The faint roar of a plane off in the distance signaled the arrival of yet another newbie. A flock of birds exploded from an area near the outer edge of the Jungle near NewHome. Near the front wall, a heavily armored man in a helmet looked up, cocking his head to the side. He was joined by a Joker in a bright green tuxedo. This was the retriever, the one who usually rounded up the new arrivals.
"Hey Pox, wanna go check that out for me? I just brought back a different newbie and I'm still registering them. I'll buy you a drink later as payment."
"Yeah, no problem."
"Looks like they fell pretty close at least."
Pox turned to look at him. "That Jungle is a freaking maze. 'Close' means I'll be back in four hours."
The Joker smirked and left without another word.
--------------------------
When they said I'd have to jump I assumed they were providing parachutes.
Lena's eyes fluttered open and she found herself staring up at a clear blue mid-day sky. She tried to shield her eyes from the harsh sunlight, but although she her brain was clearly sending the signal to her arm, nothing was happening. She looked down. Her arm was no longer there, flung off on impact she assumed. In fact, none of her limbs were there. Only her head and body remained. Sighing, Lena closed her eyes and mentally felt out the area until she located her right arm, which proceeded to crawl around in search of the rest of her.
---------------------------
Pox was maneuvering through the dense jungle foliage on his hoverboard when he came across Lena's arm. At first he wasn't exactly sure what to think of it. He paused, tilting his head to the side as the limb crawled around, feeling various roots and plants in search of something. He tapped his helmet, thinking that perhaps his visual screen was malfunctioning. When that failed he checked his respiratory systems to see if any strange gasses had leaked into his helmet, but the Oxygen to Keiso-Carbon Dioxide Conversion software was fully functional and clear. He racked his brain in search of an explanation. Was he high? Had he recently sustained head injury? No, not that he could remember...As far as he could tell there was nothing wrong with him. There was simply a detached arm crawling around in front of him.
"I...ok. That's fine, that's fine." He threw his arms up in defeat. This WAS improbable island. He decided that it would probably be best to bring it back to Vinnie at NewHome and register it as a monster. Right after he retrieved the newbie. Pox hopped off his board and picked up the arm, which promptly bitch-slapped him and began wriggling around as if trying to escape.
"GAH! Stop it! Stupid detached arms..." He growled, holding it away from him. The arm seemed to calm down after a few moments and then pointed off into the jungle. Pox blinked a few times.
"You belong to someone don't you." The hand gave a thumbs up and pointed again, more urgently this time. Pox felt as though he was going to be sick, but he grabbed his board and began hacking his way in the indicated direction.
---------------------------
Lena sighed in relief. Someone had found her arm and was moving steadily towards her. A man emerged from the jungle wearing the armor of a futuristic soldier and a helmet. He froze upon seeing her and quickly threw her arm to the ground making a strangled screechy-squeaky noise as he did so.
"No no no, don't freak out!"
"Oh that makes it even worse..." the man moaned, facepalming and turning away. Lena sighed.
"Can you just help me out real quick? I'll pay you back in someway as soon as I can." The man eyed her suspiciously.
"Help you out?"
"Yes, help me out. As in gather my limbs so that I can sew them back on." She would have to dig around in her bag (which had fallen next to her) for her sewing materials, but that wouldn't be too much of a problem.
"Do you know where all of your limbs are?"
"My legs are over there," she motioned with her head as best she could. "and my other arm is over there." The man walked slowly over to the areas she had indicated and came back with his arms full of Lena's limbs.
"I hope you know this is wrong on so many levels." He dropped them by her side.
"Well I just fell out of a plane, my limbs weren't meant to handle that sort of impact." She had already resigned herself to the fact that she would have to explain what she was. The man froze again.
"You just fell out of a plane."
Lena looked up at him as her right arm began to sew the left one into place.
"Well, yes."
"So you're the...That's...Fine." He shook his head. "My name is Poxicoriozone Lozaerix, soldier of the NewHome army and general wandering resident. I'm here to bring you back in one piece." He seemed to think about his statement. "Which now has a whole new meaning."
Lena chuckled quietly. She was sewing on her last leg now.
"Well thank you, Mr. Poxi...Poxic..."
"Just call me Pox. Nobody can pronounce it."
"Thank you, Pox."
She stood up, stretching her newly reassembled limbs.

Dreem was enjoying himself. The jungle was not a normal place to have fun, in fact, most people would consider it to be a terrifying horrible place in which random monsters would come and escrivate you. Dreem found it to be a very intricate obstacle course in which he could push his speed to the limit without disturbing (read: destroying) anything.

The hum of his hyperstatic disks on the surface of the ground was the most beautifull sound he could imagine, the sparks produced where his speed scorched the ground, a lightshow just for him. He watched trees fly by in a blur, plowed into (Through) an imp, and straight up a cliffside. He watched the top rush up at him, and relaxed his body completely, letting his momentum cary him up and over, ten feet, twenty thirty, before he let himself flip forewards, and came down in a dive, lightly touching down on a tree and speeding verticaly towards the ground before pivoting and landing, already at full speed, letting his powerfull knee shocks take the force, and accelerating untill the cliff was far behind him. Music boomed in his head, and around him...his own little bubble of awesome.

He was so enthralled with his speed run that he almost crashed into two people (he assumed...one was in a craz hat...helmet...thing, and the other was missing a leg.) But veered at a right angle at the last moment, instantly setting the ground where he had turned alight, and causing him to crash painfully into a tree...at a couple hundred miles per hour....Dreem survived, the tree didnt.

Dreem picked himself up with a groan, shaking of sawdust-like splinters of wood. Then, he realised that he might have crashed into the people...he looked around frantically for blood splatters, finding none, he timidly rolled back to where he had seen them. They were there...and alive...he sighed in relief and saw that the lady didnt have one of her arms on.

"AAAAH!" he yelled in a panic. "Im sorryimsorryimsorry, i didnt mean to knock your arm off, Aaagh!" he intoned, beggining to panic....a lot.

There was a blur of light, a rush of powerful wind, and a stream of profanity as Pox was knocked back a few feet and onto his ass.
"Godamn son of a bitch motherfucker! What was that?!" He scrambled to his feet and readied his gun.
Lena's left arm was laying on the ground next to him and he stooped down cautiously to pick it up. What appeared to be a little kid rolled out of the trees and Pox aimed for it's head (he didn't actually fire...they taught you not to do that in the academy).
"Watch where you're going you little-"
It tilted its head up and Pox nearly dropped his gun. It was a robot. And apparently little kid. It was a damned adorable little kid robot too. He softened up immediately.
"Nawws!"
It started panicking as it saw Lena's arm and Pox made the executive decision that this thing was neither hostile or capable of wounding either of them.
------------------
Lena accepted her arm back from Pox and smiled warmly at the little creature before her. He reminded her of one of her old students. One of the hyperactive troublemakers.
"It's ok, they do that a lot. It doesn't hurt at all." She began the process of sewing it back on and chuckled as Pox "nawwed" at it. "What's your name, little guy?" She pulled up the bandanna covering the lower half of her face to pull the thread tight. Pox glanced over at her and yelped.
"Dude! Your jaw is really messed up! Are you sure you're ok?" He reached out to touch the exposed bone but Lena dodged his hand.
"I'm a Zombie, ok? Last time I died my jaw was shot off. It's a sensitive subject and I'd appreciate if we didn't discuss it any further." She looked away uncomfortably.

Dreem didnt need to breathe, but if he did, the speed at which he was hyperventalating would have knocked him unconcious. "I-it...it doesnt hurt?" he asked shakily. His voice was very slightly synthed, as though he was speaking through a low setting autotuner, even so, its childlike quality marked the little robot as being rather unthreatening. He seemed to be in constant motion, small rotations of the wheel-like appendages on his legs causing him to drift up and down, as well as side to side. He seemed deeply worried, seemingly doubting that limb removal was "Okay".

His stress levels were not helped when he saw that one of the people he had almost hit seemed to only have half the flesh on her jaw. He let out a little synthed whimper and fell on his metallic butt. He started rocking backwards and forewards, letting out little sniffly noises. He seemed to finally come to the question Lena had asked in his mental inventory. "Im...im Dreem...im...i...i...im sorry that i almost crashed into you...i did it before and, and, i thought that you went splat like the other guy...and i didnt......." his speech dissolved into tiny words of appology, and what sounded like short sound clips of people freaking out....apparently externalising his mental state.

The front of his face now showed to upper case Q's and little else.

Pox opened his mouth to say something and promptly shut it. Well, Lena's tendency to lose limbs made significantly more sense now. He was used to strange things on this island, but a Zombie was a new level of interesting for him. He took a moment to process this information. Pox glanced over at Dreem and felt an overwhleming sense of sad...He didn't like the "Q.Q" face at all. That implied that the adorable little robot he was already considering his little brother was sad. He tossed his gun on the ground (which he forgot was loaded and promptly fired off into the jungle, followed by the gargled sound of a dying Imp) and walked over to Dreem, placing a hand on his shoulder-ish-thing.
"Listen little buddy, we're both ok and that's what matters. Lena doesn't seem to be in pain."
"I'm really not. It happens more often than I'd like to admit."
"See?" An idea began to form in Pox's little devious brain and he tapped his fingertips against each other. He was grinning like a fool, though his helmet prevented the others from seeing it. "Hey, you've got some decent speed on you. Wanna race? You'd be surprised what I can do on Hyperspeed."
------
Lena could tell she was about to be left behind. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Pox looked over at her and shrugged apologetically.
"You can head that way to NewHome and ask around as to where the Club Dreem-" Pox paused and looked back and forth between Dreem and the direction of NewHome. "YOU'RE THE FUCKING DJ! IT ALL MAKES SENSE!!" He was now irrationally excited. Pox slammed his fist against his palm. "We race. Right the fuck now!"
Lena sighed and headed off towards NewHome.

Dream's face changed to lowercase Q's...then to his regular eyes... It seemed that the mention of a race had made him forget "Mostly" about his near slatterifying of the two. "Okay" he said exitedly. "And...oh yeah." he said nodding. "I built a club..." he seemed lost for a moment. "Oh, so youve been to my club." He said, a happy face icon apeering on his face. "Cool!" he said... he seemed to be under the impression that people didnt know about his club....this was rather odd since it was massively popular....perhaps he was just extremely oblivious.

Dreem seemed to be vibrating with anticipation, the wheels on his feet barely touching the ground, throwing up small arks of spark as they rotated in small bursts. At Pox's last sentence, dreem's smiley face got a much bigger smile. "Ok!" he said, "Where are we racing?" he asked.

Pox seemed to ponder this for a moment and then nodded in agreement with himself.
"AceHigh is a pretty decent distance...How about to AceHigh, then back to NewHome? That'll take 5 minutes or so, right?" He laughed at his own cockiness. He would probably lose horribly now.
Reaching into his bag Pox pulled out a small silver and green cube. He pressed a red button on the side and it immediately unfolded into his hover-surfboard. As Pox stepped onto the board, sheets of metal shot up around his boots, locking around his ankles to prevent him from flying off. He stooped down and turned the dial to "Hyperspeed" and it roared to life like a car engine.
"Lena could you carry my gun back? Good protection too. Front trigger is bullets back trigger is chainsaw." He looked over at Dreem and gave the thumbs up. "On the count of three. Three, two...." He paused dramatically. "ONE!"

The board launched forward, swerving through the blur of trees in such away it could have been considered a dance with the Jungle. Pox was crouched down, clutching the sides of the board. He glanced over to his side, thoroughly impressed with himself for keeping an equal pace with Dreem. In a moment of over-ego male logic he did a barrel roll, drove his board straight up over the treetops, and slammed back through the foliage, crushing several branches and birds as he did so. The board glided easily over the ferns, maneuvered through the dense trees at a surprising rate, and kept steadily alongside Dreem the entire time. Pox flipped a switch on the bottom of the board which SHOULD have been a hyper boost but was instead apparently now an iPod shuffle. He cursed quietly as Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy began to play and he remained at the same speed.
"On the plus side, The Prodigy." he mumbled, barely hearing himself over the blaring speakers that had replaced his boosters. He curved sharply up to avoid a fallen tree and made a wide turn to exit the Jungle in an area of thin foliage.
Bursting through the treeline it was just a stretch of obscenely long field between him and AceHigh.
---
Lena rolled her eyes, picked up the gun, and started off on her way.

The instant the sound of the word one had left Pox's lips, Dreem accelerated to his usuall pace. He had to pace himself if he was going to get to and back from ace-high, as he was already a little low on energy...still...he didnt plan to let pox beat him. As he accelerated the world blurred again, and sparks shot up in a cloud behind him, as his hyperstatic disks whirred over the ground, clinging for optimum traction.

He was impressed and happy that pox seemed to be keeping up with him through the jungle. It had been quite a while since anything had rivaled his speed. Unconciously he started blaring A song loud enough to quite litteraly make the leaves shake on the trees.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=s7RrpPsGF9g&NR=1 )

The music only seemed to hype up dreem further, as, getting to the fields, he leaned farther foreward, and a roar of wind could be heard as, in sync with the music, dreem suddenly flew forewards, as though shot from a cannon, his discs hardly touching the surface of the ground. It seemed that he had been slown by having to maneuver around trees. It was clear that here, in an open space, Dreem was at his ideal... that said, when they got back to the jungle, pox would have the technichal advantage...the question was, who would prevail? It would be a close race without a doubt.

Pox heard the first few beats of Dreem's music and scrambled to shut his off. He loved Saliva, a band he had discovered through Dreem's superior DJ skills and musical taste. As they sped over the open field however, Dreem gained a decent lead on Pox. He frowned, crouching down against his board even further, bowing his head to reduce wind resistance. He closed some of the gap, but he was still just behind Dreem.

The gates of AceHigh were very, very close and Pox prepared to turn on a dime. Shifting his weight to his heels and standing up very suddenly, Pox swung the back end of his board around, lightly touching the gate and sending up a huge cloud of dust and small rocks as he began to speed back towards the Jungle. He crouched down again, flattening himself against the board as best he could.

The board was inches from the ground, leaving a trail of dust clouds in it's wake and even gouging out bits of softer ground as he went. If the board had crashed at this point, Pox would have been instantly killed. He was, however, extremely confident in his ability to dodge people and things. When they reached the Jungle again Pox smiled knowingly. He had the upper hand here. The switch Pox had flipped earlier had once again changed and in an extremely delayed reaction, his boosters fired up. Six small bulbs appeared on the sides and bottom of the board, one on each side and four positioned strategically on the bottom. There was a loud roar as fire exploded from the bulbs in a steady stream, faded into a white flame, and propelled Pox forward at a ridiculous pace.

The gates of NewHome didn't stand a chance against Pox's board and when he collided with one of them it promptly splintered and fell apart. Pox didn't seem to notice however and was now doing donuts in the middle of NewHome, pointedly ignoring the distressed and disturbed looks of the various residents.

"LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING BOSS!" He did a backflip with his board and landed, quite satisfied with himself. He wasn't sure where Dreem was, but he knew for a fact that he had thoroughly enjoyed that whole endeavor.
----------------
Lena was among the residents staring at Pox and blinking in confusion.
"You realize the gate...Nevermind." She shook her head and laughed quietly. He looked like he had just had quite a bit of fun and that was enough for Lena to forgive his abandoning her and shattering the NewHome gate. She made a mental note to help with the rebuilding of the gate later.

As dream reached the gate of ace-high, he pivoted, throwing up a puff of flame, before rocketing off in the opposite direction. In the field, he eisily overtook pox, but at the treeline he was forced to decelerate a bit, and pox took the lead.

They were neck and neck, dreem vaulting over obstacles and going straight up trees, pulling massive arial stunts, but then, the fields before newhome came into view, pox having pulled a good few yards ahead, but dreem gaining every moment. Then, just as he was about to vertake pox, dreem screeched to a halt, his desire not to be yelled at for breaking the gate overtaking his wish to win.

Pox didnt seem to have this mindset. "Woot! You won, you broke the gate, but you won!" he said, cheering for pox's win...

Pox stopped feeling awesome when he realized that the gate he had practically built himself had just been utterly destroyed. By him. He hung his head in slight defeat and sighed.
"That's...that's unfortunate." He looked up and noticed the Retriever walking towards him briskly with a disapproving frown.
"What the hell Pox. What the hell."
"Racing people and being oblivious. Same as always, really." He tried to hide the fact that he felt really, really stupid now. It was failing. The Joker looked a little more irritated now.
"Do me a favor, will you? Stay away from NewHome for a while. You break far too many things." The Joker turned sharply and stormed off, muttering profanities and insults all the way.
Pox reflected on this and realized it was very, very true. He had unintentionally blown up his own house, melted a mini-fridge, shattered the gate and snapped one of the turret mounted machine guns on the wall in the past week. Turning to Lena and Dreem he rubbed the back of his neck.
"Right, temporarily banned from NewHome. That's cool then. So, am I rolling solo now or do I have friendly company?"
--------------------------
Lena wasn't sure why the man who had approached Pox was being so harsh...It wasn't like he was blowing things up and melting vital food supply containers on a regular basis. He had broken the gate, he could fix the gate, no big deal.
"Of course you have friendly company. Where will we go though...?" She didn't know anything about this island yet.
"Well, my overall mission is to find and destroy the Improbability Drive, which is SOMEWHERE on the island. If you'd like to pursue that goal alongside me, I would be extremely very awesomely pleased." He paused for a moment. "Hint, hint."
"Hunt down the 'Improbability Drive'. That sounds violent and unpleasant."
"Very."
"Oh..." Lena seemed to get incredibly sad for a moment. "Is it a malicious being at the very least?"
"Ohhhh yes. The Drive is bad. Very extremely not good." Pox folded up his board and placed it in his bag. He seemed to realize he was missing something and looked back at Lena. "Gun?"
Lena picked up Pox's gun which she had laid down beside her and handed it over.
The angry man came back.
"OUT DAMMIT!"
Lena squeaked and Pox jumped. Both of them turned to Dreem and Lena made sad eyes.
"Are you coming too?"
"I could hook you up to a broadcast system so you can still DJ at the club." Pox offered. Lena nodded in agreement. She liked Dreem. He was adorable and seemed like a sweet little thing...

Dreem shrugged and was about to answer affirmatively when the Joker gave him a look. Dreem cringed slightly. "I...I..." Dreem stuttered. The joker raised an eyebrow. "You are a valeuable asset Dreem. I would prefer if you would stay." he said, making it clear that 'prefer' was not the word he meant.

Dreem's screen went like this (O_O).

"But...I...If...But..." he stuttered more. The joker continued looking at him expectantly, and then, he sighed in defeat, as dreem dissapeered from sight and was suddenly hiding behind Lena.

"Fine. Make an outpost or some such thing. Keep us posted of things coming our way, and well see about letting you back in." he said glaring at pox.

Dreem was huggling lenas legs... he was obviously a bit intimidated by the city caretaker.

Pox hadn't thought about making an outpost...
"If we make an outpost you know we're not going to be able to come back, right?"
"That's the point." The Joker growled, turning to leave. "Go clear out your house and then leave. You've got one hour."
Pox walked over to Dreem and Lena, huggling Dreem reassuringly.
"Thanks for sticking with me guys. I'll definitely make that broadcasting system. I have a communicator in my house anyway, so that's half the trouble right there."

*exactly one hour later*

The freshly repaired gates of NewHome slammed shut behind them. Pox sighed.
"We need to find a place to make an outpost." Lena pointed out.
"I know. I'm not the best at building wooden things...If we could find a place that had an abundance of metal I could have us set up within a couple of days." He seemed to be in deep thought. "We could try CyberCity 404. There's a junkyard adjacent to the city and nobody goes there anyway, so we wouldn't be bothering people. Hell, we might even merge with the city after a while."
The more Pox thought about it the happier he became. He was going to have his very own outpost and for once he could bitch at everybody else instead of being bitched AT by everyone else.
-----
Lena liked this idea. She still wasn't clear on what this island was, why she was here, what the drive was and just about everything else, but she had Dreem and Pox and that was enough for her.
"And what do you propose we call this fine establishment?"
Pox pondered this for a moment. After about a full minute of silent contemplation he hung his head in defeat.
"How about this. I build it, you plan it and help run it, and Dreem can name it and take care of entertainment." He looked back and forth between them. "Deal?"
Lena thought about this and then nodded slowly.
"I can handle that...How far away is this junkyard?"
Pox rubbed the back of his neck.
"It's a five day journey from here." He gave a double thumbs up as if to show hopeful excitement. Lena sighed sadly. She didn't really want to walk through dense jungles and fight various weird things for five days, but what had to be done had to be done.
"Fine. We should probably head out." she turned to Dreem. "Have you thought of a name for the outpost, Dreem?"

Dreem seemed to think about it for a moment, weaving leasurely over the ground. "How bout MRD-Tech." He said "Mechanical Research Division Of technology" he said absentmindedly. He apeered to have pulled the name out of an orrifice i wont specify here, but it did have a ring to it. "And im gonna try to set up a little studio...thing." he said, his smiley face apeering. Then he seemed to realise something and he got a sad face. "I mean....im not sure how i would do that...but i could try..." he said, sounding discouraged. It seemed that he wasnt all that used to having help with things.

Dreem was partly off in his own world now, thinking up wild ideas, and (entirely physichaly improbable) structures. "Upsidedown sideways floating speedway." he muttered distractedly. Something that would make no sense to anyone but him in all likelyhood.