Nightshift 60: F11-F20 Hallway
[Inside F16]
Now that Ilia had left, there was plenty of room to pace, and Lana took it. It would help keep her muscles loose, too. Ilia had been a help, but the most important point was getting the basics to Ema -- including the part about running away being the best thing to do if she couldn't help. She would hold onto that guilt; Lana knew ( Read more... )
Now that Ilia had left, there was plenty of room to pace, and Lana took it. It would help keep her muscles loose, too. Ilia had been a help, but the most important point was getting the basics to Ema -- including the part about running away being the best thing to do if she couldn't help. She would hold onto that guilt; Lana knew ( Read more... )
Instead, she looked him up and down. He certainly looked the part of a warrior; he could have walked off any Samurai set in Hollywood and straight into the drab little hallway.
"I'm Lana. I've invited my sister to join us, but she hasn't arrived." It hadn't been very long, so Lana wasn't more worried than her usual well-concealed abject terror at what this place could be doing to Ema. "Please, come in."
Her flashlight was sitting balanced on her desk, pointed upwards. It provided more shadows to the room than light, but at least they wouldn't be tripping over the beds. Or Lana expected she'd manage to avoid that; Ema could trip over thin air. "I've had a few pointers, but she has had nothing, and we're both very aware of how dangerous that can be."
Both to ourselves and to others went without saying; she was visibly uninjured, and Ema would (hopefully) arrive in similar condition. Which said more about their poor luck than their good, in Lana's mind.
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"My partner's gonna show up to get me at some point, but he's gonna give me some lead time to help you guys out. So it shouldn't be a problem." Renji nodded, then cleared his throat a little awkwardly. "I didn't want to ask on the bulletin board cause... well. But is what you're mostly worried about in this case monster-shaped or people-shaped?"
It wasn't exactly the most delicate way to put the question, but Renji wasn't a delicate guy. And it was an important question, because that would determine what direction any lessons were going to take. Monsters and people attacked differently, had different goals.
And really, for Renji's part, he hoped it was monsters. It was better to deal with a nasty thing just trying to eat your face than some sick fuck trying to hurt you.
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"Both my sister and myself have had the misfortune to watch people get killed in the line of duty here, and neither of us was well-equipped to help." She walked over to her closet and pulled out a foot-long, heavy brass candlestick. "This is the only weapon I have that isn't a limited resource; I have a couple of scalpels as well, but throwing them is rather a last resort."
"To be blunt, I need to know how to protect my sister. Preferably while protecting myself, but that's secondary to Ema's safety." She'd be here soon; he needed to know that now, but once Ema was here, any such statement would lead to an argument rather than a lesson.
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He eyed the candlestick thoughtfully and nodded. "Glad you have it. I used to have a sword, but it went missing when I got taken out, so I guess it's gone for good." He made no move to take the candlestick, though. He didn't want her to think he was going to try to take her stuff.
He glanced at the door, but there was no sister immediately running in, so that let him ask the next question. "Your sister gonna let you protect her? Because it's way harder to get the job done if there's someone in the way."
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"I think we might be able to agree to watch each others backs, though." She didn't want to let Ema go after any monsters, but she was trying to be realistic. One of them had to.
"As far as I know, she's unarmed, so perhaps we should start with that." Lana's eyes flicked to the door -- she hoped Ema hadn't fallen asleep again, even if the girl could use the rest.
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When Ema finally arrived at F16, she could hear muted voices from the other side of the door. It looked like their tutor had beaten her there, which wasn't much of a surprise given Ema's delayed start and her slow pace. More likely than not, they would get started as soon as she announced her arrival. All she could hope for was that she wouldn't be too much of a failure as a student. Self-defense wasn't something with which Ema was well-versed. Lana was the one capable of great physical feats, not her.
Of course, all of that would happen after gaining entry to the room. Ema knocked on the door a few times before calling out, "Lana? It's me!"
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But he didn't want to think about that right now.
"The unarmed is going to be ugly. Get her a weapon. Something with some range on it, but still light. Like maybe a broomstick." He considered suggesting that she get the candlestick, but a club-like weapon was probably better used by the older sibling who was probably going to be a lot more aggressive with it. "Something like that's good for keeping the bad stuff at bay. But unarmed is most important, you're right."
Because unarmed with a monster - unless they were way more advanced as students than Renji was willing to bet they were - was all about just getting the hell away from them hen something had already gone really wrong.
If he was going to say anything else, he fell silent when someone knocked on the door. It was probably Lana's sister, considering he heard the muffled sound of a girl's voice. He glanced at Lana, then took the few steps over to the door and opened it, making sure to stand aside so Lana would be visible. He knew he looked kind of off-putting to some people.
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"Ema, this is Renji. He's agreed to give us a few pointers."
The next words came out like she'd swallowed leftovers that had gone bad -- the words came out normally, but her brow was wrinkled and her expression confused. "He mentioned that we need to get you a weapon -- after we're done here, do you want to go look for something?"
"But first, your students await."
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When Lana brought up weapons, Ema's stomach sank a little. She was armed last night, although she didn't actually use it when the monster attacked. Besides that, Mr. Javert's handaxe was no longer in her possession. Perhaps it was just as well. Ema wasn't sure she'd have the heart to actually wield it. "I have a small garden shovel," she offered, pulling it out of her bag to demonstrate. "I figured that was better than hitting rats with my flashlight." After a bit of hesitation--honestly, Ema didn't want to go anywhere--she added, "But we can get something after we're done if you think we should." What Ema wanted and what she needed to do were entirely different things. It was like Zero said. She needed to move forward.
That decided, Ema set her stuff down so that they could begin. She set her flashlight onto the other bed to help eliminate more of the shadows.
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He looked at the shovel. "It's definitely better than the flashlight. But mostly what I'm thinking is you probably want a weapon that's going to give you better range. Like a broomstick, maybe."
He gave the two women a wry smile. "Because that's lesson number one. If you guys aren't normally fighters, it takes a long time to get really good at it. So what you should always be thinking about is how to get the hell away from things. Only stand and fight if they corner you. And there's nothing wrong with doin' it that way. I was a street kid. You learn quick that most of the time there's a fight, you're better off just not being in it." So wherever you're going, be thinking about a couple of escape routes while you're going there. Ones where you can get a door between you and what's chasing you."
"So for something like that shovel, you're probably going to want two-hand it, like this," he demonstrated how it would be best to grip it, "just because that'll give you more power when you swing, and you're less likely to get it knocked out of your hands. A lot of the stuff is just animals, so sometimes you can scare it away if you give it a good smack. Eyes, ears, and nose are the most vulnerable things you can hit. You hit hard enough, it hurts like a bitch and it's really disorienting, so that can buy you time to run."
He paused, knowing he'd already said an awful lot. "I mean, that's all real basic stuff. Okay so far?"
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"The thing I saw looked like a lot of different animals patched together -- with some ugly claws." The fact that Ema had seen something similar didn't need to be brought up; if she could spare her having to talk about anything, she'd do so. "What's the best way to avoid those, if running is impractical?"
All they'd need to do would be to get to each other, if she could use the ring to move, but that hadn't worked very well last time, now had it? Though why Gant hadn't teleported himself alone, she would never know; pride, perhaps. It seemed more likely than altruism.
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When Mr. Renji began his instruction, Ema grabbed her journal out of her bag and began jotting down notes. This was a lesson, which meant that she was taking it seriously. What if she forgot something later? She even took a few would-be practice swings with the journal, holding it on either side with both hands as she went through the motions. "Got it."
Lana's question interrupted Ema's practicing, however. This was something that Ema needed help with, more so than defending herself against the giant rats that roamed the hallways.
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He thought about the creatures Lana mentioned. "Those ones are... weird. They're always different so there's not one right way to fight them. And if there's just one area they stick to, I haven't heard of it. Honestly, unless you've got some... uh... big guns with you, just run. Get the hell away from them. Go for the nearest stairs, since most of the time they can't manage those real fast. If you absolutely can't run, go for the heads, try to avoid the claws, hope for the best." He looked at the shovel. "You can try to use something like that as a shield because it's got some surface area one it. So one of you blocks, the other attacks. You just need to have a good grip on the handle and be ready to turn the blade to catch the claws."
He looked at the shovel again. "If you don't mind..." he picked it up and held it. The thing felt really small, but it probably would work better for the girls because they were small. "So the big thing is you have to have your grip pretty loose so you can turn it, but then hold it firm when you actually take a hit." He demonstrated. "You never put a tight grip on a weapon unless you're about to take an impact."
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The stairs were a good idea -- damn, she should have jumped on the desk instead of ducking behind it. Grabbed one of the drawers as a shield. Instead, she'd hid and panicked and relied on Gant's rusty firearms training, which had not been his most shining moment.
"I was afraid of that," she said, in answer to his comment about those things infesting the entire institute. "It was my fault; I knew this was something we should do, and I hadn't found the time. Now all we can do is prevent it happening again." She still hadn't specified what it was, but if Renji couldn't put two and two together, he didn't need to know.
Then she fell silent, watching his technique.
"Loose hold, right." Lana wasn't usually one to buckle under an onslaught of information, but she usually wasn't having to do anything physical at the time. She wasn't about to join Ema in making notes, but she muttered a reiteration of the things he'd just told them as she stepped through a couple of swings. Perhaps hunting for shields, not weapons, would be the prudent course.
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No. She needed to focus so it didn't happen again. Otherwise, this whole exercise in self-defense was pointless, as was Mr. Javert's sacrifice. Better to focus on the lesson and not the feelings associated with it.
After watching Lana give a few practice swings and swinging her book twice herself, Ema turned to their instructor and asked, in all seriousness, "How would you define what's too tight and what's too loose, scientifically speaking?" It was a perfectly legitimate question as far as she was concerned, since it sounded like the margin of error that was permissible for either was relatively slim.
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Renji stared at Ema like she was speaking a foreign language, then finally said, "I don't think I can. It's too lose if you can get it knocked out of your hands, too tight if you're fighting against yourself or lose some of your motion range cause you're holding on too tight. You got to just practice it and feel it." He guessed he should be flattered that Ema didn't think he looked like too much of a moron for a question like that, but he kind of was. Or maybe not so much a moron as uneducated. Shinigami didn't really bother with the whole science thing.
Renji watched Lana carefully. She was starting to get that look, like she was getting a little overloaded. It was a look he'd had on often enough himself when he'd first gone to the academy and had been playing catch up. It hadn't done him a lot of good to try to learn everything at once, and he doubted it would work any more for a couple of presumably normal humans.
He nodded as if to himself. "How about we call it there for tonight unless you've got any questions. You two practice what I went over, and keep the stuff that you can't really practice in mind as best you can. If you want, we can do some more tomorrow. Just let me know what you want to do."
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