damned_institute | DAY 65: Breakfast

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DAY 65: Breakfast

Scar came to slowly, vision blurred and head throbbing. His memory of the previous night was vague and somewhat scattered. What he was most aware of was his renewed and increased hatred for the man called Lingormr. The Ishbalan didn't give a damn if he had been a special counseling patient. That bastard had enjoyed every second of tearing Scar to shreds. What he may or may not have realized was how much it had affected Scar emotionally. He had felt a renewed sense of drive at the start of the night; the disruption on the intercom and the news of the 'cure' had rekindled a fire that fueled Scar to drive forward. To have a little hope.

Lingormr had promptly crushed that.

He was in pain. So much pain. The cut on his hand was only fading scab at this point, but stitches now pulled at the deep gashes in his legs and back. Not only had the nausea not settled, but his stomach was beginning to cramp. The rash on his arm was impossible to hide without the old bandages covering it. It had nearly reached his elbow.

Scar's hazy eyes could make out the nurse, now pushing a wheelchair up to his bedside. This was humiliating. And he was too exhausted and hurting to lash out or become angry. He was just broken. He still tried to take some sort of grudging control, insisting that he didn't need to be pushed around, that he could at least turn the wheels of the damned chair himself. But he didn't make it down the hallway before the pulling and sharp pain in his back became so obvious on his face that the nurse took over.

He entered breakfast with a frustrated, tired, but overall defeated look to him. Scar felt too sick to eat. He sat at the table and brooded, wishing more than anything to simply be left alone.

[For Goku!]

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Waking up was like watching two pieces of mismatched film taped together. What he'd been doing completely cut off, and he was suddenly opening his eyes and sitting upright in an unfamiliar bed for the second time. He felt significantly better than he had after spending the night walking around with his energy on empty, but it was still disorienting and tugged at the remnants of his headache. ... Ugh. It was still hard to believe doing so little could have made him feel so awful. At least it was mostly gone now. Some food and rest, and he'd be back in shape. And from the announcement, it seemed some food wasn't very far off.

"Good morning, Mr. Taylor," a nurse greeted brightly as she opened the door. "You must be hungry." Kyousuke's face clouded over at the unfamiliar name, which didn't escape the nurse's notice. "Do you know where you are?" she prompted gently.

"No," he said slowly, just to see where it would get him. As the nurse went on to explain that he was at Landel's Institute to be treated for his "condition," he simply stared with a strange expression. ... So it was true. They were being kept here and told they were insane. At least he'd been warned about it, but that didn't make it any less bewildering to hear.

"...I see," he responded after a moment. What was he supposed to say? He wanted to protest, but it wasn't going to help him any. If he tried, it would only be written off as crazy ramblings.

The nurse seemed pleasantly surprised at his reaction, and led him to the cafeteria. He'd been wondering how they'd been able to get away with calling such a decayed building a hospital, but the halls were nothing like how they'd been at night, now spotlessly clean and having the look of a proper facility. ... Strange.

Once in line for breakfast, he took a good deal more than he normally would have; between missing dinner and expending all of his energy the previous night, he was famished. The nurse handed him a couple of aspirin before she left, saying he looked like he needed them, which he accepted with a shrug, placing them on the tray. He wasn't normally one to resort that sort of thing, but it wasn't like it was going to hurt anything, and he couldn't say he minded the idea of getting rid of the remainder of his headache. He had some work ahead of him to figure out what to do next, but he wasn't so sure if he was feeling quite up to socializing just yet, so was drawn more to the edges of the cafeteria. He caught sight of another boy, close to his age, who seemed to have the same idea as he did. ... He didn't seem to be faring so well, either. Kyousuke made his way over, placing himself at the same table, but just far enough that they could ignore each other if it came to that.

"Hey," he cautioned. Most people probably would have asked if he were alright, but it was stupid to just state the obvious.

Well, it hadn't taken long at all for someone to approach him, and Sora glanced up and watched as another boy took a seat close-by. It was true that he could have just ignored the stranger to mope some more, but in the end Sora realized that wouldn't do him much good. If he just sat there on his own, all he'd be able to focus on was the pain in his stomach, so maybe this was better.

The other boy had very strange hair, but Sora couldn't exactly judge when it came to something like that. Plus, some of the Organization members could give this kid a run for his money in that department, so it wasn't worth more than a few seconds of consideration.

"Hey," he said back. He wished he could have put some more energy into his tone, but that wasn't working out at the moment. "The intercom said there would be new patients around. Are you one of them?" Sora felt that he would have noticed a hairstyle like that before, especially on someone closer to his age, or maybe even younger. He really wasn't the best choice for explaining things right now, but he could always make that clear later.

.... He thought as much. The lack of energy in the response said a lot, and Kyousuke wondered if he might be better off leaving the other boy in peace. Normally, he probably would have, but since he'd been the one to greet him, and he seemed to be up for it, he could try his chances a bit more.

"Yeah," he nodded, taking a gulp of juice. "I woke up here last night." That... hadn't exactly been the best night, but in hindsight, he thought it was better then than now, because it was easy to see that there was something seriously wrong here. He wasn't sure how he would have reacted waking up here in the day without any kind of preparation for it. He made a glance around, wondering if there was anyone who wasn't quite as fortunate, but there was no way of telling. Apart from the staff, the atmosphere seemed heavy wherever he looked.

He considered asking the stranger if he had been around long, but he shifted his thoughts halfway through, and asked instead, "... Are you sure you shouldn't be in bed?" He probably should have been himself, if he were honest, but the other boy didn't know that.

Last night... So Landel hadn't been kidding about the new patients. It was terrible that even now, more people were being pulled into this trap. Sora's only wish was that the newcomers weren't getting affected by this strange infection. Arriving at Landel's was hard enough on its own, but being sick on top of it? Luckily, the other boy looked pretty healthy.

Apparently Sora wasn't doing as good of a job of that, though, since the stranger ended up asking after him. Sora sighed and glanced at the nearest nurse. "Yeah, I probably should be," he admitted, "but you usually only get to do that if you're unconscious or something."

Not to mention there had been a lot of loose ends he'd needed to tie up, along with trying to find information about his condition. "Umm, you're right that I'm sick," he said after a pause, "but it's not just a normal cold. In this place, there's always something bigger going on, I guess." Chances were that this boy had only heard the very basic things so far, and the idea of explaining it all was pretty daunting at the moment.

At that response, Kyousuke simply snorted. .... Some hospital, if they didn't let anyone rest properly. But he guessed that was probably asking too much, considering they hardly had anyone's best interests in mind. He followed the other boy's glance to a nurse for a moment, before returning to his food. The one nurse he'd talked to had seemed nice enough, not much different from any of the nurses he'd met back home, but he had to wonder if that was just an act, or how any of the staff could pretend this was normal with a straight face.

Something bigger... Thanks to Fifth Sector, he'd grown used to things having a dark underside. The difference was, in that case, he was well-acquainted with it, but here, he was mostly in the dark. The news didn't surprise him much, all considered, but he wasn't sure he liked where this was going.

"So it isn't natural." That seemed to be what he was implying. He frowned, drawing his eyebrows together. "What do you mean by that?"

He didn't really want to press someone who obviously didn't seem quite up to it, but this didn't sound like something he could ignore.

Since this illness was something that was going to be affecting most of the institute until it played out to the end (whatever that turned out to be), Sora felt that it was his right to explain at least the basics of what was going on to the other boy.

He rubbed at his stomach, pushing the heel of his palm in to try and massage the cramping away. It didn't help much, but it was better than just sitting there and suffering.

"Well, if we're going to trust the Head Doctor, which is never really a good idea in the first place, then at the end of all this, those of us who are sick are going to turn into some kind of monster." Sora hadn't yet noticed any signs of a change, but at this point it seemed likely that it was going to hit him all of a sudden. That was almost more frightening because there was no way of preparing for it.

"Last night... Did you wake up in time to hear the clue? Some rebels who are helping all of us from the outside hacked into the intercom system and told us to go search one of the rooms in the medical wings. There was some information there, but..." It wasn't exactly clear, and from what he'd interpreted, it wasn't good news either.

"...!"

That made him jerk his head up in surprise, his hand tightening around his fork. .... It was insane. He'd heard about monsters in the halls at night, but people turning into them? Was that even possible? But hard as it was to digest, he kept his thoughts to himself and tried to force himself to relax. He didn't see any reason the other boy would have to lie about it, and putting up resistance without trying to listen was just going to make the conversation harder for both of them.

And it occurred to him that this wasn't the first time he was hearing this. He'd heard the announcement, but none of it meant anything to him at the time, so he'd completely forgotten about it until now. What was it, again?

"...They said there was a cure," he remembered aloud. But from his tablemate's condition, and the way he trailed off like that, it was easy to imagine they weren't given a free answer. "...I see. I guess it wouldn't be that simple." And then as an afterthought, "Sorry for bothering you."

He did want to ask what they'd found when they gotten there, but he could look into that on his own. From the sound of it, this boy had enough to deal with without being interrogated about it. It was probably best to just leave it be for now.

Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to tell someone who was brand new about something as gruesome as the possibility of a number of the people around him turning into monsters, but Sora hadn't known what else to do. Better to be warned than have a nighttime partner suddenly change on you, right? Sora would have liked to think that anyone who was sick would give someone warning, but he wasn't that naive, either.

"It's not a bother," he said after a pause, shaking his head. "And I guess there is some kind of cure, but all we got to see was... a drawing. It was a stomach." He glanced down at his own hand, still pressed against his middle. "And there was a butterfly inside. So whatever's causing this, it has to do with that."

If anyone was going to try and remove something from their stomachs, they would need someone who was actually trained to do that, or there would be no point to it. Would trying to vomit it up work? Somehow, Sora didn't think it would be that easy.

"Oh, but... I didn't even introduce myself yet, did I?" Sora remarked after a pause. "The name's Sora."

... Well, if he really didn't mind. Kyousuke had a feeling that if he were in the same situation, he'd want to consider it as little as possible, but not everyone coped in the same way. It was actually kind of impressive that he seemed to be taking something so horrifying in stride.

"A stomach," he repeated. It gave him the image a cocoon, and something bursting its way out, and he had to grimace, but luckily his appetite at the moment was too strong to be dashed by it. He could only hope there was more to it than that, and that his initial reaction was totally off-base. In light of that, there was one more thing he had to ask: "What do you plan on doing?"

Introductions... Right. "Tsurugi Kyousuke," he responded, nodding in greeting.

That name was a mouthful, but Sora had been forced to deal with plenty of those since his arrival here. Not to mention the Organization and their names that all had random x's shoved into them.

"Tsurugi," he repeated, hoping that it would be all right to just get one of the boy's names down. It was still so strange to him how the grand majority of people had more than one name, but it made sense for those who had grown up in large cities.

As for what he was going to do... that was a little more difficult for him to answer. He stared down at the table for a moment. "I don't... I can't die. That's not an option, so if I can avoid that, I'm going to. Whatever's inside me, I've got to get it out somehow." Which meant either finding a doctor or someone who could cut him open properly and then heal him up. Neither option was going to be very easy.

"Yeah. Nice to meet you." It wasn't the friendliest greeting, but Kyousuke had never been good at the sort of thing. At least Sora apparently wasn't the type the start out on a first name basis; only his brother ever used his, and he had no real desire to change that.

He fell into silence after that, unsure of what to say. That sounded dangerous, and like fighting something horrible with something almost as horrible, but Sora seemed to already know that. He could offer to help, but he already knew there wasn't a thing he could do, not knowing anything about anything like this, so it would end up as nothing but a worthless sentiment. He wasn't about to give empty words that he couldn't act on. Maybe he'd have to check that room to see if there was anything he could find, but it was a longshot, and he didn't even know where it was.

"...Good luck," he said after a while. He wasn't normally the type to say things like that, but he didn't seem to have anything else, and he did hope he could reverse this somehow.

The sentiment was appreciated, even if it wasn't going to help him in any concrete way. Sora hadn't expected something like that in the first place, seeing how Tsurugi was brand new. He was just getting his bearings, so to expect him to have any way to stop this illness would have been unreasonable.

"Thanks," Sora said with a small smile, though once again it wasn't at its usual level of brightness. At least Tsurugi wouldn't realize that. If Kairi had seen him like this, then she definitely would have called him on it.

Why had his friends had to disappear right as this all happened, anyway? It was almost as if Landel had planned it that way.

It seemed like their conversation was going to end there, but then one more thing occurred to Sora. "Oh, by the way! I don't know if you've met your roommate yet, but you probably haven't had a good chance to talk to him." If Tsurugi had seen anyone in his room this morning, chances were they'd only chatted for a minute or two before the nurses had shown up.

"At dinner tonight, you should make sure he isn't sick, just in case something happens. We don't know when the change might happen, after all." Sora felt bad for putting such a terrible idea into the head of someone so young, but Landel's had required him to be on his toes and so he couldn't just ignore it. It was better if Tsurugi was prepared, right?

A small noise escaped his throat on Sora's thanks. ... This was frustrating. He was usually at the forefront of things, always for action and effort rather than sitting idly by, so having nothing to contribute left a bitter taste in his mouth. In a team, everyone brought something different to the table. He didn't have that here, and most likely nobody would expect much out of him, but that didn't account for what he expected from himself. He didn't know what to do yet, but he'd figure something out. ... Simply watching everything unfold would be pathetic, and intolerable.

Of course, there was no reason to tell Sora that. Whatever he ended up doing, he'd simply do it. It was the end result that mattered; whether anyone knew of his intentions didn't concern him.

The talk of a roommate distracted him from his thoughts. He hadn't noticed anyone else in the room, either at night or in the morning, but if they all had one, he'd have to meet them eventually. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of sharing a room, but he didn't intend on hanging out in there for very long anyway.

He frowned slightly, at the the talk of checking if they were sick, but ultimately, he wasn't bothered by it; it was only practical. If someone did change in front of him, there was no telling what would happen.

"I'll keep an eye on them. Especially if they are sick," Kyousuke affirmed. He wasn't naive; he knew there was a good chance if someone became a monster, they could hurt someone, or the other way around. Nobody would choose this willingly, so he couldn't let either happen. It wasn't as if it affected him much, but it was the right thing to do.

... That went for Sora, too, he supposed. He wondered if there was a subtle way of asking where to look... Probably not. If it would be obvious no matter how he did it, then he'd just have to take an obvious approach.

"Where are you, by the way? I'll probably want to avoid that area just in case," he said plainly. It was a cruel thing to say, and actually just the opposite of his intentions, but it was for the best. ... It wasn't like they had any particular bond, so if Sora thought badly of him for it, it didn't matter. And it was easier to keep watch over someone if they didn't know about it.

Tsurugi took the information without much of a reaction, which Sora was glad for. Actually, it seemed like the boy, despite being new and pretty young, was taking this all in stride. Maybe he was used to this sort of thing? Or maybe he just didn't like showing his true feelings. There wouldn't be the time to figure it out right now, unfortunately, since it looked like the shift was coming to an end.

As for the question asked, Sora didn't take any offense to it. He knew that right now, he was a possible danger, and he was already worried on Link's behalf. His roommate had been warned and now he was armed so he'd probably be able to defend himself, but just the thought was enough to make his stomach cramps worse.

"My room number is M7," Sora said after a pause. "I don't know where all of the other sick patients' rooms are, though. You should watch your back no matter where you are." More and more people were probably going to start changing as the nights went by, which could turn the institute into even more of a madhouse.

Sora really hoped they solved this before that happened.

That went over easily enough, and Sora didn't seem to think anything of the fact that Kyousuke would only look after himself while avoiding involvement (or so he was pretending). He had to pause when he heard it, though; it was hard to believe anyone would actually tell someone to look after themselves after being told they were probably a danger to be around. ... He didn't know what to make of that.

"... Worry about yourself," he muttered, the words coming out cold. He stabbed at the remainder of his food with a little more force than was necessary, continuing to eat without another word. He wasn't even sure why, but suddenly he just felt strangely on edge.

While Tsurugi's tone was a bit cutting, Sora figured the other boy was just annoyed that he wasn't putting more thought into his own situation, which was pretty dire. Still, Sora couldn't only think about himself, since anyone who might get in his path if he turned was involved too. While they were dark thoughts, they also happened to be necessary.

"I'll do my best," he agreed with a nod, and it was around that point that the intercom went off, explaining that the patients would be split by age for the next activity.

"Oh, I guess we ran out of time." Sora hoped that he hadn't distracted Tsurugi from eating his breakfast, especially since the new arrivals needed to stay energized. He slowly pulled himself to his feet, as the stomach cramps were still in full force. "Good luck adjusting to all of this," he said as they parted ways.

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DAY 65: Breakfast

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