Day 55: Cafeteria

[bodhiandspirit]

Though five days without bathing was hardly unusual for Rita, she was actually looking forward to showering today. To her, the last shift had been somewhat enjoyable, if only because it allowed her an opportunity to be alone with her thoughts for a bit. Of course, she couldn't be completely alone in the communal showers, but no one was rude enough

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[see_my_back]

Showers had been pretty uneventful, aside from the soldiers being more obnoxious than usual after her trying to help Kurt at breakfast. She didn't care though, she wasn't going to let her friends or her teammates down and she wasn't going to let other people suffer or work their asses off while she sat on hers

[unheroed]

Harvey was more than happy to come back in from the cold weather, glad to have that over with. Franziska had managed to distract him from the temperature at least somewhat, though her personality had matched the elements rather well. Either way, he was now back in the heated building and that was all that he cared about.

Though as he headed in for lunch, he couldn't help wondering what the food situation was going to be. The nurses had been vigilant about giving him those vitamin shakes, but were the soldiers going to care?

As it turned out, the answer was no. He was given food from the new menu just like everyone else, and while the pink gruel looked like it would be edible for him, that didn't mean that he wanted it. Then again, it was probably no worse than what he'd had before, so the transition wouldn't be as tough for him as it would be for the other patients

[see_my_back]

She was almost to ninety by the time someone actually spoke to her. It was an older guy, at least to her, and he'd definitely seen better days. Seemed like he'd had a nasty time of the institute if nothing else. It was hard to tell if he was genuinely curious though, or if it was a roundabout way of mocking her. She frowned, counting silently in her head as she went. Eighty-nine, Ninety, Ninety-one...

"No... I just like... doing these... for the fun of it," she said between hops, resisting the urge to roll her eyes, but at least managing to keep an even tone. "It's supposedly... part of the punishment... for our insubordination... yesterday."

[unheroed]

The girl was actually doing a decent job of responding to him even while she continued with her punishment. Harvey certainly wouldn't have been able to manage that even before his injury. Then again, a lot of young people were fit because they had the time and the energy to work out; he probably would have managed just fine at her age, too.

There was little point in making such pointless comparisons in his head, though, and so he only frowned as she explained. "Wasn't the whole stunt with cleaning the cafeteria enough?" Or was it that they wanted to give the particularly bad patients a proper punishment now? "How many do you have to do?" He really wasn't mocking her, since she seemed to be serving out her sentence with little trouble.

[see_my_back]

One-oh-six, One-oh-seven...

If there was one thing Sakura was good at, it was multitasking. Her nearly photographic memory helped, though she did a fair amount of studying and keeping herself busy as well. She never lost a beat, and at least the man didn't appear to be mocking her, he seemed genuinely curious. Though it was a little bit creepy that he would choose to sit by her when they'd never met before. Well, whatever. As long as he wasn't one of those sort of nasty old men.

"That didn't... exactly fly with me either," she huffed, not so much out of breath as she was simply timing her speech so as not to run short of it in the first place. She'd tried to help Kurt because dammit, she didn't let her friends get punished like that alone. If she'd learned nothing else from Kakashi's tests with the bells, it was that teams came first and always. If there was punishment, you faced it together. You didn't leave people behind to clean up your messes. One-eleven, one-twelve "I'm starting to think... they don't like me very

[unheroed]

To be honest, Harvey didn't think it was anything personal for the soldiers. The girl wasn't the only one doing jumping jacks, which likely meant that the people who were being targeted had done something particularly bad the day before -- probably lashing out violently. While Harvey thought that losing control like that was idiotic, he had a pretty tenuous hold on his temper lately. If things had played out differently, he might have been right alongside the girl

[see_my_back]

Since the man seemed content to sit and wait, she hurried her pace a bit, wrapping up the remaining exercises in just a couple minutes. It wasn't enough to work up a real sweat, but it was enough to be obnoxious. That and she was informed that she wasn't allowed to sit down for the remainder of the shift either. Well that was just fine.

She worked on slowing her breathing as she walked back to the man's table, arms crossed over her chest. She refused to appear tired though. Meal or no, exercise or no, she wasn't going to show weakness, not to these jerks. "Done," she said with a nod.

"Sakura Haruno. And you are?"

[unheroed]

So she wasn't allowed to sit, either? This place really was doing all it could to make it seem like they were in a training regiment now, and thus far it seemed to be working. In the end, there wasn't much they could do to resist. This whole series of punishments was likely meant to prove that

[see_my_back]

"Nice to meet you Dent-san."

What kind of a name was Harvey Dent? She wasn't sure what made him decide to talk to her, but everything about him seemed a little strange. As if the injuries weren't enough, he hadn't even eaten his food, and he'd done nothing but ask her questions. It was hard to know what to make of him, exactly.

"I only threw a few. I was mostly trying to sneak out," she admitted. "But there were even more near the exits. Seemed like a good opportunity to test the waters. And if this is all the punishment they're giving us, it was more a learning experience than anything else."

Okay, so maybe it wasn't quite that simple, but it give her some insights she hadn't had before, and it certainly let her know what the outcome would be were they to try again. How to retaliate, what precautions would need to be taken...

[unheroed]

Dent-san? Okay, that was a little weird. Harvey already realized that his last name was kind of odd, but having it used with what he was pretty sure was a Japanese honorific took him by surprise. The only reason he even knew that much was because he'd had a few clients who were Japanese, but that wasn't the point. This answered the question of where the girl was from, though it didn't explain the dye job or why she was so fit

[see_my_back]

Huh. So Dent managed to make it into the Sun Room without trouble? It was possible she'd just been unlucky. Or a little unruly. Or perhaps a bit of both. Maybe he'd used some pretense as an excuse, pretended he was trying to get away from the food fight, rather than escape in general.

"It all depends," she shrugged, "for whatever reason, the people here are bound by certain rules during the day that are different at night. Granted, a lot of us don't have the same abilities, but we still have numbers. Skills. People here who should have no trouble plotting around that." If Shikamaru were still here, she'd have a lot more confidence saying that, but she was no slouch herself.

"I'm not saying it should be our primary objective, but it's something to consider. Especially since a lot of the nights end up being kind of useless. Even if you find all the secret passages or collect the right things, isn't that just going along with what they want?"

[unheroed]

Thus far their conversation had been normal enough, though what Sakura started explaining next ended up losing him. Bound by certain rules? Well, sure. They couldn't run around and explore, but that was obvious. And then she said something about abilities, which seemed to be referring to something else entirely. Harvey tried to piece through it, but in the end he wasn't quite following. At the same time, he didn't want to make himself seem like an idiot by having to ask

[see_my_back]

That was always the question wasn't it? It wasn't enough to just lead someone in the right direction, they always wanted to know exactly what to do as well.

"I'd certainly like to discuss tactics with some of the more influential clubs to start," she said, glancing aside as though her inspiration might be found elsewhere. "But the better we know our enemy, the better we can plan for when we confront them. So far, we know how the new staff will react to even a small uprising. If we were more coordinated though, had specific teams set to distract while others focused on things like... escape, overwhelming them at their weakest points, taking prisoners... but it also depends on what our objectives are too."

She crossed her arms, on hand resting just under her chin. Some of the patients were content to escape into this world, most wanted to be sent home. Still others wanted revenge, and some... those that had died before coming here, what did they want?

[unheroed]

The clubs again. Harvey had never seen much reason in joining. They did the same thing that everyone else did, just with more structure and a lot of bulletin posts. That only attracted attention, and he'd managed to find people to work with just fine without using something like that. Still, the girl was young. If she wanted to believe in that, then who was he to stop her