Luminary Institute

89: Scaring One’s Pants Off

Ryker and Electra ended up joining their group’s impromptu meal. As they all crowded around and scarfed down their meals, their fatigue seemed to heal as energy flowed back into the group. A simple meal could do a lot. 

The space between the walls seemed to open up, the light seemed less harsh and more inviting, the air felt fresher, and the atmosphere created by the wreckages felt shifted from dystopian to a more light-hearted mystery.

Nyssa fidgeted with the corners of her now-empty paper plate. Laying between Celeste’s arms, she listened in on the conversation bouncing back and forth between the others while folding the plate’s edge into a spazzy, spiked pattern. 

“We saw this CRAZY robot looking thing. Scared my pants off! I almost took a dump right then and there. It had like twenty legs, but was just hanging from the ceiling completely destroyed. Like how someone might display a trophy!” 

“Woah...” “Really?” “That’s absolutely wild, not gonna lie.” 

“We haven’t seen anything at all. It’s just kinda been electronics the whole way down. The lighting’s been oppressive to say the least. Nice and relaxing, but a bit boring. I was expecting to fight stuff. There’s been nothing that even has had the chance of getting my heart moving. Unless you count the possibility of getting an unintentional defibrillation from wires hanging on the ground.” 

“That’s literally just hanging out with Electra.” 

“Right? That’s why we haven’t been particularly stimulated during this exploration. It’s not like we got to take any fancy photos like you all have.” 

“Well, there’s always the next levels down, it’s probably like a dungeon, right? With any place like this, it must be that the lower levels have more security, information, and... stuff due to their... you know. Increased awesomeness.” 

“What an amazing explanation from our upperclassman right here! Everyone clap!” 

Nyssa hopped in on the round of applause to congratulate Ryker for his eloquent speech. As a friend group, they kept clapping for a couple minutes straight until Ryker’s annoyance overflowed and blew up the doorway behind them—literally. 

Once the smoke cleared, a moment of silence filled the air. One-by-one, people began clearing their throats and packing up. The meals got shuffled back to packs as everyone feigned ignorance towards the new excavation they had just performed. 

“Do you all want to travel together down through the lower floors though? It’ll be more fun as a group,” Electra flexed her arm with a smile as she tried to rally everyone together. “It’ll be a little more high energy too!” 

“Won’t it be too crowded?” Albion pushed himself off the ground with a faint groan. He moved his legs around while rubbing his hip flexors and rolled his shoulders around. Opening his hand towards the ceiling, he flexed his fingers a few times while letting ice flow from his fingertips. “I’m ready to go whenever though.” 

“I’m also down to head out right now, but I’m also willing to come in a group,” Titus did a couple squats while slinging the bag over his back. “Albion it won’t be that crowded, especially if we split up through a room.” 

“... True, I guess I’m also down for the idea of going together,” Albion relented as everyone else followed up with their own murmurs of agreement. 

Electra, after a first pump of joy, did a five-part handshake with Titus. “I knew you’d support me, my good friend. My number one investor. I’ll make sure to give you fifty percent of the company's shares.” 

“Thanks, I guess?” Titus couldn’t quite make sense of Electra’s high energy babbling as they set off. As a group, they snaked their way downward into the lower floors, a little slower now as a group, but in high-spirits as people joked around and lightened the mood. At the same time, with the increasing danger in the lower floors, Angelica began descending to meet up with the students. 

“I got it!” Ryker called out, running forward and meeting the sparking automaton with one hand. It struggled in his hand, puncturing into his wrist and forearm before he detonated everything below his elbow to reduce it, along with its two buddies, into dust. “Huh, they’re really starting to come out now. What floor are we on?” 

“We just got past floor ten,” Electra checked her observation journal. “We started seeing automatons on floor eight. We ate on floor five.” 

“Thanks, thanks,” Ryker called out as he whirled around to destroy another sneaky automaton. “These are like... spiders but larger. Like baseball-sized spiders.” 

“Please don’t make that analogy,” Celeste scrunched up her face. She shot a couple laser beams out from her eyes to blow down the door on the opposite side of the room before looking towards Ryker’s area. “I’d rather not think of these as large spiders. It just makes it a worse mental image to fight...”

“What happens if you need to fight a spider in the future then?” Titus asked with a gentle smile, a faint light of curiosity dancing behind his eyes. “Would you end up fighting harder or be unable to fight as well? I’m kind of curious because this type of mentality is split among my younger siblings. Some of them would fight way harder, and others wouldn’t be able to move.” 

“I think I'd be frozen for the first couple seconds, but then the adrenaline would kick in and I’d fight a lot harder. Like my life, like every fiber of my being, depended on it,” Celeste shivered as they walked into the next room. This one, dark like the rest, seemed desolate though. Empty desks sat strewn around the room as chairs laid across the floor. Some were still upright, others were flipped like a child’s temper tantrum had just swept through the area, and others had been destroyed like an adult’s temper tantrum had just swept through the area. 

Click. Click. 

After everyone spent a minute snapping photos, they moved onto the next room without issue. Next room? Also desolate. Next room after? A branching path where one led to a custodian closet. 

Once they got to an actual branching path though, they paused until they heard footsteps coming up from behind them. Angelica, who had been communicating to them over the radio, arrived at last. 

She had walked through the dark without a light, and rubbed her eyes as she entered the area lit up by Celeste, Nyssa, Titus, and Electra. With the mix of colors, her face seemed dyed in orange, purple, and more. 

“So, since this place is going so deep, I thought it’d be better for me to be with you all. Don’t worry about me though, I’m just going to hang around the back,” Angelica shrugged. “Probably a little further away in all honesty, to let you all live and learn. You all getting hurt of course, isn’t out of the picture, but a mortal danger is far from what I’d expect.”

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