[MINGLE] Glitches: Locked In

[sixthiteration]

The Inn is still a place that most of the villagers gather and, as such, a perfect place to conduct an experiment. Since it is a place of high traffic, it is not uncommon to see people come and go at all hours of the day and night; men and women come through to eat meals, to deliver game and simply to talk and catch up with others. If there's any bit of news or a new development within the village, it always spreads through the Inn like wildfire.

So what happens when the Inn is locked away from everyone else? What happens when the doors cease to work and the traffic in and out of the myriad doors is forcibly stopped for an afternoon and evening? Chaos? Panic? Both? Neither? That is precisely the hypothesis being tested today.

There are ways out, yes, but they're cleverly hidden. The keys are not in the normal, visible places they should be kept and each key fits a certain door. Additionally, those doors have to be opened in a certain order or nothing is going to happen.

How long will it take for the Inn to open up to the public again?


[Details can be found HERE]

Comments

[immunetolight]

"Why are there keys that do nothing? It makes no sense." Then again, nothing about this place makes sense and Ren doesn't even know why he asks the question. Since arrival, he's felt like he's been blinded and deafened. The Force, the part of him that has been so integral to his way of engaging the world, has been completely blunted since he rose from that fountain and navigating this place without it leaves him reeling.

It makes him short tempered and angry, more than usual, and a lot of the times Rey ends up taking the brunt of that frustration. Now, though, he has a place to direct that energy that isn't a person but a thing: these doors.

"If I had the Force, I could make it open. I could blast it open, augment my strength, something."

[fromnowhere]

"Why are you asking me," she says with a small amount of irritation, "I didn't do it."

She huffs a little, putting the key back into her pocket before shaking her head and looking around. "Brute force doesn't seem to have worked, so don't throw yourself at it, either. I won't feel any sympathy for you if you injure yourself trying to get out of here."

It's said with a certain amount of snarkiness, knowing full well that his temper is getting the better of him. Why not add to it? She's tired of the stalemate between them.

[immunetolight]

"I wasn't expecting you to feel sympathy for me." Ren has had a few minor injuries since coming here, most notably the laceration on his palm from a fish hook, but he's tried his damndest not to ask anyone for assistance. He's not used to being on a planet as backward as this one because he'd been raised in systems with a certain standard of living; his father might have been a smuggler but his mother was a princess and had a threshold for what she wanted to endure.

Jedi were supposed to live austere and once he'd gone to Luke, he'd lived differently, but his childhood still affects the way he sees the world. He prefers more technology to less, more luxury to simplicity. This place pushes nearly every button he had been aware of and a few new ones. It is, in some ways, worse than Rey.

"No one else has sympathy for me when I've been injured. I didn't expect you to suddenly start."

[fromnowhere]

She huffs again. Leave it to Kylo to feel sorry for himself and throw a full-on pity party when there are more dire circumstances at play.

Rolling her eyes, she steps closer and looks up at him. "If you'd been truly hurt, you could have come to me. I'd still help you, even if you don't like me. I'm actually pretty good with minor injuries," she adds, "considering there was nowhere to go for medical help on Jakku. You had to fix yourself since no one else gave a damn."

[immunetolight]

"I had someone else help me with it, someone called Jean-Luc Picard," Ren explains. He'd gotten a bit of judgment from the man but he'd helped all the same. Ren isn't used to asking for help and it'd been awkward at first but he'd pushed through.

"I can't run to you every time I have a problem, Rey. How would that look?"

[fromnowhere]

The look she gives him is nothing but judgment because if he can't trust her to help him when it's just the two of them from their world - with a random person here and there that she's not sure about - then how can she ever hope to find a way to escape?

"It would look like perhaps you were using your head instead of your emotions," she told him as she shook her head disapprovingly. "It's good to hear you're making friends, though."

Sarcasm. So much sarcasm.

[immunetolight]

"I would call him an acquaintance," Ren says, scowling a bit. "And honestly, I need to appear independent. I don't want to show weakness in this place. I'm already without the Force."

It's not like him to be this open with anyone, much less Rey, but Rey had spent time in his head and he'd spent time in hers. They may not be connected any longer but it feels safer to reveal his insecurities to her than it does to anyone else. She knows he has them and hiding them does no good. She can understand him, at least.

[fromnowhere]

"Do you really consider it showing weakness if you're injured and ask for help?"

She frowns at him, then shakes her head to mentally move on from the subject. It's honestly not doing them any good, standing there arguing over semantics when they're still going to be trapped at the end of it. "Nevermind. That's a problem for a different day. Right now, unlesss you're planning on making this your new home, we should figure out what's keeping us here."

[immunetolight]

"Showing injury when I don't have my greatest strength available to me is a weakness," Ren snaps back at her. He doesn't have access to the Force for the first time in his life and she wonders why he's sensitive about showing an injury? It's because he has no way to defend himself! Who knows what might harm him here while he can't fight back? He sure doesn't want to find out.

"As to the task at hand, we need to find a way to open one of these windows or doors. Force isn't working. It must be some kind of puzzle."