tampered | (no subject)

[The Underground has shifted.

The Underground has rearranged itself and has made way for a new chamber: dark and humid as any cave or grave or hollow, with walls alive with electric colors of paint in sour greens and jarring yellows and shrieking reds and all other piercing colors offensive to nature and splashed or shattered or stabbed onto the walls at angles and fractured points. Look carefully among those corners and jagged letters, and see words that may yet be familiar--words of poets and philosophers alike.

Come, Seeker, and pass through the narrow door, under the low lintel, and see what shelters in this cleft of concrete and heaved-up Underground, who has decked a chamber in broken glass and broken pipes, who lights the perpetual Underground night with flickering fluorescence and with sparks.

They are nimble, yet they are made of iron. They are mechanical, yet they are oiled in blood. They will hear and answer five questions from you and they would ask and hear five answers from you alike.

Mind their riddles and mind their claws (for their claws are words as much as they are iron).

A ward will bar the way, Intruder, if more than one should dare to enter at a time. The way is shut to you. And you shall neither see nor hear nor understand that which transpires between the Seeker and the Sphinxes.

Who Seeks?]

[ooc: For those players who volunteered their characters for an "interview" here, here is a log where your character can speak to the sphinxes. Feel free to do it in long form or action tags, as you please. But be prepared: the sphinxes can be merciless--! Good luck...]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Still and still we are the waiting ones. You have arrived."

Nails click and clack as it rolls onto its stomach. "Ask and we ask. Answer for answer."

Ask and we ask. Answer for answer - crap.

Well, Billy's played that game. Well okay he hasn't in real life, early freeform MMORPs done in basic chatrooms probably don't count as real life, but he's been in a similar situation with his first RP character, Gonzo the Swift (look no one is really intelligent at the age of twelve) so he knows, theoretically, how this kind of thing works.

Man he better make the questions good. Ease up on the snappy comebacks he tells himself, as if that'll help.

"Are you going to hurt anyone?"

Okay basic, to the point, and more importantly, something he can actually do something about.

It stops to stare for the longest moment, unblinking even in the sharp tilt of its head.

"I don't plan to." Its tongue crawls out to lick its blunted metal lips; an unnecessary gesture, no wetness forthcoming. "But it's not about anyone. It's always someone especial you don't want hurt. Who is it?"

Billy doesn't hesitate to answer. "Teddy." Teddy is the most important person, the one he can't hurt, who can't get hurt. He'll tear down the City walls if something happens to him.

"Why are you here?"