damned_institute | Day 46: Sun Room

Peter woke up suddenly, his body twisting in the bed and then forcing him to catch his breath in pain. Pain, which was coming from his middle because of the thing that had scratched him last night, and after that...

After that, Zach had jumped in front of him like some kind of martyr, like the exact opposite of everything Sylar stood for, to take the next hit for him. It got pretty fuzzy after that, so night must have ended right around then.

The man let out a pained grunt as he straightened himself up in bed. For some reason, he got the feeling that he'd slept in. There was no way for him to really tell without a window in the room, but he just knew. The fact that Sam's bed looked long since vacated was another clue.

Sam, but was he Sam again? Had the brainwashing worn off, as he and Roland had hoped, or was he going to have to go through this nightmare for even longer? He didn't know how long he could handle "Zach" and "Harrison" before he started going batty himself.

Pulling himself out of bed, Peter lifted his shirt and saw that he was tightly bandaged. The scratch most likely wasn't nearly as bad as the bite that "Zach" had received, but it still smarted. He let his shirt fall and then had to deal with a nurse chiding him for sleeping through the morning announcements. Not that Peter really cared at the moment. He was too busy thinking about last night and the fact that in a way, he now owed something to Sylar. Except it hadn't been Sylar. That was something he was sure of now.

Lost in his thoughts, Peter reached the Sun Room right as the rest of the patient populace was trickling in from breakfast. Sighing to himself, he headed over to the bulletin board and then saw a note written in familiar yet unpleasant handwriting. Holding his pen in a vice grip, Peter scribbled out a reply and then stalked over to an armchair and fell into it with a huff.

While Sylar was maddeningly frustrating, there was one good thing about the fact that he was himself again. It meant that Nathan was too.

[For Spock!]

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Weren't most people here fighters? Sure, there were a few patients tossed in that had never lifted up a weapon before, but those were rare as far as Sora could tell. It seemed like Neku was fairly new, though, and so he probably didn't have the best idea of what kind of people made up the patient populace.

"They can come in a lot of different forms, but the most basic kind are these little black creatures with yellow eyes. Those can almost become liquid - they get all flat and move around on the floor and stuff like that." That was always annoying; one second Sora would be smacking one up with his Keyblade, and the next thing he knew it was sliding away across the ground. "There are others that can fly or shoot fire or... anything, really." Sora had seen all sorts, to the point that it was becoming increasingly difficult to surprise him.

He raised both eyebrows at Neku. "How about the Noise?" Kind of a weird name for monsters, but 'Heartless' wasn't exactly normal either.

Sounded eerily similar to Noise. Great. So not only was he stuck in this weird building, but there was some other guy that was like an alternate universe version of him. And it wasn't the first either. There was Roxas last night too. He'd heard of everyone having a look-alike somewhere, but 3? And all in the same place? There was a limit to coincidence.

"This is way too weird," he scratched his head as he listened to the description. Mr. H mentioned that there were different planes and different worlds that could be tuned into, so then, was this something like that? He couldn't quite wrap his mind around it, but he sure as hell intended to ask Mr. H about it later. Seriously. First Roxas, now Sora? Roxas had seemed like kind of a space case, but Sora had to see that there was something going on.

"The Noise are a lot like that too. There's all kinds, but they're black creatures with things like neon paint on 'em. They look a lot like they popped out of some graffiti or something. Usually shaped like animals. They do all the same stuff. Fly. Shoot things. Change into other things."

He shook his head, annoyed that he couldn't grasp what was going on. It reminded him too much of Week 1 back in the UG. A million questions and not an answer in sight. Only this time, he didn't have an obnoxiously cheerful partner and her possessed pig-cat to help them out.

While Sora had met his share of people here who had similarities to his own situation that he could find, he had to admit that Neku's descriptions were far closer than he was used to. While Heartless had nothing to do with graffiti (what was that?) and didn't have any sort of neon paint, their colors could differ even if they tended toward darker shades. The different variations were eerily close, too.

He had to wonder if maybe the Noise were a kind of Heartless, and Neku had just been fighting against them without realizing what they really were. Then again, he probably wouldn't have gotten very far without a Keyblade. Thinking about this was kind of giving Sora a headache, but now it was a mystery that had to be solved.

"You stayed in one place when you were fighting them, right?" Sora asked. He wasn't that good at playing detective, but now he was downright curious. "You didn't travel to other worlds or anything?" If Neku had, then this would go from being weird to being more than just coincidence.

"And... what did you fight them with?" It was a stretch to think that Neku had ended up with a Keyblade without even knowing what it was, but the fact that he'd been forced to play some sort of game seemed similar to the way the Organization had used him. It was possible Neku had been forced to take down Heartless without being properly aware of what he was doing or why.

Different worlds huh. Well if things were already this unbelievable, might as well throw that one in too. Who knew?

"It depends on what you mean by one place," he sighed, scratching his head. "It's complicated, but I'll give it a try. I've never had to explain it to someone else before. The Noise from before was in Shibuya, but you could only fight it on different planes."

Usually it was him getting the lesson in how things worked on the other side. But here was another story completely. He slid his headphones down around his neck and removed the radio from where it was clipped to his waist, holding it up for Sora to see. "Like, you know how a radio has different stations, depending on how you turn the dial?"

Neku demonstrated, though he got nothing but static through most of the dial. A dial? This was seriously the stone age. "Noise exists differently depending on what plane you're tuned into. It can be just bad vibes in someone's heart in one plane, but an ugly piece of Noise in another plane. You can't always see it, but it's there. Just like the radio stations. Even though you can't tune in to all of 'em at once, they're still there and still playing music.

Since the Reaper's Game is played mostly in the plane where dead people can walk around like regular people, the Noise there is pretty fierce. You even have to fight it in separate planes with a partner. If you don't erase it in both places, it'll never disappear."

He gave another sigh. If he had to try this hard just to explain it once, Shiki must have had the patience of a saint to keep pounding it into his skull. He only hoped it would actually sink in for Sora so he wouldn't have to try explaining it again.

"We fight them with Psychs. They're different for each Player, but mine were psychokinetic. Like throwing stuff with your mind or making fire or ice. Stuff like that. Sometimes it would take the shape of swords or heal or whatever. It's anything you can imagine. That's kind of what powers a Psych. Imagination."

He paused, wondering if he'd missed anything. It was a hell of a lot to take in all at once. "This making any sense?"

Shibuya? Was it just him, or had someone else told him that they were from there? Sora felt like the name was familiar, and yet he couldn't actually place it now. It was kind of annoying, but he was soon distracted by Neku's explanation.

The idea of different planes was hardly the same as the physical worlds that Sora traveled to in his Gummi ship, but one thing that stood out to the boy was when Neku mentioned "bad vibes in someone's heart." If the Noise had anything to do with people's hearts, then it meant they really were similar to the Heartless in more ways than he'd expected.

In fact, the Noise actually sounded like they were even more trouble, what with having to fight them on "different planes" or however it worked. Sora scrunched up his face. At least he usually knew when all the Heartless were gone, if only because they stopped trying to attack him. He had to admit that it was nice having the Keyblade as a beacon that just drew the things to him.

As for how Neku fought, that was completely different from what Sora was used to. If anything, it was more like the magic that Merlin and Donald had taught him, so it didn't exactly fit.

When the other boy stopped and checked to see if Sora had gotten everything, he gave a small nod. "Yeah, well... enough of it, anyway. There are some obvious differences between all of that and what I've done, but a lot of it is the same, too. Especially what you said about bad stuff in people's hearts..." That was probably obvious, seeing how the things he fought were called Heartless.

Day 46: Sun Room

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