damned_institute | Nightshift 44: Laundry Room

Lockon's determined expression faltered a little at the sight of the huge space with its rows of washers and dryers. Of course he should have expected it--this was an institution, after all. But somehow he'd been thinking of something more like the laundry room on the Ptolemy, small and neat and high-tech, with neat layers of clothes and flight suits. "I'm still getting used to this place, after all," he murmured.

But he recovered enough to shoot Sho an unimpressed look at his suggestion. "I was thinking he could hide behind some clothes...would monsters really come prowling through the laundry room?" As he spoke, he scanned the area around him for any sign of something leather for the slingshot--or gloves that might fit him. It only now occurred to him that this was a longer shot than he'd thought it might be.

The Child had just been following along, still silently, but he looked up suddenly when Sho banged on the dryer. He didn't jump, but he still seemed startled.

"Mummy?" he asked again.

"Hex if I know, I figure there could be monsters at any coordinates within this whole damn function," said Sho. If there could be creatures in the bathroom mirrors, why not one popping out of the washing machines? Preferably whichever one they tossed the kid in.

"Clothes, dryer, cabinets, it's all equal to me," the Reaper relented. "Just do something about him; I did not agree to babysitting nanobrats."

For just a moment, Lockon let his discouragement show--he put a hand to his head and sighed. "Any coordinates, huh?" Then he forced himself not to falter and instead smiled down at the Child. "We'll just have to make sure the coordinates we find for you don't have any monsters, that's all."

The Child's reaction to Sho's banging on the dryer was something of a comfort--at least he had some normal reactions to stimuli. But Lockon was still kind of worried about him. The thought crossed his mind: if he really believed this was just a lost kid, he wouldn't even be thinking of leaving him in a laundry room. Or would he? No: even if he'd thought it was over, he was still a part of Celestial Being, and that meant sometimes he had to choose fighting over kindness.

He didn't see any gloves, so he turned his attention back to the Child and pointed at a corner of the room. "Why don't you stay there for now? It must be safer than just wandering the hallways--or coming with us into the janitor's closet."

The banging sound didn't come again, but the Child wasn't reassured. "Mummy, I'm scared." He knew he wasn't supposed to be out without Nancy, and it sounded like the bombs were starting again, and he needed to find her.

Was this place safe? There were people here, but he couldn't tell...

"Well, I've heard the rooms we stay in are safe, but I ain't dragging him back there," Sho amended. He disappeared behind a row of washers for a moment, coming back with a flatbed cart. Last time, it had broken when he'd dropped a dryer on it, but maybe if he and Lockon actually set it down on it instead of from five feet up, it would hold.

When Lockon pointed, Sho turned his flashlight that way, confirming nothing was lurking there. Too bad. At least they'd be rid of him soon.

"Mummy this, mummy that," he muttered. "Like a freakin' broken record."

"You'll be fine," Lockon assured the Child in his gentlest tones of voice. "It's safer here than where we're going, after all."

He started to crouch to give the Child an encouraging pat on the shoulder--but mercifully, lucky timing stopped him from completing the gesture. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sho wheeling out the cart, and he paused, looking back at him.

"Huh? What are you doing with that?" Lockon stood up, frowning at the cart.

They were leaving him? Here? "I'm scared of the bombs, Mummy." He wasn't going anywhere--he didn't like being alone. The last time he was alone for long... well, all he remembered was that something really bad had happened, and needing to find Mummy.

This time there was a hint of fear in his voice; he really didn't want to just be left behind.

"My intention is to mobilize one of these machines to become the base of my artwork!" said Sho grandly, banging one of the washers with his shovel again. "Plot a vector back to the Sun Room and maybe toss it on whatever was banging around in there, arrange some couches..."

His plans trailed off into chuckling, though that was interrupted by the nanobrat's whining. Bombs? There weren't any - well, there was that explosion last night, but that had been a brainwashed patient, right? Had this kid gotten caught in that? Not that it was Sho's problem if he had.

Lockon was a patient man: other people's complaints and bad behavior didn't usually faze him. But he was losing patience with Sho now. See, Lockon was growing less and less inclined to leave the Child here. He just couldn't: true, the kid might be one of the apparitions of the Institute, but he acted too much like a scared and frightened little boy. Protecting someone like that was too much in Lockon's nature--even as broken as it was. Especially as broken as it was.

So he said to the Child, "Don't worry about it. You can stick with us, even if it is dangerous where we're going. You'll just have to be careful."

Then he turned to Sho. Time to take charge...as much as Sho would let him. Lockon decided that it was time for him to find out what that entailed. "Sorry, but your artwork can wait. We need to get some supplies and watch out for this kid."

The Child flinched at the sound of metal on metal, the most reaction they'd seen out of him this entire time. "Mummy?" He was definitely frightened, starting to lean towards frantic. He looked around, then headed straight for Sho--or so it looked--and suddenly he was moving fast. Nothing at all surprising for a child his age, but in the dim light, it was already hard to keep track of him as it was.

Sho, on the other hand, was not a patient man, but relatively speaking he had been the very paragon of it tonight. This, however, was just to much.

"Okay, okay, supplies instead of art? I can understand," he said graciously. Then his face twisted with an angry snarl. "But we are not dragging around this little- hey, what the factor are you-!"

The beam from Sho's flashlight danced about wildly as he flailed his arms in what he perceived as an incoming attack. The Reaper reacted one of the few ways he knew how: with violence.

"Stay back, radian!" he shouted, jumping away and kicking the incoming adolescent in the chest, the boot making a solid "thump!" as it sent the Child flying off his feet and onto the ground. "Why the factor are you running to me? Go grab him!"

Lockon's eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of the Child moving, and he turned back to Sho just in time to see him flailing defensively. Something clicked into place for Lockon: as obnoxious and socially inept as he was, Sho wasn't being deliberately spiteful to the Child. He was genuinely freaked out.

So when Sho kicked the poor kid, Lockon didn't react with the rage he otherwise might have. He just frowned at him--this guy was going to be tougher to get through to than he thought, and as a matter of fact he might have to wait a while to try it--and turned to the kid. "Hey! Are you all right?"

He knelt down and reached out for the Child's shoulder, to steady and comfort him.

The Child cried out, the force of the kick knocking him onto the floor--he was just a little boy, after all. He wasn't hurt, though--because he was fully equipped with an army's worth of nanogenes, even if he didn't know it.

He fell back against Lockon, but barely even noticed; his focus was on scrambling to his feet and hurting the bad man who had kicked him. There was no finesse to his movements--he looked like what he was, an angry child lashing out. But this child had all the strength of an armed Chula warrior.

At his mere touch, regardless of where, his victim would feel the ribs on their right side crack and break, and their skull nearly doing the same, though The Child didn't make a single movement to cause it. Their eyes turned glassy and dark, obscuring their vision to a degree. And on the back of their right hands, the same Y-shaped scrape that the Child bore appeared.

The bright side to that, if any, was that it was all the damage he did... with the nanogenes. His fists were another matter, and he was aiming for Sho's ribcage.

Sho calmed down a little when the kid went flying, but his stance turned defensive when the kid scrambled back to his feet.

"What, you want some more? I'm warning you, I have 0 tolerance for whiny kids like you!" Sho was a little freaked out, yes, but mostly he just didn't like little kids running at him without warning. Or anyone doing that for that matter. Brandishing his shovel, he watched as the Child got started towards him and, calculating trajectories, took a swing.

Unfortunately, between the darkness, the Child's small size and most of all, surprising burst of speed, the implement only grazed the back of the kid's head as he came under Sho's swing and socked him in the ribs.

That nagging feeling that had been in the back of Sho's head since the kid had shown up exploded into a full-scale scream in multiple decibels as the Reaper felt his ribs suddenly snap. Even stranger than the implied impact of the punch was that crushing sensation on his head. His vision dimming, possibly from the mysterious concussion, Sho crumpled to the floor, writhing in pain. Even in the midst of his agony though, he managed to swing the shovel along the ground in one hand towards his assailant, though the attempts were somewhat pathetic.

"Fractalfactoringirrationalcotangentangleeatingbonebreakingbisectedtetra-"

"It's all right, he won't--" Do that again, Lockon was about to finish. But then he laid a hand on the Child's bare head behind the gas mask, and he flinched back as the injuries took hold.

It was only the surprise of it that made him let out a grunt of pain; otherwise he'd have held it all in as per usual. As it was, he crumpled back a little, falling to his knees rather than settling down on them as he'd intended.

His ribs cracking, his vision dimming--

This felt familiar. This felt more right than anything else he'd experienced in the past two days. He should have been injured, bruised and bloodied. It made more sense than him being whole.

For a moment, Lockon was caught in the past, as it was so easy for him to be. He didn't say anything, didn't try to help Sho. He was remembering his last battle.

The Child stopped his assault on Sho, again seeming startled, and just looked at him when he crumpled to the floor. He stayed silent and still, watching him, and then stepped back into the shadows.

Sho was gasping for breath. Inflating his lungs to the proper volume hurt but he couldn't help it as panic filled his mind, the probability of hyperventilation rapidly approaching 1. He needed to calm down. Focus his mind. Reassess the situation and take appropriate punitive measures. But the pain-!

He began to count the prime numbers, those numbers only divisible by one and themselves, hoping he could find some solace in them.

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23...

Mind beginning to focus again, the mathematician began to categorize his injuries as actually debilitating or merely painful. While everything hurt, the only problems actually hindering him were his dimming eyesight and possibly the ribs impacting his mobility.

"41... 43... 47... 53..." he hissed between clenched teeth as he slowly rolled over, gasping in pain as that put pressure on his ribs. He needed to get up. He needed to get moving. He needed to get revenge.

Rising to his hands and knees, Sho glanced around, trying to spot the kid. He couldn't see him, but it was possibly because of his dimming vision. He could, however, see Lockon kneeling on the floor - at least he assumed it was the man, since the figure looked too big to be the attacker. A quick shine of the flashlight confirmed it.

"97... 101... 103... I'll get you, you-!" Sho's threat broke off into wincing grimace at the pain on his ribs yelling brought. "107..."

Lockon didn't notice as the Child vanished into the shadows again. He was lost in his own shadows: recalling a mad battle and the pain that had come with it. This pain was enough to blindside him again, albeit metaphorically rather than literally this time. A selfish thought rose up in his mind: he wanted to be back there in that last battle. He wanted to be left to die, his life's only meaningful purpose accomplished. What was the point of being here now?

It was the faint sound of the numbers that brought him back to what reality had become. He blinked, and then he remembered: there were new people he had to protect. None of them mattered the way Lyle had, but then again, there was still Setsuna, and he did matter. And Lockon would keep protecting people even if they didn't matter. It was just his nature.

He fought his dimming vision, remembering now what it had been like to work with impaired vision, even if it had only been such a short time. "Sho."

Lockon took a breath, careful not to disturb his broken ribs too much. Then he rose to his feet, forcing himself not to wince too visibly as the motion set his head swimming with pain. "Leave the kid, and let's get out of here."

He grinned, and on the inside, he was relieved that he could still manage that. So long as he could, everything would be all right. "We can still walk, can't we?"

"113... 127..."

Sho's head throbbed when he swung it from side to side, looking for any sign of the Child. Nothing. Nowhere. The little nanobrat had escaped his field of vision.

"131..."

His name caused him to glance towards Lockon, a quick movement that he soon regretted, clutching his head tenderly, but even that hurt. Leave the kid? Run away? But it wasn't running away if the target had already run. There was no point in staying here; Sho hadn't seen what had been done to his partner - partner? Subordinate. Meat shield. Hindrance - but if it was anywhere near as bad as what had been done to the Reaper, there was no way they could move any of the machines in here onto a cart. Even if they could, they probably couldn't even effectively move it once there.

"139... 149... 151..."

Concentrating on not passing out, Sho pulled himself to his feet with the hand truck, swaying for a moment as he fought the sudden bout of dizziness.

"Yeah... didn't get my legs, so yeah," he said as he stood, leaning on his shovel and the hand truck for a moment. "Ribs, head. Hand zetta hurts too. You?"

Lockon resisted the urge to lean on a wall, a washing machine, anything. Sho was hurt too; someone here had to be stable. As always, that was going to be him, even if he regretted it in the morning. (He wouldn't, though. Regret was still something he wasn't very good at.)

"My ribs and my head for sure." Lockon paused, then looked at his hand. This time he did wince visibly. He hadn't paid much attention to the pain in his hand at first, because it hadn't mapped so easily to the last injuries he remembered. But now he saw the injury, and it annoyed him more than all the other injuries combined. His hands were special, and he had to keep them intact to pull the trigger. Even if there were no triggers to pull here.

He frowned down at the nasty scratch for a moment, then shook it off. "It looks like we're the same. I've heard it'll all be bandaged up when we wake in the morning, though, so let's just keep going. I don't want to be this helpless tomorrow night, too."

Mirror injuries? He hadn't seen the kid punch Lockon, but then again, punches to the chest didn't cause cranial injuries. A set pattern of damage reflected by fractal upon his victims? That was just weird.

"Right. Resume operations, continue progress," mumbled Sho, wincing as he straightened up to start moving. Walking unsteadily - from overall pain and exhaustion, as his legs were perfectly fine; his injury from Doyleton didn't even hurt anymore, though that was probably relative - Sho made his way to the door and stumbled out into the hallway.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/739477.html?thread=60510613)]

Nightshift 44: Laundry Room

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[Sho says, "No, YOU touch him!" on the subject of the masked hot potato]

[Lockon says, "OKAY!" because hello no self-preservation sometimes.]

[Jamie says "NO, BOTH OF YOU!"]

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