damned_institute | Nightshift 40: Schoolhouse (Ruins)

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Nightshift 40: Schoolhouse (Ruins)

[from here]

The schoolhouse was just as she had left it; the broken ceiling, cracked walls, supplies strewn about. Senna's gaze was drawn to a pencil lying in the dust, and the fractured part of her mind wondered if it was the same one from the night before. For a moment, her body paused, caught between the urge to pick it up, and some kind of unnamed fear holding her back. The moment passed.

Shaking her head, Senna shuffled to the podium, where Aidou had folded the flag and left it the night before. It was on the ground next to it, like something had blown it off. She picked it up, her hands tingling, and moved her hand over it to dust it off. She blew, and a small cloud rose. Just dust, she wondered, or ash as well? Dust to dust, ash to ash, and would she ever--

Damn, this place fucked her over more ways than she would say.

She walked back to Momo, gluing a smile on. "Here ya go, chief. One unknown flag for unknown purposes."

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An old school, by the looks of it, corroborating Hinamori's statement about the town having been destroyed fifty years ago. Soma didn't know much about the twentieth century, but the little building seemed to fit what little she did know.

Curiosity won over her instinct to keep still, and Soma took the liberty of examining the desks as Senna headed for the podium. Nothing of value here - erasers and pencils and scissors, worn with use and age. Certainly no clues as to how the students here might have met their end.

She returned to Hinamori's side as Senna handed her the flag. Fifty states in the old United States of America, wasn't it, before it became the head of the Union? She didn't know anything other than that; determining the precise time they were in was best left to Hinamori.

Momo took the flag from Senna and opened it up. She cocked her head a little before laying it across the podium. Her finger lightly brushed against each individual star on the blue field, the shinigami mouthing the numbers to herself. When finished, she drew her brow down and recounted.

"Fifty. Interesting."

She cocked her head at Momo, watching as the Shinigami counted the stars. She didn't quite know what the right number was, but fifty seemed to be what it was.

The sound of dirt settling made her head whip around, but it was only Peries returning. Senna offered the girl a sheepish grin and a shrug, before turning back to Momo. "Find what you were looking for?"

Soma shook her head slightly. "There's nothing out of the ordinary here. What you would expect of an old schoolhouse, I suppose."

She looked down at the flag. "I don't know much about Union history, but fifty seems to match with the late twentieth century and onward. That much seems to make sense, given what I've heard."

Momo started folding the flag up. "The fifty star flag was adopted by the United States of America in the 1960's," she stated. "I only know this because Hawaii becoming a state was a point of interest to the Japanese, so it filtered into Soul Society much quicker than a lot of human events do."

She tucked the flag under her arm and moved to the doorway to check the other room. "This place is older than the flag indicates. They are not matching."

The information filtered through Senna to leave confusion in its wake. Things weren't matching. Wasn't that the point? The night before Momo had told her to have Aidou look for things that seemed fake... And Aidou himself had told her point-blank that everything was real; that that was the point. So... Then, what were they looking for, exactly?

She followed Momo, a couple steps behind, and looked up at the sky. It was like the more sense they tried to apply, the less there was. She was a whole lot better when she was just letting things slide. Senna sighed, once. But she supposed someone had to figure a way out of this mess. As for her, she'd go along for the ride.

So Soma's history was off, then...? It was all rather difficult for her to grasp. She wasn't the one who usually did the thinking, unless the colonel was testing her.

"Perhaps the date is wrong, then, ma'am," she offered. "Perhaps it isn't the late twentieth century after all - perhaps it's later than that. Are there any anachronisms here?"

She paused. "Or - perhaps the people in charge of this place set this up on purpose. How can you sense how old this place is? They may very well have done something to trick you into thinking it's older than it really is." She looked around. "I saw skeletal remains outside, in the open; I don't think those would last fifty years as you said they did."

"Those are all possibilities, Peries-san," Momo replied, pushing the broken door to the restroom open more and stepping into the small room. "This place is a mystery."

Two stalls, a sink and -- What was that? The shinigami moved over to the corner.

"I said this place was over fifty years old; I didn't say the event that caused this place's current state occurred then," she stated. "What is piquing my curiosity is why this town chose to remain in such an archaic layout when the rest of society had moved forward with modern technology?"

She looked over from the decontamination station she'd found in the corner. "A modern flag, and a shower device used to cleanse the body of any contaminants." She turned back and gazed at the station. "Think about it; these devices use a great amount of water in a very small period of time. They often have water pressure strong enough to literally rip casual clothing off of a person. Wouldn't a building this archaic need a lot of renovations to install the plumbing required to support that volume and force of water?"

The other two spoke back and forth; their words skittering over her head like wingless birds. She looked at the station that her and Aidou had glanced last not, not really knowing what it was. Momo's explanation... Some kind of experiments, then? What other use would there be?

Senna still said nothing, and would have probably continued on like that, but for Momo's last sentence. "Wait... So you think that all this-" A hand waved out to encompass everything. "-isn't from age or whatever, but was an effect from something else? What's strong enough to...?" Senna trailed off. Shinigami were, obviously, but this world, this place was the absence of anything like that. So what could humans do that could cause--Her eyes widened. "A bomb?" No, that wasn't right. "Something like the radiation fallout?"

Soma followed Hinamori to the restroom, peering inside over the shinigami's shoulder (it wasn't often she was tall enough to do that). The flag had been difficult to interpret, but the state of the bathroom wasn't.

"I agree, Vice Captain. The decontamination device is completely at odds with the rest of the building. And I see no sign of any school supplies that would warrant the presence of a station such as this."

She turned back as Senna spoke, shaking her head slightly. "I don't think it was a bomb, but it's difficult to tell at the present time. I haven't seen enough of this place to construct any other hypothesis."

"Whatever destroyed this place was far more sinister than a bomb," Momo replied, leaving the bathroom. "There is nothing more for us in this building. Let's move elsewhere."

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Nightshift 40: Schoolhouse (Ruins)

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