damned_institute | 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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Well, when he put it that way..."Yeah," she admitted, mostly because she couldn't lie to make him feel any better about this. "It does. But the driver's a trained professional, there's really nothing to worry about. And if it helps, the explosions are very, very...stable."

Javert crossed his arms. "Nothing to worry about? We are sitting in a metal box powered, if I understood your explanation, solely by explosives, and driven by one man with as much capacity for error as any other human being - which, in my experience, is quite a large one. What's more, the entire contraption appears to require the presence of no less than three emergency exits - " a hand waved irritably at his surroundings - "though I doubt there would be many survivors should this thing crash."

Part of him was considering letting the matter drop - he was speaking to a twelve-year-old girl, after all - but the thought of forty miles an hour and the nauseating scent of whatever-it-was these buses burned simply couldn't leave him that easily. And he had no intention of dying again.

Something struck Dairine as funny about Javert's incredible dislike of the bus, and she grinned. "Really," she said, folding her hands in her lap and looking at him, "do you really think we could get out of this hell that easily? The bus isn't going to crash. Whatever's brought us here seems to have a vested interest in keeping us here, in one piece or not. Having us get torn to pieces by monsters is much more entertaining than crashing us into a tree," she said cynically. "I've spent enough time with certain entities to know what sort of games They like to play with human beings."

"On second thought," grumbled Javert, apparently not quite listening, "dying sounds like a decidedly more pleasant option. Or, at the very least, crashing. If we could overpower what nurses are here and perhaps distract the driver - "

He lapsed into half-audible muttering directed at a nonexistent cravat, his posture relaxing somewhat from ramrod-straight to imperceptibly less ramrod-straight. It seemed he had, for the moment, accepted the inevitability of the bus ride.

Of course, that was because the bus hadn't actually begun to move yet.

"Listen to you," she murmured, looking past him at the Institute. "'Live free or die'. Overpowering the authority. You sound like a revolutionary." She didn't say it disapprovingly, though - there was an impish sparkle in those grey eyes, and she was definitely grinning. She made sure to look at him, though, to prove that she wasn't accusing him of anything, especially not disloyalty to the state, merely amused by his choice of words.

"I like your ideas, but putting them into action's not going to be any picnic. And I'd rather not crash, if it's all the same to you. Too much margin for error, and it's too early for me to work out the required physics. Maybe I can try something on the way back." It was hard to tell if she was joking or not.

Javert snorted, glancing sharply at Dairine. "What the Institute is doing is hardly legal," he said dryly. "Nor are they the authority in this case. I rather think my conscience will still be clean." But is it? -Don't think about that.

He settled back slightly. "I can't be the only one onboard who's considered it. Perhaps the other patients will formulate a plan during the day."

"Who knows? Here, in this place, it might be. One thing's for certain, though, this isn't any reality I know."

The bus's engine roared to life, and she braced herself. She had faith that Javert would be able to not have a freak-out fit about the bus. At least, she hoped so...

Javert opened his mouth to answer, but was forestalled as the bus began to move. His jaw clicked shut and his knuckles whitened noticeably against the sides of the seat, but his face remained relatively impassive, if somewhat paler than usual.

"Are all buses as insufferably loud as this one?" he managed, his voice nearly lost amidst the noise. When - if he got back to Paris, he'd never complain about the fiacres again.

Day 28; Bus 3

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