Night 52: Main Hall, 2-West

[hes_deadjim]

[from here with Spock]The doctor jerked with surprise. Spock seemed to appear right at his elbow, and he'd be damned if his heart hadn't set to racing. He'd just been just starting to think that maybe that encounter with that statue was a fluke, and there'd be no surprises down here, and then that damned Vulcan had to go ahead and see if he could

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[witchdetective]

[ from here ]

Upstairs, the lights were still flickering. Power had been restored to the whole building, it seemed... a reasonable assumption to make. That was enough for Erika, who stopped at the top of the stairs and only moved slightly to block the door. There it was again - something from the corner of her eye. But she knew better than to wonder what it was. She knew.

"Landel-san is quite crafty. The flickering lights are bringing things in and out of focus and throwing us off. It's quite distracting, but just a cheap parlor trick. But the reason behind all of this..." It was quite obvious that the good Doctor was just trying to scare them, but Erika was the type to thoroughly expose the truth and rip it apart for everyone to see. She was the self proclaimed intellectual rapist, after all.

For some reason, she was reminded of how thoroughly she crushed Natsuhi's dignity with her Master, the thought bringing a pleasant smile to her face. And again, she could see a flicker in her peripheral vision. The detective paused for a minute, and then gestured to the hallway.

"Before we continue, what's your name?"

[ran_on_empty]

The God-General didn't mind so much when the girl moved ahead of him, figuring she would've had enough common sense to remain close enough now that they reached the second floor. It was at the top where the caught something from the corner of his eye a second time, though this time his focus remained forward as he listened to the other speak.

"Stephen. Yours?" Sync answered without any amount hesitation, casually falling back on the alias given by the institute. It was slowly becoming a habit now, but at this point he preferred to tuck away his identity whenever he got bored and decided to have a little fun. It wasn't as if he was without other options either, but using Ion's name could get tricky if Luke and those other idiots caught wind of any of his 'deeds'.

"Anyway, cheap's one way to describe it, but he usually doesn't skimp on everything else."

hey look Sync I have that face too.

[witchdetective]

That name was so laughably boring that Erika was almost certain the boy was giving her the name they called him here in the Institute. Of course, that didn't matter, but the detective wasn't one to use aliases. Those were in the domain of common criminals and witches who didn't exist, and Erika was neither.

"Furudo Erika. Forgive me, I'm normally not this rude; I'm just very busy, you see. Could you explain your last statement? About Landel-san not skimping on his flashy shows?"

She had caught that the boy was implying that events like these were actually quite common, and Erika had observed enough strange nights to know that this was possibly the truth. After all, there was that odd night with the portals and the other night where everyone stopped understanding each other. She hadn't pegged Stephen for someone who had been here long, but perhaps her reasoning had to be revised ('revised', because she was never wrong!)

[ran_on_empty]

'Furudo Erika'? It sounded like the order was backwards for some odd reason; maybe it had to do with cultures or whatever. But now that 'introductions' were exchanged Erika sounded more than ready to get the point.

"What I explain kind of depends on how long you've been here," Sync began. "Even if it's been less than a week you've probably witnessed a few things for yourself."

The transporting rooms were one clear example he could think of, and a few days ago there must have been some kind of speech spell that affected the entire institute. Sync considered all of this to be public information, so if Erika didn’t believe him then it was her loss.

"But anyway, Landel doesn't bluff when it comes to knocking us off our feet. Two weeks ago we were stranded in Doyleton one night and were attacked by hordes of dead people. 'Zombies' were what a lot of people called them."

He gave an idle glance down the hallway.

"If I didn't know better, it kind of sounds like he's got something in store for a specific group of people."

[witchdetective]

Zombies? Zombies? Erika didn't even bother to hide the amused and somewhat mocking look on her face as she looked at Sync for a moment before continuing to walk down the hallway towards her destination. Really, Erika understood that the tricks behind this institute were beyond cheap parlor tricks, as she so described earlier.

"I have experienced some strange nights, but zombies isn't exactly something I'd expect to happen here." Zombies. That was the easiest trick to explain. Which the amount of people employed here, all it took was some costumes, make-up, and a paranoid populace to -

Really, she wished Landel would fix it already, the flickering shadows were getting irritating, especially since it was always in her peripheral vision...

The matter irritated the detective so much that she actually trailed off in the middle of her statement, shaking her head and getting even more irritated at how easily her train of thought was getting thrown off by something as stupid as flickering lights! With a huff, Erika decided to just stop wasting time and set off again, heading down the hallway.

[ to here ]