Night 49: F21-F30 Hallway

[no-dont-go.livejournal.com]

Sleep studies. Emergency reconstruction. The doctor's first message was just as ominous as his second, and once again Aigis felt herself dealing with a rush of sudden, burning emotions. She had to stay seated for a moment, biting her bottom lip, just trying to cool down. With her cooling jets missing, it wasn't quite as easy to filter in air to calm her. She had to rely on this model's version of human "breathing." Was this how real humans coped with the fluctuations in their systems? It was a tedious process.

Finally, she was relaxed again, but just as determined. Standing to her feet, Aigis retrieved the baseball bat Junpei had prepared for her and made for the door. She would find Landel tonight, and force him to release all the patients here in the institution. If he would not listen to her pleas, she was not opposed to using physical means.

[To here]

Comments

[witchoftruth]

It seemed that Battler really did come from an earlier "timeline", but even so, he should have expected that Erika was going to be tenacious about checking each and every possibility that the witch was alive. That was her initial purpose in the first game they played together, wasn't it? While Erika was slowly getting the idea that Beatrice had very little, if anything at all, to do with their game, she was adamant in checking anyway. It was probably purely out of spite, wanting to make sure that her victory over the witch remained so.

That was why Erika seemed rather pleased when the door opened to reveal no one in the room. Of course, this room wasn't secure and it was possible that Beatrice suffered the same fate as Nunnally. What kind of trick was this, not even resorting to a closed door? Not that Erika needed one.

One might have expected a remark or two from Erika, but there was none as the detective slipped in after Battler, immediately moving to one of the closets and sliding it open. Her inspection was thorough, and she repeated her actions with the second closet. Upon finding nothing, the detective moved to the beds and proceeded to search underneath them, and then observe the tops, and even checking around corners. After every possible inch of the room was explored by Erika, the detective merely turned to Battler and tapped on one of the bed frames.

"There were people using this room, at the very least," She pointed out, looking just as amused as ever. "Of course, the doors have been unlocked for quite some time now and if Beatrice was here, she has left for the night. I suppose we'll just have to look for her, don't we?"

Of course Beatrice was not in this room. Beatrice didn't exist, and Erika couldn't believe Battler had led her back into the hallway she just came out of and took a chance picking a random room hoping that the occupants had already left. Then again, that sort of reliance on dumb luck did seem to be an Ushiromiya tradition.

[dreadofthegrave]

Unlike Erika, Battler didn't spare the room much of a glance beyond the fact that it seemed empty upon entering. If there were some deeper sort of mystery, he might have tried to look more closely and see if he could think of anything, but as it was, there were no real questions at all. The only thing here was an empty room with an unlocked door, which was about all that was needed. At any rate, it hardly left anything unanswered.

"... If you're that bored, do whatever you want. There's no reason at all for me to aimlessly wander around such a big place for one person when there's no clue where she could've gone. Anyway, I already talked to her in person. Even if you keep dragging this out, she's definitely here. No matter what kind of weird theory you come up with, you'll run into her eventually."

It was annoying enough that this whole farce was even continuing. There were much better things to be looking into than the the location of someone whose presence he'd already witnessed. And didn't everyone get herded around together during the day anyway? If Erika was as observant as she claimed to be, there was no way that she'd miss her for very long. ... This didn't even make for a game. Games implied challenge and multiple outcomes; something like this only led to a single, fixed point.

[witchoftruth]

"I find it strange that I haven't run into her yet," Erika pointed out. Beatrice was the first thing she would have noticed, but all she had was Battler. As if she was going to simply believe that the witch existed simply because Battler couldn't let go of her just yet. She sat down on one of the beds, waving at him dismissively. He wasn't going to provide her any more information than what he was already repeating, and Erika needed some time to think about her next course of action.

Looking for Beatrice would have been the ideal thing, yes, but there was no point looking for someone who could have been anywhere in this place. With a personality like Beatrice's, there was no need to look for her. Beatrice was stupid enough to come to anyone who challenged her. In that case, Erika would simply have to drag her out.

Battler wasn't required for that, so she said nothing and instead looked around the room thoughtfully. It seemed that their conversation was over, for the time being.

[dreadofthegrave]

[ ducking out to here ]