Zach put his hand to his chin and wondered, "Well, we still haven't complete figured out everything about them, there's much to learn. How they survive with this mechanism, might be explained by the increase in trees since the second wave of the White Flu. Nature tends to take things back for itself, once it's been hit, so it kind of recuperated and more oxygen came into the atmosphere from the enormous increase in trees. Though, Akumas aren't the only things with weird biology, a Kappa's bowl head is pretty weird."
"Shaurei's kind of like that, in a way," said Cornelius. "I don't know much about him, but what I do know is fairly strange. He apparently doesn't need to eat or sleep. We managed to get some hair samples, but when we scanned them, the computer crashed. We booted it back up, did some other scans, it was fine. Back to Shaurei — died again. It's like there's something in his biological makeup that causes analysis to freak out." Cornelius frowned. "Which, given that he's a demon, would make sense. His true form breaks minds and all that."
"This is useless," muttered Brittany, who proceeded to raise her voice at Noah, "I mean, why are we trying to calm down these kids... especially you! I hate kids, and you... Oh dear god, you shouldn't be allowed near anyone!" Overall, Noah was left pretty unfazed by her outburst. She would constantly take time to point out his personal flaws, particularly when she was mad at him. Noah did as he always did in this situation: walk away until Brittany stops ranting. And she went on... and on... and on, for about 5 minutes, before finally realising that Noah had left. Turning to the kids, she asked, "Hey, where did he go?"
"If you keep shooting him like that all the time, then likely the damage is already done, and it's your fault." Alex tilted his head, not looking towards Britt but rather at the floor. "I've already been traumatized enough for a lifetime, the damage is already done. So, I suppose you can do what you want."
"Hey, he was like that even before I met him! Besides, I don't make a habit of shooting him..." Brittany stopped and paused. Only a year ago, she wouldn't even have thought of shooting anyone, and now she could casually shoot her own friends in the head just to prove that she could... Noah has had a terrible influence on her, and all the others. She thought aloud: "... I actually wonder why I still stay around him..."
"He's not a meat shield!" Brittany had taken offence to that statement. Noah had saved her life... more than once. Same deal with all of her friends. "In fact, he's basically the leader of the... group I'm part of. For some reason, we follow him everywhere, even to our deaths... Maybe I just find the adventure of saving the world all the time exciting... but that doesn't explain I immediately agreed to come with him to a Memorial a 6a.m in the morning for a war he has no connection to."
"I think I'd prefer a gas mask to a meat shield..." Alex mused. "I think that would be more useful..."
He drummed his fingers on the edge of the fountain.
"I mean, I don't know you at all. I'm thirteen years old. Why are you asking me deep philosophical questions about your choices in life? They like to say children are smarter than you think, but that doesn't actually happen as often as it does in the movies... I'm not going to give you any revelations. Sorry."
Cornelius nodded to Zach as he left.
"If children aren't as smart as they are in the movies," he asked Alex, "why did you attempt to justify messing around in a fountain with pseudo-scientific and faux-philosophical language? You used words like 'algorithm' and 'secretions'. Claiming you aren't smart now makes me think your intelligence is like the tides: high one moment, low the next."
edited 15th Nov '11 10:11:10 AM by TeraChimera
Brittany sighed. Of course, now is a good time for realism to rear it's ugly head. Still, she shouldn't have expected much from a kid who jumped into the fountain within 10 minutes of being here.
"I know... I've just being thinking a lot lately... and have been blaming Noah for lots of things. I hope he doesn't take it too badly. Now would be a terrible time for him to start caring about what people say to him..."
Britt couldn't believe the kid had actually done that to himself. Frankly, she blamed herself for trying to scare the children into behaving. She took out a roll of bandages she was holding inside her coat pocket, and began wrapping them around the boys wrist.
"My friend Charlie was a med student, and he taught me how to use these properly."
He had asked for a bandaid. He did not ask to be touched. He did not ask to be touched. He did not ask to be touched to be touched to be —
he grabbed the roll of bandages away from her and flinched back.
"I'll do it," he said, his voice shaky. "And, the real question is what a regenerator would be doing with this stuff."
Well, that kid was rude.
"I wasn't always a 'regenerator', as you call it... up until a month ago, I was a regular human... well, I wouldn't say 'regular', but I was most certainly mortal. I helped out Noah with... work, I guess you could call it, and a month ago, something terrible happened to me. Noah saved my life, and made me immortal as a result. As for these bandages, they're in case anyone else gets hurt, which is very likely in my life. I'm always expecting a guy to pop out and try to kill me at any moment."

"One has to wonder," said Cornelius, "why an Akuma would develop such a mechanism on a planet with an atmosphere of about twenty percent oxygen; its legs would be gaseous almost all the time. And yet, it survives with no apparent difficulty, so it seemingly breathes the same amount of gases that you do. Stranger and stranger," he mused.
"There's always the possibility that the science is wrong, but that might be one of the last proposals I would accept."