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 Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:07 am
He grimaced at the intercom before it was reduced to the scratchy, empty sounds of being muffled. He felt a cold, sinking feeling inside. Who knew what the doctors were going to do to Billy? Or if it was them who'd done this to him in the first place? He swayed a little on his feet, conflicted on whether to stay or go as the silence dragged on. He glanced at the door. He didn't want Kaveri around Billy.
"Er, great, great..." He edged toward the door, lashing his tail. The less time he had to spend talking to the mad doctor, the better. In a moment he'd scrambled out and headed back down to the garden to see how Billy was faring - and if anything had happened to Kaveri.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:15 am
Kaveri was knelt beside Billy, holding up a dry, grey tentacle. She was fine, but Billy hadn't improved. Kaveri looked vaguely ill herself, she wasn't too fond of the fishy smell of the ink -- but she couldn't leave him alone.
Especially not around whatever else may be lurking on the island that happens to prey on seafood. She looks up to Zach as he comes around the corner, lifting her head as high as her neck can stretch. "He's really dried out but has a pulse," she informs him, "still breathing, but barely. I think that along with the poison, he may not have had enough water..."
She lifts the tentacle up a little bit, patting it with her other hand. "He's probably suffering a lot worse than we are, he's becoming an ocean animal now -- he needs water, that may be a contributing factor -- you know what happens to fish out of water, they can't breathe and they die..."
Motioning for Zach to come over, she adds, "Watch him for me, I'm going to get some water from the cafeteria."
She'll ask how the intercom conversation went after that, she felt that water was the most important thing for Billy right now.
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Sabin Duvert Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:20 am
The response of the lab techs under Sabin's irate direction was quick. While Kaveri was out at the cafeteria getting water a jeep pulled up to the garden and with one man on each side, lifted the pale octopus man into the jeep without a word to Zachary, and sped off back towards the labs to take him into observation.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:25 am
Kaveri returns with an arm full of water bottles, running as fast as her legs can carry her back to the garden. When she got there, she discovered that Billy was gone -- all that was left of him was the splatter of ink on her plants. She looked at Zach, bewildered, hugging the bottles to her chest as she circled the garden. He was just there a few minutes ago!
"Where'd he go?!"
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:43 am
Zach glanced in the direction the jeep had left minutes before, a foot away from the battered, ink-strewn plants. "Uh... they took him... the guards..." He still felt like he'd done the wrong thing, even if Kaveri had asked him to.
He realized his jaw was starting to hurt for some reason, and rubbed at it. He didn't notice his bizarre-looking fins for ears were connected to the jaw, and he'd been fanning them out the entire time since he'd heard the screaming in the first place.
He carefully stepped over the short fence, careful not to smash a stray toe into it. "D'you need help with those?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:55 am
"Mmn." Kaveri grunted and looked at the ground, at the black goop still dripping off the tomatoes. "I hope they don't do anything to ******** with him and I hope he's alright."
The doctors... they wouldn't let one of their precious subjects die, right? She stopped circling, standing at the edge of the garden with a look of concern. "I don't like putting much faith in the labs, but I like to think they know what they're doing. They're trained professionals and all that s**t," the vulture-woman shifted the bottles in her arms, shrugging, "he's probably safer with them than with us."
Kaveri hoped so, anyway.
She sighed and looked at her garden as an afterthought. "Yeah, this thing's gonna need some work. Can't believe it, and it was just starting to get back in shape, too..." Kaveri shook her head, kneeling down to set the water bottles on the ground. "Oh, well, at least it's not completely trashed like the last time. I just hope I can make that nasty smell go away..."
Hopefully it won't attract flies. Ick.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 9:03 pm
"Well... we'll find out, maybe." He looked around sharply, as though expecting some other crazed islander to leap out of nowhere at them. When nothing chose those moments to do so, he continued, wandering in the direction of the back wall of her duplex building. "I guess it'd be a waste for them if any of us did die... but I hope you're right... I don't know how their record is for keeping people around here alive, but seeing them putting up more of these buildings lately really isn't comforting." He tapped the duplex wall behind him with the back of his right hand. "This makes it look like most of us are probably expendable to them."
"At least he didn't uproot anything..." Casually he tried to lean against the wall with his back, but the sharp pain of his small wings being crushed between forced him to stay standing. He surveyed the The garden did look like it had taken a hit. "Have they got hoses around here? I haven't seen any, but maybe if you wash all the plants off it might go away." He'd been doing his best to breathe through his mouth to avoid the smell of the ink.
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 1:34 am
Kaveri kept staring at the ink on the tomatoes, seemingly zoning out and not paying an ounce of attention to Zach at all. The horrible stench surged up in her nostrils, then started to fade, fade, fade... a chunk rolled off the leaf and onto the ground in a small oily puddle. Kaveri blanched, fear-stricken, backing away from the mess and into the fence. Something about it terrified her.
{black} (black) [drops]
A hissing voice crossed her thoughts. Her vision doubled, a strong sensation of fear gripped her by the long neck and held tight. Choked. She felt choked. Sick. Almost unable to breathe. She swung her head around nervously, shaking, breaking into a cold sweat. The once-heady smell of the ink was almost gone to her. She let out a gurgled cry, clasping her hands to her face, now frozen.
Why was she feeling so sick, so frightened? Did Billy's falling down and disappearing bother her that much?
Was she panicking?
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 1:50 am
"Hey, er, Kaveri... there was something I was wondering..." He put his hands together, trying to take a deep breath. This was a question he hadn't asked in years. There was an odd silence for punctuation. That was strange. Kaveri had been talking moments ago. He looked up when the quiet had been drawn out too long for him to feel comfortable. Kaveri's expression was strange to him. Something was wrong.
Something was always wrong.
"You, um... you don't look so good," he blurted out. The obvious statement was drowned out by her muffled scream. His eyes widened. Poisoned? To his fearful mind, the long-necked woman was behaving the same way as the octopus who'd crashed into her backyard garden. Billy must have had a disease, and Kaveri had caught it!
He skirted around the outside fence until he was almost next to her. He looked her over, swearing under his breath. His expression was growing more grim by the second. "What's wrong?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:19 am
Words were lost on her. Her thoughts felt like static, a broken radio sounding off inside of her head. Hissing, crackling. Her thoughts became static. Jagged black lines.
Zach was looking at her. She saw him. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat felt dry. What she tried to say was strangled by whatever imaginary force was holding her so tightly, another unintelligible garbled string of sounds as she held out her hand to him. Fear and desperation was written all over her face.
Flies buzzing. She could hear flies. But there were no flies here. They were at the clearing with the rocks and the rabbit... she knew there were no flies here. She had been thinking of them, but there were no flies and it was too soon for them to be attracted to the ink's rotten fishy smell... which was almost gone to her.
But then she saw flies. Not real flies, but ethereal ones. Little buzzing dots of iredescent black darting across her field of vision. The buzzing could be heard over the static. She took a step towards the percieved flies, flailing her hands to grab at them and bat them away. To grab at the flies that weren't there. She caught a few, they melted in her hands like liquid. They were slimy and wet, like oil. Black, oily flies.
But then their numbers grew, faster and louder until the buzzing rung loudly in her ears to the point of becoming a dull, ringing hum. She swatted at the air a few more times, before finally saying something remotely coherent:
"These... goddamn flies..."
But there were no flies.
Zach could see that.
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:32 am
His stomach was in a knot. He felt a cold chill just watching her. His face was a mask of horror and desperation. His mind continued to shriek that she was dying, and he was merely watching her deteriorating. He was frozen, and he couldn't even reach out a hand to grasp hers before she began to swat at the empty air as though under siege by a nest of angry, invisible hornets.
Only now did he feel like he could move. Stiffly, weakly, he raised his hands to his face to partly cover his mouth as he watched her. He could feel his breaths coming in quicker, more disjointed, but he couldn't look away and he couldn't reach out to help her.
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:35 am
The first thing you notice, is an irritation around your shoulders where it meets your neck. As you scratch it you feel an almost down like softness, as you play with it, it and others like it continue to grow out of your skin, becomming full blown feathers. The skin below your neck changes fading up from yellow to red. Even as the skin on your face darkens to a grey color. The area around your eyes redens and the side of your head appears to be growing a strange, patterned abrasion. You feel your ears grow smaller and less noticable, part of this strange new shape. Your upper lip hardens and extends up to your nose, which appears to almost push back and merge with the skin around your new... beak. Your tongue having changed to be more pointed. You look down at your lower body, feathers like the ones around your neck growing there as well. Sprouting from your pores and thickening on the spot. You feel the thickening of the skin that seems to occuring. That isn't as painful as the talons that force their way out from your changing toes your large toe growing further appart and your small toe appearing short and stubby compared to the rest of your toes which have thickened and legthened. The human toe have popped off and you now have large bird like feet. The same seems to be occuring on your hand as well, the finger closest to your thumb and your thumb both changing to sport their own dark talons. You notice the skin under your arms stretching and becomming more baggy. You feel a pain shoot through your arms as you watch the skin begin to stretch before your eyes. The as of yet unaffected fingers merge as this happens, they grow out long and to curved point. More than that occurs though as the darkened skin begins to open as bone protrusions of what will be your wings begin to grow in, but without the skin or feathers. You are left entirely less than human and feeling it down to the core of your being. 
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 3:06 am
The flies were swarming her. They went for her neck! The base of her neck! The flies were going to strangle her! She itched, itched, itched, and reached back to grab for her shoulders to bat the flies away. She felt something rise up, something soft against her chalky grey fingertips. Feathers? Where those feathers?
But before she could make any sense of that, the flies left her neck went for her face. They clung to her lips, heavy and thick, some of the flies even went into her mouth. They tasted like motor oil, or something similar, something vile since Kaveri never tasted motor oil before. It was sour and metallic at the same time. They stuck to her tongue, it made her tongue feel like it was shriveling up and becoming narrower. The flies were all over her face. Her burning cheeks, her ears -- wilting and shrinking like her tongue.
Her head felt strange. She could still see, amazingly enough, and saw the flies rush down her body and swarm all over her lower half. So many flies, she couldn't see through them. The mass of them was very, very thick. Thick and black like sentient dots of crude oil, changing her before her very eyes but she could not see what they were doing to her. She could feel them on her, their spiny, awful little legs prickling on her skin and leaving white feathers in their wake.
White, white, white. Why are the black oily flies leaving trails of white feathers? It made no sense! Nothing made sense! Her breathing became ragged, a powerful, gripping surge of fear entangled her mind as she watched the swarm of flies have their way with her.
She stumbled backwards as they went for her legs. Her legs felt heavier, her feet odd and unbalanced. A few more steps back before she completely lost her footing on the awkward new feet. Balance! What happened to her balance?!
Kaveri fell. She fell on her back, the plants broke her fall, but she still fell. And the flies would not leave, they would not go away no matter how much she cursed them in her mind or swatted at them or let them drip away.
They were coming back up! The swarm split into two halves, each going for her arms. Kaveri couldn't do anything to make this eldritch horror stop, she held her arms in front of her face to keep the flies from going after her face again.
"Stop it!" Kaveri cried, but the flies did not relent. They piled onto her forearms, masses and masses of them, to the point where her hands felt very heavy and everything from the shoulders down felt deep-rooted pain. Her arms hurt the most, she saw before her eyes the black gloss coating her arms stretch out in the vaguest outline of wings.
Bare, naked wings with horrible bony spines. The flies mutated her hands! Her hands were gone! All that was left was two fingers on each hand.
She layed there weakly, listening to the humming of the oily insects. The noise droned, then faded, and one-by-one in a single-file line, the flies started to drift away from her. They were leaving. Her thoughts started to become a bit more clear, but she was still frightened beyond words.
What the flies left behind was not what they first attacked.
Something new was in her place. Something white. What was it?
It wasn't human.
Kaveri layed there in the garden, sprawled on her back, her awkward new mouth gaping open for breath. The grip on her throat started to loosen up, she could breathe freely now.
The last of the flies was gone, and she weakly lifted her head. Was it over?
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 3:26 am
He wanted to look away so badly, but he couldn't. Kaveri was becoming something different - was it seconds, minutes, or hours? - and the third person he'd ever seen as they lost their human features and changed. Rex had just been the first, the clinching proof of a very dismal future. This was different. Kaveri was a friend. More than a friend, even. He didn't want her hurt, but there was no way to stop what was happening. Shaking, he leaned down to grab a water bottle. Water, cold water, that's what Ambrose had needed when the blonde man sprouted fur in the cafeteria. Would it help? It wasn't going to reverse what was going on, but he needed to splash her with it, do something to stop her before she hurt herself or the changes became too painful for her.
When he came back up, twisting off the cap with a quick, forceful snick, Kaveri had already landed in the plants. What he'd missed in those few moments made him gasp. Her face... her feet... and now her hands... he watched with a sick fascination as they changed. Then he noticed once again the weight in his right hand. A water bottle. After a moment of stunned and delerious thinking, he hopped the fence and twisted the cap of the bottle off completely. Several of the plants that had avoided a trampling the past two times were crushed underfoot in his haste to get to her side.
He kneeled down next to her and looked her over again, still in disbelief. He practically couldn't recognize her face any more, but at least she looked awake. After some trial and error of gulping in air he'd neglected to while he'd been watching the changes, he forced out a few words. It was a pity he couldn't even convince himself with them. "Don't worry... E-everything's going to be okay..."
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 3:47 am
Kaveri felt lost. She didn't even recognize her own garden at this moment, she was laying on her back, staring at the sky after all the flies disappeared from her vision. The blue sky, edges of trees, a few grey and white seagulls drifting overhead. She could barely smell anything.
"De flies are gone," she whispered hoarsely as she looked tiredly up at Zach. "Dey all flew away and left."
She lolled her head to the side, bending her awkward legs and getting a glance at the feathery top of her knees. "White. I don't understand. De flies were black... leaving white behind."
"Maybe de flies eat colors... eat dem all until dey don't have color anymore. Until de world becomes black and white, no grey areas in between." It was rather evident that Kaveri had yet to come back down to reality -- she felt so very, very detached... and even her talking had changed. That new beak and tongue of hers made speech rather impaired.
She gazed blearily at the red dragon. Even in her delerium she recognized him. "What does it mean to have white feaders? All of de colors mixed togedder... left behind by black, de absence of color. What does it mean?"
"White feaders. What else has white feaders? I am an angel? A dove?"
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