first ➳

[undefines]

Characters: Nue Houjuu and OPEN
Setting: The dormitory floors; the cafeteria; Floor 6 (forest)
Format: Action preferred
Summary: Nue wakes up in the Tower, is annoyed by mysterious sounds, and doesn't care for the cafeteria food.
Warnings: Some goriness in the last prompt.
Notes: You might want to check this out before tagging in!


I. Dormitories
[Nue has a lot of questions about her situation when she comes to. There are the obvious, like where this place is and how she has been brought here, and then there are the more esoteric, like the number of youkai and the number of humans here alongside her. However, as she explores her new surroundings, her thoughts begin to come back to one particular question more and more often.]

[What is that noise?]

[Her pointed ears twitch and lie back like an animal's—not that most people should be able to see that, given the way she has covered herself with one of the few seeds she has access to. (Another thing to wonder about.) She even growls a little. It's seriously irritating, and it doesn't sound like anything she has ever heard before. Her wandering through the dormitory hallways quickly turns from an attempt to get her bearings to a quest to locate the source of that whining. Occasionally, she'll stop and scratch at a wall, as if to dig inside.]

II. Cafeteria
[Sometime later, Nue can be found in the cafeteria. She doesn't look significantly more pleased by the situation here than she did by the one upstairs, but for what is at least in part a different reason. Specifically, she's miffed by the options she has for food.]

[Seriously. As if suffering through the oatmeal wasn't bad enough, her reward is this flowery crap? What kind of self-respecting youkai would be pleased with this garbage?]

III. Floor 6
[Being unable to fly makes taking down a prey animal somewhat more difficult than it would otherwise be, but Nue makes do nonetheless. The loss of her powers and the aggressiveness of what should have been a timid doe catch her by surprise—and she has the bloody shoulder to prove it now—but it isn't hard to entangle the animal's legs with one of her flexible, blade-like wings while the other five slit its throat and rend its flesh. It doesn't take her long to leave it jerking against the ground in its final movements.]

[She doesn't feel like carrying her prize all the way back to "civilization," so when she settles down to eat, it's in the dirt. The scythe-like limbs at her back cut into her meal's still-warm body, and the blue spears opposite of them pry it apart for her. Blood drips down her chin as she gobbles down the meat raw. Unashamedly, she eats like an animal, because there's no one around to tell her she should do otherwise. She doesn't mind it.]

Comments

Cafeteria

[true_noir]

[Nue, there's a young woman staring at you with a bemused look on her face. By now, she's become intimately accustomed to the little nuances of the cafeteria, and one of the small joys she has in eating in this place is watching the expressions of disgust when someone tries the oatmeal for the first time or gets stuck eating one of the more ... colorful dishes.

All she sees is a sort of dumpy, cute, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl like so many others in the tower, plowing into her flowery food with incredible annoyance. It was a sight she'd seen so many times she couldn't help but forget most of them. She simply giggled, helping herself to oatmeal.

Bland? Yes. Tasteless? Yes. Debatable texture that sometimes made you want to gag? Yes. However, it was consistent, and she appreciated that in the mornings.]

New here, aren't you?

[undefines]

[Of course Nue notices when she's being stared at, and she doesn't waste any time staring back, her attention easily drawn away from her omelet. She isn't quite sure what to make of this woman, and her wings twitch behind her as she takes in her appearance.]

[The way she asks if she's new feels a little too casual for the situation, so at first Nue isn't entirely sure how to respond. She does, eventually, settle on answering honestly.]

Yeah, I'm new. [She continues to study Chloe with a little too much intensity to simply be called curious.] You're awfully blithe about the situation, aren't you?

[true_noir]

Very blithe. This isn't the first of these I've been trapped in. You learn to enjoy yourself in the midst of hellish nightmares...

Or you go crazy. [She giggled and took a bite, watching the young girl with curiosity in her gaze. Definitely far too casual.] Sometimes it's fun to do both for a while.

[undefines]

You're weird. [She says this not as an insult, but as a statement of fact.] This isn't the first time I've been confined with no escape, either, and I still managed to avoid becoming docile and domesticated.

Dormitories

[vermicompost]

[As he's walking through the hallways, he stops at the sight of a girl scratching at the walls. She looks so young and so unsettled that he can't help but feel immediate sympathy and concern. Another child here... He hates to see that. Is she new here? He can't just leave her alone.]

Hello. Are you all right?

[He smiles at her, limping his way over to where he's scratching. He doesn't see anything on the wall, but he wouldn't be surprised if she's just upset and acting out of panic. Who wouldn't want to scratch through the walls to get out of here? His tone is gentle when he speaks.]

Can I help somehow?

[undefines]

[Nue pauses when she is addressed. Rather than immediately respond, she merely looks at him at first, her eyes drawn to his marred skin and pallor, his white hair and his mismatched eyes. His limp is obvious. It makes her curious, albeit in the sense of a person wondering how a sick animal managed to avoid being culled for so long.]

[Her movements swift, she sweeps closer to him and leans in, wasting absolutely no time invading his personal space. She studies the veins marking his face more closely, but she doesn't say anything about them yet.]

Hey, you. [Her voice is a young woman's.] Tell me what that sound is.

[vermicompost]

[He's used to being stared at, considering how he looks. He's just glad he doesn't scare her. He hates the thought of scaring children. She doesn't seem to be shy at all, in fact, with the way she approaches him so readily. He isn't offended by her close scrutiny. It isn't her fault he looks so strange. He does feel self-conscious about it, but he tries to ignore the feeling.]

Sound?

[Her voice sounds older than he expected, but considering the range of people here, he isn't too surprised by that. Is she older than she seems, maybe? The thought doesn't make him any less concerned for her.

He isn't sure what she means by "sound". He stops to listen for a moment, but he doesn't hear anything unusual. Is that why she's scratching at the walls, because she hears something?]

I don't hear anything. What does it sound like?

[undefines]

You don't? [Her surprise at that answer is short-lived, however. She makes a soft harrumphing sound.] That figures.

[She doesn't elaborate on what she means by that, though, glancing away from him and backward the space she had been clawing at.]

It doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before. [As ignorant of the modern world as she is, she can't place something like a wireless signal.] It's high-pitched and whining. I couldn't find where it was coming from, so I thought maybe there was something inside the walls.

floor 6

[terreifying]

Wooow...

[Rei stares at the way the girl is tearing into her meal.]

...Is it good like that? When it's completely raw?

[undefines]

Maybe. [She gulps down another half-chewed mouthful, straightening up and wiping blood from her chin as she's addressed. She doesn't rise from the ground, though, instinctively half-hovering over her meal.] But if you're so pampered you've never eaten like this before, I bet you wouldn't like it.

[terreifying]

I really haven't.

[And the one time she did eat raw meat...well, it wasn't like she could taste it.]

But you never know. Maybe I would!

Floor 6

[swiftkicks]

[Ugh.

She knows it's necessary for some people to kill animals for food, but was that particular display really needed?

So her voice is just going to float down from a tree nearby.]

You could have just killed it quickly to end it's pain. I could have helped.

[undefines]

[She looks up at the sound of that voice, her posture instinctively shifting to hold herself over her food.]

If it had its way, I doubt I would have been killed quickly. [She shrugs her uninjured shoulder.] I would have been quicker if it hadn't sealed my flight.

[It's not like she did it for some sadistic pleasure.]

floor 6

[witchoftheweek]

[...really, Nue? Not that Patchouli cares in the slightest that the chimera is eating a monster. It's one less one in the Tower.

No, her concern is entirely different: two youkai with strange wings are in the Tower now. It isn't out of the realm of possibility that someone who didn't know any better would mistake Nue for Flandre. That is something she can't allow to happen. So she stops, sitting down next to her, looking serious, as always.]

...if this were any other place, I would just pass on by without a word, Miss Nue, because your messy eating would be a matter of etiquette only. Doing that here could potentially cause a serious problem, though, and I can't let that happen.

[undefines]

[Nue straightens up when addressed, but she doesn't wipe the blood from her chin this time. She does, however, lick it from her lips, then drag her tongue across her teeth.]

[Sorry, Patchouli, you brought it on yourself by mentioning etiquette.]

Sorry, but do I know you?

[In other words: Unless you have a good reason, not my problem.]

[witchoftheweek]

Probably not by name, but you probably know of my residence in Gensokyo: the Scarlet Devil Mansion. I'm Patchouli Knowledge, its librarian.

The problem is potentially a rather deadly case of of mistaken identity for both you and the younger of the two vampires that inhabit the Mansion, seeing as you are both here in the Tower.

You both have unusual wings, you're both threats to humans, and - let me be frank here - I don't trust most of the humans here to be smart enough not to mix the two of you up.

Dorms

[midnightblackandgold]

[A familiar, yet not familiar given the clothing and different style hat being worn, witch coming up to Nue with her broom over her shoulder.]

Can't you sharpen your claws on a rock like a normal youkai or are you part-cat now?

[undefines]

[Ugh. This is not a voice she was hoping to hear, but she doesn't do anything more than make a face at Marisa when she glances back at her. The difference in clothing doesn't register as particularly important in Nue's mind, so she doesn't comment on it.]

[Instead, she demands:]

Do you not hear that sound?

[midnightblackandgold]

I hear a lot of sounds. You might wanna be more specific, ze.

Floor 6

[wrigurun]

[Wriggle watches cautiously from the staircase. She hadn't been planning to spend much time on this floor but something had caught her attention. Another monster was it? They didn't normally come out during the day but with the way they tore the flesh from the deer's body she couldn't fathom it as anything other than a monster.

It wasn't one that she'd seen before, in fact its shape seemed to warp and change as she cycled through all the possible creatures it could be. This wasn't the time to sit and stare though, with no powers it'd be bad if she got caught. As quietly as she could she crept up the staircase, her attention still focused on Nue. Without looking where she was going her foot slipped on the edge of one of the stairs and she fell face down with a small thump and a yelp]

[undefines]

[A monster's senses need to be sharp in order for them to hunt their prey, of course. So, it's no surprise that this thing hears Wriggle when she slips and falls. It straightens, its gaze instantly honing in on her.]

[...Of course, in reality, it's just Nue studying Wriggle out of curiosity. There are so many strange people here, after all.]

[wrigurun]

[Wriggle still can't make out... whatever it is that's staring at her but now it's too late. It must just be one of the regular animals on this floor, the monsters didn't come out as much during the day. The more she looked... yes it was just a regular animal but it already had her in it's sights and she worried that it might attack.

What were you supposed to do in these situations? Intimidation? It was better than nothing. She puffed out her chest and stretched out the sides of her cape as far as they would go and she yelled in as loud a voice as she could muster]

Don't come any closer!

Dormitories

[warriorscribe]

*...Oh dear, why is this person (and that is what he sees in her seed - a person, human) scratching at the walls?*

Are...are you all right?

[undefines]

Can't you hear it?

[Rather than a yes or a no, she answers his question with one of her own, her voice demanding.]

[warriorscribe]

Hear what? *Enoch tilted his head towards the wall, trying to hear whatever it is she was hearing. He couldn't, whatever it was...

But if she was scratching at the walls, and there was no longer any reason to...*

What does it sound like?