damned_institute | Nightshift 23: M11-M20 Hall

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Nightshift 23: M11-M20 Hall

Gin sat quietly on the edge his bed, hands folded in his lap as the doors unlocked. The knives were still beneath his pillow, where he'd stuffed them before Naoe came in for dinner. He'd prefer the man didn't know he had them, but if Ran arrived before Naoe left, well, it wasn't that important.

He still didn't know if she was going to show up at all. He'd wait a few minutes, check and see if her spirit thread was getting any closer, if not... there were plenty of other things he could do tonight. Jack was reliable if nothing else and wouldn't be too difficult to find. The disembodied voice of the announcer was right though. It was possible, terribly likely in fact, that he was not on the grounds. That he was somewhere else entirely. It would help if he knew a little more about how their announcement system worked. Obviously the Head Doctor wasn't the only one who could use it.

Regardless, he had to focus his thoughts on the here and now and then proceed forward. He sat patiently, for now at least, waiting for his visitor.

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[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/landels_damned/93596.html?view=6013340#t6013340)]

They made it to the men's block fairly quickly and without being attacked. There seemed to be a lot of people out and about. Maybe it was too crowded for the monsters to want to attack. Enough people to make the danger outweight the rewards.

She slipped along the corridor of the men's block, checking the number of the first door in each one. Finally she reached the one she thought was correct and glanced back at Sora. "M19 would be this corridor, yes?"

Rukia followed along behind Rangiku, keeping an eye out for any more of those cat things from the previous night. She saw none of those, but quite a few small groups of other patients. Rukia didn't recognize anyone, though, so stayed quiet.

She looked to Sora when Rangiku questioned him.

No attacks so far. That was good. The halls tended to be safe at the beginning of the night, though that hadn't been the case yesterday. At least Special Counseling wasn't going on tonight - not that the experimentation was any better.

Sora was drawn out of his musing by the question, lifting his head and blinking at Rangiku. "Hmm? Oh, yeah!" He was curious to see what this was all about, since it seemed like she was being pretty tight-lipped. Then again, maybe that was just how she was. Sort of like Leon...

He'd get to see who she was getting the knife from soon enough.

That was good to know. She wasn't entirely sure how long she could expect Gin to wait for her, and they'd been delayed already. She nodded in thanks, unable to resist ruffling his hair like she would do with Hitsugaya. "Thankyou."

She glanced down at the doorway and then back at Rukia and Sora. "I'll be back in a minute," she said. "Wait here for me." She smiled and then stepped quickly towards Gin's room.

[Moving up to Gin's thread]

Rukia watched Rangiku as the other woman moved down the hallway. It seemed pretty clear to Rukia who Rangiku was getting her knife from. It was a man, a man who the Vice Captain wanted to keep Rukia away from. And she wouldn't say who it was. It had to be Ichimaru.

Rukia frowned, wondering what it meant. She glanced over at Sora, feeling like she should say something to the boy. She said the first thing that came to mind. "How did you and Renji meet?"

Wait, they didn't get to come with? While Sora smiled when his hair was ruffled (it didn't come off as condescending, so he didn't have a problem with it), his expression quickly turned into a pout as Rangiku walked away. Why was she being so secretive? He was curious!

"Her boyfriend or something?" he muttered to himself, though he was distracted from his inquisitiveness by Rukia's question. "Oh! I met him through Nowe--" He stopped then, having spoken before he'd thought about what he was saying. "The three of us spent a nightshift together, and we found that we worked really well as a team." He'd rather this didn't become too awkward. He wanted to stop making everything uncomfortable because of what happened, but he didn't want to brush off Nowe's disappearance as meaningless, either.

"Ah," Rukia nodded. The mention of Nowe reminded her of Ichigo. How could people just disappear? It didn't make any sense...

"I'm sorry about your friend," she said quietly. Managing a grim smile, even though she didn't necessarily believe her own words, she added, "But we'll get the people responsible for this."

"It's all right," Sora quickly assured her with a small shake of his head. "It's not like you wanted it to happen." He knew that Rukia wasn't apologizing for herself. She was only offering her condolences, but he didn't want her to feel bad about it.

"Kurosaki..." He breached the subject somewhat awkwardly. "He was your friend, too?" He knew that Renji had been friends with him, and since Renji was also friends with Rukia, it would make sense if all three of them were close.

Rukia's lips tightened. She nodded again, saying, "Yeah, we're friends." She refused to use the past tense. Ichigo was alive, somewhere. He had to be.

Present tense... Yes, that was better. Sora nodded confidently. He wondered what Kurosaki was doing now, what Nowe was doing. Maybe Nowe was with his dragon again. What had he called it? Legna?

It was nice to think about, but lingering in the hallway was making him impatient. He glanced over, eyeing the door that Rangiku had entered. "What's taking her so long?"

Rukia followed Sora's line of sight. "I don't know." She was pretty sure Rangiku had gone to see Ichimaru, but she wasn't sure she felt comfortable telling Sora her theory. Then again, the kid had a right to know. "But it might be an old friend of hers."

Being perhaps an overly trusting person, Sora didn't seem to notice that Rukia was apprehensive about discussing the subject. "Oh! That's nice," he responded with a smile. Old friends were almost always good to see again, weren't they? He'd missed Kairi and Riku so much when he'd been separated from them, and when they had all finally been reunited he couldn't have been happier.

Even so, he didn't want to wait much longer. Without really thinking about it, he started tapping his foot.

Rukia offered a noncommittal, "Mm." Deciding that she was being too taciturn around the boy, though, she decided to turn the conversation to a more useful topic. "So, you said you've never been to the chapel, but where else have you been? Have you found anything useful?"

"I've been to most of the rooms down here, I think," Sora explained, distracted now that he'd been asked a question. "Onto the field, and then part of the second floor. Renji and I did a lot of exploring up there together." And with one other person, but they definitely weren't going to get onto that subject again.

"It's good that we're going up there again tonight, though, since I don't know the layout that well." It was a little embarrassing, considering how long he had been stuck in this prison. Then again, the layout had changed on him a few times, so he had an excuse.

Well, it was good that Sora had seen a decent amount of the place; he would probably be able to provide them with useful information. Rukia hated being behind, so to speak, but it was something she had had to get used to as a low-ranking Shinigami. No one told you anything you didn't absolutely need to know.

Reluctantly, Rukia said, "Renji didn't tell me what was going on tonight. Do you know what exactly we're looking for?"

While Sora knew that he was more experienced than a lot of the other patients, he didn't ever make a big deal out of it. He could have easily held it over their heads or used it as a bargaining tool. That wasn't the way he worked, though. He was just glad that he was able to help people out instead being dead weight.

"Umm, no," he admitted with a small sigh. "He wasn't very specific or anything. I think he just wanted us to explore some more." He doubted Renji would be too upset if they didn't find anything significant. It wasn't like that sort of thing was in their control.

"I see." Rukia folded her arms, still watching the door down the hallway that Rangiku had entered. She kept an eye out for any creatures, though; no sense in being surprised.

Rukia felt like she should say something else, but she was still angry with Renji, and upset aver Ichigo's disappearance, and just in a foul mood in general. So she stayed quiet for the time being.

Quick! Something had to be done before this got awkward. Luckily, Sora was no stranger to striking up conversations and chattering on and on with someone he barely knew. That was the only way to become friends with them, right? And he figured it was especially worth befriending Rukia, since she was Kairi's roommate.

"So what was your life like before this?" It was usually a question he didn't ask, since that was in the past and hardly mattered now. However, they needed to kill time. "I never really asked Renji about it, but... I kind of get the feeling he wouldn't tell me." He smiled sheepishly. He had no idea of Rukia would be any more open about it, after all.

Rukia couldn't help smiling at Sora, even if it was a weak smile. He seemed like such a gentle, innocent kid; no wonder Renji had grown so fond of him. She wondered for a moment why Sora thought Renji wouldn't tell him things about their past, but then she realized that the big dummy probably had it in his head that he could somehow protect people by not telling them things... Which, come to think of it, was probably why he hadn't told her what he was doing tonight. That bastard. She never could seem to get through to Renji that he didn't need to coddle her.

Back to Sora's question, though. Rukia chuckled quietly, saying, "Well, Renji tends to be a tight-lipped, cranky old man, but that's why he has charming people like me around." It couldn't hurt to joke. "Renji and I, and Rangiku... we all died a long time ago. I don't know if Renji told you that, but we're not alive. At least not where we come from." She waited to see how Sora would react to that.

"Old?" Sora's tone was between surprised and amused. "He's not that old, is he?" While Sora might not have been the best judge of that sort of thing, he had never gotten that impression from Renji. He didn't act old, and he was definitely in good physical shape. He'd never heard him complaining about his back or saying anything about "when I was your age...", like old people always did.

But his question was answered - sort of, anyway. "You're ghosts?" he asked, his eyes widening. Though he didn't seem shocked for too long. He had met a lot of dead people in Halloween Town, after all, and they had all been pretty nice. Well, except for Oogie Boogie...

"He never told me," he said, sounding a little hurt by that. "Maybe he thought I'd be scared." That wasn't fair. He wasn't a child that was going to be frightened and push people away - if anything, he was more accepting than most adults!

Rukia held back a small chuckle at Sora's question. It was a natural reaction, after all. In response to his last words, she said, "I doubt that's why. Renji just tries to hard not to burden others. With anything." Maybe Sora would understand. He'd be doing better than her, if he managed that.

"Anyway, we're not ghosts, exactly. We help ghosts who are lost find their way to... well, to the afterlife, I suppose. I don't know what you call it in your world, but for us it's Soul Society."

That did make some sense, actually. Sora could understand wanting to withhold information that was troublesome so that he wouldn't upset others. He had always been able to tell that there was a lot of good in Renji's heart, but that was becoming more and more obvious as he continued to learn about him. He was sure that Rukia was the same.

"Oh, so you help put them to rest? That's good." After all, having angry or depressed spirits wandering around couldn't be good. He had never thought that there were people that actually helped take care of that as their job. "It sounds pretty interesting!" With everything he had seen, it was still exciting to learn about new things.

Rukia wished being a Shinigami was as simple as Sora seemed to think. While they did do good things, like soul burials, and defeating Hollows, Rukia had always wished they could stop souls from becoming Hollows in the first place. Restless souls were a lot harder to detect than Hollows, though, so she could understand why the Twelfth Division hadn't yet come up with any way to reliably find them. Still, she wished they would devote more of their attention to that, rather than Captain Mayuri's sick experiments...

No use bothering Sora with her worries, though. "Yes, it is interesting," Rukia said. "How about you, Sora? What is your world like? How did you and Kairi meet?"

Since he had pried into her life, Sora had been expecting the same treatment. He didn't mind talking about it, though. While there were definitely aspects of his past that were still sore spots, he could avoid those. And normally he would have wanted to get things done instead of standing around and chatting, but they were being forced to wait, anyway. (How long did it take to pick up a knife?)

"She washed up on the beach at my home!" he announced, finding the whole mystery behind their meeting very exciting. "Me and my best friend, Riku... We found her. The mayor ended up adopting her, and the three of us have been friends ever since."

"Oh, well, that's dramatic," Rukia said, turning to regard Sora. "Certainly a meeting you won't forget, huh?" Though she supposed dashing out of nowhere and kicking the man who had been chasing Renji and their friends was an equally dramatic entrance. So many years later, she couldn't even remember why she had done that, except that it had seemed like a good idea at the time. In any case, she was glad she had.

Rukia folded her arms, shifting her weight. "Must have been nice living on the beach. I've only ever seen the ocean a few times."

Nightshift 23: M11-M20 Hall

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