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 Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:10 pm
There was something special about minipet duty. Growing up, Sasha had always had pets. A goat, some chickens, a barn cat. None of them had been potatoes with a million eyes or little soulless dolls, but the pets in the labs were charming nonetheless - if not a little creepy.
Minipet labwork was almost relaxing compared to the other duties. Feed them, clean them. It was mindless, easy to do, and best accomplished when one's thoughts were plagued by more serious, contemplative issues.
Sasha kept herself busy in the labs, jotting down notes and behaviors as she tended to the minipets. Half of her notes were official labwork, the other half a personal project. Two birds with one stone. Lost in her thoughts, it was doubtful that she'd hear anyone approach.
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Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:30 pm
Melvin had already done his duty work in the labs and was off to do his own personal projects, moving into one of the many lab rooms that also had tanks equipped along the side walls. He picked this one because it wasn't overrun by more defined departments within the Life department that was usually filled with more people who were also dedicated to the same field of study.
Stepping in, he froze when he saw the woman inside and looked around. The fact that it wasn't populated here had him worried. Sasha wasn't know for her mental stability from what he last saw and had no problems with sneaking in sharp objects to use at close range.
Still, there were cameras about and he hoped that would save him, not to mention he had a shield. Slowly moving, he went to his own group of cages with the minipets he caught himself and set a white binder on the counter. Taking his glasses off, he pulled on some sunglasses a moment before opening a cage that suddenly spilled out light. Subject 5GX4a was carried before it's door was shut and he moved to one of the holding tanks on a counter, setting the pet inside. Taking his binder, he opened it to a fresh form and took a red pen from behind his ear.
"I forget you're in Life." He told her, before moving up to a nearby shelf to find a Lux Meter. He picked one off a shelf and headed back to plug it in.
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Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:59 pm
Melvin's voice shook her from her reverie, and Sasha startled briefly before collecting herself. She narrowed her eyes - the last time she'd seen him had been during her little visit with Rep, and she wasn't entirely sure she liked the blonde life trainee. Leaning her hip against the counter, Sasha watched Melvin move around the room. He seemed comfortable in the lab, working with the minipets, and Sasha made a thoughtful noise.
After all, she'd made a deal with one tall, dark and handsome Dakota.
She ignored his comment, pushing off of the counter to slip a little closer.
"What are you doing?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:08 pm
Melvin watched her move from the corner of the protective sunglasses he was wearing, wary of any concealed weapons or just genearl twitches that might indicate a move to gouge out his eyeballs. Sasha was unstable, he knew that much, but she was also someone who made Rep's red-hair stand on end. There was something here he was curious about.
Plugging in the machine, he pushed a button and waited for it to set to zero. "I'm using a lux meter to determine the amount of lumens the minipet gives off." He explained, testing if she even knew what the word meant. He had only recently researched it, but it wasn't hard in theory to figure out and the lux meter was very straight forward. Turn on. Point. Measure.
"What are you up to?" He said, having noticed her near the other minipet tanks.
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Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:40 pm
"Research," was all she replied, one brow lifting slightly as she continued to watch him.
"Why do you need to know about lumens and lux meters?" She narrowed her eyes and tapped her fingers on the tabletop. Was this something she would need to take into consideration on her own project?
She didn't even know what the ******** a lumen was, let alone a lux meter.
Sasha pinched the bridge of her nose. This golem bullshit was going to be a lot more complicated than she'd initially thought.
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Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:59 pm
He returned to his work, setting the meter and waiting for it to start giving him numbers. "Because.." He said, as if he were being asked why is the sky blue by a child. "...I need to record everything about this specimen to have a bases of comparison. For that reason, I need to measure how much light this minipet emits to know if, during the course of various future experiments and testing, if there are any changes." He looked up at her a moment before taking off the protective shades, bright blue eyes watching her a moment. She looked vexed.
"Having problems, little girl?" He asked, poking back at the last time they met. Was Rep on her mind or did she has a hit list a mile long that was troubling her? He wondered how many knives she could conceal with what she was currently wearing.
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 10:37 am
Sasha pressed her lips together, blatantly choosing to ignore the 'little girl' comment. "I guess what I'm asking is - why is that sort of knowledge important? How will it benefit us in the future? Why does it matter how brightly a minipet glows? Are you charting FEAR levels? What kind of project are you working on?" She narrowed her eyes. "Have you ever cooked with minipets? There was a hunter here before - a division assist, actually - who cooked with minipets. It was usually awful, but I'm looking in to beneficial buffs. For a friend."
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 10:50 am
He didn't know why she even was in Life if she was asking these sort of questions, but he entertained her for the pleasure of educating someone who just didn't seem to get it. "I'm creating a base level of data on all my specimens. Weight, height, health, heat, any color discolorations. That way I can notice if, during testing, if there any changes by comparing. Get it?" Did she not take basic High School science? "This one gives off light, thus I'm going to record it so that I'll notice changes in the future. As to what I'll be testing, why would you want to know?" He wasn't sure if she was interested or if she was prying, though he felt it was the later.
At her last string of questions, his eyes narrowed and he clicked his pen. "Are you screwing with me? I'm not this Julie woman that everyone mentions no matter what other people say." If word was getting around that he and Julie had something in common, then he wanted to stop that gossip in his tracks. Sure, he wasn't petting and cuddling his specimens like some techs, but that didn't mean he wanted to eat them either. Sure, the cafeteria food was horrible, but he had some common sense and boundaries.
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 1:40 pm
In one ear and out the other. She'd never been big on doing anything with minipets aside from feeding them and cleaning up their s**t. Typical lab duties.
"I don't hole myself up in this room with otherworldly creatures." He was kind of a haughty b***h, wasn't he?
"And I'm not screwing with you, Melvin. I'm asking you a legitimate question. You seem to know a lot about these things - so I figured I'd ask. Don't you think that there might be some way to figure out how to use the FEAR in the minipets as an additive to food? As a means of giving us buffs as opposed to destroying our lives or ruining the bathrooms for a week at a time?"
She crossed her arms over her chest.
"I don't work with minipets, so I don't know a lot of the research that goes into them. I'm working on a golem prototype, not measuring <******** its and whatalls that have to do with minipets."
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 1:48 pm
He leaned back in his chair. This wasn't her department apparently. "If this isn't your department, why are you asking? You don't seem to have had or have any interest in minipets? If golems are your department, why ask about the possibility of consuming minipets?" He wanted to know before he told her anything. "Just answer me that. Is this really "for a friend" and who? Someone not in Life apparently if you are asking for them."
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 1:57 pm
"Dakota. He's a moon. He asked me if I knew anything about it, and I don't, and so that's why I'm asking you - you know more than I do in this department, as far as I can tell."
She shrugged.
"You don't believe me, you can always ask him. I told him I'd do him a favor, poke around find a contact for him and put together some notes."
Sasha gave a curt laugh.
"I don't give a s**t about minipets, but if they can be used to strengthen and empower the front lines, then I'm all for it."
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 2:16 pm
Melvin rose, opening the tank and taking out the minipet inside. He held it by it's neck, tightly, and held it up to her. "As you should. I don't care about these things. They are creatures of Fear and only shed light on the rest of their world and what we can use against them. They are specimens we can take from Halloween without causing a commotion. They are nothing but Fear to me." He told her, walking before he cradled the pet and relieved the pain of holding it improperly. "However, they are limited. We run out of these pets quickly due to how quickly they can die if someone forgets to put them in a tank." He opened the cage and placed the Golden Crown inside. He then gave it a treat for behaving, and shut the cage before locking it.
Then he took off his glasses and looked at her. "As Fear, ingesting them would be hard. They don't keep their forms if you break them apart. Feeding anyone would take too many, and ingesting Fear would leave only negative side effects from what I've read. Chills, cold, paranoia. Go to the Infirmary and ask any doctor there. Fear isn't good inside a hunter's body. Whatever small power you could get from them would be temporary and probably wouldn't be worth all the negative side effects. If Dakota wants to do research, he'd have to trap his own minipets, try to cook them without them becoming unstable, and get someone stupid enough to test it on without killing them."
He had to smile at such a ridiculous thought. "He'd have to pay big money for volunteers to be stupid enough to eat that." Walking over, he placed the shades on his binder before brushing his bangs behind his ear, looking at her with electric blue eyes. "Honestly, you don't seem the type of person to do favors for anyone."
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 4:01 pm
Sasha watched him closely, a small smile toying with her lips. It seemed genuine enough, a light of humor flashing in her eyes.
"Dakota has a way about him. I don't think he'd have to pay anyone, to be honest with you." She tapped her chin with a finger, took a step closer to him. He was smart. Very smart. Sasha could appreciate that.
"There has to be some sort of way to use them to our benefit. Apply them to our weapons somehow - there are FEAR packets, but they're one-time-use only. I'm not talking about merging minipets with anything, but draining them of their FEAR to add some kind of buff to our weapons, or even an item."
She watched him closely as he set the shades down, her smile growing in wattage at that final question.
"I don't do favors for free. It'll cost him."
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 4:41 pm
He tensed, watching her move closer. However, that did not stop him from talking shop. This was becoming his new field, and he didn't often to talk Life talk since the older techs dismissed him as a dumb trainee.
"Minipets would be hard to make an item since they have no core. Unlike weapons who were once Halloween creatures, minipets have nothing to hold them together. Even weapon conversation is tricky and not even remotely perfected to come out a complete success each and every time. You'd have to take that technology and work on creating a whole new system of making Fear without cores into objects, and even then it's not guaranteed they won't be utterly worthless and break apart or just not even create anything. Weapon conversion is a much bigger department and one I'm not an expert in. You'd have to ask that department if it's even remotely possible to convert minipets."
Patting his pockets, he finally found his goggles again and put them back on, fixing them a moment before he sat down and looked over his own numbers and the paperwork of the equations he had to use to figure out his own data.
"Having our weapons use minipets for a small buff could be worth a try, but it involves taking a LOT of minipets for testing and the Life Labs are not in huge supply at the moment. We had to be sent out a while ago during that whole carnival business just to get more, remember?"
He worked on a equation, but still watched her from the corner of his eye. The fact she was drawing closer was worrying.
"What are you hoping to get out of a Moon like Dakota?" He asked, glancing over at her. He wondered if he should tell the man that Sasha was completely off her rocker.
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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 7:06 pm
Sasha saw him tense, the smile on her lips stretching even further. It was nearly downright predatory.
"Okay, so. Would there be a way, I wonder, to extract the fear traces from the minipet and then apply it to the weapons. Just a small buff that could be used in any sort of circumstance. There is no issue going out to collect more. I'm planning a trip out there myself soon enough, both to gather minipets and do a little research of my own."
She didn't relent in her forward motion, drawing up closer and closer. Sasha tilted her head.
"If not minipets, then something else. Their whole world is created from FEAR, isn't it? They have to know how to harvest it or something, wouldn't you think? How do they make FEAR packets? I wonder if that formula could be altered to apply different fortitude buffs, attack buffs, defense buffs, what have you."
Melvin's final question had Sasha laughing, head thrown back in a throaty belly-laugh.
"It's not just that he's a moon, or that he's Dakota. It's the simple fact that he owes me a favor. That alone is precious, wouldn't you agree? It could be anything. Half of his pay, help covering duties. Anything."
She shrugged, the smile lessening slightly.
"When it comes down to it, it's really quite simple."
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