damned_institute | Day 51: Breakfast

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.

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"Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Sometimes I even pop in on my alternate selves. We make a nice little team." Most of the time. Sometimes his alternate versions were his biggest threats.

"Not as flashy as it seems, though, dimensional travel. I just tune into whatever world I want and" - Sanae snapped his fingers - "off I go. No space ships, portals, stuff like that. Kinda boring. But it's good when ya wanna be covert."

He nodded vaguely as the Doctor described Donna. It was clear to see that he trusted her very much. How well would they do in a Game? Probably quite well, more so if Donna's declaration of the Doctor to be insane was more of an affectionate one. Unfortunately, it was against the rules to kill people for the sake of making them Players. Not that Sanae had those sorts of thoughts on his mind.

Ooh,, 'popping in on' past or future selves was risky, even when the person in question (like, say, a Time Lord, which the Doctor was certain Mr H was not) knew what he was doing... Which, well... Mr H might have. Time travel, transdimensional travel, all without a capsule...

"You're not human, then, are you?" the Doctor asked, though the way he said it made it sound more like a statement and less like a need for confirmation. "Humans don't just visit themselves, especially not in the twenty-first century. And even later on, well..... Certainly not that easily, not without a capsule or vortex manipulator of some kind."

He tilted his head back, his lips parted and tongue pressed against the back of his upper teeth as he considered Mr H a second time. It was the lack of a capsule—lack of anything, if Mr H wasn't oversimplifying—that really cinched it. He sniffed, and then leaned forward in his chair, working through his thoughts out loud, "So that leaves the question of 'what are you?' Some kind of transcendental being, I'd think, but which one; an Eternal or a— a Guardian or.... Well, there are all sorts of possibilities, aren't there? I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me...?"

Sanae smiled vaguely. This was his big secret that the Doctor was piecing through, and he'd never exactly been fond of telling people it. Actually, he'd been forbidden from telling it. Buuuuut, they weren't in a Game, and it wasn't like this man was a Player...or a Reaper. He could bend the rules. "I used to be, sure. Then I died. That'll do it, ya know.

"And you're guessin' close," he admitted. "Real close." He was a Guardian of sorts, but probably not the type that the Doctor was talking about. "Technically I'm what they call a Higher Being. Some people call us Angels, but I wouldn't go that far."

Sanae leaned back in his chair with his hands laced behind his head. "I gotta give it to ya, Doctor-san, ya really figured that out fast. Met someone like me before, have ya? Or is it just that good old intuition?"

"I've met... similar people before, yes," the Doctor answered, giving a nod. "Not exactly the same situation, of course, but when you've met more than one transcendental species, well... I wouldn't say you've met them all, but you know what they have in common, what they can do."

Of course, if Mr H had been a human before he'd died and come back as this 'higher being' (he agreed that 'angel' was probably a bit too far, though being mistaken for one was an entirely different matter), that was definitely different than the usual sort.

After a brief pause, he grinned and added, "What to look for, as it were. And knowing what humans can't—or don't—do, well... That helps, too."

[ack! sorry for taking so long...!]

"Small world," Sanae offered. He'd never heard of any other kind of being that could do the things he could except in manga, but then, he wasn't aware of everything in the wide, wide world even though he did his best to.

"Where'd ya meet 'em?" he asked, unlacing his hands and settling them in his lap as he leaned forward. "Out of curiosity."

One had to be a pret-ty special human to meet a 'transcendental species' (He wasn't sure how much he liked being labeled that, but really, whatever floated one's boat.) or...maybe not even human at all.

"It really is, isn't it?" the Doctor agreed. "Small universe, even."

He glanced down at his breakfast, and took a moment to polish off the last of his sausages before answering Mr H's question. "I've met a lot of them on Earth, actually, but not all of them. They weren't native here, of course, but the ones I ran into were hanging about for some reason or another." Unfortunately, the 'some reason or another' had only rarely been a pleasant one, but he narrowly bit back a comment on that. Mr H seemed like the nicer sort, and as long as he didn't start spouting details of an evil plan...

"Are there many more like you around Shibuya—or Tokyo—or Japan? Or is it just you?"

"I wouldn't know, but I'll take your word for it," Sanae said with a laugh. He'd always thought of the universe as vast, especially given how many dimensions it could fit into itself. But it wasn't as if he'd ever traveled the universe that most people thought of.

He frowned at the Doctor's answer. Many beings like him on Earth...who were alien? How come none of them had ever decided to arrive in Japan--no, Tokyo? That city was probably (if pop culture was to be believed) the likeliest site of alien contact or Armageddon or what have you. "Huh...never knew that."

Sanae shrugged. "There's more 'round the country. We keep to ourselves, ya know, so ya won't meet another one of my type unless ya die and, uh..." How to put this? "...stay dead."

Day 51: Breakfast

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