damned_institute | Dayshift 42: Bus 2

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Dayshift 42: Bus 2

Before anyone could come to any decisions for their next move, the room suddenly filled with a thick fog. Faster than he could realize what was happening, it had filled up the entire room and swallowed every single one of his friends. Then there was that undeniable stench of iron, blood and... he last remembered taking a step back and feeling that slippery skid and the realization of what that was. By the time he yelled, he was sitting straight up in his bed like he'd bolted awake. Like it'd been nothing more than a bad dream. ...What the hell just happened?!

"Oh! Good morning!" The nearby voice made him yelp with a half squeak-like noise. Oh, for hell's sake. It was one of those freaking nurses again. She was beaming at him like nothing had happened at all. Before he could so much as ask one question, the hag started blathering real fast about some field trip and buses and getting changed and hurrying up before everyone left without him and... OH MY GOD, WHAT WAS SHE DOING?! She was grabbing at his shirt like she was about to start helping him get dressed (or undressed in this case).

He flailed in a desperate attempt to get away from her and yelled his consent to go along if she would get out and let him change HIMSELF. What was the matter with her?! Thankfully, she left but told him to hurry. Hell if he knew what she'd do if he took too long. So for the sake of not getting freaking stripped, he quickly changed into the clothes she'd left on the bed. Clothes being the ugliest looking white-and-black track pants he'd ever seen and a bright blue sweatshirt with a cute little penguin design on the front. This was some kind of joke, right? ...Not to say the penguin wasn't cute or anything but there was no way, no way, he was wearing something like this in public.

But the nurse had burst right in again, and before Kanji could offer much protest, he was being pulled down the hallways and through the doors of the bus. He'd yelled some things her way, but she totally wasn't listening at all. By the time they stopped, he was standing at the front of the bus with a paper bag and the nurse had run off to cart another poor sap along. Frickin' PERFECT. For the sake of not standing up there like some kind of zoo animal for everyone to stare at, he plopped himself into one of the seats by the front and sighed in complete exasperation.

[Free. No limit.]

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"Oh, hi," Akihiko said, smiling awkwardly at the girl who'd sat down next to him. He noticed that wince as she was sitting, and moved over a little to give her a little more room. "You okay? That looked kinda painful," he said, poking the straw through his juice box.

Right. Introductions, you idiot. One of these days he was just going to write that on his hand or something. Introductions before jumping straight in.

"Uh, and I'm Akihiko," he said, extending his free hand out to the girl. "And I guess it's going all right. At least the bus hasn't turned into something out of a horror movie, like the whole place did last night. What was that, anyway?"

Senna looked amused for a second, then grasped the guy's hand. "I'm fine. Mostly, at least. I'm Senna." She leaned back in her seat, content to just rest her tired muscles for the time. The point he raised was legit--Senna wasn't sure what it all was about, and until he mentioned it, she had been assuming that was some kind of mismatched dream in-between the different realities. The fact that it had been real to a degree.... Internally, something shuddered. Outwardly, the girl shrugged easily.

"No idea. Just another fun aspect of this house of horror. A new surprise every day." All of this was said dryly. "Like these trips. I mean, yeah, something new and different, but there's still the boring aspect of the day to day drag."

Akihiko nodded, settling back in his seat and eyeing his muffin a little. "Good to meet you, Senna," he said, smiling at her. Though...there was still the end of last night to think about. He didn't like thinking it, but he realized that he was lucky. He'd seen scenes like that before - not to that extent, but close enough that it didn't turn his stomach the way it might have done for some people. He didn't want to think about what it might have been like for anyone who wasn't prepared.

He laughed dryly at that statement. "You can say that again. They don't spare the wacky surprises. So, the trips happen regularly, then? I wasn't around for the last one. What can I expect to see?"

She nodded. "Pretty much, I think. Every... what day is today? Saturday? Yeah. We head over to this town and look around and do a lot of nothing." Senna rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "A small town with barely any people and only a few things to do. I have no idea why we go there."

She rolled her shoulders once, then cracked her neck. "Other than that, how's your time here going?" She smirked, sticking out her tongue. "Having fun at the madhouse?"

"So they drag us out to the boonies just for the hell of it every week," Akihiko replied, returning that joking eyeroll. "If they're going to all the effort of getting us up early so we can do a whole lot of not much, you've gotta wonder why. Maybe they need the time for...something." That sparked a thought, but he shrugged it off. It couldn't be that they needed to get everyone out of the premises to do something inside. That was...well, it was entirely too plausible as far as he was concerned, and he made a mental note to bring it up later.

Shrugging off that train of thought, he returned the grin and laughed. "Well, for values of fun that include getting teleported randomly one night, and going out exploring only to find the scariest bear ever. How about you?"

Senna, on the other hand, saw it as nothing more than what it was. She shook her head. "Nah, I don't think so. That's giving the day to day people way too much credit. They're probably just trying to bore us to death or something. Much easier than getting crazy monsters after us every night." Crazy monsters that controlled lightning and shook the ground... Crazy monsters that threw slabs of the ground and moved almost faster than Senna could see... Ha. Yeah. Death by boredom might be preferable at that.

She raised an eyebrow, interested. "A bear, huh? Interesting, interesting. But how's this about teleporting?" This was a definite subject of interest. As someone that could teleport, other instances of it happening drew her attention. And it was better than getting back on the subject of monsters.

"You've got a point there," Akihiko said, laughing again. "Boring us to death is probably easier than trying to catch a scary-ass bear then send it after people." Still, though. It was worth asking a few others what they thought, even if Senna seemed to be dismissing the point.

"The teleporting thing was, well, weird," he said, catching that raised eyebrow and beginning to respond. A friend and I ran into a -- I don't even know how to describe the kid. Almost like some kind of electronic puppet thing. We tried talking to it, since we thought it was like a patient at first, then it pulled a set of blades on us. We tried fighting it at that point, but then he got this bracelet thing outta nowhere and fired something at us. We wound up somewhere else entirely."

He was just going to continue omitting the part about the clothing switch. Yeah, it was true that he'd hit it off pretty well with Senna, but he swore sometimes that Mitsuru had a second set of ears for stuff like this.

"Catch?" she responded. "They probably make 'em--cook 'em up in their laps or something. They do everything else right? A little bit at playing god with that wouldn't be much different than anything else." Man, had she been down this road before. She fricking wished people could just be happy with their own damn life instead of trying to mess with others.

At the second comment, her eyes widened. "Whoa.... Yeah, teleporting all right. Sounds like someone still has their powers... Or maybe they were brainwashed that night." Or something. Shit. "Man, so they teleported you somewhere? Mine can only do me." That she knew of. Maybe she could drag someone along for the ride. "Where'd you end up?"

"You're probably right, Senna," he said. "Doesn't make it suck less than the rest of their playing god does, but I suppose it's one of those things where just bringing everyone here and making their lives suck isn't enough. They've gotta go coming up with ways to make them suck more."

Akihiko hummed, thinking back to that night. "I don't know if it was either. I think this place has a few extra tricks up its sleeves. The kid with the bracelet was one of those tricks, I think. Because I've seen a brainwashed patient - someone I know from home. She was still herself, just with the brainwashing in place. The weird kid was just..." He trailed off, trying to think. "Well, weird. And I don't know exactly where we ended up. It was definitely still inside the building, but somewhere I hadn't seen before. We didn't exactly get much of a chance to look around. We got attacked by something right after we landed."

"There's probably some weird point to all of this for them," she responded, bordering on the edge of bitter. "There usually is in these kinds of things. They fuck with people's lives, never even tell them why until it's way too late for them to put that information to any real good use. And then you just gotta--" She cut off abruptly, realizing that she had been putting too personal a spin on a it. Didn't matter now, she guessed; long as it didn't start getting depressing. To that effect, she suddenly smiled, bright and genuine. "Then you just have to hope that the people you care about will be there for you when you need it. Right, Akihiko?"

As for the other thing, Senna started thinking. To her own words, the Institute could make anything it wanted, making a kid from nothing with weird teleporting powers probably was nothing. But still, it sparked something, an idea, and even if it was stupid.... "What do you think about this idea?" she asked. "What if they're studying us, taking something from us, to make their monsters and other stuff? Example here," she went on. "That kid can teleport people. I can teleport. Man, I'm probably not the only one here that can do that. How'd they create that? Randomly? Or through something we gave them?"

The idea was so sudden and so... big that Senna paused after this, absolutely silent in nature. And if this was true? What then? There was a whole lot of stuff that they could steal from the people here....

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Dayshift 42: Bus 2

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