(no subject)

[notfromthra]

Kid peeeeeers out of a pantry, shielding his(?) eyes from the light in the room with filthy fingers.

skekTek doesn't see this, as he is putting the finishing touches on what is actually, ha haaaaa, a portal-hijacking device! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH! He might be back for another cupboard-thing as the others seemed to find them so amusing.

Kid is a little thing with long matted hair, a grimy, colourless smock, and bloodshot eyes. He hisses a breath in through his teeth, trying to reconcile this new sense. Sight!

skekTek hears this. Turns and looks at the small, dirty creature. Oh hoh. Another being.

Kid eyes him through his fingers, frightened enough to make a low hooting sound. Ooot. ooot.

skekTek eyes this small creature in return, round artificial eye glinting in the light. Birdlike tilt and then bob of head, ducking down to look more closely. Another youngling? Strangely different, this one.

Kid crouches down very small. Don't notice me don't notice me I'm not here.

skekTek knows very well that that just doesn't work round here. Instead, he looks about the room. No-one else here. Perfect. He limps toward the small being.*

Kid edges backwards, towards the dark. Ooot!

skekTek grins a beaky grin, reaching out a hand. "Haoteh uu svaleros..."

Kid narrows the cracks between his fingers, watching that hand with poor eye-focus and a LOT of caution. "Ooot?"

skekTek remains still. Never mind the fact that the taloned fingers are twitching slightly.

Kid crouches smaller. Just because he can see the monster doesn't mean it can see him, right? If he's very, very silent...

skekTek: Nullah ... nullah... *wait for iiiiiiit. And... Grab!*

Kid shrieks, a sudden handful of very healthy struggling child, twisting and squirming and trying to bite the big monster!

skekTek is not--letting it go--that easily! There is much wrestling and hissing.

Kid keeps shrieking, possibly loud enough to drown out all else, until he can get his teeth on one of those clutching hands.

skekTek is bitten. Bitten but good and wasn't it just his luck, the wretched little thing got his natural hand. Really should have worn protective gloves, there. Flash of pain, eliciting a screech. You get a mouthful of blood if you've bitten hard enough.

Kid spits out the foul taste, and goes back to shrieking. Let go!

skekTek: *Not a chance, now. Hissing horribly, eye watering, he shifts his grip so that the other hand covers the child's violent biting orifice and hefts the entire operation toward the portal at a swift, lurching pace. (Elsewhere, an urRu alchemist pauses, regarding a suddenly bleeding hand. So it begins again.)*

Kid howls a protest, kicking madly. He's never had a good experience with being grabbed and picked up; the best it's ever lead to is a sound pinching, the worst, a painful round of injections.

skekTek might spare you the needles and things. Maybe. He triggers the portal and in they go, into a slightly more dimly-lit place smelling of chemicals and captive beasts.

Kid continues to panic, being nothing more or less than a terrified child. This is all out of his purview! (Though actually, this is closer than the Sanctuary)

skekTek: *This creature flails worse than the Podlings did! He drags said flailing child into the nearest restraint, which happens to be the chair into which subjects are strapped for essence draining. For good measure, he secures the flailing limbs. Hm. Gelfling-sized.*

Kid begins to taper off the screaming into gasping sobs, pulling fitfully against the cuffs. o,o

skekTek: Hmmmmmmmm. *Oh, it's never good when a mad scientist makes a 'Hmmm' sound. Taloned hands grasp the child's head and his eyes are examined.*

Kid has spent his entire life in the dark. His pupils are fixed wide, the eyes just faintly cloudy and very,very bloodshot, and he resists opening them more than a slit, even when struggling to get the creature off of him.

skekTek: *They'll be peeled open anyway. Oh hohoh. Pupillary access. I wonder. He looks at the wall opposite. Cackles.*

Kid cringes at the dim light, eyes rolling wildly.

skekTek has an idea, if he can remember where he put the thing. He disappears round the other side of the chair, rummaging through storage until--AH HA.

Kid doesn't try to see where he's gone; he's much more used to following things by ear.

skekTek is making plenty of noise. His limping, shuffling gait leaves an auditory path, as does his wheezing breath and the small sounds of cybernetics. The rummaging has revealed what he was looking for and he returns. Without warning, he grasps the kid's head to immobilise it and begins to strap something to it, a device that, when fully placed, will hold his eyes open.

Kid tries to thrash his head back and forth, hissing incomprehensible sounds of distress.

skekTek 's hands are too strong for that, possibly, especially the cybernetic one.

Kid starts screaming again, his eyes watering.

skekTek: Nyaaaaaaaagh. Silence! *he finishes attaching the headgear, then makes his way to the wall, operating thunking controls. The wall slowly opens, revealing crytals and mirrors and fire.*

Kid: *It's more light than his weak eyes can bear, the flames a spear through them that changes his cries to howls of pain. He wants to be back in the dark farm, with all his age-mates.*

skekTek: *Not a chance. With a sheild placed over his eyes, skekTek makes /certain/ this one isn't moving, reaching out to hold the creature's head steady.* Look into the light, youngling.

Kid sobs, completely uncomprehending. What is going on!? He doesn't begin quieting until that light bathes his face.

skekTek has made a few changes to this setup this time. With no slaves to operate the reflector, he has to do this himself. Next to the chair is a lever which positions the final reflector, aiming the bright, pale purple beam into the kid's eyes.

Kid finally falls silent, panting for breath, eyes transfixed. His look of terror wanes into something else, something -less-, as the beam bleaches his mind.

skekTek watches this happen. Watches hungrily, his eyes on the vial at the end of the tubing.

Kid: *This boy was bred to be eaten. Perhaps this is appropriate, his essence draining out, leaving the formerly healthy boy gaunt and insubstantial, his wide, whitened eyes sunken and fixed.*

skekTek waits until the flow trickles to a stop, talons twitching, before he pulls the lever again, the beam diverted. He reaches out to pick up the flask and holds it up to the light.

Kid: *Nearly a full flask of pale liquour, like a blush wine. The child sits silently, still staring at the place the beam was.*

skekTek: *A glance at the flask. Then at the child. Then at the flask again. This vliya would have to be given to the Emperor and yet... certainly it would have to be tested first, yes? Of course. No sense in giving him something dangerous. And there would be more tests to be run on the small creature, as well. Placing the flask on a table, he releases the child from the chair, steering him desultorily toward a cage.*

Kid is much, much more tractable now. The child goes into the cage at a nudge, sitting down in a corner and resting his head on his knees. o,o

skekTek: *Cage is locked. Now is the time for *science!**

----

This did not sit terribly well with urTih. Not the essence-draining, he didn't know about that. The urRu and the Skekses were not that closely linked. What didn't sit well with the urRu in question was the prospect of losing any more body parts--usually unexpectedly--to the Skeksis' mad experiments.

Now usually the urRu, urTih included, accepted everything with a quiet, stoic patience. It was simply their way. Things happened, they adjusted, they moved on.

It didn't mean they had to like it.

Nothing is truly infinite. Not even the patience of an urRu. And round about the fifth time he'd collapsed for no reason and with little warning in the middle of something and had had to be resuscitated by urIm the Healer only to come round about three weeks later, urTih's patience had worn quite, quite thin. One day he'd woken up to find he was missing an arm. And he'd lost a leg quite unexpectedly, causing him to tumble down almost the entirety of the spiral path in a very inconvenient and painful manner. He'd also somehow lost sight in his right eye while casting a divinitory bolas, which caused the throw to go wild and hit urSol the Chanter squarely upside the head, knocking him unconscious and stopping the music entirely. Needless to say, it was taken as a Very Bad Sign. If he recalled, the Gelfling extermination started not long after that, but that is beside the point.

So after this latest surprise bloodletting, enough was enough. He wasn't going to lose any more limbs or organs or senses. Not, at least, without something to say about it. So he sat down somewhere and meditated upon contacting to the mind of his other half. It was much easier, now that the valley and the castle were so close. Much easier.

Meanwhile, in the castle, skekTek cackled quietly to himself and set about preparing a round of tests. A whole new kind of essence needed thoroughly examined, of course. He paused, glancing at his hand; it was starting to hurt. Who knew what was in that youngling's mouth? An infection would be distracting, so he paused to disinfect the wound.

Hm. Sure is quiet.

We need to talk.

"AAaaAAAaaAaAaAaAaANNGHhh!" came the predictable startled reply at the sound of a voice in his mind. Test tubes went flying. "Don't do that!" Wheeze. Wheeze. He leaned against the table. His hallucinations are just getting rude, now.

I am not a hallucination. You know who I am.

Quasi-avian meh-face. "I don't want to talk to you."

We are going to talk, anyway. Rather, I am going to talk and you are going to listen.

"Yoooouuuu can't talk to m--er, think at me like that!"

I can. And I will. Now see here, I've tolerated you hacking off bits of yourself--and thereby bits of me--for long enough, I should think. You try going about your business and suddenly losing an arm or the sight in one eye, eh? Wouldn't like it if the shoe were on the other foot, would you?

"You don't wear shoes," skekTek sneered. Laboratory scientists are not well-known for their debate skills.

As I recall, you aren't terribly fond of the cold.... An unaccountable shiver ran through the Skeksis and he wheezed harder. Given that a good deal of him was metal and nothing conducted cold quite like metal, it wasn't long before his beak was chattering and his artificial eye inexplicably frosted over. "C-c-c-curss-s-se youuu...."

I can stand in this cold all day if need be, the telepathic voice reminded him. And urTih could, too. Not only were the urRu naturally warmer, they were bloody stoic. And if any systemic shutdown rebounded back at him, he'd simply lie down and wait it out. Damn and blast.

"Wh-wh-what d'you w-want-t-t?" skekTek shivered.

I simply want you to tread more cautiously. Remember that we share an existence, just as the others do. And fix whatever it is you put in your head--even I grow weary of losing time.

After much spluttering and shivering, skekTek finally acquiesced. "Oh all r-right...."

It is not that much of a chore to work toward maybe a little harmony between existences, now, is it?

"SPLJJJGNGHZZXXXZGGNAAAGH!"

After that comment, however, he found he was alone with his thoughts again, and, after a few more moments, growing warmer. He wheezed and gasped and hissed. Neh. Damned stubborn old--Graaaaaaaaaaaoh, forget it. Once he found he could move again, he put it out of his mind. There was work to do.

Besides, the portal hijacking device might bring in its virst victim any time, now.

Comments

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

Normally, Gabriel used his PINpoint to move around the Nexus. Simply, it was easier and quicker to use, and it was harder to trace his movements. It was rare that he used portals.

Tonight is one of those rare nights, entering the Sanctuary from a portal not far from the house. It was new to him; he'd discovered it during one of his morning jogs, a faint ripple in the grass that most would miss. He'd nearly run by it himself, but he felt something familiar, a pull, and he'd tested it out.

This night, he'd been walking home from dinner (vegetarian chow mein and spring rolls at a tiny, hole in the wall Chinese restaurant), and he'd decided to pop into the Sanctuary for a cup of coffee and to see if anything was going on. But it was a dull night, and he left after one cup, taking the same way back to his own world.

When he steps through, he instantly realizes he is not in Manhattan. His first reation is to step directly back through the portal. Unfortunately, there isn't a portal there anymore to step through.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

Oh, it worked, it worked! KYAH HA HA HA HA--ahem.

Gabriel is very much not in Manhattan, no. Last time anyone checked, there isn't anyplace in Manhattan that has stone walls, esoteric laboratory equipment, and is that close to a source of active lava.

Welcome to the Chamber of Life, Mister Grey.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

Welcome, indeed.

First round of business, look around. Second round of business, in tandem with the first, is to check his PINpoint to see where it registered him being in relation to... well everything.

The PIN's screen stares back at him, blank.

Walls of stone, glass beakers, tubing, metal bits and oddities, the pungent smell of chymicals and science. Warmth, so much warmth, almost stifling to him. Mr. Grey is dressed for a Manhattan winter's evening, not a trip to Vesuvius.

He turns round to see another stone wall staring back at him. Nothing there, not a trace of the portal left. He presses his palm to the cool surface. Nothing at all.

This is not a positive turn of events.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

Well, not for Grey, anyway. However, for the creature who comes limping into the room at a swift clip, it is a very positive turn of events. The creature stops, regards him with a glint in its eye easily recognisable to anyone who's ever seen a mad scientist. Seems that look is one that transcends species.

It ducks its head forward slightly, in keeping with its bizarre, oddly avian appearance. Sidles into the room. A full-sized human needs captured more carefully than the smaller ones. It reaches slowly toward the nearby table.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

It's damned hard to sneak up on Grey. He turns back around, sees the buzzard-looking monster thing, and instantly puts up a shield of telekinetic energy. It doesn't feel right, though, not nearly strong enough. What the bloody hell?

He reaches for his inner pocket, for the glass knife within. He's not sure it would do much, but at the moment it's all he has.

"Seems I'm not in the right place. Show me to a portal, and I'll be on my way."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

"Heh. Heheheheh. Portal only goes one way," the creature answers in a gleeful rasp. The device it picks up is somewhat esoteric, but you don't have to be an expert in the local technology to recognise a trank dart gun when you see one. The creature moves carefully to cover the exit.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

There must be another exit. Even if there isn't, there has to be a way around the thing. Grey raises his hands... and ducks left, trying to put some equipment or tables or something between himself and the thing with the gun.

Not that this will get him out of the room, but it buys him time. Will Mr. Skek come looking for him?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

Of course he's going to come looking for him. Even though the table is covered with disturbing-looking scientific equipment, it's not that great for hiding behind, and he circles round it, trank gun at the ready. The artificial lens that replaces his right eye whirs and rotates.

He takes aim with the trank gun, grinning a beaky grin.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

Gabriel ducks under the table.

"I'm not here to harm anyone." Hmm. Anything hanging off the table? He continues to move, crouched. The thing will have to lean over to get to follow. Unfortunately, the area is cramped and there's nowhere to move to. Well... the knife is sharp, anyway.

Plan A. When the thing leans over, he'll slash at it's face, hopefully startling it enough to be able to either disarm it or push past it--maybe even both.

If that doesn't work well... there really isn't any Plan B.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

There isn't really anything hanging off the table, no. And, as it is, there's little room to move for either of them, so the creature is being cautious.

It cackles at him, then steps back before leaning down to take aim with the trank dart gun again and fire, squinting its natural eye.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

Gabriel tries dodging it, but there's nowhere to go. He tries anyway, moving sideways and hitting the table with his shoulder, knocking something glass over. Smash! The dart hits him in the opposite arm, and he claws at it, trying to get it out before it can do... the... obvious...

Wow, this stuff works fast.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

That is rather the point. It isn't going to drop him entirely, just make him tractable. So the creature limps forward again, a nightmare of cybernetic parts and vulture hunger, taloned hands reaching out to grasp him again.

"Heh. A live specimen. So much more valuable than dead."

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

"Spe...?" His tongue is not his own.

Specimen? Panic shows in his eyes. The one fear he has, come true.

Could be a nightmare? he reassures himself as he's dragged out from under the table, hard bony claws grasping his ankles. His hat is left behind.

"... c'mn? Cn't do thss in th' Nex's." But he knows better. Nexus 'treaty' or no, Nexus 'Avengers' or no, he doubts their true validity.

His muscles are limp, but his nerve endings are working just fine. Bump-bump goes his bare skull against the floor.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

"Not in the Nexus, now."

Grey is hauled up from the floor and brought to, what else, that chair thing that faces one of the walls. However, once the human is secured into it, the Skeksis seems to have second thoughts about the thing's usual purpose. No essence-draining yet, he decides. No, what this merits, first, is a thorough examination. Ohhhhhh, yes.

Cackling quietly, he goes to locate some terrifying-looking implements of *science!*

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

The restraints are tight over his wrists and ankles. He watches the thing lurch around, trying to follow its movements out of the corner of his eye. He tries to reach out to the web, still finds the strands there, intact.

Andre. Allen. Pause. Alistair.

Faint murmurings are his only answer, nothing strong enough to make out.

Shit.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

Clearly, this creature seems to believe that anaesthetic largely happens in other laboratories, because there doesn't seem to be any to be found among the array of tools he's collected. Plenty of scalpels, very large syringes, something that looks like a speculum... a vacutainer... and several other things all the more worrisome for their unidentifiability.

However, one always starts with blood samples, doesn't one? One of Grey's arms is grasped and poked with the cold metal talons of the creature's right hand. Ah ha.

"There it is, human. Just a small sample...." one can hear the eyerolling sarcasm in the creature's tone. That's a mighty big syringe he's poking Gabe with--small sample, indeed.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

It doesn't feel very special going in, either. Considering it usually takes ten minutes to actually find a vein in his arm (which is why he has the central line, just underneath the skin below his left breast.)

Damn, but it hurt. The cold of the claw made his skin pimple, even while still wearing his coat and a three-piece suit.

Already, he was trying to pull back, to distance himself from what was going on, to stay calm. There wasn't any way out if he lost control. The web was still there, just distant, like a radio signal that was too weak to tune in properly. It worried him.

The pain in his arm grew sharp, and he instinctively tried to pull away. "Nrgh, f'cker..."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

It probably does hurt, considering the blood vessel found is in Grey's wrist. Hippocratic Oath? No such thing. After he's drawn quite a lot of blood, he puts the syringe aside and notices the draw site probably isn't going to stop bleeding on its own. Well, that's going to be messy and a mess is not what's wanted at this stage of the game, so a bandage is tied round it, probably a bit more tightly than is needed. Awh, but he takes such good care of his test subjects, doesn't he?

That is put aside to be analysed in a moment. Now, he shall shine a bright light into Grey's eyes, peer into said eyes and into nose, ears and mouth, peeling things back uncomfortably. Grey gets a closeup of the creature's own cybernetic eye, a many-lensed affair that swivels and rotates in what looks like a forcibly-enlarged socket.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, wonderful care. It's not long before his fingers start to tingle from the lack of proper blood flow to them, the hand throbbing.

When the thing looks into his mouth, he fights the urge to gag, struggling in the head restraint. It was uncomfortable to begin with, the entire setup he was strapped into having been designed for a smaller body, and it doesn't take much to work his way out of it, even in his half-sedated state.

And now? He'll bite. It isn't hard, though. He'd be hard pressed to chew anything at this point.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

So this is what metal fingers taste like. Metal. Imagine that. Metal and blood and chemicals.

The Skeksis pulls his hand away with an annoyed hiss. "Always biting," he mutters. "Neh." And there are a lot of tests yet to complete. Might as well start the next one. This one, however, involves a great amount of esoteric machinery set up around the chair, involving mirrors and lenses and little crystals, a huge blank sheet behind said chair, and the subject's head restrained again.

A control lever is pulled, opening a panel of the wall the chair is facing. Well, there's where all the heat is coming from. Furthermore, there's a complex array of more mirrors and lenses and crystals out there, which slide into place, then tilt at the pull of another lever. Pale purple light hits the machinery in a bright beam, bounced between the mirrors, and the creature peers into an eyepiece that directs a thin beam of the stuff across his artificial right eye at an angle.

He can see into your head, now.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

And what an amazing thing the inside of the human skull is. Brain, bones, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, glands, nose, mouth, teeth, tongue, and throat. There, in the twisting tunnels of the vascular system, is where he'll find his first oddity, although not so deviant as the others he'll discover later. Several synthetic shunts in the veins running along the frontal lobe, keeping the blood flow unhindered.

The next, which is much more telling, will be found when he inspects the brain itself. There, along the surface, are very fine wires, their ends imbedded deep within the grey matter. The tiny wires thread themselves along the surface of the brain, down to the cerebellum, where they disappear down the back of the neck, following the spinal column. It does not seem that they have a purpose, or at least are not being used for any current purpose.

He sits through all of this with growing unease. Without the voices in the web, it's so very difficult to pull away, but he continues to try, to master his fear so that it does not control him.

But gods and hell, it's difficult.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

The Skeksis stares at this, entranced. Whoever installed this network has a level of technology he can only just grasp. His fingers twitch--he itches to open up this human's skull and see this for himself, to touch it, to follow the wires and feel their connexions. But no. He could tell the human wouldn't survive such exploration. Its internal systems were too delicate and those shunts were far too telling. A tendency toward hypersanguination. Bah.

But that means that this must be a more complex brain than other humans'. So much more--the sort of vliya it would yeild would be potent, indeed....

No. That is the last phase. There are schedules to follow. The wall is closed again, the room becoming immediately cooler, and the machinery moved. The Skeksis settles in for a moment to examine the blood under another complex array of lenses and mirrors. Drops of it are poured into retorts to watch for chemical reactions, as well. Hmmmmmm.

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

He watches the thing for a while, poking at his blood and making odd noises. When he realizes it isn't coming back for a little while, he closes his eyes and again tries to listen to the web. He can hear faint voices through the strands, but he is unable to follow them back to the center.

Perhaps it is the sedatives. He remembers that he was having trouble getting through prior to sedation, but maybe if he concentrated...

In his mind, he pictures the lab, all of the machines and the strange, alien laboratory instruments, the tables and the thing itself, the walls and the floor.

Across the room, a glass beaker moves a few millimeters, making a scraping noise.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dualnature_/]

If the Skeksis hears it at all, he takes no notice. The rest of the human's internal workings need examined.

And that's going to require removing its clothing, at least to some extent. Shudder. Exposure is something repugnant to the Skekses, as the countless layers of robes seem to indicate; exposure of themselves and even of other beings. Right, might as well do this quickly. He approaches the human again, and frees one arm, already working it free of the jacket. "Stay still."

[mrseysidescousr.livejournal.com]

This human seems to agree with the Skekses in this regard, as he's wearing a coat, a jacket, a shirt. Three layers.

And no, the human will not stay still. You must have him confused with someone else. Although this time he's feeling a bit more focused. This time, when his arm is freed from the jacket, the hand shoots up toward the thing's face, toward it's neck. He's fast, but is he fast enough?