Inside the Stasis Chamber [Sunday]
Stasis Chamber
Once the five were in the room, the door slid closed just as silently, then disappeared into the wall. They might not have even noticed because once their eyes adjusted they would be confronted with dozens of stasis pods. Inside each was someone who had disappeared during the week, and there was a tube from each that connected them, weblike, to a large black sphere in the center of the room. The only sound in the room, other than the occasional gurgle of the liquid in the stasis chambers, was a deep, mechanical breathing coming from inside the black sphere.
Coulson
Once Coulson was in the room and his eyes started adjusting, it was hard not to notice the stasis pods. He tried not to dwell on them too long, though. Getting worked up about the people in there wasn't going to help him right now and unless there was a big button that said 'Free Everyone,' he didn't think it was likely that he'd crack them open safely.
Okay, he maybe glanced around to see if there was a big button like that. Once he was satisfied that it didn't exist, he turned his attention to the black sphere. The breathing only made it seem extremely ominous.
Emily
"Holy crap." Yeah, Emily was not expecting this. So everyone else was stored there, it seemed.
"We need to get them out of here, now," Emily said as she started looking around.
Bo
"We do," Bo agreed, torn between relief at seeing those faces again after assuming they might be dead, and worry about the condition they were in. "But be careful. We don't know what kind of defenses those things have; they might get hurt if we touch the wrong thing."
Emily
"Look, last time I saw something like this it was in a movie. I'm so not touching anything that might endanger them," Emily said quickly, because she supposed it was easier to make it clear she wasn't the dumb blonde here.
"A control panel maybe? That sphere sticks out like a sore thumb."
Bo
Bo nodded. "Or sore lungs," she added, listening to the low, rasping sounds from the black structure.
Emily
Emily went silent for a moment. "Oh, clever. So that thing could be powering these things? And it's breathing?"
Way out of her league.
Bo
"So maybe it's alive, or maybe there's something alive inside it." Bo kind of hoped for the second if only because if she had to pick an enemy, she'd go for the smaller option.
Emily
Emily took a moment to stare at Bo. "You've done this before, haven't you? Not the exact same, but I can tell you're talking from experience," Emily said, not without fearing Bo got pissed off or something. What? Nobody liked other people asking about their lives.
"Anyway, that thing doesn't look organic, so...someone inside?" An idea crossed her head. "One of, you know, ours?"
Bo
School security at Fandom tends to mean weirder things to deal with than an out of control food fight, yeah."
Bo nodded to the stasis pods. "We can see all of them." She peered through the plexiglass-like substance of the nearest pod at the face of the girl she'd been talking coffee-denial and extreme interior-decoration with only a few days ago. "If they're hiding, it seems more likely it's the bad guys in there than another prisoner."
Emily
That was one job Emily was never going to fully understand, so she just nodded and smiled; at least they had someone reliable here.
"If that's the case, then it's a lousy hiding spot. Even more if it's powering this thing," Emily mused as she stared at a pod. "Or being powered by the pods, then I guess it would make more sense. Sense is suddenly a very relative word."
Coulson
"No, it's the perfect hiding place," Coulson argued as he took a closer look at the sphere. "There's no obvious way to open it up and we can't do anything to drastic to try to force them out since we don't know what might affect the people in stasis. Whatever's in there has all the cards."
Éponine
She'd seen strange things in Fandom, but this was a new level of strange that went beyond Éponine's frame of reference; she'd been more or less silent (except for a few muttered curses) since they entered the room, staring into one pod or another with horrified fascination.
She finally found her voice, though, and spoke up with a faint undercurrent of appreciation.
"It's damned tricky, whatever it is," she noted as she wandered along the row of stasis pods, tapping on the glass (or whatever it was) in front of the occupants' faces. "This is quite the nicely laid trap."
Emily
"Still, whoever is inside is inside; yeah, we can't get in, but we're still here."
Emily poked the sphere. "Holing up is a desperate last measure, no matter what you want to think about it." Unless it wasn't, but Emily didn't want to think about that.
Raven
Raven had been moving from pod to pod, trying to see who was in them. They were all alive, at least, she could sense that, but she had no idea how to get them out without causing them harm.
"I know little of technology," she said. "But they are all alive, at least. I fear doing something that will hurt them, but we must find the way to free them." She eyed the sphere.
Éponine
"Will it get us out of this place if we do?" wondered Éponine, who could care less about heroics.
Raven
"We cannot leave without them," Raven said firmly, eyeing the woman. She had no idea who she was. She had no idea who any of these people were, except Bo.
Éponine looked like she might taste good, though.
Banishing that stray thought, Raven looked to the pods. "They are being kept here for a reason. By freeing them, we will do harm to whomever is keeping us all prisoner."
Éponine
Looks, like Thénardiers, could be deceiving, so you might want to rethink that, Raven. You don't know where she's been.
"Oh, well, if that's the case," Éponine said, shrugging. "May as well get to it, then."
If it had a chance of getting her the hell out of here, she was all for it.
Emily
"Still haven't figured how to open it, assuming it opens somewhere." Or somehow.
Sometimes it really sucked to have no powers.
Meditation Sphere
Closer examination would show that the sphere's markings were a match to the door they had come through, and it should open the same way, but for now it stayed stubbornly closed.
Anakin
Anakin had been fighting all week--fighting the pain, fighting the regret, fighting the decades of bad memories caused by terrible decisions as they were pulled from him anyway and inflicted on people he was fiercely protective of--and he had run out of will to fight.
As he succumbed to despair and rage at his inability to stop this from happening, his surroundings began to mold to fit his new vision. The mask that had been his nightmare for two decades was back over his face, his breath was rasping mechanically in his ears and the contraption the Toymaker had strapped him into had transformed into his familiar meditation sphere.
And there he would stay. He could feel presences outside of the sphere, some of them familiar, but he wasn't coming out. Not now, not ever. This living nightmare was what he deserved and he no longer cared who else was suffering along with him.
Coulson
"Excuse me," Coulson said, raising his voice so that hopefully the person inside the sphere could hear. "We can hear you breathing. Please open up."
He preferred to start politely when there wasn't an obvious alternate tone to take. Sue him.
Meditation Sphere
There was no response from the big black sphere.
Emily
Yeah that wasn't creepy at all. Emily inched slightly at the sphere, wondering just how out of her league she was.
"Is someone in there? Help?"
Meditation Sphere
There was, again, no response from the big black sphere.
Emily
Emily hit the sphere with the base of her clenched fist a couple of times.
Look, she had no patience for this.
Meditation Sphere
Now she had no patience and a bruised hand because that metal was hard.
Emily
Emily resisted the urge to keep ~attacking~ the sphere because let's be real, she was pathetic.
Maybe someone else was doing better?
Bo
Bo carefully laid a hand on the sphere, trying to pick up any trace of chi from within.
She wasn't expecting libido, here -- given their current conditions, she'd be kind of turned off if anybody was turned on -- but if a creature was intelligent, alive, and awake, there was almost always something.
Meditation Sphere
There was definitely something: someone male was alive, awake, and really, really pissed off.
Bo
Alive, awake, and... her powers didn't really work in a way that would directly pick up pissed off, but given the amount of testosterone involved in that...
"Somebody's definitely in here. A guy somebody, I think."
Emily
Emily eyed Bo. Did she want to know how she knew? Not really.
"Our supposed Big Bad, you would say? Do you have X-ray vision or something?" Emily asked, ultimately giving in her curiosity.
"And I don't know if you can tell us this, but is he aware of us?" Emily wanted to know all the things.
Bo
"Or something," Bo answered. She stroked the surface again and tried sending a pulse of power out at the sphere, but her ability to affect others' will by touch had never worked through non-living objects before, and it didn't now. "My powers don't work that way; I just sense life energy." Of a sort.
Éponine
Éponine, like Bo, had gotten close enough to the sphere to touch it, only she wasn't trying to sense anything from it. Instead she was running her fingertips along the surface as she hummed brokenly to herself in thought.
"Well, how do you like that!" she blurted out all of a sudden. "It looks an awful lot like the door did, if you get up close."
Coulson
"You don't happen to have a crowbar handy, do you?" Coulson asked as he looked a little more closely at the seams. He was joking, sure, but it would be nice if she did.
Éponine
"I don't make a habit of carrying one around with me," Éponine replied with an absent laugh. That was more her father's thing than hers. "Maybe that was a mistake. But where would I keep it?"
Focus, Éponine.
Coulson
"Strapped to your leg, maybe?" Coulson suggested. "Once we get through this, a crowbar duct taped to my body will probably become part of my sleepwear." Along with as many guns as he could comfortably sleep with. Just in case. And maybe some plastic explosives for opening up mysterious black spheres.
Bo
"Bat?" Bo offered, because she could. She wasn't really serious about it, though. "Except not so good for prying, and if this thing has defenses we'd just piss it off."
Coulson
"We tried being polite and helpful already," Coulson reasoned. "Maybe pissing it off will get us somewhere." Not necessarily somewhere good, but they were already somewhere not good, so how would that be much different?
Éponine
Éponine had one ear pressed against the outside of the sphere because the sound of whoever was breathing inside fascinated her, but she looked up and snorted, a distinctly dismissive sound.
"The door didn't work that way, did it?"
Coulson
"No, it opened much faster without us doing anything," Coulson said. "But that hasn't worked with this sphere so far."
Raven
Raven pressed her hands against the sphere, closing her eyes in concentration, trying to see if she could sense what was inside. Almost immediately she recoiled from the rage and pain she felt. It burned into her, but there was something familiar about it as well.
Confused, she leaned against the sphere again, letting the emotions flow into her, then shook her head. "Oh, Azar, it cannot be," she said.
Bo
Raven seemed to have the same idea as Bo, but from her reaction, Bo was going to guess different abilities, or stronger ones, or both. "Can't be what? You can sense what's in there?"
Raven
Raven barely heard Bo at first. Her emotions shot out of control, panic and anger foremost, and her face shifted to the vampire game face. She snarled and scraped her talons against the metal sphere. "Let him out!" she howled. "Let him out of there!"
She spun around to face Bo, struggling to calm herself because this wasn't helping anything. "I can feel him," she panted. She'd know his emotional signature anywhere, even as deep in despair as he was. "It is Professor Skywalker. We have to get him out!"
Anakin
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" came a booming voice--one about three octaves lower than Anakin's usual--from the sphere.
To add to the atmosphere, he reached into the Force and made half of the lightbulbs in the room explode.
Nothing came close to hurting the stasis pods, though. He wasn't that far gone.
Yet.
Raven
Raven didn't flinch, but she couldn't help but make a little sigh of hunger as Anakin lashed out. There was such a feast of emotions here, so rich and deep and pure. She could gorge herself if she wanted.
No. That wasn't what she was, and she'd prove it.
She pressed her hands against the sphere again. "Professor Skywalker, I do not understand what is happening here, but, please, we are here to help. What do we do?" She struggled to relax, letting just calmness radiate from her instead of her rage and fear.
Coulson
"We can do more to help if you let us in," Coulson offered as he checked to make sure he didn't have lightbulb debris on him..
Bo
Bo spared a nervous glance at Raven's face -- she didn't know the girl well enough to realize that kind of transformation wasn't normal for her, but it was still disconcerting given the desperation that had accompanied the change -- then turned her attention back to the sphere.
"Anakin? It's your friends out here." She and Raven were, anyway, and the others certainly didn't mean him any harm. "We got kidnapped too; we're not going to hurt you."
Raven
"He is in so much pain," Raven said, pressing her hand to her chest as she tried to steady herself. Her own emotions were all over the place due to her transformation, and she couldn't afford to let them get the better of her, not now, not when someone she loved was suffering. The feelings were reminding her far too much of what she'd once done to Anakin and her other friends, when she'd been her father's pawn and had trapped them in their darkest nightmares.
"There is so much anger and despair," she said. "I do not know if he can hear us." But she'd do her damned best to get through to him.
Anakin
"THIS IS A TRAP," Anakin boomed, locked safely inside his sphere. "JUST ANOTHER TRAP."
Next they'd be telling him they had Rory or Obi-Wan with them...
Éponine
Éponine tilted her head, frowning in thought.
"Why would it be?" she asked. "We only want to get out of here ourselves. There's hardly any point in trying to trap you, too. What good would that do any of us?"
Emily
"Not to mention you are already trapped, you know. Besides, I don't think that a bunch of people that don't know you so well could make a convincing trap. We are all in the same situation here," Emily said as she made her best effort not to be annoyed. So there was someone in there and he was from the island, great.
"Don't you want to get out? Uh, sir?"
Raven
Raven looked around, trying to figure out what to do. For a moment she wondered if this was another bizarre room created to torment them, like the ones the other doors in the maze had led to. But no, it was too personal, too focused on Anakin. So this had to be real. She fleetingly thought about trying to send her Soul-Self through the sphere, but given how unpredictable using her powers had been, she wasn't sure if that would make things worse, and she didn't want to risk causing more harm to Anakin.
"Professor Skywalker, it is Raven," she said, focusing on projecting her affection and respect for him so he would know it had to be her. "Can you hear me? We want to help you. How do we get you out?"
Anakin
"I don't want to come out."
The voice was still deeper, but at least he wasn't yelling any more.
Éponine
"Why not?" asked Éponine, in a faintly scolding tone. "I can't see the point of just staying in there. It seems rather silly to me, and anyhow it's a dreadful inconvenience to the rest of us."
Coulson
"I'm sorry, Mister Skywalker, but she's right. If we're all going to get out of this, we'll need all the help we can get," Coulson offered. "And I'm confident you can help all of us quite a bit, if you're willing."
Bo
Bo wasn't sure what had been done to the man to put him in the state where he wouldn't want to escape from that thing he was in. She could make a few educated guesses after her experiences this week, and she didn't like any of them.
"You can't stay in there," she said now. "People are in trouble, Anakin. The kids are in trouble, you know, the ones you and I are supposed to be keeping safe?"
And didn't she feel just awesome about how great a job she'd managed of that so far.
Raven
"You are needed so very much," Raven pleaded, fretting and wondering the same thing as Bo. "And your wife must be waiting for you to return. And Juliet and Christopher. They want you to come home. You have seen and been through so much in your life -- I know that you can handle this, whatever it is. I know this because you have taught me that."
She'd failed to believe that of herself in the past, but right now she was putting every bit of faith she possessed behind her words.
Éponine
"There, you see? A fine role model you make, hiding away in that thing when people are counting on you!"
Éponine didn't know Anakin, except for what she could surmise from what Bo and Raven had said, and she was utterly fed up with this dungeon so no, she had no reservations about talking to him as if she were lecturing a small child.
"It's a shame, really, is what it is. Good heavens! All these children scared and hungry and only wanting to go home, and you having a sulk instead of doing anything about it."
Reservations about shamelessly playing on people's emotions? She didn't have those either.
Anakin
The sphere slowly opened to reveal...well no one that looked particularly like Anakin Skywalker.
A black helmet completely covered his face (and explained the automated breathing noise) and matched the rest of the black uniform he was encased in.
"Where do you think he's getting the memories to torture you with?" Anakin demanded. "They're mine."
Welcome to Anakin's extremely screwed up subconscious--and these were the memories he thought were the least scary.
Coulson
Somebody Coulson barely knew in a flashy set of armor. This was nothing new or shocking to Coulson. "Then you have some control over the situation. You can stop this and spare your students."
Because if focusing on the kids got him to open the sphere, Coulson was going to continue focusing on them.
Raven
Raven, however, knew that armor. When Anakin had told her of his past and she'd gone to Tahiri for confirmation, her friend had shown her a data pad about Vader and what he'd done. It had shaken her to learn about Darth Vader, but it had also given her hope about redemption, and she wasn't about to let him lose that now if she could help it.
She drew as close as she dared, fighting against her heightened emotions (which now included wanting to eat Éponine, though she understood the merit of the approach the others were taking). "You have good memories as well," she said. "All the people here you have helped and protected, and the love and respect they have for you. When I was returned to life after my father took me and the horrible things I did, you told me you had been there, and you would help me if I let you. Please, let us help you now."
mecha-kin
"I tried stopping it," Anakin said in a deep voice, the regret at odds with the mask, "and it just got worse. Why should it be different now?"
Bo
Something about that body armor was just...ereuegh, but Bo swallowed the creep-shiver down and said firmly, "Because now you're not alone."
Éponine
"I should think not," Éponine added, thinking of that room from a few days ago and what it had shown her. "As if you're the only one with memories you'd rather you didn't have! Why, just the other day we found that room where --"
She stopped and shook her head. "But look here, who's this 'he' you're talking about?"
Anakin
"He called himself the Toymaker," Anakin said. "He wasn't terribly chatty, but seemed fascinated by our island. Probably a bad sign."
But in this particular state of mind, Anakin thought everything was a bad sign.
"He disappeared after the vault opened."
Raven
"Then we will find him and stop him and set things to right," Raven said, fighting hard against her anger. It was too important to stay in control right now. "He has not beaten us, and he will not. And he will not beat you."
Coulson
"But for that to happen, we need to work together," Coulson said. "Will you help us stop all of this?"
He was saving the question of 'Do you have any ideas for how to stop this?' for later. First things first.
Anakin
"Chasing him down would only get more of you hurt," Anakin said, reaching up to finally remove his mask, "and I don't need more guilt this week."
Éponine
"Oh, there's a person under there. Isn't that something?" Éponine said vaguely, and half to herself, in the same tone someone might use when finding unexpected change in a coat pocket. She managed to focus again, though, and went on:
"Though, really, who's to say it won't be just as bad for everyone if you don't tell us, and we go on being stuck here? Good God, we'll only get picked off slower, and have to watch each other disappear besides, and that won't be terribly pleasant for anyone."
Coulson
"At best, we'll eventually end up like the people in all of these pods around us. Can your guilt take that? Everyone you know ending up in there?" Coulson asked. "Wouldn't taking a chance to free them and get all of us back home be better than accepting that fate?"
Anakin
Anakin nodded once, squaring his shoulders and standing up. "Because screw that guy," he said.
Raven
"What must we do?" Raven said. She gestured to the pods. "How do we free these people, and how do we get home?"
She did her best to put on a brave smile, brimming with faith.
Emily
Emily had been a good little girl, mostly because she had nothing -in a way- to do with this. Some people there actually knew the guy, so let them handle it. But it just wouldn't do for her to stay there quietly.
"I think you are doing it," Emily said as she pointed at Anakin. "I've been thinking about it, and there's nothing else here that might power those pods, not to mention they're hooked up to this sphere. I have no idea of how, but if you get out of here, chances are they will power off and release everyone." She looked at the others for a moment. "Right? I think that's the gist of it at least."
Bo
Bo gave her a look of re-appraisal, not that she'd ever thought the words Dumb Blonde about the girl to start with. "It makes sense. The guy likes screwing with us; he can get his rocks off and save energy by using us to hurt each other."
"But only if we let him." She offered Anakin a hand out of the shell, if he wanted to take it.
Coulson
"I wish I could say this was the first time I've seen a powerful being do that," Coulson said. Oh, Clint. "It seems to be par for the course, though."
"But it does make it that much easier to fight back. It leaves the power entirely in your hands." Unless there was mind control involved. Then it would lie in Bo's hands, since she had the bat to hit him in the head with. Fortunately, that wasn't the case here and no violence seemed necessary.
Éponine
"That is, if you choose to use it to help us."
This time, Éponine wasn't even trying to play on his guilt, at least not entirely; it was just that the tone of this conversation was beginning to feel like people pinning all their hopes on one person, and she was cynical enough to think it was just a setup for disappointment.
She meant to sound sarcastic about it, but something in her expression suggested she'd been let down too many times before.
Anakin
And the look on Éponine's face--one that Anakin had worn to often in his own life--was enough to decide it for him.
"I'll help."
He took Bo's hand and climbed out of that hated meditation pod. Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and concentrated. The stasis pods began to open even as the room around them started to become ephemeral and fade into darkness. In the vault, the monsters began disappearing, popping out of existence as if they'd never really been there at all.
The world turned black.