Day 56: Bus 3

[rocksthecourt]

Waking carried a sense of disappointment along with it for the first time in a long time. Klavier actually sighed in irritation when he realized where he was. Damn it all. So they hadn't managed to move quickly enough to cover as much ground as they had hoped. It was a shame, really. Last night had actually proven to be relatively productive. If

Comments

[scientist_skye]

Although Ema supposed she should have been disappointed in not getting first-hand experience with whatever happened last night--if anything at all--she honestly couldn't bring herself to care all that much. A full night of sleep was what she needed, physically and psychologically. After the emotional lows that had punctuated much of yesterday (not to mention that nighttime in the institute tended to be horrible), time to simply sleep and not worry about what sort of experiments were being run was just short of wonderful. The only thing that marred the experience was the fact that she still had to wake up here, still as imprisoned as she was when she had gone to sleep.

Well, at least today started better than yesterday had; the other bed was still occupied. And the morning announcement had made clear that today they were going into town like they had the previous Saturday, which meant that she would be able to get some fresh air and be in places that weren't sanitation-white. She'd be able to explore and get some much-needed space. It wasn't freedom, but it was better than being trapped here. Plus, she'd be receiving a bit of money! Ten dollars wouldn't take her very far, but it was certainly better than nothing.

A soldier came to drop off clothes for Ema and Aigis; Ema was handed pink snow pants, a striped sweater, snow boots, and a winter coat that was a few sizes too large for her. Considering that Ema wasn't terribly acclimated to the cold, coming from southern California, she was grateful for the fact that what had been selected for her was warm. She changed quickly, followed the officer out to the buses, received her breakfast (real food!), coupons, and ten-dollar credit card.

All the while, she looked for Lana--the two sisters hadn't gotten a chance to meet up yesterday and Ema was feeling a bit antsy going that long without some sort of face-to-face contact with her sister. She wanted to make sure that Lana was still doing okay (especially since the last time they'd seen each other hadn't gone well) and to ask about what happened last night. Years of looking for Lana amongst a crowd made the search a relatively short one; Lana was standing further down the line not far from Ema. Once the patients were instructed to board the buses, Ema beelined directly to her.

"Did you get my note last night?"

[For Lana, obviously ♥]

[fourstonewalls]

Another player enters. General Berg sounded far too reasonable for this place. As had Aguilar, speaking just before night ended, though what exactly he'd been referring to was something she had yet to determine. Lana couldn't see how their explorations the previous evening fell into either group; they had attained one of their objectives, but it had been a modest one. She hadn't wasted time reading the files they'd found, merely stowed them, hopefully to appear this evening, but the ordinariness of the stash had been confirmed. She'd flipped through a half-dozen files, skimming them for anything noteworthy, but they'd been uniform in their blandness. Names, faces, stories -- all of them a pack of lies, but she would be surprised if they didn't match up, like a smudged fingerprint, to the lives of those they detailed.

They'd been very thorough in constructing these fabrications -- the depth of the research was odd, when Berg was on the intercom blithely shattering the lie that this was a normal hospital.

A few moments later, a woman entered -- one of Aguilar's finest or one of the old staff, Lana wasn't certain. Either way, she brusquely held out a bundle of clothing, starting with what would be an entirely lovely pantsuit if it hadn't been bright aqua, with banana-yellow accents. The shoes even matched. All of it showed signs of heavy wear, which was perhaps more troubling than if it had been abandoned unworn. The woman held out the pièce de resistance and actually looked apologetic -- a wide-belted trenchcoat, that had once been white but had never recovered from some stains. They'd faded enough to be unidentifiable. Thankfully.

At least while wearing it she didn't have to look at it. And she'd seen worse in the courtroom. Far, far worse. She took the coupon book and money card with a murmured thank you and made her way out to the buses. Patients were already loading; she couldn't see Ema anywhere. Detective Badd was just getting on the third bus, so she stepped into that line.

Ema's voice -- and the rest of her -- appeared out of nowhere at Lana's elbow, and she jumped. Then who it was registered, and she stepped to the side to let her slip into line. "Pardon us," she said, pro forma to the patients behind them, though no one seemed especially bothered by the line-jumping.

Yes, she'd gotten the note. The moment of near-terror when Ema's old room had been emptied and tidied was something she could and did cover entirely with a smile. "I did. Thanks. That was very thoughtful of you."

If they took every night one of them needed to sleep as a sign, neither of them would ever relax. Lana's smiled did not waver. "Did you sleep well?"

[scientist_skye]

"You're welcome," Ema answered, keeping close to Lana as the line boarded the bus. "I just remembered how scared I was that one night when I couldn't get into your room, so I didn't want you to worry about me. Especially because I didn't know I'd changed rooms until dinner." After sixteen years of living with Lana and especially after their tenure in Landel's Institute, Ema was pretty sure that Lana would have been distraught at the site of Ema's room being completely empty and the unspoken possibility of Ema being released that went along with it. Leaving a note to assuage her fears seemed like the obvious course of action; Ema cared too much about her sister not to. They were, after all, the only family the other had.

Smiling in response to Lana's own smile (she really did miss smiling with her sister), Ema let herself be corralled onto the bus. She took the first open seat, three rows in on the right side, and scooted in toward the window. "I did. I guess I needed it; I feel a lot better than I did yesterday." Scientifically speaking. Ema couldn't help but wonder, briefly, how the institute handled the fact that its patients didn't really get enough sleep. There had to be some kind of compensation, because no one ever really seemed to exhibit symptoms of exhaustion aside from occasionally sleeping in or getting a real night of rest. It was an unsolved question, not unlike the rapid healing. Speaking of which, Lana was hurt the other night, wasn't she? Ema's smile faded into a frown of concern.

"Are you okay? You didn't end up too badly hurt by those rats, were you?"

[fourstonewalls]

Lana leaned over and wrapped an arm around Ema's shoulders in apology. Point taken -- she'd find a way to stay awake long enough to leave a note, next time. Ema did look refreshed; whatever the rumor mill might say about a good night's sleep, this one seemed to have been a good idea.

"Not at all. Just a few cuts, and it's almost healed." They'd been a little more than surface cuts, but the rest of that was completely true. Now her leg just kind of itched.

Lana cast around for a new topic, one that didn't involve monsters or shouting or even the research she and Ilia had done. Something safe, or hopefully so. "Do you have a new roommate?"

[scientist_skye]

Relief spread across Ema's expression and she let out a breath of air that she wasn't even aware she was holding. "Good. I... I'm still really sorry about that night, Lana." The apology wasn't filled with the overwhelming self-hatred that she had felt when she'd posted it in text form on the bulletin yesterday, but it was no less earnest. Of all the people in the Institute, Lana was the one she knew she could always trust.

Lana seemed willing to shift the conversation elsewhere. Now that she'd gotten a chance to apologize in person, that was perfectly all right with Ema. "I do. Her name is Aigis. She was Kay's roommate before. That's how I knew Kay was really gone." She paused, briefly, and frowned again. "I was scared that was why we hadn't seen her. Whoever she was supposed to meet is going to be disappointed."

[fourstonewalls]

As much as Lana would have liked to wrap her up in cotton wool, if she ran into the senior Faraday, it would go easier if she knew. "Her father, I assume. Prosecutor Byrne Faraday." She looked down at her hands, folded on top of her lunchbag. "He -- well, he passed away several years ago, but he's here now. Not that that makes any more sense when I say it out loud, but there you have it."

"Do you know anything about that case?" Lana wasn't sure Ema did; she had no real reason to remember it beyond perhaps the minor sensation the Yatagarasu had been in the papers, but Ema never ceased to surprise her. Sometimes for the good. Come to think of it, hadn't Edgeworth involved in that mess somehow? Von Karma sticking his nose -- and his protegé -- into as many pies as he could manage? Something like that.

Everyone in both departments had wanted a piece of the biggest mystery to hit Los Angeles in, oh, at least five years. Lana hadn't seen a shred of it beyond what the press had gotten, though she did have a better vantage point for reading between the lines than most. What had happened to Kay after her father's untimely death? Lana hadn't even thought to ask, at the time.

Grand mystery and then Case Closed in a heartbeat, and quieted as ruthlessly as they dared. Which had been quite a bit. My, my. How much had she missed, blinded by youthful optimism and then complicity.

[scientist_skye]

Ema started going through her bag of breakfast as she though Lana's question over. After the pink paste from yesterday, this was likely going to be a wonderful meal. Prosecutor Byrne Faraday's name sounded familiar, now that she stopped to think about it, although not because of his relation to Kay. To be perfectly honest, she hadn't made even the slightest connection between the two of them until just now (which made sense, since she'd had no reason to be reminded of the prosecutor until now). He wasn't someone she'd met before, especially if he'd passed away several years ago. So why did his name ring a bell? Think, Ema, think!

Lana said it was a case. What case led to a prosecutor dying that didn't involve Joe Darke?

Oh, this was going to frustrate her until she got an answer. Even a few bites of her muffin weren't enough to trigger her memory. "His name sounds kind of familiar, but I don't remember why. Maybe I read it somewhere? What case are you talking about?"

[fourstonewalls]

"It made quite the news story, a few years ago. Here's a name that might be familiar -- Yatagarasu. As in The Great Thief Yatagarasu."

"There was a smuggling ring," she began. Still was, most likely, but alarming Ema would distract from the story. "International crime syndicate. Much bigger than the local precinct, but this was where it all started." And ended. Or should have, though Kay's outrageous claim to the Yatagarasu name was proof enough that it hadn't. "The Yatagarasu stole evidence against the smugglers, and sent it to the newspapers. That put the department in the unenviable position of trying to capture the only lead we had on the smugglers."

In retrospect, that all seemed very simple. What else had been going on? Had White had his fingers in the smuggling ring as well? It was beyond frustrating -- all these fragments of information, and there wasn't a thing she could do but wait, possibly to watch history play out in the same inevitable fashion it had already done.

"There was a break in the smuggling case -- a murder, and a suspect, and not enough evidence for a conviction." She knew exactly where the files were stored, but that didn't help her come up with the names now, or why no one had been able to put the man away. Ah, well. "Then, later, there was a second murder, and a second trial. That's where everything got strange. The defense was the sister of the first victim," Lana began, and gave her sister a wry grin. "She'd promised to avenge her sister's death." Here Lana's recollection sprouted a few more holes; too many years, and too many cases. They all blurred together a bit, and only the pieces she couldn't help but remember had lingered. "By the end of the trial, Prosecutor Faraday and the suspect were dead, and the defense had admitted to killing them, being the Yatagarasu, and had escaped."

Badd could have explained it better, but she wasn't about to ask him for what were obviously painful memories. And Prosecutor Faraday himself -- well, dead men couldn't testify.

"So you can imagine my surprise when Kay Faraday turns up, claiming to be the Great Thief Yatagarasu herself." That was still a puzzle, though Badd knew more than he was saying on that subject.

[scientist_skye]

As Lana explained the details of the case, Ema's eyes began to grow wide with recognition. She had no first-hand memory of it, only being nine years old when it went down, but she'd read about the case somewhere in investigating Mr. Edgeworth's track record. After the first prosecutor was declared to be off the case due to a potential conflict of interest--being declared a Great Thief was not really what the courts wanted behind the bench--Mr. Edgeworth was supposed to take over. Of course, the prosecutor and the defendant both ended up being murdered during recess, meaning that his first case was pushed back to State vs. Fawles. It was no real surprise that the details had escaped Ema's memory, since she had only read about it after the fact and even then her interest was trivial at best. After all, it didn't end up involving Mr. Edgeworth to any official capacity and it wasn't a case filled with a great deal of forensic evidence. Understandably, her interest in it wasn't overwhelming.

She'd had no idea that it was Kay's father who died in the courthouse that day. Which was understandable enough, given that she only met Kay in the institute, but the realization made Ema wonder if she had put the pieces together upon meeting Kay two years into the future. However, with Kay gone, there was no real way to find out.

Really, the way in which Kay and her father just missed each other seemed overwhelmingly sad. If it had been Ema's own father, she would have been bitterly disappointed at losing the chance to see him alive again. Then again, Kay really had no way of knowing that he was even here, did she? So, really, Kay had no reason to be upset by information she didn't know. And, by extension, Ema didn't have much cause being disappointed on her behalf.

"It is weird that Kay says she's the Yatagarasu, if all of that is true," Ema commented, trying to keep the pseudo-empathetic glumness out of her voice. "Especially since the defense attorney had admitted it when she ran away after killing Kay's father. You'd think she'd want nothing to do with the Yatagarasu at all."

[fourstonewalls]

Or revenge, Lana added silently, but if Ema hadn't thought of it, she wasn't going to bring it up. "Precisely. There's a lot more to that story than meets the eye, and it was already quite the case to begin with. I'm certain Detective -- ex-Detective Badd knows more about it than he's letting on, but that doesn't mean he'll share it with the rest of us." Especially a disgraced ex-Prosecutor with no personal stake in the case. She didn't plan on asking him; if everything was resolved, it could stay that way. If it hadn't, the odds that she could do anything but provide a sounding board were low, and there were dozens of others suitable for that.

"He -- Byrne Faraday -- might appreciate a chance to talk to your new roommate. Just to hear how Kay was doing." There wasn't any hiding that Kay had come and gone -- the bulletin board had made that beyond clear. "I just...might not mention the Yatagarasu around him if I were you."

[scientist_skye]

"I won't," Ema answered automatically, although she had to wonder the exact reasons why the subject was taboo. Was it because he would eventually be killed by her? Because of Kay's future claims? Because it was something he was so deeply involved in? Because telling him who the Yatagarsu lady was would destroy some kind of space-time continuum? That last one didn't even seem very consistent with how everyone from their world behaved up to this point, since Ema and Lana both knew about their own futures.

Still, Ema trusted her sister's judgment. If Lana thought it was a bad idea, it was likely a bad idea. The subject of the Yatagarasu was officially off-limits with Prosecutor Faraday.

After some thought (and a few more mouthfuls of food), she added, "I'll talk to Aigis and tell her to get in touch with him. And if he wants to talk to me about her, I'd be willing to do that, too. Even if I haven't met her back home yet, we were still friends. I think he'd like to know that she wasn't alone here."

[fourstonewalls]

"That sounds like a good idea.  I know...I would want to know, for good or ill."  Though it sounded, aside from her absence, that Kay's stay here had been comparatively uneventful.  Lana dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, since the man was sitting only a few rows away.  "Mr. Badd misses her too, though it might be best not to let on how obvious he's making that.  I hadn't realized he'd been that close to the Faradays."

Lana shook her head a little.  Had they pried themselves out of their own courthouse soap opera only to plunge themselves into another?  Quite possibly.

"Any plans for today?  I promised...Mr. Badd, actually, that I'd talk to him."  She would have like nothing better than to just traipse around with Ema all day, but she didn't have that leisure.  Besides, Ema might not want her big sister around all of the time -- she remembered being that age.

"Maybe I'll pick up some coffee.  Need anything from the store?"  Like she was just running errands on an ordinary Saturday.  Ten dollars wouldn't go very far, but groceries seemed a safer purchase than trying to smuggle in contraband.      

[scientist_skye]

A slight nod, subtly given just in case Mr. Badd turned around, was the only response Ema gave her sister's whisper. She knew that Kay thought really highly of the man, referring to him as her "uncle" and everything. What she didn't know until now was how complicated the situation really was. Regardless, Ema resolved to talk to Aigis tonight about talking to Kay's father and to leave a note for him on the bulletin tomorrow.

When Lana asked about her plans, Ema shrugged. "I didn't make any plans with anybody; I forgot today was Saturday. I figured I'd go to the bookstore again, maybe explore some of the other stores to see what's there, have lunch. Meet people. I think it's a good idea, scientifically speaking, to meet as many people as we can." After all, meeting Snow yesterday was easily one of the better parts of Ema's day. The importance of getting to know everyone and make as many allies as possible hadn't been lost on her, even given her mood.

"I don't think I need anything? I don't even know what the stores in Doyleton really have, since last time I was here I spent most of my time investigating for traces of zombies." That, and she didn't have money to spend; why would she have wasted her time looking at things she couldn't actually afford? "I have ten dollars on this card, so if I find something I can buy it on my own. I don't want to take your money."

[fourstonewalls]

"Alright." She resisted the urge to point out that her money had always been Ema's money, and that if Ema though Lana wouldn't rather spend it on her, she wasn't thinking as clearly as she ought to be.

There was one more thing that they did need to talk about, though. "Anything happens, I'll look for you on Main Street, down at the end where the buses let off." Outside might not be the best idea, though. Hmm. "Or in the bookstore. That's down that way, and the shelves would make good barricades." Planning for a zombie apocalypse was a bit outside her jurisdiction, but she couldn't help trying.

[scientist_skye]

The thought that Ema's spending money was an allowance from Lana actually didn't cross Ema's mind. And even if it had, it wouldn't have changed her response much; back home was an entirely different reality than they were in here. They had so precious few resources that it didn't seem fair not to take advantage of them for oneself. Besides, Ema wanted Lana to be happy and comfortable just as much as Lana wanted the same for her. Ema had her own money. She'd be just fine.

Ema nodded at Lana's emergency planning, taking the idea of a possible zombie apocalypse with grave seriousness. It had happened before, so it'd be irresponsible of them not to plan for it, just in case. "Hopefully we won't need to do that. Even if there is a zombie uprising, it's possible that the cold temperatures will work to our advantage. Scientifically speaking, without an internal source of energy and constant bloodflow, they'd freeze."

[fourstonewalls]

"I'm not sure science applies to zombies, but if it comes to it, I hope your theory holds."  The one she'd seen hadn't been quite as unstoppable as she'd feared, but there had only been one, and safety just a door away.  Relative safety, at least; if they were caught here tonight things wouldn't be so simple.

Neither of them were well-equipped for such an occasion; Lana had the benefit of self-defense and gun training, but without a sidearm the latter was useless and the former only a weapon of last resort.  All they really had were their wits, which right now Ema was doing a better job at at least trying to use.

"It's a better strategy than than threatening them with lawsuits."  Lana pursed her lips, as if seriously contemplating the matter.  "But we don't want to advertise that we're still in possession of braaaains."  She drawled the last word out reached her arms out in the playground version of a zombie, and reached for Ema.