xp_logs | Tower of Babble: On the Scene

Amanda, Marie-Ange and Wanda venture into the ruins to get an idea of what the heck is going on. It's too bad it isn't quite as easy as "Crawl around in the underground tunnels with flashlights." Trap-filled ancient ruins that might be the source of a major communication breakdown are the pits.

The entrance to the ruins was still protected by the traps and plastic sheeting that the archaeologists had put up to keep their studying safe from the elements. Despite the language breakdown, they'd managed to keep it mostly maintained, even if they'd gotten no other work done at all. The small pits and digs were dusted with sand, the plastic and canvas was flapping loose in the desert wind, but the ladders were still tied securely to the entrance of the ruins, and when Wanda flipped the switch, the strung lights in their plastic and metal 'safety covers' turned on, lighting the way down to the entrance.

Not being able to talk coherently and have Amanda or Wanda make any sense of it didn't stop Marie-Ange from a continual muttering under her breath about exactly what she was going to do to whoever or whatever was exactly responsible for the situation as she climbed down the ladder. She understood what she was saying, and given her choice of language, perhaps it was best that no one else did.

Wanda waited until Marie-Ange had made it all the way down and a little out from the ladder before swinging herself over and then down. Already, she was frustrated by their inability to communicate beyond overblown gestures of grand proportion (Doug's idea, actually, and one that helped ease tensions a little bit). She couldn't even begin to imagine what it would have felt like being stuck in the situation like the others, especially considering the problems in that area.

Shaking her head, she reached the bottom and then moved out of the way for Amanda's decent. In the end, they would just have to trust each other, words or no, and if they had achieved anything working together for so long, trust was it.

The witch climbed down a little more slowly and carefully than the other two - there wasn't a hell of a lot of light down there, and old childhood issues were hard to break. Landing in the soft sand that hand collected at the ladder's base, she glanced around. Not much more than a hole in the ground, really, with a tunnel leading off into blackness. The air was heavy with dust, and the slight breeze from the tunnel's mouth was chill. Amanda shivered, and raised her eyebrows questioningly at Wanda.

It would have taken Wanda some time to figure the look out but she'd been thinking the same thing. With the lights from the dig site only going so far, it was going to get even darker soon. And while Amanda did have a light spell--everyone loved George--it took far less energy for the older woman to turn on her powers. A second later and the red glow was casting a slightly eerie light on the trio. But it was far better than nothing.

A look at the other two and then she took lead, the light illuminating the tunnel in front of them.

Until and unless they needed them, the flashlights were staying in her backpack. Even with the long-life batteries, who knew what was going on down here, and they'd agreed that all of them might need their hands free. But Marie-Ange clutched the straps of her backpack nervously anyway. The red light of Wanda's powers was unsettling, especially in the ruins. She looked around at the remains of stone walls and shivered. Cold, dim and lonely, even with Amanda and Wanda right there.

The problem with sites like this was that even with a light source it was hard to see everything at one time unless you illuminated the entire area with flood lights. And sadly, they had none on them and as they went deeper, it was clear to Wanda they had passed the point the dig team had been forced to stop at. The lights stopped a few feet back along with any signs of tools.

The heavy silence, broken only by their footsteps, was the only reason she suddenly heard the soft click as her foot stepped down. Immediately, Wanda started to scramble back, hastily lifting her foot from the pressure plate. But her other foot was suddenly skidding downward in a shower of rocks and dust as the floor gave way with a load groan that echoed against the walls. Twisting and throwing herself backwards only seemed to hasten gravity's work and Wanda threw out her hands in a desperate attempt to grab the edge of the sudden hole beneath her.

"Fuck!" Of course, only Amanda actually understood the word that burst out of her, but the intent was plain to anyone who knew her. Lunging forward, she grabbed desperately at Wanda's hands, the taller woman's weight yanking her off her feet and dragging her towards the pit on her belly. Desperately she dug her toes into the floor, Docs seeking purchase, but they both kept sliding down into the yawning chasm that was opening before them.

After she found the people responsible for them not being able to talk, she was going to find the people who built traps into perfectly good ruins and beat them to death with a fedora. Or perhaps a snake or two. Marie-Ange whipped one of the laminated cards she'd packed out of her sleeve and in a cascade of littlespluts , a chain of imps appeared, their normal lurid green and yellow skin painted shades of red and black. Wanda's hex-light had tinted everything, even the drawing that Marie-Ange used as a source. The imps latched onto Amanda's ankles and dug theirtaloned claws into the sand and heaved back, leaving streaks of goo on the ground and on Amanda's ankles.

There was slimy stuff on her legs where her boots ended, but at least she wasn't sliding to her messy death any more. Tightening her hold on Wanda's wrists, the Brit met her mentor's eyes and nodded.

'S all right. We've got you.

The ability to breathe came back in a rush when Wanda felt her and Amanda's descent stop with a jerk. Shooting the young woman a relieved small grin when she caught the look, she carefully sought purchase against the wall with her boots. It took a moment but she was able to kick a small notch in the dirt, enough to give her something to push off of. She glanced up and caught Amanda's eyes again, nodding back to her, tightening her grip around the witch's wrists.

She couldn't really tell Marie-Ange to start hauling... Amanda let out a sharp whistle, the sound echoing alarmingly loud off the walls of the pit, and began pulling as much as she could, hanging half-way over the mouth of the hole, ancient brickwork digging into her belly.

All she was waiting for was a sign - any sign - that they'd realized what she was doing, and Marie-Ange began pulling back, the heels of her boots digging into the ground. She pulled, the imps pulled, and between her and the half-dozen half-formed little image creatures, they hauled Amanda and Wanda back. An inch, and then another, and then a few more - the more they pulled back, the more the goo that the imps left on the ground helped to ease their way back.

With a grunt and a curse to herself, Wanda hooked an arm around Amanda's shoulders for the last heave and hauled herself up. With both knees on solid ground, she suddenly slipped and ended up in a heap on the ground. It was very odd that the ground was actually comfy and squishy...it took her a second to realize that it was Amanda was was laying on.

Groaning, she rolled a bit so that her head was still on the younger girls legs but she didn't feel like getting up just yet. One hand found Amanda's and squeezed a silent thank you and the other went to...Marie-Ange's ankle and did the same.

The air had wuffed out of her as Wanda landed on her. Amanda raised her head, face smeared with imp goo - the screwed up expression said it all. But, no time to worry about that - they had a job to do. She glanced at the pit now blocking their path, raising her eyebrows questioningly as she cocked her head in that direction.

Marie-Ange shrugged, wiping goo off her hands onto the back of her jeans and flipped the laminated card over. There wasn't anything on the back - it was utterly blank, but that's all she needed. Lying it on the ground, because ... well, she couldn't have explained it, even if she had been able to speak coherently, she concentrated again, and the plain back of the card spread itself out over the pit. Shiny and plastic and bright cherry red. She couldn't say "Move fast, the imps took a lot out of me and this is a very strange image to make." but she could send the last imp over first, scurrying as fast as it could move, and then do the same herself.

The image of the card felt like cheating. And under her feet, it felt like a waterbed. It rippled and waved and did not stay still, but it held, and did not dissolve under her own feet, and on the other side of the pit, she could concentrate more on it, holding it together mentally as much as she could.

Heaving herself to her feet, Wanda winced. She was bruised and scraped from the fall which meant it would hurt worse in the morning. But that was neither here or now. Shrugging off her backpack, she tossed it carefully to the other side of the pit. She was heavier than both the girls and the added weight of the bag would not help matters. Cautiously, she stepped on Marie-Ange's image, hiding a wince as she felt it move slightly beneath her feet.

Heights had never bothered her...however, trapped pits with who knew what in the bottom did. Not wanting to waste any time, Wanda managed to get to the other side, making a mental note to never, ever buy awaterbed.

Waiting until Wanda had reached the other side so as not to strain Marie-Ange over much, Amanda half-ran, half-scurried over the impromptu bridge. The slight give made her knees wobble somewhat, but she cleared the pit just as the image began to waver. Landing on the other side with a slight bump and a skid on the sandy floor, smeared with goo and dust, she gave the other two a bright smile and a thumbs up.

'Well, that was an adventure, wasn't it?'

Laughter came from Wanda when she saw Amanda and she leaned down to help her to her feet. They'd gotten through that trap just fine but now they had to go forward. The smile faded from her face as she turned to the darken tunnel. Someone with a lot of time on their hands had been through here and they were attempting to either kill intruders out right or scare them off. The hex-light around her hands flared brighter, illuminating their way again.

They were neither dead nor scared off and it was time to keep going.

Back at the camp, Doug is already hip-deep in conflict. The archaeologists and UN troops aren't getting along at all. Already high tempers rise, and Sofia steps in.

"If it hadn't been for you imbeciles, stirring up trouble, we wouldn't be in this position in the first place!"

"Stop jabbering at me you horrible little man! I can't understand a word you're saying!"

To anyone who wasn't Doug, the words were meaningless babble, but the raised voices were a clear indication that tempers were flaring in the desert heat. A small group of soldiers were confronting several of the archaeological team, getting more and more aggressive as the inability to communicate only fuelled the situation. One of the soldiers - the one who was speaking - was jabbing his finger emphatically at the lead scientist, a rather arrogant American by the name of Dr. Bryce. He wasn't taking the gesture well, and was shouting back just as much.

"Excuse me," Doug said quietly but firmly, interposing himself between the arguing pair and forcing them to back away from each other and face him. "Now, then, what seems to be the problem?" He held up a hand as both men began speaking simultaneously. "One at a time, please."

The soldier looked momentarily surprised, but soon recovered his ire. "This is all their fault!" he declared, pointing again at Dr. Bryce. "Who knows what they meddled with down there! I demand that they allow us to go down there and fix it!"

Doug rubbed his temple and shot a silencing glare at Dr. Bryce when he looked like he was about to jump in and start yelling again. "We don't know what caused the problem yet," Doug replied soothingly. "We have people looking at the dig already, please give them time to figure things out."

"'People'? What kind of people? More academics with no ability to cope in the real world?" The soldier stepped forward, that finger now waving in Doug's face. "I've been a soldier for twenty years, boy, I've been all over the world and seen more than you can imagine in your computer games! This situation calls for action, not somewishy washy bookish type tiptoeing around a 'historically significant site'! I want answers, and I want them now!"

That was all it took; a still pillar of white, Sofia struck out, catching the offending man's wrist and bending his hand back until the fingertips nearly brushed against the top of his forearm. She didn't bother to part her lips, as her narrowed eyes and the gritty wind that forcefully shoved him back wards said enough. The corner of her mouth raised as she turned around, facing only Doug now, and circled around like a large jungle cat back to his side.

"Why thank you, Sofia," Doug said with a smile and slight bow. He still wasn't sure why she had appointed herself his bodyguard, but he was grateful for the help. "Now then," he addressed the soldier, "as I said, we have a team investigating the ruins right now. They are very competent, and I'm sure they have everything under control."

Still in the ruins, the trio journeys on, finding that the ruins are extensive, and well-guarded. Rocks fall, but no one dies. At least it isn't snakes.

The fact that when Wanda had packed one of the backpacks, she'd included wet-naps and cotton swabs made Marie-Ange laugh, even ten minutes later -after- they'd gotten all the sand and goo and especially the sand/goo mix off their skin. Either Wanda had anticipated the need to clean up, or the need to get sand out of places that sand ought to never be. But either way, the mix of thoughtfulness and absurdity was just what she'd needed to break the sullen grumbling that she had been doing.

The further they went, the more they realized the ruins were more extensive then they'd realized, stone walls and the crumbling foundations buried under the sand and rock. It wasn't a tomb, or a religious site. It was a small town, or at least, the last remains of one. With Wanda lighting the way, the walls that could be seen peering our of the packed sand and rock looked positively hellish, and few, if any details could be made out.

The archaeologists were going to have a field day. If all this got finally sorted out.

It was amazing that this had gone on undiscovered for so long. Wanda scowled briefly. That might have been thanks to whoever set the trap back there. Traps, she thought, with an s. It had been slow going since the pit as she'd insisted on taking more time to look for things similar. They'd found two switches to God only knew what and had thus far managed to avoid them.

Agatha had told her about ancient traps they sometimes found on sites but this was more along the lines out of something like The Mummy, more modern. But the other benefit of having her powers overlay her mind's eye was that she could keep an eye out that way. It was impossible to spot everything, regular sight or chaotic sight, but it was better than nothing. Luck had been on their side.

Bringing up the rear, Amanda was also keeping her eyes open. And staying as close as she could to Wanda's hexlight - this place was spooky. It also reeked of age, setting off odd little echoes in her mutant power, not so much energy as memories of energy? What you'd expect from a place that hadn't been disturbed for... Then something caught Amanda's eye, and she stopped, peering at the wall. Of course, Wanda's progress meant the light went away, so Amanda summoned George, who was the smoky yellow of oil lamps down here, and rather sluggish to boot. But the light was enough for her to see that the ancient dust on the walls had been disturbed, a broad swathe of clear stone about the heightsomeone's shoulder would be, if you were taller than Wanda. A brief exclamation caught the attention of the other two, and she gestured for them to come see.

Amanda's frantic gestures were as broad and unspecific as everything else they'd be able to do. "Follow me." "Help!" "You are about to be eaten by a grue." Marie-Ange wasn't sure what a grue was, exactly, either. Doug hadn't said. As Marie-Ange followed behind Wanda, it became obvious to her that Amanda wasn't hurt, and wasn't upset. Just concerned, and pointing at the wall, with George hovering just next to it.

No dust. Which meant someone had been here before, and recently enough that no new dust had time to settle. It was almost a relief to know that they were on the right path. Wherever the thing that was affecting everyone was, someone -must- had triggered it. And if their Someone Else could get in, so could they. Pointing at the wall, Marie-Ange frowned and shook her head, and punched her open hand and stomped her foot a little. Whoever set this thing off was going to get a piece of her wrath, even if it was just a little one. She pointed down the path they'd been taking and huffed a little, indicating that they should move on, and then set off, going a few yards down the path.

She didn't go too far, not far enough to get out of the range of Wanda's hexlights. She had just wanted to indicate that they needed to keep moving, find the person who had been there before them, deal with whatever was going on, and then get out of there. In hindsight, Marie-Ange realized she really could have afforded to be more patient - especially when she hit something with her ankle and went stumbling to the ground, throwing her arms out to break her fall, and yelping in pain as she banged both knees on the ground.

Wanda winced and stepped forward to help when she stopped dead in her tracks, eyes narrowing when she spotted what had been the cause of Marie-Ange's tumble. A broken piece of wire glinted dully in the red light she was casting down on it, now slack on floor instead of where it had been taut between the two walls. Another trap, but what...?

When the ground rumbled beneath, and the floors around, them Wanda nearly found herself on the ground next to her teammate. Grabbing onto the wall, she cursed and then cursed again at the waste of cursing when no one understood you. No hole was opening up underneath them, so that was a start. So what...a small piece of rubble suddenly bounced off Wanda's hair and she forced herself to look up. And cursed again as she watched the wall above them start to shake, pieces of it falling off.

There was a timeless moment where everything seemed to pause, dust puffing up around them. And then an entire section of the wall simply collapsed, a crucial supporting pillar having been nearly cut through and the wire placed just so, knocking out the last of the stone. A mass of ancient stone and brick, with the added weight of sand behind it, came crashing down on the fallen pair.

Then there was the sharp noise of someone clapping their hands together and a shimmer of light that illuminated Amanda standing above them with her hands stretched in front of her, holding back the rubble with the fragile bubble of her shielding spell. The strain was clearly enormous - even as they realised what had happened, she dropped to one knee, head bowed with the effort and a small groan escaping her.

Wanda realized that there was too much pressure on the shield for Amanda to be to sustain it for very long and if it fell, they all would be either seriously injured or dead. Quickly she studied the strings, picking through them and discarding them in her mind until she found one that, while not perfect, was a little better than the rest. There was one section that had ashatterpoint that would give if enough pressure was added just so, hopefully starting a ripple effect that she couldn't see just yet and give them enough space to get out from under there alive.

A mental pluck and there was a new rumble as a piece of the wall that hadn't fallen suddenly loosened. Years of decay had weakened the hold it had to the ceiling and with the tampering done to the other parts of the wall, it suddenly gave way, falling sharply onto a point above them. A serious of cracks, groans and creaking could be heard as something snapped beneath the additional weight and the debris started to fall the rest of the way to the floor.

Marie-Ange gave a startled scream and covered her head with both hands as the debris fell around and on them. She tensed, anticipating the large stone blocks falling on top them, or worse, the entire thing just coming down and squishing them flat, and stayed tense until she realized that the only thing falling on the three of them was the smaller pieces of stone, chips and pebbles and dust and sand.

Once the rumbling stopped and all she could hear was tiny pinks, she opened her eyes carefully. There were pieces of the stone walls everywhere, and loose sand piled up around the collapsed rocks, but nothing bigger than an egg had landed close enough to the three women to touch them. She pulled herself to her feet, and crept carefully over to Amanda to offer her a hand up.

The witch was kneeling on the floor head down as she panted, trying to catch her breath again. That had been heavy. At Marie-Ange's touch on her shoulder, she looked up, giving her friend a wan smile and pointing to herself before giving a thumb's up. I'm okay.. Then she pointed at Marie-Ange and then Wanda, frowning a little. You?

Before answering, Marie-Ange reached back and took a bottle of water from her backpack, handing it out to Amanda. Then she covered her face with one hand and pointed at her feet, looking unmistakably sheepish. I feel stupid. They were all okay, but she knew sheshould've been more careful. Had Amanda and Wanda both not reacted so fast, they'd have all been at best, injured and most likely, crushed to death.

A hand fell on her shoulder and Wanda gave her a tired smile before squeezing and then letting go. She was pissed but not at Marie-Ange. Someone had come in here and destroyed the integrity of the site beyond simple grave robbing and pillaging. And she had no doubt in her mind that if the site team had come further down, they would have been killed. Senseless and appalling and someone at the end of it was going to pay.

Jerking her head, she indicated that they had to move on. They would rest soon enough--at this point, everyone needed to recharge and regroup--but she wanted to be well away from the wall and the trip wire. With the considerable size of the place, they could find a safe spot quickly enough.

Not everyone at the camp's tempers are up. Some of them are just melting down from the stress of not being able to communicate with anyone.

It felt like Doug had been chasing after inarticulate yelling since they had arrived in the camp, and this was no exception. The noise was coming from the very edge of the camp, so he simply followed the noise.

One of the younger archaeologists, a pretty dark-haired woman, was screaming at one of her colleagues, trying to pull away from him. He looked like he was attempting to restrain her, if gently, and the expression on his face as he talked futilely at her was torn between frustration and worry.

"Alyce, please, you need to stay here-"

"Leave me alone! Leave me alone, I need to get out!"

All the running was going to have him in fantastic shape, Doug mused as he pulled up to the pair, slightly out of breath. "What's wrong?" he asked concernedly. The woman seemed extremely agitated.

"Let me go, let me go-" She was sobbing hysterically, and the older man sighed and looked appealingly at Doug.

"She's panicking, and not listening."

"Alyce? Alyce, what's wrong?" Doug asked, having caught her name from her colleague's pleas. "If you tell me what's wrong, maybe I can help?"

She gasped, jerking back away as if shocked to hear someone speaking intelligibly to her. Then she threw herself at him, sobbing just as hysterically, even if there seemed to be more of an edge of relief to it this time.

"Shh, it's all right," Doug said, awkwardly petting the woman's back as she clung to him. He'd gotten the same reaction more than once. A person could only go so long, unable to understand the written or spoken word of anyone around them. "There are people working on fixing this. It'll be okay."

One bored DJ/Receptionist/Mutant Rights Activist plus one bored adjunct equals smoking, kvetching and bartering for souvenirs.

The adjunct finally put down his pen, and quit pretending to write while Mark sat across from him. He had shown Pete inside the inner flap, and then had returned to his own desk in the outer tent, waving Mark to a seat. He reached into his uniform blouse pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

"Smoke?" He said, his English heavily accented, but still understandable.

Just what the doctor called for, even in the oppressive, dry heat of the Middle Eastern desert. Mark graciously accepted the cigarette and a light. "Thank you," he said after taking a puff. "Bet you're having loads of fun out here."

"It is a," The man paused, searching for the word. "Boring. Yes, a boring posting. You are British, like your boss?" He said, setting his lighter back down on the desk beside his red beret.

"My father is." Mark reclined, trying to attain some degree of comfort in the metal fold-out chair. "Mister Lydon is an old chum of his, hence why I'm here." He offered the adjunct a wry smile as he raised the cigarette to his lips again. "I bet I'm having no more fun than you lot are. Just between you and me, of course."

"Ah." The man nodded and took a sip from the bottle of water beside him. "It is better than in the South. It is just as hot there, but the ground is wet. A swamp, yes? Many bugs and things. Hard to keep clean."

"I suppose it's better that the most exciting thing you do around these parts is read the news, when your alternative is shooting at uppity Syrians from your bunker, yeah?" Mark kept up his smile. A low level schmuck of a soldier would have at least one valuable nugget of information. That and cool hats.

"There is no shooting. That would be an incident. But the Syrians like to... test the border regularly. Like flies buzzing." He said, eying the man closely. After all, he'd never seen an American before. Unlike the colonel, he had not been educated outside of Iraq, coming from the mob outside of Tirkurt.

Mark was unfazed by the soldier's look. "I personally can't wait for this all to be sorted out. I've never seen a mess like this before, with everyone so up in arms. Even in America, clergymen are going wild about this."

"They will always talk. Even now, the Iranian imams are claiming that this all some hoax, as if nothing of Allah can exist in countries they war with. Faugh!" He threw up his hands. "I prefer more worldly concerns, like when I can stop having to guard a pile of old rocks."

"Amen." Mark raised his cigarette in a sort-of salute. "Speaking of worldly concerns, your hat there. Do they issue you more than one?" His free hand made its way down to his hip pocket where he kept his cash. An authentic Iraqi military beret would make a great addition to his already substantial hat collection.

"This is a Republican Guard field issue. It is, what is the word? Sacred to our corps." He looked left and right slyly, "and for forty American dollars, I can acquire a new one later."

"That's such a shame." And probably more than the soldier made in a month. Mark put his hand down on the table, the crumpled edges of a handful of bills showing in his closed fist. "It's really nice, too."

"Of course. A symbol, yes?" He said, pushing the hat across the table to him.

Both the green in Mark's hands and the beret were gone in seconds. "Certainly. And now I can share your pride, yes?"

With Amanda exhausted from her shield, the women rest for the night aside an underground river.

The path they were following had sloped downward at some point, not steep enough to cause concern but enough to make them realize they were going further underground and not in a straight path. As they rounded a slight curve, Wanda paused, head tilted slightly. The sound of running water reached them and she looked both concerned and intrigued. An underground river, perhaps? she thought, starting up again.

The noise was getting louder as they approached and Wanda felt slightly uneasy since the sounds of water were starting to mask any other sounds. Which mean that whoever was behind the traps, and possibly the entire situation, might be somewhere close by. On guard, she forced them to slow down, keeping a sharp eye out for traps and footfalls.

Since the tripwire, Marie-Ange had put out one of her imps walking ahead of the group. It skipped and bobbed along, hopefully too light to set off any more traps, but solid enough that if it caught up on something, she would feel it. The imp moved with a excited gait that none of the three had - it was a product of the drawings that Marie-Ange used, and how nervous she felt.

Once they were past a long curved stone wall, with the sound of the rushing water even louder Marie-Ange sent the imp ahead further, stopping dead in her tracks when the imp went over a low wall, and disappeared with a 'plop'. She stared at the other two in confusion, shaking her head. Her sense of the imp had faded seconds after it disappeared, something her images rarely did unless she dismissed them. She shrugged, in exaggerated fashion and scratched her head, to indicate that she had -no- idea what had just happened.

Amanda was drooping with weariness, and could only manage a short sigh at what seemed to be a new and potentially dangerous obstacle. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep, and possibly see what energy, if any, she could drain from the place. And that required sitting down and concentrating.

Lifting her fingers to her mouth, Wanda followed Amanda's earlier lead and whistled sharply. When both the girls turn to look at her, she shrugged and tossed her pack onto the ground. They were all getting tired, and hungry, and it was past time for that break. With the wall far behind them, and an apparent river ahead of them, this would be the best place to stop. They had no idea what lay beyond it but two traps and a lot of walking later and none of them were prepared to face it.

And with the curving slope, they would even be able to build a fire without being seen. Though with all the noise the two traps had made... Wanda dismissed it for the time being. They could not do anything about that and it was a worry for the 'morning'.

Once she'd set down her backpack, and had eaten some of one of the MRE's they'd gotten from the camp, Marie-Ange crept up next to the low wall as silently as she could. Resting or not, she wanted to know what the heck had happened to her imp. Slowly, she poked her head up, and peered over it, breaking out into quiet laughter as soon as she saw what was below the wall.

Water. Pitch black, and she thought, not -very- deep. It couldn't be, not in the desert. There must have been some kind of underground spring or stream here, perhaps that had gotten buried by whatever had buried the ruins in the first place. She waved at Amanda and Wanda, and pointed down over the wall, making a drinking motion with her other hand, to try to indicate that the water they'd been hearing was -right here-. The imp must have gone off over the wall and right into the water. It made sense, it would've dissolved the ectoplasm that the image was made of as soon as it hit.

Amanda, curled up in a small, exhausted ball with her pack under her head, acknowledged Marie-Ange's find with a slight nod and a slow, weary blink. Water.Yay. Something to deal with later. Much later.

But at least they had plenty to drink.

Everyone is having a rotten night! Mark's souvenirs and bartering with the adjust comes back to haunt him. In the jail-shaped way. The bad Syrian jail shaped way.

Always with the filing. Mark sighed. Even on location and undercover, Pete had given him paperwork to do. Granted, this was blatantly illegal paperwork as opposed to paperwork of ambiguous legality that he was used to, so at least there was some change. Earbuds set firmly in his ears, he walked up to the UN camp and showed his ID badge to the guards, who let him in to return to the tent that he and Pete were sharing.

Which was currently being ramshackled by a contingent of non-UN soldiers. And judging by the hats they wore, not Iraqi, either. Mark gulped and pulled an earbud out as he walked up to the man who was apparently in charge of the search. "Um, may I help you, sir?"

"You are the Americans. The new ones here?" The Syrian officer said, looking at Mark and waving for his men to continue searching. He showed no concern at all about Mark's sudden appearance. "I am Captain Balquir, from the local border compound. We are inspecting your goods, to make sure you have brought nothing illegal or contraband into our borders. May I see your papers?"

Mark hastily stopped himself from informing Balquir that they'd already been inspected head to toe and back before they were allowed to set foot on Syrian soil, and then again before they were allowed into the UN compound. So he just smiled politely and fished through his satchel for the proper documentation, taking great care to keep the other less legal contents hidden from sight.

The captain put a hand on his shoulder. "Please wait. Sergeant! Take this man's satchel." Before Mark could protest, his bag was ripped from his hands, and the soldier reached in, pulling out the beret that he had purchased earlier in the day. "I thought that was what I saw. Where did you get this?"

"I bought it at a surplus store," Mark lied. "A good deal, too, or at least the guy told me. Only forty dollars." He hadn't paused his iPod, and with one earbud still in, he had enough stimulus to blast himself out of trouble should the need arise. But he bit down that impulse, too.

"You bought a Republican Guard beret at a surplus store. That is your story?" The Captain actually smiled. "I think we will need to verify this, including the rest of your identification." His smile didn't waver, but it certainly turned icy. One of the soldiers grabbed Mark by the upper arms and hustled him outside. "Get him in the jeep."

Too many people around, all of whom could easily identify him. No, Led Zeppelining his way out of this would be messy and ruin the entire mission. So he let himself be forced to the nearby jeep, but not without some resistance. "My boss is not going to like this," he warned. "You really ought to think twice."

"My boss is the government of Syria, on who's land you are on. Your 'boss' has a lot of questions to answer for us, as do you." The man patted Mark's arm almost affectionately. "But you must not worry. We will ask them many times, over and over. And every lie we find will get us closer to the truth. It will be painful, but we will be able to trust it after a few weeks."

"Oh wonderful. I look forward to it. Do you have HBO?" Mark was going to pay for that, but he didn't care. Pete would find him and bust him out. He could sleep easy with that knowledge. Nothing bad would happen, and this would just be another story to laugh over at Finnegan's.

Now why didn't that knowledge stop the shivers from racing up and down his spine?