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

Jack swallowed hard and clenched and relaxed his fist a few times before looking up to Kaylee, who, not surprisingly, seemed upset by all of this. Honestly, Jack would have been surprised if she hadn't been upset. "I think... It'll be easier if maybe we break the bones first. But we have to be quick about the rest of it. Here." Jack pulled off his coat so that the only bit still on him was the arm attached to Kaylee. He wasted no time, however, in removing his suspenders and making a makeshift tourniquet about halfway down his forearm, an effort that would at least lessen the blood flow to the area and make for a somewhat less gory scene. When he began to feel the coolness and tingles in his hand from lack of blood supply, he held his hand out for the hammer. "You.. might want to look away."

Kaylee took a few deep breaths as she fished the hammer from her pocket and handed it over. Deep down, she felt a sudden, aching need for her crew- for Simon, especially. Both for the comfort of a familiar face, and because she was sure Simon would have tools on him that would make this even a tiny bit less painful and difficult.

"Right," she whispered, eyes streaming as she turned her head away. She wished she could watch, almost felt like she owed it to him- but she couldn't.

Even with Kaylee looking the other way, it isn't pretty. He did take a moment to stall and remove his vortex manipulator so that he could actually see what he was doing.

Between cries of agony and Jack trying in vain to bite back his shouts, there is the definite sound of the crushing of bone underneath skin and muscle. In the dim light, it's possible to see the flecks of Jack's blood that pepper his face and decorate the pick-like end of the hammer. It really isn't long before Jack's grip on the hammer loosens enough for the tool to fall from his hand. He looks drained, weary, and is wobbling slightly. He carefully picks up the hammer and sets the blade into one of the off-mark wounds he's made.

"Kaylee," he said in a weak, airy voice. "I need... I need your help. Your wrench... Please.. I need you to use it and hit the hammer as hard as you can." With his bones and skin broken, they were against the clock now. It wouldn't be long until his bones would have healed back up and they'd have to start over. "Can... you do that? Please?"

Even as Jack began to hack his hand off and Kaylee had to fight hard to stop herself throwing up, she had to wonder if there wasn't something more to this. After all, not many people would cut their own hand off for a total stranger's sake... but what that something could be, she had no idea.

When Jack asked her to help, she began to cry again. No, no she didn't think she could do it, but that didn't change the fact that she had to.

Gathering up every last bit of strength she possessed, Kaylee forced herself to open her eyes and seized the wrench.

Just a few hits. Then it'll be over. Your survival depends on it, girl.

And with that, she positioned the hammer and wrench and hit with all of her strength, landing several hard blows before the rest of the hand was severed.

When the task was done, Kaylee felt her knees giving way, and she slumped forward to her hands and knees and began to vomit.

Edited 2012-05-26 02:07 (UTC)

Jack was unable to shield his screaming as the blade cut right through flesh and bone fragments. When he heard the sound of the shackle hitting the floor, Jack held his arm to his chest and with a shaky hand, scrambled for his abandoned body part, holding onto it as tightly as his weak grip could manage. It was a slow and painful process, but even as he sat on the ground, bleeding and breathing heavily with tears and sweat streaming freely down his face, he could already feel his bones beginning to mend from the shards and fragments that he'd broken them into. He could hear the sounds of Kaylee being sick over the horrible task he had just had her do, feeling rather sorry for the poor girl. It wouldn't be too hard to assume that a friendship would be rather difficult at this stage.

It takes a few tries, but in time he manages to croak out weakly, "Kaylee... Thank you... You were very... very brave. And I'm... really, truly sorry. I promise that I'll make it up to you when we get out of here.."

Kaylee could barely hear his words over the sound of her own ragged breathing and quiet sobs. Her mind was rushing, too much to speak yet, and she felt a sudden deep, powerful, aching need for a familiar face- for her crew, for her ship, even for her parents. To wake up in her hammock on Serenity, for someone to just hold her and tell her this was just a horrible nightmare, that the past few months had been a dream or hallucination and she was home.

And some part of her mind was already admonishing her for losing it- she, after all, wasn't the one who'd lost a hand.

"I... I'm s-sorry, too," she wailed. "I ain't even lost a hand, and you're t-takin' it a lot better'n me..." She then looked over at him, open-mouthed. The hand that she had severed was still attached. "Your hand. I j-just cut it off and... wh-why's it back? Oh, God, I'm goin' crazy. I gotta be."

"No... no, you're not going crazy," He said reassuringly. The process was slow, but he could definitely feel it working. "It's part of why I told you to do it in the first place. It's complicated but basically..." He groaned and let his head loll back against the wall. "I can't die. And I can't get hurt for long, either. I'm immortal. Stuck in time. No matter what I just sort of... return to the state I was in when I became this way." He swallowed and hissed his pain, holding his reattaching hand firmly in place.

It took about half an hour before Jack was able to confidently put weight on it without something tearing. He was looking more full of color, too. He really did look just as healthy as ever. He took a moment to strap on his vortex manipulator and nod his head toward the pipe before extending a hand to her. "If you're feeling better, we should probably get going."

Kaylee rather wished he had told her that from the beginning- but what was done was done, and she realized it probably wouldn't have made her feel any better about having to do the deed in the first place. Severing a hand was still severing a hand, after all- and she wondered fleetingly if healing was just as painful as the cutting had been.

Feeling bile creeping into her throat, she swallowed down the urge to be sick again with some difficulty.

"Sounds like a bit of a blessing and a bit of a curse, huh?" she said quietly, more tears leaking out. Kaylee then wiped her eyes on her filthy sleeve, feeling more and more ashamed of herself, as she felt like she hadn't done much of anything except panic and cry since coming down. She wished she was brave like the Captain or Zoe or Jayne.

"Yeah... hold on a sec, though." She reached into her pockets and fished around again before pulling out a hair tie. Tucking the loose shackle inside her sleeve, she then put the hair tie around the end of the sleeve, closing it off so the cuff wouldn't fall back out. "Don't want this floppin' about and getting caught on something." Not in the least because she was quite sure she couldn't survive cutting her own hand off.

"Very smart idea, Kaylee." Jack smiled at her brightly and took a moment to reattach his suspenders and put his coat back on. "Let's get going."

Jack headed in toward the pipe, getting down on his hands and knees and crawling in first, awkwardly inching along with his wrist strap lighting the way for the two of them as they made their way further into this strange and terrifying environment.

The pipe, after a terrible claustrophobic cramping stretch, emerges behind a bar. Dusty bottles sit on the shelves, and T-shirts hang on a rack higher up. Looking out over the bar, there's a black and white checked floor with raised stages, hanging cages, and a step pyramid with some strange looming stalactite shape in the shadows above it -- but the only light comes from a broken sword lying on the ground, emitting a flickering red glow.

Kaylee squinted around at their surroundings when they'd emerged from the pipe. Tight spaces didn't overly bother her, being a mechanic and thus used to crawling in them, but it was still a relief to get into an open space and off her hands and knees.

"Hunh," she remarked. "Now this looks a little more normal. Wouldn't trust nothin' in those bottles, mind." She could make a guess as to what the cages were for, but decided not to comment on it. "Looks like this was some sorta club, maybe."

"Definitely some kind of club. Look at those go-go cages," he said, pointing up to one of the dangling cages. "whether or not it was a good kind of club remains to be seen." Jack rose to his feet and looked around. It seemed abandoned of any sort of business at all... Was the place closed down? A quick examination of a layer of dust on his finger revealed that they hadn't been touched in some time.

He looked over the bar to the source of light; the pulsing broken sword on the ground. Curious...He placed a hand on the bar and used it to vault over, making for the sword. It didn't look cursed or like an artifact, but they seldom ever did. He peeled back the cover on his vortex manipulator and ran a scan of the item, just out of habit. It was strange... just a bunch of what looked like statistics? What did they mean? Nothing harmful that Jack could tell, so he bent down to take hold of the hilt and get a closer look at the thing.

"I saw them, but wasn't gonna say anything about it," Kaylee grinned, beginning to explore the place a little. "It's so old, it's hard to tell either way..."

She had her back turned to Jack and thus didn't notice him reaching for the weapon, or else she probably would have stopped him; after all, they had no idea what it could do, and knowing their luck so far, it probably wasn't anything good. When she looked around for him, she saw the red glow and leaned over the bar to watch him.

"Ya sure that's safe to touch?" she wanted to know. "Well, then again, I guess you can't know til you do..."

The moment his hands touch the hilt, pixellated letters appeared in the air.

JACK ACQUIRED THE POWER OF LOVE. BUT, IT'S BROKEN!

Kaylee simply stared at the letters, tilting her head in confusion.

"Power of Love, huh? Sounds real nice, actually! Except for the 'broken' part, of course..."

Jack, holding the sword in hand, blinks and stares up at the strange appearance of the words for a long moment before shaking his hand. Weird. He does feel a little different, somehow, with the weapon in his hand. "This would have really been nice to have a while ago," he said with a distinct amount of annoyance dripping from his throat. He reaches down to pick up a few of the pieces, seeing if they were of any use, then pockets the longest shard he can find before bringing over the rest of the sword, which now mostly amounts to a long, flat-ended dagger, and sets it on the bar.

"Not sure what else we're going to run into here, so you might want to keep that safe." He smiled at her and moved around to lift up a panel in the bar to let her out."

"Tell me about it," said Kaylee, frowning. "But.. yeah. It may come in handy again."

Let's just hope we don't have to cut his hand off a second time, she thought, but kept that to herself. She then returned the smile, glad that she still COULD smile to begin with, and came out to start looking around some more. "I wonder how long this place has been down here? ... and what made whoever used it leave it behind in the first place?"

"No clue. It's pretty contemporary, though... maybe a little ahead of its time. If you had some lights going in here, some people and some music, I bet it would be a really nice little club." It was suspicious, however, that such a state-of-the-art club like this would be just abandoned like that. It was concerning. What was the reason it was closed down? Did it have something to do with the sword Kaylee was holding? Was this the scene of a terrible and grisly murder?

He craned his head this way and that, holding up his vortex manipulator for light. The only exit he could discern was the lift near one of the back walls. He felt a little uncomfortable with just the one exit... Surely that couldn't be safe. "I guess we take the lift. Upwards has to be better than down, right?"

Moving to a fresh thread here to alleviate page-stretching yes good

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

DUNGEON LOG.

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

OOC: NEW THREAD