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 Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 8:42 pm
"I tried going through the proper channels, I even tried bribery when that didn't work... then it occurred to me that someone much lover on the chain would be a lot easier to handle since the higher-ups all have huge sticks stuck up their asses." stare She pushed the door open into a huge room filled with row upon row of tall book cases, there was even a second level with stacks that went all the way up to the tall peak of the roof... with the exception of the north side of the room. There was a wide staircase that led up to the second level and what looked like a wide patio with tables and soft chairs.
The room was lit with diffused lighting, making it dim and there was a coolness to the air that spoke of air conditioning but it was quite dry at the same time... climate controlled to protect the books!
However this area contained more than just books, in the lower area there were also small tables set with flat screen computers and just enough room for the keyboard, mouse and an open book."Alan is just one of the few contacts that seems to have a thing more for schoolgirls than for bribes... he isn't too much to worry over, and I can take care of myself.. but I needed to explain you to him." sweatdrop
There was only one other person in sight as Sam led John towards a touch screen kiosk where they could look up what he wanted to find. "Meta-Human biology should be a good place to start, then we can narrow down the field from there."
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 8:54 pm
He sighed heavily as she told her story. That was the problem with people these days - they never knew what was in front of them. They were so caught up in their own bullshit, they could never tell when someone wished to help. Sam would have exhausted all other options before lowering herself to bribery and seduction - was it so bad that a young girl wanted to inspect and research some rare books? Even if it was under supervision, John could not fathom why people would get bent out of shape for that...
...But then, the world was a strange place.
"If he ever touches you, I'll rip his lungs out. Lets make that clear." John said firmly as she led him to the directory. "I'd much prefer Hono'o and I teach you some lockpicking skills then have you do what you just did..."
He pulled the seat out for her to sit on, lowering his glasses - the coolness of the air was easing his pain, as well as the dimness of the light, but if he stuck his face into a computer screen it would all come right back. Plus his fingers were too big for the keys - he'd probably poke holes straight through it if he tried to type! "Uh..." He murmured, rubbing his temple for a moment, trying to remember what he needed to find. "...Look for electrical elemental biology...anything to do with accelerated healing...and make sure its a broad search. Up to date as well as old school..." He knew that up-to-date textbooks had the latest and greatest in techniques and info, but sometimes there are styles that are written out as archaic or draconian that work just as well, if not better...
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:22 pm
Samantha chuckled softly. "I already know how to pick locks, where do you think Hono'o learned it from? But unlike my mother, I understand the newest security systems, and know that getting into a building like this is a hell of a lot harder than just cracking and electronic lock!" Munin was a raven after all, and all ravens are thieves at heart wink
She typed in his request, and selected the auto locator... tiny little purple lights lit up in the floor, leading up to the second level and directing the pair towards the section with the information that they needed. "It may be full of books, but this building really is high tech." She said as she slipped out of the seat and headed towards the second level.
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:37 pm
Now that surprised him...he never thought of Munin as a thief, but, now he thought about it, ravens were thieving little buggers....
He followed closely behind her, drawing his coat off his broad shoulders to slip it over a seat, pausing as he took his sunglasses off and rubbed his eyes...his headache was slowly receeding now. Perhaps that aspirin was finally kicking in? Or maybe it was the coolness and the dim lights...
"High tech..." He murmured as he followed after her. Everything was high tech these days - phones were becoming little computers. To him, they were all useless scraps of plastic and metal if he unleashed a decent amount of voltage...luckily, he either had better control over his powers then he thought, or the bleeding in his brain were finally affecting his powers...
He followed after her as they gathered the books. There were several on accelerated healing, but not that many on electrical elementals...to be honest, John didn't know all that many. There was the girl with the hammer that grew....what was her name? Aside from that...
Taking the books and carrying them back to the tables, he sat down heavily in one of the seats and flipped the first one open. It was a medical textbooks, a lot of the terminology was beyond him, but he could glean the majority of what had been written. The desklamp shining down on the book was dim enough to keep his headache in check, so he began to read quietly...
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:47 pm
Samantha curled up in a chair across the table from John, booting up her laptop again and then flipping open a book to jot down notes on what she read.. there wasn't much, and frankly she wasn't sure what to look for... when it came right down to it Munin was still more likely to try and solve a problem with magic than with science.
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:01 pm
He read for a long time. The only movement he would make was when he would turn a page and run a finger down through the lines. After a while, he would swap books, shutting one when he exhausted its information before taking up the next, correlating the information between the books, before eventually moving onto the next.
Soon he pushed one of the books away in frustration and leaned on the table, his elbow on the tabletop, his head resting on his fist. He sighed heavily, almost as if in defeat.
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:11 pm
Sam had picked up the books that John put down, taking her own notes on them.
She looked at John as he set the last book down and even leaned across the table to pat his hand. "Perhaps this is not the way either... you can't rush into this sort of thing." sweatdrop
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:21 pm
"There is nothing to rush, honey..." John said quietly, watching her tiny pale fingers brush over the back of his scarred, dark hand. He pulled up the book he'd just snapped shut and opened it again to the last page he was on, running his finger down the line as he read out loud.
"Patients showing signs of Type 4 Accelerated Healing do not regenerate fresh stems cells like Types 1 through 3. Instead the bodies platelet production is increased, allowing for cramming of cells into the wounded area, producing accelerated scarring and clotting. It has been argued that Type 4 Accelerated Healing is not healing at all - instead it could be considered as Accelerated Scarring."
He shoved the book away from him, before pointing to the innumerable scars on his real arm, cris-crossing his skin in every conceivable direction. "All over my body. Its right there, clear as day. My body doesn't heal from wounds, it just patches them up so i don't bleed out."
He rested his head in his metallic hand again, gripping Sam's little fingers in his, his face stony. His mind was now whirling, and he didn't know what to do...
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:37 pm
She left her hand under his, understanding that he was taking a bit of comfort from her presence alone. Sam frowned thinking over what he had just said and something that Hono had told her before. "Have you ever had a blood transfusion, from another Meta?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:40 pm
John frowned at that, pulling himself out of his funk enough to look up to her from his hand, lowering the metallic limb down to rest against the table as he squinted at her.
"...Not that I can remember...why?"
...What would a blood transfusion have to do with his healing factor?
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:57 pm
"Have you met Damion Headly? He was on Hono's team again this year at the tournament I believe..." The wheels in her mind were turning now, taking what she knew and what she remembered and working on something else.
"I don't suppose Hono'o told you how Damion became a Meta human either... When Hono'o first teamed up with Damion he was human... hearty and strong but fully human! It was that first year that she did something that started him down the road to changing into what he is now. He was badly injured during one of the fights, his face and eyes burned to the point where he was blind, but Hono'o didn't have the time or the energy to spare between rounds to even start properly healing Damion's wounds." She leaned over the table dropping her voice despite the fact that they were still alone, Aekea was just chalk full of unscrupulous people!
"So she took a leap of faith, and slit her wrist, letting her blood flow into a glass and then made Damion drink it... her blood merged into his system, and he healed.. it was slow at first, but now he heals almost as well as she does.. as I do!" Samantha had found, from small experiences that she had her own healing abilities, that her body healed itself without scarring and without her having to activate it... the same blood that flowed in her veins flowed in a more concentrated level in her mother.
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Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 11:06 pm
He nodded slowly as she spoke. He'd heard of such things....the blood of a powerful metahuman healing the wounds of another, especially a healing metahuman...but...
He shifted in his seat a little. How to put this without freaking his lover's daughter out?
"Uh, Sam....I've, uh, I've tasted Hono'o's blood as well...maybe not in that quantity, but I still have..." He said in a very measured tone, deciding to keep the where and the why to himself. "...And I haven't noticed any marked improvement in my own healing abilities afterwards...I mean, I can always ask her to try....but to be honest, I don't think its a good idea."
Firstly, it would mean Hono'o would have to hurt herself for him...and he did not like that idea, not in this situation. Secondly, he was a big guy - if anything was to happen from the bleeding, he'd have to bleed her little body dry. And that definitely wasn't happening.
"...My condition is due to platelets clogging my system up. Packing the wounds with scar tissue, like a surgeon packing a wound with gauze without actually stitching anything up. Thats the key." He muttered, resting his head on his fist again, staring down at the book.
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:19 pm
Part of Samantha wondered how John had managed to taste Hono's blood, but the rest of her was too busy going over the rest of what he had said. "You missed the point... do you know how modern doctors try to cure humans with blood cancer, what they call Leukaemia? The cancer is created in the marrow of their bones so it is not like a tumour that can be removed... instead they find someone with the same blood type and genetic markers, and they make a bone marrow transplant! The new marrow doesn't have the cancer cells in it, and it takes over the body, destroying the bad cells." She didn't mention the fact that the patient was irradiated first to partially kill their own bone marrow so that it was too weak to fight the new marrow, or that 50% of the time the new marrow attacked the patients internal organs as well as the cancer producing old bone marrow... That last was called Grafts vs Hosts disease, and it was a horrible way to die...
But John didn't really have to worry about that sort of thing. "Or she could even hook you up to a dialysis machine! We could donate and store plasma over a course of a couple of weeks and then hook you up to a dialysis machine and filter out your own blood while replacing it with ours!" She liked that thought a bit more than the idea of a bone marrow transplant, too much could go wrong with the first procedure especially with two people who could heal the way John and Hono'o could.
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Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 6:56 am
John kept looking at the book, as if it held all the answers. "I don't have cancer, honey...all the cells I have are good cells, they're just producing rapidly...which, i guess, is kinda the same thing...."
He rubbed his forehead some more. All this thinking was making his headache flare up. "....The dialysis sounds good....my blood might mess the machine up, though....high iron content....makes the electricity flow eaiser."
He frowned suddenly, squinting at her. "Wait wait wait....what do you mean 'ours'?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 4:12 pm
Samantha smiled as she leaned her chin on her free hand. "Our... Hono'o is not the only being in her line with regenerative healing abilities, it is a genetic trait for her now.. not an active magic, and the main reason why I chose to be born instead of choosing another avatar as I did my first! I gained more than I lost by being born mortal-ish... and lucky you, my mother, brother, and I... are all blood type O-negative, considered universal donors!"
Now she was satisfied with herself... Samantha was not a natural healer, or fighter her ability was memory.. the ability to remember anything that she observed, and in the past she had used that ability in conjunction with her other half.. Hugin.. to process information and develop a plan of action in record time! Part of Munin had convinced herself that she needed Hugin to do more than just hold information, but she had convinced herself now that she could still be of use...that she could formulate plans on her own, even if it took a bit longer than it had when she had been with Hugin.
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