Welcome to Gaia! ::

Apsalar nodded eagerly, then began to frown when she realized where John's mind had gone. "No," she said, shaking her head. "Not..." She struggled to find a word, trying to remember what non-Chimerae were called. "Not...the man."

To be honest, Smoke was still something of an enigma to Apsalar. When Devon had been experimenting on her, Trent had, or so it seemed to her, taken rather unnecessary care - by scientist standards, anyway - while stitching her up. Maybe she'd just been too delirious by then to feel any pain.

Yes, that made more sense. Much more than any of the alternatives.

She touched her fingers to the side of her head. She was thinking too hard, and it was making her already prodigious headache worse. So instead, she turned her attention down to John.

And John looked like he was thinking about something.

"What...s'it?" she asked, trying to enunciate properly and sort of failing. But hopefully, she'd be able to get her meaning across.

Apsalar stared at him. She shook her head. "Don't..." Frustrated, she waved a hand, trying to consider the word she wanted to use. She moved her hands around slightly, trying to consider the words she wanted. "Understand!" she said on a flash of insight. "Understand."

She meant the scientist. That man made no sense to her. He didn't seem to take the same enjoyment in tormenting the Chimerae that the rest of them did. She frowned irritably into the distance. Why was that?

He had offered the curious Chimera in the bottom cages a cigarette to examine. For some reason, she couldn't forget that.

"Matters?" she asked at last, looking down on John and feeling a little worried. If John thought it mattered, it probably did - and if he didn't remember it, that meant they might be in trouble. Well, what could the worst have been.

"Back," she decided at last. It would come back, she meant. Probably when he least expected it. "Don't worry." Don't worry about it, don't think about it, and it might come back. But there had to be something else they could do besides let John worry about something one of the scientists had said - that might or might not be important. For all they knew, Smoke might just have been doing it as a different sort of torment.

"I... Think so. I don't know for sure though." Who knew if it mattered besides Smoke himself? It could be a psychological test or torment. Then again, it could be something more, an underlying... What? What could it be? He shook his head and decided to take Apsalar's unspoken advice. Though the scientists may not have a clue to what she was talking about, John could read her from the inflections in her tone and from the vibrations that came with her speaking. The snake genes in him made a lot of things possible that he hadn't had time to realize yet.

"He's a weird man," John finally said, closing his eyes. He stretched out on the bottom of his cage as much as he could, feeling the chilled metal against his bare back. His shirt was laying in a crumpled heap in a corner of the cell, torn, shredded, and covered in dried blood. It had so many holes and rips in it, it wasn't any good for warmth or cover any longer. John felt better without the rags on him, they felt pathetic and it was much easier not having his elbow or hand getting hung up on the loose threads and elastic.

He took a deep breath, feeling his stomach reach off the metal floor as his ribcage expanded. He would figure out what the man said later, hopefully. He was tired right now though.

"I'm going to bed though. I haven't slept in days," he informed. A moment later, he was snoring.

Apsalar gave a slight nod. It was probably important - if it had been some sort of psychological test, they would have been doing a follow-up by now. And no matter what, John would never remember it if he kept beating his brain trying to recall. She knew that from personal experience - words that kept eluding her grasp, only to come back a few minutes later. If she knew them, anyway.

She seized gratefully on John's final decision, no matter that she wasn't entirely sure what it meant. "Yes," she agreed quietly. Was that something that applied to all the scientists, perhaps? But no, that didn't make sense considering that they had just been saying that Smoke seemed different from the other scientists somehow.

So she looked over at Tobart once John fell asleep. She would ask him, if she was looking for an explanation of the word, since John was asleep and hadn't seemed to think it wasn't something she would know. But unfortunately, it wasn't one she had heard before. "Tobart?" The names of the other Chimerae came easily to her by now. "What is..." she hesitated, making sure she had the pronunciation exactly right before carefully repeating it just the way it had been said before, "weird?"

((OOC: Bump?))

I tried to move with a cool hand...
It didn't go as I planned.

I'm full of rookie maneuvers...
and gestures meant to be grand.

"My daisy, you make me go crazy, forever amaze me.
Now let's let the day go lazy."

Immediately TAIS' guards swarmed into the room, the computer quickly accessing Panther's failing organs and creating an antidote that would save her system.

"Thank you, Sir," TAIS stated coolly from her speakers in the cieling as her men separated Devon from Panther. "And here Master Yani thought you were an educated doctor. Rest assured he will be informed of this costly error."

The antidote was delivered to the soldiers, and Hiccadu leaped from her spot, changing into her human form.

"Idiot," she snarled, taking the antidote from one of TAIS' men as she sneered at Devon. "Some scientist you are. Go into a corner and behave yourself."

Acting with a gentleness that only a living body could provide, Hiccadu inserted the needle into Panther's tense vein, delivering the antidote into the poor girl's arm and thus into her frantically beating heart.

"TAIS has used no chemicals this one is allergic to in the antidote," Hiccadu stated out loud- mostly to reassure Panther, if she were conscious now. "This Chimera should be showing signs of improvement in about three seconds upon administration."

"My daisy, you know what I'm after- your musical laughter.
A more beautiful disaster..."

I cant believe what you create...
When you let your heart detonate.

You leave a path of delightful destruction.
You're quite the bomb, my daisy...

((well, crap))


Devon grumbled. A mere brainfart almost cost him a good test subject. Perhaps he needed to take a rest from performing experiments. "Thank goodness, for TAIS. I'm sure I will hear it from Yani now" he sighed.