There are a few things to note when it comes to The Arena Inbetween, and that is that everything is structured and has a schedule. Please, if you haven't been confirmed for a character yet, then DON'T post here in the IC yet. The game is open and ready now!

As I said before, There is a schedule for this game, which basically means there is an order the posts will go. Here's the system for you, read over it if you want to get aquainted with it.
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Story Post- A Story post is any post made by me, Liseran. These posts will advance the over all narrative of The Arena Inbetween. Story posts will not directly conflict with player posts, so you don't have to worry about me forcing an ending on your characters that you don't want. The Story posts will mainly be here to add some new element to the Arena Inbetween, and everything else will be influenced by the players. The very first post in the IC will be a Story post.

Player Posts Intermission- The Players can make posts before the Event Posts are scheduled to happen, to move along their characters story, or development. Sort of like getting your head in the game before it actually starts.

Event Posts- An Event post is a post that will detail the most recent arc, or in this case, event in the Arena Inbetween. Think of it as an announcement for what your characters will face in the Arena next. Event posts are where you will find out whether or not you will be partcipating in a battle royale, or a twisting maze of challenges. Only I can write Event posts, but if you have an idea for a really cool Arena event, than feel free to share it!

Player Posts- This is where you, the Travelers, come in at! Everyone who is participating in the Arena Royale will make a serious of posts at whatever length they prefer. You stop making posts when your character is finished with the Event. Your character cannot finish the event in the length of one post. You must make at least three posts before comppleting the Event with your character. Once you have finished the event, you can make a few more posts wrapping up any loose ends you may have had while writing the posts.

Intermission Posts- This is a type of post that only I can make. Once everyone has wrapped up there Events, I will make an intermission post that reveals what The Staff of the Arena are doing. You can think of it as a shorter Story post, and in fact, because they are so similar, after the intermission is done the next Event Post will be made.

The story will advance in this order.

Players have a generous amount of time to respond to the game, if you are unable to continue because of outside circumstances, then it is perfectly fine if you don't respond right away. Just make sure to tell the rest of us in the OOC, or rather you can tell us here, at the Official Arena Inbetween Discord server.

https://discord.gg/pWfGqQ

other than that, welcome to The Arena Inbetween!

Story Post

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Leila walked the halls of the Arena, the lights were cast low so to simulate night here in the Inbetween. There was no sun or moon, just the blank expanse of white that stretched infinitely from one side to the other. The North Wing was cold, the atmosphere now desolate after the last batch of Travelers had left. The most recent Arena Royale was a turning twist of drama and mazes, and at the end of it all, they only won one Mirror Shard from the visitors. The Traveler who remained here due to losing their Mirror Shard was being held up in the dormitory. He was another version of Coggs, a member of Paradox here in the Arena. It was jarring seeing double when he first appeared in the Mirror Shard room, but they soon got used to it. He’s asked to leave, but the Staff has tried to explain to him that there is nothing out there for him. He will not find anything that can bring him home out in the Inbetween. Leila had promised that during the next Arena Royale, Paradox would try to procure a Mirror Shard for him so that he could finally leave, and that was enough to make him settle down with his ideas of braving the unknown.

The next Arena Royale seemed like it would be a life time away, but really it would be in the next couple of weeks or so. She sighed, and Charlotte fluttered out of her breast pocket landing on her shoulder. “I don’t know how many more of these we can host, Charlotte.” She confided in the moth. Charlotte flew around her a little, twirling in the air to try and cheer her up. Leila laughed, “I’m fine, friend. I’m just more or less concerned with how the next Travelers will take the news that they have to participate in the Royale. Who knows, maybe the next losers won’t be so adamant to wait?”

She heard soft footsteps behind her and turned to find Cosmos patrolling the halls. “All of the Dorm rooms are secure, Leila. Mr. Devesh^2 is not happy about having to stay here, but he seems to have settled in comfortably now.” She reported. Leila nodded.

“Thank you, Cosmos.” She touched the wall softly. “It’s about time we renovated this place. It’s been so long since we’ve been trapped here.”

Cosmos agreed, silently. “I can work on that next if you want. I have time before the Travelers arrive again.” Leila shook her head.

“Rest now. You’ve been working all day, you deserve a break.” Leila told her. “I’ll walk a little more, than head on over to bed. We have to plan for the next Royale tomorrow.”

Cosmos hesitated for a second. “Uh...my internal clock reads that right now...in the Old Reality, it is winter.” She said.

“Winter already…” Leila hummed.

“Yes...I just thought you’d like to know what time it really is.” She said. Leila smiled.

“Thank you, Cosmos. Perhaps we can throw a christmas party of sorts? I’m sure the Travelers will find that to be a warm welcome.” She suggested.

Cosmos nodded. “If that’s what you wish, then tomorrow I shall gather a committee. We can plan a christmas welcome to the Travelers next time.” Leila chuckled.

“So serious Cosmos. Very well, now that that’s settled, it’s getting late. I have a walk to take.” Leila dismissed herself, and walked onward without Cosmos.

Cosmos looked at Leila’s retreating figure, and wondered briefly what kind of walks she was taking so late in the night. If there was to be a christmas welcome, than she would need to get rest like Leila had said, so Cosmos headed for bed. The Staff rooms were near the dorms, and the Arena was big enough to hold all of them, if they partnered up anyway. When she entered her assigned dorm room, her partner Nymi was snoring soundly in the bottom bunk. She climbed up the rungs of the ladder quietly, then fell asleep almost instantly when her head hit the pillow.
……………………………….

“So you want to throw a christmas party?” Shay asked, confused. She had followed Cosmos to the common room that morning, only to find that everyone was already waiting for them. Cosmos had detailed a plan that Leila had suggested, but Shay didn’t think it was such a good idea. “I’m all for having good relations but…”

“Shay has a point. It seems a little...silly.” Coggs, the original, said. “And things are already weird enough as it is here in the Arena. Throwing a christmas party would make everything feel surreal.” Shay had to admit things were a bit weirder than normal.

“I think it’s a great idea.” Eris said sitting on the couch. Their feet were propped up against the coffee table, to which Cosmos sighed. She spent a lot of time polishing that table. “I mean, yeah things are...definitely a lot odder than normal what with Coggs #2 being housed here, but I think this is the perfect thing we need to make things go back to normal.”

“Well about as normal as we’re used to here in the Arena.” Cosmos added, gently pushing Eris’ feet off. “And besides, if we spent every single moment here seriously planning everything, we’d all go mad.”

Thomas spoke up from beside Coggs, an arm around him. “You got that right. If I have to go over maze routines with the monsters again, I don’t know what I’ll do.” He said.

Beatrice’s voice carried from the dining table. She was the only one to have gotten breakfast yet. “I’m with Tom. I’m sick of looking at my guns all day. And Shou’s about pushed to his limit, too.”

Eris chuckled. “How can you tell? The guys a blank slate most of the time.” They said. Shay huffed.

“Well if everyone’s in agreement like this, I guess we oughta just go with it. We can find supplies somewhere around here.” She said. “The Inbetween will probably just hand it to us if we think hard enough about christmas.”
And just as she said that, four cardboard boxes of old holiday decorations plopped themselves down on the table. Beatrice jumped back, her chair hitting the ground.“God I hate when it just makes shit like that. Scares the hell out of me everytime.” She muttered.

Cosmos walked up to the boxes, and inspected the tinsel inside. “There’s no time to waste everyone. Let's start decorating while the lights are still bright in the Arena.”

The entirety of Paradox began to put up decorations for christmas all over the Arena. The North wing where the Mirror Shard room was the decked out with lights and a wreath. The dormitory and the common room had green and red paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, and Eris had managed to procure a bunch of Santa Claus stickers. They even managed to find a christmas tree for the common room, and Leila suggested they save that for last.

By the time they had finished, the Arena was ready for the season. Cosmos was just finishing up with the last few wreaths in the Mirror Shard room, when Leila came in to survey the work.

“You know, this place really cleans up well.” She said. Cosmos hopped down from the ladder.

“Yes, the christmas idea was perfect. It may have taken a few days, but everything looks so much...happier now.” She sighed. “I’m sure we could do the presents, but I don’t think we’ll have time. The Royale will begin tomorrow.”
Leila looked up at the floating Mirror Shards. “Yeah. I can feel it. They’re getting ready to send some more our way.”

“We still haven’t made plans for the next Royale, though.” Cosmos said. “Do you think we could just wing it?”

Leila laughed, touching the pin on her front pocket. “We’re moths, aren’t we?” She asked.

“I suppose we are, ma’am.”

The two of them stayed in the Mirror Shard room for a little while. Cosmos felt a bit of anticipation as she contemplated what the Travelers would do when they saw the pretty decorations. Maybe they’d feel a little more at home than the last batch.

Regardless of the attention drawn by the sudden flash of her mirror shard, the woman that dropped down from it, landing with inhuman grace and balance, might have caused surprise or interest among those used to...other types. As the black haired woman rose to her feet atop the mattress set up to catch fallers, eyes scanned the space, hands going to brush off her uniform, internal checks being performed. A full system diagnosis was completed in moments, showing no viruses, no foreign programs, everything was as it had been seconds before, onboard the fleet flagship enroute to another star system. Arsenal was intact, even down to the Special Weapons left over from the last conquest. This indicated that a standard shift had occurred.

Stepping calmly off from the mattress, boots clamped down against the floor, making the proper sound for whatever material it was made from, dust being kicked up in the process. Stella's gaze narrowed, as her head turned, taking the space in, unarmed seemingly for the moment, hair moving in time with her head shifting, swishing behind her. Gloved hands lifted, as her arms crossed, the digits now gripping each arm, as they folded together, against the fabric of her uniform. Her vision picked up on all the shards around, marking hers on the minimap that was overlaid onto her vision, part of her HUD, which also monitored her systems, and people around. A scan confirmed that wherever here was, it wasn't within range of a relay terminal. Indicating that odds were this was another dimension. Though that had already been considered with the loss of communication to the Treasury of the Doctor, or to the hivemind at large. The shards were likely tied to how she had been brought here, given she detected no other means of spacial or reality warping. In other words, some sort of summoning system, which could get past normal means of guarding against space manipulation. She could only assume that her siblings, all several billions of them were hard at work trying to figure out what happened. It was likely then that the Doctor would be preparing an investigation to locate her, and reestablish the hivemind link. As the first Rockroid, she had known what it was like before the hivemind had grown up, so she accepted this separation. She scanned her space again, spotting at least two bio-data signatures, but neither were given a copy, as Stella didn't want to risk running into anyone who could counter such, yet.

But finally, the silent being turned her attention to whoever seemed to be in charge of the space, and made eye contact if possible without moving from her spot. But if needed, she'd move to a point where she could address the other easily. "You, explain. Present location, and reason for being summoned here. Your identity as well." Her tone was direct, and held no pleasantries, all business. It could have been taken rudely, but one couldn't blame the advanced lifeform, this was the routine when in new areas where no information was given instantly.

Cosmos stood a little ways away from the door to the North Wings hallway. She had been standing there, waiting for the Travelers to arrive, like they were want to do, when two new mysterious visitors appeared from the Mirror Shards floating in the air. She stood ram rod straight, and bowed slightly, upon seeing a man in...wizard robes? She had remembered seeing a picture of such fancy clothing in an artbook that Coggs owned. The man even had a fancy staff that she could see him stow away in his impressive robes.

The other visitor was a rather tall, official woman in uniform. She landed gracefully on the matresses, it reminded her almost of how Shou Hanamura used to hop around the training grounds in the Old Reality. Cosmos nodded, as the woman asked in no warm voice what the fuss was about this strange new predicament they both found themselves in. The wizard asked nicer, though something told her that what she was seeing about his kind appearance was off. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but as she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, the nagging sensation of looking at a picture slightly skewed to one side crawled its way into her mind.

"Yes, I can explain all." She said, in a clear voice. She was glad the two of them seemed to be taking this so well, the last bunch had freaked out a little bit, and it took far too long to calm them all down. "My name is Cosmos, I'm the first intergalactic Agent at Paradox Agency. I am also your tour guide, as well as advisor for the upcoming Arena Royale. You two are the first to arrive at the Arena, and rooms have already been made and fit to accomodation. You will have to stay here, in this Arena until the Royale has finished, and you have won your ticket out of here. I'm afraid you can't leave immediately as of showing up, there are no doors or windows out of the Arena, and the only things awaiting you outside of these walls...is an impermeable sea of white." You have found yourselves in another dimension, trapped more or less, only known as the Inbetween. You will make camp here for however long the Royale lasts, which is upward to a month, or even more." She finished speaking.

She bowed slightly once more, it only seemed right in the situation they were in. "I cannot change your current problem...but I...am sorry that you have to participate. If it were up to me, I'd send you home with that shard in hand, but it isn't to be. So for now, the best I can do is show you to your rooms."

Stella listened, processing the information given forth with ease, making a decision swiftly. There was no going back, only forward. They were "expected" in the general sense of the word, not the two specifically, but rather travelers from other realms. The subject of the battle royale for just a moment, caused the woman's lips to quirk upwards in a strange, almost predatory like smile, before returning to their flattened state, providing the sensation that it had just been a trick of the light. She ran a subroutine, calculating time, setting up an internal clock that now appeared on her HUD, showing her the given time. Treat it like a video game, and keep moving forward.

"I see, very well then. Challenge accepted. I assume further information will be provided should it be required, with extra information accessible through the right means?" The statement could be taken as one conducting research, casual conversation, or any other manners of action. Her tone remained the same, businesslike, neutral. And yet, was that a look of strange glee that flashed in the back of the woman's eyes for a split second? None of the others could have realized, but to the Grandmaster, this place...this Inbetween, was like a buffet. A place to feast upon bio-data, that could be delivered to the Treasury upon eventually returning home. However long that took, of course. Her calmness was innate, only give up information when asked, and deemed important. She'd gather data from whatever functioned as computers in this place, process enemy data, and use it to proceed forward. No matter how many broken bodies she left in her wake...After all, a broken enemy is better than a dead one.

Cosmos blinked at their nonchalant attitude. "Um...Yes. Follow me, once you have settled into your dorms, Miss Leila will call you into the Dining pavillion for dinner, if you are hungry." She turned around to face the door, opened it, and led them all to the West Wing of the Arena. As she walked, Cosmos suddenly remembered an important detail about the Arena.

"Um! This week, the Staff will be celebrating Christmas. So...Merry Christmas." She nodded to both of them. She hoped they liked the decorations, she worked hard on the wreaths. Though the abstract santa claus art that Eris had made was a bit distracting.

Cosmos led them to their rooms, each one had a special name plate on it with their names written on it.

"If you want, you are allowed to roam the halls of the Arena, explore a little." She said. "I have other duties to attend to but..." As she spoke the words, a small slight moth shining emerald floated towards them, and landed gently on Cosmos' shoulder. "If you ever need anything, Charlotte can get it for you immediately. Simply ask her for anything, and it shall appear."
Cosmos nodded to the both of them in turn, and then walked off to prepare for the first event.

Silence had fallen after her question had been answered, at least verbally. The only sounds made were the tones consistent with boots against the types of flooring present, and the rustle of clothing as Stella followed after the two. She didn't make any sounds that one might expect from a living person, such as breathing. It wasn't that she couldn't breath, rather that there was no need for expending the unneeded energy at present. The silence reigned until Stella was shown her rooms, noting the presence of her last name upon the name plate. "Rock." It made her blink a few moments, before taking in a breath, to then let it out. Unless a keycard was given, which it presumably wasn't, Stella placed a hand on the door, and either pushed it inwards, or pulled it open, whatever way the hinges were designed. Once on the other side, with the door closed behind her, she glanced around. A simple bed, a simple desk, and a few other things, such as a dresser and presumably what was a closet(if there's anything else that's standard which I missed, I can note it later). She took in another breath, before letting it out. There was no need to breath, but it helped as she mulled things over.

Sub-routines were run, before blue light manifested in the air before her. They took the form of various shapes, mostly rectangular in appearance. These would converge, merging together to form...a cannon, blackish-blue in color, a perfect resemblance to another weapon from another world. Stella then knelt before the weapon, running a check of it, examining each part, confirming that her Rock Cannon was intact, and working fine. This would be repeated as she manifested a saber, checking it over, before finally, a motorcycle appeared, another check being run. And with a snap of her fingers, all the items vanished back into thin air. She sighed softly, reaching up a hand, to run it through her hair. She was going to remain in her quarters for the moment, but she'd go walking later, see what she could find...

As Cosmos walked, she made her way to the dining hall, where Eris was seated their feet propped up on the table yet again. Cosmos sighed, pushing their feet off. "The Travelers have arrived." She announced. Eris jumped up, dusting off their pale green jacket.

"Cool. So when do we start with the whole Arena thing? Still have no plan, you know." They told her. Cosmos just nodded.

"I know, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it." She said. "Have you got anything done recently?" Eris shrugged.

"Nope. I'm not on the Event Team, remember?" They stuck their tongue out playfully. Cosmos just rolled her eyes, slightly annoyed.

"Fine. At least the foods done, I can smell something cooking in here?" She asked. Beatrice came from the back of the small kitchen space, setting a large bubbing pot on the oak table. Cosmos scowled at that, the steam was slowly staining the wood. So much for keeping up appearances.

"We're having chicken and dumplings tonight. The Arena said so." Bee chuckled. "It was all I could find in storage, so..."

"Thats fine. I've been hankering for chicken for a few weeks now." Eris reached for the pot, but Beatrice slapped their hand away.

Cosmos shook her head, a small smile on her face. "Well I told the Travelers they could rest for a while, so we have time. Maybe I should tell them to come eat dinner?"