Day 73: Breakfast

[lighthearted]

When Sora woke up, he was so worked up that he practically thrashed his way out of bed. He probably would have fallen straight out of it and onto the floor if he hadn't caught his foot against the ground and then forced himself upward into a sitting position.

But it didn't feel like he'd slept at all. His heart was pounding, his face flushed with worry. Tsurugi... It had been Tsurugi, but he'd looked different. And he'd barely even been able to talk, he'd been so out of it. What had this place done to him?

If Sora went out to the cafeteria, would he end up talking to a Tsurugi who had purple hair? And what would that mean? Would Tsurugi even show up for breakfast this morning?

There was just too much he didn't know, but sitting around in his room worrying about it wasn't going to do any good. Sora stood and let out a bracing breath, glancing over to Link's sleeping form in the opposite bed before he approached the door and anticipated his nurse.

She seemed to sense that he was worried, because she didn't chat with him too much on the way over to the cafeteria. Sora didn't even have the presence of mind to stop by the bulletin. He just went straight to the mess hall and got a tray of food while half-distracted, parking himself right near the entrance from the Sun Room. He barely ate his food, instead keeping an eye out for Tsurugi with two shades of hair in mind.

[For Tsurugi.]

Comments

[fullmetalheart]

Ed shook his head. "No. Scar did though and showed me his. ...Was he the one that knocked me out? By the time I saw him, something was hitting me and between that and the dark..."

[redcladidealist]

"Scar's the guy with the scar on his face, right?" Lloyd pointed at the bridge of his nose and made a crisscross in the air. "Yeah, that's who knocked you out. I didn't even know he was there until he did." He'd been a little too focused on their fight. "What did his note say? Do you remember?"

[fullmetalheart]

"Yeah, that's him." Ed frowned as he tried to remember the wording. "Something about bouncing around from place to place, I think."

[redcladidealist]

Mild disappointment flashed across Lloyd's face. He'd been hoping for something different, another clue, but... "One of my notes talked about bouncing around, too. We figured out that it was talking about the warp pads on the third floor. They also talked about working together to take out the security and Landel, but I don't know who's working on the first part of that." And it didn't look like Ed knew any more than he did.

[fullmetalheart]

"Warp pads?" Ed frowned a little. "We did get up to the third floor once, but didn't get very far before it became morning."

[redcladidealist]

"Warp pads are these things you step on that can teleport you to different rooms." It wasn't too surprising to Lloyd that Ed didn't know what they were. Even in his world they weren't all that common. "It's a kind of magitechnology. I've seen it before. When you got to the third floor, do you remember a kind of circle on the ground that glowed?"

[fullmetalheart]

"Oh." Ed made a face. "That's going to make mapping things out a bit difficult. And not really?"

[redcladidealist]

"Tell me about it," Lloyd grumbled. Setting aside his fork (he'd still only been poking at his food, still trying to work himself up to forcing himself to eat), he reached into a pocket and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. When he unfolded it, there was a rough sketch of a map.

"This is what I've mapped so far," he said. He pointed at the circle the arrow from the stick figure led to. "That's where the first warp pad took us, after we got to the top of those moving stairs."

[fullmetalheart]

Ed looked at it. "Looks like you didn't get much farther than we did. We got to the Sun Room area and were going to start checking doors when we got interrupted."

Also, Ed thinks Lloyd's mapping skills suck.

[redcladidealist]

Hey, at least Lloyd had a map. That was more than Ed could say.

Lloyd's finger moved to tap the room that was labeled with the word trap. "If you get up there again, be careful about this room. There's a door in here that shocked us when we went through it. One of my friends said it can tell if we've got any metal on, so you have to take all your metal off."

[fullmetalheart]

Ed stared at Lloyd. "You're saying I need to take off my arm and leg. And have the ports surgically removed so I can go through without getting fried."

[redcladidealist]

What? Lloyd started and stared right back at Ed, until his gaze dropped to the blond's hand. "Oh. Damn, that's right. You said that thing was actually buried into your skin. You can't-" He stopped, the rest of what Ed said catching up to him. "Wait, you have the same thing for your leg?!"

[fullmetalheart]

Ed sighed. "Left leg from a bit above the knee. That's the leg I kicked you with last night. There's a reason I picked that one."

[redcladidealist]

"No wonder it hurt so much." His leg still ached even though that kick had only grazed it. "But... damn, I didn't know you lost your leg and your arm. What...?" He trailed off, not sure if he should even ask what happened. Something that bad... Would Ed even want to talk about it?

[fullmetalheart]

"I did something I shouldn't have as a kid," Ed said. And that's all the detail Lloyd's getting about that.

[redcladidealist]

Yeah, that didn't sound like Ed wanted to talk about it. Lloyd let himself change the subject. "So you can't take it off... Ugh, that's not going to be fun when you go through the door. It won't kill you, but it'll hurt. I felt like I got zapped by someone's lightning spell." It hadn't yet occurred to him that he was in the same boat. He's so used to having a metal crest on his hand that he almost doesn't even think about it anymore. If he ever makes it back to that room again at night, he'll be in for a rude surprise.

[fullmetalheart]

"Great. So I get to hate everything when I go through it if I can't figure out how to disable the thing," Ed said gloomily. "Too bad I can't use alchemy to try to bypass shit. Unfortunately, if I try to use it too much, I'll be useless for the rest of the night."

[redcladidealist]

"How much is too much? Do you have any idea?" He hadn't thought about Ed's special abilities, or how it might be useful to get past the trap. "You made a wall last night. Do you think you could take one down?"

[fullmetalheart]

"I also didn't have any limits on my alchemy," Ed reminded Lloyd. "I think that I probably could although then I'll probably be done for the rest of the night. That or limited to one or two much smaller transmutations like transmuting locks open or something."

[redcladidealist]

"Oh." No, that didn't sound like it would be worth it, then. He'd make it through without pain, but then he'd be useless afterward. Still, it wasn't a pleasant idea to look forward to. "Maybe you could run through the door really fast, then, so it wouldn't last as long." At least, he could only hope it would work like that.

Folding the paper back up, he moved to slip it back into his pocket. He didn't quite manage it as well as he should have, though, the somewhat deadened sense of feeling in his fingers making it difficult to keep his grip. The paper slipped and fell, and he grimaced before bending to pick it back up. This time he made sure to pinch it tight (too tight, crumpling it a little bit) before shoving it back into his pocket.

"So you're planning on going to the third floor tonight?"

[fullmetalheart]

"Assuming nothing goes wrong tonight." Please let nothing go wrong tonight. Ed ate some more of his food, slowly starting to find his appetite. "Having problems?"

[redcladidealist]

Lloyd had been trying not to call attention to it, but when Ed called him out on it, he couldn't find it in him to lie. With another grimace, he shrugged, flexing his hand. "I don't think it's anything you can help with. My hands feel a little bit numb. Your brother said he might be able to tell if it's getting worse, so I guess maybe you could, too, but you'd need your powers for that."

[fullmetalheart]

Ed frowned at that. "Because of your key crest being messed with?"

He thought a bit, trying to figure out how he would tell if Lloyd was getting worse. "I think that if we can tell, it'll be through the chemical reactions you're going through."

[redcladidealist]

Lloyd nodded. "I think so. I can't think of what else would cause it." Chemical reactions, though... He made a face. "You make me sound like a science experiment."

Although, wasn't that exactly what it was? Just an experiment the doctors were doing to him? That thought didn't sit well at all. "Dammit, I really hate this place."

[fullmetalheart]

Ed winced. "Sorry. You aren't one. Not to us, anyway. I don't like this place either."

He's also rather hoping that they don't do anything else to him. One night as the monster of the night was more than enough.