damned_institute | Day 54: Recreational Field

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Day 54: Recreational Field

Well, that was the most exhausting lunch Elena had ever experienced. And she didn't get around to eating very much either. Her headache was a least somewhat bearable now, but as the shift ended, she realized how stupid it had been to not get something in her system before the shift ended. But that apparently wasn't in the cards. In fact, just as she stopped panicking long enough to try and get some food down, her nurse was sweeping to her side.

"Shift change, m'dear." Like she hadn't noticed everyone getting up out of their seats and leaving the cafeteria. "I'll take your tray for you, and you make sure to get out to the field on time."

"On time?" Her blank expression must have given away more than she realized, because the nurse was giving her yet another sympathetic look.

"You slept thought a lot this morning, I'm afraid. I'll explain along the way."

By the time they had reached the Rec Field, the nurse had explained most of what had happened with the food fight, and the tear gas, and it only served to damage her calm yet again that day. Of course she slept through something like this, and of course the boys and girls were split up this shift, and of course Elena would have to wait around for some uniformed man to call out her fake name before she could get to Stefan.

At least her last name was near the stop of the list.

"Bailey, Samantha-"

"Here! I'm here. Can I go back inside now? Please?"

Though she didn't even wait for an answer before turning back and heading for the building. As far as she was concerned, she did what she was told, and there was no good reason why she couldn't make her way to the Sun Room right this very second.

[to here]

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Tomoe gave the other woman a nod, making a brief glance back at the group still near the other end of the field before answering, "My name is Tomoe." Her eyes followed where Leela was looking--though at this point she wasn't looking for anything in particular, still just trying to memorize the surroundings.

"I would be lying if I said that I wasn't," she answered coolly. She wasn't sure what to expect this night. Her entire first day had been such a blur of confusion, the night only making the world that was already coming apart at the seams disintegrate that much more--and then the second simply... didn't exist.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, the events of that day in particular combined with the confusion of the previous two finally breaking her habit of closing off while under stress. If she continued to do that here... it seemed like she would probably get herself killed. Again.

Leela had to think about that question, as usual. "Five days, I think. Sometimes it's hard to be sure." So much happened at night that she sometimes found herself longing for a nice, boring rescue attempt at the Near-Death Star, or a relaxing run-in with murderous slugs, just to have a chance to relax and kick back a little.

On the other hand, the days, and the weirdly uneventful night last night, made watching Fry watch TV seem exciting. Then there was today, which… She didn't have a frame of reference for today. It was just freaky. "How about you?"

She still wondered if there was anything worse in store for them tonight, some kind of punishment or something. But she didn't want to launch into that depressing topic and freak poor Tomoe out if she was brand-new.

"Three," she answered, more than agreeing being able to tell--she logically knew it was only her third day, but it seemed both longer and shorter than that. The man she had spoken to at lunch had been there for six days--the others from the previous days... well, she hadn't been willing to actually speak to anyone on the previous days and so she didn't know. But she imagined that Leela wouldn't necessarily know much more than Gren--and so she had to hope that she would finally be able to speak to Kenshin that night without the shadows coming to life or fumes choking the life out of them again. After a month... he had to know more.

"I still know nearly nothing of this place... aside from the obvious," she glanced toward the other woman again. "Do you have any guesses as to what is happening here...?"

Leela had plenty of guesses, but most of them were insane, though she reminded herself Elaine hadn't thought so about some of them. Battle royale to the death? It was seeming more likely as time wore on. Leela's own favorite theory was still that they were in some sort of human zoo, unable to see the glass separating them from the visitors, who were probably tapping on it and wondering when they'd mate. Not any time soon, perverts, Leela thought.

"I think the head doctor's a mad scientist, and also evil, and he does things to us because he can. Maybe he wants to study our reactions, or maybe being evil is reason enough for him. Most mad scientists walk a kind of thin line, anyway, you know." The Professor was also old, but certainly had been mad even when he was young, so Leela felt qualified to offer her opinion.

Tomoe nodded in response--though in truth she didn't know, the closest thing to 'mad scientists' she'd ever come remotely close to would have been the local apothecaries in Edo. But someone with power doing things for the soul purpose of being able to... she could believe that. She had been trying to figure out what the point might be--but that was assuming that there was one...

"I see," she answered. "Is there anyone here that you know...?" From her 'world'. The concept of multiple worlds was a difficult one to grasp, but perhaps for herself the sudden change in both time and country (not to mention the whole... coming back from the dead part) made it somewhat easier.

[ooc; again, apologies for being so slow x__x]

Leela thought she understood what Tomoe was aksing. It was the natural thing to wonder. "Not from home. But I've made some friends here, and as far as not being idiots, the friends here are kind of better." She grinned to let Tomoe know she was kidding. Mostly. Leela was pretty confident that an unfair fight of three-on-one featuring one of her new friends would end with Fry crying, Bender dented and infatuated, and herself and Taura enjoying Zoidberg bisque.

"Where are you from?" Somewhere a lot less cosmopolitan than New New York, she'd bet. Leela couldn't claim she'd made a lot of progress exploring this crazy place, but she'd done her best, darn it!

[Don't worry about it!]

"Japan," she answered easily enough, though she didn't move into any sort of specifics--judging by the look of her current acquaintance she wasn't convinced the woman would know either Kyoto or Edo (or rather... Tokyo... as Kenshin had pointed out that morning), let alone Otsu. She wondered if she should tack on when she was from... but she wasn't sure that 'Genji 1' would mean much to a foreigner--and she wasn't familiar with the western calendar to give a different answer.

"I'm from New New York. And from pretty far in the future. I think it's the future, anyway, but who really knows?" Things happened here that weren't possible in her own time, let alone in the Stupid Ages, and Leela still didn't know if that meant they weren't when it seemed like, or if technology had gotten farther than she thought. This was before the giant ants, right? She'd never been good at keeping dates straight when it came to ancient history.

She looked out over the wall again, and wasn't too surprised at seeing nothing. "What kind of crazy thing do you think's going to happen tonight?"

New York... (she thought the second 'new' was some accidental verbal tick), she had never heard of it--but much like everything else it sounded Western to her, and whether or not it was a good or bad thing, anything that sounded foreign was lumped into 'Western' in her mind.

"I don't know... I can't remember what happened last night at all, and the night before..." well, the night before she didn't particularly want to revisit. "What has happened on the nights before that...?"

"What hasn't happened?" Leela said, with a sigh. "Shadows coming to life, doors going crazy, a house that wanted to kill us, you name it." She thought for a moment. "But last night was almost… calm. I started to head outside, but I didn't even get to the door."

It was starting to sound like more than a few other people had found the night weirdly uneventful. Was the Institute trying to fake them out or something? Leela really wished she could kick it, and… do any damage at all. "I'd bet almost anything that it's going to be extra-weird tonight. I just wish I knew what to expect." But the way this place worked, you never could. It was like being sent on delivery after delivery, only by someone a lot more determined to kill her off, and a lot more competent at trying, than the professor.

A... house...? That earned Leela a bit of a look (though considering it was one of Tomoe's looks it probably went unnoticed). She turned forward again after a moment, listening to the rest of what she said. "Based on... everything else, I would not doubt that."

"I do have someone here," she said, choosing her words carefully, "Apparently he has been here for at least a month. We haven't been terribly successful in sharing information yet." Considering the first night their shadows came to life and attacked each of them before anything of importance could be touched upon, the entire second night was non-existent, and that morning someone staged a coups d'état with breakfast food and got the entire cafeteria gassed...

"Someone like a boyfriend someone?" Leela aksed, her interest caught. Elaine had had a husband here, even if, thanks to their timelines being screwy, she'd sort of been more Guybrush's wife than he was her husband. Sometimes Leela was glad Fry wasn't here, and sometimes she wished he was. Pulling his butt out of trouble would've given her a goal more concrete than hope something happens to make violence the answer for escaping. After this morning, she had a bad feeling about that ever happening.

"He must be pretty tough." A month was an awfully long time to be here. Very impressive. "Or she must," she added hastily, in case Tomoe meant a friend.

She straightened up just a bit at the question, mainly because she had been trying to skirt that particular subject entirely. "He..." she paused in her answer, still not sure what the appropriate one was. The accurate answer was that he was her widower, but she couldn't very well say that--and yet husband wasn't exactly right either. But it was the simplest. The pause likely didn't go unnoticed, "He is my husband..."

The answer didn't set right with her, but there wasn't much more to be said. Besides, there were much more important things going on than their ill-defined marital status. "And yes... he is..."

Edited 2011-02-07 04:18 (UTC)

Leela definitely noticed Tomoe's hesitation. "Oh! Are you married in a time that one of you hasn't gotten to yet? I think that's kind of romantic."

She hadn't had the best of luck with that kind of thing herself, but, in fairness to Fry, she had been skipped over most of the courtship. It better have consisted of something a little more ambitious than fluffing Bender's assprint out of the couch cushion for Leela to sit on, but she was aware it probably hadn't. Stupid Universe-B Leela, outdoing her romantically, waving diamond scrunchies in people's faces.

"On the other hand, it could also be a pain in the butt." She gave Tomoe a smile.

Tomoe was starting to regret mentioning Kenshin at all--she only had to give some kind of hope of better answers from someone who had been there longer than each of them, not to wind up delving into the turmoil that was her personal life.

"No," she answered almost grimly, unsure whether she should say more. "It is more the opposite..."

Leela tried to puzzle out what the opposite would be. They weren't married, in a time they hadn't gotten to? Tomoe's tone said clearly enough that it was probably past pain in the butt and into the sort of existential gray area that only a place like this could stick you into.

"I don't understand, but I'm sorry if things are tough. My old roommate's husband is here, only they were married for him, and not for her. Poor guy." Leela thought Guybrush was too sweet to be a very good pirate, but he was a good person.

She looked over to Leela at that statement. She couldn't help the selfish pang of realizing there was someone else in this... confused state. She looked away again, her brows drawing lightly. With everything else she had not been thinking on the more personal end of the situation--staying alive, finding out what was happening and hopefully figuring out how to get the hell out seemed so much more important. But now that the topic had been breached she couldn't help but think on it again.

"We were married in my time..." she said quietly, that grim note still in her voice. "But he is fourteen years older here... and I..." she went quiet for a long moment before finishing, "I should be dead."

"I'm sorry to hear that!" Leela thought about it for half a second, then put her hand on Tomoe's arm for a moment. "It must be so hard for you two. Not to mention confusing." She frowned sympathetically. Jumping forward in time randomly was bad enough, but getting what amounted to one big jump, that you couldn't undo with chronitons, had to be worse.

"But at least you get to be together here." Now she was back to thinking it was sort of romantic. Maybe they'd be able to get out together, too.

Tomoe stiffened a bit at the touch, even if it was from another woman she really wasn't used to being touched so openly by anyone (and if there was one thing she'd noticed during the day shifts, it was that nearly everyone seemed a lot more grabby than the people she was used to--it obviously had to be some sort of cultural rift).

'Hard' barely touched on the matter--not when in their first two meetings they could barely look at each other because of everything that had happened in the end, not when she could almost see the horror in his eyes at having such a significant ghost shoved right under his nose. If it weren't for the fact that he was the only person she knew she could completely trust in the entire hellhole she would likely keep her distance just to save him the pain of her presence and her the pain of his reactions to it.

She nodded to the last statement though she didn't agree with it. It was more than obvious that he didn't want her there--both for the difficulty of the situation and the fact that the institution wasn't a safe place to be. After what she'd seen and heard about she was already confident that she was going to be of no use in any plan to escape from it. All she would likely be was all she had ever been: one giant weakness. The reminder of that fact just made her blood boil.

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Day 54: Recreational Field

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