Phantom thieves... Honestly. [he laughs quietly to himself] Must be how Inspector Vergier and Charlie feel when...

[Raphael's hanging out in Lumina Cloth, the lights and setting... Not really reminding him of home but he prefers the bustle of this Root Town to the sedate pace of Mac Anu. He didn't get very far with the last quest and when he'd tried to enter on his own it had been more of a disaster than his first attempt to break into the Louvre. Good thing he was an expert in making quick getaways from sticky situations.

Maybe it would have been easier if Fondue was here to offer backup]

...

[a quick shake of his head - whoa, now was not the time for reminiscing! - before he finds himself a clear corner of the plaza and starts putting together a short dance number to whatever rhythm is playing in his head. Wouldn't want to get out of practice now, would we? Maybe if he focused on something else until his mood improved...]

[Action for Mac Anu]

[Hugging his grimoire to his chest, Clive wanders aimlessly about the unfamiliar city, taking in all the sights. Although he is rather overwhelmed by the unexpected change in location (and attire), he has to admit that this is a very beautiful city. He's never seen anything like it in his entire life.]

It beats being stuck in a prison cell, at least...

[He lets out a sigh and looks around for a bench to sit on; carrying this giant book around gets tiring really quickly. Once he's seated, he sets his grimoire down beside him and digs out a strange device from his pouch. Whatever it's supposed to be, he's rather impressed with the sleek design. Clive spends a few minutes just examining the object before he presses his index finger on the "Touch me!" message on the screen. To his surprise, the screen actually changes to show some sort of menu. It seems that touching the corresponding icons also takes him to different screens.]

What a fascinating little piece of technology. I never would have even imagined that it was possible to build such a device.

[Until he figures out what he should do next, Clive is perfectly content with just sitting here and messing around with the Relic. Touch screen technology hasn't been invented yet in his world, so he'll be entertained by it for quite a while. Anyone is free to bother him, of course.]

[Text]

[Once he discovers the public board feature, he decides to post a very simple message, which... actually takes him some time to type out because what are touch screen keyboards.]

Could someone explain to me what's going on here?

[Meta Knight idles by the Chaos Gate in Lumina's Cloth, eyes darting around hoping to find anyone he might know.

Unfortunately, Dream Land habits are hard to break from and he easily grows bored. He pulls out his Relic and randomly selects from the three keyword columns.]

Today is... "Halberd Failing Ocean"..

[It takes him a moment for that to sink in.]

Accursed...!

[He manages to stop himself from throwing his Relic on the floor. Come on Metty, you're over that incident already. He tries to straighten himself out, looking around to see if anyone witnessed that.]

That would not be a very good area.

[SPLASH!!

Anyone who might be in the square today may find the unusual sight of Tsubaki by the fountain, arms dipped inside as he tried to search for something. His makeshift tent was situated nearby, one he had been staying in due to the lack of an inn. Why he chose to camp right in the middle of the city, no one knows. Still, that was hardly the dilemma.

Nope, him blindly reaching through the cold waters was the dilemma. Anyone who knows him may also notice he is squinting badly, and he can't seem to focus at all on what he's looking for.]

Just where did it go?

[Yuuta's sitting on the edge of the fountain beside Takeshi. The two of them have their heads put together and it seems like they're studying something that Takeshi is holding. If anyone were to walk by, they might overhear the two of them talking amongst themselves.]

See, here, it was different for me. I went home after this point and stayed there for awhile before turning up here again.

[Takeshi frowns, puzzled.] Really? I wonder why that didn’t happen to me. I’d like to have gone home, too. I’m worried about Sumire-chan...

[He trails off for a moment, then points at the one of the notes he’d been taking on his Relic. It might be nonsense to some, but it would definitely make sense to people who’ve been in The World before.] Oh, you find this weird too, right? This is the last place I remember going, but I can’t seem to access Lumina Cloth anymore!

Yeah, I noticed that too! [Yuuta taps his chin as he thinks.] I wonder what made the World change like that so suddenly. The BBS disappeared too. I kinda miss that.

I miss it too. It was way easier to contact people with the BBS for parties and dungeon crawling and events... [Takeshi sighs and his shoulders slump down, looking like he’d been dumped by the girl he loved the most (which he’d really rather not happen, actually).]

I talked to one of the GMs, though. Kain. He said there was something like budget cuts and company... things that happened. Couldn’t get more than that from him, though.

[Yuuta frowns. He guesses that would make sense although the timing is still bugging him a little.] By the way, did your levels get cut too or was that just me because I went home?

Mine got cut too! I was almost 10 the last time, but then it got cut in half. [He notes this down. The list just keeps getting longer and... messier; Takeshi wasn’t very organized and his notes on the difference between the first version and this one was all over the place.] At least it’s pretty easy to get them back. I’m almost 20 this time.

[The state of the notes is actually getting on Yuuta’s nerves. He’s naturally neat and organized so it’s easy to see why but despite his giant want to fix them, he tries to ignore it.] I guess ‘cause we’re used to it by now. If you think about it, we’ve been here ages.

Ugh, don’t remind me! I already feel like a grandpa, and I’m just 20!

[ There is a trick to dealing with temporal displacement, or whatever the fuck you call it when you were in one place and suddenly wake up in another. That's generally not to panic while putting on your thinking cap and figuring out what the heck happened, or you know, calmly asking those around you for help. Unfortunately, Karkat doesn't really do calm or rational when shit goes wrong.

Probably because sleep isn't a luxury afforded to Karkat on the best of days, even before Jack's destruction of Prospit and Derse. He'd spent the entire SGRUB campaign awake, not once taking a break to get some much needed rest. He probably wouldn't have even slept afterwards, had Kanaya, Tavros, Equius and the others not had a lapse of sanity so grand (debatable, since he doubted any of them had two working brain cells to rub together most days) that clearly the solution to enabling Tavros to walk again was to chainsaw the lower half of his body off and grant him a pair of robolegs, all while he was standing innocently by. Unprepared for the flood of orange-brown blood coming his way.

Fucking idiots, the lot of them. It had been a wonder any of them had survived their time in the game, one of Gamzee's retarded miracles that would remain unexplained. It still hadn't been enough to save them. He hadn't done enough.

Needless to say, waking up with a group of unfamiliar, unconscious bodies in a room he'd never seen before was a blaring exhortation horn to his think pan that something had gone horribly, inexplicably wrong. Well, wronger than things were previously. He takes deep, gasping breaths in a useless attempt to keep his cool, deciding to abandon the not-quite-corpse party and head for the outdoors. Looks he's making an effort to harass the first person he sees that will give him the time of day.

Poor you. ]

HEY, YOU. YES, YOU, THE SLACK JAWED, DROOLING BUFFOON I'M CURRENTLY POINTING MY CLAWED, TACTILE APPENDAGE AT.

YOU.

YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK WE'RE DOING HERE, WHY WE'RE IN THESE RIDICULOUS OUTFITS, AND WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO EVERY LAST ONE OF MY BARELY TOLERABLE FORCED TRAVELING COMPANIONS OR I'M GOING TO FLIP MY SHIT. I WILL FLIP MY SHIT SO WELL AND SO LONG THAT IT WILL BE CHARRED TO A GRILLED PERFECTION, AND JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT CAN'T POSSIBLY GET ANY BETTER, I WILL COVER IT WITH THE MAYO OF EXQUISITE BATSHITTERY AND FORCE IT DOWN YOUR GAPING FEED CHUTE-

[ Any time you wanna cut in would be good. ]

[At first, Toph just freezes where she is. Everything has drastically changed. She not only feels this, but she can hear it, too. There are more people around, the earth isn't the same as the Temple her friends were staying at.

A market place, maybe? But how did she get here? Toph frowns, not at all amused by this turn of events. Sheesh, they finally get somewhere with the whole Firebending training thing, and now this happens?

Never a dull moment for a member of Team Avatar.

Toph feels off, though. The girl frowns, and tries to Earthbend something. It doesn't work, and it's not only frustrating, but worrisome. Great, now how is she going to fight? She still has her Seismic Sense, so not all of her bending is gone, but….

She needs information, that much is a given. Toph just hopes that she's in somewhat friendly territory.]

Hey! [To make sure they know she's talking to them, she reaches out to tap their arm or shoulder, but the latter may be harder to do since she's pretty short for a 12-year-old.] Yeah, you, the person I just tapped. Do you mind telling me where I am and how the heck I got here?

Oh, yeah, and before I completely forget, why isn't my Earthbending working? Seriously, what kind of place doesn't allow bending?

[Such a sweet little girl, isn't she?]

[Newbies. Always the same, no matter how many other MMOs they've played before. Aradia is no different. She's taking in the sights and sounds of Mac Anu, soaking in the atmosphere.

At least for a little while. It isn't long before she's either poking at the quest shop, bugging NPCs, or poking around at the Chaos Gate, trying to spin up an interesting combination of Area Words.

Come bug her?]

[ The area for today's show is Beloved Past's Paradise! While you can spot low-level monsters prancing around here and there, it appears to be an otherwise peaceful place, even if a bit cold. Excellent for training if you don't feel too confident about your abilities. ]