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-(Mon+y Py+hons 1ife of Equius)
Equius Zahhak woke up in an unfamiliar bed late at night on February 5, 2012. He didn't actually leave that bed until the next day, compelled by an empty stomach and a growing sense that people were watching him. (It was true; he was occupying one of four beds, and his three roommates were regarding him uncomfortably.) After finally coming out, Equius discovered that the Tower had a kitchen, and promptly engaged in some good old therapeutic cooking, which lasted for the rest of the day. He learned that humans don't eat their young (how weird is that?), and took the first blow to his worldview: there were rustbloods here who he knew as bluebloods. It was really uncomfortable. He also discovers that there are other people from his world who were taken to the tower -- David Lalonde, Kanaya Maryam, Nepeta Leijon, and Eridan Ampora. He later starts building a friendship with his roommate England, which gets cut off after his other two roommates intrude quite aggressively on their tea-time. Equius never had any more significant relationships with his roommates; both Fawkes and the Highblood disappeared, and he was casual acquaintances with England, nothing more.
On the same day, Equius wanders into the media room -- which would later become, undoubtedly, his favourite room in the entire Tower. Here, he met the jadeblood Eridan again, and the two of them sat around watching bad/amazing movies for a while as Equius tried to unravel the mess that was Eridan's time reels. The two of them soon began hosting the "movie nights" on a regular basis, usually with just the two of them in attendance, and these meetings deepened their relationship considerably -- to the point where Eridan eventually became Equius' closest CR in the game, hands down. They didn't need much of a reason to host one of these, but because of Equius' delicate nature, they typically ended up in the media room watching a fluffy rom-com after one troll or the other got too shaken up by events in the horrortower. From here on in, assume that there are movie nights with Eridan (and sometimes other people) strewn liberally throughout, but none of them have real events of note.
Later, a certain event called Hitori Kakurenbo happened. (doop doop explain Kakurenbo here)
Equius was on edge for several days after Kakurenbo. As he always does when he's on edge, Equius went down to the kitchen to bake more delicious goods, and in the process met Shion. They were two antsy, paranoid, socially maladjusted boys who happened to meet in a kitchen, but Shion would later become another one of Equius' closest friends, mostly without him noticing. Because of their similar dispositions, Shion and Equius often wound up sticking together when times got tough, because they knew that the other would understand what they were going through. Even when the situation wasn't that bad, they still liked to stick around and talk to one another -- both were just reasonably nice kids, so there was no factor of danger or affectionate insults in talking to the other.
Willow Rosenberg hosted a "friendship affirmation party", which was basically just an excuse to get people together and have them be happy after Hitori Kakurenbo ruined everyone's moods. Equius... never much liked parties, so he mostly hid in the corner, but in doing so he met another yellowblood who liked hiding in the corner: Sollux Captor. This was Equius' first real chance to interact with someone he knew was on his level, hemospectrum-wise, and he opened up much more to Sollux than he did to anyone else up until that point. Pity the two of them never met again. Around the same time as this weird-ass party, Equius also met a human girl named Rose Strider, though they didn't really talk much (and the words they did exchange were mostly about Nepeta). Rose would become a large part of his development later.
In March, Equius had the incredible bad fortune to run across the Grand Highblood in a chipper mood. Because when the Grand Highblood is in a chipper mood, people die. A lot. Equius put up absolutely no resistance when the Highblood grabbed him, since he was still of the mindset that it was a purpleblood's job to kill lowly yellowbloods, but it seriously upset him anyway. After he was revived the next morning (because that's a thing that happens in Animus), Equius had a horrible idea: since he was supposed to be sleeping in his dorm room, but the Grand Highblood was also sleeping in his dorm room, he would just sleep places that weren't his dorm room and stay out of harm's way! Unfortunately, the Tower did not like residents sleeping in places where they weren't supposed to. Equius found out the hard way that if one doesn't sleep in their assigned bed for too long, they will begin to feel the effects of sleep deprivation no matter how much actual sleep they get. It was in this state, sleeping under a piano, that he met Rose Strider for the second time.
Equius was sleep-deprived and therefore unable to put up the usual 'classy lowblood' act, so the conversation he had with Rose was unusually sincere for the time. Rose decided that this whole "scared of the Highblood" thing was actual bullshit, and since Equius refused to get angry about it, Rose took it upon herself to get angry for him. This was oddly touching in a weird sort of way, though he only realized that later -- at the time, he was trying to stop Rose from going off to slay the Highblood herself, because the difference in strength meant that he would crush her like an over-ripened grape. Although he initially rejected everything she said (and was utterly confused as to why she cared about him being pushed around), Rose Strider and her "pep talks" became one of the strongest influences on Equius as he gradually started to grow a backbone. Although she always tried to act cool and distant, the two of them eventually struck up a peculiar but long-lasting friendship. She eventually became one of the very few people he actually smiled at on a constant basis.
At some point between his death and the conversation with Rose, Equius was dropped into an event known as Labyrinth. The gist of this event was pretty simple: characters from the Tower were removed from the normal floors and relocated to a secret floor that no one but the admins could access, and they were told to fight to the death until only one person survived. Equius moved through the labyrinth with Karkat Vantas (cerulean) and Kanaya Maryam (mutant red); he didn't get along especially well with either of them, but he would take the protection of Karkat's powers and Maryam's... well, chainsaw massacre-ing any day. Unfortunately, they ran into Gamzee Makara in the Labyrinth, and this time he wasn't nearly as amicable as he was before the event. Gamzee had run out of sopor (a pacifying drug) a little while before the event started, so he was beginning to descend back into the mindset that the Grand Highblood had: kill everything, and make annoying honking noises while you do it. Gamzee attacked them about halfway through the event; Kanaya and Karkat died, but Equius fled, and he was fast enough to escape the indigoblood's clutches. Needless to say, his relationship with all three of the involved trolls went straight down the toilet after that, and it never quite recovered. Equius later died at the hands of Her Imperious Condescension, Empress of Alternia.
Equius, like several other residents, dropped off the face of the Tower again during the month of June; they were being held captive for yet another game by the newly-revealed head administrator, Ruana. This one was titled 'Infighting', primarily because that's what it was; each admin of the tower had a group of residents representing them, and these groups were to compete in almost game-show-like challenges to see which admin was superior. For Equius, this event basically translated to "month-long migraine". He was in the admin Riki's group, which meant that the quarters he was forced to live in for that four weeks had some pretty impossible geometry, and there was no way to get out. This drove everyone a little bit crazy, but it made Equius' Spacey-sense utterly insane. Space does not work that way, goddammit. During this event, he met Rose Strider again and she gave him more of her questionable pep talks. However, he also met one Wriggle Nightbug when she crash-landed into him while trying to fly through the broken geometry. Wriggle and Equius were as different as night and day -- she had the body and mind of a preteen girl, she was a firefly demon so all her friends were bugs, and she was judgmental and quick to criticise. Somehow, though, the two of them developed an odd comraderie, and eventually started to regard one another as trusted friends.
After a few weeks to catch his breath from Infighting, our yellowblooded friend discovered a not-so-yellowblooded friend who had just arrived in the Tower. Equius had heard many things about this blueblooded version of himself (the "True Equius", as he called him, since so many other people insisted that this blueblood guy was the real thing and he was just an anomaly). Never had the two of them met, however, until now. It ended... well, pretty badly; blueblood Equius acted exactly how one would expect him to act (that is to say: domineering, aggressive, and more than slightly uncomfortable), but in the end he did drill some valuable lessons into Equius about how to conduct himself. Stand up straight, speak clearly, and so on. To this day he doesn't have them down pat, but without the blueblood Equius, he probably never would have started doing it at all. Yellowblood Equius never met blueblood Equius again, and the blueblood disappeared from the Tower shortly after their little talk.
As the monthly event, the Tower went through something known as Glamour Failure; everyone in the Tower woke up as wireframe approximations of their normal selves, with little floaty things in their chest cavities. The floors of the Tower -- cathedral, fountain, workshop, media room -- were almost completely empty, except for more of this weird wire. This event showed everyone present why they were able to revive: because their bodies no longer existed. They were just souls, floating in wireframe bodies, and the collars around their necks regulated the glamour. Equius didn't do very much in this event except shake and cry with Tavros Nitram, the brownblood who he actually had a pretty good relationship with, despite him being Gamzee's matesprit.
After a particularly ill-advised attempt to make amends with Gamzee goes haywire, Equius finds himself being hunted by an indigo, again. This time he flees to the space floor, hoping that the exploding galaxies all over the place will do something to calm his nerves; they kind of do, but at the end of the day, Gamzee finds and kills him again anyway. He submitted completely to Gamzee's culling once again -- but the murder was over and done with, Equius started to feel the beginnings of resentment stirring within him. He wouldn't act on this resentment until much later, but nonetheless, this death marked the first time that Equius began to seriously wonder whether Gamzee's murdering sprees were justifiable. And by extension, it was the first time he began to seriously reconsider whether the hemospectrum was really a healthy system that ought to be followed.
In the middle of August, Eridan Ampora returned to the Tower after a month-long disappearance. Equius (who had been hiding in his room the past several days, trying not to scream as he contemplated his life and his choices) really didn't want Eridan to see him in such a state -- or anyone to see him in such a state. Unfortunately, after spending a month in the ruins of their old world, Eridan wasn't in the mood for treating Equius gently. What happened next was a horrible experience for everyone involved, which mostly included Eridan making aggressive and demeaning romantic passes at Equius and watching him squirm. Eridan, who had gone through a bit of an emotional crisis at the time, was attempting to grapple with the fact that he actually did have a thing for Equius, and was having difficulty coming to terms with it. This basically put a huge wedge in their relationship, and it stayed wedged for a good long time.
And then, whale.
No, I mean it -- there was a giant space whale, and it crashed into the Tower, destroying 90% of the floors -- and most of Equius' personal belongings. A search party consisting of Jade Strider, Gamzee, and Wriggle found Equius and Tavros huddling together under a tree in one of the few remaining floors. Of course, the presence of Gamzee drove Tavros to run directly towards the group, and Equius to run directly away from the group. Eventually, they wrangled him down to the cafeteria floor, where the group had set up a little refugee camp. He spent the rest of the day wandering around the bottom floor, and once he got news of Eridan's whereabouts, he ran up to the infirmary to help out. They had a bonding moment, and Eridan stopped calling him by his last name, which was an improvement. Eridan also decided to start redflirting with him again, which was decidedly not an improvement -- but this time it was less "malicious" and more a desperate plea. Equius, being Equius, nope'd right out of the conversation.
Later, Equius was stalking around the Network when he noticed that Eridan had a little conversation with Karkat Vantas (cerulean). This conversation should have been private, but the Network was broken, so everyone got to see. Karkat, being the absolute master of romance, was hassling Eridan about the frankly embarrassing state of his quadrants; he had a red and a pale mate all lined up for himself, but was hardcore in denial because of other romantic entanglements he'd had for a long time before coming to the Tower. Equius read the log with a dawning sense of horror, and began avoiding Eridan again, not really wanting to deal with the whole romantic thing. He wasn't ready, okay. That didn't stop Eridan, though; he knew that if he didn't confront Equius about it, Karkat would, and that would be a real catastrophe. Unfortunately, because Equius refused to look at him, they ended up having this conversation from opposite sides of a door. Fortunately, though, it was really short, because Equius already knew everything that Eridan wanted to tell him ("I love you"), and they just stopped talking after like five tags. It was probably the most uncomfortable thing ever.
...Oh, did I say that was the most uncomfortable thing ever? Because I was wrong. After that, the Shadows happened.
Basically, a certain deity from the Persona series got really bored and decided to create 'evil twin' versions of lots of characters, created from magic fog. These evil twins were designed to take everything that the characters tried to hide or repress about their personalities (which was usually all the bad parts), and brought them out in full force. Because Eridan is kind of a horrible mess when it came to personality and repression, his Shadow was a pain and a half to deal with, and when it manifested as a monster it was a pain and three-quarters to defeat; in the four days it was active, it trolled Equius some more with deeply uncomfortable conversations, and refused to let him go, to the point where he was essentially held captive as Jade Strider had to kill the bastard herself.
And a few days later, Equius' own Shadow confronted him (after searching high and low, and freaking out most everyone it met). There was a lot of shaking and crying as Equius' Shadow basically knocked him down and kicked him repeatedly with a detailed explanation of how much Equius had suppressed everything ever during his lifetime (and it was right). Eventually, though, it too manifested into a hugeass mechanical knight with a broken crown on its head. Fortunately, however, there were more people to fight Equius' Shadow than there was Eridan's: Wriggle, Gandalf, a human version of Gamzee, and Eridan himself. Eventually the thing was defeated, and Equius... well, suffice to say he was put out of commission for a while.
After taking some time off to calm his pounding kokoro, Equius wandered into the media room again and discovered Eridan again. They should have had a deep heart-to-heart talk -- except Animus was in the middle of a body-swap event at the time, and Eridan had the body of a certain jadeblooded lady. Despite this, they ended up having a nice heart-to-heart anyway... and eventually, while Eridan is still in a girl's body, the two of them finally agree to try out this "boyfriend" thing. And they hug. But don't kiss, because Kanaya... and also because Equius... and also because Eridan.
Equius took a short, week-long hiatus after that, and he got dropped in the dead world also. It ended about as well as one might expect. Nothing significant came of this, except that Equius spent another week running everywhere and paranoid that something was going to crawl out of the darkness and kill him -- but really, that's par for the course with Equius by now.
On December 1st, Equius ran into Gamzee Makara once again. Predictably, Gamzee had fucked something up and was expecting Equius to fix it like a compliant yellowblood... but thanks to the magic of character development, Equius didn't really feel like dealing with Gamzee's bullshit anymore, so the whole thing turned into a loud argument. Loud arguments were basically the extent of their interactions for the rest of the game; a few people tried to make jokes that they were blackflirting with one another, but they were completely off-base. There was no "flirting" to be had here; black quadrant-mates like competition and insults, and are never out for the other's blood. Gamzee and Equius? Out for each other's blood.
From December 15 onward to the end of the game, things gradually settled into a routine. But because it was the Tower, the routines included freakouts in public places and unattractive arguments of many kinds. One particular January highlight: a really awkward age-up event in which Eridan had wild, kinky sex with just about everyone. Equius flipped his shit, again. And that is all that will be said on the matter.
And finally, on February 3rd (the last date where he did anything of particular merit), Equius went to explore the machine floor that had opened up. He had some nice talks with people, and also got both Shion and himself killed. He still feels really bad about that one.
On the same day, Equius wanders into the media room -- which would later become, undoubtedly, his favourite room in the entire Tower. Here, he met the jadeblood Eridan again, and the two of them sat around watching bad/amazing movies for a while as Equius tried to unravel the mess that was Eridan's time reels. The two of them soon began hosting the "movie nights" on a regular basis, usually with just the two of them in attendance, and these meetings deepened their relationship considerably -- to the point where Eridan eventually became Equius' closest CR in the game, hands down. They didn't need much of a reason to host one of these, but because of Equius' delicate nature, they typically ended up in the media room watching a fluffy rom-com after one troll or the other got too shaken up by events in the horrortower. From here on in, assume that there are movie nights with Eridan (and sometimes other people) strewn liberally throughout, but none of them have real events of note.
Later, a certain event called Hitori Kakurenbo happened. (doop doop explain Kakurenbo here)
Equius was on edge for several days after Kakurenbo. As he always does when he's on edge, Equius went down to the kitchen to bake more delicious goods, and in the process met Shion. They were two antsy, paranoid, socially maladjusted boys who happened to meet in a kitchen, but Shion would later become another one of Equius' closest friends, mostly without him noticing. Because of their similar dispositions, Shion and Equius often wound up sticking together when times got tough, because they knew that the other would understand what they were going through. Even when the situation wasn't that bad, they still liked to stick around and talk to one another -- both were just reasonably nice kids, so there was no factor of danger or affectionate insults in talking to the other.
Willow Rosenberg hosted a "friendship affirmation party", which was basically just an excuse to get people together and have them be happy after Hitori Kakurenbo ruined everyone's moods. Equius... never much liked parties, so he mostly hid in the corner, but in doing so he met another yellowblood who liked hiding in the corner: Sollux Captor. This was Equius' first real chance to interact with someone he knew was on his level, hemospectrum-wise, and he opened up much more to Sollux than he did to anyone else up until that point. Pity the two of them never met again. Around the same time as this weird-ass party, Equius also met a human girl named Rose Strider, though they didn't really talk much (and the words they did exchange were mostly about Nepeta). Rose would become a large part of his development later.
In March, Equius had the incredible bad fortune to run across the Grand Highblood in a chipper mood. Because when the Grand Highblood is in a chipper mood, people die. A lot. Equius put up absolutely no resistance when the Highblood grabbed him, since he was still of the mindset that it was a purpleblood's job to kill lowly yellowbloods, but it seriously upset him anyway. After he was revived the next morning (because that's a thing that happens in Animus), Equius had a horrible idea: since he was supposed to be sleeping in his dorm room, but the Grand Highblood was also sleeping in his dorm room, he would just sleep places that weren't his dorm room and stay out of harm's way! Unfortunately, the Tower did not like residents sleeping in places where they weren't supposed to. Equius found out the hard way that if one doesn't sleep in their assigned bed for too long, they will begin to feel the effects of sleep deprivation no matter how much actual sleep they get. It was in this state, sleeping under a piano, that he met Rose Strider for the second time.
Equius was sleep-deprived and therefore unable to put up the usual 'classy lowblood' act, so the conversation he had with Rose was unusually sincere for the time. Rose decided that this whole "scared of the Highblood" thing was actual bullshit, and since Equius refused to get angry about it, Rose took it upon herself to get angry for him. This was oddly touching in a weird sort of way, though he only realized that later -- at the time, he was trying to stop Rose from going off to slay the Highblood herself, because the difference in strength meant that he would crush her like an over-ripened grape. Although he initially rejected everything she said (and was utterly confused as to why she cared about him being pushed around), Rose Strider and her "pep talks" became one of the strongest influences on Equius as he gradually started to grow a backbone. Although she always tried to act cool and distant, the two of them eventually struck up a peculiar but long-lasting friendship. She eventually became one of the very few people he actually smiled at on a constant basis.
At some point between his death and the conversation with Rose, Equius was dropped into an event known as Labyrinth. The gist of this event was pretty simple: characters from the Tower were removed from the normal floors and relocated to a secret floor that no one but the admins could access, and they were told to fight to the death until only one person survived. Equius moved through the labyrinth with Karkat Vantas (cerulean) and Kanaya Maryam (mutant red); he didn't get along especially well with either of them, but he would take the protection of Karkat's powers and Maryam's... well, chainsaw massacre-ing any day. Unfortunately, they ran into Gamzee Makara in the Labyrinth, and this time he wasn't nearly as amicable as he was before the event. Gamzee had run out of sopor (a pacifying drug) a little while before the event started, so he was beginning to descend back into the mindset that the Grand Highblood had: kill everything, and make annoying honking noises while you do it. Gamzee attacked them about halfway through the event; Kanaya and Karkat died, but Equius fled, and he was fast enough to escape the indigoblood's clutches. Needless to say, his relationship with all three of the involved trolls went straight down the toilet after that, and it never quite recovered. Equius later died at the hands of Her Imperious Condescension, Empress of Alternia.
Equius, like several other residents, dropped off the face of the Tower again during the month of June; they were being held captive for yet another game by the newly-revealed head administrator, Ruana. This one was titled 'Infighting', primarily because that's what it was; each admin of the tower had a group of residents representing them, and these groups were to compete in almost game-show-like challenges to see which admin was superior. For Equius, this event basically translated to "month-long migraine". He was in the admin Riki's group, which meant that the quarters he was forced to live in for that four weeks had some pretty impossible geometry, and there was no way to get out. This drove everyone a little bit crazy, but it made Equius' Spacey-sense utterly insane. Space does not work that way, goddammit. During this event, he met Rose Strider again and she gave him more of her questionable pep talks. However, he also met one Wriggle Nightbug when she crash-landed into him while trying to fly through the broken geometry. Wriggle and Equius were as different as night and day -- she had the body and mind of a preteen girl, she was a firefly demon so all her friends were bugs, and she was judgmental and quick to criticise. Somehow, though, the two of them developed an odd comraderie, and eventually started to regard one another as trusted friends.
After a few weeks to catch his breath from Infighting, our yellowblooded friend discovered a not-so-yellowblooded friend who had just arrived in the Tower. Equius had heard many things about this blueblooded version of himself (the "True Equius", as he called him, since so many other people insisted that this blueblood guy was the real thing and he was just an anomaly). Never had the two of them met, however, until now. It ended... well, pretty badly; blueblood Equius acted exactly how one would expect him to act (that is to say: domineering, aggressive, and more than slightly uncomfortable), but in the end he did drill some valuable lessons into Equius about how to conduct himself. Stand up straight, speak clearly, and so on. To this day he doesn't have them down pat, but without the blueblood Equius, he probably never would have started doing it at all. Yellowblood Equius never met blueblood Equius again, and the blueblood disappeared from the Tower shortly after their little talk.
As the monthly event, the Tower went through something known as Glamour Failure; everyone in the Tower woke up as wireframe approximations of their normal selves, with little floaty things in their chest cavities. The floors of the Tower -- cathedral, fountain, workshop, media room -- were almost completely empty, except for more of this weird wire. This event showed everyone present why they were able to revive: because their bodies no longer existed. They were just souls, floating in wireframe bodies, and the collars around their necks regulated the glamour. Equius didn't do very much in this event except shake and cry with Tavros Nitram, the brownblood who he actually had a pretty good relationship with, despite him being Gamzee's matesprit.
After a particularly ill-advised attempt to make amends with Gamzee goes haywire, Equius finds himself being hunted by an indigo, again. This time he flees to the space floor, hoping that the exploding galaxies all over the place will do something to calm his nerves; they kind of do, but at the end of the day, Gamzee finds and kills him again anyway. He submitted completely to Gamzee's culling once again -- but the murder was over and done with, Equius started to feel the beginnings of resentment stirring within him. He wouldn't act on this resentment until much later, but nonetheless, this death marked the first time that Equius began to seriously wonder whether Gamzee's murdering sprees were justifiable. And by extension, it was the first time he began to seriously reconsider whether the hemospectrum was really a healthy system that ought to be followed.
In the middle of August, Eridan Ampora returned to the Tower after a month-long disappearance. Equius (who had been hiding in his room the past several days, trying not to scream as he contemplated his life and his choices) really didn't want Eridan to see him in such a state -- or anyone to see him in such a state. Unfortunately, after spending a month in the ruins of their old world, Eridan wasn't in the mood for treating Equius gently. What happened next was a horrible experience for everyone involved, which mostly included Eridan making aggressive and demeaning romantic passes at Equius and watching him squirm. Eridan, who had gone through a bit of an emotional crisis at the time, was attempting to grapple with the fact that he actually did have a thing for Equius, and was having difficulty coming to terms with it. This basically put a huge wedge in their relationship, and it stayed wedged for a good long time.
And then, whale.
No, I mean it -- there was a giant space whale, and it crashed into the Tower, destroying 90% of the floors -- and most of Equius' personal belongings. A search party consisting of Jade Strider, Gamzee, and Wriggle found Equius and Tavros huddling together under a tree in one of the few remaining floors. Of course, the presence of Gamzee drove Tavros to run directly towards the group, and Equius to run directly away from the group. Eventually, they wrangled him down to the cafeteria floor, where the group had set up a little refugee camp. He spent the rest of the day wandering around the bottom floor, and once he got news of Eridan's whereabouts, he ran up to the infirmary to help out. They had a bonding moment, and Eridan stopped calling him by his last name, which was an improvement. Eridan also decided to start redflirting with him again, which was decidedly not an improvement -- but this time it was less "malicious" and more a desperate plea. Equius, being Equius, nope'd right out of the conversation.
Later, Equius was stalking around the Network when he noticed that Eridan had a little conversation with Karkat Vantas (cerulean). This conversation should have been private, but the Network was broken, so everyone got to see. Karkat, being the absolute master of romance, was hassling Eridan about the frankly embarrassing state of his quadrants; he had a red and a pale mate all lined up for himself, but was hardcore in denial because of other romantic entanglements he'd had for a long time before coming to the Tower. Equius read the log with a dawning sense of horror, and began avoiding Eridan again, not really wanting to deal with the whole romantic thing. He wasn't ready, okay. That didn't stop Eridan, though; he knew that if he didn't confront Equius about it, Karkat would, and that would be a real catastrophe. Unfortunately, because Equius refused to look at him, they ended up having this conversation from opposite sides of a door. Fortunately, though, it was really short, because Equius already knew everything that Eridan wanted to tell him ("I love you"), and they just stopped talking after like five tags. It was probably the most uncomfortable thing ever.
...Oh, did I say that was the most uncomfortable thing ever? Because I was wrong. After that, the Shadows happened.
Basically, a certain deity from the Persona series got really bored and decided to create 'evil twin' versions of lots of characters, created from magic fog. These evil twins were designed to take everything that the characters tried to hide or repress about their personalities (which was usually all the bad parts), and brought them out in full force. Because Eridan is kind of a horrible mess when it came to personality and repression, his Shadow was a pain and a half to deal with, and when it manifested as a monster it was a pain and three-quarters to defeat; in the four days it was active, it trolled Equius some more with deeply uncomfortable conversations, and refused to let him go, to the point where he was essentially held captive as Jade Strider had to kill the bastard herself.
And a few days later, Equius' own Shadow confronted him (after searching high and low, and freaking out most everyone it met). There was a lot of shaking and crying as Equius' Shadow basically knocked him down and kicked him repeatedly with a detailed explanation of how much Equius had suppressed everything ever during his lifetime (and it was right). Eventually, though, it too manifested into a hugeass mechanical knight with a broken crown on its head. Fortunately, however, there were more people to fight Equius' Shadow than there was Eridan's: Wriggle, Gandalf, a human version of Gamzee, and Eridan himself. Eventually the thing was defeated, and Equius... well, suffice to say he was put out of commission for a while.
After taking some time off to calm his pounding kokoro, Equius wandered into the media room again and discovered Eridan again. They should have had a deep heart-to-heart talk -- except Animus was in the middle of a body-swap event at the time, and Eridan had the body of a certain jadeblooded lady. Despite this, they ended up having a nice heart-to-heart anyway... and eventually, while Eridan is still in a girl's body, the two of them finally agree to try out this "boyfriend" thing. And they hug. But don't kiss, because Kanaya... and also because Equius... and also because Eridan.
Equius took a short, week-long hiatus after that, and he got dropped in the dead world also. It ended about as well as one might expect. Nothing significant came of this, except that Equius spent another week running everywhere and paranoid that something was going to crawl out of the darkness and kill him -- but really, that's par for the course with Equius by now.
On December 1st, Equius ran into Gamzee Makara once again. Predictably, Gamzee had fucked something up and was expecting Equius to fix it like a compliant yellowblood... but thanks to the magic of character development, Equius didn't really feel like dealing with Gamzee's bullshit anymore, so the whole thing turned into a loud argument. Loud arguments were basically the extent of their interactions for the rest of the game; a few people tried to make jokes that they were blackflirting with one another, but they were completely off-base. There was no "flirting" to be had here; black quadrant-mates like competition and insults, and are never out for the other's blood. Gamzee and Equius? Out for each other's blood.
From December 15 onward to the end of the game, things gradually settled into a routine. But because it was the Tower, the routines included freakouts in public places and unattractive arguments of many kinds. One particular January highlight: a really awkward age-up event in which Eridan had wild, kinky sex with just about everyone. Equius flipped his shit, again. And that is all that will be said on the matter.
And finally, on February 3rd (the last date where he did anything of particular merit), Equius went to explore the machine floor that had opened up. He had some nice talks with people, and also got both Shion and himself killed. He still feels really bad about that one.