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Testing 1, 2, 3...
Topic Started: Apr 19 2014, 12:46 PM (840 Views)
Smitejr

Kursten walks around the vacant lot that they had chosen for their little arena, making sure there was no interference that would reduce the value of their experiment. When he's satisfied that there are no errant phenomena, he turns back towards the two people who had accompanied him.

"Alright, test area looks good. Are you people ready to start?"

He palms his book...he's never really tried using it in anything even approaching a combat situation...but he's fairly confident that he could reign in the errant thoughts that tended to get in his head as he drew power from it. And it was worth testing...he didn't know nearly enough about the actual effects it produced, most of his work till now was in translation.

"Okay, dictee, note that the test site is as control as anywhere in Reliquus can be. We might want to try the experiment outside of the city later to see if there's any noticeable difference." He takes a breath to steel himself, then nods. "Let's begin."
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Smitejr

Kursten considers that, holding his chin in his hand. "Yeah, that makes sense. Might be a bit hard to count, it's really tough to hold them straight and easy, especially when there's a lot of them."

At the thought of an autopsy, Kursten cups a fist in his hand, smiling wide. "That's a great idea! Nothing could help us find out where these things come from better than that!" He rubs the back of his neck. "Well...some things might, but that's a very important place to start!"

He blinks. "Especially for me? What does that mean?" With that, he draws out a tentacle, and with a flick, detaches it from his body. It wriggles around a bit, before growing stiff. "Didn't seem that hard to me."
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SarahSyna

"I'll just have to make sure I'm too far away to get tripped this time!"

There was a moment of confusion before he detached the tentacle, then Destiny scooped up the stiff appendage and poked Kursten with it.

"Well, nevermind then! I was worried I'd have to cut it off or something, and the idea of carrying out an autopsy on someone who might be awake through it wasn't a nice one. Shall we do it now then? Hey, Tru, what time is it exactly?"

"Fifteen thirty-two, and, uh... 45 seconds."

"Thank you!"

She beamed. "Now we know for when it starts to decay!"
Edited by SarahSyna, Apr 25 2014, 06:24 PM.
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Smitejr

Kursten nods. "Ah, alright. You probably wouldn't have had to worry about cutting it off, anyway...I never seem to run out of them, and I don't really get hurt when my tentacles do, beyond a really vague feeling. But I can also detach them, so I guess it doesn't even really matter anyway..." His voice trails off, getting quieter until he catches himself and coughs.

"Well, I suppose the experiments can begin! Are you going to want to cut it open? I'm kind of curious to see what's inside, if anything. It might just be solid, unrecognizable muscle...I don't really know."

He snaps his fingers, an idea. "Oh, almost forgot!" he manifests and detaches two more tentacles. "I have different kinds, they might lead different results. This one's spiny, and this one has suckers on it!"
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SarahSyna

Destiny looked up at him quizzically as he trailed off, then shrugged. She wasn’t going to poke him about it like an annoying girlfriend, especially when there was something scientific for them to pursue!

Tru tossed over the medical kit to her. Destiny just managed to catch it, fumble it and catch it again before she set it down on the cleanest, flattest bit of ground there was. She flipped it open and took out a clear, plastic sheet. She laid the sheet out and rested the tentacles on it in order of detachment, being especially careful with the suckered and spiked ones.

“Not ideal conditions,” she murmured, “But I suppose if it’s both easy and painless to detach them, we can always do this again, in the proper clinical environment. We can simply consider this something of a preliminary exploratory procedure.”

She pulled a hair tie out of her pocket and swept back her hair into a stubby ponytail, then swept on her labcoat. She rubbed a large squirt of sanitiser into her hands, then tugged on a pair of plastic gloves with a satisfying snap! sound. Tru propped herself up on her elbows and looked on with the barest interest.

Destiny ran her fingers along the surface of the first tentacle, checking for a discernible edge. There was one, but likely only because of how the thing had stiffened while on the ground. She probably would have to autopsy a ‘fresh’ one to have a more accurate insight.

She sliced the tentacle open and laid it out flat, keeping back so Kursten could look in. There was a small look of surprise on her face.

To be honest, she’d expected something close to a cephalopod’s arm – essentially solid muscle controlled via hydraulics – or even like the inside of a sea urchin – a fluid-filled cavity surrounded by muscle.

Instead, what she was looking at were small, greyish muscles divided by a thin layer of translucent fat, with black arteries and veins running over and between the muscles. There was no apparent anchor for the muscles either. They didn’t even seem connected to one another.

She began to nudge the innards with the scalpel as she explained these things to Kursten, lifting out little muscles with no apparent trouble and setting them in the corner of the plastic.
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Smitejr

He blinks as Destiny flips on the labcoat. "You...uhh, just brought that with you? I mean...it's a good thing you did, you seem really prepared for things! Did you plan to do something like this?"

Kursten tries to follow along with Destiny's explanation. "That biology doesn't even sound like it would work! Hrm...it is infused with magic, maybe it just ignores anything having to do with common sense in how it operates..." He tilts his head. "Do you think you can get more out of it in a clinical situation? Unless you're going to do a chemical analysis, what do you want to find that couldn't be done here?"

To think, that's what he was swinging around..."Is that black blood? Eesh...that's some creepy stuff. I wonder what it all means...It doesn't seem like this really led anywhere for us. Is there something I'm just missing?"

He looks closer at the foreign, impossible tentacles that formed his weapons, and shakes his head. "Wow, I hoped this would give me a bit more insight, but all it did was raise even more questions...Still, that's pretty common with research, so I guess I shouldn't complain..."

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SarahSyna

"Oh, I always bring my labcoat everywhere. It's comforting, and also good for most weather." she said cheerily, cutting open the suckered tentacle. It looked much the same inside, albeit with muscle clumps around where the suckers were on the outside. The suckers themselves seemed normal enough, though an examination of a live specimen would be needed to verify that.

"I think a chemical analysis would be a good idea. I don't know any creatures with black blood. Red, blue, green, yes. But none with black. The colour of blood is depends on certain chemicals within it. Like how we have haemoglobin in our blood, so it's red, but grasshoppers don't, and theirs is green." Destiny continued. When she was relaying information, her tone was uncharacteristically brisk; not harsh by any means, but lacking the usual chirpy quality.

"This might sound weird, but it kind of... it looks like something that's mimicking biology without actually being biological in nature, or understand it. I've read about poppets and things, things what function as an item as long as they resemble it."

She shook her head and laughed.

"But I'm probably just being silly. There's some small plastic sample jars in the medical kit, would you pass them to me, pretty please? And one of the plastic bags. I don't want to get this, uh... substance all over my kit. I do think it's worth following up on though. You're right. This doesn't seem like it should work, which is exactly why you and I are going to examine it in further detail when we can. These are inside you, aren't they?"
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Smitejr

Kursten shrugs. "Well, it looks good on you. And having it with you helped now, so it's probably a good idea." He looks over her shoulder as she splits open the suckered tentacle, noticing it looks pretty much identical to the previous one.

As she explains about blood color, he nods. "Yeah, our blood is red because we have iron in it, crabs have blue blood because their's is full of calcium, and down the list. What chemical would give it black blood, though? As you said...it's never been seen in nature..." He shakes his head. "Well, we'll find out later, won't we?"

Catching the shift in her tone, he thinks about asking her about it, but soon enough she regains that bit of music in her words that makes her so fun to listen to. "Hmm...maybe. They do tend to feel more animated by magic than alive on their own, magic seems to permeate them. Maybe that's what forms the connection between the muscle/fat groups?"

Getting Destiny the things she asked for, and nods. "Yeah, this is really good stuff! Thanks for taking such a close look at it!" He shakes his head when she says they're inside him. "Nah, they were only inside me when I needed them to be, in order to repair that big injury. They're mostly only skin deep, they grow themselves completely new whenever I want them."
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SarahSyna

Destiny glowed a little at the compliment. Someone else liked her labcoat!

She really did need to stop talking to him as if he wasn't smart though. She was so very used to talking to Tru about things that she probably dumbed things down far too much, like she didn't trust his ability to understand her or something. That sounded very mean about Tru actually. But she was smart in her own way! Just not academically. It wasn't mean to realise that, right? Especially when Tru herself admitted it too?

Hmm.

She thanked Kursten for the samples before slicing open the spiked tentacle, for the same of thoroughness. And it was a good thing too, because this one was a little different.

The thick, tapered spines were deeply rooted in the flesh of the tentacles, rings of muscle keeping them in place. An enthusiastically experimental squeeze confirmed that these rings didn't just secure the spines but could also maybe be used to release them, and also that cats had very good reflexes!

"I sure hope no one learns how to talk to cats." Tru commented. "Because that owner might want to know who scared the shit out of Tibbles."

Destiny blushed and pretended she couldn't hear her over the sound of sample-taking.

"It's no big deal, Kursten!" she said, not looking up at him as she busied herself cutting out samples of flesh, muscle and skin from each tentacle, "This interests me a lot too. And even if it didn't, you're my friend, so I'd do it anyway."
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Smitejr

Kursten looks over as she continues to fiddle with the other tentacles, before paling slightly as she messes with the spiked one. "Be careful with that, De-" he begins, before he pulls himself out of the way just in time to avoid losing an eye. Apparently the cat off long to the left of them was not so lucky, and he winces at the loud screech of protest it makes. "Sorry, I should have warned you sooner about that. You probably don't want to mess too much with those, it's a bit dangerous."

Helping her sort and store samples away, he smiles. "Well, I appreciate it." He turns over to Tru, frowning. "You know, you could probably help with this. I mean, you're just kind of sitting there...but I suppose we didn't really need it..." His voice trails off again, and he busies himself with poking around the inside of the excavated tentacle, before blinking, and pulling out the book. If he's right... "Destiny, is it possible to chemically examine this blood after it's been dried? Or can we try drying it out on paper?"

It was crazy...but when you were dealing with magic, things that seemed sane were often thrown out the window as a matter of course. After all, what was sane about someone sprouting tentacles because they read a book?
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SarahSyna

Destiny just kept her head down, totally and completely not embarrassed at all, not one bit. Yep. She was a doctor, not a vet. And even if she had been a vet, that cat was long out of sight now and she couldn't do anything for it anyway.

Actually, if she had been a vet, she wouldn't be taking samples, so the cat wouldn't have gotten a spine in it and the whole thing would have been avoided from the very start.

In fact, she probably wouldn't even be here right now, because the vet was in the opposite direction to the clinic, so she'd never have met Kursten at all because she'd never have seen him getting hit by a car. And that was just a terrible thought.

"I can arrest the tentacles if you want." Tru said amiably. "Or maybe the cat."

"We can test the dried blood, yes. There's some filter paper in the kit, with blue lining on one of the edges, so you'll know it when you see it." Destiny said, back to her business voice. "If you pass it out to me, I can do it for you. Oh, and a pair of gloves and a pen, if you see them."

She held up her hands and made a face. "These gloves are... unsanitary right now, and I'd like to avoid contamination."
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