damned_institute | Day 30: Cafeteria, Dinner

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Day 30: Cafeteria, Dinner

The cafeteria was all but empty when Zelnick got there. He was a little disappointed; he had gotten the impression that patients usually ate dinner in their rooms, so he hadn't arranged to meet anyone, and there really wasn't anyone to sit by and engage in conversation yet.

Quietly, he collected dinner and a big glass of orange juice, and chose a seat near the food-serving counters. Talking for so long had made him thirsty... and, well, fruit juice was a luxury he had missed.

[Stalk away, my dearest Admiral. <3 ]

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[*parks car*]

The sight of his nakama flanked by two guards wasn't something that really surprised Zoro anymore. Of course, this was Usopp, not any of the others commonly associated with the words "reckless endangerment" but the sniper was a Straw Hat Pirate. Trouble was an integral part of their lifestyle whether they wanted it to be or not.

"Hey Usopp," Was his greeting as he settled across the table from the sniper. "I need to ask you something."

"Oh, Zoro!" Usopp smiled widely as Zoro sat down, despite Zoro's uncheerful attitude. Seeing Zoro neutral-to-scowling was normal. "You didn't get involved in the fight, huh?"

In an odd way, as funny as he thought the orderlies watching over him were, he was also a little proud of it. Look at me! Bad news, right here! Better watch out! Then again, Zoro had done the more intelligent thing by staying out of it--

This place really did make everything seem backwards. "Sure, what's up?"

"Nah, didn't feel like it." Zoro smirked, darkly amused but a little tense overall. His gaze flicked up toward Usopp's guards for a moment, hand hesitating slightly before pulling out the picture he'd tucked into his waistband that morning. In it were two grinning people seated on a bench in a Doyleton park: there was Zoro in a dark green baseball cap and, next to him, a fair, black haired girl with two equally black eyes.

Slowly, he slid it over to Usopp.

"I got a visitor yesterday. She gave me this." He explained, keeping his expression carefully neutral, "The picture doesn't look fake but it can't be real either. There any way to explain it?"

If there was anyone Zoro trusted who'd know the tricks to this kind of thing, it would be Usopp. The picture didn't make sense but Zoro knew better than to assume things about it. The whole situation sincerely required an answer he wasn't really equipped to give and, somehow, the picture wasn't as easy to ignore as it should have been. Had that actually been the case, an explanation of "mystery photo" (probably from Luffy) would have sufficed and said mystery photo would have already been burning down in photo-hell.

"Huh." Seemingly oblivious of the guards now that he was in conversation, Usopp leaned forward to look closely at the photo. The people here talking about how everything he knew was a lie, that was familiar, but actual photographs were new. He stared over it, only pausing to lean back for a moment and take another bite of his barbecue and chew while he thought.

The background looked like the park back at Doyleton. He'd spent long enough in it on their trip. That alone was weird; were they all meant to be citizens of that town? It'd explain why the town seemed so empty, and maybe even why some of the townspeople seemed to want to help the 'patients,' excepting the fact that all of this was a huge lie and Doyleton probably equally so.

"There's really sophisticated ways to fake a photo, although I don't know a lot about photography myself," Usopp admitted. He could take a photograph and he knew sort of how they worked, and he knew for a fact they could be doctored to look like things had happened which hadn't, but he didn't know the details on how to recognize that sort of fakery. "Who gave it to you? Why are you with that sword lady who follows Smoker around?"

There was another reason why Zoro had come to Usopp instead of searching for someone who could probably tell him more about the matter: Zoro was less likely to kill the sniper for asking questions he didn't want to answer.

"Any thoughts though?" The swordsman asked, ignoring his dinner in favor of crossing his arms and frowning. He thought of how to phrase his answer to Usopp's question, knowing that he couldn't be unfairly vague towards one of his crewmates.

"That's not the girl with Smoker, they just look alike." He wondered if he should attempt to tell Usopp the complicated 'Tashigi stole my childhood rivals' face but that's not her, that's some other lady who's actually claiming to be said childhood rival only with another name' theory. It was a little complicated. "And she's the one who gave the picture to me yesterday. Claimed we were friends or something."

Usopp frowned as he kept looking at the photograph, but nodded his head. The idea that his head might be in any danger from the pirate hunter sitting across from him didn't cross his mind, nor did the irony that he had two guards making sure he wouldn't harm good upstanding patients like Roronoa Zoro. He was too occupied with the question of the photograph.

"It wouldn't even have to be doctored, I think, even if I can't tell for sure if it is or isn't." Usopp looked up again. "I've read about them being able to make monsters who look like people you know. You think it's a friend and then it tries to eat you or something. If they can do that, I don't see why they couldn't make fakes for you and for the girl in the photograph, then pose them together."

He took another bite, chewing and swallowing, before he continued. "She was a visitor?" Usopp had never gotten a visitor, although he wasn't sure why. Maybe they didn't think he'd be fooled, or maybe they thought it would be more worthwhile to confuse people like Zoro. "They sort of seem to know about our real lives, only they twist it to something weird to try and bother us." He had decided to just not think about what his doctor had said concerning Kaya. "So whoever she was, she was probably a monster or just a fake. I think the fact that the photo looks like Doyleton's pretty condemning. This isn't a setting you'd be in normally anyway, but it's a setting they could set up a fake for easily. It's just part of the 'you aren't who you think you are' game, it isn't proof of anything."

He didn't know if that would make his nakama feel any better about the photograph, but it was obvious that the picture bothered Zoro. Rather than ask more personal questions about the woman in the picture, he let it be for now. It didn't matter who she was, just that Zoro needed to know this photograph of her with him wasn't real.

Zoro had to wonder what idiots would go to that much trouble just to bother him about something he'd come to terms with long ago. Of course, wouldn't his going through all this trouble to verfify the picture mean that there actually was something he hadn't come to terms with yet?

"I know that," Zoro shook his head, indicating that the picture's 'other life' aspect wasn't what bothered him. The swordsman knew himself very well and no number of Kuina's or Karen's or Tashigi's totting photo albums full of proof could ever convince him otherwise. But was the girl in the picture really just a monster? It made sense, what Usopp said.

But if that was true then fighting her wouldn't get him the victory he'd always wanted. Had he really been hoping to get his 2000 and 2nd round from some fake in another world...

Zoro's eyebrow ticked in annoyance and he told himself to stop thinking about it. It wasn't her in the photograph and he knew that, he just had to get his impulsive side to understand what his reason was saying. Maybe once he did that, he could go off to the kitchen to burn the damn picture. Hopefully annoy the cook while he was at it.

"She had better be a fake," He couldn't resist muttering as he rubbed the side of his head. The air around him felt a little heavy at the thought of some zombie Kuina running around and calling him 'weak'.

It was obvious from Zoro's expression that something complicated was going on here, not to mention from Zoro's asking the question in the first place. He didn't think Zoro would believe the lies they told here; he didn't think anyone in the crew would. But it was a little confusing, thinking there might be another world or another version of them or something, since after all there were versions of them from different times and things popping up. Usopp figured it could all fall under a simple rule, 'if the Institute says it it's probably a lie,' but that might be overreaching.

At any rate, he'd answered with all honesty. Whoever she was, it disturbed Zoro to see her like that, and that disturbed Usopp a little too. Like a universe where I hurt Kaya somehow...

"She's a fake," Usopp said with as much firmness as he could, even though Zoro had obviously not been addressing him. He wasn't sure he meant it just for the woman in the photo either, but for the Kaya who'd supposedly put him here, too. All of them.

"Heh." Chuckling though the situation didn't merit any laughter, Zoro ran a hand through his hair and visibly tried to relax. There really was no use thinking about things too much.

In a moment of quiet sentimentality, Zoro found himself glad that he had his nakama. Thought it was true that their safety always came first and that he would have preferred they not be at the Institute at all, Zoro couldn't help but concede to the thought that being together in one place would be best. Not exactly strategically sound but their balance in abilities leveled the playing field; it helped to have both reason and rhyme in a harmony of sorts.

He held out a hand for the photograph. Enough talk about things they had no control over; the swordsman could sense that it was getting late.

Speaking of 'late', Zoro remembered something he'd been meaning to talk to Usopp about. "Oh, by the way..." Casually, he scratched at his chin and quirked an eyebrow. "I spoke to your roommate this morning, Captain Usopp."

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Day 30: Cafeteria, Dinner

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