damned_institute | Day 65: 3rd Shift: Courtyard

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Day 65: 3rd Shift: Courtyard

[From here.]

It was chilly out in the courtyard, making Lloyd glad for the odd but relatively warm clothing he'd found himself in when he woke up. He could have stay inside the building, he knows. His nurse had told him he had a choice of several rooms he could eat his lunch in, if he wanted. The cold felt good, though, and the tree he was sitting against felt solid and comfortable. He still felt lost, but trying to get straight answers from the nurse was frustrating. The man had retreated to let him eat in peace, promising to come back when Lloyd was finished and he'd had a chance to "clear his head." The teen was just fine with that.

Lunch itself was actually pretty good. He'd gotten a chicken sandwich, and his spirits lifted a little when he saw that there was a brownie with it. It had taken him a minute to figure out the box with juice inside, having never encountered anything like that before, but after that it was easy to just settle down and enjoy his food.

Well, for the most part. Worry for his Dad still ate at him, and he had no idea where any of his friends were. He still felt a little off, too, like some intangible part of him was missing or weakened, but he chalked that up to leftover side effects of whatever it was Yuan had done to him. He was confident that would disappear soon enough, once he finished recovering. He already felt well enough that as soon as he was done eating, he was determined to leave. If his doctor had his things, he'd ask for them first, and maybe he could talk to some of the other people here, see if they knew anything that could help, but one way or another, he needed to find his friends and make sure his Dad was all right.

[To here.]

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Lee kept himself vigilant. Even if the various nurses and orderlies about, not to mention other patients, Lee knew better than to turn his back on the Uchiha. He had never come face-to-face with Sasuke in a real battle; not since the fight Gai-sensei had broken up between them before the chuunin exams. But he had watched Sasuke's fight in the preliminaries, and his fight against until the genjutsu had put him and most of the crowd to sleep during the coup. And Lee remembered every calculated move and ingenious attack Sasuke had pulled in those battles. One could say the chuunin had a silent respect for the runaway, and it showed in the earnest caution he took in approaching Sasuke further. Which was more with words rather than physical movement.

"I am..." Lee found himself at a loss for words. What did he have to say for a missing-nin he and several others in their generation had determined to kill for the sake of the village's safety? He had even been with the group that had accompanied Sakura in her attempt to beg Naruto to give up on Sasuke.

What was there to say? 'Hi, it's been a while! Guess I should let you know you're dead to me if we ever get out of here?' Lee was much too polite to actually say such a thing.

Before he had managed to choke up some new words to fill the gap of silence, Lee took a moment to glance to the other's eyes. What he saw had him gasp in spite of his efforts to remain in control of his reactions. "Sasuke-kun! You are..." Blind? How had that even...

Although Lee held no great bond of friendship with Sasuke, even he couldn't keep the indignation and rage out of his voice. "Who has done this to you?"

Perhaps this was how Landel got his comedic entertainment, a treat on the side of the bear-baiting and cock-fighting messes that passed for what he did to the patients here. The man likely got a kick out of the sheer irritation he could inspire by constantly forcing Sasuke to repeat the same scant pieces of information to the same confused people until eventually he would lose count of the number of Konoha-nin that had arrived, passed through, and gone.

How did that make sense in the context of this world? Did they return to their own world and then forget the Institute in the interim? Were they even the same people? If they weren't, how many doubles of them were walking around this world -- or did the doppelgangers even work that way?

The string of questions rumbling in an annoyed vein through Sasuke's mind were visible on his face as an exasperated frown, but a frown without intent or threat. Even if his face was turned toward Lee, the displeasure on it was directed elsewhere, not sharp enough or focused enough to convey real danger.

His expression did focus at what Lee stumbled into next, however; but it was confusion rather than anger pulling his attention back to the Konoha-nin. Others had certainly noticed it quickly, and Lee was a taijutsu master who might have seen the differences in how Sasuke was forced to operate his body if he'd been watching long enough. It wasn't that Lee had noticed that was odd -- it was the note of real anger in his voice when he demanded to know the culprit.

As if it made him, Lee, angry that Sasuke had somehow been blinded. Sasuke tried to imagine what might be going on in their world that could have caused a Konoha-nin other that the idiots that made up his former team react in such a way and was forced to conclude that he couldn't think of one.

Especially not now.

So Sasuke finished Lee's sentence and answered his question with another one in kind: "I'm blind, yes. What do you know about this place?"

Lee hadn't needed to be close to Sasuke before he had gone missing-nin to know the boy frowned more often than he smiled, and Lee was used to disapproving looks. The frown that ended up being sent in his direction did nothing to sway the young man, though he was very much aware of the shift of Sasuke's lips. He still did not sense any immediate danger of attack, but Lee was not going to let his guard down anytime soon.

His perception of Sasuke's eyesight had been correct, at least, but he hadn't won any points for being observant. Lee pursed his lips at the dismissal of his own question. He didn't appreciate the clipped tone, either, but what else should he have expected? He was nothing to Uchiha Sasuke, after all.

Lee almost played the stubbornness card and refused to answer, insisting his question be answered first. But Lee knew he would likely just create a standstill in that case. It bit at his pride to have to be the one to concede, but life had taught him that politeness always trumped pride.

"I know this is Landel's Institute for the Mentally Unstable." Lee listed off the points in as succinct a fashion he could. "This is not an elaborate genjutsu. It is a place that is not anywhere near the Land of Hot Water, but in a place called New Jersey. The one named Landel is the one in charge and at night he causes... troubles for the patients." Monsters. Controlling. It was all a little hard to take in, but that was what Lee had been told.

Lee's answer suggested that he had, at the very least, conducted basic reconnaissance and managed to scrape together an overall picture of the Institute, which was more than Sasuke could have said for other Konoha-nin who had been here before. He could remember -- remembering them in the morning, and then putting the memory away with the understanding that there was little point in thinking on things that were gone.

And now here one was. Maybe Konoha had perfected a jutsu wherein thinking about it often enough resulted, inevitably, in one of its shinobi showing up and needing to be given the same unchanging details over and over.

"We are in a place that is not in our own world," Sasuke said after a moment of deciding where to start. In order from least to most believable seemed as good as any. "Landel is not the only one who has power in this place, but the others are scattered and unorganised.

"The 'troubles' at night are anything from hallucinations to attack by monsters." Monsters: such a childish word, but there was no other way to describe it. Hallucinations, monsters, and a host of other things that would take too long to tell -- a host, and then sometimes a death-match. "Sometimes the Institute takes patients for experiments."

Sasuke made a gesture that could have meant his eyes or encompassed his body entirely, too casual to be entirely uncaring. "My eyes were one such experiment."

The being in a new world talk was something new to Lee. He had to wonder if maybe Sasuke was here for a legitimate reason, but so far no one else he had met seemed to be crazy. But that didn't mean Lee wanted to believe it.

"But I cannot be in a different world!" He scowled, though there was no one around to blame for his situation. "I need to return to the war!"

"They did say monsters..." The skepticism in his voice was clear. Hallucinations were acceptable. So far, things didn't sound like too much for the Green Beast to handle. Experiments, however, had Lee boiling. "That is mistreatment, whether patients are in need of a cure or not!"

Lee even felt anger rise again on Sasuke's behalf. He might have chalked the blindness up to something happening between the Uchiha and his old chosen mentor, Oorochimaru, but knowing that was not the case only made Lee wonder exactly how powerful this man Landel could possibly be. "And yet you say Landel is not the only one with power here. Who else is there?"

Lee couldn't be in a different world? Sasuke came very close to snapping what a damn shame for you, it's a party for the rest of us -- the words were on the tip of his tongue when the second half of Lee's sentence registered. The war. There was a war going on at home, and barring some change that was truly enormous, there were only a few reasons that that could be happening.

Sasuke not only being an Uchiha but under the supervision of one who travelled in some of the most criminal elements in their world meant that he had a fairly good idea of where he was supposed to figure in that war, and it wasn't behind a Leaf standard. That meant that it made even less sense that Lee could be bothered to stir up righteous indignation about Sasuke's eyes, the other shinobi's weird notion of honour aside.

How far would that honour take him? The last time Sasuke had met Rock Lee in the Institute, they had been able to work together briefly but effectively, but that Lee had made no mention or war.

"We have not been brought here to be cured," Sasuke said finally, brusquely dismantling whatever illusions Lee might have believed about the place. "You will learn that once night falls."

As for further information -- Sasuke had not made a habit of withholding it until now, but circumstances were different between himself and Konoha now. Where there had only been distance was hatred, stunted and awkwardly-grown within the confines of the Institute but still real, still smouldering; the promises he had made to the Sannin were ones he intended to keep if possible, but they were promises made to a man who might not remember them even if he had returned.

"I will tell you about the Institute if you tell me about the war," he said, voice cool, deliberate. "What is happening in our world?"

Night fall. Lee was looking forward to it actually. It would be then that he would execute his escape from this place. Then after he returned from the war, he would break all his new acquaintances out. After all, priorities. It was best to leave Sasuke in a contained place, as well, if he could manage it.

Keeping Sasuke in the dark about the war was a tricky situation. Lee didn't want to reveal Konoha's plans or secrets, but if he had been here for a while and wasn't up-to-date on the the sides in the war... maybe it wouldn't hurt to tell him. Lee hadn't seen hide nor hair of the Uchiha since he had left Konoha years ago, and the last he had heard was next to nothing, save that Sasuke was missing. Big surprise there. If something had come up concerning the Uchiha, unless Lee had been selected for a mission connected to him then he probably wouldn't hear anything.

For all he knew, though, Sasuke was keeping out of the war. And in that case...

"I do not see any harm in that trade-off." Lee sat where he had stood. He needed to eat, after all, and that was something he could do while explaining and still keep his eyes on Sasuke at the same time.

"The shinobi villages have unified under one symbol in order to combat Kabuto-san, the masked man who is Not Uchiha Madara, and the hordes that they control."

Lee was wiling enough to see sense -- as Sasuke remembered, underneath the bowl cut and the exuberance there was a well-trained shinobi, just as underneath Gai's ... Gai there was a man that Sasuke had noticed even Kakashi respected. The rustle of movement reminded Sasuke that he'd neglected his own food, and the reminder of what it meant to be a disciplined shinobi forced him to drop onto the grass and feel for his own lunch bag, pulling out the sandwich with little care for which it was.

From his nurse's vantage point, this doubtless looked like a proper picnic between friends. Sasuke might have snorted at the thought had Lee not continued into an explanation of what exactly the war was --

An explanation that had Sasuke's hands stalled halfway to his mouth, lunch completely forgotten.

"Kabuto?" The first name that left his mouth was utterly disbelieving. Kabuto of all people had become the arch-nemesis of -- of all the shinobi villages? What the hell had become of Orochimaru -- had he been killed already? (Had Sasuke killed him, or ...) "... Uchiha Madara?"

The name was one Sasuke knew, from childhood family history to information tenuously ferreted out under Orochimaru's decaying nose, but what meaning did it have in this context? Why would Lee bother to clarify that he wasn't -- "If he's not Uchiha Madara, then who is he? Why is he allied with Kabuto?"

There was still a hint of confusion on Kabuto's name -- Sasuke had known the medic-nin could be a threat, but never one significant enough to take a place as co-leader of a shinobi horde worrisome enough that the shinobi villages had actually allied. How much was Sasuke missing?

Sasuke also seemed to be taking a more casual approach to their meal time and settling down. Lee could appreciate it. He didn't want to be tense the entire time, and this allowed him a little more ease.

His name dropped caused Sasuke obvious confusion. Lee shook his head, a little amazed. "I do not see how you could be so in the dark about it." A moment, and then he winced. "Apologizes, that was not meant to be a joke."

He took a sip of his juice, trying to gather his thoughts. "The man claimed to be Uchiha Madara, but we have since found irrefutable proof that Madara is dead. We are very much in the dark about him, except we know he is very, very strong. From what I last remember, all the shinobi were being called to join in the fight against him. Only Gai-sensei, Kakashi-sensei, Naruto-kun, and Killer B-san were battling him directly."

"As for why he is allied with Kabuto... I can only assume it is because they have the same goal in mind."

What Lee didn't see and what Sasuke hadn't seen were apparently hugely different things, all of Sasuke's literal blindness aside. The apology for phrasing was waved aside with an impatient swipe of Sasuke's sandwich in the air, Sasuke's expression taut with increasing shock and confusion. Not only was there -- an Uchiha who wasn't an Uchiha (and honestly, given the history of his clan, Sasuke was beginning to suspect that that should have been the least startling piece of information), but Naruto had gotten strong enough to be among that list of elite fighting him?

How much time had passed since Sasuke had last seen the shinobi world, that Kabuto was in a position to pose such a threat and Orochimaru's name was nowhere to be mentioned?

"What goal is that?" He asked finally, picking the most immediate concern. There were many things he could surmise from any overt goal of Kabuto's without betraying (or betraying even more) how far removed he had been from the situation this whole time. Lee made no mention of Uchiha other than not-Madara: that hadn't escaped Sasuke's attention.

And therein lie the big question. Lee took a bite out of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, hoping to buy some time. Not enough. He shook his head, brows creasing in doubt.

"I do not know," he said simply and quietly. He should have had more information, and would have if briefings could have stood to be a bit longer, but a shinobi was a soldier who did what he was told and had little room to ask question. Sometimes it was better to ask before doing, but there was not time when the war had been sprung upon them.

"I only know that we were given very little time to gather our allies and assemble into teams. Then the enemies started to attack." Lee glanced up from his sandwich, trying to read all that he could in Sasuke's expression and form. "Tell me, did you know of Kabuto's ability, the Edo Tensei?"

There was the wall Sasuke had expected to run into: even if Lee had been privy to the inner workings of his enemies' minds, he likely couldn't share it with someone who was in all likelihood set to be his enemy as well. Unless Rock Lee had changed a great deal over the intervening years, it was more than likely that he genuinely didn't know enough to make it worth telling, especially with what sounded like a surprise attack. It didn't make the lacklustre response any more satisfying.

Sasuke finally remembered his sandwich in time to take a bite right as Lee asked a question that made him wish he hadn't. When had Kabuto learned and stolen the Edo Tensei? Chewing through what felt like a mouthful of sand, Sasuke's frown deepened until finally he found his juice box and fumbled it open for a too-sweet sip.

"The Edo Tensei is Orochimaru's pet technique," he said, and then honestly: "I was unaware that Kabuto had mastered it. It requires a great deal of chakra and an intimate knowledge of sealing techniques. Whom has he revived?"

Sasuke at least seemed to manage to absorb his unfortunate lack of knowledge on the enemy. It wasn't really Lee's place to know that information, however. He was still only a mid-ranking shinobi, one of many. Gai-sensei would have told him the full truth if he had known, but even that jounin had not been privy to information that perhaps only the Kage's gave out at their own discretion. If they even knew at all.

It was surprising to see Sasuke frown so deeply, but Lee knew he could not blame him. It was all news to the missing-nin. Nothing would be easy to swallow.

Oorochimaru's own technique. That explained its complexity, though it really was amazing that Kabuto had managed to perfect it as he had. Lee tensed, eyes dropping to his hands full of sandwich and resting on his knee. "... A great deal of people." He took a deep breath, then looked back up with blank seriousness. "I myself, along with Gai-sensei, Kakashi-sensei, and Sakura-chan fought some I am certain you are familiar with. One Zabuza and Haru-san."

Even what little Lee had been able to say was more sitting on the surface than absorbing: the players, both on Akatsuki's (or was it Sound, with Kabuto involved? but then where the hell was Orochimaru?) and Konohagakure's side. Konohagakure's alliance with the other village was in and of itself another thing that was difficult to swallow, between the old and older blood lying between villages.

Kabuto learning the Edo Tensei, that excessively showy and destructive jutsu -- another thing that was not quite absorbing. But Lee moved on with barely a pause into something that made Sasuke's gaze snap back up in the direction of the Konoha-nin's voice, because while the Edo Tensei was theoretically manageable with study, resurrecting a great deal of people required more chakra than Kabuto had.

And bodies -- was that why he'd kept such meticulous track? And how --

"How did he get access to their bodies?" He demanded, frown growing no less deep. "You must have an article of theirs to use the Edo Tensei, and we buried them --"

We, back when Sasuke had belonged to any we beyond the clan --

"... they would have been difficult to access," he concluded, voice drifting into slower contemplation. "He had to have planned on a large scale." And then, finally, another thought: "How much time has passed since I left Konoha?"

Lee frowned deeply at Sasuke's words. He did not often grow irritated with others unless they were being purposefully difficult but today seemed to give Lee enough excuse to make an exception. "I would not know! I assume he was either very diligent in his research, or else he took up grave robbing in his spare time."

Lee was the last person to look to for a peek in the mind of a half-crazed shinobi. He wasn't power-hungry or consumed by hatred for any village. If anything, he would have thought Sasuke would have known, having been a comrade of Kabuto's for a time.

"As for time..." An odd question to ask, but if Lee did his math correctly... "It would be over three years, now. The exact number of months escapes me, but it is nearing my eighteenth birthday and I was nearly fourteen when you left." So perhaps closer to four years now. My, how time did fly...

For a moment, Sasuke had indeed forgotten where Lee stood in the chain of information. Clearly Konohagakure had not changed its ways to any noticeable extent when it came to sharing the truth with those who fought its battles: that, more than anything else, reminded Sasuke that when he returned to the shinobi world he was more likely to end up at the other end of Lee's taijutsu than next to it. The knowledge was shelved with the same determined neutrality as every other thought of his former comrades over the past few years in Sound, next to every illusion of his erstwhile teammates Orochimaru had seen fit to conjure.

"He collects bodies in his spare time," Sasuke corrected in passing, before focusing on the latter of what Lee had to say. He'd known time had passed, indeed had suspected a significant amount of it had gone by between his arrival here and that of other shinobi. But to know that a solid year had passed, at the very least ...

"In that time, have you spent time with other Konoha-nin? Have you noticed any of them disappearing unexpectedly?" Or was there simply no evidence at all of Landel's kidnappings?

Lee's face screwed up in disgust. "That is a revolting hobby."

To desecrate dead bodies was completely unpardonable! To think that such despicable person could remain hidden in plain sight within Konoha as long as Kabuto had was sickening. Lee sighed, wondering how his village could be so successful in some areas and yet so negligent and wanting in others. He was rather patriotic; Gai-sensei had battered all his students with long-winded sermons on Keeping Alive the Spirit of Fire endowed in any proper shinobi of Konoha. But this kind of oversight hit Lee's pride in his village rather hard if he allowed himself to dwell on it.

Returning his mind back to the conversation, Lee took a bite of his sandwich and waved a hand in dismissal, again not caring that Sasuke couldn't even see the gesture. "I have seen them as often as ever. The only one who ever disappears is Naruto-kun, but it is generally on village business."

It seemed an odd question. It was time for Lee to get some answers. "Why do you ask?"

... well, yes, he chose to join Orochimaru of his own free will, what sort of person do you expect him to be? -- that was the response that flashed through Sasuke's head most immediately, with the accompanying desire to raise a sardonic eyebrow to express what he thought of Lee's apparent naivete regarding his opponent. The necessity of repressing it lay in the fact that, irrespective of the quality of his information on his enemies, Lee was still a quantity worth knowing and a shinobi worth an alliance in a place like this. That, and Sasuke didn't know the other ninja well enough to be quite certain of what Lee might have expected in a man like Kabuto, and there was little time to discover it. The stir amongst the staff gathering at the door was enough proof: shift was ending soon.

It was too soon for Sasuke's tastes, especially given the answer he'd just received. If only Naruto had been at Landel, that might have made sense: from the intelligence Sasuke had of Jiraiya's movements, a lapse in their presence would have been common enough. In fact, if there were someone Sasuke might have chosen to take in order to avoid notice, Naruto might well have been one such choice, especially with the nine-tails in tow.

But Naruto had said he couldn't feel the kyuubi's chakra at all, here; more blatantly obvious, others whose absence would have been missed had been here. It made no sense whatsoever -- could Landel control time in other worlds?

"Other shinobi have been here," Sasuke replied, searching for a concise way to explain things. "Mostly Konoha-nin. All of my former team, my replacement on it, and a handful of others. Some have been here multiple times."

A pause, and then deciding that there was no other conclusion to draw: "As have you. But you bear no memory of it, do you?"

Lee was so intent on the conversation he hardly recognized the signs of a shift change coming up.

Lee blinked, unable to believe that. After all, everyone had been busy preparing for the war up until now. Other than Naruto and Gai-sensei, there should not have been even one shinobi absent from the village.

"I do not see how that can be possible." Simple and honest. But there were always explanations as to why Sasuke could be mistaken. after all, even if the voices seemed the same it's not like Sasuke could seen them to make certain. "Perhaps you were misled as to their identities."

And for himself, Lee could only shake his head, though he realized a moment later that Sasuke couldn't see that, either. "Now, that is truly impossible! I know of all the places I have been in the past and this place is not it. There is no memory to speak of, because I was never here before to make it!" This he believed with one hundred percent sincerity.

Edited 2012-10-05 06:22 (UTC)

Sasuke had to remind himself that Lee was new to the Institute and, like all the others before him, simply wouldn't be able to see that the impossible was more than possible but daily here. There a moment's darkness that passed over Sasuke's face at the notion of fakes -- he had met a fake here too real, had believed in it himself too fully to know anything other than that what he knew was what he knew. It had been more than two years since he had last seen Sakura, Naruto, or Kakashi, but there were ways to know them that were impossible to quantify to someone else.

He was Sharingan-born: there were always ways to know.

"You were here," he said, voice cold enough to cut across Lee's excessive confidence. Even as he spoke, he could hear the spread of the faintly hollow cheer of the nurses spreading across the field, ushering patients back inside. "You were only here for a day and a night. Others have been here more than once, for longer periods of time, and with each return nobody remembers the last time they were here.

"But I know them."

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Day 65: 3rd Shift: Courtyard

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