Welcome to Gaia! ::

Evan always felt a certain kind of obligation to keep an eye on the people he had woken up. They were new and he had been there a while, so it was his responsibility to show them the ropes. Whatever he had done with Chel obviously hadn't worked out. Nora might have almost died the first time they had sparred. He decided to try something a little different with Paige.



He would be leaning against it waiting for her if she ever found it.

Evan frowned at Paige, confused almost to the point of alarm, before understanding slowly dawned. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling, though his ears turned red.

"Sorry," he murmured, hiding a bark of laughter in a cough. "I'll, uh--we'll--anyway. I'm sure--I mean, I hope you've had a chance to settle in okay, uh, otherwise. I don't know how much the Life techs told you, but along with regular training, we're also encouraged to do these courses. There're five different ones, all tailored to different division specialties. This one," he said, gesturing at the tower behind them, "is Mist's, which is kind of a combination of all of them. Once you clear a course, you can get clearance for runic tech. Any questions so far?"

Paige's scowl was mean enough to make Evan turn redder. Maybe it was just the nature of her suggestions. "Sorry," he muttered again, turning to lead Paige through the entrance of the tower.

"Okay, so the first part comes from the Sun course. It's easy--all you need to do is hit stuff." He summoned Gir and took a swing at a few shadowlings who seemed eager enough to die that they launched themselves at Evan and Paige. They dissipated with high-pitched shrieks. "Like so. Okay, your turn."

The woman he had been with had certainly seemed to think so. Paige pointing it out was a nice reminder, but no less embarrassing for it. He nodded in approval as she handily dispatched a couple of shadowlings.

"I mean," he said, "just pound on the wall or something next time if we're too loud." He gave her a quick, polite once over and a bright smile. She was pretty--and tall, which was definitely another point in her favor. "Or the door. Wouldn't want anyone to feel left out."

Paige's directness manged to startle a laugh out of Evan. "I can respect that," he said, nodding and still smiling. "It's important to be dedicated to your work--especially for someone who has to learn how to do everything."

Once the shadowlings were cleared, he ascended the stairs, calling over his shoulder, "But if you ever change your mind..."

He stopped at the top of the landing, frowning in annoyance at the tiles that covered the floor. "This is probably going to hurt," he warned Paige. "It's probably going to hurt a lot. There's no telling what stepping on one of these tiles will do. If you're lucky, it won't do anything. If you're unlucky, it might explode underneath you. Step carefully."

Evan contemplated the tiles before him, trying to look for any that screamed certain death. They all looked frustratingly similar. With a deep breath, he finally selected one at random. He held his breath and stepped onto it, releasing it in a relieved sigh as nothing happened. "Okay, your move. Careful, now."

"Don't get cocky," Evan warned, though he couldn't help but smirk at her sass. "We're not done yet." He was relieved that Paige seemed to be doing well so far. Belatedly, he considered the fact that, if this went south after all, this might not be the fun, friendly introduction to Deus he had hoped it'd be.

Well, he would just have to keep them from failing. Shouldn't be too hard--if they could survive the Death course, they could survive most anything. Right?

Evan was about halfway through the minefield; he would only need to take one more step to get across. He wasn't about to spend hours analyzing each tile to see which ones might be more full of death than the others. Instead, he held his breath, took a chance, and hoped that he lived to see lunchtime. It was almost a relief when the tile exploded beneath him with enough force to knock him across the room, because that meant that it hadn't killed him. It hurt like hell and left him a little dazed, but at least he was still alive.

"Like I got my a** handed to me," Evan muttered as he took Paige's hand and hauled himself up. He shook his head to clear it of the echoing ringing in his ears before proceeding--with noticeably less go-get-'em than before--to the ladder. "Next we go to the top of the tower, pick up our princesses, and try to get ourselves down in one piece."

Yes, he did say princesses. With a straight face, even.

A pair of human-looking figures in full princess costumes--complete with ridiculous hats--were chained to the top of the tower. Evan waited for Paige to catch up before explaining, "These are our objectives. We need to unchain them, but it's probably not going to be as easy as it looks. If they get hurt, don't worry too much about it. They're just golems--they're like lifelike robots, kind of--and they're made to get broken anyway. Drop it if you need to get yourself out safely."

With that, he took a look at the golems that had been set out for them to rescue and smiled as he recognized at least one of them. Cee's curves barely fit into the princess costume, and it was clear by the skewed angle of the hat that some tech had tried hard to fit it over her poofy hair and just gave up halfway through. "Dibs on that one," he told Paige.

No sooner had he started fiddling with the manacle on the golem's right wrist than it exploded in his hand. Gir whimpered and whined as their Fear shield shattered, but Evan was more concerned about the blood dripping down his arm from where fragments of the manacle had sliced through his coat and into his flesh. <********> he swore wholeheartedly, shaking his arm to try and relieve the pain. "s**t, goddamn ******** ow--look," he said to Paige, "I need to go get this taken care of. You finish up here if you can, but be careful."