towerofanimus | pull out the first cord

Entry tags:

pull out the first cord

Characters: Gamzee and YOU.
Setting: Over several floors. You can pick where you run into him.
Format: Starting in prose. Will match anything.
Summary: Gamzee wanders, believing he's attached to the machine again.
Warnings: Typical troll pottymouth + bonus. Also most of my icons are kinda cruddy placeholders right now.

It feels real enough. He'll give it that. But then, it had always felt real to him. There were times he wondered if he'd ever actually been removed from the program at all. Perhaps they'd just let him feel like he had while still keeping him securely under their control.

This was a little silly, though. Even for them.

Gamzee had found his clothes, changing into them gratefully as that tight white outfit just wouldn't fly. He even wore the straight jacket, buckles hanging loose and long sleeves falling past his hands as his arms hung at his sides. In a way, he likes what it stands for. And here even that is a small comfort.

Cal's arms are looped around his neck, tied in a simple knot so they stay in place, and the doll hangs down his back. His silent partner. He takes everything in as he quietly walks the halls. What's left of the sedatives from the ward make him appear a bit dazed, but they'll wear off soon enough.

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Gamzee may have seen this guy sleeping, still, when he left the room. He will come across him again in strange armor on the twenty first floor.

Normally, this would be a restaurant with good food and a sinister price. In the wake of the whale attack, it's in ruins, still. Enoch is apparently using the wreckage as training practice, tossing a piece of debris in the air and then leaping to catch it with a kick. Strangely enough, while he's actually kicking in midair, he doesn't seem to fall.

He lands after the latest round and notices the kid. He honestly hopes he's only exploring and wasn't looking for food here. Not here, not a child.

Gamzee doesn't know what this used to be, nor does he particularly care. It's just another floor out of many in his trek up and around the building. It's a lot to take in, in more ways than one. Perhaps it's for the best that he still doesn't believe any of it is real.

To him, this man is just another sight to take in, and he stops to look at the blond with a dispassionate gaze until he realizes he's been noticed. At this point the edges of his mouth turn up in an unfriendly smile.

"Hey there, bro."

He knows that smile. He's never seen it on anyone so young, however, and it shows in the tension in his body, his legs not having moved from their position in his battle stance, the tightness in his shoulders and arms, though for the moment they were at his side, still, not up as if to protect him.

"Why are you smiling at me that way?" He's no threat to the boy, and he can all but guarantee the boy isn't a threat to him. This is his tone: wary but not afraid.

"Just getting my greets on. Ain't nothin' out of the ordinary, is it?" The smile falls back into something a little more natural looking, and the boy takes a few more steps into the room, looking around as if nothing it out of the ordinary.

"Shit got all knocked out of whack this high up, yeah? Wicked destructful masterwork is what this motherfuckin' is."

It took Enoch a few moments to parse what he was saying - mostly it was the grammar, at least with the exceptions of "shit" and "wicked", but the first he'd found multiple times could be brushed off and not actually change a thing, and the second's meaning to him fit the situation anyway. At least it was distraction enough from the smile that he didn't address it.

"...Indeed. The tower was under attack recently, and our hosts are still working to repair it."

"Got some fuckin' work cut out for them, then." He tilts his head back to stare up at the damage with little actual interest. He's simply stopped caring about anything he's shown, as there's no point in getting attached to it. None of it is real.

"Saw you gettin' your work-out on. Figure you're gonna knock all at some motherfuckin' heads?"

The poor child seemed far, far too weary for his age... It's enough that he falters a bit in trying to parse his sentences again. After a pause too long while he puts "work out" and "knock at heads" together with the context, he finally shakes his head.

"If I need to. Monsters sometimes appear in this tower, particularly at night."

Of course, being able to use this room's furniture to train was something of a bonus. Enoch isn't a vandal by any means the grand majority of the time, but something in the situation has warranted a rare moment of pettiness. Sometimes, petty defiance is the only kind of defiance that works.

"That right?" Learning this doesn't seem to bother the kid either. He almost expected it, really. Why not have monsters? They had them in the SGRUB program, so it only made sense. He supposed it would be a bit more difficult to fight them, given that they'd taken away the abilities he'd had before, but he just couldn't find it in himself to be worried.

"Guessin' you're all kinds of prepared to be taking those bitches out, yeah? Ain't as squishy as some..." Humans. Oh right. "As I am, bro."

Edited 2012-08-31 21:30 (UTC)

"I've needed to be prepared to fight for much longer than this." A bit of a tentative smile that's really more of a slight quirk at the corner of his mouth that doesn't last a second. It might not have been a smile at all, in fact.

"...It seems as if you have, too."

Edited (-How- did I forget how few cues were verbal?) 2012-09-03 04:41 (UTC)

He shrugs at that. "Kinda. Don't all know what motherfuckin' counts anymore." Fighting in the program had only been going through the motions in real life, and he had none of the abilities he'd had in the game.

"You wanna test a brother out?"

"You don't know what counts?" Enoch repeated, trying to figure out what that meant. Experience was experience, wasn't it?

"What do you mean?"

He could address the idea of a spar or contest at some point when he knew what the boy was saying.

The kid just shrugs again. Going on about it to too many people will just put how much it bothers him on display for everyone to see.

"I mean the practice I got might not all be considered real, as it were all mostly in my mind. You dig?"

Not all real... Well, his first encounter with an Arch was technically in a vision (though weapons of God were odd like that, they followed him into battles that took place inside his own soul...), but what he'd learned about how to use it, or rather, the style he learned was most comfortable for him carried over when the vision had ended.

...Then again, that was a waking vision, more illusion than dream. Would it have been the same if he'd passed out to learn it?

"You mean you were trained through visions?"

"...Sure, let's call it that." It was as close as anything, and he'd rather not go into all the details again. They might as well be called visions if he didn't fully experience them in real life. In fact, he was tempted just to go with that explanation from now on. Why not?

"Weren't all as motherfuckin' hands on as I'd have liked."

Of course, Enoch's sharp enough to remember he'd asked about "testing" before.

"We could train together, then, and see where you stand. We might as well use the furniture here for something productive while we can."

"Aight."

He doesn't even pull his hands free of his overlong sleeves, just adopts a rather lazy stance with them hanging at his sides. It might not even be all that easy to tell that this was actually his signal for the man to come at him. He doesn't think there's much need for any real preparation.

Enoch tilts his head. Was he waiting for him to set up targets for him? Best to ask. "Ah...would you rather I set up your targets for you?"

He doesn't know the kid's strength, so how can he know what's best for him? If he sets up a target that's too dense, he could hurt himself...

He doesn't, of course, realize his words were taken as an invitation to spar instead - not that he'd object to that if Gamzee asked.

The boy in the straight jacket just blinks at him, deadpan. "Targets?"

He flops his arms somewhat comically at his sides a couple times.

"Nah, motherfucker. Come on at me."

Enoch looks at the kid opposite him, torn between confused and distressed. Normally he'd be inviting the younger one to come at him. It usually gave him a pretty good idea of what they could handle.

Well...he'd dismiss his armor to protect it. He'd rather a bruise than lack protection against claws or fire.

That settled, he stepped closer to Gamzee, extending his hand, much like a handshake but with the palm turned slightly up.

"To a good spar, then." He sounded exactly as uncertain as he was.

Handshake? Nah, that just won't do.

Smiling, Gamzee ignores the hand and instead holds out his fist, fully expecting to receive a bump back from the other man.

Enoch's hand slowly lowers as he looks at the offered fist in confusion.

"Ah..."

He's obviously a little bit helpless here. His stance doesn't mean he wishes to start, of course, and even then the fist just sitting there the same way his open hand was...

"Bump it, motherfucker."

He doesn't move, smile still in place and fist held out toward the man.

Bump it...? Enoch looks at Gamzee's fist, then his own hand. Well, it's not like bumping it with anything but would be practical or make sense.

What an odd greeting gesture, though, he thinks as he lightly taps their knuckles together. Was it only for sparring? That would make sense, a lighthearted mock-punch to a good spar.

"I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with this gesture."

"You are now, bro." The boy winks. "Just gettin' you all set up for the fistbumping moments of the future, you dig? Gettin' you straight up schoolfed on getting your greets on."

Then he stepped back and swung a foot at the man. Apparently the spar was on.

That wasn't what he was expecting at all. The kick comes while he's still working out what Gamzee's saying, and it hits him in the leg.

He buckles for all of a moment before jumping (off what?) into a somersault to land on his feet, where he immediately drops to a crouch and sweeps his foot out to try and knock the boy off his feet. This is a test of his abilities, so, he might as well at least gauge his ability to jump.

Floor 21? Or what's left of it....

Works for me.

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Sorry I'm so late.

No worries. I'm pretty slow myself.

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