revivalproject | [closed] A-MAZE-ING

Entry tags:

[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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?

“I do when the floor is lava,” says Leo with way too much pride.

Leo watches Donnie rearrange wires, rubbing sweat off as it gets hotter and hotter…

“Uh,” he says at the question, and then moves back to the edge of the platform, grimacing at what he sees.

What the heck? There hadn’t been immediate threat of death in the last room!

He hurries back to Donnie’s side. “Not to rush you, but you’re gonna have to rush this.”

Elbow-deep into the wall, Donnie (thankfully?) can't get a good look over the edge for himself.

He does not like the look on Leo's face then. Whatever his brother's seen can't be anything good.

"-I'm trying!" he hisses, pulling a length of wire out as far as it will allow. This one's connections seem to run parallel to the door. For a moment he hesitates, knowing if he messes up, they won't be able to fix things and try again.

Donnie tries to keep his focus on his task, looking at the other wires again. "Can't find any cables that look like they'd be made for data exchange so I'm going to have to hotwire the floor panels..." He looks at the wiring he's holding, trying to make sure it's going where he thinks it is.

But if this is the wrong one it might trigger something else...or maybe even that- Would it really be that bad doing things their way?

-Yes- because we're just being strung along, and we'd probably be forced to play some other stupid game..! -unless this was also something they planned, and you're just falling into that trap either way! Ohhhhh this is not the time for you, Donnie overthink!!!

He mops his brow with his other hand. Just do this..!

"I'd say everything in here is already hotwired enough," says Leo, glancing over his shoulder again. A bad joke, but he's nervous.

Still, he has faith that Donnie can do whatever it is he's trying to do. He just really hopes he can do it quickly...!

That Donnie doesn't even groan at the joke suggests how hard he's concentrating on things. The last thing he wants to do is get his brother or himself fried.

His hands fish around for another cable of wires, and he looks between them before he slips out his multitool again, swapping for the knifehead. He makes a careful slice to expose the internal wires, checking and rechecking the flows. This is a lot more complicated than starting a car or anything, but the principles should still be the same.

"I'm overcomplicating," he says, drawing in a careful breath. The heat is making things gross, but he resists the urge to wipe his face again.

"...when all we really need...is a hard... reset."

Donnie brings the wiring together, bracing for any horrible jolt that might come in case the insulation from the cables isn't enough. There's a brilliant snap of a spark, and then the lights go completely out, the room lit eerily by the underglow of the bubbling magma beneath them.

Before they can get too worried, the sound of things powering up hums through the walls and under their feet, and briefly even Leo can see the 'hotspot' where the sensor on the floor is as it flashes. All at once, the panels begin to shift and unfold, sliding back into position as things revert back to starting mode.

"Leo, let's move!" Donnie says, reaching out to tug his brother before he starts across the yet moving tiles. "I don't know if it'll go off again once things reset completely but it can't stop in the middle of the process!"

A hard reset…?

Leo doesn’t ask, and in the end he doesn’t have to; all the lights go out, and then he can see the flash of something as the room puts itself back together.

He barely has time to comprehend what Donnie did before he’s being tugged, and that he understands.

He moves in lockstep with Donnie, rushing over the tiles, helping look for stable spots to step. He hopes they don’t trip…

The floor's still moving into position as they run, but surely it's a simple feat to cross for ninja-trained teens!

The brief lines of heat can still be felt as they make way, making Donnie push forward as fast as he can, glad his leg doesn't hurt as much as it had been when they'd first headed down to the warrens. He's just as glad that they don't have to worry about the extra heat so long as they keep moving.

The room is big but they're making good pace, little more than half-way now. So long as there's still some gaps, they still have time!

It should be a simple feat to cross for some ninja-trained teens, but...

It happens as they're just about three quarters of the way across. Leo looks back, a stupid impulse to see if the tiles behind them are starting to move apart again, when his foot catches a gap and he pitches forward, tumbling away from Donnie and sliding into one of the wider gaps.

"Gah!"

Thankfully, the magma is still well below his dangling feet. Unthankfully, the tiles are still moving, and the gap between the tile Leo is clinging to and the oncoming ones is rapidly closing.

They're almost there, they're almost there, they're almost there...!

Donnie doesn't take long to realize his brother's no longer running beside him, already whipping around just before Leo lets out a shout.

"Leo!"

He skids to a halt, nearly falling over himself in his haste to scramble back to where his brother is, heart practically in his throat until he sees Leo's still hanging on. He throws himself across the already joined tiles, reaching out to grasp his brother's hands.

"I've got you!"

The tiles are smooth and featureless enough that Leo has to fight to keep holding on, and can't get enough purchase to pull himself back up. He's still flailing when he hears Donnie call out his name, and he looks up in time to see the lunge.

Donnie grabs his hands and Leo grabs back, saving himself from a terrible fall.

But the tiles are still oncoming, and Leo windmills his legs.

"Pull me up, pull me up, pull me up!"

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

no subject

no subject