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 Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 1:07 pm
 Felincia was almost ashamed of herself - upon seeing Eve, she found it hard to remember Eve's personal pain and continually focused instead on the scientific progress that could be made through her handicap. Looking at Eve's crutches, an idea was forming in her mind.
Still, she was too excited to worry about it all now. "The werewolves raided the lab some time ago and stole the first three of my Project Xedod binders. After reading about my plans for mini spies - mice turned into cats - the leader decided to find the rest of my binders. I had been working late that night and got penned in here when they broke into my lab. I managed to fend them off with Xedod's completion binder. That's when the Keepers broke through."
Unable to stop her excited gabber, Felincia continued enthusiastically. She sounded a lot like a science teacher. "You may have heard that I have successfully transformed myself into a genetic mutant - half cat, half human. I can voluntarily change my form into that of a domestic cat. I can do it to other humans, too. But more of that later. So, I was practicing being a cat - that's why I've been missing from my lab so long today - and had the most unusual encounter."
Felincia related her adventure with the werewolf leader, then continued. "The beast had the same idea that had been budding in my head: why can't this work on bigger cats? But you know what that'll mean."
Jesute shuddered. "Department 0."
Felincia nodded gravely. "Right. Thanks to code 5, no experiments including subjects larger than Specified 1 in extremity can be conducted on a living being until first used on a dead one." She gulped. "Wildcats are Specified 3 in extremity. I'll have to ask for a dead Keeper from Department 0 to keep going."
Then, before Eve could cut in, she continued hastily. "But, I have managed to gather DNA of a werewolf. I'm trying to find the protein that will make me a werecat, not just a mutant. And, thanks to my encounter today, I now know where the werewolf mansion is!"
With the exception of Department 0, things were looking pretty bright.
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 1:33 pm
 In truth that she learned,
or the times that he cried Eve was quite impressed. Felincia had been a train wreck in weapons, but she was brilliant in a lab. "You should try it with even more animals," Eve suggested. "See if it works with more than just cats," she thought longingly of Felincia's new freedom. Her own new freedom was a rusted iron to Felincia's polished gold.
Evangeline thought a little bit more. "Wait, so the werewolf leader is a little kid?" she asked. "A little kid and a couple of cronies did all of this?" she was in a bit of shock.
She made a face. "Department 0...why do we have to go to Department 0? It has got to be the creepiest place in the entire Keeper network of departments. Evangeline despised it with a passion.
In bridges he burned,
or the way that she died
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Rogue Phoenix Fire Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 3:11 pm
There wasn't a single Keeper who didn't share Eve's dislike of Department 0, with the exception of Department 0 Keepers themselves. But those guys were creepy themselves.
Felincia shrugged. "It's gotta be done." Suddenly experiencing numbing excitement, she scrambled to her lab. "Now, if you'll be so kind as to excuse me, I've got forms to send and experiments to conduct!"
Rushing through her locks and hand-scanner, she slid to a halt in front of her lab equipment. The werewolf DNA had finished separating, and she could analyze the proteins she needed. Then, combining those with the wildcat DNA she would receive if her form came through, she could test those on a - ugh - Department 0 body.
Pulling out her notebook, Felincia began to scribble furiously. It looked like she was going to pull another all-nighter.
Later that night, Felincia received her acceptance form to conduct experiments. She also received a tuft of panther fur. 'A panther? I asked for a bobcat!' Felincia shrugged and hurried to Department 0.
No one in their right mind would scramble to Department 0 in the middle of the night, but Felincia was too excited to care.
The first person she met was a huge, hulking figure with a name tag reading "Hi, I'm Bert". Bert was bald, muscled, and unsmiling. She showed him the acceptance form and gulped nervously as he grunted and unlocked the huge iron door.
The first thing that hit her was a gust of frigid air.
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Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 4:18 pm
Imagine this:
A cold, dark room with no windows. You can tell by the atmosphere that the entire room is underground. It's probably even under the basement. The ceiling shows all the wires and plumbing, and the lights remind you of your gymnasium: big, clumsy things that flicker every so often.
But the ceiling is at least fifteen feet above your head. Below that are aisles of tables. On the tables are what look like glass coffins. These are truly freezers. And they contain perfectly preserved bodies. Were it not for the frost that forms on the oldest ones, you would think these were only sleeping people.
Some of these bodies have been here for decades. They are fallen Keepers who, instead of allowing themselves a funeral ceremony, donated their body to the Keeper labs. But the labs rarely dare to use them.
Despite the dark and cold, despite the long aisles of bodies, despite the loud whirring of the freezers, one thing doesn't fail to hit you.
This room is clean.
Not a speck of dust hits the ground.
That's because the entire room - which is the length of four football fields, by the way - is lovingly tended by the Department 0 Keepers.
The Keepers are usually big people with little to say. They keep to themselves, and take pride in how they tend to these bodies and their freezers. No one could take better care of a mechanical coffin.
No one would want to as much.
This is Department 0.
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Rogue Phoenix Fire Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 3:35 am
In truth that she learned,
or the times that he cried Evangeline rummaged around until she eventually saw some of the binders. She loaded them into her bag and got it onto her back. Evangeline lived on the base of keepers. It was the most convenient place to live too. Short commute and free housing.
Evangeline was given one of the lower number houses because of her handicap. Her home had a single floor and a ramp up to both doors. It would be useful if she ever wanted to use her wheelchair. 'Like that would ever happen,' she thought. Evangeline hated using a wheelchair. It made her feel worse than she did using the crutches. It reminded her about one of her least favorite parts of childhood, having to look up at everyone else.
When she got to home she unloaded the bag and started going through the binders on the kitchen table. It was not long before she took out a binder of her own and started making her own notes.
In bridges he burned,
or the way that she died
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 10:50 am
Felincia walked stiffly through the rows of freezers, staring into the components. The whole thing was made creepier by the facts that it was freezing, the Department 0 Keepers kept looking up and staring at her as she passed them, and Bert kept following her everywhere.
With her accursed empathy, she couldn't help feeling sickened by the sight of these bodies. They looked so much like people! One Keeper looked like her Grandmother - she walked quickly away. 'After all, it might really be Granny.'
Felincia decided that she would request a proper burial when she died.
She soon realized the freezers were organized in their rows not by age or length of death, but by intended use. She hurriedly jogged past "explosives" and "poisons" toward the "genetics" rows. The goosebumps she was getting on her arms weren't entirely from the sight of dead bodies. Next time, she was bringing an extra sweater.
When she reached the first genetic row, she passed up and down the freezers, looking inside for someone with - something. Perhaps she wanted to humor her empathetic self and look for someone who seemed to really need a chance. Everyone looked as equally frozen as the next until she came upon a freezer slightly smaller than the others, looking inside, Felincia knew she had found her.
She was a small girl, not even a teenager. She had long black hair and a wonderfully innocent face. Her eyes were closed, though they did not look blissfully peaceful. A long gash across her throat showed where a weapon had ended her short life.
Felincia sat on her heels and read the tag attached to the freezer: "Shaishuu Cremegre
Died: age 12 year 1980
Death: vampire blade, clean. Ambushed trainee camp.
Donated for: genetics
Time before burial: indefinitely."
Felincia tried to imagine what mother or father would allow their twelve-year-old to be held in a freezer indefinitely. Most bodies were only kept for fifty years, then buried in a ceremony. The freezers had to be cleared out every once in a while, after all.
Felincia's decision was made firm. She would use this girl. But no matter how much she begged, the Department 0 Keepers would not let her take the body to her lab. Shaishuu was to stay where she was.
"Then I want a table set up here," she said hotly, beginning to get impatient with these creeps. "With all my equipment. ALL of it."
She spent the next six days there.
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 1:48 pm
This is a brief description of the experiment Felincia conducted, as recorded in her binder:
"Day one: A skilled surgeon helped open the body's skull so we could see the brain. Electricity was carefully used to stimulate the brain. Remembering its duties, the brain began a slow pulse and a very shallow breathing.
Day two: Wore two sweatshirts under my lab coat. The body had been receiving constant electricity to keep it alive. The old wound was beginning to bleed again, so it was quickly sewn up by the surgeon. The old blood cells must be producing new ones. That means the body is fully functioning. And that it'll get hungry. Tube was installed to feed the body. Made sure all was stable, then injected the panther DNA concoction into the body.
Day three: No change in the body. Created a new concoction and injected it into the body.
Day Four: the body has thrown up. Concoction success. Body is a panther. A very sick panther. Ew. Will inject werewolf protein.
Day Five: surgeon, under my guidance, stimulated the brain with several gentle prods. Brain reacted. Body successfully transformed into a human and back into a large panther. Then it threw up. So I injected another protein.
Day Six: this time, no vomiting. Thank the Keepers. We turned the body back and forth from human to panther. Then I noticed: her wound is gone. In transforming into a cat, the body healed the wound itself! Aside from being in desperate need of more blood, the body is perfectly healthy and athletic. And, it's a werecat!"
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 5:17 pm
In truth that she learned,
or the times that he cried
Over those six days, Evangeline had gone to the lab one more time. Felincia was not there and they were still doing clean-up. As she could not pick up heavy things, move quickly, or do much manual labor anymore, she stayed home and read the binders.
Eventually Eva had taken up two binders in notes. She had made adjustments and recalculated how to change someone into a bird. Evangeline had become fascinated with animals, not when she was little, but when she was in the hospital. She had a lot of time on her hands and managed to not only graduate and learn most of what was being done in the labs where she knew she would end up.
She had become fascinated with birds in particular. She loved how they could fly anywhere. If Felincia could turn into a cat, why should she not be able to fly?
In bridges he burned,
or the way that she died
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Rogue Phoenix Fire Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 5:35 pm
[[A bird! Why didn't I think of that?]] On the seventh day Felincia ignored her mother's protests and went to the lab to finish her work. She had a form to finish ("Dead body success, may I work on Keepers now?" kind of thing) and she needed to move her stuff back up to her lab.
Entering Department 0 one last (she hoped) time, she saw that most of her stuff was already upstairs. All she needed to do was "unplug" the body.
For her own security, Felincia tested the werecat again. Yep, the clothes stayed on when she transformed, like a werewolf's. Yep, she had the capabilities to speak human. Sadly, she removed all wires, allowed the surgeon to seal the skull back up until hardly a scar could be seen, and unplugged the machine.
She continued cleaning up, glancing every so often at the girl's body. She was sorry to see it be sealed inside a freezer forever. When the machines and lab equipment were all finally taken away, Felincia looked one last time at the body in farewell.
Suddenly her brow creased with concern. Glancing at Bert - who had followed her all morning, as usual - she bent and laid her hand on the girl's cold, still chest.
Only it wasn't cold or still anymore.
"I don't believe it," she whispered. Then her voice rose in a bit of a panic. "This thing is breathing!"
"You made it breath, with your machine," Bert said in a patient tone.
"No, this thing is breathing by itself!"
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 5:42 pm
 The first thing she remembered was whispering. It wasn't like the sounds Shaishuu was used to hearing, sounds that came from within herself. These were from an external, solid source. Then she realized she was moving closer to it. Behind her she could hear the farewells of those she loved, until she could hear them no more. And suddenly, she was no longer aware that anyone had said farewell to her. And the closer she came to the whispering, the less and less she remembered of what she was leaving behind. Soon she had only a feeling of leaving something wonderfully peaceful, and even that ebbed away to nothing. Then, she felt her heartbeat. And her body. She realized she was alive again. Opening her eyes, she slowly tried to sit up. It took a moment for her eyes to work properly. Wiping a hand across them, she waited for the crowd of blurry figures to blend into two people: a large bald man with a face incapable of expression, and a small young lady with a very shocked face. Shaishuu sought for her voice. Clearing her throat, she said faintly, "I'm supposed to be dead." The shocked girl had to look for her own voice for a minute. "Well, would you like us to... kill you again?" Shaishuu thought about this, but even as she did all memories of her afterlife completely disintegrated. "No, thank you. I can't remember what it was like, so I really have no preference."
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Rogue Phoenix Fire Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 6:40 pm
In truth that she learned,
or the times that he cried [[Complete side note: all bodies that are frozen, become like applesauce if they were to be unfrozen due to the ice crystals in the cells. Walt Disney...applesauce if ever unfrozen. Everyone who is frozen...applesauce. All well and dandy if they are in a refrigerator while not frozen, but still slowly decomposing, but whenever the cells freeze...you guessed it! Applesauce! Secondary side note: I hate applesauce. /sidenote]]
Evangeline, to her great displeasure, needed groceries and food. That was all well and fine, but it was not functionally sound to go through the store on her crutches and have to go through the process of getting all the food into the bag each time she found another item and then the whole checking out process. It just would not be a good idea.
Evangeline turned the wheels on the chair. She picked items she needed to put into the basket. To her even greater humiliation, she needed to ask people for the things on higher shelves. Of course they helped. What would you say? 'No you cripple; get it yourself?' It was just embarrassing that she had to in the first place.
When all that was done, she had to go and out everything on the belt. Evangeline went to swipe her credit card, but could not see the machine. She gave a sigh. she did not have any cash on her. "Can you just swipe it directly up there?" she asked growing redder.
The cashier did and then Evangeline got the bags into the basket and wheeled herself out as fast as she could. She got home and put them away. She then promptly proceeded to get her crutches, prop herself up on her couch, and continue to go through the binders.
In bridges he burned,
or the way that she died
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:34 am
[[Well, you know what? We're doing a roleplay with vampires and werewolves where the werewolves' clothing doesn't fall on the ground or rip when they transform. And people are turning into cats and birds. So frozen bodies don't have to be applesauce. I don't like applesauce, either.]] Felincia stared in shock as the girl stood, rubbing her eyes in confusion. It was one thing to bring a corpse back to life. It was another to bring back the soul.
"Um... we need to get you registered," she told the girl, trying to keep her head. "With the lab heads first, then the Keeper heads. We'll contact your parents, if they're still alive. Can I... help you?" She watched as the girl tottered unsteadily toward the door.
The girl seemed to dazed to answer, so Felincia took her upstairs to the Keeper doctors for a check-up, then went to the secretary who kept all the forms. She stared dismally at the pile of forms she threw on her lab tables, then set to work.
It took five hours.
Around nine o'clock at night, Jesute swiped his DNA card on the door and came in. "Felincia -"
"Please, Jesute, just tell them I'm not coming home until I finish this," Felincia said in exasperation. "I don't care what Mom says, this has got to be done."
Jesute couldn't help smiling. He walked over and picked up a stack of finished forms. "I'll get these over to be filed, then."
"Thanks. When you're done, could you do me a favor? A few, actually. We need to fill out another form - location of Werewolf Mansion found. Do they have forms for found hideouts?"
"Need you ask?"
"So fill it out, please. I'll let the Keepers organize an attack on it at their leisure. Then, I want to research. The werewolves think kings gave them the land. I want to know what 'kings' exactly."
"That may not be in Keeper records."
"Then FIND IT. I'll help once I'm done with this."
Jesute nodded, hefted the finished forms in his arms, and left, locking the door behind him. Felincia sighed and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. "I think I'm going to go back to inventing weapons."
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:39 am
It's probably unnecessary to say that Shaishuu was very much confused. She wandered up to the infirmary, expecting to see Mrs. Hoptop, but she discovered when she got there that Mrs. Hoptop had been killed in a werewolf raid five years ago. Mrs. Gorg was now in charge, and she treated Shaishuu sweetly as she did a routine check-up. Shaishuu fingered her collarbone, noticing something. "The wound's gone." Mrs. Gorg looked at Shaishuu's files, which had been hastily dug out from eighteen years ago. " 'Lethal wound from simple vampire sword,' " she read slowly. "Yes, that's how you died. Felincia says that when your body transformed into a panther, it healed the wound by itself." "Panther?!"
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 4:20 pm
And the seasons, they go round and round  Abby had Jerry on her lap. She was not at the mansion, but at the park. She could only get her pack to handle so many cats in a week and did not feel it necessary to push her luck with them. They all respected her very much and a few had helped raise her, but cats and dogs, dog having come from wolves, only mixed so well for so long.
"Where did your friend go Jerry?" she asked him as she scratched his head lightly. His eyes closed and he began to purr. She felt him rumbling beneath her fingertips.
Abby's thoughts trailed back to the raid. They would need another one to see how much the keepers knew. If they were going to be turning themselves into house cats, Abby would need a way to differentiate between the street cats and the Keepers. 'Maybe we should do another raid. It would help us a lot if we could find more out in general. A basic recon mission,' she thought to herself. The pack had old maps of the Keeper's base aaround somewhere. She would have to dig those up again.
And the painted ponies go up and down
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Rogue Phoenix Fire Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:34 pm
After Shaishuu's check-up was done, it was time for a heart-to-heart chat with the girl who had brought her back to life.
Felincia sat nervously on a stool on one side of her lab table and invited Shaishuu to sit on the other side. Taking a deep breath, she explained about the DNA testing and how she had been brought back to life. "Your parents, I'm afraid to say, were both killed in raids," Felincia said, glancing down at the files in her hands. "So... if it's okay with you... you're going to be living with me for a while."
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