As it turned out, Leisy and Olivie had something in common: neither had heard so much as an offhanded comment about mass sleepwalking during their individual efforts to learn more about Stillwater's ominous hidden lore. Having joined the procession of people, a lone beacon of consciousness in a single-file sequence of sleepwalkers, Olivie suspected that this hair-raising march was something out of the ordinary. Even more so than when the Green Day had first cast its sickly pallor over the coastal town, she felt as though she, her party, and her acquaintances were in for something nightmarish. Though she couldn't understand them, she got the impression that her pokemon were just as uneasy as she. Periodically, Gespenst would fire off an Energy Ball into the sky, its radiance illuminating the whole column for a moment before it petered out and the Cacnea got to work making a new one. Together with the light provided by Olivie's lantern and Ella's luminescent Inkay, Gespenst's efforts revealed to the trainers that they were headed toward the edge of town. Olivie made sure to control her breathing as she followed in the footsteps of a man in front of her, down a boardwalk stairway and onto the soil. Then came the ascent. The path wound through the clefts and rises. In no time, the area's unfathomable layout combined with the pitch-black of night left Olivie completely lost. All she could do was follow the villager in front of her, and keep ahead of the villager behind. Through all the twists and turns, however, the brunette was aware that she was steadily rising. The wind picked up as the eerie parade crested the top of a hill and turned out toward the shore. A natural stone archway lay just ahead, suspended upwards of 50 feet over the sand below, and here the wind's steady push became terrifying. Still, the sleepwalkers plodded onward, and Olivie was forced to press on. On her shoulder, Verrine clung to the side of the girl's head with all the strength her tiny limbs could muster, and both Buck and Bifrons kept a low profile to avoid catching a gust. As she made her way across the arch, using various plants as handholds, Olivie's composure suffered, and she could barely find the courage to forge onward. What seemed like hours later, the bridge widened out again, and Olivie could breath easier. She judged that she was on top of a kind of formation known as a 'sea stack', a vast pillar of stone jutting up from the ocean near the shoreline, eroded into a cylindrical shape by time and tide, and overgrown by plants seeded there by the same wind that deposited the dirt. If her guess was true, though, it meant that a potentially lethal drop lay in every direction. This was not, however, her chief concern. A hole had opened up in the clouds, and in the sky beyond the sea stack the green-tinged moon shone down. It didn't provide much light, but it gave enough to reveal the shapes of at least a hundred people sitting on the grass in what appeared to be concentric circles, each with a black nimbus surrounding their heads. After crossing the bridge, the procession broke up, each individual headed for an open spot to sit, motionless and expressionless. The entire scene freaked Olivie out enough to make her breathing ragged and her hands shake. It was like something out of movie; how could this be happening!? Movement at the center of the gathering caught her attention. She spotted someone waving, squinted, and only a second later recognized the person waving as Bernard. Her heart, still too beset by the creepiness of the situation to soar, settled for a surge of hopefulness, and she started moving his way. She managed to get within a hundred feet of him, carefully avoiding bumping into any of the sitters, before she noticed the slowness with which he moved and her heart was chilled once again. He, too, was asleep. The realization that it was a trap filled her mind, but it was already too late. A dark shape arose next to Bernard, and from its imperceptible mass a torrent of blackness rolled out across the top of the sea stack. It crashed into Olivie before she could even turn to flee, its speed to great even for Leisy and Ella to get away. For a moment, all was dark, but then Olivie's eye's blinked open. Having fallen over somehow, she jumped to her feet. For a moment it seemed as if everything was the same, but something gnawed at the back of her mind that caused her to look around more closely. Everything, in every direction beyond the pillar, was pitch black. There was no trace of clouds, of the shoreline, of the natural bridge, the lights of town, of the sea, or anything. Only one this stood out from the void. Staring directly upward, Olivie could see the moon, its brilliant pure white surface impossibly close. By her estimation, it was only a couple hundred feet up. Whirling from side to side, she spotted Leisy and Ella, both in the same situation as she. Her pokemon, too, were unharmed, but glancing at the ground made Olivie aware of something else that was different. At her feet lay a person, sprawled asleep and snoring, that looked just like her. At the feet of her pokemon, doubles of them slumbered as well. All the while, the people sat in their circles like statues. [i]It's me. I'm dreaming. It's an out-of-body experience.[/i] For a moment, she wanted to laugh, but her humor evaporated quickly. In its place came only anger. [hider=The Benevolent Beauty Turned Boisterous Bruiser] [b]Current Location:[/b] Seashore Stack Dreamscape [b]TP:[/b] 36+ 1 = 37 [b]CP:[/b] 25+ 1 = 26 [b]Interaction:[/b] [@Dusksong]'s Leisy Takigawa (The Adventurous, Unassuming Go-getter) [@LuckyBlackCat]'s Ellanor Beaufort (Pretty, Perky, Poison-Prone Punk) [b]Pokemon:[/b] Buck the Bidoof – lvl 3 – healthy Gespenst the Cacnea – lvl 5 – healthy Verrine the Karrablast – lvl 4 – healthy Bifrons the Nidoran♂ - lvl 2 - healthy [/hider]