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 Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 7:32 pm
 It was an atypically peaceful day on the Kitsusagi Mountain. The sky was clear. The breeze was gentle. The righteous and the malcontents alike were huddled safe in their houses, and Jabril had all the room in the world to stretch his leg and enjoy the sub-zero weather. It was boring being cooped up in the lab all the time. What better way to celebrate the season than to work outside and enjoy nature?
Jabril perked up his ears, carefully scanned the clearing where he'd set up his second-best dissection table. But there were no patches of fur visible in the bracken, nor did he hear cracking sticks or smell musk on the wind. He was perfectly alone.
Just as planned.
With an excited little bunny-hop, Jabril injected some more tranquilizer into the deer laid out on his second-best dissection table, and flicked the portable stereo on with one of his tails. Music immediately blasted out over silent landscape, and couldn't help but sing along.
This was going to be so much fun!!!!
"Oh, IIIIIII can't deciiiiiiide, if you should live or diiiiiiie~"
He did a shimmying little dance as he gathered up his surgical tools.
"Oh, you'll probably go to heaveeeee~n, please don't hang yer head an' cryyyy~"
Jabril took his modified bone saw into his paws, and flicked it on, grinning to himself as it roared to life.
"No wonder whyyy~, m'heart feels dead insiiide~! It's cold an' hard an' petrifiiiied! Lock the door an' close the blinds, we're goin' fer a riii~de!"
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Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 7:50 pm
So up the 'lovely little ray of sunshine' was, storming along with her tails held up high in an offensive manner and a rather displeased look on her face. Being the child of a berserker had blessed her with little: The ability to lose both her ability to speak (though only under the full moon) and the ability to quite -happily- lose her temper and find the best of ways to express it.
Then again, she had found good ways to vent her rage.
Being a tad smaller then her siblings, Swax found that trodding through the snow was the most undelightful of 'hobbies', often having to stop, wiggle her bum a couple of times, then pounce to make any progress.
In face, 'often' pretty much translated to how she made her entire trek. The entire twelve minutes it took. After some lovely prodding and looking, Swax finally dumped her body, taking herself out in the process by dumping herself into the snow, one tail sticking outta it, before popping back up, in the area that seemed to bear the origin of her utter discontent, before putting on as best an 'angry face' as possible and making a face at the strange who stood the-....
....
"Umigawd.." her expression melted away all of her previous spite to make almost.. fangirling and doting eyes at the current -masterpiece- that seemed to be at work under the paws of this stranger. Indeed, Swax had just stumbled onto something -far- nicer then her previous engagement of -boring-.
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Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:07 pm
Jabril had been in the midst of a perfectly good mad scientist's cackle, throwing his head back and baring his throat in celebration, when heard some mumbling beneath his music.
Immediately the dancing stopped, and he leveled his bone saw in the direction of the strange sound. He held a scalpel clenched in his mouth like a cigar.
"I was nae dancin', an ye cannae prove it." Jabril announced, without preamble, gathering his dignity around him.
It hadn't been dancing. Of course. It was, uh, the ebb and flow of surgery.
The femme looked shocked. Oh god, not one of those. This was why Jabril lived alone.
"If yuir one of 'em animal rights freaks, y'can run yuirself right off. I got anthrax on me, I do, an' I do-nae see you complainin' about the wee packages of human-made meat in th' headquarters."
Granted, those animals died to provide sustenance, which Jabril's conquests died so that he could put their organs in blenders and derive essential chemicals from them, or use their parts to construct horrible freakish chimeras. Details.
The music thrummed on.
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Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 8:59 am
"Not dancing, can't prove it." she repeated zombishly as she all but dragged herself through the snow to plant herself down right at the end of the stranger's dissection table, two paws propped up on it and her head all but flopped on top of that while her tails wagged happily behind her.
However, she looked up at the irish-accented male as he went on to threaten both her purposes and.... wait wait, did he say -anthrax-? Her head suddenly popped up. "REALLY???" She didn't sound terrified more-so than -excited-, her tails still continuing to wag side to side. "CanIsee?" Indeed, she didn't seemed worried in the least about it's side-effects on her body. Her body was a tool and vessel for science, at least in her mind, ever since she was but a little'un, so this was just another opportunity for experimentation!
She made a bit of a face in afterthought, however, as she proceeded to add: "And I have nothing t'do with them 'Peta' freaks. They can go choke on a scalpel and slice their little trachea open for all I care." she made a little bit of a mocking motion and pantomime of a being doing such, collapsing into the snow, before sitting back up again and sitting in her ever-so-undainty pose. Honestly, Swax didn't take any of the 'ladiness' that came down her family line. "What you seem to be doing here is a much better use of flesh then it prancing about anyways." she added, waving a paw at him, before resuming her fangirling position at the end of the table. "So please, continue on and don't mind me~!"
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Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:53 pm
The deer carcass lay seaming on Jabril's operating table, its chest spread open by an iron bar. He appeared to be trying to do something to its heart that it would be very unlikely to survive.
Jabril blinked. The urge to stand and stare was fairly foreign to him, and he wasn't sure he liked it. It felt like his mind had just hit a brick wall at one hundred miles per hour, and now he was staggering away from the crash site wondering why he'd gotten off with a few minor bruises instead of getting his head smashed in.
This stranger was apparently... happy about his work?
No one was ever happy about his work. Not Jorm, who got bored, or Ifrit, who couldn't be told, or Setsu, who liked to stop around giving him flat looks and silent moral judgements. Not anyone. Except his Mum, of course.
This was either an expected oasis of sanity in an otherwise self-righteous world, or it was a terrible trap.
"Oh, aye. A moment, yeh?"
He rooted around in his coat, pulling out a modified surgical mask and a vial of white powder. The mask when on his muzzle. The powder was pushed towards the strange femme. That was not the only vial he carried.
"Ye- fancy anthrax, then?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:11 pm
Swax made a rather delighted sounding noise as the vial of anthrax was produced for her own viewing pleasure, scooting closer to it, but not coming into contact with the glass container. While Swax was an intelligent girl, she wasn't exactly well versed on the ways one could contract anthrax, and she wasn't about to let her own experimenting days be cut short on a chance poke. "Fancy it? Hardly. It's fascinating in all it's own ways to be sure, but there are many other things that I would say are nice to play with as well~." she beamed, before ticking off a few options by trying to fold her toes to count them off. It didn't really work as well as she would have liked, but it was a good attempt.
"Ebola, for example. And the horribly curious disease-plague that is hinted at in the second Laura Croft movie. Not what it is, because for sure a movie could never contain it's awesome, but the fact that if there's an anti-life to accompany life, what sort of damage would it cause.." she ranted for a moment, before bursting into the same fit of giggles one would imagine to hear from a girl talking about a -boy- they fancied rather then a good modus operandi a-la-disease for death.
"But mostly Ebola. It makes your cells separate and go BLOOSH" Swax waved her paws about while making the sound effect. "It's like your entire body falls apart I've heard." this was followed by a wistful sigh, almost startstruck. "At least, that's what I've noticed with my own lovely little experiments~ Needless to say, I've found that sometimes I have to censore my work or my lovely little body-disposal system won't get rid of the evidence for me." The curly-furred kitsusagi sort of laughed, more awkwardly then the previous sets, before waving a paw. "But enough about that~ Anthrax, anthrax~ Not the top of my 'pick your poison' list, but I do agree it's quite lovely as well~"
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Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:32 pm
"Oh, aye, but c'n ye weaponize ebola? I do-nae think so," Jabril countered. It was hard to see the challenging grin beneath his surgical mask, but it was visible all the same, in the way his tails snaked back and forth and the fur crinkled at the corners of his eyes.
"Anthrax bacterium, now - tha' is a useful beastie." He carelessly tossed the vial up in the air, with a flick of his muzzle, and caught it between his two outstretched paws. The kitsu biologist was wearing a slightly dreamy look. Living weapons were the best weapons. His Da taught him that. "Transmitted through th'air, takes em' down right off, nae highly infectious ot'erwise, perfect fer runnin' off do-goodin' enemies o' progress. Yeh?"
He stuffed the vial back in his coat, with a smug sort of wink.
"If ye ha' ebola, pr'aps ye care t'prove it."
He shoved his paws back into the deer's chest, and began carefully carving away layers of fat with sharp claws.
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Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:44 pm
"Mmmm, now see. You seem to have made one little presumption about my plans here." Swax didn't sound offended, or even challenged by the stranger. Half a temper-tantrum, half emotionless. It made her bouts of anger so much stronger in her own eyes. "Because while you may have the better airbourne weapon, Ebola doesn't have a vaccine, unlike yours." she taunted, before adding, "But it would be a nice little doubled-up effect." she said, leaning in and whispering in a sinister way:
"Just make everybody frightened of getting Anthrax and sneak ebola in under their radar. If they don't die of one, the other could take them out." she said delightfully, before adding, "Not to mention watching people heave their insides out and slowly slough off all their body is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
The swayed from side to side, "But both are good, Both are very good." she chimed, seeming rather pleased to have intelligent conversation for once, before leaning over to Jabril's side to watch him work on his lovely little specimen, humming a happy little tune to herself, though she made it sound almost -deadly- with her tone.
"Might I ask exactly what you're planning to do? It looks absolutely -stunning-." she complimented cheerfully.
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Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 10:39 pm
Jabril bent his neck and sniggered. It wasn't quite a cackle, but that almost made it more sinister.
"An' wh around here d'ye think is carryin' anthrax antidote?"
He moved his paws with the deer's chest, making an ominous squelching sound. When he turned his attention back to Swax, his tone was almost conspiratorial.
"Th' problem wit' ebola, Fluffy, is ye ha' t'keep it from infecting yuirself. Ye want t'weaponize ebola, ye got t'cure it first, yeh? An' rilly, wha's the fun in cures?"
He proudly pointed to the deers chest cavity with bloody claws, bouncing back and forth a little on his hind legs. He so rarely got to show off!
"D'ye see th' heart beatin'?"
It fluttered steadily against the pads of his paw.
"M' gion t'put a special sort o' pacemaker in."
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Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 8:13 am
"You." She answered bluntly, before making a bit of a face at the nickname she'd just been christened by the stranger, before batting at him and correcting: "Oi. It's Swax, not 'fluffy'." she stated, sounding every bit miffed by the comment, before putting back on her 'game face' and responding to the more important of all the conversation: "Which is why you make some poor unsuspecting standby victim do it. And don't touch the infected party. An ounce of prevention is worth a gallon of cure."
Swax leaned forward to look at the heart that was being motioned to, tilting her head to the side a bit, before shrugging. "A pacemaker put in the heart of a creature that's likely to not ever move again?" she pawed at the other section of the thoracic cavity. "Really, it's vacuum system for breathing has been shut down."
She learned that one from reading her fun little books. "But it might be interesting to see the heart keep pumping despite the futility of why the heart beats in the first place..." Swax suddenly pounded on her own chest and beamed a bit, proudly announcing "I've not got a heart as most would put it. Blame m'pops for the inheritance of such a thing." Swax curled the fur on her chest between two of her toes before sighing happily at the thought. "Ba-dump, Ba-dump...." She offered a paw to Jabril. "Check for a pulse, even. I've yet to have found one and I've had my whole life to check."
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Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 6:23 am
"But tha's exactly the fun of it!" Jabril gestured excitedly to the deer's chest. Swax was correct. It was no longer breathing. The creature was, for all intents and purposes, dead as a doornail. "I ha' t'see how fast I c'n get its heart t'beat wi'out explodin'. An' how slow it can go wi'out failin' t'pump at all. Ye follow? I cannae make further al'erations 'till I know the beasties' limits."
Blood spattered on the snow as he made an expansive gesture.
"Now, a Kitsu heart- tha I have nae got m'hands on. More trouble'n t'is worth, wit' the do-gooding sorts on th' mountain."
Jabril assumed a wounded martyr's pose, pressing a paw to his chest as though about to swear an oath as to his pure and noble scientific intentions. He did have morals. He wouldn't do anything to smart or useful kitsu. Just the silly, stupid ones that sat around breeding and cuddling. Surely no one would miss those once they got some eggs out of them.
"But if yuir volunteerin' t'be a test subject-"
The male's mood abruptly shifted, and he cracked a grin, bright and sharp as the ice on the mountainside in morning.
He did not hesitate when it came to manhandling Swax, first pressing his paw to her chest and then grabbing the side of her neck. When no pulse was forthcoming, he scented the air.
"Yuir undead? Ye do'nae smell like rot."
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Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 7:48 am
"OoooOoooh~" Swax chimed, seeming rather interested in the entire experiment. Being of the experimenting sort of her own, she didn't mind the grotesqueness that was being described to her. In fact, it was almost like Santa Claus had decided she'd been a -very- good girl and gave her the best of her presents early!
"Though I have to admit that making a heart explode would be rather entertaining in it's own purposes." she said, sounding rather sadistic about it. Indeed, spatter and all the internal gore that came with the role of experimenting was probably what drew her to it in the first place.
While most females in her position probably would have squeaked in horror at being manhandled in such a way, Swax made almost no sound at all, simply shifting a bit, and even making a point to fidget in the smallest of ways: It tended to be easier to feel the pulse on a slightly-moving object. At least that's what she'd found.
"Undead? Hardly. To be undead requires there to have been life then death then a state of limbo between the two. I've yet to have reached a 'dead' state. I can't exactly say that my body is 'living', due to a lack of pulse, but from what I've learned of my 'kind', mostly of asking my father and meeting 'minilings' that share my ... 'similarities', I can be rendered into a state of a like-death." She seemed rather pleased to share the information, "It's what I like to say is my subject of experimentation for the most part: The Nobodies." she sighed sadly at the thought, "I'm not the best of all subjects I could get my paws on, but I've yet to have been able to get my paws on a first generation nobody or a full-nobody." Woe.
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Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 11:43 pm
Jabril let Swax go, and started circling the female like a wolf sizing up its prey. Watching the femme from another angle was very unlikely to be useful, but when experimenting, it always paid to be thorough. Jabril could spend days dissecting an interesting specimen to its most basic components, scanning and cataloguing and absorbing himself so far into his work that he forgot to eat or sleep.
"Nobody." He tasted the word, feeling how it rolled of his tongue. "T'is a wee bit melodramatic name for a species, but I s'pose ye ha' yuir reasons."
The scientist snapped his jaws together.
"D'ye bleed?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 7:35 am
"I didn't come up with the name. And frankly I think it should be switched with our counterparts, the Heartless. Since we have no hearts, and they have no bodies." She shrugged a bit, not minding the attention, frankly since it was better then how me mother doted on her and how her brothers nagged at her. "At least, like us, no 'bodies' in a traditional sense. They're moreso.." she held up her front legs and did a bit of a squiggly squishy motion. "They're kinda.. morphy. Not like a body should be. Like.. an anti-body?"
The sudden new question, strange in it's own way, caused Swax to pause and think about this for a moment. Thinking, most of what she could do to her name. No heart meant mostly faked emotion, which left her with pure logic. And her logic didn't have a flat-out answer for that.
"I dunno. I've yet to have actually done so, and I can't think of any time when I -should- have done so, since.. y'know.... if I haven't, I can't really tell how minor of an 'injury' counts as major enough to draw blood."
She paused a moment. "From what I know.... I have no idea. Again, haven't gotten a more.. 'versed' specimen to learn from."
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 2:51 pm
The thought that a mere organ could be linked to emotion never once crossed Jabril's mind. Oh, he knew that the darker denizens of the mountain were supposedly gifted with horns and stitched shut in their heads, and that the good and true were blessed with curiously detached wings. But to his mind, the only part of the body relevant to personality was the brain.
Superstition was rubbish. Magic was merely the word used to explain genetically inherited abilities that lazy kitsu refused to investigate or understand.
"If ye c'n bleed, if ye ha blood, then ye must ha' a heart. Or some other means t'pump it."
He nodded towards the now-cooling deer.
"Like tha' poor fellow."
Jabril curled his tails happily, lost in the labyrinth of his own mind. Then he cackled. No sense in letting Fluffy think he'd forgotten her.
"I do'nae s'pose ye'd be willin' t'provide a sample." He waved the notion off with a flick of his ears. For some reason, other ktisu got dreadfully squeamish and upset when he asked for tissue samples. Jabril put that down to ignorance. "If they c'n make ye[/], they must ha' enough in common wit' th'rest of us to reproduce, yeh? Ye'd think tha' would mean blood. Or-"
He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone.
"Wha' if we could get our 'ands on one?"
And if Swax turned on him, he still have his chemicals.
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