"Oh wow, that was a close one..." Tyler mumbled to himself, punctuating the statement with a nervous chuckle. He didn't know what it was, but he'd bet that whatever he just avoided was baaaaad news. He reached up, smoothing his hair down a bit since the impromptu run had thrown it a bit outta' whack. Then, he turned to continue his pursuit of the earlier beasties when something stopped him. A sound... Sobbing? He thought, turning his head towards the sound in question. "Curious..." He spent a moment considering his options, namely following after some insane monster thing, or investigating the source of this sound. ... Right, so turning away from his pursuit, Tyler rather quickly began to make his way towards whatever it was that happened to be crying out in the streets at this hour. "Hey?" He said, calling out in the direction of the sobs, "You alright?" ... "If you're another monster, could you try not to scare me? These are the only pants I've got on me."

Arthur dropped down with a thud. Surprisingly the room shook a bit, some of the furniture rattling away. Funny, he shouldn’t have made as big an impact upon landing.
Thump, Thump, Thump.
That following sounds answered his question. Something big was approaching the building. The monsters that were pursuing him had scattered, fleeing from whatever was approaching.
Thinking he should probably leave too, Arthur ran to the stairs. He didn’t get far however as he saw the following in the window next to him.

He froze. The giant eye peering in could easily see him. It blinked once distance before whatever the eye belonged to moved along, a giant thud followed after every step. Soon as the sound of footsteps disappeared completely, Arthur heard the sound of clock chiming in the distance.





“Well the thirteenth hour is essentially the missing hour. You know how the normal world is done in 24 hours: two twelve hour segments. Well this one has only has 13 hours. The first twelve hours lining up with either the day, or night, whichever. The thirteenth hour, might as well not exist in the normal world.” Roy paused. That explanation had been a mouthful. “Anyway, you don’t want to be our during the thirteenth hour. During that time there is no passage between cities, not to mention it’s prime hunting hour for most nightmares.”

In the distance, they could hear the clock-tower ring, once.
“Well, that hour went by rather quickly,” said Roy as he stood up, grabbing a cane that Daniel hadn’t bothered to notice before. “I’ll direct you to the nearest exit I know.” Roy walked over to the stairs, limping as he walked.





Thankfully, the source of the sobbing wasn’t from some creepy monster. It came from a grown man who was huddled in the middle of the street. He looked like he had been attacked, though his injuries were rather minor. The important part was he looked to have suffered a mental breakdown muttering “Go away. Make it stop,” repeatedly in between sobs.

A moment of silent reflection followed as Tyler stumbled across the crying man. Soon enough, however, he came to and blurted out the first thing that came to mind in an attempt to break the ice. "Oh, hey, cool. You're not a monster." ... That bit of detective work aside, Tyler took a quick glance around. Things seemed quiet enough, save for the man's incessant sobbing of course, and upon further examination, it seemed that the man was more afraid than in any real danger. "Okay okay," Tyler said, taking a few steps closer before dropping down into a crouch before the man. He tilted his head down, a nearly tangible sense of calm rolling off of him as he tried to look into the man's eyes. "Take a deep breath there buddy, there's nothing around to hurt'ya anymore alright? Now I want you to think," Tyler immediately followed one word with another so that the man wouldn't be able to interrupt him, "what's your name? Can you tell me that? And what're you doing out here at such a late time of day?"

The man took deep breaths, as he recovered. It seemed that the company of another human being was enough to get him back to reality.
“My… my name is Long,” he finally spoke in between breaths. “And I-I just wanted to get out of the streets, but, but, I couldn‘t make it.”
He tried to stand up, but staggered before falling to a knee. Physical exhaustion, as well as the previous shock had left him drained.
“C-can you help me?” he pleaded.

Arthur slowly stepped out of the building he'd been hiding in. He quickly began reevaluating his choice of coming, but being unable to evaluate altogether, and with no other options, he proceeded to roam the streets again - searching for answers.
"Hello!" He shouted out, "Tell me where I can find the Tacks man or I'll start melting your houses!"

The calls from Arthur fell on deaf ears. Not a single thing stirred in the Mad City, so, of course, Arthur did the best thing. Bring down the house.
The first building fell with a crunch. To Arthur’s frustration, the city stayed quite, almost as if deliberately ignoring him.
The irritation kept building and building. Despite being a rather calm guy, Arthur couldn’t contain the rage any longer. And what better way was there to sooth his rage than to destroy the rest of this neighbourhood?





Daniel continued following the limping Roy down the street.
“Just a warning there though Dan,” he started, pausing to make sure Daniel was listening before continuing. “While the normal would has no way of interacting with the Mad City, the reverse isn’t the case. Nightmares will be intruding your everyday life. Watch yourself.”
The two walked a little further until Roy stopped. “Well here we are.” Roy pointed over to a ladder, which made it’s way up to the rooftops.
“Up somewhere on these rooftops is a Wardrobe… yes just like that one C.S Lewis book. It changes places often, but it stays in this general area. Watch out for the Hate Hives though. “

Daniel shook his head and frowned. "Mad City, nightmares, Hate Hives, C.S. Lewis! Geesh! Everything here is just hell bent on making me confused." He exclaimed shaking his hands. "I'll be careful, i'll be careful, no need for worrying." Daniel said as he waved away to Roy casually, then heading towards the ladder as he started climbing it. Once up in there he'd immediately proceed to go and start searching for that wardrobe that Roy mentioned. He had to go back to his hideout as soon as possible, make sure it was safe, what with those freaks searching for him back where he came from...Gah, this was going to be a pain no matter how he looked at it, he sighed.

As another building lost it's corner stone and collapsed messily, Arthur felt a piercing weariness come over him. This wasn't working, and he was tired, it was time to go home and try again later. He looked around for a door and then realised something. He wasn't hungry, he'd just eaten and hour ago after all, he wasn't sleepy, hadn't been in a long time, and wasn't exactly bored. Why leave? He found a piece of rubble, an easy task, and sat on it. Maybe this place wasn't so bad.

Daniel carefully traversed the rooftops. While a fall from this height would not kill him, breaking a leg would surly mean death to him in this crazy place. The rooftops were cluttered with all sorts of junk, and doors marked most available surfaces. At one point Daniel found a hole which didn’t lead to the ground, but to some street flipped on it’s side. He knew better than to explore that however, and continued searching for the wardrobe.

Eventually he saw a wardrobe in the distance. The size, shape, and colour of it stood out like sore thumb amongst all the other junk on the rooftops. If anything, Roy was talking about this one.

“WEE DOOONNN'T WAAANNNNT YOURRRR KIIIINNND ARRRROUUUUNNND HEEEEEERRREEE!!!”

Daniel turned around to see a group of seven or eight, religiously clad individuals, most likely members of a cult.

They carried makeshift weapons, torches, crosses, pitchforks. And they were closing in quickly.





Arthur was quickly interrupted by the sounds of more debris falling. With nothing better to do, he went to check it out. To his luck, he found someone desperately trying to get the rubble off him. Upon seeing Arthur, however, he stopped what he was doing and immediately began to cower in fear.
“Oh please! Don’t kill me!” he begged. “Y-you’re looking for the Tack’s Man right? H-his office is in District 13, over that way. Please don’t kill me…”

Arthur approached the man sympathetically, turning the rubble to gas momentarily to allow escape, he had assumed the buildings were empty after receiving no response.
"I have no intention of killing you. After no one came to help me and then I received no response, I assumed this place was deserted." Arthur tried to be calm, but he wanted revenge, "I don't know this place well. If you can take me to District 13, or at least point me in the right direction, then I'll be out of your hair." He looked into the man's fearful eyes, "Sorry. What's your name? Are you hurt?"

"Help you out?" Tyler said, repeating the man's words as he considered them. Of course, it wasn't a particularly difficult thing to decide, the man was clearly in trouble on his own. Moody as Tyler was, he wasn't going to just let someone die because he didn't feel like lending a hand. "Yeah, I'll help you out." His voice was surprisingly gentle, a reflex he'd built when speaking to his sister who was the only person he had to assist with any regularity. Reaching down, Tyler grasped the man's hand and helped to pull him to his feet. That done, he pulled the man's arm around his should so he could lean on the more stable young man while they walked. "So..." Tyler said, his voice trailing out as he came upon a realization that simply hadn't occurred to him, "You never said where we're going? What way should we head, Long?"

OOC: Like I've mentioned in the other topic, I'm going to try and expand everyone's feedom. Withdraw the hand of God somewhat. I'll attempt to keep my posts fairly detailed so you can start taking more liberties with the info at hand. I will exert full control for bossfights still.

IC:



"Stay away!" cried the man even at Arthur's words of compassion as he scrambled out of the rubble. "J-just keep following this avenue. You won't miss it, I swear!"
Despite being injured, the man limped off as fast as he could.
Didn't seem like a good idea for Arthur to stick around either, as other people began to emerge, angrily looking for who was responsible.


You are now in:




The first thing Arthur noticed when he entered the District was the eerie synchronicity of everything there, like it was one big clockwork contraption. It struck him as kind of beautiful until he realized that everyone there was too scared to do otherwise.





The two walked at a slow place. Long weakly spouting which direction to turn everytime they made it to an intersection. The streets grew slightly more lively as locals began to emerge from there homes. It wasn't a welcoming sight though, as the locals eyed the two unnatural as they walked.
That soon came to an end as the locals retreated into there houses again at the sound of the earth shaking.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Oh God!" paniced Long. He attempted to make pace only to fall forward. "It's after me..."
Regretably, Tyler got Long to his feet again, and proceeded to drag Long at a faster pace this time, not wanting to encounter whatever Long was afraid of.
They didn't have far to go luckily. Just as they turned into a lower class street. A man quickly approached them from the distance, well, as quickly as he could walking on that cane of his.
"My God Long! What happed?!" the man exclaimed as he grabbed the other end of Long from Tyler. "We'd better get him inside."

"Well shit," exclaimed the man as he placed a blanket on Long, who had long since curled up in the fetal position. "Maybe the world just finally broke him."
He turned back to Tyler. "Sorry about that. Didn't even get a chance for formal introduction. The name's Roy Warner, but you can just call me Roy. Thanks for helping out Long back there, though I don't know how much good that will do him."

Arthur marveled at District 13, but he couldn't admire it's beauty forever. He quickened his step and began looking for the office where he could find the Tacks man. His patience quickly ran thin, and he found himself grabbing people.
"Where can I find the Tacks man?"
Were this a normal day, he knew he'd be less certain, he knew he'd care more about the people he could be hurting, but this place had robbed him of his life's work, and it would be buried for it.

((OOC: Late post is late.))

Daniel sighed and shook his head. "Seriously? I'm leaving in case you didn't notice, so just go away and we'll never see each other again." He said before attempting to speed up towards the wardrobe. His main objective at the moment was reaching that wardrobe and getting out of that place as soon as possible...Then again, could he really trust that Roy character...? Then again, what choice did he have? Brushing aside the interior conflict for later, Daniel focused on reaching the wardrobe. Of course, he still had his pistol, and it still had bullets...Hopefully...If any of these freaks tried to do anything stupid, he wouldn't hesitate to show them that was a bad idea.

"I don't want any trouble."
"I'm sorry, but I'm in a hurry."
"Kinda have my hands tied right now."

Every person who passed by had some lame excuse to prevent themselves from associating with Arthur. Though their words didn't communicate it, the way the hustled from one place to another like no tomorrow certainly made them look awfully preoccupied.

It wasn't long though, before an officer took notice of Arthur's actions and moved in to confront him.
"Excuse me sir," he annonced, placing a hand on Arthur's arm and turning him so that they were facing. Arthur took a quick look at who he was dealing with. The officer seemed normal enough. He stood half a foot taller than Arthur, and he held a baton in his free hand at the ready. But, it didn't look like he was about to show him a hard case of police brutality... yet. "I need you to stop harrassing these people."





The mob chased Daniel closing the gap. For a large group carring some rather awkward weapons, they sure move mighty fast. Luckily, he wasn't in any real danger. He had managed to sprint fast enough to get to the waredrobe. Instinctively, Daniel opened the wardrobe, taking one last look at the mob behind him, only to haul ass once he realized they were right behind him. He jumped in closing the wardrobe doors, just as a pitchfork came flying and planted itself in the wood.

Daniel was enveloped with a falling sensation. He fell, for what seemed like minutes until he finally landed backwards onto the empty, and luckily, normal looking street. He took a quick look around to see where he had come from, but found nothing of the sort. Apparently, this portal was a one-way trip.

Arthur examined the officer, and for a moment felt the need to complain about the entire state of this place. However, he had to keep up his appearances. Brushing himself down he looked the officer in the eye and spoke as boldly as he could.
"Certainly Officer," he said, "Just as soon as I find the Tacks man."