❝Leave the monster's body as-is.❞

[clinical]

[Out in the open of the Plane, there's a sterile table with a dead giant hand on it. The layers of its flesh have been peeled back and pinned down by metal shish kabob sticks from the kitchen. Jade is just carving away at another layer, revealing the general bone structure, when there's a scream from a little way away.]

[Jade puts down his scalpel. The zombie runs at Jade quickly, still screaming, it's jaw gaping and wide, and Jade takes a few steps towards it and impales it with the spear he draws out with a burst of light. The creature is still screaming, but that doesn't bother Jade particularly. He just moves it with his spear onto a second table, injects it with something, and uses more shish kabob sticks to hold it down. Jade watches it thrash and scream for a moment, but the injection doesn't work.]

Hm. What a shame.

[With surgical precision, Jade severs the creature's head from its body. It is so difficult to dissect something that is thrashing around. The screaming stops, not that Jade was disturbed by it in the first place, and Jade draws his spear back into his arm.]

Comments

[rationalist.livejournal.com]

[Sherlock watches with no actual feeling. What a nice, well, feeling. He tilts his head.]

Very impressive.

[brandyhabit.livejournal.com]

[Benny is horrified, because ewwwwwwwwww]

At least you're keeping busy.

[clinical]

It's disappointing that neither of them took to sedation. [Jade steps back over to the no-longer-walking hand, as he wasn't done with it when the zombie decided to offer itself up. He cuts out a bit of flesh and sets it out on a slide.]

[clinical]

[Jade shrugs] I've dissected monsters since I was a child.

[And then a frown flickers over his face. That was not what he had intended to say. It was about as horrifying as the lie he had come up with, but it was also true, and that's odd.]

[promisedsomeone.livejournal.com]

[Asch is only moving from spot to spot as a necessity. Still, Jade's amazing work manages to catch his attention. Well, that's disgusting. Asch does a good impression of someone who's swallowed a bug.

He had something to say but he sort of forgot.]

... Is this supposed to help us get out of here?

[clinical]

[There's really only one suitable response to this:]

If you're squeamish, you're free to leave.

[brandyhabit.livejournal.com]

That's new. I'm sure that made for very interesting school days.

[she cringes, looking at the two figures skewered onto the table]

Temporal manipulation and vivisection. Is there anything you can't do?

[promisedsomeone.livejournal.com]

[Troll harder, Jade.]

I'm not squeamish. I thought you would be more interested in whoever apparently broke the Machine.

[clinical]

Bring back the dead.

[That is very different from Jade's desired comment, and it shows in the surprise on his face.]

[clinical]

[If you want to disturb a scientist at work, go harass Dist]

They didn't break it. They changed its settings.

[If we're honest, which we try not to be, Jade is just very curious and very selfish.]

[brandyhabit.livejournal.com]

[and she actually notes the surprise, which...wasn't what she was expecting. She hesitates, looking at him uncertainly]

Are you all right?

[promisedsomeone.livejournal.com]

[Damn it, Jade!]

Whatever. It needs to be fixed. If time is still going forward while we're dallying up here, there might not be an Auldrant to return to.

[clinical]

[He smiles and opens her mouth to assure her that nothing is wrong. What comes out is this:]

Apparently not. [Well, that was almost to be expected. He shrugs and continues on.] The words I'm saying aren't the ones I intend to say. [Those were, though, and he notices that with interest]

[clinical]

They seem to want us to find the person who made the choice. We should likely be asking around.

[Jade isn't asking around. He is slicing off a bit of walking-hand skin so he can look at it more closely under a microscope. He already has samples from smaller hands so he can compare the compositions.]

[lamb_of_gold]

Discovered anything of interest?

[He gives the hand a good once over, keeping his face neutral]

[rationalist.livejournal.com]

[Sherlock leans close to inspect one of the hands.] Have you determined how this functions?

[clinical]

They're mostly consistent with decayed human corpses, though the muscles are stronger than normal after this much decomposition.

[lamb_of_gold]

They'd have to be, especially onces this large - I've seen them on the walls and ceilings of several places.

[He shifts to look at the headless zombie] And these ones are surprisingly agile.

[clinical]

I decided to do the tissue analysis before examining the nerves.

[Observing Sherlock's interest] I have extra scalpels.

[onehundredbeers]

[Nathan is intrigued by dissection! He knows it when he sees it, and wanders over, casually eating some chips. He's probably a little dishevelled looking, he's not used to, you know, not being pampered and treated like The Best Thing Ever.]

Nice, uh, set up.

[He takes a peek at the work Jade is doing, and is very cautious to remain over here while he still has food.]

Pretty awesome.

[brandyhabit.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's one of those experiments they seem so fond of around here. They've been known to have rather annoying effects from what I've seen.

[rationalist.livejournal.com]

[He looks up.] Oh, thank you. Where did you get these? Those bipedal creatures are everywhere it seems. But I haven't seen these hands.

[youidiots.livejournal.com]

[Tear is... annoyed, in her own way. Goings on in their own world as well as what's happened here have set her on edge in the worst way.]

Colonel Curtiss...

[promisedsomeone.livejournal.com]

[Jade is disappointingly useless. Well, whatever. Asch doesn't have time for smalltalk anyway!]

I managed to leave a note for you in Daath's library before this happened. You'd better hope you make it out to find it.

[clinical]

[Jade gives her a smile and not much else to go on.]

Tear. Care to help?