Night 49: Pet Supply Place

[bprd_fishman]

[ From here.]And this was not the Sun Room. Or any room at Landel's that he'd seen. The odd twisting feeling made Abe's hand slip from the door handle against his will and it slammed shut, leaving him in a far more cramped room that smelled faintly of animal food and wood shavings. "What in the world?" he whispered as he reached for his flashlight

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[rischiarare]

Ow. Okay, he hadn't been prepared for that second time. When he - what, landed? Was that it? - in the new room, he actually felt queasy, taking a step forward from the door to avoid tripping over his own feet.

He was tired and about to lose his dinner. This was already turning into a great night. The smell of wet dog wasn't helping his newly-developed motion sickness, though Roxas supposed there was a small sense of gratification knowing the smell wasn't coming from the three of them. No, it was definitely this... building...

Wait a second. He actually knew where this was; he'd passed by this place with Axel earlier that day. He'd looked through the windows in an attempt to catch a glimpse of any possible animals inside, though he hadn't gone in himself.

And it was still pouring rain outside. Great.

"This doesn't make sense," he said, turning back to stare at the door behind them, the one that had just shut by itself. "I can't even use corridors here, but this store isn't anywhere close to the institute." And if these two still had hearts, there was no way corridors were the things transporting them all over the place. He'd lost control of the Keyblade once, so he supposed it was somewhat possible to lose control of the corridors of darkness as well (maybe they were leaking from him, or something? Not a personal problem he wanted to deal with), but the sensation was so completely different it couldn't have been them.

"I guess we should be lucky we're on the same world."

Oops. He hadn't meant to say that.

Theorizing out loud. First problem that needs to be put down. It hadn't been a problem before since he never hung out with locals. Maybe they hadn't heard him over the rain. Explaining the whole world thing was... well, it wasn't something he should do.

[sewenteen_sir]

Chekov was once again disoriented and unsure of where they were, but once he shone his light around their new surroundings, he found himself in even more disbelief. They had somehow gone from the second floor of the prison to the town. Chekov had been in this establishment just that morning while he had been mapping the town. It looked to be in severe disrepair, though.

He was immediately reminded of the attack that had occurred the very night he and Captain Kirk had arrived. It had happened in the town as well, which meant that they might be at the origin point of the reanimated corpses.

Forming his recommendation that they leave immediately, Roxas' input gave Chekov pause. Corridors? Worlds?

"Do you know of somezing zat could be causing zis phenomena?" Chekov asked, deciding that learning more about what Roxas thought was causing them to bounce around his maps might take precedence over throwing themselves into the unknown once again. There wasn't an immediate threat at the moment, and given that each time Chekov passed through a door he felt ill, there could be something physically detrimental to passing through doors without considering the potential consequences. "When you say 'corridors', what are you referring to?"

[doneinthree]

Kirk glared out the window at the dark, flooded street. His head throbbed a little from the quickness of the two jumps they'd just gone through, but at least he felt better than Roxas looked. The kid had obviously been exhausted since their fight on the first floor, but if he was managing to keep it together, then Kirk could hardly whine about some slight nausea. It was impressive, really: Roxas may have been young, but he obviously had a good head on his shoulders.

He'd met Starfleet cadets with less composure - say, the sort of Starfleet cadets who might've jumped when they saw a figure suddenly stagger out from the shadow of the Black Rock Inn. Kirk checked over his shoulder at the two teens, and back outside. It was hard to tell what was happening from this distance: the figure could have been injured, tired, any number of reasonable things, but he'd seen a horde of reanimated corpses come at him with that same unsteady walk. He wasn't taking chances.

Kirk backed away from the front as casually as he could, redirecting his flashlight to take in the trashed pet store again. He'd been listening to Roxa, and Chekov had already picked up on the most intriguing point. Corridors. Like a subspace corridor or... something else? From the nature of his abilities and what they knew about Landel's, there was no doubt that Roxas came from a different reality from theirs. Kirk was interested to know what exactly the young man meant when he talked about worlds.

Letting Chekov head the conversation for now (the two were closer in age, after all, and the ensign had demonstrated the ability to make friends with younger prisoners), Kirk moved towards the back of the shopfront to check for danger. He had little desire to stay in this town if it was still crawling with zombies, but they could afford a moment to get their bearings. And, okay, he didn't relish too soon a repeat of whatever hell happened to his head every time they went through a door.

[rischiarare]

Whoops. The gig was up (as Xigbar would probably say)... or was it jig?

"No," he said quickly, before following it up with, "I mean, I do, I guess, but I don't think that's what's happening now." Oh man, he really was going to vomit. Somehow he had never done it before but he knew that was exactly what his body was wanting to do. And the rain was giving him a headache. Using the length of his pipe leaned up against the closest shelf - piled high with dog food cans, from what little he could see - the Nobody wobbled a little more steadily on his feet.

He officially hated frogs now.

"For one, neither of you should have been able to go into one." Okay, he was blathering, but give him a break. Maybe if he kept talking the food would stay in his stomach. It seemed like a reasonable conclusion. "I don't mean like... hallway corridors. It's like a tunnel... that goes somewhere else."

All tunnels go somewhere else. That is a really stupid explanation.

Roxas wasn't sure saying "corridor of darkness" was going to, you know, expel any potential worries or questions from them and he didn't know if explaining what little he knew immediately upon meeting two other strangers was a good idea. The Organization had drilled their rules into his head pretty hard. Usually accompanied with physical threats.

Grasping for straws, he suggested, "Shouldn't we leave? There might still be zombies around." Which were probably more worrisome than multiplying frogs, and he was going to need longer than a minute to recover.

[sewenteen_sir]

Chekov had to admit, Roxas' explanation of what he'd been referring to left something to be desired. He could at least comprehend that Roxas knew something about... black hole-like tunnels. Which weren't exactly what they were all experiencing, being that they were at least remaining in their own dimension (supposedly), but it was at least something to question further. Where did these tunnels go? How were they formed? Why couldn't he and Captain Kirk go through one of the tunnels Roxas was referring to?

He didn't press the issue however, due to the fact that Roxas looked as though he were about to be ill. If the other young man were Starfleet then Chekov would have urged Roxas to divulge as much information as he knew. However Roxas was a civilian, and looked as though the travel was beginning to wear on him.

It concerned him, the thought of continuing through these unknown entities without any information--especially when Roxas was looking to adversely affected. However Roxas was echoing Chekov's earlier recommendation that they leave before something made them unable to escape. But without anything to go off of, who knew? They could step through the next door and never come out.

Chekov's eyebrows came together and he looked up at the Captain for orders. "If zis plece is ze origin point of ze reanimated bodies, it would be to our adwantage to leawe as soon as is possible, Keptain." Even if they had no readout on what it was they were using to escape. He looked back to Roxas, frowning slightly.

"Are you going to be able to stand anozer tunnel?" he asked, offering an arm to assist Roxas if he needed it.

[doneinthree]

Roxas' explanation of corridors also went over Kirk's head, but he could grasp the gist of his meaning, and the most important point. "So it's not you who's doing this," Kirk said, still picking his way through the disorderly mess of the store. He hadn't exactly suspected Roxas was to blame - the kid had looked as surprised as they did to warp to completely unpredictable rooms - but he shown himself to have "powers," and he'd seemed to recognize something about the doors.

But same as how Kirk knew it wasn't transporter technology shooting them around, he guessed it wasn't whatever means Roxas normally used either. Which pointed again to their number one suspect: the Head Doctor. If his hunch earlier today was right, then Doyleton also fell within Landel's sphere of influence, meaning going through the front door again(?) would send them off to god-knows-where. And, seeing how Landel loved inflicting his experiments on as many prisoners at once, it also meant that everyone else was probably going through the same thing.

Kirk's flashlight lingered on the open drawers in the grooming area, and the disarrayed supplies within. Whoever had been here before them was now long gone, and if some of the building's structural damage had happened just tonight... well, Kirk definitely wasn't averse to Chekov's recommendation.

"Here." He pointed out a door at the back of the store, which a sign indicated would lead into a veterinary clinic. Time to test the scope of Landel's "experiment." A few solid kicks with his hospital-issued boots rattled the lock, and he pulled it open, unsurprised to find exactly what he was expecting: a vet clinic. The other passages hadn't changed until they'd gone through, either.

Kirk looked back at the two teenagers, smiling as he held the door open for them. "If you're feeling up to it, I'd say 'as soon as possible' is right now."

[rischiarare]

"I'm okay," he said, quickly moving away from the offered arm. If there was one thing he needed, it wasn't an arm to hold him up (not even if he was about to fall over, thanks.) Maybe just moving and getting out of this rainstorm would help; even a different smell couldn't hurt. It was just the combination of everything.

Once he did move towards the door Jim opened, he did feel better. And since he was already flinching before entering the door, he was prepared for it.

[To here.]