damned_institute | Nightshift 31: F-A Block Hallway

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Nightshift 31: F-A Block Hallway

[from here]

Anya was beginning to feel the adrenaline as she rounded the corner. Those zombie dogs the first night hadn't really counted as a fight. She hadn't been in a real fight since... since Buffy.

Oh dear god, what if this Kimbley guy had superpowers like Buffy, only his were way better than Buffy's? That was entirely possible, Buffy's weren't exactly the last word on awesome superpowers, no matter how much The Slayer liked to think different. Holy crap, she was gonna get slaughtered!

The vengeance demon cut off her nervous thoughts quickly. She'd promised to do this in order to get more good intel from that sin-type woman. Plus, it wasn't like there was much out there that could kill her.

She opened the door and stepped into the next hall.

[to here]

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[enthusiastically coming in from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/330371.html?thread=26910851#t26910851)]

Harley squinted once she got out into the hallway. That's right. The idiots didn't have emergency lights. Why was it she forgot about that every single time? As though navigating through the halls wasn't going to be hard enough without it being dark. Man, why didn't--

Wait! She didn't have time to wonder about stupid pointless things. She had to get moving. Down to business! She held a hand up and held it over her eyes as she peered through the darkness, as though that would help. She still wasn't sure if she wanted to find the ruckus room or the trap door first, but either way, she would have to head... that way!

"Right!" she confirmed to no one in particular. Determined not to waste time as she had last night, she moved as quick as she could down the dark hall.

Rhode's mind had very obviously been elsewhere than watching where she was going. No one was usually in her way as she skipped down the hallways, or if they were, they got out of her way quickly. That didn't happen this time though as Rhode found herself colliding with someone passing by her hallway at the very moment she'd been exiting hers.

The impact didn't hurt all that much, both with the first hit or with the secondary crashing backwards onto her rear, but the whole thing annoyed her. "Hey!" she protested immediately like it was the other's fault for not watching where she was going.

"Oof!" The hit caused Harley to stumble back a few steps, but thankfully not fall to the floor completely. It was a good thing she hadn't decided to run, otherwise that might have really hurt.

The one she'd bumped into wasn't so lucky and had fallen to the floor. She blinked down, surprised. Was that... a kid? She'd never seen a kid in an asylum before. Boy, they sure had some weird regulations in other towns.

"Hey, watch out, kiddo," she said, not actually sounding angry at all. Normally, Harley might have protested herself, but really, it was bound to happen sooner or later. With how dark these halls got, it was a wonder that all the patients weren't constantly colliding into each other in a massive, human-pinball display. She was used to working in the dark, but this was ridiculous.

She looked up a ways to get a look at the woman who'd gotten in her way. Long, blond hair...

Jasdero

Immediately, the woman was marked with a label, and only for her hair color. Well, not exactly. She also had the other mark of being a human, but Rhode was more used to those being around than not. Might as well put this human to use; the woman didn't exactly have the feel of a goody-goody and could be much more entertaining as a result.

"You watch out," she pouted a typical, childish response as she scrambled back to standing. "I can't get to the basement if people keep getting in the way!" Again, like it was the woman's fault.

"Yeesh," Harley droned exaggeratedly, holding her hands up in a shrug. "Tou-chy."

What a grumpy little kid. Harley was noticing that a lot here, especially at night. Maybe everyone just lost their sense of humor after dark. Besides, wasn't it past this kid's bedtime? What did she think she was doing wandering off to the base--

"...Wait, basement?" She didn't recall seeing anything on that map Meesy showed her about a basement. Besides, the best Arkham had in their 'basement' were laundry and furnace rooms. Talk about boring. "Why the heck would ya want to go to the basement?"

...Well, it was dark. Maybe the girl's clothes were really dirty and Harley just couldn't tell.

Kind of like Jasdero, but kind of like Tyki too. A smarter Jasdero then, though not by much. Of course, as a woman, she was bound to be smarter than any of the male Noahs. They were all idiots that didn't wanna play with her when she wanted to, or who started food fights and didn't even try to help her do her homework right. The Earl was really the only male (or did he have a gender?) that she could base the gender upon and he was annoying!

Anyway, now that this human woman was interested, Rhode was going to do the best she could manage. "Yeah, basement. And I wanna go because it's supposed to be a lot of fun, but I can't find it!," she pouted, drawing out words and syllables like it was some kind of tragedy that she couldn't find it. It was, sort of, but not as bad as she was making it sound. She was just being bored and whiny went along with that. "Do you know where it is?"

Her eyes seemed to perk up immediately. A lot of fun, huh? What, oh, what could possibly be in this basement that's supposed to be so much fun? Now Harley was incredibly curious.

This stank. She had started out with two possible destinations for the night and now with the inclusion of the courtyard, the big room in the middle, and the super fun basement, she had five. Decisions, decisions...

She smiled and clasped both hands behind her back, leaning forward like a little kid expectantly waiting for a treat. "Ooo, lotsa fun? Like how? There a lotta goodies down there or somethin'?"

One never could tell. This place was a lot different from Arkham. Maybe they put a lot of neat gadgets down there. Maybe there was something useful down there.

"Don't gotta clue where it is," she answered honestly, "but I bet it ain't all that hard to figure out."

It was true. They would just have to look for stairs that went down, right?

Rhode saw the light of excitement flash in the woman's eyes and perked up herself. Oh? Oh! This person had some mischief about her! Not just in her eyes but in her emotions too! And now she was asking about it which made Rhode all the more keen on piquing her interest further.

"All basements are fun, but it should be a lot more fun in a place like this," she said, smiling at first, then pouting when the woman didn't know where ti was, "Well, it's gotta be down, right? There's no stairs that go down though..." That was a problem. Just another reason why she wanted Tyki there. If he wouldn't bust her out, then he could at the very least phase them through the floor and into what was supposed to be a basement!

"My name's Rhode Camelot!" she said suddenly, for once introducing herself first. Just calling this other "woman" wouldn't do if Rhode intended on letting her be tonight's playmate.

"Heya, Rhode! I'm Harley," she said, happily. Maybe the girl wasn't as grumpy as she had previously thought. And so far, Rhode was being much less of a pain than Mozzy and Blondie had the night before. She had said nothing but interesting and curious things. In fact, what this girl had just said gained Harley's attention even more, but for different reasons.

"No stairs that go down?" she repeated dubiously. She placed a finger to her lip in a thinking gesture. How could there be a basement but no stairs that went down? That made absolutely no sense. ... Unless...

"Oh!" She held up her finger in realization, as though a lightbulb should have been going off above her head. "I get it! So it's one of those secret basements, then, huh?"

Wow! That would definitely explain why people considered it fun. If these people really did have a secret basement, then that meant they must have a lot of goodies they don't want anyone else to find, right? Why would you hide the basement if you were just using it to store a bunch of mops?

"Eh, but isn't Harley a boy's name?" she asked, blinking. She wasn't exactly one to talk with how strange the Noahs' names got sometimes, but still, she was pretty sure Harley was supposed to be a male name.

Overlooking the name (it wasn't that important), she went back to grinning. "Secret things are always more fun," she hummed, agreeing with Harley's assessment of the basement's entrance. Of course, secrets also took some work to find out about, but that could be a part of the fun sometimes. Sometimes. This place had it's ups and downs, and she really didn't want another "down" night. "But I gotta find it first!"

Boy's name? How was Harley a boy's name? She'd been called Harley all her life and no one else had ever considered it a boy's name... had they? "Hey," she pouted childishly. "Rhode ain't exactly a girly name either."

Well, at least Harley agreed with the girl regarding one thing: They needed to be the first to find this basement, before everyone else got all the good stuff! But where to start? She thought back to the bits of map she recalled. No, she couldn't think of anything that looked even slightly helpful.

"Hmm," she droned loudly, thinking again. "Last night a big baby told me there was a trap door that went outside in M78... He coulda been wrong and it goes to the basement."

There was always a chance of that.

"Let's see, if I were a secret basement, where would I hide?" she muttered. Didn't old movies usually have a book in the library or a statue with a head that twisted or something like that when it came to these secret entrances? Maybe that was the case here, too. "... Any ideas?"

"I'm not girly," she stated proudly. Really, she was pretty girly by the standards of the word, but not so far as the Earl's standards were concerned. He called her a tomboy so often!

And she happened to like her name, thank you very much! That wasn't something she'd be arguing over with a human though. Humans were beneath her.

She considered a bit about the big baby and doors in rooms, but didn't believe it. "Rooms are supposed to be safe. Besides, it wouldn't be fair if someone got a door to the basement all to themself!" While it was possible that someone might have dug down, Rhode wasn't about to waste time on too much of a might. This place had to have something better than a door in a room anyway! "Wouldn't be hidden anywhere obvious, that's for sure." It wouldn't have been a secret for so long if it were some place obvious. Or it was just stuck somewhere Rhode hadn't yet gotten to. That was always a possibility. "Some place that people wouldn't go to..." Somewhere boring probably.

Well, that was true. It wouldn't be fair if someone got an entrance to the basement or the outside all to themselves. Then again, who said the people who made this entrance even cared about being fair? And just because the rooms were 'supposed to be' safe, didn't mean they were. Things weren't always what they seemed. Harley was half-wondering where this kid got her information.

"Some place no one goes... Laundry room?" Harley said almost immediately. Damn it all, why did she keep thinking of laundry rooms?! That one time she fell down the laundry chute must have affected her more than she'd thought. "Utility closet... Library... Medicine pantry... Maybe a nurse's office, too."

She knew she'd never want to go to any of those areas. But would anyone actually put a secret entrance in any of those places? Who knew. It was probably a place so boring, no one would even think of going there.

"Ew, Laundry..." Rhode made a face. That was stuff that the Earl did. Or Tyki. They were the parents, and as such, Rhode had never been forced into doing the icky laundry. That was a good guess. The library too. Sure, she went in and out of the one in the Ark and at the Earl's base, but it was still a boring room with usually boring books.

She didn't mind Little Riding Hood so much though...

"Know where any of those places are?" Rhode asked first, just to see, then tried to remember when she'd looked over that partial map "Emily" had let her look at. She remembered seeing some kind of Library listed. Now just had where had that been? Bottom floor somewhere.

It was good to see someone else thought laundry rooms were boring. Well... Harley didn't mind it so much when she was doing her puddin' laundry. It made him happy after all. ...But that was something else entirely.

"I know where some of the nurse offices are. Passed by 'em on the way to the room with the finger paints," Harley responded, tilting her head as she thought.

"Hmm, hmm, hmm. ...Nope! I dunno where the other places are." She remembered how to get to the big room in the middle, the courtyard in back, the bathroom, the backyard looking place, and the place upstairs the doctor had been yelling about. Outside that, she hadn't had the opportunity to explore much.

So Harely didn't know where things were. That didn't help, and neither did what she sort of knew how to find. "Nurses are annoying," she said immediately still making a face. And they were. They were the ones that had the needles and liked jabbing them. Odds were they were worse when it came to the night.

Not going there then.

"The Library.... I think I know where it is," she said unsurely, trying to drag back the scribbled map. It was around the Sun Room, she knew that much. But there were a few doors in there, and she only knew which side it should be on. She raised an index finger and tilted it towards her right side. "It's on the right after you go through the Sun Room doors. I know I've been in it before, but not at night. Maybe we can look in there?"

There was another thing Harley could definitely agree with. Boy, did she hate the nurses back home, and the ones here weren't any more fun. They never let you do anything fun. Though the ones here at least let you play with finger paints and give you a journal.

Thankfully, Rhode at least knew where one of those destinations were, even if she didn't sound all that sure. And, well, though she doubted it, the library was as good a place to start as any. Besides, this secret basement probably had stuff in it worth the trouble of searching every room they could think of. Maybe there was even some goodies she could bring home to Mr. J.

"Sounds like a plan to me!" Harley said enthusiastically. Who knew. Playing detective could be fun! "What are we waitin' for? Let's go! Let's go!"

She would have to wait for Rhode to lead. After all, the kid was the one who actually knew where she was going.

It wasn't every day that her playthings were so enthusiastic about running around with her. All the better! She didn't need to put up any "innocent little girl" front this way. That would make running about so much easier.

"All right, just follow me," she announced, then started off into the next hallway, expecting that Harley would follow.

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Nightshift 31: F-A Block Hallway

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