Night 52: Main Hallway, 1-West

[lookitmemama]

[To here]"Made it..." She whispered triumphantly as she walked quietly into the dark and quiet hallway first. It was hard to decide where the best place would be to stand since once others began to flood in, Asuka could easily be overshadowed by the taller adults. "Hmmm..." The best she could guess was to hug the opposite wall by the doorway and

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[scavengerbird]

"Ah, yes, you are correct!" Zevran confessed readily. After he was sociably close, he rested his hands on his hips, and gave a friendly smile that he hoped would set the mood. Cooperation was key. Lone wolves never went far in organizations. He had some concerns, but he would need to work with them. Asuka was new, like him, but her lack of years could be an issue. Under normal circumstances, he'd be inclined to believe that a group that was what the History Club seemed to think it was wouldn't allow in children. At least, not useless ones, which spoke well of the girl. But they were both recruits in a bizarre situation, so all of that was still up in the air.

And yet, it was admirable that someone so young felt motivated to be proactive like this. Asuka was probably not entirely naive. Maybe she had led a difficult life, one where she understood that you protected yourself, or else no one would. It was sad, but necessary. She deserved to fight for her freedom as much as Zevran did.

"But please, call me Zevran," he continued, friendly and open. His good humor wasn't even entirely false. "Zevran Arainai, if you want the rest, but I see no need for formalities if we are going to be friends tonight."

[mistressmadgirl]

[from here, and I am SO SORRY for the delay!]

Long red hair, wearing red, thought Agatha, and short, blond, and tattooed. There were a number of people in this hallway, as well, and she let her light fall on each of them in turn. The red-clad girl, as she had expected, stood out soonest; not many had anything but the prison outfit to wear.

She looked almost impossibly young- that didn't mean much, the lighting was bad, some people were baby-faced- but everything about her posture was filled with confidence, she had a nice big stick, and the man she was talking to was indeed short and blond. Looked like she'd arrived.

"History Club?" she asked anyway, cheerfully, as she approached. "I hope I didn't keep you two waiting or anything."

sorry shitty tag is shitty

[lookitmemama]

"Zevran it is then..." Asuka's smile was just as flattering as Zevran's, but it held nothing genuine. She just wanted to get this mission done and move on to phase two. Friendship would happen once she knew he and the other new member were actually capable of something. Until then, she just wanted them to move out of her way and shut up so she could work! And where the hell was--Oh, here came the last member of their colorful tribe. Even better, it was a girl this time. The eva pilot was starting to feel like a rare species around here. The only unfortunate thing was they were both weaponless, but hopefully they could do something about that sooner rather than later. All three of them would be rather fucked if she remained the only one with a blunt instrument tonight.

"No, you're fine," The rehead assured as she folded her arms across her chest. "I'm Asuka, Asuka Langley Soryu!" Her smile grew a bit wider, almost harmlessly feminine, before she looked over at Zevran so he could introduce himself. Asuka didn't enjoy claiming that responsibility from others; sometimes introductions were the only things people could achieve independently. Who was she to take the wind out of someone else's sails?

[scavengerbird]

Ah, and the party was assembled. How nice. Zevran was eager to get them on their way, but introductions must be made. Asuka seemed sharp enough, but his first impression of the newcomer was more positive, and came with fewer red flags.

The woman he assumed to be Agatha was not much older than Asuka, but old enough that time and nature had granted her a notably buxom figure. Even the dull uniform could not hide the dramatic curves of her body. Her long, golden blond hair was the stuff of ballads, and Zevran was initially inclined to call her face sweetly in line with her mane. However, he doubted there was much that was traditionally sweet about an individual who decided to pursue this cause. Her appearance alone was lovely, but not half as intriguing as her decision to take up arms for the night.

Zevran was not a young man anymore, and there was a pronounced distance of age between himself and his assigned allies. He was now older than many of the assassins he had worked with, and it was impressive he had survived so long. He was also older than his dear Warden, and quite a few of their mutual friends as well. It didn't bother him, not much anyway, but he supposed it was why he felt that nagging sympathy for the confident redheaded girl. Even Agatha had not fully shed her childhood, although she was certainly an adult.

"Ah, wonderful. As I was just telling Asuka, I am Zevran. That must make you Agatha." He returned her bright smile, although it retained his own personal edge. "It is a pleasure, and if we are all of a like mind, I imagine it will be even more pleasurable for us to make sure we accomplish something tonight."

The last part of his words overlapped with the intercom sounding, and soon that same old sinister voice filled the halls. Unfortunately, the man was not alone tonight. It was easy for anyone to identify a voice in pain, but Zevran considered himself particularly well versed in the aftereffects of torture or a sound beating. Landel had called the woman Jill, and referred to a Marc, but the names meant too little to Zevran.

Landel's berating was slightly more personal, although Zevran couldn't say it inspired as much guilt as it did dread. Like the time before, a sharp noise cut through Zevran's thoughts, although it was not so intense. Instead, it was accompanied by the glow of the formerly dead lights. One of them strained, and then cracked violently so that Zevran couldn't stop himself from whipping around to face it. Magic gone wrong? He could only guess, but his adrenaline assumed the worse. The end result was that the corridor maintained a sickly glow that Zevran liked less than the darkness. It seemed that some of the torches had not cracked under the pressure, unfortunately. Zevran felt too exposed like this. Every shadow, dangerous as it might be, was a potential hiding place, but now they were all filled up with light.

Zevran scanned the area, but didn't waste much thought on the way his shadow seemed to fail to follow the turn of his head. "Call me a pessimist, but I don't think this is going to be in our favor," he murmured.

[mistressmadgirl]

Well, her fellow recruits seemed friendly and confident. Agatha was pleased; having to explore hostile territory with a pair of incompetents, cowards, or jerks would have been a major problem. That... was more or less the only good sign, though, as the intercom sounded with its snickering, invective-laden message.

"Oh, sweet lightning," Agatha murmured at the sound of the impacts. She hadn't been particularly attached to the radio voices. As far as she could see, they'd yet to be especially helpful. But there had at least been the knowledge that someone outside of their prison, and who knew something, was trying. Those little noises turned her stomach, even as Landel's insults made her roll her eyes.

Then the lights started to burst.

Agatha turned instinctively and brandished her modified hand-lamp at the noise, but it wasn't anything to fight, just an electrical phenomenon which stabilized in moments. That was a little more worrying than an honest monster attack, actually, just as Zevran was saying, but at least they'd have a little more visibility. And it seemed not to be the same effect as the other night's squeal of static, which could have caused no end of problems for the making of new friends.

"At least I can still understand what you're saying," Agatha offered. Rather than waiting for a response, though, she bent down and gingerly picked up a cracked light that had fallen near their little band. "Oooh, there's wires in this," she murmured, grinned, and started knocking away the remaining glass on the wall. It was important to take parts where you could find them!

ffffff sorry for slowness, I had a rough week

[lookitmemama]

Landel's speech sounded more like a father's lecture to his children than a warning. And if there was one thing Asuka hated, it was being treated like a child. The decisions she'd made, whether good or bad, were based on the intelligence of a mature woman who understood rather well how unfair the world was and worked. It didn't play by any set of rules and neither would she.

Is this why they were kidnapped, she wondered. Was the head doctor simply trying to cleanse this world of human err? How uncreative.

"Let's just hope the doors don't start leading to wrong places as well..." The redhead commented as she looked down the hallway in front of her, the lights flickering on and off randomly. Asuka was not very comfortable with this new "advantage". "I wonder how fast the monsters will get to us now that we practically have an 'eat me' sign on ours backs with all this light..."

Sheesh, was there ever a night where bat shittery didn't happen? Fuming, the eva pilot averted her eyes to the floor as she contemplated what to do next. Instead, her gaze was attracted to Agatha as she began pulling wires out of one of the florescent lights. "Are you an engineer?" Or a nerd, but she didn't want to ruin this budding friendship already by asking that!

Looking from Zevran to Agatha, Asuka wondered how far they had explored in the institute. "How long have you two been here? Do either of you have maps of the place?"

[scavengerbird]

Zevran watched as Agatha took to inspecting the scattered fallen globes with great abandon. She mentioned wires, which Zevran couldn't say rang much of a bell with magical lighting devices. She could have been a mage (there was something borderline and excited about her), which would explain the fascination, but he had never seen Amell or Morrigan get excited about dissecting magical traps they came across. Spellwork seemed to all be created in the mind, with no need for... wires. Zevran's next thought was that they were worth coin at the right market, but even that theory had issues.

Besides which, he also had to take into account the passing and all too casual mentions of misleading doorways and language barriers. Monsters, he was accustomed to, and he didn't doubt their presence. Not after he and Captain James stumbled across that corpse.

"No map, I'm afraid. What I would do for one isn't appropriate to say in my current company, but it would be quite a lot," Zevran lamented with a smile, and tucked some stray hair behind his ear. He would need to rebraid it soon. He was probably looking a bit on the haggard side as of late, but that was what kidnapping would do to you. Thankfully, this was an easy way to transition into requesting details on the passing references his companions had made. "This is my third night, and it has been without any excitement at all. Not a single mauling or tryst, let alone whatever you two experienced with the doors and misunderstandings. Those are exaggerations, I hope?"

[mistressmadgirl]

"Engineer?" Agatha repeated, absently. "That's... probably the best word for it, if you've never heard of Sparks..." The sharp bits were well cleared away by now, and Agatha stowed the metal in her shirt-bag with a faintly self-satisfied air. Now, what were the others talking about? Oh, yes. Maps. And the doors and languages.

"I'm afraid those did happen," she told Zevran, even as she fumbled in her bag for her notebook, then through its pages for the relevant part. "The doors even dropped me outside. In the middle of a blasted lake where something tried to drown me... I don't see how the lights will be a problem, the monsters seem to see just fine in the dark... ah, here." She flipped the notebook around with a smirk and a flourish, showing her map to the others. "I can't personally speak to its accuracy," she admitted, "but this is what was on the bulletin board for a little while, and nothing I recognize is wrong."

[lookitmemama]

"No, I haven't," She admitted to Agatha, gauging the woman with her usual skepticism. Asuka was by no means an expert in engineering, but she had taken a few classes about it in college and this was the first time she had ever heard anything about "Sparks". Though to be fair, technology, as Asuka knew very well, rapidly advanced in a very short amount of time. She could be simply out of the loop since her job took up a lot of her free time. Perhaps later, when they weren't at mercy of the head doctor's antics, she would talk with Agatha more on "Sparks".

But for now, they needed to formulate a plan. Zevran was without a weapon, and unless he was secretly a ninja, this little band was fucked. Agatha thankfully had something hard to club a bitch with, but she wasn't sure if that was enough. The maps were a good start, though. The eva pilot hoped Agatha had done a bit more exploring than she and knew where the best place for something a bit more lethal than a baseball bat.

"Well, this is a good start at least..." Many of these places on the first floor had been experienced in the day time as they nurses shuttled the patients to and fro. The second floor looked a bit more intriguing, though it was frustrating to see that almost everything was marked as private for staff members only. And where the hell was the head doctor's office?!

"I wonder if the second floor would be more fruitful. I mean, the only place I've been to with weaponry was the activities' shed and it only carries baseball bats..." Straightening her posture, she looked to the one man in their group, pointing a finger at him. "You, Zevran. Are you skilled in any kind of combat training?"

[scavengerbird]

A Spark? That was an interesting term. Zevran only knew of engineers who worked with siege weaponry, finding newer, better ways to put together rolling towers of awkward death. Their lumbering approach was nothing to be scoffed at, but they were painfully cumbersome. No engineer he had met (and then seduced and killed as a matter of business) had shown much interest in magic unless it could be strapped to one of their weapons.

"Me, Zevran, yes," he mimicked as he pulled himself from his thoughts. "I am quite. I would be very poor at my job if I did not know my way around a weapon. However, I have none to demonstrate this with, so you will need to take my word for it." He had enough to stop any man that after them, perhaps, but it wouldn't do much in the face of a monster like he and James had spotted the previous night. Thankfully it had been dead then, but Zevran knew his own luck. "So, let us go upstairs, and we can fix this and make our new friends very proud."

[mistressmadgirl]

"That sounds about right," said Agatha, grinning broadly despite her rising unease. Knowing that it must be the lighting, since the motion she kept thinking she saw was clearly not there in the steadier beam of her flashlight, only did so much for the wrong feeling; she needed to get moving and do something. And she chuckled, banishing her nervousness. "Onward!"

[mistressmadgirl]

[Moved to here.]