THE MORE WE DO [ACTIVE/CLOSED]

[screw_askew]

Characters: Dr. Stein, Fran Madaraki
Content: Time marches on, Stein gets his hands dirty, and sins against nature are committed in the name of SCIENCE
Location: Madison Square Park <--> Rockefeller University Hospital
Time of day: A few hours after the [Mazoku Hamel Fight]
Warnings: Mangled corpses, gore, desolation, abominations of medicine and

Comments

[patchwork_phd]

Meanwhile, Fran had been spending her time in Rockefeller largely getting to know the place. The best home was one you could navigate in your sleep. Which was partially why many of her excursions had been in the middle of the night, but there was (as always) another reason: She had gotten to know Stein, or so she thought, and had all but expected him to do his more interesting experiments in the nocturnal hours. So far she'd not gotten the chance to crash any of his trials or tribulations, but that would change soon; she felt it.

She had been keeping herself away from Angelicus, as well. That painful awkwardness, as aloof as Fran was, would not disappear so easily, it seemed. But she was scarcely being a loner! No, at any given moment, one could easily find the little patchwork person taking more notes on seemingly insignificant discoveries from the layout of the building to the color of the new parasites' carapace. Or roaming the halls and humming a little song to herself, seemingly lost in her own world. Or daring to go outside and

1/2

[screw_askew]

The trip was mercifully uneventful, the streets emptied of man or beast until his arrival at what was left of Madison Square Park. The area was quiet, abandoned in the hours since the disaster, the survivors gone away to lick their wounds, those less fortunate predictably left where they had fallen. However, he was not alone. The sickly sweet scent of carrion had brought a pair of crabs forth from the woodwork, lesser breeds unlikely to find sustenance any other way.

He continued forward undeterred, surveying the scene and paying the creatures little mind. Now was not the time for games and horseplay, there was business at hand. There was still sufficient sunlight to allow a cursory search, though what darkening had already occurred served to mask the gory details. Stein had little interest in this sort of massacre; the lack of artistry, precision, feeling left a taste in his mouth akin to spoiled milk. Such a waste

2/2

[screw_askew]

So close to bagging his last find for the day, Stein found his work interrupted by a screeching lunge. It had been expected, even inevitable, but remained annoying all the same. A speedy backwards dash left the creature to sail past harmlessly as its partner made a similar attempt only to meet Stein head-on, initiative stolen before it could react. No time for games, no time for fun. A harsh scowl accompanied a double armed thrust, both hands outstretched in a grasping manner, fingers nearly gouging into the chitinous exterior of the creature. Thrashing and clawing with weak forelimbs, the crab was held at bay by physical strength, but the finishing blow would come in a more esoteric flavor

[patchwork_phd]

Mm. Look at that. Fran's unasked question got its answer quickly enough on the last leg of her most recent wander through the building. (Such fascinating things in here. It always impressed her. No matter how many times she walked the floor or inspected the equipment, it seemed there was always something interesting to be found. Now that she thought of it, that was probably a sense of nostalgia, since she'd gone so long without proper medical equipment. And of course, Rockefeller had nothing on the real Madaraki Emergency Room back in Japan, but, well, they weren't in Japan, were they?

But at any rate. Fran watched with fascination as the doors of the hospital slid open, framing the silhouette of the man she'd been wondering about. And it looked like he had something in tow, too! Ah, that cart of his. Loaded with... hm. However they had died, it was certainly not pleasant, if he had deigned to put them in body bags. Perhaps it was in that commotion? Maybe she should have gone. Then again, if Stein returned home safely, it was more

[screw_askew]

The return trip had gone off without a hitch, uncontested either by contrivance or simple good fortune. No matter, there was hardly a difference here anyway. Though the trip had been relatively brief, night had already begun to fall as he approached the entrance to Rockefeller University Hospital. Stein had similar musings to his counterpart as he approached, thinking fondly of his own place of research, the plainly titled Patchwork Lab. Though likely outmatched in terms of equipment and sophistication, the decor and location back home simply could not be beaten

[patchwork_phd]

Oh, cold storage! Yes, that was certainly urgent. As soon as those two words escaped his mouth, Fran immediately stopped poking around and joined Stein up front, just to the side of him, her own pace quickening to match his. This was going to be fun. She kept the chatter to a minimum as well, since anything she could have said might have slowed the transport, and besides, it wasn't like it was the first time either of them had seen a dead body.

But when he spoke to her, she was certain to answer quickly. "Oh, my. If only I'd known, I would have gone to help. There weren't any survivors, were there?" Of course not. He would have told her. "Well, these bodies should be very helpful in determining several things." That bit was quieter, almost to herself, since she knew he'd have made that conclusion already. "Yes, of course," she piped up louder. "This will be our little secret for as long as we can keep it that way." Angelicus wasn't one to go roaming (as far as Fran knew), but there was always that chance

[screw_askew]

Keeping a brisk pace and wheeling down and through a number of faceless halls and junctions, Stein replied with the same galvanized manner as before. "No such luck I'm afraid," regarding her earlier inquiry of survivors, rhetorical as it may have been. "From what I had seen, it appears the victims of the event either walked away on their own, or not at all." The condition of the corpses he had deigned to retrieve could attest to that soon enough. They were the fortunate ones.

He soon found himself greeted by a pair of ominous steel doors. Sliding around rear-forward, he backed into one door as Fran pushed open the other, spilling into an examination room adjacent their final destination: the morgue (Ha ha! DeepThankfully the facility had not been in use during the alleged cataclysm that had befallen this simulacrum of Manhattan, leaving both the refrigerant untouched and the morgue itself free of any long-forgotten and terribly spoiled surprises. Stein had taken to bringing it to working order shortly after first arriving; it was

[patchwork_phd]

Oh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my. Stein was certainly right about one thing: This damage was unlike anything they'd ever seen. No doubt inhuman. The power limiters (or whatever the colloquial term was) placed around the city (or in its inhabitants; again, whichever was the leading theory) would prevent any sort of human from doing this kind of damage. But what could have been the cause? "One attacker, I would imagine," she muttered, deducing what she could from the corpse in front of her and the descriptions of the others. And on the inside, she laughed -- when had she become the forensics expert? This wasn't some sort of crime scene investigation in New York; this was science. (And of course, the answer was obvious: Fran had always been a forensics expert.)

"Well. I think we can safely deduce that whatever was there isn't there anymore. I rather think we'd have seen something about it on the network if it were rampaging the city." Or, of course, it might have come here. And there was also the likelihood that it would have attacked Stein,