towerofanimus | (no subject)

Entry tags:

[au1] enoch

(no subject)

Characters: Grell and YOU (and

caliginous, secretly)
Setting: Early on July 1st. Pick a floor, any floor. (A part of this mind control plot. Since Karkat's involvement is being handwaved, and Grell can conceivably have her emotions altered more than once, I'm not picky about the location.)
Format: Either, but prose preferred.
Summary: Grell has been feeling testy, lately. Bloodthirsty, even.
Warnings: Violence, potential character death.

Grell is beginning to forget the last time she slept.

She knows the rules, just like everyone else, but what's the point in abiding by them? No tower is going to push her around, and tell her what to do. Especially not one that thinks it's funny, to keep stranding her here, without her acquaintances to amuse her.

It must be approaching four nights, now. She yawns, and readjusts her chainsaw, on her shoulder.

The days are blurring together. Everything has been a blur, really, since William and Ronald were taken away from her. Not because she's worried, she reminds herself. But what is she meant to do, with no one interesting to talk to? She spends her nights killing monsters, and her days dreaming up newer, bloodier ways of carrying out her little murders. The past few days, she hasn't been able to escape the thought that she's going about this all wrong. The monsters are no fun. Her fellow tower citizens, though... Now, there's an idea.

An idea that won't go away (not that she tries hard to fight it). Today, it seems particularly strong. In fact, within the last few minutes, it's risen like a fever pitch, in her mind. What have the monsters ever done to her? Nothing. And the other inhabitants of the tower? Everything. Every single one of them should be writhing in pain, in place of William and Ronald. Every single one of them owes her the entertainment, the company, that her friends can't currently provide.

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What does a bored Yusuke do? Wander around. Where to? The cafeteria since he was hungry. Though upon arrival, and getting his oatmeal, he grimaced. This crud again. At this rate, he was tempted to just dump it, but he had to learn to deal with it. If he could take the health bars, he could deal with this.

Then he sees Grell with the chainsaw an stops, holding the bowl of oatmeal while doing so. He blinks, already sensing some hostility from the woman. Still, he at least tries to play innocent, looking around himself.

"There something here that needs slashing or something?"

For reasons she couldn't identify, it immediately irritated Grell, to know that there were people deigning to eat the oatmeal, right now. Nevermind that, after all the cafeteria foolery, over the last month, the kid might be starving. The impression she got, when she looked at Yusuke, was of a weak-willed idiot, playing directly into the tower's hands, by eating its disgusting oatmeal.

"There's always something that needs slashing," she sneered through her very pointy teeth. "Tell me - what have you been up to, lately?" If he's been in the pods, he's guilty as Ciel and everyone else, for not keeping her friends safe.

Honestly, Yusuke could care less what the woman thought of him, though insults were always the one thing he couldn't really stand. And with a chainsaw like that, he definitely wasn't about to just let her destroy him. Still, he remains neutral through, simply giving her a shrug.

"Oh I don't know, appearing here at friggin random and all that," he spoke. "Was hopin' the food would be better, and hoping to piss off a few of my buddies today, but that ain't happening."

He was new, then? All the more reason to get rid of him! Why not introduce this kid to the wonders of constant, impermanent tower death, right off the bat? Grell half wished someone would have done the same, for her, when she arrived. Then she wouldn't still be waiting around, wondering how much worse her first death was going to be, for how long it was waiting to strike her.

"Are your buddies here?" she asked him, pleasantly enough, casually swinging her chainsaw down from her shoulder. It might be pertinent to know, if anyone was likely to coming running to try and back this kid up, if she took a swing at him. Although, given how many people were still absent from the tower, it seemed unlikely.

"Not that I know of," he said, still staring back, mainly at that chainsaw. Yeah, large weapons were instantly something that got him on guard. Still, that's if this woman could really hit him.

"Alright, so what do you want? Usually when people wanna kill me, they kinda give a bit of a speech or just get on with it."

And curse his impatience to hell.

This adventure started innocently enough. Someone seemed to have dropped a little red gem inside the elevator. He picked it up, thinking to ask on the network if anyone had misplaced it, when it grew teeth - luckily, he was able to let go before its teeth could close around his fingers, but somehow it wound up with one of Ishtar's bone fragments between its teeth before it vanished.

Luckily for him, this rupee wasn't very smart; he finds it on the step just inside the thirtieth floor.

When he closes his hand around it, a female voice speaks faintly.

"They became the Freemen.

The Fallen Angels-..."

"Quiet," he whispers, looking surprised for a moment when it does stop. Enoch pockets it quickly and straightens up...to see a long-haired woman with a strange object(weapon?) coming down the other way. Enoch politely steps back down to the previous floor and turns sideways so she can pass.

((ooc: Sorry for this novel of a tag.))

Grell pauses, just around the bend in the stairwell, when she hears the voice. She can't make out what it's saying, but she figures it can't be anything good. It's fine if she wants to skulk around the tower, and pause in poorly lit spaces, but if someone else is doing it, they must be up to no good. Or, at least, up to something that Grell would currently define as no good.

When she comes into view, she gives the man a little finger wave, with her free hand. "What's a handsome guy like you doing in this corner of the world?" she asks, with a lilt in her voice, as if she's being pleasant. But what she really wants to know is, if she heard a female voice, from around the corner, where is the speaker, now?

"Finding something that was taken from me," he says, his eyes darting towards the movement of her finger for a moment. The darkness of this floor and the monsters he knows it hides makes him tense.

There was a thought that someone out there had the scalpel blades the tower had so conveniently packed along with his possessions. He hadn't recovered them yet nor had he yet to find all of his belongings. It had been perhaps a good few weeks or so since he'd found them missing, two since he'd recovered his cigarettes and at least three more of his little magical catalysts. There were two more, he was certain. But those would turn up eventually. For now, he's been backtracking here and there just a bit each day.

Floor twenty was today's target.

He surveys the area, glancing off at the ramp where his cigarettes had been precariously placed before drawing out the case to light one for himself. The nicotine helped him think. Of course the thief wouldn't come back. He'd already scowered this entire floor himself. With a sigh, he lets out a drag and turns to go. But he isn't alone now, is he? He's aware of a second presence, one that seems particularly strong and smells of death quite literally and figuratively. It sets him on edge but sure as hell he isn't about to show it just yet. Instead he'll wait for it to pass or confront it if it wishes to be confronted. At any rate, it would be a good test to see if his catalysts were tampered in any way during the time they had disappeared.

Not at all alone, though whether Muraki senses Grell first, or she him, is hard to say. Somewhere, farther down the ramp, she pauses, the breeze carrying the sound of movement and the smell of cigarette smoke down to her. She's seen very few people smoking, here. This individual, whoever he is, must derive a good deal of pleasure from knowing he has the luxury of those cigarettes, a small, homey indulgence, when so many other inmates of the tower don't.

And that just makes her want to take them from him, and hoard them away, whether she manages to get her chainsaw into him, or not.

The click-click-click of her heels intensifies, as she rounds the curve of the ramp, and comes upon her smoking friend. She laughs, a high, clear, noise, as if he had been privy to her thoughts. "Oh, you're handsome, too. This is going to be so much more fun than I thought. Look alive!" she cries, over the revving of her chainsaw, which she swings toward him, in a broad arc.

((Woohoo, you're back! Let's get right into it.))

Under normal circumstances, he never would have considered such a thing an indulgence. It was just another thing that helped him think, something that set his mind in the right place. As much as he'd hate to admit it, the nicotine had become a crutch. One that helped him through med school along with the caffeine among other things. But as most things that came into his life, he'd learned to make the most out of it. In his spellcasting for example.

The minute he hears the clicking of her heels, his senses are already called to attention. Even more when the chainsaw comes up. The minute it does, he lets his cigarette fall from his fingers. The ash circles around him, following the pattern of a magical array he'd set into place just in time to prevent the blade from coming down via a timely magical barrier. His eyes are wild under the momentary flash of purple upon impact as he strains to draw energy from his attacker, just to keep the barrier up a moment more and they glow with a strange light from the flavor.

Death.

He tastes it on her aura and her brimming energy.

Death.

He knows the taste of it well.

"How ironic that you should tell me to look alive." the doctor replies, the light in his eyes dying down once more. The barrier flares, however, attempting to push Grell away a good enough distance to give him some room to maneuver.

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(no subject)

Cafeteria

Re: Cafeteria

Re: Cafeteria

[sorry tagging has been slow! i should be a little faster, now]

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Floor 29, heading up to floor 30. (Grell may want to take this back down into the garden maze though

Re: Floor 29, heading up to floor 30.

Re: Floor 29, heading up to floor 30.

Floor 20! Nice open air~ Can shift to floor 31 eventually!

Re: Floor 20! Nice open air~ Can shift to floor 31 eventually!

Now I'm REALLY back! /sobbing into hands