damned_institute | Day 64: Intercom, Evening

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Day 64: Intercom, Evening

When the cheery jingle sounded over the speakers, the Head Doctor could be heard humming a song that suspiciously sounded like pieces of "Superstar" from today's movie. Then, as if realizing people were listening, he abruptly cleared his throat.

"Good evening, patients!" he greeted after a quick recovery. "I do hope everyone had a pleasant day. And what better way to end things than with a scrumptious steak dinner? We'll be including fries on the side, as well as offering our usual assortment of water, milk, and juices. Of course, we also carry vegetarian options for those of you who don't eat meat. Enjoy!"

The intercom turned off, leaving the nurses to escort patients to their rooms.

((Please make all dinner threads under this post with your character's room number in the subject line. For updated roommate assignments, refer to the latest Lounge Post. Thanks!))

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Link grunted quietly, stirring in his sleep. Images of the Princess and Ganondorf and Midna shuffled through his foggy head. Midna... She was gone. That much he knew. And Hyrule was safe. And the Princess was okay...

The young hero came to slowly, shaking the sleep out of his head as he sat up. He couldn't remember going to sleep-

Link's train of thought was broken as he looked about the strange room frantically. Everything was so perfectly clean. Too clean. There was a strange device attached to the wall, and everything looked so unnaturally refined. Brow furrowed and eyes wide, he grasped the smooth metal beams that held the bed together. What was this? Where was his equipment? What was this strange attire he was dressed in? Where was Zelda? She had been with him mere seconds ago!

There was another boy laying in the bed next to Links. He looked to be trying to sleep, and normally Link would not have disturbed him, as he appeared slightly pale and probably needed the rest. But Link needed answers. Now. Unable to keep a slight edge of shock from his tone, the Hylian spoke.

"Excuse me? Where am I?"

Link wanted to pepper his current company with questions, but he resisted. He did not want to come across as too much of a fool

Despite Sora's concerns about having difficulty with sleep, that turned out to not be the case at all. In fact, by the time his new roommate had woken up, Sora had been in the process of dozing off, and was in that half-awake state when he suddenly heard a voice calling out to him.

Sora blinked his eyes a few times as he tried to force his weakened body to wake up. Disoriented, he put his hand on the wall that the bed was pressed against and used that to help him sit up.

He saw the other boy sitting on the edge of his bed, looking confused and worried. Sora could tell just from that look on the stranger's face that he was new, which meant that there would be a lot to explain. He drew in a breath and tried to work up the energy to respond.

"Umm, it's kind of complicated," he said after a pause, "but the bottom line is that basically, you've been kidnapped. We're all being held prisoner here, but the staff will tell you a different story." While waking up right before nightshift meant a larger shock, it also allowed you to be more aware of the real story of this place from the beginning.

"My name's Sora," he said next, since they needed to touch on introductions before they both forgot. They were going to be roommates, after all.

"I apologize for waking you, Sora..." The poor boy looked exhausted. Link felt badly for bursting out as he had. "My name is Link. I come from Ordon." The nervous edge was still stuck in his throat.

Kidnapped? That was nothing new to Link... But this place was strange. Everything was built... differently. It felt futuristic. Things were so carefully refined and plain. Nothing looked as if it belonged in Hyrule at all. Complicated? This was more than complicated...

"The... staff? You mean people work here? What exactly is 'here'?"

What in the name of Farore was going on?

The apology seemed out of place considering everything else that was going on, but the fact that Link had taken the time to offer it despite that gave Sora an idea of what his new roommate was like. He sat up in bed and turned on it so that they were facing each other across the room.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I wasn't completely asleep, anyway." Which was true -- while he'd been on the brink, he hadn't yet fallen into a deep sleep. "And it's called Landel's. Basically, we're told at first that it's a mental institute, and I guess during the day it acts like one." Sora couldn't say how accurate it was, since he'd never been to a mental institute before this one, but Link could make his own assumptions about that.

"So the staff is... well, they dress and act like nurses, but there's also a Head Doctor. You'll hear him talking over the intercom pretty soon," he said as he nodded up to the unit on the wall. "When night comes, the doors are going to open and you'll be able to look around, but... monsters are usually wandering around, too."

He was jumping right into the nitty-gritty, but with night about to start, Sora didn't see that he had any other choice. He doubted Link would be willing to just sit around in their room all night, so he'd be seeing it all for himself soon enough.

Link hesitated a moment; he was having trouble keeping up with Sora.

"I... I'm sorry, but what is a 'mental institute'? Or an 'intercom'?" The words were awkward on Link's tongue. He knew what a doctor was... And a nurse... Was this some sort of place for sick people? He had only gotten a few bumps and bruises from his fight with Ganondorf. Link briefly looked over himself, and found that he was completely healed. How long had he been unconscious?

"I can handle monsters-" He paused, the harsh reality hitting him that all of his things had been taken. The Hylian stood, marching over to his closet and pulling it open. It was filled with clothes. He turned to face his roommate.

"I had a sword, and many other things. I'm assuming they have been taken?"

When Link started asking questions, Sora realized that there was a lot more that he was going to have to explain that he'd realized. From the sounds of it, Link came from a place that was more primitive in terms of technology, which meant that he was going to have a pretty hard adjustment period here.

On the other hand, it sounded like Link knew about monsters and how to deal with them, so at least that part would be easier. Relatively, anyway.

"Umm, a mental institute is a place people go if they're... crazy, basically. But none of us actually are!" he quickly clarified. "It's just that the nurses and doctors tell us we are, because they want us to think that our lives are a lie we made up. And that's an intercom," he said as he pointed up to the unit again. "The Head Doctor who's in charge of everything will make announcements out of it." That was something Link could learn about just by observing, at least.

Link didn't hesitate to look around, though, and Sora didn't have to think too hard to figure out why. "Yeah, all our stuff is taken, and if you have any powers, those are weakened, too. But we can still fight." That wasn't something he was going to give up on, even now when he was being forced into a position where he couldn't.

Link closed the closet, still listening intently to every word Sora said. He meandered back to the bed, sitting down. So, this was a hospital for crazy people who weren't crazy. That meant that there had to be some sort of deeper meaning involved. And an intercom was some sort of magic device attached to the wall, through which the boss of this place spoke.

"I don't know about powers..." The Hylian glanced down at the back of his hand, relieved when he saw that the mark of the Triforce was still there. Link looked back up at Sora. "But I had things with me that I need back." The dishonor it would be to have managed to lose the Master Sword, one of the most priceless artifacts in Hylian history... He would have it back, as well as his other equipment. "Where do they keep our things?"

When Link glanced down at his hand, Sora tried to sit up slightly off of the bed and look over, but he wasn't able to see much from across the room. Powers or not, this place was tough to deal with until you got a weapon, and Sora realized that most people weren't as lucky as him and Tsubaki, who were able to summon theirs.

Unfortunately, the next question wasn't one he had an answer to, and he shot Link an apologetic look as he settled back onto his own bed and leaned himself up against the wall. "We don't know where they keep our stuff," he admitted. "I think we'll probably only get it all back once we escape. Well, sometimes your outfit from home will show up out of the blue, but weapons are trickier."

Now he was going to be delving into darker topics, but there was no point in sparing Link just because the information wasn't pleasant. In the end, this was stuff he needed to know. "The only time someone will get their weapon back is if they're brainwashed to fight against the rest of us, and even then it usually disappears once that wears off." There had been rare occasions where another patient had picked up the weapon that someone under Special Counseling had dropped, but it wasn't a good idea to rely on something like that.

Link frowned, looking down at the ground between them. He was still trying to take this whole situation in, and he was stuck without a sword in a place filled with monsters. But he had to remain optimistic. This was just another puzzle- another maze set in front of him. He would come out on top. He always did. But to do that, he needed to find his sword. Getting his tunic back would be good, too. The mail would at least keep him safer at night.

The young hero looked back up at Sora, shocked when he mentioned brainwashing. His ears drooped a bit.

"You mean... they're controlled by the people here?" Link had certainly seen that before- the site of Ganondorf's spirit invading the Princess' corpse still made him feel ill. But by the way Sora spoke of the control, it was fleeting. That was a relief.

It was hard to ignore the way that Link's ears actually moved, almost as if they were expressing emotions for him. Sora had seen animals who could do that, but it was something else entirely to see it on another person. Unless Link wasn't human to begin with, but usually if something non-human was put into a human form here, they were made to look completely human. The ears would have been an oversight.

Now wasn't exactly the time to ask, though, and so instead Sora focused on answering Link's question. "Basically, yeah. It only lasts for one night, but what happens is that some of the nurses will show up at your room before night comes and... I guess you're taken somewhere, and brainwashed somehow, and the next thing you know you'll be attacking people who are supposed to be your friends because you think you're supposed to be guarding a certain area."

It had to be horrible, and Sora was relieved that he had never been picked for that. He'd never been experimented on either, which was strange when he thought about it. He'd learned to be grateful for that, although now he was sick and in danger of turning into something even worse, so it looked like he hadn't dodged every bullet.

The unnerved look in Link's eye was unmistakable. There was only one man he knew to be powerful enough to commit such an atrocity as overtaking the body of another, and that man was dead. What kind of power was held in this place that was capable of matching Ganondorf's? Nothing overruled the divine power of the goddesses. Nothing!

Had the Triforce of Power been taken here upon Ganon's demise? Was it now Link's task to obtain it? But why would the goddesses send him here and take even his sword? And why would there be other "patients" here?

"That's awful," he managed, meeting Sora's eye. "I've... I've seen that happen to a friend," the young Hylian clarified. The incident was still fresh in his memory. "It certainly wasn't any magic I was familiar with," he murmured. Goddesses... He hoped, at least, that she hadn't been in pain. Link needed a change of subject.

"I'm assuming that you had planned on staying in tonight?" Sora gave a pleasant first impression. Link wasn't sure how much of a fighter the boy might be, but he was at least up for the company. Fighting with a companion, or better, a friend, was always better than fighting alone. He wouldn't mind venturing out with Sora.

It was understandable for Link to be disturbed by the concept of brainwashing, especially if it was something he'd come into contact with before. Sora was already getting the feeling that Link had been through a lot before showing up here, if monsters and brainwashing were things he was familiar with. Then again, it hadn't really been any different for Sora in that respect.

"Yeah, we don't really know how they do it," he admitted with a sigh. The only consolation was that it wasn't permanent, although there was another sort of brainwashing that could be. He thought of all his friends who had been released, or even just his roommates. It was way too big of a number.

When Link asked about what he had planned for the night, Sora glanced up, and it was clear that he'd been taken off guard. Normally, he would have resisted the suggestion that he was just going to hide in his room, but that actually had been the plan tonight.

But now that Link was involved, Sora didn't know if he could stick to that. He wondered if he should mention his illness. It seemed wrong to keep it from the person who had the largest chance of being affected by it, but on the other hand...

"Well, I don't want you heading out on your own," he said after a long pause. He was about to suggest that they head out together, since he wanted to make sure Link stayed relatively safe on his first night, but at that point the intercom went off.

[To nightshift.]

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Day 64: Intercom, Evening

Re: M7

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