Day 23: Sun Room, Evening Shift
Miles Edgeworth had quietly snuck off to a corner of the cafeteria during lunch, avoiding making conversations. He knew other people would probably lecture him later or accuse him of avoiding them, but that hadn't been true at all. He'd just wanted some time to work quietly by himself for a while
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A smaller group would definitely be good. The one last night had been nearing unmanageable in the conditions they were working in. A battlefield was one thing, but cramped corridors were not a good place to have a large number of people.
"I'd appreciate it. I'd like to know who I owe for making me a weapon." She paused for a moment consideringly. "This Ed is that blond boy you were talking to at breakfast? The short one?" she asked. She'd spotted them talking, keeping an eye on her allies as much as she could. A soft smile graced her lips. "Another adoption, ne Renji?"
It was rather cute, really.
The news about what would be happening tonight wasn't reassuring though. If something happened to one of them, then it would leave them scattered. And if any of them were ever brought onto Special Counselling. Well, the very thought made her wince.
She reached out, patting Renji's forearm gently. "You're doing a good job, Renji."
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He nodded, his smile fading back to his normal grouchy non-expression. "Yeah, that kid. Seems like a good kid." He grunted in answer to her last question.
Adoption? What was she talking about? It wasn't like he was assigning himself to being his dad or something.
"You want to know what the fake names for everyone are," Renji said. "Last night they were... torturing people," he refused to call it an experiment, like it had some sort of validity as an act, "the bastard announced the names. But they were the fake names."
When she touched him, he gave her the ghost of a smile. "Thanks." It sure didn't feel like he was doing a good job. Ichigo and Nowe were gone, and nothing he'd done made a difference there.
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She nodded in agreement. "Ah, I have Kuchiki-san's, yours. I should find Claire's and the others." Better to know than to wait and worry, after all.
The news about the torture made her lips tighten in displeasure. You fought and killed to protect, but torture... and to have it passed off as part of the game this doctor was playing... "Some twisted game," she muttered angrily. "Torturing people for fun."
She sighed softly at his reply, grateful to get at least a smile from him, but not entirely satisfied with it. Impulsively she leaned over and wrapped her arms around him, pushing his head against her chest and petting his hair. "Those kids need you. You're making them stronger and giving them something solid to hold onto. It isn't your fault what happened. From what I've said, even General Yamamoto couldn't have prevented what happened."
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"I've got the other names written down... in the notebook thing." Renji sighed. While he had a decent memory, names weren't exactly his strong suit. Especially not western names, which most of these seemed to be. "I'll copy down what I've got and give it to you tomorrow. You'll at least have some more names for people that you can trust..."
And then he was utterly enveloped in one of Ran's famous (infamous?) hugs. As always, he was struck by the curious sense of near-suffocation, but he wasn't about to object. There were few ways a man could die truly happy, and this was definitely one of them.
Ran made a good point - the same point that Rukia had made. And in a weird way, Ran saying it made it penetrate better, made it almost stick. Maybe it was because he didn't have all those hideous emotional complications about her. Or maybe it was because Rukia had already hammered that point home once and Ran had just struck in the final blow.
It was enough that a little of the tension left his shoulders.
"'kay" he mumbled into her breasts.
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She kept on petting his hair, feeling the tension leave his shoulders a little. Most of the time he made everyone forget that he hadn't always been a vice-captain; he was powerful and capable and well respected. But sometimes he made her feel old.
Rangiku sighed then, resting her shin on top of his head, and twirling one of the little braids of hair around her finger absently. "Trust me and Kuchiki-san to help. You don't have to take up all of this responsibility on your own." It was easier said than done, she knew; vice-captains were expected to act alone or under the orders of their captain, not so much as a team. But that was what was needed now.
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"Yeah..." he said.
It felt kind of nice, to be on the receiving end of a hug for once, one where he wasn't trying to be strong for someone, and one where he didn't have to worry about thinking inappropriate things about the person hugging him like he did with Rukia.
"We need to figure out how to get stuff divided up." It felt weird to be thinking about making decisions in a group, but at the same time, he wasn't comfortable ordering either Ran or Rukia around.
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She moved away finally, settling herself comfortably next to him on the sofa, their shoulders just touching, and drawing one knee up beneath her self. "We can sort that tomorrow, if your kids don't turn up this shift," she said. "I'll take care of them tonight while you get yourself a weapon." She sighed softly, clenching her fingers as though round a sword. "I know I'd feel better with a katana in my hands."
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He frowned. "Hopefully they show." Kids weren't known for being reliable. "I'm just tryin' to think of a good meeting point. Something between blocks. If you want to take a stab at the second floor, maybe the stairway rigth there..." he didn't have his journal with him, so he got up for a moment to steal a piece of paper from the bulletin board.
He drew a quick, rough sketch of what he knew of the first floor - the places they had been, where the doctor's offices were, and the stairways. He did a second sketch of what little he knew of the second floor - only one hall in detail, all the rooms marked, and then the existence of the next hall, as well as the stairways he knew of. "It's probably a safe guess that the layout upstairs is somethin' like down here, so there should be two more halls. This is the one where the... thing attacked us before. Which was right after we dispatched a small group of other... uh... things." He rubbed his chin. "So it's makin' me wonder if there's something interesting down here."
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She sat up more straight when Renji stood, watching him as he went to grab some paper. She peered at the rough map with interest. "Seems a good bet," she replied musingly. "Why put something very strong where there's nothing to be guarded." Even if this were a game, it made sense to be cautious and not let the pawns get too close to something important.
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"Yeah," he agreed. "Just be real cautious. The smaller monsters are cake. But it's like this place only has two settings - easy or invincible. The only one I've run across so far is the metal pyramid thing, but there might be other real nasty shit that I just haven't been unlucky enough to find yet." He frowned. "Hate to say it, but at least tonight we don't gotta worry about running up against other patients."
He hated to ask, but he did anyway, because he needed to know. "Is the someone you're getting your knife from Ichimaru?" His tone was notably devoid of anger; at this point, he was curious. And he was still trying to figure out everything that Ichimaru had told him.
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Metal pyramid thing? Must be one of those things you needed to see to understand. If it had caused so much damage though, she'd rather not come into contact with it. She gave a solemn nod. "If they have us here, then who knows what kind of powers the other patients have. And the idea that they could use any of us like that is not reassuring." Any of them would be enough to cause serious damage to anyone who came up against them.
Rangiku sighed softly at his question. She'd known it would have to come sometime though, was surprised that Kuchiki hadn't asked earlier, to be honest. "Yes," she replied simply, returning his flat look with one of her own. Pretending otherwise wouldn't do them any good.
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He nodded. "One of the kids told me it might be possible to snap patients out of it if you can bring up something personal and important enough, like a memory. But... that doesn't really help us a whole hell of a lot." Because really, if one of the Shinigami were in that state, their opponents would be down before anyone had a chance to speak, pretty much.
He didn't so much as twitch at her answer. "Then do me a favor and see if you can find out where he got it. He's only got two hands, and there's plenty could put a knife to good use that are getting by with nothing." Considering the way things seemed to regenerate themselves over night, there was really no reason for any source to be guarded jealously.
...unless Ichimaru just wanted to be a bastard. But Renji was slowly forcing himself to believe that the man had a reasonable streak. They just had different ideas about what constituted reasonable.
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Well, it was good to know that there was at least something to break people out of this brainwashing, but she had to agree; with the amount of power that any one of them would have access to under Special Counselling, it would likely prove a moot point. "It's something to consider though," she said. "If we can get through to one of them, or if they could slow one of us down, even for a second." It might give them enough time to put a few more feet between them.
His reaction to her admission took her a little by surprise, she had to admit. Hadn't he been the one who had attacked Gin on sight only the previous day? Not that she was complaining. She nodded. "I'll see what I can do. He's ah... a little wary that one of us might try to kill him if he tells us where he got them from." There was a note of curiosity in her voice which she couldn't quite hide. Whhat was this sudden lack of animosity.
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But the Special Counseling thing. "If it could work, somehow... imagine what one of us could do to this place, then." He imagined releasing Zabimaru to his bankai in these walls. It would be worth whatever pain came from it.
"Ask him again, now," Renji said. "Besides, the knives wouldn't be for me. Unless he intends to go around scaring the children..." He shrugged. He felt uncomfortable talking about this. It still didn't make sense to him. "He knows that unless he goes near Rukia, there will be no problem with me."
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Now that was a nice thought. "If it worked, then any one of us could do enough damage to get people out or find the man behind this." He had to be hiding somewhere in the building, and a few strategically broken walls wouldn't take too much effort.
She nodded at his request, wondering what had happened that would apparently make Gin change his mind. "I'll ask, I promise," she said. "If he knows he's not being hunted, it might be easier." All she could do was try, after all. "You talked with him?" she asked, raising an eyebrow curiously.
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"We can find the man behind this," Renji said, keeping his voice low. "Yesterday before you got here, he was in the chapel. I was there too. I looked at his spirit thread. I could find it again." He shrugged. "But right now, it's pointless until we're armed and have a force put together. Several people tried to attack him in the chapel." He shook his head. "What will give us a chance is numbers, coordination..." He frowned. "Only a few people know this. Don't tell anyone else. If nothing else, when people are taken for Special Counseling, they may be interrogated. If they don't know we can look at spirit threads, we need to keep it as an advantage."
Back to the subject of Gin. He shrugged, a grunt the only answer to Rangiku's question. "He knows I'm not hunting him any more."
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