damned_institute | Day 60: Music Room (Fourth Shift)

It wasn't often that Renji felt less like punching people in general as his day wore on. This was a new experience for him. A not unwelcome one, if he was being honest. And the fact that he felt less like punching Fai? Kind of mind-blowing. The sort of thing Zen masters would probably use as a kouan to reach an all-new level of non-punching enlightenment.

So he was back from the dead, almost everyone he'd known was gone, and yet bizarrely his day felt like it was looking up. Kind of. Renji wasn't sure what to make of this. Maybe his grumpy meter was just nearing empty. That was as good an explanation as the next, considering how this place made him feel.

Whatever the reason, he ended up in the music room. And he remembered oh yeah. He'd always kind of hated this damn shift. He grabbed a little book of music and a drum and retreated quickly to the far end of the room. He put the drum down in front of him just so he looked like he was doing something and opened the book. But he had no idea how to read music, and really, he was more interested in the ongoing puzzle of what the hell had happened in the last four weeks.

And brooding. Of course. There was always brooding to be done.

[Okay Tolten, let me lay it out for you. When there's a mommy and a daddy... or sometimes a daddy and a dadddy. Or, hell, sometimes a mommy and a mommy if you buy the right kind of wood cuts (and a third mommy if you go to just the right shop)... but anyway when they love each other very much, or at least a suitably large amount of money changes hands, there are some things that happen...]

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"I appreciate the offer," he said genuinely. It would be nice to be able to indulge even if he was quite certain that playing music didn't mesh well with his life back on the Ptolemaios. He would rather someone like Feldt got the opportunity really. She was bound to all of them and it wasn't really her choice, was it? She was thrust into all of this like, well, like he had been, but at least he had been made for it.

He nodded seriously when she asked, moving onto a topic he could speak more knowledgeable about. "Yes, there was. The whole town turned into zombies once night fell, from what I saw. It was an interesting night." And that was rather an understatement.

That was an understatement, and Rose understood exactly what he meant. Zombies. This place really had taken on an open-source sort of feeling. A sphinx. Zombies. Modern-day psychological horror. Force fields. Military takeovers.

Next thing they knew, there was going to be a hangar full of mecha in the basement and a dragon in the woods.

"I can imagine. Was this an unauthorized expedition, or is there a way to get down there at night?" It would be a long, cold walk with no easy method of transportation, but not impossible. A hoard of rampaging zombies might get in the way, though. Also, it wasn't much of a town, though being from Rainbow Falls left one little leeway in that regard.

Edited 2011-12-19 03:35 (UTC)

Oh, how Allelujah wished that there was a hangar full of mecha. It would make things so much easier, even if Kyrios wasn't amongst them. At least mecha made sense.

"It was at the end of one of the trips," Allelujah explained. "It just got later and later, darker and darker, and the nurses never took everyone back to the buses. Once night fell... you've seen what happens to the place. Whatever it is extends that far it seems." Which was a little disturbing. The townspeople didn't seem to know what really happened but were caught up in it anyway. "I think you could get to the town," he said thoughtfully. "I made it to the mountains one night, although I was alone then and I move quickly."

That sounded unpleasant, at the very least. "I'll take that under advisement next time." She wanted to know if that failure was laid at the foot of the current management or the prior, but Allelujah was still talking, and had said something more interesting than being a small, blonde, expendable extra in a completely shitty movie.

"Was there anything in the mountains?" Were they even looking for a gate, here? Rose doubted it. But if they weren't supposed to be finding a gate, and the puzzles in the basement turned out to be mere window dressing, what was the point of this whole set-up?

Or was it co-incidence that no one knew more that the bare minimum about the basement challenges? The idea had merit. Still, she could pursue this line of questioning, first.

"It wasn't the most fun I've had," Allelujah replied with a faint grin. He'd had worse days though. At least he hadn't been stuck in his Gundam in the middle of a desert in a sandstorm.

"There's a lake up there," he began to explain. "And I saw a cabin there too although I was attacked by some dog-snake monster before I could get to it." And night had ended before he could kill it and continue. "It was cold enough that there was ice on the water. And..." he paused for a moment, remembering what he'd seen on the way up there. "There was a corpse near the stream on the way up. No, a skeleton really. It looked like it had been there for a long time." Which didn't bode well for them really.

"A dogsnake?" That was a new element. "Are we talking furry and sinuous, or scaled and tailwagging?" Or trapped in a nursery rhyme about gender stereotypes?

Rose hopped up on one of the bookshelves and swung her feet in the air. Even if they hadn't found much, swapping notes beat...swapping notes any day.

"All I've managed to find was a Sphinx and a bunch of ogres." And a pair of silvergilt trinkets. "Was there a reward for making it that far?"

"It was rather scaly as I remember. I was a little preoccupied with not getting eaten." He hadn't made notes about it. "It wasn't particularly friendly." Or friendly at all. Maybe if he'd tried throwing a corpse it would have played fetch, but he had been sadly deficient in the corpse department.

He leaned back against the wall, a better place to watch her from as she hopped up there to sit. "A sphinx? I haven't seen that one," he said with a small smile. "And no, no reward. I burned my hands on the acid. Maybe in the cabin, but night ended before I could get there."

The dogsnake sounded kind of cute, if one liked temperamental and/or scaly things. Rose certainly had an affinity for the former, and while she counted herself more of a cat person, the irritating thing about dogs was their crushing interdependence; a scaly vicious dogsnake would make a great familiar to a High Wizard.

"It was down in the basement. Riddle and everything." She hoped the allusion was familiar; he hadn't balked at Sphinx, so perhaps it was.

"I guess only some areas have prizes. I'd like to see this cabin sometime, though. Even if it's a dead end." For the skeleton, literally. For them, hopefully not.

Day 60: Music Room (Fourth Shift)

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