damned_institute | Day 40: Lunch

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Day 40: Lunch

*hobble wobble*

"Damn that SCOURGE!" Starscream cried out, the slowly-filling cafeteria producing a jarring echo of his raspy voice. His limping, already bad enough from not knowing how to properly use his crutches, was now exacerbated from the injuries he'd received the shift prior. Despite the gauges in his non-casted leg so lovingly provided by the aforementioned 'patient', Starscream could still put some weight on it, but not so much that he could really stop and rest; relieving the soreness under his arms was out of the question. The nurse that walked behind him with his tray, already upset at having to deal with yet another troublesome inmate, was growing rather impatient as his charge slowly made his way down the food line.

"Just...give me a standard serving of the aquatic creature's flesh, some of those fried potato slices, two bananas, and three bottles of juice," Starscream sighed, his anger from just a moment ago assuaged by the physical exertion needed to move the way he did. "I'm going to sit down here...bring it to me when you're done."

He was hardly surprised to find that one of the bananas was completely bruised along its inner curve, or that the handful of 'chips' on his plate were all on the small side. Tired and frustrated as he was, however, he could barely muster a 'damned flesh-creature' before moving his fingers to the plate, picking one of the longer 'chips' and shoving it into his mouth listlessly.

There was an unusually high concentration of sodium chloride crystals on it. Of COURSE.

[For Tony Stark]

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"I don't expect it to. I'm more than used to dealing with strange situations, so hopefully I'll be able to cope better than some of the others," assured Utena. It wasn't that big a jump from upside-down castles and cleavage swords to all-powerful mental institute full of monsters and time manipulation.

She nodded at the man's idea. Having a history for the place on hand to refer to certainly would be better than having to keep notes herself. "It doesn't help that the bulletin notes all seem to get taken down at the end of each day. I looked at the board again today, and none of the notes I saw from yesterday are there anymore except for the important ones that probably get re-posted every day," said Utena with a short sigh. "Maybe there's a way to make that kind of information available outside the bulletin board, somewhere where the nurses can't take it down. Like in some kind of hidden Landel's guidebook something." Even as she had the idea, however, Utena wasn't entirely sure how it would come about. She knew that she certainly wouldn't be able to do it; she could barely keep notes for herself, let alone others.

"Circulate it in secret?" Indy asked. Getting hold of the information would be hard enough; copying it and distributing it widely enough for it to be of any use would be a labor worthy of Hercules. He didn't think he was the right man for the job, but someone here might be. "Or whoever was compiling it could take it down themselves during the afternoon and repost it the next morning. At least that'd keep the patients from having to write it out again every day."

There was no guarantee that the nurses would let it stay up for any length of time in the first place, but then again, they'd let a lot of other questionable messages stand. Either they weren't watching it too closely, or--more likely--they had reasons of their own for wanting the patients to pass information.

He started to envision it: a list of escape attempts (getting as far as the ruins doesn't work; mass rebellion doesn't work...), maybe a list of theories about the place with supporting evidence (time travel: ...well, convincing evidence might be harder. At least it'd be a start). The key was whether anyone would be willing to stop squabbling long enough to be contribute--and whether anyone had been there long enough to have anything useful to add to it.

"I guess that's what a couple people already do with the primer and things like that. But you're right that we need more than just the basics on hand for people," said Utena. Now she was curious to know more about what had happened further in the institute's past. The longest staying patients she had met so far had been around for only two weeks, and from the sound of things, the institute had been around for far longer than that. At least some people from further back had to still be around and still have stories to tell, didn't they? Like Indy, Utena too wanted to know what had worked and what hadn't; if she knew that, then that just made it all the more likely that her efforts would be the ones that actually worked, setting everyone free at last.

"Maybe it'd be good to start by asking who's been around longest over the bulletin, and then asking to talk to them?" she suggested. It was a simple suggestion, but it was better than nothing, Utena decided. "I'm sure they'd be willing to talk if it's for the sake of helping everyone."

"Not a bad idea," said Indy, whose thoughts had been tending along the same lines. "Maybe I'll give it a shot the next time I get over there." Even if nothing came of it, he wouldn't be out anything by trying.

They were reaching the end of that conversational thread, but they also still had a lot of lunch to get through. For lack of a more original idea, Indy filled the silence by extending his right hand for a shake. "I'm Dr. Indiana Jones, by the way," he introduced himself. "I'm an archaeology professor."

The opening wasn't just a pleasantry, although he did feel compelled to observe a few more of the rules of etiquette with the girl than with the people he'd been talking to lately. Indy was interested to see whether his field sounded familiar to her--might be a good way to test how much she knew about this world before she made any kind of claim. So far, she seemed normal enough (pink hair aside, but maybe that was normal for 2009), but so had a lot of the people he'd met so far who were reeling off ridiculous origin stories.

Utena paused for a moment at the extended hand, then remembered that handshaking was a more common western-style greeting. She smiled and extended her own hand to shake the other man's, not too firmly but not too softly.

"Wow, really? That must be really neat, learning about all that history and stuff firsthand. We only really learn about history through textbooks at my academy, so it seems a lot more boring than it seems like it ought to be," said Utena, genuinely interested in the man's stated occupation. The only "teacher" she had really been all that friendly with in her life was Akio, and he wasn't really a teacher so much as an administrator. It was good to be reminded that friendly teachers - ones who weren't hellbent on forcing her out of wearing the boys' uniform - actually existed.

"Anyway, my name is Utena Tenjou. I'm a student at Ohtori Academy." She was curious to see if Dr. Jones would know of it. As far as she knew, Ohtori was supposed to be world-renowned, even having a sister campus in Amsterdam, but so far, the only people she had met so far who knew the school's name had been her own classmates.

Well, she'd passed the first test--if she was going to claim to be from a different world, at least it included archaeology, and at least Indy could deal with that. He smiled at the girl's enthusiasm, although of course he heard that misconception a lot. "Believe it or not, I spend most of my time reading history books too. Being an archaeologist is actually much more about research than digging for buried treasure." He grinned and hastened to add, "Of course, I do more than my fair share of that too." Didn't want to make himself sound too boring, after all.

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Utena. Hmm, Ohtori Academy," he repeated, trying to place it. The girl--Utena--seemed to be expecting him to recognize the name. Probably a big prep school of one kind or another. "Tenjou" sounded Japanese to his ears, which would explain why he'd never heard of it; he wasn't really familiar at all with Japan. Then again, she might still be well in the future from when he was. "Where is that?" he asked finally. "It's not ringing any bells, but I'm not too up on high schools."

Utena let out a soft, good-natured laugh at Dr. Jones's correction. "Sorry, I should have guessed that. I hope I didn't just insult your job." Utena really wasn't much of a reader, but she didn't begrudge people who really enjoyed it, either. Maybe she didn't enjoy reading from dusty history textbooks, but that didn't mean someone else couldn't find them fascinating. "Though I'm curious, have you dug up many interesting things so far? The only really old artifact I think I've ever seen in person was this rare Indian spice that someone told me takes about 200 years to refine. Don't know how true that is, though. Ever heard of anything like that?"

For the time being, Utena left out the part about said spice being at the center of one of her more . . . bizarrely wacky experiences at Ohtori. Maybe it hadn't been directly responsible for switching her and Himemiya's personalities, but it had been there fairly prominently, at least.

"It's in Japan. The campus is near the shore and far away from any cities, but it's big enough to be its own small town, almost," she explained. "And it actually goes all the way from preschool through to twelfth grade, with a few college-level courses for special cases. It's a boarding school too, so it's not really exaggerating to say that someone could live almost their entire life there up until graduation, sometimes beyond." Even as she spoke about graduation, however, when she thought about it, the graduation ceremony she had heard about at the end of her first year at the school hadn't seemed to receive all that much attention. In fact, it had sounded more like a passing story than an actual event. "Oh, I heard that so-and-so graduated yesterday!" "Who?" "You know, the one with all the friends." "Oh yeah, I guess I'll miss them. Too bad. Hey, what do you think is for lunch today?" When she thought about it like that, it seemed a little weird in hindsight, but she decided not to let it bother her all that much.

"No, not at all," Indy said, waving her concern off. "Research might not be as glamorous as field work, but you can't have the latter without the former. And yes, I've had some interesting finds in my day--I go on at least a couple of expeditions a year, and I usually come up with something interesting." Although he didn't come away with anything interesting, as often as not.

Indy considered briefly what artifacts to mention--claiming to have found the Holy Grail would earn him strange looks, even here. Better play it safe, tell her about something exciting but not far-fetched. "My latest piece is a gold crucifix that's supposed to contain a fragment of the original Cross. It's from the sixteenth-century; the conquistador Cortés gave it to a fellow Spanish explorer." There, that should be interesting enough.

"I can't say I've heard of that spice, though," he added. "It sounds a little like a marketing line, but I guess it's always possible."

He'd been right about Japan, but that seemed like an unusual model for a school to Indy. "How long have you been studying there?" he asked with interest. A system like that had both a lot of potential merits and a lot of potential drawbacks; he was a little curious as to how the students felt about it.

The expression on Utena's face made her interest in Dr. Jones's description of the artifact very clear. She was essentially still a child, after all, and one very receptive to hearing about new and interesting things. "You mean the cross from Christianity? Wow, I didn't even know that really existed! How do you think it might have gotten inside the crucifix, if it's real?" she asked.

She then listened to him answer her question about the spice. "I don't know, one of my classmates went through a lot of trouble trying to find a second container of it in India. She said something about having to cross a lot of wilderness to get it. Something about elephants too, but she seemed a bit shaken about that, so I don't know what she meant by that." Even if the spice wasn't 200 years old as claimed, it was probably at least very rare and very potent based on Nanami's descriptions of the trouble she went through to find it. From the sound of things, it was no wonder she had been so upset when the wind promptly blew away all the spice upon her return to Ohtori.

Whatever that spice was, it had nothing on a certain curry that could literally switch the minds of whoever ate it. But that was neither here nor there.

"Just over a year and a half so far," Utena answered after taking a few more bites of her lunch. "My aunt's been putting me through, thankfully. I don't think I'd be able to go otherwise, since my parents died a long time ago." She was silent for a moment, a nostalgic look on her face. She then continued: "I mainly wanted to go because I thought it would help me find someone I've wanted to meet again since I was a little girl. Something about the place just makes me think it's somewhere he'd show up in eventually. The scent of roses is everywhere, for one thing. I remember he smelled exactly like that."

"That's the story, anyway," Indy replied. "Of course, there've been a lot of relics over the last two millennia that have been said to contain a piece of the Cross--probably a lot more counterfeit than real, depending on whether you believe there are real fragments in the first place. But if there is a shard in there, it was probably set between the body of Christ and the crucifix itself, or maybe underneath one of the precious stones at each of the points." There was no way to tell for sure without taking the artifact apart, something Indy certainly wasn't prepared to do. He wondered idly if scientists these days had some way of seeing inside objects--it must come in handy if so.

He didn't comment on the spice--it still sounded like a scam to him, but he didn't want to offend Utena by being any more blunt about it than he already had been. The kids at Ohtori Academy must be pretty rich, though, if they could afford to go chasing all the way across Asia after a spice. Indy only wished he had that kind of funding.

He wasn't quite sure what to make of Utena's statement: she was going to this fancy boarding school just to chase after some boy? It wasn't as though that was uncommon--certainly plenty of his female students seemed to be in college to find husbands among their classmates (or professors!)--but it did seem like a waste to Indy. Then again, maybe his perception had been skewed by the women he knew, almost all of whom were professionals, academics, just plain feisty, or all of the above. Marion in particular was pretty atypical, Indy realized suddenly. He'd never really thought about it before.

"I hope you're cracking a book occasionally while you're there too," he commented lightly, and left it at that. She probably got the boys-come-and-go lecture enough from her aunt.

Utena didn't really know much about Christianity, or much about religion in general for that matter. She knew her parents had had a Christian funeral, but she had been too young at the time to follow whatever traditions they might have wanted her to. She had been too wrapped up in her dreams of princes and saving damsels in distress after that to care very much. Thus "I hope you find out if it's true or not someday, then. I'm sure you'll find a way!" was all that Utena could really say on the matter of the artifact after Dr. Jones had finished explaining it.

"Ah heh, when I'm in the mood to. I do read for school, at least, and my friend Wakaba has shown me some good novels," she admitted with a bit of embarrassment. "I do care about school. I really do. I like the stuff I read in books too. But I've always been the athletic type, so it just feels weird having to sit around somewhere for a long time just flipping pages. My body just ends up wanting to get up and stretch, or go running, things like that."

She had caught Dr. Jones's look as she had talked about her reasons for attending Ohtori. She was used to people questioning her pursuit of her prince, especially adults. Really, the only adult who hadn't so far had been Akio, who seemed very understanding of everything she was talking about. Still, despite not caring what people thought of her prince, she didn't want Dr. Jones to think that she was some kind of boy-crazy girl like Wakaba, and so she decided to clarify her statement a little. "Anyway, it's not just a romantic thing I'm after with the person I'm looking for. At least I don't think that's it. It's . . . I'm not really sure how to describe it. I guess you could call him an inspiration to me. He had a lot to do with how I live my life now. He came in on a white horse and comforted me when I was grieving, told me to never lose my strength and nobility when I grew up, and promised that we would meet again someday. I've tried striving to become a prince since then, and I've been trying to find him so that I can thank him and show him that I haven't forgotten his words," she explained, forgetting towards the end of the story that she hadn't actually told Dr. Jones yet that the man she was looking for was a prince.

Indy found himself oddly gratified to hear that Utena was at least interested in something other than the mysterious dream boy. Not everyone had to be an academic, after all--it was perfectly fine for her to be focused on sports if that was what she cared about. Indy wasn't a parent, but he liked the idea (at least in theory) that kids should choose their own paths in life. There'd be plenty of time to redirect themselves later if they wanted to.

He wasn't quite sure what to make of the girl's prince story, though. It was an unusual fairy tale, to say the least. Was the white horse supposed to be some kind of metaphor? Just an idle schoolgirl fantasy? Either way, Indy considered, you could do worse in life than to pursue personal strength and nobility. They might be better goals in the long run than fortune and glory, come to that.

"What do you mean, 'become a prince?'" Indy asked, curious almost in spite of himself. "Are you literally trying to become part of a royal family, or are you just trying to emulate the qualities that man had?"

To tell the truth, Utena was very limited in her knowledge of real royal families and so-called "real" princes. She knew that some still existed in Europe, and that was about it. No one ever seemed to mention them when she talked about her own prince either, so it was odd to hear Dr. Jones asking along those lines now.

"Uh, well I guess it's more the second one. I don't know about royal families and their princes, but from what I understand, those people are just princes in name. They're not the kind of prince who saved me all those years ago. He was more of a storybook prince, I guess you could say. He had a regal bearing, a gentle smile, and no desire in the world but to be noble and help people," she explained, a wistful smile on her face. "Those are the kind of things I want to do in my life. I want to live heroically, with style. I want to be strong and help people whenever and however I can."

Indy was walking the line between being amused and being impressed; maybe he was some of each. Not that she didn't still sound like an utter romantic, but that desire to be a hero, with a touch of swashbuckling panache and a healthy sense of justice--it sounded a little familiar. All right, fine, more than a little familiar. Throw in the intellectual curiosity and a Ph.D. and it would've been a fair description of Indy himself. If he did say so himself, which he wasn't likely to anytime soon. Humility was still a virtue.

"Good for you," he said, kind of wishing he could introduce her to Short Round. They'd probably get along swimmingly. Not much danger of Utena's ennobling the trickster out of the kid, though. "Sounds like a pretty good way to live your life, all in all. I don't know that you need to be a prince to be a hero, though."

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Day 40: Lunch

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