Labyrinth

[raptorcanaria]

Here's the thing about Milliways: It's not the Real World. Dinah has a very clear delineation in her mind: there're things that happen in the bar, and there are things that happen at home, and even if people visit from one to the other, they're very different places.

Justice League, supervillains, Oliver. Those things don't follow her in. Which is good and bad, because it becomes a place to escape. And escape becomes too safe, somewhere where actual threats aren't real. That's the problem with the place. It's not home, and it doesn't touch home, and if she wanted, she could stay in the bar, rent a room, and never have to worry about outside. And that's what's so dangerous.

Not that she's thinking of danger right now, even deep in the forest where there might be demon rabbits. She's just thinking of the run, and the exercise, and also where she wants to take Ollie for dinner tonight. That's how she manages to get lost.

And how she finds herself facing a rough hewn stone wall, with a door cut into it.

Dinah stands in front of it, stretching out her warm muscles, staring at the door. Has that always been here?

Comments

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah hangs back in the doorway, watching him, reaching back for a bone as she does so.

He's about halfway down when something clicks - and the doorway Dinah's standing in starts to grow bricks again.

"Dammit!"

[boston_bruiser]

"What the - oh shit!"

Dinah looks like she's undecided whether she wants to stay in or out, and Voodoo's running on instinct and right now that instinct tells him -

- to get up, sprint to Dinah, and unceremoniously yank her inside.

[raptorcanaria]

"Hey!"

Dinah shakes her arm free of him, and gives him a firm look of disapproval.

"A simple 'come in' would have been enough. Now we're commited to forward."

Because the door, slow as it went, is now a stone wall.

And just as that happens, there's another pair of clicks from the long walls, and spikes start folding down in the bottom fifth.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo rolls his eyes. "Yeah, as opposed to what? Split up an' - synshlyukha chertovski derevne what the fuck is this shit?"

(Voodoo doesn't get to use Russian as often as he'd like to these days. A shame - it lends itself to cursing so well.)

"Dinah, if they covered any'a this bullshit in that fuckin' Holy Grail movie, now would be a real good time."

[raptorcanaria]

"Nope, we're officially in a different movie," Dinah says, rocking back on her heels to look up.

The entire bottom twenty feet of the long walls are now beginning to move forward, into the center, now patterned with two foot long spikes in a grid.

"For crying out loud," she raises her voice to no one in particular. "We were kidding about Indiana Jones!

"Alright - "

She turns and races towards one of the spiked walls, which is heading into the center, then turns and slides between the spikes, climbing them like a stretched out ladder.

" - Looks like we're moving up."

[boston_bruiser]

"We are? Well, shit, if it'll keep my good bits from gettin' spiked-"

Monkey see, monkey do, and it only takes seconds for this particular monkey to make like Dinah and start climbing.

Except he doesn't.

The pack on his back is too big, way too big, and the space between the spikes is too small - but the pack is holding all his gear, all his supplies, three day's worth of MREs and water -

"Aw, fuck it!" he hollers, undoing the straps and tossing it down before he starts racing to the top, gun slung across his chest.

(You ain't never seen climbing like this, son.)

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah stops as the pack falls, hanging by one of the top spikes. For a second it looks like she's going to drop down after it, but she thinks better of it, swinging herself up and onto the top of the moving part of the wall.

Then she offers a hand to Voodoo.

"What was in there?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Food, water, an E&E kit, some nav gear and medical supplies," Voodoo says, taking her hand and hauling himself onto the wall. "'bout all I brought 'cept my gun, my mags, and my compass."

[raptorcanaria]

"Ugh, that sucks."

Well, not as much as if he didn't have any ammunition left.

She turns away as the walls get close enough that the spikes are overlapping, just in time to see and hear the second section of the walls start to shift. This time the spaces between the moving parts are further apart, but instead of spikes, something round, narrow and hollow starts to move out of every hole.

Dinah realizes what they are just in time.

"Down!"

She actually wrestles him to the ground before she gets the word out, and the air above them cackles as lines of flame fill the space for three seconds.

And again, the walls start to creak inwards.

[boston_bruiser]

"Really? Fuckin' really?"

He rolls out from under Dinah, running to the wall, dropping to the deck as the pipes spit fire again.

"A soundtrack would be nice, you know!" he shouts to nobody in particular as he hops to his feet. "Common fuckin' courtesy to pipe in some John Williams when people're dodging your fuckin' death traps!"

The pipes spit fire again, and he drops to the deck -

- but he's too slow; the fire wings him, and soon there's an inferno blossoming on his sleeve.

"Shit! GodDAMMIT!"

[raptorcanaria]

"A soundtrack would make this fun," Dinah says, from the deck. "And we can't have that.

She's stayed down for the two fires, despite the impending death by crushing and when Voodoo drops beside her, she dives towards him.

"Voodoo! Are you okay?"

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo doesn't respond - more to the point he doesn't hear her, busy as he is patting out the nascent flame. For an oil fire, it dies fast, and he squeezes the affected arm. Pain jolts up his arm like a lance.

"Just a burn. No bone. I'll be fine."

He presses his head to the deck as the pipes spit fire again, then hops to his feet when they die out.

"C'mon, move!"

[raptorcanaria]

"Three seconds," though it's hard to hear her say that because she says it as the fire is spurting.

As soon as it is out, she rolls to her feet, grabs a pipe (and scowls because it's hot) and swings herself up, putting a foot on another one and rolling on to the next level.

When the fire spits again, she's above it.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo follows suit - he's not quite as lithe or acrobatic as Dinah, so it takes him a little while longer, but soon he's above the fire.

"What's next?" he hollers. "Ninjas? Pirates? Poison gas? Low-yield nuclear bombs?"

Someone doesn't know when to stop tempting fate.

[raptorcanaria]

Ye-ah, Dinah noticed that.

"Please let it be ninja," she mutters dryly, staying low. She nudges Voodoo in the foot now and indicates the narrow wall at the far end of the hall. At the top, she can now make out another triangle.

It's still way out of their reach, vertically and horizontally, but she starts to address the latter by running in that direction, along the still-moving floor.

[boston_bruiser]

And, you know, Voodoo'll follow suit, sprinting as best he can.

"If this don't net me a fedora an' a bullwhip by the end, me 'n whoever runs this place? We're gonna have words."

[raptorcanaria]

"Ask Mike."

Mike will totally do it.

As the floor they're on closes, Dinah stops and looks at the walls now starting to close.

There doesn't seem to be any fire coming out of the, but there's also no convenient handholds. Just one shallow groove running along one side at five feet, and on the opposite wall at fifteen.

[boston_bruiser]

"Okay, this one? This one's actually pretty well-designed."

He steps back.


"How high you think you can jump if I boost you?"

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah smiles, appreciating a man who appreciates a well designed death trap.

"With a running start, I could get the top one. Clearing it would be a push."

[boston_bruiser]

"Don't need you to clear it, just need you to reach it."

He positions himself close to the wall, making his hands into a stirrup as before. "Ready when you are."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah nods, and turns her back on him, just to jog to the other closing wall, spin and race at him.

As she approaches, she counts her steps:

"Three! Two!" On one she plants the ball of her foot into his stirrup and leaps up.

She easily grabs the uppermost ridge and jams her fingers in, pulling her feet up to the same ridge.

Oh, for a bat-grapple.

[boston_bruiser]

"How're you doin' up there?"

Not to pressure you, Dinah, but WALLS MAKING FOR SQUISHY-SQUISHY ACTION PRETTY DAMN FAST.

[raptorcanaria]

"Really wishing I was an acrobat, here," she says. But she manages to turn around, so she's facing downwards holding on by one hand and her feet, and nods towards the approaching opposite wall.

"Come join me."

[boston_bruiser]

"Up there? Me, an itty-bitty blanco niño?"

He shakes his head, grabs hold of the groove on the opposite wall, then sticks a foot in and jumps before sinking his tomahawk into the wall. The blade slips, and he turns, jumps to the opposite wall-

- and just barely grabs the groove.

"Okay," he says, scrambling into position, "what now, we wait for only half of us to get squished?"

[raptorcanaria]

"No," Dinah says, reaching out across the gap, towards him.

"Now I complain loudly about hos you need to go on a diet and shed that bulk, machoman."

In other words - grab her hand and do it now.