Day 62: Sun Room (Second Shift)

[complicatedliar]

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?]

Comments

[no_dont_go]

[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~]

[gald_digger]

[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!]

[selfnighted]

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]

[madeinthehrl]

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?"

[cpt_minnow]

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]

[stellarregions]

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]

[notachick]

Although his conversation with Hijikata had finished well enough, there was still the business of his missed meeting with Taura and the others. It was a terrible thing for a leader to be so unreliable and the longer Okita put things off, the worse they would become. Still, he wasn't the best at dealing with his own failures and so, as he stood at the bulletin, mulling over the myriad of things he had to do that day, he went with the last on his list rather than the first.

It was a sad thing to see Asuka go. A worse thing to realize that it was always the younger ones here that seemed to disappear first. Shinichi, Kaito, Heiji.... The three of them were long gone now, along with Junpei, Kyouya, that brilliantly flashy boy in charge of the Aid Society... Okita stared at the bulletin board long after he finished putting Asuka's note up, thinking back on how many they had lost in the past month. His chest still felt heavy when he turned away, a bright smile plastered to his face like always. There was hope, of course, that they would return like Hijikata and Badou and others had, but that hope came with the caveat that they would be put in immediate danger again.

Making his way to a couch, Okita wished he was able to go outside like the others, but following last night's occurrence, he wasn't willing to risk it. Especially with the lack of staff and the curious way people were acting. The Head Doctor's announcement didn't assuage his fears any either and so he pulled his legs up under him and settled back against the soft cushions, wondering if his sickness had anything to do with what was going around as he watched the Sun Room with mild amusement.

[for Brook!]

[oyaji]

Breakfast had left a heavy weight in his stomach that refused to unwind even after the fragile truce Barnaby and he had struck. It certainly was born from guilt and worry, but that was no longer an issue, so why did it continue to persist? Shifting in his seat uncomfortably, Kotetsu tried keeping his head down and his eyes unfocused, but nothing he did seemed to help. As time wore on, it became worse and manifested into a dizzy spelled and a nauseated stomach.

When their nurses came to take them to the courtyard, Kotetsu opted for the Sun Room so he could "relax" and thus wait for this uncomfortable sensation to dissipate.

"Ugh," he groaned in passing to Barnaby who followed him. "I think that pancake didn't sit well with me. I'm gonna go to the bathroom real quick." Breaking away from his partner, the older man was led to the men's bathroom by his nurse. Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one in there this time around. Apparently the boys of the institute were taking a shower, which meant he was a bit shit out of luck.

Kotetsu didn't really want to hurl or do whatever else was necessary to dispel this nausea in front of an audience, but there was no choice. In a stall, Kotetsu stood staring at the porcelain toilet with dread. The first buzzing of light-headedness and excessive saliva signaled the upsurgence of his stomach's contents.

"Okay, okay," the former Hero mumbled to himself as he waited for the inevitable. He squatted down to the toilet's level, palms beginning to sweat, but nothing came out. Kotetsu even gave a few dry heaves, but it was all for naught. Whatever this nausea was, it refused to leave him peacefully.

With a defeated sigh, Kotetsu flushed for posterity's sake and left the bathroom, rubbing his stomach the entire way back to the Sun Room where Barnaby was waiting for him.

[Bunny and Japan]