damned_institute | Day 58: Cafeteria

Anise woke up feeling lucky to be alive. She still felt a bit waterlogged, even though her skin, hair, and clothes were completely dry. During last night's adventures, she'd swallowed a lot of water, and it still felt heavy and disgusting in her stomach. Her arms and legs were tired from treading water. Lying still in her bed, she still kind of felt like she was floating and bobbing in the water.

But she was alive.

Knowing how close she came to death last night, and remembering the lengths her friends had gone to in order to save her, there was no way Anise could let a little discomfort get her down. She had to be at her best today so she wouldn't seem ungrateful to Guy and Claude. On that note, she had to remember to thank them properly, now that she was better able to express herself.

While getting ready, Anise was surprised to actually run into Claude that morning. He came to her room asking for the notebook he stored there (or maybe it was an excuse to see her cute face again), so Anise happily located it and handed it over. She was pretty tired, but the big smile she gave him was genuine. Who wouldn't be happy to see her savior so soon after a dramatic rescue?

After he left, Anise finished re-tying her pigtails into a low position so the military beret would fit on her head, and then she was ready! Even though her stomach wasn't feeling that great, she figured sitting down to a decent meal would help normalize it. And luckily for her, she was among the few who had the privilege of eating such a meal. Anise filled a plate with french toast topped with syrup and fruit, accompanied by small portions of each of the available side dishes.

It looked like she was early, which meant there weren't a lot of people around. That was okay, though. Anise could get a good head start on her meal before any company came around. She sat down at a table by herself and started on her sausage first.

[for Tolten!]

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The brief smile had vanished from Byrne's face again. Badd had never seen Byrne so disheartened, even in the middle of KG-8 (should he tell about the hallucinations? No, no reason to worry him, and as he'd told Javert the effects would pass eventually) "Experiments, I think. Beyond that even the veterans don't know...and at this point I don't particularly care." His voice lowered--not softened, there was only so much you could soften gravel and barbed wire when you were constantly restraining the urge to murder the people around you. "Nothing could excuse what they did to you. All I want to know now is how to destroy them."

Badd made another nudge to try and get Byrne to sit down. He wished he was able to smuggling a lollipop out of his room to give to him, any tiny little thing he could do to make things comfortable and familiar for him.

This time Byrne would let his friend lead him to a table. It was getting tiresome standing here. Forget about eating, though. He'd be lucky if he could stomach lunch later on. Too much to think about, too much to worry about.

"Open daytime rebellion has proven to do more harm than good," the prosecutor responded after a short pause, "And I doubt it's so easy to find the head of it all if the veterans have been trying for weeks. Their system is clever and too perfectly chaotic at night. Fighting them will be difficult." He looked and sounded disheartened at first, but both his expression and tone hardened as he continued on. "But I bet it's not impossible. Just harder than the Yatagarasu's used to."

The torture session had taken a lot out of Byrne and would likely continue to haunt his mind for a little while. But being here now, reassured by Badd's presence and his will to fight...the possibility of victory didn't seem so impossible anymore.

Badd gave a firm nod and bit his thumbnail in lieu of a lollipop to nibble upon. There. He'd claimed it, even after they'd tried to tear him down in the worst way possible. General Aguilar had tried to have the Yatagarasu written out of existence completely but they wouldn't go down by a few holograms and fake letters.

"And we are still the Yatagarasu," Badd said, pulling his thumb from his mouth. He leaned back against the table, managing to somehow be defiant in his casual gesture. "Against time, against death, against the smuggling ring, against every conceivable law of reality and every horror they've tried to throw at us, the Yatagarasu's still flying. They're not going to be able to break us of that."

He was even less a man of speeches than he was one of compassionate gestures, and he viewed rhetoric as words ill-spent. But someone needed to make a noble statement in this worthless place...someone needed to put the fear of the gods in General Aguilar's forces and break the cycle of torture and despair.

Badd wasn't technically smiling. He very rarely smiled. But the people who knew him closely knew better than to just look at his face and his lips for signs of his true emotions.

If Byrne looked into Badd's eyes he'd know that his friend was wearing a fierce grin.

Day 58: Cafeteria

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