damned_institute | Day 38: Game Room

She’d never been in the Game Room before.

It didn’t look spectacularly interesting, she had to admit… but it’d be more fun than just hanging out in the Sun Room, right? Yuffie idly thumbed through a deck of cards, walking around the room to examine various bits and pieces. Board games, video games, chess… No really awesome prank material that she could see, but maybe she could rope somebody into a game of poker? That could be fun, but… ah, then again, most of the patients were just like her -- they didn’t have anything really cool that she could swindle out of them. Not until Nightshift, anyway.

Still! She’d keep it in mind. It wasn’t like there was anybody else in the room yet anyway, so any potential swindling would have to wait a little while. What could she do in the meantime, huh? Pick- pocketing a nurse could be fun..! Wait -- no, not when it was quiet like this. She’d have to wait until there was more cover, unless she got distracted. Yuffie hadn’t stolen anything in days, not since that time in Doyleton, with the Kaito kid…

Yuffie smirked. That had been fun.

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[sorry about the wait!]

Kenshin followed Sano into the game room, but found him quickly waylaid by a certain young ninja who probably needed talking to. The rurouni quickly turned on his heel, wanting to find a place where he could observe the two without actually looking like he was hovering. The empty chair next to Sakura--the young girl he had spoken with the day before--was the perfect place to do just that.

"Good afternoon, Sakura-dono," he said warmly. "May this one sit?"

Sakura was kind of surprised at how often people approached her here, but the face was familiar this time and she gave the man a smile as he walked to the table.

"Himura-san," she nodded, "of course, please sit." She might not be in the mood to play games, but she wouldn't mind some conversation. Besides, Himura had some good advice last time she'd spoken to him. "How are you?"

"Well, thank you," Kenshin replied, taking his seat. There was a deck of cards on the table next to him and he picked it up, idly turning it over in his hands. "We made it outside the walls last night, but night ended before any real progress could be made. And yourself?"

Sakura still looked a little troubled. Maybe she was still having trouble with that friend of hers? Or maybe it was any number of things that could have been happening in this horrible place. In any case, maybe it was time for the rurouni to play the 'wise old man' again. Older. He might joke about it, but he wasn't even yet thirty! And everyone always seemed so surprised when he told them how old he actually was...

"We weren't able to complete our objective," she said with a frown. "One of my friends was taken for some kind of experiment, so we went after him instead." That had been trying enough. But at least she'd had a few moments to talk to Sasuke withough interruption. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Himura's report made her curious though. They'd gotten outside the building and yet here he was again. What kind of progress could they really hope to make?

"My other friend," she turned to give him a faint smile, "he's still as stubborn as ever, but I think, I hope, he might come around." Her cheeks reddened for a moment, surprised at how much she'd told him, but then, he'd been very kind the last time they'd spoken, hadn't he?

"Sorry, I don't mean to dump all of this on you. It's just..." Just what? The fact that he actually listened? Maybe that was part of it. "Things have been a little crazy I guess."

Kenshin's expression darkened when Sakura mentioned that her friend had been taken for experiments. Just like the others. "Is he all right? Your friend. Given the...ah...given the circumstances, of course." That last caveat was depressing, but necessary. There was no way that anyone taken for experiments in this place could be completely "all right" afterwards.

The rurouni's smile returned when the girl confided about her other friend, the same young man she'd been so frustrated with earlier. "Well, that's good news! Keep on him, but don't be too forceful. If he starts to open up, you don't want to scare him back into--oro?" Why was Sakura apologizing?

"Really, it's all right. This one is always happy to listen."

"From what I could tell, they'd only given him a light sedative and there was no serious damage," she sighed. The truth was she'd seen that there was some kind of implant they'd placed in his eyes, but there was nothing she'd been able to do to remove it. "If we were home I could fix it easily, but here is another story."

She could only keep trying her best and hope that Himura's advice would work. Even if he acted cold and immovable, there had to be a heart in there somewhere. She'd seen it before in the little things they'd done together as a team.

"You're a nice person Himura-san," she said after a quiet moment. "Back home I don't have a lot of friends, so I guess I feel spoiled to have such a good listener." The friends she had back home just weren't those kind of friends. Ino had been once, but at least with Himura, she didn't have to worry about becoming rivals for the affection of the same boy.

"Well, that's much better than it could have been," Kenshin said, still not entirely convinced, but not wanting to push. There was probably much more than that, things that Sakura wasn't telling him. If she didn't feel comfortable saying, it wasn't his business to know.

He looked at her with some surprise when she started talking about how 'nice' he was. He hadn't been expecting a compliment, and his first impulse was to brush it off. He could demure, modestly claim that he really wasn't all that nice but thank you anyway. It was the polite thing to do, he supposed. But it wasn't what Sakura was looking for. So instead, he smiled and drew as close to her as decorum would permit. "Thank you. That was a very kind thing to say.

"Sakura-dono, what this one says still stands: this one is always happy to listen. If you ever need to talk, please, look this one up. If this one can be of some small help to someone here, he's content."

Edited 2009-01-20 20:25 (UTC)

She might've been suspicious if he'd actually pressed her for any kind of information, but so far, Himura had only shown that he was exactly what he seemed: a nice person. Sakura did feel guilty for not saying more, but the feeling was fleeting. Holding onto information was one of the first skills learned as a ninja. Still, she gave him an appreciative smile for his concern.

"You're welcome," she replied, mood somewhat lifted. He'd mentioned some other important things earlier and she hoped he wouldn't mind if she asked him some questions.

"You said you made it outside the building last night, didn't you Himura-san? I wonder how they can still pull us back, even from so far away." Maybe it was some kind of summoning jutsu. It would take an awful lot of chakra to pull off something like that every single night though. Then again, if they'd managed to seal off the powers or chakra of other patients, it had to go somewhere, didn't it? "What was it like outside?"

Kenshin shrugged slightly, looking at the deck of cards that he was still turning over in his hands. "Foggy, in a word," he said. "The visibility was very, very bad. We were in a forest, but we could barely even see the trees. It was also quite cold. We climbed as we walked, and the temperature kept dropping. It was well below freezing by the time we were out of the trees and nearing the top. It was also very rocky; there seemed to be some sort of disused quarry or something similar to it nearby." It was the same report that he'd given to Homura on the bulletin just a few hours before.

"It was very frustrating for this one and his friends to make it all the way out there only to find ourselves back in this place by morning. It shows what a long reach Martin Landel has here, doesn't it?"

Edited 2009-01-22 00:44 (UTC)

Day 38: Game Room

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