damned_institute | Nightshift 33: M35, Clinic

Falis was so grateful Namine hugged her back she almost cried. Almost. Finally deciding she needed to get the rest taken care of, in a normal non-magical way, the bounty hunter locked her fear back away. "Thanks... I needed that," the princess muttered, barely audible, to Namine as she disengaged.

Taking her sword back up, as well as the monster's claw, the bounty hunter painfully got herself to her feet. She took two steps toward the nearest bed and ungracefully dropped down onto it. Looking over at Namine, she patted the bed next to her as an invitation to the girl, then laid her sword on the bed in easy reach.

Falis turned her now hooded eyes to Raine and raised her chin up in a small gesture of acceptance to the stitching. She hooked her fingers in the torn part of her pants and ripped the pant leg open, exposing the decent-sized gash in her upper leg. She was dangerously close to exposing her underwear to everyone in the room but, given her shirtless state, not to mention the barely holding together bra, she didn't care at all; she felt no shame.

"Is that what they call the poison the daytime vultures in white use?" She wasn't too keen on the ideas of poisoning herself.

"Of course." Naminé wasn't the kind of person (or Nobody, she guessed) who would abandon her friends in need, and she did her best to help Alita limp over to the bed. And took the seat offered to her, of course. This night was a rough one, but Naminé was glad that they got Alita to the clinic in time. She actually had to marvel at the fact such a thing existed - kindhearted patients who chose to stay behind and tend to the wounded instead of going out on their own. If Naminé was actually useful to them, she would have asked to join them, but... well, she did have those things in her room. Perhaps they wouldn't mind donations.

"It just makes you sleepy," Naminé quipped. She knew it was not poison; she never experienced getting sedated, but if the fact Luxord was still standing after getting constantly sedated was any indiciation, then she was pretty sure it wasn't what one would consider a poison.

"... Right?"

Granted, she didn't even know if Raine had the sedatives they used during the day, or something along the lines of the pain medication that Naminé had taken from the Pharmacy nights ago.

"That's right," Raine nodded. "It's not quite the same; the sedation is a side-effect instead of the intended one. I can find something that doesn't cause as much sleepiness, but it's unlikely to be effective."

Dragging a chair over, she sat down at Falis' side (where an accidental kick was unlikely) and threaded the needle--while she couldn't repair clothing to save her life, she could still stitch people up without a problem. She still considered it more invasive than she liked, but ironically enough it might just relax the girl.

Falis mulled the idea of the painkiller. Something to cut the pain would be nice, but with the witch there, she'd prefer to not be too sleepy to react if necessary. "I'm okay with most pain. I don't want to fall asleep, so something that doesn't do that will do," she finally stated.

Raine was right - stitching a gash was normal and something she'd had done to her many times before. Usually there was a little numbweed to rub on the wound before, but she'd endured Pete stitching her up without any. She would endure again. It was kinda nice to be familiar with what the healer was doing now.

Idly running the thumb of her good ran over the sleek surface of the black claw, Falis decided that she wasn't going to bleed to death anymore. The bounty hunter raised her left hand and held it out to Namine. "How's about you work on getting this undone," she said in reference to the tourniquet, "while I get sewn back up? Go slowly now. It's really bad to just let a tourniquet loose. Gotta ease the blood back into the limb."

The thought of stitching up a person like one did to clothing was a little gruesome, but Naminé wasn't unfamiliar with the concept. Still, she decided to look anyway. Again, another technique that could have been useful to know. Granted, it was one that Naminé hoped that she didn't have to use...

"OK!" It seemed simply enough, as Naminé tugged at the ties and started to do as Alita instructed, moving slowly and trying to lessen the pressure on her arm bit by bit. She failed in tying the tourniquet tight enough, the least she could do now was get it off properly.

At the very least, if Alita had to be awake during the stitching, then she would have something else to watch to help distract her.

Raine looked at Naminé to make sure she was doing all right, then left her to it. The more other people could do, the better.

"What caused all this?" she asked after a little while, frowning, as she glanced up at the acid burns. She was continuing the bestiary even if being prepared wasn't always, or often, possible. "I've seen some unfortunate mishaps with acid, but they were all minor in comparison to this." Especially since she'd never seen someone with this much acid damage; she was wondering just how many clothes Falis would have to take off to get everything treated.

The bounty hunter didn't acknowledged the pain from the sutures until the half-elf had paused to look up at her other injuries. The bounty hunter's eye twitched and she grit her teeth against the pain. Since Raine asked about her adversary, Falis was more than happy to oblige her with the knowledge of just how awesome the bounty hunter was.

She held up the wicked looking claw. "The ugly ass beastie this used to be attached to," she said with a grin, some of the wildness coming back into her eyes. "It was about three to four meters big with a kinda glistening black exoskeleton, claws and spiny tail with something like a blade on the end of it. I think that's what got me in the leg." She tilted her head in thought for a moment. "Oh, it had this weird double-mouth thing going on and it's blood burns like flaming oil."

The bounty hunter smirked. "It's dead now."

Naminé listened in on their conversation, not that she couldn't do much otherwise, as she slowly undid the tourniquet. Actually, Naminé was curious about what the creature looked like - she had seen glimpses, but the safety of her friend was more important. Still, she had a pretty good picture in her mind, helped by Alita's description.

What struck her most about the creature was how alien it was. Perhaps it was just a monster that Naminé had never seen, but ... it still seemed horrifically different from what Naminé had seen. Most of the monsters she had seen were mutated versions of animals that one would expect to see in the day. But she couldn't even begin to describe what the creature Alita killed was supposed to be.

"Does it sound familiar to you? I've never seen a monster like it," Naminé asked Raine, hoping that the other woman might have recognized it. That creature managed to kill a patient, at any rate, and though Alita defeated it, her victory almost came at the cost of her life. Naminé truly hoped it was a one of a kind beast.

Raine wondered if Falis had ever met Signum... it sounded like they might get along. "Nothing that I can recall," she said, after a long pause for thought. She knew about a lot of monsters, but that was a new one entirely.

Which was of course still very interesting... she had enough common sense to not want to run into anything that could do this, but she could always ask around for further information!

Later, anyway. "All right, I just need to take care of the acid burns..." She glanced at the rest of the room. The fact that they were all teenage boys might make this awkward. "Since I suggest you rest for the remainder of the night anyway, are you up to moving next door?"

"It kinda seemed like a cross between a lizard, an insect and the Jitterbug," Falis added on. "...not that any of you know what the Jitterbug was. Anyways, my experience with creatures that act that way and hunt like that did generally are part of a bigger group, like bees and ants. I wouldn't be surprised if another one pops up. I suggest a spear - it works really well."

Once Raine was done with the sutures, the princess poked at them a little, checking to see how well they'd been done. Not bad...

She looked up when Raine suggested moving to another room. "Uh... what for?"

Jitterbug? Well, she agreed with the lizard and insect qualities - especially the insect, with that smooth, hard shell the creature seemed to have. But she frowned when Alita predicted that it was most likely part of a group, she couldn't help but shudder. There really didn't need to be more of that creature.

As for Raine's suggestion, well... she was going where Alita was going, so she waited for Alita to make her choice.

Raine raised her eyebrows and tilted her head slightly towards the other occupants of the room; she figured it was best for all involved to go elsewhere, since she didn't think she could avoid taking Falis' top off. Tamaki alone would probably react badly enough... "Besides... that, it might get noisy in here, and that makes it hard to get much rest."

Personally, she'd found it bad enough when she had to take off her shirt in front of just Tamaki and Kratos; a bigger, young crowd was even worse.

Falis simply stared back at Raine. "... and they're a problem why? I don't care if they look. They're just breasts; it's not like it's a big deal."

She knew full well what Jodou would be saying in a situation like this, spouting off stuff about princesses and propriety (whatever the hell that meant) and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like people thought there was something wrong with looking at a person's body.

Seriously, like she cared.

It took Naminé a little while to understand what Raine was getting at - to treat the rest of Alita's wounds, her shirt would have to be taken off... all of it. Naminé understood, but she had to admit, she saw Alita's carefree response coming from a mile away.

Naminé just scratched her head, like she was being embarrassed for the Princess. But still...

"It's probably better to treat her here. I can stand in front of her, maybe?" Naminé knew she was rather small, but still, maybe she could just block out the offending parts? If it truly bothered Raine that much, anyway.

"That should work... to some extent." Raine wasn't bothered so much as she sort of thought that Falis should be. If she wasn't, though--Raine just shrugged. It didn't matter to her, either; it wasn't as if Zelos was in the room.

It took Raine a few moments to even figure out what to use; she had burn cream, but nothing mentioned acid. She settled on something that "promoted healing" (as opposed to what, exactly?) and did her best to be gentle; the girl had to be in more than enough pain as it was. The painkiller she'd taken couldn't possibly be all that effective against injuries like this.

As expected, the fact that she'd gotten her bra half melted off meant wearing one again was going to be uncomfortable; Raine used a little extra gauze, but said after a while, "I'm afraid wearing a shirt may not be terribly comfortable for a day or two." Even if that was fine with Falis, somehow Raine thought the nurses just might object.

Treating the burns bothered her a lot more than the stitching up of her leg. There was just too much contact needed to apply the salve to the locations, though removing the last bits of clothing off her upper body hurt a lot more than the bounty hunter was willing to admit. Whatever the salve was, it was soothing, once the half-elf was finished, and eventually the pain overall started to dull to a low thorbbing as opposed to the loud screaming it'd been doing before.

The princess yawned a little and blinked her eyes, not quite sure if it was the poison or just the exhaustion of such an intense, pitched battle with the creature combined with her injuries. She rubbed at an eye with the knuckle, holding her ripped up left hand out for Raine to work on next.

"Nah... It's fine. I don't mind most pain," she replied. "If I can still feel pain, it means I'm still in control." Being in control of... her other side was very important. No longer feeling the intense pain she should be in was the first sign she'd lost her hold on it.

A thought occured to her. "Oh, the thing I killed? It killed someone before I got there - a guy." She shook her head a little. "Don't know who he was, though."

It didn't seem like either women were too bothered by exposing Alita like that, but Naminé did as she suggested, standing before Alita as Raine worked on the burns. They did look rather painful, now that Naminé could see them in better light. All that, from a creature's blood?

Hopefully, that wasn't going to be a common thing in Landels.

As Alita mentioned the man who died in the Kitchen, presumably to that beast, Naminé shuddered just the slightest. She knew what he looked like, but only after he died. It was not a pretty sight to remember. But she didn't say anything else, deciding to save identifying him for tomorrow. Surely, more people had seen the body - so someone must have been able to identify him. At least they had paid their respects.

"Good, because without stronger painkiller you're going to be feeling it for a while," Raine warned. She understood not wanting to be sedated during the day, when they were at the mercies of the staff, but since they were also reasonably safe then the trade-off just might be worth it.

When she'd gotten all the acid burns taken care of, she got Falis another shirt (the bra wasn't going to hang on much longer no matter what she did) and turned to Naminé. "Are you hurt anywhere?" She couldn't see anything new, but that didn't mean much, and the splint might need looking at.

The bounty hunter flexed the fingers of her now bandages left hand and frowned at the pain briefly, but then shrugged. Though they still hurt, there seemed to be no permanent damage that would hamper her ability to wield a weapon. Automatically taking the shirt from Raine, Falis looked at it for a moment and then, scooting back a bit on the bed, carefully curled up on her unburnt side and tucked the shirt between the crook of her arm and head.

Deciding to rest, she brought the sword closer to her, laying it before her as a warrior does and she tucked the claw back into the waist of her pants; she wanted to hold onto it, entertaining thoughts on what Hokuto would do when she saw the awesome trophy. Closing her eyes, Falis grinned and nudged Namine with a toe.

"Nah, she's fine. Namine's tougher than I am; she survived two close brushes with death today without a single scratch. I, on the other hand, like to bleed... within reason."

"No, I'm fine. This is an old injury," Naminé shook her head, smiling to show that she was fine. She was sure if there was something wrong with her, a nurse during the day would notice. Besides, she felt fine.

Though a little guilty when Alita pointed out how she survived the events of tonight. One, she was lucky. The other...

"I just ran away. I'm glad I came back, though." Naminé knew that Alita wanted her to run to safety, but Naminé still didn't want to know how tonight would have turned out if she didn't choose to come back to Alita. Alita won the battle without her, but...

Raine nodded; she could guess. "This is why non-combatants are still good to have in a group. My normal role is support mage." With so few spells at her disposal, though, it was just--easiest to stay in one place. If asked, she was willing to go out with a group, but she... had a feeling Kratos would generally be the better choice for anything that might involve combat.

Although, the nights in here had suddenly been less than eventful; why? Finding out where the most people tended to venture--and where the most people usually got hurt--would be a good idea. It might not be worth it to secure a room, but they should still be nearby.

Falis yawned again. "I just like fucking shit up," she replied. "But I like having someone there when I finally come back down."

It was nice to hear encouragement from the others, but Naminé still couldn't help but feel slightly useless. If she was born with magic powers, like Raine... or trained herself, like Alita did, maybe she wouldn't be such a drag. At best, she was simply a walking map. But she supposed she did what she could, which was all that mattered. As long as she helped, it would be acceptable, right?

"Well, I'll always be there when you're... er, done fighting," Naminé assured her friend, skirting around her foul language.

"Thank you again, Miss...?"

"Raine Sage. You are?" She had to admit some curiosity about such a gentle girl who nonetheless was friends with Alita, of all people. All right, she also saw Alita with someone she knew of fairly frequently, but Hokuto was... interesting.

She had to wonder how often Alita's companions saw her bleeding anywhere near this severely; quite possibly more than with most other people. Especially considering how slow things in M35 had been lately, they really needed to look into giving first-aid lessons, as soon as possible.

"Mm... 's nice," the bounty hunter replied to Namine. Falis shifted a little as she tried to get more comfortable, one leg ending up on her friend's lap in the process. She placed her hand on top of the sword, the motion very similar to what a child would do with a security blanket, and a small smile touched her lips.

A couple seconds later and the princess started to snore. "ZZZZzzzzZZZZZzzzz..."

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