[center][h1]Good Morning, Tsarevna[/h1][/center] It was dark in the room, but that was to be expected even in the middle of the day in Bak's basement room. This place had been retrofitted for human habitation, because it was obvious from the lingering smell of old rubber and stale sweat that the only things that had ever lived in this space were unused sports supplies. There were no windows and only one big double door that locked only from the outside, but the space was big enough for Bak to move around in and offered her almost complete privacy. Bak sat in the far comer on a massive pile of cushions, gently snoring with her head lolled back on a pillow that had been shoved between it and the hand metal of her backpack. Bak didn't like mattresses, her talons had a habit of clawing them apart whenever she had a bad dream and besides that she didn't like laying down anyway. Laying on her side was awkward, on her back was completely out of the question, and facedown just resulted in an uncomfortable crushing feeling that kept her awake all night. So she slept like someone relaxing in a chair. It would probably lead to back problems in the long run but as far as she was concerned no back problem trumped the one where you had a missile launching tumor growing out of it. "[b]BAAAAAA[/b]" Bak stirred. [b]"BAAAAAA"[/b] Bak opened up her eyes. [b]"BAAAAAA"[/b] Bak reached up to her nightstand and booped the novelty fluffy sheep alarm clock she had ordered from the internet right on the snoot. In the process of the boop, though, there was a bump as she knocked her arm into the corner of the nightstand and a lightning bolt of pain shot up it and buried itself in the very center of her brain. She let out a hiss and held the arm up to the sky while searching out the pull switch for the lights with her other hand. With a click the room was illuminated and she looked up at her arm as throbs of pain shot down it into the rest of her body. It was all bandaged up clean and white, covered with a padding that Miss Celestine had been kind enough to apply for her. The old minigun that had served her well, along with the ruined slab of armor that the demoness had crushed, were both gone and a conspicuous bulge was visible underneath the padding. It had been growing for about a week now, ever since they got back. There hasn't been any point in delaying purging the gun, it wasn't as though the pain was going to be more tolerable in a week or two. So she'd gone into her basement and pulled it like you would a busted tooth. It still lay over on the other side of the room, next to her sewing table, the thick metallic tendrils as long as her arm that acted as the pseudo-nerves necessarily to control it splayed out over the side and coiling on the floor underneath. Now something new was growing where it had been, her choice based on the suggestions of her friends on the [i]GUNZ-GUNZ-GUNZ [b][i]2[/i][/b][/i] official forums. She waited while the pain began to fade. If purging equipment was like pulling rotten teeth than growing new pieces could be compared to growing a shiny new tooth, nerves and all. Unfortunately, that meant that the nerves had to grow first before being encased by the armored protection of the newly grown tooth. It left whatever new part she was growing in a very tender state. She figured she had one more week of being careful before the shell was sufficiently thick enough to prevent teeth grinding pain whenever it received so much as a love tap. She took the tow cable hanging under her cannons in her good arm and chucked it up over a steel bar that had been set into the ceiling and stretched the length of the room. She willed the gears to turn and they did so, pulling Bak up to her feet off the pile of cushions and spilling a variety of sheep themed stuffed animals she had been using as a blanket onto the floor around her. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes Bak made her way across the room, passed her sewing table, her computer, the massive poster of Celestine's mother she had managed to get from her, and gathered her uniform and bathroom supplies from a metal storage cabinet beside her door. Then, making sure that the back of her nightgown was properly tied closed, she turned the nob and made her way out as quietly as she was able. Bak was an early riser. She got up before the sun was even thinking about peeking over the horizon, a holdover from her sheepdog days that had served her well in her new life. Not many people were around at this ungodly hour, and that suited Bak fine because it meant no one would see her before she was ready. In fact, the only person here that had probably ever seen morning Bak was the one that shared this basement with her and even then she'd never intended to wake him up. It was just difficult for her to walk quietly. Maybe he even just stayed up some nights, thinking deep thoughts about the night and death and stuff like that. She trod carefully across the darkened room, trying to make only to most muffled of clanks so as not to disturb him. She caught a ghostly flicker of movement out of the corner of her eyes? Had that been him? Had she been to loud? She looked around the dark room slowly. She wasn't afraid of the dark, or Vittorio, or Vittorio in the dark, or anything like that. But it did spook her a little if she ever saw him floating around out here in the whee hours of the morning. "Good morning Vittorio." She said in a loud stage whisper, and waited for a response. When nothing came she decided to just quickly move on. Her destination was the girls showers in the gym. By Rhean law a public school with an athletics program had to have wheelchair accessible shower facilities. Fortunately for Bak Mephisto had cheaped out when renovating the school so that "shower" was a large concrete square, a drain hole, and a hose they ran in through the back door. It suited her much better to avoid getting all her equipment needlessly wet. [hr] After toweling off and fixing her hair the way she liked it in the mirror she slipped her shirt around her neck and shoulders before started to tie it on. First the undersides of the sleeves using the little ties she'd sewn there, deftly manipulating the ties with one hand like she'd done plenty of times before. Then she tied the two sides together using the side ties. Then she made sure to get the back, difficult as it was to reach back there and tie it snugly so the fabric framed her backpack. She'd modified all her clothes like this to fit around her unique body frame, and had gotten pretty good at it over the years. With a snap, a button, a clasp, and a zip Bak put herself together piece by piece until she was ready for work! After finishing up by oiling the joints in her legs she set out on her 5:45 patrol of the school to clear out any delinquents, nere-do-wells, or feral cats that had taken up residence in the night. Since Bak had started attending class here feral cat related injuries had gone down 80%. She'd timed it so that, barring interruption, she'd always finish on the roof just in time to watch the sun rise over the city. She waved down at any of the teachers she saw starting to file in for the day. Most of them tried their best not to make eye contact. Waiting for the students that arrived was a significantly less friendly Bak. Anyone who went to this school knew that you would get hurried along to class at the end of a gun if you lingered in the hallway past the bell, and that was if she wasn't annoyed by something already. If she was already annoyed you generally got one verbal warning that, if you chose to ignore, would be followed by full volley devastation. Only five student had the reputation of being immune to this sort of coercion. Thobias were too tricky to hit, Gabriel Brekke was just too strong, Rurik had gotten it so often he could get away as causally as breathing, and Christine she refrained from shooting seemingly in order to spite the entire male student body. As for Clara...Clara was Clara. Enough said. The students had to wonder how Bak found the time to attend classes herself while waging this one woman war on juvenile delinquency. These students didn't know about Clara's invisible little friends, or how Bak had been allotted three of them in order to help with her duties as "Disciplinary Committee" head. That would be a normal day, though. Today it was a well known fact that Bak was on the mend. She had been lax in her duties for the past week, merely noting the names and faces of those that were cocky enough to break the rues to her face. She'd let them off for now, then there would come a reckoning. Oh, there would absolutely come a reckoning! Really! There would! There was no way she was using her arms condition as an excuse to avoid confronting Rurik about anything. He deserved a week off anyway, for all the hard work he'd put in on the mission. She was just biding her time, that's all. [hr] Bak walked around the school as class let out and club activities started to begin. She wasn't in a club. Most people here went home after the day ended, or went somewhere, and the ones that were liable to hang out after hours were a combination of the most brazen and the most skittish. Early on she'd applied to join the sewing club only to find the next day that they'd all apparently come down with late stage fingernail cancer and had to regretfully disband. Bak had gotten the message after that. So she patrolled the grounds doing the same thing she did in the morning; make sure there were no delinquents, ne're-do-wells, or feral cats hanging around after school hours. Today, though, a flyer fluttered out of the sky and slammed directly into her face. Grumbling she pulled it off to get a good look at it. [i]Tired of being the underdog? Mephisto's School for the Wickedly Inclined Lessons for training being offered. See Miss Maskono, P.E. for details.[/i] Had the student council approved this? Bak didn't know, they hadn't been called together for a meeting in the past week. For all she knew this could be a fight club, or a revolution, or maybe even a trap to lure in the Mephisto's fighters! Maybe from that clever man the boy Galbrek had talked about on the television. It was her duty to investigate things like this. As she stomped off to figure this out a few more students that were otherwise members of the go home club curiously picked up the flyers behind her. As Bak reached the area of the gym her ears perked up at the sound of battle and she doubled her pace until she rounded the corner and found the gym teacher locked in mortal combat with some masked girl! This was bad, that girl was really good to go toe to toe with Miss Maskono. If she got up close to Bak and targeted her arm she could probably put Bak out in seconds. But she could not abandon another of Mt. Mephisto's hard workers! "Miss Maskono, do you require fire support?" She yelled. [@RoflsMazoy][@AtomicNut][@Dezuel]