Disclaimer: You guys know the drill. I don't own it, I'm broke, don't sue me… blah blah blah. I don't know why I keep writing disclaimers, cause everyone knows none of its mine. I think it might be because I like rambling at you people.

Author's Note: Woohoo! Second chapter! Yay! But seriously, what will happen to our beloved JenJen? Who the hell grabbed her? Has she really gone bonkers? Is she going to die? Read an find out…

*   *   *

Chapter One

When Jenny had asked Audrey, Michael and Summer whether or not they would like to go skydiving with her, Michael said something along the lines of, "I didn't survive the Shadow World to die from a faulty parachute cord! No way!" Audrey merely thought she was joking, but then she realized that Jenny wasn't. Audrey declined a little too fast for her excuse to be plausible. Summer, eyes wide, blatantly refused.

One would think that Audrey, Michael and Summer would have gotten used to Jenny going off to go so something the old Jenny would have quaked at the thought of doing. The old Jenny, or Jenny version 1.0, would have sat quietly at home, writing or studying, while Jenny version 2.0 doesn't care much for idleness. A strange recklessness and restlessness has come over her as of late, like a very bad case of ADHD. Only not. She can never go a week without going after something new.

Jenny then posed the question to Dee and Tom. Dee was practically out the door and on the plane before she finished asking the question. Tom, his hazel eyes dancing, dipped her low to the ground and gave her a big wet one right on the lips. Afterwards, he accepted, a smug smile on his face. Tom had become much more demonstrative since their stint in the Shadow World as the group of humans that didn't know the meaning of the word "stupid."

Jenny knew for a fact that Tom still had nightmares, but he never admitted them to anyone else but her. She knew that he sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, thrashing around, tangled up in the bedclothes, breathing as if he just finished a marathon. He would then call her, regardless of the time, just to hear the sound of her voice, however irritated and groggy. She would then hurry over, bearing a large thermos of brandy-laced hot chocolate, and attempt to calm him down enough to sleep. When the booze didn't work, Jenny often had to sing him lullabies to get him sleepy enough to drift back to dream – and hopefully not nightmare – land. Some nights, he was so shaken; all she could do was hold him. And some nights, that's all both of them wanted.

Jenny never told anyone that she still had nightmares about the whole ordeal. Nope, not even Tom. No one needed to know, simple as that. But despite all her attempts to quell the nightmares, blue eyes and shadows and icy doorframes still haunted the depths of her mind. But no one needed to know that. She felt like she was five all over again, in the aftermath of the whole basement business. She remembered her grandfather being sucked in by icy tendrils and bony, fleshless hands, dragged into the ice and the swirling darkness in the basement closet.

The others seemed to be holding up relatively well. But then again, they've had five years and college between them and the Games. Real life is here, we have our own lives to live, and high school is long gone, Jenny had thought, as a sort of mental shield against the nightmares and what she knew they meant. Whenever the nightmares claimed her sleep at night, she would wake up, a scream on her lips, feeling like she were sixteen again, and in the midst of the second Game. But then rational thought came back to her, and she remembered that she had graduated from Carnegie Melon as valedictorian and Phi Beta Kappa, plus various other honors, and had her own condo in southern California, a scant five miles from the beach, a pet goldfish with the wonderful name of Jim and a little black kitten named Socks. The rest of the gang all came and hung out at her place during their vacation time from their various jobs. Jenny herself had started her own chapter of Big Brother Big Sister in her area, and owned a local arts supply store. Pretty good for a girl fresh out of college and no overgraduate degree. In a few years, she was planning on going to graduate school, and then off to see the world. That is, once she made enough money. And according to Michael, who was never very happy about her always tearing off after some new interest, she would be a lot closer to her goal if she didn't go and blow half her income multiple times a month.

Jenny knew there were many reasons for her recent fascination with extreme sports and thrills, and a few of them she wouldn't tell anyone. Ever. Since no one knew about the nightmares, she couldn't tell them that if she were dead tired every night before she went to sleep, she would sleep more deeply and the nightmares would subside. She had a feeling Tom was catching on to her theory, as he joined her more and more frequently on her jaunts. Even though he thought it was because of precisely the reason she told everyone: She was alive, and not being picked apart by Monkey-Man and Crocodile-Lips for all eternity, so she had every right to live as much as possible in the time given to her.

But then, she went parachuting, and that time seemed a lot shorter then last she checked.

The arms around her were warm and solid, vaguely familiar, and covered in the rayon and polyester skydiving suit. She clung to the hands wrapped almost painfully close around her midsection, trying to draw herself into them to keep from being best friends with the pavement that was getting much too close. A sharp tug and a harsh zipping noise rang through her body, and distantly she recognized the release of the emergency parachute, the cords and vast dome of life-saving fabric stretched as it filled with air, and then she was drifting, the tatters of her own parachute falling down below them.

Even though she now wasn't hurtling to the ground like an over-sized rock being pitched over the edge of a canyon, she was still going much too fast, because their combined weight of both her and her unknown savior. But it didn't matter much, seeing as how the ground was leaping at her from less then a hundred feet. She couldn't turn her head enough to get a good look at their concealed face, and the arms and hands were covered in the sleeves of a black diving suit and a pair of metallic-looking blackish silver Gore-Tex gloves.

It came as a shock to her when the ground suddenly appeared beneath her feet, and the arms slowly slid from around her waist, as if afraid to let go, afraid she might still keep on falling, even though both of her feet were planted, if not firmly, on the ground, and landing crew lackeys running around panicking, as of they weren't programmed to deal with someone having their parachutes break, and then the emergency cord snap in half.

As soon as the arms left her, she crumpled to the ground in a heap. Hell, she had a good enough excuse, because if almost being a road waffle from ten thousand feet up isn't a good enough excuse, no one ever had the right to collapse. The figure crouched down beside her, the ground crew still scurrying around, bringing her blankets and such, trying to herd her into the truck so she could warm up and they could get her checked over for shock, but she wanted to wait for her two airborne companions.

When the figure lifted the large mirrored goggles, Jenny gasped.

*   *   *

Author's Note: MUHAHAHAH!!!! I just *love* cliffhangers!!! They make me feel in control…

Thank you my wonderful reviewers!!!

Oh, and Lotus, I know. I gave up on Forbidden Dreams. It just started to piss me off. I mean, that was last updated, when? January? And I mean, come on! She broke down over a frickin' *Post-It Note!* Oi. I might revamp it if I ever get off my duff and actually read it over again.

See you in Chapter Two!!