Day 41: Sun Room

[feartehreaper]

Haseo's steps were heavy with the weight of righteous anger as he was escorted into the Sun Room, his posture so sullen and reluctant you could almost hear the nostalgic cry of an electric guitar. He was seething, and though perhaps it was a bit harder to be intimidating while wearing the uniform of an insane asylum and flanked by a bored-looking

Comments

[number_crunch]

Sho was in a bad mood. First there was this factoring institute, then there were the numerous nurses which came with the threat of getting put into chemical standby, and in addition to all of that, some little loud-mouth microliter that thought she knew more than a brain-dead paramecium.

"This zettabytes," snarled the mathematician, strolling over to the bulletin board. It looked like he had actually gotten one semi-intelligent response to his inquiry; the rest were either hectopascals doing multiplication or copy-pasting the guide he'd already seen.

Then there was the matter of the stupid stemplot who couldn't understand a perfectly good proof that Triangle-Head was a wuss and clearly Dodecahedron head would be the most fearsome monster. Just how stupid could the population get?

Wondering what to write next, Minamimoto idly began folding a octahedron out of paper.

[Reserved for Kenpachi]

[noneedforsanity]

For the rest of breakfast after speaking with Gin, Kenpachi's eyes had never left Sho. The thrill of a potential fight sang in his ears, blocking out other, lesser concerns. So what if he was trapped in a pseudo-insane asylum with all of his strength and power blocked off with no hope of escape? There was blood to be spilled.

When breakfast ended, Kenpachi took that opportunity. He followed Sho back out into the Sun Room, and with all the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros approached the man, ignoring the bulletin board for the time being.

"That was some show at breakfast," Kenpachi said, trying in vain to get a sense of the man's reiatsu. Gin hadn't seemed to have any reiatsu, either. How annoying. "But do you actually have the strength to prove your words?"

[number_crunch]

Sho was too busy staring at the bulletin board, eyes flitting from post to post like a fractal butterfly, connecting words to ideas to sentences to formulas, to pay attention to some crazy megaton meat-head stomping across the room. It did, however, catch his wavelength when the man spoke to him, unmistakably referencing his grand speech.

"Who the factor are you?" he growled as per his usual salutation. The guy had 2 creepy eyes, 1 scar, 0 eyebrows and 1 hex of an expression, but Sho was not particularly intimidated. The average punk in Shibuya with even the median number of piercings was scarier than this guy, if maybe not weighing in with as many moles. His stare irate, Sho continued folding and ripping, transmuting his octahedron into tessellated parts.

[noneedforsanity]

Now that Kenpachi was closer to the man, his eyes caught the movement of Sho's hands as he folded his octahedron. He immediately discounted the object as pointless...possibly a nervous tick or some clever puzzle, neither of which had anything to do with his intentions.

"It is only fair that you know the name of the man who will kill you," Kenpachi replied boldly. He wasn't sure what a factor was, but the tone of the man's voice suggested it was an insult of some kind. "My name is Zaraki Kenpachi, shinigami captain of the 11th Division of the Gotei 13."

He grinned widely, waiting for the man to respond appropriately. Everyone in soul society knew the name Kenpachi, after all.

[number_crunch]

Sho snorted; this guy had an ego big enough for its own global coordinates. Kill him? Kill him? The chances of that were less than a quantum miracle.

"Kill me? Kill me?" he repeated out loud for the guy's benefit. "You're out of your vector!" The name meant little to him, but the title was interesting. Most of it was incomprehensible garbage that he'd derive later, but there was one term that he certainly recognized. "Plus what, you're a Reaper too? What the hex a Gotei 13?" Never mind what he meant by "captain" or "11th division". Maybe he was from a different Game; Sho had to admit his data about other grounds was a little less than encyclopedic. "Either way, you can't be more than a standard deviation above the mean if you R1 I've never heard of you."

By now, the octahedron was gone and his hand was full of multiple identical interlocking pieces that he was quickly arranging and rearranging without so much as a glance to his hands.

[noneedforsanity]

What the hell just happened? The conversation was going as expected...Kenpachi would throw out a challenge and his opponent would answer, he would press on and his opponent would press back. In this case his opponent was pressing back...maybe? He followed the conversation after the exclamation of surprise that Kenpachi would be capable of killing him--an unusual yet pleasing reaction -- but then it went entirely downhill. What the hell was a vector? And a standard deviation? Was this guy for real?

Reaper, though, that name rang some bells. He understood in Europe and America the shinigami were often called 'Grim Reapers.' "I think Europeans call us Grim Reapers or something like that, yeah. I'm surprised you ain't heard of me. But it's not like it matters. You know my name now, and that I am going to kill you. Reputation don't mean a thing compared to killing desire." He ignored the man's weird talk for now. It was probably some funky dialect or something, and asking about it would only serve to confuse him.

[number_crunch]

The one interesting thing the guy had said and he wasn't going to give back and answer? While in Column A, Sho appreciated him not trying to self-inflated sequence who stood on title, but in Column B, interest in killing intent < interest in crazy alternate alignment of ranks. Not that this would stop him from yelling some more.

"Get in line! The number of hectopascals with 'killing desire' are more than the atoms in a teragram of Pb!" he shot back with a barking laugh. "If I quaked in fear at every diametric who yelled at me, I'd be vibrating faster than the air between us!"

[noneedforsanity]

Kenpachi grinned. Okay, he was starting to understand this guy. So long as he ignored every other word he said, this guy was actually starting to make sense. Instead of being cowed by Sho's words, Kenpachi laughed.

"Those others were probably mortal, weren't they? They didn't kill one of the most powerful men in all soul society just for the hell of it, did they? You don't become captain just by makin' pretty speeches, 'specially not of a deadly an' brutal group like the 11th Division. You just don't get it, I don't wait. I'm going to kill you, or you're gonna kill me. Simple as that."

[number_crunch]

So this over-protein'd product thought he was tough stuff, huh?

"Not the whole population; I just derived a factoring angel before I got here! And what the hex Soul Society? Is that the designation of whatever off-frequency dimension you hail from?" The data didn't even sound like another Game, at least not in Sho's home dimension. How many degrees parallel did you have to go to get this far off though? Or maybe that was an eccentric name for the Higher Plane of Angels? It sounded like something they might say, but Sho was pretty sure there weren't any Reapers there, or if they were, they weren't Reapers any longer. "And you just try it! I'll knock you down like Gs on a falling star!"

[noneedforsanity]

Okay, so derive must mean "kill" or something, but he wasn't quite sure what an "angel" was. Probably something that was supposed to impress him. Yet more surprising than that was that this guy didn't know what soul society was. "Soul society...ya know...where the dead go after they leave the livin' realm?"

He was most certainly very confused at this point. "So wait...are you or ain't you a shinigami? Seems I can't sense reiatsu here."

[number_crunch]

"You mean the UG? 'cause if you're dead*dead, you don't go to any coordinates. CRUNCH! That's it, your line of code ends and you just become frags in the atmosphere," replied Sho with a shrug. Win the game or be erased, those were the rules. Incompletes would be destroyed. "The UG's a Player's last chance to solve the equation of life and death. If not... CRUNCH!"

He cackled loudly at this second exclamation. His laughter cut off at the man's second question.

"Weren't you listening, you deaf denominator? I'm a Reaper, just like you!" he shouted with unnecessary volume. He frowned, then added, "Even if I don't understand what quack quadrant you come from." Spirit pressure? Was that = to Soul? Or some derivative there of? "I'd give you a proof, but this stupid prison seems to be a fractal coefficient on my powers; I can't even shift wavelengths to show you my wings."

Not that he normally bothered with the wings, but it was the surest sign of Reaperdom.

[noneedforsanity]

"That's the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard," Kenpachi said. "I don't know what this 'UG' you're talkin' about is, but once you're dead you either move on or you get stuck, and if a shinigami doesn't come and get ya out, you become a hollow." What was supposed to be a simple fight to the death was really starting to make his brain hurt.

"You're talkin' nonsense."

[number_crunch]

"Then the fecal containers you've seen must have been measured in zeptograms! You're the one who's out of their vector! Hollow? Is that some kind of ghost? What a load of garbage! When people die, they get 1 chance at the Game in the UG if their Soul falls within the realm of qualifying probability; if not or they fail, /end! If you're a Reaper, you should know this no matter what dimension you're from!" Sho yelled, waving his hands and what had turned into two tetrahedrons. Multiple worlds was one thing, different ranks was one thing, but not knowing the Game, hex, not even recognizing the UG? There was no factoring way. He snorted at the man's last comment. "The categorically 99% nonsense data is: captain, Gotei x13, Soul Society, hollows, and the scar-faced scalene standing at (1,1)."

At this he pointed his arms out at 45 degree angles to either side of Kenpachi, illustrating his X and Y axes.

"Seriously, did someone hit you in the processor or were you just generated this way?"

[noneedforsanity]

Kenpachi was getting more and more confused with every statement Sho expressed. Game in UG? There was no such thing as a Game that he could conceive, except maybe the fact that any fight was pretty much a game in his book. Still, it confused him, and confused him greatly. So when Sho opened his arms to place Kenpachi as the (1,1) on the crazy man's graph, Kenpachi did the only thing he could to make things simpler for him.

He swung a punch at Sho's exposed chest.

"I don't know what crap you're talkin' about," Kenpachi added. "But none o' that matters. You an' me. Right here, right now."

[number_crunch]

Now, it wasn't that the punch had been unexpected. Yes, it had taken him off-guard, being how it was that his current posturing could not exactly be considered a defensive stance. But he had been fairly sure the neolithic nonagon was going to resort to violence at some point. He had even had likely probability it would be a punch. All the same, Kenpachi's fist knocked Minamimoto right off his feet and onto the floor, interlocking paper polygons scattering to the winds.

It wasn't that Sho was that light, but it was that much of a blow. What did this guy eat?

"You yoctogram," spat the mathematician angrily, stumbling back to his feet. He got ready to respond with greater than or equal force, when he spotted the nurses and orderlies starting to close in. Grinning wildly, Sho gave a barking laugh before yelling at the scarred man with encouraging hand gestures. "Bring it on! Is that all you got?"

Hopefully t = Kenpachi does enough to get heavy sedation < t = nurses arrive < t = Sho sustained serious injury. If not, he was more than

[noneedforsanity]

Kenpachi didn't care about the nurses, necessarily, but the fact that Sho didn't respond with violence in return saddened him. Granted, he was able to take the punch, but if he wasn't going to fight back this was going to be a very boring fight. So instead of striking again, he frowned. "This is gonna be really dull if you don't strike me back," he said. "Hit me!"