588/Radiant Infirmary Episode 588

Radiant Infirmary Episode 588
Date of Scene:	12 October 2023
Location:	Administrative Office
Synopsis:	Hinoiri is feeling...good? Something MUST be wrong...so she goes to visit the Nurse to get herself checked out.
Cast of Characters:	Setsuna Meiou, Hinoiri Kirara

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Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Ah, the school infirmary. A staple of the high school experience...where students go to deal with the various cuts, scrapes, strains and the like common amongst a building full of 1000 or so hormone-soaked adolescents. Not to mention all the ones trying to scam the nurse to let them skive off of class.

Generally, the infirmary's a fairly small office for the nurse and some equipment. At least, that's the general rule. Given the budget Radiant Heart boasts, the infirmary's a bit bigger and more well appointed than most. There are several beds (which are currently not in use) and to an eye familiar with the medical world, there's enough well-laid-out kit that it's quite likely that, in extremis, one could actually do surgery here.

Still, most of the room is broken up with little rolling-wall medical dividers, with the bulk of the area set up for the kind of service one would need for a typical average assortment of students. Reasonably nice chairs, little triage areas, that kind of thing. The walls have various posters one might see in a doctor's office, though most of them are a bit more aimed at student-level things like common adolescent illnesses and the like. One particular poster, however, probably catches the eye:

This one's photo surrounded by a black frame in the style of the common 'motivational' poster. The picture is of a woman in a maroon yoga suit who, from about the waist down is lying face down...but she's bent over comletely backwards so that her head is lying on the bed between her legs and her face and upper torso are face up with her arms lying next to her legs. There's a nurse behind her in the shot, and the text reads in large letters: 'GOOD NEWS' In smaller type underneath is added: "The Doctor found your problem'

Leaning against a counter in her signature labcoat/dress is Nurse Meiou, who is passing the time as she usually does by reading a book whilst idly spinning a pen through the fingers of her off hand. Said book has a back cover with a tall, scruffy looking man wearing a trenchcoat and holding a staff in one hand and a rather huge revolver in the other.

Hinoiri Kirara has posed:
Hinoiri Kirara had... well. She'd had her soul shot out of her body or had some fire compost make her pass out. Either way, she figured she should at least get looked at. Just a bit. Not like any of the nurses in this backwater of a world could tell a proper magical ailment when it came to it, but if there were any other issues caused by this, she'd best be certain.

She gave a small knock before coming in, well, it was the nurse's office. And she didn't why she wouldn't be allowed to come in. She didn't, however, expect to see... What. The heck. Could people... actually... BEND like that?! OW!

WHY?! Nope. She didn't want to know. Just the mental image of it was horrific.

Instead she brought her attention to Setsuna and... Huh. A magic staff? Oh. Wait. One of those 'guns'. Ugh. Magic was SO much better than guns, why would anyone want to use one if they had access to the other?

"Hey, uhhhh... so... I had a bit of a run in the other day. Apparently there was a like... fertilizer fire or something in the flower garden when I was walking with some of the other students. I blacked out for a minute. Well, that's what they told me... that or I got my soul shot out of my body, but I figured the first was more likely."

She reached a hand up to the back of her head. "So uhhhh... since then I've been feeling unusually... happy? If that makes sense? So... I figured I should get checked out, make sure I'm not like... on some kind of weird... poisonous vapor drug high or something, you know?"

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
As the door opens enough for Hinoiri to be partially visible, Nurse Meiou stops reading, glances over, then says, "Ah, Miss Kirara. Please. Enter freely and of your own will."

As the younger woman steps in, the absently-spinning pen comes to an abrupt halt...and then Nurse Meiou twists her wrist in an odd way...and the pen is suddenly replaced with...

Well...

...it kind of looks like the nurse is holding a black piece of pure void in her fingers...though seemingly hovering in the middle of said apparent hole in reality is a golden, stylized capital 'P'.

She then uses this...anomoly to...mark her place in her book before closing it with a snap, revealing the front cover to read 'TURN COAT' in large English letters before she sets it down on the counter beside her.

A few short steps bring her over to Hinoiri, and she hrms, "Well, having one's soul shot out of their body sadly ISN'T an unheard of occurence around here...so let's see if there are any physioligical side effects."

She then leads her over to a little square plate off to one side of the room and says, "Lets get some baseline readings first. Step up here please and clip this over your index finger." She hands a little plastic clamshell clip and wiggles her index finger to demonstrate which one, then steps to the side, and once Hinoiri has done so, presses a button that makes a little armature swing from the wall on one side of the plate and across to the other, which the young science-minded woman can see causes a large number of physical statistics to populate on the display readout nearby.

Hinoiri Kirara has posed:
Hinoiri Kirara blinked a few times, cocking a single eye when she saw that bookmark. Sure, she'd seen a few dark magic bookmarks before, and a few that gazed into weird voids of unfathomable realms... but she didn't expect to see one HERE. It must have been something else. Cause there was no way it was actually that.

She gave a soft sigh. "Yeah... pretty sure that was a joke," Hinoiri said, giving the nurse a confused, wary look. She... was old. Too old. She couldn't be using and knowing about magic. Could she? Was she part of Obsidian? "I don't think most souls are plug and play."

She held the clamshell clip for a... for a lot of moments.

Okay. Pinky, that was the tiny finger.

Thumb was that thick, knobby one.

Middle one was the finger for the gesture. So... which one was the index finger?

THE POINTER FINGER! That was one to point, which meant--

She put it on the ring finger, assuming that one was the index finger.

Of course, when the armature swung out, she let out a light squeak, staring at it... and uhhh... went actually red when she had to switch fingers. "U-uh... yeah. I... I always get those two mixed up... eh... heh heh... uhhh..."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou arches an eyebrow, but only gives a soft smile as Hinoiri fiddles with getting the sensor on the correct finger. To be honest, any finger would have done, but eventually she just gives a soft smile, "It's okay, dear."

She then hrms at the readings, "Well, nothing really unusual here. Your blood pressure's slightly on the lower side from average...but if you've been feeling calmer than normal, that's to be expected."

She then shakes her head, "And spiky thing? About yay big? Kinda floats there for a bit unless someone puts it back?"

Yeah, if someone comes to her openly expressing that they've interacted with magic, she's going to just roll with it and let them assume that 'magic schools have some magic teachers somehow'.

She nods, "You wouldn't be the first person it's happened to."

She then smiles, "...and frankly, feeling happy is FAR from the worst thing that could happen to you after having your soul forcibly ejected temporarily from your body."

Of course, she's unaware that the reason for such was a reduction in the amount of Dark Magic around the young woman's soul.

Hinoiri Kirara has posed:
Hinoiri Kirara blinked a few times and just... stared. And stared. Then stared some more. Finally, she gave a small nod. "Uhhhh... yeah. And... surrounded by a bunch of black, inky stuff? That... sounds... like it... until I passed out... uhhhh... Huh. Okay... then... so soul it was. Well. That... sucked," Hinoiri said.

"... So... ummmmm... any... after effects I need to worry about? Am I going to start like... howling at the full moon or something?" she asked with a bit of a nervous chuckle.

"... But... yeah. Hurt a lot. A whole lot. But after I felt... better than I'd felt in a while. Figured I should make sure I was like... good and all. Maybe it's like an oil change or something, every ten thousand miles just rip the soul out, shake it a bit and jam it back in," she said with a small shrug.

"... So, I'm good? Then? To go? Nothing to worry about? Not gonna pop back out or anything?"

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
At Hinoiri's comment, Nurse Meiou blinks, then arches an eyebrow, "...inky black stuff?" She shakes her head, "...without having seen it personally, I can't be sure, but that sounds like your problem right there. Souls SHOULDN'T be surrounded by 'inky black stuff' unless something's wrong."

She taps her chin, "...at a guess? I think some of that stuff might have been removed while your soul was being put back, and that might explain why you've been feeling better since."

She hrms, "Well, you shouldn't have to worry about it popping out on it's own...since your soul is bound to you, it takes a specific kind of external stimulus to make it manifest outside your body...though doing so for an extended period of time I would imagine to be quite likely EXTREMELY bad for your health."

She leans against one of the beds, "...that being said, for safety's sake, I'd probably reccomend getting a purification done to purge any of that residual 'inly black stuff'. I can see about getting something that should do that for you."

Hinoiri Kirara has posed:
Hinoiri Kirara gave a shrug. "Yeah... I think... they got rid of all that. Actually explains a lot and kind of... what I was suspecting might be happening," she mumbled, reaching up and stroking her geode idly, glancing off to the side.

"... But yeah. I've been handling my temper a lot better since and.... well. Still annoyed by stupid people being stupid. But slightly less annoyed. And... good to know. I guess... and uhhhhh. This... all falls under patient nurse confidentiality, right? Cause uhhhhh... I've seen things but.... I don't really... can't really do anything with it. Would like to avoid getting the wrong kind of attention, as it were." Likely sounded like she meant obsidian and co.... but honestly, she meant the good guys. The last thing she wanted was them asking about who she was.

"... But yeah... I think they took care of that for me. Hadn't... seen it before. Was kind of... creepy. I should... probably get going, though. Good to know that I'm healthy as a..." Trailed off. She wasn't going to say horse.

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou shakes her head, "You don't have to worry about me passing on any secrets, dear. Basically all I know at this point is that you're magically aware...which is a condition you share with a very significant fraction of the students in this school, so that's not particularly identifying...but it IS something that's useful for your medical professional to know."

She then walks over to the corner of the office and rummages in a jar, "Strangely enough, compared to humans, horses are as fragile as spun glass. Heck, humans on the regular survive and easily recover from injuries that would send 99% of other species on the planet into shock and death. Humans invented surgery BEFORE they invented anesthesia. We use flat-out neurotoxins to spice our food. We willingly expose ourselves to dangerous levels of radiation for purely cosmetic benefits."

She shrugs and walks back before handing Hinoiri a Snickers bar, "Human brainpower and inventiveness may have conquered the planet...but our stamina and ruggedness certainly helped facilitate it." She pauses, then goes on, "If you find yourself starting go get more irritable and having problems with your temper, come back and I'll see what we can arrange."

Hinoiri Kirara has posed:
Hinoiri Kirara gave a small nod. "Yeah... I suspected. But well, since I can't exactly cast spells or throw moon beams, I'm trying to stay out of the way of people who can. And keep it on the down low that I can tell, you know?" she said with a shrug. "Thanks, though." Then she got to her feet and paused.

"... Yeah, humans are weird, I guess. Some of you can survive anything, others of you trip and hit the floor poorly and drop dead. In the end, it's just the law of averages. With a large enough population you'll survive and fail to survive anything," she muttered. Stroking her geode again, idly.

However, the snickers made her eyes narrow and she actually sneered. "I *don't* need a piece of candy like I'm a--" Then... then she paused, shaking her head. "That wasn't me being irritable. That... was just bad memories. No candy. I don't want it for this. I... I..." Then she paused and looked her up and down.

"... Do... you have a daughter? About... this high?" Reallllly low to the ground. "Green hair, kind of a brat, more mature than her age would make you think?" she asked, cocking an eye.

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou gives a bit of a smile at the pushback against 'candy', "...while, yes, it's TECHNICALLY a candy bar...this particular kind is also noted as being particularly useful as a ration bar when you're forced to postpone a meal for some reason since they keep well and are fairly energy dense. If you don't want it, just give it to one of your dorm-mates."

At the question about someone who looks a LOT like a tiny version of her, she pauses...then shakes her head, "I'm far too young to have a daughter that age, dear."

Hinoiri Kirara has posed:
Hinoiri Kirara sighed and took it, giving it an annoyed look. "Fine. It'll probably make the pink brat's day," she muttered with just a hint of annoyance. She didn't even dislike candy. But... sweets after the doctor... THAT rubbed her wrong. It rubbed her really, really wrong.

She nodded in agreement. "Okay, then. Thanks, was great seeing you, doc. Here's hoping there's nothing wrong next time," she said, walking out... she was a few dozen feet out before pausing. Wait. Was that the nurse saying she was her lil sister? Huh. That... made sense. Wonder why she didn't go here, then... eh. No biggy.

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou smiles and waves...

And just before the door closes, Hinoiri can just hear her call, "Take care, Miss Hinoiri...and don't forget...Destiny is a stone cold bitch."

Hinoiri Kirara has posed:
Hinoiri Kirara froze. And then whipped around. What in the... there was no... Oh. Ohhhhhh. She actually started to laugh. Okay, she didn't know what exactly that meant... but she DEFINITELY knew those two were connected. Pfft.

Okay, so the nurses in this school were weird, definitely magic and possibly... hive minded? Or something? Oh, she didn't know. But it was amusing, at least. As long as nobody knew about her, wasn't... really her problem.

Still... it confirmed her earlier hypothesis... the dark energy was affecting her. More than she thought. But... she could control it. So it'd be fine. She was sure.