damned_institute | Day 30: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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Day 30: Cafeteria, Breakfast

Hitsugaya woke with a start.

His entire body ached, but the pain was nowhere near as bad as it had been the night before. His injuries had been tended two with clean gauze and bandages, and he found every movement wasn't agony. He wasn't in the best of shape, but thanks to the miracle of landel's strange time distortion, he had mostly recovered from the vile poison without having to waste anyone else's talents.

And in his hand, still...there was the key.

He dressed quickly, sliding the key onto the key ring from his desk drawer and stuck it into his pocket. Whether the key stood to gain them anything or not, it stood as a vital reminder that they could succeed in this place. There was hope, as insignificant as it often seemed. They could beat this place.

That small shred of hope made getting up worth it.

The nurse who escorted him to breakfast was cheerful, and commented idly about how wonderful it was to see young Tommy Winters up and about again after his unfortunate run-in with a bad case of food poisoning. He smirked slightly, knowing that any lies the institute forced into their heads were only that: lies. He wouldn't buy it for a second. And on top of that, the concept of muffins sounded almost appetizing. While he still preferred his authentic Japanese cuisine, the food here was slowly becoming more and more bearable. He would have preferred a warm bowl of sweet nattou over rice over the mufffins, but they would do. The plain yogurt and fruit, on the other hand, was excellent. He piled his plate high with fruit as usual, and got several small bowls of yogurt as well.

Finding the most convenient table to the end of the food line, he took a seat and scanned for the new arrivals. New arrivals meant people who would be lost and confused. Renji did a good job of making a bulliten post last time...he should recommend abarai-fukutaicho do the same again this time.

[Waiting for Angel]

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"I didn't know it was possible until I saw it with my own eyes," Tamaki explained. "I've seen Ed do alchemy and Renji do magic. And you'll see it, too. I understand if you don't believe it - you probably come from my world, don't you? Where it's normal and these sort of things only happen in books or on TV or movies. But it's all true."

Mello would see soon enough.

"From your world?" Mello yawned again and pushed himself back into an upright position, somewhat unsteady. "I come from the real world. Yeah." He didn't know whether to trust Tamaki or not, and any uncertainty in that matter usually defaulted to suspicion. Still, Tamaki didn't seem to have the intelligence to attempt some kind of manipulation...after all, he'd thought Mello was female. It was a common mistake, sure, but it didn't speak well of his observational skills.

Again, he reached for a muffin, forgetting that it was blueberry until after he'd bitten into it. The headache was building, and the room continued to swim. Eating something more might help counterbalance whatever drugs had taken hold of his brain.

"So you're telling me that if I try to take one of them hostage, it'll turn into a monster?" He indicated one of the nurses with a vague, sloppy gesture. "You've tried this?" Hell, he was already drugged. It couldn't get much worse.

"We saw it happen the other day. They took us into town. But the town was the same as this place. And on the way back, they all...changed." Tamaki shivered again. "It was horrible." He poked at his bun, not wanting to think about that. And how he'd failed Ed, even if Ed had said he hadn't.

But there were other things to discuss.

"I'm from Japan. I go to Ouran Academy? You must have heard of it, it's one of the most prestigious schools in the world."

"No," Mello said, shaking his head. His hair fell over his eyes and was clumsily pushed aside. "I think I...there was a manga about it? Someone I knew used to read that junk." The word was familiar, but he'd never wasted his time with the stuff. He wasn't completely confident about the memory, either. He should have recognized the name of a prestigious academy, but it was possible that Tamaki was overestimating his school's reputation.

The idea of shapeshifting nurses was a bigger concern than Tamaki's history. They'd literally changed, right before his eyes? Mello munched on the muffin as he tried to conceive of that, then downed half his glass of milk in two swallows. In his drugged state, it hadn't occurred to him that the food might not be safe.

"A manga? Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be strange for Ouran to be in a manga. It is where all the wealthiest Japanese students go, after all." Tamaki only read historical romance, but it made sense to him.

"Are you alright, Mello-kun? You don't look very well...."

"I'm fine," Mello said curtly as he returned his glass to the table. It wobbled dangerously, and it was only luck that kept his attempt at straightening it from spilling it all over the table. He didn't appreciate the diminutive honorific, but he was in no condition to argue about it. Mello wiped the frosting from a cinnamon bun with his finger and quickly licked it clean. Whatever they'd drugged him with made him hungry, that much was certain. He was annoyed that there had only been one chocolate chip muffin on his plate.

"If it's such a prestigious school, you must know some chemistry," he deduced, though he was far from confident about the guess. "What drugs do they use on people who misbehave?" If Tamaki knew, it would give him an idea of how long he'd be in this pathetic state.

"Drugs? Some sort of sedative." Tamaki shrugged. "I've never been sedated, and I don't really personally know anyone who has been. Some sort of barbiturate, I'm sure. But not one of the anti-psychotic ones, that wouldn't be safe at all!" Despite his rather flaky personality, Tamaki was second in his class.

"They don't always use drugs though. That's only for patients who get very, very violent. And if it's very bad, I've heard you're locked in solitary confinement."

"Huh," Mello said. He'd expected something along the lines of 'the stuff that makes you sleepy,' so he was pleased by the intelligent answer. Barbiturates were a broad classification, though, and the knowledge didn't do much to reassure him. One to four hours, then, if the books he'd read as a child could be trusted. "Great," he mumbled. "Nice of them to worry about our safety, when they're not trying to kill us."

Mello groaned and rubbed the side of his face. At least he hid it well...but then, it didn't seem like Tamaki's observation skills were top notch. He wanted to glance around the cafeteria again, but he worried that too much movement would worsen the nausea.

"They act like they care, during the day. They try and tell us we're crazy, and we're not who we really are. They tell me my name is Jason Cole...." Tamaki frowned. "My name isn't really Suou Tamaki, technically, but it isn't Jason Cole, either. That's an English name. I'm not English at all!"

"Hrm," Mello said. He squinted at Tamaki, trying to deduce his nationality. He seemed to have the slightest hint of a British accent, but now that Mello thought about it, everyone here seemed to have a hint of accent identical to the one he'd cleared from his own voice when he moved to America. Odd. Did that mean they were in Europe? Tamaki said he was from Japan, but judging by his complexion, he wasn't completely Japanese.

Mello groaned again, more quietly this time. Too much information that didn't connect. "They're calling me the wrong thing, too," he said, though he didn't elaborate on his own complicated situation. "What country are we in? England?"

"We're in America," Tamaki said. "We don't know where, but we're sure it's America. I went to sleep in Japan in my world one night and woke up here, in America. I still don't know how they do it. But they do, and they took my friends as well." He took a bite of his bun.

"That's how we know we're not crazy. Most of us have friends here, people we've known for a long time. And we remember all the same things, and we know we're all not crazy."

"I went to sleep in Japan too," he said. It wasn't a complete lie...he'd lost consciousness in Japan, at any rate. "How do you know we're in America?" Mello wouldn't be surprised, but he needed something to substantiate the claim. "And they took other people you knew, too? Were you doing anything important out there?" Mello leaned back slightly as he thought, and very nearly lost his balance. He sat up quickly, trying to hide the mistake. "Tell me what was happening in the news when you...left Japan. Were there any unusual murders?" His best theory so far was that this was a special kind of limbo reserved for people who were killed by the Death Note, and although Tamaki didn't seem like a likely victim, Mello was reserving judgement. Although his gaze was unfocused, he was clearly listening with interest.

"We had our Spring Festival...." Tamaki said, thinking back to before this horrible place. "Oh, we're in America because all our doctors are American, and the town down the mountain is very American. And everyone there used American vernacular." There was no doubt in his mind that was where he was.

"Unusual murders? No... not very unusual." He tried to think. Just the usual, as far as he could remember. "What would be unusual?"

"But everyone here has a British accent," Mello said. He frowned in concentration, trying to pick up snatches of conversation around him, but everything sounded like it was underwater. Goddamn drugs. He scowled and pulled on a handful of his hair, deeply annoyed. He still didn't know how he hadn't seen that coming. He knew he was better than that.

Mello ignored the question. The most useful thing now would be to see what Tamaki did and didn't know; there'd be plenty of time to explain later if it was necessary. "Do you watch a lot of television?" he asked. Kira was all over the news. There was no way that Tamaki could have missed it, unless...

No. Even drugged, Mello was too smart to waste any thought on that multiple dimension crap.

"No they don't." Tamaki blinked. "No one has a British accent. Or, well, a few people from England do...." But everyone else spoke normally. Didn't they? Though everyone he'd spoken to lately had been speaking Japanese....

"I watch lots of television!" he announced. Mostly anime and old movies, but he did watch the news and a few game shows.

"You have a British accent," Mello pointed out. "It's subtle, though. Like you tried to get rid of it, and replace it with an American one. You're originally from Winchester, right?" He was confident in his identification. He'd spent the better part of his childhood surrounded by that intonation, and he'd recognize it anywhere. That had to be a clue, then. He cringed as the pieces failed to fall into place. Mello searched the walls for a clock, but groaned and gave up after a few dizzy glances. How much longer would he be stuck like this?

"Alright," he said as he pulled off a piece of cinnamon bun and then popped it into his mouth. "So what's your favorite channel? Who are your favorite news reporters?" The words, spoken quickly and slurred, would have been hard enough to understand even if they hadn't been spoken around a mouthful of food. A second later, Mello's eyes widened and he lifted a hand to silence any answer until after he'd swallowed. This time, he was careful to enunciate. "Wait. First. What year do you think it is?"

He'd been putting altogether too much faith in the teenager, he realized. It was possible that Tamaki had been here for much longer than a couple weeks.

"No I don't." Tamaki blinked, confused. "I've never even been to England! I was born in France, I grew up there. But I don't speak Japanese with an accent at all. Any accent." He'd grown up learning both, his Japanese was flawless!

"Oh, well, I like the channel that shows all those world history programs! I just adore world history! That is what you were asking, isn't it? What TV stations I watch? Oh, and the anime channel. My favorite...news reporters? Ah, I like Ando Yuko, she's on 'News Japan' and she writes books...." Oh dear. The date question.

"Well, I don't know what year it is here, or what year you come from, but the day before I left it was 2007."

"But..." Mello started, his expression deeply confused. They were speaking English, weren't they? He couldn't be that far gone. He mentally translated the conversation to Japanese, but his usual confidence was weakened. Either the drugs had hit him harder than he'd suspected, or Tamaki was completely insane. Either seemed like a possibility, and Mello filed away the rest of his language-based questions for a time when he was more confident in his abilities.

Tamaki's answer regarding the date was wrong, which he'd suspected, but it was the unusual number of qualifiers that interested Mello. He tilted his head in thought as he tried to decipher the meaning. If this was an afterlife, then it would make sense for people to come from different years, but surely Kira had killed more people than this. He hadn't recognized anyone that he'd had killed when the notebook was in his gang's possession, but then, he knew he couldn't trust his observation skills until he sobered up. Could there be different levels of limbo?

The best conclusion right now, he imagined, was that once people entered this place, they lost their sense of time. Mello absently picked at his muffin as he tried to concentrate, and crumbs spilled over the side of his tray. He'd have to start keeping a tally of days.

"Are we dead?" he finally asked. The question was spoken bluntly, as if it had just occurred to him, and judging from the startled expression that immediately crossed his face, he hadn't meant to ask it.

"But?" Oh dear, new people were always so confused. And Tamaki wasn't very good at explaining things.

"Ah, dead?" He shifted uncomfortably. "Er, I'm not. And, well, no one's really dead here. Not anyone that's walking around. Some people used to be dead, but aren't anymore. Ah...did you...were you...?"

How did you politely and delicately ask someone if they were dead?

Mello's expression again turned distant as he tried to process the possibilities opened by Tamaki's answer. How could the teenager know for certain that he hadn't been killed prior to waking up here? If the last thing he remembered was falling asleep, it could have easily happened overnight.

"I think so," Mello nodded. No reason to hide that fact. "What do you mean, 'some people used to be dead?' Is this some kind of afterlife, or isn't it?"

It figured that the afterlife would be some American mental hospital, he thought with irritation. He took another gulp of milk, but this time when he replaced the glass, it wobbled precariously before falling onto its side and spilling the remaining bit of liquid over the table. Mello cursed and pressed his hand hard against his head. Rather than try to clean up the mess, he glared at the milk as if daring it to drip over the edge. It seemed indifferent to his unspoken threat.

"Well, some people say they died," Tamaki explained. "But other people didn't. I know I didn't, and neither did any of my friends who are here." He took a napkin and mopped up the spill, never liking mess.

"This isn't the afterlife. It's some sort of...experiment, we think. We're like the rats. I'm really not very good at explaining it all, I'm afraid. It's just all so large and strange and doesn't make much sense."

Mello silently watched Tamaki clean the mess, glad that he hadn't had to do it himself. "Who's controlling the experiment, then?" he asked. He watched the glass rock back and forth for a few seconds before realizing that the movement was making him queasy. With some effort he sat the now-empty glass upright. If this actually was some kind of prison, knowing who was pulling the strings would be invaluable. If it wasn't, and Tamaki was just some deluded soul unwilling to confront the fact that he was dead, it would still be useful to know the commonly held misconception.

At least there was a question Tamaki could answer!

"His name is Martin Lande. He's the man you hear on the intercom. He showed himself once, but there was some sort of forcefield that kept people away from him. No one knows where he is during the day. Or at night. And the man on the radio and him are always fighting. It's all very confusing!"

The intercom...that must have been the scratchy sound he'd woken to during the night. Mello absently rubbed his finger over a few small, scattered droplets of milk that had been missed by Tamaki's napkin. "Martin Landel," he repeated, as if trying to trap the name in memory. Maybe he should have brought that empty book to take notes...but then, he hadn't anticipated having his mind compromised like this.

A force field wasn't possible without using a prohibitive amount of energy, but if this was the afterlife, the laws of physics probably didn't apply. Mello tried to reason through Tamaki's explanation as he continued drawing groggy, meaningless smears across the table with his index finger. Feeling things was strange. He missed his gloves. When he was back in his right mind, he'd be sure to have a long, meaningful, conversation with whatever nurse had done this to him, and this time, he'd be better prepared.

His finger stopped in the center of a small spiral and he furrowed his brow in a weak attempt at concentration. "Tell me everything you know about Martin Landel," he said. "And that other guy, the man on the radio." Hopefully, he'd be able to remember all of this.

"I... I don't know much." Tamaki frowned. Oh, there were so many better people Mello could be talking to about this! "Doctor Landel seems perfectly nice during the day, over the intercom, but at night he's terribly mean and cruel. He taunts us and things like that. He's in control of everything. The man on the radio used to be his friend, I think. Or his partner - they talk about it, at night sometimes. But now they're trying to defeat each other. The radio man talks in poems and songs and riddles, and I don't understand half of what he says!" Which was terribly counterproductive if he was trying to help.

"Oh! But last night, he did...something, and the intercom was off all night and there weren't as many monsters, and the Head Doctor was so very angry! But it was hard to tell, he could barely get his intercom to work!"

Day 30: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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