damned_institute | Day 29: Chapel

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Day 29: Chapel

Hiei didn't give a damn about religious services, meditation, or pretending to be social. The always sudden waking after night put him in a bad mood, this one particularly so. Even with Kurikara licking him like some perverted moron, the warmth the dragon provided was welcome in Hiei's bed, and missing when he woke, giving the surrounding air a greater sense of chill.

But the perfect thing to relieve his anger might just be making an appearance that morning, and that at least gave Hiei hope for a decent day.

Hopefully Kurikara and Kurama both would be clever enough to figure it out for themselves. Without hesitation, Hiei demanded to be led to the temple, taking a seat in one of the rear pews. Humans had a way of overdoing things, and this place wasn't really much exception to that. Granted Hiei's limited knowledge prevented him from realizing there were much more outrageous churches, but to the demon, the colored pieces of glass and polished wood seemed to be much.

It didn't matter, however. Either could be turned into weapons, perfect objects to slice into that damned head doctor's throat or bash in his skull. That was a thought worth grinning about.

[Feel free to pester. Just, uh, be aware that he's not exactly nice.]

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Renji nodded, grateful that Hitsugaya had spared what little dignity he had left. "Thank you, sir," he said. "I'll... let you know for certain later." He had to hope that maybe he would stop hurting as the day wore on, but he doubted it. This had been something that no amount of healing could touch, and he found that frightening.

He cleared his throat. "Have you seen Mo-- Vice Captain Hinamori yet?" he asked. "'m kinda worried. Since she was having some problems yesterday."

Hitsugaya nodded. "Just post a note on the boad. I'll be certain to get it."

He visibly stiffened at the mention of Momo. She was having problems yesterday...that much was for sure. "Since when?" he asked, his voice cold and distant.

Renji shrugged. He'd half intended to get in to this, and now he just had to trust his instincts, play it cool. "Eh, she was pretty upset after the... thing," he said. "And when I talked to her, she was sedated." He shrugged. "Women. They never make any sense."

"That's for sure," he mumbled. It had to have been the drugs that made her so...weird...right? He'd never seen her drugged up, so it could've been that. "I don't know what got into her. I've never seen her like that."

"Oh, she say some weird stuff to you too?" Renji asked, doing his best to sound merely curious. "People say weird stuff when they get hit with these drugs. Just kills that filter between the brain and the mouth." He rubbed the end of his nose, looking vaguely embarrassed. "Worse than getting drunk."

Hitsugaya nodded slightly at Renji's suggestions. "She didn't make any sense," he said. "So it must have been the drugs. She seemed to have a rough time of things yesterday. First Byakuya, then..." he realized he had gone a little too far and cut his sentence short. "It had to have been the drugs. I don't think mo...Hinamori-fukutaicho has a lot of experience with being on anything like that."

"Not like any of us really do," Renji said. "Though man, in the Academy, she sure could put it away if she felt like it." He chuckled, though frowned shortly after. "Something else happen to her?" he asked, worried. Like her confrontation with Byakuya hadn't been enough of a mess.

This was ~not~ a conversation he wanted to get into with Renji, but there was no point in hiding it now. It'd be foolish to try and play off something so insignificant, and he was no fool. "The reason I know the woman...Rhode...if it's the same person I think it is. She snuck up behind me and kissed me while Momo and I were talking. Momo..." he shook his head slightly. "...she went berserk on the girl. I still don't know why. But that's why she was drugged."

Renji simply stared at Hitsugaya for a moment, as if wondering if this was some kind of joke. "Oh," he said. He firmly squashed the urge to ask the question he would have been a big enough bastard to ask almost anyone else - was she any good? - and instead nodded thoughtfully, looking toward the front of the chapel. "Oh," he said again. "Well then. That all makes sense now."

Hitsugaya raised an eyebrow in Renji's direction. Was he privy to some secret knowledge he wasn't? After all, none of it made any sense to him, and he was normally the first to pick up on the subtle nuances of things. "How does any of that make sense?" he asked, his tone at once irritated and genuinely curious.

"She's a woman," Renji said, as if that explained everything. "They get like that, sometimes. Like... you know, like dogs when you threaten their territory. Allen's problem child is lucky she's not dead, really."

Hitsugaya raised an eyebrow in Renji's direction. "Their territory. Right." Since when was he Momo's territory?

Women were odd.

"Right," Renji agreed. He sighed. "Women are so fuckin' strange," he said. "They never come out and say what they really want. It's always some mysterious... thing."

Hitsugaya nodded slightly in agreement. Normally he wouldn't be quite so open with anyone, but it was nice to have a chance to vent about the oddities of the day. "She told me to talk to Matsumoto, as if she'd somehow understand," Hitsugaya added. He sighed. "As if she expects me to go on some kind of scavenger hunt just to understand what she wants out of me."

Renji snorted. "Well... Matsumoto's another woman, so maybe she'd get it. And she doesn't play the mysterious game so much... I guess." He rolled his eyes. "How much courage does it take to just out and say something? You'd think it was the end of the world, the way they act." He shook his head. "Like we can read minds or something."

Hitsugaya humphed. "I'm not going to play games with her. I never have. She used to do this when we were kids. She'd come home from the academy and act as if I should be surprised to see her, when I knew she'd come home every chance she had. She always came home."

Renji nodded, filing that bit of information away for future consideration. It was interesting, that was certain. "She talked about you, when we were in the academy," he remarked, then sighed, again the sound of a man put-upon by women. "They make us too complicated, in their minds," he said. "Guess maybe they think we're like them, never being straightforward." He laughed. "Rukia spent forty years convincing herself that I didn't miss her or care or anything." The laugh died away. "But since I was thinking the same shit, maybe I was taking a page out of her book for once, and being dumb too."

"She talked about everything," he said. "When I ended up going to the academy, I had no problem finding anything because she was so damn insistent on telling me every little detail that happened in her life. You couldn't get her to shut up."

Hitsugaya made a halfhearted shrug. "Eh, so you were dumb. Those closest to me are all idiots. It seems like you resolved your issues in the end, at least."

Renji laughed. "So you got a head start." He found that very amusing. Not that Hitsugaya had needed any other advantages, from what he heard.

He snickered at Hitsugaya's remark. "We're all fuckin' idiots some time or another, sir. Wise man's the one that notices when." There was no cuteness or implication in his tone; it really was just what he thought. "Yeah. Managed to stop being dumb eventually." He smiled, mostly to himself; for a moment, he convinced himself to not think about all the other things, to just think about what he and Rukia had promised each other. That was one thing that was always good, no matter what.

Great. Now Renji was getting all sentimental, giving one of those private smiles people seemed to get when they started thinking about that stuff. "In any case," he said, changing topics. "Fowl made some decent progress with his training. He actually knows how to attack, it's defending himself he needs practice with. So last night wasn't a total loss."

Renji couldn't blame Hitsugaya for wanting to change the subject. It was an awfully personal conversation, and they didn't know each other that well. It'd been nice to have another guy to talk to for a bit, though, one that wasn't a kid.

...and wasn't Daemon.

He did his best not to think about that; better to talk about Artemis. "That's good to know," he said. "And... I'm not really surprised. Defense's harder to do." He tilted his head back, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. "What're your plans for training him?"

"Artemis is too useful to keep in training," Hitsugaya answered. "When we have the chance, I'll train him further...and once he gets his weapon, he should be able to function effectively. He's actually trained with a western foil before."

Renji noted that Hitsugaya said he'd train Artemis. Apparently Renji was out, when it came to that. He wasn't certain how he felt about it. "That's good to know," he finally said. "Any idea when that'll be?"

He thought for a moment, realizing one other thing he'd needed to mention to Hitsugaya. "I'm going to try to make as many copies of the updated map as I can today, so we can give 'em to the leaders tonight." It had been a while since they'd updated the maps and made certain that everyone was current - he'd been intending to do it yesterday, but he'd also been expecting to be eating dinner in his room where he could do so. "I'll see if I can get someone else to lend me a hand while people're doing the visitor shit."

Edited 2007-12-21 20:23 (UTC)

"It depends," Hitsugaya commented. "Fowl seems quick on his feet when night begins, moreso than the rest of my team. I'll work with him off and on until my team shows up for whatever task we're undertaking. He'll get some practical experience after that. I'm giving him my bat so he's not completely unarmed and has something to protect himself with."

He nodded at Renji's suggestion. He'd intended to do something similar, but hadn't had the opportunity. "I have quite a few of the maps done up in my room. I just need to add the most recent additions and they'll be ready to pass out. The quickest way, I'd say, is to hand them out under the instructions that they make a copy of the map for as many people as they can as well."

That had been something he'd suggested to Hitsugaya himself, if he recalled, but there wasn't a need to point it out. He didn't care who thought of what as long as it got done. "That would be the best idea. I'll put a note on the board, since sounds like we should have enough maps for all our people tonight. I can make more and give them out to others. As long as they're copying them and passing them along, everyone here can have a new map pretty fast." That sounded like the best way to go to him. "Do you have any new additions that I don't know about?" Otherwise, he could pretty much copy from memory, at this point.

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whiteychan.livejournal.com - 2007-12-23 23:12 (UTC) - Expand

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