damned_institute | Day 40: Recreational Field

Kio's breakfast ended on a much happier note than it had started. However, for once the announcement truly surprised him. He blinked as his nurse came to pick him up. Recreational Field? But.. but if they had a greenhouse, he wanted to go there. The prospect of gardening was a truly liberating one, an island of joy in this hellhole. He thought about going to the Sun Room and lying down, but it occurred to him that he hadn't had proper fresh air since being here. With a cheery goodbye wave to Honey, he followed his torturer outside.

It was much better than he had expected. The sun wasn't too hot (what time of the year were they in, anyway?), so he walked slowly along the walls, fascinated by the size of the field. He wondered if Sou-chan was alright. He hadn't even checked the board. Well, if Soubi wanted to apologize, Kio would be willing to listen. The place was so crisp and clean. He had to think if anyone had ever gone over the walls. What was out there? Freedom? Or a different sort of monster?

Leaning against one of the walls, Kio took as much advantage of the sun as he could. He desperately wanted a lollipop. One was quietly nestled in his pocket, but he would need to wait until the nurses were busy with other patients before he tried anything. Soubi had gone to some trouble to get them, the least he could do was make sure they didn't get confiscated. So with bated breath, Kio waited for a shift in the mood. He was, for once, content. Not happy, but not going crazy either.

[Sou-chan! Team Loveless deploy!]

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Ronixis got the impression that Dean didn't quite believe him. Just a feeling. Not that it mattered. Ronixis probably wouldn't have believed it if he'd been from twenty-first century Earth either, before space travel beyond the solar system had become a reality. "It's a change," he admitted with a shrug. "I spent the last few months on a planet called Roak though which in terms of technology equates to roughly seventeenth century Europe. This place at least has electricity."

He laughed softly, shaking his head. "You don't have to humour me, you know," he said after a moment, smiling wryly. "I guess it's one of those things you have to see to be able to believe it happens. I wouldn't have believed in demons and monsters and magic if I hadn't encountered it first hand."

For a guy who looked average and normal, Ron was really a character, wasn't he? "I was wondering where you picked up how to use a crossbow," Dean admitted. He wasn't sure how much of Ron's story to believe, although he supposed it could be a coping mechanism: him encountering monsters, that? He could believe.

So maybe he wasn't as much of a vet at this as he'd assumed at first. Maybe he was more competent than Ghosts-are-our-friends Angel, but the fact was Ron had ripped off some bad sci-fi movie or book to help him deal with what his life was and how ugly hunting evil could get. Dean supposed it could be worse. So long as Ron was coping and wasn't gonna flip his lid anytime soon, he could just file away any oddball remarks like this Roak crap as just Ron adjusting. And he was was right on one thing: it was pretty damn nice to have electricity and running water and food. Dean had been in way too many situations without any of those on hunts. One less thing to worry about.

"So, you're like, what, a bounty hunter?" Dean asked, probing. He was pretty sure Ron was a hunter, but he'd been like that with Angel, too. He wanted to know if Ron hunted and he didn't have any fool notions like the things they hunted were equal to fuzzy, cuddly teddy bears that wanted to be your friend. "Like Boba Fett?"

Except...yeah, he didn't even know about Star Wars.

That he could understand wanting to know and it was easy to talk about with far fewer awkward explanations involved. "Archery has always been my hobby," he began. "I started in school and just kept up with it. But when it came to hunting down Asmodeus, it became a whole lot more important to be able to use a weapon, especially when there were monsters attacking so frequently. I was never one for swords or martial arts." He'd leave those to people like Iria and Ratix, especially since he tended to focus on using magic anyway.

He didn't know who Dean was talking about when he mentioned Boba Fett, but he could answer the question easily enough. "I guess you could say I've been doing something like that although it isn't my real job, more like something that needed to be done, so the group of us went to do it. Someone unleashed a plague on the village of a couple of my friends, turned the inhabitants into stone. We needed Asmodeus' blood to create a cure for it. We just got kind of involved in more than we'd bargained for."

Archery as a hobby. Dean tried to work out that one. Of course Dad taught Sammy and him how to shoot when they were kids, but it'd always been with the job in mind, never just for fun. Well, it was fun, but not in the way he guessed Ron meant. Bow-hunting for them had been just basic survival skills, not something you'd do after classes just 'cause you had the free time and you felt like it.

Still, as hobby's went, Ron's had turned out to actually be useful. Maybe he didn't think of himself as a hunter, but the fact was he was one.

This plague that turned people to stone sounded like it'd been ripped off from the whole basilisk thing, but you'd think you'd have heard about a whole town going stiff, literally, and Dean had to admit it was pretty unusual for some locals to get involved before a real hunter got wind of it and dealt with the situation. And how had they known they'd need this Asmodeus's blood to help the town? Shit, why did he even think that word sounded familiar? Racking his brain, Dean came up with a blank, but he knew he'd heard or seen that word before. It wasn't the first time he wished Bobby was here. Aside from having a fellow hunter here to help try to manage this explosion of shit that needed killing, Bobby had a way about approaching something with a fresh perspective, and he'd been around this business probably longer than Dean had even been alive, so that had to mean something.

"You're taking it really well," Dean remarked. He glanced at Ron, judging his reaction, "Finding people turning to stone and that monsters are real. Most people would already be booking it for the hills at the stone part."

Edited 2009-04-06 06:32 (UTC)

Of course, that had been the highly condensed basic version of the story, cutting out the time travel, ancient lost Earth continents, interplanetary wars and invisible matter. Oh, and the fact that the Roakians were evolved from cats and had cute tails. He didn't want to push his luck by bombarding Dean with odd explanations and possibly unbelievable situations. It was an odd situation all round.

Ronixis laughed softly. "What was I supposed to do? Leave them to their fate?" He shook his head, his expression becoming solemn. "No, I couldn't have done that. They needed help and I was in a position to give it."

Coping or whatever, Dean couldn't argue with that. In the end, that was the job. You killed these things, these monsters, because if you didn't no one else would save these people. Dean was quiet for a second. These last few months, he'd been feeling tired, dead tired, done with having to spend every second of his life on the job and freaking out about Sammy, about what Dad said the last time he'd laid eyes on the guy when he was alive. But Ron was right. Most people, they could afford to quit, take a vacation. But with him and Sammy? You take a vacation and people started dying. Dean grunted under his breath, an almost self-deprecating sound.

Typical, it'd take some guy who thought he was from the future to just break it down and remind him why hunting needed to be done. Weird lives, man. The intercom sounded, Dean stopping as he listened to the man's voice. So far he didn't know yet if this Martin Landel was a demon or something else, but what he did know was that the man seemed to be distracted. Either way, the shift was over, and he could spot Hello Nurse picking her way over the grass toward them. Dean turned to Ron, and slapped him on the shoulder.

"Babysitter's here. Thanks again for the other night, Ron."

Day 40: Recreational Field

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