protect_and_survey | (no subject)

There's noise in the darkness.

Some ways away, behind a small outcropping of dirt and rock, Sunshine drifts back into consciousness, groaning from the massive headache throbbing behind her eyes.

"Is someone there?" she asks uncertainly, hearing the unfamiliar voice. As her vision clears, Rae looks around, her Dark Sight lending clarity to the darkness around her but offering only unfamiliar sights. She can't help the stab of fear that goes through her, remembering another time when she had woken up in a strange place. Where is she?

When she spots the other muddled figure on the uneven ground, Rae moves to get to her feet and approach. "Hello? Are you all right?"

So... not SciOps then. And not the infrequently-visited apartment.

"Do tell me again how safe that pub is." Simmons sighs, scrubbing at her face briefly to try and un-rattle her brain. "I seem to be all in one piece - you?"

"All limbs still attached. Head too, though it aches like someone tried to make it otherwise," answers the baker with an attempt at a lightly wry tone as she clambers her way over towards the other woman. "Whoever told you Milliways is safe is a liar and deserves to be kicked in the shins."

It's mostly benign, she would admit, but when it's not, it's really not.

Upon her next step, Sunshine stumbles on some loose rocks, and the resulting wave of dizziness causes her to temporarily give up on being successfully ambulatory; Rather than fall, she sits abruptly down on one of the rock outcroppings near to the woman.

Once her head clears again, she offers with an attempt at a smile, as though they hadn't just woken up in a strange, dark place with only a stranger for company, "So... hi. I'm Rae."

Edited 2013-12-30 15:30 (UTC)

She stretches out a hand when she more hears than sees the other woman stumble - there's a sense of a darker mass in a very dark room, but as much as she loves studying bats, she's not one herself. Thankfully though, Jemma's always been more the type to panic after a crisis rather than during it, so her tone is brightly pragmatic.

She won't discover the fine art of panicking during a crisis until later... but Sitwell can deal with that when it comes up.

"Careful, if whoever put us here had the poor sense to leave us healthy and free, it's hardly our place to correct him." Or her, though statistically Jemma's probably safe with her choice of pronouns. "I'm Jemma - guess you didn't see who did this either?"

Edited 2013-12-30 20:57 (UTC)

"...It was more of a what than a who," Rae replies at Jemma, hesitating. "Did you not get caught by the demon with the chains? Lots of fur, horns, smells horrific... ridiculously long tongue?"

"... By the name of Gene Simmons? Who isn't a relation, by the way. Er. No. Well. Maybe, I don't have the same clothes on that I remember wearing last, and a not-terribly-pleasant headache, so there's a possibility of concussion. That's probably not good."

She pauses, and grins wryly in the dark.

"Actually, based on that description, I think I can live with not remembering."

"I wouldn't mind forgetting it either, but no such luck here," Rae replies, wry but wondering who in the nine hells Gene Simmons is.

"I'm going to make us some light." The darkness might be as clear as day to her, but that wouldn't necessarily be true for Jemma. "Probably best not to look this way for a moment, so your eyes can adjust."

Jemma obligingly looks away (you learn quickly as a science major to just be agreeable about such things as safety warnings when you start playing with things that can actually kill you), studying the rough-hewn stone walls once they become visible.

Rae conjures the light, lifting it up and letting it hover above them so it won't be in their direct lines of sight. Its light is a little less than direct daylight.

"Cozy place," she says, dryly. Rae is bundled up against the snow and ice she had been expecting outside of Milliways, gloves and hat and coat and boots and all. She wasn't expecting this, certainly. "A cave? Or a dungeon of some sort? It doesn't look natural..."

Simmons is distracted by the way there's darker marks on the walls. She stands, gingerly, dusting her slacks off absent-mindedly as she does.

"I think, based on projection and relative staining of the nearby rock, that this," She waves a hand at one of the marks, which arches across the wall, "Is arterial spray... probably from someone about a good foot taller than me?" Forgive her tone of academic curiosity - she doesn't usually end up in the dangerous places until long after they've ceased to be dangerous.

"Joy," Rae breathes, looking around. "The decorator must've felt the room wasn't complete without some arterial spray, I guess."

She's known vampires like that. Briefly.

"Since there might be something around here wanting to add a couple more decorative sprays to its walls, I suggest we focus on finding a way out of here, and back to the bar if possible."

Simmons squints at the blood stains, looks up and down the cave, shrugs, and starts trudging along the rock wall.

"Assuming that they didn't get spun around completely, the one who was killed probably came from this direction."

Rae stills for a moment... She thought she heard something.

But the sound doesn't come again. "So do we go the way the poor blanker was going and hope he had it right, or go the way he was coming from? I vote going the way he was going."

"Well, he did get messily murdered." Simmons points out, giving the opposite direction a very dubious look. "Not a strong recommendation."

"But he would've likely been looking for a way out, too," Rae replies. "And he didn't find it back the way he came."

Edited 2014-01-01 05:04 (UTC)

"Or he wasn't looking for a way out - he could have been an explorer, or miner." She offers, not at all excited about the idea of heading towards the murderer.

"This certainly doesn't look like the kind of place either an explorer or a miner should be going alone."

The only scenario she can really imagine is someone wanting to get out. To get out from underground, and see the sky again.

"Well, we can't really know, so it'll be down to blind luck whether we find a way out or not," Rae says, not liking this one bit.

"If you have a strong feeling about which way we should go, lead on."

"I just have a strong feeling about not going where whatever it was that did the killing came from." Simmons points out, and resumes her trudge. "Come on, maybe there will be more clues further on."

"If this were my dungeon, and I was whatever made all that mess?" Rae remarks, eyeing the spatter as they pass it. "I'd be guarding the exit."

There's that sound again.

"......Did you hear that?"

She pauses, tilting her head (very much looking like the RCA pup, sadly).

"... No?"

"Maybe it's nothing."

Rae wishes she could sound convincing.

"Let's... ah, tread quietly, shall we?" she says, continuing forward with the hovering light.

Rae earns a very dry sort of look for that - she may be SciOps, and not at all field-rated, but she's not an idiot.

But she doesn't argue - the point is valid, after all. She should settle down and look for more clues. That is definitely a good plan.

That light is really distracting. She's pretty sure Fitz would love it.

"Um... which way?"

There's a fork in the passageway up ahead, crumbly stone and cave fungus in abundance. But also, the blackened remains of a torch, set into a roughly-worked iron sconce on the wall. One of the passageways leads unevenly uphills, while the other seems to curve away downward. Both ways are equally dark.

Simmons peers first down one pathway, then the other. There's not really much to recommend one over the other, so she does what she believes is the next logical step: Get more information.

This is accomplished by pulling the torch out of it's sconce, knocking off the worst of the carbonized bits, and stuffs some of the cave fungus onto the top of it as best she can.

"I don't suppose that light of yours can set off a spark?"

"It's just light, no sparks," Rae replies, stepping forward. "I can light that torch."

It's the simplest thing, creating fire. She gives Jemma plenty of warning before she does it, though.