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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Sora had never attempted to remember Renji's full title, and the man didn't seem to mind if he just used the one name, anyway. It was probably just habit for him to go through the entire thing when he met someone new. "Same here," he told Brooklyn with a small smile. "I only have one name." That was all that had been needed back at Destiny Islands. The idea of meeting someone else named Sora was an odd one.

After a quick nod to Renji in regards to that heavy topic, Sora figured they should devote some time to filling in the new patient. Everyone had to learn about Landel's at some point, and it was best if it was sooner rather than later. It was unfortunate that Brooklyn had woken up in the middle of the night - that must have been really shocking for the poor guy!

"Oh, okay! Well, if you have any questions, me and Renji are good people to ask," he told the other patient with a quick smile. "We've both been around here for a while." He wasn't sure if that was something to be proud of, but at least it meant that he had a lot of information to share.

Renji shrugged one shoulder. "Titles come with bein' in the military," he said. "I worked hard to get that high. But it doesn't mean anythin' here. It's habit. So yeah, call me Renji if that's what you're comfortable with."

He continued eating his breakfast, speaking between mouthfuls. "Waking up in the middle of the night is kinda... rough. It's what happened to me. But maybe it's better to see what bullshit the daytime stuff is early, I guess. Every morning, we wake up in our rooms and have to listen to these assholes tryin' to convince us we're nuts. And then after dinner, all the doors on the rooms unlock and shit gets really weird. You any good at fighting? You'll do it a lot. If there's a weapon your good at, I can see if we got something that's at least weight the same way, or we can at least put you on the list for the alchemists. That just takes a while."

"Try to convince us that we're nuts, huh?" Wonderful. Because that would be so very difficult, Brooklyn mused sarcastically. It would be easy to convince others that he was insane, at least, especially if he tried to explain to them what he really was. Smooth.

"I'm... not really sure how good at fighting I am now," he admitted, leaning forward on the table so that his arms folded over each other. "I've been a bit altered from... my usual self. There's no real weapons I'm good at - though I did manage to get a hold of a shovel last night, for what it's worth."

Sora seemed like a nice enough kid. He still had his reservations on Renji, but the man was opening up pretty well now also. Perhaps he'd found a good table after all.

Wasn't Renji going a little too fast? He was probably sick of having to explain this for the umpteenth time, but Brooklyn wasn't going to be able to follow very easily if he spouted out too much at once. Sora figured he could do his best to fill in the blanks his friend had left, though.

"Yeah, they'll call you by some other name and say that your life was made up, but don't listen to them," he said, becoming almost serious for a moment. It would be horrible if someone was actually convinced into thinking that none of their friends or experiences were real, and Sora didn't want that happening to Brooklyn. "You might even see some of your friends around here eventually, so that'll make it pretty obvious that you're not crazy."

Sora hoped that the new patient found some of his friends soon, at least. At first he had been against the idea of his friends being forced into this horrible situation, but having them around made him that much more determined to get out. Besides, he could keep an eye on them!

Not that he had done such a great job of that with Kairi.

"A shovel, huh? That's pretty good! Where'd you find it?" Sora had never had to worry about getting his hands on a weapon, but he figured a shovel ranked pretty high as far as the makeshift weapons that could be found around the institute. Good for bashing!

Renji nodded. "It's... not unusual," when Brooklyn mentioned his form being altered. "There's several people that say the didn't look - and weren't - human before they got here. And I believe 'em, because they don't have human souls. These people here can make really advanced gigai... uh... false bodies, I guess. And chain a soul to them." He grinned at the thought of hitting people with a shovel. Before he got his sword, he would've killed for that. "Shovel's a better weapon than most people've got. Weight's probably off, I guess, but it's easier than just using the pens, right? It'd take a couple weeks before it'd be your turn with the alchemists anyway. 'specially with another new lot coming in."

He nodded again, at what Sora had to say about the institute. "They'll even drag people in that look like people you knew, and try to convince you that way you're nuts. Or..." he glanced at Sora and decided to let it drop there. He still wasn't that comfortable talking about Nowe, and didn't want to bring it up now. It was between him and Sora for now, for them both to deal with together.

"It's not safe to be alone at night," he said. "If you had kidou in your old life, you might still be able to use it, but it'll knock you on your ass. Best thing to do is have at least one person to watch your back. And now there's a monster that changes to look like people you used to know so it can try to eat you. There's a couple... clubs, guess we call 'em, like a joke. We're in Arts and Crafts... we mostly do exploration, try to rescue the people they're torturing on a given night, stuff like that."

"False bodies?" Brooklyn had patted himself down a couple times before he even realized it, as though feeling for seems or something else that might be out of place on a real body. It certainly felt real. "You mean we haven't just been magically transformed into a different being?" He'd always just assumed that was what had happened before. And why not? Couldn't Children of Oberon due something like that easily?

"And what's key...whatever you said? Is that like a type of martial art or something? I don't know any of that..." He probably just needed to shut his mouth before he sounded even less informed than he already did. Never mind where he was or why he'd been turned human - he couldn't even understand a lot of the things this guy was saying. He did get the part about not being alone at night. Looked like it was definitely a good thing Peter had run into him.

"I'm sorry. This is all a bit much. I just need to know why I'm here. And... torturing? What?"

Renji really needed to slow down! Sora watched as Brooklyn became more and more puzzled by what the redhead was saying, and he couldn't stop himself from letting out a small sigh and sending his friend a look. Sora wasn't very good with tact himself, but didn't Renji realize that he was just confusing the poor newcomer even further?

"Sorry," he interjected before Renji could say anything more. "Renji's just trying to give you as much info as he can before the shift ends, since there's a lot you need to know. We're not sure how they put people in other bodies. It might be magic, or it might be what Renji's talking about. And he just means that if you had any sort of magic or power before you came here, it's going to be really weak now, so you've gotta be careful." He felt like he was practically translating, but Renji didn't seem to realize that he couldn't explain everything in his own terms, since that wouldn't make much sense to someone who wasn't from his world. Then again, most of the other patients hadn't traveled to multiple worlds the way Sora had, so it was probably harder for them to understand that.

"We don't know why we're here, either," he said, looking a little apologetic at this. While they did have a lot of information to share, there was also a lot they still didn't know. "But people do get taken every other night and experimented on," he continued gravely. "It's really horrible, which is why we're doing our best to stop it."

While he had taken note of the way Renji had trailed off and sent him that glance, he couldn't worry about that right now. He wouldn't feel right sending Brooklyn away when he needed their help.

"Sorry," Renji said, looking down at the remains of his breakfast. "I wasn't thinking." He'd gotten used to just dumping everything he knew, making it like a report because in the last week or so, he had just been reporting to a superior office like normal. "I mean... I don't know. Guess it could happen that way, with the bodies, if people have that kind of kidou... uh... spirit arts? Alchemy? Magic?" He guessed the most common equivalents he'd heard. "But they've also stuck some people that aren't supposed to have bodies at all into bodies, so..." He shrugged. "It's all just guessing. This place is really goddamn frustrating."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "We know a lot of stuff now, but still not the important stuff," he said. It was frustrating. And he was annoyed with himself for just jumping headlong into an explanation. It wasn't like he hadn't been new recently, himself. "And it's real different, depending on where you're coming from."

Edited 2008-02-12 07:13 (UTC)

Well, he didn't have any magical abilities or any of... whatever they were talking about, but if weakening him had been the objective then they'd certainly succeeded. Being human meant being able to talk to other humans without them running scared, but it also left him a lot more vulnerable. As much as he enjoyed being able to chat like this, he wasn't human.

So these people knew a lot more than he did, but still very little about why things were actually done the way they were. That wasn't particularly promising, but at least he wasn't the only one slightly out of the loop. There was still one particular issue he wasn't willing to let slip past his radar just yet, however. "I'm sorry I'm making you rehash all this. But you mentioned torture. What were you talking about?"

The fact that Brooklyn was hung up on that particular fact gave Sora the idea that he was a pretty good guy. If Sora had been hearing all of this, he was pretty sure that was what he would be most worried about, too. He could still hardly believe the horrible things the institute did to the patients, some of them his close friends -- look what had happened to Kairi!

"Every other night, a few patients are taken up to these experimentation rooms and horrible things are done to them," he explained, staring morosely down at the table. "There's no way to stop it, but others do their best to get to them and help them afterward." He hadn't heard of any patients actually being able to interrupt the process while it was going on, since he was pretty sure the doors were tightly locked.

There seemed to be a commotion coming from one part of the cafeteria, and Sora lifted his head to see that there was a young girl and a few other patients trying to fight the staff. His eyes widened as he straightened in his seat slightly. What were they doing?!

Renji nodded. "And the nights they don't do that," he said, "they take a some prisoners and... do stuff to them. So they get their strength, their spirit, their weapons... everything back. And then attack the rest of us without mercy. And they remember it all the next morning, when they're back to themselves." He looked away. "Dunno which is worse."

He, too, notice the commotion. His eyes went wide as he saw it was River, what was happening to her, and then there were Daemon and... someone he didn't recognize. Without realizing it, Renji stood, hands against the table top. The muscles of his arms were tense; he was ready to bolt - much like the day he'd jumped over the table in front of Sora to go after Ichigo.

It sounded like he'd gotten stuck in a hellhole. They were definitely being toyed with. There was no other explanation. People being tortured one night and sent against their friends the next? A game for someone. He was nobody's plaything.

When the commotion started up he figured he shouldn't be surprised. With this many people in this sort of situation it was only a matter of time before some of them rebelled. Surely this happened on a regular basis?

He stood up when Renji did. It might turn into an all out brawl, but he needed to test out this new body appropriately, right? These weren't monsters, just other humans, and Brooklyn could stand to let off some steam.

Sora should have expected that Renji would want to get involved at the first sight of a fight, but that didn't mean that it was a good idea! When Brooklyn seemed to share the sentiment, the Keyblade Master sent them both looks of disbelief.

"Don't make it worse!" he insisted, getting to his feet as well, but only so that he could grab Renji by the wrist in a feeble attempt to make him stay put. He knew that the man could shake him off if he really wanted to, but Sora wasn't against jumping on his back to stop him. Renji got sedated enough already - with his track record, jumping into another fight might lead to him getting thrown into solitary confinement.

He glanced over to Brooklyn and shook his head. "You don't want to get sedated, do you?" Sora could understand that people were angry with the staff, but the nurses never did anything to hurt them (during the day, at least). Lashing out like this wasn't going to lead to anything good!

Renji jumped when Sora grabbed his wrist, but didn't try to shake it off. He didn't sit, either, not yet. But he also didn't make a move. "Not really," he said. It wasn't like he enjoyed that feeling, or any of the things that might result.

"I don't know if it can get much worse," he said. "Maybe if everyone started fightin' at once, though, we'd get somewhere." They hadn't ever tried that, either.

He looked down at Sora. "Sorry," he said. He wasn't certain what he was apologizing for, yet. But he still kept an eye on the fight.

Brooklyn was stopped in his tracks the same as Renji, if only because he wasn't sure what to do if the red-head wasn't doing anything. Sedation? He'd been sedated before (though not here), and from Renji's expression it looked like he had been too. Well dang.

He agreed with Renji - there were so many of them! If they all banded together surely they could overpower the staff? Then again, if it was that simple then why hadn't it been done before? This was also assuming that most of the other patients would be helping them. Some of them looked rather young to be thrown in a fight like that.

But still... "We're just going to stand down, then?"

While Sora could understand where Renji was coming from (everyone working together and maybe they could overpower their captors), he didn't think it would work. The Head Doctor had to be prepared for this sort of thing, didn't he? Besides, attacking these poor women wasn't going to get them anywhere.

Things were only getting worse, though, as other patients got into their own fights all over the cafeteria. Everything was quickly turning chaotic and Sora watched as nurses and orderlies ran around, trying to contain the situation. He noticed one of the patients as he got onto a table and started yelling for others to join on, but Sora couldn't shake the feeling that they were just going to make things worse if they let this continue.

It was then that he noticed Rukia was getting involved - he saw her topple off of a table and onto a nurse, and he imagined Renji had also witnessed it. He removed his hand from Renji's wrist, but only so that he could link elbows with the man -- and then he dug his feet in.

"Attacking these nurses isn't going to do anything!" he continued to argue, directing his comments to both Renji and Brooklyn. "All you're going to do is get yourself and other people hurt!"

Renji's eyes went wide as he saw Rukia dive off the table. "Rukia!" He took a step forward, but was stopped short by Sora grabbing his arm. He looked back at Sora; he didn't want to just jerk away from him; while Rukia was always his first priority, Sora was important to him as well. Every instinct he had screamed that he should be right there with Rukia, because that was how it always was, how it always should be. But he also couldn't quite bring himself to shove Sora away. He didn't want to hurt him, ever, physically or otherwise, and he knew what it felt like to push someone he cared about away, even in such a simple sense. He never wanted to feel that again.

He didn't know what to do. He had two equal, but perfectly opposite impulses. It wasn't something he knew how to deal with. "Sora, let me go," he said.

Like that would do any good.

He noticed two of the larger orderlies moving closer to them; two of the really big guys, the ones that normally were there to dogpile him when he started shit. They weren't being all that obvious, and weren't being aggressive, but they were there, and obviously waiting for him - and maybe Brooklyn - to try to jump in.

"Shit!" He turned his head back toward Sora, the look in his eyes all but pleading, begging to be let go.

Sora seemed so adamant. Brooklyn didn't want to let the kid down in what might end up being a pointless struggle. The boy had been there longer than he had, anyway. He probably knew what the staff here was capable of. The gargoyle liked a fight as well as any member of his clan, but he wasn't the most irrational of them.

Still wishing he could help out in some way, he found himself returning to his seat. It was for the kid's sake, he told himself.

In the end, what right did he really have to keep Renji from doing what he wanted? Especially seeing how Rukia was involved - if Kairi had decided to join in (which she hadn't, and Sora was glad to see that she knew better), he would have felt the same way, after all.

The look he got from the man made him quickly pull his arm away and let it fall back to his side limply. "Sorry, I shouldn't have... You can go if you want to." He was going to get hurt (probably) and sedated (definitely), but Sora had no place in holding him back.

Brooklyn had taken a seat, at least, and Sora figured he could stay with him and make sure he stayed safe. As a brand new patient, this had to be a lot for him to take in.

Renji gave Sora a look that was something like gratitude when the boy let go. When he looked over toward Rukia's table again, though, she was already down, being stuck with one of the damn needles. Seeing that made him feel ill, like his breakfast had turned into stone in his stomach.

He started forward, no longer intending to fight; he mostly just wanted to get to her. The two orderlies headed him off before he'd taken more than a couple steps.

"Just have a seat, Kyle," one said. "We don't want things to get any more exciting."

For a moment, Renji clenched his hands in to fists. Doing his best to sound reasonable, he said, pointing toward where Rukia was, "I just want to go make sure my friend is okay."

The orderly looked over his shoulder. "She's fine. The nurses are taking good care of her. Now, please sit."

He thought about hitting the man, long and hard. But he also knew that would end up with him sedated as well, and no closer to Rukia. He'd just have to get to her as soon as he could after breakfast. Gut churning at yet another reminder of how damn helpless they were during the day - at least at night, they could fight - he went back to his seat next to Sora. He sat down with a thump that set the trays on the table rattling, and put his face in his hands. Somewhere between stewing and fuming, he muttered, "I hate this bullshit."

Brooklyn fidgeted, frowning at the room in general and feeling helpless. But what was he supposed to do? Sora had been right about the sedation. It looked like people were going down right and left and he couldn't make out any that were actually making any positive impact. What would be a positive impact, anyway? It was like a battlefield, except there were innocent bystanders thrown into the middle of it.

"Does this... happen a lot?" he asked, hesitating to bother an obviously infuriated Renji but needing to know. One would think that if it did, others would already know the outcome and not get involved - unless people had actually managed to escape this way. Then again, if there were new people like him arriving all the time...

What a mess. There was still a possibility that he was dreaming all this, wasn't there? He'd wake up in the evening and he'd have his wings again and everything would be back to normal.

...But the sun. He was pretty sure that even at his best he wouldn't be able to imagine the way the sun actually felt. That short experience kept this whole crazy world feeling too real to dismiss as fantasy.

Sora sat down, though he kept an eye on Renji as he attempted to head over, only to be stopped by two orderlies. That didn't seem very fair, especially since he was only trying to check and make sure that Rukia was all right, but the staff was probably pretty wary of him since he had started fights in the past.

He jumped a little when Renji fell back into his seat and caused the plates to rattle, but frowned sympathetically and set a hand on the man's shoulder for a moment. "I know. I'm sorry."

Glancing to Brooklyn, he quickly shook his head. "This is the first time I've seen anything like this happen." He couldn't stop himself from watching as more and more of the patients who had been fighting started to fall to the ground, succumbing to the effects of sedation. It was a little disheartening, actually, but Sora had gotten the feeling from the start that it wouldn't work.

It bothered him a little, that he couldn't have faith in things working out. But night was the time for that, right?

When the intercom came on, Sora pulled his hands up to cover his ears while still trying to take in the words. They were going back to their rooms now?

Nurses were already heading toward them. Sora let out a sigh and looked to Renji again. "I'm sorry," he repeated. If he hadn't held him back, he might have been able to get to Rukia before those men got in the way. Once his nurse arrived, Sora stood up and let her grab him by the wrist so that she could lead him safely out of the room.

If it was possible, Renji was even less happy when the orderlies started taking people out of cafeteria. He stood, stepping a little away from the one coming at him, just in case he got any big ideas about grabbing his arm like the nurse had done with Sora.

"Where are you taking them?" he demanded.

The orderly gave him a soothing smile. "Everyone's just going back to their rooms now," he said.

Renji watched a nurse pick up Rukia, who was limp and obviously unconscious. "What about her?"

"She's just going back to her room too. We don't want anyone to get hurt. You don't need to worry."

He didn't trust it. He didn't trust anything these people said or did, ever. But he also didn't have a hell of a lot of choice. He could fight them - he wanted to, just because he was so upset and anxious - and it wouldn't do a bit of good.

He made a sound like a strangled, frustrated growl, then looked at Sora. "Hey, don't worry about it. Find me again when we're out, okay?" he said. They still needed to talk about their business as well. And to Brooklyn, he said, "If you can find me again, or Rangiku - tall blonde lady, really... curvy - we can finish the talk we started." He wished he could point Ran out, but with the chaos, it was impossible.

Hating every step of it, he let the orderly lead him out of the cafeteria. He kept his eye on Rukia as long as he could. It wasn't nearly long enough.

Edited 2008-02-14 21:55 (UTC)

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Day 30: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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