Character Dig Site

"Yes, I gathered that the gloves can break rocks," Rune said, nodding at Adam, "what I'm asking is... how to say this? What... what method do the gloves use to break the rocks? I mean, do you crush them? Strike them? Disintegrate them with a laser-beam?"

He glanced at Nick as he spoke and pulled out his notebook. "2015 eh? Interesting... in-ter-es-ting..." He turned a few pages, and wrote 'Flying shoes', possibly potential in 23 years: 2015. No flying cars? Rune looked at what he wrote and mentally sighed. He'd nearly be fifty in twenty three years. Technology progressed too slowly in the hands of scientists who required everything to be safeguarded. Far too slowly.

At Marion's rather indignant assertion, Rune glanced up and shook his pen slightly, saying, "She's got a point you know. Unless... there is something about me that is particularly uncharacteristic for your time period?"

Before he could get an answer, Rune was approached by Herakleios. "Me? Well, no, not without a bit of planning, or at least some sort of communication. If you're talking about the people not here right now, well... they rushed ahead before we could regroup." He shrugged, "I guess the excitement of exploration overbears getting organized first." It was a bit of hypocrisy on his part; had he not been given such charge to lead, Rune would no doubt be ahead with the others. Perhaps even further than the others.





Tucker furrowed his brow and shook his head a little skeptically, but shrugged anyways, saying, "If you say so Mr. Stellark." He looked at the pod-man and added, "And Knives. Knives." He nodded, making what one might call a metal face. "Very cool." Here." He walked over to the Knives and took his sleeve gently.

"I'm Tucker, by the way." He guided Knives towards the exit, saying "I guess we'd better scurry out of here before whatever 'thing' is watching us starts taking video too."

Cain turned around and saw how Tucker was leading Knives, "Hold his hand, he's blind, not a sack of potatoes," he snapped. He reached into his pocket to find the candy, then remembered how Knives said he didn't remember when he last ate. He took out the sweet, a slightly squished miniature snickers bar, then reached out for Knives's hand and placed the candy in it. "Chocolate. Has lots of phosphates in it."

He turned away, as if embarrassed by the sudden show of kindness. He quickened his pace for a moment, then slowed down and turned around to see Tucker's progress with Knives.

"Well, uhm, I was touching the ground like a minute ago, so I don't think you can really blame him."

Knives realized how long it had been since he had food he actually liked. Not an IV solution, not freeze-dried crap, not canned anchovies—nice things. Not since the day he had been taken to the facility and shit got fucked up. So even though it was a mini chocolate bar and he didn't know what kind it was, he was pretty excited.

"Thanks for the chocolate." He tore open the wrapper with his teeth and ate the whole thing in one bite.

Nick shook his head at Rune. "Oh! No! No, you're fine. I was just...speaking without thinking."

"Like always." Jackson added.

"Shut up."

Jackson only chuckled before turning to Marion. "Huh? Oh! Well, there's the boots, and..." He showed her his metal gloves, "There are these." He reached into his backpack and pulled out a small stone. "Adam, can you demonstrate for them?"

Taking the stone, Adam turned away from the group. Then, he threw it in midair, and punched it, watching as it turned into tiny bits of pebbles. He then took off the gloves and turned back to the others, smiling. "Just like that."

"Uh-huh," said Marion flatly. Great. Just great. "And why would we ever want to punch rocks to break them? It seems like you're getting unnecessarily close to the rock. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned blasting and drilling?" She was rustling her wings slightly, and her tail started swishing back and forth.

Well, I got what I asked for. Why couldn't I have gotten someone useful? Someone who invented a new, more precise and more accurate version of acoustic location? I don't even know the extent of the rock-destroying; they might bring the entire tomb down on us by accident. And how would they control that in the first place? I don't know how something like that could be constrained.

"Oh come on, give him some credit." Said Rune, "After all, it's still a remarkable invention for such a young mind, even if it's method of function is a little on the barbaric— eh... no, bad word— rough side. I'm not certain that we'd find any use for those gloves during our exploration, but— I'm not certain that we wouldn't." he shrugged, as though to submit that it was up in the air at this point.

"Oh," He turned to Marion directly, "by the way, Marion, do you know how many... mmm- people we've got in the tomb right now?"





Tucker's face flushed, against his will, with red embarrassment, not that it was visible in the dark, or so he imagined. "Hey- I just thought that it might be a little weird... or- or- assuming to go straight for his hand, but if he's fine with it then fine; I'm fine with it." He glanced at Knives and asked him, "Are you fine with me guiding you by the hand? Would you prefer that? Do you feel any more like potatoes than you used to with the way I've handled you?"

Humor aside, Tucker did feel chagrined to a decent measure when Cain had called him out. He was quietly unsure of whether his guiding method was rude or not. Knives hadn't seemed to mind, but he struck Tucker as the kind of person who went quite a bit without minding things, at least on the outside.

In the meantime, he looked past Knives at the others who were in the room as well and asked, "Hey, you three, are you sticking around here? It's probably not a good idea to head much further without telling the others. This is a sponsored dig, after all."

edited 1st Nov '12 5:36:10 PM by Ryuhza

Jackson looked down, feeling heavily disappointed. Seeing this, Nick slung an arm around the blond's shoulder.

"Hey," He said, "We're still going to support you, no matter what. Sides', we still have other inventions to use."

"I know but still..." Jackson said, "I thought I could be of use to them."

"We still can show them what we can do. Don't give up so quickly. We have a tomb to explore!"

Adam nodded. "Don't feel down, Jackson." He reached into his bag, pulling out a small bracelet. "We can least scan the walls for information."

They're right. I did kind of drag them here for help. It'd be a waste of time to leave now. With a small smirk, Jackson cleaned his glasses. "Alright, you two convinced me." He turned the Rune, "Has anyone else gone deeper into the tomb?"

edited 1st Nov '12 6:12:05 PM by Masterofchaos

al-Faddil raised an eyebrow. "Just rocks? Or have you tested it on anything else?" He didn't directly asked how it worked, though he'd probably get an answer. Partly it was ingrained habit, partly awareness of the audience.

A quick glance down the sides. "A few. I counted four, but hear more voices than that, and no one sounds distressed despite the crash earlier. As to direction..." A shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine. Echoing and reverberation underground make it difficult to judge." The fact he could hear voices at this distance, through the stone and turns, probably tipped off the others that he had either technical help or abilities not entirely human. A giveaway, but let them guess which successfully.

"Seriously! Everything is totally fine." Knives bit his lip, afraid of sounding like he was trying too hard, because he was sincere. Wow, he was making a great impression on these people.

"I actually don't like touching strangers that much anyway because I kind of rely on touching things and when I touch new people I can tell right away and it's so WEIRD. No offense. I just—don't know you, that's all. Uh, how long do you think it's going to take to get back to where the food is? Just curious. And what are you guys going to do with me? Let me sit around?"

edited 1st Nov '12 11:27:24 PM by LeungBaiFang

Cain saw Tucker's reddening face and gave him a lazy grin, showing teeth, and then quietly slipped away into the shadows, past Marion and the teenage boys. He briefly paused at al-Faddil, wondering for a moment if he knew Farsi.*

He put on his sunglasses and stepped outside. It was now almost midday, and the heat was relentless, but it didn't bother him much. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the camp was mostly empty besides a few stragglers.

edited 2nd Nov '12 12:04:20 AM by Tehpillowstar

Rune rubbed his head and looked up to answer Jackson's question, but al-Faddil beat him to the punch. "What he said. I saw a few people head into the doorway up ahead," He gestured at the other end of the room, "Where they've headed from there..." Rune shook his head relentingly.

Just at that moment, the man, who Marion had identified earlier as Cain, arrived through the door. Rune started to ask him, "Hey, how many others did you-" but the man flew by without a word, and only a passing glance at al-Faddil. "Well how about that? Never mind then." He took another look at the doorway at the far end of the room and sighed.

Rune noticed that he still held his notebook and pen in one hand. Curiously, and a little cautiously, he opened it up and turned to the page that he had listed the workers names on. The one with the strange Hello. He stared at it. The names were there— all of the names, but the Hello was gone. There was also the large and messy question-mark he had scribbled next to the Hello, but it was written over half of the names.

"Ugh..." he muttered under his breath and rubbed his eyes some more. He must've been tired. Very tired.





After hearing Knives' take on the small ordeal, Tucker turned back to Cain and made an irritated face, as though to say, Oh yeah, what— what did I tell you? However, the man merely grinned, exposing some particularly sharp and further unsettling teeth (or perhaps fangs?), before heading off towards the entrance very quickly.

"Well, there he goes." Said Tucker, sighing. He looked back at Knives "Don't worry, it's not far, just a couple of doorways away. I'm not in charge, so I'm not sure what we'll have you do. The people here seem pretty okay, just a little on the unusual side— at least for me. Anyway, let's get going. Come on." Tucker took Knives by the sleeve again and led him out to another part of the group, closer to the entranceway.

"Hey, everyone." He said, waving lightly.

"Wait a minute," said Marion. "Scanning? What do you mean, scanning? What are you going to scan?" She massaged the bridge of her snout, rustled her wings, and sighed slightly. "You know, when I ask you what kind of inventions you have, I mean all of them. Not just one or two of them." At least they're not totally half-assing it.

Upon hearing the group come back from deeper within the tomb, Marion turned to them, and the first thing she noticed was a teen boy with tinted glasses. Is he blind? Swell. Just what I needed: more complications. And, most likely, it's only going to get worse from here on out. She sighed. "All right," she asked. "What happened?"

Today seemed to be seesawing: a good thing, a bad thing, a good thing, and so on and so forth. Maybe it would even out in the end, or maybe everything would crash and burn horrendously. Hoping for a totally happy ending seemed to be out of the question for Marion.

Adam smiled and turned. "Oh? These? Well, we use these to learn more information about things. Like the history, or if there's some kind of code. We use these a lot."

Nick faced al-Faddil. "So far, we only tested it on rocks. But I'm sure we can do a lot more."

Jackson watched as Cain walked back, but before he could say anything, the man flew off without a word. "Odd." He then looked over at Rune. "Are you quite alright?"

More voices. Great. And it was kind of warm out there. Well, it was Egypt. What did he expect?

"Don't mind me, lady, just had some teleportation issues. I'll... just not be in anyone's way. Unless you want me to do something? I can... break stuff."

Lamest explanation of his powers ever.

"With superpowers."

Eh, that would do.

"The evil scientists did it, so don't ask me how it works. Do you have any food?"

Kalogeros looked on unimpressed at Adam’s display of his “invention”. Though it would pass off as a pretty good enchanted object, especially since he’d never seen one made as a glove before, the effect of the enchantment itself was pretty crude. It wasn’t something he’d waste his time on. He gave an amused smirk at Marion’s reaction, which pretty much outlined its major faults.

He quickly frowned as he turned to Herakleios, who still wasn’t using his lantern, opting instead for the tiny black stick everyone else was using. He walked up behind Herakleios and tried to grab it out of his hand.

Herakleios, who had been wondering how al-Faddil had managed to hear people from that distance, noticed the movement behind him and pulled his hand away.

“Give me that,” Kalogeros said and tried to grab the stick again, but was stopped when Herakleios slipped it into his pocket. “Damn it man, do you have any idea how many materials I had to go through to get the right level of brightness?”

“It’s not the right level…” Herakleios said, then turning to al-Faddil and turning to Marion added, “I’ll go and set up traps above ground. I need to know about all the facilities of the site, and your security patterns too.”

Marion decided not to pursue the thing about scanning. Saying that they could "learn more information" about them was so vague Jackson probably didn't even know how they worked. She figured he probably swiped them from somewhere, or else he'd go into a bit more detail. The whole purpose of scanning anything was to "learn more information" about it.

Back to Knives. "Sure, we've got food outside," she said. "Help yourself. I'm a bit busy right now, though, so you'll have to have someone else take you outside." He can break things. Joy. There's probably more to it than that, but still. How come half the people here have abilities that tend towards the destructive? "Luxor's not too far from here, so if you want, we could get you somewhere."

She turned to Herakleios. "What kinds of traps? I'm not sure I want bear traps or punji sticks scattered around the camp. They'll probably be more of a hindrance to us than anyone who wants to attack this place for whatever reason. And I don't think a lot of animals will be around here."

Well that didn't come out right.

Adam sighed and looked down. He should've let Jackson explained everything. He was better at words than he was. Now he was just making Marion even more unimpressed with them.

"I screwed up..." He muttered, floating in mid air. "Well...Ms. Marion, can we at least go deeper into the tomb?"

Rune ran his fingers across the page slowly, staring with such mounting drowsiness. The words lost their meaning. The shapes of the letters blurred in and out of his vision. They split and moved apart. A dark sky hung suddenly above the page, descending, descending, closing the book... death... ink... free-falling... a ripple under his skin. Supreme focus. Unfocus. He opened his eyes, but they remained closed. His eyelids burned. Noise was arriving in his ears and reverberating in a numb, lifting sensation throughout the rest of his body. His top half slipped backwards while his bottom half—

Rune suddenly snapped to attention. He looked around like a wild man for a moment, then found the one responsible for making words at him. It was the English sounding kid, Jackson. The one responsible for gloves? Why did gloves have significance at... where was...

Rune stared at Jackson, blinking with a very blank expression on his face. He felt that something was wrong with his left hand, so he glanced down at it. It was sandwiched in the middle of his notebook, still resting on the pages when Rune had abruptly shut the thing. The dig in Egypt. The rock breaking gloves. Oh. Rune finally realized that he had just about dozed off in front of several people. Classy.

"Yes- what?" He asked, somewhat absently, to Jackson. Was he feeling quite alright? Huh. Well... no, of course not. "Oh, yes! Yes, of course." Rune shook his head and waved it off, "I was just in deep thought about something, that's all."

That, in the very least, was true.





Tucker walked closer to the group, still guiding Knives. Knives spoke first, being characteristically vague— as though the circumstances that brought him into the tomb were suddenly negligible. When he was done, Tucker nodded and glanced at Marion. It only took him a moment before he bit his lip, glanced away again, forced a bent-forward cough, then resurfaced with his sunglasses in place.

"Cain and I, as well as some others, heard a loud crashing noise from further back in the tomb. Upon investigating it, we discovered a large metal... puh... eh... pod which carried Knives here. Apparently there was some... teleportation mishap?" Tucker sighed as he said this. Teleportation. It sounded like something out of a comic book. "But that's not all," he continued, not directly looking at Marion behind his sunglasses, "In the same room that we found him and his pod, there was an unusual change of— ah, architectural design, partway through the room. It looked more like the Natural History Museum than an Egyptian tomb."

He scratched his chin uncertainly. "Maybe that's not a great example. The material was entirely different from everywhere else. I don't want to speak more than I know, but it kind of looked European? The room was just beyond another room, which had several other doorways. I believe it was theee... second of two doorways on the left side. The others are probably still in there."

Finished reporting, Tucker looked at Knives again and offered, "Oh, Knives, I can show you out to the food if you'd like, and if you don't mind me dragging you around like a sack of potatoes for a little more. I could use a bite to eat anyway."

Herakleios shook his head as Marion finished her question. For a talking chimera, she knew very little about how sorcerers work. Maybe being a chimera in this world meant something else entirely.

“Signal beams, containment traps, surveillance spectres,” he answered, “anything to increase response time to break-ins. And they won’t affect anyone I don’t want to, so your workers won’t have any trouble with them.”

“What, go around the site and memorize everyone’s names and faces?” Kalogeros said, “Pass, I’d rather check out the rest of this tomb if it’s all the same to you...and f*ck you if it's not."

Okul turned to Amu and said, "it's time we face it: We're not getting very far without the others' help. And they seem to have grown weary of this place."

Amu nodded in agreement, and with a sigh, they made their way out. Amu stopped when he spotted Marion and, hoping she wasn't too deeply into conversation with anyone else, said to her, "hey, stupid question. We're hungry. Got any scraps to throw us? Knowing we ain't been all that much help yet, but still. It'd be nice to have a full stomach."

Okul, meanwhile, headed out of the tomb for some sunlight and fresh air. Glad to finally be free of the stuffy place, if only temporarily, he took a look around, before spying a figure on the horizon. Okul frowned and shook his head at this.

The approaching figure was a tall, lean man, with dark skin, dressed in a silk robe of uncertain origin and wearing a long wooden mask. The carving was minimalistic but precise, with just enough detail to imply an expression of contempt. Slung across his back was a crossbow and a quiver containing a number of bolts. The shaman made his way to the camp, silently surveying it. Even underneath his mask, the shaman's expression was utterly non-commital.

Magic users will feel slightly physically nauseous if they get within five feet of the shaman, who is by job definition a competent wielder of Anti-Magic. And I still feel really lost, so someone feel free to prod Okul, Amu, or the shaman as they see fit.

edited 4th Nov '12 5:04:41 PM by KillerClowns

Cain wordlessly analyzed the newcomer's appearance and the strange ill feeling he felt as he stepped closer. He glanced at Okul's expression and guessed that the newcomer was familiar to him, or at least, his costume. Cain couldn't figure out what caused the strange feeling but he was positive it came from the masked newcomer. It wasn't bad, or evil like necromantic energies, but it wasn't familiar.

Haruka trotted over, waving her hand towards Cain with a big goofy smile on her face. He nodded towards her and said, "Murakami." With the two next to each other, one could see the stark height difference. Haruka barely reached the top of Cain's shoulders. If she was alarmed by the newcomer's aura, she didn't show it. She gave a questioning look to Cain, before trotting into the tomb entrance where Knives and Tucker were.

"Hi Knives! Hi Tucker!" She exclaimed, forgetting that she had not met nor spoken the two before, except though Cain's eyes and mind. "We have food! Lunch, that is."

edited 4th Nov '12 5:48:18 PM by Tehpillowstar

One of the armors moved up next to Okul. The suit was surprisingly quiet in motion, there was no way to completely mask the footsteps of something so heavy, but it made little noise otherwise. "Friend of yours?" The voice was completely human, no electronic distortion, though it didn't actually come from the region of the armor's faceplate.

In the meantime at least one smallish prefabricated building had been put up, providing a more permanent place for bunking or eating than the tents.

-

al-Faddil raised his eyebrows. "Inscriptions? Artwork? Or just architecture changing?" The last thing they needed was to stumble onto a Belkan site. It'd be familiar territory to him, but far more dangerous than anything here so far. Of course, it could be a lot of other things too.

Marion frowned. Teleportation and changing architecture. Maybe the interdimensionality would get worse as they went further into the tomb? Which would mean whatever was causing it was inside the tomb. Which might mean Bad Things were in there.

Of course, Bad Things might not be in there. It might simply be some kind of interuniversal artifact that was decaying. It seemed kind of unlikely, but hey: you never know. Still, Marion filed that information away for later. She'd need to make a call or two about this to be safe in case of worse-but-not-worst-case scenarios. Well, she probably wouldn't be safe, but the rest of the world would be. Worst-case, everyone was screwed. Best not to panic the help, though.

She turned to Herakleios. "See, for future reference, this is why it pays to be precise. Those are less traps and more magical security measures. Those sound fine. Go ahead and set those up, but be careful not to put them where someone could set them off by accident. Or at least put up warning signs until they're finished."

To Amu, she said, "Yeah, that's fine. We've got food outside, although nothing's really set up yet. But I'd kind of like to get out of this place for a little while." She began walking out of the tomb. "So, what kind of food do you like? Or eat on a regular basis?"

It was the shaman who replied to the armor's question. "I do not befriend barbarians and bandits," he said, glaring at Okul.

Okul said, "Yoth shaman. Thus the mask and the stick lodged firmly up his ass, though I do not know this one personally."

The shaman replied, "but I would know the crown of the Bitch Queen anywhere."

His voice icy, Okul said, "call my mother that again, and I will..." pausing to glance at the armed men surrounding him, he more carefully finished with, "see you in a dueling ring. And you shall not leave it alive."

The shaman merely chuckled, and replied, "very well then. I shall refrain from further insults to your beloved mother, as cleaning your entrails from these robes would be so very difficult." Then he turned to Cain and Haruka, and sensed... magic? Of some strange sort. Not the power of the Eyes and Teeth, but still enough to make him wary. Especially given the power — hard to measure, but perhaps comparable to that of a Transcendent. Not impossible to defeat, with cunning and patience, but definitely not an enemy to be challenged openly.

The shaman's mask hid his scowl, and his voice managed to remain deceptively cordial. "While I see no signs of civilization," — by which he meant Yoth civilization, since he did not recognize any other people as being civilized — "I come in peace and mean no harm. This quaint little camp is quite intriguing, in fact."

edited 4th Nov '12 5:56:49 PM by KillerClowns

Knives thought he was hearing more people and he was sensing some more movement through the ground, but he wasn't sure.

Someone addressed him directly. He assumed that she heard him introducing himself to—wait, he didn't introduce himself to anyone out here yet. Maybe someone told her his name when he wasn't paying attention? Well, she mentioned lunch, so that probably meant she was a good person.

Tucker was kind of confusing. Knives was usually good at detecting sarcasm, but being so hungry and everything he was kind of out of it. He decided to go with, "As long as you don't mind and you don't throw me off a cliff or anything, sure, man. But just a second, it's freaking hot out here."

He took off his hoodie, revealing a Hello Kitty t-shirt, but Knives neither knew nor cared what was on his shirt. "Okay, we're good."