damned_institute | Dayshift 42: Bus 2

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Dayshift 42: Bus 2

Before anyone could come to any decisions for their next move, the room suddenly filled with a thick fog. Faster than he could realize what was happening, it had filled up the entire room and swallowed every single one of his friends. Then there was that undeniable stench of iron, blood and... he last remembered taking a step back and feeling that slippery skid and the realization of what that was. By the time he yelled, he was sitting straight up in his bed like he'd bolted awake. Like it'd been nothing more than a bad dream. ...What the hell just happened?!

"Oh! Good morning!" The nearby voice made him yelp with a half squeak-like noise. Oh, for hell's sake. It was one of those freaking nurses again. She was beaming at him like nothing had happened at all. Before he could so much as ask one question, the hag started blathering real fast about some field trip and buses and getting changed and hurrying up before everyone left without him and... OH MY GOD, WHAT WAS SHE DOING?! She was grabbing at his shirt like she was about to start helping him get dressed (or undressed in this case).

He flailed in a desperate attempt to get away from her and yelled his consent to go along if she would get out and let him change HIMSELF. What was the matter with her?! Thankfully, she left but told him to hurry. Hell if he knew what she'd do if he took too long. So for the sake of not getting freaking stripped, he quickly changed into the clothes she'd left on the bed. Clothes being the ugliest looking white-and-black track pants he'd ever seen and a bright blue sweatshirt with a cute little penguin design on the front. This was some kind of joke, right? ...Not to say the penguin wasn't cute or anything but there was no way, no way, he was wearing something like this in public.

But the nurse had burst right in again, and before Kanji could offer much protest, he was being pulled down the hallways and through the doors of the bus. He'd yelled some things her way, but she totally wasn't listening at all. By the time they stopped, he was standing at the front of the bus with a paper bag and the nurse had run off to cart another poor sap along. Frickin' PERFECT. For the sake of not standing up there like some kind of zoo animal for everyone to stare at, he plopped himself into one of the seats by the front and sighed in complete exasperation.

[Free. No limit.]

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The shinigami was silent for a moment. "Apology accepted," Momo said, her voice softening a bit.

"And there's no need to think of me in any kind of divine nature for there is no divinity associated with me or any shinigami. We are gods, yes, but no one worships us and we do not grant any kind of miracles nor cause any disasters. Most humans never even know we exist. We perform a necessary function and have an existence, you could say 'live', far longer than humans do."

She offered a small smile. "It is a hard concept to grasp, I know."

"I'm afraid it doesn't make much sense to me. But it sounds like it suits you." That was diplomatic enough. Death gods made about as much sense as reviving the dead without cryogenics or cloning.

"You mentioned shells, and something called a limiter -- were you changed when you woke up here? Physically?" She looked down at her hands, thin and elegant and weak. The soft parts were still a little bruised from banging on the pipes last night, and one nail had begun to crack. She'd envied hands like this -- now all she wanted were her own back, and to know that no-one had died to give her this extended lease on life.

"Thank you. It may be easier for you to think of shinigami as a spiritual army as opposed to gods." Now to explain the limiter.

"A gigai," Momo explained, "is what I am physically in. As I mentioned before, humans cannot normally see shinigami unless they possess an unusually strong spirit. In the few rare instances in which we must directly interact with humanity, we use a gigai - an empty vessel to contain our spiritual essence that mimics a human body. A gigai looks exactly like what a shinigami would look like if human."

It was because of this that Momo was reasonably certain that the loss of sight in her eye would not carry over when she finally freed herself of this place.

"So, in a way, I am changed. I look the same, yes, but I am now confined into a flesh body that is not mine." She paused. "As for the limiter... I am used to being under one when I travel to the living world, given my rank and the level of my reiatsu, but it's not anywhere near this strong. This gigai I am in is not even properly made to contain reiatsu of my level."

Taura couldn't help the growing look of disbelief on her face, her eyes opening wide and her jaw slowly sagging until she realized what she was doing and snapped it shut. She wasn't sure there was anything she could say to that.

She didn't want to think that Momo was lying, or really mentally unstable. Was a god really that different from an alien, or time travel? Or was the difference all in her head? Either way, Momo seemed resigned to the strange looks and the disbelief, and no-one deserved that. Taura had had enough of that in her short lifetime -- and now here she was doing it to one of the first people she'd met here.

Focus, Taura. Death god. Perfectly normal. That still didn't give her anything to talk about. She settled on explaining why she'd asked in the first place.

"This isn't my body. I mean, I'm human," she said, emphasizing the word just a hair too strongly, "but I had some modifications. And," she paused. How did one just admit to possibly being a murderer? She had the sinking suspicion she was going to be doing it on an alarmingly regular basis. "A full-body transplant is possible, back home, but clones don't grow much faster than everyone else." Especially taking her metabolism into account; this heart beat slower, not faster, and there was only so much acceleration drugs could do. Her shoulders hunched inward, defensively, protecting a body she wasn't sure she had a right to. "And if this is a clone, who was she? What could be so important that they'd kill her just to put me here?" she asked, her voice plaintive.

Momo wasn't unsympathetic. In fact, the closest look to the sympathy she once would have had settled on her face. It was just that after everything she'd gone through, the suffering she'd endured emotionally and physically, the pains of humanity did not pull at her heart strings as they had once done. She was still shinigami, still a vice captain, but here, things were different. She'd been here too long - that was the truth.

"The beings that have brought us here have the capacity to bring the dead back to the living, trap gods and place mechanized creatures inside flesh bodies," she stated quietly.

"Is it do hard to believe that they could do something that already exists in your world? They are evil and none of us know their true aim. I'm among those that have been here the longest and we still know very little. These people, the powers they wield... they are not human, which means it falls under the duty of the shinigami to protect humanity from them even at the cost of our lives. We will somehow find a way to break the limiter and once our zanpakutou are ours again, we will send those people to Hell where they will be humbled before returning to the cycle."

She paused. "Perhaps that body is akin to a gigai and nothing more than an empty shell they have transferred your soul into. Regardless, being in that body is not your fault, Taura-san. You did not potentially cause the death of another to obtain it. You were forced into it; you are just as much of a victim as the one who used to be in that body. Death is a natural thing for humans. It always will be, no matter how violent that death may come about. It is not the end, just another turn in the cycle, another path down the road."

Usually, Taura didn't have to be told twice. She was a quick learner, a talent which tended to separate the good soldiers from the dead ones. But this reassurance was one she'd heard several times already, and was going to need to hear a few more before it really sunk in. Her physical modifications had defined her life, and would define her death.

"I'd be lying if I said I weren't afraid of death. If nothing else, it keeps me on my toes, trying to stay one step ahead. And...I'm a soldier. I've killed on the battlefield, and I'll do it here." Her teeth bared in a snarl, though not directed at Momo. "Death isn't the issue. It's...greed."

She'd admitted it. She ran her fingers over her cheeks, as she spoke, her voice dropping to a quiet rumble. "They don't know how long I have. Could go tomorrow, could be five years, depending on how good the medics are at jamming wrenches in those gears. But that's all I'd ask them to do. This body feels like forever. And part of me wants to keep it."

"I never said death isn't to be feared," Momo replied calmly. "It just another part of life. There is a reason most humans never know that shinigami exist or that there is even a so-called Afterlife. Though, when a human dies, their entire existence changes. They will not see the people they knew when alive, venture to a new plane of existence and, whilst in Rukongai, build a new 'life' and never know when they will be reincarnated back into the living world. Death is a mystery to almost all."

She was not put off by Taura's reaction at all; the woman was human and thus to be expected. "There is nothing wrong with that part of you. You are human," she said as if that explained everything. To Momo, it did. "If you'd like my advice, I'd be more worried about the health of the soul rather than the body. But you didn't ask for it, so feel free to disregard it. My apologies."

"Then I think I'll stick with living for this life," Taura said, essaying a smile. Some of it seemed to stick, though her shoulders were still slumped.

It wasn't any use dwelling on it, no matter what. So she took her own advice and looked forward. "So what are you planning to do in town? I guess without any money shopping is out. Even food...was this supposed to last us the whole day?" She held up her bag, which was down to some orange slices.

Momo offered her bag, minus the juice box, to Taura. "You are welcome to mine. I don't eat very much."

She really didn't have any plans. Maybe she'd just find a nice tree in the park to sit under. "Oh, I think there's a spot in the park with my name on it. They do give us these little books with papers we can exchange in specified places for services or food." She chuckled. "Many find ways to acquire things normally not available to us. I'm not good at that sort of thing, so I don't even try."

"Really?" Taura hesitated, wondering if politeness dictated she refuse. But Momo hadn't touched her food, and she was kind of tiny. "Thanks," she said, and took the bag.

She peeled the top off the second yogurt cup, one of her nails bending a little. "Maybe I can find some nail polish. I'd never realized it had a purpose beyond looking pretty." She scowled at her nails, this time because they were soft and weak and looking ragged, rather than as a symbol of the changes she'd undergone. "That and information. I know lots of people have been to this town before, but I can't just sit around and wait for rescue. It wouldn't be fair."

Momo shook her head a little. "The townspeople are not helpful in any way. They are all convinced we are what the staff presents us to be during the day. Some of them make take pity on us and give some of the children candy, but if you're expecting aide from any of them, I'm afraid you will be mistaken."

She sipped her juice box. "I remember on my first trip seeing some of the others try to run. There is far more staff in town than there is in the institute. I believe Landel and his people create more just for this trip. Be wary on the way back. Once in the past, the bus was stranded outside the institute walls when night fell."

She shook her head again. "None of the staff are human, we know that now."

"There must be a weakness somewhere. There's no such thing as an impregnable prison." Taura wasn't sure who she was trying to convince, but it sounded like what Miles would say. Or not say; he'd just find it and be halfway out before everyone else had even realized he'd started to move.

"Create more? And what do you mean they're not human?" Creating servants wasn't a foreign idea, not when she'd been commissioned and designed and built to spec, but creating servants overnight was. "What are they?"

Taura may very well have been trying to convince herself. Momo... she wasn't sure if she'd given up or not. She had her duty and would see it through, but the light of hope she once held had died with Signum. Intellectually, the shinigami knew if the prison was meant to keep them inside, there is a chance it could be weakened from the outside. This was proven true if one chose to believe in Jack and Jill. Momo did not.

"The buses were stranded and the staff, both nurses and orderlies, were interspersed inside the buses," Momo explained. "Night fell and, upon the setting of the sun, the staff transformed - mutated - before our very eyes, becoming some of the monsters we are set upon by at night."

She paused. "They are not human. They have no souls."

Taura had hope, but if that left, escape was her duty, and to give up trying would be to betray everything she'd been given in that dirty basement. And that was Not An Option. She could hear the words in Miles' voice, extra capital letters and all. It made her smile, irrespective of the context.

She could hear echoes of something else he'd said there, and it was worth repeating. "Human is as human does. They've already proven themselves monsters, even without that. But I will keep one eye on the height of the sun."

Edited 2009-06-29 00:21 (UTC)

"Some people have a weakness to the form they see during the day, unable to contemplate harming the staff as they appear to be human," Momo replied. "Many have arrived since that trip that ended in such circumstances. I am pleased to hear that you do not harbor such a weakness."

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Dayshift 42: Bus 2

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