The antique store was crammed full of things. Most of them were completely pointless without an alchemiter, although Rose was enjoying idle contemplation of what sort of delicate china monstrosity might be formed by the combination of a gilt-edged tea set and a small crystal octopus, perched on a tiny cerulean orb.

The endless, if inaccessible, possibilities were not what had brought her into the building, however. The giant taxidermically-preserved feline had. It had been visible from the street, looming beside the counter, one paw forever raised in greeting or fond farewell. It wore no collar or nametag, and its eyes were dull and staring, but Rose approached it nevertheless. It reminded her of the Sphinx, a bit, which should have been a warning, but it would take more than dying to threaten her love of mythological creatures. Or of cats.

> Rose: go tiger free!

The night hadn't been nearly as productive as Loki would have liked, though he didn't feel all that upset about it. He had all the time in the world, as far as he was concerned.

He would have to keep an eye out for those showing very visible signs of infection. It seemed to be a very rapidly progressing disease, which was interesting, but not necessarily all that helpful. Of course, the question of humanity was cute in terms of philosophy, but considering that Loki had never been human and had no desire to lower himself to that level, he found it amusing more than threatening. It would probably set the mortals into mental paroxysms, though.

The prospect of visiting the town Soma had told him about, that was certainly more interesting, and possibly useful. Particularly considering they were apparently to be given some money to spend. There had to be a book store in the town at the very least, an possibly something more useful. He had serious doubts that he'd be allowed to purchase anything overtly useful like specialized tools, but the knowledge was far more important and books were the best place to focus.

Loki smiled prettily enough for the nurse when she showed up and took the clothing offered. It was slightly less painful to look at than the normal horrible uniform - jeans and a green flannel shirt, though he wasn't enamored of the plaid pattern. The outfit also included a black jacket and gloves, necessary since the weather was still cold. He made certain to tuck his notebook and a few pens into the jacket, since even if he wasn't allowed to purchase useful books, there would no doubt be an opportunity to take notes.

And he had a message he wished to pass around as well. Hopefully there would be some sort of bulletin board in the town. If not, it could always wait another day he supposed. That didn't tend to make people less dead.

Loki went quietly to the bus, accepting the sack of food and the little booklet of coupons. He examined the card that came with it for a moment - apparently that was the money equivalent - then looked through the coupons. Really, of the choices the massage and the manicure sounded the nicest. He was particularly wary of the 'tasty meal' since in his experience, anything with 'tasty' actually in the name was destined to be anything but.

With his normal air of amusement mixed with despair at the general state of food in this place, he started picking through what passed for breakfast.

[Send me an angel!]

A misplaced sense of familiarity met Barnaby the moment he opened his eyes, and the sight of the blank, white ceiling from yesterday morning greeted him. After rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, Barnaby sat up and felt around for his glasses. Had he blacked out again and wasted an entire night? Where was Kotetsu? And what had become of the man who had seemingly vanished before his very eyes at the end of dinner?

Once Barnaby slipped his frames onto his face, the world came into clearer focus, even if he didn’t get any answers out of it. He was in his room, and someone had apparently stripped him out of his street clothes in favor of the hideous hospital pajamas. Barnaby wasn't sure what he found more offensive -- that someone here had once again touched his things without his permission, or that he’d been undressed while unconscious for the second time since his arrival.

The thought made his skin crawl.

Just as he looked over to find a lump in the bed next to him, though, his assigned nurse came to retrieve him. He would have to confirm Klavier Gavin's whereabouts later. For now, he had no choice but to allow the nurse to escort him into the cafeteria. Strangely, she seemed to be under the impression that he and the other patients had slept soundly the whole night. While he might have assumed it was an act, Barnaby got the feeling that she genuinely believed what she was saying.

Regardless of her intentions, he knew she wasn't going to be any help. Instead of trying to ask her anymore questions, Barnaby left a note on the bulletin board concerning his roommate. If his observations from yesterday were any indication, he'd get some responses, at least. While he could have taken the time to leave something for Kotetsu, Barnaby didn't feel inclined to do so, especially when he knew he probably wouldn't check the board anyway.

He had no appetite this morning, but his nurse wouldn't leave him alone until she'd assembled a tray of fresh, fluffy pancakes for him. Honestly, Barnaby didn't see why some people felt the need to butt into his personal choices like this. At least there wasn't anyone forcing him to eat -- for now, at any rate. He sat down at an empty table close to the wall after setting his food down, privately hoping that she wouldn't try to find a "friend" for him to eat with this morning. He was tucked out of the way, so maybe she would forget about him for a few minutes as long as he didn't draw any unnecessary attention to himself.

Hands neatly clasped on the table, Barnaby didn't look at anyone in particular as patients filtered into the cafeteria for their morning meal. There were too many questions buzzing in his mind for him to focus on the names and faces of people he didn't care about. If Kotetsu wanted to find him, he could. It wasn't like Barnaby was going anywhere.

[For Kotetsu.]

Rose: Be the other girl

She was still Rose Lalonde, but, in the blink of an eye, she was no longer where she had last been.

She looked around. Driven earth, stretching out beneath her feet. Not surprising. The fact that it was all a uniform beige, with no checked pattern pounding across it, a little more so. She looked up, into the light, and set her jaw.

Showdown time.

Given what he'd done to the last nurse that had bothered him, and the fact that it had already been more than ten minutes since that time, Cox was fairly certain that every nurse, orderly, receptionist and even janitor currently working that day knew about it. And maybe some that weren't working if this place actually got decent phone service. As such, when his door next opened, he decided not to even bother looking back from his continued lounging on the sofa, choosing instead to go right into his current jackass routine.

“This is Doctor Cox,” he droned out mechanically with all the monotony of an answering machine, “So sorry I can't come to the door right now, buuuut if you drop your package at the beep and leave without a word, I'll be sure to not start listing off your biggest insecurities and, thereby, make you leave in tears." Message completed, he drew in a deep breath and finished with a long, "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeep," that was not going to end until he heard the door closing behind him.

> Rose: Open second door

You can't open the second door by yourself! It takes two people to do that. The inscription says so.

Not that you've read it yet.

Rose looked up at the door, the previous one's precise opposite number. The hallway had not been the esophagus of a great beast, at least so far. Or it was a very stone-covered, hallway-shaped esophagus.

She felt more comfortable in this door's presence, despite the fact that it was covered in more writhing monsters than she could shake a stick at. Or a candle, which she held up. Only those two who offer their blood will be allowed entrance. it read, which was simple enough.

Rose had no intention of being left behind. She pricked her finger on one of the fangs, and waited for the others to catch up.

> ==>

Honk.

Gamzee startled himself a bit by how loud the horn was in the empty hallway, but followed that up with a grin.

Honk honk.

Never mind that it might be attracting the attention of a monster or something else he didn't want. That possibility never came to mind. If anything, it would help the rest of his group to find him in these dark hallways. Rose knew what his bicycle horn sounded like, at least.

The main hallway thankfully wasn't far. He'd just wait there and look for familiar faces, even if it was still hard sometimes to distinguish one human from another. Their rainbow of hair colors helped some.

> ==>

Stepping through the door, Gamzee found himself in a larger room than the one they'd just left. It was also a great bit brighter, and he squinted against this brightness with a frown. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and the sudden light made it difficult for him to see for a few moments.

When he'd finally blinked the spots away, he walked further in to allow the other two room to pass around him. The pillowcase was set down, and he twirled a club idly in each hand, just taking everything in. It wasn't a room full or treasure, but it did look like a place he could mess around with the weapons he'd picked up. That could be fun too.

> Rose: Contemplate wizardly robes

She couldn't contemplate wizardly robes, except in the abstract, since neither wizards nor robes were on display. Their armor, however, was another matter. If wizards ever stooped to wearing armor, that was, but what else could this egregiously florid and flowing suit be? Not to mention the missing chinstrap for beardly egress. Daring to challenge the one, be he man or troll or of a heretofore unknown nature, wrapped in mists and shadows, would be a task to daunt any would-be hero. Except for the part where the armor was empty, the eye sockets long-dark. His crossed wands were dipped in blood, though whether his own or not Rose could not say.

She looked up, her attention rapt by the sight, sparing only the most minute notice for the other eight suits of armor and their equally unlikely armaments.

"I take it this is the physical aspect to the challenge." Brains and brawn, Lalonde could claim them both. So could Ilia; Gamzee was, as always, the wild card.

[from here]

Her expectations were met without fail. With the doors secured behind them and only a new hallway before them it wasn't hard to guess this would be much the same as their last task. Hopefully wherever they went from here would be less deadly. Hopefully, but not likely.

"Well then, kids, left or right?" There were only two doors here, like the hallway before, so any guess was as good as hers.

> Rose: Explore

The purpose of this room went without saying. Its mythological inspiration was evident in every minute detail, from the smallest carving to its denizen, who sat imperiously on what passed for a throne for a quadrupedalian creature.

"I believe we have found what we were looking for," she said, to her two companions. Not the ultimate destination, as the Sphinx was a gatekeeper, though she could see no door in the room besides the one by which they had entered. That didn't mean there wasn't one, of course, just that one was not offered to them on a silver platter. Or gold, as befitting the decor.

Then she turned to the Sphinx. It would be rude, after all, to ignore their host. "Greetings. I am Rose, and these are Ilia and Gamzee. I assume you have a question to ask us. Shall we get started?"

[from here]

Once they made it through the door and it had slide smoothly closed behind them there was no mistaking the sound of a final click. Dropping her juice, Ilia turned back around swiftly and reached for the handle. "Wh--Hey!"

Tugging with all her might, Ilia struggled to get the open but it would budge an inch. Frustrated, she slammed a fist against the dark wood, releasing a hiss. "... Damn."

For better or worse, there was no going back now. She turned back to the dimly lit hallway, a grim frown stretched across her face.

> Rose: Descend

Rose bounded off the stairs and down onto the floor of the ballroom as soon as she could, alighting on the floor in what was, on its own, a graceful maneuver. As she jumped, the flames on her wands extinguished, and her sylladex reset itself to the auto-balance modus, ejecting everything in it. Her possessions rained down on her head, the journal landing last of all, wide-open atop her pillow. She jumped on it, clutching it to her breast.

It was too late to hope any of that had gone unseen. Bluffing it was, which always worked best when one's stockpile of information was correct. "I seem to have been divested of my powers. Can you try yours?"

> ==>

Yes. Hell yes. The room beyond his door was just a pantry, but that was the best thing he could have asked for just then. Gamzee wasted no time in stuffing food into his pillowcase - except the canned things. Those looked like too much trouble to mess with. He couldn't even tell what a lot of these human items were, but if it looked edible than it went in the bag.

The ladder was a complete joy. When he'd gotten as much as he could carry, he wasted more time by sliding it back and forth across the rows, ignoring the sounds of angry rats as he ran it into them below. In fact, he was ignoring most of the pests that attempted to bother him completely, just knocking them away with his unused flashlight when they got too close.

Once he was satisfied with that, he slid to the floor and made his way back to cheerfully join the others.

> ==>

[from here]

Ilia didn't plan on lingering long if she could help it. The walk-in refrigerator was a bit too chilly for anyone to want to stay too long, and a few large, mutated cockroaches also were cause for keeping on her toes. However, with a clear goal in mind it wasn't too hard to find what she was looking for; a hidden trap door under a rather conspicuous tile in the corner of the room.

Kicking a few roaches out of her way, and only sustaining a few scratches on her legs for the effort, Ilia made her way back towards the kitchen to bring forth her good tidings. The bottles of juice on the racks caught her eye, but she could grab those when they came back through together. Maybe a bottle of orange and one of cranberry. As long as they didn't encumber her too much in the next leg of their journey then it wouldn't hurt to bring them along.

[to here]

> Gamzee: Do something awesome.

The troll would have loved to have been able to do something truly incredible just then, but alas, they were really only breaking into the kitchen. Although the idea of grabbing a few of those pots and making a temporary drum set out of them was very tempting.

But wait. Wait. This was a kitchen. Kitchens generally contained food. He knew this place had other food aside from what he'd been given the past few meals. Even if what he was given was quite edible, at least as far as he was concerned, he could still definitely go for something else right now. Had this been their destination all along? Because he could really appreciate that.

"Hey, my most excellent of human sisters. We gonna grab ourselves some chow?"

[ from here ]

The cafeteria was no different then the Sun Room, with the feeling of predators already lurking in the shadows to get the jump on unsuspecting victims. It only took a moment for Chipp to locate a door as he veered to the right on instinct. It was a good choice, because he swore he heard the crunch of bone as something made impact on the wall they were just a second ago. If Chipp were alone, he might have wanted to turn (and possibly laugh), but with Venom in tow, he was quick to just head right for the door.

It wasn't that Chipp had no faith that he and Venom wouldn't be able to take on a few (or a hundred) monsters, but they had bigger fish to fry. Much bigger fish.

"Damnit!" Yet another creature attempted to strike at them, Chipp veering to the left and making a wide turn until he crashed through the door. What was that, a ... a thing? He thought he saw hands, human hands and a mouth, but it too only made a crunch against the floor when it missed.

Screw this shit! Chipp didn't even hesitate when approaching the door, literally crashing into it with his shoulder to throw it open as they escaped into the Courtyard.

[ to here ]

[ from here ]

While the Sun Room was a familiar sight for Chipp, he realized (not as quickly as he ran) that he didn't even know where this Courtyard was. Wasn't the room ahead the Cafeteria? If so, then one of the other doors... Which Chipp didn't even remember going through, even though he thought one of them was that room with the weird games and shit. Wait, so where exactly were they going again?

Even Chipp couldn't justify just running ahead without at least knowing where he was supposed to be, if only because he happened to be traveling with someone who did know, so he managed to hit the metaphorical brakes and skidded to a halt in the middle of the Sun Room, mercifully keeping a hold on Venom's arm so his "colleague's" momentum wouldn't cause him to crash into one of the couches.

"So, uh... Where's this courtyard?"

In retrospect, it might have been better to ask this question before he started running his ass off into places unknown. Even Chipp could vaguely tell that he may have been a little too hasty in his actions. Maybe. Well, whatever, it was only going to be a moment before they could start moving again, right?! Nothing wrong with doublechecking the plan!

Castiel never came to dinner. It should've been a relief, in a way, except if there was only one benefit having his ribs broken, it was that Stefan didn't have to worry about harming his roommate. Stefan spent the time in silence, too restless to nap or eat, pacing a little in the small space between his desk and closet. He didn't consider wandering into Castiel's half even once — doing so would be like admitting that the man wasn't coming back, as irrational as that was.

But his roommate didn't show, and Stefan didn't get a hint about his whereabouts until the intercom piped up again. A few of you were fortunate enough to be selected to help us... Trepidation filled him as he stood before the exit, his knife in hand. What did that mean? Right now, Stefan was probably the only person who could know Castiel had been "selected" — should he find someone who knew him? Leave a note? He knew Castiel had friends, from what he'd read on the bulletin board...

Stefan didn't get long to consider it. He'd scarcely stepped out into the hall when, out of nowhere, alarms blared and a woman's oddly cadenced voice began chanting warnings over and over. The sound rattled uncomfortably in Stefan's finely tuned ears, but his focus was now taken up by the pink light which rushed through the hallway next. Pain, he expected now. Debilitation. Confusion. Danger.

In the stillness which followed, he didn't get any of that. In fact, he felt... Weird was the wrong word for it. Weird, he realized, was what he'd been feeling before. His skin itched under his bandages, and almost without thinking, Stefan unbuttoned the top of his shirt and reached in to peel them off his shoulder, and knew before he did what he would see.

His wounds were completely gone. Torn skin and muscle, bruises and cracked bones. Gone. And not just that. His hearing, his sense of smell, all those little things he'd taken for granted after 145 years of being a superhuman monster... He was himself again.

There was a moment's guilt at the first emotion which Stefan registered. Elation and amazement, close enough to that rush he'd felt after he'd turned, drunk on blood and the power of being a vampire, that he wanted to recoil from himself. But it wouldn't last. It hadn't for Edward. He was likely to go back to being deafened and crippled in the morning... but until then. There was no point to feeling guilty about the plus sides. Lexi had taught him that. It wasn't all a curse.

Stefan smiled and ran, becoming little more than a blur as he sped through the hallways to Elena's room.

[to here]

Erika stood back to survey her work, and she had no idea why no one seemed to care.

By 'no one', she was referring to the soldiers who were on guard, who should be looking particularly anxious due to the atmosphere of this place. It didn't make sense in her mind. Someone who just took up a large chunk of the middle of the Sun Room to build a blanket fort of all things should have prompted some sort of reaction other then asking what she needed the blankets for. In the center of the room, a couch and several chairs had been stolen from the tables to make more "support" for the blanket to stretch across both. In fact, Erika was finishing up preparations for another layer of blankets to be laid out and still, she got no reaction from the soldiers. At least, not any reaction that matched with her expectations. A lack of a reaction was still a reaction, but not the one she was expecting.

Why was she going out of her way to antagonize her captors in the first place? In truth, it was because Erika was hoping to stir up some drama and suspicion after the military was stupid enough to make it blatantly obvious that they were in a tough situation regarding their little traitor. But perhaps Erika overestimated just how serious the situation was. Even so, she seemed outright disappointed and grumbled quietly to herself as she started to lay out the second blanket after stacking some more chairs up to make another wall.

"What a waste. All of this trouble and no one even wants to look at it," The ex-detective grumbled to herself, but she didn't bother dismantling what she already put up. No, it seemed more like Erika was determined to ruin someone's day and if she could annoy some people by making it more difficult to find a place to sit, then it was all the better for her. After setting the blanket in place, Erika watched the fabric settle for a moment before scowling and crawling underneath the fabric, poking her head out from underneath and glancing around again to be met with no reaction whatsoever.

Why did no one care?!

[ hay Sync it's time for a secret evil league of evil meeting get in here. ]