damned_institute | Day 37: Breakfast

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Day 37: Breakfast

[for Sylar, I believe]

At the sound of the intercom, Wally jerked awake and blinked around at the room. He’d fallen asleep. He should have been up and keeping an eye open for ZEX, but he’d fallen asleep waiting on his bed.

“Idiot,” he groaned, ruffling his hair and sighing in annoyance. “Way to help a guy out, hotshot.” Hopefully ZEX hadn’t dropped by and thought he’d left or something, or wouldn’t be too mad at him for just forgetting about it like that. If he was lucky, he’d be able to catch up with the other patient at some point and explain what had happened.

Rolling himself a little awkwardly out of the bed, Wally took the opportunity to stretch his injured leg and test how well it was holding up. It was feeling a bit better, not so much that he could abandon his crutch or that it didn’t pull painfully if he wasn’t careful, but better. Tony had apparently made it through the night in one piece as well, which was a relief. He really didn’t feel comfortable about the thought of his roommate wandering about on his own with an injured arm. Not when Wally himself could relax and fall asleep in the apparent safety of their room.

Yeah, he wasn’t going to let himself forget that one in a hurry.

It was at that moment that the door swung open to admit one of the nurses. She seemed surprised to find him awake and ready to go already, but smiled warmly. “Hungry, are we Mr. West? Well in that case, let’s get you to the cafeteria. The staff have provided some delicious French Toast as well as a range of other foods I’m sure you’ll like. Now will you be needing a hand with your leg, dear?”

“No thanks, I can handle it,” Wally replied, smiling back. After all, it probably wasn’t the nurses’ fault that this place was so messed up, so it wasn’t like picking fights with them would do anything. With a cheery wave goodbye, Wally slowly made his way to the cafeteria, keeping a tight grip on his crutch all the while. Obtaining a plate of food was only slightly less difficult than it had been yesterday – he didn’t have the painkillers to work around this time – but he managed well enough, coming away from the buffet with a tray containing a plate piled high with slices of French Toast and slathered in maple syrup, butter, and sugar, as well as a glass of juice. Not quite as good as some coffee would be right now, but the sugar would hopefully make up for it. And, with how few people were here at the moment, he could afford to take more food than might have been considered ‘normal’ – he’d have most of it gone by the time anyone came to keep him company, then he could just worry about how many extra serves would be allowed before he aroused suspicion.

Feeling pretty happy with how things were looking so far, Wally hummed faintly to himself as he dug in to his breakfast.

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"Nice to meet you, Kaiji! Thanks for the warning about the other nose-guy, even if it was an accident." Usopp smiled, the horrors of the previous night already forgotten in the moment of conversation. He gave Kaiji's question some thought, eating more sausage while he was at it.

He'd gotten too much... how did Luffy eat so much meat all the time? "I don't think they're trying to get us all... it's been pretty weird, to be honest. A few of us were here, and then went away, and then came back. And one of us just disappeared again, a couple of days ago." A little eerie to think he could just up and vanish one day, and he wondered how the others would react. Well, Sanji would probably take it more calmly than Nami's disappearance, at least.

"But we've got our captain, and me as our reliable vice captain and first mate and sniper, and a lot of our best fighters are still here too. So I don't think Landel sent any of us away because he was intimdated, or anything like that. It's kind of random, I think." Usopp considered it a bit more. "The person who was sent away last was one of our smartest people, but our doctor is still here, and he's pretty smart too. I really don't know."

Kaiji seemed to listen well, but he didn't talk a lot about himself, Usopp noticed. On the other hand, Usopp really liked talking, especially about himself, so he thought he could make up the difference in conversation.

Edited 2008-11-20 07:22 (UTC)

'Warning.' Riiight. Whatever term floated his boat (which he was apparently 'Vice-Captain' of.).

As Kaiji was listening rather intently to all that Usopp had to say, it took a moderate reminder from his eager stomach to get him to split up his attention. He wasn't a fan of multitasking, but he was a fan of eating. "Random," he grumbled between cut-out bits of toast, "It figures." Stupid enigmatic evil people and their stupid unpredictability. He stabbed at his food a little more forcefully in mild frustration, "Nothing about this place can just make sense. The old bastard's probably just trying to mess with your heads."

He paused for a moment: there was something else that didn't make sense about this, and it was more on Usopp's friends' side than the Institute's. "But how could they let themselves get caught and dragged here again?" Whether it was an actual pirate crew or not, one would tend to think that they would want to prevent this kind of thing from happening again as much as possible.

The king of not learning his lesson and getting pulled into things he didn't want to get pulled into really had no room to talk here, but it wasn't like Usopp knew that.

At the comment about the head doctor just messing with their heads, Usopp nodded in agreement. If there was any sort of master plan behind it all, it was over Usopp's head; besides, there were apparently smarter people trying to figure out those sorts of details. Some of the questions on the bulletin board lately were getting downright weird. He wondered if he shouldn't answer them, but for some reason felt a stubborn urge not to. Nate came to mind, too, and his weird little rabbit and the depressing conversation they'd had. Usopp almost missed Kaiji's question for his thoughts.

"Huh? Oh, well, the same way we got caught in the first place, I guess." He shrugged. "The guys who were here before said they don't remember ever being here. Maybe they take away our memories of being here, or something, when they send us back." Pausing, and poking at one of the sausages on his plate with a fork, Usopp added, "Some people say that patients who leave were just 'cured' and believed the things the Institute said, then were sent off to a fake home, or something. But I don't believe that. For one thing, it doesn't make sense; if the doctor here wanted us to really believe in those fake lives, why would he have the whole night horror thing going on? Or let us meet people who remember the exact same stuff we know, like my crew? And where would people go if they were 'cured,' what use would he have for that?"

Sighing, Usopp leaned his head against his arm for a moment. "I don't know what use anyone would have for any of this place, though. But I do know the people who were taken from our crew would die before they'd get brainwashed into giving up their dreams."

Kaiji poked absently at his food for a moment. Assuming that Usopp and his group were actual pirates, and they had been sailing on the sea at the time of their abduction, then how the hell would they have been caught? Raided? Ninja crazy-collectors cruising up to them on a speedboat and injecting them with sedative, taking them away one by one? Roofies in the grog? "The hell would that be?" he blurted out, curious. He had wanted to see if anyone arrived in the same or a similar manner as he did, and this seemed like a good opportunity to ask.

On the other hand, Kaiji knew for sure how he ended up here. Or at least, he was pretty certain. And it made sense. Mostly. If anyone was familiar with them personally (which was next to impossible), they would probably say that it wasn't unusual or surprising.

"You know, I can think of a few things it could be used for," he announced matter-of-factly. Kaiji's contempt for the wealthy and familiarity with the horribly sadistic with too many resources on their hands let him piece together good ideas of why someone would start such an establishment as this. That, and he frequently had an overactive imagination when it came to these things. He could be wrong, but-

No, he was never wrong in his usually-unfounded assumptions about people. Never.

"The hell would what be?" Usopp took a moment to follow Kaiji's train of thought. "Oh, how we got here? We don't know. I don't think anyone does. I was resting, and poof, here I woke up. I think it was like that for the others, too, but a lot of us have different memories. Some from earlier, who don't remember stuff I remember happening, and some from later, who remember stuff I haven't gone through yet. It's pretty weird, but we've kind of gotten used to it. I've heard of people showing up here right when they'd thought they'd died, believe it or not."

He had to be curious when Kaiji declared he knew a possible reason for the Institute. "So, what would that be? A motive, I mean. I can't figure out what anybody'd get out of this place. Even the things that seem to make sense don't really, when I think about them a little more." Usopp shook his head and started on the last of the overabundant sausages.

Well, that made loads of sense.

Wait no it didn't.

"You really don't know how you got here? None of you do?" Kaiji let that little factoid sink in over a bite of the comparatively insignificant amount of meat that he had procured. "Even though it wouldn't make sense, I guessed that it was about the same for everyone. But if it was what I remember, you'd know." His expression shifted unpleasantly as another thought hit him: "Everyone would be more pissed off than confused, too."

Kaiji wasn't even going to try to touch the whole time and memory thing. That was all so far over his head that even attempting to piece it together and forcing it to make sense seemed like a bad idea. Was it important? Maybe. Vital? Not really. Not to him and not right now, at least.

"The reason for this place is pretty easy to figure out." Elementary, dear Usopp. The great Detective Kaiji was all over this shit. "I mean, you've heard the way that guy talks at night, right? There's no way you could miss it." The crazy moonlight rantings of a madman. It was about exclusively what Kaiji's theory was based upon, aside from personal experience with batshit insane rich guys who liked cutting people apart. Thinking about it made his blood boil and he began to speak more quickly. "There are people like that out there, you know, he's probably living out someone's dreams right now." He thought for a moment about what he had dealt with where he was from, then elaborated: "They usually go after the kind of people who they figure no one will miss" -he was referring to himself- "so that no one in the public catches them. They can get away with doing whatever they want. Isn't that what everyone wants? Being able to do anything?"

Now, Kaiji didn't want to assume that everyone here was the kind of person that could go missing or die without anyone even blinking over it, but they were the easiest targets. "There are a lot of different kinds of people here," perhaps most disturbingly of all, "it's how you know that the guy who runs this place knows what he's doing."

Usopp listened to Kaiji's talk, frowning but not interrupting. It took a few moments for him to piece together what he thought Kaiji was getting at, as Kaiji seemed to be skipping around in his focus, but slowly Usopp answered, "So, you think it's just some kind of big game? Something that entertains him?"

It was true that pirates were the kind of people who could disappear easily, but he wasn't so sure about everyone else here. Still, that wasn't the most important part; even Kaiji had commented on the variety in the patients. "I think that's part of it, too, but that can't be all there is to it. I mean--why bother with the whole daytime part if he just wants to see us running around confused? And it's got to cost a fortune, to run things like this. If he's really using normal stuff to just build a playground. It's too weird to be that simple."

Maybe that wasn't a good argument, especially since they were talking about a theoretical lunatic. Usopp tried again. "Some of the stuff here is really unnatural. One night, I was stuck in a room with giant death slugs, I mean, giant leeches. Not just a couple of them, a whole room full! Falling out of the ceiling and everywhere, I practically had to swim out! It was so bad, I don't even need to exaggerate when I talk about it." That was really saying something, although Usopp supposed Kaiji didn't know him that well yet. "And the way people's bodies are changed... and all the weirdness with the radio, and last night, I saw..."

He abruptly changed topics, shaking his own head violently to clear it. "What I mean is, if this is just a giant game for someone, it has to be the biggest, most complicated, weirdest game ever. Maybe it really is, but we can't really be sure of something like that; if Landel is nothing but a crazy guy who has a lot of spare time and likes running us around like mice," there went that metaphor again, "there's no figuring out what he's really after, or what the core of this place is like. There's no finding the secret and breaking out."

Kaiji frowned back knowingly, looking more agitated. The issue here wasn't that he was being incredibly presumptuous and shallow, it was that Usopp didn't get it. He couldn't really hold it against the young pirate, but it was kind of frustrating to be questioned like that. "You've never seen it happen, have you?" he snapped mildly. Kaiji knew at least one other person in the world who had an obscene amount of money and loved to spend it on bizarre and cruel things like this for no other reason but to see it happen. It wasn't too farfetched to believe that there might be two or more people in the world like this.

"I can't explain the giant leeches and two-headed dog people and whatever other crazy shit is crawling around," he admitted, "that's all just part of it anyway." An integral part of existing here, dismissed casually as part of something large and largely pointless. Kaiji's logic truly was flawless. "No matter what the details are, there's got to be a trick to it."

Since when was Kaiji the optimistic one here?

It was true, though - if this was a game, there had to be a way to win even if one side was blatantly cheating or seemed to have the upper hand. And, from the looks and sounds of things, if the patients won in the end, they likely had much to gain from it. The odds were stacked against them, but he knew that their efforts would pay off if only they could find the right solution. How? Who knew? Did it matter? The game theory worked out perfectly in Kaiji's head, so much so that he considered it irrefutable.

"There's always a solution," he said firmly, "It might be next to impossible to find, but there's a trick." This was the glass staircase, the creased paper, the device feeding vital stats to his opponent. It was the missing card in the deck, the proportions of rocks, papers, and scissors. It was anything but obvious. If anything, it was totally absurd at best.

"... I agree that there's a trick to it, but I don't think it's just a game. Look, I've seen some pretty crazy people. People who screwed up other people's lives, even ruined whole countries, because they could get away with it." Usopp gestured with his now-free fork. "But most of those guys got something out of it, other than kicks. Sure, they were sick, but they got money, or power, or..."

What had Enel gotten? He'd had power, but had just taken advantage of that to try to destroy everything. Usopp paused, unnerved by the comparison. Wasn't Dr. Landel practically God, here? After swallowing back nerves, he went on.

"I can't figure out what the person here wants... unless it's just to make us suffer. And it seems like it'd be easier to make us suffer without going to all this weird trouble. I agree they're playing a game with us, too! But there's gotta be more to it than that. A game to see... who is smarter, or stronger, or survives better, maybe."

But there had to be a neater way to do that, too. He sighed loudly. "Maybe it's just semantics. They're definitely screwing with us, and I don't think it's just the head doctor behind it, but I wouldn't bet there's a real trick for us to win it. It's not that kind of game. Even if we 'win' the stuff they set up for us, it's never going to be the way out. And that's the only game that's really important to us in here, right?"

"I've seen the ones who had nothing to gain from it," Kaiji stated in a disgusted tone, "they pull this kind of fucked-up stuff for their own amusement all the time. I'm not a pirate or anything like that, but I've still seen things." And experienced them, as evidenced by his collection of nasty markings. "There doesn't have to be a reason, other than 'they can.'"

Once again, though, Kaiji's brain was set to work in the midst of new ideas. Something in the last thing that Usopp said clicked with him, and in a matter of seconds he was grinning wickedly. "Yeah, well I'd bet that there is." An idea was brewing.

An insane, next-to-impossible, completely illogical idea.

It might have been just stupid enough to work.

Usopp wasn't so sure about the mental health of the person he was talking to, but wasn't going to point that out. After all, he probably came across as crazy to plenty of people, and he was just creative, that was all. It did sound like Kaiji had gone through some hard stuff even before showing up here, which would explain some of the scarring.

It didn't explain the grin, though. "... Okay, like what? I'm pretty much stumped still. And the people who're trying to calculate how many people traveling how many hours each night carrying what items and fighting what monsters get how far on full moons when it was a sunny day or whatever seem to be getting a lot of information, but I don't know if any of it really comes together to make sense." He'd skimmed some of those, but it all seemed just as random as the rest of this place.

"It'll never make sense," Kaiji said assuredly, "they're looking too far into it. Even if they know all of that stuff, does it really matter?" Probably not. Or at least, Kaiji would never be able to process all of that information, therefore it was effectively useless.

"If I'm right about the reason this place exists" - Of course he was - "there are ways to test it. But this kind of thing would take everyone doing the same thing at once. It's next to impossible." How many people were there here? How many different types of people were there here? Why the hell would all, let alone most, let alone several, let alone any of them want to follow the directions of someone like Kaiji? Even if he had his moments, he wasn't always the brightest crayon in the box: all of those weird scars were practically a warning not to go along with any of his ideas. Each and every one of them was the result of a bad decision or a way of getting out of the results of a bad decision.

"Anyway, as I was saying, if this place is just a sick show for someone the most obvious way to solve the problem is to get boring." Fucking genius if he did say so himself. "It would sure as hell catch the head of this place off guard, if nothing else. Has this place ever had a time when everyone was doing the same thing at once? If we could get one thing to work, it could lead to others."

Okay, so it was more than a little idealistic. But damn, if every single person trapped here could do the same thing at the same time, it would be impressive. Kaiji wasn't generally one to work with others, but he could adjust to fit the right conditions. He had done it before many times, and he could do it again now if he had to. "Right now we're all over the place. Like a chopped-up animal." Like his left hand the last time he decided to 'stick it to the man.' "We can't get shit done that way." Yeah, even that bastard who punched him in the face earlier could get in on this brilliance. Everyone meant everyone. It wasn't like Kaiji had never worked with unsavory or disagreeable types before.

"If you had a group this big and that organized and this pissed off working against you, you'd get fucking scared, right?"

"If I had a group this big pissed off at me I'd be fucking scared, even without the organization," Usopp answered honestly, glancing around at the crowd in the cafeteria. "But there's no way to get everyone here organized. Some people don't even want to leave, and some people're too crazy to work with others. We don't even have groups that work together in a neat way, and the guys who run those seem kind of sane at least."

His own efforts to get people to talk about chemicals and simple weapons in an organized fashion had been a disaster so far. It might have been partially credited to his own absolute lack of leadership skill, 'Captain' Usopp or not, but he couldn't help thinking that it also had to do with the personalities of people here.

Still, Kaiji's suggestion reminded Usopp of the uncomfortable rumor that he still refused to believe, no matter how many people swore by it. It didn't make any sense. "So if you play quiet and boring--maybe you get declared 'cured' and disappear like so many patients do. We can't be sure what'll happen after that. And if people refused to play along altogether, stayed in their rooms at night, didn't argue during the day, they'd find other ways to make us act. Were you here for the first trip to Doyleton? They attacked us on the buses--it was fight or run for your lives, free entertainment and no choice on joining in or not."

Usopp shook his head, frowning. "Last night I went out exploring with a friend. I saw a lake, or what I think was a lake. Around it, there were bones. I think they were human bones. I didn't get close to it, but was that part of the game? Or is it part of something bigger? Where did so many bones come from?" After sleep, a meal and a conversation's distance, he was able to at least think about what he'd seen.

It was at these new revelations that Kaiji's jaw practically hit the floor. "Well," he tried to talk in a strained voice, looking thoroughly horrified. There was only really one word that he could formulate that fit appropriately: "Shit."

Wait, Usopp had asked a question, hadn't he? "I," Kaiji paused for a moment to try to let everything sink in a little further and to compose himself. "I've only been here for a few days," he finally admitted. Okay, so maybe he was basing his decisions and ideas a bit too much on his past experiences. But really, what else did he have? The commentaries of some people who were in the same situation as he here and there, with a few creepy announcements from the person in charge peppered in between. "But..."

The mental image of what Usopp apparently found last night left Kaiji somewhat shaken: not nearly as much as it must have bothered the ones who saw it firsthand. As much as he wanted to hide that fact, it was practically written in capital letters all over his face. A guy with a megaphone or a voice on the intercom may as well have been announcing it: 'Attention all patients and staff, Kaiji Ito is flipping his shit.'

Unfortunately, even scenarios like this weren't completely foreign to Kaiji. And, in his experience, things like that were not only part of the game, but a central point of it. Survival was basically the core of the massive gambles that he had participated in, and those who lost...

"There's a good chance that that's just a part of it, too."

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Day 37: Breakfast

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