Turned Around in the Wrong Neighborhood [Lerna/Meninas]

Alright so she was lost.
It was still a little dizzying to be making her way through the sereitei outside of just the normal confines of the Shino academy. She could make her way around the campus no problem, in FACT she quite prided herself on her ability to help the other students figure out where it was they wanted to go. But as it were, like any other time she headed out into the sereitei, she found herself utterly and completely lost. One of the instructors that volunteered in one of her classes had gotten injured in the line of duty on earth and so her and a couple of the other students had made their way to the Squad Two infirmary to see if they could see him. As it turned out he wasn't in a condition for visitors. Her and her little gaggle of peers had headed back, and she had split off from the group on the way back.

She'd already MADE it to Division Two right? How hard could it be making it back? Harder than she'd expected. With an anxious swallow, she found herself.....where ...WAS she? While some might have panicked, Lerna remained fairly calm, wandering her way around as she simply started familiarizing herself as best she could with...wherever she'd found herself.

And then she stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted a sign. Division Three. Research. And she felt a chill course it's way up her spine that made her eyes widen ever so slightly. And a miasma of memories that weren't hers coursed through her mind as she stiffened. Ah....THATS where she was. Lovely.

The voice only confused her a bit more. She had been making her way through the division with..... torn objectives. On one hand, a small part of her DESPERATELY wanted to NOT be in this place. A Mod Soul, no matter her position as a member of the Gotei and the general....well.ambiguity of whether anyone KNEW what she was, was bound to feel a tension in a place so historic to their kind. And as always, Lerna couldn't help but have to calm herself just a little. Relax, it's not like anyone even knows, so far as anyone knows you're just a soul, right? There's no way someone would be able to just TELL, right?

She was a bit involved in her own thoughts and so when she was walking through the area, she flat out didn't notice Meninas until she heard that little murmur from the woman, snaring Lerna's attention and causing her to pause. Glancing from Meninas herself, to the Birds she seemed to be observing. Were they experimental birds? The absurd thought crossed her mind, before she banished it. "I always thought of it more as a Tweet. I guess everyone hears something different." She mused aloud, thankful that her experience on earth had tempered her to be at least somewhat casual when meeting new people.

She smiled. "Got a favorite type of bird?" Alright, maybe being in this place was throwing her off her social game a little, she definitely was more on edge than usual, but hopefully the other woman wouldn't notice the tension.

Lerna smiled just a bit at that simple answer, huh one of those... That question however did catch her a bit off guard, her own perceived notion that she had been handling her stress well thrown a little into the gutter with the question as to wether she was sick. Her hand reached up, gently pressing to her forehead, making sure she wasn't sweating and , thankfully, she wasn't. All the same, she gave a sheepish chuckle as she replied. "I guess I AM feeling a little under the weather right now. Got a little lost, and figured I cold just find my way around, but this place is just a bit on the big side." A pause, now giving the woman before her a PROPER look, making note of ....some strange qualities. There was something almost ...vacant about her. Was she a member of the squad?

"You can tell they're about to hatch?" She glanced in the direction of the nest itself, and her pupils briefly slitted. She seemed about right. Her own experience was so much less....calculated than Meninas' to be sure. But she felt like the woman might be right. She supposed it'd make SENSE for someone in the research division to know something like that. She glanced back to the woman. She was attractive, but she noted that as passively as she might have noted the color of the woman's hair. She was aware that humans would have found her appealing, in other circumstances she might have even agreed, but she was also inclined to be wary of just about anything and anyone that she ran into in a place like this. If she could tell the eggs were about to hatch, what else could she tell? She tried not to think about it too hard, the woman could already tell she was anxious, she didn't need to give the woman MORE reason to scrutinize her.

Lerna blinked for a bit at that and chuckled. "Well, antidepressants or medicine. Who knows maybe I just have a fever or something." She chuckled, folding her arms for a moment before she .....paused, glancing at Meninas for a moment. Something.......familiar. Something nagging at the back of her mind as she found herself a bit ....distracted. Something about this woman was abundantly wrong, that much was clear... but she also noticed.... a quirk. A vacantness that wasn't.....JUST something as simple as stupidity or foolishness.

"If you don't mind me asking: What are you?" She asked lightly. The girl's grasp of nuance seemed to be almost non-existant, so well....she could only be direct, right? And so she let that veil peel away, her expression turning....blank, serious. To many, it might seem hostile, but it was, in actuality, a blank indifference so far as her eyes and face were concerned. Trying to find and ...scratch the itch going on in the back of her mind, trying to connect the dots on something that felt somehow obvious, but still wasn't popping out at her.

Lerna nodded lightly at that. "Shinigami is just a title and an occupation. What were you before you were a shinigami?" She asked, feeling a slight tension. There were a few possibilities. Danava....for one.... Demon was also a possibility, not that she really cared much for them. She still had a bit of a chip on her shoulder, but all the same... there was also other possibilities. Maybe she was just being paranoid, maybe she was just biased as a Mod Soul herself, but more and more, she was remembering where she'd seen things like this before. The older, or more.....altered mod souls. It was incredibly unlikely in fact. It was much more likely this woman was a Danava probably, but well...she was here wasn't she?

She made her way over to the woman and knelt down, staying outside of the usual little bubble of personal space, but still getting close enough to get a general look at the woman. "I suppose I am a bit strange. I'm pretty old, so it makes sense. Once you crack a thousand years I guess you start getting a little stranger. You're a bit strange yourself, hopefully you haven't been around that long have you?" She ventured.