T - Bee, Dark, Xenon, Satra

[Nathalia]

Zeki and Senka both wake up slowly, their heads pounding and their eyes burning a little; smells like they may have had chemical cloths pressed over their faces!
Both are locked in the same, none-too-sturdy-looking cage-like structure; a poorly built box with bars ill-fitted to the side.
They appear to be in a very dark room, only silhouettes visible to them from their positions in the box; nothing is moving and they can only hear one another.
How did they get here?
Zeki remembers going out to the market, and Senka remembers dawdling near some Bander cages out in the Capital...
Other than that, both seem quite confused as to what could be going on...

Try to find your way out and then see if you can either light up the room yourselves, or find some other means of seeing in the dark!
It's never a good sign to be locked up like this!

[Bee]

When Zeki first woke, he thought, insanely, that he was in his own bed, having done something immensely stupid the night before that had left him with a miserable headache. That had happened once. He had been a very bad young man and sampled wine--a whole quarter of a bottle!--until he had fallen over drunk, and woke in thundering, throbbing, queasy agony. The light had seared his brain. Sounds had made it explode. Scents made it toss and turn like a shoddily-crafted boat on a sea of pain.

But he had not done anything bad the night before; in fact, the last thing he remembered was going out to buy some cherries his body didn't need to snack on. He could faintly smell chloroform. The surface below him was not his plush mattress. It was cold and hard and he stared at it, perplexed and worried. Then he sat up, amid a small seizure of dizziness, and got frightened. He was in a blasted cage. There was a woman next to him that he did not recognize at all, and it was dark. This was the polar opposite of everything that was good in the world.

He rubbed at his eyes like it would make his surroundings transmute themselves into his room. It didn't happen. The only bright side might have been that the cage appeared to have been crafted by a drunk monkey. Was this some kind of sick joke?

He gently tapped the woman on the shoulder; she might have already been stirring. "Hey," he said, cautious but hurried. "Hey, you need to wake up."

[Dark]

Senka moaned. Her head was killing her; had she been drinking? She made an effort to wake, bleary eyed. What could possibly be so important this effing early in the morning?

"What's the matter, Vish--" But that wasn't Vishne's voice, and she certainly wasn't in her own bed, now that she was awake enough to notice. She woke up the rest of the way rather abruptly.

Considering her head, she made sure to sit up slowly (the world still tilted dangerously, and she felt horribly nauseated for a few terrible moments before the feeling passed and once again became a steady, unpleasant throbbing), and regarded her companion.

A kid--she had always been terrible at judging age; he could be borderline twenty for all the difference she could discern--and not someone that she recognized.

She was in a dark room with a complete stranger, locked in a cage, and with no clue as to how she had gotten there. (Memory filtered back--she had been in the market, considering the purchase of a companion for her bander--but after that: nothing. The smell of chloroform only told part of the tale).

"Who are you? And where the hell are we?" Senka never sounded panicked--she had been raised by Ezra of all people--and she could have been commenting on the weather for all the inflection in her voice. But she was panicked. Just a bit.

[Bee]

Zeki bit his lip. The last time something like this had happened to him, things had gone all to a very fiery hell in a very poorly-crafted handbasket. But the woman seemed calm enough despite the punchiness of the questions, and he thought that might be a good example to follow. He was a scientist, after all, he could not go about losing his cool when presented with a new and difficult situation. He had kept his head in plane crash after plane crash.

This whole thing had a droll level of irony to it, if he thought about. Usually it was the Corvies doing the imprisonment, though Zeki himself had never done anything like that; and here they were, two Corvies sitting in a cage.

Think rationally about this, he told himself. Two Corvies putting their heads together could rarely fail to invent some sort of plan.

"I'm Zeki," he said. "And I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea where we are. But I think we really wanna get out." He leaned in closer to the bars, trying to see around the room, for signs of people, anything useful. If only one of them were a Spade.

[Dark]

Senka nodded in affirmation; escape was paramount, of course. She had not enjoyed the last time she had been trapped by a mysterious force (and such a memory to recall in a situation like this; she hadn't thought of Thalia or that ill-fated journey to Corvisetowne in quite some time).

"I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you," she said dryly. "I'm Senka, Senka Huldah." There was no real reason to provide the additional information of her last name--few considered it important--but it was important to her, to remind herself where she came from in a moment like this. She was a Huldah; she could handle anything. And if she had escaped imprisonment once, she could very well do it again.

"How do you feel about the judicious application of physical force?" she asked, examine the joints of their cage. Poorly constructed. And hopefully easily...persuaded.

[Bee]

Zeki thought it a pleasure to meet, in its own way; being locked up with someone seemed a much better prospect than being locked up alone. He didn't know how calm he could make himself be if he were by himself in a dark cage with no memory of how he got there.

Brute force seemed like a good first choice. Try the simplest solution before you make your plans all complicated. And actually that was pretty much the first rule of making something work: hit it until it functions. It was pretty primitive, especially when one had a bunch of fun gadgets lying around as Corvies were wont to have, but you'd be surprised at how often it worked.

"Worth a shot," he said, and because apprehension made him a little silly, "Or a shove as the case may be." He was eyeing the same joints Senka was. He grabbed a bar that wiggled a bit under his hands. The bruises might be worth it, he thought. He backed to the other end of the cage--not a considerable distance by any means, but whatever he could get--and shoulder-charged the bar.

It popped out of place and he fell forward. Fortunate he had gotten so little wind up, it hardly tickled but a little in the shoulder.

"I think," he said, "someone needs to get back to engineering school."

[Dark]

"Indeed," Senka murmured to herself. It almost seemed too easy, but perhaps she was being paranoid. It was entirely possible that the individual(s) behind their kidnapping were criminally--oh, the unintended pun; she almost winced--stupid. But she had been drugged and locked up without apparent cause, so a little paranoia was well-placed she felt. It kept one alert and (hopefully) alive, with all vital organs and appendages in their proper place.

"We should tread with care; someone might have heard that," she warned before she slipped through the opening Zeki had so kindly created and considered the darkened room. Her eyes had adjusted only marginally to the gloom--there was hardly any ambient light to speak of--and she could barely make out shapes, let alone distinct form. Cards, but it was dark.

"I don't suppose there's a light switch?" she half-joked. Or a lantern. Or a candle. Or anything else which omitted light, really.

[Bee]

Having lived a lot of life in Corvistowne, Zeki was somewhat leery of lairs, a term he was quick to apply to their surroundings. One hardly knew which substances and objects were dangerous in the light, let alone what might be lurking in the dark. But they needed to get out and since a door did not seem forthcoming they would need to shed some light on the area. He groped around, trying not to stick his hands in anything that might remotely be considered dangerous. He jammed his hip into a small desk.

And where there were desks there might be--lamp! A puny thing, but it was at least fit to help find bigger, brighter brethren. And get them out of this oppressive gloom. He smiled in Senka's direction but she might not have been able to read his face, and turned back to their new little friend.

"Ah ha!" he said, and tugged the little string to turn it on. The sudden light hurt his eyes because he was staring directly at the bulb like an idiot, but the spots faded and he was too happy to care. "Let's find an exit."

[Nathalia]

The tiny lamp dropped a small amount of what looks like hoarded coppers out of its somewhat rusted bottom. (10 unassigned points, to be split among Bee and Dark). The lamp also seems to tingle slightly...maybe it's best to hold onto it, am I right?

The light illuminated a horror, they could not have expected.
Above them, suspended from the ceiling, is the semi-conscious form of Mercutio.
On the far wall, suspended upside down, is the semi-conscious form of Andrei, his face looks a little purple through the fur, and he'll no doubt be dizzy for a good, long while when he wakes up.
Both smell rather horribly of some kind of chemical, especially around the muzzle, though it isn't easily detectable unless close up.
Andrei remembers only getting in a carriage to see what the Capital held today, Mer can't remember anything but trying to find his sister.
Both are bound in an odd, fleshy mass that looks a bit like purple and veiny plant-life; it pulses quietly...and has no scent whatsoever.
Careful getting them down...not too sure if you'd want that stuff to touch you...

[Dark]

“Merciful Suits…” Senka almost wished that they hadn’t found the lamp, but the thought of stumbling into this in the dark…no, better to have the illumination. (Better to have been put in the cage).

Veined like the underside of a leaf, it reminded her more of flesh than anything; a pulsing, purple mass of flesh that cocooned its victims almost entirely. The sight made her vaguely nauseated, and she had to stop herself from looking too closely lest she actually become ill.

“Are they alive, do you think?” Senka questioned softly, moving slow and cautious towards the suspended bodies. If the pair weren’t dead, hopefully Zeki and she could render them aid. She did feel a rather strong inclination to not bother and leave them--she wanted an exit now dammit--but it didn’t feel right to simply abandon them; not when it could have just as easily been them trapped up there in that--mess.

“We need to get them down.” But how?