towerofanimus | 001 || so we didn't screw up as badly as we could've

Entry tags:

001 || so we didn't screw up as badly as we could've

Characters: Jade Strider and all of the people
Setting: Room 2-01, Floor 30, Cafeteria
Format: Starting action, but I'll do whatever!
Summary: Jade wakes up in the tower, and has quite the day before she finally makes it to the network terminals.
Warnings: Probably foul language and violence against generic Tower monsters, will update if needed

[Room 2-01]
[Her waking up is rather uneventful. One minute she'd dragging some needles across a giant disc while talking on and off to Eridan, the next minute she's... well, asleep apparently. It's admittedly a bit blurry and blinding since she doesn't have her sunglasses on, so those are the first thing she reaches for.

She simply skims the letters without much of a care (yeah yeah the world is over she's got it whatever), and she makes her way towards the trunk at the end of her bend. She quickly wrestles the white suit off to put on her pants and red atom shirt (she didn't really feel up to Godliness at the moment), and starts shuffling through the trunk for the rest of her belongings.]

[Floor 30-- Perpetual Nighttime]
[In a dramatic stroke of Jade Strider Luck, Jade ended up falling plop down on the floor when the staircase fell, letting out an unceremonious yelp. She recovered quick enough, standing up and... it was a toss up between looking at everything tinted dark and looking at everything blurry, so she hazarded a chance her eyesight might've improved with the whole god tier thing, and propper the sunglasses up on her forehead.

Not that it... helped much, so she just opted to keep walking until she found the staircase. And that was when she noticed she stepped on something and holy shit ow her foot ow ow ow-]

What the--!! [She'd been smart enough at least to bring her gun with her, and immediatelly whipped it out while she tied to clumsily jump away from whatever was at her feet, and started shooting blindly at where she thought the black blob of evil might be.]

[Floor One-- Cafeteria]
[It was quite the trial to actually get down to the cafeteria, and she had dutifully eaten the oatmeal she had been handed because son of a bitch she was hungry. The oatmeal wasn't quite enough to satiate her appetite for the moment though, and now she had an...interesting looking egg in front of her. And it was black and shiney and she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be.

Right now she was just kind of poking it and looking at it distastefully.]

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[America is just walking down the staircase when he hears the gunfire. He has to peek down at the floor before he feels confident enough to climb the reassembled staircase and wave at the person to try and catch their attention.]

You hav'to get back to the stairs!

[America hops back and forth on the staircase in question as he tries to decide if he should run out to help or not.]

Can you?

[ Jade decided to go on a massive hunt through the tower before actually trying to find anyone...or maybe she was simply trying to find them and hadn't actually located the computers. Either way, her nose leads her straight to the cafeteria. She's still yawning; at home it was 2700, much too late for Jades to be awake. But here, who knew what time it was? ]

[ Spotting the girl, she doesn't even realize that they look similar. She just sits down next to her. ] Oh, there are eggs....are they good?

[She was preeeeetty sure the black...whatever that was off of her foot (if only because hey it wasn't hurting as much now!), but it was the sound of some kid even younger than her falling that got her attention.]

Uh... yeah no problem I got this.. [So she says, but she's doing her best to try and maneuver her way back to the stairs with her gun pointed out at nothing and trying not to step on fuzzy black masses again.]

[She spared the new girl a cursory glance, but then Jade wasn't one to put two and two together much considering they already looked pretty different and well there is such a thing as weird ass ectobiology.]

Haven't actually manned up enough to take a bite out of potentially poisonous poultry reproductive objects.

[Just. Poking it with a fork. Yep.]

It was one of those feelings that Elain got when he couldn't explain logically how he got to a place, or the circumstances that lead to the disaster. With the thread of Kyoji Mujo and his ability to absorb others abilities, he had resigned into believing that the letters were indeed true.

With his father now dead and two teammates soon followed his path, Elian was left feeling alone and scared yet his face still showed the passive resilience of someone trained to not let his personal feelings get the best of him.

His once aimless steps led him into the cafeteria. He wasn't feeling all that hungry. His appetite made him feel empty almost like his soul. Was this really his fate? He was a throw-away. A clone created to act as a tool and hardly left to make his own choices, he wasn't used to being without an escort.

He could take this time to learn how to do everything for himself when he was used to having things done for him. Elian looked over the selection of food and nothing seemed appetizing.

He picked something simple. The oatmeal didn't look appealing but it was simple, filling and if not a bit bland, it did take care of his nutritional needs in one fell swoop. His small stature of 4 feet 10 inches really made him look like a child at best even if he was chronologically 14 years-old.

With the tray in hand, his baggy uniform secured in its customary fashion, he took a quick glance to find someone just as uninterested in her meal as he was in his surroundings. Grief had yet to hit him. For the moment, it was better to take it in stride on his approach toward the table.

"It's not all that bad." He said, placing his tray down on the table top.

Hurry or lots of monsters will come! [America chances stepping down off the staircase, but he doesn't stray far, squinting out into the darkness.]

I'm right next to them so you just have to come over here!

[ They're quite a pair, then, the two that can't put two things together properly. ]

It does look a little grey...I didn't know eggs came in that color!

[ Reaches out to poke it with her finger, sorry Jade. ]

[...So maybe Equius has taken to bringing his bow and arrows whenever he wasn't going to the cafeteria. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. You can't have the elevator go to any floor, so if you happen to be headed for... oh, say, the workshop or something? Better bring some defenses along with your handy dandy mechanic's supplies.]

[He paused near the ceiling of Floor 30, hearing -- of course -- the call of distress. The darkness made it too difficult to see who the person in distress actually was, or where they were on the floor, but did that really matter? No. What mattered is that someone got caught down there, the poor ~~bastard~~ guy. So, Jade-- look above you, you'll see a flashlight beam, courtesy of Equius' toolbox. It doesn't go very far, but still.]

Get back to the staircase!

Edited 2012-07-11 23:08 (UTC)

Right right...

[Trying not to let on how freaked out she is, but caaaarefully inching towards where she hears the kid's voice. Oh man she's getting saved by a kid this is so embarrassing--]

Uh does this...happen often? [She needed to seem like this totally was not a problem for her and keep the kid talking so she knew where he was.]

[Thankfully she's not that deterred by the egg-poking, because Jade probably would've done that herself if she didn't have a handy dandy fork.]

I don't think they're supposed to.

[Clearly it was some kind of mutant egg. And clearly this meant that she should pick a bit off with her fork and stick it in her mouth after some stranger poked it.

Genius.]

Luckily Jade's presence could probably avert any potential Napoleon Complexes-- the girl was pretty dang short, even for a 13 year old, especially obvious with how hunched over her food she was.

She looked up from scrutinizing the strange egg when she heard him speak, confirming that he was in fact addressing her.

"Looks like something that popped out of the ass of a congested donkey."

[Flashlight! That was definitely helpful. She looked towards it and immediately dropped the glasses back over her eyes before whoever was holding it could see them to confirm the position.

She glanced back down at her foot to reveal that that was basically just a black. blob. thing. What.

No time for that, she scrambled with her grip on her gum and pulled her foot away, hopping loudly up onto the staircase easily with the aid of the light.]

It was nearly instantly that Elian grimaced at the description with a wrinkle to his nose. "That's pretty disgusting. Although, it can't be any worse than protein rations and reconstituted fat solids."

There was a hidden smirk in his reply. He had to admit that he was enjoying the greeting a little more than he should. Was this really how kids interacted? It didn't bother him since his partner and friend, Urizane, had a fetish for melons, if it could be called that.

He was especially thankful that he wasn't the only small one in the bunch and especially grateful that he wouldn't have to endure the Napolean Complex. Even worse would be his oversized feet. Thankfully, no one had to see that yet. His baggy uniform hid most of the strange issues.

"I would rather eat fatty acids and--" wait Jade you're not supposed to know scientific bullshit stop-- "protein powder than lick a donkey's butt."

Sorry Elian, this was far from the normal child experience, Jade was just a very special child. A special child that had stuck the fork into the egg rather than actually eating it, and the fork was now sticking out of it as if it were some kind of flag.

And she kind of stared at that for a moment before she looking back at the guy in front of her. "Why the fuck are you eating that stuff anyway. You some kind of child monkey astronaut?"

"Something like that. Actually, I was born in a lab." He softly scoffed and stared at her now flagpole fork. His teal eyes blinked for a moment during the stare. That was just weird.

"You could make a glue out of that stuff." He looks down at his plate that consisted of oatmeal and a really bland looking bagel.

It didn't really matter to him now if anyone knew about his past. It was kept secret for so long that not even his co-workers knew about it. It was probably better that way. There would have been too many questions.

He lifted his glass of water to take a sip nonchalantly. "You're lucky that you have a normal existence. I'm Elian."

[FLASHLIGHTS, AWW YEAAA.]

[See, being Crazy Prepared has its uses! Equius is mentally triumphing this small victory over Nepeta in his mind, except not really because that would be rude; in the meantime, he slowly makes his way down the staircase to where the other person is, who he still hasn't seen. For a moment there he thought he saw a gun (and you know that threw him for a loop), but there were no horns... oh.]

[And now that he's closer he recognizes the human, marginally. Somewhat. He had basically reacted the same way as Kanaya when curiosity had gotten the better of her and she decided to assess these, er, humans. They were strange. He kind of stopped communicating with them after that, except for the one time with the John human which... was also confusing, since it was short and awkward and entirely one-sided on his part, and also he got blocked. He's not sure what this Jade human is like either, but he does know he/she/it is an acquaintance of Eridan's. Meaning on the subject of his/her/its disposition, he perpetually understands jack shit.]

[So clearly the best way to remark upo this long-winded thought process is the old classic,] ...Oh.

"I was born in a lab once I think but Rose made it sound really complicated and I think my brother is my dad and I had a brother that lived in the middle of the pacific. So normal's pretty relative."

She's just kind of starting blankly at the fork and the egg as she rattled it off blankly. The best part was that for once she wasn't making up sarcastic bullshit.

"Jade Strider, ace glue engineer and egg critic. Nice to know ya, hermit boy."

[Sadly Jade was indeed not a mind reader and had no idea Equius was having a long-winded thought process or what he was gawking at. She kind of caught the glint of the guy's glasses and the candy corn horns on his head, so she basically just figured it was a friend of Eridan's and left it at that.]

Wanna stare at the red child wonder or you wanna go somewhere where the boogie man won't jump out from the mysterious black shadows of ominous darkness?

[Whether he's coming or not, she's walking down the stairs and getting to the other side of the threshold to the floor below before anything else comes 'cause yeah there's no way she's sticking around.]

He sighed softly and pushed his plate aside slowly. "Hermit wouldn't be far from the truth. I didn't have much of a choice."

Everything that she said was indeed true about normality being only relative and subjective to the person experiencing it. To him, lab tests and torture were a normal thing. He grew up with it. The pain was definitely unpleasant but he never complained. It was all he knew up until he was taken out of that place by his father.

"It would seem that cloning is a more common thing that I had come to expect. Strange how life takes on a surreal approach to existence." Oddly, he smiled the moment his father's words came to mind. "He wanted me to have a normal life. Ironic he kept me locked up for a good while before I was allowed to be seen."

"The outside ain't all it's cracked up to be anyway. Where I lived it was hot as satan's balls every other week, or everything was buried under six feet of snow." Maybe if she were a normal kid that would've been her trying to jokingly make him feel better. She's still joking, granted, but let's also ignore the fact that she was kind of a social recluse and only talked to people on the internet.

The fork was lame though, and she picked up the spoon she had used for her own oatmeal to steal a scoop of Elian's oatmeal for herself. Because she is a classy thing and it was a lot better eating that than trying the mysterious egg.

"You an actual clone? Like another of you walking around doing shit?" At least she waited until she finished eating to speak again.

...Oh. Um, yes. Sorry.

[But she had already started moving by that point, so he treads carefully after her, keeping the light out just in case. Once they touch base on Floor 29, though, Equius clicks off the flashlight and returns it to his toolbox. This floor seems relatively safe compared to the one above; it was a garden, which of course makes Equius a little uneasy, but it was better than the... thing living above their heads.]

You... have you arrived recently?

"Yes." He watched her scoop up the spoonful of oatmeal and decided that he should try to do the same. "I have two surviving brothers. One died during the conditioning. My father was the only one I ever knew and he," the pause was enough for him to take in that spoonful of oatmeal, "it's not important right now."

It hurt to think about what happened to his brothers. He felt their powers being drained. Granted that he didn't know them, he was able to feel them. The connection he had with his father was enough to make his hands shake. He already had his time to grieve. Now, with the threat of his world possibly being destroyed, which wouldn't be that far from the truth, Elian had his doubts.

"This shit's terrible." In goes another spoonful. At least the taste allowed him to feel like he was alive again.

Sure did. [She responds a bit distractedly, now preoccupied with whatever the heck this floor was. It kind of looked like a hedge maze? How the hell did they fit a hedge maze in here. She will never stopped being amazed.]

Name's Strider. [And she finally turned to actually give him his attention.] Jade Strider. You're one of Eri's freaky alien friends, right?

She kind of stared at him when he paused, and it seems like he was having some issues? Whatever, that wasn't any of her business at least. "I had a clone once," she added nonchalantly, shifting the conversation away from the topic that he obviously wasn't excited to elaborate on.

"She came from the future. Technically she was me from the future but we invalidated that timeline. So I guess she's still technically me."

Jade shrugged at her own explanation (mostly she was just filling the air with words), and let out a chuckle that she tried to suppress when he voiced his opinion on the oatmeal. "Amen to that."

[

]

Eri? Um... yes. My name is Equius Zahhak. I... sort of know you. [That is to say, he's been creeping on you and the other three for a couple of perigees. That counts as knowing someone, right???]

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001 || so we didn't screw up as badly as we could've

floor 30

cafeteria

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