protect_and_survey | (no subject)

"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.

Simmons has lost interest in her surroundings. Rae herself is much more fascinating.

(Is she from her world? Is she on the list? Isn't there someone who deals with fire on the list? She's pretty sure, but she doesn't have full access, and it's been a while, honestly.)

Rae is ignoring Jemma's staring, and trying to ignore the way even the uneven drip..............drip of water droplets from somewhere in the darkness are making her tense up.

"I vote we head that way," she says. "Uphill."

That sound comes again - a far-off, echoing sound, like the enraged bellow of an animal. But the passageways make it impossible to tell which way the sound is coming from.

"Okay, I know it's not my imagination now. Let's go."

Uphill makes sense, as a cave system has to run out somewhere, and the higher you go, the less ground there is in general.

"It could be the locals are using the caves for cattle storage - it would be an easy way to get them into a defensible space." She muses, because babbling stops the rattle of nerves. Sort of.

"Locals who might've left those decorations back there, you mean?" Rae says dryly, climbing. "I really don't care to find out whether that was a cow or something else."

Right before another branch in their path, there's a particularly steep bit where part of the stonework has fallen away, broken by something stronger than itself in some distant time past. Rae manages to pull herself up, and then, with a grip on an edge of the wall, offers a hand down to Simmons.

Rae's protests are met with a long-suffering look and silence, waving off the offered hand to clamber up on her own. The other woman might not actually be a SHIELD field agent, but the attitude is familiar - in this case, depressingly so.

"Well, you seem to have a plan - lead on."

"Only if 'keep going and don't die' counts as a plan," Rae replies, only faintly wry, as they approach the next fork. "I'm just as lost as you."