text: You dive behind the doorway, and sits heavily with your back against a wooden shelf. The canned spam container rolls over a glass shard to stop beside your legs and you try to pick it up. You cut yourself on the sharp edges of its lid. You look at your fingers and wince at the slit. Small blood droplets form at its edges. You pinch yourself on the cheek and wince again at the pain.
  
  "So this isn't a dream. This dreamlike situation..." you sit there and contemplate.
  
  The noises of the crowd grow louder. You snap out of your reverie and look around you in an attempt to find anything useful to barricade yourself in. Ancient junk litter the whole room. Shards of broken glass, old books, used rags, black and white pictures, a paw holding a wooden picture frame with broken glass... wait....
  
  The broken pieces of glass reflects light towards your eyes and you see the face of a cat smiling at you. You jump up with surprise and walk backwards, but the wall behind you is suddenly decimated as the cross-breed of a chainsaw and a guillotine smashes it into pieces. You leap forward and turn.
  
  "I've been waiting for you boy. Now, accept your fate!" The mask jeers. "But... I have something I must do. I'll be taking that body."
  
  The guillotine clanks back into its ready position.
  
  A sudden gust blew the hat the you dropped into the air.
  
  "There it is! My cloche!" The voice drew both the attention of the mask and your attention to it's source. A girl stood in front of the mask twirling her cloche. She Wears striped white socks, revealing white shorts, white cropped top, and a white sweater with long flat strands hanging down. The girl had her back towards you, and you resist the urge to glance up into her shorts. With a confident air, she fixes the cloche on her head.
  
  "I can't calm down without it." She her expression towards the mask a a mixture of cheerfulness, ferocity, and obnoxiousness.
  
  "You're that girl from before..." you blurt out.
  
  "Well this is a surprise. I created this space so that only the boy and I could enter." The mask intoned, "That you could intrude here..." A swipe of his weapon shook the ground. "I offer my respect to a pioneer of the Real World. There is only one way for us, who have no real bodies, to go there. You too have found a vessel, have you not?" The mask leaned forward.
  
  "I don't know" the girl injected, "When I came to I was abandoned in this world. An unknown place. An unknown sky. Not knowing where or how to get back. Not even dreaming of hope."
  
  "I see. A lost little sheep."
  
  The girl put on her cheerful expression again, "I'm Merry. Merry Nightmare."
  
  Nothing moved. The atmosphere is buzzing with electricity. "Merry..." you murmured.
  
  "Hey, take me back to the world of dreams. You can go back, right?"
  
  "My apologies, little sheep. I'm headed the other way. I've come here to get outside." the mask replied, as he stepped around Merry and towards you. A shift in his step and he looms above you. Glass shards disappeared with the force he generated. An arm blocked his way.
  
  "Then it's a dead end" Merry refuted.
  
  "Regrettably it's a one way road. I'll force my way!" He roared.
  
  Merry smiles. The masked king of cats leaps in to the air and goes for a cut at Merry. She dodges it easily with a leap backwards. "I finally found a way! I'll make you take me back even if it's by force." Merry grinned.
  
  The mask stabbed at her with his long weapon; Merry simply leaps over with one hand tapping it for balance and lands behind him. The mask turns with impossible speed and swing the weapon back for another round. Merry leaps forward and slams her fist into the mask's gut, bringing him out the back of the house with an explosion. The mask grunts and backpeddles as he lands while Merry slides to a stop in front of him.
  
  You can only look at the scene dumbstruck.
  
  The mask chops down the weapon with black smoke trailing from the end, but Merry simply rolls out of the way "she's fast!" and punches the mask again. "And strong! That she'd have such power in those slender arms... Have I underestimated her based on her pretty appearance? Merry spins, gathering a powerful kick to the mask's head, which the mask barely blocks with his arms, uses her hands for leverage, and immediately deliver a kick to the side which the mask fails to block at all.
  
  "The boss is in a pinch! Commence supporting fire!" The cats bring out a cannon to blast Merry. With both the mask and the crowd to worry about, Merry won't stand a chance.
  
  > grab the cat
  "As if I'd let you!" you shout while throwing yourself at the cannon.
  
  A blast resounds and you give Merry sufficient time to leap clear of the cannonball. The ball of metal swings clear of Merry and crashed into one of the fish skeletons in the sky. The huge bones rain down on the ground and almost crush the mask beneath the weight. Before the mask has time to recover, Merry delivers an extremely powerful kick.
  
  The brutal force caused the mask to crack open, and half of the mask fell down on the plank. You stare dumbstruck as Merry lands to a cat stance in front of you.
  
  The mask covered king of cats blocks the uncovered side with his hand as his hood provides a dark shade that prevents you from seeing his uncovered face.
  
  "Did she win?" you wonder.
  
  "That's right, I won! So I'll have you take me back to that world."
  
  The mask looks up. "I see, I see... so that's what you are."
  
  "Huh? You know something about me?"
  
  "No, I know nothing about you" The mask states and is helped up the the cats. "Oh, but this is very interesting..."
  
  Merry fumes and her shoes send up a cloud of smoke.
  
  "So a lighthouse does not merely shine..." The mask turns around with his cape in a flourish of smoke.
  
  "Hey! Why are you saying stuff that doesn't make sense like it's so profound!" Merry runs to grab the mask's cloak... and passes through him. She stumbles to the ground, "wait!" She looks to her side at the mask's expressionless facade. A green smoke layered with electricity curls around the mask and his minions.
  
  "You!" She runs towards him again, with her one of her arms outstretched... and passed through him, again. "Hear me out...!" Merry pleaded as her arm reaches for thin air.
  
  She retracted her arms and and drops jerkily to her knees, her arms hanging limp in front of her. "If you're going back, take me along..." She squirms, sitting on her legs as if she's about to cry, buts managed to blare the word idiot before falling...
  
  You stared at her the whole time, thinking how pretty she is and how much better she can fight than you, but now that she looks like she's about to fall, you took a step forward, and...
  
  You step on concrete.
  
  The kitten squints at you happily, walking around you with its tail flicking left and right.
  
  You gaze at it's movements, and after staring at it for a while, you gaze around at your surroundings. Everything is in order. The derelict town has disappeared again, replaced by the shopping district. Pedestrians walk the street ignorantly as if nothing has happened.
  
  "A 'daydream', huh?" The kitten meows happily as if agreeing with you. "Reality's stranger than fiction." You decided, talking at the kitten.
  
  > The end...?
  The End of the Beginning, the Beginning of Everything.
  
  You bend down at the kitten grinning dreamily. The kitten yelps and leaps away, as if it was scared by something. A hand waves at your lowered face and you drink in the familiar dress...
  
  "Hey! Call that guy from before one more time! I'm not done talking to him yet!"
  
  "Even if you ask me to I don't..."
  
  Her angry eyes turns to a watery cave. She looks down at the concrete ground, the rim of her cloche along with her hair covering her eyes. She turns around with tears flowing freely, and began to run.
  
  > catch her arm
  You reach out and catch her wrists, abruptly stopping her. Her dress flutter with the sudden movement and the tears that gathered in her eyes spilled to the air. You're action surprised even yourself.
  
  She turns to you, her eyes closed, her lips quivered. Her knees bent and she falls into you, your body supporting her weight.
  
  "Hey, pull yourself together!"
  
  "Merry!" You call out her name.
  
  Her hair quiver in the wind, A strand of tear comes out of her closed eyes and runs down her face.
  
  She is asleep.
  
  > Secrets
  "Dreams and reality.
  
  What is fermenting in these two worlds?
  
  Looks like there's something worth chasing."
  
  Chaser John Doe ponders over this question as the wind erode away at his cloak.
  
  A mysterious girl stands outside the gates wearing a school uniform. Her long brown hair flows in the wind. Leaves float off the ground as the air currents before the storm strengthen. Thunder rumbles in the distance. It seems as if her bosom is glowing with a white energy. The color of the glow is reflected out of her eyes as she gasps in pain.