Day 51: Breakfast

[thatdamnedninja.livejournal.com]

Yuffie Kisaragi, indomitable bouncing ball of sunshine and unfathomable ebullience, was tired. It'd been a long night full of gibberish and getting nowhere fast.

"Can't I—"

Plucky, who had been busily loading a plate full of French toast and bacon, tittered. "I'm afraid not, Hanna, darling. A chat over a nice, hearty breakfast would do you a world of good, don't you think?"

"Aaaaactually—"

"Come on, let's find you a seat. Plenty to choose from this morning!"

For a long moment, Yuffie seriously considered doing something—anything—to act out. Punch her nurse, rub jam in an orderly's face, climb a wall and hang off the ceiling, jump on a table and parody Loveless… A ruckus like that would definitely jolt her back into gear, right? Sedation aside. And it'd turn Plucky's good day right on its head, which was always a bonus worth shooting for.

But, by the time she'd reached a decision—and it was an epic decision, a really awesome one; everybody'd appreciate the genius, she was sure—she was already alone. Her breakfast tray had been set down neatly by the nurse, who had left with an infuriatingly winsome smile.

"Wow," Yuffie muttered. Shaking her head, she picked a chair at random and threw herself into it. She kicked back, one arm slung across her eyes, to wait. For what, she wasn't totally sure. Some moron to decide that she looked like good company? That was how it usually went.

Comments

[repelling.livejournal.com]

When the guy sighed, Uryuu noticed without comment or change in expression. As long as he got the desired information, the feelings of the source didn't matter. If forced to posit a reason as to why, he'd have attributed it to either his overly direct, even rude approach. Though, the similarity of Mason's reply made it unlikely that he'd taken offense.

The explanation thus far was less that and more an introduction; Uryuu had enough patience to allow it, ingesting the previously speared apple in the meantime. Fruit for breakfast, or breads, or sausage and bacon. Not a fish or bowl of steamed rice in sight. Fruit, hopefully, would be harder to drug; water as well. Taking a sip, he noted that like with the faucet, it tasted... well, like water.

"You mean," dripping sarcasm, "madhouses don't usually open the doors at night? The flashlight was a nice touch." His voice returning, now, to a level near-monotone. "The hospital smell combined with the lack of monitoring machines, again, told me that last night. Does everyone have a different name? Is this earth?"

There were too many questions, and too many places from which to begin.

[gamingsostfu.livejournal.com]

Oh, he noticed that sarcasm. Dude wanted to get an attitude, huh? Matt leaned back in his chair, his arms crossing over his chest in a slightly defensive pose, regarding the boy with an even, though somewhat agitated, stare. "Look, you want answers? Then let me talk."

He glanced down at his french toast for a minute, but then thought better of taking another bite. They didn't have very much time, he knew, and he needed to figure out this guy's deal before the nurses moved them on. "Nobody here - that I've met so far, anyway - knows the real goal of this place, or where it is, or what year it is, or really anything useful. I assume it's Earth, since we're breathing an' all, but the staff offers no clarification whatsoever." Now it was starting to feel like a debriefing - which. Matt guessed it was. "They call us by different names, but that's probably just another side to the cover up." Either that, or it's their way of pissing us off. Matt didn't really mind the name the nurses kept calling him, but he wished they'd come up with something a little more creative. "Marcus" was just so plain.

"Honestly, I'm of the opinion that it's like a maze," he went on, glancing around at the bustling cafeteria. So far so good. His eyes met Ishida's again with relative ease. "And we're the rats. The entire thing reeks of an experiment - explains the unlocked doors and the shit they pull sometimes at night."

Thoughts of the night before last went through his head right then, and he frowned. Hopefully Landel had had his fun that night, because Matt wasn't sure he could deal with another midnight traipse around the asylum with wonky doors; they'd never get anything done.

[repelling.livejournal.com]

For once, his attitude had not been intended against the other person. Uryuu wasn't about to explain himself--let Mason think what he would--but it had been directed more to the situation, to the shoddy facade. His response to the defensive reprimand was very nearly nothing; very nearly, as almost imperceptibly, his eyebrows lifted.

Perhaps an Earth of a very, very different time, which failed to explain the how very late-twentieth century everything seemed. In any case, he agreed with Mason's assessment (though it wasn't a difficult or unique one to come by), musing at the irony that he had, after all, wound up in a laboratory, under the eyes of possibly mad scientists. Though, Kurotsuchi Mayuri and his observational bacteria might have claimed to have beaten "Landel" to it. He quickly put that from mind. His features soured with the fleeting thought. It wasn't something he wanted to consider, especially as he couldn't do anything about it.

An easy, new focus came with shit they pull sometimes at night. Uryuu had received the gist of some things from Maito-san, but it would undoubtedly help to hear it while comprehension was at 100%.

"Such as? Also... at the moment, everyone sounds as though they're speaking Japanese. I heard otherwise last night. Was it related to the man on the intercom, or does language change at night as well?"

[gamingsostfu.livejournal.com]

Matt refused to give the younger man a full reaction to that statement - or any reaction, really. He had the upper hand here, the brunet knew, and he wasn't about to give it away. So it's not English that I'm hearing everyone speaking, he resolved, his eyes narrowing at empty space, off to the side, as he contemplated. He spoke fluent Japanese, yes - one of the many advantages of being brought up in a House like Wammy's - but at that exact moment, he could swear he was listening to Ishida speak English to him. To be honest, he was somewhat ashamed that he hadn't wondered about the varying origins the other "patients" seemed to come from; not everyone in the world spoke perfect English, like he'd been hearing them speak since his arrival in Landel's house of weird.

He'd noticed, his first day, that Minako was a Japanese high school student. Why, then, had he been so all right with her speaking fluent English? All right, so it was more than likely that she'd learnt such grammatically correct English in a top knotch school in her country, but she'd even greeted him in English. Now that he thought back on the entire situation, it should have set off some bells.

But it hadn't.

Matt silently berated himself as he tried to think of how to handle answering this particular line of questioning. There was really no other conclusion for him to come to, based on this new information, other than that Landel had to have some sort of mechanism at work, right at that moment - something with the ability to alter brainwaves, or some shit along those lines, to give everyone in the facility the impression that they were hearing everyone else speaking their own native language. Which, strangely enough, wasn't an illusion; they were actually having a coherent conversation, one in which both parties were speaking completely different languages and hearing the responses in the one they needed to hear to understand fully.

"Nah," he finally responded, "the language doesn't screw up all the time." In his own mind, he was starting to sound paranoid even to himself, so he wasn't entirely sure if broaching this subject with someone he didn't trust as far as he could throw him was a good idea. Probably not. Mello, though... That was when he decided their next course of action, and Mello could throw a hissy fit all he liked, but Matt had himself convinced that Landel had to be somewhere in the building, controlling all these mechanisms. They needed to find him, but he wasn't on the second or first floor - of that he was sure, and Mello had probably figured it out already as well. That meant that there was either a basement or a third floor - or both.

Only one way to find out, really.

"I'm not sure why they messed up last night," he answered, honestly for once. "There doesn't really seem to have been anything for the crazy doctor to gain from it, to be honest. Maybe it was just to fuck with us?" The idea seemed plausible to Matt. Landel seemed like your run-of-the-mill mad scientist; who knew what was going through the man's head? "The man on the intercom was probably the one who did it. He's the sadistic bastard who runs the place and kidnaps the most random people you've ever met right out of their beds." The brunet was pretty satisfied with that explanation of the Head Doc.

"Every night so far, it's been something different though." He finally took another bite of the french toast, before it got too soggy. "My first night here, the doors went mad. You'd open one, and it'd lead somewhere completely different than it was supposed to. One of them actually opened up into downtown Tokyo." Matt glanced away. He didn't enjoy mentioning that event, and he wanted to make it obvious that he wasn't going to go into detail. "But they were just fine the next morning." A shrug. "Go figure."

[repelling.livejournal.com]

The length of Mason's delay spoke volumes. Unfortunately, their contents offered little of concrete use to Uryuu. He would hardly sit there, staring, waiting ever-expectant for the reply -- while Mason took his time, Uryuu smeared grape jelly on his toast, and disposed of half of it. His mind raced while he chewed, the act near mechanical.

Depending on what Mason eventually came up with, Uryuu felt he could venture a guess as to the wait. The longer the pause, the less he felt inclined to trust what would be said. At the moment, it probably related to the matter of languages. Had it been to do with "shit pulled at night", the wait could be attributed to distress, or the search for a sufficient summary. Given how easily Mason had mentioned it, Uryuu doubted that.

The answer came, and Uryuu found himself trusting it despite his misgivings. As unnatural as the idea of relying on another person was, he had little choice. Better a patient than an employee. He could confirm these details with others, as well, and given the topic, see for himself. In any case, once Mason began talking, Uryuu's feigned concentration on the meal returned to bottom rung, and he looked across at the other guy, steady and absorbing.

Despite the crude language, the guy was clearly savvy. The man of the hour, Head Doctor Landel himself, certainly seemed the type to do things for no reason other than malice, or boredom. Any reason at all. And after the languages overheard, even he wondered from where everyone else had been taken. The doors sounded absolutely absurd, though it was only one more impossible thing on a teetering stack of others--and not all of them had been placed at this Institute. It had begun in Hueco Mundo, perhaps even Karakura Town.

"Go figure," he echoed, tone dry but not scathing - a recognition of Mason's unwillingness to expand, despite Uryuu's interest in hearing more. A very brief pause to consider his next question, so short as he'd taken time while masticating to organize them.

"Are there frequent escape attempts at night? What is outside this Institute?" And, were there monsters out and in, as Maito Gai seemed to say?