Uneasy Alliances [TBTP, Pre-Plague, Closed | Merrick]

As Merrick spoke Tatsuya gestured to the device and rolled his eyes, non-verbally blowing off Reyla's concerns, which of course only made her more angry. Instead of blowing up at him again however, she simply took a deep breath and turned away from him. Regardless of anything else Tatsuya had firmly planted himself on the list of people she disliked, but even though she wouldn't necessarily be disappointed if he were to die and be shuffled off into the cycle, she also had to acknowledge that for the time being she and Merrick were supposed to try and keep him alive as part of their unit. Even if Merrick showed no interest in doing so.

If Reyla was willing to admit it, she might also have acknowledged the fact that this situation was wearing on her nerves, badly. This was supposed to have been a simple mission, and while she had expected that something terrible had happened to the Shinigami staffing the listening post, she also hadn't expected to find an entire complex like this. What was happening here she didn't know, though she doubted that it was any kind of secret research. If it had been their superiors would never have sent them here in the first place. Either way however, this was not going according to any of the plans that Reyla had anticipated, and she knew on some level that she was taking her anxiety out on Tatsuya. Not that she would ever acknowledge such a fact.

The fact that he was being deliberately disrespectful wasn't helping him either.

In an effort to calm herself down somewhat Reyla turned back to Merrick, trying to ignore Tatsuya's attitude. "You're right, not to mention that there's very little we could likely glean from the device without the proper interface." Leaving that as her final word on the subject Reyla followed Merrick, glancing into the rooms that he had already looked in to see for herself what remained of whatever operations had been underway here. What concerned her was the fact that every room showed sign of a struggle, and given that there had clearly been hollows being experimented on somewhere in the complex she doubted that the Shinigami that had been stationed here had been particularly weak. There were only three scenarios that Reyla could think of that could have led to such a widespread struggle ending with the apparent deaths of everyone stationed here. Either there were far more Hollows than the two that they had found so far and they were able to overwhelm the staff with sheer numbers, there had been a particularly strong specimen being kept here, or one or more Shinigami turned on their fellow soldiers for some unknown reason. The first scenario seemed the most likely, but Reyla couldn't discount the chance of the other two being the explanation for what happened here.

She desperately hoped that it was either the first or second scenario.

Eventually they came to an excessively large metal door with a strange keyhole in it. The door in and of itself seemed fairly formidable, but Reyla could clearly sense an unusual barrier integrated with the structure of the door. Reyla glanced at Merrick, "I'm sure you can feel that. I'd like to get a closer look at it, I'll only be a moment."

With that Reyla strode forward and placed her hand on the door, focusing her magic to get a good idea of exactly how this barrier was created. What she came back with was interesting, but it was something she could deal with as long as Merrick was willing to help. "This is...different. I've never seen something like this before, but it seems that the barrier is keyed to different forms of simultaneous energy manipulation, Hado, Bakudo, and Kaido. I could theoretically pick this barrier apart without using all three of them, but it would take me at least an hour." Reyla turned to face Merrick again, ignoring Tatsuya as he leaned against a wall looking bored, "I can handle both the Bakudo and the Hado, if you can handle the Kaido. Basic manipulation should be all that's necessary, we don't even really have to cast any spells."

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As Merrick began to speak Reyla was brought out of her investigations, and in response to his seemingly disparaging tone Reyla just shrugged. "An hour is likely a low estimate, but unless I actually start trying to unravel the barrier at a fundamental level I can't say for sure just how much longer it might take, and now's not exactly the right time for experimentation." 

Unfortunately Merrick's second question wasn't something she was quite so eager to answer. In all honesty she didn't have a problem letting Merrick know the extent of her abilities, at least in that respect, however she absolutely didn't trust Tatsuya at this point. Even if she didn't like Merrick she could trust him to hold information to his breast with an iron grip, Tatsuya on the other hand was an unknown, and she couldn't trust him not to start rumors about 'forbidden spell casting' that might hit a little closer to the truth than she'd like. People did always tend to assume the worst about people who had skills that they didn't understand.

Making a quick decision Reyla turned to Tatsuya, "Tatsuya, go sweep both ends of the corridor, we don't want anything catching us by surprise and we don't know how many Hollows there actually could be in this facility." The irksome recruit looked like he was going to protest for a moment, but instead simply shrugged and walked towards the end of the corridor. Maybe a lucky Hollow will do us all a favor.

With Tatsuya out of easy hearing Reyla turned back to the door as she spoke to Merrick. "In terms of knowledge I'm able to match acting Captain Mirabelle. If you'd prefer a more numerical analysis my current knowledge of spells peaks at the one-hundred level spells, even if I can't cast them legally." Reyla had no real fears about Merrick reporting her, just because she knew of spells that weren't legal to cast didn't mean that she had broken any laws. Besides, she somehow doubted that Merrick was exactly guiltless himself. The more she interacted with the man the more convinced she became that his plan to build clinics in the Rukongai wasn't nearly as altruistic as it sounded.

"Regardless, I want to know what's behind this door." Reyla's hands lit up as she focused her energies, her right hand a dull orange and her left a bright blue. Placing her hands on the door the light seemed to be absorbed into the metal. "So if you wouldn't mind?"

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As their combined energies got to work disabling the barrier spell woven into the door Reyla considered Merricks question. There were feasibly a great many things that she could reasonably expect to be behind these doors from documents to sensitive experiments. Unfortunately she had no way to narrow down her expectations as of yet, so she decided to give as accurate an answer as she could given the circumstances. "An explanation."

Reyla stepped back as she felt the barrier dissipate and took a look at the door itself. She didn't quite recognize the material it was made out of, though it was clearly metallic, and if it was metallic it could melt. Reyla pointed at the top of the leftmost door and spoke, "Hado number twenty three, Moyasu." With that the spot that Reyla pointed at seemed to heat up incredibly rapidly until it glowed a bright white with the acrid scent of burning metal tinging the air. As she moved her finger to trace the outline of the doors the heat continued to follow her finger, melting a path all the way around the doors. The doors, now bereft of any connection to the walls, fell into the room with a loud crash.

Reyla only made it four steps into the room before she froze, her breath catching in her throat. In the center of the otherwise empty room was a giant cylinder covered in glowing blue lines which extended out to cover the floor, ceiling, and walls. What had stopped Reyla however, was the sight of four glowing sigils on each of the rooms four walls.

Reyla recognized those sigils, after all she had designed them.

"I know how they've been dampening spiritual signatures."

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Once again Reyla had been thrown for a loop, and she was not happy about it. The sigils that were being used here were almost direct copies of the sigils she had designed for her time dilation spell, and the fact that they were here meant that somehow she had missed an observation device within the lab she had been working on, and now her research was being used for unknown purposes. Most importantly however, her research had been a breakthrough, and she hadn't been consulted. Reyla was proud of many things, her appearance, her social skills, but most importantly she was proud of her abilities as a Shinigami, and this direct theft of her work made her blood boil.

Even worse, the people who had done this had tried to modify her work, and she could see several spots where they had made mistakes. The intent of the sigils was clearly to provide reiatsu sinks that would absorb ambient spiritual energy, but due to the modifications that had been applied to them they didn't disperse that energy very readily, and would instead hold onto it until there was simply to much energy, causing a highly destructive detonation. Instead of consulting her and admitting to their theft of her work however, the individuals responsible for this had instead gotten around the problem by creating the pillar in the middle of the room which, if she was reading the Kido right, slowly bled off the stored energy into the earth. A clunky and dangerous solution to an easy problem.

Pushing down her frustration Reyla replied to Merrick, "Yes, I can disable it. You might want to exit the room though, if I'm reading this right," Which unfortunately I am, "there's going to be an absolutely massive spike in spiritual energy centered on this room. I can shield myself from the effects, but working with these sigils will require enough concentration that it wouldn't be wise for me to spread my attention by trying to protect anyone else."

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Reyla waved to Merrick in acknowledgement of his statements. She wasn't going to ask him to put up a barrier, but she supposed it couldn't hurt. She also doubted that she would need to knock on anything if she was reading the situation right. Based on the glyphs and what she could sense of the spell work she was able to determine that the spells in the room were laid down as reiatsu sinks, essentially absorbing the ambient spiritual energy given off by any being of significant power. However, that energy had to go somewhere, and while the containment spells inlaid on the cylinder in the center of the room were powerful, they weren't powerful enough. Thankfully the builders had seen to setting up a solution to that, unfortunately it wasn't exactly applied in the most efficient manner.

It looked like the spells were designed to slowly siphon off energy into the earth itself, allowing it to harmlessly dissipate without being noticed, unfortunately the slow rate of release that allowed it to be harmless and unnoticed also meant that the spells had been absorbing energy far faster than they could release it, and it looked as if the container had nearly reached capacity. Ideally Reyla would be able to simply disable the sinks and allow the energy to drain safely, but the people who made this had mistakenly integrated all of the spell work so closely together that to remove one element was to unravel the whole thing, as such all of the energy stored in the cylinder would be released at once in the relatively small space of the room. Reyla didn't know the exact amount of energy, but she estimated that the release would be equivalent to several captains exerting as much of their energy as they were able, which also indicated that this instillation had been in place for some time.

With a frown Reyla pushed her concerns aside and got to work. First she set up protection around herself. "Bakudo number sixty Sangai." A gentle light began to flow up from Reyla's feet as petal like layers formed around her feet and folded up to engulf her before fading to a transparent green chrysalis of energy. Thankfully Reyla's skill would allow her to keep herself safe from the eruption, if only because the energy would be undirected. Exerting her will Reyla caused a small hole just large enough for her hand to fit through to appear in her shield as she walked to one of the glyphs. Reyla tensed as she laid her hand on the glyph. Concentrating she carefully wove some of her own energy into the spell, effectively integrating a formless bakudo into the spell weave before she spoke, "Bakudo number seven, Funsai." Reyla drew her hand back into the barrier and closed it as soon as the spell began to take effect. The glyph flashed brightly as her spell work shattered within it, causing it to quickly unravel, and then suddenly Reyla's world went white.

Through the rush of sound and noise of the massive eruption Reyla could feel her shield strain, but it held even as the room shook around her and she was slammed against a wall that she could feel was quickly becoming riddled with cracks, and then in an instant it was over. The sudden darkness was blinding, and the ringing in her ears made it hard for her to hear her own breathing, but she wasn't unused to situations like this and quickly her senses returned to her. A very small amount of light was leaking in through Merricks barrier, which looked worse for wear but had thankfully also held. The doors however had been twisted beyond all recognition and were embedded into the floor. Stumbling slightly Reyla made her way to the barrier and knocked against it, hopefully alerting Merrick that it was safe to lower it and allow her out.

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Reyla stood in the smoke filled room for what felt like hours, though in reality it was likely no more than a minute, before she heard the clanging of steel on steel that told her someone was trying to cut through the mangled doors.

Clearly not Merrick then, he'd be through this as soon as he decided to put some effort into it."

As if responding to her thoughts a tiny sliver of dim light broke through the door where Tatsuya had been striking it, and after saying something to the man that Reyla couldn't understand due to the door in the way Merrick easily took care of the door, ripping it down in a screeching cacaphony of twisted metal. Stepping out of the now open doorway Reyla waved her hand in front of her face to try and disperse the smoke coming out of the room, "That was unpleasant."

In response to Merrick's statement about remaining Shinigami and Hollow Reyla attempted to spread her senses out to detect what Merrick could feel, but her current lack of skill with her spiritual sense coupled with the massive sensory overload she had just experienced made it impossible. Unwilling to admit this, but deciding that she didn't want to be moving in complete silence until it was necessary Reyla spoke up with a concern of her own, "As long as you realize that there's no way they didn't feel that discharge, and now that the dampeners are offline they'll know just as much about our position as you do theirs." In truth Reyla wasn't that concerned, she doubted that there was much that could threaten her, and anything that could probably wouldn't be able to do much against Merrick, as much as it annoyed her to admit it. Tatsuya was a different story, but at this point Reyla didn't much care what happened to him if his own decisions put him in danger without backup again.

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Reyla gave Merrick a flat look, "Of course it's destroyed, and no, it's not the first  time I've seen that device." Merrick had also mentioned that he'd like to talk about her knowledge more later, and at this point Reyla honestly no longer cared to keep all of the information she had to herself, especially since Merrick was easily smart enough to infer most of the information himself. That being said however, she still had no desire to speak about her work in front of Tatsuya, "We can talk, later though."

Reyla was somewhat surprised that Merrick asked her opinion, but rallied gamely. "You clearly have more of an idea of where the groups are. If one of them is clearly moving I'd recommend intercepting them first, however if they're both stationary I'd recommend finding the Shinigami first. Unfortunately any equipment and data that might have been with the Hollows has probably been destroyed by this point, and I believe we'd both like some answers from the Shinigami before they have a chance to escape now that they know their cover's been blown."

Unfortunately Reyla couldn't just go out on her own, or she'd already be moving, but without Merrick she was essentially blind within the complex.

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At this point Reyla was tired, annoyed, and she frankly no longer cared what happened to Tatsuya, so when she was asked for her opinion on his going after the Hollows she simply waved her hand, "Go ahead." If we're lucky he might get himself killed. While her thought was unkind, it was nonetheless how she felt at the moment, and she didn't really feel like pretending any different anymore.

Reyla watched disinterestedly as Tatsuya ran off, sighing when he finally turned a corner, "Somehow I don't think that they'd put anyone he could consider a peer in a base like this." Reyla turned to Merrick, "Regardless, lets go. I'll follow since you're the one who knows where we're going. You can ask any questions you have on the way, but I'd honestly like to get this done as soon as possible."

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