The Missing Report

[Silva]

A loud bang sounded from above, following what had seemed to be Kingston responding to his call. That theory was soon verified.

"Hey Eiran, do you like my Grappler’s Glass boots that I've known this whole time that I've been wearing? The way out is up there, I saw the light of the exit while I was making friends with the local wildlife," Kingston said. He didn't sound distant, maybe a little ways up from them.

"Very handy," Eiran called up to him, though he knew little to nothing about Silimatic glass. "Were those the brake you spoke of?"

He kept climbing. Allence spoke up from below him.

"Why...why did you save me?" she asked. Her voice sounded slightly cracked, like she'd been crying.

Eiran frowned, the expression obscured by the darkness and rungs of the ladder. Why had he saved her? It hadn't even occurred to him not to take her. If he could help, he did. If he could prevent harm, he did. It's who he was.He hadn't considered not saving her. Not even for a moment. And he would have thought that that was what anyone would have done. That it was the normal thing to do. It appeared this city still housed more cultural differences than he'd discovered as of yet.

"Why wouldn't I have?" he finally replied, continuing upwards and praying that Kingston was right and that an exit was near. Despite no visions flying at him, he had a knot in his stomach that grew every moment in the shaft. Should another elevator start on down...

He shook his head. No. No use worrying. That meant suffering twice.

@Archer @Emi

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All good. 

 

[Archer]

"How much... you think it'll take?" A distant voice wafted towards Kingston. He stopped to listen. 

A woman responded, faint also. "Let's look around." 

"Around?"

"Rat bird, I missed you!" As his foe reemerged from the shadows, mottled wings flapping furiously to dive at him, with a sudden clang, the Smedry's foot clamped onto a metal grate. Cold air was blowing out of it, and on the breeze, more voices, disgruntled sounding folk if he'd ever heard them. They appeared to be waiting for something. Relieved, Kingston used a small sword to pull the metal away from the wall, then let both of them fall into the abyss, revealing a squareish tunnel ahead. And in it, a family of scary looking baby flying meekers.

"I think the nest of deadly rodents actually improves the air duct exploring experience," Kingston decided. His own words echoed through the chamber loudly. "Oi, speedy side-kicks, I see the light at the end of the tunnel!" Having no other choice, he squeezed himself into the space, and was promptly assaulted by the fangs of many tiny meeklings. 

"This is fiiiine! Oh, OW, OW, OW, this is very, very pleasant!"

[Silva]

Eiran paused momentarily at Kingston's review of the air duct. Deadly rodents? Those didn't sound fun.

But, given nothing assaulted his mind, he reached away from the ladder anyways and clambered inside the vent. A vent. If he ever got out of there, he would never let the TUBAist administration hear the end of it. Security measures were not something to be taken lightly. Nor should they be taken from well known cliches. Anyone would know how to take advantage of them and then the measures would serve no purpose!

Unless...

"Another layer," he muttered to himself. "Because everyone will be like me and think they wouldn't do something like that, it becomes the better bet for being unexpected." 

Despite that logic, it still felt off to him. The fact remained the the measures were useless when figured out. He still was confused about that Pele fellow, though. What was the point of that? The lack of skeleton clearly had shown a way out of the death trap. Why let your invaders know? Reason seemed to take a backseat in this place.

He froze. In front of his face was a small rodent. A meeker? It was somewhat cute, staring up at him with big eyes. Which scared him.

"I don't want to hurt you and you don't want to hurt me. So let's both do our own things, yeah?" he asked it.

The little thing kept staring at him, but scooted to the side to let him pass. Grateful, Eiran kept moving, wondering if Kingston had gotten all the less polite ones.

[Emi]

Allence watched those two. She apparently couldn’t not look at them as they were climbing above her. While looking at them a thought crossed her mind. How actually Kingston appeared in TUBA’s archives? That was interesting. Not like she would suspect the man for some bad intentions. For her he was only a person to sell weapon. Good, although sometimes irritating. But good.

Her thoughts were disturbed by Eiran, who just stopped right above Allence. No, he didn’t just “stopped”. He literally froze. Even though Allence wasn’t good at reading people’s emotions, she easily felt, that something isn’t okay. 
 

“What happened?!” She shouted at Eiran to make sure that he will hear her in the noise, coming from the ventilators. 

[Silva]

"Cute little fuzzy thing that possibly is murderous!" he cheerfully called back to Allence. "A true all-in-one package!" Now that the meeker no longer was looming over him, he recognized its cuteness. And danger. Why things had to pair that way he wasn't sure. Something in the cosmere had it out against things that were solely pleasant. It didn't seem to work the same way for bad things. Those were able to sit solely on one said. Quite annoying that was.

He continued crawling along, happy that a fear of small spaces had yet to develop. 

"Do you see an end to this, Kingston? Or will we be in these vents for the rest of the forseeable future?" he shouted. The last member of their group had gotten out of his limited sight range. 

It dawned on him that maybe his theory had been wrong. The coincidences might actually have been occuring to make them think they'd make it out when in reality it was just an extended death trap. Or would that be too much effort?

Eiran shook his head. No use thinking about it, he knew. No long lasting conclusions would be made while trying to find this report. Analysis should wait until later.

He doubted that resolve would last very long at all.

[Archer]

Clang. Clang. Clang. Kingston stopped his crawling to try to look at Eiran. As he did- claaaang- he smacked his head into the ceiling of the tunnel. "Oh, I hope we're in here a while longer! I'm incredibly pleased to report that the path splits ahead, and there's no way of telling the best way forward."

He shuffled forward a bit to let Eiran see. As he did, he felt the metal under his knees change in texture, going from a smooth sheet of steel to a latticed grate. It rattled beneath him. "There's actually some light coming from this hatch I'm sitting on, but that doesn't seem important. Now, if you give me about an hour or so, I could use the magnets I carry with me to polarize a very small sword, put it in a bowl of water, and we'd have a helpful compass that would point the way north... you've got a bowl of water, right? I thought I saw one in your coat pocket, please don't tell me that you lost it."

Kingston readjusted himself. The metal holding him up continued creak ominously. "Hey Allence," he shouted, voice echoing throughout the space, "ahead of us there's two quite unique features:"

"Duct," he pointed at the path to the left. One of the screws holding the hatch he was on popped out and dropped to the ground below. He pointed right. 

"...duct." He was starting to get concerned about his position. I wonder if this spot is unsafe. I sure hope this grate isn't-

"LOOSE!" With a bam, the metal gave way entirely, dumping the Smedry out of the ventilation system to the floor below. He smashed into the ground, rolled to the side, bounced off a wall, and came to a stop flat on his back. He was greeted by the sight of Kumiko and KanMien standing in front of him, in front of the elevator doors. 

Ding! At that exact moment, the lift's doors slid open. "Don't go in there," Kingston panted, ribs throbbing. "Eiran farted in it."

 

[Silva]

Eiran judged the drop to the ground. A decent distance, but none too dangerous if done intelligently. He dangled his legs over the edge and held tight to the sides. Then he let himself drop. He dangled for a moment before letting go and landing on the ground.

He scooted away from the opening quickly to keep the space clear for Allence.

The elevator doors were open and KanMien and Kumiko seemed as though they were going enter it. 

"I wouldn't recommend taking that down--not a pleasant ride," he said. "The brakes stop working fairly early on..." Eiran glanced about the room. "Anybody find anything while we were on our detour?"

He hoped they had. He also knew they hadn't. The amount of thought, despite much of it being cliched, that had gone into this place wouldn't allow for such ease in finding a missing report.

@Sorana @The_Archivist @kenod 

[kenod]

KanMien blinked in surprise as she saw them appear, and she looked into the elevator, trying to figure out what was going on. "How exactly did you..." She muttered in slight amazement. She shook her head, and looked at Kumiko, hoping she had a better idea of what just happened.

Kumiko just looked at them, wondering what she had done to deserve being stuck in this mess. "How busted is that elevator that just having the brakes stop working is enough to cause serious trouble?" She noted. "And no, we haven't found anything else yet. To be fair, we were mostly standing around waiting for the elevator to return."

She looked around, wondering what had happened with the elevator. If that thing had actually fallen down at full speed they would have either had to have climbed out really quickly, or spend a lot of time climbing, and she wasn't certain if that much time had passed. "How much did you actually climb upwards to get back here?" She asked. "I'm curious if this thing is just acting up or if there's some kind of spatial anomaly."

[+Sorana]

Zokora walked through the long, dark tunnel, following the others. Her thoughts drifted this way and that way, and finally she paused, looking towards where the ceiling should be again. Fascinating. And scary. It was scary how the darkness went on and on and on, how it never seemed to stop and how somehow her own face looked down at her. She extended a hand, as if to touch something, her fingers reaching for nothing but air.

She shook her head and turned back to the spec of light again, started towards it. The sounds of the others had vanished and she started to wonder how long exactly she had done nothing but stand here and stare at a wall that wasn't even there, when she finally stepped out into the light.

"This way." Sera announced and flew off, searching for the path the others had taken. Zokora followed her carefully, made her way through the next room, at first trying not to step on any letter, but finally giving up and simply hurrying onwards. It took her a while to catch up, but she finally did saw KanMien and Kumiko, as well as Eiran and the voices of some others not too far away.

"Sorry." she apologized when she stopped next to them, looked down at her hands. "I have to admit, I got completely distracted."

@Silva

[Archer]

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Let's bring this thread to its thrilling conclusion! Mostly because I have an old report from Tesh that I want to reveal to everyone who has made it this far. #neverdeleteanything

 

[+Sorana]

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Sure. We could just head to another room and stumble upon it?

@Silva @kenod @Archer @Emi

[Emi]

2 hours ago, Sorana said:

Sure. We could just head to another room and stumble upon it?

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I’m okay with it

 

[kenod]

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Sounds good to me too

 

[Archer]

“I need to go to the washroom,” Kingston announced. One of his lenses had gotten scratched, and he needed somewhere private to clean them off. The Smedry looked around for a sign.  

At that exact moment, a sign down the hall flickered on. Dull red back-lighting illuminated the word ‘EXIT’ above a non-descript wooden door. Kingston gravitated towards it, raising the rest of his lenses to his eyes to check them as he walked. Warrior’s Lens seems fine, he decided.  

He turned the knob. Shamefiller’s Lens seems…

I’m such a terrible door.

He stopped, realizing his mistake too late.

No one has wanted to use me in decades. My hinges don’t just squeak, they’re rusted through! Not that it matters, all I lead to is a stairwell and that report. And it’s not very user friendly that-

“Don’t mind me, I’ve found nothing of note!” Kingston called out, swinging the door open to reveal a small dark room filled with container-like objects he couldn’t immediately identify, a set of stairs leading upward, and off to the side, a small sheet of ancient TUBA stationary.

-And it’s not very user friendly that these hydrogen gas tanks are stacked so close to me. Oh golly, I’m so embarrassed, I could just-

WHHOOOOOMPH. The door shattered into a thousand pieces, spraying into the containers. An angry hiss could be heard, followed by a high pitched whine.

“TAKE YOUR TIME!” Kingston screamed, barreling through the room, tossing aside the doorknob that was still in his hand. It clattered to the ground, landing next to the scribbled-on page on the floor which he ran past, mission forgotten as he bolted up the stairs.

[Silva]

Eiran looked at the others when he heard the crash. 

"I think we should probably check if he's okay," he said. He paused for a moment, as though to say something more, but then started in the direction Kingston had gone, not checking to see if anyone was following him. They likely wouldn't. He was a new hire, not someone whose advice really ought to be taken quite yet.

He reached the doorway and frowned at the destroyed door. There didn't seem to be any doorknob in the rubble, he absentmindedly noted.

"Kingston?" Eiran called hesitantly. "Everything alright?"

[Archer]

Kingston ran like his pants were on fire, which was ironic for a man with his Talent. Was that that proper use of the word ironic? he thought to himself as he ran towards the saftey of the upper levels of the TUBA sanctuary. Sometimes his librarian training kicked in at unfortunate times. 

Behind him, a closet full of hydrogen canisters sat hissing wildly. In the middle of them all, a single sheet of paper sat lazily on the floor, waiting to be picked up. Waiting to be of use. A single line peeked out the top, the rest of the writing hidden beneath the fold. 

Tesh. Followed by a date. 

Next to the report, the first canister combusted with a poooof. Flames licked hungrily towards the page, which was also an ironic descriptor. Or appropriate? I must look up the definition next time I'm near a dictionary. 

[Silva]

Eiran followed reservedly. Until he heard the explosion. Or, rather, saw it a moment before and then heard it. Followed by a vision of...shame at having lost something of import? He frowed and hurriedly stepped inside, taking in his surroundings quickly.

His eyes flicked to the canisters.

Were those...?

Rusts. 

His eyes flicked up to Kingston.

He seemed okay. Running up the steps frantically, but given the canisters...no wonder.

His eyes flicked to the paper and the flames near it.

Without really thinking, he picked it up. Eiran skimmed it briefly and frowned. A recipe? It was written in a very official looking font on a very official looking paper, though. This was it, then, the missing report. The thing they'd been looking for. The thing they'd nearly died looking for. The thing they might still die looking for.

"Come on down, Kingston," he called up hurriedly, sparing another glance to the imminently exploding canisters. His head kept filling with images of destruction and death. His favorites. "I...I think we've got what we came for."

He turned on his heel and walked out as quickly as possible, trusting that Kingston would have the sense to follow and not hang out near the flames.

@Ookla the Paradoxical

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No need to respond, @'ing anyways. 

Technically we'd wrapped up since Archer'd sent us all the report, but Ene's reminder made me not want to let this cliff-hanger of almost three months remain. 

 

[AonEne]

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I wanna see the report  

 

[Archer]

Kingston was a very sensible lad. So he continued running up the stairs, to where he thought the exit was. 

But Kingston was also a Smedry, so as fire chased him up the corridor, he disappeared from sight, lost in the explosion. "Oh no, I've died!" came a faint cry. Then-

Kabam! Explosion noises! Ambiguous fate for our fair hero! 

It's what he would have wanted.