2020-01-19 - Dungeons and Dreamers

'MEKA' running down her legs, Abitha stands in a pair of sweats and a tank. She seems a little dazed. Where was she? She looks around, taking a good look at her surroundings. One step. Flup. Oh good, she had sandals on. She blinks at the statue, squinting at the carving. This was... strange? I mean, yeah, sure, so was Godzilla. "O... K... Dreaming, I guess?" she asks aloud, trying to take stock of the room and whoever else was in here with her...

James is dressed, surprising absolutely no one, in jeans and a hoodie- this hoodie for an obscure actual-play tabletop rpg podcast, fittingly enough. He blinks slowly, gathering his wits (such as they are) as his surroundings come into focus. Looks like this one had fallen asleep on the couch while stoned. "... wait. What?" And then it hits him, and his left eye twitches just so. "... every. Damn. Night. In this godforsaken town.", he mutters, and looks about, catching sight of Abitha first. "Oh hey a face I recognize. Yay?"

One minute, she was falling asleep, cuddled up next to her boyfriend after a day long birthday celebration, the next, she's standing in an unfamiliar place, in a red nightshirt with the Detroit Red Wings logo, and just her bare feet. What the hell was going on? The blonde sighed, trying to look for a familiar face. Nope. No one she could recognise. Jonathan was nowhere to be found this time.

"Yeah, that's gotta be it," Katy responds to the Abitha's voice, not really looking at the source, still looking around herself.

Beth is wearing an oversized t-shirt that reads 'Animals of the World' and has a delightful assortment of woodland creatures with labels like 'Trash Panda' 'Danger Noodle' 'Formal Chicken' and 'Murder Log'. She is wearing a man's boxer shorts under this. She squints at the statue but luckily her glasses have materialized into her hands as if by magic. She realizes she's holding onto her glasses and puts them on her face before she squints out of confusion more than vision problems this time. She pads across the stone floor on bare feet towards the statue to read the plaque. The confusion on her face compounds.

Abby is in pajamas. They are blue and have bunnies on them. The bunnies are white and pink. Unfortunately she's on bare feet as she looks around, blinking, both hands brought up to rub at her face. Rub rub. She hears familiar voices, and tilts her head. Then she pinches herself. Pinch. Pinch. Pinch pinch pinch. "Oh, shoot," she mutters to herself with a little groan, half sighing.

Then, squaring her shoulders and raising her chin, she wanders over. "Hello! Why is everyone in my dream? Don't answer that. What's this?"

Shoving her hands in her pockets, Abitha pads over to the doors, a distracted echoing of, "Yay." answering James as she walks down the symbols. Of course, crossed daggers make her pause, and she looks around at the others, specifically Abby, "Ok, this is twice now, don't ask questions you don't want answered." She lifts a hand to knock at the door she was at, because, yaknow, 'MacTheKnife', "I think I've fou-..." Her hand hits the wood and shadow seems to crawl down her arm. She shivers and looks a little panicked until the shadows seem to form into some semblance of clothing. She looks down at herself in wonder, starting to smirk, "Ok, that was fucking cool."

Katy makes a grab for a symbol, she doesn't know what it means, but when she does, there is a purple glow that surrounds her for a moment before she ends up in an outfit consisting of brown slacks and a pink blouse with poofy sleeves and black knee high boots. Her blonde hair in a long braid trailing behind her, she also notices she's wearing some sort of light leather armor.

James nods at Abitha, glancing at the others, recognizing Abby as well. "Two. Two faces I know, ah, ah, ah, ah.", he says under his breath, just one of those little personal Counting Count impressions one does, hashtag-relatable. He doesn't go for the symbols immediately, instead checking out the two faceless figures going for the face. "... face... off.", he murmurs, making a little swirly pulling motion at the figures with his fingertips, when suddenly he catches sight of first Abitha and then Katy having their magical girl transformations. "Oh, shit. Awesome!", he says, and runs over to touch the Harp, because it was the closest to him. Golden sparkles flow up from his feet all the way (ok it's not actually that long of a way he's pretty short) up to his head, obscuring his form in golden motes before it vanishes, leaving him... dressed exactly as he was before except now he's got a harmonica in his hand. He blinks, looks at himself, looks at the harmonica. "... Harp.", he says, and again his left eye twitches. "Harp." He looks up at the ceiling. "Seriously?!"

Beth continues wandering towards the door as the others gather near it. "Hey. Thanks for those pictures of my hearse." She says casually to James, as if they were meeting up at a cafe and not a weird magic room in their pjs. "Hey Abby. And clearly you are in our dreams." She watches as Abitha picks the daggers and the shadow clothes her. Then Katy does the same. Her brows raise a little and she approaches the door to touch the symbol of a tree. A green light engulfs her and when it fades it reveals a transformation: Beth is now wearing the most druid of druidy outfits complete with antler headdress, messily applied face paint that may just be streaks of mud, and a badass looking gnarly wood staff.

"What - was that?" Abby tilts her head, staring at Abitha's changed look, her mouth hanging slightly open in confusion. She wanders closer, though she is clearly wary of her surroundings still, frowning at every corner of the room. "Hello! That's an interesting outfit - so what, you just touched it and..." She studies the doors, the symbols, waves a hand around at them. "What do these even mean? Okay, that, for example, would be sort of disappointing..." she comments in James's direction. A moment later, hastily, she adds, "But I'm sure you'll do great with it! Good choice!" Trying to cheer him up.

As for Abby herself, she avoids any further musical instruments or peculiar choices and goes for, "Oh, what's this?"

And her pajamas just - look - it's not so much that armor goes on her, as her pajamas melting away. Because that's a bikini. It's a fur bikini. I mean, there are bracers and boots and a very large axe, too, but. Fur bikini. "Oh for shoot's sake!"

Abitha may just bust a gut, grabbing her sides and launching into a peal of laughter that fills the room. Sure, Katy looked cool, Beth looked badass... But the reactions from James and Abby. She was dying. She couldn't breath. Tasha's Hideous Laughter would be ashamed of these results. And then it's all cut off as she hears all the happenings and she catches glimpses from the corners of her eyes. She fumbles at her belt, cause, sure, she had to be armed. Two daggers are whipped out, and... well, she doesn't actually look like she knows what she's doing, but yaknow, you stick things with the pointy end. She flattens herself, back against a wall, staying low, trying to keep actual fear off her face.

Katy approaches the plaque to read it. "Hmmm...'Beware: The Chambers of Mimicry Imprisonment'...I wonder what that means." She turns to look at the rest of the party and says, "Guys, this is a warning sign. It says Beware, which probably means something dangerous. I don't know what the Chambers of Mimicry Imprisonment are though."

Beth doesn't laugh. Clearly women wearing antler headresses do not lightly laugh. She does give James and then Abby an incredulous look before she lifts a hand to scratch her head under her headdress before she takes a step towards the door. "Uh...I haven't played D&D since college. I think I can cast spells, right? Like tree and animal spells and shit..." She tries waving around her rad looking staff while calling out, "Conjure a big ass bear!"

James gives Abby a weak smile. "Thanks.", he says, hefting his mighty harmonica, before glancing to Beth. "Three. Ah, ah, ah.", he says, before smiling a bit more. "Yeah, I remember you, glad to see you're alright. James, by the way.", he replies, before she goes on to touch her own symbol. The last two transformations happen to Beth and Abby, each more badass than the last. Abitha's laughter rings out and he wrinkles his nose in her direction. Then the thunk of the opening doors, and the darkness and fire beyond. His blue eyes take in the open doors, and then again go over the rest of his impromptu party, before falling back onto his harmonica. "... I feel like a game show contestant with a parting gift. I just can't believe my eyes.", he murmurs for no reason, before taking a step towards the door. Before he can go further, Katy's explaining the sign, and he tilts his head. "That seems-", he starts to day, but then the screaming begins. "... and as we seek, so shall we find."

"Oh, stop it!" Abby gives Abitha a serious admonishing look, and harumphs softly, before lifting the heavy axe up onto a shoulder. "This is ridiculously heavy, I don't know if I can hit anything with it..." she complains, then wanders forward, peeking into the darkness, before veering off to follow Katy towards the plaque. Of course, Abby, the barbarian, can't ready any fancy letters. That's for weak, civilized people.

"Mimicry Imprisonment? Ohh. Wait, is this a jail for mimes?" She narrows her eyes into the darkness beyond.

When she hears the yelling and the familiar voice out in the distance, Katy is freaked out but trying really hard not to let the rest of group see it. There was no way she was going to lose it in front of complete strangers, but she heard his voice. It couldn't possibly be him, could it? She barely manages a response. "Mimes? I don't think so." She's visibly shaking though, as if trying really hard not to just bolt towards the screaming.

"Are you seriously quoting Blues Traveler?" Abitha whispers insistently at James after giving Abby an apologetic look. She had forgotten just how dire the circumstances usually were in these things. One of her daggers is flipped, handle first, and offered to James. She had more, clearly, at least two more hilts visible on her. She creeps closer to the door to try to peer in, squinting, "I'm just hoping that's not just telling us the whole room is a Mimic." Another, smaller knife is drawn, a better model for throwing. She looks surprised at it, then grins. Ok, maybe this was still kinda cool. She tries to open up her other senses, reaching out to the surrounding area to see if there were any other conscious minds besides the party.

"Do you guys hear that?" Katy calls out, yelling over the tortured screams. And when the gremlin like shadows appear, she freaks out and yells, "No, no, no, not again!" Her fist starts to glow yellow, and her eyes are watching them, waiting to see what they do.

"Inc!" Abitha is quick to shout, multiplayer callouts the fastest to her mind as she's arching her arm back and letting a knife fly at the things, her opened senses giving her just enough time to realize and warn the others before the surprise attack.

"But I've said nothing so far.", James replies to Abitha, in that same insistent whisper. "And I can keep it up as long as it takes." And then she's offering him the knife, but he waves it off, hefting his harmonica to his lips and playing a couple of quick notes. "Catchy little tunes and hip three minute ditties, yeah?" He seems about to say something more when, suddenly, BEAR. Before he can comment on that, however, he hears Diana's voice out there, and he narrows his eyes, putting a few things together in his head. And now he looks a little pissed. And then the gremlinshadows appear, and he ducks off to the side instinctively, muttering under his breath, "... wanna bust all your balloons, wanna burn all of your cities to the ground.."

Beth lets out an incredulous laugh when she actually manages to conjure a real whole ass bear. "Hey bear!" She calls out in chipper amazement as she steps around to pat her freshly conjured bear. Pat pat pat. "So he's the deal. I need you to go absolutely nuts in there and fuck whatever-" And then she hears Ciprian's voice and a worried look crosses her face. The gremlin shadows appear and Beth points her staff at them, "Bear I'm gonna need you to fuck them up!"

"I'm hearing voices, but..." Abby starts, brow furrowing above her narrowed eyes as she stares into the dark, head tilted to listen to the tortured voices before she speaks up in a tight, firm voice. "I'm sure mimicry means it's not real, right? Mimicry, that's what's written there, right?" She insists, waving a hand towards the plaque and shining a sunny optimistic smile in Katy's direction.

Spotting the shadow gremlins, she takes a couple of quick steps back from them, gripping the handle of the axe resting on her shoulder. "Oooh, I really should've picked the shield. Okay! That's right, go bear!"

The optimistic smile from Abby gives Katy a moment to regain her composure. "Yeah, mimicry. None of it's real!" she exclaims. Then she growls at the Shadow Goblins and yells, "Would you jerks stop moving so I can blast you???" She watches the chaos, waiting for her opportunity.

Katy has had enough, and after seeing Beth's bear attacked by one of the Shadow Goblins, Katy turns to the attacker and a beam of yellow translucent energy comes out of her hands to push the Shadow Goblin away. Or at least attempt to.

Abby stands there, axe in hand, staring at the scene and the combat taking place in front of her. "Go away! You're not even real!" She yells at the goblins. "Shoo! Shame on you!" She's sounds very peeved at the goblins. At this whole situation, really, but the goblins take the brunt of her displeasure. Meanwhile, her hands tighten around the axe handle, harder and harder, knuckles turning paler.

Abitha, for her part, looks horrified, eyes wide, mouth open in shock. Sure, in a lot of games you can summon minions and send them off to fight. Sometimes you even felt a little sad when they got killed, but usually they respawned. It was an entirely different when something so realistically cute and cuddly was so horribly mauled just a few feet from her face. Her eyes turn on Beth, giving her a little down-up look, as if judging her for the indifferent way she sent the animal off to be hurt.

James winces as he hears those roars of pain from the bear. Someone should have warned him that this was going to be one of those Dreams, the kind where the dog dies. He pops up from behind the nothing he was hiding behind, and says, "So, desperately, I sing to thee of love, sure, but also of rage and hate and pain and fear of self.", then brings the harmonica to his lips. It glows golden, and illusory flames and sparks and clouds of smoke envelop the shadow goblins- who seem completely unaffected by his paltry parlor tricks.

And probably also just noticed him.

Abby has no powers. Abby just has an axe, positive attitude and a fur-lined wedgie. "This is silly," she declares after the pretty light show bathes the shadow goblin things. So she decides to rush over and wack the nearest shadow goblin with the axe. It can't be too hard. Sure, her stance looks more like she's swinging a baseball bat than an axe, but she's got her serious grimacing game face on.

Beth cheers as Bernard launches himself at the shadow Goblin...only to see him be hurt by the goblin. "No!" She cries out, and she even stomps a boot-covered foot impatiently. "No! You leave my bear alone!" And then she lifts her staff and waves it around frantically while calling out, "Uh....uh....thorny thorns!" It's not the most eloquent of spell casting, but she manages to get some nasty thorns to sprout and potentially entangle that shithead goblin Steve. "Bear! I'm so sorry!" She cries out. Then she looks to Abby and Abitha, "Come on! You guys are supposed to be the damage people! Abby take that big fucking axe and shove it up that shadow goblin's as-" She doesn't need to finish because there Abby goes already doing what she was suggesting.

An exaggerated roll of her eyes answers Beth's commands. Abitha moves back toward the wall as the first two goblins were gone and maybe more were coming, "Do we have to solve some sort of puzzle or just try to kill these things 'til they stop coming?" An idea seems to come to her, face growing a little intense as she concentrates. She had only used this ability once before, and didn't really remember how she had done it, but... she wanted to be small, unseen... And something answers, light bending, shadow folding, the wall seeming to hug her, though it was truly only an illusion sliding into place as Abitha cloaks herself from view and creeps invisibly toward the doorway, ready to stab the shit out of whatever would come through next.

Katy was done waiting. Hands still glowing yellow, Katy decided to march forward. She needed to go see where the screams were coming from, and staying put wasn't helping anyone or anything. She walked forward to investigate.

Abby's axe still swings, because she can't exactly stop it once she's got it moving, but there's nothing there as the goblins collapse into black piles on the floor and she nearly stumbles. Then she stops, looking down, head rising to glance over in Beth's direction. "See, you took care of that, didn't need me at all!" That's some kind of encouragement, at least. Then she watches Katy march forward, and she rushes after. "Wait, where are you going? That's probably full of - whatever these things are."

James lets out a sigh of relief as the shadowgoblins are taken out... but then he notices that light fading outside, and the sounds of more of them coming, and he shudders. His tricks have been pretty ineffective so far, and that's pissing him off- on top of the growing terror he feels. The light is fading, and they come closer. Light fades, light fades... light- Aha! "Crystal flame!", he shouts, and grins. "I'll do anything you say." Oh, he's going into the back catalogue now. "Light so bright it hypnotizes", he sings, "But it never hurts to gaze, Never to burn or char with fire, Simply the heat from warmer days." And that harmonica comes back up and goddamit this time it works, light sparkling from it in a golden wave that rushes to where the fire was burning outside and replaces it with illusory, but still brilliant, light, likely grabbing the attention of the things outside quite firmly.

Beth approaches her bear to pat him some more now that the goblins have been destroyed. "There there. You did your best, bear." She directs the same look towards Abby, "That was a real good axe swing. You would have knocked his head clean off his shoulders." She stares into the darkness of the other room then and says, "It seems like they are attracted to..." And then Abitha sort of melts into the wall and James sings light into life revealing all of the shadow goblins. And the door. "That way!" She cries out, pointing towards it, before she nudges her bear forward. "Come on bear let's beat it!"

Still trying to hold her cloaking, Abitha risks trying something she'd never done. Two powers at once. Mentally, it was a bit like trying to play Osu with one hand and Elite Beat Agents with the other. It was not easy. Regardless, she wanted to try to keep up her cloaking while reaching out to the minds of her fellow Mentalists, attempting to let them know, <<I can see another door, I'm going to try to sneak toward it.>> The brief flash of the image of the door she can see, lit by James's flames, would flit across as well before she goes back to concentrating on maintaining her cover. She creeps toward the door, eyes darting around it for any detail... checking for traps.

Upon receiving the message from Abitha, Katy continues towards the door as well, making sure she is looking around, having her party member's back, ready to attack whatever comes her way.

Abby looks slightly disturbed at the rush of shadow goblins towards the flames, halting in her advance, nose wrinkled in slight distaste at the smell wafting through the room. She returns the axe on her shoulder, head shaking, and continues ahead towards the door. She received no special message, but Beth back there was pretty clear. And she's got an axe. No powers. But an axe. "So... maybe that's all of them? That would be nice." She uses the axe to prod the door.

James stands there for a moment, panting, as his illusory flames do a hell of a lot more than he was intending for them to do. His jaw works a few times, and he looks around the room, just sort of gobsmacked at what he apparently did. He looks down at his harmonica, which seems to be steaming a bit, and gives it a respectful nod, just as Abitha's words whisper into his mind. He jumps, then nods, and lets out a whoop. Bard in the end, he can't resist taunting the mostly-fallen foe as he starts making his way towards the door at a clip. "I got some news for you!", he sings cheerfully. "It seems my ship still stands no matter what you drop, and there ain't a whole lot that you can do!"

At least the fur bikini includes sturdy boots with the fur. Still, they're not steel-toed work boots, so Abby yelps as the rock rolls over her foot while she tries to jump out of the way, not quite fast enough. "Shhheeeooot! Fudge!" She yells, dropping the axe as she hops on her unharmed leg a couple of times, before finally flopping onto her rear on the ground. "Ow ow ow," she winces, eyeing her foot and testing her toes with a tentative, worried wiggle to assess the damage.

If only she weren't invisible, Abby would receive the most judgmental expression that Abitha could muster. "I was checking for traps... Oh look it's trapped." her dry, disembodied voice seems to comment from the air in front of the door. Right, so Abby probably couldn't hear her mentally, anyways. Noted. The little rogue starts to inspect the lock now, as the trap she had identified mere breaths before Abby had sprung it was already gone. She feels on her belt and... Nope, no picks... Hmmm... Oh! She checks her cool little sleeves. There they are, two little metal tools set to begin trying to pick the locked door open, the quiet clicking sound of it... maybe creeping people out? She was tunneled in, so she probably wasn't thinking about that, still holding her illusion in place...

Beth and the bear are still heading towards the door and potential freedom when that boulder rolls out and over Abby's foot. She gasps audibly, hands flying up over her mouth, before she picks up the pace a little faster. "Uh..." She glances to the mess of Goblins with some trepidation on her face before she looks back at Abby. "Uh...druids can heal, right?" Sure, druids can, but that's not how her glimmer works. She points her staff at Abby's foot and goes, "You are healed." But nothing happens. She looks a little frantic as she listens to Abitha lockpicking, and then points her staff between them, "Thorn wall?" She asks more than commands, a plea for something to happen.

Katy walks forward, trying to take a closer look at the five displays to see what they are like.

Katy walks up to the closest of the five displays to investigate and see what's there.

James lets out another whoop as he sees the shadowgoblin crushed by the boulder, but as he turns back and notices Abby's hurt, he winces and gives her an apologetic look before yelping and jumping away from Beth's healing spikes, running through the door and into the Winter Weirdland on the other side. His eye is immediately drawn to one of the displays, fascinated at what appears to be his living room in ice. "... dreams we dreamed at night were never meant to come to life.."

"How was I supposed to know!?" Abby harumphs at the disembodied voice while she tests her foot. It hurts. "Ow!" That's how she reacts to getting poked in the rear by a glowing green spike. Fortunately, she doesn't actually see the spike, what with it being under her rear, just rolls away, shooting Beth an odd look. "Oh. That - actually feels better. Thanks! I think." Then she reaches for her axe, and tries to use it like a walking stick to haul herself up, still avoiding putting too much weight on her injured foot. She'll look at it later. First, it's time to gawk at the snowy landscape

But, of course, barbarians just survive in the land of ice and snow, hence the fur bikinis, they don't make fancy ice sculptures, so she just looks dumbfounded.

Disembodied footsteps are pretty much a dead giveaway to Abitha's careful steps into the room, approaching one of the sculptures that seems to depict a bed against a brick wall, nerdy decorations hung around, the rest of the open floor fading away, like it were in a larger room just out of the camera. She was still looking for traps, but given none, she would let her illusion fall as she stands fully to inspect the place she slept. She finally seems to fade back into view like a curtain of the very room falling away from her. "Do they seriously have an appropriate line for everything?" she mutters.

"Sorry! I wasn't aiming for your butt I swear." Beth says a little sheepishly to Abby before she crosses the threshold. She steps inside then, her eyes widening a bit in wonder, and notices the snowflakes falling. This causes her to put a finger to her lips, the universal sign of quiet, and with a glance at her bear she waves her staff at him to return him to where he came from. She then comes forward to inspect the sculptures.

“Maybe we each have to pick one of these displayed and do something?” Katy suggests, looking around at hers.

James grins over at Abitha, and opens his mouth as if to say an appropriate line, then pauses, looking puzzled. He shrugs at her. "I've tried-", he says, and then that grin reappears. "-well, no, in fact I lied." And then he takes a breath to say whatever lyric he came up with to actually answer her, but it dies on his lips as Beth motions for them to be quiet. He winces sheepishly, and zips his lips. Instead, he contemplates the snow and the pillars and the way it seemed to react to his prior words, and decides to try something. He glances to Katy as she speaks, nods, and reaches in with his harmonica onto the display that looks like his living room, knocking over an icy coffee table.

James gets a smirk and an eye roll. OK, so that was actually a good one. It occurs to Abitha after a moment that these sculptures were cool and all, but... there was another doorway out? She glances over her shoulder at that opening, brow furrowing. To Katy, she answers, "Or, is this like some sort of tease to coming back to waking?" She looks from her sculpture to the spikes, "Or are we supposed to choose to go deeper?" She doesn't seem to like the idea. In one motion, she jumps up and flops backward toward her ice-bed, wanting to get back into bed and actually get some real sleep.

Abby just trudges forward into the snowy room, limping slightly, still using her axe as a walking stick rather than a weapon. She looks very confused and slightly worried as the others interact with the displays. When Abitha flops herself onto a bed sculpture, she just stares, lifting one hand in a shrug, as if requesting some kind of explanation. Her eyes dart towards the gate and the raised spike. Blankly. She's clearly missing something.

Maybe Abby is really into method acting, and is getting a little too much into her barbarian role.

Logic is the way Katy tries to cope with this situation. If her display is an analog of her previous state in bed with Jonathan, and she is dreaming, she needs to make sure to wake up, and she needs to make sure he wakes up. In the end, she can’t find the logic in the situation.

“Okay, so this is bad. I know there’s someone or something responsible for this, and I’m ready to make a deal. Wherever you are, just talk to me, we’ll make a deal.”

The words felt right to say out loud, though she wasn’t sure where it all came from, perhaps a desperate move after hearing Jonathan’s voice cry out in anguish in this place.

Beth watches the others flop onto furniture with a perplexed expression. She wanders around the snowy area for what seems like ages before she finds it. The bed from which she was plucked. Not her bed but the bed of the man whom the t-shirt and boxers belong to. She follows suit, sitting down in the snow to try and go back to sleep, maybe.

James looks rather dubious at all this- especially as he hears that Katy-echo. "... trying to give me the run-around, eh?", he mutters, and moves in to sit on 'his' snow-couch as he sees what happens with the spikes when Abitha and Beth take their places. He's cautious as he sits tho, not quite relaxing, a nagging feeling that he's missing something in the back of his head.

Katy might have been going slightly crazy, or maybe it was paranoia. But she sits on the iced replica of the bed she was sharing with Jonathan at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle. She doesn’t quite commit to lying down, just in case something else happens.

"Shit! Fuck!" Abitha is hopping back up almost as quickly as she had flopped back. The display was made of fucking ice and with her shoulders and neck exposed like they were, she was instantly shivering. Hands move to skin and rub furiously to try to get feeling back, but she doesn't get back up just yet, wondering if it was some sort of five-way switch that had to be held down to trigger all at once.

Abby scratches her head. Fortunately, she's not wearing a horned helmet. A second spike goes up, and she pivots, holding up a hand, a finger vaguely aimed in Beth's direction. "Hi. Why is everyone lying down? What's with that? That's - is everyone - oh boy." She looks around at the two other displays. Katy takes another seat, so there's just one missing, and that's the one Abby heads towards, looking rather apprehensive. "So... I'll just... lie down here, then, shall I?"

Beth lifts a hand to give Abby the thumb's up once she comes to the appropriate conclusion.

"This kind of looks like my bed, a little..." Abby muses once she's limped around it, but she hesitates.

The bed is made of ice. Abby is wearing a bikini.

"I guess I'm that last one. Ohh, that's cold." She places her hand on the bed and yanks it away. "I'll just - maybe if I sit down, that's enough?" So she sits down, gingerly, first unwedging the bikini and getting as much coverage as possible out of it.

... as demonstrated by James, who stands up as soon as the last spike lifts and they see that room beyond. He winces, and quickly sits back down, watching his spike raise again. "... shake me and my confidence, about a great many things.", he mutters, looking a little lost as to the next step, and glancing at the others in their own icy dioramas hopefully.

Katy notices the inside of the room and attempts to move one of the chests inside the room to see if she can move towards the room they are in.

Katy attempts to pull out the chests for the others. Maybe the key to their escape was in those chests.

"Hold the..." Abitha peers wide eyed at Katy, "You can pull shit with your mind?" Yes, Mac, people have different super powers. Hell, Katy shot ELDRITC-... laser beams with her hand not too long ago... But that was different. That was the shine. "Dude, unfair!" She takes her knife and stabs the bed she was sitting on, crossing her arms like a spoiled child.

Never having played Dungeons and Dragons before, despite many an invitation over the years, Katy wouldn’t know any references so she doesn’t even respond to Abitha.

“Let me see what’s up with the chests real quick before you guys get up.”

And when she stands, she’s immediately confronted with her doppelgänger.

“What the hell!?” She is starting to look a little loopy, like, tired loopy, right after everything stops being funny.

Beth sits up when the chests come sliding out of the room. She stays in her bed, but sitting up so she can watch what is happening. When there are suddenly two Katy's she lets out a 'Oh!' followed by a, "Hey! We should put that Katy in the bed!" She reaches for her own chest to try and pry it open.

Abby looks very uncomfortable, but continues to squirm in place, ensuring the spike stays up, leaning over just so she can squint into the other room."Who... spoke first into the darkness?" She repeats, but doesn't quite follow up on it. Then she watches the chests roll in through the door, jaw setting in a tight line. She blinks and jerks back as the second Katy shows up.

"Oh, gosh, I hope this doesn't turn into one of those 'Kill her! No, kill her, she's the evil clone!' scenarios," she pipes up cheerfully. Hearing Beth's idea, she bounces to her feet and heads for her own chest to pop it open as well.

"Ok, but... which one..." Abitha asks, brow furrowed, pointing a knife from one Katy, to the other. She couldn't tell, as the flash had briefly whited out her vision, which was the real one... But... Her mind reaches out again like before, trying to feel who was who, see what minds were here in the room with them, maybe skim some surface emotions.

Abitha seems to eye one of the Beth's... The one that didn't quite do the mimicry right. She points her knife at that one and squints, keeping an eye on her as she steps off her bed. Abitha has a better idea than the rest of them, in her mind. She doesn't try to open her box, she tries to make sure it stays closed while she goes and picks up one handle of it. Then, she'd drag that big, unwieldy box toward the bed and try to put the entire thing on top of it. Cause DoppleMac can stay in the goddamn box.

“You’re not going anywhere!”

Katy attempts to push her double towards the bed with her mind.

Beth points her staff at her duplicate which points her staff at her. They both shout, "Thorns climby thingy!" It's probably going to be a terrible idea in hindsight.

A frustrated growl slides from Abitha as she stares into a face that she... frankly had enough issues with. Without a thought, she reaches out to shove the other Mac, hands crackling to life, shouting at her, "Leave me ALONE!"

Abby rubs at her face, fingers and thumb massaging her eyes. Then she sits down on top of her box. Her foot is still hurting, so she reaches down to rub at it. "I'm pretty sure I wasn't the one who spoke first into the darkness. I think I heard - um, Mac, first?"

Things are happening, but what's she going to do, behead them and let dream sort them out?

Katy is tired, mentally more than physically, but she attempts to pin her doppelgänger down, as if her life depended on it.

Beth watches as James's box vanishes and he is able to stand and depart with a confused look on her face. Slowly she begins standing up from her bed, watching to see if the double does the same thing. Or, maybe even if she does, if the door will close.

DoppleMac is actually surprised by Abitha's move, at least that's how she looks, wide eyed... Shocked. She flops back in a shuddering heap on the bed, The real Slim Abitha looking angrily down at her. Honestly, she supposed if it had gone poorly, both versions of her would have flopped to the floor paralyzed. Which was honestly a pretty funny idea to her. She cackles like a madwoman, eyes going wide. Oh, she was tired too. And now loopy. She walks toward Katy and NotKaty with a wild grin, finger sparking. Somehow, she had a crazy idea.

"Well, I'll just..." Abby grunts as she pushes herself off the box and back onto her feet. For lack of anything better to do, she takes the axe and tries to pry her box open with the edge of the blade. It's not exactly a crowbar, but it'll have to do. "Grrrr."

Abby takes a step back from the box as her double pops up, and stares at her in the barbarian costume, making a face, nose and mouth crooking sharply aside. "I... can't believe I look like that," she breathes out, and self consciously tugs on her furry attire. Then she waves towards the bed. "Would you please lie down there? I'd really appreciate it! That would be really nice of me, thank you!" Of course, her double probably does the same.

Beth is on the stairs when Abby begins standing up. The stairs vanish beneath her feet. She lets out a shriek and grabs for the ledge. Luckily for her she catches it. "Oof!" She cries out as she lifts herself up onto the landing so she can go to wherever it is the stairs will lead her."

Speaking of pops, that's the sound Abitha's finger would make the moment it touched A Katy's skin. Basically, if both Katy's responded to one being shocked, or if only one did, she'd have her answer on which would be the double. It was the most solid logic she could stitch together of this weird tableau. Once discovered, the doppleganger would get a real full tazer load and Abitha would be moving on back toward Abby. If the lovingly chipper nurse barbarian hadn't already sorted herself, of course.

Finally, with one last burst of energy, Katy focuses everything she has left into pinning her doppelgänger onto the bed.

Everyone was sorted. Kinda. Abitha looks over at the horrified likeness of herself and Katy's dopplegangers, still frozen in the likeness of a fight, then shakes her head. She was breathing a bit faster, a side effect of all that excess use of her synapse flares, "Can we fuck off back to the real world now?" she asks, looking from Katy to Abby.

Katy couldn't explain it, perhaps it was adrenaline, perhaps it was something else, but as soon as she saw her doppelgänger frozen, she sprinted out of the room, without even looking back.

Abby shouldn't sprint. Her foot is still giving her pangs of pain every she sets it down, heel first, trying not to put too much weight on her toes. She nods along, glancing at Abitha with a small grimace, baring her teeth. Her Barbarian teeth. It's very fierce. "I hope this is the last one! I'll be - really upset if this isn't the last one." Navigating the stairs will take some work, using her axe as a walking stick, but she makes it.

Abitha follows slowly behind her wounded compatriot which... was a really uncomfortable view for the little gamer as she attempts to follow the furry bikini up the stairs. Dammit, Mac, quit being so awkward. She takes one final look around this weird dungeon, a little oddly contemplative of how reflective those golden walls were... before running the last few steps into the Waking.