damned_institute | Nightshift 44: Disciplinary Therapy Room 1 [M-U for Haseo]

Entry tags:

haseo,
m-u

Nightshift 44: Disciplinary Therapy Room 1 [M-U for Haseo]

The doctor tucked an unruly piece of her long, blonde hair back behind her ear as she inspected the experimental room. One M2D - she had debated finding an old-fashioned HMD for this, but had decided against it. She wanted to see her subject's eyes, and that really wasn't possible with the older, bulkier headsets. Besides, it was much more fun playing with new toys. Of course, the older ones still had their appeal, but there was something about having the latest and greatest equipment that made her just a little happier than she would be without it. She grinned, then moved to the side.

The other implements were nearby, just waiting to be used. A black face mask was attached to a valve leading to a large set of drug chambers backlit with blue. She checked the amount and volume of the drugs in their chambers. They were perfect, just as she had ordered, and she smiled wickedly. A device that looked not unlike a medical laser laid nearby, and it, too, was in perfect condition.

She laughed to herself - it wasn't quite a cackle, but neither did she try to hold in the sadistic glee that laugh held. Now, the last, most important part of the experiment...its subject. The doctor flipped through her notes, grinning widely as she did so. What an interesting case she had before her. Lost memories at such a tender age...and what memories they were, too. Well, a small thing such as a lost set of memories was easy enough to bring back. And if it had side effects? Those weren't any of her concern.

The doctor stepped up to the surgery chair the young man was carefully strapped into, inspecting the wavemarks on his bare chest and face with a light nod. Once she was satisfied, she checked the restraints holding him in place to be sure they were securely fashioned. Her subject would likely give her a bit of a fight once the short-acting sedatives wore off, and she couldn't have him getting up before they could get started, now could she?

She stepped out of his range of vision then, pressing a few buttons on a computer screen. "Wake up, Haseo...or should I call you Ryou?" This time she didn't try and suppress the cackle in her voice.

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Despite what could only be described as a vague-at-best sense of awareness, it was the slight stir of air and sound of movement that alerted Haseo to something changing in his environment- a person nearby and then stepping away from him, even if at first he didn't seem to care to do anything about it. For a fleeting moment he thought he might be dreaming, but in the next, he was suddenly all too aware that something was wrong, and pushing past the lingering fog in his head he blinked his eyes open, utterly dazed. The odd lighting and unfamiliar place didn't really help.

However, this wasn't the first time he'd awakened at Landel's with a state of dulled perception already in place. With bizarre clarity he knew that he'd been drugged somehow, though he didn't remember where, or how, or when. It was all a blur... he had been in his room at some point, right...?

His name was what really caught his attention- not just his character's handle but his real one as well, the one that denoted the teenage student behind the mask of the widely known 'Adept Rogue.' There was something distinctly unsettling in hearing both used aloud in the same thought. Not only had he not been called 'Ryou' since he'd been pulled into this whole mess, but as far as he knew the number of people who were aware of them being the same person could be numbered on one hand... and none of them he'd truly met outside of the game.

"What--"

He stiffened, instinctively trying to shift from the position he was in, but of course the attempt didn't go too well. His eyes swept over the room and tools without properly registering what they were, another wave of disorientation taking away any chance in making sense of things.

"What the hell...? How...?"

"You're awake now? Excellent." There was a smirk in the woman's voice, a tone of satisfaction. "So what would you like me to call you? Haseo? Ryou?" She laughed, pressing a few buttons on her console before she stepped away from it, heels clicking hard against the tile floor.

"Or should I call you by another name you used to go by?" It was at that point, she stepped behind him, taking the M2D and putting it on him, then adjusting its display and earpieces almost gently - as if she had more reverence for the device than the teenager who would be wearing it. She let the dim light illuminate the lower half of her face so he could see the cold smile that graced it before she moved away. The sound of her fingers on a keyboard seemed to echo throughout the room.

The next time she spoke, it was audible through the headset. "Ah, yes. Seven years have passed since you used that name, and I'm sure you don't even remember it. Or do you? It was taken when you went to register for R:2, was it not? There's a reason for that, you know. Only one player has ever used the name Sora, and once that player stopped logging in, not even the most skilled hackers could register it."

The visual display flickered to life then, showing a male PC - one with a scar on one cheek and ninja-style clothing - holding a blade to the throat of a blonde female PC holding a staff. "Your member address, please?"

Haseo was silent, his body tense against the restraints and mind working furiously to endeavor past the remains of the sedatives in his system. It was imperative he figure out just what the hell had happened and what this strange woman was going on about, but it was all just so confusing at the moment that it was ultimately useless.

Subconsciously he tried to lean away from the woman as she placed an HMD on him, but the sneer that appeared on his face betrayed his rising anger... as well as hid his fear- how successful that was was probably hard to say. All the same, he did try to follow her movements, but it seemed that somehow she knew just how to do her work without revealing her appearance. Convenient.

"Why should I care what some old hag calls me?" he demanded, looking down then to try determining exactly how he'd been secured. Unfortunately, it seemed that even the increased strength of his PC's body wasn't enough to be of any use- his experimental tugs yielded nothing but an increase in his heart-rate. He jumped slightly when the voice interrupted him through the headset, though the words were just as nonsensical as they were before. The way she spoke reminded him of Bordeaux, though it was apparent that she wasn't anyone he readily recognized, even from what little glimpse he'd already received.

"Don't be so fucking stupid," he snapped, "'Sora' has to be a common name. It was probably registered thirty seconds after the servers went online, and-- even if you could steal someone's name, the player would just report it." All the same a well of anxiety seemed to have started forming in the pit of his stomach, somehow unrelated to the obligatory tinge of fear that followed being tied up under the "mercy" of an unknown but obviously sadistic woman. After everything that happened, there was no telling at all what she intended to do to him.

And then the display itself came on and Haseo froze, staring helplessly at the scene that was unfolding. An instant later, his mood abruptly seemed to change and escalate, and he reeled back with a sharp yank at the bonds before going completely rigid in the seat.

"These graphics are terrible..." he complained weakly, sweat beginning to form and roll down his face and body.

The doctor laughed - now that was an amusing reaction. "I would think you'd find it very important for me to call you by the right name. Unless you're telling me you want me to stop talking at all, which isn't going to happen." She noted the increase in his heart rate and respiration, though. She was getting to him, which was an important first step. The next few would involve his response to a certain drug combination under stress, so it was vital that she monitor those signs.

"Do you know how many players tried - and failed - to register it before you? The answer to that is 'well over a thousand'. More than that tried to hack it after that, but it was protected. Now why would that be? I wonder...what could be so important that the system would try and keep it from happening? Hm?"

She pressed a few more keys and clicked her mouse a few times, and the view shifted to a first-person view. The blonde wasn't struggling - no, it wasn't that she wasn't trying to get away. She was just making the mistake of thinking this particular PKer would listen to reason. "Is that better? You would have been seeing it from this angle, so maybe that's why you think the graphics look so bad."

The ninja character decided that he was bored of all of that talk after a moment. With a single sharp, swift stroke, he 'killed' the blonde, watching her body fade to grey before leaving the area.

"The most infamous PKer in The World...and his player was only ten years old. How interesting."

"No, and I don't care," Haseo answered, "'The World' is just a crazy place, okay?" He was pretty certain he could go on living without knowing why some crazy lady knew about his brief, failed first attempt at securing a username, and definitely without being told about this "Sora" in that nerve-gratingly condescending tone.

He flinched again slightly when the scene changed its point of view, though at the same time he was very aware that his reactions were... odd, considering it was just footage or something from what he assumed was the first version of 'The World'. Even though the images followed the movement, he lowered his head and closed his eyes, refusing to watch the blond PC get PKed for no good reason at all- if the snatches of conversation he caught despite actively trying to ignore it were any indication.

He laughed from the back of his throat at the woman's words, shaking his head with his eyes still shut. "What the hell are you talking about?" he finally said, "Creating 'Haseo' was the first time I ever played 'The World'." He paused to take in a breath or two, trying to control the nervousness in his demeanor in the same way he was somehow managing so far to keep it from his voice. "Whatever you're getting at, you're wrong about it."

It was always so cute when they talked back, wasn't it? Yes, she thought so. That made it just that little bit more fun to see them break apart. It was like the icing on the cake, or breaking through that one last security barrier before you got into the good data.

"Oh, but the way you're reacting means that you do care. Your heart rate is up, your respiration rate is up...the works. And do you know what that means? It means you're a little curious. Don't you want to know what happened in the past?" She laughed, stepping back out from behind the console. "I think you'll find it ever so interesting."

She stayed out of sight for a few minutes more, checking the nebulizer chambers one last time, then stepped behind the chair again. "After all...who doesn't want to know what happened in their own past? Don't deny that you've been curious. Who wouldn't be curious? That's a big chunk of your life, missing from your memory. But don't worry. It won't be missing much longer. In fact, you've already seen a little of it."

"That's a pretty shitty definition of curiosity." Haseo swallowed and turned his head, trying to catch sight of the woman past the darkened HMD and odd angle. "I'm 'reacting' because you're trying to scare me." Of course, that meant he was also admitting that it was working, but that was better than-- whatever else. Accepting she had a point somehow. Giving any permission to continue according to her clearly twisted ideas.

The continued insistence upon something in his 'past' baffled him. His life wasn't some shounen manga- before the stuff unfolding in-game, he would have claimed his life to be pretty damn uninteresting. His mind refused to connect the two ideas she'd presented thus far, dancing around the issue and producing odd answers like the notion that she was going to try reteaching him how to read. But though Haseo himself didn't harbor any notable phobias... an irrational, overactive sense of self-preservation? He was definitely getting that- to what, he didn't know, but he could feel and hear his heart pounding as his body tried to adapt itself to a state more suited to protecting his well-being. He coughed and shifted uneasily.

-- There was something, but... that incident might as well not have happened at all with the careful covering up it had received. And since starting the game, since awakening as an 'Epitaph User', even thinking about it had been studiously avoided. He'd been sick for a while. Lots of people got sick as children, so it wasn't like it mattered.

"I'm not missing any memories," he lied baldly, blinking the sting of perspiration from his eyes, "You're crazy... fuck you."

She just laughed off the curse as if it was nothing. Because, really, in the long run, it didn't matter what he had to say. The fact that he was reacting like that at all - even that little admission that he was actually scared - was all she needed.

"You're lying," she stated, all traces of amusement gone from her voice. "You were ten years old when the Morganna Incident - the Second Network Crisis - occurred. And yet, you don't remember it at all." She continued to speak as she wiped the sweat from his forehead and began to attach a series of electrodes. She didn't bother trying to be gentle as she pressed each one into place. "Isn't that odd? The World and the real world were both changed so drastically. But that span of time is blank for you. Your parents hid all of the evidence they could while you were in the hospital, CC Corp hid the rest, and you've never once questioned it. I'm sure they were happy about that."

She connected the electrodes to the monitor, nodding once. "You should be thanking me, you know. So few people get to see what's been hidden from them." With that, she reached for the face mask, securing it in place. "Now relax. This won't hurt..." With that less-than-reassuring statement, she turned on the nebulizer, letting the drug combination flow, then settled back behind the console.

"Relax, and try to remember. What form did you take? Eight years ago, when you first registered...what form did you choose?"

The HMD flickered to life again, displaying the image of nine-year-old Misaki Ryou sitting at his computer. He couldn't sit still as his fingers quickly moved over the keys, mouse moving just as rapidly. The view shifted to first-person again, showing the final part of the character creation process: inputting the name. The boy laughed as he entered the name 'Sora' and hit the confirm button.

Haseo fell silent at the accusation, though his anger was practically tangible as she dared to touch him again- had she been close enough, he probably would have even tried to bite her. He thought that she had to be absolutely deluded, and so he held back the corrections on the tip of his tongue in favor of merely hissing in fury. Her words hit way too close to home for comfort, but he rejected the implications without a second thought.

"My parents-- How'd you get so full of shit?" he managed, voice rising in emotion, "Damned bitch, why don't y--" His curses were cut off prematurely by the placement of the facemask, and surprised, he resumed panting, pulling at his bonds until his muscles protested. The contraption confused him- were they just going to sedate him again? Why? If only he could free just one arm--

He jerked at the sudden onset of something else being piped into the device, sweet-scented and foreign, and for several moments his breath halted in alarm. He couldn't help but think that that was a particularly cruel act to force someone to drug themselves by breathing, and he shook his head in a fruitless attempt to escape the equipment. Immediately his head began to buzz, though whether or not it was his imagination was hard to say... save that each semi-panicked gasp only made it worse. Relax indeed.

He shuddered with the return of the images, because as soon as they appeared he couldn't deny recognizing the room as it had been when he was in the third grade, himself sporting a haircut he distinctly recalled hating. Yet the computer terminal was foreign to him, as was the program on the screen when the viewpoint changed. On the "outside" Haseo twisted helplessly in place. It was a trick, surely... there were definitely programs now that ran "actors" that were near-impossible to tell from reality.

"Eight months," he replied, voice rough with effort, "I'm an Adept Rogue...."

She said nothing in response to that statement - there was absolutely nothing to say. Her work would do it for her. And it was satisfying, at that, watching each fragment of memory falling into place. Just like breaking into a computer, in its way. If it felt like that to her subject? That was fine with her, too. She clicked away at the keys again, breaking another layer.

On the screen, several months were passing, the flow of time moving more rapidly than it should have. The boy was bullied in school, then came home, pulled on his headset, and took it out on The World. The player quickly built a reputation, and the voices of the other players could be heard: "Watch out for that ninja PKer. He got me twice last week, then again today!" "Man, I lost so much stuff when that guy got me! It's not fair. And the way he manages to evade the Crimson Knights just pisses me off." "Sora, huh? You mean the infamous PK of Carmina Gadelica? That guy's bad news." All the while, the ninja character listened in the shadows, and for a moment, the screen seemed to be split: on one side, there was the character, and the other, the boy, and both wore the same grin.

Summer turned to fall, fall to winter, winter to spring, and every day, the same thing happened. It became a bright spot in his day, something he could brag about. The view changed from the game world to the school playground, where the kids who had been bullying Ryou were now gathering around him to listen to his stories. He never called any of them friends, though, even after the bullying stopped.

"No. Over a year. You were a Twin Blade," the doctor said, and then laughed. "Is this ringing any bells yet?"

The effects of the drugs in his system ultimately escaped Haseo's notice. He was too stressed and his attention was stretched between too many stimuli- far beyond standing a chance in deducing a change designed to be subtle. His awareness of the headset as a tool and hiss of the nebulizer began to fade without his understanding, replaced by what was developing on the display itself and strangely persistent clicking rhythm of the doctor's keyboard.

He wanted nothing more than to continue resisting, and yet as the story continued forward it became overlaid with a sense of reality far beyond what should have been possible from a mere montage of recordings. Haseo could feel that boy's amusement and ultimate indifference at the others' opinions. Hear the words spoken as if he was standing right there. He gasped and cursed sporadically under his breath, but in many ways it was just something carried over from earlier... by now his anger had disappeared entirely.

These were not his memories- the passing of so many years on someone his age should have dulled them far more. And yet... those cruel attitudes from his classmates, their eventual and at first begrudging respect... they were real, but the reason behind them he simply didn't think about anymore. He'd escaped it all once he'd changed schools, a long way from anyone who would have known him before he'd fallen ill. At the time he'd been told that it was a new chance, and that he should be glad for it.

"If you're so different, then what do you expect? Come on Misaki, get with the program!"
"--what? You mean you really just killed--"

"Stop it," Haseo said, shaking, but his voice sounded off even to his own ears. He knew somehow that even if he wanted to take part in acknowledging a memory locked away, this wasn't the way it was supposed to be done. Something would have to-- was going to break if it kept up.

And then without any further warning he shut down, struggles ceasing abruptly as he slumped against the restraints, eyes fluttering closed in one last resort of denial.

"You remember that now, don't you?" A few more keystrokes, a slight adjustment to the drug levels. "You remember all of it. But that's just the tip of the iceberg." She laughed, then, but there was a threatening undertone to it. "Open your eyes, Ryou. The real show is about to start." Just in case he was planning on leaving his eyes closed, she decided she'd just open them for him, sending a wake-up shot of electricity through the electrodes.

The scene on the HMD changed, this time to a first-person view. This was the game world again, and Sora was bouncing from point to point through the field, humming to himself just a bit. Then, he grinned, seeing a perfect target. The blonde wavemaster blocked the first attack, but the next one knocked the staff out of her hands. He took advantage of that, wrapping both arms around her from behind, blades glinting in the 'sunlight.'

"Your member address, if you please." The blonde woman scoffed. "Tell me. What do you think of my style? I could be a powerful ally for you. But you'll have to trust me," he continued. She rebuffed him after that, calling him a boring fool. The conversation was over after that; she was soon PKed, and fell to the ground, body shaded grey.

The scene skipped forward, then. A girl with a large sword appeared, and called Sora out for 'selling information' about another player. The doctor paused things, then. "Make sure you watch this part," she said, with a laugh, then with a few more keystrokes, pulled up the rest of the memory.

"You're the one who sold out Tsukasa to the Crimson Knights, aren't you?," the girl said, pointing her blade directly at him. "Sold out? Not me," was the reply. "You're lying!," she insisted. "No one paid me for it, so you can't say that I sold him out," he answered, with a chortle. She moved to attack, but he nimbly dodged. The girl became more insistent, then, and he grinned, asking how much she was willing to pay for that information.

The scenery changed again, to an underground dungeon area. Sora distracted the Crimson Knights, allowing the girl - Mimiru - and Tsukasa to escape.

"That's only the first encounter with all of them. Things get much more interesting...you should be remembering more of this now. Aren't you?"

Did it really make a difference whether or not he actually remembered? Either way was basically the same- despite the sudden listlessness, he could still tell firsthand the casual elation in Sora's actions... that way of movement was a special ability, wasn't it? Or rather, maybe most players didn't bother to exploit it, which was a shame except for the part where it made him look more awesome in comparison.

Physically, Haseo himself seemed to be barely breathing, shivering as if cold and lips moving silently beneath the mask. He'd always been particularly strong-willed, but this wasn't quite the same as when he'd resisted AIDA or the promise of power from misusing his Avatar. There was nothing beneficial for him in this, and rejecting hadn't and would continue not to work. So instead of denying it any longer, he'd relented to not acknowledging it as true or false at all. Unless something as an outside influence stepped in the pressure on any interest he showed would continue, either until he broke and gave in or until he finally just died in reaction. And then they'd probably just revive him anyway.

The twisted mess of feelings Sora had experienced at simply PKing and watching that other character fall was strikingly evident, and Haseo was sickened on a psychological level that was far deeper than he would have thought that ran. There was no vindication in that act, as there was when his existence as Haseo primarily consisted of PKKing. Why would he care about member addresses so much? People tended to give them to him without even asking anyway.

-- They gave them to Haseo without asking anyway.

He jumped at the abrupt pause in the stream of images, for a moment again aware of the room itself. But at the same time something seemed off with his perception... the clack of keys was still intensely loud, and his head seemed to react oddly to that. As if she was...

The replay caught his notice as if he'd been forcibly redirected toward it, simply by hearing a name that seemed out of place. Once more his breath roughened, unmistakably worsening after the most recent change.

"-- Ah, Tsukasa...?"

"You know her here, I know that. But you seem a little surprised. You remember now, right? You knew her back then, too. And you two weren't always on the best of terms. Of course, you could say that about a lot of people, but...it seemed like no one could quite tell what side you were on at any given moment." A light laugh, a few more keystrokes, and a few more mouseclicks.

"But that's what makes it interesting, or at least that's what you thought." A scene that looked like a montage began to play, the doctor narrating each one. "Your alliances shifted. At some times, you allied yourself with Tsukasa's good friends, Mimiru, Bear, and even BT, giving them information here and there." The display showed a group of people talking - the girl with the sword, the Wavemaster Sora had PKed, a man with a blue tattoo covering most of his body. Sora seemed amused by the whole thing.

The scene changed again. This time, Sora and BT appeared. "Of course, that didn't stop you from wanting to PK Tsukasa when you found out he was doing an event. Considering Tsukasa's consciousness was trapped within The World, that wouldn't have ended well." Another scene change; this time, Sora was speaking with Mimiru again. "Especially since you found out about this, and even passed on that information to other people. That, and a set of very interesting keywords, ones that I'm sure you know. Δ Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground."

The Hulle Granz Cathedral was the next scene to appear. BT used a Wavemaster ability to clear the mist surrounding the cathedral, revealing a hidden bridge and a red Chaos Gate. "You followed just as the Twilight Eye was closing. Now it's time for a pop quiz: do you remember what happens next?" Her fingers tapped across the keys, then stopped as she waited for the answer.

Tsukasa's appearance was jarring. Haseo had indeed ran into the Wavemaster right after he'd arrived at Landel's... and at the time he'd thought it strange that the other teenager had seemed vaguely familiar. Seeing the full get-up, in its "home environment," now that feeling of recognition was definitely amplified.

As for Tsukasa's friends, with this there were faces and events to match with the names Tsukasa had offhandedly mentioned in their brief conversations- conversations which had always been civil, though... hadn't there always been an odd note? In a way it bore a parallel to the interactions here, where most of the time Sora seemed and had acted amused, but underneath it all there lied an agitation at not knowing the entire solution to the mystery the Wavemaster presented.

Haseo shook his head slowly, disturbed. The mystery had been solved, right? Endrance had told him part and Tsukasa had done the rest. There wasn't any reason for him to feel this way, as the "main character" in the doctor's exhibition did.

Again there appeared to be a hitch in the images' progression, causing Haseo to flinch and cry out involuntarily. With the way the show seemed to drag its unwilling observer along, it was starting to give him a nearly intolerable sense of mental whiplash whenever the location or speed of the replay changed so abruptly. Not that the scene itself helped any... Haseo was far from being the only one who had an emotional investment in the Hulle Granz Cathedral, but for him, it was particularly strong.

In his distraction, for a moment he almost seemed ready to answer the woman's question. But then he merely let out a sighing breath, his course of thought simultaneously muddled and jolted by a sudden flash of vertigo.

The doctor noted that sense of vertigo, taking that to be an answer in and of itself, as the scene played on. "That's right. The upside-down castle, and what it contained - a little black box hidden there by the creator of The World himself. It wasn't the Key of the Twilight that any of you thought would be there. And you didn't even get to play with the box!" She laughed a little, a darker tone coming to it.

"That didn't stop you all from looking for that Key, of course. You even allied yourself with your favorite PK target, and someone you really couldn't stand..." The screen flashed forward. Three players could be seen - Sora, BT, and Silver Knight. "After all, the Crimson Knights you so eagerly betrayed before had been dissolved by their very leader. You just wanted a pawn to use - someone who could distract anyone who got in the way of your search."

The doctor pressed a few more keys, slowly getting to the root of what she really wanted to reveal. "Of course, you proceeded to play your usual game after that. You followed Tsukasa's friends - and girlfriend - wherever they went, right down into dungeons. You remember that, right? Telling Silver Knight he could become a legend if he killed the monster that couldn't be killed? And then, when you found it, you PKed the two players who alerted you to its presence. You even left your pawn to fight it alone when you decided you couldn't beat it. You were so upset after that, but then..."

Another dark laugh. "What's your friend's Avatar called? Macha? Well, she took a different form then. And you took advantage of that to stumble into what would eventually be your undoing."

She clicked a few more things, adjusted the drugs' dosage one last time, and waited. He should be remembering the last parts, now. And if he didn't, or tried to pretend? Well, that was easy enough to handle.

The doctor's voice hit a note with Haseo that managed to leave him nauseous even with everything else going on. In it was an edge of malice that would have been alarming to just about anyone... and another of familiarity that was even more so to this particular victim.

He continued to feel drawn along like a dog on a short leash, his awareness jerked forcefully into witnessing the series of interactions with the man who at one time had probably hated him more than anyone else in 'The World'. He realized with something resembling mild horror that Haseo had seen him before in R:2- a Blade Brandier whose help he had turned down in the midst of his anger.

Unfortunately, it could only get worse. Regardless of how unresponsive he'd been for the last while, the way in which he swiftly went rigid at the mention of Macha's name was still quite discernible.

Haseo knew that what had eventually turned into Endrance's Avatar had once been another entity, Mia, and that Mia had eventually been destroyed. However, there was something else too that at the time Haseo had shrugged off as just one more fact amongst all the information about Tsukasa and Endrance's pasts: Tsukasa had also known of Macha... had called her Macha as well because she had been--

... That cat character, "illegal," who had drawn attention to Tsukasa in the first place and... possessed many strange abilities. What was important here was that she could teleport, leading to an area where--

At that brief recollection all bets were off, and even the sturdy chair Haseo was strapped into rocked with the sudden onset of panic and genuine fear in the teen. Although he really wasn't in the position to engage in hope, there had still been a faint illusion that the act wouldn't have gone this far. The level at which he'd effectively sealed away what comprised the tail end of his absent memories disallowed even owning up to something bad residing within them. That option had run out.

"Yes," he said, answering a question which was by now several minutes old, "But... you can't-- please... stop. I-- you don't understand." It wasn't like him to plead, but that's exactly what he did, voice shaking and pulling on the restraints thoughtlessly until the pain laced through his entire body. If he could just get away with this, then maybe there was a chance he could push it down again, or deal with it in a way that didn't involve actually seeing the last of it. Something stirred inside of him, and he redoubled his efforts, panting in distress.

The problem was that she understood all too well what had happened. Even if she had wanted to, it was too late to stop the process; the last barriers in place had been removed. So, she pressed the last button on the console, then stepped out from behind it, saying, "I can't do that. If I stopped now, there's a chance that you'd fall into a coma again. You don't want that." The statement was true, in a way; she was working with his brain, after all. The chance of him going into a coma with all the restrictions she had put in place was really quite small, but she wouldn't tell him that.

"It's all coming back to you now, isn't it? You'd just been told that you didn't have any passion for the game itself, and you decided you'd take that into your own hands. You'd been playing double agent for a while, at that point. You'd been speaking with Morganna for some time, promising to do her bidding. But at the last moment, when Aura awakened, she attacked."

As she spoke, that exact scene played on the display; there was no slowdown or rapid shifting, only the last stand. Tsukasa declared that she was going back to her world, and Aura - the true Aura - woke.

She stepped up and took off the face mask, then continued. "You played the hero, you know, because you stayed behind just long enough to tell her you weren't actually on her side. But she didn't like that, not at all. So, she decided to get back at you..."

A large creature holding a wand in the shape of a Celtic cross appeared then, and the PC was pinned to the wand by his wrists and ankles. The wand was then lifted into the air, and beams of bright light circled Sora; it might have been beautiful had the action been meant to be innocuous. The viewpoint changed again on the display: ten-year-old Misaki Ryou screamed, then fell to the ground. "You stayed that way for some time, you know? You were comatose until the very last Phase - Corbenik - was defeated."

Even with the sense of being there persisting, Haseo tried turning as far as possible in what seemed to be the woman's direction, voice rising in hysteria. "How do you know this won't--!" he started, but then cut off with a choke as the last act continued to fruition... and he realized with merciless clarity that it was hopeless. There wasn't even enough time to gather up any resistance to brace against what was about to happen, the combination of fear and drugs and the way the replay worked in the first place making his mind enter a spiral that could not be resolved in the few moments that were left.

That strange, desolate area that had once only appeared in Haseo's nightmares (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/721825.html?thread=58927777#t58943393) fell into cruel focus. Sora had been waiting, along with the warped Aura and heavy presence of Morganna, the motherly-turned-troublesome artificial intelligence that had intended to forever delay Aura's proper birth. She had tried everything to turn back Tsukasa and the others who had helped unravel her plan, but the Wavemaster had refused to give in after everything that had happened. The girl awakened, and Sora had then made a decision.

Shaking uncontrollably and tears streaming down his face, Haseo saw and felt it all as the doctor narrated, not even noticing when she came close enough to remove the drugging device. Sora stepped in and distracted Morganna while Tsukasa made to remove everyone from the Area... except for the Twin Blade, under his insistence.

Then, as the doctor suggested, Sora's luck abruptly ran out. Ryou had been young, bolstered by his attitude and actions so far in the game and repeated successes of the others; doing something as foolishly cocky as tricking what was essentially the game itself and then mouthing off about it hadn't seemed such a grave mistake.

Morganna cornered him with her influence over the game's properties, and then she summoned a part of her own program and developing plan to do the rest- Skeith, the Terror of Death and first Phase in the Cursed Wave. The surprise and realization of betrayal hit Haseo as clearly as the moment it had happened. In reaction, his Avatar flared to life, flashing over his body in the form of its familiar red pattern, and unfortunately only adding to the particularly unique feeling of having one's very being rewritten to serve other needs. In the replay Sora/Ryou was screaming, and Haseo screamed and screamed in unison until his throat was raw and he had no breath left. As the doctor spoke, he could do nothing but wheeze helplessly, consciousness rapidly fading in and out in shock.

The doctor didn't answer that question; she didn't have to. Her work was practically done now, and she simply watched as the full impact of those reawakened memories hit. Once the red pattern appeared, she let out a particularly loud, long cackle - one that you might hear come from a hacker's voice once they had gotten past the final layers of security and to what they wanted.

She had known the whole time that Skeith would react; it couldn't be helped, not when it was practically being called out. "Ah, yes. The Terror of Death, Skeith. It's no surprise you're the only one who can control it; you two are so very intimately linked that it really can't be helped. Others tried, under CC Corp's orders, but...let's just say that it didn't end well."

The doctor smirked to herself as she picked up that last device. She couldn't have her subject easily forgetting what had happened, after all. No, she intended to make sure that he couldn't forget it. She flipped a switch, and the laser-like device hummed to life. "The urge to pretend this is all a bad dream is there, isn't it? I can see it in your eyes. You want to forget all of this. But we can't have that."

With that, she pressed a button, aiming that red beam at Haseo's right shoulder, then drew the pattern of Skeith's wand, a Celtic cross. She was aiming for precision, so it was a bit slow, and the light was hot enough to be painful. Once that pattern was etched onto his skin like a new wavemark, she moved behind him, repeating the process on the left side.

By now the added physical pain seemed insignificant, although it and its implications would have probably served to enrage Haseo had the situation been any different. The fact that he'd escaped falling comatose was kind of amazing in itself, though already having Skeith's influence with him might have had something to do with it... even if right now that control seemed tenuous at best.

Of course, the Data Drain hadn't technically been real, but at the moment it might as well have been. The short bursts of memories about what happened after the attack continued on even without the outside stimulation- everything from the months he'd spent trapped and acting out a much more direct purpose than Tsukasa had: camouflage for hunting down Aura.

Which he had eventually accomplished, in the process cutting down and leaving comatose an unclear number of other players who hadn't known any better. He'd gone and found the Key of the Twilight as Sora, and then he had attacked her as that monster, whereas her program had been split into pieces. The defeat of Skeith by Kite and his friends had followed shortly afterward, but even that hadn't been enough to release him or undo the damage he'd done.

He remained unresponsive over the sound of white noise and his own wild heartbeat in his ears, though with the HMD off and the ability to think more freely returning with the restoration of untainted oxygen, he was vaguely aware that the woman still seemed a bit too familiar. However, for some reason he couldn't quite focus on her identity, and finally it became irritating enough for him to do something about it although his voice was still hoarse and quiet when he spoke- "... Who are you?"

She stayed just out of his field of vision as she removed the electrodes and released the restraints, taking her time with them. The interesting part was over, after all. What was left was to clean up and then begin the data analysis. She began to walk back towards the console, but...that last question made her smile. Who was she? Of course, she couldn't give out her name. Doing that would be foolish.

In the end, as she gathered her things and powered the console off, she decided on an acceptable answer. "I'm no one important. Just...an interested observer." She laughed one final time, and then exited the room, seeming to vanish into the darkness.

Haseo whipped his head around at that reply, but by the time he'd managed any sort of focus in the darkness, she was gone. Clumsily, he fell halfway out of the chair, barely having realized he'd been freed except that the places where the restraints had been smarted in accompaniment to the buzzing ache across his entire body and acute burning on his shoulders. He merely knelt on the floor, partially braced on the chair and shivering-- apparently that woman had taken his shirt, too.

What was he even supposed to do now? His head hurt and it was hard to think straight, though he did realize that he didn't know how long he'd been stuck there: it could be night or day as far as he was aware. All there was to it was that it seemed he was alone now... wherever this was, anyway.

Trying to forget was tempting, but this was so much different than six or seven years ago. Then, everyone had indeed been baffled at his spontaneous recovery, but although he had reacted slower than the others who had also mysteriously awakened, his parents had disagreed with finding his memory loss significant. They'd been happy to sweep it all under the rug, and as soon as it was possible, as soon as the worst of his confusion and noticeable symptoms had dissipated, that was exactly what they had done, and the specificity in what he remembered versus what was irretrievably locked away had been ignored in favor of slightly-higher-than usual doctor visits for a while to make sure it wasn't all about to happen again. Until now. He wasn't sure it was possible to ignore it now.

...Skeith...

Haseo wiped at his face with his arm, although it too was hardly clean of chilled-over sweat. After a moment, he decided he was too worn out to do anything, and so sat still where he was instead, trying not to dwell too much on the fact that some strange woman with a sadistic streak had so effectively succeeded in breaking him.

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/741342.html).]

It was with no small amount of trepidation that Endrance pushed the door the rest of the way open, the sudden feeling that he'd been too late mixing with the fear of what he'd find. He took a slow deep breath, closing his eyes and crossing the threshold, then letting it out slowly. And...he looked at Haseo and then rushed over without thinking, but stopped short of what he wanted to do, which was immediately throw his arms around him.

It was the look in his eyes that stopped Endrance. He hadn't ever seen anyone look so...hollowed out. He wouldn't say it, but he had to admit that this was more frightening than it would have been if he had found Haseo covered in blood, or bandaged up, or anything of that sort. That stopped him from hugging the Rogue, but not from reaching up to brush sweat off his forehead. It was only then that he noticed those newly-made wavemarks, blinking in surprise. A cross? No...Skeith's wand. But...

A thousand words came to mind, then, but none of them seemed right for the moment. He settled on the simplest ones, in the end. "Haseo...I'm here now. Alkaid is too; she's holding off a monster right now. But...I'm here. Whatever they did, it's over..."

It may have been over, but Haseo's senses still seemed dialed up to their maximum: it had been possible to hear someone approaching from halfway down the hall. For a moment he stiffened, his mind racing. Dr. "Interested-Observer" wouldn't come back, would she? Especially since he'd been released- with freedom of movement restored it wasn't like he was about to go down again without some sort of fight, which she should have known... she knew just about everything else already, so-- despite how distasteful the concept was, they wouldn't kill a subject they'd just finished with, right?

He was more than a little stunned when the intruder turned out to be his friend with the long blue hair instead, and the fact that he didn't immediately recall the man's name slipped by him in the subsequent reduction in nervous tension at recognizing him as a friendly entity.

However...

"Alkaid?" Haseo paused, avoiding eye contact. That didn't seem to make any sense, and truthfully only part of what was said did. Monsters? He shook his head automatically, thoughts too disjointed to cater to anything but what seemed most concerning to him at the moment. "Huh...? Didn't you see her?!" he replied quickly, and then abruptly grabbed the front of Endrance's shirt near the shoulder. "Make sure--"

This is Macha's...! With a quiet gasp Haseo let go, then let out a shuddering breath, eyes drifting toward the doorway and agitation once more growing apparent.

What did they do to you, Haseo?

Endrance hadn't ever seen him that panicked, and it definitely wasn't right that he didn't seem to know who anyone was. The words 'calm down' came to his tongue, but he held them back, sensing that they wouldn't help right now. As much as he wanted to simply pull him close and say a quiet 'I'm glad you're still alive', that wouldn't help, either, not with how Haseo had grabbed him and let go immediately after.

"I'm sorry. I didn't see the person responsible. If I had, believe me, I wouldn't have hesitated to take them out....I'm sorry, Haseo. I ran up here as soon as I could, but..."

They shouldn't stay here too long, but right now Haseo was in no shape to travel. The focus had to be on getting him to that point. "You're safe, now, though. She won't come back...and if she does, I'll be here. I'll make sure she can't hurt you anymore. I won't forgive her for taking you and hurting you."

It took Haseo a very long moment of disorientation to get over the Macha the cat character > Mia > Macha the Avatar connection... particularly after the previous night's events and what he now knew. Of course, it had already seemed hard enough to "deal" before this, and now.... well, it didn't seem possible for it to get any worse. There was little that could have been thrown at them at that moment that would have disconcerted Haseo any more than he already was.

Even so, a little more than mere panicked instinct had finally begun to kick in, and slowly he relaxed just enough to put his head down and palms on the floor, focusing - or trying to - on breathing calmly. Endrance might have been too late, but even with his head all out of whack Haseo knew that this was the guy who kept going and saving him- if he was there then he could believe at least partially that it was alright. Even if there was definitely some irritation on his part that the doctor had managed to get away, in addition to the relief in that she was gone.

"Should have known better..." he started, the quieter tone still noticeably roughened. Naturally, there was little chance in catching someone when they were apparently in her home territory, perhaps possessed odd powers in the first place, and definitely didn't want to be caught. "Fucking Helba..."

That name took Endrance by surprise. It wasn't that he didn't recognize it; it was more that he couldn't easily connect the hacker who had been such a vital part of their victory seven years ago with...well, doing anything like this. She was certainly brusque at times, and made no secret of her power and willingness to use it, but it was hard to picture her being this ruthless towards another person.

The woman behind this must have resembled her quite a bit, but...wait. There was something wrong. It had been a long time since he had heard her name. What was more confusing was that Haseo knew it. That...if he hadn't played R:1, he shouldn't know her name. She had hidden her tracks very, very well after the party in Net Slum. A few had tried to contact her, but had either gotten very vague answers or none at all. She wouldn't go around introducing herself.

That brought one question to mind, and there wouldn't be any going back from the question once he asked it. He knew that, but at the same time, there was no way that he couldn't ask. It would certainly be a painful question, but understanding what had happened was going to be a vital part of making things better. Still, it was with no small amount of trepidation that Endrance knelt next to Haseo, being careful to keep the flashlight beam out of his eyes as he laid it on the floor.

"...I'm sorry, but I have to ask. You don't have to tell me if it's going to be too much...but...what did she do?"

The fact that he'd said something unusual didn't occur to Haseo, nor did Endrance's surprise and the reason behind it in the overall tense mood. He was preoccupied, and it was then as the Blade Brandier knelt that Haseo caught sight of one of his swords in the other's possession. He swallowed thickly as he followed the blade's profile, reflecting the flashlight's yellowish beam in the darkness.

"Nothing," he snapped back almost immediately, tearing his gaze away from the floor and upward... but not quite to eye level. Of course that was a lie, and about as blatant as they came... an odd expression passed over Haseo's face as he sat back on his heels and moved one hand up his other arm, deliberately looking away from the equipment still in the room and still maintaining the posture of sudden anger.

"Bad memories," he appended, as if that would be enough to explain.

Anyone else might have asked more questions than that, but Endrance knew better than most how powerful a single painful memory could be, let alone more than one. That was enough for him. It would come out, in the end, as all memories do, but he had no intention of trying to pry or force it out. That had to happen on his own terms, and in his own time; anything else would only rub salt into the wound.

He nodded once, meeting Haseo's eyes as he did, and started to say something, but thought better of it in the end. Some things didn't need more words, and it felt as if saying them would only make it harder in the end.

He took a long look around the room, noting the equipment that was left there. On the inside, he felt a mix of revulsion and horror, but he was determined not to show any of that right now. It was all too brutal, too horrible to think about.

Besides that, there were more pressing matters at hand, and they weren't lost on Endrance. "We shouldn't stay here too much longer...do you think you can stand?," he asked after a moment, offering a hand up as he got to his feet.

You've had to be so strong since you've been here, Haseo. Let me take on that burden...I'd take on anything for you, because I love you.

"I'll take the lead, if you can take the light...and stay behind me. I'll protect you...and if anything tries to hurt you, I won't hesitate to strike them down."

Edited 2009-10-16 07:46 (UTC)

Being defensive against someone it actually seemed to work on... was a small relief, actually, as was the fact that Endrance didn't seem to want to try pushing it. Haseo sighed vaguely, the slightest hint of exasperation leaking through, although it was mostly an automatic reaction. "Yes," he answered, and after a moment broke his fixation on the foggy hand prints he was leaving on the floor and pushed himself to his feet uneasily, ignoring the offered hand in favor of crossing his arms. In the end it really wasn't that hard at all, more weird and slightly disorienting than anything like difficult.

After further pause he gave another sigh and then silently held out his hand for the flashlight. Letting Endrance take over wasn't a hard decision to make, circumstances standing, but there was something bothersome about that idea which the Rogue himself couldn't quite place. Though he didn't voice it, he didn't intend to follow like a child, regardless of trauma induced. "Where are we, anyway...?"

"We're on the second floor...on the west side of the building," Endrance answered, as he handed over the flashlight. "This hall's quiet, but there's a fight going on not too far after we leave it. Alkaid's bought us some time, but she's still injured, so...we shouldn't keep her waiting too long."

He began moving towards the door, then stopped for just a moment. "I...I'm glad that you're still alive. I don't know what I would have done otherwise..."

And with that, he stepped out and back into the hallway.

[to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/741342.html)]

[from here, item found with permission]

A chair with restraints dominated the room, and a bank of computers, dials and buttons dead to the world, completed the Dr. Frankenstein look. All it needed was a couple of Van de Graff generators and a Jacob's Ladder adding some static and reverb, and it could be one hell of a party. Except all the computers were dead; no missing powerstrip or violent button-pressing could bring them to life.

The counters were clean; no drops of blood, sweat, tears, or analyzable chemical compounds. All that was left was a very familiar trash can. S.T. poked his flashlight in -- there was something inside, but it sure as hell wasn't a syringe. Black rubber and elastic, by what he could make out against the black of the can. Either it was evidence or whoever had been in here had been wearing their special underwear when they'd needed to piss themselves. Either way, he needed to get it out without contamination.

The toolkit went on the floor, and he extracted a pair of pliers and a clean t-shirt. He was going to need to shake down the kitchens for Ziploc baggies before doing this again. As much as there were times he never wanted to see another one of the fucking things after a day on the floor of the Harbor, baggies, condoms, and human excrement were staples of the American Way. And there really wasn't anything better for evidence-gathering, as long as you made sure everyone knew that only the reusable containers in the fridge were for human consumption. A few nuclear-green toxic-chemical stickers wasn't always enough to dissuade graduate students, though sticking a Twinkie in with the samples often did the trick.

The pliers, held gingerly, made decent tongs, and he snagged a piece of elastic and pulled out a black face mask. Not a gas mask; just one of the ones school nurses kept around for kickball-related asthma attacks. The inside caught the light; it was still slightly damp on the inside. Whether from condensed saliva or chemical residue would have to wait for the lab. He dropped it onto the t-shirt and wrapped it so that nothing touched the inside. It went back in the kit, though the pliers stayed in his pocket.

[and back out to here]

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Nightshift 44: Disciplinary Therapy Room 1 [M-U for Haseo]

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