damned_institute | Day 51: Arts & Crafts (4th shift)

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Day 51: Arts & Crafts (4th shift)

There were very few activity shifts, Cloud was sure, that could possibly make him feel more like he was being treated like a child. He took a seat at one of the tables and blankly examined the materials set out before him. A pair of the dullest scissors he'd ever seen were labeled 'ages 3 and up'. It was good to know where the patients stood in this.

He wasn't much of an artist, and he ignored most of the paints and other drawing utensils in favor of a few sheets of colored paper and instructions on how to make origami. That sounded vaguely familiar. Didn't Yuffie have throwing weapons made out of paper at some point? It was something to do anyway, and thus Cloud began the process of crafting what ended up being very elaborate paper wads.

Sadly, his attempts to keep from dwelling on the subject of his missing friend failed when he realized this was something Aerith probably would have enjoyed greatly. Tonight, he and Yuffie would go out and try to accomplish... something. It was depressing to think there really might not be anything they could do, that they might all end up the same as the flower girl eventually.

[for a hopefully more optimistic materia thief]

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Deep in thought, Mello barely listened as the ever-perky nurse continued to try to sell him on various aspects of this place. "...wonderful chance for the patients to express themselves!" she concluded her latest spiel.

Give me a full clip, and I'll express myself all over the place, he thought, giving her his usual flat look. He hadn't seen the setup for arts and crafts yet, and while he didn't expect to find anything useful, he would've been remiss if he didn't at least look. There wasn't anything useful. The room had the same feel as the rest of the Institute, trying to be cheery but falling short enough to come off depressing instead. Maybe that was just Mello. Some of the other prisoners seemed to be getting on all right.

He took a few sheets of paper and a calligraphy pen, half-intending to pocket it, though there were better weapons to be found at night, grabbed a black magic marker as if in afterthought, and found an empty table. He got two fingernails colored black, the kind of pointless rebellion he'd almost always been too busy to bother with at Wammy's, before the nurse intervened.

"Really, Michael, that's unacceptable. These supplies are for art, not getting yourself dirty right after your shower."

"Jesus, lady, are you for real?" Mello snapped. That was a rhetorical question. He knew she was. "I'm expressing myself."

She took the marker away, and he indulged in a brief but vivid fantasy about finding a third bullet and delivering it to her. He had to do something tonight. Being reduced to kid shit like this (failing at it, too, came the unwanted, silent addendum, right on cue) was unacceptable. He'd find a more destructive outlet for his frustration later.

[for Lunge!]

A quiet lunch had followed his morning with Nunnally, providing a short interlude in which Lunge could gather his thoughts together. The slip-up had been unacceptable, of course; a natural outcome of the culmination of three day's worth of carefully aimed attacks, perhaps, but unacceptable nonetheless. Progress demanded strict separation of the personal and professional. How else would he get anywhere if he didn't follow that code?

But anyway. His nurse, seemingly delighted with his 'work' that morning, had decided that another trip to the Arts and Crafts room would do him good. He didn't argue; the majority of the adult patients would be in there while the younger half showered and made use of the Sun Room. Perhaps he could find Jones, or L, especially since they still needed to decide on a plan of action for future basement attempts now that it was clear that they'd either have to only try on nights without special counseling patients around or plan an alternate route- through the courtyard, maybe? But who knew what they might station outside?

Neither of them seemed to be around when he arrived, anyway, but it wasn't long before he spotted a familiar blond man- sitting alone was Morgan, now with one (no, two) of his nails filled in with black. To be honest, Lunge was simply surprised that he hadn't turned his attentions onto his surroundings instead; he'd struck him as the sort to leave his initials scraped into table- and chair-legs as an opportunistic mark of protest.

The last time they'd spoken had been in the wake of both of their 'sessions', in Doyleton. Part of him wanted to ask after Mello's experiences, find out if he had indeed spoken to Javert yet, but he restrained the urge to leap straight in. Without any comment on his handiwork, Lunge headed to the empty seat across from the younger man, nodding briefly- he didn't suppose he'd need permission this time- and sat down. "Morgan. Have you made any progress since we last spoke?" A nice, general conversation starter. He'd let Morgan lead for now.

"Lunge." Mello gave him a nod in return, several degrees warmer than it would have been for most people. Matt and L knew what Mello had been through, but they couldn't possibly get it the way Lunge did, couldn't share the urgent need to fix this.

His frustration flared again at the question, and he tried not to betray it in his expression. He hadn't made satisfactory progress. Initial contact with a handful of people working on the same problem was all he had to show for several days' efforts. It wasn't enough, and right now, he felt sure the others wouldn't have managed to discover any more than he had. The answers simply didn't exist.

He'd fought against the hopelessness that told him there was no solution in every rational way he could, had started to try a few irrational ones, too. He'd simply have to fake it until he found a way to believe again.

"Some," he replied, which wasn't entirely untrue. "I'd have made more if this place hadn't decided to impersonate an Escher drawing. I'm meeting with the man you suggested later, and I've noted some others with a personal interest in the matter."

Matt would just have to deal with the change of plans. Maybe that ring would come in useful after all. It would necessitate a detour tonight, but would make things much faster in future. Mello idly drew a jagged line to nowhere on the calligraphy paper. Planning that far in advance had been unthinkable only a few days ago. Was it surrender that he was doing it now, or simply realism? He made a straight, thick penstroke off the edge of the page, and looked back up at Lunge. "How about you?"

The welcome he got had been just that- a welcome- which made for a good start. Lunge hadn't been sure whether or not his presence would be received gracefully or not, given that it so inescapably related to pain of some sort (you're not the type who likes to be reminded of your 'failings', are you?), but so far things seemed to be going smoothly. That mild flicker was to be noted, if it had truly been a flicker, but that seemed to have more to do with the question of progress than anything so personal. Good.

Interesting, though, that he'd brought it up almost immediately himself with the mention of Javert. Was there perhaps a sense of kinship in there? Or, if not quite as strong implied of that, a sense of trust? It all depended, he supposed, on how many 'others with a personal interest' there were; it was only natural that he felt more comfortable discussing what had happened with those already familiar with the process (process, that's a good word- scientific). After a moment, he nodded. "Good. The more information collected on what happened, the better." For a second he almost found himself asking if he was feeling any better himself, but the triteness of the question struck him almost immediately; did it matter? True though it was that conversation on that particular matter flowed more easily between them, it didn't give him the room to be sentimental.

But, to business. It was obvious enough that L would rather he kept the details of their visit to his headquarters a secret for the time being, but that didn't matter especially- enough had happened otherwise to give the impression of honesty when explained. "My partner and I were thrown off by the same thing that night," Lunge explained, gaze flickering up to meet Morgan's unfalteringly. "but we managed to use it to arm ourselves and explore the basement- we tried to get another look yesterday but a brainwashed patient interrupted us. Did you run into anywhere interesting?"

He knew the formula: Randomised doors; some taken to meet host (?); some taken to meet Landel (???); some taken to one of two home worlds (empty variant/ ghost variant). It would be interesting to see which ones had applied to Morgan.

A slow blink stood in for a wince at the memory of the empty city: the car, the shells littering the pavement, Matt's pale, stricken face. Anyone could have connected those dots. The self-accusation Mello had escaped in the city had since come flooding back, more than making up for lost time. He couldn't argue with the internal voice that told him, Your fault, your mistake. Matt might not even be here if it weren't for you. It was perfectly true, despite the fact that Mello hadn't done it yet; he knew it was the path he'd been on.

"Yeah. We did." Just as he'd done with L, he made himself focus on the essentials, the facts. "Back home, but a place I haven't been yet." He drew a circle on the paper, with spokes radiating out. It looked too much like the ring of cars, and he scribbled it over. "I was with someone I knew, before here," he explained, because it was relevant, wasn't it? That little side trip had been meant to fuck with Matt's head. Icing on the cake for Landel that it had fucked with Mello's, too. He frowned at the page, because there was something else about that detour he knew Lunge would find significant. "What they did to me... It was gone, while we were there." And he'd chased an idiotic, superstitious hope for the rest of the night, that one door, the next door, would take them back.

"What's in the basement?" That was close to another subject he didn't like to think about. Those topics were starting to hem him in, thorned hedges blocking every path. But if the strange, huge room where he'd faltered was in the hospital, he wanted to know. The fact that doubts had seized him there so completely, however fleetingly, told him it wasn't elsewhere. It stood to reason it was either on the Institute grounds or in Doyleton.

There might have been a pause before the man answered that would have suggested a moment's thought for a lie, but Morgan's answer was truthful enough. So they'd taken a trip back 'home' as well. Not his own specifically, but presumably somewhere of significance to his friend instead. Perhaps it was time for him to lay down his hand- if not the King, Queen and Ace in his sleeves.

"I have a confession to make- the two of us found ourselves somewhere similar that night as well. We ended up at a place of significance to my partner, though it was completely empty." The ghost tower wearing his partner's name across its glassy, computerised eyes, otherwise empty. The deeper shades of panic he'd seen in motion across L's face, like the play of a darker light across water. Both illuminating in their own way, and both details he'd hold back for now. "I hope you'll forgive my caution."

But that note about his own therapy, there was something that stood out to him. There was his outlier. After a moment, Lunge tilted his head. "You say it was gone? How could you be so sure? I... would have known if it had reversed for me, if only temporarily." He'd been so sure he'd felt it, then, that flicker of panic cutting off his resources. Maybe... "The person I was with regained their clothes when they returned. Do you think perhaps that the reversal to pre-Institute status affected everyone from the 'world' they arrived at, even if the area wasn't based on their memories specifically?" Rhetorical question. He knew it.

The basement, meanwhile, was an altogether 'safer' topic. There was a moment in which he wondered whether or not he should share information about their spoils- but Morgan didn't seem like the sort to steal. Besides. If he wasn't careful, L's paranoia would rub off on him. "We're not entirely sure. The room we visited two nights ago held a Sphinx-" here Lunge paused briefly to give Mello a look to leave the I know, but it's true-incredulity unspoken, "-asking riddles. On solving one, we were given a 'prize', a small shield of some sort, with the implication that it could be used to gain access to somewhere else in the basement."

That was, at least, what he had assumed from the creature's words. This is the Coliseum Shield, which you can use somewhere in the grand ball room. Suggestion: the shield had no intrinsic value, and its size suggested a symbolic use rather than a literal one. It was likely that it acted as a key of some sort to this 'Coliseum', and that the keyhole was in the ball room. They'd find out soon enough.

Mello nodded: yes, empty; and yes, I understand reticence quite well. "We were the only ones there, too." As if seeing his own future hadn't been eerie enough without the place being deserted. But it was only in memory that it took on that tinge; at the time, Mello had been so buoyed up by feeling like himself again that he'd hardly registered he'd been standing where Matt had died. Oh, he felt it now, most definitely, the recollection of his callousness. Walk right over your grave, Matty, there's things that need doing, he might as well have said.

"It was just the two of us, so there was no control group. We both got our proper clothes back, and everything that went with them." Matt's smokes, Mello's gun, rosary, everything. "I know the effects were reversed. I knew it as soon as we landed there." He was, obviously, curious about what had been done to Lunge, but, for once, he would have scrupled to trade for that information. The only thing of similar value he had was the details about what had been done to him, and it had been hard enough to spill those to Matt and L. Mello knew pretty well that his sense of honor was skewed, but it was honor nonetheless, and he wouldn't have asked Lunge to tell him his story without being prepared to give his own in return.

How had it been accomplished, though, this awareness of who was native to a place, and who wasn't? It spoke to an uncomfortable degree of knowledge about their real lives. But Mello had already known they knew too much about him, had suspected well before that awful night that his nurse, Dr. Weaver, any of the staff, could have said his real name out loud if they so chose. As if he were just anyone. He would fight to the death to keep from believing that.

Jumping to the next topic with perhaps untoward eagerness, he gave a quiet heh in acknowledgment of Lunge's unvoiced caveat, which approximated the same signal Mello would have given, albeit with less of an eye-roll than Mello would have thrown in. "I think we were in the basement here, too. It had that feel. A giant room, with fancy-ass doors." The cursing was deliberate and derogatory. He still remembered that sense of being awed against his will. Remembered his certainty that the doors were a puzzle. Riddles... Lunge's nod to the impossibility of it all made Mello sure he was telling the truth. He had no reason to invent such a lie. The question was, what would solving it all get them? "They had hollowed-out spaces in them, like something needed to be put there." Like the shield; it wasn't much of a stretch. "Do you know what happens if you open those doors? We ended up in some sort of break room, but that wasn't a normal night."

Good- Morgan hadn't been offended by his decision to hold back here and there. Presumably he was doing precisely the same thing anyway, which, as troublesome as it might have seemed, also meant that he had the right to lie without crossing a line of some sort-- and you're not a hypocrite, are you, Morgan? But, aside from that, it seemed as though they had fallen into the same scenario that he and L had: empty world, all personal affects restored, and apparently all physical injuries removed. And if there was one thing he knew instinctively (not, not instinct, from experience and evidence) that he could trust the man about above all else, it was the physical injuries.

"Hmm. Well, that's certainly the way it seems so far. Even if you didn't recognise the place you were taken to, it would still have been replicated from memories of your own home world." Replicated. Lunge was careful to use that word, careful to distinguish between reality and what he had already decided was a trick. But more than that, the trauma of that unhappy reunion relied on its believability; rejecting it became therapeutic. "Perhaps whatever it was triggering it- the system behind what happened- was able to recognise those from the world it mimicked." Which, if 'system' was the right word, implied that same uncomfortable level of understanding built into the Institute he'd picked up on all along. They didn't even have to think about what the most effective course of action would be- it was intrinsic. A system designed for the perfect experience. The only place he'd felt it more than in L's tower was in that room on the second floor, leather straps biting into his ski-

No.

Morgan wasn't the only one feeling the inexplicable (ha) tug of the next matter. "Spaces? There's more than one?" Lunge's expression fell into a faint frown for a moment. That complicated matters. "Then there must be multiple items to collect." And if there was a shield, he now didn't doubt for a second that there would also be a sword to go with it- the hero's weapons of choice. "The Sphinx called the item we were given the 'Coliseum shield', so I would suggest that they lead to a Coliseum. Though," he added suddenly, frown falling more deeply into thought, "a 'coliseum' is a theatre of sorts. Who, then, would be the audience, I wonder?" Again, he let his eyes fall steadily and unfalteringly onto Morgan's: take one guess.

It was replicated that struck Mello. It had been obvious from Matt's reaction how accurately the empty stage had been set, and though he'd managed to convince himself, while they were there, that they'd managed to get one step closer to escape, he'd known all along that real progress would never have been that easy or unlooked-for. He'd known it was another trick, a construction designed for maximum impact. Presumably, Lunge's companion had suffered a comparable emotional blow, thanks to whatever place the Institute had seen fit to throw them into. Just as it wasn't for Mello to say that Matt had been taken back to the scene of his death, he fully recognized Lunge wouldn't be forthcoming with any details about his partner from that night.

"That's a massive amount of information." That it was about them, about him, he quickly pushed from his mind. "It has to be organized, and stored, which is to say accessible... somewhere." The place couldn't just pluck it from their minds, could it? He should have considered this before, he thought, irritated with himself; and would need to devote more thought to it before he came up with anything he could act on.

"There were two spaces." Lunge's rhetorical question got a quiet huff in response. "Would anyone ever get a thumbs-up in that coliseum, I wonder." He could see Landel liking that idea: himself as the emperor, holding the power of life and death over his prisoners, watching them struggle in a contest that was rigged. The only way to win would be to refuse to play at all.

Two nights ago, so they had wound up there by chance, in the middle of what sounded like a quest right out of a fairytale, or some shit, in a part of the place Mello hadn't even guessed existed until that same night. A part that had felt older than the rest of the Institute, at least to him. "What's it doing down there? The style's inconsistent, to say the least."

Lunge's eyes flickered and he tilted his head, interested. There was an curious point- one he hadn't considered fully, at least. He'd so far been operating on the assumption that whatever it was controlling the changes here was specifically a computer system, and that much of what they'd seen was computer generated. Even so...

"I don't think it's paper-based, if that's what you mean," he answered. It all linked together. Put two and two together and you got... "However, there is one thing I noticed, last night in particular. Before removing the translation mechanism, you could hear the sound of typing. The suggestion seems to be that the Head Doctor has access to a computer that can control the Institute and most likely contains information on the patients here." Assumption: correct. They always were.

Nearly always, Heinrich. Nearly. Not when it counts.

Shut up. Two spaces meant two objects. That was the ideal outcome; it meant that only one more item had to be found. The Inspector's mouth twisted into a hollow, pithy little smile. "I'm sure the Head Doctor would leap at the chance to play God and saviour."

And, after all 'thumbs up' had always been misrepresented: not a sign to free, but the sign for permission to kill. One of life's little urban legends. Yes, he didn't doubt for a second that the man would be happy to show it. That cruel twisting of expectation- that was something he knew that Martin Landel thrived on. "That is, I suppose, its only purpose. It's grandiose, it's jarring, it's exciting- it's a theatre not only for the patients, but for Landel himself. Would I be right in saying that the entire 'look' of the room was overtly elegant and overblown?"

Mello nodded. "It'd have to be a computer system, to keep track of that much data." The thing was, if the computer were the control mechanism for things like the randomized doors, it was crazily advanced, and its components were undetectable: no wires, no cameras or sensors. No evidence of it at all that he had noticed. You're slipping, Keehl. That system's what you want. You should've been working on this since the day you woke up here, not wasting your time on the obvious places. Patient Possessions and the presumed storage place for their actual records and belongings, which he still hadn't reached, the computer even Matt couldn't crack, those were red herrings, and he'd fallen for them. He began drawing again, restlessly, a few sparse lines that would represent, eventually, as much of the Institute as he'd seen first-hand. Bloody inexcusable that he hadn't made this a priority. He still felt that whatever was used to drag the prisoners here in the first place had to physically exist, somewhere. The same went for this master system.

The question of where the hell they put things applied to the underground room, too. "You'd be exactly right. It's mostly empty. There are two other doors, wood, with angels and devils carved on them. The phrase that came to mind for me was 'Old World.'" He skipped to the bottom of the page he'd been drawing on, and made a quick circle, with the doors and pillars marked as he remembered them. A seemingly unrelated section of the Institute, where the fact that this was, at its core, a battle was at least nodded towards, instead of up here, where Landel seemed to delight in soppy talk about his fucking good will.

"Have you been in the basement when the doors're working the way they should?"

Doors with angels and devils carved into them. 'Old world'. Lunge was sure he'd find some impressive marble flooring and vaulted ceilings when he got their himself. Landel certainly wanted to make an impact down there, didn't he? "Probably an extension of his egotism," he mused, more to himself than to Morgan. "I wouldn't be surprised if the basement were something he himself installed, rather than it having been originally included in the Institute plans- that would explain the architectural differences. The rooms that represent him are the ones that express the power." Just a theory, of course, and one lacking any real evidence, but since when had he ever let that restrain his thoughts?

Idly, he let his eyes wander across to Morgan's sketch. Looked like a map of some sort, an eagle's eye view of various rooms. The two doors he'd mentioned likely led to the 'tasks' that had to be completely in order to obtain the two coliseum items to open the main doors, behind one of which lay the Sphinx. But what else was there...?

He glanced up again. "No, not yet. I've joined an effort to explore the area, though our only attempt so far was derailed fairly early on," he explained, doing his best to keep the irritation out of his voice. "We'll be trying again soon enough. What about you? Will you be trying your hand down there?"

Mello understood quite well the drive to go and see, to work out the mysteries for oneself, but this was a battle where their opponent had written all the rules, and would never share them with the prisoners, would never allow them any meaningful victory. True, Lunge was unhampered by his own mind trying to convince him that any resistance was doomed from the start. He was still more than intelligent enough to know that you never engaged the enemy in a framework he had created and which he ruled.

Or was Landel counting on his prisoners to concede defeat before they even began? That had never been Mello's style, and he wouldn't allow it to be now. Damn it, he wasn't supposed to think he could turn odds like that to his advantage. He was supposed to know it, and do it.

"What do you think you stand to gain?"

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Day 51: Arts & Crafts (4th shift)

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lol tl;dr, I'm so sorry /)_(\

no worries, this got huge, wow

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