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They're gone? The creepy blue zombies are out of town and I'm...worried about Ollie and Tate and Roy.... going for a ride to celebrate the fact they're gone. This is one of those awesome days to be alive and once all the therapists and teachers had worked out that they were gone, we actually got to go outside for the first time since before I came back here for the seminar thing I was doing.

I'm pretty glad we're all okay here. I mean the last thing anybody wants to happen at the ranch is somebody getting hurt, and if the zombies didn't do it, I'm pretty sure Casey and TJ were gonna hurt each other pretty soon. There's only too many ways that a fight over crafting yarn cause you can't get outside can go.
( Trigger warning: drugs )

And then I taught a couple of the friends I made how to crochet, since we sort of used up all the embroidery floss a couple days ago and everything. It sounds like we're all sixty five but we're working on a blanket and it's gonna be awesome when we're done and everything. Sometimes it's actually kind of nice to get a chance to just hang out and not have to worry about...everything.

Something bad and something amazing happened to me not too long ago, and while I need somebody grown up to run the whole thing by, maybe I'm ready to start trying to let my life actually change. I'm sort of looking forward to that, anyway.

Gotta say those blue things were great for taking out some aggression, yo! Fireworks to the faces bitches!

Never thought I'd miss being a vampire...

If anyone has suffered serious injury as a result of these events, do let me know. I can't regrow something that's missing, but I can reattach and rebuild pretty effectively.

I'm glad that's over moved away from here. Never thought I'd be so glad to not see alien zombies wandering the streets. I wish I could help, but... I'm afraid I'm pretty useless right now.

Anywhere else I would be considered odd for knowing magic but here it seems to be less of a bad thing and more of a good thing. You never know what you will find outside. I am starting to think that is a good reason not to move back home to Paris... Paris would feel rather boring after this.

It seems I arrived just in time to miss all the fun...

Assuming that the blue monsters are indeed gone, The Mirror will hold its grand opening in a few days. Commissions were obviously not the first thing on my mind lately. It appears to be at least safe to go outside again, which my daughter will be very grateful for.

I love my current work.

Is it safe to come out now?

Animals are... rather fascinating, really. To wake up to a world where animals can't talk, where it seems almost like whatever plan Dillamond was talking about might've already long come into place... I can understand why some people are so passionate about Animal rights now.

I don't trust the headmistress of Shiz at all either. Madame Morrible. Something about her just... doesn't sit right with me.

Somehow, I think it must always end this way.

Goddamn it. It's never right.

Well that was..terrifying.

It's over. There's only the clean up.

Hello. My name is Mary Eunice McKee, and I've just moved here from Baltimore where I was helping with food donations at Community Of Most Precious Blood. I'm a bit ... shy, I confess, and not very good at meeting new people. I hope I can do good works here as well. It feels like I was Called.

Can you believe it? Alien invasion and my father still expects me to be working. Now, let nobody say that I'm not committed to the cause but, at a time like these last couple of weeks, looking after my family seemed like a more pressing concern than lunch meetings and emails. Is that unreasonable? I didn't think so.


[ Lucrezia ]

Will you be alright if I head back to Sac soon, now that the craziness seems to have calmed donw a little? Mother said you can stay at home for a while. Neither of us like the idea of you being in Irvine alone at the moment.

I have offered my services as a volunteer to assist the Las Vegas Emergency Services in the clean up effort. If anyone else would like to join, I will pass along names.

Transportation and lodging will be arranged.

( Cut for language and anyone who doesn't want to see it, as well as mentions of character death. )

On the plus side, I can now go out without having to punch things in the face

On the bad side, my dreams are insane. I still have no idea what a power flower is, except that it... generates stuff from nothing. Sunlight, maybe? It's ~magical~.

Oftentimes, the dreams become nightmares. Terrible visions that plague us even into our waking hours and make us wonder what cruel gods haunt us. The thing about these nightmares is that they only end because we make it so. We wake up, we crawl and scratch and dig our way through the darkness until we find that light on the other side.

And when we find that light, we don't let go.

God knows it's a heavy weight. God knows the despair can be endless. Seeing that terror come to life, cutting down people like a slaughterhouse. You wonder how you can hold up. You fear another endless campaign of suffering, of choosing to sacrifice tens of thousands to save tens of millions. That's blood that doesn't just wash away.

Then it's over in an instant, and you feel this relief. But it's empty. It's hollow. Because tomorrow could bring another darkness. And the day after. And the day after that.

Without my crew, my family. Without their support... I'm nothing. Just a marine who stumbled into something big, something world shattering, and did the only thing she could do - try to stop it. And in this waking world, there are others. Many like me, thrust into their own respective situations that defined and altered them. Earth would be piled high with seven billion corpses without them.

A hero is someone who doesn't walk away, when everything is telling them to. There are more threats out there. I'm not going to walk away.

I can't believe it. The alien things are gone and I have a dream about being totally kick ass. I wield a whip like a boss and now I really want to try and see if I can do it here.

Other than that everything has been pretty normal. The bakery is fine, I'm learning fast and it's been protected by Audrey's boyfriend who is like an awesome sorcerer. It's pretty handy. I may need to stop eating pastries though before I get fat.

I'm starting to wonder if I really should have stayed in Paris. It was kind of nice forgetting how crazy the OC can get...

So, my friend Annabeth told me that I should join this forum thing. So, here I am. My name is Percy Jackson and I'm originally from New York City and I moved out here to go to USC in the fall. I'm in summer housing right now cause my mom just got married and I didn't feel like staying home alone while she's on her honeymoon and figured her and my stepdad would like some time alone even when they get back. Not really sure what else to say.

I'm fucking annoyed. I should have been out there, helping. I'm supposed to be an Avenger. I had a dream where Steve Rogers asked me to join up again. I'm not sure why I wasn't before, or what happened in between, but whatever.

And yet I'm stuck being sick and awful instead of being out there helping out. I don't even feel like an Avenger. Maybe I'm not.

Fuck this whole thing. Cancer sucks.

Sooooo...is this a Southern California thing? Because I don't remember these strange events happening up in San Francisco. I'm glad it's over and I'm thankful to everyone who helped in the fight. Especially since I don't know many of you yet.

[Filtered against Percy Jackson]

WARNING: TEENAGE GIRL POST Don't say I didn't warn you. Looking for advice.

So, what do you do when there's a boy, whom you may have a crush on, and he suddenly appears at your school? You haven't seen him in years (you've been in contact though) and he wanted to surprise you with the fact that he's going to the same college as you. This is just too strange for me to try and figure out by myself.

If anyone needs me, I'm afraid you'll just have to suffer through without me. I'll be in Rio for the next week or so, reacquainting myself with my husband.

All things considered, I don't think the Serenity prayer is going to cover it this time.

Is it always going to come down to a no win scenario? That's the thing I hate the most about the dreams, how mo matter how hard we try, or how much we fight the only thing we can do is choose the smaller of two evils. Everything always has to end with death.

I didn't even know her that well, not here. I don't know why I can't stop crying Nobody should ever have to make that choice, especially not after the dreams she must have dreamed.

I can't pretend it's never going to touch me, anymore. I can't keep hiding from the inevitable. If it always comes down to the same things in all universes, I can't run from who and what I need to become, and the things that I hope I'll never have to do, but almost certainly will.

I guess in the end it really is true. With great power comes great bullshit.

A local theatre troup and a nuclear attack? They must really think we're all a bunch of slack jawed dimwits. Is this what they do here? Make up ludicrous excuses for explainable events?

Nuclear explosion my ass.
( There's something they're not telling us. )