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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"Before or after you ran into the monster?" Did he ever just let things go? Yohji's obvious irritation wasn't something that was enough to deter him. Aya was aware Yohji hadn't promised to show up but he did hope that at least after he finished whatever business he deemed more important he would have headed over.

Though...that wasn't giving his teammate much credit. "Nevermind," he raked his fingers through one ear-trail.

"I'm guessing the fog and the...blood isn't a normal way things end."

"Before," Yohji replied sourly. "Someone close to them was taken for one of the torture sessions last night. I wasn't about to leave them to go up there alone. And they got cut up badly so I helped them back to their room. Or would you have preferred I leave them to bleed out?" It was cruel perhaps, but Yohji wasn't feeling particularly charitable.

He sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair. "Not really," Yohji replied. "Although there was one night, a while back, where the scent of blood filled the rooms. Me and Cliff went to check it out, although we didn't get far." Damn, how long had it been since then? A week? No, more than that. Nearer two probably, when Cliff had been there still.

While Aya was staring at the back of the seat in front of him, a brief side-long look was thrown at the blond with that question. "No." Seemingly cold and heartless were two different things and one could only really accuse Aya of the first. He didn't like the way Yohji was dancing around with names though. The swordsman noted how he got none with one half yet 'Cliff' was offered without hesitation.

"Left who to bleed out?"

Great, just great. Aya just had to go and ask that question now. And when Schuldig was sat a couple of seats behind them. Between a rock and a hard place indeed. He'd become too complacent recently with just him and Ken here. But this Aya was more volatile than the one he remembered most recently. So should he lie and probably have Aya know that he was lying, or just spill it and probably get his throat cut there and then.

He'd find out sometime.

"Schuldig," he said coolly.

He didn't have a blade and the nurses would probably drag him away before he was able to rip out a jugular with his nails- so for the moment, Yohji would have his throat intact.

"Schuldig." Aya repeated, what had been cool before was positively sub-zero now and a new rigidness had set into every inch of Aya's lithe frame.

He wasn't dead yet. Yohji figured that this was just a temporary situation until Aya could figure out how to take him out without the nurses noticing. Huh, he'd never thought he'd be glad to have the staff around. Would wonders never cease?

"He isn't an enemy here, Aya," Yohji replied sharply. "There's no point being enemies when we're all trapped just the same. Besides, you have no fucking idea how long I've been stuck here. He was the only connection I had to home for a long time."

The back of the bus-seat took the first blow. Aya slammed the heel of his hand into it, hard enough to send up a meaty 'thump' and a flash of pain jarring up his arm. He ignored it, digging blunt nails into the worn covering as he turned and stared at Yohji, seething under the rigid mask of his features had set into. It was a pity Ken wasn't there, though all his presence would have done was diffuse this anger between the two of them. Ken had known. Ken had known and just let-

"Being stuck here is no reason to forget, Kudou." Yohji had always been vulnerable in such a way and leave it to Schwarz to take advantage of that. Twisting it.

And just like that the anger shifted to purpose, deadly intent. The look of Abyssinian moments before his blade was unsheathed and blood was split.

He was not going to allow Schwarz to continue fucking with his team. This was going to end. Now.

Shit. Yohji winced as the blow hit the back of the seat and he glanced around, checking to make sure that the nurses weren't getting out needles already. Not yet, although a couple were looking in there direction and fuck, why was he sitting in the window seat? Aya could just get out into the aisle!

"I haven't forgotten anything, Fujimiya," Yohji snapped. "But I'm not dumb enough to let old enmities fuck us over in a place where there's no point holding onto them. It might be yesterday for you, but do you think we haven't had bigger things to do in five fucking years since then?" Schwartz were old news. It had been their own predecessors who'd done the damage.

While Yohji glanced around, paranoid about the nurses Aya hardly twitched. He was aware of the nurses and the fact he was suddenly screaming tension was something he knew was probably grabbing their attention. Getting up would make them move for him because he would only do so to shove to the back of the bus and confront this complication none of them needed.

"Let Schwarz take care of their own." Five years he didn't have, Yohji. It was yesterday for him and there was no changing that. A yesterday where he had almost lost what little he had left because of Eszett, because of Schwarz. At the most, Aya could only fathom five years giving him apathy towards the rival team if they stayed away, which it seemed they did.

He sort of wanted to snap back that they did a better job of taking care of their own than Weiss did, but that was too cruel, even for him, no matter how much the urge bit at him. "No," he said finally, giving Aya a dark look. "I'm not expecting you to do anything, but I'm not going to suddenly stop having contact with Schuldig just because you said to." He wouldn't even be around if not for Schuldig considering how long they'd been there before anyone else had shown up.

"You'll continue to put him first." Had he been doing this the whole time Ken was around as well? A lack of back-up and trying to make some sort of progress to which the monsters had found easy prey. Aya was fighting his own urge to grab the front of Yohji's shirt and shove the other man back against the window to brow beat some sense back into what all that bleach had obviously leeched out.

That earned Aya a dark look from Yohji. "Oh yeah, 'cause you're just a paragon of virtue when it comes to putting Weiss first," he said scornfully. Was this really how conversations with Aya in the town were going to go? It seemed that way. he half expected to turn around and see Asuka peering over his shoulder. He carefully didn't turn around. "I do what I cant o keep my sanity and trust me, if not for him, I'd have been dead or given in to this place a long time ago." Even if that just scraped the surface of what was actually going on. He didn't even know what was going on, but it was more than that now. He just didn't like to put any kind of name to it. Fate hated him.

That was different and Yohji knew it. They all had their own personal goals or reasons in Weiss. You couldn't compare what he had done for his sister to putting someone like a member of Schwarz first. You couldn't and if Yohji even dared. "Of all the people..." Obviously this was more than just picking each other up when they were bleeding to death. There were hundreds here and Yohji chose Schuldig of all of them to be his pillar of sanity? Could they just pause there for a moment and listen to how sane that sounded?

The bus continued to rattle and shift over bumps as they headed to town. Aya just hoped they were close. He wanted off this bus now.

"Listen, Aya," Yohji snarled, eyes narrowed dangerously. "You have no idea what happened before I woke up here. I was here for weeks before any of the rest of you turned up, so if I happened to find the one person who could verify that any of what I'd gone through was real, when the entire place was set up to make me believe otherwise, then so what? He's the only person I've been able to lean on who hasn't disappeared on me in this fucking place. So back off."

"I have no idea because neither of you have told me." Ken danced around it. Yohji had been practically doing pirouettes. The most he'd gotten was a 'a lot had happened' which said nothing. Excuse him, if his priority had been trying to understand where he'd woken up.

Yohji wanted him to back off? Fine.

Aya stood, violet eyes flashing. "Mr. Tanaka-!" His nurse was there seconds later, alarmed and trying to stave off a potential dangerous outburst from charge. The look the swordsman turned on her was potent enough to make her pause for a second.

He said nothing to either of them. While every inch of his body was screaming to turn on his heel, plow to the back of the bus and finish what the Tower crashing apparently hadn't managed to rid him of Aya restrained himself. Unfortunately the only seat left open was the one immediately in front of them. He'd take what he could get. Aya claimed it, curling up in a tight ball of black and red frustration highlighted by what little pale skin his second-hand clothing showed.

What the hell had happened to his team?

"There's good reason for that," Yohji muttered underneath his breath as Aya moved. Neither he nor Ken exactly wanted to explain to Aya how fucked up everything had become, how close both of them were to the edge. Hell, they might both be over it by now, just clinging on by their fingertips. 'Oh hi, Aya. Ken started killing people for fun and I tried to strangle you to death so I could get my memory wiped'. Yeah, there was no way to give that any kind of good spin.

He glared at the back of Aya's head in the seat in front of him for a moment and then leaned back, wincing at the pressure against his back. Fuck. That was no how that conversation was supposed to have gone.

A mistake in hindsight. Misunderstanding was running rampant on all sides in a rare and very ugly form. Maybe whenever he calmed down to more of a simmer and one of them sat him down to tell what happened in those five years, he'd regret the harsh words that had spilled out of him and the way he'd behaved.

But right now he was grabbing onto his hatred for Schwarz, because that was one of the few things that made sense right now. Wrapped tight in his pride and a sudden fierce mental division between black and white, Aya was doing his unmovable force impersonation. Not the best time to be doing such, but he didn't care.

He felt Yohji's eyes burning twin holes in the back of his head and ignored it. He set himself to ignore pretty much everything, other than the jarring motions of the bus and the tight web of his thoughts. Yet his hand still strayed up, rubbing the lobe of his ear where her earring should be.

Violet eyes slid shut and Aya was silent for the rest of the trip.

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Dayshift 42: Bus 2

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