Navian
Inactive Member
Zenjinkaze Fighting School, South Bird Dormitory
Night time in the south dorm was usually quiet. Given it's low population, it didn't have as much hustle and bustle as other dorms. The room of the lizard and Nepleslian was usually quite warm, with a soft red light, but tonight, that light had gone out.
Zoia, being her cold-blooded self, groaned a little, and looked around the room to try and find something... Anything that was warm. The faint heat lines she could pick up in the dark drew her over to her roommates' bed. She pushed her muzzle under the blanket, and slowly crawled up onto the other mattress, laying against the unconscious form of her roommate.
For a few precious moments, Sarena remained oblivious, but she gradually began to stir. At first, she tried to shuffle away from the intruder, but found it difficult to move. Besides, the bed didn't have room for two. Next, she developed a frown as the temperature on one side of her became uncomfortably cool. When she tried to turn to that side, and pull the blankets around her to rectify the matter, she found herself face-to-face with her roommate, at uncomfortably close quarters. From that point on, it took her about two seconds to go from troubled sleep to full alertness, at which point she began to scream. "Aaaaaaaaaah!"
Zoia freaked out, just as equally, not with noise, but with a quick thrash, clutching at her head. She started chittering and squealing as her senses were overloaded by the high pitched assault on her inner ear. "Would you stop!" She curled up a little more. "It's night time. To your kind that means sleep... Which means I must also sleep... Because I am here to get used to your customs. So sleeeeeeeep," she whined, clutching the girl and burying her face into her warm body.
Sarena was not assuaged. "Get out! Get off me! You promised to stay on your side!" She could hardly struggle much with Zoia's claws on her, but she made a good, if futile effort to push at the Vekimen with her knees, elbows, and forehead.
"That was before my lamp broke... I would rather not freeze tonight... You're warm, so sleeeep." She groaned again, her voice muffled by the girl as she fought to stay latched on. "I'll get it fixed tomorrow..."
"Stop it! I'm not... I'm not an appliance!" Sarena was starting to get desperate. Unfortunately, she didn't keep much within arm's reach. A katana wouldn't be very useful here, and she had yet to learn the technique of disabling the Vekimen with a pineapple. "Find someone else! Find... a radiator, or something!"
"Radiators would burn me, and yes... I'm going to slink around the dorm and find people I have never even met to crawl into bed with. Look, I know you, we are roommates, and this is going to happen sometimes, if I need it. Otherwise I might die," she said, lying just a little. She wouldn't die, but people will think she was dead until she warmed up enough, and boy would she be stiff! "It's like if you were in a snowy arctic but needed a heat source. You would probably do the same," she grumbled.
"I mean the staff!" Sarena was almost at her limit. Maybe the katana wasn't such a bad idea, it had a blunt end, after all. "I think humans invented fire just to stop this from happening." In a moment of dubious clarity, Sarena lunged for her pineapple and wedged it against the Vekimen's throat, between her jaw and collarbone. She then grabbed her sword and, keeping it in its sheath, made an effort to pry herself free for a quick escape.
Zoia's tail lashed out quickly, wrapping its length around Sarena as she struggled. "Would you stop? Seriously, what is your problem? You act as if--" Sarena's screams drowned out Zoia's remaining words. With any reasonable hope of escape extinguished by extra limbs, claws, and alien super-strength, Sarena was back to Plan A: Make as much noise as possible, and hope to get the attention of some rescuer.
The noise made Zoia truly angry, as she flipped over the girl and pinned her, ramming her forearm into the girls mouth to shut her up. The look in her eye was of pure anger. "Look, I don't care what kind of uptight, prissy, bitchy society you come from, but where I am from if someone needs help you help them," she growled, her voice losing it's normality and taking on the natural tone of a Vekimen. "You don't moan and whine about it, especially with something so pathetically simple as going to sleep. Fuck, I offered to help you with school despite I honestly think you are a moron. Take time out of my studies to help you with yours and I ask you to lay down, and just let me be warm cause my light is broken," she snarled, pushing herself off the girl. "You selfish, stupid girl," she growled, slamming the door on her way out of the room.
Sarena's fear turned to anger as she listened to the Vekimen's speech, not that she could act on her emotion in either case. She was only prepared to defend herself by the time the door slammed, and it was no longer a pressing concern. Instead, she had to clean up, try to restore some of her dignity, and get dressed (and armed) to go look for someone in authority.
"Sarena-chan?" the Nepleslian heard behind her. Sarena turned around very slowly, having not heard the door open. Standing a few feet away was her teacher, Hashimoto Nenna, and though she stood at her usual parade rest, the Neko was wearing a well worn set of light blue pajamas. "What's going on?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and nodding at the now open door.
When she saw who it was, Sarena tossed her katana back down on her bed. "Zoia climbed into my bed and grabbed a hold of me. She wouldn't let go until she'd lectured me about how it was her right, or something." A quick and undetailed summary, but Sarena didn't seem to be at her best at the moment.
Recognition flashed across the teacher's eyes. "Sarena-chan," she said, taking a few steps toward her student. "Did you know that Vekimen are cold-blooded?"
Sarena hugs herself and shivers. "I noticed. She was complaining about her broken lamp... she said she would die if I didn't let her stay in my bed. She's not dead, is she?" Her tone was a bit more sarcastic than concerned, not to understate it.
Neena smiled slightly. "No, she was exaggerating a little bit. She would have had some issues but should have been fine after some warming up during the day. However," she continued, her smile vanishing, "It would probably put her out for half the day though."
"I don't think I can sleep with her in my bed... and she promised to stay on her own side." As weak as it sounded, this seemed very important to Sarena. "That was the first thing she did when she met me, she made me promise to stay on my side of the room... after joking about eating me, anyway."
The Neko smiled again. "You shouldn't have to. We'll just make sure she has an extra heat lamp in the room. If she somehow breaks two in a night..." She shrugged. "Come get me. As for the Vekimen in question," she continued, turning to the door, "want to come with me and talk to her, or do you want to go back to sleep?"
Sarena didn't manage to get any words out, but shook her head, and seemed prepared to follow. Though she was starting to feel tired again, it felt like things should be more settled before she went back to bed. She waited for Nenna to lead her outside.
Walking out of the room, Nenna walked down the hallway she had seen Zoia pass through before she had reached the student's room. "Question for you," she said to Sarena. "Have you looked up any of the information about Vekimen?"
Sarena shakes her head. "Zoia talks about it a lot."
"Did she tell you about the living conditions there were on the station?" the teacher asked.
Sarena takes a deep breath. "They live indoors, they're on strict rations, they kill each other in training and make trophies out of their classmates' skulls. She never really talked about heat lamps, though." She knew there was more, but it seemed difficult to articulate.
The Nito Juni chuckled and shook her head at that. "Well, that wasn't in the brief," she said, then said under her breath, "I can't wait." Sarena followed a few feet behind, feeling safer with a teacher (and a Neko at that) between her and Zoia, than she would with a sword in hand.
She didn't feel so safe crawling into the person-sized hole they found in the school gardens, a few minutes later. The lizard had dug it a little way away from the entrance to the dormitory, and had hidden herself in the darkness within. Sarena wondered for a moment if she was still dreaming.
"She in there, Sarena-chan?" Nenna asked, kneeling in the moist turf.
"I think so," Sarena replied. It seemed polite not to say anything about trying to judge from the smell. "What else would make a hole this big?"
"Well," she replied. "Tell her that I got a radiator running in my room if she wants to get warm again."
Sarena cupped her hands around her mouth to rely the message into the abyss, in her typical hushed tone. "Hashimoto-sensei says you can use the radiator in her room to get warm. It won't burn if you don't touch it."
Zoia hissed from in the hole at the radiator comment. Given their previous conversation, now she thought they just weren't listening to her. Despite being told not to touch it, still.
Nenna looked at her student in confusion, "What do you mean not burn her?"
Sarena explained simply, "I told her to find one, but she said she'd get burnt."
The Neko snorted in amusement. "Sounds like someone has a curiosity problem." She then said in the hole, "Okay, you win Zoia-chan. You can sleep with me for the night. We'll get your heat lamp fixed tomorrow and make sure you get an extra." After waiting a moment, putting a few strands of hair behind an ear, she continued, "How does that sound?"
Zoia slithered out of the hole a little, an angry look on her face. "That... Isn't... The point" She grumbled, glaring. "This is getting to be too much for me. I'm done changing..." She mumbled, slipping back into the hole a little.
Sighing, she replied, "I know, but let's not make decisions until we've all gotten some good nights sleep, ok? We'll all talk tomorrow about how to... deal with each other."
"I'm not even supposed to be asleep right now. I only sleep now because you all do... My kind sleeps during the 'day', or when it is brightest," she huffed. "She can go to sleep, you can go, but I'm not you. I am a Vekimen," she grumbled.
Leaning back from the hole, Nenna pinched the bridge of her nose as a headache started coming on. "Ok, I'll talk to the Principal tomorrow about this. I'll get you permission to skip tomorrow so you can sleep." Coming back to the hole, she said, "Can we just go back inside?"
Zoia slowly poked her head out of the hole to look at the teacher with an impressively flat and aggravated glare. "You... are incompetent at the whole being a teacher thing," she grumbled, rolling her eyes. She went back into the hole, speaking in her own language before going silent.
Sarena stared slack-jawed at the gate to the underworld.
Slowly backing away from the hole a few feet, said teacher looked at Sarena. "Unless you have anything to add, Sarena, go back to bed."
"I... I'm... that's fine. Just so long as she doesn't wake me up, again." Sarena started backing away, and once she received permission, ran back to her bed and locked the room.
Once the Nepleslian was gone, the Neko sat near the hole. "Zoia," she said, "You're right. I'm an incompetent teacher. I've dealt with a dozen other species during my service, so I assumed that I could just come in as your teacher by just reading a couple of briefings." She shook her head and continued, "Obviously I was wrong. But I can't fix problems that I don't know about. I'm not psychic, I'm not your species, and my usual instinct of yelling at you would only make things worse.
"So," she said, getting to her feet, "I'm going to leave and go to my room. If you feel like talking about it, I'll leave the door open for you. If you would rather stay here...well, I don't really understand but I'll make sure the groundskeeper doesn't bury you." Turning on her feet, the Nito Juni walked back into the dormitory, thinking about how to word that particular message.
Night time in the south dorm was usually quiet. Given it's low population, it didn't have as much hustle and bustle as other dorms. The room of the lizard and Nepleslian was usually quite warm, with a soft red light, but tonight, that light had gone out.
Zoia, being her cold-blooded self, groaned a little, and looked around the room to try and find something... Anything that was warm. The faint heat lines she could pick up in the dark drew her over to her roommates' bed. She pushed her muzzle under the blanket, and slowly crawled up onto the other mattress, laying against the unconscious form of her roommate.
For a few precious moments, Sarena remained oblivious, but she gradually began to stir. At first, she tried to shuffle away from the intruder, but found it difficult to move. Besides, the bed didn't have room for two. Next, she developed a frown as the temperature on one side of her became uncomfortably cool. When she tried to turn to that side, and pull the blankets around her to rectify the matter, she found herself face-to-face with her roommate, at uncomfortably close quarters. From that point on, it took her about two seconds to go from troubled sleep to full alertness, at which point she began to scream. "Aaaaaaaaaah!"
Zoia freaked out, just as equally, not with noise, but with a quick thrash, clutching at her head. She started chittering and squealing as her senses were overloaded by the high pitched assault on her inner ear. "Would you stop!" She curled up a little more. "It's night time. To your kind that means sleep... Which means I must also sleep... Because I am here to get used to your customs. So sleeeeeeeep," she whined, clutching the girl and burying her face into her warm body.
Sarena was not assuaged. "Get out! Get off me! You promised to stay on your side!" She could hardly struggle much with Zoia's claws on her, but she made a good, if futile effort to push at the Vekimen with her knees, elbows, and forehead.
"That was before my lamp broke... I would rather not freeze tonight... You're warm, so sleeeep." She groaned again, her voice muffled by the girl as she fought to stay latched on. "I'll get it fixed tomorrow..."
"Stop it! I'm not... I'm not an appliance!" Sarena was starting to get desperate. Unfortunately, she didn't keep much within arm's reach. A katana wouldn't be very useful here, and she had yet to learn the technique of disabling the Vekimen with a pineapple. "Find someone else! Find... a radiator, or something!"
"Radiators would burn me, and yes... I'm going to slink around the dorm and find people I have never even met to crawl into bed with. Look, I know you, we are roommates, and this is going to happen sometimes, if I need it. Otherwise I might die," she said, lying just a little. She wouldn't die, but people will think she was dead until she warmed up enough, and boy would she be stiff! "It's like if you were in a snowy arctic but needed a heat source. You would probably do the same," she grumbled.
"I mean the staff!" Sarena was almost at her limit. Maybe the katana wasn't such a bad idea, it had a blunt end, after all. "I think humans invented fire just to stop this from happening." In a moment of dubious clarity, Sarena lunged for her pineapple and wedged it against the Vekimen's throat, between her jaw and collarbone. She then grabbed her sword and, keeping it in its sheath, made an effort to pry herself free for a quick escape.
Zoia's tail lashed out quickly, wrapping its length around Sarena as she struggled. "Would you stop? Seriously, what is your problem? You act as if--" Sarena's screams drowned out Zoia's remaining words. With any reasonable hope of escape extinguished by extra limbs, claws, and alien super-strength, Sarena was back to Plan A: Make as much noise as possible, and hope to get the attention of some rescuer.
The noise made Zoia truly angry, as she flipped over the girl and pinned her, ramming her forearm into the girls mouth to shut her up. The look in her eye was of pure anger. "Look, I don't care what kind of uptight, prissy, bitchy society you come from, but where I am from if someone needs help you help them," she growled, her voice losing it's normality and taking on the natural tone of a Vekimen. "You don't moan and whine about it, especially with something so pathetically simple as going to sleep. Fuck, I offered to help you with school despite I honestly think you are a moron. Take time out of my studies to help you with yours and I ask you to lay down, and just let me be warm cause my light is broken," she snarled, pushing herself off the girl. "You selfish, stupid girl," she growled, slamming the door on her way out of the room.
Sarena's fear turned to anger as she listened to the Vekimen's speech, not that she could act on her emotion in either case. She was only prepared to defend herself by the time the door slammed, and it was no longer a pressing concern. Instead, she had to clean up, try to restore some of her dignity, and get dressed (and armed) to go look for someone in authority.
"Sarena-chan?" the Nepleslian heard behind her. Sarena turned around very slowly, having not heard the door open. Standing a few feet away was her teacher, Hashimoto Nenna, and though she stood at her usual parade rest, the Neko was wearing a well worn set of light blue pajamas. "What's going on?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and nodding at the now open door.
When she saw who it was, Sarena tossed her katana back down on her bed. "Zoia climbed into my bed and grabbed a hold of me. She wouldn't let go until she'd lectured me about how it was her right, or something." A quick and undetailed summary, but Sarena didn't seem to be at her best at the moment.
Recognition flashed across the teacher's eyes. "Sarena-chan," she said, taking a few steps toward her student. "Did you know that Vekimen are cold-blooded?"
Sarena hugs herself and shivers. "I noticed. She was complaining about her broken lamp... she said she would die if I didn't let her stay in my bed. She's not dead, is she?" Her tone was a bit more sarcastic than concerned, not to understate it.
Neena smiled slightly. "No, she was exaggerating a little bit. She would have had some issues but should have been fine after some warming up during the day. However," she continued, her smile vanishing, "It would probably put her out for half the day though."
"I don't think I can sleep with her in my bed... and she promised to stay on her own side." As weak as it sounded, this seemed very important to Sarena. "That was the first thing she did when she met me, she made me promise to stay on my side of the room... after joking about eating me, anyway."
The Neko smiled again. "You shouldn't have to. We'll just make sure she has an extra heat lamp in the room. If she somehow breaks two in a night..." She shrugged. "Come get me. As for the Vekimen in question," she continued, turning to the door, "want to come with me and talk to her, or do you want to go back to sleep?"
Sarena didn't manage to get any words out, but shook her head, and seemed prepared to follow. Though she was starting to feel tired again, it felt like things should be more settled before she went back to bed. She waited for Nenna to lead her outside.
Walking out of the room, Nenna walked down the hallway she had seen Zoia pass through before she had reached the student's room. "Question for you," she said to Sarena. "Have you looked up any of the information about Vekimen?"
Sarena shakes her head. "Zoia talks about it a lot."
"Did she tell you about the living conditions there were on the station?" the teacher asked.
Sarena takes a deep breath. "They live indoors, they're on strict rations, they kill each other in training and make trophies out of their classmates' skulls. She never really talked about heat lamps, though." She knew there was more, but it seemed difficult to articulate.
The Nito Juni chuckled and shook her head at that. "Well, that wasn't in the brief," she said, then said under her breath, "I can't wait." Sarena followed a few feet behind, feeling safer with a teacher (and a Neko at that) between her and Zoia, than she would with a sword in hand.
She didn't feel so safe crawling into the person-sized hole they found in the school gardens, a few minutes later. The lizard had dug it a little way away from the entrance to the dormitory, and had hidden herself in the darkness within. Sarena wondered for a moment if she was still dreaming.
"She in there, Sarena-chan?" Nenna asked, kneeling in the moist turf.
"I think so," Sarena replied. It seemed polite not to say anything about trying to judge from the smell. "What else would make a hole this big?"
"Well," she replied. "Tell her that I got a radiator running in my room if she wants to get warm again."
Sarena cupped her hands around her mouth to rely the message into the abyss, in her typical hushed tone. "Hashimoto-sensei says you can use the radiator in her room to get warm. It won't burn if you don't touch it."
Zoia hissed from in the hole at the radiator comment. Given their previous conversation, now she thought they just weren't listening to her. Despite being told not to touch it, still.
Nenna looked at her student in confusion, "What do you mean not burn her?"
Sarena explained simply, "I told her to find one, but she said she'd get burnt."
The Neko snorted in amusement. "Sounds like someone has a curiosity problem." She then said in the hole, "Okay, you win Zoia-chan. You can sleep with me for the night. We'll get your heat lamp fixed tomorrow and make sure you get an extra." After waiting a moment, putting a few strands of hair behind an ear, she continued, "How does that sound?"
Zoia slithered out of the hole a little, an angry look on her face. "That... Isn't... The point" She grumbled, glaring. "This is getting to be too much for me. I'm done changing..." She mumbled, slipping back into the hole a little.
Sighing, she replied, "I know, but let's not make decisions until we've all gotten some good nights sleep, ok? We'll all talk tomorrow about how to... deal with each other."
"I'm not even supposed to be asleep right now. I only sleep now because you all do... My kind sleeps during the 'day', or when it is brightest," she huffed. "She can go to sleep, you can go, but I'm not you. I am a Vekimen," she grumbled.
Leaning back from the hole, Nenna pinched the bridge of her nose as a headache started coming on. "Ok, I'll talk to the Principal tomorrow about this. I'll get you permission to skip tomorrow so you can sleep." Coming back to the hole, she said, "Can we just go back inside?"
Zoia slowly poked her head out of the hole to look at the teacher with an impressively flat and aggravated glare. "You... are incompetent at the whole being a teacher thing," she grumbled, rolling her eyes. She went back into the hole, speaking in her own language before going silent.
Sarena stared slack-jawed at the gate to the underworld.
Slowly backing away from the hole a few feet, said teacher looked at Sarena. "Unless you have anything to add, Sarena, go back to bed."
"I... I'm... that's fine. Just so long as she doesn't wake me up, again." Sarena started backing away, and once she received permission, ran back to her bed and locked the room.
Once the Nepleslian was gone, the Neko sat near the hole. "Zoia," she said, "You're right. I'm an incompetent teacher. I've dealt with a dozen other species during my service, so I assumed that I could just come in as your teacher by just reading a couple of briefings." She shook her head and continued, "Obviously I was wrong. But I can't fix problems that I don't know about. I'm not psychic, I'm not your species, and my usual instinct of yelling at you would only make things worse.
"So," she said, getting to her feet, "I'm going to leave and go to my room. If you feel like talking about it, I'll leave the door open for you. If you would rather stay here...well, I don't really understand but I'll make sure the groundskeeper doesn't bury you." Turning on her feet, the Nito Juni walked back into the dormitory, thinking about how to word that particular message.