damned_institute | Day 38: Game Room

Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mojave Desert, Indy's brain automatically spat out, but that wasn't what Keman had said. Anyway, he couldn't think offhand of any civilizations that had been conquered there, unless perhaps if Keman was Native American. There was something off about all this, but pushing it directly probably wouldn't get him any more answers. At least not the kind he needed.

Later on he was going to have to sort out everything he'd heard today--magic, check; time travel, check; hyperadvanced leisure activities, check; bizarre animals, check; rocket ships...he sighed: check again. Ridiculous. Like most of his adventures, it would make a really great movie--if only he could get anyone to believe it.

He was slightly heartened by the kid's enthusiasm; give him a student with a genuine interest in history any day over thrill-seekers hoping archaeology was their ticket to getting rich quick. "That's a better background than plenty of people have going into it, believe me," Indy said. "There's a word in my field for an archaeologist who's not interested in reading and doing careful research: grave-robber." Okay, so he'd been called the same thing once or twice, but no one could accuse Dr. Indiana Jones of not doing his homework. Besides, most of those were just misunderstandings.

"Are you interested in anything in particular?" he asked. "Any specific region, time period, anything like that?" Whatever it was, he probably had a war story. More importantly, he wanted to figure out what the kid knew about the world. Please just say ancient Egypt or something else normal, he caught himself thinking.

"So it's not all intellectual, then," Keman said, smiling wryly. "It makes sense that there would be a few treasure hunters in the mix. I mean, there's got to be a quite bit of gold involved, right? It's unfortunate, but humans aren't often known for their selflessness and honor." That was true enough. Human nature was a fickle thing anyway, but after generations of slavery and conditioning, there were very few humans left in his world who were even capable of putting others before themselves. It was better here, of course. Meeting his fellow inmates had raised the dragon's opinion of the species quite a lot.

He started slightly when Jones asked about what "interested" him. Fewmets. That was another one of those probing questions that was going to get him into trouble. Well, maybe it was time to ease the older man into it. It was just going to get harder and harder to avoid it from here on out, after all, and Jones needed to know one way or another. Might as well. "Ah...well. About...oh, two thousand years or so ago, the halfblooded children of the conquered people and their conquerors revolted against their overlords and started what is now called the Wizard War. They ultimately lost, but there were heavy losses on both sides, and it's sort of...forbidden to even mention it. Because of this, books on the subject are few and far between, so you have to get a bit crafty if you want to find out anything about it. That's my particular area of study, I suppose. It's a little more personal to me than most, since my foster sister is halfblooded."

Indy shrugged. "Sure there are treasure hunters, but a lot of people probably start out honest. It's easy to think of knowledge as the real treasure until you've got a 3,000-year-old amulet in your hands." Or the Cup of Christ. "Just like with anything else, sometimes people go too far in their pursuit of whatever they're after. But there are still plenty of good ones out there. Just look around a museum sometime and you'll see." He was careful to throw in the good with the bad before Keman got too down on the subject. The kid was too young to have given up on humanity already.

It sounded like he'd given up on reality, though, and there wasn't a damn thing Indy could do to try to fix that. He remembered Aurion at breakfast, that "this entire world is foreign to me" line. Oh, and here they were with wizards and magic again; just great.

"Let me cut to the chase here, Keman," he said, setting the Tetris down altogether and going for a mix of gentle but firm in his tone of voice. "I've never heard of this wizard war. I'm not exactly unfamiliar with that period in history--" far from it, in fact, "--and I can't think of anything you could possibly be referring to. So what you're getting at is that you're from another world, isn't it? One with magic?" He was leading the witness again, but right now he just wanted a little directness here.

Keman would have liked to go to a museum and see, since they sounded interesting, but he had no idea what one was. He'd have to ask Orihime later, the next time he saw her. Still, he smiled and said, "I'll be sure to do that." No need to make things any more complicated than they already were.

But maybe not quite as complicated as he'd originally thought. When Jones mentioned 'another world,' Keman relaxed visibly. Good. This was going to be a lot easier, then.

"Yes to both. I'm from another world, and magic is an important part of that world. I apologize if I seemed...like I was having you on or something. I just needed to see how much you knew so I could ease you into the idea of other worlds existing. I didn't want you to think I actually belong in this place or something."

Oh, for crying out loud. How the hell'd they manage to get this many types of crazy into one building, Indy wondered uncharitably. He was starting to think that his presence here was just some kind of accident; maybe they really were looking for a guy named Lucas and somehow ended up with a guy named Jones by mistake. He couldn't figure out how he fit into this collection of screwballs; at least his exploits were genuine. Other worlds, for God's sake!

But of course he couldn't say all that to the teenage boy in front of him. What he actually said was, "So does that make you an alien, or what?" He regretted this as soon as it was out of his mouth and added apologetically, "Sorry. You just look so much like an ordinary kid; I wasn't expecting to hear you say you're from Mars--" He checked himself. "Or wherever you come from."

He couldn't believe he was actually talking as though he were seriously entertaining all this. But there was no point in upsetting Keman. Wherever he was from, the poor kid had probably been through enough.

"You think I'm insane," Keman said. He wasn't hurt or offended, he was merely stating fact. Jones didn't sound like he believed him, and probably thought he was a raving lunatic.

"To answer your question, no I'm not an alien. Or, at least, I don't think I am. I'm unfamiliar with the term." The way that Jones had said it made it sound rather negative. "And I'm not from 'Mars.' There are different planes of reality in the universe...I just happen to be from one." He was ignoring the 'ordinary kid' comment for right now. If he wanted to convince Jones that he was, in fact, sane, suddenly coming out with 'oh, by the way, I'm a shape-shifting dragon' probably wouldn't help his cause any.

Indy chose his words carefully. "I think there are a lot of claims being made here that I don't understand, and I think holding off on accepting them until I have more evidence isn't a bad idea, speaking practically." Time for one of his many variations on the playing-cute, I'm-a-scientist-so-you-can-understand-why-it's-tough-for-me ploy. "It's nothing personal. But when the guy I talk to at breakfast tells me he's some kind of mystical healer, and the kid I talk to in the morning tells me he's from seventy years in the future, and next person I talk to comes out with other worlds and wizard wars..." He shook his head. "And they're all running from things that go bump in the night. All this in barely twenty-four hours--it's just a little much."

He might be digging himself in deeper here, but he did owe Keman an explanation. "An 'alien' is a word for someone who comes from another planet, somewhere that's not Earth. Your friend with the 'rocket ship' might visit other worlds in outer space like that." When he wasn't confusing children with his delusions. "But what you're saying sounds more like another dimension."

Keman couldn't really argue with that. He was a very logical person himself, and he could respect healthy skepticism. He still remembered his own first day here, how confused he'd been, especially since the first familiar face he'd seen belonged to someone who should have been dead. That had taken some getting used to. "All right, I can understand that," he said, nodding. "It does take some getting used to. I woke up in the middle of night, when I first came here. I'm sorry that I...added to that."

The dragon would have liked to ask Wash about 'aliens' later, but he hadn't seen him around lately. He'd probably disappeared...just like Shana. Keman frowned. "I think so, yes. I know that my ancestors came to our world through a 'gate,' constructed accidentally by another people, that linked the worlds." His voice was almost apologetic. Saying all this was almost...embarrassing, in a way, given the way Jones had received it so far.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 38: Game Room

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject