towerofanimus | 012/002 ♐ sensitivity! sensitivity! ⚙ ᴏᴘᴇɴ

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012/002 ♐ sensitivity! sensitivity! ⚙ ᴏᴘᴇɴ

Characters: Equius AU (guest starring Eridan), Ienzo, and YOU.
Setting: Dormitory hallways, and then anywhere at all. (Bargain prices up against the wall!) Backdated to noontime on the fifteenth.
Format: Action. I'll change to match.
Summary: Derps with recorders. Equius (Pet, early stages) is mamaloguing the shit out of his poor matesprit (and being very loud as he does so), and Ienzo (Howl/Lovely Ladies) is being a creepy creeper who creeps. He wants to experiment on yooooooooou.
Warnings: Words. Also a Disgaea!Mao-level creeper warning for Ienzo; there is a good chance your character will die if you tag him.

Part One: Equius ♐

[Walking down the hallway today are two trolls… well, okay. Maybe “walking” is a strong word. One of them, a rather tall yellowblood, is walking. The other one, jadeblooded and supremely confused, is being dragged along after the first with a weirdly clingy variant of holding hands. There’s a little mechanical bug flying along behind them; close inspection reveals that it’s a little babby robotic Virgin Mother Grub. It seems to be batting at the yellowblood’s arms, but every time it does, he abruptly jerks his charge to a different position. Usually one that involves holding said charge very tight to his chest. And also intense glaring.]

[Yeah, Equius decided to tinker with the heart recorders. Unfortunately, through it he has discovered his inner Kankri, and is now monologuing the everloving daylights out of his poor matesprit. But hey – at least it’s just the early stages! Hope you weren’t planning to get anything done the day of the sixteenth, Eridan, because he will not let you. But in the meantime, it’s just an innocent nagging vaguely reminiscent of a certain Queen’s ramblings about her son the Prince and marriage. However, he’s still paying attention to the surroundings; if anyone gets too close, he will stop abruptly and move the two of them away in much the same way he does to the mechanical Mother Grub.

[The mamalogue: spoken as rapidly as is possible to do without sacrificing clarity.]

…You know you can’t keep staying in that room, Eridan, it’s really not good for anything if you do. Roommates are just terrible news as a general rule, and yours are just bad. They’re going to ruin your life, I can tell you right now, they’re going to ruin your life! I want you to be safe, I really do, that’s all I’m trying to do here – don’t give me that look, Eridan Ampora, I don’t know what else I can do to make it clear to you that I’m really not here for anything, anything, except to keep you out of harm’s way. You deserve to be! I’m just saying, there are a lot of monsters in this Tower, and not all of them are the kind that wander the floors at night. We really have to find somewhere else for you to stay. You can’t sleep down in one of the lower floors – oh, god, no, never again, I would hate for that to happen to you, you’d be miserable – but maybe another dormitory would get past the no-sleep law? I’m sure it would. Another dormitory. We can make some kind of arrangement for you in mine, I’m sure we can kick one of my roommates out for a while, or at least share, one of them sleeps at odd hours anyway I’m pretty sure. But the long and short of it is you have to get closer to me. We have to stick together. Because who else is going to take all of these precautions for you, hm, Eridan? Jade? No! All Jade’s going to do is shrug and slap you on the shoulder and say “You can do it, go get ‘em,” but that’s not good enough. That’s not even remotely close to good enough. There’s only one person who really cares about you and really worries about your health and your happiness and your future, and that’s what we’re talking about right now – get back here! – and I want to make myself absolutely clear: it’s for your own good, okay? This is all for your own good. Because obviously you can’t seem to take care of yourself any longer, just look at you! How much shorter are you than me? Half a foot? Half a foot! And you’re thinner. See, this is the kind of thing I’m concerned about, Eridan. I’m not sure you can think of all these things on your own, eating and sleeping and not dying and stuff like that, and that’s why I’m here. Now, come on – come on now – Eridan, that is not the way to the kitchens!

[Note: replies can come from

chronomancer as well if he has something to say.]

Part Two: Ienzo ⚙

[Meanwhile, for a somewhat different flavor of maniacal Valentine’s shenanigans, particularly unfortunate individuals may find a short man in a lab coat creeping around the Tower. And we do mean creeping. He may walk as a shadow along the wall, or appear from nowhere, humming a happy tune; any monsters he should run across are promptly put down with an unusual amount of disregard for examining their corpses afterward. The monsters were all peanuts, as far as he was concerned. There were much more interesting things he could be cutting up and examining than monsters.]

[Such as, for example, other residents!]

[If someone is in bad enough relation to luck, they will find Ienzo walking up to them from within a wall, a shadow given form. He’s grinning, grinning in a way that he swore – quite a while ago – he would never grin again. And he’s holding out a little heart-shaped tape recorder. On the label, written in red Sharpie with little hearts drawn around the side, is the word ‘Howl’ .]

[Want to help him out in his experiments?]

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Ah, alright then. I'm not sure if the library will be able to help you..but if you tell me the lyrics, I might be able to tell you where they come from.

Certainly. Actually, I have a recording of it right...

[He fishes around in his pockets and comes out with that darling heart-shaped recorder. The uncomfortable smile disappears intentionally.]

...here! Yes, here it is.

[He presses play, and the grin returns.]

[Tohko listened to the music, recognizing where it came from-after all, she loved stories, even musicals-but..Ienzo's smile was rather..off. However, the music was good..but..where was this urge to flirt coming from?!]

You know, that's from Les Miserables, you handsome man.~

[Tohko blushed and covered her mouth in shock. Where in the world did that line come from?!]

I'm..sorry! I don't know where that came from..

[Hang on..was it that music box?]

Hmmhmmhmm.

[He grins. This one is decidedly different, seductive and a bit predatory.]

Thanks. I have another one, though.

[And from his other pocket comes a second tape, which he deftly switches out. He presses Play again, slowly moving closer to her; instead of an infuriatingly catchy Broadway piece, however, the song is "Howl".]

[The moment Ienzo said he had another one, Tohko's hands went to her ears. She heard a small snippet of the song..but, thankfully, she didn't hear the rest of it. She started to back away from Ienzo, hoping that her guess was correct, that the music boxes were influencing people.]

Ienzo, we're both..being affected by the music!

[That was the shortest sentence Tohko could spit out, and it took all her efforts to not flirt with him.]

Affected by the music?

[Oooooh. Something in his addled mind took that the wrong way.]

Well, I don't know about you, but I certainly am.

[Creeping closer. Closer. Closer.]

Do you want to go take a break somewhere... private?

[LIKE THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT DARK CORRIDOR OPENING UP ABOUT A FOOT BEHIND TOHKO. Whoops. But don't worry, it doesn't lead to anyone's dormitory or a bad Love Hotel clone...]

[Tohko clenched her hand into a fist in order to keep herself from saying anything embarrassing.]

We both are..due to the..Administrators!

[Tohko backed up a little bit as she spoke.]

I do-wagh!

[And, sadly, Tohko stepped into the dark corridor. Where it would take her, she had no idea. She just hoped she could get Ienzo to snap out of it before she lost control and they both did something horrible.]

[Have you ever been to floor 27, Tohko? It's the laboratory floor, and like all laboratories worth their salt, it's got a good old operating table right in the middle there. That Corridor of Darkness leads right into it, from the ceiling -- so Tohko will literally fall in and land on her back. It's all to keep her a little longer, of course. Ienzo jumps through as well, expecting the strange landing, and a second later there's a ring of purple fire around the staircase. Don't try to walk through that, obviously.]

[And then he's just going to casually lift her up using gravitational magic. Go ahead, try and fight.]

[It didn't take Tohko long to get her bearings, but the hard landing hurt and made her cry out in pain. When Ienzo dropped down, she sat up and started to scootch away-only to see that the staircase was blocked off.

In her panic, Tohko lost whatever grip she had on herself and managed to speak one line before Ienzo lifted her up.]

This is a strange place for some quality time..~

[And then, she hit herself in the leg to get some control back..and that's when she was lifted up in the air. Tohko held down her skirt with one hand and gripped her dagger with the other.]

Ienzo! Let..me..go! I don't want..to be part of your experiment!

[It's okay, Tohko, don't worry about your skirt, Ienzo is a decent moral human being and his one true love is SCIENCE... normally. Under the influence of Lovely Ladies, however, that might be a good idea regardless. Catching a flash will only make him want to chop you up more.]

Well, you know how it goes.

[She is jerked backward onto the operating table, and straps immediately reach out to confine her arms and legs. Meanwhile, he calmly walks around the side and leans over her; his other eye is visible, though it's completely normal. What a letdown.]

They say it's the best in the most unusual places!

[While being jerked back onto the table hurt, Tohko tried to fight back the pain and fight off the straps. While her legs were easily strapped down, her arms were harder to get, as the hand that held her dagger was chopping at one strap and the other was trying it's best to beat it off.]

That may be true for some people, but I..have..no interest in being a science experiment! No matter how handsome you are!

[That last part was due to the music box, but it wasn't like she could cover her mouth now. She had to deal with the straps. Then Ienzo.]

You're too kind.

[And then he pushes his hands down onto her arms. Yeah.]

[Just long enough for the straps to take them, though. Then he lets go.]

Now, are you going to drop that knife or do you want me to make you? It seems nice and sharp. Very useful. I could use that...

And you are way too cruel, even for a chessmaster.

[Tohko would try to fight Ienzo off as she spoke..but just failed in the long term.

She tried to calm down and not panic as she thought about what to do. If she let go of 'Wendy', Ienzo would use it. If she didn't, he would still use it.]

..I will only let it go..if you promise to not harm me with it..and keep your promise.

...

[He thinks this over for a moment.]

I promise.

[After all, there are other tools in this room to cut her up with. It's not like one little knife will make much of a difference.]

[It was the principle of the thing. It would be terrible to use Tohko's own weapon to harm her. She bit her lip and tried-for a moment-to see if she could move her arm enough to throw the dagger at Ienzo.

She could not. Those straps were too tight. In the end, she had to just drop it. She clenched her fists to keep her flirting under control and tried to break through to Ienzo.]

Ienzo, listen..when I met you..you didn't sound..happy about..human experimentation. Why perform it now? Do you want my opinion of you to lower?

[It sure would be terrible, but it wouldn't be too efficient. Ienzo's training has caused him to dislike non-efficiency on principle, even though the songs would probably love it if he cut someone up with a dirty knife that belonged to them for protection. His conditioning is stronger than that. Meanwhile, Ienzo walks over to the sides of the room, and starts opening cabinets. There are countless bottles and boxes inside which he promptly begins to look through.]

[At the words "human experimentation", he pauses, fingers wrapped around the handle of one of the cabinets. He stands there for quite a while. It seems that Tohko's plea has actually worked.]

[ ... ]

[He opens the cabinet and takes out a box labeled 'SYRINGES'.]

[Not that Tohko knew that her plea worked. She grew hopeful when he paused at one of the cabinets, but that hope quickly vanished when he opened it and took out the box full of syringes.

Gripping her fists even harder, she tried to speak again.]

Ienzo..do you want to remake the past..and hear humans screaming and pleading..for their lives?

[At her second attempt, he's off to the side somewhere, where Tohko can actually see his face. It's more or less an impassive line, as it should be when operating, but...]

[...no. No, he doesn't. It's a horrible sound and he hates it. And it's clear this time from his expression, as he stops again in the middle of preparing the needle, that what he wants to do and what the Tower is making him do are two very different things. In his defense, he lasts much longer this time, and ducks his head a bit as if somehow that would help him regain control of his body, but... no cigar.]

[Tohko, thankfully, managed to catch the expression on his face this time and nodded to herself. He was trying to break free and not do anything..so she would have to help. Otherwise, he would do something they would both regret.

So, taking a deep breath, she screamed as loud as she could. It was a scared, high-pitched scream, and while it was genuine, Tohko mainly let it out in an attempt to help Ienzo break through.]

[That... that didn't work the way you wanted it to, Tohko, darling.]

Shut UP!!!

[Tohko sighed and bit her lip as she recovered. That..didn't work at all.]

Ienzo..snap out of it! Throw away the syringe and teleport someplace else! Fight it!

SHUT UP!!!

[He immediately strides over to Tohko, syringe empty in his hand, and grabs the base of her neck with his open palm... and fires a Sleepga point-blank into her. That ought to knock the darling out long enough for him to chop her apart.]

[And, sadly, with one last feeble scream, Tohko was knocked out.

To start dreaming her usual nightmare of being stoned to death. Quite appropriate, really.]

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012/002 ♐ sensitivity! sensitivity! ⚙ ᴏᴘᴇɴ

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