Anise Tatlin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gald_digger) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2012-06-03 06:49 pm
gald_digger) wrote in damned_institute2012-06-03 06:49 pm
Day 64: Cafeteria (brunch)
Well, that went well! Anise had gained herself a gorgeously handsome new friend. She just hoped that weird illness didn't get either of them killed before she could get to know him any better.
... Yeah, that was morbid. It was hard not to think about, though.
Before going to the Cafeteria, Anise made a stop at her room to grab her journal, maps, and a pen. Once she finished eating, she could get a start on copying the maps for Barnaby. He was going to be so glad he met her!
With that done, Anise made her way to the Cafeteria, where she picked up an assortment of food, making sure to get some meat, vegetables, and milk on her tray. She then sat down at a table and set her notes aside while she started on her meal. It was hard not to feel self-conscious about the rash on her arm, though the makeup she used had blended the discolored part enough that it couldn't be seen from a distance. Anise just hoped no one would come specifically looking for it.
[Ilia!]
... Yeah, that was morbid. It was hard not to think about, though.
Before going to the Cafeteria, Anise made a stop at her room to grab her journal, maps, and a pen. Once she finished eating, she could get a start on copying the maps for Barnaby. He was going to be so glad he met her!
With that done, Anise made her way to the Cafeteria, where she picked up an assortment of food, making sure to get some meat, vegetables, and milk on her tray. She then sat down at a table and set her notes aside while she started on her meal. It was hard not to feel self-conscious about the rash on her arm, though the makeup she used had blended the discolored part enough that it couldn't be seen from a distance. Anise just hoped no one would come specifically looking for it.
[Ilia!]
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Eating was something he had to think about, though. The fact that he was slowly adjusting to eating solids was both surprising in terms of how his body was slowly healing and worrying in that he'd been here for long enough that a change had taken place.
Still, it was better than having to deal with those horrific vitamin shakes. Harvey stood in line, eventually picking out some oatmeal and cut fruit to eat.
A quick glance around the room didn't show him anyone he wanted to speak with, let alone anyone familiar. Not that there were that many names on that list at this point, seeing how Jones was gone. With a sigh, Harvey went to sit down and quietly hoped that no other newcomers would decide that he was a good person to plague with their questions.
[For Niikura.]
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And so he was forced into the brunch line Shiina-less and still incredibly frustrated. With his mood swinging everywhere but satisfied, he didn't even find himself wanting to devour the entire buffet spread as usual, and ended up just taking a bowl of cornflakes and fruit. It wouldn't be enough to last him until dinner, but hopefully, he'd feel hungrier once he actually started eating. Otherwise, he'd end up grumpy and hungry by the end of the day: not good.
The other thing he needed was some company. No one he absolutely had to talk to was in the cafeteria yet, but Niikura didn't want to wait around and let his cornflakes get soggy, so he ended up just sitting down across from a guy he'd met a few days ago: Harvey. Not exactly a pick-me-up, but maybe he could get some more info out of this guy. Discrete deep breath and--
"What's up?" Although not as obnoxiously chipper as usual, the Niikura that sat down was still the opposite of the sulking teenager that had just slouched his way through the buffet line. He twirled his spoon before plunging it into his breakfast. "Pretty crazy night, huh?"
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Either way, he was a little bit surprised that Niikura wanted to talk to him again. Not that their first conversation had been particularly hostile, but they hadn't seen eye-to-eye on most things. Then again, Niikura struck Harvey as someone who was laidback about most things (or at least put on airs of being that way), so it wasn't so shocking that he was willing to chat with him again.
Or maybe this had to do with Shiina. Not that Harvey had any investment in that, but the girl had seemed out of sorts yesterday.
"Yeah," he said in response to the kid's remark. "Looks like you made it out all right." There wasn't any obvious sign that Niikura was hurt, at least. Harvey was still curious about why those birds had targeted only specific people, but he wasn't going to bring it up now. "Who were you with?" It was a way to ask after Shiina without actually saying her name.
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"Eh, just Naga--" Niikura made a brief face as he corrected himself. "Shiina." He wasn't sure if Harvey remembered Shiina's surname, and Westerners usually referred to each other by their given names anyway. "We made it out of the bus no sweat, but outside was the, uh, hard part." He ate a spoonful of his cereal. "For obvious reasons."
He was doing pretty well at this keeping it casual thing so far. No weird veins popping out anywhere, no eye twitches, no sudden urges to flip tables...at least, as far as he could tell. Good training or something. Couldn't sound too flippant, though. That was suspicious.
"Definitely something I could've done without."
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"Yeah," he said with a sigh as he finally worked a spoon of the oatmeal up to his mouth. It was good that he'd let it cool off slightly, since even now that heat was aggravating the wounds around and inside his mouth.
"I'm pretty sure we all could have." Harvey sighed and leaned the good side of his face down onto his open palm as he swished his spoon through the rest of the oatmeal, trying to cool it down more actively. He considered asking Niikura if both he and Shiina had been targeted by those birds, wanting to get to the bottom of that little mystery, but figured he could get to that later.
"Were you on the bus that crashed?" Harvey was curious to know the full story there, seeing how that was the reason they'd ended up in that whole mess in the first place.
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"His name's Snow or somethin' like that." He laughed harshly. "I'm surprised no one's started a manhunt yet, 'cause he pulled some pretty ridiculously stupid shit." He didn't know what the guy looked like so he couldn't be the one to start it, but he figured he would know soon enough. It would be the patient that got everyone to stop and glare when he entered the cafeteria.
Niikura pointed his spoon briefly in Harvey's direction. "Who'd ya make it out with?"
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"You can't be serious," he said, rolling his eyes, even though only one was visible at the moment. And yet the sad thing was that he could believe that there was some patient here that was idiotic enough to try that and put the rest of them at risk. He would have been more pissed off if he'd gotten himself hurt during the resulting mess that crash had caused, but in the end what he'd gotten out of it was some more ammo.
"I wouldn't be surprised if people go after him eventually, but at the same time, we should be more focused on the guy who put us here in the first place." Harvey's anger was mainly focused on two people, and he wasn't going to let himself get distracted by some idiot.
The question Niikura asked was unexpected, mainly because Harvey never put all that much consideration to the people he worked with. "Oh, don't know if you know any of them, but... it was Lana, this guy who calls himself Zero, and a girl named Leanne." The latter two he didn't know particularly well, but they'd all worked together well enough, surprisingly.
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Harvey was right in that they had to stay focused on Landel. He'd already given them plenty of distractions, and this whole deal with Snow was just another one that he'd already held up for them all to jump on. Of course, if Niikura ever got the opportunity to punch the guy in the face, he wasn't going to exactly pass it up, but still, they had to keep their priorities straight.
"Don't know the other two, but, I've talked to Lana before," Niikura said with a laugh. "She's pretty sharp, that one." A worthy opponent, if she ever became one--and much nicer to deal with than her former superior, in his opinion. Out of all the assembled figures from Los Angeles, Lana was the only one he actually had any real respect for, and they had only spoken once.
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Lana was the one who stood out the most from that group. Sure, maybe she wasn't an android like Zero, but she knew what she was doing and that was what mattered most to Harvey. "She is," he confirmed with a nod, and his tone made it clear that he thought well of her.
There was something that Harvey had vaguely been wondering about since Niikura had taken a seat, though, and that had to do with the fact that the kid had been planning a basement run. Niikura seemed to be in good spirits -- or he wasn't completely down in the dumps, at least -- so Harvey was guessing they hadn't made any progress yet. Still, he was curious. "So, that whole plan with the basement... I'm guessing it didn't pan out?" he asked as he picked up a piece of cantaloupe and carefully placed it into his mouth before chewing.
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Niikura shook his head as he ate some more of his cereal. "Nah, we're still going for it" - somehow - "but these past couple of days, we've gotten sidetracked one way or another." It was just one thing after another, really, from the mission to last night. What he really wanted to do was drop everything and magically become a brilliant doctor so he could figure out how to stop Shiina's illness from progressing, but she'd been quietly adamant about sticking to their original plan, and how could he really refuse that?
"What made ya think we dropped it?" As far as he knew, he hadn't even mentioned anything about the basement so far, and not even recently on the board unless Harvey was actively stalking his little exchanges with Mike and Shiina. Even those hadn't hinted at plans falling through...weird.
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Then again, what had happened with his group hadn't not been a mess, so it wasn't that he was judging. It was just frustrating to see what was happening and not be able to do anything about it.
It made sense that Niikura wanted to know how he'd come to that conclusion, but Harvey had a perfectly good reason. "Well, I think if you guys had gone through with it already, I would have been able to tell." While he hadn't met anyone else other than his own so-called teammates who had gone to the coliseum, he imagined that after coming out of that you had a certain look about you. And he was good at reading people.
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Actually, he could have easily been either of those at the moment, but Niikura excelled at creating a desired persona, and even though he could sense that Harvey wasn't interested in his goings-on for suspicious reasons, he didn't trust the man enough yet to actually reveal how he was feeling. It was probably going to be the death of him some day, but that was alright: he didn't fear death, for one thing.
"Have you talked to Shiina recently?" It didn't hurt to ask; Harvey already knew that Niikura was always keeping a weather eye out for her. She probably wouldn't be pleased that he was snooping around in his own way, but he figured she would be more honest, just a little bit more, with people that weren't him. It was kind of like stabbing himself in the foot because it wasn't too much of a stretch to guess the real, dismal truth, but Niikura wanted confirmation, however painful it might be.
If she hadn't been honest, well...birds of a feather flocked together, as the saying went.
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It was no surprise that Shiina got brought up, and Harvey was surprised that Niikura had held out this long before asking. "Yeah," he replied, "I talked to her on the bus ride into town yesterday."
He could have left it at that, but he might as well give the kid a wake-up call if that was in order. Which it very well might be -- teenagers were notoriously oblivious about stuff like this. "She seemed... out of sorts, I guess you'd say. I think she's starting to realize how much she's in over her head in this place."
And weren't they all?
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"Thought you'd say somethin' like that," Niikura said, letting just a hint of the doom and gloom bleed in. "I've noticed it too. Can't do much, unfortunately." Locking her in would mean locking himself in as well, and that would make both of them just as miserable, if not more than they were right now.
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He wondered if his story would be a wake-up call for his kid. Still, that didn't mean he was going to tell him.
"I guess all you can do is keep an eye on her," he said, shrugging as he took the last few bites of his food. It was definitely getting easier (and less painful) to get things down now. Seeing how the food they were being served was actually good, it helped. Still, it looked like the nurses would be rounding them up soon, so before long he pushed his plate away.
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By now, the nurses were starting to move around the cafeteria to collect their charges for the next shift. He hadn't gotten much out of Harvey in terms of new information, but just the conversation had been good enough; all he'd been looking for was a distraction, after all. Info would've just been the icing on the cake.
"Eh..." Niikura let his spoon drop into his empty bowl. "Looks like it's time for the next shift." He stood up and threw one of his sloppy salutes. "See ya 'round, Dent-san."