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When one ran in, they all ran in. Even with sound logic coming from one of the Mercury knights, Sarras couldn't blame any of them for rushing forward in an attempt to save whoever was in the next room. Whether it be Carolyn, or that old man hit in the head with the crochet mallet, or even Richard, Sarras couldn't blame any of them for ignoring Ankh's orders and rushing forward. He couldn't hold it against Piggy, because he was honestly going to do the same thing too.

When they rushed in, Sarras felt overwhelmed with a sense of clarity, and now it made sense. The rumbling in the walls, the vibrations, the whirling sounds that echoed throughout the level. Gears! Ridiculous amounts of gears! It was as though they were mice that fled inside a great grandfather clock, and Sarras wasn't the type to admit to being claustrophobic, but with the constant rotations and the grinding noise, he found himself resisting the urge to place his hands over his ears to stop the noise.

Or maybe that was the screams that came from the poor figure that was caught in the gears? It wasn't Richard, thankfully, but whoever it was... Sarras did NOT envy them. At all. Years of taking animal lives and processing his own game for meat and stuffing had steeled his stomach for such a gruesome discovery, but it was still enough to unnerve him for the moment. Ankh appeared to being taking control of the situation, but it wasn't enough for the person trapped in the gears.

Sarras looked around the room, obeying the order to stay put for the moment, and he looked for an off switch. There had to be something they could do! He twisted himself around, looking this away and that, and in doing so, he felt his hand brush against the metal rod at his waist. Maybe he could place it in one of the gears and stop them, long enough for them to pull the figure out and get the device?

"Hang on! I'm going to try and jam the gears with this rod!" Sarras shouted to the others, breaking formation and moving close to where the figure was. He didn't care if Ankh or others tried to stop him- they had to stop these gears before the person was crushed to death! Like hell he wanted to see death a second time in his tenure... He picked a gear close to the figure and sucked in a breath, pressing the rod in and hoping, praying that he didn't lose a hand or head from this.

Once she was in the other room and could see that the trapped figure was not, in fact, Tristan, Menae let out a loud sigh of relief. She was still shaking, because there was still some poor person trapped, but it wasn't her brother and that was a relief. He was still safe, at home.

"S-sorry," she said, quietly, to Ankh, "I thought I heard.." It was obvious what she thought she'd heard, so she fell silent, staring at the ground. Nothing she had would help - her "weapon" was a tiny clay statue, she had no useable magic, and she was pretty sure she couldn't reach down there.

So she had to watch the poor figure struggle, while other people tried to help.

She definitely shrieked in fear when the lights went out, even if she would deny it to her grave, and made a noise of horror when the poor figure slipped deeper into the machine, but she moved closer, examining it. Whoever that was had been trapped for some time and wasn't dead...

"I might be able to fit between the gears," she said, "and try to retrieve our poor new friend and the device?"

There was a brief moment that Sarras felt like a damn genius, and yet, just as quickly as he found some victory, fate was a cruel mistress and snatched it away! The gears had stopped, but the lights went out, letting him know exactly what was keeping the electricity going. Before he could let out a curse, the rod snapped, the lights went back on, just in time to see the figure and the device disappear into the gears!

"s**t!" Sarras snarled, too angry and stopping himself from reaching after him to grasp just how stupid of a move that was. If the others had turned on him and berated him, he wouldn't have blamed them and he'd have gladly taken the criticism for it. But now there was a bigger problem- WHY HADN'T HE GRABBED FOR THE DEVICE FIRST? "Dammit!"

Menae offered to go in after the figure, and it was just like Ankh to stop her. Smart move, too, but he knew that someone was going to have to go in. And he would have gladly volunteered, but he only needed a moment to look at the grinding gears to come to a sad realization. "God dammit, I'm too big to fit in there. Sonofabitch..."

Why the hell was he chosen to be a knight, he wondered to himself as he looked over their predicament. The figure, assuming it was someone and not just a puppet like Ankh suggested, was likely dead, and they really, really needed that device! They couldn't go back empty handed!

"Well, I'm out of bright ideas. Anyone else got somethin'?"

Burj Khalifa is pressing buttons on her remote control to try and control the machine!

"Wait!" Burj Khalifa cried out in a sudden burst of focus. "Wait. I found this remote control in the treasure pile a few rooms back. Maybe it can do something here." She pulled the remote control out of one of her pockets and started mashing buttons (particularly anything that looked like an arrow) to try and control the machine. "Come on, come on, one of these has to do something..."

Menae was not expecting to be physically stopped on her way to the machine, and she looked over at Ankh, a little surprised. His vehemence came as something of a shock - he barely knew her, why bother worrying so much? But he was physically blocking her, and she was small and did not particularly want to kick him in the shins or something jsut for a chance to go machine-diving.

"I don't...think it's fair to act as if that creature has no value just because it isn't traditionally alive," she said, "because even if it is a homunculus, it can cry and scream, can clearly feel pain and fear..." It reminded her of that game her brother loved, Mass Effect - Menae herself wasn't one for them, but she did like watching over his shoulder.

"Does this unit have a soul?"

In this case, she thought the answer might be yes.

She could have hugged the Uranus Page who actually got the machine to stop moving, so that when Ankh volunteered, he might have a chance of coming out alive.

"Please, be careful," she entreated the Pluto Page desperately. "And...and try to get him out, if you can." She would gender it. She would take it home and call it Legion, if she had to, because she wasn't leaving behind a creature in pain. Even if it was an AI.

As Falias followed the others in backtracking through Room 4, he heard a loud 'clunk' sound coming from somewhere. The sound was followed by the floor suddenly shaking "Did you hear that?" He asked, his query a general one as he briefly looked around, however when nothing further seemed to happen he continued moving, lengthening his stride when he realised that the main group had gotten a bit ahead of him.

He was one of the last ones into Room 2, but didn't really have time to appreciate his surroundings as the door suddenly slammed behind him.

He had a bad feeling about it, but there was nothing for it - it seemed the only way to go was forward.

And then the screams started up and they sounded like... "Eva..?" What the hell was his cousin doing here? He took a step forward and then another, the others momentarily forgotten . "Eva!" For chrissakes, his cousin was only eight - no nine - she'd turned back in March and still into princesses and animals and cute things.

The Pluto Page (Ankh) was saying something, so were some of the others, but Falias' mind was not on that, rather it was on the fact that if if he let something happen to his very cute and very young cousin then he'd never be able to look his mother or aunt in the eye again. "EVA!"

Only to skid to a halt in the next room because the figure - whoever or whatever it was - was most certainly not Eva. It was however most certainly caught and he gulped feeling suddenly queasy, the device piece momentarily forgotten as he stared at the screaming figure.

For once the Pluto Page issuing orders didn't bug at him, the tone which had seemed so grating earlier something of a relief as the other kept his head. The red-haired page (Sarras) wasn't idle either as he jammed a rod into the gears. Did he hold his breath? Maybe he did, but it seemed to be working - the device was pausing as the lights flickered. Falias moved forwards in an attempt to try and help get the figure free...

He didn't make it, the pause that of just a moment, before the rod snapped and the figure was yanked into the machine. "s**t!"

He was with Ankh when the older Page shot down first the little Mercury Page's (Menae) suggestion that she try crawling into the machine after the figure and he was equally against the stick wielding Page's (Hogwarts) suggestion to give it a try. They were kids both of them - no way was he going to watch as kids crawled into a potential deathtrap machine - no make that a veritable deathtrap machine.

Although loathe as he was to admit it, it was looking more and more likely that someone was going to have to go in there and like the the red-haired Page, Falias was doubtful that he would even fit, although he was willing to give it a try - after all better him than the kids.

When the Pluto Page volunteered to be the one to go and asked one of them to hold the rope, Falias stepped forward. "I'll hold it" he said. He looked at the red-haired page (Sarras) who had also volunteered and then back and amended it to "One of us will hold it and between us, we should be able to pull you back if we need to." He fished out the hook thing that he'd picked up from Room 4 and held it out to the Pluto Page as he added "Here, not sure if it'll be of any use, but I picked it up from one of the rooms."

Then before it could sink in that Pluto Page had just dubbed him the 'in charge person' whilst he was gone, the Uranus Page (Burj Khalifa) spoke up and mentioned finding a remote from one of the rooms before starting to fiddle with the buttons and despite it was a long shot and part of Falias knowing that it was a long shot, he couldn't help but hope that it would be that simple and the remote would solve their problems.

It certainly did something - as after a bit of button mashing the machine finally slowed to a stop and the lights once again went out. There was something about it that niggled at a part of him, but Falias put it aside at the sound of sobbing, suggesting that maybe the figure was still alive somewhere in there.

A voice in the darkness spoke up (Pigfarts), suggesting that they turn the machine on and Falias shook his head, before realising that they were unlikely to see the gesture down to the darkness. "I think if we're going to get into that thing then we need to do it whilst it's off. Although I agree that doing in the dark is not a good idea." In fact it'd be plain crazy his mind supplied. "Did anyone pick up a light source from earlier? Or has any magic that makes light?" The last was another longshot, but from the feel of the auras he knew that he wasn't the only Squire amongst them.

ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS, ONCE MORE.

Good news: the machine was off.

Bad news: the machine seemed to be what was powering the whole place. The lights were also off.

And no one was coming forward with any lights.

Well, a powered-down machine remained better than a powered-up one, dark or no dark -- and if the whole facility was without power, that meant other advantages.

Ankh powered down to his civilian form briefly, fumbling in his back pocket for his housekeys. He located them, then set them and his wallet both on the ground, along with the worn gold band -- its metal scratched and flaked to a dull smoothness -- that he'd worn on his left ring finger for the past twenty-five years.

He powered up again, then reached for his keys, fumbling in the dark till he found what he needed. It was a little flashlight, the kind you had to push down on in back to light up, mostly meant for helping you find the keyhole on your car door at night. It lit a tiny circle of space at a time.

Ankh pointed it first downward, to the place on the floor where he'd left his other personal effects.

"Listen up. This is my wallet. It has my name and home address in it. It also has fifty bucks and two credit cards in it. If I come back and find it does not have fifty bucks and two credit cards in it, it better be because you used the two credit cards to MacGuyver me out of that machine and used the fifty bucks to blow your sniffly noses on because you were so goddamned worried about me.

"This," he said, directing the beam a few inches over, "is my wedding ring. You take it to the address in my wallet and you give it to my wife Carolyn. You tell her I love her very much," Ankh said, still rattling everything off like a school instructor on the first day of class.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen," he said, pointing the beam up at the archway, "is where we came in. Mercury and Mars, while the power's off, go in there and see if you can't get that door open -- then shove one of those goddamned tables in it so it can't close again if we get the power back."

Was that it? That was probably it. He'd already put one of the adults in charge, the Earth knight. The other one was holding the magneted end of the rope that was tied around his waist.

"Alright, kids," he said, turning back and walking toward the gap in the machinery with grim determination, "Keep an eye on each other."

He held up the little flashlight, its tiny beam just barely illuminating the space ahead, then began maneuvering himself into the space between the gears as quickly as he could.

"Hold out the device to me," he called outward to the being in the darkness, "and I'll pull you out."