damned_institute | Day 27: Intercom, Evening

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Day 27: Intercom, Evening

The intercom gave its cheery jingle just before the Head Doctor's equally buoyant voice rang through the halls.

"Ah, and finally, our day is coming to a close! Rooms and roommates have been reassigned with care, though what great partnership can start without a good meal? Ah, yes, after the nurses escort all of our patients, new and old, back to their proper rooms, everyone will have the chance to enjoy a savory chicken pot pie, full of peas, carrots, potatoes, and of course, chicken. On the side, we'll have buttery corn on the cob and green beans, and to drink, you may choose from the regular slew of water, milk, or assorted juices, which your nurse will bring to you.

"I believe that's all for now! Phew, long day, huh? I know I'll be happy to get some sleep, and thank you to all our vigilant doctors and nurses, although Dr. House seems to have gone AWOL... Hmm... Well, in any case, have a good dinner, everyone!"

The intercom clicked off again as the nurses began organizing the patients for the small trek back to their rooms.

[ OOC: Remember, room threads go in response to THIS post, and please put your respective room number in the subject line of your first post. Thanks! ]

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[posting with Fey's permission]

Beatrix pressed her advantage and grabbed Naomi around the throat, her nails digging into the skin as she pushed the woman backwards.

"You've had a bad day?" Beatrix laughed sharply and narrowed her eyes. She raised her other hand up, fingers hooked like claws, as she readied a strike.

She paused, though, when something in the woman's eyes caught her attention. Maybe it was fear she saw, the realization that Beatrix outclassed her, or maybe it was desperation - perhaps a little of both. The Bride's face suddenly went from furious to deadly calm. She did not release her grip on the woman's throat not did she lower her readied strike. She did ease up just enough so she wasn't cutting off the woman's air supply.

"Then tell me," she said, her voice very, very calm.

And now she was held by her throat, with the insane woman threating to gouge at her face or some other horrible act.

Naomi took as deep as breath as she could and tried to get her thoughts in order.

"Yes," she said, her voice as calm as she could make it. "I've had a bad day. This place is a prison that fronts as a mental institution. Every patient here was kidnapped, without their knowledge, and brought to this place. There has been no discovery of why or how. To my knowledge, no one has yet escaped. We're cut off completely from the outside world and attempts are made to brainwash us through careful conditioning - repetition, isolation, drugs, positive and negative reinforcement, application of negative stimuli for rule breaking or inappropriate behavior." She hoped that would get the woman to release her. She just wanted to be left alone, unmolested, and allowed to compose her report in peace.

She didn't want to be arguing with an irrational and crazed violent mother.

Beatrix forced herself to listen carefully to the woman's words, remaining still and steady in her readiness to kill this woman if she decided to. A mental institute front? Unexplainable kidnappings... brainwashing... It really wasn't Elle's style. It was Bill's.

She'd killed Bill.

Though this woman did confirm the usage of drugs. But it didn't explain the complacency this woman had with the nurse earlier.

"Are there children here?"

"There are teenagers," Naomi said, wishing this damn woman would just let go of her. "I haven't seen any children. I haven't been here long, I just woke up here today. I can't answer your questions."

There wasn't anything else she could tell her.

"She's almost five, with an angelic face - long dark brown hair, skin tone like mine and her father's eyes, deep and brown. She has a smile that warms the coldest of hearts," Beatrix said. "And her name is BB."

She wasn't going to get anything more from this woman and she didn't seem like she was part of this new conspiracy to keep her separated from her daughter. So, she lowered her arm and released her grip on the woman's neck. A moment later and she stepped back.

"If you see her, or know anything of her whereabouts now, or in the future, it is in the best interest of your survival to tell me," she said as she picked the napkin up off of Naomi's tray and wrapped it around her bleeding hand.

"There people are fools if they believe separating me from my daughter will make me compliant."

"I haven't seen any children that young here," Naomi said, her hand going to her throat. There was going to be a bruise there, wasn't there?

"They'll use drugs to make you compliant." She may as well warn the woman now. She pulled out her chair and sat down, not hungry at all despite the tantalizing smell of dinner. She wasn't going to be looking for this woman's daughter. She supposed it had to be horrible, but there was no empathy there. Naomi wasn't a maternal person.

"The doors unlock at night. I've been told that monsters come out as well, but I haven't been here at night so I can't verify that."

"Monsters... right..." Beatrix said snidely as she moved away from Naomi, examining her injured hand. "The only monsters in this world are the ones like me. Anything else are drug induced hallucinations."

She stopped in front of her own desk and stared down at the potpie and corn. Southern style cooking. It obviously wasn't safe to eat.

"Why would they unlock the doors? Anyone skilled in abduction knows better than to let the captive move freely at any time."

"I don't know. Maybe because the monsters keep us from moving freely."

Honestly, Naomi had spoken with people who claimed they were Death Gods, had been told it was a year after she had supposedly disappeared, and that she wasn't even in her own dimension anymore. Oh, and L had tried to tell her they might just be the figments of someone's imagination. She was at the point where she was numb to it all.

She needed to be sarcastic, it helped.

Beatrix looked over at Naomi with a bit of a smirk at the sarcasm.

"Maybe this really is a mental institute if there are others claiming to see monsters at night," she said as she washed her hand with the water from her supposed dinner.

"Lucid dreams are a bitch." She'd had them a lot while in her coma.

"Except no one I've met is actually suffering any form of mental disorder that would manifest with hallucinations," Naomi said, evenly. "Any abnormal mental states I've observed have been benign and wouldn't interfere with daily living, therefor wouldn't require imprisonment in a mental instituion." There had been people who had seemed somewhat off, but Naomi knew her mental disorders and diseases. She had to.

"And your name isn't Jessica. Just like mine isn't Noriko. They give us new names and act as though those have been our names all of our lives."

Another conditioning technique. Kidnappers used it on victims to try and erase their 'old life'.

"And you are an authority on psychological disorders?"

Beatrix knew there were enough drugs out there that caused hallucinations. There didn't necessarily need to be a mental disorder to have such things. "Perhaps drugs, as you've mentioned; they do prepare and bring us our food," she said with a gesture to her untouched plate.

Now that the wound on her hand was clean and no longer bleeding, she examined it closely. It would heal and possibly not even leave a mark.

"How do you know my name isn't Jessica?"

"I studied psychology extensively in college," Naomi admitted. Which wasn't entirely a lie. She had taken the whole run of courses, in preparation for an FBI career. And had received further training in at the academy.

"The food at breakfast and lunch is clean. They feed us three times a day. They inject us with drugs when they want to drug us but the possibility of drugs at dinner can't be ruled out." She had amassed quite an amount of information in her short time at the institute. It paid to be trained in getting information out of people without letting on that was what you were doing.

"Because the nurses call everyone here by a fake name. So if a nurse says that's your name, I know it isn't. I'm Shouko Maki - they call me Yoshida Noriko."

"So you aren't an authority," Beatrix said dismissively and then reconsidered. "But it does give a base for knowledge, I will grant you."

"What kind of drugs do they inject?" Most likely a sedative which wouldn't account for the nighttime hallucinations. Maybe they put something into the air at night...

Beatrix looked over at Naomi for a long moment. "Arlene... Arlene Plinkton." She may have put her assassination days behind her but she wasn't about to offer up her real name to anyone here. Those that did know would seal their own coffin.

"I'm not a psychologist," Naomi said with a shrug. "But I have enough of an education that it's a career option." Not one she had any interest in, though. She didn't want to be a psychologist. She wanted to go back to the FBI - but that was out of the question.

"Sedatives during the day. I don't know about the air. This is my first night in this place."

She didn't have enough information to say whether or not the things everyone saw at night were hallucinations or not. L hadn't broached that possibility, and if he had dismissed it, there was probably good reason.

Beatrix would just have to see for herself what the deal with these so-called monsters were at night. She hoped they were just delusions of the people that were supposed t be in a mental hospital and not hallucinations brought upon by drugs.

She found it interesting that Naomi had enough of an education in psychology for it to open up job opportunities. It made her wonder what the woman thought of her and her tendencies to take a hard line when it came to getting information. And to think she'd once been such a sweet, little naive farm girl...

The Bride sat down on her bed, and pulled the pillows out from under the bed, tossing the one she'd taken from Naomi's bed back to where it belonged. She glanced down at her injured hand and thought back over the fight they'd had.

"You are skilled. The average person doesn't know how to fight like that," she said nonchalantly, watching her roommate. "What do you do for a living if psychology isn't you cup of tea?"

"Oh." Naomi ducked her head and forced a flush to come to her cheeks, looking almost embarrassed. "I don't work. I'm just a homemaker. After I graduated college... my family is very traditional. I take martial arts just to get out of the house."

None of that was exactly a lie. Her family was traditional, and they had been pestering since college to settle down and raise a family. And she'd channeled all the frustration at feeling like she couldn't run her own life into first dance and then martial arts.

Beatrix continues to watch Naomi for a moment. Such a sudden change in demeanor. Interesting...

Her lip twitched a little. "Homemaker... right..."

The Bride was more amused by the misdirection than anything else. The woman she'd fought with mere minutes ago was not the same woman that was acting like she took martial arts on the side as an escape. Such a person wouldn't have been able to react so quickly and so well in a real combat situation. There was much more to Shouko Maki than she appeared.

Beatrix found the flashlight and examined it, concealing her continued watching of her roommate. "What style are you learning and who is your master?" Such a generic term for a teacher, but it would be improper to refer to her teacher as a sensei or shifu without knowing the style's origin.

"Capoeira," Naomi said, answering easily enough. "I used to breakdance, in college." She laughed a little at that, honestly a bit sheepish to be admitting it. Breakdancing had gone out of style years ago. And probably with good reason.

"I had to give it up, but it was easy enough to apply what I knew to the fighting style. My instructor is Mestre Batata."

Or had been, when she lived in LA. Along with hundreds upon hundreds of other students. There was nothing in the information she was giving that was a lie or that could be traced back to Naomi Misora.

Beatrix chuckled. She supposed she could see how breakdancing could be applied to something like capoeira.

"I must admit, you're the first person I've ever fought that used that style," she said. Even so, she still would have been able to kill the woman had she wanted to.

"I'm not familiar with your master."

"It's not as popular as the Asian styles," Naomi admitted. "But I like it. And it suits me. He's from Los Angeles - that's where I live." Or had been, at one time in her life. Before returning to Japan with Raye, they had been living in Virginia. Which had made the sting of quitting the FBI all the worse. She was constantly reminded of what she'd had to give up.

A large part of her wanted to go back to Boston. Or had. Now she didn't know what she wanted.

"Everyone has a style they prefer over others," Beatrix said. "Popularity is not always the best thing to base such a decision upon. The best masters are rarely found in the common styles." She'd lucked out in having a wonderful shifu in Bill for her kung fu, but the real treasure had been Pai Mei. She'd learned so much and...

Beatrix blinked a moment as she thought of Pai Mei choking on his fishheads as Elle's poison killed him. Anger flashed in her eyes a moment before she got it under control. Best she not lose her temper now that she'd decided not to kill Naomi.

Setting the flashlight down, the Bride returned to her desk and looked through the drawer. "I've been to LA a number of times. Usually on business, but I found the city entertaining.'

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Day 27: Intercom, Evening

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