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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"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.

Alright, Falis remembered coming to after her fight with the pointy monsters her first night, that being where she met this woman, but she didn't remember any kind of magic being used. In fact...

The princess' eyes flashed dangerously as she stepped toward the woman, invading her personal space. "You told me you did first aid on me, not magic," she growled. "What else did you do to me while I was unconscious, witch?" She drew a fist back to punch the woman but then remembered all the staff circling overhead and, eyes darting up to look at all the sets of eyes watching her, she dropped her arm. "I swear if you used any kind of other magic, no injury I have will keep me from exacting a long, violent, satisfying revenge upon you."

Raine's first impulse was to slap her; the girl was about the same age as her older students, and she hadn't met a teenager yet that could honestly intimidate her. "I'm not a witch; I'm a healer," she said firmly. She looked Falis in the eyes, no hesitation; she'd had worse than angry children threatening her.

"This is not your home. Magic is not the same as magitechnology; it does not harm by definition any more than non-magical treatments do."

Though she'd gotten a painful reminder far too recently of her lack of combat skill, she could fight. Regardless, she wasn't giving Falis the chance to lash out; too fast for anyone to see who wasn't looking very closely, she simply flicked Falis' ribs with a finger, something that normally wouldn't cause pain at all. She was supposed to heal, but consequently she also knew how to hurt.

More than that--threatening the teacher was not acceptable.

Falis opened her mouth, ready to snarl about how evil magic was when suddenly a fresh wave of pain flooded the bounty hunter's torso. "Unnnghhhh!" Falis backed up, hand protecting her injured side as she hunched over a little in pain. That was so not fair.

"Bitch," she growled out, glaring at the woman. "What the hell did you do that for?" sh demanded. Some healer.

"Proving a point." She'd spent half her life surviving any way she could; it had never gotten as bad as she was afraid of (at least until she came here), but now the girl knew she wasn't defenseless. She wasn't as strong as a half-elf should be, and at the moment she was unarmed, but she knew what she was doing.

"Now, would you like to sit down again?" Raine asked calmly. She could explain more about magic either way, but ironically enough she thought the girl should be careful not to aggravate her injury. The little flick Raine had given her hadn't caused any damage; she had been careful not to do that.

A scowl was the immediate response to the explanation and question posed to Falis. What the hell point had she been trying to prove anyways - the easiest way to guarantee a gut punch later on sometime? It wasn't as if Falis thought she was invincible. She knew she wasn't, just pretty darn close to it. The bounty hunter had more than enough reasons to be careful of injury, mostly because she really didn't want to end up slaughtering a bunch of innocent people if she got so injured she lost control.

She might have argued further with the woman if she hadn't felt all those eyes on her again. The blonde cast her gaze up, almost nervously, at the staff walking the balcony above them before looking back at the woman next to her.

"No," Falis said, crossing her arms, "but I will." And with that, the princess sat back down, making sure her injured ribs were well out of reach of the devil-healer.

Raine sat down as well, but not within reach; it wasn't to avoid injury herself, but to show she wasn't going to touch the girl again.

"You wanted to know about non-technological resurrection?" Back into lecture mode; she'd been approached for a reason, and she was always glad to explain a concept. Yes, it was also an escape, but never mind that.

Falis scowled at the woman for a moment. "Yeah," she answered. "This place has a means to do it. I wanna know how."

"This place does things that should be impossible." Raine looked at her Exsphere; she'd never heard of one going dark like this.

"As I said, you need both the body and the soul for it to work; I suppose it's possible they create bodies here. I'm not familiar with how that would be done--I know it isn't possible in my world." If it were, Yggdrasil would have. "Once the soul has been brought back, it might also be difficult to place it in a replica body. But, if solutions are found to all those problems... I imagine that's all there is to it." Deceptively simple, when put that way.

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