Connect This Space Between

[thepurpleone]

WHO: Donnie and you..?!
WHERE: The Warrens
WHAT: Taking things one step at a time...
WHEN: Post volcano eruption
WARNINGS: N/A
NOTES: Will match tag format.


i. hanging in there
The trip down had more or less been a mechanical process. Just follow everyone down, one foot in front of the other. For all that he's observed, the whole matter of a volcanic explosion happening somewhere overhead was still a difficult thing to process, or perhaps it was just everything else with that just topping it all off. He'd traveled in uncharacteristic silence, just waiting for that last straw that would possibly make him snap.

Thankfully he's been able to hold it together. Fresh water helps, and having other things to mind has kept his thoughts from spiraling completely out of control. It might be an odd sight to see a humanoid turtle carrying a makeshift tank with some kind of local alien turtleish creature in it, but Donnie's clung to it like a lifeline. And then there's DATA, Tony's strange little robot-spy-camera who's apparently been demoted to a cantaloupe as Donnie's chosen method of carrying him along is by a net-like bag. But now there's space and they can rest, so they're set down while the teenage turtle tries to get some feeling back in his fingers as he slowly allows himself to start assessing their new surroundings. Data collection usually helps him relax.


ii. like mapping out dungeons
Being underground isn't really a problem for him. He's more or less lived underground all his life, and compared to the sewers of New York, this is far less complicated to navigate.

Donnie takes to mapping things out, wandering the strange tunnels. He hasn't yet managed to cobble together a replacement computer for the one he sorely misses wearing on his arm, so he's doing things the old-fashioned way, with pencil and paper. He's tackling things in sections, intent on working out every possible direction down one way before he'll commit to the next. Which will explain his absence from the main area at given times. This may not be some technical project to work on, but he's approaching it the same way, completely caught up in his findings.

Someone might want to make sure he remembers to eat or you know, sleep.


iii. no time for idle hands
If he'd been completely without some sort of access to tech he might have lost it by now. At least here the atmosphere is much more inviting than Calibrations. But it also means there's no doors he can close when he wants to keep to himself and work on things. Not that he's finding himself too bothered by people.

His main concern is potential fire hazards, and what with moss and mats everywhere, at times Donnie gathers up some of his things and relocates himself down some tunnel or another where there's less of a risk of burning anything when he tries to do some circuitry work or welding.


iv. aces wild
Choose your own adventure! Throw me a starter or whatever.

Comments

[thepurpleone]

"It's weird, right? The layout," Donnie muttered after a moment, setting one sheet down to pick up another page to add things in, lightly in the case that he had to adjust them.

[tempredmental]

"Mm." Keith frowned a bit. "What do you mean?"

Keith was by no means an engineer, even on his own knowledge. He was a pilot and a fighter. So, he didn't really recognize the potential layout for what it might have resembled.

[thepurpleone]

The kid rolled his eyes before turning towards the bag he had there on the floor beside him. He rooted around it until he pulled out a narrow bundle, carefully unwrapping it to show a sliver of a motherboard. Carefully he rested it atop the pages.

"It's almost similar to this. Not exactly, but close enough. I'm hesitant to say there's some kind of significance because apparently anything I suggest is questionable, being based upon uncertain details."

He was... still a little moody from his talk with Tony, but he was mostly upset at himself.

[tempredmental]

"Is that yours from home?" he asked about the circuit board. If it was something Donnie found here, though, and the place looked similar, could the same people who set up these tunnels have made that circuit board?

Though, if it was Donnie's from home, that would be a pretty darn weird coincidence.

Keith's head started to race a bit with ideas, and he had to slow himself down.

[thepurpleone]

"No, but I replicated it," Donnie said as he picked it up again, tilting it as he inspected the fine lines that covered its surface.

"It could be a strange design preference or it could be symbolistic. Or these areas could have particular functions, just like what you'd expect of a fully wired one of these. There isn't a whole lot to go on."

[tempredmental]

"Mm." Okay, so it wasn't 'found', which made this perhaps a little less symbolic about that board in particular, but that didn't mean that there wasn't still something to this shape.

"So like... those devices in the shields..." he said, pointing to a couple on the map in turn. "They're positioned where they are relative to the tunnels... possibly for a reason."

Keith was a closet conspiracy theorist, Donnie. He was definitely going to be receptive to things like this.

[thepurpleone]

"Or just out of convenience with the design," Donnie suggested with a shrug. He wasn't particularly feeling like threading conspiracies himself. "The machinery themselves aren't too complicated. They look like they're handling the basic functions that keep the place habitable."

[tempredmental]

"Hm." Okay, so yeah. Keith could dial it back if someone felt he might be taking something a little too far. He nodded, sitting back for a moment as he tried to rethink that theory into something a little less meaningful and something more useful.

"It does make you wonder, then, if any of the chambers have some sort of significance or if it's just... a coincidence."

[thepurpleone]

"I guess..." Donnie admitted. "Unless the designer's a huge troll and just wants us to think that."

He heaved out a sigh, shoulders drooping. "...sorry. I think I've hit a wall. Normally I'll think and overthink these things into mobius strips but I'm... My head's just not in it right now."

[tempredmental]

Keith looked Donnie over for a moment, his expression kind of confused for a bit.

"Something up?" he asked. Keith wasn't great at being the comforting type, but he could listen, at least, if someone wanted to get something off their chest.

[thepurpleone]

The turtle hesitated. "I'm just...not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with myself, here. I'm not convinced that this isn't just a fancier trap than the other one we were stuck in for a month and that they couldn't get everyone in for that one but ohoho, a volcano will sure do it!"

He dropped his face into his hands. "But even then, it's like...well...what am I supposed to do? There's no clear point where all the shielding's coming from, there's no way to get through what doors are there, we're still restricted, so... What, do we just wait? For what?"

[tempredmental]

Keith frowned a bit. Honestly, all that had sort of been on his mind, too. Granted, when you have a really big disaster looming over you versus just, "Hey, get in the tunnels," he was pretty sure that pushing people into a situation like this was definitely easier. It wasn't like they had a volcano to push everyone into Calibrations like they did for this.

But still, while Keith was pretty sure the volcano was a natural occurrence and not a ploy designed to force them all into an underground prison, the whole can't leave thing was definitely frustrating.

"Even if we could escape from the tunnels here," he said quietly, "what would we do? We have no way of knowing if it's even safe to go back up to the surface, yet." The volcano had been real enough for Keith. "And it's not like anyone's got any protective gear with them to be able to go check."

[thepurpleone]

"It's not even a matter of going back up to the surface. I mean, I would have preferred there have been an alternate escape plan to going underground for a volcanic eruption but that's what we were left with." Donnie huffed.

"But this place is clearly bigger than what all we've seen. What's the point of this place? Are there actual places suitable to stay in? Actual facilities we can use? The shielding is similar to the ones I've picked up in Calibrations, so it's not like it isn't impossible, right?"

[tempredmental]

"Yeah... same here. I don't see why they couldn't have used the ships and just had us stay in orbit until things cleared up." Keith frowned, looking annoyed at the whole thing as well. It would have been preferrable to be up in space than stuck in a cave.

Keith considered the rest of that, though. Donnie was right. There definitely was a lot more. After all, there were the mines themselves, and the tunnels where Calibrations took place, and also the ones by the beach with the glowing crystals and hot springs. There were a lot of underground structures, both natural and created, so who was to say that this was the end of all that?

He nodded.

"That would be something interesting to find out, but... I don't think the mushroom guys know anything about it." He frowned a bit. "We'd have to figure out a way to get past the sealed doors."

[thepurpleone]

"They seem to know a lot more than we do when it comes to this place," Donnie pointed out. "The way they manipulated the metal in the pipes to get us water? Or even just showing us down here? They at least know enough about the place, but who can say how long it's been here?"

Language barriers were such a pain!

The mention of the doors made the turtle teen groan. "There is that. So far as I've seen, there aren't any controls conveniently on our side to access the thing even if it wasn't shielded," he sighed. "I have to wonder how long the power's been running, or what it's running on."

[tempredmental]

"Mm." Keith nodded a bit and then considered that.

"I don't know if it was running down here at all beforehand, but, when we first arrived, there wasn't much power to anything at all," Keith explained. "We had to get the plant up and running again to get power to all the stuff here. If this place didn't have power already on its own, then that would be when it came back up."

Buuuuut...

"But, if its not relying on the main power plant, then I don't know. I mean," he sighed, "I would guess that means it's got one of its own." As for the rest of that, though... the same could be said for most of this place. How long was it here? Who built it? All of that.

[thepurpleone]

"I don't know if this place is connected directly to the city. It might be its own independent structure. Dustin said it reminds him of some of the structuring of the shuttles, so we wouldn't be surprised if this was some kind of ship." Donnie sighed again. "Which just brings up even more questions."

[tempredmental]

"Oh, yeah. Like the Calibrations tunnels... or the Marsiva." Not that Donnie would know what the Marsiva was. "When the ships were back in the Drift Fleet, we had a massive escort ship that the smaller ships were sort of... 'tethered' to. We weren't on it very often. Just during Calibrations, or just after arrival... or... after we... died, and... came back." Keith had seen some people do that. He'd been lucky enough to avoid it himself, but not everyone had been.

[thepurpleone]

"Eyew, wait- so you've experienced the Calibrations thing even outside of here?" Donnie blinked, and then he had to stare. "...what do you mean, died?" And apparently didn't stay dead... He wasn't sure which was more concerning, both, probably.

[tempredmental]

Keith nodded, and then took another deep breath.

"People who died in Drift Fleet were brought back. They'd wake up on the Marsiva in the same way we woke up on arrival." He swallowed. "There was... Looma. She died when a massive meteor hit a planet we were trying to evacuate. She was one of the ones that didn't make it off in time. She woke back up on that ship a few weeks later."

[thepurpleone]

Donnie's arms snuck up around himself as he tried to hold back a shudder. "Oh, a meteor strike sounds so much worse than a volcanic eruption," he groaned. They would have been very much dead if that had been the case here. Even though he didn't know who this Looma person was, it was still troubling to hear.

"Did...she remember?"

[tempredmental]

Keith looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I'm... not exactly sure... just how much of it she remembered," he said. "Like, she was aware of what happened, but I don't know what details of the actual incident she remembered." He shook his head a bit, but more to clear it than anything else. "She wasn't the only one, either. There was a guy... Max. He lost his leg. Looma lost an eye. Like, some injuries weren't just magically healed when they came back."

[thepurpleone]

The turtle hugged his arms more tightly around himself. He hoped they didn't remember the specifics of... well, dying. Those poor people...

"But...could they have been? Was it on purpose? I mean, if they can bring people back from being dead, bringing them back whole doesn't seem any more difficult. ...okay it's still disturbing either way, but my point stands."

[tempredmental]

"I don't know," Keith said. "They usually spent about a week or so on the Marsiva after waking back up... and were kind of sick for a bit, like... recovering? From death?" He scrunched his nose a little. "And someone mentioned this sense of cold and dread with just... black." He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know anything about how they were brought back. We just knew that they were."

[thepurpleone]

"That doesn't happen here, does it..?" It seemed the logical thing to ask, even if Donnie felt a little sick himself contemplating it. He'd rather avoid the experience and certainly wasn't about to try it, even for science. But it seemed more like something was trying to preserve them more than let them test too many limits.

He thought of how Tony and Sonic both ended up teleported back to the fountain when they'd tried to go out too far, or get out of the city with the impending eruption of a volcano hanging over their heads.