[from here]

The flickering glow of torches seeped up the stairs as Momo lead her group down into the belly of the beast. It was a warmer glow, inviting almost, though the shinigami knew better than to expect such a welcome. On the contrary, the warmth was a warning unto itself.

Slowly the expanse came into view, the columns and fountains belaying any thoughts that this was underneath an insane asylum, a place of horror. Marble, vaulted ceiling, silver sconces... this was decisively out of place when compared to the rest of the institute. No wonder this was where Landel chose to allow others to see him face to face.

Laevatein at the ready, Momo scanned for any monsters, hoping there were none. She skirted to the side once off the stairs, to get a different angle so anything hidden by the pillars would be revealed. The far door, the one they wanted, was cleanly in view.

"Sage-sensei, you will be needed soon. Be careful with those. Should something happen to them, it will be a very long night."

[from here]

Momo carefully entered the kitchen after making quick work of the lock on the door. She stayed low to the ground, eyes scanning for any presence. Anything within this room would be hostile as they were the first within. Seeing nothing immediately, she relaxed her stance just a bit and quickly crossed the room to where the large cold storage room was.

"Our captors do not leave any useful knives in this kitchen, so it is a waste of time to look for them. Our destination in in here," the shinigami said, gesturing to the door.

Could the Head Doctor go just one night without saying something creepy and cryptic on the intercom? Anise started to wonder what he meant about seeing visitors sooner than tomorrow, but she quickly decided it was best not to think too much about anything that old bastard said.

The girl began to gather her supplies for the night, retrieving her flashlight, her meat tenderizer, and a pillowcase that was rolled into a tiny ball and crammed into the sack on Tokunaga's back. Anise had to remove the maps inside to make space, but she figured that was okay. If they went outside tonight, those maps would just get ruined in the rain.

Come to think of it, she never managed to find Guy today to tell him what she and Luke planned. Maybe Luke caught him during the field trip? If not, then she could just surprise him!

With the weather like it was, though, she had to wonder if they'd have to change their plans. Climbing the wall and running across the grass was going to be a bit harder with everything all wet and slippery. Just to be on the safe side, though, Anise took the outdoor sneakers from her closet and tied those on her feet. They could probably still tough out the rain if they wanted to.

As soon as she was ready, Anise waved goodbye to her roommate and darted out the door and down the hall.

[to here]

The increase in the rain didn't bother Momo. Oh, she'd pay later when they were herded back into the buses for having spent so much time wandering around in it, but it didn't matter. The shinigami's mind was focused in the past as she walked away from the town proper. It was strange, a lone woman from the institute leaving the more supervised area to head into the residential sector in the southern part of town, but Momo had her reasons.

It was down this way that she'd drawn Signum to, her dear friend turned undead, that last trip. It was down this side street that they had faced each other upon the rooftops. It was upon the roof of this building (or was it the one next to it) where Momo had been forced to behead the knight to save both of their souls. And then the building had burned.

Except now, it was intact, looking as if fire hadn't touched it. It was possible the roof bore ashen scars, but not only was the shinigami incapable of getting up to the roof as things were right then, but she wasn't one hundred percent sure she was standing before the correct building. As she stared up at the roof, her unopened lunch from Tasty Burger still in hand (though cold now), what had she been expecting? To see the after images of Signum? To see that the daytime facade at least showed some sign that an honorable knight had met her end there?

Momo let out a heavy sigh and pushed her damp hair out of her face. So caught up in what was before her, what was in her mind, she never noticed that she had been tailed.

"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]

In the cool silence of the night air his voice sounded louder than it should have done, as though he were intruding on a great wall of quiet. The Institute still loomed over them as a dark blot of shadow, equally still as they moved across the grass. It wasn't, he reminded himself, all that far to the ruins. Just so long as they kept moving, they would make it with more than enough time to spare.

The wall they had been trailing next to ended abruptly a few feet away; he glanced back over his shoulder at the other two before pressing on and turning the corner, speaking with his back turned to them. "Since she said the next message would be in a few minutes, I suppose we'll find a few more answers then- provided she returns at all." Her simply putting in an appearance wasn't reason enough to be won over just yet; if Jill was going to take to the stage, it was her duty to put on a show. Particularly when it sounded as though she was going to be performing in a solo act. He paused. "So she is, for all intents and purposes, alone."

[From here]

It hadn't been the most graceful landing, but at least Prussia had landed on his feet without injury; a twisted ankle right now would not have been the best thing for his escape.

He picked up the torch from where it had landed, and took a moment to check out what lay ahead of him. The land was unfamiliar to him—even in the dark he would have recognized in an instant if it had been German land—and provided little clue as to which direction would be best to travel in. There were no paths, no roads on this side of the hospital or the side around the corner.

He decided to move along the wall for now, and started heading east. He'd see if there was anything compelling in that direction—some landmark he might recognize or a road or anything—and decide where to go from there.

( from here. )

So far, so good. Kairi tried to move as quietly as she could, not wanting to attract any kind of baddies that could be lurking in the shadows. ... And lest she forget actually crazy patients. Then again, she doubted she'd ever forget that incident.

Oh well, she was almost there. No time to think about past injuries.

( to here. )

( 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...

Heat was able to ignore the still faintly throbbing spot on his head as he was led back into the cafeteria for another meal he had no intention of eating. He kept himself from rubbing at what he knew would be a small bump because dammit it didn't hurt that much. It was embarrassing, was what it was.

At the fishy odor filling the room when he entered, the demon wrinkled his nose. How that was supposed to be the slightest bit appealing he had no idea. Then again, it wasn't always the taste that mattered. Whatever this cod was, it could very well taste better than the rotting flesh he'd gotten down the night before.

His nurse made some comment about his lack of appetite, but he wasn't paying attention. She could eat his damn lunch if she was worried about it going to waste. It wasn't his fault they didn't inform their staff properly of their patients' eating habits. The room was fairly empty too, so Heat wasn't picky with where he sat. He just hoped one of his tribemates found him before he was stuck with some other pest for the duration of the meal.

[Sasuke?]

Why couldn't she get it out of her mind? It was a stupid white dress. So what if it was visual evidence that she was a princess? It should not be bothering her this much. It was a just a dress.

Falis didn't protest when the vultures herded her outside to the greenhouse for some quality time with Mother Nature, or something like that, as lost in thought as she was. Her headache had subsided to a dull throb in the back of her head, but she still stared at the plants and dirt wondering if they really expected her to bother. She had no talent for such things.

Turning her eyes to the others that had been herded along with her, Falis looked for someone she knew. Someone who might... No. She wasn't going to start questioning herself. It was just a stupid white dress.

[Soma and eventually Hokuto]

It had all been going so well!

Seeing Cloud and Aerith(!) again had brought a now unfamiliar lightness to her shoulders. Work would be harder from here on out, but she wasn't on her own anymore. She was getting a second chance she'd never thought was possible. And then, then they'd trekked outside, totally ready to face the fog and the unknown (privately, the ninja had been a little worried; it couldn't happen again, it just couldn't, but what if it did?)—only to wake up. In their beds. As usual. Gaaaaaawd—!

"I just want you to know," Yuffie informed her nurse, grabbing her journal from the desk on her way out, "that your hair looks spectacularly god-awful today. What did you do, stick your tongue in a socket? I'm not exactly hip on fashion, too busy badass for that fluffy stuff, but—"

Plucky looked ready to plant her face in her hands. Or to plant her hands somewhere else. To her credit, and much to Yuffie's eternal disappointment, she did—tried to do—neither. "One of those days, is it?" the nurse sighed, disapproval incarnate. "Well. You're just going to have to behave; the new batches of patients are due today. We don't want to make a bad impression."

"I am feeling so completely convinced of my wrongdoing," Yuffie confided. They stepped into the cafeteria, practically empty as of yet. The chocolate cake last night had worked a treat, whetting her appetite. Honestly, she was getting sick of pecking at scraps like a runt Chocobo in the snow plains—but not literally, of course. Ew. She got more than enough of that on those damn buses once a week. Now that AVALANCHE really was dropping onto her lap—and remind her to get the hell out of dodge if Barret ever took his turn—she couldn't afford not to keep her strength up. For one, she'd be a liability. For two, she'd get her spine chewed out.

"Fruit," said Plucky, hovering as her charge picked out her choices for the day. Rolling her eyes, Yuffie grabbed an apple, slinging it onto the tray alongside an 'English' sandwich. "That'll do. I'll leave you to your breakfast, now." Somehow, that sounded about as comforting as 'My name is Don Corneo and I am raiding through your panty draw', and Yuffie was stopping that thought right there. Oh, god. Eurk. Bad, bad, bad! Bad, brain. Bad. That—yeah, no. Just, no. 'Sides, the guy was as dead as a doornail, splatted across Da Chao's feet. Dirtying them, really, but somehow Yuffie couldn't bring herself to be sorry about that.

(And it wasn't like the creep'd ever end up here, right? Right!)

She took to a seat, dropping her tray and her journal both onto the table. The book fell pages-down; Yuffie flipped it over, thumbing through to the middle as she worked through her apple. An almost finished map of Gaia stared back at her, neat as she could ever manage. Dots for major locations, squiggles for mountains. Stars for the materia caves, Chocobos for the tracks. All labelled in Wutaian. It was just a little piece of the home she absolutely had to get back to, 'cuz Leviathan knew what kind of trouble they'd be up to their necks in without her.

[For Donna]

[from here]

The fresh air, though a bit chilly and damp as it seeped through her uniform, was refreshing. Knowing the area to be dangerous, Momo stopped a bit away from the door and scanned the field as her eyesight adjusted to the light cast from the moon. She didn't see any movement, nor did she hear any. Perhaps she'd arrived before the monsters had stirred from their daytime slumber.

That would be fortuitous as Momo would prefer to avoid confrontation. She had adjusted enough for the loss of sight in her left eye, but she could only compensate so much as it had only been a week and she'd yet to get into any serious combat since then.

With a quick glance to the right, checking the field's other door, the shinigami headed toward the outer wall. If she remembered correctly, the canines tended to come from behind the shed toward the back. If she could get to the wall before they showed their snouts...

[from here]

Continuing down the hallway toward the outside, Momo decided she would scale the wall and head to the ruined town. It had been several days since she'd been there and she was curious as to what might be found in the other buildings. Her mind was much clearer now than the last time. Perhaps, she could see it in a new light.

Momo knew traveling alone was not the best idea, but she was armed, in her uniform so she blended in well with her surroundings, and she'd be outside where her flashlight would not be needed. She was already on her second set of batteries and needed to preserve what she could. She was fairly sure she'd be alright against any of the Institute's monsters.

[from here]

Once out of the female block, Momo hesitated, unsure what she wanted to do. She'd left her room without a thought, her body automatically following the same motions she did every night once she'd secured Laevatein back in its hiding place in her room. She was feeling more comfortable with the broadsword, but there was only so much she could do with it while it was in its current state and she had no one to formally teach her. Celes' tips were certainly appreciated, but Momo was unwilling to ask the general for lessons, feeling as if she'd be imposing. She would just have to adapt her own style.

After a moment of thought, the shinigami headed to the left. She'd only had two options, really. She could have headed to the right and helped with the M-U rescue, but pacing that hallway while waiting for someone to be released from their torture was not something she wanted to do. Instead, she started toward the outside of the Institute.

[to here]

Utena tested her flashlight one more time after the lights went out. Still not even a sputter like there had been during the previous two nights. She sighed softly. Sure, Himemiya still had full batteries, so moving around tonight wouldn't be a problem. She knew that she couldn't just ask to borrow the girl's flashlight forever, though; that would just be delaying the problem. It would be best for them to go up to the janitor's closet for extra batteries tonight rather than waiting. Besides, Himemiya still needed something to defend herself with, and the pipes up there were better than nothing at all.

Frankenstein's monster? she thought as she listened to the Head Doctor go on about something on the intercom. That doesn't have something to do with what the transcript from a few nights ago, does it? She shook her head. She didn't have time to think much about it. Opening her closet door, she took out a garbage bag and the Sword of Dios replica. Even in the dark, she could tell the sword looked much better alongside her duelist uniform than it had with "Yomi's" institute clothing. She smiled a little at that.

After bidding a good night to Sakura, Utena stepped out into the hallway, squinting in the dark for Himemiya's room. Which one had it been? She knew it wasn't too far down from hers.

The intercom jingle went off, mirroring the cheery voice that came out of the speakers soon after it.

"Hello, everyone, and I hope you found productive endeavors in both your music-making and your therapy sessions! Now, our nurses will be escorting all of you to your rooms and to your delicious dinners. Tonight, we're serving moist slices of turkey breast covered in gravy and served with mashed potatoes and grilled artichoke. Also available are our usual salad and drink choices, as well as a to-die-for devil chocolate cake dessert!

"...Mm, yes, I do think I'll have to partake in some of that myself! I trust you'll all enjoy it as much as I do, and I'll speak with you again shortly!"

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. ]

Coming in a shift late following a rather surprising day off had not been Jizabel's intention, however he'd somehow managed it nonetheless. And worse was the frazzled look he had once he finally did arrive. Nothing save for the fact that he had managed to grab his coat on the way to work appeared professional about him, and he was quick to disappear into his office to straighten out the mess. A nurse or two was sure to have seen him, but they were hardly a threat to his position, and although he hated the thought of it, he knew how easily it would be to simply say that he'd had a rough night should anyone ask.

It was true enough in any event, but Jizabel would have to be more careful about letting any errands affect his image here.

His hair pulled back and spectacles set as they should be, Jizabel finally glanced the patient files he'd had no time to look at stacked on his desk. Three of them, by the looks of it. Of course. He couldn't expect that time had stopped in the Institute for his tardiness, so it only made sense that they would expect him to see to all three of his daily patients in the short amount of time before night fell.

Spreading the files, he found two, at least, to be ones he'd had before and filed those away into his desk to keep the unfamiliar patient file handy. If he was lucky, he'd have just enough time to glance it over before that particular patient graced his office.

Peter woke up suddenly, his body twisting in the bed and then forcing him to catch his breath in pain. Pain, which was coming from his middle because of the thing that had scratched him last night, and after that...

After that, Zach had jumped in front of him like some kind of martyr, like the exact opposite of everything Sylar stood for, to take the next hit for him. It got pretty fuzzy after that, so night must have ended right around then.

The man let out a pained grunt as he straightened himself up in bed. For some reason, he got the feeling that he'd slept in. There was no way for him to really tell without a window in the room, but he just knew. The fact that Sam's bed looked long since vacated was another clue.

Sam, but was he Sam again? Had the brainwashing worn off, as he and Roland had hoped, or was he going to have to go through this nightmare for even longer? He didn't know how long he could handle "Zach" and "Harrison" before he started going batty himself.

Pulling himself out of bed, Peter lifted his shirt and saw that he was tightly bandaged. The scratch most likely wasn't nearly as bad as the bite that "Zach" had received, but it still smarted. He let his shirt fall and then had to deal with a nurse chiding him for sleeping through the morning announcements. Not that Peter really cared at the moment. He was too busy thinking about last night and the fact that in a way, he now owed something to Sylar. Except it hadn't been Sylar. That was something he was sure of now.

Lost in his thoughts, Peter reached the Sun Room right as the rest of the patient populace was trickling in from breakfast. Sighing to himself, he headed over to the bulletin board and then saw a note written in familiar yet unpleasant handwriting. Holding his pen in a vice grip, Peter scribbled out a reply and then stalked over to an armchair and fell into it with a huff.

While Sylar was maddeningly frustrating, there was one good thing about the fact that he was himself again. It meant that Nathan was too.

[For Spock!]