Near the entrance to Hydroponics - she had actually never ventured deeply into it - Patsy Walker sat and concentrated on a single, pale yellow flower on a bush. It wasn't a flower she could identify, but it was pretty, and Patsy figured that this was a good flower to practice her fledgling telekinesis powers on. She narrowed her eyes, wishing that this was the sort of thing that she could have practiced in GLaDOS, instead of the stuff that GLaDOS had her doing. The flower budged, just a little bit, and then stopped. Patsy growled. She really had run out of practice since the time she'd been here.

Mostly because I've been busy doing other things, she thought to herself. Other things, beyond the whole GLaDOS thing, namely meant one Daimon Hellstrom. Who I haven't seen since we did...that...some time ago. Gotta fix that.

She sighed, stood up, and ran a quick hand through her long, red hair. She stretched, plucked the flower from its stem, and tucked it behind her ear. She'd fiddle with that later. For now, she was going to go hunt down Daimon.

Clothes? Check. A place to stay? Check. Full deck of cards?

...wait a moment.

In the park within the City, Sakura was busy shuffling through the deck of cards, slightly in a bit of a panic. In design, they looked like tarot cards, but on the face were different creatures of sorts, each bearing names like "The Windy" and "The Jump" and "The Shadow".

"...16...17...18..." Sakura uttered and stopped as she got back to the first card. "...where's Erase? I-I know I didn't drop it. Ohh, if I lost it, Kero-chan's gonna kill me!" She could see it now: the little plushie lion jumping down her throat because of it. Perhaps it wasn't lost, but more somewhere else on the ship? Sakura hung her head at that. "The ship's too huge, I'll never find it that way...!"

Right now, though, other problems were at hand. Like the state of her magic. If she didn't have access to her magic, what good were her cards?

With a deep breath, she removed the necklace holding the strange pendant and held it out, a magic circle forming under her. "Key that hides the power of the stars, show your true form before me. I, Sakura, command you under our contract. Release! " On cue, the pendant glowed and started to expand, showing its true form - a staff bearing a star enclosed in a circle on its head, small wings to its sides. "I-It works!" Taking the staff in hand, she looked towards her cards. "Let's see..."

...

About an hour (give or take a few minutes) later, the area around Sakura has changed a little bit - a few extra trees due to The Wood, a lot of flowers thanks to The Flower and resting under one of those tress were two Sakuras, one of them actually The Mirror in disguise.

He'd asked for directions from Marco and after a little more exploring, Jake had wandered down to the city and found Cassie's house. For a long while he just stared at the familiar building and its accompanying barn. It had been years since he'd actually seen it - after the war ended and everyone went their separate ways, he hadn't had much call to visit it. But here it was, exactly as it had been the first day they'd all met to figure out what they were going to do. A bunch of frightened teenagers trying to deal with something way out of their league and with no one to turn to but each other. He flexed his fingers and swallowed thickly. And he was supposed to meet his brother here.

His real brother, not the slug pretending to be him. The brother he'd ordered killed for the sake of the war. An order that had gotten his own cousin killed. He glanced down at his feet, hoping that maybe he could find some respite from this train of thought - he knew where it lead. Just more questions and more guilt. Maybe if he'd tried harder to find another way, his brother would be alive back home. So would Rachel. Or maybe they'd all be dead.

The self-doubt and the guilt always gnawed at him, but here and now it was hitting him doubly hard. His brother was alive, which meant he was probably pulled from earlier on the timeline. Which meant that i they fixed this, everything would go back to the way it was "supposed" to be. His brother would move on and end up dead by Rachel's hand and Rachel herself would die soon after.

Fantastic. Why was it always him again?

He shoved those thoughts aside, took a deep breath and put his hand on the front door knob.

The Jedi Temple.

He really needed to propose the Magic Department move to the Tower of High Sorcery. It really made a lot more sense, didn't it?

Oh well.

An illusory sign out front said "Welcome New Applicants", along with a magic mouth that welcomed them and gave brief instructions to the office he had reluctantly claimed after deciding that no one would ever manage to properly find their way to his actual wizard's lab. Thus, behind a desk, he sat scribing a scroll and awaiting potential new members to the department's ranks.

"Alright guys, come on out!" Ash said, having transferred the Pokemon back to the Poke Balls, realizing that trying to herd them all down to their present location would've been way too much of a hassle.

Ash had dragged the team to a clearing in the city for one thing, and one thing only: To find out if their time in the pods had affected their strength and power at all. It didn't look like it, but it'd be good to at least confirm that.

Besides, it'd been ages since he'd really trained with most've 'em, and Oshawott still needed more training regardless. And it might be good for the otter to see how some longer-trained Pokemon fought.

"Pikachu. You're up. I wanna see ya hit me with an Electro Ball!"

Pikachu saluted. "Pikaa-pikaCHOW!"

There was a new arrival on the ship, one that had been released quite unexpectedly. It had watched the humans mingle, and it was now prowling around the inhabited areas of the city. It was smart, and knew it needed to find his master.

"Meow," said Mick, holding what appeared to be a Gaia Memory in his mouth, wearing a belt.

(ooc: Philip's probably somewhere here, so is Shotarou and anyone else. Bendy time will allow for multiple "return to Sonozaki if Found" scenarios.)

It had been a long time since the last pod pop but fortunately for Rein, her entire stock had been doubled since the last time they had made landfall. Armed with new fabrics both familiar and alien, and her legion of sewing machines, dress dummies and such, and her new tenant to boot, Rein was able to take on the world.

Or at least clothe it.

Sending out her customary notice to come visit the store, Rein opened the door to Stormwind Clothiers and awaited her first arrival.

"Alright, this" Peter said as the door whooshed open, "is the Science Department. Its got everything from test-tubes, to microscopes, to things we don't actually know how to use and are frankly afraid to test."

The teenager took a seat and rifled around in the cabinets until he'd found a sterile lancet and a microscope slide.

"Okay, any questions before we get started?"

So many people had recommended the Media Library to Soren that it ended up being one of the first locations on-ship that he paid a visit to. As promised, there was plenty of information to be found in convenient, electronic format.

Convenient for everyone who wasn't essentially from a medieval time period and thus had no framework for understanding computers, let along databases.

Losing patience, Soren began mashing the controls on some kind of instrument panel, and was rewarded with a moving picture featuring humans being menaced by floating tin plates, a woman singing about less-than-optimal romantic encounters, and some sort of storybook featuring a blue-skinned 'space explorer' and his evil nemesis (both with rather improbable hair).

"Infernal machine," he hissed, hitting the table with one small, bony magefist. "I'll show you a bad romance."

As far as he was concerned, the future should be destroyed. With fire.