damned_institute | Nightshift 32: Sun Room

The brief moment the sword was out of her hand was an unfortunately missed opportunity as Wesker's other hand was occupied with his own knife. Had it been free he would have grabbed at it, but even then he was fairly certain he would have been too slow in his current state.

The stab in the shoulder did cause Wesker to withdraw, the less damage received the faster it would heal.

He wasn't quite sure what she was talking about when it came to 'interfering with barriers'. "Surprised to find yourself more vulnerable to me than you expected, hmn?" Just because he wasn't quite sure what she was talking about didn't mean he couldn't use that to his advantage.

Wesker shifted his stance to a better position. "I do hope when you come to your senses you'll be more pleasant than this," Wesker said, charging in for a high attack with the knife, purposefully making his eyes glow to attempt to draw her attention upwards.

Signum might favor a direct, brute-strength based mode of combat compared to her Midchildan comrades, but she was far from guileless, and the taunt rang false to her. "You don't know what it is, either."

Unfortunately for Wesker glow-in-the-dark eyes were something she'd seen plenty of times in magic-users so it didn't phase her. Her most pressing issue in the fight was that she couldn't make full use of the superior reach and weight of her blade without risking chopping him in half, something generally frowned on when making arrests. Instead of trying to meet his weapon with hers again she stepped into his rush and to his weapon side, catching his knife above her head on the ridges of her bracer and swinging Laevateinn's pommel into his open side. Even if the damage didn't put him down broken ribs would make his movements a lot less fluid. That was the way to go when you couldn't kill: break them down slowly, each wound allowing the next to be placed more precisely until you could knock them out easily.

The sound of the cracked ribs was audible, but that didn't deter Wesker at all. His other hand came up, brushing past his pocket and pulling out the exacto knife as he did.

That hand came up to stick the blade into the armpit of her blocking arm, jamming it in as hard as he could. As far as he was concerned, this was a fair exchange of blows. "I know what's making you weaker," It was this hospital, he was sure. Though he wasn't quite sure why they would keep her partially weakened.

Signum was already turning away from the blow, feet working quickly to keep to keep at his side, and the blade caught her chest instead, inexplicably (from her point of view) parting the pseudomatter fabric of her armor and drawing a short red line in her flesh before her skittering off it like it should have in the first place. Only a box-cutter, but it had wounded her as easily as Testarossa's pseudoelectric scythe might have...

Her blocking arm twisted and she grabbed his knife arm, pulling it out to stop him from following her turn so she could get behind him. The impromptu grip wasn't as well-targeted as the one he'd put on her at the beginning of the fight, but the knight's enhanced strength made it plenty painful and difficult to escape.

The grip on his hand was painful, but the ribs hurt worse, a stabbing pain with each breath. The stab wound on his shoulder was slowly closing, but it would be a minute at least before he could heal his ribs.

"What do you think that you'll accomplish here?" Wesker asked. "If even that little blade can damage you, how do you expect to deal with everyone that comes through this room, and I assure you, there will be more and many will be better armed than I."

Perhaps he could keep her talking for a bit to give his ribs a chance to heal slightly.

"If so many escape my comrades I'll have to consider using greater force. That's all," Signum shot back. She was the one holding back on them, after all. This was all for duty; even with the limitations placed on her it wasn't challenge enough to enjoy.

She'd been ready to clock him with her sword's pommel again, this time on the head, but since he'd stopped resisting she instead stuck the blade in the ground and reached for his other hand, knee driving into the back of his as she did. It'd look better to take him in conscious than unconscious, and that sort of thing mattered when she was scoring points and earning favors for Hayate.

While he had hoped to prolong the talking and give himself more of a chance to heal, this was too good an opportunity to pass up. He slid the exact knife up into the sleeve of his coat and grabbed the handle of the sword, switching around painfully to do so.

He went down to one knee as his knee was stepped on, and twisted again to use momentum to pull the sword out of the ground to swing it.

It took an incredible amount of effort to pull it up out of the ground, and he had clearly under-estimated the weight of the weapon. It would be too heavy for him to use properly, but right now that didn't matter too much.

He swung the blade up over his head, aiming for the general area of the Signum's shoulder so she would release his other hand. It was a clumsy and uncontrolled swing, but there was plenty of momentum behind it.

"Laevateinn," the knight called her weapon's name, and it responded to its true wielder's intent, its answer the heavy metallic sounds of its internal mechanisms working. The blade split into linked segments and arced back, avoiding Signum's body and plunging down to sever the hand that held it.

She eyed him contemptuously as she picked the sword up off the ground, prying his fingers from the hilt. She hadn't wanted to seriously attack someone who was effectively unarmed with her blade, nor cause this level of injury, but he'd brought it on himself. Trying to use her own knightly arms against her... it was both shameless and stupid. The grip on his other arm tightened for a second, an unspoken warning as to what would follow if he kept fighting.

As expected, Peter was met with the sounds of a fight as he followed Harry into the room. He used his flashlight to get a better idea of what was going on, and was surprised to find that there were only two people involved.

Still, it was obvious that the girl (with pink hair?) was being brainwashed, considering her armor and the fancy weapon she was swinging around. Both of the patients seemed to be bleeding, but the man was at a serious disadvantage -- Peter knew that it took more than one person to take down the Special Counseling patients.

He glanced to Harry, taking a deep breath as he steeled himself. "The girl is brainwashed, so she'll try to attack us. We've got to help that guy, though. You ready?" He knew it was dangerous taking his friend into a fight like this when he didn't know his limits, but Peter already knew that Harry wouldn't accept being left on the sidelines.

Harry stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of the conflict taking place in the sun room. Staring at the struggling pair in confusion, he tried to figure out why anyone would be attacking a patient.

Peter's explanation didn't help to clear things up either. How the hell did he know she was brainwashed? Was there a spate of mind controlling aliens going around or something?

The reasons behind the fight didn't matter in the end, all that mattered was that Peter was going to get involved in a fight that had nothing to do with them and all Harry had defend himself was his bare hands

He stared a moment at the sword the strange, armored girl was wielding, fighting down a spike of fear as the memory of getting stabbed hit him again. The last thing he wanted was to go through that again, but he couldn't let Peter see he was afraid.

Moving carefully around the room, he attempted to get behind the woman in question, hoping he could catch her off guard. It shouldn't be too hard for him to disable her, considering his enhanced strength, but he didn't want to get stabbed in the process.

[from here] (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/363106.html?thread=29709410#t29709410)

Momo slipped silently into the Sun Room, sword at her side, and she immediately found Signum engaged in a fight with another. Oh no... I was too slow.

Not only had she been so slow in getting Signum's team taking care of and the extra added accompaniment of Willow, but two others had entered the room before she got everyone in place to stop exactly that from happening. The sight of the knight in her full armor awed the small shinigami a moment, the sword in the knight's hand obviously Laevateinn. Momo couldn't help but admit that she was a bit scared of this encounter and a whole lot intimidated by the Belkan knight in her full glory.

Stop hesitating, Hinamori, she told herself once she caught sight opf the one man beginning to circle around to Signum's back. This would not go well if the two men got involved. She had to move now, to hell with the intimidation, to hell with the small amount of fear. She had to stop her friend. She had to draw her blade on the knight.

Momo stayed low to the ground as she used the advantage of being small in stature as well as wearing a black uniform granted her in the night time environment with lots of small cover between her and the knight. She dashed toward the knight, not a single word coming from her, and she broke into few a few feet from Signum and the man she was fighting.

Being as small as she was, she stepped into the space between the two. She took her sword, end third of the blade grasped in her off hand, and swung the tsuba at Signum's face. The angle of the actual blade as she stuck was in position to block an immediate attack from the knight's own sword. At the same time, the limber shinigami kicked at the hand that held onto the arm of the unfortunate soul that first crossed paths with the Belkan knight.

Momo's intention was to get Signum to release the man and focus on her. Hopefully, it would work. "Run," she called out to the injured man, though it was a command that hopefully would be heeded by the other two men in the room.

Now that was something that no sword should have been able to do. Wesker screamed in pain as his hand was quite neatly severed from his arm. He needed to get out of this fight quickly before he took more damage than he could reasonably heal tonight.

Thankfully, with three more people here, that wouldn't be so difficult. One of them was even so kind as to actually get in front of his opponent and attack the hand holding him.

Wesker pulled at the weakest part of the woman's grip, twisting his arm to make it easier to escape the grip. There were already bruises forming, but those were far from being concerning. Once he was free Wesker wasted no time running to the door leading into the cafeteria.

He would just have to hope there were no monsters waiting for him.

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So the part about reinforcements hadn't been a mere bluff. Just when she thought she'd calmed things down a rush of new bodies filled the room, most spreading out around her while one rushed in. Brave, foolish, or simply trying to buy the others time to surround her- the Signum didn't know which she was, but the knight had never been one to run from a fight so the katana-wielding girl would be her first opponent.

Plenty of ways to end this right away, but one dismemberment was bad enough... she again forwent the use of her blade, meeting Momo's swordarm with her own to stop the advance of her blade. She cursed mentally when the shinigami's kick struck her immobilized arm and her quarry slipped free... but he was only running back into the arms of her comrades, and wounded as he was he wouldn't be much of a threat. It just didn't look good.

But... what was it with this one? This energetic kind of feeling she got? She wasn't even sure what it was. She was getting old, indeed. The knight dropped her stance, throwing the weight of her body and armor and all of her magically enhanced strength behind her blocking arm to force the girl back.

"I am carrying out the lawful order of the Time-Space Administration Bureau." Signum's eyes were on the girl's, but her voice reached easily to the far corners of the Sun Room. "Surrender and we will hear any mitigating testimony you wish to give."

That didn't seem likely at this point, but they'd seen what had happened to the first man. Maybe it would give them reason to consider the mercies of the law again.

The last thing Peter expected was for a young girl to get involved, and yet she seemed to know what she was doing. She was armed, which was more than could be said for him or Harry. Then again, they didn't exactly need weapons most of the time.

At least the severely injured man had gotten away while the getting was good, but the limb he left behind was enough to make Peter's stomach turn. He had seen some grotesque things during his time as New York's protector, but no one got used to seeing limbs detached from their bodies.

In any case, maybe the girl was armed, but she was still no match for someone who was even more armed and might have had some powers on top of it. It wasn't getting too violent so far, but that didn't mean that it wouldn't. Trying to catch Harry's gaze, Peter moved forward toward the two girls, not quite sure what he was going to do, but prepared to jump in when he saw an opening. He knew that trying to reason with the brainwashed patient was futile, so he would just have to wait for a proper time to attack.

Harry stopped, blinking in surprise as a girl appeared out of nowhere and dove into the struggle without a pause. He was begrudgingly impressed by her courage. Seeing the severed hand of the other man had been enough to make him want to reconsider getting involved in this, but she either didn't notice or didn't care.

He wished he knew what what was going on here, but the important thing was that the woman wielding the sword was obviously intent on doing some serious harm. He really didn't want to get involved. This had nothing to do with him or Peter but there was no way he'd be able to convince Peter to just leave and he didn't want to admit to being afraid. Besides, getting shown up by some little girl was something his ego really couldn't take.

God, he wished he a weapon or six. He'd never been in a fight without at least a trick or two up his sleeve. Just going in barehanded like this couldn't end well. But Peter was right there, expecting him to do something and he couldn't let him down.

Doing his best to ignore the fear clenching his gut, Harry determinedly darted forward, hoping to grab the woman from behind and prevent her from harming the young girl who'd attacked her.

Yes! He's free! Momo thought as the man Signum had been fighting was able to escape with her aide. Her elation was short-lived, though, as the knight stopped her attack and threw her considerable strength into forcing the shinigami away.

Momo's eyes widened slightly in surprise as the force of the knight's shove sent her flying backwards. She'd known Signum was strong, but she hadn't any idea the woman was this strong. Momo was usually good at maintaining her feet, but in the end she was still less than ninety pounds and constrained by Landel's limiter.

CRASH!

The shinigami hit a chair several feet from Signum hard enough to break the piece of furniture, momentarily knocking the wind out of her. A heavy sadness hit her as she realized her friend did not recognize her nor remembered where she was. At least this told her that they hadn't forced the knight into this service by threatening Hayate's life.

"Please... your orders do not come from the Time Space Administration, but from Martin Landel," she said as she got to her feet and looked the knight in the eyes. A shiver ran down her back seeing the look within them. She never wanted to see her friend look at her with those eyes again.

"Please, Signum, don't do--" The shinigami cut her words off as she saw the one man move in on Signum from behind. Her eyes widened in alarm and she called out to the man. "No! You don't know what you're dealing with!!"

Momo ran toward Signum, knowing full well she wasn't going to be able to get there in time to stop her from responding to the man's attack unless she used shunpo. Even then, the shinigami wasn't sure she could position herself correctly to prevent it given the situation and she couldn't afford to expend that much reiatsu at this stage.

"Signum! Please stop!" There was near desperation in her words, her eyes wide and glistening with emotion.

Tch. Her opponents weren't even doing a good job ganging up on her, coming in one at a time like this. They'd bothered to use whatever it was that was weakening her armor, but they couldn't even coordinate a decent attack to take advantage of it. They didn't even seem fanatical; they just didn't seem to realize how outmatched they were.

And to add to the strangeness of the whole situation, one of them was shouting her name. And at her approaching comrade, which would have ruined his chances of taking her by surprise if he'd had any in the first place.

The knight turned and rose back up to her full height, flicking her sword's separated blade towards Harry. The point curled back, and instead of a stab or a slash the movement produced a loop of segments that expanded towards her target flat-first, brushing aside the room's furniture like a wave.

Her eyes turned back to the girl. "Who are you?" The mere fact of her existence and her name weren't secret, of course, but enough else about her was that there was very little publicly available information on her. No acquaintance of Signum's, though... a former member of the armed forces, perhaps?

When the young girl was pushed back and crashed into the chair, Peter took that as his cue to get more involved. He had been planning to move over to her and make sure she was all right, but before he could even make it that far the girl was charging the brainwashed patient once again.

Though this time Peter could see why, when he saw Harry's attempt to grab at the woman from behind. The moment he saw that she was starting to retaliate, Peter hissed under his breath and rushed the patient as well.

He already knew his strength was lacking here, so he was going to have to hope he could get creative with his webbing. The main threat right now was that sword she was holding, so he pulled his arm up and sent as much web out of his left wrist as possible, hoping it would be strong enough that he could use it to at least disarm her.

Harry thought he had a good chance of catching the sword wielding woman off guard, but when the other girl shouted a warning at him he knew that chance was lost. If she was that concerned about him getting hurt, surely she should realise that drawing attention to him was not the way to prevent that.

Even if he'd lost the element of surprise, he thought he still had a chance to get a hold of her. Still moving forward, he was completely unprepared when the sword separated somehow and came flying at him. Harry could do little but brace himself for the impact and roll with it when he was knocked to the ground. Shoving himself to his feet, shaky, a bit bruised and incredibly annoyed by the whole charade, he glanced over to see if Peter had any bright ideas.

Guessing what Peter was trying to do, he threw himself forward again, swinging at her face. He carefully reigned in the strength of the punch, after all he'd been able to put his fist through the side of buildings back home and he had no interest in killing this woman. With any luck, that trick she'd pulled with her sword on him would prevent her from being able to use it in close quarters quickly. He wasn't sure she'd use the thing to just knock him down again.

Momo winced a bit at the impact the man took as Signum's sword, separated into segments, swept him to the side as if he was nothing more than yet another piece of furniture. As much as it pained her that her friend did not recognize her, the shinigami hoped that perhaps the introduction the knight was demanding would at least spark some kind of recognition within those calculated, cold blue eyes.

"I am Vice Captain Hinamori Momo of the 5th Division of the Gotei 13 and a commanding officer within the Arts and Crafts group here at Landel's. I am shinigami. More importantly, though," she said, coming to a halt a few feet from the knight, her eyes softening, "I am your friend, Signum."

Her eyes flickered from the knight to the woman's sword. Memories of training in the forest with Kira and Renji popped into her mind and she shifted her stance to a defensive one that would allow her the greatest amount of adaptation. Thank goodness for training all those years with Renji and Zabimaru; she was well acquainted with a serpentine blade. The shinigami also turned the katana within her own hand quickly so that the back of the blade, the unsharpened edge, was out, holding it sakaba-style. She would not draw her blade's cutting edge on the knight yet for she still held hope.

That hope was quickly fading the more the others got involved as the man to her side flung some kind of substance at Signum and the other man got to his feet and threw himself back at the knight.

"Please," she said to the man to her side in the odd-looking outfit, "take your friend and leave before one of you gets really hurt. This... she... is my responsibility." Her weight shifted forward slightly, her eyes keenly upon Signum as she waited for the right moment. "Please... just go while you still can."

Apparently the reason the other one had been hanging back was because he could shoot some kind of goop. Out of his wrists. With precision, too. What was with these people? None of them could use real magic but they had all sorts of strange tricks up their sleeves. Even the inherent skills of cyborgs were at least recognizable as a form of magic; this guy and the first seemed more like they'd had their actual biology altered.

The attack made wielding her sword awkward, not impossible, but she wasn't going to wait to see if he could get more of that stuff past her fields and into, say, her eyes- he was target number one.

"I don't know you," she said to Momo over a twinge of doubt. "Words or that sword, you can test me with either when this is done." Before Harry's charge could reach her her image split, then vanished entirely, and in the next instant she was above the one who'd struck her, striking down with the scabbard that had suddenly appeared in her free hand.

When his shot successfully latched onto the sword, Peter felt triumphant, but only for a moment. It turned out that the web wasn't actually doing much, since he couldn't shoot out nearly as much as usual, and it was also a lot weaker.

The young girl's words made him pause for a moment. He could understand the sentiment, but that didn't mean that he was exactly willing to leave. He considered for a moment before turning his gaze toward Harry, trying to catch his friend's expression and see what he thought.

He shouldn't have dropped his guard, though. The next thing he knew, the brainwashed patient was gone -- his spider senses kicked in, but far too late for them to be helpful. He felt her above him, but not soon enough that he could actually dodge out of the way, and the scabbard hit him hard on the shoulder, strong enough to force him to his knees.

Skidding to a halt when his target suddenly vanished, Harry looked around in confusion, trying to see where she had gone. When he saw the knight appear above Peter, he let out a shout of warning, far to late to do any good.

While he could see that the knight hadn't used her sword to strike Peter and intellectually knew his friend would be fine, seeing him driven to his knees like that panicked Harry.

In spite of the fact that nothing he'd done so far had been even remotely effective, Harry disregarded this in favour of running towards Peter, hoping desperately to get between him and the knight before she could strike him again.

"Yes, you do!" Momo practically yelled at Signum as she continued to watch for an opening. And then it happened.

The shinigami felt like she was in slow motion. She could track Signum's movement, following it, but her body simply would not, could not, move fast enough. Her only hope was to use shunpo to interpose herself between the man in the odd outfit and her friend, but the second she saw the scabbard instead of the sword coming at him, Momo decided against using the energy to use the flash step. She simply could not afford to expend that much energy so soon in this encounter thanks to the limiter and gigai she was in.

Damn Martin Landel and all his subordinates to Hell. Let them stare into the Gates of Hell and know the future that would await until reincarnation. Damn them all for making her fight a friend.

The other man was moving toward the battle, but the shinigami was simply closer. Momo dashed at Signum as soon as she could move. Being small definitely had its disadvantages, but there were times when the benefits greatly outweighed them. Such as slipping in between a pair of much taller combatants; they needed a certain amount of space to fight in, much more than the diminutive shinigami did.

Momo went to attack with her blade at the arm of Signum that held the scabbard but, at the last moment, pulled short and ducked underneath the scabbard. She passed between the kneeling man and the knight, pivoting her foot so she could drive the kashira, the butt of her sword's hilt, up into Signum's gut generating as much force as she could manage without losing her footing.

"Go," she said to the man she was protecting before her words were directed at the knight. "Let them go, Signum. It's me you want; I am a commander here."

And again the small one came to interrupt, this time with a slightly more subtle attack that passed under Signum's guard and slammed into her stomach, offering an interesting tidbit along with the blow. The claim of rank could be a lie, but even then someone who intentionally made themselves the focus of a battle would be a devoted guardian. In either case, she was the type of worthy opponent Signum was predisposed to seek out in battle.

Or could have been, if only she'd had real equipment. The scabbard disappeared again, and Signum took advantage of its closeness to grab hold of the shinigami's sword arm with her newly free hand.

"You I already have, and they are just as trapped. If they won't surrender they'll fall to my comrades."

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