Day 28: Bus 1
Zelgadis was not happy, at all. Not that this was any change, but the events of the past few hours had given him more to angst about than usual. Nightshift had been dreadful: first he was attacked by a small green man and then covered in leeches, neither of which lead to warm fuzzy feelings
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Although what he would never quite tell Rufus was that the President's safety took precedent over everything else, without question, for the sole reason that if the President were dead, then there was simply no point in following his orders anymore. For his orders to be effective, they had to keep him alive...even if it meant defying his orders in the process. A bit of a catch-22, really, but there it was. This was especially true because Rufus had no heir, which meant the moment he died, the Turks pretty much ceased to exist. No one left to protect, after all.
He let Schuldig and Rufus's conversation buzz in the background, not interested enough to pay full attention. The scenery outside was fucking boring. Like they were in the middle of nowhere. Still, it was nice to actually see something other than the depressing walls of the institute day in and day out.
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Schuldig waved a hand dismissively. "Shy away from risk all you want, ShinRa, but sometimes you've got no choice. And whatever this fucking place plans on throwing at me, I say bring it on. When the inevitable comes to meet you, it's a bit more dignified to walk out and meet it halfway than to cringe in the corner until it arrives. Possibly it's the difference between someone who runs the risk of death or insanity simply by fact of existence and someone who's got an entire legion of people meant to keep him as far away from harm as possible, but I think I like my way better." He slouched in his seat, mentally doing calculations. How wide was his range, now? Probably less than half of his original mile and a half radius...it'd be awhile before he found out what Doyleton held in store for him. "Though I doubt you're capable of understanding that."
After a pause, he recalled that there had been a second part to Rufus' question. "As to shielding myself in someone else's mind, yes, that's technically possible," he acknowledged. "But not for you. It has to be a mind I'm almost as familiar with as my own, in order for me to be able to tell my thoughts and my host's apart. The only person who qualifies is Farfarello, since Crawford's closed off to me in that respect." Not that Schuldig intended to use Farfarello that way...unless, of course, Farfarello insisted upon it, which was a possibility. But he couldn't block out the sinister little thought that said a telepath that couldn't handle one measly village's worth of thoughts was one that was hardly worth the trouble of keeping sane in the first place.
"This is all theoretical, though. We don't know what's waiting for us there anyway."
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Now was different.
Drawing back his hand, the man frowned. Schuldig gave him something to concentrate on instead of that confusion and fear, something solid to lock his mind on. He'd expected the telepath to spit in his face, tell Reno what had happened during MU, or something else. He nodded quietly to the telepath's answers, trying to find an angle he hadn't looked at yet. Worse yet, they were pulling into town.
"We're going to find out soon enough."
He'd been hoping Schuldig could use himself as a shield if he had to. Why? One might as well asked the wind why it blew. Damned if he knew. Rufus didn't question himself when an idea came. The best option he saw was getting Schuldig to Farfarello if the telepath lost it then.
"It's not cringing, Schuldig. It's being proactive instead of letting one's self be buffeted about."
Rufus bit down on the inside of his lip, keeping his acid words to himself for now. Cringing hadn't been something he'd ever done. Diamond WEAPON's blast had proved that. If it hadn't, then him meeting Kadaj head-on with Jenova hidden on him had, not to mention jumping off the building to try and get a shot at the damned box. Everything was a risk for Rufus.
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It wasn't much longer before the bus pulled to a stop right by a park and the nurses began herding them off. He slipped out of his seat, intending to do some searching through town for information while he left Rufus with Schuldig. The two seemed to have some unfinished business they were still discussing and his presence wasn't really needed.
"I'm gonna go take a peek around town, leave you two to it," he said, resting his hand on Rufus's shoulder. "Find me if you need me, yeah?"
He let his fingers linger there for a second before he began moving off the bus.
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Of course, as it happened, there was no need for that. In theory, he should have been relieved...
Schuldig's fingers dug into the bus seat as he stared out of the nearest window. He was able to see people milling around out there - an entire town of people he couldn't read, couldn't touch. His fellow patients were his only telepathic contact; otherwise he'd have felt as though he'd been rendered telepathically deaf.
True, his continued sanity wasn't in as much question as it had been a minute ago...but he hadn't exactly been looking for a village-sized reminder of how much his powers were shackled, or the telepathic equivalent of walking into a ghost town. Only his eyes provided him with any proof that people lived here.
So much for his theory of those Power Inhibitors having a functional range. Either they had a very large range, or they worked differently than he'd thought.
"I can't hear them," he muttered under his breath; he was only talking to Rufus in the most superficial of senses, in that the president was theoretically close enough to hear the words. Certainly Schuldig had no actual intentions of his words carrying. "Not anything."
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Rufus had caught the tiny smile on Reno's part, a mild relief sweeping him at that. This was all territory that was so new to him, that he stumbled and fell spectacularly more often than not. At least this time he hadn't upset the table when taking his fall. A spot of warmth remained where the Turk's fingers had touched long after he had left.
That relief was stronger when Schuldig wasn't seized by the firestorm of thoughts that Rufus had been expecting. While he would have dared Farfarello for the telepath, it wouldn't have been something he wanted to do. Barely catching the whispered words, he continued to watch Schuldig closely for the least sign of something wrong.
"Isn't that good? With all of us spreading out, doesn't that lessen the strain?"
He ignored the nurse shooing them off the bus for now. Schuldig probably had places to go, but he wasn't moving either of them until he was sure someone was taking care of Schuldig.
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He finally pulled himself to his feet, studying the town through the windows of the bus. "It's also a little unsettling," he muttered. "I can't read the staff, and there are a few select patients whose minds are beyond my reach, but that's not that many people compared to those I can read in the institute. But this is a whole town. I see them but there's nothing where their thoughts should be. Shape without substance." He shot Rufus another look. "It's about how you feel if you stepped off this bus and discovered you couldn't hear them in the mundane sense. Something's very wrong."
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"I'd imagine everyone would rather have you sane than all the information in the world."
Something Schuldig said kept coming back to nag him. Such a wide area was odd, but not unheard of. Shin-Ra had controlled Midgar despite it being one place versus all of Midgar. Computer systems made it all easy.
The ever so famous lightbulb finally lit in Rufus' mind. Flashed at least.
"What if they're androids or cyborgs? Can you normally read machines? I don't know about your world, but we have some rather advanced systems in mine. A robot that looks like a human isn't unheard of. Reeve Tuesti's Cait Sith proves that."
A mercifully brief image of a black cat walking on its back legs with a red cape on and shouting through a megaphone came to mind and was gone again. Rufus really hated that thing. Rising to his own feet, Rufus had no idea where he was going in town, but the nurses were insisting they get off the bus. If Reno went one way, he might as well go the other.
"Either way, we need to get off. Maybe we'll find something in this town. I doubt you want to spend the day with me, so do you want me to stay with you until you get to Crawford or Farfarello incase the 'sound' suddenly comes back on or leave you be?"
Rufus' dismissal of Schuldig's loss of telepathy as unimportant wasn't seen in his mind as a loss of value or the like. Schuldig and his well-being had more value than telepathy or any other ability. This was the difference between Rufus Shinra the man and Rufus Shinra the President. When acting in his role as president, everyone had a value, a point where loss exceeded that value, and a point where Rufus would have them killed if they turned on him or he suspected they would.
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Schuldig allowed himself to finally be ushered out of his seat to move down the aisle, although he turned his head slightly to continue conversing with Rufus behind him. "As to the android idea - I suppose it's possible, although it hardly seems likely. The staff of the institute are off-limits to me, and I've seen people bleed them so I know they're human...at least to a given value of 'human', who the fuck knows. Either way, if sentient beings can be shut off from me, androids seem superfluous."
At Rufus' offer of companionship, however, Schuldig faced forward again and shrugged. "You're free to do whatever you want. I don't even know why you'd take my preferences into consideration, but as far as I'm concerned it makes no difference whatsoever to me."
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Rufus sighed as he shook his head.
"A man makes an error, and you beat him with like a whip, Schuldig, until he surrenders. You're a hard man, and that's coming from a man that most on my world considers the worst."
Letting Schuldig go ahead of him and off the bus, Rufus shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He watched Schuldig long enough to make sure that he didn't keel over and then turned away. It hadn't been his intention to get into yet another argument with Schuldig, thus why he walked away first. When the telepath had sat down, he'd hoped some sort of reconciliation could be made.
A deep part of him was relieved and fearful at the same time. He hadn't sabatoged himself, hadn't ruined everything, although that was more Schuldig's doing than his own. Either way, he headed down the street and away.
((Rufus headed off here: http://community.livejournal.com/damned/245151.html ))
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