"Gnite!" Jake says before returning home.

---

Lucky's eyes go wide.  "Wow!  Neat!  I've never heard a story like this before!"

*Fast forward*

The next day comes and Antoinette is standing next to Jake's bed, staring at him. Not an uncommon occurrence as Jake knows it's just something she does once in a while. "Good morning." she says softly.

---

Lucky wakes up the next morning to find Shina's tail is flopped over his neck. Some boy's foot is at Lucky's chest, and Liberty's face is right in front of Lucky's though upside-down.

Jake gives a sleepy smile, yawns, stretches, and waves at his lil sis.  "Mornin.  Let's sneak out as soon as possible."

He gets dressed and ready to head out.

---

Lucky's heart is so full of happy, hopeful, family love, he could just burst!  He lays there a few moments basking in the warmth of his new friends, wishing the moment to never end, but he begins to worry about the group being discovered so he decides to wake everyon... gently.  He begins purring and rubs his cheek against Shina's tail.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:44, Wed 26 Oct 2011.

The various kids wake up as Lucky wakes them (Oh the randomness). They all have messy hair and frazzled looks, but are all smiling. Even Liberty gives a tired smile as she wakes up.

Eli looks around, then at some odd magical sundial that seems to be giving time as if the sun were hitting it. But nobody is sure what light is casting the shadow or how the sun is in the room. The room isn't bright as the outdoors either. Odd device. Eli says, "Good morning. We need to get to making this place invisible..."

"Neat sundial, Eli," Lucky says with a smile and tail-wag, "Sounds like a good plan.  What can I do to help?  I have no idea how to make a place invisible."

Eli says, "We need to gather twigs and brush from around the area." he goes outside and immediately gets everyone to work on gathering the brush to the entrance of the cave.

Meanwhile, back at the estate, Antoinette says, "We need to distract people from looking at the woods."

"Aye-aye, Cap'm!" Lucky answers with a salute and a smile.

He hurries to help out with the others.

Jake skews his lips.

"Well I could pull a prank involving Robbie pretending to be a suicide jumper," he suggests, "That'd be pretty distracting.  What did you have in mind?"

Antoinette says, "We could pretend we're poor orphans and make them look for us. Then when they find us, tell them we are nobles. Miranda could do this too."

"That sounds like a better plan," Jake says, "Let's do that!"

He takes his sister's hand and goes looking for Miranda.

Miranda is found easily enough. She notices Jake coming and nods to him. "Jake." she says in acknowledgement. When Jake reveals the plan, she agrees to it and soon wears a cloak over herself.

Jake lifts his hand and gets himself and his sis a disguise as well.  He then does his best impersonation of a poor orphan and grins at the girls.

Antoinette does a good peasant impersonation as she tends to stare off blankly. Just change her clothes, let her hair down and tada! Although she had to get dirty and stuff. Speaking of, Miranda has a hooded cloak and a grease smear on her cheek and a smile, doing a good Raven impersonation.

The plan is a success. Most people are fooled. But it's also insightful... Jake and Antoinette get to spend a day in the shoes of peasant children. Most grownups, even peasant grownups, treat them poorly. Some bark at them for merely existing. Others ignore them. Others put them down when they try to play. Still others expect the kids to do absolutely anything they tell them. Any act of defiance is met with a smack to the face.

It sucks to be a peasant child.

Miranda seems oddly unphased by it. Antoinette cries often.

Jake starts with a big smile at how cute the two girls are but before long his smile turns upside-down as his romanticized fantasies about the freedom and fun that peasant children enjoy are crushed.  Sure, he had no illusions about mistreatment of slave children by their masters or peasants by the wealthy, but he had guessed that peasants at least treated each other with love and respect.  Maybe he got that impression because peasants and servants are on their best behavior when rich folk are around.

He sure isn't used to being bossed around or reprimanded by total strangers for minding his own business.  As angry as he is for being mistreated, he's even more angry that his sister is.  He keeps himself from using his magic or his blade on these insolent beggars because... well..  for one, he's a kid... not a Maverick with ice in his veins; and for another, the orphans are counting on him to be a diversion.  So he winds up crying right along with his lil sis.

The "poor orphan" ruse manages to fool and hold off the bad guys for several hours, but soon enough, Jake and Ant's caretakers find them. The down side? The ruse is over. The upside? This happens JUST as the orphanage slavers were about to take the kids for a serious beating due to not believing they were nobles.

The even better side? The slavers get taken to jail to be flogged for intent to harm a noble. Sometimes stupid justice done purely on "I'm bigger and you ticked me off" comes back to bite practitioners of the same justice.

Antoinette is either unaware these people are being punished for something they didn't do, or she figures they are getting punished for treating kids badly. Which... is technically true. Either way, as usual, the caretakers shelter Antoinette from seeing said flogging since they know she'll cry and throw a fit otherwise. Jake, however, they permit to see it if he wants. Miranda too.

Jake is more focused on comforting his lil sis than seeing ironic poetic justice executed.  Besides... even as angry as he is at the nimrods... he feels guilty when someone gets punished on his account.  On that note, he approaches the family servants responsible for making sure this sort of thing doesn't happen to him and Antoinette.

"It goes without saying that Mom and Dad will be furious if they find out about this.  I'm guessing they're liable to replace the entire staff...  if they find out.  I don't hold any grudges against any of you and I don't want any of you to lose your jobs.  So Mom and Dad don't have to find out.  But I'll tell you why this happened..."

He explains about the escape of the mistreated slave orphans and the diversion plan.

"So right now they're scared and hungry and homeless.  I need help figuring out what can be done for them.  Any ideas?"

The men ponder a bit. One says, "Nothing says you can't tell your parents that you *heard* about poor, starving orphans who hated that place so bad they ran away from it, risking death. After all, your sister is the sort to learn of these things. If your parents know of this much... perhaps they can help."

Jake rubs his leg.

"At best they'll claim they're too busy or can't afford to help.  At worst they'll ask Ant for the details and she'll let the cat out of the bag.  But nothing ventured nothing gained, I suppose..."

One of the men facepalms. "Well.. can't you keep your sister from blowing the whistle?"

Antoinette says, "Let's visit them." and starts walking off.

"I could try and reason with her...  erm...  well it looks like it's time to go check on the...  Hold on, Ant!  They probably need food and water.  Let's not go empty handed, ok?"

He rushes to catch up with her to take her hand so she doesn't wander off.

Meanwhile, back at the cave, the children have gathered an impressive amount of foliage, but it's FAR from being enough to cover the entrance. "I'll do what I can with this... it's a temporary fix, but with people looking for us, we will need it..."

He begins casting a spell of some kind and the runes he had drawn around the entrance glow briefly before vanishing. "There. Now when we here people coming, we all huddle into the cave and when I say the magic word, the foliage we gathered will become a camouflaged wall."

Lucky of course helps out as best he can with the gathering of the foliage.  He gives a bright smile at Eli's magic.

"Wow!  Neat!  We sure are fortunate to have you helping us.  Thanks so much!"

He'll give Eli a big hug if it looks like he'll let him.  If not, he'll give a grateful bow.

Lucky and Eli hear some people approaching. So Eli goes inside the cave and motions the others to go in with. He activates the spell and the foliage pops up, covering the mouth of the cave.

Upon arriving, Jake and company see the cave that USED to have a mouth, now has a large growth of vines and dense leaves in place. The mouth of the cave can't be seen, although many children's tracks can be.

Lucky holds his breath, wondering of they've been found or if the nice rich kids are back.  Jake has kept as quiet as he can lest he accidentally give away the slave kids' location.  When he sees the footprints he lets out a sigh of relief.  No adult footprints is a good sign.

"Hey everyone!" he whispers, "It's me!  Jake!  I brought food and water!"

Eli says another magic word and the bramble collapses back into its original form. "Hi Jake! It's so good to see you. We're famished... you brought adults?"