Nightshift 56: Bill's Hardware

[she_is_ruin]

[from here]After dashing over to the hardware store, it was Yomi’s turn to shatter the lock, allowing them access inside. Here, she took out her flashlight and used it to light the aisles, aimed in such a way as to minimize how much showed through the windows. If the noise didn’t draw something, the light probably would. Nightshifts were no place

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[she_is_ruin]

"So..." she said, looking up and down the shelves until she found a long-handled axe, which she then picked up and examined, "something exists beyond the body, you would say. Is that not so?"

Yomi didn't broach a reply about how Damned may or may not have changed them. Twisted them. Brought Yomi closer to life, while Albedo closer to death, perhaps. There was nothing to talk about there. The ability to heal had never been a secret to Yomi, or something to remark greatly upon in others, but in regards to herself it was a topic that sat as a part of a much larger story--her story, of how she had come into such powers in the first place. And all of the rest.

To the sesshouseki, the story was over, and yet it wasn't, was it? Not just yet. It was the reason why getting specifics about others was easier than giving them. Information that went deeper than mere surface facts had to be earned. And for Albedo, it was probably the same. No one liked to admit to a near stranger that their identity had been swept out from under them--that there was a chance of perishing where once there had been the ability to knit one's body back together. Not unless they truly didn't care who knew their secrets.

Like immortality, that kind of nonchalance was a rare quality.

With the axe added to the rest, her bag was starting to take on a noticeable amount of weight, but she shrugged the strap higher on her shoulder nonetheless and turned to face Albedo with a smile. She found the expression was coming easier now that he wasn't holding her hand while asking his questions. "Let's go into the back."

[purpletaint]

He slid her question around in his mind. It was a theoretical question which had a purely scientific basis. In the past, however, weren't these questions something else? Theological, instead? Placing religion and science side by side existed as the first mistake--but grant him this, in humor, it laid also as the foundation for many a thing both hated and adored.

He smiled at her when she turned with the same, and slid past her, pressing against the door at the back. The knob didn't turn, but it shifted in his hand. Only a button lock at that and too easy was it to wrench it to the side and break it. He pushed the door open and slid inside. He glanced around curiously.

"Beyond the body, hmm," he echoed again. Albedo looked back at her, raising an eyebrow in humor. "It's all but assured. Waveforms, mental energy--it's been proven in full where, and when, I am from. With many usages for all, I'm sure." Not the least of which, the URTVs themselves, and speak nothing of the UMN itself. "It's quite common."

His hand moved over the items categorized by material, head cocking over a few in particular. Without much thought on the matter, he scooped up a small hatchet and two knives, adding them to his bag. "Is that strange to you?"

[she_is_ruin]

Yomi could manage the bag but walking into a potential conflict with it slowing her down meant she would have to be ready to drop and run, so to speak. The hardware store’s back room, however, seemed to be free of night time creatures. Filled with stock, Yomi’s assumption wasn’t wrong--what wasn’t out front could be nestled somewhere here in the back.

There were challenged to reading when shadows had almost completely taken over everything, but she made do with the aid of her flashlight, silently and methodically looking over boxes.

As for the discussion of the future and the past, and the abnormalities belonging to either time, Yomi didn’t have a lot to say about what lived on after the body had died. What was there to say? Did Albedo’s spiritual energy defend against dispersal? Did he have a soul that went deeper than the flesh?

She found herself another axe and slipped it between the flaps of the bag. “No…” she said eventually. Energy that could be examined separately from the body. Energy that could exist centuries after its form had been destroyed. No, the concept wasn’t strange to her at all. The sesshouseki was the primordial example, and she was carrying a piece of it within her at that very moment. Four thousand… Ten thousand… A hundred thousand years into the future, and the sesshouseki would probably still be “living.” Granting others the ability to heal from death, too. Keeping them alive. Forever, maybe. Forever as a spectre once its consciousness had fully merged with the carrier.

Her healing was slower than Albedo’s in the short term, but did his prevent him from aging, too? Yomi would probably keep her appearance, unless the sesshouseki’s presence altered it with time. And her body… if it was destroyed completely, would she come back? If her head was cut off, if her heart pulled out, would she just heal? Was she like him in that way, recycling eternally?

Coming back toward him, she paused near the shelves, and finally selected one more knife.

Now she was asking herself the same questions he had been. But the difference was, she didn’t want to know the answers. It didn’t interest her. But she felt it now, in increments, the weight of his interest in finding another just one. Did the same cold darkness slither over his thoughts when he mused on the same?

[purpletaint]

Oh, but he was not an idiot in any case. Despite her nature as a monster, despite her abilities mirroring his own, he still heard the pause, noted it as heavy. Give him someone else and he would have tore it apart--for her, however, he'd pull back from his usual actions.

When she was finished gathering her choices, he trod back towards the door to the main area; shoving his sword again under his arm, he rummaged in his bag as he did so, trying to get a balance where things wouldn't be crushed. The saw had some kind of sleeve on the blade, for that, he slipped it along the side, trading it for one of the knives. The bag was swung back over his shoulder, and leaving the sword where it was, he started playing with the shorter blade.

Passing through the doorway, he inquired back to her, humor in his tones. "Is it 'no' completely, or are you unsure?"

[damned_monsters]

Rustling of tools might have weakened it--the gravelly chattering, claws drumming against wood and glass. As the pair approached the storefront, the noise became more evident, overtaking all else.

A glance toward the entrance was enough to give reality away: nine petite figures, huddled in packs of three and lined across the aisles. Their yellow eyes moved as though searching, their limbs shaking off excess moisture from the outside. It was unusual to find necrits hunting in the town, particularly in midst of snow and ice. Their presence in the broken shop proved simple: they simply wanted someplace dry.

Fortunately, the necrits seemed largely unaware of the pair, content with dealing against the poor environment. For now, at least.

[Psyche]

[she_is_ruin]

Yomi had thought the discussion was over and had turned her attention to eyeing Albedo’s katana, but when he spoke up again, she was clearly in the wrong. She looked at him questioningly, expression placid as always.

Unsure? What would make him think so, when she was anything but? Was he breaking down every pause she made, like a scientist watching a lab rat?

Ahhh, this boy, asking so many questions. When was it going to be enough?

Such was the thought going through her mind the moment her better instincts roused, a wordless signal that something had changed within her surroundings. The sesshouseki was suddenly a much louder beating in her head, like a drum being hit with great force. Potential enemies. That was all she needed to know. At once, she turned off the flashlight in her hand, killing the light before it was visible from the front of the store. When she looked, it was impossible not to notice what had followed them inside, thanks to her having broken the lock keeping the doors sealed. And now that she was aware of them, their noise was unmistakable.

They weren’t the grasping undead, but they were still in the way. Slinking around trying to find an escape route before being discovered wasn’t Yomi’s first plan. Neither was being caught and killed by a bunch of pack animals willing to attack anything they came across.

There had been enough to do with dying already. Yomi was more than ready to move on from that.

Taking two steps back, she shifted her machete into her other hand and reached for the first thing she could use as a projectile: a paint can. Grabbing it by the handle, she threw it past Albedo’s head so that it would slam into the shelf just in front of the group of necrits situated on her far left, and then ducked down out of sight, letting her bag slide off her shoulder and hit the ground at the same time to mask the noise within the cacophony of falling items. She moved into an occupied aisle on her right, keeping low.

[purpletaint]

...Ah, but that sound was familiar, wasn't it? His mind placed it instantly, a mixed creation, small and skittering with hungry mouths. They had fed on his blood that night, after Albedo had taken Klavier's metal pipe to the man's ribs. And that night had been... A mess in itself, wasn't it? Albedo had shifted his own self-hatred, but it wasn't too far off, now was it? Klavier deserved it, part and parcel, and everything in-between. But that wasn't here or there, was it. In the end, there was only this strange female, those yammering creatures, and a choice of weaponry if they were to fight them.

And judging from her actions, she planned on doing so. He watched her, with a clinical bored expression, until she was some distance away. Then left his bag next to hers and strode forward towards the entrance, sword in one hand, knife in the other. "Ahh, you all again. Far be it that you're the same ones, more than likely. Still, maybe you're a collective consciousness, hmm?~ Maybe you'll enjoy pieces of me as much as the others."

Was there a point? Not as much. Only gaining their attention in full so she could act as she would. Unlike last night, where being bait had been secondary, here it existed as primary. Let them come. Of pain, of wounds, of regeneration and what was left--this was all clearer than anything else he could think of. Give Yomi her silence and Albedo his distractions, and let them both forget the things forced into the front of their minds.

[damned_monsters]

The paint can hit home, ricocheting off several packages before skidding against the floor, staying surprisingly intact despite the force applied. Plastic, screws, and nails fell over the little creatures nearest to the impact, and they screamed in alarm. The rest skittered back to the end of their respective aisles in hopes of catching what had upset their companions, chatting away excitedly.

Their voices died in unison the instant Albedo spoke.

All nine pairs of eyes narrowed in on the boy, thought processes clicking together in comprehension. Flesh, blood. Intruder. Their detour had taken them to a worthy prize, and without wasting another moment, two of the three-necrit clusters leaped toward Albedo, their claws poised to strike. The rest lingered in anticipation, waiting for their turn, unaware of the second figure in transition.

[she_is_ruin]

If Yomi was going to fight, there was just one thing she could do, and that was fight as if she was alone. There was no more squad, no more team support. Ranguren was still a fresh memory in her mind, but he, too, was gone. She’d chosen the sesshouseki, and that was what she had, which was why she hadn’t tried to signal the boy into her plan. Their ‘partnership’ wasn’t so strong that she thought she could depend on him in any area. If he could fight, if he would fight, that was up to him, but if he was unable to sneak away, he’d make a viable distraction for her to piggyback on.

Attempting to flee didn’t seem to be on his agenda, though; as she slunk down the aisle on silent feet, she could hear him boasting over top of the commotion. By the sounds of them, the spectres had been drawn to area of the paint can’s impact--foragers looking for prey, not running from it--but had immediately locked on to Albedo at the sound of his voice. For them, a desirable target, and for her, an unequivocal diversion.

Was her acquaintance always so conspicuous, or was he luring them to complement her movements? Yomi didn’t care. She only had mind for how many she could get behind, and when she peered around the end of the aisle, she saw less than half still paused by the entrance.

Well then.

Keeping low to the floor, Yomi came at them, aiming the machete at the side of a necrit’s head to catch its eye during the stroke and at the same time twisting the lower half of her body to kick the next nearest.

[purpletaint]

[ modding approved. ]

Here again, here again. He stopped when the majority tore towards him, watching their movements with a careless expression that belied the intent in which he watched their feet, noting the weight behind each step, the exact moment when they would leap at him. And he was not wrong. How many to allow and how many to attack? He knew from experience how well they could tear into things, how perfectly they could ravage to get on down onto the ground to consume.

Two were faster than the others, and he swung out with the sword, hoping to catch them both. As he did so, three others moved, latching on to thigh, beneath a knee, and the arm in which he swung with for a particularly able creature. He grimaced, half in memory, half in pain, and wasted no time in stabbing at the skull of the one on his arm with the newly picked up blade.

As for the last, it moved late, and therefore gained no antagonism. It joined the other at Albedo's knee, causing the boy to stumble as the tendon and muscles began to fail. Already, hmm? Would he be downed so quickly this time?

[damned_monsters]

The machete hit home, the blade embedding into the soft tissue of the creature's eye. The movement was quick enough for the necrit to fall without a scream. In contrast, its companion cried from the impact on its stomach and the subsequent crash into a nearby shelf. It shook itself, stumbling painfully on its knees. Hurt but moving.

For a moment, it seemed Yomi had successfully gained the upper hand on a single cluster on her own. The one remaining necrit, however, had caught her movements early on, and as she moved against the others, it leaped onto a nearby shelf before launching itself at her neck, teeth and claw aiming for her throat. Furthermore, the surviving necrit finally managed to steady itself, and despite the pain shooting through its front and spine, it, too, attacked, teeth clasping onto a knee.

Albedo, on the other hand, was gaining some ground, despite the force against him and the closeness of losing his own footing. The sword caught hold of the necrits as hoped, but it was the force that affected as opposed to the sharpness of the blade. They slammed into each other and the nearest wall, before scrambling unsuccessfully to untangle. It would be some time before they would recover. The two at his legs continued their work, tearing through skin and muscle.

The attempt to drive the knife into the fifth necrit's skull, however, barely registered in both skin and reaction. The creature continued to latch onto the boy's good arm, hoping to tear it apart in the next several minutes.

[she_is_ruin]

The third one was already on the move, scaling a shelf to get height on her, and as she felled one and scattered the other, she used the momentum of her kick to keeping rolling, sheltering her head and neck. While Yomi yanked the machete free, she brought her other hand up, the one still holding the flashlight, and shone it in the face of the falling creature so that it might be blind to where it was landing and give her time to get out of the way.

Puncturing its large, luminous eyes before it crowded her too much was one option. She hadn’t been wrong about them--like on most creatures, the eyes were a point of vulnerability and allowed easy access to brain matter, assuming the brain was located in the skull cavity. But the flesh on these ones… Shallow strikes weren’t going to be enough to debilitate the spectres. She could tell by the way the machete had dragged on the corpse’s tough hide as she’d removed it.

And now that Yomi had used up the element of surprise and exposed herself to the pack…

The one she had kicked away hadn‘t been eliminated from the fight. It moved in with jaws open and attached itself to her leg before she could take up a new stance. It was the pressure she felt first, like a vice being locked about her knee--then came the pain of its teeth sinking down toward her bone. Yomi came down on her free leg, quickly reversed her grip on the machete, stabbed at its eyes to kill it before it did more damage than it already had.

[purpletaint]

All right. Well, then. Blades could not cut, but the creatures' mass seemed inconsequential by how far they were flung. 'Bashing damage,' then, hmm? His mind chose an action and followed it through. The knife flipped over in his palm, and with no hesitation, he drove the hilt into the skull of the one on his arm. Whether or not that succeeded was truly irrelevant at the moment--the ones on his legs were the higher threat.

And as that was briefly thought, his right leg gave out. Tch. If anything, he needed to become more resilient. He broke far too easily--amusing, at length; annoying at times. His teeth bared in a sharp intake of air. At the least he could stop them as he fell--he angled, so his tibia would at least crush the two lower unless they released him.

As he did so, he brought the sword back, aiming for the remaining one attached at his thigh. Detaching the beasts, he considered idly, watching this all from a separate perspective, was truly half of the concern.

[damned_monsters]

The female's continued movements and light saved her from sharpness hooking into her vital points. A pained shriek escaped from the necrit's mouth, and with its arms raised, it smashed into her side before toppling to the floor, writhing. One clawed feet had succeeded in tearing through fabric but ultimately failed to draw blood. The opposite was true for its companion, who took enough blood and flesh to be partially filled. Whose jaws locked the instant the blade passed through the eye to reach the brain. It twitched as it died but did not detach.

The male, too, was beginning to get a better idea on how to handle the creatures. The necrit at his arm dropped instantly at the force against its skull. For a moment, it stilled, disoriented. The actions taken against the two lower were executed correctly, and suddenly, the pair found themselves under eighty pounds of mass. The one at the boy's thigh released. Both flailed wildly in an attempt to escape as they slowly felt their ribs bend to the point of breaking.

[she_is_ruin]

Bastard. The creature that had already gotten a taste of her was persistent, even in death, and it made the sesshouseki thunder in her blood. If the stone had desires, its current one was to inflict pain for pain received--which was not far off from Yomi’s own wishes. Perhaps in the end it was only responding to her intuitive dislike of being threatened by her captors and their monsters.

If she was going to exist, she was going to exist all the way through this imprisonment of hers. Becoming food for a spectre wasn’t an outcome in that plan.

With clinical detachment, Yomi used the widest part of the blade to wedge the corpse’s jaws open and pull it off her, sacrificing delicacy for quickness. Her leg wasn’t beyond use but it was shredded enough that straining it would make it unusable in due time. The pain alone would have made walking impossible for a normal person, but Yomi cared only for whether or not she still had motor function and her kneecap had provided some protection to the delicate tendons around it… even if removing the necrit was causing further damage. The situation didn’t allow for her to take her time sliding its teeth out of her. After all, there was one still--

Before the last necrit had a chance to get up, Yomi brought her other foot down on it with an audible crunch of bone and tissue.

Now they were all dead.

At least on her end of the store. Albedo was…

Yomi looked for him amongst the gore and the commotion--commotion not caused by the necrits on her side of the room, which had been dealt with, but by the two groups surrounding the boy as he knelt in the middle of them, covered in his own blood. In that moment, he didn’t look like a being with inhumanly advanced regeneration to his name. He looked like a baby who had six spectres breathing down his neck.

Her injured knee screamed in complaint at being forced into a run, but Yomi did so anyway, and as she moved back up the aisle toward Albedo she sent her machete spinning into the face of one of the dazed creatures. At the very least, it would serve as a distraction until she could dispatch it--and the most effective way to do that was through blunt force, not through the close-range cuts provided by a machete. Hence the shovel she snatched from a shelf and promptly swung down at the other disorientated necrit staggering around the boy.

[purpletaint]

[again, modding permitted]

The first acknowledgement was of bodies crushes beneath his leg, and as their bodies caved inwards, Albedo leaned forward, hands touching tile, and pressed his leg down further, soft ribs crushing, giving with sharp snaps. The movement beneath him slowed, then halted, limbs falling to earth. There existed no time to contemplate mortality for from the count, he had four more, let alone if Yomi had dealt with her.

That question was one answered from movement at his side, and his eyes angled, watching a blade spin toward one, and watching her dance to attack another. She was beautiful, wasn't she? Covered in blood and others' gore like a goddess of death and vengeance, and he watched her, watched as she moved in destruction. The muscles under his knee were knitting together and his eyes trailed over to the first two he had struck, wondering if he could regenerate and stand before they gained their own footing.

Skin pulled together against the cool tile, and the tug of muscle and tendon regrowing made him set his mouth in a line. Slowly, like this, it grated on him, the process of death being reversed to something closer and further from actual life.