Content warning: 'discussion' of human bodies by beings that don't know jack about human bodies. One of said beings is also horny.
Ryuji felt himself regaining consciousness, opened his eyes and blinked.
He felt something off about his body, like there was a weight stuck inside his chest. His hand moved from just below the throat to his stomach, and he felt his fingertips run across something slightly bumpy and unfamiliar. He glanced down to realize his clothes were gone, replaced with a hospital gown over a naked body. He pulled his collar and stared at a large, fresh scar going down his chest.
"[What the-?!]" He recoiled and felt his back hitting a wall, grounding him more in reality. He was on a bench, sitting in front of a railing that was covered with a faint blue… thing. He stood up to approach it and tapped it with his finger. It made a sound like glass, but it felt weird to touch. It was firm, but buzzy.
He walked around what turned out to be a circular balcony. He wasn't in the desert anymore, but that didn't narrow his location down in the slightest. This seemed to be some kind of industrial area, encircled by a mountain range, and cut by an entanglement of footpaths, pipes and railway tracks. Some buildings appeared completely destroyed, but judging by the occasional humans and animals in the distance and the smoke coming from the chimneys, the facility was operational. Maybe he could get some answers from one of the workers or something… assuming some of them spoke his language.
The only way out was some kind of mechanical blast door. After Ryuji fumbled with it for a moment, it opened to reveal a small round room with some weird lit-up table in the middle, like they had in some war rooms in movies. On the outer rim of the room were, in no particular order, doors to other sections of the building, assorted displays showing data he did not even try to understand, a bunch of workbenches, and some kind of wardrobe-sized doodad with a faded symbol of a stick with wings and a pair of snakes around it. The whole aesthetic was just a bit too off to look like the real world, but a bit too worn down and mundane to look like the Palaces he had seen before.
"[Hello?]" he said. "[Is anyone home?]"
No response but the whirrs and beeps of the machines.
"[Will anyone scream at me if I enter?]"
Ditto mark.
"[Alright… then…]"
Ryuji was about to enter the room when a voice came out of the loudspeakers hidden somewhere:
"LOBOTOMITE!"
"Okay, okay, I'm leaving!" Ryuji said, then retreated back to the balcony.
He sat back on the bench, lacking better ideas, and then his eyes widened as realization struck: whoever that was had addressed him in English. Not only did he understand it, he responded in English as well.
"Holy crud…" he whispered. He felt the connections in his brain that weren't there before, between the words he could match to their translations, the way they all would come together in a sentence, the way they should be pronounced in a generic American accent, the grammar, the articles, the numbers, a few idioms sprinkled here and there, all of it implanted into his brain like they've been there all along.
"Through. Other. Thumb."
He could even make the "th" sounds, meaning his pronunciation was superior to the author's.
"Man, Ann's gonna flip when she hears this…"
"Look at what you've done, Klein," a loud voice boomed from outside, probably from a loudspeaker he hadn't noticed. It belonged to a woman, and as far as Ryuji cared, she tried too hard to sound sultry. "You startled him. Now, now, you poor lobotomite. We do not have any microphones outside, so could you please step back into the building?"
Ryuji decided to not react. Maybe she'd go away if he kept quiet?
"DON'T CODDLE HIM, DALA," Klein protested. His voice was loud, even by Ryuji's standards. "HE HAS NO OTHER WAY OUT."
"Well, he could just take the elevator down to the Big Mountain grounds and wander the premises," said a third voice – male, somewhat whiney.
"WELL, IT IS CLOSED NOW. HE CAN NOW EITHER COME TO OUR FLOOR, OR STAY ON THE BALCONY UNTIL THE END OF HIS MEAGER LIFESPAN."
"Maybe it's for the better," piped in a fourth voice, in an odd cadence that made Ryuji think of a hammy movie narrator. "Who knows where it has been. What poisonous excretions could it produce."
Cue static on the line.
"FOR THE LOVE OF BANACH AND TARSKI, GET YOUR BRAINS IN ORDER!" Klein boomed. "THE LOBOTOMITE MOVES ON HIS OWN VOLITION, REACTS TO COMMANDS, AND SPOKE A SINGLE SENTENCE AFTER THE PROCEDURE, DEMONSTRATING HIGHER INTELLIGENCE THAN EXPECTED. HE MIGHT BE WHAT WE NEED TO FINALLY DEAL WITH OUR PROBLEM."
"Don't mention the procedure," the nasally voice protested. "If we tell him that we removed his brain, spine and heart, he might-"
"You did WHAT?!" Ryuji was loud enough that the microphones in the building picked him up.
"GOOD JOB, O," Klein commented. "IF YOU WANT YOUR ORGANS BACK, COME AND SEE US. THERE IS AN ELEVATOR IN THE SINK, LABELED 'THINK TANK'. TAKE IT AND MEET US IN THE COMMAND CENTER."
Despite the hesitation, Ryuji decided to play along for the time being – if only because he didn't seem to have any other options. He walked back into the building and started looking for a sink large enough to fit an elevator in it. He found a normal-sized one in the bathroom and another one in the room with a bunch of planters in it. Finally, when looking for another one, he noticed a pair of automatic doors with a sign between them. One of the doors was labeled 'THINK TANK', the other 'BIG MT'. On the wall next to these doors, there was 'THE SINK' written on it, suggesting it was just the name of the floor as a whole.
"Right," he grumbled, irritated with the nonsense around him.
The door opened, revealing a small, cramped elevator. Ryuji considered taking the stairs, then realized he hadn't seen a staircase anywhere. Frustrated by the layers of this nonsense, he entered the elevator and punched the button.
The elevator rode down too quickly for his comfort, stopped roughly on the destination floor with enough deceleration to make him tumble forward, and opened to reveal nothing but an empty corridor leading forwards and upwards.
"We are eagerly awaiting you," said Dala. "Come, Lobotomite."
"Okay, can you dial it down?" Ryuji proclaimed, marching towards the source of the voice. "I'm sure it counts as sexual harassment at thi-" He registered what's in front of him and code-switched. "-ittai nan da?"
The corridor led to a massive, dimly lit room filled with all sorts of screens, monitors, and other doodads that simultaneously looked advanced and outdated. The only source of light was a single lamp – rather large, all things considered, but not large enough – and five small floor lights illuminating… whatever the heck was in front of Ryuji at the time.
There were five of them, arranged in a row, floating over the floor by some unknown means. The core of each was some kind of transparent tank, with what looked like a human brain inside. They differed in highlight color – left to right, white, purple, blue, dirty-yellow, green. Each tank had three articulated arms attached to it, with screens at the end of each. Two screens displayed an eye each, while the third showed a zoomed-in picture of a lip, and if they arranged just right, they produced something that just barely resembled a human face.
"[Welp, I am stuck in a Palace with no powers,]" Ryuji muttered under his breath. "[Then again, their eyes aren't golden…]"
"YOU TOOK YOUR SWEET TIME, LOBOTOMITE," said the one in the middle, with the voice identified as Klein before. His brain tank flashed in sync with the words.
"Did you hear it speak before?" said the green one, with the narrator voice. "That sounded like a foreign language." He floated up to Ryuji. "Is English not good enough for you," the eye monitors rapidly extended towards him, "commie spy?"
"Commie?" Ryuji inched away from him, more flabbergasted than threatened. "I'm not a commie, I'm just Japanese."
"Ah, yes, Japan," the green brain replied. "The lovely island country a few hundred miles away from the People's Republic of China!"
"CAN IT, BOROUS!" Klein barked at him, and he returned back to his spot. "NOW, WE WERE ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS LOBOTOMITE HERE."
"Fascinating, isn't it?" said Dala from the purple tank. "It is the skinvelope of the brain that triggered our satellite's detectors." She seemed fascinated. "That might be proof of things beyond the crater."
"IT WASN'T ABOUT THAT!" Klein retorted. "IT WAS ABOUT SOMETHING IMPORTANT!"
"Maybe we just wanted to watch him breathe and blink," Dala suggested, returning to her previous sultry-ish tone.
The yellow tank tried to speak, judging by the flashes, but what came out was more like a garbled assortment of static.
"These are baseless accusations," Dala retorted, unconvincingly. "What use could I get from an oscillating microfusion cell?"
"Hello?" Ryuji waved his hand to get everyone's attention. "I'm still here and I wanna-"
"I KNOW YOU ARE STILL HERE," Klein shouted back. "I AM POINTEDLY IGNORING YOU AND YOUR HAND PENISES."
That was the exact moment Ryuji gave up on trying to process the madness around him. What came out of him in response was a deadpan. "...my what now?"
The yellow tank tried to say something again.
"An incoming transmission? From the Forbidden Zone?" Borous (probably) repeated.
Everyone's monitors started quaking a bit in fear. "THAT HAS TO BE…"
"If it isn't my old colleagues, the mighty 'Think Tank' of Big Mountain."
Ryuji turned around and found himself staring at a still image of another one of these mobile brain tanks. He looked much worse for wear; his eye monitors were askew, one of them was busted, and the other one and the mouth one required a thorough scrubbing. The brain-storing part of the tank was almost opaque.
"Big Fools, all of you…" he sneered with condescension. Ryuji was reminded of all the overconfident Palace-ruling Shadows. "It is I, Doctor Mobius, transmitting from my dome-shaped… dome in the Forbidden Zone. A zone that is, yes… forbidden to you!"
"MOBIUS…" Klein muttered, in awe and/or fear.
"Even now, my deadly Robo-Scorpions swarm across Big MT with their pincers and pointy laser tails," Mobius continued. "Soon, all Science will be mine! Even the technologies sealed in the Big MT research centers cannot save you. So cower in your "Think Tank." Wait, for the end." After a beat, he added, sotto voce, "Hm, yes… that's all. Uh, goodbye."
The broadcast ended. Ryuji watched as the Think Tank tried to regain composure. He hadn't found the message threatening at all, probably because months of battling assorted Shadows in a mental world had desensitized him to danger. Or maybe because this whole situation was so frickin' ridiculous.
"SO, THAT WAS MOBIUS," Klein explained. "DRIVEN MAD BY THE FAULTS IN HIS SCIENCE, HE THREATENS US WITH THIS LOOPED BROADCAST." His eye monitors raised up a bit. "THAT'S WHY I WANTED THE LOBOTOMITE HERE! YOU SEEM SMART ENOUGH TO TAKE ORDERS, YOU CAN HELP US DEAL WITH HIM ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Ryuji raised his hands. "Why would I wanna help you? You stole my brain, heart and spine." He finally realized the obvious. "Wait, how can I think if I don't have a brain?!"
"WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR SIMPLE-MINDED QUESTIONS?" Klein huffed. "JUST GO AND DO THE THINGS WE WANT!"
Ryuji crossed his arms. "You want my help, you answer the questions. And I've got one more: why do I know English now?"
"ASK 8," Klein replied. "HE DEALS WITH SOUND, LANGUAGE IS BASICALLY SOUNDS YOU MAKE WITH MOUTHS. OR VOICEBOXES."
The long sequence of static that 8 produced was probably a very thorough explanation of how he got his language skills embedded in his brain, or whatever passed for it, but unfortunately Ryuji didn't understand a word of it.
"Makes sense," O remarked.
"O… kay. Question two: what happened to my inner bits?"
"Your brain was extracted in a standard brain extraction procedure," Dala explained. "It now communicates with you via the Tesla coils we have embedded in your head."
Makes as much sense as everything else about this place, he thought. "Standard?"
"It is performed on all Lobotomites in the facility," Dala explained. "Though it never fried the Auto-Doc before."
"And, uh, why do you remove people's brains?"
"Why wouldn't we?" Dala replied, too excited at the prospect. "It offers a few distinct advantages."
"It makes the pacification field work, for one!" Borous declared.
Ryuji raised an eyebrow. "The what now?"
The yellow tank replied to that with five more seconds of static.
"What 8 meant," O said, realizing a translation is needed, "is that the pacification field stops you from attacking us as long as your brain is not in the building. After our last visitors with brains inside them caused too much trouble, we're not taking any more chances."
"Hold on, my brain is not here?" Ryuji reacted. "Then where is it?"
Cue silence, as the Think Tank awkwardly stared at one another – not out of shame, they were past that emotion, but out of unwillingness to admit they did not know something. Finally, Klein proclaimed: "MOBIUS HAS IT."
Ryuji didn't buy that. "Oh, really? Why do you think so?"
"BECAUSE HE'S A MADMAN!" Klein replied. "HE MUST'VE NOT CLEANED HIS BIOGEL TANK IN NEWTON KNOWS HOW LONG!"
8 piped in with more static.
"Good point," Borous remarked. "The Auto-Doc that performed the operation was programmed by Mobius himself! Clearly some leftover code of his sent the brain to the Forbidden Zone!"
"And he worked with brains before," O added. "This has his screen-prints all over it."
"Right." If Mobius was as sane as all the others – which seemed likely at that point – he might have captured his brain for whatever reason. "And why did you remove my heart and spine?"
Klein turned to the side. "DALA, EXPLAIN YOURSELF."
"There were… complications," Dala replied. "The heart and spine cried out for directions from the missing brain, with their exposed nerve ends, and the Auto-Doc was forced to remove them. I put them in their little tanks afterwards. Shhh, little organs, it's all good now…"
"You got some cybernetic replacements in exchange," O added. "And they're much better than your original bits. Normal spines are lame. Just a bunch of vertebrae stacked together. You should help us out of gratitude for giving you a non-lame spine."
"We even fixed that damaged leg of yours!" Borous exclaimed. "Well, the Auto-Doc did, automatically, but it also told us to take all gratitude from you."
"Wait…" Ryuji raised and lowered his leg a few times, then trotted in place for a moment. No pain, nothing, it's like that fucking piece of shit Kamoshida didn't get his leg broken to begin with. He grinned to himself, it felt exhilarating. The one good thing out of this trainwreck of a day…
"Yessss…"
…and it was gone. He froze dead in his tracks, then put both his feet on the ground and stared daggers at Dala. "Don't do that again."
"I make no promise, my little hairless teddy bear."
"Ugh," Ryuji shuddered. "Alright," he said, "I think you're all weirdos, but it's nice that you fixed my leg/ and if that Mobius guy has my brain then I want it back. we're on the same team for now. Whaddaya want from me?"
"YOUR BRAIN IS MOST CERTAINLY STORED IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE," Klein outlined. "TO ACCESS IT, YOU WILL NEED THREE TECHNOLOGIES SCATTERED IN THE FACILITY. FETCHING THEM SHOULD BE A TRIVIAL TASK FOR A LOBOTOMITE LIKE YOU."
"And what are these technologies?"
"THE THOUGHT-FOCUSING X-2 TRANSMITTER ANTENNA ARRAY, THE CARDIAC-DAMPENING STEALTH SUIT, AND A VERTEBRAE-PULSE-DE-SENSITIZER FREQUENCY FOR A SONIC EMITTER."
"Uh," Ryuji was intimidated by the long words, "can I get that noted down?"
"WITH WHAT? WE HAVE NEITHER PENS NOR NOTEPADS. NOR HANDS TO WRITE."
8 responded with more incomprehensible static.
"That is a fantastic idea!" Borous proclaimed.
"What is?" Ryuji asked.
In response, an off-white pillar, about one meter tall, appeared from behind a column and rolled up to him. On the top of it rested a small steel square with some tape reels inside.
"This holotape should allow you to use the Central Intelligence Unit in the Sink," Borous explained. "It's that round map contraption in the center room. Load the tape in, boot it up, and it can give you both a detailed map of the facility and supplies you need to sustain your fleshy form."
"Don't be rough with that tape," Dala requested. "Gently push it into the slot and hold it until you're done."
"BRILLIANT IDEA," Klein's monitors nodded. "THAT THING WAS PROGRAMMED BY MOBIUS AGES AGO, BUT IT SHOULD WORK FINE FOR YOUR PURPOSES. WHILE WE'RE AT IT, YOU CAN USE WHATEVER THE SINK OFFERS YOU TO SATISFY YOUR…" He shuddered in disgust. "...NEEDS. DIRECT FURTHER QUESTIONS TO THE CIU AND DON'T WASTE OUR TIME ANY MORE."
Ryuji picked up the tape and spun it in his hands. "Just one more thing…" He glanced at Klein. "If it's so trivial, why didn't you fetch these technologies?"
"Well," O said, "it's because that requires hands, and other things we don't have. Mostly hands. There are doorknobs out there."
"And deadly Robo-Scorpions!" Borous helpfully piped up. "They patrol the Big Mountain in the search of anyone opposing Mobius! Their stings drain intelligence, which means you should be immune."
Ryuji said nothing, but the way he inhaled air through his nose betrayed his irritation.
"Can you do that again?" Dala asked.
"Uh, that part about deadly robots?" Ryuji ignored her. "That's the kinda thing you say up front!"
"SO YOU CAN TURN AROUND AND LEAVE WITHOUT HELPING US?" Klein rebutted.
"He can't leave," O pointed out. "The radar fence perimeter blocks him."
"That is one of the other advantages of brain removal," Dala remarked. "If you try to leave the perimeter, the pylons will shut down the electrodes in your skull, and your body will be transported back to the Sink."
"Sure. Why not at this point…" Ryuji rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger in frustration. "If you want me to get you the tech thingies, I'm gonna need some armor and a weapon. Probably a gun."
8 piped up with some more static, excited. Another pedestal rolled up from the side. It carried a retro-futuristic-looking energy pistol with a conical muzzle, a bunch of vacuum tubes on the side, and a small oscilloscope screen on the back. There was some kind of battery-pack-looking thing attached to the top of the barrel, and a bunch of replacement batteries were provided on the side.
Ryuji carefully inspected the weapon, pointing it away from himself – and, driven by some compulsion, away from the Think Tank. "I've never seen anything like this before."
"That is the sonic emitter," Borous announced. "It wasn't created as a weapon, strictly speaking, but it can fire sound at lethal frequencies."
"It also gives a fantastic biogel massage," Dala added.
"YOU ARE NOW OUTFITTED WITH A WEAPON," Klein announced. "IT ACCEPTS ALL KINDS OF STANDARD ENERGY CELLS. THE CIU IN THE SINK MIGHT GIVE YOU ARMOR IF YOU PAY FOR IT. I THINK IT HAD A DEBUG SUBROUTINE THAT ACCEPTS BOTTLE CAPS AS CURRENCY. WE WILL CLEAN UP AND SEND SOME TO YOU LATER."
"I don't think it was a de-"
"NOBODY CARES, DALA!" he interrupted her. "I DID NOT HAVE TO GIVE A LECTURE IN FIFTY YEARS AND I WANT TO END THIS ONE QUICKLY." He glanced at Ryuji one last time. "IS THAT ALL, LOBOTOMITE?"
Ryuji realized that there's one thing he assumed would happen, but considering the state of the brains before him, might need restating: "Uhm…" He picked up all the loose energy cells with his off-hand. "When I get all the tech and my brain back, you're gonna reattach all my bits in the right places, right?"
"RIGHT, OF COURSE," Klein grumbled. "WE WILL PUT YOU TOGETHER LIKE SOME GIANT YUMYUM DEVILLED EGG."
"Awesome!" Ryuji grinned. "That's all, I'm gonna go get you the stuff." He turned around and marched towards the elevator back to the Sink, but turned back after a few steps. "Um, by the way… I might end up, er… ex-krettin' myself all over the floor upstairs."
"EW!"
"We did not need to know that," O protested.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. But I remembered that you had some cameras and mics upstairs, and I thought you might turn them all off. Spare yourself the gross stuff."
"OF COURSE, I'LL GO AND TURN THEM OFF RIGHT NOW. NOT A WORD, DALA!"
"Thank you, buh-bye!" Ryuji spun around on his heel and ran towards the elevator with the sonic emitter in one hand and the spare energy cells in another.
He didn't trust the Think Tank. They carved him up like a Christmas turkey and generally seemed more detached from reality than a hypothetical Yusuke on hallucinogens. At the same time, he needed his brain back, and he needed to find all the others. Playing along for now was the sanest option, but he needed to keep his options open.
Resolving to come up with a plan B and maybe C, he stepped into the elevator and pressed the button labeled "The Sink".
It shot up way too quickly and his head hit the ceiling when it reached the target floor.
Bathroom added to the Sink by The Sink - Simple Overhaul by elr0y7.