damned_institute | Day 22: Brunch

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Day 22: Brunch

Cid usually liked sleeping in, especially in a place as messed up and uninviting as this, but this happened to be one situation where he really wished he hadn't.

Right there, on the bulletin board. The Head Doctor and he'd fucking missed it? Some part of him wished he'd been there to take his eye out and another part of him knew he wouldn't have been able to. No man that powerful who hid for so long went to dangerous places without some kind of entourage.

Brunch sounded like it'd be filling, at least, though he nearly stopped in his tracks when the bastard announced TEA. TEA. It'd been a damn long while since he'd had some fucking tea, though with all the stress this place had found fit to rain down on his fucking head, it hadn't really been the first priority on his mind. Kinda nice, even if Cid was sure this was just some game the mother fucker was playing to get them all stuck neck-deep in Stockholm Syndrome.

He scanned the mostly-empty room for any sign of a familiar face once he'd piled waffles and sausages and syrup on his plate, though the person he really wanted to talk to was that Reynolds guy. "Spaceship" was the last word he remembered clearly before waking up in his bed, and dammit if he wasn't going to keep it stuck like glue in his mind.

He found a table where he could watch people come into the cafeteria and grabbed for his mug. The steam rising from his drink and the bag of herbs in it was nearly enough to make him grin despite it all, and it was with marked leisure and a little relief that he drank his goddamn tea.

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The day had barely started and already Aya was feeling so cheated. Years had mellowed down his temperamental notably, like the red of his hair gone from vibrant crimson to rich wine, he rarely anymore felt so wired up he'd be acting like a half wild cat. This morning, seeing Yohji in the chapel and trying to figure out what the hell was happening seemed to be a mixture that pulled just the right strings within him to kick up a storm. The nurse had not bothered him more than if he needed another shot and he had lied that there was no pain. She had arched a brow in disbelief, Aya had stared, until she obviously decided it was not worth the trouble and left him alone.

When he arrived to the cafeteria he could see Yohji in one of the tables but sure didn't feel like talking with him right now. So he chose to pick up some food, mostly fruits and a rare waffle, and sat down to a nice peaceful corner of a table to sip from the cup of coffee he was nursing between his hands. Overgrown bangs of blood red hanging over his eyes, he set to eat in silence.

Otacon asked his nurse only one question this time as she led him away from the chapel to the cafeteria: should he expecting a visitor after brunch? She gave him nothing more than a smile and a pleasant "Oh, I hope you do, Mister Langley!" before ushering him into the food line-up.

He didn't know if this was better or worse than an actual response.

Otacon almost mechanically loaded up his tray, knowing that he needed energy to deal with the rest of the day, but his appetite wasn't cooperating. He was never much of an eater—it was why he was so skinny. Otacon was more concerned with getting a moment to collect his thoughts than food. He spotted what looked like a quiet place, save for a single man.

"Hi," he said, stopping a couple of seats away from Aya. "Do you mind if I sit here?"

Pale hands paused with the coffee cup on the redhead's lips, violet eyes gazed at the stranger through the messy bangs as Aya considered the man for a moment, paranoid at his best.

"Hn." He nodded, lowering the cup to the table and then added more politely with quiet voice. "Please do." Despite what many would like to believe, he had excellent manners, just chose to use them according to the situation.

Wondering if he should introduce himself as well, Aya tucked the unruly bangs behind his ear. The moment extended until it was too late and he sighed a little. Social skills never were his forte.

"Thank you," said Otacon, flashing him a brief smile. He seemed a little distracted as he set his tray down and took a seat—when was the last time he'd slept, really? He remembered waking up twice here, but sleep... He'd been awake all of yesterday, and before then, it was practically twenty-four hours on the Big Shell.

Otacon ate two pieces of toast without tasting them, still going over recent events in his mind. He flipped open his journal to make a few quick notations, and it was while doing this that Otacon looked at the red-haired man again.

I wonder, he thought to himself. Did he seem familiar? Otacon went over his repertoire of anime titles: the man was young, athletic, good-looking, which could fit nearly anything. He had long messy bangs, which was endemic among bishounen types—

Wait, what was he doing? This hospital had his thinking all turned around, suspecting people of being anime or video game characters, worrying about fictional monsters hunting them out during Nightshift. The man was a person. "Hey," Otacon greeted again, embarrassed by his impoliteness, even if Aya wasn't a mindreader. "My name's Otacon. How long have you been here?"

Aya had directed his attention back to his tray, chewing slowly on the variety of fruits he had piled on his plate. His appetite eluded him, but considering what Yohji and Kurama had said, he'd need something to keep himself going when the night would fall. The coffee churned within his empty stomach, the last remnants of the dizzying mixture of whatever the nurses had had him drugged on still flowing in his blood - he didn't feel so good.

When Otacon spoke, he lifted his gaze from his plate to eye the man wearily. There didn't seem to be any malice behind the simple words, and why would there be? A little annoyed at his own constant suspiciousness, he frowned, shoving his fork back at the tray before speaking.

"Fujimiya Aya. I woke up here this morning. Perhaps few hours." His answer very to the point but hardly unfriendly as he offered Otacon a somewhat curious glance, studying the older man with attentive eyes. "Yourself?"

"Only a day longer than you." A few hours? Otacon studied him closer, noting his tiredness for the first time—but everyone here looked tired, whether newcomer or veteran. Aya was surprisingly self-possessed; still, there was something about him that suggested he was used to stressful situations. "It's nice to meet you, Aya. Or, uh, Fujimiya, if that would be more polite."

A Japanese name. The red hair was odd, but... No. Otacon continued to not think about anime. "Did anyone explain to you what this place is?"

"Aya is just fine." The redhead flashed a pale smile at Otacon, not wanting to appear too cold and close-minded from the start. He considered the second question for a moment, tilting his head with characteristic feline grace and nodded then. "A mental hospital. A monster show by night."

His cynicism was not any indication about carelessness - he'd take every warning seriously. But it was hard to cut off the dryness from his tone of voice after six years of missions all weirder than the one before.

"That's... pretty succinct," Otacon said with a laugh. As far as he was concerned, Aya was perfectly companionable. Dealing with prickly soldier types was nothing new to him—at least Aya tried to smile. "It's not the craziest thing this hospital has to offer, but a lot of it is a 'seeing is believing' deal. Still..."

He tried one of the blueberries he'd picked up. Where did all this fresh food come from? Was it transported here through the back, or somewhere else... somewhere they could escape through? "There's also the fact that people come from different worlds, or times, if they're from the same world. For instance, I'm from New York, in the year 2009. What about you, Aya?"

Indigo eyes blinked few times wildly when the message in Otacon's words registered in Aya's mind. 2009? How was that possible? It was several years to the future. Elegant eyebrows furrowing, the redhead picked up his fork again. Very accustomed to keeping his emotions to himself, he still wasn't perfectly expressionless and the confusion was clearly written over his features.

"2009, huh?" Aya begun silently as he hunted a slice of strawberry around his plate, finally capturing the fruit with his fingers as he grew impatient. "That's quite ahead of my time," he muttered before popping the strawberry to his mouth, licking slowly the tips of his fingers as he fixed his gaze back at Otacon. Was the man out of his mind? Yohji had mentioned something about Schuldig coming from different time as well. Years back, Aya would have laughed and told Otacon he was done with the fairytale hour but it had not been over a year yet since he had seen genetically engineered god and killed it with his katana.

Weird shit happened all the time. Such was life.

"I come from Tokyo," he said finally calmly. "You mentioned different worlds? What do you mean by that?"

"Sounds crazy, doesn't it?" Otacon looked much more animated than he was a few minutes ago. It helped to be distracted from the dread of family/friend visits. "I've already met someone—sort of—who told me it's 2006 where they are. Also Tokyo! It seems to be a common point of origin..."

He took a second to consider his words. Really, the best approach was to be straightforward, especially in a place like this where the nurses had no compunctions about pulling you away in the middle of an involved conversation. The approach had worked for Renamon. Aya appeared to have a good head on his shoulders, despite the expected confusion.

"Different worlds. For instance, I've encountered a couple of people who come from a city called Midgar, on a planet called Gaia." Otacon did not add that they were Final Fantasy VII characters. He didn't want Aya's head to explode. "They're not the only ones. Even people who say they're from Earth, it might not be the Earth you know—an event in your country's history might've gone in a completely different direction for them."

Aya narrowed his eyes at Otacon with his chin propped on the back of his hand that was holding the fork midair. Thoughts swarming in his dizzy head so fast he didn't notice how his other hand scooted up a piece of waffle. "Midgård?" he asked before nibbling on the waffle. He tried to remember where he had read the word, somewhere in the countless books he had consumed during the last six years.

Chewing slowly on the piece of waffle he finally swallowed and looked back at Otacon curiously. "I think Norwegian mythology? It's the name for the world. Gaia as a word is so overused it might..." Snapping his mouth shut he studied Otacon, snorting a little and leaned back on his chair. "Or perhaps I'm missing the point here?"

It wouldn't be the first time someone invoked ages old idiotic religions and myths for their own use to act like gods over the rest of the humanity. Maybe they had ran out of ideas with more recognizable ones and had to turn to something new and more ridiculous.

"I'm not trying to play games with you," Otacon answered sincerely. He set his fork down and also sat back, wondering if he was perhaps being too straightforward with all this. The man would probably see for himself anyway if he ended up running into lightsabers during the nightshift.

He readjusted his glasses to give Aya a moment. "I'll back up. You're right about the name connections to mythology—I'm not an expert myself, but I know it gets used a lot in anime. But as far as the Fi... Gaians are concerned, there's no such thing as Earth. It's something about this place. They're grabbing people from different universes—different timelines within those universes—and for what, no one's sure. My friend told me of a rumour that this is an experimentation facility... I'm starting to believe it."

Elegant brows arching, Aya nibbled on his waffle as Otacon spoke. He didn't feel like interrupting the man when he was so helpfully telling him all this without any urging on his part. Instead he let himself map the older man for any details worth remembering - a habit he had picked up during the last six years.

"If what you say is true, how much science fiction as it sounds like, that'd be my first guess as well." These days, it was virtually impossible to faze Aya with anything less than killing off his whole family, who already were dead. His cynicism didn't stop him from feeling uncomfortable however. "Did you friend suspect any purpose behind these experiments? I haven't been here for long but it all sounds like a cruel game of survival to me."

"I had a theory. And since the speech..." Otacon sighed, his thoughts returning to the activities of the upcoming shift. It wasn't all dread—part of him was actually curious as to what else the Institute could conjure up. He recalled the warnings on the bulletin board. "Were you in the chapel this morning? The Head Doctor said something interesting... See, you might've noticed that a lot of people here look like soldiers, or fighters in general. Not me, obviously." He laughed.

Otacon glanced out at the rest of the cafeteria, taking a moment to find Snake and Fox in the crowd, and was pleasantly surprised to note that both were socializing with kids. Kids... Why were there people so young here? "I thought at first that this was some sort of indoctrination program: first they break down your mental state with the fake IDs, keep your skills up with the monsters, then you're brainwashed into a willing warrior. There's all sorts of 'Perfect Soldier' programs back on my world."

He found it helped to talk out his ideas. All the rumours he'd heard and the pieces he'd uncovered in his short time at the Institute were coming together as he explained the situation to Aya.

"But the Head Doctor... To be honest, I don't want to think about the implications, but... the way he talked about our visitors, it sounds like this brainwashing program goes way beyond training soldiers."

"Beyond..." Aya muttered, slinking into silence once more, trying to recall what the head doctor had said before. Even if the situation had not made much sense to him at the time, he had made sure he'd hear every word the man uttered and even how it was presented to the rowdy crowd.

He tilted his head back slightly, glancing at Yohji's direction from the corner of his eye. Yohji would not be what he'd call the perfect soldier material, always failing to follow orders and taking matters far too personally. "You might be right there," he admitted grudgingly. "He let us assume the visitors wouldn't be beyond this same treatment we're getting here ourselves. He also made sure to point out that this was not the first facility of this sort." Aya was not notorious for his subtle approach of any difficult subjects. He'd lay out the facts just as he saw them.

"Kudaran!" The Japanese word was snapped between thinning lips, the only apparent show of temper he let pass before the violet gaze whipped back to Otacon, and continued with his smooth, practiced English. "But what could someone possibly gain from breaking the psyche of this much different people?"

Otacon grinned to see Aya really get into it. It was always useful to get another viewpoint on things. "That's the key question, isn't it? I don't really know myself. I've been picking up hints from the bulletin board..."

He flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook to find the relevant quotation.

"Here, Aya. Some patients found this message broadcast on a TV: 'Today there was a fight between forces near Old Los Angeles in the downtown. Neither group is large enough to be considered a threat to the US, but the armed forces were sent to calm things and all seems stable...' That suggests to me that wherever we are, it's at some volatile point in Earth's timeline." But which Earth? he wondered. "And didn't the Head Doctor say something about 'genetic and environmental factors' in his speech? That makes me think of..."

Otacon closed his eyes, suddenly looking aggrieved. The conclusions his imagination was leading him to sounded like, at best, the plot of a post-apocalyptic anime, and at worse, one of his worst reoccurring nightmares.

Bulleting board? Aya frowned thoughtfully. He'd have to take a look at it later. Otacon seemed to be a source of just the type of information he was looking for so he had no hurry to get away. He listened patiently the quotations and half voiced assumptions. When Otacon fell silent with irritation, he cleared his throat.

"I'm not sure if it really matters where we are." He'd worry that when he'd get out. "But if these people are able to bring all these people here, from wherever they lived before, their purposes must be something according to these skills."

He considered Otacon for a moment, insistent bangs of blood red slipping over his eyes again. When he spoke his voice was silent. "I can see you have some kind of assumption about what is happening outside. The newsflash doesn't sound anything familiar. But perhaps Tokyo isn't always on top of LA news... "

"It's not any news I've heard either—well, not in reality," Otacon amended. "Really, you're right that it doesn't matter where—or when—we are. My partner could probably care less about that, just as long we escape. But maybe if we know what's the situation, we'd know what they plan to do with us."

He frowned at the scattered notes in his journal, then settled his gaze on Aya. There wasn't much time left in the shift, so he had to talk fast. "This is just a theory, and I know it'll sound strange. But 'Old Los Angeles' reminds me of something I've seen a couple of times in anime: a nuclear explosion goes up in Tokyo, and the city is rebuilt elsewhere as New Tokyo or Neo-Tokyo or whatever. The previous site becomes known as, of course, Old Tokyo. And what worse 'genetic and environmental effects' could there be than substantial nuclear contamination?"

The fallout from nuclear war. It was everything Otacon had been fighting against for the last few years, and to think that he could now be living in a world where such a thing had already come to pass...

He shook his head. "I might be getting carried away. I mean, using this theory to deduce what the doctors intend with us isn't exactly obvious. It would probably be more interesting to know how they brought us here: that's the key to getting out, I guess."

"Getting out is of course an objective I'm sure everyone here has," Aya started, letting his gaze pass over the crowded cafeteria. "If what you say about different worlds and times is true, then I wonder if getting out really is possible without a right person to help with it." Why had he ever even thought it'd be as easy as finding an exit?

The scenery Otacon was painting from possibilities wasn't so far fetched as Aya would have liked it to be. Perhaps not the only possible way but worth some thought anyhow. Wild imagination cruising about, he let random ideas slip through his mindscape, not paying much attention to them.

Then he turned his gaze back to Otacon, flashing him a brief, pale grin. You're an interesting man, seemed his eyes to say, perhaps a bit displeased to know the brunch would end any moment now and he'd have to move on. He didn't have to hear it aloud to know Otacon had had an unusual life.

"Would you mind continuing this conversation later?" Having someone to pounce of theories wouldn't be bad at all.

Aya's question came at the same time as the touch of fingers on Otacon's shoulder. The engineer glanced up in surprise, and saw the ever-smiling face of his nurse. "We should get going, Mister Langley," she said. "You don't want to be late for this special visit, do you?"

"Oh, er..." Otacon looked back at Aya, and nodded at him. "I'd like that. And maybe you could tell me about where you come from. I'd be interested to hear about it." He stood up with a smile. The tone of his next words was slightly more serious than it would be anywhere away from Landel's. "Take care of yourself, Aya."

The nurse matched Otacon's smile, but unlike him, her smile possessed the same unsettling but unnameable quality as everything else here. "A nurse will be along shortly for you too, Mister Seto," she told the red-haired young man, and promptly led her patient away.

Aya was absolutely right, Otacon thought grimly as he followed her. It was true that no place could keep out or contain himself and Snake for long, but this hospital went far beyond an Alaskan island or patrolling armed guards.

What had they gotten into now?

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Day 22: Brunch

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