damned_institute | Day 38: Game Room

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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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He could hear the tone, and made a show of studying the board as if his next move actually mattered. "I told you who I am." He moved another pawn. "My name is Kvothe, and I've been attending the University and living in Imre. You've probably never heard of it. I've never heard of anyone with a name like yours before, and I'd still like to hear about this person that you seem to think I am."

Once again, Depth Charge mirrored his move. Was there really nothing more to this game than moving little soldiers around? It left far too much time for him to think about what 'X' was telling him- and that was bad. Because the more he thought about it, the more it started to sound, well, plausible. For a start, how would X know about chess? Or this 'Imre' place? Slag, how would he come up with a name? He could have ben winging it, of course, improvising, but...

"You... really don't know what I'm talking about." the Maximal said slowly, as if each word weighed more than an entire fleet of starhoppers. The unblinking stare that rose to meet his opponent's was curiously searching, even a little desperate. "You really don't have the faintest smelting idea, do you?"

Kvothe shoved another piece forward at random, looking up at Depth Charge seriously. "No. I don't have the faintest idea what you want or who you're looking for." He leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. "Would you start answering my questions, now?"

Depth Charge stared across the chessboard. Then, exhaling deeply, like a tanker sinking below the horizon, he sank back in his chair with one hand over his eyes. We've got a problem. Abandon ship.

He'd tried- Primus he'd tried!- to get X and the kid in front of him to correspond. Probably sent his logic circuits into overload in the process. But he'd seen the young human's face, heard his voice. There was no way he could go on thinking they were the same person.

It was utterly crushing.

Slowly, he slid the hand down from his eyes and over his chin, sitting upright again. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll answer them." he answered simply. "It's Kvothe, right? And you wanted to know who X is?"

The breath Kvothe let out was silent, but relieved. "That's right. I think I should know who you thought I was. And why you want to find him so badly." He felt he had much more control of the situation now, since the man no longer seemed to think he was this 'X' person, and so he was much more comfortable.

"X. Where do I start?" Depth Charge sighed again, this time out of chagrin rather than disappointment. "The Protoform X I'm looking for is an experiment gone wrong- insanity calling itself science, not to mention a sadistic freak. He escaped, turned up in my jurisdiction- a little settlement called Colony Omicron- and destroyed everything there but me, then carried on across the rest of the universe. I make it my duty to find him and offline him. Personally."

He paused to catch Kvothe's eye. "Don't get the wrong idea- you're obviously no cold-blooded killer. Guess if you want something enough you'll believe anything."

Not exactly a flattering comparison, he thought, but he nodded. "Good, I'd hate to think that I did look like some kind of cold-blooded killer." He smiled thinly.

Strangely enough, later in life some people will actually say that he is, but at this point it wasn't true.

"So, don't you know what he looks like? 'Red hair and green eyes' seems kind of vague if you're looking for someone like that."

"It's complicated." Depth Charge shook his head dismissively. "This isn't my real body. I'm normally a slagging robot, but when I woke up here I was human. There were a couple of similarities, though- my optics are normally red and my armoured plating blue. Like this body's eyes and hair. Figured I could use that to find him."

And boy had he been wrong.

"...A robot?" Kvothe looked confused, of course he was from a world without engines or electricity, they didn't have anything like robots even at the University. "What's a robot?"

"What?" Depth Charge blinked, nonplussed. Was this kid for real? "You don't know what...? Never mind. I'll try and explain it. It's like..." He sat back again, this time in thought rather than disappointment. Explaining a robot. Hah. It was like explaining water, or gravity. "A robot's kind of like a human, but made out of metal and full of gears and wires. Everyone from my home planet's like it."

Kvothe sat back as well, still confused but thoughtful. "It sounds like something that has to be built. If everyone where you're from is a robot, who built them?"

If he ever got back to the University he'd definitely tell Master Kilvin about this, he was sure the Master Artificer would love to try building something like that.

Depth Charge couldn't stop himself from giving a dry little laugh. Rhinox would've had a field day explaining this slag. "I'm a fighter, kid, not a philosopher. Most people would say Primus, I guess- he's kind of an all-powerful god. Me? I'm not sure anymore."

Kvothe nodded a little though he's not quite sure what to think. He'd thought it was a relatively straight-forward question. "So, when you woke up here you were completely human instead? Makes me wonder what other people here might really be." Ordinarily he'd think the man was completely cracked. However, the blue hair somehow didn't look dyed and with the rest of the madness in this place he supposed it wasn't any more impossible than everything else that happened. After the statue in the chapel he was prepared to believe a lot.

"There are maybe three more Cybertronians here, plus X. They're all 'cons, though, so I wouldn't trust 'em to so much as hold the door for me." Depth Charge suggested, "I've met and heard of a couple more non-Cybertronian 'bots, but other than that? Your guess is as good as mine. There could be anything here from aliens to ick-yaks. You're human, right?"

"Yeah, I am. Are you sure that X is really here? Or, that he's still here? I saw notes about people disappearing when I answered your message on the board. If he was really here he could be gone now." At least, Kvothe hoped so. He didn't like the thought of more sadistic psychopaths running around the place, especially after the night before. "What do you mean by ''con?'"

"'con? Oh, right. 'con, like Decepticon." Depth Charge explained, simplifying the politics as much as he could- he was probably even less interested in it than Kvothe was. "It's just a name for a faction on Cybertron- an amoral, lying, worthless faction. The faction I'm with was at war with them for centuries."

As for X... "And if I'm here, X is too." he said determinedly. "I've followed him across the entire galaxy. Slag, we even died at precisely the same time. There's no way he's not here."

Died? That gave Kvothe a bit of a chill but he decided that whatever happened he didn't really want to ask. "Do you really think that has anything to do with it? I mean, my roommate has a twin, and I think they were together before he turned up here, but he's here and she's not. maybe he's not here. It doesn't sound like you've really got any proof that he is, right?"

"He is here," was all Depth Charge could say. But for all the outward conviction, he wasn't so sure anymore. All the while he'd been speaking to Kvothe his doubts had been slowly building up in his mind.

But that wasn't a possibility. He couldn't consider that. Because if he was in here and X was out there, wherever 'there' was...

"If you say so..." There was no point in arguing it, really, and he supposed it was always possible. He still had his doubts, though. This place hadn't yet seemed to adhere to any type of real logic. "I'll keep an eye out."

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Day 38: Game Room

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