"I-- I-- I don't know, I swear! I'm just the receptionist!" A red haired guy stammered and cowered back from Shatterstar's swords. He pointed down the hallway to a hall, before hurriedly pulling the lanyard off from around his neck and thrusting it towards Ric's waiting hands.

Things had moved quickly after Art received that final phone call. The call to Scott had dispatched their back up - Ric and Tabby, with Lila as transport. Gaia had tagged along as well, determined to come along since her friend was in trouble. The group had stormed the studios at the address Art had been given, and were now making their way through the corridors thanks to the security pass they'd taken from the receptionist. The place was oddly deserted, almost as if it had been cleared out in anticipation of their arrival.

Which it had. The only souls left in the building now were Rita and the executive producer - whom the group quickly found once they reached the last studio. It was a vast empty space, with Rita standing slightly in front of a large man, dressed in a strange blue outfit with a sword in hand. Art stepped forward, waving off Star for the moment.

( Rita? What's going on? )

When the dwarves Paige and Monet journeyed from their tea time in Wonderland, they had hatched a brilliant plan of breaking not only the princess's curse, but also her hold over the fellow dwarves. They couldn't nor wouldn't wait for just any old prince to show up -- who knows how long that would take and the prince rumored to be traveling the lands, rescuing various damsels and fair maidens, must have been otherwise preoccupied. No, they couldn't wait; they would break her out of that diamond coffin themselves using good ol' fashioned elbow grease and team work. The lady dwarves hurried back to their cottage, hidden deep in the forests of the Savage Lands to tell the others their plan and stop this nonsense over Emma White once and for all.

In another part of the Savage Lands, the Crown Prince Scott of Summerisle was found on his latest adventure. He had been on the hunt for years now, searching for his beloved fire-haired princess. This entailed rescuing various damsels and fair maidens across fabled and dangerous lands. Whenever he'd hear of the latest lady in distress, he'd gallop to the ends of the earth only to be greeted by disappointment when they failed to be Briar Rose. He would depart from those very ladies he saved, leaving them in a somewhat better position than they had been before he arrived. His latest adventure led him to a modest castle hidden behind bramble and thorn, kept underneath shadow. As his heart swelled in his chest, he dared to hope that this was the place.

Over the cabin and the castle, a bright moon shone to aid the hopeful rescuers in their intentions. ( Tonight was the night the sleeping princesses had been dreaming of, the night they would wake up. )

This was getting boring. And Paige was getting hungry. She'd just woken up from her usual afternoon nap and wandered out to where the rest of the household was pouring over the diamond-encased princess. The place was starting to return to it's usual state of dirt and chaos, and it was just so ridiculous.

"I think we need to find a new cook," she announced in rather peeved tones, eyeing the princess with something coming close to distaste.

[ BOBBY, JONO, DOUG, JULIAN, MONET, GAIA ]

Lila Cheney couldn't be too sure about what technology they had, if they could somehow trace her or find her and follow her. She wasn't prepared to bring them back to Earth with her, much less back to her Dyson Sphere. It was her home away from home and the transfer spot she used when teleporting around Earth. She didn't need them finding out where that was.

So for what could be considered Earth-days, she took Gaia around the galaxy. This time there was no fun and it wasn't a vacation. They stayed in a place for only a little while before teleporting to another place across the galaxy, a distant planet where no one would know who they were. Lila perhaps spent a little longer doing this than she normally would -- if only because she was paranoid about getting caught again. They only stopped to eat and sleep and Lila let silence sit comfortably between them except when it was absolutely necessary to talk.

When they got back to Earth, Lila let Gaia get away. She then headed to her own room, ready to collapse.

Lila felt heavy when she woke up. She slowly came into consciousness in the central hospital. It was bustling and no one had the luxury of privacy at the biggest center of xenotransplantation and related research in this sector. The patient beds were in bunked cubes, taking advantage of all the space to treat as many as they could on this interplanetary hub. Nurses went between the cubes, floating on little pods to reach the patients at the tallest heights before levitating to the next bed. The low humming almost lulled Lila back to sleep.

What caused her to jerk was the sudden realization of the restraint around one of her wrists. How the hell did she get there? It kept her connected to her cubicle and when she tried to teleport out of there, it lit up and she didn't go anywhere. She shook her arm, tried to wrangle it loose.

"It is sending a bioelectric current through your nervous system to neutralize your abilities," an electronic monotone voice explained, on a two-second delay as the humanoid beside her spoke in an unknown language. ( 'We could not let you leave before your trial' )

Everyone might have been on guard for another potential quake - but this was so completely off the scales of what anyone imagined. At around 3pm on Friday afternoon, the ground buckled and rippled out from the epicenter, quickly extending far out beyond Santa Monica's borders, the entire state and the surrounding areas soon feeling the shake.

At Paradise Hotel, they were luckier than most. Thanks to the quick thinking of Jean Grey and Madeline Pryor, they were able to reinforce the hotel, keeping it from completely collapsing around everyone's ears. It wasn't perfect - the top of the building still swayed and buckled, the two top floors crashing down in on each other and partially damaging the third. Most of the windows shattered, with the balconies quickly collapsing in on themselves and the back stairs following suit.

In the upper levels, Julian Keller found himself caught underneath a piece of falling concrete, knocked out as it pinned him down. Mark Sheppard, having stepped out onto one of the balconies not long before the quake, was instead impaled by a broken railing, suspended almost in midair. Forge would later be found buried underneath a slab of concrete that had once been part of the back stairs. They weren't the only residents who needed immediate help, and everyone needed to get out of there in a hurry.

Paradise Hotel was trying to fall down.

[ OPEN ]