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[IamanElfCollaborator]

"That's....literally what I just said!"

[Empiricist]

"Then let's go already!" She glances over to the cloaked figure "W-we c-can meet i-in the r-real w-world i-if you want!" She gestures over to the running girl, looking almost expectantly for some sort of answer.

[Powder Miner]

The Grey Shade nods a couple of times, seemingly defeatedly, as Mijimeki admonishes him, but then Mijimeki asks what to call him, and it gives the hooded man pause. After thinking for some moments, the Grey Shade laughs jaggedly to himself, and then answers. "...The Fool. That works. Call me that." Whatever the Shade (slash Fool) had been planning to otherwise say, he trailed off as commotion erupted around Ryo, and just ended up nodding once again. "...right. . . .Come on, partner." Taking out one of the cylinders to go home, he pressed its buttons, and both he and the unconscious boy disappeared... though the Happi stay behind.

Ryo darted out the door, with the others following just behind her, but chances were that what Ryo saw past the boundaries of the train station the moment she darted out of it would give her pause. An entire city stretched out beyond its bounds, skyscrapers with fallen-out windows and rusted girders, a layer of grass on much of the concrete, a world where the air is dry and stale despite the still, calm sea stretching into the distance far away. A layer of decay and unnatural still seems to permeate everything, creating a landscape of grey, rust red, and blue -- an environment inherently bleak and stark at its very basest level, despite all of the half-deteriorated signs and trappings of civilizations. It looks like noone has been here in years, besides the hints of motion Ryo can just barely see around corners and in the distant streets.

[Dermonster]

Ryo steps into the barren wasteland and makes it only a few  meters before she recognizes what she's looking at.

"What... what?" she stammers, eyes wide. "What the hell?

The entire world looks dead; the buildings are degraded, the roads are choked and cracked with weeds, and even the clouded sky looks like all life was drained from it.

"Where... I..."

And once again, she feels like she's about to cry. Every half baked plan that crossed her mind falls to pieces. If this had been just some random closed down trainyard she could have made do, but some purgatoric nightmare of a city?

She doesn't know what to do. Her breath is starting to hiccup, thoughts whirling mindlessly before failing to occur altogether. "I... I just want to go home." She falls to her knees, scraping her knees through her bedclothes as the world starts to blur. "I-I. I just."

And then the only sound there is is half choked sobbing.

[Sl4cker]

The jet-haired boy doesn't waste any time in catching up to Ryo from her position on the ground. He kneels down on one knee a bit next to her, arms limp as they touch the ground. He just waits by her for a second, maybe several, maybe a minute or two. He doesn't move from his pose, but he does speak.

"We can return you there," he says, finally, with a breath that seems to shake at the start and end.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"....come with us, we'll get you home."

[Dermonster]

"H-how? There's... there nothing here!" Ryo waved an arm out, as if to encompass the entierety of the hellscape around her.

[Empiricist]

"M-maybe if y-you stopped running away and actually listened for once in your l-life, you'd know!"
She produces the cylinder.
"_L-look, t-these are what the guy uses to escape. P-press all the buttons a-at once like T-this, a-and..."

Teleport the party out.

[Sl4cker]

Miji says nothing, but he continues to keep a close eye on Ryo.

[Dermonster]

Ryo's face briefly scrunches in confusion. "Wha-"

Be telported?

[Powder Miner]

The panic and fuss finally begins to grind to a halt as Ryo jogs out into the city and is sent into something of a state of despair by the ruined, rusted state of the world outside of the train station. She breaks down into tears, and the group surrounds her. Finally (and with an expression of some impatience herself) Aoi takes out the last of the group's Goho-Ms, sinks her fingers into the three indentations that mark the device's buttons, and then presses down on them, activating the cylinder. A flash of blue fills the vision of each of the teenagers present for a moment, forcing them to blink their eyes shut...

...and when they reopen, the group finds themselves out of the ruined city, and instead in an area that is familiar for Aoi, Kanade, and Mijimeki, but far less so for Ryo: a little thicket of trees. Not overgrown, massive trees, not sickly and dying trees, just a little woods of nice, tame plants, creating an atmosphere that is serene, shaded, and soothing. Something that might perhaps mollify Ryo's fears is that she can see houses in the distance, within fairly easy walking range. These houses aren't dilapidated wrecks, either, but the suburban little houses with smoking chimneys and other signs of life that make up Aoi and Mijimeki's neighborhood.

There's a piece of paper nailed to a tree nearby, with a picture of a girl with shoulder-length hair (colored in brown) and eyes clearly colored green (the colors here visibly provided with colored pencils). It's... not a great sketch, but at least the grey pencil text written below the picture provides some clarification: "Next one. Shiro Akari. More information here three days from now."

[Sl4cker]

Mijimeki runs a hand through his hair. He licks his lips a little awkwardly, trying to alleviate the dry feeling that had slowly creeped into them over the last few hours. "Shiro Akari. Anyone finding that name familiar?"

[Dermonster]

A flicker of blue, and-

She blinked, and the nightmare vanished. A new landscape sprawled before her, houses and streetlamps twinkling like stars in the dark. Was it over? The stars twinkled overhead, bringing a wave of relief over her mind. It was done.

Bracing against a tree, Ryo got back to her feet. She took a step forward but paused, uncertain. This... where were they? There weren't any woods near where she lived. Ryo tentatively looked back at the other three.

"Um." she said, "Do any of you know how to get to [DISTRICT/STREET NAME HERE] from here?"

[Empiricist]

"I-I can probably s-search it up." Aoi brings out her phone, fingers tapping impatiently on the screen as the app starts up. "_{J-just a second...}" Hurry up! Hurry up damn it! The sooner she could get directions the less reason the girl had to part ways, and the better the odds of convincing her. What to convince her of precisely Aoi don't quite know just yet, she could figure that out later, go with the flow, but right now she just needed everyone to stick together and talk it out, that is if the app actually-

"A-ah! I-it's that way."

[Dermonster]

"Oh. Okay. Um... thanks." Ryo said, lamely.

She peered into the indicated direction. She thought she could see a few landmarks. She took a few steps, but hesitated again, looking up at the stars.

It was really late, wasn't it? And with what had just happened...

Suddenly the walk back seemed a lot more daunting than it had just moments earlier.

Ryo looked back at the others, uncertain.