If L was being shooed indoors out of the rain by his unwanted caretakers, then he wanted to be shooed somewhere useful. He had managed to glean some knowledge earlier -- not as much as he would have liked -- and was aware that the hour was advancing. As much as he wanted to escape from this predicament, time was always in short supply.

He had another concern, though. The previous week, Landel's prisoners had been trapped in Doyleton with the "undead," along with a number of townspeople who had taken on the same appearance and characteristics. "Jill"'s comments over the radio suggested that this was the result of a spell meant to resurrect Doyle, one which had gone awry.

Then... is everyone in Doyleton dead already?

It wasn't an appetizing thought, but given last week's events, and other reported mishaps related to abortive attempts to return to the Institute from Doyleton, he thought it would be best to eat something. If there was a possibility that he would have to confront serious physical jeopardy, he didn't want to do it on an empty stomach. This meant that skipping meals, any meals, was probably a tactical error.

As such, he made his way into the remaining restaurant for which he had a coupon, and found a seat at an empty table. Maybe they will have pie, he thought. Cherry.

[Miss Lehane.]

Having said goodbye to Remy, Meche paused to think about where to go next. Lunch was the obvious decision, and looking at all the cookbooks had made her hungry anyway. She was pretty sure she remembered a restaurant on the next side street over ("Twin Pines," the coupon said); hopefully it had something a little healthier than burgers. She steeled herself at the bookshop door and ducked out into the rain.

It was really coming down now, and of course the nurses hadn't given any of them an umbrella. Well, it wouldn't do any favors for her hair--it was strange how that came back to her suddenly; she hadn't thought about it in four years--but there wasn't really anything she could do about that, so she decided she might as well get over it now. At least she had a hat and good rain boots.

With one hand pressed to her hat to keep it in place, Meche set off at a brisk jog down Main Street toward where she thought she remembered the Twin Pines was.

[for Peter Petrelli]

[Tracking Faith from here; Scarecrow's effects are wearing off]

No sign of Sam, but he was willing the Demon had went this way. He'd heard something loud banging open in this direction, and Dean was willing to bet that it'd been that Demon. The more he thought about it, the more he was getting weirded out by this whole thing. It just wasn't adding up. Dean could at least safely say that the halls had stopped lurching and throbbing around him. Great, he'd stopped tripping but that didn't change the fact that Sam had somehow been possessed.

Dean stopped in front of the door and listened, wiping his bloody nose absently on the back of his hand. Someone was definitely in there. Screw going in gently. If that thing wasn't gonna use its telekinesis on him, then he was gonna finish the exorcism so long as he was still breathing. Dean kicked open the door.

And barely danced back in time as what looked like a friggen mop swung at him out of the darkness. Normally it would've been annoying, but the thing riding Sam had snapped the handle and it was now closer to a crude stake. Dean didn't give the sonuvabitch another chance to wind up, charging it and throwing his weight against it.

[from here]

Skidding around the corner, there were actual doors here, and yeah, okay, this was a lot nicer now that the non-existent holes in the floor had stopped crumbling all over. Kind of. She thought so, anyway, but a part of her half-expected to lose her footing at any second, too. What the hell had happened back there?

She grabbed the first doorknob, rammed it with her shoulder, but for one, ow, and two, nothing, and neither had ever happened in her life. Not for as long as she could remember. A locked door stopping a Slayer? Please.

She cursed, but left it behind. Fuck it, if there was time to dwell on this, she didn't have it. Next one. It gave way this time, after a couple of tries, and she nearly pitched head-first into the shelves.

Graceful.

[from here]

The hallways here were different, and yet, very close to the same. Ayanami spread her beam around the hall as she moved out from the stairwell, again, glancing around. Nothing. And few noises; less even than the floor below. Was this a viable option? She stopped, looking to the right down a hall ridden with doors. Would any of those give weigh to a location of a pilot? She couldn't know.

"Where," she asked, "do you want to go now?"

[from here]

Okay, so far so...ridiculously quiet. Better than the civilians milling about, she guessed. If they were civilians. You could never really tell and it wasn't like running up against crazy shit didn't make someone into something else completely.

Case in point: Willow. Who would've thought, huh?

Man, speaking of which, she hoped no one back home was wasting their time looking for her when they had another apocalypse on their hands. For whatever the count was. Four or five times now? God help her if she knew. The Fire and Brimstone Daily didn't exactly deliver to prison, but Angel had dropped by sometimes with updates. So how're you doing? By the way, Sunnydale is showing signs of being sucked into another hell dimension again.

It was weird to think of herself as someone to be missed and a part of her thought, Nah, who would bother?, but that wasn't true, and she knew that, too.

Anyway, she just didn't want the world to end. She definitely didn't want it to end while she was stuck in an empty dark hallway. Missing out on all the fireworks wasn't cool. Every Slayer bit the bullet sooner rather than later, so it was really more of a case of finding a banging wicked way for it to happen.

[From here]

"Well, let's hope it's not lying in wait for its own revenge tonight," said Yukari, only half-joking this time. "Or anything else lying in wait for them, for that matter."

Glancing up and down the dark hallway, Yukari opened up a gap and reached inside. After a few moments of fumbling, she came out with a flashlight in one hand and her parasol in the other. The latter was still a bit bent and sad-looking, but at least the former worked fine.

What forces might conspire to ruin their lovely evening? Hopefully none.

[from here]

Oh yeah, Yukari had asked about her injuries. There was still some gauze wrapped about her left hand, currently holding the pillowcase, but it wasn't anywhere as heavily bandaged as it had been the day before.

"Mostly healed. Saw the bird again last night, so I made it pay for its debut."

[From here]

Who needed flashlights when you had mad ninja skills?

Yup, Yuffie was good. All senses primed and ready for action, just in case any action decided to come along and, y'know, happen. Which was about as likely as Barret turning up with a basket of posies and a bottle of blueberry wine.

She kicked back against the wall a few meters away from the door, shuriken half behind, half to the side. There were no shadows deeper than any of the others for her to dramatically skulk around in yet, so she shrugged off the reflexive urge to seek one out. She'd give it a couple of minutes, to see if John (or anybody else interesting) turned up, and then she'd move on. The night waited for no-one, least of all when you were under the thumb of a madman who thought regular, predictable wake-up calls were for lesser beings.

Which they kind of were, but that wasn't the point.

The night kicked off with another cryptic, creepy message from the Head Doctor. A rebel? Was he talking about Jill, or maybe another comrade of hers?

Well, whatever. Anise figured it was best not to think on it too much. There was a chance that this was just another ploy to make Jill seem trustworthy, after all. Anise had more important things to think about! Like how she was going to get to the ruins tonight. Ugh. How could she let the whole day pass by without at least asking someone to join her? She couldn't just go alone... could she?

For a minute, Anise was seriously considering that thought, but she knew her friends would probably be upset with her if she went through with it. In a way, she was more worried about getting scolded by them than she was about getting attacked by monsters. Even though getting attacked while on her own would be seriously bad...

When she thought about it, though, there was another way to go about this. She could head outside, see if she could find some other bold individual going the same way, then join up with him or her! Preferably a 'him'. A handsome 'him' would be even better.

As she did every night, Anise gathered her things for the excursion: the meat tenderizer, flashlight, running shoes, and a balled-up pillowcase stuffed into Tokunaga's sack. Once she was ready, she gave the room one last glance to make sure she had everything, then slipped out into the dark hallway.

[to here]

_{[From here.]}

Shinji paused at the major hallway, playing the beam of his flashlight over the walls. This was familiar by now. He'd come through this hallway a couple times before and it was usually as far as he'd gotten into the institute at night. Usually he just stopped - he didn't particularly want to find out how far the corruption went or encounter anything unpleasant. Tonight was different, though. Kaworu was missing (or so he thought). He'd wait here for a few minutes to see if Kaworu passed through. If not, Shinji decided to move on. He'd find Kaworu if it took all night. He owed him that much.

He didn't want any more of his friends to be hurt because he was too afraid to take action anymore. Despite the firmness of that thought, he still found himself fighting against panic and fear. This place still scared him at night. All moving shadows and claustrophobic walls. The feeling of being watched and followed. It was more than creepy, even after a few nights here. He wanted to go back to his room and try and sleep for once, but this was more important.

He wouldn't run away. Not this time. At least, that's what he told himself. He just hoped it wasn't a lie.

"I could tell you some stories," Yuffie suggested brightly, "of unquestionable legality." Illegality, that was. Petty little things like the law didn't usually mean very much to her, except for the times when she had to uphold it. Always fun for the breaking, though, the law, and messy for the clean-up. Just the way she liked it.

Her nurse looked like she wanted to rub her temples. With sandpaper. "No, thank you," she said instead. "Why don't you run along, now?" Please!, was the unspoken request. Before I spontaneously combust. Or commit various acts of violence that would have me arrested, or placed in a loony bin. Like this one. Yuffie had quite a bit of fun filling in the blanks other people left. Sometimes she did it outloud, just to see the reaction; sometimes she kept it to herself. It really, really depended.

"Don't mind if I do!"

She took off, bolting out into the Courtyard. The weather was dour, overcast and threatening rain, but Yuffie didn't care. She'd refused a coat on principle, and had found herself bargaining: Fine, fine, Plucky had conced she could go without a coat, but unless she had at least a sweatshirt on, there'd be no outside-time for her. She ran a little ways down the dirt path, then toppled herself into a series of cartwheels. Straighten, run. Cartwheel. Straighten, run, just for the sheer sake of movement, and the whip of the wind. She laughed a little giddily, checking her gait down to a jog. Gawd, Leviathan, she'd needed this. Right from the get-go, she'd needed this. Every day she spent cooped up in side, the more nervous energy she had.

Nanaki had helped, she realized. Sort of. He'd…helped. In a way. His presence and everything that was wrong with it weighed on her, for sure, but he was still Nanaki. He didn't deserve to be here, didn't deserve to be stuck in a body that he hated and couldn't use, but all the same, she found herself glad to have him.

Yuffie started to hum, as she jogged leisurely around the Courtyard. A cheery little tune, one of her favorites; no, it was her favorite. A Wutaian walking song, with the roughly translated title of Pathway After the Rain. The pace stayed even but the tune picked up, and she found herself half-singing snatches of the lyrics to herself. It felt like ages since she'd last said anything in her native tongue, at least outloud; she wrote in it all the time.

[The Doctor]

[From here]

Tyki moved further down the hallway at an easy pace, noticing the lack of other patients around here but he didn't really care much about it. Perhaps it meant no one would snag any smokes away from under his nose this time, but then again, that may have been too optimistic. Eh, but that hardly meant that another person would get away with that, right? Redhead just got lucky last time, and if that guy's luck lasted they wouldn't meet again during the night. And if that guy's luck - or anyone else's for that matter - wouldn't last...well, tough luck for them, people couldn't always win. Finding smokes and getting a free kill wasn't a bad way to spend the night after all, provided that the kill itself would be interesting enough.

But that was only if someone bothered showing up, and turning doctor offices upside down wasn't going to take the whole night he was pretty much certain. Well, he guessed he could worry about the additional entertainment later on. And as he briefly paused to ditch some ash on the floor, he guessed he could always head for the basement or something like he had done with Naminé and Giovanni back then. Not that he had a death wish, but sometimes a challenge was needed to keep things from getting boring.

And boredom? That wasn't something he was particularly fond of anyway.

[Reserved for Allen Walker!]

( from here. )

There was the stairwell. Kairi couldn't help but smile to herself as she rounded the corner and spotted the familiar hallway, still shrouded in darkness like she remembered it. She could see down the hallway and slightly into the Sun Room from where she was standing, and she lowered her flashlight, not wanting whatever it was that was lurking inside it that night to spot her.

At the thought of that, she looked down at the sword that she held in her hand, feeling ready to take on whatever it was that they were going to do tonight. Though, she had a feeling that even with her own weapon, the two boys wouldn't exactly let her help out all that much. Still, she'd try. The sword she had was real and with her at all times, not like a keyblade that would appear seconds before being attacked.

And to think, back when they used to play on the island with wooden swords, they had never given her one. Well, now she had a real sword, so hah!

( from here. )

One thing Kairi couldn't help but admit was that her room now was a lot closer to the door than her old one was. It was practically a hop, skip, and a jump away! Not bad at all.

... Not that she was lazy or anything. She wasn't the lazy one of the group. Certainly not.

Either way, Kairi continued down the hallway and out the door with ease, careful to watch her step.

( to here. )

It took quite some time for Anise to figure out how to open the flashlight and replace the batteries within, but eventually she had the device working again. Once that was done, she began to prepare for the night. When she opened the closet and looked around, she found just what she was looking for: shoes. There were boots too, which was kind of tempting, but she supposed the running shoes would be better for running and jumping in.

After tying those on, the girl took a pillowcase from her bed, rolled it into a tiny ball, and then crammed it into the small sack on Tokunaga's back. If that town outside of the institute turned out to have anything useful or valuable in it, she'd have a sack she could use. If it really was just a pile of ruins, then chances were that everything was free to take!

It was at that time that the nighttime announcements came on, opening with a creepy laugh from the Head Doctor. And... was he talking about Jill? It had been so long since Anise had heard anything about that woman, so that was unexpected. For a moment, the girl considered bringing a radio with her tonight, but remembering how much trouble its clues had caused her before, she decided against it.

Forget the radio. Exploring was more important. As soon as the doors unlocked, Anise stepped outside her room, but immediately paused just outside the door. That broadcast had been pretty distracting; she didn't forget anything, did she? She had her meat tenderizer in one hand, flashlight in the other, and Tokunaga on her back...