hypervigilance (![]() ![]() @ 2012-04-22 22:37:00 |
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There were plenty of issues in the loosely categorized plan Hooch had suggested, which Moody was going to attempt. Journaling until she was blue in the face was all well and good when it was all the good she could do. Talking to the scientists wasn’t going to save anyone in Puritan-ville, so that made this plan the best one they had at the moment. Insurmountable hurdle number one meant Moody was leaving her castle of books in the library. Eight books had been open to various pages, now neatly and respectively put away. Her supplies were limited, and Moody wasn’t going to ruin any of them for nothing. It wasn’t her first time to the Beta block of the Beta-Kappa tower, if simply because Moody had explored everywhere one could easily go in this compound. It wasn’t red like Gamma or green like Kappa, but it was hard to judge a hotel by its hallways and common area, if any. And Moody couldn’t see into the damn rooms. That annoyed her – not as a voyeuristic hedonist or any shit like that – because that meant the scientists had modified her eye. Alpha was a big damn wall too. But the bigger issue was that she didn’t know her own limitations. Right, the door said Rolanda Hooch. Moody hadn’t asked how old Hooch was, but she had mentioned a flight suit. That nominated the Grindelwald area for most likely when; strangely that made the other woman younger than Moody, who had only been in nappies at the time. The door looked like a door. But Moody knew better than that. Anyone who didn’t want her looking into other quarters certainly didn’t want her entering those rooms either. It was impossible to feel subtle in a place run by people whose magic or other means were so advanced to take her unaware from her own time and world, but it was no reason to purposefully draw attention to herself. Spells to check for wards, traps, and family poltergeists were second nature to her – silently. She detected nothing. That was discomforting. Hooch apparently didn’t keep the good practice to always add one’s own wards, no matter what. For the simple sake of ruling out the obvious, Moody’s first attempt to open the door was the least complex: she took a hold of the doorknob and attempted to turn it until she heard or felt the latch open. She wasn’t so fortunate. Nor was she such a fool not to have attempted that before other lines of access. At the third time Moody attempted a spell, by that time a highly difficult and complex one, to open the door she had an audience: Mrs. Beta. “You wouldn’t be willing to open this door would you, ma’am?” Moody asked in a polite voice with the sarcasm kept out. Deadpan had its merits. But the young scientist – she didn’t look older than…twenty? – didn’t say a word in response. So far Gamma was the only one who lowered himself to talk with the creatures they studied that Moody had seen. Harry had mentioned speaking to the others, specifically at least Miss Omega, in regards to the children. She would have more questions for him about that after this activity. Her journal had been on the floor open, which revealed a note addressed to her. The scientist was standing right there! Bloody hell, if that’s how it was… Moody took a break to reply to the person ogling her. Was it so much better for her data than speaking? No matter how it went, at least she had begun to interact with another scientist. They weren’t the only ones who could collect data. The door remained a problem. Moody dropped the journal – still open to Beta’s page – on the floor as she considered it. If magic wasn’t going to work, there was always the good old method of brute force. Moody was shorter than most men, but she was plenty damn strong. Perhaps it would have gone differently if she hadn’t noticed another comment from Beta appearing on the page. Perhaps it would have been worse because she would have no idea what was coming. Either way, the door was no longer her problem. Her body was propelled through the air, swiftly as it met no resistance, but Hooch’s room flat out wasn’t there. In fact, no floor was on the same level as the door. Her eyes glanced down to see the large pit of wood and metal just before the first one snapped at her foot. Her eyes closed for minor protection of both normal and magical eye as the snapping surrounded her on all sides. Of course, Moody saw the whole thing because an eyelid was a pitiful barrier for her right eye. She estimated it to be thousands of mousetraps, muggle mousetraps, the metal hinge on a wooden base snapping shut with an immense amount of pressure. She was better protected than the average mouse – or even lab rat, from the scientists’ point of view – but that wasn’t enough to stop all damage. She grunted as she waited for the assault to stop. Each trap jumped as it snapped shut, triggering more of the traps around her. Her movements made those close to her bite into her limbs, back, torso, face, and hair. For so simple a device they delivered a remarkable amount of pain. Beta clearly had a far more active imagination when it came to such things than [Bellatrix] Lestrange ever would. This very trap told her more about Beta, and it was a price worth paying, even as she paid it. What she was left with – besides a few rogue, unsnapped traps – was the dilemma of the dimensions of a large…pit for lack of better word (the mouse traps obscured the view) and an exit far above her head. It was nothing worth whinging about. She had expected something for her troubles at the door, and she got them. The way up took longer than Moody would have preferred and involved more mousetraps on her fingers. They clung to her like kids suckling at a goat’s teat, if a goat were made of nothing but teats. At long last, her fingers found the edge of the doorway. With strength and a willingness to work through pain, Alastríona pulled herself up, first so that her head was level with the hall’s floor and second by pushing herself up so that her arms were above her hands and her waist level with them. Only then did she let herself lean forward onto the floor, her legs drawn up to secure her the rest of the way into the known part of the compound. Her right eye spun in all directions to ensure no one and nothing more was about to attack her. Standing, she didn’t bother to start peeling off mousetraps as she looked at Beta one last time, “You make good doors.” |