Day 6 - Vivisection
Extremely sleep-addled tale of Mumei and Shiori, hunting for macguffins in a warehouse full of zombies. Shiori's always a joy to write for. I skipped day 6 back in October so today is just filling in the blank.
Mumei frowned as she sliced open the ghoul’s abdominal cavity. Nope. She moved to the next one, dragging it forward by its chain, and left the first to stumble around bewildered at its new, better ventilated torso. As bewildered as the mindless husk, left behind by an entropic soul, could be. Which, given its inability to recognize the near-godlike being that had vivisected him as even existing, was still somewhat bewildered. The shrouded lantern sitting at her side made this place unnamed. The existence of the building and everything in it rendered utterly meaningless to anyone even bound to civilization. Even as loosely bound as something like a ghoul. No one, not even council could know she was here at all, let alone what she was doing. Mumei had set up shop in an old warehouse attached to the shopping mall where she’d caught her current crop of patients. Because of course the [item] was in a ghoul, in a shopping mall, with thousands of others.
The bootleg [Arcadia] detector she had was only able to narrow its location down to about half the mall. Then again, given it was printed from her broken memory, by a knock-off infini-forge, conjured by by a knock-off lantern, used by a knock-off Mumei, while the real one was cloistered with the rest of council, it was probably miraculous it worked at all. Still, as she glanced down at it to make sure whatever ghoul had eaten it hadn’t wandered off, she saw the trident wreathed in laurel and couldn’t help but roll her eyes. It was Atlantean, of course. The original probably wasn’t any better then. Atlanteans sucked at detectors. Great at tridents, statues, nets, hooks, embossing, harpoons, thermal energy and singing fish, of course. Everyone knew that. But everyone equally knew an Atlantean detector might as well be throwing a dart at a map. Worst detectors in all of civilization. Well, except humans, obviously. They could barely find their own phones. She gritted her teeth, focus Mumei.
It didn’t help that the stench of the warehouse was abhorrent. With nearly a thousand ghouls, rotting away chained to the rafters, all howling with their shredded vocal chords at once, it was a definite assault on the senses. Still, Mumei knew it wasn’t even in the top five worst smelling buildings she’d been in, though she couldn’t put names to any buildings that were on that list. It sure would have been nice if a reaper had taken care of these ghouls before they wound up shrieking in my ears, she thought. But Reapers, other than Calli of course, were never there when you actually needed them. Sure, accidentally rub a demon core the wrong way for one second and they’ll be all over the place like its a pizza party. But have a mall full of ghouls to silence? Nowhere to be seen. Actually though, they usually were better at keeping on top of entropic souls than this. In all of civilization there’d never been malls full of them before, at least. Not a great sign, she thought. All the more reason to find the damn [thing]. She drew her dagger down the torso of another ghoul, and frowned again. Nothing.
“Need some help?” A voice called down from above, nearly startling Mumei into dropping her dagger. Shiori sat among the rafters, kicking her feet as if on a swing, as the ghouls’ chains slid and swayed around her.
Mumei looked up, “you scared me Shiori, what are you doing here?” Wait, what is she doing here. She looked at her shrouded lantern, it should be impossible. This whole place was still unnamed.
“Its a story.” Shiori said, as if responding to the unspoken question. “And a secret one at that, the best kind. Where else would I be?” She leapt down from the rafters, taking the fall with a grace that belied her mostly human appearance.
Mumei grew suddenly rigid, her voice emotionless, “Did you stop to think maybe it's a secret for a reason? Not everything needs to be recorded, archiver.”
“Not much point in an archiver who picks and chooses what to archive, is there?” Shiori smiled. Mumei moved with immense speed, and flawless precision. Delivering a back-of-the-dagger strike to her thorax before Shiori even saw her move. Immediately followed by an unnaturally strong grip on the back of Shiori’s neck and a blade to her throat. Mumei normally had an energy of subdued whimsy, but in that moment Shiori remembered, this is the one being in all existence that witnessed every fight, every battle, every war a human ever fought.
“Don’t fuck with me witch! I watched the Hunters build their pyres! I remember the stench of your forebears as they burned.” Her eyes were swirls of darkness now, her expression cold and unmoving. Shiori raised her hands placatingly, “got it.” She croaked out, gasping for breath. Mumei looked at her and her expression fell abruptly, damn.
“Shiori I am so sorry. That was not cool. Oh my gosh. Not even, remotely, ok.”
Shiori coughed and cleared her throat, standing upright again. “Maybe not ok, but definitely cool. I kind of forgot you could fight like that.” Shiori was grinning ear to ear.
Mumei smiled despite herself, “me too. Sorry. Again.”
“Oh no,” Shiori continued waving her hands as if still talking Mumei down, “It's my fault too. I knew I was trespassing out of my depth. I just didn’t think things were so…serious.”
Mumei looked to the ground. “About as serious as it can possibly be. Bae may be willing to play dice with the fate of humanity but I’m not.”
“Hah! I see what you did there?”
Mumei looked confused, “Huh? Oh, no. I mean it literally. She rolled a d8-billion to decide what person to hide the [redacted] in. Then that person turned into a ghoul. And here we are.”
“Well, I promise I’m here to help. I’ll even redact the archive so no one finds out about the [you-know-what]. That's what my protege wants anyway.”
“O…k. I have no idea what any of that means, but…thank you?”
“I’ll even tell you which ghoul it's in.”
“Wait, you know? Can you see the future?”
“No, just the present. And only in bits and pieces, the general flow of the narrative.”
“Well then tell me?” Mumei looked around the room wildly, as if the object in question might suddenly reveal itself.
“Oh I don’t know yet. But I know I will when I tell you. Only…”
“Only?” Mumei narrowed her eyes.
“Only, I got cut-blocked recently by this shoddy surgeon with just…no technique. And then you went all throat-stabby on me. Plus I saw this meme where we vivisected each other at the same time and…well, if it really was a d8 billion we need to check ourselves too right?”
“And people call me unhinged.”
“You are, that's why this is such a great opportunity!” Shiori gave a small hop of joy, climbing up onto the makeshift metal exam-table Mumei had been using. Mumei shrugged and climbed up with her. She had no idea why she was going along with this, but felt caught up in the tide. She tapped her lantern briefly and conjured a mirror above them.
“Ooh, you sure know how to treat a girl senpai.”
“Don’t make this weird.”
“What could be weird about two girls vivisecting each other with dirty knives in a room full of monsters.”
It ended up being awkward for more than one reason. One, the necessity of nudity for a vivisection somehow caught them both off-guard. Two, only one person’s arms could be properly visible in the mirror at a time, Mumei simply let Shiori have that perspective, knowing she had long ago reached the vivisection equivalent of typing without needing to look down at the keyboard. She began her incision nearly blind, and Shiori shivered with delight at its cold precision and the memory of Mumei’s earlier barely-contained malice. Shiori showed herself to be a prodigy as well, but as they opened each other’s abdominal cavity, they found only the standard organs for their respective forms. As they stitched their torsos back together and clothed, Shiori seemed to be in a fugue state, expression blissful.
“The ghoul, Shiori?” Shiori barely opened her eyes, pointing to one seemingly at random. Mumei, rolled her eyes, but when she cut into the ghoul, a balding, particularly belligerent one that had been bumping into the others like an undead meat-roomba, she found [exactly what she was looking for]. She sighed with relief and collapsed into a chair. “Thank you Shiori.” She slid it across the table and Shiori snatched it up, stashing it in her jacket like it was part of an illicit deal.
“Can I trust you to make sure that gets wherever it needs to go?” Mumei said.
“You can.” Shiori nodded. If you’re watching protege, it’ll be [Where time stood still for you and you locked away your past,] Shiori thought.
Mumei nodded back, finally seeming to relax.
“Senpai, did you really watch the Salem witch trials.” Mumei looked away and to the floor. “I don’t remember, and that wasn’t what I was referring to. Don’t worry about it.”
Shiori looked down too. “Well, I have. And worse. In archives, I mean. Just stories but, how do you deal with it? Sometimes it can be so painful. Just watching.”
“Sometimes its unbearable.” Mumei said.
“Yeah.”
“...Yeah.”