[Athilea Majiri]

She gasped and moved towards Mazins voice, dropping to her knees next to him. Her hands found Mikes body and she worked the small talent of healing she could still access since their dilemma started. "I...I don't know if what I'm doing is helping him or not, Mazin."

Calonia hoped that she could at least ease some of the pain she remembered feeling. The problem was, she did not know if it was pain through the character, or physical pain to her body. "Please, tell me if it looks like I'm helping."

[Shenandoah]

Mazin looked at her with a frown as light emanated from her hands. "I'm not sure..." Even as he spoke, Mike passed out. "But if it is what's wrong with him... we have no luck to take and move him anywhere else. I can just look at that armor and tell we're too weak to pick all that metal up."

((Mini-fast foward...))

In the end, they were able to slowly haul the unconscious form of the administrator off to one side of the square where the login point was. Mazin sat against the wall of a nearby house, dozing as he waited and trying to ignore the numbness that was where his butt used to be.

Michael chose to awaken as the dawn spread through the sky. "Ugh..." he groaned, shifting and causing a loud grinding sound to be heard. "Where... am I?"

"You're still logged in, Mike," Mazin said, having stirred when Mike woke up. "Or something..." His eyes were sleepy and his voice was dull. "We haven't figured it out yet... You okay?" Mike sat up and his eyes widened as he looked at the differences from just a while ago for him. The administrator was stunned into silence for a very long moment.

[Athilea Majiri]

Calonia was slumped against the wall, on the verge of sleep. At least until Mike woke up. The grinding sound of metal on cobblestone made her wince and whimper. For a moment she panicked when she realized that she could not see. Then she remembered what had happened and she looked towards Mikes voice first and then Mazins.

"We don't know what has happened. That is why we came to you, we thought there was some sort of upgrade or something." The woman shifted slightly to relieve the stiffness in one of her legs. "How ar-" She stopped speaking before she finished the sentence, realizing that she would just be repeating Mazins question.

[Shenandoah]

Mike looked at them with wide eyes, his blonde hair falling in his face and making him jerk back, his green eyes widening in shock. "What the hell?!" He clambered to his feet, a clatter of metal on metal filling their ears. The administrator stood, his cape falling in a swirl around his feet and he stumbled slightly under the weight of the plate only to sag to the ground. He couldn't even stand under the weight of his own armor.

Grunting, he struggled to stand even as Mazin shot to his feet and went to him. "Okay, there's got to be buckles somewhere in here..." he muttered, knowing a bit about armor from some of the stuff he had read once upon a time on a lark.

"Get your hands off me!" growled Mike. "What the hell did you do to me?!" He was scared, obviously so. And he had no clue how to react to this situation.

"Michael... we're as stuck as you right now," Mazin calmly explained. "As Calonia said, we came looking for help and I don't know what's happening or why we're like this. And please hold still!" Mike stilled long enough for Mazin to pop a buckle and loosen up a part of the armor before accessing other parts of the armor with ease.

"I'm honestly surprised there were buckles. I didn't think fantasy armor had that."

Michael looked at him for a long moment, stunned by the different shadows falling over the two player's faces and the sudden realism in the movement of clothing and bodies. No matter how much rendering was done, a regular movement through a game scene had a certain amount of stiffness. Mostly because if it didn't have some simplicity when it came to loading, rendering masses of people would suddenly overtax any number of servers and send them crashing.

But they looked real. Green eyes focused on Calonia. "You two... I guess you two are the players that were hospitalized." Slender fingers stilled before swiftly retracting and grabbing at the broach that held the cloak in place.

"What do you mean, hospitalized?!" yelped Mazin, suddenly panicked.

"They haven't released any names or anything to the public, but as I'm a designer of the game and I need to know these things... A pair of young adults, completely unrelated to each other except for playing at the same time, lost consciousness and haven't woken up yet."

"What's their names?"

"O'Shay and Tooney," responded Mike. He was granted the vision of the color leaving Mazin's face rapidly as horror spread across the almost feminine features.

[Athilea Majiri]

Calonia sat while she heard what was happening. She knew that Mazin must have been helping with Mikes armor after asking him to remain still, but did not move to help. She would only get in the way as she was. When she heard him speak of someone being hospitalized she gasped.

Her name..O'Shay. She felt sick to her stomach. If she'd had anything to eat she likely would have lost it. Mixed with that was relief though. "At least someone found me." She muttered. What would have happened had no one happened upon her? The woman shuddered to think. "I..I am really Alexandria O'Shay, and I am lucky that anyone found my.." She swallowed, "my body, because I live alone."

She pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them to herself. Worry and fear was written on her face when she rested her forehead on her knees. There had to be something they could do to get out of the game. Some way to fix whatever caused them to be trapped.

[Shenandoah]

"I'm... Shit, Rex musta found me, then..." Mazin was still pale as his fingers left the cloak and began fiddling with the straps on the armor in a mechanical and very absent fashion. He wasn't really seeing what was going on in front of him, nor could he really hear beyond the disturbing rush of blood in his ears. The top part of the armor slid free with a loud crash on the ground, though he didn't hardly flinch. "I'm Rick Toomey. Why are we in the hospital?" Mazin stepped back away from Michael, afraid of the answer.

The older man frowned as he levered himself up onto his feet. "I don't know all the details... but... You two are comatose. How you're here, I've no clue."

Mazin looked at him with a haunted expression. "I think you're in the same boat now, Michael." He turned to Calonia, now identified to him as Alexandria O'Shay. Her lost expression and posture had him kneeling down next to her. "Calonia?" he asked, not bothering with querying if she was okay as it was obvious she wasn't. His own emotions were whirling away within him, and he had no idea when all of this would click as it would be something of an explosion when it finally did.

[Athilea Majiri]

Her muscles twitched at the sound of the breast plate hitting the stones, but she gave no other reaction, and she didn't seem to notice when Mazin knelt next to her for a long time. When she finally spoke it became obvious that her emotions were only barely kept in check. She did not lift her head to look at them either. "I just need," She paused before continuing on, "I just need a few minutes."

Even so, she trembled a little. Calonia never liked it when someone saw her upset, much less when that someone was virtually a stranger. She did not know how long she could keep a lid on the emotions that left her feeling nauseous.

[Shenandoah]

Mazin flushed slightly even as he backed up. "Okay," he mumbled, casting a look over at Mike who was still in denial on his own circumstances.

Michael looked about at the sudden realism of the game that he had helped design. It was obvious that what he had done was not this complex or detailed. It was obvious to him he'd gone outside the parameters by taking off his breastplate. He knew he didn't engineer straps into his character's armor design.

Jasper... or rather 'Michael the White' approached one of the windows as the streets became more populated as more people logged on. He saw his own face, the one he woke up to every morning and shaved... however this was the face of his avatar with long hair and a beard.

"This is ludicrous..." he mumbled, kneeling down next to his breastplate still laying on the ground. One hand reached down and grasped the edge of it and he started slightly when he was greeted by various players walking by.

[Athilea Majiri]

In just a few minutes after Mazin had asked if she was alright, Calonia was on her feet and looking more or less composed. She heard the players greeting Mike and smoothed her skirts before thinking of it. Why on earth was that becoming a habit?

Her voice was gentle, "Mike, is there anyway that you can contact the other administrators?" She shifted a little and waved absently to players that greeted them as a group. "I think, also, that we may want to try to keep ourselves from doing things that may obviously not be part of the game. I don't know how much attention we want to attract, or what type of attention that would get us." She tried to keep her voice low enough that only the two men could hear her.

[Shenandoah]

((Digging the new look.))

Mike tried to access his menu and failed miserably. He shook his head, not realizing that Calonia wouldn't be able to see it. "I can't feel the headset or anything," he murmured.

"It's a good idea to keep ourselves controlled. Calonia's right... we could get in trouble with other people. Like we almost got in serious trouble with you, Mike." He blinked. "What is your real name, since you know ours?"

"Jasper Warren," said Michael.

"You really are a developer. You look a lot the same in real life."

Mike gave him a half-grin. "I am usually told that, but in reverse. We could be seen as anomalies now, and if we are seen as dangers, we may be attacked."

"And we bleed now, too," muttered Mazin. "Calonia demonstrated that last night."

[Athilea Majiri]

((Aww, thank you. I was just thinking the same about your new look!))

Calonia gave a miserable nod and touched her nose unconsciously, "Yes, we can. We can also break bones." As soon as she realized what she was doing, she stopped. She also attempted to take on a position of standing that would be close to her avatar. "I suppose that I should also tell you. I'm as good as blind. Eyeless Sight is not working for me."

It took everything she could to keep herself from fidgeting with her skirts and shifting from one foot to another. "We will have to find a way of moving that does not involve someone literally holding my hand. Do you have any ideas?"

[Shenandoah]

Michael looked at her in worry before realizing he'd have to put the armor back on to maintain appearances. "Does your avatar have a staff normally?" He grimaced at the idea of putting it on. "Not to mention, we could keep up a constant stream of chatter and one of us could guide while the other walks beside. However the issue would be that if I'm now comatose, too... Any administrator I try to contact may react like I did to you."

He turned to Mazin. "Help me put this on, would you?"

Mazin nodded in return. "Do you know how to use that sword in real life?"

"No," sighed Michael as he crouched down to help facilitate in his re-armoring. Luckily, there weren't many people on yet and there should be few as it was a school day. It didn't take long to buckle the straps into place and he grunted as he stood. "Good thing I've got the muscle to support this crap." He sighed. "Let's see about getting you a staff to help guide you, Calonia."

[Athilea Majiri]

She nodded, "I do have a staff...somewhere. I must have dropped it when I collapsed." Her thoughts ran though where it could be and then she gasped. "I bet that's what I tripped over, Mazin. Do you remember where we woke at?"

Calonia took a could of hesitant steps forward, feeling the ground as carefully as she could while trying not to attract to much attention. "If it's still there. I only hope that it does not raise to many questions on it's own."

[Shenandoah]

"Hopefully not, but you can pick up items... How long have you been playing?" asked Mike, interjecting his thought into the conversation as he rolled his shoulders underneath the plate. "Okay, next time I develop a game, no super heavy fantasy armor."

Mazin frowned himself. "Let's go look at least." He stood close to Calonia and while he was next to her as close as possible that the game would allow, no one would know that he was actually touching her and that she could feel it. It would just seem like he was just super close.

[Athilea Majiri]

She smiled at him gratefully as they walked back in what she hoped was the direction they had come. The woman looked towards Mike as he asked how long they had played for. "I only just made this character a couple of nights ago. I'm a rather new player."

To Mazin, though, she spoke more softly. "I am sorry for my earlier reaction. This is just so much to take in." After a moments pause she added, "Thank you for checking on me though."

[Shenandoah]

Mazin smiled slightly. "You're welcome... and I think we're going to have to find a place to go to sleep. At least, I need to. I'm tired. And still hungry," he commented, raising his voice on the part about food and shelter.

Mike heard and glanced over his armored shoulder. "We could go to an inn. Or some other place. I don't know what we're going to do about food, though."

"There is the market. They have some food carts over there, though we may have to go out into the wild to get food, too." Mazin frowned at that. He hadn't had a chance, yet, to fully explore his magic and he wasn't sure if he'd be able to access it without the command screens. Granted, it shouldn't be too hard as Calonia had employed healing magic a few times.