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]

The light that streamed in the windows seemed thin to Aigis. She knew that light was made of waves and could not rightly be touched, but this human body gave her a different perspective on things. Particularly things that she could "see" and "feel." She didn't understand art in the least, but she found herself growing more curious about nature and the aesthetic side to things the more time she spent in this body. Perhaps she was becoming complacent with how things in the institute were operated.

That very thought frightened her. She could never become a willing puppet of the institute and yet... And yet Aigis could not shake the feeling that that may well be where things were turning. Hadn't she just the night before admitted to Sechs that she was in some ways thankful for what Landel had done?

Her new heart thudded in her chest unexpectedly then, and Aigis reached up, clenching at the gray neckline.

[for The Doctor~]

[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?"

It took a bit of talking, but Maya managed to convince her escort to let her go to the Sun Room rather than out to the courtyard. From claims that Maya was perfectly fit (partially true or not true at all), to claims that she had a unfortunate predisposition against cold (a lie), to claims that Maya was tired (she was depending on the nurse noticing how little of the human food she ate—not a problem for Maya, but abnormal for a human), and the woman seemed to give in out of sheer weariness.

There was more elegant way of convincing her, Maya was certain, and all in all it seemed a mite too much work to get out of going outside. She simply didn't want to sit on the cold ground, and as Maya settled into a couch, she couldn't help but smile at her own self-indulgence.

Unfortunately, her own company had its disadvantages. In a few minutes, she became bored with sitting still, and as she idly rubbed her hands, her thoughts drifted to Wataru. Hmm. Perhaps she should have gone outside, after all.

[free]

Everyone she knew had made it to breakfast safely, but the news of more deaths and disappearances during the night awaited her on the bulletin board. Even vaguely familiar names--names to which she'd attached no real significance--were a little sobering to Soma. It had to be the reason she was feeling a little lightheaded as she glanced around the Sun Room.

There weren't many people here when she'd arrived, and Lingormr was easy to spot. Soma offered her usual small smile as she approached him, inclining her head slightly. She hadn't seen anything unusual on the bulletin today--perhaps that was a sign that last Nightshift had gone better for him than the one before. It was difficult to imagine actively antagonizing Kratos, anyway.

"Good morning," she said, sitting down next to him. "How did everything go?"

Loki looked up from his notebook, one hand still idly stroking the cat in his lap. He smiled. "I think it went rather well, actually. I accompanied Kratos to the medical wing and we acquired some supplies. I also picked out several books from the medical library that I think will be helpful in utilizing those supplies."

And Kratos hadn't gone out of his way to get on Loki's nerves, which was really the more important part of the night as far as he was concerned.

"I hope that your evening was... similarly productive."

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)

Johnny's thoughts were still stirring around with all the new information Lust had given him. He was human, he could get nutrition from food, supposedly that meant he could go into the sun and pray and do everything vampires weren't allowed to do.

It was liberating.

When the nurse came to collect him to take him outside, Johnny almost agreed, but once he stepped into the light and warmth of the Sun Room, he knew this was where he wanted to stay. It didn't take much, apparently the man wasn't comfortable with a male patient's sexual advances and was more than happy to leave him in the room and escape.

With a content sigh, Johnny flopped onto a couch, only slightly aware there was someone else on said couch. The warmth of sunlight on his skin was strange and pleasant. It was something he hadn't felt in centuries.

This was gonna be a long day.

There was no way Depth Charge was about to go to the courtyard- he might as well have made a round trip to the recreational field and called it returning to the scene of the crime- and so it was off to the sun room he sloped to collapse down onto one of those man-eating sofas. At least the cats were back. He'd only been sitting for a few minutes, stretched out across a two-seater sofa, when one snaked its way across the floor and leapt up onto the cushion next to him, looking up at him presumptuously.

Depth Charge simply raised an eyebrow back. "Seriously?" Soliciting petting from a guy who'd done nothing but wreck the joint last night? He paused, faintly disbelieving- and then reached out to ruffle the cat's ears with an irritated sigh. "Cats really are stupid."

Truth was, all it had done was remind him of another stupid cat- one who'd probably have gotten his problem a lot quicker, though more by way of empathy than intelligence. Primus. What would he say if any one of those slaggers turned up here, huh? Even in another universe he couldn't keep things together. Then again, they'd probably figured that out by now anyway.

[free]

"That's good to hear." One corner of her mouth twisted up slightly. "Sora paired me with Riku last night. We only got a few steps down the main hallway before night ended."

She wanted to tell him about Riku's idea to explore the basement, but that could wait until they actually got there. Besides, she wanted to get a better idea of what kind of person Riku was like. He hadn't seemed overly confrontational, but he had come off as the sort of warrior Lingormr had probably grown up with. She could see how they could have rubbed each other the wrong way.

"I brought you those sketches I mentioned," she said suddenly, opening her journal and removing a few loose pages. The drawings were hardly professional, but the lines were clean and neat: two of the mobile suits she'd piloted, and a carefully shaded drawing of the colonel's house in Russia.

She looked down for a moment. "It's not much, but you've shown me pictures of your home, so..."

Last night had been a pretty pleasant evening, all things considered, but the taunting at the end of the night had dredged up the same old fears and paranoias that had been haunting him ever since they'd dragged him off for one of their 'experiments.' He'd almost refused his medication that morning, but in the end, had simply been too mentally exhausted by it all to put up a fight. He'd spent breakfast sullenly, then expected to head out to the court yard, where at least he'd feel a little less cooped up.

His nurse, however, had other plans. After chiding him about how long he'd been out the previous day, and how, with that 'nasty bug' going around, he should take better care of his health, she'd towed him off to the Sun Room instead and left him there, seated on one of the couches.

It was so innocuous during the day. Whatever had been going on when they'd slipped through last night, there was no sign of it now. He might have wondered how they managed that, had he been in the mood to wonder about how anything here actually worked. As far as he was concerned, it was just one long nightmare. Which might, it seemed, be getting worse, if that ominous announcement was to be believed. He rubbed his arm a bit in a nervous gesture. The injection site was healed now, but the mental scar remained.

[Open]

The light shone bright in her eyes and she instinctively reached for a pair of sunglasses on top of her head. Finding them absent, she shielded her eyes and looked around her. Her surroundings had completely changed; she didn't recognize this place at all.

"Follow me, please."

Robin sat up and looked at the slender lady in the doorway. "To where are we headed?" Her tone was even and cautious.

"The Sun Room, of course, Miss Satanella. You missed breakfast, unfortunately."

"That is unfortunate indeed," Robin answered, playing along with the assumption that she was known as 'Miss Satanella' to this woman. Sliding her legs out of bed, she noticed that she was wearing very simple clothes. There had been nothing about her previous attire that she was completely attached to, but it was important to Robin to note all the same. Whoever had removed her from the Revolutionaries' ship had thought it necessary to strip her, but not put her in sea-stone shackles.

After following the woman and entering the Sun Room, she noticed that the woman left. There were others dressed like her in the vicinity, but the ratio of watchers to attendees had decreased significantly. Her gaze fell on a man reclining on a couch, who appeared to be unoccupied.

She approached him, a pleasant smile on her face despite the myriad of questions on her mind. "Languid sir, do you have some free time?"

"Riku." Loki's lips twitched for a moment, though her next statement had him more concerned than anything else. "How could that even be? Unless he kept you waiting for a very long time." Considering the night had felt a normal sort of length and he and Kratos had gotten quite a lot accomplished. "I'm sorry that you accomplished so little... but I am concerned. Does this sort of thing happen often?"

"Hm? Oh, yes!" He took the sketches from her and looked through them slowly, taking his time to appreciate the simple line drawings. Soma, like him, was an indifferent artist, but good at rendering accurately what she had seen. He smiled, one finger gently tracing the lines that made up the first of the mobile suits. There was a certain similarity to the Destroyer's form that he saw. "Are these automata, the war machines that you spoke of?" he asked. "They look impressive. What is the scale?"

He inspected the second drawing. The concept seemed similar, but the design different. His eyes were bright with curiosity as he inspected the pictures of the machines. The third picture, of the house, brought a softening to his expression. "Your home?" he asked softly.

Too bad he didn't have a camera. Depth Charge was stretched out on a sofa, cuddling one of the cats. S.T. liked cats. They didn't ask for much, and they didn't take shit from anyone. He was secure enough in his masculinity to pet kittens and do photo ops with baby seals. D.C. was usually a little touchier.

So, of course, he walked up to the one of thee two that was less likely to bite him if rubbed the wrong way, and ruffled D.C.'s hair from behind the sofa. "Looks like you made a new friend."

Before the guy could take too much offense, he transferred his hand to the cat, who was an equal-opportunity cuddler, it seemed. It sniffed his fingers and then headbutted his hand. "Anything exciting happen last night? I was out for the count."

Gren's hand dropped back to his side as he realized someone was approaching. He didn't recognize the woman, which meant she was probably fairly new. He'd been there long enough to get to know most of the regular population by now.

The phrasing of the question was a little odd, but given the way people were apparently pulled from all over, he didn't think a whole lot of it. "Yeah, sure," he replied after a moment. "I'm not busy." He could certainly use the distraction.

Soma shook her head. "He didn't keep me waiting that long. It's just that time can be a little unpredictable at night. What seems like hours for one team can be a few minutes for someone else. It isn't anything you can predict. The best we can do is try not to blame anyone or get frustrated when it happens."

She produced a pen and drew a small stick figure beside each of the mobile suits to indicate the scale. "These are the ones I flew--the Taozi and the GN-X. They're both about nineteen meters high. The cockpit's located in the chest, and once you get used to the controls, they can mimic human movement fairly easily."

She nodded in response to Lingormr's question. "I moved there a few months ago. I was going to stay in the barracks, but my commanding officer offered to let me move in with him."

"Pleased about something?" Maya asked the man who'd just sat down. She was tempted to ask how he'd gotten rid of his nurse so quickly, but the answer could quite simply come down to his nurse and Maya's nurse having different personalities. Of course, it also depended on their charges; Maya couldn't discern whether her escort was upset with her on the best of days, and honestly: Maya simply didn't care enough to find out.

The question, then, was fairly pointless. "Did you have a good night?" Maya said instead, falling back on something that reliably occurred to everyone, even if someone's nighttime experience might be more fruitless than others.

"Interesting," Loki said. He didn't like the idea of time being unsteady in pockets, since it might inconvenience him rather terribly some night. As an idea that was simply an intellectual exercise, he found it interesting however. "I imagine frustrations run high more often than not."

Loki nodded appreciatively. "I hadn't thought they would be so large. That is... impressive." He looked at the pictures again. "The golem that I saw was nothing close to the size. Truly, the future is woundrous... such machines. What was it like, to operate them? Did you fly?"

His smile seemed softer as he looked at the picture of the house. "It looks like a very nice place to live."

Soma nodded. "I've had more than a few rough nights myself. It's probably Landel's fault as usual, and if it is, annoying us is almost definitely his motive, so the best thing to do is to keep fighting back."

She smiled then, a full smile that touched her eyes. "I flew. The GN-X in particular was like nothing I've ever flown before. It could turn on a dime, it responded to the faintest touch, it kept up with my reflexes..." She'd taken on a Gundam and won in that suit, and if she reached back, the thrill of it was still there. The taste of victory. "I'm happy the war is over, but flying that mobile suit is something I'll miss."

And if Landel had any sense, if he wanted her to even consider fighting someone else's war, he'd give it back to her.

"It is." She refused to use the past tense there. "It's a little difficult adjusting to civilian life, but I'm enjoying it."

Loki laughed. "Annoying us, making it difficult for us to achieve our goals... there are many reasons to interfere with things in that manner." He shook his head. "So yes, I suppose continuing past that adversity is the best way to fight. And refusing to be more annoyed."

Soma's real smile was quite nice, Loki noted. His own expression lost a little of its normal guardedness as he smiled. "Flying... I can only imagine." It wasn't something he'd done with magic yet, and the Bifrost was something else entirely. "It must have been wonderful." He laughed softly. "The way you speak of it is like I've spoken of horses, sometimes."

Loki nodded. "What is it like, inside this house? I've never seen one look thus before. Though that is no doubt because things have changed much since my time."

"Just the sunlight~" Johnny turned a small but honest smile onto the woman he shared the couch with. Had he been himself, he would have smelled her, sensed her presence without thinking, heard her heart beating in her chest...as nice as some of the changes were, the loss of his sharp senses was still a bit unsettling. He'd have to make up for it by being more observant than usual.

Her second question confused him, though, and he decided not to hide this from her. Better to gain information for now before deciding what to do with it. "I'm not certain I know what you mean. I don't remember falling asleep...I merely woke up in this place this morning. I assume it to be some sort of prison for non-humans or something of the sort." Was he wrong? It wasn't like he had a whole lot to go on other than he wasn't dreaming and the people here were most definitely not insane. The 'patients' weren't, at least.

Edited 2012-03-05 03:41 (UTC)

How to ask without raising suspicion...

"Thank you. It seems I am not busy either, in the foreseeable future." She was doing her utmost best to keep her expression neutral. Her eyes darted 'behind' her at her next question, though, as she chose not to take a seat. "These people not dressed like you or I... what is their motivation?"

An open-ended question, at least, and the most direct point from which to begin an analysis of their group structure.

She still had no reason to believe anything was out of the ordinary; she had not lived an ordinary life in over 20 years. So far, this was just another obstacle in her path.

Definitely new, then. Gren felt a pang of sympathy. When he'd been brought in, he had at least had past experience to fall back on. For many of the people here, he expected, this whole trial was confusing in the extreme.

"They'll tell you it's a hospital if you ask them," he replied after a moment to muse over the best approach. "That everyone of us," he gestured to the patients scattered around the room, "is ill. That what we think we know about ourselves is just and illness and that we have different lives they're trying to help us remember. But it's not that simple."

He smiled wryly. "It's hard to explain, but you'll see tonight. All of this is just a front for... some sort of experiment. No one's really quite sure what it is they're actually trying to do here."

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Day 62: Sun Room (Second Shift)

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