damned_institute | Day 46: Lunch

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Day 46: Lunch

The mere fact that she'd been susceptible to whatever hold the Institute had had on her yesterday was sufficient to leave Ayumu both upset and angry - no, not angry, downright furious, both at herself and whoever was responsible for that. But there was also the fact that because of it, she'd lost out on an entire day of work, and in several ways had ruined some of what she'd done already. That little conversation with Himura the day before, for instance, was something she'd sincerely prefer not to remember if she'd had any choice in the matter.

Unless the man was a complete moron, which, unfortunately, was one thing she couldn't believe of him, he had to have realized just who her brother was. After all the effort to keep that fact quiet (not exactly a secret, but certainly not advertised; half the Shinsengumi probably never even realized it because there was no reason to) she'd gone and chatted about it with him. Told him all about it, practically painted a bright target around a weakness that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

She'd spent the shift in the Sun Room pretending to sleep, while in truth forcing herself into calm. After years of practice she could shunt away the useless and distracting emotions, focusing only on what was important and needed to be at the forefront of her mind, and by the time the intercom signaled the lunch period she was feeling considerably calmer. The time to silently observe others had, as well, alerted her to something she probably should have noticed earlier: Mello was back. Would her previous objective be reinstated now? He seemed to have far less of a bulletin presence this time, so perhaps not. Still, though, it bore investigating.

None of her thoughts were visible, of course, as she moved through the line, examining the lunch selection somewhat dubiously. Now with the benefit of Yuuko's memories she might recognize the food, but she certainly didn't share the enthusiasm for it that her imaginary self apparently had. Ayumu skipped past that part and settled for the salad bar and some bread, then positioned herself in a place where she could watch both the door and the rest of the room, setting her journal open in front of herself as though planning to write something. There was far too much that she'd missed, too much work to do now.

[for Okita]

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"Fine." Once Mello wouldn't have resented the order--and that was definitely what it was--in the slightest, but things were different now, and he bristled at the idea that he would fall in line so easily, with so little reason to.

"How did you get here, and why were you acting completely different yesterday?" If he was going to trust L, he needed satisfactory answers first.

He folded one of his pieces of pizza over and took a bite, the sour expression still on his face. He would have expected L to have made more progress by now. Disappointment made him want to be contrary, and he took his time about finishing the bite before answering L's question.

"My roommate and I had almost gotten to the courtyard wall, when we were attacked by dogs. If you've been here four days, you know they weren't normal dogs. We had to turn back. Why, what did you do?"

Edited 2009-12-21 22:51 (UTC)

L took a slow, deep breath, then let it out, tilting his head to the side as if to consider the situation very, very carefully. His expression was sharp, and when he spoke, he doled the words out at a measured pace.

"I got here the way anyone gets here: against my will, and with no explanation of how it happened. In a more specific sense, I woke up in a bed here Sunday morning. I imagine that something similar happened to you." He paused and shot a look of appraisal in Mello's direction: Well? Did it?

"As to yesterday... everyone here has been given a false name and persona; the staff appears to believe that both are true. They keep details in files in an office across the main hall from the Sun Room.

"It's difficult to say what the exact mechanism was, but a number of people woke up yesterday convinced that these constructed identities were accurate; if you have been reading the bulletin board today, you will see other examples of it. I haven't heard of anyone who was affected not recovering their wits today." A strange note had entered his voice, one of mingled frustration and resignation.

"A show of manipulation, maybe. It isn't the first time in the last few days; I doubt it will be the last." L's strange tone cleared. He had the feeling that the rest of the encounter was likely to be nothing more than a volley of hostile inquiries, and found the prospect tedious in the extreme. It is important to sound strong and steady, he thought, as a matter of credibility. He took a sip of grape juice, one which didn't even wet his lips, before moving on to Mello's next question.

"Last night? I visited a site near the Institute, but it was a waste of time."

Edited 2009-12-22 06:14 (UTC)

Mello set the pizza down, done for the moment, and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. What he really wanted was chocolate. It wasn't not eating it, which was a pain, but bearable, so far. It was knowing he didn't have any that made him antsy.

"I was in the middle of something," he found himself answering, not wholly voluntarily, spurred by that penetrating look. "Something important."

He had seen cryptic and not-so-cryptic references to people not being themselves, but in a place as fucked-up as this, he didn't trust anyone to be consistent from one day to the next. Though he no longer believed Landel's existed just to fuck with his head, it was obviously constructed to fuck with the prisoners in general, and he wasn't yet convinced that L's specific presence here wasn't a directed attempt to undermine him, by persons and for reasons he had yet to uncover.

"Why should I believe that the way you are today is any more real? Tell me something only you and I know." He tried, and thought he mostly succeeded, in making it sound more like a demand than a plea.

L sighed and shook his head, not quite refraining from rolling his eyes. "Weren't we all."

There was genuine chagrin in his voice, and annoyance; it was only a matter of proving that Yagami was Kira, a matter of fixing the loose ends around him until he was thoroughly entangled. He didn't care so much about Amane, who would be pulled under in Yagami's wake no matter what else happened. He was certain that Yagami didn't care, either.

They both seemed far away, too far to formulate the distance in his mind, even though he had seen and spoken to Amane soon after his arrival, and Matt had mentioned that Yagami had been at Landel's for a while. It would be more difficult to credit if not for the fact that he had every indication that he and Mello had both been there at one point, too.

He had been planning to mention it, and the fact of his conversation with Matt, as information worth noting. Now, that idea revealed itself as a pitfall. The things he knew about Mello would be more suspect if it seemed possible that L might have learned them at the Institute.

He caught the odd quality in Mello's voice. If it had not been for the position their meeting yesterday had put him in, he would not be inclined to humor demands. No, even then, he was disinclined, but the situation gave him little choice in the matter.

On the other hand, Mello seemed to need an answer, apart from wanting and insisting on one. A good sign; it restored some of what L felt was the appropriate balance of power. That Mello was doing a good job of hiding the need was even better: Why hide something that isn't a vulnerability? I think you want me to be L. Elements of their interaction the day before supported this theory.

"Because I am myself today." His gaze was fixed on Mello again, and he spoke in low, unamused tones. That answer, at least, would be obvious, if not for the fact that he had been so completely convinced of a lie less than twenty-four hours earlier.

"The easiest thing would be for me to write your name just above the surface of this table with the tip of my finger, but I will restrain myself; the nurses are watching. My second choice would be to mention to you that it is more hazardous to make midnight kitchen excursions here than it was when you were twelve years old -- no, thirteen -- in Winchester. Which was, by the way, the last time I saw you. It hasn't been eighteen months since then."

He dropped his gaze to the table in front of Mello, then made a point of letting it travel back up Mello's torso, to his face. "You are twenty now? Maybe you have some explaining to do, yourself." 2010 was the year Matt had given him.

Edited 2009-12-22 13:00 (UTC)

Mello did want to believe this was L, mostly, though not only, for the sake of having L back from the dead. Occam's razor, he told himself, picking a pepperoni from one of the pizza slices and eating it. Which was likelier: the Landel's staff just happening to find someone who looked right, somehow learning enough to instruct him in how to behave and what to say (an unthinkable security breach on almost every level he could imagine), and arranging for it to seem like chance that Mello had encountered him at all? Or that two people who weren't in collusion, as far as Mello could tell, and had nothing to do with Kira or the House, had been right about time being fucked with somehow? The explanation that should have been saner was more ridiculously convoluted than the theoretically impossible one.

"That doesn't prove anything. Anyone can claim to know a name, and I mentioned the kitchen and Winchester yesterday." He thought for a moment, tapping at the tabletop with his fingers again. "Tell me what you said before about someone's reading habits.

"And if you can explain how you haven't gotten any older in almost seven years, that would help too," he said, with a faint tinge of sarcasm. "It's 2009 where I come from." Did L know he was supposed to be dead? Mello still wasn't ready to tackle that one, nor was he eager to account for his activities in the real world since the last time he'd seen L there. L may have walked along the line between legal and questionable activities, but Mello had vaulted over it and never looked back.

L's memory of the previous day frustrated him. The general outline of events was clear, but anything specific would swim in and out of focus, and in all, it was like remembering a long, vivid dream. He had no recollection that the kitchen had been mentioned. It was becoming difficult to resist the temptation to push his tray to the side, to trace "1ɥǝǝʞ 1ǝɐɥıɯ" in the air an inch above the top of the table, to get past an authentication process to which he never should have been subjected in the first place.

Then again, he was pleased that his proxies seemed to understand the importance of vigilance.

"You are trying to establish my identity through B's supposed mania for Akazukin Chacha?"

He made a point of pausing, holding his slice of pizza in place with his fork, and cutting a strip of it off with the knife. A surgical removal of a chunk of ham followed.

"Sunday should have been the second of November, 2004. It wasn't, but it should have been. That would make today the fifth." He ate the bite of pizza. The baked pineapple was more delicious than he would have expected.

"Who else alive knows about that anymore? I had to make sure." Mello knew, and suspected L did too, though they'd never had an opportunity to talk about it, that B had died of a heart attack in custody. He also knew that Misora had vanished from the public record around the same time. However the hell they'd done it, the evidence and Mello's gut feeling now agreed this was L.

"November fifth," he repeated, flatly, afraid something of his visceral reaction to that date would come through in his expression. L's death had been covered up, but Wammy's had made the newspaper, and once he could stand to think about it, it had been child's play for Mello to connect the dots. But he'd never figured out what had changed. L had been in Japan for almost a year, with Kira trying to kill him from day one. What had let him succeed when he did?

"Do you know about the eyes?"

L had taken another bite of pizza into his mouth, a larger bite, and now that he had to talk again, it muffled his answer. "Mm. Yes. The eyes." He swallowed the food and took a sip of juice before continuing. "Higuchi had them, and Amane must have had them also -- assuming she was the Second Kira. Why do you ask?"

When Mello repeated the date, his expression was peculiar, in that it appeared to be a concerted attempt at expressionlessness. Not bad, as such things went, but not useful to L at the moment, either. He thought back to his conversation with Matt, almost the first person he'd spoken to after waking up at Landel's. He was under the impression that I died some time in November, 2004.

L's demeanor shifted; less irritation, more seriousness, more intimacy. "The fifth of November is significant to you? That is, for reasons other than Bonfire Night."

Mello was, briefly, gratified at having his hunch about Higuchi confirmed. The information about Amane was news to him, and he silently filed her name away for future reference. He couldn't do anything about her now. Now, he had to give the news he'd been hoping to avoid.

That date hadn't meant Bonfire Night to Mello since he was fourteen. "November fifth, 2004," he said, still with the flat calm of before, which cracked some, but mostly held, "was the day you died." He swallowed against the dryness in his mouth, but there was more he needed to tell. "Mr. Wammy, too." Mello had insisted on calling every adult at the House solely by their last name while he was there. That he didn't now was a mark of belated respect.

The sinking, twisting, dismayed feeling was already familiar: L had experienced it a few days earlier.

First, it had been his reaction to Matt's news, and as reactions went, he didn't judge it as inappropriate: he might have been risking his life over the past year, but he wanted to live, and he wanted that life to take place in a world where Kira had been vanquished.

Then, later that night, he had "died" under other circumstances entirely. If he focused on it, he could remember the sensation of choking on his own blood. He tried to consider the incident in an impersonal way.

Since then, a mingling of intense anxiety and disappointment blindsided him at unguarded moments. It was worst, by far, in the Arts and Crafts Room, but every time it came up, he pushed it resolutely aside as an irrelevant distraction. He could acknowledge, in an intellectual way, that he would have to rest at some point, that the most recent stresses were things that could break him if he even managed to stay alive, but that point would have to come after bringing down both Landel and Kira. He knew that he had too much to do to allow himself to collapse under the weight of trauma and defeat.

Still, the crushing chagrin which greeted Mello's revelation surprised him. To some extent, he wanted to step away from it, observe it, codify it, file it, and forget about it, yet it was the kind of thing that would not allow itself to be put at a distance and forgotten.

He had always known that bring Yagami into his circle in a personal way meant courting death, but the fact that Kira might have managed to kill Watari, who had been working mostly in seclusion, troubled him more. Daniel Laurier, yesterday, had missed his "father" badly. L suspected that this was mostly a manifestation of his desire to leave the Institute, but he was not surprised that it had expressed itself as a desire to see Quillish Wammy, the closest thing he had to a living relative.

He found that his left hand was shaking, so he set it against the outside of his left leg, where it clutched at the fabric around his knee. This is my habit when I am agitated, he thought. Indifference was becoming more and more difficult to feign.

"I see. That's very unfortunate," he replied, flatly, then swallowed. No point in trying to take a drink, hiding his fallen expression behind a cup; he would spill grape juice all over his lunch.

Something had occurred to him, though, when he had considered the possibility of his own death over the last few days. Some time in the month of November. This interlude at Landel's... how did it really affect him? Was it what had passed for "death" at home? The chance existed.

It didn't explain Watari's death, though. He realized that he was clenching his jaw, and relaxed it.

"Do you know how it happened? There were bodies, yes? How much progress has Kira made since then?"

"They-- Fuck, I'm sorry." Seeing L visibly agitated, L who had always been so calm, even dispassionate, rattled Mello. "It's bad, back home."

How could he even begin to explain? L could extrapolate, he was sure, but telling him that what he must have considered the worst-case scenario had actually come to pass was going to be no easier than telling him he was supposed to be dead.

"I don't know what happened to--" He sighed. "To the bodies.

"I had to rebuild the case from scratch. In the time that took..." He stopped again, and shook his head. "Kira's continued. Most of the world's on his side now. The U.S. has officially given up trying to catch him. The Japanese police covered up that you were gone. Their fake L is useless, and so are they. They've cooperated with Kira before, and I'm sure they'll do it again. They have one of the murder notebooks." Mello assumed L must also have deduced there were two of them in play. "The one I had, in fact." He scowled down at his pizza. "And now that I'm stuck in this fucking place, it'll just get worse." He was far too angry to watch his language.

It was all up to Near, back home. Near, who had taken the SPK underground, who didn't know some of the rules in the notebook were fake, who still had Mello's damn picture. Who was too passive to make things happen. People who believed the fate of the world rested on their shoulders were likely a dime a dozen here, but in Mello's case, he thought, silently fuming, it was actually true. He looked up at L, leaning closer over the table and lowering his voice. "We have to get out. Immediately, if not sooner."

"So, to be fair, we cannot say with any accuracy that there are bodies, specifically mine." L spoke in a halting way, as if he was expressing his ideas almost the moment that he formulated them. "That may be important, if my abduction to this place passed for my 'death' at home."

This was feasible, but he had serious doubts about it; his dead man's switch was set to a thirty-day countdown. Either Watari had reset it before his own death or disappearance, or Roger had, for some reason, spent several days dragging his heels about informing anyone of L's "death." L found scant reason to believe either scenario.

"Their fake L?" He considered the idea, his head tilted to the side. The NPA task force knew that his suggestion that Light Yagami might take up L's mantle if anything were to happen to him had been a test, but... Is it possible that he has managed to convince them... to turn it around to his own advantage?

Given that this is Kira we're talking about, the answer is likely to be 'yes.' "Please explain more about him. If he is who I think he might be, there is a reason for his apparent uselessness."

He had stopped shaking; now, at an opposite extreme in only a minute, his tranquility seemed almost unnatural. The only thing that betrayed his recent break in demeanor was his breath. Because normalizing it was a struggle, it was still a touch faster and more ragged than usual.

He answered Mello with a flat stare and a flatter tone. "Yes? How do you propose to effect this escape?"

I was in the woods last night, and still woke up in my bed at the Institute. He elected not to say it; it would only lead to irrelevant questions about his reasons for making the trip, tedious explanations of what he had found there, and embarrassing admissions of how useless the errand had been. At the moment, he needed credibility.

Maybe there was some boundary in the relative vicinity of the Institute past which trespassers would not find themselves in their rooms, come morning, but he suspected that if such a thing existed, it was at a greater distance than anyone could pass in a few hours.

He leaned back once more, trying to tamp down his anger and focus on L's questions.

"It's true that no one saw the bodies--" But it had been perfectly clear to Mello that L was dead, from the moment Roger had called him and Near into his office and confirmed what Mello had been trying to believe was impossible. For months, he'd been telling himself, L swore he'd see Kira dead, and he'll do it. It's just taking longer than other cases, in an attempt to deny the doubt that was edging into dread with every passing week.

"But this is only your fourth day, and it's been five years at home. I know time's fucked-up here, but to be off by that much? And what happened to Mr. Wammy, if you vanished? I know he died; it was in the papers. It makes more sense if they somehow managed to drag you here before Kira could do anything."

He pretended not to notice that L hadn't completely mastered his breathing yet. "Soichiro Yagami told me they'd set up Touta Matsuda as L, but that he was only a mouthpiece. He never denied that you were gone." Yagami could have been lying--Mello certainly would have, in his shoes--but he hadn't even pretended the current L was anything but an imposter.

He picked at a slice of pizza. It seemed decidedly unappetizing. "I have to get my gun back first. I'll do that tonight." Effecting an escape would take planning and luck. As much as Mello hated it, he had to admit jumping on the first chance with next to no preparation hadn't exactly worked out.

Mild annoyance snapped L out of the remaining effects of his attack of nerves, and an exasperated expression passed over his face. "Mello, if at some future point you wish to contradict my analysis of a situation, please do not do it by reiterating my own theory." He sounded irritated, and perhaps a little bit insulted.

"As to the rest of it" -- his manner calmed, returned to gravitas -- "Touta Matsuda would never make a convincing L, nor would they have seriously chosen him to replace me.

"Even if the proxy L they have selected is ineffectual, it would not have been by the initial design of the NPA task force members. They would have chosen the person they thought the most capable; Matsuda can only be a figurehead intended to obscure the identity of that person over a matter of... days, at best. Weeks, if they are optimistic. Over five years, though, more than a few people would have noticed. No. I have a better suspect than that."

That Mello was seeking the return of his firearm implied answers to questions about him that L hadn't yet quite formulated, but which had been suggested by Matt's cautious references. "There have been discussions on the bulletin board about the creation of weapons. If you want to try to find your gun, try to find it... but it's possible that if they were able to acquire useful weapons from the patient possessions room, more people would have them. I haven't heard of any gunshot wounds since I came here."

Would I have? he wondered. His acquaintance was far from universal, and some rumors traveled faster than others. But it was more than that: even at night, when his fellow prisoners fought for their lives against the things that came out to menace them, he hadn't heard a single report echoing through the halls.

Edited 2010-01-05 07:27 (UTC)

"Look," Mello said, becoming annoyed with this discussion himself, and unable to help but feel scolded. "This place sucks, but it's better than being dead. People leave here. We can leave here."

He, of course, thought that no matter how difficult it was for other people to get to where patients' possessions were kept, he would be able to manage it. But he decided not to share that opinion with L, and he was certainly keeping it to himself that his ultimate goal here was to take down Landel and anyone else who got in the way.

After he did that, he'd need to know who to target back home. Once more, he attempted calm. "Who would they have picked as L?"

"I don't think it is as simple as that," he replied, his tone very flat. "People have managed to get some distance from the Institute on foot, at night, but they wake up in their beds in the morning with no idea how they got there. This situation also appears to extend to the town nearby: Doyleton. Patients were taken there on Saturday. If you're speaking of patients who are rumored to have been 'released'... well, release, if it exists, would certainly be conditional."

He speared a few bits of strawberry with his fork, put them in his mouth, and chewed a bit before he continued to speak. "It depends on a few factors" -- he paused to swallow -- "such as whether or not they paid much attention to my express intentions in suggesting it. But my first guess would be Light Yagami. It would be the kind of choice that group would be likely to make, and because there is an almost inestimable chance that he is Kira -- "

L gave an expansive shrug. "It explains his lack of progress on the case."

This bore out what Mello had experienced the previous night, with that chunk of time missing between meeting up with Emmett's friends and waking up in his bed with his shoulder bandaged. "Or they dump you back home, or somewhere, with no memory of here." He was still certain he could prove to be the exception to that rule too.

The revelation about the younger Yagami was surprising only in that it fit so well, Mello was annoyed with himself for not having concluded it sooner. He'd known Soichiro Yagami had a son who'd joined the police force, and someone like that would've been perfectly placed to conduct the manipulation he was sure Kira was pulling off. "Why would you have suggested him? He would've only just started college then, right?"

"Again, I do not think that is precisely the case. Some people had visitors, Sunday, relatives and friends, but -- it seems that at least some of the visitors claimed to be former patients, even when the people they were visiting didn't think there was any basis for the claim."

L's mouth was half-full of fruit again. He was articulate as he could be, under the circumstance.

He swallowed, then sighed at Mello's question. "Do you think I would have suggested him seriously? He is the only good suspect. It was a test."

"Light knew about it," Mello said, not making it a question. He'd discovered very little about how the investigation had proceeded under L, but it was the only way that gambit would have yielded useful information. Part of him wanted to ask who L would really have chosen, but the rest of him knew you didn't ask questions like that unless you were prepared for an answer you didn't like.

He took another bite of pizza, making a face when he found it was only lukewarm. "We both know first-hand how convincingly people can seem to be what they aren't. Those visitors could've been made to believe anything." Whatever the truth was about people's fates once they left, Mello was certain it was well-concealed. "If some version of me was really here before, I guarantee he would've brought hell down on this place by now if he could have."

"Of course," he replied, sounding indifferent. "So did everyone else. They were also aware of the intention behind the suggestion. Aizawa is the exception; he was not working with us then; he has just returned, now that Kira is no longer threatening Japanese government officials. Mr. Ide came with him this time, also."

He speared more fruit with his fork. The tenor of the conversation was getting on his nerves, if he was honest with himself, and there were a number of a questions about Mello, and his current state, which remained unanswered.

There was no need, at this point, to ask about the scar; its relative freshness suggested some kind of failure, possibly in the Kira case itself.

He couldn't decide whether or not he thought it made its bearer too identifiable to take up his position. L was not, himself, particularly anonymous-looking; there were some crowds he might blend into, but not many. His unusual appearance was irrelevant as long as his habit was to draw attention only when he made a conscious decision to do so and to spend the rest of the time well out of sight. Mello's scar, and his swagger, implied that his habits were different, perhaps even reckless.

This line of thought raised another question: what had happened in the five years that separated them? The few hints Mello had given him seemed shadowed and incomplete. Matt had mentioned Near as someone who had been at Landel's in the past, yet Mello had not mentioned him at all, presenting himself as the current investigator. None of what L knew about either of them indicated that Near would have been content to step back and allow Mello to claim the case for himself.

"What do you think Near would have done? He was also here. They might have developed a plan." L's tone was as innocent as it could be, with his mouth full of half-chewed fruit.

Mello was becoming irritated again himself. I can't grasp your entire strategy immediately if you don't give me all the information. And if I'd known Light Yagami was sticking his nose into the case from the beginning, I would've suspected him much sooner. "I never saw your files, Ryuuzaki." Now he knew who would've been able to make sure they were lost. "I didn't even know who your leading suspect was until now."

He also hadn't known that Near had been a prisoner here as well, and tore the crust off one of the pieces of pizza, frowning, as he considered this. Near certainly hadn't gone missing from back home; Hal would have told him, even if she'd been instructed to keep it quiet. So it was either in Mello's future, or irrelevant to him.

He scoffed at the idea of any variation of him being up for cooperating. "Near doesn't have what it takes to get out of here. I'd be shocked if he can tie his own shoelaces. He'd be a midnight snack for the first monster whose path he crossed. Trading information? Maybe. Outright planning together? It would never happen." It was salt in the wound that Near had gone, no matter what the conditions or circumstances had been, while Mello was here (again? it didn't matter: he was stuck and Near wasn't), and he tore a piece of the crust off with his teeth as forcefully as he usually crunched chocolate.

So, now it was obvious: in five years, Mello had been unable to accomplish the identification of Light Yagami as the leading suspect in the Kira investigation.

L had achieved it in two months, starting from scratch. Although it was true that he'd had the advantage of some cooperation with the Japanese police, they'd hindered him in other ways, and much of what he had learned was extraneous to his involvement with them. The FBI was useful, too, but they had assisted him only for a brief time. What had consumed all the months since then was a maddening series of attempts to prove what he knew to be true.

Even allowing for a number of circumstantial strictures -- that his own chosen successors were quite young, and that Yagami would almost certainly have suppressed as much evidence as he was able to -- L was disappointed that so little progress had been made in half a decade. Mello's comment about sharing information supported his suspicion that Near was also pursuing the case, and that they were not collaborating, or not collaborating much. There was no way of knowing how far Near might have gotten on his own. Probably not much further than Mello, if Kira was still a factor.

His flat gaze had been trained on Mello for a few seconds, but then he shook his head, as if to clear it. There is never any point, he thinks, in wasting much time wishing that circumstances could be different from what they are; it only prevents us from confronting them in an effective way.

"For the time being, Kira is... not irrelevant, but a secondary concern. The case may become more important again in the future. The current situation is more vital at the moment." He paused to load his fork with more fruit; there were now only a few pieces left. "Apart from resentment, which is natural, do you have any other specific thoughts on it?"

Edited 2010-01-21 00:04 (UTC)

Mello's theories and knowledge about the Institute were a work in progress. In a day, he'd gone from being certain the whole thing had been orchestrated for the sole purpose of taking him out of the picture to realizing that whatever the hell was going on here, it went too far, involved too many variables, for that. He tore the pizza crust into small pieces and ate a few, trying to pull something more useful from his mental file on the place than what they both already knew. L was right, of course: catching Kira had to take a backseat to getting back into a position to do it.

"I don't think it's random who they drag in, but there's no pattern I can see, yet, except that they take people who know each other. You, me, Matt, Near, someone called Mikami, who apparently knew me. That's not a chance sampling from back home. They've gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to get specific people." Including what amounted to time travel, and apparently being interested enough in Mello himself, among others, to kidnap them twice. But why? He tore another bit of crust off, but just tossed this one onto his plate.

"Who told you Near had been here? Did they actually see him?"

"No, you cannot accurately say that 'they' have gone to a lot of trouble. They may have, or they may not have, depending on how easy it is for 'them.' The mechanism of abduction is not known, although I'm told that some of the situations have been impossible... locked-room scenarios and so on, like moving vehicles. That is anecdotal, however." L paused to swallow the bite of fruit he was trying to speak around, his last. There was still some pizza left on his tray, but with the exception of the sweet baked pineapple, it wasn't to his taste.

"My own should have been relatively difficult; I was taken from a place with strong security measures. To me, the supposed irrelevance of how secure the situation ought to have been implies relative ease on the other side of the equation." He paused to shrug. He preferred to work on as few assumptions as possible; a guess might be lucky, but supportable facts were always preferable. Hunches came later, and were mostly useful as directional cues. He would still have to double back if a weak hunch didn't pan out, and decide how much effort to commit to a strong one.

"Some of the people here know each other; some do not; without interviewing everyone who is here, has been here, and will be here in the future, there is no way to be absolutely certain about the assertion. What we can say is that some people who know each other have been here."

On the periphery, nurses seemed to be picking up their activity. He suspected that it was only a matter of time before one came to encourage him to move on to the music room, a prospect he wasn't looking forward to. He wanted to be able to hear Landel's announcement; if it interrupted the conversation, so be it.

"Matt mentioned that Near had been here. Do you think he would have taken it on faith?"

Edited 2010-01-23 22:32 (UTC)

Poke a fucking hole in every idea I have, that's nice. Even if L were right--which, okay, he probably was--it was annoying.

"No one should've been able to get to me, either." Mello had sidestepped the security to get into Lidner's place easily enough, but no one on earth should have been able to break in while he was there, not stealthily enough to catch him by surprise. He still didn't believe plucking people out of any time they cared to was easy; the idea made him feel too powerless, and he'd never accept that.

He rolled his eyes reflexively at the realization that it was almost time to get fucking herded along again, but he was done eating.

"No. Matt wouldn't have believed it without a reason. Do you know who this Mikami person is?"

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Day 46: Lunch

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