damned_institute | Night 59: Main Hallway, 1-West

[from here]

Kirk ran into the main hallway and found nothing there except more pink light coating everything. His gut feeling said that if something was happening, it should've happened already, but he was a loss to explain what was going on. The system (if he could call it that, vague as it was to describe the whole Landel's torture/experimentation assembly line) had broken down at least once already, on that night when I.R.I.S. had first(?) appeared, and the whole of the building flickered like a malfunctioning hologram. Was that what the glowing cover was for? To prevent... he didn't know. Something. Something bad enough to warrant a Code Red.

(What had killed that creature?)

Waiting around here was already bad enough on normal nights, what with it being an open space with high traffic, but he'd picked it because it was the quickest and most obvious meeting place for all of them. Now with the whole area lit up like the inside of a strip club, Kirk was starting to feel like a lone piece of meat wrapped in a gold ribbon and tossed out for the wolves. He made a face for a second as he considered the unfortunate implication of mixing those similes, then decided that the dumb thoughts which crossed his mind ranked considerably lower in priority than, you know, paying attention to his surroundings and not getting himself killed.

Kirk swung the lead pipe in his hand once, just to focus, and shook his head as pain rippled out from the still-healing gunshot wound on his right arm. Take it easy, Jim, he admonished himself silently. It was still early in the night. Someone would be along shortly. And if not... he was giving his crew one minute. One minute, and then screw it, he was tracking down everyone himself.

[KIRK TO ENTERPRISE]

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The boy's immediate use of a swear word threw Ilia into a moment of confusion, which only grew as he began to talk about some sort of religion involving messiahs. Was he being sarcastic? Teenagers were pretty proficient in using their words creatively but it still caused her a bit of discomfort hearing that from a boy so young. Well, she wasn't that old herself, so she couldn't blame him for whatever angst led him to choose his ways in speaking.

Rose's use of the word "troll" in addressing the boy struck Ilia as odd. He looked ordinary enough, and calling someone a troll seemed kind of like old-fashioned slang, its meaning perhaps lost in the years between their times. Now that she thought of it, though, Ilia hadn't ever asked what century Rose was from, but that wasn't the issue at hand. It seemed the kids knew each other, at least.

And that maybe she knew the boy? Without realizing it, perhaps? He seemed to think he recognized her, but his dazed expression had her wondering if maybe he was mistaken. But that also pushed her to wonder why she thought she should know him, too. Well, they would probably figure it out as they went along, at some point. "I'm not sure about you being ghostified, but even if we did run into each other we must have never got to introducing ourselves."

Her smile was back in place and she took the moment to do just that. "I'm Ilia Silvestri. I understand you two are... friends?"

Wait, no. She hadn't been there. He was getting her confused with the women that had been. How was he supposed to tell all these humans apart? They might have different hair colors, but not easily distinguishable horns. He blinked lazily at her for another couple moments, nearly zoning out.

Friends? He brightened up again at that immediately. "Yeah! This sister here," (What was her name again?) "is the bestest of friends I done got myself here yet. Not my best best of friends. That's being Karkat. But it's all bitchtits times when hangin' with her." He gave a thumbs up at that, though it wasn't really necessary, just to show his approval.

Wasn't there something else he was forgetting, though? "Oh. Haha, right. I'm Gamzee. Gamzee Makara."

Rose nodded graciously at the thumbs-up, like a queen taking the bows due her. Bitchtits might be an inappropriate (if also apt) description of her role in human society, but she was getting the hang of troll lingo, and there it was merely a mild compliment.

"He and I come from, shall we say, complementary universes. He and his friends have waged a campaign of inter-universe feeble attempts at online harassment, stemming from a mix of genuine antagonism and cultural misunderstandings." She was definitely getting the hang of troll culture now; some of the initial confusion had been from restrictive hegemonic assumptions.

Namely, that all trolls were the same. They weren't. They had as much, and as little, in common as Rose and her friends. A bit more outward antagonism, and an inexplicable obsession with meddling in the affairs of the planet formerly known as Earth, but their differences were greater than their similarities.

She was a bit curious as to which one Karkat might be. Not This One -- though their mutual inappreciation of sarcasm might be a common point, GA had seemed smarter than that. Or at least to value the simulacrum of intelligence, as she'd fallen victim to one of John's more obvious pranks. Still, Rose looked forward to talking to her again, now that ridiculous time shenanigans had moved from fairy tale to recent history. Or recent future history.

"There was somewhere you wanted to go, Ilia. Why don't you tell us where it is?"

He seemed to be speaking in a very slangy form of the standard English vernacular, which would account for his loose usage of what she would consider curses. It helped justify their use so she could put that unusual trait out of her mind. Though the term "bitchtits" caused Ilia to purse her lips in an attempt to hold back a reprimand for addressing a lady with such a manner.

At least he seemed genuine enough, and Rose didn't seem offended by his remarks. "Gamzee! That's it!" Now she could place it; she had been looking out for someone of his description yesterday. "Lana asked me to check up on you if I saw you. Glad to see you're doing all right." If he was a friend of Lana, then that put him in a good place in her book. Despite his oddness.

Rose's words on their relationship were quite a bit more complex. Complementary universes. That was heading into a region of speculative physics that Ilia wasn't fully versed in, but it was close enough to what seemed to be going on in Landel's that she could put it aside and not jump on that as a topic of speculative discussion. Despite how much she would want to under normal circumstances. Instead, Ilia contented herself with a simple, "I see."

And now to business. It seemed Rose was willing to have the spacey boy continue along with them. Ilia didn't mind the company, and traveling in groups was likely to be better than leaving him on his own. "I don't know how much you both might know about the basement, but I have on good authority to believe it's actually the next step in finding a way out of this place. While my sources were... hesitant to give me the full details on what the place entails, I think it's worth a shot. Better to run on a hunch then stand still and get nowhere."

"Now, I haven't pinpointed the location. Like I said, my sources weren't willing to go into full detail," Ilia continued, her smile turning a bit sour in her disappointment. That anyone would think she couldn't handle herself to tell her straight left her more than a little bitter. "But from what I have gleaned it's somewhere past the cafeteria." Bulletin posts and snippets from various conversations had all started to come together leaving her quite confident that was the area they needed to search.

Her mouth tightened into a frown and she looked between Rose and Gamzee with a serious expression, her voice lowering. "It is dangerous, however. That's to be expected. But I'm willing to take that risk along with you if you're both confident in your abilities." Rose had seemed comfortable that night on the mission, all the way up until it had involved the death of Giuseppe. Apparently as long as it wasn't human, or at least if it was just giant arachnids, Rose didn't have any problems taking down other creatures.

The name Lana didn't ring a bell. But then again, Gamzee couldn't outright recall the names of any of the woman he'd walked with that night. That was already apparent with how he'd confused this human for one of them. This was about normal for him, and he didn't expect to start being good at remembering things any time in the near future. And he was pretty okay with this.

"Aw, shiiit. Warms a motherfucker's heart knowin' he's got people lookin' out for him." He slapped a hand on the front of his chest, a bit near the collar bone. It wasn't as if he actually knew where in his body his heart was actually located, but it had to be somewhere close.

The people in this place sure were really nice. He could get used to that part, at least.

As for the basement... he didn't know anything about it. He wouldn't be above checking it out, if it ended up that's where they were headed. Without much to add on the subject, he gave contented and slightly dopey smiles to both females but said nothing. He knew Rose was real good at the whole planning thing, and this other blond sounded smart too, so he had no trouble at all letting them make all the decisions. But then, he rarely had any trouble letting others make decisions for him.

Rose leaned over and corrected Gamzee's hand position.

"I guess if we want a walkthrough, we're going to have to write it ourselves. Again." And by ourselves Rose meant herself, of course. Gamzee was intellectually challenged, and Ilia too goal-oriented. It took a certain type of person, obsessive and thorough, to write a decent walkthrough in the face of imminent death and/or dismemberment.

"There can't be that many places to search past the cafeteria." She had a map, although it was missing pertinent and vital pieces of information. There were only a few rooms back there. One of them must conceal the secret passageway.

> Rose: Be the leader

Night 59: Main Hallway, 1-West

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