Day 56: Intercom, Late Evening

[damned-intercom.livejournal.com]

Despite the rough start and the heavier snowfall, the buses managed to stay on route and on schedule. With minutes to spare, they arrived at the gates of Landel's Institute, back to the waiting arms of the military. All pretenses seemed to drop at this point, and the soldiers again took on their patented gruff exteriors. Patients were filed out of the buses in an orderly manner, eventually being escorted to their rooms for dinner in much the same. There, as promised by the personnel, well-behaved patients found their purchases among their returned possessions. A few even found new faces, though whether they brought as much joy as bought goods remained unseen.

The woman manning the intercom seemed to have missed the notice about the day's trip as her announcement remained no different from the usual. "Attention all subjects and personnel," she said. "Lights Out will commence within the hour."

A pause.

"I repeat, Lights Out will commence within the hour. All personnel: please report to your stations. The General will begin his address once preparations are underway. Thank you."

The intercom clicked off.

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. ANY NEWLY ACCEPTED CHARACTERS MAY POST TO THIS SHIFT (but are not obligated to if you would like to wait for Nightshift or Dayshift); please refer to the new room assignments before posting. Thank you! ]

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m7

[composers-proxy.livejournal.com]

Neku was wary of being touched even by people he knew. So after the invasive pat-down before he got on the bus, his mood was sour enough. Why bother letting them spend money at all if they were just going to take it back? Now the soldiers were leading him to a new room.

"This isn't my room. Where the hell is Roxas?" he crossed his arms stubbornly outside the new door. He knew well enough that people disappeared from this place, but to throw this at him on top of everything else...

"Sent home," the soldier replied vaguely before giving him a firm push into the room. Neku went, but he didn't have to be happy about it. Sent home? Recovered? Home in this world? His own? Maybe he and Roxas hadn't been the tightest roomies, but he definitely didn't want this.

"Sora?"

[lighthearted]

At first, Sora only heard muffled voices outside of his room, though when the door opened he was quick to turn in his chair in hopes that he would see Minato's face. Who he saw instead was still someone familiar, and yet he was just as shocked as Neku was.

"Neku," he replied, his tone a bit more reserved if only because he was already starting to put two and two together. Neku and Roxas had been roommates, so the only reason that Neku would have been moved here was if Roxas was--

Sora clenched his jaw, holding back his questions until the soldier who had brought Neku here left them alone. His mouth was burning from the spicy food, so he took a drink of water and then regarded the other boy with a frown. "Where's Roxas? Do you know? Did you see him this morning?" He hadn't seen Roxas for the whole trip, but he'd figured that they were just missing each other, since it was pretty easy to do. He hadn't seen Kairi either, after all, so --

Wait. Did that mean she was gone too?

He was getting ahead of himself, assuming things that he shouldn't have been, but Sora had lost so many people here that it was hard not to think of it. He was glad that Neku was okay, of course, but what about his Other? And more than that, how had he not somehow felt that Roxas was gone? Not that he had any of the other times, but still...

[composers-proxy.livejournal.com]

Glad as he was to see a familiar face when everything was falling apart, he didn't have any more answers than Sora did. There was a hesitant shake of his spiky head as a took a seat on the edge of what he assumed was his new bed. And while Sora's curry smelled pretty cosmic right about now, he got to stare down another bowl of pink goo. Not that he was all that hungry to begin with, but it didn't exactly help either.

"I haven't seen him today," he said grimly, "I wasn't exactly expecting a room change. But maybe it's something to do with our new evil overlords. They don't seem to like the way the other guy was running things. Could be he just wanted to shake things up."

Okay, so cheering people up wasn't his strongest quality, that was what Shiki and Beat were for. Being on his own so much wouldn't have bothered him this much a month ago, but now it was so much harder getting through things without a partner around.

[lighthearted]

Even though Neku was trying to find another reason for why he and Roxas might have been separated like this, Sora knew that the chances of the Nobody still being here were very low by now. He didn't want to make Neku feel bad, though, since it wasn't like this was his fault. No, this place just enjoyed giving him the chance to speak with his friends only to take them away soon after.

"I have to go check on Kairi," he said quietly, the words meant for himself rather than his new roommate. He realized that Roxas could have been released on his own, but at this point he was just paranoid. It would be too sad, if he bought those gifts for her only to find out that she was gone.

Of course, it occurred to him at a delay that this also meant Minato was gone. These disappearances just kept piling up, and yet new patients were let in every day to fill those spots. Sora was getting really sick of being one of the only people who remained, and yet he wasn't eager to get brainwashed either. He'd been Matthew for a day, and that had been long enough.

"Anyway," he said with a small, sad smile, "I'm glad that you're still here. I hope you had a good day." Sora's day had been great, but finding all of this out had muted that somewhat.