damned_institute | Day 39: Intercom, Evening

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Day 39: Intercom, Evening

The Head Doctor seemed a little rushed as he spoke on the intercom, not taking as much pleasure as he usually did in describing the delicious food that would soon be served.

"Hello, everyone! Tonight is turkey night, which means turkey breast in a great turkey gravy with some nice turkey sides: peas, herb potatoes, a small garden salad, and for dessert, a slice of pumpkin pie. We of course have vegetarian substitutes available, as well as our usual assortment of drinks.

"...I believe that's it! I'll talk to you soon!"

The intercom clicked off abruptly.

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The girl was certainly strange, but it was a different sort of strange from the nurses. They only served to aggravate Soma; Mele made her rather curious. Kururugi had spoken of different worlds, and Soma wondered what Mele's world was like, if she hadn't even heard of turkey there.

She hadn't been expecting the next question thrown at her, though. It hadn't even occurred to her that their little altercation at lunch would have attracted attention. She paused, stirring her peas with her fork, before she finally answered.

"He's from my world," she said. A population of well over ten billion on her Earth, and the one man (well, two) who had to be here with her was the only one she truly hated. Why did it have to be them, of all people? Any civilian would have been preferable - any UN pilot - even that cocksure Frenchman. "An escapee from the same supersoldier institute that raised me, and a wanted terrorist. I thought I'd defeated him for good half a year ago; apparently I was wrong. I was trying to finish the job today."

There was that word again. "World?" Brook had been describing a place that could be described as "another world" (certainly it was no place Mele had ever heard of), and here was another person to say something like that.

That word was followed by another she'd heard recently, "Institute?"

It was about time she actually asked someone exactly what this place was. If Soma had tried to ~~kill~~ 'defeat' someone, this couldn't really be an afterlife, could it? After all, if it was they were already dead. Mele leaned forward. "What is this place? What is 'Landel's Institute'?"

Though it sort of irritated her that this was the third time she'd asked this question since waking up. Her conversation with Brook had considerably lightened her mood, though, so for now she could be patient.

Soma shook her head, her eyebrows furrowing slightly.

"I don't know. I only just arrived here last night, and the little I've learned doesn't seem to make much sense to me. The man I talked to last night said they took people from all sorts of places - different times and different worlds. He said that we're in New Jersey, in the United States of America."

She stabbed at her peas. "The people I've spoken to all say that this is a mental asylum. The man on the bulletin board said that the nurses tell us that we're insane and that we aren't the people we think we are, and that we have families in this world. I don't know why they do that. That's all I know."

And she knew she wasn't insane. Both the nurses and E-0057 had called her by strange names, calling her someone she wasn't. She knew perfectly well who she was. She was Soma Peries. But why couldn't they see that?

Mele leaned backwards. Soma had said nothing about an afterlife, and from the way she spoke, it wasn't even a consideration. Not that that proved much; lots of people died without knowing they had. It wasn't Mele's style, but she'd witnessed deaths so sudden, the victim had had no idea what had happened. But that was a long time ago now. Most recently, she'd watched as they screamed in denial before returning to dust.

But Soma mentioned a mental asylum, which made at least a little sense, if her conversation with Brook was anything to go by. But were they going to try to convince Mele that her life was all a delusion? And if they all came from different times and worlds, then Brook wasn't delusional but simply had been telling her about his world, like he'd said.

But--

"How? Why were we brought here?" Then Mele bit her lip as she remembered Soma had said that was all she knew. Lie or not, if Soma didn't want to say anything more, she wasn't going to. Not unless Mele did something she didn't feel she was up to doing right now. Mele had, after all, seen Soma fight, and without knowing how Mele was being limited, she wasn't sure what she was still capable of. Better to wait than to possibly embarrass herself. "Nevermind. I'll...try to find out." Was Mele actually volunteering to share? But well, she found she liked Soma. Which was odd in and out of itself, but Mele had changed. She could even admit she liked the Gekiranger (okay, maybe not, that thought just made her skin crawl). It was just...Mele had never had a chance to--

"What's your world like?"

Lingering on the past was pretty useless if she wasn't going to put the memories to good use.

"I thought it was for military purposes at first. That's what I was in my world - a soldier." The perfect soldier. No matter what they said. "And they say there are people here with all sorts of powers. It made sense to me. But it isn't organized at all like a military institution, and my nurse spoke of a family..."

It was the third time she'd been asked about her world since she got here, but Soma found she didn't mind. She was almost happy to discuss something she actually knew about instead of wondering constantly about what the present held for her. She'd never been one for useless speculation.

"I'm from this world, or something close to it - just three hundred years into the future." Speaking with Conklin and Kururugi had given her a fairly good idea of what the world around her now was like, for which she was quite grateful. "The nations of the world have formed into three power blocs, and the need for fossil fuels has been eliminated with the construction of orbital elevators - ah, they collect sunlight and transform it into energy." She'd forgotten she was talking to someone who apparently didn't know what turkey was.

"We fight wars with large humanoid robots called mobile suits - I suppose that's the most striking difference I've encountered so far. I pilot one of them myself," she added, unable to keep the slight pride out of her voice there. "And you? What's your world like, Miss Mele?"

Mele nearly spit out the water she'd been drinking. 'Miss.' Only Bae ever used anything like that, and although she wasn't opposed to it per se, it was unnerving, for reasons she couldn't quite fathom. Whether it was the absence of Bae or that it reminded her too much of Long's mocking deference, Mele found herself saying, "Just Mele is fine."

"My world? Hmmm..." Mele touched her chin, thinking. "Well, it's pretty normal. There are some fights, occasionally, between the schools of Rin Juken and Geki Juken, but," Mele shrugged, "that's stopped now." Probably. Who knew what had happened; Long might just have gotten the last laugh--

Pulling her thoughts away from that, Mele tilted her head. "From the future, you said? Do you know about Juken?" If the masses that Rinju Den had bullied were any indication, not many knew of Juken, even in her own time. But Mele had to make sure.

Mele seemed to react poorly to being called 'Miss.' Was Soma being too formal? She nodded quickly. "All right, Mele. And you can call me Soma."

The concept of 'normal,' Soma had found, wasn't nearly as easily definable as she had thought it was before. Mele's world certainly didn't sound very much like hers.

"I've never heard of Juken or either of the schools you mentioned. What are they?"

"Sensing the beast heart. Kenpo obtained through the power of beasts. Juken."

Mele stopped there, because the rest of it could and would incriminate her. Not that she wasn't proud of her Fist, but a soldier of any military wouldn't take her alignment well. And anyway, the last thing she had been doing was eradicating the remnants of Rin Juken. It hardly seemed to matter, now.

"...There were two schools of Juken," Mele settled for saying. "Rin Juken Akugata, and Geki Juken Beast Arts."

Soma from the future didn't know. Mele told herself she'd expected that. Even so, it would have been nice if--

Mele bit her lip. "Doesn't matter," she said lightly, turning back to the food.

It sounded like a fantastic power of some sort, or perhaps it was only some modified form of martial arts and Mele was being poetic (though she hadn't really struck Soma as the poetic sort). The mention of two different 'schools' seemed to reinforce the martial arts explanation.

She might have been lacking when it came to judging other people's emotions, but it was fairly clear Mele was disappointed that Soma hadn't heard of this 'Juken.' She supposed she could understand the feeling; she remembered the disappointment she'd felt last night when Conklin told her he had no idea what the Human Reform League was all too well. It was similar, she supposed, except the other way round; here the HRL didn't even exist yet.

But she was still curious about what Mele had said, and she leaned forward slightly, allowing her own voice to become a little less formal. "Can Juken be taught to someone, or are you born with it?"

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Day 39: Intercom, Evening

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