damned_institute | Day 34: Breakfast

Entry tags:

Day 34: Breakfast

[starting off in M13]

The last part of the night was little more than a blur in Homura's mind. The men had rushed in, but not joined them, instead staying off to themselves. Before any of them had a chance to react, however, a voice sounded through the air, mocking some other person Homura had never heard of, and the patients themselves.

To Homura, whoever that man was, he sounded a great deal like a god.

But before he could ask questions, the demi-god found himself no longer in the chapel, but some strange room on a bed. Is that what Kenren had meant from his earlier warning? Homura sat up, glad at least that the world didn't spin when he did so. Then the same man from before began to speak again, with a completely different tone. It was confusing to hear him talk that way, calling them patients instead of prisoners as he had before. Homura listened quietly as the announcement was made, then got out of bed.

Maybe he wouldn't have to go anywhere yet. It wasn't like Homura knew where to go anyway, and that meant he had time. If this was his room, and if he had been here as long as Kenren had said, there was a chance he could find something with answers. The Taisho had even told him that Homura had seen Rinrei. Certainly he would've written something down, made a map, something that could let him find her again! He started with the desk at the end of his bed, first finding a small stack of notebooks. Picking up the first, he flipped through, turning the pages with quickening desperation as he found each one to be blank.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"So are we even on Earth?" That was a possibility he didn't want to consider, but if Angel and himself were both from different parts of Earth, then there was a good chance they were still there. Maybe he hadn't taken himself to a completely different world. But did that mean Murata was stuck in a similar situation? He hoped not.

"Huh? They let you wander around during the nighttime?" That was odd for a mental institution.

Angel hesitated. He didn't want to scare the kid when he technically had no solid proof either way, but somehow, he suspected Yuuri would find out what was up eventually.

"I don't know, either," he said finally. "All I've got are theories. We might be trapped in an extremely sophisticated glamour or we might be in another dimension altogether. There seems to be a time and dimensional rift of some sort. Wherever we are, it's unstable."

Which was what worried him the most. If it was a glamour and it broke apart, everything would be fine. If an entire dimension tore apart, though...that would be an issue.

"Doors open at night. The safest place to stay is your room, but if you have to go, go with a group. You'll find a number of people willing to take you in, if you ask around for the Arts & Crafts."

He'd offer, but keeping someone under his protection here was a little different than the way it'd worked back home where he could just give people a place to stay while he went out and killed things. Given he'd run into—what, two hyenas, a cat, and a couple of giant demons over the past two nights alone? Yeah, he doubted he'd be the safest companion to travel with. Nothing good was ever attracted to him, anyway.

Yuuri blinked at the hesitation. Was something wrong? This looked an awful lot like Earth technology, he noted while glancing around the room. Sure, he'd never been in a mental institution before, but from what he did know everything looked normal.

"Glamour? What's that?" Turning his attention back onto Angel, Yuuri's eyes widened at the explanation as he gasped. "Dimension?! As in, another world?!" Sighing, Yuuri rubbed at the back of his head as he muttered more to himself than at Angel. "Ahhh why does this keep happening to me?"

He wasn't a king of this world either was he? Yuuri didn't exactly want to find that out again. Having two worlds as home was more than enough for him.

"Eh? Really?" The young Maou asked as he glanced around the room. "So everyone here is in the same situation then? Taken from their homes to this place."

"Well, like I said, no one really actually...knows for sure," Angel added hasitly, despite damage already being done. He knew he'd scare the boy. "You mentioned that before, though. The water pipes. You've had this happen before?"

Certainly, dimensional travel wasn't truly exclusive or anything, but the method that Yuuri had mentioned was, well, off, to say the least. The only logical explanation he could come up with was that Yuuri had somehow found a portal within a pipeline. Which wasn't entirely impossible.

"Pretty much. You'll find not a lot makes sense here."

He wondered if they really were in an entirely different world, if not, then he should be able to call his family back in Japan right? Since this world definitely wasn't connected with Shin Makoku.

"Ahh yeah something like that - it's not the pipes but the water source. I was first flushed down the toilet and landed in a different world on the other end. But I've also fallen into rivers, pools, puddles and bathtubs and traveled between them as well." Yuuri began explaining. It sounded so far-fetched even to him when he spoke it out loud. "I was traveling from one bathtub to another one when I entered here."

Frowning softly, Yuuri crossed his arms over his chest as he thought out loud. "Although... I've only recently begun opening the portals by myself and I wonder if I just took a wrong turn or something."

Angel was silent for a second or two. "...Oh."

Did that—was that even possible? Even for someone who didn't seem to be entirely human, it sounded kind of out there. Then again, possible was starting to become a wider and wider definition. Still. Flushed down a toilet. That was—it was.

Yeah.

"Um." He shook himself out of it. "I-I don't think you took a wrong turn. Portals are like doorways, you can only go in or out. But that aside, there doesn't appear to be a logical reason as to why any of us are here. It seems to have just...happened somehow."

Edited 2008-07-30 22:35 (UTC)

Yuuri looked at Angel with a confused expression when the other patient remained silent for a moment or two. It wasn't like he would make up the most ridiculous situation and just blurt it out. He wasn't proud at being flushed down a toilet either. So why had he mentioned that? Ahhh damn the spur of the moment things.

A sigh slipped passed Yuuri's lips at those thoughts, but Angel's hesitated words brought him back to the conversation. "Huh? Really?" Angel seemed to know a lot about portals. "You seem know a lot about portals Angel."

"I've had some experience," Angel replied.

And he was finding more and more people with similar knowledge, even though the metaphysical laws didn't always quite match up even though they came from his world. Or, well, Earth, anyway. But a slightly different version, maybe? However that managed to work.

"Where were you trying to get to?"

"Ahh really? I didn't know that there were others on Earth that could create portals. That's great!" Yuuri said with an excited grin.

Poking at the pancakes on his plate, the young Maou wondered just how long he'd be stuck here before he'd be able to go home. If it was anything like his beginning time in Shin Makoku, then there was a 'boss' or something that he had to defeat before he could return him.

"Huh?" Broken out of his thoughts by the next question, Yuuri glanced up from poking his meal as he cheerfully answered. "Oh! Back to Japan."

Angel blinked once. "They can. If you have the right texts and power. Depending on the portal, the supplies vary."

But somehow, something said Yuuri opened them...on his own. If he did, he was harbouring some serious power inside him. He looked like a kid, but Angel had learned that appearance didn't usually mean much.

"You were going home," he stated. "So where were you before that?"

"Oh wow!" Yuuri's eyes sparkled with excitement at the prospect. There wasn't that many back in Shin Makoku that could open up portals, and just before now, he thought he was the only one who could on Earth. His excitement paused; however, at the mention of needing the right texts to open up a portal.

"Texts?" He'd never had to use anything like that to get through portals, and neither did Shinou from memory. "Really? ...Eh! Could that be why I ended up here instead?! Ahhh I thought it was just because I'd only recently began doing it on my own lately."

Shoulders slumping at the thought, Yuuri shook his head. How could he be so careless? He would have thought Murata would have informed him about needing any paperwork to do any travelling.

"Mmhm! Yeah I was." Yuuri confirmed with a nod. "I was in Shin Makoku before then - back at Blood Pledge Castle with Murata and the others."

Yuuri's reaction was--somewhat unexpected, but Angel supposed if someone was going to have any sort of reaction, excitement wasn't the worst option on the list. The boy was surprisingly carefree. It was a little refreshing, actually.

Though kinda hard to know how to respond to. He never did do well around excitable people. Or people in general, actually.

"How it works for you might not be the same. Honestly, it's hard to say anything for certain right now."

He rotated the cup idly around on the table in a half-circle. "Shin Makoku. Are you from there?"

Although he'd said he'd been born in Boston. That didn't make his ancestry any less likely, though. Doyle blended in perfectly well despite being a half-demon.

"That's true. I think Murata explained that it was to do with the control of my maryoku that allows me to travel between the two places." Yuuri murmured thoughtfully. But who would have thought there were other methods to travel through to other dimensions and the like. "But I haven't gotten used to that kind of travel yet."

The rotating cup caught the young Maou's attention. "Eh? Ahh no, I'm from Earth actually." He said with a slightly sheepishly tone. "Shin Makoku is a medieval world that I spend half of my time at."

Maryoku referred to powers of some kind, Angel assumed, so he opted not to question it. He really needed his reference books to even begin trying to sort all this out.

"But you have ties there," he said. "That is why you go to and from, isn't it?"

"Yep!" Yuuri said without any sign of hesitation. It was getting difficult to decide which world he preferred over the other these days, and he doubted that he'd be able to pick between the two anymore. Both were special to him in different ways.

He found his mood mellowing just slightly at this line of topic, and in the next moment, Yuuri found himself smiling happily. "My family lives on Earth, but the person who named me lives in Shin Makoku... along with Wolfram and the other Mazoku and humans I want to protect and look after."

Hunh. Wasn't that interesting. And the count of actual average Joe civilians at this point was still essentially at zero, including this encounter. The only theory in which all of this made any kind of sense was the fictional one, which only went to show how bizarre this entire situation was.

"Protect from what?" he asked.

"Eh?" Soushu had been defeated a few weeks earlier, and there hadn't really been any real threat to such a degree since then. They'd all managed to stop the rebellion that Wolfram's uncle had been trying to create, but other than that there wasn't much going on. Thank fully.

Yet there was still a few human countries that were against creating a united world. Ahh a Maou's work never seemed to be finished. "Um, well I guess there isn't too much to protect them from anymore, really, but there are still a few human countries against mazoku and humans living peacefully together." Smiling up at Angel, Yuuri added, "I want to help create a world where everyone can live together without worry."

An idealist, huh. Sometimes he wished he had that clarity. He kind of hoped Yuuri wouldn't lose it. And maybe...maybe he wouldn't.

He smiled faintly. "That'd be nice."

"Mhm!" Nodding his head, Yuuri's eyes became alight with determination as he stated. "I won't give up."

Glancing around the room at all the different patients having their breakfast, Yuuri regarded them thoughtfully. How long had all of these people been in here? Some looked like they had actually settled into this situation, and that thought upset Yuuri slightly.

"How long have you been stuck in here Angel?" Yuuri asked.

"Not that long," Angel replied. "Close to a week. Six days."

He hadn't started losing track of time yet and the days were both routine and different enough that he doubted he ever would. So that was good, at least. There was little else as bad as being trapped in a black hole mass of indistinguishable time. And he really wasn't too keen on going there again.

"Six days?!" Yuuri's eyes flew open and he almost fell out of his seat at that notion. "How can you be so calm when you've been stuck in here for that long?"

Sure he'd spent quite a lot of time over in Shin Makoku, but the time was different to there. Was the same true for here then as well? And if that was the case, then had only a few minutes at most gone by back home?

"Well, I don't really...panic well." Or answered questions well.

This was probably a cue to change the topic before Yuuri could dwell too much on his non-answer.

"You said you had a family, didn't you?"

"Eh? Aaah you're lucky!" He panicked too many times in situations. That was something Yuuri just could help considering his lack of experience. Although, Eru's birth was, perhaps, the worst panic attack he'd ever had. Ahh just thinking of when Nicola went into labour was enough to make him feel panicked.

Yuuri was entirely oblivious to Angel's successful deflection and change of topic. "Yep!" The young Maou's excitement was put on pause as a thought occurred to him. "Although that nurse before said that my family were the ones who put me in there in the first place."

"They feed everyone the same line," Angel replied. "Whatever they try to convince you of, it's a lie."

He didn't even have a family, which made the lie fall through immediately in his case. And he was fairly certain this was true for a number of people here.

"Really?" While he asked the question, Yuuri already knew the answer. Why would they do such a thing? It didn't make sense to the young Maou. He'd never experienced anything like this either on Earth or on Shin Makoku. Where should he go now?

Yuuri fell silent for a short moment as he glanced back around at the other patients. "Is there even a way to escape?" He mumbled to himself. Wolfram was going to be mad at him for getting himself into this mess... all of them probably would be.

Day 34: Breakfast

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)