damned_institute | Nightshift 38: F1-F10 Hallway

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Nightshift 38: F1-F10 Hallway

Though experimenting with playing cards wasn't exactly the hardest of bodily training, Ophelia did feel that the rigorous testing of her speed, accuracy and throwing power had sharpened her mind for the coming night, and she went out into the night confident that she would be able to handle herself much more gracefully than she had previously. It still irked her greatly that she was no longer able to face any challenge that came her way head on, but she realized now that if she was going to make any progress in attempting to get her power back and shove Martin Landel's balls up his own esophagus, she was going to have to turn down a few fun opportunities here and there.

Ophelia left her room with Kio's maps and a handful of pens in her pockets. She felt more than a little naked without anything else in hand, and she was reminded instantly that she missed not having her full night vision, but no matter. She had to get to the Sun Room quickly. There was no way she was going to get tied up again and miss the opportunity to get further into the basement. The fact that Landel had mentioned something about "down there" specifically in his intercom announcement only made Ophelia more eager.

The Claymore hurried down the hall as fast as she could while making sure she didn't bump into anything in the dark.

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Fox remained silent as he paused in front of F8, grabbing the door handle and just hesitating for a moment. He supposed that if Lyta wasn't here, he could explain it away with the excuse that she had been taken for experimentation or to be brainwashed for the night.

That would just be making excuses, he would have to face loosing her sooner or later. In a place like this it almost seemed inevitable. Fox opened the door and looked into the room. One female, sleeping, but even with the limited light provided by his blue glow and Nara's flashlight he could see it wasn't her.

Deciding he didn't want to disturb her, Fox closed the door again and just rested his forehead against it for a moment. "She's gone," Fox said out loud. He wasn't normally prone to violence for purely emotional reasons, but he was willing to make an exception now.

Shikamaru leaned against the wall opposite the door as he waited, arms folded loosely over his chest. He wasn't planning, not yet, though he knew he'd have to do so sooner or later. When Fox opened the door and nothing giant and hungry jumped out, he assumed the worst-case scenario had been avoided.

"Okay." Shikamaru's voice lacked the sensitivity it might have had if he'd known Fox better or they hadn't been in the middle of a dark hospital filled with giant cats. No girl. Check. Moving on.

"You said that you and someone else got out of the building. What happened then?" Fox's voice had trailed off after the statement, indicating something bad, but it was likely--probable, even--that they'd just made mistakes that could be avoided the second time through.

For a long moment after Shikamaru's question, Fox didn't speak, just leaning against the door before he finally stood up again. Nara seemed particularly careless, or perhaps dense if he hadn't gathered from what he had implied earlier.

"I think, when morning comes, you'll understand more about why it's so hard to escape from this place. Getting outside doesn't seem to stop it. In the morning you wake up back in your bed, no memory of how you got there. Fighting one moment, in bed the next." Fox explained, avoiding talking about what had happened outside.

It was a wound that had just been reopened. It wasn't something he was going to talk about with a stranger either, especially not a kid. "We should keep moving." Waiting in one spot wasn't very healthy in this place.

Shikamaru gave a displeased groan as he pushed away from the wall. "If that's the case, what's the point of running around?" Regardless, he followed as Fox started down the hall again.

He didn't buy the chance that there was no way out. Even if this was a real place and not an illusion, and he was pretty sure it was real, there had to be some kind of jutsu keeping them there. Bothersome, but he had a bit of a knack for resisting sleeping genjutsu, and that was what the loss of consciousness sounded like. He'd just have to avoid being caught up in it, whenever whoever was doing this decided to make it morning.

Shikamaru knew it was a troublesome day when 'fighting one moment, in bed the next' had to be considered a bad thing.

"And where are we going, anyway?"

"We can't get out while this place is still in operation. So, the only way to get out is to take this place down." Fox explained. " But it's not easy to get things done at night. In addition to the cats we saw back there, there are much more dangerous opponents, gas, and occasionally they take other 'patients' here and brainwash them, turn them against us."

It was an understatement to say Fox was glad that had never happened to him. As bad as having the implants had been, he had to admit, perhaps just to himself, that he would have hated it even more to have been turned against the others trapped here.

Again, a concise and useful explanation. Shikamaru was glad that he didn't have to waste time mining for information, but he'd still appreciate it if what he learned made any sense at all. Aside from doubting that escape was impossible he took Fox's word for fact, giving a short nod when the explanation was complete.

If Fox had already made an assessment and concrete plan, he would've expressed it right away. As useful as they were, he was feeding Shikamaru facts rather than a plan of action, which meant Shikamaru would have to cobble together something himself, which meant he'd have to think harder than he was thinking now (and he was thinking pretty hard, considering he'd just crawled out of bed), which meant even more effort. He expressed his displeasure with an irritated but thoughtful 'hrm,' not the first and certainly not the last.

"How big is 'us' and how many people are keeping the place running?" It'd either take one powerful ninja or a group of several to cast a jutsu that affected such a large area at the end of the night. To his knowledge, no Leaf ninja had inexplicably disappeared recently.

Shikamaru had a feeling that if his bed was empty when morning arrived, he was going to have a lot of shit to deal with when he got back.

"Us includes everyone trapped here, though quite a few are noncombatants. There are several groups that organize over the bulletin board and go under different names. The cooking club, arts and crafts, history club. Things like that. I imagine there are also smaller, less public groups at work," Fox explained. Nara seemed to be able to take in information fairly well, and he did ask a lot of intelligent questions. Fox didn't mind explaining, it gave him something to do. Something to think about.

"More people are brought in at least every other day. We have no idea how many people are at work here aside from the visible staff, though I think a fairly large support staff would be required to keep things running as smoothly as they do." There was no direct evidence to support that, but it made sense, and it was something to be taken into planning. They could only directly fight the enemies they could see, but they had to take into account that things did go on behind the scenes they couldn't see.

There was a lot Fox wasn't telling Shikamaru, but he felt that the kid really didn't need to know about the more complicated issues. Assuming he was still around tomorrow, someone would no doubt explain it to him.

Unfortunately, the useful information seemed to stop there. Shikamaru paused for long enough to simultaneously stretch and sigh with annoyance, which was a difficult feat he'd spent a lot of time perfecting. He caught up quickly enough.

Fairly large. Great. He'd be able to do a lot with that, like speculate about the number of times he'd yawn during this conversation. The words weren't useful for much else, but he didn't blame Fox for their insufficiency. "Give me a rough number. Thirty? Fifty? Two hundred?" It couldn't be too many if the sudden absences had gone unnoticed. The visible staff must be unaffiliated with any group or country, or Fox would have noted that. "And they're from all over." An easy assumption, given that Fox was a Rock-nin. He only voiced it because thinking out loud cemented the important facts as he sifted through what might prove to be minor details.

How were groups organized? Dividing themselves along country lines seemed natural but dangerous in a situation like this, but he was sure any Leaf-nin would know that. Common sense. For now, the details about groups were filed as irrelevant but marked for future reference that he hoped he wouldn't have to use. He didn't plan on sticking around for a second longer than it took to make sure that everyone from his village was safe.

There simply wasn't enough information. Shikamaru didn't suspect that Fox might be hiding anything; although they were from different villages, they had a common goal and he expected the conversation to progress the same way any conversation would progress if he arrived fresh on the scene without details. "Nothing in common?"

"At anyone time there are no more than two hundred and forty patients here, unless they've added on more rooms that I don't know about," Fox said. "I think most of the rooms are full, though the exact number changes all the time."

This felt a lot more like a military briefing than explaining a weird situation to a kid, and Fox spent a moment thinking that over. He had been a child soldier himself, and Ed was a major, despite his age. Perhaps this kid had some experience too.

"It's hard to track exactly how many new people arrive at a time, though I would put the minimum at perhaps fifteen, though most of the time I think it's at least twenty."

Fox turned back to the main hallway of the female patient block as he continued to talk.

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Nightshift 38: F1-F10 Hallway

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