☠ 006 | you have remembered the apple still lodged in your throat

[destructiveprinciple]

Characters: Avenger, 'Shirou' and OPEN to all.
Setting: The meadow, the lounge and the cafeteria and the media room, set throughout the week.
Format: Action spam.
Summary: Avenger, still a little annoyed by the package he'd received on Monday, deals with the shadow children following him around. 'Shirou' meanwhile is slowly being convinced he'd being haunted by a severed arm that wouldn't go away no matter how often he throws it out.
Warnings: Typical fare for the Tower of Animus.

[ SCENARIO A || FLOOR 25: THE MEADOW ]
[ At first, there had only been the faint sensation of something's eyes staring at him, no more. It had started in the evening; feeling like he was being watched before a shadowy figure had slipped into view and began harmlessly following him around. It had been rapidly joined by a few more shadowy things, and despite his annoyed attempts to ward them off via a couple dagger to what looked like their heads or limbs, they didn't vanish. They didn't said anything on the first day. Whispers only started drifting out of them on the second day.

They just followed him around the tower, smiling with a slash of white against the blackness of their bodies, and somehow whispered louder and louder and louder. Finally, he'd wandered onto this floor and sat down. Avenger was bemused when he realized he could pick out unexpectedly familiar voices from the chorus. Caren, her voice full of her cold high-and-mighty contempt, commenting on his worthlessness. Another voice, younger and higher, picks up the thread from among the rest of the voices, full of insults.

Bazett, a shadow biting out her scolding words full of scorn and derision.

i never trusted you, not truly. i was right to. look where believing in you as my comrade landed me, Servant.


It continues on in this length for awhile. Avenger rests his chin on his hand, and wonders why the shadows that clustered near him thinks he cares one damn whom they mimic. ]


[ SCENARIO B || FLOOR 81: LOUGUE ]
[ The number of shadows that trailed his footsteps doubles, then triples in size soon enough. There's an entire horde of them, all yelling and crying and blaming. how could you it's unfair die die die repent hurts unforgivable look at us ruined and dead because of you you've survived monster beast pretender demon fake and we have not it's your fault it's all your fault we hate you. this is your fault how dare you hate you die die die so unfair you're evil you deserve to suffer for this filthy weak pathetic the world would be better off without the likes of you so why don't you just
fucking
die ]

—Yeah, that's right. Think that if ya' want. Shut up already. [ He waves them off dismissively.

The crowd surges, the voices of accusations besetting him. But by now, this late in the week, Avenger has figured out what's their deal and he's not very affected by the experience. He had little attachment to his world that wasn't misanthropic, so it did not bother him in the slightest. In fact, it bored him.

Walking through the lounge, with a severed arm tucked under his arm, and followed by that shadowy crowd instead of taking the elevator to the dorms at night seemed reasonable to him. Stupid Shirou kept throwing it out into the trash can in the cafeteria and making him dig it out again. ]


[ SCENARIO C || FLOOR 1: THE CAFETERIA ]
[ Now, the person busily cooking his worries about being haunted by an arm that won't go away even after he'd repeatedly tossed it into the trash (where had the arm even come from anyway?) and confusion, in the kitchen is probably a very familiar face to whose who frequent the cafeteria regularly.

As reliable as clockwork, the teenager comes in very early in the morning to place the food inside the oversized oven to be baked and then removes it from the oven to transfer the food to clean plates, before taking the neatly ranged dishes out in the cafeteria for any resident to eat as per the job the administration had assigned to him.

Once that was done, it was back to the kitchens to cook even more, and that is what brings us to our current state of affairs: Emiya Shirou engaging in one of his favorite hobbies—cooking in times of crisis. Determinedly ignoring the one or two shadows that follow him around early in the week. B| Denying they exist at all! ]


[ SCENARIO C || FLOOR 14: THE MEDIA ROOM ]
[ 'Shirou' is not coping well with all these voices. :|a

Curled up in one of the bean bags with his eyes screwed shut, his mouth a tight line, and a good dozen shadow children milling around him, focused on him and only him, he looked frazzled and confused and guilty. ]

Comments

A

[puppy_lancer]

[Lancer steps into the meadow. Like Avenger, his shadows refuse to leave him alone. Unlike the other Servant, he likes it that way.]

...Well, aren't you popular?

[He looks over Avenger and the horde of shadows.]

Re: A

[destructiveprinciple]

[ The screaming litany of grievances and faults the shadows around him tossed at Avenger were disregarded with the ease of somebody who had long been proficient at treating it all as annoying white noise. ]

Eh, guess I am. They're noisy pests.

[ He looks over at Lancer's approach, raising an eyebrow. ] They've latched onto plenty of people, huh?

Re: A

[puppy_lancer]

Yeah.

[He looks back at his own shadow children.]

...At least I got ones I liked.]

Re: A

[destructiveprinciple]

[ The shadow with Bazett's warped voice sighed from the midst of the chorus, flittering to the side, posture stiff. at least Lancer was honest when he let me die and knew when to take the situation seriously, unlike you. perhaps you could stand to take a paper out of his book, Angra Mainyu. He shrugged a little. ]

That's great for you. [ Sarcastic! ]

[ He waved a hand at them. ] They're not Jason's work at least.

Re: A

[puppy_lancer]

Yeah, he prefers more substantial things.

[A pause.]

I guess he finally got the warning and stopped trying to make himself the most hated administrator.

Re: A

[destructiveprinciple]

Like stuff that tends to err on the side of ripping out peoples' spleens.

[ Bazett's voice continued to speak and then faded away behind others that chattered and overlapped and whimpered. Another shadow, with its hands clasped together as if in prayer. full of an unforgiving contempt: honestly, even this guy survived and you couldn't grant salvation to simple illusions? are you so in love with the everyday life you crave even here, that you pay us no heed? i have not yet completed my duties. ]

Eheh. I dunno, maaybe you're giving him credit for more brains than he actually has.

Re: A

[puppy_lancer]

Who knows?

['So you would put yourself under the sway of a terrible Master, rather than save me?<']

Hey! I didn't say I liked him!

[He sticks his tongue out at one of the shadow children.]

Re: A

[destructiveprinciples]

[ The shadows chattered and keened, heaping the blame on the one they'd attached themselves to.

Avenger, not even paying an ion of attention to the background noise, scoffed. ]

Oooh, what's that one got to say?

[ It didn't even matter whether or not they could be the real deal to him. They were mere illusions and only that, shadows rattling off empty accusations and guilt-trips, exaggerating the lot. It was awfully dumb. ]

Re: A

[puppy_lancer]

Oh, just something about how I like Jason more than her.

[He shrugs.]

She's always been a vindictive bitch.

[And here he winces, almost expecting the shadow to hit him. Instead, he just gets more harsh words.

'Is that really what you thought about me?']

Re: A

[destructiveprinciples]

[ He laughs, noticing that wince from Lancer after he said that insult. ]

Bitch had you fucking well trained too, from the looks of it. Habit?

[ you're as foul-mouthed as ever, demon.

Sister, i'm quite frankly not surprised. he has to make up for his uselessness in some area, after all. ]

Re: A

[puppy_lancer]

...She's a violent vindictive bitch.

['Like you're any better.']

Re: A

[destructiveprinciples]

That's rich, coming from you.

[ Came Avenger's comment seconds later. :> idiot lapdog ]

Re: A

[puppy_lancer]

[He looks from the shadow to Avenger.]

...Are you guys working together or something?

B

[undefines]

What's with the arm?

[A voice he has heard before sounds from one shadowy portion of the lounge. Rather than her normal nighttime hunting, Nue has been wandering aimlessly in the evenings. Rather than making her want to seek out comfort, all the presence of the accusatory shades has done is made her do is avoid other people.]

[But she can smell the arm before she sees it clearly, and she's curious. She remains where she is, her accompaniment of grinning shadows clustered around her, much less numerous than his.]

Re: B

[destructiveprinciples]

[ He slowed, coming to a stop. The throngs of shadowy children, with wide white smiles and vague outlines, converged around him, cursing him for surviving when they had perished and suffered and fallen to this. Some were the voices of whose he was familiar with, many more were not.

Angra glanced down at the limb tucked under his arm, then at her. It indeed, does smell. ]

Oh, you know, one of those. Souvenirs?

[undefines]

What, did you kill somebody? It's not a very good trophy if you're just going to let it rot.

[Her own gift wasn't quite so gory, and it was about herself rather than someone close to her, so she doesn't make the connection.]

[destructiveprinciples]

No, why the hell would I do that? [ Take trophies from his kills, he means. Compulsive hoarder he was or not, pieces of dead bodies were useless to him. ] That's a pointless thing to do unless they were carrying something of value with 'em to loot.

[ He flaps the end of the severed arm at her, its limp pale hand flopping about.

stop fooling around with that. ]

[undefines]

Beats me. You're the one carrying around a rotting arm. [Her tone is both dismissive and casual. It's not really Nue's style, either.] Some people like that kind of thing, I guess.

Where'd it come from, then?

[destructiveprinciple]

You're the one who asked. [ He tucks the severed arm back under his arm, the vague red marking on the back of the hand briefly visible. ] Hm, it doesn't smell that bad yet.

[ :P ] Got it in the mailbox!

[undefines]

Maybe not to you. I guess your nose can't compete with a youkai's.

[She says this somewhat loftily, but her heart isn't really in it.]

Oh, the mailbox. [One of her wings flicks behind her in a particularly pointed swish.] You don't seem bothered by it.

[destructiveprinciples]

[ lmao ]

A bit tasteless.

Right, right. Should I be? [ Of course, he interprets her form as a blank silhouette that glows and has a lot of arm-like squiggles so it's one of her arm-squiggles that flicks pointedly behind her to him. ]

[undefines]

Maybe, maybe not. It seems like the kind of thing that would be meant to bother a person, though.

[She doesn't want to admit that what she received got under her skin.]

[destructiveprinciples]

[ One of the shadows in the hissing, venomous throng of shades laughs. sneering; you're nothing. a void. nothing. you can't bother a walking patch of NOTHING.

Completely lack of reaction. ]

Oh? Then what did you get for this Tower-wide prank, missy? This arm was already severed from its owner when my world still existed.

[undefines]

Who says I got anything?

[destructiveprinciples]

Everybody got one, didn't you take a look at the network before it went haywire this month?

[ Or that was his guess, anyway. She had very poor chances of being an exception. ]