Things to Run Away From Really Fast

Notes: I'm mad at my cat because he woke me up. I was chaining those challenges like woah.

My three-step goal for the Sensei Comp is to Reality Check, use Elemental Manipulation and Teleport. I shortened that to "Check, Fire, Port" so I could memorize it yesterday, or I never would have been able to carry that list into a dream.

Onto the dreams.

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I'm driving through, across, around a series of nicely winding roads. There are some problems with traffic, but it happens. I'm just enjoying the ability to slalom through the roads and enjoy the drive.

There's something about me dating a woman.

Then I'm Tony Stark, and I've just managed to get the arc reactor removed. Apparently I was dying immediately beforehand, because I get a phone call that goes immediately to voicemail, and I hear my voicemail playing morosely -

I rush to to the old-style landline and pick it up like a hot potato. "Pepper!" I say, "I was just going to call you!"

So Pepper's here, along with the other woman I was dating. At this point, I'm no longer Tony Stark, but I am some rich guy who needs to have kids to... um... leave things to. (It made sense at the time; let's just say that if I was playing as myself, this idea would really freak me out.)

Neither of the two women that I am now dating want to have kids, so I'm talking to a third woman who my family had an arranged marriage thing going on with. All four of us are sitting in a guest bedroom, hashing out legal details. The arranged marriage woman thinks that I should actually get married to one of the other two women because I'm romantically involved with them, but Pepper points out that marriage is actually a protection for the kids.

---

(I wake up briefly and attempt to WILD. It doesn't work, but the dream goes lucid later on.)

My point of view is following a sky train car suspended from cables over a vast forest. Inside the train car are dozens of sloths, and they're crawling all over the inside and outside of the suspended car.

Now I'm inside a building in a downtown area, stone and brick and lots of windows. My hands are sore because I've been climbing the indoor jungle gym using only my index fingers... because that's what sloths do?

There are fireworks outside and I hurry over to a window to watch them with the three people I'm here with: my mom, a girl from my childhood who died a few years ago, and her mom as well. The fireworks aren't super extravagant, but they're inside the city over the square, so it's pretty cool to see.

Back inside the building on the lower floor, there's a grocery store. A villain—possessed Harry Dresden?—is threatening the people there.

I've wandered back inside, and while the grocery store is on the ground floor, I'm on the second floor despite having just walked in from the square. I remember the Sensei Comp, and think about how I've always had trouble phasing through a floor, even though walls aren't that hard.

I drop to all fours and focus on pushing my hands through the hardwood floor. Three inches down, four inches down.

I remember that in order to earn points, we do have to be lucid. OK, I think. I know I'm dreaming, I'm lucid, I'm lucid. I chant it as a mantra as I start to feel my knees sinking through the floor. I'm lucid, I'm lucid.

The floor has almost enveloped my torso and I blink -

I fly through the air and land on the floor below, coming face to face with Not Dresden. He turns from threatening the people in the store and looks at me with a wide grin. I ignore him.

Fire, fire is definitely a thing, I think to myself. Ah, reality check first. Then fire, then teleport.

"One, two three four five six," I count on my fingers. "Reality check done."

Then I throw a wall of fire at Not Dresden. He jerks back and dissipates the flame, but it's a close thing. The look on his face is something.

Also, apparently sending flames at your enemies counts as flirting.