♤ Quake (volume ii)

[deal_me_in]

WHO: Open~~
WHERE: Southeast Sector of Temba, close to the fringes of Orange-12
WHAT: Mild property damage???
WHEN: End of September
WARNINGS: N/A
NOTES: The mystery continues! Checking things out? Ping away! Or if anyone wants to have belatedly looked into the previous site, ping Tony!


Weeks have passed since the mysterious tremors out by the mines, and given its localized occurrence much of the city's happenstantial residences were mostly unaware of anything unusual happening at all, unless they'd tuned in when Echo had made his timely sitrep.

The coolness of the early morning tended to hang about longer and longer as the days wore on, proof of some seasonal shift if the turning leaves weren't already a visual hint in itself. One such morning was accompanied by a vague rumble, easily dismissable by anyone out walking about the fringes of the area, perhaps causing some brief panic in the spider-housing factory, but nothing more followed.

It wasn't until well after noon that another tremor buzzed through the area like a horse shuddering under the threat of a pesky insect. It was most likely felt by anyone dwelling in the copse of buildings that made up the Tower if not the bar, and while it wasn't nearly strong enough to knock anything over, it lingered for perhaps a second longer than one might be comfortable with before it quieted.

"That wasn't me!!" came the Hunter Vanguard's reflex-defensive, whether there were people at the Deep End or not. And as suspicious as it sounded, if there were witnesses about they could confirm that all the Exo had been doing at the time was toss a knife at the dart board hanging on the wall.

That seemed to be about the end of things until perhaps half an hour later, a different sort of rumble sounded, the sound of compromised structures as a portion of the wall from one of the uninhabited residential buildings across the road began to sink and break away, and the larger chunks that fell to the ground appeared to be sink impossibly deep into it. Depending on when one might come across the sight they might just find strange portions of a wall jutting out from the ground itself and be none the wiser.

Comments

[demjiin]

Kaz was in the Deep End today. As the seasons changed the cold was making Kaz's leg ache and Omega's salve only helped to a point. Right now Kaz was falling back on the pain relief that he'd used for years; whiskey. The first earthquake made Kaz stumble and use his cane to brace himself.

"Unless you randomly decided to throw a monstrously huge knife the size of a modest meteorite, I know that was not you."

[deal_me_in]

"-well no, but we do have exploding knives if the situation calls for it..." Cayde, were you trying to help your defense or not?

The Exo stood still as he waited to see if there was any follow-up, but even the board on the wall had ceased to sway, and he'd thankfully heard no tell-tale sounds of shattering glass or anything. "Wonder what that was. Tony mentioned something about an earthquake happening earlier in the month."

[demjiin]

...exploding knives? Kaz would be returning to that idea. At the moment Kaz finished dragging over a second chair and resumed sitting in another with his bad leg stretched out in the second.

"You were in Temba for that, I see. Do you know what happened to cause the ground to cave in?

[deal_me_in]

"I was but that wasn't my fault either!" Cayde was quick to say, metal brow furrowing as he almost looked to be pouting before he blinked as Kaz's words sunk in. He walked over to pull the knife from the dart board, running a thumb beside its edge.

"Cave in? What? I didn't hear anything about a cave in. And you said the ground?"

[demjiin]

Cayde gets a look that is about as much of an 'are you an idiot?' it can be without physically saying it out loud.

"Unless Stark has started burying explosives, then yes. Caves are in the ground. And the mines. So if the ground up here was affected, then logically it had something to do with a mine cave-in."

Look, Kaz wasn't here okay?

[deal_me_in]

Oh, he knew that look. Ikora'd give him something of the same expression every now and then. He scowled back.

"He was the one asking if it was me!" Cayde said, not having to force much of a laugh. "I wasn't anywhere near the mines though. All the explosives I set off were in the other tunnel." He waved a hand. "He only asked me about earthquakes, but he hadn't mentioned anything about cave-ins."

[demjiin]

Well, that look isn't going anywhere anytime soon. If anything it intensifies.

"...so you didn't know that a sinkhole formed near Stark's Forge?"

Look, Kaz wasn't here okay? But even he knew that it happened

[deal_me_in]

"Nnnno?" Cayde frowned. He didn't particularly care for the look when he hadn't done anything to deserve it. "Is it still there?" He was sure if this was a big thing then Tony would have mentioned something more than just an earthquake. There were other things he was busy with that he hadn't gone over in that direction.

[demjiin]

Well, it's not quite a facepalm, but Kaz did drag a gloved hand over his face to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"There is a giant clearing without anything in it from pebbles to tall trees near Stark's Forge. I can't tell if there's still a sinkhole under it, but there was definitely one there before. So start over again. Were there earthquakes preceding it?"

[deal_me_in]

The Exo twirled the knife back and forth between his fingers, ignoring Kaz's dramatics as he listened to the teenager's recount of what had apparently happened.

"None I've felt or heard about. And that one must have not been so big if it was only noticed in a certain part of the city. And no one's really talked about it so I haven't heard anything otherwise, or if there were any incidents following."

[demjiin]

Kaz still looked unimpressed.

"Riley alerted the Network, which is how I knew. So the earthquake just now wasn't your doing but it strains credulity to think it's not related in some way to a sinkhole nearby."

Didn't Echo get caught in that same sinkhole too?

[deal_me_in]

Oh, was he supposed to keep track of network happenings? He'd been a little preoccupied with trying to find enough explosives from the ones he'd stashed here and there to try and keep that tunnel to the calibrations chamber blocked up, and wasn't too happy with what kept happening whenever he did.

"Given that these things are happening pretty recently, I don't think it's a far stretch to figure they might be related somehow. But sinkholes being pulled into the picture just seem kind of weird."

Cayde paused his knife twirling to tap its point in the air before reversing its spin. "If an earthquake caused a sinkhole, wouldn't it have been strong enough to be felt by the whole city? And if it was strong enough, then there would've been a lot more damage in the area, right?"

[demjiin]

Kaz took a sip from his glass before replying.

"Not necessarily. If the earthquake was small and localized to a certain area then all it would need to cause a sinkhole is an open cavern that was already close to the surface. This is why I thought the mines may be the likely culprit behind a sinkhole forming."

[deal_me_in]

"Has anyone gone to the mines recently to check? And didn't a bunch of them map the place out? That'd be the quickest way to figure if anything collapsed there," Cayde suggested. "Though it sounded like there wasn't too much to find there to begin with, so at least if it was something closer to the surface it wouldn't have taken anything important with it."

He gave his knife a toss in hand, catching it neatly once it was pointing towards the wall before he flung it at the target hanging there. True, Ikora said it wasn't wise to have knives for a dartboard available to potentially inebriated people, but right now it was just Cayde and Kaz, so who was she to complain?

[demjiin]

If alcohol plus edged weapons was a dangerous combination then Ikora would disapprove of the gang that Kaz lived with and the gambling palace where he spent a lot of his time. His perceptions might be a bit skewed on Cayde's knife throwing thanks to that.

"A map of the mines would be handy and for more than just this. Is it something that these" -he hekd up his smartphone to indicate it- "would keep track of?"

[deal_me_in]

Cayde on the other hand would probably love a place like that.

"I don't think they're equipped for that sort of thing," he said. "Sundance can do scans and take images so usually that's what I fall back on instead of using those things. But maybe they can take uploads of maps, which is the next best thing."

[demjiin]

Kaz did not fully trust anything about the smartphones and had long suspected the Network itself of being untrustworthy and a way for their collective captors to keep tabs on them.

"I haven't been able to tell if the 'ghosts' are alien technology or a form of alien life."

[deal_me_in]

"Yyyes." Both an answer and not, but it was true as anything. "They were created by this big thing we call the Traveler, who seems to have some sentience but even now we still don't understand too much about it."

Cayde retrieved his knife again. "You thinking of taking a trip to the mines-?"

He wasn't quite finished when another rumble sounded, louder than it was physical, the tremor accompanying it not as severe as the previous one. The sounds continued even when the shaking had ceased, and Cayde shot Kaz a look.

[demjiin]

Kaz raised both eyebrows at Cayde's look.

"I think the last earthquake damaged the foundation on something. And that something just collapsed."

Kaz slid his bad leg off the second chair that was holding it, and got to his feet with the assistance of his cane.

"Hopefully it's not a something that was occupied."

Though Kaz was more concerned with communal things, like the Diner or Greenhouse, he doubted they were affected by an earthquake that they felt from here. Still, Kaz was far too curious not to go see for himself. Whether or not Cayde came along too, Kaz was going out of the Deep End.

[deal_me_in]

"Yep. Sure sounded like."

Cayde slipped his knife back into its sheath, and he wasn't long in following Kaz out.

"Think it was close. Lot of empty buildings around. I think this is the closest with anyone in it." He hadn't exactly chosen the location for the bar out of convenience, otherwise he would have picked a spot around the city square. Needless to say, that didn't mean he wan't concerned that someone might have been in the area, and so long as he was aware that something had happened, it was definitely something he took upon himself to check out.

[demjiin]

As Kaz got outside the residential tower the Deep End was in, he was still able to see a rising dust cloud from where a wall had sheered away from one of the buildings across the street. As he watched a sizable bit of debris crumble off of the building, he saw that it hit the ground then sank quickly until it was roughly halfway submerged in the same ground.

"I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a cavern under that wall, same as near Stark's Forge."

Kaz narrowed his eyes in thought, then looked at Cayde.

"You said that Sundance can take images and video, right? Well since it doesn't need solid ground to walk on so it would be a better candidate to examine the crumbled pieces of the wall than we are."

[deal_me_in]

Cayde had stuck to the stairs right after Kaz rather than exploit his usual egress out the hallway window, so he saw very much the same as Kaz witnessed.

"Well, there is a sewer system..." he put forth as he edged around Kaz, starting a cautious approach. He glanced back at the teenager, holding a hand up to let his Ghost materialize.

"She," he corrected with a slight smirk, giving a nod then at his partner. Sundance nodded back, swiveling a glance at Kaz before she drifted ahead with the Exo trailing her. Cayde slowed to a stop just before the road's edge closest to the buildings where the collapsed wall was, optics narrowing as he studied the ground. He'd reach out to hold an arm out before Kaz from going any farther than him if looked to try.

Meanwhile Sundance floated off towards the sunken wall, blue light playing from her core, washing over the wall and then the ground below it.

[demjiin]

Cayde needn't have bothered, Kaz stopped in the middle of the road and leaned on his cane. He also wasn't sure if Sundance was even alive at all, so it's not as if he had conceived of the ghost's gender. For the moment he now waited on what Sundance found.

[deal_me_in]

As Sundance scanned, Cayde stooped down, studying the ground. "Something's not right..." he muttered, looking across towards the wall that jutted out of the ground like some unusually uniform rocky outcropping. The ground around it was smooth, but a careful eye would notice a slight change in texture between the edge of the road and the buildings.

The Ghost ceased her scans, turning and flying back over to the two. "It's like the ground just gave way. But I'm not detecting any space beneath it," she reported. There wasn't even any hole to see. It looked like even ground, and if they hadn't been sure that the building there had already been crumbling, it could have been easily mistaken as just another ruin.

[demjiin]

Kaz did come the rest of the way across the road so he wouldn't have to shout at Cayde ad Sundance.

"Then, as much as it pains me to say it, I have no idea what this is. I was going with the idea of a sinkhole, but if there's no cavern beneath the soil, that nixes that idea entirely."

Kaz was still back a ways from the edge of the road but frowned at the ruined wall.

[deal_me_in]

Cayde held up a finger, looking around before reaching over for a chunk of rock, perhaps some part of the crumbling wall that had bounced out when the rest of it fell. He hefted it, tossing it up and down in hand, a sizable chunk as big as his fist.

He got to his feet, glancing at Kaz before he tossed the rock out between them and the sunken wall. Rather than bounce, it plopped sort of wetly, causing a vague ripple along the ground. Slowly it began to depress into the dirt itself, a gradual sinking.

"You seeing this?"

[demjiin]

Kaz continued frowning at the rock.

"Loose wet sand that yields easily to pressure and sucks in anything resting on or falling into it is the definition of quicksand. But instead of completely submerging, it's as though the quicksand is hardening at the surface again."

Which flew in the face of reason.

"I have even less of an idea what this is than I originally had."

[deal_me_in]

The Hunter folded his arms as he listened to Kaz's observations, casting a glance at Sundance as she came to hover at his shoulder. He nodded as he looked at the rock that continued to settle itself down into the deceptive surface of the ground.

"Sinkhole wasn't a bad theory. But I guess we gotta consider that things around here may not work the way we think they should. You said it hardens again? So it's not permanently quicksand?"

[demjiin]

Did that also mean a suspension of physics? Which, considering who Kaz was talking to, would probably mean 'yes'.

"Well, I said that what I thought was a sinkhole near Stark's Forge pulled in everything from pebbles to tall trees. But after a few days when in Sh'Ka, and then only hearing about it after I came back to Temba, I went to the site where the sinkhole would have been. I did the exact thing you did and tried tossing a stone into it. But the stone just sat on the surface, as though the ground had hardened again."

Kaz was still frowning at the wall as though it had purposely offended him. But since he hated a puzzle he couldn't solve then it sort of had.

[deal_me_in]

Cayde wasn't crazy about problems that couldn't be solved readily with a gun, himself. He considered Kaz's recount of his findings by the first site of the supposed sinkhole, stroking his chin.

"Yeah, you got me. Not sure how something goes from hard to soft and hard again. Some kind of erosion? Except that's kind of weird when there's nothing to erode into..." Didn't much explain the shaking either. He tapped his fingers against his chin.

"Probably be a good idea to mark off the area until it uh, stops being quicksand, in any case."