damned_institute | Day 30: Cafeteria, Dinner

"It'd be too easy if everyone just agreed to my demands," said the noble, though he did a stand-up job of masking the sarcasm. "His nickname is Kyon, I didn't ask for his real one, and he's just your average child. About your age. A good samaritan is trying to teach him martial arts, but he essentially has no skills. And for your information, f he were a proper vampire, he would have undergone an increase in abilities, however he's no different than a human."

Aidou couldn't deny that even normal E classes were stronger; it made Kyon's case all the more of a pain.

"If you're not occupied, we can meet tonight. My new pet needs to be fed tonight with or without you, so we'll be around."

Sasuke just snorted a bit at Aidou's comment before focusing on the information presented. Uninspiring, if also unthreatening. Still, Sasuke stood by the idea that more patients meant more warm bodies to throw at Landel's forces when (if wasn't a possibility, ironically) the time came.

"I'm travelling with Mark and his group tonight," Sasuke said, frowning. "If I don't meet you, how is this Kyon going to feed?"

Aidou shrugged, graciously ignoring any snide sounds coming from Sasuke's direction. "The same way any other slobbering monster gets fed around here. I just made the proposition because it would be easier and quieter."

In other words, procuring it through force, as Aidou had taken to doing. Despite what the bleeding hearts claimed, it wasn't in his best interests to simply ask, and he wasn't going to bargain for blood. No, he'd have to do it the old fashioned way for Kyon too.

The frown remained for a moment, and then cleared, Sasuke's expression going carefully blank. "There are so few patients here willing to help that you're planning to attack someone?"

What the hell sort of help could that be to keeping patient interests aligned, if there was no way to tell whether an attacking beast (and that was a stronger concern for Sasuke than perhaps some others) was something Landel sent or another patient?

"Vampires are not supposed to exist," Aidou answered, his gaze on Sasuke's face. Calculating. "I'm afraid it's a hard lesson to shake. Anonymity is to be valued, and truth not bestowed lightly. You found out by unfortunate accident. I would've wiped your memory if I could, but as it turns out, that mistake could be put to something useful. That's the only reason I asked. If I have to do it the hard way, I will--but I'm not cruel. I'm not a fan of adhering to clichés either, you know."

Bringing "new people" into the fold was just unacceptable. It was already a headache that so many people knew already. The noble didn't so much care over who squealed the loudest--he could deal with whatever came--but it was the fact of the matter. He wanted things under control, close to his chest.

Unfortunate accident: finding himself unexpectedly between two of the creatures, obviously quite different, both claiming to be the same thing. And Aidou was not cruel -- petty, definitely, but his advice was given in a completely different way from, say, Orochimaru's -- so this solution did in fact make sense.

Now that he thought about it, he'd seen Aidou meet new people before, and never had he actually declared what he was out loud, except when faced with Alucard: an apparent threat to Aidou's own identity.

"How long will the process take, then?" Slightly irritated voice and expression still unreadable.

Briefly Sasuke wondered again what bizarre place Landel's was, if he was apparently the one expected to be the most sympathetic (or something) out of the people Aidou knew to know about the vampirism thing. His attitude towards the patients and the place had changed since he'd failed to escape and failed to escape blinding, but he didn't stop being Uchiha Sasuke. Traitor.

He cocked his head, considering. Aidou couldn't even claim to have 'nearly forgotten' was it was like to deal with potentially unwilling food sources--they'd always been willing. Subdued in some way, with a vampire's ethereal magnetism, with memories cleanly removed afterwards. And then when he was seventeen, new regulations had come into place along with the blood tablets. No drinking blood while on school property, which was almost always.

But he hadn't complained, because Kaname-sama had asked it of him. Now, he could only wonder what was going through Sasuke's head. Despite everything, the kid was still a kid, and had already made it clear he didn't know vampire kind.

And Kyon, too, who would probably put up a fight about it.

"Not long; meeting up at all will probably be the most time-consuming part of it," answered Aidou. He could hope. He also had things to do, like find his own meal. "As for how much blood, not enough to slow you down." Aidou didn't think Kyon's appetite had gotten any more insatiable than that yet... And that yet was fairly important, considering what Aidou knew of ex-humans. Telling Sasuke that Kyon's status might eventually deteriorate until he was biting anything that moves didn't seem like the smartest move to make.

Sasuke paused just for a moment. If Aidou was lying and this Kyon took more blood than Sasuke could handle -- Sasuke could incapacitate a full-grown ninja in less than a minute, let alone a normal, recently-human child. If, on the other hand, Aidou was lying and Kyon wasn't a civilian or actually did have enhanced abilities, he was going to be left relying on Aidou.

That assuming that Aidou wasn't lying about being there to supervise.

Sasuke hadn't backed out of anything because of fear since he was twelve and facing Orochimaru for the first time, and by now even the Sannin didn't so much inspire fear as pity. He gave a short nod.

"I'll meet you," he said, and turned finally to his own meal. "Where would be the quickest? And I'm still not agreeing completely until I've met this kid for myself."

Well, that was settled, it seemed. Aidou took a drink of water, unperturbed by the rest of the proceedings. All in all, this resembled some kind of tedious chore he just didn't want to deal with, if his mien was anything to go by.

"All right, it's agreed you'll come, then," reaffirmed the noble. "He has a room in the first M block, so I'm meeting him outside, in that hallway."

Sasuke nodded shortly, thinking with a bit of irritation at delaying the first concrete goal for Nightshift he'd had in a while. It seemed like a necessary diversion, though, not least because he was interested in finding out what another experiment here had undergone. And he cared precious little for the other patients, but there was no point sowing unnecessary paranoia.

There was already plenty of that.

"I'll find you." With that over with, Sasuke started working fairly steadily through his food, methodical and neat (eating blind was pretty fast learning, at least; all it required was knowing where he was in relation to himself) without being any kind of polished. At a pause in his meal, though, he remembered: "Incidentally, what have you observed about the appearances?"

He'd agreed to possibly be a blood-bank for some pet project of Aidou's; the vampire owed him a few answers at least.

He thought bitterly of how very much he despised cafeterias. If he had his way, he'd never set foot in one ever again, not that someone of his status had ever spent much time in them to begin with. Perhaps he missed normal company most of all, beyond all the cheap banalities of mess halls.

Aidou wanted a vampire to talk too.

And then he just felt childish defying his own advice, and weakening his resolve. There was a very good chance that Akatsuki, at least, was gone. Dead, maybe, who knew. "Appearances or disappearances?" he questioned dully, pressing the tines of his fork through a clump of mashed potatoes before eating them. His father hated it when he'd played with his food as a child.

Flicking his gaze up, he glared at Kyon's back--a routine check to see if he wasn't flashing his fangs at someone--before glancing back at his own dinner partner. Ugh, to think what it would be like if he wasn't working alone, having to do all of this stuff by himself.

Sasuke had already talked disappearances clean through with Allen; it had been sort of one-sided and the boy was the type to notice something suddenly missing much more than something unexpectedly turning up. But even Sasuke, blind, hadn't failed to notice that there was more noise around the place; definitely more people being introduced.

"There have been a lot of theories about disappearances and any kind of purpose or pattern," he said, surprised to find that he was done with the main course. "Do you see any pattern in the appearances of people?"

He paused, and then, neutrally, "And have you ever heard of people who appear already modified, during Nightshift, and act as if they remember correctly but seem to be controlled by the Institute?"

This was almost going back to the first questions asked when he'd first woken up here, but that was probably inevitable. They hadn't been satisfactorily answered then, partially because he hadn't had many people to ask, and partially because he hadn't known what was going on, exactly.

No doubt there were plenty of theories about the seemingly random disappearances, and about as helpful as those concerning the giant birds nesting on the roofs. If he just had a bit more evidence, weeding some out would be easy... "Not particularly," he started off, answering Sasuke's first question. "Other than that they're timed, but that's obvious."

And another mystery brought to the table. That, at least, hadn't become personal experience for him, if one excluded Roland, whose bloodlust he didn't trust with or without the aid of mind control.

"Mmm, I'm sure most have by now--every other night they're lurking around, I expect. Notice how the ringleader has stopped announcing them." He took another drink, his free hand resting in his lap. "What about them?"

Timed was definitely obvious enough. And presumably the lists of patients had gotten too long to introduce over the intercom anymore; Sasuke had noticed a real influx since he'd arrived.

"It had seemed that the patients who were chosen for modification or brainwashing were generally those who had been here for at least a day or so," Sasuke said, and decided not to drop Allen's name just yet. The kid had only barely been convinced that he might not have killed a friend of his. "But instead, some patients have run across one of their friends, physically modified and forced to attack them."

Done with the food, Sasuke took a sip of juice before adding, "You mentioned that you had experience with a mimic. We thought it might be one of those -- would that be consistent with what you met?"

The vampire's eyes narrowed in an arctic, inhuman look of thoughtfulness at Sasuke's words. He sensed the manipulation of facts, no different than what he did from time to time. Still. His meal was twice the size of Sasuke's, and there was still more left, now going cold. He toyed with the stem of the plastic fork.

"I've met more than one of them, yes." He did not want to think back on the one that had taken his own face right in front of him, but he just had to grit his teeth and get over it. "And this 'mimic' nickname seems to come from the fact that they are perfect copies of appearance and behavior. Lures, you could say. They're not forced to do anything." He ran his thumb along the plastic, bending it just to the point of breaking before easing off and doing it all over again. "What kind of 'modifications' are we talking about? Chances are it was just another monstrosity."

What was it Allen had said? At first the kid hadn't wanted to even talk about it, but eventually he had. It hadn't sounded like any of the experiments Sasuke had heard of here, either, more purely physical where Sasuke expected mind-play.

"I'd think so as well, but the humanoid monsters I've encountered have been mostly unaltered from basic human appearances," Sasuke said, frowning over his juice again. "This one apparently had been modified to have extra limbs, parts of animals, things like that."

Perfect imitations of appearance and behaviour, huh? Sasuke wondered if there was any difference in the chakra.

The fidgeting stop for a split second, then continued without pause. "Wait a minute, is this an Allen Walker thing?"

Extra limbs, parts of animals, things like that.

"Because I saw him last night, with something that fits that description. It'd never been human, I'm certain. On the other hand, the doppelgangers are very precise fakes until you get too close--vampire blood will smell like vampire blood even if it's not, for example." And that made him want to gag, remembering how much of his own blood he'd apparently spilled. "... They're weak, though."

Thank the gods the boy was unable to see the flitting emotions on his face.

An Allen Walker thing? Sasuke almost snorted, amused; apparently his roommate got up to more trouble than he'd expected.

"Allen's my roommate," he confirmed. "He was convinced that he'd killed his friend last night. Apparently this friend had been a visitor earlier in the day, so it was strange that he appeared at night as well, apparently with all memories intact. This thing was also pretty strong, according to Allen at least."

It could have been an odd coincidence, of course, though Sasuke suspected that this place left little to unpredictable things like chance. And it was true that Sasuke only had hearsay evidence of Allen's being able to fight, but there was no reason to lie about that, which meant that Aidou calling the thing easy to kill didn't tally well with Allen's losing control.

Aidou did snort, rather cruelly that. "Speaks wonders of a human's luck that such an idiot is still alive," he muttered under his breath. His tone of voice didn't hide the blatant derision. A very unfortunate coincidence that that little freak was Uchiha Sasuke's roommate--he was surprised Sasuke could speak so neutrally of him.

"I saw what he got himself into," he continued, full of antipathy. "It was just a monster, but he let it get too close. It's his own fault."

Aidou and Allen had met, and apparently utterly failed to get along. Sasuke supposed it was only to be expected, and frankly he had yet to find someone with whom Aidou did get along, but he also hadn't heard Aidou speak of someone else with that much unmitigated disdain. Not even a blinded Sasuke.

"It seems he and his companions all believed it was their friend," Sasuke said, and didn't mention anything at all about how his first thought when Allen had explained it had been about the fake Fugaku who'd said you are my son. "Then again, Allen doesn't seem to be good with objective judgement. How do you know him?"

Not so much because Sasuke cared either way, but because he hadn't actually been with Allen for a Nightshift and so had no real idea of the boy's capacity.

"It might be your instinct to trust. It's not ours. I can't say I'm terribly surprised to learn other people have believed that their friends and family have come for them."

Even seeing Akatsuki--the real Akatsuki--in the Landel's uniform had only brought out his suspicion and aggression, not relief. Aidou didn't usually bring up such differences, if ever. Vampires being better than humans, yes... but vampires were also more hard-hearted and vicious, more cold. Typically, one did not need another vampire to point out such things--the humans who hunted them did that for them.

He cleared his throat. "We became acquainted on the fieldtrip, where he forfeited all respect I might have had for him. Not a big loss. I don't see a scenario where he and I would have to associate for an extended time. He's about as mature as a weepy schoolgirl, in my opinion, but I take it you see something more in him." And that was all it came down to, in the end. Business. So long as there was no need to associate, he'd just as soon punt Allen's dead body.

Your instinct to trust? Sasuke was genuinely puzzled until he remembered Aidou's distinction between vampires and humans, which until now had just been that vampires drank blood and were generally somehow better. If Aidou thought all humans were trusting -- ... then again, a lot of them were. Stupidly so, until they'd been burned.

"Not so much," he shrugged in response to Aidou's last comment. "He's my roommate, but I haven't had a chance to see him in any kind of action. He's stayed alive and he's made alliances with one of the groups, though, so he's got his uses."

At any rate, Sasuke was now considerably more certain that Allen had fought a mimic and nothing more, and also reasonably able to convince himself that he hadn't actually been worried that Uchiha Fugaku might turn up in the Institute. "Speaking of imitations, have you had a visitor yet?"

Aidou was a brat, but he was smart enough and sufficiently different from Mark that discussion with him was worth the time.

He smiled thinly. Sasuke was a good boy. Or at least one that he could respect--set apart from a normal human kid his age, he could be tolerable. Ironic, wasn't it?

"No," he answered truthfully. "And I really have no interest in accepting one. Are they that believable, despite all the untruths?" It was honest curiosity now, since everyone seemed so gung-ho over these "visitors." He hadn't heard of one person refusing a meeting.

"I wasn't given a choice," Sasuke said, blankly until he considered the fact that he was blind and therefore his nurse essentially steered him to wherever she considered best for him. "Anyway, that doesn't matter. They're not believable insofar as they give the same bullshit about our pasts as the Institute doctors. Their ... behaviour is accurate."

Extremely accurate. And possibly calculated to strike in the right places, or at least Sasuke's fake had chosen things that Sasuke hadn't built defences for, because he had never thought they would be needed.

"Be warned of a mimic's mouth, then," the noble said after a moment of silence. "Their only offence seems to be an extendable jaw." Proof enough that he believed Sasuke might need the warning; a suspicion the poker face he was now presenting Aidou hadn't held up in the face of his... visitor.

The closest Aidou himself had come to losing control over their lies was in his first therapy session with Hatori Sohma, and he was prepared now. With Akatsuki's disappearance, with everything. He wouldn't be open to believing in anything, not unless all channels could be examined to his approval. He found this kind of psychological manipulation all too common. Trying to fool one's better judgment...

"In any case, have you noticed any change with your eyesight?" He came short of saying 'your little eye problem', but changed it at the last moment. "What was the procedure exactly?" Aidou'd never bothered to take a close enough look.

Day 30: Cafeteria, Dinner

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