damned_institute | Nightshift 35: Main Hallway, 2-Centre

"A curse isn't an ability, now is it?" Shito figured that since his simple existence defied the laws of nature, curse was a pretty accurate word. And if that wasn't enough, then having to deal with Akatsuki all the time was clearly a curse. "I can handle myself in a fight, but that's just training and practice."

All these questions about his hand were starting to piss him off. He should never have started answering the wench's questions at all. "Just the hand. It'll be normal again in the morning." Or as normal as it could be, being someone else's hand attached to his arm.

"Curse, huh?" Elle repeated. She knew there were some people who thought of the abilities as a curse, people who just wanted to be normal, unevolved. She didn't understand that. It was like an eagle wanting to be a sparrow. Who would choose weakness when they could be strong?

"What's your name, anyway?" she asked, rearranging her face into a mask of friendliness.

There was one way to force him to show off his abilities. The ball of electricity in her hand crackled and glowed brighter as she contemplated launching it at him.

Definitely time to tune out this conversation. Shito wandered over to the railing, which the girl had electrified before, and peered down into the Sun Room. Looked pretty chaotic down there, weird flashes and a lot of noise. Shito was very glad he wasn't down there and he backed away from the railing again, just in case anything came flying up this high.

Shito vaguely heard the girl asking something and was tempted to ignore that, too, but he caught the word 'name' and figured he could at least answer that much. "Tachibana Shito. You?"

"I'm Elle." At this point, there was no point in hiding her real name. Either he knew who she was or he didn't, and either he'd tell people about her or he wouldn't. She'd pretend to be Pom-Pom another time, when she couldn't easily be caught in such a blatant lie.

He wasn't even looking at her. That was just rude. Elle shot an arc of electricity at Shito's back, intent on getting his attention. If he used his own ability to block or retaliate, all the better.

Shito didn't really care what the woman's name was, but it was more convenient if he had something other than 'hey you' to call her, so he'd asked anyway. He certainly wouldn't bother remembering her name beyond tonight, though.

And then there was a very faint increase in the ozone smell in the air, and Shito's back and foot were burning. He whirled to face Elle, shouting, "What the hell?"

Had that been enough to stop a human heart, since it had hit in the torso and grounded out through his foot? Shito really hoped it wasn't, because the fact that he was still standing would kind of out him as being a zombie.

Elle blinked. She hadn't expected the electricity to do any real damage - it never had before, here - but most people at least cried out when they got jolted. This guy hardly looked in pain! Maybe that was his ability... immunity to pain. What kind of lame ability was that?

She generated a ball of electricity with each hand, flexing her fingers as she eyed him up and down, enjoying the feel of the current sparking across her knuckles.

"Haven't you heard? I'm a fucking psychopath," she sneered, still directing the foul language at her memories of Daddy.

Let them have another story to post on the bulletin board, another warning about that crazy blonde. She didn't care, if it meant being in control of something. Or someone, whatever. She was sick of feeling so helpless all the time. And besides, watching them dance when the electricity hit them was fun.

Pointing her finger like a gun, she aimed another blast at him.

((From here... well, technically, still down there for the moment.)) (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/458774.html?thread=37847830#t37897750)

Elle's electricity suited her; it was short yet violent, a sharp jolt that drew attention, yet only caused real damage when she desired it to.

The thunder that boomed out at the same time as her blast was worthy of a god, a shockwave of sound that battered the ears like a ram to the gates of a city. Someone was using heavenly thunder in the domain of its god? Such insolence had to be dealt with, immediately. That was why Indra sent roaring lightning directly at Elle, the kind of power that she could now only remember instead of commanding directly.

And there, its masked face staring up at them, was Indra in the middle of the Sun Room, each long stride bringing it closer and closer to their end of the balcony. Surely... surely, with both arms bleeding freely, the demon wasn't planning on getting up to where they were...?

[so many apologies, I know I've been useless this NS ;_;]

Shito could only wish he was immune to pain. Truthfully, it probably hurt less than it would have a century ago, when his body was newer, but he could never be sure if that was because death was numbing his nerves or if it was simply because he'd gotten so used to pain that he didn't notice it as much anymore. His back was blistering a little, but it hurt a hell of a lot less than being impaled on a chainsaw or having his arm cut off, and even those hurt less than the things Touhou did to him. But that didn't mean he was going to let the bitch get away with it! "Psychopath is putting it mildly!"

Another blast formed in her hand--a ball in shape, it was a weird phenomenon to see--and this time Shito was ready to dodge when it came flying at him. The ball of lightning crackled as it passed him, raising the hair on the back of his neck for a moment, but his attention was very quickly diverted by the roar of thunder. That couldn't be Elle's doing...

And then lightning like nothing Shito had ever seen, in more than a hundred years, came up from the Sun Room below. "Shit!"

Elle was perfectly aware of thunder, as a phenomenon. Lightning caused it, because of air pressure or heat or whatever. But her lightning never had.

Not even bothering to see whether her attack on Shito had been successful, she looked around for the source of the thunder, only to be struck with a bolt of electricity far more effective than anything she could generate here. The force of it threw her backwards into the wall before she crashed to the ground.

She couldn't help it - she screamed. Showing pain was a weakness, but this was the third time this week that she'd been electrocuted, and it hurt just as bad as it had before. The floor beneath her began to singe as she channeled as much electricity as could into it, desperately trying to relieve the tautness of her muscles and the hurried, irregular beating of her heart.

There was no time to lie around and recover. Her body was a finely tuned electrical generator, anyway - it wouldn't take long to adjust to the extra current pounding through her veins. She pushed herself to her feet and grabbed hold of the railing, channeling out the last remnants of the extra electricity and topping it off with her own. The entire length of the railing ignited with blue current, a dazzling array of sparks that cast a flickering light on the room below.

That's where the other lightning had come from. Elle peered down, trying to make out who or what had attacked her. There was some sort of hulking creature in the middle of the room, moving towards her. Had that been it? That... thing? Well, let it attack across the electrified railing, if it could. A big, dumb-looking thing like that belonged in a cave somewhere banging rocks around. There was a reason the Neanderthals had died out, a reason humanity was still evolving; Elle was living proof of that. She had Darwin on her side.

Such thoughts were ironic, for Indra was the next stage of humanity's evolution; a rapid change that put Darwin's theory into its final, horrific proof. Survival of the fittest; those who were weak became food for the strong. At the moment, two top predators were having a feeding frenzy; the only difficulty being the sheer slipperiness of their prey. But now one had remained still for it, something that Indra looked forward to.

It leaped. For a creature so seemingly ponderous, so obviously slow and dull, such a leap should have been impossible... yet it cleared the lower floor in one smooth arc, crashing through the railing as though breaking through a flimsy piece of plywood.

More horribly, it soon proved that it was the god of thunder and lightning, a power that filled its very core. The lightning Elle pumped out crackled across Indra's skin, around its armored plating... and before her eyes, the deep wounds in its arms began to seal shut, the bolts arcing until they were absorbed into the demon's body as easily as sunlight.

Then it slowly stepped towards Elle, now swinging the great lance on its right arm as though the heavy metal was nothing more than a toy. Elle wasn't normal... that was greatly to Indra's satisfaction. And after that, another meal was nearby...

Shito took great satisfaction in watching Elle go flying and crashing into the wall. Her scream of pain was icing--the nutcase clearly had it coming, and if Shito was in no condition to dish out the pain right now he could at least watch someone else do it. Something else.

But that 'something else' part did pose a problem, because it seemed pretty likely that it would turn on Shito as soon as it was done with Elle. And the dumb bitch had managed to heal the wounds some other patients down below had inflicted--great move there. Shito had one working hand, no powers, no weapon... of all the strategems, to know when to quit is the best, as it was said. Time to get the hell out of here.

But going back didn't seem like a great idea either, since it would leave Shito in exactly the same position tomorrow night--no powers, no weapon--so instead, Shito started to edge along the wall, hoping to get past the thing while it was attacking Elle.

Oh crap.

Electricity healed this thing? But that was her only weapon! How was she supposed to fight it? There was one thing Elle knew from experience would hurt someone like her. The problem was, there weren't any handy lakes or doggie baths to stick the creature in.

Her hands had been generating electricity out of instinct, but now she doused the light, hoping it would make it more difficult for the creature to find her. In something approaching total darkness, she fumbled amongst the twisted metal that had been the railing, hoping to find something weapon-like. There was one broken, bent piece of metal that could serve. It wasn't sharp, but it also wasn't going to heal the thing if she hit it with it.

Probably.

Feeling like a kid with a plastic sword, Elle brandished her makeshift weapon at the creature, trying to circle around it so her back wasn't up against a big gaping hole in the floor.

Indra stopped. The great demon simply stopped, and despite having a blank mask, one could almost feel disdain oozing from the creature. The great razor-sharp edges of its lance were retracted again, sliding back into its palm and elbow, as though the great weapon were too sacred a thing to bother with such a weak opponent.

Instead, the monster strode forward with its left hand out, the pair of deadly discs embedded in the back of its hand beginning to whir ominously. Elle was allowed to circle around it as she pleased, for without eyes or ears or nose, Indra had no senses that had to keep focused on its prey. There was no escape, no hiding from such a being.

Once she got within arm's length, however, that massive hand lashed out at her. Indra was aiming to wound and maim, not to kill; though with such weaponry, the two were far closer than for any mortal blow. Oddly, while it struck at Elle, its face seemed to be following Shito, as though the demon was expecting to be done with Elle shortly, and in any case had no fear of her.

How did one sneak past a creature that didn't seem to use any visible means of sensing its prey, but obviously knew where they were anyway? Well, Shito figured that sticking close to the wall was probably a good idea anyway, since it at least meant the thing could only attack him from the front or sides, and not the back. Why did everyone always attack him from behind, anyway? First the chainsaw golem, then Elle... very frustrating.

Elle tried to back away from the creature, but it was like trying to back away from a hurricane. The hand, with its spinning blades, slashed towards her and no matter how prepared she was for an attack, she couldn't entirely avoid it.

She stabbed the broken piece of railing into the whirring mechanism, hoping to break whatever it was that kept the blades moving.

Whether it actually had an effect on the mechanism was something Elle never got to find out. She hadn't counted on how powerful the blades were - they sent the metal rod straight back out at her, and it slammed into her shoulder with such force that the jagged, twisted edge left a deep cut.

Elle tumbled backwards with the force of the blow, her wounded shoulder colliding painfully with the floor. It was on pure instinct that her hands crackled with electricity, arcing from her fingertips into the ground. With the adrenaline pumping this hard, it was difficult not to generate electricity. Too bad it wouldn't heal her.

This was not gonna be the way she went out, lying on the floor, waiting for it helplessly, not even trying to defend herself. She tried stand up, but the pain in her shoulder was too much, her damaged ribs made breathing hard, and she just wanted two seconds of not getting her ass kicked.

The screech of the blades cutting through railing didn't even make Indra flinch, nor did Elle's tumbling backwards cause it a moment's pause. It strode forward with the same remorseless gait, and even the lightning arcing from Elle didn't slow it down. It merely drew up those bolts into its own body, all those volts dancing around its body like it was a living Tesla coil.

Even as lightning crackled around it, Indra reached down with its massive armored right hand, deliberately choosing the shoulder that had been so deeply cut for its fingers to dig into. Then it yanked her up like a rag doll, holding Elle up without any obvious strain.

Then the mask slid open, baring its maw with its rows of razor-sharp teeth, still blackened and reddened from rotting flesh and fresh blood. Indra had fed well so far, but it had room for more, much much more. It lunged for Elle's other arm, demonic hunger still unsatisfied in its desire for flesh...

That... was a lot of teeth. Holy crap, the thing was going to eat her. Shito sighed and closed his eyes for just a fraction of a second, already regretting what he was about to do. Yeah, she was a bitch, and a nutcase, but she didn't deserve to get eaten alive.

Shito ran a few quick steps back towards the fight, then threw himself into a sliding leg-tackle, the heel of his leading foot aimed for the back of the monster's leg. If he could knock it off-balance, maybe he could grab that metal bar Elle had dropped...

This was so dumb.

Elle had just enough clarity left to yank her arm out of the creature's way, barely avoiding its gnashing teeth. She wrapped her hands around the one holding her, desperately trying pulling herself up to alleviate some of the pressure on her shoulder, twisting and writhing and kicking her feet in an attempt to find the floor or shake herself out of the creature's grasp or something. But nothing worked. It hurt worse than getting shot, worse than electrocuting herself even.

Her fingers were still crackling with electrical current - an instinctive reaction to danger - but now her whole body was coming alive with it. Blue-white arcs shimmered across her skin. Elle gritted her teeth in concentration. She had to control it. If she didn't, if she let go and used the full extent of her ability, it would leave her faint and helpless, totally at the mercy of this creature.

She could almost hear her father's voice in her head. Don't disappoint me again, Elle. You're tougher than this. But Daddy's reassurances were beginning to sound hollow.

Normally Indra wouldn't have cared about the first dodge of its teeth, instead lunging again and again- sometimes the exertion made the meal only sweeter. The lightning crackling across Elle was still being absorbed, as though Indra was a battery with a fathomless capacity. Those rows of teeth stretched wide, the demon leaned forward once more...

...but then something happened. Suddenly there was a roar of flame from one of the other patients, a blast of fire that wrapped around Indra's head and drove it back. When the flames dissipated, the blue skin was scorched and blistered, the kind of burns that would cause a normal human to scream in pain... yet Indra was silent, its actions speaking far more loudly than any roar might have. In one motion, Indra flung Elle down the hall, blindly throwing her to the side as far as it could as it created lightning and flung it where the attack had come from. All this time it staggered back, nearing the edge where it had jumped up.

That was when Shito attacked. The zombie dashed at the stumbling demon, and even though striking its leg was like putting one's leg to a mountain, and lightning still crackled and arched at any contact, Indra was still just disoriented enough. It stumbled, tottered, and when Shito's full weight hit, its leg collapsed beneath the strain of the hit and the heavy burden of the demon's dense body.

Once again, Indra made no sound as it fell, plummeting back from where it came.

((Falling down here.)) (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/458774.html?thread=38009878#t38009878)

What exactly happened was totally unclear to Shito. There was fire out of nowhere, and the monster was freaking out, throwing Elle aside and blasting lightning at--as far as Shito could tell--nothing. But he was in motion and couldn't exactly stop, so his heel connected with the monster's leg exactly as he'd intended.

The resulting shock was significantly worse than the one Elle had given him, and Shito bit down on his tongue to keep from crying out. Even his numb nerves felt that one strongly! Another burn was added to the first one on his foot, but because he was lying down the electricity thankfully didn't need to travel through his torso to ground out, and he didn't have to find out what a shock like that would do to his dead heart. The electricity grounded itself through his hip, leaving yet another burn in its wake. Shito had no idea what his insides must look like, at this point, having been ravaged by electric shocks twice in such a short period of time, but he was glad he didn't have to see the majority of the damage, just the entrance and exit points.

Left gasping and hurting but aware enough that he knew to worry about what the monster would do next, Shito forced himself back to his feet, only to find that the thing had vanished while he was still reeling from the shock.

The fuck?

The electricity was throbbing through her, crackling brighter across her skin, trying to force its way out of her. Elle whimpered at the combined strain of controlling her ability and the pain lancing through her shoulder.

She squinted through bleary eyes as the creature lunged again, only to have it stop, suddenly engulfed in flames. And then she was somehow on the ground again, skidding on her side through a sticky mess of her own blood.

There was a man, further down the hall, running away. He must have caused the fire. And Shito... what the hell was he doing? He was attacking the beast? Why would he do that; why would he help her, at the risk of his own life?

As silently as it had come, the creature fell backwards into the Sun Room. And with the realization that the danger was gone - for now, at least - Elle was able to suppress the electricity racing through her veins. She channeled it safely into her hand, using the light shimmering across her knuckles to peel back the torn scraps of shirt glued to her shoulder. She needed to assess the damage that thing had done.

It hurt like a bitch, that was for sure. There was a deep cut, made deeper and wider by the creature's fingers digging into it. She still had a full range of motion, but each time she moved her arm, hand, or even fingers, pain shot through her entire body.

"Just what I need," she grumbled sarcastically.

Nightshift 35: Main Hallway, 2-Centre

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