damned_institute | Nightshift 60: F11-F20 Hallway

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Nightshift 60: F11-F20 Hallway

[Inside F16]

Now that Ilia had left, there was plenty of room to pace, and Lana took it. It would help keep her muscles loose, too. Ilia had been a help, but the most important point was getting the basics to Ema -- including the part about running away being the best thing to do if she couldn't help. She would hold onto that guilt; Lana knew her sister, and she could admit she would (and had) done the same herself.

But neither of them could let it freeze them up in the future. They had to try, that was the key to the whole thing. Two men were dead; one mourned, one not, and so were many others. This place ground through people, and Lana didn't intend to let their names be the next up.

[Ema and Renji]

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"We're with you." Lana took a grip similar to the one Renji had shown on her own candlestick, and took a tentative swing. "I'd like nothing better, I assure you. I'm just afraid that hasn't been possible, in my experience."

"The thing I saw looked like a lot of different animals patched together -- with some ugly claws." The fact that Ema had seen something similar didn't need to be brought up; if she could spare her having to talk about anything, she'd do so. "What's the best way to avoid those, if running is impractical?"

All they'd need to do would be to get to each other, if she could use the ring to move, but that hadn't worked very well last time, now had it? Though why Gant hadn't teleported himself alone, she would never know; pride, perhaps. It seemed more likely than altruism.

When it came to physical combat, Ema's pride wasn't so great that she intended to prove her prowess by standing down a monster in the hallway. She'd been on the receiving end of an attack by a smaller animal and had seen first-hand an attack by a much-larger patchwork horror. Escape from an attacker was priority number one. Scientifically speaking, it was one-half of the fight-or-flight instinct, after all.

When Mr. Renji began his instruction, Ema grabbed her journal out of her bag and began jotting down notes. This was a lesson, which meant that she was taking it seriously. What if she forgot something later? She even took a few would-be practice swings with the journal, holding it on either side with both hands as she went through the motions. "Got it."

Lana's question interrupted Ema's practicing, however. This was something that Ema needed help with, more so than defending herself against the giant rats that roamed the hallways.

Renji watched both the women and made a few corrections, just on how to stand a little better. "When you swing, you get the most power out of overhand, but it also takes longer. Just try not to have to do an upswing. It's low power and you're fighting gravity instead of getting help. Okay, and since there are two of you, get comfortable fighting back to back if there's more than one thing. That doesn't mean actually having your backs together... you need enough space that you can still move and get in a good swing. So you want like two or three paces between you. Enough that you can back up fast if something tries to get between."

He thought about the creatures Lana mentioned. "Those ones are... weird. They're always different so there's not one right way to fight them. And if there's just one area they stick to, I haven't heard of it. Honestly, unless you've got some... uh... big guns with you, just run. Get the hell away from them. Go for the nearest stairs, since most of the time they can't manage those real fast. If you absolutely can't run, go for the heads, try to avoid the claws, hope for the best." He looked at the shovel. "You can try to use something like that as a shield because it's got some surface area one it. So one of you blocks, the other attacks. You just need to have a good grip on the handle and be ready to turn the blade to catch the claws."

He looked at the shovel again. "If you don't mind..." he picked it up and held it. The thing felt really small, but it probably would work better for the girls because they were small. "So the big thing is you have to have your grip pretty loose so you can turn it, but then hold it firm when you actually take a hit." He demonstrated. "You never put a tight grip on a weapon unless you're about to take an impact."

Even guns hadn't done much, though as guns went, it had been a rather small one. The scalpel had done the most damage, but it had been a complete lucky hit, and one that she couldn't count on repeating.

The stairs were a good idea -- damn, she should have jumped on the desk instead of ducking behind it. Grabbed one of the drawers as a shield. Instead, she'd hid and panicked and relied on Gant's rusty firearms training, which had not been his most shining moment.

"I was afraid of that," she said, in answer to his comment about those things infesting the entire institute. "It was my fault; I knew this was something we should do, and I hadn't found the time. Now all we can do is prevent it happening again." She still hadn't specified what it was, but if Renji couldn't put two and two together, he didn't need to know.

Then she fell silent, watching his technique.

"Loose hold, right." Lana wasn't usually one to buckle under an onslaught of information, but she usually wasn't having to do anything physical at the time. She wasn't about to join Ema in making notes, but she muttered a reiteration of the things he'd just told them as she stepped through a couple of swings. Perhaps hunting for shields, not weapons, would be the prudent course.

For her part, Ema held onto Mr. Renji's every word as she took down notes--advice, technique, all of it. Although, when he got to how best to deal with the patchwork monsters, Ema had to use extra effort to stay focused. It was hard not to get caught up in remembering the previous night and how that had ended. Mr. Javert could have ran with them, but he'd elected to stay back and hold it off. And...

No. She needed to focus so it didn't happen again. Otherwise, this whole exercise in self-defense was pointless, as was Mr. Javert's sacrifice. Better to focus on the lesson and not the feelings associated with it.

After watching Lana give a few practice swings and swinging her book twice herself, Ema turned to their instructor and asked, in all seriousness, "How would you define what's too tight and what's too loose, scientifically speaking?" It was a perfectly legitimate question as far as she was concerned, since it sounded like the margin of error that was permissible for either was relatively slim.

He definitely got the impression that there was a reason for the sudden interest in self-defense, and it probably had something to do with a bad encounter. Maybe a bad encounter that had gotten someone killed. If they weren't talking about it straight, though, he wasn't going to poke his nose in and ask. It was probably hard enough for them to deal with alread.

Renji stared at Ema like she was speaking a foreign language, then finally said, "I don't think I can. It's too lose if you can get it knocked out of your hands, too tight if you're fighting against yourself or lose some of your motion range cause you're holding on too tight. You got to just practice it and feel it." He guessed he should be flattered that Ema didn't think he looked like too much of a moron for a question like that, but he kind of was. Or maybe not so much a moron as uneducated. Shinigami didn't really bother with the whole science thing.

Renji watched Lana carefully. She was starting to get that look, like she was getting a little overloaded. It was a look he'd had on often enough himself when he'd first gone to the academy and had been playing catch up. It hadn't done him a lot of good to try to learn everything at once, and he doubted it would work any more for a couple of presumably normal humans.

He nodded as if to himself. "How about we call it there for tonight unless you've got any questions. You two practice what I went over, and keep the stuff that you can't really practice in mind as best you can. If you want, we can do some more tomorrow. Just let me know what you want to do."

Ema grabbed things and hung on until she was hanging by her fingernails from the ceiling. Though usually in a more metaphorical sense. She looked interested, though, and not thinking so hard about what had happened; both were a marked improvement.

Then again, Lana had occasionally been accused of stubbornness herself. She admired Renji's patience, and appreciated it, as Ema's questioning could -- and had -- made grown men weep, though for very different reasons than Lana's turns at interrogation.

"That sounds like an excellent idea. I think we've both got enough to practice, and I expect you have things to attend to." She wouldn't dwell on the fact that, at night, she and Ema were both pretty much useless; it didn't help to think about it, and if they couldn't be helpful, at least they could learn to avoid slowing anyone down.

Mr. Renji's answer wasn't satisfactory (why weren't people more scientific about these things?), but it at least gave clearer parameters on what was acceptable and why. Tightly enough to keep a grip, loosely enough to maintain flexibility. She'd have to undertake her own experiments to see where those limits were on her own time.

As if realizing as much, he and Lana both seemed to believe that they had enough to work on for tonight. Ema had to agree--she'd already filled a few pages with notes and needed to review them before they stopped making sense. Besides, like Lana had said, he probably had his own agenda to attend to during the night. It was better not to use up all of his time. "Thank you very much for helping us tonight, Mr. Renji. I'll practice and do my best." And, if she figures out the calculations of force and pressure and velocity, she'd give him the scientific answer he didn't have for her. Just in case someone else asked him sometime in the future.

"Sure thing," Renji said. "Just give me a yell when you want to work on more." He grabbed his flashlight and headed for the door, then paused to say, "Stay as safe as you can, both of you."

He slipped out of the room and headed out into the hallway.

"Did you want to now? Practice, that is?" Her eyes gleamed. "A little empiric study?" Lana laid the word empiric out there like a trap for a defense attorney, though with no malice in it. They both could use the practice, and the exercise.

"Or we could go hunting some better shields, if you'd rather not be stuck in here all night." Her nonchalance was studied; to be honest, she wasn't sure she was up for too much poking around in dark corners, but she had to pretend.

Several moments (and a few swings of Ema's spade) went by before Ema answered. The silence wasn't teenage petulance or anything of the like; rather, Ema needed the time to think it through. She was torn between what they should get done and what she felt most comfortable doing. Priority number one really should have been procuring weapons and a method of defense. However, after last night the idea of spending a lot of time wandering into who-knew-what was wholly unappealing. Even after spending a day doing her best to push past what had happened, she was still pretty strongly shaken.

Carefully, Ema looked up at her sister. "Maybe it would be better if we practiced instead of went out exploring. So we're more ready tomorrow night." There was hesitance in her voice, as if she expected Lana to disapprove or disagree. Ema felt a bit disappointed in herself, like she should have been able to recover faster than she had been.

"Certainly." Perhaps it might be prudent to practice with something less dangerous than a candlestick and a shovel...but that would require having other options. Oh, well. The worst that would happen would be a loose tooth or a few bruises.

"Before we do that, though, there's something I should show you. Two things, actually." She went to the dresser and opened the second drawer, motioning Ema to come look.

In the drawer was a revolver and a small, golden ring with a red stone. "If something happens to me," she said, and trailed off. You should know to look for them. "At close range, even if you miss, a gun will startle a monster. The safety is here; flip it off, and pull the trigger."

Then she picked up the ring -- the easy one. "As bizarre as it sounds, this will teleport you. Break the stone, and you and anyone touching you will be brought here. Blood will reset it to the location where you're standing. Or so I'm told. It worked once, but I haven't tried it myself." If Ema couldn't figure out when, well, she didn't really need to know.

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Nightshift 60: F11-F20 Hallway

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