Hourly Challenge: Group Shot

a/n: Doug is testing Spidey the Octoskell in the bottomless abyss in Oblivia. It is going really well. Don't worry!

Slight swears, way too much skell geekery. More than one hour, but I was having fun.

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but I built Spidey and mapped the area below the weather barrier, so don't blame them.

The abyss looked darker than Doug had ever seen it, foggy and grim and smuggly taunting. Alexa stood beside him, one hand resting on the tether connection, studying the dizzying depths. She was chewing her lip with a ferociousness she usually reserved for when she was pouring over skell schematics. Go on, he thought, show some hesitation and try to talk me out of this. Like that's gonna happen. Like it would work anyway. Something about being around Alexa let his crazy out, and it wasn't getting tucked back in.

"Are you sure you don't want to take my javelin instead?" she asked finally.

He could have laughed. So much for hesitation. She was still worrying about the best weapon for him to take along, strictly just in case. They'd rigged his beam sabre onto one of the minor legs, complete with a trigger that he could engage from the comfort of the pilot seat. That leg was now curled against the body of the skell, leaving him with a mere seven legs to manage the climb. Doug had managed to run a lap around the cave entrance just fine, weaving through stalactites and stalagmites both.

"Too bulky," he pointed out, not for the first time. Plus he didn't want to leave her alone without her best weapon. If he didn't get back, if she had to fight and the bulky skell failed her, if -. He shook his head. Mira offered bad options, but there was not point counting them ahead of time. Planning for them was another matter. The javelin stayed with her, and his sabre was now decorating Spidey. "So we doing this?"

"Oh, you bet we are. Keep that camera rolling and give me a live play along the way, okay?" Another thing she'd managed to fix up was a wired connection from his comms, snaking along the tether. The weather barrier that blocked flight into the deeper levels of the abyss also played hell with electromagnetic communication. If he was going to keep in touch with Alexa, it would have to be using something akin to a tin can telephone, linked by a piece of string. One way, unfortunately, but at least he'd know someone was listening and maybe praying for him.

Once inside the tiny skell, Doug inched his way to the lip of the cave entrance, then made managed the flip, step by multiple step, over the edge and down the side of the cavern. He kept his word, narrating the surprisingly easy climb. He headed for a large sloping rock tube carved in the side of the wall. Or maybe it was buried and half-exposed? He made sure the camera picked up the carvings. They struck him as decorative, but what did he know? Maybe they would mean something to someone eventually. The tube was half as broad as Melville Street, and would make for an easy climb.

He struck the weather barrier when he was maybe 3 meters shy of the tube. He'd flown against the barrier in a regular skell before, and the event had always felt like a blast of air straight up, steady but impossible to overcome. This time it pressed the tiny skell sideways, closer to the rock wall. Spidey's knees bent deeply, and the feet skittered along the surface. Doug let the skell flex, not fighting the force of the atmosphere, and crept slowly downward. As he hoped, the pressure eased up as he slinked down lower. When he reached the tube, there was hardly a breeze to keep him from leaving the wall and exploring the slope of the artificial ledge.

He paused there, filling a silent Alexa in on the trouble, the success, and the situation. From this far down, the late afternoon sun wasn't doing much to light the area. The stones had changed from a dusty beige to a darkened uniform grey. Climbing would be tricky, since it was harder to spot formations. There was only the one light for the camera on the prototype. Spidey could manage slick walls but it was better to have a warning about ledges or changes of angle. It would be smart to turn back now. They'd proved that Spidey could pass through the barrier. The Oblivia gap could be explored without the help of the Ma-non, their little ship, and their ridiculously over-powered shielding. Just this one fact would be a great advancement.

Naturally, Doug decided to climb just a little further.

He'd spotted what looked like a small opening in the wall, tucked under a bend before the carved tube plunged straight down. Even with the limited light, it would make for an easy climb. Spidey swayed slightly on the far downside, and the restraints cut into Doug's shoulders, but he didn't have any trouble piloting the machine. Sure enough, the opening was more than a dark spot. Doug maneuvered the skell into the entrance of a new cave.

This one didn't have a proper flat floor like the larger cave above. The shaft cut into the rock wall sunk into a vee at the bottom, mirrored by a sharper angle in the roof. The light of the camera swung around to reveal walls that were traced with wavy lines, like worm tracks. The lower groove sloped up towards the back, spreading and flattening as it went. In the far shadows, something metallic glinted. Doug had a few more meters of tether before he had to return. Spidey skittered further into the cave.

A few steps and Doug hit the brakes hard. Maybe he felt that first warning tug on the tether. Maybe it was what he saw. At the end of the cave sat six or seven wrecked skells. They were lined up like discarded dolls, listing against each other. An Ares 70 bent forward unnaturally. Next to it slumped a level 20 baby skell, the kind given to newbie pilots, tipped into the lap of what had probably been a Verus. All of the mechs were damaged. Wiring and plates were torn from legs and arms. Weaponry stuck out in splinters from the backs. Every single pilot's compartment was torn open.

Chewed open.

When the cave darkened behind him, Doug wasn't even surprised. He had pulled Spidey's eighth limb free and lit up the beam sabre while he was still spinning the skell around.

a/n: CLIFF HANGER AHHHHHHHHHHH! Creepy Coraline music on loop, "Dispair", very effective.