ext_204858 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
blackberet.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_lounge2009-10-31 12:38 am
blackberet.livejournal.com) wrote in damned_lounge2009-10-31 12:38 am
Entry tags:
Oktoberfest '09: The Game (Part II) by Elisabeth
Title: The Game (Part II)
Author: Elisabeth (Indy- and Meche-mun)
Word Count: 4,950
Rating: PG-13/R, for language, character deaths and thinly-veiled sensuality.
Character(s): Appearances or mentions of: Peter Parker, von Karma, Edward Cullen, Falis, Hokuto, Indiana Jones, Yuffie, Minamimoto Sho, Evangeline, Lelouch, Harvey Dent, the Goddamned Batman, Seta Souji, Arisato Minato, Badou, HK-47, SECRET SPECIAL GUEST STAR, Honey, Landel, Jack, Lydia, I.R.I.S., Sylar, Tony Stark, Wolverine, Sam and Dean Winchester, Harley Quinn, Artemis, Sam (of Sam and Max)
Pairing(s): Falis/Hokuto, Lelouch/his soulmate, Sam/Dean(??!!)
Summary: Battle Royale at Landel's.
Notes: Part I is here. Again, I've used several cuts so you can stalk your faves easily or read straight through. Enjoy!
--
Oblivious to the cycles of life and death around him, Peter Parker was still going strong. “…AND THEN HARRY CAME BACK TO LIFE AS A ZOMBIE AND TRIED TO KILL ME EVEN THOUGH I JUST WANTED TO HELP HIM. I TRY, I MEAN REALLY TRY, TO REACH OUT TO MY SO-CALLED FRIENDS, EVEN WHEN THEY DO ASSHOLE THINGS LIKE DATING MY GIRLFRIEND OR COMING BACK AS AN UNDEAD MONSTER, AND THIS IS THE THANKS I GET? AND THEN HE DIED AGAIN AND…”
--
Revenge, it has been said, is a dish best served cold. Manfred von Karma was not ordinarily one to put stock in the maxims of the common rabble, but in this instance he found the principle sound. So when the boy insolently pointed out a “logical fallacy” in his flawless argument over lunch one day, von Karma mastered his temper and waited. He was nothing if not a patient man. He had invested years in the settling of one score; he knew that to do so, to lay one’s traps seamlessly, could only increase the satisfaction to be had on the day of fruition. But a mere three days later, absurd though it was, Landel’s little game presented him with the perfect opportunity for payback.
And a box of Saran Wrap.
Von Karma found this almost as infuriating as the original insult, but he was as resourceful as he was patient. He would play the hand he had been dealt.
Finding the boy was the work of a few minutes; he’d obtained the room number well in advance. Gaining admittance to the room (to avoid eyewitnesses; though they were easy enough to discredit, a von Karma did not take unnecessary chances) was surprisingly easy as well. The boy spoke with almost exaggerated politeness, as though mocking him. Then he said: “I suppose you’ve come to kill me.”
Von Karma sneered, a response vastly superior to expressing the surprise he really felt at that moment. “Hah! On what evidence do you base this wild accusation?”
“It’s a simple enough guess, given tonight’s events, and I’ve heard about you.” The boy was calm, maddeningly calm. “Please, feel free to do as you will. If you’re foolish enough to think killing me will change the fact that you had your facts wrong, I won’t stop you.”
Rage flooded von Karma’s senses. “A mere boy—!“
“Wrong again, Prosecutor.”
Von Karma lunged. He was a vigorous man for his age, and he easily overpowered the slight teenager, stretching several carefully-prepared layers of Saran Wrap over the boy’s nose and mouth.
The boy struggled at first—not in any substantial way, nothing that threatened to break von Karma’s powerful grip—and, slowly, his body slackened. Von Karma waited several full minutes to ensure that the job had been done perfectly, then cautiously peeled one corner of the Saran Wrap away and listened. The boy was not breathing. He folded the Saran Wrap neatly, with gloved hands, and turned to go. Now he only had to find some fool with his guard down on whom he could plant the weapon.
Without warning, an inhumanly strong hand clenched around his shoulder. Von Karma found himself being spun around to stare into the face of the boy he just killed.
“How—” he spluttered.
Edward Cullen stared back at him with cold eyes. “I don’t breathe,” he said shortly, gripping tighter as he craned his head in toward the old man’s neck.
--
The Hunter was hunting tonight.
It was fast and vicious, taking what it wanted, ravaging its prey with little regard and no remorse. Its very appearance should have been a warning to any hapless passer-by foolish enough to wander into its lair: its body was obscured by a long cascade of blonde hair, tangled to Gordian knots by exertion and wild movement, but more importantly, the pupils of its crimson eyes had narrowed to vertical slits. It was rapacious, insatiable. And it clawed and bit like the feral beast it was, raking red lines and digging red imprints of its teeth into its prey’s flesh, aggressively marking that prey as the Hunter’s own. The Hunter roared with the primal thrill of dominance, so loudly that it almost didn’t hear the prey when it at last spoke up.
“Um...Falis?” Hokuto said tentatively, lifting her head from the pillow. “Maybe not so hard?”
--
“…SO ONE MINUTE I’M SINGING SHOW TUNES AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN IT’S RIGHT BACK TO MAKING WITTY QUIPS AND BREAKING SOME KID’S ARM, AND NOBODY UNDERSTANDS WHAT THAT KIND OF THING DOES TO A GUY INSIDE…”
--
Indiana Jones wasn’t one to brag (too much), but objectively he was a pretty tough guy. He had fallen into a train car of live snakes, outrun a speeding boulder, nearly had his heart ripped out of his chest, and survived something that had felt an awful lot like divine wrath from the Ark of the Covenant itself (though no doubt it had some easily-identifiable scientific explanation). Tonight alone, he’d gutted out some minor stab wounds, two bullet holes, more punches than he could count, and a yellow foam dart to the eye.
So he couldn’t quite fathom how he was getting his hat handed to him by a teenage girl.
The four-pronged blade came sailing at him again; Indy ducked so late that it almost shaved the top of his fedora. He cracked the whip toward it, trying to snag it out of the air or at least stop it from coming back to her. It fell short. Indy winced—Jesus Christ, the wounds in his shoulder felt like they had live coals in them.
The kid caught her weapon and smirked. Indy didn’t know whether this was some kind of game to her or whether she’d just lost it, but either way, she didn’t look like she was letting up anytime soon.
In his defense, it had been a long night. But that wasn’t doing a hell of a lot right now for his ego—or his injuries. If someone walked in and offered him a choice between continuing to deal with this kid and trying to outrun that speeding boulder, Indy would cheerfully take his chances with the rock.
She was rearing back for another throw. Better think fast.
“Hold on a minute!” he said. “ That weapon—that’s a shuriken, isn’t it? Looks like early Edo period.” Indy didn’t have a clue when it was from; Japanese history wasn’t his strong suit. He was stalling desperately for time. “You know, that could really be worth something. If you were smart, you’d quit trying to embed it in people and get out of here with it; sell it and make a fortune. It belongs in a museum!”
Raw greed flickered across her face, and Indy was just about to let out the breath he was holding when she shrugged and grinned, in the manner of someone who’s about to make a joke and laugh louder than anyone else at it. “Pretty good line there!” she snickered. “But I say it belongs in your skull!”
Well, Indy just had time to think as the blade hurtled toward his forehead, damn. That line never did work.
--
“…Y’ALL DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE / BEING MALE, MIDDLE-CLASS AND WHITE…”
--
It had taken form nicely: 4 long tables, 29 plastic chairs, now piled up at h ~ 2.95656 m, l ~ 6.096 m, w ~ 1.2192 m; the result of t = 87.23 minutes of labor; and all with the crowning touch of d sticks of dynamite underneath. D was a constant, unknown because Sho had just dumped all the sticks he had onto the cafeteria floor without counting them. He stepped back to survey his work and cackled. This art project was looking zetta good!
The only factor that could subtract from his enjoyment was the addition of one of the seemingly infinite number of annoying yoctograms who populated the Institute. So obviously, one of the most annoying of all showed up almost immediately.
“You again?” Evangeline demanded as soon as she entered the room. It was that math boy from the bus, coming back like a bad smell. The fact that she had been the one to approach him this time was lost on her.
Sho did a 180 and nearly foamed at the mouth when he saw the intruder. She was wearing a bulletproof vest over some frilly dress—two mismatched halves of a botched equation. “That’s my line, Nanobrat II!”
“Pity you weren’t smart enough to come up with it first,” the shinso taunted.
Lacking a comeback, Sho through a chair. Evangeline dodged easily. “Ah, the advantages of being ‘byte-sized.’” She approached his sculpture with a mocking smile on her face. “What’s all this garbage?”
“It’s art!” Sho spluttered.
“Listen, human. I lived through the Renaissance; I viewed some of the greatest works in human history before the paint was dry.” Whether that was true or not didn’t matter; it wasn’t as though this lowly human had any way to check. She came closer to the tables, putting a hand out to push one over. “I’ve seen art. This junk heap isn’t it.”
“Don’t touch it, hectopascal!”
“Oh, are you sensitive about it? I had no idea.” She smirked.
Sho knew that great art should always be explosive, but this braindead binomial didn’t have a clue how well he’d fulfilled that mission. “Are you deaf, or do you just have the intellectual capacity of a paramecium?!” he spat. “Unbalance that equation and you’ll convert us all into imaginary numbers!”
“Fine, then. I won’t.” Evangeline sniffed disdainfully. Sho had just finished inhaling for the sigh of relief when she continued, “I’ll just add one last touch to make sure it has the proper…electrifying effect on your viewing public.” And with a wicked smile on her face, she made a downward-sweeping gesture and invoked the spell in ancient Greek: axe of thunder.
The lightning struck the sculpture, which caught fire and began to blaze up and melt and blacken. The fuses of the dynamite sticks ignited, sizzling as they burned down. Sho, who knew that sprinting the 4.073 m to the door—and then the additional distance that would be needed to get him out of the blast radius—would take at least 38 seconds longer than he had, shrugged and cackled again.
The cafeteria, Sun Room and most of the small rooms surrounding them abruptly turned into rubble.
--
“…AND SOMETIMES MY SUIT RIDES UP IN THE BACK BUT I CAN’T FIX IT BECAUSE—“
BOOM, interjected the explosion, ending Peter’s pain forever. Talking, it turned out, was not a free action at Landel’s.
--
Lelouch couldn’t process it.
In a blind panic, he’d struggled into the wreckage of the Sun Room, tearing through the rubble with bloodied hands until he’d found the lifeless body of his love. For perhaps the first time in his life, he’d found someone he’d truly cared about more than any other concern, cherished, wanted to be with every minute of every day. Someone whose side he could rush to the instant he awoke, someone beside whom he could grow old. Someone he could help guide, develop, shape, but also someone who could offer him potentially limitless support in return. Someone who might tolerate the advances of others, but who would always truly be his and his alone. Someone stable, yet every day a blank slate, just waiting to be filled by all the knowledge the world had to offer. And though the recent rule change had clearly been targeted at keeping them apart, limiting their interactions in an attempt to cool their passion, Lelouch had stayed faithful. He’d grasped the happiness so many could only long for, and now it had been ripped from him, through a senseless act of unfathomable cruelty, perpetrated by madmen. It lay in battered chunks amidst the rubble on the Sun Room floor, utterly lifeless. Oh, he might try to pick up the pieces and put them back together, perhaps with the aid of some wood glue, but Lelouch already knew that his relationship—and his broken heart—were lost to the dark abyss of torment forever.
Weeping openly, he pressed the gun to his temple. A life without his bulletin board simply wasn’t worth living.
--
Luck was with him tonight. His closet had contained a sawed-off shotgun and a box of shells. Good pickings, Harvey knew—twenty-five shots and whatever he could grab off the bodies could close a hell of a lot of distance between him and freedom, or put a hell of a lot of holes in one caped crusader.
A familiar suit had been hanging on the closet rack, with a faint but recognizable stench of oil and one side scarred by burns. Harvey put it on, even did up the tie. If his luck ran dry later on, he’d be good and ready to greet death with his best two-faced smile.
The luck had held so far. He’d started off from his room and flipped every time he’d hit a fork, letting chance guide him—and it’d worked. When the bomb or whatever it had been went off, Harvey had been in the back corner of the building by the morgue. Every time he ran across another patient, up went the coin and back down again: heads, they died; tails, he left them for someone else to kill. Anyone who actually stood there long enough to let him flip a coin wasn’t going to be a contender for making it out of here alive.
Now he rounded the corner back out into the hall, and luck stuck once again. Up by the next door, on his right now, was a familiar shadow, attached to a familiar man wearing a very familiar bat-head-shaped cowl. He even had the cape. Harvey would have scoffed, if he’d been the kind of guy who was stupid enough to give himself away that easily. Depending on what kind of hardware they’d given him with that suit, Batman might know he was there already. Harvey didn’t care. He was going to take his time and do this one right, the same as all the others.
The left side of his upper lip curled in a sneer as he flipped again. Heads, he’d shoot the caped crusader from here; tails, he’d go over. Have a friendly conversation with him. Maybe teach him a few things about fear—the kind of fear she’d felt.
Harvey traced the arc of the coin in the air—up, up, up—
--
You reach the door to the Waiting Room/Lobby 1. You think this would be a relatively safe location for you to rest.
Open the door?
> No
>>Yes
-
…There’s someone here!
Like you, he’s a teenage boy, wearing a black school uniform and carrying a sword.
Somehow, this meeting feels strangely fateful…
> Throw yourself at his mercy
> Run away
>> Smite him
-
> Attack
> Bash
You summon your Persona.
…But your opponent summons one too!
> Bash
> Dia
> Attack
> Bash
-
You can feel yourself beginning to tire.
> Offer to let bygones be bygones
> Make up a song about sword-fighting to motivate yourself
>> Keep on smiting!
-
Your Courage has increased.
Your Diligence has greatly increased.
-
> Bash
> Attack
> Attack
-
You have established the Protagonist social link of the Fool Arcana!
But you can feel yourself beginning to lose consciousness…
…You wonder why neither of you has said anything.
--
Badou lit up for the thirty-fourth time that night and wished the patient room doors had peepholes. This was the last cigarette left in the second, crumpled pack, which meant that in the next couple minutes here he’d have to go out and either get smokes or get killed trying—a fact that he was sure as fuck not happy about. The lack of peepholes meant he’d have to crack the door and give away his presence even to check if the coast was clear. What a fucking picnic.
He took another drag. The sweet, thick haze of nicotine smoke was the only thing letting him make peace with the stupid “weapon” on the bed next to him. Seriously? A spork?
HK had swept the bulk of the first and second floors and found them blissfully free of living meatbags. The only downside of this was that he was now running dangerously low on things to kill. He was attempting to remedy this by making another sweep through the patient blocks with the pistol he’d acquired earlier (the meatbags had initially given him a toy lightsaber, probably thinking they were so funny). So far his search hadn’t turned up anything that needed killing. He was just turning to leave, with the intention of patrolling the second floor and the kitchen he had yet to check there, when he picked up three very quiet noises: a tiny click, the almost inaudible ignition of paper, and the nearly silent sound of a meatbag inhaling. Unfortunately for said meatbag, HK possessed excellent hearing.
He opened the door. As he’d expected, the male meatbag was on the bed, smoking and cowering. Only his lack of motion had prevented his liquidious body from making the telltale sloshing sounds. “Statement: I believe we are the last ones still alive.”
“I like it that way,” Badou said. “Actually, no I don’t; I think it’s fucking terrible, but I like it a lot better than just you being the last one still alive. Let’s just stay like this.”
HK pointed his pistol at the meatbag’s sole functioning eye. “Statement: That may be the worst idea I have heard all evening, and I have heard a lot of very stupid ideas tonight from meatbags in your position. Reach for the sky, meatbag.”
“Meatbag, meatbag, meatbag,” Badou muttered to himself. He looked at the guy, looked at the gun, considered finding some pussy way out of this, and realized there was no way through that door but through Senseless Carnage Man here. He leaned back and inhaled again. Any way you looked at it, he was screwed. Might as well enjoy his last cigarette.
Mere target practice, HK felt, was inferior in every way to the actual slaughter of organic meatbags and the warm, fuzzy feelings that accompanied it. However, he was also an artist, and one of the finer points of assassination was just the right touch of intimidation beforehand. And he hated when targets disregarded his simple, easy-to-understand orders. He edged the pistol barrel three centimeters to the left and shot the unlit cigarette. Fragments of tobacco and paper rained down over the room. Tiny holes burned into the bedsheets and went out.
Badou pushed himself off the bed, stalked silently over to the cigarette-murderer, and jabbed the spork into his neck.
“Oww!” HK yelped, and then, realizing how despicably meatbaggy this was, amended, “Interjection: Oww!” He’d had time to bring the gun to the meatbag’s head, but not to fire. The tines didn’t seem to have damaged any vital systems, but his neck was bleeding. How had that pathetic weapon even managed to pierce his skin without breaking?
“Hey, mister,” said Badou, dangerously calmly. “Nobody fucks with my cigarettes.” (How had that pathetic weapon even managed to pierce the guy’s skin without breaking? he wondered to himself.)
They stood there, at a standoff. The pistol was pressed to Badou’s head, the spork to HK’s throat. Each knew that inflicting further pain on the other would be as good as suicide; Badou had already proven himself fast enough to be able to get one last stab in on his way down, while HK’s finger could easily tighten on the trigger as he was stabbed. Neither moved.
There was a knock on the open door, followed by the entrance of an older gentleman in a tweed suit. He was carrying a Chinese vase, which an expert would easily have recognized as a beautiful example of the Ming Dynasty, late fourteenth century. “Exschuse me, hash anyone sheen—“ he began, then blinked owlishly behind his glasses, taking in the bizarre scene in front of him. He started to back away. “I’ll just shee myshelf out then, shall I?”
“Objection: You will not go anywhere, meatbag, unless it is by way of body bag.”
“Hey, I met another guy here who started his sentences with ‘objection!’” Badou said, eyeing the door. “I think he was a lawyer. You should go kill him.”
HK snapped the gun toward the newcomer. The older gentleman, in turn, hefted the vase above Badou’s head.
“Hey! What did I ever do to you?” Badou protested.
“Shorry. It jusht sheemed like the right thing to do."
The standoff resumed.
--
It might have continued until dawn, had the older gentleman not gotten a terrible itch on one side of his nose. He tried valiantly to ignore it for quite some time and almost succeeded by reciting under his breath in Latin, but in the end, it was just too strong for him. He took one hand away from the vase to scratch—and the vase, precariously supported to begin with, plummeted down on Badou’s head.
Badou’s spork jabbed reflexively as he fell underneath the sudden crashing weight. He might have come up with no more than a goose egg if his skull hadn’t bounced against the floor on the way down. HK, who had started bleeding copiously from the neck, fired the pistol as his last conscious action as a meatbag. The older gentleman went sprawling. Before everything went black, he strained to focus his eyes on the shards of the broken vase. You see, you can tell a fake by the cross-section.
--
Honey stepped back to look at his work and beamed. This might be his most delicious cake ever! It had been a little tricky to find the ingredients he’d needed in the pantry, but he just looked very carefully at everything in there, made a few substitutions, and voilá! It had really helped to have that great butter knife to frost with, although he wasn’t sure what it had been doing in his closet. Maybe the intercom had said something about it earlier, but he’d been a lot more focused on trying to decide between chocolate and strawberry frosting. Including both had definitely been a good decision in the end. He wouldn’t have wanted one flavor to feel left out, after all!
Very carefully, he picked up the cake by the plate and carried it toward the hallway. It had been really quiet tonight except for that one loud noise, and nobody had come in at all—but Honey guessed it wasn’t surprising that the second-floor kitchen didn’t get very much traffic, even with the delicious smells of fresh cake wafting out of it! But he was sure everyone would just come running now that he was finished. The thought of offering a slice of tasty Super Choco-Strawberry Cake to a lot of smiling new friends almost made him bubble over with excitement.
“All right, everybody!” he called as he stepped into the hall, proudly holding his special cake aloft. “Who wants cake?”
Nobody answered.
--
“Well, then!” the Head Doctor said brightly, shoving a stack of paperwork off his desk chair so he could sit down. “Let’s compare notes, shall we?” He beamed at the three other occupants of his office: Head Nurse Lydia, an unusually foul-smelling incarnation of Jack, né Alec Doyle; and I.R.I.S., as represented by the intercom. Jill was noticeably absent, possibly because she and Lydia were the same person.
“I’ll start off. Let’s see, my money was on Sylar, who….” The Head Doctor consulted his list, which was several pages long and still warm from the printer. “Oh, dear. Even when you rig these things, they never quite turn out the way you expect, do they? It looks as though someone ate his brain.” He looked pointedly at Jack, who held up his rotting hands in the universal gesture for “it wasn’t me.” “Oh, all right then,” the Head Doctor snapped. “You never could take a joke. Who did you pick to win?”
“Trnnh Strrrhk,” Jack said.
“I’m sorry, Alec, could you speak up? I realize you have certain speech impediments to overcome, but a rotting jaw is no excuse for poor enunciation.”
“TONY STARK.”
“Not a bad contender. I understand he was trying to make an Iron Man suit out of cardboard and popsicle sticks early on in the night. He might have succeeded, if we’d been stupid enough to leave the felt down there.” The Head Doctor flipped through the list again and chuckled. “Killed by the explosion, alas. Tragic that he didn’t put his considerable talents to use in building a bomb shelter. I.R.I.S.?”
“Our state-of-the-art Next-Wave analysis devices determined that a patient by the name of James Logan Howlett had a statistically significant advantage over the other subjects, due primarily to his incredibly potent ‘healing factor’ and adamantium skeleton and claws.” I.R.I.S. paused. “Also, he was played by Hugh Jackman in the movies. I thought he might be too pretty to die.”
The Head Doctor nodded in approval. “Well, that’s the best choice I’ve heard so far. I’m given to understand that he’s the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn’t very nice. Now that I think of it, hasn’t he survived a nuclear blast?”
“As well as a plethora of cheesy spin-offs. What do I win?” I.R.I.S. asked.
“Hold on, I’ve got to check the list first…not on that page, not on…no…huh. No, I.R.I.S., I’m afraid Wolverine is dead, all right.”
“What was the cause of death?”
The Head Doctor looked up. “Heart attack. Too bad that damn medical wing isn’t finished yet.”
“I’ll be certain not to mention that to our visitors.”
“Well, Lydia? Was your bet any closer to the mark than the rest of ours?”
“I didn’t bet on any one patient, Dr. Landel,” Lydia replied stiffly.
“Not a gambling woman?”
“No, rather I assumed that the last two patients would be killed come morning by virtue of refusing to attack each other. More specifically, my guess was that the Winchester brothers would engage in an epic flamethrower battle against the other patients, char-broiling everything in their paths and leaving them the final two men standing, after which they would be brutally forced to weigh their survival instincts against their consciences in deciding which of them should live and which should die; ultimately their pitched fight would end in mutual confessions of love and a decision to greet death stoically in one another’s arms,” Lydia said in a monotone.
There was an awkward pause.
“I pride myself on being precise,” Lydia explained levelly.
“Not very accurate, though," the Head Doctor countered when he recovered. "Actually, they went down early on—in retrospect, I might have made a mistake in giving Harley Quinn that grenade launcher.” He tossed the list aside, the way someone who wasn’t a sociopathic, ethically-challenged medical professional of dubious credentials might throw a Frisbee. “Well, that’s all of us. Nobody picked any female patients to take the gold?”
“Do we have any?” I.R.I.S. asked.
“As few as I can manage; too expensive. You wouldn’t believe how much a simple white bra costs—it’s highway robbery, really,” the Head Doctor replied. “Why don’t you do the honors and tell us who won, Alec?”
Jack glared at him and grudgingly got up to retrieve the list, inadvertently leaving a couple of toes behind on the floor. He flipped to the back page, scanned to the bottom and read, “Hrrnnhnrrzrrkh Mhhtssrrkhnrrh.”
“Come again?”
“HONEY, ASSHOLE.”
“Perhaps later.” The Head Doctor’s smirk vanished. “ Wait—did you say Honey?”
“Of course not. That’s impossible,” Lydia snapped in a monotonous monotone. Jack thrust the list in her face, silencing her. Yes, the last name on the list was undeniably “Haninozuka ‘Honey’ Mitsukuni.”
“I can have our systems perform a recount….” I.R.I.S. offered.
“No, that won’t be necessary, I.R.I.S. I think we can all agree that tonight’s experiment has been…less than satisfactory. What say we just reset and pretend none of this ever happened, eh?”
“Shall I call the usual crew in for the resurrections, Dr. Landel?” Lydia asked, deadpan.
“Sure, that’s fine. And the cleanup, repair and cooking staffs, of course. Today is waffle day, you know!” The Head Doctor rubbed his hands together gleefully.
Lydia’s heels clicked efficiently on the floor as she strode away. She stopped at the door. “Do you want them to remember tonight’s events, or do we need the memory alteration team as well?”
But the Head Doctor had already turned back to his desk. “Do whatever you think is best, Lydia,” he said over his shoulder. “As relieved as I am to learn our subjects aren’t as incredibly dull as I thought they were, this little exercise certainly has taken a lot of time I could have used to deal with all this…damned paperwork.”
--
Artemis Fowl awoke with an inexplicable headache—strangely reminiscent of the kind one might have if clubbed over the head with a Louisville Slugger by a giant talking dog—and the barest impression of a very bizarre experience still rattling around in his head.
“That’s odd,” he murmured to himself. “I could have sworn I’d spent last night attempting to murder the rest of the Institute’s population with a frozen cod.”
But as he couldn’t think of any logical place to obtain a frozen cod at Landel’s Institute, Artemis was forced to dismiss this as just an exceedingly strange dream. By the time his feet hit the floor, it had already begun to fade.
Author: Elisabeth (Indy- and Meche-mun)
Word Count: 4,950
Rating: PG-13/R, for language, character deaths and thinly-veiled sensuality.
Character(s): Appearances or mentions of: Peter Parker, von Karma, Edward Cullen, Falis, Hokuto, Indiana Jones, Yuffie, Minamimoto Sho, Evangeline, Lelouch, Harvey Dent, the Goddamned Batman, Seta Souji, Arisato Minato, Badou, HK-47, SECRET SPECIAL GUEST STAR, Honey, Landel, Jack, Lydia, I.R.I.S., Sylar, Tony Stark, Wolverine, Sam and Dean Winchester, Harley Quinn, Artemis, Sam (of Sam and Max)
Pairing(s): Falis/Hokuto, Lelouch/his soulmate, Sam/Dean(??!!)
Summary: Battle Royale at Landel's.
Notes: Part I is here. Again, I've used several cuts so you can stalk your faves easily or read straight through. Enjoy!
--
Oblivious to the cycles of life and death around him, Peter Parker was still going strong. “…AND THEN HARRY CAME BACK TO LIFE AS A ZOMBIE AND TRIED TO KILL ME EVEN THOUGH I JUST WANTED TO HELP HIM. I TRY, I MEAN REALLY TRY, TO REACH OUT TO MY SO-CALLED FRIENDS, EVEN WHEN THEY DO ASSHOLE THINGS LIKE DATING MY GIRLFRIEND OR COMING BACK AS AN UNDEAD MONSTER, AND THIS IS THE THANKS I GET? AND THEN HE DIED AGAIN AND…”
--
Revenge, it has been said, is a dish best served cold. Manfred von Karma was not ordinarily one to put stock in the maxims of the common rabble, but in this instance he found the principle sound. So when the boy insolently pointed out a “logical fallacy” in his flawless argument over lunch one day, von Karma mastered his temper and waited. He was nothing if not a patient man. He had invested years in the settling of one score; he knew that to do so, to lay one’s traps seamlessly, could only increase the satisfaction to be had on the day of fruition. But a mere three days later, absurd though it was, Landel’s little game presented him with the perfect opportunity for payback.
And a box of Saran Wrap.
Von Karma found this almost as infuriating as the original insult, but he was as resourceful as he was patient. He would play the hand he had been dealt.
Finding the boy was the work of a few minutes; he’d obtained the room number well in advance. Gaining admittance to the room (to avoid eyewitnesses; though they were easy enough to discredit, a von Karma did not take unnecessary chances) was surprisingly easy as well. The boy spoke with almost exaggerated politeness, as though mocking him. Then he said: “I suppose you’ve come to kill me.”
Von Karma sneered, a response vastly superior to expressing the surprise he really felt at that moment. “Hah! On what evidence do you base this wild accusation?”
“It’s a simple enough guess, given tonight’s events, and I’ve heard about you.” The boy was calm, maddeningly calm. “Please, feel free to do as you will. If you’re foolish enough to think killing me will change the fact that you had your facts wrong, I won’t stop you.”
Rage flooded von Karma’s senses. “A mere boy—!“
“Wrong again, Prosecutor.”
Von Karma lunged. He was a vigorous man for his age, and he easily overpowered the slight teenager, stretching several carefully-prepared layers of Saran Wrap over the boy’s nose and mouth.
The boy struggled at first—not in any substantial way, nothing that threatened to break von Karma’s powerful grip—and, slowly, his body slackened. Von Karma waited several full minutes to ensure that the job had been done perfectly, then cautiously peeled one corner of the Saran Wrap away and listened. The boy was not breathing. He folded the Saran Wrap neatly, with gloved hands, and turned to go. Now he only had to find some fool with his guard down on whom he could plant the weapon.
Without warning, an inhumanly strong hand clenched around his shoulder. Von Karma found himself being spun around to stare into the face of the boy he just killed.
“How—” he spluttered.
Edward Cullen stared back at him with cold eyes. “I don’t breathe,” he said shortly, gripping tighter as he craned his head in toward the old man’s neck.
--
The Hunter was hunting tonight.
It was fast and vicious, taking what it wanted, ravaging its prey with little regard and no remorse. Its very appearance should have been a warning to any hapless passer-by foolish enough to wander into its lair: its body was obscured by a long cascade of blonde hair, tangled to Gordian knots by exertion and wild movement, but more importantly, the pupils of its crimson eyes had narrowed to vertical slits. It was rapacious, insatiable. And it clawed and bit like the feral beast it was, raking red lines and digging red imprints of its teeth into its prey’s flesh, aggressively marking that prey as the Hunter’s own. The Hunter roared with the primal thrill of dominance, so loudly that it almost didn’t hear the prey when it at last spoke up.
“Um...Falis?” Hokuto said tentatively, lifting her head from the pillow. “Maybe not so hard?”
--
“…SO ONE MINUTE I’M SINGING SHOW TUNES AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN IT’S RIGHT BACK TO MAKING WITTY QUIPS AND BREAKING SOME KID’S ARM, AND NOBODY UNDERSTANDS WHAT THAT KIND OF THING DOES TO A GUY INSIDE…”
--
Indiana Jones wasn’t one to brag (too much), but objectively he was a pretty tough guy. He had fallen into a train car of live snakes, outrun a speeding boulder, nearly had his heart ripped out of his chest, and survived something that had felt an awful lot like divine wrath from the Ark of the Covenant itself (though no doubt it had some easily-identifiable scientific explanation). Tonight alone, he’d gutted out some minor stab wounds, two bullet holes, more punches than he could count, and a yellow foam dart to the eye.
So he couldn’t quite fathom how he was getting his hat handed to him by a teenage girl.
The four-pronged blade came sailing at him again; Indy ducked so late that it almost shaved the top of his fedora. He cracked the whip toward it, trying to snag it out of the air or at least stop it from coming back to her. It fell short. Indy winced—Jesus Christ, the wounds in his shoulder felt like they had live coals in them.
The kid caught her weapon and smirked. Indy didn’t know whether this was some kind of game to her or whether she’d just lost it, but either way, she didn’t look like she was letting up anytime soon.
In his defense, it had been a long night. But that wasn’t doing a hell of a lot right now for his ego—or his injuries. If someone walked in and offered him a choice between continuing to deal with this kid and trying to outrun that speeding boulder, Indy would cheerfully take his chances with the rock.
She was rearing back for another throw. Better think fast.
“Hold on a minute!” he said. “ That weapon—that’s a shuriken, isn’t it? Looks like early Edo period.” Indy didn’t have a clue when it was from; Japanese history wasn’t his strong suit. He was stalling desperately for time. “You know, that could really be worth something. If you were smart, you’d quit trying to embed it in people and get out of here with it; sell it and make a fortune. It belongs in a museum!”
Raw greed flickered across her face, and Indy was just about to let out the breath he was holding when she shrugged and grinned, in the manner of someone who’s about to make a joke and laugh louder than anyone else at it. “Pretty good line there!” she snickered. “But I say it belongs in your skull!”
Well, Indy just had time to think as the blade hurtled toward his forehead, damn. That line never did work.
--
“…Y’ALL DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE / BEING MALE, MIDDLE-CLASS AND WHITE…”
--
It had taken form nicely: 4 long tables, 29 plastic chairs, now piled up at h ~ 2.95656 m, l ~ 6.096 m, w ~ 1.2192 m; the result of t = 87.23 minutes of labor; and all with the crowning touch of d sticks of dynamite underneath. D was a constant, unknown because Sho had just dumped all the sticks he had onto the cafeteria floor without counting them. He stepped back to survey his work and cackled. This art project was looking zetta good!
The only factor that could subtract from his enjoyment was the addition of one of the seemingly infinite number of annoying yoctograms who populated the Institute. So obviously, one of the most annoying of all showed up almost immediately.
“You again?” Evangeline demanded as soon as she entered the room. It was that math boy from the bus, coming back like a bad smell. The fact that she had been the one to approach him this time was lost on her.
Sho did a 180 and nearly foamed at the mouth when he saw the intruder. She was wearing a bulletproof vest over some frilly dress—two mismatched halves of a botched equation. “That’s my line, Nanobrat II!”
“Pity you weren’t smart enough to come up with it first,” the shinso taunted.
Lacking a comeback, Sho through a chair. Evangeline dodged easily. “Ah, the advantages of being ‘byte-sized.’” She approached his sculpture with a mocking smile on her face. “What’s all this garbage?”
“It’s art!” Sho spluttered.
“Listen, human. I lived through the Renaissance; I viewed some of the greatest works in human history before the paint was dry.” Whether that was true or not didn’t matter; it wasn’t as though this lowly human had any way to check. She came closer to the tables, putting a hand out to push one over. “I’ve seen art. This junk heap isn’t it.”
“Don’t touch it, hectopascal!”
“Oh, are you sensitive about it? I had no idea.” She smirked.
Sho knew that great art should always be explosive, but this braindead binomial didn’t have a clue how well he’d fulfilled that mission. “Are you deaf, or do you just have the intellectual capacity of a paramecium?!” he spat. “Unbalance that equation and you’ll convert us all into imaginary numbers!”
“Fine, then. I won’t.” Evangeline sniffed disdainfully. Sho had just finished inhaling for the sigh of relief when she continued, “I’ll just add one last touch to make sure it has the proper…electrifying effect on your viewing public.” And with a wicked smile on her face, she made a downward-sweeping gesture and invoked the spell in ancient Greek: axe of thunder.
The lightning struck the sculpture, which caught fire and began to blaze up and melt and blacken. The fuses of the dynamite sticks ignited, sizzling as they burned down. Sho, who knew that sprinting the 4.073 m to the door—and then the additional distance that would be needed to get him out of the blast radius—would take at least 38 seconds longer than he had, shrugged and cackled again.
The cafeteria, Sun Room and most of the small rooms surrounding them abruptly turned into rubble.
--
“…AND SOMETIMES MY SUIT RIDES UP IN THE BACK BUT I CAN’T FIX IT BECAUSE—“
BOOM, interjected the explosion, ending Peter’s pain forever. Talking, it turned out, was not a free action at Landel’s.
--
Lelouch couldn’t process it.
In a blind panic, he’d struggled into the wreckage of the Sun Room, tearing through the rubble with bloodied hands until he’d found the lifeless body of his love. For perhaps the first time in his life, he’d found someone he’d truly cared about more than any other concern, cherished, wanted to be with every minute of every day. Someone whose side he could rush to the instant he awoke, someone beside whom he could grow old. Someone he could help guide, develop, shape, but also someone who could offer him potentially limitless support in return. Someone who might tolerate the advances of others, but who would always truly be his and his alone. Someone stable, yet every day a blank slate, just waiting to be filled by all the knowledge the world had to offer. And though the recent rule change had clearly been targeted at keeping them apart, limiting their interactions in an attempt to cool their passion, Lelouch had stayed faithful. He’d grasped the happiness so many could only long for, and now it had been ripped from him, through a senseless act of unfathomable cruelty, perpetrated by madmen. It lay in battered chunks amidst the rubble on the Sun Room floor, utterly lifeless. Oh, he might try to pick up the pieces and put them back together, perhaps with the aid of some wood glue, but Lelouch already knew that his relationship—and his broken heart—were lost to the dark abyss of torment forever.
Weeping openly, he pressed the gun to his temple. A life without his bulletin board simply wasn’t worth living.
--
Luck was with him tonight. His closet had contained a sawed-off shotgun and a box of shells. Good pickings, Harvey knew—twenty-five shots and whatever he could grab off the bodies could close a hell of a lot of distance between him and freedom, or put a hell of a lot of holes in one caped crusader.
A familiar suit had been hanging on the closet rack, with a faint but recognizable stench of oil and one side scarred by burns. Harvey put it on, even did up the tie. If his luck ran dry later on, he’d be good and ready to greet death with his best two-faced smile.
The luck had held so far. He’d started off from his room and flipped every time he’d hit a fork, letting chance guide him—and it’d worked. When the bomb or whatever it had been went off, Harvey had been in the back corner of the building by the morgue. Every time he ran across another patient, up went the coin and back down again: heads, they died; tails, he left them for someone else to kill. Anyone who actually stood there long enough to let him flip a coin wasn’t going to be a contender for making it out of here alive.
Now he rounded the corner back out into the hall, and luck stuck once again. Up by the next door, on his right now, was a familiar shadow, attached to a familiar man wearing a very familiar bat-head-shaped cowl. He even had the cape. Harvey would have scoffed, if he’d been the kind of guy who was stupid enough to give himself away that easily. Depending on what kind of hardware they’d given him with that suit, Batman might know he was there already. Harvey didn’t care. He was going to take his time and do this one right, the same as all the others.
The left side of his upper lip curled in a sneer as he flipped again. Heads, he’d shoot the caped crusader from here; tails, he’d go over. Have a friendly conversation with him. Maybe teach him a few things about fear—the kind of fear she’d felt.
Harvey traced the arc of the coin in the air—up, up, up—
--
You reach the door to the Waiting Room/Lobby 1. You think this would be a relatively safe location for you to rest.
Open the door?
> No
>>Yes
-
…There’s someone here!
Like you, he’s a teenage boy, wearing a black school uniform and carrying a sword.
Somehow, this meeting feels strangely fateful…
> Throw yourself at his mercy
> Run away
>> Smite him
-
> Attack
> Bash
You summon your Persona.
…But your opponent summons one too!
> Bash
> Dia
> Attack
> Bash
-
You can feel yourself beginning to tire.
> Offer to let bygones be bygones
> Make up a song about sword-fighting to motivate yourself
>> Keep on smiting!
-
Your Courage has increased.
Your Diligence has greatly increased.
-
> Bash
> Attack
> Attack
-
You have established the Protagonist social link of the Fool Arcana!
But you can feel yourself beginning to lose consciousness…
…You wonder why neither of you has said anything.
--
Badou lit up for the thirty-fourth time that night and wished the patient room doors had peepholes. This was the last cigarette left in the second, crumpled pack, which meant that in the next couple minutes here he’d have to go out and either get smokes or get killed trying—a fact that he was sure as fuck not happy about. The lack of peepholes meant he’d have to crack the door and give away his presence even to check if the coast was clear. What a fucking picnic.
He took another drag. The sweet, thick haze of nicotine smoke was the only thing letting him make peace with the stupid “weapon” on the bed next to him. Seriously? A spork?
HK had swept the bulk of the first and second floors and found them blissfully free of living meatbags. The only downside of this was that he was now running dangerously low on things to kill. He was attempting to remedy this by making another sweep through the patient blocks with the pistol he’d acquired earlier (the meatbags had initially given him a toy lightsaber, probably thinking they were so funny). So far his search hadn’t turned up anything that needed killing. He was just turning to leave, with the intention of patrolling the second floor and the kitchen he had yet to check there, when he picked up three very quiet noises: a tiny click, the almost inaudible ignition of paper, and the nearly silent sound of a meatbag inhaling. Unfortunately for said meatbag, HK possessed excellent hearing.
He opened the door. As he’d expected, the male meatbag was on the bed, smoking and cowering. Only his lack of motion had prevented his liquidious body from making the telltale sloshing sounds. “Statement: I believe we are the last ones still alive.”
“I like it that way,” Badou said. “Actually, no I don’t; I think it’s fucking terrible, but I like it a lot better than just you being the last one still alive. Let’s just stay like this.”
HK pointed his pistol at the meatbag’s sole functioning eye. “Statement: That may be the worst idea I have heard all evening, and I have heard a lot of very stupid ideas tonight from meatbags in your position. Reach for the sky, meatbag.”
“Meatbag, meatbag, meatbag,” Badou muttered to himself. He looked at the guy, looked at the gun, considered finding some pussy way out of this, and realized there was no way through that door but through Senseless Carnage Man here. He leaned back and inhaled again. Any way you looked at it, he was screwed. Might as well enjoy his last cigarette.
Mere target practice, HK felt, was inferior in every way to the actual slaughter of organic meatbags and the warm, fuzzy feelings that accompanied it. However, he was also an artist, and one of the finer points of assassination was just the right touch of intimidation beforehand. And he hated when targets disregarded his simple, easy-to-understand orders. He edged the pistol barrel three centimeters to the left and shot the unlit cigarette. Fragments of tobacco and paper rained down over the room. Tiny holes burned into the bedsheets and went out.
Badou pushed himself off the bed, stalked silently over to the cigarette-murderer, and jabbed the spork into his neck.
“Oww!” HK yelped, and then, realizing how despicably meatbaggy this was, amended, “Interjection: Oww!” He’d had time to bring the gun to the meatbag’s head, but not to fire. The tines didn’t seem to have damaged any vital systems, but his neck was bleeding. How had that pathetic weapon even managed to pierce his skin without breaking?
“Hey, mister,” said Badou, dangerously calmly. “Nobody fucks with my cigarettes.” (How had that pathetic weapon even managed to pierce the guy’s skin without breaking? he wondered to himself.)
They stood there, at a standoff. The pistol was pressed to Badou’s head, the spork to HK’s throat. Each knew that inflicting further pain on the other would be as good as suicide; Badou had already proven himself fast enough to be able to get one last stab in on his way down, while HK’s finger could easily tighten on the trigger as he was stabbed. Neither moved.
There was a knock on the open door, followed by the entrance of an older gentleman in a tweed suit. He was carrying a Chinese vase, which an expert would easily have recognized as a beautiful example of the Ming Dynasty, late fourteenth century. “Exschuse me, hash anyone sheen—“ he began, then blinked owlishly behind his glasses, taking in the bizarre scene in front of him. He started to back away. “I’ll just shee myshelf out then, shall I?”
“Objection: You will not go anywhere, meatbag, unless it is by way of body bag.”
“Hey, I met another guy here who started his sentences with ‘objection!’” Badou said, eyeing the door. “I think he was a lawyer. You should go kill him.”
HK snapped the gun toward the newcomer. The older gentleman, in turn, hefted the vase above Badou’s head.
“Hey! What did I ever do to you?” Badou protested.
“Shorry. It jusht sheemed like the right thing to do."
The standoff resumed.
--
It might have continued until dawn, had the older gentleman not gotten a terrible itch on one side of his nose. He tried valiantly to ignore it for quite some time and almost succeeded by reciting under his breath in Latin, but in the end, it was just too strong for him. He took one hand away from the vase to scratch—and the vase, precariously supported to begin with, plummeted down on Badou’s head.
Badou’s spork jabbed reflexively as he fell underneath the sudden crashing weight. He might have come up with no more than a goose egg if his skull hadn’t bounced against the floor on the way down. HK, who had started bleeding copiously from the neck, fired the pistol as his last conscious action as a meatbag. The older gentleman went sprawling. Before everything went black, he strained to focus his eyes on the shards of the broken vase. You see, you can tell a fake by the cross-section.
--
Honey stepped back to look at his work and beamed. This might be his most delicious cake ever! It had been a little tricky to find the ingredients he’d needed in the pantry, but he just looked very carefully at everything in there, made a few substitutions, and voilá! It had really helped to have that great butter knife to frost with, although he wasn’t sure what it had been doing in his closet. Maybe the intercom had said something about it earlier, but he’d been a lot more focused on trying to decide between chocolate and strawberry frosting. Including both had definitely been a good decision in the end. He wouldn’t have wanted one flavor to feel left out, after all!
Very carefully, he picked up the cake by the plate and carried it toward the hallway. It had been really quiet tonight except for that one loud noise, and nobody had come in at all—but Honey guessed it wasn’t surprising that the second-floor kitchen didn’t get very much traffic, even with the delicious smells of fresh cake wafting out of it! But he was sure everyone would just come running now that he was finished. The thought of offering a slice of tasty Super Choco-Strawberry Cake to a lot of smiling new friends almost made him bubble over with excitement.
“All right, everybody!” he called as he stepped into the hall, proudly holding his special cake aloft. “Who wants cake?”
Nobody answered.
--
“Well, then!” the Head Doctor said brightly, shoving a stack of paperwork off his desk chair so he could sit down. “Let’s compare notes, shall we?” He beamed at the three other occupants of his office: Head Nurse Lydia, an unusually foul-smelling incarnation of Jack, né Alec Doyle; and I.R.I.S., as represented by the intercom. Jill was noticeably absent, possibly because she and Lydia were the same person.
“I’ll start off. Let’s see, my money was on Sylar, who….” The Head Doctor consulted his list, which was several pages long and still warm from the printer. “Oh, dear. Even when you rig these things, they never quite turn out the way you expect, do they? It looks as though someone ate his brain.” He looked pointedly at Jack, who held up his rotting hands in the universal gesture for “it wasn’t me.” “Oh, all right then,” the Head Doctor snapped. “You never could take a joke. Who did you pick to win?”
“Trnnh Strrrhk,” Jack said.
“I’m sorry, Alec, could you speak up? I realize you have certain speech impediments to overcome, but a rotting jaw is no excuse for poor enunciation.”
“TONY STARK.”
“Not a bad contender. I understand he was trying to make an Iron Man suit out of cardboard and popsicle sticks early on in the night. He might have succeeded, if we’d been stupid enough to leave the felt down there.” The Head Doctor flipped through the list again and chuckled. “Killed by the explosion, alas. Tragic that he didn’t put his considerable talents to use in building a bomb shelter. I.R.I.S.?”
“Our state-of-the-art Next-Wave analysis devices determined that a patient by the name of James Logan Howlett had a statistically significant advantage over the other subjects, due primarily to his incredibly potent ‘healing factor’ and adamantium skeleton and claws.” I.R.I.S. paused. “Also, he was played by Hugh Jackman in the movies. I thought he might be too pretty to die.”
The Head Doctor nodded in approval. “Well, that’s the best choice I’ve heard so far. I’m given to understand that he’s the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn’t very nice. Now that I think of it, hasn’t he survived a nuclear blast?”
“As well as a plethora of cheesy spin-offs. What do I win?” I.R.I.S. asked.
“Hold on, I’ve got to check the list first…not on that page, not on…no…huh. No, I.R.I.S., I’m afraid Wolverine is dead, all right.”
“What was the cause of death?”
The Head Doctor looked up. “Heart attack. Too bad that damn medical wing isn’t finished yet.”
“I’ll be certain not to mention that to our visitors.”
“Well, Lydia? Was your bet any closer to the mark than the rest of ours?”
“I didn’t bet on any one patient, Dr. Landel,” Lydia replied stiffly.
“Not a gambling woman?”
“No, rather I assumed that the last two patients would be killed come morning by virtue of refusing to attack each other. More specifically, my guess was that the Winchester brothers would engage in an epic flamethrower battle against the other patients, char-broiling everything in their paths and leaving them the final two men standing, after which they would be brutally forced to weigh their survival instincts against their consciences in deciding which of them should live and which should die; ultimately their pitched fight would end in mutual confessions of love and a decision to greet death stoically in one another’s arms,” Lydia said in a monotone.
There was an awkward pause.
“I pride myself on being precise,” Lydia explained levelly.
“Not very accurate, though," the Head Doctor countered when he recovered. "Actually, they went down early on—in retrospect, I might have made a mistake in giving Harley Quinn that grenade launcher.” He tossed the list aside, the way someone who wasn’t a sociopathic, ethically-challenged medical professional of dubious credentials might throw a Frisbee. “Well, that’s all of us. Nobody picked any female patients to take the gold?”
“Do we have any?” I.R.I.S. asked.
“As few as I can manage; too expensive. You wouldn’t believe how much a simple white bra costs—it’s highway robbery, really,” the Head Doctor replied. “Why don’t you do the honors and tell us who won, Alec?”
Jack glared at him and grudgingly got up to retrieve the list, inadvertently leaving a couple of toes behind on the floor. He flipped to the back page, scanned to the bottom and read, “Hrrnnhnrrzrrkh Mhhtssrrkhnrrh.”
“Come again?”
“HONEY, ASSHOLE.”
“Perhaps later.” The Head Doctor’s smirk vanished. “ Wait—did you say Honey?”
“Of course not. That’s impossible,” Lydia snapped in a monotonous monotone. Jack thrust the list in her face, silencing her. Yes, the last name on the list was undeniably “Haninozuka ‘Honey’ Mitsukuni.”
“I can have our systems perform a recount….” I.R.I.S. offered.
“No, that won’t be necessary, I.R.I.S. I think we can all agree that tonight’s experiment has been…less than satisfactory. What say we just reset and pretend none of this ever happened, eh?”
“Shall I call the usual crew in for the resurrections, Dr. Landel?” Lydia asked, deadpan.
“Sure, that’s fine. And the cleanup, repair and cooking staffs, of course. Today is waffle day, you know!” The Head Doctor rubbed his hands together gleefully.
Lydia’s heels clicked efficiently on the floor as she strode away. She stopped at the door. “Do you want them to remember tonight’s events, or do we need the memory alteration team as well?”
But the Head Doctor had already turned back to his desk. “Do whatever you think is best, Lydia,” he said over his shoulder. “As relieved as I am to learn our subjects aren’t as incredibly dull as I thought they were, this little exercise certainly has taken a lot of time I could have used to deal with all this…damned paperwork.”
--
Artemis Fowl awoke with an inexplicable headache—strangely reminiscent of the kind one might have if clubbed over the head with a Louisville Slugger by a giant talking dog—and the barest impression of a very bizarre experience still rattling around in his head.
“That’s odd,” he murmured to himself. “I could have sworn I’d spent last night attempting to murder the rest of the Institute’s population with a frozen cod.”
But as he couldn’t think of any logical place to obtain a frozen cod at Landel’s Institute, Artemis was forced to dismiss this as just an exceedingly strange dream. By the time his feet hit the floor, it had already begun to fade.