revivalproject

Entry tags:

Shock

WHO: Tony, Cayde, Jan, Cap
WHERE: In the Tembubble
WHAT: Tony's trying to fix some cameras, but keeps running into curiosities
WHEN: During the mermay event
WARNINGS: Everyone being fish-people and potentially doing offputting creature things.

A natural affinity for electric currents didn't always translate to reliable craftsmanship. Only one camera in the city square remained alert, watching Tony curiously as he held one of its brethren, perched together on the roof of the hotel where they were close to the sun and could overlook the gently sifting sand below. DATA bubbled occasionally with a burst of jetstream to keep himself stable, but Tony's windingly long tail draped down the facade of the building to twine into the open windows and root him while he worked. It was so smooth and matte black that it could have disappeared into the covered murk inside, but for the occasional spark that arced across it while Tony concentrated, casting small glints into the darkened rooms below. That leathery hide spreading up his body only made the tail look dangerously longer yet, snakelike even on his arms up to his elbows like he had been dipped in ink. Only flecks of yellow on his palms and the softest slope of his belly broke up that subtle colour, and the scars that stood out on his scalpel delicate hands. They were mostly faded burns and nicks, and none so starkly white as the perfect rings around several of his sharp fingers. Probably because he used them to work his way into the broken camera, forgoing any more cumbersome tools, and barely flinched when the device sparked and left the water smelling burnt. He had clearly taken more care with his unblemished tail, maybe thanks to the sheer ripple of his single, silken fin that traced a sensitive line straight down his front to his pointed tip. Even a bubble breaking from between the brickwork near it had his tail flinching away to loop again restlessly. His only scales were as synthetic as the broken camera, flashing gold covering him from chest to jaw, the edges precise, minuscule hexagons where the nanoweb blended along his skin.

"This one's fried," he murmured to DATA, who dutifully recorded the state of the final camera in the area. "The glass needs to be recast, too, just like the others. Can probably salvage the case, but..." He had ejected a computer chip, warped to itself like the device had overclocked and burst from the inside out. This was going to take some time, and the glass was going to take the forge which--...Donnie wasn't there anymore. Tony pursed his lips, the room below lighting up in a pop like a camera flash, and leaned over DATA with a gentle brush over its top like Tony was stroking his head with a free hand. "Guess that's not a problem," he mumbled, to the blank stare of the robot.

a. the outpost [cayde??]
A lobster clung to the side of the tower from which Echo had once set himself to guard over this city. As it slowly lifted a pointed leg to lodge into the next stone, so did DATA, and they watched each other intently in their measured, sideways ascent. Inside, in the cooler water and only the sunlight lingering by the windows to see by, Tony turned slowly in place, floating bonelessly. He hadn't made it to the forge. He could see it easily as he swam overhead, feeling dread slowly tighten around his heart. Glancing down at the outpost made that dread feel like a stone, dragging him down and impossible to get his arms around. He might have stayed there in the sand, until he found he was staring at the curious line held taut between the outpost and the clock tower, and frowned. It was enough to send him swimming inside, slowly making his way up the way his robot did on the exterior, and was distracted once more as he found the remnants of a cozy corner long abandoned. He had to shake himself back into focus, and by the time he finally made it to where that line was mounted into the wall, he was holding a limp, hurriedly stitched stuffed animal, its tiny limbs bright blooms of colour drifting from between his black fingers. With the other hand, he strummed curiously on the wire, watching the vibration ripple and letting his gaze roll across to the clock tower like he could see that turbulence cross the open stretch of water.

b. a much deeper pool [jan???]
The forge would have to wait. A later project, further along in the schedule. It would be pointless, after all, to do all of that work without solving the cause of the disruption. Talking directly to Billy was out of the question, too; a distraction really, and he didn't deserve to feel interrogated, he needed some time. No, Tony would have to go to where he understood the source was. Even several feet above the wide, black mouth of the mine, the water was cold. He stared down into it, waiting for movement, and starting to shiver, expecting tentacles to unfurl from the rocky sides, pull him in, hold him down until the sun was a pinhole high above him. He went darting back to the ledge of the hole, where a sticky residue remained, staining the rock in drips and keeping him circling it to avoid touching the discoloration. It had been intended to keep the threat contained, he vaguely recalled. That didn't explain the pitons he found driven into the stone, both on the ground and barely hidden by the sand, and the wall inside the pit. He had to dig his fingers into the ground to try to work one free, throwing bolts of static into the water around him while he hauled up on the rusting metal. At the edge of the pit, a pair of funfronds floated up out of the darkness, watching curiously and flipping energetically at each other.

c. the civic centre [steve???]
Tony's tail was a black banner, ribboning through the water over the roofs of Temba for DATA to track and try his best to scuttle after through the purple streets. Tony swam with the piton clutched in one hand, looking like he moved with confident aim, and feeling entirely the opposite. Who was he supposed to ask? If Jon knew what it was doing out there by the mine, would he think Tony had just been out looking for an excuse to talk to him? Was Tony out looking for an excuse to talk to him? In that case, he should have been collecting flowers, about ten hours ago to accumulate a bouquet that neared big enough to justify himself. He slowed over the greenhouse, peering down through the glass and feeling reluctant to go inside even if it would help make up for the lost time. Cutting any flowers from there had felt like a violation ever since Lauri-Ell had been so gently intent on correcting the one time he had made that mistake. In his minds eye, she practically glowed, blue skin that should have melted into the water instead shining like the colours vibrated in conflict. Tony's focus darted toward the civic centre then, only for his brow to furrow with a new question, that strange image of Lauri-Ell fading. The answers weren't any more forthcoming the closer he got, and still nothing as he sank into the strange bowl of the pool on the roof of the centre. It was half filled with purple sand, and teeming with lobsters, more secure up here than on the ground, but it didn't exactly look like a lobster sanctuary. Tony's free hand and a loop of his tail wound around a ladder bolted to its side. To help the lobsters? One of them pushed up from the sand and helicoptered its way out of the depth of the pool, onto the roof, as if to prove otherwise.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well then, all the more reason not to spoil any surprises by going through the main entrance," Cayde answered easily once Lula had been properly settled and they were once again outside. For as simple as the venture was, he glided cautiously across the rooftop of the building, coming to a pause at the other end, hands resting on the ledge as he looked down.

Why hadn't he ever come down here before? Well, aside from the fact that somewhere at the bottom something had claimed space for its den. Or something. He frowned, shrugging before hauling himself over the edge and propelling himself across the open space between buildings.

It wasn't clear to Tony how committed they were to the stealth mission bit until Cayde was doing his peek, and Tony had to rapidly catch up, sinking down from where the was stretching out in the sunlight like he thought this was more of a music video experience. Settling just over Cayde wasn't much of an improvement, where he could hold Cayde's shoulders like he held the ledge, and peer over his head. As Cayde darted away, Tony lingered again and raised a hand to an imagined earpiece and only half committed to whispering to mission control, "We're moving out," still managing to roll his eyes and twirl a finger like he had to be insubordinate even to an authority he just made up.

The tiniest giggle slipped from him as he glanced back at Tony. Smaller fish and like-creatures diverted their paths just slightly enough to not be caught up by the two's passing. Cayde tried to make anything out at the murkier waters below them, wondering if there might be anything interesting. Well, first things first.

It wasn't too much of a swim to get to the other end of buildings, and once there, Cayde looked over at Tony again. "Which level?" he asked.

Swimming clear across open water to the daunting face of windows didn't feel particularly stealthy, so Tony did his best to swim in Cayde's path and stick close to him, like it was possible to make a small enough impression between Cayde's lights and Tony's trailing tail. "He was pretty far up when I found him..." Tony mumbled, trying to properly graph the memory in reverse and hoping to just spot something to guide him as he ducked under Cayde to get closer to the windows. Mostly, they were dark with grime or algae, so their mission might not yet have been compromised by how difficult these windows were to actually see through, and Tony had to skim along them before he found a spot clear enough to try to squint through, hands up daintily to keep away from the gently swaying green film. It was even darker inside at this depth.

It was funny how easily Cayde just forgot how bright he naturally was, at least until he caught a glimpse of the dulled glow mostly swallowed up by the overgrowth on the windows. He tilted his head, glancing up at Tony's response as he quietly counted floors.

"Looks like some of this gunk's already been cleared off," he observed as he swam up to a spot where the glass caught the light much easier. He brought his hands up as though it'd make much difference in cutting down on the glow of his own optics.

"There--look," Tony announced, hovering around another gap in the buildup, then darting along to try to find a different perspective to confirm what he was seeing. There wasn't much else in the room, but the door had been broken away from the wall, and a number painted bright and bold on it so even from out in the water, it was easy to read. That didn't give Tony a lot more context for what Wesker had accomplished with the process, so he was already swimming away, heading further down to where he knew there should have been another one, if he could bring himself to wipe any of the algae off of the glass. Maybe another floor down instead...

Cayde looked as Tony spoke up again, swimming over to find a similar space where he could see a little more of what lay within the room beyond. It was kind of disappointing, really. No secret equipment, no weapons stores... Just a door with a number. Boring! And maybe kind of ominous if one didn't know what it was for. But still mostly boring.

He swam back and forth along that row of windows to see if there were any other cleared off spots in the windows before he went down where Tony had gone, pausing to once again squint. "Uh...Tony..?"

The waters towards the ground levels of the building were ripe with algae and old aquatic plantlife that had clearly had time to thrive. And strangely enough, there was a sudden expenditure of bubbles that came up, brushing past Tony.

They expanded rapidly as they skimmed his tail and collected static. The bubbles that reached his head were swollen, and frothed when popped with a claw. By then, Tony was surrounded by the reaching tendrils of weeds, thriving and untouched growth that would stand taller than even his long tail from the ground, so seeing much further past them was impossible, and as Tony did his fruitless search he insisted, "That wasn't me. You'd know if I was gassy."

In spite of things, Cayde had to let out a laugh because that was a predictably Tony thing to say. In the next second after he was diving down past the electric-laced bubbles to grab an arm as the weeds began to 'grow' upwards towards Tony's tail, or rather the entirety of whatever the aquatic weeds had taken root started to lift.

The Exo was already moving to drag Tony back up towards the top of the wall that he missed the large pair of yellow-gold eyes that opened up amidst the weedy darkness, glowing dully, their slight milkiness suggesting that at least the thing might not be very accustomed to anything bright. However in pulling away, Tony was treated to an excellent view of its giant maw as it yawned open, showing an impressive array of stalactites and stalagmites...that probably would have been more comforting were they featured in an actual cave.

The urgency of the situation didn't dawn on Tony as he let Cayde haul him up, when he noticed the unnatural sway of the foliage, or even when he locked eyes with the creature peering up at them from the floor. He went, "Oh, look at that," still fairly limp and letting Cayde propel them upward, even tugging slightly on Cayde's hold as he twisted his hand to gesture down at the giant thing that couldn't have just snuck in without anyone noticing. It was only when the beast peeled back its lips to display those massive teeth that Tony went tense, and while the next sound he made still could have been interpreted as light curiosity, his tail was suddenly coiling upward and away from that opening cavern. The chasm it created was big enough that the change in pressure snatched at Tony's whipping tail, which was just enough warning for Tony to yelp, "Cayde...?!" before the great sucking current was dragging at them both. Now Tony was helping, both hands around Cayde's to charge upwards against the powerful inhale.

"Oh, you are a lot bigger than I thought you were!" Cayde noted, optics widening as he glanced down with the sudden pull against them.

His tail was pumping double-time and he felt like they weren't making any headway, but maybe that was better than being dragged in. "Big guy's gotta run out of suction eventually, right?!"

All of that water was going to have to go somewhere, just like it was rushing down as the thing below them surged upward, hungrily churning into the untouched hollow that it had been crouched over for so long. Knowing what was coming did not give Tony the time to warn Cayde, only give him a wide-eyed look of panic for his misplaced optimism, then a wild grab around his waist without much concern for the filaments that dug into his arm. Whatever the damage, it wasn't going to be as bad as being hurled into Cayde once the water equalized, and the tide turned. The tip of Tony's tail was dragged down relentlessly and skimmed along those massive teeth as they came crashing back together, and the immense pressure blasted upward like a mushroom cloud.

In response, Cayde flashed Tony a bright, maybe even unhinged grin. Suddenly Tony was latching around him and just before they met teeth, the rush of water against them came, tumbling them head over tails.

Too fast, too much, and without knowing which direction they were being propelled, Cayde pulled Tony closer to wrap himself protectively around his squishier friend so he'd take the brunt of any rocks or walls that they might end up against. Or windows.

All of that algae that Tony had been working so hard not to touch was suddenly swirling all around him, and after the first breathless crash into the cold glass of the window, everything seemed to go numb and he could no longer feel it, either. He didn't even realize that he had coiled himself tightly around Cayde like a constrictor, until the tide was turning again and he had to rapidly get control of his limbs before they were sucked back toward the teeth. The creature had dislodged itself from its burrow into the ground then, but was slow, turning like a planet to try to spot what had disturbed it in the chaos of the churning water. It was impossible to miss. If Tony had more than a second, and less weeds whipping around his head, he would have turned more than an accusatory glare on Cayde for not realizing his neighbour had its own gravitational pull. It made a noise that made the glass behind them vibrate.

He supposed it would be a poor time to say he'd crashed through worse things. Or into them- the crashing into things was worse because that just meant they were more solid and you weren't coming out the other end but anyway- right, they were inside now! Or something!

Cayde lifted his head, giving it a shake as he tried to figure which side was up, and he met Tony's glare with a blink and then a brief pat down as he tried to make sure there wasn't any damage done. The rattling behind them had the Exo look back, watching silt billow up from below, and he gave Tony a nudge further into the room and towards the first door they could find. They were on the other side of a wall, the thing was virtually blind, this was as best a chance for them to put some distance between them and Cayde's massive mystery neighbor before it decided to give chase, if it even dared.

Several of the other locals of these depths were already rushing past them, sensing the safety of that retreat that Cayde was nudging toward and Tony started pulling for in return, only to slow with his hands on Cayde's belt like he might yank him back the other way. Now he suddenly had time, even as the water roiled, bouncing around the room and tossing them side to side as the beast outside beat its fins. "What if it's going out?" Tony had to ask. That couldn't be good. It didn't have anywhere to go. Eventually, it would run into the barrier.

"Can it?" Cayde blurted, trying to suddenly work out logistics that he hadn't considered before, for whatever reasons might have been. "I mean, if it wanted to, wouldn't it have? I figured it got too big..." There was something else that nagged at him in the details department, a by now familiar sensation what with all the lapses that had cropped up when they'd been considering rocket launches and mysterious cables.

He stopped trying to swim for the door, looking back towards the broken window.

"-theoretically if it did try to leave, how would we keep it from doing so?"

The nature of the beast and its choices thus far were not Tony's department, and he could only shrug with a look of bewilderment at these questions. The ignorance didn't make him rethink his focus, rather assured him that there were matters he simply did not want to know more about, and how a fish's brain worked was one of them. Unfortunately, that might have been their immediately solution, because all of the ones that Tony had involved building some kind of trap, and they were on a bit of a schedule. "Lure it? Back down?" he offered even as he started to move. Maybe that wasn't the whole plan, but they had to start enacting something before the thing got any further.

"And then what?" Cayde couldn't help but ask, already following after Tony.
Keep swimming circles until it tires out and decides to go back to sleep or something?" Luring it was surely the easy part, but if it tried that suction trick again, they'd be tiring out a lot sooner than that thing would.

"-think we can shock it?"

Keeping it swimming in circles seemed like a rational enough approach until they could figure out something more permanent, which Tony expressed with a twirling finger as he darted back out into the open water, and the dragging wake of the beast. Underneath it now, the depths seemed even darker as its mass blocked the little light that did manage to filter down through the water, and the clumps of earth and foliage that it had accrued in its long hibernation cascaded away in swirls. It was still fairly caked, like it wore its own shell of mud, and Tony was not feeling optimistic that it would feel his little sparks through that armor unless they found a vulnerable point. He grimaced at the suggestion, but didn't have a better one, so he was off to push his way through the pressure of the beat of the creature's fins to try to get close to one of those yellow eyes.

Despite the current circumstances, Cayde still couldn't help but marvel as they emerged into darkness and caught a glimpse of the immense shape to really get an idea of the size of the thing that had been living at the bottom of the... Well, this was all more than a lake, wasn't it? He put a pin in that thought, trailing his eel friend as they cobbled together a plan.

Maybe brightness would deter it from going any higher. Cayde looked for an opening and slipped on up past the thing, making sure not to lose track of Tony as he looped around to the beast's other eye. He swirled around in a tight spin as the glow of his tantalizing filaments brightened.

The creature's ascent did appear to slow as it turned to try to asses that curious glinting, its eye rolling away and narrowing as Tony made his way towards it. Even this close, Tony wasn't sure he would have been seen even if the big guy was looking directly at him; it was clearly tracking the brightest flashes its milky eyes could discern, searching for reflections off of appetizing scales. "Hey there, gorgeous," Tony crooned. "You hungry?" That didn't get its attention, either; Tony wouldn't be surprised if it was as deaf as it was blind. They had definitely disturbed the sleep of somebody's grandpa. Tony risked sliding closer, letting the sparks of his tail jump to hardened skin as he skimmed along the creature's brow. This time, it did blink, then uttered that deep sound that made the water vibrate again.

"Is it working?" Cayde hissed, not particularly crazy about finding the thing effectively drawn to him, even if that was part of the plan. The sudden sound the big fish-thing made didn't quite confirm anything, but it made him hesitate, tail curling in towards himself. He looked back in Tony's direction.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shock

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