spira_rp | It's hard to find true equilibrium.

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It's hard to find true equilibrium.

Lindblum was, in Lumi's opinion, a singularly awful city.

Built atop a mountain, or possibly a cliff, it bore the sort of architecture that made it amply clear that it had been added to over time, that it had started off much smaller and had grown, almost organically, outwards and then upwards, like a particularly unpleasant fungus of mismatched brick and tile all contained within the immense castle's fortified walls.

Lumi's nose had wrinkled as they made the approach to the Falcon's Gate via airship. Even from a distance he could see that, without more space for the city to crawl beyond the walls, as most seemed to when they outgrew a castle's ramparts, it had just gotten ... taller. Idly, he had wondered how it would fare in the event of an earthquake.

Once the airship had docked and he and Marluxia had disembarked, he decided that the city was even worse than it had looked from their approach. The winding streets and irregular buildings did little but compound the fact that the city was not purpose-built. Some of the houses leaned like drunkards and some of them had larger, over-hanging upper floors, as though they had been added to at a later date by a less skilled builder. It looked disorganised, ramshackle and untidy.

With any luck, they wouldn't be there long.

They were in the city on a mission, or, at least, a favour. In deference to the alliance he had made with the most recently recruited of his old ... "colleagues", Marluxia had agreed to make a trip to Even's old home to pick up some items that he hadn't thought to bring with him on his would-be temporary relocation to Daguerreo. It wasn't safe for him to go himself, on any front, and Marluxia had the freedom of movement accorded to an established and voluntarily joined member of Clan Khamja.

Lumi stood in the street outside the Air Cab station, a frown on his face at the feel of the uneven cobbled floor under the soles of his shoes. It was a warm day, but it was growing clear that Summer was on its way out in this part of the world. The breeze that blew down the street carried upon it the scent of woodsmoke, hanging baskets and the promise of rain. It was, despite the pleasant day, cool enough to make Lumi stiffen where he stood. He scowled, looking up. The sky was, at least, still blue, though grey clouds were visible in the distance.

He looked to Marluxia for direction. It was he who had the address of Even's old residence.

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Even watched.

As Szayel attempted to remove the bullet, Lumi started to struggle. The drug he had been given wasn't enough to dull the pain significantly, but it would do its job later on. With any luck, he wouldn't remember this at all.

He stood, thinking it fortunate that Szayel had the infirmary equipped with Arrancar-grade restraints when he felt Lumi's Chakra surge. He didn't know if it was a full loss of control or partial, but either way, the sudden force of it was enough to exert a sort of pressure on him the like of which he'd never felt. It was like being under an opposing magnet, enough to knock the breath from him.

Through it all, he heard him cry out. It was wordless, but pained, entirely unlike his speaking voice. There was none of the cool softness he associated with him in that sound.

Edited 2016-05-19 00:18 (UTC)

Marluxia watched Szayel begin to work, his eyes flickering over the restraints on Lumi unhappily. He understood why Szayel would insist on their use, but he'd have preferred not to have to strap Lumi down. He was vulnerable enough with his injury, and doing this would only render him helpless, a state which, if Marluxia knew Lumi even half as well as he thought he might, Lumi would respond to badly.

The restraints were padded at least, so Lumi was unlikely to injure himself further.

He felt Lumi's chakra flare, the sudden, inescapable sense of Lumi's raw power filling the room and pressing down on them. Marluxia was more accustomed to Lumi's chakra signature than most, but he'd never experienced this intensity, and he didn't actually believe this was it at full force, either. This was neglecting to control it, rather than deliberately flashing it.

He still swallowed hard, having to hold his breath for a moment as the sensation washed over him.

The noise was the worst thing. Lumi never sounded like that, but Marluxia's expression remained stony and concentrated.

Szayel grimaced as Lumi's chakra flared. Reiatsu of that intensity was physically painful to work under, and Szayel hadn't had prior opportunity to study Lumi and render himself less vulnerable. He hissed through his teeth as he worked the forceps in a little deeper, finally managing to get a successful grip on the bullet.

Breathing was hard. Szayel didn't even have his mask out to take the edge off his suffering. "Yevon ymsekrdo," he hissed through gritted teeth as he pulled the bullet free.

He wasn't sure how much longer he'd stay on his feet, and his arm felt like lead as he dropped the offending bullet into the kidney dish and backed up sharply away from Lumi, bringing his mask fragment out as he did. Then he fought to catch his breath again.

Well. That was interesting data.

In the past, Lumi fought as he heard the faint hiss of the autoinjector and felt the sharp scratch of the needle in his skin. He started to succumb to the effects of the tranquilliser.

It came on quickly, first taking from him the intensity of his movements, then the ability to do so altogether. He felt his muscles relax slightly, his breathing slow and then he was left with nothing but a profound, aching sense of loss as unconsciousness claimed him.

In the present, he ceased to fight and struggle once the bullet had been extracted. His Chakra settled almost immediately in the aftermath.

He lay there, quiet save for the gradual slowing of his dry and ragged breathing. What had been laboured, heaving breaths gave way to a deeper, quieter rhythm as his pulse slowed back to a steady normal. A sheen of sweat was visible on his pale skin and blood still oozed from the wound. His eyes, though closed, were wet, with the tracks of tears running from the corners into his hair.

It didn't surprise Even to see Szayel immediately summon his Mask to offset the effect that Lumi's Chakra had had on him.

Szayel was, as he said, weaker than the three of them and, as such, had lower defences against comparatively higher Chakra concentrations. He was, nonetheless, slightly impressed by his dedication to his job. Most would have done that prior to finishing the job, for safety's sake.

He eyed Lumi from his position, almost surprised at how quickly he had calmed down.

Marluxia watched Lumi for a moment, his expression unchanged from the moment Szayel had started the extraction. Lumi was breathing easier, but it was hard to miss the sheen of sweat, or the track of tears. Marluxia wasn't one to offer comfort, and Lumi wasn't the type to take it, but Marluxia watched him for a moment longer than was necessary to determine that he was settling down again.

When he moved, he made his way around the bed and picked up the kidney dish, with the offending bullet inside. It was red and bloody, with traces of Lumi's flesh still clinging to it. Szayel couldn't be permitted to keep that.

Szayel took a deep breath, feeling better now he had his mask out. All three of the Ryoka were good at keeping their reiatsu in check, but he still felt a little better to have some Hollow back up when he was alone in a room with them.

He retrieved a stethoscope, and walked back up to his patient with renewed confidence, eyeing Marluxia as he examined the bullet. He wanted to keep that, of course, not just for the valuable sample data it represented, and precisely because of that data, he didn't expect he'd be allowed to keep it.

"You can unrestrain him once I've put a cannula in," he said, without looking at Marluxia. He didn't want to try and fight Lumi about having that done, either, and he didn't leave it up to choice. "You seem to be wearing a lot of his blood; I want him on a drip." He put the stethoscope over Lumi's chest, listening to his lungs, making sure there was no fluid, or partial collapse, or puncturing.

He felt his pulse, too, at his wrist, and his neck, and then lifted Lumi's lip to check the colour of his gums. It was hard to miss the slightly elongated canines, too.

The reappearance of the Ryoka's reiatsu hadn't gone unnoticed, but Nel hadn't thought much of it until Grimmjow had mentioned that Marluxia had been carrying Lumi in the direction of the infirmary.

There had been blood in the hall when she'd gone out to take a look. As the resident white mage, she played nurse to Szayel's doctor. He did the assessment and procedures, and she helped with post procedural healing. She also knew how to dress wounds, which instruments were which, and could assess and diagnose most minor injuries without anyone having to bother Szayel, which meant that really, she did more nursing than Szayel did doctoring.

She'd started walking down to the infirmary when she felt a chakra surge, one she hadn't felt before. It had died away again before she'd got there, and she swung the door open to find Marluxia, covered in blood and looking serious, and Even, looking just as serious.

Szayel meanwhile, was examining Lumi, who was restrained to the bed, and looked to be thoroughly out of it.

"What happened?" She asked, her eyes wide. Lumi was not someone you expected to get hurt.

Even looked up as Nel entered.

He hadn't felt her approach. Usually he would have, her Reiatsu, suppressed or not, was one he was familiar enough with to pick out of the mess of signatures in the Palace with ease under ordinary circumstances, but all he could feel at the moment was those of the people in the room with him, both Lumi's and the compensation effect of the others.

It didn't surprise him that Nel had come running. She was a particularly good white mage, excellent at healing. If there was a medical emergency, it made sense for her to back her fellow Arrancar up.

"He's been shot," Even said, before adding: "With a magic bullet."

Edited 2016-05-19 11:26 (UTC)

Lumi didn't move as Szayel checked his pulse.

Instead he lay there, still, some of the tension that had been in him gone. The drug wasn't there to knock him out, just kill the pain. His sleep was his own, an effect of the exhaustion and weakness to the Elemental magic infused into the bullet.

Due to bad luck, or poor timing, Lumi opened his eyes, his pupils round rather than slitted.

The room seemed too white, impossibly bright, wide as Lumi's pupils were. The haze of the drug fogged his mind and the lingering shreds of memory pulled at his perception, as though he was waking from a nightmare. All he could think of was the restraints that held him in place, that he wasn't supposed to be there, that he had to get out, to find...

It took a fraction of a second from when he had opened his eyes for Lumi to realise that there was something at his mouth, something that was warm, not a mask.

He turned his head, not much, but enough to allow him to catch Szayel's hand between his teeth. He caught the knuckle of the first digit and the flesh between his finger and thumb and bit down with a snarl.

Szayel wasn't paying much attention to the fact that Lumi was waking up, slowly, or not so slowly. The sedative could be like that, Lumi would probably be incoherent for another few minutes before he came round properly, and then someone, Marluxia, would have to explain exactly what had just happened. Until then, he could stay restrained until Lumi was satisfied he didn't need to poke at him further. What he didn't need was an agitated patient ripping a cannula from his arm; Lumi had already lost enough blood if the paleness of his gums was any indication.

The movement was quick, and at first Szayel didn't register any pain. Then he did, and he drew in a sharp breath. Lumi's teeth were very sharp, he realised. It was probably lucky he had his mask fragment out or he'd have to do some reconstructive work, with his off hand.

"Off!" He shouted, eyes wide, preparing to hit Lumi round the face. He wasn't sure he wanted to take the risk that Lumi, with his enhanced strength, and sharp teeth, could bite through hierro, and he channeled his chakra to strengthen it in his hand.

Marluxia's attention was caught by the movement, and Szayel's intake of breath. He dropped the kidney dish, reacting quickly to catch Szayel's free wrist in his hand and shoot him a look that threatened instant and brief retribution if he followed through on that movement.

Lumi's pupils were blown, he saw. He probably couldn't see, probably wasn't really looking at what he could see. "Lumi," he said, his voice low, and steady, and firm. He needed to get Lumi to focus for a moment; right now he was reacting as anyone with Lumi's strength would when waking up to find themselves injured, restrained, and being poked by the likes of Szayel.

"Lumi," he repeated, getting close and trying to meet Lumi's eyes with his own, trying to get Lumi to look at him and recognise where he was. "Let go, Lumi."

"Shot?" Nel repeated. She didn't get to follow up on that question, or her thoughts that followed it however, because suddenly Szayel's chakra was flaring and spiking and it was obvious he was being bitten.

She rushed over to the bed, leaning across Lumi, and then stopped at Marluxia's reaction. She didn't expect that to work, no matter how close they were, not if Szayel had sedated him with what she expected he had. Then again, Lumi was a Ryoka, and they might not react in quite the same way.

But she didn't want this to become an outright brawl, so she let Marluxia try and talk sense into him first.

Even got to his feet when he heard the dish fall.

He watched as Lumi clamped his teeth around Szayel's hand and looked on in mild horror as he heard the decidedly inhuman sound he made as he refused to let go.

He took a step forward when Nel moved to help, but stopped when she did.

Surely Marluxia wasn't so foolish as to think that he would be able to snap him out of this drug-induced fit of madness.

Lumi sustained his snarl, drawing a breath inwards with a vicious rasping noise when he ran out of air. He bit down harder on the offending hand between his teeth, his Chakra flaring. Something cracked.

The stark brightness of the room consumed everything, though he heard movement, indistinct and loud, around him. The walls and ceiling were bright white, there was a gleam of light off silver, glowing strips above... and a flash of blue.

His scowl dropped slightly when he saw it. There was something about that colour, that exact shade, that cut through the brightness of the room and through the fog in his head.

Lumi's pupils contracted, narrowing back to their usual slitted form, and familiar eyes came into focus, the brightness withdrawing. He knew he could trust those eyes, that he wasn't in any danger.

Let go,

Should he? He breathed hard around the hand he was biting, no longer snarling, trying to take in the request, convincing himself that it was what he should do, that it was right, all right.

Gradually, he relaxed the pressure of his jaw, almost as if he'd forgotten what he was doing.

Lumi's eyes had returned to normal, and Marluxia nodded. He didn't break eye contact with Lumi, saying, "Thank you. That can't have tasted pleasant."

He seemed to be calming down, and drifting back to the unfortunate reality of being injured and in the infirmary. He had Szayel's blood in his mouth, and Marluxia had been able to hear the crack, and somehow he didn't think that was Lumi's teeth that had broken.

He put one hand on the top of Lumi's shoulder before he sighed, and straightened to look at the others.

Szayel forced himself to retrieve his injured hand slowly, even though every instinct was to snatch it away. He gritted his teeth and cradled it in his other hand, but didn't take his eyes off Marluxia.

So, even with Lumi in a drug induced state of incoherent agitation, Marluxia was able to control him with little more than a word. That was interesting information.

He turned without a word to take himself to the sink, tearing the glove off his injured hand quickly. It was broken, and bleeding, and right now it throbbed horribly. He held his arm by the wrist and kept his hand under the water, rinsing the wound where Lumi's teeth had broken the skin with a hiss.

Nel threw a glance at Even when it became clear that Lumi was actually letting Szayel go. That was an unexpected, and slightly frightening, development. She'd seen people in that kind of confused, defensive frame of mind before. She'd heard of someone biting a finger off another healer, and having to be shot with so much muscle relaxant it could topple Nnoitra.

She hadn't seen someone be talked down from that state before.

She only met Marluxia's eyes for a brief second before she went to attend to Szayel.

"Let me see," she said, reaching for his injured hand.

Lumi kept his eyes on Marluxia even as he stood up.

He wasn't himself, that much was obvious in the way he pulled weakly at his wrist restraints with a soft and nearly plaintive sound, but he was calmer, and much less likely to bite somebody again.

Even returned Nel's look, his own halfway between surprise and mild concern. That sort of control wasn't at all common short of Beastmasters and he certainly didn't expect it of Marluxia, let alone Lumi. Marluxia hadn't known Lumi for near as long as he had known all of the Nobodies, and yet he managed that?

He shook his head and sat back down in the seat he had left, giving Marluxia a questioning look that bordered, ever so slightly, on suspicious.

Szayel glowered at Nel, his voice peevish and lip curled as he snapped, "I can deal with it." He had his mask fragment out, his hand was broken, and he'd been badly bitten, but frankly he'd attended to much worse injuries, and that was on other people. On himself, between his research, and his Hollow, he had.... ways.

"Go and put a cannula in him," he said, turning away from Nel and waving his uninjured hand in Lumi's direction. "He'll need fluids and antibiotics, and a decent cure spell. I can see to myself."

Nel put her hands on her hips and looked at Szayel, flatly. She considered pulling rank, since she was within her rights, but, well... The infirmary was Szayel's domain, and he didn't want her to look at his wound, she wasn't about to force him.

"Don't take that tone of voice with me," she warned him, before she turned away to go and pick out an intravaneous needle and cannula. Lumi had lost a lot of blood, and he wasn't exactly bouncing back now that the bullet had been removed.

She threw Marluxia a glance when she approached Lumi once more, saying, "I hope he doesn't try to bite me." She, unlike Szayel, didn't have her mask fragment out. She didn't feel as though she needed it.

She hoped that would continue to be the case.

Marluxia caught the look on Vexen's face, but his expression remained utterly unreadable in response. It had been a small gamble, as far as Marluxia was concerned, but in betting that he might be able to reassure Lumi when Lumi trusted him enough to actually sleep in his presence, over the potential loss of Szayel's fingers, against the risk that striking Lumi in any way to make him let go would only make the situation worse, he hadn't seen how he personally could be on the losing side of any of the outcomes.

At worst, it wouldn't work and they had to sedate Lumi further. Marluxia lost nothing.

"He shouldn't," he said to Nel, looking back at Lumi and meeting his eyes again for a moment before he murmured thoughtfully. "Can we remove these restraints now? I don't think they're making the situation better."

Even wondered how wise a course of action removing the restraints really was.

On the one hand, they seemed to directly distress him. He obviously objected, whether knowingly or unknowingly, to being bound. This resistance seemed to calm in Marluxia's presence, whatever that meant, but it still obviously made him uncomfortable. He wondered if it was a vulnerability thing. Everything he'd seen since he'd lost it had suggested a curiously animal-like behaviour pattern, so he could only surmise that Lumi's response to being strapped down was part of a heightened fight or flight reflex.

On the other, could he be trusted not to act like that unrestrained, if he slipped out of consciousness again? His weakened state left him unable to fight his bonds to normal capacity and the magic in the bullet had affected his Chakra enough that even a blast of it hadn't quite been enough to floor Szayel, though it had been a close-run thing, but it didn't make him safe, not if he came to with that level of distress a second time.

It was a gamble, but Marluxia obviously thought it better to err in the direction of Lumi's comfort. Did he really trust himself to be able to head off another potential disaster like that one? Did he trust Lumi that far?

"Uh," Nel made a noise of obvious reluctance and hesitation as she looked Lumi over. He still looked out of it. Calm, but out of it. "Better to ask the doctor on that one." Szayel was the one that had been bitten, and he was the one in charge of treatment.

Nel swabbed the inside of Lumi's elbow before she pulled a strap around Lumi's upper arm. "Sorry about this," she said, reflexively, and she wasn't sure if she was addressing Lumi, or Marluxia with that comment. The tourniquet tended to pinch, and she didn't really want Lumi trying to pull away from her while she was messing about his veins with a needle, so she checked to make sure he was staying very still before she went any further.

It's hard to find true equilibrium.

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