damned_institute | Day 28: Bus 1

Zelgadis was not happy, at all. Not that this was any change, but the events of the past few hours had given him more to angst about than usual. Nightshift had been dreadful: first he was attacked by a small green man and then covered in leeches, neither of which lead to warm fuzzy feelings.

And now this.

When the nurse had come into his room with new clothes he had a small glimmer of hope-- some thief had taken his normal Landel's wear in the night, so perhaps this was a change in luck. However, it was not the godsend he had hoped for. Minus the threat of sedation, there was nothing in the universe that could make Zelgadis wear a bright lemon-yellow shirt. There was a jacket of a slightly more tasteful variety, so Zelgadis made good us of it-- he put all his coupons in a pocket and pulled up the hood. It was almost as good as his cloak. Well, no it wasn't, but it would have to do.

With mild protesting, Zelgadis was lead to a large yellow vehicle. He climbed the stairs, took a seat towards the back, and readied himself for another frustrating day of being attacked and threatened with spoons.

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"I will. Be careful, Reno."

Rufus had caught the tiny smile on Reno's part, a mild relief sweeping him at that. This was all territory that was so new to him, that he stumbled and fell spectacularly more often than not. At least this time he hadn't upset the table when taking his fall. A spot of warmth remained where the Turk's fingers had touched long after he had left.

That relief was stronger when Schuldig wasn't seized by the firestorm of thoughts that Rufus had been expecting. While he would have dared Farfarello for the telepath, it wouldn't have been something he wanted to do. Barely catching the whispered words, he continued to watch Schuldig closely for the least sign of something wrong.

"Isn't that good? With all of us spreading out, doesn't that lessen the strain?"

He ignored the nurse shooing them off the bus for now. Schuldig probably had places to go, but he wasn't moving either of them until he was sure someone was taking care of Schuldig.

Schuldig shot Rufus another sidelong look. This one, for once, wasn't openly hostile, instead merely questioning in a suspicious, why-are-you-persisting sort of way. "It's good in that respect, yes, although unless the patients spread out so much some of them go beyond my radius it doesn't much make much difference to my telepathy about the density," he replied. "But it means that either the power-dampening abilities and influence of the institute stretch this far, and canvas an entire community - which I hardly need to tell you is an alarming conclusion to draw - or that there's a possibility my telepathy's been permanently hobbled. And either way, I can't get any new information like this...nothing we can reliably trust, anyway, since there's no way of knowing whether or not we're being lied to if I can't get in their heads."

He finally pulled himself to his feet, studying the town through the windows of the bus. "It's also a little unsettling," he muttered. "I can't read the staff, and there are a few select patients whose minds are beyond my reach, but that's not that many people compared to those I can read in the institute. But this is a whole town</>. I see them but there's nothing where their thoughts should be. Shape without substance." He shot Rufus another look. "It's about how you feel if you stepped off this bus and discovered you couldn't hear them in the mundane sense. Something's very wrong."

Rufus ignored the look Schuldig gave him, his mind clicking along and circling the information he had to go on like a wolf looking for the most crippling place to latch onto prey.

"I'd imagine everyone would rather have you sane than all the information in the world."

Something Schuldig said kept coming back to nag him. Such a wide area was odd, but not unheard of. Shin-Ra had controlled Midgar despite it being one place versus all of Midgar. Computer systems made it all easy.

The ever so famous lightbulb finally lit in Rufus' mind. Flashed at least.

"What if they're androids or cyborgs? Can you normally read machines? I don't know about your world, but we have some rather advanced systems in mine. A robot that looks like a human isn't unheard of. Reeve Tuesti's Cait Sith proves that."

A mercifully brief image of a black cat walking on its back legs with a red cape on and shouting through a megaphone came to mind and was gone again. Rufus really hated that thing. Rising to his own feet, Rufus had no idea where he was going in town, but the nurses were insisting they get off the bus. If Reno went one way, he might as well go the other.

"Either way, we need to get off. Maybe we'll find something in this town. I doubt you want to spend the day with me, so do you want me to stay with you until you get to Crawford or Farfarello incase the 'sound' suddenly comes back on or leave you be?"

Rufus' dismissal of Schuldig's loss of telepathy as unimportant wasn't seen in his mind as a loss of value or the like. Schuldig and his well-being had more value than telepathy or any other ability. This was the difference between Rufus Shinra the man and Rufus Shinra the President. When acting in his role as president, everyone had a value, a point where loss exceeded that value, and a point where Rufus would have them killed if they turned on him or he suspected they would.

Schuldig laughed bitterly. "And who exactly are you basing that observation on? There are patients who've made death threats against me and I've never even met them, much less inconvenienced them in any way. You don't think there are plenty of people who'd trade my sanity for a snippet of intel? Either you're being deliberately obtuse or you're telling me white lies to make me feel better, not that the latter would serve much purpose when I'm well aware of the truth."

Schuldig allowed himself to finally be ushered out of his seat to move down the aisle, although he turned his head slightly to continue conversing with Rufus behind him. "As to the android idea - I suppose it's possible, although it hardly seems likely. The staff of the institute are off-limits to me, and I've seen people bleed them so I know they're human...at least to a given value of 'human', who the fuck knows. Either way, if sentient beings can be shut off from me, androids seem superfluous."

At Rufus' offer of companionship, however, Schuldig faced forward again and shrugged. "You're free to do whatever you want. I don't even know why you'd take my preferences into consideration, but as far as I'm concerned it makes no difference whatsoever to me."

"I wouldn't. But you don't believe that, do you?"

Rufus sighed as he shook his head.

"A man makes an error, and you beat him with like a whip, Schuldig, until he surrenders. You're a hard man, and that's coming from a man that most on my world considers the worst."

Letting Schuldig go ahead of him and off the bus, Rufus shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He watched Schuldig long enough to make sure that he didn't keel over and then turned away. It hadn't been his intention to get into yet another argument with Schuldig, thus why he walked away first. When the telepath had sat down, he'd hoped some sort of reconciliation could be made.

A deep part of him was relieved and fearful at the same time. He hadn't sabatoged himself, hadn't ruined everything, although that was more Schuldig's doing than his own. Either way, he headed down the street and away.

((Rufus headed off here: http://community.livejournal.com/damned/245151.html ))

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/244463.html?thread=17602287#t17602287).]

Day 28: Bus 1

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