vivarium | The sleepless night [Open]

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The sleepless night [Open]

By the evening of day 69, when things were at least reasonably under control, Heiji was pretty tired. And while he did want to just fall asleep on the nearest flat surface, wasn't this the perfect opportunity to actually enjoy what they could while Zero still didn't have full control of the warehouse?

Answer: Yes.

A: Gutting a fish, setting up campfire stuff
The last time he'd been allowed into the maze with Hershel, they'd both regretted the lost opportunity. A whole fish tank room full of fish, most of them the kind that were actually supposed to be eaten rather than looked at. And they were going to die soon, anyway, right? Without power.

So technically just leaving them would be terribly wasteful and tl;dr Heiji was carrying a giant floppy wet salmon in both arms over to the river where he was going to (in theory) gut it and scale it and cook it because you know what, he wanted some actual food.

B: Campfire dinner
After a great deal of effort and setup, the smell of cooking salmon began wafting over the garden; once it was near to done, Heiji would start contacting people over the bracelets to tell them what was up and to bring any food or supplies they wanted if they'd found any. Who knows, maybe someone'd find some vegetables they could cook or something.

C: Reading mystery novels/textbooks/language guides
After dinner was over, Heiji was just going to set down with a stack of books and start reading some mystery novels, maybe offer to read something he'd found in the library with someone. HE MISSED READING OKAY, it was his life.

D: Music room
And of course now that the music room was temporarily open, Heiji was looking everywhere for Snake to hopefully listen to some piano playing for real. ...Although he wasn't above trying it out for himself, as well as the other instruments. Or maybe just shredding some cloth in here for bandages.

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Heiji thought this over. "I can think of a bunch of things," he said finally. "Considering this is supposed to be an 'experiment', it'd make sense for there to be variables in the way we're treated or the conditions we're exposed to. Maybe we receive preferential treatment. Or maybe it's a function of group dynamics. We don't get along all of them time, but most of us help each other out, yeah? That means there's less infighting, and people work together to find things like bandages or food.

"Or maybe it's something less tangible. Ain't there a couple people around here unusually good at solving puzzles? But say there was a test subject like Alessa -- someone who couldn't solve puzzles well on their own, and didn't have people willing to help them..."

"Whatever it is, if their situation is more desperate than ours, I can see why they might resent us."

"Maybe the fact we've had so few betrayals means something." Hershel mused as they went along. "Especially now that everyone's gotten used to each other, instead of breaking apart into smaller groups we seem to have banded together for the most part, like you said."

"Do you think that's strange?" He asked rather suddenly, glancing to Heiji. "After all we've been through and all that's happened to make us doubt each other, everyone does seem to be willing to give each other a chance. It wasn't at all like that at first, yet here we are."

He shook his head. "Regardless, if there are other subjects that's one more thing we'll need to try and figure out when we escape. We can't leave anyone behind."

"It is a little weird," said Heiji. "I expected more people to be like Zelos. But... I think part of it's the people who make up the group. We've got a couple of people who make a point of giving others the benefit of the doubt."

It also helped that no one had been murdered recently, yayyy.

"Honestly, I wanna know who these other subjects are. We don't really know much about 'em other than that they exist. I wonder if one of 'em is responsible for this virus. That'd be quite a feat, huh?"

"It makes a difference. Look at Jake, we gave him a chance and he's come through." Hershel said with a smile. "All of that could have gone many different ways too. Things could have been very different."

Then again, someone still got murdered, so that blew. He nodded. "I wonder how that'd even be possible, if they have the same resources we do." He frowned. "Do you think if they managed to escape they might try to help us? At least one of them must be sympathetic."

Heiji smiled in turn. "Yeah, though he still ain't too sociable. Likes to play it cool, I guess."

"Well, no one in our group is a programmer or engineer. Even if we wanted to make a virus like that, we wouldn't be able to, yeah?" He crossed his arms, thinking out loud. "But you gotta wonder what the purpose of that virus was. If it was to help us, it sure didn't work out that way. Calhoun ended up lockin' us in the Garden, them robots ended up tearing up Calhoun, and now we've got that Zero guy breathin' down our necks. If anything, wouldn't ya say it was geared toward wrecking everything it could? Sounds more like they got a problem with the experiment itself.

"As for the other test subjects, why not? The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?"

"I think he's just not used to being around people in a friendly way." Hershel mused. "He's gotten a lot better though, step by step. Maybe that's true of a few people here, really. Look at Sasuke, he's come out of his shell quite a bit from when we all first met him."

"Maybe... I noticed something though, the robots all seemed fixated on Calhoun when they could find pieces of him. I wonder if maybe the original virus was only meant to attack Calhoun and everything else was an unintended side effect of that. It seems almost simple if it was that, just some means to try and bring Calhoun down."

"But why tear up Calhoun?" asked Heiji. "Why bother? He's just some robot, yeah? Sure, we got a grudge against him, but ultimately, he ain't even the real power behind this place.

Maybe it's like that old saying: "If you want to shoot the general, first shoot his horse". Takin' down Calhoun sure has gotten Zero's attention. Bet there's things he'd rather be doing than chasing down viruses and lookin' over our shoulders. If someone wanted to draw out Zero, then they sure did a bang-up job."

By now they'd reached the fish tank room, probably; Heiji started toward one of the tanks, intent on catching some of the smaller, knife-like fish swimming around in one of them.

"Well, maybe it's the best they could do. Making a virus of some sort under these conditions must have been quite difficult, and if Calhoun's the only real, visible figure to strike at maybe that seemed like the best course." Hershel offered.

"It may have been a test too, strike at something to see where it's weak points are so that the next strike can be more precise. I fear whoever did do this may never have that chance again though, if they're found out."

Hershel followed, a bit unsure of how they were going to catch the slippery little things. "Should I run up and try to get that net from the pool?" He offered. Hopefully no octopi were still hanging out there.

"If," agreed Heiji. "Zero said he was takin' steps to ensure it didn't happen again. He said somethin' else, too. He said he spent an awful lotta time and effort setting up this experiment, and he was gonna make sure it 'succeeded'. Apparently, failure is probable."

Which sounded pretty great to Heiji, he'd love to just ruin all of Zero's shit forever and ever just because.

"I dunno, do you really wanna risk... that?" That meaning Mr. Octopus, of course. In any case, the saury were numerous and apparently tired enough that Heiji had relatively little trouble scooping a bunch up. Although that pool net would be pretty handy...

"I wonder what 'failure' means for us." Probably nothing good in most cases, Hershel imagined. Maybe something good in a few, though. He could dream. "Did he give any clue to what exactly he was getting out of this?"

"I think it'll be alright... it had to have run off by now, right?" Right?? Either way, Hershel turned to the exit. "I'll be right back, alright?"

And off he went. What adventures he must have gone through, because when he gets back his shirt sleeve has ink on it but he has the net. "Well, it spit at me but not much more than that. How is that bloody thing surviving in there."

"Good question. He said, 'The odds are against us. Simply know your fate is tied to this success, as is the fate of every being here.' Sounds like what you'd expect from someone high on their own steam, if ya ask me."

Good job, Hershel, good job. "Maybe it wasn't feeling too hot after me and Sasuke dumped a couple of robots into the pool. You shoulda seen that lightshow."

He motioned to another tank. "This one's got some mackerel in it! Try and scoop a couple out, huh?"

"... you what?" Does he even want to know. Probably, it sounded kind of awesome. "How did you manage that exactly?"

He headed to the tank as directed, brow furrowing as he tried to get some mackerel. After a few moments- "Ah, there we are." He managed to sweep up two, pulling them out and hurrying to the bucket. "What else?"

"Yeah, we baited 'em and ran into the pool room. Their metal feet don't work too well with how slippery the pool is, so I used the gurney to give them a little shove. Encourage 'em, y'know?" Ha ha yeah, it was great.

"...We locked one in the freezer, too, but it's probably frozen by now." It's cool, it's cool. Probably.

"Hmm, I dunno. What kinda fish do you like best? Flounder? Cod? We've kinda got a buffet going here. Once we get the campfire up, I bet we could make some tea, too!"

"It sounds like you two had fun." He's really not as surprised as he should be anymore. So was life. "I'm glad you didn't get hurt in all this excitement, or that blasted squid didn't cause trouble." Can you imagine.

"... if didn't have any limbs falling off, did it?" That would explain a lot.

And he smiled. "Don't worry about me, I'm more than happy trying what we have. Do you think Sasuke has a preference though?"

Yes, Hershel. You might even say... buckets of fun. Dohohoho

"Not too sure. It was pretty dark at the time. Actually, we kinda lucked out on that one, because it practically walked in all on its own. All we had to do was shut the door after it. If we'd had to fight it, it would've been a lot more trouble, I'm sure."

"Sasuke'd probably like the same kinda fish as me. So... let's try a couple sweetfish!" He pointed out one of the tanks. "After that, I think we'll be outta room for that bucket, but I guess that's okay. We'll need to actually eat all this stuff we're cooking."

You should be arrested immediately.

"Definitely, those things were stubborn." He sighed. "We got swarmed by a bunch of arms when we found food, blasted things didn't want to let go. Then Ema and Jake set them on fire." What a life.

"Sweetfish it is." And off he went to scoop out a few. He came back with his prize, placing them into the now quite full bucket. "Alright, there we are. Let's get back before something unpleasant finds us." Who knew what was lurking around, robots, octopi, Jake.

"Just what I was thinking!" Farewell, soon to be dead fish!

"Oh, that's right. Let's pick up that shrine on our way out." The shrine room wasn't hard to find, and it was as creepy as ever. That didn't stop Heiji from gathering up as much as the Calhoun merchandise as he could, though. Burn it. Burn it all.

"...Man, some bad taste went into this."

"Calhoun loves himself very much." Someone had to, I guess... Hershel helped out gathering the kindling, making faces at some of the more ridiculous nonsense. This was such a weird, weird thing.

"I hope this is all flammable." He was really looking forward to the fish. Real food was always the best, can anyone blame him. He holds an armful out for Heiji to inspect. "How's this? Enough, you think?"

"Yeah, but we can always get more if we need to." So back up to the garden it was, with their ill-gotten fish and campfire fuel. Clearly this was not ridiculous at all. Somehow, though, this was ending up a lot more like camping than he'd thought it was going to be...

"You wanna start putting this wood together, or start cleaning the fish? I totally can't wait to set fire to this thing."

This did end up to be a camping event, go figure. Hershel pulled the bucket up some.

"I'll work on the fish, I wouldn't dream of taking the duty of burning that mess from you." Heiji truly deserved to have that honor, fuck Calhoun. "I'm assuming there's no special way to prepare these ones as compared to the others, right?"

"Gotcha." Heiji started breaking up pieces of the shrine, making them into manageable bits for the fire. As long as they were making one, they might as well put it at the site of the last one, right? Keep things isolated.

"You basically do the same for those guys; it's just that they're a little smaller." And thus a bit trickier, but Hershel seemed like the careful type.

Not burn down the world, always a good method. Hershel nodded and got to work, probably doing a better job with the scales and such now that he had even the vaguest idea how it worked. It might even taste good? Who knew?

"There we are." He said after he gutted and descaled the first little fish. He's a real cook now, truly. On to the next one. "I hope we have enough to share around a little. Everyone could use it I think."

"No worries, we'll definitely have enough!" said Heiji, breaking apart some of the bits into even smaller pieces he'd use to coax the starter flame to grow a bit bigger.

"I can't wait; this is gonna be the best!" He apparently really, really missed real food. But was anyone surprised? Alfendi could murder someone for some pizza... or maybe not. He seemed to actually like the gruel, what a total weirdo. "Too bad we don't have batter. We could make the 'fish' in fish and chips."

"Maybe we could gather everyone, it'd be rather nice." Sweet murdergame fish party.

"Oh, did you like the ones from that cooking bit to acquire a taste? You'll be a proper British gentleman at this rate." Just imagine, what a horrifying world. "Will these sweetfish be put in the foil too then?"

"Let's do it. Now that we got these bracelets to communicate with, it should be easy to get everyone in the same place!"

Heiji grinned. "They were pretty good, I gotta admit. Though fries are the best when you steal 'em from someone else's plate." Shocking, how shocking. This was your future British gentleman.

He sat down to start helping with the fish. "We can, but I think we've got enough wood to make a few skewers, too. They're best that way, I think."

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