ORIGIN - I Will Scream Into Your Silence

He was, at the moment, upside-down.

The overhanging rocks were quite low, here, not quite ceiling--and much lower than the highest points of the roof. He was hanging maybe fifteen feet up, pressed to the rock, staring upside-down at Draco.

It looked different, upside-down. He was trying to figure out where everything was; perception this way was... hard.

Nidhogg was a creature without direction, too. That isn't to say, physical direction--up or down direction--this is a change of topic, and an implication of philsophical direction. He'd been angry, chaotic, wanting to escape. Then he'd sort of gotten lost a single cave away, and wound up hauled back by Vargas; but he hadn't seen anything of interest in Pegasus, anyway. Only flowers and birds and things, all gross and he didn't like them and he liked Draco better but he didn't want to admit that, no sir. So now he just sort of... existed.

Dwelled here.

Upside-down.

He didn't know what he wanted, and that had taken him from violently chaotic to sullenly simmering, staring at the Black Spire with a dull, angry mind and no idea what it was he should be searching for.

Or... doing, for that matter.

Ahh, well. Time to drift aimlessly until provoked; to hang from rocks and glare at nothing as if it owed him something in return.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Sleepy, tired—whatever you want to call it, Alpha was it. There was, unfortunately, a job to do; but, the routine would help (it hoped) to chase away its fitful slumber.

Someone, at some point, had retrieved Chaos-One and told it to firmly stay put. Time would tell if the beast actually obeyed that command. Despite Nidhogg's misgivings about purpose, the orthoclase was giving him a good week before another escape attempt. Either way, it still needed to be trained; Alpha'd already forgotten what half-hearted plan it offered to Vargas. His report that a team was being assembled to combat Mother and Order was helpful, though.

So, prepare it for battle and hunting down targets.

... it was a matter of finding the wretched thing, first.

One would think it's an easy task to find something that was covered in irradiated green accents—and was also rather large—but one would also be rather surprised. Alpha squinted high and low, tired eyes doing a poor job of catching any good glimpses. It would've helped if it weren't looking directly at the ceiling and at the bases of the walls, but... oh well.

Flipping on the magicka switch, the orthoclase squinted at the large, clustered silhouette of red some fifteen feet up the wall. "Chaos-One?" it barked, narrowing its eyes as if that'd magnify its vision. It blinked and stared that way. Was that the glow of his quills, or a trick of the light? Draco always made things look so... strange.

Alpha shuffled a few paces forwards, and—for whatever Godforsaken reason—wagered that Nidhogg might listen for once: "come down."

@Nidhogg

Toxic eyes narrowed at the approach of another set of identical eyes. Well, Nidhogg's were maybe a shade greener--a bit closer to emerald than to chartreuse. Anyway, he hated Orthoclase-Alpha. No--no, it wasn't intense enough for hate. He despised it, though. But it wasn't anything personal. He despised... everything.

He didn't budge an inch. Instead, his pent-up resentment boiled over, the "what's the point" adolescent rage never having left him. "WHY?" he demanded, sullen vehemence in it. "Why should I bother? What's the point? It's STUPID. Blah blah make chaos! It's stupid!" he repeated, and squeezed tighter against the stone--as if for security, or maybe preemptively assuming Orthoclase would leap for him, to tear him down from his little ceiling ledge. It could probably reach him--maybe?--too. "Everything here SUCKS. It's stupid grass or stupid rocks and nothing interesting! There's no point and it's STUPID!"

The tantrum-throwing monster stamped one clawed foot against the rock above--below?--him, and glared miserably at Orthoclase-Alpha as if challenging the Overseer then and there to prove that life, in fact, did have some grand purpose.

Or maybe to pull him off the rock.

He really wasn't sure.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Sweet of Nidhogg to not quite hate the orthoclase, yet. It was sure to give him "good" reason to, though, as one was wont to. One had to wonder, though, why numerous kickings, bitings, and related backlash hadn't been enough to garner hatred. Vargas had the patience of a saint compared to it; even a stray nip was enough to make Alpha whirl on him and return the attack. Imagine how it felt about that devil-may-care attitude.

All that being said, Alpha wouldn't call the serpent a complete moron; he knew to stay out of reach and strike only when it was most inconvenient for his target. It drove the orthoclase up the wall (hah.) Speaking of walls—

Toxic eyes leered up at the initial question sniped at it, at first disinterested in whatever he was saying due to its own exhaustion. The words took a minute or so to parse through its head, and… well, if the Overseer weren't so doggedly tired, it might've gawped some. Gawped and resonated because, really, what was the point? An eternal cycle of enduring miserable conditions where it was stifled and stagnating? Someone'd finally verbalized that melancholic feeling in its gut. It was locked in the recursive scenery of it hurling itself off a cliff.

So, at first, the black snake didn't get a reaction at all; just the usual… blank and distant look through him, rather than at him.

It blinked once as it mentally resurfaced, and shifted its weight to either foot. It harshened its stance, shoulders rolling up. A grimace was pasted on and it growled, "Chaos-Two, come down." Is that stern and authoritative enough? It didn't know. "Master Vargas needs you trained." Way to... completely ignore and put Nidhogg down.

this post is kinda trashy but ehhh
@Nidhogg

Nidhogg stared, for a long moment. His tail twitched once or twice, catlike, as an urge to not do exactly what he'd been ordered to rippled through him. And a cunning, if untrained, mind tried to think of how to justify it.

He could not, after all, fight Orthoclase-Alpha.

It would kick his ass.

Very carefully (and never breaking eye contact), Nidhogg picked up a small rock. He then threw this rock, awkwardly because his elbow didn't pivot like a humanoid's would; it very visibly sailed away and skittered across the floor with a few clicks.

There was nothing subtle about this. It couldn't have been a more obvious, lame ploy if he'd tried. It almost seemed sarcastic--but no, he was just that inexperienced.

"Look," he tried, after a moment. And, in case Orthoclase-Alpha had somehow missed it: "...A rock."

@Orthoclase-Alpha