towerofanimus | Of new progress and new barriers

Characters: Enoch and anyone!
Setting: Infirmary, backdated to Dec 26; Dorm 3-18, Dorm floor 1, and Floor 97, backdated to Jan 1; Secret Room, backdated to between Jan 5-12.
Format: Starting in prose but I'll match you
Summary: Enoch attempts to test out his regained real powers and learns he's apparently running on Extra Mode, then later he gets a motorcycle and tries it out, and then he tries and fails at leadership once again. But it's not his fault this time, he swears.
Warnings: Nothing but a bleeding injury in the first prompt.

Infirmary(F2), December 26

Enoch wakes to an unevenness in his position where he's fallen asleep against the wall of the infirmary. Something is under his waist, and he aches from the awkward position his back's been forced into. His muscles protest as he pushes away to a kneel, reaching back to remove the obstruction.

There's a weight on the back of his jeans. His hand feels over the familiar form of the Arch.

Not caring about the pain, he leaps to his feet and lifts his robes to get to the Arch, holding it in his hands, looking it over. He opens it, watching the crackle of energy between the protrusions in front become its familiar beam of blades. He knows Lucifel wouldn't have planted the one he gave him on him. So does that mean it's the real one, followed his soul at last? He quickly undoes his cloak and sets the scarf Yotsuba gave him aside to pull off his robes, leaving him only in his jeans and sandals. The robes would get in the way, if his powers are back. He calls on his armor, and it responds. It's a weak flicker of light that at first fizzles out. But he tries again, and the light spreads up his body, leaving behind the armor in its wake. He closes and stows the Arch again, examining his gloves, looking down to inspect the armor. Has the new collar fluid worked? Is it real?

For a split second, the glamour flickers. The armor persists, over the white jumpsuit and wireframe. It's real. Enoch looks at the door, back at the Arch at his waist.

He takes it, opens it, and heads out.

It doesn't take very long for him to return, bare-chested once more and clearly rattled. The wound on his side has been reopened and bleeds freely. He staggers for the nearest empty chair, but is very likely to stumble over or into someone on his way there.

Turns out, the plague doctors are still immune - and his armor can only take one hit from your run of the mill tower monster, at that. Since when was it so weak?

Dorm 3-18, Dorm Stairs/Dorm Floor 1, Monsterzilla City(F97), January 1

By the first, he was tired. Very tired. He'd stayed in the infirmary for the last week of the incident, and having not been in his bed was beginning to take its toll. He checked out the new place, just a cursory look, before turning around and heading right up to his room. He fell asleep almost immediately, a deep sleep from which very little could rouse him.

Something from outside him wakes him, a noise, though he was sleeping so deeply he has no idea what it was he'd just heard. He pushes himself up groggily, having slept on his stomach since he never dismissed his armor or set the Arch aside.

Beside his bed sits a motorcycle, sleek and futuristic, as if by the tower's standards. He reaches out to run a hand along its side. It wasn't a pleasant place, where he rode this. But riding it, itself...it might have been fun if he wasn't fighting for his life the whole way. He slides out of bed, taking its handlebars and walking it carefully out of the room.

You may see him in the hallway with it, or wheeling it up the wheelchair ramp towards the top dorm floor, where he's headed to ask Lucifel for proper wind protection.

Or perhaps you're among the less fortunate who have to share an elevator with him and the machine. If the elevator starts getting too crowded, Enoch will be found sitting on it rather than standing beside it.

And if you didn't see him there, you'll likely see him in the city of giant monsters, Floor 97. His armor is gone now due to the floor's effects, but he has a helmet, at least. The cold doesn't seem to deter him. His wheels kick up snow as he navigates around buildings at top speeds, weaving between the legs of a giant imp and leaving it in a spray of snow as it tries and fails to follow him for observation.

Satisfied, he comes to a halt by the stairs, looking down the stairwell as he takes his helmet off, to make room for his armor when it inevitably returns. He's learned better than to assume it's in a good position for it.

Secret Room, Jan 5-12

Enoch sits in the new room, his new trailing friend nearby. "It's good, that you have this place now. Do you have a name?" He catches himself. "Of course not...not one like ours. So, why not..." He seems to be having trouble thinking, a little distracted. Eventually, though, he smiles and looks up at the unit again. "Solomon. Do you like that name? It's derived from 'peace'."

The unit seems on the shy side (that or they're still acting like "normal" units even here), but the smile is all Enoch needs to see. "I'm glad. Let's see if we can ask Aria something, Solomon."

Unfortunately, Aria seemed a bit too busy, so later anyone would find Enoch sitting in one of the chairs, a notebook opened to an empty page on the table before him, a pen in his hand. They had to do something. They had to come up with a plan. They had to figure out how to search. They had to let other people, people who came too late, know about Dax. But while the pill Zo had given him had muffled Eleven's voice such that he was no longer chained to absorbing distractions, his ability to brainstorm effectively, his capability with free association suffered greatly. When his mind was set to wander, the muffled screams drew his attention away every time, made it hard to think without someone or something else to give him a line of thought to start from.

And so he sat, one hand to his head and the other holding a pen poised above a blank page. This would be a common sight for several days. Sometimes there might be scratched out scribblings on the page, and sometimes he might even tear out a page entirely.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well...humans are meant to live on Earth as we see fit. It's forbidden for Heaven to interfere without God's approval. This means that angels can only watch, and I assume only interfere when absolutely necessary. The choir of Grigori grew enamored with humans, and fell to live with them. They built a tower behind a shroud of distorted space. The tower was surrounded by an enormous city, larger than any to be founded by human hands alone, and there were people living within the tower itself, as well."

Thankfully, no horrific experiments (that he was aware of), but it was connected to The Darkness. Life was comfortable but it was all they had. Enoch pauses for a moment, to give the other the opportunity to ask a question or simply so he didn't just talk his ears off.

"..."

He has to take a minute to figure out all of that. "What, so you guys just sit and do nothing? You just have to wait for your god to say you can do something? You guys sound like puppets. Like him."

For all that Dark Pit has grown to appreciate about his original, that's something he can never understand.

"But whatever. Keep going."

"I'm...I'm not an angel. But it isn't that Heaven does nothing. They protect Earth from The Darkness so that demons do not interfere with humanity, either, and to keep their souls safe. These Grigori were meant to watch over humans, I assume both to track their progress and to watch for Dark activity. You see...we simply cannot be given advancements. It would be like giving a child a weapon without training him how to use it. We're liable to hurt ourselves if we don't earn for ourselves what they simply gave."

He sighs. "I know life on Earth is difficult. I know this better than any angel ever could. But after spending time with the Archangels and seeing the Tower, I came to realize that this hardship is necessary. It is an obstacle for us to overcome. We have the potential to overcome anything set in our path - and that potential will never be realized if things like this motorcycle are simply handed to us rather than earned. As they were in the Tower."

That answers the question of why he has the motorcycle, at least, even if he hasn't given all the details yet.

... Well okay. He seems angelic, but whatever.

"So... uh."

Let him try to get this straight.

"I'm guessing this Darkness is kind of like the Underworld Army. These Grigori guys were supposed to be guardians but they messed up. I'm guessing they sent you after them?"

Enoch seems like the hero type.

Enoch nods. "That's exactly it. I was sent to search for them, and though it took me three hundred years, I found the Tower. My mission was to defeat and capture each one, but each of them has an entire world to themselves within their level of the Tower. Azazel's is where I got this motorcycle - his was an enormous city of steel, far too large and complex to search on foot, so Lucifel, my guardian, 'made arrangements' and was waiting for me with this. It was destroyed, eventually, but I suppose that doesn't matter with film and glamour."

"Yeah I - wait what? It took you three hundred years?"

Dark Pit stares in disbelief. He may be an angel with no real sense of how human time works, but even that is way beyond anything he could think of. Three hundred years is an incredibly long time, especially with someone who's been in existence for under five years.

Enoch's mouth smiles sheepishly but his eyes don't follow suit, not with the age in them. "The shroud of distorted space I mentioned...it made it very difficult to find. I was given immortality so I could carry out my mission."

"That... seems like a ridiculously long time for someone to have to be on the same mission." He shakes his head. He can't even imagine being loyal enough to something to do the same thing for hundreds of years.

"It was...important. In addition to all I've said, their children with humans, called Nephilim, were creatures who were in constant agony. To escape this, they devoured one another, until the compounded impurity corrupted them and turned them into monsters of flame, rampaging and destroying everything in their paths. If just one managed to escape the Tower, there would be no reclaiming Earth."

And then there was the deal with The Darkness, but as far as he knew nobody actually knew about that until he found Ishtar's prophecy.

... Welp. "... So you killed them when you found them, right?" Creatures of darkness that threatened people... it seems pretty obvious to him.

Then again, he's also pretty aware that his world has a simpler view of evil than others.

"The Grigori?" After a long pause, he nods. "That was the idea...the only way to truly capture them was to kill their physical bodies so their souls could be returned to Heaven."

He supposes a physical body could have been captured but then again, he was the only case of a physical being brought to Heaven and he had no idea how that was accomplished. Maybe it was too difficult or unreliable a process?

"... I wouldn't think that a human, even one given powers from a god, would be much of a match against an angel. How did that even work?"

He'd say 'no offense', but politeness isn't really in his vocabulary.

"It...worked." He really doesn't know what else to say. Apparently, those blessings were, indeed, enough to make him a match. "Though, I've heard I'm meant to become an angel, myself. That could explain it. Though I still feel human."

And if Dark Pit could sense these things, he'd feel human to him too. Noticeably blessed, but human. It's a weird thing.

"Maybe. I've never heard of that kind of thing happening, but I didn't interact with humans at all at home, really. I've never heard of the gods doing something like that for a human either."

It's not impossible, but definitely not something that's happened to his knowledge.

"I'm the first in my world, apparently. Perhaps the last. I wouldn't know."

He might be a little more helpful if he could remember his time in Heaven, but he just...doesn't.

"It's pretty hard to predict the future, yeah."

He shifts a little bit, wings flapping.

"Where were you even going to drive that motorcycle?"

"I'm not certain." A sheepish little smile. "I've never tried to think of the levels here in that way, so I was going to simply travel until I find a place for it."

"Doesn't the gym level have a track or something?" It's not great but it's something, at least.

"It does... I'd prefer one of the wider areas, however."

Somewhere where he's not quite so likely to run into someone.

Of new progress and new barriers

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