Welcome to Gaia! ::

((Will post soon, sorry!))

The soldering iron stripped off the bits of flesh from her gums where the tip of the iron was scalding hot--and where it was cold, she felt the gums getting stuck to the iron, tearing more of the pink skin away. Blood filled her mouth, and since she was on her back, she would either have to swallow it or choke on it.

It tasted awful, like metal and death, and whenever she let the blood run down her throat, the iron touched her lips, causing them to blister and crack almost on contact.

If her throat and mouth had room to let out a scream, it would have happened long ago. Silent tears sat on her eyeballs, blurring her vision. Pools overflowed to let single tears slide down over her temples and into her hair, where they stayed, cooling to the unpleasant temperature of the metal table.

The tooth with the gel in it froze from the rods, expanding the gel. Her tooth had enormous pressure in itself, reading to explode the tooth...

And then it splintered, causing fragments of the tooth to fall and mix with the blood it caused, as well as the blood from previous experiments.

Panther's screams ravaged her body, and not even the soundproofed walls of the experiment room were able to stifle her voice. There was something torn in her scream, something that shouldn't have been there. Screaming from fright was one thing. Screaming from pain, quite another. But this scream was one of something else. Death echoed in the halls, and her scream seemed neverending. Abruptly it was cut off as she ran out of breath, but her eyes remained glazed, her mouth stayed open in a soundless shriek.

Her other tooth ached as well, but not nearly so bad as the other one had before it was destroyed. The gel, now hardened, also fell with her splintered tooth, and she spit out the fragments that she could. The rods in her mouth restricted her movements, however, and the white pieces of enamel and cementum glued to her lips with her own blood.

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and her chest rose from the metal gurney, then fell back down as her eyelids fell over half of her eyes. The monitors bleeped and hummed, and the beeping grew slightly more alarmed.

The girl's last defense mechanism was coming into place; an involuntary instinct to "play possum". Her heart rate plunged dramatically, and she went completely limp. Looking at her unmoving chest, it was evident she was no longer breathing. Underneath her eyeballs, the pupils dilated more than natural for a Chimera or human.

John heard the scream, as well as the rest of the Chimerae. "PANTHER!" he screamed back, fists closing around the bars of his cage. His knuckles grew white, as white as his chalky face. "God DAMN it, let me the ******** out of here! Panther!" He shook the cages with so much force they toppled over, and his cage clattered to the floor, throwing his back against the bars. The air was knocked out of him, and he curled onto his side. There was nothing he could say, and he could only wait, uselessly, for the feeling to pass.

Then he heard it. The scream. What was in the scream. That thing, that torn sound that shouldn't have been there.

"What have you done?!" he tried to shout, but the air made his voice choke out in a rough whisper. His arm left his stomach, and he scrabbled at the floor, as if trying to drag himself and his cage to the Experiment Room. "What have you done?!"

In the Experimentation Room, Smoke sat on a stool, watching the entire proceedings without a single emotion on his face, watching from behind those orange shades, watching, but never acting. John's last shout reached him, and Smoke closed his eyes, trying to drown out the loud world.

Panther was in a state where she was unable to feel pain, but she was completely aware of everything. Her heart rate had fallen dramatically, and she was no longer breathing. A shock was administered to her body, but all it did was cause her heart to stop completely.

Panther drifted away, where John wanted to go and past, past the world of pain and struggle.

And no amount of revival could bring her back, because she chose to leave. Her body had rejected her, and she accepted the news gladly.

Monitors beeped, beeped, beeped...

And then the single, constant tone told them she was gone.

Smoke put out his cigarette on the heel of his shoe, and tossed the used bud into a nearby waste container, then stood up from his stool. A white bundle was folded neatly in a cabinet above the sink, and Trent took it down, unfolded it, and spread it over the girl's body.

"Subject F36072. Time of death, 2:48 am."

At the moment hound was not doing so good. He was shaking but not from cold. He felt depressed and scared and in pain all at the same time. He was desperate. He cried out, "Blood...give me blood! Please? Give it to me!" He was going through his daily withdrawl. Hound was in the middle of his worst state. Every day he fought the battle he was fighting then. The battle to remain stable.

((OOC: Been away for a while. >.> Sorry!))

Apsalar had fallen into a mild doze, not quite willing to sleep until she heard the click that signified that Panther was back home and...well, if not safe, at least okay. When the screaming began to echo, though, her head shot up, golden hair being shoved back from where it had fallen across her face. As the cages toppled over, she hardly flinched; the clang that the bars gave as they slammed the floor barely earned a hiss. Her attention was on the shrieking.

She knew the voice. Panther. And she, like everyone else in the room (most likely), could hear what didn't belong in there. The...the other. Her reaction to it was animalistic. She felt her skin prickle, her spine stiffen, and the growling begin.

Death was here, and she knew it. Her growl started low and rose into a cry that was half a crooning song. Grief for one of her packmates, for one of the pack's children.

Panther. No, no, not little Panther. That wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

And though she and Panther had been by no means the best of friends, she could not help but hurt for the child's loss. There must have been a way to prevent this. Somehow, somewhere, there had been a way to stop it that she had not seen.

If only. If only.

As much as she hurt, though, there was another who would be hurting himself even more. She turned her gold-brown eyes towards John's cage, prominent amidst the tumble. And a cold, silent determination settled itself across her face.

They had killed Panther. There was no way to prove it, but Apsalar was sure. The little girl, that innocent little thing who had done no one any harm. For that, they all deserved to die.

And die they would. If it was the last damned thing she ever did.

((should I wait for Anin before I respond?))