damned_institute | NIGHTSHIFT 27: F-BLOCK WOMEN'S BATHROOM

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/217967.html?thread=16160367#t16160367).]

Robin shone his torch in the bathroom, pleased it was empty. He crept inside and wandered to the sink. Turning the cold tap on, he cupped his hands beneath the crystal clear water (it still amazed him, this technology), and splashed his face before holding another handful to his lips and drinking. It should wake him up a little more. He let the stray water drip down his shirt and sling to the material. Much better.

He turned and headed back out (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/216250.html).

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/222551.html)]

With no idea where she was going, Rika could only check each room for anything interesting. The other rooms around her, she easily guessed those were the other patient rooms, and they were most likely not in there. With those out of the way, Rika decided to head to the first room she could find without a number.

It was an ordinary bathroom, it seemed... A little run down, but nothing special. Though Rika could hear the pipes groaning, and something red dripped from the sink faucet.

Something red...? Come to think of it, the metallic smell permeating the air was familiar. No, Rika knew exactly what it was.

"It's dripping blood," She muttered to herself, drawing closer and standing on her tip toes to peer into the drain. Sure enough, red sticky liquid - blood - was crusting around the drain, staining it with a crimson color.

OK. In spite of how freakin' fast the creepy meter was rising, he was in motion at last and experiencing the kind of apprehension he was trained to swallow without argument - the kind of apprehension that, after years of exposure, could warp one's perception of normalcy to the point there was no such thing. Safety existed, but its poor design was destined to fray.

The job was never over.

Back against the wall beside the entrance, he flicked the beam about the new area, an unnerving focus he liked to reserve for chicks and the regular hunt brushing odds and ends of the place. A wry smirk began at the corner of his lips. These were the showers he preferred. Maybe he'd forward a request to his nurse when it came next shower shift...

Shaking his head and reassuming his former bearing, slippers scratched quietly on tile as he walked toward the basins. He was suddenly overcome by a horribly sweet smell, something giving the air a metallic taste. Worse was the fact he immediately recognised it.

And it was everywhere, residue staining each drain, dripping from each tap...

What the hell.

He stole a glimpse of himself in the mirror, noting the smiley-face shirt and grimacing. Something was going on, and he wasn't certain what the environment's variation meant for patients. Unsettling questions wormed into his demeanor. 'Is this human blood running through the pipes?' 'Who does it belong to?'

"... Weird, huh?" He said quietly, gaze remaining on the basin as he addressed the girl standing nearby. Holy crap she was tiny. "Anyway," he turned to her, face blank. "What's a kid doin' by herself?"

It was the sudden voice that cut through the air that startled Rika, not the sight or smell of the blood. She turned around, looking up at the man who entered with wide eyes. Either he was new himself, or this sight was not a normal one during the night.

"I got lost," Rika chirped, giving the other man a nervous smile. It was true, after all, she had no idea where she was going. "I was trying to find my friends, but I found this scary place instead..."

Maybe he would be willing to help her. Rika did need to try to find Hanyuu, or Keiichi and the others, if they were even in such a place. She could only hope so, because if she wasn't there to stabilize the town...

"Actually, this is Rika's first night here. Are there always scary places like this?" She looked around the room as she made her statement. It was actually very unsettling, as it reminded her of the basement of the Sonozaki mansion.

The small smile offered as he heard out her plight didn't quite match the melancholy glow in his eyes. This was the youngest patient he'd ever crossed paths with – basically a baby – and being aware that she was stuck here...? It jump-started an inner desire: to take some damn responsibility and save these people already! The girl's predicament spurred that heroic side of the huntsman so rarely exposed to the tedious likes of dayshift. There was a reason, apart from his own twisted gratification, that he kept with the life he'd accepted.

"Hold on, hold on," he interrupted in a hushed voice, glancing to both sides in the mean time. "So your name's Rika, you're new here. I'm Dean." He gestured to himself. "Right now, I think it'd be wise to stick together. Can't have anyone venturin' alone tonight, 'specially with the, uh," he tilted his head, nodding at the bloodied sink – "Newer chain of events." Though the truth was he knew he couldn't leave her behind.

Dean's words answered Rika's question about the appearance of the bathrooms, at least. So they weren't supposed to be like this... which only worried Rika more. Was something going to happen tonight? It felt like a bad omen.

If something was going to happen, at least she wasn't going to be alone. Rika looked genuinely happy when Dean suggested that they stuck together, and she nodded her head in agreement.

"Mii~! This place will be less scary if I go with you!" Rika smiled, keeping her voice hushed to match Dean's tone. "Thank you, Dean!"

He'd better watch he didn't get a toothache, hanging around the sweetest kid in town. To not be victim of another frustrating attitude was Dean's Pleasant Surprise of the Night.

"OK, good t'know someone appreciates it," he murmured. The man's grin divulged a clear gleam of relief. It wasn't exactly the killer smile he liked to show off, but it faded within seconds anyway. He stood there, expressionless again as he came to a decision.

He opted to take the girl's hand. She was way too small to keep at the corner of his eye. If she disappeared on him, he wouldn't notice unless he could feel her hand leave his own strong grip.

"C'mon, let's get outta here," he said quietly, next clearing his throat and kneeling a little to reach for her miniature hand.

Dean's reaction did seem a bit strange to Rika. It was as if he was... almost relieved that he met her. Rika did her best to suppress any doubts. It was true that she didn't know anyone except Peony, whom she couldn't really count as knowing, in this place. But that was exactly why she would have to trust Dean. She didn't know this place, and going out alone seemed to be just as bad as going with a complete stranger.

What would she lose if it she died, anyway? The cycle would only start again. Yet Rika would do all she could to stay alive; this was the first time she had woken up in a place that wasn't Hinamizawa and this might be the miracle she had been waiting for.

"Alright," She smiled again, taking his hand. Hopefully, this wouldn't be a bad decision.

Nodding along with the plan, he looked down through what darkness he could pierce. "Anything in my hands is better than nothing. We'll try to find a sword if we can?" He made it into a question, giving Heiji a brief smile before turning to walk out of the block, into the connecting hallway.

The strange smell that was around Bella was also out here, but an even stronger scent surrounded it, overpowering it. Blood. Very fresh, very strong, very warm blood. His head immediately snapped to the Women's Bathroom door, the smell almost a tangible path straight into the room. Even having trained himself in self-control, a familiar burning pricked at the back of his throat.

More curious than thirsty, Edward made his way into the bathroom, refusing the instinct to cover his nose to hide some of the smell. Unconsciously, his mouth had already begun to water, even if he had only fed a day ago. Or maybe just a few hours? Time moved so oddly here.

His eyes stopped on a little girl (in an asylum like this? Maybe she belonged here-) staring curiously at the sink while a man addressed her. The vampire started, turning back to Bella and Heiji with a questioning glance. He had expected some younger patients, but this girl was barely a child.

"You might want to stay back; there's blood dripping from the faucets," Edward addressed Bella, ignoring the other two in the room for the moment and giving her a worried glance. He knew she had the strange habit of being sick at the sight - or smell, really - of blood, even when it wasn't her own. He was more focused on going quickly through the bathroom so they could hurry on.

He shrugged back to Edward. He'd seen kids in dangerous situations before--namely Kudo, but his case was slightly different--so he wasn't really phased by the sight of the little girl. He was, however, very interested in how Edward knew that there was blood in the room.

"Blood in the faucets? Really?" Heiji frowned and examined the sinks closer, turning on the flow and sniffing the contents, "I didn't even see that. I guess you can see better in the dark!" He smiled at Edward.

Heiji leaned back and his hand fumbled at the back of his head. He realized with a slight jerk that he didn't have his trusty hat. The one he always turned around when he was working something out. With a sigh, he realized he'd have to make do without.

"But why would there be blood in the pipes? Is this going on all over the institute or just in here? And if so, why...?"

Being a detective, Heiji was always full of questions.

Oh no. The moment Bella walked into the room following Heiji and Edward, her feet stopped dead in their tracks as if they were rooted to the ground.

All at once the nausea hit, and she saw the room tip forward. Catching herself on the wall, the teenager let out a low moan. It was overpowering. The smell of the blood made her want to pass out, roll over, and die all at the same time. Needless to say, it wasn’t a happy experience, and the moment Bella could feel her feet again, she was flying out back from where they had come from.

Her reaction was worse than he expected - she all but wheeled out of the room, falling down in a heap. He followed for a quick moment, saving his answer to Heiji's question until after he made sure she was alright. He should've warned her earlier. After murmuring a worried question, she nodded the affirmative; she'd be okay for now. It'd be easier to move through the room, grab the pipe, and get out.

Going back in the bathroom, this time he did raise a hand to cover his nose; turning on the bloodflow to full blast was not making the situation any easier. Answer muffled by his hand, he tried to smile back. "I camp a lot. It helps adjust the eyes. Would you mind turning that off?" It was hard to still be polite when he longed to take a free hand and dip it in the warm pool of blood. "We're a little bit sensitive to blood around here - and the smell is horrible."

Moving to the back of the room didn't help much, especially with the showerheads dyed crimson as well. The grates below them had already been stained brightly. "It's coming from the showerheads, too. How could there be enough for that?" Edward stopped breathing, lifting a hand to turn on the shower's nozzle the tiniest bit. As he suspected, a thick line of red began to trickle out. Liquid, still - not the least bit coagulated.

Augh. This reminded him of that horrible Resident Evil movie.

Heiji also looked worried when Bella flew out of the room, but he could guess why. Blood phobia. It wasn't uncommon, but in his line of work you had to be used to gruesome sights. In some of the cases that came across his father's desk, the body had to be identified by fingerprints or dental records. Heiji didn't particularly enjoy looking at those photos, but it was necessary.

"Ah, camping," he said, complying with Edward and turning off the faucet. "That'll do it. Sorry about the smell--it doesn't bother me as much, obviously," He grinned. "Kinda used to it by now. Anyway, let's get you a pipe."

The teen detective backed up and bent his knees slightly. He only knew a bit of hand-to-hand combat, but his legs were probably strong enough to kick one of the pipes out of it's fixture. He began to go at one of the pipes under the sink.

"So, there's blood in the showerheads too, huh?" Heiji said between kicks, gritting his teeth. "Reminds me of that story in the Christian-Hebrew bible. The one with, uh, Moses and the plagues? He got God to turn all the water in Egypt into blood." He laughed, "But if someone's trying to free us, turning all the water into blood isn't going to do much really!"

"It's fine," he responded, only half-aware of the conversation. He couldn't deny that the blood was fascinating; flowing like water in an asylum. It was as if he had been put into a rather horrible B-type horror movie. Maybe next, a rotten corpse could come crawling through the toilet.

Stranger still, it was distinctly human blood. Where on earth - or more fitting, who - could it be coming from?

Edward turned suddenly from the showers with a disgusted face. Moving back to the sinks, he watched Heiji freeing the pipe, coming up with a rather interesting idea. "No kidding," he agreed, face turning thoughtful. "There are supposed to be monsters here... I wonder if the blood is meant to attract them?" It worked that way in the movies. And his own life, sadly.

Snapping from his reverie, he noted the rather determined pipe. "Do you need any help with that?"

"Yeah," Heiji grunted, kicking at the pipe again, "That'd be nice, man." He backed off to take a rest, wiping his forehead with his shirt. For a seventeen-year old, the kendo had been treating his scrawny body very well. But then again, chasing after criminals would probably do the same thing.

"I dunno if that's why there's blood everywhere," Heiji started, sitting down on the filthy floor. "But there has to be a reason, right? Besides making Bella-chan sick. Don't think the Head Whacko has it out for just her. No offense, she's not the center of my world." He grinned, "How long you two been goin' out?"

He nodded, taking a position next to the piping. Loosened now, all it would take was a few more blows to fully seperate it from the rest of the tubing. Kicking at the piping, Edward rolled his eyes at Heiji's comments. As if he needed another lunatic after her blood!

"I hope not," he said dryly, between blows. "Outside of a psychological means of manipulating or otherwise unnerving the patients, I've little idea. Perhaps it is merely something out of their control?"

My, he was taking this better than he had thought. "It's good she isn't, or I'd be insanely jealous." Giving a final kick, the piping wrenched itself out of the wall, sliding along the floor to stop at a wall. A small trail of blood trickled out from the wall, but that was all. He'd almost been afraid a flood of blood would shoot out.

Picking up the dislodged pipe, he turned to give Heiji an accomplished smile. "Mmm, almost three years, I believe. And speaking of Bella, I belive it's time to make sure she's all right."

"Maybe it is... but I doubt it," Heiji said thoughtfully, standing up. "That guy on the intercom sounded plenty crazy to me. But how he would get blood into th' pipes is beyond me. There has to be a way though. As a guy I know says, 'there is only one truth', y'know?"

He opened the door, gesturing out the door with a grin and a small bow, "After you sir. Your princess of three years awaits!"

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/215033.html?thread=16971513#t16971513)]

Haruhi didn't really see why they had made such a big deal about it. She was fine--and alive--so what was with those looks? Well, whatever, she wasn't going to think about it now, not when they were so close to their destination. Haruhi fully intended to salvage something from this bathroom to make up for the knife. She still felt a bit guilty about admitting to Utena that she had lost it. But a pipe or something would definitely make up for that!

"Here we are!" Haruhi yelled as she threw the door open. But one step into the room was enough to make her let out a grunt of disgust and hold a hand to her nose.

"Was there a fight in here?" she asked as she surveyed the room. There was blood all over the sinks and countertops of the bathroom. Blood ran down the drains in the showers. Even the showerheads themselves were dripping with blood, making it look like as if the blood was coming from the showerheads themselves. But that couldn't be right, could it?

Stopping dead in her tracks the moment she walked into the bathroom, Kairi’s felt as if she was going to be sick. The intense scent of blood made her gag, and she lifted her hands quickly to her face, covering her nose and mouth. “What happened?”

In all her days of staying in this horrid place, she had never once seen such a thing happen. Why was there blood everywhere? What happened to the water?

“What are we going to do?” Weren’t they supposed to try and collect metal? At this rate, everything would be covered with blood.

The siezing sight and smell of blood everywhere stopped her in her tracks when she recognized it. It was like nothing she had ever seen before, and yet it was so horrifyingly familiar. It drew phantom pricks all over her skin; a heavy metallic beat to her heart. She swayed, her light trembling over the wall, to the ceiling as she backed into Utena.

She tried to make sense of it, but the only conclusion she was able to draw from her scattered thoughts was, 'But I never even bled then.'

She had spent years in constant, searing pain, but it had been the same pain day after day, year after year- predictable, expectable. Now being outside of that returned her capacity for fear of the unknown. She almost wanted the old world back.

Utena stopped in her tracks, once Haruhi had flung open the door; the sight before her made her blood run cold. So much blood... it was everywhere, on everything, on the walls and in the sink and coming out of the faucets-!

Wait, what?

It was coming out of the faucets. That... that wasn't possible. Blood does not flow from sink faucets! The surreality of the situation swept over her, causing her breathing to become a bit shallow, a bit hurried; it was as if they had stepped into another world, a world of terror and carnage. What brought her back to the real world, after a moment, was Anthy backing into her; that's right. She wouldn't be the only one disturbed by this, would she? In such an extreme situation, it was easy to forget... and, she had promised to protect Anthy. That meant her emotional well-being as well. One hand was raised to the Rose Bride's shoulder, in an attempt to steady the girl; a moment later, a reassuring squeeze was given, as well.

"We... we were here to collect the metal pieces... will they be alright? Can we... still do that?" She was unsure, for once; the scene in front of them, right out of a horror movie, had thrown her a bit.

"Well, if you guys want to touch the bloody pipes then I won't stop you. But I don't want to if the blood is really coming out of them. That's what's going on, right?" Even Haruhi was having a hard time believing it, but that was what it looked like. Well, gross.

"Either way, we'd have to clean the blood off somehow and we obviously can't use water from here to do that. Are all the other bathrooms like this?" Haruhi hoped not. At the very least, maybe they could get metal from another one.

"Is there anywhere else we can get metal from?"

How horrible. Kairi frowned from behind her hands, her gaze turning towards Haruhi as she shrugged her shoulders. “There’s always the kitchen? But … who knows how long it would take us to get there…”

The girl did make a good point, though. To clean off the blood, they’d need water … and by the looks of things, there was no water anywhere near by. “You don’t think all the bathrooms are like this, do you?”

There had to be something they could do.

"Just metal?" Anthy asked, confused, holding on to Utena firmly. Didn't they need actual weapons?

She almost spoke up about the rising nausea she felt with the smell of blood so heavy around them, but held herself back. For someone who'd had her heart cut out and every limb penetrated by angry, sharp blades, she still didn't have a stomach for all this blood.

"Maybe," Utena said, "we should try another bathroom. They... they can't all be like this. Or... actually," she backpedaled, upon hearing Kairi's comment, "that one kitchen, that we went to our first night... that had a lot of metal in it. Pots and pans, and things like that. If we could get the front off of one of the ovens... well, they could probably make at least a couple weapons from one of those. And there might be more knives that we could use in the meantime." This was starting to sound like a better and better plan. At the very least, they wouldn't have to deal with all this blood; she'd resisted, at first, but the sight and smell was finally getting to her.

[From here. (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/214355.html?thread=17000531#t17000531)]

The moment Axel walked into the bathroom the smell of blood hit him in the face like a brick, making a disgruntled sound in the process as he looked about. There didn't seem to be any monsters wandering around, save for a group of women that were also crowded near the entrance.

He managed to inch his way past them, meandering over to one of the sinks and glanced inside the bowl. Lo and behold, the thing was dripping with blood and crusting the drain with a dark amber. The sight of the contents itself was nothing foreign to him, but the location from where they ended up in certainly earned a confused glance.

However, curiosity got the better of him and he reached forward to grasp the knob, twisting it halfway and watched as blood poured out and splashed against the porcelain surface.

Naminé wasn't too familiar with the smell of blood, but even she could identify that thick, coppery smell as soon as she walked through the door. As soon as she looked around, Naminé could tell that there was something wrong with the bathroom.

Axel confirmed it when he opened the faucet and was rewarded with a torrent of blood, gushing out of the spout and splattering all over the bottom of the sink. That sight had gotten to Naminé more than she wanted to admit and she quickly turned away, horrified.

"That's..." She didn't have to finish her sentence, but Naminé's bewildered expression probably finished her question. What was blood doing in the pipes?!

"It's obvious you're not supposed to take those pills with alcohol, but this is ridiculous." Axel commented with a raised eyebrow, tempted to hold his hand under the torrent but refrained from doing so. To him the imagery was more bizarre than horrific, and as much as he would've liked to study this spectacle for a while longer they were already running late.

"C'mon you, there might still be some water left in our room." He spoke to the blonde, reaching for her hand and urging her out of the bathroom with him. Only a blind person could've missed Kairi that happened to be traveling with the group of girls he'd seen earlier, and he quickly flashed her a smile before stepping back out into the hallway.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/228015.html?thread=17029551#t17029551).]

NIGHTSHIFT 27: F-BLOCK WOMEN'S BATHROOM

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