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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"Oh, just... living." The slightest hint of a smile played over B's lips at that, but it was quickly replaced in favor of intensely scrutinizing a deformed chip he had held up in front of his face. "I'm not pleased with the food choice here," he said, putting it down and choosing another, "but it's not overly taxing otherwise."

"So. About last night," he continued, but then cut off, intending to see what Endrance would find most important about their encounter to bring up first.

"I'm not particularly pleased with it, either." It wasn't a lie - he was feeling a bit queasy at the smell hanging heavy in the air. "Though I'm rather more displeased at..." He turned, about to indicate the nurses, but his eyes settled on a girl standing on a table, making a rather impressive speech. Endrance flashed a brief smile in her direction.

"...as I was saying," he said, turning back to B's direction as the nurses were talking the girl down from the table, "it's the overbearing presence of the staff that I'm more displeased with." Really, it was as if they felt the need to watch him at every single moment.

"...about it? You mean...the reaction I displayed?"

Between one topic and the next, B moved a lingering, unblinking gaze to the lunch-line, to the girl attempting to be rousing, and finally to Endrance, who B then decided had a name that clashed with his hair and outfit. He dismissed the man's second and main concern- never mind the overbearing, nameless mass of nurses and their beastly male counterparts, the meals entirely lacked real substance. And by substance he meant sugar. White sugar. Supplemented with caffeine, the taste of fruit, or both... he had no intention of being picky. Actually, perhaps he had understated the gravity of his displeasure.

For the matter that was currently at hand however, he could definitely work with that- Endrance's reluctance to fight back against the cat that had attacked them. "Exactly," he said, licking grease off his fingertips and reaching for his juice, "I noticed that you seem capable of fighting, so it seems odd that you wouldn't do so at first...." In addition to the following and calling and wistfulness before the creature actually turned aggressive, that is.

Endrance wrinkled his nose, piercing a piece of cucumber with his fork as if it were a particularly troublesome opponent in the Arena, or as if it were the cause of everything else here. He didn't actually eat it afterward, instead letting the fork fall to one side.

"I thought I explained myself earlier...the cat looked familiar. That's all."

It wasn't a lie. The cat did look familiar, and he'd halfway expected to see a trailing cloud of black dots following it as it fled. Or, to feel a familiar tap on his shoulder, Mia laughing and using as many Healing Potions as it took to repair all of the damage. A prank gone wrong...or a mirage of the real one. Did it matter, really...?

"But...it wasn't the one I was familiar with after all...it was just a lookalike."

Perhaps he'd been too direct, and in doing so had limited what he would be able to get out of the man. But, in his opinion it wasn't like it had been entirely him in starting it, so obviously it wasn't entirely his fault.

He thought he was beginning to understand the situation, although he certainly wasn't going to be satisfied with theories alone. He wasn't trying to directly manipulate the man, so perhaps that was the issue too... or not... but in any case B had invested a mild interest, and it was only right to follow that as far as he and Endrance both continued to exist at Landel's.

Fortunately B was anything but impatient. The only concern he had in the decision to mostly drop the matter was that something else might cause enough of a 'distraction' to the guy and then B would be left with nothing- without even getting the chance to learn what he'd meant on the board by an 'Avatar.'

"If that's the case," he started, after only a beat had passed, "then I hope you're not too familiar with anything like the other creatures around. Oh. But I'm sure you're keeping up with reading the board in there now." He made a brief gesture toward the doorway to the Sun Room, then chuckled rather unnaturally. "I'm not certain a giant bird would be too impressed with how you managed that cat."

So, it wasn't going to be so easy to drop the subject altogether. Endrance sighed, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. "I would hope the same for anyone here..." There was a momentary flash of a question - why keep things so secret?

The answer was complex. On the one hand, there was the fact that opening up about the situation might lead to finding some other answers. What happened to Atoli, why no one was familiar with anything else he knew so well...how to get back, though it didn't seem like that last thing was something anyone knew how to do.

On the other hand...'she' would always be one of his weak points. It felt almost as if saying anything would somehow shift or defile that memory.

"...has there ever been a situation in which someone was more important to you than anything else in the world? Or, I might say, a situation in which the danger to yourself didn't matter, as long as you could protect them and keep them near you...?"

The shift in questioning was abrupt, but it would be easier to explain everything after that, or at least try to put it in terms that would make some sort of sense.

What a strange oversight that nobody, in B's entire life, had ever asked something like that of him. For a moment he nearly stumbled entirely in his composure, and glanced sharply at Endrance before quite literally forcing himself to relax. The change was practically indiscernible, but the kind of thing someone else from the place he had been raised at definitely would have picked up on. His mood was instantly a notch closer to anger.

In B's world people were not persons- the sincere acknowledgment of another's humanity was a concept entirely foreign to him. However, his answer, if he were to be entirely honest, would be "perhaps" for at least the first part of the question... but the all-consuming passion to surpass the man he had once been groomed into being like, during those last few years of his short life, were a far-cry from what Endrance must have intended. Especially with the mention of protection. That was something he would have never done.

"My life and the life of others were forfeit for goals akin to that," he answered, the slightest note of tension apparent in his voice, "Now what are you getting at?"

The question had come out of left field, that much was true, but that wasn't the reaction Endrance was expecting. He raised an eyebrow, unsure of how to answer that first statement. 'I'm sorry' wasn't quite enough, and the subject seemed to be a rather tense one. He decided, in the end, to leave it and answer that last question.

"What I'm getting at is the truth of the matter...a story that began seven years ago. I met 'her' then, while playing The World, a very large MMORPG. We became close, but...things happened. 'She' was taken from me.

Years later, when the second version of the game was released...'she' appeared to me again, in a different form. That different form is what I reacted to so strongly. 'She' had been taken from me a second time, and I...still, after everything...after the second form had been revealed to be an illusion, I still wanted to protect 'her'."

B put his elbow on the table and slouched enough so that his chin was resting in his hand, neatly seeming to ignore the end of table-girl's antics in addition to the rest of the cafeteria. In reality, he was keeping his senses on high alert even as his eyes were focused on the fish he'd finally decided to eat, mutilating what he'd received by tearing off bits of fried batter with his free hand.

"What a shame," he said, although surely any condescension was lost in his vague tone. What Endrance was saying did make sense, if a twisted sort of sense: the man had clearly been playing too many video games (when there were far more enjoyable things like books, of course) and the object of his 'protection' would also definitely appear to be a cat. There was a large number of words in various languages he could think of to describe that sort of thing. But no matter.

"The monsters here don't need your protection." Although somewhere in there he knew he seemed to be missing the point and pressing one that didn't need it anymore, it hardly made a difference to him as he continued in a low voice, wondering what sort of reaction he'd get next. "Your past life is done. You should probably get over it."

"We never really escape the past," Endrance said, in an icy tone. "It always has an influence on us...even if we wish to avoid that unpleasant truth."

He folded his arms over his chest, glaring across the table as he began speaking again. "I suppose there's no sense in trying to explain how that's the case? If I should, as you say, 'get over it', there's no sense in further explaining how that affects me...and no sense in trying to use the power that I have that's so closely tied in with the past..."

Endrance cocked his head to the right, gesturing with his left hand as he added one last question. "Unless, of course, I've misinterpreted?"

"There's no reason to clam up," B said, unruffled, "I was only offering some advice." A moment passed and suddenly he looked up and frowned slightly, inexplicably seeking eye contact.

"I'll assume you've found some reason to think that then... have you yet seen any evidence that would suggest that this is an acceptable thing to be chasing after?" In the next moment he was peering over his shoulder, once more seemingly disinterested, before turning back slowly to the plate in front of him. "Do you think this power of yours would even work here?" A sigh as he poked at the mostly naked white fish that was left. "Well... I don't know what it is, or anything really, so I can't say."

Endrance didn't comment on that first statement. There was no reason to say anything, but his expression softened just a bit. "...have you ever heard of the dot hackers? About seven years ago, they resolved the Second Network Crisis. It was catastrophic, affecting every aspect of modern life..."

He paused, looking down for just a moment. "In order to do that, there were several beings...the eight phases that made up the Cursed Wave, and the ninth after that...that had to be destroyed. My Mia, she...I don't know how, but...she had something to do with the sixth phase, Macha. I don't like thinking too much about what happened..."

Endrance stopped speaking again, taking a long, shaky breath before continuing.
"There's only one way to find out whether summoning my Avatar - Macha...I'm sure that somehow the two are related - will work." He hadn't planned on trying, to be honest, but that message on the bulletin board from earlier had him thinking about it - even if it would require going outside another time. "I don't know that it will work, but if it does..." How would Data Drain work outside the game? He wasn't sure, but...there really was only one way to figure it out.

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Day 40: Lunch

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[a few .hack spoilers here and there]