damned_institute | Day 62: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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Day 62: Sun Room (4th Shift)

What an unproductive day this was so far. Doing nothing but sitting on a couch, watching the bulletin board and thinking too much about things...if only his injuries weren't keeping him from getting some decent exercise. (If only he hadn't let himself get injured, period, but...)

This shift, Zero was left with nothing to do but sit around, without the promise of a useful conversation like last shift with Nigredo. It wasn't like his other option was any better, though. Showers, already being a waste of time as they were, just sounded very uncomfortable, if not impossible, to do while wearing a sling and a cast. So when his chatty nurse came up to him at shift change and tried to get him to follow her to the showers, the once-Reploid refused to budge. She seemed surprised at his refusal, tossed a few 'why not's and 'we can do this and this to protect your bandages so they won't get wet's at him, but he stubbornly shook his head at everything she said. There was no way he was going in there in this condition. Too much effort for no gain. Why did getting clean matter so much, anyway? It had only been a few days since the last time he'd bathed. It didn't matter.

Thankfully, the nurse took pity on him (only because of his injuries, he was guessing) and gave up trying to persuade him to move. She left him alone with his thoughts, and the once-Reploid carefully reclined on the couch and lay his uninjured arm across his stomach, staring up at the ceiling.

... He supposed some quiet time to think wasn't all bad. He was feeling much better emotionally than he was this morning, mainly because he'd had time to let recent events sink in. Zex and Ema's fates had hurt at first, but by now he'd managed to channel most of that hurt into more resolve to fight. His conversation with Nigredo had helped keep his mind off of things and was enough to leave him wondering for awhile, even though figuring out what to do about Landel was more important than that right now. And, he had a new self-assigned mission for tomorrow via the bulletin board - to assist Ema's sister Lana in any way he could. Not to mention he'd learned about the existence of a town outside of this place....

...Alright. On second thought, the day was not as unproductive as he'd been thinking it was. Didn't mean Zero wanted to spend the rest of this shift just lying here, but at least he could say the times he was doing so earlier in the day weren't a total waste.

[free!]

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Nigredo had won Klavier and his undivided attention, regardless of its nature or the threads of logic weaving inside the man's head. It was enough to loosen his grip, to allow inches of space between them. An acquiesce was not to be taken lightly. Nigredo still really liked Klavier to not lose his favor.

So he would give him what was required, what the man needed to hear. "It was with another group, shortly before Dr. Landel regained control," Nigredo began, the words spilling fast and light against his lips. "The battle played out similarly, and one of the combatants was killed. She was literally in pieces at the end." In a most horrifically wonderful way, a detail that must not be shared.

Nigredo exhaled. "The next day, I found her in the Sun Room--injured but alive." And equally confused by the fact. "They had revived her, or the developments in the basement were not permanent. I don't know."

“So Lydia’s not really Lydia but a soldier he’s had brainwashed this whole time?”

Tsubaki did remember the female soldier who’d been selected to mingle with the prisoners, but she never would have imagined that woman had such complicated allegiances. She’d always just been a disembodied voice to Tsubaki. Just Lydia, the nurse assisting Landel. But now it sounded like she had been working against Landel first and had only become the woman known as Lydia second. It was a mind-boggling thought…

“If she’s been brainwashed into helping him, did he make her stay behind to spy on Aguilar?” she ventured in a near-whisper.

And then there was this mysterious Claude person, who seemed to have be a whole other part of the puzzle.

She hadn't been in the room when he'd shouted, but she'd heard the word. "Multiple universes. They have to be bringing all of us from somewhere, and our stories don't line up."

"The night the doors all turned into wormholes -- we ended up on Cissnei's planet, and the stars were all wrong. They're wrong here, too, if this is Earth." She was beginning to doubt that, even if the gravity was perfect. "There are aliens here. Magic. And I met a guy from Jupiter this morning. Cyborgs, but no wormhole drives." Human bodies were remarkably resistant to technological enhancement -- jump pilot's implants still killed a small percentage on installation, even if she'd never met a pilot who thought anything of the risk. She hadn't ever considered it; she didn't have the natural knack for it, and, while that wasn't strictly necessary, she'd always seen ships as a means to an end, rather than a goal in themself.

"It can't just be time that separates us. I don't know how he does it, but he's grabbing us across universes." The jumps didn't feel that different from wormholes, really. Nausea and disorientation and instantaneous transfer. "Why not just recruit an army, I don't know." Tech like that, and he could hire an army. Admiral Naismith might like him, if he didn't pretend to be too charming, and had a good reason for all of this. Which were probably both impossible, but Taura wasn't sure.

"It was when I was twelve. That obvious, is it?" She didn't have to specify what; if he'd asked before disturbing her because he thought she was engrossed in her book, he wouldn't have phrased it that way.

"If I'm not fooling anyone else, I'm certainly not going to fool myself." She closed the book, not bothering to mark her place. She looked over at the man, tucked birdlike into the corner of a sofa. He was barefoot, and his hands were empty. He looked almost like a puppet who's strings had been cut, dropping him into the room. She could sympathize. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it was obvious." That wasn't the case; he doubted that many people would have picked up on it. But pointing that out would have been tantamount to a revelation about himself, one that he often shied away from making at this point in an acquaintance. If she was sharp enough, she might question his statement, at least in her own mind... if not, she would let it pass, accept as a given the idea that she had been clumsy.

"But when you say 'fooling yourself'... what do you mean?" He sounded, now, like his interest was more focused, but still benign. If she hadn't phrased her comment that way, he would have assumed that the pretense of reading was solely an attempt to discourage conversation. A book she'd liked when she was 12... she must have chosen it as a distraction.

Two years, and only Ema had suspected her façade was anything but. Well, Damon had known exactly how fake it was, but he'd merely pointed out the cracks in private and shored it up in public. Care was a habit, but she wasn't trying that hard, now, though. It was nice to know someone cared enough to ask, without knowing her at all.

That didn't mean she wanted to answer. Or that that question was anything other than disingenuous. She raised her eyebrows at him for a long moment -- no, she wasn't going to play this game. Not today. So she leaned forward, and forced emotion -- irritation, mostly -- into her voice.

"My sister was here yesterday. She isn't today. Any other personal questions you'd like to get out of the way, Mister...."

"As for that, Mr. Barnaby, I haven't a clue - you'd have to ask our keepers for such information," she responded with amusement in her voice, being completely literal about answering his question. "Unfortunately, I am afraid that I may have missed breakfast this morning." Even she didn't know if she had been awake that whole time and lost the memories, or was simply drifting out of consciousness for a few hours; neither option thrilled her.

"I know a certain someone would be horrified to learn of such a tragic fate in this place." She was thinking of Luffy, of course, but a little bit of Zoro and Sanji as well, being the ones most often concerned with food on the ship. "Whatever shall become of me..." There was a definite air of confidence as she spoke the next words. "Wasting away all on my own."

She'd broken out of captivity on her own plenty of times; she had no doubt she could do it again. However, everything in its own time.

What a strange thing... Okita listened to Taura's explanation, trying to wrap his head around all the technical terms he'd never heard before. Wormholes to him meant insects crawling through wood and it took him a moment before he realized she was talking about the curious effect of the doors several days to a week ago. The day when the doors opened to rooms they should not have opened into - and Okita and Kenshin had been forced to run for their lives through a tunnel that dropped rocks onto them. He tucked all of Taura's information away as best he could, resolving to ask about some of these things later - cybords, wormhole drives, Jupiter. It all went mostly over his head up until the final bit.

It could have been a throwaway and yet the words struck him as particularly strange.

Why not just recruit an army.

Why not? Why?

He dropped his gaze, hand coming up to his chin as he thought. "Why not just recruit an army...." The military clearly had a hand in this. The people brought here were clearly extraordinary according to their worlds. The variety of recruits were enough to constitute an army indeed.

But why not recruit here, from this world? Why take all the time and effort to draw in others from different worlds, times and universes?

"...Perhaps there's no one left he can recruit," Okita mused to himself. "And the enemy that lies ahead is one that the people here, even with their technology and advancements, cannot conquer." It was certainly something to think about. Something important that Okita couldn't quite put his finger on.

"Oh, brother," Claude groaned, rolling his eyes. "You know, if you're gonna make fun of me, you could at least be more creative about it."

Yeah, he was probably taking it a little too personally, but his mood had been gradually declining throughout the day as it was. First he'd had to see his mother suffering because of what that bastard Head Doctor had done to her and her friends. Then he'd never heard word from Guy. Now he had to deal with getting sick on top of this weird girl taking cracks at him when she was the one with the goofy hair. Seriously. Seriously?

Before he could say anything else, though, another dizzy spell sent his senses spiraling. Claude instantly rubbed at his eyes, his hand reaching out onto the side of the couch to steady himself. "Nngh..." Okay, maybe he ought to sit down. It wasn't too bad yet, but he didn't need to push himself. Even though he was probably just opening himself up for another fit of laughter, Claude settled down onto the nearby cushions.

While on the surface it might have seemed like Satanella was just toying with him, Barnaby understood how disorienting it was to suddenly wake up here. She was wise for realizing there was no way to know exactly when she got here. The staff had an unnerving way of treating newly-arrived patients as though they'd been around for awhile, but just hadn't been aware enough to remember it. In fact, Barnaby had spent much of his first morning doubting himself and his sanity. They had exploited his weakened self-confidence.

He hated it. He hated that they'd apparently known to take him at his most vulnerable, and he hated how easily they'd been able to do it.

At any rate, Satanella didn't sound too worried about what had happened to her. Barnaby didn't know what kind of life she'd lived that allowed her to keep that kind of attitude. Quite frankly, he didn't particularly care to know right then. Even so, she was obviously new, and so Barnaby supposed he bore some responsibility for setting a few things straight for her.

"If you happen to have any special powers or abilities, you probably shouldn't rely on them too much," he calmly pointed out. "Whoever runs this place has apparently found a way to limit them."

"So it's just us?" Taura was good, and some of the other fighters here were in her league, but... "If we're it, that's a piss-poor excuse for an army." A few dozen fighters, a few dozen civilians. "Even before we start attacking each other." And General Aguilar and Landel at each other's throats, but that didn't surprise her; neither of them were men who shared power. It was far too like home for that.

Which brought her back to Okita's warning -- far too many death notices, in the last few days, and most of them hadn't sounded quite right. Like someone trying to hide friendly fire as an equipment malfunction, it was obvious and completely counter-productive, but it didn't quite tell her what was happening.

"Maybe it's resilience. Survival, not success." Her nose wrinkled. She'd equated the two, but success had gotten bigger than merely living. Even as the clock ticked down, her horizons got wider. "It would explain the illness."

"I'm feeling better than I have in some time, actually," Edgar replied, looking Locke up and down. He had to admit his friend actually did look under the weather- unusual, given how very little seemed to get him down. "Though the nurses keep warning me about an illness going around. I thought it just idle chat, but..."

He made an indistinct noise, letting his statement trail off. It was an answer enough as to what he thought. He had a seat opposite Locke, pulling his fingers through his hair. "What is it you wanted to ask me?"

Hearing him talk was giving Ilia a headache. Normally she was deeply interested in getting to know new cultures, but Gamzee's dialect had not translated well through the institute's language filter. She rubbed irritably at her forehead.

"Do you sound just as ridiculous to everyone else in your species?" The words were out her mouth before she could stop them. Well, no use trying to be nice when she couldn't very well call him a friend. But he still deserved some respect, particularly if this was related to some religion as he seemed to be implying.

"Sorry," she hissed slowly through gritted teeth. She took a deep breath again, trying to calm her thoughts before speaking any more. "Look. I'd be happy to hear about trolls and your customs some other time. But the fact is that someone important is dead and you had a hand in it. Though..."

She bit her lip. Already she could feel the rage draining away into despair. Rose was dead. She was really, honest-to-god dead. How could Ilia have let this happen? "Though, getting angry with you won't solve anything. And it wasn't... entirely your fault. Ugh!"

Ilia buried her face in her hands. Why did this have to be so difficult? Martin Landel had forced this child's hand, and then made him forget it had ever happened. She couldn't be angry with him over this. It wasn't fair to Gamzee. She should never have thought Landel would ever play fair.

"Hahaha yeeahh... I get that all the motherfuckin' time, sis." It didn't seem to bother him either. He'd gotten used to it by this point, and it was just sort of a given that people would nod their heads and go along with him without really understanding everything he said. It wasn't as if he didn't do that often enough to everyone else.

Oh right, but there was that whole Rose being dead thing. That was still bad and depressing. Such emotions didn't really make it into his expression, though. He rubbed at the back of his head, trying to think of a way to appease her, but coming up with nothing. He didn't even have a Faygo on hand to offer her for the sake of just chilling out.

"Shit, I'm all kinds of sorry about this." And he was. At least as sorry as he ever got about anything. "Someone should've let a motherfucker know things were gonna go down like that from the start so he'd know to get his bailin' on, yeah?"

He did try to show remorse, at least. Were the drugs he was on really that emotionally impairing? It seemed that way, but who would give a child drugs that strong? Wasn't a hospital smart enough to prescribe something more mild?

"Actually, that.... might have been my fault," Ilia admitted. She knew the blame did partly fall at her own doorstep. She rubbed her arm, ashamed by her previous accusations towards the boy. Or troll. Whatever he was.

"I knew what we were getting into. Not the details, but I knew it would be dangerous. People even warned me it would be dangerous!" She slammed a fist on the armrest spooking a nearby kitten into a run. "I was foolish. I thought it would lead us to the exit, but it just--"

Ilia bit her lip, stopping anything more from escaping. She could feel her emotions wanting to break down again. She had thought her tears were all cried out, but it seemed her eyes were intent on proving her wrong.

"Yeah, yeah. I've got better things to do than be creative today," Rainbow said with a brushing off wave of her hand. "Like not falling all over myself. Ha haaa!"

Rainbow had barely burned the guy again, however, when he took another stumble. She would have taken that as a cue to just laugh all the more in Blondie's face had it not been for the groan that went along with it. That did give Rainbow some pause. The guy hadn't even tripped on anything this time, and it sounded like he was going to be sick or something.

"Hey, seriously, what is up with you? You feelin' okay?" she asked, raising an eyebrow as she leaned on the back of the couch, looking down on Blondie.

Edited 2012-04-07 06:07 (UTC)

A beat, during which he frowned at her, looking about as empathetic as he was able to.

He'd never had siblings of his own; his only way of understanding what she must be feeling now was intellectual, which was his way of understanding most human ties, most emotional responses. If someone felt affection for a sibling, they wouldn't want to see them here, but once they had been here, it would be bad--difficult--if they went missing. The best-case scenario was that the vanished person wasn't themselves anymore. The worst was a terrible, messy death.

The sister was probably the girl from last week... there could be other possibilities, but if he searched his memory, she seemed like the best one. She had been very young. This wouldn't have been a place for her.

It was also interesting that the woman he was speaking to now seemed to be resisting the full spectrum of common emotional responses. She wanted to distract herself. Pride? Diligence? Repression? Hard to say. She seemed too composed, at any rate, to be grieving, although he couldn't be completely sure. She hadn't said her sister had died, but there was still a chance, shifting among the variables, that it was what had happened.

He did feel a twinge of pity for her, more than he would have expected. People were disappearing too often these days. He'd spent several afternoons in the past week feeling a species of bereavement that was more like a hollow, impersonal disappointment. His casual relationship to the dead and missing men precluded him taking it harder, but it hadn't been nothing to him. It felt like premonitions of disaster were, bit by bit, coming true.

How would he have experienced those losses if he had close ties to the people involved, maybe felt responsible for their well-being? He could only guess.

"I understand. I'm sorry." Not for intruding; it was the closest he usually came to any expression of sympathy. His tone was soft, almost chiming. "Please call me Ryuuzaki." He didn't offer his hand; even if it had been his habit, he was just far enough away from her, collapsed into the corner of the sofa as he was, for it to be inconvenient.

He could look at her more directly now, without hiding his interest. He guessed that she was somewhere around his own age, give or take a few years--it was always hard to be more accurate than that on sight, and sometimes a person's experiences might age them prematurely, or the context provided by their surroundings might be misleading.

He waited for her to introduce herself. There didn't seem to be much point in questionable reassurances that maybe, if they played their cards right, they'd be able to help her sister. He suspected that if he tried it, she'd throw the book at his head.

"Lana Skye." She hadn't hid her name on the bulletin; Ryuuzaki had been around long enough that he'd either seen it or his searching expressions had been gawking rather than observing. She didn't think so. Especially as he'd said to call him Ryuuzaki, not that it was his name. Neither his looks nor his accent were Japanese -- the latter was almost as much of a mess as Edgeworth's, years of travel making it bland and indeterminate. Still nice enough that she'd had to stop Ema from calling his number just to ask to be transferred to Lana. Edgeworth had been here twice, as had Wright; she had to take that as a hopeful sign.

Too much thinking. Ugh. This was definitely whatever was going around, rather than just emotional trauma and lack of sleep; she could fight exhaustion, even without coffee, for longer than this. Her wet hair was cold against her skin, and dampness was wicking down the back of her shirt. "I don't suppose you have any theories as to why Landel wants us to be ill, do you? It seems remarkably petty compared to his usual modus operandi." Nothing he did was kind, but Aguilar had been the one withholding normal food and playing dominance games.

That caught her attention in a heartbeat, the mask dropping considerably. For one thing, she wondered if he did in fact know her face, her name, her reputation - thus his 'advice.' The other option was his advice being genuine and blanketing in scope.

"Such people are... preferred patients, are they?" It was as safe a response as she could manage while continuing the topic. She focused on not showing the depth of her connection through her eyes, but didn't look away. "It would not be the first time exceptionally talented people were targeted for those same talents they possessed." She was proof of that, after all.

Then she relaxed again. "May I ask how you came upon such important information?"

Gamzee tilted his head, watching Ilia get worked up with his usual detached air. He reached out then, calmly, giving the woman a gentle pat on the arm. He might have been genuinely trying to console her, but he gave more of an appearance of trying to settle a whimpering puppy than anything else. He just wasn't suited for deep, emotional moments.

"There there, sister. Weren't all your fault. A motherfucker's gotta be makin' mistakes to get their learn on, right? Ain't nothin' you could've all done better I'm thinkin'." He grins. "Horns up! Honk honk!"

The ridiculousness of Gamzee's statement, along with what could be described as a condescending pat on the arm, sent Ilia over. Her need to cry was still there, but instead of sobs she found herself chuckling darkly. There was no peace here, but his phrase 'horns up' gave her an idea on how to pass time once she was taken back to her room. There was definitely some booze she had left stored in the closet. Maybe now was the time to put it to good use.

"Thanks for the encouragement." Ilia swallowed, but couldn't quite muster a smile. "I would say this was a bit more than a mistake on my part. We'll have to see... if all we did was for something worthwhile still. If anything, I feel like we might have just..."

We might have just lost a valuable ally. A good friend. Rose. There was no replacing a companion. No amount of liquor could drown that away, either.

While Barnaby wasn't sure if he'd go as far as to say his words shook the woman's confidence, it was obvious that he'd at least given her pause. Perhaps she, too, was a NEXT. It sounded like there was a high percentage of them here, although Barnaby had yet to see other patients demonstrate their own powers.

"You could say that," he confirmed, folding his arms over his chest. "Someone warned me on my first day here, and I tested my abilities as soon as I could. They're not completely gone, but they aren't what they originally were, either. Using them during the day is particularly difficult."

Actually, triggering his Hundred Power was downright impossible while the sun was up, but Barnaby didn't see any reason to clearly spell out his own weaknesses. Instead, he would only share what she needed to know to keep herself safe -- nothing more, nothing less.

"I-I'm fine," he automatically said with closed eyes, though the way his arms tightened around his stomach said otherwise. "Just tired, I guess. It's not a big deal."

He couldn't help but sound slightly defensive as he spoke. It was hard enough to admit something was wrong to most of his friends. Saying as much to a girl who had just laughed at him was even harder.

"Don't worry about it," he added with a small wave of his hand, not bothering to look at her.

"Doesn't look like 'not a big deal' to me," Rainbow told him bluntly as she frowned down at him. "No one rolls around holding their stomach like that who's 'fine'."

She stared down at him with her judging eye for a few moments before sighing in half-frustrated defeat. "Look, I'm sorry. Ribbing is just kinda what I do. I didn't think you were actually feeling, you know, sick sick. If I'd known, I wouldn't've said anything, okay?"

Locke mentally shook the thoughts of illness away, focusing on what he'd wanted to talk about, instead; it was more important, in his mind. "Last night Tolten and I were exploring the upstairs area near the Sun Room. While we were up their, we came across these doors...and it seemed like nothing could get through them. I couldn't pick the lock and Tolten couldn't bust it down either. You know anything about impossible doors?"

Hopefully, Edgar might've heard something or tried to get through them himself. There wasn't a door Locke couldn't get through with enough time and this one was bothering him.

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Day 62: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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Sorry for the extreme delay! Backthreads are off the backburner now!

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it's fine! I've been busy with work anyway.

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