damned_institute | Day 28; Bus 3

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Day 28; Bus 3

There was, Naomi decided, some sort of cosmic irony in all of this. Not that she was trapped in a deranged and possibly other-worldly asylum with a man she'd idolized for years and a boy who was being investigated for - among other things - the murder of her fiance. No, at this point, those were perfectly normal occurrences. Rather it was the soft, pretty, feminine pink sweater dress she'd been stuffed into in the morning. A chance to wear normal clothes, and she looked like a soccer mom. The white blazer and white boots only made her look like a soccer mom who maybe hadn't given up gogo boots.

It was humiliating. Why couldn't she have jeans and a sweater? And sneakers? Something she would conceivably wear? Not this damned pink monstrosity. And her nurse kept saying how pretty she was.

She didn't care if she looked pretty.

Grumbling to herself, and taking it out on her muffin, Naomi was shoved onto an empty bus and told to 'sit tight'. Oh, she'd sit tight alright....

At least she was relatively certain L was alright. She'd spent the whole night with him, and other than falling on his ass, nothing had happened to him. And hopefully nothing would happen to him in town, either....

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Signum wasn't particularly happy with the mediocre results of the previous night's expedition- what was the point of having a strong, well-armed, combat-capable team when you never saw a hint of trouble... and didn't even make it halfway through your reconnaissance route, to boot? Not a worthy display.

The sour mood she was in wasn't doing much for her attitude towards their little expedition. Any hopes she'd entertained that leaving the grounds of the institute represented any kind of opportunity were quickly ground under the heels of more pessimistic logic. No, the institute always maintained its perfect control during the day. This little change of venue wouldn't affect that in the least. Give her the night, give her her sword. That was when she could make some headway.

She couldn't bring herself to care about the civilian clothes they were given for the occasion, either... or so she thought. The button-down shirt and slightly frayed slacks she'd been handed made for a fairly masculine outfit, but they suited her better than a lot of the prisoners' handouts, so she wasn't in much of a position to act above matters of fashion. Though she would to anyone who bothered to ask.

Apathy was a sentiment best displayed, she decided, from the back of the bus. As soon as she was free of the nurse's guiding hand she made a beeline for the rear of the vehicle and plopped herself down next to a young girl who looked much more enthusiastic about the whole charade than she could bring herself to be. She'd have to try not to bring her down with her, she supposed.

Rinali smiled warmly as the other woman sat down next to her. She had an amazing color of hair, much like many of the people here. Never before had she seen so many colors in people's hair colors that were not replicated in nature. She was likely from one of the other planets they talked about on the boards yesterday.

"Hi," Rinali said to the woman who clearly did not look like she wanted to be here. "I'm Rinali."

It didn't hurt to be polite.

"Signum." Signum responded matter-of-factly. Ordinarily she would have left things at that, equitable a little on the cold side (as could be said of her, no doubt), but as in most things the reality of her present situation required some changes. She wasn't terribly good at talking to civilians, but they were all allies of a kind now. She'd just have to make the effort.

"What do you make of this?" She asked, unable to conjure an interesting topic of conversation beyond the actual situation at hand. It had that nice feature of actually being important. Or failing that, immediate. But even through her skepticism she had to wonder why their captors would go through the trouble of arranging the trip. She'd always seen the days as merely prep time for the nights, why bother messing with the system?

"Pleased to meet you," she replied pleasantly.

Signum had raised an interesting question, although probably not a vital one. Whether she was talking about the trip or about being trapped here, there wasn't a lot she knew, really.

"I'm fairly new here," she admitted. "So my knowledge of this place is limited. It could be that they're trying to show us more of the world so that we realize that even if we escape, there's nowhere for us to run. It could also be that the nurses and staff during the day honestly have no idea what goes on at night, and they're just trying to give us a change of scenery, thinking it would be good for us. I find that hard to believe, but seeing as we've all been transported to this planet at this time and many people have been limited in their abilities, who knows? It might be the day staff are just as much innocent victims of this experiment as we are."

Signum nodded at the sentiment. "As am I." Generally she was more pleased to meet armed people who could entertain her for a few minutes, but that was one of those impolite facts she kept to herself.

Both of the girl's answers were interesting, despite their purely speculative nature, in that they covered two very different views of the daytime institute's motives. Were they merely an appendage to the night institute with a harmless veneer, or did their attempts to run the psychiatric facility of the day have their source in a genuine delusion that they were one?

"The head doctor bridges day and night, though." Signum pointed out. "He's nominally in charge and definitely doesn't have our best interests at heart. Intimidation seems more likely." That, or he just thought that giving them a sliver of hope and a new environment to spin their wheels in would be amusing. "Or it's just a different type of game. New stimuli for the subjects, or whatever they really think of us as." He did claim to be a doctor. Hell, Scaglietti called himself a doctor too, and his interest in medicine had been anything but altruistic.

Rinali didn't like the idea of being thought of as a test subject. It reminded her of the boy who was tested on at the Black Order and went into fault for being unworthy. She shook off the unpleasant memory and looked back to Signum.

"It's possible," she agreed. "But whatever their plans, I don't think any harm will come to us while we're out here. It would spoil the illusion they've worked so hard to develop."

Just then, the bus began to move. She looked out the window as they left, moving just as fast as the trains she used to ride on, but without a track. It was relatively impressive, although the speed itself wasn't terribly upsetting. She had ridden on trains many times in the past. "So what planet do you come from?" she asked with genuine interest.

"Probably." Signum didn't really care either way. Change meant danger and opportunity in one, so it could be a good or bad thing. If there was advantage to be found it would come first for her and those like her, quick-blooded warriors and survivors whose instincts served them well amidst chaos. But others would suffer in the balance, so she couldn't bring herself to hope for it.

And like Rinali had said, it just didn't fit the way things had been run so far.

The girl's question caught Signum a little off-guard. She'd accepted quickly the proposition that the prisoners represented many realities, but she still thought of them as alike to the humans of the Earth she knew. It didn't help that the obvious aliens she'd met, the shinigami, insisted on seeing everything in terms of their own reality despite it all. Being specifically asked what planet she was from by anyone here, especially anyone nice and normal-Earth-human-looking, set off all kinds of alarms she had to consciously ignore.

"Midchilda." She answered. "Lately. I'm Belkan by birth."

If you wanted to call it a 'birth.' Still, even that was more than she could tell most Midchildans. There was a vague hint of irony to that.

These terms meant absolutely nothing to Rinali. She wasn't a stellar traveler so she couldn't know what was on planets other than earth; in fact, likely no one in her time had been to another planet. "I don't know either of those planets," she admitted. They weren't part of the solar system, that much was for sure. Her eyes lit up with interest. "What's Midchilda like?"

Really, the entire concept of interstellar travel still baffled her, but it was nice to be sitting with someone who knew about this. Her brother would be thrilled!

Curious, was she? Explaining anything in detail didn't do much for her sense of unease, but logically she knew it couldn't hurt. If these people escaped home they would be returning to places where the TSA didn't exist, and even if they somehow came to her reality the TSA would accept them as refugees and they'd learn all this anyway.

"It's one of the central worlds..." How to explain this without going into interdimensional physics? "...which means it's close to other worlds." She explained a bit lamely. In a sense that had nothing to do with traditional astronomical measurement.

"As a central world with two large moons it's very magic-rich, and it's the capital world of the TSA so the people are prosperous and advanced technology is widespread. It's been recovering from its last great war for the last hundred years, though, and there are still many ruined cities."

On the whole, though, if you weren't in the military or one of the big research institutions it wasn't so different from the wealthy nations of Earth in her time.

Rinali listened to Signum with intense interest. A few points didn't seem to make sense, namely a habitable world that was close to other worlds. Looking at what they knew of their own solar system, only Earth was habitable. Was it possible that they had the ability to travel quickly between the stars? "What do you mean by 'close to other worlds?'" she asked inquisitively. "I have to admit, my knowledge is limited to our star system and its eight planets...and only one of those is habitable." She smiled warmly. "The entire concept of 'other worlds' is really fascinating to me. We're just beginning to fathom how immense the universe is."

The mention of magic drew her attention as well. "What do you mean by magic?" she asked. "My planet doesn't have magic, but I've heard other people here mention that."

Oh well. "The region of interdimensional space Midchildan local space occupies is very compact, which makes it easy to reach other worlds with interdimensional ships from it." Signum hoped the girl wouldn't make her explain this mathematically. Reciting equations didn't do a lot for her image, which was heavily founded on relatively speech-free violence.

"Magic is a substance with extremely variable properties that can be manipulated by technological means and innately by some living beings." Ugh, she felt like a textbook. The girl should have sat next to Reinforce, Signum thought... despite being quite aware that she'd chosen this seat, and to speak, for herself.

"Where then are you from?" Signum ventured. She wasn't all that interested, certainly not in the intense way Reinforce or Rinali herself were, but time spent listening was time not spent talking herself.

Rinali was curious, but she wasn't ~that~ curious. Mathmatics never were her strong point, and while she appreciated the detail that went into scientific discovery, her dislike of math was part of what kept her brother as the science-minded one of the family. The entire phrase Signum mentioned made absolutely no sense to her. All she recognized that she was talking about a technology far beyond their normal means.

A substance with extremely variable properties, capable of being manipulated by technology or innate ability? That sounded a lot like Innocence, although without the sacred element.

"I'm from a world called earth," she answered. "I think a lot of people are, although most seem to be from further in the future than Allen, Ravi, and I. I imagine you don't use the gregorian calendar, but we're from the year 1899. I have to admit, this entire concept of people coming from different times and different planets is a little difficult to grasp, but it's very fascinating. My brother would love it."

1899... -43 by the Midchildan New Calendar, 70 or so in the Time of the Saint. "I've been to it. Or a version of it. Further in the future, as you say."

A look of annoyance crossed her face when the conversation swerved to the strangeness of the prisoners' origins. "Different planets isn't the problem. It's the incompatible histories and magics. We're not even from the same universes." Or so she'd been told. Meeting gods had helped moved that little idea out of the realm of 'words she nodded to' and into 'what the hell is wrong with this place' territory, though. It was just like those stupid myths about Alhazred. If Alhazred had mastered time and causality how come they couldn't stop themselves from completely destroying their civilization? It had been a ridiculous notion, and here it was given life.

Rinali blinked at Signum's suggestion. "Incompatible histories? You mean it's as if there are entirely different timelines that occurred for people?"

The idea that earth in 1899 was different for her than it was for others was even more difficult to conceive than the concept that people traveled to other planets. She had to be joking!

"Yes. That's what I mean." She affirmed.

Well, an explanation wouldn't hurt. "I hunted mages on Earth extensively. There are several magic-users here who come from similar times, so if we had come from the same timeline we would have inevitably come into conflict. But we did not."

And. Well. Gods.

Rinali blinked a few times. "There were mages on earth where you come from?" she asked. "We...we have something like magic. It's a material called innocence, although it's not really magic. It's a material given to us by God with quantifiable scientific properties that we use to form anti-Akuma weapons." She didn't see the harm in talking about where she came from. Signum was very open about her world, it was only fair that she be so as well.

The concept of worlds was becoming very, very complicated.

Add another interventionist god to her tally. The Saint was starting to look awful plain by comparison. "That's the sort of thing I meant by 'incompatible magics'. There's nothing like that, on Earth or anywhere else, in my experience." And more importantly, the experience of the TSA, which existed to find such things. "There are a few mages from Earth, but there's no native magic system. They've all learned from offworlders."

She wondered if these 'Akuma' were anything like Momo's hollows. Gods seemed to come with increased opportunities for spiritual peril.

Rinali nodded slightly. It was difficult to believe that innocence didn't exist on earth in another reality when it was such an intricate and fundamental element of her own life. "That's very strange, I'll admit," she said. "Of course, the idea of magic at all as something real beyond fairy tales is hard to swallow as well."

It would make sense that anyone to learn magic would have to learn from off-planet, though. There was whatever the noahs did, but that couldn't be magic, could it? And the effects of the innocence often seemed magical, but there was a scientific explanation for how they functioned.

"Is it?" Signum asked. She plucked the straw from her juice-box, and the thin plastic promptly withered into a charred black mess between her fingers.

"The word 'magic' prejudices you. Forget the word as you know it and let the evidence of your own eyes take its place."

That was more or less how she avoided going insane while hanging around a bunch of functionary gods. The idea still made her a little crazy, but when you ignored all the baggage that went with the word 'god' and just reacted to their personalities and powers in a purely practical fashion, they weren't hard to deal with. At least, no harder than any other group of people who thought they were more important than everyone else.

Rinali glanced back out the window as she pondered Signum's words. To the uneducated person, her innocence probably came across as magic, didn't it? How else would they expect a woman to be able to fly through the air if not through magic? Maybe it really was an issue of semantics and not an issue of what actually existed. The concept of saying a few words and waving your fingers was ludicrous. The concept of a technology or power that had not been fully fathomed and seemed magical could make sense.

"It's just a lot to take in," she admitted at last. "The idea of space travel was only just being dreamed by a few novel writers." Edgar Allen Poe came to mind and his story about a trip to the moon. It was a flight of fancy, but looking around her at people like Signum who weren't even from Earth."

"I won't argue with that." That it was a lot to take in, she meant. Signum was relatively fortunate... there seemed to be a few patients who were even familiar with alternate timelines or something similar, but short of that she'd come about as well-prepared as she could be. As a a guardian of the Book and as an officer of the TSA, she'd been exposed to a very big universe. In some ways it made it harder to accept that there was even more out there she knew nothing about, but for the most part such wide-ranging experience and knowledge made it easier to accept a little more and cut down on the amount of time she spent dumbfounded.

Rinali nodded slightly in silence. Signum was a relatively nontalkative person, it seemed. That wasn't a bad thing, but it did mean that she was talking a lot more than she was accustomed. She liked talking to people, but she didn't usually carry the conversation on her own. Still, she liked Signum. She was stern like Kanda, but a lot less violent and more reserved. Maybe she could get signum to open up a little, or maybe they would end up sitting in silence for the rest of the trip. Either would be fine, but she'd certainly prefer the former.

"Would you mind telling me about your 'world?'" Rinali asked politely. "I probably won't understand everything, but I'd be interested to hear."

So she was to be the textbook after all.

"Midchilda?" It wasn't really hers, per se. And she hoped Rinali liked hearing about the military, because that was what Signum knew best. "It's the capital world of the Spacetime Administration Bureau, and is preeminent among the dimensional-spacefaring worlds. It's been that way for the last 73 years. Almost the entire technological base was shifted over to magical systems in the fifty years preceding. The reforms and political power have made it prosperous and compared to most worlds it is considered utopian. The Spacetime Administration Bureau draws most of its recruits, does most of its research, and contracts most of its manufacturing in Midchilda, so they're considered synonymous by many, but many elements of the TSA, especially the newer generations of the Dimensional Navy admirality, are more impartial and have created rifts between the Bureau apparatus and the Midchildan central government."

And break for leading questions. Signum was sure the girl had some preferences in what she heard about.

Rinali was quiet as she listened to Signum's story. It was a lot to take in...dimensional-spacefaring worlds, shifting from technological to magical 'systems', and the Spacetime Administration Buraeu and TSA. She latched onto a single point Signum had mentioned that sounded like it could use at the very least a little clarifying.

"What's the TSA?" she asked, trying her best to keep all of the details straight in her brain to report back to Komui. "I'm guessing that's a government..."

"Time/Space Administration. Just another shorthand for the Bureau." Signum explained. "They're charged with managing interworld navigation and crises, especially those involving powerful magic. Besides the Navy they have their own research and investigations arms, and because many powerful magics have survived the fall of older civilizations that created them they maintain a network of archaeological sites and resources as well. But as I said, because the Bureau was created by and is so tightly bound to Midchilda there's a growing tension between those who want them to be impartial, those who see them as interfering with Midchildan affairs, and those who want them to identify more closely with Midchilda."

Day 28; Bus 3

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