(OOC: Very sorry for the delays. I'm posting this all at once, but feel free to rp the time inbetween if you wish. Any questions, please PM me or Katrina.

"Uh uh uh uh! You can look, but you can't go there. Not for two minutes that is."

The voice echoed through the hall, despite not being shouted or yelled. As the last statement finished, a fireworks display lit up in the center of the corridor, between the team and their goal. From its center appeared Crystal in her usual appearance; blond hair, grey eyes, and a strangely satisfied smirk on her face. She wiggled her finger at Hades, and pointed down.

"Come on back down here, Tarzan. We gotta talk." She waited for him to come down before addressing the rest of the group, hands on her hips and grinning.

"I've got to hand it to ya, your team is proving hard to fool. But rules are rules, and those," she pointed to the weapons held by Kaz, Hades and Sonya, "are not allowed. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Now Kaz, you should've known better than that, since you sent out the invitations."

Nearby a stick bot uncloaked itself, and walked over to the group, holding a metal crate.

"All right boys and girls. All pointy and exploding objects, coiling whippy toys, and other things collectively classified as 'weapons' go in the box. Your group is officially grounded for two minutes. Starting now."

A bright red square appeared in the air around the group, representing their confinement. The beam was harmless, merely a holographic show. Crystal crossed her legs and decided to float upside down while she watched, a warped cross between the Cheshire Cat and a Lamp Genie.

~~~~~~~~~~~

On the two-minute mark exactly, the red box vanished, and Crystal righted herself.

"All right kiddies, you're free to go. Your toys will be returned at the end of the game, in the exact condition you left them. Keep doin' what you're doing, just without the dangerous toys. Remember, Mommy's watching you...." The singsong warning echoed again through the corridor, and Crystal vanished in a puff of smoke, horror-spoof laughter gradually fading away.

> "All right boys and girls. All pointy and exploding objects,
> coiling whippy toys, and other things collectively classified
> as 'weapons' go in the box. Your group is officially grounded
> for two minutes. Starting now."

Sonya/Teresa sighs as their weapons are collected… by, she notices, a robot that had previously been cloaked. So, Katrina isn’t the only invisible thing running around this area. Good to know. "Well, I guess that answers my question about cheating, then."

She’s more annoyed by the delay than by the loss of her tranq-pistol… well, its temporary loss, anyway… but decides to make use of the time. "Hey, Cyra… while we're stuck here anyway, I want to practice with this cloak-the-invisible-girl trick. Try to dodge, OK?" Without further warning she whips the tapestry off of her waist and tosses it like a wheel of pizza dough in Cyra’s direction.

((OOC: Iris, I know Kaz and Crystal haven't actually met IC, but if you're ok with it, I'm going to have Kaz know it's Crystal and shtuff, ya?))

Kaz sighed as Crystal appeared, telling them they were breaking the rules like misbehaving children. "You're annoying. Don't you ever get tired of that look Crystal." It was more of a statement than a question. When the little bot uncloaked and came over carrying a box, Kaz shook his head. "I thought I heard something, now I know what it was, and what to look for." He looked pointedly at Crystal while winking, as if to say 'Gotcha'. "Yes yes, I know I sent out the invitations, and I know not to bring weapons. These are tools you see." He couldn't help but chuckle. At times, there was a fine line between a tool and a weapon. One just has to look back in history to see those examples. He dropped the whip and dagger into the box with a shrug.

While in the 'time out box', Kaz didn't have much to do, and didn't care to interact with the others, so he decided to keep his blood flowing. Kicking his right foot into his left, he did a cartwheel in place, seeming to pivot perfectly at his waist in mid air. When he stopped only his index and middle finger, and thumb of each hand were touching the ground as his feet were pointing straight in the air. He preceded to do push ups, before moving into one handed push ups to pass the time.

When time was up, he pushed himself up off the floor, tucked in tight, rotating his body in the air so he landed perfectly balanced on both feet. He immediately started forward again. "Hades, did you see anything from up there while you could?"

“Not much I’m afraid, there is an intersection up ahead, and the path branches into three, each heading towards some kind of structure, that could be a guard tower or could be the main central part of the castle but I could not tell due to the mist, which road do you think we should take? Do you want to see for yourself?”

Cyra sighed and loosed her whip that was hidden beneath her hair on her back. She was just about to sit down when Teresa throw one of the taperistries at her, telling her to try and dodge. She snorted and stepped slightly to the left and nabbed the tapestry from midair and twirled it in the air a few times to gain momentum and let it loose back at Teresa. She spoke quietly, "You had better dodge as well." She smirked inwardly, wondering at what that girl was really thinking. 'Didn't she think I'd react? That'd be foolish of her.'

Cyra looked over at Kaz only to see him doing three fingered push-ups, while doing a handstand. 'Well, well, well, he's stronger then he looks.' She shook her head slightly. 'He would be an interesting oppenent, I'm not sure if I could handle him though. Sometimes I wonder if my parents were telling me the truth. I wonder if I am actually a mutant. Maybe I should see if they could test me here.' Cyra shook her head yet again, this time to get rid of her thoughts. The two minutes were up.

Sonya/Teresa blinks in astonishment as Cyra catches the tapestry and hurls it back at her, harder and faster. She tries to dodge but ends up tripping over her own feet as the fabric tangles around her. Man, she’s good!

"Heh." She tries not to appear too embarrassed as she untangles herself and gets back to her feet. "So, I guess the lesson here is that the plan works OK if Katrina is as bad at dodging as I am, but not if she’s as good at dodging as Cyra is." She shrugs. "I guess that’s something. Anybody know if the invisible girl is a martial artist?"

Kaz nodded at Hades, "Hmm, I suppose I will take a look for myself." Kaz semi-mimicked Hades' earlier stunt, though at the height of his wall climb, he kicked off, twisted around and latched onto a large support beam that ran the length of the hall. After getting on top, he took note of what Hades has said. "No kiddin, I thought it was bad outside, but...I wonder if the fog is natural here or if it's being made." With a shrug, he grabbed his bit of cloth, bit down on the end and tore it a bit. Ripping the cloth down it's length he created a five inch wide strip, while tying the rest around his waist.

"I can't say for certain Teresa, but I highly doubt she has any sort of training like that. From what I understand, she's more the art type, than the physical. I know she plays the oboe (going off memory..if I'm wrong, let me know)." Looking over the area again, "Heres the dilemma I see. The main area of this castle is huge, with who knows how many places to hide. So on one hand, that would be the place for us to go, but on the other, the outer areas are quite large themselves, with their own places to hide. My guess is the other groups would head towards the center." He looked down at the others. "So we could head towards the center, where we could encounter the others, and perhaps find Kat, or we could search the outer areas, perhaps find her, but also gives the others more room to find her before we do." Sighing a bit, "With the split ahead, logically we should split up to cover more ground. But as this is a group exercise, and we have no way of communicating between us...." He left it open for the other to get his meaning.

Kaz began to move across the beam, similar in movement to a panther stalking it's prey. At each beam that extended to the walls, he used his strip of cloth and snapped it out towards the wall, to see if he would feel any resistance at the end, where Kat may be hiding. He continued this as he moved towards the 'fork' in their path. "Up to you guys which way to go."

Just before she vanished, Kaz aimed a parting comment at Crystal.

"You're annoying. Don't you ever get tired of that look Crystal."

She paused to smirk at him. "Call it minor payback. Someone has to teach you anger management. May as well be someone you can't retaliate against."

Then she vanished from sight. She watched and listened through the holocams as they plotted. Also, she shuffled through the rest of her resources. The stickbots were not her only toys to play with. Perhaps she'd sick the birds on them once they entered the mazes.

She continued to watch, to see which direction they chose.

> “From what I understand, she's more the art type, than the physical.”

Sonya/Teresa nods to Kaz. "Good to know. In that case, my little toreador trick might work on Kat better than it did on Cyra." Thinking about it some more, she adds "Though it looks like all y’all have some pretty impressive moves, yourselves, so maybe I’ll just stay out of the way if it comes down to that."

She nods again at Kaz’s summary of the situation, somewhat pleased by his evolving management style. "Well, I’ll go along with pretty much anything, but if nobody else has an opinion, I vote for heading straight to the center." Privately, she figures Kaz is right about meeting the other teams that way, which is her primary goal in this exercise anyway.

"So, unless anyone disagrees?" She starts moving in the appropriate direction.

((OOC: Since Hades and Cyra aren't posting, and it seems to be just Sonya and I, well, I say we skip ahead a bit here. The Southern group is heading towards the center. What exactly is there we don't know. Obstacles? Ambushes? A run in with another group?))

OOC: My apologies I thought I posted.
IC:
"That way is as good as any..." Cyra stopped abruptly as someone huge and red slammed through a door on the right. 'He looks like he's in hurry.' She looked at the group, "I say we follow him. He seemed to be in a hurry." She shrugged, "What's the worst that can happen?" Cyra moved quickly after the big red guy. 'Who knows, he might lead us to Katrina.'

(( OOC: Kaz – I’m happy to jump ahead to wherever. Just post something describing the jump and where we end up and I’ll cheerfully go on from there.))

Abyss’ sudden arrival and equally sudden departure comes as something of a shock to Sonya/Teresa; by the time she realizes that this isn’t an attack he’s already barreled through the exit, leaving her standing there looking slightly foolish.

"Well. That was… unexpected."

> " I say we follow him. He seemed to be in a hurry. What's the worst that can happen?" "

Cyra has a point, Sonya decides.

Of course, it was probably a trap -- after all, Abyss seemed to still have all his strength, which made him part of the exercise rather than a fellow participant -- but really what did it matter? It wasn’t like there was any real cost to losing this particular game.

"Fine with me," she says with a shrug, and follows Cyra.

(OOC: Sorry, lots of stress irl right now. Hope this works )

Crystal watched as Pluto nearly ran down the Southern group before vanishing again. She connected with her other 'selves' momentarily. If the Northern group took the path of ignoring the new annoyance in the library, they might soon be headed in this direction. That would be an interesting meeting....

"I say we follow him. He seemed to be in a hurry. What's the worst that can happen?"

"Fine with me."

"Hmm.... Follow Pluto, possible find Katrina and end the game.... or stay put, possible run into Group North, and see what happens?" Crystal frowned. "Wow.... tough choice...."

She decided to stay put for now, and see what happened.

(Continued from Northern Section)

Barreling through another door, they almost ran into Kaz and another woman that Katrina didn’t know. It was another one of the teams! Again, Katrina had to suppress a gasp of surprise. Pluto didn’t suppress anything, letting out a word that Katrina’s mother would have made him wash out his mouth for saying. Katrina didn’t mind, she’d heard worse on the school bus, but he apologized anyway. Then they were through another door.

“Pluto,” Kat whispered in his ear, “we can’t outrun Kaz. We’ll have to hide, quickly. I’ll turn you invisible too.” And then Katrina did just that. To her own eyes the giant red man was suddenly there and not there at the same time. To anyone else, he would have vanished into thin air leaving only the sound of his noisy footsteps. It was much more of a challenge to keep him invisible than it was just for herself. He was much bigger and Katrina was getting tired. The game would be over soon, one way or another, but she wasn’t giving up the fight just yet.

She hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings as she continued hurtling down corridors and empty rooms, following an elusive red streak. Until, having crashed through one rather ornate threshold, she realised she was now tailing of two others. Two others who were not the red streak she had been hunting. Knowing that if she faltered to consider the change of events she would loss any chance she continued, practically at the heels of two girls, whose backs were not characteristic enough to inform Nox who they were.

Before turning one particular corner the intrusive slamming of a door several times mingled with the heavy tread of footsteps, but since this had been happening rather frequently it was of no concern. That is no concern until the ‘little hunting party’ turned that corner and was met with the sight of an empty corridor. 'Presume he’s carried on, or check the adjoining rooms of which there were far too many' – those were their two choices. Now Nox did falter, and so slowed to a jog, knowing that a false move would mean their target could be lost forever. Talking over one shoulder to Abyss as she, at a much slower pace, advanced up the corridor, she voiced the question out loud – “Do we search or carry on?”.