Searching for Clues. [Quest] {Sya/Maddy/Kassie]

[Maddox Aquila]

Heaving a sigh of relief as Syana's voice confirmed that she was alright, and basically ignoring what she actually said, Maddox looked to the flickering flame before raising his eyes towards Kasumi as she indicated to a switch that was on the wall.

On the one hand, there were empty clothes and blood around the cave, which could indicate a trap.

On the other, they were already lost, with no light or means of guiding themselves out of the cave safely, aside his matches, which did not provide enough light to safely navigate the perils of the cave. Kasumi had even tripped up when the cave was fully alight, much less by the light of his meager flame. He could make a torch, but that would probably mean sacrificing more clothes, and given the weather outside...

"I can escape from any trap quickly." Assuming it doesn't involve fire or something light based."If you wish, I can give you the matches so you can hide a ways away in the direction we came from while I trigger the switch." He offered, his green eye focusing on the flickering flame at his fingertips.

[The Martyr]

-No action can be made from me. Skipping this round. -

[Rii <3]

"You guys. It could be possible that the switch was the cause of this. You think we should just try and move on?" Kasumi's voice caused Syana to look in her direction, her green eyes filled with confusion. Moving her gaze towards the switch, she pulled her staff close and thought the red-haired girls words through thoroughly. Moving ahead at a careful pace, she felt her vision change to a blurry quiver, but she forced herself to stay strong. She felt like Kasumi and Maddox needed her and she needed them. She couldn't rely on them, she wasn't weak. 

Syana's head whipped around and she slowly made her way into the darkness with careful steps.
"I can escape from any trap quickly. If you wish, I can give you the matches so you can hide a ways away in the direction we came from while I trigger the switch." Maddox's voice echoed behind her and she wanted to scout ahead first, but the more she stepped - the longer the cave felt. Soon she stood there and listened carefully; moving to the side with an awkward, staggered step. Her head felt heavy, her brain was pulsating and she rested her cheek to the wall. It was cold, reassuring and made her regain her senses.

Her body seemed to liven up ever so slightly. She lost the feeling of lethargy and could feel her body calming down, but she felt like she was about to vomit. Her body wrenched and Syana slid down. The fact this darkness was making it hard to see was triggering a lot of complications, but she was adamant of walking onward. Standing up, Syana gently tapped her staff ahead and closed her eyes to relax.

((totally just rambling right now, gives you guys more to type and the qm too.))

[Jimmydalad]

Hearing Maddox's words, Kasumi thought hard. Syana seemed to be having problems, but she was still close to Maddox. Additionally, so long as her foot didn't get caught again, Kasumi would try her best to quickly react to any situation that presented itself. It didn't take long to confirm her thoughts.

"I'm pulling the switch." Kasumi called out loud. "Maddox, make sure that Syana stays safe, ok?" She felt odd being the one to give orders. She was a lower ranked mage than the others, but she felt herself falling comfortably into the position. If this did turn out to be a death trap, it was better she died than the others.

She nodded her head towards Maddox and pulled down on the switch. Immediately moving herself into a defensive stance, she took in her surroundings and prepared for any threat that could come to her.

[Maddox Aquila]

Maddox hadn't the damndest clue what happened to Syana, but he was pretty sure he could hear her footsteps and the tapping of her staff on the ground. "Syana..." He half groaned, half sighed as he held steady to the math in his hand, which was getting dangerously close to his fingers. Rising it to his mouth, he nipped the non-fire engulfed end between his teeth and pulled another free, lighting it with the remainder of the first.

Spitting out the first match, which burned on the ground beneath them, he looked to Kasumi in the flickering light, noting her resolve as she gave him a command. A pointless command, but a command nonetheless.

Nodding, since he was used to taking orders and had no real qualms with it as long as it went along with his agenda, he half faded into the shadowed wall, so that only his arm, holding the match, and head poked out through it, just in case he needed to make a quick movement - which would be easy enough for him in the darkness of the cave.

[The Martyr]

There's nothing more ahead in the cave, if Syana walks a bit further ahead she will only find wall blocking her path, but no details is seen without proper light. As Kasumi quickly flip the switch, there's slight light being poured into the cave from above. On the wall before Syana is details of a riddle with a keypad to enter an answer. With these new details, the floor is shown to have some sort of weapon going on, but could this perhaps what caused the death of the previous travelers? It's some sort of vacuum, but how it works or anything is unknown unless they get the riddle incorrectly. The riddle on the wall says “An insurance salesman walk up to house and knocks on the door. A woman answers, and he asks her how many children she has and how old they are. She says I will give you a hint. If you multiply the 3 children's ages, you get 36. He says this is not enough information. So she gives a him 2nd hint. If you add up the children's ages, the sum is the number on the house next door. He goes next door and looks at the house number and says this is still not enough information. So she says she'll give him one last hint which is that her oldest of the 3 plays piano.”

[Rii <3]

Rubbing her head with Maddox's coat sleeve, Syana's gaze moved over the wall and her green eyes were filled with confusion as she lifted her hand in the darkness and felt the cold wall meet her fingers. There were dents in the wall. Trailing over them with one finger, she could make out that they were meant to form words.
Her eyes widened as she ran her hand over the wall. It was a dead end. Was those deaths natural causes?

The sound of footsteps drew closer and as Syana looked around to see a dim light coming from Maddox, she shifted her gaze towards the wall and caught sight of the inscriptions.
Lifting her hand to trace the writing, she began to read it out loud before cocking her head in confusion at the words.
Looking towards Maddox, her green eyes flashed with confusion and she found herself giving an awkward smile; her face paler than usual in the dim light.

Looking back to the writing, she took a step backwards and examined the wall thoroughly before soon realising that the floor itself felt different.
Looking down, her eyes widened. Light seemed to pour in from above and beneath was a contraption. Lifting her boot up carefully, Syana took a step back off it and gazed at the computer; relieved the cave had filled up with light.
Glad to finally physically be able to see both Kasumi and Maddox she turned her head around to look towards Kasumi and beckon her over.
"What do you think it means?"

[Jimmydalad]

Kasumi squinted, her eyes adjusting to the sudden increase in light. It seemed like the switch activated some kind of mechanism in the cave, the light showing words and a keypad on the wall before Syana.

"Just what sort of cave is this?" Kasumi wondered aloud, her voice incredulous. Was this magic or technology? Putting her chakrams away, Kasumi walked up towards the wall. Her gaze was squarely on the text before her and while she did notice the weapon laden floor below her, she did her best to ignore it.

"I think we need to solve this riddle if we want to progress." It was a bit of a dumb statement, but just saying it out loud helped her feel more confident in her thought process and it provided an answer to Syana's query. "It seems to be a simple maths riddle, I should be able to solve it. If we're wrong though, we might end up being on the receiving end of the floor."

Reaching into her bag, she got out a notepad and pen and began to write down numbers. With the number 36, she did prime number decomposition to get the numbers 2, 2, 3 and 3. From there, she began making numbers from the four she got that would add together to form 36. Due to the wording, she made sure that each sum had three numbers in it. Once she had written them all out, she noticed that only two of the possible trio of numbers had the same answer. Though it took some time to make sense of the final part, a thought came to her and she jumped up, her face confident.

"Ok, so the riddle is asking for the ages of the woman's sons. Judging from her hints, we can infer that there are 3 of them. The ages of the three sons have to multiply together to give 36. From there, all of the possible trio of numbers have to be added together. It took some doing, but only two trios add up to the same number: 9, 2, 2 and 6, 6, 1. From her final statement, since she said "oldest son" and not sons, there can only be one older son, so it has to be 9, 2, 2."

Moving towards the keypad, Kasumi looked over it. Was she right? She felt confident about her answer, though a part of her in the back of her mind was telling her that she was wrong.

"Maddox, if by chance some trap were to go off or I get the puzzle wrong, get Syana and get out of here." She let out a soft sigh. It was now or never. Moving her fingers over the keypad, she typed in the numbers 9, 2, 2.

[Maddox Aquila]

Suddenly, the ceiling opened slightly, allowing some light to pour into the cave and illuminating the form of Syana, who seemed to be alright. Sighing in relief he diverted his attention to Kasumi as she spoke up, wondering about the cave. "Dead government agent, government files, a meeting set in this very cave..." He trailed off, stepping out of the shadow and licking his fingers, he killed the flame of the match and tossed it to the floor of the save. "An old base, perhaps? Secret cache? I cannot imagine many people making the trek up here." Stalking forwards, his green eye scanned the riddle, which caused his brows to furrow.

By the grace of the gods themselves, Kasumi whipped out a notebook like she knew what she was doing and began to scrawl her way through the riddle. Though he watched over her shoulder, intrigued, he did not interrupt her work.

Once she had finished, she once more instructed him to take care of Syana, and he was legitimately starting to wonder if he perhaps looked too daft to come up with that idea on his own. Rather than sass her, tempting as it might be, he nodded. Truth be told, if the situation required it he was probably close and fast enough to grab both of the girls and hopefully run the hell away before anything bad happened.

Hopefully he wouldn't have to find out the hard way, though...

[The Martyr]

As each number pressed into the keypad, a small beeping noise rings out into the care. After the numbers are correctly inputted, a female robotic voice is heard from the pad. “Access granted” The cave begins to shake violently and moving machine parts is heard in all directions. The young travelers will find standing difficult. After several minutes of shaking, the dead-end wall begins to shake.
The wall begins to move upwards like a large garage door with dust flying everywhere. As the door opens, bright unnatural light is leaking out from inside. Once fully open the adventurers can venture forth and find a study. The study looks abandon as if it haven't been used in a long time. There's papers everywhere with gibberish.

There's an office chair and desk with papers on top. There seems to be information regarding the virus here, but on top is no info about the cure. If they hunt through the desk draws they will find even more papers that's hard to figure out what everything means. However they all look very important related to the DCD. Farther inspection of the study, the adventurers will find a small container that says “antidote”. If they take all the paper work and the container, maybe everything will be well again?

[Rii <3]

Syana stood there in sheer confusion as she quizzed over this equation. Her green eyes filled with wonder. What was these numbers meant to resemble. This riddle made her head hurt. She couldn't quite understand how to do this. The numbers danced on the screen in a big mass of confusion.
Syana lifted her fingers and traced over the keyboard.
"Just what sort of cave is this?" Kasumi gawked beside her. Syana shrugged, trying to process the riddle with little attention she had. 
"Dead government agent, government files, a meeting set in this very cave..." Maddox spoke up and Syana looked towards him with inquisition. Why would the government set a home here? She folded her arms and cocked her head to the side before looking towards the floor. "An old base, perhaps? Secret cache? I cannot imagine many people making the trek up here."

Kasumi began to rifle around in her bag and pulled out a notepad and pen. Syana's attention moved to her and she watched her as she began to write down the riddle.
"Ok, so the riddle is asking for the ages of the woman's sons. Judging from her hints, we can infer that there are 3 of them. The ages of the three sons have to multiply together to give 36. From there, all of the possible trio of numbers have to be added together. It took some doing, but only two trios add up to the same number: 9, 2, 2 and 6, 6, 1. From her final statement, since she said "oldest son" and not sons, there can only be one older son, so it has to be 9, 2, 2."
Kasumi was on fire as she was working out this all-so-confusing equation. Syana's eyes were focused on her with pure interest and she couldn't help but lean over to try and get a gist.

Kasumi seemed to have figured it out in no time at all and Syana wondered what was going to happen next. Herr fingers clutched tight onto the shaft of her staff like she was ready to swing it around in self defence. 
Kasumi then decided to say something which caused the poor brunette to scowl.
"Maddox, if by chance some trap were to go off or I get the puzzle wrong, get Syana and get out of here." Tapping went the keyboard and Syana braced herself.

It seemed to be the correct answer as the cave began to jerk and jolt and Syana held onto her staff to keep herself steady; grabbing Kasumi's arm in case the girl suddenly fell in a trap. The area around them began to change and the walls seemed to ascend. Syana's eyes moved over the new area ahead and she lightly walked in. Looking around, she kept her staff close to her body. She moved towards the office chair, her eyes moving over the pieces of paper and taking hold of them.
The scribbles written on them were more than a surprise to the girl and she placed the paper down while trying to understand it but coming to no avail.

Her eyes swept around the area one more time before moving to the container marked antidote. She reached out to grab it before freezing on the spot and recalling the smears of blood on the walls.
Why would there have been smears of blood on the walls?
She looked at the antidote carefully before curling her lip in thought. Sure, her brain was hurting enough as it was, but this made little sense to her. 
One more thing buzzed through her mind.
Looking towards both Kasumi and Maddox, one thought that seemed to cause her to do something she rarely did and frown swept into her mind. Hiding her face from the two and pretending to examine the antidote and papers closely, Syana found herself worrying. Did they deem her useless or saw her as a burden? 

[Jimmydalad]

Kasumi sighed happily as a sound confirmed that the answer she submitted was correct. That moment was sadly quashed when the cave began to shake. While Kasumi tried to keep on her feet, Syana suddenly grabbing her arm caused her to crumple onto the floor, sitting on her knees as the wall in front of her began to move. Having to shield her eyes from the dust, Kasumi coughed while the dust started to settle.

"You know Maddox, you might not have been far off." Kasumi said as the room revealed itself to the ragtag group. Unlike Syana, Kasumi stayed where she was, her instincts telling her that something was very wrong here. She watched Syana move around the room, looking about to see if there was anything threatening still in the area. It didn't look like the weapon beneath them was reacting.

Tentatively pushing herself up, she walked into the room. Her eyes perused over the documents that laid scattered about, hoping to find something to go off on or something that could explain anything about DCD. Unfortunately, everything she tried to read came back to her as gibberish. Was it possible that the papers were encrypted or was the text more based around a scientific lexicon?

"An antidote?" Kasumi muttered quietly to herself as she moved towards the container that Syana was looking at. Could it really be that simple? She was tempted to open it, see what was inside, though she held back. At least for the moment. Her face was impassive as she went about the other documents, trying to make sense of them but failing in the process.

"For now, let's just gather up all the papers as well as the container." Kasumi declared, gathering all the papers she could and trying to fit them into her bag. "I think the less time we spend here, the better. We can see if this antidote really does work and how much of it there is. Hopefully, we can quell the outbreak in South Fiore."

Kasumi had come here hoping to find answers. Instead, she found herself asking more questions. Who the hell built this lab? How did they gain the resources to build the lab? Why was there a security system that asked in riddles? Why did DCD develop in the first place? Gritting her teeth in frustration, Kasumi tried to put those thoughts aside as she made her way towards the exit of the cave. She had a feeling things were going to be getting a whole lot more hectic.

[Maddox Aquila]

Maddox nodded with an impressed expression as Kasumi's answer seemed to have been the correct answer - or so he thought before the cave began to shake, forcing him to brace himself by spreading his feet and extending his arms as though he were balancing on a very delicate wire. If he hadn't gone through the sorts of vigorous training that he had, he would have likely been on his ass in an instant.

Luckily, no such thing happened, instead a door opened, revealing a not-so-secret secret room to them.

"I am not just another pretty face." He assured Kasumi, his complete and utter lack of expression making it difficult to tell if he was joking or just stating what he believed to be facts. He was about to tell them not to rush in just in case there were traps, but Syana waltz in like the room was her own, leading him to slap a palm to his forehead before following the girls.

At a glanced, the papers were unreadable, and he disregarded them for the time being. "The ramblings of a genius or a madman?" He wondered, slowly making his way through the room. When Kasumi mentioned there was an antidote, he turned, furrowing his brows. So all this time, someone had an antidote, sitting in some remote corner of Fiore where few would dare to venture? Was DCD premeditated? A biological weapon? Was it the government's doing?

He was drawn out of his thoughts by Kasumi, who he nodded to. Perhaps he might venture back to this place on his own sometime for a better look...

[The Martyr]

Rewards: 120 ap 700 jewels