Night 50: Cafeteria

Jul 25, 2010 09:15

[from here]

The dark of the cafeteria took enough time to adjust to against the light and colour of what had occurred in the Sun Room that for a moment Lunge only waited by the door, too cautious to move any further into the room without being fully prepared. It seemed unlikely that two ‘guardians’ would be placed in such close proximity to each ( Read more... )

lunge, yomi, keman, l

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she_is_ruin August 3 2010, 21:11:56 UTC
Things had been going passably, if not well. Her and misfit companions had been discussing the basement, had made it into the Sun Room… And then the opponent lurking there had attacked. Something had been amiss, and the sesshouseki had known as much, but then… Then the bindings pinning her limbs, pulling her down…

She knew she’d been moved, but her memories were a little fuzzy, an effect the stone wasn’t responsible for. And that had pissed Yomi off, once she’d snapped to attention not in the lounge, where she’d been a second before, but in the cafeteria. She’d put an absent hand to her head, disoriented despite her best efforts to gather her wits. That hadn’t been like the nightly blackouts that sent them all back to their beds. Nor had it had seemingly had anything to do with Landel’s ring, since it was still intact, as her searching hand told her.

It had just been… hugely irritating.

More irritating was the radio message that had broadcasted while she’d been making sure everything was in working order. More irritating still was the intercom announcement that followed in its wake as she decided whether or not to check back in on the Sun Room. Its final, ear-splitting whine cut through her head like a hot poker, making her snarl.

If not for the fact that when the two women--speak of the devil--came flying into the cafeteria on the front-end of an energy attack, speaking what was definitely not Japanese, Yomi might not have ever noticed that Landel’s last words had been in English. English. And the big one was speaking a stranger form of English, she thought, while the blonde had replied in… something else. The sudden difficulty in understanding what was being said had her attention over their varying injuries, though the latter was hardly subtle.

Fingertips still pressed to a temple, Yomi just looked at the two of them, blank. What the hell?

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ninelivesonce August 4 2010, 02:40:25 UTC
Teresa thumped down herself, and muttered something Taura didn't catch. "What?" Taura poked her head up over the counter and glanced at her. Wait, what? There was field surgery, and there was reattaching a severed limb. Bits of light were all around -- not just afterimages from the attack, but something like what Hanatarou had done. Healing? Tissue regeneration? Magic? "What's that?"

And then Yomi came stumbling in, with exactly the same sentiment. Well, at least they were in agreement? And they had three again, if Teresa was in any shape to move once she'd finished. Then again -- Hanatarou had had trouble walking, after fixing a bone -- what would reattaching a limb do?

They'd better not count on moving anywhere else. "Are you all right, Yomi?"

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number1smiley August 4 2010, 02:44:56 UTC
Feeling the presence of youma again, Teresa opened her eyes, the normally silver eyes still blazing gold with slit pupils. and searched for the source. She was prepared to fight, even as she was having some difficulty reattaching her arm. But then she identified the feel and saw the youma in question. Hayashi.

"You." Slightly, Teresa relaxed, not much but enough to indicate that she wasn't about to attack the youma in the room. "What happened to you?"

She then glanced at Taura, not understanding her. No matter. She had an arm to reattach.

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she_is_ruin August 4 2010, 04:09:33 UTC
As attention turned to her, she let her hand fall. A headache wasn’t what was bothering her.

Again, Yomi looked from one to the other, then shrugged at Teresa’s question with a shake of her head. At least it sounded like the female had asked a question. Even if Yomi been able to make the words out, however, she doubted she’d be inclined to answer, whatever the case. She took some pleasure out of seeing the other’s body stiff with renewed caution. Teresa looked fierce, but at the moment she was mangled like a chew toy while Yomi was unharmed.

That couldn’t have been nice to realize.

Still, it wasn’t enough to make up for what had happened or this mess of a language barrier she was now dealing with. Before addressing Taura, she leaned back until the small of her back met the edge of a table, not bothering to hide the ill humor in the movement. At least she could partly understand the other one thanks to past grade school classes.

After fixing Taura with a look, Yomi pointed in the direction of the intercom. The thing in the Sun Room might have spirited her off, but it was Landel who was playing them now. Then with the same hand she gestured at her ear and her throat, expecting that would be enough to get the message across. As for the rest… Yomi had to actually think about the words, not being fluent in anything other than Japanese. "You speak English?" she asked Taura in the formal form of English she’d been taught. "Japanese?"

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ninelivesonce August 4 2010, 20:55:57 UTC
"Yeah, English."  Taura nodded, then switched to shaking her head when Yomi continued. "Just English."  It was a stubborn language -- some planets had hung onto others, but English was the language of most in the Nexus.  Even Athos, though perhaps that was more for it's gender neutrality than any pragmatic reasons.  "Did you hear what Landel said?" she asked, speaking slowly and clearly, and then gesturing to the intercom herself.  "I was too busy not getting killed."

Teresa was still struggling with her arm.  Taura wanted to offer to help, even if all she could do was hold the limb steady.  But while she could probably make an offer of assistance clear, actually doing anything useful without a common language was another story, and more hands -- hah! -- might just get in the way.         

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number1smiley August 4 2010, 21:06:59 UTC
Somehow Taura and Hayashi were still able to communicate some, yet Teresa couldn't understand anything other than 'Landel'. She fixed her glowing eyes on them, trying to read their lips. Perhaps she could convert the movements into words.

Or not.

"Do either of you understand me? If so, I need cloth," she finally said. A few seconds later and the fingertips on the severed arm curled in a bit. That should not have taken even a fraction of the time it did and she still couldn't feel the tingle that told her it was attached enough to let go of the limb.

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she_is_ruin August 5 2010, 05:12:25 UTC
To other people--to other creatures--it would probably be a comedic moment: them bumbling through an exchange while one sat in the corner and held a severed arm to a stump, after Yomi had been catapulted into another room. Ridiculous, honestly. That language was even a issue was such a banal human problem.

A problem that Yomi saw no value in trying to tackle in the long-term.

As it was, the sesshouseki’s heavy-handed beating flared up with newfound annoyance as Yomi was resigned to making out English. Nonverbal signs were a much better solution--and part of a language that everyone could understand, from spectre to coddled human. She wasn’t so incapable that she couldn’t get the gist of Taura’s reply, though. And that might just have made her the most flexible of the three of them at the moment.

In a growing game of charades, she pulled the radio from her pocket and gave it a wave. "He’s stopping the talk," she said to Taura. "They can’t talk to everyone now." Whoa, her teachers would be so impressed! Pronouns, negatives, tenses! How amazing was she. To Teresa, she just gave a cock of her head as she straightened from the table and dropped the radio back in her pocket. It wasn’t like the blonde was dying (yet).

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ninelivesonce August 6 2010, 03:16:53 UTC
"Yeah -- yes." They'd established that much. Martin Landel was a sadist obsessed with his technological breakthroughs. On Jackson's Whole they were a dime a dozen. There was an escape plan. Find someone just as bad and get them to go after each other, and slip out in the crossfire. The collateral damage would be inexcusable to anyone not a fellow Jacksonian -- and Taura didn't count herself in that. They'd never given her somewhere to belong.

Teresa needed something. "What?" Taura held out her hands, spread and empty. Then she waggled them. "A hand? Hold something? Medical supplies? Help?" She mimed walking off with one hand, then two hands came walking back? "Can you show me?" It would all be so much untranslated noise, but the sense should get across.

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number1smiley August 6 2010, 03:23:03 UTC
The pantomiming with the radio caught Teresa'a attention, taking note of it. Her attention was more focused on Taura and the woman's clear inability to understand her.

If she was anyone else, except for Irene, Teresa would have rolled her eyes. Instead she sighed, golden glowing eyes narrowing to slits in irritation as the fingers on her left hand continued to slowly twitch. She couldn't let go of the limb yet, so she took her own thumb between her teeth then tugged on the tattered sleeve of her shirt to convey that she needed cloth.

Once done, she returned to holding the limb and focusing her youki.

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