ITP: Consolidation.

[fracta_anima]

OOC: So we don't wind up spamming the Network Comm and because some people just want to write: comment here to post your nightmares/punishment as you have written them. Please specify if it's a nightmare or a punishment in the subject line.

If it's a punishment, please also put in the subject line if it's viewable and on what day(s).

Remember to add your character's tag to the post.

Thanks guys!

--Random

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Punishment, Day 6 [TRIGGER WARNING FOR NEEDLES AND MEDICAL SQUICK]

[morituramfides]

The first thing Jin noticed was his sudden increase in lucidity; no longer was Moros’ voice booming in the forefront of his mind, scattering his thoughts and judgment into a slur of aggression. The persona had returned to the back of his subconscious, continuing its silent nagging as it always had.

He sat up—he hadn’t even realized he was lying down—to a familiar white room. Familiar? No, this wasn’t the tower at all—the walls and ceilings were white, but this shouldn’t have been familiar at all. His bed was harder, made of metal, and there was only one where there should have been four.

He sat up, his elbows resting on his knees, and ran his hands through his hair in exasperation, menially noting that the missing one had returned in his sleep. But something far more concerning grabbed his attention, and he stared at his open palms. No longer was he wearing his green bomber jacket, or even the white spandex suits that he had woken up in months ago. His hands were uncovered, and his sleeves were off-white. It took him a moment to process what it was; a standard white lab outfit. Not a uniform, or a lab coat, but something more befitting a patient. Something more befitting of his childhood memories. Something standard to the Kirijo Laboratories.

He glanced down at the rest of his attire in shock, and sure enough he had the white pants to match. The same white, blank outfit that he had worn for a good part of his childhood. A name tag identified him not as Jin Shirato, but a number; numbers he remembered but didn’t care to read, he’d memorized them throughout his childhood and spat on the combination once he had obtained his freedom. He idly thought about ripping the serial number off his jacket and storming out.

But he would’ve been stopped anyway, as when he looked up a group of men in white lab coats entered; the room was no longer empty and white, but instead outfitted with various machines, some purely mechanical for recording data, some for observation and monitoring, some that held chemicals and the remnants of shadows. All disturbingly familiar and unchanged.

The scientists approached him without addressing him, grabbing his arms, rolling up his sleeves, and an instinctive panic started to settle in Jin’s mind. He pulled away angrily, wrenching his hands away from the experimenters as a grimace crossed his face.

“Fuck off--!” He yelled violently, elbowing one of the scientists in the midsection, who let out a gasp of pain and stepped away. “Where the hell’s Minato?!” He demanded, bringing his newly returned arm back around to punch another man in the stomach before he could grab him.
“Minato?” Another scientist, that hadn’t been assaulted, sounded genuinely confused. “There is no one who goes by that name here.”

Jin’s eyes widened in surprise, though he couldn’t quite tell himself; he didn’t quite remember his vision being this blurry, and it was here he became aware of the fact that his glasses were gone. That’s right. He hadn’t gotten them until after he had escaped. Surely this was all some sort of twisted flashback from his paranoid mind?

No. But they would have known who Minato was, even if they hadn’t cared to remember most of their names. And he knew by his own voice that he was far too old to be a child stuck in the lab again.

In that momentary silence of his shock, a couple or scientists grabbed his arms, slammed him back on the bed to the sound of his grunt and clanging metal, and strapped him down to the metallic table. He struggled against his bonds and gave a yell.

“Screw off! Where’s Chidori?! Where’s Takaya?! Where are Izumi and the others?!” The last one was a stretch, but surely there had to be someone?

One took out a needle, testing the amount of liquid that was inside, and pricked his arm, injected it into his arteries. He winced. Some of the other scientists began speaking among themselves.

“Sir, there’s no one here on record by those names. Not even unofficially.”

“Must be delusional. Probably a result of extenuating mental stress.”

“Monitor him closely. See if you can identify a pattern in his thought process. And check how the Shadow reacts.”

Not on record?

Doubt and worry was beginning to make its nest; no way. He wasn’t delusional. He felt more sane than he had in the past week, there was no way---

His thought process was interrupted by another prick in his arm, and another in his other, and then another, and soon he lose track. They were worse than the initial one; bigger, more painful. Some started to bring over tubes. With the newly created holes, they stretched the skin on his arms and inserted the tubing, some pumping in blood, some pumping it out, some pumping in strange liquid that he couldn’t identify and he couldn’t count how many there were because his eyes were shit and his head was beginning to swim.

He took a breath; noticed again that his hearing was altogether improved as his mind was suddenly flooded with noise. He could pick up beeps and footsteps more easily than he could a day ago. That’s right; after they escaped was when he started to conjure up explosives. Chidori had always warned him that too many and he would go deaf. He said well, he wouldn’t rely so much on his sense of sound then. The constant booms and detonations had dull that sense a while ago. But that was after he escaped.

His heart sped up; the heart monitor he was connected to reflected that but—wait when had they set that up? He became aware of the wires and electrodes they had hooked up to his chest and struggled against the straps again, a sense of claustrophobia that hadn’t been there before nagging at his mind.

“I’m not delusional—other tests subjects, my teammates—Ken too, and Koromaru, what the fuck did you do with them--?!” He picked up the growing desperation in his own voice and it made him feel even sicker. His anger was ignored, except for one scientist that paid him a moment only to tighten his straps so they dug into his un-perforated skin and kept him still.

Another however, took pity. “There’s no one in this facility that goes by the names you’re giving us. You’re experiencing a delusional fantasy or perhaps a false memory.” He spoke almost as if he were talking to a five-year-old.

Jin’s temper flared; No. He wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. His muscles tightened, but all that managed to do was aggravate the already agitated skin and unsettled the tubes and make his arms ache. He tried to kick, loosen the bonds or at least knock someone in the face, but eventually they held his legs down and strapped down his lower body as well.

Another man shooed the one who spoke to him away. Those who accompanied him had rolled over some other machine. They made sure Jin’s neck was restrained and began attaching electrodes to his temples. This won’t hurt, they promised.

But of course they were wrong; he knew they were, they had done this before. The machine would monitor something like his brainwaves, but the Kirijo Group always had to take it a step too far. The next thing he knew there was pain in his head again. Moros was forcefully unsettled again, not so much as coming out as being stirred from its passive-aggressive rest. His head was throbbing; his arms were aching; his chest was heaving; his heart was thumping. He was panicking.

He wasn’t going to scream in pain; that wouldn’t help anyway, it never had. His ears were pounding; too many sounds that were too loud than what he was used to, and too overwhelming on top of every other little bit of pain. He could hardly see anything clearly and that only made him even more scared.

His thoughts were racing. Where were they? Where were they?

Whatever the scientists were doing, they seemed to let up a tad. Jin managed to strain his neck ever so slightly to the side. There was an observation window here; all of the rooms had them, so the other scientists could observe or someone could see if a Persona went berserk. It afforded a small look into the hallway. He remembered when he was a kid he would always look out and see the other kids. Once he had seen a girl with audacious red hair, a boy with blue with special escorts, and a tall boy with a very particular look in his eyes. If he watched, he could see them again. They had to be here. They had to be somewhere. Anywhere. And as impossible as it was, he held out hope of seeing a boy with brown hair and even a small white dog too.

The scientists didn’t pay him mind as he watched. ‘He’s delusional,’ they kept repeating. ‘No one by that name or description is employed on these premises.’

They kept asking him questions about them; when did you first meet them, what are they like, do they protect you and comfort you? He answered all of them to as much as he felt like indulging these assholes, but all of them answered him with the same denial once he demanded to know where they were. One of the men wanted to diagnose him with Multiple Personality Disorder. Another offered PTSD, and another said that they were simply a coping method, like a child and their imaginary friend.

Every time he overhead their theories his muscles tensed, and it made the pains in his arms and his chest even worse. His thoughts raced, his temples throbbed, and Moros writhed in anger, and the scientists seemed a bit more satisfied with themselves.

Sometimes they swapped out the equipment he was attached to. Had to re-insert new veins, poke new holes, administer new liquids and medicines. Change the settings on the monitor systems, swap out the electrodes attached to his chest and head. He had no idea what any of them did other than make him various degrees of numb, nauseous, pained or delirious.

He kept watching the hallways, but no one familiar came by.

All he could distinguish was a rotating cast of men in white, but he lost track of the passage of time.