damned_institute | Day 30: Staff, Morning

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Day 30: Staff, Morning

Burly orderlies and agile Calm Effect nurses flooded the cafeteria from the Courtyard while regular hall nurses filed in from the Sun Room and ushered out those not involved in the rebellion. It indeed seemed as if Landel was sending out all the cavalry, and an effective cavalry they were: The riot didn't continue for much longer after the alarm sounded, though it seemed strange just how quickly all of the mutinous patients fell, even the ones who hadn't been injected with anything.

The hall nurses were quick to escort their well-behaved charges back to their rooms, praising those who hadn't joined in and chiding those who muttered under their breath in response. There were some exceptions, of course: One nice young man had even defended one of the nurses from the violent patients! Now, wasn't that exemplary behavior? Dr. Landel would be so proud to hear about it...

Within half an hour, all of the so-called "loyal" patients had been safely deposited in their rooms, and it was then that the alarm finally stopped and the true difficulty of the situation was tackled. There certainly weren't enough rooms in solitary to accommodate such rampant disobedience, and yet measures would have to be taken to ensure proper consequences for each and every patient involved. After all, something like this couldn't be allowed to happen again!

Different options were considered. Perhaps they should make an example out of the girl who had sparked the riot, but then again, perhaps not. This certainly wasn't the first case of patients attacking nurses or their peers in a crowded area, but what had been different this time was the sheer support that the other patients had shown for her. Should the staff then make examples of all those who had tried to "protect" her from the well-meaning nurses? No, there were too many for that...

In the end, it was decided that the best immediate solution would be to treat the rebellious patients in the Medical Wing while they were unconscious and then move them back to their rooms to await punishment. To ensure the safety of both their roommates and the patients themselves, however, the staff decided to securely fasten their limbs to their beds and keep them heavily drugged. Such a sad sight they were to see, but... it was necessary.

Finally, when each and every patient had been escorted back to their respective rooms, the staff hurried off to an emergency meeting upstairs. Strangely, Head Nurse Lydia was the one taking care of the proceedings in the Head Doctor's stead. She calmly told them that he was preoccupied with more urgent matters, and as she began to speak to the crowd, the staff could only wonder what could possibly be more important than an unprecedented patient riot...

[ Comment to this post with separate threads for each patient room, and please put your character's room number in the subject line. Thank you! ]

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Nathan wasn't exactly sure what to say about that, despite being a man of many words in his prime. Sorry your friends keep dying? It was a sobering notion to entertain, especially now that he knew Claire was here. Sure, she had a better chance of surviving than most of the people here if she had even a fraction her power, but it didn't keep him from worrying. He'd let too many things slip through his fingers, and whether or not he could ever be a father to her wasn't the point.

He couldn't be responsible for anyone else...

Nathan stopped himself short on that, shaking his head and focusing again on the conversation at hand.

"Yeah," he answered simply before tossing in, "Or we could talk about all the morons that got us set to our rooms. Your choice. I'm not picky."

Cid snorted at that, looking towards the ground as he shook his head.

"If you're fresh meat, then you prolly don't know just how much this place can drive you to that." He glanced back up at Nathan, expression a little more sobered. "New people comin' in all the time, old people disappearin' without a fuckin' trace, people not rememberin' shit because they're from further in the past than the rest of their friends - hell --" his eyes hardened as his tone got a little more frustrated "-- I'm one of that last kind."

He paused and added with a sigh:

"And as if that ain't enough of a hell, there's the brainwashing..."

"Further in the past..." Nathan's voice trailed off again as Cid's words all but confirmed what had happened to Claire, why she didn't hate or remember him. "Is that even possible? Wouldn't it make more sense that some of the patients have amnesia?"

And the brainwashing... He'd thought after being attacked by the mole men that he'd come to terms with the fact that this place didn't make sense, even by the Company's standards. Nathan leaned forward, shoulders hunched and hands folded in his lap.

Things were getting more and more complicated. Again.

"Hey, man, I don't make the rules around here," Cid grumbled, running a hand through his hair. "Trust me, I know: I'm a goddamn spaceship engineer, and this place has been breakin' my brain for... fuck, over two weeks now."

Two weeks... Cid had to pause in his speech and just think over that for a second. He finally shook his head and grit his teeth, looking to the side.

"I thought it was amnesia too, at first. Some pretty important shit went down and then I lost consciousness and wound up here - buddy of mine showed up too, but he couldn't remember said important shit. Then, some more of our comrades started showing up, all from a goddamn crazy future, and I wouldn't have believed them unless they looked different..."

He trailed off. The AVALANCHE members had started fading into the literal ether left and right after that, but he'd whined enough to Nathan already.

The more he thought he was at least beginning to cope with the incredibly hard to buy reality of it all, the more prone he was to being slapped in the face with information like this. Nathan closed his eyes and sighed, taking another of many moments to digest everything Cid was telling him. It felt more and more like the last, couple shreds of sanity he clung to were slipping away, and it sickened him that that was probably just what the sick bastards behind this place wanted, Company or not.

Nathan didn't comment further. He didn't raise anymore futile questions, and he didn't intend to do so any time in the near future. There wasn't any use in asking; nobody really knew what the hell was going on anyway. The only thing certain and true was that they were all stuck there, and there wasn't any easy way out, not for any of them.

"You like to fly, I take it." Chosing to pursue the unlikely topic of the other man's career over the mind-breaking laws of Landels, Nathan couldn't help but indulge his own, inner, dry sense of what could sometimes be called humor.

If there was one topic of conversation that could have cheered Cid up from his morose state of mind, it was this. The pilot perked up immediately as the subject came up, and he wore a wide grin as he answered.

"Like to? Hell, it's what I live for!" He said in a tone far more upbeat than his previous muttering. He brushed his knuckle against the side of his nose and smirked. "I'm the best goddamn pilot on the face of the planet - my planet, anyway. Flew in the Wutai War and did enough damage to earn me my own space program once I did some engineering for the company bastards. Woulda gone up in the No. 26 model if it weren't for a faulty oxygen tank and a bunch of goddamn bureaucrats..."

Cid trailed off as his eyes lost a little of their light. There was someone else he could have blamed for all of that, and just a month ago, he would have. Shera had saved his life, even if it'd been in a fucking stupid way, and he'd only repaid her with being an asshole to the point of abuse for years.

He'd seen her and apologized his damn heart out before going off to his potential death, but it didn't excuse a damn thing until he got back home and proved his sincerity ten times over. He definitely wasn't anywhere close to marrying the woman, as much as his future-sent comrades might try to tell him, but he wasn't going to abandon her either. He owed her that much.

"Anyway," he finally ended with a sigh, rubbing his eyes and realizing that about half his explanation had probably gone over Nathan's head. "Yeah, I feel cooped up if I can't get off the ground, so you can imagine how much this place is pissing me off."

Nathan listened to Cid's animated explanation, actually somewhat amused by the engineer/pilot despite himself. Sure, he didn't understand what the Wutai War was, but he wasn't a moron; it actually seemed like he could relate to his loud, somewhat crude roommate after all.

"You have no idea," Nathan answered him finally, looking away as he thought, not about his time as a pilot in the service, but to something he'd just grown so accustomed to. To be able to fly... it had been like a black mark on his otherwise flawless image for so long, but to now have it taken away, reduced to just being able to hover... Well, if he was being honest with himself, it felt like being shackled to the ground.

"I was in the service as a pilot too." Clearly a better, easier explanation than the other option.

Cid's head snapped up and he stared at the man in front of him.

"Y'serious?" He asked, and the shock on his face soon turned into a grin even wider than before. It occurred to him that this was too big of a coincidence to be just that, but he didn't really care at the moment. "Well, fuck me if that ain't the best thing I've heard all week! Another dogfighter!"

It was only after his initial response that Cid realized there was another level of excitement to all this. After all, if this Nathan guy was from a different world, it meant that his brand of civilization might have different technology, different methods of propulsion, and different ideas for Cid to take note of and implement once he got back home. Hell, if what Barret and the others had said about cutting off mako-usage was right, he'd have to figure out a new way to power his babies.

"So," he asked, leaning forward and feeling more lively than he had in a long damn time, "what'd you fly?"

"Don't get your hopes up. After that, I got into politics," Nathan warned the other man, only half-joking as Cid certainly didn't seem the type who would be terribly fond of the government.

His roommate's question did stir up a lot of old memories, though, memories he rarely paid any attention to, so focused on the future and his career that the old days had just become another platform to speak from in his campaign. It was kind of sorry that he'd forgotten so much about where he'd come from. It wasn't until much later that he'd realized how much it all meant, everything. His life, his family...

Nathan sighed and than allowed himself to laugh at the twisted humor of it all. What did he fly...

"F-15 Eagle, among things. It's been a while, though. You?" he asked, surprised to find himself actually acting like a social, human being again.

Nathan hadn't been wrong about Cid's preconceptions of government, though given where he came from, he had some good reasons for the negativity. Cid tried to take that into account as he heard the other man's words - tried to think, hey, maybe that world's government was more like the times before Shin-Ra than like Shin-Ra itself, but he still couldn't wrap his mind around the comment. After all, why the hell would someone throw away the sky for something like that? He'd heard of some war heroes going into Shin-Ra management as soon they'd gotten some clout with the public, but those guys were scumbags and Cid found himself sorely disappointed that the other airman might be that brand of asshole.

Then again, the guy had already expressed his understanding of Cid's sentiments, and Reeve had turned out all right in the end even if he'd kinda been a pussy.

Literally.

Cid then turned his attention to Nathan's explanation of what he flew, and though he should've been expecting some alien jargon, his insane amount of expertise in the field didn't really allow him to fully brace himself for it.

"F-15 whatnow?" He blinked dumbly, scratching the side of his head. "Uh, Shin-Ra P56 Monstrenco here, along with pretty much everything else under the sun, but I've got a feelin' we ain't on the same technological ground."

Two pilots from two different worlds. Nathan supposed it made sense that he had no idea what a Shin-Ra P56 Monstrenco was, though he imagined that, unless Gaia or whatever was drastically different from his own home, they were used for the same end.

Really. War stories and technological babble wasn't really his expertise.

"I guess we're not. But flying's flying, right?" Even though he was all to aware that that was hardly the case in personal experience.

"Damn right," Cid managed a smirk, and though he wanted real bad to ask for gross detail on what an F-15 Eagle was, he held back for the sake of his pride. The man was his roomie, after all, which meant they'd probably be seeing a good amount of each other unless Nathan disappeared ominously like the last guy.

"So, I'm guessin' from what you said that you still fly now, right?" Cid asked as he leaned against the wall on the side of his bed, trying to look calm and cool even if he still felt really damn excited.

Nathan had to laugh at that. It was possible that, if he spilled the beans, Cid would be interested, even a little envious, considering how much he obviously loved to fly. Still, reservations remained ever-present, the result of a long, long time spent ignoring and holding back and wishing his ability would disappear for the sake of his career. Nathan just sighed.

"Yeah. I still fly." He probably didn't even have to ask whether Cid did or not.

"That's great," Cid grinned, absentmindedly reaching into his pants pocket for a cigarette that didn't exist. The pilot stared down at his empty palm as he pulled it out again, wondering what amount of relaxation he must've achieved if he'd forgotten, even for just a split second, the craphole situation he'd landed himself in.

In any case, even if the guy was in politics, he still flew, so... heh, he could still be an asshole; pilots tended to be arrogant dicks as far as the stereotype went, and ...well, Cid's own personality wasn't helping the cause.

"So hey," he asked, turning the conversation in a different direction, "what's your world like, anyway? There any physics laws that can bend space-time, bridge alternate universes, and bring dead guys back to life?"

Cid could guess what the answer would be, but hey, a man could dream.

"Oh, just the usual," Nathan replied casually, with a grin that would probably imply that he was kidding. "Guys flying through the air, women punching holes in walls, office workers learning how to travel back in time..." His tone turned somber again as he realized he was in the same boat, wishing against all hope that there was some way...

But you couldn't get do-overs like that. Not in his world, not in this one. The hard truth of it was plain as day. He sighed again, for at least the thousandth time that hour.

"I haven't heard of anyone bringing the dead back to life, though."

"Right, right," Cid snorted good-naturedly in response to Nathan's joking, waving a hand at him as he looked away. The pilot didn't really notice the other man's expression turn somber, instead arching a brow thoughtfully and beginning to ramble himself. "Though I gotta say, in my world, one of my buddies, Tifa... man, she could punch through that and worse, and then I guess we have, y'know, sentient alien plagues, but..."

The pilot trailed off from his interruptive muttering as soon as Nathan added his last sentence. Cid blinked at his roomie, looking simultaneously amazed and dubious.

"Wait, y'serious?" As far as Cid's life experience went, he himself had some pretty sweet jumping skills, and then Tifa could kick ass, and then there was the sentient alien plague, but aside from some Haste-casting to speed movement up, he'd never heard of anyone achieving actual time travel.

So if Nathan's world actually had that... well, it could clear shit up, that was for sure.

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Day 30: Staff, Morning

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