damned_institute | Day 46: Sun Room

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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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Just his luck that the last person he wanted to see would show up again. The guy had the balls to actually call him by name, which was cause enough to wonder what the math freak was up to. What did he want anyway? Neku supposed he should be glad that at least Sho hadn't taken to stacking the couches on top of each other or something.

"Surprised?" he asked, turning to appraise the other. It didn't help that Sho was so much taller than he was. It threw any attempt at intimidation right out the window. "Day one is always a cakewalk. Even I know that."

"I admit, you got tossed an easy problem to start with," said the mathematician with a depreciative shrug. If the little orange ball of convex angles wanted to demean the game, it was no skin off Sho's back substitution. He wasn't the one running the show... though whether knew that or not was another question.

"Maybe tonight you'll get thrown something a little more advanced, like those necropascals we had on Saturday," he said, chuckling. "We'll see how you like that level of Noise if they turn up the decibels. Hope you got a good partner, Player, 'cause I can't see you makin' it on your own."

Though Neku was pretty sure Sho wasn't the GM for the week, he sure did enjoy sticking around and bothering Players. He wished there was something aside from a slow salsa remix of songs from the 60's to listen to so he could at least make an attempt to zone the Reaper out, but no such luck.

"I think you've got the same odds I do," he said with a shrug, letting Sho's comments roll off his back. Whatever a necropascal was, he didn't want any part of it until he got a hold of some decent pins and a partner, but he wasn't going to admit that to the Grim Heaper.

"You think I can't find a partner? I didn't have any trouble for three weeks in a row back in the other game. It's not like it'll be that much harder here." Okay, so that was a complete bluff. But Sho didn't have to know that.

"Hah; I don't doubt the quantity's there, but the qualitative factor in that particular equation you might find a little disappointing," he snorted. Just like Shibuya, just like the UG, this place was 99% hectopascals. Still, interesting data: orange hadn't found a partner yet. Did that mean he hadn't gotten together with Hanekoma and Joshua? Or did he just not consider them partners?

"And this Game ain't like the last one if you haven't noticed; difficulty and chance of erasure are cranked up an iteration above the tasks you're used to." A cackle. "Shops with psyches and hefty yen exchange rate? All gone. I bet even the cat's strapped for material."

Say, that was an idea. Maybe he should have gotten Hanekoma to make him some pins while they were still on speaking terms. Though it seemed factor H was playing for the other side of the equation from the beginning and fat chance of that happening now. Oh well. If you couldn't have psyches, two tanks of exploded oxygen would have to do.

Did Sho enjoy talking in a way that made it so no one could understand him? There was a raised eyebrow on Neku's part as he tried to keep up with exactly what the Reaper was trying to make a point of. Couldn't he just say there were lots of people but most of them sucked? It seemed like that would save time on both their parts. He decided not to comment. If those weak pins were all that people here could come up with, maybe Sho was right. Lame. Did he have to keep adding in that annoying laugh on top of everything else?

"I noticed," Neku returned flatly. Like it wasn't obvious when he had to make a 2 or 3 day side-quest just to get his hands on some pins. Not to mention they hadn't even gone outside, let alone to any shops. He was stuck in the same grey threads as everyone else and he didn't even know who to ask to see if he could change the Trends. "But that goes for you too."

If the Reaper thought he was going to get a rise out of Neku that easily, he had another thing coming. Beat, sure, that was obvious, but Neku prided himself on having at least a little more composure than that. "What do you want anyway?"

"I've found alternative currents to using psyches; learn to think outside the perpendicular parallelogram, you picometer!" claimed the Reaper derisively. "I've picked up pieces far prettier than petty pins; powerful parts for the perfect projectile pyre. O + O + Heat is my formula for success!"

Now he just needed the means to force his gift on a certain gray-haired youth. A snare just seemed primitive but it might come down to that.

"Me? Just triangulating your position in the grand scheme of the game; every little variable counts, no matter how short they might be," he said with a laugh, leering down at the kid. "So far, you're not measuring up to much."

It was hard enough to put together what Sho was saying when it was in a mission mail, but when he had to try to process it all while just listening to it, without being able to reread any of it, he found he didn't retain quite as much as he might've. He could ignore the insults, but it sounded like Sho was using something aside from psyches. Pyre. Heat. O? Well, they'd used Au for gold before, was that supposed to be Oxygen? Or just a variable in one of his neverending math lectures. Seriously, it was worse than taking Calculus.

Of course, most of that went out the window when the Reaper took a stab at his height. Neku narrowed his eyes, the only obvious outward sign that he was offended by the insult, though he tried not to give the bastard too much of a rise. He just hadn't hit his growth spurt yet, big deal.

"You can throw equations at me all you want. It doesn't mean you can predict a thing. There was plenty you didn't take into account before."

Having gotten held up by his talk with Naminé, Sora was late coming into the Sun Room. Not that he minded -- he saw the Sun Room practically every day, whereas he hadn't seen Naminé in over a week. Now he was always going to have it in the back of his mind to keep an eye on the girl, but in a way it was nice to have someone to worry over. Someone who he could actually keep tabs on, that is.

However, there was one disadvantage to being late, and that was that most of the seats were already taken. Sora let out a sigh and rubbed at the back of his head as he tried to pick out an empty spot or someone who was alone.

Instead, what he saw was a pair of patients who were having some sort of argument. That was normal enough that he tried to overlook it, but in this case there were two things that stood out to him: first, the fact that there was a marked age difference between the two arguers (which just didn't seem fair!), and second, that the younger patient looked like someone he might get along with.

If anything, the incident from yesterday had just made him more eager to prove that he was a proper hero (and what was wrong with that?), and so after just a second more of deliberation, he walked over to the pair and butted in.

"Hey," he interrupted, "is something going on here?" Not the most stunning entrance, but he was used to dashingly saving someone who was in danger due to a Heartless or something.

"O-kay, so maybe I didn't count on the big C taking the blast and then phase-shifting his asymptote out of there, but, this dump aside, I would've refactored into the UG anyway for a flawless victory in the end! Factoring doctor digits distracting me from my destination," he muttered. Grinding his teeth, Sho got read to rally back and rant at Neku just how screwed the UG would be when he got back when suddenly another brat with a hairdo like a convention of convexes came upon their conversation.

"Nothing you need to know, radian," he growled to the new kid, glaring down at him.

To be honest, Neku hadn't exactly anticipated that Joshua would do something so selfless(well, it'd seemed that way at the time at least), and he didn't care to admit that Sho had a point. However, his equation for flawless victory was nothing but theory. He'd gotten his ass handed to him even with all that taboo noise!

At any rate, apparently Neku had damsel-in-distress painted somewhere on his back. Yet another would-be hero showed up as soon as their conversation started to get a little bit heated. First Sheena and now some guy who... well, he probably got his hair cut at the same place Neku did. Or something. It wasn't quite like looking in a mirror, but it was close enough to be weird.

That and he definitely didn't have the same kind of authority Sheena seemed to. Besides, Sho seemed to be finished doling out clues about his plans, so unless he wanted to sit through a lecture that would feel surprisingly like being in some kind of nightmarish chemistry and physics class (and knowing Sho, there was probably a pop quiz after), he'd better find a way to bounce.

There was the option of playing that this new kid was his partner, which might shut Sho up, but unlike certain Composers, he didn't feel right about dragging in other parties into his own messes.

"Just an idiot monologuing to himself. Waste of time. I was just leaving."

Radi-what?

Sora stared right back up at the silver-haired man. He was already getting the feeling that he didn't like this guy. He just had that kind of attitude that screamed "bad guy," and Sora had dealt with enough of them to know. He glanced from him to the boy who looked like he could have easily been his Nobody. While he didn't look like Roxas, necessarily, there was some sort of weird closeness in their looks.

When the boy gave that sharp-tongued response, Sora's mouth quirked up for a second. "Mind if I go with you, then?" he asked with a tilt of his head. If he was going to spend the rest of the shift with one of these two, then there was really no contest about who he'd pick. For one thing, he'd gotten pretty sensitive when it came to people calling him the wrong name, so the taller man had already gotten off on the wrong foot with him.

"Tch. Fine then, get out of my quadrant!" said Sho grouchily, making shooing motions with his hands. "Math class is over anyway; you all fail!"

Grumbling to himself about vertically challenged challengers, Sho went over and flopped on a nearby couch. Bothering Neku was just an idle past time until he became a threat; as long as the kid wasn't partnering with the Composer, what he did wasn't any of the mathematician's real concern.

[Sorry about the delay; Sho's out if you guys want to backthread or whatever]

"Let's bounce," Neku decided. At least the other teen seemed to have a similar impression of Sho and didn't mind giving him an excuse to cut out of math class. Neku tried not to smirk in return, but gave it up and sent the Reaper a mock salute as they found their own place to chat. Maybe the hero wasn't so bad.

As if he'd been scanning his mind somehow, Sho announced the end of their conversation and shooed them off in a huff. Because it'd totally been the Reaper's idea all along. Sure.

Neku found an open spot on the other side of the room and crossed his arms over his chest. Not the friendliest of body language, but at least he wasn't leaning against the wall or something.

"I'm Neku," he offered, supposing he ought to give something in thanks for the other guy's arrival and their escape from the Grim Heaper.

Sora had to fight not to wince when the stranger said something about "math class." What was the deal with that?! Sora had never been upset to ditch school after he'd gotten the Keyblade, and math was one of the things he'd disliked the most. He never wanted to repeat a math lesson, and the idea that the older man had been drilling his lookalike in algebra and geometry was enough to make Sora stick his tongue out in distaste.

At least they had gotten away from him. While Sora had started off with a shaky opinion about that stranger, the math comment set the man below neutral for sure. Besides, it looked like he'd been picking on this other kid, so...

The crossed arms didn't really deter Sora. He remembered the way Leon had always stood like that, and smiled at the memory.

"Nice to meet you, Neku! I'm Sora," he said, placing his hands on his hips for a moment. "What was with that guy, anyway?" He risked looking back at the man, who was now laying on the couch, before turning back to face Neku.

When the other guy offered his name, Neku's smirk disappeared, replaced by one of confusion. The nurses kept calling him Sora and maybe this hero guy was the reason. They did look oddly similar, so he could kind of understand the nurses or doctors getting confused. But given how weird this place was already, it seemed like a stretch to think he could escape just by telling the nearest nurse that it was all a big mistake.

"Wait, so you're Sora?" he said finally, scratching his head. "The nurses keep calling me that. They must think I'm you or something."

His tone of voice made it obvious what he thought of the nurses for being so dense. Obviously there were some glaring differences. Hair color for one. And Sora wasn't wearing headphones. How hard was that? Neku shook his head.

"You mean Pi-face?" he sighed, following Sora's gaze. "Who knows? I could never understand half the things that came out of his mouth even before I got here."

Wait, what?

Neku's confused expression was quickly mirrored on Sora's face when he heard that the other boy was being called by his name. So what, were the nurses trying to convince Neku that he was Sora? But that didn't make any sense. Maybe it was just a weird coincidence, but that be a pretty huge coincidence, especially considering that they looked pretty similar.

"I've never heard of anything like that," Sora admitted as he rubbed at the back of his neck and sent a suspicious glance at the closest nurse. "Uhh, sorry?" He knew it wasn't his fault that Neku had been landed with his name for his fake one, but somehow he still felt like he should apologize.

Pie Face seemed like a strange name for the guy they had just left behind, but Sora chose not to question it. The more interesting thing was that Neku apparently had a history with the guy. "So you knew him from before?" he asked. "How?"

Sora seemed pretty freaked out by the name situation too, which wasn't encouraging. Like he didn't already get called enough different nicknames back home. How hard was it to say Neku? Really.

"Unless you think the nurses would actually believe us that there'd been a mistake, I wouldn't worry about it. It's not your fault," he shrugged, adjusting the headphones over his ears. Still lame, but at least the next song that came on was faster paced. This easy listening stuff was going to put him to sleep. Seemed like there ought to be something more to the names, but he couldn't make any connections. Maybe when he learned more about how this place worked, but now? It was like working with only half the pieces to the puzzle and expecting to figure out what the picture was.

"Sho Minamimoto," he clarified, deciding he would rather not look in the direction of the Reaper. "He was a Game Master back in the Reaper's Game. It's kind of complicated."

Neku wasn't wordy on the best of days, though he'd gotten better since his time in the UG. Still, giving long-winded explanations wasn't really his thing. Then again, the Reaper's Game wasn't something that could be easily explained either. "We were on opposing sides. I think he's still sore that he lost."

When Neku brought up mentioning it to the nurses, Sora just gave a shake of his head. While he was one of the people who thought the nurses were generally pretty nice and just trying to help them because they didn't know any different, he knew for a fact that they were stubborn about things like their names. There wasn't much point in trying to talk to them and clear up the situation. He'd just call him Neku and leave it at that; hopefully there wouldn't be any future confusion from all of their similarities.

"Well, if someone starts talking to you about Heartless or Keyblades, then they probably just confused you for me," Sora joked with a smile. It probably wouldn't come to that, but it was a possibility if the nurses were going to run around calling Neku by his name.

Having a name to put with Mr. Math Teacher's face, Sora filed it away and then focused on the few details that Neku had for him. So they had been on different sides in some sort of game? It reminded him immediately of his fight with Luxord, but Sora knew it was probably way different from that. He scratched his head and thought it over.

"So what kind of game was it?" he asked with a tilt of his head. "Not a... math game, I hope." That would have just been too horrible!

Was this guy for real? It all sounded familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Heartless, keyblades, he could swear he remembered reading about a video game like that, but that would just be beyond bizarre. Maybe Sora was into that kind of stuff though, who knew?

"I'll keep it in mind," he said casually. Unless Sora had friends who were as obnoxious as Sho, it probably wouldn't even be a problem. Besides, there had to be plenty of people with the same name in a group this big. There'd been two Ryuichis in his kindergarten class and doubles weren't so strange.

"It was only math when Pi-face was running it. They switch GMs every week," Neku explained. Why did everyone want to know about the game? It'd been the most nerve-wracking, insane, annoying three weeks in his life. Of course he'd come out of it with friends and a new outlook on life that was well worth the exchange, but...

"Anyway, if you die, sometimes you get a second chance at life if you play this thing called the Reaper's Game," Neku explained. "It's a week-long game where you have to meet challenges and fight a bunch of enemies called Noise. Sho was one of the Reapers and I was a Player, so we didn't exactly get along."

So, on the other hand, if someone came up to him and started talking about Noise and GMs and Reapers, Sora would just be able to know that it was a mix-up. He tried to relate what the other boy was saying to his own experience. So Heartless would be the Noise, and the Reapers would be the Organization members...

Sora was just glad that there weren't any Nobodies who were obsessed with math. Demyx liked music and Luxord like card games, but those were much easier to deal with in Sora's opinion.

Of course, the main difference here was that Neku was making it sound like he'd ended up in this game after dying. Sora frowned and sent the other boy a sympathetic glance. So he was one of those people who'd come to Landel's after his death, huh? That had to be really tough.

Then again, Neku had implied that he'd won the game, so maybe he'd gotten his life back? It was nice to think that if anything ever happened to Sora, he might get a second chance himself. Then again, he sort of had; he'd come back from becoming a Heartless, and that was supposed to be impossible.

"So... you got your life back?" he asked carefully.

"Yeah. We should've won the first week we played, but they made up all these rules at the last minute and caught us in a technicality," he gave an annoyed sigh. "You have to have a partner to play, but they only let one person win. So I had to play two more times before I got out."

He really didn't think he had too much room to complain. The way things ended, it'd been pretty sweet for all of them. Too bad he'd only been able to enjoy it for a day before it all vanished.

"But yeah, I got it back. Like I said, the ones running it don't like to play fair. The guy in charge of it all was the one who killed me in the first place," he was still sore about that one. It wasn't that he didn't realize that Josh had done the right thing in the end or that it'd been for the good of Shibuya, but the way he'd gone about it all had given Neku nothing but grief.

"Yeah, anyway. What about you? Heartless stuff and all that?"

That just sounded downright unfair, not to mention annoying. It reminded Sora of how sometimes the people he fought against seemed to be finished, except then they'd come back twice as strong! How did that even make any sense?

Still, it sounded like Neku had been persistent and gotten his way through the game two more times than he'd had to. As far as Sora could tell, he'd definitely earned his life back. That was pretty surprising if his killer had been the one to put him through all of that. Now that he was hearing more, maybe it wasn't the best situation to end up in after death...

"That's too bad that you made it through only to get brought here," Sora stated with a frown. It had been a similar situation for him. He'd only just been getting used to the feel of the Islands' sand on his feet when he'd found himself in this place.

"Me? Well, yeah, it's my job to fight these monster things called Heartless," he explained. "They can be really dangerous, to the point that they could destroy worlds if they aren't controlled." And yet they hadn't made it to this world. Sora still didn't know why that was. It seemed like Heartless would have been largely drawn to all the darkness that must dwell in Mr. Landel's heart.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Neku almost snorted at Sora's honesty. It was too bad. That was putting it more than lightly. These guys were lucky he wasn't the type to lose his temper easily or he might've flown off the handle. Probably helped that his introduction had been more or less gradual seeing as he was used to suddenly waking up in weird places after the course of the game.

"So you're a fighter too, huh? What're those heartless like?" he asked. Mr. H had said he should try to find people who might be able to partner up with him. If this guy was any good, maybe he'd actually be able to get somewhere tonight. Then again, it's not like it was very far. The temptation to go by himself was pretty strong too.

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.

Day 46: Sun Room

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