Day 55: Cafeteria

[mustbethesuit]

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[razing_phoenix]

All things considered, Guy had imagined that one of his friends would have come to join him. Too much had gone on last night, and he would have liked to reconnect with them as quickly as possible. A bulletin post only went so far in assuaging his concerns, but as it turned out, it was a stranger who came up to him.

Guy took in the older man's appearance, along with the uniform that he wasn't used to seeing on anyone else, let alone himself. It actually suited the man decently just from first impressions, though he'd have to see if that assumption stood up.

Having already crouched down to start taking any stains out of the floor (not that there were many, since there had only been one meal in here since the staff had cleaned it yesterday), Guy could see how this sort of down-and-dirty cleaning could be hard on someone who was older or just wasn't used to it. Luckily, his joints and bones hadn't forgotten this sort of thing so quickly, so he felt fine.

Even though the stranger's demeanor was completely different, the comment about his age reminded him of Jade, and brought a small smile to his face. No matter what this place did to them, at least the company tended to be good. But more importantly, he wanted to address the man's problem. "Maybe work on scrubbing the walls instead? Or the tables? That way you won't have to put too much pressure on them." It wasn't just the floor that needed to be cleaned, after all.

"Oh, and the name's Guy, by the way. What do you think of the new uniform?" he asked, clearly not entirely serious. Even if they had to do work, they might as well make the best of it.

[tasteoftruth]

"I'm wondering how many of my tax dollars went into designing fancy suits for prisoners," Badd grumbled, not returning with his own name. With the resources Dr. Landel apparently wielded it seemed like nothing was impossible--if Badd was on the outside looking in the first target he'd hit would be financial records to see who was paying for this mess.

Up close the kid seemed older than Badd has first surmised, though to him 'kid' was still anyone between the ages of five and thirty. "You seem pretty upbeat about all this, did you hold down a janitor job before you came here?" he asked, making only the most cursory attempt at actual scrubbing. He doubted anyone actually expected the place to be clean, the important part was the punishment. It wouldn't surprise them if they cleaned the place to sparkling and were still harassed over a neglected dustbunny found in a darkened corner.

[razing_phoenix]

The fact that the man didn't reply with his name wasn't lost on Guy, and he had to wonder if it was intentional or a mistake. He wasn't able to guess based on the few words that they'd exchanged so far, but he did see it as a lack of manners. He wasn't going to judge the man for it so quickly, of course; they were all distracted and it wasn't the most important thing. But it stood out to him nonetheless.

The man's first comment almost went completely over Guy's head. He could make some assumptions, which was that part of the man's salary went to a government or kingdom (he had no idea how it worked on other worlds) and he therefore felt like he'd been snubbed, but...

Chances were the man wasn't even from Earth in the first place, right? Then again, there was always the possibility that he was.

But Guy was getting ahead of himself. He smirked in response to the question. "I don't know about upbeat, but I did used to be a servant, so you could say that I'm used to it, yeah." At least the fact that he was doing a thorough job would probably cover up the fact that his companion for the shift wasn't putting as much effort into it.

"Do you mind if I ask where you're from?" Even if he hadn't gotten the man's name, maybe he would answer this instead.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd kept his head down as they talked, watching the guards more than he did Guy. "Los Angeles, California. The US."

And if he got asked what planet that was on he was going to feed Guy his own rag because he really did not want to deal with that nonsense. Location wasn't a big deal here, and the last time he'd admitted it he'd gotten the chance to make Gant a new enemy. As to anything else, the kid would have to earn that right. Badd had no idea who to trust around here and if anything a sour face was more trustworthy than a chipper one. It was usually the guilty ones who ran their mouths the most.

"You?" He couldn't quite place the accent. 'Servant', though, that was pretty formal. Maybe he was someone's butler from the wrong place at the wrong time.

[razing_phoenix]

Even with the man giving him three different ways to identify where he came from, Guy was completely clueless. Luckily the act of cleaning meant that he was able to hide his puzzled expression, but he didn't have any better idea of if the guy was from Earth than he'd had before he'd asked the question. He could always just come right out and make sure, but the man had been acting brusquely since he'd come over, so he wasn't sure if it was the best idea.

There was another way to find out, though, and that was by answering the question himself. "I'm from Auldrant," he said. "Kimlasca, specifically." Which was both the truth and a lie. He was really from Hod, but he'd lived in Kimlasca long enough that he could refer to it as home to a stranger and not feel too bad about it.

With most of the floor around him pretty much gleaming, he moved on to the seats closest to him, starting at the base of the bench and then moving up with the sponge, dipping it back into his bucket of water periodically. He was doing an admirable job of not dirtying his uniform despite the fact that he was doing a thorough cleaning.

[tasteoftruth]

"Hm. Never been there." It meant nothing to him, but Badd was no master of geography. For all he knew it existed somewhere in Africa and was populated by more than crazy people who really liked to clean floors. He took Guy's advice and perched himself on the seat opposite Guy, cleaning the table as an excuse to get off the floor. It wasn't even that dirty in here, he had a feeling cleanliness would be decided by the general's mood rather than any objective standard.

As Badd scrubbed he looked around the cafeteria at the huddled masses of cleaners and the ne'er-do-wells standing at attention with empty hands. No Kay, they hadn't knocked her out and taken her back in again. Badd felt a small weight rise off his chest at missing her face in the crowd.

[razing_phoenix]

That wasn't much of a response, but Guy wasn't surprised to hear that the man was ignorant of Auldrant. He'd long ago gotten used to the idea of people being from a number of different worlds, and so he only nodded, moving up to clean over the top of the bench.

This guy wasn't contributing that much to the conversation, which made Guy wonder if he should just ask the question he'd had sitting in the back of his mind for a while now. He'd noticed how the stranger was looking around and wondered if he was searching out someone in particular, but it was just as possible that he was merely taking in the odd sight of all of the other patients in new uniforms wiping down the large room.

"I've never heard of any of those places you mentioned, either," he admitted after a long pause had grown between them. "Is it on Earth?" It felt a bit surreal to be engaging in small talk when there was so much else going on, but it wasn't like complaining about the changes they'd been put through was going to get them anywhere.

[tasteoftruth]

"Yes," Badd snapped back. "And if Auldrant isn't we're not going to have much less to converse about. I only talk to people from this planet." Cripes. Another reason it was good that Kay was gone, she was extremely eager to believe silly things and he wasn't sure if she could put up with the pressure from all the crazy people around here.

The next stroke of his rag nearly scrubbed the paint from the top of the table. He wondered if they were even going to feed the populace today, or just starve them until tomorrow morning in order to make them more pliant. Normal prisons had regulations on them, no matter how shoddily they were followed, but Badd doubted there was any ethics board overseeing this operation.

Necks were going to snap when he blew this open and got back to Los Angeles.

[razing_phoenix]

That sudden response caused Guy to pause in his work for a moment as he lifted the sponge away from where he'd been scrubbing it. It had just been so blunt, and he wasn't about to lie and say he was from Earth when he really didn't know that much about the world. Everything he knew he'd learned through Landel's or from Claude, and that wasn't that much to go on.

The man's attitude made it clear that he didn't believe that other planets existed, but Guy wasn't going to just deny where he came from in order to have a conversation with him.

"I guess you picked the wrong person to talk to, then," he replied, but despite his words his tone was rather calm. He sighed and got back to cleaning, figuring that the man could move on and chat with someone else if he was going to be picky.

[tasteoftruth]

What was that, his third in two days? Badd had stopped keeping track.

"Guess I did. I have enough trouble dealing with the maniacs around here who don't think they're from space and have enough sense to be reasoned wtih." Nothing to do now but watch the guards and watch for Kay, making half-hearted attempts to clean in the meanwhile. Badd shifted to the next chair over and started cleaning that portion of the table. At least Guy wasn't violent or babbling and was willing to actually put a bit of elbow grease into his cleaning for the benefit of Aguilar's ego.

[razing_phoenix]

Guy was still baffled by how this man was more or less calling him crazy to his face, since he usually expected people to have at least some modicum of good manners. More than that, Guy didn't really think there was anything about his behavior that came off as mentally unstable. He'd come to believe in the existence of other worlds, after all, though in a way it had been easier for him seeing how he knew for certain that this place wasn't Auldrant. The fact that no one here had heard of Kimlasca or Malkuth had been a big clue.

"I'm not... from space," he said as he wrinkled his brow slightly. He knew all about space travel after talking to Claude, who was from Earth. Clearly this man was further back in time if he saw that as crazy talk. "I didn't even realize there were worlds other than my own until I came here. And doesn't it stand out to you that so many people are telling you the same story?" It wouldn't make sense for everyone to be insane in the same exact way, after all. If this guy was truly going along with what the nurses had been telling him, then he had a long way to go. As Guy kept working, he idly wondered what class the man was.

[tasteoftruth]

Oh, just from another world, not space. That really made all the difference.

"If you put a bunch of crazy people in the same box they're going to start spreading their crazy ideas to each other. It's not surprising. Besides, you're the first person who's from...wherever it is that you think you're from. Everyone's got their own personal delusion." Badd moved another seat to the left, scowling. It was a matter to wonder--how many people here were sincerely crazy, how many were sane, how many were sane playing crazy, and how many had come in sane and been driven mad by this place.

[razing_phoenix]

This guy didn't seem like the sort who was going to change his mind easily. Guy couldn't fault him that much. If someone wished enough for things to be normal, then it was very easy for them to convince themselves that it was so. But he was eventually going to have to face the facts. It wasn't Guy's job to make that happen, and yet he also felt a need to defend himself against claims that seemed to be getting more and more ridiculous.

"I'm not the only one here from Auldrant," he said with a shake of his head. "If you meet a young girl named Anise or a teenager named Tear, go ahead and ask them. They can tell you all about it." Normally Guy enjoyed exchanging facts about different worlds with other people, but he wasn't exactly in the mood to do so with someone who seemed to be mocking him.

What also surprised him was just how rude the man was being. Had he actually been crazy, this was no way to treat someone with that sort of disability, was it?

[tasteoftruth]

Badd might have asked why all Guy's friends seemed to be named after random nouns, but he worked with a guy named Gumshoe so he didn't really have much room to talk.

"You're really assuming I care," Badd said dismissively. "I don't. Wasting my time talking to people who can't understand even the bare bones of reality isn't going to be conducive to finding the truth about this place." What was needed was truth, hard evidence, and this place seemed to change so fast that trying to hang on to anything was pointless. He'd talk with Javert again tonight and see what leads he'd come up with. Now that Kay was out of the picture he could devote the bulk of his brainpower to piecing together Landel and Aguilar's schemes.

...damn. The best thing about going to jail had been a reprieve from decades of detectivework and vigilantism aimed at taking down the criminal populace and here he was stuck right back in the thick of it against his will. Necks and snapping, he'd make sure of it, he'd planned on enjoying his retirement if he was lucky enough to make it that far.

[razing_phoenix]

The dismissive way the man was acting was grating at Guy more and more as he continued to work at the conversation. It was probably a better idea to just stop talking and agree to disagree, but he also knew that he was level-headed enough to keep up with this discussion without losing his temper. He could only imagine how Luke or even Anise might have behaved if they came across this man.

"You're free to do that," he said as he shrugged and kept working, having moved to the top of the table by now. There weren't even many food stains, but he continued to work even things that looked like the hint of a stain out of the tabletop.

"But you're only harming yourself. The grand majority of people here are from places other than Earth or from times that you aren't used to." Claude, for instance, was from Earth -- and yet this guy probably wouldn't give him the time of day just because he'd been into space. It was honestly a bit xenophobic. "If you really want to find the truth of this place, you'll have to talk to your fellow prisoners. You're cutting out important contacts because you're assuming we're insane."

Wasn't it just as likely that they were telling the truth? But the man refused to open his mind up even slightly.

[tasteoftruth]

"I had another crazy person say the exact same thing to me yesterday, oddly enough." And there was the time travel. "There's enough sane people around that I think I can manage without listening to the mad ramblings of someone who thinks monsters come out at night to eat their livers or that the government is putting drugs in their waffles." He hadn't seen that particular kid again since their first meeting, come to think of it. Maybe he was released for being too crazy to be useful.

It had even spread to Kay, which had just made Badd uncomfortable. She wasn't the most sensible of girls but even just a few days here had made her talk about time travel and people who shouldn't be able to be here.

Though he would never admit it, it was one of the other reasons that Badd flat-out refused to even consider Guy's testimony. If he started believing even a small crazy thing he might get sucked into their lies and madness and believe the entire fish story.