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The Amazing Flying Circus
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 Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 7:46 am
"I know; I'm sorry I said it," Tobart mumbled again, trying not to attract attention. He gripped the back of his neck with both hands and pulled his head down as far as it would go. Curled up fairly well and back against the front bars of his cage, Tobart felt as close as he could to privacy, safety and security this way. In his own dark personal space, he was able to squeeze out a few silent tears to tame the urge to let it all come gushing out. They fell onto his legs and into his lap, staining his clothes that he was once so proud of.
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Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 6:07 pm
Devon picked at Panther's teeth, scraping hard at some of her cavities on purpose just to see what kind of reaction she would give. His eyes remained cold and distant as he gazed down upon the 'patient' he was examining.
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Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:47 am
Panther cringed at the feeling, like nails being raked down a chalkboard or metal scraping against metal. It was horrible. She was glad when he stopped.
John peeked at Tobart with a discreet opening of one of his eyes. He felt bad, knowing he had caused it all. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it badly. I just..." He trailed off, and sighed regretfully. "I wish I could have made more of a difference for you guys."
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Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:58 am
"You're different," Tobart replied, "stronger than the rest of us." Well, at least me anyway, "If anyone could've made it, you could. But you didn't. It just... hurts." Perhaps Apsalar was right. Perhaps it would just be better to die. He shuddered, "It's not your fault."
Lonomia peeked up at the conversation with interest (understanding little, if anything at all), his previous form of entertainment gone into ashes. He wished he could have another.
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The Amazing Flying Circus
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Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:46 pm
Apsalar looked from Tobart to John. She tilted her head, and seemed thoughtful. "Maybe if..." she trailed off, because she didn't have the words. But she had had a thought about how an escape could be done. Not about actually how to get out of the compound - she didn't know it well enough. But from what she knew of the outside world (mostly heard from chatting scientists while she was being experimented on) she thought that...maybe...it could work.
But she couldn't share it even if she tried. Once again, her lack of language stood in her way. Instead, she looked down at John from her perch above him. "Not your fault," she said instead, repeating Tobart's words. TAIS was all-knowing. Yani would never let his experiments go. She was amazed they'd gone as long as they had. And she was proud of them for managing it. "Tried."
Her frustration with her limited vocabulary was evident. Her golden-brown gaze flicked from John to Tobart and back again, wishing she had the words to detail the thoughts she had.
After a moment, she looked down at the faint curl of smoke coming from the cage of the Chimera to whom the scientist had given the stinky tube. As instinctively repellent as she found it, it was still somehow the first time she'd wondered why it bothered her.
Why did smoke bother her?
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Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 7:37 pm
Devon put the excavator back and pressed a button on the side of the table. These small mechanical arms came out by Panther's head on both sides. They made their way into Panther's mouth and forced her to keep it open wide. Devon then stuck a dental suction hose in Panther's mouth and took hold of a dentist drill. He began drilling one of her cavities while using the dental mirror to get a better view of the back. The sound of the drill did not bother him, even though he didn't use it very often.
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Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 10:35 pm
Panther was used to the drill as well. Indeed, the Chimera storage room seemed ten times louder than the drill when they were trying to sleep at night. Her sensitive ears made her wince every now and then, but they weren't panther parts.
John nodded absently, numbly. He would hold it against himself too, if he were Tobart or Apsalar, or any of these other Chimerae.
He looked up through the holes in the ceiling of his cage, seeing round specks of Apsalar as she spoke to him. "I thought you were familiar. Is that you, Apsalar? I'm glad you're still here," he offered lamely, yet sincerely. "You should have seen the outside world. It's incredible. And it's so much more worth fighting for now!" He kicked the back of his cage in a sudden fit of frustration, but sunk back into his quietude once more.
He knew he had to help Apsalar learn how to comunicate. She was brilliant enough to keep decaying, putrid rats hidden in her cage for weeks at a time, despite TAIS, despite her robots, despite the scientists with olfactory capabilities... If any could help get around the guards, it might, just might be her.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 9:31 am
"...John," Tobart mustered up, "will you tell us about the outside world?"
((Short post is short. This short OOC is longer than my short post. That's how short my short post is.))
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The Amazing Flying Circus
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 1:18 pm
Apsalar looked down at him, looking a little bit sorrowful. "Yes," she said, recognizing her name. "Here." He was glad she was here? There was a strange thing. She wasn't glad she was still here, except maybe as far as it comforted her packmates.
She looked back down at John, listening to what he said - not so much the words, since half of them made no sense anyway, but the tone. The way his voice went up and down gave the words that she did understand enough context to figure out what he meant.
After Tobart asked John his question, she looked over at him and smiled a little bit. Tell. Outside. Yes, what was it like?
If John confirmed her own thoughts on how they could live their lives out there, she would have to start pondering a way to get them out in the first place. It could be done. Had to be possible to do it. But she needed to think about it hard to figure out how.
There had been enough escapes that security was now incredibly tight. But she'd still been able to attack Yani - their security could not yet read minds. There had to be some way...
And once again, her mind's eye flashed to that curling waft of smoke.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:38 pm
Devon spent a while drilling Panther's cavity, besides swabbing and picking at it with another excavator. However, he did not insert a filling into that cavity. Instead he picked up a tube and took the top off. He stuck the tube in Panther's mouth and squeezed some of the gel from the tube into Panther's cavity.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 11:55 pm
((Surprisingly, you get epic points for that Miinefield lol))
John looked at Tobart thoughtfully, but not without surprise. He should have known they might want to hear more about it. But where to start?
"There's so much..." he murmured. There was the trees, the sounds, the grass, the rocks that were so big the clouds sat on them... Everything was a hard topic to cover. But they would be there a while.
He sat up abruptly, a determined, excited gleam in his eye. If the Chimerae could pick up nothing from what he said, they would be able to tell he was avid about this subject.
"As soon as you get outside, you can smell the difference. The air smells sweeter, and it's... It's..." How could you describe warm when you didn't even know the word for it? "It's like this," he said, and reached his fingers through the ceiling holes and into Apsalar's cage to feel. "Touch," he said, hoping she would and then also show Tobart. "It's like... When you're under a light for a long time. The bright thing when they're experimenting on you? But not bad. It's good."
Nevermind that they didn't know what the words meant. When they did, he could tell them about it later.
Better yet, he could show them.
Panther screamed; the dentist thing was not pleasant. Eventually she would pass out from the shock of having the top of her tooth destroyed, but now she was trying to get her mind off the pain. The only thing that came up was that she didn't need it anyway; the gruel they served the Chimerae was just gray slush that slid its slimy way down their throat.
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Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 1:59 pm
Apsalar's eyes were wistful as she listened to what John was saying. She couldn't even begin to imagine the scent of air different from this. When John reached his fingers through the cage towards her, she touched her fingertips to his. Her hands were a little cool to the touch due to earlier blood loss, so she felt the difference more keenly than she might have otherwise. She gave a slow nod. Though she didn't know the word for that feeling either, she could understand what he meant.
A light that felt good, she thought. A light that wasn't threatening. What must that be like?
She glanced around the semidarkness of the Chimera holding room. Not something she would learn about here, that was for sure.
More than ever, she wanted to figure out a way to get out of here. These were things she wanted to see for herself - it was so hard to just imagine things that must be so beautiful. She didn't want to do them injustice.
"A way," she murmured. "Must be."
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Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 4:23 pm
"And the grass is green, and it smells different too. And the sky is huge!" They could see the sky for themselves through ventilation windows at the top that John was pointing at, though they were too small for a Chimera to fit through unless they had rodent or feline genes. "It's all above you. It's everywhere. And at night, there are countless, tiny lights, but they aren't... Like the good light."
He smiled to himself, thinking about outside. It cheered him up considerably, gave him new hope. They would get out.
Apsalar caught his attention, and he looked up at her curiously. "What is that?"
((This is weird, trying to talk about everything without good words for it xD))
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Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 6:48 pm
((OOC: I know, right? It's so hard trying to figure out what words they might know. >.<))
Apsalar had lapsed into a thoughtful silence, and didn't speak at first when John asked her his question. After a few seconds, she seemed to stir and glanced down at him. She looked at him for a minute or two, then shook her head. "Not yet."
Whether she meant she didn't know yet, or she was playing a lone hand for now, it was difficult to say. She just couldn't get the image of that curling plume of smoke out of her head. There was the nagging feeling that if she could only figure out how, she could use that to her advantage somehow.
She wanted to run what she was thinking by John. He would know if it was even possible; he would know how they could manage it, and all she had was the vague beginnings of a thought. But she couldn't find a way to phrase it, and besides...
TAIS was everywhere. Until she actually had something to put in motion and could communicate it to John and maybe Tobart and whoever else she could get without hitches and uncertainty, she had to keep her thoughts to herself.
She raised a hand, though, holding it so both John and Tobart, if he was looking, could see it. And she used hand motions to describe that plume of smoke that she'd seen rising from Lonomia's cage, imitating it as best she could.
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Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 8:24 pm
Devon took a small wire and fit it down into the gel until it touched the bottom of the cavity. Devon then began drilling down another cavity. His cold, merciless eyes gazed down as he pushed the drill down into Panther's tooth. He never spoke a word as he worked.
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