damned_institute | Day 23: Lunch

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Day 23: Lunch

The second the intercom sounded, while the man on the intercom was still talking, Ashton pulled himself off the couch in the Music Room and slowly made his way to the door. He walked, glided even, as if he were a ghost in a dream. The nurses had already filed up to escort the patients to the lunchroom, and one bustled over to walk Ashton those few feet from one room to another.

"You're not looking very well, Mr. Pritchett," she said cheerfully. "Didn't you enjoy your shower?"

Ashton replied with a small, forced smile, then shook his head. He didn't feel like talking now. Though the nurses were pushy and downright annoying, he figured he owed this one at least a little explanation. They didn't know - or didn't believe - what went on after dark, but he owed them the benefit of the doubt. "Bad day," he decided on telling her.

Bad day indeed. The showers and the music had done nothing for his nerves. But then again, what could get that graphic image out of his head?

He glided ghostily through the taco line and settled on two chicken and bean tacos, with chips, a scoop of guacamole, two churros on the side, and a glass of apple juice. He wasn't used to this sort of food (save the juice) and he wasn't even sure he'd eat it, but the chances were high that he'd be able to pass it off on someone.

He was on the verge of tears again, too. What he would have given to just sit down next to a barrel and eat a hamburger.

Thank goodness the cafeteria was bare just now, too. It left all the corner tables open, the tables that shouted 'Don't talk to me, I'm brooding over here.' He sat at one, pushed his food a little away from him, and buried his head in his arms.

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Otacon was bound to have a conversation like this eventually, and as far as FFVII characters went, Rufus Shinra was actually not a bad choice. He chewed his food thoughtfully as he tried to figure out how to answer.

"When did the Institute take you from your world?" he asked after a moment, also keeping his voice low. "But as for your questions, yes and... maybe. The Diamond WEAPON destroyed the Shinra building and killed you, as far as everyone who played the game knew. Then several years later, a sequel movie was released and revealed that you'd survived, but was now suffering Geostigma. It's been awhile, but I think at some point you — well, you in Advent Children — mentioned that you were trying to rebuild Shinra. Whether or not that..."

Otacon let his words trail off as someone approached. "Roy, hey. I'm glad you made it through the night." Of course Colonel Roy Mustang couldn't be defeated by a few mutant cats, but with the stuff on the boards lately...

He glanced at Rufus, leaving this matter up to the discretion of the younger man.

"I was taken from just after the remnants were returned to the Lifestream."

Advent Children? A movie? He was from a video game and a movie? That hurt the mind to consider. His reality was nothing more than a child's game and a movie for the brainless masses to watch. Roy brought a welcome distraction from trying to wrap his brain around what was disgusting and interesting all at the same time. Obviously he hadn't died in the fall of Shin-Ra Tower, but it had been a close thing, Diamond's blast nearly killing him.

He was struck at first by Roy's eyes. Were they really purple? And he thought Kadaj's were disconcerting.

"Not a private conversation, no. Merely catching up on some history. Do feel free to join us if you like. I am Rufus Shinra."

Gesturing to one of the empty chairs, Rufus waited for the other man's name.

"I am sorry, Otacon, but as I said on the board, I do find it difficult to believe that my life and actions were nothing more than a game. I doubt this game went through my life from birth upwards, and I have clear memories of all that."

"Didn't make it far," he told his roommate with a sigh. Roy was still upset that nothing had been done, but considering what his night had been occupied with instead, he couldn't complain too much.

While only one eye was purple (and perhaps that was even stranger), it was easy to assume otherwise when his bangs kept getting in the way. He probably should have gotten his hair trimmed at the same time that he got shaved, but the thought hadn't occurred to him then.

The more this Rufus spoke, the more Roy realized that he sounded familiar. Wait - he sounded like him. The alchemist looked distracted as he took a seat, eyeing the blond curiously. He wasn't going to say anything unless one of them noticed as well.

"Colonel Roy Mustang," he said eventually, having almost forgotten to say it. And then when they started talking about some game, Roy was rendered even more confused. He was usually the one who knew more than the rest of the patients, so this position made him wary. He'd listen to them for a little longer and see if he could piece together their conversation.

The similarity between their voices might've been the most obvious to Otacon, who now also wore a rather distracted expression as Roy and Rufus' voices almost overlapped. Wait... he remembered looking this up once while there was all that hype surrounding FFVII:AC.

They had the same voice actor. Oh, this was too much.

"Uhh," said Otacon, trying to shake off the latest bizarre revelation. "Er, like I said to you earlier, Rufus, I don't blame you. This is only what I know, and I don't understand it much better than you do. To be honest, I'm starting to wonder myself if I'm all that... unique, for lack of a better word."

How much should he say? Roy didn't know about the anime yet, but it was bound to get out eventually. Even if Fox and Snake didn't mention it to Edward Elric or whoever else, Otacon wasn't confident that he'd be able to keep up the charade during their dinner conversations.

"Okay. I've been thinking about it, and here's something that might make the whole concept a little less... disquieting. This is only a theory," he added quickly. His food sat forgotten again as Otacon thought his way through this.

"There's the idea—not common or well-accepted, true—that universes in my world which are labelled as 'fiction' could conceivably be real on an alternate plane. Obviously, our worlds aren't completely separate if someone was able to move through them and bring us all in one place. So from there, you could say that the events on Gaia made a... dimension echo, which imprinted itself on my world, an alternate reality of yours. This echo manifested itself into fictional works."

He decided not to add that this poorly-worded idea was based on something he once read about otakukin.

What Rufus had taken to be a trick of sounded ended up being confirmed the second time that Roy spoke. They truly did sound exactly alike except for the inflection of some of their words. Strange to say the least. For a thankfully brief moment, he considered what this Roy would look like with blonde hair. One never could have enough stand-in decoys with as dangerous as it was.

Even with poor Otacon's theory, Rufus still didn't look all the convinced. It must have been hard at times to be the sole voice of reason in the garden of insanity, and Rufus had to admit that Otacon wasn't doing a bad job at it. Still, him? A character? That wasn't likely.

"I don't know if you've heard, Colonel Mustang, but Otacon here is attempting to explain to me how I am nothing more than a character in a video game. Interesting, but as you can tell, I'm not entirely convinced. I like your idea of alternate universes better. It's a hard thing to swallow that all your life's work with a company such as Shin-Ra and all that has been done with them and the WRO is nothing but a plotline in a video game. I am president of a company that went down in flames during Meteorfall and I have been rebuilding. It seems to lack that 'fun' element of video games, or so I'm told. I am a President, not a character to be controlled. I imagine you would feel the same were you in my position, Colonel."

A small, bitter smile came and went, Rufus never one to be happy with how things were when they could be made better. His attention moved back to Roy quick enough, his initial thought that both the man's eyes were purple proven wrong quickly. Odder and odder.

Maybe if he heard the man speak again, he could convince himself that they didn't have the exact same voice.

From the way the other two paused, it was obvious that he wasn't just hearing things. It was hard to ignore, but Roy did his best to disregard it. He wouldn't be able to have a serious conversation if he kept pausing to listen.

When Otacon launched into some sort of explanation, the colonel's confusion only increased. He couldn't stop himself from taking on a deer-in-headlights look as his roommate babbled on. While he appreciated Rufus' attempt to explain, there was one problem.

"What's a video game?"

He disliked not knowing such things, but he figured with the amount of people who had asked him to explain alchemy, it could be worse. It really was remarkable, though - Rufus even spoke with the same confidence that he did. Though it made sense, if he was the president of a company...

Roy frowned. The man looked young, and he was already that high on the ladder? Then again, a company was different from a military government, but he couldn't stop himself from asking, "How old are you?"

While the man had asked for his opinion, he didn't completely understand the situation yet, so he would have to wait before passing judgment.

"The goal was more 'drama' than 'fun,' I think. I mean, practically no one in AVALANCHE has a fun backstory. And er, strictly speaking, you were never controlled. More the villain than anything else. Well, one of them. Your boss battle came pretty early on." Once again, Otacon was babbling way too much information.

When Roy asked his question, he couldn't help but laugh a little, realizing for the first time how lost the colonel must've been. He'd forgotten about the level of technology in Amestris.

"Uh... video games. The basic idea is that the game's an animated image on some sort of screen, and a player will interact with this image using a control interface. Buttons, joysticks, that kind of thing. These games can get even more complex, enough to be almost indistinguishable from real life."

This was getting off-topic.

"What I told Rufus is that his world forms the plot of a popular video game in my world. I, uh, don't care if he doesn't believe me, but I'll say his world isn't the only one I recognize from video games... or other things," Otacon added awkwardly.

"A video game is something children play for fun. A game played on a television."

Rufus shrugged, not able to explain it better than that. He'd never played many to start with. Seen a few, but never had time or the desire to waste his time with such. The question of his age threw him even further off.

"I am twenty-five. I took over Shin-Ra Electric Power Company a few years ago. Before that, I was Vice President for quite sometime."

He waves a hand towards where Reno and Elena sat, that faint relief coming again at the sight of not only Reno but Dean and Elena as well. Another night that they had all made it through.

"The redhead is Reno, second in command of my Turks or the Investigation Division of the Department of General Affairs. They're something like my bodyguards or the company's special task force. They deal with the things that Shin-Ra's force couldn't. As Otacon could probably tell you, Shin-Ra was and is more than just a power company. We were also the Planet's controlling military force and de facto world government. It's a long story."

And evidentally one that Rufus wasn't willing to go into in how Shin-Ra fell during Meteorfall and how he had been rebuilding it for the past three years along with Geostigma striking. Rufus' gaze sharpened on Otacon at the man's verbal stumble.

"Who else? Is Colonel Mustang from a video game as well? And what is a 'boss battle'?"

While Roy could have asked what a television was, he decided against it. He had made enough of a fool of himself, if the way Otacon had laughed was anything to judge by. The point was that apparently Rufus' life was part of some story, some work of fiction, in Otacon's world. It was a strange concept, and he could see why Rufus was so against the idea. It trivialized things that were significant to him - it trivialized his whole existence.

Twenty-five? Upon hearing that, Roy looked as if he'd taken a smack to the face. The expression passed quickly, however. Neither of them needed to know how much that bothered him. "Hmm... Was the president assassinated, then?" He realized that hadn't been the best way to phrase the question (he should have asked if the president had died), but he couldn't help thinking of his encounter with the Fuhrer. It was a different situation, and he certainly didn't get to succeed the man after he'd killed him, but...

Well, wouldn't that have been nice.

He was surprised when Rufus pointed out Reno and Elena. Who would have thought he was connected to them? "Ahh, yes, I've met them. They seem very capable." He got the feeling the relationship between Rufus and his "Turks" was similar to the one between his subordinates and himself. Then again, he didn't need them as bodyguards...

When Rufus explained that Shin-Ra was more than just a company (and actually sounded quite similar to the Amestris military), Roy just felt even worse. What was so great about this Rufus, that he had already taken complete power at such a young age?

Though he was distracted from his jealousy when Rufus suggested that he was from a video game as well. "What?" The very idea was preposterous!

"You didn't play a lot of video games, did you?" Otacon asked Rufus, frowning. He looked over at Roy, and unnecessarily added: "Don't listen to him, they're not just for kids. I mean, Rufus' world alone had some pretty mature themes..."

He listened to the rest of the conversation in relative silence, fascinated by how there were only very slight differences in the two men's voices. Even better was that Otacon suspected both realized how alike they sounded, but neither wanted to broach the subject.

It was because of this that Rufus' question caught him off-guard, even though he'd expected to deal with this. Roy's reaction was giving him second thoughts, however. "...Um."

Oh, what the hell. The colonel wasn't going to believe him either. "Not a video game. An anime. You can think of that as a non-interactive version of a video game," Otacon told Roy, attempting to maintain as much of a semblance of sanity as possible. "That's how I recognized you yesterday. Er, sorry."

He sat back and decided that if he was going to admit that much, he might as well go all out. "A boss battle is a difficult opponent in a video game. Rufus, you fought AVALANCHE with a shotgun and a big black... cat... thing named Dark Nation. They won. Am I right?"

Next: "And don't worry, Colonel, he had an easier time with taking over. Rufus is the son of the previous president who was, yes, assassinated. No offense meant to Rufus. He's a smart guy. I mean, I liked him in the movie."

Rufus didn't even blink at the look on Roy's face, only catch it by a quirk when he'd turned to Roy to find out if the man had been told the same. That expression was mistaken for disbelief versus surprise. He was used to it. Most people tended to take him lightly until they realized just how vicious Rufus Shinra could be and was. Then again, most everyone on the Planet had already dealt with or heard of Shin-Ra Company.

"The President, my father, was assassinated, yes. Sephiroth got to him before I did."

Rufus mouth quirked in annoyance.

"Another year, and I would have killed him anyways. The old man grew far too paranoid after the first time I tried when I was seventeen."

Rufus' mouth shut quickly, not having meant to go that much into detail over his life. Not being from his world, most simply didn't understand that this was how things were, especially among Shin-Ra's ranks. It was kill or be killed. Rufus' face barely changed with what he had said, but one could get the feel that he was drawing inside himself again, once more the cold and distant President Shinra versus Rufus. He was expecting the looks of disapproval or disgust from them. Oh well.

"Dark Nation was an excellent guard, and yes, he did die. Strife killed him. I didn't lose though. I left a battle I couldn't win. I call it a strategic withdrawl."

And Otacon blew that all apart.

"An anime?"

Even he knew what that was. That made being from a mature video game so much less terrible.

"He's from a cartoon? A kid's show?"

Rufus glanced at Roy, struggling not to grin. Oh my. The Colonel with a voice that matched his was from a kiddie's show? He didn't know whether to laugh or slap a hand to his forehead. He settled for trying not to smile.

"No offense, Colonel Mustang. Truly."

This was just too much.

Roy leaned back in his chair, not certain he wanted to be around either of the men anymore. He was not pleased that Otacon had kept this information from him, especially considering the drawn-out conversation they'd had at dinner the night before. Then again, it couldn't be easy to tell someone that...

It was obvious that Otacon wasn't insane, though - not when he was able to recite what had happened to Rufus so easily. While it was possible he was a mind-reader (though he didn't look the type) or that the two were playing some sort of prank on him, he doubted it.

While Rufus was expecting a disgusted glance, he did not get one from Roy, at least. He didn't know the details of the situation and understood that at times, killing was necessary. He had never been near enough to his parents that such a thing would have been conceivable, but he wasn't one to judge others for murder - and the man hadn't even gone through with it, anyway.

Though all these thoughts of his dirty past brought him back to Otacon. "I'm going to assume that theory about alternative universes and echoing is true. But if that's the case, what... What sort of things do you know about me?" It seemed so strange that his roommate had been able to watch something about his life as a form of entertainment. The only thing he could equate it to was if he met someone here who turned out to be a character from a novel he'd read. Definitely odd, and the anger he'd felt toward Otacon dissipated slightly - it couldn't be easy for him to run into people he sort of knew.

That anger was easily transferred to Rufus, however. He was caught between liking and disliking him. "I seriously doubt it was a children's show," he grumbled, though the way he said 'show' made it obvious enough that he wasn't even familiar with what he was talking about. Either way, he was glaring daggers at the blond.

This was all so ridiculous.

Roy wasn't the only one shooting glares in Rufus' direction. "Okay, I'm going to say this only once," said Otacon, sounding far more indignant over Rufus' comment than anything else discussed this lunch. "While some anime shows are targeted towards kids, the genre as a whole is definitely not children's cartoons! As the colonel could tell you. FMA had war, death, blood and... several fairly disturbing scenes. Especially towards the end... And even then, much more extreme content can be found into hundreds of other series!"

Otacon took a deep breath and readjusted his glasses. "Ahem. Sorry," he muttered, directing this at no one in particular. This wasn't exactly the ideal situation to drop bombshells of this magnitude on Roy, but he supposed Landel's was teaching them all to be flexible.

"I know quite a bit. Like why you want to be Fuhrer, for instance," Otacon admitted to Roy, seeking out the first example that showed his seriousness without getting too much into it right now. "And oh, if you're wondering why you two sound exactly alike, you're voiced by the same actor. Uh. Don't ask me how that works with my echo theory."

(So then what did that mean for Axel and Raiden?)

The showers had done well for his nerves, and the promise of food was a relief. After wolfing down several burritos right there at the table, he loaded his tray and moved over to where Otacon was talking with the General from the showers.

"Otacon," he greeted with a subtle smile, sitting down beside him. He raised his head. "You're Roy." And then he turned to face the man he didn't recognise. Again, that sense of recognition. Some kind of movie?

"And you're..." he started, extending a hand. Of course, Snake could have told him that he had the designed immaculateness of a politician; the controlled emotion of one who had something to hide; the beauty of a fiction character (who was he?); but he'd already pulled out that trick on Roy, and doing it again in front of him would probably arouse suspicion.

Rufus glanced at Roy, pushing down the thought to apologize to the man. After all, he'd been more than a little disturbed to hear that he was from a video game (even if he didn't believe it). Hearing one was from a cartoon had to be even worse. When it came to things like anime, Rufus wasn't the best versed people. All he really knew about it was that it was a comic or cartoon that he'd see occasionally laying around the employee lounges or playing on television. What he certainly wasn't going to mention was the collection of manga he'd once found in his desk that he swore to this day came from Reno.

He was pretty sure Roy didn't come from one of those.

Pushing his tray aside, Rufus rested his arms on the table. The one was healed up nicely. Listening to the two, he felt more at ease than he had thought he would given his revelation. Neither seemed particularly judgemental or upset about his father. That was a change. It was disconcerting to hear his own voice out of another, especially one who had his own tones and authority in what he said. He wasn't about to let himself consider the idea of a 'voice actor' or the like. Not yet.

"If it had blood and the like as Otacon says, then it isn't what I'm thinking of. It could always be worse. One of us could have been a disgustingly cute creature."

That was as close as Rufus Shinra came to making peace. Still, it was disturbing to realize someone knew things about him. It made that telepath he had been speaking of seem less a threat at least. Snake's arrival broke his train of thought thankfully, locking away the things that had been trying to rise that Pyramid Head had reminded him of.

"I am Rufus Shinra. And you?"

Just how many people were in Landel's? And why? The Head Doctor interrupted them again, bringing a glare of annoyance from Rufus at the intercom.

"Bastard."

At least Otacon seemed to have his side. Yes, his life was nothing a child should be exposed to. Fullmetal had been forced to grow up too fast (though in many ways, he was still a child) - that serial killer, Tucker combining his daughter and his dog, the war...

It seemed that Rufus was taking back his earlier comment, so the colonel did his best to accept that. The president didn't know a thing about him, after all. He shouldn't have made such judgments.

When Otacon revealed just how much he knew, however, Roy couldn't stop himself from tensing. That... How could he know something that personal? He narrowed his eyes, suddenly coming off as very defensive. "I... see." The voice actor thing was hard for him to wrap his head around, but he wasn't going to question it.

He sent Snake a well-meaning nod as he joined them, but before long the intercom was blaring again. Personally, Roy was more than ready to get away from the conversation.

"Until next time," he told the three other men, standing from his chair and heading for his nurse.

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Day 23: Lunch

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