Carmin~

We rush into the cafe as the worker puts on another pair of sunglasses. He ges he gestures for Sunglasses and me to get out of the way.

"Don't worry, I've done this before," he says. The cat snarls at us- an awful, scratchy noise.

The cafe worker springs around to the other side of the cat. The cat hisses as an incredibly bright pulse of blue light flashes from its eyes. I scream. Sunglasses grabs a thick, heavy rolling pin off the counter.

The cat's eyes are white now, and it's stumbling around, disoriented. The cafe worker pulls a small dart out of his bag and expertly throws it into the cat's side. It jumps and whirls around in suprise, but then seems to stumble onto its side. 

Its eyes were blue again- or maybe it was just a trick of the light, because now its eyes are half-closed. The cat's making a half-purr, half-hum from somewhere deep in its chest.

I take off my sunglasses in alarm as the cafe worker limps over to the counter. He's got a deep gash in his left leg.

"Well, this is inconvenient," Sunglasses says. "Do we even have time to take the thing to a vet? Oh no, and your leg-"

"I'll be alright," the cafe worker says, irritated. He stumbles into the back room and pulls a bandage and a small bottle from the wardrobe as Sunglasses inspects the cat closely.

It's completely tranquilized by now, and the weird pulsing under its skin has stopped.

"We'll just have to take it to the vet on the way to the Hub," he tells me. By the way he says it I can tell that the 'hub' is important. "We can probably just drop it off."

"What was that flash of light?"

"Oh, that? Sort of a thing taken cats do. It seeps into your mind and messes with something. Can paralyze you if you don't have protection."

"That's why you wear those glasses?"

"That's one reason." 

Cafe Worker comes back out with a freshly bandaged leg and a slightly less annoyed appearence.

"We should get going. The breakfast rush starts in an hour and a half," he says, fishing some keys out of his pocket. "I'll get the automobile started. You two, put the cat in the trunk." 

Hey guys!

I've been waiting to see if anyone is interested in posting, but it kinda doesn't seem like it... so if no one else is interested, this might end up slowly morphing into a solo write. I'm totally fine with it either way, but if y'all want to keep RPing feel free to jump back in ;)

Carmin~

With bandaged legs and tied-up cats out of the way, we drove through the quiet, dirty streets in relative silence. Sunglasses and I sat in the back seat, looking out the windows.

"So... I still haven't caught your names," I point out.

"Yes, apologies about that," the cafe worker says from the front seat, driving with his good leg. "The taken cat sort of put a damper on things."

Sunglasses keeps quiet.

"My name's Rebet," he continues. "Or at least that's what it is now. It won't be that important... once I drop you guys off you won't be seeing that much of me." 

I nod. "Also, what's the Hub? And uh, a 'taken cat'? And- actually, could you give me some information in general? It's been like an hour since sunglasses snuck me out of that room and I still have no idea what's going on-"

Rebet laughs. "You want an exposition dump? Usually those are really annoying in books. Although, it's probably a different thing when you're living it nightly."He glances at me in the rearview mirror.

"Here's the thing. In my experience, I'd bet you probably still think we're aren't real. Just characters in a dream, figments of your imagination."

"Well... yeah," I say, "and what's up with the whole-" 

"Look. You get to the hub, you get a couple tests run on you, you'll go from there. Telling you everything else right now would probably get me fired."

Rebet stops talking. Sunglasses speaks up.

"You can call me YG if you want," they say. "That's what some people call me, at least."

I smile at them. 

A little later Rebet pulls to a stop in the road. YG hops out, removes the barely sentient cat from the trunk, and runs it into a building. We start driving out of the city. 

~~~

About 30 minutes later we pull up to a small but distinguished white house with a dark grey roof and cheerful blue curtains. Several other mismatched roadsters are parked in the driveway and road.

We all walk up to the front door. YG raps their knuckles against the wood. In a few seconds, a polite elderly woman opens the door.

"Hello," she says, as if reciting a poem. "What might you be doing here right before sunrise?"

"Don't you remember us?" Rebet replies without hesitation. "We're the milkmen."

The woman gestures for us to come inside, her hoop earings swinging gently. We follow her past a sitting room to a closet door, where she presses the knob into the doors... and they pull open! An elevator.

My eyes widen. "Woah, I-"

Rebet elbows me. We all walk in and go down to a lower floor.

The doors slide open to reveal a tidy office space bustling with people. Some complicated machinery sits against one wall.

"You're not the only one we broke out this morning," the woman points out. 

Annae~

I weave the two younger volunteers and their emancipated girl between desks and sit them all down in a group of tables and chairs.

"So," I begin. "This is going to be rather grueling, but we're going to have to get through it if you want any idea of what's going on." The girl nods eagerly.

"I'll start at the very beginning.

"There's a large scientific society based in Auridence- that's the city you've just came from- and it's grown quite powerful over the past few years. They're running a large variety of nasty experiments, you see. On their good side they're running money-making mumide schemes; and on their bad side, they're destroying cats from the inside out to spy on people, running research on folks like you, and working on neurologic weaponery to stay in power. It's quite a mess.

"Many of our current group didn't want to be involved at all at first, but once we caught wind that this might be a multi... reality, I suppose?- issue, we decided to start building a resistance.

"You must understand that these scientists are trying to shape Auridence and its surrounding areas into an oligarchy. Many of their policies are already in the process of being solidified, and they seem to be trying to send out scouts to wherever you come from."

The girl looks shocked. "That's not possible! I promise you I'm just dreaming. I've heard them mention that, but... I'm not traveling between dimensions or anything-"

"You think we're not real?" 

"Well..."

"That's a typical concern," I point out, "but I would like to assure you that we are, in fact very real. You might also find it amusing that most people in this 'dreamscape' of yours do not believe you are real- in fact, according to nearly everyone, you do not exist! You would assume it's quite easy to hold people prisoner if the general masses consider their type to be fictional aliens from an alternate dimension. Mind, I don't know if you're actually from an alternate dimension. No one here knows much of the science surrounding these links."

"But what if you're just living in a simulation?"

I grin. "What if you're just living in a simulation?" 

~~~

A while later, after sending the cover-up to the urgent care down the road, giving YG a brief filing task, and showing the girl Carmin a few of the ropes, I send Carmin over to a cluster of other new people. They all begin hurridly talking among themselves.

"If you want to remember each other's names and otherplace locations," I call over while getting a few files together, "I would recommend writing it on a paper scrap and keeping it in your pockets. You're certainly going to forget if you don't."

The group looks at me, intrigued.

"Wait," a 30 something woman says suddenly, "Does anyone else hear that?"

"What?" a boy asks.

"It's like a... clanging...? Yeah, a clanging kind of noise. It's coming from over th-"

She stands up straight.

Her face goes blank.

And then she vanishes.

HHAHAAAHAHAHA TOP TOP TIPPER TOPPER

Carmin~

Everyone starts to panic. A few more people seem to just pop out of the room. 

"ANNAE!? WHAT'S GOING ON??" someone shouts over to the woman, who's standing nonchalantly at her desk.

"I would suppose that's the seven AM group," she calls over. "Some of you are from different AOT though. You're not all going to vanish right now." 

"WHAT'S AN AOT??"

"AOT? It's an acronym for area of time. Many of you are 'waking up'," she replies, with strongly indicated air quotes.

Suddenly I notice a far-off beep. A somewhat obnoxious beep. Then another. They seem to be coming faster, so why does it feel like time has slowed...

"Shoot," I hear myself say. The beeping's getting louder, and-

Suddenly it feels like I've just started falling through a wormhole, and-! 

-I feel like I'm covered in a tangled mess of sheets....

~~~ 

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP 

Irritated, I roll out of bed and slap my alarm clock to shut it off. Why do I still feel so tired...

I stumble into the bathroom and start bushing my teeth out of habit, not looking forward to school today at all. I throw on my clothes. My mom has the tv turned on to some news station.

I plop myself down with a bowl of oatmeal in front of the news. I don't usually watch tv when I eat breakfast, but maybe it'll help me wake myself up. Probably not, to be honest. The news anchor is just talking about plastic or something.

Wait-

"Scientists have recently discovered a new form of plastic. It's incredibly cheap, sturdy, and useful in many sorts of weapons and neurological therapy devices. The only apparent downside is that it produces a black, inky chemical currently refered to as 'mumide' in an excessive amount..."

Why does that- SHOOT.

OH MY WORD. 

The dream! -or, the 'not-dream'? Why's it always so hard to remember things you dreamt about? What was it... there was someone with knives in their fists, and a prison room, and coffee and an evil cat... and there were helpful people and an alarm went off... was there a milkman? I feel like there was a milkman... Someone had sunglasses. No, I had sunglasses too-

But mumide sounds much too familiar for this to be a coincidence. 

"This 'mumide' is a rather dangerous skin irritant along with a other host of side effects, but scientists are looking into long term storage solutions for this toxic waste..." 

Carmin~

I spent the entire day with a new roomate- An exhausting, unplacable feeling of deja vu.

Everything new seemed familiar somehow. My english teacher reminded me of someone I had recently met- although I couldn't remember who I had recently met- the clouds looked they were in the exact positions they were in years ago, I knew that I had seen that news broadcast before.

Our chemistry teacher did her little spiel at the beginning of class where she'd bring up random news articles related to scientific advancements or the arts. Mumide was the topic today.

Mumide.

Every time I think about it my brain screams in a whisper at me to understand something. Or remember something..?

The skin on my ankles is mildly itchy by the time I get home. 

Annae~

Eventually the 7 am group has cleared out of the basement. The rest of the group (which is comparatively tiny, implying most of our new recruits are from the same AOT) stands around in mulled silence. I assume they're still shaken up.

The basement is a mess of papers and carryover chaos. I begin to tidy up some of the mess.

Studies on interworldly injuries.

I sigh. This is likely going to be one of the most dangerous things I ever attempt. Not just for me, but for the dreamers, their world, our world- I smile, remembering my mother's favorite quote.
"Everyone wants to save the world until they have to save the world." 

I walk over to the group.

"Alright," I say, "I really should have gone through this with everyone while they were still here, but now is better than tomorrow. I would estimate that in an hour or less, you are going to be 'waking up'.

"Your- no. From what I've heard your tomorrow is going to feel like one of the strangest days in your life. Like an itch on your brain.

"You can try right now to cement all these memories firmly where they are, but you're likely going to forget most (if not all) of them tomorrow.

"We're trying to run reasearch on what happens when you skip between... two worlds, for lack of a better term. There are some pens by the couches, so we would appreciate it if you could all write/ draw something on your arm. It might help to jog your memory tomorrow, and if it doesn't we'll have a bit more information my tomorrow.

They nod numbly and I collapse into my chair in front of my desk. About 45 minutes later, most of them are gone. 

???~

Carmin disappears with a soft, echoing crack. A Dream Seal glows faintly in her place. I turn to Rebet and take off my hood. He smiles.

"We'd better stake out and wait for her to come back." He says, and I agree. We set up camp immediately, watching the Dream Seal. I let a yawn slip from my mouth. Rebet looks up. "Are you tired?" He asks. I nod.

"Kinda."

"Go to sleep, I'll watch." Rebet looks up at the dark sky. I nod again, then tuck in. The last thing I hear before I fall asleep is Rebet's flamethrowers shifting into gear, and a faint 'Sleep well, Crow.'

~

OH-KAY. So, when I created Rebet I was thinking he would have flamethrowers like Crow has blades, and also that he and my charrie might be shipped sometime in the future. WHATYA THINK?? *Ta daa hands*

Also Crow is just a nickname. I have a backstory to go with it, but my charrie's real name is Jadis, and it's a she. :)