revivalproject | [closed] A-MAZE-ING

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[closed] A-MAZE-ING

WHO: turtle bros
WHERE: the Warrens
WHAT: maze time!
WHEN: maze time!
WARNINGS: maze time!

If Leo's being honest, he doesn't have the best track record with mazes.

And he and Donnie haven't exactly been... okay, lately. And Leo is still worried about Donnie's leg.

So all things considered, maybe they weren't the best choice to volunteer to trek down one of the routes that opened after Keith's group went ahead.

But the thing is, Leo doesn't know if either of them would have been happy sitting around waiting for something to happen. Donnie always wants to fix things. And he would have gotten too anxious the longer they sat there.

So here they are, in the maze. Leo supposes, in good news, that nothing scary has happened yet. The maze isn't full of monsters or deadly traps. It's just big and confusing. The most dangerous hazard so far is the threat of running out of food, but at least they thought ahead on that front.

So they're exploring, and trying not to have to double back too much. This has been going on for awhile now. Leo hasn't been paying attention to how long, but he's sure Donnie knows. At least tech works down here.

"I wonder who built all this?" he asks. "Was it just for... a-maze... usment?"

This is hardly his first maze pun since they came in here, but now he's really stretching for what even counts as a pun.

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"I'm pretty sure they're all some kind of shady," Donnie notes, reluctantly following after. He frowns. What about body language? The guy hadn't been nearly as fidgety as fan-girl.

"Okay, so he lied. Great!" Not great, he still looks like he'd love to kill something.

“He was especially shady,” Leo assures Donnie. But it’s okay - one more to go.

“Helloooo,” he greets as he steps into the sensor spot of the final holoturtle. “We got that info for you.”

“Did you?” She remains as cool as calm as when they talked to her the first time. “Well, if it’s interesting, maybe I’ll talk.”

“Try this one on for size.” Leo draws himself up, like this fake insider info is very important. “The Rothschild factory’s latest shipment is dead in the water. Literally! Apparently it sank.”

“Hmm…” She lightly crinkles her skirt with her fingers, but makes no other movements. “I see. So their stock is sure to crash.”

“That’s right!” Leo grins. “Pretty helpful, right?”

“Hmmm… I suppose.” The holoturtle hums, then turns and points.

“The door you want is the one to the left.”

“The left…” Leo nods seriously. “Alright, thanks!”

And then he steps back and smiles at Donnie. Well?

At least this exchange is quick, but so far as Donnie can tell... Well, that's just it. He can't tell much, and after the last one, he frowns at the conflicting information drop.

Leo had said something about body language but there hadn't really been much to go off here. Did that mean she was just better at lying or was he just boringly sincere?? When his brother looks back at him, Donnie gives an exasperated shrug. What???

Ah, of course Donnie didn’t get much from that.

“Well, let’s go,” says Leo, and he turns and leads the way… to the center door.

“Alright, let’s get out of here!”

"What-"

Donnie follows Leo again, pace slowing as they head for neither of the doors that had been indicated. "Wait, she was lying too??" Can't even trust any AIs, imagine that!

He hesitates. "-you're absolutely sure?" They only have one shot, after all. But they've also spoken to every turtle and wrapped up business with them all. Or did they? Not that Donnie wants to get stuck talking to any of them again.

“Yeah, she was,” Leo answers easily. “The info that dumb rich kid had to give us probably wasn’t worth anything, even for the game. She was not impressed.” Leo shrugs. “I’m just glad she lied to us; she could have refused to answer, and we’d be guessing.”

But Leo isn’t guessing. He stops in front of the door, and looks back at Donnie.

“I’m sure,” he says. Though his own doubt creeps in, not about the door, but about…

“Trust me.”

"I...guess that's true," Donnie concedes. And Leo at least looks certain as he continues to the door in question.

Ugh, he can't even tell when fake people are lying. Guess that's no surprise. If it were up to him they'd probably waste their chance, unless he could have hacked things somehow.

Donnie steps over to Leo, for a moment looking like he'd reach up to pull his goggles down again, but he stops himself. He may not be able to trust AI turtles but he trusts his brother.

"Okay." He gives Leo a nod.

"Let's ditch these losers."

Leo has full confidence that given enough time, Donnie would have found a way to hack this and get through on his own. But... it feels really good to be useful.

And at the confirmation, Leo's smile gets even bigger and bolder, and he nods back.

"Heck yeah! Goodbye snoozefest!"

So saying, he'll step through the doorway with Donnie. As soon as they're through, it closes behind them; let's hope they chose correctly!

Edited (changed it so he isn't just saying almost the same thing donnie just said lol) 2024-12-19 02:37 (UTC)

That makes Donnie grin. He'll be even happier once they leave this room completely. ...although it'd suck if they ended up being trapped back in there. -yeah, not thinking about that, not thinking about that...

He tries not to tense as the door locks behind them, casting a glance and another nod at Leo as they keep going. Onward and forwards...

The hallway before them has a few gradual zigs and zags that Donnie wouldn't be surprised if they'd been purposefully so to make them doubt whether or not they'd taken the right path after all. But in the end he's figured they couldn't have turned nearly far enough to be heading backwards, and indeed the way before straightens out again.

"...I sure hope there aren't any more weird puzzles like that one," he finally allows himself to complain.

The zigs and zags do make Leo worry for a second that he might have overthought it, though he doesn't let it show on his face. But then the hall straightens out again, and they're still moving forward, and he relaxes again. He really did it!

He's got a little pep in his step as they keep moving. This is going so much better than the maze of death.

But when Donnie starts complaining, he can't help but grimace.

"Don't jinx it."

Briefly Donnie looks like he might have something to say about that before recalling the potential of their still being used as someone's entertainment. He very pointedly shuts his mouth at that, looking around anxiously as though waiting for something to happen.

But nothing does, at least...not yet.

"Wonder how everyone else is doing..." he says after a while, because the silence is kind of getting to him. He somehow doubts that they've all had to deal with rooms full of holographic turtle people.

Another doorway eventually comes into view, and Donnie can't help but feel a little apprehensive about it as they draw near. Well, not like they can just go back...

"Eh, I'm sure they're doing fine," says Leo airily. "That main group has Cayde with 'em and he's so cool."

Hargrove's no slouch with that axe, either. They're definitely okay.

Leo also looks at that doorway warily. Guess it's time to find out if there's another puzzle up ahead...

That gets an arch of a brow from Donnie. "Oh right, the robot guy... Tony's with them too, isn't he?" At least they'd have any technical problems covered there.

Worrying about how everyone else is doing isn't going to help get them through any faster. He sucks in a breath, steeling himself as they make way. The doorway yawns open upon their approach, revealing... a deceptively plain expanse of a room, to the point that it could have almost been mistaken for just a wider corridor.

The door shuts behind them once both have stepped past its threshold, and Donnie's already pulling his goggles down to look for any signs of traps. He doesn't have to wait too long as the seams of the floor panels begin to split and slide, warmth spilling up from the gaps as glowing yellow-orange bubbles some twenty feet beneath them.

"Is that...magma?!"

More panels begin to shift and pull back, leaving the turtles on a platform by the door, with only a smattering of hovering floor panels scattered about the once solid hall, the distant door beyond wavering behind the heat of the bubbling pit beneath.

The mention of Tony, as ever, makes Leo frown. “Yeah, I think so,” is all he says in answer.

Any bad feelings are quickly preempted by the state of the next room they find themselves in, though, as Leo gapes at the sudden change. This is totally different from the last one!

“The floor is lava!” he shouts, a little manically. Who knew a childhood game could prepare them for this situation?

The only reason Donnie refrains from a his gut reflex to want to swat Leo for that one is the fact that it's more or less true.

"Magma," he still feels he need to correct, but now hardly seems like the time to dive into the differences between that and lava. It's gotten hot in here pretty quick!

"Well, of course it's not going to be that simple." He grumbles as he nudges his goggles up just to confirm his suspicions before he points to the platforms and then the one before the other door itself.

"They've got the same sort of reading as the barriers I've scanned before. Those usually show up as nothing because there's something about them that nullifies being picked up by mystic readings." He frowns. "Meaning they're likely warded so you can't just portal on over."

Magma, lava, same diff!

Leo sighs at that assessment, because of course nothing can be simple. "Alright. So got any ideas for how to get across? Because I know we're good at roof jumps, but these are some big gaps even for us."

"True... And with that down there, I don't think we should risk the attempts..." Donnie mutters.

He looks across again, tapping at his goggles. "This is so annoying," he grumbles, removing them from his head so he can take out the energy crystal that he'd installed so long ago. "The null fields are messing up with the rest of my scans. It shouldn't do the same so long as I'm not using anything of supernatural power..."

Donnie replaces his goggles after he's tucked the crystal into his belt pouch, tipping them down to scan the area again. "Ha-ha! Thought so! Power's still running through the place. If these floor panels were able to move earlier, then maybe there's a way to get them back into position? Or even rearrange them... I just...need to find out where I can override the system."

Ah, hack into the system and make the jumps more doable. That's a good plan.

Leo can't see what Donnie sees, of course, but he looks around anyway, like maybe the answer will show itself if he does.

"Is there a control panel around here or something?"

"That'd be the convenient option," Donnie says, semi-distracted as he looks around. "I'm suspecting a lot of this is remotely connected so I can't just trace the wiring to anywhere conveni- Wait!!"

He points at a panel, his grin freezing as he realizes it's about half-way across the room.

"Well that doesn't make any sense. But then what around here has..." he sighs. "From what I can tell, that has a similar sort of trigger as with the other room when we activated the holograms. So...something should happen once we come into contact with that point.

"...of course there's still the problem of getting to said point."

Donnie looks over the edge of the platform, flinching back. "I could try flying, but I think I might get roasted in the process."

Oh great, it's halfway across the room and Leo can't portal. Of course.

"Yeeeaaah... We don't want you getting Kentucky fried." They aren't even in Kentucky. "Maybe there's something we're supposed to trigger first?"

He looks around again, squinting at everything for a solution.

"Kind of tired of being almost cooked in general, kind of a one time to many sorta thing."

But triggering something else would make sense. Donnie strokes his chin.

"In that case, it wouldn't make sense to be looking so far. A trigger should be readily accessible. ...of course, that's only assuming that this whole thing is playing fair and isn't treating this as just an extreme means of security."

But they hadn't just schmoozed with hologram turtles at a fake party to get around security. No, this had to have some sort of solution too.

Donnie turns, brows lifting as he seems to notice something on their own platform before angling sharply down in annoyance behind his goggles.

"Start here..." he says under his breath, stepping towards a spot there before stopping just before it. "-if this is all some twisted game. But... What if we don't want to play this dumb-dumb game..."

He carefully steps past the spot he'd looked at, walking towards the edge of the platform nearest the door that had closed behind them, hand digging out a multitool from a pouch. Clicking the screwdriver head into position, Donnie studies what otherwise looks like a blank wall before wedging the edge into it to pry open a hidden panel.

Leo snorts at that. But then Donnie is moving around their platform, and poking around at the wall...

Leo has his mouth open to ask how that's going to help when something actually pops.

"Whoa. Did you see that with your goggles?"

"Sort of. There's an energy concentration over here that branches from the door and the sensor on the floor. I had to zoom in to find the actual seamline..."

Donnie pulls the panel aside, allowing himself a brief grin. Ah, beautiful, beautiful wiring.

"Okay, now we're talking. I didn't pick up any signals I could hack into, but there has to be some connection to an internal system. If I can set up a direct connection then I should be able to extend the floor for us. Judging by the temperature readings I'm getting, those panels seem to be made of some heat-resistant material, so they're intended to be our only way to safely cross."

Normally this is the point where Leo would tune out, but honestly, after the holoturtles' useless ramblings, listening to his brother's familiar tech infodumps is almost calming. Even if he still only halfway understood what that meant. Donnie found some energy and followed it to the wall, and now they have a potential way to get over the lava-magma.

"Sweet. And way easier than using a broom to pull a pillow closer." Leo comes to look over Donnie's shoulder, but his communications datapoint can't make heads or tails of this wiring and his brain certainly can't do better, so it doesn't look like anything in particular to him. But he trusts that it makes sense to Donnie.

Edited (typo) 2024-12-20 05:22 (UTC)

"Please tell me that's not an actual thing you do."

But Donnie doesn't mind his brother's commentary too much when he's mostly got his attention on trying to work out deciphering the wiring. It's not an easy thing to get into, not when he can literally feel the heat.

"Ugh, I need to narrow this down somehow..." he grunts, flipping his goggles back down again. It's easier to see some of the connections when he can get a better idea of where the power's running. "That's going to...there, and this one seems to be for this door but that won't help right now... Uh- is it just me or is it getting hotter in here?"

Surely the magma below hasn't been...rising. Has it?

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