Day Twelve, Conclusion

[voidtreckermods]

All battles come to an end. Professor Chill and his henchpeople is defeated, the ice giant slain by the brave heroes of purple team. The townspeople led out of the tunnels and due to some extraordinary pun-hacking skills by Kaito the weather machine is de-powered.

Being a magical snowstorm the shutting down of the weather machine causes it to vanish, snow begins to melt and then evaporates into the air before it can become a larger problem in terms of a flood. The temperatures rise, going from dangerously cold to a warm spring day, warm enough that the voidtreckers will soon be too warm all bundled up as they are. The clouds disappear, the sun shines. Within a short period of time the streets are dry, the mountainsides are green and the trees are bright with flowers.

The streets are still a mess, property is damaged and the clean up operation is going to be intense but it doesn't look like there is any lasting ecological damage at least.

The ice labyrinth vanishes and those inside it will find themselves suddenly standing in the field below. For red team, the journey to the top of the mountain took four days in the blizzard but with the weather clear and going downhill they will reach the valley by the end of day eleven.

The army has arrived and mostly taken over gathering the injured and dealing with the more serious damage but there is plenty to do for those who still wish to help. Houses need put back to rights, streets and paths need sweeping of debris.

Help out, find your friends, swap stories. Celebrate a job well done.

Towards mid afternoon of day twelve a beeping from their SCA's should draw everyone's attention. The map leads them to a place just out of sight from the town and there is the Voidtrecker Express. It is time to leave.

Comments

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin is a little bit surprised when after a few minutes of Kaito's fiddling with the computer system, the ice labyrinth simply disappears and Orange Team suddenly is teleported to the field below. "What? Oh, nice!"

Then, of course, there's a round of laughter and congratulations, which last for a little while.

And then, within a very short period of time, the snow is all melted and the hillsides around him turn green and the flowers start springing, and it is too warm to wear the jacket. He goes to say hello to family and friends who were on other teams.

[flatteries]

Inigo is tired. He's so tired. He's no stranger to having to fight for a long time on end, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get tired all the same. He's mostly been sitting and resting ever since all the snow and cold disappeared, really.

But then he spots a familiar face nearby. Curufin's appearance is apparently enough for him to force himself to get up and run-- oh no, bad idea, more like walk over to the other. He even manages to hide most of his exhaustion behind a smile.

"Looks like you made it."

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin looks around and sees Inigo coming. His face lights up, he's glad to see him.

"I made it. And you made it. How did it go for you and your Purple Teammates?"

[flatteries]

"Well, it seems we are all still alive, for one!"

He laughs, making it obvious that it's just a joke. Granted, it probably is the best one could say, considering the whole bunch of them are probably exhausted at this point after all that fighting. But of course Inigo is going to try and put a positive jokey spin on it anyway. It's what he does.

"How about you guys? Hopefully you didn't have so many monsters to deal with."

[so_dark_a_road]

"Being alive after a battle is always a good thing!" Curufin laughs too.

"Actually, Orange Team didn't have any monsters to deal with. Just an ice labyrinth that had a habit of getting up and shaking its booty as though it were on the dance floor!" He's the same, he likes to joke about things that either aren't funny or wouldn't be funny if the worst had happened. "We did have that damnable machine, though. I was going to just break it, but Kaito had hacking skills and he managed to fool the machine into thinking he was Dr. Chill. So he wrangled access to the system and shut it off."

[flatteries]

A.. shaking labyrinth? That sounds a lot less straightforward than what the purple team was dealing with, that's for sure. It's the shaking part that feels kind of weird to Inigo - he can't even fully imagine what the other means, really. But Curufin seems cheery enough about it, so maybe it.. wasn't that bad..?

"Sounds like a mission accomplished for all of us. It really pays off to have people with us who specialize in all varieties of things, hm?"

Like machine hacking, for once. The only kind of hacking Inigo knows is with a sword.

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin actually wishes he could have gotten down off that ice platform in the sky and come to help Purple Team. He's good at hacking with a sword, too.

"Yes! It pays to have specialists. And it's a good thing Kaito was there, because then I wasn't really necessary. I think I could have broken the machine if Kaito hadn't been there to hack it, but maybe it's best I didn't. That machine might have been booby-trapped. If I had started fooling with the wires or smashed the console, it might have had a self-destruct sequence and blown us all to hell. Or dropped the platform out of the sky and killed all of Orange Team. Something bad, anyway." He smiles, though. "All's well that ends well!"

Still curious, though.

"Say, what were the monsters like? I never got to see them."

[flatteries]

It's pretty amazing how Curufin can just casually talk about potential death with that smile on his face.. Although Inigo isn't exactly judging him, considering he loves covering everything up with smiles as well - maybe the other is just doing the same thing. It's a little odd, though.

"The monsters? Well, they weren't exactly like anything I have fought before. They were all made out of either snow or ice, yet they seemed to be moving. I suppose that machine must have animated the snow and ice somehow."

Which is also weird, but Inigo can wrap his head around that at least after all the strange things he's already seen in this place.

"They weren't too pleasant to be around, really. Mostly since they seemed intent on trying to rip us apart."

[so_dark_a_road]

Inigo is not the only person who is dubious about the smile on Curufin's face when he talks about possible death. He's gotten that kind of feedback from others, whether they said it aloud or only showed it with their facial expressions. But it's true that he's covering up something, even from himself. In all those many years of battles against Morgoth the Dark Enemy of the World, the worst monster that Middle-earth had ever faced, he had learned to charge into deadly peril with a grin and a joke, and that had served him well.

"Strange, monsters made of snow and ice. I would give a lot to discover Dr. Chill's secret. It might stand us in good stead on some other mission, if we ever had to face artificially animated creatures again. But those particular monsters, I don't imagine they were very welcoming! Unless to welcome you into their savage arms or their vicious teeth. Did any of them have teeth? As I said, I didn't have the chance to fight them."

[flatteries]

Something about what Curufin says makes Inigo laughs, and he jokingly shoves the other a little with his arm. There's no real force behind it though, since he's just being playful.

"You are almost making it sound like you wished you could've fought those menaces with all your questions! You ought to be careful what you wish for, I don't feel like lifting anything anymore for days after having to deal with those things for so long."

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin grins back at Inigo and nudges him back, jokingly.

"I do wish I could have fought those menaces! I'm a fighter by temperament, a warrior by profession. I like to fight. But you must have fought them every day on this mission, and I can see why you'd be fatigued."

[flatteries]

"Oh, sure, then let's switch around next time this happens. You can go fight all the monsters you want, and I will use my great intellect to solve a labyrinth in no time!"

Says the boy with no more than two active braincells at any given time.. But at least it's obvious that he's jokingly exaggerating on purpose, judging by the tone he says it with.

(Jokes aside though, he really wouldn't mind it. Inigo can fight just fine, but that doesn't mean he necessarily likes it. But that's something he won't admit out loud.)

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin grins. "All right, it's a deal! I'll use my brawn to wrestle those monsters into compliance, or chop them up into pieces with my sword, and you can use your brains to solve the great puzzle!"

Oh well, intelligence is relative. Or so Curufin would say when it's his mind stacked up against a problem he can't solve in time. But he has to chuckle at Inigo's deliberate exaggeration; it's humor he can identify with.

( Everybody has something they won't admit aloud. XD )

[stealsyourheart]

"Oh thank kami" He slumps to the ground with a laugh and tired smirk. "That's a bit closer than I like cutting it."

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin responds with a smirk of his own. "I was a bit worried too. But hey, it could have been worse? We could have had ice monsters actually in the labyrinth with us, chewing at our elbows as we tried to deal with the machine. Likewise, the labyrinth could have simply dropped us 25,000 feet to the ground instead of teleporting us here. We'd have been Pancake Kaito and Pancake Curufin!"

Still laughing. "Congrats on hacking the machine, however. And too back we didn't get to finish our race."

[stealsyourheart]

"True. It was a pretty boring labyrinth, all told!"

He grins at him. "Thanks. Got lucky, this time."

[so_dark_a_road]

"Yeah, we'll have to put in a request for a more dangerous labyrinth next time." Big grin.

"I don't think that was luck, though. I think you're good with language. You persuaded that stupid machine that you were Dr. Chill."

[stealsyourheart]

"Better for us that it was boring?"

He sits up enough to bow, a magician's flourish.

"Computers are dumb." He says cheerfully. "They can only do what they're programed to do. Once the authorisation was accepted, I could do what I want."

[so_dark_a_road]

"Better not to get bitten in half by some monster or tossed into the sky, I agree."

Curufin grins again and claps when Kaito bows.

"They do seem a bit. . . mechanistic," he agrees. "I could never understand people who think computers can actually think. You sure scammed that one!"

[stealsyourheart]

"They are machines, after all! Can only do what you tell em to do." He shrugs. "You can program them to act in ways that might look inteligent, sure. But they've only got a set number of responses. If X, do Y."

[so_dark_a_road]

"I'm not a programmer, but I've listened to people talk about these machines and I've done a little reading myself. It doesn't sound like it would even be possible to create a machine that had genuine intelligence."

[stealsyourheart]

"We've lots of speculative fiction about that, but with our current tech level? Nah. Not happening."

[so_dark_a_road]

"Very speculative fiction!" he laughs. "Say, Kaito, since we didn't finish our race through the labyrinth, shall we have a race back to the train? Not right this minute. In a little while."

[stealsyourheart]

He huffs. "We could! I'm pretty wiped though, I'm guessing you'd win!"

Good place to end this one?

[so_dark_a_road]

"All right, then, let's just rest here for a bit. We don't have to decide right this minute whether to race back to the train. We don't have to race at all. Just if you're up for it in a bit." He smiles at his friend again.