Night 49: Basement - Grand Ballroom

[gamingsostfu]

[from here]

He somehow managed to fight back a sigh, though his exasperation was probably pretty obvious. Matt wasn't stupid, and he wasn't patient; he knew that something was up, something Mello obviously didn't feel like sharing at the moment. However, he wasn't the type to just roll over and accept bullshit - especially when his radar for it was

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[swornandbroken]

Mello gave a frustrated, annoyed huff when Matt stole the lead for the second time tonight. "Will you quit--"

Then his head was reeling again, and the whole huge, ornate room wavered until he blinked hard, and this did not look like the Institute. He touched the pocket where his gun was, not realizing he was doing it.

"--that," he finished, stubbornly, but much more quietly. "Holy shit." He doubted this was as bright as an electrically-lit room, but it was blinding after all the dark rooms they'd been tossed into, and so huge and empty that he felt paradoxically claustrophobic. With his bad peripheral vision, he had an irrational fear that he wouldn't see anything that came after them.

"I don't know where the hell we are," he admitted. He turned a slow circle, shining his light around, noting wooden doors with carvings on them, and the white marble ones at the far (very far) end of the room. He'd got so turned around with all this jumping, he had no idea where they were in relation to anything. He headed for one of the closer doors

[gamingsostfu]

Mello's protest fell on... well, not deaf ears, but Matt sure as hell wasn't paying attention to the blond right that moment; instead, he was off looking over the other side of the room - which was surprisingly ornate, and very big. He chuckled at that, giving the room a quick once-over with the beam of his flashlight. If we ever get outta here, we could be "Understatements R Us," he thought with a cheeky grin. Or... something equally sarcastic.

The sarcasm was helping keep the full effects of the night at bay. He found madhouses creepy as they were, but madhouses that actually went mad at nightfall? Not helping his mood.

"Shit," he murmured, looking up and down another magnificently crafted door, this one on the opposite end of the room from where they entered. Matt glanced over at Mello. "D'you think we're even still in the right time?" One just didn't find this level of decadence anywhere in the modern day.

[swornandbroken]

"Of course we are," Mello said. "Life isn't a fucking science fiction novel, Matt."

Not that he'd have known it, from the last few days of his life, and Matt did have a point, of sorts. This was all very Old World, with the angels and devils, and as unsettling in its own way as the empty city had been. It was difficult not to feel dwarfed by the immensity of the room. Mello stood up straighter, in deliberate response to it. He wanted a look at those white doors that seemed so far away, too. They gave him a strange feeling, like a concentrated version of the unwilling awe the entire room imposed on him. He felt... challenged, and he didn't like it. Which meant he had to go over there. Obviously.

"Come on, I want to check those out." He started across the expanse of floor, footsteps echoing, not looking back to see if Matt would follow.

[gamingsostfu]

"That's not what I was even referring to!" Matt snapped, then thought better of it. Would admitting that I had a video game in mind make me less of a dork? Probably not - even though Eternal Darkness wasn't all that dorky of a game. This place reminded him of that mansion an awful lot, that was certain, and the goings-on of the entire night had his sanity meter running a bit short. Who knew - maybe the next door they passed through would have Matt and Mello walking on the ceiling.

...that's not a bad idea, actually.

Shaking his head, he returned to reality at the sound of Mello's semi-command. "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," he grumbled, wishing like hell he had pockets to stuff his hands into; instead, he just tightened his grip on his flashlight, crowbar, and edible goodies, following after Mello.

[mukuchi]

[from here]

The first thing Mori noticed was a sudden feeling of vertigo. It was like he had just gotten up too quickly, his head going fuzzy, his stomach dropping like a stone and he nearly stumbled if not for a quick double step and an absolute fear of dropping Mitsukuni. Squeezing his eyes shut, the taller teen took a deep breath and that was when he noticed the next thing - the smell was wrong. The air was chilled and old, stale and the sense of space was far too big. Cracking an eye open, Mori shook his head as he tried to clear it of the strange fuzziness and then stopped dead in his tracks.

This wasn't the Sun Room. There was no sound of rain or the lingering scent of cat hair and sofa cushions. It was a giant...hall? So huge that no light seemed to be able to pierce the darkness that stretched into forever and so tall and even as Mori glanced up, he couldn't tell where it ended.

Where were they? And how did they get here?

[host_club_honey]

One moment he'd been playing with Windy, trying to reach the paper balloon that always seemed to hover just out of reach, the next, they were in a huge room! Takashi was disoriented and even Honey took a moment or two longer as he sat up, blood rushing away from his head now that he was right-side up.

"Uwaaaaaaaaa," he breathed in quiet awe as he looked around the room. It definitely wasn't the Sun Room. And it couldn't be that Takashi got lost. The Sun Room was super-easy to find! But this definitely wasn't it. It wasn't anything close! It was like they'd somehow hopped into Doraemon's front pocket and been spit out somewhere completely different!

"How'd we get here? Where are we?" he asked, not actually expecting an answer, but feeling the need to voice it anyway. At least it was large and not cramped. That would've been even worse! But really now, where could they have ended up?

[damned_monsters]

Now this was definitely new and interesting, and the sylph darted about curiously, her delighted giggles taking an almost eerie tone as they echoed repeatedly off the walls of the large room. She darted about the chandelier, examined the candles on the walls, and swirled about each pillar in turn, seeming to completely forget her companions for the moment.

[mukuchi]

At least one of them seemed enthralled with this place. Windy-chan took off, causing the chandelier to tinkle as she whizzed around it, taking her time to explore this new environment, and apparently thoroughly enjoying it all. Meanwhile, Mori felt like his heart had decided to swallow a rock and had plunged to the bottom of a sea trench. An unknown place meant unknown dangers and although he could hear others up ahead (or, at least, catch hints of human scents that lingered fresh in the air), he couldn't see them and he had no idea if they were hostile or monsters or just other lost travelers

[roseoverture]

[From here]Going through the door again made Utena feel sick to her stomach and dizzy again, just as she had felt going through those first two doors. Maybe that had something to do with the "how" that Ruby was interested in? The feeling was accompanied this time, however, by unexpected light around them. It wasn't much, but it was a lot more than had been in the building so far. Utena squinted, adjusting to the new lighting levels

[thatmaskedchick]

“No way

[its_the_mileage]

[from here]Now that they'd turned up both all over the Institute itself and a couple of places in town, Indy hadn't thought he could still be surprised by their landing sites. He'd been dead wrong

[unheroed]

There was a lot of food for thought produced by what they'd just seen, but most of it he'd gone through three times over by now. Jones was right; they couldn't make any claims without more evidence, and they just didn't have access to enough of it. Nothing was going to hold up unless they had a means of proving it, but with the way they were tossed around (in this case, quite literally) and made to only see the aftermath of whatever Landel was up to, the odds were not in their favor

[tender_cruelty]

He'd almost hoped for them to turn up in another room in Doyleton except that he was fairly sure that their luck would have run out and they'd have been dumped in the middle of zombie barkeeper vs patients mark two and he never needed to see a room spattered with exploded zombie brains again. Or any kind of brains for that matter. From now, on brains should stay firmly inside craniums. Instead there was the sound of running water which would have been soothing except for the eerie way it echoed around the room.

The very very big room.

"The basement?" he asked, glancing over at them with a shudder and remembering Fai and Yue and screaming and that little girl slowly bleeding in his arms and only one can survive and Landel's smug, satisfied expression.

Still, this wasn't the Coliseum, and it was impressive, unlike anything that he'd ever seen. it would have been beautiful if everything hadn't seemed quite so warped. "That's probably for the best," he replied. "I've not heard of anything good coming from down here."

[its_the_mileage]

"Hard to be sure, but it fits the description," Indy answered warily. Not much chance there were two places around here with chandeliers like that.

He wanted to ask the younger man what exactly he'd heard about the basement, but right now he was more interested in getting out of it. Just like in town, there were no obvious signs that anything else in here was moving besides them, but the longer they stood around, the more likely they'd find out the hard way if they were wrong. And he never had run across that damned fire extinguisher.

The flashlight illuminated a number of doors; Indy arbitrarily headed for the one at three o'clock and went through it. The choice probably made no difference anyway.

[to here]