She blinked.
"Yeah, I'll try the wolf. I need meat."
Bianca took a seat off to the side next to the fire in that pretzel-legged way that her teachers sometimes told her to do, watching Mai'iq* with the knife. He had better be good with meat. She mustered up the strength, took a deep breath, and turned to Mai'iq.
"How fast can you do it? If my grandpa was here, he'd have already skinned it and taken the guts out and seasoned it with old potato crisps or something and still made it taste yummy and juicy and all that stuff."
She glanced over at the people who tried fighting the wolves, but she saw a bird-like shape that wasn't there before. So she proceeded to ignore it instead.
edited 27th Sep '12 10:31:38 AM by CrystalGlacia
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."
PI
Damien looked at his hands as if surprised to find them holding a squirming teenager. The strain felt like nothing, but one of the alarms had started beeping again. Damien stared for another long second into Felix's eyes, and wondered if he could see Damien's night-vision flickering on and off. He dropped Felix just as suddenly as he had picked him up— at least, he tried to. His left hand released, but in his right, the muscles had seized up still clutching a handfull of fabric. With Felix back on the ground, Damien began prying at his own fingers, to little success.
"I'm sorry," said Damien. "It's... Stop— stop squirming. It's frozen up. I can't let go."
He turned to the magician, and did not know or care what happened between Felix and his right hand in the meantime.
"Can you just do it like this?" He dropped to his knees as the magician had initially told him to, hand still attached to Felix's shirt. "This won't be a problem if I don't have hands, and I have no idea how long this could take to start working again."
edited 27th Sep '12 1:43:47 PM by DaeBrayk
Whitetip watched as the others prepared to cook the wolf. Even though she really didn't need to eat right now, the smell was starting to get a little tempting. Then again, the wolf was most likely going to be split between the others, and she felt right at the bottom of the pecking order here. Back home, she was the alpha of her pack, meaning that she got first pickings when it came to eating. Going from the top to the bottom was going to be a bit of a rocky road, unless these beings handled meals differently.
She cast her eyes over at Bianca. For being completely different species, Whitetip was seeing a lot of similarities between herself and this girl. Given that Bianca could somewhat understand her and also seemed to be carnivorous, it really made Whitetip wonder. She made a note to ask Bianca what exactly a "birdie" was at some point. Maybe when the situation was a little less dire.
Come to think of it, since both of them had an interest in sampling the wolf, Whitetip decided that she should probably ask what parts of the wolf she planned on eating. In particular, there was one organ Whitetip was thinking about. She got up and moved closer to the girl.
"If you don't mind me asking, were you planning on going for the heart?" she asked.
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Drummer Boy
The simple observation that he was being spoken to brought Philip back to his senses. He stopped clawing his throat and sat up.
"I'm sorry." He was wheezing. "Bad memories. Some food and water should—should help."
His stomach growled for emphasis and he sighed. "Might have some internal bleeding, but I'll need to see a doctor about that. Don't worry about me."
edited 27th Sep '12 7:37:56 PM by SnowyFoxes
The last battle's curtains will open on stage!
Nathan observes the panic attack as Ma'iq gets to work on a wolf. It's like nothing he's seen before, though he supposes that the video he watched in psychology as an upper education student may have been a sign of this. He can hardly believe what he says about internal bleeding when he recovers, despite himself he can feel the talons of pity and admiration sink into him, his quest for the strong and perfect made with real flesh and blood no the walls of a test tube, yet he can't help feel for this more than likely inferior being.
He realizes he's been staring for quite a while now, "You sure you're going to be alright? That's a pretty major condition." He kneels down, "Should I look at it? I might be able to do something."
And there it was, the very mental poison of the likes of Mathew and Jason, sinking into him, his doubt in the powers that were beginning to move from the depths of his mind.
edited 27th Sep '12 10:38:57 PM by Aqueos
Bet you didn't see that coming
Drummer Boy
"If you can, I'd be very grateful. I'd hate to drop dead before getting home." Philip swallowed a little blood and tried to hold back another cough. "Not sure what happened, honestly. I got hit by that bomb months ago. Wouldn't it have healed by now?"
Philip knew he didn't know anything about medicine, which he figured was kind of sad because he was raised by his uncle, who was a doctor. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be stupid and it made more sense.
The last battle's curtains will open on stage!
The magician frowned—adding several wrinkles to his brow—and circled the two. "We do like to complicate matters, don't we..." He said with a bit of a sigh.
When he had circled them about twice and returned to stand before Damien once more. "It's possible, however..." the magician slowly turned his head to Felix with a look that was at once both dour and somewhat intrigued. "I cannot guarantee that there will not be... runoff. Nor, indeed, can I attest precisely as to what may occur as a result of that runoff."
He began flipping his hat into the air and catching it, directing his attention to the task while continuing to speak to Felix and Damien. "It could be something scarcely noticeable; an ill patch of skin, a sense of feeling something that isn't there, itchiness... a clutch of rogue feathers. A large beak in place of your nose and mouth— in any case, it's quite very feasibly likely that I could fix it— so long as I get a good look at you, as you are now."
He shrugged with his hands and caught his hat, still not returning it to his head. "Or, if one of you have some means by which to sever this bond between you, we need not concern ourselves with what could happen."
Back at the campfire, the magician's companion continued to stare at the injured man. The man had told the companion not to worry about him. The companion did not buy it.
"A man states that he may have internal bleeding, and then tells me not to worry." spoke the companion in his rumbling, and somewhat stately, voice. He moved his feet at last, coming closer to the wheezing man and bending his neck to stare at the man directly.
"You don't have time to wait for a doctor to show up. You need help now."
this place needs me here
It has come to my attention that Motree has been feeling quite ill lately; there is a strong possibility that we will not be seeing posts from her in the near future, assuming she doesn't improve. Please carry on.
"I'm taking the stuff around the lower back." Bianca motioned vaguely to a spot on the wolf's back that was just in front of its back legs, where tenderloin would be butchered from on a cow. "My Grandpa's a really good cook. He said that the best meat comes from that part; it doesn't move around a lot, so it stays tender without having to cook it all day. Why? Does heart taste good?" It probably was different- Papa said that the heart's basically a special muscle, but it moves all the time and it's not tough.
She glanced at Philip- he had started coughing again, then the snake-dragon told him that he really needed to see a doctor. Only... there were none around. That'd be kind of hard.
edited 29th Sep '12 12:15:32 PM by CrystalGlacia
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."
the cutest lizard
Suddenly, Felix got an idea. It seemed so clear... why hadn't he thought of it before?
Felix reached down to his belt and unclasped his dagger from it, unsheathing it in the process. "The dagger... I could probably use it to cut the piece of the shirt loose, releasing me. You'd still be holding on to it, though... I assume that would cause some complications. 'Runoff'." Felix winced at the thought. "I'm serious, it's probably less dangerous for me to go once I free myself."
He looked at the magician quizzically. "You're human, right?" asked Felix. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "Does that spell of yours even work on non-humans? We really need to be careful while going about this - I've heard there's all sorts of ways magic can go wrong, if it's not used properly."
edited 29th Sep '12 5:43:47 AM by Collen
Gave them our reactions, our explosions, all that was ours For graphs of passion and charts of stars...
Drummer Boy
"Er... if you say so." Philip shrugs. He doesn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation much at all. "But could I just eat first? I really want to eat. Maybe I'll feel better after that."
He grins as if trying to reassure everyone, and he swallows, holding back more coughs.
edited 29th Sep '12 8:02:55 PM by SnowyFoxes
The last battle's curtains will open on stage!
"Yeah," Bianca replied, "There's nobody around for miles, let alone a hospital. I'd rather be warm, comfy, and full if I thought I was going to die." She was rather matter-of-fact about it, picking at her wolf meat with her fingers. It pulled apart easily and juice was coming out, so that was good. But it still had that slightly desert-y taste, like it had been eating prairie dogs. Still tasted better, though, and she pulled piece after piece off, working her way through it quickly.
Normally, when she tore into prey with Mama, they had to eat it raw and use their teeth, but humans found that scary for some reason. It was't really their fault; they have to eat quickly before the soul comes out or it'll be like they ate nothing but potato crisps and ramen- empty junk food.
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."
"Well, that's good to know. At least we won't be fighting over the choice bits," Whitetip replied. "Back in the land I call home, whenever a kill is made the alphas get first pickings. As our home is actually not too different from this place, it pays to pick the parts that have the highest energy content, and we believe that the heart is the most energy-laden part of the body, given its function."
At this time, she noticed that the wolf had been skinned and was in the process of being consumed. She was about to walk over to it and pull out the bits she desired, but then she remembered that she still hadn't figured out the pecking order around here. She may have been an alpha back home, but she didn't think that was the case here.
She turned back to Bianca. "Is there a pecking order around here, and if so who's on top? Eating before your superiors is a major offense, as far as I know."
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The magician glared with indignation. He pressed his hat against his chest and declared, "I am the magician. The magician uses the magic to create wonders. The magic does not use the magician! If I focus on him," he gestured at Damien with his hat, "A scrap of cloth will hold no bearing on the outcome of this trick. With you there, however, it sings an entirely different tune. There are two bodies in the picture, difficulties suddenly arise and the end result is so far from perfection! The nature of this performance calls for nothing less than perfection! Otherwise..."
The magician wrinkled his brow at Felix and pressed his mouth into a dark smile. "Otherwise... we will indeed, have complications."
He let go of the expression and returned to his quicker manner of speaking. "Now, there will be no runoff if you simply step away from our soon-to-be bird. If this trick, as I plan to perform it issued any chance of causing undesirable consequences, I would have asked consent before I performed it. Cut yourself loose, young man, and there will be no issues. If you really want to be a bird too, I can manage that in a moment."
The magician turned his attention back to the card that Damien had picked, frowning and occasionally looking up at the man.
Back at the campfire, the magician's companion was giving Philip an especially blank stare. Oddly enough, the bloodied man appeared to be truly blase about his condition. The man was surely mortal... but he did not care terribly about his well-being. Why? Did a part of him want to die?
Slowly, the companion pulled back.
"No, no, I suppose that's fine." he said, for once avoiding looking at Philip, and actually feeling slightly dejected. Just before pushing away he added, "If you can manage to eat without spitting blood all over your food. It looks as though you've already got a quart of it all over your chest. How much, I wonder, do you have left?"
With that, the companion pushed off the ground, raising himself back into a full upright position, and retreated to a pillar that was holding up part of the gas station's large concrete roof.
this place needs me here
"A pecking order?" She knew that there were alpha wolves and beta wolves who had to do what the alphas said, but wolves always let their kids eat first. In people families, everyone just ate at the same time because food and surviving aren't people's main concerns anymore.
"Um... I don't think it matters. A lot of people who don't know each other showed up tonight, all from different places. It hasn't been long enough. Still, they'd probably let me eat first just because I'm a kid, and people think it's bad to put themselves before a kid." She looked at the wolf, laying on the ground with its tongue hanging out of its mouth. She didn't know why, but it reminded her of how Grandpa said that, for some reason, deer aren't dead until their tongue hangs out. He's probably cooked deer before. "I'm going to go grab something quick."
Bianca got up and headed into the gas station building. What she needed was stuff she could use as plates, because people were going to start taking meat, and they couldn't just set it on the ground. Searching under a fallen ceiling tile, she found something. A pack of paper plates, maybe for a picnic. Those would do; plus, they were still plastic-wrapped and not covered in dirt. She headed back out.
Reclaiming her seat near the wolf, she got plates out for herself and Whitetip and retrieved the knife that was being used on it earlier, then cut through all the tough chest muscles until she got to the ribs and stuff; she could actually see it in there, sitting between the deflated lungs behind a big bone right in the middle. Had she eaten and not hurt herself, she would have just picked up the wolf's body in her talons and dropped it on a rock so that the bones would break and make it easier, but instead she just slid the blade between the ribs so she could cut it out. It tumbled out of its spot and she put it on the plate, before she realized that most animals ate off the ground.
"Um... it's so that you don't have to eat off the ground. Because dirt tastes bad, and stuff." And then she proceeded to chop off her own piece.
edited 30th Sep '12 7:28:29 AM by CrystalGlacia
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."Nathan decides not to say anything and just hope Phillip doesn't notice his truancy. He's done a scan bu the armor is highly inconclusive, in fact about all it could decide was that he was coughing up blood for a number of reasons.
He sits down and picks away at a forelimb, it was quite disgusting really but he couldn't show weakness here. The velociraptor seems to be... conversing with the girl again, and the answers she was giving to unknown questions were just too confusing. He decides to be overly polite this time around, no use in offending people.
"Bianca, may I ask what exactly you're talking about?"
He gestures towards Whitetip with his free hand.
"How exactly do you understand the uh um... its speech. We haven't made any headway on any type of animal."
edited 29th Sep '12 11:20:01 PM by Aqueos
Bet you didn't see that coming
PI
"Well," said Damien, now only one of his eyes on nightvision. He tried to close it. "Sounds perfectly safe to me."
He tore away the piece of the shirt he was holding and looked at the magician expectantly. It occurred to him to ask how the whole cyborg issue would effect the process, but they had dawdled enough. He would find out in a few minutes anyway.
the cutest lizard
Felix fell to the ground with a thump, sand trickling through the hole in his shirt. Felix heaved himself off of the ground, brushing the sand off his front.
"That works too," he muttered, once again putting his dagger away. "Though I'd prefer it to have been a cleaner cut..."
Felix sighed, and said, "I suppose it's pointless to argue with you two, then. Just be careful, Damien. I don't want any one of us to die. Guilt isn't exactly good to be weighing down on you when you're trying to survive."
Gave them our reactions, our explosions, all that was ours For graphs of passion and charts of stars...
"Well... I'm a siren. That means I'm part bird, not another mermaid, because mermaids are nasty and creepy." Trying to get it all out with the knife was too hard, so she gave up, let her hand change to talon fingers, and clawed her meal out that way, depositing it on her plate. Her hand went back to normal.
"And, look- Whitetip has feathers like a bird, and I'm a bird, too, so I can kind of get what she's saying." She pulled some more pieces off, burning through her dinner rather quickly.
edited 30th Sep '12 8:19:56 AM by CrystalGlacia
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."
The magician snorted out another laugh and gave Felix a rather amused look. "Guilty? Who's going to feel guilty?" He waved the idea off with his hand, and then stared contemplatively at Damien.
"Now sir, before we-at last begin, I have but two final questions for you. The first of which: Are you desiring to return to your rusty old self at the end of all this?"
this place needs me here
As it turned out, Whitetip didn't need to make a move to tear up the corpse herself - Bianca was nice enough to cut out the heart and put it on a plate for her. This sort of behavior was rather uncommon among her own kind. Even in a pack, each member was looking out for his or her own needs first. If someone couldn't figure out how to get into their meal, that was his or her problem. As such, she was rather surprised that someone would actually go through the effort for her.
She nodded in thanks before reaching down, grabbing the heart with both hands, and then lifting it up and taking a bite out of it. It didn't taste much different from the hearts of the creatures she was used to eating, but then again all meat tasted similar to her anyway.
While she was eating, she heard the word "bird" getting thrown around again. Interestingly enough, Bianca compared Whitetip to one; namely, both had feathers. If her kind was indeed similar to these "birds," then that brought up an interesting thought. One that Whitetip would address after she was done eating. With another mental shrug, she went back to finishing off the heart.
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PI
Damien raised an eyebrow. Turn back afterwards? It was hard to imagine missing the person he was now, but then again, he never knew exactly how this magic would turn out. If he had learned anything working for Valerie, it was that things could always get worse.
"I wouldn't mind the option," he said, "But I'm not overly attached to the rust itself."
A man falls from the sky and lands on the ground with some kind of rolling motion. "I'm Sano, I'm ok" he whispers before he faints.
A Hot Air balloon floats away in the sky. The man in the ballon drops a backpack which lands a few hundred feet from Sano.
PI
"Hey!" Said Damien, standing up, a rock the size a basketball in his hand. The people back at the campfire could worry about the man who had fallen. He was addressing the balloonist. "We got kids dying down here. You land that balloon or I'll land it for you!"
The magician nodded his head. "Fair enough. I supposed I shall have to remember what you look like then." He set his hat back on his head and took a few steps backward, focusing on Damien. The magician held up his hands vertically, as though he were framing a picture. He shut one eye and squinted the other, and stood this way for several seconds.
After a few moments, his hands began to shake with increasing tremor, almost as though they weren't connected to his arms. "Mmmmmmm..." finally, they closed into fists, rather violently. "There! Got it."
Moving closer and examining the ground, the magician removed his hat and clutched it between his hands. "Now, as for the second question..." He raised his eyes to meet Damien's, when-
"Agh- confound it! Yet more distractions!" He clenched his teeth angrily, turned turned around, looked up to the sky, and shook his hat in the direction of balloonist. "You!" He cried out, "What do you mean by dropping men wherever you cherry-well please?! We are about to begin a critical stage of our performance, and I won't stand for you bobbling everything up!"
this place needs me here
"Put me down!" yelped Felix, struggling to break free, panic rising inside him. "What is wrong with you? I was just trying to help- and you- put me down, already!"
Gave them our reactions, our explosions, all that was ours For graphs of passion and charts of stars...