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BEYOND THE SHADOW YOU SETTLE FOR ❅ PART 1
BEYOND THE SHADOW YOU SETTLE FOR
Finding the facility after they know to look was never going to be the problem. Not with the resources and Guardians at their disposal. It was always knowing to look at all. There were rumors of some mysterious entity capturing myths, possibly even human-related, but no specifics.
Now that they know for sure, the place is found through various magical and scientific means.
As they hide around the periphery of the facility, made to look like an unassuming office building on the top level, Jack talks to them all over the comms.
"I hate that we're going in blind when it comes to the underlevels but I don't think there's any way we can find out what's in there - and we don't have time to try. They could've been found out and for all we know, the people in charge will move locations make the facility disappear."
Or kill the three people they promised they'd help, including a kid.
"So just be ready to adapt. Be ready for a fight including against humans, probably with guns. If they can see other myths, they can see us. If we get split up and the comms don't work for whatever reason, instead of looking for each other, just free any imprisoned myths you can and incapacitate any resistance in whatever ways seem appropriate. Use all the spare snow globes to teleport myths out."
The yetis had gathered all of the very smallest snowglobes so that they can all carry more of them. The marble-sized micro-globes can take months to build. This will clean out a solid year's supply in one go.
"If you start facing some heat and get overwhelmed, hit your panic buttons. If it's too much, just portal out. We can only do what we can do."
The information the tech nerds to pull on the place means they know some important things: location, plans for the upper floors, locations of breaker boxes, location of where the building connects to the power grid.
Jack crowdsourced ideas on how to approach. Stacia's idea of tossing roadkill into the main breaker is unconventional but it works and the quick power outage means they'll be scrambling for a bit, giving them time before they realize the power station's guards were knocked out and bound.
Nightwing manages to clock where the cameras are and disable them.
Tim and Branch's ability to infiltrate the vents while tiny is a boon. It's easier to maneuver and avoid tripping traps, letting them dismantle them first. It takes some doing but they find their way past the boundary to the underlevels. The elevator down is a bit of a bottle neck but the both that and the largest vent shafts are a way down.
Disabling security sensors is easy. Thwarting some of the magical defense (how do they have magic to use for traps??) is more complicated.
The basic alarms and traps are one thing but the second they manage to slip in to a fairly large warehouse-sized room everything goes to hell. All of a sudden, there's the sound of clanking and and grinding gears. Walls shift, turn, and flip, floor panels rotate and tilt. The entire area shifts and reassembles itself ins short order, quickly separating everyone, as if the facility is one giant clockwork machine.
Now divided into pairs and trios, they all find themselves split up in dangerous trapped rooms meant to slow them down.
Don't worry, though, it's only forever that they might be in there, not long at all.
❅ Format: The mod will be using prose because there will be a lot of description of traps and responses.
❅ NPCing: This part of the plot will have mod npcing. If you can, please try to tag at least about once a day to your respective threads so the mod can try to block out some semi-predictable time for npc tags. The mod will not comment in after every tag around, since characters may need to discuss things. Instead, the mod will comment in when IC actions are taken manipulating the environment.
❅ Environment: The entire point of this is to attempt to manipulate the environment to get around the traps. Players are encouraged to either have character ICly communicate with each other to figure out each course of action, or to communicate oocly to plan it. Questions to the mod can be asked in the question comment or to the mod plurk about the plot if you want more real-time communication. The mod will answer what questions they can, such as providing more description, or letting players know if a part of the environment can be manipulated, but will not reveal the consequence of a course of action until it is ICly taken.
❅ Status effects: The traps will be dangerous and potentially cause magical status effects or injury. This will be an unavoidable consequence and a requirement of participating in the plot. Before inflicting any effects, though, the mod will tell the players what's about to happen and make sure a slight variation isn't necessary for ooc comfort reasons.
❅ Long-term effects: Players who go with some kind of status effect for a character can optionally have long-term consequences from it if they like. A lot of this has magical and has the capacity to cause long-term damage and scarring.
❅ Resources: Elle will be their man in the chair acting as a coordinator for the mission on the games. Players can handwave that important information was conveyed to or from Elle.
Mini-globes: Mini snow globes the size of marbles will have been given to everyone to use to transport myths out as well as emergency transport to the Pole. For those who don't carry storage with their normal outfits, they'll have been given fanny packs to carry them.
Devices: Courtesy of Miguel, there are mini bombs; spy bots that can fly and scout ahead, transmitting video to their comms; and elemental handheld devices can use to cause localized effects of extreme freeze or extreme heat. The latter is hot enough to melt the door looks to the thick cell doors.
Magic crystals: These can float over the hand to guide the Guardians towards other myths, as well as provide the location of their home habitats so Guardians can tell the snowglobes to right location to transport them home.
no subject
Right now though...Puss is a cat. With a cat's brain. Bright lights, diodes, lots of tiny shinies to catch his attention...it's a lot. And it changes over time too! Really seems almost tailor made Puss's eyes are wide and his head is darting slightly from side, trying to follow it all.
Then he hears the footsteps of a god knows what outside. Perfect. He's prey. Again.]
Oh...yeah. Sure. Uh...do these symbols look like anything to you?
[Puss isn't really a puzzle guy and the life of a roaming hero doesn't lead to much academic knowledge. Really, he's striking out in this room badly. Hopefully his companion doesn't see how badly.]
no subject
There is the hint of a voice under the sound, calling something out, but it's hard to hear.
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[ Floor, growl, shake, screech. Floor, growl, shake, screech. Floor, growl, shake, screech. Tim is playing playing Simon in 3D for unknown stakes. Every time the mantra repeats, his hand ticks towards something that lit up, although he's a little shaky the exact items that light up on growl and shake.
He puts his back beside the door so he can see as much as possible. ]
You watch this wall's changes and tell me if those incredible feline ears heard something else under that screech.
[ Floor, growl, shake, screech. ]
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There's something to this...
[He bounds over to the wall, pressing himself up against it trying to follow the sound.]
Someone is speaking, I think, but it's like the poor fellow is delivering his speech through a mouthful of dirt.
[Sniff sniff. Mouth open, get that scent in as best he can.]
Smells like a bit like dirt too, in fact.
no subject
Κασσάνδρα
It looks as if it was scrawled there by someone's hand, gouged into the floor.
The green-dirt smell is stronger. In fact, Puss will smell some of the smell from the scrawl itself. There are the faintest traces of something wooden.
They only have seconds before it will potentially disappear again.
no subject
Cassandra.
[ Tim was going to say something about the smell (which flits around the back of his nostril familiarly, but he can't place it), or the noises, as the room slides and shifts around.
Then the floor revealed the scrawl, and Tim forgets all of that. Ignores Puss, too, and flings himself toward the name before the room can move again. Batarang in hand, he scratches Timothy with a pointy R inscribed in the circle beneath the other name, just in case a shift sends this bit of floor back to Cassandra, and gouges a line through the άνδρα, snatching up any filings for later analysis (if there is a later beyond the next 15 seconds). He adds an "/ie?" to the end. ]
I know two Cassandras. If they're here - I'm not leaving until I know who wrote that.
no subject
[Puss nods his head and clenches his paw into a fist over his heart. It's a promise that doesn't have the option of being anything else. Puss doesn't leave people who don't really deserve it in distress.]
The smell seems to be stronger here. I wonder if...
[He sticks his nose in the fresh scratches and inhales. He's looking for fresh air, or at least less stale air than what's in this room. Different air. Anything to indicate it's coming from somewhere other than here.]
no subject
Κασσάνδρα
There is no fresh air coming from anywhere. Puss's nose will be strong enough to tell him that the smell is just a particularly potent trace scent, as if something that smelled of dirt and wood and green life gouged itself into the floor.
Up close, it'll finally cue up something familiar: the smell of the Talking Trees from back home.
Ten seconds left.
And suddenly, with the count at twelve (which the two of them already passed, they're at ten now) the door to the room bursts open, armed thugs with rifles cram into the doorway, they open fire -
There is a scream that isn't theirs -
And just as quickly the vision is gone. It was just a vision. The door to the trap room is still closed. There are no soldiers.
Nine seconds. The metallic screeching in the walls is almost deafening for a moment. Only a cat's ears might catch that the voice spoke again during it, even if the words were a nonsensical garble.
no subject
Something like Poison Ivy. Something like the Swamp Thing - something green and wild and dirty -
The clock is at 12 - wrong, floor, growl, shake, screech, dirt, shift, Κασσάνδρα, Timothy, Κασσάνδρα, the smell - and Tim is flinging two batarangs at the assailants with one hand, running in and pulling up short when the batarangs hit the wall.
Screech again. Floor, growl, shake, screech, shift, Κασσάνδρα, Timothy, Κασσάνδρα, the smell/guns, screech? Same screech? Loop? ]
You saw that too, right? Guards with automatic rifles. Someone screamed.
no subject
[And Tim will be able to tell that he saw it all, because Puss drew his sword and lunged towards his assailants.
Directly into the big reset button. Puss's hat repositions on his head as if his ears were flattening back in annoyance with himself.]
In my defense, it seemed quite real.
no subject
19.
Screeching again.
18.
The sound of claws on metal.
It's almost random.
The words scrawl on the floor again, but the writing is subtly different. By the same hand, but it's as if they're actively there writing it. Now there's a chill to the air. Puss, more in touch with some aspects of the metaphysical, will feel the fur on the back of his neck stand on end.
Κασσάνδρα.
The sound of gunshots, the scream. Louder now. Maybe a woman's? Not in a voice Tim recognizes, it's not Cass or Cassie's voice. It's a woman that sounds a little older, a voice that is sounds like water over stone, even as it cries out it's somewhat beautiful, unworldly.
Garbled words, but different this time.
Gunshots, a scream, and the smell of plants grows stronger. A green liquid appears from nowhere and slowly pools in a pattern Tim and Puss might potentially recognize, a strong pour ending in a slow trickle, fanning out, partially outlining a curvy shape, as if meeting resistance with an invisible solid object on the ground.
The first garbled message repeats again.
The room keeps changing at random.
Tiny flowers bloom from the pool of green liquid, as if eking out one last tiny bit of life. But then they die, and the liquid turns to ash and disappears.
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It's OK. If it was important, it would restart it, not scramble it. But look -
[ Tim gestures at the pool, when its starting to sprout flowers. ]
Is something trying to tell us how they died, or how Cassandra died?
[ Cass and Cassie aren't dead, so far as he knows, and Cassandra of myth was... stabbed? Maybe? Who reads Homer. ]
She didn't get turned into a plant. That was Narcissus.
[ Fine. He's going to try something he can manage, which is to spell out the word Cassandra on the walls' switches by matching the Greek letters. If the red button didn't blow them up, this can't be a worse option. ]
no subject
Puss only watches Tim halfheartedly, but there's something prickling at him. Something his feline senses are nagging him about.
Death, decay, plants, something screaming, shooting and violence, it all converges into the prickling of his fur and the little sensory snaps at his whiskers. There's a presence-
It's a good thing he didn't put his sword away, though the way the tip wavers ever so slightly might tell on his own nervousness. He whispers frantically:]
Tim! We're not alone!
[And then demands forcefully:]
Reveal yourself, malefactor!
no subject
But they sound sad now.
Desperate.
And the voice starts crying in between, her sobs as light as the bubbling of a spring.
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Robin and Puss: I reversed those audio clips. The first one says "do not", the second says "the button".
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[ He doesn’t get a chance to say more on than that on the subject of we’re not alone when Elle breaks in and that -
That also tracks. Tim didn’t hear the first garbled message, as it was specifically stated as being only for cat ears, but he caught some faint whisp of something on the second. ]
Anyone want to take bets on whether the missing word is push or ignore?
[ He taps the side of his mask to flip on the infrared, just covering the supernatural base at the same time. ]
The clock’s slow. The button resets to New Game plus. The switches do nothing.
[ Okay, so he said it like Rainier Wolfcastle. He’s trained for this. ]
There’s no piranhas, robot clowns, or giant pennies so Prometheus isn’t taking their security very seriously. Just let it count down to zero and stick close to me. If I’m wrong, I’ll keep you covered.
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[Ha. Jokes. Totally not worried about the specter of unknown motives in the room with them.
Also he has no idea if Tim is joking. He puts a paw on his chin in thought.]
...Piranhas, sure. Robot clowns? Out there, but, eh, workable. But giant pennies? You have a strange life, my friend.
[Like Puss is one to talk.]
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[ Tim’s money is still on don’t push it. ]
Giant pennies are normal. For a certain subset of people, something’s not worth doing unless you can do it with style. Like dropping intruders into a trap instead of a cell, or offering to flamenco on a button.
no subject
When it gets down close under five, there's even a chorus of screams, loud enough to vibrate the metal.
But through it all, the garbled voice says nothing, either because they're doing what it wants or because it knows there's no hope, thanks to the choice they've made.
3
2
1
There is a click in the door mechanism and it swings partly open. They're free.
They suddenly see a brief set of flashes. It's first-person. They see green hands and arms with skin that's a mix of soil-caked tree bark and the flesh of a succulent. Vinelike tresses of hair, covered in wilted yellow flowers, occasionally swings into the face of the person whose eyes they're seeing through. Some of the tresses have been burned and poisoned into wilting.
The nymph in the vision runs around frantically, trying switches, pushing symbols, spelling out words in the Greek letters like "open" and "escape."
She speaks to herself in Greek but through myth magic they understand it, "Think. Think. There has to be - there must some way. There must!"
As she attempts things, she hits the timer reset button over and over. At least three times.
"Artemis, help me, there must be a way! Why would all this be here?! Why would it be here when it's all useless? There must be a code or some puzzle or -"
She stops.
"It's a trick. It's a trick. They just delay me."
She stands near the timer and watches it countdown. "Faster! Please go faster!"
Far off in the distance, she finally hears boot falls. The soldiers. The humans.
"Please!"
When the count is low, she moves towards the door she heard a click the first time. A click of a lock, she realizes now. It must be that it locked and the countdown is to it unlocking. A trick to trap oneself for them, until they come for you.
6...5...4...
A different wall bursts open into an open door. Gunfire. She screams as she's mowed down, falling to the floor. Green blood pools and small flowers bloom in it and immediately start withering.
3
2
1
The escape door clicks and unlocks. She was right. It isn't the last thing she sees. The last thing she sees is one of the soldiers standing over her, raising their rifle, the finger on the trigger tightening -
The vision fades, having flashed in the space of a just millisecond in the real world. They will not be delayed by her.
It had been so hard to stay coherent. To communicate. Her mind had been so unclear. She knows some of her references probably hadn't landed, but clinging to the words and concepts of her life seems to be all she can do.
Her spirit has been locked here, in its constant backwards countdown, trying to help other escaping myths escape, whenever they've become trapped. Always, she failed.
Until now.
For a second, they briefly see the delicate shape of a woman, her body all green plant-life and brown bark.
In the room, her small voice says, "αντίο."
Satisfied at least someone escaped, she finally fades for good, and the presence Puss felt is gone.
There is the sound of the bootfalls of soldiers but they didn't reset the timer too many times. The sound is far off and avoidable. They have avoided a deeply outnumbered fight - one they might have survived with all their combined skill, but certainly not uninjured.