Night 50: Main Hallway, 1-West

[heroesdontshave]

[from here]It looked like the hallway opened up over here. Guess he couldn't expect to just run around and follow a linear corridor forever, but now he had to figure out which way he wanted to go. Normally, he'd just run down whatever hallway he happened to lay eye on first, but again, he was running a liiittle blind here

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[bodhiandspirit]

[from here, and meatshields ahoy! /o/]

Now what?

There still weren't many people out in the halls yet. It looked like Rita was going to have to wait if she wanted to find any potential allies. Not quite feeling patient enough to wait idly, the mage continued walking down the hallway with her flashlight pointed at the floor ahead of her, and her attention mostly focused on the ring in her other hand. Would it be safest to keep it on her finger, or in her pocket? Supposedly, the gem was activated by breaking it, and Rita didn't want to do so accidentally, before she was prepared to...

"--Gahh!!"

Something big was suddenly blocking her path - or maybe she just hadn't been paying enough attention to notice it until now - and upon realizing she was about to bump into it, Rita leapt to the side instinctively. In her surprise, and with her sudden movement, the ring flew from her fingers, only to be caught again within the second, though the feat caused Rita to stumble disgracefully in her rush to regain her hold on it.

Once she confirmed it was safely in her hand again, the mage took a step back and studied the figure she had nearly bumped into, pointing her flashlight straight at the stranger's face.

It was a man. A man the size of a bear, and with no light on him to distinguish him from any nighttime monster. "Hey, what do you think you're doing, loitering around in the dark like that!?" she demanded, indignant. The fault may have partly been hers for not watching where she was going, but she assumed anyone who'd wander around alone at night would at least have the sense to carry some kind of light with them.

[affictitious]

[From here.]

His entrance here was met with a scream, which wasn't something he was exactly unused to, but this time it wasn't deserved and wasn't directed at him and he wasn't in the form of someone else who was infinitely more threatening looking than his vessel was. But vocal was good. Vocal was how questions got answered.

Slick as oil, he slithered into the conversation with, "What're you screaming about?" then an "oh" followed by the thought of next vessel is definitely going to be more threatening. And taller. Add to mental notes.

And here he thought Sam Winchester was the Sasquatch to out-sasquatch all sasquatches. Have a low whistle of appreciation, kid. It's all for you.

[heroesdontshave]

And all of a sudden, the people who were hiding come out of the woodwork. Of course, Snow had been so distracted trying to peer through the darkness, he hadn't really noticed anyone approaching until a girl yelled right behind him. ...Okay, he could secretly admit that startled the hell out of him. He jerked and whipped around in time to get a bright light right in the face. "Whoa!"

He immediately winced and threw a hand up to try and block out the light. He couldn't get a real good look at them, but it sounded like a young girl and a guy. Neither of them were telling him put his hands up or get down on the ground or anything, so he was gonna take a wild guess and say they weren't soldiers. Actually, it sounded more like he'd been the one to startle them. Or at least the girl. Whoops.

"Sorry. Didn't think anyone else was wandering around." He was trying to sound lighthearted despite the apology. No hard feelings, you know? He was also still squinting, trying to get a good look at them. "You guys okay?"

[bodhiandspirit]

Rita lowered her flashlight with a shrug, deciding that she'd tortured the man's eyes enough. That shrug was also the only acknowledgment his apology received.

"Hmph. I'm just fine, and you better be glad that this is, too," Rita retorted, making a point of slipping the ring safely onto her finger. If he paid any attention to that announcement at the start of the night, he'd understand what it was that they just narrowly avoided.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" The question sounded almost like an accusation, though it was really just Rita's usual tone of voice. She was asking honestly, actually. The big guy looked like he might be useful to have around, so maybe he could accompany her in her escape. "...That goes for both of you."

The mage noticed the other man there as soon as he spoke up, though it wasn't until now that she glanced over her shoulder to get a look at him. Compared to the giant in front of her, he looked like a fairly normal person, though apparently not one who could mind his own business. Who invited him?

[affictitious]

Ohh, bitchy. He liked it.

But aside from that, he recognized the giant's question as... pretty weird. Actually, both were kind of odd, from the sounds of them. Though it was clear he wasn't somewhere interesting like a secret government base or the Batcave, those particular questions suggested that they shouldn't be here. Y'know, permanent no-negotiation deaths aside.

Slipping the stolen glasses onto his nose, he broke a few vertebrae in order to look the guy in the face. "Is there a reason we shouldn't be?" Though if he was on earth - which was a pretty clear bet, seeing as humans - there could be any number of ghosts or zombies or flesh-eating cannibals or wendigos hiding in the wings waiting to pounce. Now that'd be a good spot of fun right there.

Even demons. He could totally go for some demons right now. That'd boost the ol' mojo tenfold.

"I was just, y'know, wondering aimlessly. Seemed like a good idea considering I'm fresh out of maps and a solid sense of direction."

[heroesdontshave]

Snow gave a quick, almost sheepish laugh at the reaction. Yikes. Looked like he already got off on the wrong foot with this kid. Or maybe she was just in a really bad mood tonight. Something about being tossed aside by society and dumped in a building to die probably worked on the nerves a little. He could understand that.

Of course, it might also have something to do with her almost dropping that ring of hers on account of him. Snow had heard the guy's announcement before, but there was no way he would ever make a connection between what the announcer guy had been yapping on about and the ring this kid just happened to be carrying. So he just figured it was just a really important piece of jewelry to her. Well, she might be mad, but at least both of them were alright. Didn't look like either of them were anywhere close to the kind of shape Badou had been in.

The guy sounded like he hadn't heard about the stuff going on in here. He was probably one of the survivors who'd just recently been dumped off in here along with Snow. The girl... who knew? She didn't seem very worried.

"Well, tryin' to find an exit for one," he responded, placing his hands on his hips as he looked between the two. Well, he was more looking around for the things everyone was hiding from and then he was going to find an escape route, but same difference. "Place's supposed to be crawling with monsters from the sounds of things but," he smiled at them both so neither of them would panic at this revelation, "it's looking like everyone and everything's laying low tonight. If there's a time to 'wander around aimlessly,' this is it." If it stayed like this, finding a way out would be a piece of cake.

[bodhiandspirit]

Were these two both newcomers? What were the chances of that? Rita was still new herself, so she hoped they weren't going to expect a big explanation. There was something she did want to share with them, however.

"If it's an exit you want, I've got it right here," Rita said smugly, holding up her left hand to show off the ring on it. "This is one of those Portal Rings that Head Doctor was blathering about a few minutes ago. If what he said is true, it can transport us away from here."

That had to get their attention. Unless, of course, either of them found 'aimless wandering' to be more attractive than 'instant escape.'

But it wouldn't do any good to have ignorant allies with her, so after a moment's pause, Rita decided she should at least mention some of the drawbacks. "Thing is, I don't know how far or in which direction. All I know is that it would transport us to a lake in the middle of nowhere. From there, we could probably escape through the forest or the mountains." ...Unless one or both paths led straight back to the institute, in which case they would have risked their lives for nothing. Hopefully these guys could put two and two together well enough to understand the risks from what she already said. Rita wasn't interested in giving a long lecture.

"It's a gamble, but you two don't have anything better to do, do you?"

[affictitious]

Oh, and monsters weren't a big thing for these kids.

Riiight. Running with it. (If he was in a building full of hunters, he might just have to kill himself. Again. Going in knowing he was gonna die was kinda like assisted suicide, right? They didn't seem to have the attitude, though... not that he'd met a lot of hunters face-to-face. Easy to imagine they had a swagger, though. Some of 'em did.)

"Hold on a sec," he said, flinging his hands up in front of him. "Can I get a Cliff Notes, here? Head Doctor? Portal rings?" Oh. That thing he'd heard earlier had... probably been important.

His luck.

From his experiences, head doctors plus institutions didn't exactly equal hospitals. He'd been in his share of hospitals; not for the patients, usually, but there were a lot of nice, corrupted staff in 'em. It had the hospital-y feel and the smell of bleach and the white walls, but usually they didn't have mon -

- okay, they usually did have monsters, but that was beside the point -

but they certainly didn't have portal rings, which sounded like an artifact to him. And this guy was just... handing 'em out. And they usually didn't have a bevy of patients vying for escape.

"Lake?"

[heroesdontshave]

Oh, definitely got his attention there. Admittedly, Snow hadn't really been listening all that closely to that announcement earlier, outside catching a few keywords. Mostly cause none of it was making any sense in the first place. He recognized the words "portal ring" as something the announcer guy had brought up but... Yeah, again, wasn't really listening. Luckily, it looked like the kid knew what the heck the guy had been talking about and had one of the things handy.

Ah haaa. So if they used that thing, they wouldn't have to bother wandering around looking for an exit. It'd just take them all out of there lickity split. Lake or no, it sure sounded a hell of a lot faster than breaking out the old fashioned way.

The guy, however, wasn't sounding all that ecstatic about it. Actually, he still seemed pretty confused about the whole thing for some reason. Not sure why. Snow thought he'd done a pretty good job of explaining the situation just a moment ago: They were in this place and it was full of monsters. Wasn't really much more he needed to know than that. The guy should already know why it was he and everyone else had been left here in the first place. The whole "hospital cover up" thing wasn't important for the people thrown in here and mentioning anything about the staff being l'Cie would... yeah, that wouldn't be helping anything. But if the guy needed a reiteration...

"Short version?" Smile. "We were all dumped off in here and this thing's our way out." Couldn't get much clearer than that. He turned back to the kid with an edge of enthusiasm to his voice. "Wherever it takes us, gettin' outside's sounding a lot better than hanging around this place. We should be able to figure out which way to go once we get there."

[bodhiandspirit]

Not surprisingly, the big guy liked to keep things simple. That may have been for the best, though. The more time they spent talking, the less distance they were going to cover before morning came. While Rita couldn't quite identify with the guy's willingness to go along with a plan he didn't fully understand, she could certainly appreciate the convenience of it at the moment.

"That's basically right," Rita confirmed, adding to that bare-bones explanation. "By day, they run this place like a mental hospital - and we're the patients. At night, it's like this. I don't know what they're trying to do with us here, but I don't plan on sticking around long enough to find out."

Did Rita want to know why some bastard abducted her from her home and took her to another planet where people treated her like she was crazy? Damn straight, she did. But the full truth couldn't be found while they were confined within the Head Doctor's walls. They had to get to somewhere beyond his control, and then they could do what they needed to. Gathering information from the outside world, launching a counter attack, finding a way home... all of those things would be possible once they were no longer prisoners.

She curled her ring-wearing hand into a fist and held it in front of herself. "Are you in or out?" she asked the smaller man.

[affictitious]

While it was nice and all for Gigantor to get on along fine with knowing a minimal amount of information, this particular pseudo pagan god kind of got off on knowing every minute detail about the situation involving him - and usually ones that didn't. It'd be nice to think that his loving brother had enough gooey feelings in him to send Gabriel to a mental hospital that sucked out his mojo so he could have fun running around in the dark, but he really doubted that sort of feeling was there.

This would've made a good television show.

"Why the hell not?" he said with a shrug; instant gratifying teleportation wasn't a new bone to him, and he was interested to see how a ring was gonna manage to move something like him - plus two other humans. Maybe it didn't discriminate between species or something. "Let's hit it."

[heroesdontshave]

The fact that she didn't know what it was the Sanctum had planned for them wasn't hugely surprising. They liked keeping those pesky, little details to themselves, and no normal person wanted to believe they were being thrown away. So he saw no need in voicing in any more info than she was offering up. Besides, Snow liked this kid's enthusiasm. The guy didn't seem to be all that thrilled about the whole thing, but he was going along with it anyway. So no need to say or do anything that would kill the mood and drag everyone down. Let's keep that energy going!

Like the kid, Snow brought his own fist up in front of him, obviously more than ready to go. "Alright! Sounds like a plan. Let's do this!"

Of course, he... didn't really know what it was they were doing or how they were going to do it or what. But they knew it had to do with the ring, right? So...

[bodhiandspirit]

So everyone was on board. Good.

"Everybody, stay close," Rita told them as she turned to face the nearest wall. She wasn't sure what the range of effect was with the ring, but she didn't want to end up leaving people behind because of an easily avoided mistake.

So it was back to the lake again. This time, Rita was going to be expecting the jarring transition, so it was likely to go much smoother than before. They'd just have to get their bearings and swim to shore. They had a plan. This was going to be easy.

"Get ready to swim," she warned the two men as she pulled back her arm, preparing herself. Her fist lingered there for a few seconds as she took a deep breath...

...then slammed it into the wall, shattering the jeweled ring.

[teleporting to here]