damned_institute | Day 62: Sun Room (Second Shift)

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Day 62: Sun Room (Second Shift)

The line of questioning that Rita had begun at breakfast still plagued Loki, as did his own uncomfortable feelings about the entire concept of people being transformed into monsters. It wasn't a useful line of thought, and he needed a better direction to consider.

Hopefully, conversation with Soma would provide that. While she seemed quite stern at times, Loki found her presence oddly relaxing.

Though he had to wonder if perhaps he wouldn't end up seeing her this shift after all, since she might be included in the group that was being herded to the showers. (As much as the statement also was one he greeted with relief, since he was wondering when he'd get an opportunity to bathe. The thought of being trapped in a building with a great many mortals and no bathing facilities had been too horrifying to contemplate.) He'd always been a bit bad at guessing the ages of mortals, mostly because they were so ridiculously short-lived.

Having already established a neurotic fear of the cold with his nurse, there was no difficulty convincing her that he'd be much better off in the Sun Room. Loki settled into his habitual seat, taking a moment to coax one of the cats into his lap. All settled in, he propped his notebook on the arm of the chair and went back to writing.

[Soma?]

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[from here]

When she returned to the Sun Room, Anise checked the bulletin again, despite having done so just minutes earlier. Still no note from Ilia. She was beginning to get anxious.

It looked like Guy hadn't gotten around to posting a role call yet, so Anise went ahead and did that. It was something to do that wasn't fretting over Ilia, at least. Once that was done, however, it wasn't long before she resumed her fretting.

Eventually, she settled into one of the sofas in the room. There, she held Tokunaga on her lap, nervously running her fingers over its seams as she watched people come and go.

[free!]

In all honestly, Snow should have been feeling pretty good today. Yeah, he hadn't managed to find Light or Serah last night. Or where any of the other people who'd disappeared were being held. But he'd found Hope, and that was at least some progress. Better than finding no one again, right? It also made him feel better about the disappearances. Because if Hope was around, then everyone else had to be, too. Somewhere.

But even if his spirits had improved, he still wound up feeling like crap as soon as he woke up. He was tired and nauseous and it felt like someone was jabbing a little needle into the side of his head over and over. He'd figured he maybe just needed some food, but breakfast hadn't done much good. Not like it was really anything to get worried over. It'd just go away eventually. But, you know. Just annoying was all.

Anyway, even if he was fine enough with ignoring it, he wasn't up for going outside and standing around in the cold again. ...Actually, maybe that was why he was feeling so bad. He wasn't used to this weather. Guess that made it the nurses' fault. Good going there, guys.

Snow scanned the room as he walked in, looking for any familiar faces. No sign of anyone yet. He'd been kind of hoping to catch Hope again, or else see someone else he could talk to to ask stuff. But, oh well. He'd just kill some time for a while until he could find someone. So Snow just... wandered the room, looking around.

He was walking by behind one of the couches when he slowed his pace. There was a girl sitting there which wasn't that weird. But she was... playing with a pretty freaky-looking doll. What the hell was that thing? It wasn't anything he recognized. Didn't really look like anything a kid would want to play with either. Though, who knew? Maybe this is what passed for 'cute' on Pulse.

Welp. No sense being rude about it, he guessed. Snow placed his hands on the back of the couch, leaning forward in an exaggerated curiosity as he peered down at the doll from above the kid's head. "Heeey. What's this guy's name, huh?"

It was hard to calm down while there was so much to worry about, and while Anise wasn't feeling her best. Tokunaga worked as a sort of safety blanket at times like this, though several minutes passed and she still didn't feel much better.

She gave a little surprised jolt when someone approached from behind the couch, snapping her head upward to see who it was. It wasn't a face she recognized, but he seemed friendly enough, so she offered him a weak smile. Anyone who'd take interest in Tokunaga couldn't be a bad person, she figured.

"This is Tokunaga!" she answered, giving the doll a little squeeze and doing her best to bring out a little cheer in her voice. "I got it back home, before I ended up here. It's cute, right?" She lifted it up so the man could see.

Toku-- Huh? That was a... pretty complicated name for a doll. Then again, there were a lot of people here with complicated names. Again, it was probably just a thing that had to do with these kinds of people. Not that he cared about that kind of stuff.

He met her smile with a big grin of his own and he poked the thing's head once affectionately, like he was testing its squishiness. In a certain kind of way, he could see how it could maybe be cute. Kind of. "Heh~ Sure is. 'S a good thing you got to bring him here with you. Now neither of you gotta be lonely."

Pretty nice of them to let her keep that thing. Maybe one of the guys in charge had a heart, after all. "Mind if I join you and To... er, your friend?"

Sounded like the big guy was a big softie. Anise nodded happily, giving the doll another squeeze. Though the story behind how she got the doll back wasn't such a pleasant one, having Tokunaga around really did help keep the loneliness away. She was glad to meet someone who understood that.

When the stranger asked to join her, Anise scooted over to make room on the sofa. "Not at all! My name's Anise, by the way." It was a little funny that she'd given the doll's name before her own. "What's yours?"

Edited 2012-03-04 09:15 (UTC)

Snow stepped around the couch and plopped himself down next to her somewhat enthusiastically. It was always good to see a smile on someone's face, especially in this place. It was nice to have a good, normal conversation, too. Maybe the distraction would take his mind off his queasy stomach.

"It's Snow." Anise, huh? Well that was a much easier name than her doll's. Nice, too. "Ha, I never noticed there were so many kids here before."

If he actually stopped to think about that, he'd probably have found it kind of worrisome. For now, it just seemed like a funny coincidence. "So where you from, Anise? Anywhere around here?"

He already figured she was from somewhere on Pulse. He wouldn't recognize the name of the town, no matter what. But he was kind of curious anyway. Besides Fang and what he'd gathered from being here, he really didn't know anything about these people or Pulse. In fact, he'd always thought there weren't even people living on Pulse anymore, let alone this many. Maybe she was familiar with the area, too.

Snow, huh? Anise had kind of expected a tougher-sounding name. She grinned and nodded at his comment about kids. "There aren't a lot of people here who're younger than me, but I've met a couple." It was pretty awful if she thought about it seriously, but Anise was trying to keep an easy, casual mood going.

"I'm from Daath," she replied, knowing full well that Snow wouldn't recognize the name. "It's... really far away." Probably farther than Anise could imagine. She had no idea how big outer space was, but she figured 'totally enormous' was a decent guess. It would just be depressing to think too much about how far from home she was, so in the meantime, she just reciprocated the question. "What about you?"

"Hmm. Far away, huh? 'S too bad." It'd be nice if it just took a jog through the wilderness to get her back. It looked like it wasn't going to be that simple, though. "Was kinda hopin' maybe you had some idea where the heck we were. Last time we all went outside? Couldn't make heads or tails of anything."

Either way, it seemed like he'd guessed right. Daath definitely wasn't a name anyone would know on Cocoon. So she was Pulsian for sure. Not that he cared about who was born where or anything. ...Would she care? He already knew it'd be a bad idea letting anyone know about what he was, yeah, but was it better not to tell anyone he was from Cocoon, too? He really didn't know. Maybe? Or maybe no one cared? They were all stuck there, right, so what was the difference?

"Anyway... I'm from Bodhum. Guess you could say it's pretty far away, too." Check him out. Master of subtlety, yeah! "It's normally a lot warmer than it is here. Not really used to it being so cold, you know? Heh. I'll take sand over snow any day."

Irony, what is that?

“It's supposed to be a country called 'America' or something, but I don't really know anything about it. Lots of other patients do, though.” Being from Auldrant put Anise at a bit of a disadvantage, but she'd done a pretty good job of getting informed. She knew what the flag and the money looked like, anyway.

Her grin widened when Snow brought up the weather and climate. Anise could definitely see where he was coming from. It sounded like his hometown was somewhere 'sandy,' but... “Beach sand or desert sand?” Her grip around her doll loosened a bit, now that most of the tension was gone. It was a relief to just talk about something normal for once. “I'm used to beaches, myself. My city's on an island, near a big volcano. It's way too warm for snow there.” Well, she'd seen snow fall a few times over Padamiya, but it always melted by midday. Nothing like the cold weather she'd seen in the past week or two.

Anise seemed to know a bit more than he did, it looked like. Though now she was getting into some confusing subjects. He'd already deduced from one of his conversations with Izaya that "country" meant a region of land. So she was saying this area was called America then. And if a lot of other people here were from this region, too. Good to know, he guessed. Maybe he'd ask someone for more info later.

He was a little lost on the whole desert thing though. Thankfully he didn't have to know what that was in order to answer her question. But he was pleasantly surprised to hear Daath was near a beach, too. His eyes kind of lit up a little as she went on with her description, enthusiastic for the connection despite the different worlds.

"Ha, yeah? Same here! Used to beaches, I mean. Bohdum's built right there next to the shore, so you kinda get used to hangin' around on it all the time. Never gets cold there either. Hell, to be honest, I never even seen snow til I wound up in this place." Most places on Cocoon were kept at pretty comfortable temperatures. There were some places specially designed for people to go and visit if they wanted cold and snow and ice, but he'd never checked them out.

There was one thing that stuck out about her town, though. Something strange. He wasn't really sure what the detail meant exactly, but he was curious and was comfortable enough to ask. "Hey, but uh. What's a volcano, anyway?"

Apparently it was big, whatever it was.

That made Anise giggle. “You have a name like that, and you never got to see snow yourself?” A guy named Snow living in a place that snow never touched? That was pretty funny.

The laughing stopped when the man's next question left her sitting with a blank, puzzled expression. Did he really just ask what a volcano was? “You know, a volcano,” she tried, pronouncing the word carefully in case he'd just misheard. When no flicker of understanding appeared in his expression, she realized he probably wasn't just mistaken. “... You really don't know what a volcano is?”

Was this another 'other-world' thing? Considering how other planets had trees and rivers and mountains like normal, Anise figured volcanoes had to be universal, too. Was that wrong...?

As soon as the mood of the conversation shifted, Snow realized he maybe said the wrong thing. Anise looked really taken aback by his question. You'd think he'd just said he didn't know what water was or something. Apparently, it was really weird not to know what a volcano was.

"No...?" he said a little carefully. There was always a chance that it was something normal but they just called it by a different name on Pulse. That was possible, right? Let's see. Something from Pulse that was big and could be located near a city. The closest thing he could imagine was The Vestige. "Oh, is it... like a building? Or like ruins or something?"

Wait, they called them ruins back home because it was from Pulse. So maybe it wouldn't be ruins to Pulse people because... Okay, nah. Who was he kidding? He didn't have a clue here.

Anise tilted her head farther to the side with each attempt Snow made at guessing, until her head was practically sitting sideways on her shoulders. He seriously didn't know!

Straightening her posture once again, Anise supposed the only thing she could do was explain... even if it felt weird to do that for a grown adult. "Well... it's kind of like a mountain, but with lava inside it. Sometimes the lava spews out the top, along with smoke and ash." She used a few hand gestures to try and illustrate the shape of the volcano, and how it erupted.

"It's usually dangerous to live close to an active volcano, but ours is pretty safe!" Anise was quick to add. She assumed it was safe, anyway. It would be pretty stupid if a religion built around knowing the future had its headquarters destroyed by a natural disaster it should have predicted.

Snow remained silent as Anise explained, watching both her and her elaborate gestures curiously as he tried to envision whatever it was she was talking about. He still wasn't sure what a volcano was but he could get the general gist of it from how she described it. A big thing with something hot inside it that sometimes exploded and spilled out. That... really did sound like something dangerous. Which was why he was relived when she added that little extra tidbit about the one near her home.

"Hah, well that's good to hear. Still think it sounds like a kinda scary thing to see hangin' around, though. Must be weird." Then he laughed a little. "Welp. Don't remember seein' anything like that when I went outside! So I don't think we gotta worry about dealin' with volcanoes and stuff while we're here either. Guess that's one load off, right?"

"Scary? Hehe. Sometimes, yeah." Anise had gotten used to it, especially considering the number of times she'd gone inside while working under Mohs. Still, between the ledges that towered over certain death, the monsters inside, and the horrible experiences Anise had in there, she couldn't say she had any happy memories about the place.

She nodded when Snow mentioned the region outside. "I'm pretty sure there aren't any, either." Not that Anise knew well enough to be certain, especially when looking at an alien planet, but it just didn't seem like the right terrain.

"What about your homeland? Anything really impressive or cool, like a big landmark or a historical site or something?" It might've been a difficult question, since it was sometimes hard for people to see the extraordinary parts of a setting they saw every day, but Anise was curious.

"Hmmm." Snow crossed his arms, looked up, and tried thinking about that one for a sec. Bodhum was a pretty popular tourist destination, yeah. There were a lot of things that attracted people to it, but they weren't really landmarks. Like Bodhum had actual shops where people could go in and buy stuff, which was a nice change from online shopping. And there was the beach, but it's not like they were the only ones in Cocoon with one. Something unique....

"Ah!" He lit up immediately as soon as he thought of it. Of course. "We got a huge fireworks dome! The base platform's way bigger than this whole building and it's built out over the water. The dome itself is nice and high, so you can see it no matter where you are in the city." Though why you would want to see from the city was beyond him.

"Every year, we have a fireworks festival where we fire off the display for a few hours. It's pretty amazing after dark, even for those of us who've been there for years. People come from all over so they can come and see it!" ...He suddenly realized he was talking a little too loudly and consciously tried to talk a little lower with a sheepish smile. "Heh. There's actually an urban legend that the fireworks are lucky. If you make a wish on them during the show, your wish'll come true."

“Fireworks? In a dome?” Anise's eyes were wide as she marveled at the mental image. The more Snow described it, the more excited she got. A dome larger than the institute, tall enough to set off fireworks in... it had to be enormous! “I've never heard of anything like that... That sounds really cool!”

And the legend that came with it was just... well, it was totally romantic! “Ooh, I want to make my wishes come true, too!” She sank into the couch a little, grinning. If only it could be that easy...

The intercom sounded then, causing Anise to sit back up straight. “Aww, no fair!” she whined. Here she was having a nice, normal conversation, and the Head Doctor just had to butt in. She looked back to Snow, pouting a little. “I guess I'll have to see you later.”

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Day 62: Sun Room (Second Shift)

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