Day 48: Courtyard

[thatdamnedninja.livejournal.com]

"I could tell you some stories," Yuffie suggested brightly, "of unquestionable legality." Illegality, that was. Petty little things like the law didn't usually mean very much to her, except for the times when she had to uphold it. Always fun for the breaking, though, the law, and messy for the clean-up. Just the way she liked it.

Her nurse looked like she wanted to rub her temples. With sandpaper. "No, thank you," she said instead. "Why don't you run along, now?" Please!, was the unspoken request. Before I spontaneously combust. Or commit various acts of violence that would have me arrested, or placed in a loony bin. Like this one. Yuffie had quite a bit of fun filling in the blanks other people left. Sometimes she did it outloud, just to see the reaction; sometimes she kept it to herself. It really, really depended.

"Don't mind if I do!"

She took off, bolting out into the Courtyard. The weather was dour, overcast and threatening rain, but Yuffie didn't care. She'd refused a coat on principle, and had found herself bargaining: Fine, fine, Plucky had conced she could go without a coat, but unless she had at least a sweatshirt on, there'd be no outside-time for her. She ran a little ways down the dirt path, then toppled herself into a series of cartwheels. Straighten, run. Cartwheel. Straighten, run, just for the sheer sake of movement, and the whip of the wind. She laughed a little giddily, checking her gait down to a jog. Gawd, Leviathan, she'd needed this. Right from the get-go, she'd needed this. Every day she spent cooped up in side, the more nervous energy she had.

Nanaki had helped, she realized. Sort of. He'd…helped. In a way. His presence and everything that was wrong with it weighed on her, for sure, but he was still Nanaki. He didn't deserve to be here, didn't deserve to be stuck in a body that he hated and couldn't use, but all the same, she found herself glad to have him.

Yuffie started to hum, as she jogged leisurely around the Courtyard. A cheery little tune, one of her favorites; no, it was her favorite. A Wutaian walking song, with the roughly translated title of Pathway After the Rain. The pace stayed even but the tune picked up, and she found herself half-singing snatches of the lyrics to herself. It felt like ages since she'd last said anything in her native tongue, at least outloud; she wrote in it all the time.

[The Doctor]

Comments

[diamondstorm]

[ahhh, sorry for fail and lateness. T_T]

The Digimon showed no reaction to the belated introduction, merely added her own. "I am Renamon." As for the other things he said she found herself in circles she had passed. The 'who's'' had been considered, as they were, and passed on. She tilted her head. "Supposedly this place is government and military funded, but that seems a little too simple for the scale of the matter."

It was hard to find someone that didn't want to destroy the place. Renamon didn't disagree. But she did not want to blindly destroy all of it. They needed to learn how it worked, filter the knowledge and try to use as much as possible to reverse some of the effects done. If everything was destroyed, they would be stuck here. She was almost sure of it.

But that was shifted aside momentarily. She blinked at his declaration of knowledge, curious. "You say you know? What is it that you've found?"

[poolcuemurder.livejournal.com]

Venom held a hand up in front of himself, almost like he were commanding the woman to stop speaking (which he was. It was a bad habit). "That isn't what I meant." He should have phrased that better, maybe. Maybe he was still feeling too ill to properly convey anything right now, if that conversation with Alkaid told him anything. That didn't mean he wasn't going to try, however. Strangers or no, he still needed all the help he could find. If Renamon knew something, anything... "I don't mean what as in who. I mean what as in what - what is running this place," he clarified as he shifted his weight to his right leg and his arms folded up to cross with the notebook over his chest. The change in position parted his hair just enough to watch her with one visible eye. "They're using some sort of tools to keep us here and maintain this system that they've set up. I want to know what it is that they're using."

He kept quiet about how 50% of that desire did not entirely revolve around shutting it down. If it were this powerful at keeping enemies at bay, imagine what sort of good this technology would do for the Guild! He wasn't entirely sure just what he could use it for or if it were entirely in keeping with Master Zato's wishes, but...

Hmm.

"And you've already answered that yourself." It was an easy conclusion and one that had been practically spelled out by Iris. The assassin hadn't thought there was a need to ask what he knew. "Landel's Institute is being sponsored for the purposes of a program known as Next-Wave," he recited to her. How many times has he gone over his notes in order to do that? That was worrisome... "While I don't know the specifics of the program, from the comments the automated system have made and the 'treatment' we are receiving, 'why' is a simple answer." He paused, taking in the sight of a group of nurses chatting amongst themselves in the corner. The more he thought about this, the more it was sounding like a terrible sci-fi novel and the more he felt like a paranoid and ultimately helpless protagonist. "We're here to be brainwashed."

[diamondstorm]

She watched the man without reaction to his interruption, following as he went on. Here was a topic with more comfort. "You'll hear different things from different people. Different ways to pull others from homes, and across realities. If you're looking for that, look for similarities in stories. Or otherwise." Look where no one else had. If that was even applicable. It was simple enough for things to change overnight--it would be simple enough to hide something from view. The fact remained what they were looking for could be in plain sight.

"Otherwise, two places of interest are the third floor and the basement. Both are shrouded, though both hold secrets it seems." She had some looking into the latter, while Renamon herself would prefer to explore the former. The ways to get there, however, seemed worst than most.

At his explanation, the barest change slid over her expression in a cock of an eyebrow. "It's perfectly reasonable that that is true. Though it seems too simple for the situation. A program in a place like this clearing spelling something out? It seems more like a red herring than a true fact--something to consider but not hold to."