damned_institute | Day 31: Sun Room (Fourth Shift)

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Day 31: Sun Room (Fourth Shift)

Though perhaps not entirely as successful as he wanted it to be, Homura walked away from lunch feeling satisfied with his efforts. Roland and Fai both had shown interest in the goal, and that was enough for the moment. Homura could be patient, had already been for five hundred years, and felt no harm in waiting another five hundred if he had to. He would have his goals realized, no matter what obstacles he faced, be they from the prison or those trapped within.

But now was time for business of a different sort, and the demi-god made his way to the Sun Room, near the common board. He made sure he could be seen from the entrance to the cafeteria, knowing that one stranger and one member of his own group both wanted to meet with him. It worked out well enough, especially given that the stated purpose of the History Club was simple.

Revenge and escape.

For now, Homura had no intention of revealing that it'd grown more complicated than that.

[Waiting for L and Junior]

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Armand shot a wary glance toward Edgeworth when the man mentioned the 1700's. He had mentioned his time of origin on the bulletin board. Was that how Edgeworth knew? He couldn't recall the specifics of his correspondence with the man at the moment.

"I--how did you know that, M. Edgeworth?" he asked, trying not to assume. He was always looking for ways to correct his ignorance of modern matters without earning the wrath of the nurses.

Then, he too, had to return the better part of his attention to Mustang. "M. Mustang, if you're willing to try me, the earliest I'd be available is tomorrow night. It's too late now to tell my companions of my change of plans, and Dr. Uzuki promised to help with my hands. Tis likely he'll be more effective than the staff." He couldn't help sneering slightly toward the last. He had little respect even for the ordinary staff at Landel's Institute.

"I'd inferred it from your reference to the Revolution and from your comment about modern technology," Edgeworth said, a bit of a smile on his face. "I'm a prosecutor back home, and in my line of work, you learn to pick up on the small details such as that. You have to, since so many people lie when involved in a criminal affair. I suspect that's one thing that hasn't changed."

Doctor Uzuki? He raised an eyebrow at the man's name. "I wouldn't think the powers that be would be taking doctors, if they had such confidence in their own staff. I agree that your friend is probably better at what he does than they are," the prosecutor said, the smile fading into a frown. He could feel tiny pinpricks of pain at the scar on the back of his neck, and he rubbed at it a bit to try and make that go away.

"That's perfectly fine," Roy replied with a nod to Armand. He didn't expect the man to be signing himself and two others up at the drop of a hat, after all. He glanced down at Armand's hands again at the mention of it, wondering briefly what had caused the injuries.

"Just get in contact with me over the bulletin tomorrow once you know for certain." He looked to Edgeworth as he explained himself, and then made a comment about a doctor being a patient. Roy was fairly certain he had heard of it before -- and doctors would be helpful to have around for those exact reasons.

"So this Dr. Uzuki is one of your companions?" he asked. "Who is the other?" He might as well know who he was possibly allowing into his ranks.

"Yes," Armand answered Roy simply. "He doesn't think I should be so formal, but none of us are exactly friends yet." Though if they weren't, Armand was beginning to wonder what exactly they were. They had to trust one another for protection, didn't they? "The other man has numbers and letters for a name, but he agreed we could call him Morrison. It's easier to remember. He's tall, with tanned skin and broad, muscular shoulders. I'm afraid he could break me with one hand if he wanted."

He still wasn't entirely convinced by Edgeworth's explanation, but the man did seem genuinely friendly. "I was studying civil law," he said. "I'm sure everything has changed in the intervening years.

Roy's attention to his hands made Armand self-conscious again, but he didn't offer an explanation either. Getting attacked by magical flames was not his fault, but it was still embarrassing.

"My background is in criminal law, but I did need to take civil classes in school," Edgeworth said - the patch of familiar ground had him well at ease, and if there hadn't been the other gentleman around, he would have been able to go on for hours. As it was, though, he was content to say, "While a lot has changed, the basic principles are quite likely similar to what you remember."

He shifted in his seat when the topic of injuries came up. While his shoulder and arm were no longer as heavily bandaged as they had been the previous day, he was sure the injuries had left scars. Whatever the case was, Miles was sure that it wasn't as embarrassing as what had happened to him. "There's a monster with the ability to change its shape," he said, easing into the story. "A colleague and I were unfortunate enough to encounter it the night before last. I hate to admit it, but it took the form of a little girl, and that little girl almost killed the pair of us."

Roy wasn't sure if people really made friends in a place like this. He certainly didn't, even if there were people who he got along with well enough. Then again, he didn't often make friends in general, so he wasn't exactly a good example to judge by. Either way, the group of three sounded promising: a doctor, a fighter, and... whatever Armand was. Roy nodded in response to Armand's explanation, not having anything further to say about it.

Law wasn't a subject Roy was all that familiar with. He wasn't ignorant, but it wasn't something he had studied. He appreciated the fact that the other two were keeping their discussion of it brief enough that he wasn't completely left out.

The topic of injuries was something he could speak on with much more confidence, and the colonel glanced at Edgeworth while he described one of his encounters. "I've heard of that manner of monster a few times before. Nothing can really be trusted when it comes to nightshift." Not even familiar faces, if the stories were to be believed.

The request was easier said than done. L could provide the man with anything, and no matter how strong his observations were, Homura could still decide not to help him in this matter. If L provided something of value, he would be walking away with free information. He had to make sure that whatever answer he provided him was good, but not overly helpful.

He thought for a moment, considering what information to provide the man. Then after a moment, L offered him an answer; “I noticed that there are no devices in town to keep track of time. Usually you would see clocks or calendars but I couldn’t even locate a wristwatch. They are absent in the institute as well, as I am sure you have realized.

“This I find rather peculiar, as a town should at least have some way of measuring time. It is a necessity. Their daily lives tend to depend on it, from when they wake up, to when they work, how much they get paid, when they return home, when they go to bed… Yet somehow they all know. Even when it came to the date, they could clearly tell me that it was October 31st when I asked.

“As for the nurses, during the time I noticed no visible apparatus that would have enabled them to communicate or know the time. Yet, they all knew exactly when the patients needed to be collected and brought back to the busses.” L looked thoughtful for a moment, biting at his nail “I am not saying that it is definite, but it leads me to believe that the town and the institute may somehow be linked, as they share many of the same qualities. This is quite a disturbing thought as it would seem that Dr. Landel’s influence reaches beyond these walls. Who to what extent?”

"M. Edgeworth, you and I should talk again sometime. I think we might have many things to share." His smile was genuine enough, even if he was underneath all nerves. He thought that he might easily come to like Miles Edgeworth. Normally he was quite good at making friends, but that wasn't coming as easily here. Already he'd made one bad judgement he knew of. He was dreading the dinner shift where he'd be trapped in his room with his roommate, whom he'd just been told was a very dangerous man, not to be trusted.

"That is truly disturbing," Armand told Roy. "I can't think what the ones controlling this possibly hope to gain by having us demoralized and untrusting of even one another. If they simply wanted to keep us bottled up, they need not let us out of our rooms at night." That was hardly an original thought, but then something else occurred to him. "It is possible, I suppose, that the unusual power our captors have over us here is the result of some bargain that requires Dr. Landel and his staff to let us out to try to find some solution to this trap but doesn't prevent them using their creatures and other powers to make it as hard as possible for us to make use of our temporary freedom."

Alita sure was asking a lot of questions. And the answers to her own were way too scary. Kagura definitely didn't want to be a vampire, but what if it wasn't that at all? What if it was only some... freak pretending? They were in an asylum, weren't they?

"It was right outside the room, in the first big hall. I'd just... barely stepped out and something hit me from behind and dragged me away," she said with some regret. While hitting from behind was a cowardly tactic, she should have sensed them coming at the very least. They had to be pretty good if she hadn't seen them at all.

... which room?

Falis brow twitched as she tried to puzzle out what the hell Kagura was describing without just grabbing the girl's collar and shaking her while demanding she be more specific. The 'first big hall' was probably that hallway that went in between the patient blocks... but there weren't any rooms that lead out onto that from what the princess had seen. maybe she meant one of the halls at the end of the patient corridors that opened into the hall.

"O...kay... were you leaving the girls' area or the boys' area?"

Kagura looked puzzled for a moment. Why would she have been leaving the boy's area? "The... girl's rooms. Leon-san and Javert-san and their friend Trebe... Treve-rian-san came to pick me up. There was... some commotion while we were going toward the stairs... that's about when it happened."

And that was that. Falis had some information to go on and now she had a place to start tracking the vampire from. The bounty hunter made note of the names of the men Kagura had been with at the time; she'd question them later to see if they were the vampire's thralls and had set poor Kagura up. If so, she'd kill them. That would smoke the vampire out at least; they didn't like it when people killed off their thralls.

Falis patted Kagura on the shoulder and grinned at her. 'Thanks. Now I can get to work on this tonight. Remember, you start feeling weird or anything, especially when night falls, you come to me right away. My room is F22," she said.

The blonde nodded. 'I'll get it. I will." She raised an eyebrow then. "Oh, and I won;t ask you what your curse is, cause you're not gonna tell me, but I do have some skill at breaking them. Keep that in mind."

The nurses were coming, so the princess stepped back and gave Kagura a confident smirk. "Later."

"We should," Edgeworth said, nodding at the Frenchman. "Sometime tomorrow or the next day? I'm meeting with a friend at breakfast, but I'm free after that."

"That is an interesting theory," Edgeworth said, tapping a finger against his right temple. "I can see why they would want to have us not trust each other; that leads to groups splitting apart. People are easier to pick off if they're alone at night."

He saw his nurse moving over out of the corner of one eye, but chose to ignore her presence for now; she would come over if it was time to leave.

"I'm more concerned about the apparent death of the man on the radio, personally. If someone outside the institute's law, as it were, could be killed so easily, what does that say about the rest of us?"

Armand's theory seemed a little convoluted, but that didn't mean that it was wrong. Landel had a fondness for being grandiose, after all, so who knew how the man's logic ran.

The topic of the radio man's death made Roy tune in with some further interest. While he wasn't as attached to "Jack" as some of the others, that didn't mean that he was going to completely ignore what had happened.

"If he wanted us dead, we'd already be there," he pointed out. "That's not his main goal, I don't think, but he doesn't seem to care if a few patients get killed in the process of whatever his goals are. It seems that pride is what spurred him to murder rather than anything else." The two men obviously had a history, so Roy wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot more to the rivalry than they were privy to.

As if on cue, the intercom went off and Landel's voice boomed through the Sun Room. "Well," he said, getting to his feet, "it was nice to speak to both of you. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you," he finished, glancing to Armand. With that, he went to meet the nurse who would be escorting him back to his room for dinner.

The smile only beamed more brightly at the offer. River might only have been half a functioning girl or sword at the present moment, but she could always spare a bit to dance. They hadn't broken her legs yet.

"She can manage. Always time for a dance, but there might be misplaced feet. Just by a few centimeters or so." The girl sighed, as though her wounds were trivial. "There are holes in her dancing shoes."

"Well, I won't tell if you won't." This place was always so boring during the day. Not much like a real institution, with people talking to themselves and drooling and shouting at invisible enemies all the time. A couple people waltzing through the Sun Room was pretty low-key, but it'd liven things up at least a tiny bit.

Farfarello smiled just ever so slightly and held out a hand to River. "I'll even let you lead if you want."

"No, I hadn't noticed." Likely for a different reason; gods weren't so keen of keeping track of time as humans. For mortals it was a matter of dwindling days, each one passing that much closer to their own deaths. For gods, divisions of time were unnecessary, simply a way of dividing the torturous boredom of Heaven. Homura had learned about such things early on, from the way light shifted into his cell, and how his guards moved about. He hadn't started caring about it until recently, however. Just before he was brought to this prison, in those days when there simply wasn't enough time to accomplish all he had needed to before his age caught up with him.

Time had become much more important once Homura himself was dying. But that was neither here nor there.

The observation was a good one, and for now satisfied Homura. Particularly the last part: how far did Landel's grasp reach indeed? Were the visitors kept prisoner on the facility, or did they live the lives assigned to them off site, in the town they had visited? Homura himself planned to find out the next time they went to that town, but that trip was several days away. Hopefully he would learn much more before then, including from the stranger beside him.

"You haven't told me your name." And the man probably still wouldn't, but at least Homura would have some means to address him. "Or how you plan on getting the information from me. I'm willing enough to go with it for now. At the very least, until we see if something useful will come out of it."

And until he learned more about the man beside him. Though Homura couldn't speak for Mustang, Hitsugaya might not be so interested in L's motives. Homura, on the other than, was far more suspicious, particularly of anyone who made it obvious that they were hiding something. Perhaps it would have something to do with their mutual imprisonment, or not. But Homura was a curious person, someone who sought to understand how people worked.

That understanding was invaluable in Heaven, and no doubt would be here as well.

“Unless signed otherwise or unrelated to business, Lamont is the name I require you to use should you have need to communicate with me on the bulletin board. Outside of that, you may address me as Hideki Ryuga. As for your other concern, I don’t believe that it would too much of an issue if you simply have your group keep a record and deliver a report every two days to M77.” L answered flatly, nearly escaping his statement being interrupted by the intercom signaling the end of the shift.

He calmly put the pen he was using away and glanced over at his nurse who was approaching to escort him to his room “In any case, I appreciate the time you took out of your schedule to meet with me.” L said offering Homura a quick smile in courtesy before making his departure.

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Day 31: Sun Room (Fourth Shift)

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