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fucking_ebay) wrote in
applesaucedream2014-10-25 02:32 pm
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Stuck in the middle with you [CLOSED]
When he comes to himself, Peter cannot see. He gasps into awareness, his own breath rasping loudly in his ears, and it takes him several moments of straining to understand that he is not blinded but blindfolded. His wrists are heavy when he reaches up to tear away the cloth tied over his eyes, and when one stops partway to his face, halted by tension, he realizes that he has been chained. Hurriedly, almost panicking, he yanks off the blindfold with the hand that can reach to find himself blinking in the dim light of a stone room.
On either side of him is a man in a similar predicament, one of Peter's wrists connected to one of the wrists of each by a chain about two feet long. Each man's other wrist is chained in turn to a bolt in the crumbling walls of either side of the cell, and each is similarly blindfolded -- or was. Peter recognizes both of them as he turns his head back and forth to stare at each in disbelief -- first Seth on his right and then on his left --
"Oh, come on!"
On either side of him is a man in a similar predicament, one of Peter's wrists connected to one of the wrists of each by a chain about two feet long. Each man's other wrist is chained in turn to a bolt in the crumbling walls of either side of the cell, and each is similarly blindfolded -- or was. Peter recognizes both of them as he turns his head back and forth to stare at each in disbelief -- first Seth on his right and then on his left --
"Oh, come on!"
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"Well, if we need to scale a wall or something, at least we have something to make a rope out of," he says reaching down to pick up a handful. Not the most comfortable rope, or the most practical considering it has to be assembled. He unbends on as well, and tries poking it into the lock experimentally, though it doesn't do much good. He has no idea what kind of lock is in these things, or how you open one.
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Unfortunately, Daniel himself knows very little about lockpicking. Door consoles on foreign spaceships he has scant knowledge of; old fashioned key-in-the-lock scenarios he has not.
"I can try for scissors?" He shrugs helplessly, fully aware of how ridiculous it sounds. "Those are harder. And I've never been able to make them, so."
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"We should just wake up," he points out, still working at it. "Or you could try for some pruning shears and take one for the team by cutting your hand off."
That was uncalled for and he knows it.
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"Hey," he responds sternly to Peter's not-so-helpful suggestion for Daniel. He can easily ignore these things when they're directed at him, but he doesn't want Peter trying to bully Daniel. ...And furthermore, pruning shears does definitely not fall under 'office supplies'.
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He gives up on the keyhole and instead turns his attention to the door.
"Looks sturdy enough but maybe all three of us could weaken it enough to break it," he observes slowly. "Not a fix for the chain problem, but at least we'd be going somewhere."
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"Whatever gets us out of here," he mutters, dubious about their collective ability to do anything about a door.
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He can always try and go for a pair of scissors but he's never really succeeded in anything like that. It's always been pens, paperclips, post-its, other small miscellany.
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Whoever built this place would have to be a piss-poor dungeon designer to make that possible, but you never know. Trouble is, there's no way Peter's getting either arm down through there when he's got someone chained to him on both sides.
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"How about I just..." he says, sticking his hand through the door close to where the handle is. He feels around for a bit on the other side, dragging Peter's hand a bit. The chains go through the door, but Peter's hand doesn't. It only takes a couple seconds for him to find a latch and push it open with a satisfying click, before pulling back his hand.
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He ends up having to brace his shoulder on it and throw his entire body weight at the thing, grateful he's at the end of their little chain link, but with a rusted squeal the door finally swings outward.
"Well," he pants, stepping back and almost folding his arms before realizing the movement would be impeded by the chains. "That's progress."
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And good thing they have at least one person on this team with a certain amount of body weight and strength. He leans forward and looks out, but there's no one there. Then again, if there were, they might've been freaked out by the randomly appearing hand, or the loud noises of Daniel trying to smash open the door. "Shall we, then?"
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The outside corridor looks, from here, to be exactly what one would expect to find in a dungeon of this size and nature - unremarkable, appropriately dismal stone brick walls, dimly lit, and, in their favor, completely empty.
Daniel typically isn't the one to take the lead in this type of situation - he wouldn't consider himself a leadership type of person by any means - but letting Petter leave first would be an exercise in painful bruising and perpetual physical space management, and he'd rather not Seth be the first one to face whatever it is that might potentially be down here with them. So, shooting the other two a meaningful look in warning, out the door he goes.
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Then again, if this is a dream, anyone else they meet is unlikely to be an actual real consciousness. Just a figment cooked up by their combined minds. Seth thinks he'd be able to tell the difference in just a small shared dream like this, when he was able to tell it was a dream so quickly. But it's hard to be sure until he can test it.
"Well, this place is probably drawn from one or more of our minds," Seth points out quietly. Though the gentle rattling of their chains is probably doing a decent enough job of letting anyone present know they're on the move. "But it doesn't really look familiar to me. At least, not the specific location." The type of setting is familiar enough. Much, much too familiar. So familiar he would happily never see another cold, lifeless dungeon ever again. Yet is seems to be a theme recently.
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Thankfully he's spared from having to elaborate when they reach a flight of spiral stairs. Or maybe not so thankfully, because that leaves them with two not-terribly-pleasant choices - turn around and go back how they came or brave the stairs and hope they go somewhere. Either way one or more of them will probably end up tripping over someone else's feet and swearing magnificently.
"Up or down, do you think?" he asks, craning his neck to see if there's anything of interest in either direction with little success.
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"Where the hell do you even come from, because I thought I'd already met all the weirdos," he says. "We should go up, obviously. No windows means they've got us buried."
Logic!
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Kinda makes him wonder what the hell kind of life Daniel's been living though. Getting shot isn't new, being thrown in dungeons apparently isn't new, dying isn't new. The dreaming is one thing, but how do you end up going through all of that so often that it becomes almost routine.
"Sounds like a fair assumption," Seth agrees, though he somehow manages to sound like he's disapproving. He's just starting to feel more and more unkind towards Peter tonight. He's going to have to try to summon some patience from somewhere. And furthermore, no windows is hardly a guarantee. Still, they've got precious little to go off here, so why not.
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Peter's question provokes a little pause. He considers his concise, vague answers he's used for that specific query before, how he's eased people into the possibility of being a spacefaring explorer and then thinks, well why not?
"Oh, I'm from space," he says easily, tone just as light and casual as if he were informing Peter that he was an architect in undergrad school. "Intergalactic explorer, you know."
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"Space," he repeats with an ill-suppressed huff of laughter. "Lots of dusty old castles out among the stars, are there?
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childishridiculous urge to shoot Seth a grin, he continues in just as conversational a tone. "You'd be surprised how many planets out there aren't as technologically advanced as Earth. And how many seem to think that visiting parties are invading demons that need to be thrown into prison and burned at the stake." Okay, so maybe that particular instance was one time, three or four at most, but the dungeon bit is a mission-wide consistency. At least those unpleasant experiences are getting put to some marginal use here.His foot chooses that exact moment to slip on the next step and his free hand flies up to grab at the wall to prevent the potential domino-style backslide. The hand chained to Peter, however, seems to forget that it is chained to Peter and instinctively tries to do the same, only to strain against its tether.
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Instead though, his arm too gets yanked up and forward, making him trip as well, though at least he has one free hand to break his fall a little and make is slightly less painful when his shins and knees hit roughly against the stone steps. Which, still, ow.
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