Blowing up the Infirmary Again [tree/sleepy/jay]

Arbor breathed.

Each intake of air sent her into a coughing fit. Each cough sent a million eyes in her direction. It never fucking failed, never leaving her in the shadows of the crowd. Everywhere people noticed her, everywhere there were glares. At this, Arbor tried to monitor her breath, keeping a lip taut as she shakily and slowly breathed in and out, in and out. In class, she ducked from questions, keeping herself calm and focused. She'd learned to meditate through pain. She knew the logistics of battling many kinds of opponents, of matching them in a variety of ways. If her opponents were her own lungs, then so be it. It would only happen for one day, right? how bad was a small cough, a little attention from people she'd rather kill than issue the time of day to?

On day two, Arbor opened her eyes to a new morning, her ruffled hair clouding her eyes. She almost forgot. The girl rose silently, swinging her feet over to the floor,  and she breathed.

A violent cough spurted out. Arbor sent her fist straight into the wall.

It was a Friday night that the door opened to the Infirmary, a figure being announced by the dim cha-ching that sounded from the automatic doorbell. Kaya had been working behind the curtain of the main room, organizing medicines in the closet, medicines that had been boosting in supply after Logan's return. He was gone then, however, sleeping away a long shift.

The door called out. Kaya perked. The short girl danced around obstacles, beds and boxes and little here-and-theres, peeking out from the curtain with a curious smile. And when she saw Arbor Banks standing there, hands in her vest pockets, the smile did not leave her, but her expression seemed to sink, to hollow. It was all in her eyes, her pale-but-reddening cheeks. The girl's gaze was dim. Slowly, she sunk back, a lethargy to her step at first whose alertness increased the further she slipped into the darkness, towards the light of the private back rooms.

"Miss L." She wanted to scream but she couldn't, sufficing to something in between, a hushed alarm as she pushed through the doorways, past the rooms where the comatose girls and extra supply lay. She didn't even seem too worried. It was as if with the need for silence came a need for nonchalance. It was almost as if she was searching to ask a question. "Miss L, Miss L."

Tap. Tap. Ta̕p̵. Kayla drummed her fingers against the shelves, the walls, anything to break up the silent monotony of the back rooms. She'd read the back of prescription boxes until the words all blurred together in her head and her head swam, she'd doodle in the margins of student records, she'd juggle bottles and lounge back in her chair counting the seconds. Her shifts were all about killing time, trying to find the best way to get through to the end of the stretch without wanting to blow her brains out.

Everything about the infirmary made her skin crawl. It was a mind-numbing boredom that chewed away at her from the inside out, gnawing at the back of her head from the moment she stepped through the doors for the day. She'd never been much of a nurse, and she wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for the Headmaster's orders. When Kaya was around, she'd do her part to try and look productive, cleaning up here and there or sorting out boxes or whatever she'd put off the day before, but that was just an act. Kayla couldn't even say why she did it. G͝uil͏t͟, maybe? Kaya was the one always doing her part, and she'd been the one who'd volunteered.

Whenever she looked at her, she couldn't help but remember the day she'd met her, broken, battered, sliced up and left for dead in a field. Kayla flexed her hand, electricity arcing between her fingertips. This place had only gotten worse since it'd happened; for awhile she'd just skipped out to avoid looking at them, but now it was unavoidable. All the comatose and pummeled bodies lined up on cots, victims from the attack. They were everywhere. Ra̵ts̨... She had to root them out, even if it meant smoking out the whole school. She couldn't sleep until they were all dead.

"Miss L." A hushed, probing voice pushed aside her thoughts. Kayla snatched the pill bottle out of the air as it came back down and set it on her desk, sitting back up as Kaya made her way into the room. "Miss L, Miss L."

"Yeah?" she asked, sitting up with sparks crackling in her hair. She still felt naked without her hat, even all these months later, but she couldn't bring herself to buy a new one. It just wasn't the same. Her lips twisted into a small frown as she absentmindedly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, swiveling back and forth in her chair. Was there a rush? If she was coming to get her, then maybe. Another patient, probably. "What is it? Someone come in?" So what other idiot managed to land themselves in here today?

Kaya almost passed the office she was in before getting the alert, skidding to a halt, her moccasins scuffing on the floor as she spun and lingered in the doorway. She watched the pill bottle land, entranced in a momentary glaze, but she bunched her hands into balled fists, crossing her arms as if it were cold, her braids bobbing as she hopped from foot to foot. Her knife bounced with her, not-so-snug in the niche of her sock. "Yes." Her matter-of-fact response was followed by a bite of the lip, her mouth turning white and dry. The fingers that peeked from under her arms were curled and white, digging into her own sides. "Arbor Banks. She's here, she came here." The small girl spoke as if she were telling a slanderous secret, like the possibility of a third party hearing would be detrimental.

Her. For a second, she didn't recognize the name, until it hit her like a ton of bricks. A girl in an orange hoodie, the glint of bronze, the ring of an explosion in her ears. Yeah. H̀er̡. Arbor Banks, short brown hair, a pocket full of pennies, the girl who'd they'd made a pact to eliminate. So she'd come to them instead. That made things easier, didn't it? Kayla shot out of her seat, letting her chair fall behind her, and dug into her pockets, flinging out all the spare change and scrap metal onto the floor, arcade coins and bus tokens and old bolts. They'd be useless. She'd already learned her lesson before, when the girl had shredded her blazer into nothing.

Well, most of them would be useless. The ridged edge of a quarter dug into her palm, buried in a tight fist.

"Stay here. I'll take care of this."

Kayla grit her teeth and pushed past toward the door, past the beds and boxes and here-and-theres, toward the curtain that blocked off the main room.

She didn't give any thought if there'd be any innocents on the other side. The only person on her mind was Arbor. She stopped in her tracks, flipped the coin in front of her with a lazy throw, and flicked it just as it came back down. A tongue of electricity flickered out to connect to the metal, and a beam shot out like a cannon blast as the quarter propelled through the air, blasting through the curtain and the wall on the other side. A roar filled the room a few seconds late, delayed like a thunder clap, with an orange afterimage imprinted in the air as the electricity faded, tracing back to her outstretched fingers.

A coin whizzed by Arbor Banks' face. She didn't react much, not out of fearlessness but out of the coin's speed. It was too fast to register until it had collided with the glass wall behind her, shattering the one-welcoming window to the infirmary. Patients screamed, most with bad legs and minor colds, limping out and helping each other along, adrenaline sidelining their pain, their fevers. Arbor, though, only backed up a few steps, shielding her eyes from the thunderclap, the brisk wind that shot outward as the sound's force cut through the air. And when she lowered her arm, the curtain was gone, revealing her. Oh, yes, her, the nurse.

"It's you." The girl placed a calm hand into her pocket, almost too calm, her eyes vacant, shielding her thoughts. "I thought you'd be dead by no--"

Suddenly, the girl erupted into violent coughs. Her pocketed hand recoiled, lashing out and thumbing the pocket. A few coins spilled to the floor. She staggered.

Of course. All opacity was compromised. She showed weakness, a weakness that was very much alive. "I don't want to fight you," she said, her face recovering its colorless boredom. She'd just come for medicine. This girl was no longer at the top of her hitlist, or her priority list.

There. There there ther͝e̸ she was. Kayla didn't lower her hand, staring through the tattered curtain at the girl on the other side unharmed. There wasn't an ounce of surprise on her face, or even some kind of stone-faced killer intent. Despite the screams, despite the blown out glass on the other side and the people rushing out of the infirmary, they might as well have bumped into each other at the grocery store. D̛ea͞d? She could've said the same thing. She felt her eye twitch as she broke into a coughing fit, scattering pennies across the floor.

"Are you fucking...?" Kayla looked over her ruddy cheeks, the way her body shook as she coughed; she was a mess. It was too hard to imagine a girl like Arbor Banks catching something as human and mundane as a cold. What, so she hadn't come here to...?

She ground her teeth and shook away her stunned moment of puzzlement, electricity blazing up the length of her arm. "Don't give me that shit!" she snapped. It was too late. Kayla was going to take her down like she'd promised to take her down all that time ago.

Kayla snapped her fingers, firing a bolt straight toward her that lit up the room in a flash of blue and white.

It was no use. Arbor gave the girl a dull, contemptuous frown, saying nothing. If she said anything, she would cough. If she breathed to rapidly, she would cough. The girl fell back a few more steps, waving her hand to the ground. The pennies that had fallen onto the floor shot upwards, levitating. Another wave and they danced across the air, rattling violently, louder whenever they drifted. When Kayla shot the lightning bolt, it veered towards the coins, their almost-visible magnetic field, vaporizing them.

She wasn't planning on killing the nurse that day, but she seemed to have no choice.

"Your power is useless against me..." she said, voice shaky but stable enough. "You'd be better off fighting me without it."

She clicked her tongue and closed her outstretched hand into a fist. Was she retarded? Stop using her power and then what, try and punch her in the face? Whatever happened, she wasn't trying to end up plastered against the walls, or end up with her throat sliced open. Everything metal in the room might as well have been a grenade, and she hadn't forgotten Kaya's lacerations. "Do you think I'm gonna go easy on you?" she scoffed, borderline incredulous. This girl was just too fucking weird. Kayla edged forward, slashing her hand through the air, a whip of lightning cracking down the corridor. The overhead lights popped, raining shards of glass down across the floor as it passed.

She supposed not. She didn't want her to 'go on' her at all. It seemed that everywhere she went, people were provoking stuff with her. It was annoying. She was like some kind of celebrity.

Before Kayla's attack, Arbor had already began hovering a shield. However, she did not account for the light fixtures above her. There was a sudden crackle of electricity followed by a loud shatter, and white, pearly shards of glass began to precipitate. She faltered, the metallic shield clanking to the ground as her instincts drove to protect her, her hands flinging to cover her head. However, she knew the fault in this. She let down her guard; the girl immediately pushed forward, running at Kayla, rushing to tackle her before she could attack. One direct hit with electricity, and she was done. It would knock her out, if her heart would even begin beating again afterwards.

There was an opening. One breath, one heartbeat, one shot, one chance, Kayla was a second away from loosing another bolt as the girl's hands went flinging over her head to shield herself from the raining glass. But it was only a second. Arbor rushed forward, footsteps pounding against the tile as she flew to close the distance behind them. Snap. A bolt streaked out from her fingers, zapping over the girl's shoulder. A near miss... She fucking missed?! Bitch...! There was a hot flash of alarm and then the girl struck, trucking her to the ground.

Fuck.

That was her only thought as the girl slammed into her, loose sparks scattering across the floor. She felt suspended in the air for a moment as her feet kicked up from under her, flailing helplessly in empty space, before hitting the tiles with a crash. Black and white spots popped in her vision as her head snapped back, the wind knocked out from her body. Laid out. For such a little girl, she sure could fucking pack a hit. Kayla slid across the slick floor with Arbor on top of her, jaw clenched.

Arbor held her there. With one hand she gripped the nurse's neck, the other raised, her elbow bearing deep into Kayla's sternum, the hooded girl's legs pinning her arms as she knelt over her. Over and over she began to punch Kayla, harder and harder, angrier and angrier. "You shouldn't have done this," she said, teeth grit as if finishing yardwork, cough gone as if it had been scared out of her. And further she sunk into Kayla's form, pinning her harder with her elbow, pressing more of her wait into her kneecaps that crushed the joints of Kayla's arms, digging her fingers further and further into the soft skin of her neck until her pulse seemed to be above her thumbtip, not under it, but above. And finally, she withdrew a penny from her coat, pressing her small but compacted body close to the girl, flattening it with an unseen pressure until the edge was thin as glass and sharp and white hot.

"I will cross you off my list," Arbor breathed, blowing her bangs from her face, hair inked with sweat, blotted black against her pale forehead.

And then she fell over Kayla.

The hold she had over the nurse was released.

She collapsed in a heap on top of the girl, awkward and unmoving, paralyzed, croaking something unintelligible. Her weapon clattered uselessly to the ground beside them, bending with a murmuring gong.

Over the two stood Kaya. The small girl was crouching, her hand pressed to the nape of Arbor's back. Her eyes, her fingertips, were outlined in a pristine red aura. She seemed worried. She didn't remove the hand for another few moments, until she was sure Arbor wasn't going to do anything, and once she did, she stood up abruptly, holding one of her braids. "Miss L," she said, simply standing there. "Do you want me to kill her?"

Damn i̴t͢...

Even her own thoughts sounded like a distant whisper in her head. Sound fell way as Arbor's fingers tightened around in her throat in a vice grip, squeezing, squeezing... Kayla thumped her hand against the tile, useless, helpless, pushing up against the weight on her arms that kept her crushed to the floor, choking against the sharp prod against her chest. I'll̢ ki͡l̡l̨ ́you... No use, no use, no use. Why couldn't she just get up?!

A dull smack. Lights popped in her vision as the girl's fist smashed against her face, again, and again, and again, until Arbor was just a dark blur and the infirmary seemed to spin underneath her. I͝'ll̛ ͜k͜ill̛ ̧you͝... Sparks flit against her skin, powerless against the onslaught. It felt like she was on the outside looking in, like all the pain was happening to someone else. I͝'̨ll ̵k̷il͟l ҉y͜o̡u͏...

She couldn't hear her last words to her. Arbor might as well have said it underwater. All she saw was the glint of sharpened copper. There wasn't anything else except the thumping in her skull, the strained erratic beating in her chest. Static. Kayla couldn't die, not here, not now, not to someone like her, not over something like this. I'̶ll ́k̡il̡l̶ ͏y̛o҉u I'l̴l̕ kil̛l͘ y̨o͟u͢ I'l̛l k̴il͡l y͜o͠u̸ ́I'͠llk͢il̢l ̕y̛o̕u̶ ̕I'ļl ̵k͘i͢ll ́you͘I̧'ll͜ ͘kil͟l ́you͞ ́I'l̢lkìl̨ly̸ou̧ ̧I'll̡k̕iĺl͡yo͟u ͞I'̵ll̸k͜ill̢youI'̶l͜lk͝il̛ly̡ouI͟'llkíl̕l̡youI̡'llk̷i͢llyoukill͢ļyouk̀ill͘you—͢

When she fell forward, she thought that was it, until her fingers slackened over her neck. Kayla gasped, sucking air back into her lungs, hot needles of pain shooting down her windpipe. Weak crackles of electricity spread down her arms as sensation flooded back into her arms, heaving upwards to throw the limp body off of her. She rolled over onto her stomach, frail and shaking, coughing flecks of blood onto the soot-stained linoleum.

Pain smashed through her, a phantom hit like she'd been slammed in the ribs with a sledgehammer, filling her head with the copper tang of iron. Kaya. What was Kaya doing...? Her words barely even ring in her head as she tried to push herself onto her feet just to slump forward again, blood dribbling down her chin with every ragged breath. It felt like swallowing razor blades every time she drank in another gulp of air.

"I..." Kayla sat up, rubbing her skull, and wiped off the blood from under her nose with the back of her hand. She felt it smear against her cheek, but she didn't care. Arbor's still form came back into focus as the adrenaline started to fade, a dull ache seeping in to fill the void. Hissing through her teeth, she stood up on shaky legs, feeling the electricity snap between her thumb and forefinger. "I'll do it..." she breathed.

What the hell was that? A blood red pulse... Kaya didn't look as much like a baby-faced freshman anymore, but she'd promised she'd take care of this for her. Even if she'd still ended up dragged into this fight, the least she could do was finish it.

Kayla pointed down at the girl on the ground, clenching her teeth. There were burning splotches of pain across her face, and she didn't need a mirror to tell she looked like shit. She'd be feeling these bruises for months.

Sayonara.

Electricity wreathed down her arm, ready to fire.

If she had things her way, the young woman would've preferred to stay home, tucked into bed; even if it meant prolonging her healing. Thankfully, at least, she was able to ditch her uniform once she graduated from the school. It was a strange feeling roaming Beata's halls in nothing but an old t-shirt and jeans, but she managed. As bright as she looked, her hair brushed neatly and her outfit free of wrinkles, there was something about the way she walked that seemed off. Or maybe it was the weeks worth of darkness under her eyes that gave her unease away at a mere glance.

Get in. Get the meds. Get out. That's what she had told herself anyways. She should've known better to assume that there'd be something to spoil her plans, simple as they were. Echoes of crashing and thunder rolled from the end of the hallways. The blonde froze, the corner of her lips upturning in an uneasy smile. "Not again..." Whatever it was, it was hardly good news.

She burst into the infirmary, with a quick flash, clearing her way across the room and appearing at Kayla's side. "Easy now!" Brailynn grabbed at the Autumn's wrist, catching her breath and drinking in the warmth of the rapid lightning. "I think the Janitor's tired of fixing up this place..." Her smiled softened up at the younger girl, despite the tense situation.

"What is going on here?" Her hazel eyes fell to the other two. Arbor Banks, she recognized, and some other strange face she hadn't seen much before. Whatever hold she had on Arbor, though, it must have been strong. "Let her go please."

Arbor couldn't see anything. She could just hear the murmurs from the girl she almost killed, the girl that caused her own impending death. Who was that? Why couldn't she move? She grit her teeth and tried to rollover, to do anything, to say anything. Just a gurgle came out. Her jaw was too weak to move. Her tongue lulled like a boat on a stormy sea.

I'll do it. No way it was happening. No way she lost. She didn't even start this fight; she was going to die a victim, like she was always afraid of. People will think of her last image as one of pure helplessness, of someone who couldn't defend themselves and someone who was picked off due to this meekness. The girl's neck twitched. She began to move her shoulders towards the sky. However, with the coming of a new voice, she succumbed to the weight of her own new gravity.

Kaya looked up from the paralyzed girl to the newcomer. Instantly, her hand shot up. An aura of red seemed to surround her fingers, but faintly, visible more so in the flick of one's eyes, the peripherals when the irises moved. When staring, it could be chalked up to the imagination, but when the gaze moved, it was certainly there. "Get off her," she demanded, trembling, her dark eyes bouncing back and forth from Kayla to this intruder. "We only wish to kill this girl."

One second, one snap. Kayla breathed.

Electricity kicked up around her thumb like she was sparking up a lighter, just a heartbeat away from dealing with her for good, when a hand snapped over her wrist. Snap, but there wasn't any brilliant flash, no crack of thunder, no body rolling across the floor. A faint wisp of electricity licked out like a snake tongue from her fingers, but sizzled into steam a foot away from the limp body on the ground. Kayla whirled, faded blue-white threads traveling up her arm and drawing up into the girl's palm, her hand locked under her firm grasp.

B͟r̶ail͟ỳnn. "Butt out of this!" she snapped, her other hand curling into a fist. If that'd been anyone else, she would've turned and thrown a punch, but she locked in place the moment the recognition lit up in her eyes. There was a numbing sensation spreading up her arm, a buzz that left her knees feeling weak even after just this little contact. She was still on shaky legs after her near brush with Arbor, but she couldn't just let her go, not right now, even with her in the way. Her eyes flicked to Kaya's, copper meeting a hazy blood red, to Brailynn's again with a renewed fury.

Right. They just wanted to kill her.

One second. Sorry. Two seconds. There wasn't any room to be sentimental. She'd say sorry after it was all done and over with. Kayla jerked her arm up, stepping down between Brailynn's feet, and slung a left hook toward the side of her head.