"So, where'd you disappear to after the last class?" Yang's voice brought Weiss out of her reading trance, and she looked up from her novel to see their team leader closing the dorm door behind her.
"Went to talk with Ritter Ozpin." Came the quiet reply. Ritter? What's that mean?
Blake apparently shared her confusion, as she asked the same question a second later.
"What does 'Ritter' mean?" The black-haired girl inquired. Haruka just threw a hand out somewhat dismissively.
"It is a term in Belkan. Do not worry about it. Ozpin has earned it, and as it is his highest title in my eyes, I shall use it as my main way to address him." Rude, and that doesn't answer the question.
"Belkan?" Weiss was the one to ask this time.
Haruka sighed, and crossed one arm over her chest to support the other, in which she rested her head. She looked annoyed, but not just with Blake and Weiss. Oddly, Yang showed no interest in the discussion at all. Then again, she got her answer, and has lived with Haruka, so she probably knows this already.
"Belkan is my native language. Please, do not inquire further." Haruka sighed again, and crossed over to her bed, pulling some nightclothes from her dresser as she did so. That answered a single question, incompletely, and raised a few more. Just who are you, Haruka Nakajima?
***
Haruka sighed again as she entered the small ensuite bathroom to shower and change into her nightclothes. She shouldn't have even mentioned the Belkan language, but her concentration was very disrupted, as her severed link with her two Lords—or rather, Ladies—was messing with her head more and more every day. While she could push the effects off, for the most part, when she got tired or was in pain, it became difficult to shield herself from the mental interference, which resulted in her getting distracted.
Normally, she wouldn't be so tired, as she could go for a few days without needing rest if she was required to, but after the sun had gone down, she'd cast Sealing Force Field, and had exhausted herself with testing out her other spells, using Rosenkreuz's recent correction calculations. And, she had been stupid enough to test Rosenkreuz's Blaster Mode under the AMF conditions. This had been a mistake, and now she was paying for it.
Haruka slung her clothes and towel onto the counter and stripped off her uniform, before stepping into the shower, and turning the water on.
Only then did she allow herself to hunch over and begin hacking up blood.
Blaster Mode has done its damage. And I only tested the first setting for two spells. Well, that's what I get for being arrogant enough to assume it wouldn't do much…
It took a few minutes for the coughing to subside, and she shook her head at her own foolishness as she cast a healing spell on herself. Soothing crimson light wrapped itself around her body, mending her self-inflicted injuries.
Haruka closed her eyes, sighed again, and began to go over her cybernetics for any remaining damage, though the spell should have repaired anything major.
Her hands she checked first. There was no evidence of any damage on the black metal of her fingers, or her silver palms and backs of her hands. Even the crimson detailing was intact, the small lines outlining her knuckles and the creases of her palms unmarred. The black metal of her fingers ran up the backs of her hands, merging at her wrists to encompass the entirety of her arms, thin silver lines continuing up the sides. None of these showed any damage in the slightest.
Her legs were the same, black, silver, and red metal undamaged to where it melded with her flesh at her hip joints, though those, too, were artificial underneath the skin.
Lines of the black metal ran up her sides, coming up underneath her arms and wrapping around her chest in two thin lines, one at the lower edge of her ribcage, and the other at her artificial collarbone. The rest of her front was actually flesh and blood, though beneath the skin there was a significant amount of artificial sections. Again, she neither saw nor felt damage.
It was her back that was a different story from the rest of her body in cybernetics. None of her back was organic at all, though parts of it felt as if they were. It was instead mostly the same black metal, save her shoulder blades and spinal column, which were both silver instead, though the plates along her artificial spinal column, running all the way from her tailbone up to the base of her skull, were each edged with red.
Nothing damaged that I can see or feel. Good. Just the question of just how cybernetic I really am… No use wondering now.
Haruka shook her thoughts from her head. It was no use to dwell on such things now.
She quickly finished washing up, dried and clothed herself, and left the small bathroom.
Her uniform went into a small clothes hamper the team had set up for communal laundry, and she flopped down onto her bed, pulling her scroll from where she'd left it. Before she could do anything, she felt a weight pull at the edge of her bed, and she glanced up to see Blake Belladonna sitting there.
"Are you alright?" Blake asked without preamble, golden eyes–the same shade as Cinque's, even—boring into silver.
"What do you mean?" Haruka asked, slightly confused.
"Haruka, I could hear you coughing up a lung, and with very wet coughs, at that. I've learned to tell the difference between coughing because you're sick, and coughing because you're injured. What happened?"
"Don't worry about it. It is no longer a problem." Haruka told her. Curse your better-than-human hearing. And that every time you look at me, your eyes make me think of Cinque.
Blake didn't respond for a few seconds, simply holding her gaze with those golden eyes of hers before standing, and leaving without a word.
Did I offend her, somehow? Haruka wondered, then mentally shrugged it off.
"Any progress made?"
"None yet, master. I should be done with analysis by midnight, but I recommend you get some sleep, instead of waiting for me to finish. You need it."
" Very well. Prayers first, then sleep."
Haruka set down her scroll next to the bed, and arranged herself into a traditional prayer position. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to pray.