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Ernst was, again, swanning around with arms full of tower shield. You could never be too prepared, after all, with giant metal birds who could break through their fortifications at any minute.

Okay, maybe he was being a little overdramatic. The people here were actually reasonably okay at fortifying the hotel, or whatever. He just kept remembering the completely wrecked state of the ski lodge: he didn't want to go that way. He was definitely keeping this weapon with him in case of emergency. It meant he couldn't really do scavenging himself, but Ernst was, well, a nosy guy. Take now, for instance: a small guy who looked like he might know what he was doing was fiddling with...were those radios?

Could they contact the outside world? His heart leapt a little before he remembered that, technically, the outside world already knew about this. He wasn't sure what headlines looked like, of course (or what the various relevant governments were doing - if the Chosen were the sorts of people with the most potential, then didn't that mean that there were Chosen among governmental figures?), but the camp at Prytaneum knew about this. Ernst was himself a part of the outside world.

Still. It was worth a peek, to see what the guy was doing. He trotted over, long limbs making the distance easy to cover, and leaned his shield against the desk. This guy was a Chosen, too, right? He didn't look outright traumatized - but you never knew, really. He could be miraculously well-adjusted. Still - it wasn't like Ernst had been banned from speaking to anyone else. He formed his left hand into a spindly finger gun and cocked it at Zan. "Ground control to Major Tom," he began, smirking widely. "Commencing countdown?"

Ernst gave a little bow of understanding, seeing the Hermes token dangle. "Well, Zan, I'm Ernst," he said, drawling on the other man's name. Though the shield made it obvious that he, too, was Chosen, he peeled back his coat to reveal his own mark, from Dionysus, pinned jauntily to his silk T-shirt. He...had not dressed very practically, this morning. Well, he hadn't been expecting an excursion to the Alps, either - let alone one that involved any sort of fighting.

He definitely sympathized with any attempt to be useful, though. Tall though he might be, his arms were a bit too weak to do real damage with the tower shield: mostly he could cover himself, and maybe the people around him if they didn't flail around too much, but he'd gotten to do a bit of shield bashing. Still, even though he'd have much preferred sitting in an office and overseeing some movie, he didn't want to be seen as useless, or ungrateful for what training had been offered. "I need something to do myself, and at this point, talking to myself sounds better than absolutely nothing." he joked. Which was why he was bugging Zan, obviously. "Unfortunately there isn't much need for filmmakers..." He was far from a technology expert, and he wasn't really strong, either - he'd spent a half hour helping push beds and stuff against doors, but had left it to people more capable. Honestly, he wasn't sure how these walkie talkies could help, either, but at least they could see whether any of these were paired?

"The shield?" He reached down to stroke it, but shook his head, smiling. It might have looked badass, and Ernst tall, but he lacked even a model's sleek musculature. He could sure hold it in front of him, though. "I can grip it well enough, but I may have not been paying enough attention in those classes." he admitted, a sly smile on his face. He couldn't much hurt anyone with it - but maybe he just wasn't built for hurting people anyway. ""Either I'm weaker than even I thought, or training dummies just cannot compare to metal birds. How are you doing, with...?" He wasn't sure what Zan had picked.

Ernst beamed - he quite agreed that his profession was cool, thank you very much. "There're certainly more hams there than here," he agreed. And he wasn't sure - as much as he liked the idea of heroic epics - that these birds wouldn't be covered in whatever non-disclosure agreements covered Prytaneum. Although - if stuff like this happened often enough that Prytaneum was usually occupied, he really couldn't believe that he hadn't heard of it before. Still - it really was a shame that so many chosen seemed so unsuited for, haha, the rage of war. Maybe the Ares and Athena and - and, uh, whoever else had a more practically useful talent had everything else handled. But Ernst had a stinking suspicion that he'd have to pitch in no matter what. He'd kind of agreed to it, in exchange for the use of the Prytaneum facilities.

He raised his eyebrows at the short demonstration, but still grinned when it did succeed. "So you also weren't, ah, Chosen for your fighting?" Maybe the recklessness was appealing to some God, though. They had personalities, theoretically, right? "I was definitely thinking any warfare that we were involved in would be a bit more modern," he added. Propaganda campaigns? Getting to know humanity's enemies by schmoozing? Or even, perhaps, planting poison in some high profile person's delicious Michelin-starred dinner (while also partaking in his own, of course), like in some spy movie? Sign Ernst up. Poisonous poop that got launched at his hair? No, thank you.

He perked up as one of the walkie talkies crackled, and then belatedly saw its partner in Zan's hand. He picked up that paired one and pushed it in Zan's direction. "Should get tape to label these," he mused, although he still wasn't sure how much use it'd be. Maybe if someone went scouting, then they could get help. But they'd need a lot more pairs than this if they were going to have any chance of systematically combing the area for survivors and supplies - which is what he presumed they'd be doing. An escape route would be nice, too, but honestly there wasn't really much they could do while the birds were still around in such large numbers. He picked up the second-last radio (or...the current last?), though, and held its button down. "Major Zan, do you copy?"

Ernst found himself beaming at Zan, but he took his finger off and set the walkie-talkie down, as well. He wrung his hand out for no particular reason, nodding as Zan talked. "I mean," he began. He'd expected - well, he'd expected it to be a bit more organized, in all honesty. These weapons looked like they came out of a history textbook, and he remembered Chris mentioning something about fighting for the good of mankind, or something, but he hadn't thought about how dirty and tiring it'd all be. He'd thought there'd be people telling him exactly what to do at every step of the way, but it actually looked like they'd mostly been given free reign, for now, now that they'd had their training. "I kind of expected to be put in the reserve forces." If there were ranks, or anything. It didn't really seem like it, at the moment.

He gave a snort. He'd just been watching his own movie when he'd been approached - although he wasn't sure that it'd been much of an approach. "You'd think they'd pick more, I don't know, soldier-y people. But maybe that means this is unusual." He said that with a tone of hope. He'd been kind of assuming that the people back at the campus had downplayed the danger because they were accustomed to it, but maybe it was the other part. Maybe they had genuinely thought this would be...simple. They had some pretty shitty recon, in that case.

Ernst didn't understand what Zan was going for at first (he hadn't thought the guy would actually go find tape, now), but after a second of staring he shook his head, as if to clear the thoughts from it. He picked up the roll of tape with furrowed brow, turning immediately to find one of those sign in sheets, for guests. The pen was really quite lovely, heavy in his hand, and it wrote nicely, too. Unfortunately easy inkflow usually meant - yep, it'd been wiped off very easily on the tape. "If only nice hotels were more prone to Sharpie." He took a strip of the tape and wound it around his own radio, though. "Let's make shapes?" He wasn't up for art right now, but they could have - a single stripe, a cross, and a double stripe? Assuming all of these paired with each other.