damned_institute | Day 43: Intercom, Evening

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Day 43: Intercom, Evening

Hello! I.R.I.S. here once more to announce to you, our honored guests, that you have officially made it through a day of our typical Landel's treatment. Of course, it isn't quite over: we will now have you retire to our designated patient quarters with one of your agency partners to inspect their sleeping area and the tools that we provide them with for the true bulk of our behavioral testing. On an added note, we would like you to notice once again that the meals we provide to our subjects are of the highest quality.

For those of you feeling apprehensive about taking part in our more intensive methods, please be aware that we would never imagine putting all of you in any danger whatsoever. This last shift will be your last at our Institute; afterward, we will escort you to our Head Doctor's personal observation station to survey some of our test Next-Wave participants in the rigorous trials we put them through – all for their betterment, of course.

Once again, we hope that you are satisfied with what you find, and as always, direct any questions you may have to your console.

The nurses began to escort the patients to their rooms. They didn't even seem to be brought to awareness by words such as "testing" and "subjects."

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. (Find all of the newly changed room assignments and shift introductions here.) If you are introducing your character during this shift, you may either choose for them character to wake up before their roommate gets back, or after. ]

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"Really?" He hoped what Tem said was true, so he and Beelzemon could start playing right away. "Well, even without my Duel Hound and Materia, I'm sure I'll be fine." Which reminded him. "Do you know anything about 'weaponsmiths' or the 'cooking club'?" While Loz could fight perfectly well with his bare hands, having a weapon probably wouldn't hurt either.

"I have absolutely no idea what those are, but you should at least take the glowrod they give us. It should be under your pillow," 622 pointed to illustrate. "It's got a fair amount of weight to it and you'll need it unless you can see in the dark- all the lights turn off."

"I haven't met anyone from the cooking club, but if you ask them they'll take any metal you can find and use it to make weapons. There are other people who offer their services, usually for a price."

Somehow, he'd only just noticed something... sort of important. Not only was Loz's hair gray, his pupils were slitted. "...Apologies if this is a bad question, but are you human?"

Loz reached under his pillow and pulled out the 'light rod' Tem mentioned. The Remnant weighed it in his hand and nodded approvingly. He pressed the button on the the handle, but with the lights on, he didn't get a good idea of how much light it gave. Well, he'd find out tonight.

Replacing the rod under his pillow, Loz said, "Metal shouldn't be too hard to find." He'd have to leave a note for the club tommorrow morning.

When Tem asked his question, Loz frowned slighly. "Well, I am human, but Kadaj once said that we're... different. Because of Mother. He told us that Mother wasn't really human." He didn't even know what Mother really looked like. He'd always pictured her as this beautiful being, who would bring happiness to Loz and his brothers.

"I haven't tried to look, but they'll take any metal, as far as I can tell." He didn't know what they did with it. Probably some of that 'magic' or whatever people called things that couldn't be explained here.

"Ah." Some sort of genetic cross, either natural or through the same sort of manipulation cloners did. "Do you know what she was?"

"Wait until Beelzemon hears about this," Loz said excitedly. He was sure Beelzemon would want something too, and maybe Alex too.

The Remnant then frowned and shook his head. "No. We... never met her. We don't even know what she looked like. Kadaj said that she came from the sky." He pointed upward for emphasis.

Well, at least someone here was happy. At least for the moment.

Planet-bound? He didn't know what level of technology it took to make genetic manipulation viable, so he still didn't know if Loz was talking about a real mother or not. If he even knew. "I didn't have parents, so these things are new to me anyway." Just brothers. Apart from the cloners, he hadn't seen anyone else for the entirety of his training.

"Yeah, all I ever had was my brothers," Loz said. He then sighed softly. He was really missing his brothers. Well, at least he had Beelzemon now. He was a real friend. Plus, there were those nice people on the bulletin, and that nice guy, Alex. Tem was actually pretty nice too. He hadn't made fun of Loz once.

"I had something similar. Squad brothers. They're all dead by now." The first deaths had been a shock to all of them, even with all of the training they'd had, drilling it into their minds that their lives were unimportant, that only the Empire and what they did for it mattered. After a while, it just became... Nothing. The last time his squad had been killed on Ralltiir, he'd just captured the rebels who were responsible, and then went back to guarding Commander Akobi.

He wished he could figure out how to make that state of mind come back. He needed it right now.

Loz could understand Tem's pain, and he gave the other man a sympathetic look. "I lost my brothers too, for a while. Kadaj died in Big Brother's arms. And I thought... I had died, along with Yazoo. But, since I survived, Yazoo must have too, and people keep telling me that Kadaj is alive here now. Although, I'm still not sure how that's possible."

"That's good then. You can find them," he said, trying to focus on something that wouldn't leave him a stupid wreck. "I died before I came here. There wasn't any way that I could have survived the explosion that I remember happening." It had been too fast to even think. Just a flash, almost too fast to see, and then he'd woken up here.

"Yazoo and I were in an explosion too. Two of them actually," Loz said. "The second one happened inside our bodies, and was the one that killed us." The first had been set up by those meanies, the Turks. All he remembered before the second one was chaging up his Materia with everything he had, while that rain hurt him and dissolved his body, before the big flash and bang.

Caught in an explosion some time before death, but didn't have any signs of it. It wasn't the most outlandish thing he'd heard here, but it still bothered him.

The bit about the second explosion was worth more of a reaction. "...How?" It sounded too much like the suicide bombers on Ralltiir, but they usually didn't have their bombs inside of them. Their body would absorb more of the explosion that way, and they were always concerned with doing as much damage as they could.

"We tried to use all our Materia at full force against Big Brother, but that made them explode," For the third time today, Loz launched into a discussion about Materia, since Tem had made it blatently obvious he didn't know what it was. "They're these glowing stone thingys you put in your body, and some people put them in armor and weapons too, so you can use magic."

That made absolutely no sense whatsoever to him. The explanation didn't really help him either. He knew things beyond what should be physically possible happened here, but that didn't mean he had to accept it beyond that, or understand it at all.

"None of those things are possible where I come from, so... I'm still confused," He said truthfully.

"You don't have magic in your world?" Loz frowned. He was no good at explaining stuff. That was usually what Yazoo and Kadaj did. Especially since he didn't know everything about how Materia worked. Loz just didn't think about that kind of stuff. The Remnant tried his best to explain anyway, using his hands to try and illistrate, "You can make lightning strike, or make fire or ice, summon monsters... I think it has something to do with the Lifestream." That's what Materia was made out of, right?

"I've seen prisoners using magic here, especially the brainwashed individuals, but it's just not normal to me," he clarified.

He decided to just drop any questions he might have about how that was physically possible, or what the 'Lifestream' was. He doubted that would get him anywhere, or how much the information would actually be worth.

Loz was kinda glad that Tem had quit asking him questions. It meant he didn't have to do any more explaining. "I bet the brainwashed ones are fun to play with." They sounded like they'd be more of a challenge. Loz liked a challenge.

"Not really. The last one I had to deal with set the floor on fire." That had been a while ago now. But Loz might find that fun anyway. 622 wasn't sure how the hell someone like him had survived for as long as he had, although magic or whatever might have helped.

Loz raised his eyebrows in surprise again. "Must have been some fight," He mused. The Remnant was confidant he could handle someone with that ability. He wasn't afraid of fire. Fire stung a little, but he could handle it just fine.

Loz also couldn't help but once more wonder how long it was until dark. He wanted to see these monsters and maybe a brainwashed person.

"It was. It didn't help that... I was trying to protect someone, but the person I was fighting kept on... Well. Teleporting." It had been frustrating, but mostly terrifying. That was easy to admit. A real fight was always that way for any soldier that wasn't a few shots short of a full clip.

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Day 43: Intercom, Evening

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