<span style="font-style: italic">   Charley and Oliver stood on top of a blue, rolling hill, with the same visual consistency as a wooly blanket. Oliver wore his usual clothes, save a perky blue captain's hat that rested amid his wavy hair. Charley wore a white sleeveless dress with a sunflower print. She was confused; hadn't she not worn that dress since she was a child? Behind them the sun shone, bathing the hills in an unearthly yellow glow. Before their feet was a sharp drop-off, a rocky outcropping. Sharp spires of stone pointed up at the sky, as if they were trying to climb up the hill and escape the foamy ocean waves that collapsed into them every eight regular heartbeats. But Charley's heartbeats weren't regular, a broken ruler reading every half-inch as a full inch, beating much too often. Her cheeks were flushed, her gingery brown hair whipped by the cold breeze. She felt as if she were floating. What was this? She turned to Oliver, a question on her lips, but he silenced her with a smile.<br/>   The peace of the scene was interrupted as a thunderclap rang through the air, causing the hairs on the back of Charley's neck to stand up. Dark clouds began rolling in, the ocean becoming more wily, its waves reaching the top of the outcrop.<br/>   "Let's jump!" Oliver shouted, grinning. Charley stared back at him as if he had grown two extra heads. He frowned when she didn't move and took her hand roughly before throwing himself and her over the edge, to the ocean below. The fall was extremely long, drawn out to the point of impossibility. Oliver looked into Charley's eyes with a disappointed look on his face. "You need to get up now," he said regretfully. His voice was strange, less like his and more like someone Charley couldn't place a name on.<br/>   "WHAT?" Charley shouted, utterly confused. <br/>   Oliver looked at her as if she were some kind of idiot. He gazed down at the ocean below before repeating himself. "I said," he began, "you need to-" </span><br/>"Get up! Get up! Lazy girl, get up!" Charley' eyes snapped open, lolking up at the plain white ceiling of her room. The alarm continued to trill, repeating the same sentences over and over.<br/>It was her father's voice that had gone over top Oliver's in what had unmistakenly been a dream. She clicked the button, flopping over and gripping her snail plushie moodily. The alarm had been built by her father. It was special, being able to see exactly an hour into the future. An hour was the time it took Charley to go from the 'awake' stage to the 'ready to go' stage. The alarm was wired with the warning system that let the Fearless Fighters know they had a job. Charley had made them late so many times for various things because of her laziness that they had to adapt around it, instead of her adapting. She flipped over again, gazing into her room<br/>The walls had no corners, instead curving around to make a circle. The walls were a pale blue. A single window faced east, into the rising sun, streaming light over everything in the room. Under this window was a modern white desk with a divet in it for a green plastic swivel chair. A curved door stood directly across it. Beside the door was a short oak dresser, the top of it covered in snail memorabilia from stuffed animals to comic books.<br/>After forty five minutes Charley reluctantly got out of bed, trading her snail onesie for skinny jeans and a red hoodie. This process of changing was painfully slow, Charley pausing every few minutes to consider a universe-changing question.<br/>The alarm began blaring as she gazed into her closet for shoes. Often times she didn't wear shoes, but sometimes you really needed to wear them. Many a find-and-retrieve mission had brought them to junk-yards, full of undesirables that shouldn't be touched with any amount of bare skin.<br/>Charley heard Oliver shouting and let out a sigh. She grabbed her bunny slippers and shoved them on her feet before walking out in to the hall, which was awash with red light. "I had the strangest dream," Charley commented, hair bobbing as she walked over to Oliver, "you and I were having a lovely picnic, then you threw me off a cliff." She bent sideways to look down the hall, expecting Damien to come popping through a door at any time now. It was rare that she wasn't the last one there, and even still, she was late. "Where are we headed?" She asked, scanning the doors carefully.