middleofsomewhere | Onward: Orange

A Stormy Night

The night of day six of Grasshopper begins to get blustery, and rain begins to fall shortly after the sun sets. Just after midnight they are facing a full-on storm. It’s quite interesting to watch, for those who need a break from investigating. Especially up on the top floor, where the glass roof gives a good view; all the instruments are set up to monitor weather patterns and are operating perfectly, a fascinating watch for those interested in such things.

It’s a little noisy, but not too bad for those that want to sleep; it’s just another distraction along with the perpetual light. Still it is, for the most part, a peaceful night.

Lights OUT

Peaceful, that is, until about an hour before dawn on day seven, their third day on-world. A large clap of thunder booms overhead, a massive flash of light brightens even the sky around the station… and something hits the facility so hard that it seems to rock. The lights go out.

Every single light and screen in the building go dark at once.

It’s only a few moments before the machines whir back to life. Monitors and equipment rebooting, a cascade of beeps and whirrs and start-up tones. The lights, however, do not come back on. Clearly emergency lighting has never been a concern for a people that can see in the dark.

It’s a concern now. From across the facility, everywhere there was an orb, there are now monsters. A lot of monsters. Grey, long limbed and ready to attack.

Luckily for the Voidtreckers, the monsters on the very bottom floor have found something more interesting than hunting them. Within moments, they smash through the grates along the floor, and begin clambering downwards.

Downwards seems to be through some kind of service shaft, though easily big enough to fit a person in. They skitter down into the darkness, if any of Orange try and follow they can. It will be a steep, treacherous descent; they may need to break out that climbing gear to descend safely.

Something Approaches

Back in the facility, the monsters that didn’t descend are instead attacking anyone they find with mindless savagery. A little while after the attack starts those near the top floor will hear a siren, ringing out into the darkness. It is not constant, rather it peaks and fades. Anyone who goes to investigate will find it comes from a black metal machine on the top floor, its screen showing a now constantly flashing, wavy green line and the words SIGNAL FOUND. As time passes, the green wave on-screen grows taller.
Luckily, they only have to last the remaining hour until dawn and when the sunlight shines through the glass of the facility the monsters shatter. In their place rise familiar orbs. Any monsters on the sub-levels remain active whilst the facility is in darkness.

The alarm subsides during the day. The machine’s wave remains the same size, pulsing only occasionally. Once night falls on the third day (Grasshopper 7), it shrills, and the wave continues to grow.

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Lights Out

Darkness descends and it would almost be a relief, Zelda thinks, if the storage room where she was trying to read an orb wasn't suddenly filled with gray shuffling things, only teeth and claws clear.

She reacts by instinct, throwing out her arms and calling on the gods. And whether it is her patroness, her ancestress, or some other god entirely, divine light comes to her aid.

The monsters cringe and step back, and for a moment Zelda feels relief- but there's something not quite right.

They're not fleeing, she realizes- not really. They're burrowing- but to where?

Well Something's Certainly Approaching

Wherever Zelda goes, the light follows. Or, at least, for while it does.

Because while she tries to rest in the daylight hours, magic always extracts its price. And she can't keep that light up forever.

Late into Night 7, the exhaustion she's tried to fend of nips at her heels. And while she tries to keep it constant, the light about her begins to flicker more and more, until she begins swaying on her feet in time with it's change.

Someone catch her, please, before she collapses entirely.

Curufin is searching the facility for monsters to kill, and he comes down to the storage room where Zelda fills the space with light and drives back the monsters. They scramble for the gratings along the floor, smash them, and scramble down into the service shaft.

"What the hell?" exclaims Curufin, running towards the shaft after the monsters with his sword at the ready. "Why are they going down there?" He grins wryly at Zelda. "When there are so many good people to eat up here."

"If you wish to volunteer your services," Zelda tells him, "I'm sure they'd be willing to take you up on the offer."

The light still in her hands, she moves over to one of the opened grates and looks in.

"We need someone down there, tracking them. But if the whole building's been attacked, who knows how many are upstairs?"

Curufin has always liked Zelda's humor. He responds with a smile. "I'd volunteer, but I'm afraid they'd find me inedible. An Elf with a sword is not usually on the menu. Too spiny and spiky, like a cactus."

He turns to her. "It's a tossup, whether to stay in the building and fight them or follow them wherever they're going. I fear that shaft may lead to some other building in this city or elsewhere, and there may be people there who don't know that the monsters are on the loose and will have no warning. What do you think? Shall we follow them? Or do you want to stay here while I follow them?"

She raises an eyebrow at him.

"That all depends on the nature of the monster's throat," the princess notes.

She knows her share of monsters, though not a whit (she suspects) of all the ones that haunt her own world. It's enough to make her wary of sweeping statements on their natures.

She hesitates, "I think we need to regroup first," she tells him. "If these are caused by the orbs, there will be monsters on the upper floors."

He raises both eyebrows and grins at her. "I haven't seen any of these monsters gulp down anybody, sword and all, yet. Especially not me."

Aw, go ahead, make a sweeping statement! Those are fun.

"You have a point there. Maybe we'd better keep searching for teammates and whatever monsters are around."

"Hmmm," she thinks,

"I can keep this floor clear of monsters for now. Go, bring who you can- we can make this a base for further exploration."

"Okay, I'll do that, if you're sure you have this floor under control. I'll go check out the other floors and locate our teammates. Best to confer with them and make sure we're all on the same page."

And then he'll climb down the service shaft and find out where it goes and where the monsters are going who have headed down there.

Minako had been switching between her civilian form and her Solider form during the time as a way to keep her from getting too exhausted. Currently she was with her civilian form with plans to change back soon.

But instead, she found that could change when she spotted the other. making her way over she made sure to stay close to her so that she didn't collapse to the ground.

"We best get you to a safe area to rest up."

"No," Zelda protested, taking in a quick breath to fortify herself,

"No, truly, I can manage...."

"You look about as exhausted as I am with trying to handle something I have no clue how to." Which was a lie, but she wasn't making that at all obvious.

"We need to at least get you to an area so you can rest."

Zelda pauses, considers, then slumps slightly.

"A short rest," she says. "I'm not that fragile."

"Okay, so a short rest and we will see how you feel after that, okay?" She at least understood the need for having at least a short break, she herself was taking them from time to time because they were still necessary.

"I assume you are like this because you found what you can do is useful, right? to help those that need it here?"

"Allow me," Webmind says, mostly to make Zelda aware there is someone next to her.

He activates his SCA's light, and projects white through his screen to make the 'face' glow.

"I can shoulder your burden for now; you need to rest," he insists, softly but firmly, stepping alongside her to add a bit of literalism to that 'shouldering'.

"I'm all right," she insists, "really, I am..."

Admittedly, it's rather less convincing than she'd like.

"Really, Zelda, we are finite beings."

Much as it stymied Webmind at times.

"As dangerous as this situation is, trying to push ourselves further does quite often come back to cause us harm in itself."

Webmind uses the moment to successfully time a flash to strike a monster right in its black eyes; it shatters.

"One must do what one must," Zelda protests... though it's getting more difficult to protest as she grows more tired.

(She is out of practice, she... has not actually had to hold a light consistently for days at a time, and it would have been inadvisable to do so in Hyrule's current circumstances.

But why let logic ruin a good bit of self-blame?)

"The train is rest enough...."

Webmind starts moving them through the hallway, heading to (hopefully) one of the more well-lit floors.

"If you were willing to return to the train right now - or forced to - could you trust that things would turn out all right for us here?"

Webmind could not see himself leaving the team easily; could Zelda?

Onward: Orange

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Lights out

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Something Approaching

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Something's Certainly Approaching!

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