Work Text:
Tony shook his head and looked around the room to see if there was a hidden passageway or anything else of interest. He didn’t see anything that looked like the walls would open up, so he randomly pulled a piece of paper from the middle of the stack to see if they were all blank or if this was normally a record room of some sort.
He blinked as he stared at the paper he’d pulled out. Was this really saying what he thought it was? Kasey wasn’t actually Jenny’s sister? Then why had she claimed to be? Was Jenny innocent in this or were they sisters like members of the same sorority or club or what?
Tony didn’t know what to think about this realization regarding Kasey’s spurious birth, but for now he needed to find Gibbs. They could do a more thorough review of this room after he found Gibbs. Deciding Gibbs wasn’t in this room or accessible from this room, Tony left and returned to the cave.
He continued to search amongst the dragon lilies to find other hidden paths. No luck until a stalagmite fell right in front of him, causing him to jump back to avoid getting skewered. He landed on something that moved and another section of wall opened up.
Tony stepped into this room, still no Gibbs. However, he found monitors that displayed various parts of the cave and one of them had Gibbs on it. Actually two of the monitors had Gibbs displayed on them and they were clearly different rooms.
How were there two Gibbs? How was he supposed to figure out which one was the real one and which one was just faking it? First, Kasey’s spurious birth and now Gibbs’ had a spurious clone.
On top of that he couldn’t tell from the monitors which section of the cave they were showing, so he had no idea where either Gibbs was; even though he could see them clearly in the cave. Tony was really beginning to hate this search. Gibbs really shouldn’t have run off, though Tony supposed by this point in time he’d technically been captured even if he’d run off on his own initially.
He tried to look for anything unique in the frames which would help him identify the location, but wasn’t having any luck finding anything. There had to be a way to tell which monitor went to what location. Someone had to be using this place to monitor the panther cubs on the screen and they would need to know where to go if there was trouble.
Tony opened drawers, cabinets, and anything else he could find, searching for some indicator on a map or something that could be used to determine where the panther cubs were. No luck. With a sigh, Tony gave up, marking the monitoring room on the map and heading back out into the cave maze to find Gibbs.
The next room he found contained a full blown panther and he quickly shut the door as the panther leaped at him in attack mode. Or well he tried to.
He ran a few yards down the hallway away from the panther before his brain kicked into gear and he realized it would be a lot easier to chase the panther away in his own panther form. He growled at the panther in warning, but the panther had already stopped in its tracks in confusion.
“You are not one of the jailors?” The panther hissed.
“Nope. I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Tony yowled back.
“Good luck. Thanks for freeing me.” With that the panther took off for the cave exit, leaving Tony to continue his search for Gibbs.
After finding a couple more empty rooms, Tony was wishing the panther had stuck around to tell him where his cub might be. He still didn’t have any idea how he’d tell which of the two cubs was the real Gibbs. Did he stop when he found one or did he continue until he’d found both and hope that they wouldn’t lie to him?
Tony breathed a sigh of relief when he finally found a panther cub. “Gibbs?”
The cub glanced at Tony briefly before taking off via the open doorway. Tony really hoped that wasn’t Gibbs. If it was, Tony’s life was going to get a lot harder.
As he continued to look for Gibbs, he stumbled across another interesting room. This one was filled with a wide variety of machines. None of the machines looked like anything Tony recognized.
One made an excessive amount of noise and there was steam coming out the top, but no screens or input mechanisms of any sort that Tony could see. One had a picture of a cat and a couple of arms. Tony shook his head and left the room, not bothering to figure out what they were supposed to do.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t need to understand how any of those machines worked. Tony breathed a sigh of relief as he found another room with a panther cub. “Gibbs?”
“Tony?” Gibbs mewed.
“Curses, you found him!” Kasey reappeared.
Tony eyed Kasey with suspicion. “He’s coming with me.”
“Only if you can get him out of here,” Kasey cackled.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I believe you’ll find the cave structure has changed significantly now that you’ve found him. Good luck.” Kasey vanished again.
Tony exchanged glances with Gibbs. “Why can’t I feel you in the bond?”
Gibbs roared something about being sent through a machine and being off ever since. Tony’s eyes grew wide. One of the machines he’d seen recently must have been what was used to disrupt their bond.
Of course, even if they could find the right machine that didn’t mean they could reverse it. Where was McGeek when you needed him? “Next time, don’t run off while I’m asleep.”
“I couldn’t help it. The forest called to me.”
Tony shook his head. “Yeah. The forest of temptation is determined to do its best to distract us and prevent us from reaching our destination, but we’ll figure out a way.”