Warren Exploration - Forward Team

[tempredmental]

WHO: Keith, Tony, Cayde, Billy H, Eddie
WHERE: Warrens and into the new area
WHAT: EXPLORATION TIME
WHEN: During the event
WARNINGS: WELP... will update as this goes forward.

It was like someone had heard him and Cayde talking several weeks ago. The storm had escalated this time to the point of them needing to hide, so everyone that had still been in Temba was back in those deep warrens beyond the mines.

It was time...

Comments

[in_extremis]

Movies were not one of Tony's many indulgences, so he only had raised eyebrows for Eddie's joke and a bit of a shrug. That was a cowboy thing, it was probably funny, but Tony didn't have more context to volley back and was watching Eddie get consumed by the vent before he could ask him about it. Then he was left in an empty hall, leaning against an unforgiving door and up on his toes, then bouncing back like anything would give him a better angle to spot where Eddie had gone, regretting letting him go. Listening to his heart beat in his ears was much too loud, and Tony had to call, "Munch...?" when he couldn't bear to count anymore.

The immediate relief of hearing Eddie call back was enough to make him drop back onto his heels, hand on his heart, but it was short lived. He was quickly rushing back toward the door, not liking how far Eddie sounded, pressing his hands against it like anything might have changed and--it started to open. He hardly let it move before he was shoving impatiently, then trying to force himself through the gap, only to yelp when that was revealed to be a poorly considered plan and forced to catch his balance on the shifting door before he pitched into an empty pit. "Uh--kind of," he eventually thought to answer when he had both feet under him again, and used the doorframe to lean himself forward, searching for the source of Eddie's voice in the void and squinting up at the light.

[the_freak]

"Come out onto path thing so I can see you!" he called down, leaning a bit precariously over the balcony, not realizing how insane a thing he was asking from Tony's point of view.

"I can't come back. So um...ya know, hopefully there's something on the other side that helps with that, or else I'm gonna hafta try and jump I guess?"

[in_extremis]

"Path thing...?" Tony repeated to himself, incredulous as he scanned for anything that he might call a path. Or a way to get up to Eddie, for that matter. Leaning himself out, he only saw a deep, dark fall into a void, and felt his mouth go dry at even the thought of testing the depth of it, sure that Jon would just leave him at the bottom of this one. The air from the mine pit had been cool, though, chilled at its depths enough to waft up even when standing at the ledge of it, and the air here was so eerily still, like every other empty hall in this maze. The walls to either side of him were smooth and blank, nothing even to grip onto, even as he stretched up to test a hand passed above the doorframe. Contorted like this, his voice was more strained than he would like as he tried to buy himself a moment to figure out what he wasn't seeing and called, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder, sweetheart." Dropping to a crouch seemed like his last recourse, trying to catch sight of anything at a different angle of the light, and still could only see the pit as he sat on his heels. He had to search his belt, producing a bent nail from one of the pockets, and flicked it out into the empty expanse. He couldn't even see it fall. "Definitely don't jump," was his strongest conclusion. "Give me a minute, I'll come up to you." Maybe if he made a kind of rope out of his clothes...

[the_freak]

"The- the path man. The glowy...it's got a big ass outline around it, you'll be fine," he encouraged, assuming Tony was just anxious about the narrow width. Which was fucking fair. You wouldn't catch Eddie out there, no fucking way.

"How are you going to do that from back there?" His mind also jumped to some kind of rope he could lower down, but- nope. He'd left his jacket with Tony. Even if he stripped down to nothing, he wasn't sure he'd be able to come up with something that would support a grown man.

[in_extremis]

There was some scuffling from below Eddie as Tony did more scrabbling around, leaving his belt and Eddie's jacket by the door and made a valiant effort of jumping up to try to fit himself into the vent and only getting kind of stuck. He let his head thump down in that darkness, arms crushed around himself, trying in envision what he was meant to do with a void.

Eventually, he had to work himself back out and lean back over the pit with a sigh, eyeing it with the suspicion that it was conjured as a personal torment and he wouldn't let it know that it worked, hanging just by his fingertips at the doorframe and toes over the ledge. "There's no path, Munch, I don't know what to tell you. Can you see what's across?" he suggested.

[the_freak]

"There's-..." Eddie broke off to squint , "There's a door. I think? And the floor comes back once you're across. You really can't see it?" Was it some kind of trick? If he talked Tony into testing it was he going to send him falling to his death? Or was it just a matter of faith?

"Can you feel it? It's maybe...one and a half...two feet wide?"

[in_extremis]

This was not a suggestion that Tony wanted to indulge. He pursed his lips, for all that Eddie could see the expression, insulted at the suggestion that he could have just missed a whole path right in front of him where there was nothing else to see, and only reluctantly slid one foot forward just enough to feel along the sheer edge, slow and subtle like he could avoid admitting that he had done so at all. Sure enough, there was nothing to stop his shoe from tipping over into the darkness--until there was. Tony froze, staring down, watching the top of his shoe crease as he strained to push the toe down and was met with solid resistance for long enough that he had to admit to his exploration and slide his foot forward.

"Okay. Fine. There's--something," he reported, risking tipping his weight fully onto the empty space, though he still kept one foot on solid, perceptible ground. There, he crouched down again, pressing a hand where his foot had passed, then trying to nick a mark into the surface that must have been there with a nail. There was nothing there to react, just a fall into the void. He shivered, then gathered himself defiantly, sweeping up his belt and Eddie's jacket again as he went to drape over his shoulders, and fussily combing his hair back to raise his chin and take on this emptiness with airy arrogance. He brought both feet onto the nothing. With another step, he could see the ledge where Eddie must have been, and twisted to step again backwards as he casually greeted, "Hey."

[the_freak]

Honestly, Eddie would've accepted he was hallucinating at this point, but he's glad to be proven right. At least until Tony came into view and Eddie hurriedly shouted for him to- "Stop!! Shit- don't step out further, it turns," he said, not giving the needed details in his panic to stop Tony from tumbling to his death.

[in_extremis]

It was almost enough to startle Tony, his shoulders jumping with a flinch and eyes closed against the aggressive assault to his very reasonable greeting. He did stop at least, with a sway of momentum like he might pitch backward anyway until he gently set his foot back down, the sleeves of the jacket and buckle of the belt dangling freely over the empty chasm. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes again for a steadying breath, very aware of how the clothes hung, how he wasn't even standing at the sheer edge of a cliff but how he should have been at terminal velocity himself. He couldn't imagine why Jon didn't want to be in the Iron Man every second. "If you're fucking with me, Munson, I'll remind you that I have a hostage, and I'm not above dropping it," he warned, the narrow slit of his eyes flinty, though he purred like it was an invitation.

[the_freak]

Fuck. Eddie huffed out a sigh of relief, and started to pat himself down for his smokes, but nope, those were in the jacket.

"I like at least one of you too much to let you die in such an anti-climatic way, I promise. You're gonna go left. My left. Your...right, I guess? That way-" he pointed to his left and paused to try and guestimate the length. "Maybe...7 steps?"

[in_extremis]

Whatever invitation was left was clearly rescinded as Tony's jaw tightened with his narrowed eyes. Was he just going to do what he was told for a third time? Every one of his senses refused each instruction. There was nothing there to go to. After a tense beat, Tony staring dubiously at Eddie's inability to tell his right from his left, he announced, "I'm coming back, I'm coming up," but then still didn't move. The door was still there, he could see it, but the expanse between him and it was blank. Just a drop. He slid one foot forward, back the way he had come, he had just walked there so it must be there, and he was probably close enough to jump...