damned_institute | Day 32: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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Day 32: Sun Room (4th Shift)

It was rare that Homura's nurse try to persuade him to a scheduled activity, but then, it was rare that Homura didn't go. But the demi-god had plans, and the poor woman had little other choice but to leave in a huff as he once again settled himself near the bulletin board in the Sun Room.

His conversation with Kenren the previous shift had left the demi-god with a lingering sense of anxiety. Perhaps it was something only those from his own world could do, but none the less, he was all the more ready for night to begin now. Goals and memories, the truth of his past and the possibility of the future: all thoughts lingering on the forefront of his mind, more than enough motivation to move forward.

Impatience was something of a rush for an immortal, he'd discovered. Homura liked the feeling, the excitement even before he had arrived in this prison. And now while he waited, he savored it again, a yearning that shone so much brighter than the boredom of Heaven.

[Waiting for History Club Q&A time.]

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"What exactly happens when they're used?" Raine was just trying to figure this out... really. The fact that she very much wanted to know anyway was secondary. "The ones I'm familiar with use up large amounts of mana, and when levels are low enough magic doesn't work and crops won't grow. When magitechnology was common, it was slowly killing the planet; that was long ago, but the effects have proved to be farther reaching than anyone of this era knew."

She knew well that the machines of which they both spoke, related or not, could devastate an entire planet. While that meant even Raine would never even try to get one working unless there was honestly no choice, there was nothing wrong with studying it indirectly...

"I have no idea what the hell 'mana' is," Falis replied. "When people use the forbidden technology, especially the magic-based ones, it destroys stuff. Villages burn to the ground, children are orphaned if not slaughtered themselves"

The bounty hunter's face took on a fierce look. "The weak willed end up controlled by the power instead of mastering it and those that master it become worse things than children imagine in their worst nightmares." She scowled, but there was the glint of something unreadable in her crimson eyes. "be thankful that stuff isn't around anymore. it should all be destroyed or, at the very least, sealed away before a bunch of power-hungry morons come along and come up with the lame idea of destroying the world because they didn't get whatever the hell they wanted out of life."

"To be specific, mana is the source of life, magic included." Raine was somewhat rushing through explanations; it wasn't that she didn't want to educate the girl, just that she talked a lot faster when excited.

"The magitechnology I know of runs entirely on magic, to the best of my knowledge. You're saying what you know of is the same, yet goes out of control? Hmm... I don't suppose you know if it's chaos magic?" That was something else she wasn't as familiar with as she could be... and therefore yet more fascinated by.

Oh no... this woman looked way too interested in magic for Falis' tastes. It didn't show more than a few twitches of the eyebrow, but the princess wasn't feeling all that comfortable at the moment.

"I never said the magic went out of control; I said some of the idiots get controlled by it. The magic clouds their mind and the evil of it slips into their souls and it takes someone very strong or very close top the person to overcome it and bring them back to their damn senses." Like Kaito. Falis had kicked the crap out of him and was about to let... her other self... kill him, but not only had Milano stopped her, but the girl's words had completely freed her brother from the witch's spell.

Speaking of witches...

"I don't know what kind of magic it is and I don't want to know. All I know is it's dangerous and good for nothing but destruction." Falis scowled. "The world is better off without it. Why do you want to know anyways? You some kind of witch?"

Out of sight from the woman sitting next to her, the bounty hunter curled her hand at her side into a fist and shifted in her seat just enough that she could easily spring upon the woman and beat her senseless if she was indeed a witch of some sort looking for a new power to play with. Falis was not about to let there be another Cecelia.

"Some kinds of magic can cloud the mind of anyone too weak to withstand it," Raine said, shaking her head. "As a result, anyone trying to wield something they're not ready for, such as a cursed weapon, can too easily find themselves taken over by it and therefore lose control of the power."

She raised her eyebrows at the last part. "Hardly. I'm well aware this is something that should never be used, but there's nothing wrong with studying it! Knowledge by itself is never evil, only some of the uses it's put to. My world has very little in the way of technology, and if it's possible to reverse-engineer the magitechnology we currently don't understand and change its power source to something that isn't destructive, the possibilities could be nearly endless." Her eyes were sparkling again at the thought; she was happiest when exploring something, be it a ruin or a new concept.

Falis relaxed her fist and decided she wasn't going to beat the woman senseless. Still, she didn't like the look in the woman's eye and scooted back just a little from her. Just in case.

"There is a reason the technology was sealed away and forbidden. It's been proven that those that study it just have to test it out and I've yet to find someone that isn't a witch or evil that has the will to withstand the temptations of the magic," Falis stated. "Knowledge may never be evil but a lot of the shit that is studied to gain knowledge is and generally it's best to just not know that stuff."

Falis crossed her arms. "No one needs to know how to make artificial beings. No one needs to know how to make chimeras. No one needs to know how to use reality altering devices like Teoria. No one needs to know how strong the ancient rod they found in a bunch of Old World ruins is."

She set her jaw. "No one needs to know any of that. They want to know and that's when they become vulnerable to either their own evil or the temptation of the item itself." She knew of only one person that had their hands on Old World stuff that didn't use them for destruction and that was herself. Well, it was more Dominikov and Pete decided to take her on as a master themselves and they were her best friends, not her servants. She did not use them like Onionhead made and used Ana and Yuna.

"Intentionally allowing for knowledge to be lost is inexcusable," Raine said firmly. "If it was figured out once, it could be again, and if the instructions are sealed away where only certain, trusted people can access them, people have a much better chance of being prepared. Yes, corruption or theft are concerns, but it's better than being left completely unprepared if a threat should arise."

None of this was dimming her enthusiasm in the slightest, either. "Is this Old World the remains of a previous society? Do you know how old?"

"Some things in existence are better off not known," Falis replied stalwartly. "The Old World existed a really, really, really long time ago. They practically destroyed the world with their technology and so the smart people sealed away what was left of their technology and forbade the people from using it again. They wanted to prevent another almost world destruction from happening again."

She tried to remember what all Dominikov had told her about the Old World. "The people moved on with their lives and eventually forgot about most of it except for the few times someone stumbled across some old ruins that still had a few pieces intact." She frowned. "Of course, there were always the people who never stopped using the stuff or held onto their notes and shit like that."

"Have you seen any of these ruins yourself?" Raine asked, leaning forward excitedly. If she could get a firsthand account from this girl (asking her name was the last thing on Raine's mind), that would be the best way by far to compare technologies. The names were unlikely to be the same, but descriptions should be.

The similarities here were remarkable; she hoped that the Desians weren't anywhere but the twin worlds she knew, but even if they were, she was very hard to identify as a half-elf anyway. And for this, she'd take that risk.

Again, Falis scooted back a bit from the woman when she started to get too close though the princess didn't notice it just yet. Why did this woman want to know if she'd seen any of the ruins? In an occupation such as bounty hunting, coming across Old World ruins just happened. If it hadn't been for those ruins and Dominikov, she'd never had learned how to understand the Old World language.

"...Yeah," she answered warily.

"Do you know anything of their composition or function?" Raine asked, energy levels obviously going up. "For a while, magitechnology was used in place of nearly all machines, as well as for some things that have no replacements. Most interestingly, there are devices that allow instant transportation--I'm afraid I never got a chance to study them closely, but I've come across them more than once."

She had a reason for asking about teleporters, of course--it was likely they had gotten here through something like those. However, beyond that, they were easier to identify than nearly anything else magitechnology was capable of.

Falis blinked at the woman's increasing enthusiasm; she had a bad feeling about this conversation. Still, she decided to try and answer the woman's questions just so she could get better information about resurrection out of her. Now what the hell did she mean by composition and function? They were just a bunch of ruins.

"Ummm... they were made out of stone and metal that didn't rust," she answered. "Most of them were broken down and none of the stuff worked anymore. There were things written on some walls and we found a few books once..." Of course, Falis could describe everything about Teoria, but she didn't really want to talk about it.

Suffice to say, Raine very much wished the girl somehow had those books with her. If her own favorite books had been in the house when it burned down, she would have cried. "Do you know the names of any of these metals, or what type of stone you saw? At least some compositions are likely to be universal, but if you use the same words we do for them, that speaks of being anything but coincidental."

Unless, of course, the translation magic at work here would take care of that, as well, but she'd consider that possibility later.

Falis raised an eyebrow. It was if this woman expected her to know all the shit Onionhead had or something. "The stone was grey and a lot of it had plants growing on it. Some of it had rubbed in ash from fires and my sword could only cut through the stone, not the metal..."

She paused. "You expect me to know fancy names or something?"

"That would be ideal," Raine nodded, not quite registering that the girl was hinting I have no clue, quit asking. "What you're describing sounds almost exactly like magitechnology, and I'd like to know if that means anything. It didn't originate on my world, so I'm curious how many places it spread to." In a world with enough mana, magitechnology might not be damaging. In the world they were discussing, that was obviously not the case, but it seemed likely to be true somewhere out there--such as its point of origin.

Magic technology? It certainly sounded like the Old World crap to Falis. "Umm... it might be the same," she replied. "I guess if you want fancy names..." Falis then repeated a few of the names of Old World terms she'd learned from the ruins. She didn't really get what they meant, but maybe just giving this woman a bunch of terms in a language she couldn't possibly understand might appease her.

"You get all that?" Granted, if she did understand those terms, Falis was going to punch her. Just 'cause.

"Well, a few terms sounded slightly familiar..." As in, part of a word sounded familiar every few terms.

Not that Raine was letting any of this discourage her. "When you refer to the Old World, is this in a literal sense or simply a reference to when your world was much different than it is now?"

Falis eyed the woman, deciding if she was going to punch her or not. Considering one of the Old World terms she'd told her roughly translated to aged cheese and the woman really didn't know anything of what she'd said, she'd save the punch until it was really warranted.

As for the question presented to her now... "Umm... both?"

Raine's eyes lit up and she nearly pounced on her. "Do you know anything of the first world, or how the people of that era came to the world you know now?" This was amazing; how many ancient civilizations had learned how to travel between worlds?

The idea had endless possibilities, and she wasn't asking just for the sake of knowledge. If everyone here had ancestors who originated from the same world... Raine was excited by the possibility of having an idea regarding why they were here.

The sudden movement actually caught the bounty hunter off-guard and she instinctively jerked backwards away from the woman. "Yes... no.. what the? Hell I don't-- Aaah!"

Unfortunately, throughout the entire conversation, the woman had proceeded to unintentionally force Falis to the very end of the couch. When the bounty hunter reacted to the newest advance from the woman, she hadn't realized her position and had accidentally sent herself off balance. Arm flailing out in an attempt to grab the arm of the couch as she fell backwards, the princess managed to snare the arm of the enthusiastic woman instead of that of the couch.

Thump!

It seemed the princess' attempt did not quite work out as planned. "Owwww..." she groaned, the impact having jarred her injured ribs.

It took a moment for that to snap Raine out of it... ignoring the nurses, she knelt by Falis' side to look her over. "You're injured." That fall was too short to cause it; her mother and healer instincts told her the girl had reacted to a pre-existing injury more than any new pain.

"What happened?" Getting an idea of what the problem might be, she glanced at Falis' hand; it was bandaged. "You came across the child?" At this rate, she was going to need to start a notebook on how to identify and handle injuries from certain Nightshifters. Either way... "Why didn't you come to M35? If this wasn't your only injury, I would imagine you could have benefited from a healing spell." She could also imagine that the girl probably needed medical care more than most due to recklessness...

Falis rolled over onto her side away from the healer, hand cradling her injured ribs. "So what if I did? Damn forbidden technology tried to transfer itself from the boy to me. Pissed me off, so I made him go stand in the corner," Falis said a bit more harsh and defensively than she meant.

"What's in M35 anyways? It's not like I needed any help - I'm more than capable of field dressing my own damn wounds. I'm not someone so weak that they need..." Wait a minute. Healing spell?

A look a cross between disbelief and disgust crossed the bounty hunter's face and she turned her head away from the healer and spit on the floor. So much for presenting that princess image. "No one benefits from magic in the end," she snarled as she slowly got to her feet.

"You did, several nights ago," Raine reminded. If the girl didn't remember much, it was understandable--she'd been unconscious when Raine got to her--but if she'd had bad experiences with magic, she needed to know it wasn't all like that.

All right, so it had taken Raine a while to agree that drugs didn't do more harm than good, but she'd managed; this girl could too.

Falis stopped and stared blankly at the woman for a very long moment. What the hell was she talking about? The bounty hunter had never been magically healed before in her life. There was never a need for it as she healed quickly and, besides, there's no such thing as healing magic. Magic never benefits anyone.

"... did not."

How old was this girl? "You were brought in unconscious, suffering from multiple lacerations that had caused severe blood loss. If I hadn't healed you, I would have been concerned about the possibility of you not waking up. You can't possibly claim you got that much better on your own in that short an amount of time."

Raine was used to both Lloyd and Colette claiming they were fine when they weren't, so she knew how to get a point across. Of course, she was also used to being able to coax or scare them into admitting what she wanted them to.

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