Night 49: Staff Training Area (Second Floor)

[timedork]

[From here]The disorientation that came when he crossed through a door was getting easier to accommodate, with the Doctor bracing himself for a shift in perception and trying to keep steady, but it was still difficult to fully anticipate. The sensation that came with teleportation seemed to be different every time

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[scarefaux]

"W-well, who's to s-say that they'd have much of a smell?" the Scarecrow said with a sideways glance to Remy, not wanting to fully take his eyes off the darkness ahead of them. Who knew what could be lurking over there? What if they were on the second floor? Or in a room in the Horrible Hallway?

He watched where Remy aimed his light, trying to catch just enough of a glimpse of the body to satiate his curiosity. He could barely make out a form, unmoving in the dark. It certainly did look vaguely human, but something was off about it- it didn't have arms or legs. Had the body been mangled that badly? Missing an appendage wasn't so bad for a scarecrow, but it seemed like a situation a human would want to avoid. They weren't nearly so easy to put back together.

"I'm going to take a closer look," the Scarecrow said with a hard swallow. His throat felt tight- not Mangled-Witch tight, but enough that he was concerned that fear really could lodge itself into one's throat- but he couldn't shake the strange fascination he felt.

Turning off his own light in favor of being sneaky, he tucked the mystery box into his pocket and crawled on his hands and knees toward the corner of the room. He took a moment to hide behind a stray chair, peering around the edge of it. No, still too hard to see. He slid the chair along the floor as a mobile hiding spot to his next stop: a desk. Scrambling deftly from the chair to the side of the desk, he took another look toward the body. It was almost in sight- he'd have to risk alerting whatever could be on the far side of the room. He took a quick breath, gathering his courage as he turned on his flashlight and shined it around the side of the desk.

The Scarecrow stole a quick look at the body before hiding around the corner again- he took a second look a moment later, now sure the body hadn't been alarmed by the light. He took a quick look around the walls- no monsters there, either. Slowly, he made his way from his hiding spot to the corner, his light illuminating the limbless form. Once in view, he felt a wave of relief wash over him as the apprehension left him.

"Hey," he called to Remy and Kibitoshin, a weak smile on his face, "this isn't a body- not a human one, anyway. It's some sort of a fake."

[bitpartgod]

"And w-who's to say we'd be able to smell them if they did?" Kibitoshin added, still using his quietest please-don't-hear-me whisper- though, really, the room was quiet enough that their voices might have well been roars for all it mattered. But if that was really the case, why, then, hadn't whatever had gotten Remy's body (n-not that the body is Remy's, just that he spotted it first!) managed to home in on them yet?

Not that any of that logic really mattered to him when the Scarecrow aimed the flashlight in the direction Remy was already indicating, and he instinctively dropped his eyes to the floor because-- because in all honesty, he'd seen far too many dead bodies in his time for his liking anyway. They all looked the same after a while.

So when the Scarecrow go up to actually get a better look, Kibitoshin's first response was to forget that he was supposed to be studying the floor and gape at him. "W-what? Why!? Look, I think we should just get out of here while..." But he was already gone, flashlight off and creeping ahead of them towards it.

This was a bad idea. This was a really, really bad idea. In fact, it was an outright terrible- "Huh?" He blinked, pointing his flashlight uncertainly in the Scarecrow's direction. "A fake body?"

More curious now than hesitant, the Kaioshin slowly, slowly eased himself back upright and crept over, biting his lip. Sure enough there was definitely a body lying on the table- armless and legless, no less- but it looked like it was made out of plastic. Creepy, but not life-threatening. He breathed out slowly, shaking his head in wonderment. "It's a dummy! What a relief! That could have been really nasty."

[tiny_chef]

Remy was almost surprised enough by Kibitoshin's question that he forgot to avert his gaze -- but only almost. Instead, he focused on Kibitoshin's face and said, "You wouldn't be able to smell them? I would."

Then again, he couldn't be completely sure. His sense of smell was still acute, but the edge of it seemed to have vanished along with his tail. He knew humans who liked food and cooking as much as he did, so he had never thought about it, but was it possible that most humans weren't able to smell as well as he did when he was a rat? The people who ran this shoebox hadn't asked for his opinion of the changes they had made in him. If they had, he would have let them know how important his sense of smell was to him; he would have sent a message about it up to that doctor who was supposedly "in charge" like a complaint to a head chef.

Landel would make a lousy chef.

Remy was so lost in thoughts on the general topic of 'nose theft' that he did not initially notice that Scarecrow had begun to edge towards the dead body.

-- Wait, it was a fake?

Kibitoshin stood up, then, and Remy found that while he still didn't want to approach the supposed dummy, he wanted to sit alone in a dark part of the room even less. He rushed over to where everyone else was.

They were right. The dead body looked like it was made out of plastic or something, with a half-open mouth. Remy stared at it for a moment, his fear disappearing. It was replaced by annoyance.

"Why would they try to make everybody think someone was dead in here? Who would do that?" Probably the same kind of people who didn't think it was weird to put a rat in a human body -- or just didn't care whether it was weird or not.

[scarefaux]

"The Wizard Landel, that's who," the Scarecrow answered, dusting off his hands and knees. His hand went to his pocket, touching the outside lightly- his find was still in there. "I can't imagine this is here for any reason other than to scare people like us."

On second thought, he could think of another reason a fake body would be lying suspiciously in a room. "... Unless it's some sort of a trap. Something to lure us over here so some other something could get us." Spooked by his own statement, he took another quick scan around the room, jiggling his flashlight back to life as it dimmed. He thought he saw a shadow move around the side of the desk, but it was simply a trick of the light. What wasn't imagined was the strange form he saw in the opposite corner: a jagged body made of white sticks, dark eyes with no life to them at all staring straight at him.

The Scarecrow jumped backwards with a yelp, colliding into his companions and dropping his flashlight for the umpteenth time. "T-t-there's something over there!" he hissed in a whisper, trying to find his light with his shaking hands without taking his eyes from the darkened corner.

[bitpartgod]

Just when he'd been so sure about this room being safe(ish), the Scarecrow had to go and suggest that they'd been walking into a trap all along! "I don't know about that," he said hastily, darting an anxious look around the room, "it wouldn't be a very good trap, if that was the case. I just wanted to run away from it."

Then again, he wasn't 'everybody', was he? And if even Remy and the Scarecrow hadn't thought twice about going in for a better look, maybe that meant that he was just being a big coward. The thought wasn't an encouraging one, to say the least of it, but it did snap him into action. It was time to stop being so damn scared of everything and take control! He was a Kaioshin, and it was his duty to protect those with him and-

"Something over there?!" he squeaked, lurching away from the direction the Scarecrow had indicated and bumping into Remy in shock with a startled little 'oof' sound, nearly knocking him down. So much for that.

But when the initial shock wore off and he finally let his eyes wander over towards the something, Kibitoshin found himself pleasantly surprised. "Over there? You mean, the skull?" he asked uncertainly, pointing his flashlight towards it. Okay, so it could still be a trap. But he'd seen it when he came in, and it hadn't moved or tried to kill them. Yet.

[tiny_chef]

It took Remy a moment to right himself after Kibitoshin bumped into him, and he wondered if he was wearing a sign that only the other two could see: KNOCK ME OVER. If he didn't want to get hurt, he'd have to give them a little more space for the rest of the night. But since they were frightened, they seemed to be sticking together.

The skeleton was something else. He could tell that it had belonged to a human once, but that was a long time ago. Whatever had killed it probably wouldn't be bothering them. Maybe it had even died the normal way!

"Come on," he said, tugging at Kibitoshin's sleeve. "Let's go. When we get to a place we like, we'll stay there for a while, but if we end up in Doyleton again" -- he said the name of the town with derision -- "we'll just turn around and leave."

He looked over at the Scarecrow, waiting for his decision, ready to march back to the door.

[scarefaux]

The Scarecrow gave a nod to Remy, his eyes darting nervously back to the corner. Grabbing his flashlight, he scooted around the end of the desk and followed his friends, heading for the door at a quick pace.

"That sounds like a good idea," he agreed, taking one last cautionary look around the room. It seemed so safe in comparison to Doyleton; however, he'd rather be somewhere positively, absolutely, undeniably safer than a room with a fake body lying suspiciously in the floor. "Hopefully, we'll find a place that's got some light."

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