☠ 004 | all sufferings, all pleasures, all good and evil

[destructiveprinciple]

Characters: Avenger and OPEN to all.
Setting: Dormitory levels, elsewhere and then the first floor, the seventy-fifth floor, and the twenty-fifth floor.
Format: Action spam to start with.
Summary: A typical open log for this month.
Warnings: All the Evils' in The World is present in this post which is a warning by itself, along with grossness/gore and blood in the first prompt? Also the expected fare for the Tower of Animus.

[ SCENARIO A || FLOOR 75: OUTSIDE ]
[ Seated on the grass warmed by the clear weather on this floor outside the twenty-story tower, the Servant is busily pulling the slowily-cooling intestines out of a dead monster, its stomach slit wide open. Its throat is a ravaged mess. A few other organs laid spattered bloodily on the ground next to Avenger; two hearts (who knew some of them had extra hearts?), what looks to be the liver, maybe a section of the stomach? It could be an alien-looking kidney. It's hard to identify them correctly. His arms are bright red up to the elbows.

What he couldn't dig out with his hands and strength, he used his short swords to cut them up further and make the task easier to complete.

One or two lumps of maimed tendons and meat that might have once resembled the regular monsters themselves, are left nearby as well, given a similarly careless treatment.

Boredom is a strange thing, when paired with constant murderous urges that Angra is attempting to redirect away from fellow residents. At least he decided to do this in a corner of this floor far away from the stairs? Not that he's making any attempt to conceal this from prying eyes. He just likes the quiet between hunting down the Tower-generated creatures. ]

[ SCENARIO B || FLOOR 25: THE MEADOW ]
[ His eyes are closed and he's flopped over onto his side onto the soft grass with one side of his face pressed against the ground, under the cool, dark shade of one of the trees in the meadow. His thin shoulders rise and fall in sync with his even, slow breathing. Taking a nap in the evening was pointless; it wasn't like he required sleep or even food or housing. But he felt the desire to pretend at it, and since he had no reason other than his instinctive paranoia to not to leave himself open in any manner, he went along with it. Angra had never quite regained the knack to true semblance of slumber after his first life, only managing a light doze or total dreamless unconsciousness at the best.

His sleep was restless and shallow. At least he doesn't snore.

So when somebody's feet unexpectedly impacts with the embodiment of all evils' ribs and there's a sudden, unwanted weight tripping over him, it roused him easily. Wheezing at the knee that comes down into his stomach, he rolls over, hurriedly trying to push them off of his body and sputters in confusion. ]

—!!? Wha, wh—

[ Disoriented and groggy, Avenger still snaps to wakefulness speedily in a few moments with an irritated snarl of fury as he realizes what happened. ]

—Watching where you're fuckin' going... [ He spat out, a tick mark show showing on his forehead; ] is way too much trouble, huh! Idiot!

[ VERY RUDE. ]


[ SCENARIO C || DORMITORY LEVELS: POST-SPARRING ]
[ There was a line of old scrapes and redness along his knuckles where Saber whacked him if he'd gotten careless for even an instance while fighting her, a newer bruise on one cheekbone and what felt like a swollen knot blooming on the top of his head from a blow to the skull. Generally, he looked like he'd gone biking on a deserted road, collided head-on with a small truck and come out the worse off.

Of course, that was usually the normal result of his sparring matches with Arturia: 'Shirou' getting beaten up repeatedly and mercilessly for one or two hours, stop for the day, do it again later, rinse, wash, repeat. He'd improved, yes, to the point where he could block her attacks occasionally and even deflect them, but he couldn't avoid getting knocked out. In today's session, he tried going on the offensive for a short time before changing his mind and deciding the price paid in the strength of her blows was too much, and playing it defensively in a battle against the Servant would probably work best.

His body burned with pain. 'Shirou' , ignoring his body's complaints of fresh soreness, wipes the lingering sweat off his forehead with his arm, calming his breathing down. The discomfort he was currently in would fade soon enough. As if to spite him until then, a knife of minor pain stabbed abruptly him in the side. ]

... Ow—ouch, owch...

[ He winced and dropped his arm back down to his side. ]


[ SCENARIO D || ANYWHERE IN THE TOWER: YOUR PICK ]
[ Generally, Angra wanders through an assortment of floors at night and shows little concern for which ones he ends up on as long as they are neither overly threatening or extreme.

He's not a picky sort of guy.

It's possible to find him sitting on tombstones in the cemetery staring at the fabrication of the skies on one floor, not mourning the dead just looking at the view, slinking through the sandy caverns on another floor, or walking over the farmland on one of the lower floors.

'Shirou' is much more easy to run into during the day, tinkering with dented toasters in the workshop, hanging out in the media room, or obsessively patrolling the hallways and floors of the Towers as normal, bruises or no bruises. Business as usual here! ]

Comments

B

[fionnuisce]

Why don't you watch where you're goddamn sleeping--?!

[Waver had been distracted, overloaded by something very familiar he was sensing that he couldn't place a name to. It was like every worry and bad feeling condensed into one, distracting enough that he'd tripped directly over-]

[directly...over...]



Oh, shit.

Re: B

[destructiveprinciples]

[ He was sleeping out of the way, out of the stupid sunlight, the magus is obviously the one at fault here.

Avenger tries kicking him directly in the stomach, hard, before scrambling away from him back to his feet, still half-asleep. The aura of palpable darkness and hate that rolls off him sure is present, the same feeling that had been distracting Waver. He regards Waver flatly, with a restraint that hangs loosely on him like a badly-fitting coat.

Almost conversationally even if he's clearly annoyed; ]

Rethink that first remark, or I'll give you a chance to watch me put a goddamn sword through your gut, thank you very much. [ Not pleased that you ruined his nap here. Very much not pleased. ]

[fionnuisce]

[oh fucking hell that hurt. Then again, he'd had worse. Waver got to his feet a little unsteadily, keeping a relatively safe distance.]

You're...Avenger, aren't you?

[On the scale of things that were not good, this was Very Not Good.]

[destructiveprinciple]

[ Good, it was supposed to hurt. The Servant rolled his eyes, straightening up and shaking off the grogginess from moments before. ]

No, I'm Crocodile Dundee, who do you think I am?

[ Tone down the sarcasm there. ]

[fionnuisce]

[Waver recovered quickly, both from the kick and the unpleasant surprise. His hands went to his pockets, one wrapping around a vial of liquid mercury just in case this went badly.]

I don't exactly know, now do I? That's the point of a Servant's class name--even if that's not an ordinary class.

[destructiveprinciples]

[ Angra is content to remain passive and stays where he is, under the cool shade of the tree in the grassy meadow. ]

Mm, that's right. You don't know. [ Kinda boredly; ] Wonder who told you 'bout my class title.

[fionnuisce]

I'm a goddamn genius, I don't need anyone to tell me.

[While he did kind of make it his business to know that sort of thing, there was no way in hell Waver was going to outright admit anyone had told him. Much less name any names.]

So I'll cut straight to the point and spare us both the pleasantries. Who or what are you, and what have you presumably been doing with the Grail?

[...well, if he was going to get his ass kicked by all evils of the world, he might as well get it over with.]

C

[vermicompost]

[Kariya is simply limping along slowly, headed for his room, when he catches sight of the young man. He seems to be in some pain, and in spite of his own pain, Kariya is nonetheless concerned for him. He holds his left arm with his right as he lurches forward, although there's considerably less of the left arm left than there used to be, after it had been severed at the elbow. He offers up a small, friendly smile, though his expression is otherwise concerned.]

Excuse me, are you all right?

[heroicprinciple]

[ Shirou looks up at the shuffling sound of somebody approaching, already prepared to brush off his discomfort. ] Huh? I'm fine. Just a little sore—

[ ... What. Whoa. He blinks. Once. Twice, eyes widening in shock and bafflement and bolting upright. The frail man lurching slowly towards him with a friendly smile, was doubtlessly the same man he'd had a small identity misunderstanding with in the kitchens weeks before, who had named himself as a relative of Shinji and Sakura. But his hair was now white instead of dark and what had happened to his body, and wait. Why was everything below the elbow of his left arm missing?

Honestly, the man looked like he'd cough out his intestines onto the floor if you poked him too hard.

And there weren't any experiments going on yet for this month. So why was Kariya so drastically altered?

Shirou looked worried, the reaction leaping out of him without considering it might come off as insensitive. ]

Matou, what happened? Your body...

[vermicompost]

[Kariya wasn't entirely surprised by the reaction to his appearance, as he knew how he looked, but he was surprised when it was followed by his name. Did this person know him? Kariya didn't remember him at all. He didn't immediately make the connection to his other self, as he hadn't seen the man in some time, and his thoughts had been elsewhere.]

I'm sorry. I don't think we've met?

[His condition wasn't that much changed from what it was like before the monsters, before the glamour failure, or before he'd come here, for that matter, so he wasn't quite sure what Shirou meant. He didn't recognize him as someone he'd known before his training, so that couldn't be it...

He glanced at his arm, almost apologetically. It had been quite traumatic to lose it, but he tended to act as if he was more concerned by others' reaction to it. He didn't want to worry anyone.]

I did lose an arm fighting the monsters, if that's what you mean.

[heroicprinciple]

[ Shirou's facial expression momentarily switches from worried to confused. He had never met this man in his universe, but they'd definitively met before in this Tower. Even with the holes in his memories Saber had drawn his attention to, he remembered that. ]

In the kitchens. Uh, that's where we met? It wasn't that long ago...

[ Shirou skips back over the apologetic glance at his arm, since it was only a small portion of the ruination that seemed to have overtaken most of Kariya's body and could be addressed later. (Even if he was still angry about the monster bullshit Ruana had forced upon them.) One eye was filmed over, as pale as his hair and he limped badly.

He worried about the man immediately. ]

No, I meant your body. What happened to it? Are you sick?

[vermicompost]

I haven't been in the kitchens a lot.

[Kitchens were a place Kariya made a point of keeping out of in his current condition. There wasn't much he could do there, he could barely eat, and he'd never been much for cooking in the first place.]

I don't remember meeting you, I'm afraid. [He couldn't always think clearly, but he didn't have gaps in his memory, as far as he was aware. It had never seemed like he did, and no one had ever pointed that out to him.] I wish I did, but-- [He gestures with his good arm. He quite simply doesn't.]

Yes, I'm sick. [He doesn't think it's necessary to go into the details.] I've been this way since I got here, and I've been here a while. [He's still not sure what the source of the confusion could be.] What's your name?

[heroicprinciple]

Oh.

[ Shirou doesn't look any less confused or worried. He crinkles his forehead in thought; no, he could easily recall seeing this same person, with a less deformed face and body, in the kitchens. That's a fact. But it's also a fact Kariya doesn't remember that meeting. ]

Ah, uh! It's not your fault if you don't remember. Er, it only happened once? [ It was said reassuringly. But he frowned a little. ] You weren't sick when I saw you then. You seemed like a really healthy guy, if a bit on the thin side of things.

[ Then he asked for his name, and since he already knew his, it was only fair to offer his own in return; ]

I'm Emiya Shirou.

D the morgue?

[swordofzero]

Suzaku kept himself away from anyone but still watched those moving through the morgue, not generally making himself known to them but marking their faces.

Then he saw a face he had already marked, or at least remembered. A man he had attacked, who had attacked him back with great force, Suzaku's bite turning him into little more than a mindless raging monster himself.

He stood up out of where he sat and stepped towards the man. "Excuse me."

D the morgue

[destructiveprinciples]

"Mm?"

Angra turned around at the new voice and saw the man he'd walked past, saw him getting out of his seat and taking a step towards him. The Servant paused, looking at him blankly like an animal that had laid eyes on an unfamiliar species. A rather boring, unfamiliar species.

Re: D the morgue

[swordofzero]

Suzaku blinked, it was him and Suzaku forced himself to look up and meet his eyes as he stepped closer again. "I just wished to apologise to you."

Re: D the morgue

[destructiveprinciple]

Angra stared at him, forehead crinkling for a moment.

"Apologize for... what, exactly?"

[swordofzero]

"I." He blinked, "I was the monster that attacked you earlier this month, the red masked one."

[destructiveprinciple]

"Ah... Uh, that was you?" Avenger smiled at the memory. "You were a nuisance to kill."

More-to-the-point, he warily narrowed his eyes at him. Was this person here for revenge for his messy death?

75

[pinnaculum]

[A fellow monster-hunter approaches, bloody himself, if nowhere near the extent that Avenger is. He likes to stay clean, but slaughtering monsters wholesale has its price.

The gore doesn't bother Sephiroth in the least. He's seen worse, and he's performed his own dissections on the monsters here. Not that he doesn't like the act of fighting, of killing, but he prefers to have some other reason for his actions, or he tells himself he does.]

You are not researching.

[It's a flat statement. In his current estimation of Avenger, he is not a man who likes to research, as Sephiroth does. He looks at what remains of the monster, wondering why, then, Avenger is handling the corpse.]

They are like us, but not.

[destructiveprinciple]

[ Avenger doesn't turn around at Sephiroth's approach, though he does lift up one blood-covered arm to wave once in greeting before dropping it back down. ]

... Nah, I'm not.

[ It was this, or he went after the next poor saps he found to sate himself. He wanted to tear something, somebody apart but he was aware of the costs that would result from that. He couldn't. He needed to curb his bloodlust, at least enough to function.

Kinda musingly; ]

Yeah, you could say that. [ Not that he cares. ] What's the difference between human and animal, kiddo? They were originally the same beast anyway.

[pinnaculum]

There is no difference. We are all animals.

[That's just biology.]

I mean that these creatures are also from other worlds. Yet they do not wear collars, and they disappear during the day. When the power was off, they remained unchanged.

[It's odd, to Sephiroth, and he stares at the remains of the butchered monster as if it could tell him something.]

They turned people into monsters, yet we already are. Then why are we treated differently than they are?

[destructiveprinciples]

The arrogance of humans would beg to differ.

[ People like to think better of themselves than that, even if it was untrue. ]

Perhaps they're screw-ups. Trash, failures of this quaint little system our hosts have constructed. [ He jerked his head towards the dismembered corpses of the monsters, hands still wrapped around the ropes of guts he was pulling out of the corpse he was seated in front of. ] That child who got the job of bringing us to here... I don't doubt he makes mistakes.

[ There was a wet slap as he torn out another bloody organ from the dead body and dropped it onto the ground. ]

Eh, I'd say it's obviously not out of the goodness of their hearts.

[pinnaculum]

We are all animals, but some animals are superior to others.

[Sephiroth says this simply, but he does consider himself one of the superior animals. Why wouldn't he?]

That is possible, but many of them seem like distinct species rather than errors. Did they not mean to bring these creatures, or are only those with a certain level of intelligence collared? We are humanoid, for the most part. Although some of the monsters are humanoid, too.

Some of them are very dangerous. [Having spent so much time hunting monsters, he has come across some that quite simply cannot be killed, or fill even him with so much terror that he cannot approach them.] I wonder if they are meant to test us, or if their presence here serves some other purpose.

[Sephiroth watches Avenger's efforts impassively, studying the parts of the monster's body as they are removed.]

No, that is unlikely. We have yet to determine the reason for our presence here, but I doubt it is generosity.

[destructiveprinciples]

In what way? A fish would see you as the most useless lump of flesh ever if you couldn't swim or breath underwater. What use would a wolf have for mathematics? For war?

[ He's willing to conclude that genetically-fucked with people like Sephiroth are superior animals in a sense, but they're all equally worthless to him. ]

Scare tactics then? Intentional or not, once they're brought here, you can make use of your messes. This Tower isn't what you could call 'people-friendly.' Maybe they had a plan to spice it up and make it even worse, eh?

Color me shocked over here. [ The bloodied, wet ropes of guts slide down and slap limply onto the dirt. Avenger glances at Sephiroth. His fingers are caked in blood, flecks of unidentified stuff. He doesn't appear to care. ] I doubt it's a test. If they wanted tests, there's loads of better ways to go 'bout it.

[ There are pretty odd-looking organs in there. The Servant pries away another layer of flesh from the monster, ripping it away in streaks and chunks to remove it. ]

Uh-huh.