thoughtformed | DUNGEON LOG.

Entry tags:

DUNGEON LOG.

Where: Varying underground locations somewhere on the island.
When: Early morning on the eighteenth through the end of the twenty-first.
Who: Seven teams of two people, listed below.
Why: Because nobody likes a snoop.

Starting the morning on the eighteenth, there are seven new local cable channels available on island TV. There are no ads announcing them, so only people channel-surfing will run across them at first. Each channel shows something rather shocking: two people held together by a pair of thick, futuristic shackles made of some strange white plastic. They're somewhere underground, and followed constantly by hidden cameras in their surroundings. Welcome to the strangest reality TV show ever.

For those seven teams, however, life is significantly worse. They'll wake up in the darkness, shackled to someone they may or may not know. They'll be wearing whatever clothes they wore yesterday (thankfully, not whatever they wore to bed). They'll be carrying anything they usually carry, though any weapon will be lacking extra ammunition beyond the load it started with. Their electronic devices will not connect to any networks or receive any signal, but will otherwise behave normally. Worst, however, any supernatural abilities they possess will be dampened -- subtly for some, more extremely for others (sorry Jade).

The shackles will not cut or break. Any attempt to remove them merely tightens them. There is no visible lock to pick. Examine or struggle how you will, but short of severing your forearm there's no certain way to remove them.

So: where the Hell are you, anyway?

Check out the threads below for answers.

Team One: Tim – Jade

Team Two: Finnick – Remus

Team Three: Jack – Kaylee

Team Four: Sherlock – Davesprite

Team Five: Natasha – Feferi

Team Six: Naoto – Ramona

Team Seven: Jenny – Nathan

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sprite? Is he supposed to know what that means? Is it like the sun thing, where if he says he doesn't understand John will find out and mock him again? Sherlock brushes it off to ask about later, because whatever it is, it's better than nothing. A magically armed teenager is of more use to him than a boring average teenager, which had been his initial assessment.

"Fine. Now shall we find a door?"

"Sure thing."

He'd maybe cross his arms around now, except that's not doable for obvious reasons, so he shrugs before going on.

"So like, after getting magic tasered or whatever for trying to break the cuffs, what makes you think a door's going to take us anywhere we'd want to go?"

"If there's a way in, there's a way out somewhere. Unless you can teleport, which you can't because you'd have tried by now, then the only way we're going to find an exit is if we look for one," Sherlock says tartly. "Starting with leaving this corridor. The structure we're in is sunken underground, possibly by an earthquake, so our best bet would be to find out if it's a multilevel building and work our way up."

After a short time searching, they will find a narrow black metal maintenance staircase behind one of the loose wall panels. The light there is eerie, only spilling in through the cracks. It appears that the entire structure is assembled by interlocking, modular panels, with black steel spars providing the skeleton.

"Wellp."

This merits an eyebrow raise, staring down the skeletal staircase.

"I'm sure this goes somewhere safe."

"I wouldn't consider us anywhere especially safe now."

Sherlock immediately ignores the boy in favour of taking in everything he can see in the flickering light, his eyes narrowing as his gaze tracks across the stairs and along the walls, noting the absolute lack of visible disturbance. No footprints in the accumulated dust, probably not used in some time then, and therefore unlikely to be the way the two of them were brought in. However...

He cranes his head to search along the ceiling and through the gaps in the walls, searching — ah, there — yes, a marginally well-hidden camera facing he and his unwilling companion, and as he peers closer between the paneling, he sees more of them in the walls looking out at the corridor. Interesting. He gives the one in the stairs a jaunty salute along with a quick approximation of a smile — well, he pulls his lips back and bares his teeth, anyway, before dropping the expression as fast as he affects it. "Cameras."

So, they're expected. The stairs are, to all observable evidence, the only way in or out, but they haven't been used. The cameras are — not new, but clearly not part of the original building, the designs are completely different, they're more like the surveillance cameras on the island at large, but they're also not temporary wireless ones set up with any kind of haste, he can see the wires anchoring them into the walls. All of which in addition to the building obviously not being as abandoned as the flickering lights are meant to lead them to believe — why would an abandoned underground building have power at all? — gives Sherlock four or five workable theories of varying likelihoods. "We're meant to put on a show," Sherlock says, almost to himself.

"Well, yeah, that goes without saying."

He peers into the stairwell, mostly getting abandoned, dark, and still freaky out of it, and while he doesn't have his sword in hand anymore he's tensed and ready to pull it out if need be. Warned you about those stairs bro, hahaha, except Bro's not going to appear, nor Cal, for any surprise strifes that end in falling down them.

"What?" And being him, he goes on - "Dude, okay, I get it. It doesn't scare you, but if this is your idea of a holiday then that's just..."

...oh. He looks in the direction he'd noticed Sherlock looking, lips pulling downwards because that is so beyond fucked up.

"If they're trying to start up like New Moore Punk'd," he starts flatly, speaking loudly enough to be heard. "Unless Ashton Kutcher pops out of the ceiling in the next minute, you're doing it fucking wrong."

After shooting the kid an an expression like he only understood about a third of what just came out of his mouth and found all of it annoying, Sherlock starts forward. None of the structure seems to indicate one way or the other whether it would be safer to tread along the wall or through the middle, so he settles for taking them normally, testing his weight on each step.

Oh don't mind him, he only gets yanked around every time the guy moves. He follows Sherlock sort of, tries to retrace where he sets his feet since those places are proven stable.

The stairs continue up for quite some time -- a seemingly endless supply of stairs -- until abruptly they stop. They ceiling above them is no longer interlocking panels but plates of brushed steel.

Top floor.

And in the distance, there are indistinct murmurs -- almost certainly voices.

Momentarily disoriented by the voices, Sherlock looks around for cameras to no avail, edging along the wall until he can pinpoint which one is between them. There's no visible door, of course, that would be easy, but the walls don't look difficult to prise apart when he inspects them. As he presses himself to the panels, Sherlock silently presses one finger to his mouth and gestures for the boy to bring out his sword. He's well aware of the futility of bringing a knife to what is most probably a gun fight, but since he lacks John and his Browning, he'll work with what he has, even if it's a 13 year old.

Peering through the panels does little to inform him — more earthquake-damaged rooms, colorful and broken, with inexplicable wall sockets, giant red buttons and what appear to be airlock doors, but no people. Probably speakers, then. Why? What is the purpose of deliberately, and Sherlock has no illusions that everything is deliberate here, put voices over the speaker system? Leading them into a trap, obviously. Well.

With a quick wrench, Sherlock digs his fingers between the panels and rips one off, flinging it aside and whirling through the opening. The element of surprise is unlikely, but the element of drama has worked well enough for him before.

The mystery conversationalist is tucked away in the corner, and immediately begins commenting on their arrival.

There are two doorways to the room: one an airlock that continually irises open and shut, and beyond which more voices can be heard, and one half-collapsed corridor, beyond which weak, flickering light can be seen.

Davesprite pulled his sword out of his sylladex as soon as Sherlock suggested it, because hey whatever they meet is probably not going to be impervious to a big fucking sword. He follows quickly after the man, then pushes forward since he's kind of the one with a lethal weapon here, and they might need it t -

- try to hack up the wannabe Jetsons radiorobotthing. Oh. He actually listens to it for a long moment before deciding Christ, that's annoying.

(Davesprite that's what it's like trying to talk to you.)

At least it's not a threat, so you know whatever. He lowers the sword, taking a look at the rest of the room and the doors especially.

"I vote the broken hallway. At least we won't be talked to death by more of those dudes."

If this partnership were a democracy subject to vote, as opposed to a dictatorship ruled under the tyrannical fist of Sherlock Holmes, then Sherlock would care -- but, luckily for both of them, the abandoned hallway is where he plans on going anyway.

First, though, he eyes the nattering robot with equal suspicion and contempt — and fascination. Judging from the rambling, it's a broken death machine (security bot? Good lord) with at least some semblance of self-awareness. A defective AI with enough functioning code to recognize itself. Interesting.

If the voices though the airlock are more of these things, they're probably equally defective. The silence of the other hallway may indicate functioning deathbots waiting for them to come into range of their weapons.

"Oh, shut up," Sherlock finally snaps at it. "Can you understand me?"

Not that it's likely their captors will have left them with anything capable of helping them, but he might as well get information before he moves forward.

"Don't make lemonade," the turret advises him.

"Wonderful, I'll make a note," Sherlock sneers.

Fine. Time to head down the destitute corridor and take the chance that it's not full of fully-functioning death robots.

The flickering light seems to come from a bank of dubiously functioning computers at the end of the hall. Next to them is a small, round platform with a tube and a number of dangling wires and electrodes above it. There are no other apparent entrances or exits, and they initially appear to be alone in the room -- until a blocky shape in the corner lights up and moves.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

DUNGEON LOG.

no subject

*magic...sword....sob

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject