damned_institute | Nightshift 34: F21-30 Hallway

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Nightshift 34: F21-30 Hallway

[F22]

SHE'D FALLEN ASLEEP?!?

Falis stood in the middle of her room STARING at her roommate's sleeping form. "No, no, no, no! This isn't fucking happening," the bounty hunter growled as her stare turned into a furious glare. "You need to get your ass out of this room tonight."

No response. Senna continued to sleep peacefully, unaware of the blonde with the barely contained rage focused on her. Granted, this was Falis' fault for not making it clear right away that the room was off-limits for the night, but even she didn't fall asleep that fast and that soundly. And certainly not when there was a very dangerous, very angry person practically standing over her.

Fuck.

Falis clenched and unclenched her hands a few times and then whirled around, her temper getting the better of her. She snatched her sword up off the bed and, pivoting, brought it down upon Senna. It was only the realization that her roommate's decapitated corpse laying in the room would probably completely turn Hokuto off that caused the bounty hunter to halt her blade a mere breath away from Senna's head. She stepped back and stared down at her roommate, occassionally raising her sword as if to slash down at the sleeping form again before lowering it.

She eventually started to pace as she waited, frustrated and upset, toeing that line of just letting her rage take her over and killing her roommate. How DARE she fall asleep?!? Falis paused in her pacing to lash out at Senna, only stopping herself partway through the stroke again. She shook her blade at the girl as she trembeled in contained rage.

Why TONIGHT????

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Momo bowed to Skuld, more than she did to the humans, but not too much more. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Skuld-dono," she returned the greeting, trying to garner some warmth back into her demeanor and only half accomplishing it.

The Norn's eyes moved to Signum and she spoke in a language the shinigami did not understand. The inflection indicated a question, but being as her friend did not answer, the odds were Signum didn't understand it either. It made Momo wonder if Skuld recognized the knight from somewhere. She decided to take the introductions upon herself.

"This is Signum - my second," she said with a brief nod to the knight. "Please excuse her; she is the quiet type." Momo hoped her friend wouldn't take offense to that, but it seemed the best way to keep the interaction between Skuld and Signum to a minimum. It was clear to her Signum was in an even less of a talking mood than she normally was - this should cut back on the awkwardness.

The shinigami decided to get right to business and removed the bundle containing the fragments of her blade and held it out to Skuld with one hand, the other drawing the semi-usable half from her sash with the other.

...I guess that's a no. Skuld said "Okay..." and gave up on that for the moment. It had been a long shot, but--she'd been a full-fledged Valkyrie before and would be again. She'd just been hoping the warrior she saw was another.

"The person on my list, Freyjadour, should be here soon," she said. For now, she took the pieces of Momo's sword and carefully placed them on the floor, slightly overlapping with the relevant array.

Again, having tea to serve would be nice. (Even if she would MUCH prefer being able to offer ice cream.) Instead, she looked at the shinigami again and asked, "Um--is there anything I need to know about your sword? I know some weapons can't be fixed like normal, and in that case I have to do things a little differently too." Basically, ask the sword nicely to let her fix it up. Not that she would phrase it like THAT if asked.

[skipping with permission]

Momo followed Skuld to the array and sat down one the floor, her legs folded underneath her. With the knight there, Momo felt no need to keep an eye on the door and thus focused entirely on the goddess next to her. She shook her head in response to the question.

"Not that I am aware of," she replied. "I acquired it here - one of the 'gifts' the previous person on the radio left for us to fight for. It has been worked on by another alchemist - one of the two patients that died last night - but all he did was repair it the last time it was broken and strengthened the metal. It had been stronger than your average mortal katana, but the weapon it was up against to cause this breakage was far superior. I doubt any weapon we have all managed to either find or create could have."

Skuld mentally kicked herself--duh. She thought she'd heard a little about shinigami having special weapons, but here... if she didn't have Noble Scarlet, there wasn't much chance anyone else would have their own companions. "Got it."

At least they shouldn't have to wait long for Freyjadour. And if there were any questions for her, they had time...

Silence filled the room for a long moment before it started to get awkward. Momo wasn't particularly in a talking mood either, but she was more inclined to participate in idle conversation than Signum was. She tried to find something to talk about. Maybe a question, perhaps...

"Do you... need to take the other alchemist's work on the blade into account? I am... unsure how your version of alchemy works," she finally broke the silence with.

"Nah, it's compatible with everybody else's alchemy," Skuld said--way to sound nothing like she wanted to. "Maybe I get the power from somewhere different, but it doesn't make that big of a difference."

Alchemy was a human art, really, so it made sense. Item synthesis... she was going to be grumbling about lack of THAT up until the minute she got it back. And about how seriously, she didn't need to learn to be humble, she wasn't THAT powerful normally yet anyway!

"Oh."

Momo had been expecting something... different. Maybe the Norn wasn't as advanced in her creation ability than those of the 12th.

"I... don't mean to sound rude, but why does both my sword and the other's weapon need to be done at the same time? That sounds... needlessly complicated."

"Because right now, alchemy's so tiring that there's pretty much no way I can do it twice in one night," Skuld grumbled. "But I can do more than one thing at once."

Predictably, she added, "Usually I can do a lot more than this; with alchemy you can only change a substance so far, and you're limited by how much you have. With item synthesis, there's almost no limits." If she'd had that at her disposal, she wouldn't need to worry about people thinking she was lying about her status.

Of course... if she'd had it, she would have freed every prisoner here in a couple of hours... and obviously flat-out rescue wasn't exactly her mission.

"Ah. I understand," Momo replied. "It sounds like you suffer something similar to the spiritual backlash the shinigami do while here."

She had the grace to keep her silence and not even allow the tiny smile that wanted to appear on ehr face make its presence known as Skuld spoke of the things she normally could do. The way she said it... Skuld must be a young goddess.

"Do you have any other questions for me?"

Skuld shook her head slightly. "Any for me? I found out not everybody here knows much about alchemy, and a couple people that did thought it was all about immortality." Might as well educate people while she was here.

Which, of course, put how many goals on her list?? She'd feel a lot better if she really had Noble Scarlet with her, not just sleeping inside her.

"Humans likes to think death is the end and strive to find a way to defeat it," Momo replied. "They do not understand the cycle of life, death and rebirth. I suppose that's what drives them to be as... progressive as they are."

She tilted her head a little. "Do you deal with humans much through the course of your duties where you come from?"

"Yeah." Skuld had given up on speaking any differently than usual. "Right now my sisters and me are living with my sister's... friend. He's a regular human guy." She didn't twitch anymore when talking about Keichii, but still didn't want to admit she liked him now. Or acknowledge that wedding bells might be in his and Belldandy's future; at least that would only happen if one of them worked up the nerve to propose, and she couldn't imagine THAT happening in Keichii's lifetime.

"I got an Earth training license a while ago, since we're all staying for... a while. Most of the people I meet are from Nekomi Technical Institute, for competitions and stuff. They like having me on their team." She grinned a little at that.

It sounded a lot like the situation Rukia had been in with the ryouka aside from the fact that Rukia had lost her shinigami powers and it seemed Skuld had maintained hers while living with humans. Interesting.

"An Earth training license? You require licensing to perform your duty?"

"Yeah--they depend on power level and that kind of thing." Skuld didn't have much reason not to answer anything she was asked, and she figured Momo was trying to find out more about what a goddess could do.

"There's a lot of different types of licenses, and they've all got different restrictions and requirements. There's a lot of rules, too, so I had to make sure I was following all the regulations around Earth training." Unlike Urd, she was meticulous enough so it wasn't a problem, just a hassle. Anyway, she was a full-fledged goddess, regardless of power or experience, and it was part of her duty.

...a part that she was already starting to think of very wistfully compared to her duties now.

"I can understand the restrictions, to an extent," Momo replied. "When shinigami of seated rank travel to the living world, we are placed under a limiter to dampen our reiatsu - our spiritual power."

"Because of the great amount of reiatsu such shinigami naturally contain, it naturally surrounds us in a manner similar to what others call an aura," she explained. "So, to minimize the effect that our presence has on the living world, the limiter is applied and to lift it requires special permission from the soutaichou."

She sighed, glancing at the door as if this Frejadour would walk in any moment. She hoped he'd arrive soon; she wasn't sure how much more patience Signum had.

"Whatever Martin Landel has done to us all to practically seal off our abilities feels a lot like that limiter, just amplified to a greater extent."

Skuld's eyes widened and she sat up a little more. "One of my older sisters--Belldandy--has a limiter like that. It's really bad if she doesn't ask permission to take it off, but she can do it with some assistance; I helped her last time." She counted it as practice for when she had a limiter and no time to ask permission to remove it.

If they compared what that knew of limiters, they might just be able to figure out something... the fact that a goddess' and a shinigami's limiters were undoubtedly different just meant the theories they formulated should cover more.

And that was a reason for being sent here that she could actually live with.

Interesting to hear that these goddesses had limiters too. Belldandy must be of sufficient strength. If Skuld didn't have one, as she practically indicated, that meant she wasn't a goddess of great divine(?) strength. It made Momo wonder how strong she was without this limiter Landel had them under.

"Shinigami can lift their limiters without permission but, like your oneesan, there are consequences for doing so." She reached up and moved the collar of her top down to modestly expose the area under her collarbone and above her breast.

"You can't see it now, but I have my division's marking right here." She then indicated the lily of the valley emblem on her vice captain's badge. The her brow furrowed for a moment. "Well, it would be if this wasn't a gigai, but anyways..."

"I don't know the specifics as I'm not of the 12th, but the mark shows up when we release our limiters, so its something like an indicator that reacts to the reiatsu we normally are surrounded by when not under the limiter." She sighed. "I'm sorry I don't have much information, but I was never considered for the 12th." For good reason too; Momo's personal morals and compassion would bend enough to consider doing the work the 12th did.

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/420620.html?thread=35536140#t35536140)]

Frey knocked on what he very much hoped was the right door. Getting Takaya to show him how the light sticks worked was now right at the top of his 'to-do' list, because wandering around alone, in the dark, was distinctly unpleasant.

[fail post of fail, but at least it's a post. x.x sorry, RP lobe of brain is not working well since my hiatuses]

"Just a moment!" Skuld called, slipping back into at least slightly more formal speech. Though as she jumped up... she remembered that she'd never met with Frey before this. Oops.

When she opened the door, she was slightly relieved to see that the boy in front of her wasn't too much taller than she was; it was hard to look even the slightest bit impressive when her current age meant being smaller than most people. "Freyjadour?" she asked, just to check. "I'm Skuld."

Momo let out a silent sigh of relief upon hearing the knock on the door. Hopefully, this meant she could get moving soon so her knight could be appeased. Signum's continued silence left Momo with a sense of urgency that sat in the pit of her stomach.

The shinigami got to her feet and stepped back from the array on the floor to stand next to Signum. She cast her friend a quick glance before focusing on the door.

Signum had, in fact, been growing steadily more irritated with nothing to do but listen to Skuld as the night had worn steadily on, so while she was in some sense pleased to see Frey that was far from clear from her expression as he made his entrance.

The knight wasn't exactly inclined to explain her brief but icy glare at the newcomer, either, so he was left to figure it out for herself while she continued doing her statue impression by the wall.

Sadly, Frey was so used to being glared at for no reason that he barely even noticed. He smiled politely to each of the women in the room, though he was surprised to find so many people here. "Yes, I am Freyjadour. Did I come at a bad time...?"

"No, it's fine," Skuld said quickly. She could sense the tension in the room, she just didn't know the reason for it; maybe getting everyone going would be a good thing. "Here, I'll take that." She grabbed what he'd brought and arranged it around the right array; proximity did matter, to some extent, but luckily size didn't. Kneeling between Frey's portion and Momo's, she put one hand by each and closed her eyes. "Wood and steel, both born of Earth, one grown, one forged..." At least the projects she was doing had a little in common.

Although that didn't save her from the exhaustion... either she took it too slow, tried to do too much, or got overconfident. She felt the energy leaving already as she tried to start one last step; both weapons were complete, but her patches showed and that was so not okay. Annoyed, she fought to hold on long enough to finish the job; never mind the headache it was giving her, she wasn't done and she wasn't going to stop until she was.

So she thought. Most of the seams had smoothed out, but she still had some to go when the last of the energy escaped her grasp; this time she didn't even feel herself fall, just blinked her eyes open and realized she was lying on the floor. Did I black out? Argh! She shut her eyes again, not happy. I hate this place!

Momo watched with curiosity as Skuld performed her alchemy. Having watched Kimbley perform the same kind of repair on her sword, she was interested to see how different the techniques were. When Skuld started using a language she didn't understand and the vague feeling of the power coming from the small goddess was enough to tell her how very different their alchemy was.

So focused was she on observing the process, enough that she'd started to bring spirit threads into focus out of curiosity, that she didn't notice the backlash hit Skuld until the goddess was on the floor.

"Skuld-dono!" Momo darted to her side, kneeling down, and pushed the girl's hair back from her face. Momo peered into her eyes, concern in her own, as she took a quick peek at the goddess' threads. It wasn't enough to cause a nosebleed, but her hand on Skuld's forehead shook just a bit before she got it under control. Though exhausted, it seemed Skuld would be alright.

"You pushed yourself too far; my apologies for asking what I have of you," the shinigami said. "I am in your debt. Call upon me if you ever need to. If rest is all you need, we will be on our way," she hooked the arm with her cast underneath Skuld's shoulders, "after we have moved you to a more comfortable place."

Unfortunately, the cast and Momo's still tender torso wound was preventing her from finding the best way to pick Skuld up. She glanced up at the nearby knight for help.

"Signum-kun..."

The wait had been longer than Signum liked, but it had at least been fruitful. Seeing Momo's weapon restored and what had hopefully been the only lasting consequence of her turning set right did more to set Signum at ease than she would have thought. The sense of lingering bloodlust the previous night's battle and its sudden end had left her with didn't lend itself to introspection so she was uncharacteristically blind to the role the twin tensions of her special counseling and Reinforce's mysterious disappearance played in worsening her present murderous mindset.

But the main reason she stepped forward to help the fallen Norn was not this slight relaxation, but something older. For one whose faith rested with her weapons it was only natural to value one's armorer highly. Even if weapons of mere steel barely registered as proper armaments to a knight of Belka, the attitude was deeply-ingrained, and her work here meant more to the knight than her claims of godhood probably ever would.

The pink-haired warrior kneeled down at Momo's glance, picking up the weakened goddess and placing her gently but without fanfare on her bed. Minding the array on the floor, of course... she was pretty sure it wouldn't do anything with its user apparently completely drained, but you never knew with foreign magic.

Nightshift 34: F21-30 Hallway

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