damned_institute | Day 36: Intercom, Evening

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Day 36: Intercom, Evening

The intercom's jingle rang out and the somewhat uninhibited movement that was going on between the main activity rooms halted as the Head Doctor made one of his usual announcements.

"Good evening everyone, and I'm very pleased to see so many of you in such high spirits after meeting with your loved ones! However, like with all good things, it can't last forever, so I ask now for nurses to escort our patients in the waiting rooms and in the main areas back to their rooms, where they will be treated with a special Sunday... steak! That's right: today, we'll be serving juicy, delicious steak with fries and cooked vegetables on the side – simple enough for everyone to like and good enough for everyone to thoroughly enjoy! (Our patients with specialized diets will receive their alternate meals, of course.) Our usual beverages are available, and for dessert, we'll be serving warm slices of apple pie.

"After all, patients, t's always wonderful to see all of you cooperating with the staff even when given so much freedom, so I'd like to personally thank and congratulate all of you for helping us, your family, and more importantly, yourselves. Hopefully, we can help you to a speedy recovery so that you can see your loved ones more often, but first... dinner! I hope to speak with you all again soon."

The intercom clicked off.

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. Thank you!

On an added note, just wanted to clarify to players of characters who are canonly vegetarians and the like that you get to decide (within reasonable and realistic limits) what kind of diet your character gets from the staff. :3 ]

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Despite his mood, Tony couldn't help noticing when Wally entered that the younger man seemed edgier than he had the previous two nights. At first, he wrote it off as situational; there was more than enough reason in the hospital from hell for someone to develop a case of nerves. Monsters, possible torture, people who weren't who they said they were, all added up to an environment that was not exactly soothing.

That assumption faltered and faded as he realized Wally was, for whatever reason, watching him. Tony raised his own gaze to meet his roommates, eyebrows drawing slowly upward, and after several seconds remarked irritably, "I'm not going to turn into a monster and eat you." He paused, frowning, and added, "Or strap you to a table and dissect you. I'm not one of the bad guys."

Wally jumped when Tony suddenly spoke up, his mind speeding into panicked overdrive as he tried to think of how to answer the probing questions he just knew Tony was going to ask. "Adrenaline. Blood loss. Both," he said without thinking. Then what Tony had said finally caught up to his brain. It hadn't had anything to do with last night at all. "Oh. Right." He laughed nervously. "Yeah, I guess I'm just getting worked up over some other stuff. That happened today. Nothing to do with you. Because it was from earlier today." He turned his attention back to his dinner, mentally kicking himself for his complete inability to keep his damn mouth shut.

It was Tony's turn to watch Wally, and he did so as seconds ticked by, eyes narrow and brow knitted in bafflement. "You're a miserable liar," he said finally. "Never play poker. You'll lose." He tapped his fork against the side of his plate several times, in an idle fidget that would no doubt become annoying if he kept it up. "So, adrenaline and blood loss, huh? I'm not buying it."

Unfortunately, he just wasn't entirely sure what he wasn't buying.

Wally didn't need Tony to tell him he was bad at lying; he'd figured that one out a long time ago, not to mention the League commented on it whenever he ended up making an idiot of himself. Like right now. But he'd really outdone himself this time, blurting out excuses without even realising that Tony hadn't actually asked anything about his unusual turn of speed the night before. All he'd succeeded in doing was drawing attention to what he'd been trying to avoid and making Tony suspicious.

"Well, uh, yeah. That's what caused it," Wally said, thinking frantically, though the tapping from Tony's fork wasn't helping. "Adrenaline makes all sorts of odd stuff happen, right? And you were bleeding pretty badly, so I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't really know what was going on. Nothing odd about that." He glanced up with a hopeful smile that shriveled in the face of Tony's intent stare.

"Yeah," Tony replied. He paused in his tapping, hand first hovering, then setting the fork down entirely. "Except I wasn't injured badly enough to lose track of what was going on. It hurt like hell, yeah, but I was conscious." The fingers of his good hand curled against the desktop, fingertips pressing hard enough against the wood to pale the crescents of skin at the tips of his blunted nails. "And if nothing odd had happened, you wouldn't be explaining it before I even got around to asking. Which suggests to me that I saw exactly what I thought I did, and that you really didn't want me to." Which explained the nervousness. He uttered a short snort of laughter, dropping his gaze and shaking his head. Something about the entire situation felt just a little bit absurd.

Wally winced, unable to really think of anything to say about that. He really needed to learn when to stay quiet. If it had been Bats in this situation, he'd probably have had the perfect excuse to explain away everything and wouldn't have been freaking out at all, but then again, Bats didn't have any powers, so all he had to explain was why he felt the need to dress up in a giant bat suit. This wasn't going to be as easy.

He fidgeted in his chair, wondering what to do now. "So, uh, how's your hand?" Wally asked, half-hoping to change the topic, though he really was concerned. His own injuries he could deal with but it was always upsetting when someone he'd been supposed to keep an eye on ended up getting hurt.

"Fine," Tony lied. It wasn't nearly that, and the sharp stab of pain every time he tried to move it too much was determined to remind him that he wasn't fine. He'd pulled through worse, but without something concrete to focus on, it was just one more thing to spike his temper. "You're changing the subject. Now, why would that be, I wonder." He picked up his glass of water and took a sip, glancing past it at Wally. "I'm beginning to get the feeling you don't trust me." The irony of that particular statement was not lost on him at all. He could, however, ignore it.

"Fine like my knee is?" Wally asked with a slight smile. He was trying to keep that leg as still as possible, but it wasn't easy considering how nervous he was. Tony's injury had to be just as difficult to deal with, maybe more so. At least Wally could spend most of his time sitting down (in theory anyway, in reality it was starting to drive him nuts).

"Well, duh, of course I don't trust you that much! I've only known you, what, three days now? Not exactly long enough to start spilling secrets or anything, even for me. And I don't see you offering to tell me your life story either." He folded his arms stubbornly an eyed his roommate, daring him to continue.

Tony uttered an unwilling chuckle at that, and nodded admission. "Yeah, pretty much. At least I don't have to worry about walking on it, though."

He gave Wally a wry look. "I've lived most of my life in front of a camera. If I have secrets, my life story sure as hell isn't one of them. And I'm not asking for yours." He toyed with his glass, swirling the water in it to start up a miniature whirlpool. "Just do me the courtesy of not trying to bullshit me on something we both know I saw. Along with anyone else who was in that hallway, probably."

"I do okay. They gave me a crutch and stuff, so it's not so bad. I've had worse." He shrugged and smiled, at least Tony was still in a good mood, which was a definite improvement over how he'd seemed earlier.

Though he was beginning to think he could have handled a brooding roommate if it meant they didn't have to have this conversation. "It's not the same," he insisted. "I mean, what kind of secrets could you have?" Nothing on the level of what Wally did anyway; if Tony had had any kind of superpower, he would have used it last night, not just been a monster's chew-toy.

He sighed heavily. Even if he could get Tony to stop talking about what had happened, it wasn't like he could make the guy forget what he'd seen. And he couldn't think of any good reasons to explain it either, other than the obvious anyway. "Look, if I tell you, you have to promise to keep it to yourself." He locked eyes with Tony, desperately trying to convey how important this was to him.

Tony smiled at the question, though it was a strained, bleak sort of expression, and bore little resemblance to humor. "I play piano," he replied blandly. "That's about it. And normally I'd kill you to keep that from getting out, but, you know. Effort."

He leaned back in his chair, all traces of levity falling away as Wally met his gaze. "You have my word," he replied, with a sudden gravity that sat a little at odds with his usual sarcastic demeanor. He salvaged that a few seconds later by adding, "And hey, what kind of asshole would I have to be to repay your watching my back by shooting my mouth off about your secrets? Especially in de Sade's dream asylum."

Wally laughed at the joke, but it was strained and nervous. Tony's willingness to treat his concerns seriously made him, if anything, even more nervous about what he was about to say. He looked away, preferring instead to toy with his empty glass while he thought about what to say. How exactly did you do this kind of thing anyway? It would have been easier if the Justice League had been around this dimension or wherever Tony was from. At least then saying 'I'm the Flash' would have been more than enough.

No point delaying the inevitable. "I, uh, have superspeed," he said shooting a quick glance at the other man to see how he was taking it. "There was an accident a few years back. I'm not sure how, but it wound up giving me this ability. My metabolism kicked into overdrive the same time, which is why I eat so much."

Deeply ingrained skepticism made Tony raise an eyebrow at that explanation, though he certainly couldn't argue the first part. He'd seen himself that Wally could move faster than should be possible within the bounds of human athleticism; doubting that now would be both ridiculous and counterproductive. He nodded slowly, processing the information and filing it away.

"An accident, huh? That's different." Tony gave Wally an odd, wry little smile. "I was figuring you might be a mutant." He realized almost immediately that the remark, if they really were from different worlds, might fail to make any sense at all. Even if the phenomenon existed, it might have a different designation. "Uh, we have people in my world who've got strange abilities, too. Genetic quirk, mostly. I'm not a biologist, I don't know the specifics."

Tony was taking it better than he'd thought, though Wally wasn't really sure what kind of reaction he had expected. Freaking out? Threatening to have him dragged off an experimented on? They were in a mental institute where monsters regularly tried to eat them, Tony was probably more worried about that than his roommate's weird abilities.

He relaxed a little and unwrapped one of the pieces of candy John had given him as he listened to Tony's talk of mutants. "Wait, you've got people with powers in your world too?" he said in surprise. "Weird. Where I'm from, people like me get called metahumans for the most part. Most of us get our abilities from things like accidents or weird coincidences, though some people get born with them too. I think there was some research going on into a genetic link, but I don't know all the details." It was odd, they'd already pretty much figured out they were from different worlds, but it was looking like there were more similarities between them then they'd initially thought.

There was something else bugging him now and without really thinking he asked: "So, if you guys have metas, do you have superheroes too?"

"It'd be stranger if there weren't," Tony mused, though he'd felt much the same. "If there were only a handful of realities in which that sort of thing turned up." Yet despite the similarities, the difference between their two worlds was drastically apparent. It was enough to make him wonder just how frequently the phenomenon did turn up, and with how many different causes. And, more importantly, how many people from these worlds had been collected by the person or organization behind the asylum.

Wally's question disrupted that line of speculation before Tony could lose himself too far along it. He uttered a startled snort of laughter. "Yeah," he replied after a brief pause. "Yeah, actually, we do."

Wally wasn't quite sure if he shared Tony's belief that it would be unusual if people didn't know about powered types, after all ZEX and Zelnick hadn't thought such a thing normal and they'd both been familiar with different species and space travel. If none of the aliens they knew had anything like it, then there probably weren't any metas in their worlds. It wasn't exactly something you could easily keep hidden after all. But then again, the dimensions he'd visited while with the League had all had supergroups, so maybe it wasn't so rare after all.

Either way, what Tony said next was a lot more interesting. "Really? What are they like?" He shifted around to fix his attention on Tony more easily now that he wasn't trying to avoid the conversation. "We have the Justice League mostly. Lotta guys with a big space station keeping an eye on everything. Fought off a few alien invasions thanks to them." He unconsciously sat a little straighter, pride evident in his tone.

"Nothing quite like that," Tony replied, though his eyes still glinted with amusement, as though at some private joke. "It's a relatively new phenomenon. In response to emergent threats, mostly, in terms of powers or otherwise. Developing any sort of effective organization's going to take time. Hell, convincing people there's a need for it'd take time, let alone the actual organization."

"Yeah, that kinda thing can be hard," Wally agreed. "You spend so much time convincing people that you really, really don't want to use all this power for anything other than helping them. And if you ever have to go all out to protect them, and they finally see what you can really do..." He sighed. He'd never had people scared of him, but after the whole mess with the League and the giant laser on the Watchtower, not to mention the last time they'd fought Luthor - Brainiac... whatever he was - he could hardly blame them.

"But anyway," he said, giving himself a mental shake and turning his attention back to Tony. "What else do you know about it? Like do they have a name? What kinda people are in the team, anyone like me? I mean, I doubt there would be. I'm pretty one of a kind." He winked and relaxed further into his chair, wincing as he forgot his sore leg for a moment.

Tony couldn't help but chuckle a little at that. "Never heard of anyone like you. So if they exist, they haven't made the news. Anyway, like I said, it's recent. So far, it's mostly been one or two people, operating in their own sectors, with their own goals and...enemies." He rolled his eyes minutely. "Sounds like a pitch for a comic book, huh? Secret identities, cover stories, the whole deal. Even the press hasn't settled on which angle to cover. Hero, or lunatic operating without any accountability?"

He sat back in his chair, hand spreading in a mock-helpless gesture that stood as counterpoint to the wry amusement clear in both his expression and his voice. "Nothing new to me. Which might explain why I'm the only one who went public." He glanced over the small space encompassed by the room. "And then promptly wound up here. Maybe they're trying to say something."

"No surprise there, it seems like the moment someone decides to use their abilities to try and help people, a whole bunch of guys start coming out of the woodwork to try and kill you. I mean, what were they doing before then?" Wally laughed as he tried to picture any of his Rogues Gallery working a 9 to 5 or something. "But don't knock the whole secret identity thing, it's pretty handy, if a little hard to keep up sometimes." Like when you had to hide an insane metabolism as well.

Wally sat up suddenly, earning another stab of pain for the movement, though he ignored it. "Whoa, no way. You're a superhero? For real? And here I pegged you as being just a normal guy." He studied Tony with interest, looking him up and down like he was trying to figure something out. "So do you have any powers or are you one of those guys that uses technology?"

Tony grimaced, then feigned thought for a few seconds before shifting his right shoulder in an absent shrug and suggesting, "Trying to kill other people? I can't imagine there being an evil temp agency, even if office jobs would be the perfect training grounds... And I can see the benefits to the whole alter-ego system. It just didn't seem like a good idea at the time."

He turned his good hand palm-up in silent, if still amused, agreement. "I don't seem the hero type, do I? Normal's pushing it, a lot, but there you go." He picked up his water glass, turning it this way and that, but not actually drinking from it. "Technology. I don't have any superpowers. I'd have used them when those things were chewing on us if I did. That's why I need tools."

"Yeah, it just seems like they go from trying to kill other people or rob banks or whatever to trying to do the same but with superpowers and stuff. I mean, who honestly invents a way to control the weather and then uses it to rob a bank?" And not be a very good bank robber at that. But that could be said about a lot of his Rogues.

...He hoped Central City would be okay while he was gone.

Wally leaned forward as much as his injury would allow. "So if you got some tools, you think you could make some stuff to break out of here?"

For a few seconds, Tony's expression was one of frank bafflement. Weather control as a method of robbery didn't fit into any sort of logic he subscribed to, certainly. He thought that might possibly be reasonably interpreted as a sign of continuing mental health. "...Was the bank manager the Wicked Witch?" he asked, feigning solemnity. "Because if not, I have no idea."

The question gained his honest thought, a brief weighing of possibilities before he replied, "Yeah. And if it turns out I'm wrong, I doubt they're going to let me out early for good behavior anyway."

Wally just smiled at the joke. Truthfully he didn't get the logic behind a lot of supervillains actions either, most of them would have been a lot better off just selling whatever their weird devices were. But it seemed like there were some people who just couldn't think of anything better to do with their time than invent some kind of new weapon and test it by trying to take down a bunch of superheroes. Well at least most of the time the situation was handled easily enough.

"So you're going to try getting some tools again?" he asked. "You're not planning on going alone are you? I mean, I don't know if you've noticed, but I can't exactly offer you much help. Not to mention this other guy might be dropping by later; I promised to give him a hand with some stuff." Though the notes on the message board had him wondering if ZEX would still turn up tonight. And what kind of condition he'd be in if he did. Something about the whole exchange had just hit all his panic buttons, but he couldn't think of what to do but get in contact with ZEX or Zelnick and try to find out what was going on.

But that still left the question of what Tony was planning. Wally didn't like the idea of his roommate travelling alone while injured, but he wasn't sure what kind of help he could offer either.

"Yeah. Having a better idea of the layout helps. Not, you know, a lot, but at least I won't be wandering blind this time." Tony shrugged, affecting an air of nonchalance practiced enough to seem genuine. His gaze flickered down to rest for a few seconds on his roommate's injured leg, however, and something queerly like guilt darkened his eyes before he glanced down to find his journal. "Assuming I can read this in the dark. Don't worry. I've got it covered."

Day 36: Intercom, Evening

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