damned_institute | DAY 23: BREAKFAST

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DAY 23: BREAKFAST

That hadn't felt like an entire night.

And his goddamn head hurt. Pounded, even. Enough that he wondered if he was going to end up playing another round of "Christen the nurse" this morning.

Maybe it was because he'd spent so much time and energy trying to find Nowe. That could be the reason behind both those problems. Just the thought of it made his stomach turn, made him want to fucking choke something.

Still, there was shit to do. He forced himself out of bed to put away his pens and the other leftovers from the adventures that didn't happen last night. He'd have to try to talk to Sora today, to see if they could just do tonight what they were going to do last night... and to see if the kid was doing alright.

...he just wished his head would stop hurting. That was probably the result of just how badly he'd overreached himself the previous morning.

The nurse that showed up to get him was cheerful. He grunted at her, listening to her with only half an ear until she mentioned all the excitement, about someone pretending to be a patient, all that crap that Landel had mentioned.

Renji gave her a narrow-eyed look. "Dr. Landel is a goddamn lying coward, and he's lying about that, too," he said. Whether it was true or not, there was only so much good cheer he could take on a shitty morning. "I hope he chokes on a cock." No matter how much venom he put in that statement, it wasn't enough.

Then he had to listen to a lecture about language and gratitude for the rest of the walk to the cafeteria, so maybe it wasn't worth it after all. She dragged him through the breakfast line, and he ended up with granola and toast and tea and a cinnamon roll, because not even a shitty fucking night could ruin his sweet tooth. Though that thing was looking a little too sweet.

The cafeteria was pretty much empty; he had his run of the place. He sat himself about as far from the doors as he could get, and proceeded to stare at his breakfast.

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Rukia looked at Adel and Renji, suddenly very alarmed. She had heard some mention of people having their powers back, but not being able to act of their own free will or some such. Any Shinigami who could release his Bankai was a force to be reckoned with, and Renji alone could bring down this whole building in a moment. And Renji being controlled by someone else... It was a terrifying thought, and came a little too close to some events in their recent past.

Rukia opened her mouth, then shut it again. This was Renji's question to answer.

"Zanpakuto are... special," Renji said. "I know mine better than I know myself. I was hoping, if I could gather the materials, I'd be able to ask for a pretty close copy of Zabimaru - his unreleased form, at least. I can describe everything about him..."

He fell silent, the good cheer draining out of him. "If they put me into Special Counseling... I guess just hope they don't. With my bankai, I could level this building in a matter of seconds, and it'd be easy." He frowned. "But from what I've gathered about these things... if they just set me against the other prisoners, I wouldn't even need to release Zabimaru from his initial form. I don't know about how anyone is under full power, but the way everyone is here... I wouldn't even break a sweat." He shrugged. "If it even came to a fight. Back home, they don't let me go to the physical world unless my power's been sealed first. If they didn't put a similar seal on me here, you'd be unable to get near me. You'd end up suffocating if you tried."

His frown deepened. "Any of the shinigami here would be able to take down as many people as we wanted, and without a fight. But Rukia, you could at least try to get close to, if she decided to let you. Rangiku is almost as strong as me. Ichimaru Gin," he couldn't say the name without wanting to grind his teeth, "was a Captain. He's even stronger. You'd just better hope they never pick any of us."

"I suppose... that all I can say is that, apparently, forcing someone in such a state to recall important memories can break them out of that condition. I can not say it for certain, myself, but if you are indeed that powerful, then that is the only course of action the rest of us would have." Adelheid gritted his teeth, looking at his palms in something like frustration. He had spent his entire life looking for that kind of power, power enough to free himself from his destiny... and now he wouldn't even be able to get near to it.

After a moment, he quietly added, "Sadly, I know what it's like, to face someone with that level of undeniable power. I thank you for being so honest; I wish only that there was some way of release this seal on our power without succumbing to the control of Doctor Landel. Being able to level this place would make exploring easy, wouldn't you say?"

Despite his light words, though, Adelheid's envy and frustration were both building. They could heal, and they could utilize more power than even he could. That child-like part of him wanted to say that it wasn't fair, that the price they paid meant nothing in the face of what they could do, the life that they could enjoy... and he found his gaze drifting to the tattoos on Renji's forehead, suddenly wondering about them. They seemed normal enough, but thus far, Adelheid had been handily defeated by two individuals with strange markings on their bodies. Wouldn't it be ironic if there was another in this place?

Rukia felt like crawling under the table at the mention of Ichimaru Gin. She looked around, locating the head of short silver hair, and hunkered down in her seat, just a little. He was one of the few people Rukia had ever met who truly terrified her. She really didn't want to know what Rangiku was doing talking to the man.

Trying to pay attention to the conversation again, Rukia cleared her throat. "You said that people who undergo... Special Counseling," She glanced at Renji, using the term he had. "That they have to guard certain places. Such as?"

"Important memories?" That was a useful fact he hadn't heard. He filed that away, just in case. Though if one of his people were under Special Counseling, he doubted they'd be able to bring up anything quickly enough to make a difference.

He chuckled. "Yeah, it would. If I just had Zabimaru..." He shook his head. If wouldn't help any of them. "We just have to do the best we can." He fell silent for a moment, worried. He had to hope that the zanpakuto were just sealed away, and not destroyed...

...no, he was not going to entertain that thought again.

He cocked up one eyebrow, noting Adel's expression. It was a little more than he expected from the normal grimness of talk of Special Counseling. "Somethin' wrong?" he asked, quietly.

He noted where Rukia looked, his eyes narrowing. What the hell was Matsumoto doing? He kept his anger under wraps for now; he was supposed to talk to the asshole first, and then he could figure out what to do.

For a moment, he slipped his arm around her shoulders, his touch light. He didn't make a big deal of it, though. "I don't know, to be honest," he said. "They've never been anywhere that I've gone."

Adelheid slowly shook his head, chasing off both the thoughts that were descending on him and the slightly gloomy cast of his features. No need for that, not quite yet. "No, nothing's wrong. But I'm afraid all I can offer are rumors; whether any of this is true or not, I'm unable to verify myself. But I believe that each person is limited to one room or location; the same as the more threatening monsters of this place. As to which rooms are chosen, I'm afraid I don't have any idea; all I could assume would be rooms of some significance, or where some amount of traffic is expected."

But then Adelheid noticed where both of them were looking, and he blinked quizzically. How strange... was that one of the individuals that they had mentioned earlier? "I suppose I should ask you the same question; is something wrong? Both of you seem a bit off-balance."

Rukia jumped a little when Renji rested his arm on her shoulder; she was still on edge, thinking about Ichimaru. Renji was just trying to be nice, though, so she made herself relax, and stop looking across the room at the former Captain.

She started to respond to Adel's question with hollow assurances that everything was fine. But the kid was being very forthcoming with them, and seemed to have some ghosts in his own closet. She might as well just be honest with him. "Ah, nothing is wrong, exactly. Just, the person Renji mentioned, Ichimaru Gin," She couldn't help it; her voice dropped almost to a whisper when she said the name, as though it would make him turn that smile on her. "He's, well, just don't turn your back on him, not for a second." She licked her lips; her mouth felt dry. "Thank you for all the information, Adel."

"He's a traitor," Renji said. He didn't know why Rukia was dancing around things. Well, maybe he did, but it wasn't his way. He gave her shoulder one last reassuring squeeze, then moved his arm away, looking back at Adel. "And he conspired to have Rukia executed. Though it was stopped in time." He didn't include himself in that explanation; as far as he was concerned, he simply hadn't done enough.

Moving back to a slightly better topic - he guessed - he said, "I don't know about the monsters. There's one I've encountered now, with a giant metal pyramid for its head. I know that it wanders freely."

If there was one thing Adelheid hated above all else, it was traitors. Especially those who conspired to kill others, that especially drew the teenager's ire. His crimson eyes smoldered for a moment as he looked at Gin, knowing that he should have at least given the man the benefit of the doubt, but... still, his fists clenched, even despite the pain that caused him. Traitors. And a captain, no less. "I thank you for the warning," he politely answered, though his voice was clipped, "and I will be certain to keep my wits about me should I encounter him. And please, there are no thanks necessary; I only wish that there was something more concrete I could tell you."

Then Renji mentioned that monster with a pyramid-like head, and Adelheid's attention snapped back to the red-haired man. "You 'know' that it wanders freely? But when I encountered it, it didn't follow me in from the outside. Which was quite the boon for me, which I'm sure you'd agree, having met it." The memory of that monster still made Adelheid's blood run cold. Not because of the invincibility, or because of the impossibility of its movement. But rather, because it knew. How? How could it know something that Adelheid alone could know!?

Rukia looked up at Renji when he moved his arm away. It had been kind of nice, despite her initial reaction, but she certainly wasn't going to tell him that. Anyway, not important, she told herself.

She couldn't help but noticed Adel's discomfort. Squeezing his fists together like that was probably painful, given the nasty wounds on them. But more so than the physical pain, Rukia saw something in his eyes when he spoke of the monster. This young man was a warrior, and a brave one; she could see that clear as day. He as probably like Renji and Ichigo (and every member of the Eleventh Division) - go down fighting, with a smile on your lips, and your enemy's blood on your sword. And yet there was a kind of fear in Adel's eyes. Skeletons. Rukia decided not to pry; she barely knew him, after all.

"How fast does this thing move?" she asked, deciding to go for a more practical question.

"It moves fast when it wants to," Renji said. "It's... weird. When it attacked us, it went after Nowe, and... it let him go when I stuck a pen through its forearm, but..." He rubbed his forehead. "I think it could've ignored me if it'd wanted to." He didn't like the implication of that. "I got the kids the hell out after that. I guess it was more interested in going after Kurosaki than it was with chasing us." He shook his head. "But anyway, that night... we encountered it in one of the upstairs halls. But it'd been in the staircase before us. I saw where it was dragging its sword."

Adelheid was quiet for some time, letting Renji speak on the matter, as he had obviously had experience with the creature as well. Only when Renji mentioned a weapon did Adelheid perk up. "A sword? But when I encountered it a few nights ago, it didn't have a weapon at all." Baffling; why didn't it have a sword if it had one? Or had it only recently obtained such a weapon?

Regardless, he did have to learn all of this, and store it in his memory to put into his journal later. "It was certainly capable of tremendous bursts of speed; when Eric and I surrounded it, it turned and attacked before I could recognize the motion. But other times it seemed impossibly slow and unwieldy; I honestly don't know what to make of that thing."

He paused for a moment, then looked at Renji. His voice was quiet, restrained, but intent. "When you fought against that monster... did you or any of the others experience a sense of deja vu? A feeling that the monster knew something more than what it should have?" It was a long shot, but he had to make sure. Perhaps... perhaps it had all been a coincidence. That would be a little relieving, at least.

"It wasn't a sword any of us could use," Renji said. "Fuckin' thing was longer than I am tall, and had to be a foot wide, maybe more." He thought back to the signs he'd seen in the stairway. "Heavy and strong enough that it destroyed part of the stairway. And was struck deeply into the wall."

He nodded. "It moved fast at times, and slowly at others. Sometimes it was clumsy, but then..." He bared his teeth. "It's like it's playing with us."

"I didn't experience anything like that. It was focused on... Nowe, though, not me." He gritted his teeth for a moment, then continued. "Afterward, Nowe was acting delerious, and said a lot of things that didn't make sense. But I put that down to it breaking his skull open on the wall. And then..." He frowned. "I don't know. He might have said something after I healed him - he talked a lot, I think, but I can't really remember any of it."

It felt important to compare notes on this monster, but he wasn't ready to talk about Nowe yet. Not that it mattered. He had to do what he had to do. He just had to be stoic about it.

"...why wouldn't it focus on you?" Adelheid was baffled by that; except for those few times when Eric had directly attacked him, the monster had gone after Adelheid with an almost single-minded determination. After what had happened, Adel had a guess as to why this was the case; but, if Renji had been living for over a hundred years, wouldn't he have an even greater debt to pay?

But then he remembered where he'd heard that name before, and he felt more awkward than ever. Nowe... the bulletin board post had said that he was gone. Dead, or worse. So he left that topic with a quiet, "I wish I could have met him." It would have been important, he thought; to meet with someone else who had known what the monster was doing, whom he could compare notes with. But as it was, that wasn't something he could now speak on. And he knew that Renji would have had to taken the disappearance hard; anyone who protected someone else would know that.

After a moment's pause, he shifted the conversation, ever-so-obviously. "Pardon me for asking, but do you know anything about this 'Kurosaki'? More specifically, whether there is anything in his past that... might cause him some regret, some guilt, moreso than you or the others?"

He would understand if Renji didn't want to answer, but now he was curious. If only he could figure out what that factor was, perhaps he could understand that monster more completely...!

Rukia sat quietly, listening to the two of them talk about this strange monster. Renji was obviously still very upset about his friend's disappearance, and now Rukia knew that they had fought the creature together. Nothing could bring people together like fighting a common enemy. Renji must have grown close to the young man, quickly. There was really nothing Rukia could do that would make it any easier on Renji, though. He would have to come to terms with that himself.

When he finished speaking, she briefly rested one hand on his arm, giving it a quick squeeze. But there was nothing she could do.

Adel kept returning to the idea of the creature focusing on one person. One person with regrets, guilt. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he had a theory about the monster, and that the thing had somehow made him feel a sense of deja vu, perhaps made him remember his sins. Rukia decided that it might be a good idea to ask him about it after all, but first she would answer his question.

"Ichigo," she began, then remembered that Adel didn't know his first name. "Kurosaki Ichigo. Anyway, Ichigo is like us in a way, but he never died. I know he has some regrets that he hasn't come to terms with, but I like to think he doesn't let himself dwell on those. He's not a bad person, if that's what you mean." She shrugged, not really sure if that had answered Adel's question.

It was his turn to jump, when Rukia touched him. He didn't ever really expect her to be the one reaching out. Which... yeah, it was fine.

"I don't really know him that well," Renji said.

Guilt and regret...

Renji finished his tea with one gulp and stood. "I'll be back in a second," he said. "I'm just going to go get more."

He stood and headed back toward the lunch line. Because if he didn't do something, even something as mundane as that, he was pretty sure he'd end up screaming.

Adelheid watched as Renji left, and soon he was left alone with Rukia, the teenager falling silent as he rested his head on his hand, digesting and mulling over everything that he had heard. Obviously, he had touched a nerve; despite himself, he still felt bad over that. If only because he knew how it felt, to have something gnawing at the back of one's mind and then to have it suddenly being the topic of conversation.

Though it was a small bit of relief, knowing that this Ichigo Kurosaki wasn't a bad person. While it honestly didn't answer his question, he was glad to know that bit of information. If only it applied to him, if only.

But now that he was stuck on the topic of that monster, and on guilt and regret and shame, it was hard to think of something else to speak about. Especially to someone like Rukia, whom Adelheid still didn't have a firm opinion on, other than she seemed like a textbook case of the female gender from his own world.

Rukia watched Renji get up and walk away, frowning. She could tell by the set of his shoulders, the way he flexed his hands, that he was humming with tension suddenly. Sighing quietly, she took another bite of toast.

Adel was looking nearly as miserable as Renji, which made Rukia just want to slap both of them. Not that this wasn't a terrible place, and bad things were happening, but brooding wasn't doing anyone any good.

"Adel," Rukia said suddenly, "What are you going to do with your guilt?" She unconsciously glanced up at Renji's back, then returned her gaze to the blonde. "Are you going to let it defeat you, without a fight?" Her voice was quiet, but there was a challenge there.

Those words startled the young man, his crimson eyes wide as he looked at her. What? How could she know anything about his guilt? Not that he had done anything to hide his brooding, but...

...he looked away from her, his voice quiet. "There are many things that I can feel guilt over, but for the more important ones, there is nothing that I can do. I fight it, every day of my life, and yet victory is an actual impossibility; it can not be done."

And yet he fought on anyway. Even though each night, it seemed, brought something new to be guilty for, cast more doubt on his path and upon his future.

Rukia smiled at Adel, though the smile was tinged with sadness. "Good, then. All we can do is fight." She remembered the day, not so many weeks ago, when she had apologized to Kaien-dono's brother and sister. She still felt guilty - she knew she always would - but it had made the pain more bearable, somehow, having their forgiveness and understanding. "Maybe someday you'll be able to do something to make up for whatever past mistakes you might have made. Maybe you can find some way to forgive yourself."

She reached out and swatted his arm playfully. "Cheer up. You're young, and strong. We'll get out of here."

"...no, I don't think there is a way to forgive myself, nor to make up for what I have done, but I thank you for the sentiment." He weakly chuckled, trying to smile as she had requested. All he could do was fight, that much was very true; perhaps, if he fought long enough and hard enough, he could finally be free? It was a hope, at any rate.

As for that last part? The German nodded, completely agreeing with that. "I have to get out of this place. I have a little sister waiting for me when I get back home; we're the only family each other has, and I hate to think what might be happening without me there for her."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better - which it probably won't - there is probably a 'you' with her." Rukia frowned, trying to explain. "You see, when I came here, I remember many more things than Renji does, even though he was with me all along. It's like... like somehow things diverged. There was the world as I knew it, with Renji in it. And then there was also his... reality, when he showed up here. Weeks passed in between what he last saw back where we are from, and what I last saw. So your sister probably still has you there with her." She shrugged, frustrated. "Does that make any sense?"

"Ah, as for that... the way that I have been told, and what I can best understand, is that this place takes people from different iterations of the same world, where different things did or did not happen." Adelheid leaned back, thinking about that before speaking again. "There are some people I know, whom have 'died' in their world, and the people they know are fully aware of their death, and yet they are still alive here. In addition, there are, as you said, realities in which those from different times have met up, as well."

"This would explain the apparent discrepancies between accounts, and also further explain why those from the same timeline can remember events differently. And as it is clear that there are many different worlds than my own, it makes sense to assume that there may be variations of my world, or of any other."

Though, when he thought about it, he had to offer a soft laugh, "I must admit there is a bit of wishful thinking involved. In my world, cloning has been perfected; I do not wish to think that my sister has a version of myself with her, nor do I wish to think about what will happen to the two versions of me when I am freed from this place."

Rukia listened, trying to wrap her mind around the problem. She was only mildly successful, but Adel had succeeded in impressing her. He was also a smart kid, it seemed. Finally, she just said, "Huh," and took a bite of the granola thing on her tray. She chewed, swallowed, then said, "I don't think anyone could fool your sister with a clone." Her gaze drifted over to Renji again, as he made his way back to their table. "You can't replace family."

Renji felt marginally better, if only because he'd moved around a little. It didn't change anything, but he was so used to being active that it helped him get things back under control, at least.

He set his now-filled cup of tea on the table and resumed his seat next to Rukia. He thought maybe he should answer the question that had driven him away from the table in the first place. Because damnit, he had to be honest with himself, and he was trying to run in a pathetic way.

But maybe he didn't need to any more. He'd see if anyone brought it back up.

He took a sip of his tea, trying to pretend he was still relaxed.

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