[from here]

It wasn't the the feel of broken cobblestones beneath her feet or the comforting feel of her armor that alerted Teresa that their adventure through Landel's teleportation holes had taken them to someplace she should have never been able to venture to again. And even though the sudden bright light blinded her for a few moments as her eyes adjusted, it was the scent barely detectable in the air that spoke to her.

Blood. Human blood.

Clad in her armor, claymore across her back, the wind rustled the half-cape as she looked around. The cobblestones were still stained with the blood of the bandits, even though the bodies were gone. She had done that. She had killed each and every one of those bandits. Even now, she could still imagine their bodies and the way the blood splattered over walls, across the cobblestones, she felt no remorse for her actions.

Head snapping up, Teresa's nostrils flared as she expanded her youki sense out across the village like she was used to. Nothing. No youma, save for the one behind her. The one that had come with her and Homura. Homura, himself, was giving her mixed feelings when she focused her senses on him. There was the stench of youma about him, but it wasn't him. Some contact he had before his death, she presumed. The stench was not unlike what had been on Clare when she first met the girl, having been held captive by a youma for a long time.

Clare.

Without a word to her companions, Teresa strode across the square to a particular spot, stained a dull brown. Kneeling down, she touched her fingers to a smaller blood stain next to it before standing once again. Silver eyes turned to the west, looking down the road that lead out of town.

There was no one there but Teresa and the other two. She narrowed her eyes. "Where are the rest?" she mused quietly.

[From here]

From Doyleton back to their prison; though Homura didn't recognize the room itself, the set up marked it as an office. Though Homura himself hadn't been subjected to the daytime doctors that he could recall, it was possible that Hayashi or Teresa had. If so, they might recognize the room, and find something personally beneficial there. The thought of the doctors and of the lives they attempted to push on the patients raised another question, however. Well aware of what the next day held, Homura turned to the two women. Taking care to keep how deeply he'd been affected by the event from his voice, he still spoke with concern. "Have either of you had a visitor before?"

[From here]

Homura stepped not into the open hall outside of the Sun Room, or even a corridor one might expect to find when heading out of what had likely been an office. Instead, a sweep of the area with his flashlight revealed a small room with wooden walls, filled with items like those the nurses issues sometimes when the escorted the patients outside. Though the possibility of something useful being found if the area was searched always existed, Homura didn't think it likely in this case. Not so much that he was willing to spend time there, at least.

"Another miss, it seems." Homura glanced at Teresa and Hayashi, then gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. Truthfully, he knew he should have felt more frustration than he did at the scenario. Yet considering everything else he was concerned about, Homura decided it best to hold off on all of those emotions. Losing control then would do none of them any good. They simply had to keep moving, and make the best use of what time the night provided. "Unless either of you has an objection, I see no reason to stay here."

_{[From here.]}

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

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

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

With her torso wrapped once again to hide the disfigurement left behind from her hybridization, Teresa found she was the first in the showers. It figured that the handlers would take care of her and her... unsightly mark before anyone else had a chance to catch a glimpse. It wasn't as if Teresa cared, unless it was someone she knew personally, but she did not feel like complaining.

Standing under the cascading water, Teresa let her mind wander back to a time when she was but a whelp and snuck away from the barracks into the woods. To where the waterfall was.

[free]

[From here]

Hime shielded her eyes with her free arm, not expecting how bright this room would be. After the halls lit only by flashlight and the basement's softer candlelight, the omnipresent brightness of this new room was in stark contrast.

As her eyes adjusted to the lighting, her grip on her chainsaw tightened. Well, what sort of test would this be?

[from here]

With a little push from her hands on the top of the wall, Teresa gained enough momentum in her vault from the greenhouse yard to be a good couple feet away from the wall. Landing in a three-point stance, the large metal weapon barely clearing the ground, Teresa too a quick look around. She didn't see anything, didn't sense anything, but that didn't mean it was perfectly safe. Most humans would be cautious at that moment, but Teresa was not human.

Without hesitation, she darted directly from her position to the door leading to the cafeteria, not once stepping away from the shadow of the building. Let some foolish human be food for the nightly beasts. Teresa kicked the door down and entered the cafeteria mere moments after she had arrived.

[to here]

[from here]

Opening the door to the outside, Teresa clicked her light off. She was far more comfortable navigating by moonlight than she was the hand-held light. Placing the light into her waistband, she felt better with both her hands free. This meant she could draw her weapon easily should she need it.

Knowing where she had to go normally would have taken her through the Sun Room, Teresa chose this route instead. By sticking close to the building proper, she could avoid the usual conflict there and hopefully catch Hime's group off before they got too far to track. Seeing and sensing nothing in her immediate vicinity, Teresa mentally mapped her path through the yard to the courtyard to the cafeteria door.

With a burst of speed, Teresa sprinted at the wall and vaulted herself over it. Tch. She actually had to put her hands on it. Death really had weakened her.

[to here]

[from here]

Just as before, the office was fairly barren in furniture except for the impressive chair, the few pictures and the computer on the desk. Teresa swept her light around just to make sure before full moving into the room toward the desk. Again, she picked up one of the pictures of the dark-haired girl. Varying ages... whoever this girl was, the man in question must love her.

Hmph.

It was time to go. Taura considered, one last time, taking the carryall from the box she'd discovered. But carryall was a misnomer -- it wasn't big enough to hold more than a wallet or a gun, and too fragile. It would only get in the way. If she needed a holster, someone should have mentioned it.

So she set out, armed with only a flashlight, for the rendezvous point.

[to here]

( from here. )

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

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

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

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?]

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]

Stepping into the larger room, Teresa's flashlight revealed many more items along a similar vein as the ones in the previous room. The scent here was even stronger, far more than in the laundry room, and it bothered her. She never would claim to have 'delicate' senses, but the foreign chemicals were making her long for the crisp northern air in the land she was from.

Further investigation showed these items were not what she had thought would be here; they must be in the other storage room. Still, she would see if any of it was usable. Pipe still in hand, she moved to the various ladders and looked them over. Those had potential, but the metal did not look like it had been crafted to handle the force the metal for her claymore would require.

And then her eyes fell on a metal contraption with wheels on it. The design made it look as if it was specifically for weight bearing. Tucking the pipe under her arm, Teresa grasped the wheeled item that rose to a little over her waist and picked it up. Heavy. Solid. This could work.

[From here]

Utena nudged the door open the rest of the way, moving so that Himemiya might have a better angle to shine her light. "The plus side, I guess, is this means we weren't beaten here. Last time I came this way, some really loud guy made off with just about everything in here singlehandedly." Utena's hand followed the shelves as the flashlight beam washed over them, keeping an eye out for anything that looked like a package of batteries. "There are pipes in here too. They're not the best weapons, but they're better than nothing," she added as she searched.

[from here]

There was only one corner to turn at the end of the hall, so Anthy took it. The rest were stairwells and dead ends. Sticking close to Utena, the remaining words drifted out of her.

"Yet, you've become precious to me. I think you are my first true friend."

[from here]

Anthy was quiet for a few long seconds. The path from last night was familiar, but she stopped short once she recognized the banisters that overlooked the Sun Room on the first floor. This was where they'd been attacked, and so this was as far as they'd come before the night ended. She wasn't sure which direction to go next to get to the place they were seeking, and so waited for Utena to take the lead from here on out.

She averted her gaze to the ground and spoke softly: "How are you so sure that I'm a good person? Haven't you ever wondered that I might've done something to deserve being the Rose Bride?"

The number of times she'd been so very plain with Utena could be counted on one hand, but there it was now -- the question Utena should've been asking herself from the very start. There was no turning back.

Dinner—cake included—sat untouched on the desk, surrounded by her growing collection of colorful origami animals and guarded by her notebook. Her three knives were lined up on the bed in order of size alongside her old outfit, with the wakizashi next to them; the Four Point was propped up carefully on the side of the bed.

Yuffie, hands on her hips, eyed the ensemble critically. It really was gonna be a shame to lose some of this kit, but it was going to a good cause. Her conscience would never allow her to leave her teammates unarmed when she had weapons to spare, no matter what her hoarding instincts had to say about it. She'd just have to suck it up and deal, and make sure they knew just how bad an idea it'd be to lose anything she gave them.

Especially the wakizashi.

She twirled on heel, paced the length of the room and back again in swift little waltz steps. Butterflies swarmed in her stomach. Nervous? Her? The Great Ninja Yuffie? No! No way! It was just—the anticipation. Restless energy and restless thoughts. How, exactly, was she gonna deal with this? It was Aerith, back from the dead, and… and…. And that was good, totally awesome, but Yuffie couldn't banish the feeling of that up close and personal re-enactment she'd been forced to go through. Looking Cloud in the eye had been hard enough.

[from here]

Beatrix had walked this path to the Sun Room so many times, she could do it in complete darkness. Which was exactly what she was doing. Knowing the way, there was little need for light as it would only draw creatures and other unwanted attention. Silently counting her steps, at the right number, the assassin headed left and down the hallway.

[to here]

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. ]