Somewhere out in space, surrounded by countless stars and light-eons of dark matter and rapidly-expanding sparse matter, amongst the haystack of space debris floating about aimlessly, an insignificant little rabbit-like creature had hidden itself away. As far as it new, the closest civilization was 5 million light years away. If it glanced in that direction, granted it had some sort of perfect zoom vision, it would be able to see the dinosaurs gallivanting about newborn landmasses. Or, there was something closer a few realities over, but adding that fifth dimension to space made reckoning of lots of things more difficult, and granted that it had only been capable of thinking in such manners for a few years, it wasn’t really inclined to take on the mental burden of doing so. Not that its mind nor body were particularly busy right now. The rabbit seemed to be passing the time by developing some sort of wormhole through which it would guide a nearby asteroid, hurtling it through space at speeds which would break the foundations of physics as humans knew them. Occasionally it would look up with an out-of-place expression upon its face, perhaps bursting out into laughter (silent, of course, since the sound could not move through space) or muttering nonsensical words to itself. And less frequently (though if one had been watching for a while one might have noticed that the frequency was increasing) he would pop something into existence next to himself, unscrew the safety lid, and pop an unhealthy-looking number of pills into his mouth. It was as he did this again that something changed. The rabbit’s brow creased, and it glanced into the bottle with something akin to anger or deep disgruntlement crossing its face. The Mew raised an incredulous eyebrow and glanced over at the other in the room with him. “I’m calling him in; we’ll do things your way,” the cat told the strange bipedal seed, and it nodded and disappeared into the pool by which they sat. “Alright, then.” The rabbit appeared just moments later, coming over and plopping down where the Elder’s recent visitor had been resting. “Not sure why we couldn’t continue the conversation telepathically, but here I am. What you need?” “I just wished to check on your status. We may have found a place that can help with your conditions.” The cat maintained admirable control over his facial expression; it never wavered from the grim line that he normally wore when dealing with this particular little mistake. He should have known that such a young mind was not ready for the responsibilities that he’d heaped on it, but times had been tough. “I don’t need help. I’ll get over it.” The rabbit had that exasperated tone to its voice that one got when he had become tired of repeating himself over and over to no avail. That was, of course, the case here: as much as it denied it, everyone could tell that things weren’t getting better on their own. “Ah, yes, no one liked Gamma Draconis 5, anyway, right?” Though it was said in a joking manner, the Mew didn’t change its expression at all, lending a biting accusatory edge to the statement. The rabbit just remained quiet, as it did in such cases, waiting for whatever other shoe would drop to do so. “Regardless, it’s not really up to you. Celibi gave me a visit, and brought this with him.” The rabbit stared at the ball that the cat held up, a look of horrible realization spreading over its face. “No way, you wouldn’t!” Upon finding no yield in the Elder’s face, the rabbit disappeared, but they both knew that there was nowhere that it could hide. “A rabbit… with wings on its butt.” If it didn’t actually say that (in surprisingly-nice script on decent paper; obviously a note that came with the patient instead of something that they’d documented themselves) on the forms, he’d have thought that maybe someone was joshing him. Not that there was generally much joshing among the Siblings, but such things had happened before. But no, it said it right there. Well, this would be different. It took Charles a while longer than usual to get to his new patient: he’d had to deal with another one who’d magically slipped into a coma. She’d been a troublesome witch who howled on and on about frogs and warts (and specifically about turning people into “warts with frogs”), and it was with relief that he’d signed the paperwork to officially authorize her displacement to a lower floor. Hopefully his new patient wouldn’t be as much trouble, and he’d get off with a net win today. As he made it to the door where they were temporarily keeping the thing, he wasn’t too surprised to see that the light was still on: when he’d come by earlier to place the chart and medicine by the door, it had already been so. Now he grabbed the medicine (a huge syringe of a powerful concoction that the chemistry team had shrugged their shoulders about when giving it to him, saying “[i]should[/i] make him compliant: it might work?” Not necessarily reassuring, but rabbits with godlike powers didn’t come through their gates often, and he’d come with no instructions) and carefully opened the door. Maybe he should have brought a carrot? He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but a half-melted room with the foot-tall occupant floating serenely in the middle playing a game of mancala with itself was not it. He’d been well-trained, though, so whatever surprise he felt did not end up registering in his manner as he greeted the thing. “Good morning.” Kevin glanced up from his game at the tall bearded nurse whom he’d felt come by earlier. The mancala board disappeared, the bits of dust that had served as a sort of quantum surface returning to their normal state and puffing out into the chamber in the subtle air currents that had been generated by the opening of the chamber door. He floated (a bit awkwardly: this weight on his neck was obviously dampening his telekinetic powers) over to the man, who held up a vicious-looking needle almost defensively. Even telepathically it drew out the syllables in a manner reminiscent of a childish human, treading somewhere on the line between annoying and adorable. For someone un-inclined to see such things in a good light, though, it was probably the former for Charles. Charles made some sort of start at a jabbing motion with the needle, but seemed to think better of it. Patients weren’t supposed to be this awake, or this… pleasant. Especially not… he cast his eyes about and took in the sight of the walls, melted as if the room had recently seen a nuclear event. He’d have to note to increase the resistance on the collar if it was the thing that did that: he didn’t recall the walls being that way before, so that was the obvious conclusion. He’d have to go over the video records, too, to see just what the whole thing was about. Seemed that the witch hadn’t been replaced with someone as simple as he’d hoped. At least it didn’t seem to be intent on killing him right now, instead asking a question for which he, of course, had a prepared answer. “Welcome to Osmund’s Institute, the leading professional conglomeration for the treatment of mentally-ill superpowered individuals.” Kevin did not seem happy with the news, flitting back and forth right in front of the nurse. As it stopped its feverish floaty pacing for a moment to make its mental cry at the world, Charles took the moment to make a jab at it with the syringe. It was a rabbit biologically, right? Charles certainly wasn’t a veterinarian, but he figured that what he knew about treating humanoid creatures wouldn’t be particularly helpful in this case, and so he just made a general guess at where to aim from seeing other take care of the more animalistic species a few times, and went for it. Even managed to hit flesh and begin the injection before the rabbit plummeted from the air. Not quite the reaction he’d expected. Charles, always one for protocol, was quick to reach for his walkee-talkee, but as quickly as Kevin was down, it was back up again, spinning around to glare accusatorily at him. The power of the psychic message (thankfully dulled at least somewhat), directed specifically at him as it was, was enough to start a headache throbbing in the upper right part of Charles’ skull. He made another jab with the needle, but this time the rabbit was too fast for him, darting to the side and then grabbing onto the syringe with all four of his tiny limbs. For a few moments they struggled, but before Charles could drop his papers and grab for the object with his other hand, too, the Victini had propelled itself backwards, pulling the plunger (still firmly in Charles’ hand) right off of the rest of it. The medicine splashed out onto the floor, almost immediately beginning to fill the room with a nauseating stench, and Kevin tossed his end of the device onto the floor with venom. There were protocols for this sort of thing. Charles took the distance that the rabbit had created, quickly moving back to the door and taking out his walkee-talkee. “I need room 1n027 gassed.” He pulled out a gasmask with his other hand as he replaced his walkee talkee with a taser, securing it over his face while brandishing the weapon at the approaching Victini. The rabbit went right for Charles’ face, but met the searing pain of the taser as the nurse dodged away from him. It didn’t seem to have much effect, as it immediately dove in again, but for the few minutes that they needed as the room became positively foggy with the amount of sedative being dumped into the air, Charles managed to stop the thing from getting his mask. It appeared that even this wouldn’t work, though. The Victini didn’t seem to be tiring, and the taser certainly didn’t seem to be enough of a deterrent (the dodging was really the only thing keeping it off of Charles’ face). Charles’ radio crackled, and he heard something that sounded like “Code 113”, though he desperately hoped that he was wrong about that. Of course, he wasn’t. As the powerful psychic generators in the walls around the room began to warm up, Charles could notice the edges of his vision blacken as his ears filled with a thrumming sound. He’d been chosen for this particular guest probably because of his extensive training surviving psychic attacks, but he knew that Code 113 was designed for things far more resilient than he. He placed himself –as quickly but safely as possible- in a prone position on the floor just before he blacked out. Gosh, even the witch wasn’t this bad. Kevin couldn’t move once all was said and done. Or, rather, when the psychic field finally dissipated, he found that the robot which was slowly fleeing the room to a little hatch in the wall had increased the suppression on his collar to the max setting. It was weird, being unable to float into the air for locomotion or unable even to sense most of what he was now used to as he was forced back to the rudimentary baseline of sight, smell, hearing, and touch. He picked himself up weakly (seemed that they’d increased the resistance on whatever was stopping his energy flow, too), but then there was someone else (in a gas mask, and definitely not his nurse, who he could see was still sprawled on the floor knocked out) coming in, and before he could attempt to scurry away in whatever semblance of speed he could manage, having not done this running thing in a while, the fellow picked him up and brought him out of the room. The door slid shut (not smoothly, Kevin noted, as the rails on which it slid seemed to have taken a beating at some point) and he removed his mask. Wait, it was Kevin’s nurse? Kevin scrutinized the face, but that was definitely the face of the man that they’d just left lying in that room. Different facial hair, and this man was a bit shorter, but he looked just like a short less-well-groomed clone of that guy! “Guess we shoulda been more aggressive with the collar on this one before. Vent out 1n027 and get Charles out of there, I’ll give this thing its tour and drop it off at lunch.” At least he didn’t sound like Charles as he described his plan of action to the woman in the nurses’ station, who nodded affirmatively and began poking at some buttons as Short Clone began to, very professionally, given how much trouble Kevin had just caused, trundle the Victini about and show it the various areas that he’d have access to. If he weren’t so much trouble, Short Clone added, though that was the only mention he made of what had just gone down. It was a bit embarrassing to be carted around by this new nurse, but Kevin resigned himself to it and even managed to enjoy the tour. Not that most of it was very interesting for him (most of the facilities weren’t really suited to a water-allergic rabbit), but they did have an amazing library, and that could probably give him something to do. Kevin had skipped out on a lot of his early education to tramp about the country pursuing the Pokemon Master dream, and had been trying to catch up these last few years as he managed to get books. Looked like he’d have no problem finding books here! Though from the titles he imagined that most of them weren’t in languages that he could understand, they were bound, from the sheer volume there (and the fact that he [i]could[/i] read some of the titles) to have something he could. “And that’s that.” It had been a very one-sided tour, as Short Clone couldn’t understand Kevin’s gibberish language and so, with no psychic power to clarify what it meant, the Victini had quickly given up on trying to discuss anything with him. “And this is our cafeteria. You missed breakfast with that silly fit you threw, so I guess you’re probably hungry. Not that we know what you eat.” He placed the rabbit down at a table, looking around at the other nurses about the room. Kevin followed his line of vision, and they eventually rested their eyes on Charles, who stood against the wall with a somewhat tired expression on his face. Short Clone ruffled the Victini’s hair between his ears with his fingers, and then walked off to possibly update Charles on how it had gone. Pleasant enough fellow. Well this was wonderful. Kevin felt the oppressive force of the collars even more now that he had to move himself about on his limbs again. He experimentally hoped about a few times on his side of the table before looking across its expanse toward the three who had congregated on the other side, eyeing them critically. They didn’t look particularly crazy, though he wasn’t really sure what to look for even if they were. One seemed to have gotten into a bit of a scrape recently, another had claws, and the last one was winged, but it wasn’t really that strange considering that he’d seen odder beings on his tour. Well, maybe they could make worthwhile conversation. Kevin made his way over without too much trouble, and plopped himself down by the two silver packets that one of them had floated over (unless floating was the basic food delivery system here, though the lines by what looked like a kitchen suggested otherwise). Well, then one of them was psychic to some extent, maybe that person could read his mind if he thought hard enough? Otherwise communication would be difficult. He glanced around at them, trying to guess which one had this power, but coming up with nothing, he figured he’d just go for it. “Hello, ladies! Would you mind telling me more about this place? I’m new!” It came out as a bunch of monosyllabic squeeks with too many consonant sounds (vs, cs, ts, and ns exclusively, though), but he was projecting it hard enough that maybe an especially psychically-receptive individual would be able to get his point if she focused.