Nov 27, 2006 14:08
Scar felt as if he'd passed out as soon as he'd gotten to his bed due to the admittedly strong fatigue and pain that having a badly injured arm tended to cause a person to feel, even one as conditioned and battle-worn as the stern-faced Ishbalan. He woke up feeling rested but regretful, and his fear that he'd wasted a Nightshift ripe with the
(
Read more... )
carnage,
scholar ling,
zelos,
qui-gon jinn,
edward elric,
obi-wan kenobi,
xigbar,
lust,
dias,
adelheid,
snake,
fayt,
ravi,
sora,
scar,
riza,
eric draven,
saïx,
azel,
larxene,
rufus,
luffy,
naminé,
river,
yazoo,
albel,
reno,
tamaki,
ichigo,
luxord,
kuronue,
hojo,
hikaru,
hughes,
albedo,
zoe,
henry,
elena (ffvii),
simon,
yuffie,
vincent,
roy,
mal,
kaylee,
zoro,
lyta,
cloud,
takaya,
aerith,
darman,
kadaj,
barret,
inara,
kaoru,
eddie brock,
zack,
nowe,
kiden,
renji,
rubedo
Sora, for once, felt completely unrested when morning came. It had been a sudden shift from being out on the soccer field with Rubedo and Saïx to his room - with the bright light of dawn and the blaring of the intercom.
He hadn't gotten an answer. Saïx had mentioned Kairi, had hinted that she was in danger - and he hadn't gotten any more details than that before night was over.
The boy was eager to get to the cafeteria so that he could find the blue-headed Nobody and finish their conversation. However, a detailed scan of the room made it quickly obvious that Saïx wasn't there yet. Downtrodden and tired, Sora piled his plate with pancakes, which were then covered with syrup, and then tried to figure out where he should sit.
After being surrounded by Nobodies the night before, he wasn't in the mood to be found. If he sat with one or two other people and ducked his head, maybe he wouldn't be noticed. It wasn't the best plan ever, but it was about all he could do.
Heading toward a boy he had seen around but hadn't spoken to (except for maybe over the bulletin board?) and a woman who was completely new to him, he quietly sat down next to the boy, looking slightly wary. "Is it all right if I sit here?" he asked the two of them. He doubted there would be a problem with it, but asking was the nice thing to do.
Maybe he could get in a conversation and forget about his intense concern for Kairi - at least for a little while. That worry was starting to include Riku and Roxas as well. He hadn't seen either for a while...
Reply
"Erm," Nowe said, intelligently, scratching his head, "you know, to be honest, I don't know the answers to most of those. I've only been here for two days." Her abruptness had caught him off-guard, and he was a little miffed at how rudely she'd asked. But then again, he supposed he couldn't blame her, he imagined she wasn't getting answers out of anyone. She must have been asking the wrong people. He opened his mouth to give her as many answers as he could, when a boy appeared near them and asked to sit down. Nowe looked up and blinked.
Wow, this boy had eyes as bright as his. And hair that was spikier. Odd.
"Oh!" He said, snapping out of his reverie and shaking his head to clear it, he nodded. "Well, I don't mind." He glanced to the woman in front of him to see if there was any excessive objection from her.
"Now, as for your answers... I don't know much, like I said. All I know is what I've been told. We're in a mental hospital. I have no idea where it is or what world it's on, but it's not mine. In fact, all the people I've met say it's not theirs, either. This place as technology I'm not familiar with at all. Where I come from, there's dragons and knights, but nothing even close to what I've seen here." He explained. That was about as much as he knew. It was a mental hospital somewhere, in some different time, on some different world.
"There are a few people here from the same world as each other, but some of them seem to be from different times. There's a guy here who I know for sure is from my world, but he doesn't know anything about the time I'm from. This place has weird powers, and I'm not sure how they work. I doubt anyone here is." He shrugged, and looked over to the new boy again.
"Hi, sorry about this. I'm Nowe, by the way. Who are you?" He offered a smile, trying to be friendly to the poor newcomer. Nowe felt bad... he'd kind of ignored the poor boy for a few seconds there. He would have introduced himself to the woman, too, but she didn't seem to want to spend time on introductions.
Reply
She didn't protest when the other boy joined them. She glanced over at him, looking him up and down before turning her attention back to the first one. Still, all she could hear was the background, senseless chatter of minds around her. And not a single telepath in the room. If this was the Corps' doing, why was she the only telepath?
"Alright. Okay." Still no answers. Other than this was a mental institute, which she'd already figured out. "What planet are you from?" He looked human. Everyone she'd met had looked human. But Kaylee hadn't seemed to be from her Earth, and Zelos... well, Lyta honestly hadn't paid much attention to him. "And what about you?" she turned to the newcomer. "I don't suppose you have any answers, either. Doesn't anyone around here have any idea what's going on?"
Reply
Dragons and knights... That sounded really cool! Sora had fought a dragon (in The Land of Dragons, incidentally), but he hadn't seen many knights. Well, Goofy had apparently been a knight, but he wasn't exactly a... typical one.
Sora was a bit surprised when the other boy - Nowe, as he introduced himself - turned to speak to him. He happened to be in the middle of chewing on some pancake. Looking a tad embarrassed, he quickly finished chewing and forced the food down so he could speak.
"I'm Sora," he said to both of them, his usually friendly self. As burdened as he was with his own worries, it wouldn't be fair to bother other people with them. "Nowe got most of that right. There's not much I can add." He bit his lip and glanced at the ceiling as he thought. "Well, he's right about the different time periods. There are a lot of people I know here and it's getting hard to keep tracking of who knows what."
He ignored his food for a moment, as hungry as he was, so he could continue. "They'll keeping on saying you're someone else, say that you're crazy." He shrugged. "You've just gotta learn to ignore it. During the day, they act like the stuff that happens at night... doesn't actually happen. Sometimes they'll take patients in the night and experiment on them. Other times they brainwash people and turn them on the others." He grimaced.
"My original home is a place called Destiny Islands, but I've been to a lot of worlds. I guess a lot of people haven't, though, so they were pretty surprised when they found out there was more than one world." He sighed. Adjusting to Landel's was always something of a trial, but it didn't seem like the influx of patients was going to ease up any time soon...
Reply
"Honestly, I didn't know there were other planets until my friend Fayt told me about them, so I don't know what to call my world. I know there's places there like the Knights of the Seal's castle, and the District of Precious Light." He looked at Sora, blinking once.
"You live on an island? It must be nice there. I haven't gotten to see the ocean yet. Legna hasn't taken me there yet." His expression softened quite a bit as he said that. He missed Legna, and flying free in the skies of his world. He poked at his strawberry jam-covered pancake, finally picking up a piece and taking a bite. His eyes widened minimally... this was good! Well, if there was any saving grace about this place, it was the food.
"I'll admit, I was surprised when I found out that there were other worlds. With all the people here, who knows how many there really are out there..." He looked around the cafeteria as he took another bite of his food, the fork dangling from his lips briefly.
"My world doesn't have anywhere near this kind of technology. We have a few airplanes and air balloons, but they're pretty new things. Haha, and Legna can only fly so high, after all... so I've always been stuck on my world." He shrugged. It seemed like everyone he met was aware of other worlds, and most he'd spoken to had apparently been to them. Nowe was jealous.
Reply
"Nothing anyone has told me makes any sense. But no one's lying. I just don't understand any of this." She sat back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest.
"I'm Lyta, by the way. Lyta Alexander. And I'm from Earth, but the last thing I remember is being on a Narn transport ship somewhere in the unexplored galaxies. Then I woke up here." If that even meant anything to these boys.
"Does anyone have any idea who's behind this? And what sort of experiments do they do?" Lyta was no stranger to experiments. That smacked of the Corps once again. They were always doing experiments, to 'better' the lives of their telepaths. Better them. Ha! But the lack of telepaths kept bothering Lyta. There would be telepaths around if this was the Corps' doing...
She was going around in circles.
Reply
"I've never heard of those places," Sora explained to Nowe, "so I guess I've never been there. I only would have if Heartless had attacked, anyway." Most of the worlds the other patients were from seemed to have been untouched by the Heartless, which Sora found relieving. It meant they hadn't spread as far as he'd thought.
"You've never seen the ocean?" Sora asked, almost a demand, with wide eyes. "That's horrible. You've have to see it!" he insisted. He wished he could take the other boy himself and show him the ocean, but there was no way that would be possible at the moment.
"I've used space travel, but a lot of people don't know about it. There's supposed to be world order where I come from. People aren't supposed to know that there are other worlds, even though there are." It was sort of hard to explain, but Sora did his best.
Sora nodded to the woman when she expressed her confusion. "Landel's is hard to get used to, but you'll get the hang of it after a while." Eventually, anyway. What she said went completely over his head, but he nodded anyway. "Nice to meet you, Lyta," he said politely.
"The guy who talks over the intercom has to be in charge, but we don't know who he is or how to get to him. And the experiments... Well, some of it is brainwashing, but it's temporary. Other people have had physical changes, I think. I dunno, it hasn't happened to me..." Not yet, anyway. But the longer he stayed here, the higher his chances were that something would be done to him.
Reply
"Heartless? I've never heard of those. I know there's monsters on our planet, but it's mostly just gremlins and trolls, with a few ogres and minotaurs. Are Heartless worse than those?" He tilted his head, curious. He wanted to learn about these other worlds, since he'd probably never be able to get to them. It was a little depressing, honestly.
"Yeah, I haven't been there yet. It's sad. I know we have one on our world, whatever world it might be, but in order for me to get there without travelling for weeks, I'd have to ride on Legna's back, and he's never been terribly keen on the ocean, I think." Nowe laughed a little, covering his mouth. He missed Legna more than ever now.
"I hadn't heard about the experiments yet. I can't really say it surprises me, though..." He sighed heavily, scratching his head and turning to Lyta again.
"I'm told that even though this place seems harmless during the day, it's harder to escape than during the night. The nurses are always watching your moves, so it's easy for them to see if your behavior is off. It's best to play along and formulate careful plans, and to not really expect any of them to work." He sighed. It was a bleak future. He was really homesick.
"I just wish some of my friends would get here. If I had them with me, I might be able to do something more. But right now, I don't even know my way around this place. I only know a few people. It's not looking too good, so far." Running his hands through his hair, he slumped backward heavily.
"Sora, how long have you been here?" He asked suddenly, realizing how much explaining the other boy had actually done, "You seem to know a lot."
Reply
"Space travel is perfectly normal where I come from. It's the only way we get around, really. I spent four years living on a space station and another year on a transport ship. Hell, I don't remember the last time I actually set foot on Earth. And I'd rather not, actually. It's not a very nice place right now." She looked from Sora to Nowe, thinking.
"Do you know how they do the brainwashing? Do they use machines, or medication, or telepaths?" She was finally getting some answers. She wasn't liking them any at all, but she was getting somewhere. "And do you know how they take us? How are they able to get us and bring us here? I don't remember anything. One minute I'm sleeping in my own bed, the next I'm waking up here."
She didn't even address the monsters. Everyone called what they didn't understand monsters.
Reply
He hadn't had one for a short period of time, even.
"They also consume worlds," he said, slightly nervous. He must have sounded completely off his rocker to anyone not familiar with the way things worked where he came from. "It's my job to get rid of them, though, so it's sort of weird that there aren't any here..." Who knew, though? They might show up any day now.
"Who's Legna?" he asked with a blink. "A friend of yours?" It was probably irrelevant, but Sora couldn't contain his curiosity.
Sighing and running a hand through his spikes of hair, Sora nodded. "I wish I had more friends here, too. I've got a bunch of enemies, but not very many friends. And I've been here... Maybe a week now? Maybe more. It's hard to keep track of that sort of thing for some reason." Then again, Sora had never known what day it was before arriving at Landel's, either.
"I'm not sure how they do it. I think they use medication, but most of the people that have had it done to them don't really want to talk about it." And far be it for Sora to press them on it. That wouldn't be fair.
"No one knows how we got here. That's one of the biggest mysteries," he admitted with another sigh. Explaining the situation always reminded him of how bad it really is. But they would find a way out--it might just take a little time.
Reply
The boy blinked, then, realizing he'd been absently mentioning Legna without explaining why he could fly. He snickered a bit.
"Sorry, I forgot to mention. Legna's a blue dragon. He's kind of my father, in a way, because he raised me for the first few years of my life. He certainly scolds me like a father would, anyway. He found me in the cliffs where he lived, abandoned by whoever my parents were, and for some reason decided to take care of me." He scratched his head. This must sound so incredibly strange to the other two. It was already strange enough in his own world for a dragon to tolerate humans enough to raise one, he couldn't imagine how weird it was for Sora and Lyta to be hearing.
"Anyway, yeah. If I were to go to the ocean, he'd be the one who took me there." He smiled absently, trying not to drift off into daydreams again. He really did miss flying, though. The sky was like a second home to Nowe.
"I just kind of woke up here, myself. The last thing I remember is settling down in some forest somewhere with Legna and my friends to sleep. We were on a mission of sorts, but I'm pretty sure all of that's irrelevant. The guy over the intercom seems to have some grudge against all of us for some reason, or something. It's really hard to figure him out." He poked at his pancakes again, most of his appetite appeased for now, and instead settled into spreading the strawberry jam around with the prongs on his fork.
Reply
"Let me just see if I've got this straight. We're all trapped in some horrific mental hospital where they brainwash us at night. We're all taken from what sounds like different dimensions, and we don't know how we got here or why. Whoever's running the show experiments on us all, and during the day... they tell us we're all people we aren't?"
Lyta gave up the idea that the Corps was behind this. They wouldn't run any operation that made so little logical sense. They loved their mind games, but they were personal. They played to people's fears and desires, used old memories and elaborate fantasies.
No, this was something different.
Reply
He'd even killed with his own hands.
"A dragon?" Sora had to stop himself from shooting out of his seat, he was so excited. This almost beat that vampire guy that used to be around. He wondered what had ever happened to him... What had his name been? Alucard? Sure, he'd seen some dragons himself, but they'd usually been enemies. Nowe had been raised by one, had one as a friend...
That was just so cool.
"That's really, really awesome," Sora gushed. "I mean, it... it's not good that your parents left you in the middle of a forest, but..." The boy faltered. He hoped he hadn't offended Nowe!
"It's possible some people have escaped," he said, quickly turning to Lyta to gloss over his blunder with Nowe. "There are a lot of patients that were here and... aren't, anymore." Escape was one explanation, but there were other, less optimistic ones. The boy shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Listening to her recount what he'd explained, he nodded once she'd finished. "Yep, that's about right."
Reply
"Well, you're right, it's not, but I never knew my parents anyway, so it doesn't matter now. For a while, I actually thought I'd grow up to be a dragon." He smiled sheepishly as he set down his fork, completely unoffended despite what Sora thought.
"I tell you what, if somehow you can take me to the ocean someday, I'll introduce you to Legna. He'll probably like you." He said with a final chuckle before turning serious again and listening to Sora's telling of the possibility of escape.
It was only possible that people had escaped? That didn't bode well. Who was to say they hadn't been moved to a different hospital on... whatever world this was? Who was to say they hadn't walked out and run into something worse than being in this place? He grimaced at the thought. The guy over the intercom had said something about a war. What was beyond the gates to this hospital?
Nowe's shoulders slumped visibly. His world wasn't really capable of travelling from world to world. What if he couldn't ever get back? There was no way Legna would hear him from here, right? Besides, even if someone like Sora, Lyta, or Fayt, who knew about how to go from planet to planet, offered to take him home... he had no idea where his world was in relation to the others. Where would he go, even if he got out? Would have to try and settle down on someone else's world, where everything was unfamiliar? He didn't like that idea at all, as nice as the people he met could be.
Deciding that train of thought was entirely too depressing, Nowe stopped thinking about it and instead turned his attention to the apple he'd picked up from the cafeteria. He wasn't that hungry anymore, so he just twisted the stem a few times until it popped off. He felt stupid and childish for playing with his food, but he needed some distraction from the depressing thoughts that were threatening to weigh down his mind.
Reply
A signal where? She didn't even know if she was in the right dimension. She knew there was more than one - her Vorlon memories spoke of them, hushed and tinged with warning. So which one was this?
"Okay, what happens at night? I mean, exactly. I get the impression it's not good, but I need details. Sora," she turned to him because Nowe had already expressed a lack of knowledge of the place's technology. "Have you seen any machines here? Any electronic equipment? Other than the intercom, I mean. Because I don't know about you two, but I'm getting out of here as soon as I can."
Reply
Figuring out where they were wasn't as easy as Lyta was making it sound. With the place so enclosed, they couldn't see any of the surrounding area. There was nothing to judge by.
"Hey," he said with a small frown as Lyta finished speaking, "I want to get out, too." He didn't like that she thought he wasn't trying. The truth of the matter was that he wasn't the best at making plans, but he did what he could. And the only way to stay sane in this place was to unwind sometimes, talk about better times. He and Nowe were just trying to loosen up - was that so wrong?
"The doors unlock," he explained. "So we're free to explore the building, but it's really dark and there are monsters around. A lot of the doors that probably lead to important places are locked, though I think some patients have gotten keys somehow." His weapon was a key, but it wasn't like it opened anything here...
"The only electronic stuff I've seen is the radio. Everyone has one in their room," he informed her. "There has to be some more stuff like that somewhere, but it's probably behind a locked door." He shrugged and sighed.
Reply
Leave a comment