Night 64: X-Ray Room

[damned_intercom]

As soon as the patients entered the dark room, the first thing they might have noticed were a couple of short bursts of static from the intercom. But no voices or cryptic messages greeted them.

Instead, their eyes would undoubtedly be drawn toward the strange picture of a human stomach carefully painted onto the southern wall, its paint casting an eerie green glow that cut into the darkness.

Although the artist had done their best to make the picture as clear as possible, they had apparently decided to leave a sharp kitchen knife perched on X-Ray table to compensate the patients for their troubles. Hopefully whoever picked it up would be able to make good use of it and the clue created for them.

Comments

[lighthearted]

[From here.]

They'd made it! The second the Link stepped inside, Sora shut the door behind them, only taking a second or two to catch his breath before he took in what the room had to offer them.

Normally, the equipment itself would have stood out, but right now there was something else that was much more eye-catching: specifically, a drawing on the wall that looked to have been made in some king of glow-in-the-dark paint.

Sora took a few tentative steps toward it, and as he felt queasiness run through him, he realized what the drawing was depicting. "...That's supposed to be a stomach, right?" A human stomach, with a butterfly inside.

[his_legacy]

Link took a deep, steadying breath as Sora closed the door behind him. Lingormr's parting words had indicated that he didn't plan to follow them inside. Good. The intercom hiccuped, but said nothing. Link frowned suspiciously.

Taking a look around the room, the first and most obvious thing he noticed was the strange machine hanging from the ceiling. Frowning curiously, he approached the long, metal table to take a closer look. So many things in this building were made of such highly polished metal... In Hyrule, steel was used much more conservatively. It was an expensive material reserved mostly for battle equipment. But what was more interesting was the large knife laid on the table. Link picked it up, inspecting it closely. The blade was set straight, and seemed to be sharp. A triumphant smirk ghosted across his face for the first time since he'd woken up here. Link had a weapon.

The Hylian was snapped out of his thoughts when Sora spoke. He looked up to the opposite wall, eyes widening as he saw the painting splashed across the wall. He knew very little about bodies and how they worked. That knowledge was mostly reserved to doctors in Hyrule. But he had been to a doctor's office once, and he had thumbed through a medical texts in his spare time enough to recognize a stomach.

"It seems to be..." He stepped around the table and next to Sora, taking a closer look. Yes. It was a stomach. And it did not take long for him to put two and two together. Link's heart sank and he bit his lip, glancing down at the knife he had just picked up. He was silent for a moment before looking over to Sora, eyes calm and serious.

"This is your call," he said quietly, his voice even. "I will help you, if you choose to go through with... what they seem to be telling us to do." Link had dealt with evil, manipulative men before. But this was definitely up there on the list of the more twisted things he had encountered.

[lighthearted]

When Link grabbed the knife, Sora felt some relief, as this meant that his new roommate hadn't come all this way only to gain nothing from it. Now he had a weapon, and while a knife was the sort of thing that required you to get too close to a monster for comfort, it was better than nothing.

But when Link's face darkened and Sora looked from the knife in his hands up to the drawing on the wall, he felt his body go cold. No, was that really what it was implying? Weren't they just jumping to conclusions?

He placed a hand on his stomach, but it definitely didn't feel like it had butterflies in it. No, he just felt sick, but he'd been nauseous since this morning, and that was a sign of something, wasn't it?

"Do you really think that's what it's supposed to be?" he said after a too-long pause, his voice going quiet. On top of it being dangerous, could he really ask someone to cut him open? Though as Sora remembered Renji's body, laid out and slashed open in the middle, he realized that was exactly what was going on here.

This was not the kind of cure he'd been hoping for.

[his_legacy]

"I hate to jump to an improper conclusion, Sora. By all means, if you can think of anything else, please tell me." Link spoke gently. He remained calm. He wanted to look around the room more, desperate for another idea or clue. But he wasn't going to leave Sora's side, even for something so minor. He chose his words carefully. Sora looked as though he was going to be sick. Given the current implications, he had every reason to be.

"I simply mean that, from what little I have heard, the head doctor is not the kind of man who would leave a perfectly good weapon lying around for us to simply take." He paused a moment before adding solemnly, "Not without reason, at least." Link had dealt with sick traps like this before. Despite his well-controlled countenance, anger flared up in his gut. He was going to make Landel pay for this. Keeping a boy like Sora locked up in this dungeon was bad enough. But to attempt to drive him to such a gruesome action? Link took a deep breath. Now wasn't the time to get angry. Sora needed a friend right now, someone with a level head.

"We haven't seen everything quite yet. Do you want to look in the cabinets for more clues?" In Link's experience, it was the little nooks and crannies that ended up being the most important. Yet at the same time he was quite certain that their initial conclusion was correct. He only wished to comfort Sora.

[lighthearted]

That was the thing, though. Even if Sora was trying to look for some other meaning, he didn't know that there was one. Nothing was immediately coming to him, and as his dread grew the churning in his stomach only got worse. He found himself leaning against the X-Ray table as he tried to pull himself together.

"You're right," he said, "but slicing someone open with a knife... That doesn't seem like a good idea, either, does it?" Then again, Sora had stabbed himself in the chest once before, to release Kairi's heart, but at least in that case he'd had some idea of what he'd been doing. This time, if he just agreed to getting cut open, he had no idea what the end result might be.

Regardless of all the risks involved, he didn't think dying was the answer. That was one path he wasn't willing to walk yet. He still had too much to do.

When Link suggested searching the cabinets, Sora nodded and pushed away from the table. "That sounds like a good idea," he said as he started moving toward one of them. He was wobbling a little, but he was keeping his balance for now.

[his_legacy]

As Sora approached the cabinets, Link began picking through the garbage bins, praying that he would find something. He watched the other boy inconspicuously from behind, making sure he wasn't going to fall over or be sick.

"It's a last resort. And even then, it's your call, Sora. No one is forcing you to go through with anything." Thus far, Sora had come across as... a bit boyish. Yet at the same time, he was noble-hearted. That much was obvious. He had been friendly and helpful, and for that, Link was thankful. But that also meant that Sora might go so far as to be willing to attempt this madness- perhaps not for himself, but for the sake of the other people who could get hurt.

Link knew that sentiment better than anyone. But he had never been forced into a situation such as this.

There wasn't anything special in the garbage, or anywhere else, from the looks of things. Link's heart sank. He had known not to get his hopes up, but Sora didn't deserve to make such an awful choice.

[lighthearted]

No one was forcing him now, maybe, but if Sora did start changing then he knew some sort of aggressive action would have to be taken. The idea of one of his friends having to put him down seemed horrible, not just for him but for whoever had to take on that burden. It wouldn't be fair to put anyone through that.

But what alternative was there? Asking someone to cut him open and possibly kill him in the process wouldn't be much better. Sora searched the shelves and cabinets, but all he found were supplies for doing X-Rays, which wasn't going to do him much good.

Except...

"Wait a second," he said after a pause, spinning around with a new burst of energy to face Link. "They had to have sent us to this room for a reason, right? X-Rays are supposed to show you the inside of your body, so maybe if we do one we can figure out what's in my stomach!" He had the sneaking suspicion that it wasn't anything like a butterfly.

Of course, as thrilled as he was with what he considered a good idea, the reality of the situation hit him soon after. "Uhh, if we can figure out how to do it, anyway..." He didn't know much about this stuff, and judging from how Link hadn't even known what an intercom was, he wouldn't be much use there either.

[his_legacy]

"That's what this does?" Link approached the machine at the center of the room, looking it over once again. "I have no idea how it works..." He didn't know how anything in this hospital worked, really. He simply put it all down to some sort of magic, though it was a completely different brand from all else that he had seen. Link inspected the tracks along the ceiling, looking around and trying to figure out how it all worked.

"I get the feeling that you are more familiar with these things than I am... I won't be of much help. I'm sorry." Link frowned to himself. This place... wherever he was... was so far advanced from his home. He was in the dark and completely useless. It bothered him greatly.

[lighthearted]

That was more or less what Sora had guessed, but despite any disappointment he might be feeling, he was quick to reassure Link. "It's fine! To be honest, I don't know that much about it either." He knew what an X-Ray did, sure, but that didn't mean he had any idea how to work the actual machinery. That was the kind of thing you only learned if you were aiming to be a doctor or something, right?

The point was that they wouldn't be able to get very far by themselves, which meant they had to consider some other options. "Maybe we should just... wait around here? I mean, more people are probably headed this way and maybe someone will know more about how to take an X-Ray than we do." It wasn't the worst idea, even though the thought of hanging around like sitting ducks made him a little nervous.

"If we leave this place, we might just end up running into that guy again." Sora didn't want to get into how he knew Lingormr right now, so he left it at that. Though even as he spoke, his gaze moved over to the other door in the room. Where did that one lead? If they got sick of waiting around, they could always go that direction, at least.

[his_legacy]

"Either way is fine by me. This is your issue, Sora. Not to say that I will not help you however you need, but..." Link sighed. This was a difficult conundrum, to say the least. "You make the call. You know this place better than I, anyway."

The Hylian was willing to sit and wait for more people to arrive. He was fairly certain that Lingormr was not going to follow them in here, at this point. But would he be so kind to others? Link frowned. Was the blood on the floor only to scare them? All Lingormr had done was taunt and tease... Was it all just talk? He hoped for Sora's sake the others would be able to get through to this room. He looked up as Sora eyed the other door. Moving farther could be a good idea. In Link's experience, sometimes moving beyond a difficult puzzle and coming back to it later made all the difference.

They had options, though. For that, Link was thankful.

[lighthearted]

So it was all up to him, then? Sora realized that made sense. Link was brand new to this and barely knew where he was, let alone what was going on. The fact that he had managed to keep his cool so well through all of this so far was pretty surprising, but Sora was appreciative of it. He was already panicking enough on his own. If someone else's worries had been added to that, it would have been tough.

That didn't mean he had a better idea of what to do, though. He had to admit that even coming this far had tired him out, so the idea of waiting around for a bit appealed to him. He realized they weren't safe here, but right now it seemed like this room would be more protected than the hallways.

"How about we wait around for a little while and if no one shows up, we go check out what's through that door?" he suggested, pointing to the one in question. Sora moved back over to the X-Ray table and pulled himself up onto it, figuring that if he was going to rest he might as well commit to the idea. His stomach still felt unsettled, and he did his best not to study the drawing on the wall too closely as he started to lay back.

[his_legacy]

It had been a conscious decision on Link's part to be especially careful to keep his head level. Though he couldn't say for sure yet, Sora seemed to be quite the excitable young man. The situation was too serious for Link to allow emotions to get out of hand.

Link nodded. He was alright with staying here. He wasn't too keen on sitting down, though, and leaned against the wall perpendicular to the door, where he could watch both Sora and for people coming in- friend or foe.

"That's fine by me." He would keep an eye out while Sora rested. Link was fine with that.

[lighthearted]

It was decided, then. Even if nothing else came out of tonight's search (well, besides the information that he'd probably have to get gutted like a fish if he wanted to prevent what was looking to be inevitable), at least Link had gotten hold of a weapon. Sora wondered if that was going to make it more difficult for other patients to figure out the clue, but the drawing and the X-Ray machine was probably enough to go by, right?

With both of them settled and still no sign of any monsters coming after them, Sora allowed himself to relax a little more as he laid back and stared at the ceiling and the track on it.

"So... what were you doing, before you got here?" It might be some time before any other patients made it through to this room, so Sora figured they might as well pass the time by having a conversation rather than just sitting in silence. It probably wouldn't be a big deal if they kept their voices down.

[his_legacy]

Link looked up when Sora spoke, a small, nostalgic smile crossing his lips.

"I was... seeing off a dear friend." It had only happened minutes ago, really- from Link's perspective, at least. It had been a horribly bittersweet goodbye, really. One minute, he had thought Midna to be dead. Now, she was alive, at least, but still gone. The Hylian couldn't be angry at her for her decision to shatter the Mirror. It was for the best. But he would still miss his travelling partner. They had come so far from the time they met, when Twilight still shrouded his home.

"...After a long journey together." Words could not do justice to the type of bond that formed between Link and Midna. The Princess was probably the only one who could understand. She had been caught in the thick of it all.

[lighthearted]

So it was something like that, huh? Sora could easily relate to what Link was saying, even though he didn't know the circumstances, because he'd had to say goodbye to friends so many times that it hurt when he thought back on it. He'd only just been reunited with Riku and Kairi, but it had been months since he'd seen Donald and Goofy.

He didn't understand why he was never able to just be together with everyone. He'd been given that brief period back at the islands, but it had been so fleeting that it was almost worse than not having it at all.

Of course, he was allowing himself to dwell more than he would normally because he already wasn't feeling well. It would be better if he just focused on Link and didn't think so much about his own experiences, at least for the moment.

"I... know how that goes," was all he said about himself. "What kind of journey was it?"

[his_legacy]

"It was..." Link thought for a moment. What kind of journey had it been? Caught in the thick of travel and battle, he had never taken a moment to take in the sheer magnitude of his success. Midna's and Zelda's success.

"We saved our kingdom," Link finally said quietly, not looking at Sora. "Hyrule, is what it's called."

'Chosen Hero' they called him. The next coming of the Hero of Time. The next in line to carry the Master Sword into battle. It was finally starting to sink in, how much had been lain on his shoulders, and how much he couldn't have done without either of the Princesses.

[lighthearted]

Saving a kingdom -- well, Sora had done stuff like that, especially if restoring Radiant Garden counted. Not that he was looking to somehow compare things. If anything, it was nice to come across someone who had been through similar stuff.

"Hyrule..." Sora sounded the name out, but he already knew that it wasn't something he'd ever heard of. "I've never been there! I've seen a few different worlds, but not that one." It was pretty uncommon for him to meet someone here who was from a world he'd actually been to, though. And when that did happen, they usually had no idea who he was. It was kind of a bummer...

"So after you were done fixing everything, you had to say goodbye?" He sighed and lifted his hand up above his head, staring at it as he remembered the times he'd reached out for friends who had been pulled away from him. And this whole time while he'd been sick, there had been no sign of Kairi or Riku. Were they really gone again?

[his_legacy]

Link wasn't unfamiliar with the idea of multiple dimensions. He was starting to believe the idea that this hospital was a completely different world from his home, or Midna's.

"...More or less. Her means of getting to my world opened the way for the person who threatened it in the first place. So she destroyed the portal on her way back." Link's voice was quiet. He looked up to Sora.

"Have you had a similar experience?"

[lighthearted]

That was a pretty bittersweet experience. From the sounds of it, Link would never be able to see that friend of his again, because it would be too dangerous. Sora had never been put in that sort of situation, except for maybe the fact that he'd been forced to forget all about his time at Castle Oblivion.

It wasn't something he'd thought about in a while, since people like Axel and Naminé hadn't been here for ages. Nonetheless, he'd had his fair share of conversations about that whole experience and he still felt like he was missing out on a lot of it. That was the price he'd had to pay, though.

"Sort of," he responded when Link asked his question. "I had to journey around to a bunch of different worlds to try and help them fight off these monsters called the Heartless, and got caught up trying to stop these people called Organization XIII." It was a lot more complicated than he was even touching on, but there probably wasn't time to explain in detail. "I'd just gotten back home before I ended up here, actually."

[his_legacy]

Link had judged by Sora's reaction to his words that something similar had happened to him. He got the feeling that there was more to the story, but Link did not press. Sora could say what he was comfortable saying. Or maybe he just didn't want to talk Link's ears off. If Sora's travels were anywhere near as long and harrowing as Link's, he could definitely understand.

He wondered if it was connected. Both he and Sora had been taken from the end of a long journey. It certainly sounded like Sora had been fighting for the sake of good. Did that affect who was taken here? Link realized he would have to meet some more patients before he could make that call.

"Were you part of an army of some sort?" Link looked curious.

[lighthearted]

"An army?" Where had Link gotten that idea? Sora sat up so that he could look at his roommate, tilting his head to the side for a moment as he tried to put the pieces together. Maybe it was just due to the fact that traveling around to different worlds like that sounded like a job for more than just three people, but that had been the reality.

Sora wondered if he would have made any more progress here at Landel's if Goofy and Donald had been here from the start. There wasn't anything he hadn't been able to face with the two of them, after all. Still, in the end he was glad they hadn't been exposed to this place. Donald might still be brainwashed out there -- Goofy too, for that matter -- but at the moment, that was better for them than being here.

"No, nothing like that," he said after a pause. "Why do you ask?" Was that how Link had done things? He'd only mentioned one friend who he'd journeyed with, so Sora didn't think that was the case.

[his_legacy]

"Oh, I... I'm sorry. I just assumed, since you mentioned travelling to different places and stopping those things called Heartless, and that there was an Organization of sorts involved... That hardly sounds like a job for you and a few friends..." Link paused for a moment.

"But I guess I know how that goes, too." Stopping Zant and eventually Ganondorf certainly hadn't felt like a job for two or three heroes. But that was how it had turned out, in the end.

[lighthearted]

So that was it after all. Sora smiled sheepishly and shook his head. "I guess it does sound that way, doesn't it? But no, most of the time it was just me and two friends." By now, Sora knew that he could always rely on Donald and Goofy to watch his back. It was too bad he didn't have that luxury here. "And, well, sometimes people joined in to help us along the way, too." People like Mulan and Jack, or Tifa and Leon... He missed them all even now.

From the sounds of it, Link's journey had also been accomplished with just a handful of people. It was pretty crazy to think about it from an outside perspective, but to Sora it just felt natural at this point.

"Oh, by the way, I had a question..." Sora had been waiting to ask this for a while, and he hoped it didn't come off as rude. "Does everyone have ears like yours in Hyrule?" He was curious to know, especially since it wasn't something he'd seen much of here at Landel's or in any of the worlds he'd traveled to beforehand. Either way, they were pretty neat.

[his_legacy]

Link nodded. So he and Sora had been in the same boat. Midna had always been by his side, and the occasional help from Rusl's resistance movement had been indispensable.

His ears subconsciously perked up slightly when Sora asked about them. The movements were hardly noticeable, really, but they were there if you looked closely.

"No, not everyone. Only members of the Hylian race have pointed ears. Folk who have lived in Hyrule since it was created by the Golden Goddesses. It's a story older than the Hero of Time himself, originating from the Sky People." But... Sora probably had no idea what Link was talking about. He was just reminiscing.

[lighthearted]

If Sora hadn't already been paying attention to Link's ears, he probably wouldn't have noticed. But since he was, he caught the way that they twitched upward for a second and had to hold back laughter. It was just so neat, how they could convey Link's mood in a weird way. Sora definitely couldn't wiggle his ears like that!

"Only Hylians...?" Sora didn't know what these goddesses and sky people were all about it, but it sounded like the sort of stuff that would have a long explanation, which meant now wasn't the best time. (On the other hand, no one else had showed up yet and they'd been talking for a while...)

"So what other kinds of people live in Hyrule, then?" Sora would have thought it would only be Hylians, but maybe others had moved in from different lands or worlds. Every place worked differently, which was why he never hesitated to ask questions like this.