damned_institute | Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

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Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

After the couple glasses of water Leon managed to gulp down during breakfast, the mage felt immensely better. He was still a bit tired, but that was nothing a little lounging on one of the sofas wouldn't cure. Stretching his arms above his head, he couldn't help but wish he'd had the chance to grab one of his new doctor's coats before leaving his room that morning. Maybe they would have let him get away with wearing it. Maybe.

He grabbed an empty sofa, pulling out the journal he tried to keep on him at all times. It was nearly complete now. Just a couple more pages to go. It might not improve his spellcasting that much, but any improvement was better than none. It was getting to where it might be too dangerous for him to use spells at all, if it left him so worn out without even finishing a monster off.

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At least he'd managed to talk to Anya, and that was...good. Though it hardly took care of the others involved, and while to Angel, this hadn't been about them, he still couldn't blame Hitsugaya for wanting to speak with him. Again.

But at the moment, the nurse was steering him directly towards another patient for the...however many times she'd done it already, and he was starting to suspect that she was doing it just because she was somehow aware of his preference to be alone.

Maybe he should just stop trying.

Angel sat down on the couch across from the other man. "Guess she wants us to be friends," he said. "I'm Angel."

It felt like it had been a while since he had met an unfamiliar face when it wasn't by appointment, but Roy was in a good enough mood that he was actually able to greet the other man with a small smile.

"They are rather persistent," he agreed. "Roy Mustang." Seeing how Angel (what an odd name) hadn't offered a hand, the colonel decided to brush off the formality this time around.

Having given up on keeping track of the swarm of faces, Roy couldn't be sure if Angel was new or not. He decided not to ask, though, just because he was getting sick of running through the same line of questioning whenever he met someone.

Instead, he surprisingly fell back on a more normal thread of conversation. "And how has your day been so far, Angel?" If the nurse wanted them to play nice, why not?

The name sounded vaguely familiar and it took Angel a moment before he recalled that Roy had been mentioned to him once, in conversation. Huh. Not the first time something similar happened, either. He was still getting used to how small this place was, after the near complete anonymity of L.A.

"As good as it gets around here," he replied. There was a moment's pause as he attempted to figure out which direction to take this.

"I've heard of you," he went on, finally. "You run something here, don't you?"

Far too used to people knowing of him without having much clue as to who they were (though Roy couldn't say that he disliked the fame he seemed to have acquired in this place, even if it was nothing compared to his status in Amestris), the colonel was surprised at Angel's question.

"The Cooking group," he said, having long ago gotten over the silly way the name sounded. "It doesn't have quite as many members as Arts and Crafts, but we manage." His members were much more sporadic, seeing how Hughes was usually the only completely faithful helper, whereas most of the other were just returning favors. That was what he got for not utilizing his charisma here as much as he would have back home.

"You don't collaborate?"

That had struck him as slightly odd, that all these different groups would remain so separate from each other. Then again, it might've just been the way things worked out. It was surprising enough they'd even managed to set anything up at all, given how close the nurses seemed to be watching them.

Close in some ways, anyway. They had to be turning a blind eye to something for so many people to be hiding weapons as large as swords.

"Oh, we do," Roy assured him with a shrug of his shoulders as he adjusted himself on the couch. "I meet with the leader of that group every few days to discuss our plans and exchange information. We just function separately, and have some different focuses when it comes to assignments."

While he knew that he shouldn't have been bothered by the fact that the Arts and Crafts group seemed so well-publicized, it did get to him at times. People were always lining up, and even that new History Group seemed to have a larger amount of dedicated members.

If he really wanted to explain it, he could imagine why that was. His strictly professional manner probably wasn't all that attractive in comparison -- perhaps he needed to form closer ties, earn people's loyalty. It just seemed like a lot of work when there was so much else to focus on.

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"Oh." Angel nodded, failing to come up with anything more intelligent to say. "So you—what do you do again?"

His interest might probably be interpreted as his looking to join, but he was really just digging for whatever information he could find right now. Besides, as much as he tended to keep to himself, he couldn't deny that connections were useful. It wouldn't hurt to get to see if he could get to know Roy a little.

While Angel wasn't brand new, Roy had to imagine he wasn't much of a veteran if he didn't know the basics of the different clubs by this point. That combined with the fact that Roy didn't really recall seeing the man around led to the conclusion that he had probably shown up in the batch before this current one.

"Well, personally, I'm one of the few here that can make weapons. For assignments, I send people to collect materials for said weapons, or to go after radio clues, or to fill out the blanks spots on the maps. I've had a few other ideas, though I'm not sure if they would go over well."

Roy wasn't sure if this was a real interest to join that the man was expressing or just pure curiosity, but he knew better than to get his hopes up.

Oh, so he was the one Archer had mentioned who had that mile long waiting list. Angel had to admit, he was lucky to have caught Skuld early on about the same sort of thing.

"Mind if I ask where you learned a skill like that?"

He didn't bother too much with questioning how it worked because he knew this sort of thing was near impossible to explain, but it was curious, where Roy had picked up that kind of power. Skuld obviously wasn't human, but as far as he could tell, Roy was.

Then again, so was Willow.

When Angel didn't jump to ask if he could get a weapon made, Roy could only assume that he didn't need one or had found some other means to get a hold of one. He didn't seem stupid, after all, so the colonel doubted he was just going without one and figuring he would get by in one way or another.

The question about alchemy was one he was more than willing to answer, however. "Where I come from, alchemy is fairly normal. It's not simple to learn, but there are texts that be studied to acquire the skill by learning the concepts behind it. Granted, it's not something everyone can grasp, and some have a natural talent for it. Much like with playing an instrument, though it's more a science than an art."

He could have gone on, but there was a chance that Angel hadn't really wanted to know all that much, so he at least paused to see if the man left it at that or had further questions.

That made sense, actually.

"Magic works the same way where I'm from," Angel replied. "They're probably one and the same, come to think of it. Just a different term."

It was an interesting society, though, where those kinds of things were commonplace. The last time anything supernatural had come out into the wide open in Sunnydale, Buffy and Willow nearly got burned at the stake.

"I'm sure there are some differences, but yes, they could be very similar." After all, if there were more people around with an ability like alchemy, his waiting list wouldn't be nearly as long.

Still, Roy was curious and there wasn't much else to talk about, so he decided to start with some of his own questions. "What is the place you're from like, then?"

When it came down to it, Roy wasn't that interested in other worlds, seeing how he wouldn't actually be able to visit any of them, but since Angel's apparently had magic that was similar to alchemy, he might as well take the chance to learn about it.

"Similar to here, actually," Angel said. "But without so much breaking of the fourth wall."

That still threw him off like nothing else, but he'd stopped trying to figure it out for the sake of his sanity. He'd managed not to run into anyone else who knew him the way Bella had, though, so with luck, that was a pattern that would keep going.

If Angel's world was similar to this place, then it wasn't much like Amestris. There were definitely things Roy had seen here that had never even been imagined in his home world, though that didn't necessarily mean that Angel couldn't be familiar with something like alchemy.

"The fourth wall?" he asked with a tilt of the head. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that term." Roy always became more interested in a conversation when presented with something he hadn't heard of before, and he was definitely paying the other man some more attention now.

Angel blinked, not having expected that question. He didn't think it was that exclusive of a term, was it? Maybe Roy's world was more different than his than he'd assumed.

"It's when the divide between fiction and reality breaks," he replied. "Seems there are some people here who're fictional to others."

"Ahh, right," Roy said, not actually surprised to hear that. He had been subject to it himself in the past, after all.

"I've come across that. Apparently my voice is the same as another patient's here because the same person voiced us in whatever fiction we're in," he explained with a shrug. It had been strange to hear about at first, but he had decided in the end that it didn't matter too much. He didn't know much about the Gate, but it implied that there were strange connections between worlds, which could very well lead to something along those lines. In the end, he knew who he was and that he was just as real as anyone else here, and that was all that mattered.

Angel looked up, eyebrows drawn slightly together. "Huh. Really."

What he'd experienced was one thing, but what Roy said kind of took it to the next level because...if Roy was voiced by someone, didn't that mean he was—well, not even played by an actor? As in, drawn and animated, probably? He could buy into one person having different roles in various different dimensions since he'd sort of encountered the same thing before, but this was another kind of bizarre entirely.

"Do you know how common this is?"

If Angel had heard of this before and mentioned it as if he wasn't that surprised by it, then why was he taking more of an interest now?

All Roy could do was shrug and shake his head. "I can't say I've really kept up with the topic. I heard about it that one time, but both the patient whose voice I apparently share and the one who told us about it are people I haven't seen here in a long time." Which meant they were probably gone. One had even been his roommate for a time, and he hadn't minded his chats with Otacon, but he had quickly learned not to get too attached here.

Angel nodded. "Seems like people go missing quite a bit," he commented neutrally.

He was still waiting for something important to show up that might narrow down what he was supposed to be looking into, but that hadn't happened yet. Though there probably wasn't much he could do given the entire lack of research materials, and even Willow was as much at a loss as anyone.

"Yes, and sometimes they come back," Roy responded with a sigh as he resisted the urge to wearily run a hand through his hair.

He had seen a few familiar faces come and go himself (Hawkeye and Havoc in particular), and while he would have liked to see them again, to have their support and their loyalty despite the fact that their memories would be wiped clean, he knew he could hardly wish this place on anyone, let alone those he cared about.

And yet he was glad that Hughes was here, considering the alternative. Strange how that worked.

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Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

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