Who: Alcatraz Smedry and Cecil Palmer When: Monday morning Where: The woods What: Making a grand entrance Rating: Depends on who finds him, but not above PG-13. He's only just allowed to go to those movies, after all. Status: Incomplete
Alcatraz quickly jotted down a note to his current set of foster parents, Roy and Joan, figuring it would probably be a good idea to give some kind of explanation for disappearing into the middle of the night, even if the Librarians would probably smooth the whole thing over like they had gotten rid of the giant hole in the side of the house. He made a vague reference to having found his grandfather, which was technically true but managed to avoid the whole 'conspiracy of evil librarians ruling the world' angle that might be more difficult for them to swallow. Then he quickly threw a bag together.
One good thing about constantly going from home to home was that he had learned to pack quickly, and didn't bother collecting many belongings. (Also, the things he did collect broke fairly regularly, leaving him more room.) So it was only minutes after Grandpa Smedry had ducked out the window to his bedroom that Alcatraz had his backpack and duffel bag filled, and turned around to follow his grandfather out the window.
And found himself in a forest. Or at least a small group of trees. Look, the closest he'd ever come to nature was a foster family he had stayed with once who liked to camp, and he'd spent barely a month with them before wrecking their RV.
"Grandpa?" he called out, trying to focus through his lenses to find the older man. He realized belatedly that he was still wearing the Lenses of Rashid and hurriedly took them off, pocketing them and putting the normal Oculator's Lenses on instead. There was still no trace of another Oculator, but then again he'd only been at this for like thirty hours. If only he had the Tracker's Lenses instead, those had been simple enough to use.
In all the books he had ever read, they said to stay in one place when you were lost. So Alcatraz didn't run off into the woods, despite his first impulse. But, he figured, changing location vertically was still staying in one spot, right? And the tree next to him looked plenty tall enough to find a way out from the top of. So he grabbed the solidest-looking of the lower branches and braced his right foot against the trunk for leverage before pushing off the ground with his other leg.
The limb promptly snapped off the tree, sending him sprawling. At the same time, with a deafening crack! the tree itself split in two, right at the point his foot had been braced. He wasn't even surprised - just slightly bruised.