[from here]

"Just my luck," Rita murmured upon stepping outside.

The greenhouse loomed over them in the center of the yard, rain rattling against its glass ceiling and streaming down the walls. Lightning flashed somewhere in the distant sky, and a heavy rumble of thunder followed. It figured that the one night Rita needed to go outside, it would be pouring rain. Fortunately, they didn't need to be out for long.

"Let's try not to waste any time out here," she suggested as she started towards the greenhouse doors. She'd only just gotten her real clothing back - the last thing she wanted was for it to get soaked through. Not to mention the few paper notes and talismans she'd stuffed in her pockets. While they wouldn't be too hard to replace, Rita just didn't want to have to go to the trouble.

[From here.]

That hadn't taken long. So much so that it looked like he was the first person to make it this far. Harvey took a moment to scan the hall with his flashlight, including near the stairs, but he didn't see (or hear) much of anything. It was the sort of thing that set him on edge.

Since he couldn't do much else, he leaned himself against the wall by the stairs and then grabbed for his gun, holding it near his side as he waited. Normally he didn't take the weapon out unless he planned to shoot it, but when there was a possibility that some transformed patient might come barreling down the halls in the next few seconds, he wanted to take precaution.

Hopefully Scott and Sangamon would haul ass over here before all hell started to break loose. If things got too hairy, Harvey was ready to make a run for it on his own. That was the logical thing to do.

[Waiting for S.T.]

As soon as the intercom was through, Link was off at a sprint. He carried the pillow case,his flashlight, and the knife from the previous evening.

There were now two tasks to be accomplished: Supplies for Sora, and another clue in the X-Ray Room. Two birds with one stone in the medical wing. There wasn't a moment to lose.

Sora could already be gone by the time he returned.

[To here]

[from here]

...Another empty hallway.

Chair held by both back legs - one in each hand - Murphy sighed and slumped against the wall. These stupid clothes didn't have pockets, and shoving things awkwardly in the waistband of his pants was beginning to become a pain. If this were a normal chair, like he usually found, he'd just break it apart and use one of the legs. Unfortunately, that didn't look like an option.

There was less junk lying around here, too. Practically none, now that he thought about it. Maybe...maybe he didn't need a weapon? The radio had remained silent, and there were no corpses lying around. Not even a blood trail.

He set the chair down and took the radio out, wondering if maybe it was broken. He stuck the end of the flashlight into his mouth to free his hands and allow him to investigate the piece of equipment.

Maybe this was some sort of clue....

[For Nina!]

[warping from here]

The events following Goku's sudden movements were a blur. The boy had suddenly reached for the other fang, and before Rita could protest, they'd been warped to an entirely different place. Disoriented, the mage climbed to her feet, brushing the sand from her stockings.

Just as the Sphinx had told them, the final challenge was a Coliseum. Rita stared upward, momentarily awed by the size of the room, and bewildered by what appeared to be sunlight. Had they been unconscious for the rest of the night? Even more unusual was Rita's own attire: she was in the tunic she normally wore at home, complete with stockings, sashes, a magic tome strapped to her back, a weapon in her hand, and...

Rita's free hand flew to her throat. Her blastia was there. With that... she was sure she could use magic without limitations. She could break free from this prison once and for all!

It wasn't until she finished processing those thoughts that she noticed the other person on the arena floor with her. That was right... only two could enter, and the other one who made a sacrifice had been the brat. So what was supposed to happen now? Given the circumstances, there were only two possibilities: they were going to have to fight together, or they were going to have to fight each other. Despite the occasional urge to smack the kid around, Rita wasn't particularly keen on either.

[from here]

As soon as the southern door opened, a draft started blowing through it, and Taura almost hauled the door shut. This wasn't a station, or a ship, though, and drafts didn't mean certain death. It wasn't reassuring, though, given what little people had said about what was waiting at the end this hallway.

She took one step into the hallway, which was nearly pitch black. She extracted her flashlight and flicked it on; just a short area, and then another set of doors, which, from a distance, looked as equally ornate as the last set. "All clear," she called back.

[From here]

Eventually, the doors gave way and spilled Goku out into an expansive room. It glittered and twinkled with the flicker of light, and the young child had took take a moment to ogle until he realized that he had come in here with a purpose. That purpose was huge and sitting right in the middle of the tall room.

It was a strange animal--More like the statue of a strange animal--and the source of the smell that clogged Goku's keen senses. The awe gradually faded and left him waddling eagerly toward the thing.

"I wanna ride it~!"

[from here]

The hallway was a mirror of the one on the opposite side -- which made the doors they were headed for obvious.

"Rumor has it that behind that door there's a Sphinx, that told riddles. And it didn't sound like a pet." Mythical creatures were always popular. Any two-bit genetics lab could whip up unicorns. Ones smart enough to talk, though, required one more thing -- a flexible definition of ethics. They weren't much harder, unless you wanted them sane.

Taura wasn't sure what was going to be behind that door. "I think they were being literal."

[from here]

The abrupt transition from one location to another was disorienting, but Rita had already done this enough times that she was relatively fine upon reappearing in the ballroom. Since there was no longer any need to tolerate the brat hanging off her thigh, she gave her leg a sharp kick to try and shake him off.

Next, she looked around the room, trying to regain her bearings and remember which direction they came from before. It wasn't long before she located the set of doors across from where they'd gone before. "We're going this way, right?" she asked to confirm, looking to Taura. "Any idea what's back there?" From what the woman was saying before, it sounded like she certainly did.

[Coming from here.]

Daemon slipped from the hallway and into the stairwell, starting the climb to the second floor. His gaze searched the shadows and he'd made no more than three steps up when he went carefully still, holding up a hand to halt Renji as well. The chittering came from above their heads, quiet but definitely there, the sound familiar enough to send a chill down Daemon's spine.

"Above," he whispered in warning, moving quickly to the landing to put the wall at his back.

The door opened at the start of the night, and the air in the meeting room seemed to stagnate, as if resonating with the presence of the newcomer. Formalities were offered first and foremost: all military personnel stood at attention and welcomed their commanding officer with a salute. In turn, Aguilar reciprocated the gesture, before moving on to stand at the head of the room. The two guards at his side followed without a single delay, situating beside the one who now held full reign over Landel's Institute.

Normally, with the completion of formalities, he would allow the officers their seats. It wasn't good, after all, to conduct a meeting in such rigid postures. The Eagle, however, remained unmoving and instead, swept his eyes across the meeting room, before settling on a single occupant.

"Major Claude Harrington."

The addressed stiffened in his position, eyes wildly alert. "Yes, General?"

"Or perhaps Prescott might suit you better?" One might have expected a look of triumph from Aguilar. Instead, he stayed impassive, edging complete apathy. "Claude Prescott, curator of the Prescott Gallery."

A beat passed. The atmosphere between the two men touched close to ice, and without further prompting, the one called Prescott dropped his guard. He smiled serenely, giving a forbidden countenance to his superior. "I was wondering when that name would come up," he remarked, tone bordering casual. Gracing wonderment.

"It was only a matter of time." Aguilar nodded, and the guards at his side moved, their intentions obvious. "Claude Prescott, you are under arrest for conspiracy and--"

The General, however, immediately cut off, the declaration unfinished. His guards also halted in their tracks while the others seemed ready to shift away. The source of their reactions was obvious: in the place of the former military officer was a man glowing bright crimson, the barest flicker of flame surrounding his form.

"You sure you want to do that?" Claude questioned. "Knowing what I am?"

Undisturbed, Aguilar reached and pressed a hand to his breast pocket, where a circular medal of silver resided. "We've already calibrated your powers, Major," he calmly explained. "The instant you attempt to surpass your limitations, you will lose everything. I recommend that you cooperate." From anyone's viewpoint, it was apparent that the cooperation was more than recommended.

"Oh~" Here, Claude glanced at the patient assigned under him. Specifically, at the device locked around her wrist. "I wonder. I'm willing to risk everything at this point." As though to emphasize, he snapped his fingers, the flicker merging to a single flare at his palm. Which vanished as predicted.

But the prediction was not without its unexpected elements. The device at Maya's wrist suddenly emitted a high-pitched wail, forcing all eyes on the phenomenon. Then, without warning, Aguilar clutched painfully at his chest, tearing at the medal pinned to his breast pocket as if it was a hot poker.

"Y-You!?" The Eagle sounded astonished, glaring pointedly at Harrington. "What did you--"

"I did nothing," the other announced, "but someone else certainly did." The smile widened, stretching to ridiculous proportions.

Something clicked, and those who kept their observations on the General might have noticed smoke rising from his tightened fist. He quickly tore out the medal and flung it at the offending element in the room, simultaneously raising his other hand to the ceiling. "Retreat," he breathed before slamming his fist against the table below. Those who caught the order and would give their allegiance to the General followed suit, slamming their fists in turn.

In the span of several heartbeats, most of the room's occupants had vanished, leaving behind confusion and stagnant air.

[from here]

Moving quickly and quietly, Rita managed to make it indoors without detection. This was going even more smoothly than expected.

Rita remembered the layout of the Cafeteria clearly enough that she didn't need to turn her flashlight on in order to find her way. She followed the wall to her left all the way until she reached the serving counter, then followed that all the way around until she was behind it. There, she found the door to the Kitchen.

Judging from the silence she heard from all directions, she had a feeling that Taura and that loudmouth brat had yet to arrive.

[to here]

When the familiar crackle came on from overhead, Claire had paused, then continued about his business, sorting through the few possessions he had in his box and setting them into seemingly random positions on his desk, looking as listlessly bored as he'd been just prior to the announcement. But he was quiet, quite aware of what this Aguilar man was saying. Ah, so he'd been right about his nurse after all -- it had been a play, hadn't it? He himself hadn't received any visit or letter from one of these supposed "loved ones" today, but all the same, it was a terrible trick to play, wasn't it?

Still, there was a sort of liking he took in this Eagle. The man was straightforward and he said things clearly. Simple truths, just like that. There were none of the stories that Martin Landel had come up with in his words, though those stories had been interesting in their own right. But Aguilar shared that same, self-righteously entitled attitude as Landel. Who was he to trespass on other people's worlds? Claire's world? That wasn't allowed. Claire couldn't allow that.

As the voice continued on, Claire finished sorting through all his belongings, then replaced all but a few back into the metal box, closing the lid with a snap. His dinner lay untouched, pushed to one side of his desk, but aside from that, the only loose items on the table top were the flashlight, the handheld radio, and the gun.

The gun. He picked it up, weighing it in one hand. The voice droned onward as he ejected the magazine, counted the bullets -- one, two only -- then slipped the magazine back into place. He raised his arm straight before him, the one with the lightning burn, and took aim down the barrel at an invisible target on the blank wall before him. As the message ended, his finger jerked slightly on the trigger, but came up against resistance. The safety was still on. No worries.

What was worrisome was the fact that it was almost as if someone at the top had just made a gift of this weapon, as if telling him, here, let me provide with a way to kill your enemy. Which felt an awful lot like someone was baiting him -- do this, you know you want to. And that wouldn't do at all. The problem with the entire Institute here wasn't that they were telling lies to all the inhabitants and keeping them locked in one place -- it was that the people who ran this place acted as if they could control these people, as if these lives were theirs to control in the first place. The gall of that assumption! Everything Claire was hearing now about that new Medical Wing was positively charged with it. It was... annoying. Yes, annoying was the right word to use here.

He really had been in that medical ward for too long, he decided. He needed to get out and do something.

The click of the unlocking door was his signal to leave. Claire twirled the gun expertly around his finger with practiced ease, smoothly slipping it into his pocket. Really, if they were going to be so generous as to give him a gun, they might as well have provided a holster with it. Not that it mattered too much, though. He grabbed the radio and flashlight, then headed for the door.

With a wave over his shoulder to his new roommate, Vino left the room.

[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.]

In the end, the owner of the other box never arrived. Firo spent dinner giving glances at the door while he ate, wondering if there was some delay or if he didn't have a roommate after all. By the time that Firo had finished eating and was then debating whether he should change clothes (it was nice to have something familiar here, but did he want to risk the clothes getting damage if the monsters were real?), he could hear the faint sound of the speaker in the room turning on, but no sound came from it.

He waited a few minutes, and then started looking around the room instead, opening drawers and rifling through the closet. Peter had said there should be a flashlight somewhere in here...

Firo didn't find the flashlight until he'd given up looking for it: he'd flopped onto the bed after testing the door—locked—and could feel something hard underneath the pillow. When he'd pulled said pillow away, a flashlight was laying underneath. That was one more point to Peter, but at the rate things were going, it didn't look like he'd have a chance to get out of this room after all, short of breaking down the door.

And then the static started. It started off low, easily ignorable, but then grew enough that Firo reached up to cover his ears in an attempt to block the incessant noise out.

"Cut that out!" he snapped irritably at the speaker, directing a glare at it as well—and then paused. Was he really trying to threaten an object...? Whoever was on the other end of it would be a more appropriate target, but whoever it was couldn't even hear him from here. Breaking the speaker would have been more effective.

A minute or two later, the static finally cleared, and a man began to speak. His words were direct (though Firo had no idea what he was talking about), and it wasn't long before he'd said his piece and the speaker turned off. In the silence that followed, Firo moved towards the door. He'd heard a click when the announcement had ended, but that could have just been the speaker, not the door... He reached out to test it once more.

The door opened. Warily, Firo poked his head out into the hall.

It was dark, but even so, he couldn't make out anything particularly guard-shaped in the immediate area. Peter had been right about the door, about the flashlight, and (according to hearsay) about the monsters. He wouldn't be satisfied if he just stayed in his room and passed up a chance to see it all for himself, though—and besides, he wasn't feeling tired at all now.

Firo pulled back into the room and turned towards the metal box. He had debated sparing his clothes earlier, but now that there really was a chance to go out... If he was going to have a look around, he'd be much more comfortable in his suit than in this stuffy uniform. Off went the beret, followed by the shirt and belt and trousers, and a few minutes later he was dressed in his own clothes, adjusting his jacket. He reached for his hat, but stopped himself just before his fingers would have touched it.

He didn't mind risking damage to his clothes tonight, but his hat... It was too important to take right now. If he were planning on escaping that would have been another matter—he wouldn't have even considered leaving it behind—but he was only thinking about having a look around and sneaking back in before morning... And if he was lucky, maybe he could even find a knife, in case the 'monsters' proved to be everything people had said they were.

Leaving the hat where it lay and picking up the flashlight instead, Firo headed out the door and started down the hall.

[From M9 to here]

Having to endure an empty room for yet another night had Sora worried. Were they not planning to give him a new roommate? He didn't know how these soldier people worked -- would they rather that patients were left in their rooms alone? That didn't make much sense, but he really didn't know what to expect anymore.

Most people would have been glad to have a room to themselves, but Sora wasn't most people. He wanted someone there who he could talk things over with while he ate his dinner. Instead, he had eaten his meal in silence, still reeling from the announcement that Landel was being replaced. It was something he would have preferred to discuss with someone else rather than dwell on alone, but he could always do that when he met up with Kairi and Riku.

That was the one good thing he had going for the moment; Sora was glad that the three of them were going to be side-by-side once more. He was particularly interested in hearing what Kairi had to say, since she'd also been here for a long time.

His dinner was interrupted by IRIS coming on, and Sora frowned when the automated voice became distorted once more. A program was being initiated? What did that mean?

He'd expected for IRIS to continue through the whole night, but soon after that a more human voice was heard. But even as Sora tried to place it, he realized that it was new, totally different from Landel's usual loud tone. But there was still a threat in those words, still a hint that something was going to happen tonight. Sora had already counted on that. With everything that had happened, how couldn't there be?

He just hoped that he and his friends could manage to get somewhere even with the odds stacked against them. Sora quickly changed from his Landel's uniform into his more familiar clothes from home and then grabbed for his flashlight (while also remembering to take Venom's copied note at the last moment; he wanted Kairi to see it too).

Once he was ready, he quietly moved out of his room and headed down the hall.

[To here.]

[From here.]

Walking through the darkness, Sechs reluctantly admitted to himself that going alone to somewhere dangerous as the second floor with his condition wasn't exactly the smartest idea in the world. Heck, he could easily picture Kibitoshin having some spectacular fret fest if he knew about what Sechs was doing right then! Still, whatever he didn't know wouldn't hurt him, right? Sechs intended on reaching his goal without interruptions and surviving in the process. Besides, he had two weapons and (most of) his battle suit to protect him! Sechs wanted to believe that his white-haired friend wouldn't have to worry; it was thanks to him that Sechs could muster up the confidence to approach the second floor again in the first place...

The liquid parasite in Sechs' spine wasn't so keen on his plan though. "Trying to find that Original of yours is nothing but a suicide mission!" it snarled in Sechs' head, "Why don't you just get it over with now and take that machete of yours and impale yourself on it again like what you did the first time we met!"

Ignoring the drug's scathing taunts and the unpleasant memory it brought up, Sechs shook his head and moved on.

Ignore it... Ignore it... Not yet...

[To here.]

[From here]

There were times where Tyki thought some buildings just looked too dull. Landels, with its amount of hallways, definitely fell into that category. It was more than cruel to let someone walk through a boring set of hallways before finally arriving somewhere interesting.

With a bored sigh the Noah entered the next one, a brief look around proving that the area was just as empty as the ones he had just passed. There wasn't much else to do but simply moving on, which was exactly what he did.

[To here]

Tempting as it was to just lay down and sleep the night away, pretend that it really was a hospital, that th door was locked and outside were just night-staff checking to make sure that patients were safe during the darkness hours, he couldn't quite bring himself to give up to such an extent, not yet. So once he heard the Head Doctor's announcement, he forced himself to get up and pull his things out from beneath the mattress.

He frowned for a moment, before pulling out his journal and scribbling a note to Ken in it.

In M43, don't worry.

Yohji

Because like hell was he going to give Ken a chance to think the worse. Yohji was much better at taking care of others than he was at taking care of himself.

He nodded to Leon and grabbed the plate with the slice of tonight's dessert on it, before slipping out into the corridor. Schuldig's room was just a few rooms down, thankfully, and he paused outside it, knocking lightly on the door, well aware that he would have a roommate too, and not certain what to expect. He'd seen the telepath out on the field today, looking just as broken as Yohji felt.

"Schuldig?"