Kratos Aurion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
forsworn) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2013-10-19 05:56 pm
forsworn) wrote in damned_institute2013-10-19 05:56 pm
Night 73: Secret Stairs
[from here]
The lights flickered on as Kratos entered; he quietly sheathed his sword and then walked onto the escalator after checking to make sure that Castiel and Lloyd had made it in after him.
"I realize our keys may not match," he said, mostly for Lloyd's benefit, as the escalator began its slow climb upward. "We have the radios, though, so if there are any issues, call." Both Castiel and Lloyd had easily remembered numbers; hopefully, they both recalled his.
The lights flickered on as Kratos entered; he quietly sheathed his sword and then walked onto the escalator after checking to make sure that Castiel and Lloyd had made it in after him.
"I realize our keys may not match," he said, mostly for Lloyd's benefit, as the escalator began its slow climb upward. "We have the radios, though, so if there are any issues, call." Both Castiel and Lloyd had easily remembered numbers; hopefully, they both recalled his.
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It was a good idea to rely on those if they were separated again, though, and so he nodded. If nothing else, he and Kratos should end up in the same spot, but the same couldn't be said for Lloyd.
They still hadn't been attacked, but as the elevator slowly worked its way up, Castiel continued to keep an eye out. It was well-lit here, but that didn't mean that something couldn't drop down on them from the ceiling.
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"I know your number," he said to Kratos, letting the comment distract him from his impatience, however briefly that would last. His father's number had been one of the first ones that he'd memorized. "I don't think I know yours, though, Castiel." Castiel's number had been in that note that was passed around, right? Dammit, he'd forgotten his list back in his room. "I'm seven-eight-nine," he added, just in case.
They were almost to the top. It would only take a few steps to race up to the door. Lloyd rocked back on his heels, restraining the impulse. He should at least know Castiel's number before he went through that door.
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"Right, shall we?" This would be their third attempt at the third floor. Every old saying he'd ever heard seemed to imply that this would be the one, their best shot at success; hopefully, that would prove to be the case.
[to here]
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This was the furthest they'd gotten, but Sora felt like they'd made it in much less time, which was a good sign. He paused at the bottom of the escalator. The room was well-lit so there really weren't any nooks or crannies where monsters could be hiding, and yet he took a moment to look over the whole room before he stepped onto the escalator and triggered it to start moving.
He spun around, turning his back to the top of the room as he glanced down at Link and Tsurugi. "I went into a storybook too, by the way! I used to visit Winnie the Pooh and all his other friends... but you really went back in time, huh? I've never done that before."
He'd done plenty of other things, and he was more than willing to brag about it if the conversation went that direction. There was nothing Sora enjoyed more than talking about the places he'd gone and the friends he'd made.
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Link let out a small gasp as he stepped into the hidden room. There hadn't been any shock in how the passageway opened, but what was behind it... The bright light, the strange staircase... It was like they had entered an entirely different place. Yes. This was the way they needed to go.
He was startled out of his silence as Sora spoke.
"Yes. In the ruins of a past era of my country, there lies a route into the past." He watched with curiosity as the stairs came to life before stepping on himself.
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In the meantime, he stepped onto the escalator and crossed his arms, resisting the urge to run up the stairs. As much as he wanted to make sure they were as productive a possible, hastiness lead to mistakes, and mistakes led to injuries. And getting hurt here instead of being able to move on would just be too stupid.
"... Winnie the Pooh?" he repeated curiously. It was surprising to hear; making that particular jump had been pretty difficult for Kyousuke and his friends to achieve, so he wondered how Sora could come and go through a world like that so easily. Or what the story was even about.
He fell silent, though, as Link spoke up. Ruins, huh...? "... That's a little different from me. We have a time machine that can take wormholes through different time routes—it's called the TM Caravan. You can take it just about anywhere if the conditions are right. We've been to a few different eras. The future, too."
The future, where his friends would be fighting right now, if his memories were right. He could talk about the things he'd been through easily enough, but he still didn't understand how they really worked. Had all this already happened, or had he lived through it early? And if he had, what would that mean when it really came? The boy went quiet, dragged away by his own thoughts.
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"The future, even? That must be pretty cool! I'd like to be able to visit different times like that..." Still, Sora was content enough to be able to travel to a variety of different worlds. In a way, that already felt like time traveling, since some worlds were more advanced than others.
It made sense that Tsurugi hadn't heard of Winnie the Pooh, which meant that Link probably hadn't either.
"Winnie the Pooh is a story about a group of animals who live in the Hundred Acre Wood together. Winnie's the main character, he's a bear who loves honey! And there's Piglet and Tigger and..." He trailed off, realizing that this wasn't going to make much sense unless he had more time to explain.
And they'd already reached the top.
Sora stepped off and eyed the door. This was where night had ended for them before, but it wasn't going to work that way this time.
"Ready, you guys?" Once both Link and Tsurugi gave their consent, he led them through...
[To here.]
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What on earth...?
The room beyond the wall wasn't very big, but it was very different from the area they were leaving behind. The surfaces were shiny in a way that most of the rest of the Institute wasn't, something that suggested a clinical, technical, advanced atmosphere. It stood at great contrast to another hidden corridor he had been in, the almost medieval one in the basement that led to the Sphinx's prison.
The small size of the area behind the hidden door meant that there was no need to clear it with the gun once he had looked inside it with the light. The area was dominated by an escalator, currently still. As he and Lana entered the room, lights came on overhead--bright lights, they hurt his eyes momentarily--and he could see that the walls were lined with speakers, which appeared to go all the way up. There didn't seem to be anyone on the escalator. He holstered the gun, intending to get it out again at the top. It had no manual safety; riding upward with it in his hand seemed like a bad idea.
As far as he could tell, the dangers here were the escalator itself, the speakers, and whatever was at the top. The escalator could be rigged to suddenly release... but that hadn't happened to anyone before, and neither had his other concern, which would be a deafening blast of sound from all those speakers.
Lana would want to press on, that much was obvious, but he still shot a brief questioning glance in her direction, in case she had something to say.
"We've been extremely lucky so far."
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There were two reasons for the quiet that sprang to mind. One -- Landel was confident in his security beyond this point, that letting them through was no concern. Two -- that whatever was going on had rattled him, and they might never have a better chance than right now to push onwards. Either Ryuuzaki was thinking the same thing, or he'd been hit with some sort of effect that robbed him of his critical thinking, so she didn't bother saying it aloud.
Instead, she covered him as they went up, and pressed him for information. "Do you know anything beyond what was on those notes? I'd prefer not to walk into a known trap or cast about at random." If there's another option. There were times that all you could do was press and press and press, and see what turned up. In law and in life.
[to here]
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The same, weird, familiar moving stairs. Korra stepped up without hesitation this time, keeping her balance as the stairs began to move.
"First thing we gotta do is find one of those teleporters, I think."
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She took a cursory look around, just in case, but nothing jumped out at her besides the escalator. "But where could they possibly take us and how many are there?" she wondered as she stepped up behind Korra.
A whole new level of the Institute could mean anything.
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"Even if we get lost, they'll just take us back in the morning. There's gotta be at least one right way to go, or the rebels wouldn't have told us to come here," she said as she stepped off the stairs and onto the third floor...
[To here]
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He blinked at it for a moment -- there had been plenty of weird things about the technology here, but this was new. The concept behind it didn't seem terribly difficult if he bothered to think about it, but the purpose of leaving it to constantly run upward seemed wasteful, if nothing else.
Still, there it was. It was impossible to avoid tightening his grip on his sword when they stepped on with a weird uneasy jerk of suddenly moving not at his own pace, but it seemed efficient enough.
The lights followed them as they moved, Sasuke tense for attack despite the fact that the only real noise was the rumble of the moving stairs, frown deepening as he took in the difference in the style of this passageway from the rest of the Institute.
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They reminded him of a science lab. Not an unappealing image for someone fond of the sciences as himself, not on its own, but combined with the horrors Landel was known for...
If the third floor appeared anything like this, they were going to be for a night of uncomfortable aesthetics.
"If we're unable to avoid using the... teleportation device supposedly at the top," Aidou started, interjecting all the distaste into the word as it deserved, "than I suggest we keep in contact. Like with the ring. Who knows where that madman plans to send us now that we've willingly ventured into another of his traps." All said from a rather casual position leaning against the bannister, arms and ankles crossed.
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Aidou's apparent distaste for this teleportation was to some extent shared, then, and Sasuke's mouth set in a thinner line as they finally reached the top. Speaking of the ring, though -- now that they had the bracelet -- he had enough time to bite his thumb and smear it over the ring before they were at the end of the moving stairs and forced to step off, and his hand had only just landed on Aidou's arm before their feet crossed off the top stair.
[[to here]]
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This was as far as Scar had gotten, up until now. He squinted in the sudden light and turned off his flashlight to preserve the battery. The stairs, he noted, were already moving.
He stepped onto the escalator, still waiting for his eyes to adjust.
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