damned_institute | Night 45: Sphinx's Chamber

How could HK be from Star Wars if he didn't know who Darth Vader was? He was the Big Bad, practically the franchise's mascot. Hell, Vader was practically the only thing worth watching in that whole series, and he was pretty damn sure he wasn't the only one who thought so. "Pff, whatever. Tell me when someone makes a show 'bout robot-cars from space," He said to HK.

He fell silent when he entered the large, golden room. Now this took the Twinkie when it came to weirdness. The hallway and marbel room were one thing, but this... this was almost too much. Especially the thing in the center.

HK was just about to snipe back with something biting and incredibly witty (just as soon as he thought of what it might be), when the doors opened, revealing...

...What? HK tilted his head quizzically, looking at the... thing. Was this a 'sfinks', whatever that was supposed to mean? "Statement: I'll try to break my programming and not call it m--...that thing that I'm required to say."

[ Sorry for the hold-up, guys! Since notifs have been wonky lately, please e-mail/PM me when it's my turn so I don't keep you waiting. :> ]

The sphinx watched the three adventurers with eyes filled with disdain and more than a little irritation. It seemed that the beast was feeling less benevolent than usual; perhaps it was tired of its master's orders or of its inability to sink its claws into anybody that came into the room. Either way, it gave out a long yawn of a sigh and waved a large paw at the man at the woman who had spoken.

"Yes, do be careful," he said in something of a grumble. "A wrong word and you might break the rules and receive a penalization, which, while amusing wouldn't help your searching very much, I assure you."

He paused, as if realizing he was getting ahead of himself, and shook his massive head.

"I suppose you'll be needing some rules first, though?" it said dryly.

[will do!]

Beatrix moved to the side, away from her companions. Should this creature decide to attack, it would be best if they were not all grouped together. Especially given 'Lance' and his less-then-affective combat capacity.

"Yes," the Bride replied. "Rules would be appreciated. If you'll, please?"

Even though Lance had expected the thing to talk to them (how else could it ask riddles, after all?), the sight of the thing talking still made his eyes slightly widen in surprise.

He'd gone from a horror movie to a warped version of a Discovery Channel program. This sucked.

HK literally had to bite down on his tongue to keep from saying anything. Normally, violence would be what he would want out of any situation.

But if he said anything now, it would likely lead to violence that would lead to the female meatbag making his heart explode. He didn't want that at all. So instead, he just nodded dumbly, possibly by either definition of the word.

The sphinx nodded a little wearily and sighed as he settled on his haunches, looking almost bored. It definitely seemed as if his last encounter with adventurers had been the last straw on the camel's back of his enthusiasm.

"Yes, I'll please," he muttered to himself before taking in a breath and reciting:

"Here, you have the option of being asked a riddle for a very worthy prize. Once I have given the question, you will have five minutes to think and one chance to answer correctly; should any one of you address me with a wrong answer or should you find yourselves unable to respond within five minutes' time, you will be forced to best me in a wholly different way.

"Choose wisely. Should you turn down my challenge, you will be free to return the way you came. Should you choose to stay, the doors behind you will shut and only a correct response will get you out with the prize."

The sphinx stopped, giving some sort of bored gesture with its paw as it arched an eyebrow at this new band of adventurers. He regarded them blankly.

"So? Which will it be?"

Without hesitation, the Bride looked at HK-47. "You will inform us when our five minute time is almost up," she said to him.

Regarding the Sphinx once again, Beatrix met its eyes. She was not going to be deterred. She was not going to be stopped at this stage. She wished she had SubZero with them, the man was of quick wit, but she would have to make due with these two. And should any of them address the Sphinx and cause them to have to deal with the second option, she may just kill them.

"We accept."

Wait, on top of everything else they had a time limit? Samurai-woman had better have enough riddle-solving powers for the three of them. He really didn't wanna get torn limb from limb by that thing.

HK nodded, still somehow managing to keep silent. It was rather difficult when it wasn't in the name of sneaking up on something and introducing it to a knife through the brain, the stopping power of a good rifle, or the mechanics of nearly spontaneous combustion.

The sphinx's face twisted into a grim smile as he received the near-immediate reply from the woman.

"Of course you do," he said.

The doors shut behind the three patients and the sphinx cleared his throat before staring straight ahead and reciting its riddle.

"With thieves I consort; with the vilest, in short; I'm quite at ease in depravity; yet all divines use me, and savants can't lose me, for I am the center of gravity."

The sphinx bowed his head with a long exhale.

"You have five minutes."

Beatrix listened to the riddle and was immediately baffled. The first third seemed to fit together, as did the second third, yet the two did not mesh. And then there was the part about the center of gravity that turned anything the Bride was able to put together meaningless.

Her brows drawn down in thought, Beatrix moved back to the other two men. Keeping her back to the Sphinx so the beast did not mistake her words to be directed at it, something she was loathe to do on principle, she asked HK-47, "Repeat that verbatim for me."

What the fuck did that mean? That made no fucking sense. Thieves, divines, and being the center of gravity? How were they suppossed to guess that?

Blondie and the Star Wars droid had better have enough riddle-solving powers for the three of them, or else Lance would be pissed. If he died because of these two, he'd spend his last breath telling them "Fuck you all".

HK started counting the time, sighing just slightly. Riddles were the sorts of things Jedi loved, not assassin droids.

"Repetition: With thieves I consort; with the vilest, in short; I'm quite at ease in depravity; yet all divines use me, and savants can't lose me, for I am the center of gravity." He didn't really need to do it using the odd meatbag's own voice, but he copied that too, anyway.

He decided immediately that looking for symbolism was not the approach that was best suited to him. This was Earth, the most insular, self-centered little mudball he'd ever seen, after all. He had to focus on the wording...

Aaah. He had it. He also knew how much time they had left. ...He'd wait and see if the meatbags would figure it out. Of course by doing so, he was really giving them a vote of no confidence. He'd never give up the chance to show how superior droids were to meatbags.

[We are to skip the Sphinx until we address it.]

Beatrix cocked her head as she listened to HK-47 repeat the riddle. It still didn't make sense. She didn't see the correlation between all those things. What did they have in common. Vile theieves, depravity, divines, savants and gravity. Gavity? That still threw her.

There was a solution. There had to be one and she would figure it out. She repeated the riddle in her mind. No, that wasn't good enough. She needed to see it.

"Again," she said to HK-47, retrieving her journal from where she'd had it in her waistband against her back so she could write it down.

Lance was still mulling the riddle over when the other two started yapping. Oh, so HK thought he had a solution?

He whispered at the younger man, "It better be good, or else I might kill ya' before that thing does."

Alright, that was enough waiting. HK could be exceedingly patient while sitting on a tiny ledge on the outside of a luxury high rise, waiting for a clean shot, but he had no such incentive here.

"Statement: Unnecessary. I determined the answer within the first twenty-three point two seconds, including the time it took to repeat the thing for you the first time. It is the letter 'V'. Query: Can we answer it now?"

As if 'Lance' could kill HK-47. That would be amusing to watch for the few seconds it would take for the droid to turn him inside out.

Beatrix was a little irritated when HK-47 refused to repeat the riddle, proclaiming to know the answer. And then when he said it, the Bride turned the solution over in her head - the letter v - and went over the riddle in her mind. She wanted to make sure the answer was the correct one before presenting it to the Sphinx.

The center of gravity. V. Yes, it was what they all had in common. She would have solved it had she been able to write them down. Seeing it would have made it click without the prompting.

"As I thought," she replied. "Good job."

Turning to the Sphinx, Beatrix addressed it directly, stepping close enough to be just out of the beast's range. "The answer to your riddle is the letter V."

The letter V? That's what the little fucker came up with?

Lance went over the riddle in his mind again, and realized that HK actually might have been right. All those words had the letter V in them, and gravity had a V in the middle. It made sense now. HK had better be right about that.

He looked up at the Sphinx, waiting for it to tell them if they got it right or not.

"Oh, my," the sphinx intoned dryly, looking up at the adventurers with a deadpan expression. "You guessed right. How unexpected."

The creature didn't even try to go back to its usual regal demeanor as it groped backwards for its usual prize and shoved it toward the patients. It was a miniature shield made of silver and engraved with unknown markings.

"This is the Coliseum Shield," the sphinx said, and though his tone probably should have been solemn, it instead came off as a sarcastic recitation. "I have handed out many, many versions of it in my long days, but I have yet to hear of a man, woman, or child for whom it has brought nothing but misery.

"There is nothing evil about the artifact itself, but where it will take you is certainly a place of death and despair. Of course, I'm sure you'll go there anyway, so here are your directions:

"In the ballroom, you might have noticed a door to the south--one of such intricacy that it either repulses or entices all who see it. That is the door to the Coliseum, and should you find the partner to this artifact in the east end of this basement, you will find yourself able to enter so long as you are willing to make a sacrifice. Should you survive the trials within, from which many venture but few return... You will be able to proceed further into the bowels of this Institute. And, perhaps, bother other creations of the man upstairs."

The sphinx sighed as he settled back down again, obviously making a conscious effort to calm himself.

"Hmph. That's all."

He closed his eyes and went still.

Well, that was a cheerful and not at all melodramatic prize. However, HK was in possession of a great deal of morbid curiosity, and the description of the Coliseum was not at all off-putting to him. It just sounded like a normal day at work for the Sith, really.

But if he had to give up killing things as a sacrifice, then he was not going to be happy.

Ah, so that is what the warlord had been hiding. Coliseum. How fitting.

Without hesitation, Beatrix took the shield and turned away from the Sphinx. They had the two items now. Well, SubZero had the one from the weapon range. She was going to have to find him.

If not, then she knew what to do this next night. "Let's go," she said, ready to leave the room.

So HK was right after all. He honestly wouldn't have guessed that answer in a million years. The shield was kind of cool, but seemed like kind of a jip after all that shit.

He also hadn't been expecting there to be a friggin' coliseum. What kind of nuthouse was this? Kids shooting themselves and making monsters, cat-human things asking riddles, ballrooms and now this.

"Yeah, let's go," Lance murmered.

[From here.]

The prediction proved absolutely correct.

Perhaps too perfectly. Unwanted trauma never came in gold--at least, not to Nigredo's understanding. It might have appeared as the giant beast in the center of the room, but its features and stance were none that he had witnessed before. Not even in the simulator. Without meaning to, the child stepped further into the room, eyes wide, entranced at the pure strangeness of it all.

He might have seemed a little too taken in, by the way he was staring blankly at the beast.

The Castlevania hallway wasn't exactly the most pleasant of things to walk (or stumble) into. Once he finally got over his irritation and noticed it, he started to get creeped out all over again. This type of set up couldn't possibly lead to anything good. The white one's comment only got him even more worried. Cause the only thing worse than having dreams influenced by movies and video games was a dash of Dante's Inferno thrown into the mix. The last thing he wanted to do was proceed any further.

Before he could raise any protest, however, Yoshiko moved her way in front of them all and snapped at the two kids in exactly the way he'd been wanting to for a while now. It was... really hot, actually. Damn. She needed to yell more often. Her display seemed to move the kids, too (though not in the same way), and they finally agreed to let them all get the hell out of there. Amazing. She was on his "People to Nail before Release" list for sure now.

The elated sensation promptly dropped as soon as he followed the black one through those doors. First thing he noticed was this was one bigass room with way too much gold and a feel to it that didn't at all seem very exit-y. Second was that thing. What the fuck was THAT?! A giant monster he could have sworn he'd seen in a textbook at some point. A gryphon or phoenix or something like that. Only it looked a lot less cartoon-y and more really freaking terrifying. That thing was huge and looked like it could have pounced from that pedistal to where they were in a matter of seconds if it wanted to. Instead, it just sat there... staring at them. Which was a hell of a lot creepier.

Had he not been rooted to the spot in terror, he might have yelled something like "You idiot! This isn't an exit!" or would have thought to backpedal out of the room immediately. Instead, he simply stared right back at the thing, feeling a great deal less awed than the stupid, crazy black-haired kid. ...Maybe it was like the T-Rex in that movie he saw once. If he just held still, it wouldn't see him. Although, it was really hard to convince himself of that when he could have sworn it looked him right in the eye. Oh God... He practically feel his whole body quivering. This wasn't happening. This wasn't real. This wasn't-- Oh God, he was going to die, wasn't he?!

Oh, how Yomi was right. Albedo was depending on it really. Nigredo had said it, at any rate. Physical trauma was supposedly better than the less substantial kinds. The boy didn't respond to her, maintaining a find expression. Her yelling was almost sweet compared to his twin's odes of hate that Rubedo expressed in such passionate tones. And by any matter, Nigredo seemed to have made the correct choice, and was continuing with the night. The white-haired Variant merely shrugged under his burden and followed after his sibling once Nigredo's pet had moved as well. And very nearly ran into both, froze where they were.

Oh goody, a big, shining room! That was clearly worth him almost tripping over the two of them. Albedo made a noise of distaste, shifting to the side to go around the pair. Shining walls, and little else seemed to be the norm, but for a pedestal and a large statue resting there. Except the statue didn't seem so much as a statue as something playing at living. The boy looked it over in an abstract fashion, vaguely curious. His memory prompted a guardian, a word long since forgotten. But the meaning had all but fled, facts shifting. But it remained that playing at life was becoming something familiar, be it himself or the walking dead--whether or not they wrote his rotting face, and this in itself was no different. A dance he hadn't yet stepped to.

He moved forward, tapestry trailing slightly behind him. "Perhaps something to fight, then?" he wondered, amused at the thought. "Another 'test' to be taken." At this, he did laugh, and it deteriorated into giggles. Rubedo's test had been with guns and turrets, surely the giant beast would be his own! It seemed too fitting, perhaps; horrible monsters to fight in overwhelming odds. It wasn't like he could yet die, after all. "Oh, pick me, pick me," he mocked in chorus to no one in particular. "I'm sure I'll like this game.~"

[Jumping in before Yomi since I'm going to be offline most of tomorrow!]

The sphinx seemed impassive, almost unimpressed, until the white-haired kid spoke. Then, the creature's eyes narrowed and flicked immediately towards Albedo.

"If you keep on like that, I will 'pick' you," the beast snarled, sounding quite unlike his usual composed self. Realizing, perhaps, that his trend of unprofessionalism had reached a new low, the sphinx shook his head and muttered something to himself.

Finally, he cleared his throat and continued. "I... apologize. I don't... normally cater to more than one group of humans per night, you understand."

At the word 'humans', the creature smirked slightly, revealing jagged teeth that seemed even more unsettling when juxtaposed against his half-civilized demeanor.

"So," he said lightly, a little dangerously, "I assume you're here to play my game?"

She’d always thought she’d done well enough under pressure, but having everything unravelling around her was not just pressure, it was something big and terrifying and unknowable; the fact that her brain was still firing neurons with some semblance of coherence seemed like a miracle. Both boys’ behavior was more and more unnerving in the face of that. Apologies weren’t the problem.

‘Going back’ meant going back, not forward through another door that was probably not an exit, but before she knew it, the kids were trying to get past her, anyway. Ugh, for god’s sake! A fuse had been lit inside her--one that had no healthy source, to be sure--and she turned on them, jaw set. She wasn’t being force-fed anymore of this bullshit! With that in mind, she overtook Nigredo, and like a flash, reached out to pinch his cheek between her thumb and forefinger. Not nicely, either. “I said enough!” Yoshiko reprimanded. “Don’t talk in definites.” Because this isn’t an exit, how could it be, you’re just a kid, don’t pretend you know!

No, this was not a way out. She could tell that the moment she’d stepped inside, through glances and impressions. Now that she was standing there, with her attention fixed on the boy, and his attention fixed on something else--something else in the room with them--she couldn’t pretend otherwise. But she didn’t want to look at what could be in that gold-colored room that had everybody so entranced. Then Alan was talking and laughing again, and a renewed chill worked its way through her.

When a fourth, unfamiliar voice boomed at them, Yoshiko jumped. She couldn’t help but look out of reflex.

Silence emanated from her, as well.

Before Nigredo could properly regain his senses, a finger and a thumb pulled his cheek in one direction, and without properly considering his place, he yelped, surprised. The move hurt more than the boy wanted to admit. "I wasn't!" he protested, hissing in the effort, eyes still edged toward the creature in the middle of the chamber. "I honestly thought... Look, this really isn't the time to argue."

Her fingers were like pins of ice in his skin. Why, of all things, did a girl's abuse hurt the worst?

She eventually seemed to understand the extent of their situation and jumped, leaving a rather sour Nigredo to rub a palm against his face. This emotion increased tenfold when Albedo's laughter caused their host to throw out a threat in return. The youngest practically glared at the middle child, the suppressed headache flaring to awareness. "No, I'm sorry," he told the creature, as though the words were the most natural to offer in this instance. "Please don't mind him."

A pause. "What do you mean by 'game'?"

Had David not been as utterly petrified as he was, he'd have probably jumped forward and clamped a hand over that bleach-haired moron's mouth before he said anything worse. What the fuck was wrong with these freaking kids?! Why were they just talking to it like there was nothing weird going on here? Did they not see what that thing was up there?! It was a goddamn monster! Scratch that. A talking monster! With bigass teeth!!

A monster that was... apologizing in a really formal fashion. Holy shit, he must have been more messed up than he realized.

He pulled his eyes away from the beast to look at each of the kids in turn, more than a little disturbed at their lack of distress. Maybe that was actually a person there but David was seeing him as a monster? That was the only thing that made sense, even if the vision itself was making it difficult to believe that. Maybe it was the voice and the implications in his tone when he said the word game. Somehow, he got the impression they weren't talking about a round of Monopoly.

A ball of dread welled up in the pit of his stomach as he looked back at the creature, frowning and trying to will himself to stop shaking. He wasn't going to let this beat down his resolve. He could do this. He could beat this. All he had to do was calm down and gain the will to speak again. ...Might take a few more minutes, but he'd do it, dammit!

His party's squabbles was noted and brushed off, the only true thing of note was Yomi (Yoshiko's?) minor abuse of Nigredo. The larger part of his being currently found it hilarious, and made a note to tell her so later. A smaller part of his mind, new to form, found the correct response a glare, if nothing else. Should he be keeping his promise? Albedo rolled his eyes in response to himself. Nigredo was fine, and a bit more emotional than the moment before. So even better. The smaller part went to argue, and the boy ignored it by moving forward, long, lazy strides like he was in a play.

He kept laughing eyes on the creature, even as Nigredo apologized for his efforts. Near to the pedestal, Albedo tipped his head, a smile on his lips. His brother had asked the game, and Albedo would await the response. He was ever-so-hopeful now, really. The creature had threatened, and Albedo waited to make good on it. He giggled once, light. "You're interesting.~" he chorused. "Are you the game?"

Night 45: Sphinx's Chamber

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

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