Nov 26, 2010 14:48
With breakfast finished and a new acquaintance made, the Scarecrow's mind turned to his other friends. The disappearance of Depth Charge's friend had brought back memories of how he'd felt when Kaiji went missing: helpless, useless, as though he should have and could have done something more to find him. If only he had his brain, then maybe he
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leela,
kirk,
s.t.,
gambit,
tsubaki,
anise,
minato,
the doctor,
goku (dragonball),
niikura,
taura,
claire bennet,
peter parker,
snow,
lunge,
lana skye,
ruby,
mello,
soren,
brainiac 5,
xemnas,
minako,
stefan,
tsukasa,
watson,
mele,
damon,
two-face,
erika,
tifa,
the scarecrow,
matt,
maya,
ishida,
yukari,
zack,
kratos,
rubedo,
haseo,
jo,
bella,
scott pilgrim,
kaito,
aigis,
elle,
izaya,
austria,
claire littleton,
sora,
prussia,
chuck,
leon (so2),
buzz,
dean winchester,
guy,
kairi,
venom,
depth charge,
kibitoshin,
ilia,
lightning,
rita,
castiel,
katniss,
riku,
yomi,
aerith,
sai,
yue,
claire stanfield,
edward cullen,
ema skye,
mccoy,
scar (tlk)
There was nothing yet from the History Club, yet -- had something more gone awry there? The group's luck had been poor, as far as she'd seen, in both missions and leadership, but they were exactly the sort of group suited to her talents. One more chance, she'd promise. After that, her nighttimes would be her own again. Not that they weren't now, albeit indirectly; she hadn't been coerced into joining the group. It seemed like a good idea at the time. How many mission reports had she seen that on? She'd only been foolish enough to use it once, herself. The look on her superiors face had been enough, and she remembered it now only to try to emulate it.
As she thought, she paced, sweeping past the bulletin every five minutes or so. The medtech assigned to her had tried to keep up, jogging along, but had finally abandoned her to the watchful eye of the border patrol. Since she made no move to abandon a set circuit, contained to this one room, they seemed content to allow her this. Good. She wasn't above working out her frustrations with a little more direct action, if they made it necessary. Three was plenty of time for sedatives to burn off before nightfall, even ignoring the fact that she had no plans as of yet.
[Leela]
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She liked the Sun Room, as much as she could like any part of a definitely-insane, certainly-fake, probably-lying-about-its-time-period mental hospital. It wasn't the kitties' fault they lived in an evil place.
She spotted the tall woman pacing as soon as she came in, and recognized her as Taura, for whom Leela's liking wasn't conditional at all. She fell into step with her (she had to jog a bit to keep up with her long legs, too), smiling. "Hey. Waiting for an important message?"
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Manfred hadn't shown up in the Sun Room either, which meant she was better off just finding him as soon as he awoke rather than second-guessing his opinion on last night's debacle. If she'd still heard or seen nothing by lunch she'd go up the chain of command. Or down, or sideways, or really, whatever got her an answer. For now, she could use the chance to relax with someone she knew wouldn't call her a freak. "How 'bout you?"
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"I've already checked in on the friend I was with last night, so nope, I was just going to say hi to the cats." The few she could see were being aloof, as usual, one washing its paw in a spot of sunlight, another sleeping with its tail over its eyes. Aww. "It wasn't too bad for you, was it? Last night?"
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"I haven't heard anything from the friend I was with." She looked down at her fingers, manicure slightly chipped from the sink dis-assembly of the first part of the night. "That thing -- it looked like my real body." Scar's hadn't, which added to the shock. But from their limited conversation, he seemed to find Landel's bodyswap more annoyance than sea change. "I'm not sure what he thinks of me now. I wish he'd answer..." The last came out a bit whiny; Taura clamped her mouth shut to avoid digging herself deeper.
It might be nothing. The shadow had meant to be intimidating, and he'd know that. He'd already known about her; she'd told him. But knowing wasn't seeing, not by a long shot, and she wanted -- no, needed -- to see his eyes when he saw her again.
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Universe-B Leela hadn't been evil, strictly speaking, but she'd still been unsettling, what with that orange hair and... marrying of Fry. Though, having done that herself, however unwillingly or unwittingly, Real Leela wasn't in a position to judge. She gave the sleepy cat a skritch between its ears, and it rumbled gratifyingly.
"And these weren't even really alternate selves, were they? The mad scientist, or whatever he is, made them appear so he could mess with us. I do wonder why I didn't have one. Maybe it would have looked like the real me, and they don't want people believing me about being a cyclops."
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Secrets, too, but none of them her own. Everyone had secrets. She didn't even know who she was working for, when it came down to it. She just hoped someone knew.
"There was a man with us who wasn't human at all, not genetically modified, but completely not human. His shadow looked normal, but it called him a freak, too. I just...don't know what it adds up to. But you didn't see one at all?" She reached out a hand to one of the kitties; it sniffed her, and then butted its head into her open palm.
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"No, I didn't. But I don't believe what Landel said. I think he just wants people to feel bad, so they'll feel less like trying to get away. You'd think it would be easier to just make it nice here, but maybe the patients are too paranoid to buy that. Not you," she explained. "Just in general."
Why they would pick people like that was a mystery, but it could have been that they liked a challenge. "And the guy I was with had one. Maybe it was meant to freak both of us out. Or," she added, with a sudden thought, "they were supposed to make people too suspicious of each other to work together." That was pretty simplistic, for someone as seemingly practiced at evil as Landel, but it made sense to Leela.
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There was one other thing that both other shadows had said, though her own had skipped. Mmm. That could be important.
"This may sound like a weird question, but, er, have you ever killed anyone?" That cried out for a little explanation. "I was just wondering if that was all it was. I mean, I'm a mercenary. It comes with the territory. Nothing personal, but we don't always have the luxury of using stunners."
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It was really also just a matter of luck that Leela hadn't killed, or fatally maimed, anyone. Things always had a weird way of working out so that everyone was all right. "I don't know if the guy I was with had, either. He wouldn't have meant it, if he did." But maybe this was the sort of thing where you couldn't coast on a technicality like that. Taura wouldn't have meant it, either.
"That's not fair, trying to make people feel bad over things they didn't have a choice about."
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She could see where every one of the ones they hadn't been able to save weighed on Miles' shoulders; as of yet, there were none on her own, but no record lasted forever.
"I wonder what he was trying to do? Just make us distrust each other?"
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"It seems almost too easy. I mean, I think if he was going to all the trouble to make evil doubles of people, he'd want a little more than that out of it. But who knows? I don't spend a lot of time trying to think like a mad scientist." Would keeping people from working together be worth all that? It didn't seem to have worked, anyway. Maybe Landel was one of those evil geniuses who underestimated the power of friendship. It would serve him right if he was.
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"And when you ask why they don't even notice. Lab experiments can't have feelings, even while you're measuring 'em." She looked down at the cat, who was purring under Leela's touch.
"The problem with this is it's so messy." Real life was always messy; it was one of the first lessons in planning anything. Combat drop, surprise birthday lunch for the commander, nothing ever went to plan. But the experiments had. Not a plan Taura would have chosen, and sometimes the results weren't expected and her entire cohort had tried to look invisible while the staff stormed around trying to force their wayward charges into a mold they themselves had failed to create in the first place. Taura had learned a word for it, her first day out. Clusterfuck. Rolled off the tongue better than disaster, while still implying that a genius might be able to find a way out of the blast radius.
But this wasn't that kind of organized screw-up by the numbers. This was side effects. Oh.
"What if we weren't the targets at all? Marc, on the intercom." Her voice rose a half-octave to an excited contralto. "What if we're just collateral damage?"
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This was exciting. Leela had tried to get away from the hospital grounds and track down Marc a couple of times. Admittedly, this was partly because she was interested to see what the scrappy leader of a resistance movement was like in person. Somehow, she'd never been able to get very far.
She was interested enough by this new theory that the cat headbutted her hand, as if to remind her it was there. "Oh, sorry, kitty," Leela said, and rubbed under its chin.
"I kind of think this whole place is an experiment we don't know enough to understand yet. I mean, none of it really makes sense. They can change people from the way they're supposed to look, and they've got to have some way of moving between realities, but everything we see here is so primitive."
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The technology disparity was an interesting point. "It's not like they've taken things away so that we won't get hurt. That would make too much sense. But maybe...it's anything we could use to hurt them? Swords don't do a he'll of a lot when the enemy has plasma arcs." Well, the swords might be all right. Took a good long blast to slag decent steel. The hand holding the sword, however, was somewhat more flammable.
Realization dawned. "They...don't think we're a threat. Defanged." Taura's bare-teeth smile didn't need two-inch canines to be ferocious. "That's when we'll strike. Let Marc and Jill play out their game, and when Landel turns his full attention to them, pow!"
That was missing some important logistics. Like how a bunch of unequipped bare humans were going to find Landel's hidey-hole, get past the rumored shield he carried, all without anyone noticing, but those were details. There were only so many places to look, and who go nervous if a few rats were running around the sewers.
No. Not down. Up. The basement was a toy. Had to be, though taking it apart could tell them a lot about their captors psychology. The third floor was where the real action was, even if no-one was even trying for it. Especially if no-one was trying for it.
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She couldn't agree that Marc was a fool, not without having met him and heard the whole story. She sort of thought he might have been a patient here once, who had escaped and taken to the woods to hide out, and help those left behind. But she could also see where Taura was coming from. If they waited for help to arrive from outside before doing anything, they'd be waiting forever. Even with time travel in the mix.
"I had a blaster. And my wrist thingie. And neither of those exist yet, in the time this is supposed to be. More to the point, they could do a lot more damage than boots or a closet bar." That went double for the people who'd started out as robots. Their whole bodies could be weapons, and messing with them was personal, way more so than swiping possessions. Now she was fired up with good old righteous indignation. It felt better than just taking things as they came. "Plus, my wrist thingie has a mapping function." Only when it wanted to, seemingly, but that was a minor detail.
"We need our stuff back!" The cat gave her a baleful look at this outburst, and hopped down from the couch. "And..." She thought it over. "Shouldn't we try to help the rebels, so they can act so we can act?"
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