damned_institute | Day 27: Library

Libraries, he'd found, were rarely as dull as people made them out to be. Though he felt no magic in these tomes, they were still full of useful information. Maybe some of them could tell him a little bit more about this world he'd landed himself in.

For that matter, why hadn't he run into any of the others yet? They'd all been fairly close together when they'd left Rekord, but he hadn't seen a trace of any of them. He was able to communicate easily with the people here though, which led him to believe Mokona was within a mile or so. Unless the ones running this little game had some other way to let all these other-worldly people communicate amongst themselves. In which case, the others could be very far away indeed.

The library had that wonderful smell of old books, and Fai traced his fingers along the shelves, skimming titles and pulling books that struck his fancy. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The War of the Worlds, and with a smile, he found Bram Stoker's Dracula as well. Raven had been telling the truth then, in spite of his own lies. Ought to be a good start. He sat leisurely at one of the tables and began flipping through his selections.

[waiting for Tamaki~]

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Both were surprisingly willing to talk about their weapons of choice. The older man hadn’t mentioned his level of skill when it came to throwing knives however the younger man had revealed that he was both skilled and confident. “I am sorry to say that I know little about obtaining weapons save for what I have been overhearing about patients using alchemy. I haven’t seen any physical evidence yet to confirm this, however.”

He looked thoughtful, “Could you tell me specifically what kind of things you would be willing to teach? With my lack of experience in fighting I am afraid that if things came down to it, I wouldn’t be able to properly protect myself.”

"My best friend's an alchemist," Hughes said, grinning. "I've seen him do alchemy probably 80% of the nights I've been here. He can make weapons, but there's a hell of a wait list right now. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of material. If you want a sword, keep an eye on the bulletin board." Roy sometimes posted a call for requests. So the kid was talky, energetic, and pretty sure of himself. Interesting.

The other one almost seemed to be cautious. Or maybe Hughes was reading too far into his politeness. This place could get him jumping at shadows.

"What I teach? Knives and hand to hand. I could teach firearms, too, if there were guns. But there aren't any. I've worked with every level of experience, though. And I don't like to brag, but... I'm good at what I do. Back home, I was head of the Internal Affairs and Investigations branch of my country's military government. Not that I did anything involving wars or anything like that; I handled problems at home. Treason, internal government issues, serial killers, violent crimes, stuff your normal police can't handle, things like that."

He had no qualms admitting what he'd done back home. half the time it made people feel better.

Heiji was slightly off-put by Ryuga's formality as well. Even people from Tokyo didn't exercise this much restraint. But then again, the guy could be under the weather. He was, after all, in a wheelchair. But even though Heiji was silently questioning Ryuga's tone, it never altered his friendly smile.

"Uwaaah," Heiji said, awe-struck by Hughes' list. "That's amazing! My dad's the head of the police force back in Osaka, where I come from. But there's not much we can't handle," He shrugged with a grin.

"Wait, alchemy?" The teen detective said, eyebrow raised, "Like, turning lead in to gold, that kind of stuff?"

It was a pity that the older man hadn’t stopped after mentioning experience. L would have enjoyed the challenge of piecing together Hughes’s occupation mearly from that information alone.“That is quite impressive, Hughes-san. You must be a very intellegent individual to have such a resume. I am quite jeleaous.” With this man’s background it was very likely that he was trying to figure him out as they spoke. L would now have to be on his guard even more than before.

As for the young man, the use of the word ‘we’ indicated that he was working with his father in the police force. If that was an honest statement, than at such a young age he probably very intelligent.

"Heh, thanks." Hughes ran his hand through his hair. "I took the job 'cause I wanted something that wouldn't send me to the front lines. Turns out I was real good at it." And not many were. It was a hard job, and you saw a lot of hard things. It could break a man, if he wasn't careful.

"So you've got some background in that sort of thing too, huh?" Hughes nodded. "Good to know. And yeah, that kind of alchemy. Turning stuff into other stuff. But it's illegal to use it to make gold." He glanced over at Ryuga, who hadn't said what he did. Interesting.

"What about you? What do you do when you're not locked in some demonic mental home?"

Day 27: Library

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