Sept. 3rd: Lab Rat

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 5:55 pm

A more nervous looking Rob walked into the lab for his first day of class work. He clutched his bag close and kept his head down as he walks in, trying not to call attention to himself.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:05 pm

"Ah, Mister West. Do you have a moment to talk before class begins?" Ashlie asks, walking over to him.

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:06 pm

Rob grips his bag a bit more tightly as he tenses up, "Ye-yeah. Sure. What's up?"

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:12 pm

"Please don't be alarmed." she says softly. "I wanted to ask you if you remember anything of what happened last night."

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:13 pm

"Ummm...I did some reading. Then I went to sleep?" Rob says.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:30 pm

"Not quite. I found you in the workshop last night and we worked on a schematic."

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:41 pm

"Destroy it," Rob says immediately. Like it's a reflex.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:50 pm

Ashlie looks extremely distraught, because she did agree to follow Rob's wishes on that particular subject. "I will adhere to your wishes on the subject and I promised not to argue with you. But I can implore you to look at the schematic before I delete it." she says as she brings it up on the workbench.

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:15 pm

"I..." Rob starts to protest, but stops when he sees the schematic. He looks confused, "This...it isn't..."

"Is this your design?" Rob asks, frowning.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:17 pm

"No. I suggested a purpose and you designed it."

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:22 pm

"And you're in charge..." Rob mumbles. "...That's fine. You don't have to destroy it. I don't think."

Rob sets his bag down next to the workbench.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:26 pm

"Thank you. You're really worried about what you built when you're asleep, aren't you?"

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:34 pm

"No, I'm not," Rob says. "But I just...they should be destroyed. They need to be destroyed."

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:35 pm

"Why is that?"

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:38 pm

It's like Rob doesn't even hear her. He crouches down and gets his tablet out of his bag, "So, ummm...did I...do anything else? Weird or anything?"

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:45 pm

"Your personality seemed to be very different." she says, avoiding the question a little bit without outright shutting him down while part of her attention is on pulling data from the Internet, trying to find any information on Rob that might not have been in the official documents that were send to her up front.

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:53 pm

"Well, yeah....I mean, I was sleepwalking. I'm a little loopy," Rob says.

She would come up with a few things that seemed to have been left out of the original information. There were several invoices and tax records from various in-house psychiatric services that listed Rob as a patient. Arranged in a timeline it looked like when Rob was much younger, he was being treated for paranoid delusions and emotional problems, but then suddenly things changed and Rob began treatment for a sleep disorder.

Also, upon closer examination, the documents concerning Rob's father that the school were forged. They were 'real', they were completely official and legal, but the person they referred to didn't seem to exist. He had no presence in social media, no news stories, no web page....as far as you could tell by examining the Internet, Rob's father only existed on paper.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 8:03 pm

"You were extremely lucid at the time." she points out while she continues to dig. This felt familiar to her and reminded her of an identity being created via artificial papertrails. She discards the identity of Rob's father as likely entirely fictional to obfuscate the truth. She instead focuses her attention on the timespan between the time between the two very different treatments, mainly where he had been at the time and who treated him.

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 8:20 pm

"That'd be a first. I usually ramble about weird random nonsense," Rob says.

Between the two periods Rob was treated by...

A member of the Institute. An expert in mutant psychiatry had been sent out to evaluate Rob. Her report read that his parents had refused to enroll him, but they allowed the expert to continue treating Rob at the house and over the next six months, Rob underwent three sessions with the expert.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 8:23 pm

"How do you know?" she asks, doing a good job keeping the outrage that's building out of her voice. She tries pulling up everything she can find about this expert and her ties to the Institute.

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 8:59 pm

"It's what people tell me," Rob says.

The psychiatrist was named Dr. Lily Nicks. She had worked as a consultant and resource for the Institute for two years. She was an expert in mutant psychology and written her dissertation on a method of mapping mutant neural structures. She was also a mutant herself, a somniatic telepath with the ability to enter the dreams of other people when she was asleep.

She had left the Institute a few weeks after treating Rob to open a private practice on the West Coast.

And from there she just disappeared. In fact, it seemed as if the reason she gave for her resignation was a lie. There was no private practice. The letter of resignation to the Institute was the last shred of documentation that existed.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 9:05 pm

"Does people in this case mean the psychiatrist who worked with you at the Institute?"

She runs a quick query through what channels she has access to in an attempt to see if she can find any mentions of her again, be it in the context of Institute business or known villain groups. Not expecting many results from that she focuses on who brought the woman into the Institute to begin with and who assigned her to work with Rob.

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 9:16 pm

"Who?" Rob asks. "What are you talking about?"

As expected there was no results. Dr. Nicks was not part of any organization that Ashlie had any sort of access to.

Her hiring process and assignment all appeared to be very straightforward and on the up and up. She was hired by the Institute advisory board to evaluate potential candidates for the Institute, particularly ones that might have some form of unique mental state as the result of their mutation. She was an obvious candidate due to her powers and expertise. She was also considered to be the best person to evaluate Rob when she was sent out.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 9:40 pm

"Dr. Nicks. You don't remember her?"

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 11:26 pm

"I don't know who that is," Rob says.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 11:33 pm

"What do you remember about your psychological treatment?"

by **Robert West** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 11:37 pm

Rob looks uncomfortable, "I dunno. Doctors, talking with people....they put me in an institution once. That sucked."

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 11:42 pm

"I believe someone may have tampered with your mind in an attempt to suppress what they considered less desirable personality traits. Those seem to manifest when you 'sleepwalk'." she says, curiously watching Rob's face for his reaction.

by **Robert West** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 12:01 am

When she first tells him there's just a brief moment where he seems to react. A flicker in the eyes, a heart beat that comes a bit faster, a twitch in the facial muscles, nothing you would see unless you were paying very careful attention.

And then he was back to normal. Like it didn't even register.

"Okay," Rob says. "Is that it?"

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 12:15 am

"Not quite." she says and with a flick of her hand pushes a video recording of the last couple exchanges between the two of them up on the workbench.

by **Robert West** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 12:39 am

"What's this?" Rob asks.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 12:49 am

"The conversation we just had. Notice how you're disregarding what I'm telling you as if it doesn't even register?"

by **Robert West** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:30 am

"I...probably just...I...," Rob looks confused and uncertain. "I probably didn't hear you."

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:31 am

"Then listen to this now. Listen to what I am telling you." she says and plays the recording again.

by **Robert West** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:33 am

Rob shakes his head, "No. I can't hear you."

He is starting to look more agitated.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:39 am

"This is a serious issue." she says. "Someone did this to you and when you sleepwalk you are trying to fight back against it. I don't know which words specifically cause this, but I will find a way to help you." she says, very much sounding like she has a vested personal interest in this for some reason.

by **Robert West** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:42 am

"S-st-stop talking," Rob begs. "Please. I'm not supposed to...I'm not supposed to talk about this."

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:49 am

"You have to. Whatever they did is not working."

by **Robert West** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:53 am

Rob laughs quickly, "G-good! I kn-knew that they would. The fools...the spineless, witless...."

"Agh!" Rob shouts. He clutches his head and falls to his knees. It looks like he's in a great deal of pain.

by **Ashlie Minamida** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:58 am

Ashlie winces and gently places a hand on his shoulder. "I am sorry, I did not mean to cause you any pain." she says, sending off an emergency signal to the infirmary in case Rob requires medical attention.

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