Mar 09, 2011 12:03
leela,
kirk,
s.t.,
klavier,
japan,
tsubaki,
badd,
anise,
minato,
the doctor,
sam winchester,
firo,
goku (dragonball),
taura,
dexter,
franziska,
claire bennet,
kinomoto sakura,
peter parker,
snow,
lunge,
lana skye,
ruby,
mello,
soren,
brainiac 5,
the flash,
roxas,
albedo,
stefan,
peter petrelli,
mele,
damon,
two-face,
ritsuka,
lion,
rapunzel,
erika,
edgar,
canada,
the scarecrow,
sync,
matt,
maya,
zevran,
battler,
spock,
zack,
kratos,
l,
shinji,
kenshin,
bella,
scott pilgrim,
gumshoe,
ax,
claire littleton,
sora,
gren,
prussia,
claude,
renamon,
guybrush,
dean winchester,
byrne,
guy,
kairi,
venom,
nigredo,
ilia,
kibitoshin,
lightning,
rita,
alaric,
yue,
sasuke,
aidou,
claire stanfield,
edward cullen,
kaworu,
mccoy
Finally, Anise opened her eyes... and found herself in a room that looked almost foreign. She remembered now, the institute, the people she met here, and how she'd forgotten all of it so suddenly... but now that it all came back to her, she still wasn't sure she was in the right place. The dolls she'd put on display were absent, and the room looked just like it had when she first arrived.
And Tokunaga... Tokunaga was gone!
Anise kicked her sheets away from herself and scrambled out of bed, desperately hoping to find the doll somewhere in the room. What she discovered instead was the strange uniform she had been dressed in. A metal tag hung from her neck, which she held up to her face to examine. Dolores Haze, S Class... What did that mean?
"Oh, you're up already." A woman spoke to her from the doorway, seemingly having let herself in. Unlike the soft, gentle tones the nurses used, this person's manner of speaking was more rough and blunt. When Anise turned to look, the reason for that became apparent: she was one of the soldiers from yesterday. It was weird, though... this soldier was actually talking to Anise. The woman stepped deeper into the room, and continued. "Once you're finished getting dressed, we can get going to the cafeteria." She motioned to a pair of black shoes on the floor, and a black beret on Anise's dresser.
Anise complied by slipping the shoes on, but she paused when she picked up the beret. There were two pins on the front, one with the letters 'SC,' and one with an image of a sword and shield. She wanted to ask about them, but she wasn't sure if it was safe to do so, so she kept her mouth shut. Since the hat wouldn't fit on her head with her normal pigtails, Anise quickly redid her hair, tying the yellow ribbons so that her pigtails fell low, covering the tips of her ears and falling in front of her shoulders in long, dark waves. It was a different look, but at least she wouldn't have to completely give up on her cute style.
"Ready now?" The soldier looked bored and impatient, but for some reason, she wasn't being as aggressive as the ones Anise had met yesterday.
"... Where's Tokunaga?" Anise asked her. When she got a blank look in return, she clarified. "My doll."
"You'll get it back later, if you're good." With that, the soldier stepped outside the room, motioning for Anise to follow. The girl hesitated, not satisfied with that answer (they took Tokunaga!), but in the end she decided to follow. Even if this soldier wasn't acting as cold as the others she'd met, who knew what would happen if her patience wore out?
When they passed the Sun Room, Anise realized she needed to contact her friends, to tell them she was all right and that her memories were back... but the soldier's pace didn't allow for such a detour, and Anise was quickly ushered into the cafeteria. The soldiers lining the walls made for an oppressive atmosphere, and Anise quickly grew more nervous. "Tough break, kid," the soldier murmured before leaving her there among the crowd of patients. Anise didn't have long to wonder what she meant by that.
The announcement that followed left Anise dumbfounded. They weren't going to eat? They were cleaning up after those idiots from yesterday instead!? With all those armed soldiers staring at them from all sides of the room, there wasn't any room for arguing. With a sullen look on her face, Anise crouched down beside the heap of supplies, trying to decide on which to pick.
"Who do these bastards think they are?" the girl hissed under her breath.
[brought to you by the letter L]
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One thing was certain, so much so that forgetting it would mean that any accurate interpretation of their current situation would be impossible. Aguilar had been involved in everything, the entire time, and to all appearances, he felt that Landel's harshness had been insufficient.
This idea was confirmed when L woke up. He shifted position, feeling uncomfortable, and there was a soft metallic jingling. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and looked down. The discomfort was due to a change in clothing: under Landel, the Institute's uniforms had been tantamount to pyjamas, but now, L found himself wearing a real uniform. A buttoned shirt with-he turned his head-shoulder straps and an armband. Trousers with a permanent crease and a leather belt to hold them up. Boots on the floor, and a rush of heavy booted footsteps in the hall; his heart began to race. It was no surprise when the door of his room burst open and he was told to put his boots and beret on. After a long pause, during which he calculated his chances of getting out of this at almost nil, he slipped his feet to the floor and complied with the order.
Then we can expect things to get much worse, he thought. Maybe they will never be better again. In any case, almost all pretense of this being a mental health facility is gone. We're now being treated like conscripted cadets rather than like psychiatric patients. There's nothing therapeutic about this.
He peered at the silver tags that had been the source of the jingling. The name was as expected; he wasn't sure what "C CLASS" meant. There was a number, also mysterious, although something about it-squinting at it didn't tell him anything. It nagged at him as he walked to the cafeteria with the near-silent soldier. Why is it familiar? He could feel it teasing him, tugging on threads at the edge of his consciousness, almost as annoying as the itchiness of the wool beret that was now clamped on his head. Three days in bandages, and now an obligatory hat, with a pin to remind him of the pain and helplessness he had suffered.
His discomfort increased on the rest of the walk to the cafeteria. He wasn't allowed to stop at the bulletin board, and when they reached their destination, the pancakes that should have been on the menu were nowhere to be seen: instead, there were enough armed troops around to kill all of the patients with little effort. His pulse quickened again, but he took a deep breath. Aguilar could have had them shot in their beds if he had been so inclined, but that didn't appear to be his aim; L's "punishment" the previous night, if that was what his flashes of insight into Edgar's memory and emotions had been, wasn't even particularly distressing. No, you want us to be useful. Corpses are of little use to almost anyone. The pile of cleaning supplies in the middle of the room made their first duties obvious, but it was also evident that the patients were to wait for further instruction.
The false name on the tag-a name that had also been called on the field the previous morning-meant that Aguilar would follow through with Landel's determination to instill the identities that had been constructed for them. Yet the words on the intercom and the shift in ambience made L suspect that it would be accomplished in a different way: as discipline rather than psychiatric treatment.
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So the dismissal of the vast majority of the nurses meant--what? To begin with, there was at least some chance that they were being held somewhere on the premises. His guess, from seeing them work during the day, was that they had no awareness or memory of their nocturnal exploits. He thought of the prettiest of the nurses who had been assigned to him, and the odd rapport that had formed between them the day after his sleep study; her care and concern had been genuine, and he'd felt a reluctant gratitude. It all led him to the conclusion that the nurses were also victims, if not to the degree that the patients were. Mulling it over gave him the same sense of uneasiness and mild disgust that he'd felt about the Sphinx's apparent captivity.
What has Aguilar done to them?
The officer stepped forward, then, and spoke. Her words weren't logical: the patients were to be forced to clean in retribution for the riot, yet the people responsible for the riot itself, those who had behaved the worst, those who had "used their food as weapons," had to stand aside and watch. The explanation was therefore negligible; it was the resentment and division and social pressure that would follow that mattered. Those who had kept their noses clean knew who to blame for the forced labor, and those who hadn't might feel guilty. The latter wasn't a sure thing; some of them might be sociopathic enough to simply be amused that they'd managed to escape further punishment.
Meanwhile, a number of the patients would find this humiliating, more than almost anything else at the Institute had been up to this point. That could serve to chip away at their real identities, erasing them until the point where they would give anything to make it stop. Aguilar might be far more effective at coercive thought reform than Landel had ever been. However, his mind games, so far, were more open and obvious; perhaps easier to predict. What's Aguilar's definition of 'a good soldier'? That's the first question to ask on that score. This woman-she's an example, although given our ignorance of the purpose of what they're doing to us, it's hard to say for sure that that's what he wants any of us to become. It was a working theory, at best, but it was better than nothing.
L glanced around the room as he approached the pile of cleaning supplies. He was unsurprised to see Jones's young friend, one of the two who had been so enthusiastic about fighting the woman in the Sun Room Sunday night, standing aside. But the other, the one L had encountered on his own first night in the Institute, was working with everyone else, looking miserable. His good intentions hadn't been rewarded. Were anyone's, here?
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A young girl near him hissed a complaint under her breath. "Who do these bastards think they are?"
"The ones with guns," he murmured, erasing the insubordination from his face. Like the nurses, the soldiers were just following orders, but he assumed that their reason for doing so was more compelling. "For the moment, it seems like antagonizing them would be a bad idea." He hadn't yet ruled out antagonizing them in some other, plausibly deniable way later, if a plan or opportunity presented itself. The trouble was that it didn't seem like this new regime would have any interest in the plausibility of his denials.
He sighed, looking over the array of cleaning supplies. A broom was tempting, because it would allow him to keep his distance from the dirt, but a bucket and rag seemed more conducive to conversation; he selected those.
He hadn't had breakfast in days.
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Eager to cover up her little slip-up, Anise snatched one of the buckets of soap water and shot up to her full height, making the water slosh precariously against the edges of the bucket. To the man who'd replied to her, she offered a sweet, cutesy smile. "Eheh... I guess that's true. They're pretty scary, huh?"
It was then that she got a look at the stranger, with his thin build and dark circles under his eyes. His posture kind of sucked, too. He didn't look like the healthiest guy, to be sure. His uniform was the same one that Anise and all the other patients had been forced into, but she found her eyes drawn to the little badge on his hat. M-U...?
"Hey, you got one too!" Anise tapped one of the pins on her own beret to show what she was talking about. It seemed like some patients had none, some had one, and a few had two like she did... so they probably meant something. "What do you suppose they're for?" If she'd had more than a second or two to look at her own, Anise might have been able to decipher them, but with so much to take in this morning, and the hurry that the soldiers were in, it was only now that she had a chance to think about it.
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"Scary?" L's gaze slid to the side, to the nearest line of soldiers. "I don't know about that. Are you afraid of them?" If she was, she wouldn't have said what she said. She resents them, but she isn't afraid--not yet. "There's a difference between wariness and fear, hm?"
He moved towards a table, preparing to wipe it. This was a more tedious exercise than regular grunt work would have been; the cafeteria wasn't very dirty to begin with. Amazing that they had been issued real cleaning supplies rather than old toothbrushes, since the goal seemed to be to bring the patients to their knees in a literal way.
"The pins? I can't be sure." He had gleaned that his own pin probably referred to the sleep study after glancing at other patients as they were marched through the halls. Some of their pins said "SC," which had only one meaning, and which was something that happened at night. The sleep studies were listed on the weekly schedule as CM-US, and also happened at night, so it had led him to the conclusion that the pin on his beret referred to the implantation of the device in his brain, and the sophisticated mind games that had been part of the procedure.
The girl also had a pin that said "SC," which meant there was more to her than her unprepossessing appearance; it hinted at why she might not fear the soldiers. The other pin she wore depicted a sword and shield. "I think you've been a Special Counseling patient." He didn't phrase it as a question. "Have you done anything at night that involved a sword and a shield?"
A glance across the room showed him that Edgar was talking to Lunge. Good.
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When the man started cleaning a table, Anise took the other side of the same table, keeping herself within talking distance. Her eyes widened when he guessed that she had been taken for special counseling, and after a moment, she nodded and lowered her head, looking down at the surface she was scrubbing.
So was his pin for something similar? Anise had to think about it a little, but she did kind of remember the experiments having a name with those letters in it... That was something people usually didn't like to talk about, though, so she didn't bring it up. She didn't have much of a chance to, anyway, because the stranger was quick to ask another question.
A sword and a shield...
At first, Anise hadn't thought much about it, since a sword and a shield tended to be a universal symbol for any kind of combat, or even a weapon shop or something. But with the way this guy worded his question, she realized it could have a more literal meaning.
The sword and the shield in the basement!
Those two artifacts that Sync had dragged her along to find. For a moment, Anise's breathing stopped, and her scrubbing came to a pause too. The things she experienced down there were sure to haunt her for a long time... but she couldn't talk about them. If she couldn't warn people about the worst part of the basement, it was best not to share any information at all. Looking up from the table, Anise tilted her head once again and hummed, as if she was still trying to remember.
"No, I don't think so. It's probably symbolic or something." It was a lie, but there were some times when lying really was the best thing for everyone. At least, Anise believed so.
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He held the cleaning rag at arm's length, using his fingertips to swirl it on the table. I shouldn't have to do these things myself, he thought. He was capable, in that he was able-bodied, but it brought his firm opinion back into focus: his skills were being wasted here, in what seemed to be training for work for which he had no real aptitude or interest. No one would ever look at him and think that he was a good candidate for any kind of on-the-ground combat (Is that what they want us for?), let alone petty custodial duties, but apart from that, he was better at issuing orders than following them.
Landel might be a childish control freak, but if Aguilar was squandering L's time and energy in this way, there was at least one level on which the General was the greater fool.
When L asked the girl about the sword and shield, she was obviously taken aback. Her motion slowed, and she seemed to hold her breath; then, she paused to think of something to say.
L felt a sharp pain in his head when she spoke again, so sharp that he winced and lost his grip on the cleaning rag. The bucket, resting on a seat, would have fallen to the ground and splashed everywhere if he had still been holding it. His vision narrowed to tunnels with what seemed like shimmering around the edges. Migraine aura, he supposed, and recognized it as one of the promised effects of the experiment. If this happens to me while I'm eating, I'm in trouble. He felt nauseated even on an empty stomach.
He couldn't focus well yet, as the pain receded, but he did his best to level the girl with a long, troubled stare. "You're lying to me," he said, weary. "Why?"
A sharp glance from a nearby soldier caused him to collect his rag and start wiping again.
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Anise expected her little fib to go unnoticed, but what she definitely didn't expect was for the guy to flinch and freeze up, like he was in a lot of pain. "H-hey, are you okay!?" Dropping her own rag, Anise rushed to the other side of the table. Considering her first impression of him was that he looked almost sickly, it wouldn't surprise her if he did have health problems... but what was that? A headache?
Before she reached him, however, he looked back to her with an odd, suspicious look; one that made her stop in her tracks.
You're lying to me. He couldn't really know that. How could he say that with such conviction? And shouldn't he be worrying about himself? Whatever that was just now, it looked like it really hurt.
Anise's face was a mixture of concern, confusion, and defensiveness as she tried to deny the accusation. "What are you talking about? That's weird. Why would I lie about something like that?" In the end, she just parroted his own question back to him. Actually answering it would have been an admission of guilt, after all.
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