vivarium | CALHOUN HOUR

At the crack of dawn, presumably, Calhoun gathers everyone in the first floor warehouse to make an announcement.

"That's right, it's time for another of my special events!" He seems pretty pleased with himself. "I noticed you lazy, fat test subjects really let yourselves go last round! It's like I don't feed you here or something."

"Well, I'm worried about your health, always lazing about and not getting proper exercise. So, I decided to be the change I want to see in the world, and so we're going to do something a littttttttllllllle different this time."

"To stop you guys from getting soft from all the fun you're having here, it's time for a little workout."

From one of the doors Calhoun never lets anyone go through there's a loud, metallic banging sound repeating, as if something is trying to get out. Calhoun does not seem troubled at all by this. In fact, he seems pretty excited.

"The rules are simple, everyone's getting sixty coins to use as they see fit. You'll notice the vending machines on both warehouse floors. Anyone who isn't caught will even get a memory back." But what does that mean?

"So go on, survive for 23 hours, I'll even give you a five minute head start. Good luck!"

And with that he scurries off. Should people hang around they'll get to witness that same door open five minutes later. From the door comes several figures, human in shape but something is very, very wrong.

They seem to be robotic, skeletal humans. At one point they must have had some synthetic skin over them but most of it seems to be melting or ripped off. They don't move very fast, mostly they shamble about until they focus on a target. Better hope it's not you!

BASIC INFO ✖ FIRST TEN HOURS ✖ LAST HOURS ✖ POST EVENT MINGLE

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hmm...

"We were little kids at the time, but... He seemed to be proud of training his cat to come to him on command. Kurou would just follow me wherever I went, but Shirou would wait until he called."

He remembers being pretty miffed about it himself. Yuusuke was probably just trying to brag.

"Sounds like typical sibling stuff," said Heiji. "You probably competed on everything, too, right? Still, that's pretty impressive for cats! Training 'em, I mean. Most people don't even try. So... Kurou was your cat, and Shirou was his cat? You remember if they got along?"

In his opinion, Sasuke shouldn't feel too bad about it. After all... cats.

"Yeah. My first memory was about kendo, actually-- we finished up a match and I won. Apparently that left us at a tie over all... The people watching seemed to think it was because we're twins." Which is... admittedly a weird thought to get used to. Him, having a twin brother, with the same face and everything.

"I don't remember too much about Kurou and Shirou... just that Shirou suddenly ran past us when Yuusuke was proving his point. I think it might have startled Kurou; I know it surprised me at the time." But he was also like five at that point, so he can kind of understand why.

"Yeah?" Heiji looked at Sasuke, frowning a little. "You don't seem all that happy about it, though." Not that it was very easy to tell how Sasuke was feeling, but if Heiji suddenly remembered a sibling he'd forgotten all about... well, wouldn't he look a little happier about it?

"You worried about him or somethin'? I can definitely tell ya that I ain't seen anyone else with your face, even before you showed up here."

Oh. Um. He actually looks a bit surprised at the question. "Not... really." Which may actually be a bit strange in of itself, but... "...I guess it was just weird. Realizing I have a twin, but I can barely remember anything about him."

...Probably? He certainly doesn't feel all that concerned for his brother, that's for sure. But it's hard to explain the feeling without sounding utterly heartless.

Really? That was... a little bit concerning, there, Sasuke. "Well, I mean. I guess it would be a shock and all. And ya said your memories were both of from you were younger, right? I dunno, I was just thinkin' that if it was me and my brother was showin' off some of his pet tricks, I'd have gotten pretty annoyed when I was little. Probably would've told him to go stuff it because my cat was the best."

Then again, Sasuke had sort of a muted reaction to most things. And Heiji was a little competitive...

"...No, I definitely remember being annoyed. He made fun of Kurou for following me everywhere. And when I won the kendo match... it looked like he was unhappy about it even though we were still tied for wins." So... they must have been competing. That was probably normal for siblings, right?

But there was something else... He frowns slightly as he tries to recall it again. Yuusuke had said something that struck him as odd, but he fell asleep so soon after he got his memory back. Just what was it...?

"...He talked about some kind of trick back then, too. A trick to use as a... something."

"'Trick'?" For some reason that word, used in that context and rendered in a language that was not Japanese, made Heiji think of something that had nothing to do with pets at all. It actually made him a little uneasy, and he frowned a little.

A trick was something that you used to mislead someone, to draw suspicion away from yourself.

But that probably wasn't what Sasuke was talking about. Heiji shook it off and laughed a little. "Well, hope you don't mind me sayin', but that brother of yours sounds kinda bratty. Hope he grew out of it."

"...Yeah, hopefully." He takes another few bites, not really sure what else there is to be said. The memories have been bothering him slightly, but he just can't put his finger on why...

"Did you remember anything else interesting?"

"Yeah," Heiji laughed. "I remembered the time I got kidnapped and taken as a hostage. Sure glad I got out of that one in one piece."

Just another day in the life of a high school detective...

He should probably stop being surprised every time Heiji has a story like this but lo and behold, he is definitely surprised.

"You were taken hostage-?" How do you say these things without an ounce of concern?

He nodded. "Kind of a long story, but this lady and a couple of her goons grabbed me and tried to make me solve this code for 'em. Can you believe it?" Gosh, criminals these days.

"Even threatened me at gunpoint, although I don't know how they got the gun."

"I'm surprised you keep running into people who are armed. Do you remember why they wanted you to solve the code?" Heiji's definitely a smart enough guy to do it, but just how would they have known that...?

Heiji nodded. "This fella I knew had some dirt on 'em would've ruined the lady's law career. He stored it away in some safe deposit box, but they needed a 7-digit pin to access it. Tried to get him to talk by roughing him up, only they did it so bad they thought he was dead."

Now that part Heiji was decidedly not happy with, even if Kusukawa had turned out to be all right after all. "Anyway. It turned out that he wrote down the pin on a piece of paper, but in the form of a code. They couldn't solve it for themselves, so they needed me to get at it."

"...So you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." Truly, Heiji's life never ceases to amaze. "Do you remember if you solved it or not?" It's hard to imagine Heiji would just give in and help out his captors so easily, so he's certainly got his doubts.

"Yeah, I solved it pretty early on, but since they already had us trapped, I figured they were just going to kill us if I told 'em. That's why I set things up so they'd have to let us go. Or at least pretend to."

Heiji crossed his arms. "Things turned out well in the end, since I'm here now. But that lady was seriously willing to kill us all just to save her own skin. I mean, what kind of lawyer is that?"

"If she somehow got a gun, she had to be involved with some shady people." She... wasn't dealing with the yakuza, was she...?

"It's good you were able to get away, at least."

CALHOUN HOUR - SURVIVOR

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