damned_institute | Day 63: Germaine Street (Morning)

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Day 63: Germaine Street (Morning)

Sora was glad that he'd had the chance to check up with a club member first thing in the morning, and while that in itself helped his mood, he couldn't muster up quite the same amount of energy as he normally did when he was feeling under the weather like this. Eating would have done him some good, but he still didn't have the appetite for it, and so he was still carrying his brown bag with him as he exited the bus and bid farewell to Kratos.

Doyleton looked the same as it always did, except this time it wasn't blanketed with snow. While Sora had enjoyed that the last time, he was glad there hadn't been a repeat this time around. Not when he was already feeling ill.

With his energy levels at such a low, it was hard to figure out where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. Maybe he should spend his day looking for gifts for friends again? Riku might want something, although Sora was sort of at a loss for what to buy him. The cold air felt good on his feverish face for the moment, but he realized that was probably going to change pretty soon.

He flipped through his coupons, but they were the same as always and didn't give him much of an idea of what to do with his day. He'd never had a massage before, but with how his body felt kind of achy and tired, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea...

[For Tsubaki.]

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Although seeing Kurogane on the bus was a bittersweet relief (she couldn’t tell at a distance if he was looking ill or not), she knew she only had a limited amount of time to look for Sora once people started filing off the buses. Sora was definitely sick, and with the way things had ended during the night, she wanted to find him as soon as she could. What if his sickness was getting worse like Landel had warned?

She hadn’t sat that far from the front but it still took awhile to get out the doors; she had to stifle mild irritation at the delay. If Sora was already headed into town, she might never find him!

As her head cleared the doorframe, she was momentarily blinded by a blast of early morning sunlight and had to cup her hand over her eyes. It was a nice day in comparison to some of the worse weather she’d experienced at the Institute, but it was too bad she didn’t have the time or the desire to enjoy it. Her lunch bag remained in her other hand, similarly forgotten though for different reasons. Anxiety was the ultimate appetite-killer.

For a few moments she glanced around her, looking for familiar faces. There was an advantage to being tall; she could easily see over most of the heads still milling around the buses. Hmm, no Sora there… With her free hand still over her eyes, she scanned the park.

The spiky head of hair was what eventually drew her eye.

“Ah, there he is!” Tsubaki exclaimed aloud. She started jogging in his direction. The pink fleece jacket the nurse had laid out for her bordered on an eyesore, so hopefully he would notice her. “Sora-san!” she called, waving her hand. “Hey!”

While it took his clouded mind a moment to register that someone was calling out for him, Sora eventually realized it, and as he turned he saw that someone familiar was running his way. "Tsubaki?" He had just been with the girl last night, and yet it was clear that she had been searching for him this morning.

Oh no, was she still worried? Not that she didn't have a right to be, but he'd already been discussing this with Kratos. At this rate it didn't seem like he was going to be able to get away from it. Sora realized that trying to ignore something so serious was the wrong way to go about it, but what was he supposed to do? Right now it felt like he had no options.

"Tsubaki," he greeted, smiling for her as he looked over her outfit. The pink was kind of bright, but it only reminded Sora of Kairi's clothing from home, so it was hardly a bad association.

Where was Kairi, anyway? He didn't see her or Riku in the mass of patients exiting the buses...

"Uhh, how are you?" He tilted his head at her, wondering how long they could talk before his illness got brought up. At least he could blame his flushed cheeks on the cold weather.

Long legs were a blessing! It didn’t take long for her to reach Sora once he stopped and turned around, though she supposed after so long cooped up in the hospital she was starting to get out of shape. She was a little out of breath by the time she came to halt in front of him.

A “hey” left her before she could think of something better. Not very eloquent, maybe, it was the best she could do. Once she had taken a breath, she pressed her gloved hands together in front of her beseechingly. “I’m fine!” she said. The answer to Sora’s unspoken question was “not long,” because some of Tsubaki’s normally soft-spoken demeanor seemed to be missing that morning, leaving her responses more direct than usual. “ How are you, though? Are you feeling okay today?”

It had been difficult to get a good reading in the dark of night, but now that it was daytime Tsubaki could honestly say that Sora didn’t quite like his usual self…

It looked like he wasn't even going to be allowed to pretend things were normal for a few seconds, since Tsubaki cut to the chase pretty fast. Sora knew that there wasn't much point in hiding anything, though he still let out a quick laugh as he rubbed at the back of his head with his gloved hand.

"I guess I still have a fever, but I'm going to try and push through it." It wasn't like he had any other choice, seeing how all the patients had been forced onto the buses this morning -- except for the ones who were in deep sleeps.

"Sorry that I held things up last night, by the way. Where were you guys trying to go?" Sora didn't know if Tsubaki and Rapunzel might have been able to get there if he hadn't ran into them, but he felt like an apology was in order either way.

“Just a fever?” There was apprehension in the question, and with good reason.

How great it’d be if all that was wrong with Sora was just a fever! She wished she could believe it without having to second guess him, but she’d been stuck in Landel’s Institute long enough to know better: what seemed like a coincidence rarely was. If Sora was seriously sick, she couldn’t ignore the possibility that he had come down with the illness the Head Doctor had talked about.

And if he had, then he was only going to get more sick, wasn’t he?

Tsubaki quickly shook her head before Sora could get too far. “No, it’s fine, it’s not your fault. It was a long shot, anyway. We were going to go back to the room where we were briefed about our mission that one time, but that can wait. Your health is more important.”

It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd just come down with the flu or something, but Sora knew it was more than that. Tsubaki did too. People usually didn't get randomly sick around here, either, unless it was the result of some sort of monster attack.

He glanced around the area, making sure that no one was lingering too close to them before he spoke up. "No, it's... it probably has to do with that stuff Landel has been talking about. My hand has this weird rash on it too." Luckily he'd been given gloves to combat the cold weather, which meant that he wasn't advertising it to everyone who walked past.

The mention of the mission that Tsubaki and Rapunzel had been put on was enough to grab the boy's attention. He'd heard it mentioned vaguely before, but he'd never had the chance to hear the details. "Right, you were picked for that! What ended up coming of it, anyway?"

The sooner he got the subject off of him, the better. They both already knew that he was sick, so there wasn't much point in talking about it now, right? Unless Tsubaki had another idea for how to combat it.

A rash? Oh no… That definitely didn’t sound like a cold or a flu.

Tsubaki’s look was concerned. “Does that mean you feel worse today? Be honest! If it is Landel’s doing, then it’s important we keep track…” Landel had said there’d be signs, right? Over the coming days? But in his usual mean-spirited way, the Head Doctor hadn’t said how many days there might be until… whatever was supposed to happen… so anything could happen, really. Though on the positive side of things, that meant there was still time!

So focused was she on the problem of Sora’s worsening condition that the remark about her mission barely even registered. A few days ago she might have jumped at the chance to inform Sora of what they’d found, but now there was this sickness to worry about…

“Hm? That’s… a bit of a story. I can tell you all about it when there’s time. For now, we should concentrate on what we’re going to do…” She trailed off with some uncertainty, realizing that saying “we” was maybe a bit presumptuous. But Sora couldn’t be dealing with all of this alone, could he? His other friends had to be worried, too, and were probably thinking along the same lines she was. “I mean, if the Head Doctor is trying to change you, we’ll need a plan if things get worse.”

Did he feel worse? It was hard to say. The rash being there meant that it had definitely progressed, but even if it was bright red, it didn't really itch or irritate him much. As for the fever, he wasn't really sure if his temperature was higher than it had been, but that was probably something Tsubaki could judge. She'd touched his forehead last night, after all.

"I'm not sure if I'm worse," he admitted. "Feel, I guess?" He pointed to his forehead with one gloved finger. Sora imagined that it would only get worse and worse until it reached a breaking point, which was probably when the change was supposed to happen. It was kind of frightening to realize that that was waiting for him, but right now they still had the chance to prevent that.

And truthfully, Sora was glad that Tsubaki was with him on this, that she was taking it on as if it was her problem too. He'd been nervous about telling anyone at first, but he knew that he needed all the help he could get. So while he wanted to hear more about the mission, he realized they should be focusing on this right now.

"A plan, yeah," he echoed with a nod. "Kratos talked about that too. I think I'm going to make a post on the bulletin so that everyone can start working on this together." He sighed and looked Tsubaki in the eye. "What do you think I should do?"

“If you’re not sure, that’s probably a good sign,” she replied. “You’d be able to tell if there were more symptoms.” At the very least the fact that the rash didn’t seem to be paining him was a plus, right? As far as serious illnesses went, so far things were pretty mild.

If only it would stay that way.

Checking his temperature was a smart idea, so when Sora invited her to feel his forehead again, she transferred her bag to her left hand and slipped off her glove. The glove had kept her hand relatively close to body temperature, so with luck it wouldn’t throw off the reading; it wasn’t exactly the most effective test ever, but neither of them had a thermometer lying around.

When she touched his skin, Tsubaki cocked her head. His forehead felt warm as it had last night, but not burning hot. “You’re right, the fever hasn’t gone away… But it doesn’t seem too much worse.” The silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. Who was this Kratos person, though? Tsubaki thought she knew that name from the Club activities and other assorted bulletin notes. She took a step back so that she wasn’t still crowding Sora, and nodded. “A note, that’s a good idea,” she said as she put her glove back on. “This is everybody’s concern now. We have to get you better if we can…”

But what else could she tell Sora? Being healthy, she could only imagine the burden this was putting on him. She knew him well enough to know that he would never want to hurt someone as savagely as monsters around the hospital did, and to be threatened with the possibility of turning into one of them…

“Take care of yourself for now,” was her answer at first. Her tone didn’t waver, but the worry in her eyes was quite clear. “Don’t try to push yourself, just conserve your strength. If you do start to act differently,” and this was the painful part, thinking about Sora being corrupted by the infection, “then we’ll figure it out. We can always keep you away from people until you come back to yourself. Maybe someone should be ready to take over your duties if it comes to that?”

It was true that so far, he hadn't been suffering from anything besides the fever. Sora figured he would have developed a cough or a runny nose by now, but mainly he just felt drained of energy and achy. Some more sleep probably would have done him good, but he'd already missed too much by sleeping through all of yesterday.

Sora closed his eyes when Tsubaki reached out for his forehead. Her hand felt cool as it touched him, even though she'd had it in a glove, which just gave him an idea of how warm he really was. Still, it looked like it hadn't gotten any worse than the night before, so that was one relief.

He was a little surprised when Tsubaki called it "everybody's concern," since he didn't really want everyone fussing over him. It looked like that was more or less inevitable, though, so there wasn't much to be done about it. In the end, he realized that he would feel better knowing that no matter what happened, he wouldn't be alone.

As Tsubaki gave her advice, Sora did his best to listen, but he already knew that taking it easy wasn't something he was very good at. "Yeah, I'll make sure that someone's ready to take things over for me depending on what happens," he agreed. "And yeah, if I have to... I don't know, get tied down or something, I'll do that."

It couldn't last forever, right? Even if he turned into something, he'd turned back, wouldn't he? Sora just had to believe in his own strength of will.

It was unfortunate that they were even having this conversation. Why couldn’t Landel just stop his meddling?

“If people do start changing in the next few days, it’ll probably be at night, right? We could just… put you in one of the patient rooms,” Tsubaki suggested. Talking about it as if it were some foregone conclusion was probably making Sora feel worse, but she also wanted to put him at ease by letting him know she was willing to think up as many ideas as possible. She counted Sora as one of her friends within the Institute and there was no way she wasn’t going to help him out! Him and the other sick prisoners. It was an unspoken promise she was determined to keep.

“Before that, we’ve still got these credit cards to use. Maybe there’s medicine in town that can help with your symptoms even if Rapunzel’s magic couldn’t heal the source? You can always have the money on mine if you want to buy something over twenty five dollars.”

Edited 2012-04-21 19:54 (UTC)

Sora wasn't sure that a room was going to be enough to hold him depending on what he turned into. Honestly, he didn't even want to think about the possibilities of what kind of monster he'd be, but there was a chance that he would be strong enough to get past any obstacles that were put up.

"The door would probably have to be barricaded with something," he said quietly, looking down at his feet. Dragging his friends into this was like the exact opposite of what he wanted to do, but he wasn't sure if he had any other options.

When Tsubaki brought up the possibility that the town might have some sort of medicine that he could buy, Sora looked up, staring at her through the fever haze as he thought it over. "Maybe," he agreed, "but I don't think I've seen anywhere around here that sells stuff like that. I'll keep an eye out, though."

He wasn't even sure how much medicine would cost in dollars, but he wasn't going to use Tsubaki's money if he could help it.

“Then we’ll barricade it,” Tsubaki with sudden firmness, her brows drawing together. There was no reason for Sora to feel abashed about any of this! The person who deserved to feel ashamed was the one trying to make others forget who they were by experimenting on them. “We’ll do whatever it takes to keep you and everyone else safe. And that’s only the worst case scenario. As long as you remember you’re you, there’s nothing he can do to change that. The rest of it--the infection--can be cured.”

Being sick and fatigued was no doubt a burden, and she wished she could do something to relieve his symptoms. At the moment, they seemed to have hit a wall where immediate solutions were concerned--Rapunzel’s attempt to use her magic was proof of that. But if Sora could hold on for now, something would come up. There had to be something to make him feel better!

Softening her voice again, she gave a faint smile and said, “I will, too. Until we find something that helps, drinking lots of fluids and staying out of the cold will do some good. How about when we get back to the hospital? Have you thought about what you want to do tonight? I don’t know all of the details about that fountain, but we could try again to go there.”

It was hard to miss the determination in Tsubaki's eyes, and the fact that she was so set on helping him through this was touching. Sora locked eyes with her for a moment, trying to smile for her because he really did appreciate what she was doing. "I'll do my best to keep remembering who I am, no matter what happens." Sora knew the strength in his heart and what it had been able to accomplish in the past. If he held onto that, if he kept thoughts of his friends in mind, maybe he really would be able to beat it.

One step at a time, though. Things hadn't gotten nearly that bad yet. Tsubaki's advice about drinking fluids and staying inside was noted, although Sora didn't much like the idea of having to hole up somewhere warm when he was already overheated. As for the coming night...

"I guess I'll have to look around for some medicine. I'm going to ask around on the bulletin and see if anyone knows anything." He'd have to head to that grocery store once he and Tsubaki were done talking. "I'm guessing that anything useful will be in the med wing, so..." When it came down to it, he'd rather not make use of that fountain. He didn't know too much, but from what little he knew it didn't sound good.

She gave a nod. “And your friends will always be around to give you a reminder if you need it.”

On the one hand, her world and the presence of kishin in it allowed her to see just how dangerous Landel’s plans were. But on the other hand, she also knew how hard it would be to corrupt a soul, which was at the heart of these possible transformations. The body could change, but the soul… The soul was the real key. So long as it stayed intact, nothing Landel did was permanent.

She put that confidence into her smile, but it quickly changed into an ’o’ of surprise when Sora mentioned the med wing. Ah, she’d almost forgotten it was unlocked! “That’s right, the med wing! That’s a good idea! Maybe some of the others have already thought as much. I’ll definitely check the bulletin, too, so if you need me you can just put up a note!”

His friends, right. If anyone was going to be able to pull him back if something happened, it would be them. And Sora knew that he had a lot of them here. Not just Kairi and Riku, but people like Tsubaki, Renji, and even Kratos. He had no shortage of them, and so he was sure that things would work out somehow. They wouldn't let it go wrong.

"Sounds like a plan," he said with a nod. Even as Sora agreed, though, he wondered if it would really be safe to ask for Tsubaki's help at night. He wanted to find some medicine because that seemed like his best bet at the moment, but he'd gone to the med wing a couple of times already. He could probably make it there on his own and be okay, right?

"Well, I guess I'd better get moving," he said, glancing down toward the Main Street where most of the patients had already migrated. "Gotta get out of the cold, right?" More than that, he wanted to put up those notes as soon as possible.

Tsubaki was thinking along the same lines, but in a drastically different direction. Would Sora accept help or was he going to think it was just pity or unnecessary fretting? He already seemed to think he’d been a burden on them last night when she and Rapunzel had discovered he was sick…

She thought about what she should say and settled for: “I’ll keep you company at night if you’re not spending your time with other people.” If he was planning on going out alone or doing something dangerous, there was always demanding he let her come along, but she didn’t want to put her foot down unless she had to. There was a fine line between being supportive and being bossy.

When the boy mentioned getting out of the cold, she followed his glance. She hadn’t even asked if Sora had somewhere to be right away; he probably had a busy day ahead of him.

“Oh, yes, sorry if I held you up. Do you… want me to come with you?”

That was a more direct offer than before, and Sora glanced at Tsubaki as he thought it over. If she was putting it that way, it sounded like she really wanted to help -- or was at least making it clear that she was willing. "Well, I guess it depends. If I meet up with Riku or Kairi, then I'll probably be fine, but..." In reality, he'd rather not endanger anyone, but it was hard to look Tsubaki in the face and hold fast to that idea.

"I'll let you know, okay? I have to see what's going on with the club first." He got the feeling that he'd end up taking her up on the offer, though, seeing how trying to organize the club while at Doyleton hardly ever worked out the way it was supposed to.

When Tsubaki asked if he wanted her to come along with him, Sora tilted his head to the side and then shrugged. "It's up to you! I'm just heading down to the grocery store so that I can leave some notes on the bulletin. If you had somewhere else you wanted to go, I'll be fine. It's not like I have anything to worry about in town, right?" He couldn't blame her for worrying, but there was also a point where it got to be a little ridiculous. Trying to escort him through town probably counted as that, though if she just wanted to keep him company, that was a different story.

“Don’t worry about including me if it’s easier not to,” Tsubaki tried to reassure him. She could understand if he wanted to spend his nights with closer friends. If she were in Sora‘s shoes, she would probably appreciate having friends from home nearby when the sun went down. “Just so long as you’re not by yourself. Promise me you’ll at least go with someone!”

During the day was one thing, but night time was just too dangerous to take chances.

Tsubaki put on a smile. “I don’t have anything to do, honestly. I was just hoping to catch you sometime today to see how you were.” She hoped she hadn’t stressed him out by offering to come along like a pest. If her company was a bother, she wouldn’t take it personally. “I don’t mind, but go ahead if you’d rather I not.”

That seemed like a good compromise. If Sora wasn't able to track down his friends then he would have to just get a hold of Tsubaki somehow. It all seemed a little tenuous when they didn't have the bulletin board to rely on, but he could promise her that he wouldn't run off on his own, at least. Though Sora realized that he might not be able to agree to that so easily if things got worse. He couldn't endanger people, after all.

"All right, I promise," he said with a nod. "And we can at least walk down to the grocery store together, right?" It was odd to think that Tsubaki had been that focused on finding him, but he was glad that she hadn't run around all over trying to track him down.

With his mind already made up, Sora started across the street toward the main road. It wouldn't take long to get to Callahan's, seeing how they didn't have any snow to wade through. Although that thought just reminded Sora of last week's activities. "Hey, Tsubaki, remember that snowman we built? I guess he melted a few days back, huh?" It was kind of a shame, but they'd had fun doing it, so that was what mattered.

A promise was good enough! Making sure Sora had someone was all that mattered.

It seemed that Sora didn’t mind spending time with her all that much, though. Or at least he wasn’t saying no to the idea of her tagging along. If that was the case, then she was happy to drop by the grocery store! There just never seemed to be enough time to see her friends, so she was glad for any opportunity.

She smiled. “Okay!” Without further ado, Sora took off toward town and she quickly followed in his footsteps. When he’d said he was going to try and push through his fever, he hadn’t been kidding, had he? “Of course I remember,” she added. “Poor Jack, it’s too bad he couldn’t stay. But there’s plenty more snowmen waiting to be built! Next time you can sharpen your snowmen-making skills.”

It was kind of sad thinking of the way that their snowman must have looked as the sun slowly came back and melted it, but Sora knew that he couldn't get too worked up about something like that. They had way bigger problems than one measly snowman, even if it had been one named after a friend.

"Well, I wonder if it's going to get hotter as time goes by now," he remarked as they continued down the street. He wasn't going at a very fast pace compared to normal, but that just couldn't be helped when he still felt so out of it. And he couldn't stop himself from wondering: would he even be here this time next week? Or would something horrible have happened by then?

No, he couldn't think like that. He gave a small shake of his head and focused on Tsubaki instead. "So, are you ready to tell me about that mission now?" They'd already spent so much time on him; he'd like to get caught up on what Tsubaki was doing before they parted ways.

Tsubaki watched Sora, wondering what he was thinking about. She felt rather useless in times like these; anything she could think of to make things easier for him didn’t seem like enough.

“Mm, it seems like we’ve had chilly weather forever…” she answered. “The weather never seems to change. Does this place still have seasons?”

The mysteries of how this world worked were especially beyond her grasp. Tsubaki couldn’t even begin to guess how Landel managed to manipulate the environment so thoroughly. Day, night, time, reality… it all appeared to be under his control. For all she knew, Jack the snowman had been wiped away by the next morning like most things that happened at night. There one minute, gone the next. Like it’d never happened. If that was the case, maybe it was better to hope that he’d melted like a normal snowman would.

She was still musing over Sora’s state of mind when he asked her about her mission. Ah… that. The full story was an even more depressing subject if she thought about it. “Oh, sure, if you want to hear about it,” said the girl. If that was what Sora wanted to talk about, why not? “I don’t think either of us knows why we were picked, but these soldiers came and got us after dinner…” Tsubaki went on to explain how they had been debriefed about their delivery mission and what they had found when they’d walked through the door. She mentioned her suspicions about the men attacking them possibly being the same rebels Marc worked with, but she left out the more gruesome details regarding the car wreck. That the desert had been booby trapped seemed like enough of an explanation.

But more important than that was Rapunzel’s idea and what had transpired because of it. Tsubaki hadn’t forgotten the checkpoint guard’s leniency with them, and she didn’t hesitate to tell Sora about it.

“And then we spent a couple of nights trying to find a computer that would work with the disc. When we finally did, most of what we found was just incomprehensible text. I’m not an expert, though, so maybe there’s more on it that we don’t know about it. What we could read looked like part of a report.”

"I feel like it wasn't as cold when I first got here. It seemed more like fall than winter, really," Sora remarked when Tsubaki asked about the seasons. It had been getting progressively colder, so it would only make sense if it started to warm up from here on out. Sora preferred spring and summer to winter and fall, so he'd be happy to have that sort of weather instead. But he honestly wouldn't be surprised if Landel made sure that things stayed gloomy to keep their morale down.

All of that hardly seemed to matter when Tsubaki started telling him about the mission that she'd been sent on, though. Sora could barely wrap his head around the idea of suddenly ending up in a completely different place -- a desert, and he imagined it like Agrabah -- when they had been stuck in this same place for so long. If only it hadn't been to do the military's dirty work! Sora would have jumped at the chance otherwise, but with this setup he knew it would just leave a bad taste in his mouth.

Besides, it had clearly been a dangerous assignment, if they'd run into armed rebels and even booby traps. It was sad to realize that people Marc worked with had been trying to hurt or even possibly kill his friends, but Sora understood that they had to try and stop the military no matter what. That night, it must have seemed like Tsubaki and Rapunzel were on the military's side.

Besides, one of the guards had been kind to them, and they'd even managed to steal something away! It was too bad that it didn't turn out to offer them much, but Sora still thought it was pretty impressive that they'd turned the whole thing around like that.

"A report? What kind of report?" he asked, even as they were approaching the grocer's. While he doubted he could shed any sort of light on the situation, he was still curious to hear about it.

“I have it mostly memorized,” she said. “I could write it down. But it went something like: ‘...monitored transmissions from planet 48-71 show no signs of hostility; however, we have detected use of a new code that will take some time to break. No traces of communication with the home planet's rebel factions yet, but we will continue to survey the situation until further notice... We have considered organizing reconnaissance missions on planet 48-71 using Next Wave subjects, but current evaluations show they are not ready. Keep them here for the time being.’

“That’s about all we could make out,” she finished.

Memorized? Well, that was impressive! Sora felt bad at the same time, though, since that probably meant that Tsubaki had recited this to others so many times that she knew it by heart now. Still, he made sure to listen closely, though in the end he couldn't make much sense of what she told him.

"Planet 48-71... I wonder what that is. It doesn't sound like it's this one, if they wanted to send us to it to do recon..." He put a hand to the back of his head, scratching through his hair as he thought it through. "So some of the rebels, they're from a different planet?" It was hard to know anything for sure with such a small amount of information to go off of, but it gave him something to think about if nothing else.

Sora paused outside of the grocer, realizing that they'd run out of time. He needed to go inside and focus on writing up a couple of notes, which would be pretty boring for Tsubaki to stand around for. "Well, thanks for telling me. I'll try to keep it in mind. I should probably get inside now." He gave her a wave and smiled. "Have a good trip, okay? And thanks for looking out for me so much."

“That’s what I thought, too, that they’re keeping tabs on more worlds than just this one,” she said to Sora. “If that’s the case, maybe whatever battle is happening between the two sides is happening across worlds. And there are rebel groups in each of them.”

The ongoing mystery of their situation was both interesting and frustrating to talk about with other prisoners. But the information they’d gotten off the disc was particularly interesting since she hadn’t had the chance to tell many people about it; Sora’s opinion was definitely one she’d wanted to get in time. Still, as determined as he was to ignore it, Sora was still feeling under the weather. She didn’t want to overwhelm him with such a heavy discussion.

Given that, perhaps giving Sora time to do his business inside the grocery store was the best plan? She couldn’t invite herself along everywhere and he probably had a lot on his mind already without her adding to it. Internally, she nodded to herself, decided on the matter. There would be time to check up on him later.

“Of course, go ahead! I’ll see you later!” She smiled a little bit at his final comment. “What are friends for.”

The prisoners might not have had their homes or their families, but… well, they had friends, right?

“You try to have a good trip, too. Bye!”

Rapunzel had tried to explain as much as she could on the ride to Doyleton, but found it a hopeless prospect after a while. The drug running through Eugene's veins kept him slow to take things in. Slow in general, really. So, shortly after trying to explain that the patients were from many far-flung places, Rapunzel had encouraged Eugene to focus on getting some food down; best to keep his energy up before he tried to take in any more information, she figured. Her own breakfast had gone down well enough, thankfully, though it had pressed against the insides of a tense stomach as she watched over Eugene next to her.

Now, after the ride in, Rapunzel was hoping that the drugs were starting to weaken. It was bad enough that Eugene had to feel overwhelmed by everything, but to have to be overwhelmed while dealing with fuzziness of the head and heaviness of the body... That could not have been fun for him. "You okay to walk on your own?" she asked as they moved carefully down the bus steps and out onto the paved road.

Eugene kept his hand firmly clamped on Rapunzel's shoulder, both because he was feeling very protective (as far as he knew, he'd died for her less than a day ago) and because he thought the ground might swing up to meet him if he didn't hold on tight. Things had gotten decidedly less fuzzy since he'd first been jabbed...however long ago that was (an hour? less?), but he still felt a little like he was about to float off the face of the world.

It was probably the drugs and his relief at being freed from the metal monster, but things were surprising him less now that they were in town. Sure, the roads were smooth and black without any visible cobbling and lined with what appeared to be the metal monster's smaller-but-equally-horrible children, but a town was a town. A few of these buildings were marginally recognizable as shops, and once you've stolen from one store you've stolen from all of them. The people, too, looked like any respectable townsfolk out to market. The highly suspicious looks they were getting were familiar too.

Ah, humanity. Nothing like a day out and about in a town full people half expecting you to rob them blind and abduct their children.

After a few steadying moments, Eugene turned to Rapunzel and quipped, "In the last three days, I've been drugged and I've been hit on the head with a frying pan. And you know what? I miss the frying pan."

Rapunzel smiled wryly at the remark, shifting so that Eugene could lean on her a little easier. "I did get another frying pan, though I doubt you want me to hit you with it," she said as they started down the street.

Before getting far, Rapunzel finally caught sight of Sora. She would have gone over to him, but it seemed like Tsubaki already had that covered. She was sure Tsubaki would forgive her later for wanting to focus on Eugene right now; and she trusted her roommate to check up on their friend well enough for the both of them. She smiled and waved to the other girl as they passed, taking one last look over her shoulder at Sora before moving on.

"Soooo this is Doyleton," said Rapunzel, gesturing at the street in front of them. "It, uh. It can take some getting used to." To say the least, she thought as one of the self-powered carriages drove past them down the road (what were those called again?) "But enough of it's similar to what we have back home that you can still find your way and figure out what's what, at least."

"Oh, I don't know," Eugene replied, deadpan (pun possibly intended). "I thought we had a good thing going."

Right on cue, an older sedan with badly tinted windows and a peeling bumper sticker proclaiming that their child was an honor student at an unreadable school took the opportunity to drive past, backfiring magnificently as it cleared the corner on its way to get that engine looked at. Eugene couldn't appreciate the small details of this study in modern life; the car had gone off with a crack like cannonfire (small arms were less common in their relatively peaceful kingdom, and he had yet to encounter any) and he jumped several feet in the air.

"Yeah, completely similar!" Eugene's grin was fixed and he had gone a funny shade of gray under his tan. "That over there's a shop of...some kind, that one sells books, the horrible metal monster's smaller cousin just exploded right over there..." He paused to elaborately waft the smells coming from a garishly-painted building down the street towards his face. "And I can't even tell you what that is, but it smells fried. Mmm, just like Mother used to make."

Rapunzel shared in Eugene's jump, though hers was maybe one foot rather than several. She hadn't heard any of the carriages make that exact noise before, but she had heard them make enough similar low-level noises to guess that it wasn't anything dangerous, at least. If the carriage driver was still going, then it must not have been a big deal.

It was a big deal to Eugene, though, as it turned out. Much as she loved being able to hear his voice again, she found herself frowning as he threw her reassurances back at her — and then full-on winced when he uttered that dreaded word: "Mother". She knew he hadn't meant it, and she knew he was beyond stressed out... That didn't mean she wasn't hurt, though.

She took a little longer than usual to answer him. "...Well for starters, the 'metal monster' is called a bus," she said, trying to keep calm, though the edge of frustration in her tone showed through. "I don't know what they call the smaller ones, but whatever they are, they're just what people use to get around here. Not magic, not monstrous — just different. Okay?"

Eugene was many things, but he wasn't dense. As a thief, he had a remarkable eye for detail; in fact, his whole profession revolved around it. That and a sense of subtlety. And quick fingers...and really good timing, and...

...Regardless, even despite the drugs he noticed right away when Rapunzel stiffened and hesitated ever so slightly. There was a distance in her voice that hadn't been there before--

Oh. The Mother thing.

He raised a highly skeptical eyebrow--just because it was different, it didn't mean he had to accept it--and looked for a reason to change the subject. And, suddenly, he saw something that had been staring him in the face for an hour. So much for those powers of observation he had just been priding himself on.

"Your hair." It was halfway between a statement and a question; a kind of strangled oath from someone utterly perplexed at a new and sudden mildly world-changing realization.

He'd seen it earlier, of course, but it had failed to register until now. Rapunzel's hair should have been short and spiky and brown; it was the last thing he'd really seen before he...died. Or fell into an exceptionally deep sleep. He really wasn't sure anymore. Either way, it was something he had latched onto before everything went black. Even though it had meant his (near?) certain demise, cutting Rapunzel's hair had freed her from her mother. Seeing it long and blonde again seemed so wrong after all that.

But not even remotely long enough. Rapunzel's hair ended somewhere around her knees. Somehow she was missing about sixty-five feet of hair...but if it had been lopped off, wouldn't it be brown? Wasn't that how it worked?

Rather than an answer to the things she was telling him, Eugene gave Rapunzel an entirely different reaction, which threw her off somewhat. "My— Huh? What about my...?"

Her head craned back over her shoulder, and she realized what he must have meant.

That... was going to take some doing to explain. Doing that she was not very confident in just yet, either.

"Oh my gosh, right, we haven't even gotten to any of— Wow, it's such a long story, and I'm not even sure I know all of it. Are you sure you want to hear it right now? I mean, you're still recovering from the drugs and stuff, right? You don't want to hear some long and complicated idea about what might have happened to me when I don't even know if it's true or not," she rambled in place of giving any meaningful explanation. "I mean, I just kind of woke up this way. I didn't see how it happened either."

"But isn't it supposed to turn brown when it's cut?" Eugene frowned. "That's what happened with the whole--" he mimed his cutting of Rapunzel's hair with a mirror shard "--thing."

He knew it had worked that way before. Eugene had been so weak he could barely hold his eyes open at that point, but he'd heard it. He'd heard Rapunzel's mother age, then fall out the window, and then...nothing. And then Rapunzel was there, trying to heal him without her magic hair-powers, and...yes.

Eugene was quite sure that was how it was supposed to work.

Rapunzel was rambling again. He thought it was adorable, the way she did that...but he was getting a headache. The ground still pitched and rolled with every step they took, and another one of those horseless carriages was driving past them (though this one, thankfully, didn't explode).

"We'll just chalk it up to this place," he said pragmatically, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. And then: "...Can we find a place to sit down?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 63: Germaine Street (Morning)

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