The bottom of your canvas shoes slapped obnoxiously against the tiled floor. Each step you took made you cringe slightly. You were making your way to the containment wing of the Foundation where your subjects were contained.
After the massacre of Stroheim's team in Mexico, Mr. Joestar had decided to detain and contain the threat of The Pillarmen. You had heard about the exploits of Mr Joestar in Europe and heard his 'heroic' tales of how he single-handedly (you found it funny that he chose those words) took down the gargantuan men. You had doubts the battles took place the way he said they did, but you kept to yourself.
When you had first heard about them, you weren't sure what you expected. You had expected men that came out of pillars, much like how someone would melt out of a block of ice. Just like normal humans that you would pass by every day. Boy, you were very wrong.
When they were lugged into the Foundation's examination room in chambers illuminated by ultraviolet lights, you were sure that your jaw had hit the floor. You had seen the first Pillarman, but he had been encased in rock and in pieces. The three that had come in from Europe may very well have been the most beautiful men you had ever seen.
After Mr. Joestar had made some very obscene gestures and comments in front of the encased Pillarmen, he and Mr. Speedwagon gave a brief showcase of how to handle the Pillarmen with precaution. You, of course, ignored all of it. You hadn't thought that you were going to end up as one of the poor attendees that had to check up on them. After three months of running tests on various stone masks and interviewing vampires, you had received a letter of promotion to task manager of the BT-PM project.
Initially, you had been excited to have been promoted, even if it was something you hadn't particularly wanted to do. But after you had learned you had only been put as task manager because the previous one had died, you weren't so sure the promotion was a good thing.
A month of observing had passed and you had yet to even see one of the Pillarmen up close. Then, the person that had been tasked with seeing the men up close had been absorbed by Santana, so now it fell on to your shoulders. You wondered what would happen if you died. The members of the team seemed too skittish to do anything by themselves.
You thumbed through the notes taken by the previous observer had taken. Overall, they were pretty vague. Santana's page was a hot mess, Wamuu's was neat-ish, Esidisi had hardly anything on his, and Kars had nothing on his page except for the pre-printed information provided by SPW.
PM01- Santana/San Tan/Sanviento/Santviento
There was a scribbled mess on the paper that you could barely make out. You best guess was chicken scratch. You tried your best to read through Santana's paper, but gave up due to eye strain.
The loud 'clop' noise from your sneakers finally stopped once you reached the first enclosure. You weren't sure how to feel about Mr. Joestar's request to call the containment zones 'enclosures'. It felt really demeaning. Plus, you didn't want to slip up and call one of the Pillarman's rooms an enclosure. Lord above knows what would happen. You scan your ID badge to get past the first security gate.
The containment zone had a buffer in front of it for maximum protection. The walls were solid concrete, and the huge window in front of the containment zone was made of bulletproof glass. The iron door was lined with a thin display of Ultraviolet light that prevented any escape. You stood in the buffer zone and stared into the enclosure to look for Santana. After a few moments of seeing nothing in the otherwise empty room, you can your ID badge and enter.
You look up on the ceiling just to make sure the orange haired Pillarman wasn't waiting to jump down on you. That was the one tip you remembered from the seminar. Thankfully, he wasn't there.
You scan the room to find a messy mop of persimmon hair tucked away in the far corner of the room. He was hidden behind a newspaper. From the very little that you could read on the paper, it told you not to engage him unless he was attempting to leave.
The Pillarman peeked over the newspaper for a moment before turning his attention back to his paper. You plop down a few paces in front of him and pulled your computer out. You logged in with a few simple taps on the keys. After the fate of the previous task manager, you had been given his computer and were expected to keep logs on it.
Pm01
Santana showed no interest in me when I came into the room for the first time. He has looked at me a total of one time. Previous cases show the same amount of consideration on his part.
You close the tab. Having nothing else to do, you open up a few files past entries.
PM01
SUBJECT SHOWS NO SIGNS OF INTEREST TOWARD ANY ACTIVITIES PRESENTED WITH. AFTER IT WAS GIVEN SEVERAL DIFFERENT FORMS OF ENTERTAINMENT, IT ENGAGED IN NONE OF THEM.
"Why are you in here?" A voice with no inflection asked. You jumped, startled at the sudden interception of silence.
You look up from the computer to see the Pillarman staring at you with a new interest. He had discarded the newspaper. He was sitting cross legged with his arms propping himself up.
"Pardon?" You ask, shocked to hear him speak.
"Why are you in here?" He repeated with the same, calm voice.
You stare back at him with a blank face.
"Are you like the other humans? The ones that come here to berate me after they chose to enrage me?" He elaborated.
"No, I'm here to st-study you," you manage. He considered your words for a moment.
"The humans before you claimed that as well," he responded, "those exact words. They treated me like an animal, are you going to do the same?"
You shook your head, "No. I wouldn't be here if the last, uh, human didn't die. It's not your fault that I'm here, so why would I take it out on you?"
One of Santana's orange eyebrows furrowed, "It was. It was directly my doing-"
"Yeah, but if the last task manager didn't treat you poorly and actually did his job, then I wouldn't be here," You reasoned, opening another tab on your computer. There was another stillness in the room. You read through some more files on Santana.
"What is that that you are using?" He asked, "Some type of computing device?"
Suddenly, the large man was next to you. He gently pried the computer from your grasp and began to mess with it. He tilted it different ways
"Well, I mean, it's called a computer, so I guess its a computing device," You said.
"What is it's purpose?" He asked, more to himself than anything.
"If you give it back to me, I can show you," You mumble.
You watched as he took the laptop apart piece by piece, making sure to be very delicate. He removed every single key, which made you inwardly groan at the thought of having to put them all back on.
"Why are the letters arranged this way? This isn't the way your alphabet is arranged," he murmured to himself.
"It was to slow people who wrote on typewriters down so that the little bars that transferred ink on to paper wouldn't jam up. It's pretty stupid in my humble opinion."
"What is a typewriter?"
"Like a keyboard but in a little machine that used ink and directly put letters on to paper."
"A keyboard?"
"It's what you just took a part."
Santana stared down at the little black keys in his hand.
"Such lengths to go for a simple scripture. Why not just use a writing utensil?" He asked, placing the keys on the ground and arranging them in alphabetical order. You smiled to yourself. He was like a child that had one two many questions, but you couldn't help but answer.
"It's complicated," You answered.
"These ones have more than one letter on them, what do they do?" Santana showed you the function keys.
"They preform specific functions on the computer. You press Fn for the prompt and them press one of these for that function. You see how Fn is blue? Anything else on the keys that has blue on it is a function. If you put the computer back together, I can show you what it does," You offer.
The orange haired Pillarman proceeded to put it together again and handed it back to you. Much to your surprise, he had put the keys back in their exact order.
"So, this is an internet browser. I can't really explain what the internet is, so you'll just have to watch. There are a few different types, but I use Firefox as my main one," You explained. You showed him everything on the display and how it worked. Santana was a very good listener. "So we can use the internet for almost anything. Like, if you want to look up what the color orange is, then we can do that." You typed orange into the search bar and opened up a Wikipedia article.
You got side tracked when you turned to look at him. Santana was focused on the screen while you looked at his face. You had heard a lot about the Pillarmen, including their attractiveness. It was different to see them up close. When you stopped talking, he picked his head up off of your shoulder and looked at you.
"Is there something wrong?" He questioned. It was his first personal question that he had asked the whole time.
"Uh, yeah, I, uh, think so," You stumbled over your words.
You spent a long time teaching him the functions of a computer. He listened very intently and asked a few questions here and there. You let out a bit yawn and tried to continue to teach him.
"If you're feeling fatigued, then you should rest," He said. You leaned into his shoulder without realizing it.
"Mhm, yeah, maybe," you drawled, snuggling into him.
Santana took hold of the computer and started to mess around with it. Your eyes shut and you could feel your body slip into the clutches of sleep. In your last moments of being awake, you could feel him lean into you in return.
Should I make a part 2/make one with the other Pillarmen?
~Ghost