[MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: The bunker & elsewhere
WHEN: 1 September 2018
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn on threads
NOTES: Plot Details | Bunker Details | Bunker Map & Key
Threads may take place ANYTIME during the plot, including before, during and after the tubes have been opened, just please do not godmod tube arrivals without explicit permission. Related threads not in the bunker are welcomed, as are general bunker exploration/reaction threads that have nothing to do with the arrivals. Please reference the bunker key doc for what is and isn't available to explore at present.

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Deep under the mountain, tucked away in the newly-discovered bunker complex, there is a room where everyone begins. It is filled with equipment — Computer consoles, monitors — but the point of it all resides within ten vertical stasis tubes lined neatly along a far wall.

One of them has been cracked and lies dormant, dry. In six of the remaining are bodies, unconscious and floating in their familiar vari-colored scrubs, vital signs ticking calmly off on their respective readouts.

In the corner, near the cracked tube, the ceiling has shattered and tumbled inward, across the floor and over the largest console in the room — The one flashing 24 HOURS UNTIL STASIS FAILURE.

Comments

[littledhampir]

She couldn’t be sure how long she’s been standing by the edge of the water, waiting for Owen to show up. Her arms folded across her chest and emanating an aura of barely controlled, forced calm. Truthfully, if she thought she could get into the pod on her own? She wouldn’t even be waiting but knowing Rose’s luck, that would only add another name to the list of the recently deceased. She might be able to swim well enough not to drown in still water but even she knew better than to push her luck, especially right now.

She hears Finnick’s approach before she sees it but doesn’t turn around, doesn’t know his footsteps well enough to place their owner until he moves into her periphery. There’s the slightest of shifts in her posture, an infinitesimal relaxation. Just like you’d expect from somebody registering a threat, but deeming it not a threat to her.

“Coming or come to watch?” Rose only allowing her gaze to shift in his direction once she catches sight of the trident, her face an odd mask of curiosity and confusion as she silently tries to picture how one would fare in a fight.

[fishermansweater]

He paueses when he realizes Rose has seen him, but an ability to make dark commentary about understanding killing isn't the only thing she shares with a victor. He's familiar with that moment of snap threat assessment.

"Come to watch your backs," he says, slipping off the one strap of his pack he'd been wearing and dumping the bag behind a rock.

Fighting isn't the only thing they teach at the Career Academy, and they don't just learn what strategies to use in the arena by watching past Games. He's pretty good at picking traps, or was before he came here where there aren't nearly as many traps as he expects. This might be real; the Gamemakers here play by different rules and they've used their tributes to do what they want done in the past.

But it could also be a trap, and having people watching out for that possibility who can swim and can fight (and swim and fight) seems to him like a good idea for this rescue mission.

"Pretty easy to trap you all down there. If someone tries, I'll stop them."

[littledhampir]

She considers him for a quiet moment, watching the ease in which he handles the trident. Not a flashy weapon he’d picked up like a naive novice who didn’t consider the reality of fighting with it. The way he held it, casually as he was right now, it was almost as if it were an extension of himself.

“Assuming the threat isn’t already inside.” Glancing in his direction as she allows that thought to register. She hadn’t expected the danger to come from the outside. The trap that Rose envisioned involved charges hidden in the walls, in the chambers that held the people. Maybe even in the people themselves. It seemed the sort of thing the people behind this place would do.

Of course, none of these possibilities were enough to stop Rose from going in there. Her need to do something would always trump any sense of self-preservation she possessed and it was an endless source of frustration to those who knew her, just how lacking that preservation was.

“One less scenario to worry about at least.” Which was what passed for an acknowledgment of thanks from Rose.

[fishermansweater]

He's aware of the risk that there could be danger already inside the bunker. The discussion of the possibility of the distress calls being a way to lure people into a fight is obvious to a Career, who's seen so many tributes die because of feasts, or because of traps (who'd set traps himself in his own arena). But the thought that they could be lured somewhere only to be trapped there and surrounded or attacked from the outside seems to have been largely overlooked.

He nods, flashing her a sharp smile.

"Seems like there's some capable people going down there."

He hasn't seen any actual proof of Rose's abilities, but the way she talks makes it clear that she's familiar with fighting, and he recognizes the assessment in the way she eyes his trident. He can guess what that's about; a trident is not the most natural weapon, and many tributes in the years after his victory tried to replicate his use of them without his years of practise. What was to Finnick a natural, comfortable style of fighting was to others awkward and cumbersome.

"You keep an eye on each other and I'll make sure nothing happens from up here."