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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Beelzemon... Beelzemon... What was it about that name that sounded so damn familiar? Whatever, he'd worry about that later. Right now this man wasn't making much sense at all. The name of the place was 'Landels,' there were 'monsters,' and he was something called a 'Digimon.' Setting aside how ridiculous 'Beelzemon the Digimon' sounded, Heat had never heard the term before. What he needed to find out was who the 'they' he mentioned were.

He didn't seem like a Tuner, though that marking on his forehead... Without asking permission, Heat stepped forward and grabbed a handful of the man's hair in order to shove his head back and make the marking more visible. It didn't look like any Atma he'd seen either, just a drawing of a third eye. The demon let him go, crossing his arms over his chest.

Basically, he now had more questions than he'd started with.

"You said monsters." Best to get down to the more important matters first and work his way up from there. "What'd you mean?"

"Wuh--HEY!" He yelped, ready to push the guy away before he let go. "What was that for? he bared his teeth unhappily, glaring at his roommate. What's with somma the guys here?!

Pulling on his hair like that had hurt. Like when Ai and Mako had fought over him when he was still Impmon or something. He put a hand to his head, running it through his hair to try and straighten the stuff out and somehow encourage the ache there to go away. "I jus' said all I know. Just got here this morning, I dunno much." He did know not to go grabbing people's heads whenever he felt like it though! "Wa's yer name, anyway?"

"How did you get here?" Heat's question was half growl. He'd woken on that bed, but this man had been outside the room. Even if it hadn't been for long, he knew just that much more than Heat did, and he'd need to spill what else he knew. "What were you doing before they brought you here, who are they, and how do we get out?"

He deserved to know that much, and if his approach was too forceful, then so be it. There were so many other questions he wanted to add on top of the others, but some of them were best saved for a more appropriate audience, if he could find one - such as how he was alive. Heat knew death, and he knew the point beyond, and if he knew nothing else he knew that this body - living, breathing - shouldn't exist. Data in the real world wasn't recycled with the rain, and he wasn't in a program anymore.

Perhaps he could at least answer one question of Beelzemon's. "Name's Heat. I just want to know what's going on."

"Was takin' a nap, cause they uh... sedated me. 'Cause I punched th' first guy through that door," he pointed at the now locked door. "They jus' had everyone stuck here wanderin' around. An' a friend a' mine said she hasn' found a way out, and if anyone could, it'd be her." You looked one moment and Renamon would be there, then the next she'd just gone.

He was also starting to remember that Renamon was usually right about everything. It didn't look like there were any other Digimon around here. "Could ya've done that without grabbing my head?"

"No." That answer came simply enough. There was always the concept of asking, but that wouldn't have gotten results quickly enough. "I wanted to see your marking." Heat tapped his forehead to indicate the third eye, then lifted his right arm to point out his own Atma mark, which anyone the slightest bit attentive should have noticed right off the bat. Beelzemon's explanation of being sedated got him away with no more than a scoff. Much of his original anger had dissipated as the man proved to be almost as confused as he was. (Not to mention that punching the first person to come through the door sounded like something Heat might have done.)

Was this some sort of lock-down? Beelzemon had been allowed to roam free while Heat had apparently been sleeping, but now both were stuck in this cell. If one had been let out before, there was a good chance he, or both of them, would be let out again. If the door wouldn't break down they'd just have to bide their time. He'd get his answers somehow.

Heat began pacing slowly back and forth next to his bed, ready to spring like a large feline predator in a cage. "You were out there, weren't you? You had to have seen something. Did you see the sky at all?"

"...What? Where my eye was?" He felt his forehead like he had done this morning, still finding nothing. "...I've got something there?" Obviously he couldn't tell, 'cause he couldn't see his own face. He didn't have eyes on stalks like a Numemon or anything. Not that anyone'd want to be a Numemon that wasn't already.

"Yeah, I was. Sky just looked like it did on Earth, not the Digital World at all." Being in the Digital World was kind of easy to spot, what with all the giant data streams coming out of the sky and other weird stuff floating around up there.

"Yeah there's something there. Don't know what you're talking about, but it looks like a drawing of an eye to me." The man's aesthetic issues weren't Heat's problem. It was his other comments that had him freezing in his tracks and spinning back to the Digimon with a new string of questions.

"What Digital World? What are you talking about?" The Junkyard didn't exist anymore. Had there been a completely different program in development that they weren't aware of? How was that possible? "And whaddya mean 'like it did on Earth'? Was the sun still black or was it.. y'know..." Not black? Yellow? The real question was did we manage to fix the world or not?

If this was the world they'd left behind, the fact that they were even here standing on it meant that its destruction had at least been halted. "Dammit! I can't just stay in here without knowing anything!" Heat gave the door another solid kick out of spite, but it remained regrettably solid.

"What? They just drew my eye on there? What was so bad 'bout actually havin' a real eye?!" Apart from the fact that he'd never met a three-eyed human, but still! It was close enough to human, wasn't it? Aaah, this was just irritating.

"...The Digital World. Where Digimon come from." Oh, right, he remembered something else Renamon said. "My friend said everyone here was from different worlds, not just the Real World and th' Digital World I know. But nah, the sun wasn't black las' time I saw it. Was really bright. It was black where you was?"

He took another bite of his food while he watched Heat try to kick the door. "That ain't gonna budge, I tried already." And trying had hurt. Everything was so messed up here.

Oh, of course. Where Digimon came from. The questions just kept on piling up and Heat narrowed red eyes at his roommate, unsure whether or not the man was being purposefully obtuse. The rest of the whining about his missing eye (he should be perfectly capable of seeing out of two) went ignored.

He was already aware that the door wasn't going to be taken down by any well-placed kick. The action was done mostly on principle. Finding himself basically back where he started, he resumed his pacing for a couple more laps, only to stop at that point and pick up an extra gray shirt he'd discarded on the floor during his rampage earlier. His teeth, just a little sharper than those of a regular human, were then put to use tearing it into strips. It was just something to do with his hands, mostly. He didn't have his armor and, after giving it more thought that he probably should have, he decided the bed sheet wouldn't make a suitable replacement for his cape. The strips he could wrap around his hands. It wasn't much, but it would be something that felt familiar.

At least he'd heard what he'd wanted to hear. The sun was the way it should be, and he was willing to bet the sky was blue as well. Even if it was just relying on the words of a man he didn't know, it still eased away some of the anxiety.

It didn't make him any more pleased to be there, of course.

"It was," he spoke around cloth. "But if it isn't now that's all that's important." The whole matter of coming from different worlds would have to wait until he had more of a feel for what this place really was.

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Day 43: Intercom, Evening

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