DAY 54: GREENHOUSE (FOURTH SHIFT)

Jan 29, 2011 11:56

By the end of lunch, Alaric was still hungry and still stuck on the middle of a perfectly balanced scale, the only difference with the scale having a new, possibly unrelated third option: it was either some sort of conspiracy (obviously of the supernatural sort), he was actually crazy, or he’d just had the very bad luck of being kidnapped by ( Read more... )

byrne, guy, peter petrelli, depth charge, kibitoshin, damon, castiel, gren, sora, sync, hijikata, ippo, alaric, woody, edward cullen, howl, kratos, zack, l, soren, roxas

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toxicspiderman January 30 2011, 05:36:53 UTC
By rights, S.T. figured he should probably hate the greenhouse. Loam and all-natural fertilizer, more processed than the bullshit on the intercom but no less redolent. It smelled like home. This wasn't Brighton soil, full of old trash, granite chips ranging up to the size of a Yugo, and needing a year's supply of GEE heavy-metal test kits before he'd eat anything that had fallen on it let alone grown there, but it was dirt. He took a deep sniff ( ... )

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hissecondshadow January 30 2011, 20:31:18 UTC
After the surprise meeting with Ranulf at breakfast, Soren hardly expected to see anybody else that he recognised. One familiar face was enough for him, even if it was a laguz. Needless to say, he would have preferred that it had been Ike, or perhaps one of the more tolerable among the mercenaries. But the goddess didn't favour him that much, nor did he expect her to ( ... )

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toxicspiderman January 31 2011, 03:47:11 UTC
"Soren. Still alive, I see." He shrugged. "Same as usual. If you can call it that. Ran into a few guys I know, waited to drag some poor bastard out of the torture chambers, but the night ended before we ran out of rescuers." There was more to the story, if he was reading between the lines on the bulletin well enough, but part of doing this job was knowing when to keep his mouth shut.

"You O.K.?" Loaded question, but in a warm room full of growing things even hysterical teenagers didn't seem too bad. Not that Soren looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but this place did that.

"Here, fill these with potting soil." He handed over a tray. "After this morning it's probably a good idea to keep our noses clean." Metaphorically speaking. He'd dragged a hand over the bridge of his own once after sticking his hands into the dirt, and a little of it was still stuck there.

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hissecondshadow January 31 2011, 12:23:50 UTC
So the rescue mission hadn't gone particularly well, then. Soren found it odd that S.T. didn't seem particularly angered or irritated. Perhaps he was used to things going wrong. Soren wondered if these supposed 'rescue' missions ever actually succeeded. Seeing as S.T. had been kind enough to afford him both information and maps more detailed than some of the older patients appeared to have, though, Soren decided not to press the issue.

"For the most part. I found somebody I knew at breakfast, which was unexpected." He kept his tone even as he tipped the soil carefully into the pots. He knew S.T. was willing with information, which made Soren at least attempt to feign politeness, but it by no means meant that he trusted the man. They were still relative strangers. It would take much longer for Soren to come close to dropping his guard.

"You were involved in that mess, then?" He didn't bother to hide his disdain. "From what I've heard, attempting to incite anything like that during the day isn't a particularly wise move."

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toxicspiderman February 2 2011, 03:14:26 UTC
"Yeah, I joined in. Meatbag Hater picked a weird day to flip out, though. If we'd tried that on a regular day we might have gotten a decent headcount for the staff ( ... )

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hissecondshadow February 3 2011, 15:07:08 UTC
"I didn't realise the number of staff today was unusual." Soren glanced around the greenhouse. Few of the uniformed men had accompanied the nurses this time, though it made a sort of sense - with the patients divided into two groups, those on the recreational field were significantly more likely to attempt something. They had more space and freedom. The greenhouses, however large, were crowded with people and plants. There was no room to manoeuvre, if indeed any amongst them were stupid enough to attempt something after breakfast. "Have they come here before?" Of course, even if they had, S.T. might not have been here long enough to know about it. But any information was more useful than none, which was near enough what Soren knew so far ( ... )

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toxicspiderman February 4 2011, 03:48:07 UTC
"Not in any of the stories I've heard. The totalitarian state on the bulletin is only a week old or so. None of this bullshit about dreams. Too bad no-one knew much." He shrugged. "There was a riot once before. About a month ago. Landel showed up in person. Don't have all the details, but he had some kind of force field protecting him. People rushed him, got sedated, you know the drill."

He knew exactly what Soren meant about his buddy. The people you most wanted to see were the ones that should be out there fat and happy.

"Funny you should ask. Couple of guys I know are headed down there tonight, and I was thinking of tagging along. I'll tell you tomorrow. Deal?" He grinned. Like a hero about to charge off into a battle and get his head blown off. The basement was a stupid idea. As stupid as escaping a helicopter with guns in a rubber raft and only a few gallons of gas? Yeah, about that stupid. Maybe the Eagle would play spirit guide and nurse him back to health. "If I still have four limbs, it's no worse ( ... )

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hissecondshadow February 5 2011, 16:04:19 UTC
"In person?" Soren considered this for a moment. "That makes sense." All it took was for the man in charge to show up and prove resistant to attack once, and morale would be crushed for a long time afterward. Shadowy figures only instilled fear for so long before people began mounting resistance. For Landel to present himself in a way that made him out to be untouchable left him a figure with a reputation. It was a smart move. They were the most dangerous kind, after all. Ashnard wouldn't have survived so long without building up a fearsome military record first, or without letting rumours circulate of dragons and blood pacts - and really, it didn't matter that his dragon had been 'tamed' with underhanded trickery and the use of the feral drug, because he still had a dragon at his command, and that was all that was needed to keep civilians in line. Soren suspected it was much the same with Landel. The logic behind it didn't matter, so long as the patients believed it impossible to stand against him ( ... )

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toxicspiderman February 6 2011, 03:21:22 UTC
"Rumor has it the guy on the radio, Marc, has been hanging out north of the Institute. I've never been up there, but he might have some ideas." He glanced at the sun streaming through the windows, then pointed. "Thattaway." No North star to point the way at night, but S.T. hoped the kid either had a good sense of direction. Or self-preservation.

"I've never seen a decent map of what's outside, period. The first two floors, sure, but everywhere else people are treating like pet research projects. Publish or perish, man. Even if they don't want it all up on the board, it'd be good to have more intel floating around."

"Be careful out there. I know a guy who thinks Marc's all right, but he only has a few weeks experience with humans. He could be another one of Landel's pawns." Might not know it himself. Loyal idiots made the best henchmen, didn't they? When the good guys tried that they got the emphasis on the idiot part. Like Wyman and the fucking van.

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hissecondshadow February 7 2011, 13:04:10 UTC
Soren followed his gaze and nodded. "We'll probably be heading to the sheds before anything else, to stock ourselves with makeshift weapons. Any information on the best way to break the locks?" Soren had seen a significant number of them around the institute as he'd been escorted from one to the next. There was no way that anybody managed to explore the place without breaking a few.

"I don't suppose you've a vague idea of how far the grounds extend?" Soren wasn't so naive as to believe that whatever monsters hung around would stop there, but it would at least give him enough information to begin mapping the place. That was as acceptable a project as any for as long as he was stuck in this place. If it achieved nothing else, it would settle his debt with S.T. for giving him the two floor maps and a rundown of the place on his first day. Whether or not the man admitted that such a debt existed, Soren knew that information never came free. It was all a matter of give and take.

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toxicspiderman February 8 2011, 04:24:31 UTC
"Probably not hard to pick, but it's kind of a hands-on lesson." S.T. didn't carry lockpicks. Matter of principle. They couldn't be passed off as anything else. He was too lazy and too cheap to get certified as a locksmith just to be able to win small metal dick-waving contests. He'd pull his bike off the rack with his keys, thanks ( ... )

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hissecondshadow February 10 2011, 16:34:03 UTC
Soren nodded. He'd watched Sothe and Volke pick enough locks to know that there was a precision to it that had to be learned rather than taught. Even if there'd been time for S.T. to show him how it was done, the time it would take Soren to awkwardly attempt it on each lock tonight would be a danger in itself. Unless they had someone with them who was confident in their skill, it would be faster and therefore safer to attempt to break through the locks. Soren added finding a heavy object to his mental list of things to do ( ... )

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toxicspiderman February 12 2011, 18:33:51 UTC
The kid hadn't been here long enough for a field trip, but S.T. was surprised no-one had mentioned the place. They had to do something about the bulletin. Revive the glory days of handbills. Go all out and invent black powder and cannons and spatter the place with an infodump of explosive proportions ( ... )

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hissecondshadow February 13 2011, 16:51:23 UTC
Several bits of S.T.'s terminology went over Soren's head, and he debated asking for clarification. Some of them were guessable - 'American', given the context, had to be a place or some other sort of geographical feature. It wasn't really important to the overall information he was being given, which was that S.T. only knew of one nearby town ( ... )

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toxicspiderman February 13 2011, 22:50:16 UTC
S.T. was used to people not quite keeping up with his descriptions. When it mattered, he'd slow down. Press got the non-condescending version. Everyone else had to ask, for clarifications or for him to just shut up. The first was a lot more likely to work. Along with the girlfriends, he'd lost one college roommate who'd gotten so pissed off at him rattling off answers to the guy's gut-level physics class that he'd punched him. By the time S.T. had come to, all that was left were some unwashed boxer shorts and some empty ramen packets ( ... )

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hissecondshadow February 17 2011, 20:25:23 UTC
Fire. Ashera, why hadn't he thought of that before? He might not be able to summon magic without a tome, but there was still the possibility of doing it the traditional way. Soren had never really bothered enough to learn how to make one, but he was fairly certain that he had picked enough up over the years to figure it out. Knives were fine in close combat, but he was, and always had been, more comfortable attacking from a distance ( ... )

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