Night 63: Main Hallway 2-West

[monkeyboy]

[From here]

Bursting through the stairwell, the young boy ran into the hallway with the intention to beat on something, but the sound of the intercom froze Goku in place. That voice! He knew that voice better than anyone now. A stubby hand unsheathed his red staff, wide black eyes narrowing. It seemed to come from all around him and Goku had a hard time catching up as he spun around in a dizzying circle, threatening the empty darkness.

"Show yourself, you demon! Give me back my friend!" He sniffed the air, trying to find where he was, but Landel was nowhere to be smelled. He was like some kind of evil voice wizard.

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[skeletonenigma]

[From here.]

And that was another thing, Skulduggery realized as he reached the top of the stairs. He had muscles, and they were aching after a short climb up one floor. Frankly, it was rather pathetic, not to mention painful.

His breathing was speeding up without permission, and Skulduggery paused for a moment to give himself time to get it back under control. Slow, deep breaths, just like for meditation. At least he could disguise the brief rest as waiting for the woman to join him. He would have offered his help up the stairs, but she didn't seem to respond well to offers of help.

[she_is_ruin]

The awkward smile wasn’t much of a comfort (there wasn’t a lot that could comfort a Category A, anyway), but neither was it as much of a discomfort as it should have been, perhaps. It reminded her of one of her own. Slightly unnatural and ill-fitting on the face.

Maybe that was why she didn’t mind the thought of moving on from the hallway with someone else in tow. “Interesting…” Yomi repeated musingly, but left it at that. She wasn’t sure she quite understood his reasons for staying in her presence, but for now she wouldn’t question them. “There are probably mirrors somewhere,” she went on. “In a bathroom or a changing room. This is a hospital building, despite all appearances.”

She didn’t question his reasons for wanting to find a reflection in the dark, either.

Although the man dwarfed her in size with long legs that could easily outstride her, he moved slowly toward the stairs, almost as slow as she did. Yomi had little difficulty keeping him in sight, even if she had to pick her way carefully up each stair. She forced her muscles to bend and contract, ignoring the pain that followed from aggravating injuries that were still fairly fresh. But two days was a long time for something like the sesshouseki; it’d been busy while she’d been asleep. The pain was far less sharp than it’d been in the morgue, and Yomi expected the stone had healed a great deal of damage already. If it hadn’t, she didn’t think she’d be able to stay on her feet long enough to climb even a single stair.

After what felt like an abnormally long trek, the mouth of the second floor came into view. Stepping out into the hallway behind Skulduggery, she swallowed a pained sigh.

“More rooms,” she spoke up, answering his earlier question. “That’s what’s up here.”

[skeletonenigma]

"Yes, but what kind of rooms?" Skulduggery asked once he had his breathing back under control. "Are there, for instance, bathrooms or changing rooms? Unless your destination is fairly important, in which case, I suppose mirrors can wait." He wondered how time passed in alternate realities. Was there simply perpetual darkness, or would a sun eventually rise? Was there any point in trying to do things quickly? All questions he could have asked the young woman, but he wasn't sure what constituted as 'normal' anymore, and until he had a better idea, he wanted to try and keep a low profile.

"You haven't told me your name, by the way," Skulduggery pointed out as he held up one hand to scan the air ahead. Whether names meant anything in this reality, he didn't know, but she hadn't seemed surprised to hear his. That had to count for something. And would it really matter if she had no idea what he was talking about? For all Skulduggery knew, up was down and left was right, in which case it might be better if she learned how clueless he was from the beginning.

He took a moment to examine his own thought process, slightly surprised. Skulduggery was afraid. Of what, he wasn't sure; it might have been the flesh and blood body he was unceromoniously shoved into and had no idea how to control. Or it might have been that part of him still expected to see a Faceless One shamble around one of these corners, its torrent of impossibilities threatening to drive him mad with a single glance. Whatever the reason, Skulduggery couldn't deny the fear that coiled in the pit of his ribcage - the pit of his stomach, he corrected automatically - pushing its way into his thoughts and transforming them into nonsensical pieces of rubbish.

Skulduggery made a conscious effort to drag that fear back down as he pushed himself off the wall. He'd had centuries of practice burying emotions he neither needed nor wanted, and he wasn't about to let this bizzare situation undo all of that effort.

[she_is_ruin]

Somehow she had fallen into tour guide duty again. When had her mask slipped down over her emotions enough to allow her to resume these kinds of menial tasks? Why wasn’t she filling the halls with the sound of her screams?

Yomi wondered if it was worth splitting hairs with him. Rooms were rooms, as far as she cared; she already knew the places that were worth visiting and which weren’t. After a moment of staring down at the blade of her katana, she lifted her hand to point down one of the hallways. "There are bathrooms down there. You could probably find a mirror in them, and we can go our separate ways from here." He had been helpful in his own way, so she owed him at least an answer.

And he was… different. Not human but not completely inhuman. Yomi tilted her head, watching him lift his hand in a gesture she couldn’t quite unravel.

"I’m… " I’m supposed to be dead. I’m not supposed to be making introductions anymore. "Yomi. I’m Yomi."

[skeletonenigma]

"Yomi," Skulduggery repeated as he tried to pick apart the air currents buffeting against his hand. She'd hesitated before answering, which could mean it wasn't a name she was used to using, or that she simply wasn't used to introducing herself. Either way, at least he had a name to go with the face now, which was usually helpful. Unless said face was actively trying to kill him, in which case Skulduggery was usually past caring. "Japanese, isn't it?" A Japanese name and some Japanese object making her immortal was a little too much of a coincidence, he hoped. And if not, at least he would know Japan didn't exist here.

Scanning the air turned out to be far less useful than it should have been. He couldn't tell if anyone had been through the area recently, and he couldn't feel anything further than a few metres into the impenetrable darkness down any given hallway. It was enough of a distance so that surprise attacks wouldn't catch him completely by surprise, but it wasn't enough for him to prepare in any significant way.

Again, Skulduggery had to wonder who the voice over the intercom belonged to. He was probably an interesting man, turning a hospital building into some kind of nightmare prison. 'Interesting,' of course, in no way implying that Skulduggery was going to like him, give him the benefit of the doubt, or refrain from killing him, if it came to that.

[she_is_ruin]

“Yes…” His question made her think he must’ve been from Earth, or some recognizable form of it.

It was possible the Japan he knew was a Japan without shards of sesshouseki. The thought made her stomach lurch.

After a beat of watching Skulduggery stare into the darkness, Yomi veered to the right, toward the Sun Room balcony. She had never felt the need to seek sanctuary herself, but she knew from her intel gathering that the chapel was more than it appeared at night. Possibly a means to return herself to full strength. She’d meant what she’d said to the man before--if she couldn’t have a proper death, then she wanted a proper healing. Yomi’s human side had a vested interest in the former, but it was the sesshouseki who wanted the latter. Two extremes at war, and only room for one winner.

“I’m going this way. Good luck with your search.”

[skeletonenigma]

So then Japan did exist here, or at least wherever Yomi came from. One mystery solved, out of the pile very rapidly building up. One might call it progress, if one was in the habit of calling anything progress, which Skulduggery certainly wasn't. Not at this point in time.

If Skulduggery knew more about where he was, when he was, and what he might encounter on the way, he would have thanked Yomi and moved on himself. It would have gone against his better judgment, since she was clearly hurt. But she also seemed perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and that would have been all the excuse he needed. Now, though... as much as it pained Skulduggery to admit it, he didn't have any idea what was going on. He was standing in what appeared to be a prison hospital where bringing people back to life was as natural as dying. And he was standing there with working lungs and a beating heart, with the vague idea that he might be in an alternate reality without the Faceless Ones in it, with his powers reduced to practically nothing, wearing pajamas with smiley faces on them, and no one to complain to about that last fact.

Yomi, reluctant though she was and as physically drained as she seemed, was the only thing making any kind of sense so far. Besides, the former skeleton was hesitant about actually finding a reflection and seeing what he looked like. His face might not measure up to what he remembered, or it might not reach his incredibly high standards. Worse, he might not even be handsome. That was a blow his ego just couldn't take until he'd worked a few other things out.

Skulduggery paused for a moment, then followed her down the main hall. "Not such an excellent guide, perhaps," he amended his earlier statement. "Excellent guides don't abandon people halfway through the tour. I'd be insulted, if I thought you would treat anyone else any differently. And you still haven't told me where you're going."

[To here.]