A female voice, slightly deeper than average for a female, yet with a hardness behind it that some of the present party would recognize as a battle-hardened warrior's, sounded out with a filtered quality to it, [b]"Since our other second-comers were unwilling to actually answer the question that is, no doubt, burning in your minds, this place you're in is called the Cyber Realm. It's the world between worlds within what you know as the internet, and what we have come to call the digital Multiverse."[/b] Should they look in the voice's direction, they would see a woman in a full suit of powered combat armor, covered completely head to toe and sealed to the outside world, judging by the filtered sound her voice had. Her eyes were faintly visible through the three-point visor. The suit was moderately bulky, but not to the degree that most power armor is, with and orange, red, and gray color scheme. As she hovered closer to the group, she narrowly avoided a stream of binary code, and put a hand to the base of her helmet. The helmet dematerialized in a flash of light, revealing her battle-hardened face. Her straw-colored hair was kept in a loose ponytail, and her almost Nordic features seemed permanently locked in a hard stare. She was a very pretty woman, but still looked like someone you didn't want to anger. [b]"And for goodness sake, be careful of the code streams. You'll pass through them for now, but don't get used to that. After your first piece you'll no longer pass through them, and we've had too many incidents where careless idiots fucked up entire worlds by messing with those streams."[/b]

Another voice, much deeper and most definitely male, rang out then, [b]"Relax, Samus. They'll learn in due time."[/b] That earned the source a harsh glare from Samus, seemingly harsher even than her usual expression, but she said nothing. In the direction of that voice was a massive red dragon, easily at least the size of Smaug from The Hobbit. Unlike Smaug, however, this one lacked wings, having four limbs instead of the usual six a dragon had. It seemed it had wings at some point in its life, though, because ragged bone spikes grew from its back and twitched every now and then, as if the dragon were instinctively attempting to move a wing to a better position. Knowing that voice came from a dragon made it more difficult to figure out which gender that voice signified, but it was likely they would find out after not too long. [b]"Forgive our resident Hunter. She's had a bad history, lost two families; one her birth family, the other the species that raised her. The name's Kalamadea, but you can call me Kal if you want something shorter. Now, I'm sure you're wanting more time to get to know each other, but time is short. There is something I need you to get in the place I'm about to send you. I will give a full explanation when you get back. Just know you're looking for a porous gray stone that looks like a piece of something."[/b] Then, before they knew what was happening, they were suddenly yanked into a portal and everything went black.

When they woke up, the dragon was no longer there, but Samus was still among them. They were in a grassy field with a waist-high wall stuck in the strangest of places and didn't seem to be for much of anything off to the side of them. It was early morning, the sun was just rising over the horizon. Things did not look all too real, though. It was as if they were inside of an old game from the earliest years of 3D gaming. Textures were fuzzy, they could see sharp angles in the terrain if they looked in just the right place, and the sounds had an obvious MIDI quality to them. What really made it feel unreal, however, was the fact that everything looked quite cartoony, and their appearance had not changed at all except for Ajax, but he still did not fit in with the general look of this place. In the background, a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO8Y7hdD6Qk]tune that some would recognize[/url] would fade to a noticeable volume and play on a loop, seeming to come from everywhere at once. In the distance to the north, a castle was visible. There was a forest to the east, a lake to the south, and a dry canyon to the west. To the northeast was a river leading into another valley, and just east of the castle were stairs leading up through mountainous terrain.