It's hard to find true equilibrium.

[thesilentstorm]

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.

Comments

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi suspected that he still wasn't fully with it, or else something was wrong, because unless he was completely mistaken, nothing about what Marluxia said about Xigbar's abilities made any sense at all. He shot him from another room? Because he can manipulate ... space?

He scowled, but shook it off, making a mental note to ask about that again later, when he didn't hurt from head to toe and when he hadn't just woken up. He couldn't quite work out why he ached all over. Every muscle hurt like one recently introduced to more exercise than they had been in recent weeks.

So, Szayel had worked on him. That wasn't much of a surprise, not given his profession when it came to medical procedures.

"Because of the magic?" He asked of the bullet. He knew procedure for bullet removal as well as anybody.

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia murmured his confirmation. "It was damaging your chakra, your reiatsu was much weaker than usual." He flashed Lumi a small, faint smile, telling him, "You let your reiatsu control go while Szayel was extracting it, and he managed to stay on his feet." Which was a demonstration of how much it had weakened Lumi.

If Lumi let his reiatsu control slip on a normal day, someone like Szayel wouldn't be able to breath, let alone stay stood upright.

"Admittedly, he struggled, but nonetheless." He met Lumi's eyes again, something clearly on his mind. "He'd sedated you, but I wouldn't let him anaesthetise you into unconsciousness. Unfortunately, he was adamant you be restrained. It may have been a wise decision on his part; you bit him for his troubles."

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi nodded. A Fire elemental bullet damaging his Chakra did make sense. While he was predominantly Non-Elemental, he did have a lower-density Ice subtype, something he struggled to control due to his lack of skill with Elemental magic, and that he kept more heavily suppressed owing to his difficulty channelling it into anything useful. Regardless of that, it would give him the weakness to Fire that all Ice elementals suffered.

"I bit him?" He asked, eyebrows rising along with the pitch of his voice.

He didn't recall doing it, but it did make some sense. He had tasted the faint coppery tang of blood on his lips when he'd run his tongue over them since waking up. He had thought it his own, but apparently that wasn't the case.

"At least it wasn't you," he said, crinkled his nose in disgust. Szayel, of all people.

[gracefuldahlia]

"Actually," Marluxia said, his voice quiet, as he looked Lumi in the eyes again, "you let go when I told you to."

It had raised questions. A lot of questions, including why, but if Lumi didn't even remember having done it at all, he probably wouldn't be able to give answer to his reasoning at the time.

"I'd prefer if you didn't attempt to bite him again, in any case," Marluxia said, with a faint smile. "One evening in the infirmary keeping him from doing whatever he does when no one's looking is quite enough without you willingly endangering your health that way."

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi held Marluxia's gaze for a long moment, mild confusion on his face. There were a few explanations as to why he might have listened to Marluxia, but it obviously seemed unusual enough that he saw fit to mention it. Perhaps it worried him.

"I'm sure I'll manage that," he said, the bridge of his nose still wrinkled in disgust.

He had never wanted any part of Szayel in his mouth and he was, quite frankly, rather glad that he didn't remember it at all. The mere notion was disgusting, not to mention slightly humiliating, especially given the circumstances.

"Let's hope I don't catch anything," he said. "I'm usually extremely resistant, even when I've bitten people, rare as that is, but you can never be sure on a strange world."

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia allowed himself a smirk and raised an eyebrow at Lumi. "You've bitten someone before, then." He knew Lumi was strong, and coldly analytical, so the fact that he'd use whatever he had available as a weapon wasn't a surprise.

It was more the fact that he'd been in a position to be resorting to biting before now.

"I don't expect Szayel will be in any great hurry to put his fingers in your mouth again regardless. You broke his hand." If Szayel hadn't been an Arrancar he'd have lost fingers.

[thesilentstorm]

"Mmmn," he said. "I don't like to, but it's a useful last resort. Usually when shooting my way out of a situation has failed to work effectively enough. That must be why I came here with the Berserker class."

It made sense. Spira was an odd world to end up on, but the Ryoka seemed to have been given the classes and abilities that suited them upon arrival. Lumi, being from a world with no magic at all, had arrived with all physical classes and had been gifted with uncommon proficiency in many of the Spiran languages. This fell in line with the skill he had in that area beforehand. Marluxia had arrived with a mixture of physical and magical classes more suited to his origins and a strange plant-based communication ability that Lumi didn't fully understand, but knew to be typically limited to a species that Marluxia certainly didn't belong to.

"I must have bitten him hard, in any case," he said, giving a snort that could easily be the closest he ever got to a laugh. "I thought Arrancar were supposed to have superior defensive capabilities?"

[gracefuldahlia]

"They are ranked by strength," Marluxia commented, reasonably. Szayel was among the lower ranks of the Arrancar, which, for Marluxia's experience with scientists, very much rang true. Whether that was their strength in their masked form, or their full released forms, Marluxia wasn't sure. He hadn't encountered the latter in person to say.

"He intended on hitting you," Marluxia added, with more than a touch of amusement, because the very idea was amusing. "I don't imagine that would have gone well for him." Even if Marluxia hadn't been prepared to ruin Szayel's day himself.

[thesilentstorm]

"Probably not," he agreed. "Assuming it was a berserk state, that course of action would likely have resulted in a rush of Chakra and a chunk bitten out of his hand, Arrancar or not."

He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, surprised that a room in such an old building was lit with relatively modern strip lights. They weren't all on, it was too dull for that, probably because it was deemed too impolite to keep them on brightly with a patient trying to sleep, but some were.

"Am I allowed to sit up?" He asked, after a moment. "I feel foolish lying here."

[sipthehoneylikeabutterfly]

Szayel sashayed through the doors with a cup of coffee in his hand. He was one of the early risers in the Palace, and tended to make his presence felt as an infuriating morning person, before finally making himself scarce once most of the Palace had been afflicted.

He'd deny it was a conscious decision, but mornings, and the kitchen, was a good combination of time and location to both catch up on and spread gossip.

There'd been a lot of gossip. Mostly about Marluxia and Lumi. The fact that Lumi had been severely injured was news that had got around by now.

Szayel eyed the pair as he entered his own infirmary, taking a sip of his coffee before he commented, "You're awake and conscious, then." His eyes ran over Marluxia, almost pointedly. He'd stayed the whole night, that much was obvious. He didn't look to have slept much, either.

"You needn't have stayed all night."

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia prepared to reply, and stopped when Szayel's impending presence became apparent. A moment later, he waltzed through the doors of the infirmary, bringing with him the scent of coffee.

Marluxia watched him like one of his Malboros watched anyone venturing towards attacking range, not about to pounce, but with the very real possibility that a wrong step would result in his unhappiness, and all the consequences that brought.

"You needn't have passed this room at two this morning," Marluxia answered. He hadn't come in, but he'd been around, and Marluxia could feel him.

"How is your hand, by the way?" Marluxia kept his tone and expression casual, but the words contained plenty of reminders that a warning might not be far off.

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi turned his attention to Szayel when the door opened. His expression, relaxed a moment before he heard the doors, fell flat. Szayel may have saved him from the longterm damage of the bullet's magical effects, but he still loathed him, and it showed.

Curiously, he didn't detect Szayel's typical signature before he arrived. That meant that his sense for even suppressed Reiatsu was still a little out, probably as a result of Chakra damage, he thought. His usual senses seemed to be working just fine, though. He smelled Szayel the moment he entered the room, although that was largely masked by the bitter aroma of the coffee he was carrying.

"Mmmn," he murmured in answer to the statement Szayel made in regards to his condition.

[sipthehoneylikeabutterfly]

"It was nothing I couldn't heal," Szayel replied, holding his hand up so Marluxia, and by extension Lumi, could see the unmarred skin on the back of his hand. "Still," he said, "that was impressive bite force to break through my hierro."

Very sharp teeth, he thought. Lumi really was more of an animal, in many ways.

He moved down the side of the bed, the opposite to Marluxia, and cast a critical eye over Lumi that contained a hint of an unpleasant smile. "You hide the ice sub-type well," he commented, after a moment, moving to squeeze a lever at the head of the bed and lift the end up so Lumi was a little more upright. "I doubt your assailant knew of the associated weakness to fire. Was it an opportunistic shot, or did you deliberately take the bullet for Marluxia?"

That had to be who it had been originally intended for, or at least, whose weaknesses it was intended to exploit. Marluxia wore his element on his sleeve, much as Even did.

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia watched Szayel with a carefully composed expression. He disliked the man intensely, and would, under other circumstances, have allowed Lumi to continue mauling his hand yesterday. He'd have allowed him to maul rather more than his hand, given the opportunity, too.

Unfortunately, Lumi rather needed his help. But that was yesterday, and the reasons to remain diplomatic to any degree in Szayel's presence were now diminishing by the hour.

[thesilentstorm]

"It was opportunistic," he replied, gritting his teeth in mild discomfort as the bed moved under him. "He took a blind shot at where he thought an associate of Marluxia's would have been waiting for him. It connected."

He didn't even entertain the idea of going into the details of the strange circumstances of the shot, nor how it had caught him. It was enough of a blur to confuse itself even in his memory of the event and Marluxia's explanation hadn't shed much light on the situation, either. It still didn't make sense to him.

[sipthehoneylikeabutterfly]

"Really?" Szayel replied. He wasn't sure if he believed it, but he also saw no reason for Lumi to pretend he'd been felled by a lucky potshot.

"Well," he said, putting his coffee down at last and retrieving gloves from a box by the bed, "it was a stroke of luck on your part that it landed where it did, then." He pulled the gloves on before he detached the drip in Lumi's arm. "It struck bone," he commented, "and I daresay you'll have difficulty with the arm for a while," how long 'a while' was depended entirely on Lumi's own healing factor, if he had one. Szayel hadn't been allowed to investigate. "But you escaped major injury."

He eyed Lumi, and then Marluxia. It was a very lucky shot, for them, for one that had been fired blind and hadn't been deliberately taken by Lumi.

"That said, in my experience with guns, and gunners," more extensive than one usually expected of Szayel, but he had grown up in Home, where guns were much more prevalent than magic, "blind shots don't usually connect at all."

[gracefuldahlia]

"You'll find this one to be outside the realms of your experience," Marluxia said, his voice level, and he held Szayel's eyes as he spoke.

The infuriating thing was that Xigbar wasn't necessarily a good shot. Marluxia expected he was, but he certainly didn't need to be. He probably wasn't a better shot than Lumi, or any other gunner on Spira for that matter, but Xigbar could manipulate the chances of his bullet finding its target in ways Marluxia expected no one else on Spira could.

"Can we leave?" He asked, changing the subject. 'We', and not 'I', because he wasn't about to leave Lumi here with Szayel around, and especially not with restraints and a lingering direct line into his bloodstream.

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi nodded at Szayel's assessment. He saw no need for argument. Blind shots rarely yielded productive results unless they were one in a number fired at roughly the same time or in quick succession. Scattering bullets without looking was quite likely to result in a hit, but one stray shot had far lower chances. Xigbar had fired one, so he'd gotten lucky, in his eyes.

He raised the shoulder on the injured side and made a small noise, little more than a hiss, of pain at the movement. He healed quickly, a bullet wound would usually be over and done with in a matter of days or weeks depending on the location, but this one was awkward. He knew that it was a myth that shoulder-shots were safe and quick to recover from, there were too many nerves and muscles and bones for it to be as easy as that, and that's if the shot managed not to be so low as to hit the lung.

Lumi knew that, for the next two months at least, he was going to struggle with mobility in that arm. The wound itself would likely heal fast enough, but the internal damage would require more extensive repair. He wondered if that could be sped up with the aid of potions or cure spells.

He looked from Marluxia to Szayel at the former's request. He wanted to leave. He didn't like the infirmary at all. It made him feel nearly vulnerable with how open it was. On top of it, he knew how he looked. The wound may have been cleaned, but he still saw that his hair was discoloured from smoke and blood and he needed a shower, or possibly a bath. More than that, he was hungry and thirsty. His mouth felt dry, his throat more so, and he couldn't ignore the empty feeling that came with an extended stretch without food.

[sipthehoneylikeabutterfly]

Szayel looked at Marluxia, refusing to be cowed by the unsubtle sense of authority he was projecting. It was almost cute that he was coming across as aloof and severe, despite knowing that Szayel worked under Aizen, and was thus, very used to aloof and severe members of Khamja.

"I want to run a couple of tests," he said, turning his attention to Lumi, "and I'd prefer you took a short course of antibiotics. You'll need a course of potions, and ethers for the chakra damage," Lumi's wasn't at its usual level, and it might need help to recover. "Needless to say, I advise against taking on any field assignments for the time being."

He shrugged, then. "The tests I want to run require a blood sample," he said, his gaze turning almost pointedly to Marluxia. There was an unvoiced question in his tone. The bullet he'd extracted yesterday had vanished, complete with the tissue samples adhered to it. Szayel suspected he knew exactly where that had gone.

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia didn't like the idea of Szayel taking blood from Lumi. He liked it about as much as he'd liked the idea of Szayel keeping a blood and tissue covered bullet from Lumi's wound, and by extension, Xigbar's gun. It hadn't been Sharpshooter, or any permutation thereof, or it wouldn't have fired, or left, an elemental bullet behind, but Marluxia still disliked the idea.

It wasn't for Xigbar's protection either, and it wasn't wholly for Lumi's. Szayel was the sort of unfortunately observant scientist that would be among the first to realise that there were some fundamental differences between Lumi and the rest of the Ryoka. In itself, this wasn't a bad thing, but it was information Marluxia would prefer to keep in reserve. For now, Szayel, like the other natives, took 'Ryoka' as a group term, and assumed they had the same origins.

It suited them all that they thought that. If they assumed that, then they assumed certain things about himself and Lumi, too.

"If Lumi agrees," Marluxia replied. "He can make those decisions for himself, now."

He couldn't yesterday, and Marluxia wasn't about to let him be studied.

[thesilentstorm]

"I don't require antibiotics," Lumi said. "The potions and ethers I'll take."

Distrust wasn't behind his refusal of the antibiotics, he just knew that he didn't need them. Lumi owned an uncommonly sophisticated and robust immune system, something that negated a need for anything of that nature to back it up. If it could be compared to anything Szayel may recognise, the use of the word 'crocodilian' wouldn't be much of an exaggeration.

"Why do you require a blood sample?" He asked. "What are the tests for? My health, your boss's records, or your own curiosity?"

He looked at him, eyes narrowed slightly. It wasn't a look of challenge, laughable as that would seem when he was in an infirmary bed, it was merely suspicion of his motives.

[sipthehoneylikeabutterfly]

Szayel made a noise that, from anyone else, would be a thoughtful murmur, and from him, managed to sound slightly lewd, as if he was enjoying the thought a little bit too much. "I won't deny my curiosity is a factor," he admitted, giving Lumi an insouciant smirk, "but you had lost a considerable amount of blood, and my," he paused, looking at the hand Lumi had bitten, and then back at Lumi, "field technique of ascertaining the extent of your haemorrhagic anaemia was interrupted."

He brought his arm across his waist, and rested his other elbow in his palm. "It would also help me check for infection, but I really would strongly advise antibiotics, regardless."

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia regarded Szayel coolly. It was irritating to recognise that Szayel had uses that probably kept him alive, but Marluxia had been forced to recognise them yesterday. Today, however, Szayel was back to being an irritation as usual.

He had questions for Lumi later. Which included questions about his refusal of antibiotics, not that Marluxia blamed him. He also had some explaining to do, he expected. It was time he explained as much about the other Nobodies as he possibly could to Lumi.

[thesilentstorm]

"Ah," Lumi said and then, after a moment, "no. No antibiotics, no blood tests."

Ordinarily, the antibiotics would just be useless to him and the blood tests routine, but Lumi didn't trust Szayel. He didn't trust him not to use it to ascertain the potential weaknesses of Marluxia's attack dog, or to compare it to the rest of them. He was different to the other Ryoka, he didn't want Szayel, of all people, to discover this. It was bad enough that he had identified an elemental weakness in somebody that presented as wholly Non-Elemental, he didn't need the opportunity to create something more directed.

[sipthehoneylikeabutterfly]

Szayel clearly hadn't been expecting an outright 'no'. He stared for a moment, surprise clear on his face, and then he asked, "Why not?"

Perhaps Lumi wasn't aware of how severe his situation had been when he'd been carried to Szayel's infirmary? Though that seemed far-fetched. He was aware enough to know how he felt right now, which was probably awful, and not something he was accustomed to feeling.

"I don't think you realise just how badly injured you were," Szayel began. "Still are," he added, uncrossing his arm and looking irritated. "What I'm suggesting isn't even half what I'd instruct with an ordinary patient. Not even you should expect to simply pluck a bullet out and walk away."