Who: The Kid and OTA
Where: The mines
When: The full course of the event.
Rating: PG/PG-13, monsters and violence
Summary: Catch-all Kid post for the event. He'll be popping up in other people's threads as well. Just please specify which day you want him for :3
The Story:


Day 1

He gives himself about five minutes to be startled and confused. It's been a very, very long time since he was even remotely underground, and the sudden onset of claustrophobia makes him twitchy. But this is an event, he knows. They were warned. He just wishes the warning had included the part about the mines.

The loss of his hammer hits him hard. He searches for it, turning up nothing but dust and stones, the occasional room or collapsing support strut. He tells himself it'll be back in the mansion when this event is back to normal; it has to be. The hammer is more than sentimental; it's the last real piece of Caelondia he has here.

With nothing better to do and no hammer, he sets out through the mines, grabbing a dusty packet of jerky as he goes. It's so quiet down here. He hopes he finds someone soon.


Day 2

The sound of the explosion sends him into a brief panic. He's been getting tenser and tenser as the hours pass, as the mines stretch on with no end in sight, and the idea of the mine collapsing, of being trapped in an even smaller space, of running out of air--

No.

He focuses. Common sense tell him not to go toward the explosion, but it's the first change to this place in days and that has to mean something. He feels a rush of relief when he finds more tunnels, more open spaces.

Then come the monsters.

He finds himself a pickaxe.


Day 3

Hunger has set in. He's out of jerky by now and hasn't found any since that first packet. The air has gotten colder, closer, and the monsters are relentless. He hasn't slept.

It feels like he's going deeper and deeper underground and wonders if he should turn back. There has to be an exit, right? There has to be a way back to the surface.

Every path just leads him deeper. He's shivering. There's ice on the walls now, a lake. He searches for a blanket and, like always, finds nothing.

He sees something enormous slide away down an adjacent shaft and shivers again.


Day 4

Could I have stopped the Calamity?

The first time he thinks it, he dismisses it as passing fancy. His mind has been playing tricks on him all the while. Starvation, cold, claustrophobia, lack of sleep; it's a wonder he's still moving at all.

But gradually the thought starts haunting him. Could I have stopped the Calamity? A few events back he learned what would have happened if he had done as Rucks had asked; if he had chosen to Restore Caelondia, gone back, did the whole thing over. He knows the truth now. The whole thing would repeat, the Calamity would happen again, and everything he had learned before would be lost. A vicious circle, one he wonders if he has repeated before.

But what if there had been a way? What if they had just done it all wrong before? Maybe there was some way to go back and remember, remember everything and be able to warn people, find Zia's father and stop him.

Could I have stopped the Calamity?

Soon he finds a door.


Day 5

He finds himself missing the monsters. The silence is back, and it's driving him mad. All he has is his thoughts and his terror at being trapped underground, visible now that there's no one around to see it.

There's nowhere left to go, and he doesn't have the strength to go far anyway. There's a room with some kind of incinerator, and that door. He doesn't trust the door. He put his hand to its surface and another thought occurred to him--that this was all too easy. That there's just going to be another monster waiting on the other side, one he can't fight. That the answer doesn't really matter now.

He slumps against the door, slides to the ground and listens to the fading static on the radio. He feels like the only person left in the world. He hasn't felt this lonely since he first woke up and saw what had become of the Walls.

He closes his eyes and waits for whatever end is coming.