A humble town in the United States.

In a humble little (or not so little) town somewhere in the United States...

A teenager was walking in an alleyway.

Jared Stein, age sixteen, was pissed off. And it showed. His face was clenched in a scowl deeper than a dip in the ocean, his hands were clenched into fists inside the pockets of the gray hoodie he was wearing and his body was moving in quick, jerky movements like he wanted to unleash his rage bit didn't know how. The air around Jared was charged with anger, and his aura was practically screaming 'give me one reason and I will unload my shit off on on you, preferably with my fists'. Anyone who ran across him would do their best to avoid him, which probably wouldn't happen since Jared had deliberately chosen the most empty path he could find.

At least, that was Jared five minutes ago. Now the aura he was projecting was more calm, although still angry, and he had slowed down to a more acceptable pace, which was more like walking than running. His scowl had died down into a more sulky look, and Jared was glowering at his battered white trainers instead, muttering angrily under his breath.

He'd told Mr Mann that no, adding orange juice to the coffee cake wasn't going to go well! It would taste terrible and make the cake dense as a brick, and then it wouldn't sell at all. He'd told him, and what did the guy do anyway? Add a whole jug of the juice into the batter before Jared could stop him and stick it into the oven to bake. What the hell?!

And that wasn't all. When the cake came out just as Jared he said it would (only it tasted more like oranges instead of rotten fruit) Mr Mann had the nerve to blame him. For not stopping him. Even after Jared had told him how it was going to turn out and he couldn't go against the owner of the establishment, even if Mr Mann was insanely nice and very, very accommodating and he'd been working there for over three years. And also very irritating, since he chose that moment to act like a little kid and say that well, Jared should have stopped him.

Needless to say, Jared's temper had flared up, and that lead to an argument that led to Jared storming out of the door while Mr Mann stared mournfully at the vomit colored cake brick, which in turn lead to Jared walking aimlessly around to calm himself down. Seriously, what was wrong with his life?!

Walking out of the alleyway, Jared winced at the sudden noise of the streets and looked around to figure out where he was. Somewhere near the library, he decided, seeing a familiar small playground a few miles away. He jogged towards the swing sets and grabbed a seat, thankful that it was empty.

Stupid Boss, Jared thought angrily, swinging too and fro on the seat. He swung himself higher and higher, the anger aiding his pushes. "Stupid cake," Jared grumbled to himself, "Stupid oranges, stupid - huh?"

As he swung upwards again, Jared squinted at the familiar looking figure. Yup, it's him. "Hey Lok!" He called, forgetting about the cooking incident for a moment. He continued to swing, going as high as he could go. "What's up?"

Lok eyed the pair of boots dangling above him. "Evidently, Jared, you are." He glanced down at his watch and frowned. Strange, he thought. Jared's shift doesn't end until half an hour later. What's he doing here? Lok slung the backpack off his shoulders and took a seat next to Jared's, musing about the possibilities as he started to swing.

Maybe he got fired. Lok figured it was likely. After all, Jared had the fuse that was about as long as the list of people at school who had gotten an A in Multivariable Calculus. But surely he wouldn't risk doing anything to get fired. Jared needed that job more than he needed his dignity.

Lok himself would never understand--he never held a single job in his entire life. Never wanted to, either. Lok didn't see the reason for the existence of jobs, the concept of giving a series of actions an arbitrary, monetary value. It didn't make any sense. But that was how the real world worked, and he didn't get to make the rules.

Lok sighed, his mind drifting back to the mystery of Jared in the playground. Maybe he's on break. Maybe his boss let him out early. Lok gripped the iron chains tighter as the swing sped up. Then again, this is the twenty-first century. No sane owner of any corporate business would be that generous.

Or maybe--Lok smiled wryly as the thought crossed his mind--maybe he has a hot date. I wonder what kind of person would want to go on a date in a playground. Maybe one of those innocent-types, who never really wanted to grow up. Maybe someone young. Not like a freshman, I mean, really, really young, like--

Lok coughed quickly to choke his rising snicker. Yeah, because Jared's the sort of guy that would date a middle schooler. You know what? Maybe I should just ask.

"So Jared!" shouts Lok, above the sound of creaking chains, "What brings you here this early?"

Jared grimaced as he remembered the argument, his knuckles turning white as they clenched on the chains. He slowed down a bit, and the chains creaked less alarmingly now that he wasn't trying to be one with the sky.

"Had an argument with my boss again." Jared said darkly, still angry over how Mr Mann had ruined a perfectly good cake. "He wanted me to help him make a orange-coffee cake," he explained, turning towards Lok, "even though I told him that it'd be pretty terrible. And when it did turn out terrible he said that I should've stopped him even though I tried. Seriously, who adds half a liter of orange juice into the mixing bowl and toss the whole mixture into the oven the moment the cook turns his back to check the sink? And well, you know the rest from there."

It wasn't really a regular occurrence, but it happened often enough that Mr Mann and Jared had a system for it - a twenty minute break and working for another twenty minutes later in the shift, ten if it wasn't too bad, and zero if it was during rush hour. For the most part, it worked. Jared would've liked to complain more (especially about moments like this), but held himself back because well, he liked Mr Mann and was extremely glad that he'd found a boss who didn't mind his bad temper. Besides, it was immature.

"Well, anyway." Jared said, changing the subject. He swung up high, his swings slightly offbeat to Lok's. "What brings you here? The library's going to close pretty soon, you know."

Lizzy was only in the door when she remembered the library book. She had spent her whole afternoon at the animal rescue centre helping out. There was the new cat that everyone had started naming Hudini because of his ability to escape every single cage he had been put into. Lizzy's whole job was helping the rest of the staff locate Hudini and find somewhere to keep him where he couldn't make another vanishing act. This had inevitably ended up with Lizzy running around the centre trying to catch the little minx. Not only that but he didn't exactly like people so Lizzy had the trouble of avoiding his razor sharp, uncut claws. Of course she didn't escape unscathed but compared to the others helping her she got off lightly. She really was determined not to get herself hurt. Thankfully one of the cleaners had a pad lock handy and they had ended up using that to lock Hudini in his cage for the night. Liz had a sneaking suspicion he was in more cramped cages before he came to the centre. He had also taken a liking to the pillow he was provided.

Anyway, when Lizzy got home, later than she had expected, the first thing she did was collapse on her bed. Chasing a cat around proved to be quite tiring. Not even her own energetic cat, Lucy, ran around that much. Besides Lucy was well trained, if she was called she would obey. Providing she was in a good mood. Lizzy was just about to call the tabby cat when she just so happened to glance over to her bedside table.

"Oh shit..." she muttered quietly, not attempting to move just staring, half in disbelief at the two tattered books sitting in the table.
Sarah, the librarian, who happened to be a friend of Liz's, wouldn't be too happy if Liz returned the books late for the sixth time. On top of that the library was closing in what, half an hour? She sat up abruptly. She'd have to go by car to get there. Her mum was at work and her dad, well he was basically glued to the sofa at this time of night, which meant she was going to have to drive. God, she hated driving. There was no other choice though.

"Dad! Where's the keys!?" she called, half jumping down the stairs.
"Donno, coat pocket maybe," he muttered with a full mouth. Probably those home made 'fortune cookies', if that's what you could call them. Mason's cooking rarely went according to plan despite him considering himself a master chef.
Liz didn't even have to check the coat pocket to know they weren't there. Instead she opened the drawer where the cutlery was kept, finding the keys in the 'miscellaneous' part of the drawer.

She shut it forcefully, rushing to the front door.
"You find 'em?" her dad asked, hearing the door open from the sitting room.
"Yeah! No thanks to you!" she yelled, hurrying out to the car, slamming the front door behind her.
Her dad's car was a pretty decent BMW from the looks of it. Inside was a different matter. The only place you could actually sit without having to be on a pile if rubbish was the drivers seat. Liz had even done him a favour and cleaned it a few weeks ago. The first week was fine, then it got progressively more cluttered.

She pulled out of the driveway before stopping, shutting of the engine and jumping out of the car. Running back to the house and flinging the door open.
"Books," she mumbled,"Forgot the books."

Lok scoffed. "Genius of a man, your boss must be, to come up with a recipe that involves combining half a liter of orange juice with coffee cake. It's just about as reprehensible as combining potassium carbonate with coke and iron turnings. Which makes ferrocyanide. Which fucking kills you." Lok laughed; it sounded sharp, vacant, and short, like a bullet that narrowly missed its mark. "The man must have graduated from a culinary institute online."

Dragging his feet along the ground, he let the swing come to a standstill, before jumping off. "As to what brings me here--" he picked the backpack off the ground and slung it back onto his shoulders--"Just the usual. I was having a smoke break." Lok dug through the pocket of his leather jacket and produced a white and yellow stub. "A cigarette this time. My friend ran out of joints."

Lok never actually smoked on any of his smoke breaks. He would only light up the utility for smoking and watch it burn out. He derived a mild sense of euphoria from watching the embers flare and eat away the paper. It was controlled destruction. It was calming.

His gaze drifted towards the sky. The sun was painting the horizon an angry red, in protest against the coming night. It was all futile--the sun's light was always overwhelmed by darkness. But the sun would keep coming back the next morning, and the morning after that. It was all absurd. Lok himself would never understand.

He checked his watch again. Only a couple of minutes until crimson would give way to blue.

Lok flicked the stub into the dirt and crushed it under his heel. "I'm about to head back to the library, actually. There was something for history class I forgot to look up." That was a lie. He just wanted to delay his departure a little bit longer, so he could walk back home under the stars. "Want to come with?"

"How did you -" Jared paused. "never mind, I don't want to know." He tried to forget why Lok knew that (probably the internet, right? Out of curiousity, right? Right?) and focused on the cigarette stub Lok was lighting instead.

When Lok had mentioned his smoke breaks, Jared had thought that he'd literally smoked (and did drugs) and almost had a heart attack over it, although he was pretty sure that Lok didn't notice. He worried over it (smoking and drugs were bad for the health, and Lok wa a friend), at least until the day he ran across Lok watching a marijunna joint burn with a look in his eyes that Jared absolutely didn't want to think about and found out what 'smoke break' really meant. That had been embarrassing.

"That would explain all of the mess ups he made," Jared snorted, keeping his legs away from the ground. Due to having no force pushing him up, Jared was slowly stopping swinging, the wind gently blowing the smoke from Lok's minature fire away from his face.

"Can't say that his drinks aren't awesome, though." Jared added grudgingly, almost admiringly. Jared could produce a good cup of coffee so long as he followed the recipe, but Mr Mann was a genius at it. Any drink he made, tea, coffee, even smoothies (which he had made as a birthday present for a coworker who had wondered if he had died and gone to heaven the moment he had tasted the smoothie), tasted like it was made out of all that was holy and delicious, which was part of the reason that he ran such a good establishment despite normal snacks.

At least, until he'd hired some good cooks (Jared included). Then both the snacks and drinks tasted good.

The light of the stub burnt out, and Lok asked Jared a question.

"Sure, why not? I'll have to go back soon, though," he said, doing a few quick calculations. It had been five minutes since he'd left the Minder's Gheist, eight since he'd started talking to Lok. That left Jared with seven minutes, although the argument hadn't been that bad. Ah well. He chuckled. "Who knows, maybe I'll pick up a cookbook for him."

By then, his swing had slowed down enough for him to get off without any difficulty. Standing up, Jared placed his hands inside his pockets and walked beside Lok, heading to the library.

The walk to the library was silent; Lok intentionally kept it that way. It was a bad habit to talk to your friends too much. The more you talked to them, the more you got to know them, and the more predictable they became. That's when you would get bored, and they would figure out you were bored, and then they would leave. And Lok didn't really want Jared to leave. Not yet.

There were roughly twenty minutes left until the library was going to close. Lok pushed the door open, holding it long enough so that Jared could get in. History books were on the third floor of the library. He glanced back at Jared, wondering if he should take the elevator up, out of courtesy. But a little exercise never hurt--

"Excuse me."

Lok blinked. Standing in front of him was a middle-aged man carrying a box full of old, battered books.

The man sighed. "I would appreciate it, sir, if you could move out of the way."

There was one book sticking out of the box in particular that caught Lok's attention. It was a dark, intense blue, almost black. On its cover was a single word, spelled out in gold: Allorae.

Lok tilted his head to the side. "What's that?"

"It's a box full of old books that the library wants me to dispose."

Lok smiled. "Then I'm sure you won't mind if I take these books from you?"

The man shrugged. "I don't suppose it would be a problem. The dumpster's right around the corner, outside the main entrance. Thanks."

Nodding, Lok took the box from the man, his eyes briefly widening as he realized how light it was. He exited the building, walked into the alleyway nearby, and set the box down, before taking out the book that had drawn his eye earlier. He was about to open it when he realized there was a lock--but no key. Gingerly, he tugged at the covers, hoping the book would open. No use.

"Hey, Jared," he called, "you wouldn't happen to know how to pick a lock, would you?"

"A lock? Depends on what type it is," Jared said, looking at it over Lok's shoulder. He'd been a bit surprised by Lok when he grabbed the box and ran to the dumpster, but quickly got over it. It was Lok, after all. Jared reached into the brown hip pouch he had on. "Hold on," he said, shuffling through the items and causing a loud clunk to be heard, "lemme check if I still have my - yup, still got it."

He pulled out a pair of paper clip lock picks with a grin. Knew keeping them wasn't a waste, he thought victoriously, taking the book from Lok to examine it. Now that Jared was looking closer, he liked the look of it too. It was seriously pretty, but why did it have a lock? Maybe it was some kind of journal or something? Who knows. Jared examined the book with a professional eye, searching for the keyhole. Lets see if all those years of picking my house locks and some occasional others helps me here...

Ten minutes later, Jared's eyes were tired from squinting at the lock, his fingers were tired from fiddling with said lock, and the book was as close to opening as it was ten minutes ago - near impossible.

"AGGHH!" Jared yelled, throwing his hands up in frustration. He glared at the book, gripping it so tightly that the cover would've been scrunched to pieces if it was a paperback. "What the hell is wrong with this lock?! It looked so simple I thought that I could open it in three minutes tops, but everytime I think I've got it it's not!" His grip tightened, and it was a good thing Jared didn't have heat vision because otherwise the book would've been burnt to a crisp. "It's almost like it's changing shape or - or -"

Three things happened in quick succession. The first was that the dustbin, which had a very weak lid, slammed shut with a loud bang, causing a fiery black blur to race out of it with a snarling hiss and brush against Jared's jeans before disappearing somewhere into the night, causing Jared to jump half a mile into the air and yell "GAAAAHHH WHATTHEHELLJUSTTOUCHEDME".

The second thing was that Jared dropped (more like threw at the blur and missed) the book, which still had his lock picking tools stuck in that damn lock. It clattered to the ground with a thud as the paper clips were jolted upon contact with the ground, and the blur skidded to a halt to reveal a cat, which hissed menacingly at the two boys. Oddly enough, they stayed in the lock even after the book hit the ground.

"WHY YOU -" both angry and embarrassed, Jared darted over to the cat to - well, yell at it probably, causing the cat to back into the wall and the third thing to happen - Jared stepped on the book and slipped, falling flat on his face and sending the book skidding behind him thanks to the force generated from his foot. The book went flying into the wall, jolting the lock picks even more...

Causing the lock to open.

The book burst open, it's pages flipping incredibly fast. A loud explosion was heard, and at the same time a blinding light and a light fog came out from the book...

---

In the forest by the small village of Allorae strolled a stranger. This stranger, dressed in red, was particularly famished. Yes, Fiona Rae was desperate for a soul to consume. At this point, she didn't care what kind of soul she was to consume. Crippled, unripe, burnt; she couldn't care less. A soul was a soul.

Speaking of souls... Fiona's eyes seemed to sparkle as she laid her eyes on an approaching stranger. An old man, who was carrying a heavy looking package. A plump old man, Fi observed. Perhaps a bit too plump. Ah, but what was she thinking? A soul was a soul. And this soul was no exception. Dare, whose eyes were still sparkling, smiled as she began skipping over to the unfortunate soul. A sweet smile crept upon her lips as she called out to him, "Sire! You look awfully tired. Do you need help with that heavy package of yours?"

Just as the old man was about to respond, Fiona felt something tug on the back of her dress. Her head whirled around, eyes expecting to find someone behind her. Alas, there was no one. She sought to blame her imagination... Right before the pull grew stronger. Genuinely suspicious, she fully turned around, only to face air. The moment she took a step forward to investigate the disturbance further, a sudden force pulled the whole of her creation forward. Before she knew what was going on, she slammed face first into a wall composed of solid stone. The world swirled for a split second, though it didn't take long for Fiona to regain her composure... And it didn't take long for to lose it again, realization that this world was not exactly hers.

"Woah, wait a second--- wait --- w-what in hell?!"

---

---

Avaline Harp took a deep breath in order to suppress her excitement as she started toward Allorae's library, her hopes set on the case she and her partner were about to pursue. According to the town's residents, mysterious murders had been occurring as of late. Apparently the victims bared no typical murder symptoms; no stab-wounds, no blue lips, nothing usual, only abnormal lightening of skin. This particular case thrilled Avaline, for she hadn't run into an interesting case in quite a while. For a while, she depended on lengthy books and keen observations performed on the side in order to entertain herself. All of these distractions from work were growing quite tiresome. She didn't have the time to mess around. She had to keep up with all of her cases.

So, now that her case was her entertainment, she was quite jubilant that day.

So jubilant, in fact, that she didn't believe anything could increase her excitement. Yet she was wrong. Though she usually hated being wrong, in this particular case, she did not mind.

It all started with a slight tug. It was as if someone were pulling on the back of her dress. Curious, she turned her head to see who it was. Part of her thought it was Zen (who she was meeting at the library), her partner, but it appeared to be no one. Her head tilted to the side. Perhaps a demon with the power of invisibility was messing with her? Not that she minded, of course. What she minded was not knowing. Not knowing who was tugging on her dress, to be exact. She considered asking who it was when the tug turned into a pull. Avaline then reached out to see if she could touch who was pulling on her dress, but was taken by surprise as the pull increased dramatically. She watched as the scene around her shifted, colors swirled, and new surroundings introduced themselves, all within a few seconds.

A breathless gasp escaped Avaline's lips as she was thrust into this unfamiliar setting. She hit the ground with a loud thump, though thankfully through quick thinking her shoulder took the brunt of the hit instead of her face. Of course, nothing could be done to stop the sense of pain that radiated throughout her body via impact with the ground. And nothing could be done to quell the indescribable feeling of intrigue that coursed through her veins as she admired the new world around her.

---

[OOC]

Wake up call! It's posting time!

It was a positively beautiful day, the sky was clear, the birds were chirping in the trees, there was a gentle breeze rustling the branches of trees and it was brushing through the thick wool like fleece on Jasper's goat legs. He hated it, the beauty of the forrest only rubbed salt into the deep wound in his heart.

"Damn all the Gods! Can't you see I'm trying to wither and die in peace! I don't deserve beautiful day, or... breathing for that matter!" He held his breath for just a moment, only to gasp for air again. To Jasper it had felt like he'd been waiting to fade away and die for an eternity. When in all honesty he'd been laying in the middle of the forrest clearing wallowing in self loathing and depression for maybe two days at the most. It had been a whirlwind of emotions since he had watched the love of his life toss herself off a cliff, falling to her death on the jagged rocks below. Blaming himself for her death Jasper had decided to lay in the middle of the forrest, starve, fade away, and die. The only problem was... Jasper was a demon and that sort of thing tends to take longer than expected.

Jasper curled up hugging his legs to his chest and sobbing. An exasperated rabbit family looked on at the sight, even they were embarrassed to see a demon act in such a way and they were cute fluffy bunnies. They had lost so much sleep the night before because Jasper had wailed like a banshee the whole time. Jasper's stomach growled loudly, he hadn't fed since sucking the life force out his rival. "Don't you start too!" he bawled up his fist and landed a direct hit to his abdomen. It wasn't a strong hit because..well Jasper hit like weak, baby kitten and even then a kitten could probably still kick his ass. He began to sputter and cough, the rabbit mother was so shocked by such behavior she quickly hustled her six babies back into the hole in the trunk of the nearby willow tree..

This left the father of the family there shaking his head. Honestly he was tired of seeing the demon mope around, and most of all he was tired of listening to him wine and cry. He had never seen a demon act in such a weak and appalling manner. No dignity at all, the rabbit thought to himself before retreating into the tree after his family.

"I could have saved her... if I had just reached out a little further, and grabbed her hand....OH DELILAH WHY!!!! Jasper wailed making the smaller birds in the trees fly off abruptly. All that was left was an owl who had been asleep only to have his ears assaulted by Jasper's bellowing. The owl covered his feathered ears with his wings. Kicking and screaming like a toddler Jasper didn't notice a change in the wind. It began to pick up, the trees whipped around, and it almost started to sound like branches were breaking and snapping. Ultimately Jasper began to feel his body be pushed along the ground in the clearing. "Huh?.... What the hell... AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" He clawed and clambered trying to keep himself anchored to the ground, pulling up clods of dirt and grass as the whirlwind began to pull him up into the air. Crashing through the branches of the trees he fumbled around trying to grab onto anything as he was being sucked up into something. Unfortunately the only thing he could manage to get a hold on was the owl. Spinning and screaming Jasper clutched the owl to his chest and found himself flying through... a tunnel? "NOOOOOOOOO!!!! He continued spinning through a haze of colors, making him so dizzy his stomach lurched, and he puked only to watch the inky black substance swirl along with the colors and get sucked through what looked like a drain. "WAAAAAAAH!!! I WANT MY MOMMY!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!

Jasper felt like his body was being pulled apart and stretched as he found himself going the same direction as what he had just expectorated. The spinning stopped and he flew through the air like he'd been shot out of a cannon, till there was a sickening splat and a crack as he hit head first into the ground. The impact knocked Jasper out cold, leaving a very confused owl to eventually get up and fly off like he'd spent the night in wine barrel.

---

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---

---

It was a normal day in Allorae, Phoebe sitting up in a tree, watching Fiona down below. Of course Fi didn't see her up there, she was eavesdropping after all! Phoebe saw an old man carrying a large box coming Fi's way. She couldn't hear what she was saying but she knew she would give Fi a big scare once she dropped from the tree. She smoothed out her dress, fixing the red bows in her hair as well. She couldn't wait to see Fi's face. "This is going to be priceless!" But something was strange, she felt like something bad was going to happen. She felt it in her gut.

Suddenly, Fi had looked behind her. Again, and again. Before she knew it, her 'friend' was pulled back. From the tree she could no longer see her, and Phoebe was worried. Soon enough, a small tug was pulled at one of her pigtails. She looked behind her, but nothing. How could someone pull her hair if there was nobody there? Must be a little child's prank. "Ok guys. You can stop now." Her hair was pulled yet again. "Stop! It isn't funny!" There was still nobody else in sight. As she turned forward again.... BAM! Phoebe was pulled out of the tree and onto the ground, but it seemed like she didn't stop falling. She could now see rainbow of colors surrounding her. "Weee~This is fun!" she screamed. Soon enough, Phoebe fell to the ground as she looked around, noticing it was night time. She could tell this wasn't Allorae. Not one bit.

Where was she? "W-where am I? This isn't Allorae..."

Lizzies whole car journey consisted of her apologising over and over to other drivers and pedestrians who couldn’t hear her. It wasn’t that she was a bad driver or screwed up or anything. Driving just made her so nervous every slight thing she did seemed like a mistake. If she breached too early, if she didn’t change gear at the precise moment the list went on. So you can imagine how relieved she was that the journey was over. Perhaps she should just leave the car and walk home. Her dad could probably pick up the car tommorow morning, the walk wouldn't kill him.

Liz grabbed the books before pulling the key from the ignition and getting out of the BMW, locking it behind her. She still had a good few minutes before the library shut but that didn't stop her running it, which didn't probe to be easy in high heels.

Of course Liz wore heels, it not only made her look taller but she had to admit they looked pretty good on her. Obviously they weren't all that easy to walk in but no pain no gain. The heels weren't even that painful, it was just poor Lizzy's low pain tolerance that made them seem so bad. Though she had seen girls wear higher and shivered at the thought of having to wear those and coming home with the feet cut off her.

As she walked into the library no one seemed to be around and she silently put the books on the front desk, double chking to see that no one would see her laving without returning the books without getting someone to scan them. It wasn't that she didn't want to wait or to put them where she got them. Liz didn't want anyone to know she returned them late. Well of course they would know but she was to tired for explainations, even if the books were brought back on time.

Sighing slightly she left the library, looking behind her to make sure there was still no one there. It was a stupid thing to be paranoid over but that's Lizzy for you. She had totally given up on taking the car back home with her and had in fact, decided on walking.

Liz only managed to get a few steps down the street before she heard a hell of a lot of angry yelling coming from an alleyway somewhere near her. Liz was compelled to go and help whoever seemed to be in trouble. Well at least he sounded like he was in trouble.

"WHY YOU-“ As she approached what the male voice was screaming about became more apparent. Well whate he was saying became more apparent. There seemed to be some type of struggle going on and Liz was about to barge right in when there was a bright light from the alley followed by a loud bang. As she got nearer to the entrance she saw that some sort of mist was beginning to form. It wasn’t thick enough to stop her recognising two figures, well one of them anyway. Jared was they only one whose name she could place although the other did look familiar. Herself and Jared had met a few times before, mostly at the cafe where he worked. From past experiences she could at least say the two didn’t exactly get along well together.

“Hey! What the hell’s going on?!” she yelled, the mist thickening quite rapidly so now she could;t even see two feet in front of her.

Damn, that hurt. Lifting his face off the ground, Jared winced as he gingerly felt his nose. It didn't seem broken or bleeding, which was good, but... Embarrassing, to fall over like that just because of a cat. Jared could feel his face flush at the memory, but tried to shove it away. The situation had gone weird with the unnatural bright light and fog, he had to focus on that instead of his own actions. What the hell happened?!

No wait, something else was more important right now. "Lok?" Jared asked anxiously, squinting through the fog. He could see a blurred figure, but that was it. "Lok, are you ok?" Oh man, his friend had better not be dead...

Someone answered him, but the voice was too feminine to be Lok. Who-

"Liz?!" Jared stood up quickly, pain forgotten in his surprise. "The heck are you doing here?!" For a moment, Jared considered her to be the one who did this as a prank, but quickly ruled it out. He didn't know her very well apart from work and school (thank goodness), but she didn't seem the type to play a prank on them like this.

"Heck if I know what's going on," he said, irritation replacing the surprise in his tone and hiding the anxiety and uneasiness Jared felt. He shuffled in his pouch and pulled out a flashlight with a mental sigh of relief that quickly changed into a mental curse when he flicked the switch and no light appeared. Batteries must have died. Dammit. Slipping it back into his pocket, Jared squinted into the fog and tried to think of what to do.

He didn't have any clue what was going on, where the fog had come from or what the hell just happened. What Jared did know was that Liz was on the scene and maybe near the edge of the fog since she hadn't been with them, Lok and himself were probably in the middle of it, and they couldn't see an inch in front of them thanks to said fog, which at least seemed to be breathable in.

And even worse, they had no clue who did this, or why. Jared tried not to think about poison or sleeping gas or kidnappers or terrorists and took a deep breath instead, trying to calm the worry and anxiety piling up like lead in his stomach.

"Get out of here, I don't think it's safe," he said at last, reaching out to fumble his way around. Focus on getting everyone to safety first. "I'll see where Lok is and meet up with you afterwards."

Dangerous (and foolish) it might be, but Jared wasn't going to leave until everyone had gotten out of this situation. His hands outstretched, Jared shuffled forwards inch by inch, heading towards what was hopefully the spot where Lok has been standing before everything went to hell.

Zen landed on all fours and blinked the colours out of his eyes as the white and red coat he had tied around his waist settled as the wind died down, staring at his surroundings in awe. What happened? Was it the work of the suoh- the spou- the one Ava had been studying up on, or another demon?

If it was a demon, they had gotten him good. Zen had been testing out the new short sword he had gotten - dark red hilt that felt comfortable in his grip (oh, it was still in his hand, cool) and a plain steel blade that tapered off into a point sharp enough to pierce the trunk of a dead tree without much effort (the tree now looked like it had died from Execution of a Thousand Cuts), which all in all made the blade pretty good. Zen knew he was supposed to be hunting for that new demon instead of practicing, but Ava was already doing research on it, right? So there was no need for Zen to bother until Ava came up with something or a fight happened.

Preferably the latter. Those were always interesting.

Practice had turned out pretty good, and Zen had just decided to take a break when something tugged at him by the black shirt he was wearing. He had looked behind him, curious. Someone looking for a fight, maybe?

Nothing had been there, only trees and bushes and a dog lying on it's back in a patch of sun. Zen had shrugged and turned around, his hand resting lightly near his sword. It was probably nothin -

Something pulled at him. Zen had fallen backwards into a mess of swirling colours and blurry shapes, which was actually pretty sweet to watch. Zen had only time to wonder "Is this from a demon?" before he had been thrown out onto the ground with a thud, leading him to his current predicament.

Ah, his vision had cleared! Awesome! So had that dizzying feeling too. Standing up, Zen looked around him curiously, sword at the ready.