The intercom clicked on with its usual jingle, the Head Doctor clearing his throat before he made his last shift-changing announcement of the day.

"Well, now that everyone is clean and having fun, I suppose it's time for everyone to be escorted back to their rooms for dinner! Yes, yes, I know the game room can be entertaining and doctor sessions can be fulfilling, but we only have so much time in the day, don't we?

"Ah, and speaking of dinner, tonight, we'll be having an old favorite--seasoned steak, a baked potato, and peas! Yum, yum. You also get a choice of vegetable soup or caesar salad--just tell your nurse which you'd prefer--and may also choose from our usual variety of drinks."

He made his usual pause, perhaps contemplating what the night would have in store once the sun fully set. Now, however, wasn't the time to reveal such musings, and so he ended on his usual cheery note:

"That's about all for now! I hope you all enjoy your suppers."

And again the intercom turned off.

The only reason Momo decided to go to the Game Room was the fact that she hadn't been there yet. She really didn't have much desire to play any games, but Hitsugaya would be in the showers for at least the first part of the shift; she could at least look the room and what it has to offer over before relocating to the Sun Room to give her report to him.

The meeting at lunch was productive, and yet, it wasn't. Maybe she was taking the wrong approach or perhaps she was just lacking the right person. As much as the thought abhorred her, she would have loved to have Unahana-taichou or, at the very least, Isane here to do the work for her. Never mind the fact that she'd taken the task upon herself to get things started. If she had things to do, she didn't have much time to think about Aizen.

And speaking of not having things to do...

One look around the game room and the shinigami didn't recognize any of the games. She'd been kind of hoping for a Go board, but after a quick rummage through the games, gave up searching any further and sat in one of the couches. She curled her legs up underneath her and, using the couch's arm as an uncomfortable headrest, laid her head against her arm. She was tired still and too many things were turning over in her mind.

Trying not to fall asleep, lest she forget to go give her report, Momo kept an eye on the door wondering who all would venture into the room.

Scar felt cold and sick, though more the latter than the former. As he rose from his bed, he didn't quite know which way was up, and the artificial light coming from overhead seemed as hot and as blinding as the Ishbal sun.

His head hurt, but that was nothing new. After all, the last thing he remembered from the night before was fighting a homunculus off of Lust and then having a conversation about events best left forgotten. The man hadn't been his brother. He just hadn't. And if what Lust had said they'd done to her was true...

Scar stood with shakiness that he wanted to attribute more to a bizarrely weakened physical state than a mental one. Had he been knocked out by some kind of lurking monster before the morning had come? He felt as if he had been out for days, being a veteran of such circumstances, though as he took the practiced role of being an obedient follower behind the nurse and orderlies that came for him, it didn't seem as if much had changed.

This place was probably just playing tricks on him again, and he was tired of being the man left out of the loop. He grabbed some food he didn't really care for and sat down, not seeing anyone he knew already seated. On one hand, he wished he had someone to talk to, and on the other, it scared him that he was no longer used to being alone.

He dug his fork into his food and tried to block out any related thought.

Gluttony didn't want to leave his Lust, not after he'd just found her!  But the mean tasty nurses said he had to.  "You can't join her in the women's showers" was a bad excuse.  He didn't like the mean tasty nurses.  Maybe Lust would let him eat them later.  Still, he knew he would see his Lust again, and that was good.  He liked Lust.  She was good and beautiful and smart and kind.  Why did they have to take him away from his Lust?

Still, he would see her again.  And she would tell him it was okay to eat the tasty nurses, and that would be good.  His new friend liked eating people, too.  That made him happy to find a friend who shared a love for eating people.  Today was a very good day.

As he entered the showers, he stood under a shower head and opened his mouth wide to drink up the water.  It wasn't as good as eating people, or eating waffles that didn't scream when he bit into them so weren't nearly as good as eating people, but it was still swallowing something, and that made him feel better.

Sai awoke rather groggily, which wasn't a good sign for a ninja. It meant he was probably ill. He'd need to get checked up with a medic-nin before he did very much more that day. Eyes blinked open slowly to stare at the ceiling and then narrowed in confusion. Not his ceiling. Was he already at the hospital?

"Mr. Pastello... wake up, hon."

Turning his head to the side revealed a vaguely familiar woman in a white uniform. A nurse? ...Oh yes. His nurse. Landels. He sat up at her direction, feeling mildly dizzy as he did so, and glanced down at his arms as he folded them in his lap. They were covered in clean bandages, no longer bleeding. The dizziness told him he was still suffering a bit from the blood loss, however.

When had he passed out? The last few events of the night hadn't been very clear. He didn't know what had happened to the two pirates and, looking around, the mess of blood they had left seemed to have been completely cleaned up. It was amazing, really. He smiled at his nurse, too weary to do much else but let her lead him to breakfast at the moment.

She helped him to his feet, where the light-headedness was even more apparent. It didn't seem to be anything he couldn't put up with, though. The nurse seemed to know a bit about what he suffered from, but made no mention of it aside from telling him to avoid lifting heavy objects and to drink lots of fluids as they made their way to the cafeteria. The subject of blood-sucking leeches never arose, and he figured if it had she'd surely feign ignorance.

It wasn't until they got there that he realized just how absolutely starving he was. He'd had what, corn for dinner? The smells were simply enticing, even though he had no idea what waffles were supposed to be. He was sure anything edible at this point would be fine, and made his way out of his nurse's grip and to the line with more speed then he'd probably ever gone after food at.

"Dolyeton"? What in the name of Fire and Rain was that? (Or where in the name of Fire and Rain was that, but Keman didn't really want to deal with technicalities at the moment.)

Steeling his courage, the young dragon-turned-halfblood (he was so used to this form that he knew without even thinking that it was the one he'd ended up in) sat up and finally opened his eyes.

Pre-glow indeed. It was pitch black.

A cursory investigation of the room that he had found himself in helped him realize a few things. First, this wasn't the New Citadel. The massive castle that the Kin had helped to shape and create did not have rooms this small. The Old Citadel, on the other hand, had had rooms of all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to be there, either. The walls were smooth, not hewn rock. They felt more like plaster than anything...which meant that he was definitely not in the Old Citadel, because plaster can't survive underground.

Secondly, he realized that he was having trouble shifting. It was so dark in the room that normally he would have at least shifted his eyes to be able to see more than an inch in front of his annoying two-legger nose, but trying to do so gave him a headache unlike one he'd ever had before...without helping his vision any. Unsettling. Very, very unsettling.

Thirdly, examination of the bed that he had woken up on yielded a strange sort of hard club. Did...did his captors (because now he was certain that he'd been captured, probably by bitter Elven Lords) expect him to fight? With a club? How uncivilized. Keman preferred a quick, clean kill with his fangs and claws to beating his opponent senseless and bloody.

Oh, and the door was, apparently, unlocked. Whichever Elven Lords had captured them seemed to be extremely inept. The young dragon gripped his club and started to move down what seemed to be a long hallway, cursing his inability to shift.

That was about when he "heard" it. A lilting melody inside his mind. One that he actually recognized.

It "sounded" like Valyn. But...that was impossible! Valyn was dead. The blast that had killed him and his father had leveled the hill on which Lord Dyran had pitched his tent. No one, not even a powerful Elven Lord like Valyn, could survive that. It must have been some other elf. It certainly wasn't Shana.

...Shana. Where was Shana?! He had to find her. What if she was in danger? She was the Elvenbane. If the Elven Lords found her, the could kill her! Keman tried to call out to his foster-sister with his mind, but he was only met with another piecing headache.

"Fewmets," he muttered angrily.

Just what was this place?

[moving here.]

With a crackle, the intercom came back on, and with a boom, the Head Doctor began to laugh into the microphone, his mouth so close that his breath rasped out of the speakers. Finally, he spoke, with one word that seemed to mean more than he let on.

"Doyleton."

Another chuckle, this time only slightly more sane as Doctor Martin Landel seemed to fall into the plush chair of his office.

"It's a place nearby, and you might be seeing it soon, though I'm not sure if you want to." He sighed, and one could almost picture him running his hand through hair that was usually tidy. "A field trip, you could call it, to one of the last heavens left on this Earth, as artificial as it might be. Yes, this Earth, not your Gaia, Expel, Ivalice, Auldrant, Radiant Garden, or--God, whatever the hell else you people call your ridiculous playtime lands.

"In any case, this is all you know now, and this is all you will know, and perhaps, in a month or so, it will be all that you have known."

A pause.

"Heh. Our first group of patients to be introduced tonight seems to have finally arrived. We'll see what they think of your personal hell. Who knows? Maybe they'll try to exploit you for information under the guise of making friends. But no matter. This will all be over, someday."

With another rasp and a sharp crackle, the intercom slowly died to silence once more.