damned_institute | Day 43: Chapel

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Day 43: Chapel

And just like that, the disorienting feeling of blacking out just to wake up in an unfamiliar bed came again. Alkaid had wondered if it would - everything about last night had been different, all the way from the zombies to the eerie emptiness of the Institute to the strange broadcast at the end of the night. Had the Head Doctor been shot? Damn, someone had gotten to it before her. And who was the voice at the end there? It was like she'd been allowed access to some kind of strange mystery that she could not understand, one that had been going on for a long time before she had arrived and would be going on for quite a while in the future, after she was gone. Had these strange sets of circumstances been bugs in this place's programming? Who could say?

The morning's intercom greeting was strange, as well. Federal training whatsit? It didn't seem like this happened very often, from the sound of it, but so much had happened since the last day she remembered that the former Demon Palace Emperor was ready to take pretty much anything at face value.

The room she woke up in was still empty. Wondering where to stick the half-cracked bat that she'd picked up last night, she shoved it under the mattress hastily when she heard footsteps in the hall.

The stupid nurse was the same as ever, though. Some things never changed. "Ahh, good morning, Eileen. It's so nice to see you awake."

Alkaid rolled her eyes at the nurse's chuckle, and shook her head. She didn't care that the NPC thought it was nice, she just wanted to see the rest of the institute already.. see what had changed! "Yeah, it's fantastic. Whatever! Just take me where I'm going and be done with it!"

It was just then that she realized that she was not wanting to devour the flesh of the nurse in front of her. And that the pain on her arm had kind of abated - she couldn't see through the thick bandages they had covered her arm with, but she wondered if her skin was still rotting off like a zombie. Had they somehow cured her infection overnight? Or was the nurse not human, like Alkaid had always thought?

There was only one thing for it: she had to go somewhere else.

"Chapel, sun room, or cafeteria, then?"

"Does it look like I care?"

The nurse sighed, then started walking Alkaid down the hall, up the stairs, and down another hall to the chapel. No one here yet, huh? That was weird. She couldn't imagine that no one else'd show up, but who could say? This place had been turned on its ass.

The chapel was empty so far, and kind of nondescript. She shooed the nurse away, and stood in the middle of the space between the pews, standing akimbo. What would happen today? What would she learn about herself... her situation? How long had she been sleeping? Was she really still going freaking undead, or had that been somehow taken care of?

All this would come to light really soon. She hoped. Geez, too many mysteries!!

[unwittingly awaiting Haseo]

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Bridget started at that voice and looked up,quickly wiping off his face and offering a warm if slightly shaky smile. "Oh! Mr. Venom!" He had read the files on the head of the Assassin's Guild and knew it backwards and forwards. Of course, that didn't mean the white-haired man didn't get the same cheerful manners as everyone else.

He stood up and looked around, before directing to a spot on the edge of the pews. "Let's talk over there, so we don't disturb anyone."

...that was not the greeting he had been expecting, but it would do (oh, the innocence of youth. It was a terrifying thing. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought the child had completely forgotten that he murdered people for a living). The assassin nodded his head and quietly followed the boy, not all that certain of what to say. Did they really need to move? Everyone else in the chapel seemed completely engrossed in their own issues (although seeing the asylum so full after having walked through startlingly empty hallways...), so would they really disturb them so much that it required them to relocate? He wasn't going to fight the boy on it, though; if he wanted to move, there was little stopping him from doing so.

For lack of anything else, Venom tilted his head down at the boy once they had found somewhere else to sit, gauging those emotions carefully. It did not take a genius to know something was definitely wrong. It wasn't really his job to be comforting, though, and the only thing to come out of his mouth was "Is this better?"

Bridget sat down and crossed his legs, thinking for a moment. "Did you wake up last night? Or this morning?"

"Last night," he answered, voice growing a tiny bit more annoyed as he ran a hand through his hair. He had asked the bounty hunter a question and really expected him to answer it. Why was it that everyone he spoke to was either infuriatingly logical to the point of ignorance, would not give him a straight answer (it took fifteen minutes to get anything useful out of the nurse and then she had the indecency to change the subject three different times before he could get the discussion back on track), or... was Alkaid? "I am already aware of the creatures here and the stripping of magic, so there is no need to repeat that to me."

This was supposed to be simple. The boy knew what sort of person Venom was, knew that he was a dangerous man, and should, by all accounts, just tell him what he wanted to hear and be done with it. He had not even gotten to the more pressing issues yet.

He would ask again. Sorrow was no reason to neglect giving a clear, concise answer. "How long have you been here?" Obviously, being in control of the Guild had spoiled him. It was so much easier when everyone did exactly what you wanted of them.

Bridget beamed. Dangerous killer was only a label. That didn't mean he was going to cower and that certainly didn't mean that he was going to do as the older man asked.

"Oh good! That makes things much easier. Well, I've been here a couple of weeks, long enough to have seen a few things that I can't quite explain and a few things I can. What would you like to know?"

That was better (aside from the smiling. Was... he really smiling at Venom's obvious distaste? That wasn't a reason to cheer up. Yes, it was nice to see him stop crying, but... Venom leaned away from the boy).

"Do you know where, exactly, we are? Somewhere in A Country? Zepp?" He should know about this establishment. If something like this were to be happening, he should know about it, the Guild should hold some sort of record on it! That was the original purpose of the Guild, to punish those doing horrid things like this that hid themselves inside the loopholes the Crusades had left behind! So why was 'Landel's Institute' drawing such a blank for him? He didn't have the excuse of just being a lowly assassin and therefore ignorant--he was the Guild Head. And after Master Zato's disappearance and death (sometimes even before then), all he had done was research other countries and suspicious organizations for this sort of thing. Unless it was operating under a different name from the outside than the inside, which would logically throw him for a loop. All the more reason for him to know, right now, what country this was. If the bounty hunter shared such information, he'd be able to whittle down the options.

"...also, what is your name?" It was only polite to ask.

Edited 2009-08-10 09:01 (UTC)

"That's the thing! We're not in any place I've ever seen or even heard mentioned in passing. The best I can figure, is we're either in the past or a totally different reality." The bounty hunter tilted his head in thought. "There was talk of the,what was it.... Oh! 'United States' and some smaller country called 'New Jersey', but those aren't familiar to me." Maybe Venom would know?

"But from what I understand, there's a lot of people here that are actually from Japan. As in, the country itself, not the colony. And almost nobody knows anything about Gears or the Wars or any of that. Well,there were two people that knew the word, but they were talking about giant robots and that wasn't quite the same thing."

He smiled again. "And my name is Bridget. It's nice to formally meet you! You know, I've got a file this thick on you." He held his hands quite a few inches apart.

"United States," he echoed, trying to think. No, that didn't make sense... "A Country, then. It hasn't been called the United States in decades, though..." And Japan still existed on top of that? ...Was that message on the bulletin board true, then? It would explain the backwards technology and general state of things, but... He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head upward, trying to sort out this new information as he stared at the chapel's ceiling.

No Gears, no Holy Wars or Crusades... No Magic. No one here knew of any of it? How was this possible? He had heard of time traveling through use of Magic, but... If that was the case and this was a different reality or time period, it would explain all these gaping holes in what he knew was true, and it would certainly back the boy's claims that no one knew about what they did, but then that would also mean that, on this world-

There was no Guild here.

There was no Assassins' Guild.

Even if he just left the walls, he couldn't return... No. No. They couldn't do that to him. He wouldn't allow that. As Guild Head, he would judge them for their crimes against him and he would not stand for this-

"And my name is Bridget. It's nice to formally meet you!" That tiny voice brought him back out of that quickly growing rage (that, despite feeling, he hadn't let it show itself in the slightest, at least not with his hair covering his face) and he turned his head back down to look at the source.

His name was Bridget--surprisingly appropriate, and yet still very unfortunate. The mention of this file (he had to be exaggerating. There was no feasible way it held that much information) did prove to be a welcome distraction before he ended up raging through the asylum in an effort to have them take him back to the Guild right this instant, though. "...is there really that much to say?"

Edited 2009-08-10 10:23 (UTC)

"Well," Bridget looked a bit embarrassed. He was clearly oblivious to the white-haired man's fury. "Roger did put it together. He's a bit ... verbose sometimes."

He looked back up. "The people here have so far been telling us this was a mental hospital, but with the announcement today, I suppose that's going to change."

"Roger?" Venom didn't remember Bridget having any sort of partner (aside from that nightmare inducing teddy bear. Was that Roger?). Furthermore, it still made no sense to have a folder of that size on him, no matter how verbose. Yes, he was the Guild Head, but... what was there to say about him, aside from that?

If anything, his thought was that it would only be a page long, maybe two pages, boiling down to "Don't bother."

That useless information cul-de-sac wrapped up in his mind, the imporant matter of being trapped within these walls and just what that meant came back to being the forerunner of the assassin's thoughts. "Yes, I heard what it said." Which was even more worrying. If this was in the past (which was plausible, even if he wished it wasn't true, but how in the world could they have the resources to bring them all here? If they hadn't tapped into Magic yet- Nnng, why wouldn't he piece this out?) it still made no sense for him not to know about it. Especially if it were some sort of federal training for A Country's military--he'd have all the more reason to be aware of something like that! "If their guise has been as a regular asylum, I'm not sure why they would suddenly change it. I don't think they took last nights events into account and, because of that, this I.R.I.S. system may only be temporary until they either find a new leader or Martin Landel regains his health." The latter was assuming the man was still alive.

"Yes! My teddy bear? You must remember Roger. He likes to meet new people almost as much as I do!" Roger, with his soft fur, soothing deep voice, spinning blades, flame thrower and near limitless memory space. His constant companion. "He's here too. But... he's inoperable and I can't get him running again." Admitting to a weakness like this wasn't a bad thing. They were all weakened here. This one just stung the most.

"What happened to the Head Doctor? I wasn't here last night."

"...The stuffed animal." It wasn't a question as much as it was a need for conformation. The teddy bear liked to meet new people. He was aware of the weapons stored within it, but wasn't Bridget old enough to not personify inanimate (or, in this case, pseudo-animate) objects? It was a stuffed animal. It held no capacity for thinking or liking others or writing verbose documentation on bounties. It was senseless and careless think otherwise and, frankly, he was a little disappointed in the boy.

In the end, Venom just nodded his head in a slow, disbelieving manner. At least he still had the toy to comfort himself or wasn't too distraught at its malfunctioning.

"I didn't understand what was happening at first or who was speaking over the intercom," he tilted his head back again, crossing his right leg over his left as he recalled the incident, "but he was attacked. From the moaning and his words of surprise, it was most likely the doing of the undead creatures we had all faced that night, meaning their presence was not something he had planned. That, or it was and went horribly out of control."

Edited 2009-08-11 08:53 (UTC)

Bridget leaned back in the pew, thinking and kicking a foot back and forth for a moment. "Well..." he began slowly. "The sheer amount of creatures set on us in the town below seemed to be far beyond the norm for this place, and indeed, the walking dead of this sort is a new tactic for this place. It would stand to reason that this was not the Head Doctor's doing. Or I suppose he is the former Head Doctor now?" His foot stopped and the hunter tilted his head.

"It could have had something to do with 'Jane' or even 'Alec', but the fact that both claimed to be on the side of the captives leads one to wonder what,exactly,is going on now." He turned and the intelligent young man was covered once more by the perfect picture of cluelessness. "I just hope not too many people were hurt up here at the facility. Are you okay?"

"I've heard mention on the board of Alec Doyle and how he was supposedly dead, but who is Jane?" Did he mean "Jill?" Or was this another woman altogether? With all the talk of some woman the two men wanted (he'd have to thank his captors for giving him something else to feel uncomfortable about. Another love triangle), any information regarding just who it was could be a very important piece to solving a) the puzzle of what they were doing here and b) how they returned back to their own time.

He needed to be back in his own time. If this had just been a simple relocation, he had no doubts the Guild would find him and put this to rest if he couldn't escape on his own. But to be brought through the folds of time? He would be lying if he said it didn't make him feel dizzy and just how much he hated that. How could he have ever planned for something like this happening...?

...that question was another thing he didn't expect. Why was Bridget even asking that, aside from just being polite? He paused and glanced down at his now-bandaged right arm, his words losing a bit of their normally cold edge. "Yes, I'm fine. Are you?"

(Gah! No Jane. That was a mun mess up. Teach me to post right before I pass out for the night. SORRY!!)

A moment of pain crossed his face, then it was a return to bright smiles. "I'm fine. Didn't get hurt at all last night. His own arm was still bandaged, but that was part of a request he had with the nurse to at least wait to see if the scars were going to fade at all.

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Day 43: Chapel

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Oh, now you've done it... ^^

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