Day 51: Men's Showers [Second Shift]

[perfectrecord]

Bah. So much for yet another suggestion of von Karma's. Such priorities this Institute had. They would implement a foolish suggestion to introduce origami lessons and to offer sewing supplies to select patients, yet refused to allow them to cleanse themselves more often than twice a week -- and, of course, without any additional privacy? How

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[sixth_attack]

Sechs was still engrossed with the temper tantrum going on inside his head when the large figure that he didn't bother to acknowledge suddenly started to speak, and with a rumbling tone that overruled the angry pounding in Sechs' ears! The startled Replica gave out a growl of surprise. Getting spooked like that never did well for his anger; all it did was make it flare up like a brief flash fire...

"Ugh...! No!" Sechs snapped, squinting his eyes through the sheet of water at his tall shower mate, "Course I didn't! What's it to you, huh?"

Wait... After they exchanged notes? Frowning, Sechs brushed the water out of his eyes. Hey! It was that big spider guy! It seemed like a long time since he last seen him! What was his name again...? Beefy Six-Arms? Wait, no... It started with an "R"... Really Beefy Six-Arms? Nah... No, it was... Ah, Recluse! Sheesh, he thought he had it with his first guess there...

"Oh! Uh... Recluse! Haven't seen you for awhile!" Feeling just a tad awkward now, Sechs' rage sizzled a little in the water (so much so that steam would have emerged from his back if it could!), but his anger over the morning's events didn't totally wash off. "Anyways..." He gruffly let out a frustrated sigh, "Had a lousy fight this morning...!"

[tartaros_avatar]

Recluse remained entirely unperturbed by the anger, waiting for Sechs to remember who he was. Gods, how much more could he be reminded of Mako by a person with only one row of teeth?

"Indeed," Recluse replied, returning part of his attention to washing himself. "And who were you fighting?"

[sixth_attack]

Grumbling, Sechs begrudgingly decided to wash himself as well, since the last time he showered all he did was stand in the hot water. It was one of the few things Sechs could do to ease the effects of the poison inside his spine. However, the drug had been quiet since it threatened Sechs that morning, so it didn't hurt to sometimes turn his back away from the water's warmth to start gathering soap and shampoo for himself. Plus having someone to rant at helped a bit too.

"Some idiot who's a friend of one of my enemies!" Sechs answered as he grumpily began smothering soap into his armpits. "He thinks so highly of that bastard!" he snarled, carefully washing around the six darkened spots on his spine before moving to the other parts of his body, "But I know that guy's true character! He's -- or was -- my roommate after all! Too bad he got himself killed before I could do the job!"

[tartaros_avatar]

Recluse's expression slowly hardened as he listened, trying to partially distract himself with washing out the small flecks of tree back that had somehow managed to nest in his short hair from last night. "I know the type. I deal with enough of them in my dimension." To his everlasting hatred and disgust, one of them had been his own sister.

"Be glad that he is dead, if nothing else. I've yet to have that satisfaction with the enemy I hate most of all." And he would never have the triumph of killing Marcus himself. Fate had been so cruel in decreeing that only another, one chosen for it, could make that man die. But, he'd convinced himself, it would still more than suffice to see that the body was destroyed utterly.

[sixth_attack]

So Recluse had troubles like that back in his dimension huh? Wait a sec... Didn't the guy say he had eight arms before? Crap! He almost blurted out "six-arms" at him! Sechs really had the number six on the brain, didn't he? (And it would have literally been marked on his forehead too if the institute hadn't taken that away from him!) Good thing he said his shower mate's name right on the first try; like his day hadn't gone off on a rough enough start as it is! Oh well, it didn't matter now, Recluse could have had ten or fifty arms back in his home dimension for all Sechs cared! They were all gone now, along with any power everyone had before ending up here...

"Yeah, but..." Sechs sulked as he allowed the soap to rinse off, "The nurse just said he was released, and I have to admit, that guy was a pretty good fighter... I don't know who or what could have done him in -- except me of course!"

There was another sigh, and Sechs slouched as another bundle of anger seeped out of him. Despite his bitterness, a hollow chuckle still managed to escape him. "Heh, I guess I'm hoping the bastard is still alive somewhere..."

[tartaros_avatar]

"They say that for everyone, including those that disappear without a body being found," Recluse pointed out, cleaning off the rest of the detritus from the night's little excursion.

"Some of them come back. You may yet get a chance to kill him." Although usually, it seemed, without memories of the place. Either it was another individual from a slightly different dimension, or they were brainwashing most return patients. Damn it, he'd actually been making progress on manipulating Marcus and then the institute decided to take that all away. He had been sustaining himself on the goal that when he escaped this place, and returned to all the resources available to him as undisputed ruler of the Rogue Isles, he could get Marcus to trust him just enough to weaken him and give the Destined One their chance to kill him once and for all.

Now he might have to start over if Marcus returned. It was the most monumentally frustrating fact about his current existence, beyond the fact that Marcus was still alive at all. Landel's was even less of a frustration than that. Perhaps next time he would simply find out whether Marcus could die here, where their power as Incarnates was so completely removed from them.

"I wish my enemy was verifiably dead, that is all. After nearly eighty years of fighting him, there is nothing I want more than to see him bleed out," Recluse growled, his face unconsciously fixing itself into an angry snarl. All he wanted was Marcus dead. Why did the universe near-literally insist that this could never be so? Before Kalinda made her prophecy, he had been given no reason, no explanation for how Marcus continued to survive everything. Every attack, every war, even the full force of a Soviet nuclear weapon hadn't killed him. And Recluse had slowly been losing his grip on sanity from the maddening inscrutability of why nothing ever worked.

[sixth_attack]

Sechs sulked even more. "Yeah..." Maybe that stupid jerk Will fell down a hole or something...

That same sulk shrunk into a somewhat hopeful one at Recluse's next remark. "That's happened before?" Instantly that shred of hope was replaced by dread that heavily dropped to the bottom of his stomach. Was it that impossible to escape this place...?

With all the soap rinsed off and his bruised back finally relaxing in the warm shower, Sechs grabbed for the shampoo and began to work it into his dark soggy hair.

"Eighty years, huh?" Wow, Sechs had only been hunting down his Original for the first two years of his life -- or at least one year and five months to be exact... Sechs didn't think Recluse was that old though, at least physically. He almost opened his eyes to get another look at Recluse when he remembered just in the nick of time that he had that damn eye-eating shampoo in his hair! He kept his eyes tightly shut as he dug the shampoo into his scalp.

"Geeze! That's one big mighty pain in the ASS!" Sechs exclaimed, suddenly feeling a tiny bit better about his own situation, "What did that guy do to you that's gotten you two fighting for so long?"