New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

Beta 3DS
I am inside a computer store, browsing the various game titles and other assorted things I find in the aisles. I am not really seeing anything that especially catches my attention until I happen to pass by the customer service desk, at which point I see a Nintendo DS sitting there. But something isn't right about it… I look closer and see it is the not-yet-released Nintendo 3DS, which won't be available until around the end of March… but there is one, sitting right out in the open. I go over and look at it, then a customer service guy tells me to leave it alone. I tell him I just wanted to see how it looked, he says ok, he looks paranoid that someone might try to take it. I am thinking if he is that paranoid that someone would take it he shouldn't have it sitting out in the open like that where anyone who walks by could possibly grab it and be gone before he realized what they had done. I say I am interested in the Nintendo 3DS, but I didn't think they were out yet. He says they aren't, but he has a prototype for beta testing. He chuckles and says he is one of the few lucky ones, but no one is supposed to see it. He puts it down underneath the counter and then walks away. I see him off to the side a ways talking to another customer, then the customer leads him away, apparently to ask a question about one thing or another. I get down low and sneak down behind the counter, I see the 3DS there. For some reason putting it in my pocket isn't good enough… I think it will set off the alarm at the exit if I do that… so I have a boxed PC game that has enough room for the DS in there, I slit the plastic on the game just enough to slide the 3DS into it, then I start trying to work the 3DS into the box. I have not yet succeeded before I see the guy coming back, and I am forced to leave the 3DS and get out of there. Epic fail. I am annoyed, I leave the game I had planned on buying on the customer service desk and I walk out.

I find I am in a mall, and I head down the main hall a short ways before I see another computer store which I go in. I am thinking I can go ahead and buy the game here since I was dumb enough to not even buy that at the previous store. I go inside and I see another person playing on a Nintendo 3DS… more beta testing? I ask him where he got his, he said it is a beta testing prototype… great… He asks if I want in on the beta testing… I say absolutely! He asks why I wanted it, I go on for a short time about wanting to try the latest technology, and then I go off on a tangent about being a game designer… he interrupts me here and said it is mine. He pulled out a packaged Nintendo 3DS and hands it to me, he does it in the way a drug dealer might hand off their goods… he says to keep it hidden, he only had his out because he was still giving out beta models. He says he is out now, so will be more careful about letting his unit be seen. He slips his 3DS into his pocket, and indicates for me to do the same. He walks away like he has never seen me, I walk out into the main mall, I am so happy!

Corporate Takeover
I am in an office of some kind, it looks like a meeting room, and there are some people at the other end of the room talking amongst themselves. I head down towards them, I can't help but be curious as to what they are talking about. I hear that they are talking about video games, video game design, and video game publishing. I don't recognize the people there, but it feels that I know them in some way. They are so absorbed in talking amongst themselves that no one seems to notice me standing there. With a bit more of a listen, I realize they are talking about one of the games I have been thinking about releasing under the name Outer Realms Software. Then I realize they are talking about Outer Realms Software itself… they are talking about how I made it all possible to set up the framework of Outer Realms Software, and thanks to that, they are ready to begin selling games. I am about to say something when I hear some more of what they are saying… they are also talking about me. They seem to have come to an agreement that while I was key in setting up the framework of the company, I was really of no further use to Outer Realms Software… so it would be best to get rid of me as quietly as possible. One of them says it's easy enough, just change the locks after I leave work for the day. That way I won't have a chance to steal any of the game design data, software, and resources when I go. This is pissing me off, since that data and resources are there because I helped make them. It wouldn't be stealing for me to take them since it was mostly my own work. So instead of saying anything, I turn and leave the room quickly before I am seen. I return to my office and begin copying files to a portable hard drive I have… making a backup copy to the hard drive and then erasing the stuff off of the company servers. If they wanted me pushed out of my own company, well they were going to be losing all of the work I brought to the company along with me!

I have a FA in my bed at Hogwarts, the one where I am a student, and I realize it almost right away. I do a quick RC to confirm the fact I am dreaming before dressing and coming out into the dorm room with the other three girls I share a room with. Andie looks over at me and asks if I have heard what happened to Umbridge… I say no, I haven't. She says Umbridge was kicked right out of Hogwarts, sent to St. Mungo's. I ask why this happened, she says Umbridge was found with You Know Who's name written clearly on her forehead, flashing in neon colors! Without thinking about it, I say, "You mean Voldemort?" Everyone in the room is shocked that I said the name, so I briefly apologize, saying there is nothing strange about saying a name where I come from… She says that no one says You Know Who's true name, but anyway, Umbridge was wandering around the streets of Hogwarts with that written on her forehead, scaring the shit out of so many of the students and even several of the teachers. Umbridge had claimed she didn't know the writing said that, she thought the writing only announced that she was an UGLY CUNT… and that's supposed to be better somehow?

So the group of us go down to the main common room and then we all head down to the great hall for some breakfast. Dumbledore is there, and he makes an announcement about the next challenge in the Tri-School Tournament. He says things are going to be switched up a bit, the different houses will be swapping participants for this challenge alone. He says that the purpose of this is to encourage the people from different houses to get along with each other better, or at least to learn to tolerate each other enough to work together. He says each participant will be given an envelope that will say who our temporary teammate would be, and we should meet up with our partner and go over strategy for getting the task done… or at least to work out any major differences so we would not be fighting amongst ourselves when the challenge comes around. McGonagall comes down the aisles and hands Draco and me envelopes and then immediately moves on. Draco looks at his envelope briefly and says this is a bunch of shit, he doesn't want to work with a loser from one of the other houses. He opens his envelope and then is clearly not happy with what it says… he throws the paper down in front of me and asks if I can believe they expect him to work with Potter? I look at the paper and see that it says "HARRY POTTER" on it. I look at my paper, and I see that it says "HERMIONE GRANGER, ROBERT ******" on it. I'll be working with MoSh! Yay! I am quite happy with the situation, though right now Draco is bitching all over the place, so I am actually quite glad when breakfast ends and I have an excuse to avoid Draco's bitching for a while.

So now I head out into the halls, following after MoSh, because I want to meet up with him and talk to him for a while. I catch up with him when he is with Hermione, Harry, and Ron. Apparently Ron had decided to speak up again after spending quite some time not speaking to anyone. He bitching about not wanting Hermione and MoSh and Harry to all be working with those rotten Slytherins… Hermione is getting mad at him for talking that way… Harry is bitching about having to work with Draco… MoSh says everything will work out fine, he trusts me, and Hermione can also. Harry says that makes them both better off than he is. MoSh says nothing is going to happen with Harry, either, he says I have had more than enough time to get through to him. Harry asks what MoSh is talking about, MoSh asks if Harry hadn't noticed there hadn't been nearly as much trouble with Draco as there had been in the past, well, that was due to my influence. Harry says MoSh is nuts if he thinks that will make any difference, so great, this next challenge is going to be a disaster… MoSh says he trusts me to make sure nothing happens, Ron says it will be lucky if Harry comes out of it alive. Hermione tells Ron to shut up, there's no need to think that way. She says Draco might be a jerk, but he's not going to try to get anyone killed. Ron says of course he will, he's a death eater, so of course he'd be willing to get someone killed. Look what his father did, after all… his father who is still out there somewhere, having somehow managed to escape from Azkaban, which no one has ever done before… he says they should just lock every Slytherin up in Azkaban right now and save themselves a lot of trouble. Everyone gets mad at him, and he ends up saying fine, if they all want to be out in a dangerous challenge with Slytherins waiting to stab them in the back… he doesn't care. Ron storms off down the hall. Harry looks at MoSh and asks if he really thinks Draco will behave differently. MoSh says yes, he does, besides… Ron was definitely overacting by saying someone would be killed. He said the worst to happen would be Draco would make Harry look like a complete idiot.

I finally join the group, though I feel like I shouldn't have been eavesdropping, and MoSh welcomes me there. We talk a bit about possible strategies for the challenge, I say I am really glad to be working with MoSh. Harry is bitching about having to work with Draco, but not because he thinks Draco is out to kill anyone, just because he figures Draco will be exceedingly annoying and they won't have a chance of doing well in the challenge if they have to work together. I tell Harry that I'll see if I can get Draco to behave himself, after all, it's just for one challenge after all… it's not like the two of them have to be best friends forever. Harry says that's not going to happen. I am about to say something else when a girl I don't recognize comes over to us, she is eyeing MoSh very closely. I wonder where Asuka is, and I am thinking Asuka wouldn't like the way this woman is eyeing MoSh. She looks him over as if appraising him, I am wondering what she is doing. I ask her what she is doing, but she just ignores me completely. After examining MoSh head to foot for a bit longer, she says we all need healing… healing for what? She says we need a healing hug, I am still not sure what she is talking about… then she starts pulling everyone into a group hug. I go into the hug, trying to see if I can tell anything about her through her energy. I don't see anything hostile about her energy, but the entire situation seems really strange. I hear her whispering something to MoSh about meeting alone with him… um… Asuka definitely wouldn't like this… Speaking of Asuka, where is she? I think maybe I should find Asuka. So I pull free of the group hug and head down the hall and around a corner where I open a portal while focusing on getting to Asuka.

On the other side of the portal I am in MoSh's inner world, I look around, and everything looks completely normal. I look around in the house a bit and I finally find Asuka in a garden out back tending to some beautiful flowers. She seems surprised to see me there, I ask if everything is ok. She says yes, everything is fine, why do I ask? I said I was just surprised she wasn't at Hogwarts with MoSh, she says she had been with the Teshnon masters, they had wanted her there to train. And after that she wanted to be here in the garden with her flowers, after all she was supposed to get some meditation in. I scan her energy to make sure it looks ok, to make sure it's really Asuka… it definitely is Asuka, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong. I say ok, I was just a bit concerned since it seems she is always getting attacked by someone, so I am glad everything is ok. She smiles at me, and I think she is saying something, but I wake up.

Plans: My plans tonight include returning to one or both if the Harry Potter worlds I have been visiting on a regular basis. I also want to take a shot at one or both of the Lucidity Power Trial Club tasks... the one where there is a giant tree draining the life energy of a planet and the one where I have to challenge Sonic to a footrace. With these goals in mind, I fell asleep with my light / sound machine and slipped into a WILD.

I am in a city of some kind, though it isn't really like any city I have seen before. I look around at the buildings, which all look rather futuristic, though they still look a lot like normal buildings in cities in waking life. There are many graceful paths connecting the buildings, with transport pods moving along those paths. I look around and see that there are some others there with me, I spot Sonic the Hedgehog from the video game series… he is talking to a couple of others, including Tails and Amy. Shadow is off to the side a ways doing a very good imitation of Vegeta, with his arms folded and looking in the opposite direction as if he is no more interested in Sonic than he is in a small bug that is flying around Sonic's head. I go over to Sonic and get his attention, he looks over at me with a slightly puzzled but not unfriendly look on his face. I tell him I want to challenge him to a race, he seems to think I am joking, but I say no, I am completely serious… I want to challenge him to a race. He finally sees that I am serious, so he accepts my challenge. So we get a map of the area, agree on a race course, agree that there is no actual prize for winning the race since it is just a friendly challenge, and we get set up at the starting line. There is a gunshot, and the race begins!

As the starting gun fires, Sonic launches off the starting line like a rocket, immediately taking a lead. I am using an archetype from Alex Mercer on the Prototype game (no, there were no claws or blades involved), using the fact he can run extremely fast. So I take off after Sonic, speeding up to very high speeds. The course is going down a regular street, there are cars parked along it, which I just jump over as I come to them, the speed I am running at makes that very easy to do. Up ahead I see there is a building in the way, one course goes the long way around the building, but I see that the short way would be to go over the building. Since I am using Alex Mercer as an archetype, I run right up the side of the building, over the top of it, and drop down on the other side. That turns out to be a decent shortcut, and now I can see Sonic up ahead again, or at least I can see his dust cloud… I focus on speeding up even more, but I find myself almost flying without even meaning to, and I have to re-focus on making sure I am still running and not flying. Up ahead is a tall building with a path that spirals up inside it, it leads to the pathways in the air. Sonic runs up inside, I run up the building side, and I am able to jump onto the path right behind Sonic. He looks back and sees me, gives me a small smile, then takes off again… We are now running along the paths in the sky, both of us are jumping over the transport pods that are moving along it. I am going as fast as I can, and even though I am dreaming, I remember why I hate running… but at least I'm not losing ground… Sonic jumps off of the paths to a hill not far off to the right, I follow him, and now we are running through a forest.

I see Sonic turn off to the right, but the finish line is straight ahead… so why not go in a straight line? I come face-to-face with the reason, there is a tall cliff blocking my way… well, I have no choice but to run up it ala Alex Mercer… I am able to do that for a ways, then there is an outcropping hanging out over me… Even Alex can't run upside down… so I find hand holds to make my way back out to the vertical part, but I am losing a lot of time here. With some more painfully slow climbing and then a bit more running vertically, or nearly vertically, I am at the top of the cliff. Sonic is coming from my right, moving at top speed. The finish line is up ahead, so it is down to a final sprint. Both of us are giving it all we got, I am thinking I might pass out before crossing the finish line… I'm used to flying fast… or teleporting… anything but running… Sonic and I cross the finish line at almost the exact same time. There is a judge at the finish line, who somehow saw us clearly enough to announce I beat Sonic by seven tenths of a second.

I jump in the air, happy I won, and I face plant right at the feet of Tails, who had been following along and rooting for Sonic. He looks down at me and asks if I am ok… I say I am, and I get to my tired feet… but my legs don't want to support me, I think they have decided to shut down. So I sit down. Sonic comes over and congratulates me on winning, he says he can run up paths that are nearly vertical, but he has never seen someone run up a completely vertical surface. I tell him I learned it from Alex Mercer, I say that without even thinking about the fact Sonic wouldn't have a clue who Alex Mercer is… I tell him he sure ran a good race, if it had been much longer, I think I would have run out of steam. Sonic says he wants to meet this Alex Mercer, running up vertical surfaces would be very useful at times. I say no, he doesn't want to meet Alex Mercer… I got that ability from Alex, but beyond that he is rather psychotic and tends to slice people in half as quick as look at them. Sonic looks quite shocked at that, but before he can say anything else, I wake up.

Plans: This is my first night of the new year, though I don't have any special plans going on for tonight. This may or may not have contributed to the fact I have only a couple fragments of non-lucid dreams to post, which while these dreams are insignificant and dumb, I am journaling them to stay in the habit of remembering and journaling.

Free the Holiday
I am in an office, this is where I work, and there is an office meeting going on right now. I look around the room and see the other people I work with, and also the boss is in there addressing all of us. I am sitting at a computer, working on finishing up a system backup of one of the many servers I am responsible for. I am in the data center of a hospital working as a computer operator, which means I am also responsible for answering phones and responding to issues that users throughout the hospital may have… and this is the part I hate. And it is because of this that I am completely miserable right now, sitting there at the computer, looking at the phone, actually afraid that it could ring at any moment. And while the whole team is present in the office, I am the one currently on duty, so if the phone rings I will have to answer it. While I am afraid of the phone ringing, the boss is talking about an upcoming holiday, saying an operator will have to be on duty for the holiday, and we are taking turns covering holidays so no one person is forced to work on all of the weekends. He is now announcing the person who will have to work on the upcoming holiday, and he indicates a black man who I know works the same shift I have… so at least I won't have to work that holiday. He is getting mad, however, saying that since I just started work here I should have to work for the holiday instead of him. The boss isn't pleased with the other man's attitude, he says the holiday schedule is based on taking turns, it's not based on seniority, and it is his turn now, so he will work on the holiday. I feel some degree of relief that at least I won't have to work on the holiday.

Poison Desert
I am out in the desert around my house, it is sunny out, though it isn't especially hot. I decide to take a shortcut through some open desert so that I can get home a bit quicker, so I follow a trail I know off into the desert. It is a fairly long trail, and I haven't really explored the entire area, so this will be a first for me. I come to a place where there is a large sewer tunnel entrance, and there is a small warehouse type building next to that with some equipment and stuff in it that is used in the sewer system. I think it is odd that there aren't any roads leading to the warehouse, so I decide to investigate. I go over and look into a window, where I see many barrels of toxic waste… or I am assuming they are toxic due to the radiation symbols all over them as well as the skulls and crossbones. One of them is being emptied into the sewer system, and that seems like a really bad thing, so I think I need to get some evidence and turn these idiots in. I am considering breaking into the place when I see there are people in there, so I had better wait until there aren't any people there. I move a bit away from the building and then I notice there is someone coming out… shit… I do a couple stretches on my legs and then I take off down the trail jogging as if nothing is wrong at all, as if I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. The man is yelling to get my attention, I don't want to stop because he might be suspicious, so I keep going, pretending I haven't heard him. As I get out of sight, I put my earphones in figuring if he catches up and says something I can say I had my music turned up too loud. Would that work? No clue. I continue, moving at a good speed, until I finally reach a main road. I head down the street towards my house, which isn't the house I currently live it, it is the house I lived in previously, and I haven't lived there for about 10 years…

12/29/10 Happy Birthday MoSh!
Plans: MoSh wants to have a party tonight, I don't really feel up to it, but I will attend because it is for MoSh's birthday and I don't want to miss that. So now I am trying to think of a gift to get MoSh... Q has found some interesting information for Asuka if she will trust in it to work... basically it's a symbiant, it maintains a steady energy flow, in exchange it feeds off of a small portion of that energy to live. The purpose of the symbiant is to keep the host from losing control of their energy. And before that happens, Q is going to remove Walms' AoH since Asuka seems so paranoid about it…

Happy Birthday, MoSh! The Cake Has an Asuka Filling!
I am at a party, I look around and see quite a few different people around, though I don't immediately recognize any of them. I am lucid, though I don't remember how I became lucid. I remember the purpose of the party… it's to celebrate MoSh's birthday, so now I am looking for the birthday boy. I make my way through the party, there is music playing but I don't recognize the band, so I keep looking after I grab a Coke off of a table with various refreshments. I take a drink and discover it's a Coke and rum, but that's not a bad thing for me. I finally find MoSh, he is talking to a couple of people, I think one of them might be Nomad, though I don't actually get a chance to look really closely at him before he disappears. I get MoSh's attention, and I tell him I have brought him a big 'ol cake! I don't actually have the cake yet, but I figure that isn't a problem since it is a dream. I summon up a massive cake… what a cake…

there are multiple tiers and cupcakes around it and candles and it's brightly colored… and it wishes MoSh a "Happy Birthday" in big letters. It is like the cake here, but there aren't the gifts on top, instead it has a third tier. I summon that cake up and say "Happy Birthday" to MoSh as I present him with the cake. He looks at it, but before he even has a chance to respond, Asuka comes jumping out of the cake and lands right in front of him, completely covered with cake and laughing like a school girl. My cake… I look at the ruins of my cake all over the ground now, or at least part of it is on the ground… the rest of it is on Asuka… Asuka suggests MoSh eat the cake off of her, and adds that she is not wearing anything underneath… ok, that is definitely TMI. I form the mess back into the original cake, except for the part on Asuka… I would prefer to have a piece of cake that has NOT been in contact with Asuka's ass… With that thought in mind, I am finding I have lost my appetite… so I just go back to the beverage table and grab another Coke and rum.

Puff the Magic Dragon
I am at school, I am running late for class. The problem is that I am also hungry, and I don't really have time to stop to get something to eat. So I run into the cafeteria and grab the quickest thing I can, which turns out to be a glazed donut and a raspberry Danish, and then I run straight to class without even stopping to pay… though I also notice that no one seems to care if I walk off with the food. Run off is more accurate, however, as I am late for class and I run down the hall so fast I run right past my classroom door. I have to skid to a stop and go back to the door, then I enter and take one of the few empty seats left in the room. I set my backpack down beside my desk and reach inside to get out my book. I also find I have a couple stuffed animals in there, one of them is a dragon. I set the dragon up under my desk, at my feet, so I can look down and see it looking back up at me. It's cute, and that distracts me from the rude comments that seem to be coming from all around me. Comments about why did I even bother coming, comments about those who are close to me not wanting to be that close to me, comments about me being disgusting…

The instructor continues droning on, not paying any attention to the fact I came in late, and I am trying to catch up with what is being said. I take a bite of my donut, but when I lift it up to take a bite, everyone stares at me as if they are angry that I would even consider eating something in there. So I hide the donut back under my desk again and just take covert little bites. I notice that the donut isn't getting eaten up… it seems to be getting bigger somehow, and soon the donut is approximately the size of a pool life preserver ring… I can't eat all that! I pull off a piece and eat it, then I pull off another piece and feed it to the stuffed dragon under my desk. I hear a couple people behind me, a couple of guys, laughing loudly that I am feeding donuts to a stuffed animal, how retarded is that? I ignore them as best as I can, and I continue eating the donut and feeding the dragon. Strangely enough, the pieces of donut I am giving the dragon are disappearing, actually being eaten! The idiots behind me continue laughing until the dragon actually comes to life, flies out from under my desk, and bathes both of them in a blast of fire. The fire doesn't prove lethal, but it does leave them with soot blackened faces and no hair remaining on their heads…

A Friend for Asuka
Note: MoSh suggested that, to help Asuka learn to be more confident in controlling her own powers so that she will be willing to actually defend herself, maybe we should seek out a trainer or trainers that can help her with her specific issue - which seems to be a fear of losing control. Q took this task on, and he discovered there is a group of people living in a world, they live a lot like monks tend to live… they are called the Teshnons, and their focus in life is training, learning, and achieving balance with all things. There was once a major obstacle to the peace they seek, however. They have a considerable power level which they focus into their fighting style, which they will use when necessary to defend themselves and maintain peace. The problem was that many of them found it difficult to keep control of that power, they found when in a fighting situation, even just training, they could lose control, so they were considering banning one of their most valued traditions due to the fact that many of them would lose control of the powers they were trying to use only for protection, only when absolutely necessary.

Then disaster struck, or they thought it was disaster at the time… an alien race, called the Nes'tulk, came to their world. The Nes'tulk are a parasitic race that latch onto another species, implant themselves in their host much like a Goa'uld, and they drain the host's energy to replenish their own. When they drain all of the host's energy, they break out and seek another host. So the Teshnons and the Nes'tulks were at war for a while until it was discovered that many of the Nes-Tulks didn't really want to harm their hosts, they just wanted to survive… but they were forced to drain as much energy as possible from the host, as quickly as possible, or the host would fight them off and kill them. Once it was discovered that many Nes'tulks would prefer peace, the Teshnons and the peaceful Nes'tulks defeated the war loving Nes'tulks and then a truce was called. Each Teshnon would accept one Nes'tulk as a symbiant, the Nes'tulk could implant itself in its Teshnon host, and take what energy it needs to survive… which the average Teshnon can easily afford to provide without any harm to themselves. In return, the Nes'tulk will regulate the flow of the Teshnon's energy so that it is no longer a problem for any of the Teshnons to keep control of their power. This has remained a mutually beneficial arrangement for the past 150 years in their world. Enough of the background info… on with the dream.

The Teshnons and the Nes'tulks
I am in MoSh's inner world, and I am there with Asuka and MoSh, and I am once again lucid even though I am not sure when or how I became lucid. It looks like the party is over, I remember there being a party there earlier for MoSh's birthday… and now MoSh and Asuka are looking at me expectantly as if I am supposed to do something… but I am not sure what they are looking for me to do. Finally, Q appears next to me and says he will take all of us to see the Teshnon masters, to see if they will be willing to accept Asuka as a pupil. If they accept Asuka as a pupil, she will be given a Nes'tulk symbiant, and the Teshnon masters will train Asuka to fight while keeping full control over her power with the assistance of the Nes'tulk symbiant. He says before anything is to be done, of course, Asuka, the Teshnon master who is to train Asuka, and the Nes'tulk who is to be her symbiant will all have to be in agreement that this is the course they want to take. I notice that Asuka looks a bit skeptical, but Q adds that he thinks everyone should meet each other before anyone makes any final decisions, just meet and talk things over, then if anyone is uncomfortable with the arrangement in any way, we look for another potential trainer. He says that while he feels the Teshnon masters would be ideal to train Asuka and the Nes'tulk is just what she needs to keep control, there are many other trainers and techniques out there to explore. He asks Asuka if she will agree to meet with the Teshnon masters, she pauses, then says she will meet with them, as long as MoSh comes along.

Asuka says that before we go to meet anyone, she still wants to get rid of Walms' AoH that is inside her, and those damned strings that could be used to control her power… the last thing she wants is for Walms to have access to control her powers whenever he decided he was especially annoyed at her. Q says he looked at the control strings carefully, and there is no sign of any foul play associated with them… they do what Walms said they do, nothing more, nothing less. Additionally, no one could take those control strings without Asuka's permission… so unless she gave Walms permission to take them back, it wasn't going to happen. And as for the AoH itself, there is no harm in that, either… So Asuka and Q spend a brief time arguing about whether the AoH and control strings are meant to cause harm to her, she says after all, Walms had already tried to kill her once. Q gets sarcastic at this point and says sure, whenever he really wants to kill someone he poisons them and then contacts friends of that person and tells them how to cure it. Q rolls his eyes and has a look on his face similar to the look I've seen on Q in the Star Trek series when he is trying to get a particularly obvious piece of information to become obvious to a particularly dense and cranky Piccard.

Asuka looks impatient, and apparently Q decides it's not worth arguing about. He says he will remove the control strings and the AoH, he adds that to be honest, he's not sure how the AoH would interact with the Nes'tulk symbiant. He says that the removal of the AoH isn't the most pleasant procedure, so a very intricate system would have to be set up to do it… first he will need a ????? (I didn't understand the word, so I can't type it.) and a ????? so they could alter Asuka's energy flow to match the frequency of the ????? at which point they could… by now Asuka is just staring at Q with a blank look on her face… Q continues, he says they can invert the ????? of the control strings themselves in order to ????? a ????? to the AoH and then… RIP! While Q had been talking, he had been fiddling with some energy strings of some kind… apparently the control strings… and now he gives a sharp pull on them, which pulls something out of Asuka, leaving a wound just above her solar plexus. Q contains the thing he pulled out in an energy sphere and puts it away. MoSh is mad, he asks why Q had to do that, Q says sometimes it is just easier to pull a Band-Aid off in one quick tug rather than try to take it off gently. He heals the wound and asks if everyone is ready to go. MoSh says Q could have at least warned Asuka, but Asuka says it's ok, she prefers that it is taken out quickly… now it's gone.

So Q now takes all of us to the Teshnon masters' temple, which is where the masters live and train the various Teshnon pupils once the pupil is of age to receive a Nes'tulk symbiant. We go to meet one of the Teshnon masters, he is a very old man indeed, though he also looks very strong. He says they are a peaceful people, they are focused on martial arts, energy control, and seek to achieve both inner and outer peace with all things. We all talk for a while, the talking and information seems to put Asuka a bit more at ease. The Teshnon finally says he thinks Asuka would be an excellent candidate for their training, and even now they have a couple young Nes'tulks that are reaching the age that they will need a host. MoSh questions that if they are young, will they know how to keep Asuka's powers under control… The Teshnon master says of course, that is actually a natural instinct of theirs, and by the time a young Nes'tulk is ready for a host they are more than capable of keeping any energy flow stable and under control. So at this point I think things are settled… until the Teshnon master says something about setting up Asuka's quarters there at the temple. Asuka says she won't be living there, but the Teshnon master says she must stay with them if she wants to get the most from her training. MoSh also doesn't like the idea of Asuka being away from him. I think that might be a deal breaker, but then I remember the connection between MoSh's inner world and Hogwarts… and I suggest setting up a similar connection to the Teshnon masters' temple. Everyone is quiet for a bit, and I wonder if maybe I said something wrong… but finally the Teshnon master says that would be acceptable for their part, as long as Asuka can focus on her training and the gateway is kept secure. Q says it would have to be secure. So finally everyone is in agreement on a plan, all I can do is hope they will be able to make this one work.

12/28/10 A Cause to Fight
Plans: I fell asleep with plans of going to MoSh's inner world to check and make sure Asuka is ok, he had a dream last night that indicated she might be infected with unstable energy yet again… We also seem to have a new idea to help Asuka get control of her energy so she will be willing to fight back when she is attacked, it involves using the control strings Walms gave her that she should be able to use to control her energy herself… but she refuses to do that… so the plan involves someone else using those so she can go ahead and fight, knowing someone she can trust is right there to make sure nothing gets out of control. The only catch is she has to allow someone else to have control of those strings, and then she has to go ahead and fight, trusting that the person with the control strings will make sure nothing goes wrong. I wish I could be a bit more optimistic about the chances of this working…

I am in MoSh's inner world, and I am lucid. This isn't exactly a WILD, I just seem to have started the dream in a lucid state, so I don't take the time to question the situation. I go over to MoSh's house and knock on the door, after a short pause, the door opens and I see MoSh at the door. He invites me in, though he doesn't look to be in a particularly cheerful mood, he says Asuka doesn't seem too pleased about the idea of letting someone else use the control strings Walms put in place to keep her energy under control. When we get to the living room, Asuka is there by herself, and she doesn't look very happy. She says she doesn't see the point in this, she will fight back if the situation demands it, she would just rather not. MoSh says that if she is being attacked, the situation obviously demands that she defend herself. He says that I had agreed to help with that, so the control strings would be in the hands of someone she can trust, so he really wants her to give it a shot. She looks at MoSh like she thinks he is completely insane, she asks if he really wants to trust anything Walms put in her, after all Walms had almost killed her once, so she would rather be rid of that thing… she thought I had taken that damned AoH out of her… and she wants to get rid of it, not to use it! I tell her that where something comes from isn't important, you use what resources you have in the best way you can. She insistently says that she will not use that thing, she is certain it will do something other than what Walms has said it will do, or it might not even do that… it might have a purely negative effect… so get rid of it.

I feel like banging my head on a wall… and I proceed to do so… the result is a hole in the wall of MoSh's living room, which I quickly repair before hitting my head a couple times on a stronger wall. The first one had been regular sheetrock while the wall I am now hitting my head on is brick. I hear Asuka saying she will fight back if it is absolutely necessary, she will do so if there is something important at stake. I can't really help it, this next outburst rather blurts out of me before I really think about it much… "So you're saying that defending yourself so that MoSh doesn't have to worry about you being attacked all the time isn't important? Making sure you don't get infected with unstable energy isn't important even though that shit makes you behave cruelly to MoSh and could possibly even endanger the children? It's not important enough even though it could mean the difference between MoSh and me having to come bust you out of some hellhole or you and MoSh having a nice dream, have it so MoSh can remember more pleasant times with you instead of always you in trouble? Isn't any of that important enough?" The outburst finally ran its course, there was nothing left of that. "MoSh needs to have a wife, a lover, a friend, not a damsel in distress…" I then think all of that was most likely out of line, so I apologize as well, "I'm sorry, but I have never liked all those movies, books, and games where there is a female character who doesn't even try to fight, she just sits around and waits to be rescued… those have always tended to piss me off."

So I walk away into the next room, feeling quite foolish for that outburst, great… now I have probably gotten both Asuka and MoSh mad at me… I look around the room I am now in, and I can't remember being in here before, though I thought I had been everywhere in MoSh's dream house. Is this an area he has just added on? It looks like a dining room, there is a large dining table with chairs all around it, there is a door that leads to the outside as well as one that seems to lead to a basement and then there is a flight of stairs leading up. I look out the door into the green fields. There is a thick forest off to the left, green fields to the right, and there is a castle out there… it's Hogwarts! I'd completely forgotten about having the connection between MoSh's inner world and Hogwarts, and now I am staring in surprise as I see Hagrid out there take care of a bunch of… um… a bunch of things that I really can't identify… so I watch him for a few minutes, I see some burst of flame come from the things he is tending, his beard catches fire, and he laughs as if he finds that amusing… which he most likely does. I watch Hagrid for a few more minutes until MoSh comes into the room, he looks worn out, but he says Asuka had finally agreed to try something new. But not Walms, she doesn't want to be anywhere around him… I comment that at least their dislike of each other is mutual… which should lead to them mutually avoiding each other… I ask how am I supposed to know what to do with the control strings, then? Trial and error? Hmmm… what will this do? *Tugs random string…* Or I could talk to Q… he has been around for so long that there is no measure of time sufficient to express how ancient he is, so he has surely seen that exact thing or something like it. MoSh says then I should talk to Q, because Asuka wouldn't agree to anything that involved her being anywhere near Walms, Walms clearly doesn't want to be anywhere around Asuka… so Q doing it would make both of them happy.

I telepathically contact Q to come over and take a look at something, and shortly after I focus on that, Q appears in a flash of white light. He looks over at me and smiles, then asks exactly what it is that I need his infinite wisdom for? I can tell he is being sarcastic about having infinite wisdom, but whether he likes to boast a lot or not, he has seen a lot during his nearly infinite life. I tell him that we need him to look at the control strings Walms put in Asuka, because Asuka and Walms mutually can't stand each other, and I need to know how they work. Q said that wouldn't be a problem, he could take a look at her right now. We go back into the living room where Asuka is sitting there looking quite annoyed, and she doesn't seem to become any happier at Q's arrival. Q looks at her closely for a bit, he says her energy indicates she is not currently infected with any incompatible energy, though she does look pretty pissed off. MoSh says to tell him something he doesn't know… Q says ok, then he will, looks at Asuka for a bit longer and finally says she is into kinky sex, and would like to do it in a public place with people watching. Asuka's angry look turns to an embarrassed look, her face turns beet red, MoSh is just staring at Q with his jaw hanging open… Q says he takes it that wasn't the kind of information MoSh wanted to know. Q looks at her for a bit longer, then he says he can see the control strings, he can see the way everything is set up, he has seen this kind of thing before. When he saw it before, however, it was being used for a different purpose, a Seed of Darkness… which is just another name for an AoH… was used to generate control strings, and an asshole calling himself the "Puppet Master" was using them to force people to fight each other for his own amusement… more like cock fighting or dog fighting… So yes, he knows how this system works. He was about to go into more detail about it, but my cat wakes me up here.

12/27/10 The Dark Half
Plans: Once again there are no real plans, thought I hope I might remember some stuff at Hogwarts, in either the one where I'm a student or the one where I'm an instructor. There are also new tasks from a group in DV, Lucidity
Power Trials Club... those challenges include finding a world where a huge evil tree is draining the life energy of the planet, kick the ass of the person who planted it, then stop the tree... and the other is task to beat Sonic the Hedgehog in a race. That's not really a goal yet, though, since I posted a question regarding that and I am waiting for an answer. With no specific plans, I didn't do my WILD tonight, but I do have recall of a non-lucid dream…

I am on vacation in somewhere in California, I think it was somewhere around Disney Land, which is where I have been spending my time. I want to go back and spend some more time there, but I think I had better check to make sure my plane flight is going to be on schedule before I go off having fun on my last day here. I have one more night available to me in the hotel I have been staying at, so I want to be sure I have my flight lined up to leave the next day. I have some things with me, I have a digital camera, my iPod Touch, and there is an assortment of crap in my purse that I don't bother looking at nor do I remember what I crammed in there. So I drive to my hotel room first, I go inside and look around before grabbing some money I have stashed in one of the drawers. I leave the hotel room, then I take a cab to the airport, after all, who wants to fight the traffic and find parking at an airport when it isn't necessary? So I pay the cab driver and go into the airport to find some information on my flight, which is flight 1218 heading to Tucson, leaving the next day. I check at an information stand, but they don't know anything… I look at a couple of the schedule boards, there is no mention of my flight. Could it be too early to get information on my flight? No, it's not, I can tell that because there are flights listed from the day after tomorrow, just not mine. This is a bit annoying, and it gets me a bit concerned that my flight may have been canceled, so I had better check around some more. First I need to use the bathroom, though, so I head to a restroom. I enter the room and see there are many stalls along the left side, and mirrors and sinks along the right side. A woman comes in and says hi before going into one of the stalls. I feel a bit dizzy, so I sit down in a seat in what looks like a small waiting area. I close my eyes and wait for my head to clear…

Missing time…

I feel like I have lost consciousness briefly, but now I am awake again, so I get up. I look at the clock on my iPod, and I see that the time is 4:52 pm, but that doesn't tell me a lot since I don't remember what time it was when I got to the restroom in the first place. I walk over to the sinks, I no longer feel like I need to use the bathroom, but I do need to wash up a bit. When I look in the mirror, however, I see that I am not myself. I am a young girl, more of a teenager, I estimate my age to be about 15 or so… This does seem a bit strange, but then it doesn't seem strange enough for me to do a RC. The other thing I notice takes my attention away from the fact I am not myself. I am covered in blood! I have long dark brown hair coming down to about the middle of my back, and it is curly and shiny, I have a pretty face… and my face is almost completely covered in blood! There is also blood on my clothes, blood on my hands, blood everywhere, and I don't know where it came from. I wash it off of me as well as I can, then I look around the bathroom to see if there's anyone else in there. I don't see anyone… I have discovered the blood is not my own, as I am not injured in any way… so I look in my purse and somehow find I have some extra clothes with me… I don't remember packing extra clothes… but I go into one of the stalls to put the clothes on. In the stall I find the woman from earlier, she is dead, she has been badly beaten… it looks like she has been clawed a lot, her face has been scratched and clawed at, her eyes have been clawed right out of her head… YUCK! I hear someone else come into the room. He looks at the body, then at me, then asks what I have done… I try to say I didn't do anything, but he isn't ready to listen, so I run from the room and around a few corners, then into an elevator, I want to put distance between myself and the body. When I get into the elevator, the first thing I do is change my clothes, and wait until I am several floors away from the restroom with the dead body.

I am now heading down a hall on a different floor, I wonder if I am safe, I think the man down there has no way of knowing who I am, so I there is no way they can track the event to me. I go into a bathroom, I am looking to relax a bit, I splash some water in my face, dry it off, then I head back out into the airport. I am having trouble focusing on what I need to do, which is find out what is happening with my flight, right now I just want to find someplace to rest. I leave the bathroom and see there are quite a few people in the hall outside, there is a black woman out there who seems to think I should know her, I am not aware of who she is… then a name comes to mind, the name of someone I knew in high school named Jamilia, she pretended to be my friend but then turned her back because I didn't want to go to her church… so she is not really someone I want to talk to, so I continue pretending I have no idea who she is. I say I have never met her, and then I walk away. But she doesn't want to let it go that easily… she follows me, keeps going at it, then she finally tells me her name and expects a certain reaction, I am not interested, she is just giving me a headache… I want to get away from her now…

Missing Time…

I am in a closet, or a storage room is more likely since it is too big for a closet… and Jamilia is there, or her body is. She is lying up against one of the walls, her face and body have been clawed, her face is frozen in a perpetual look of pain and fear, and her eyes are missing. I then realize I am holding the eyes in my hand… yuck again! I drop the eyes and hurry out of the store room, then I realize I am once again covered in blood, so I duck back into the store room. I look around for supplies, I clean myself up a bit, snag some clothes from a laundry bag… they don't fit very well, but it looks a lot less out of place than the blood. I leave the bathroom, though I am hearing a voice as if it is speaking into my ear, the voice sounds desperate, the voice sounds scared, it is the voice of a young girl… the voice says she doesn't know how to make it stop, please help her make it stop… but how can I make it stop? I think it will have to be done in a dream, in the girl's dream… I am about to leave the airport, but I find I am being ushered onto a small plane. I tell them I need to leave, but the guard pushing me onto the plane says it isn't safe, there is a vicious killer on the loose, another body was just discovered on this floor… so I let them push me onto the plane. I am expecting the plane to take off, but instead it just taxies across the runway to a place where there are a lot of beds set up in a big tent, the beds are there for the stranded passengers to sleep until their flights leave. I say I'm not staying there since I have a hotel room for another night, so I hail a cab and head straight back to the hotel. I can still hear the girl speaking to me, she is telling me she hasn't been able to sleep at all or the "other one" comes out… I tell the girl I think I can help, but we need to get into a dream state to do that. The hotel room is a good place to do this. I go into the room, over to the bed, where I lie down and focus on slipping into a WILD…

Dream Within a Dream
As I enter the dream within a dream, I am lucid now, fully aware that I am in a dream, what I still fail to realize is that it was a dream before I lied down to get into this WILD. I am in a very pretty place, there is green grass, it looks like a beautiful meadow, and there are flowers around the outside edge… the trees are so green, and the sky is so blue, the tall grass is blowing gently in the breeze. There is a girl there, about 15, she has long curly dark brown hair, a pretty girl, and she is flying a kite, the kite is all the colors of a rainbow. She looks over at me, looks briefly alarmed, then relaxes. She says she thought I was "the other" coming back again. She said "the other" would surely be here soon, and then she would have to leave and wake up, or "the other" would wake up and do something horrible… usually ends up killing someone… The girl turns her attention back to the kite.

Someone else is entering the meadow, but this one is coming in what looks like a cloud of death, the grass is dying where she walks, there is a cloud of darkness surrounding her… but when she gets closer I can see it is an exact twin of the girl with the kite. She looks to be about 15, long curly dark brown hair, but instead of a bright smile she has a dark glare on her face. She seems to be ignoring me completely, she goes over to the light girl and says she isn't going anywhere, so the light girl will just have to accept it. The light girl says no, she says she hates the dark girl, and will find a way to get rid of her darker half. I tell the girl that I know how to solve her problem, the dark girl tells me to stay out of it, she'd had enough of those stupid adults interfering with things. The light girl says she knows what the dark girl is, she is a demon, a monster from hell, go away! The dark girl says she isn't going anywhere, never!

I somehow know the two of them have to be one to be stable, they aren't two separate people, but two halves of the same girl. I tell the light girl this is really very easy to fix… they need to be at peace, though. She says she will never make peace with a demon, I tell her it's the only way to be free of it. The light girl looks at me doubtingly, then at the dark girl… I get them standing, facing each other, their energies are the same frequency since they are the same person… I tell them to take each others' hands and look into each others' eyes, and with that acceptance, the conflict would be over. The dark girl seems very willing to do this, though the light girl still seems doubtful. The dark girl says something that surprises me… she tells the light girl to stop rejecting her, they're supposed to be sisters… I tell the light girl she just needs to do this one thing, and her trouble will pass… just please trust in that. I am hoping my energy is showing that this can be trusted. Finally the light girl complies… and when they do, the two girls become one… the girl says the other one is gone! But no… she says she still feels the presence inside her… but maybe that's ok…

I wake up in the hotel room bed, now I notice that there is a young girl lying on the bed next to me, the girl is waking up at the same time as I am. She looks over at me with a strange look on her face, and she says she had the strangest dream… and I was in it. I tell her I visited her dream, but she says that's crazy talk… but she does know I am here to help her with "the other" that keeps coming to take over. She says she thinks she will be ok, though, she feels different now. She says she can still feel the presence of "the other," but it didn't feel like a bad thing now… in fact, that presence was rather comforting. I tell her that is because there may come a time when she needs "the other" as she calls it to come partly forward to protect her, but there would be no more of having "the other" taking complete control and then going out of control. She looks at me for a bit and then smiles, she says she isn't sure why, but she believes that now… she looks sad then… she says she doesn't know how she will make up for those who "the other" killed… I tell her that is over now, no one is in danger. She says she wants to go home… wait… what time is it? She has a plane to catch! If she isn't on the plane when her mom comes to pick her up, there's no way she will get to go on another weekend on her own until she's 40! She hurries out of the hotel room, then she pauses, returns and gives me a big hug. She says she doesn't know what I did, but thank you… she runs from the hotel room again, and I wake up.

12/26/10 Healing Dreams
Plans: I didn't really have any major plans when I fell asleep last night, Christmas was over, and I'd spent some time playing games on my new Xbox 360 Kinect, which actually does involve some exercise… and my body is sooooo not used to any kind of exercise that I went and tired myself after about an hour and a half of active gameplay… is that pathetic or what? So my main thought was to get some sleep, which I accomplished, but not much in the way of dream recall... a couple of fragments.

Holding My Last Breath
I am in a hospital, I am walking down the halls even though I am not sure why I am in the hospital. It's like I have forgotten so much, am I there to visit someone? Am I there as a patient? Damn, I wish I could remember something, I am wondering what is wrong with me when the idea I might be dreaming occurs to me… and I do a RC by pinching my nose. When I am still able to breathe, I realize that I am dreaming.

I look around the hospital hallway, trying to figure out where I am and what I should be doing there. I remember that I didn't have any specific goals for the night, so I am thinking that I must be there for some kind of purpose, since that is usually the case when I appear somewhere randomly. There are doctors everywhere, even what appear to be a couple of patients walking in the halls, but no clue as to why I am there. I look into one of the rooms and I see someone in there with severe burns, he doesn't look good at all. I glance around, then I go into the room and focus on a healing spell for him, the result is his burns quickly heal over. The man looks at me and says it's a miracle and I must be an angel of some kind, sent down to mend his wounds. His ranting and thanking me gets more attention than I want, and soon there are several doctors and nurses in there. One of the doctors seems very happy to see me, he asks if I have come to heal the Longbottoms some more, because there has been no further improvement since I had been there last time, so if it was supposed to continue on its own, something went wrong. I now know where I am, at least… I am obviously at St. Mungo's hospital in a Harry Potter world. And maybe I was there to help with healing Neville's parents, so I follow the doctor from the room and onto an elevator that goes to another location and then opens. The doctor leads me quickly down the hall to a room numbered 657.

Inside I see that Frank and Alice Longbottom are sitting in a pair of chairs right next to each other, though each one of them seems completely oblivious to the presence of the other one. They are both staring off into some version of infinity that only they can see. So I focus on using the song My Last Breath by Evanescence to heal the two of them, and it seems to be having an effect… it looks like they are actually focused on me instead of on some parallel world that might exist only in their minds… but then as soon as the song is over, they both slip away again. It seems like my attempt was an epic failure, though the doctor says that was a very good sign, as they have had absolutely no response to any external stimuli except for my song and Neville's visits… I wonder if maybe Neville could help with the healing, since they are already showing some reaction when Neville visits, the song would give them some more stimulation… and I have the idea that once they get free of the catatonic state, there is very little chance of sliding back into it. The hard part would be getting them to that state. So I tell the doctors that I will come back to do more later, and they thank me for trying again, and then I leave the room. I am walking down the hallway, fortunately there is no one around me when I wake.

Dear Diary
Or at least I think I wake up… I roll over in bed and give off a couple yawns, I am remembering a Harry Potter dream, I really should sit up and take a few notes. Or just grab my iPod touch and take a couple notes… or grab the notebook by my bed and jot a few notes. I know I need to take notes or I might end up forgetting the dream, but it is still a difficult task to talk myself into doing it when I just want to fall back to sleep. So I grab my iPod and type in a few notes to remind me of the trip to St. Mungo's to do more healing on Neville's parents. Then I hit save, and set it back on my waterbed bookcase before rolling over and falling back asleep.

Note: I didn't realize the second part of this dream was actually a dream and not me really waking up and journaling until I checked my iPod and found there were not any notes files saved… >.<

12/24/10 You're in Hogwarts, Dummy! Do a RC!
This dream starts with a FA, as I wake up in a bed that's not my own. I roll over and lie there for a couple of minutes, then I realize I am hearing people outside of the curtains surrounding my bed. I sit up in bed and put on some clothes right there in bed before pulling the curtains aside and getting up. My roommates are in the room, they say hello to me, but it seems I have slept in a bit, and it is already time to get moving. The four of us go down into the common room where there are a lot of people talking to each other, there is a photo on the front page of Umbridge. The focus on the story is the substandard teaching going on at Hogwarts and how the students are completely disrespectful and there needs to be more discipline going on in there. That isn't what everyone is talking about, however. In spite of Umbridge's intent, her arguments were weak and had easily been rebutted by an annoyed Albus Dumbledore. To further detract from the impact of the story is the fact that there are large colored letters on Umbridge's forehead that spell out LOSER. I wonder if she has found any reprieve from having the announcement on her face… And of course since the photo is a moving one, the word on her forehead is flashing animatedly from red to blue to green to yellow… So her story is having minimal to no impact with any of the readers.

I go with everyone else down to the great hall where breakfast is being served, I look around when I get there and I spot MoSh over near the Gryffindor table talking to Harry and Hermione, Ron is there as well, and he also appears to be talking to everyone. On a whim, I go over to the group of them and give MoSh a big hug. MoSh hugs me back, and says he's glad to see me, too… what's up. Ron seems to have wanted to say something since I first put my arms around MoSh, and now he lets his big mouth run off… "Come on, now," Ron says, "That is just too disgusting, not only are you talking to a Slytherin, now you're hugging one? What's next, are you going to start snogging right here in the middle of the great hall?! Because if you do, I think I'm going to puke." MoSh says he has had just about enough of Ron's talking shit about his friends, Ron says MoSh should choose better friends then. MoSh says that does it, and he punches Ron in the face. Ron goes down pathetically easily, and he is holding his nose, which is bleeding. Ron asks if MoSh has gone mad, MoSh says he is just sick of Ron's attitude problem. MoSh says Ron keeps saying the Slytherins are a bunch of rude assholes, but the only one around here he sees acting like an asshole is Ron himself! Ron is mad, and he is looking to Harry and Hermione to back him up, but neither of them seem willing to do it. He asks what their problem is, or are they siding with the Slytherin lover? Hermione seems really hesitant, and she is trying to word what she says as gently as possible, she says that maybe Ron could at least give me a chance before assuming he knows me. Ron says he can see what was going on here, we're all tournament contestants, so anything he says is automatically wrong because he's not in the tournament, he adds that he doesn't need anyone, and storms off in a serious huff. Hermione starts to follow Ron, calling after him to wait, Ron calls back to leave him alone.

It is silent between all of us for a couple minutes, everyone is looking in the direction Ron stormed off in, I say I didn't mean to cause any problems, it's just that MoSh and I are friends regardless of which house we were each put in, and that's not about to change just because he's in Gryffindor and I'm in Slytherin. Hermione says it's not my fault, she says Ron is going to have to grow up eventually… although she really didn't see the need for punching Ron in the face… MoSh says it just pisses him off when Ron starts badmouthing me. Draco comes over behind me and asks me what I am doing over here with these… I look at him, hoping he won't say something incredibly rude, I think he is about to do just that, but he sees me looking at him and stops. He asks what I am doing over here, he says he has been waiting to talk to me. I say ok, and I say goodbye to MoSh, Harry, and Hermione to head over towards the Slytherin table with Draco. He doesn't stop at the table, however, he continues to a corner of the room where there aren't any other people. When we get there he speaks quietly, he asks how his parents are doing. I tell him they are fine, perfectly safe. I say if he wants to visit them, that can definitely be arranged. He says he would like to. I tell him we can do it after classes, or definitely sometime over the weekend. He seems satisfied with that, and we head back to the Slytherin table. Draco asks what I was doing hanging out with the Gryffindor tournament contestants anyway. I tell him MoSh is my friend, so I will be talking to him sometimes. But don't worry about anything, my friendship with MoSh has no bearing on the tournament. We finish our breakfast and then leave the great hall to our first class.

Classes go on without any problems, although I do notice that Ron is continuing to have a major league chip on his shoulder. He is not sitting with Hermione and Harry, he sits several rows away from them next to Neville Longbottom. I wonder how long Ron is going to stay pissed off this time. Ron is apparently so annoyed, however, that he screws up his potion in Potions class. There is a small explosion and a lot of foul smelling smoke coming from the vicinity of Neville Longbottom, but for once it wasn't Neville's doing… the foul odor and smoke clearly are coming from Ron's cauldron. So while Snape immediately starts yelling at Neville, when he got there he seems all too pleased to be yelling at Ron instead. Ron glares over at Hermione as if it is somehow her fault that he isn't sitting beside her to get help with his potion. Ron is doing a lot of talking to Neville, who seems a bit uncomfortable with whatever Ron is saying, but he is doing his best to hide that.

After Potions class is over, we are met at the door by McGonagall, who tells us that it is recommended for us to meet with Vegeta after we finish with lunch, Vegeta is going to tell us a few strategies that might help us in the next challenge. So after getting a quick lunch, Draco and I head out to the area where Vegeta does his training. Harry, Hermione, and MoSh are also heading there, I even spot Ron at a distance, watching the group of us as we go over to Vegeta. Vegeta is already out there waiting for us to come, he says the next challenge will allow us to take in only our wands, but obviously we will be taking our skills with us. He intends to make sure we have the skills that will help us with completing the tournament. He says contestants who have trained with him will have a distinct advantage over those who have not. Hermione asks if that is really fair to the other schools' contestants. Vegeta says of course it is, his training has been offered to all contestants, if the contestants from the other schools don't take advantage of it, that's their own fault. Draco makes some dumb comment about Ron being a dumb ugly git, and considering how Ron has been behaving here, I don't really have anything to say to deny it.

So we spend a good length of time training with Vegeta, the tournament participants have been excused from the class after lunch, so we have longer than the other students. Much of what Vegeta is teaching right now is focused on speed and agility, and then he adds in a few techniques for boosting energy levels, which in turn, will boost the power of spells cast with a normal wand. I do some of the training with MoSh, which Draco doesn't seem to like, but this time he keeps his mouth shut, not saying a single word about it. Vegeta's evasion training consists of avoiding large jets of fire that Vegeta is sending at us, this seems odd to several of the participants, others seem to understand, of course, MoSh and I know what is going to happen. Draco pulls me to the side just a bit and says Lucius had told him what the challenges would be before he got thrown in Azkaban… and this one involved stealing a golden egg from a mother dragon, so that must be why Vegeta is using fire jets for training… it's just like a dragon's fire.

There are still a couple of classes after the training is done, but those are also uneventful. In the class where Slytherin and Gryffindor are together, Ron continues to be extremely anti-social, shooting looks of anger at anyone who got too close to him except for Neville, and Neville looks like he is becoming rather uncomfortable around Ron, too… Right now Ron isn't doing too good in the friends department, since all of his friends are pretty much fed up with his attitude for now, though Hermione looks like she is really upset about the situation.

After the last class is over, I am thinking this day has been a very long day. Even though I think I have known all day, somewhere in the back of my mind, that this is a dream, I haven't been consciously thinking about or aware of the fact that I was dreaming. I have a sense of urgency, though, a sense that if I don't get Draco to see his parents soon, the chance will be missed. I tell Draco it has to be right away, or his chance to see his parents would be missed. He asks what about getting something to eat, and I say it has to be now, he can eat something with his parents, but we have to go. I lead Draco back to the Slytherin common room, which is completely empty now since most everyone else is in the great hall eating. So now what? I have to get Draco to see his parents… who are currently residing in my inner world so they won't be targeted by Voldemort… so I would open a portal… That doesn't seem like an easy task right now, considering I am not fully aware it is a dream, but I decide I can use a mirror. I end up rationalizing that I can't open just any portal while I'm awake, but I can use a mirror even if it is a dream. I open the portal using a full height mirror in the common room, then I lead Draco through it into my inner world. Q is there waiting for us, I think he knows I am about to wake up, and he says he will take Draco to see Lucius and Narcissa, and he will also take care of getting Draco back to Hogwarts, I could wake up if I need to. Wake up? Wake up from what? I'm not sleeping… I wake up, and kick myself for having that long a dream and not becoming lucid!

12/24/10 Battle At Hogwarts
Note: Plans for this night included going to a Harry Potter world with MoSh, the idea is to find out more about the next challenge. Then there is also a Harry Potter challenge posted at a thread I just found out about on DV referred to as the Lucidity Power Trials Club. The goal of the challenge is to fight death eaters off while Harry kills Voldemort, using only Harry Potter spells and a wand. Those are the primary goals, though I might end up doing more. For the first challenge, I fall asleep using my light / sound machine, and I successfully slip into a WILD…

I enter the Harry Potter world a short distance from the Hogwarts castle, at first I'm not sure what to do, I remember the challenge requires the use of a wand which I don't have. Well, then first I will have to obtain a wand. I am in the forest, and I see there are a few people in there with me, one of them is a death eater who seems to be totally occupied with sneaking up on a centaur who is firing arrows out of the forest into a fight. Well, the death eater would have a wand, which is what I need, so I look around and pick up a large rock and sneak up behind the death eater. He is crouched down, taking aim at a centaur, when I bring the rock down on his head… hard. He is knocked out, maybe killed, I'm not sure, but I grab his wand and head towards the fight. I got that issue taken care of.

So I am heading towards the fight when I come across the first death eater in my way, he apparently thinks I am nothing to be worried about. He is laughing, he says he bets he can kill me before I can even get a spell off. I look around, trying to come up with something at least a little creative, and I spot a sizable broken branch lying in the grass not far past the death eater. I tell him he doesn't scare me, I can take him down with an accio spell. This clearly amuses him, he says he doesn't have time for my games. Ok, neither do I. "Avada…" he starts, but I get mine off faster, it's shorter. "Accio!" I say, pointing the wand at the tree limb behind him… the branch comes straight to me… and it doesn't bother trying to go around the death eater, it punches a hole right through him, so his spell comes out as more of, "Avada Kad-glurgh!" The bloody branch lands at my feet at the same time as the dying death eater collapses to the ground. Well, that may have been amusing, but there are so many more death eaters to kill, and nowhere near enough branches to run through all of them… so I take a minute to think, it would be a lot easier if I could fly… but since it's Harry Potter spells only, I use the wand to summon a Firebolt with accio. I am getting a bit impatient for the broom to come, but finally a broom comes down out of the sky and hovers in front of me. I wonder where it came from, but I figure it doesn't really matter. I get on the broom and fly into the sky.

I am flying over the majority of the fighting, there are actually very few people on brooms, I see a lot from up there. I see there are giants out there, but they are still some distance off, so I am not worried about those now. I fly in low over a group of death eaters approaching the castle, and I figure this is my chance, I just need to nail them with a bit of lightning, I have almost used my Battery spell… when I remind myself that I have to use a Harry Potter spell… damn… that is actually getting to be a bit of a pain in the ass… but that is the challenge of it. Ok, I need a spell, how about fire? I use the incendio spell from the Harry Potter spells, which is used to start a fire. But I have considerably more energy available to me than the average Harry Potter witch or wizard, so I am able to use the spell to generate fireballs coming from the tip of my wand, and I use those as I swoop in over the death eaters, dropping the fireballs as bombs right into the middle of the crowd. There are explosions, some of the death eaters are thrown clear, others are set on fire. Some of the death eaters that have caught on fire are panicking, and they run wildly and end up setting the robes of other death eaters alight… and soon there are many death eaters, all of them on fire and running in panic.

I pull my broom up and head around for another approach, when I see there is someone up on top of the astronomy tower. The roof of the tower has been completely destroyed, so now the top floor is exposed to the elements, and clearly visible from my position in the sky. I see several death eaters closing in around one person, so I fly in closer to get a better look. I see there are several death eaters surrounding Draco Malfoy, I can hear them saying something about Draco not supporting the dark lord, they seem pissed that Draco or maybe one of the other Malfoys hadn't been following orders. So I come in on my broom, I quickly help Draco onto the back of the broom, then fly away from the tower with curses flying after us. I use the protego spell to reflect their spells back at them, one of the death eaters ends up casting an avada kadevra on himself… there are now three of them left on top of the tower. I use wingardium leviosa and lift a broken section of the astronomy tower up into the air… with the death eaters on it. Looking around, I see a hostile giant getting a bit too close for comfort, so I drop the large chunk of the astronomy tower and the death eaters on top of the giant. The giant is knocked senseless, the death eaters plunge to their deaths… I fly over near the edge of the fight area where I find Lucius and Narcissa trying to sneak around the outskirts of the battle and get closer to the castle. I land in front of them and let Draco off of my broom, much to the relief of his parents. The Malfoys all together again, and they look happy to see each other. I don't have the time to sit around and watch the reunion, so I head back towards the school.

It looks like the death eaters are getting into the castle now, so I decide I had better get inside to make sure everything is taken care of in there. I go inside and find numerous witches and wizards exchanging spells and curses, the effect makes it look like a futuristic laser battle with the blasts of light shooting across the room. Most of the action is going on in the great hall, so I head in that direction. There are three death eaters in my way, I use a confundus spell on them, they get quite disoriented, and start blasting spells and curses at each other. I continue through the room into the great hall, where there are a lot more witches and wizards fighting, but one of them stands out to me… I see Bellatrix Lestrange… and I want her… dead. I call out her name, getting her attention, and I throw a couple of chairs at her by using wingardium leviosa, it is enough to get her attention. She comes over towards me, saying I will pay for attacking her, I say I'm not going to just attack her, I'm going to kill her. She laughs at that, saying there is no way a pathetic no one like me is going to be able to kill her.

So Bellatrix clearly doesn't take me seriously, so I decide maybe I need to do something to prove this is very serious, so I use the spell reducto, which is meant to blast solid objects, I use the spell on the floor right at Bellatrix's feet. The spell blasts the floor, and the force of it sends Bellatrix flying backwards into the wall, she looks quite surprised. She immediately goes to cast a curse at me, I use another reducto spell, this time on the wall right behind her. She only gets a small bit of her spell off, "Cruci…" BOOM! The wall explodes, making Bellatrix face plant in the part of the floor I blew up with my first reducto spell. She gets to her feet and is glaring at me with pure hate, she throws another curse, or she tries to, but I interrupt her spell with another reducto spell, on the ceiling. "Avada ka…" CRASH! A large section of the roof crashes down on top of Bellatrix. She is cursing fluently now, although she is using the kind of curses that aren't magical… I use wingardium leviosa on a marble statue and float it right over Bellatrix's head. "That does it," she is yelling now, "I'm going to make you wish…" she looks up at the statue… "that's not even possible…" And then she dives to get out from under it before it falls. But the goal isn't to smash her, I use the reducto spell one more time and blast the statue into pieces, many of which land on top of Bellatrix since the blast radius is larger than the statue itself. I wait for the dust to clear, I see a lot of action going on in the other side of the room. It seems everyone else is gathered around watching something, is that where Harry and Voldemort are having it out? I don't care about that, he is fine on his own. There is movement in the rubble as Bellatrix is trying to dig her way out of the rubble. I wait long enough for her to stand up, glaring around. Bellatrix seems pretty speechless, and pretty much in pain, though she is doing whatever she can to keep that from showing. I move around Bellatrix, I have to aim this properly, and so I get to the correct position. Bellatrix has re-learned a word, and that word is "you." "You… you…" now she is repeating it, "you… you…" Now if I have aimed this properly… I use the accio spell on a spear baring knight behind Bellatrix at the same time as I put a final reducto spell at the rubble at her feet. The blast of the rubble sends her backwards as the knight statue moves forward, resulting in the spear getting run through Bellatrix's mid section. She is now hanging off the spear, impaled on the spear… the spear breaks off of the statue… somehow still standing… "But there's no way… no one could… it's impossible… who are you?" and then she collapses, dead. I hear other people celebrating Voldemort's death, but that isn't important to me, I'm about to wake up anyway.

12/22/10 Expedition Fail
Plans: Meet Tigress in the biome, explore ancient Babylon, take Lara Croft with us, I wonder if she even remembers me... The last time I saw or heard of her was when I was still with my ex boyfriend, James, and at that point she and James were going out together, she was one of his dream girlfriends. I imagine that's over since I feel that he isn't even dreaming any more, but I can't be sure until I meet with her. Another plan is to make sure Asuka is ok, and I wonder if I have been absent from the two Hogwarts schools or if I just don't remember it or if it is basically on hold until I get back, in time stasis, or more accurately I travel through time to get to the right point and time at each Hogwarts.

The End of the World As We Know It
I am in my house with my mother, we are watching the news on television. The news is showing nuclear bombs hitting some major US cities, and I question if I might be dreaming since there has been no word of a nuclear attack or threat of a nuclear attack lately. So I do a nose pinch RC, and I found I can't breathe when I pinched my nose… and that means I am awake? But the news story looks so surreal to me, I think it has to be a dream… doesn't it? I do one more RC just to be sure, and again I find out that I am awake. (The nose pinch RC usually works well for me, but this time it epic failed!) So I ask my mother what is going on since I just came out of my room to see what is on television, she says we need to get to a safe place, because the air force base near Tucson will no doubt be a target. So where can we go that will be safe? Leaving town to the north is not an option, because Phoenix will no doubt be attacked, too, so we would be driving out of a disaster into another disaster. The clear choice of a place to go would be underground, to a place where the blast wouldn't reach us, although I am still wondering how that's supposed to help with the radiation after the attack. I mention that to my mother, she seems convinced that after the first big rain, the radiation will be gone. I know IWL that this is not true, but in the dream it made complete sense, so now the idea was to choose a place to get underground. The best option we could think of is Colossal Cave, a system of caves to the east of Tucson, so we decide to go there.

We are packing up our stuff as fast as possible, because to approach Colossal Cave means to get closer to the air force base, which means getting closer to the target of the attack… so we were in a big hurry to gather all our stuff and get moving. We gather the animals first, all into my mother's car since it is a bit bigger than mine, the car in the dream is quite a bit larger than her car IWL. Then we gather important things and hit the road. We have already been on the road for a bit when I realize I have forgotten my laptop, and I find that really upsetting, I want to go back for it, but we don't have the time. My mom is impatient that I need that, so she says we will go into the gift shop at Colossal Cave and I can get a new laptop there. I am impressed, as I know the Colossal Cave gift shop has only Alienware computers, and they're the ones who have the computer chargers that run on solar power or water power… so if I just find an underground stream I can keep my computer charged! Yay! And I can pick up all the software I need there, too! I am so happy I want to hug one of my cats. I look in the back seat and see there are about ten cats in carriers piled on the seat, the back end is full of dogs… way more than we have… And there are mice, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs running on the floor and several birds flying around… there's no way this can be real… then I wake.

The University
I am at school, but it is a much larger school than the one I have been attending, and then there's the fact I just graduated, but neither of those things seemed odd to me. I am in the halls, it is the first day back in class, so I need to go to my locker and get some stuff for the next class, and I find the locker with no problem. I remember my combination… it's 23-33-64, and I get it opened quickly. I put some stuff back into the locker and took some stuff out before heading off to class. The odd thing is I don't end up going to class, I head out to my car and start to leave. I am out onto the main road before I remember I can't go home yet, I have another class! But I want some food first, and there isn't time to go to another place to get food, so I pull back into the school parking lot to get a parking place, the parking lot is huge, but I finally get into the underground parking garage and I am able to find a parking place. I am hoping I don't have any problems finding the car when I get out of class!

Ok, well I have time to grab some food at the cafeteria, so I head into the door closest to the cafeteria. I am thinking I technically shouldn't be taking time for food, because I have completely forgotten where my locker is and what the combination is, and I have also forgotten where my class is, but I am sure that will all come back after I have eaten. I find Tigress and a couple of other people sitting at one of the cafeteria tables, so I sit down with her. She starts talking to me about possible dream plans for the next night, she says she wants to go explore some ancient civilization, so we can meet in a dream at the biodome… I think about that for a minute, then I do a RC and discover I am dreaming.

I tell Tigress we don't have to wait at all to set off and do something cool, let's go right now! This is a dream! Tigress looks at me strangely for a bit making me wonder for a bit if she might not be Tigress, but just a DC of Tigress… but I continue speaking anyhow, figuring it will be revealed in just a bit. I tell her I'll go get Lara Croft, and she can go get Daniel Jackson or whoever she wants to bring along, and we can meet back in the biodome. She gets up and does a RC, and says this really is a dream, awesome! I am about to open a portal to the world where I once knew a Lara Croft, I am focused on getting there, I am hoping I will still be able to do it. Before I can get a portal open, however, I wake.

Tomb Raider: Return to Lara Croft
I am in a place that doesn't look very familiar, but it still looks just a bit familiar like I have been here a long time ago. I see a large house with a lot of land around it, so I approach the house and go up to the front door. When I knock on the door, a man opens the door, he is a butler, and he seems to recognize me… and shows me in to where Lara Croft is. I had been wondering if she would remember me, but any question of that is out of my mind immediately as Lara greets me as she would greet a long lost friend… because to her that's what I am, a long lost friend. We do a lot of talking, which I won't go into extreme detail here, but I will summarize. She says she hasn't seen my ex boyfriend, James, around for a long time, and she has basically given up on his coming back. She asks how he and I are getting along, I tell her what happened when he lied to me and went off with someone else, she agrees he is an ass… to do that after all the time we had been together, I say I don't think he really loved me at all, he was afraid of being alone, and for that length of time I was convenient until he found someone he was truly in love with. She used to have a roommate by the name of Katana who went on some of her adventures with her, but Katana has since moved on with some really hot guy from Lara doesn't remember where… So Lara Croft and I spend some time catching up on old times, then I remember that there are things we have to do. Over time I have been becoming steadily more lucid…

Now I am completely lucid… and I remember why I had actually come here to see Lara. I ask her if she is interested in going on a trip, going to see ancient Babylon, which is what Tigress and I agreed on visiting. Lara looks at me for a minute like I am crazy, then asks why I even need to ask that, of course she wants to come. She has some pokémon with her, I had forgotten she has pokémon, and before we leave, a persian and a pikachu join Lara and me. I open a portal, focusing on getting to the biodome, which is where I am to meet Tigress. A portal opens, and I lead Lara and her two pokémon through the portal and into the biodome. Unfortunately, however, I barely have a chance to see Tigress there with Daniel before I feel like I'm going to wake up. I focus on stabilizing the dream and it seems to stabilize. I tell Tigress I can now open a portal to ancient Babylon, and then I focus on opening that portal. The portal opens, but it seems like the effort of opening the portal has made the dream go unstable again. I catch a glimpse of the hanging gardens of Babylon through the portal, but then I wake up.

12/21/10 This Is The Way I Pray...
Note: It seems that Lujan has been making things difficult for Asuka and MoSh again, I'm not sure what has set him to start being an ass again. But I am thinking he needs a little discouragement from continuing to do that. I spent some time thinking up some nice nightmares made just for Lujan. So here are a few highlights from the night of nightmares Lujan had…

Dude Looks Like a Lady
Lujan is at a strip club filled with the most beautiful women ever, all of them are dancing around a pole and stripping slowly down to the point where they have nothing on but what their mommas gave them. The tops come off, the women shake their breasts teasingly as they remove their bras. Then it's time for the bottoms come off, leaving each woman only wearing sexy and colorful panties… then the panties came off. Impossibly, huge hairy dicks sprung out of the tiny panties, and the "women" started swinging their hips, they all came in close around Lujan, so he is now surrounded in a pocket of dicks all pointed at him, and the "women" are laughing as each one of them cum on him at the same time, which results in Lujan puking all over the place.

The Way I Prey
"Another dream that will never come true, just to compliment your sorrow…" - Disturbed
Ok, well the earlier scene may have been amusing, it didn't really accomplish anything. The next nightmare is a work of art, it comes in the form of a multiple level dream, which I hope has had the effect of convincing Lujan that any further attempts to bother Asuka will lead to some very unpleasant situations for him. The course of the dream was inspired by the song Prayer by Disturbed. This one starts off as what I'm sure is a very pleasant dream from his point of view. He is sitting in on a porch swing near the pool in his inner world with Asuka right next to him, or he thinks it's Asuka… Actually, it's me, so I pretend to be into him for a bit, but when I lean in for what he expects to be a kiss, I turn into a twisted version of myself, Witchblade formed into a nasty looking claw with which I am gripping his neck, glaring at him and growling, eyes glowing red like a demon… I tell him that if he wants to avoid being trapped in an endless nightmare, he will make sure he never bothers Asuka again. For just a bit he acts worried, but then he laughs, he says this is a dream, and he's not going to waste his time with me when his woman is waiting for him…" He attempts to wake himself up…

"Another life that I've taken from you, a gift to add on to your pain and suffering…" - Disturbed
Lujan wakes up in his own bed, or at least it looks like his bed, he chuckles to himself and rolls over to see me standing over him by his bed, so I pin him to the bed by the neck using an Alex Mercer style claw on my left hand, not convinced of the consequences yet? "I think that you might have to take another taste, a little bit of hell this time." I tell him that this is a nightmare from which he will never escape. He says that's not a power I have, so my threat is empty, and just for making the threat he is going to have some extra fun with Asuka… I use an Alex Mercer claw on my right hand to tear Lujan virtually in half, in response to the pain most likely, he wakes up… or tries again to wake up…

"Another truth you can never believe has crippled you completely…" - Disturbed
Lujan wakes up and gets out of bed, he is muttering to himself about how that bitch dared make threats against him when there is no way I could ever… manage… to… then he stops his muttering and looks over at me, I have remained in my demonic form, glowing eyes, evil look, Alex Mercer claws on both hands… Lujan is getting mad now, he says he doesn't know what shit I am playing at, but I had better stop if I know what's good for me, because I would only be making matters worse by… the next thing out of his mouth is a cry of pain, as I put some of the tentacles like is used in Prototype by Alex Mercer, and they have emerged from the ground beneath Lujan and pierced through his legs, binding him painfully to the floor. "Do you believe now that you can never escape from the nightmares I create?" followed by an evil laugh… then Lujan tries again to wake up.

"All the cries you're beginning to hear, trapped in your mind, and the sound is deafening!" - Disturbed
I have a little time to set up the next phase of the nightmare, so I transform the room where Lujan will be waking up into a hospital bed in the middle of a really creepy and twisted hospital, which is there for the sole purpose of performing cruel and unusual experiments on the unfortunate individuals trapped within its walls. The hospital looks like those in the video game series Silent Hill, where everything in the hospital has been transformed into twisted and backwards forms of what is expected. Add the extra effect of people in the other rooms crying out in pain and fear, and it became a very creepy setting indeed. The tortured cries in the other rooms are what "awakens" Lujan, at first he thinks he is going to wake up for real, and yells at someone to shut up while he's sleeping, but then he apparently realizes it isn't any normal sound and opens his eyes to see the creepy place he is in. I have transformed myself, as well, now I am one of the twisted nurse creatures from Silent Hill, I am carrying a syringe with a huge and filthy needle, Lujan is staring at me in shock, I tell him he just needs a little shot… He looks at the needle and tells me to keep it away from him, I tell him he has to take his medicine… and I'm sorry, but that left foot is going to have to go. He looks down at his left foot, which is now rotten and crawling with maggots and other assorted insects, he is trying to pull the bugs and stuff off of the foot when I stick him with the needle and inject the fluid… there… that didn't hurt, did it? The sound of the cries becomes deafening as Lujan adds his own cries, the fluid is burning him on the inside… then he "wakes up" again.

"Let me enlighten you, this is the way I pray…" - Disturbed
I am now in a more normal looking dream with Lujan, he is looking around nervously as if he expects to be attacked at any given point, he looks over and sees me there… I look like my normal self now. He says he doesn't know what shit I am up to, but it isn't going to work, my tricks and illusions won't work. I tell him they aren't illusions, it is just a small sample of the nightmares I can create… there's plenty more where that came from… he says I can't keep him in a dream forever, and once he is out of this dream he would have his way with Asuka and it would be all my doing. Apparently he had not yet had enough…

"Living just isn't hard enough, burn me alive inside! Living my life's not hard enough, take everything away!" - Disturbed
In an instant the serum I injected in him earlier becomes active again, I can even see the fire burning inside of him when he opens his mouth to cry out but is completely incinerated instead.

"Another nightmare about to come true will manifest tomorrow…" - Disturbed
So now it's time for another false awakening, this time I am not visible when Lujan wakes up in bed and gets up. He says something about that was an intense dream, then he looks around the room. He walks to the door and opens it, but he doesn't step outside. For outside the door it is not normal as it is in the room. Outside the door is Silent Hill, the twisted dark version of a town, though I have no idea what his home town looks like so I can't replicate it correctly. That doesn't seem to be what he is noticing right now, however, as there are creatures moving around in the mist and cries of pain and torture everywhere. I have transformed into a zombie at this point, and I am lumbering towards him like a zombie would do, there is blood all over my face, I reach out and grab his arm and proceed to rip a large mouthful of flesh from the arm… yuck… he pulls away and slams the door, I puke. Ok… that was more of a nightmare for me than him… I change to my normal form and teleport into the room, he is demanding I return his inner world to normal. I ask how he is so certain that his nightmares have not manifested into reality. He says he knows it's a dream, this is not his reality. I say but the nightmare is now your reality, and you will never wake up. That doesn't stop him from trying yet again…

"Another love that I've taken from you, lost in time, on the edge of suffering…" - Disturbed
Back in Lujan's usual inner world, the place with the nice house and the pool, I am lying on a lounge beside the pool in a revealing bikini, I am in the form of Kanmuri. Lujan is looking around nervously as if expecting something nasty to happen at any moment, but nothing does. As Kanmuri, I walk up behind Lujan and ask what is wrong with him. He jumps about three feet as he turns to look at me, I make a point to look perplexed. He seems glad to see it is me (Kanmuri) and grabs hold of me a bit too roughly for my liking, but it seems he is doing it out of desperation rather than cruelty. He says he has been trapped in the worst nightmares, a series of nightmares, each time he thinks he wakes up he finds it's another nightmare. He says it is over now, and I (Kanmuri) know how to help him relax. He reaches out towards me to embrace me, but I push him away. He seems surprised at that and asks what is wrong. I don't answer, I just disappear into nothingness. He is calling for her to come back, but a hollow voice speaks and says he has turned away a woman who would have him and is after one who wants nothing to do with him… the entire place is suddenly covered with snow and ice, a frigid wind is blowing, the plants are now dead. Too bad, it looks like you've been shut out in the cold, all alone… a hollow laugh follows that comment. The cold wasteland around us literally shatters like glass, leaving Lujin falling into space…

"Another taste of the evil I breed will level you completely…" - Disturbed
I am floating in a void with Lujan right beside me, I'm not sure exactly how to read the look on his face, I think he is trying to look angry, but I can tell the nightmares are starting to get to him, the fact he has seemingly woken up many times and yet is still trapped in this dream. I have said I can keep him in the dream indefinitely, even forever, and it is starting to look like that might be true. He says he wants out of this dream right now, he wants to wake up. I tell him that is easy enough, just say he will never go after Asuka again. He said he would bring his woman back with him if he wants to. I tell him that he is asking for another taste of the evil I have brought, although I can't promise he'll survive it. He says he wants out of the dream immediately. I tell him if that's the case, he should just wake up.

"Bring to life everything that you fear, live in the dark, and the world is threatening…" - Disturbed
So now I am with Lujan in a completely normal looking room, or at least I can't see anything strange about it. He is looking nervously around, I am invisible so he can't see me. Well, there is one thing odd about the room… there are no windows or doors in it. He is looking for a way out, he seems rather desperate to find an exit from this room. There is no exit revealed, but the walls do start closing in from all directions, causing the already small room to become even smaller… The walls change from ordinary walls to steel, and that metal becomes red hot, so hot that it is glowing, the temperature in the tiny room soars. Lujan is calling for someone to get him out of the room, out of the dream, his skin is burning and blistering painfully.

"Living just isn't hard enough, burn me alive inside! Living my life's not hard enough, take everything away!" - Disturbed
The walls are suddenly gone, he is back in his ordinary inner world, and he immediately heads for the pool in search of some relief from the burning heat… but the pool is filled with red hot lava instead of water, so no help there. He is surrounded by beautiful women, all of them scantily dressed, and they are all crowding around him. But when they get close enough, they do not bring gentle caresses or love, they have fingernails that are more like razor sharp claws, and they immediately start clawing at Lujan, pulling at the already burned flesh, tearing it off, a couple of them are eating it, it really looks quite disgusting… As that is happening I hear him calling out for me this time, calling to Raven, so I become visible just outside the group of ravenous women who are tearing at his flesh. He says he'll do it, he'll leave Asuka alone, just let him out of this dream! I look at him with doubt, I say if he goes anywhere near Asuka, if he even so much as looks at Asuka, if anyone else does anything to Asuka on his behalf, he'd better be sure he isn't even thinking about her, or he will be back in this dream before he knows what happened, and the dream will not end, but it will go on forever. The eternal nightmare. He says he will have nothing to do with Asuka, he doesn't even want to hear the name, just get him out of this nightmare!

"Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, leave me no one…
Turn to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, cast aside…
Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, leave me no one…
Turn to me, return to me, return to me, you've made me turn away…" - Disturbed
As this part of the song is playing, I hold my hand out to Lujan, offering to help him get away from the women, who are covered in his blood and look more like monsters than women… They don't want to let him respond to me, but he finally manages to reach out and take my hand… a healing energy flows over both of us, forcing the ravenous women into the pool of lava where they are consumed by flames. Lujan has been completely healed, gone are the burns, and the places the women had been tearing at his flesh are healed as well. That brings noticeable relief from the pain, I can tell just by looking at him. As the light healing energy floods the entire inner world, or as much as I can see, the whole place returns to the way it normally is, a nice pool and a nice house, Kanmuri is over by the house, looking out with a confused look on her face, I wonder what it has looked like to her…

"Living just isn't hard enough, burn me alive inside, living my life's not hard enough, they take everything from you…" - Disturbed
"Now remember your promise," I say to Lujan, who seems relieved to be back in his normal inner world, enough so that he might start kissing the ground at any moment, "Because if I find out you fucking lied to me I'll have to come back… and you don't want me to have to come back. You think you just had a nightmare? That's a walk in the park compared to what will happen if I have to come back. Eternal nightmare, that's what you will get, an eternal nightmare, and you know I can do it." He is babbling incoherently, I can only make out a few words such as "Never" and "Asuka" and "Stay away" and I piece together that he is saying he will never go near Asuka again, and will stay away from her… Kanmuri is standing there with us now, well actually Lujan is hunched over on the ground babbling, Kanmuri wants to know what happened to Lujan, I tell her he needed a bit of a lesson, so if she wants him to care for her instead of Asuka, she could make progress towards that by caring for him now, he would be in need of some comfort and some gentle treatment since he had been treated rather harshly in his nightmare. So Kanmuri helps Lujan stand up, he says he wants to make sure Asuka is nowhere near him, that she can't get anywhere near him, because it might look like he had gotten near her on purpose… Kanmuri is talking in a soothing voice, saying Asuka is nowhere to be seen, she is not here and would not be coming here. He is saying something about monsters, and evil demon women, Kanmuri is telling him none of those are here, he is safe in his own inner world. She gives me a strange look that says she finds what I have done to be disturbing to say the least, and I agree with her on that, but if it will make him leave Asuka and MoSh alone, it will have been worth it.

12/21/10 Asuka in the Dream with Roses
Note: It seems that Lujan has gone and grabbed Asuka again, even though I thought that was over quite a while ago. He hasn't caused any trouble since July of 2010, but here we go again?! As annoying as that is, the first goal is to get Asuka back , dealing with Lujan is secondary. I am wondering if there is something wrong with Kanmuri, who was Lujan's girlfriend, and for the past several months has been keeping Lujan occupied so he hasn't been going after Asuka. I got the feeling from reading MoSh's dream that something could be very wrong… So this was the primary plan for the night.

Asuka in the Dream with Roses
When going to look for Asuka, I somehow find myself in a huge garden, and I find I am there alone even though I had intended to pick up MoSh before coming to find Asuka. I wonder where MoSh has gone to, I clearly remember making a stop by his inner world before opening a portal to track Asuka, and I would have sworn MoSh was right behind me in that portal. Well, he isn't here now, so I will just have to deal with that and see if my portal even ended up in the right place at all. I explore the garden, and it is all roses, roses are everywhere. There doesn't even seem to be any ground except for the ground I am walking on, just roses as far as the eye can see. I also can't see any sky… it is a bit disorienting, but I follow the path through the tunnel of roses to see where it leads and hoping it leads to Asuka.

All of the roses are actually a bit disorienting, but I finally find an area that is basically a room made out of roses. The effect is really rather beautiful, but so disorienting… Asuka is in the middle of the rose room, sitting there holding a rose, a golden rose, it looks like the golden rose is the only one of its kind… there aren't any golden roses on the bushes all around us. She looks up at me as I enter the area, at first she doesn't seem to recognize me at all. I look at the golden rose she is holding in her hands, I wonder if there is anything wrong with it that might be affecting Asuka. She finally seems to recognize me and holds the rose out to me.

I take the rose and look closely at it, the rose begins glowing with a golden light. I look around the rose room and see that the entrance I entered through is gone, now there is no sign of an exit. I also think it is strange that Asuka has not said a word to me, she has smiled, but not spoken. I speak to her and ask if she is ok, she still doesn't answer, instead she reaches a hand up to me for me to help her up. I do that, asking again if she is ok, she still doesn't answer me. She is still looking at me with a strange look on her face, so now I am wondering if I have definitely found Asuka at all, or if this might be some kind of decoy, so I look closely at her, reaching out to feel her energy… it is definitely Asuka, though there seems to be a bit of unstable energy there. It's Asuka, but something is not right. I open a portal out of the rose room… there is a small amount of resistance to the portal, but nothing I can't handle… and I lead Asuka through into the healing glen. I'm not sure if he knew telepathically or what, but MoSh meets us there in the healing glen. He wants to know if Asuka is ok, I say I think there is something not right, but she should be fine after healing. When the crystal golem comes out I hand the golden rose to him and tell him I think the rose may have something to do with what is wrong with Asuka since I found her holding it. He says he will take a look at it after putting Asuka somewhere comfortable. He takes the rose, which is tiny compared to his huge hand, but he gently lies the rose on the ground before taking Asuka into the healing cave with MoSh following behind.

12/15/10 A Tale of Two Hogwartses
Plans: Go to Hogwarts, take the train to the pyramids... Nomad says he'll be there if he can. Yay! No other plans.

Field Trip
I am at Hogwarts where I teach. The students there have been many new things lately, need I think it would be a good idea to practice it all. I think maybe a simulation where they can practice without any danger, and I think of the Outer Realms training area. Do I need to ask Dumbledore before taking these kinds of trips? I think maybe I need to find out for sure before taking the students off to all corners of the reality. So I head to Dumbledore's office, looking for Dumbledore to check and make sure field trips beyond Hogwarts grounds will be ok. As I am almost to the hidden entrace to Dumbledore's office, I see a pissed Umbridge passing on her way out of Dumbledore's office. She pauses long enough to glare at me intensely, then she storms off in a huff without saying a single word. I wonder what has gotten her in such a bad mood, but then she is usually in a shitty mood, so I don't pay much attention to her. I go into the hidden office so I can ask Dumbledore about field trip. Dumbledore asks if I saw Umbridge leaving, he said she is still trying to find a way to get me kicked out of Hogwarts, and she is still failing to do so. We have a bit of a chuckly at Umbridge's expense, and then I proceed to ask Dumbledore about the field trip. At first he seems a bit hesitant, says he isn't sure if it's a good idea to be taking the students into actual danger. I tell him that there is no real danger, the place I know of is 100% safe, no one can get hurt for real there. I tell him it's more of a simulation or an illusion than anything, or more like a waking dream, something that can't really hurt anyone. I give my word that all of the students will be completely safe. After a bit more of a pause, Dumbledore says he needs to check a thing or two out first, not due to not trusting me, but he doesn't want to give certain people any valid reason to have me kicked out.

Moon Express… All Aboard!
I am outside of Hogwarts, somewhere on the grounds, but I am not certain which Hogwarts I am at... I have been there only for a couple minutes when Nomad shows up, he says he wants to go to the pyramids to meet up with other dreamers there. I say I had thought he was going to wait at the pyramids for dream class dreamers, and we would meet there when I bring the Hogwarts Express to be part of the transportation. Nomad looks at me for a bit, then he says he was going to do that, wasn't he? Then Nomad says we will take the Hogwarts Express back to the moon and meet up with the dream class dreamers anyway. Nomad and I go to the station where the Hogwarts Express drops off the students, where we find there aren't many people. There is one there who seems to be a sort of guard, so we approach him. He says that no one is allowed access to the train without Hogwarts clearance, but he quickly changes his mind when I use MoP (Master of Puppets) to make sure he agrees to let Nomad and me take the train out for a while. Both of us get into the engine of the train, and head out on the tracks. There is a tunnel that the train passes through, which makes a perfect hidden location to go through a wormhole to get to the correct dimension. When we come out of the tunnel, the tracks lead right up to the pyramids, the Giza pyramids in Egypt. I see some people there, but I have no idea who they are. I don't recognize anyone there. After the train stops, Nomad gets off and starts talking to some of the people there, and soon I see there are dragons around us, and some of the people are getting onto the train. I notice the tracks don't continue on for very far, so how are we supposed to get to the moon? Does the train fly? Well, I figure it's going to have to start flying. I pull the train away from the pyramids after everyone is on board, and the problem of the tracks is solved right away. Two beams of moonlight seem to solidify and form tracks heading up to the moon, and that is what the train rides on to get to the moon. So I drive train onto the tracks of moonlight and moonbeam tracks all of the way to the moon. The surface of the moon has been terraformed, and the station there looks like a station in a theme park I might see in Disney Land or some other place like that. I pull the train up to station where I see people getting off, but it looks like there are quite a fewer than got on… I figure that some of them woke up. I tell Nomad that I had better return train, Nomad gives me a strange look. I tell him everyone here can wake up as they would normally. So now I follow a loop in the moon tracks and now the tracks head back down to the surface of Earth. I pass by the pyramids, go through the wormhole tunnel, and I return the train to Hogwarts without anyone other than the guard I used MoP on noticing the train had ever been gone.

The Second Challenge
I am a student at Hogwarts, I am there with MoSh, I am not lucid. MoSh says we are going to be finding out about the second task of the tri-school challenge. I think that sounds pretty cool, so I follow MoSh to the room where we will be meeting. I see Draco there, though he doesn't seem to like the fact I'm hanging around with MoSh, I wonder why he should have a problem with that. MoSh says I had better go over there and get with my partner, he looks a bit jealous. Partner? Who is my partner? MoSh says Draco is, of course, maybe I should do a RC as well. I do a RC and I realize that I am definitely dreaming.

McGonagall enters the room and announces that there is going to be a meeting of tournament contestants, so since we are all together in the meeting room the room where we first gathered, it is time to give out the first clue on how the task will be done. It seems this room is to be used as a common meeting place. McGonagall tells us the standings, how everyone did in the first task. I hear someone bitching that MoSh is still there when he didn't finish, McGonagall repeats in a somewhat impatient voice that not MoSh finishing due to foul play so it doesn't count. I hear someone else say to kick Draco out for cheating. McGonagall says Draco is not responsible for his father's actions, and was not the one who cheated, now before we run out of time, let's get to business, which is the next challenge... We are getting to talking about the task when Umbridge bursts in, she immediately points at MoSh and then at me, she says MoSh and I should be disqualified. McGonagall asks on what grounds? Umbridge then indicates her own forehead, which now has large red letters on it that spell out EPIC FAILURE. Several of the people laugh briefly, causing Umbridge to scan the room to see who it is, but she is unable to determine who laughed. I use MoP on her, then I telepathically say that little problem certainly is not worth interfering with the tournament. She pauses, then she agrees out loud to something no one else even heard, and finally she says she overreacted to the writing on her face. After another brief pause, she turns and leaves. Everyone is looking in the direction she went with strange looks on their faces, including McGonagall. After a bit of silence goes by, McGonagall finally gets the attention back to the tournament challenge. The second tournament challenge will be using magic this time… Draco comments that it was stupid to have a challenge where magic wasn't allowed… McGonagall ignores the interruption and continues to tell us that only our wands will be allowed at the beginning of the challenge, though anything else obtainable in the course is fair game. Like the previous challenge, only a small amount of information would be revealed at different times before the challenge, so they aren't telling us much... What they do tell us is that we will be taking a valuable treasure from its powerful protector, so we will want to work on spells that could help us deal with an opponent that is considerably more powerful than we are. These clues make me if this is the golden egg and the dragons challenge that she is talking about. I think it sounds very possible that this is the dragon challenge, or at least that it will be something similar. I figured Draco won't be able to cheat this time, but I wonder if the others will cheat. If they're going to be cheating, there's plenty of ways I could cheat, too… though I don't really see the point. Even if they don't cheat, I will still be able to handle the challenge.

Burnout: Library Escape
I am at a library, looking at some books there. I notice that some of the stuff here is for sale, it seems it is a store of some kind merged with the library. I find a pink purse with some adorable kitties all over it, so I take a closer look at it, and I am thinking it could be the perfect gift to give Alicia for Christmas. It has so many pockets, just like she likes it best, so I am really considering picking it up. Then I see the price, it is $140, and there is no way I can afford that, but how can it be so expensive? It's just a purse, it doesn't look like a name brand, and the main point is I don't have that kind of money. I am disappointed, but I walk away from the purse and head towards the front of the library. I also see quite a few books, but it seems like the really cool looking ones, the ones that look like antique leather bound books, are all for sale instead of being available to be checked out. Well, that isn't really surprising considering the condition they would probably come back in if they came back at all. So I continue looking through the library / store, and I soon find an exit where I didn't realize there was one, one of the windows is actually a door that slides open when approached. I go out through that door, and then back in, noting that I don't have to pass by the security scanners to get between the library and the parking lot. So I want one of the antique books, one in specific, and the purse for Alicia, so I pick up both the book and the purse, and I try to carry it casually over to the hidden door and then out. I am sure someone is going to catch me, in a real situation I would be caught, but here I am able to walk away with the stuff. I reach my car, but the remote keyless entry isn’t unlocking the red neon… the car next to it keeps beeping and flashing the lights. This finally is strange enough that I do a RC and find out I'm dreaming.

So now I get into the red car that my keys fit, it's a red sporty car, I'm not sure what the make and model are, but it's a small and cool looking car. I get in and drive out of the parking lot, the car has a nice bit of pickup, especially considering the size of it, so I floor it and I am driving down the street at high speeds. Since this is a dream, my car can go through any other vehicle on the road… so I decide I want to drive as if I was in the video game Burnout! I floor the car down the street into some traffic, and my car does prove to be able to plow right through other cars, even cars that are much larger than my car is… and that is fun. I see some thick traffic, where most of the cars are stopped due to the congestion, and I decide it's time to get out there and "check traffic" which is where the player takes their car and crashes through every other vehicle on the road, knocking them out of the way. I do that now, and clear a path down the road with ease, then I find myself driving out onto a pier, so I stop and get out. Enough of the Burnout game for now, so I go to the end of the pier where I see several people there. I get closer, and I see there are quite a few men together, one of them has his hands tied behind his back, and they are holding him over a tank of boiling water. One of them, looks like a judge, says he has sentenced the criminal to death by boiling, he would now be drowned in boiling water. I ask what he did, the judge says the man insulted the judge, and that is punishable by death. That seems retarded to me, but I act crazy and say I have always wanted to do that. So the executioner laughs and says I can go ahead. I go over to the man who has been sentenced, I use a small knife in my hand to cut the ropes, then I push him into the water. He swims for shore. The judge is pissed, he comes over to me and is cursing fluently. I shove the judge's face into the boiling water briefly, then I pull his face out. His face is red, with some minor burns, but I tell him he should behave unless he wants a longer dip. This is where I start thinking I shouldn't be wasting time playing with these DCs, I have goals I need to accomplish! Except right as I think that, I wake up.