damned_institute | Day 32: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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Day 32: Sun Room (4th Shift)

It was rare that Homura's nurse try to persuade him to a scheduled activity, but then, it was rare that Homura didn't go. But the demi-god had plans, and the poor woman had little other choice but to leave in a huff as he once again settled himself near the bulletin board in the Sun Room.

His conversation with Kenren the previous shift had left the demi-god with a lingering sense of anxiety. Perhaps it was something only those from his own world could do, but none the less, he was all the more ready for night to begin now. Goals and memories, the truth of his past and the possibility of the future: all thoughts lingering on the forefront of his mind, more than enough motivation to move forward.

Impatience was something of a rush for an immortal, he'd discovered. Homura liked the feeling, the excitement even before he had arrived in this prison. And now while he waited, he savored it again, a yearning that shone so much brighter than the boredom of Heaven.

[Waiting for History Club Q&A time.]

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The voice startled Subaru, but after a moment of staring he recognised the tall man looming over him. "Ah, Kurogane-san." Somehow he looked even taller in daylight. And when Subaru was sitting down.

He nodded. "You okay?" he asked out of reflex. He was too used to watching the kids, Syaoran mostly, and having to deal with whatever if he didn't want to hear that magician's whining about "not taking care of the kids" or some such crap. "Your leg any better?" he tried again since the first question was a little too general. It had been a few days, so his leg should have been fine.

"Oh, yes, thank you. The last couple nights were quiet, so I had time to rest up and heal." Not that he had planned for his nights to be so uneventful, they had just sort of worked out that way. "And you? How is your shoulder?"

"Good," he nodded, then took a seat on an adjacent couch from the boy. At the returned question, Kurogane gave his shoulder a quick glance. "It's fine." Or however fine it was supposed to be for the kind of injury it was. This was about the fourth day since then, and he could barely feel that it was there. The scar was the only reminder now, but he wasn't one to linger on past mistakes and so ignored it.

"This place is starting to get on my nerves," he said at length. Though he wasn't one for conversation, he hadn't been able to vent about things for a while. Last night hadn't even allowed him to have a decent fight, aside from the verbal one with the magician. If anything, those arguments only added to his frustrations.

Subaru nodded sympathetically; he could imagine this place would be especially trying on people who were accustomed to a lot of physical activity, like Kurogane-san clearly was. "I think it's designed to get to us, in one way or another."

He grunted a little, annoyed though agreeing. It had gotten to them all in more ways than one. Kurogane was only annoyed and just a little, or a lot ticked off. The others were having a harder time by what he'd seen. Fai and his monster run in-- and the Princess's supposed torture-- he could only imagine what had happened to the still absent Syaoran.

"How long have you been here?"

Subaru startled at the question, and really had to think before he could come up with an answer. "I guess... six days now, probably. I was unconscious with a fever for a while at the beginning, though, so I've only really been awake for five days or so."

A shorter time than the magician then. But still, longer than Kurogane had been there himself. Maybe he could answer a few more questions. There were still things he was unsure of, the basement in particular. He needed to know if he was to plan a course of action for this night outside of finding the Princess's room.

"One of the others from my group just showed up, so I'm trying to figure out if she's just been here but hidden, or if she just arrived." He stared at the boy, meeting his eyes. "From what I've been told, the basement is the only place that could possibly hold others captive where they could not be sensed. Do you know if that's true, or is there another place where people could be held?" and tortured he left out.

He did have the maps listing those rooms Zabuza had mentioned, but it would be much better hearing it from someone else before he went rushing off in search of the kid. And that Manjuu.

Subaru shook his head sadly. "The basement is possible, but when they take people for their experiments, I'm told that happens on the second floor. I've never heard of anyone being kept for more than a night, though."

Chewing on a nail absently, Subaru thought about what he'd learned in his time here. "But whether or not you can sense someone isn't the best indicator--I'm an onmyouji, I've seen and communicated with spirits all my life, but here I'm as blind as any civilian. I can't sense anyone, not even my own twin sister."

"Even magic can't be sensed?" he asked, wondering, "not even if it's the driving power behind this place?"

A feather wouldn't be that hard to sense. Not for the Manjuu, in any event, but both he and Fai had their own senses as well. Hindered, Kurogane knew he might not be able to sense any kinds of magics - he could barely register them as stood - but the magician had more power than he let on. There had to be something at least he could sense. He had said though that he hadn't sensed anyone around that one time.

Then Sakura could really not have been around. That meant her words from earlier were... and that still left Mokona!

He growled a little, setting a hand to his head. No world before this had even been so confusing. The worse headache before now had only been that time traveling issue in Shura and even then it had been simple enough. Now there were problems all around, ranging from time travel discrepancies to blocked senses. This place had to be a trap; it was too complex not to be.

"I don't know. I get nothing. Even when... even when someone I know, from my world, was working magic I'm very familiar with... it was like watching it on a movie screen, I didn't feel anything." At the time he had been too out of it from blood loss and shock to pay any attention, but now that he thought about it, it was unaccountably weird for him not to sense Seishirou's magic when it was being performed openly, right in front of him, with no attempt to shield it.

"That won't help," he muttered, once again annoyed. Now Fai wouldn't even be able to help locate the Princess, who he was fairly sure had some kind of magic traces to her. All those feathers had to give her a good deal of power, right?

He leaned back into the couch, trying to think. Without any way to sense things so far as magic went, Fai was practically useless for all his information. The Manjuu could be anywhere, as could the feather that they weren't even sure was here. Still, he had to work with the assumption that at least Mokona was here. Communication would have been impossible without it.

"What about..." he started, then had to think doe how to say it, "things that aren't human? Can you think of anywhere creatures might be kept? Not the ones that are out at night though." He brought up his hands and formed a Mokona sized circle in the air. "This size. Like a stuffed animal. We're looking for something like it that has to be here."

"Are you sure it has to be here?" Subaru sighed, not wanting to sound insulting or cruel. "... A lot of people... well. A lot of people seem to think they know what's going on here. But they all have different ideas. Different people they think are 'really' in charge. This place... I'm not sure it's like anything any of us have ever encountered before."

Rubbing his forehead tiredly, Subaru searched for a way to say this that wouldn't sound unbearably arrogant. "At home, I'm considered... well. My family has been onmyouji for thirteen generations, and they say I'm one of the most powerful in the family's history. That person I mentioned, the one I knew from my world... he was even more powerful, and ruthless. Brutal. To seal his power, and mine, and everyone else's here... I don't know. What can do this?"

"Yeah, pretty sure," he nodded. What other explanation was there for them being able to communicate so easily? He looked out at the room. "I can't say exactly what's going on here, but I do have a few guesses."

He didn't really want to explain the hows and whys for his reasoning, but he had a feeling that if he didn't, there would be more questions coming his way. Better to get it out before that happened. "The group I'm with, we're used to this - going around to different worlds and dimensions. We've been to a lot of them, each one different from the last. This is the first place where others have been pulled from worlds as well, but it's not something me and that magician find as strange."

As for what could do this... He pointed a finger at the ground as he explained, "We're looking for these feathers. They're memories of someone and even one holds a lot of power. It could do something like this easy." He again gave the room a once over. "In the wrong hands, those feathers can give someone the power to do whatever the hell they want. Even restrict powers like with you and your friend," and himself, but he preferred not to admit to his own weakness here.

That was one Subaru hadn't heard before. It was interesting, though. "So if the person in charge of this place has one or more of those feathers, then this creature you're looking for must also be here? Couldn't they have used the feathers to make a new world entirely, one they control and that doesn't have to follow any of the rules you're accustomed to?"

"That... creature," Yeah, Mokona could be called that, "would be here for another reason. It doesn't have a connection to the feathers."

He thought a moment about what the boy was suggesting. "It's happened before. One feather turned a game into a reality."

"Why are you so sure it must be here?" Kurogane-san was answering questions fairly freely, and Subaru was curious enough to press a little further.

"I don't know, it just does this thing... something magic, and that lets people from different places be able to speak to each other." If he knew what it was the manjuu did, he would have been able to explain it a lot better. "Like right now. I can understand you, but you're probably not speaking the language I hear." That was still weird sometimes, even just thinking about it. How did he sound to others then?

He sighed, "Anyway, that's why it has to be here. We've gotten separated from it before, and when that happened, we couldn't understand each other. Just jibberish." Fai had been the worst. "But that's not happening here."

"If they do have it, and that's what's causing the translation spell, then it must be well-guarded. Wherever the Head Doctor is, that'd be where you'd find something that important, I think." It made the most sense--if a critical part of the functioning of this place depended on one particular creature, then that creature would be kept well away from anywhere the patients could get.

"All right. So where is he?" It made as much sense as anything. To find the problem, head for the source.

"No one knows. He shows up when he wants to, and always with strong shields, from what I've heard. Most of the time, he's just a voice on the intercom." Subaru sighed, sinking deeper into his chair. "But I've never even seen him, I just have stories to go on as far as that goes. We don't know the full extent of this facility, either. Until it was announced, no one had any idea there was a basement."

So he'd been seen. If he was confident enough to walk around with so many "patients" here who'd rather strangle him than watch him pass by, then he must have had some kind of power. "Do you know if it's always been like this here, or if this place used to be normal and then ended up changing?" Asking was all he could do really, even though he knew Subaru had only been there for a grand total of 6 days. He'd still been there, and had likely learned a lot more than Kurogane had managed while having to deal with Fai.

"And so far as you know, the basement remains unexplored." He clarified first, then sighed once again. "That's the best bet for where this could be based on what you've said." The basement was still an option for exploration. If not this Head Doctor's hiding place, then maybe the Manjuu's. Or hell, maybe even Syaoran was down there. He wouldn't know until he took a look.

"Maybe. But I doubt he'd have invited the patients so eagerly into the basement, if he was really hiding there. I think... probably up, not down. But that's just a gut feeling." Something about hiding at the top of the mountain, so to speak, seemed to suit the Doctor more than hiding in the basement.

He'd considered that as well, but unless there was some confirmation of a floor above the second... "Is there another level above the second floor?"

"The last time we were allowed outside the building compound, I was pretty distracted running from bird creatures, but it looked like it from the outside, anyway. I can't say for certain, since it was dark, but that was my impression." Subaru hated not knowing more, he truly did. He was used to being the one in control, the one who understood and could do something.

Day 32: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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