Enre looks around trying to find out where the odd noise he could barely hear was coming from.
"Silver dragon? There's alot of different dragon types aren't there?" Vai shifts again, uneasy. "I think I should rest, um, Professor. I'm feeling really tired after that. Should I go back to the infirmary?"
"Silver dragon? There's alot of different dragon types aren't there?" Vai shifts again, uneasy. "I think I should rest, um, Professor. I'm feeling really tired after that. Should I go back to the infirmary?"
"Wouldn't you prefer to go to your own room? You've been assigned a room with Ursula. She's a very calm person...well, she has to be. Her brother would try the patience of a saint. Anyways, I think you'll like her."
@Enre: *klikklik*
*sssshhhhhkkkkkkkkkkslp*
*clicklikchk*
*sssshhhhhkkkkkkkkkkslp*
It's echoing all over, maddeningly consistent now that you can hear it. Coming from the air vent. No one else seems aware of this, all locked in conversations as they are. In fact it's only because of your superb senses that you were able to hear the sound over the racket of the cafeteria.
Enre looks at the air vent as he hears the noise. He wonders what is going on. He walks over to the vent wondering what the noise could be. He takes off his mask after asking anyone near the vent to move. Once his mask is removed he opens up the vent to see if he can hear where the noise is coming from or smell anything off.
@Enre: Inhaling deeply, you get a giant snootful of dust, and the smell of years and years of cafeteria cooking that has accreted on the uncoated metal walls of the building's HVAC. After a couple sneezes and a minor coughing fit, you approach and try again...
...and get nothing. Whatever is making the sound apparently doesn't give off a strong enough scent to be detected over all the crud in the cafeteria air vent. Or, perhpas, it has no scent at all.
Not smelling anything Enre moves away from the vent before placing his mask back on. He than goes back to where he was standing trying to figure out what that noise was.
"I can? Really? I worked so hard to control it enough to make it into weapons...it never occurred to me that it could be manipulated in other ways. Or with so much detail," she said, admiring the scene between the serpent and the fox.
"You were learning how to shape it and only thought you were learning how to forge a weapon." Lysander replies as the fox gets a lucky strike in. "One shape is just as easy as another, once you know how to do it."
"I can? Really? I worked so hard to control it enough to make it into weapons...it never occurred to me that it could be manipulated in other ways. Or with so much detail," she said, admiring the scene between the serpent and the fox."You were learning how to shape it and only thought you were learning how to forge a weapon." Lysander replies as the fox gets a lucky strike in. "One shape is just as easy as another, once you know how to do it."
"Oh. Ummm.....right."
She conjured up her chakram and then tried to change the shape into something that wasn't a weapon. Her first attempt turned into an amorphous flame before dissipating. Her second attempt vaguely resembled something that might in theory be animal-like...if you happened to be four and painting with finger paints.
"Define easy....."
"Hey Enre what are you doing with the air vents man?" Asch asks when he notices Enre looking through the vents.
"I heard some clicking noise." Enre says after Asch asks him.
"Clicking?" Asch asks as he heads over to see what he was talking about.
"Wouldn't you prefer to go to your own room? You've been assigned a room with Ursula. She's a very calm person...well, she has to be. Her brother would try the patience of a saint. Anyways, I think you'll like her."
"Oh, I hadn't realized I was given a room... Ursula? Thank you, Professor. How do I get there?" Vai looks at Nasima and smiles. Nasima was someone she could trust. Hopefully.
"Wouldn't you prefer to go to your own room? You've been assigned a room with Ursula. She's a very calm person...well, she has to be. Her brother would try the patience of a saint. Anyways, I think you'll like her.""Oh, I hadn't realized I was given a room... Ursula? Thank you, Professor. How do I get there?" Vai looks at Nasima and smiles. Nasima was someone she could trust. Hopefully.
Sensing that Vai wanted to spend as little time as possible in her presence right now, Aananda reached up to her headband and pressed a couple of buttons. A holographic map appeared in the air in front of Vai.
"The blinking light shows where your room is. The map will fade in a moment, but the light will show you the way to where you want to go. It's not magic...just nanites." ^.^
@Enre and @Asch: Both of you can hear the sound, but neither are sure from where it might originate; this is a huge building, after all. You hear a brief giggle, though, and notice Michael and Kitty heading down the stairs towards the basement and sub-basements.
@Kitty and @Michael: You see Enre and Asch standing at one end of the cafeteria, looking dubiously down an air vent.
Kitty hesitated. If it had been Ryuzo or Keme she would have called out for them to come and help without hesitation. But Asch... It was better for Michael to keep away from Asch as much as possible. She just hoped that they didn't run into anything they couldn't handle.
"What are those two doing going towards the basements?"
Enre shrugs "The air vents go through the whole school right? Maybe they heard the noise to?"
@Enre and @Asch: Putting two and two together, you realize that if a sound is that direct, carrying that far, and being heard all over, it must be either on the roof by the AC Banks, or down in Sub-basement 13 where the heating units live.
@Kitty and @Michael You sail past the cafeteria and continue down the stairs , heading for sub-basement 13, where the furnaces and boilers crank out enough heat for the entire facility, an amount of power roughly equivalent to a large sun. The blast door is unlocked, but pasted with warning signs against using certain powers (ice blasts, flames, concussives or other explosions, etc.) You can see through the narrow window that the cavernous room beyond is very dimly lit, and what light there is is mostly coming from heat grates, observation windows, and safety lights. The room is so hot that the doorknob is warm to the touch, and sure enough; stepping through the threshold the temperature shoots up considerably. All around you hear soft clickings of timers and clocks and gears, and the low shhhhooooshhhhhhhhhhh of flames and pilot lights hidden away behind massive doors.
Sub-Basement 13 is a gigantic space. It is easily 300 meters long and 200 meters wide, with a ceiling 50 meters up. Heat sinks the size of cars jut out at crazy angles. A complex 3-D grid of catwalks lurks above everything with ladders for access at three different places on the long walls and two different places on the short walls. The floor is the usual sort of industrial iron treadplate, and beneath it is a long drop of perhaps 500 meters down to a giant cooling tank filled with bizarre chymicals and reagents designed to freeze a heating unit before it can reach critical mass and undergo a VRD (Very Rapid Disassembly). Each unit has a massive trap door underneath so it can be dropped into this tank if it cannot be shut down in time.
Some of the boilers are the size of yachts, some are as big as a tractor trailer, and then there are the furnaces, each a more manageable size. Pipes and wires and control units stretch up to the catwalks in vaguely threatening grey-and-black tangles like bizarre, cybernetic jellyfish. Buried in and amongst them are the vents and carrier pipes that wind up into the school proper, leading into the HVAC system. Walking space is variable. Where you are standing right now, by the Operators' Office, there is a decent amount of room, with clear space 100 meters off to each side reaching to the walls, and then about 20 meters of clear room in front of you . Once in the grid of heating units, though, some walkways are wide and easily traversed while others are little more than crawlspaces.
Sodium-vapor lights hang at regular intervals from the ceiling, but are all dark. The door to the Operators' Office is ajar, and a radio is playing the Peggy Lee version of "Fever".
Somewhere in the boilers, you hear the sound:
klikklikklikKLIKCHKCHKklikklik
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhthmp shhhhhhhhhhhhhthmp
A thought occurs to Vai as she leaves, and she turns once more to Aananda: "Um, this is a school right? When will classes start for me? There's so much about the world I never knew."
A thought occurs to Vai as she leaves, and she turns once more to Aananda: "Um, this is a school right? When will classes start for me? There's so much about the world I never knew."
Aananda smiled. "Well, classes got cut short today thanks to the incident and we're heading into the weekend. There's a concert scheduled for tomorrow evening. Several student bands have been working hard to prepare." She sighed. "And there will probably be a memorial service the day after tomorrow for those who couldn't be raised after the incident today. Classes will resume on Monday morning. You'll be put in History of Agartha, and either normal PE or advanced your choice. I, uh, well, I have some rather unconventional teaching methods for advanced PE. But aside from that what classes you take depends on what interests you have."
Kitty looked nervous.
"I hear something in there....but I really, really don't want to go in. That place is too scary!"
Ephebe handed a vial to Krays. "It's distilled time. It should be set for just enough time to let you be able to transform. But it's okay if you want to take a little bit to talk things over with Death before we head back."
He takes and drinks the vial
"Ok, I'll go have a chat..."
His eyes glaze over for a few minutes, then he perks up again
"That went about like I figured it would. 'Not their proudest moment' is what he said."
He stands there for a sec...
"Oh!"
He shifts into kobold form...and looks the same, but his scales have a brighter edge to them, and he's a litle bigger, but only those closest to him would notice.
"Ok! We can go back now."
After a few hours, the near-tireless (and usually thankless) work of the Infirmary staff gets the remaining injured examined, routed and treated. Things are still busy, but the deluge has passed. A sense of order and calm return to Avalon's healing halls.
Noting the familiar emerald glow returning to his cuffs, Fei takes the opportunity this moment of calm provides to excuse himself and head to the workshop again to discharge his built-up energy.
His new daily ritual complete for the moment, the young monk starts to head for the Cafeteria. He stops, his mind playing back the chaos and violence of the morning...as well as his encounter with the protean.
Fei changes his course, heading outside to an area of the green that is away from the main building and currently bathed in Agartha's 'sun'. He kneels down and lets his senses take in the relative peace of the natural world around him. With a slow, measured breath, he closes his eyes and tries to still his thoughts in an attempt to achieve the tranquility surrounding him...
@Fei: Your tranquility is interrupted by a strange clattering on the roof, like someone dragging a bag of tools across the tarpaper and gravel and walkways.
"Huh. It looks like you're maybe an inch or two taller in this form now."
"Yeah, let's go back." She yawned. "It's already been a long day. I could use a nap."
@Fei: Your tranquility is interrupted by a strange clattering on the roof, like someone dragging a bag of tools across the tarpaper and gravel and walkways.
Fei's eyes open after a moment, as the clattering sounds from the roof continue. The maintenance crew normally is not so noisy. Unless that is not the maintenance crew at all...
He rises to his feet and turns around. Not seeing anything immediately, he quietly makes his way back to the outside of the building, at an inward corner where two walls meet. Using both walls to brace himself, he makes his way to the roof to look around.
"Indeed. Teleport incomming!"
Casts Teleport, and takes all 3 of them, unless Lysander doesn't want to come/be seen arriving with us
"Wait those two couldn't…damn it. I think they are trying to find out what's going on with the sounds as well. Neither of them are fighters they should have told someone!" Asch says as he punches one of the tables leaving a fair sized dent into it. "Give me one second and we'll have some back up and then go probably bail them out of trouble..." He says as he closes his eyes and relays what is going on to Amada.
Wakes from his nap, as one of his clones hears awful racket when passing by a duct...
::They what!:: She mentally exclaims back as she teleports herself to the lunch room. "We can't leave them besides this is your time to thank Michael properly for helping me." She says with a look to Asch. "Hello I know we met earlier but proper introductions were unavailable at the time. My name is Amada Love's champion. I know a succubus as the champion of love who knew." She says with a smile.
Wakes from his nap, as one of his clones hears awful racket when passing by a duct...
You hear two other students walk by outside, they are speaking softly about the logistics of heading all the way down to Sub-Basement 13.
@Asch and @Enre: Waiting to hear where you two are headed, if anyplace.
@Vai: As you are walking to your room, carefully following the directions Aananda gave you, you round a corner into a stretch of hallway that has a few burned out lights, making the light quite dim. One of the overheads is blinking epileptically, making an unpleasant little kunk-kunk-kunk, kunk-kunk sound as it does so. A muffled *CLUNK* sounds from behind the thick metal stairway door at the end, some 200 feet away, giving you pause. Suddenly, there is a sputtering noise and with a loud *ZZZT!* the E, I, and T all burn out on the exit sign, leaving only a lurid red X glowing unpleasantly above the egress. There is a scratching noise in the wall to your left.
You're suddenly not sure you were supposed to come this way.
They pop back into Avalon academy in the hallway in front of Krays's room.
"Okay, well....ummm....thanks. It was....well, a much more interesting trip than I'd intended. I'm sorry we didn't really get to enjoy things more, Krays. It's kinda depressing to have so much trouble in my favorite place. Maybe it'll be better next time....which probably won't be for quite a while once my parents hear about the assassination attempts this time."
Vai stops walking altogether. Deep breaths. There has been lots of damage to the building, maybe they haven't been able to fix this part yet. Vai thinks, but it's not much reassurance. She's troubled the others too much for one day. Head held high, Vai walks on, following the directions, trying not to jump at the noises.
@Asch and @Enre: Waiting to hear where you two are headed, if anyplace.
"Yea we do need to help them but I'd rather not be seen unless we have to be." Asch says as he wraps himself in shadows. And nearly disappears fully from view.
@Asch:
From your perspective just inside the door you, too, can hear the sound coming from somewhere ahead in the boiler banks. You also hear Kitty's comment about not wanting to go in there.
@Vai: the scratching in the wall follows you as walk forward.
*sktch skctch*
*sccccrrrrtch*
*scratch skritch*
*shkshkshk*
*scrrtch*
There is a tortured squeak, like a rusty hinge, muffled and far away.
They pop back into Avalon academy in the hallway in front of Krays's room.
"Okay, well....ummm....thanks. It was....well, a much more interesting trip than I'd intended. I'm sorry we didn't really get to enjoy things more, Krays. It's kinda depressing to have so much trouble in my favorite place. Maybe it'll be better next time....which probably won't be for quite a while once my parents hear about the assassination attempts this time."
"I enjoyed myself al lthe same. Thanks for getting me out of here for a bit. I think we're targets just for being champions, and as paranoid as it may sound I don't think we should ever let our guard down, here or anywhere. We'll get back out there, sometime, after this is all over, I'm sure" he says with a smile.
He gives her a hug"Thanks for being my friend, Ephebe."