Lasers!
X-ExperimentsIndex:
(DH) – Daehyun speaking
(L) – Myungsoo speaking
(BY) – Yongguk speaking
(S) – Sungyeol speaking
(YA) – Yoona speaking
(J) – Jessica speaking
(JI) – Jieun speaking
(LJ) – Joon speaking
(PB) - ??? speaking
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“I’m boooored…” The kid let out a small sigh as he sat against the wall. He had hoped to see these people show off their fighting skills, so he hadn’t expected to end up staying at the entrance of somewhere he hadn’t been to before. Think of all the action and adventure that he was missing by just sitting around doing nothing! The boy would have snuck off after the other group, but for some reason, the leader of the group was keeping a stern eye on him, so it made it very difficult to run after the more fun sounding group.
“We should probably take you back home then.” (LJ)
“Eh…? Wait, what?!” The kid quickly jumped to his feet before shaking his head furiously. No matter how bored he was just waiting for something to happen, he refused to miss anything that might happen! “I don’t wanna go home yet! I have to see you guys fight the bad guys!”
Joon rubbed the back of his head as he attempted to search for any sort of answer to this predicament. He could let the kid stay, but having him here made it difficult to fight. Only Jessica and Daehyun were currently capable of fighting anything that might show up. Joon had a laser sniper rifle, which is very good in combat, but the mines didn’t exactly offer the space necessary to use it properly. As for Sungyeol, he used bow and arrows, the old and traditional weapon of the past. Okay, so it was a laser bow, hence why Sungyeol didn’t have to carry any arrows, but it wasn’t as accurate as a gun. Of course, Sungyeol still had a better chance at fighting than Joon did. “Come on! Let me stay! Pleeeease?”
A sigh escaped from Joon’s lips as he gave a reluctant nod. Whether or not he was going to regret his decision was yet to be seen, but he really hoped that he wouldn’t. However, pushing those thoughts aside, he turned his attention back towards the tunnel. Joon was starting to think that he probably should’ve gone with the other group. If there was anything important down there technology wise, they most likely won’t know what to do or what to look for. Any information that could help the resistance would always be gladly accepted, but he would just have to wait and see what they ended up reporting.
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The walk down the tunnel was made easier thanks to the smooth steps that had been created. The mines above held jagged flooring at a slope, making it difficult to travel through the mines without tripping over something. Of course, miners usually used vehicles to travel through the mines, but it didn’t necessarily making walking any less hazardous.
“What are we supposed to look for?” (YA)
“Something that shouldn’t be in here… I guess...” (L) Yoona scratched her head a bit as she looked at the smooth tunnel walls. Besides the wall itself, the crystals and various other minerals that lined the walls seemed to be something worth noting. Of course, that was simply because she was drawn in by the mineral’s ability to display its light. Other than that, so far, nothing seemed to be out of place.
As they continued down the tunnel, only the sound of their footsteps echoed through the hollow area. It would’ve been less nerve-wracking if everyone had been able to coming along, but they each knew the reason why Joon had decided to split them up. Holding a conversation may have been something to keep them all calm, but despite the many new things that they learned from their cryston, none of them knew what exactly to talk about.
Out of pure curiosity, Yoona brought out her cryston before pulling up the map. Even though they didn’t have a full map of the entire area, it allowed for some sort of comfort to know that they were making progress. Plus, it helped to know that they wouldn’t end up getting lost if they ended up having to decide on a path to take if multiple paths made itself known. “How long is this tunnel?” (YA)
“Maybe Yongguk can look ahead.” (JE) As if on cue, Jieun’s lantern began glowing brighter before the light began to swirl around the group. The light then moved forward a comfortable distance away before swirling in place and forming the familiar ghostly figure. Once Yongguk was now standing before them, the light spun a few times around Yongguk before making its way back into Jieun’s lantern.
“Did'ja need something?” (BY)
“Uh… Do you think you can move ahead and see how long the tunnel is?” (JE) Yongguk raised a single brow as he turned around to look towards what seemed to be an endless darkness. Unknown to them, Yongguk could recognize the area almost immediately, though it seemed to have changed from the last time he was here. Folding his arms, Yongguk turned back towards the group before clearing his throat.
“It’s not very far.” (BY) Jieun had a confused look on her face, but Myungsoo and Yoona were eager enough to continue forth that they ended up accepting Yongguk’s words without questioning how he knew. While Myungsoo and Yoona began moving forward, Jieun paused for a moment as she continued to stare at Yongguk.
“How do you know?” (JE)
“I can see in the dark and I can also see pretty far.” (BY) Without letting Jieun get in another word, Yongguk’s form shifted back into a smoky light before disappearing into Jieun’s lantern. Since Jieun didn’t really know much about Yongguk, she couldn’t tell whether or not he was telling the truth. With a simple shrug, Jieun decided to believe Yongguk before quickly catching up to the other two.
Before long, the trio quickly found themselves in front of a metal door. Myungsoo knocked on it a few times, but no one answered. Pulling out one of his blades, Myungsoo attempted to slice through the door, but the second his blade came into contact with it, his blade was deflected. When Yoona took a closer look, she noticed that it didn’t even leave a scratch. “What are we supposed to do now?!” (L)
“We can use our cryston to ask Joon… right…?” (JE)
“… We can?” (L)
“I think so.” (JE)
“I’ll give it a try.” (YA) While Yoona was busy with that, Myungsoo and Jieun turned their attention back towards the door. If Joon didn’t know how to open the door, then what were they supposed to do? Unintentionally pouting, Jieun touched the door for a moment before looking along the surface of the door, trying to find something that would open it. Without some sort of handle to at least try, it was a bit difficult to determine what may open the door.
As she examined the door, something strange began to occur. Countless formulas, elements, basically anything that had to do with the composition of the door began making itself known to Jieun. The further she studied it, the more she was able to understand how the door was made, its strengths, and even its weaknesses. “I see… so that’s how it works…” (JE)
“What works?” (L)
“Huh?” (JE) Snapping out of her thoughts, Jieun stared at Myungsoo blankly for a moment before her eyes widened. Looking back at the door, Jieun took a step back as she held her head a bit after realizing that her head was starting to throb. “The… um… the door… It’s steel infused with crystal energy. It uses specific crystal combinations, which is why we can’t break it down.” (JE)
“… What?” (L)
Jieun looked at Myungsoo, a bit confused at first as to why Myungsoo didn’t understand her explanation. However, upon figuring out that she had somehow gained knowledge simply by staring at a door, Jieun stared back at the door, a bit dumbfounded by how that worked. “Uh… Jieun…? I don’t get it, but uh… do you know how to get in?” (L)
“Um… y-yeah… the uh… the energy from the crystals can be drained into our weapons to um… to break down the door.” (JE) It was a bit confusing, but Myungsoo did get the gist of what Jieun meant. Get rid of the door’s power and it’ll be easy to break it down. The question was, how were they supposed to do that? Though, once more, Jieun seemed to know the answer to that as well. “Give me your weapons and I’ll do it.” (JE)
By now, Yoona had stopped talking to Joon and had tuned into the conversation. As they both laid their weapons down in front of the door, Jieun held her lantern up before closing her eyes. At first, nothing really seemed to be happening. Her lantern continued to grow its usual green aura, so Myungsoo and Yoona were starting to become a bit skeptical that this would work. However, soon enough, Jieun’s lantern began glowing brighter, which in turn, caused the door to start glowing. In that moment, the lights from the door were drawn into Jieun’s lantern. Within Jieun’s lantern, two colors began to appear as the lights spun around. The lights then left Jieun’s lantern before separating and going either towards Yoona’s weapon or Myungsoo’s weapon. Soon enough, the lights completely transferred into the weapons, thus making the weapons faintly glow.
Opening her eyes, Jieun looked down at the weapons and smiled a bit before handing the weapons back to their owners. “There. Your weapons should be able to cut through the door now. Um… I think that you can attack together to do something, but I don’t really know what exactly.” (JE)
Jieun rubbed her head a bit, but she still couldn’t understand how she could have found out about all of this without anyone telling her anything. While she was busy trying to figure it out, Yoona and Myungsoo were looking over their weapons in awe. “Wow…! It has a light!” (YA)
“So we can break the door down now? I wanna try!” (L) With little to no hesitation, Myungsoo swung one of his blades at the door. Despite the fact that sparks flew upon impact, Myungsoo’s weapon was capable of piercing the door with relative ease. The door, however, didn’t display any traces of a blade cutting through it. Instead, it looked more like something had crashed through the middle of the door, creating a large hole in its wake. “Woah…! I like that!” (L)
“I’ll try too!” (YA) Yoona followed Myungsoo’s example, but instead of creating a hole like Myungsoo had, the remainder of the door had been blown out of its frame into the room, scraping along the floor before colliding into the opposite wall. The two had jumped when it happened, but once everything had calmed down, they both stared in surprise and awe as they stepped into the room. “I can make it fly!” (YA)
“I wanna do more!” (L)
“Shhhh! There might be someone here…! We should look for something first.” (JE) Myungsoo and Yoona thought on it for a moment, but they decided to go with Jieun’s suggestion for the time being. She did have a point after all and with just the three (four if Yongguk counts) of them there, they might not be able to handle whomever may be here.
As they split up to look around, Jieun quietly hummed a song that she had heard back at town. Everything she looked at didn’t seem to be giving her any information as before, but she was a little scared to let that happen again. As helpful as it had been, Jieun didn’t understand it at all. She didn’t want anything bad to happen if it didn’t turn out to be as good as it seemed.
Coming to a stop, Jieun’s eyes soon landed on a wooden contraption of sorts. With a bit of confusion and interest, Jieun walked up to it before placing her hand on it. A small hum of interest escaped her lips as she felt the rough surface of the wooden object. So far, everything she’s actually touched had either been smooth, soft, or jagged. This, however, was just rough with a hint of jagged. It was a weird feeling, but for some reason… this object felt familiar.
“There’s a lot of drawers… I don’t get what these are for.” (YA)
“It keeps stuff in it. Didn’t Byunghee tell you?” (L)
“I know that! But there’s a lot of it… Why would there be so many?” (YA) Myungsoo merely shrugged as he opened one of the drawers. Looking inside, a single brow rose as he began rummaging through the contents of the drawer. There were a great number of weird cubes inside, all looking pretty much the same. The cubes seemed to be all made of glass with smaller cubes inside, all a faded blue-green color. Yoona leaned in as well, though she was just as clueless as Myungsoo was. “Are these important?” (YA)
“Maybe we can just take some back with us. These can fit in our bag, right?” (L) With a nod, the two took their bags off and opened it up before they began randomly stuffing the cubes into their bags. They may have had some space in their bag, but considering the amount of cubes there were within the drawer, it was difficult to tell if they were getting good cubes or not.
“Maybe we should check the other drawers too.” (YA)
“Oh… Okay.” (L) Closing the drawer, the two moved to opposite sides before they began looking through the drawers. Here and there, they would grab random cubes from these drawers and stuff it into their bag before moving on to the next one. Hopefully, it would be helpful to Joon, but the only way to find out was to bring it back to him.
“What are you two doing?” (JE) Yoona turned from what she was doing as she looked at Jieun. She was about to respond, but a look of confusion instantly crossed her face as she saw a weird object attached to Jieun. Walking up to her, she looked specifically at the straps around Jieun’s waist before tugging at it.
“We… uh… we thought these cubes were important, so we were going to take it.” (YA) Once she was able to pull her attention away from the weird object, she pulled one of the cubes out of her bag before holding it out for Jieun to see. Jieun furrowed her eyebrows and narrowed her eyelids as she took a closer look at the small object in front of her. By now, Myungsoo had completely filled his bag and had made his way over to the two.
“Hm… the components are interesting here. Despite the fact that it’s see through, it’s tough enough to withstand… well, a fall from a... a tall building. There’s information locked inside, but I can’t see what that information is. Maybe we can put it in the cart.” (JE) Jieun unlatched the object from around her waist before turning around and motioning towards the wooden object behind her. Yoona leaned to the side a bit to get a better look at the ‘cart’ before looking back at Jieun.
“Is that what that is?” (YA)
“Yes! It feels… familiar for some reason, so I’m taking it with me.” (JE) Yoona nodded a bit before looking at Myungsoo, whom had taken Jieun’s suggestion and placed his bag inside of the cart. Now that she was looking inside of the cart, she could see that there were a lot more objects inside. Glass objects, paper objects, even other bags were in there. She didn’t know the importance of these items, but she decided not to question it as she followed Myungsoo’s actions.
As Yoona and Myungsoo began placing more cubes into the cart, Jieun activated her cryston and waited patiently for the holoscreen to show itself before deciding to contact Joon. Once Joon answered her call, Jieun smiled as she began talking. “I think it’s safe for you guys to come down here. We found some stuff, but we’re not sure if it’s what we’re looking for.” (JE)
“Really? Great! We’re coming down then.” (LJ) In the background, Jieun could hear the sound of Daehyun’s excited voice. Jieun let out a small laugh before she deactivated her cryston. She felt better knowing that the rest of the group was coming, though she did hope that they would be done with it soon.
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“These are data cubes. They store basically anything that was recorded within these, but these are still a pretty good thing to find. I, uh… just don’t know how to access the information inside.” (LJ) Joon scratched the side of his head as he pulled out a storage cube from inside his bag. Pressing a button on the side, the cube began to glow a faint yellow from the top, though it wasn’t creating anything as before. Instead, Joon simply put the storage cube down before he began putting the data cubes on top of the glowing platform, causing it to get into the storage cube. “Just put it in here and we can get all the information necessary.” (LJ)
“Wow… That makes it a lot easier!” (YA) As Joon, Yoona, and Myungsoo did that, Jessica, Daehyun, Sungyeol, and Jieun had walked off to the side to continue looking around. There were all sorts of machinery that were just simply sitting around, doing nothing. There were also some that were actually in use, but what that use was, neither of them really knew. They did pause though when they suddenly heard high-pitched squealing coming from somewhere.
“What was that?” (S)
“Let’s find out!” (DH) After looking around for a moment, the small group found a door where the squeals were coming from. Carefully, Jessica turned the doorknob before carefully pushing the door open. Looking inside, they could see someone standing hunched over a table with a bright lamp right above the table. Other than that light though, the rest of the room was fairly dark. Whatever the person was doing, it was causing some sort of pain to the creature on the table.
“What are they doing?” (S)
“Maybe they’re writing.” (J)
“Well, let’s find out.” (DH) Stepping into the room, Daehyun carefully made his way over to the person. Although they were a little hesitant, Jessica, Jieun and Sungyeol followed after Daehyun. Looking around, they could just faintly see and hear the sounds of machinery at work. There were screens that didn’t seem to glow like a holoscreen that were constantly giving off information that made little to no sense to the group. Liquids were simply stored away on shelves above various other tables and shelves and there were drawers in this room as well. It became obvious that the person in front of them was doing experiments, but what kind of experiments; they had no idea.
Once they were a safe enough distance from the person, Daehyun came to a stop. Daehyun was about to say something, but the three behind him hadn’t been paying much attention and thus, they ended up walking into him. The sound of grunts and feet stomping forward to keep from falling forward caused the person in front of them to jump for a moment. They each held their breath, not knowing whether they should say anything or not. Their bodies each stiffened up as they heard the person let out an annoyed sigh followed by the sound of something being placed onto the table. Turning around, the person stared at them for a moment before giving an amused smile. “My my my! I didn’t expect to have visitors all the way out here.” (PB)
The woman took a step forward and in turn; the group took a step back. She held her smile though as she folded her arms and leaned on one leg. She took a moment to examine the faces of these four and in an instant, she was able to recognize who exactly they were. “Oh! You four must definitely come with me. I have such a lovely game for you to play.” (PB)
What was a game? Despite Sungyeol and Jieun’s curiosity, both Jessica and Daehyun knew better than to believe that this woman was a good person right off the bat. After all, she was down here in this strange area and she was wearing a scientist’s lab coat. That meant that she had to be a bad person, right? Maybe if they figured out what she was doing, they might be able to figure out if they could trust her. “Uh… who are you and what were you doing?” (DH)
“Hm? Oh, my name is Park Bom. As for what I’m doing… It’s nothing important. I was just doing some experiments on this cute little creature.” (PB) As if she needed proof to show that she was telling the truth, the woman stepped to the side to show a mole currently strapped down to the table. It was struggling and it was letting out muffled squeals due to the fact that its snout was currently strapped to minimize the amount of sound it made. Next to the creature were various liquids and needles, indicating that the injections were probably the cause behind its pained cries. A gasp escaped from them as they stared at the little creature before looking back up at the woman. “Isn’t it precious? It’s been such a naughty little thing though with the noise it made, but that’s nothing I can’t deal with.” (PB)
“So… you’re the one who made those animals bigger?” (JE) Bom seemed to be a bit confused at first, but once she seemed to understand what Jieun was talking a bit, her smile came back as she stood up a bit straighter. It was interesting just how much these four seemed to know already, but it still wasn’t as much as she had hoped for.
“Oh, why yes! It seems you’ve seen my handiwork. My… You have been quite busy, haven’t you? Would you like to follow me for a little rest?” (PB) Bom took another step forward, but Daehyun instinctively stretched his arm out to the side in a defensive manner. Bom let out an amused chuckle as she took a step back. “I see… So it’ll be like that, will it? Well… I’m just going to have to tire you out a little more then. Oh! I’m getting so excited just thinking about the fun we’ll have together. Aren’t you?” (PB)
Reaching up to her ear, Bom activated her cryston as she began walking away from the group. Almost immediately, hatches from all around the room opened up, revealing small robots that were now coming to life. As the robots emerged from their little rooms, Bom walked up to a door in the back and opened it slightly before turning to look at the group. “Don’t worry! I’ll be back as soon as you’re all worn out, okay? Have fun~!” (PB)
And with that, Bom was gone from the room.
Of course, that was the least of their worries. As the group pulled out their weapons, they could see the robots arming themselves with all sorts of weaponry that suddenly came out of their little bodies. It was more or less a surprise that anything could fit in them in the first place, but they weren’t exactly too worried about that at the moment. “What do we do?” (JE)
“What we always do. We fight.” (DH) By now, there seemed to be hundreds of small robots all around the room, almost to the point of covering most of the furniture around the room. Taking in a deep breath, Daehyun picked up Bartholomew and placed him on the ground. As Bartholomew’s claws began to grow, Jessica took out one of her scrolls and unrolled it before she began drawing. “Everyone ready?” (DH)
As if to warn them, a laser shot between them, causing the group to jump a bit. Jieun reached to her waist to obtain her lantern, but the second she felt thin air, Jieun looked down to realize that she had left her lantern on the cart. What was she supposed to do now? “Let’s go!” (DH)
Bartholomew jumped forward, spinning in the process as its claws created a miniature deadly tornado. Turning her scroll around, Jessica began shaking it as the drawings began falling out of the scroll. They were small and not elaborate, but they were cute and based off of some mascots she saw back in Arten City. The small drawings all ran forward and jumped on top of whatever machines were closest before pounding away at it or pulling them and causing them to crash into another robot. Sungyeol shot his arrows every now and then, but if any of the robots managed to get to them, he used his bow to knock back any robots that came too close. All Jieun could do was stand between the three and hope that everything turned out okay.
At first, it seemed like they would be doing well. The robots seemed to think that they only had claws at their disposal, but once a good amount of robots had been taken out, lasers began shooting at the group. With how many lasers were being shot at them, it was near impossible to dodge all of them at once. Daehyun grit his teeth as he made Bartholomew retreat back to them before growing and surrounding them, acting as a shield for them. They could hear the sounds of lasers hitting Bartholomew, but they were trapped inside of here while the robots continued shooting.
“What do we do?!” (J)
“We… I’ll call the others!” (JE)
“Oh! Good idea!” (DH) While Jieun was busy with that, Jessica continued drawing whatever came to mind. Sungyeol looked around, but from what he could see, there wasn’t any sort of opening for him to shoot through. Of course, it was probably better that way. “Anything?!” (DH)
“H-Hold on!” (JE) Daehyun bit his bottom lip as he looked up at Bartholomew. He could tell that Bartholomew could take the hits, but he could also tell that it was starting to wear him down. If they didn’t get any help soon, then there was no telling how things would play out. “Hello?! Joon! We need help!” (JE)
The other three instantly looked over at Jieun as they waited impatiently to see what Joon had to say. Just as soon as the call came to an end, the sound of fighting could be heard from outside of Bartholomew’s defenses. As Bartholomew began to revert back to its original state, the sound of battle was beginning to die down. After Bartholomew was back to its original size, the four looked around to see that the remaining robots had been taken care of.
“Are you guys alright? Ah! Crap… You’ve all been shot!” (LJ) They each stared at Joon for a moment before looking at one another. Each of them had burn marks to indicate where they’ve been shot, though the laser shots were clearly not enough to kill. Joon let out a sigh as he folded his arms, trying to think of why the robots weren’t set to killing them. Just as he was thinking about that, he saw the group suddenly fall to their hands and knees.
“Wha… What’s happening?” (J) Joon kneeled down as he examined the person closest to him. He wasn’t a medical specialist or anything like that, but with the help of his cryston, he was able to at least tell what was happening to them. The cryston honed in on the burn marks before it began analyzing it. Various names and effects began to appear on his cryston, but the second the cryston was able to simplify the names and their effects, Joon let out a quiet hum as he folded his arms.
“It’s not lethal… It looks like the lasers were made specifically to put its target to sleep. Don’t worry though! I think it’ll wear off…” (LJ) None of them were necessarily convinced that that was the truth, but before they could say anything, the four of them had fallen to the ground, completely knocked out. Joon scratched the book of his head as he poked the person closest to him. “I guess we’ll have to use the cart to carry them too.” (LJ)
“I’ll go get it!” (YA)
“Wait. The doorway is too skinny for the cart. We’ll have to carry them one by one.” (LJ) As the group began carrying them one at a time, Joon couldn’t help but wonder how they could have ended up in that kind of situation in the first place. Had they activated some sort of trap or had they been intentionally attacked? The robots wouldn’t just simply make their intruders fall asleep, so the latter option was starting to sound more realistic.
He would just have to be more careful with them.
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[[ My Own Thoughts:
Okay, for those who may be confused about Jieun…
It will be explained in a later chapter.
So I hope it isn’t too much of a problem until then!
However, if you really are curious about it,
Just go ahead and ask me.
Comments are loved!
I love talking with everyone.
It’s also nice to know how I’m doing with each chapter. ]]
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