It was evening at the time. The day had been a rather normal one and by now, Kat Dakuu was itching to get on her computer. When the rest of her family started a cozy evening watching the baseball game, she quickly slipped away. After all, the Astros always lost.

Kat turned on her computer and logged into Menewsha, her favorite site. The first thing she noticed was an announcement notice. It looked like there was going to be a new update. something really, really cool it hinted. That would be fine so long as it didn't slow down her computer. As if on cue, the page stopped loading.

"Damn it! load you stupid computer!!" She started madly clicking the link again...and again.

Suddenly the mouse wasn't under her finger anymore. In fact, she realized her computer was gone....and her room. Kat blinked in wonder as she found herself on an island unlike anything she'd seen before. hundreds of different sized square buildings covered part of the island from what she could see of where she stood on a beach. she could feel the sand getting in her sandals and the ocean breeze tugged at her hair and hat she was wearing. Where was she? and she didn't own a hat or any of these clothes for that matter! what in the world was this? she felt so free for some reason like she'd just woken up and never had a chance to stretch her legs until now. It suddenly clicked in her mind.

was she....her menewsha avatar?

Profiles:

name: Kat Dakuu
age: 19
image:
(yes, kat changed it...)
personality: adventurous, insane. she's the sort that's easily bored and easily distracted/amused. often acts younger than she is because she's just so full of energy. While shy around new people, you wouldn't know it if you stick around to get to know her. she scares people that think she's shy by how un-shy she can be.

Originally Posted by Cicadetta

Name: Cicadetta
Age: 27
Image:
Personality: Cica tends to be introverted, but the nerves that come from dealing with new situations somehow make it easy to chat with people she doesn't even know. Maybe because it's more awkward to sit in silence among people she doesn't know. Still, it can be draining to socialize, and so she tends to avoid things like parties. Also, change. Change is hard. But lately she's been trying new things, traveling to new places, driving more, meeting people. Maybe she's finally breaking out of her shell…

Originally Posted by zeapear

name: Zeapear, though she prefers 'Zea'
age: 13
image:

personality: Once you get to know Zea she can be a real fun person to be around, though she has trouble talking to people older than her due to the age difference. She also has an anxiety disorder and cries and panics easily, despite this she can get feisty if rubbed the wrong way. Zea's sometimes been described as 'annoying' because of her bubbly behavior and seemingly endless energy though most people don't seem to mind. She is also terrible at sport, just the thought of Physical Education makes her want to vomit though she's getting better. On the internet Zea is a lot more confident talking to new people and she isn't afraid of ridicule, Menewsha is one of the only places she can be herself. (sorry this is all over the place, I'm no good at writing bio's/personalities >A>)

Originally Posted by rampartte

Name: Miki (rampartte)
Age: 23
Image:
Personality: Miki is an easily excitable person who tends to find the silver lining in almost anything. He/she is a positive and outgoing person who strives to move forward. Miki likes sweets and cooking and many really girly things... which makes his/her new life a little awkward.
He/she is actually a she trapped in the body of her 'he' avi.

Cica had had a long day at work. Oh, the time had gone by quickly enough while she was there, but by the time she got home, she felt it: the weary need to escape. It did not take long for her to flip open her laptop, turn it on, wait impatiently for it to load and connect to her other life.

She plugged in her iPod to charge and made the rounds of her usual sites - humor, webcomic and what have you - before logging onto Menewsha, where she spent the majority of her online time these days.

The site greeted her with a yellow announcement bar. It was a teaser, and an intriguing one, but Cica didn't need to read it more than once. So she clicked the dismiss button. And her browser stalled. Dammit. Her internet connection hadn't disappeared again, had it? It did that sometimes, then took its sweet time coming back. That was annoying. She hated feeling cut off from the world.

As she stood up to go check on the modem, she realized… she wasn't in her room anymore. She wasn't even in her house anymore! Instead, she was standing on an unfamiliar, sandy beach, on her tip-toes for some reason. Her toes felt numb, too. What in the world was wrong with her feet? And yet, it was beautiful here, and even toe issues couldn't distract from that. Waves hit the shore in a gentle song, counterpoint for the gulls that flew overhead. A cool, salty breeze made the warmth bearable and… she felt strangely connected.

Other things were odd. She was wearing a dress for one thing. And carrying a long silky cloth of the same color. It wasn't a towel or anything, just a decoration to get tangled on things. Well, maybe it would come in handy. She ignored it, and then looked down at the long, sky blue skirt, past that to… God, her legs felt weird. Looked weird, too. Was she in heels to compliment the dress? That wouldn't explain the hairy legs, though. It was lovely, white silky hair, but still… Oh god. Hooves. Those weren't feet, those were… hooves. She softly whimpered, ignoring the civilization ahead and wondering what the heck she'd gotten herself into.

Miki rolled her neck left, then right, hearing it crick and crack into place as she pushed the door open to her little home. She kicked off her shoes right in the doorway and dropped her heavy purse on the kitchen counter as she made her way to the fridge to grab up the brita filter. Some people drank from the milk carton, Miki chugged fresh filtered water right from the filtered pitcher.

Today had been such a long and monotonous day at the office, it was just like every other day. Four white cubicle walls, notices and regulations tacked all over them in bland yellow post-it notes. That was her world for the majority of the day, the week. And it was a bland and boring place.

After popping the tap off a soda from the fridge, she made her way downstairs to her only other world that had any meaning, her dear sweet computer desk. This one was covered in bright colorful trinkets and figures with happy notes that needed no meaning more than to cheer up her bleak day.

She took a gulp and plopped down, and logged first thing into her 'happy place', the Menewsha website. Here she could play games and buy beautiful clothing she would never dare wear in the real world, and talk to all sorts of interesting people. And her favorite part? Dressing up her little male avatar, he was just too adorable! Almost like having a boyfriend! Almost... except much more adorable.

Ignoring where her thoughts were going, she glanced up to the top of the screen and noticed that yellow announcement bar. Anything new in the world of Menewsha brought up her spirits. And with wishful thinking, she closed her eyes and wished quickly three times for what she wanted before clicking the banner.

"New common items! New common items! New common items!" ~CLICK~

Miki waited a second, then peeked one eye open to see what the big news was. Then she opened the other eye as she found the news was nothing more than a blank blue screen. Well.. that was odd... but maybe she should be thinking what was more odd was the fact that the screen had no edges. It was like she was staring up at the sky.. and oh! Wait! There came a cloud into view!

She blinked and realized a second odd thing.. she was laying down, not sitting in her chair. Had she fainted and fallen over, and then someone had stolen her roof? She sat up and took in the fact she was sitting on a soft sanded beach, not her room's floor. Digging her hands into the sand, she determined that yes, she really was on the beach. A noise to her left made her ear do a funny flick feeling, and she turned to blink at the rolling waves washing up close to her.

Huh.

She scratched her head and found she was wearing some sort of headband or barrettes or something. Frowning, she scratched it a little more and one of the bumps flicked again, and she felt that. Wait.. these barrettes... they felt like kitty ears... and she could FEEL herself feeling them..

Double huh.

Zea trudged in through the front door and wiped the mud off of her shoes using the welcome mat, another rainy day at school. Figures. Sighing she flung her navy school bag onto the leather sofa and entered the computer room, leaning over her messy desk she clicked the 'start' button and went off to make a sandwich while her computer booted up, it always took a fair while. Returning with her freshly made lunch she plonked herself down in her desk chair and opened firefox. Like always it was taking ages to open, by the time it had started Zea's sandwich was almost gone. She smiled when it did though, going on the internet was the favourite part of her day. Logging into Menewsha, her online haven, she noticed an announcement notice at the top of the screen. "Huh..." Zea muttered absentmindedly as she clicked to 'see more', her computer froze. Biting her lip in frustration she stood up to wander around for a bit while it loaded, sometimes it could take yonks. When she stood up she was no longer in her house, or even in her normal clothes for that matter. She was standing on a sandy beach under a perfect blue sky, occasionally a gull wheeled overhead and in the far distance she could see some smaller islands and the occasional ferry. It seemed so familiar, as did her clothing... "Peculiar." She whispered after a while, drinking everything in. "I think this is Menewsha..."

After a short walk along the beach, kicking off her strappy high-heeled shoes, Zea discovered she wasn't alone in this paradise. On the opposite side of the beach she could see a couple of figures wandering around, she couldn't tell what they were doing. At the current distance she couldn't make out any distinct features but two of them appeared to be female and one male. Maybe these were other users? She started pelting towards them waving, she couldn't tell if they had seen her yet or not. "Hey! Hey!" She cried out as her feet drummed a steady rhythm across the bright sand.

Dimi opened the front door of his house after returning home from yet another miserably hot day at the shop. It had been the same for at least four weeks now, temperatures so hot that one could almost break into sweat from the task of simply walking into the shop. Damn, it was so hot! Not like the customers could understand that while sitting in the air conditioned waiting room, staring out the large, plate glass window separating the waiting room from the shop so they could watch vehicles being worked on, wondering why their car hadn't been fixed yet. Even the sales associates got to enjoy their day as they wrote up service tickets in the air conditioned lobby, or sitting idly by in the air conditioned office. All while the technicians toiled away over the hot motors of customer's vehicles in the non-climate controlled shop, each one working up a sweat so bad that it appeared that they all decided to take showers while wearing their uniforms.

Dimi shut the door behind him with a sigh and kicked his boots off. First thing was first, he needed a shower to relieve himself from yet another hard day of work. Not a hot shower, or even a warm shower. No, this shower would be nice and cool. He grabbed a towel from the linen closet in the hallway on his way to the bathroom. Once he was in the bathroom, he quickly stripped his work uniform off, hopped in the shower, and turned the knobs to set the water temperature to his liking. He simply stood there in the stream of water pouring down on him with a satisfied sigh, relishing the feeling of the cool water as it seemed to at least wash a portion of the fatigue away. After his shower, he wrapped the towel around his waist and gathered up the clothing strewn across the bathroom floor, then made his way to the bedroom.

Inside the bedroom, Dimi dropped the clothing in his arms into the clothes hamper, where they would wait along with the rest of the clothes within for the next laundry day. Once his arms were freed from holding anything, he went straight to his laptop computer and pressed the power button. As he waited for the computer to boot up, he picked up a pair of earphones and slipped each one into his ear canals. Music always seemed to help him relax. Once the computer was booted up, he opened up the music program that listed all the music he had stored on the computer's hard drive. There was enough music stored on his computer that it would take roughly 5 straight days of continuous listening before the end of the list was reached and the music player would automatically start playing it again from the top of the list. Before then, though, he wouldn't hear a single repeat. That didn't matter right now, though. He just wanted to listen to some music, and he wasn't even concerned with the genera at the moment. After a few songs, he would probably decide on a specific genera to listen to. As the music started pumping directly into his ears, he opened his web browser and brought up the homepage for Menewsha.

Dimi entered his username and password and clicked on the "log in" button. As he waited for the page to load, he stretched and yawned. It was a pretty big yawn, too. Big enough that it forced him to close his eyes until the yawn finally passed. When he opened his eyes again, he arched an eyebrow and tilted his head slightly to the side. Funny, this didn't look like his computer screen. What was going on here? Then he noticed something else missing, the walls of the bedroom, the chair he had been sitting in, hell, his entire house was missing!

Dimi reached his hand up to scratch the back of his head in wonder when he happened to notice something else strange: there were tribal tattoos all over his arm. Granted, he did sport a tattoo on his left shoulder, but it wasn't a tribal tattoo. Besides, he was looking at his right arm, which he didn't have any tattoos on to begin with. Then he looked down and saw more tribal tattoos sprawled across his chest and down both legs! Not only that, what happened to the towel he had wrapped around his waist?? Instead, he was wearing a pair of manties, covered only by two belts crossing over each other! That's when realization finally set in... Somehow, he was no longer himself. Instead, he was somehow now his avatar!

Along with the beach and the ears, Miki was discovering more and more things about herself. She had a white fluffy tail with a cute red bow on it. And it wiggled when she wanted it to, as if it were really attached to her butt. She felt the red ribbon around her neck curiously, then looked down to the long skirt with slits all the way up both sides that she was now wearing. She was also shirtless.. and boobless. Miki gulped and reached down to check for a few other essential lady parts.

That wasn't right... that wasn't right at all.

"Holy @#&%*!!"

She was a he! She was a man and she was dressed up just like her avatar in menewsha. And someone was yelling at her from down the beach, but Miki didn't notice because he'd gotten up and started yelling himself, running around in circles on the sand.

"Oh my Gods! Oh my Buddha! Oh my Oprah! What do I do??!?"

After Kat finished staring blankly at her surroundings, wondering what the hell had happened, she moved on to inspecting herself. She was definitely wearing her avatars clothes, though she changed them so often that she couldn’t be sure. It was kinda ridiculous how many sashes she had wrapped around herself. Could she even run without tripping over herself wearing all this stuff? She supposed she’d find out eventually even with her hatred of running.

Kat was busily staring at her new long icy colored hair which was so different from her usual frizzy blond, when she noticed motion out of the corner of her eye. Someone appeared on the beach that hadn't been there a second ago. He was lying on the ground, but he didn't appear to have fallen from the sky like she expected. Was that how it looked before she suddenly materialized here? before she had a chance to think-and given the chance she'd probably sit for hours trying to figure this out- someone came running up from a distance.

She was waving madly and Kat could only blink in confusion. The girl running towards them appeared to be young and rather excited as she yelled something Kat couldn’t quite make out from here.

“um…?” Kat said, blinking in confusion. She looked around to make sure the girl was yelling at her. She turned to see the man start running around in circles and screaming. Or she thought he was a guy though not many guys she knew had cat ears and wore a skirt. She looked back and forth between the two screaming people, her expression getting more and more panicked. Finally Kat took off running from the other people and wailing.

“What the hell is going on?!!!!!!!” As she suspected, kat tripped before she got more than a few steps away.

When Zea got close enough to see the strangers clearly she stopped running and took in the situation. Why were they all panicking? One of them, the man wearing the skirt and kitty ears and tail, was running around screaming hysterically and one of the girls, the one dressed in blue and green, was now fleeing from the other two... three? Another figure had suddenly appeared out of the sand. Sighing she jogged the last few meters to the group. Two of the users seemed familiar, maybe she knew them online?

"Um, hi...?" she ventured nervously as she slipped her shoes back on, "Does anyone know what just happened? I'm Zea by the way, I think. Well, you know what I mean!" she continued though no-one really seemed to be paying her any attention. Rolling her eyes she walked over to the water's edge and looked down at her reflection; her hair was short and slightly redder than it was in the real world but it seemed to suit her, her eyes were a brighter blue as well. Luckily she hadn't been caught in one of her skimpier outfits, the one she was wearing was thankfully one of her nicer ensembles. Wait a second... Was that makeup? She rubbed the skin above her eyes but her hand came back clean, was it just her skin colour then?

Kat groaned, spitting sand out of her mouth. Her mind was a bit stunned still so it took her a few seconds to understand what was being said. "Zea? Zeapear?! OMG I'm so relieved you're not a monster!!!" Kat yelped as she jumped to her feet. She nearly ran over and hugged zea, then paused half way through her first step, her shyness kicking in. This was kinda like meeting a stranger in real life terms even though they were online friends....if this was the Zea she was thinking of. But how many people named zea would be running around in what appeared to be Menewsha?

After brushing the sand from her strange green overalls, which she'd never wear in real life (was this real life or what anyways?), Kat walked up to Zea. She waggled her fingers in a nervous wave. "I'm Kat! And um...." She looked at the other people, noticing for the first time another woman and man. When had they got there? They weren’t even standing that far away! "I don't know who they are. I-"

Sometimes Kat forgot how shy she could be. It wasn't strange for her to say two word responses to people she didn't know well, and that was when asked a direct question. She kinda stuttered in her mind sometimes, not even braving to speak out loud, when she had to dominate a conversation with a stranger. This situation warranted more words though so she had to push past that. "I just poofed here so no, I don't know what's going on. I guess you don’t either..." she finished lamely with a sigh.

Zea's eyes widened. "Yeah, that's me! So, you're... you're Kat? Kat Dakuu, I mean?" she questioned, it was a little awkward meeting Kat here, she wasn't really sure why though. Sighing with relief she continued on "Good, I hate being the only person not know what's going on!" she was talking very fast, Zea had a tendency to do so when nervous or excited, and at the moment she was a little of both. Luckily a little of the awkwardness was melting away now they were talking, hopefully by the time the worked out what was going on the barrier the real world created would be gone completely.

"I saw that you fell over before, are you okay?" She inquired anyway, attempting to strike up a conversation. It was getting rather hot in the sun and there were a couple of palm trees a little way off, Zea was beginning to take back her thankfulness for being in a covering outfit... "Want to go sit over there? It's getting really warm." she observed, gesturing to the general area of the palm trees. "Aaaand... You might want to button up the top of your overalls..." she continued on hesitantly, turning red.

Cica was at a loss. Where to go from here? she wondered. And for that matter, how? It took a while for the new situation to really click in, but once it did, she realized that there were others here, too, on the beach. She heard them, her ears twitching strangely, before she really saw them. She certainly didn't recognize them when she did, although she had a funny feeling that she'd hardly recognize herself if she caught her reflection.

But then two names caught her ear. Kat and Zea. Fellow Menewshans, and Sprinkleteers at that? Friends. Well, that would explain some things. Not a lot, but… Oh yes. Some Menewsha avatars sported faun legs, and Cica had a habit of not using human avatars. Was she her avatar, then? Too weird.

Suddenly, she was thankful she hadn't been a winged mouse person in a while. This was bizarre enough. Not too bizarre to deal, though, not anymore.

Well, maybe it was. Her first attempt to catch up with her friends saw her tangled in skirts and altered legs, and eating sand. So did her second. She would be brushing sand out of her fluffy leg hair for hours, wouldn't she? Ugh. On the third try, she found some semblance of balance and gingerly walked through the sand toward her friends. Who were, incidentally, the most human-looking of the new arrivals.

Great, now she felt self-conscious.

"Zea, Kat, is that you?" she asked when she was close enough to talk to them. She wasn't sure who was who, but for whatever reason, the one in gold and green looked younger. Maybe it was the hair. So… she guessed that that was Zea, and that the blue-haired girl in green coveralls was Kat. "Oh, god, do you have any idea what's going on?" Mental gears had begun to turn, finally, and she actually had a theory, but… "Um, I'm Cica, by the way."

Dimi finally got over his self-curiosity enough to realize that he wasn't alone in the area. There were four other people nearby. He moved over closer to them and opened his mouth to speak. But, he stopped talking before he had even started, his mouth still hanging open. As soon as he was about to hail them, three of the women had started talking with a fair amount of enthusiasm, hardly able to get words in amongst themselves as frantically as they were speaking with one another.

Dimi closed his mouth and looked over at the fourth person, a cat-eared and cat-tailed male who was preoccupied with running hysterically in circles with an expression on his face that looked like somebody trying to out-run the end of the world...and failing miserably... Well, Dimi supposed that he couldn't blame the guy. After all, this was a pretty weird experience.

Still, the fact that he hadn't been able to say a word to anybody yet that he thought might actually get heard made him a little aggravated. Dimi crossed his arms over his chest and gave a huff, which synchronized perfectly with a single flapping noise that sounded directly behind him. That noise caused Dimi to arch an eyebrow with wonder as he looked over his shoulder and saw a large wing. He turned his head and looked over his other shoulder and noticed that there was another wing on that side. It didn't take long at all for him to realize that those wings were attached to his back. Looking further down, he saw a demonic tail with some sort of red accent jewel adorning it near the tip. He thought to himself as he looked a moment longer.

{That's right, I had wings and a tail equipped on my avi... Well, that cinches it... I somehow became my avatar on Menewsha...}

Dimi turned his face forward again as he closed his eyes and gave a sigh. Meanwhile, an anime-like, large drop of sweat appeared on the side of his head.

Kat nodded quickly to zea. “Yeah, yeah, that’s me.” She blushed, as Zea mentioned Kat’s little trip. “Er….I’m fine….I just tripped like I tend to.”

Just as another woman ran up, Kat processed the last thing zea said and she turned completely red and looked down at her coveralls which were open basically to her waist underneath her sash. “EHH?!” Kat quickly tied her sash higher up as there didn’t actually appear to be a button at the top of her outfit. When that was taken care of and her sash and arranged it so she wouldn’t trip on it, Kat turned to look at the other woman.

“Cica? You’re uh….” Kat trailed off, staring at the woman’s legs, her mouth slightly open. “Furry legs...and horns?” Kat honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was really, really odd to see an un-human person outside of a movie or dream. “Yep, cool to meet ya.” Kat squeezed her eyes shut and smiled brightly in her cute anime face. It probably didn’t look nearly as cute when Kat tried to mimic it, but what with her eyes closed, how was she to know what she looked like?

Well, now that three of them knew each other, Kat decided to wave at the two guys. “Hello!!!” Kat was blushing with shyness (she’d been blushing a lot today hadn’t she?) as she called out to the others. She actually thought she recognized one of them, the guy with wings and a lack of clothing. She was sure she’d seen that avatar before. It felt really weird recognizing breathing people by avatars from a site. It was going to take a while to get used to this...

Wait, horns? Cica reflexively touched her forehead with one gloved hand and… sure enough. Horns sprouted out of her skull. How could she have forgotten that? "Faun. I'm a… um. Nice to meet you, too. In real life, I mean. Sort of… Or whatever this…" She blushed a little, too, and tried to put on a smile.

She hugged her own sash close to her shoulders, like a cloak. This was going to be odd. There were few people she'd recognize by their avatars alone. Avatars changed so much, after all, whereas names were more or less constants. She would never have recognized her friends, and had no idea about the guys present, either. Who weren't much more human than she was at the moment. A cat boy and a demon boy? She could deal with that. She hoped they'd come over as she echoed Kat's wave.

The white cat-eared and tailed boy finally gave up his useless running and plopped down into the sand, panting for breath and whimpering. Well, he didn't have endless energy here, he did get winded, so the place must be real in someway, right?

He was just rubbing at one of his eyes when the sound of someone calling hello caught his attention. The ears twitched in the direction of the others before his head turned up, and the harem cat-boy took in the three girls standing together and the one male who looked naked save permanent marker drawings all over him...

He blushed and rubbed his cheeks while his ears flattened out.

"Um.. um..."

So weird, her voice even sounded a little lower to be a soft male voice. He tried to shake it off and climbed back to his feet, venturing hesitantly closer to the other four.

"C-can anyone tell me where I am? And what I'm wearing??"

“Yeah, whatever this is... Kat muttered to Cica. “’Cause I haven’t a clue either." She then turned to the cat-boy who seemed to have tired himself out and noticed the others.

“Hi,” Kat said, eying the boy curiously. “Um, I’d say this is a dream….but this is strange even for my dreams…” Which was really saying something considering kat’s wild imagination and her multiple dreams related to the internet and fantasy. “So um….I think we all just appeared here. Here being…just maybe….possibly and totally weirdly, MENEWSHA!” Kat had to yelp the last word out with some difficulty. Great, now she was voicing pure insanity…then again, she was looking at a boy with cat ears and tail.

Kat twirled the end of her sash nervously. “So, my name’s Kat. Who are you?” She hoped she knew this person. She really, really did.

"Cica!" Zea cried out joyously and ran towards the faun-woman, arms outstretched for a hug. It was probably because of the age difference but Zea had always thought of Cicadetta as one of her Menewshan parents. "Does anyone know who those two are?" She queried, gesturing towards the general direction of the men, in the act of doing so she noticed Kat making a face. Her eyes were rather scrunched up and she was smiling hugely, though it looked more like a grimace. "Uh... Kat...? What are you doing?" she asked nervously, Kat was acting extremely odd.

Turning and dancing lithely over to the cat-boy she answered his question; "I think we're in Menewsha!" and promptly grabbed Kat's hand and spun around humming 'It's Not Unusual To Be Loved By Anyone'. Realising the boy probably didn't know her, his wasn't an outfit she recognized, she blushed and stopped jumping about and decided to introduce herself. "I'm Zeapear, I prefer Zea though." she offered, holding out her hand as a sign of greeting.

"I'm not doing anything. what do you mean?" Kat asked Zea, obviously not noticing how strange acting as herself might actually appear. She shook her head then turned back to the cat-boy

Kat didn't even have a chance to say anything. Zea was suddenly next to kat, causing her to jump and let out a tiny cry of surprise as Zea grabbed her hand and spun her around. "What are you doing?!" Before she'd hardly got that short sentence out, Zea had already stopped jumping around. Kat staggered, off balance, as the younger girl decided to actually greet the older boy.

Looking kinda dizzy, half from spinning and half from all this insanity, Kat plopped down onto the sand with a big sigh. "I'm totally insane...." she muttered under her breath.

Zea absentmindedly lowered her hand slightly as she turned to look at Kat "Oops... Sorry Kat!" she groaned, realising that in the real world, not that this was the real world, people she knew online might not be as nimble as originally thought. Offering the hand that wasn't held out before the cat-boy to Kat she tried to work out who the other people were, they didn't seem familiar at all but maybe she'd spoken to them before... And then a thought struck her; "Presuming this is Menewsha, where all of the other users? I mean, this site isn't as big as Gaia but It's still pretty active... Shouldn't more people be arriving? How long have we been here anyway..." she exclaimed, wondering if she could get her mind back to her real body. If she couldn't... Tears started to prickle at the corner of her eyes, I wont cry! she told her self, furiously forcing them back.

Dimi walked over to the group as they beckoned him to come closer.

"Heya. I don't really understand what's going on, but it sounds like the rest of you came to the same conclusion as I have. Somehow, although I can't fathom how it's possible, it seems that we've entered the bodies of our avatars on Menewsha."

How odd. Even in this surely impossible situation, he seemed calm. Maybe he was hoping this was all some sort of weird dream? Scratch that. This was too weird and freaky to be a dream. Maybe a nightmare? But, if that's true, when did he go to bed? Surely he hadn't suddenly fallen asleep at his computer? Granted, he'd been working many long hours recently, and the heat was enough to give almost anybody at least a mild case of heat exhaustion, but he hadn't felt tired enough to fall asleep when he had sat down at his computer.

"Anyway, I'm Dimitri Bloodbane. But you can all call me Dimi. All my friends do."

Kat rubbed her head then took Zea's hand and rolled back to her feet. "Sorry, Kat's just clumsy..." she said with a sigh. She made a distinct effort to not go crazy and after a second, she looked a bit saner. "Huh, I didn't think about that, zea. Maybe the other people aren't here yet...or they appeared somewhere else? I don't know." It was a fabulous question, but Zea would have to figure that one out herself.

Kat turned around, seeing the older demon looking guy approach them. She smiled at him and nodded in response to his hello. "Yeah, that's the only explanation any of us can think of," She said in agreeance. "But now I really do wonder why we're the only one's here...."

Kat blinked in surprise. "Dimi?!" she exclaimed after he introduced himself. "I thought I recognized that avatar...cause you never change it...but yay, a person I know!" She then realized he hadn't heard the others trading names earlier. "Oh...I'm Kat Dakuu."

"That's probably it." Zea wavered, Kat was probably right. And she wouldn't ask about getting back, that would probably make the others panic.

After a quick inner battle she successfully managed to hold in the waterworks. Zea quickly wiped around her eyes to catch any tears that might have come through without her knowing and turned to face Dimitri Bloodbane. His name sounded familiar, she hadn't spoken to him, she was pretty sure about that, but she had definitely seen him around... Anyway, introductions were required.

"Hi Dimi, I'm Zeapear. Zea is fine though." she smiled, and then continued on to comment on his observation; "Yeah, it does appear to be that way. Pretty cool, huh?"

A dream, Kat had suggested. That would fit with her developing hypothesis, but not in the way Kat thought. She was about to say something, when she staggered a little at the enthusiastic hug. Or was it a glomp? "Hi, Zea!" Cica returned the hug briefly before the girl scampered off, allowing the faun to regain her balance. She always did forget that Zea was as young as all that. She displayed a lot of maturity in the forums, compared to others her own age and older. Definitely had the energy, though, like some of Cica's own younger cousins.

She turned to the scantily-clad demon boy while contemplating how to comfort the two more upset members of the group. Tricky, because Cica was upset, too. Just more than a little numb. Tears would no doubt come later. Hopefully when and if she was alone. "Hi, Dimi. I'm Cicadetta, but everyone calls me Cica. Everyone here, I mean."

"Maybe… Well, if it was some sort of… bug. And they fixed it soon enough that only a few of us caught it?" she started slowly, wheels turning. "It had to be related to…" She shook her head, and resisted the urge to squeeze the nearest hand for comfort by rubbing the base of one of her horns instead. Yeah, that would turn into a nervous habit if she wasn't careful.

Kat blinked and had to turn to Cica to stare. "A bug? w-what do you mean? I guess....you mean this whole thing is an accident. Then that would mean there really are just us here?" That was a daunting thought. If the whole site had just moved into some sort of dream-like virtual world, then this would be a better version of spending all day chatting online. This was....strange though.

"what if they don't know we're here?!" Kat yelped suddenly. Now that she'd thought the idea, she couldn't get it out of her head. Ideas were the most infectious thing after all. She loved the idea of finally meeting people from mene, but she wasn't sure anyone else would enjoy being trapped here.