Frigid, stale air circulated through the dim, icy cave system. the cracks in the walls and ceiling whistled as the gentle, persistent breeze pushed through each crevice. The floors had a thin layer of powder snow, before giving way to the solid block of near whitened ice. The peace was filled with tension. Tension broken by a flash of brilliant white. inside the flash, a sweeper portal grew, extending to its fullest width. The light faded, dimming the caves back down to before. With enough light to be able to see a fair distance without strain.
From the portal, four figures emerged. Leaping a great height into the air, and landing effortlessly. Each donned a blue, large collared jacket; red worksman trousers, and white boots, complete with shiny steel toes. Blinx, their leader, and one of those four figures, studied the surroundings closely, squinting to try to catch as much detail as he could.
Whilst the immediate area around the portal wasn't too large, only being big enough to comfortably sit a small camp, this would give way to an extremely vast underground gorge. Either side stacked with the wreckages of multiple pirate-era galleons, the gorge walls being three of such ships tall; all of which being both split apart and concealed inside the ice. The ice walls themselves only allowing passage through either juts in the wall, or pieces of decking and bridge lucky enough to escape the grip of ice without being completely destroyed.
Blinx hummed to himself anxiously, the thought of crossing the wreckages filled him with dread. One of his team mates did not appear to feel the same way, however. He pulled his sight over next to him, and had his eyes fix themselves on Skitch.
The first of the team's current members that Blinx met, Skitch, had an extremely small build, standing a full head shorter than Blinx. In contrast to his small stature, Skitch's ears were oversized, with the left ear's tip coming just short of the top of Blinx's scalp. The right ear's cartilage had been cleanly broken about an inch from the base, neatly drooping behind his head, lower than his chin. His fur was a toffee brown, with white countershading slightly off-centre towards the left of his face. The right-most stretch of white being next to the edge of his lips, circling round between his right eye and his nose, over the top of his left eye, and fully down the left side of his face, before centering at the front of his neck and down his body. Skitch's face had also been mildly disfigured on the left of his face. Whiskers only grew on the right side due to three deep set scratch scars across his left cheek. His left eye had been severly damaged; his standard eye colour was purple, yet his left eye sustained so much injury that it was permanently a deep, soul sucking black across the whole of his eyeball, only giving way to a glimpse of colour on the off chance he looks to his sides.
Skitch gazed out to the chasm with a cold, blank expression. Save for a few squints to look in the far distance, Skitch was nearly motionless. Blinx's eyes glanced past Skitch and to his other team mates.
The newest on his team, Kevin and Skye had not long passed their exams to become proper time sweepers. Since their enrollment in the time factory, they had become an item together. Kevin stood a couple of inches or so shorter than Blinx, with a much narrower physique. Kevin's fur was well kept, and a lime green all over. He wore a set of short, oval reading glasses, slowly fogging from the radient heat emitting from his body. Kevin's ears had an average length to them, angled wide out from his head, tips being shoulder width. His eyes were a dull, dark blue. And his pupils would normally be a little more dilated than others around him.
Skye, in contrast, stood almost half a head taller than Kevin, and an inch or two taller than Blinx. She had a naturally muscular build, yet somehow did not have any overt definition. Her fur was a deep red, accentuated by almost brilliant white streaks across the lower half of her face and head, resembling the wake of a speeding boat. The wake effect even seemed to apply to her fur itself, puffing up and out along her cheeks. Her yellow eyes called a naturally warm aura to her, mirrored by her resting face carrying a slight smile. Skye's ears were not led evenly, with her right ear jutting upright, and the left sending itself at a right angle out from her head.
Both Skye and Kevin immediately huddled together in the cold. Blinx dismissed this, confident in their ability. Blinx slung his arm in front of him, and lit up his wrist communicator. He pulled in a deep breath.
'We've arrived safely, radio check.' Blinx commanded. He stood patiently, waiting for the small crackles from his wrist communicator to give him some familiar voice. It flared up, almost jumping Blinx.
'Signal's weak,' An operator responded, in crunchy, low quality audio, 'so we will make the recap brief. In here is where the Tom Tom gang have been finding and manufacturing their weapons. we need you to find how they are getting in, and shut it down.'
Four more sweepers jump through the portal. All dressed in sleeveless jackets, worksman trousers, and standard issue boots; all of which in varying shades of black. Blinx looked over his shoulder at the presence of another sweeper team. His shoulders slumped a small increment. His eyes rolling. 'What are they doing here?' He groaned.
One of the team members donned in black approached Blinx in a slow, smooth fashion. His fur a dark black, tufted like a Maine Coon, with an extra puff of hair atop his scalp for good measure. His eyes were a hypnotic turqouise, tinged in green. He wore piercings on both ears, and a small star shaped pendant on each cheek, an inch or too from the corner of his lips. His goggles sat slack around his neck. He carried himself with confidence, almost always wearing a faint smirk on him.
'Don't be too excited,' He began, his words smooth and disarming to most, 'We've had our brief already. After all, many hands make light work...' He leaned into Blinx's face, softly adding 'Don't you agree, kitten?' to his statement.
'Get scratched, Roland.' Blinx responded. This immediate cut off made Roland chuckle, leaning back to fold his arms; taking a small moment to soak in Blinx's bemusement towards him.
As if by the flick of a switch, Roland pulled his arms away. He lifted one arm in the air as he turned around on the spot. His voiced boomed across the gorge, complete with soft reverberation and echoes. 'We have two walls of the gorge, and we have two teams. So we will do what makes sense. My team will take the left wall, Blinx will take the right.' Roland turned about once more, to look back at Blinx. 'Unless you're thinking of anything different?'
Blinx paused, almost scowling at Roland. He mumbled out 'whatever' to him and set himself towards the right hand wall.
Kevin and Skye unhinged themselves from each other and moved across to the wall. Skitch fixed his gaze at Roland's team as they walked past them, before locking eyes with a tall, pure white, slender sweeper, complete with a giant diagonal claw mark across the left of his head, and down to his lower right jaw. 'How's it going, Skitch?' The sweeper said, reaching out his fist.
'Cold enough for you?' Skitch mocked, as he bumped the outstretched fist with his own; mouth in a wide grin, missing a selection of teeth from his left side. The white sweeper continue to walk past, waving his hand.
'Ha! When I was told we were going someplace cool, I thought we were going to the beach!' The two exchanged laughter as the white sweeper moved out onto the ice passage along the left wall.
Skitch walked calmly over to the right-hand passage for the gorge. About ten paces behind Skye and Kevin, who were a further ten behind Blinx. Skitch felt the ground beneath him quietly crunch. The thin layer of iced snow veiling a ledge of solid ice under them. Skitch eyed his feet. The bottom of the gorge was too far for any detail in his bad eye to flag. This kept him oddly calm.
Blinx had managed to find footing on the deck of a ship, half jammed into the ice. One by one, he gave a hand for everyone to set foot on board as well. Both Skye and Kevin's weight were met with gentle creaks. Skitch's weight, despite being considerably smaller than the other three members on his team, caused a much louder, much scarier creak across the entire ship. Everyone else flinched and gasped, on the cusp of screaming. Skitch pressed one of his fingers to his lips and shushed every one to a state of silent anticipation, eyes fixed roughly where the noises were coming from, and where they were travelling to.
The loud creak that had stretched from beneath their feet across the length of the ship had moved into the ice wall itself, trailing in a series of sharp, almost metallic snaps and crackles within the frozen, abyssal wall. The number of crackles eventually dying down to none. The ship, however, remained intact. 'There, see? Safe.' Skitch said unenthusiastically, simply walking on down the length of the ship. Blinx sighed with relief and followed behind. Skye and Kevin waited in place for a small while before moving themselves, eyeing the spot where the crackles sound like they came from.
Blinx's team reached the rear of the first galleon, halted by a large drop to the next ship. Skitch leaned over and noticed a rope ladder half way down the height of their current ship. he turned, looking at the part of the ship left outside of the ice, and noticed a large, nearly three foot round hole in the floor next to the wall. He locked eyes with Blinx and motioned his head over to the hole. Blinx nodded, before walking over to the hole. He sighed in relief at the presence of another rope ladder, this one leading to the inside of the ship.
The inside of the ship was dark, and smelled of damp. The room itself seeming to be a captain's quarters, complete with a large set of windows on the wall, conveniently in the direction they were headed; and judging by the smashed panes of glass mixed with the ladder Skitch spotted, it was certainly convenient for whoever else uses these galleons and ice paths. The atmosphere inside the ship was enough to make most of the team itch to climb the ladder down out of the quarters.
Blinx descended out the ship's window, cautious to not thrash around in the ladder. His feet touched the ship below, positioned at a slightly canted angle. he called out to Skye, who moved down the ladder without much fuss, most of the work being done by her arms rather than her legs. Skitch motioned for Kevin to go next, but he didn't move. Kevin froze up from the sight of the gorge floor, something that laid just outside his focus up until this point. Skitch sighed, and effortlessly climbed down the ladder himself. Skitch stood at the base of the rope ladder, holding it for him. Blinx called up at the window, 'Kevin, just come down, Skitch has the ladder. It's safe'. Blinx didn't properly process the lack of creaks on the second ship until that point. this realisation added to his feeling of dread. Kevin, looking out at the window, sighed to himself in an attempt to rationalise his safety at his team's hands. He approached the window, crouched down to grab the window sill, and slid his feet onto the first rung down.
The rung slipped off the bottom of his boots, and up the back of his legs. Kevin's hands slid from the sill, sending the sweeper into around a five metre freefall, plummeting into a faceplant onto the decking of the ship below. this impact broke through the floor and dragged the surrounding floorboards into the ship's wreckage, pulling Skitch inside the chaos.
Skitch landed on the first floor below, falling on his stomach, the piece of decking that supported him was shaped like a surf board; leaving his head and arms to dangle off the sides. Kevin fell a further two floors before coming to a stop. The planks and boards piling on top of him. On the deck of the ship, Blinx and Skye ran over to the freshly punched hole in the floor, nervously peeking over the edge. Blinx called out to the two of them. Skitch weakly pulled a thumbs up, and Kevin pushed the planks off of him, hacking from the fibres and dust that filled the air around him. 'You two need a rewind down there?' Blinx asked.
Skitch groaned; and Kevin, once he stopped coughing, looked up at Blinx. 'We should be okay, we might even find something down here.' He finally responded. Pulling his glasses from the rubble and setting them on his head. The glasses had stayed in good condition after the fall. Blinx skeptically let them be, motioning Skye to continue with him. Skye hesitated. She blew Kevin a kiss, and anxiously followed Blinx. Kevin responded in kind.
'So, Skitch. Got any plans?' Kevin asked, almost with an air of helplessness. Skitch struggled himself to his feet, before pulling out his weapon of choice, his sweeper.
Skitch's sweeper, the TS 4000 by nomenclature, was a deep blue, circular device. Roughly the diameter of the whole of his back, with a large, inset clock face that had a star as the clock hands. Clasping the handle on the sweeper body with his right hand, and the nozzle on his left, He pointed it down to the floor near Kevin, and fired it; the activating beep echoing through the gorge. Extending from the sweeper was a long wooden ladder, neatly arranged in the sweeper so that deploying it would make it exit the sweeper long-ways. The ladder crashed into the loose planks below, stretching up the couple of floors' gap, sitting nicely against the floor Skitch was stood upon, with about a foot of height in ladder to spare. Kevin ran his eyes up and down the length of the ladder, before grasping the sides, and starting to climb.
Blinx and Skye kept to their route on the top of the ship, making their way once again to the rear. The two noticed an ice bridge that crossed to gorge's valley. The other side of the bridge led to a crevice that lied under the path that Roland's team was traversing.
It was at this point, Blinx noticed Roland's team, they had just crossed over the top of the cavern that the bridge led to, none the wiser to it. Roland clambered his way up a ledge, leading to a plank that took its path onto another ship; crossplaned, with the middle exposed to the gorge. One by one, Roland pulled his team up the ledge. The last one, the white, scarred sweeper, batting away his help, climbing up on his own. Roland looked out to the gorge, locking eyes with Blinx once more. He pulled a flirtatious smile and winked.
After rolling his eyes in response, Blinx continued to scan his surroundings, to see any other routes that may present themselves. He gaze fixed on a crow's nest that jut out of the tall ice sheet. In particular, the top of the mast that had stuck out of the nest. There, Blinx saw a dark figure, crouching down, using both legs and one of its arms to balance. Skye asked Blinx what he was staring at, Blinx responded by summing it up as a gargoyle, but something wouldn't sit right with him about it. Blinx kept his eye on the gargoyle to see if it might move.
Inside the bowels of the ship, Kevin pulled himself off of the ladder and into the room with Skitch. Skitch swept the ladder back up, before running his own brief examination on Kevin. Kevin gave simple brush offs to Skitch's worry, instead turning his focus onto the room itself.
The room was wide and vast, stretching the width of half of the ship, with the ice wall coming a half foot in from the ship's original wooden walls. The other wall was decorated with a set of gun ports along the length of the room, each armed with a black cannon, seized from the constant moisture. Inside the room stood a door on the far wall from Skitch and Kevin, and two pressure plates on the floor a good distance away, much closer to the hole Kevin created. Kevin and Skitch looked at the plates, and then the door. 'Looks like a Record puzzle here.' Skitch deduced.
'Great.' Kevin pluckily responded, shortly before he followed it with, 'I don't have a Record.' He commited himself to thought for a second. An idea reached his mind, jolting his body as if it came like an electric shock. Kevin pulled out his own sweeper, designsted the TS 3000 S.
Kevin's sweeper design was reminiscent of a 'V' shaped guitar, and had an orange clock face of its own, although much smaller relative to the sweeper body compared to Skitch's sweeper. Kevin checked it over for a second. 'It does look like I have a pause control.' Kevin added. Skitch checked his own sweeper as a reaction to Kevin.
'Me too. Right. Stand over on that plate and we'll see how fast the closes.' Kevin planted himself on the plate closest to the ice wall. A loud, metallic click echoed across the room. The door, however, stayed motionless. After the click sounded; Skitch, joining Kevin, stood on the plate. Skitch's plate caused a second loud click, shortly followed by a slow, grinding noise from the door as it opened, rolling up along the ceiling. Skitch stepped forward off of the switch, and watched. The door stood for a second before it slid shut with force comparable to a guillotine. The slam into the floor rumbling the planks Skitch stood on.
Skitch took in a deep breath, and stepped on the plate once more. Letting the door slide open again. Both he and Kevin pulled their sweepers into their right hands, readying their controls. Skitch called out the countdown, the two slowly built their energy inside themselves as he did so. Skitch finished his countdown and called out 'Go!'.
The two sweepers activated their Pause controls and charged at full speed for the door. The control would expire with both sweepers still on the same side they started at, although they were close enough to risk the extra distance without help. Skitch found himself ahead of Kevin by only an arm's length. The door began to slide shut, both sweepers seemed to be coming short by a split second. Skitch's eyes widened, and he jumped forward to his knees, sliding over the threshold. His shins led perfectly flat, with the rest of his body almost folding neatly over them. His head managed to clear the door before it slammed shut. Skitch's feet pushed straight out in front of him, lying him flat on his back. Exhausted.
Attempting to climb to his feet, Skitch was met with a ripping sound and a small series of prickling pains across the tip of his ear. Looking at the seam where the door shut, he noticed bits of tanned fur jammed in the floor. The frigid air tingled Skitch as it finally accessed the freshly bare skin on the tip of his ear. Looking around the room he had just risked his safety to access, Skitch realised he was the only one who made it through. He called out for Kevin, turning to beat on the sliding door. Kevin responded to him, affirming to Skitch he was alright. The room Skitch found himself in was considerably smaller, with an empty gun port on the side hanging out of the ice, and a hallway completely filled in ice on the other. The floor was notably sparse, lacking any sign of gadgetry. 'Kevin, there isn't a switch on this side, you'll have to find another way through.'
Hearing this made Kevin groan a little. 'Alright, fine, I'll have a look about. And Skitch?' Kevin paused, making Skitch perk his ear up, 'Tell Skye I'm alright, I don't want her to worry.'. Skitch accepted Kevin's task, the words ringing through his head for a small while.
Skitch noticed the size of the gun port being just big enough for him to squeeze through. All Skitch needed was something to hoist him up and out of the inside of the ship.
He had thought of that earlier. His sweeper, rather than having its cargo space free to fill with swept objects to use in combat, Skitch dedicated three slots to items he deemed to be helpful. The first, the wooden ladder, was ejected, to allow Skitch to use the second. The ladder nearly stretched to the whole length of the room. He fired the second item at the wall, and with great force, a harpoon with a long length of rope departed from the sweeper nozzle. This was what Skitch was planning for. Skitch swept up the ladder once more, and walked towards the far wall.
The harpoon had been jammed far into the width of the wall, making Skitch unable to pull it out on his own, Skitch relented and started to sweep it back up again, from the far end of the rope. The long stretch of rope easily found itself swept up, taking up the slack. Once taut, the harpoon slowly started to budge, straining the sweeper. The whirring of the sweeper increased in pitch. This rarely happened to Skitch, he was not sure what would happen if the sweeper strained to breaking point. He tensed, and felt the harpoon give way. The harpoon entered the sweeper fast enough for Skitch to be knocked back, nearly off his feet with a painful grunt. With said harpoon now being the top of the pile, Skitch approached the gun port. He slung his head through, and using his left hand to grip, pulled his upper torso out aswell. His right hand, still holding the sweeper, slowly made its way through the gun port too. He rested the base of the sweeper on his chest, and pointed it to the ceiling, at a point the sat over the top of the ship. Skitch, once again, pulled the trigger.
The harpoon shot through the air behind Blinx and Skye. The rush of wind behind him made them jump. Both sweepers drew their weapons and pointed them to where the harpoon's rope slung over the ship. The two could see the rope pulsate in tension, culminating in a hand gripping the railing on the edge of the deck, followed by a second, then the hands pulled up who they were attached to. Skitch pulled himself from under the deck, and flopped over the rail. Both Blinx and Skye breathed a sigh of relief that they were safe. 'What did I miss?' Skitch asked, still slumped on the decking.
'Nothing too much, we don't think.' Blinx responded. 'We were trying to figure out if-' Blinx focused back on the mast the shadowed figure was perched on, to see it gone. All that was left behind was a blue ring of dust in the air where the figure once stood, expanding outwards. Blinx's eyes widened, scanning the surroundings. His eyes took to the ice bridge between the walls. His sight was met with the dark figure, sprinting toward the cave that the bridge led to. 'Quick, this way!' Blinx called out, springing into action. Skye and Skitch took a second to realise what was attracting Blinx's attention before giving chase themselves.
The ice bridge sounded off with the dull clumping of the three sweepers battering their feet against the floor. Skye laboured some speech between her strides, 'What happened to Kevin?'
'The door only let me through, he's trying to find another way. He said not to worry, he's fine.' Skitch assured, every other word broken by a sharp breath to keep himself at top speed.
The sweepers soon cleared the gap, making way into the icy tunnel. The three turned a sharp corner to find themselves met by the dark figure, stood at a dead end, next to a large lever. Catching their breath, Blinx, Skye and Skitch all looked at the tight tunnel walls around them. One side had a thin, transparent ice wall, with an assortment of spherical bombs on the other side. The other, a deep inlet the length of nearly the entire wall, with exception to the small area around the lever. Inside the inlet, laid three large cannon muzzles. In unison, all three sweepers looked from the cannons back to the figure standing next to the lever. Skye holding her hand behind her back, elbow still pressed against her side.
'On the bright side, at least Kevin can read our eulogies.' Said Skitch, drenched in a sudden rush of gallows humour.
'Oh that's just not fair.' Blinx groaned, independant of Skitch's statement.
The sound of three cannon blasts bellowed through the gorge.