The Cave

Spoiler

oop, slight thing to correct, @FalconerGal9086 - Jaron's the fox, not the hound.
Still, a very good post!

Kendrik heard the noise and whirled around. Yep, Jaron wasn't there. The hound bit his lip. Why was Jaron running around so much? It wasn't like him; normally, they'd just stick together. Then again, this was an unfamiliar setting, and Jaron's anxiety was nothing if not persistent.

Fortunately, based on the loudness of the sound, Kendrik knew Jaron wasn't far off. The hound ran over, finding the fox in front of a metal door.

"What does it say?" Jaron whispered, gesturing to the knobs at the door's center. He was on his knees, one hand inches away from the buttons.

Kendrik leaned forward, peering at the buttons and the symbols on them.

"I don't know," he said. They stared at each other nervously.

James looked into the darkness of the cave where Jaron and Kendrik had gone.

"You found something. What is it?" He asked.

Rather than wait for Jaron and Kendrik to enlighten him and the others with their find, he stopped leaning on the rock and went to join them. It took his eyes a moment or two to adjust to the darkness, but soon he found himself looking at a strange metal door. His curiosity was almost instantly piqued. This was the sort of thing that was common with what he did - or, at the very least, should have been. Secret passages and rooms were, for the most part, a thing of fiction. The few times he had encountered actual ones had ended in a variety of ways, and he hoped that this time would end with a better result than any of them had.

Spoiler

Oh oops, mixed that up xD I'll edit, thanks!

Kratzer gazed quietly at the door, approaching. It had a keyboard in the middle. Most of the keys were covered in dust from lack of use with the exception of E, I, O, S, G, H, ', C, N, and M. So, they knew what letters were used, but the question was in what order? If there was an apostrophe it was probably an 's at the end, which left E, I, O, G, H, C, and N. That was assuming it was a word, however...well, good a place as any to start, ja?

"If the passcode is a word it's probably going to end with the apopstrophe 's', no? That leaves E, I, O, G, H, C, and N to be unscrambled."

Raiden peered over their heads to look at what it was they were seeing. He listened to what they all said, before speaking up.
"Y'know, it might be a random combination of letters too. Or at least, random to us, anyway."

"It's possible, but we need some starting point - it'd take a very long time to attempt every possible combination."

Spoiler

I thought I'd spice things up with some new characters that have never been in a roleplay before - though one of them has shown up in a storybook. Meet Luke Blythe and Levi Quinn. Or, if you want to go by their real names, Lucifer and King Kartiel of the End. Here's some brief descriptions on what they currently look like, since neither have profiles yet.

Luke: Has short, curly black hair and bright blue eyes. His eyes are slightly pointed, but it's a detail most tend to miss. He's wearing a hoodie, jeans and sneakers right now, with a pencil tucked behind one ear. His clothes are covered in all sorts of stains, but it's clear that they all come from art projects. Appears to be in his teens, and his height matches that.

Levi: Has short, messy black hair and green eyes peeking out from behind a pair of glasses. He's wearing a collared white shirt, black dress pants, and loafers. His clothes look slightly disheveled, but not by much. Appears to be in his teens, and his height matches that.

What was more startling - waking up in an unfamiliar forest, or finding a stranger lying on the ground beside him? It took his memories only a few moments to return, but the brief moment where he was completely disorientated absolutely terrified him. The memories gave him some of the answers he was looking for. He was teleporting, and had somehow ended up here. Wherever here was had to be far away, because he had been absolutely exhausted and had promptly passed out on the forest floor.

But what it didn't explain the boy next to him.

Rain was pounding against the ground all around them, but the tree they had awoken under provided a decent form of shelter. Neither one of them were truly wet. Leaning across the dry dirt, he gave the boy a gentle shake. The kid couldn't have been much older than this body was. Sixteen, maybe seventeen at most. "Hey," he said, giving him a stronger shake. "Wake up."

His eyes shot open. For a moment, he thought he saw a flash of red. But then he blinked, and the eyes were a pleasant shade of blue. "Who-who are you?" the boy questioned, rushing to his feet and backing away from him. He wildly looked around. "And where are we?"

So it appeared that this boy was just as clueless as he was about this place. It was his lucky day - he had never seen the boy before, which meant that he couldn't have been going to the same school as him. "I'm Levi Quinn." A pause. The boy still looked nervous. "I don't know where we are. I just woke up here, too."

The boy stared at him, then gave a slight nod. It seemed like he trusted him, at least enough to give him a name. "My name's Luke Blythe," he said.

There was a loud clap of thunder from nearby. Both jumped at the noise, but it was Luke who seemed the most startled out of the two of them. He started to wildly look around again, but this time it was with a purpose. He raised a hand up and pointed at a cliff face nearby. "There's a cave there," he commented. "I think we should go there."

"It would make a good shelter," Levi agreed. "And it would be the perfect place to learn more about each other!"

The two hurried towards the cave. If Luke noticed Levi flinching when the rain hit his skin, he didn't question it. Levi was grateful for that; it was one of the many things he had no desire to explain. They both came to a sudden stop when they reached the entrance of the cave.

"There's people in there," Levi whispered.

Luke nodded.

"I'm not getting a good feeling about this-" Luke completely ignored his comment and walked inside. Sighing, Levi rushed in after him.

Luke hesitantly raised a hand. "Hi?"

"Ya can read this?" Kendrik said, looking back at the others with wide eyes. He moved, uncomfortable with all the faces now crowding around him, so he could stand behind Jaron. "Go ahead, I guess. But I dunno if it's a good idea."

Jaron wiped the dust off of the buttons. "It's old," he whispered. "Maybe it won't work."

Tapping a claw against his chin, Kendrik nodded. He didn't quite believe it, but he trusted Jaron. He turned around, ready to explain to Thomas what is was that they'd found, only to see two people standing in the entrance of the cave. Kendrik's heart skipped a beat until he realized that they were just two kids.

"Stay over there!" Kendrik called out, after one of them said a hello. "'s not safe here!" Hopefully they'd take the hint, because he already felt surrounded.

While everyone else had gathered around what sounded like a door that required some sort of puzzle to open, James let out a deep sigh, refusing to move from his place of rest. Even when the two teenagers hopped up into the cave, he hardly moved.

"Safe is relative," he said to the young boys. "All of us here are strangers seeking shelter from the storm. I don't think two more added to our numbers would do any harm." He looked over to the dark corner of the cave where the others were gathered. "They found a door, by the way. Sounds important or mysterious, but frankly, I'm too exhausted to care."

He wonders how protected it is - can he try to hack it? Or should he manually run through the many combinations? Kratzer glanced back as Kendrik started talking and noticed a couple boys in the entrance to the cave.

He simply raises a hand in greeting and looks back up towards the door, starting to type. He starts with the key that had the least dust and backtracks from there to the one that had the most in an attempt to break the code, but since Jaron wiped the dust off he has to work of memory.

The two walked a little farther into the cave, each marveling at the sight that greeted them. The people here seemed strange. Some of the oddities were obvious - two of the men in the very back of the cave were more animal than human, for example. But the other strange things were little more than feelings. He didn't like this group of people in the slightest.

Except Luke, of course. He seemed like a decent kid.

As he was looking around the cave, he noticed another person standing not too far away from the two bipedal animals. He tugged on Luke's sleeve. "Look!" he whispered, pointing at the bacm of the cave. "There's Reyes Eberhardt! You know, from that ghost hunting show?"

Luke muttered, "...It's fake."

"What is?"

"The show," he said, slipping his hands into his pockets in what was likely an attempt to look as small as possible. "It's not real. There's not any ghosts there."

Levi stared at him.

"...And we should be careful," he said. "The people here are...odd."

He tried to tune them out as his fingers flew across the keyboard. The heartbeats alone were distracting enough - voices made it nearly impossible. It'd been a long time since he'd worked a hacking job, too, and he'd never had the same knack for computers Diamond or even Viper had.

Kendrik watched Kratzer press the buttons in a variety of orders. Kratzer stared ahead, totally focused on his task, even though the giant door never moved. Still, he seemed like he knew what he was doing, and Jaron, who was right beside Kratzer, looked enthralled. The fox's mouth hung open, and he moved his arm back to his side.

Pop!

The noise came from above the hound's head. Kendrik looked up just in time to see the ceiling in front of beginning to split, spilling rocks and dirt onto the floor. "It's a trap!" he shouted, pure adrenaline taking hold of him. He grabbed Jaron, who had just begun to turn his head, and flung him back towards the entrance of the cave. Jaron hit the ground head-first, sprawling out on the floor.

Barking in alarm, Kendrik tried to squeeze past the rocks, but it was too late. In a matter of seconds, the pile of earth had cut him off.

"Jaron!" Kendrik shouted, trying to claw his way through the earth.

On the other side of the cave, Jaron opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He groaned; he had a terrible headache.

"Sohn einer Hündin!" Kratzer exclaims in German as the ceiling comes crashing down, stepping back to avoid getting hit by the rubble. The noise is deafening and he finds himself momentarily stunned from the sheer volume bombarding his sensitive ears.

Was he the one who did that? Probably. Though, was it a success or a failure? A trap or an opening? Hard to know. He grimaced as the ringing in his ears began to fade when the rocks settled.

"Is anyone hurt?" he asks, stepping towards the wall. He has a hard time focusing still but tries to push it off; this isn't a time so show weakness.

Groans were heard from both sides of the cave.

Reyes was in the middle of trying to pry himself free from a rock that had fallen on his foot. The entire attempt was as hidden as he could possibly make it in the current situation. It hurt, but not as bad as some of his injuries had in the past. He tugged and tugged and tugged. When that ultimately failed, he went to pushing the rock right off of his foot. The rock went flying into the cave wall he had been standing beside prior to the ceiling falling.

He hopped to his feet, wincing as he put one foot down. He could already feel it healing. In an effort to make sure no one noticed his injury, he hid the foot in question behind his other one. It made how he was standing look incredibly awkward, but what other choice did he have?

"I'm good," he said.

On the other side of the collapsed part of the cave, Levi was currently dealing with a completely different, far more worrying problem - Luke had been caught right under multiple rocks. Levi's instincts had kicked in right as he had heard the loud pop. He had teleported several feet back and had come out unscathed.

But, Luke...

Levi rushed over to the boy and frantically started to push rocks aside. There was more blood than he thought anyone could lose. Then again, human biology still confused him to no end. But it certainly wasn't a good sign, and he needed to get out as soon as possible.

When Levi had finished clearing off the rocks, he started to tug Luke's limp body out from underneath the rocks. Luke was surprisingly hard to move, but Levi had always been a stubborn person. After a few more attempts, he was able to get the other boy free.

"Luke," he frantically said. He propped the other boy up against the nearest cave wall. "Luke, please get up!"

His eyes fluttered open.

Levi gave a startled cry and stumbled back at the sight, almost tripping on the bipedal fox that was laying down nearby. Because Luke's eyes hadn't been the same beautiful shade of blue that they had been only minutes prior.

They were red.