tenipuri_xp | Plog: Oshitari

Date: Unspecified time in the afternoon.
Rating: R for mentions of bad stuff.
Summary: Oshitari escapes.

Oshitari awoke to chaos.

Or at least that’s how it seemed to his overly sedated mind. There were loud voices echoing off the sterile white walls of the lab, and a hand, no, two hands tugging on his arm.

Another injection. Gods, no more. He wasn’t sure the last had worn off. His dark eyes peered sluggishly about, half expecting more images being played on the screen in the corner. The one they’d used to show him what had happened to his predecessors. All mutants. All young. All screaming with their last breaths, struggling vainly to get away, get free, even as what horrible drugs went coursing through their veins.

The doctor in charge had thought it enlightening to show Oshitari exactly what he could expect. Oh, not all the mutants died, he’d been assured, a red pen tapping against the doctor’s lips. Some just fell into a state of psychosis, never to recover.

And Oshitari considered it bordering on psychotic that at that moment, he’d wanted to break that damn pen a hundred times more than he wanted his hands around the doctor’s neck. It had been their favorite game over the past few days, ever since he’d unwittingly and unknowingly let it slip that red reminded him of Akira. He still wasn’t sure what else he could have told them; he’d been given some variants of truth serums and hallucinogens so many times over the past week, he could count the hours he’d actually been lucid on his fingers.

And the doctor seemed to delight rubbing his slips into his face. It was meant to make him break; he knew it, they knew it. But every red tie, every red pen and clipboard and belt and heavens knew why the red jello they’d felt compelled to eat in front of him just reminded him of Akira, of a loud shot in a darkened tunnel.

Maybe he was going mad.

The voices were still there though, and he swung his gaze slowly around…was he just imagining things again? Whatever the last injection had been, it had done something to the energy in his mind. He didn’t know what, but at the time he remembered screaming in horror as the waves of energy that had always existed separately in his head, building and seeking outlets outside of himself, had suddenly went rushing back into his own mind, hitting him with hallucination after hallucination until he’d blacked out.

Was he even sure what was real anymore?

“Look, Himura, it’s real simple. If you just let me do this now-“

“Stop it! You can’t use that on the subject without Kiriyama’s approval! What do you think is going to happen when he gets back later and finds out?”

“Hey, I’m saving us some valuable time here! The doc is just going to stretch this out, making us hang around here while he goes out on his stupid little ‘errands’. We’ll be here all night, processing more pointless data on this one if we have to wait for him. I’m not sticking around; I do have a life outside of this lab, and a date. I’m not passing it up so we can sit twiddling our thumbs waiting for him to kill this one.”

Oshitari blinked at that, his head rising now to see fingers fumbling with the IV in his arm. It was coming to him slowly. The doctor wasn’t here? Kiriyama? Was that the doctor? And what exactly were they doing?

“You don’t know if it’s going to do that! What about subject 74? Do you remember what happened then? What are you going to do if this one goes berserk as well? Just put the serum down, Watanabe.”

A laugh rang out, and Oshitari felt a little spittle fall on his arm. If he’d had the energy, he might have been disgusted.

“That’s not going to happen! That was a fluke thing, come on! Like a one in a hundred chance! And besides, we’ll be behind the glass, monitoring. You worry too much, Himura!”

Oshitari watched the needle slide into the IV with a sort of detached, dull terror. This wasn’t going to be like the other serums, he knew instinctively. This wasn’t going to be some clever little drug that made him sick while they showed him clips of mutants over and over, trying to brainwash him. No, this was going to be something entirely different.

A minute went by. Two.

“Huh. No reaction. What the hell, it should’ve worked by now…did the doc switch vials on u-“

The lab tech never got to finish his sentence. All at once, Oshitari’s muscles strained, froze and locked. It was like all of his nerve endings were on fire, and walls were being blown to bits inside his head. He threw his head back, screams ripping out of his throat. There was a crash beside him, panicked voices suddenly filling the room.

“What the hell did you do?”
“Quick, get the sedatives!”
“I can’t hold onto his arm, someone get over here!”

Suddenly, there was too much in Oshitari’s head, a veritable tidal wave of psionic energy. There wasn’t any way to hold it back. He felt it pour over other minds, close and distant. His freed arm lashed out, and somehow, the energy channeled through it, a sharp purple glow striking out from his fingers to stab the tech closest to him.

Save yourself.

It wasn’t exactly a lucid command on Oshitari’s behalf, but the man stopped screaming and clawing at his already bleeding eyes to stare at the still bound mutant, eyes blinking as he suddenly saw it was himself bound. Hastily, he fumbled around, unlocking and unwrapping Oshitari’s restraints before the mutant hissed in pain, falling to the floor.

Around him, it was a bloodbath.

Two tech were viciously biting one another on one side, huge chunks of flesh already gone, skin flapping as they struggled with each other. Another, a woman, was already dead, having cut her own throat with a broken beaker. Oshitari gleefully took it in, even as he crawled to the man beside him, who’d fallen down dead immediately after the energy attacking his mind had dissipated.

Fucking humans. Let them die.

With shaking fingers, Oshitari managed to work off the tech’s drawstring cotton pants, struggling to put them on, not noticing the needles and bags being ripped painfully from his body as he moved farther away from his shackles. There were tools scattered on the floor around them, and his fingers closed around a scalpel, gripping it tightly in his fist, ready to strike out at anyone who came near him.

He had to get out, get out, get out!

Weaving to his feet, he almost collapsed again, righted himself, and made his way to the door. And then another door, and then another. Once he reached the hallway, he did collapse, a cacophony of terrified and anguished screams echoing from everywhere. Oshitari breathed hard, his mind at once quiet, all of his power’s energy spent, and jumbled with thoughts that wouldn’t stop.

Never had he wanted to die quite so badly as now. But he had to keep going. Did they know? Had he revealed anything about the Brotherhood? He couldn’t be sure…couldn't remember. All it took was for one leak to the military, a leak the doctor

Kiriyama?

would be only to happy to provide them. For more subjects. More testing. More pain.

More death.

Saeki’s face came to him, followed by Shishido’s, Shinji’s, Ohtori’s…He had to warn them. He had to make sure they were safe. The thought overdrove everything else in him, and he pulled himself laboriously to his feet.

Akira…I couldn’t save you. But I will not let them win. I have to warn the others.

And then I can rest.

**Footnote: Tari's powers will be updated Monday morning, when I can be online again.**