Day 50: Chapel

[full-score.livejournal.com]

The last thing Claude heard was the Head Doctor's voice faintly filtering into the corridors of the ship before he found himself tucked beneath the sheets of his bed. It took a moment to register he'd even changed locations, but then he he abruptly sat up, fought the wave of nausea that washed over him, and felt the blankets beneath his fingers. The room. He was back in his room now. Under different circumstances, he might have wondered if last night had been some horrid dream, but the sharp pain in his eyes gave him a rude awakening. Hissing through his teeth, Claude buried the heels of his palms against his lids, only to discover two cold compresses had been taped over them.

"Good morning, Thomas," he heard the nurse's cheerful voice from beside his bed. Her sudden presence nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he sharply turned toward the source of the greeting, heart beating rapidly in his chest. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well today, but hopefully you can still enjoy some of the activities we have planned."

'Not feeling well' was a bit of an understatement. His hand hurt, his stomach kept turning with every movement, and it felt like someone had dumped a bunch of sand into both eye sockets. Right now, Claude just wanted the nurse to leave him be, but it didn't look like that was an option. Taking his uninjured hand, she gently tugged him out of bed, despite his protests that, no, really, he just wanted to stay in and sleep, please.

"I think getting out of your room a little bit will do you good," she told him. "I'm sorry your eyes are probably hurting, though. If you're ever feeling uncomfortable, don't hesitate to ask one of us for some pills."

"What about eye drops?" Claude asked tightly.

"Oh, no, too much of that could damage your eyes," she cautioned, and the sheer irony of the situation hit Claude so hard that it would have been laughable if he didn't already feel like crying right then. The nurse was as oblivious to it as always, however. "I know you usually go into the chapel during this shift. Would you like to go there again?" Claude didn't answered immediately, but that didn't deter the nurse. "Yes, I think that sounds best..."

In truth, he probably should have requested the sun room -- it was closer, for one, which meant the nurse didn't have to lead him as far of a distance. For another, lying down on one of their sofas sounded like a good option. But by the time Claude came to that conclusion, he was too stubborn to say anything, and he made his way up to the second floor, his footing slow, but steady.

The nurse deposited him on one of the central pews, next to the aisle, before leaving him to himself. Thankfully, it was still early in the shift. As he paused to listen, the room was mostly silent, save for the footsteps and hushed voices of the occasional staff member or patient who trickled in. But it was probably only a matter of time before others came. For some reason, the thought of being stuck in a crowded room made him tense, not necessarily because he thought anyone would pay him any mind, but because he simply didn't want it right then.

Somehow, the full implications of what happened last night hadn't sunken in: experiments, healing himself, the issue of whether he could actually go home after this, not being able to see, the ship, father. Instead, he just felt saturated with all of it, paralyzed by the horror of what they'd done to him, and the uncertainty of what it all meant beyond this moment. Claude took a shuddering breath, uninjured hand balling into a fist in his lap.

[For Guy.]

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[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

So he was right. Kiba hadn't arrived during the nightshift, but during the day before. That was lucky for him, even if he didn't realize it. Sai smiled again, moving past the other ninja to sit beside him on the pew. (Not too close, of course. Kiba was somewhat standoffish, meaning he'd want personal space.)

"The rest of us were in Doyleton when you arrived, meaning you were alone with other new patients." Unless he wasn't the only one to show up from Konoha that afternoon, but one thing at a time. "Did you have an opportunity to speak with anyone after nightfall?"

Had he gotten any answers, in other words, or would Sai have to go through the typical shpeal again?

Other patients were still slowly making their way into the chapel, but there was still a distinct lack of familiar faces. No familiar blond spikes or head of pink. Unfortunately, it was harder to keep track of people when everyone was divided up during the shift. There was brunch for meeting up next, he supposed.

[livesbyinstinct.livejournal.com]

Kiba slumped back against the bench, the brief spike of annoyance he had felt a few seconds ago cooling into an even simmer. He nodded once, folding his arms across his chest before leaning his head back and looking up at the ceiling. "Yeah. Naruto and some other guy I didn't know. He knew Shikamaru, whoever he was. We didn't get far, though. Seemed like I had only started talking to him before…"

Before everything had faded and he woke up in the bed that wasn't his, in a place that wasn't home, with some guy in the room who wasn't Akamaru. He narrowed his eyes, squinting as he tried to pierce his own mental fog. That couldn't be right. They had to've gotten farther than that. They had to have done more than stood around and talked in that one hallway for a minute or so. Kiba hadn't even gotten the other guy's name, now that he thought about it. That couldn't be right, but no matter how hard he tried to recall it, he still came up blank. His memories of last night stopped right there, in that corridor, right after he had found Naruto, with everything else cracking and falling apart like a crumbling mosaic from there. What the hell was up with this place? Why couldn't he remember? Was there even anything to remember? The buried part of him wanted to ask if it was normal, but he refused to do so. He was stronger than that. Just because he couldn't remember something didn't mean there was anything wrong with him. It shouldn't bother him, either. He couldn't allow it to. He had things to do.

But it still didn't change the fact that the thought was still there, nagging at him from the back of his mind.

He scowled, finishing flatly, "...before I woke up here again."

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

"That's not an unusual occurrence. It's a common goal at night to see how much you can get accomplished before you're rendered unconscious. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes a little, but it's rarely anything you can control." So he'd spoke with Naruto, who'd once again had his memory erased of past events recently and might not be able to offer much, and someone else. He doubted Kiba had been told even a small percentage of everything he needed to know.

Dumping it all straight on him would cause confusion, so he'd have to go with bits and pieces at a time and slowly outline the larger image. First he had to determine whether he'd arrived from an earlier or later time. The latter had been more common among his fellow ninja as of late.

"I've been here a while, so I can tell you most of what you need to know." Just as soon as he knew how much exposition was needed. "What's the last thing you remember happening before you woke up in the Institute?"

[livesbyinstinct.livejournal.com]

So, the people who ran this place were toying with them. This institute was a maze and they were the metaphorical rats. Not that Kiba had expected much less; he hadn't trusted Landel's to begin with. Everything seemed off from the get-go, and he had immediately realized there was something fishy going on, though that probably wasn't much of an actual accomplishment than proof he still possessed a fraction of common sense. The idea that the staff who ran this place apparently had the ability to render the lot of them unconscious whenever they chose to still bothered him, of course--ticked him off, really--and he hoped that one day he would be lucky enough to be able to return the favor. It wasn't like they'd be able to keep them for long, either; it was only a matter of time until they busted out. The clock was all ready ticking.

Kiba shook his head, shooting Sai a clear look of disbelief once he finished. "What do you mean, you've been here for awhile? You can't have been here much longer than I have." He shrugged then, straightening his back against the pew. Maybe this was more of that memory-loss crap. Wonderful. "...I guess the last thing I remember is Sakura knocking all of us out and running off to play hero, or whatever it was she thought she was doing. Idiotic is what it was. Stupid." He scowled. What the heck had she been thinking, running off like that? Just leaving them there unconscious in potentially hazardous territory. "Managed to send Kakashi after her before that bomb of hers totally floored me, though. Beats me what happened next."

Though Kiba secretly hoped Kakashi had kicked her ass. Or Sasuke's. Both, if the jounin could manage. That would certainly brighten up his day. He might even stop resenting the obnoxious smiley face that was plastered on his shirt for awhile.

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

They'd been working together? This wasn't too surprising, given that any attempt to track down Sasuke after the previous one would require a better team of trackers and Kiba's group was best suited for the job. Since that meant he was definitely from a later point, Sai would be keeping his questions to a minimum. There was only so much he wanted revealed to him before it actually happened.

And he had to believe it could still happen if he got out of this place.

Now describing a matter that he hadn't believed himself at first was the difficult part. Some were more open minded about this sort of thing than others. "I've been here for nearly a month now," he got that part out of the way first. "The last thing I remember from before my arrival is going to bed on a night shortly after Hidan and Kakuzu of Akatsuki were defeated."

He looked up over the pews at some of the other patients, taking in familiar faces. "This place, whatever it really is, appears to exist outside of time. You won't find a single ninja from our village that was taken from the same moment, and time seems to carry on even after our disappearance, as though we're just a copy of ourselves."

[livesbyinstinct.livejournal.com]

"A month?" He wanted to call bullshit. "You're kidding me."

Kiba had never been one for complex theories and crap, but his thoughts tended to be pretty black and white about what things he believed and what things he didn't. He could buy that their brains had been messed with. He didn't like it, but he could believe it. Brainwashing and the like was common enough, and he was sure there was some technique out there that could obliterate memories with a few precise hand-seals and a skilled practitioner. But what he couldn't believe was someone messing with the fabric of time--creating time paradoxes or whatever you wanted to call them. Sai not remembering past events? It didn't sit well with him, but it was something his mind could be coaxed to wrap around. But Sai being here for a month? That he found hard to believe. It was also difficult envisioning time just carrying on without them. Bunch of crap, that was. Someone would notice. Someone had to notice. If someone thought they could just try and copy...

"A month?" he repeated, not caring if he sounded like an idiot. "Fine. If it's been a freakin' month, then what the heck's been keeping you here?"

[ooc: I apologize for the late reply.]

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

((no worries))

Sai waited patiently for everything to sink in, saying nothing at first but keeping a faint smile. He honestly hadn't expected Kiba to believe everything right off. Though he didn't know the other teen well and he wasn't the best when it came to reading people, stubbornness practically seeped from the boy's pores.

"The same thing that keeps everyone else here. I've yet to see anyone escape, merely disappear." Naruto, for example, had been there when he'd first arrived, but since then had disappeared and returned twice - both times with no memory of having been there before. For now, however, he'd keep that bit of information to himself. "If you try to escape during the day, you'll be captured and sedated. Your only chance is at night, but getting anywhere is extremely difficult."

And the more of them there were to get out, the harder things were going to be. He couldn't make a run for it and leave the others, though whether he thought it was even worth making an attempt at this point was still up in the air.

[livesbyinstinct.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, well, I don't know about you, but I'm not going to sit around and wait another month to get out of this place," Kiba replied, not bothering to hide how skeptical he sounded. "If there's a way in, then there's a way out. That's all there is too it. Can't be that hard to find, or else the bastards wouldn't be calling us back in at all. Bet they'd just let us walk around until we died of boredom."

Wrong as Kiba probably was, he refused to believe things were as worrying as they appeared to be. Sai made things sound damn bleak if he had been in this place a month and still hadn't found a way out. Though it would certainly would take more than Sai telling him these things to make all that he had just told him true. Kiba had all read noticed that the majority of his chakra was blocked, that his nose wasn't as reliable as it should be, but that wasn't enough. Not hardly. All it was was a minor (if annoying) setback.

He looked away then, black eyes darting around the Chapel, searching for any new, familiar faces. "So, who else is stuck here? Naruto, you, Sakura, Shikamaru--am I missing anyone?" Those were the people he was sure of; the presences he had confirmed some way or another. Perhaps if he had made it farther during the night, he might have been able to ascertain more information about who was here and who wasn't. His nose had been better then, but even with it, the scents were vague, mixed, harder to distinguish--and even though some scents had distinctly familiar edge to them, Kiba was used to having things so transparent and obvious that a sliver of doubt couldn't help but prick at him in its spare time.

Besides, he might as well get whatever information he could out of Sai while he was here anyway.

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

The smile Sai gave Kiba then might have been placating, but if it was that wasn't his intention. "I agree. And I haven't given up on finding a means of escape. If you're able to sniff out anything before the rest of us, don't hesitate to let us know." And if that came across as a pun, well, that hadn't been intentional either.

Kiba was like Naruto in some ways, but also completely different. From the looks of it, it was possible that he was even easier to accidentally insult than the blond, so he didn't say as much as he could have about it just not being that easy to break out. The other ninja would find out soon enough, so why make things look bleaker than they must already look to him? His abilities would prove useful here, even if they were dampened and he'd be without the usual dog companion all members of the Inuzuka clan had.

It was easier to answer the next question, and a slight subject change was welcome. "At last count, there was Naruto, Sakura, Shikamaru, Hatake Kakashi, Maito Gai, Jiraiya of the Sannin, an old friend of Kakashi-san's named Uchiha Obito, and those that have been here longer than I have - Uchiha Sasuke and Haku of the Village Hidden in the Mist."