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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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!"

Hmm. Mello chewed his lip as he tried to find a place for all of the information. He felt as if he were operating on two levels: his usual self, which processed knowledge and formed conclusions almost as quickly as usual, and the densely drugged part of his consciousness that refused to acknowledge those conclusions or provide supporting evidence. It felt like swimming against a strong current. He was silent for several seconds as he picked at the tape that held a square of gauze to his forearm. Why would two people fight over intercoms and radios? Even if they weren't willing to meet face to face, there were telephones for that.

"They wouldn't involve so many people in a private fight unless they had something to gain from it," he said. It took Mello far more time than it should have to sort through everything he'd been told. "If the man on the radio only communicates at night, when the staff turns into monsters, he's probably a monster himself, and if Landel's personality changes that much every twelve hours, then he's not in complete control either." The idea that the nurses in the building were some kind of Cinderella-style lycanthropes was absurd, but the drugs had raised his threshold for outlandish ideas and he intended to use that to his advantage. Mello fell silent for another lengthy moment, but no conclusion was forthcoming. Surely, the location itself wasn't sentient. Although stuff like that wasn't unheard of in mythology, he preferred to take the more mundane route of inquiry until he had a reason to do otherwise. "Whoever's controlling this has to be someone that's not affected by it. Are there any people who act the same during the day and the night?"

"I think during the day," Tamaki said, tapping his lips with his finger. "It's a play. And Doctor Landel is just pretending to be nice. I think he's really always like he is at night. But over an intercom, it's easy to hide. I don't know about the man on the radio... he was here last night, and one of my friends went to see him. I'm still waiting to hear what happened." He finished off his bun and thought.

"The only people who act the same are us. We never really see anyone else. Who's... really human, anyway. The nurses can't be, if they're monsters at night. And we never see the doctor or the man on the radio. Oh, and our normal doctors go home at night. They aren't here when all this happens."

That made sense, he supposed, but why would anyone waste their time with an elaborate play? From what Tamaki said about the hospital, it seemed to fit with most ideas of limbo: some place to be tested or to do penance, but not as bad as an actual hell. He wasn't completely sold on the idea of the afterlife, but every time he tried to think too deeply, the room began wavering again.

Mello continued to pick at the gauze and tape as he thought, hoping something would click into place without too much effort. He remembered the bats, and their rotting, disgusting bodies. Something had felt off about the outdoors, but-

"We can't be in America," he said, sitting up as he remembered one of the details he'd been grasping for. "The stars outside aren't the constellations from the Northern Hemisphere. They're not any constellations at all."

"It isn't our America," Tamaki reminded him. "It's some other America, in some other dimension." So of course the constellations would be different. "People have said little things aren't quite right like that."

Mello groaned in frustration. For some reason, it was easier for him to accept the possibility that he was stuck in some bizarre afterlife than the possibility that there were dozens of parallel earths. He'd studied long and hard as a child to get his mind around advanced science, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let the whole thing go that easily. He was almost offended by the concept.

"What's your evidence for this alternate dimension junk?" he asked. He jabbed his finger against the crumbs on his plate and licked it clean. "I need something better than 'it's what the other people here say.' You're telling me that nurses turn into monsters every night. You have no way of knowing that the other patients are real." Which, of course, would make Tamaki unreal too, but Mello would deal with that possibility later.

"Because there's no other explanation," Tamaki explained. "We're all real. And so many of us come from different worlds and different times, there isn't any other way to explain it." It was just simple logic, really. Of course they were all real, why wouldn't they be? And Tamaki knew that for a fact because you couldn't kiss not-real people. And not-real vampires couldn't leave a mark on your neck. And not-real girls didn't make you....

Well, feel very nice indeed, to put it politely.

Apparently, Tamaki wasn't too familiar with the concept of evidence. Mello stared at him for a long moment as he reviewed the statement, but still, there was nothing solid to grasp onto. "Just because you can only think of one explanation doesn't mean it's right," he pointed out. The words weren't a criticism, but a statement of fact. "Everything here could be a simulation. These other people might be constructs put here as part of a test, or to mess with your head. You can't just..."

Mello's explanation paused as he picked up a painfully cheerful female voice. No one could be that goddamn perky in a place like this, except for that idiotic... Distracted, he glanced around the room once more, and this time, everything stayed in one place although movements were still wrapped in a blurred halo. He couldn't pick out the blond girl, but--

He gasped loudly and pushed himself back, very nearly falling off his chair. That wasn't possible. It couldn't be. Even if he and L were both dead, even if they'd both been killed by Kira's notebook, they couldn't exist in the same place. It was an emotional truth rather than a logical one, and those were far harder to challenge.

When the man he'd been staring at raised his finger to his lips, Mello gave a quick nod and turned back to the table, but his eyes were still wide and he didn't complete the statement he'd broken off a few seconds earlier. Even if he'd been able to think at his usual level, he wouldn't have known what to make of L's presence. His whole identity was tied up in the fact that the man no longer existed, and Mello felt deeply disoriented, as if part of himself had been negated.

He stared at the table as his mind raced to make sense of the evidence, but this new sense of confusion was even more powerful than the barbiturates. He seemed to have completely forgotten about Tamaki.

"But... there aren't any other explanations." Tamaki didn't see why that was such a difficult concept to grasp. He was confused when Mello suddenly seemed stricken by something. Tamaki had seen that expression before, so many times.

"Mello-kun?" He glanced over his shoulder, perplexed. "Is everything alright? Is something that matter? Did you see someone? If you're scared of someone, you've no need to fear! I'll protect you!" He knew people had enemies in this place. Like Ed. And even if those enemies seemed nice....

Fortunately, Mello was too stunned to take offense at Tamaki's offer. "Uh," he said quite eloquently as he continued staring at the table.

L wanted him to act as if he hadn't noticed him. Why? This wasn't some normal afterlife, then, where they sat around and waited out eternity. L was planning something. But what? If he hadn't found a way out in five years, it was possible that they actually were trapped here. He chewed on his fingertips as he tried to untangle the detective's thought process. Misa's voice had been forgotten in the confusion.

"No, I'm fine," he said a few seconds later. Some of the slurring had faded and the words were easier to understand, though his voice was still distracted. He didn't seem scared, exactly, but overwhelmed. There were too many emotions to sort through, and many of them were contradictory.

L was alive. More accurately, both of them were dead, but they were still on the same level of existence. His childish excitement would have been happiness had it not been shot through with anxiety. What did that mean for him? As a child, he'd wanted nothing more than L's approval, but in recent years, he'd focused his energy on surpassing his predecessor's accomplishments. With L here, that was no longer possible...not to mention that if L knew Mello had been killed by Kira, he would assume that he'd made a mistake, and the excuse "I knew that would happen," had stopped working when he was ten. God damn it.

"You don't look fine," Tamaki pointed out. "It's alright... I won't let anything bad happen to you." He may not be that good at fighting, but Tamaki would do his best when it came to his friends. And unfortunately, poor Mello was now counted among those ranks.

"Oh dear..." Tamaki frowned, distracted by the commotion as...what was going on? He frowned, nervous, aware that Very Bad Things were happening. Oh, fights broke out during the day often, but not like this...

"Ah, Mello-kun? Maybe we should...." Should what? Hide under the table? Actually, that seemed like a perfectly good idea at the moment....

"I'm just sick," Mello pointed out. It was a half-truth...the feeling of being drugged was similar to having a high fever, he was discovering, and he didn't want anyone to know that he'd been bested by a damn nurse. L could probably tell, he realized with annoyance and embarrassment.

"Huh?" he said a few seconds later. He followed Tamaki's gaze to the fight and his eyes widened. "Don't do anything," he said immediately. This could be a valuable opportunity. He turned in his chair to face the fight, his eyes darting between the nurses, the patients, and the doorway. "Wait until the nurses stop coming. If they're all busy dealing with this, we might be able to get out." He glanced back to L, wondering if the detective had the same idea, but L seemed to be watching with an indecipherable expression. Well, he'd figure it out soon enough, Mello imagined.

He watched the fight with intense concentration, trying to compensate for the sluggishness of his thoughts.

"I could get you some water...?" Tamaki frowned. This wasn't a very good situation to be sick in! He frowned and looked around, and was quite willing to do nothing. He wasn't a fighter!

"Ah..." What about his friends? "Mello-kun, thank you very much, but I can't just run away with you like that! I'm terribly flattered, of course, but I have to make sure my friends are all right!"

"You'd stay in this hellhole to check on your friends?" he asked incredulously, then cringed when he realized that the statement probably didn't cast his own ethics in a positive light. Based on that, it was safe to say that his self-control and intelligence were still compromised. Was this plan as good an idea as he thought?

Even if this was an afterlife, escape was worth attempting. A few quick glances around the room revealed far more gauze than he liked to see in one place, and many of the injured people looked strong and self-reliant. As someone who relied on weapons for intimidation, he suspected he might be in over his head. Then again, L looked fine, and considering this terribly disorganized riot, intelligence seemed in short supply here. All the brawn in the world wouldn't save an idiot.

Or someone who chose loyalty over self-interest. It was useful to know that Tamaki was that type, though. It might prove useful in the future.

The fight was still going strong, and the stream of orderlies and nurses seemed endless. An opportunity to escape was unlikely. At least he wouldn't be the only sedated one...that should make it easier to gather information.

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Day 30: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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