guinea pig in a twisted mouth.

[thegooddoctor]

WHO: Dr. Angelica Einstürzen, and the young vigilantes known as Trauma and the Pillowman.
WHERE: Angelica's secret laboratory.
WHEN: Wednesday, dead of night.
WARNINGS: Violence, death, and the above characters being themselves.
SUMMARY: Terry and Katurian bring the fight to the good doctor-- and she evens the score.
FORMAT: Quicklog.


[ The air was still stale, the place too long hidden underground without a human being inside it-- nothing but dusty vials, the hum of machines, and the flutter of wings in the rafters. Quiet, like a grave. But Angelica preferred it that way. Nothing but cold steel and glass, uninterrupted except by the cawing of the monster crows she kept as pets, bred from the gift of a single egg and matured into beasts in the year she had been gone.

She had meticulously cleaned away the debris, restoring her laboratory with a singular focus. The good doctor needed a proper place for her work, a place hidden from the world-- protected, beneath the earth. It was here that Angelica had spent the past week experimenting, on herself and what scant specimens she could hunt. Slowly, her vials filled with samples, her notebooks filled. This was a time of pupation.

Even now, in the middle of the night, Angelica did not sleep. Under the white light, she was a slender, pale phantom, her hands unnaturally steady as she pierced her skin with the point of a needle, drawing her own blood. ]

Comments

[demonspawn]

[ He thought it too, that maybe he'd actually gotten her, that maybe now he and Katurian would get away. But the slight stinging pain in his arm drew his attention to that needle, its contents -- whatever they were -- emptied into his system. His heart clenched. What was that? Was it poison? How long did he have?

Quickly, he ran back to Katurian, hoping that Angelica would be distracted long enough for the two of them to get away. He knelt down, shook Katurian's shoulder. ]

Hey -- hey. Come on, we gotta go.

[ He hesitated. Then reached out to check for a pulse, hoping that tingle of numbness he felt in his finger tips was just his imagination. ]

[thegooddoctor]

[ Terry was a dark moving blur through the haze of red and searing pain. Angelica gripped the nearest counter top, her gloves slick with blood, sharp teeth bared like the monster she really was. All that sticky sweet pleasantry, that mask of humanity-- that was gone, replaced with the deepest desire to rip Terrance's organs free from his body.

She groped blindly for a weapon, anything sharp enough to cut the boy into ribbons. ]

[goryteller]

[He still had a pulse, but everything in him was fading fast. His breathing came out in delayed, half-chokes. Under his blood-soaked mask, his skin was white and sickly. His lips were blue. He promised himself that he would hold onto every feeling, that he would really try to appreciate what was happening to him, but within seconds he was lost in those feelings, swallowed up in the sensations like an ocean wave. Drowning.

Huh.

When Terry touched his neck, he raised his head to look at him. He managed something like a laugh (almost soundless, a pocket of air in a sea of blood) before his eyes rolled up in his head and he went down.]

[demonspawn]

[ He was shaking. Just a faint tremor. Maybe from exhaustion, or stress, or adrenaline, or the fact that Katurian had just died -- or maybe it was the poison he could practically feel his heart treacherously pumping through his all too human body. Weak. His fingers dropped from Katurian's faded pulse to grip his shoulder tightly. An apology to his corpse. An apology for what he was about to do.

Run away.

Because he could already tell his body was shutting down. He felt nauseous, his head pounding, the numbness spreading from his fingertips up his arms. He was going to die -- for real this time, if he couldn't get away from whatever it was that had killed his powers. Angelica. This place. And he could see Angelica trying to recover, still standing even with the mess of glass in her face. Terry couldn't wait any longer.

His grip tightened on Katurian for just a moment before he let go, stumbling towards the door. Struggling to make his failing body obey him enough to pull it open, staggering out into the night air. His legs felt seconds from giving out -- he just had to get as far as he could go. ]

[thegooddoctor]

[ She could hear the sound of the boy's staggering footsteps. The blur of his form was moving unsteadily towards the door. There was a quiet click as it shut behind him. The noise she made was a soft snarl. Fine. Run then, boy. He could get away from her, but not from the toxin already spreading through his limbs to his lungs. He wouldn't get far. And inevitably she would find him again -- and his friend, too, if he revived in the City.

She always found them. The bad children. Even Heine hadn't been able to run from her forever.

Now, it was time to heal. She would lay down behind closed doors and become a pupa, quiet and dormant for a few hours as she metamorphosed into another body. This one would regenerate, make her whole again. All the while, Katurian's body would be waiting for her. And when she awoke, she would put on a clean dress, and she would put that cooling corpse on the operating table. She would pull her favorite scalpel free from his throat. She would take off his mask, his costume-- fold them, set them aside neatly. She would clean the blood.

Then, tenderly, she would cut his still heart out of his chest. ]