damned_institute | Nightshift 24: Second M Block, Near the bathrooms and exit

Too many things were happening at once. Tamaki could hear everything, but it was like it was all coming from far away. Like he was under a bridge, listening to a train somewhere down the tracks - that distant, muted sort of sound. He heard people calling out, he heard Hikaru's muted curse, and he knew that his friends were in trouble.

They were all in trouble.

A pity things didn't seem to be moving in slow motion. Oh no, they were moving all too fast. He clung desperately to the hilt of his sword, so glad he'd asked for a guard. His hand was wrenched against it and the metal dug into his skin, but it helped him keep a grip on the weapon. Even as he felt that slice of claws once more, another gush of blood, he refused to let go of the sword.

Instead, he wrenched it. He twisted it with all of his strength, praying to whatever might be listening that he severed something important.

He really, really didn't want to die.

The cat that attacked Hikaru was turning now, blood on its paws and the desire for more in its eyes. It was unfortunate it hadn't gotten its claws buried into the boy's side, but at least he was weakened. But now the group of three were all looking at him. Behind, he could hear the screams of the other cat as Tamaki twisted the blade. For a second, the cat hesitated and then it darted into the dark again. It waited just long enough for people to look the other way and then it attacked, aiming for Light's calves with its razor sharp claws.

When Tamaki wrenched the sword, something in the cat snapped. The fragile bones gave way under the pressure and the cat screeched, a high and horrible sound. Its shoulder cracked and the sword jumped, sliding into the vulnerable organs inside. The cat gurgled, blood spilling from its wound and its mouth, but still it tried to scratch even as the life left it.

Robin's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak as Hikaru complained about the 'twin' comment. Cringing as the cat struck the boy, Robin reached out to try and help. The cat, luckily, darted off into the shadows.
"Hikaru, I'm sorry. I only meant to warn you...not distract you."
He scratched his head and smiled a small, apologetic smile. He'd make it up to Hikaru when he had a chance.
For now he wanted to check on Tamaki.

He smiled at the sight. Tamaki was doing well for himself. For...an amateur.
But his smile turned into a frown when he looked at the cat. It might be a mean thing, but it was still a living creature. "Finish it off," he said softly, pulling off his dressing gown. He was going to have to cover their wounds to stop the bleeding. And, if they were deep, he was going to need a needle and thread. But he wasn't about to admit how awful he was at stitching. He always left it to Johnny to make repairs to clothes and wounds.

It was when he had the dressing gown in his hands that he heard the approach of the cat. Without thinking, he threw the robes towards it. A distraction would be great, but he hoped to cover the cat and give them a chance to kill it. These slippers weren't very good, but their feet might have enough power to break something. Otherwise it was a trip into the wall, head first, for the cat.

Light grimaced when the claws connected with Hikaru's side, but by then there wasn't really anything he could do about it. Damn it! He didn't really care if Hikaru or any of the others got themselves killed, but if the remaining cat turned its attention to him after that...

He made more of an effort to keep track of the cat as it darted off again for this very reason, but it was impossible to keep sight of it in the encroaching darkness and keep a good grip on his flashlight so that he could beat the thing's skull at a moment's notice in if it came back.

He glanced back to the others once he'd lost sight of it, still keeping half of his attention on the area surrounding him. It probably wouldn't do much, but what else was he supposed to do? Besides, if he didn't show concern for the wounded now, that would only lower their opinion of him and likely limit whatever information they might decide to give him later.

Light managed to say "Do you need any--" before the cat struck again. Turning in the direction Robin had thrown his robe, he swung the flashlight towards the cat that would hopefully be caught under it. If he missed, he was going to keep trying until the damned creature was dead. That was what it got for interfering with the god of the new world.

Suddenly it was like someone had pressed the mute button. The only thing that Hikaru could hear was his heart pounding and his own labored breathing. He'd never been hurt this badly before. He didn't know how to handle it.

The boy just stood there, pale and shaking, ignoring everything around him. All he could see--all he could focus on--was the blood pumping out of his side.

Tamaki wasn't thinking anymore. He couldn't think, his mind had begun to shut itself down from the trauma. He wrenched his sword back and drove it in once more, trying to follow Robin's order, shuddering and shaking and beginning to sweat from the pain and the fear.

He was rapidly on his way to being in shock.

The cat was stabbed again and it tried to yowl, but only blood gushed out. With one last feeble swipe at Tamaki, its broken body jerked and it slowly fell to the floor. Muscles spasmed and still the blood rushed out of the open wound. It lay, skewered on the end of Tamaki's sword, but moved no more.

The other cat dodged when Robin threw the robe at it. Leaping to the side, it hissed at the former fox and turned just in time to see Light's flashlight coming down on its head. It tried to jump back, but it was too late. The flashlight cracked down on its already injured shoulder and the cat screeched, clawing at Light. The next blow landed on the cat's head and the creature crumpled like a house of cards, a sickening crunch resounding through the halls before silence descended.

“Well then,” he smiled, “looks like that's that.”
The creatures were done with, it seemed. Onto more imortant things. He looked at Hikaru and his expression softened. Looked like he'd never had an experience like that before.
“Staring at it won't help,” he said, pulling his shirt off. He held the arms out and rolled up the body of the shirt, making it one long length of material with the rolled part making some padding.
“Top off,” he smiled to Hikaru, holding the makeshift bandage out. “We'll stop the bleeding with this and find a place to clean the wound. How's everyone else? You all did well. Tamaki? Smile, it's ok now.”
Well, it would be better once they cleaned the wounds and saw what needed what. Hikaru's injury worried him. He wanted to make sure it had stopped bleeding before they fell asleep and no longer had control. That might mean burning or stitching it shut...

For now, the boys were important. But later he was going to have to see about getting a weapon and training the kids. He was also a little curious as to the upbringing of Tamaki and his 'kinghts'.

Killing the cat before it could kill him had been more important than protecting himself from the creature's relatively minor retaliation, so as a result, the cat's claws were able to reach his arm and tear up the unprotected flesh. The bright red furrows left behind quickly overflowed with blood, but it was only when the cat had finally stopped moving that Light felt safe enough to withdraw his arm. If that thing got up again...

Doing what he could to slow if not stop the bleeding (the scratches were fairly deep, extremely painful, and not at all cooperating with his efforts), Light spent a few more moments staring at the dead cat before turning his attention fully to the others. He honestly felt a little detached from the whole situation, but in a completely different way than Tamaki and Hikaru probably were. This was the first time he had killed something-- really killed something-- with his own hand. It was very, very different from just writing someone's name down, but whatever horrors there were from knowing he'd caused someone or something's death had long since disappeared for him. Once the heat of the moment was gone, there was nothing but the knowledge that he had yet again done what was needed to secure his place as the god of the new world.

But that wouldn't do for his audience. Remembering the horror the realization that he'd killed someone had brought him the first two times he'd tried using the Note, he allowed a fraction of that to enter his voice and demeanor. Using all of it would have been ridiculous, of course, because while he had just killed something, its existence hadn't held as much weight as a human's at all. As for whatever fear he needed to cover the rest of the experience all of them had just gone through, Tamaki and Hikaru were the perfect examples of how to behave. Again, nothing quite as severe as exactly the same way those two were reacting, but a scaled down version should be fine. Freaked out, but still more or less rational.

With this attitude firmly in mind, he said to the red-haired man in a scared, quiet voice, "We should move. If more of those things show up..." He fell silent, casting a nervous glance into the darkness surrounding them. He would offer to help too, but doing so now when his own arm was a mess wasn't going to be very, well, helpful. The redhead seemed to have things under control, too... sort of.

And then it was over.

Hikaru looked up at Robin and stared dumbly at him for a few moments before he blinked and finally seemed to register what was going on. His head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton, but the world was speeding up again and his breathing was slowly--very slowly--starting to return to something resembling normal. Nodding mutely, the boy started to slowly lift his tattered shirt, hissing at the renewed pain. "God damn it." At least it could be properly taken care of now. It just hurt like a bitch.

Tamaki didn't seem to be any better off. He looked as pale and shaken as Hikaru imagined that he himself looked, and that leg didn't look like it tickled. Neither did Light's arm.

"L-let's get into a room," he said through clenched teeth, doing his best to ignore the way his eyes burned and the growing lump in his throat. He'd never forgive himself if he broke down and started crying like a little girl in front of these people. "We need to look at Tamaki's leg, and..." Hikaru choked back a sob. "God d-damn it all. GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!"

Smile? Smile? How did Robin expect him to smile at a time like this?

"I..." Tamaki started, waving vaguely at he bloody and mangled body of the cat. He had done that. And he was still bleeding, and he could still feel the heart-pounding terror of the attack. Shaking and damp, Tamaki doubled over and lost control of his stomach, wretching painfully in the dim hall. He had no such reservations about breaking down, not after what they had just been through.

"Hikaru..." he managed, after straightening as best he could and wiping his mouth with a shaking hand. "Hikaru's right. We need.... we...." Talking was hard. He wrapped his arms around himself, staining his shirt further with the blood from his arm.

Robin hated to admit it but... these kids were soft. Not that he blamed them for being upset, heavens no. He was just from a world where bad things happened often, he supposed. People just went along with it a little easier.

Robin tied the 'bandage' round Hikaru, over the wound, and ruffled his hair.
He was going to forgive the bad language for now. The kid needed and outlet.

He then stood on the dressing gown and tore off the sleeves.
"Alright boys. This will have to do for now. We're going to find a lavatory and have a rest, clean up."
He passed Tamaki a sleeve for his leg.
"It was them or us," he pointed out. He grimaced as the boy threw up and gently squeezed his shoulder. He didn't think there was much he could say to help right now.

He then moved over to the other boy, holding the second sleeve out to tie around his arm.
"I'm Robin," he smiled. "You were very good back there, well done."

Once he was done, he patted his hips and looked at the cats.
"Right. You boys look over there, work out the quickest way to a bathroom."
He bent down, picked up the rest of his dressing gown and crouched beside one of the dead beasts. He didn't think the kids would want to see this. Hell, he didn't really want to DO it. He had friends with hands like this... But.. It had to be done. He wrapped his hand with the material of the robe and began to yank out the cats claws. It wasn't at all easy and even hurt despite the clothes protecting his hand. It only meant they'd be worth it. Blood squirted across the hall and over Robin, across his face. Even his lips, which he had to force himself not to lick out of habit.
He stopped at four. One for each of them. He'd try and pull off the gunky skin later before he handed them over.

Wiping his forehead with his arm, he stood and pocketed the claws.
"Right-oh. Off we go."
His robe was mangled and bloody and sleeveless, but he out it on regardless. It was suddenly a bit chilly out. Maybe he should have taken the fur too...

Light's thoughts were honestly traveling somewhere along the same lines as Robin's were, but he didn't know that. He was more focused on trying to get his arm to stop bleeding, because while he was sure he had lost less blood than either Tamaki or Hikaru, the increasing feeling of lightheadedness was enough to make him worry. If he wanted to keep thinking at his usual speed, he was going to need to get his arm taken care of fast. L might not be around to take advantage of his sluggishness, but that didn't mean he could allow himself to become lazy.

He shot Tamaki a sympathetic look when he threw up, but like Robin, he didn't really have anything to say that would help. If he had known Tamaki better, it would have been a different story, but right now he was again faced with the mystery of just why the blond sounded so much like him. That and the lightheadedness was now accompanied by an entirely unwelcome feeling of nausea at the smell, which made it much harder for Light to maintain the stringent control he normally had over himself. He could tell without looking that he was now both pale and shaky, neither of which he had made the conscious decision to become. As far as he was concerned, that sealed the fate of the people who ran this place. Once he found out their names and faces...

He looked up gratefully when Robin approached with the makeshift bandage, and he held out his arm to make tying the sleeve around it easier for him. "My name is Light, and thank you. I couldn't have done it without your help." Which was true. If Robin hadn't knocked the thing down before it reached him like he had, he'd probably be in as bad shape as the others were.

Once that was finished, he nodded and began to look for the nearest bathroom, finally shifting the flashlight into his left hand and trying to ease the cramp that had formed in his right at the same time. Depending on how deep the cat's claws had gone, holding a pen or a pencil could end up being an extremely unpleasant experience for him. Good thing he could still write with his left.

He tried to ignore what Robin was doing to the cat's corpse as he searched, too. It was logical enough, but there had to be a better way for them to defend themselves than to steal the claws off of a dead cat.

Hikaru was barely holding onto his composure by a thread. It wasn't helping that Tamaki was introducing the contents of his stomach to the floor, or that Robin was slowly extracting BODY PARTS from the now-deceased (well, they'd already looked--and smelled--pretty deceased before, but the last thing he wanted to think about was the prospect of ZOMBIE CREATURES running around Landel's) cats. He turned his head away and closed his eyes, but that only blocked out the sight. The smell was everywhere.

And it made his stomach want to rebel.

Swallowing the bile that was rising in his throat, the boy used the hand that wasn't holding the bandage up to see if he could spot the bathroom with his flashlight. He knew that there was one around here somewhere.

Ah. There.

Hikaru laboriously switched off his flashlight one-handed and tried to juggle it so that he could point a shaking finger in that direction. "I t-think it's over there..."

It took Tamaki a moment to muster up the strength to reach out and take the sleeve. He just held it, his mind unable to comprehend what he was supposed to do with it. He'd just killed something. And he was still bleeding. His mind was protesting that any of this was really happening.

His eyes followed Hikaru's finger, blankly. He needed to get himself under control. What would Elena think, if she saw him like this? Or Ed?

"Let's go," he managed to say, his voice sounding hollow and from far away even to his own ears.

(moving here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/133627.html))

Nightshift 24: Second M Block, Near the bathrooms and exit

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