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 Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 1:27 pm
Kiyomizu stage Also known as the ‘Jump off’ spot and the place of suicidal lovers, this stage is a part of the main temple to Kiyomizu. A popular tourist spot, it’s got a wonderful view that allows you to see nearly all of Kyoto, and has a wonderful breeze on the hot days. The temple stage has a history for people falling off the edge though or even doing so on purpose, which is where the term ‘Kiyomizu no butai kara tobiorita tsumorinde’ – ‘Like jumping off the Kiyomizu stage.’ was conned.
Overall, it’s a great place to just relax, take some pictures, or enjoy the sites of Kyoto, and is also a popular meet up place for groups, or even a romantic place to take your date to.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:30 am
[Satomi slowly reaches the Kiyomizu stage, coming from the hot springs] 'Damn Yuuji... Sosuke... Driviline, they're all such jerks.' After leaving the hot springs, Satomi wasn't feeling any better. She almost did, even with Asuna's company, the girl who she found herself once never talking to actually wasn't so bad, and with Nodoka, it was beginning to help cheer her up. But after overhearing Driviline and Sosuke, her opinions on the two had changed completely, and she lost nearly all of her respect for the two...
She told herself that she needed to go somewhere to relax, and after Asuna and Nodoka's recommendation about this place for tomorrow, she decided to go there now instead, scoping out the place to see if it really was worth bringing her group to. Not that she didn't believe them, Satomi definettly took their word for it, she just thought it would be nice to walk a bit more and get some fresh air. It wasn't really working though... The problem with being alone like this is that the only thing she had to keep herself occupied was her own thoughts, and right now it was filled with a lot of anger towards quite a few particular boys who made her whole day like this.
Trying to shake it off though, Satomi eventually made it to the top, leaning herself against the railing as she let out a deep sigh. The place actually was kind of nice, and it did help her relax a bit. But.. it was ironic really, the whole evening after dinner, she sought out some time alone for herself. And now that she was, she kind of wished she had some company.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 1:30 pm
[Cassandra flies into the Kiyomizu stage, in her Gaseous form]
Here it is. The 'Jump off' point. It was only really as she arrived that actual logic kicked in and she realized that the chances of there actually being anything buried here was quite low at best. Of course, she could just summon some undead rather than animating the dead...
That was when she noticed her there. Satomi. The two hadn't actually had an official exchange of words since their rather fun little encounter. At least, Cassandra had found it quite fun. However, as enjoyable as it was, she wouldn't want Satomi jumping on her at the first sight and trying to jam a spike through her face or something. Not that jamming a spike through her face would be very effective; but that was irrelevant.
Reforming out of sight, in the shadows, Cassandra cleared her throat quietly as she walked out, stopping next to Satomi. She wasn't actually tall enough to reach the top railing, but by leaning forward a fair amount, she managed to lean comfortably enough on the lower one, looking through the gap between the two levels of the railing. She was about to say something to break the ice, but it just felt somewhat... uncomfortable.
She couldn't put her finger on it, but to just be standing here, next to Satomi, who she'd bitten, incysted and fought less than a week ago... it was just a very odd feeling. After all, usually when she fought with something, the next time she saw it - if there was a next time - it would have the incorrect number of limbs, and probably calling her 'Mistress'... Even though she had been there not even a minute, it was bugging her already. This 'bugging' accelerated quickly to just an utter hatred and annoyance that was utterly intolerable. "...Take off your footwear." She said simply - after all, it was around the ankle that she'd done the 'work'.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 1:44 pm
After being here for about fifteen minutes, still casually leaning on the railing as she enjoyed the view, she began to feel her eyelids getting heavy. At one point, her eyes actually closed, and she had nearly dozed off in the time she was here. Had she really been that tired already? Then again, it was a pretty long and rough day for her, she did need to rest. But the more she remained here, the less she wanted to leave. There was something almost hypnotizing about this place, she was drawn to being here, and even during her half-awake state, she began to make plans for bringing her group here tomorrow. She knew the others would like it.
Failing to even realize who had approached her, her eyes still nearly shut, Satomi was awfully oblivious to Cassandra's presence. Sure, Satomi was a bit short herself, but Cassandra was just too far beneath her eye level to so much as be a blip on her radar. But as she rested there, the doctor's voice was what had brought her attention as she quickly awoke in a fright. Realizing she was no longer alone, how embarrassing it was to doze off, and who the voice belonged to, her eyes shot open and she stumbled back, nearly falling from being startled like that.
Frantically she patted down her pockets, seeing if she had any tools she could use, but then she remembered how her pockets were emptied out for the restaurant, and she was left defenseless among the vampire. It never occurred to her that she may have just wanted to talk, and Satomi stood rigid, a slight look of fear on her face as her eyes met with the doctor's, and she stuttered out a response. "Wha-What do you want??" She said quickly, failing to acknowledge her request as she tried to find out the meaning of this. The last time the two met, Satomi had a terrifying fight with her, so she was assuming the worst with this girl, and was in a slight panic.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:23 pm
Cassandra sighed and shook her head, waving her hand casually, telling the girl to calm down. Although, she did like the clear terror that the girl was in from just being in the presence of her. Of course, it was simply because of that sheer amount of terror that she could detect that the little Doctor decided not to withdraw her offer. After all, she had no reason to keep her cyst and her bite present if she already feared her.
Producing her favored weapon, she held it like a dart for a moment, but wasn't pointing it at Satomi. Instead, she just held it for now, staring hat the point of the needle. "I don't know how much inconvinience my... actions have caused you." She admitted. It wasn't really a policy of hers to tend to keep a particularly close eye on those that she'd encysted or bitten - it was a sort of 'fire and forget' policy when it came to such things.
She sighed and shook her head, feeling... almost regretful. Almost. She knew that this girl was clearly not about to try anything at the moment; and if there was anything useful about her, then it was certainly not anything physical that Cassandra would be able to salvage from her; and extracting brains was always risky. Therefore, there was no reason for her to trouble the girl with her business anymore. "...So if you would be so kind as to remove your footwear... I'll... get rid of it..."
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:46 pm
Whoa, time out. She was... apologizing? After all the Hell she caused that day, this monster was just going to act like all is forgiven and dismiss everything that happened? She was caught by surprise from this, staring at Cassandra dumbfounded, as if she had grown a second head or something. She took a long, deep breath to try to calm herself, taking another slow step back from Cassandra when she saw the needle in the girl's hand. After all, even if she was making peace, Satomi wasn't foolish enough to fall into what may be a trap.
"Why are you doing this?" She asked slowly, confidence returning to her voice as she stood her ground, not obeying her just yet, trying to find out what the meaning of this was. "What do you want with me? I mean... those things you said that day, what did you mean by that?" Hundreds of questions were filling her head at once, and she wanted at least her biggest concerned to be answered before she made herself vulnerable in any way to the doctor.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 3:24 pm
'What did I mean by what?!' Cassandra was confused herself now. Here she was, probably at the peak of what most people would call 'behaving' or 'helping', and this girl still wasn't satisfied? Then again, she could sort of understand. After all; Cassandra had been boasting about burning the flesh from her own body in order to make the spells she cast even deadlier. That was in itself quite a disturbing thing for any human too witness, she'd imagine - especially from someone that appeared to be a ten year old girl.
So, rather than actual show any sort of actual idiocy, she simply shook her head and smirked. "Well, let's just start with the most obvious thing." She folded her arms, the smirk fading from her space as she began entering 'explanation' mode. "You may recall I asked you, in the moonlight night, with no illumination, to count my fingers." She shook her head and smiled - a sort of genuine smile, with just a hint of twisted evil that crossed her face with satisfaction after she'd spent hours getting something to work. "I don't suppose you've tried walking at night without any illumination since our little engagement?" She could be wrong; but the perfect hundred-or-so feet of darkvision that her vampiric bite had transferred to the girl is hardly the sort of thing that would go unnoticed. You look around and realize that you can see in total darkness - albeit in Black and White, and it fades over distance, but even so, it was not really the sort of thing you'd pass of as natural, or even human.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 5:50 pm
So that was why?? Two nights ago when she ended up making one of this Chronographer watches for Driviline, and she stayed in the lab overnight, she had discovered this unique ability, and was deeply distraught by it. Sure, it allowed her to stay in the Engineering Department without the lights on if she wanted, and had been useful in her getting her, but she was still very uncomfortable from having it. Was that a side effect of the bite? Question still racing in her mind, Satomi shook her head slowly in disbelief, parting her lips to speak, but finding she couldn't speak, having been at a loss of words. Finally, she removed her glasses, taking another long breath as she put them in her pocket, once again looking Cassandra in the eye as she reassured herself.
"It's an advantage, but I don't want it. I want to be normal like the rest." Satomi said quite seriously, not amused at all by Cassandra's head games with her as the girl eventually sat down, taking another breath as she tried to wrap her head around all these questions. She began to remove her left she, just as Cassandra had requested, and rolled down her sock, revealing the partially healed bite and the strange lump by her ankle that was Cassandra's cyst. "But... you said I wasn't a bad person; that I'm interesting. Why...? Knowing you, what's not bad for you is horrible to me." She said with a somewhat amused tone, feeling that although it was true, it was just strangely ironic. Most of all though, the fact that she was just hear now with the doctor on such... peaceful terms was what struck her as the most strange thing of all.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:30 pm
Cassandra knelt down, readying her needle; but that wasn't all. She also pulled out a small black bottle. "You'd lose anyway when it's healed. You might not have noticed; but there are other differences. Your blood, for instance, is darker. Not in a creepy 'Darkness of your soul' sense - it's literally physically darker in colour." She listened to what Satomi was saying, and shook her head, smiling - a sort of weary, 'oh-this-question-again' smile. Putting her needle behind her ear like a pencil for a moment, she began unscrewing the bottle. It had an almost humourously long cap, and took a great deal of unscrewing. "You see, I knew you weren't a bad person... because you were standing against me." She said with a grin.
She never deluded herself into believing that what she was doing was actually good. She knew all too well that she was what most people would class as 'evil'. As she finally got the lid off of the bottle, she gave it a light shaking, dipping the needle into it. As she pulled the needle out, it was covered in black powder. It looked as if it had been dipped into liquid, and then dipped into black sherbert, as the powder looked stuck to the needle. "Alright... I'm not going to lie to you. This is going to hurt a lot." She said simply. "Probably even a little more than when I actually bit you." You said, as though the whole 'biting' thing was an utterly trivial matter.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:57 pm
So.. wait a second, she was saying that she was well aware that her actions were evil? Or at least, from how she phrased her statement, that was how she figured. But, good and evil were really in the eye of the beholder, what was evil to one person may be considered good to another. Yet Cassandra seemed to be admitting that her view of it was the same as Satomi's. This vampire was quite an odd one, she had to admit...
Looking down at her right hand as Cassandra had admitted to her the difference in her blood color, she took a brief glance at the bandage around her knuckles, noticing again the darker stains than what normal blood would give. Unlike the darkvision though, this was something that she was certain had come from her bite at the very beginning. It worried her from time to time, especially when she hadn't been able to find a scientific explanation for it, but now that Cassandra explained it to her, she almost felt... relieved.
At least she was being honest though, or at least, Satomi assumed she was. Seeing this side of Cassandra, she felt like she could trust her, at least a little anyway. But when she pulled out the needle and the bottle, beginning to uncork it, Satomi worried again while she watched. She told herself over and over that Cassandra was helping her, but it still didn't bring her much comfort. None the less, if it would help, she would do it. Biting the edge of her lip, Satomi nodded very slowly, almost hesitantly as she braced herself for whatever pain she would feel. She had experienced pain quite a bit thanks to the numerous accidents in the lab, but she could tell this was going to be far worse. Still, for now, she would allow the doctor to help. "I'm.. I'm ready." She finally said, shaking off any sense of fear as her eyes showed a look of a firm resolve.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:16 pm
Cassandra handled the needle incredibly carefully as she threaded it with her 'special' thread - she didn't want to touch the stuff either. She took few deep breaths to steady her hand, before plunging it into the skin next to the bite. In less than a second, she'd pushed it out of Satomi's ankle, on the other side of the bite marks, and as it came out, the black powder had totally disappeared. The thread healed up the wounds as quickly as the needle had made them. But it wasn't the needle that was going to actually going to be the most painful - in fact, it felt about as painful as being stabbed by a normal needle in two places - the entry and exit wounds.
What would hurt would be the powder that was applied to it. A very special mixture that Cassandra had never revealled the ingredients, it was basically an 'anti-toxin' for the affects of her bite. The powder actually transferred directly into Satomi's bloodstream, where it broke down into much smaller parts, and as it travelled, it would systematically re-write all the changed pieces of DNA, reverting them back to their 'defaults'. To put this into terms of pain, it would feel roughly like having all the blood in your body spontaneously boiling for a straight ten seconds. There were no permanent effects to this treatment - the blood didn't actually increase in temperature at all, it just hurt like hell - but the ten seconds of 'blood boiling' was bad enough in itself. As soon as Cassandra pulled the needle out, she shut her eyes and grit her teeth together, preparing for the inevitable screaming. Even Grundy had screamed - heck, even she would scream if it was done to her. On the plus side, it was very fast acting, and as soon as the pain ended, Satomi would be cured of the bite. The cyst, on the other hand, had yet to be dealt with.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:44 pm
Seeing Cassandra hold the needle, bracing herself for what she was about to do, Satomi was having second thoughts all the sudden, thinking that maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all. But when she reminded herself that this was her opurtunity to be back to normal, she didn't budge, and allowed the good doctor to start.
When the needle initially hit her skin, she let out nothing more than asoft cry of pain that was held back, her entre body tensing up tremendously as it went into her flesh. Just the needle alone did hurt quite a bit, but she had worse than this more often than she would have liked to admit, so she managed to tolerate the initial stab. But after she pulled the needle through, the pain intensified not even a second later.
Her body felt like it was on fire, the pain burned through every part of her body from head to toe, and she could barely take it. Her eyes clenched tightly, tears still managed to seep through as she lashed out, nearly hitting Cassandra as she doubled over in pain. She would have done anything to find some releif, Hell at this point she wanted to break a bone just to find a focus point for this agony, but instead it spreaded through her like a vicious and deadly poison, leaving Satomi to finally let out a loud yell that echoed through out the stage and some of the horizan. The ten seconds felt like hours, but Satomi did everything she could and it took all of her will power to remain conscious during the entire ordeal. In the end though, as it began to die down, leaving her panting for breath and her body sweating while she lied there, she managed to barely open her eyes, showing that she didn't pass out from the tramatic event on her body.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:19 pm
As Satomi screamed, Cassandra doubled over herself, clenching her own eyes shut and whispering words that she probably hadn't said - and meant - for a long time. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." The reason for her apology was simple. This was another one of 'those' procedures, right up there with boiling her eyes out of her skull - one of the ones she agreed to never perform on herself unless necessary; and it was a pain that she had never quite forgotten. In truth, Cassandra knew that she had severely understated the amount of pain that the healing procedure would use; but she doubted Satomi would've agreed to it if she'd said 'Oh, yeah, by the way, it'll make you feel like you're boiling from the inside out.' That would've gone down well like animating the corpse of a bishop in the middle of a church... Which, ironically, she had done before - albeit just the once.
As the ten seconds - which felt just as long for Cassandra as they did for Satomi - ended, Cassandra still kept her eyes shut, just in case. There had been times when the 'pause' was simply because the patient had run out of breath to scream with. She shook her head again, repeating herself still, but a little louder this time. "I am sorry.. I am so sorry..." She couldn't believe it herself, but she actually felt sorry for this girl having to go through such excruciating agony. The worst part being that she couldn't even do anything to ease the pain. Sure, she could pump negative energy into her - but unless she was an undead and had been hiding it this whole time, that'd serve little purpose past killing her; and without any medic records to go by, it wouldn't be wise to administer any painkillers - especially since most of hers were custom cocktails for her clients to use while she sawed their limbs off to replace them.
Counting a solid five seconds before she'd established that Satomi was either over the pain, unconscious, or dead. Personally, either worked for her; but she was actually hoping, for once, that she hadn't actually killed her patient. She noticed her eyes were open, which was some comfort. She took a deep breath, shaking her head again, kneeling down by her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "It's the only way to remove the effects of the bite... The cyst is far easier..." She said, hoping to console her a little bit. She made a mental note that later, when she had an entire day or so to herself, that she'd get to work and do some more major surgery around her fangs - it was a long and complex surgery, with a lot more magic than most of her usual jobs, even for her. She could make them do quite a lot of things - and depending on the things they were engineered to do, the cure was different. That cure was just horrible, however, and right now, she was expecting a punch in the face rather than any sort of actual positive reaction.
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:35 pm
No words could describe how she felt right now. Her body was completely exhausted and trembling, she couldn't speak, only breath heavily as she still tried to recuperate over the whole ordeal, and she felt sick, barely able to keep herself from vomiting or loosing control of her bodily functions. It was just so bad... she wanted to die. Even though the trauma was over, all of her strength had been sapped from her, and even if she tried to move, there was nothing more but the faint struggle or a twitch before she gave up on the attempt, instead deciding to just remain there as she no longer felt like she was even inside her own body any more.
"Am I dead...?" She said weakly, not even joking as she closed her eyes again, feeling te pain even in there. Wherever her body could feel pain, even places she didn't know existed, it was there. And even now as it faded, she found it intolerable as she lied there; only able to breathe at this point as she tried to gather herself, hearing Cassandra's voice just faintly, allowing her to know she was still alive, but barely. She waited for Cassandra to say something else though, at this point she didn't even care about removing the cyst, she wanted to know if she would be okay after this. It felt like she had been paralyzed...
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:50 pm
Cassandra took another deep breath. For at least a second, she had considered actually killing the girl to put her out of her pain, and then animating the body. Who would know? Where would be the proof? Oh, of course - no doubt some meddling wizard would come along and try to heal her to see if she burned or something from it. Which, of course, she would. It was just far too much of a risky move. Then it hit her. Of course. The spell she'd used that night on Grundy to give her power - if she did a lower power version of it, reversed the spell so it was her giving power to Satomi, made sure the spell was specific enough... The undead factor could be a problem; but if she could just think of a way to reverse the negative energy to positive energy... Yes, it should work... At least, there's no reason why not. She didn't even have the spell book the original spell was in - but she remembered most of it, and the spell would have to be changed so differently that it would barely be the same spell; but it was worth a shot.
Without hesitation, or even a mere thought as to what this would do to her personally, she grabbed her needle and plunged it into her index finger. Using her own blood as a makeshift pen, she began scrawling a circle on the ground around her. Already, she began chanting the spell, before she'd even got halway through inscribing the circle around herself. "Mit meiner Macht und die Macht der necromantic Energie fließen in meinen Venen, fordere ich nach meine eigenen Energie zu werden positive Energie..." This was not a quick spell, and she had no idea exactly how well it would work; or what it would do to her - but she could not stand to see the girl in such a state. Of course - when she and Grundy had tried it, it was merely complete hellish agony for ten seconds, followed by a quick dose of negative energy - which was, naturally, not an option here.
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