Chadius: TOA Summary 8/27/07

• Party drives to South Africa to the portal, back to TOA HQ
  • Morning report to Zii
  • Ceelie and Tara bump into Grapha. She's noticed a causal anomaly a week ago, had to report to Zii about it.
  • Reports to Zii; Nightmare & Daestra ahoy

• Everyone goes home to get some rest
  • Viveka researches Dopplegangers, dreams and Nightmares
  • Tara heads to her home, waters plants. Viveka calls her, they head to Mark's Bookstore.
  • Li finds a tea shop in Chinatown, then he finds Tara and Viveka in a sushi shop.
  • Then the trio heads to Diiman's summer house on Central Park West. They smear him and write some notes while he sleeps. Ceelie made some iced tea!

• Next day, off to TOA HQ!
  • Breakfast and go to Zii's office.
  • Zii tells them the site is in Merm territory, they'll need a guide
  • Terillis Algera walks in and introduces herself; she's the guide.
  • Escorts them to the SS Minnow, the sub seems sentient
  • Terillis found the ruins in House Endris about a week ago; Tara thinks there is something up with all the stuff occuring a week ago.

• 6 Subs approaching!
  • MISTIC excavation team #123866 demands the ruins are theirs, and the Minnow should leave immediately!
  • Terillis has duly noted their warning and will ignore it.
  • Battle stations!

Brain Dump: Ceelie

Blah blah car trip blah blah. Usually it's funny listening to D on car trips, but somehow on this trip it didn't really catch my interest so much. I didn't really even want to sit in my little seat in his armrest, so I just curled up in the cupholder. Usually I like going on trips. They're fun and I get to meet new people and see new things, and when we go for TOA I always get to talk to people. But this one was creepy and it was really hard to forget about my nightmare and how it wasn't really a nightmare, and everything felt all weird. It was nice when E held my hand for a little while. I think his nightmare was really scary for him too. Maybe it's because we're younger than everyone else.

It was a pretty long ride back through South Africa, but we got back to the portal okay that night and went back to headquarters. It was late morning there, 'cause time zones are weird, so we went right to Zii's office. When we got there it did the weird pausing thing, and me and Tara shot each other a look when everyone else sort of stopped, and then Grapha walked out of the Zii's office. That sort of explained it. We said hi, and everything, and she mentioned she was there because some sort of causality glitch happened a week before. She didn't really give us details, but that would've been just before we went to bust up that HORO cell. I guess we'll figure it out.

So she headed back to her room and everyone started moving again. We explained to everyone else, and then went in to talk to Zii about our stuff. So everyone else explained the stuff about the nightmare, and how all that happened. Zii commented that it's weird, but nightmares tend to make you grow. Daestra seemed really surprised by my nightmare when she saw funny-fake-Helen being so nice to me, and said something about me having a really strong mind. But somehow that made it worse. Zii was really right. About the nightmare thing and all, I mean. But, they went on with the story and I showed Zii the icky inky fork.

Anyway, after the explanations to Zii about the adventure in Africa, the team split up to rest. People were pretty tired from all the funny time zone stuff. D went to take a nap on the couch, and I set up E with a bed in one of the extra rooms in my little dollhouse. I think Lily stayed up late anyway, and Vivi doesn't really sleep, so she started doing research on nightmares. I don't think her nightmare was really bad, but she seemed weirded out by the whole deal. When her research didn't come up with too much, she called Tara. She'd already had a nap and a shower and all, but was still sort of sleepy. But she's always really nice, so she met Vivi and they asked her friend at the nifty book store to help out. They found out some neat stuff. After that, they decided to go get sushi and I was really jealous and bored at home, but Tara was really sweet and had her leftovers wrapped up and promised to come over and bring me sushi. And then, it was really funny, Li had just had some tea in Chinatown and then ended up walking right past the sushi place they went, so he walked them over to D's place to visit ME! Yay! I made them iced tea for when they got there. I even squeezed fresh mango into it.

When they showed up, we had tasty iced tea and I devoured the sushi. We sat in the kitchen and talked for a while and we did silly things like put sliced up mango on D's face. And then I guess Vivi wanted to tell him something so she wrote a note on a post-it and stuck it to his forehead. And of course he was doing his usual mumbly thing where he totally knows what's going on but doesn't realize it because he's just thinking what I'm thinking and it's absolutely hilarious. So of course, he woke up covered in mango juice with a post-it on his face and was completely confused. He's funny.

I was a little sad when everyone had to go, but I glided over to the ballroom and practiced the piano for a while. Eventually, D woke up and tried to figure out what was smeared all over his face, but he had no idea. It was great. Then I was bored again all night. I need to find more hobbies.

In the morning, we all had breakfast. Luckily, D's got a rock garden on the roof that had some tasty tasty rocks for E to have. Once we'd all had our breakfasts, we went up to TOA and headed into Zii's office, again. The whole team was assembled, and we were just waiting for the Merm to show up. Oh yeah, he had a Merm guide all lined up for us, since this next fork was in some kind of underwater ruins and they're in Merm territory. She's a neat lady and her name is Terillis Algera. D already knew who she was 'cause she has one of those underwater TV shows. I think I saw it on the Discovery channel once when D was out at a party. She took us to her sub, who was also very nice. Her name is the SS Minnow but Terillis calls her Min.

Terillis told us a little about how she found the ruins a week ago in the back yard of House Endris. Tara immediately saw the connection with what Grapha was saying, that it would be about the same time. We will have to keep our eyes out for any connection. It was a couple hour trip from the TOA port to the ruins, and I spent most of it getting to know Min. She's pretty interesting. D tried piloting the sub, but he wasn't nearly as good at it as he is at driving the Black Tiger. I warned Min that he can be a little wild sometimes.

So we get right up close to the ruins, and then suddenly Tara's danger sense goes off and a bunch of subs show up on the radar all at the same time. Then we get hailed by these guys, who claim they are MISTIC team 123866. What a bunch of dorks. They seem to think they've claimed the ruins for MISTIC and that we should leave immediately. Terillis told them that their claim was "duly noted and ignored." We all cheered. Uh, on our way to battle stations of course! I told Min that D's much better at shooting guns than he is at piloting boats -- or submarines! I think she likes me.

And then we all waited to see what the MISTIC people would do first...