Night 65: Disciplinary Therapy Room 1

[damned_doctors]

What made someone extraordinary? It was a question that the institute worked to answer every day, and while the primary method was by doing the obvious in studying extraordinary people, there always had to be a point of comparison. It was the reasoning behind those patients who really didn't have much to them, who didn't stand out in any quantifiable way.

Ryuugamine Mikado was one such example. By most accounts, he was a completely normal boy -- his only real achievement was the creation of an internet gang. In fact, that most interesting thing about him was his strange name. They had taken even that away from him here, seeing how the nurses called him Arisata Kenta.

But the doctor for today's experiment wasn't going to bother with anything like that. As it was, Mikado had been unconscious for the past few days, put under observation as they studied him for any anomalies and tried to decide what to do next. In the end, the most interesting thing they could do with a normal person was somehow change that, and that was simple enough with the tools left to them.

All things considered, for a regular civilian Mikado had handled himself in the institute rather well. And what they had planned for him tonight wouldn't necessarily make his life here any easier. He wasn't going to get some sort of magic offensive ability, or even added strength. Still, it would be enough to point out both his own change and the oddness of others.

Ryuugamine Mikado wouldn't be able to straddle the line between a boring life and an exciting one after this.

The boy was strapped down to the table, and for now the doctor was keeping all the necessary tools for tonight's surgery a secret, placed on a cart that was off to the side, out of view. He'd need to do some explanatory work before he got started, after all.

Comments

[damned_doctors]

The laughter was probably the result of hysteria, because Mikado was now denying the very nature of his situation. Or it was so absurd, so out of the norm for a simple Japanese schoolboy, that he didn't know how to react. The body and brain sometimes had strange responses to high stress, after all.

As for the tears, those were more generic, but also interesting because -- well, would they offer extra lubrication when the eye was extracted? There was only one way to find out.

Now that he had Mikado's cooperation (not that he'd required it), the doctor bent over the table, revealing only the lower half of his face. His mouth was pulled tight with concentration as he moved the edge of the tool to Mikado's lower eyelid. A little push was given, and then the scooping instrument managed to cup the boy's right eye. The doctor had to be unbelievably precise, but Landel hadn't hired him for no reason, and before long he was slowly pulling his arm back, extracting the eyeball with it.

There was a reason he'd told Mikado to remain still, after all.

[ofthemotions]

It was something unlike pain, but not unknown to discomfort. It defined itself more as unnatural, a scrape against the senses, a jolting grasping into places that should maintain themselves as untouchable, and in that singular violation--

There was a sharp inhale that Mikado wasn't aware of making. The distance given to the situation dispersed and he squeezed his other eye shut against the perversion of it. Perhaps the thing that was worse beyond all else, is that the doctor did what he said, and did not tear the optic nerve. Sight shifted and gave itself at odd angles--he found himself viewing his cheek at one point, without any way of canceling the sight. Something that would stay with him, perhaps; the fear of being only able to see.

[damned_doctors]

Not ever having been on the other side of this equation, the doctor really didn't know what it was like to have one of your eyes pulled out of the socket. He could have asked, could have tried to force Mikado into talking about it so that he didn't try to hide away from the situation in his own mind, but one thing was for certain now: the boy couldn't close both his eyes and just pretend it wasn't happening.

The only reason the doctor didn't ask was because he needed to concentrate. In some ways, they were under observation just as much as the patients. If he made a mistake, he'd surely pay for it.

So, while he kept the eye removed, the doctor grabbed for the microscopic chip with his other hand, holding it between thumb and forefinger. He slowly eased it toward the socket, ignoring the blood and fluid in the way as he set it in place.

[ofthemotions]

It was less the slow pulling out of his eye, the way that it had given a wet pop when it cleared the socket--it was less that, and more the placement of an outside item; something that without a doubt did not belong where it was being placed, that made the boy begin to shudder, a rolling tremble that encased his form.

There was a wordless whimper that he heard somewhere, and he realized in the back of the mind that he was the one making it.

[damned_doctors]

When Mikado shuddered, the doctor's hand twitched, wanting to reach out and hold him in place. But with one of his hands making sure that Mikado's optic nerve didn't snap and the other placing the disc, he didn't have a free one to do so.

"Stay still," he murmured as he kept working. He had to push the disc around very minutely until it was in the exact right place, a sweet spot that he'd found during countless experiments performed before this, to develop the technology.

Once it was properly placed, he slowly put Mikado's eye back into the socket with a level of finesse that came from lots of practice.

It was done.

[ofthemotions]

The murmur was anything but comforting and yet it did just that-- Mikado took a shaky breath inward and tried to restrain his own movements. He had no want to lose his sight, all else considered. No matter what, in this kind of situation, he'd--

He'd rather not lose anything.

There was a settling of that outside object, and then there was the horrific sensation again of his eye being moved, looking at things without having control over it, and he made a sound again, quiet and an almost whispered moan, and with a wet pressing, his eye was back where it was supposed to be.

He couldn't close it with that item still there, but there was at least, finally, the knowledge that the man wasn't just going to rip it out after all. His other eye blinked rapidly, tear ducts overflowing, and he began to breathe in hitched breaths.

There was the want to ask if it was done, but the boy found he didn't have the ability to speak.

[damned_doctors]

"There," the doctor said, as if he was a painter who had just added the last stroke to a masterpiece. He took a step back and nodded, because this was the result of months of research and trial and error. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" It was a cruel thing to say, but he wouldn't have gotten involved in this sort of job if he didn't have a small interest in sadism.

"Now you'll get an idea of just want it's like to be extraordinary," he said as he retreated further from the exam table. "I wonder if it'll be all you've built it up to be?"

And then, any sign, any sound of the doctor was gone, as if he'd just vanished.