damned_institute | Dayshift 49: Bus 2

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Dayshift 49: Bus 2

Morning hit without warning, with the sheer knowledge hitting the Digimon before anything else that today they were going back to Doyletown. Her feet hit the floor and she rotated her right shoulder experimentally. The skin stretched tight, soreness persevering, but it moved fine. She stretched her fingers then curled them into a fist, staring at the tanned skin that was her right arm. If something happened this time... She would be more useful. Her mind replayed the events of last week, and Renamon stilled, considering.

There wasn't much time left to her as the nurse bustled in with an armful of clothes, the same shade as the weeks before. The woman murmured a cheery complaint that it was too cold for skirts and left Renamon to change. The pants were preferable to the past two weeks, though the other item she was left with gave too much to irony. She frowned at it for a minute, then slid it over her head, reflecting that this motion in days or weeks past would have left her shuddering. It meant she was becoming used to this human body, and that was nothing that boded well. She grabbed her notebook before being led to a bus, and slid into a seat halfway down the aisle, pressing against the window. Again, the previous night had been more than short. Was it just her, or was there something more to it?

[for Haseo!]

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She just didn’t know what to do. Another night, another chance to make a difference, and Tsubaki had nothing to show for it. She could do the math: in the two weeks she’d been imprisoned in Landel’s, more than half of her nights had ended abruptly without being able to achieve her intended goal, or even being able to attempt the goal.

It was frustrating, and worrying. A desperate coil of anxiety made her want to wring her hands, muss her hair, do something.

There was nothing good in getting worked up, but--! It was like she was standing still while everyone around her suffered. What could she do to stop them, the… the whatever they were, time lags? To make sure she could do more than just do nothing? Tsubaki wanted someone to tell her how. She wanted to be useful. She wanted Black☆Star.

And now it was time for another field trip, and there was no possible way of telling what would happen this time, if there would be a similar attack, if there would be something worse… There would be new prisoners around, too, with no idea what was going on, and the people on the radio didn’t seem to want to or couldn’t help… Tsubaki knew this feeling. It’d been dogging her as long as she’d been in the Institute, rising up when she couldn’t keep it completely repressed. Selfishly, there was also fear for herself mixed in, beginning with her parents and ending with her brother.

With a slightly more lackluster demeanor than usual, Tsubaki worked with her nurse to get ready for the trip. She didn’t understand the reference on the t-shirt (http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a129/shirasyndrome/12109-1.jpg?t=1271213178) she was given, but combined with a pair of black pants that fit for the most part, the outfit was simple and comfortable enough. It seemed the weather was rainy again—on top of her breakfast bag, she was given a raincoat (http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a129/shirasyndrome/today257.jpg?t=1271213152) with cute little whales on it to put on as she walked to the buses.

The clothes weren’t really her style, and fashion didn’t occupy much of her thoughts, but Tsubaki tried to smile at the coat. She couldn’t let herself be subsumed by fears. If something were to happen that day, she could only act.

Taking a seat, the girl scooted to the window and began eating her bagel.

The feeling was unmistakable. Out from his hair poured the dark hair, and it was wrong, it wasn't right—

And then it was gone, replaced by white walls and a cheerful smile. Riku didn't even feel like he closed his eyes. It was eerie how much control they had over him, and it made him feel powerless. The last thing he wanted was these people in charge to have every aspect of him bound and controlled. The lack of freedom was suffocating. The feeling that he couldn't get anywhere seemed to envelop him more than he liked, but he tried to deal with it. He had to deal with it. His friends were counting on him.

Friends who, while traveling with, he hadn't been able to find any answers. They were doing a good job, weren't they?

Riku's mind was swimming a little too much to really pay attention to what the nurse was saying. He caught a bit about pulling on clothing and going into town, but he didn't know anything else. At least, he knew he was headed out, but he didn't know where or what for. Why would they chance giving them that much freedom? Didn't they think of what would happen if they managed to actually work as a unit? Then again, Riku had a feeling a few of them weren't that unlike him, in the end. Working for what mattered often outweighed some intelligent notions.

He pulled on his clothing quickly. It wasn't really his style, but most things weren't. After a year in the Organization jacket, he wasn't too picky. Jeans, a bright red shirt—whatever, he didn't mind.

After they were on, he headed out, just in time to see Sora getting on a bus. But before he could head in and sit by his friend, as his instincts told him to do, his nurse caught him by the shoulder. "We've got someone we'd like you to talk to."

Interference again. He didn't say anything. A frown was all she deserved, and all he would give, really.

He was a little surprised when he saw the nurse was directing him toward a girl a moment later. He hadn't had the chance to talk to too many—or any, really, with the exception of Kairi and Naminé. Riku took the seat beside her and slouched a little, though his gaze still moved easily over the seat in front of him. Since he noticed the bagel in her hand, he started to eat his, and he didn't bother with greetings yet. Better to get a read on the situation, he felt, than waste his time with awkward formalities. Plus, he needed strength, so he figured he had some excuse.

It’d never been a real concern, her dad’s jokes about worrying until one’s hair turned gray. When it came to problems, there was always some kind of room in which to find a solution. But things had never been as bad as this. Landel’s was a different type of battleground altogether.

Even so, there was a path forward here, too. No matter what happened, Tsubaki knew it to be true, and that was what she’d focus on.

Her reflecting kept her distracted to the point of only vaguely paying attention to the prisoners that got on and moved past to find seats; she didn’t realize the duo were approaching until a figure in red slid in beside her. Tsubaki looked over in mid-bite, eyes on the retreating nurse, before quickly passing her hand over her mouth to brush away any cream cheese.

"Um, hello," she offered as the boy began to dig into his own breakfast. His face wasn’t all that familiar to her.

There were three buses. Riku already noted that much outside, but he double checked by peering beyond the seats out the window toward the other buses (or catching the reflection of one on the window). Three, somewhat full buses, with the opportunity to possibly slip by and be unnoticed. What were they thinking? What were they playing at? Was this just an excuse to make them act out? He wanted to see if anyone else was trying anything, but his vantage point didn't provide him much of a chance. And there was also the part where they might not bother before the ride out. Too much of a risk of the trip itself being canceled.

Yeah, he decided. Nothing would happen yet.

He chewed in a manner that could only be called "moodily" on his bagel while drawing these conclusions. No matter the weight of them, they came to him quickly, and he followed only his second bite by time they were completed and she greeted him. Riku peered over to her as if he was looking at her for the first time again, and he thought about what to say. No need for the pep talk now. They forced him into this enough times that he could probably skip a few steps.

"Hey," he greeted while he straightened up a little. His coat felt a little bulky on him, but he didn't care. "I'm Riku."

Someone was apparently involved in other thoughts, too.

Tsubaki smiled at him. “I’m Tsubaki,” she returned. “Nice to meet you.” Making conversation with her new seatmate was better than sitting alone or dismissing talk in favor of mulling. Like a distraction for distractions. Maybe it was the same for him.

And his name, Riku… Had she it heard it before...? No, no, she was sure she’d read it!

Instead of asking a general question, like how long he’d unfortunately been in Landel’s already, she lowered her hand into her lap, expression tinged with curiosity. “Riku-san…” she repeated slowly, adding, “This might sound odd, but are you by chance the same Riku who was writing to Sora on the bulletin?”

So much for keeping him away from his friends. At least, this was clearly someone who knew Sora. Not that that said anything—for all he knew, this was someone in that club that he didn't like, or maybe just someone who met Sora along the way and never forgot him. His best friend had always been good about making a nice first impression. Still, he figured he had some luck being placed next to a girl who knew him. It meant they had some common ground to stand on.

"Yeah, that's me." He realized that it meant that anyone could read about their conversations, and that meant that anyone could know that he didn't like that club. Oh, well. It wasn't like Riku went around trying to make everyone happy. That wasn't ever that important to him. "How do you know Sora?" It occurred to him that perhaps she didn't actually know Sora and was just some busybody, but he figured a busybody would be a little less obvious about it. Probably, anyway. It wasn't like he couldn't just go tell his friend that someone was keeping tabs on them for no reason.

"What a coincidence," said Tsubaki. Well, it was… and it wasn’t, in a way. Friends, family, it seemed common for people who knew each other to wind up trapped together eventually. Something to be thankful for, but also a kind of cruelty to have loved ones suffer, too. She could imagine what Sora was going through, because if she remembered correctly, his friends hadn’t been in Landel’s before… "He’s a friend. I met him a few days after I arrived, and we’ve worked together once in that time,” she went on. "He’s a good person, so I’m glad he’s not alone."

Anyway, she took the connection to be harmless. Hopefully mentioning it had been all right to do. That the Institute could be such a small world (figuratively, at least) touched on its more disheartening aspects, and that could put a first meeting into a nosedive without any trouble. But even Tsubaki knew it could be hard to think about other things.

"Can I ask how long you’ve been here?"

"It's just day three," he responded. Riku felt more at ease with a self-professed friend of Sora's. Though Sora had met up with some idiots in this place, he didn't think they were bad idiots. Just idiots. There was a difference. Those guys in the club just didn't know how to handle things in the correct way, but it wasn't like they weren't trying to help. Even he realized that. Sora himself hadn't always made the right choices, but most times, he made it out okay—or a certain definition of okay. His time in Castle Oblivion and the muddled results contradicted that quite a bit.

"Nothing to write home about," he added. His posture took a turn for the worse again as he slouched. "Not like most people here—like Sora, anyway." Not that Sora could write home. Riku had a feeling bottles didn't travel very well from this world back to Destiny Islands.

Three days. That meant… For a moment, a touch of dismayed surprise widened her eyes slightly before she muted the expression and put on another smile. Riku having not been around for more than week wasn’t so strange a thing when people came and went all the time, but the realization that he hadn’t been around for the previous field trip and might not know what’d happened made her uneasy.

Expecting danger here was different from expecting it during nightshifts. With the latter, a person always knew the possibility was there, could almost grow desensitized to the thought in time, but nothing was set in stone. A night could be uneventful in a loose sense of the word. But with the field trips now… They hadn’t been expecting what had happened last. The night hadn’t yet set in before those things had started to appear, and the attack had been on a much greater scale than anything she’d seen in the hospital. The risk, and thus the foreboding, was worse.

Absently, Tsubaki leaned forward a little to better view his face. “So has anyone told you about the field trips?” she asked. She kept any uncertainty out of the question.

"I haven't heard anything," he replied. It was the truth. The fact that she transitioned to that meant that there was something to tell, he just didn't know what that was yet. "Except that it's probably too easy to conclude that we can just escape. It's meant to tempt us, probably. Along with everything else here." That didn't leave him from wondering if he could properly time a bathroom break and sneak out a window. Too many possibilities, and he hadn't gotten there yet. It wasn't like Riku to hope, but he couldn't give up, either, not when his friends were sitting so close.

"I guess ... if there's anything to tell, let me know." He welcomed any information that could make his arrival in this town go a little more smoothly. Any information in general was what he wanted about Landel's and this new town, but he realized it would probably hard to get. That wouldn't mean he'd stop trying.

Ah… She didn’t hesitate to share information if she could, but there came a point when warnings leaned towards doomsaying. “I see,” said Tsubaki. There were staff patrolling up and down the aisle at any given time, and she pitched her voice lower. “This’ll be my third time. You’re right about getting away as far as I can tell. There’s usually twice the amount of hospital staff; I haven’t heard of anyone being able to sneak past them. The area is in the control of the Head Doctor, too. The townspeople act perfectly normal, but I think they’d alert someone if we tried anything.

“But mostly you should be careful. The last time there was a field trip, everyone was still in town when it… changed. Like what happens at night. There were enemies everywhere.”

Which only gave the facts. She couldn’t do justice to the scene.

Changed. Enemies everywhere. Riku focused in on these factors instead of the rest, and he decided he didn't like it at all. His hands pressed against his legs while he tried to process it, and he thought of his friends. In fact, he even paused, making a point of looking in Sora's direction. That wasn't what he wanted to hear; he didn't want to hear that there were enemies there. And he had a feeling they would be just as limited as before, especially if Landel had control over it.

"Why can't we just take a bus out when that happens?" He figured if everyone went mindless, it might actually be their opening. A very difficult opening, but one all the same. A diversion with some headed back home and others headed out to the great beyond could possibly work. Then again, he knew he was missing some facts. "The monsters—they aren't that cunning. Right?"

In Landel’s alone, Tsubaki had broke similarly bad news more than once, and it was never any more pleasant. Hearing it was worse than telling it.

Riku looked away for a moment, and she remained silent until he spoke again.

“There’s no telling for sure it will,” she felt she should say. But they weren’t words of blind hope, either. Maybe everything would be fine (at least about returning from the town unscathed). Or maybe Landel had something else planned. Always, with this not knowing, it was…

But Riku’s question was compelling. What ways could they escape? Tsubaki hadn’t yet exhausted that possible avenue just because… “No, not the ones I faced. They were… more instinctive. But they were different than the ones that appear around the hospital. They were, uh, zombies.” The word wasn’t unbelievable to her, but merely strange to think about, knowing Sid-sensei and the kind of nonviolent zombie he was. “The buses usually stop outside a park with some nurses on them to watch patients who stay behind.” In other words, there was wide open space in all directions that needed to be crossed before getting to the buses. And after that, there would be nurses to face, mutated nurses.

"So, no chance," he decided, though the last thing Riku wanted was to be so ultimately defeated. He thought about it and realized the only way to do it would be to work together. No matter how hard the nurses tried, they wouldn't be able to stop a group of time combined. No zombies would be able to keep the number of them apart. Three buses full of people could do some damage if they tried.

"Do we get our powers back if this happens?" It seemed like a good question to ask. "Not the full ones—the limited ones."

“Yes. Every time the sun seems to set.”

At least there was that. And at least Riku had now heard the worst case scenario firsthand. But Tsubaki had some experience in tactics, stacked odds, and the determination of those fighting for the right reasons—so she had to disagree with his phrasing. The more they learned, there would come a time when they could flip the tables; she knew this, whether or not it took the edge off of her fraying feelings.

She cupped her hands around the leftover portion of bagel, done with it while she could still talk with Riku. “I still think there’s a chance. Besides what we’ve been talking about, it might reveal something about what’s going on. But there is a hardware store and other supply places.” Tsubaki paused for a beat. Their reality was rather pitiless. “In case something happens.”

"All right, maybe I'll just check those out." Riku gave a small shift, and he noticed that the buses were coming closer to a town when he looked out the window. He had a feeling that not as much would get done due to his unfamiliarity with the area, but he would still try. His ability to bounce around an area freely would be gone, but he couldn't let that keep him down. Riku remembered running through the institute the night before to keep in shape; maybe doing something like that might just help him out.

"Thanks for filling me in on all this."

“It’s no problem. I’m sure if you talk to others, they can tell you more.” She got the impression that Riku was going to be on the move soon.

In some ways, the drive down seemed much shorter than the wait to get everyone loaded on did. Once the park came into view, the nurses began to get ready to reverse the process and disembark their patients; the usual wave of movement went through the bus at the promise of their destination. Tsubaki smiled at Riku, but in looking at what lay past the window, her stomach twisted just a little tighter.

What exactly was with this town and what was going to happen?

“If I don’t you see you again today, I hope it goes well,” Tsubaki ventured. “Tomorrow I’ll leave a note for you on the bulletin to check in.” It was painfully apparent to her that putting up notes or searching for faces in the crowd alone just weren’t enough.

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Dayshift 49: Bus 2

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