damned_institute | Day 37: Sun Room

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Day 37: Sun Room

Joe had read some of the larger notes stuck up on the bulletin board when the announcement came on the intercom. All things considered, this Landel guy didn't even seem so bad. Even if these people were held here against their will, he was certainly nice about it.

Apparently, the new patients - including Joe - were to hang around in the Sun Room or go to Arts and Crafts with the kids. Well, there was plenty of information on the board, including maps and descriptions of monsters, for Joe to prepare for the nighttime, when he could seriously get going on fighting his way out. He could look for where the boss would probably be waiting, or where his V-watch might be, and figure out how to fight the monsters. In fact, he had plenty of time to work all that out... but this the first time he'd had to really relax since he got his powers. So it couldn't possibly hurt to enjoy the calm period, could it?

The red-head stepped back from the board, and hopped back onto a comfy-looking couch to digest in the sunlight. He reached up to pull his cap down, and sighed when he realized it wasn't there. "Oh well, nothing's perfect. I still wouldn't call this hell."

[free!]

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Ah... they had better not. Yukari couldn't exactly say there would be consequences if they did, but needless to say she would Not Be Happy should it happen. Already it was bad enough Falis got this far-- she didn't want to think what would occur if anyone else she knew found out. Especially one of her seniors, now that they were here... Uhg.

The girl acknowledged as much, even if she didn't outwardly show it. Her hands were, once again, a seemingly intensely interesting subject should any onlookers glance in her direction. Yukari fell silent even after Falis asked her next question, which was a common topic she was starting to find; perhaps one of the reasons she bothered to look up again was because Falis' question puzzled her so much.

"'Ancient technology'?" Yukari inquired quizzically. "There's nothing 'ancient' about anything here at all."

Falis sighed and almost rolled her eyes. "To you, maybe, but it is to me. The stuff here, the technology and such - some of the magic even - are Old World things to me. That was hundreds of years ago."

Huh. How did that work? It sounded so backwards; weren't things supposed to progress forward, not revert back? All these places were so different, it was almost mind boggling.

"My home has all these things, too," Yukari replied, shrugging her shoulders lightly. "If I didn't know any better, I could barely tell the difference." At least, if they gaged by the day and left out the fact they weren't supposed to be here.

"Ah." So it was like with Hokuto. "Well... when you get back home, keep an eye on the people in power, the ones that think they're above nature. There's a reason this technology was forbidden in my lands."

She sighed and leaned back into the couch. "I'd hate to see more lands destroyed thanks to the greed and arrogance of a few."

Yukari couldn't help but raise her eyebrows, and belatedly she realized it was kind of ironic she was telling her this.

"It's happened," Yukari responded, sounding awfully casual about it. Although it was true; plenty of history included people trying to do exactly that. Not to mention the entire root of the reason they were fighting back home... "It's kind of hard to follow through with anything too bad, though, unless you're made of money or something. Usually with enough opposition, those sorta things can be stopped."

"Unless the few find ways to harness forces that should never have been used," Falis replied. "Those are the people that will end up using magic and other kinds of technology to destroy lands whole, at their whim, or because they think it will stop some things from happening. It's more a show of power, because they can, than anything else."

She pursed her lips. "It's not a question of having enough opposition, but having the right opposition." She paused. "I hope your world has it before your time is over. Numbers only help so much; it is the few with the drive and ability to effect change that will determine the path such things take."

She closed her eyes. "And then... I hope your land chooses the right people to lead." She chuckled lightly, finding the fact that herself apparently counted as one of the right amusing. "You'll be surprised where such people may be found."

"No one's going to try to destroy anything," Yukari insisted, shaking her head slightly. Maybe if they jumped back about a few hundred years, but these days? It didn't sound likely someone would decide to invade or destroy anyone anymore. "Nobody has magic, either-- everything is science now. If you talked like that to anyone back home they'd think you were crazy."

Thanks to Dominikov and her grasp of the Old World language, Falis knew what science was - at least in a rudimentary sense - plus she had explored many ruins from the Old World.

"And if you were to talk of science in my world, unless you were in my kingdom, you would be thrown into jail; Forland is the most tolerant of ancient technology than the others given our line," Falis replied, not bothered at all that Yukari sort of called her crazy. "I know science, Yukari, I may not have formal education but I am learned and I've read the writings left behind of the Old World. It's kinda essential for my job anyways. In the end, there really isn't much difference between magic and science."

Falis shrugged. "I hope you're right, though."

"If you say so..." Yukari wasn't in the mood much to debate it-- generally, she wouldn't be debating this whatever the situation was, but now it was more so. So their worlds were different, nothing they said would change it.

"Still, it's nothing to worry about," she finished off. "My home isn't that dangerous."

"That's good." Falis tended not to dwell on things like that too long anyways. It wasn't her world, so she'd only give so much input.

"So... what do you do for fun in your world?"

At this rate, Falis was going to start making Yukari homesick again. Oh well, it was a considerably better feeling than when they were talking about their last topic.

"There's a few things, I guess," Yukari answered. "Usually I'll go with a friend to the shopping center by the station, or head to the mall. Or I stay at our dorm if I don't feel like going out."

Falis blinked. "What's a... mall?"

Yukari gave her own blank expression for a brief second. "Well, uh," she began making vague hand gestures as she began to describe. "It's usually a pretty big building with a lot of smaller stores inside. Normally it's things like clothing stores and a few restaurants, but it's got other things, too."

"...so it's like a tavern where you can buy shit aside from ale, board and tail?" She tilted her head. "Like a covered marketplace or something?"

"Er... sure." If the comparison helped, then Falis was free to think so, even if Yukari wasn't quite sure what she had in mind. "The buildings are about the same size as the institute-" Yukari gestured a hand around them. "-well... more or less, they can get bigger depending on where you go, but where I live it's actually kind of small."

The bounty hunter's eyes went wide. "As big as...?" She blinked. "Shit, that's fucking huge. Marketplaces that are close to half the size of my castle?" She scratched her head, trying to wrap her mind around it. "Are there enough people in your village to patron something like that and keep it going?"

Yukari almost wanted to laugh; this girl certainly was one of the more stranger people she's met... "Village? No, no-- I live in a city. Y'know, where there's thousands of people living there. It's no small town."

For a moment, Falis looked at Yukari like the girl had suddenly grown a second head. Then she furrowed her brow and the gears were obviously turning in her head. City... thousands of people... That was like the Grandal capital. She hadn't been back there since her village had been destroyed, but even at that young of an age she could tell there were a mighty fuckton of people. And it smelled.

"How do you all take care of the--" She stopped not wanting to come across as insulting so she searched for better wording. "Aa. A place that big that's not a castle has to have... issues with so many people in close quarters. Does your ruling family provide com-- the people with facilities typically only found in castles?"

... Oh boy. It was kind of strange having to explain this, but Falis really didn't have a clue, did she?

"There aren't any castles or kings or princesses and everything else that goes with it around," Yukari began to explain. "Well, there used to be, but it was all ages ago. Nowadays each country has their own government and most people look after themselves, and there's different kinds of places to live, like a house or an apartment. Like I said, it's not a small place; there's large buildings everywhere."

See, that's what was wrong with these lands of ancient technology; they didn't have a sovereignty to provide, protect and take care of them. People as a whole are easily herded and rarely agree on anything. She wasn't so sure about this whole people ruling themselves thing. That was why all this technology and shit got out of hand an needed to be forbidden. Falis didn't feel like asking Yukari about the problems such a way of ruling obviously had to have. Instead, she decided to hell with trying to make her question sound unoffensive; she didn't care anymore.

"Okay, I get that, but how do you all deal with the smell of having that many people shoved together?" She grumbled. "I get how it works in this building since it's not that big, but this place isn't even a third the size of my castle and you're talking about places as big as the Grandalian capital. Let me tell you, that place would fucking make you sick if you were there too long."

"What are you talking about?" Sounding appropriately disgusted, it was Yukari's turn to give Falis another odd look. "Whatever place you came from, it's not what you're thinking at all!"

Falis would just ask Hokuto about it. She'd be able to understand what the princess was asking about. She thought she was being pretty fucking clear. "The capital of the land I was born in - not my kingdom, by the way - has waste issues because of the amount of people and the assholes that rule that country don't give the people the proper things the crown should. It's the only place I've ever been in that's the size you've been talking about." Falis sighed. "Never mind," she grumbled.

"Anyways... do you have any pets? I had a wolf cub growing up, but then he got too big and started attacking the village's chickens, so we had to let him go."

Ew. Needless to say, Yukari couldn't imagine living in those conditions.

"It's... complicated." One would think the whole idea behind a modern city was simple enough, but now when it came to explaining it to someone who didn't have a clue what it was like... Who would have thought it actually was a bit complex?

The thought of owning a wolf should have been a strange and unusual one, but if Falis came from such a... medieval sounding place, maybe it wasn't so odd after all. "I suppose Koromaru counts. He used to be a stray dog at the nearby shrine, but now he lives with us."

A stray. Well, Falis supposed that was nice of them. The princess had found that a lot of strays were diseased and crawling with parasites, but she figured Yukari would have had those taken care of or this dog had originally been in good health. She wasn't going to ask, though.

"Aaa. That's good for him. Stray dogs tend to be prey for roaming wolves and the occasional goblin that wanders too close to human settlements." She paused and then let out a breath. "You don't have goblins in your lands, do you?"

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Day 37: Sun Room

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