damned_institute | Day 35: Bus 2

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Day 35: Bus 2

Wally woke as the intercom crackled to life and was surprised to find himself back in his room. The last thing he'd remembered was feeling relieved at finally beating off those dragonfly-lizard things. There'd been that weird intercom message, then... he wasn't quite sure what had happened after that, but he was certain it hadn't involved falling asleep. He'd be half-wondering if he'd dreamed the whole thing if it hadn't been for the nagging ache on his back and ankle from where he'd been bitten. A quick check revealed they'd been bandaged, apparently while he'd slept. He wondered if he had Kal to thank for that. Maybe he'd get the chance to ask later.

He jumped as the door swung open to admit the familiar face of the nurse who'd woken him yesterday. "Up already, are we?" she said cheerfully as she busied herself pulling out clothes. A blue shirt and a pair of jeans were passed to him. Wally blinked, he hadn't been here long, but he'd gotten the impression that the grey-and-smiley-face combo was standard.

"Does this mean I'm being released?" he asked, hope creeping into his voice.

The nurse turned back to him, pity etched on her features. "I'm afraid not, dear." She smiled brightly as she continued, "but today's when all the patients get a special field trip into town! Won't that be a treat!"

Wally stared at the clothes, his mind working away. He'd been trying to get into town and to a phone last night before he'd been attacked. But if they were going in today, this might be the perfect chance for him to contact the Justice League. He smiled warmly and thanked the nurse as she left to allow him to change, then happily allowed himself to be led to one of the buses, picking a seat about halfway down and sliding in to look out the window. It seemed like today was going to be brighter than yesterday, at least in the area of possible phone calls and rescues. About the only dark patch he could see was that the contents of his paper-bag breakfast were going to be nowhere near enough to fill the yawning pit that had taken the place of his stomach, and even that was tolerable when he was positive he wasn't going to be here much longer.

"And you say that time goes rushing by, but it seems so slow to me, and you see a blur around you fly, but it takes too long, it seems so slow to me..." he sung absently.

[Oh Captain, my Captain~]

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Naruto hadn't woken up in the best of moods. Last he'd known, he'd been yelling something at Sasuke. The details were a little fuzzy, somehow, and he wasn't sure if it was due to...whatever it was the Institute did the patients for them to just wake up in their room like that, or because it had been a lot of things at once last night.

Either way, his frustration with Sasuke was still there, and he was even angrier that they'd been interrupted. The bastard had hurt Jiraiya, too, and he hoped the man would be okay.

He didn't say anything as his nurse came in, shoving some proper clothes at him that he put on quietly and quickly. He didn't even pay attention to whether or not she'd turned around or left the room; he was too busy seething at whoever had brought them here, and did this to all of them.

He was taken to a bus, he figured for the visit as the intercom had told him. He got onto it, trying not glower at everyone but finding it a little difficult. He didn't even know where Sasuke was now or if he was even safe.

He slumped next to a boy, the first seat he'd spotted as empty, and decided to still, at least, be polite. "Hey," he said, turning to him. "I'm Naruto."

Allen looked up from where he'd been staring out the window, lost in his own thoughts. A boy close to his age had decided to sit next to him. Allen didn't mind the company and this one definitely seemed friendlier than some of the others he'd met, so he returned the greeting.

"A pleasure to meet you," he replied, a little of his British accent and formality showing through. "My name is Allen Walker. I don't... believe I've seen you before. Are you new?"

The boy seemed to have some scars of his own, though his looked more like kitten whiskers than the ugly thing on the left side of his own face. It was only made more apparent by the dull red glow in his left eye. Seemed like the curse was always active with different kinds of Akuma in the area. The shinigami were okay, or seemed to be, but there were so many others it was hard to keep track of it all. He hoped it wouldn't put the boy off from talking to him though.

Naruto barely noticed anything odd with Allen's face, as he wasn't the type to really pay attention to that. The boy had answered him, and seemed okay with engaging conversation. Naruto smiled, glad for the distraction and the chance to, maybe, make a new friend.

"Yeah, got here yesterday, actually," he said, but then his smile faded slightly. It was nothing to be happy about. He shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. "So I guess I'm one of the new...patients, here, or whatever it is we're supposed to be."

"I'm sorry to hear that. It's not the best place to be. I hope someone warned you about the nights here," he replied, looking a little concerned. While he might do alright, he knew not everyone had a weapon to fall back on.

"I don't really know where this place is either," he admitted. Most people seemed to think it was somewhere in America, but he honestly didn't know how they came to that conclusion. He was a little more concerned about the difference in time, having missed an entire century. "But the town is kind of neat to visit."

Naruto nodded, relaxing slightly in his seat. He didn't feel like he had to be on his guard around Allen, and rather that he was sitting next to an old friend.

"I was warned by someone I know from...my world," he said, frowning slightly at the last part. It was still so crazy to wrap his mind around properly. He tugged on the edge of his t-shirt, not really comfortable in these clothes that weren't his. He was used to wearing things usually a size or two too big for him.

"It is?" Naruto looked interested at that. If it was, maybe it wouldn't be as bad as he expected it to be. He didn't think they'd have much freedom once outside, either way.

"You have friends here? That's... well I guess it's good and bad," Allen gave Naruto a half smile. "I wish my friends didn't have to be here, but at the same time, I don't know what I'd do without them." It was selfish, he knew, but it wasn't just support in battle, here it was all the trauma and horrible things they tried to do to mess with a person's head that made it difficult. If his friends hadn't been around to pull him back to reality, he could see how it would be easy to be taken in by their lies. He gave an apologetic laugh, "I suppose that sounds kind of silly."

"A-anyway, the people in town were pretty nice last time. And there's a lot of free food too. And all kinds of new inventions. I've never seen so many automobiles." He looked curiously at the other boy. "Do they have automobiles where you're from?"

"Nah, that's not silly," Naruto said, knowing exactly what Allen meant. It was conflicting, and selfish, and he'd only been there for a day...but he knew that without Sai, he'd have been completely lost. Without Jiraiya, he'd have been a mess. They'd help him, so far, to stay in one piece.

Naruto was growing more and more curious about the town, trying not to let his imagination run rampant in case it wasn't up to his expectations. Though new inventions but would be fun to discover, and from what Allen was telling him there was already one he didn't know about.

"I don't think so...I never heard of those!"

It was kind of nice to have a light conversation and push some of the heavier things aside for the moment. He was glad Naruto understood how he felt, and it seemed the other boy was going through the same things.

"Well we're riding in one right now. It'll take us into town. But there's smaller ones too that are only for a handful of people. They're like wagons but they don't need any horses or animals to pull them. There's some kind of complicated engine inside that makes them go," he tried not to sound too excited, but before he'd come here, he'd only seen them every now and again, in the more heavily populated towns. In Doyleton it was like everyone owned one!

"What do they use for transportation where you're from?"

"We use teleportation techniques or we jump!" Naruto said, almost proudly, and definitely not like it was an odd way to travel. He'd heard of trains, but Konoha didn't have any, and they didn't have any that ressembled what they were sitting on.

Allen hadn't expected Naruto's answer in the slightest. "How... How far can you jump?" he said incredulously. Unless he had some kind of amazing power, jumping from place to place seemed like way too much work. Wouldn't it be easier to just run there?

"What's teleportation?" he added after a moment. Was that like the telepathy thing that let you see into other people's minds? He didn't know how that could be used for travel though.

Naruto grinned wide at Allen's incredulous look, amused. He'd never really thought about this aspect, sharing how different things were from world to world. Maybe they could learn about awesome things, and when they'd get back to Konoha, Jiraiya and him, could teach everything to the villagers.

"We just jump from roof to roof or tree to tree!" He said, wishing he could demonstrate. "Maybe I could show you...but I'm not sure I can here. Teleportation is like...being in one place, then being in another in the next second! Just with one hand seal!" He grinned, making the seal with his fingers.

It sounded just like the way Rinali got around when she used her Dark Boots. She could jump really far, further than rooftops and trees, but the principle was the same. Though Allen couldn't see how that would be a reliable form of transportation. Not like a carriage or a locomotive.

"If you could, it'd be really easy for you to leave this place. There's lots of rooftops and trees in the town," he told Naruto. As for the teleportation, "Oh! Just like the ark! Ah- I mean um! I've seen something kind of like that! But you can do it without any special equipment or anything? All by yourself? What's a... a hand seal?"

"I think...if it was that easy, the others from my world would already have left," Naruto said with a slightly bitter smile. The bitterness wasn't aimed at Allen, not at all, but rather at their being stuck here. It was insane to him that no one had found a way out yet, except for the few he'd been told had disappeared suddenly.

He grinned, though, glad to show off hand seals and how his world worked; it was distracting. "It's what your hands do to help you do the right techniques and summon the right kind of chakra!" He demonstrated again, doing a few of them one after the other, feeling a little odd when none of them were followed by the familiar feel of his chakra moving along his body.

Allen couldn't help but empathize with Naruto's feelings, but there was little he could do to argue. If he'd had full access to his powers, he probably would have helped his friends escape long ago. "I guess that's true. Are there a lot of people from your world here?"

The things from Naruto's world were really interesting, but he didn't think he'd heard of them before. He would have remembered something like this. He watched the boy move his hands quickly in different positions though he had no idea what any of them meant or what they were for. "That's neat! What does chakra do when you summon it?" he asked, still a little confused by all the strange words Naruto used.

"I met three of 'em, but I heard there were three others," Naruto said, sounding a little like he wasn't up to going into details at the moment. His meeting with one of the others in particular had been interrupted too soon.

Naruto's grin spread wider, glad that Allen seemed to find what he was showing him interesting. "It lets you do things like clone yourself for a bit, or transform something into something else, or make illusions, or just give you more strength! You can use chakra in punches to make 'em stronger or at the bottom of your feet so you can walk on water and stick to stuff!"

"That many?" So far he'd only seen small groups except for maybe the shinigami. He supposed if Ravi and Kanda were still around that would make just as many, but he hadn't seen either of them for days now. "I think only one of mine is still here," he said with some regret. "But the number of enemies from my world seems to keep increasing." Yet he'd saved Tyki just last night. Why? Tyki was just as likely to put a knife in his back as look at him. He couldn't explain it.

So what was chakra then? The way Naruto described it made it sound like some kind of magic, but most of that seemed so impossible. Except perhaps the walking on water part, but that was for a different reason entirely. "You can really do all that? You must be pretty good at using it then, that all sounds so..." he gave a short laugh, "it's pretty incredible."

"Oh...It's sort of weird, since you're glad they're there, but at the same time, you'd rather they be safe at home," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his neck. He was grateful to have Sai and Jiraiya around, and the fact that Zabuza and Haku were still alive was great (and he was looking forwards to seeing them both again, despite the fact that they'd been enemies years ago). Sasuke and Itachi's presence he was even more conflicted with, so he didn't linger on it too much.

Naruto grinned, laughing a bit. "It is, yeah! I mean, it's pretty cool...What's it like in your world? What do you guys do?"

Allen agreed and decided to leave it at that. The subject seemed to make both of them uncomfortable and it was more fun to concentrate on the subjects that were interesting and enjoyable anyway, right?

"They tell me it's the same world as this one, but... there's some differences too," he explained. "I'm from about... a hundred years in the past for this world, we didn't have any of this technology either. But um, I'm an Exorcist, as are my friends. We're sent out on missions to destroy Akuma; which are... mechanical dolls that steal the bodies of humans and power themselves with the human souls. They... disguise themselves as human to claim even more victims. It's our job to find them and release the souls as well as to keep such sad things from happening where we can."

Weird as it might sound, it'd been daily life for him. It was adjusting to this place that was strange.

"Oh," Naruto said, frowning slightly. It sounded complicated, and...sad, somehow. Not something that could easily be enjoyed. Being a shinobi wasn't always easy, but he always thrived on the fights, the missions, the adventures they got into.

"That sounds kinda...difficult, I guess," he mumbled. "But at least there are people like you saving the souls!" he added, trying to cheer it up a bit. All he'd had to face were criminals, not body stealing, soul eating -- whatever they were.

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Day 35: Bus 2

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