[from here]

Lockdown scanned the hallway with his flashlight before entering. Axe poised, the bounty hunter stepped into the long and wide hallway. After taking a brief klik to review his map, Lockdown continued on his way.

Well, at least his optics and processor weren't playing tricks on him like the last night. Although apparently people had suffered much worse that night than he had. Due to his habit of checking the board every chance he got, he'd seen the notices and questions about 'dying' last night. With slag like that going down, Lockdown was more anxious than ever to get out of this Pithole and back in his real body and world.

Once again, it was Nurse Lydia who took over the daily announcements just after the jingle came on. She didn't seem to waste any time and launched right in.

"Hello, everyone. Dr. Landel will be taking over for the last announcement of the day, but for now, I will continue in his stead. Presently, our nurses will escort you to your rooms, where dinner will be served. Tonight, the menu consists of herb chicken, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and carrots. Dessert is a brownie."

After one of her conspicuous pauses, she added:

"A double-fudge brownie."

It seemed as if someone had been coaching her from the background. At any rate, she stiffly finished the announcement with: "The Head Doctor will speak with you soon."

The intercom clicked off.

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. SOME ROOM ASSIGNMENTS HAVE BEEN CHANGED IN LIEU OF DROPS, so please double-check on your character's assignment here. ]

The day had been slow for L so far, slower than he required: the events of the previous night were traumatic, but they did not outweigh his need for information and a useful way in which to apply whatever he might learn.

When the nurse shepherded him from the cafeteria, through the Sun Room, and over towards the door of the Arts and Crafts Room, he experienced a small internal wince: this was the room where it had happened the night before. Unpleasant, yes, but likely to be irrelevant in terms of my own welfare, except in terms of what I can learn from it, he reminded himself.

He had the impression that he could avoid the room if he wanted to, but there were several convincing reasons to push past his reluctance: his meeting with Lunge was necessary, the opportunity to see the room in more usual circumstances might be valuable, and he did not want the staff to see that he had been affected. He wasn't sure how they were tied to the events of the previous night, but the buzz of information around the Institute suggested some kind of strong connection.

As he stepped into the room, feet feeling imprisoned in the slippers that the staff kept insisting that he wear, he avoided the area where he had collapsed. Instead, he turned to the right and proceeded as far into the room as he could, then left, then took a seat in the back corner.

If the nurses pressed him to be more creative, he would take up painting. However, he expected to express his creativity in other ways.

[For Lunge.]

That had been a very frustrating shower. For many reasons. At least Raine was going to at least look at Forte. Hopefully, she'll actually heal him. The showers had also succeeded in making the ninja feel like a pervert. A mild one, but still... It was as if Yukari had picked that spot in the showers because she knew the ninja could easily see her.

Ugh! Damn youkai.

Squirreling herself away in a corner of the cafeteria, Sheena finger combed her wet hair before pulling it back with the bright red ribbon. She so needed her own hair ribbon back. She was attempting to formulate her plan of acquisition - she was ninja after all - as people started trickling into the room. The plan was put on pause, though, when her stomach rumbled.

Food now - plan later.

[Closed to Haseo and Endrance]

Yuffie had died.

No, really. Seriously. She had actually died. Bleeding all over the place, making a horrid, sticky mess and scaring the hell out of Suzaku; she remembered it clearly. Kind of. Sort of. Through the blood loss, the pain, and the visions. Through Aerith's voice whispering in her ear, Cloud's stricken eyes, and her own panic. As bad nights went, it had been Bad, capital B and all the trimmings, and oh, god. She sat, trembling on the edge of her bed, eyes closed and hands pressed hard over her racing heart. The by-play between Landel—Landel!—and Lydia barely even sunk in. There was nothing in the whole world, any world, that could prepare you for something like…

Had it all been some kind of hallucination?

Had she imagined the whole thing?

No… She didn't think so. Nightmarish or not, Yuffie knew reality. But if it had been real, how was she alive now? That kind of pain wasn't something you could just cook up, was it? She thought about it all the way to the cafeteria, drifting behind her nurse without focus or intent. Maybe if she tried to stay clinical, tried to step back… But she'd never been good at that when things got personal. And every time she closed her eyes or blinked, she swore that the scenes played back to her, like an overused commercial on a crappy channel on a crappy TV, in a run-down dump of an inn that smelled like mothballs and yesterday's breakfast.

The scent of blood and damp, rotted wood clogged her nose. Disgusted, Yuffie shoved her bowl of cereal—handed to her by a clucking Plucky—off to the side so that she could melt into her chair, palm heels scrubbing against her eyes. Too much. This was… Too much. She couldn't even paste a plastic smile on her face to make herself feel better. Her usual shield, the white noise of inane babble that could filter out almost any crisis, was in tatters all around her. Five minutes, she gave herself.

Five minutes (not) to think, five minutes to get her act together, because there was no way she could let herself shatter here. No way…

[Closed to Sheena]

_{[from here]}

Yomi's plan had been simple from the beginning, simple enough that acting on autopilot would make no difference.

Break apart the bathroom. Take any good metal. Go elsewhere and repeat.

She could do that, whether or not her heart was fixed on the past, and her thoughts were a million miles away, and the sesshouseki was thrumming in her veins, an ominous drumbeat trying to lead her by its tune. She could do that, because it would keep her moving. It would keep her going. She could focus on it, and not on her disintegrating existence.

Her attention turned to the line of sinks, not on the rising volume of ghostly voices. They were just noise in the background, noise to be added to the already chaotic static in her head.

Huh, night already? How time flew. Lockdown listened to the broadcast, in case it said anything important, before getting up and shutting the door once more, propping a chair against the knob. He then returned to his bed and sat in front of the assassin droid.

"C'mon, I won't bite... hard," The bounty hunter grinned. He put both hands on HK's shoulders and pulled him in to kiss him on each cheek, while his hand ran through the droid's hair. "What do you say?"

Hello! I.R.I.S. here once more to announce to you, our honored guests, that you have officially made it through a day of our typical Landel's treatment. Of course, it isn't quite over: we will now have you retire to our designated patient quarters with one of your agency partners to inspect their sleeping area and the tools that we provide them with for the true bulk of our behavioral testing. On an added note, we would like you to notice once again that the meals we provide to our subjects are of the highest quality.

For those of you feeling apprehensive about taking part in our more intensive methods, please be aware that we would never imagine putting all of you in any danger whatsoever. This last shift will be your last at our Institute; afterward, we will escort you to our Head Doctor's personal observation station to survey some of our test Next-Wave participants in the rigorous trials we put them through – all for their betterment, of course.

Once again, we hope that you are satisfied with what you find, and as always, direct any questions you may have to your console.

The nurses began to escort the patients to their rooms. They didn't even seem to be brought to awareness by words such as "testing" and "subjects."

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. (Find all of the newly changed room assignments and shift introductions here.) If you are introducing your character during this shift, you may either choose for them character to wake up before their roommate gets back, or after. ]

It'd been nice to talk with Subaru, if only to see that the young man was faring a little better than before.  He seemed to have the worst luck and unfortunately, there wasn't always someone there to protect those that needed it the most.  As he passed the Sun Room, there was still no sign of a post from Ururu either.  Things didn't look promising.  But the nurse didn't stop there, she led him out and into the waiting room, empty now, but she promised his visitor would be along shortly. 

He thanked her and nodded, taking the seat provided and folding his hands quietly in his lap.  Would today be the day that he would get to leave this place with Ashura?  He'd done everything he could.  Followed the nurse's and doctor's orders, taken his medicine, even though it was causing havoc with his magic and his health, he'd tried to keep from causing any major fusses.  Would that be enough?  If he didn't get out soon, well... he didn't want to think about what might happen.

So he continued to sit, looking up anxiously every time the door opened, wringing his hands in his lap.  There was a mixed feeling of dread and happiness that seemed to be at war within him.  It would be a relief to see him again, but at what cost?  How long could he keep trying to balance two different lives?

Kibitoshin left the cafeteria in what could only have been described as a state of sheer, unleaded anxiety. Why did he have to be the one Dory had spoken to first? With everything he’d said and failed to say she’d probably ended up with a reverse education. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she came out of it knowing even less than she had when she arrived.

Hopefully- and he really did hope, more than anything- someone else would be able to start over and tell her what she needed to know, especially since she hadn’t exactly seem altogether… well… there. To be fair, she had been a fish until today. Expecting her to be perfectly normal was maybe a little much.

What he needed now was some peace and quiet. Maybe if he had a chance to calm down he wouldn’t make such a fool of himself in his meeting later that afternoon. The library would do for that, right? If he was lucky (which he never was, but he had to be positive) they’d have that book he hadn’t quite finished in Doyleton (even if he couldn't think of the town without shuddering), the odd one about Lady Esmeralda (which hadn't been very good anyway, but...). A quick scan of the shelves on arrival didn’t turn anything up, but he did manage to find a battered old book called ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to settle down with. Apparently, it was about a girl finding herself in a strange new world. Why did that ring a bell...?

Satisfied, he took a seat and began to flick through the pages.

[free for unlimited poking!]

Where was Blitzwing?

Lugnut ignored the nurse's fussing over his foot, even as it howled objections to his ill treatment of it the night before, pounding through the town in search of his wingmate, reportedly helpless and injured by an attack the night before-- and not finding him, not seeing even a glimpse of his crazy triple-changing ally.

Snarling at the nurse, but restraining himself from shows of violence-- Blitzwing would mock him if he showed up drugged already, and he would be useless to Megatron like that--he made his way impatiently to the cafeteria, stopping for just long enough to post an urgent notice on the board.

Where was he?

Looming in the middle of the cafeteria, he took the tray the nurse handed him (filled with disgusting human fuel, didn't she know he didn't have time to eat, not when his wingmate was missing?) and ignored it, watching for Blitzwing, where was he?

He refused to think about what might have happened to a wheelchair-bound, drugged, incapacitated warrior, with the swarms of monsters flooding around him, clawing and biting...

[for Scourge]

[From here]

HK happily chopped the head off yet another zombie as he entered the office, immediately scanning for targets, which were soon located and locked on to. "Statement: I like this. This should happen more often!" The axe swung again, this time seeing if he could keep the severed head balanced on top of the zombie for long enough to kick it in the face of the next one. It worked. All this made for a gleeful assassin droid.

S.T. was bored. Bored and feeling useless. He'd stomped around town, looking for a distraction from his own self-pitying funk, as the light had waned. Boredom and feigned anticipation had given way to dread. He'd circled back around to the grocery to see if there was anything less useless on the bulletin. No dice.

Then it happened. Everything changed, without the comfort of a closed door and an unchanging dormitory room. Usually it was like an elevator with a dinner service -- if the doors open on the same sight as you left, either it's a crap elevator or you're in a stockbroker's office tower. And if it were the latter, the food would need more unpronounceable French things.

This had no frame, no steady point of reference. The smell of rotting fruit, esters and alcohol, hit him first. Papers curled and became brittle. The ambient temperature dropped at least five degrees.

It was night, and the closest thing he had to a weapon was a ballpoint pen and a rack of rotting tomatoes. At least he hoped the tomatoes were on his side.

[for Spider Jerusalem, open to threadcrashing once we get going]

[from here]

Lockdown kicked the door to the hardware store down and barged in. There was already a zombie in here, a big one, who the bounty hunter guessed was the owner of the store. There were also two other zombies with him, so Lockdown was already outnumbered. But that had never stopped the bounty hunter.

He frantically shifted his optics around the store, before settling on a set of large axes. Dashing forward, and executing a somersault to dodge the hands of the zombies, Lockdown quickly took hold of an axe, preparing to defend himself with it.

"HK, get your aft in here and lend a servo!" The bounty hunter called out.

At first, the idea of being stuck in this meatbag dwelling sector at night seemed like a wonderful idea. So many targets, such an open field, and so many things that could be repurposed for use as weapons!

...Then he saw all the zombies. After the talk of those 'space barnacles' last night, it was fairly easy to identify them as such. But the only thing was, those things were supposed to only affect droids.

Now there were meatbag zombies. All over the place. And he didn't have a flamethrower. Oh no no no nononono.

In short, HK freaked out.

Lockdown had seen some pretty weird stuff in his lifetime, but this took the grand prize.

Everything suddenly becoming dirty and run down was strange enough, but the rotted flesh creatures nearly killed it for him. They reminded him of the stories of the mutated space barnacles, only these humans didn't seem to have any of the slimy creatures on them. Lockdown shook himself and decided to think about it later, preferably when he was actually armed.

The bounty hunter dashed up from his seat and bolted out the door, heading out to find the hardware store, and HK-47

[to here]

Okay, so it looked like there was no point in trying to get through a TV. It figured. It was either because their abilities were sealed off or the world inside the TV simply didn't exist here. It wouldn't have made much sense for the Head Doctor to bring them there when they had such an easy method of escaping/hiding out anyway. Yousuke told himself he shouldn't be surprised, but he couldn't help but be disappointed anyway.

Well, whatever. He hadn't eaten since breakfast on the bus, so he figured it was about time he put one of his coupons to good use. "Tasty Burger" sounded like a generic chain out of a kid's show or something. Some place the main characters would meet up at after school. In any case, it couldn't hurt to see if the burgers really were as tasty as advertised.

He pulled out his coupon and got in line. Looked like he was stuck with the basics...

[Mitsuru]

Feeling slightly enlightened, Indy headed back down Main Street in search of his next quarry--those damn elusive cigarettes for Sanzo. The obvious place to start was the corner store, which, as it turned out, happened to be on the next corner. Callahan's Grocer. Indy went in.

The store was clean, even cozy, and larger than he'd expected--partially because it included a butcher's shop, Indy guessed, but it also just had a wider variety of food than he was used to. Like the Institute, this place was obviously getting shipments in frequently; all this couldn't be grown locally, given how fresh it looked in the dead of winter. Looked like the good people of Doyleton didn't get their milk delivered, either. Aside from the butcher's counter and the register where you paid, it was all self-service.

Indy offered a polite greeting to the man at that register--the owner, presumably--and started examining the aisles. The shelves turned out to hold a large array of tins and boxes of food and cooking ingredients, but no cigarettes. He headed up to the register with the intent of asking the owner (Callahan?) where he could get some, but--hey, weren't those rolling papers behind the counter?

"You know," he said conversationally to the man behind the register, "normally I'm not much of a smoker, but a hand-rolled cigarette would really hit the spot today." He took the coupons out of his pocket and fanned them on the counter. "'Fraid I don't have any cash, but maybe we could work out a trade? You'd be doing me a big favor."

Indy was prepared to fork all four of them over if he had to. There was enough left in the paper sack to get him through the day, and he couldn't think of anything else he needed more than Sanzo's information right now.

[for Callahan and then for Dean]

For the most part, Lockdown continued to simply give nothing but passing glances to the buildings in town. However, there was one that caught his interest soon enough. A 'Bath and Body' shop of some sort. Lockdown remembered his time in the showers, and the various concoctions he'd seen. Perhaps this shop contained something he could use for his and HK's "date".

The bounty hunter entered the shop, at least thankful to be out of the biting cold. He looked around the place, mostly indifferent to the pink walls and decorations. Lockdown wasn't the type to be easily distracted, especially when he had a goal in mind.

Lockdown walked along the place, looking through the bottles on the shelves. He picked up a bottle of liquid soap, noting its viscosity by tipping it on its side. He did the same for a bottle labeled 'lotion', noting that it seemed to be creamier than the soap. He read the ingredients labels on each bottle and determined that the lotion would do the job better. He put both bottles back and then began racking his processor thinking of ways to sneak the bottle out without anyone noticing.

[Free. No limits]

[continued thread from here]

Hahaha~ Poor Sheena. At this rate, she was doomed. At least it was a playful kind of doomed. Sheena was her friend after all, and if Harley actually felt the girlie was in any danger, she wouldn't have been as nice to little miss youkai over here. Sheena was so dramatic sometimes, heh.

Harley made an excited Oh! noise when she heard this was Yukari's first trip. Fun! "Place is small and boring, but you can have fun anywhere if you know how. We're all dolled up with nowhere to go anyway. Let's hit the town!~" Dusty, little Nowheresville town, but still. Might as well take advantage of whoever's tax dollars were funding this little trip.

She turned away from Yukari, leaned forward, and held a hand up above her eyes as though she was concentrating real hard on looking far away. She turned her head back and forth eagerly as she spoke. "I just been down this street before. Not a whole lot. There's a burger joint and some beauty places and a grocery store and some place with TVs and ya can't really see it from here but there's a hardware store waaaay down there, too. Also heard there's a toy store somewhere around here!"

Harley wasn't a really picky person when it came to the where. If it was up to her, she'd be picking up a big mallet, some machine guns, and a flamethrower... some snacks, too. She hadn't had anything high in sugar in a long time. Since even she knew those weren't an option, well, there had to be some place that was fun.