Pieces of the Puzzle

[terranities]

Who: Cain Knightlord and EVERYBODY (no seriously, he is knocking on every door in the residential areas)
Setting: All dorm rooms on each level
Format: Starting with Prose, but will match you
Summary: Cain has some questions to ask of everybody!
Warnings: Cheerful derpiness?

Comments

[lucidmutant]

When that dorm door opens, it opens to show Cain an enormous green fellow with a rather scary visage, but he's showing no signs of hostility. "Time seems to be all I have here, so I do have plenty to spare." A roundabout way of saying yes.

[terranities]

Well now, that was not what he was expecting when the door slid open, and for a long moment he was left to wonder if the Tower was altering his perceptions of reality again. If it was, then he wouldn't let it affect him, he wouldn't display any outward signs of discomfort.

Maintaining his friendly smile, he raised a hand in greeting and leaned on the doorframe, peering up at the other's neck to check what colour his collar was..?

"Mind if I come in?"

[lucidmutant]

Fawkes' collar was orange, and rather large to fit the big mutant's robust neck. And no, this is no trick of the tower - Fawkes is quite real. He waves off the handshake. "I would, but I do not wish to start a habit of doing so. I fear accidental injury of those smaller than I." His voice isn't as loud as normal as he speaks.

The question gets a nod, however, and Fawkes moves aside. Once Cain enters, he'll see that one of the beds lacks a frame - the mattress is just laid on the floor, and the remnants of the frame and boxsprings are piled nearby.

[terranities]

Orange, like his own. At least that ruled out species as a common denominator in colour choice; but then again, that would have been far too simple and already noted by someone resident here. The other's response to Cain's handshake cemented this was no hallucination, and he wondered what Fawkes actually was.

Tactfully avoiding mentioning the remnants of the poor bed, Cain just perched on the nearest place to sit and rested his arms on his knees in a relaxed posture.

"That's very considerate of you! My fingers and I thank you, though I'm sure you wouldn't have done me any harm."

dormssss

[tempustemporum]

Cain gets the dubious honor of being the one to intrude upon Ienzo’s reading time. He’s doing it in his dorm room, though, not in the library; it’s much nicer in there than it is in here, but he’s kind of grown a strange attachment to the place after becoming an effective shut-in for a few weeks. That and, well, he’s been sleeping in here for five months, it’s not like it’s unfamiliar to him anymore. Normally, no one in his room really gets visitors, which is why he found it mildly surprising when a door opened. Regardless, he went to open it himself.

“Excuse me,” said the blond-haired man standing on the other side of the door, “I wondered if I could have a moment of your time, please?”

“…You may,” he said. “What is it?”

huzzah!

[terranities]

Cain glanced at the other man's neck to check his collar colour, just a brief flick of his eyes so as not to make it too obvious, before he was raising a hand in genial greeting.

"I'm conducting a bit of research into the tower and why it has brought us here, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Psst. Ienzo is eight. ;D

[tempustemporum]

Don’t you worry, Cain, he caught it and was checking yours as well. He’d gotten out of the habit recently because of the lessened interaction with others, but the information was now more crucial than ever. And it seems that this man was thinking along the same lines. “…Go ahead. Do you need to sit down…?” He opened the door fully and floated out of the way, for Cain to enter if he wished.

Lol he looks older, thanks! And what colour is his collar?

[terranities]

Was that child... floating? Cain still wasn't used to all the oddities that people from 'other worlds' presented, but he wasn't going to allow it to affect him - he had a job to do, and he would make sure it was done.

His smile softens a little for the boy's age as he entered and took a seat, leaning his elbows on his knees to lower his lanky frame in case his height was at all intimidating to someone so young.

"Well, do you mind telling me a bit about the place you came from before here?"

Room 2-12

[token_vengeance]

"What do you want."

Erik opened the door, raising his eyebrow at the blond standing before him...sounding a bit too damn cheery for his liking.

Leaning against the door frame, with his arms crossed over his chest, he knew he looked less than welcoming.

[terranities]

Cain would have been utterly naive if he thought everyone would be co-operative without any stumbles at all, and so he takes the brusque greeting in his stride, smile never wavering as he looked for what colour Erik's collar was.

"I'm conducting a bit of research about the residents of the tower, looking for patterns and correlations between various things. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?"

[token_vengeance]

Erik's collar was blue, but currently hidden under a tight black turtleneck--it was a sort of a uniform for him, here. A way to help him ignore the sign captivity around his neck.

"You can ask them. I'm not necessarily going to answer them, however." Quirking an eyebrow, he watched Cain evenly, giving nothing away.

[terranities]

Cain has no such compunctions about needing to hide his captivity; it was what it was, and pretending it didn't exist was no way to escape from it.

“I wonder if the first thing I could ask, would be to get a look at your collar?”

[begin0peration]

There's some obvious sounds of objects being moved and a trunk being closed before the occupant answers the door. Fran seems perfectly content despite apparently being interrupted in the middle of something, but hey. Her first visitor~~.

"Of course~. What do you need?"

[terranities]

His smile widens a little, blue eyes shining warmly behind thick glasses, as he leans down somewhat to be more her height.

"Just to ask you a couple of questions about your home and life here, if you don't mind?"

[begin0peration]

"A questionnaire? Well, sure."

Fran moves back from the door, letting it swing open to reveal her rather empty room. The sign outside says she has a dorm mate, but she's yet to see them at all. With whatever she'd had out of her trunk hastily packed away, the place looks untouched.

"I haven't been here that long, though. Does that matter?"

[terranities]

“It doesn't matter at all.”

He smiled at her reassuringly, warmly, as he stepped into the room and waited for her to come back in and make herself comfortable.

“How long have you been here?”

...well you said you wanted tl;dr okay

[terranicidal]

Abel was not happy with any part of this shithole.

It had, however... given him something that he hadn't had in an extremely long time -- hope, and the taste for a freedom that seemed just beyond his reach in this place. After his conversation with Edward, and then Cain -- it had all fallen into place. If they were far enough away from the Red Mars Project that neither were recognizable, their identities just as generic and indeterminable from the next pair of faces in the crowd, then that meant that maybe a life as 'normal' was not as impossible as he had come to believe it was.

Hope for a life away from a world where they were nothing but tools... expensive pawns, guinea pigs and lesser beings -- monsters...

He wanted it. God, he wanted it more than anything. A place he could protect them properly -- a place they could actually be... happy.But the Tower of Animus was not that place. Perhaps it was a stepping stone to reaching it -- but it, itself, was far from the ideal paradise despite the 'freedom' that existed within the

mmm derishush

[terranities]

Cain was well aware of his brother's plans to sit outside the elevator doors until they opened, and personally he thought them fatally flawed in a number of ways. The biggest flaw was, of course, Abel's need to sleep - they only need wait for his brother to succumb to that basic need before leaving and returning completely undetected.

Aside from the holes in his logic, Cain was worried that this would be seen as an act of aggression and would make Abel a target for experimentation, someone to be made an example of. He refused to lose his brother here, where there were no safety nets of being a valuable commodity... yet he wasn't actually out attacking anyone, and for that grace alone, Cain wasn't arguing with what he chose to do.

"I brought you breakfast, lazybones. I cooked it myself~"

Which had been a distinct adventure, and the reason they were a little burnt crispy around the edges. Advanced in many ways though they were, neither had been given cause to even make toast for themselves before, all their meals provided by the

[terranicidal]

That bleary half-asleep stare continues for a few more beats before he blinks hard, pushing himself upright and yawning as he stretched. Ahhh, he hates mornings... or afternoons... whatever. Waking up was never any fun compared to the joy of undisturbed sleep.

But food was definitely a good motivator to bring him into the waking world. He's reaching out for the tray curiously.

"...what's the occasion?"

[terranities]

"I can't make breakfast for my favourite little brother?"

He gave a mock pout, sitting on the edge of the mattress and handing the tray off to Abel so he could eat.

"I even catered to your disgusting and unrefined tastes!"