Day 52: Intercom, Dawn
There was no telling if the next announcement came hours or minutes after the previous one, but regardless of that, it did come on with the onset of dawn. Like clockwork, like always, someone was there to greet the half-groggy patients as they woke up in their beds
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Kanda came awake with a jerk, sitting bolt upright in the bed--too fast for it to really register that his surroundings were unfamiliar. Half a second later, though, with his back pressed against the nearest wall, there was no way he could miss the drastic change in scenery.
…Speaking of missing…
There was a rather comical flurry of movement as Kanda searched in vain for Mugen, but the sword was nowhere to be found; not a comfortingly familiar weight at his hip, not tangled in the bed sheets, not propped against the wall or the desk or the bedframe. Not that he’d really expected to find it, since he’d been knocked unconscious…captured…
Frowning even more deeply than usual, he pressed a hand to his forehead, as if that would alleviate the steady throb pounding away at the inside of his skull, or somehow clear his rather muddled thoughts. What felt like only a minute ago, he’d been in Jordan, at the Order’s base there, and the last thing he remembered was getting attacked by that Noah bastard with the freaky-looking eye in the middle of his forehead-
“Your mind. Let us use it for our party!”
Party? The dark-haired Exorcist scowled as he turned a slow look around the room, wondering what the hell the Noah were playing at here. Kanda hated parties (then again, he hated just about everything really), but even he knew that something wasn’t right about this. If this was someone’s idea of a celebration…
His scowl only intensified as he looked down and finally noticed what he was wearing. The sweatpants were bad enough, but the shirt was outright unbearable. Leaving on the sleeveless undershirt beneath it, he tore off the smiley-faced tee, dropping it on the floor and kicking it under the nearest bed on his way over to inspect the closet. The metal clothing bar that was most likely inside would be a poor substitute for Mugen, but it was better than nothing.
Very carefully not thinking about what the Noah had said to him, a name he hadn’t heard in years, Kanda reached out a hand to slide the closet door back...just as the door to the hallway creaked open. He tensed, ready to attack with feet and fists, then froze, a little off-balance on finding himself faced with a very normal-looking nurse, not a Noah.
“Good morning, Mr. Katou! Good to see you up and about,” the woman chirped with a sickly-sweet smile that made his lip curl. Still, Kanda was wary of nurses--Akuma had nothing on the nurses of the Black Order’s European Branch, and he’d learned the hard way to be careful.
(Though careful evidently wasn’t the same as courteous.)
“Where the hell am I?” he growled in reply. Then what she’d said to him actually sunk in, and he frowned as he quirked an eyebrow. “And it’s Kanda.”
The nurse just shook her head and made an annoying little clucking sound. “Don’t worry about any of that right now, let’s just get another shirt on you, okay?”
Kanda’s eyes narrowed at the avoidance, his whole body tensing again as the woman moved to retrieve another shirt. Someone was clearly toying with him here, which definitely fit the Noah’s M.O.…and come to think of it, one of the Noah had been a shape-shifter, hadn’t she…
Closing the space between them in two swift strides, the swordsman’s hand clamped tightly onto one of the nurse’s wrists, twisting it slightly, just enough that the obvious threat in the action came through. He could be wrong, of course; she could very well be nothing more than a regular human. In fact, he knew he probably was wrong. But there was still the off chance he wasn’t, and that wasn’t the sort of chance Kanda took whenever he could avoid it.
“Answer the question,” he growled again. “Where did you Noah bastards take me? Where the hell am I?”
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She stared into his eyes, swallowing back her fear as she tried to reason with him. "You're in Landel's Institute," she answered, giving the response that they were all supposed to give. "We're here to try and help you, so please, if you could just get your shirt on, then we can take you out to get some food."
Sometimes the promise of food was enough to convince people. Sometimes getting the name of where they were also did the job. But that remained to be seen, and the nurse was still prepared to call for help if necessary.
[ Court ]
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Landel's? Where the hell was that? He'd never heard of it, but he recognised the antiseptic smell of a hospital, and that only made him more wary and irritable.
"I don't know what you and that jackass Millennium Earl of yours are planning...and I don't give a damn." By now, he was definitely twisting the nurse's arm, probably pretty painfully. "I'll kill you all either way."
If she was an Akuma, there was no way she wouldn't fight back in response to a challenge like that; and if she was just a normal human, well. It was a mistake he could easily justify--better safe than sorry.
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"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, her tone pained as she stared the patient in the eyes, trying to get through to him against all odds. "Now, if you don't let me go and calm down, then I'm going to have to sedate you."
She didn't want to have to do that, just like she didn't want to have to call for help, but the patient wasn't giving her many options. He was sort of twisting her arm -- literally, in this case.
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...Unless...someone at the Vatican had decided to re-examine some aspect of the Second Exorcist project--but no, they had Third Exorcists now, there was no reason for that, and after what had happened to the Asia branch nine years ago--
No. This wasn't worth thinking about, it had to be the Noah, and he was leaving even if he had to smash his way out. And maybe if he did, they'd show themselves and face him head-on, and stop this stupid hiding-behind-clueless-humans crap.
"Tch." Turning on his heel (still not wearing the t-shirt), Kanda headed for the door, the look on his face making it clear that anyone who got in his way was in for trouble.
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As expected, the two burly men stepped up to block the door, watching him with hardened eyes that seemed to say that they weren't going to tolerate any escape attempts.
The nurse came up behind the patient, crossing her arms over her chest as she considered him. "Will you allow us to take you to the cafeteria now?" she asked. She didn't want him to get violent again, but he wasn't leaving here anytime soon, and he needed to understand that.
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"Fine," he snorted, his voice clipped and cold. "I warned you."
Kanda leaped forward, aiming a blow at the chest of the man on the left even as he snapped out a mid-air kick intended to take the other man in the gut.
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But that was all. Almost as if they were made out of steel rather than flesh, the two men recovered and then reached out to grab the patient by either arm to restrain him. And all the nurse could do was watch. She hadn't wanted to resort to this, but more often than not on a patient's first morning this was the result.
Sighing, she reached into her uniform for a syringe and then slowly approached the young man.
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This--this didn't make sense, he thought disbelievingly, he'd hit them with just about everything he had, they should both have been on the floor, not simply wincing slightly at the blows to their ribs before grabbing hold of his arms more firmly. Maybe they were Akuma after all--
He caught sight of the nurse's movement out of the corner of his eye, and seeing the syringe in her hands, he waited the half-second until she came into range, still trying (and failing utterly) to wrench himself free in the meantime. "What the hell is all this?!" he snarled, shoulder-checking one of the orderlies before aiming a vicious backwards kick at the nurse. "I don't need medical attention, so let go!"
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Luckily, it would soon be over. At this point, she shook her head. "You're right," she said. "There's nothing wrong with you physically, but that's not where we're trying to help. I hate to do this, but you really must calm down..."
She came in from the side, where he wouldn't be able to kick at her, and then pulled up the sleeve of his shirt in order to stick the needle into his upper arm. It went in and came out in the space of a second, and then she stepped back. "That should help..."
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The instant they stepped back, Kanda took that one off as well (it took longer this time, since his arms felt so very heavy and he couldn’t remember how to close his hands around the bottom of the shirt for a moment), irritably throwing it across the room and lunging for the door again.
Or trying to, anyway. The room spun, tilting crazily as he stood, and only the quick reflexes of one of the orderlies kept Kanda from losing his balance entirely and ending up on the floor. Feeling ill and weaker than he had in years and far too much like he had nine years ago (a lifetime ago, it felt like), Kanda closed his eyes and focused on steadying himself.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself wearing yet another shirt--he hardly remembered them putting this one on him--and the nurse was again saying something about taking him to the cafeteria.
Grimacing, Kanda started to take the newest shirt off as well, but when he saw the nurse’s hand hover warningly over another syringe, he decided it wasn’t worth it. Fine, he’d wear the damn shirt for now…but if it did turn out that the Noah were having him on, as he still suspected it might, Kanda was going to make that smirking three-eyed son of a bitch eat it.
But for now, he finally consented to (rather unsteadily) follow the nurse to the cafeteria-there was no reason to stay in his room, and he might as well see what the Noah had planned for him.
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