Day 27: Lunch

[norainu]

Renji wasn't so certain what this grilled cheese thing was all about, but he liked the sound of some soup. Even if it was strange western soup, well... there wasn't anything bad people could do to soup, in his experience. His good mood was starting to fray at the edges, a little, from the strain of dealing with the Ichimaru issue, and even more from what had been on the bulletin board earlier.

He'd never had difficulty simply writing something before. But...

He shook his head as he entered the line. He didn't want to think about it. He wanted to hold on to the tenuous equilibrium he'd managed to find.

Renji got himself a large bowl of soup, water, and even one of those sandwiches, just to try it. Old habit, recently awakened, had him over to one side of the cafeteria, where the fewest people possible would have the chance to pass behind him. He sat there with his back toward the wall and started eating.

Comments

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

The blue-haired boy's eyes widened a bit as they took in the mangled limb. He'd lost fingers! Would the institute heal that as well as it healed other wounds, or were missing pieces an exception?

"Oh... Wow. I'm sorry." He took a short glance around the room and then back at the other boy. Suddenly his already small appetite was nearly nonexistent. There were many questions he could have asked that the other Leon no doubt would have found upsetting or irritating, such as Does it still feel like you have all of them? But he held himself back. "It looks like a lot of people had rough nights," he said quietly instead. "One of my friends was nearly killed."

[for-marian.livejournal.com]

Leon grunted vaguely in response to the other boy's startled 'I'm sorry.' Pity was not a pleasant thing to have directed at him but at least there were no stupid questions asked after that, so it was a blessedly brief annoyance instead of a drawn-out one.

"What sort of monster got your friend?" That was a matter of much more interest to Leon than was discussing his own situation yet again. He refused to ever again be caught as ignorant and unprepared as he had been the night before--the more he knew about the monsters that prowled the halls at night, the better his chances were of avoiding another serious injury, or worse.

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

"Well, I only saw it after it had been killed," Leon muttered with a frown. He shook his head. "It had a human shape, for the most part. Hard metallic skin...long claw-like nails. Sliced his stomach open pretty bad." It had appeared as though Dias had stabbed it in the back somewhere, but he hadn't taken a long enough look at it to be able to give a definitive word on where the best place to strike it was.

"I keep reading about monsters on the boards and hearing about them from other people, but that was the first one I'd actually seen."

[for-marian.livejournal.com]

"It sounds somewhat similar to what I faced, though I have been told that the monster in question was unusually strong, even for this place. It had many abilities and, as you can see, was carnivorous." That was perhaps the most galling of all--that the thing not only took Leon's fingers, but likely ate them. Being a meal for a monster... how pathetic. "If I only had Chaltier..."

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

"Chaltier?" That had a familiar ring to it, like 'Lacour.' "Is he or she a friend of yours?" At least Leon suspected it was a person. It could be any other object. Or a spell. Or an emotion, perhaps equivalent to 'if I only had hope.' But perhaps he was thinking about it far too much and shouldn't be so nosey with people of questionable dispositions.

[for-marian.livejournal.com]

"He was... is my Swordian." Leon remembered that the other worlds seemed to not have Swordians, which made sense, as the creation of the Swordians was tied so closely to the Ae'ther War. "A sentient sword, who enables me to cast spells." And yes, very much a friend... perhaps the only 'person' Leon would willingly call that.

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

For the second time that day, Leon found himself staring across the table with his mouth hanging open. Once again he snapped it shut. "A sentient sword?" he asked in awe. "How was that done? Is it possessed with the spirit of an actual living thing?" His mind raced with theories on how this could be possible. Gyoro and Ururun had been able to possess Ashton at will, but they were all living. A sword was simply metal.

"And it allows you to cast spells? Could you cast them at all without it?" Receiving the Blessing of Mana from an item was unheard of. "What materials is it made out of?"

[for-marian.livejournal.com]

"Not... possessed. Five men, and one woman, chose to make the sacrifice and become Swordians, in order to give their people a chance in an ancient war. One of them... died, in the war, and the Swordian was then possessed by another spirit." Leon scowled and looked away. That he would not discuss further. "Their voices can only be heard by individuals who are compatible with them."

"As for how they were made... we knew relatively little. Most of the ancients' technology was lost in the war, and we'd only been able to reclaim or duplicate some of it. The making of Swordians was well beyond us." Leon sighed, and rubbed his forehead with his good hand. So much pain and destruction, over that ancient technology. "I could use my own energy to create certain attacks beyond the physical, on my own, but without Chaltier I was not able to summon stone out of thin air, for instance."

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

Certain attacks beyond the physical sounded like the sort of attacks Claude, Ashton, and Dias were capable of without mana. That was understandable. The souls within the swords must have been the ones with the magical affinities. "Simply amazing..." he said in a sort of sigh. "I'm a heraldry user - a spellcaster, myself. I'm sorry for all the questions. I just find it all so fascinating."

It was always depressing when ancient knowledge was lost and unable to be recreated. That such knowledge and/or technology had allowed for people to give their souls to inanimate objects, and further - that there was an issue of compatibility with a separate weilder... He'd never heard of anything like it. The Nedians had robotic creations, but that life was artificial. This was something else entirely.

[for-marian.livejournal.com]

"It's not a problem. I would be just as interested in the sword techniques of other worlds." And as long as he steered the topic away from Berselius and Kronos, it was a reasonably safe topic. "The military was quite involved in the research into the ancient technologies, but I was not a member of the science divisions, so I had relatively little to do with any of it but Chaltier." His father, on the other hand... okay, so, not an entirely safe topic.

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

"You should speak with my friends, then," Leon pointed out. "Everyone else here from my world currently is a swordsman, and they have some pretty interesting techniques that they developed themselves. At least I think they did."

He pointed to himself proudly. "I was a member of a science division back where we came from. Under the King of Lacour. Very advanced as far as our planet goes." Though not nearly as advanced as the Nedians, but he could leave that little part out for now.

[for-marian.livejournal.com]

"I would like that." And the funny thing was, Leon found he genuinely meant it--talking technique with other swordsmen was one social activity he could actually get into. As long as they didn't dismiss him as a child, that is.

"What sort of technology did you focus on? Keeping in mind that I am not a scientist myself." In other words--keep the explanation simple.

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

"Well, our technology aside from weaponry was rather limited, having seen some from planets other than our own," he admitted, as much as he hated to do so. "We were in the process of incorporating heraldry in a way that it could become stronger - more focused. I helped design and build a large... I suppose I should refer to it as an 'energy cannon.'" The simple term caused him to make a bit of a face. "We were rapidly advancing, though."

[for-marian.livejournal.com]

"That weaponry gets the research budget seems to be consistent across worlds. Though we did have several resident scientists whose interests were more in plants than in battle. And the Draconis airship was quite good, as well. Though nowhere near the level of the Ae'therian and Er'therian machines, even so." The Ae'thersphere... Leon almost wished he'd gotten the chance to see it, even though its revival came at the cost of the surface world. From everything he'd learned from Chaltier and Berselius, the Aeropolises were full of technology they could only dream of, in the present day.

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

Leon nodded. He decided to leave out mentioning Precis and her 'Bobot' just yet. That was a small exception, and a simple design that the boy could have copied if he'd wanted to. "It was a necessity, though. Or we thought it was. Our planet was being overrun by monsters. We had already lost a continent to them."

In the end, the Lacour Hope hadn't been as strong as they'd thought and was most likely at the bottom of the sea now. That didn't need to be mentioned.