<i>The key to existence is borders, lines, barriers, walls, or whatever the term you use for setting things apart. All that is comes from how things can be separated in 'something' and 'something else'. Without these border, this barrier, everything would simply be one amorphous mass, an existence where nothing can be told apart is one where everything is the same, there would even be no difference between emptiness, thus, without borders, there is no existence. The first, and perhaps most important border to come into being was the line between 'what is' and 'what is not'. Reality and fantasy. From this, all else came forth. We divided reality into stars, continents, countries and people and a thousand more things, and we gave everything a name of it's own to set it apart. Fantasy too, was further divided, into dreams, things lost, things that could be, and so much more. And so all was different, and all was good and in balance. At least it was, until that first of barriers cracked. Many things have happened since then, but that's just the backstory. If I had to draw a line of where to start the story, I would draw it... right... </i><br/><br/>----------------------------------------------[STRIKE]<i>here</i>[/STRIKE]------------------------------------------<br/><br/><b><span style="text-decoration: underline">Arthur's Rest mess hall</span></b><br/><br/>Dust floated through the air, lit and revealed by the rays of the morning sun falling through high-set windows. The faint echoes of voices and clanging pans from the nearby kitchen. Idle chatter and distant footsteps, all of it flowed together to add a surreal element to the dawn, giving a sensation of things being not quite real. These were the thoughts of Arthur Dent, a man in his mid-fifties sitting alone in the dining hall area of the shelter he started. Once the shelter had been a warehouse holding various goods traveling through Avalon port. It was a good, solid building made from red brick during the war, designed to last and resist. Four of it's six great storage areas had been transformed in living and sleeping areas for the shelter's resident, the fifth had been changed in the dining area Arthur sat in now, almost unchanged since it's early days save for the long tables and benches filling it now, giving it an old barracks mess hall feel that Arthur quite liked. The night guard living area had been expanded and turned into the kitchen and cleaning area. The final area of the building? Ah, that was reserved for that Kitsune. Arthur didn't always approved of what that Kitsune did, but the shelter benefited from the people she drew.<br/><br/>Voices rose, warning the aged man to the arrival of several early diners. The first of many that would soon crowd this large hallway in less than thirty minutes. A high-pitched giggle chased away that surreal sensation as a small group arrived in the hall. All of them were night workers at Club Minxx, Arthur recognized the person that giggle belonged to, some girl named Twitch that was possessed by an owl spirit or something. She was talking excited to the shelter's only vampire, who hid from the sun glare under the dark umbrella she always carried. The small group seated themselves, all together, chatting while they waited for breakfast to arrive, which from the swearing that drifted into the mess hall from the kitchen, might be a bit delayed.<br/><br/>Padded cat feet tapping silent on the floor alerted Arthur to the arrival of Mort, a Cheshire cat of a particular round disposition, more rotund than his two brothers.<span style="color: Plum"> "Well It Looks Like Breakfast Might Be Late. An Audacious Start To A Notable Day."</span>The beast noted, speaking not to Arthur, but to the shelter residents arriving at the mess hall behind him.<br/><br/>It was never good news when a day was NOTABLE.<br/><br/><br/><span style="text-decoration: underline"><b>Rift Lab</b></span><br/><br/>Away from the mess hall and the other areas of the shelter, a fox slept unaware and unaffected of the day's start. Meguri's freelance lab for Rift research and Anti-Rift emergency response center was a lot less fancy than it's name. The shelter's warehouse nature was most obvious here, where most place was taking up by crates of various sizes filled with equipment and various finds. Many of them open or just standing around, making the large hall feel very chaotic, and despise the size of the place room was rather limited due to all those containers. A small living area had been eked out from this chaos. Four large and worn sofas surrounding a battered coffee table, on which a pile of discarded fast food boxes and forest of empty coffee mugs was slowly growing. Whether Meguri invited them or not, several Rift Hunters always hung around here in case a Rift appeared and a quick response was needed. The sofas often doubling as beds. The kitsune mostly left those men and women along, so it was a place to relax with your work buddies. Not much privacy, but it was easy to sneak off between the crates for that.<br/><br/>The kitsune herself spent most of her day at her workstation, a large desk cluttered with stacks of notes, marked maps, recordings, measurements, as well as Meguri's laptop and a device nobody but her knew what it did, but it sorta lay there half-hidden by all the paper on the desk. Meguri too, was partially on her desk right now, having fallen asleep in her chair, snoozing and using her keyboard as a pillow. The bed a few meters behind her unused for several weeks. At least Whisper was a better host, relaying a rather bawdy story to the people at the hangout.<br/><br/>His grin told anyone arriving at the lab that today would be GOOD.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>