damned_institute | Day 41: Breakfast

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Day 41: Breakfast

Endrance turned his head to look at the intercom, giving it a look that would wither an entire rose garden in an instant. He would never get used to ending up in his room again from somewhere else in the Institute.

He brushed his bangs out of his eyes, not sitting up just yet. He could tell already that his torso had been heavily bandaged, even more so than it had been the night before. The cuts on his arms were covered with fresh bandages, and the one on his cheek seemed to no longer be there at all.

Endrance had been expecting to wake up in a lot of pain, but even that seemed numbed. "They must have given me something," he murmured quietly, as he slowly sat up.

At that moment, his nurse came to get him, pushing a wheelchair along with her. "Peyton, dear, good morning. I've come to take you to breakfast, so..." He shook his head. "I'm fine. There's no need for that...I can walk perfectly well."

She sighed. Well, if he insisted, she wasn't going to stop him. She motioned for an orderly to take the chair away, and walked him to the cafeteria. Once they had gotten there, she pointed him toward a seat, then set a full tray of pancakes covered with syrup, a bowl of fruit, and a glass of orange juice in front of him. "Now eat all of that, Peyton, or else you won't be strong enough to keep walking like that."

He glared at her back as she walked away, then stopped suddenly. There was that faint pulse he'd felt the night before...it was exactly the same.

And so he completely ignored his food in favor of staring at the cafeteria doors, looking at every patient that came in.

[thread will be closed to Haseo. ♥]

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Scourge's constant look upward changed abruptly from fear to what was almost worship. "I, um...I don't suppose you'd have any weaponry lying around that you really don't need anymore?"

Slights against Galvatron aside, suddenly his lordship sounded like Scourge's kinda mech.

"Only in exchange for services. I can't just give anyone my weapons, after all." Being a resident weapons dealer seemed to be the only thing that mattered to most. At least those people were focused on practical things, rather than morality. "I usually make them custom to order, given what materials I have to work with, which are minimal. But still enough to produce far better results than those who have to scrounge for kitchen knives."

Scourge, who had been doing exactly that last night, was already sold. "What kind of services?" he asked, setting down his fork and nudging a bit closer to the huge man. "I'm a tracker. I can hunt things down for you, or sneak in somewhere you can't be. Plenty of useful job skills."

Any weapon would be wonderful, at least for making him feel safer. The frying pan just didn't cut it.

"Chemicals for more weapons are always needed. I have some duties that make it quite impossible to get to where they are stored during most nights. All chemical bottles should be marked with this symbol," He sketched out the generally standard NFPA diamond (http://www.newenv.com/Graphics/NFPA/nfpa-card.gif) on a page in his notebook and held it out for Scourge to see.

"The top segments each contain a number from zero to four, four being the most dangerous in any catagory. The bottom segment contains symbols marking any special safety concerns. I can use any of those chemicals that are marked with high numbers and those additional symbols."

Riiiight. Hazardous chemicals that Lord Recluse couldn't personally go get but was totally okay with Scourge getting. Scourge was suspicious of this plan.

"And where exactly are they keeping these chemicals?" he asked, trying to memorize the little symbols as much as he could. "And what am I carrying them in? This looks kinda dangerous."

"The laboratory." Recluse flipped to a page which had a copy of the publicly available map of the second floor. "The containers they are stored in will be safe enough. One of my adversaries is here, and I often have to deal with him during the night. He was once injured by chemical weapons, and would likely react unfavorably to finding me making them myself." He already had made phosgene, after all. One of the gasses that could have killed them both during WWI.

"Adversaries. You mean one of those monsters, right?" Scourge peered over at the map, noting that it was right next to the animal test subjects area that everyone'd been saying to stay the slag away from. This got worse and worse.

"Don't suppose you could give me a weapon before I head up there? I'd be a lot more likely to come back again."

"No, I mean a Hero. Like those Autobots. Annoyingly concerned about morals." Marcus just needed to go away for at least a while so the Villain could get Villainous things done. It felt like minding a small, annoyingly rule-loving child.

"A blade, then. I may be able to get it to you without my adversary's notice. But I expect results in return for the payment. If I do not receive any, then I will take my payment back, as forcefully as I feel necessary." This wasn't a threat, it was just a statement of how he operated. Therefore, his voice was completely calm. He didn't need to make grand threats when he was in control of the situation.

Scourge detected the capitalization on Hero, and instantly commiserated. Right, he wanted to keep it quiet. Scourge could handle missions behind people's backs, he'd done plenty for Cyclonus when Galvatron didn't need to be bothered about paltry matters that would have just gotten him upset and violent again.

"Better the weapon, the better the chemicals. Like I said, you won't get anything in return if I don't live to bring them back."

"I make excellent weapons. I do not produce anything of lower quality." And blades had always been a specialty. He was exactingly precise in sharpening them. "As long as you are capable of using them, they will do their job." Just as with people.

"I know a few tricks." Scourge tried to pass off casual mastery as 'having watched people with swords use them to good effect'. Still, it couldn't be that hard.

"Then you will get a weapon. I need to know your cell number or where I can find you tonight to give it to you." And he would have to be quick about it. Marcus had the sense not to tell Recluse which cell he was in, but it never took him long to show up.

"M32. My roommate's some guy named Waxer, but I doubt he'll give you any trouble just for showing up. I'll wait for you." Because the less time he spends alone without a weapon outside his room, the better.

Recluse mentally filed away the cell number, not bothering to write it down. "I'll be there." He already knew what type of blade would probably be best, especially with that... rather unconvincing line pertaining to personal skill. He wouldn't waste too much metal this way if things went bad.

"Just don't mention it was me. My teammates get a bit tetchy when they think I'm going behind their backs." Still needed to find Kon before Blitzwing did, or things would really get messy. They seriously needed a Megatron around here.

A new, more manic voice rang out across the cafeteria (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/623376.html?thread=51660304#t51660304), and Scourge jerked up so fast he sent a bit of pancake flying off his fork and halfway to the next table. "Oh. Great. Another table crazy. Do people always do this in the mornings?"

"But of course." Recluse wouldn't even dream of it. Not as long as he was satisfied with the results he was getting, of course.

He barely reacted when the idiot started yelling, not turning to look, rather deciding this would be a better moment to start picking at his breakfast. "It sounds almost like one of the people employed by my government." It certainly had the utter incomprehensibility and mania to it that was often heard in the classic Mad Scientist.

"The sort that might stumble upon a brilliant idea every so often, but mostly just creates impractical doomsday devices that contains some easily exploitable flaw the Heroes will instantly find." It was why Arachnos had a specific training and oversight program for those ones. He liked keeping worries over nation-destroying explosives, zombie invasions, and plant-zombie invasions to a minimum within the Rogue Isles.

"He sounds like an overenergized Perceptor. Or possibly the Constructicons after they've been spending too much time with Mixmaster's chemistry set." Devastator's lack of intellect did get a bit frustrating when you wanted to make sure he only knocked over a specific electrical tower, but having a giant condensed engineer would probably be worse.

"Mad scientists can be valuable assets, as long as you can direct their tendency towards self-destruction away from your own interests." Always a difficult balance, with so many other things to manage at any given time, but if one couldn't handle that, they weren't cut out for the job of leading a Villain group.

"Well, that'd be why we killed Wheeljack." Actually, as Scourge very vaguely recalls, they only did that because he was there. But in hindsight it was very clever!

The nurse seems to already be moving in to handle the table-related nonsense, and Scourge once again digs into his sugary eggs.

"They can become impossible to manage, especially if they begin to think they can really get away with their schemes to take over or destroy everything in sight. Which seem to be a required component of their personality." Recluse was still very slowly picking at his breakfast. Nothing about it was at all interesting or really necessary, so it wasn't holding his attention.

Uninteresting? Unnecessary? How dare he slander the wonder and glory that was maple syrup on savory buttermilk pancakes, gifts from the gods themselves to provide sweet bliss in this wretched place! If Scourge was psychic, he'd be offended.

"We keep our engineers on a pretty tight leash. After all, we're the ones that created them...or brainwashed them...or they were there before..." Scourge trailed off, folding one clawed hand over his face and sighing. "Actually, forget I said anything. I'm not getting into that debate."

They weren't holding his attention, and he didn't feel the need to explain himself to anyone. If Recluse had any of his psychics with him, he would have replied as such.

"We've tried doing that before. It doesn't seem to produce such high-quality results. It does work quite well for elite soldiers, however." Provided they had the prerequisites for the Bane Spider program. Then, if they were within the Rogue Isles, nothing could save them from their fate.

"Tried giving them three recorded origins? I've been trying to figure out how to stop them from doing that. Messes with the records a lot."

Then he should totally not give it to Scourge, because the poor tracker would wind up making himself sick again.

"Not deliberately, I think." He'd been in command of Arachnos for over 60 years now. Quite a lot of impossible things had happened, and he couldn't be bothered to remember all of it. "Others have used such techniques fairly recently." Nemesis, of course. Everything would have been so much more simple if Marcus could have just acted as he was supposed to and killed Nemesis back in 1932.

[Thread is relocating here, with Harvey joining in. Thanks, guys!]

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Day 41: Breakfast

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