[teleporting from here]

The dizzying, whirling sensation that characterized teleportation on Gant's first night was just the same as he remembered it. However, after a minute of stumbling into the new area he was still just as nauseated as before, and worse.

"Lan--" Gant interrupted himself with a watery cough. Falling to his knees, Gant clutched at his chest as the pain from the attack suddenly came into sharp focus. Another cough racked his body and he dropped the gun from his hand, reaching up to cover his mouth. He felt wetness and tasted copper.

Damn it. Another round of coughs and Gant was reaching for Lana, trying to get her attention. "Lana... Lana, I..." He could barely breathe. He was bleeding profusely from the hole in his chest. He thought maybe his lung had also been punctured in the fight. What a cheap shot from that mangled hodgepodge of a monster.

He was going to die, wasn't he?

[from here]

Following Soma into the medical wing, Kratos closed the door quietly behind them. The lobby area looked as much as it had the previous night, although he did not stop again to draw comparisons between it and the Elemental Research Academy. His awe and curiosity had both been satisfied, so now it was simply business as usual. This part of the wing had already been mapped clearly in his head; it was time to find out what other kinds of "surprises" lay in wait.

He turned to Soma and then pointed to the open door to their right. "We entered that room over there. It's some kind of lounge area; there was nothing of interest. Which way did you go last night?" Maybe this was a good time to pause and consolidate their findings, seeing as both of them had been in the medical wing already. And Soma had sounded as if she had managed to go through a fair amount of rooms.

[from here]

The last stretch of hallway was even emptier than the previous one. Maybe people had learned to avoid the medical wing after last night. By all rights, she should have done the same.

Brushing that thought away, she glanced back at Kratos. "I did manage to explore part of the wing before night ended, though. Did you?"

[from here]

Turning the corner, Vino found that, in fact, he was very much early, it seemed. Huh. There was no one yet in this central hallway, though if he looked back towards the west side of the building, that strange person with the unnatural-looking white hair had gone down that end of the big hallway. He could still see the whiteness of their hair standing out from the darkness of the atmosphere around them.

He spent a few moments watching this person, then lost interest, instead finding the nearest wall to lean against to wait for the other person to show. Healing powers! He'd be able to see them in action, right? Vino wondered what it was like, having an injury healed with the kind of abilities that this kid had. Would it be like Czeslaw's 'healing,' he wondered? That would definitely be interesting to see, wouldn't it? Watching your own injury just mend itself like that. Like magic!

But while this ability certainly could be a useful one to have, Vino hadn't decided yet whether this would be an ability he'd want in his arsenal. Felt a bit like cheating, didn't it? What would be the point in challenging yourself to do things if there was no thrill in it? (Most people would call this the 'thrill of danger,' but Vino didn't believe in such a thing for himself.)

If you could always heal yourself from any injury, then how could you tell the difference between being alive and... not? There'd be no difference then, that's what!

A pause in his thoughts as Vino checks around again to see if he can spot any familiar head of spiky hair. Nope, no one fitting the description yet. He settles in to wait.

[from here]

He glanced idly at the doorways as they passed them, and yet still none read infirmary. "It's only a waste of time," he replied. "If you can't find them. Which would be a bit pathetic in a small building like this."

There was another hallway to the left and Albedo ducked into it, coming up short. Draping his hands behind his head, he walked back to the other, tilting his head. "Especially since I saw Sora about twenty minutes ago. Hopeful with hair at unrealistic angles?" Which would make sense. Sora was sky and didn't Riku speak as shore?

It was annoying, that. It spoke of a beach, and that reminded him too much of a girl.

[from here]

As far as Riku knew—which wasn't a reliable piece of information in the least—this was approaching new territory for him. It was the first time he tempted fate by going somewhere without one of his friends since he first woke up in this place. If it wasn't Sora or Kairi that was there with him, it was Naminé; to some degree, each one had been there for him on the various nights that passed. Before, it hadn't been a guarantee for success; maybe part of the concern was that there were too many feelings involved. When he worked before, cloaked with the blindfold that hid his worries and fears, he was weighed down by the need to do something for his friends, if not their actual presences.

It was a thought that he needed to stall immediately. That was agreeing with the Shadow, after all. Then again, that Shadow wouldn't have expected him to have gained one still unknown comrade for the night. His impression of this guy wasn't fully made up yet, but it was getting there fast. Even if he had a gun and he was young—which, for anyone else, might actually make them stall, but Riku had been promised heroic adventures at the age of five by a stranger with brown hair—he still had a head on his shoulder and an obviously distinct way of being.

Riku realized that as they grew closer to where this med wing was that if he was getting here with Sora or Kairi, he wouldn't be trying out the drugs for a change in his experience. Neither of them would let him, and his own guilt would be overridden by his sense to accomplish something. But they weren't here tonight. He had no way of knowing if they were even still in Landel's. Any plans he could make were based off maybes, so he had to focus on now.

He slowed considerably to glance down toward Albedo. The guy still had a question to answer, and it seemed wise to get that out of the way before they had these drugs in their systems.

[from here]

Unsurprisingly, the door opened with a twist of the handle and little pressure. The interior hidden behind a door long since locked--if they were to believe the blow-hard of a commander who had taken control--was quite large, dwarfing the sun room in comparison. Enclaves and doorways crept away from them, and Albedo was idly curious--wondered, if he survived in a more than unsightly way, if he'd see what new toys a medical wing would have to offer him.

For now, however, there were other things, goals that he and this other had in common if it was to be believed. And should Albedo speak to him, play with him? Or should he just go on half-ignoring him and perhaps the other would flee of his own accord. The boy began to move forward across the space, glancing around idly for these things that were supposedly set out. It'd be annoying if it all turned out to be a farce. "So you wake up after getting back from 'somewhere', and your first thought is to try to attempt to poison yourself?" He moved to glance down a hallway on the left, seeing nothing but doors. "Seems a bit strange. Shouldn't you be seeking your comrades or doing something wholesome?"

[from here]

From here, Vino could go several ways. The frequented Sun Room was the most obvious option, though he could also choose to either go into one of the side doors or continue onward down the hall. If he were an architect, Vino thought, where would he put a radio broadcast room in an insane asylum?

Definitely not the Sun Room, that's for sure. From his previous explorations, the doors on his right led to waiting rooms, the kinds one might find in a doctor's clinic. Nothing there except chairs and magazine racks. And Vino wasn't interested in those.

Oh, right. He'd taken those maps from the Sun Room during third shift, hadn't he? Those would be handy in a time like this, right? Vino fished out the crumpled sheet, switching on the flashlight so he could see better.

Not much was labeled except for areas marked as "STAFF ONLY" and other rooms he'd already been in around the Sun Room. Ah, he'd been right about those side doors. Vino doubted that they would have anything he was looking for in the Entry Room.

Meanwhile, farther east on the map, there was a section that caught his attention. Hadn't the message at the start of night announced something about a medical wing on the east side of the Institute? The giant, "STAFF" area certainly looked suspicious enough. Vino had no interest in doing any favors for the people in charge of the Institute, no matter what sort of reward they offered in exchange, but he did know that if they were planning something in that area, they'd have their people positioned there, right? It was worth a shot, at least.

Having decided, he looked the map over once again, committing the surrounding area to memory before switching the light off and stuffing the map back into his pocket.

[to here]

[ from here ]

As Erika approached the meeting spot, she was pleased to see that she was, indeed, first to reach there. This was to be expected: Erika was closest to this particular hallway and she could have given the others a minute's head start and still probably beat them while walking at a leisurely pace. But Erika had hurried to get here and set up camp anyway, directing her flashlight to the ceiling while dropping her bag next to her feet.

Perhaps the detective was so anxious to get there first in an effort to get back at Sync for implying that he more or less found her useless. Yet he followed her around anyway! Hopefully, this would be the last "team exercise" she would be expected to perform in this place so she could finally rid herself of him.

This hallway was as empty as the last one, but Erika knew she was going to see some traffic very soon. There was only one place on her map where a med wing was and it was east, just as Aguilar said. It was definitely a place that she would visit sometime soon so she could collect more of those pins, but not tonight. After all, Erika wasn't so desperate for a pin that she would willingly subject herself to Unknown Drug X. Let the other idiots work out the side effects and she'd be more than happy to step in if the risks were really worth it.

Gant was probably not the first patient to feel more dignified after that kind of stirring announcement given by the General. Now that man knew what he was talking about. They certainly were not animals, like ol' Landel used to play at. All his passive aggressive comments and mustache twirling had gotten a bit on the chief's nerves. Not that he would have admitted that in front of the Head Doctor, no no no! But given the choice of the two, Gant much preferred the General over the Head Doctor.

It also helped to know how the system was actually supposed to work. So it was the badges that meant everything here, if you didn't have time to back you up. The seniority thing was fair enough; you survived, so you got some perks. But hard work also earned you privileges. The badges. He had wondered why some people had them and others didn't. Looking at his own record... Gant had nothing. Not a thing. Probably meant he should get busy. And what better way to start than the drug test.

If this had been a different situation, Gant would have balked at the idea of taking in experimental drugs. But as it stood, he had come to realize a few things about this place in his week-long stay. One was that the objective wasn't to kill them. Even Aguilar had hinted that they had a purpose for being here. It went beyond just trying to instill fear. There was an objective, and Gant was interested to find out more. Unfortunately, that meant putting himself into danger, but as long as he had a weapon, it probably wouldn't be so bad.

Once he was suited up for the night in his precious orange suit, and geared to the teeth with candlestick, scalpels, radio and flashlight, Gant stepped out the door and into the hall. His destination, the Medical Wing.

[To here]

[from here]

He slipped silently down the hallway, flashlight (turned off) in hand, as he couldn't fit it into a pocket with both the bulky radio as well as the gun. A hassle, but bearable. Having a portable source of light handy with him while wandering dark corridors was actually rather helpful, even if normally, Vino wouldn't have bothered with it at all. Light showed up too brightly in darkness when he needed to be invisible.

Like a shadow, he passed through this larger hallway in his block, ignoring all the doors. He'd tried them all before. Besides, his job wasn't to break into a room. At least, not completely, anyway.

[to here]

[From here.]

Empty. Again.

Whoop-de-doo.

Less witnesses, good thing, yadda yadda yadda. Peter just wanted to get it all over with and get down to the good stuff. (Good being a subjective word here.) The basement. The coliseum of...whatever the coliseum had in store. A fight. Probably with lions. Three headed lions. The point was that they were finally getting somewhere, and now that the hour had come all Peter wanted to do was slice through every other bogus problem barreling his way and head straight for it. He was sick of worrying about Grell, about monsters, about the godawful crap Jessica and her attitude had brought him, about all the people that had left. Being fiction. Kirk had put a better spin on it, but that still did little to ease the grip on his insides every time the subject popped up. And if Captain freaking Kirk couldn't assuage him, then what could?

Getting down to business might. A chance to get answers would be even better.

[To here.]

[From here.]

The kitchen, unsurprisingly, was just as he remembered it to be. White and remarkably clean, with the usual and disappointingly normal array of cooking supplies scattered about. Unconsciously, Edward hesitated in actually entering the room. As sharp as his memory was about the room itself, the events that had occurred seemed even sharper. He could recall with perfect clarity the look on Jun's face when the hole had opened in his chest, splashing blood on the floor and the counter. The white of the room had made every drop of red highlighted, as if his senses needed the help on locating it.

It was also the room where he had murdered Venom. No, it had made no difference to Edward's conscience that the man was dying already. He had gone nearly eighty years without killing a human, and then his record had been smashed the first night he had been in Landel's. Not to mention he had also died himself, a human death he had suffered once already. He'd yet to tell Bella about either incident, and he still hesitated on doing so.

Suffice to say, he didn't really want to go inside. He knew there would be no evidence of two men dying in this room, but the smell seemed almost to linger with him. Just thinking about the sheer amount of blood he had consumed that night lit his throat with the familiar burning. He rubbed it absently, stepping inside.

There were two doors on either end of the kitchen that he hadn't taken much notice of before. The pantries, he assumed. He moved ahead so he could open the door, finding himself to be right.

[To here.]

[From here.]

It had been an exceedingly long amount of time since Edward had seen something new in the institute, and he imagined if he was a human the pantry itself would not disappoint. It was larger than he would have thought despite the size of the patient population, and filled to the brim with a wide assortment of foods. They all blurred into one scent to him, one that was nearly overwhelming when he had opened the door. Like the sun room, he was wary. There were too many dark spaces here and the flashlight only went so far. With enough time in the institution, he had acquired a very justifiable paranoia of the smallest of dark spaces.

He eyed his way through the first and closest shelves as he took a few steps inside. It had more preserved food than he had imagined. Luck again. This way he would be able to get food for Bella that wouldn't expire. The problem would be how much he could carry...

First things first, then. He turned to Wally with his offer: "If you want to begin your business, I can watch your back. Just in case something decides to change our luck for the night."

[from here]

So far so good. They'd made it to the cafeteria without either of them getting attacked or horribly maimed (again) or anything. Now if they could just get as far as the kitchen without anything else happening? Wally would count this night a win.

He glanced back to make sure Edward was keeping up and tried not to think too much about how Damon and Alaric must have dragged him all the way through this room last night before he'd woken up again. He also tried not to look for any kind of marks from it, because there never were any here. It was like the building had a giant reset button that they hit at the beginning of each day.

"I don't think it's much further," he said, mostly to remind himself to focus on right now. "But all the same, we should keep an eye out."

[from here]

The sun room was quiet, with the artificial hush that came from snow blanketing the big windows. The halls upstairs weren't; while it wasn't quite a fight that had broken out up there, it was heading that way. Possibly irrevocably, as what the boy up there had just called the brainwash brigade didn't do negotiation. At all. Even if they liked to chat their victims up first, which sounded like what was going on. Taura slipped to the perimeter of the room right under them, and out of view.

Ringside seat to the discussion, but unless Rita slipped and made noise, the crew above was too busy with their own preliminaries to start a second front.

[from here]

Tolten tried to seem confident as he took the lead, proceeding further into the dark corridors. There had been nothing overtly threatening so far, but his heart was racing in his chest even so. He couldn't shake a sense of lurking danger, of shadowing hidden fear. He tried to tell himself he was being foolish, but experience told him otherwise.

This reminds me of the sewers. Though hopefully there would be no failed experiments lurching about, hell-bent on human flesh.

And thoughts such as those will not calm your nerves. And now he was no longer alone, and he was bound by his honor to look after his companion. He couldn't allow himself to give over to old fears and childish worry. They would find an exit of sorts, find someone possessed of the means to help them, and... well, that was as far as he'd gotten but at least it was a plan.

The corridor widened suddenly, and Tolten faltered to a stop. He held up a hand and swung his torch in the opened space, taking in the change in surroundings.

[From here.]

He had reached the meeting point in less than a few minutes and there was still not another patient to be seen. Castiel paused, standing near the wall as he moved his flashlight up and down the corridor. There was nothing, not the sound of a shadow slipping through the dark; not the whisper of something less than human.

The only sound was the static that periodically came from his radio. He couldn't seem to get it to let up, and he wondered if it was reacting to him or if he'd been given a faulty one.

He would have preferred the former option, but he had been knocked down too many notches when it came to the loss of his abilities, his divinity, the very things that made him him.

Castiel let out a breath that had been caught in his chest and then lowered his flashlight. He wondered how long this whole process would take, but he supposed that all depended on how well he did as a student. He fashioned himself a fast learner, but he had never been able to grasp things like popular culture.

He imagined he would do a bit better with lockpicking, though. Leaning himself against the wall, Castiel stood there quietly, waiting for Orihara to show himself.

[For Izaya.]

[From here.]

As Castiel exited the room block he'd been assigned to, it occurred to him that Gabriel had not caught up with him this time around. That was for the best. He had a difficult time shaking his brother off in this place, seeing how he couldn't disappear at the snap of a finger. If he'd had to bring his brother along on his lesson with Orihara, Gabriel would have broken up the instructions and also invited far too many questions, considering his paranoia from the other night.

He had little idea of what the archangel got up to on the nights that they didn't come across each other, but at this point he couldn't get caught up pondering about it.

Straight down the hall and he would be at the spot that they had decided upon. He still had no idea of where Orihara's room was, but perhaps it was better that way. Their relationship should remain strictly professional, especially since he didn't really know how to turn it into something other than that.

This was easier.

[To here.]

Window shopping--no, that was too lofty a word to be used with this quaint town. Looking at things all day (yeah, that worked much better) was all well and good until the chilly air became less than bearable. With the sun sinking into the earth, the shadows grew across the sidewalk and made pockets of frigid air. The redhead groused with each shadow she passed through. Frankly, this whole day had added to her grouchy mood. It was cold, she was wearing the most unflattering pair of jeans, and this jacket! She looked like a fat pink bird!

Horrible! This whole day was just horrible. The eva pilot couldn't even find a place worthy of her money. They had no beauty supply store, and what little the nail salon sold was just pathetic. So instead of buying anything worth her ten dollars, the second child decided to drown her sorrows in something containing amounts of chocolate and grease. Tasty Burger certainly had the grease part down, but Twin Pines had a better variety of heart clogging entrées.

Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one in this town with that line of thinking. There was a line and Asuka refused to take a table. She would sit in a booth, so there! Giving her name, the young girl found a seat at the entrance and waited as patiently as she could.

[Mein sugar daddy!]