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Post by <Raintalon> on Nov 23, 2016 19:29:46 GMT -5
She simply rolled over and lay still.
Marian watched from the other side of the room, sympathetic but not sure what to do about it.
With a lurch that made Ellie tumble back several steps and Thomas almost fall over, the ship creaked and came to a halt. The stars on the observation deck stopped blurring and were suddenly still, making them look a lot more like regular stars. Like the kind they used to see at night.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Nov 23, 2016 20:22:52 GMT -5
Toby slipped, scrambling to his feet as soon as it was safe to do so. "Earthquake?" He suggested fearfully after a minute of, for about the second time that day, shock.
Jaavi grabbed the rail in time to save herself, narrowing her eyes against the change in lighting, then leaning hesitantly forward and reaching out a tentative hand to touch the glass as the stars stopped, almost as if she had just walked outside her house at night. "We've stopped." She said simply.
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Post by <Raintalon> on Nov 24, 2016 10:35:06 GMT -5
(Except the glass is actually a force field and too far away from the guardrail to reach)
"Yeah..." said Ellie, turning and walking back down the hall. "I should get back with the others." she said as the door closed behind her.
"The gate." said Thomas suddenly. Sure enough, it was waking up. Starting to turn slowly clockwise.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Nov 24, 2016 10:39:18 GMT -5
...nice job me. ))
Jaavi made no move to follow, having no desire to deal with all the drama that was undoubtedly going down by the gate.
Toby turned, eyes widening. "Maybe we can go home now." He suggested hopefully, while Steven simply glanced up for a second, still too upset to care much.
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Post by <Raintalon> on Nov 28, 2016 9:05:08 GMT -5
The gate finished dialing and opened with a whoosh, just as Ellie arrived back in the gateroom. "Woah...what happened?" she asked, looking around.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Nov 28, 2016 10:17:34 GMT -5
"It just started spinning again." Steven explained, cautiously approaching the gate but stopping a safe distance away from it, his blue eyes flicking anxiously towards his sister.
"Terrific, let's go home." Toby walked purposefully forward and was through the gate in an instant.
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Post by <Raintalon> on Nov 28, 2016 10:40:15 GMT -5
"Toby, wait!" called Ellie. She turned to the others. "Stay here. If I'm not back in fifteen minutes, move on without me." She stepped through the gate...
...and straight into a cold, flat, snowy desert. She looked around for Toby, eyes wide. "This isn't home."
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Nov 28, 2016 10:44:37 GMT -5
Toby was standing a ways away, his posture limp as if he wasn't really paying it any attention. The snow fluttered fitfully around his ankles, but he didn't seem to notice the cold, instead he simply stood there, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched over.
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 6, 2016 21:34:05 GMT -5
"Toby?" said Ellie hesitantly, approaching him.
"You think we should follow?" asked Marian uncertainly, staring at the gate. Then she spun around as there was a ping, and the clock above the gate controls activated. It read: 1:30:59, and it was counting down.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 6, 2016 22:28:06 GMT -5
Steven took a cautious step towards the clock, giving it a close, searching look as though it might bite him. "Why do I get the feeling this is a bad thing?" He asked, raising his eyebrows as he glanced at Marion. "Why is everything in this weirdo place already out to get us?"
Toby didn't answer at first, his hunched shoulders making his already small frame seem even shorter. When he did speak, it was in a quiet, expressionless tone. "I'm going to be late for dinner, aren't I?"
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 6, 2016 22:34:22 GMT -5
Ellie looked at the ground, digging the toe of her boot into the snow. "Yeah...I guess we are." she said with a forced laugh.
"Maybe it's not so bad." said Marian, examining the clock. "I mean...we don't know what it's counting down to. Maybe that's when the portal will open and take us back home."
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 6, 2016 22:40:36 GMT -5
"Maybe." Steven conceded, though he didn't sound very optimistic. "I wonder who built this place. It couldn't have been the people we live with, could it?"
Toby didn't laugh, just watched the snow for a few minutes before continuing in the same quiet tone. "I always eat my little brother's vegetables for him, when Mom and Dad aren't looking. Then he gets my meat skins..."
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 6, 2016 22:50:24 GMT -5
"We'll get back." said Ellie, in a voice more confident than she felt. "We will. There must be a way."
"No way." said Marian. "This would be like...their worst nightmare."
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 6, 2016 22:54:21 GMT -5
"Exactly." Steven agreed, looking at the strange portal again. "So it must have come from somewhere else. But the door was on our planet, so whoever built this must have been there before, right?"
Toby made a noncommittal noise, finally turning to look at Ellie as the bright snow stood out against his curly black hair. "On a scale of one to ten, how much do you believe that?"
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 7, 2016 14:32:08 GMT -5
"I can read that..." said Sara. She was, surprisingly, standing, though she was leaning heavily against the wall and she looked ill. She squinted at the clock. "Steven, can you read that?"
"Think about it." said Ellie analytically. "The gate leads to different places. Our home, and now here. There can't be gates going on forever, can there? I mean, someone had to have built them and they must've stopped somewhere. So eventually, it should loop back and we can go home."
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 7, 2016 14:44:43 GMT -5
Toby frowned, his mind trying to work through her superior logic as if he was studying a complex piece of woven cloth. "...I guess." He muttered after a minute, finally looking around and really noticing where they were. "What...what is this stuff, anyway? Can we eat it?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth he stuck out his tongue, trying impulsively to test his theory.
Steven moved protectively closer to his sister, though he let her stand on her own until she should give some sign that she wanted help, he knew better than to treat her like a little kid. Glancing back at the symbols, he blinked; suddenly they seemed less like strange squiggles and more like....almost words. "Yeah...Marion?"
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 7, 2016 14:46:41 GMT -5
"One hour and twenty-eight minutes...." said Sara quietly.
"What?" said Thomas, squinting at the numbers. "How can you tell?"
"I think it's just water." said Ellie, watching it melt on her palm. "Weird water."
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 7, 2016 14:53:50 GMT -5
"Oh." Toby shook his head, his black curls sending several cold flakes flying. "Well, even if we do get back, it could be a while. You should go back and let the others know we're okay and what's here, I'll look around and see if we can use anything." His tone was quite bright and his expression had cheered up considerably, but his posture betrayed him.
"No, she's right." Steven put in, staring hard at the clock. "It's like reading your own name, it's so...obvious. How in the stars we know that, I don't know."
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 7, 2016 16:03:50 GMT -5
"Yeah." said Ellie. She hesitated. "Look, Toby...AH!" she cut herself off with a scream as the ground gave out beneath her and Toby, sending them plummeting downward.
Marion squinted at the numbers. "No, I don't recognize it." she said, frowning. "They're just squiggles."
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 7, 2016 16:17:06 GMT -5
Toby let out a cry of shock, twisting as the ground beneath him became as firm as the white powder his hands clawed at, trying desperately to ease his fall. "Ellie!" He screamed, choking on the snow that was suddenly a lot less peaceful and pretty.
"It's counting down." Steven explained, frowning at it. At the back of his mind, something seemed to stir, some long-buried memory.
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 7, 2016 16:20:03 GMT -5
"Oh." said Marian, eyeing the clock. "I wonder what it's counting down to?"
Ellie tumbled down and out of view, buried under the snow. Toby's fall broke near the bottom of the chasm, and he ended up on top of the same mound.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 7, 2016 16:25:13 GMT -5
For a minute all he could do was lay there, eyes wide, trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened. Then he sat up, gritting his teeth against the protest of his muscles as well as the biting cold, and scrambled off the mound. "Ellie!?" He called again, diving into the mound and digging away the soft, strange water. Could you still drown in all this?
"Colors." Steven murmured vaguely, glancing at Sara. "A bunch of colors, remember? Like a rainbow."
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 8, 2016 22:40:23 GMT -5
Sara stared at her hands, frowning. "Yeah...and something weird...like being stretched out."
Thomas blinked. "What in the stars are you guys talking about?"
"I second that." said Marian. "Are you saying you've been here before?"
Eventually the snow caved under his touch, but only a little, about enough for his hand to reach through. Through the hole he could see a small, icy cavern, with Ellie lying at the bottom. She seemed to be unconscious.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 9, 2016 12:05:55 GMT -5
Steven frowned, silent for a moment while his earliest memories seemed to flicker and lurk, just out of reach. "It feels familiar." He answered helplessly, turning away from the clock and instead heading towards the door. "I want to see what else there is."
Toby's hands were red and numb as he combed aside the icy slush, as soon as the hole was large enough he squirmed through and crawled to Ellie's side on frozen limbs. "Ellie." He repeated, sinking into a hunched crouch and trying to shake her awake. "Come on, Ellie..."
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 9, 2016 14:53:56 GMT -5
"I'll come with you." said Thomas hurriedly. He stepped uneasily past Sara and Marian and walked straight into the hall. Sara shrugged. "Suit yourselves. I'm not going anywhere near the rest of this metal coffin just yet."
Ellie stirred, wincing as her scraped hands moved across the ice. "Ugh...Toby?"
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 9, 2016 15:10:15 GMT -5
"Don't move, you m-might be hurt." Toby answered hurriedly, pawing away the loose snow repeatedly even though the numb pain was dreadful. "I'm really s-sorry, Ellie...I didn't mean to get you into this."
"Just give a holler if you need us." Steven called over his shoulder, and entered the dark hall. "Ellie was already through part of this," He went on to Thomas.
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 9, 2016 15:32:57 GMT -5
"Shh." said Ellie, eyes flying open a little wider. "Stop talking."
Thomas was walking solidly ahead, not looking back.
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 9, 2016 15:39:08 GMT -5
Steven sped up as Thomas began to widen the distance between them. "What do you think this was for?" He asked aloud, gazing at the walls as they past.
Toby's voice cut off instantly, he stuck his tongue between his teeth to stop them from chattering. Tilting his head, he listened, hard.
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Post by <Raintalon> on Dec 9, 2016 15:43:08 GMT -5
Ellie was still lying very still, flat on her back. She stared solidly up at the cave ceiling, then back at Toby, then back at the ceiling.
Thomas shrugged, continuing his walk. "Who cares?"
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Post by ®Hawkpath® on Dec 9, 2016 15:46:24 GMT -5
Steven frowned slightly, glancing at Thomas more closely. "What's up? You don't seem to be in this walk for the sightseeing."
Toby slowly lifted his eyes to the ceiling, his heart pumping hard and fast, sending hot blood flooding through his cold extremities and making them tingle.
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