wanted to be moved somewhere else right away. She said being around only these drones could make a girl downright antisocial… I thought she seemed antisocial enough. I told her there were some things I was going to try to teach her, but she immediately laughed at that idea and said there was nothing she could possibly learn from me… cocky brat… I asked if she really wanted to leave this place full of drones and be around real people again, she said of course. I said that as long as she cooperated with her lessons, she could do that. She gave me a dirty look for a bit, then a contemplating look, then apparently decided to play along.

So since I wasn't feeling drained right then, I took her out into an open area of the containment area and focused on setting up a flow of dark energy between us, the idea was basically the same as when Walms had given me the first amount of his stable dark energy since the only dark energy that had ever been inside me had been unstable. So we ended up making a game out of it, a form of tag actually. The goal of the game was to peg the opponent with a ball of dark energy while avoiding getting pegged by absorbing the opponent's energy ball before it reached you. It seemed a good way to get her to expend some of her unstable dark energy at me while allowing her to absorb some stable dark energy. It became quite an interesting game, actually, playing it throughout the containment area Dela had been living in, efficiently exchanging dark energy. I would send her a stable energy ball, she would absorb it and then send an unstable one back, which I would absorb and stabilize. The plan had been to make sure she was able to absorb most of my energy balls, but she was able to do most of it on her own, she was already quite good at sensing when there was energy approaching her. This actually made for a quite fun game.

When the game was ending, it was clear that Dela was expecting me to take her somewhere there would be real people instead of just the drone DC's. I told her she was not to attack any of the real people outside of this containment area, since they weren't simple DC's. She said of course she wouldn't attack anyone, as long as they were nice to her. I wondered what qualifications she had for counting them as nice… did she expect people to do everything she told them to do? She would find an unpleasant surprise if that was what she was thinking… since most of the people in my inner world… actually all of the ones who stay on permanent basis… are familiar with dark energy and able to handle it. I opened a portal and took her to Vegeta's house, I figured he could even help her with controlling her energy. Serena was outside with the twins, Gene and Amanda, and Vegeta was demonstrating something to the twins. I went over to them and asked if Vegeta and Serena would mind keeping an eye on one more, Serena got a big smile on her face. She asked who the pretty girl there with me was. She scoffed at the compliment, I told Serena it was Dela, and Dela would need a place to stay while she was learning control over her dark energy. Vegeta looked at her and said she would learn it fast enough here. Dela gave me a dirty look and said I wouldn't get away with just dumping her off on someone else. I told her I wasn't dumping her off, but since this is my dream self and I would have to wake up, I wouldn't be able to stay with her all the time. She looked a bit perplexed at that comment, I told her Vegeta and Serena could explain… I was about to wake up. And then I did wake.

Note: When I fell asleep tonight, I was feeling like shit… that tends to happen when I keep having it shoved into my face that people I thought were friends really place absolutely no value on me at all… so I was pissed off and depressed at the same time, which was making my dark energy go quite unstable, and I had to get rid of that issue… so my WILD was used on getting rid of that unstable dark energy on the most readily available target, the Templars.

I was in a long hallway, and I was lucid, and I also had a good idea of where I was. I was right where I had intended to be, which was in one of the many hidden templar bases on the astral and dream planes. I wasn't feeling any better now than I had been when I had fallen asleep, my energy was no more stable than then… and yet I didn't really feel like I was in danger of losing control. I knew where I was, I knew who I wanted to direct my unstable energy at, and I had no urge to direct it anywhere else or at anyone else. I wasn't even feeling like I would rather be directing it at the people who had caused me to go unstable in the first place. While it seemed to me that the instability of my dark energy was a bad sign, it also seemed to me that the fact I felt in control of how I released it was a good thing, a sign of progress…

So now I walked down the hallway, I was still feeling angry and unstable and a bunch of other things, but it wouldn't be long before I found a target… and there was a target on their way to meet me now! I saw a Templar walking down the hallway towards me, he didn't look like one of the soldiers, he was dressed in white clothing with the red Templar symbol on it. He looked up and saw me there in the hall, and he looked quite surprised to see me. He walked quickly up to me and asked me who I was, he demanded to know what I was doing there. I decided I would act even crazier than I felt, I thought his reaction might be amusing, so I grabbed the surprised Templar by the collar and demanded to know why he was wanting to write me off like some piece of shit… he looked at me with a very confused look, said he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, so I got mad at him for pretending he didn't even know who I was. I said he knew exactly who I am, and he had better show some respect, because I am worth over twenty of him, the worthless sack of pathetic shit that he is… He told me he didn't care who I was, and I had better get out of the restricted area before I found myself confined to a nightmare where a vulture was perpetually pecking… I said I didn't need a nightmare, looking at his face was a nightmare, of course that must make it a horrible nightmare to have to look at that face every time he passes a mirror. He was mad now, and upset, and a few other things that made him look very comical, he went to the wall and pulled a lever that activated an alarm. I had seen him going for it, and allowed it, because I wanted a bunch of Templars to kill.

I didn't have long to wait, I could hear the approaching Templars, I decided to go with my Alex Mercer archetype, sometimes that can be very amusing, so before they could arrive I grabbed the Templar who had pulled the alarm and consumed him, taking his energy and his form. Shortly after a group of Templars came from both directions, surrounding me in the hall, but of course they didn't recognize that I wasn't one of them. They all began looking around in a confused manner, asking me where the intruder had gone, what was with the alarm, and a bunch of other questions they weren't giving me a chance to answer. I decided to continue picking off Templars for as long as I could get away with it, by getting behind them and using the stealth consume that I have seen Alex Mercer doing on the game. I managed to consume five Templars before I got sloppy and let one of them see me. Oh, well, I was getting tired of the covert thing anyway, so now I formed my right arm into Alex Mercer's arm sword, and started cutting through Templars with it. My Witchblade armor blocked their attacks from getting through. Of course everything that was going on got the attention of still more Templars, who were coming and attacking from both directions in the hall.

As I was slicing through Templars, I was making my way slowly through the base until I found myself in a large intersection that looked like one of the central parts of the base, or at least that's how it felt. I thought this was a good place to make the final release of all the unstable energy I had left inside me. I decided to ditch the Alex Mercer archetype, so I focused every bit of unstable dark energy I had right now into one spell, and released an Immortal Fire of epic proportions, and there was a blast of dark flames extending outward from me in all directions, a huge explosion. After the blast was finally over, and the dust finally settled, there was no sign of the base any longer, in fact I was standing in a large crater where the Templar base had been just a short time ago… And I felt drained, like so much of my energy had just up and left me, but at the same time I felt a lot more stable. I did a scan on myself, examining the dark energy inside me to see what was there, it was all stable, and it was all of my own frequency… excellent… except for a tiny part… wtf? I examined the part that was not my own frequency… had someone infected me with something? Is that why I had gone unstable? I examined it closer, I was focused on that, and I finally recognized the frequency… it was Walms' What was that doing there?! Well, it didn't seem to be harming anything… I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, I looked over there to see who was watching, but in that instant whoever it was disappeared. I didn't get a chance to see. Who the fuck was that?! I was trying to figure that out when I woke…

Note: Tonight I pulled a Walms! FA, get out of bed, RC… continues to have a nice lucid dream… *does the happy dance* I just wish I could make myself do a RC every time I wake up in the night or in the morning, I would catch a lot more FA's… Yay for FA's!

I woke up in bed, got up to use the bathroom, and for once I thought to do a RC right away… and it turned out I was dreaming! Awesome! I was in the middle of a real FA!

For some reason this idea seriously excited me at that point in time, almost as if I had never had a FA before, and I had to focus to calm myself down a bit before focusing on remembering what my goals for the night were. I remembered that one of my goals had been to go meet Erik's guide with MoSh, but that was already done. So what was my next goal? I didn't have any other goals for the night, so that meant I was free to figure out what I wanted to do. I thought I could check out the house in Oblivion, the one in Skingrad, and even though I hadn't been in contact with Tigress I could still do something there on my own. Hmmm… instead, maybe I would try to just try to open a portal to get somewhere I was needed. I focused on Through the Never and on opening a portal, then I went through that portal…

I found myself back in MoSh's inner world, which took me by surprise since I had already completed the goal I had with MoSh. So maybe there was something else I had to do with MoSh tonight, which was fine, but first I had to find him. I looked around MoSh's inner world for a bit, taking real notice of it for the first time, and realizing things there were far from normal. Things were quite dark and creepy, like used to happen quite often, but it hasn't happened much recently, so what might have happened to create this problem? Since I thought that might be why I was there, to clean up the place, I started focusing on cleaning up the dark energy and replacing it with light energy. I went into MoSh's house and started cleaning up in there, I saw Asuka in there as well. She was clearly not well, she was cackling like some kind of a mad woman, and her eyes were solid black. She was throwing some kind of strange energy bolts at me, they seemed to be made of solidified dark energy. I could tell she needed serious healing, so I focused on the song Silver and Cold to pull dark energy out of her and Touch My Heart to replace it with light… and she disappeared.

I didn't know where Asuka had gone, but I figured I would find her again soon, as long as she hadn't left MoSh's inner world… and if she had left MoSh's inner world, I would track her down then. I continued through the house, absorbing dark energy from the place and replacing it with light, then I went back outside and continued doing that. I walked around for a bit absorbing dark energy, I wondered where MoSh might be, and where were the kinds, Data, the EMH he recently installed? Was this really MoSh's inner world? Or could I be in the wrong place? Well, no matter where I was, Asuka had been there and she had been seriously infected. Maybe I should find Asuka next, then check to see if I was really in MoSh's inner world or if I might be in the wrong place somehow… after all, I hadn't focused on reaching MoSh's inner world, I had just focused on going somewhere I was needed.

As I was about to open a portal to track Asuka down I saw that I wasn't alone, there was someone else there standing not too far from me. I went over to investigate and see who it was, it looked like he was surrounded by an aura of dark energy, but it looked stable and I didn't sense hostility… So I went over to investigate the person closer, to see what he was doing there, and when I got closer to him I recognized him… it was Walms! I went over and said hello to him, I asked if he was here to clean up some of this dark energy, after all it would be just a midnight snack for him… He didn't answer me, instead he looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, if it wasn't for the fact that he is lucid in 99.9% of his dreams, I would have thought he wasn't lucid there. But then he does have a few non-lucid dreams… occasionally. I told him he was dreaming, maybe he should do a RC, check out the gravity of the area or whatever it is he does for a RC. He looked at me strangely, making me have serious doubts that I had identified him correctly, I was having serious doubts that it was Walms at all…

I felt I needed to clean the place up, so I continued absorbing dark energy, and I saw that Walms, or the person I had first thought was Walms, was doing the same. I continued cleaning up dark energy, Walms and I got separated while I was cleaning the place up, and I ended up wandering into the garden area out behind MoSh's house, where I found Asuka. She looked just as nuts as she had before, she attacked me with dark energy bolts again, I dodged the attacks and jumped up into the air, sending a couple of tendrils of Witchblade to hold her and keep her from disappearing again. I looked around, and the area that might or might not be MoSh's inner world was much cleaner than it had been, it looked a lot brighter and was clear of dark energy, so now I had to get Asuka healed. I focused on the songs I had tried to use before, Silver and Cold to draw dark energy out and Touch My Heart to put light energy in, and this time it seemed effective. After the song spells had completed, Asuka looked like her normal self and seemed quite confused at the fact she was tied up, so I let her loose.

The first thing Asuka was wanting to know about was MoSh, she said she didn't know where MoSh was, she might have done something to MoSh, she said she should have known something like this would happen, she knew she would never be able to keep control if she tried to fight, why had everyone insisted she try to fight when we all knew she would lose control again? Why? I told her I thought Vegeta and Tuvok had helped her with that, but she said there's no way either of them would ever understand the force inside her, that there is no way she could control it… I saw she was crying, saying she was sure she'd done something horrible, and it was MoSh she had done it to, so what now? I told her MoSh can't be seriously hurt in a dream, but let's find him. I opened a portal, focusing on finding MoSh, and then I led Asuka through the portal.

On the other side of the portal I found MoSh was there, and he was there with Kaomea, he looked quite worried about something. He seemed glad to see me, he said Kaomea needed healing, he said he had tried to heal her as best as he could, but she really needed to be taken to the healing glen for healing there. I said Asuka could probably use the extra positive energy, too, as she had been really badly infected somehow. I focused on opening a portal to the healing glen, and then all of us went through it, MoSh, Asuka, Kaomea, and me. I telepathically contacted Basara even as we were going through the portal, so when we exited into the healing glen, Basara showed up there soon after. The Crystal Golem was there, and we did a group healing spell, Basara, MoSh, and I did healing spells along with the Crystal Golem, the entire area was filled with golden energy. The golden energy was very relaxing, and it is here that I woke.

I was walking down the sidewalk in a normal looking neighborhood, it looked to be a typical lower middle class neighborhood with homes that looked like they could be quite nice if they were kept up better. But whether due to lack of finances or to laziness, the necessary maintenance kept getting put off… I was somehow at least partially lucid, I realized I was dreaming, but that was about the extent of it. I wasn't thinking at all about my waking life any beyond that. I followed the sidewalk for a while, I figured I would soon find out why I had been brought to this particular place at this particular time. So far nothing looked out of place… a nice evening, the sun was setting, a gentle breeze was blowing, some dogs were barking, a cat darted across the road to the cover of some bushes on the far side. I just kept walking, listening and watching carefully for any sign of why I might be there.

It didn't take long for me to find that out… As I was walking past one of the houses, I heard screaming inside, someone was being attacked. It sounded like a child screaming, but those weren't the screams of an angry child throwing a tantrum because she hadn't gotten what she wanted… those were screams of terror. I ran up to the door of the house, which was locked. There was more screaming from inside the house, though the screams sounded muffled by something now, I couldn't tell what. Since the door was locked, I just blasted it down with a blast of energy and went into the house anyway. The muffled screams were coming from the basement, there was another locked door there which I also broke down. There were three people in the basement. There was a little girl, appeared to be about ten years old, tied up and lying in a shallow hole which looked like a grave, there was a man standing on the far side of the hole holding a gas can, the flammable liquid was still pouring out of the spout onto the little girl in the grave. I could smell the gas from the base of the basement stairs. There was a woman standing by the side of the grave, she was holding a box of matches… it didn't take a detective to figure out what they were doing.

I told them that the girl was coming with me, the woman seemed very upset by that, she told me to stay out of other people's business when I don't understand the situation. I said I understood the situation much better than they thought. Now step away from the pit, I was taking the girl with me. The woman said it was too late, quickly lit a match and tossed it into the pit at the girl. I telekinetically caught the match and knocked it away from the girl in the hole, making sure none of the gas fumes managed to ignite. I wondered if these people were really assholes or if they were only trying to kill the girl because they thought she was a demon… because they knew of the evil inside her… so I did a quick mental scan of the man, then I wished I hadn't. I got images of the couple's first child, a little boy, the father doing absolutely unspeakable things to the child and then the mother would tell the boy he was evil because of what the father had done to him… it was enough to make me sick. He had died when they had decided to punish him by burying him alive for a while to be alone with his claustrophobia and fear of the dark, but they had left him in there a bit too long and he had suffocated. If the girl was a demon, this couple definitely deserved her!

The mother lit another match and threw it into the hole with the girl, I knocked it aside like I had the first one. This one, however, landed next to an empty gas can at the father's feet, but it apparently wasn't quite empty after all. A flame sprung up suddenly, taking both of them by surprise, and igniting the man's pants instantly since he was surely covered with at least the fumes from the gasoline. He saw the fire and started flailing around, which of course just made things worse, the woman seemed at a loss as to what to do about it… while that was going on I jumped down into the hole and untied the girl, giving her a boost out of the hole and then climbing out after her. The father was now completely engulfed in flames, screaming loudly in terror and pain, the mother was trying to use a blanket to put the fire out. All she accomplished was catching the blanket on fire. She threw the blanket down on the ground, but part of it flew back in her face and set her on fire as well. She responded to the fire about as well as the father had, by flailing around a lot. She fell to the ground and started rolling, which is what is supposed to help, but then she rolled into the hole where the girl had been… and into the puddle of gas there… and burst into flames.

I picked the girl up and carried her out of the house, which was starting to burn quickly behind us. There was no way that house was up to fire safety codes… but that didn't really matter. I could hear sirens in the distance, apparently someone had called the fire department or the cops and emergency vehicles were coming. I quickly carried the girl away from the house and down into a dark alley where we wouldn't be found. The girl was acting like she was completely traumatized by the experience with her parents. I wasn't buying it, I could see from her energy signature that she wasn't in a truly traumatized state, I could also see that she had quite a bit of dark energy in her which was most likely the thing that was causing her to behave in an evil way… so basically she did have the energy of a demon. It seemed to me that if she could learn to control that energy, she would be able to focus it better and take care of people who deserve to be eliminated, like her parents had deserved to be eliminated. But that would take time, and I was about to wake up. This is where my recall of the dream ends, but as I woke up I heard Q saying he had brought the girl back to my inner world and set her up in a home in a separated part of my inner world, populated by DC's and anyone from my inner world that felt like visiting her. I remember hearing Q say that since I had wanted to bring her back, she was now my responsibility… congratulations, you adopted a ten year old demonic orphan!

I was in the mall, I was looking for some piece of jewelry that would help me have a source of dark energy IWL since that is where I really need more help keeping myself stable and under control. I have a stone that holds some, but I was thinking I should find something better. As I walked through the mall I looked at all of the various stores, clothing stores, toy stores, video game stores… the video game store almost got me distracted but I spotted a gift shop at the last minute and went there instead.

The clerk inside was a shady looking person that looked like the kind of person who would be selling dark energy, but he turned out to be merely stupid, not evil. I asked if they had jewelry, and he kept trying to show me shirts with fake gems studded all over them. I specified that I wanted earrings, bracelets, necklaces… he took me to more shirts, he didn't seem to be getting the picture at all. After giving a brief look around the store I left quickly as the man continued talking behind me, saying something about the bathroom and a low flow toilet that kept the water clean with sanitation crystals so it could be used several times before being disposed of… um… I hadn't said anything about a toilet…

I continued walking through the mall for a while longer, I was beginning to think I would never find what I was looking for, so I went to a restaurant and ordered a soda. I had some more money, and I wanted something to eat, I felt I should buy something healthy… a salad… but I wanted something fattening… donuts or a hamburger… so I balanced it out. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and a few other vegetables on it, but then I went ahead and cheated by ordering one donut. I walked down the main path in the mall, eating and drinking as I went, for some reason fumbling with my sandwich, soda, and donut instead of just sitting down to eat… I finally decided I had to sit down to eat, found a bench, and sat down while I continued to eat. It was all tasty, I finished and took a deep breath, I was still disappointed to not have found any jewelry. Then I saw what I was looking for.

I walked across the main corridor to a jewelry store which had been right there in front of my face the whole time I had been eating. I looked at the jewelry in the cases, some of it was pretty, some of it was butt ugly, but then I saw gems that looked like they could hold dark energy. I asked the salesman about those, he said they were black diamonds, which I have never even heard of let alone owned. Since they were diamonds, they were very expensive, and I couldn't afford any of it. I was so disappointed. The salesman seemed to look down on me for not being able to afford the diamonds, he mocked me, but his mocking turned out to be helpful. He said that cheap people like myself should stay down at the other shop where they sell only the crappiest jewelry to the lowest class of people. Hearing there was another store, I wasn't even mad at the insult, I thanked him, which drew a confused look, and headed in the direction he had pointed.

I moved down the main corridor of the mall until I found the shop the jewelry salesman had indicated, then I went inside. This store was actually selling a lot of things, and there were two levels to it, it did seem to be more of a gift shop than a jewelry store. I went upstairs to the jewelry display. The first thing I noticed was some smoky quartz earrings that were a very reasonable price. I would prefer not to get earrings, though, since I usually can't wear them for long without having my earlobes get irritated and itchy. I wanted something I can wear all the time. I looked for a bracelet, since I already have a pendent as well, but there was very little selection. I found a couple of bracelets, they were plastic pieces of crap, didn't have any gems in them, not even fake ones. I spotted a couple of stones that got my attention, there were two black stones sitting on the counter that were sparkling vaguely, I instantly knew those would be perfect.

I asked the clerk if they had any bracelets or other jewelry with that kind of stone in it. He said no. I asked if one of those could be made into a piece of jewelry. He said no, they're not for sale. He seemed rather rude. He turned and walked away without another word. Without thinking about it much, I pocketed one of the two stones and left the store quickly.

I was back in the main corridor of the mall, I felt the stone in my pocket and I could already feel its dark energy, it felt good. I thought I had better leave before someone came after me, so I looked for the nearest exit. When I got outside I realized that since I had come out the wrong door I didn't know where I had parked. It was dark out, many of the parking lot lights were out, but I had to find my car. I looked around the parking lot a while until I finally spotted my car. I was almost to my car when I woke.

Note: I didn't sleep very well this night, I actually only got around 4 hours of sleep for the entire night. I remember several fragments of dreams, but others have told me that I showed up in other dreams which I completely don't remember including an epic fight with Xildron, a shared dream with Walms, possibly a shared Voyager dream with MoSh… Here are the non-epic fragments I remember…

*Pirates of the Caribbean*
I was in a bar working there as a waitress. Somehow this didn't seem strange enough to trigger a reality check even though I have never worked in a bar for a single day in my life… Well, I thought it was completely normal as I fetched drinks and passed them out to a wide array of drunk people amidst a lot of loud talking, boisterous laughter, cat calls, and obnoxious comments… I noticed that the bar was not like a modern day bar with rock music and flashy lights, instead it looked like an old time pub off of an RPG. I had just finished passing out a round of beers and I was heading back for another round when the bar tender, also my boss, signaled me to come over. The bar tender was an older man with a friendly face, although his face was showing clear displeasure now. My first thought that he was upset with me was put to rest when he said the problem was pirates. He said there were two particularly drunk pirates who were arguing with each other and being especially loud and obnoxious, they'd had a bit too much rum, and they were bothering the other customers. I glanced at a group of men in one corner who had insisted on calling me a lot of nasty things and thought the pirates couldn't be worse than them… the bar tender told me to throw the pirates out.

It didn't seem strange to me that he was asking a woman to throw out two drunk pirates… I knew I could handle them just fine. I went to the pirates he had indicated and pulled the first one to the exit door, physically lifted him up and threw him out where he face planted in the dirt in front of the pub. I threw the second pirate out shortly later, and he face planted right near the first one. It was then that I recognized the pirates… the first one I had thrown out was Jack Sparrow, the second was Barbosa, both from Pirates of the Caribbean.

I went out and deliberately threw Barbosa into several more face plants, thinking he deserved it. I then went and helped Jack Sparrow up. I knew the authorities were coming and would arrest both pirates… I helped Jack Sparrow away from the pub so the authorities would not find him, they would find only Barbosa. Jack Sparrow was coherent enough to ask why I had come back to help him, and the only response I could come up with was to say I had wanted to help him because he is hot…


*Pirates of the Caribbean II*
At the beginning of this dream I was watching a television show that had a small town on an isolated island. They believed if any of them were to leave the island they would be killed by the savages in the outside world. The main character was a young woman who dreamed of leaving the island. It seemed like a much overused plot. As I was watching, however, I found myself in the movie in the role of the young woman. I was outside of my house on a seldom used dock during the night watching a full moon reflecting off of the calm ocean water. I was dreaming of other places when I saw something out there, it was a ship. The ship sailed close to the shore and a man swung from a rope attached to one of the masts and landed on the dock like an acrobat of some kind. I was staring in amazement at that as I saw the man was Captain Jack Sparrow. I couldn't help but think he was hot and fantasize about sailing away with him on that ship to far off places and adventures. But why was he really here? My father came out of the house and yelled at me to get inside the house. He didn't seem to have noticed Jack Sparrow or the ship, I figured he hadn't even looked outside to be sure I was actually there. I quickly went inside the house. Later that night when I was lying in bed trying to sleep there was a tap at my bedroom window. I went over to the window to investigate and, much to my surprise, Jack Sparrow was outside trying to get my attention. I opened the window to see what he wanted, I was just happy to be able to see him again before he left. He said he could tell from the moment he saw me gazing out over the sea that my heart yearned for adventure, his ship was short one crew member… he wanted me to come away with him. And I wanted to go, I really wanted to go, but what would my family think? The door to my bedroom slammed open and my father was there with a furious look on his face, he said I should know better than to associate with out world pirates, and if I was to be seeing a man he would choose that man for me… and that made my decision for me. I told my father it was too late, I had already chosen, and he would not control my life… I climbed out of the window and headed for the ship with Jack Sparrow as my father behind me cursed loud enough for the entire island to hear.

*Going On a Holiday*
I was with my friend Alicia and her mother. We had a fun trip to a nearby lake all planned out. We were packing some things up, the trip we had planned included a couple nights of camping and a lot of hiking and playing in the water. It was going to be so fun. While Alicia and I were packing our stuff I wondered if Tigress and Silver might want to come. I thought about asking Alicia if that was ok, but I didn't want to feel like I was imposing by inviting two more people along. Should I ask if Tigress and Silver were even interested? No, I wanted to know if they could come before I presented the idea to them. Alicia's mother was driving the car full of stuff, Alicia was navigating, I was in the back seat. Alicia's mom couldn't drive, Alicia couldn't navigate. Instead of pulling into the car port for the night, we almost ran into my car, turned around somehow, and then somehow ended up three blocks from the house and pointed in the wrong direction. Alicia was mad at her mother, her mother was mad at her, and it ended up with Alicia's mother telling Alicia if she could do better then she should drive. Alicia took the wheel, Alicia's mom got in the back seat with me. We were heading back to the house, taking the long route since Alicia still couldn't navigate, and Alicia's mother placed her hand on my bare leg, I was wearing shorts. Much to my surprise, Alicia's mother started creeping me out when she started massaging my thigh in a sexual manner… uh… I moved her hand off, but she just put her hand back on my thigh and resumed the massaging… This was more than just a little disturbing, lesbian sexual advances from my best friend's mother?! Wtf?!

*Don't Try to Fix Me; I'm Not Broken*
I was in a typical RPG style town that can be seen in pretty much any RPG on the market. A lot of the people there were under mind control, they had been corrupted by dark energy. The enemy responsible for doing that to them was already dealt with, but the people were wandering around like zombies now. So I was going through the town and using healing spells on the people I found who had been infected with dark energy. I was just one of a team of healers doing this, it was a large town and a large number of the people were infected. It took a lot of repetitions of my healing spell songs, but finally it seemed I had found and healed the last infected person in the area of town I had to cover. Once the healing was done all of the healers were to meet back in the town square to confirm the healing process was complete. So now I returned to the town square where I found I was the first one back. It was still early, though, so I wasn't going to get concerned for the others until they were quite a bit later. Soon enough they started filtering back in.

All of us were now talking to each other about how the healing process had gone and how many people we had healed. In spite of being the quickest back to the town square, it also turned out that I had healed the most people. This had been decided on purpose since apparently they all thought quite highly of my healing abilities. We were all talking when one of the healers, a young woman, took a closer look at me. She looked both shocked and worried at the same time, she said I should have mentioned I had been infected. I asked what she was talking about, I wasn't infected with anything. She said she could see dark energy inside me which I had surely gotten from being around so many infected people. She said they shouldn't have put such a large amount of the load on me, it was apparently too much since I was now infected with dark energy. I told her I wasn't infected, I was fine. The dark energy inside me was stable and completely under control, it wasn't a threat to anyone. The other healers didn't seem to understand that or maybe they thought it was impossible to control dark energy, I used to think controlling dark energy was impossible, because now they started doing healing spells on me. Their healing energy was deliberately trying to purge the dark energy out of me, which I didn't really want, but I figured I could get more. Then their healing spells were making my dark energy go unstable, which was not good, so I couldn't let that continue. I told them to stop it, they weren't listening to me and only intensified their healing attempts. I focused on creating a force field to block their healing spells, and they all looked at me as if I was crazy. I told them to stop trying to fix me; I'm not broken! I told them I control my dark energy, not the other way around!

After tossing and turning for what seemed like forever I finally sat up in bed, rubbing my tired eyes. Why was I unable to fall asleep? Normally I don't have any difficulty falling asleep, but this was clearly going to be one of those nights where I wasn't going to heading back into my dreams. Considering that I'd made plans to go back to find Dragor and finish the task of healing him. Well, that obviously wasn't going to happen tonight unless I managed to find a way to get back to sleep soon. Feeling kind of hungry, I left my room and went to the kitchen without turning on any lights. What I found in the refrigerator made me start drooling…

it was a chocolate cake! It looked like one of the most delicious chocolate cakes I have ever seen, dark chocolate cake with chocolate icing and slivers of dark chocolate on top of the cake, a ring of strawberries around the edge of the cake. Being hungry, I figured no one would notice if there was an extra sliver of the cake missing… I cut myself a thick slice of cake and happily ate it. Only then did I realize the slice of cake I had taken was extremely obvious to anyone who took even a fleeting look at it. I was trying to figure out some way to cover my tracks when it occurred to me that I could possibly be dreaming. I did a RC and discovered that this was definitely the case. Since I was in a dream anyway, I went back to the refrigerator and ate the rest of the cake.

Feeling like a pig now, I thought about my other goals for the night. Oh, yeah! I wanted to find Dragor and try again to heal him. With the intent to locate him, I focused on opening a portal and went through it. I stepped from the portal to find myself beside a very familiar looking cave; it was the same cave where I had found Dragor the first time! I hadn't thought there was a chance Dragor would be in the same place as I had found him before… Well, since I had been there before I knew exactly where I needed to go. When I reached the large chamber in at the end of the entry passage I found the same three people there. This time, however, Dragor was walking in front of the other two who were sitting in some big chairs. It was obvious that Dragor was angry at his two companions, he was pacing back and forth and telling them they had better get off their asses and do what he told them before he got really angry. The other two seemed a bit nervous over the threat, but not enough to actually do much… that is they didn't seem to want to do much until they looked behind Dragor and saw me. When he saw the other two staring over at me, Dragor also turned to see I was there.

This time it was immediately apparent that none of them wanted to waste time on idle chat. The three of them attacked me on sight, firing large blasts of energy at me. Witchblade formed immediately and protected me from the power of the blast, the force of it propelled me back through the passage and out the mouth of the cave. I landed there and looked back into the cave where I saw the three of them coming, Dragor in the lead. I waited for them to approach me as I considered my options for getting Dragor on his own. There was a blur of motion as the two guys with Dragor split to my right and left and attacked me from those directions. Now was the chance… I opened a portal directly behind Dragor and charged directly at him, right into his lightning attack and tackled him right through the portal…

The portal I had opened led to an isolated location; a dead world not far from the planet I had been on when I found Dragor. I hadn't specified where the portal should go, I had just directed the type of location I had needed the portal to lead, and I had wanted it to lead somewhere that a big fight between Dragor and me would not hurt anyone else. I surveyed the surrounding area. The landscape that surrounded us was completely devoid of life. Dragor stood glaring at me, the only thing I could see in his eyes was pure hate. And yet I knew that somewhere inside of him there was a spark, a chance for his heart to be healed, a chance for him to be set free of this hate and to live his life how he chose. But he was not going to make healing him easy, it was obvious that he was going to fight it every step of the way, holding onto is hatred in the same manner a drug addict will hold onto their drugs even though those drugs are killing them. He said if I wanted to play, this would be the last game of my life.

All I saw was a blur of motion as Dragor came directly at me in a full on attack. My training with Vegeta must be doing some good, as I reflexively jumped into the air and avoided Dragor's attack, coming down on his back with a hard kick that sent him head first into the dirt where he dug a trench with his face. That didn't even phase him, though, as he did a flip back onto his feet, turning to face me at the same time. He had a smirk on his face. He said he was glad this wasn't going to be as easy as he had thought it would be with me being a mere human. He moved his hands as if he was doing a Final Flash like Vegeta on Dragonball Z, instead of an energy blast, however, a blast of lightning came out of his hands. I used Whiplash to deflect the bolts back at their source. After reflecting back in the opposite direction, however, the bolt of lightning split into two separate bolts, circled around, and hit me from behind, the result was I was knocked over and was sparking all over. Dragor, apparently thinking the attack had done more than it actually had, was laughing at me and asked if I wanted to change my mind about fighting him since he really saw no advantage to destroying an opponent as weak as me.

Ok… it was time to stop being on the defensive and go on the offensive. I had the idea that since I had attempted to heal him he would expect light energy attacks and know how to block them. I thought maybe he wouldn't expect the dark energy techniques I have modeled after Alex Mercer on Prototype…

I had the song Phantom Lord by Metallica playing, but more because it helps me get more energy than because I was using it to focus a spell. I selected Alex Mercer's spike attack, sending dark energy into the ground to have it erupt right under Dracor in the form of razor spikes. Dragor responded instantly, jumping into the air, clear of the spikes while laughing. A bit more dark energy… and a blast of dark energy lightning came from the tip of each of the spikes, centered in on Dragor. Apparently he wasn't ready for that one, as he failed to get out of the way as the dark energy lightning wrapped around him and pulled him into the ground hard as the spikes retracted. So now Dragor was even more pissed off and on his back in the middle of a small crater.

But I also saw that the dark energy inside Dragor was beginning to become more unstable as he had tried to absorb some of the energy in the lightning attack I had just hit him with. With it being unstable, there would be a better chance to draw some of it out. So I switched from Phantom Lord to Silver and Cold by AFI (Your sins in to me, my beautiful one…). The effect of this healing song was to pull quantities of dark energy directly out of Dragor and into me. Even that wasn't as easy as it sounds… he was more than willing to relinquish some of his energy, in the form of flame attacks, sending waves of black flames in my direction. I had to redirect my healing spell, place it in conjunction with Fuel by Metallica (Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire!", to absorb all of the dark energy as it came in my direction. I was focusing on The Curse by Disturbed to try to stabilize all of that dark energy as it came it, but it was looking like it might be too much energy to stabilize all at once.

No matter how unstable my energy might be getting, Dragor's was much more unstable because he was pissed off. He erupted into a massive blast of fire powered by dark energy. The entire area around him burst into flames, flames reaching high into the sky and scorching the ground around them, burning into the surface of the planet itself to make a large crater there. I could hear Dragor inside the flames laughing maniacally, saying that there was no way he could be defeated by one as pathetic as a mere human, his full power would crush me like a gnat… he continued yelling and laughing, sounding like nothing short of a complete lunatic. The flames around him blasted into an even brighter blast which was nearly blinding to look into. Witchblade was protecting me from the force of the flames as I focused on absorbing some more of the energy…

This wasn't getting anywhere… but it did appear he was expending a large amount of his energy into all of those flames. So maybe I might have some success in using a healing spell at this point. So I focused on using the song Touch My Heart off of the Devil Hunter Yohko soundtrack. The song started playing, and the first thing I noticed was something I'm not used to seeing… it was forming a sphere of light energy around me that was blocking out the dark energy flames. I was able to approach Dragor much more easily than I had expected with the dark energy being blocked out by the sphere of light. When I got close enough to Dragor I was able to move on to the next part of the spell; a pillar of blue and white energy erupted around Dragor,

which clearly got him even more pissed off or maybe it was actually hurting him, because I could hear loud roars from within the energy pillar that I couldn't tell if they were of rage, pain, or both. The pillar of light burned bright until it had burned off all of the dark energy flames and left nothing but a huge charred crater with an unconscious Dragor in the middle of it.

I went over to Dragor, he was alive, though he looked quite disoriented from the entire ordeal. I had some unstable dark energy inside of me… so I was focusing on The Curse by Disturbed (Defying the curse that has taken hold, never surrender, I'll never be overcome!) to stabilize the dark energy inside of me. I had gotten it mostly stabilized when Dragor got up and looked at me strangely, still looking very disoriented. The song spell to use now was Of Wolf and Man (I feel I change, back to a better day… Hair stands on the back of my neck… In wildness is the preservation of the world, so seek the wolf in thyself! Shape shift nose to the wind, shape shift feeling I've been, move swift all senses clean, earth's gift, back to the meaning of wolf and man!) to change Dragor back to his true form, which is that of a blue dragon.

Dragor now had the form of a huge dragon, three heads, shining scales that looked like they were made out of brushed steel, breathing bolts of lighting, roaring so loud that the surrounding mountains were shaking with the sound. The entire dragon was sparking, an electric dragon, it was an awesome sight to see. The dragon finally calmed down and looked directly at me with its middle head, now the dragon had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen…

Dragor made a snorting sound in my direction before flapping his massive wings and taking flight into the sky and disappearing through a portal that appeared there. He had just disappeared from sight when everything around me faded and I woke.

I rolled over and got out of bed. The darkness in the room made it impossible to even see my own hand in front of my face. How could it be that dark? I got out of bed and groped my way through the darkness. The room seemed to go on forever. Far beyond where my bedroom door should have been I was still going. This was clearly not normal. I decided to do a RC, and found out that I was dreaming.

I summoned a light so I could see the room I was in. Surprisingly enough, the room turned out to be my bedroom. I wondered how I had been walking forever and still not have left my room. That didn't really matter any longer. I looked around the room, trying to remember my goals. The book from the Akashic Records was sitting on my dresser. I remembered my encounter with the evil sorcerer that seemed to live inside the book. He had said he was bound to the book, and had shown clear hatred for all living things and a definite desire to get out of the book. He had said in no uncertain terms that if he had not been bound to the book he would have wanted to kill me on sight just for having light energy in me. I had not seen a single thing about him that I liked. Anything he could possibly have to teach wasn't something I wanted to learn. So instead of returning to the book I wanted to lock it back up and send it back where it came from, or even better, to a place it would never be found.

I picked the book up off of the dresser and lied it down on my bed. It seemed completely harmless now. There was no sign of the evil contained within. Nothing on the book that could betray that it was anything other than an ordinary antique book. I had a thought in the back of my mind that maybe finding the evil sorcerer had nothing to do with the book… maybe an evil entity had seen me trying to use the book and had teleported me elsewhere to try to use me. Maybe if I was to open the book now there wouldn't be any problem with getting the information out of it. Maybe… maybe… maybe… No… that was way too many maybes. Something about that book intended to get me to go into it again, no doubt the power of that damned sorcerer. No way could he be trusted.

The locks on the book hung open. They looked simple enough to seal again. I tried to lock the book closed. It wouldn't stay. I would fasten the lock just to have it come open again on its own. Why was that happening? That seemed like a bad sign, like the thing inside had already started the process of getting itself out. I wasn't sure how powerful that sorcerer was, but there was no way that having him get out could be considered a good thing. I tried a few more times to make the book stay sealed closed. Those ideas included different energy flows, including the one that had caused it to open and the inverse of the one that had caused it to open. Nothing worked. Maybe I would have to ask someone about this. I thought it seemed really retarded that I had opened the book and now I couldn't lock it again. I knew it would be a stupid move to go back into the book and end up releasing the sorcerer, but had I already done something incredibly stupid? If I had, then I would have to set it right. No two ways about it. That meant finding out a spell that would seal the sorcerer back into the book or into something similar or destroy the sorcerer or heal him on the off chance he had a spark somewhere in there… But maybe it wasn't down to that yet.

Not wanting to leave the book alone for some reason, I telepathically contacted Q. I told Q what the current problem was. Q responded by saying that since Sephiroth is part dark energy, I should contact Sephiroth. Q said Sephiroth would have a better understanding of the dark energy at work inside the book. So I telepathically contacted Sephiroth. I repeated to Sephiroth what the problem with the book was. Sephiroth said he would be right there. And sure enough, only a second or so had passed before Sephiroth appeared in my room. Sephiroth came over beside me on my bed and sat down, picking the book up and taking a look at it. Sephiroth turned the book over in his hands a few times, seeming a bit puzzled. He examined the lock closely, latching it closed only to have it come open again. I asked him if he knew what was wrong. He indicated to me to be quiet, looked at the book some more, then finally said that this lock would need a specific flow of energy to seal it, just as it had needed a specific flow of energy to open it. Sephiroth examined the book a bit more and then latched the lock closed. This time it stayed locked.

Sephiroth got up from my bed, looked at the book a bit longer, then he set the book down on my dresser. I asked him if he wasn't going to take it with him. He said not yet. He said he wasn't sure that book was supposed to be in the Akashic Records to begin with. I said I thought every book ever written was in there. Sephiroth shook his head. He said every piece of knowledge is kept there, but not every book ever written or created. Information on dark energy could surely be found there, including information on how to use it and control it. But if this book was created to house and imprison an evil entity, it surely was not intended to be in the Akashic Records. He said he was going to find out more about the book before deciding what to do with it. He added that since the book had not been bothered in my room so far, it seemed best not to move it. There would be a lot of evil forces that would love to get their hands on that book, either to claim its knowledge or even to release the sorcerer. And that would not be a good thing. I waited there a few more minutes, spent some time with Sephiroth. After spending some time with Sephiroth, I felt the dream slipping. I didn't even try to stop it. I had gotten to be very relaxed while I was with Sephiroth. So now everything in the dream faded to black and I woke.

Note: Several plans for this evening. First I did more training with Vegeta. Did a quick run through of the previously completed challenges, and then moved on to the maze. My reaction time is improving greatly just from the nightly training. Vegeta says if I keep this up, I will be moving and reacting so quickly that my enemy will have trouble keeping track of me. Who needs to teleport when you move as fast as that? Vegeta's time dilation allowed me to get a few hours training into less than an hour of waking life time. I am finding my memories of the training aren't as clear as they were in the beginning… Vegeta says that's fine, don't worry about it. The training needs to become instinctive, so remembering it is not important. Next I wanted to heal MoSh after he had been having some pains last night, followed by one more healing on S to make sure she is ok. And I still want to have a shared DDO dream with Tigress where we both remember it well. Still working on that one. I have decided not to go back into the Book of the Abyss again. I didn't like that sorcerer I found in there. I didn't like his attitude, I didn't like the feeling I got from him, I didn't like the fact he slipped disturbing images in with the images showing different fighting techniques, I didn't like the fact he had put down the fact that Walms restores nature by using dark energy… I didn't like anything about him. My first WILD went to training with Vegeta, this starts with my second dream.

I got out of bed and looked at the clock. The clock said it was 1:30 in the afternoon! Oh, shit! I'd intended to be up by about 10:30! I threw on my clothes and ran out of my bedroom… and into a dark room. Wtf? My bedroom door closed behind me, leaving me in total darkness. I groped around in the darkness until I felt a wall. The wall felt like panels of cold steel. This made absolutely no sense. I followed the wall to the side until I found a corner, then I followed that wall. I could hear my footsteps echoing off of the steel floor. Why couldn't I see anything? I needed light. So far this felt like being in a strange dream where nothing was right… a dream? Maybe I was dreaming… I did a RC and confirmed that fact. I became lucid.

I formed a ball of light in my hand so I would be able to see. The light reflected off of the metal surfaces of the room. The sound of my footsteps echoed. I thought about my dream goals. I wanted to go meet MoSh to take care of a couple of things. So I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world and went through it.

I found MoSh waiting on the other side of the portal. MoSh asked if I was ready to go. I said I would be ready as soon as I did a healing on MoSh for the pains he had experienced the previous night. MoSh agreed to that, so we went into his house and into one of the bedrooms. MoSh lied down on the bed and I focused on the song Voices from the Macross Plus soundtrack. Golden energy formed and flowed through MoSh as the song played through. After that was done I opened a portal to go find S. The portal opened easily and I went through, followed by MoSh.

The portal exited into a familiar scene of a church with a small graveyard beside it. Things didn't look as dark or dreary as I remembered it. It looked like a pleasant little church. Like in the photo, except it was night out. In the graveyard I saw a woman. She was beside one of the graves with some flowers. She set the flowers beside the grave and then looked over at MoSh and me. It was S. She looked over at us, she had a strange look on her face. She was the reason why I was there. I headed over to S. When I got closer to S I saw she was looking past me at MoSh. She said something about the bitch bringing her mutt mate. So apparently she was not happy to see us…

I approached S, completely ignoring her comments. I did an energy scan of her. She was contaminated by dark energy. I could take that out… I briefly remembered things going bad the last time I tried that with her… should I try it again? Yes… I knew how to be more careful. I used Silver and Cold to draw dark energy out of S. MoSh used a healing spell, putting light energy into S. This time I watched the energy I was drawing out to make sure I wasn't trying to absorb any sentient entities. I drew the dark energy out, MoSh replaced it, and I didn't see any sign of a sentient entity. The process went smoothly. When the process was over, the area looked even brighter. It actually looked quite nice. I opened a portal back to MoSh's inner world.

When we got back to MoSh's inner world, I noticed the dream seemed to be ending. Time to dilate time. I told MoSh I wanted to do something more with him if he didn't mind. He said that was cool. I figured that might not even matter… if he wasn't going to remember me. Either way, I decided to dilate time. I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, dilating time to the point where one hour in waking life equaled four hours of dream time.

Note: The dream state completely changed plots here, so I will separate the next part into a separate dream.

I woke up and sat up in my bed. I couldn't see anything in my dark room. I got out of bed and headed for the door. I tripped over something furry… with a loud hiss, the cat ran out the door. Crap… I hadn't intended to step on a kitty… I followed the running cat and found her in the living room. I turned on the light so I could see the kitty better. A cute little tortoiseshell kitty jumped into one of the chairs and curled up to go to sleep. I did a double take at seeing that. The tortoiseshell cat could be no other than my beloved Amber…

but Amber got too old and sick, we had to have her put to sleep over 3 years ago. Yet there she was, curled up on the chair and sleeping. I approached the kitty, a bit afraid she would disappear and prove to have been just an illusion. I stroked her soft fur. She no longer appeared angry from being kicked, she started purring loudly. Amber always had such a loud purr. I scooped the kitty into my arms and hugged her close to me. Nothing could make me let go of that kitty… never again. I hugged my purring kitty close to me. It was a dream come true to have her back. Wait… no… what if all of this really was just a dream… a dream that would disappear before I knew it was gone… then Amber would disappear with the dream… no, I didn't want to lose her again, my beautiful Amber... I did an RC… Definitely a dream. I held Amber close to me, I felt like I would cry…

Amber started to wiggle. She wanted to go. I set her on the floor and she rubbed around my legs a few times before going into the other room where the cat food is. I could hear her eating in there. It seemed so unfair that I had to lose her again… Now to get my mind off of that and onto one of my dream goals. Open and read some of the contents of that locked book I found in the Akashic Records. I went into my bedroom and found the book on my dresser. I took the book and lied it on the bed. I undid the lock, the lock opened easily. I had already figured out the lock earlier, though I no longer remembered how the lock had opened. I opened the book to the beginning and looked inside. The pages felt like parchment under my hands. There was such detail on the book for a dream… such beautiful detail. I admired the leather cover and the pages inside right down to the fact they were completely blank. I flipped through some more pages in the book. Blank, blank, blank… I couldn't find a single line of text or a single picture in the entire book! So how could that help me with anything? Completely annoyed, I slammed the book closed. This sucked. All that trouble to get into the book for absolutely nothing. So I would do something else during this dream. There was still time left… and I hadn't yet dilated time, so I could make it even longer. So what would I do next?

When I reached the door I got a strong feeling that I should turn around and go back to the book. Something about the book pulled at my mind, insisted that I return. I walked back over to the bed and sat down. I had a very strong feeling guiding me to pick up the book and open it again. But how could a blank book help me any? It couldn't help. The insistent feeling continued. The urging, the pull. This feeling could not be denied. I had to open the book. I lied the book on my bed again and opened it up to some random point in the middle. The blank pages stared back at me as if taunting me with their mystery. I reached out and touched the page of the book, felt the parchment. The parchment felt like liquid now… like it wasn't quite solid. My hand sank into the liquid, and then I felt myself falling… falling… and everything faded to black before a whole new location came into view…

I surveyed my new surroundings. I floated down to what looked like a stone platform floating in the middle of an endless abyss… weird place. Purple clouds or something filled the abyss, but that only made it look emptier. The large stone platform floated in the abyss without any obvious means of support. I floated down and landed gently on the large stone platform. I looked across the platform, which looked to be about the size of a few football fields… not a small place. A figure stood at the far side of the platform. I could not tell who he was. I moved closer to the figure, the figure did not respond to my presence at all. The figure could have been a statue if it wasn't for the subtle movements I noticed as he shifted his position. I approached slowly.

"Get on with it, will you?" the man said, "Do I look like I have all night? Come over here and tell me what you are doing with a book about dark energy. You don't look like a dark energy being… I see way too much of that disgusting light stuff in you. So tell me what you're after and make it quick, I have little patience for those of your kind."

"Those of my kind?" I asked.

"Light entities," the man responded in an irritated manner, "If I had not been bound to this book you would already be dead, fool. Now either tell me what you want here or go away!"

So he didn't like light energy. I wondered what he would think of Walms. I saw the man looking at me with an intense star that made it look like he could peer right into my mind.

"I have seen this person you are referring to as Walms…" the man said with obvious disdain, "I can see much of what goes on in the worlds, I just can't participate. I saw your Walms using dark energy to restore a forest." He scoffed, "There are those who don't realize dark energy is not meant to create life, it is meant to destroy life. Using dark energy to plant flowers… such a waste. Now, for the last time, why are you here?!"

I pushed thoughts of Walms out of my mind, and focused on creating a mental shield to keep this guy out of my thoughts. I saw the annoyance on his face when I did that. I told the man that I wanted to control the dark energy. When I said that, he seemed to be a bit more interested. He said most of my kind only seek to destroy dark energy, and all who use it. I told him I was no longer that blind, dark energy can't be destroyed, if it did that would destroy the balance of the reality. He snorted at that. He said if I want to use dark energy I would have to get rid of that light crap I have right now. I said no, I would have both. He looked a bit surprised, but got an interesting smirk.

"So you seek to live in both the dark and the light at the same time? You would dwell in the world of twilight?" the man was asking me, "Not just anyone can control both the dark and the light simultaneously. Mostly one has to select between the two, at least for their primary energy. Choose either dark or light." He looked at me as if evaluating something about me. His gaze was so intense I could feel him probing over me… I reinforced my mental shield to be sure he could not see my thoughts again. "But yes, it looks like you might just be able to do it… as long as the process doesn't drive you mad."

"I will control both," I said, trying to sound confident. I had the feeling it would be an error to display any form of weakness to this man. I asked him who he was.

"I am the darkness," he said, "I am the destroyer of worlds, I am the bringer of night. My name would mean nothing to you, though, human. If I was free right now I would rend your soul from your worthless carcass and devour it whole… you would be forever imprisoned within me, where you would experience an eternity in hell." He chuckled as if thinking of a pleasant thing. "But alas, it is not to be. I have been bound to this book and am now forced into servitude to fools like you. Teaching you how to use dark energy. There's still some fun to be had when fools who think they can control it are instead consumed by it, but not nearly enough. So if you seek my knowledge, come over here. I find some things about you amusing, but my patience for you is running thin."

I wondered if I should trust this person. Who knows what he might try if I got too close. I eyed him from my current position, wondering what the best action would be.

"Oh, for the hate of…" he said in a very impatient voice, "This cursed book won't allow me to directly harm anyone. And if I had wanted to kill you, you would have been dead long before you got even that close. Now get over here or go away. I'm not going to say that again. I might not be able to harm you, but I can refuse you my services."

I went over to the dark sorcerer. He violently and suddenly took hold of my right wrist with his left hand, and my left wrist with his right hand. It felt like his grip could break my bones. But any pain I might have felt was instantly numbed by a surge of icy cold energy. Like dry ice. The cold flowed through my body in a massive rush. I felt instantly both drained and energized. Images filled my mind, images of various moves that looked like Alex Mercer from Prototype… the form changing, the consuming, the tendrils, the spikes coming from the ground, the sword, the claws… and some things I didn't remember seeing at all… becoming a dark vapor, fusing with an enemy to take control of them, creating raging black flames, calling forth darklings that would do my bidding, absorbing dark energy from any source, including the darklings I had just summoned… The flurry of images passed through my mind so fast I didn't even catch all of them. The images of using dark energy powers were interspersed with disturbing images of violence, torture, and death. I didn't see all of those, either, but I saw images of a child impaled on a spike, crying and writhing in pain, darklings coming out and eating the child alive, seeming to feed more on the cries of pain than on the flesh… I knew I had missed quite a few images, both of the torture and of the powers, but then the images stopped. The dark sorcerer pushed me away from him, my legs buckled and I fell to the ground.

"Maybe I was wrong," the sorcerer laughed, "If you can't even handle that, you haven't got a chance of handling dark energy. Don't expect to be able to use those powers on your own yet… that's assuming you saw any of them… and return here in 24 hours time… if you have the backbone to take another step into darkness." I stood up, facing the dark sorcerer. I didn't want to show any sign of weakness. "Now be gone, human. We have no further business to discuss here tonight." With a flick of his hand, an invisible force sent me flying up into the air. I passed through the surface of the book and crashed into the wall of my own bedroom. Ok… that was weird… I wondered if it was wise to return there again… or if this was all a trick.