Pinball.....

"Carradene!" shouts a raccoon man from the background. "While your asking questions, ask them if they have any idea what all that light was about just an hour ago. Scared the #&^@ out of everyone!"

"Sure Joseph," mutters a rather tall wolf next to him. "And while he's at it, why don't we just ask the strangers if they can lift the flaming barrier that keeps us locked within, prisoners of this accursed island!"

This brings a hearty laugh from the raccoon and the rest of the Pack.

Synizn opens his mouth to answer the questions, when.....things get weird.

Now, it can be said that the multi-verse is a weird place, where almost anything is possible AND probable....if you look hard enough. Sometimes, however, even some events just come out of left field, take a right at the stoplight.....and head into the zone of just plane NUTS!

Now, some argue that there is a higher order.....that Someone or Something is in charge. Anyone witnessing the next event from a position ABOVE the multi-verse, in a set of universes of "low probability"......that person would have to wonder about that!

A Crystallic, giving off the proscribed warning signal to it's owner, to prepare him for an unexpected call from a malfunctioning Otherworld Slipgate system, is instead thrown through the very viewing screen/warning sign it had used to warn it's owner. The much suffered artifact shrugs mental shoulders, and finds itself at the feet of a humanoid, grizzled, grey furred wolf....and a bunch of demi-foxes! The safety feature of the slipgate system that SHOULD prevent two such powerful Atlantian artifacts to exist on the same plane of existence, backfires and sends yet another Crystallic that was floating in the molten remains of what used to be it's owners lair (re:1270) zipping back to a stunned demi-fox and his shipmates (re:2523). Then, the entire Island of Dragon Moreau suddenly flashes yet AGAIN, finally causing the imprisoning shields meant to keep the Pack in (and incidently keeping a deadly Phage out) back to where it's home universe.

Then.......

1. Nothing, the demi-foxes and the Pack have no idea what just happened......
2. Sigin, and his.....family just happened to be standing a touch too close to the grey furred wolf when the Cyrstillic AGAIN flahses.....they find themselves looking at a startled pair of humaniod foxes (one golden female and one red furred male).....
3. And what of Fred and Astra in all this? Well.......Sigin disappeared.....