Gypsy groups together what he feels will be the best team for investigating the right hand tunnel which seems to go downhil to a dead end. With Slinky leading the way, the 4 darkly outfitted team members quickly find their way back to the dead-end which looks a bit too smooth for having been a simple land slide. It actually looks a bit more like a huge boulder was rolled into place, blocking some hidden passage further on. The only problem with that theory being a lack of a place to roll the boulder onto. Fortunately, this time there are those amongst the team who can see the astral side of things, and the boulder does indeed, from the Astral Plane, appear a bit more as a door covered with runes. The runes look almost as you'd expect Sperethiel to look if you were to try to write Sperethiel in a manner similar to writing in old-english.

Dogma leads the rest of the team topside to investigate their location. Although it would be at least a 3 hour trek to the surface, if this is indeed the same tunnel, they begin hurredly making their ascent. After half an hour it's almost beyond doubt, every thing looks so similar. The rocks are a bit sharper perhaps, some crevices where water ran previously are missing, although a trinkling of water can be seen coursing down the same path. However, it definitely has all the same major turns and large openings.

Gypsy struggles to hide a satisfied smile when they discover the secret of the supposed 'cave in'. Before settling in to attempt to decipher the semi-familiar runic writings, he turns to Slinky.

"Can you get in touch with Dogma and the rest of the team, and fill them in on what we've discovered? The knowledge might cause a change in their plans, and save them a long trek. I really don't think we should be going too much further without them."

"Sounds good to me Jack. Always liked leading, that way your the first to get to crunch someones head in their surprise." Gremish cracks his neck and steps up preceving as the team moves forward, as you look at him you can tell his mind is bent on clicking into every nook and cranny of the tunnel system as you go, your in good hands folks just take care of the real world, is the mood he gives off.

Rebo accompanies Gypsy and the other two downhill, switching on his aural viewing the entire way, seeing with his second sight.

Great. More mystic drek, he thinks, irritated, as he sees the runes in the rock.

"What's it say? 'Speak, friend, and enter?'" he thinks out loud, sarcastically.

Slinky nods to Gypsy, “You got it.” She backs up a few steps and turns, hand rising to her ear as she spots Little Bird. She smiles. Andy. Her hand continues it’s motion and presses her right ear shut. The jacked in comm unit (synched to channel 3 per Dogma’s instruction) transmits.

<<< Little Bird, Gypsy and I have found the ‘cave in’. Signs in the Astral point to it being a door of some kind. It definitely doesn’t look natural. Could be something on the other side of this that bears looking at. Orders Dogma? >>>

The slim girl shoves her thermographic goggles onto her forehead and reaches down to her heavily laden pack, gleefully abandoned when the search team halted. She rifles through the meticulously organized pack, hands lingering briefly on the ruthenium cloak and sensors that she’d finally paid off after the last job. She smiled thinking of James’ enigmatic fixer who’d arranged, very circumspectly, to get those sensors. Ana didn’t see why James griped about the man so. It had been fun – almost like a scavenger hunt – to wind her way through his oblique and clues and innuendo to finally make her way to the drop site.

Bingo. She palmed fresh memory chips for her camcorder and recorder and closed up the bag. Standing she unfastened the glove of her body armor and released her hand onto its tether revealing compartments that could slot various electronics. She ejected the chip from the team’s descent into the caves. She slotted the fresh chips and as they initialized gave them the image label, amongst all the official date and time stamps, PostManaWarpInsanityWormDemonZombieHellHoleBoulderDoor. She shook her head thinking about an old timer who remembered when files names could only be 8 alpha-numeric characters. Characters. She chuckled and fastened her hand back onto her arm. Should have done this sooner. Grenades. Zombies. I’m off my game. Gotta focus. Pulling open a patch on the palm of her hand, the camera’s eye and the recorder’s mic peeped through. She held her hand out at the ‘door’ and began making notes to the image.

"Agents present: Gypsy, Rebo and Slinky. Drone present: Little Bird. Location coordinates encrypted Dunmanway, Tir Na nOg. Presumably. Cave system. Subject appears to be a door of some kind. Gypsy will provide further comment. Gypsy."

She nods at Gypsy.

Rebo chimes in.
"What's it say? 'Speak, friend, and enter?'"

Slinky blinks, not catching the reference. "Comment by Agent Rebo. Further comment by Gypsy." She nods again and moves her hand across the face of the door, looking more like a mage 'sensing' the door than a techie recording.

As the other half of the team grumpily moves baggages to the narrow cave system that leads outside, no one thrilled about the crawl, but then again not too thrilled about being in a cave full of dead undeads, Dogma, helping out the baggage train, pauses momentarely.

<<Roger that Slinky.>>

Dogma debates internally. On the one hand, this "door" definatly should be investigated. But scouting topside, possibly finding a village or any sort of inhabitants, might be fruitful also. But faced with risk of more zombie men or worse down that tunnel, splitting up the team just isn't wise. He could send one of the astrally projecting capable mages back to the top alone, but Dogma was still very reluctant to expose someone to the perils of astral attacks, or having his body posessed.

He noticed the baggage train had stopped, all eyes on him as his teammates had guessed something was up.

"Alright everyone, Gypsy's recon team found some sort of door down the other passage. We're all going to investigate it rather than split up."

<<Slinky, we'll be joining back up with you shortly. Try to figure out how to open that door, but don't go in until we're all regrouped.>>

No one seemed particularly sadened by not having to make the journey back up the cave system.

The elven sorcerer glances bemusedly at Slinky's extended 'hand'.

"It appears to be some form of Sperethiel, although I've not seen quite the like before. It looks almost archaic. I'm going to try and work out what it says, but it'll probably take a bit of time."

Sleel hearing Slinky's message relayed it to Dogma, then waiting for further instructions. He order his drones to watch their backs while they proceed back down the tunnel to reconvene with the rest of the group while shouldering what baggage he can.

Gremish relaxes, his body falling into a sleeplike state as he spirit leaves his body. He travels quickly up coming to the surface after a few seconds of travel. The first thing he notices is that the passage is alot longer this time, almost twice as far as going town. Coming to the surface he realizes why. The entrance is on the side of a cliff that is at least a thousand feet over the ocean. The ocean is alive with life, moreso than ever before seen by Gremish. He looks around, above the cliff, which tops only 10 feet from the entrance to the cave and is aghast at the carnage. Where there should be great lengths of grassland, and villages, there's an almost desertlike wasteland, covered with large rocks which protrude from the ground, and not a living being to be seen in any direction. Curiosity grabs the better half of Gremish, and he flies even higher, trying to get an over-view of where he might be. It's unmistakable. Although a very different contour shape, he is projected over what should be Ireland. An Ireland one might expect to see after a nuclear holocaust, except that the high cliffs and closer ocean suggests that a pre-historic Ireland is more likely, one which hasn't lost alot of it's land to the natural corrosion of weather.

Dogma awaits Gremish before having the team turn back. It's during this time that Gremish repeates verbally that which he has seen. There are no apparent threats on the surface, though the various offshoots in the cave system might contain a threat.

As Dogma's team slides its way back down, feeling like they wasted time needlessly, Gypsy sits gazing at the writing. Between the writing and astral analysis, he begins to understand. The word "Darkforce" is one of the first words he deciphers, at about the time he realizes that the rock is but a material component of a Ward. Other words he is finally able to translate includes "touch", "banish", "poetry" and "life". As he nearly gives up on translating the rest Rebo realizes something odd. The astral signature of the rock indicates more than being a part of a ward, the thing is ALIVE. A boulder, twice the height of any man, and it's alive.....

Dogma's half of the team arrive at the cave-in, dropping heavily their baggages and sitting or crouching around the passage way, tired from the pointless excursion.

Dogma goes to the front, where Gypsy and Rebo are looking at the boulder, with Slinky looking like she's filming a home movie... out of her hand.

"Alright, let's get it open, boys."

Gypsy and Rebo both simultaneously turn to stare at the elf, with a "how the frag you want us to do that" kinda look, before noticing the smile in Dogma's eyes indicating he obviously knew his order wasn't all that easy to follow.

"So anyway, what do we have" says Dogma, more seriously this time.

Gypsy and Rebo fill him in on what they've uncovered sor far: the few translated words and the appearance that the rock is alive.

"Ok, so we're guessing this rock... will move by itself is we find out how to.. 'operate' it?" tried Dogma. "Anyone got any ideas?"

Sleel looks around, not really sure what to do. He sets his drones up as a perimeter watching the teams back, but with a clear line of fire to the boulder. One little bird drone heads off down to the mouth of the tunnel to keep watch and alert him should it detect anything.

"Well guys, I don't think I can do much more than cover you all while you figure out what mumbo-jumbo to do to get that thing to move. Maybe give it some food? I've set us up a perimeter defense with the bots, with a birdy down the tunnel mouth to let us know if anyone tries creeping up."

A live rock, Rebo thinks. He didn't know how this was possible, but somehow, here it was. He sensed thought patterns running through it when he assenssed it; impossible as it seemed, this was a living being.

"Ok, so we're guessing this rock... will move by itself is we find out how to.. 'operate' it?" tried Dogma. "Anyone got any ideas?"

"Stand aside," Rebo says, stepping forward.

Pressing the index and middle fingers of both hands against his temples, Rebo tries to communicate telepathically with the living rock...

Slinky sketches a salute at Dogma as the young elf arrives. Uh-oh. Grem went Astral… he’s gonna get it. She shuts off the camera with some more murmured notes as Rebo shoulders past to do his thing. What is going on? Where are we? She looks at the rune stone before her as she continues moving back. Living stones? Barren rocky Ireland? She casts a worried glance at Andy just as she backs right into the cave wall checking her elbows roughly on the hard surface.

She reflexively rubs her elbow joints and grins at Jack, stony textures flickering across the man’s chameleon face, “You know the best thing about cyberarms?” She pauses a beat, “No funny bone.”

Rebo puts his hands to his temples and the hairs on Slinky’s neck stand. A faint tic seems to jump in the corner of Jack’s eye… Poor guy… he’s about to come out of his shifting skin.

The frustration of not having solved the puzzle immediately has Gypsy slightly irritated, and Dogma's little little jab doesn't help matters any. He slots a couple of chips into his pocket secretary, and distractedly scans the enclosed data as he and Rebo brief the newly-arrived team leader on what they have discovered.

He takes a breath, ready to give a summation of his calculations and research on the matter, when the 'faux mage' steps forward and begins spellcasting. Moving slightly away from the living boulder, the wiry elf leans against the wall of the tunnel, his attention seeming to be split between the data on the small screen in his hand, and watching for any results from the psionicist's efforts.

Gypsy was pretty confident in his solution. In his mind, the poetry aspect was the only unknown quantity of his theory. His eyes slowly glide over his teammates until they come to rest on Slinky.

'That was one of her interests, wasn't it? He'd seen her in that section of Pale and Scaly's library on more than one occasion, hadn't he? And just last week she'd been merrily rambling on about some great turn-of-the-century American poet named John 'Banjo' Vie, or some such.'

Catching Slinky's eye, he silently indicates for her to meet him a little away from the rest of the team gathered around the living barrier. Keeping part of his attention on what was happening with Rebo, Gypsy casually moves off a little way down the passage.

What the HELL?
"Uh, anyone with comm equipment- see if you can get in touch with our superiors. Or anyone. This is straight out of a cheap sim..."

James spins around a few times, taking in the crazy, stupid sight, before he has to sit down, partly out of dizziness and partly out of sheer shock.

"Two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 1638, uh, four. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. My name is James, I'm a...professional troubleshooter and I'm in some kind of alternate Ireland. She sells seashells by the sea shore."
"So I'm DEFINITELY not crazy, everything checks out in working order. I'm not stoned, I'm not drunk, I'm not even concussed.
...
Does that make this more or less weird?"

"-16,384, 32,768, 65,536," Jack says absently, picking up the sequence from James. "256, 16, 4, 2, 1.41 and so on lower." A nervous tick was jumping in the corner of his eye. He reached up to rub it, and noted that his skin had taken on the mottled tone of the surrounding rock.

They were in the same place, but they weren't. Tir na Nog was gone (that was a thought he actually didn't mind so much) and instead they were in the exact same place/somewhere else. There was a living rock down the hall. It was like waking up the morning after the cermak blast and finding out that bugs had eaten everyone next door and were eyeing you over the fence, all over again. Too many changes, too fast, too little explanation. Too much magic. Too little that he could do while everyone else was figuring out the bibbity bobbity boo.

Jack's mind suddenly switched gears, and he stood up a little straighter, his skin turning back to a normal color. This place was a mess. There were dead things everywhere. He held his Cobra in one hand as he toed one of the recently redeceased with his boot. When it showed absolutely no inclination towards moving again, he grabbed it by the most solid looking bit and dragged it to the corner of the room, begining to make a neat, orderly pile out of the dead. You had to keep things clean, or else you might start attracting bugs.

The team contemplates the best way to move the rock. Oddly enough, now that it's noticed that the rock is sentient, the idea of explosives scurries quickly away from the minds of the normally hinderless professionals. As everyone rummages through the sanity of their brains, a single individual steps up in an almost trancelike manner, placing a hand on the rock. Nobody else seems to even notice, concentrating more on trying to make something of their location by counting, mumbling, or cleaning.. A bit of a rumbling is heard as the rock seems to move, only then does the team notice Rebo with his hand on the rock in one of his meditative trance like states. Gypsy and Gremish notice that a Detection spell is going on between the rock and Rebo. The rock seems to almost come apart, as if it were about to rise upon 2 legs which seemed to have been folded under it. The cavernous room is tall enough to allow such a move, and this rock would be a tall creature indeed if it rose to a pair of legs.

Rebo:

"Uh, Rebo buddy, dat there rock seems liek its decided to grow a pair of legs.... you may wanna get away before it crushes you or something..."

Prepared for anything Gremish takes a fighters stance bracing for what may either be some sort of rock man or maybe whatever is moving the rock from the other side...

Dogma stood in reflection while the mages tried various theories to get the boulder out of the way. Gypsy was talking to Slinky about something, Jack was tossing corpses into a single pile and... James was flipping out.

<<Take it easy James. We are facing many unknowns, but we're still profesionnals with a job to do, no matter where we are. We'll get through this.>> sent Dogma to James. Not much of a pep talk, but he had confidence the warrior would be fine. He was tough and reliable. They all were.

Rebo had his hands to his head, a focused look piercing the giant boulder. Then, Dogma watched with incredulity as the giant rock got up and stood aside.

There was utter silence in the cave, as everyone stood totally still and dumb at the sight they'd just witnessed.

Gremish, as usual not impressed by much, is the first to talk, breaking the trance-like effect the giant moving boulder has on everyone.

"Uh.. uh.. good job, Rebo" managed Dogma, shaking his head to clear it. "What did you do?"

While always having come off as a little odd, what ever was going on around here was making Tevos rather jumpy. Infact ever since 'mana-porting' here Tev had been despretly trying to keep his composure as the consumment professional he was supposed to be. It wasn't happening.

Having remained quiet until this point, possibly from some form of catatonic shock, "That rock, just got up and left. Do rocks typically get up, and move out of your way?" rather astutely observes Tevos, speaking just slightly over his left shoulder to no one at all. But this was enough to bring the rather confused man back into what ever world he was in.
"Sooo. No rock and roll jokes?"

"Uh.. uh.. good job, Rebo" managed Dogma, shaking his head to clear it. "What did you do?"

"I asked it if we could pass," Rebo replies. "It's answer was apparently yes."

Moving out of the rock's way, Rebo waits for the living rock to clear the passage for them.

This is getting out of hand. Slinky watches with concern as her teammates are struggling to make sense of the situation. She herself has only a fingernail’s grip on her fluttering heart and clenched stomach, but after the breakdown in the zombie room she’s damn sure not going to let on just how scared she is. Hell no. She looks at Dogma, the team’s solid core. He looks tired, worn. He’s scared too. Dammit. She glances at Andy, his eyes blank as he parses drone input. At James almost rocking himself. At Jack with his borderline OCD. At Gremish with his unruffled, devil-may-care attitude. Her eyes move to Tevos as she begins to feel someone’s eyes on her back. She looks up and finds Gypsy’s violet gaze drawing her away from the group.

Slinky slips off to the side with her buddy and nods at Gypsy's words, “Yeah, I heard you say ‘poetry’ in there. Sorry, I missed it in all the...” she scratches behind her jaw and a light gleams dully on the glove and forearms of her body armor, “Well, I'm a little distracted, you kn– holy fragglesnot!”

Slinky’s eyes go wide and she gives Gypsy a hard ‘get down’ shove towards the ground as she spins on the door climbing claws whickering through the air as they protrude from the gloves on her hands. She takes a step and a half toward the door before realizing that it is simply sitting idly by and with a sheepish expression retracts her claws.

She gives Gypsy an apologetic look and a hand up if need be. “You were saying?” she says to Gypsy as she glances over at Rebo, waiting for him to sprout worms out of his face after communicating with anything in this strange, strange place.

What if this is some massive mindfrag, like an amped up version of one of Grem's spells... there was a dragon inbound when we left... worth a try...

She closes her eyes.

I disbelieve. I disbelieve.

She opens them.

James watches the looks everyone's giving him, and grins sheepishly.
"All right, all right! I'm not crazy, not yet. Time to find out what lies ahead of us without putting your collective hoops on the line, and that's my job. NINJA VANISH!"
James abruptly fades from sight as the ruthenium activates, already sneaking down the tunnel by the time he completely winks out.
Like the Cheshire Gun Nut, his Roomsweeper is the last to fade.

Dogma watches James fade into a shimmering field of barely discernable air as the samurai heads into the unknown after assuring everyone he was in his right mind.

Ninja... Vanish...?

Dogma calls Jack in and puts his hand around the man's shoulders when he arrives to the front of the passageway. "You're with James. And keep an eye on him... he seems a bit.. off...". The Elf gives Jack a knowing nod of the head and sends him off.

The team leader then turns to the rest of the assembled crew, each member going through his or her list of wise-ass remarks of incredulity.

"Rebo, you think you can communicate some more with this giant rock thing? Ask it where we are, who else is down here, what's going on, etc.?"

"Sleel, start sending drones ahead. You'll also be covering our rear when we move out after Rebo is done with Rockman."

Taking Slinky's hand, the slender blonde elf lets the tech-wiz pull him from where her shove had deposited him on the floor near the tunnel wall. Cocking an eyebrow and trying to hide a smile at her contrite features as brushes himself free of dust, he finally spots what has everyone else's attention. The boulder-thing had grown limbs and was moving aside!

To Gypsy's way of thinking, this was no more strange than anything else that they'd encountered here so far. In his time, he'd seen summoned Spirits that kind of resembled this rock. But that Demon-thing was beyond all experience. And the strange Circle in which he assumed they'd arrived troubled him.

As always, it was the attention Gypsy devoted to problem-solving that grounded him, burying the panic that might otherwise paralyze the sorcerer. His main goal was finding the answer to each of the mysteries they'd run into on this trip, and linking them together to get the big picture.

Of course he had an inkling of what had happened ... was happening ... to them. A theory that at first glance seemed so far-fetched that he was tempted to disregard it out-of-hand. But the further they went, the more little details seemed to fall into place.

Turning his attention back to Slinky, he catches her just as she opens her eyes, looking disappointedly at her surroundings.

"I was saying that skills deemed to be of some artistic merit might prove useful in the near future." He pauses and glances at the living boulder once again before dryly continuing, "of course, maybe not quite as useful as I first thought."

"I can try," Rebo replies when asked by Dogma if further communication is possible.

Pressing his fingers to his temples again, Rebo tries to communicate telepathically with the rock again.

"Do you have a name? What is this place? What year is this?..."

The questions continue flitting through Rebo's mind as he attempts another communication.

Jack passively observed the interaction between the mages and the rock. When he heard people say that it was moving, he was ready to whip out the shock gloves, since someone had obviously left an earth elemental behind. That didn't quite seem to be the case, since something about the elemental (what else could it be, it was a moving rock) had all the mana sensitives in a tizzy.

"Can do, Boss," Jack replied to Dogma. He prepared to follow James and the drones, mottling his skin into subdued earth tones. It certainly wasn't as effective as James' full ruthenium outfit, but it broke up his silhouette, and as long as he walked softly, it was better than nothing.

He paused long enough to pull on his shock gloves. If there were any spirits or elementals out there, bullets weren't going to do that much good. On that note, he swapped out the ExEX for regular rounds, so that he could equip the silencer without looking like an idiot.
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