damned_institute | Day 43: Courtyard, Third Shift

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Day 43: Courtyard, Third Shift

Once again, Endrance's nurse interfered with his plans. He had been planning to look around the Game Room, but the moment he began to move towards the Sun Room, she had taken him by the arm. "Your family has asked that we make sure you get as much fresh air and sunshine has possible, and you won't get that by staying inside playing video games all day."

He had thought for a moment about protesting, but decided against it. After all, if what had happened to Haseo was punishment for having spoken too strongly the day before, he didn't want to make that worse somehow. So, when given the choice of going out to the recreational field or the courtyard, he chose the latter.

There were a few reasons behind the decision, the most salient being that he wanted to see what the area looked like for a second time - this time without the threat of a brainwashed patient surprising him. The second reason was just as strong as the first, and it had to do with the presence of a second former Demon Palace Emperor. As energetic as she was normally in The World, he couldn't imagine Alkaid not wanting to spend some time outside.

Just as before, he sat down under a tree by the side of the pond, keeping one eye on the door.

[closed to Alkaid]

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While he couldn't hear anyone approaching, Fox could feel it, see it, in the sense provided by his implants. A little too tall to be Snake, not quite the right size, although he couldn't really tell the specifics beyond that. Fox turned his head just enough to be able to catch sight of the figure approaching him.

He went completely still and his eye's widened in surprise for a moment, before he turned even further to make sure it wasn't just a trick of the light. Big Boss. Fox got to his feet slowly, and calmly. Not jumping or rolling to his feet took a lot of effort. Big Boss was alive... that really wasn't the surprising part, he'd been visited by Big Boss, although it had been a younger boss, one that had been brainwashed and couldn't remember.

That had been hard to take, a unique form of torture that had slipped past his defenses. If this had been night time he'd have suspected a mimic, but that couldn't be the case now. Fox was still wary, though. Cautious, because this place had seemingly taken a lot of pleasure playing with him. Giving him the people he missed, but there was always a catch.

"Big Boss..." It was a lot softer and more strained than Fox wanted it to be, and a little disbelieving. He didn't think Big Boss would mind, if it was really him.

Reno watched her for a moment, expression neutral for the first time. He'd been there, of course. Not right there, but--

Whatever. There'd been Sector 7 and a bunch of crap after that and when it came down to it, holding onto all the fuckery you felt guilty over just wasn't worth the headache.

He kept quiet, though, just waited for her to ask the next question. Comfort, also not a part of default Turk training, and the closest he'd ever gotten to something like that was to shake someone out of it so they could get their ass moving and not get killed.

"S'when they shot him down, anyway," Reno said, dodging the phrase when he died 'cause that just sounded bullshit, like, oh, he rolled over and stopped breathing. He peered at her. "Dunno when you've come from if last thing you remember, he was still alive."

It was such a relief to talk to someone who understood that law and order were paramount. Never mind that Leon had been forced to betray the King and commit crimes himself, at least for a time he'd been able to do some good with his miserable life. "One of Stahn's compatriots, Mary, was a very well-behaved girl. I don't recall that I ever needed to shock her."

"Hmph." And that was the end of the topic of zombies. Leon was not going to discuss it further, and if Kratos even hinted that Stahn had mentioned his pathetic pleas for death, at the end... oh, there would be words exchanged.

"I hope so, too. My sister has some really good people around her now, to help her put things to rights, but..." Frey was almost the only family she had left, and Cousin Haswar, while a kind and wonderful person, was someone they'd really only barely known. Smart and tough and incredible as Lymsleia was, she was only a child. Frey wanted to be there for her, as much as for Falena.

Frey had to smile, though, at the thought of Lym, even if he did worry about her and want to be with her. "I'm sure there's a lot of things she's going to change. My sister hated some of the traditions she saw no purpose for, and she can be remarkably stubborn." And though Frey could never approve of how Aunt Sialeeds had gone about it, it was still true that most of the corrupt nobles of the Senate were either dead or had their positions weakened terribly by the war.

[backthread?]

"There are such things as intelligent criminals," Kratos said with a faint smile. "They're typically the ones who know when not to talk." He had met his fair share of those, although their silence was due to the fact that most of them committed suicide upon being caught. It complicated things, but that was what spies did in the first place.

He honored Leon's silent termination of their zombie discussion and changed the subject. "Ah, anyway, have you spoken to Stahn yet?"

What a weirdo. He sounded pretty sincere, though. It was hard for Anise to keep giving Leonard a hard time if he was going to say something like that. Hopefully this meant he was going to get serious about keeping up with information about threats and other scary stuff.

The girl looked at the offered hand for a moment, then forced herself to bring out one of her better smiles for the guy. Hey, he earned it. It wasn't often that Anise was the one getting encouraged by someone else. "Right!" She took his hand and pulled herself up to her feet. Once she finished brushing the grass and dirt off of her clothes, she looked up at the man's face again.

"Don't get yourself killed, okay? I'll be really disappointed in you if you do." Despite talking about something so morbid, she was back to wearing a bright, childish smile. "I'll see you again later!" In a way, it was a promise that she'd stay alive, and that she fully expected him to do the same.

Ah hah, the guy wasn't just muscle and....you know, writing shit. He'd brought up something Rude was interested in. Finding links between worlds. Last night had seemed kind of like standard horror show shit to him. Not stuff that actually happened, but stuff people had wondered about.

"Many?" he asked. He wanted better numbers than that. "Think there was a film or two, years ago. Probably around the time monsters started growing in numbers. Nothing like that#s ever happened as far as I'm aware." That little town at the foot of Mount Nibel always gave him the creeps though, during the rebuild. He could picture that sort of thing sparking off some weird zombie invasion.

"No way! There can't have been zombies 'cause I'd remember if there were! Are you guys sure you didn't have some kinda joint hallucination?"

He glanced at Bart in concern the moment he said the word 'hallucination'. Bart had been acting so off at lunch yesterday, seeing things and freaking out and he didn't want to set him off again. And he really didn't want both his friends to be hallucinating but it made more sense than him missing a bunch of zombies. Except that that left him as the only not-messed-up one and meant he'd have to tell Batman and the Flash that Robin and Impulse had started seeing things. Which would suck big-time. Like, seriously. He'd be in so much trouble for that and he wouldn't have even done anything. So they'd better not have gone crazy on him.

"I don't remember anything after lunch yesterday. I just woke up here," he told Robin defensively. "If Bart says the Flash got bitten but you say he's fine, maybe it wasn't real and they're just messing with you."

It was strange how casual a lot of these people were with time travel. But not a bad strange. Hokuto's attitude reminded him of the women of Starfleet, smart and friendly and sure of themselves.

Kirk folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the clear sky, and wondered idly what the stars looked like at night. "I took a bit of Earth history at the Academy. It was a good way to fill up my program starting out, seeing out how I didn't actually qualify for a lot of classes," he admitted. He glanced back at Hokuto. "Please don't tell me you predate space travel."

Edited 2009-08-22 18:55 (UTC)

"We knew it might happen," she replied quietly, seriously because she really should never have let herself get emotionally invested in him. You'd think that the four years where he was locked away at Hojo's tender mercies would have killed off whatever she felt for him, but apparently feelings like that for Zack Fair just didn't die off. She was as bad as the Ancient girl in that respect.

"The last thing I remember was Tseng sending me out to find him before the army did. Tseng wanted me to keep him alive and safe." And they'd have sorted out the details later on about what exactly to do with him. But he didn't deserve what Shinra had done considering how devoted he'd been.

Otacon gazed at Snake a moment longer, then shook his head and settled on the grass beside him without comment. He knew when pressing the issue (Snake would've called it "nagging") wouldn't change anything. Although there had been a time he would've done it anyway, in the belief that Snake still listened, no matter how brusque he acted.

But this wasn't the same man. Not yet.

"Hopefully it shouldn't hinder you for long. I've heard that injuries heal up faster than normal here. By all accounts, yesterday wasn't typical either, so if you just try to avoid engaging with any enemies at night..."

He should probably be grateful that Snake hadn't met his father after dark. Maybe the only good thing about being here was that a staff dedicated to perpetuating the illusion of a hospital. At night, without any nurses or access to proper medical supplies, things could have gone a lot worse. Otacon vaguely remembered someone mentioning a first aid kit. Where did they get that?

As he pondered, he noticed a tall older man walking on the other side of the courtyard. He wasn't close enough for Otacon see the resemblance, but even from here, his eyepatch was unmistakable. And the arms. He recalled Snake's improbable description on the bulletin board.

"Is that him?"

"Yeah," Snake said, voice husky and biting as a Zanzibar breeze rattling through a chain fence. "That's him. You can tell by the way he walks. How he makes you feel, even sitting here. The whole of my unit was under his spell when he betrayed us." His hand clenched. "In the three weeks after N313, sixteen of them took their own lives - even though the grave they followed him into turned out to be empty." He stopped, and fell silent. That was too personal, and not his story to tell.

"On paper, and in person, he seems like a philanthropist," he explained, instead. "That's why he's so hard to get rid of once he gets under your skin. There's strong ideals deep inside him, ideals that lure people in. But outside of those ideals, there's just a madman left. He's the real 'Heavy Walker'; these days he's little more than a walking nuke. That's why he's so dangerous - he can strike from anywhere."

Between the pain, the drugs and the knowledge he was near Big Boss, a sudden insane question occurred to him and he blurted it out to Otacon without thinking.

"Otacon," he said, "who are you? What was your life like?" He immediately felt blood draining from his face upon realising what he'd just asked, and snarled, "I'm not asking because I'm interested in you as a person; don't get any stupid ideas. I don't care about anyone's personal life, and you're no exception! I just want to know if there's any connection between the kind of things you did that meant you ended up in this place, and that's all."

"It takes too much to bring dead people back in my world so, no, not many," Jiraiya stated with a shrug. "And it's a forbidden technique, anyways. And those that are brought back with that technique do become mindless killing machines, but they also don't have any sort of decay in their final form."

It's not like giving Rude more information would hurt. Rude wouldn't be able to use it for anything, as it wasn't detailing the technique, just the result. Something interesting for Rude to consider, anyways.

"We have some horror films, but I've never gone to see one," Jiraiya went on, addressing what else Rude had said. "I'm curious to find out where the Institute got that idea... or if it's just a side effect of what they're doing."

"Well... we've been to the moon," Hokuto said cheerfully. "At least, some countries have." To the best of her knowledge, Japan was still working on it. "But we're still a long way away from anything like being able to take vacations on Mars." Not that she cared much, honestly, unless aliens came down and revolutionized everyday technology.

"So how did you get into this Academy but not qualify for a lot of the classes?" Truthfully, she wanted to know partly because she could so see it happening at the Academy she was aiming for.

"That is something that worries me as well. Originally, I thought it might be possible to escape the confines of the Institute, perhaps find a bastion of normalcy and regroup there... unfortunately, that possibility is rather doubtful now." It was possible that the entire world was like this... and if that was the case, the further they roamed from the Institute, paradoxically, the greater the danger they were in. He didn't like considering it, but perhaps their only hope of escape would be to solve the mystery of how they'd arrived at the first place.

The statement that Faize made caused Adelheid to wince, as he never did like admitting that he was unwell and liked even less it being so obvious that someone else could comment on it. However, if such was the case, then perhaps Faize could help him puzzle something out. "I was bitten last night, and what happened with those creatures... it is contagious. Which, if it will happen again tonight... I've been trying to think of a way to make sure no one happens across me, and to prevent myself from attacking them."

Bart flinched, starting at Kon like he'd just been struck.

"I don't think...no, it couldn't have been a hallucination," he said unsteadily, looking at Robin with an obvious, if silent, plea for help. "The Flash's bites must have healed up."

But that didn't make any sense. Wally's superspeed clearly hadn't been working last night; otherwise, he wouldn't have been bit at all. Why would his injuries heal so quickly if his speed was out, while Bart's speed was still working just fine, but the cuts on his arms had yet to finish healing? As if in reaction to that thought, the itching in his wrists suddenly redoubled; he scratched at the bandages without thinking about it.

"Batman was there too," he said, trying to sound decisive. "He saw Wally get bitten, so...he can confirm it..." Bart hoped. Oh, he really hoped so. He did not need any more reason to doubt his grasp on reality right now...

"Oh well," said Kirk, unable to suppress a grin. "I just drove into the shipyard and hopped onto the cadet shuttle." While the memory amused him now, he remembered the anxiety he'd felt while waiting around for Captain Pike to argue his case to the admissions office. He still didn't know how Pike had managed it. Cashing in on George Kirk's name, maybe. "I'd done the aptitude tests, but I hadn't actually put in an application or... any of the other thousand things you needed to do, but it worked out in the end."

He leaned in a little closer to Hokuto, as if imparting a secret.

"As it turns out, if you're good enough to get into Starfleet despite not being qualified for any programs, you can still go on the command track. You don't really have to know anything to be in charge of everything." Kirk laughed. "So what do you do, Hokuto?"

Well, that wasn't nice of her, true as it was. What a way to treat a poor, delicate soul like herself. Dahlia looked down again like those words actually wounded her, back to fiddling with her thumbs in the middle of this awkward conversation.

Hmph. Not that it mattered if she got this woman on her side or not right now. All she needed for now was more people thinking she was harmless, that's it. She had her toys to protect her from danger at night, making these ones just for insurance. Ha! Feenie-bear and Mr. Attorney may have had stories, but nothing lasted long against word of mouth about how sweet, innocent, and frail someone was.

If they tried to crucify her, she'd give them one hell of a trial.

"I'm glad that you're okay." She managed to get out finally, eyes locked on her shoes. "You and your friend. You're lucky that you're strong enough to fight them..."

Otacon looked back at him, briefly torn between bemusement at Snake's obvious defensiveness or trepidation over answering that question. Hadn't he wondered about that before on his first day here? If it wasn't just a game — if there was a method to why people were brought here, then it put into rather ominous perspective their choice of three of the best soldiers in FOXHOUND, and a weapons engineer. Federal training. Could the theories really be right? Were they all trapped inside some kind of Force XXI nightmare?

"Maybe there is a connection," Otacon said quietly. He paused, gathering his thoughts despite already knowing where to start. "My grandfather was part of the Manhattan Project, and my father was born on the day of the Hiroshima bombing. And I... created Metal Gear REX, the first Metal Gear capable of launching an undetectable and untraceable nuke. At the time, I believed we were developing a mobile TMD, thanks to a combination of bureaucracy, divided labour and my own naivety and... and arrogance. I should have asked more questions, but I didn't. I learned too late what I'd done."

Two fingertips nudged his glasses back into place, and Otacon lifted his chin again. By now, he was used to bearing the burden of REX.

"You were the one who told me, actually. It was how we first met."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Sylar replied, enunciating each syllable with slow exaggeration as he made his way towards her. He made a point of his casual demeanor, his complete lack of concern towards anything she could try to do to him: he glanced at the sky, the grass, ran his hand against the rough bark of a tree as he passed by it. He hadn't felt this kind of leisure since before he'd come to this place, and her desperate attempts to get him to leave her alone were ill-conceived at best and pathetic at worst. Besides, as much as he would have liked to, attacking her right now wouldn't get him anywhere during the daytime.

There was something that bothered him about the situation, something that didin't click between the Courtyard situation that night and the Courtyard situation right now. Whatever it was, though, it wasn't major enough for Sylar to be truly concerned, and he finally looked towards her, his eyes narrowed, sharply.

"Trying to fool me? I thought you were smarter than that by now."

Rude wasn't entirely sure about the zombies back home. Hojo had a knack for that stuff, but they seemed to occur 'naturally' near the old plants. Something the the MAKO and all that. But this guy knew about 'techniques'.

"Do you know the technique?" he asked. Luckily for Rude he was always so...stoney and there wasn't a hint of perverse interest in his voice or expression. There wasn't a hint of anything, really.

In fact, when he inspected the arrival of a pair of boobs not far from the benches, only a fellow and professional boob watcher would have spotted the signs and subtle changes in him. Even Tseng had trouble telling when Rude's mind wandered.

"Looks like we don't have to bother," he shrugged. Why see a movie when you lived it? He was intrigued by the guy's reasons for wondering. Rude just assumed the place was freaky and full of zombies so the town ought to be to. But inspiration? That brought in the idea that the worlds were connected but translated as other things. Comics, games and films.

"You know anything about Gaia?"

An undetectable, untraceable nuke?

Snake stared in fear, defensiveness forgotten. How was that even possible? With the missile defence programmes recieving greater international attention, there was always going to be someone looking for a work-around, but -

"So that was how we first met?" Snake said, quietly. "Doesn't sound like we met in the best of circumstances." He considered this, looking up at Otacon, trying to imagine him building something that terrible. "But how did the Metal Gear concept data get leaked? And why would anything like that need to be built in the new Millenium, after the peace talks and the UN's disposal project?"

Edited 2009-08-23 12:28 (UTC)

Something about this wasn't right. Why was he wasting so much time talking? Why wasn't he attacking her like before? It could be that he didn't want to draw too much attention to them, but something just didn't add up.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded, confusion seeping through her tone. "You came into my house, you..." she couldn't bring herself to finish the thought.

Wait. Did he really just not remember? That had to be it. There was no reason to pretend otherwise, after all, and that only meant one thing.

The Haitian. Her father must have caught up to him, must have wiped the memory of what he did. Claire wasn't sure how she felt about that-- on the one hand, he couldn't gloat about what he'd done, but a larger part of her wanted him to remember. Getting revenge just wouldn't feel the same otherwise.

His outfit was the same as hers, too. Was he posing as a patient, or did he get stuck here just as she did?

She folded her arms, trying her very best to look intimidating although she wasn't very (it didn't help when you were barely over 5 feet tall), and said, "I guess my father just got to you first."

Hokuto laughed and shook her head. "Wow. That's kind of scary."

And then he asked the question she really didn't know how to answer... oh boy. "Nothing special," she said. "Until recently I was a normal high-school girl who knew a little magic. Here, I'm just another Arts & Crafts recruit. I have a black belt in karate and I'm still just a clueless newbie." She grinned, but it was a little less sincere than before. "I'm not the only one who's drastically out of my league, but that doesn't make me feel any better when I'm humiliating myself in front of my commander again."

"I had been thinking something similar," Faize admitted grimly. It was a rather serious blow to their hopes of escape, but they needed to take it as a push towards considering other methods of reclaiming their freedom. They needed to shift their focus. Giving up was not an option Faize wanted to consider just yet.

There was a look of concern on Faize's face, albeit subtle, when Adelheid informed him of his condition. The infection spread by those creatures... the symptoms described sounded unpleasant, to say the least. "I... I see." There was sympathy in his eyes, but he didn't speak on it. He suspected that Adelheid was uncomfortable enough, and most likely didn't want any expressions of pity.

"That is rather difficult. It may be possible to barricade yourself in your room should the situation be dire enough to call for it, but..." Faize averted his eyes, wondering if such a suggestion was inappropriate.

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Day 43: Courtyard, Third Shift

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