damned_institute | Day 59: Sun Room (4th Shift)

After an intercom broadcast like that, Kurogane felt somewhat better about the little information he'd gotten from Harrington the previous night. The man only sounded competent when he needed to but was an idiot otherwise. Unfortunately that was furthered proof of the General not employing the brightest of staff members, making another option for information closed to them.

Kurogane was again some steps ahead of his escort when he reached the Sun Room and ignored the soldier further as the ninja headed to look over the bulletin. Last time he'd missed something, and he wasn't about to have that happen a second time. With some searching he located Tsubaki's messages to others he didn't know but found nothing either written by the magician or addressed to him. That being the case, he left the board without any of his own writing and sought out a chair over a couch. If he didn't leave open a space by him, he had a better chance of being left alone. Or so he believed.

[free ~~bird!~~ bear]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rapunzel was glad to hear Tsubaki and Ilia suggest that the effect might be a trial that would go away soon. She hadn't been looking into the drugs or whatever it was that had been going on in the medical wing, but if Tsubaki and the older girl knew about it, she was willing to trust their judgment. She didn't say anything more on the issue for the time being, preferring not to think about it when they could be focusing on more important things anyway.

She nodded when the point about consequences, biting her lip again for a moment. "Yeah, our mission didn't go as expected, to say the very, very least." Wince. "But we pretty much got what they wanted out of us done, so I guess they figured that was the important part.

"And as for another pair... I don't think there was? No one else talked about missions before us or on the same day as us, just after. So I think that means we're all the first people they tried this on. Right?" she asked, again hoping she wasn't on the wrong track.

The fact that they were all women, despite the ratios at the Institute, didn't seem to have played into anyone else's calculations. And she'd coaxed (oh, fine, pestered) the information out of Gamzee and his partner.

"We're the ones willing to talk about it." Rose almost hadn't; secretiveness was a fundamental part of her nature, but it wasn't part of Ilia's. And she'd had the bulletin to do it over; now that they were talking face to face she was fighting the urge to derail the conversation entirely.

"Unclear. There was only one death announced on the radio, and Aguilar's announcement made it clear that missions began the night we were...invited to participate, but the number was never given." Four, for symmetry, still seemed highly probable to Rose, though she granted that the elegance of the solution might be a biasing factor.

The food did seem to be unrelated, if Ilia's was fine. Though how she could eat in a room full of rotting food -- well, she was made of sterner stuff than she appeared to be. In fact, that could be said of this entire quorum. In it's entirety.

"I expect there will be more tonight. Any means necessary", she drawled, mimicking Harrington's accent.

Tsubaki made an interesting point about the mission being a new occurrence. Ilia waited to see if she heard any contradictions, but it seemed everyone here was in agreement. "I have a few friends who have been here for a good amount of time. If there had been surprise missions before now, I'm sure one of them would have mentioned it to me."

Anise and Claude and Guy. Ilia crossed her arms and clasped them tightly against her. Guy and Claude did seem intent on keeping some things from her. To protect her, but still, she felt the blow to her pride and to their mutual bonds of trust. Would they have hidden something like this from her as well? Claude had seemed surprised when she had mentioned it to him, but there was always a chance he wasn't being honest with her.

"More missions, huh?" Ilia tapped her fingers against her arm, her eyes darkening. "I wouldn't wish that on anyone here, but it's definitely a possibility." Would other kids as young as Rose be taken in for an assassination mission again? This military system didn't seem too concerned about possibly breaking innocence. No more than they cared about the possibility of breaking their charges' bodies or minds.

"Did anyone notice anything that might have indicated they were being chosen for a mission before you were taken? I didn't notice any changes to my day..." If there was some sort of indicator, perhaps steps could be taken to warn other patients. Or preempt the institute from taking them at all, though that was not so likely.

So the four might have been the first guinea pigs for some kind of mission system. And there were others, others Rose was aware of that were probably struggling with theirs at this very moment.

Sad thoughts.

“It’s been over three weeks since I arrived and I hadn’t heard of any kind of missions outside the grounds before this,” she pondered, crossing her arms across her waist. Surely something as dangerous would have filtered into the public’s knowledge, even a little bit? It seemed that all of them were thinking nearly the same thing, though--that the missions were likely going to continue.

More like hers and Rapunzel’s, maybe, or more like Rose’s and Ilia’s, which if she was understanding things right, had involved… an assassination?

Slowly, she shook her head at Ilia’s question. “Mm, I didn’t notice anything, either. And we all have different relationships to each other, and different ranks, don’t we?” So far if there was a pattern, Tsubaki wasn’t seeing it. She glanced sidelong at Rose before saying, “The announcement you mentioned… are you talking about the night they happened? I remember him talking about the changes they’d made that night. And whatever was going on in the medical wing…”

Any means necessary. The imitation would have been funny in any other situation (and still kind of was), but right now, it just gave Rapunzel a shiver.

She shook her head to Ilia's question. "The only thing different that happened to me was getting switched to a new room, and I'm pretty sure that didn't happen to either of you," she said to Rose and Ilia both, shoulders slumping slightly. Did they really have this little to go on? Seemed Tsubaki didn't have much else to add either, other than to point out that the four of them really didn't share much in common. Different ranks, different relationships, different experiences. It just seemed so... random. And yet it sounded like they had been picked for a reason.

"Maybe it's just our gifts and abilities?" she suggested. That was the only thing she could think of that had made her and Tsubaki fit in any way to perform their mission. Tsubaki had had the know-how, and Rapunzel was the healing support. Maybe that was the same with Rose and Ilia, she speculated. "Did it feel like you guys were picked because you worked well together? Or, I don't know, had talents that balanced each other out?"

Rose shook her head, too. "Nothing. An entirely quotidian evening. Same room, same roommate."

"We didn't know each other before. Though their estimation wasn't incorrect. If that was their intention." They'd worked as well as a newly-formed team could be expected to, on such a gruesome task. Rose still disagreed with aspects of Ilia's approach, but given that Giuseppe was dead, it was all water under the domicile.

"We could check for these," Rose added, taking off her beret and shining the Eagle badge. "In case we think that there have been others recruited."

"I remember the announcement," Ilia said with a nod. The General had announced that they could expect changes to the institute. Tsubaki was probably right that this was one of those new changes, along with whatever had been left for the patients in the Medical Wing. Ilia made a mental note to check it out one of these nights.

Rapunzel seemed to have undergone a room change, but for Rose it had been just the same as ever. "Same here; no new room or roommmate for me." Lana was a constant Ilia hoped she could always count on.

As for taking them for their abilities or testing their teamwork compatibility, those were less measurable at face-value until put to the test, which seems to have indicated positive results. At least with their two missions.

"The Eagle badges are a good indicator," Ilia praised, her hand unconsciously moving up to touch the edge of her beret. "Should we run into anyone with them, we should probably record their experiences and maybe we'll see patterns in the missions themselves." Or else parse out what the military's goals for them could be in the future.

If more information was dropped, perhaps they really could reach out to the resistance and be of some help to them, though Ilia had perhaps ruined her chances with making friends on that side of this battle with her previous actions. She had no regrets, however. She had done what was necessary to keep both herself and Rose safe, and that was all that had mattered at the time.

Day 59: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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