damned_institute | Day 32: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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Day 32: Cafeteria, Breakfast

Sylar's gears were still turning as the nurse and a burly orderly escorted him down long halls and through a strange, sunlit room. He'd been forced to drop his pen when the orderly had seen it, and since then, he'd realized that this place had better security than he'd originally anticipated, as well as a large population of patients. It looked like he'd have to bide his time for now, pretending to be this 'Zachary Blaine' and trying to figure out how the hell he'd gotten here.

His mind went over and over the events in Mohinder's lab, tracing every second that led up to his unconsciousness. According to the computer logs and the decked-out loft, Mohinder was working for the Company now, so had that woman with the electricity been an operative? Was this all a Company front? Even so, it didn't make sense for them to drop him off somewhere without any close supervision. They knew how dangerous he was. How special he was.

But right now, his abilities had been nullified and he was left only with the option of playing along. It was a very good thing that it was something he excelled at, even with his sudden loss of the cure clouding his thoughts and telling him to do something drastic.

Still, it was fun to take ahold of strings and let someone think they were pulling him when in fact he was the puppetmaster. Who knew? Maybe he could find a new toy now that his last one had worn out.

Sylar took his syrup-covered waffle to a table and tried to keep track of both the security and the people flooding in. Soon, he'd find an opening, a weak link he could exploit. It was only a matter of time.

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Leon woke up, feeling rather dizzy. The sudden change from the basement to his room was more disconcerting than normal. He sat up and shook his head. A sphinx. He'd have to visit the library today and try to figure out more about the creature. If they returned to the basement tonight, he wanted to be ready to answer it's riddles... and get some answers out of it, as well.

While he was busy plotting, one of the nurses showed up to escort him to the cafeteria. He followed along in brooding silence. This was his fourth day here. Four days, and still all he had to show for his efforts was a baseball bat. And he hadn't even acquired that on his own.

Leon piled up a plate with food and found an empty table. The Head Doctor had said there were new patients arriving today, and already he thought he saw a couple people he didn't recognize. How was Landel able to get them all here? He munched contemplatively on a piece of bacon, watching the doors as the patients arrived.

[free for bothering]

The morning brought a change in Diva. It wasn’t so much the fact that she was battered, cut, and covered in human bite marks, all mostly hidden behind swathes and swathes of bandages, or the fact that her fight with Heat had been cut off against her will, or the fact that she was once again considering if she could drink someone’s blood, a quick snack, before dinner. (Whether or not Yukari was alive, if another human got penned in with her then it was all the same…)

No, it wasn’t really because of any of those things, though they might have played a part. Mostly, Diva suddenly woke in the same hospital bed, in the same hospital room, with the same human nurses cooing at her like she were stupid, and reluctantly accepted the thought that she was going to have to try new things to get her way. And in Diva’s language, ‘new things’ meant being craftier. Thinking ahead. After all, the longer she went without any clue as to the whereabouts of her children, the more she realized that the stakes were so much higher than she kept thinking.

A feeling of vulnerability, of urgency, never suited Diva. It confused her.

Despite the large number of injuries, she showed no signs of pain, not even a limp. Since she didn’t consume human food, she had no need for the cafeteria line, and instead stepped into the cafeteria and towards the first table (and occupant) that caught her eye.

She stopped beside him, but then needed a moment to think of something to say. Or rather, something to say that a human would find human-like. "Hello," said Diva.

Leon glanced up at the young woman standing beside him. He didn't know her, but he thought he might have seen her around before. So probably not a new patient. She was young, younger than Kagura by the looks of her, and heavily bandaged. He frowned slightly, immediately concerned for her.

"Hello," he replied. He nodded at the chair across from him. "Want to sit down?"

An easy invitation. Diva looked to the chair, then gave her assent by walking around to sit in it. There.

"I want to know more about the ‘visitors’," the Chiropteran continued, in her best curious girl role. She was pretty, sweet, and innocent, and people should generally be kind to her, because she was a fragile human youth. "The ones that get called fakes. Do you know about that? It's really important."

Leon shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't know," he apologized. "I've only been here a few days. I haven't heard anything about visitors." He didn't even know that they could get visitors... for a moment, he had a dim hope that Ada would show up, but it quickly faded. She was more the type to break in through a window, anyway. And if the visitors were fakes, actors or something, then it wouldn't really matter.

"Oh." The Chiropteran was obviously put out by the comment, since if the man couldn’t answer her question, then sitting down and talking to him at all was a big waste. It also meant that Rhode’s comment--screaming about the fakes, as she had been--was still just one nebulous thorn in Diva’s side.

Being "visited" by those two perfect, tiny children, too close in blood to be anything but her daughters, was something that remained burned in Diva’s memory. Any mention of it, any at all, was important to her. She didn’t believe they weren’t hers, but she had to know the truth of it, to know how she had daughters without any memory of giving birth.

She hoped he would say something interesting, whatever the case.

The girl looked disappointed. "Sorry," Leon said again. "My name's Leon. What's yours?" He was starting to get the impression that she was a bit absent-minded, or something. Maybe it had something to do with her injuries. "Are you badly hurt?" he asked.

Well, it never hurt to give her name, now did it. Even in the midst of all this uncertainty and frustration, it was a small pleasure. "Diva. I’m Diva," replied the girl, meeting Leon’s gaze, before his second inquiry made her absently glance down at herself. Although her body was already healing way faster than the average human, and she was evolution’s most sturdy creature, she was badly injured. In the way that she was not used to being injured at all.

"He tried his best to kill me," came the best answer she thought of. "But I think he just liked to see me bleed. He likes it."

It'd been the same for her, really, since she had no active reason to kill him. Her determined onslaught had been her brand of self-defense, in a way.

"Who tried to kill you? Landel?" he asked. He'd heard about patients who got taken away for late-night experiments. He guessed that they amounted to little more than torture sessions. This girl was setting off every one of his protective instincts. If someone had attacked her that viciously and she'd survived... she must have just barely escaped with her life. Leon's concern was obvious as he looked at the girl, waiting for her answer.

She blinked curiously, as though Leon had said something she didn’t quite understand. Landel… Landel’s Institute. He was the one who was looking over this facility, like Amshel did. Truth be told, Diva hadn’t ever paid much attention to things like the intercom or staff conversations, knowing only that they were all enemies to be killed.

Diva being killed by anyone but Saya was ridiculous, but being singled out for extermination was nothing new to her. She thought it made sense, even if Leon was wrong.

Shaking her head, she answered simply, "Not him, not yet. The one I’m talking about wears the same clothes as everyone here; he’s trapped too. He just got mad because I wouldn’t let him threaten something precious to me." Heat wasn’t there in the cafeteria, and she wondered if he could even heal more quickly than a silly human. Even after everything, though, she found herself bearing no sincere animosity. Diva just cocked her head, her expression slipping into even more wide-eyed consideration, which could’ve been mistaken for dismay. "You look upset. Because he eats people? Are you scared?"

"Another patient attacked you?" he said. He wondered if it had been one of the brainwashed patients... or maybe that vampire-type guy who'd attacked Kagura. "What was he threatening?"

Her wide-eyed concern and questions took Leon aback, a bit. "I-- no. I'm worried, that's all." Not scared. He didn't get scared. Or at least, he didn't admit to it. Only way to keep going. "He eats people? Like... a vampire?" Maybe it was the same guy. There couldn't possibly be that many vampires running around here.

Right?

It was almost interesting, having someone asking her things that she could answer. And best of all, it all tied back to her daughters, so maybe if she told this human more about it, he'd have some answers for her.

"That's why I want to know about the visitors, because my daughters came to 'visit'," explained Diva, starting from the reverse end. "I asked him about them, and he'd said he'd eat them. So we fought." It was all point A to B to C to Diva. The man's continued questions after that point were less easy to understand, because Diva thought he was lying, but what was so important that it was worth lying about? Just another stupid thing about humans that she didn't like.

The word 'vampire' stood out for her, being the second time someone had said that in her presence. It wasn't quite the same, when it wasn't being used in reference to her, but Diva knew what the man was after, and smiled. "No. He must eat the whole person." To prove her point, Diva hooked one finger in the collar of her shirt to pull it down a little, and peeled back one of the thick bandages with her other hand. Heat had gotten a few good bites around her collarbone, and the one she showed Leon was deep and ragged, missing flesh where Heat's teeth had hooked and ripped it off.

Leon looked horrified at the deep bites on Diva's neck. Eating a whole person was much more like zombies, but zombies weren't sentient. They didn't threaten to eat one's children. His mind raced as he tried to think of something else capable of threats and speech that would try to eat someone. Nothing came to mind; all the things he'd seen that had ever tried to eat him generally did it without announcement.

"That's horrible," he said. "What'd you say he was called?" He was certainly going to be keeping a watch out for this individual. No one like that should be allowed to roam the halls at night.

He paused for a moment, taking a sip of orange juice and going back to what she'd said earlier. "You have children?" he asked. She looked awfully young to be a mother. Still, it was hardly impossible. They would have to be quite young themselves, though. Probably only a couple years old, at most. And she seemed to think that the visitors were fake. So maybe something had been off about the children they'd brought in to see her.

Awww, she missed that look. She wished it were coming from Solomon or Nathan or James, any of her Chevaliers, rather than from something she couldn’t make use of. Humans showing her concern was a situation that Diva could only turn over in her hands, poking curiously, and not knowing what to make of it.

The Chiropteran wondered if she could force her blood into someone during these stifling daylight hours. She really needed a Chevalier.

Sitting back in her chair, Diva watched Leon in an appraising way, the balls of her feet brushing the floor as she slowly swung her legs back and forth. She shrugged and said, "Don’t know," in regards to Heat’s name. When he mentioned her children, both of her hands went to her stomach, her expression dimming. Withdrawing, in a way. This human was asking about her children...

"I know they were mine. But I don’t remember... how I made them. When they came out." She gave Leon a pointed look, as she had already told him exactly why this was a problem, and why it was confounding her. "I have to find them, so don’t you know anything?"

The look on Diva's face wasn't a reassuring one. And he suspected that she wasn't being entirely truthful when she said she didn't know her attacker's name, but he decided not to push the subject. He had some information to go off of, and the bulletin board seemed to be a pretty good way of finding people.

At his question about her children, she visibly withdrew. Her reply indicated memory loss of some kind. He shook his head. "I don't know about your kids. I'm sorry," he said. Maybe some of the people here really were crazy and needed mental help. His impression of Diva was certainly shifting in that direction.

She sighed. Because what else was there to do when all her life she’d been hounded by humans who all claimed to know what they were doing, what they were fighting for, and yet not one single human could tell her anything about her babies. How stupid. Diva could have killed each of them for their ignorance--she certainly had no reservations over that--but the fact that there wasn’t even a hint of dishonesty made her restless for her Chevaliers.

Turning her head, her gaze roamed over the various faces in the crowd.

As members of the Red Shield knew, Diva wasn’t like her sister at all. Part of the difference lay in her dependence on her Chevaliers. She had mothered them, and yet Diva was still the child that they looked after. She didn’t know how to take care of herself, and short of attacking the human across from her, she didn’t know how to go about finding those two little wide-eyed children.

Jeez, she hated this place so much!

Leon followed Diva's gaze out across the cafeteria. "Is he here?" he asked quietly. He looked back at Diva, his gaze intense. "I won't let him attack you again. Don't worry."

He paused, then continued speaking, a bit awkwardly. "Try not to worry about your kids too much... I'm sure they're being taken care of. Maybe they'll come visit you again?" He liked to think that he'd gotten better at the whole comforting routine after dealing with Ashley. He'd been quite good at not telling her exactly what kind of mortal danger they were in. Sure, she'd picked up on a lot of that herself, but he'd done his best to be reassuring and calm. He could do that same thing here.

"No," she burst out, because if her daughters weren’t with her, were with that boy instead, the one from the Zoo... the one who’d said she’d never see them again... then they weren’t going to be safe. "This is just another place where they’ll cut you up and experiment on you! They aren’t going to be toys for them." Her gaze snapped back to Leon, and Diva narrowed her eyes, suddenly irritated. Any insinuation that her children were all right being away from her touched on her violent temper.

She’d killed humans for less.

Biting her bottom lip, she looked more like an upset child. She didn't want the nurses to stick her with more sedatives if she jumped the table to kill him!

Leon shifted away from Diva at her sudden, angry outburst. "Sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't mean to upset you." Damn. Guess he wasn't as good at being reassuring as he'd thought.

He decided to keep quiet for a bit, rather than risk angering her again. If she got too upset, they'd attract the attention of the nurses, and he certainly didn't want that.

She continued to nibble her lip, tilting her head so that silky strands of hair slipped over her shoulder. Her expression was open, looking like she were considering his apology. Or considering her outburst like someone capable of guilt or tact might. But, naturally, it was for neither of those reasons: seeing him shift away was a small reassurance, thinking that somehow Leon just knew and was frightened of her as most things were.

That, she understood. Her superiority apparently reinforced through his body posture and apology, Diva let her attention slip from the imagined insult.

"Now you understand, I just can’t let anything happen to that precious life. Even if I don't know where they are now and there’s dozens against me." She was a mother, after all, and she’d do anything for her family. It was something worth telling, even to a human. "So you’ll tell me if you find out anything at all?"

Leon nodded, not quite following what Diva was saying. "Of course," he agreed. "If I hear anything at all, I'll let you know." Information on the visitors might be useful to him, too. He'd have to ask Hitsugaya or Rangiku about it. Or maybe Javert. He had a whole list of things to investigate today... hopefully he'd get the time to do so.

Hee, that worked out so well, then!

Diva let a soft laugh of delight escape her, before she smiled warmly. "Thank you." Of course, he was human, and Diva being extra thoughtful to follow her Chevaliers’ suggestions didn’t make him any less susceptible to her penchant for bloody havoc, but following Diva’s whims usually allowed for a longer lease. The humans who all worked for Amshel and had actually met her knew that.

She thought this one would also make a good Chevalier, but those surprises would have to wait for night. Weighing things in her head--not something she was used to doing--made her think to wait until the best possible moment.

Leon smiled. She seemed to be doing a bit better, now. He took a few bites of his breakfast, then realized that Diva hadn't gotten any food. "Are you hungry?" he asked. "You ought to eat something. It'll help you get better quicker." He glanced at the bandages on her neck and arms again. He had to find out who'd attacked her like that. He couldn't just let someone get away with it!

"That’s right," she said with a whimsical smile, but made no move to get up and visit the cafeteria line. Diva found the suggestion quite funny--a secret piece of knowledge that she had, and he didn’t. "I’m going to dine late, though."

Was she hungry? Should she eat something? All very kind offers made to a creature that drank human blood to survive.

Diva wondered if Saya-neesama ever found it as quaint as she did.

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Day 32: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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