damned_institute | Dayshift 42: Morning

Senna stepped off the bus to wind blowing through the clothes she was given. A sad face at one of the nurses allowed her a long red scarf as well, and once she had draped it around her neck and let it hang down her back, she had trotted off.

The park she had saw last time seemed a good place to be on the look-out for the chicks from last night. It was close to the buses, and a big enough place that if they remembered that they had a race date, it would suit its purpose. The girl ran to a place in the middle of the field and waited there, shifting her weight from side to side. After a while, this wasn't enough, and Senna traded back and forth between jogging in place and acrobatics--the easy flips and cartwheels keeping her warm.

Her mind had changed in the night before. She had gotten a taste of what leadership entailed, and she wasn't sure she had rose to the occasion or not. She knew she had tried her best, and had been willing to give as much as she had, but it hadn't been enough. She knew this. Hokuto, at least, had gotten hurt, and in the end, they still hadn't explored more than the schoolhouse. They really needed a different approach with that place.

She went back and forth internally, body going through the motions and reflexes of her movements.

[for... Falis, Hokuto, Meche, and Soma?--and down to here]

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"Sarcastic," she groaned, sitting back on her heels. "I was being really, really sarcastic."

The worst of it seemed to be over by now. Her stomach was still cramping but no longer felt like it was being mauled by the Jaws of Supreme Death; the urge to gag and retch and be generally grossness was slowly abating. Yuffie took a small, slow, experimental breath. And then another. And then clapped a hand over her mouth.

Urp. Maybe not.

Still, it didn't feel like she was going to lose any more imaginary food. "That obvious, huh?" Lowering her hand, she turned her head just enough to look at the guy. His voice wasn't familiar, but she'd seen him around enough to know that he wasn't new. "Damn nurses wouldn't let me sit up top." She laughed a little. "Go figure."

"And I was being facetious," the Doctor replied with a cheeky grin. "Well... more or less?"

Now that the girl wasn't burying herself in her bush, he recognized her as the one who'd given a speech in the cafeteria the other day. Brilliant. He'd been meaning to seek her out sooner or later because of that, and here he'd happened into her!

"It was the only readily-available answer that made any sort of sense," he said on the topic of her motion sickness. "Try closing your eyes for a bit. It's not the most advanced method to stave it off, but it should help the feeling subside. Your brain will be less confused.

"More or less?" Yuffie snorted, swiping the back of her hand across her mouth. Yuck. She'd gotten pretty good at not making a mess of herself over the years, but it still tasted grossness. The whole thing was still grossness. Even so, the man's cheek earned him a ghost of a grin.

And his next suggestion earned him a raised eyebrow. Close her eyes? 'For a bit'? Not something she had a habit of doing around strangers, but another surreptitious glance revealed that he was kind of -- well, he didn't seem all that threatening, not in his looks and not in his mannerisms. His body language was totally benign. "It's not my brain I'm worried about," she said, going from cautious to plain confused in split seconds.

And from confusion came curiosity. Experimentally, Yuffie closed her eyes.

"Well... A little more 'more' and less 'less,' but enough to say that I wasn't being entirely facetious," he answered, slipping his hands into his pockets as he watched the girl. It seemed she was doing a bit better already, what with being on solid ground and able to talk without heaving.

It also seemed she was a bit confused. "That's what motion sickness is, though, you know: a confused brain," he explained, removing a hand from its pocket to tap his right temple. "Your body can feel that it's moving but your eyes tell the brain that you're not. The brain gets confused, and doesn't know what to make of it."

Talking to this guy, it was hard not to get confused. It wasn't a bad confusion; he seemed perky and friendly enough that it was appealing, without bouncing right into her face like that creepy Albedo kid had done the morning before. Yuffie looked around at him again, ineffectively since she had her eyes closed. "'Kay, so, Mr. Not-Quite-Facetious. You got a name?" She peeked one eye open, and the smile she managed was friendly enough despite her lingering paleness. "I'm Yuffie."

"Never really thought 'bout that before," she added, closing the eye again. The world wasn't spinning so much anymore, thank Leviathan. "Too busy concentrating on 'oh gawd not again' and my stomach doing a samba to worry about what my brain was getting up to. How the hell are you supposed to cure something that's all in your head?"

Oh good, she was smiling now. That was a definite improvement.

"John Smith," the Doctor replied. He took a few steps toward Yuffie, and then crouched so as to be on eye level instead of standing above her. "Pleasure to meet you, Yuffie; it's good to have a name to go with your face now. I heard your speech the other day. Well, most of it. It was very spirited; it's a shame the nurses interrupted you."

Yuffie may have been looking better, but he hoped that she was feeling better, too, especially since by the sound of it she wasn't a newcomer to motion sickness. "At this time, you don't," he said in answer to her question. "You cope with it, and try to make your senses agree with each other to lessen the effects."

"Nice t'meetcha," Yuffie returned, starting to sound progressively more chipper. It was easier to be cheery when you weren't hacking up internal organs and those weird not-carrots. What was with those. They were weird. Fabric rustled as the man--John Smith, what a boring name--crouched next to her.

Wait, wait! He'd heard her speech? Yuffie straightened, balanced precisely on the balls of her feet, and opened her eyes so that she could grin properly. "You saw all that?" She asked. "Awesome. It was pretty good, wasn't it? I mean, I guess I failed at inciting a huge revolution amongst the masses, but that wasn't really the point."

Her smile turned a little rueful at the mention of the nurses. She thought she'd been pretty impressive up on that table, lasting as long as she had when she'd clearly been at a massive disadvantage… but still, it was frustrating! She was about to comment on that, but something about John's next words caught her attention. "'At this time'?" She questioned.

Dayshift 42: Morning - Magus Park

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