The Ranch

Salty Smack Talk (3)

Sherlock flips through the books on the bookshelf. Pierre opens the drawers around the room. Lucien looks under desks and on the surfaces of the walls and furniture. Kai moves objects around and inspects them. They find hidden objects here and there, collecting it all into a pile on the desk.

"Burned alive my molten fragments of rock and ash, perpetually frozen in time for all of eternity....fate can be cruel." Kai comments in a pitiful tone.

"I don't think we're in a position to pity." Lucien mumbles.

"Bad luck, I call it. Wrong place, wrong time. But yeah, I wouldn't want to be immortalized forever as some event in history to be studied by historians and scientists for free." Pierre shrugs.

"But the encapsulation of the bodies is pretty interesting." Sherlock adds.

Pierre looks at him with a weird expression,"Yeah it's exactly your kind I don't want my fossilized body touched by. You and your grubby hands."

"...grubby." Sherlock looks at his pre-teen sized hands.

"Yeah Sher, it's called consent." Kai jokes.

"Consent...they're dead..." Sherlock mumbles questioningly, his voice low due to being outnumbered.

While roaming around, Abel finds a framed photo of a marketplace. He takes the photo down to take the photo out of frame, but spots something on the wall behind it. A small area of wallpaper is bumpy and unnatural looking. He rips away the wallpaper to find a letter cryptex embedded into the wall. There's ten turners on the lock.

He glances at the photo once more. A picture of a mountain. "Yes I think so too." He says to himself. He turns to Kai," What was the name of the volcano?"

"Mt. Vesuvius." He answers before returning to his search.

Abel scrolls through the different letters, finally setting it as [MTVESUVIUS]. A panel in the wall swings open, behind lay a walkie-talkie, or at least a version of it.

"Over hear." Abels voice is quiet, but is heard well in the soundproof room.

The others bunch together to look at the voice transmitter. Sherlock's the first to speak up, " Is there some code word we have to say?"

"Well, we won't know unless we try it first." Kai shrugs. He doubts they only have one chance.

"Then, shall we?" Pierre picks it up and turns it on. "Hello? Over."

"Why'd you say "over"?" Lucien wonders.

Pierre shrugs,"Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

A voice comes through very clearly,"Hello?....over?"

"See." Fully aware that the person on the other side was hesitant in saying the last part and probably said it because he did, Pierre bluffs his way through.

Ignoring Pierre's misplaced pride, Kai takes the walkie-talkie," To whom might we be speaking to, over." He gives Pierre a smirk while Sherlock rolls his eyes.

With no static, an answer comes through," Team Funderburker. Why? Who is this? ..over."

Kai glances between his groupmates, a devilish smile spreads across his face," Team Funderburker. Throughout the course of this game, you are allowed to ask me three questions. Whether it's helpful or not is up to you, over." Kai lets off the button and cackles.

Pierre looks at Kai questionably, "You really think they're gonna fall for that? They must have been double our age. There's no way adult would be that stu-"

"Naive." Sherlock cuts him off, pointing to one of the hidden cameras with his eyes. Pierre mouths a sign of understanding and stays quiet.

"Then we'll be holding onto them for now, over." The other side answers, excitement hidden in his voice.

"PFHH-BAHAHA." Pierre rolls onto his back and laughs aloud, his feet kicking the air. A camera catches the actions of the preteen.

The other members of Funderburker, look up at the screen from the balcony. The other teams glance at them, and they can feel their cheeks burning slightly.

"Creative, I'll give them that." Major Jax nods in approval.

"We've only had one other team find them, but they immediately gave themselves away, so it wasn't that interesting." Simon D comments, not wanting to directly agree with the lazy Jax.

When the devices were first found by a previous team, it was explained that while the main puzzles have instructions hidden around the room, the communication device is more of a bonus Easter egg.

If one team finds it, it'll automatically open up on the other side. It's intended purpose was to slow the other side's progress through incorrect solutions or locations of clues, but it has yet to be used like that. That was until now, but Team Poseidon's approach is a little...unconventional.

Stated earlier, there are clues hidden around the room along with the puzzles to help solve them. For example, there's a slight tear in the wall and ripping it away would reveal an easy follow-the-dots game that would help solve the map puzzle.

Saving time effectively amounts to how much you know about Pompeii's history and the eruption of Mt.Vesuvius.

The goddess of fortune is looking down and blessing Poseidon's team members. At least that's how it looks from an outsider's perspective. After all, what are the chances that they picked a child that seemingly knows any and all useless information for a game that might not have had anything to do with such puzzles.

That's right, the audience is looking towards Kai, the knight in shining armor that will save his team from the poisoned lava that will fill the room if the hour passes. The staff are on the same page as they direct more attention to his actions.

At this moment, he's set the walkie-talkie down and is inspecting the things they've found hidden around the room and starts separating them into piles.

In one pile, a bunch of marble pieces that seem to be akin to a three dimensional puzzle. In another, miniature versions of old-fashion machines. In the last pile is the leftovers, made up of random things like wool and a single olive.

Kai claps his hands, "Who wants to do what?" He looks at his work, satisfied.

"Some of those marble chunks have grooves like on a pillar. It's probably a building of some sort."

"Multiple." Abel corrects," Over here.." He points at a shelf that had weirdly shaped indents, like somethings meant to be placed there. And with that, the job is pushed onto Abel. Abel pouts while sorting the pieces out, resigning not to speak up ever again.