damned_institute | Day 44: breakfast

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Day 44: breakfast

Yuffie had died.

No, really. Seriously. She had actually died. Bleeding all over the place, making a horrid, sticky mess and scaring the hell out of Suzaku; she remembered it clearly. Kind of. Sort of. Through the blood loss, the pain, and the visions. Through Aerith's voice whispering in her ear, Cloud's stricken eyes, and her own panic. As bad nights went, it had been Bad, capital B and all the trimmings, and oh, god. She sat, trembling on the edge of her bed, eyes closed and hands pressed hard over her racing heart. The by-play between Landel—Landel!—and Lydia barely even sunk in. There was nothing in the whole world, any world, that could prepare you for something like…

Had it all been some kind of hallucination?

Had she imagined the whole thing?

No… She didn't think so. Nightmarish or not, Yuffie knew reality. But if it had been real, how was she alive now? That kind of pain wasn't something you could just cook up, was it? She thought about it all the way to the cafeteria, drifting behind her nurse without focus or intent. Maybe if she tried to stay clinical, tried to step back… But she'd never been good at that when things got personal. And every time she closed her eyes or blinked, she swore that the scenes played back to her, like an overused commercial on a crappy channel on a crappy TV, in a run-down dump of an inn that smelled like mothballs and yesterday's breakfast.

The scent of blood and damp, rotted wood clogged her nose. Disgusted, Yuffie shoved her bowl of cereal—handed to her by a clucking Plucky—off to the side so that she could melt into her chair, palm heels scrubbing against her eyes. Too much. This was… Too much. She couldn't even paste a plastic smile on her face to make herself feel better. Her usual shield, the white noise of inane babble that could filter out almost any crisis, was in tatters all around her. Five minutes, she gave herself.

Five minutes (not) to think, five minutes to get her act together, because there was no way she could let herself shatter here. No way…

[Closed to Sheena]

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Oh, gear. He was a talker. Depth Charge sighed a little and propped his elbows up on the table, sensing the start of what was potentially a very long and very arduous conversation. Well, he'd brought this on himself...

"HK-47, was it?" he asked casually, sizing the man up. 'Tall' was relative to the other humans here, but Lockdown still had a physical advantage over him in terms of build. That explained a lot. "You always let bigger 'bots bite out most of your neck?"

"Affirmative: Yes, that is my designation." The culmination of a long, illustrious, blood-stained line of assassin models.

Oh joy. more 'attitude'. It was like the juvenile Twi'lek or T3-M4. Possibly the two combined. "Negatory: No, I would prefer it if I remain unchewed upon." Maybe if the context wasn't mentioned, it would go away.

"Figures." Yeah, he hadn't exactly pictured Lockdown giving the guy much of a choice anyway. Still, HK-47 didn't exactly look or sound like a pushover. Depth Charge gave him a hard, searching look, trying to work out whether or not he was looking at a victim or... Pit... a willing accomplice.

Now there was a thought he'd take to the scrapheap. Fighting a wince, he decided to cut to the point and get it over with quick. "Alright. His idea or yours? And don't try and twist the question, either."

"Statement: His," HK said quickly. There was no reason to twist it when he could pin the blame on someone that wasn't himself. "The whole concept which I really would rather not mention held absolutely no interest to me." Although he should have realized what was going on, even with the utterly distracting bribe of chocolate.

No wonder he was so eager to blame it all on Lockdown. Depth Charge supposed he'd have done the same thing if he'd be caught screwing around with a 'con. "I'd say you should kick him in the gearbox next time," he began, complete with internal flinch at a long-gone memory courtesy of Rattrap and an impromptu game of De-beach the Stranded Manta Ray, "but he'd probably enjoy it."

"Statement: I find that doubtful. If I have interpreted that euphemism correctly, I certainly found no reason to like it when it happened to me." That was quite a while ago now, but it had been amazingly painful. He hadn't been used to having to worry about blocking any strike to that area before, and had rather stupidly assumed that meatbags would be almost as functional and therefore it would not be so bad. Oh, how wrong he had been.

He couldn't argue on the second part. Robot or human, be it by foot or by slagging great branch, that still smarted.

Nonetheless, it was with a thoughtful whistle that Depth Charge answered. "I don't know about that. I knew a 'con who was into tying people up and draining them of their mech fluids." And then of course there was Protoform X, but not even a Decepticon deserved to be associated with that twisted little Pitspawn.

"Statement: That would just be sadism, not masochism." Under the right circumstances, he himself fell under the latter category. He liked it when a master was harsh to him. But at the moment, no one fell under that designation.

Oh, right. There was a rather more vital matter to ensure was protected. Such as his own well-being, his chances of having support for becoming a Decepticon, and... yes, Lockdown's safety as well, because he wasn't sure how far the blast radius that was Lugnut might reach. "Supplication: I would ask that none of this get to Lugnut... Please? He seems to have an adverse reaction to anyone who associates with someone who is a 'disgrace to the glorious name of Decepticon!'" HK pleaded, the effect possibly broken by the fact that the last part came out in a pitch-perfect (although slightly quieter) imitation of Lugnut.

"Sadism, masochism, whatever. Point is, weird fetishes seem to stick to 'cons like a bad case of rust." Depth Charge shifted in his seat, all but ready to start on Blackarachnia and Silverbolt (and if that wasn't a fetish, he didn't know what was) when HK-47 butted in with a concern of his own. And the Maximal kind of got his point up until he suddenly had Lugnut barking at him from across the table.

Slaggit! How the scrap did he do that?! Hoping that the other man hadn't noticed him jerk virtually all the way out of his chair, he tried to nod understandingly. Scaring the tar outta him aside, though, yeah. Getting on ol' Luggers' bad side probably wasn't what the guy was going for with this. "Hey, I got nothing to gain from ratting on you. Gimme a little credit here."

"Commentary: I have not observed enough of them to confirm or deny such statements, but if they are akin to the Sith, as they seem to be, it is quit possible that this is correct." There were some... odd things that took place within the Sith hierarchy on a regular basis. Most of them somehow fell under the designation of classified information, and he was therefore not allowed to speak or (fortunately, in some instances) think about them much at all.

Ha ha. He had been hoping for that sort of reaction. It was one of the reasons why he loved his voice mimicry function. "Statement: With how badly events always seem to progress, and the general fascination with this subject that most of the inmate population seems to have, I could not be sure."

Sith...? Depth Charge frowned slightly, thrown for a moment as a brief scan of his memory core turned up nothing on the word. What, there were more of those types out there to get on his case? "Never heard of them," he said with a shrug, "but if they're aftholes with a taste for interplantary conquest? Probably. Don't know why, but evil always seems to mean kinky."

HK-47 had a point, though. Rattrap would have been proud of the usual scrap that went up on that bulletin board on a daily basis. "Yeah? Well, I'm not about to kiss and tell for you." He stretched his arms back behind his head lazily, almost swinging his feet up onto the table. "You're perfectly capable of embarrassing yourself."

"Statement: As they created me I am obliged to take offense at the 'afthole' statement, no matter how true it may be for some among them, especially certain Dark Lord's apprentices with delusions of grandeur." The conquering bit was a given, really. It was only the 'afthole' part that was in any dispute.

Now it was HK's turn to do an embarrassing spasmodic movement in the form of a cringe. He'd taken the 'kiss' part literally at first. "Agreement: Unfortunately in this meatbag form, I have to concede that this is true."

Wait, created by-!? Depth Charge raised his eyebrows at that, letting out a little whistle. "Robots created by humans... by the Matrix." Somehow it just didn't sit right with him that those hairy apes he'd seen would some day go on to create life, life that he was looking in the face right this very moment. Talk about unnerving. Still, Cheetor's little friend had been pretty handy with a wrench...

Unfortunately for HK, his wince didn't go unnoticed. "What's that look for? You know I'm not talking. Maximal's honour."

"Statement: I am more than aware that the idea of being created by a meatbag is odious, but my master is a very intelligent and efficient individual, for a meatbag." The best that he had ever met, of course.

"Admission: I took the idiom literally. It was worrying." Frankly, he had reason to take things that way at the moment.

'Intelligent and efficient' weren't two words Depth Charge generally associated with beings with around the same degree of evolutionary maturity as tadpoles, but he was willing to accept that it could happen some day. The people he'd met here hadn't been half bad.

Rather less easy to get his head around was HK's little misunderstanding. Depth Charge gave him a blank look for a moment before, bluntly and maybe a little too quickly, said, "You're really not my type. Either of you."

HK sighed irritably. Why were they talking about this in the first place?

...Oh, right. The bite marks. "Explanation: I think by this point, after several days of almost non-stop tormenting on the general subject from every single individual I have met, that it is understandable that I misinterpret such a statement by now."

Oh, good, this was one less person to worry about. "Statement: Good. I was never programmed for any of this and it is extremely distressing." He was an assassin droid, not a-- ...Whatever the fekk the meatbags wanted him to be!

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Day 44: breakfast

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