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damned_lounge2008-10-19 01:00 am
kobayashi89.livejournal.com) wrote in damned_lounge2008-10-19 01:00 am
Entry tags:
Oktoberfest '08, A Day on the Inside by Kobayashi
Title: A Day on the Inside
Author: Kobayashi
Beta (if applicable): None
Word Count: 5,000
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Martin Landel, Landel's Inner Child, Nny, Jason Bourne, Son Goku, Hinamori Momo, Luxord, Xigbar, Sora, Zabuza
Pairing(s) (if applicable): Technically, Luxord and Xigbar happen to appear in the same scene...
Summary: Landel. In Landel's.
Notes (if applicable): I apologize for mangling anyone's character that is mentioned herein. Rest easy knowing they were mangled for the amusement of the masses.
A Day on the Inside
========================================================================
The first thing Martin Landel noticed upon waking was that his ultra-smooth and oh-so-nice silk sheets had been replaced with starched, bleached and most-definitely-not-silk-but-in-fact-could-it-be-oh-dear-god-what-depths-do-we-sink-to-cotton sheets.
It was unpleasant, to say the least.
The second thing he noticed, upon opening his eyes, was the ungodly bright and undeniably fluorescent lights. This was followed by the stark whiteness of the room, the stark lack of furniture, and the stark starkness of the room in general. No paintings. No wall hangings. No high-definition television giving him the latest updates on what the squirming ants in his “care” were up to. There was, however, a desk that certainly wasn’t in his room before, but then, it was probably safe to assume at this point that he was not, in fact, in his room.
In what was an understatement sure to do Captain, Major, and hell, even Admiral Obvious proud, Landel surmised that something was wrong.
The idea was already festering in his mind, but a healthy wall of denial was keeping it at bay for the moment. Unfortunately, such mental barriers were quickly being undermined by successive pieces of evidence. Sitting up, he found he was wearing, not stylish pajamas with their embroidered monogram, but a disturbingly dull, gray set, pants and long-sleeve shirt. But they weren’t plain, oh no. In the middle of the shirt, looking up at him with its (from his point of view) upside-down smile, a sick mockery that didn’t seem so funny now that he was on the receiving end, was a yellow smiley-face.
He was already looking to the door with increasing dread before the handle even turned and the nurse walked in. He stared at her in absolute disgust, but remained quiet as she closed the door behind her, adjusting her clipboard, checking her notes before she addressed the man.
“Well, good morning,” she said with a practiced smile that, had Landel not used the same one (#27, “I’m happy to meet to you, just as you’re happy to meet me!”) on many, many occasions, including practicing it in front of the mirror every day along with the other 126, he might have confused it for genuine pleasure at greeting him. Were he not in such a sudden state of disarray and surprise, he might have smiled convincingly (#25, “The world is indeed beautiful, for that is the way that I wish it to be.”). Instead, the best he could manage was a harried grimace (#87, “Fuck you and your unborn children too; does this look like a good morning to you?”).
“Urgh…” he managed to grumble, not trusting himself to use coherent vocabulary quite yet.
“I’m sorry you feel that way; the sedatives can sometimes upset the tummy,” said the nurse (#34, “I sympathize with your pain, and though I try my best, there’s nothing I can do about it. Deal with it.”), obviously confusing his baleful glare for an expression of unfortunate physical discomfort (#61, “Alas, no, do not worry yourself about me; I will survive; merely seeing you is all the comfort I need”). Not to say that he wasn’t in physical discomfort, but Landel was sure that had little do with drugs that he most certainly didn’t use on arriving patients, and more to do with the terrible, coarse-weave fiber that covered his body in a loose, gray layer.
“But, I’m sure all you need is a little breakfast to clear that up, right, Mr. Doyle?” she continued. “Now, let’s get your slippers on and we can-”
“That’s not my name,” he started in a futile protest he had seen dozens of times before, yet could not stop himself from repeating. “My name is Martin La…”
His voice traced off as he took a moment to analyze what the nurse had actually said.
“Wait, what did you just call me?” he asked her, staring with haunted eyes.
“Mr. Doyle,” she said with a nervous smile (#52, “I’ve seen this before, yes, I have; you don’t scare me, no, you don’t… now don’t come any closer.”), “That’s your name. Alec Doyle.”
It wasn’t until thirty minutes later that Landel, writhing and twitching in spasms on the ground, managed to stop laughing, during which time two orderlies were called in, as was a doctor to ensure that he was, in fact, just laughing because something was that funny, not because he was going into a seizure or some other medical condition that caused crazed, gasping laughter to spill forth from one’s mouth like a torrent of shit from a busted sewer drain. Unfortunately, the Psychotic Cackling Show resumed after a short commercial break the moment the nurse asked “Mr. Doyle” if he’d like to go to breakfast now, and didn’t end for another twelve minutes. Airing resumed in short fits of giggles at each mention of the name, but Dr. Landel managed to keep this to a minimum and remain standing so that the nurse, still convincing herself this was no worse than any of the other poor souls in this place (after all, hadn’t one of the patients stabbed dear Lizzy just the other day? Yes, compared to this, breathless, insane laughter was nothing!), could lead him from his room, down the halls and towards the cafeteria, where breakfast was in full swing.
========================================================================
Landel smiled politely (#73, “Thank you for your assistance; now please do me the favor of shutting the hell up and going away.”) at the nurse as she seated him and his breakfast at a table across from a young man, claiming he should meet some of the other patients and get to know them. He quickly progressed through smiles #74-76 before she took a hint and left him.
A quick glance informed him that breakfast included bacon and scrambled eggs; Landel thanked his amazing foresight in serving the patients actually decent food, much as he preferred sausage to bacon and sunny-side-up to scrambled. This was pure heaven compared to what other evil, egomaniacal god-scientists would serve their “patients” for breakfast, if they served them breakfast at all. He was somewhat insulted by the brightly colored bowl of cereal the nurse had gotten him, though his Inner Child (the one that gleefully laughed whenever a patient stubbed their toe and still thought the “caught your wee-wee in your zipper” monster was a much better candidate for Bathroom Lurker than some stupid shadow thing that lives in the mirrors) was nostalgically delighted to see the processed little rings, despite being mildly annoyed at being served a no-name knock-off (further annoying his adult ego, which tried to patiently explain, to no avail, that there is not even a molecular difference between brand-name Kellogg’s Fruit Loops and generic Hoops of Fruit). That said, he was already sampling the orange juice (which, thanks to his high standard of food quality, was indeed juice made from oranges, and not juice that just happened to be orange) when he took a second to look across the table at who the nurse had seated him with.
“Hello,” said Johnny C. with his ever present, often seen, yet nonetheless quite disturbing now that it wasn’t on the other side of television monitor bug-eyed stare. A particularly twisted smile accompanied the greeting, not in the least made any smoother by the specks of bacon and hash browns (“Why didn’t I get hash browns?” cried Inner Landel) stuck between his teeth. Minus the food particles, the expression itself was not unlike one of the triple-digits that Landel had not yet found an occasion to use, at least not in public.
“Hello,” replied Landel with a patient smile (#48, “Thank you for coming, but visiting hours are now over.”).
“My name’s Johnny. But you can call me Nny,” said the homicidal maniac, shoveling more hash and fried strips of pig into his mouth. “For short,” he added, as if Landel might not understand why a person would have a name, but want to be called something other than their whole name.
“I’m Landel. Martin Landel,” replied the doctor (#13, “Two can play that game.”).
“Like… the head doctor guy?” asked Nny, one eye giving a nervous twitch as his fork halted halfway in its ascendant journey to his mouth.
“Yes, exactly like the ‘head doctor guy’,” he confirmed.
“So… if I stab you, does that mean I get to go back?” With surprising and disturbing speed, a silverware knife flashed into the killer’s free hand.
“No, if you stab me, you get to spend the rest of the morning sedated,” corrected Landel (#51, “I’m not impressed by your barbaric attempts at threatening me, nowputtheknifedownplease.”), pointing a thumb over his shoulder at some of the nurses and orderlies who were in the middle of giving Mr. Bourne what was quickly becoming a regularly scheduled nap.
“Oh. Okay,” said Nny. Apparently satisfied with his answer, he put the hovering forkful of food into his mouth and turned his knife on his scrambled eggs, cutting the yellow mass into obscene messages.
“Yes,” said the doctor, pleasantly surprised by his sudden dropping of the topic. After several seconds of awkward silence, he turned his attention to his Hoops of Fruit.
They were delicious.
========================================================================
Landel was mildly disturbed at the sound of his own voice (# 35, “How’s everyone doing? It only gets better from here!”) making enthusiastic platitudes across the intercom, and the particularly personal tone that, despite knowing what it was like to speak those words and therefore knowing such was not the case, made it sound like he was addressing him personally. However, before he could ponder whether whoever was behind this was using a synthesizer, a recording (made while he was unconscious?) or was just very good at impressions, an attendant came to take away his empty trays and lead him out of the cafeteria.
“And now it’s time for activities in the Arts and Craft’s room, Mr. Doyle!” said his nurse cheerfully (#28, “Today is going to be fun fun fun!”); Landel, stifling a giggle, dourly noted that this was not even the same woman that had been leading him around earlier this morning, though if he had not been specifically trying to note so, he would never have noticed. He was rather ambivalent on whether he should feel pleased to make such mind-numbing wardens, or concerned that this showed a lack of creativity and originality on his part.
“I don’t feel so well,” he lied, (an actual use of #61, and not just #87 being mistaken for it by disturbingly cheerful and unobservant nurse). “Could I rest in the, ah, Sun Room?”
“Oh, did you hear about the different rooms at breakfast? Well, okay then. It’s right this way.”
Once he arrived, it took another succession of the low #70’s to get his nurse to leave him alone; again, he felt a vague sense of accomplishment at succeeding in making this place the most pleasant, flowery hell to ever exist, overwhelmingly tempered with a growing annoyance at being on the receiving end of his masterpiece.
Ah, the bulletin board. Sure, he kept tabs on it, but it had been ages since he had actually taken the time to read it in person. What were the patients up to these days?
The clubs. With their oh-so-clever nicknames. Because no one could tell what that they weren’t really about cooking and history and such. Of course, thinking about it, he only had himself to blame; it was he who made the nurses sensor any mention of weapons or other unseemly activity, yet did not give them orders regarding thinly veiled euphemisms for those same activities. Maybe he should start punishing them directly for messages that weren’t encoded cleverly enough?
And then there was the “anonymous” poster. Posters. Oh, Mello, you and all your little compatriots. Playing your little information games. As if it would accomplish anything; the basement and the coliseum and all that was set up for a reason, you know? Well, besides my perverse entertainment.
And did he think there was really any reason for the temporal dysfunction other than the fact that Landel liked to keep the weather running according to his calendar, and not the Institute’s? Which reminded him, agonizingly, that every minute spent here was hours lost on the outside. How disturbing. He needed to fix this, and fast… but unfortunately, the most surefire way to find out the source of these problems would have to wait until nightfall. Besides, he had more immediate problems.
“You!”
Like crazy monkey boy here.
“You bastard!”
Snapped out of his funk by the sight of a face nothing less than burned into his memories, Goku was quickly making his way across the Sun Room, not giving a damn who was looking his way. Before Landel could much more than turn to face him, the boy’s fist connected with his jaw, sending him flying back against the bulletin board, which promptly exploded in a flurry of paper.
“You’d dare to even show your face here, after that night!?” Goku continued shouting, jumping on him and slugging Landel again.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” growled Landel (#15, “See how much I’m smiling? That’s how much you’re going to regret this.”), and honestly he didn’t; he couldn’t think of a single reason the boy would want to punch his face in. Other than the whole “trapped in a demonic institute of hell” thing, but you didn’t see anyone else punching him, did you?
“Even if you weren’t the one with the lightsaber, Sanzo’s death is your fault, Landel!” he shouted, punching him again.
“Nurse, nurse, crazy rabid monkey here! Please assist!” shouted Landel to anyone who cared to listen, before turning his attention back to Goku. “I believe you are mistaken, sir. My name is Erik Nightlow, a wizard.”
Personally, his Inner Child remembered the knight being the cooler of the fantasy duo Landel had made-up in his youth, but somehow he got the feeling that no one would believe him to be some muscular dragon-slayer with his body. Not to mention the name “Sir Swordsalot the Awesome”.
“You think I’d forget your face? Then you’ve got another thing comiiiigggguurgllglgl…” Goku slumped to the side, a hypodermic needle in his neck filling him full of chemically induced serenity.
“Thank you,” he said (#43, “I am grateful for your assistance, but that was not, by any stretch of the imagination, what I would call ‘good service’.”) as nurse helped him up, two orderlies dragging off the peacefully drooling Goku.
“Let’s get those looked at, hmm?” suggested the nurse. Landel’s first instinct was to protest, but noticing the number of people staring at him, he instead covered his bruised face with his hands and moaned piteously in agreement before accompanying the nurse out of the Sun Room in a stealthy getaway.
========================================================================
Armed now with bandages and an ice-pack to cover most of his face, Landel decided that while certainly many of the patients didn’t know his real face, it was apparent that a few did recognize and were more than willing to help make it unrecognizable, and it couldn’t hurt (anymore than it already did) to disguise his stunning good looks.
“That was an unfortunate scrape you had in the Sun Room,” said Nurse #4 as they walked down the halls. “I really do apologize; most patients are so well-behaved, but every now and then you get one like that… Well, at least you weren’t hurt too seriously! Otherwise you might have missed lunch!”
#61 was used to convey his own regret at being physically beaten in the face, but was soon followed by #73-76 as he assured the nurse that he could get his own food, which was in turn replaced by #86 when the cafeteria worker refused to let the meat-to-bun ratio in his hamburger exceed 3:1. Grouchy, and sure that he was getting less than a healthy amount of dead flesh in his diet, Landel seated himself at the nearest bench available. There was a young girl seated across from him, but either his disguise was working or she simply didn’t recognize him; either way, no sudden shouts or threats were made, nor were any punches thrown. It probably helped that she was half-blind, what with the scarring around the lifeless, off-color left eye. Subtle, but then, he was a doctor, after all.
“You’re new?” she said, not looking up from the salad she was pushing around with far more vehemence than any vegetable could possibly merit. Gone was the insecure, confused child that first entered, this was most definitely angry Hinamori Momo. A marked improvement in Landel’s eyes.
“I am and I’m not,” said Landel with a shrug, spitting out the sentence between bites of burger (No smile; consuming greasy chunks of protein was far more important than facial pleasantries). “But today’s the first time I’ve been out of my room and out on the floor in a long while.”
“I see… and already you’re all banged up,” she noted.
“As are you,” he replied. “Was it one of those monsters I’ve heard about?”
“Actually, it was another patient,” said Hinamori. Was that bitterness? Or was she just gloomy? Landel was more an expert on different kinds of smiles; he really didn’t care what kind of misery his patients were in, as long as they were miserable.
“One of those possessed patients, was it?” he murmured as he stuffed fries into his mouth along with the mash of meat and bread that was already in there, licking the salt and grease off his fingers with more delight that probably any other patient in the room. Except maybe that girl over there. But she was a special case.
“Actually, no,” said the shinigami firmly. “She was quite aware of what she was doing, and was doing it of her own, twisted will.”
“Oh, that’s so sad,” said Landel. And it really was; one of the more hilarious injuries he’d seen in days, and it hadn’t even been his fault? It just did not get any more disappointing than that. Getting over his discontent and swallowing the last of his burger, he flashed her a meat-speckled grin (#4, “Damn, that was tasty!”; food stuck between teeth optional and to be used at discretion). “Well, I hope you got her good for it.”
Hinamori looked decidedly uncomfortable with his “encouragement” and opted out of answering by finally putting some of her mangled salad in her mouth. Now, that was better. She was troubled by it, at least a little. Nothing was more annoying than those holier-than-thou idiots who never doubted a single thing they did.
“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you,” he said, getting up with his empty tray. “Hopefully we’ll speak again soon.”
Only next time, it’ll be through a PA system, with any luck, he thought to himself.
========================================================================
So, to wit, Landel had learned one important fact: there was a definite time gap. Neither Hinamori’s injuries nor Sanzo’s death were things he remembered. So between going to sleep in his quarters and waking up on the wrong side of the doctor-patient relationship, at least a day, if not multiple days, had passed.
Where did the time go?
Perhaps the bastard who’d set this trap wasn’t nearly as skilled as Landel and required such a time gap to configure the institute to accept Landel, and he had merely been put unconscious for a few days. It was possible.
He checked his wrist, only to remember that he hadn’t gone through with the plan to cut himself daily to keep track of his biological time. Plus, the very nature of the institute messed with regeneration rates anyway, so it would have been moot.
Pondering these mysteries, Landel barely even noticed as he was escorted to the game room, so engrossed was he in his thoughts that he didn’t so much as snicker at being called “Mr. Doyle”. Taking a seat on a couch, Landel was quick to find that “free time to ponder your existence and how to solve it” was not on the list of encouraged activities for patients, as two others came over to interrupt his cogitation.
“Who’s on the couch?” asked Luxord whimsically as he came walking up, flicking a stack of cards from one hand to the other.
“Who is on the couch,” replied Xigbar with a wide grin, slapping a glue-covered piece of paper onto Landel’s forehead in a blatant violation of his personal space. Groaning, Landel pulled the sticky mass off his face to find it was a crude imitation of a nametag stating, “Hello, my name is WHO”.
“Abbot and Costello is a two-person comedy routine; adding a third party to it completely ruins the premise, balance and flow,” said the doctor flatly (#23, “Your stupidity is such that I am honestly amazed you don’t simply combust in the mere presence of my brilliance.”), wadding up the gluey mess and throwing it across the room, where it neatly embedded itself into Sora’s spiked mass he called “hair” without the boy even noticing, causing Xigbar to give a low whistle. “Unless, of course, you expected me to sit quietly and listen to you two prattle on. Did you?”
“Ah, he wounds us deeply! But yet such cunning insight cannot be faulted!” said Luxord in overdramatic fashion, such that it became impossible to tell whether he thought Landel had an actual point or not.
“Totally forgot they didn’t like audience participation,” said Xigbar, still watching Sora with an impressed look on his face as the boy walked out of the room with the thing still attached to the back of his head. Seriously, the kid brought new meaning to the word “oblivious”. “Nice shot, by the way.”
“So, gentlemen,” started Landel, trying, unsuccessfully, to wipe the glue off his forehead with some of the bandages that had come loose. The condensation from the no-longer-very-cold-but-still-comforting-and-good-as-a-disguise ice pack was mixing with the adhesive to form an uncomfortable gooey syrup that was threatening to trickle all down his face if not taken care of. “To what do I owe the displeasure?”
“Absolutely nothing,” said Luxord. “Complete chance.”
“Though you can give me a fiver if you like,” suggested Xigbar. Luxord gave him a look. The cyclops only shrugged. “What?”
“Of course; it’s what you do every day,” sighed Landel, shaking his head.
“Try to take over the world?” suggested the gambler, crooking an eyebrow.
“We should totally do that one some time,” laughed the sniper.
“Annoy the hell out of everyone else,” said Landel, gritting his teeth (#16, “I’m going to kill you, and it will be so good. SO. GOOD.”). “Is there anything I can do to convince Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum to go play Dynamic Duo somewhere else?”
“I thought mixing metaphors was frowned upon,” murmured Xigbar, scratching his chin thoughtfully.
“It most certainly is, my friend, it most certainly is,” said Luxord, shaking his head sadly before turning his attention back to Landel. “So, if we’re Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, does that make you Alice? Do you want to be the little girl?”
“Which is totally cool, dude, ‘cause, y’know, they don’t give dresses out here, so you can’t dress up, just so long as you don’t start skipping around and making daisy-crowns or anything creepy like that, that’s totally fine with me,” said Xigbar in a none too comforting manner.
“That somehow strikes me as odd, coming from the center axels of quite possibly the largest homoerotic love-polygon in the entire institute,” muttered Landel.
“I should point out there is a notable difference between mutual feeling of affection among members of the same gender and middle-aged men pretending to be prepubescent girls,” said Luxord.
“For one thing, I don’t think chicks rent pornos about the latter,” pointed out Xigbar.
“Quite right,” agreed the other Nobody. “We’re nowhere as creepy as you.”
“Whether or not that’s a true statement,” said thegood bad doctor, “I never agreed to be Alice.”
“And we never agreed to be Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum,” replied Luxord. “So we’re even.”
“Except when for that one time we tried to sneak into Wonderland with Axel to get shrooms,” corrected Xigbar.
“Where did he ever find that atrocious rabbit costume, anyway?” frowned Luxord, shuddering at the very memory of it. “Terrible, absolutely terrible.”
It was at the point the announcement system kicked in to, of all things, announce that the shift was over and that all patients were to be escorted back to their rooms for a delicious and nutritionally balanced dinner (#37, “I hope your day was as good as mine, because mine was fantastic!”). Never before had Landel been so glad to hear the sound of his own voice, and Landel was a man who was always very, very pleased to hear the sound of his own voice. He couldn’t help but smile gleefully (#12, “I’m winning! Not in ways that matter, but winning is winning!”) as the two Nobodies were taken away by their respective nurses, and even being led away by Nurse #6 to dinner couldn’t spoil his relief at being freed from their incessant chatter.
Now, just one more shift until nightfall.
========================================================================
Zabuza spent the majority of dinner staring at Landel with laser-like vision as he ate his food, sizing him up, watching for those little things that told you all you needed to know about a person right before you killed them.
Landel happily ignored him.
========================================================================
Ah, Nightshift. Finally.
A day in hell, but that was all about to end. Unless whatever bastard had put him in here had also completely reengineered the entire institute, running through this rat-maze would be easier than stealing candy from a baby, spitting in the baby’s face, then laughing maniacally as he devoured the candy before the baby’s crying eyes. Mostly because he knew how to run outside the maze. Oh yes.
Among other things, Nightshift meant he could stop covering his face with the gluey-gooey ice pack thanks to the lack of lights lowering the chances of someone recognizing his face and taking after Goku’s footsteps (or fist-prints). Mag-light in hand, Landel made his way to the end of the hall and to the bathrooms, where he proceeded to wash off the remnants of said gluey-gooey mess, ignoring the soul-sucking shadows in the mirror (“You wouldn’t be able to ignore a ‘caught your wee-wee in your zipper’ monster!” pointed out his Inner Child). After that, he proceeded through several secret passage ways that not even the smartest patients had found (because, almost by definition, the smartest patients didn’t waste time trying to climb into toilets or under sinks, or randomly dig at the floor tiles) until he came to the basement entrance, taking several off branches the only he (and most likely his mysterious captor) knew about. Everything went smoothly; monster and patients were avoided, and Landel hummed a happy tune as he went, the song accented by the screams of Landel’s favorite kind of people, those in pain.
It was not long at all before he came to the sanctum of sanctums, that holy of holies, the room of the master: Landel’s private room, from which he ruled the Institute with an ironically non-metal, yet all the more cruel and piercing hand. It was all as he remembered. The screens. The dials. The levers and switches, the video feeds and computerized diagrams. All of it. Beautiful. And in the middle of it, his high-backed swiveling chair, a classic evil accompaniment, faced away from him and towards the screens.
“Ah… Mist-ehr Lahndel,” said a thickly accented Russian voice from behind the chair. “I see you haff made it herr. And so fahst, too! I ahm surprihsed hyou made it herr so quickly. Naht even a fool day.”
“It’s my institute, what did you expect?” growled Landel, tightening his grip on his flashlight. Sure, the poor things might break when swung against a demon or a mutant nurse, but this man sounded human, and in the long standing war of human skulls versus metal flashlights, the winning team was clear.
“I expekt-edd hyou to per-haps take your time, enjoy the eksperriance,” said the voice.
“Then you’re an idiot,” said the doctor politely (#57, “Let’s agree to respect each other’s opinions, no matter how wrong yours might be.”).
“Juhst as I now expekt,” continued the speaker, as if he hadn’t even said anything, “that hwen I turn around, you will tell me ehvhry-sing you larned to-day. And zhen, I expekt, hwen I hand hyou dees gun, hyou hwill shoot hyourself in the hhead.”
“That shows how little you understand how I think,” snorted Landel, getting ready to leap and swing with flashlight.
“No,” said the man, dropping the accent and turning around in his chair, the promised gun in hand, “I know exactly how you think.”
========================================================================
Martin Landel stared down at his bloody corpse, lying at his feet, gun in hand, hole in head.
It was obvious, once he had seen it. It was an experiment. He had put himself in his own institute, without his own knowledge, to see the system from the inside. Because of how the institute worked, this created two Landels: the experimenter and the experimentee. But once they met, there was only one way to escape the experiment: one of them had to die. And of course, between the one who had run the experiment, was not out-of-sync with time, and was already in control and the one who was several months behind, uninformed, and only had a day’s worth of experimental test data to his name, it was clear which one.
And so, as predicted, Landel had told Landel everything he had learned that day. And then, when he was offered the gun, he shot himself in the head.
All according to plan.
Landel sat back in his throne, sighing contentedly as he watched the pooling blood spread out across the floor. And then he smiled.
(#1, “It’s good to be me.”)
Author: Kobayashi
Beta (if applicable): None
Word Count: 5,000
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Martin Landel, Landel's Inner Child, Nny, Jason Bourne, Son Goku, Hinamori Momo, Luxord, Xigbar, Sora, Zabuza
Pairing(s) (if applicable): Technically, Luxord and Xigbar happen to appear in the same scene...
Summary: Landel. In Landel's.
Notes (if applicable): I apologize for mangling anyone's character that is mentioned herein. Rest easy knowing they were mangled for the amusement of the masses.
A Day on the Inside
========================================================================
The first thing Martin Landel noticed upon waking was that his ultra-smooth and oh-so-nice silk sheets had been replaced with starched, bleached and most-definitely-not-silk-but-in-fact-could-it-be-oh-dear-god-what-depths-do-we-sink-to-cotton sheets.
It was unpleasant, to say the least.
The second thing he noticed, upon opening his eyes, was the ungodly bright and undeniably fluorescent lights. This was followed by the stark whiteness of the room, the stark lack of furniture, and the stark starkness of the room in general. No paintings. No wall hangings. No high-definition television giving him the latest updates on what the squirming ants in his “care” were up to. There was, however, a desk that certainly wasn’t in his room before, but then, it was probably safe to assume at this point that he was not, in fact, in his room.
In what was an understatement sure to do Captain, Major, and hell, even Admiral Obvious proud, Landel surmised that something was wrong.
The idea was already festering in his mind, but a healthy wall of denial was keeping it at bay for the moment. Unfortunately, such mental barriers were quickly being undermined by successive pieces of evidence. Sitting up, he found he was wearing, not stylish pajamas with their embroidered monogram, but a disturbingly dull, gray set, pants and long-sleeve shirt. But they weren’t plain, oh no. In the middle of the shirt, looking up at him with its (from his point of view) upside-down smile, a sick mockery that didn’t seem so funny now that he was on the receiving end, was a yellow smiley-face.
He was already looking to the door with increasing dread before the handle even turned and the nurse walked in. He stared at her in absolute disgust, but remained quiet as she closed the door behind her, adjusting her clipboard, checking her notes before she addressed the man.
“Well, good morning,” she said with a practiced smile that, had Landel not used the same one (#27, “I’m happy to meet to you, just as you’re happy to meet me!”) on many, many occasions, including practicing it in front of the mirror every day along with the other 126, he might have confused it for genuine pleasure at greeting him. Were he not in such a sudden state of disarray and surprise, he might have smiled convincingly (#25, “The world is indeed beautiful, for that is the way that I wish it to be.”). Instead, the best he could manage was a harried grimace (#87, “Fuck you and your unborn children too; does this look like a good morning to you?”).
“Urgh…” he managed to grumble, not trusting himself to use coherent vocabulary quite yet.
“I’m sorry you feel that way; the sedatives can sometimes upset the tummy,” said the nurse (#34, “I sympathize with your pain, and though I try my best, there’s nothing I can do about it. Deal with it.”), obviously confusing his baleful glare for an expression of unfortunate physical discomfort (#61, “Alas, no, do not worry yourself about me; I will survive; merely seeing you is all the comfort I need”). Not to say that he wasn’t in physical discomfort, but Landel was sure that had little do with drugs that he most certainly didn’t use on arriving patients, and more to do with the terrible, coarse-weave fiber that covered his body in a loose, gray layer.
“But, I’m sure all you need is a little breakfast to clear that up, right, Mr. Doyle?” she continued. “Now, let’s get your slippers on and we can-”
“That’s not my name,” he started in a futile protest he had seen dozens of times before, yet could not stop himself from repeating. “My name is Martin La…”
His voice traced off as he took a moment to analyze what the nurse had actually said.
“Wait, what did you just call me?” he asked her, staring with haunted eyes.
“Mr. Doyle,” she said with a nervous smile (#52, “I’ve seen this before, yes, I have; you don’t scare me, no, you don’t… now don’t come any closer.”), “That’s your name. Alec Doyle.”
It wasn’t until thirty minutes later that Landel, writhing and twitching in spasms on the ground, managed to stop laughing, during which time two orderlies were called in, as was a doctor to ensure that he was, in fact, just laughing because something was that funny, not because he was going into a seizure or some other medical condition that caused crazed, gasping laughter to spill forth from one’s mouth like a torrent of shit from a busted sewer drain. Unfortunately, the Psychotic Cackling Show resumed after a short commercial break the moment the nurse asked “Mr. Doyle” if he’d like to go to breakfast now, and didn’t end for another twelve minutes. Airing resumed in short fits of giggles at each mention of the name, but Dr. Landel managed to keep this to a minimum and remain standing so that the nurse, still convincing herself this was no worse than any of the other poor souls in this place (after all, hadn’t one of the patients stabbed dear Lizzy just the other day? Yes, compared to this, breathless, insane laughter was nothing!), could lead him from his room, down the halls and towards the cafeteria, where breakfast was in full swing.
========================================================================
Landel smiled politely (#73, “Thank you for your assistance; now please do me the favor of shutting the hell up and going away.”) at the nurse as she seated him and his breakfast at a table across from a young man, claiming he should meet some of the other patients and get to know them. He quickly progressed through smiles #74-76 before she took a hint and left him.
A quick glance informed him that breakfast included bacon and scrambled eggs; Landel thanked his amazing foresight in serving the patients actually decent food, much as he preferred sausage to bacon and sunny-side-up to scrambled. This was pure heaven compared to what other evil, egomaniacal god-scientists would serve their “patients” for breakfast, if they served them breakfast at all. He was somewhat insulted by the brightly colored bowl of cereal the nurse had gotten him, though his Inner Child (the one that gleefully laughed whenever a patient stubbed their toe and still thought the “caught your wee-wee in your zipper” monster was a much better candidate for Bathroom Lurker than some stupid shadow thing that lives in the mirrors) was nostalgically delighted to see the processed little rings, despite being mildly annoyed at being served a no-name knock-off (further annoying his adult ego, which tried to patiently explain, to no avail, that there is not even a molecular difference between brand-name Kellogg’s Fruit Loops and generic Hoops of Fruit). That said, he was already sampling the orange juice (which, thanks to his high standard of food quality, was indeed juice made from oranges, and not juice that just happened to be orange) when he took a second to look across the table at who the nurse had seated him with.
“Hello,” said Johnny C. with his ever present, often seen, yet nonetheless quite disturbing now that it wasn’t on the other side of television monitor bug-eyed stare. A particularly twisted smile accompanied the greeting, not in the least made any smoother by the specks of bacon and hash browns (“Why didn’t I get hash browns?” cried Inner Landel) stuck between his teeth. Minus the food particles, the expression itself was not unlike one of the triple-digits that Landel had not yet found an occasion to use, at least not in public.
“Hello,” replied Landel with a patient smile (#48, “Thank you for coming, but visiting hours are now over.”).
“My name’s Johnny. But you can call me Nny,” said the homicidal maniac, shoveling more hash and fried strips of pig into his mouth. “For short,” he added, as if Landel might not understand why a person would have a name, but want to be called something other than their whole name.
“I’m Landel. Martin Landel,” replied the doctor (#13, “Two can play that game.”).
“Like… the head doctor guy?” asked Nny, one eye giving a nervous twitch as his fork halted halfway in its ascendant journey to his mouth.
“Yes, exactly like the ‘head doctor guy’,” he confirmed.
“So… if I stab you, does that mean I get to go back?” With surprising and disturbing speed, a silverware knife flashed into the killer’s free hand.
“No, if you stab me, you get to spend the rest of the morning sedated,” corrected Landel (#51, “I’m not impressed by your barbaric attempts at threatening me, nowputtheknifedownplease.”), pointing a thumb over his shoulder at some of the nurses and orderlies who were in the middle of giving Mr. Bourne what was quickly becoming a regularly scheduled nap.
“Oh. Okay,” said Nny. Apparently satisfied with his answer, he put the hovering forkful of food into his mouth and turned his knife on his scrambled eggs, cutting the yellow mass into obscene messages.
“Yes,” said the doctor, pleasantly surprised by his sudden dropping of the topic. After several seconds of awkward silence, he turned his attention to his Hoops of Fruit.
They were delicious.
========================================================================
Landel was mildly disturbed at the sound of his own voice (# 35, “How’s everyone doing? It only gets better from here!”) making enthusiastic platitudes across the intercom, and the particularly personal tone that, despite knowing what it was like to speak those words and therefore knowing such was not the case, made it sound like he was addressing him personally. However, before he could ponder whether whoever was behind this was using a synthesizer, a recording (made while he was unconscious?) or was just very good at impressions, an attendant came to take away his empty trays and lead him out of the cafeteria.
“And now it’s time for activities in the Arts and Craft’s room, Mr. Doyle!” said his nurse cheerfully (#28, “Today is going to be fun fun fun!”); Landel, stifling a giggle, dourly noted that this was not even the same woman that had been leading him around earlier this morning, though if he had not been specifically trying to note so, he would never have noticed. He was rather ambivalent on whether he should feel pleased to make such mind-numbing wardens, or concerned that this showed a lack of creativity and originality on his part.
“I don’t feel so well,” he lied, (an actual use of #61, and not just #87 being mistaken for it by disturbingly cheerful and unobservant nurse). “Could I rest in the, ah, Sun Room?”
“Oh, did you hear about the different rooms at breakfast? Well, okay then. It’s right this way.”
Once he arrived, it took another succession of the low #70’s to get his nurse to leave him alone; again, he felt a vague sense of accomplishment at succeeding in making this place the most pleasant, flowery hell to ever exist, overwhelmingly tempered with a growing annoyance at being on the receiving end of his masterpiece.
Ah, the bulletin board. Sure, he kept tabs on it, but it had been ages since he had actually taken the time to read it in person. What were the patients up to these days?
The clubs. With their oh-so-clever nicknames. Because no one could tell what that they weren’t really about cooking and history and such. Of course, thinking about it, he only had himself to blame; it was he who made the nurses sensor any mention of weapons or other unseemly activity, yet did not give them orders regarding thinly veiled euphemisms for those same activities. Maybe he should start punishing them directly for messages that weren’t encoded cleverly enough?
And then there was the “anonymous” poster. Posters. Oh, Mello, you and all your little compatriots. Playing your little information games. As if it would accomplish anything; the basement and the coliseum and all that was set up for a reason, you know? Well, besides my perverse entertainment.
And did he think there was really any reason for the temporal dysfunction other than the fact that Landel liked to keep the weather running according to his calendar, and not the Institute’s? Which reminded him, agonizingly, that every minute spent here was hours lost on the outside. How disturbing. He needed to fix this, and fast… but unfortunately, the most surefire way to find out the source of these problems would have to wait until nightfall. Besides, he had more immediate problems.
“You!”
Like crazy monkey boy here.
“You bastard!”
Snapped out of his funk by the sight of a face nothing less than burned into his memories, Goku was quickly making his way across the Sun Room, not giving a damn who was looking his way. Before Landel could much more than turn to face him, the boy’s fist connected with his jaw, sending him flying back against the bulletin board, which promptly exploded in a flurry of paper.
“You’d dare to even show your face here, after that night!?” Goku continued shouting, jumping on him and slugging Landel again.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” growled Landel (#15, “See how much I’m smiling? That’s how much you’re going to regret this.”), and honestly he didn’t; he couldn’t think of a single reason the boy would want to punch his face in. Other than the whole “trapped in a demonic institute of hell” thing, but you didn’t see anyone else punching him, did you?
“Even if you weren’t the one with the lightsaber, Sanzo’s death is your fault, Landel!” he shouted, punching him again.
“Nurse, nurse, crazy rabid monkey here! Please assist!” shouted Landel to anyone who cared to listen, before turning his attention back to Goku. “I believe you are mistaken, sir. My name is Erik Nightlow, a wizard.”
Personally, his Inner Child remembered the knight being the cooler of the fantasy duo Landel had made-up in his youth, but somehow he got the feeling that no one would believe him to be some muscular dragon-slayer with his body. Not to mention the name “Sir Swordsalot the Awesome”.
“You think I’d forget your face? Then you’ve got another thing comiiiigggguurgllglgl…” Goku slumped to the side, a hypodermic needle in his neck filling him full of chemically induced serenity.
“Thank you,” he said (#43, “I am grateful for your assistance, but that was not, by any stretch of the imagination, what I would call ‘good service’.”) as nurse helped him up, two orderlies dragging off the peacefully drooling Goku.
“Let’s get those looked at, hmm?” suggested the nurse. Landel’s first instinct was to protest, but noticing the number of people staring at him, he instead covered his bruised face with his hands and moaned piteously in agreement before accompanying the nurse out of the Sun Room in a stealthy getaway.
========================================================================
Armed now with bandages and an ice-pack to cover most of his face, Landel decided that while certainly many of the patients didn’t know his real face, it was apparent that a few did recognize and were more than willing to help make it unrecognizable, and it couldn’t hurt (anymore than it already did) to disguise his stunning good looks.
“That was an unfortunate scrape you had in the Sun Room,” said Nurse #4 as they walked down the halls. “I really do apologize; most patients are so well-behaved, but every now and then you get one like that… Well, at least you weren’t hurt too seriously! Otherwise you might have missed lunch!”
#61 was used to convey his own regret at being physically beaten in the face, but was soon followed by #73-76 as he assured the nurse that he could get his own food, which was in turn replaced by #86 when the cafeteria worker refused to let the meat-to-bun ratio in his hamburger exceed 3:1. Grouchy, and sure that he was getting less than a healthy amount of dead flesh in his diet, Landel seated himself at the nearest bench available. There was a young girl seated across from him, but either his disguise was working or she simply didn’t recognize him; either way, no sudden shouts or threats were made, nor were any punches thrown. It probably helped that she was half-blind, what with the scarring around the lifeless, off-color left eye. Subtle, but then, he was a doctor, after all.
“You’re new?” she said, not looking up from the salad she was pushing around with far more vehemence than any vegetable could possibly merit. Gone was the insecure, confused child that first entered, this was most definitely angry Hinamori Momo. A marked improvement in Landel’s eyes.
“I am and I’m not,” said Landel with a shrug, spitting out the sentence between bites of burger (No smile; consuming greasy chunks of protein was far more important than facial pleasantries). “But today’s the first time I’ve been out of my room and out on the floor in a long while.”
“I see… and already you’re all banged up,” she noted.
“As are you,” he replied. “Was it one of those monsters I’ve heard about?”
“Actually, it was another patient,” said Hinamori. Was that bitterness? Or was she just gloomy? Landel was more an expert on different kinds of smiles; he really didn’t care what kind of misery his patients were in, as long as they were miserable.
“One of those possessed patients, was it?” he murmured as he stuffed fries into his mouth along with the mash of meat and bread that was already in there, licking the salt and grease off his fingers with more delight that probably any other patient in the room. Except maybe that girl over there. But she was a special case.
“Actually, no,” said the shinigami firmly. “She was quite aware of what she was doing, and was doing it of her own, twisted will.”
“Oh, that’s so sad,” said Landel. And it really was; one of the more hilarious injuries he’d seen in days, and it hadn’t even been his fault? It just did not get any more disappointing than that. Getting over his discontent and swallowing the last of his burger, he flashed her a meat-speckled grin (#4, “Damn, that was tasty!”; food stuck between teeth optional and to be used at discretion). “Well, I hope you got her good for it.”
Hinamori looked decidedly uncomfortable with his “encouragement” and opted out of answering by finally putting some of her mangled salad in her mouth. Now, that was better. She was troubled by it, at least a little. Nothing was more annoying than those holier-than-thou idiots who never doubted a single thing they did.
“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you,” he said, getting up with his empty tray. “Hopefully we’ll speak again soon.”
Only next time, it’ll be through a PA system, with any luck, he thought to himself.
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So, to wit, Landel had learned one important fact: there was a definite time gap. Neither Hinamori’s injuries nor Sanzo’s death were things he remembered. So between going to sleep in his quarters and waking up on the wrong side of the doctor-patient relationship, at least a day, if not multiple days, had passed.
Where did the time go?
Perhaps the bastard who’d set this trap wasn’t nearly as skilled as Landel and required such a time gap to configure the institute to accept Landel, and he had merely been put unconscious for a few days. It was possible.
He checked his wrist, only to remember that he hadn’t gone through with the plan to cut himself daily to keep track of his biological time. Plus, the very nature of the institute messed with regeneration rates anyway, so it would have been moot.
Pondering these mysteries, Landel barely even noticed as he was escorted to the game room, so engrossed was he in his thoughts that he didn’t so much as snicker at being called “Mr. Doyle”. Taking a seat on a couch, Landel was quick to find that “free time to ponder your existence and how to solve it” was not on the list of encouraged activities for patients, as two others came over to interrupt his cogitation.
“Who’s on the couch?” asked Luxord whimsically as he came walking up, flicking a stack of cards from one hand to the other.
“Who is on the couch,” replied Xigbar with a wide grin, slapping a glue-covered piece of paper onto Landel’s forehead in a blatant violation of his personal space. Groaning, Landel pulled the sticky mass off his face to find it was a crude imitation of a nametag stating, “Hello, my name is WHO”.
“Abbot and Costello is a two-person comedy routine; adding a third party to it completely ruins the premise, balance and flow,” said the doctor flatly (#23, “Your stupidity is such that I am honestly amazed you don’t simply combust in the mere presence of my brilliance.”), wadding up the gluey mess and throwing it across the room, where it neatly embedded itself into Sora’s spiked mass he called “hair” without the boy even noticing, causing Xigbar to give a low whistle. “Unless, of course, you expected me to sit quietly and listen to you two prattle on. Did you?”
“Ah, he wounds us deeply! But yet such cunning insight cannot be faulted!” said Luxord in overdramatic fashion, such that it became impossible to tell whether he thought Landel had an actual point or not.
“Totally forgot they didn’t like audience participation,” said Xigbar, still watching Sora with an impressed look on his face as the boy walked out of the room with the thing still attached to the back of his head. Seriously, the kid brought new meaning to the word “oblivious”. “Nice shot, by the way.”
“So, gentlemen,” started Landel, trying, unsuccessfully, to wipe the glue off his forehead with some of the bandages that had come loose. The condensation from the no-longer-very-cold-but-still-comforting-and-good-as-a-disguise ice pack was mixing with the adhesive to form an uncomfortable gooey syrup that was threatening to trickle all down his face if not taken care of. “To what do I owe the displeasure?”
“Absolutely nothing,” said Luxord. “Complete chance.”
“Though you can give me a fiver if you like,” suggested Xigbar. Luxord gave him a look. The cyclops only shrugged. “What?”
“Of course; it’s what you do every day,” sighed Landel, shaking his head.
“Try to take over the world?” suggested the gambler, crooking an eyebrow.
“We should totally do that one some time,” laughed the sniper.
“Annoy the hell out of everyone else,” said Landel, gritting his teeth (#16, “I’m going to kill you, and it will be so good. SO. GOOD.”). “Is there anything I can do to convince Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum to go play Dynamic Duo somewhere else?”
“I thought mixing metaphors was frowned upon,” murmured Xigbar, scratching his chin thoughtfully.
“It most certainly is, my friend, it most certainly is,” said Luxord, shaking his head sadly before turning his attention back to Landel. “So, if we’re Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, does that make you Alice? Do you want to be the little girl?”
“Which is totally cool, dude, ‘cause, y’know, they don’t give dresses out here, so you can’t dress up, just so long as you don’t start skipping around and making daisy-crowns or anything creepy like that, that’s totally fine with me,” said Xigbar in a none too comforting manner.
“That somehow strikes me as odd, coming from the center axels of quite possibly the largest homoerotic love-polygon in the entire institute,” muttered Landel.
“I should point out there is a notable difference between mutual feeling of affection among members of the same gender and middle-aged men pretending to be prepubescent girls,” said Luxord.
“For one thing, I don’t think chicks rent pornos about the latter,” pointed out Xigbar.
“Quite right,” agreed the other Nobody. “We’re nowhere as creepy as you.”
“Whether or not that’s a true statement,” said the
“And we never agreed to be Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum,” replied Luxord. “So we’re even.”
“Except when for that one time we tried to sneak into Wonderland with Axel to get shrooms,” corrected Xigbar.
“Where did he ever find that atrocious rabbit costume, anyway?” frowned Luxord, shuddering at the very memory of it. “Terrible, absolutely terrible.”
It was at the point the announcement system kicked in to, of all things, announce that the shift was over and that all patients were to be escorted back to their rooms for a delicious and nutritionally balanced dinner (#37, “I hope your day was as good as mine, because mine was fantastic!”). Never before had Landel been so glad to hear the sound of his own voice, and Landel was a man who was always very, very pleased to hear the sound of his own voice. He couldn’t help but smile gleefully (#12, “I’m winning! Not in ways that matter, but winning is winning!”) as the two Nobodies were taken away by their respective nurses, and even being led away by Nurse #6 to dinner couldn’t spoil his relief at being freed from their incessant chatter.
Now, just one more shift until nightfall.
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Zabuza spent the majority of dinner staring at Landel with laser-like vision as he ate his food, sizing him up, watching for those little things that told you all you needed to know about a person right before you killed them.
Landel happily ignored him.
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Ah, Nightshift. Finally.
A day in hell, but that was all about to end. Unless whatever bastard had put him in here had also completely reengineered the entire institute, running through this rat-maze would be easier than stealing candy from a baby, spitting in the baby’s face, then laughing maniacally as he devoured the candy before the baby’s crying eyes. Mostly because he knew how to run outside the maze. Oh yes.
Among other things, Nightshift meant he could stop covering his face with the gluey-gooey ice pack thanks to the lack of lights lowering the chances of someone recognizing his face and taking after Goku’s footsteps (or fist-prints). Mag-light in hand, Landel made his way to the end of the hall and to the bathrooms, where he proceeded to wash off the remnants of said gluey-gooey mess, ignoring the soul-sucking shadows in the mirror (“You wouldn’t be able to ignore a ‘caught your wee-wee in your zipper’ monster!” pointed out his Inner Child). After that, he proceeded through several secret passage ways that not even the smartest patients had found (because, almost by definition, the smartest patients didn’t waste time trying to climb into toilets or under sinks, or randomly dig at the floor tiles) until he came to the basement entrance, taking several off branches the only he (and most likely his mysterious captor) knew about. Everything went smoothly; monster and patients were avoided, and Landel hummed a happy tune as he went, the song accented by the screams of Landel’s favorite kind of people, those in pain.
It was not long at all before he came to the sanctum of sanctums, that holy of holies, the room of the master: Landel’s private room, from which he ruled the Institute with an ironically non-metal, yet all the more cruel and piercing hand. It was all as he remembered. The screens. The dials. The levers and switches, the video feeds and computerized diagrams. All of it. Beautiful. And in the middle of it, his high-backed swiveling chair, a classic evil accompaniment, faced away from him and towards the screens.
“Ah… Mist-ehr Lahndel,” said a thickly accented Russian voice from behind the chair. “I see you haff made it herr. And so fahst, too! I ahm surprihsed hyou made it herr so quickly. Naht even a fool day.”
“It’s my institute, what did you expect?” growled Landel, tightening his grip on his flashlight. Sure, the poor things might break when swung against a demon or a mutant nurse, but this man sounded human, and in the long standing war of human skulls versus metal flashlights, the winning team was clear.
“I expekt-edd hyou to per-haps take your time, enjoy the eksperriance,” said the voice.
“Then you’re an idiot,” said the doctor politely (#57, “Let’s agree to respect each other’s opinions, no matter how wrong yours might be.”).
“Juhst as I now expekt,” continued the speaker, as if he hadn’t even said anything, “that hwen I turn around, you will tell me ehvhry-sing you larned to-day. And zhen, I expekt, hwen I hand hyou dees gun, hyou hwill shoot hyourself in the hhead.”
“That shows how little you understand how I think,” snorted Landel, getting ready to leap and swing with flashlight.
“No,” said the man, dropping the accent and turning around in his chair, the promised gun in hand, “I know exactly how you think.”
========================================================================
Martin Landel stared down at his bloody corpse, lying at his feet, gun in hand, hole in head.
It was obvious, once he had seen it. It was an experiment. He had put himself in his own institute, without his own knowledge, to see the system from the inside. Because of how the institute worked, this created two Landels: the experimenter and the experimentee. But once they met, there was only one way to escape the experiment: one of them had to die. And of course, between the one who had run the experiment, was not out-of-sync with time, and was already in control and the one who was several months behind, uninformed, and only had a day’s worth of experimental test data to his name, it was clear which one.
And so, as predicted, Landel had told Landel everything he had learned that day. And then, when he was offered the gun, he shot himself in the head.
All according to plan.
Landel sat back in his throne, sighing contentedly as he watched the pooling blood spread out across the floor. And then he smiled.
(#1, “It’s good to be me.”)
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Brilliantly entertaining is an understatement. :D
I always assumed that the process of bringing a patient to Landel's involves creating a copy of the original, given how personal timelines and memories work in this game. Made perfect sense even when applied to Landel himself. Characterization of everyone involved seemed great, based on what I've read of the archives, too. Good show!
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The original plan was just "Let's put Landel in Landel's!" and see what wacky hijinks ensue. Actually making a plot and reason behind it came about halfway through.
I've been stalking since about August, so I mostly only used characters that I've been watching or that I know from their original series. I kinda wanted Landel to have dinner with Dante, so it could consist of "Fuck you!", but I didn't want to disrupt the continuity that he already has a roommate, so I went with Zabbers instead.
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Also, though Dante would have been fun, the Zabuza glaring was just priceless. I loved that. XD
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Regularly scheduled nap, indeed. xD He'll probably build up a resistance to the drugs within a week, at this rate.
But aside from the grin that came with the name-drop, very well done! :D I figure Landel would be just so twisted as to do that to himself.
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and brb, making Jade use the name "Sir Swordsalot the Awesome" for a D&D antagonist.
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