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damned_institute2009-08-09 01:04 pm
hailmegatron.livejournal.com) wrote in damned_institute2009-08-09 01:04 pm
Entry tags:
- apollo,
- brainiac 5,
- chekov,
- citan,
- forte,
- harley,
- hijikata (gintama),
- indiana jones,
- jamie,
- juri,
- kaito,
- kio,
- kirk,
- kristoph,
- kuukaku,
- kvothe,
- l,
- leon (so2),
- lockdown,
- lord recluse,
- lugnut,
- lunge,
- luxord,
- peter parker,
- raphael,
- scar (tlk),
- senna,
- soubi,
- suzaku,
- sylar,
- tenzen,
- the flash,
- the scarecrow,
- tk-622,
- tsukasa,
- xigbar,
- yue,
- zex
DAY 43: CAFETERIA, MORNING
Where was Blitzwing?
Lugnut ignored the nurse's fussing over his foot, even as it howled objections to his ill treatment of it the night before, pounding through the town in search of his wingmate, reportedly helpless and injured by an attack the night before-- and not finding him, not seeing even a glimpse of his crazy triple-changing ally.
Snarling at the nurse, but restraining himself from shows of violence-- Blitzwing would mock him if he showed up drugged already, and he would be useless to Megatron like that--he made his way impatiently to the cafeteria, stopping for just long enough to post an urgent notice on the board.
Where was he?
Looming in the middle of the cafeteria, he took the tray the nurse handed him (filled with disgusting human fuel, didn't she know he didn't have time to eat, not when his wingmate was missing?) and ignored it, watching for Blitzwing, where was he?
He refused to think about what might have happened to a wheelchair-bound, drugged, incapacitated warrior, with the swarms of monsters flooding around him, clawing and biting...
[for Scourge]
Lugnut ignored the nurse's fussing over his foot, even as it howled objections to his ill treatment of it the night before, pounding through the town in search of his wingmate, reportedly helpless and injured by an attack the night before-- and not finding him, not seeing even a glimpse of his crazy triple-changing ally.
Snarling at the nurse, but restraining himself from shows of violence-- Blitzwing would mock him if he showed up drugged already, and he would be useless to Megatron like that--he made his way impatiently to the cafeteria, stopping for just long enough to post an urgent notice on the board.
Where was he?
Looming in the middle of the cafeteria, he took the tray the nurse handed him (filled with disgusting human fuel, didn't she know he didn't have time to eat, not when his wingmate was missing?) and ignored it, watching for Blitzwing, where was he?
He refused to think about what might have happened to a wheelchair-bound, drugged, incapacitated warrior, with the swarms of monsters flooding around him, clawing and biting...
[for Scourge]
no subject
Nothing. Just...nothing.
The doctor's dulcet tones were gone. Peter woke to the voice of an android, buzzing over the intercom where there was usually false cheer and lamenting over mounds of paperwork. Where was Martin Landel?
He listened to the automation, but shut off at the word military. Weapons. Armor. Not exactly heartwarming thoughts at the moment. Peter rolled over, tugging his pillow from under his head and wrapping it to his chest. He tucked the end under his chin, staring thoughtfully at the newly mussed bed on the other side of the room. Brainy must have left a little while ago.
It didn't matter how many times he told himself this wasn't real. That nothing they did was for keeps. They were living it, weren't they? Maybe not living in the literal sense, but he could see. He could smell. He could touch, he could feel, he got angry and sad and hit every notch between. He could feel his own pulse. He knew it was there, not something he was just peripherally aware of when the mood struck the writers, but he always, always knew it was there. Ever since he became Spider-Man. It was weird, yeah, but the last few months had him checking constantly. Sometimes it was hard to believe you were alive, even hours after the guns stop blaring and S.H.E.I.L.D. was picking up the pieces.
The point was, being fictional...it didn't change that. He could feel the cut on his chest. He felt the skin tug when he inhaled and his chest swelled with air, and he felt fresh bandages itch across his skin when he blew it out. He could still feel his insides sinking lower, and lower, dragging all his thoughts along with them until he turned dizzy and shook around the pillow. He wasn't real, but he could feel. Why should it be different for anyone else?
The nurse collected him as usual, doggedly steering him towards the cafeteria. She found him a seat first, and loaded up a tray for him, all smiles when she returned. Jiggly, glistening chunks of scrambled eggs, speckled with pepper and cheese. Like little bits of-
you're not getting away that easy buddy
it's not supposed to be funny, Peter
safe because your failures are all dead and buried
He spasmed. Shot his hand to his mouth to keep from vomiting all over the table as the nurse panicked and hoisted him away by his middle. They rushed out of the cafeteria, and she held his bangs out of his face while he emptied his stomach into the toilet, then stroked his back when he began to cry.
They returned sometime later, and Peter nibbled on soda crackers and sipped a fresh cup of tea, paler than a sheet.
no subject
But last night...
It was easy to say he'd done what he had to, but that didn't mean he wanted to think about it. And Indy was still bothered by the question of just what those Zombis really were--surely not really the living dead. Landel's human experiments, more likely. What the hell had the man done to them to make them act like that, moving right up until gray matter fell out of their skulls? He would've liked to get Pierson's take on the situation, but it looked like Indy's roommate was already up and out for the morning. Indy could wait. The more he thought about last night, the more worried he got about the loose ends he was going to have to tie up.
His concern only increased when he got to the cafeteria and he saw Peter Parker sitting alone, looking like he'd been crying. Indy had the nurse pick him up a couple of pieces of food at random and headed over, wondering what the hell he was going to say. He was fine with kids, in a general sense--you had to be to teach undergrads, and he felt like he came across okay with them. Shorty was easy to get along with too, when he wasn't cheating at cards. But Indy had no idea to what to do with a teenage boy who was obviously scared and grieving. That was the kind of thing the kid's parents should be doing, and Indy's own dad hadn't been a hell of a lot of help as an example.
But Peter's parents weren't here, and Indy felt even more responsible for him than he had last night--after all, he was the one who'd blown up the kid's friend, no matter how dangerous that friend was now. He'd probably screw it up somehow, but he owed it to Peter Parker to try, at least. Even if Peter punched him in the face, anger might offer some kind of consolation.
So Indy had the nurse set his tray down across from Peter's and joined the boy. He looked awkwardly down at his plate for a long minute, then said simply, "I'm sorry."
no subject
The clatter of a new tray gave him a jolt, and he was suddenly face to face with Indiana Jones. Instinctively he drew back, blinking at the now strange sight of him in clean clothes and bandages. Not a fleck of gore on him. A crisp snap between his fingers told him he'd just broken his last cracker, crumbs sticking to the sweat on his palms.
What was he supposed to say? The guy looked like hell, staring at his plate as if some divine message would spell out in the hash browns. Peter twisted his lips and swallowed at the heavy apology. He...cripes, he knew that he was sorry. In a vague sort of way. He was Indiana Jones, classic hero and DVD staple to every American shelf. Of course he was sorry, he was the good guy. Morality and guilt was a token, right?
You always knew that the hero would pull through and make all the right decisions when you were sitting on your couch staring at a TV, but you never really thought about it. Not seriously. When Indy pulled out the gun and shot the guy with the sword, everyone laughed. It was funny. But being here, you had to think about what was really going through his head. Did he shoot him because he was easy, or because he deserved it? Did he ever regret doing it? Lay awake at night and wonder why he could pull the trigger so easily? Looking at the other man now, Peter could see everything. Little wrinkles in the corner of his eye, uneven, rumpled sleeves, the dirt under his fingernails. He was solid, and mere feet away. His fingers twitched, compelled to reach out and grab his arm just to check - make sure he had a pulse too.
There was another pause. Peter stared at his tea, pushing it away and dropping the remains of the cracker inside. "I thought you wouldn't want to talk to me again," he admitted quietly. "You know. First impressions and then...yeah. Craziness."
no subject
That was part of the problem here--all the expectations. Indy got the sense he wasn't just playing surrogate father figure in this conversation, but some other kind of character as well. Hadn't Peter suggested that he was a big fan of the (decidedly non-academic) cinematic saga of Dr. Indiana Jones? With a title like "Temple of Doom," Indy pictured the film version of himself as a swaggering hero right out of a radio serial--finding the buried treasure right under the X, single-handedly beating up the whole Nazi army and always getting the girl. It was even easier to picture all that crumbling as the kid kept staring at the real guy in front of him. Indy glanced back down at the plate and realized he still had flecks of Zombi gore under his fingernails. What a hero.
He was really making a mess of this. Indy felt that he should be saying something encouraging, something to demonstrate that he had at least some idea of how Peter felt. Thing was, he wasn't sure he did. Indy didn't think he'd ever had a seemingly dead friend turn up as a Zombi and try to kill him with knives and high explosives; if he had, it wasn't coming to mind. But he had been a teenage boy sometime in his life and he'd lost people too, so maybe he could begin to empathize. Anyway, he had to throw something out there.
"Look..." he said, and then immediately got stuck again and groped for where to go next. It took a few more seconds of helpless silence before he continued, "Thanks. It was good of you to try to watch my back there with that--with your friend. I know what happened wasn't easy." Come on, Jones, what else? "And this might not be high on your list of concerns right now, but I wouldn't worry about the movie thing either, if you can help it. You know the facts about your life better than anyone."
The facts, not the truth. Just like in archaeology. There was only one set of facts about your life. The truth, Indy thought, wondering again what the "Temple of Doom" was like--now that was the elusive thing.
no subject
Or it was just that some people were still taking it as a joke. Unbelievable. Peter would have been one of them before, but now that he had actually seen zombies face to face? He could never watch Dawn of the Dead again. It would be like a violation somehow. Like that time MJ was over, flipping through the channels and stopping at Interview with a Vampire. Peter was cringing the entire time, and it took MJ a good ten minutes before she clued in and switched to Vertigo.
The same would have to go for...well, everything, to be honest. Was there a separate little universe for every story ever written? The thought was overwhelming. And terrifying. The writers could dick around as much as they pleased, bring in whoever - and whatever - they wanted. For all he knew Jason fricking Voorhees was stalking the halls and that was why twenty to forty people disappeared a night.
And they weren't just limiting themselves to fiction shocks, either. Any conceivable twist in the plot was game. A teenage boy gets into a fight on the board, and lands himself in a wheelchair, watching his only friend bleed to death. A man who could heal from anything in seconds is suddenly knocked out cold for days, practically disappearing from the face of the Earth. Your best friend comes back from the dead, and just when you think you've got a second chance? He's gone. Eaten alive. And the third time...
"No, I-" He raised his hand, but forgot the gesture halfway through, dropping it in his lap again and sighing. "You were right. The whole time. I should have listened to you." Awkward pauses. That was the name of the game here. The lump in his throat went down thickly as he swallowed, searching for his thoughts. "He wasn't...there anymore. They took his body and - I don't know what they did, but Harry wasn't in there. He wasn't human anymore. They perverted him. And I know they did because he was dead - we saw him in the morgue. So whatever made it talk, made it recognize me? It was something they did."
He smiled. It was small, grim but honest, and he was finally looking the other man in the eye. "It didn't have a soul. I should...I should be thanking you. It would have killed us both if you didn't show up."
High list of concerns. Right. There was a list, for sure, and the fiction thing was definitely top three. Did he still not get it? Even after last night? Maybe there weren't any zombie stories back in the thirties. Not highly publicized ones, at any rate. Indy might never clue in, unless Sherlock Holmes or some other dusty old book guy popped in for a visit. Peter's world could just be closer in years to the real one. It would explain why he recognized so many people here. Monsters too.
"Comic book. I get off easy. It's harder to recognize someone when they're just a bunch of drawings." He batted the cup back and forth between his hands. "I think fake names might be a good idea. Less of a hassle that way."
no subject
Control over life and death--the ultimate attempt at playing God. Just like the Nazis, Landel was tampering with things he couldn't possibly understand. Indy might occasionally be tempted to make that last grab for a priceless artifact or use whatever technology had brought him here to see ancient civilizations firsthand, but he also believed that science should have limits--and in his experience, people who crossed those lines didn't come to good ends. The only problem was that Landel seemed to have no qualms about bringing everyone here down with him.
"You probably were lucky your friend and I were there," Indy replied carefully. "But I can't fault you for trying. At least you know it wasn't him in there, instead of wondering." It was easy to be objective when the bad guy was a stranger, but he wasn't so sure he wouldn't have done the same if one of those things had started talking to him. Until now, Indy'd still been pretty convinced he could handle himself alone at night, but he was starting to get that having partners here wasn't just about being able to fight Landel's lab rats. You needed other people as a buffer against what this place could do to you.
The revelation that Peter was (at least, claimed to be) part of some sort of comic actually might've been more unexpected than the fact that Landel was manufacturing Zombis. Indy couldn't help but wonder what kind of comic the kid would be in--he seemed pretty ordinary, a far cry from Dick Tracy or that new Superman fellow the students had been talking about in the last couple months (come to think of it, weren't they a little old to still be reading the funnies?).
"So far it hasn't been too much of a problem for me. You and a drunk I ran across yesterday have been the only ones who've heard about that 'Temple of Doom,'" Indy replied. Which reminded him... "By the way," he added, feeling more than a little foolish, "the guy got really angry, said I 'owed him for Short Round.' Any idea what he meant by that?"
no subject
It wasn't even wondering at this point, was it? It was...fuck, the fourth wall totally bulldozed all the rules. Gone. No use for logic. Was enough of Harry in there to make it important to the story? What was the point in worrying about souls and minds when it was all scripted in the first place?
He couldn't handle thinking like that. It was driving him mental, even worse than this place was. This story. It was so hard to separate the two and then you had to wonder if there was a good reason to separate them in the first place. Landel's was a story, and what happened happened. It was all worked out beforehand. Peter felt real, and he did what he thought was right. If that's the way he was written, then...fine. There was nothing he could do about it, was there? He thought things over, tried to pick right from wrong, made friends, lost them, made enemies, lost them too. All that felt natural to him. And as long as it felt real and not forced, he was going to have to go along with it. He didn't know how the story ended. He was still fishing his way through the rise to the climax. So to him, it was real. He was making choices. Maybe they weren't his, but he was making them. Obsessing over it was only going to make him go nuts.
"Still, though, you probably should make up one for the board," he insisted. "There's been a couple times I've seen where someone posted their name and a bunch of people start harassing them about their movies or whatever. You might not be able to do much if they recognize your face, but broadcasting that you're here only means that someone's gonna come looking to bug you about it." Briefly, he thought of Eddie. Geez. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of him, and there was nothing on the board about him lately, either. Was he even here anymore? "And if someone you know from home is here - someone bad - it only makes it easier for them to find you, too."
The guy said he owed him for - oh. Cripes. Short Round, of all people. Peter had forgot about him. "Um, I guess the guy must not have liked him? Or something? A lot of people did, but some might have thought that it was weird you had a kid for a sidekick all of a sudden. He was only in the one movie, so...I don't know. The guy was drunk, like you said, so it's probably not worth worrying about."