Scene #8873: The Obsidian Vault

Owner	Pose
Ivy Carrow	ACCESS RESTRICTED \| --- \| Exoverse 5986-1 : B-A-V \| \| Border - Anathema - Vacant \| \| "The Obsidian Vault" \| --- You're ushered to into the inner ring after your arrival, a grim young woman with dark hair that some light recognize as Luz opening a rift, leading the elites from the mismatched merger of a commercial airport and grim manse into what could best be described as a war room. Plasma screens had been adhered to stone walls at one end, while a handful of warprunners typed on laptops atop a long table that wouldn't have been out of place in a medieval castle. It's the Vice-Captain who speaks first. "We picked this as a first expedition for elite participation because this is a Vacant world. That is to say, it does not appear to have any active threats, to our knowledge." They let 'to our knowledge' hang in the air for a moment, before forging onward. "But don't be fooled. That doesn't make it safe. The physics of this place can prove lethal. Our medic will explain. Westenra?" "The universal laws are not the same there as they are here." Luz picked up immediately, her voice grim. "What matters to you is, there are proteins in a living thing's cells that can't form there. If they're taken into the world from outside, they'll break down." "You'd die." Luz leaned forward, her mouth a stern line. "Instantly." "And that just won't do! You're not to die here." Ivy made a lazy gesture, reaching into the air, cutting open reality and pulling out...Some kind of lantern. It was completely round, save a handle. A spark of red light burned at its center, surrounded by black. It felt as though it should have been dim. And yet, it filled the room with an eerie red light, casting no shadows. "Think of it like a piece of home. It'll let your bodies hold together." The smile falls from her face. For a moment, she's dead serious. "Whatever you do, don't step out of the light." A pause. For a moment, all the Warprunners were quiet. Captain Carrow let an elbow rest on the table where she sat. "I'll give you the same talk I give to any of my runners." "There's always risk. It can't all be made safe. We're the first through the gates. The first to see the hazards, the monsters, the people on the other side. And sometimes, all that's keeping you from the worst of it is something like this." She laid the lantern on the table. Stood. "Today, I'm going through that warpgate. And if you want to join me, there's a place for you."
Ivy Carrow	For once, it seems she and her Vice-Captain are in harmony. "Think it over." He picks up where she left off, the grim realistic, voicing concerns she never could without breaking the stride of her boistrous enthusiasm. "If that's too much risk for an archeological mission, there's no shame in saying 'no.' You don't have to say it aloud, but we're asking you to consider why this risk is worth it to you." "But we're hardly the only ones with questions to ask, are we?" Ivy's hands steepled, her smile only slightly weighed down by the topic. "Ask my friends, ask. Perhaps we'll even have an answer, hm?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine unclips her ritual knife from her belt and, keeping it in the sheath, turns it over in her hands as a fidget while the mission's dangers are explained. Her eyes stay on the Captain, only straying for a moment when the lantern is produced so she can ponder its eerie red glow. When the time for questions comes, she speaks up. "No life on this world, huh? I wonder if this vault was built by robots, or if it wasn't always so hostile. Are there signs that life used to exist there or is it just a barren rock aside from the vault?"
Petra Soroka	Like Angela said, it's been a while since Petra took the Eggpack on an adventure! This makes her feel a little bit like she's been letting Angela down, that the black hole of Quicknest has been draining all of her time and attention for absolutely no gain, and that she's been slacking in her other duties. Whether this is true is subjective; Petra's attending to one of her duties (meaning, one of the girls she cares about, or the regrettably girl-less Quicknest) practically every moment she's awake, so calling her schedule 'slacking' is patently kind of insane. The point stands that Angela needs to be given walkies, however. Petra's interest in the Warprunners doesn't dissuade her from choosing this to be the adventure, either. So after heading out from work, Petra steps through the teleportation circle back home, tidies up a bit (it's important, when going on an adventure. And this isn't just an 'adventure', it's an expedition!), and then heads out, swiping up the Eggpack as she starts the walk to the nearest Warpgate in District 12. Petra's outfit is a clashing third and fourth thing in contrast to the bland airport and gothic manor of Castle Carrow. Olive cargo pants and a black crop top, along with the collar around her neck, is uncharacteristically more skin shown than usual, and then the bulky monitor-screened metal backpack with arms hanging off of her shoulders is some entirely different aesthetic from the scrappy faux-military vibe she's got otherwise. It's also the first time she's ever worn the Eggpack without sleeves-- the straps aren't comfortable on her bare shoulders, and she realized this slightly too late to do anything about it, so she just uncomfortably adjusts the straps every few seconds. "Well, shit. I do need proteins." Petra sounds sarcastic, but she's still intently attentive to Luz as she explains. "It's, like, still in Sector Zero? Is it a physics thing? Do you have any idea if it affects other powers, like..." Petra tries to think of a thing Elites do that has to do with proteins. "... Do werewolves need protein synthesis to transform...?" That's not an important question. There are some questions that Petra asked earlier that are important though. "So there's a vault. What does that mean? Is there life there that isn't hostile, that, like, built it? Is it an artificial structure that's got, people's belongings in it? Ancient kingdom's riches kind of shit? What's stopping you from opening it? What kind of scale of opening it are we talking about?" Having to stay inside a little radius of light or die isn't abnormally dangerous for an Elite trip, but does make Petra wonder if this is going to be more of a guided tour. She leans a hand on the table, peeking over a shoulder at one of the laptop screens, to try to get an idea if this is going to be enriching for Angela, or just a lame stroll through a dark and dreary area for her. "Smart idea to bring Elites to a-- 'vacant' world, though. Means none of these dumbasses can piss off our first contact with a newly unified world."
Petra Soroka	The concept of irregular physics keeps tugging at Petra's brain, though, and she has a new stream of inane questions after thinking for a little bit. "Is it just protein synthesis? Does it affect already existing proteins? Does anyone have an egg, that we could, like, toss out of the light? Egg whites change color like that because of the proteins denaturing, so maybe we could see something happen that way." This isn't really a problem that needs solving, they have Ivy's lantern, but Petra obsesses over it a bit anyways. She'd totally have been fine if she was still Silvered. Would Sting Silver be enough of an ontological adjustment to her state of being that she'd be alright? Did that... medic, whatever her name is, only mention the proteins part because she assumed everyone coming would be organic so the rest wouldn't matter, or does it really only affect that? Nonsense such as this fills Petra's head.
Angela	Cinder is the Agent being sent along on this mission. While she gets to run into Petra a fair amount at the facility, they're on different teams now so actually fighting together hasn't happened as much as she'd like. And in this case, she's almost certain there will be a fight because even if it's instantly fatal to forms of life that she knows about, SOMETHING must have built a vault in the first place and there's probably something BAD behind it. But it's also an opportunity to see the sort of place that she'd never have even dreamed of seeing before. She feels more alive in this moment than she had at any point before her world unified. "Gosh," Cinder asides to Petra. "This is going to be so COOL. Going where none have gone before. Well, at least in a real long while! I'd have thought I'd have gotten USED to it by now but it's still just as exciting as when I first stepped out of The City...!" She frowns at the idea of her proteins breaking down and dying but she figures the risk will be worht it. "I mean it wouldn't be much of an investigation if we just immediately died." She agrees. ''There's always a risk.'' "Got it," Cinder says impatiently like Ivy's usual talk is the kind of usual talk that Cinder has to endure usually. ''Why this risk is worth it to you'' Cinder just bites at her lip rather than answer. It's kind of a personal thing to say out loud, but she does have her reason for better or worse to go on dangerous adventures like this one. Angela, meanwhile, continues to be on the Eggpack screen. The Eggpack has been upgraded with a decorative Punishing Bird keychain that someone (Cinder) thought would be cute to add to the Eggpack. Angela would agree that Quicknest is probably more taxing for Petra than if she had never been given control of it. While she doesn't want Petra to lose or be shown up by Aidan in any way, she can't help but be impatient for its liberation so that Petra doesn't need to be continuously driven mad by Aidan and Kale's efforts--or lack there-of judging from what she's been hearing about Aidan (the truth doesn't really matter to her). ''Do werewolves need protein synthesis to transform...?'' "What?" Angela asks, kind of thrown by the question. She looks around for anyone who is looking particularly werewolfy. ''Smart idea to bring Elites to a 'vacant' world.'' "Oh that's a very good point, Petra." Angela says. "I don't imagine the universe is anti-backpack at least if they can build a vault there." Her tone is as dry as ever but her eyes are focused and shining with curiousity.
Meika Kirenai	Before the rendezvous to be ushered up to the briefing room, in the intermediate time after ducking out from Kagoshima, the warp hub hallways aren't an awful place to wander. Convinience stores feel close enough to the kind at home to comprehend, but different enough for that liminal detachment to hang heavy like petrichor in humid air. That makes it comfortable to windowshop, or scoop up an can she can only guess at the flavor and caffeine content of, before skipping- not actually skipping, that'd get weird looks -out back to the promenade, off to wander a little more. Showing up early has perks, if you're doing so just to not be somewhere else. "Oh! Hey, Petr-... ah." A little raised-hand wave gets cut off in the time it takes Meika to react to Petra being here, and the second longer it takes to react to Cinder also being here. With her. It's not really possible for Meika to hide the awkward glance around she does, worried somewhat formlessly over who could, theoretically, be watching. Aluminum silently crackles in her grip. ' Our medic will explain. Westenra?' Immediately switching focus, and anxiously setting down the still-unopened mystery energy drink(?) can on the extravagant table, regardless of whose place it's by, Meika turns to Luz, and repeats the little wave. "Nice to- to meet you, Miss Westenra." She hopes that's a last name. Part of the greeting is just because she's someone unmet, but part, too, is to try and uphold some idea of it being a normal habit, nothing out of the ordinary, for that same formless nervous worry. Biting the inside of her lip hard enough to taste iron, she shuts up, and lets her eyes drift to middle-distance focus instead of clearly watching Ivy and Alex's presented efforts. '... Do werewolves need protein synthesis to transform...?' Meika winces. Protein chemistry is something she can only think on through the hazy half-remembered lectures teachers at a school she doesn't go to anymore briefly touched on, but even then, she's uncomfortably suspicious she herself might not really need them to transform. Not that she's free to try. 'It'll let your bodies hold together.' Meika's quickly drift to, and don'tt stray from staring at the odd lantern, even as Ivy steps away from it. "How? How's it work?" She's braced for 'it's complicated', but there's a little hint of uncertain concern. "Is it just the protein stuff..? Keeping that how it- you, know, should be..? Or..." Hands stick themselves into her jacket's pockets, and flare it out, tantamount to a dismissive shrug. "You think there's something to gain, though, right? With- with all that talk of risk, or whatever. Even if it's just... getting to find out, I guess. You figured out the instant death thing. What else did you find?" "... I'm- I guess I'm curious enough to try, anyway, probably. Can't-" No, it can be that bad. She purses her lips. "... It's worth helping figure out, right..? Even if it's risky? You're trying to make us say 'no' a lot. I- You don't have to do that. Who wouldn't have already made up his or her mind?"
Ivy Carrow	Are there signs that life used to exist there or is it just a barren rock aside from the vault? "The vault is what we've found. But..." Ivy leaned her elbow on the table. "It's a new world. What if we just haven't FOUND the rest, yet...?" "Smart idea to bring Elites to a-- 'vacant' world, though." Ivy chuckled. "We picked it for a great many reasons, after all..." "The proteins would immediately break down." Luz repeated, matter-of-factly. "As near as we can tell, yes. It does seem to be a 'physics thing.'" A pause. "Maybe it would stop most biological powers? Hard to say. I'd expect werewolves to just die, anyway." "We don't know what we'll find there! One of the only ways to know for sure is to break through and see for ourselves." "I don't imagine the universe is anti-backpack at least if they can build a vault there." Luz's eyes snapped to Angela now, consideringly, fingers drumming on the desk. "You might be right." She said, slowly, "If none of your internal mechanisms need it, you'd be just fine." "How? How's it work?" "It's a mix of magic and something else," Ivy said, smoothly. "If I had to sum it up, I'd say it imposes just enough of our reality on the world, to make it a please we can survive." "We use something like it..." She pulls up a sleeve, revealing a black-green stone, strapped to her arm, glowing faintly at her touch. "To help us survive most anywhere. No matter what kind of world we visit. This lamps will let you follow us, too." "You're trying to make us say 'no' a lot." "Not exactly." Alex said, clasping his hands. "I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't keep everyone informed of what was at stake." A small smile. "Yes, I do think it's worth it. New technology? New places? New people...? It's why we're all here."
Ivy Carrow	The Warprunners lead them beyond, through a door. And there was the high security gate. Those who had come with Ivy for their first tour would recognize it. But it had lain fully dormant, then. Today, anticipation hung heavy in the air, and it buzzed with activity. "We have lamps set up already, but these will be your personal ones, in case something goes wrong. Please take one for yourself while visting this world I.f the the indicator below the handle is green, you're good to go. If it turns yellow, talk to me or the Captain. If it turns white, talk to me or the Captain. Urgently." Metal hazard signs were nailed to the walls, warning against unauthorized entries, reminding of decontamination protocals with images of stick figures. "Be aware." the Vice-Captain said, pulling out and studying a necklace hidden in their clothes. "This exoverse does not adhere to a typical terrestial shape. This is normal; do not be alarmed." The gate itself, inactive, looked not unlike a chandelier, beaing heliotrope stones, hanging from chains from above, matched by another stone on a pedestal below. A thick glass wall separated the elites from the gate...But not for long. Ivy swiped a card over a reader. The door beeped three times. Opened, with a soft hiss. The Vice-Captain followed behind the elites. Taking up the rear, he pressed a button on the inside of the the door. It closed shut, sealing the room off from the rest of the castle. "Captain, I believe we're ready to open the gate." "I'll do the honors," she smiled, rubbing her hands together. Held out her arms, like a conductor. One pointed to the chandelier. The other, the floor. Each shimmered. Something red flickered across its surface, like lightning. Space opened in a rip through the air, red like a bleeding wound, through it, they saw the walls of...stone brick, again? "Nice and clean." Ivy grinned, satisfied with herself. Then, in...Confidence? A gesture of good faith? Recklessness? She stepped through the gate, to the other side.
Ivy Carrow	...They came through into a lonely room, with two warprunners sitting at a wooden table by a window, playing cards, lit by more of those lanterns and their bizzare shadowless light, in the midst of a conversation interrupted, before standing at attention. Through the window... The elites saw the view from the top of a spire--a spire that seemed to have sprouted from a floating disc of stone, floating over...Well...Nothing. The world was dark, not the way the night is dark, or the place behind closed eyes is dark, because light still bleeds through, in pinpricks of starlight, in the shine that bleeds through eyelids. There were no stars in the sky. There was no sun, or moon. And as far as they could tell, no ground. The warprunners led them down the stairwell, lanterns in hand; Ivy at the front, Luz in the middle, Alex at the back. Out, into the strange, too-quiet landscape of a world that had never, could never know life like theirs. Floating bits of stone hovered in the air, illuminated by more of those lights--like bubbles of luminous red, cut against a backdrop of absolute darkness. There was a desolate beauty in the way irregular black hexagons slowly rotated in the air, in the way that bridges had been haphazardly, crossing the distance between floating island and floating island, connected by lamps in a single, continuous line of light along the path. Abruptly, the tell-tale handiwork of grand gothic bridgework stopped, and the architecture grew strange. Smooth, obsidian-black, obelisks floated in the air, down a smooth path, bearing bizzare pictographs in faint white light that multiversal translation couldn't make heads or tails of. Three obelisks on either side, and then there was the door. There were no details. No handles. No signs. No obvious mechanisms. But there was a crease down the middle, where the doors were meant to open. It wasn't even very clear that they were doors themselves.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine huddles near to Ivy as the group passes through the warpgate, but once she's out of the little Warprunners base on the other side, she's dangerously close to the lamp-light's edge. "Stars..." she mutters, a habit picked up from her time on Snaer, as she surveys the landscape - if it can be called a landscape, when so much of it is suspended in mid-air. Hanging out at the front edge of the lamp's effective range like an excited dog on a too-short leash, she oohs at the black obelisks as Ivy directs the Elites along the path. The huntress even chances reaching out to touch one, tracing her fingertips up the stone where she sees red light shining on it. The team reaches the vast doors, and Madeleine eyes them curiously. "No hinges on the outside means they slide apart, or open inward, right? I wonder if there's a bar on the other side." She doesn't even entertain the idea that the Warprunners haven't tried opening it yet. "Or maybe there's some kind of passphrase we have to say..." Stepping forward to the edge of the lantern's reach, she places a hand on the door, half-expecting to receive some kind of 'speak friend and enter' situation.
Angela	Angela looks at Luz for a long moment. "...To be clear. /I/ am not the backpack." She can't be sure but it's best to head off that idea at the pass. Cinder (and Angela, via Eggpack) follow along. Angela takes a long look at that gate without commenting on it, but she seems interested in the stylizing of it--it isn't her first gate that looked different from what she's used to, but she finds the different ways these Gates tend to exist are interesting to her. She knows she can't leave but if she could... Cinder enters with her lantern, marveling at the floating stone. "Woah..." She says. "Amazing... It's kind of pretty, isn't it? Like... even after everything has burnt away, it's still pretty..." Cinder smiles at Meika, completely oblivious to what's bugging her. "Oh hey Meika. Good to see you again. Glad you're... out. Looking forward to working with you." She beams happily but not for too long until the group finds the bridgework has stopped (a shame, she kinda dug the design) and then sees...those obsidian black obelisks floating, much bigger than the smaller rocks she's been seeing before. And ... bizarre pictographs on the door. Angela draws out her Enkephalin reader and starts scanning the door--Cinder is more physically oriented than Info Gathering. Angela figures if she can eventually gleen details about Blue Star, maybe she can find something about the doors. Or what might lie beyond them. "...Hm. If it wasn't for that crease in the middle being so straight, I wouldn't even be sure this was a passageway just by looking at it." She glances to Petra, "Any thoughts?"
Petra Soroka	"I'd have thought I'd have gotten USED to it by now but it's still just as exciting as when I first stepped out of The City...!" "Okay, okay, but that's the thing--" Petra happily chatters to Cinder as Ivy goes through her prep, codeswitching from pressingly-insistent abrasive Elite to sheer excited goofball. "I barely ever do this kind of thing either. And I get pulled through portals and stuff a lot." Petra briefly slips her hand into the Eggpack's, gesticulating with it in order to pull Angela into this particular conversational thread too. "Like, the Pokemon world? The Infinity Train? The stuff with Niko? That's all, like, weird portal missions, but they've all already got people. I can't even think of a time where I went to a world without people. I guess outside the Urban Centers in Lilian's world is kind of similar?" "I mean it wouldn't be much of an investigation if we just immediately died." Cinder understands Petra's exact thought process about this. Though, after a few seconds of reflecting on the time that Petra's thought process was thrown into immediate and terrifying question by Liza, Petra adds something else after Cinder. "But she should totally go in first, though." "The proteins would immediately break down." Petra really wants to see what happens to an egg that gets thrown outside of the lamplight. It's not important at all, it's one of the least important things to ever be conceived, but she's begun imagining the mechanics of using her morphmetal as a sort of bowl to crack the egg into and extend it beyond the light, so that she could pull the egg back in after... whatever happens to it. Does this cook the egg? If the proteins denature, and all the bacteria on it die, is it cooked without needing any heat at all? Petra does not have an egg, a fact which she's acutely aware of due to digging through Qetra's storages in the radio yesterday. Also, because if she ever gave Qetra an egg, she'd end up with a rotten egg spitefully squished into her hand someday. "If none of your internal mechanisms need it, you'd be just fine." Petra squints dubiously at Luz, having followed the same line of thought herself but immediately suspicious when it's easily agreed to that day. "... And you haven't tried, like, remote work? Drones, and stuff? I've got robots. Some of them don't even have meat inside them." Petra holds up Twopence, her personal ratbot companion to replace Pence, to demonstrate. Its wheels slowly roll it off of her hand, and then it weightlessly floats over to latch onto the hand of the Eggpack, lifting it up and down like a puppet to show off its capabilities before being stowed away again. "If I had to sum it up, I'd say it imposes just enough of our reality on the world, to make it a please we can survive." "Gross." Unexplained, except for the unnerving saccades of psychic needles radiating off of Petra at all times. "We have lamps set up already, but these will be your personal ones, in case something goes wrong." That's not to say she doesn't take a lantern when given it, though. She's got slightly too much stake in living, and far too much stake in being useful and progressing her arc, to step through the red portal and instantly die due to having her entire body turn into slush. She uncaps her morphmetal to let a little ringlet of quicksilver carry it instead, because her hands are for more important things. Or, they will be, once Petra stops feeling Meika's gaze (occasional as it is) burning into her back whenever she gets too close to Cinder.
Petra Soroka	The presence of bridges is mildly disappointing to Petra, but the ominously vantablack architecture is not. Logically it makes sense that the ground's been trod at least enough to make passing to the vault fairly simple, but Petra instantly resents the sensation of walking across a red carpet in an unknown world, as if they couldn't ever be trusted with real exploration. And she says as much, looking out at the obelisks with a bit of a dazed expression. One hand rests on the side of the bridge, and the other, while distracted by the alien scenery, unthinkingly slipped into Cinder's. "I hope we've got something more exciting for us past all this already tamed stuff. You didn't just ask for Elites because the handle for the door of the vault was a little too high for you to reach, did you?" "Any thoughts?" Petra is fucking terrible at puzzle solving. She puts her hand on her hips, staring at the door with a pout. "Well, so this is what you can't open, right? What have you tried? Proper brute force? Is there any magic involved?" Petra's methods of opening doors that she's not allowed through are as follows: she has her lockpicking set that has almost exclusively been used for fun and practice. There's unfortunately nowhere to use it on, though. She has... brute force. She also has weapons, which are another kind of brute force. She also has robots, which are another kind of brute force. There's only one thing to do: "I'm going to try brute force." Petra announces, before drawing out all the rest of the morphmetal in her bottle. The red light gleams unnaturally off of the fluid metal, streaming through the lightless sky like a distant galaxy, with only the small ring around the lantern handle being held in reserve. Two swipes back and forth ring out in quick succession, criss-crossing blows slammed into the center of the seam hard enough to crush metal-- though if this is metal or not should be audible by the quality of the impact sound.
Ivy Carrow	Madeleine marches to the vault, finding the doors beginning to glow. More pictographs, their blue glow a sharp contrast of the red of the lamps, began to come into view on her approach. Alas, she was met with no 'who goes there.' Only more silence. As Angela takes her readings, that what she sees rebounds and swims. The numbers and lines of the readings begin to melt into something else... When the world ended, they wanted to have somewhere to go. Toiling day and night, those who would not live there labored on their ark, as the great night grew close, and the stars grew cold. As the world dissolved benneath their feet, they begged for a place, until they were drowned out and silenced by the tide, until the ark of light was all that remained. But shadow is drawn most crisply against light's back. And darkness breathes in every crevice. "I hope we've got something more exciting for us past all this already tamed stuff." "I certainly hope so, that wouldn't make for a good first impression, would it?" Ivy slipped through, tapping at the vault with a clawed knuckle, more of that blue light pulsing across it. "It seems resistant to spatial tampering. I can't teleport past it, and I can't open a doorway through it. We've tried force, but it isn't exactly our specialty..." Ivy couldn't help but frown, seeing Petra try to just PUSH it open. More of that light flashes outward, across the whole of the doors now, rapidly, more rapidly by the second. There's a crackcrackcracking, like the spiderweb sound of an iced over lake fracturing under your feet. Morphmetal pressed. The full might of the repurposed silver made it groan. An inch, the door opened. More flickering, irregular now. "Was that really all it took--" --What was that? Whispering. Distant, incoherent. Imagined in the cracks...? But it's getting louder, and louder... ...And it's coming from the door.
Angela	Cinder happily chats with Petra! Even in a place like this, she's just so happy being with Petra. "Yeah, we kind of go out on ''missions'' but missions aren't really the same as adventures, right? I mean a mission ''can'' be an adventure, but sometimes the mission is like cleaning a room out, not really an adventure! But when we go through Warpgates like this, or even with the Infinity Train--it's an adventure. I think what makes an adventure an adventure is the travel and the discovery... And sometimes just the strange beauty of weird existences that are out there" She doesn't mean weird in a bad way, or even in a 'weird' way exactly, but she doesn't know what better word to use there. Angela is pulled into the conversation, distracted from the readings she's taking. "...You know, that is true. I think the closest I can imagine is when we investigated those tunnels but that was a little different from this. I am getting similar...vibes though, in a way." She frowns, thinking about it. "Thanks to the Antegents..." She mulls aloud. "Niko was definitely an adventure--for the most part it was actually quite nice, but it was just so difficult seeing that poor child suffer, and then learning about that AI that was also trapped and suffering and wanting to help but being unable to..." Cinder doesn't have an egg either but she does let her fingers brush up against Petra's for a moment. Angela is exceptional at puzzle solving but there isn't exactly a puzzle here either. A blank door isn't a puzzle on its own, it might be a mystery but that's not the same. The words on her Enkephalin Reader start shifting around. This is normal. Angela repeats the words softly--the ones on the scanner--and then trails off at the last line. "...Whatever is in there... I suspect will be hostile. ... It seems that even though there is no possibility for life now--that is not this world's original state."
Petra Soroka	"Yeah, we kind of go out on ''missions'' but missions aren't really the same as adventures, right?" "Can I say something fucked up?" Petra blurts out, as if she would ever really not say something fucked up. "I kind of didn't mind the Infinity Train that much? It was kind of, like, nice, and it was a good adventure." "I mean, it happened at a bad time. The number thing set me the fuck off with how I'd just started to get better. I got stuck there with Kale, and that was when I really, actually tried to kill him. Did I mention that before? I was going to torture him and then toss him under the train wheels and watch him splatter across the hyperglass at supersonic speeds. Hyperglass can do some really weird things, I did a science project on it when I was-- yeah." "And obviously I hate it for--" A little bit of a sore spot, still. "For what it did to Angela. I guess that was Lance, but still. Fuck the Train. But it was kind of cute." "Was that really all it took--" "See, I mean, my logic is," Petra, master puzzle solver, lectures over the slamming sound of morphmetal against door. "It's not going to collapse like tissue paper if it hasn't already fallen down from whatever you've tried with it. It wouldn't be a wall if whatever was inside was so fragile that it'd break from hitting the wall. We could spend all day standing here trying to figure out whatever method or code or whatever is intended for it, but it's kind of stupid to even think it'd be something we could, like, recognize or perform." "But there's one language that's universal--" Petra's actually surprised herself when the door starts to open. She didn't expect it to be that easy either, she expected to get yelled at and then have some cross-hatched puzzle get shoved in her face for her to get frustrated by. "Oh, eh?" "It seems that even though there is no possibility for life now--that is not this world's original state." Petra, unnerved by the whispering and pulling her morphmetal back into orbiting satellite droplets, glances over her shoulder at Angela. She absently tilts her shoulder in front of Cinder, holding a hand out to the side in readiness while quicksilver droplets conglomerate into a knife, a sickle, a sword, softening and amalgamating through a series of pure silver weapons without any apparent thought on her part. "Not always? Then-- do you think this is a bunker, and not a vault for, like, treasure? Where the people who used to live here have been surviving?" Petra considers something, and then rather than pushing her way into the cracked open sliver of door like her gut instinct had been about to guide her to do, she takes a step back instead. Shielded by Cinder's lantern instead, Petra uses the morphmetal circlet around her own to guide the lantern like a will-o-the-wisp up to and through the open gap, tucking it just inside the inner area. Her logic is-- "If it's some fucked up native monster to this world, then probably our physics are as hostile to it as its are to us, so this will kill it if it tries to attack. And if it's people surviving here, then this is sort of a symbol that we're alike to them, right?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine raises an eyebrow as glyphs appear on the door. "Has it always done this?" she asks, turning just in time to see Petra's morphmetal swinging toward her. She ducks - unnecessarily, as the morphmetal was aimed a lot higher - and draws her knife on instinct, back pressed against the door itself. Then she feels it give, just a little, under the assault. And she hears the whispering coming from within, rising in volume. "I can't make heads or tails of it," Madeleine says, confusion evident in her voice. "But whatever it is is getting louder, or closer." She steps aside as Petra slips a red lantern through the door, nodding in affirmation of the idea.
Ivy Carrow	There's no meaning for Madeleine to find in the voices, nothing to parse. It's something generic, without intention, combed over, husked out, made empty and meaningless. And it remains husked out and empty, when one of the voices finally says; "Help Me." There's a deep, crackling groan from deep in the vault. "I'm So Cold." "It Hurts." The door's flickering becomes steady, constant blue light, shining bright. Faded to darkness. Petra's lantern, shoved through the door, glowed with a white alert. "Hold Me." ...Went dark. Black filaments coaxed their way through the opening in the vault, like an insect's feelers, feeding tubes. "I'm So Alone." spread out from the door, then veered in--not toward the explorers, no--but toward the lamps in their hands.
Angela	''Can I say something fucked up?'' "'fcourse!" Cinder kind of likes when Petra says fucked up stuff. Of course, what Petra does say doesn't really seem ''that'' fucked up to Cinder. She enjoyed the Infinity Train too in some ways. But there was plenty that just really bugged her about it too, though a lot of that had very little to do with the Train itself. ''For what it did to Angela.'' Angela looks over to Petra, gives her a studying look for a moment, and then says, "...I'm sorry," Not that it's really HER fault it happened but she should have been used to it, she thinks, she shouldn't have let it ''show''. "You don't have to hate the Train simply because of a bad experience I had on it." WEll maybe she does but Angela does add, "Or at the very least, you don't have to deny what you enjoyed even if you do hate the Train because of that." Cinder draws her EGO Weapon as Petra readies herself--she is wholly willing to put her life in Petra's hands. After all, she wouldn't be around if not for Petra she's pretty damn sure. But she keeps a good grip on that lantern in the dark. ...Though that poem speaks of what light... ... ... Something to think about later. Petra's lantern goes dark, "Petra...!" Cinder raises up her lantern, still covering Petra, instinctively. It takes Angela a moment to realize that the voices she's hearing are coming from outside of herself. "...So you are." She murmurs.