Welcome to Gaia! ::

((And I'm sorry as well... ^ ^;; wink )

"Best in the world... huh?"

With a dejected sigh, Vahn had leaned backwards and just sucked his teeth. He was annoyed as could be, but then again he wasn't exactly in a position to complain outright.

He watched the ceiling idly, but kept Lucind in the corner of his eye.

"... I'm sorry about what happened."

At the hospital:

Denise was more than gracious about leaving and allowing them some private time, but a an aide remained at the entrance of the room, just in case.

Yaits Corp HQ:

Receiving no reply whatsoever, Yaits seethed, "That petulant little crow, too think I trusted him no less, reached out to him with an olive branch of cooperation, and this is how I'm repaid. He would dare to keep a sacred trust from me beyond the appointed time. You disgusting little bird, you are no more glorious than your master's dry bones."

He slammed his hand against his desk, which disintigrated into a puff of smoke almost immediatly. For a moment, his eyes were overcome with a black glow. Recovering, he left his office immediatly, slamming the door behind him. He didn't bother to tell his secratary where he was going. A member of the corporations upper level management approached him as he was on his way out.

"Sir," the man said, "My apologies, but there will be a four hour delay on the production estimates."

"You're fired, your personal items will be mailed to your current address." Yaits said calmly, with a snap of his fingers, two security gaurds took one arm each and proceeded to drag the former employee out of the building.

Yaits didn't mind the walk to the labs, it gave him some time to calculate some short term plans, his primary short term goal now being obvious. He would get Melissa back, returned safe and sound before he was ready for his next move, or that petulant little crow would know what true power really was. The scanners read his eyes, his voice command was recognized, as was his hand scan and his DNA readout.

Inside, Dr. Iskugawa gazed through dark glasses at a vial being penetrated by Gamma radiation.

"Good to see you sir," he said excitedly, "Oh, I can't wait till you what I've found, yet so much remains to be done. I've only tested a few of the impure samples of Vahn's blood. This is absolutely amazing, but I've found a way to purify the impure samples if you wish."

"Very good," Yaits said, "What have you found?"

"The true blood with Vahn's DNA is heat resistant, so heat resistant that it remains intact even when enduring the heat, the corpusles remain intact by emanating a heat of their own, at temperatures up to 2,000 degree's celsius. They actually glow. The trick is, the corpusles must be alive, dead corpusles are useless. It's a good thing we obtained such fresh sample. Now say we construct a clone from the samples we've obtained, we could make construct a serum to make fire resistant soldiers from the Vahn clone. But that aside, when exposed to intense heat, the Vahn blood survives, the remaining blood disintigrates, thus we could purify the 18 remaining impure vials into four or five pure vials, making for a total of five or six. But we can't heat them using any form of radiation, as that will destroy the Vahn cells as well as the donor cells, we must use conventional heating."

"Do it," Yaits said, and get to work on a clone from which we can extract samples from, "The prisoners we've obtained from the Gaian government should do nicely for experimentation purposes. I'll provide you with something to enhance the clones age so we can accelarate the timetable for this project. The government is eager to see results, and we will give them their due, but no more."

"Yes, yes," Ishkugawa said, "Thank you, I will not dissapoint you, in the name science itself I shall not disappoint you, I received a fresh batch of fetal material today, it will be put to good use, I assure you."

"Have you had time to examine any of the other blood," Yaits asked.

"Yes, one Joseph Brown," said the doctor, "I found no inherent abilities in the blood, but it is infected with a flesh regenerating virus of which I am eager to discover more about."

"As soon as you know what it is, I want it ready for mass production, not produced mind you, but ready? I also want full written evaluations of all blood samples, incuding Lucinds, within the next seven days, along with a fully detailed history of your progress, understand?"

"I certainly do."

Yaits was on his way to the Charitable Order Hospital when the phone rang, if it was made over the phone theat was given to Evan himself by a top ranking employee, there would be no need to redirect the call. Otherwise, it would be redirected to phone for common business.

If it was indeed Evan on the line, Yaits would be ready to speak, if it was anyone else he would note only his complaints about being contact by those beneath him tersely and hang up.

"Hello," said calmly, waiting to hear if he recognized the voice on the other end, or sensed the appropriate motions. "Edward Yaits the Third speaking."

"I'd like to express my appreciation for what you have done concerning the charge I sent you for safekeeping," Yaits said, "However, the time has come for my daughter to come home, you do understand, I hope. You have three days to deliver safely to the Yaits Corporation Headquaters, or, if you like, I can pick her up myself at place that we can mutually agree upon. I'm not a hard to man to get along with, Mr. White, by no means. I seek no conflict between us, and I would hope that you feel the same?"

"Sure," Yarneth said, "Forgive my caution with my words, I gaurd them so carefully that it is hard for me to be myself, even over a secure transmission. Know this, whoever trys to record, trace, or route this conversation will dealt with harshly."

Yarneth licked his lips, "What, no lecture, no diatribe against actions you find atrocious and immoral. I can sense the hate in your voice, I'm no fool. You're hatred is so strong you can't even put it into words. I know what you want more than anything else in this world. You want me dead, my defiled corpse paraded through the streets. Dream on little bird, I savor those emotions."

"Let me tell it like it really is, you have three days to have Melissa Faulkner delivered to the doorstep of Yaits Corporation. If you fail to do so, or attempt anything funny, I will never forgive you.

"Put a flower on Adaire's grave for me, if she indeed has one. I'm very sorry, but it was a neccessary, she was a rather dangerous creature, after all. And give my regards to Munin and the other crows."

((Hathead?! eek ))

It wasn't as if Yarneth didn't know a little about the Raven's, he had seen them through the eyes of his progeny in the ancient years, and this one in particular he observed through the eyes of of Adaire. Yarneth spoke delusionaly, but he had no delusions as to how the course of his actions affected other people. He knew that by now, Hugin the Raven would want to destroy him, and when you want to destroy something that badly, it is hate. Yarneth didn't need to reach into the depths of White's mind, he didn't need to try, it was a logical assumption, just as the assumption of Adaire's death was logical.

"Three days, Mr. White," Yarneth said, "If you do me this favor, it will not go unrewarded, my word of honor."

With that the transmission would be cut, as Yarneth had hung up, as his small convoy was pulling into the VIP parking lot of the Charitable Order Hospital.

No honor, Yarneth whispered, Feh, as if the crow hadn't done his share of justifyable mischeif back in the day.

"Ah..."

For a while, she just sat there musing and alternately looked at the man and the bandaged hands in her lap.
His reply and apology told her he did have an idea of those scenes at Latent, but that he preferred to push it aside for now, into some far corner of his head.
Also...it sounded as if Sunstrike had been kidnapped or something alike...

This whole day was no longer part of her memory, except from a few spot like remnants - though even those could be false products of her mental 'error'. Lucind had hoped to get a detailed story from Vahn and that she could later on 'borrow' his memory for it wasn't likely her own could be repaired or reconstructed at all. Now she decided to stick to the next best information source: the internet. No, even better, she'd use the GSF operation system, all reports, interviews, satellite data, yeah! ...okay, sometimes the Half-Siren felt bad for using her status as a special agent while she was on some kind of permanent holiday and...and thinking about that brought her a deja vu...

Anyway, if she only found a computer with internet access in this hospital she would get to know enough for a start. Well, since waking up from her coma around twentyfour hours ago Lucind had just listened to what Denise and the doctors told her about the injuries and the news headlines of the last days. Obviously, recent events had made her acting more carefully, suspiciously even and she hadn't asked or told anything which could've revealed her utter ignorance.

In fact, that hand full of infos she had by now helped to come up with a couple of possible scenarios. There was one thing though the woman really wanted to know: why was she holding on to Vahn's fang, a weapon of fire, when they had found them, the handle fused with her flesh...?

Only now Lucind realized she was humming. No special melody, just some low tune. She stopped. Maybe it was better to leave the man alone now so both of them could get more sleep...

((This time it's my turn to be sorry XD I totally missed that the last post was addressing Lucind and Vahn... - Something else: I wondered if its okay to use WLAN in a hospital XD ))


"Oh why...thank you...," she answered, sitting up in her bed and carefully shaking both hands. She only felt minor itching and stretching beneath the dressing: to her own surprise her flesh was really healing fast. Denise had told her how bad the Half-Siren's palms had looked...

Lucind blinked and nudged the roses with her nose. If she hadn't had her first coffee right before the men entered her room, she might had been a little grumpy - though only inwardly. Now, she simply smiled thoughtfully and looked from the man in the background to the one with the black gloves.

"Honestly, I didn't do much. Wasn't me who finished off the Behemoth." A wry grin. "But I guess I did a good job as a distraction for this beast. - Anyways, I heard the clear-up operations are proceeding well and that most of the damage in the town will be fixed withing a couple of weeks. Good to hear that..."

While she kept on chatting politely, fresh images popped up in her mind. No, not her own memory but what she had seen and read last night. When she'd realized Vahn was asleep, the woman had spontaneously decided to ask where she could get access to the internet since she couldn't sleep at the moment anyway and wanted to mail her friends at her store as well as the GSF concerning her whereabouts - she didn't care much if they believed her explanation or not. To her surprise, one of Denise's assistants brought her a laptop and even a more comfortable chair into Vahn's room - the nurse's order, Lucind suspected.

Thus, she had sat there in the dim light, the sound of typing accompanying the buzzing and occasionally bleeping of the medical machines. The GSF satellite data were quite good, only the moment of her arrival at the docks was missing - the Special Forces usually had no reason to observe the town with such hightech methods until events like this attack of the undead happened. However...using this file had made her feel like watching some weird homemade fantasy movie...

"By the way, Mr. Yaits. Did they find any weapons at the docks? I think especially Vahn would be glad to see his sword back by his side^^ "
The Half-Siren had left behind another set of throwing knives, which was not worth mentioning. But it really bugged her that also her second pair of wah sikeils could be lost as well...