Dreamland.

Scientificly, a dream isn't a reality, it is a mixture of your emotions down to the tiniest little bit of feeling you get when you think about something. A dream is based on what you've seen, heard, or read that day, nothing more. It's not a clear message, it's a fuzzy little bit of colors and images mashed up together for your personal enjoyment, and nothing more. Dreams are made up of your imagination, and nothing more. They're not real and just because you see something in a dream does not mean it's going to happen. Dreams are a combination of wishes and imagination, and nothing more. No real facts, no real logic, nothing from the real world. You can be whatever you want to be, whomever you want to be like, whenever you want to, and nothing more. In dreams, fantasy becomes a realality and you can't tell your dream from the real world around you. A dream is a dream, and nothing more. Unless you're a demigod.

Poppy never had dreams when she slept, mostly just black with a few maniacle laughs in the distance. Nothing like most normal people, she hardly ever slept in the Rosely's attic anyway, the only place to sleep was on the floor, in a corner, on top of a shoebox. Not exactly like the beds here at camp. That was one of the great things about coming to camp, she had been claimed on her first day, gotten to go straight to the Nemesis cabin only to find the lovely surprise that it was unocupied. She had her pick of a dresser, bed, and the tiny bathroom in the back to herself. Yet, with all these great things going on, she couldn't help but feel like their was something missing, something that had to do with her past. All she knew was that her mother was Nemesis and her father was last seen somewhere in America. She had grown up with her aunt and uncle Rosely, all they knew was that her parents left her in London and moved to America, only to be seen in pictures in all of the hotest clubs. Poppy now knew that was a lie because her mother was a goddess, but it still hurt not to know her father and to have had her only known family lie to her about something so personal.

Of course, tonight was different, tonight, in the back of her mind, there was something there. It was almost like her mind was trying to tell her something, decifer something that she couldn't. And suddenly, amidst the blackness and fog in her mind, she saw something, well, someone. It was a boy, around seventeen or eighteen, with dirty blonde hair. Poppy wasn't sure why she had thought of him at all since she didn't know anyone like that, but her mind still continued to wonder. She saw the boy running on the streets with four or five other people, she couldn't tell since it was already blurry enough. She couldn't tell what they were doing anymore, but they had stopped running. The boy pulled out something that almost looked like a sword and started swinging it through the air, obvioiusly like a type of practice. Poppy had to admit, despite the fact that this person wasn't real, he had skills.

Suddenly everything faded to black and a new scene came up. It was the same boy from the other scene, but this time he looked younger, a little younger then Poppy to be exact. He was there with a little boy and girl. On the other side of the street there was a grown man, and the boy pulled out a sword and hacked it into the side of the guys head. The man colapsed, bleeding, and laid on the ground, twitching. Poppy thought the little boy would leave, but instead he raised up his sword, and slashed it into the man's side, he let out a scream of terror, and Poppy woke up. The scream was still ringing in her ears as she wondered who the boy was and why she was dreaming about him.

Poppy didn't know anything about her past, but this boy could be a part of it. She knew her father lived in America when he met her mother. He must've been a pretty clever man with a lot of stree-smarts to make the goddess of Revenge fall for him. She wanted to know more about him and her other family, she must have other realatives besides her horrid aunt and unlce, right?

((This is trip into Poppy's dreams that help her learn, little by little, about Meatcleaver and Clove.))

((PG13 due to a nice amount of violence (and gore)))

Meatcleaver had been sleeping uneasy ever since little Daggerdeath had left. He had admitted he missed the girl, after his pack forced him to. Well, Glamour did but that wasn't really the point. The point was that he'd been dreaming about some random girl he didn't know and it frustrated Meatcleaver, not to mention it drove Johnnyboy crazy, as the constant torture annoyed him. This night was just the same as every other night with the dreams. The moment he knew that, his anger flared and he knew he'd need to release it the next day.

Meatcleaver was back on the deserted street again, Johnnyboys sword in hand and silently moving toward the man who had killed his father. Rather than the mindless rage Meatcleaver usually felt when he harmed people, a cold calm was over him. His rage made him stronger and his mind was clearer. This was the time for his revenge. Meatcleaver grabbed the sword and once again, never with regret, he opened the mans head, through his skull and his brain. As the blood, mixed with braincells flowed out of the mans head and his dead eyes stared at Meatcleaver, his insides cheered with joy yet he wasn't fully satisfied. Once again he swung his sword, mutilating the man beyond recognision in his dying moments. He howled at the sky in happiness as the man took his last breath. Meatcleaver looked at his two friends but noticed a girl standing near who hadn't been there in his memories. He walked up to her but she faded as the dream changed.

He was older, running along the streets with Glamour, Johnnyboy, Brawler and Curly. With a stab of pain in his own heart he looked at the little boy. Yet he knew had had to live up the memory, as he always did. They were running along, taunting as they went. They laughed and Glamour was shooting windows with her bow, just for the fun of it. Meatcleaver was showing his skill with the sword, stabbing and slashing invisible opponents. Brawler just ran along, laughing at the sillyness of the group while protecting the young boy. Johnnyboy was working his speak like a gladiator and the little group was happy. It was an old memory, before everything had changed. Before Curly had died and Brawler had shut herself away from them. Yet something was different, the young girl was there again, the one he had seen before.

Meatcleaver stopped the look at her. She was no older than twelve at best, yet it was obvious she already knew things that you only learned in the streets. She reminded him of his father, who had often had the same expression as that little girl. Meatcleaver walked towards the girl. "Who are you?" He demanded but his dream faded into nothingness again to change into an abandoned room with a single chair in it. Peter was tied to it and Meatcleaver felt the anger of revenge, calm, cold and calculating. Brawler was there, her eyes no longer full of tears but her expression hard and cold. They were all young but cruel and lethal far beyond their years. Meatcleaver walked up to Brawler and handed her a knife, wickedly sharp with a curved blade. The hilt was build from dragons with ruby eyes and a saphire sat between the dragons, at the center of the hilt, where the blade started. The pummel was a large oval moonstone. Brawler took it and as Meatcleaver left, he already heard the screams from the boy who had led Curly to his death.

The scene changed again as Brawler returned the knife to him. "Keep it. I don't want to carry it with me. Or if you will, give it to a girl who can handle her knives." Meatcleaver had nodded and taken the knife back, which he had given to Daggerdeath on her birthday, less than a year after that event. Yet in his dream he just stared at the knife, it's beauty marred by all the blood from the boy. No wonder Brawler hadn't wanted to keep it. Meatcleaver washed and cleaned it, keeping it close but each and every person who had known Curly, would not bear to see it, as none of them had any proper skills with a knife. The rich blade would belong to somebody else soon enough, but not now. Now it needed to be hidden and safe, waiting for an owner who would care for it.

Meatcleaver awoke in a start, waking a rather groggy Glamour. "What was that all about?" She asked. Meatcleaver shook his head. "Nothing. Just a dream about Daggerdeath." He lied. He had plenty of those and so did the others. They wondered how she was, if she was still okay or if she had died on her own but nobody dared to say it. "Is she alive?" Glamour asked, the only one who did dare voice those things, although she hardly ever did it. "I'm not sure but if she is dead, I will kill the one who took her life, no matter how long the hunt takes." Meatcleaver vowed and Glamour nodded and went back to sleep. Meatcleaver himself went over to Johnnyboy and took up the guard so that he could sleep, constantly wondering what the connection between him and the little girl in his dreams was...

((Yes, that is Clove's favorite knife!! How nice of you to notice. ))

Poppy slowly climbed back into her bed. After a long day of hard work at camp, she could hardly stand up, but as good as the bed felt to her, she wasn't in much of a hurry to fall asleep. The dreams were becoming more like nightmares now, with the scenes they displayed to her each time. She couldn't help but wonder if this was just a dream, or if somewhere, kids actuallly lived like this. She had seen them stealing which, by her standards, was totaly fine, but then were was the R-rated stuff. The kids got into fights with random people that, most of the time, ended in death. Poppy knew how to fight and how to kill, but she never did it as often as these kids did.

When she was on the streets, her best friend was silence. She used it to dogde the shopkeepers eyes, and reach into their pockets for money, and sometimes she woould just run in and out of the stores, alarms blaring, but no one would suspect a little girl. For those days with old favorites, she sharpened her knives before dashing in. They already knew her face from before, so innocence wasn't really her best option. It was better to use speed, just run in, grab whatever she needed, and run out. If she met any trouble in the process, reasoning wasn't an option either since all they would do was call the cops. She would pull out a knife and drag it across there arm as she past. Most of the time it caught skin but, nothing too severe. In other cases when she would have a run-in with the cops, she would take out a knife and throw it at their feet while she was running. Just enough to slow them down, and then later she'd go steal a new knife from some random stranger. Most other street kids would kill to have the throwing accuracy she had, and then use it to aim for the head or heart or something more killer then a foot, but Poppy wasn't there to kill unless necissary. She was there for her own personal enjoyment and the thrill of the streets.

That was what really drove her out of London, it was getting more and more dangerous as more and more people knew her name and face. She wasn't comfletely alone though, she did have Cody to help her stay low when it came to stealing the most essencial things. It worked for a while too, and Poppy actually thought things might get better when they left London for America, but then Cody died. That was when her rage came over her and she trusted no one. She no longer aimed to miss, she started aiming to kill. It was her old life and, even though she missed it, camp life was good too. There was a thrill training to kill monsters, and she even made a friend who wasn't all that different from her.

She sighed and turned over onto her side as she shut her gray eyes, maybe tonight would be different and there wouldn't be any nightmares, but considering how long they'd been going on, she doubted it. The scene quickly shuffled as she fell asleep. The boy she had been seeing was there again, talking to someone who looked a little familiar, but the face was so blurry she couldn't tell. He smiled and pulled something out from behind his back, it looked like a knife, much more sharp then any that Poppy had. She had always wanted to learn how to sharpen to the wicked points, but was never able to. Cody probably could've taught her if he wasn't....

She pushed the thought aside and turned her attention back to the scene she was now watching. The boy running down the streets with, again, four other people. They all looked like they were having fun and were happy, which was strange considering some of the other scenes she had seen including these people. They didn't seem like the happy type of people, more like the evil, dark, kind of people, but hey, never judge a book by its cover because, if they're like these kids, they have lots and lots of different volumes to read. Suddenly everything just stopped and her mind seemed to zoom in on his face, there was a name echoing in the back of her mind, but she couldn't hear enough to understand it. Suddenly she heard a scream and joltted up in bed, only to be greeted by darkness of the night and the unanswered question that still lingered in the back of her mind, who was he and why was she dreaming about him?

Meatcleaver was still laughing about all that happened as they went up into the attic they had started to occupy. The blood on his clothes had started to dry and the others were washing up. Meatcleaver didn't feel like bothering with it. The shirt would probably get burned in the morning while cooking dinner. He lay on the hard floor staring at the roof for a moment. He wasn't too tired yet and his gang wasn't with him yet. It was Glamours turn to guard and so she wouldn't bother him if he slept. When he heard Brawler and Johnnyboy come up the stairs and laying down for the night, Meatcleaver closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

He was suddenly in a place he didn't know but since he saw what looked like the Big Ben, he presumed it was London. Why was he in London? He'd never been there and had no interest in going there. He looked down the street and saw the girl chased by the cops, throwing knives at their feet to slow them down. She obviously wasn't like him. He would have aimed higher, not really bothered if one of them got hurt or killed. Actually, he would like it. He looked at the girl, she seemed young here, very young. Perhaps now that she was older, she had changed and dared to hurt people. There was still hope.

The scene changed and they were in America, somewhere. Meatcleaver had been there, he just didn't remember the exact location as he'd been nearly everywhere and never stayed anywhere long enough to get used to the place. Yet the girl was older and there was a change about her that Meatcleaver knew all too well. She'd cared about somebody and lost them. A short pang of pity quickly made way for interest as the girl aimed to kill. Now that was somebody who he could accept. He smiled as he watched the girl, knowing she would escape. He watched for a small while longer untill the dream changed yet again.

This time, it was a recent memory. They were prowling the streets, Brawler, Glamour and Johnnyboy were with him. Daggerdeath was gone and they missed her. Meatcleaved had spotted a girl they had all taken interest in. A teen girl with red hair, a dodgy figure that was so obvious in her sneaking they had looked at each other, exchanging grins of wickedness. Like hungry wild animals, they had stalked their prey. When the girl noticed she was being followed, she'd run. They had chased him, laughing as they went. When she, in his terror, was stuck they had gotten close. The girl had begged them not to hurt her but Meatcleaver had handed Glamour the wicked mace they carried with them. Glamour had taken the honours of the first cut, after Brawler had hit the girl onto the floor. Johnnybot had offered to let them take the kill and was just laughing at the girl as she faced death. Meatcleaver had taken care of the final killing blow. Her blood still covered his clothes.

Now this might seem cruel but Meatcleaver had seen this girl before. Unlike popular belief, the girl wasn't innocent. She had killed, every part of her being screamed it and so they had chosen to clean her up. It was strange that they chose to hurt the innocent while they only killed the so called criminals. Members from other gangs were usually the top of their list. Musing, he'd stood there, in front of the dead girl. "Meatcleaver!" Johnnyboy yelled as the sirens started getting closer. They had run so that she could get cleaned up. They had enjoyed a nice evening, drinking a few beers, toasting for Daggerdeath's health and to their latest kill.

He looked up, his beer bottle in hand and saw the little girl. A shadowy figure lingered behind her. Meatcleaver stood up and the figure stepped from the shadows, pressing her index finger against her lips, gesturing for his silence. She put her hand on the shoulder of the young girl and smiled at him, her brown eyes twinkling in the dim light of the evening. "Daggerdeath." He said in a scared tone but she just smiled and disappeared, leaving the little girl behind.

Meatcleaver woke up, sitting straight up and looking around in a panic. She'd been there with the girl. What did it mean? What was the connection between him and this girl. What did Daggerdeath have to do with it? His sword was in his hand as he sat on the staircase that led to the attic. The little girl reminded him of his father and he turned his head to the ceiling. "Dad." He said. "Who is she?"