damned_institute | Nightshift 44: F-A Block Hallway

[from here]

The darkness didn't do much to slow Anise down. She'd gone nearly a week without a flashlight before, after all. Anise knew her way through this block.

Sync had picked a spot close to Anise and Dahlia's rooms for a meeting point. If it had been anyone else, Anise would have guessed it was because it was convenient for the two girls, but this was Sync. He wouldn't choose the hall by the F-Block if he didn't think he could get there plenty quick himself. He probably expected that he would arrive before Anise would get a chance to tell Dahlia anything.

He would probably be right to think that too, but if there was even just a tiny chance of meeting Dahlia first and leading her away before Sync showed up, Anise had to go for it.

[to here]

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/730915.html)]

Nothing here either. Were they even trying now? This wouldn't even scare Feenie and she knew for a fact that the P on his old sweater didn't stand for "Phoenix." You know... if the last two nights weren't that Landel Scumbag's plans, the only thing he had up his sleeve was scary dolls and flickering lights. Ha! Tonight should be a cakewalk, then!

The only thing echoing in the hall so far was the click of her slippers on the floor. If she wanted it to stay that way, she better hurry up.

[To here~ (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727542.html?thread=60026614#t60026614)]

Edited 2009-10-07 21:59 (UTC)

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/731425.html)]

Well, this was the same old hall, wasn't it? Alkaid didn't even need to turn on her flashlight for this stuff! All she needed to do was run her hand along the wall. Which - was kind of gross, all things considered. The walls here were kind of off, but she had to keep conservation in mind!

She was alone in the hallway right now, which meant she'd been able to get a good headstart on the nightly rush. Now all she had to do was take a turn and she'd end up in the next hall, on her merry way to F12.

If this 'reiatsu' thing ended up being a prank or something, Alkaid was going to murder someone. With acid. In the eye. It wasn't usually her style, but Badou was the kinda guy who knew how to make do, and something about him was sort of working in the back of her head. Stuck with ya, that guy. ...Even though he was a stupid idiot who made stupid excuses for doing stupid things.

But why was she thinking about him? She had better things to do...

[from here] (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/728500.html?thread=60049844#t60049844)

Okay, Yukari's room was F29, so Junpei was almost there. What a relief! He made it the whole way, passing people, without thinking about how delicious their flesh was and how much their blood would quench his thirst. Or how much more enticing the red-headed chick that was in the hall's flesh was than her boobs.

Something was seriously wrong with him when he found his eyes moving to stare at easy to bite limbs instead of the ginormous melons that chick had.

[to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/728695.html?thread=60050807#t60050807)]

[from here]

People darted in and out of the blocks; women heading out, men heading in. Sexual segregation, whether in the bedrooms or the showers, didn't make much sense. Then again, Taura wasn't sure she'd run across a social etiquette rule that made sense. Humans balanced illogical against irrationality and tied it into a coherent whole with arbitrary gestures.

Somehow the whole system worked. Except when it didn't, which was what mercenaries were for.

[skipping a hall to here]

Edited 2009-10-08 02:23 (UTC)

[from here]

Stepping through the doors, Sam realized that he'd never actually stepped into this area before. He'd only ever moved through the rooms to meet Dean, so there'd never been any reason to come through here.

Not that it was anything special. It looked identical as the other room blocks, pretty much: rows of doors and hallways, each one neat and tidy, though in the dark, it all looked a lot less sterile-happy.

He wondered if Skuld was maybe waiting for him, but he didn't have a choice in making a brief detour to grab the pipe. A part of him wondered if this was even gonna work. Except it obviously had for Dean, so he wasn't gonna hesitate too long at going with it for now.

[here]

Edited 2009-10-13 04:45 (UTC)

[from here] (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/731425.html?thread=60046625#t60046625)

In the next hall, Senna stopped, dropping Meche's hand and running her own through her bangs. She leaned the items she was carrying against the wall, moving both hands up to retie her ribbon. She kept an eye out for anyone strange--and in that regard, anyone looking for them as well.

Ribbon hanging out of her mouth as she tried to catch all of the strands, Senna glanced at Meche. "So. I'm pretty sure that spear is yours," she said eyes moving to the one against the wall. "And uh, sorry about the abrupt movement."

Normally Meche would have protested--she'd told Manny they'd meet him right there, and experience had convinced her that running off tended to be a bad idea--but in this case she felt it was justified.

"Don't worry about it. Sometimes the leader's just got to make an executive decision in an--" She took a minute to find the right word, then grinned wryly. "--emergency situation."

That was her spear, so Meche picked it up and moved into the core stance, trying to refresh her memory of last night's lesson. At least "power coming up from the ground" was pretty well burned into her brain by now.

"You know, not to dampen the mood right at the beginning, but to be honest I'm a little worried about this assignment," she admitted. Better get it out of the way before Manny got there--not that she couldn't be honest with him about the danger, but she'd rather try to put on a good face while he was around. "What are we going to do if that monster invites himself to the party again?"

Senna made a face at Meche as she finished tying up her hair. A short tug, and she was settled, the familiar action calming the fluttering inside of her. "I'm just glad everything was okay," she said gruffly, then softened. "I'm worried. I didn't hear from Soma, and Alita refused to eat. So when I heard...."

She trailed off, instead focusing on Meche. She reached out to palm the other sword, the leaned on it slightly, eyebrows furrowing. "He might," she started. "He might not. I went to that place for a week before, remember, and I never saw the guy. So there's no guarantee." Senna straightened, a silly grin dominating her expression now. "So you're not allowed to worry, lady. What's the point if you don't know? Worry then! I'll think of something."

Something like running better, and not having the entire group go inside. They weren't going to get trapped again. She wouldn't let them.

Meche had plenty of things to worry about, including--now that she thought about it again--whether it was really a good idea to leave Alita alone with Hokuto. Well, Hokuto couldn't stay too long with an Arts and Crafts assignment of her own on the agenda, but God help whoever ran into Alita next. "She didn't eat dinner?" Meche asked. "I passed by them at lunch, and I'm not sure she had anything then either. I can understand why she might not feel like food, but..." But going hungry might be setting herself up to attack someone else. What would happen if this didn't wear off? Hardly anyone else on the board had even seemed concerned. And why wouldn't Soma answer Senna's message?

She frowned and tried to take Senna's advice--or maybe follow her orders was more like it. "All right, all right. I'll try not to worry so much. It's just hard when there are so many things that can go wrong around here."

Now that she was done stating the obvious, Meche kept going with her review of last night's material by dropping her left hand to her side and spinning the spear by rotating her right wrist. She'd have to be careful not to make herself sore before they even got started, but she needed all the practice she could get.

Senna's expression clouded at that fact. Both hadn't been seen eating lunch either? "Yeah, I don't--" Know, she had been about to say, but then suddenly she had a horrible idea. "Meche. What if they don't want food?" The intonation should make it clear. What if they only wanted something else?

More the reason to force feed them tomorrow.

"Stuff'll go wrong," she replied with a shrug. Stuff was going wrong, left and right. And she knew it. But... "But no need to make stuff worse by getting upset beforehand. Stuff's good in this second, right?" Senna's eyes danced. "After all, you get to see your boyfriend."

The girl watched as Meche practiced, throwing out, "If you want speed to back that up, you have to only twirl it with your fingers, then grab it on a downward spin to carry it through. It's tricky though." She straightened, pulling the other spear from her belt. Checking for space, she demonstrated--a quick move that made the spear blur. "Other than that, if your opponent knows what you're doing, he could knock it from your hands. So you have to always be quicker." Which led to her fighting style. Shinigami or no, she was a small girl, and she wasn't going to be besting anyone in a strength contest. Speed made up for it. Hit fast enough, and it was more powerful than if you were muscle bound. Plus... no one could hit what they couldn't touch.

Edited 2009-10-09 02:34 (UTC)

"I know." Meche stopped the spear. "But I don't know what we can do about it. Right now our options are either hold them down and try to force-feed them and hope it helps, lock them in, or just put it off for a little while and see if they get better on their own. I don't really like any of those, but we can't follow them around every night just waiting to break up fights."

She started the spear up again instead of replying to Senna's comment about Manny--until he was right there in front of her, preferably close enough to reach for at any time, there was plenty to worry about.

It was much more reassuring to focus on practicing instead; Senna's lesson was quite a bit different from Alita's. As Meche had seen in their match last night, Senna had lightness and speed on her side, while Alita wasn't quite as fast but could rely much more on her strength. Meche wasn't sure she had any of that. Nonetheless, she tried the spin Senna's way, and found pretty much what she'd expected--it was faster, but her grip wasn't nearly as good. Hmm. She wasn't sure which way she liked better.

"Okay, so let's say I'm doing it that way. The spear's spinning much quicker, but if the other person does this--" She turned her spear handle-end out so she didn't stab Senna by mistake, then thrust it forward to interrupt the path of the girl's spear. "--what's to keep me from dropping it if I'm only using my fingertips?"

"I'm all for force feeding," Senna replied. "If they're too full of food, they won't want to eat people." Maybe. Hopefully. "I don't think we should lock them up when they could be doing some good elsewhere. But I need to find Soma tomorrow. At least we know that Alita is... occupied. For now." Senna's eyes shifted, embarrassed.

The spear topic was a whole lot easier. She grinned, nodding. "Yep! You got the weakness of this down. It's totally easy for that to happen. The two things on your side are speed, like I said, and not spinning it longer than necessary. Here. Try that again." Senna lifted the spear up, repeating the same move she had before, except this time it was sped up considerably. Meche moved in to stop it, but Senna had already grabbed it to swing downward, momentum cracking the two together, reverberating along the opposing wood. Without good grip, an opponent would drop it at that point. "It's a good defense as well as offense. But that's just me. You should find what suits you best."

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/732808.html?thread=60208520#t60208520).]

Just a little further. And time to decide. Keep the cigarette or... do as he said. He was pretty sure she'd told him he could keep it but...he hated to feel he owed. And he was angry. He wasn't supposed to...fall apart like this, just over a stupid habit.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727282.html?thread=60210418#t60210418).]

Edited 2009-10-09 22:40 (UTC)

Meche nodded, glad she'd had a good hold on her spear. And glad Alita's workmanship was so solid--that cracking noise was something to take seriously. She pulled her spear back and tried a slow-motion imitation of what she'd just seen Senna do.

"I guess I'm just not sure what I should be focusing on yet," she said once she'd done it a few times. "I've never trained with anything like this before, so it's a little hard to tell whether to worry more about speed or strength." Compared to her two teachers, Meche didn't have much of a chance with either. Anyway, it was sort of a toss-up. Her right hook might have more oomph behind it than lots of normal women's, but she wasn't sure any amount of training would really help her out-strong-arm, say, a boxer like Domino. Fast might be something she could do, with a little practice.

"Know any other basic moves I should try?" she asked Senna. Whatever she decided, it wouldn't hurt to pick up all the ideas she could.

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727282.html?view=60220402#t60220402)]

the corridor was dark and Cissnei shone her torch around the area cautiously for a second before switching it off again and heading towards the exit to the main corridor.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727542.html?thread=60221430#t60221430)]

[ from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/728695.html?thread=60044407#t60216183) ]

There were people in the hallway, but at least they weren't bleeding or anything. Just two girls - and Alkaid was comfortable enough to be able to ignore them and their delicious human flesh, no matter how tender and juicy it might be, even raw.

Her tummy rumbled again. Gggh, didn't she just eat dinner?

Well, she was absolutely, positively sure that she wouldn't want to eat Haseo when he showed up at their meeting spot. He was probably all stringy and stuff, anyway.

There's only one way to find out, a little zombie voice said inside her, but Alkaid pushed that down and hurried on.

[ to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727542.html?thread=60371446#t60371446) ]

Edited 2009-10-12 20:46 (UTC)

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727282.html?thread=60239090#t60239090)]

She spotted her prey already moving down the main F-A hallway by the time she reached it. Perfect. If she had been able to release yoki, Ophelia's eyes would already have changed from silver to golden. With a silent shiver of anticipation, she followed through the shadows, keeping a decent distance behind her target.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727695.html?thread=60239759#t60239759)]

[[From F21-F30 Hallway. (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/731425.html?view=60222497#t60222497)]]

Evangeline had steadied herself somewhat by the time she reached the adjoining hall, and she might appear her usual confident self to the casual observer... but she knew all too well that anyone used to looking for such things would be able to see how weak she was. Not good...

But even after what had happened last night, she couldn't bring herself to back down.

[[Heading to West Wing, South Hall 1-B. (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/727542.html)]]

She probably could have made her way through the darkness, but there was no need to with her trusty flashlight. Checking her map again, Kagura tried to decide where she should go. For now, she had to get out of the women's block if she wanted to explore the rest of the institute.

Again, he swept his flashlight across the width of the hallway twice before proceeding. He could not afford to encounter monsters again; they needed to find I.R.I.S. as soon as possible, before the night passed and they would have less freedom to move around again.

And if there was anyone who could hack into I.R.I.S., it was Feldt Grace. He swiftly made another turn; almost there.

Nightshift 44: F-A Block Hallway

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