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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"Crazy demon girl sort of sums her up. I'm not gonna give a play by play unless you really want one, but short of it is, she...entered you. Like, physically melted into you. She asked for a hug. And there were melting floors. Any of that ring a bell?"

This was, quite frankly, just weird. Hazy or blank spots in a person's memory was common enough - hell, he got that all the time when he overdid the booze - but as though it hadn't ever existed at all...Had it been the girl that did something to Alfons or this place? Both?

Reno blinked at the question. He was curious as to the reason behind it, but figured it was none of his business. "No. Not at all. Hughes seems real close to you, actually. Looked after you for the night after the deal with the girl. You guys know each other well from before?"

[ack! sorry about that. XD;]

After what had happened in the chapel, Elena found that she didn't have much of an appetite. The Head Doctor's words kept replaying over and over again in her mind, like a CD with a scratch on it. Their friends and family had the same thing happen to them. They had been here too, at one point, if that could be believed.

Wait. When had she ever started believing any of the lies here?

The girl grabbed a mug of tea (not coffee, but she'd take caffeine in any form at this point) and a couple pieces of buttered toast, figuring that if she felt more like eating in a little bit she could just go get seconds or something. Walking over to where Reno was (he wasn't exactly hard to miss in a crowd), she breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that he was already with Alfons.

"Sorry I'm late."

Alfons smiled when he saw Elena sitting down, and even though the girl's face didn't ring any bells from the previous night, he recognized her from the drawing on the board. "No, it's fine; Reno and I were talking about what happened last night."

But when he turned to the red-headed man, that smile switched to a frown, and even though he wanted to believe the older man, that was... a little much. "It's not physically possible for a little girl to have merged with me. There just isn't enough volume in my body to accommodate her, even if we assumed that her bones were broken into powder."

That was how he saw it, anyway. Logically and scientifically, there was no possible way that it could have happened. And while he'd seen some strange things at the end, he wasn't going to accept something that simply could not be done. So he shifted the subject rather quickly. "But ah, no, we don't exactly know each other, Mr. Hughes and I. To be honest, I was a little upset with him and with someone else when I first came here, and I thought that he would still be mad at me. So it just... doesn't make sense, for him to suddenly care about me, given all of that."

The entire situation was weird, and Alfons wasn't quite sure what to think of it.

Reno lifted his hand in a casual wave at Elena, and smirked. "Tsk. Since when do I ever get there before you?"

He glanced back at Alfons. Shit, the boy just had to be the stubborn, logical type, too, and make everything harder, didn't he?

"Look, I know it's a lot to take in, but logic seems to have booked it out of this place from the start. You notice the way your room grew in size this morning, maybe swapped to a new location altogether?"

Actually, Alfons would probably find a scientific way to explain that away somehow. In which case, it would be interesting to hear a theory. Reno only believed it had happened because he'd seen it happen, but like Alfons, some of this stuff didn't make any sense to him as to how, either.

He lifted an eyebrow. "Oh? Well, maybe Hughes has a different way of dealing with people he's got issues with, but I'd say that at the very least, he was friendly with you." He paused. "Something must've happened during the night with you two. Made up or something...but you should really talk to Hughes about that."

As in, you sure as hell weren't sleeping, dammit.

"I had to powder my nose," Elena said airily, with an ironic little smile. It was pretty amazing how quickly they could fall into this kind of banter. "It won't happen again. Can't let you be the responsible one all the time."

She resisted the urge to slap a hand to her face and groan when Alfons started going all...scientific on her. He was hellbent on making this as difficult as humanly possible, wasn't he? Luckily, Reno came to the rescue by pointing out that NONE of this actually made sense, and felt the need to add a little something herself. She put her hand on top of Alfons' and said softly, "Everything here is illogical. Take me and Reno for instance. We're from the same world, yeah, but they pulled us from different times. I'm about four or five years younger than the Elena that Reno's used to. If they can play with the space/time continuum like that, doesn't it stand to reason that, somehow, a little girl--a monster pretending to be a little girl, really--could rearrange her molecular structure? I know it sucks, but you're just going to have to trust us, okay?"

Giving his hand a squeeze, she smiled. "The best person to ask about Mr. Hughes is Mr. Hughes, but as far as I can tell...he isn't mad at you. I think he's been really, really worried, though. You ought to talk to him."

Very obviously, the consensus was that Alfons needed to talk with Hughes as soon as humanly possible. The problem was that the man seemed to be more than engrossed in his own problems, with a fight nearly breaking out and some... rather unsavory-looking people with him. Not that Alfons wasn't completely certain that the older man could handle himself, but it still made the blond raise an eyebrow.

But back to the present company, he forced himself to nod. Really, that was all he could do. If this was all true, then logic just didn't have any place in it. And if that was true? There was no point in arguing much of anything. He'd just have to talk to Maes later on, and get all of this straightened out. Somehow.

The German rested his other hand on top of Elena's, gently squeezing back as he tried to order his thoughts. Hard to do, when he had apparently missed an entire night, but it was still something that he had to do. "I'm... I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that, hearing that he was worried. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure he was trying to help me, and I was being foolish for pushing him away like I did."

He didn't know it, of course, but Alfons was making the exact same conclusions as he had the night before. But, oblivious to this, he softly smiled as he asked, "Could both of you promise that what you're saying is the truth? I know it sounds weird, me asking this, but Mr. Hughes is- was, rather- one of the very few in this place that I know and I think I can trust. So if he were to be upset with me, it'd leave me in quite the state."

"And I don't suppose either of you have an explanation for why I suddenly decided that hugging a demonic girl was a good decision?" A sheepish sort of expression at that, as in the light of day even Alfons saw that as a remarkably stupid choice.

"What, wanted to look good for me?" Reno said, teasing. With all the weird crap popping up every other second in this place, he couldn't deny that whatever little sense of normalcy he could get was a relief.

At least Alfons was looking like he was agreeing for now. Maybe still a little dubious, but good enough.

"Promise," he said. "If you're gonna pick someone here to trust, he's probably the one to go for." He didn't know Hughes that well, but there was just something about the man that came off as genuine.

Reno studied Alfons for a moment, one finger running in an absent circle around the rim of his glass. "Suppose you thought it might get the rest of us off the hook. We do owe you a hell of a lot for it. Not that that makes it any less of a damn fool thing to do, mind you."

"You know it," Elena said, deadpan. "Had to borrow a nurse's powder puff to do so, though. I bet they think we 'mental patients' are going to commit ritual suicide with an eyeliner pencil." She waggled her eyebrows suggestively and laughed. It was impossible not to smile, not when Alfons was finally believing what they were telling him, even if it was cautiously.

They were on the right, then. Always a good thing.

"Cross my heart," she echoed Reno. "He's actually the first guy I met here, and one of the nicest. I've never even seen him really, truly angry before."

Busying herself with her toast, Elena looked away. "You saved our butts. Really, you did. But it was a really, really, REALLY stupid thing to do. I don't know what would have happened if someone hadn't given her a hug...but..."

[ooc: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. LJ ate my post yesterday and I didn't notice. ;_;]

Alfons couldn't help a soft laugh of his own, feeling a little at his ease. While it hurt, knowing that there was no one in the Institute he could joke around like that with, it still made him feel better by corollary. It was always a nice thing, knowing that others could take care of each other.

So he removed his hand from Elena's own, letting her work on her toast as he thoughtfully chewed on his pancakes, thinking about what they'd said for awhile before he spoke. "In that case, all I can do is talk to him later and try to get things settled. ...settled again, if all of this is true." A bit of a sigh at this; it was so weird, not remembering what had happened or any progress that he might have made. Weird, and more than a little unsettling; what could have happened to make him blank out like that?

And as for that last part? It made Alfons sheepishly duck his head: again, the consensus seemed to be that it had been a really bad decision on his part, and especially considering how the other two had acted, the German took it to heart. Even though his slight smile made it hard to tell what he was thinking. "I promise not to try hugging demonic girls in the future? But I am glad that doing so helped you both, I really am. I-"

The sudden sound of a flute broke out in the cafeteria, and it made Alfons trail off, confusion evident in his blue eyes as he found the source of said music. "I, um... is it normal for there to be live performances here...?"

Landel's seemed to get more and more weird by the moment.

"Well, women." Reno was equally deadpan, keeping a straight face as he looked over at the only other male of the table to see if Alfons would play along. The kid's smile was annoyingly hard to resist. "You never know."

He was about to agree with Alfons that all future huggings of little girls was to be avoided like the plague when the soft notes of a flute caught his attention as well. He glanced over in the direction, but there were too many people to really make out who the musician was. The fistfight just a bit earlier hadn't been anything real unusual—the cafeteria was sort of like a bar, in the sense that there were too many men with too much testosterone in too confined an area—but the music was definitely new.

"Far as I know, music's been limited to the music room," he said. At least it was a patient, and not one of the staff members serenading everyone. Now that would've been creepy.

Reno glanced away and back at his food with a shrug. "Dunno what the hell to expect from here anymore, though, really. After the Head Doc showed up, I'd say anything's a go."

Elena punched Reno lightly on the arm. "Hey, no fair! Don't pull Alfons into it...now I'm outnumbered! Sadness." She stuck out her bottom lip and traced a "tear" down her cheek with one finger, pretending to pout. "Now I'm feeling emo. I'll have to dye my hair black, dress badly, and listen to stupid music...all because of YOU!"

Speaking of music.

The girl tilted her head to the side, listening. It was...kind of ethereal, and very pretty. More so than what they normally played in the Music Room, at any rate.

"No idea, but I like it. It's a nice change, I guess...but you never know. Like Reno said, after the Head Doctor showed up, all bets are off. Not like this place was terribly normal in the first place, though."

She grinned. "I wonder if he takes requests."

That made Alfons laugh again, and her pretend-pout encouraged Alfons to try, at least a little bit. "But you're already dressed badly, Elena; if it's any worse than we'll be the ones saddened." Seriously, shapeless gray with a smily face on it? Not the height of fashion.

"Strange, though; I don't recall seeing any flute music like that in the Music Room... or any flutes, either. Just recorders." Odd, that. But it was very pretty, and for some time the boy just listened, enjoying the music and how beautiful it was.

At Elena's question, however, he glanced back at her, a bit of a frown on his face. "I wouldn't know if he does take requests or not, and sadly it wouldn't do me much good if he did. I've never seen a flute like that before. ...hah, then again, there's a lot here that I haven't seen before."

Reno lifted an eyebrow, a little thrown by Elena’s melodramatic reaction. For a moment, he wondered if someone had spiked her Earl Grey. She by far hadn’t been the most uptight person at Shin-Ra—that particular poker went up Tseng’s ass—but she had...never sounded like a complete teenager, either. Probably because she hadn’t been one.

He shook it off after a second. This was the Elena he had now, and if nothing else, he was good at rolling along with the current situation.

He gave the strip of blond hair hanging over her eyes a playful flick. "Yeah. Already so few women here as it is. They could at least let you girls look good for us."

Reno had never been in the music room himself, and so had no idea what was even in there. In any case, he wasn't really complaining about the music. Not exactly his style, but at this point, he'd take anything that made this place less dull.

"Maybe it came from his world and they let him keep it for some reason. Probably figured it wouldn't hurt."

Or maybe they didn't care if it hurt. The place was already littered with little unexpected weapons, bits and pieces of powers that people were able to keep. Who was to say they weren't doing it all on purpose?

Like a game. It always came down to that damned concept.

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Day 22: Brunch

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