Welcome to Gaia! ::

Most of the other scientists left while Devon pulled off his bloody medical gloves. He walked over to the sink and rinsed his hands. Devon then dried his hands and put on a new pair of white medical gloves. He walked over to where John was and took a medical swab. Devon then took swabs of John's wounds and put the swabs in a container to check later. "I guess by the sound of your screaming that it did burn. Good" Devon said.

[ Ooowah! I think I forgot to post. A recap please? ]

((She's just on the way there.))

Smoke didn't know that Apsalar was waking up until she murmured in her drug-induced half-sleep. He moved his sunglasses up so they rested, nestled in his hair, and looked back at the Chimera. Something flickered across his eyes, but then he turned to open her cage door, doing a double-take as he saw the sick-looking lump lying in the corner of her cage. He pulled it out with his bare hands, noting with displeasure that he was holding half of a dead rat. Wonderful. Well, that explained the gray lining in her intestine. Maggots spilled out from the rat's eyes, ears, and the holes where Apsalar had been eating. No animal would eat a dead animal with maggots in it, it would purely instinctive to avoid it. But then again, it was instinct to avoid eating carrion as well.

With only a hint of a grimace in disgust, Smoke disposed of the rat in a garbage chute, which lead to a furnace hot enough to incinerate even teeth.

"If you keep eating stuff like that, you're going to die." He dipped a clean surgical towel into cleaning solution and began mopping up the floor of Apsalar's cage. The only reason he didn't spray the chemical was because there were more Chimerae beneath her, and he didn't need them suffocating on a noxious gas.

He unstrapped Apsalar from the gurney and picked her up, trying to be fast and move her into her cage while, on the same token, trying to keep her stitching in place so the process wouldn't have to be repeated.

I tried to move with a cool hand...
It didn't go as I planned.

I'm full of rookie maneuvers...
and gestures meant to be grand.

"My daisy, you make me go crazy, forever amaze me.
Now let's let the day go lazy."

Apsalar smelled faintly of death. That was the key thing that attracted the guard dog (monster) of the slaughterhouse (castle).

She slinked over, keeping mostly to the shadows, with her eyes sharp. None of the Chimerae knew this, but Hiccadu had actually taken a liking to eating deceased Chimerae, as long as they weren't poisoned or too overly ripe. Then again, Hiccadu had a stomach made of iron- some decomposition wouldn't affect her really. But poisonous things- like cancerous cells, knock-out drugs, and some toxins- would definitely pose a danger to her system.

Like death itself, Hiccadu moved closer to the half-conscious Apsalar, stalking ever closer like a lioness on the prowl.

She couldn't resist uttering a soft, violent hiss of anger and disappointment as she saw Smoke place Apsalar back in her cage. That meant the girl was going to live. What a shame. She looked tasty too.

Her tail curling, Hiccadu padded closer, until she was right next to the gurney.

Moving her great head closer to Apsalar, she sniffed experimentally, then looked over at Smoke and sniffed again, zeroing in on his hand.

Then she jolted as she realized what she had been smelling, and growled deep in her throat, hissing viciously and loudly this time- this time out of rage. What? A dead rat? THAT was what she had been smelling? THAT'S why the female Chimerae smelled of death? What a joke!

Disappointed, angry at both herself, the Chimera, and Smoke, and just a little hungry, she turned her face away and angrily smacked her tail against the bars of Apsalar's case, causing the entire thing to shake and shudder loudly.

Turning away from the scientist, she looked over her shoulder at him pointedly, as if expecting him to kill something off just so she could eat it. Either that or she was shooting him a glare.

Sulking, she turned away from the cage and began to head back the way she had come.

"My daisy, you know what I'm after- your musical laughter.
A more beautiful disaster..."

I cant believe what you create...
When you let your heart detonate.

You leave a path of delightful destruction.
You're quite the bomb, my daisy...

The boy's heart lurched when Smoke looked at him, down there. At his level. Right in the eyes. The only time the whitecoats looked in his eyes were to shine lights in them, after which they would usually say, "No; nothing special about his eyes. Nothing wrong either..." Sometimes they would continue to look for just a second.

Lonomia had never seen his own startling green eyes. Or any part of himself, really. If you showed the boy a photo of his face, he would not know who was in the picture. (Or what the picture even was.)

The whitecoat held the stick out toward Lonomia. The boy was skeptical (he was one of them, after all), but the stick never harmed Smoke, and he wanted to try. Lonomia took the cigarette in a cold, fragile hand and examined it for a second. He glanced back at Smoke to be sure he wasn't moving; wasn't going to hurt him.

Confirmed enough for Lonomia that Smoke wasn't going to poke, cut or beat him, all of Lonomia's attention went to the cigarette. He touched the moistened end that had been in the whitecoat's mouth. He rolled it in his fingers, watching attentively when ash fell to the ground. He sniffed the smoke, his upper lip recoiling. He touched the bright end, yelping as he dropped the stick. It had burned him! He looked at his wound, more surprised than hurt, and then down at the stick. He picked it up again, and raised it to his lips. He breathed in as he had seen the whitecoat do.

Lonomia began to violently choke, the cigarette dropped from his mouth. He coughed uncontrollably, his lungs burning and desperate for air. As he sucked in a breath, he wondered how the whitecoat did it. He had done exactly as he had seen Smoke do; why didn't Smoke choke like he did?

Lonomia poked the stick on the ground, rolling it back and forth, unintentionally scattering ash. He didn't want to have the same reaction as before, but he didn't want to return it quite yet. First he had to figure out what he was doing wrong so he could try it right.


((Oh dear. Kids; smoking's bad for your health; don't do it! [/PSA]))

((OOC: D8 Everything happens when I'm not here.))

Apsalar's eyes kindled when she spotted him taking her rat away. She growled deep in her throat, wanting the words to come. Don't take that. Put it back. It's mine. Hadn't she caught it, killed it, herself? She'd been keeping it until it reached the right stage of decomposition. And it was almost there!

But no. The scientist tossed it down the chute, making Apsalar whine softly. Well, there was no shortage of rats around here, she comforted herself. She'd soon get another.

At his words, however, she stared at him in disbelief for a full three minutes - long enough, in fact, for him to get her into the cage. Eventually, she broke her stunned silence with a single word.

"...So?"

Well, now she most certainly had to get herself another rat. And hide it better.

She glanced across the cage, cursing herself for missing the moment. There could have been a few seconds there, when Smoke had been moving her into the cage, a few seconds where she could have escaped. Not that she would have gotten far, of course, but a few blissful moments of freedom would have been worth the price paid.

But she'd been too shocked by his words - and the fact that he seemed to think saying such a thing would dissuade her.

Noting Tobart in an absent sort of way, she blinked at him a few times. Hi. I lived. I cut Yani and lived. Are you making note of this?

Hiccadu was too quiet and Apsalar too occupied with her own thoughts for the blonde to notice her right away - until the tail smacked into her cage, making Apsalar jump and hiss as she felt the stitches pull violently. She was pretty sure she'd ripped at least a couple of them.

She shrugged to herself philosophically. It didn't hurt too much, and if she went back into the experimentation room right now, Devon would probably remember why she'd been sent down there in the first place.

With a mild tilt of her head, she watched Smoke hand Lonomia the funny-smelling, smoky tube. Then her nose wrinkled and she growled a little as she watched the scene play out. She huffed softly to herself - that was a mean trick to play on the other Chimera. Then again, she wondered why she was surprised that one of the scientists was playing nasty little jokes like that.

Maybe she was still mildly out of it from the drugs.

Sko watched the smoking stick silently. Confused as to what it did, why it existed. The embers smoldered and rolled about on the ground as he played with the strange thing.

She looked at the smoke man. He looked calm, curious, could it be that he was trying to stimulate learning? She wondered mildly why he would do that. Her curiosity was almost unbearable. Cat instincts maybe, learn, seek answers. She leaned towards them, sniffing and trying to keep a straight face.

She watched Lonomia's wide eyes, gasping at his daring with the stick. Maybe.... Just maybe, she could reach out and take it. She immediately recoiled from that thought. Stupid. Never get involved with them