Nightshift 43: Main Hallway, 1-Center

[dahliahasthorns]

[From here]These two were just little Chatty Cathies, weren't they? Whatever. As long as they didn't start talking about how much their love could never be and got to kissing in front of her, they didn't have a problem here. Dahlia followed them as quietly as she could, doing a nice job of attempting to be stealthy and just looking ridiculously

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[herr_inspektor]

[gdjahj so sorry about not getting back to this! my internet shorted out before I had a chance DX]

Ever cautious, Lunge stepped forward and peered through the open door. What he was expecting to see was a couple of patients exploring. What he wasn't expecting to see was a samurai in full costume on the attack.

Ah.

He drew back, a little bewildered but not yet undone. All this meant was that he needed to rethink the situation and formulate another... hmm? Overhead, life breathed into the intercom with a crackle like the wind through drives leaves. His hand twitched automatically, scribing every word from the message with efficient, flawless accuracy. Someone was in. And what's more, 'IRIS' clearly was not happy about it. The stream of binary and song lyrics seemed little more than nonsense to the inspector but when the encore came with a steady hum of screams, suffice it to say his attention was grabbed.

But before he could start to process the announcement, someone was speaking to him. Lunge turned, irritated but wary enough to give the man a swift check with his flashlight: average height, strong build, almost definitely Asian, carrying himself with a cautious kind of confidence. Curiously, he didn't seem to carry a light of his own. An old hand, maybe?

Glancing up towards the ceiling demonstratively, he cut straight past the pleasantries. "Do those kind of messages play regularly here?"

[haplesstracker]

Lunge was ignored for a moment as the intercom came on and Scourge flicked his head up to look at it almost out of reflex. Sounded like someone had finally cracked the system, whatever good it might do them to have yet another crazy announcer around.

Zero one zero one zero one zero zero. It was binary and it was going far too slow for Scourge to get anything out of it. With his body the way it was he probably couldn't have reconstituted the message anyway without a regular computer to assist him.

And now it was singing as it counted and what the heck. Did IRIS have enough sentience to make some sort of musical protest to her rough treatment or had someone gotten the prisoner announcements mixed up with their WMP playlist?

Scourge sucked in air, a human gesture but one that felt necessary and comforting. When Lunge turned, his hand flicked up to ward off the light.
"No. No, the singing's new. And the...the um, the other noise." The voice of IRIS had left behind an odd humming that lingered at the edge of Scourge's hearing like a smudge on a set of reading glasses. He ignored Lunge, still looking up and into the shadows to figure out what sounded so familiar about it.

Another shallow, organic breath. Screaming. Hordes and hordes of people screaming, and some deranged part of Scourge's brain wondered if they had accidentally stumbled into the kind of songs Dr. Landel listened to when he wanted to relax. The man could have taught Vortex things about sadism.

[herr_inspektor]

"I see." Lunge dropped the torchlight to the floor, although that was more to do with having already gotten a good look at the man than his obvious discomfort.

So far it had sounded as though IRIS' daytime messages had been little more than old recordings. Did that, he couldn't help but wonder, also apply to tonight's messages? Were they listening to a breakdown in progress or a breakdown that could easily have occurred upward of ten years ago? It was an interesting thought; the radio in his other hand still had little more to offer on it than the blues. Hmm. Not a talker, was she, this Jill?

Ignoring the serenade from overhead, Lunge turned himself to a more immediate issue. "What about that?" He gestured towards the door with his torch, holding it open just a touch so that the fight within became visible. "Would you call that normal?"

[haplesstracker]

It wasn't stopping, they were just letting it keep going. Couldn't be live, nobody could keep up a string that long, but to Scourge's discomfort he couldn't hear the recording repeating either.

"Hm?" Scourge forced his mind away from the persistent screams and poked his nose in the door. Oh, so that was what was going on, bunch of people fighting something powerful and unstoppable--hey, was that Kon's blue friend? Had to be, that model was pretty rare. If Kurt was going to walk off with such a nice body you'd think he'd have the sense to keep it in good condition.

"More normal than the singing, but if that bouncy guy's a new monster they've really been scraping the bottom of the cube," he murmured, staying quite in case the one inside heard them. He looked fast and strong, probably reasonably smart, but at least he didn't have horrific fangs or sulfur vents.

He did have a spider pattern, though. Of course. It was always spiders.

[herr_inspektor]

"I see." Lunge sighed, and for a moment a look of pure irritation flitted across his usually blank face. Apparently, the Institute's definition of 'normal' was going to be just about as fluid its definition of 'sane'. But of course.

On the bright side, the man was right about the spider-man. Presumably, he had been brainwashed into attacking the patients some way rather than actually being one of the 'monsters'. That much made sense. Just how he was climbing the walls... well, that had an logical explanation. He was sure.

As for the man in front of him, however, Lunge could only tilt his head in curiosity. 'Bottom of the cube'? Perhaps it was a lingual quirk; every language was prone to its own little foibles. Which language was this man speaking? "I've never heard that expression before. Where are you from, exactly?"

[haplesstracker]

Not even talking five minutes and already the human was starting to get into his past--not that Scourge would have minded, but that always brought up the space thing and the robot thing and possibly the 'dark hunter of mechs created by a giant robot planet-eating chaos god' thing and most people here started getting skeptical before he even got through the first of them. He'd liked being a Decepticon but he wished he could trade out his backstory for something more sensible.

"Charr," he answered casually, hoping the human wouldn't push it past what he could cover with a plausibly organic excuse. "Kinda in the back of nowhere, you probably haven't heard of it."

The tracker peeped in again, wincing as the monster sent more furniture flying. It was talking, and prissy-blue-boy and his friends were trying to talk it down, which probably meant it was more likely to be one of the brainwashed patients than a proper monster--a freaky one, yeah, but Lockdown had been a muscle car two nights ago.

[herr_inspektor]

If the man was trying to throw him off he was going to be sorely disappointed. Trying to throw Inspector Lunge off of the scent was like trying to stop the sun from rising- either you were crazy or you'd damn well better hope you had some cosmic forces to back you up.

'Charr'. Nonspecific and completely unknown to him. He couldn't even guess at a continent, never mind a country, even if the name did have vaguely Western connotations.

Lunge didn't blink. Like tightening a tourniquet, he pressed on. "You're right. Enlighten me. In the back of which nowhere?" While he certainly hadn't moved into an interrogation, there was still an underlying yet completely unavoidable force to the question. And while getting an answer wasn't at the top of his priorities for the night, doing so would set a precedent should the need to question the man again. "Which country?"

[haplesstracker]

'Country' meant it had to be an Earthbound human. Scourge scowled, folding his arms with his makeshift sword sticking out from under his left arm. What was it with all the nosy nosecones around this place?

Fine, if the human wanted an explanation, Scourge would give it to him. "All the nowheres," he replied, jutting his chin out as if daring him to protest it. "It's not a country, it's more of a planet. Dwarf planet." If Charr had countries Scourge didn't know about it, the place was deserted when they took refuge there. "And if you're going to start in on me being crazy I'd like to remind you there's a blue and red guy in the next room standing on the ceiling shooting goop from his wrists."

[herr_inspektor]

... oh. So this is what L had meant when he'd mentioned the 'delusional' patient he'd run into earlier that morning. For a long while Lunge simply stared at the man, carefully examining his face for any tell-tale tics or twitches that would hint at a lie. His scrutiny amounted to nothing. Either the man believed it himself or he was telling the truth.

God, what a terrifying possibility.

Barely a moment later and it was as if the silence had never happened. If anything Lunge simply looked disappointed as he held out a hand, all business again. "Inspector Lunge. Are you waiting for someone?"

[haplesstracker]

Yep, there was the 'I'm dealing with a crazy person' look. He couldn't win. Either he told the truth and looked stupid or he lied, got caught out when he made the sort of mistake most humans knew to avoid, and looked both stupid and untrustworthy. Why couldn't he have been put at a robot asylum instead?

Scourge uncrossed his arms and gave Inspector Lunge a look of mild irritation, rolling his eyes ever so slightly. "Yeah. Don't know what he looks like, met him over the bulletin board, but he calls himself Honey."

"Have you seen Scourge-san?"

Speak of the Fallen. Scourge glanced back over his shoulder, already prepared to look down at some small, squeaking thing, and found he had to look down even farther. "And that looks like my ride. Have fun standing around in the darkness." He raised the tip of his blade to his own forehead in a mock salute, then turned on his heel and walked away.

[ To here.]

[herr_inspektor]

Honey- the patient in charge of the Cake Club, off the top of his head. Before Lunge could pull up any more detailed files on him, however, the two of them were distracted by a very young sounding voice indeed. He followed Scourge's glance to to a group of three- an older man with a goatee and two youths, still in their teens. The youngest looked barely older than twelve, riding on the elder's shoulders like a small child. Only after Scourge announced that he was going with them did he realise that that was Honey.

The Institute was... definitely full of surprises. Lunge shook his head and forced himself back to work. He used Japanese honorifics. The other young man with him also looks Japanese, but the older man looks more Western...

Once he had entered everything he could learn simply from watching the four members of Cake Club that he could see, he turned back towards the entry room doors. The fight raged on. If he turned his torch off he would hopefully go unseen behind the heat of the attack.

[To here]