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

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"Whoa. And it missed? Tell me it missed. Because, you know, Snake's blind, so he'd have trouble dodging." Why Piper has the need to explain that out loud is anyone's best guess.

"Did you get a memory?" Piper pauses for a second. "Is that intrusive to ask? I just figured we'll all get to know better if we share."

"Actually," said Heiji, making a swatting motion with his right hand, "Snake deflected it. At least that's what he said, and I don't have any reason to doubt him. It sounds kinda nuts, but... yeah, I dunno. If his timing had been off just a little bit..."

And even if the timing hadn't been off, it had been incredibly lucky that the blade hadn't had the spin required to cut into Snake's hand anyway. Those things were sharp and throwing them at people was ILL-ADVISED.

He waved a hand. "Nah, it's fine, it's fine. You mean for the robot thing, right? Yeah, I got a memory back. I remembered the time I got kidnapped."

"He deflected it?" Piper looks incredulous, and then bites her lip, as if she has a perfectly logical retort to that but doesn't. Because why would there be logic in this place?

And then she gets all the more upset, because Heiji oh-so-casually drops in something the average person might find outright traumatic. She drops her voice down to an urgent whisper. "You were kidnapped?"

There never was, Piper. There never was.

"Yeah," said Heiji, lowering his voice a little in automatic response to Piper's tone of voice. He didn't seem all that concerned about it, though.

"Before this time, I mean. Bunch of criminals were tryin' to get me to solve a code for them so they could get into a safe deposit box. They were pretty serious about it, too. Had a gun and everything."

"Are you sure it wasn't what led up to you being here?"

All Piper remembers is that masked figure, but she's pretty sure that being kidnapped is anomalous. It happening twice to one person, unless Heiji finds out he's secretly the son of a foreign dignitary or something, seems a little farfetched.

(She thought, having just spent the last twenty-four hours running from robots.)

Heiji shook his head. "Nah, it was totally different. For one thing, there was no guy in a gas mask. For another, I already had 'em cornered at the end of the memory. Besides, there's no one that looks like the people in my memory here -- and I got the feeling it happened a while ago. Couple months, at least."

Heiji was... an anomaly himself, so.

"Before that, it was getting tossed off a cruise ship. So I guess I had a bunch of crazy stuff happen to me."

"You must have been scared." Piper still looks concerned, and now a little bit like she expects Heiji to burst into tears or something any second. "I can't even imagine what sort of life you had to have where that sort of thing was normal."

Part of it almost sounds exciting, and Piper thinks she must have imagined drama and adventure as part of her life when she was a little girl.

Wow. Barely anyone ever brought up Heiji being scared. He had to consider this for a moment. "Yeah," he said, "I guess I was. Well, during the kidnapping thing, anyway. When that fella clocked me from behind, I didn't really have time to feel fear.

"But... how do I say this...? I felt like I wasn't as scared as I could've been. I've kinda felt like that since I got here."

"Like you aren't as scared as you could be?" Piper sucks at the bottom of her lip for a moment as she thinks that over. "We've got the threat of being blown up like- like Akiko. We should be terrified beyond reason. We shouldn't be able to cooperate at all."

Her eyes widen. "Do you think Calhoun's putting a sedative in the water or something? It could explain why we're staying mostly rational."

Heiji looked down at his bracelet. "I don't really feel drugged or anything, though. I think the most likely answer is a combination of the people here, and the way the threats have been introduced -- gradually, so we get acclimatized to them. Most of us are the type to at least pretend like everything's fine. Probably also helps that our 'goal' is so far ahead."

He glanced at Piper. "Guess I feel like we can get through this, as long as we keep our wits. Panic and fear are our worst enemies, not the traps."

Piper doesn't look entirely dissuaded from her casual theory. "You know that saying about putting a toad in lukewarm water and heating it to boiling kills it without it thinking to jump out? That's actually a myth. The toad jumps."

She has no idea how she knows that.

"I'm glad you didn't say 'other people'. I know I was a little tense with Kzuryuu after Clive and Zelos, but...I really do believe that we're all just trying to do the best for everyone."

"That really a saying?" Heiji asked, blinking a little. Wait, was Piper's observation an argument for or against them noticing they were drugged? In any case, the saying apparently wasn't too big in Heiji's corner of the world. "Well, when you're talkin' about frogs, we've got one big one: 'A frog in a well knows not of the great ocean'. I guess if you get right down to it, that could apply to us, too."

"Oh, speakin' of Clive and Zelos -- I ain't had a chance to ask you about this earlier. But you were in the grey room with them before, right? You said they talked all high and mighty about morality or something. So what'd they say, exactly?"

She nods. That's a pretty decent saying, honestly.

"It was just...the certainty they had when talking about really serious issues of life and death. I guess it doesn't matter since it was all in the hypothetical. I would have thought I would have had them pegged for traitors from those conversations but I guess I'm too naive about it." She scowls and then sighs. "Not that I don't get high and mighty too."

(Ya think?)

Huh. Heiji thought about that for a second. "I think ideas like justice and right and wrong ain't things you can just throw around. They're things you have to hold in your heart. And it goes without saying that someone who talks about them but isn't willing to live by their words has no right to invoke them in the first place."

He smiled a little. "Of course, as far as bein' overbearing about right and wrong goes, I can't really say anything!"

Piper laughs. "I don't think you're that bad. Maybe we'll just be overbearing together."

Still, the vote bothers her. Maybe she's just feeling a sense of justified betrayal - it's right there in the word, after all.

"Well, thanks!" he said, grinning in response. "So what'd you remember? Anything good?"

Hopefully, it was less unpleasant than Snake's memory was going to be...

CALHOUN HOUR - SURVIVOR

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