Heather, always the one to react first, announced the plan of action to the group, “Run!” Susan, getting the hint, began hobbling their shared body past the stunned Sapphire, the rest of the group following quickly behind her (Echo assisting Spencer and Veronica by pushing their wheelchair for them).
    Sapphire stood there, as the group ran past her, not expecting resistance from such cooperating guests thus far. She looked back towards the three muscular Sapphires still in the room (the one who had been restraining the malformed Sapphire had gone back through the trapdoor), shouting, “What are you three waiting for!? Go after them!” The three muscular Sapphires shared a look of agreement before rushing out of the tent flap after the group.

    The group was running, and they didn’t know where they were going to go. With the park in lockdown (whether because of the raging storm outside, or for some ulterior reason) they were trapped within the park. Because of this, they hadn’t even bothered running towards the main gate, rather they were running further into the park. As they ran past various buildings and attractions Sapphire’s voice blared out over the loudspeaker, “Emergency! Please remain calm. All park guests are recommended to stay where they are and await for park officials to come pick them up for the re-education process. Please, do not resist. Those who resist further shall be punished more so than they already will be.”
    Again, the group dare not stop running, knowing that there were at least four Sapphires after them, and probably more on the way. They ran through a large open area, the floor designed as a large circle with Chronos’ beaming face plastered on it. Standing near the top of Chronos’ face was someone in a Chronos costume. The body of the costume was the Chronos face, while where a person’s head would normally be was covered in a top hat. What was pretty disturbing, was that Chronos’ face was completely animated, but what was more disturbing was the fact that a voice was coming out of it, saying, “Come with me if you want to live!” The Chronos mascot then turned around and waddled away in a direction away from both the group and the Sapphires chasing them.
     “Should we trust her?” Lindsay shouted, the window for being able to actually make a decision quickly closing.
     With two brains, both choices ran through Heather’s heads as the proper one to make, but that was quickly righted as Susan took charge of the situation, changing her prancing movement mid-stride and commanding, “Follow him!” The rest of the group followed suit, chasing after the red clock.

    Chronos led the group through various twists and turns behind the large buildings of the park, through dark alleyways and even a couple of tunnels. The group wasn’t sure whether this strange person was leading them towards their captors or was actually trying to help them, but they were encouraged by the fact that the further they ran through these back ways, the quieter the sound of the footsteps chasing them became. After running for a good ten to fifteen minutes, the sounds of footstep behind them had stopped completely. Another five minutes, and the group could see the Chronos mascot finally enter into a building. It was best described as a shack, because that’s what it was, the walls looked like the wood was practically decaying, and the roof was made of corrugated steel.
    The group paused outside of the shack catching their breath. Spencer asked, “Do you think it’s a trap?”
    “I don’t think we really have the choice,” Echo said, caressing one of her sore tentacles, which were clearly not designed for running.
    “Well, guess there’s only one way to find out,” Lindsay said, walking up to the door and opened it. The group filed into the small shack (Veronica and Spencer abandoning their wheelchair in the process), uncertain of what they would find inside.

    Turns out, they didn’t find much. The shack was pretty small, and piling six (well, five seeing as how Heather and Susan were sharing a body) additional people made the shack even more cramped then it already was. When they had entered the shack, there were three (really four, but I’ll get to that) other people already in the shack. In addition to the Chronos mascot, there were two deformed Sapphires. The first one had no arms and the only article of clothing she had was a studded collar around her neck. She seemed to have been crying recently, as she had dried mascara trails on her face. The second deformed Sapphire was in a situation similar to how Echo had been earlier that day (as in she was missing her head completely), but was similarly completely naked. While this would normally be disconcerting, the fact that her privates areas seemed to be completely rubbed out (she had no boobs nor vaginas to speak of) left the group slightly more at ease than her other naked companion. In her lap, she was patting a Sapphire head whose hair was half shaved, which the group had assumed was the head of the headless Sapphire, but was in fact a separate Sapphire altogether (hence the confusion I mentioned earlier). The shack was extremely cramped, what with ten people (distributed across 8 bodies) currently occupying it.
     The groups immediate thoughts were that they had walked into a trap, what with the presence of two (really three) Sapphires, but because the Sapphires did not immediately try to capture them (in fact, if anything the Sapphires seemed to recoil slightly at the intrusion of some people into their fortress) they figured that were probably in safe hands.

    The Chronos mascot turned towards the group, the face animating as it talked, “Oh good. I couldn’t really turn around to check that you all were following me. Oh! Where are my manners!?” The Chronos mascot reached up (which was rather difficult, the costume was not really designed to allow someone to reach their arms above their head) and removed its top hat, eliciting some gasps from the group.
    Underneath the top hat was another Sapphire head, however this one was much more different than any other Sapphire they had met that day. Her skin was wrinkly, and while the ends of her hair still had the blue ends, a large majority of her hair was gray. The skin of her neck fed into the plastic of Chronos’ shell, clearly indicating the costume was in fact more a part of her body than a costume. The face gave them a warm smile, and as she talked the animated Chronos face remained still, “Hello, I am Sapphire, and I think that I have a bit of explaining to do.”
   “You think?” Lindsay snarked.
    “Well, I guess I should start with how come it seems like there are so many of me. You see…”

    Pick an explanation for what’s been going on all day.
    1.) Clones
    2.) Robots
    3.) VR