INCISIONS - aya

[ABATHUR .]

The air tonight was thick, he thought to himself.

There were many things air should be when doing a dissection - clear, sterile, slightly cold, emulating a morgue or operating room - and the Tanglewood environment met no such standards. In fact, it was basically the opposite of a healthy surgical environment, with high humidity and temperatures and an atmosphere of general unease stemming from the radioactivity which lurked in every step of muck that you took, or seemed to at the very least, although for him the sensation was fading. It felt haunted, yes, like something very bad had happened here, but he was no longer so cautious about living here. It certainly didn't feel like a home yet, but he didn't have any irrationalities about it.

As the arachnid laid the corpse of the small dog that was his prey down on the ground of his little den, shifting the paws so as to give him more space to work, he couldn't help but be annoyed at the air which he had been considering very heavily these past few moments, even in such a moment of concentration as one would assume a surgical procedure would take. He supposed he had just done this so much, performed an autopsy, even with just domestic dogs, that the challenge of cutting open a body while preserving it had faded as much as the rudimentary sort of toned down paranoia he had towards the fallout zone of Tanglewood had, that over the years as he did it more and more to extract whatever he needed it had just stopped being a problem and started being more second nature. He didn't think he'd ever be rid of it, either, as he dragged one of his fangs down the center of the canine, having to improvise since his claws weren't thick enough to be of any use in this small body. He couldn't quite feel the blood as much as usual, couldn't feel it welling up and pushing past his hairs in such detail that it almost felt pleasurable in a non-sexual way, in how it sent a chill across his entire body. It was such a weird feeling, too, having your limb partially buried in someone just to get one thing, but, again, it was part of him, and though he preached evolution and change, there were some things that were just innate.

It didn't take long for him to get what he was looking for, to extract the essence, the soul, the foundation of what someone was. It was green, gelatinous, solid enough to maintain its shape but excreting an odd slime, with a strange odor about it - not one of meat like what a corpse usually provided, but more crisp, sort of metallic. It felt alien in an environment that was so familiar, that being biology.

Shame he couldn't smell it.

tags - "speech"

[aya]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 55%; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"]Aya could smell the essence, and what a weird smell it was. She didn't actually mean to impose, but she had happened to be nearby as she was about to find Abathur and propose a project she knew he'd be interested in. Her nose twitched as she caught sight of the essence, fascinated eyes blinking. "What is that?" She asked, padding closer cautiously. She really didn't mean to impose, but now Abathur had piqued her interest. It almost looked like slime, but it had a more sturdy shape, and that smell was really quite strong this close. For a moment she wondered how Abathur could work in such close proximity to this smell for so long, when her mind flickered back to what she'd read and she remembered - right, spiders can't smell. Not all spiders, she thought, tail twitching. But most.

[ABATHUR .]

He didn't even know how many things he had adapted to, how many clan-based intricacies were frequent enough to warrant a mental adaptation - he only questioned it because when Aya suddenly popped in and started inquiring for things, he wasn't surprised. Not at all. It took him a moment to register her, but after that, he had no questions, nothing to consider further, not a hint of curiosity as to why exactly she decided to pop up. Didn't really matter to him. As he was with a lot of things, he was just used to intruders. "Essence," he answered, as if that was a reasonable and full explanation, before realizing he hadn't actually said much of anything and deciding to elaborate. "Concentrated form of subject's genetic data. Basically, soul, allows editing. Mostly supernatural," he continued, rotating himself to face her. With one small gesture he sort of shoved the glob towards her, unaware of the pungent stench it permeated. "Self, able to modify any subject's essence, including own, given direction, time to perform operation." His voice was... different. It had an air of eagerness about it, as if he was actually enjoying talking about something. Even his eyes reflected this, with small speckles of yellow in the white void of his eyes. He was somewhat happy right now, to share his work and experience.

It was an odd feeling for him, but odd didn't mean bad, necessarily.

tags - "speech"

[aya]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 55%; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"]Assuming that Abathur shoving the gloop at her meant for her to take it, she took it in a paw nervously, inspecting it. Essence? The soul? She'd never read of anything like this in any books or heard of it from others, but here it was, real as could be. Neither did she consider for a moment that Abathur was tricking her; what would his motive be? He didn't seem like any prankster to her.

She glanced back at the spider and noticed his eyes. She leaned forward, not intending to invade his space but doing so anyway, blinking as she watched the flecks of yellow in his snowy eyes. "Your eyes change colours." She concluded, leaning back again breathlessly. So that was what he had done to his eyes. She still didn't know why they changed colour, though, and for a moment the essence she held in her paw was entirely forgotten.

Still, the tortoiseshell wasn't stupid. She connected the dots quickly. "Did you use this to do that?" She gestured to the essence, and made a movement to pass it back to the spider - after all, this was his, and she didn't know how fragile it was.

[ABATHUR .]

As he placed his limbs on the goop once more, pulling it back towards himself, his eyes noticeably changing focus based on how the flakes all shifted towards the ball. This was his life's work. Obviously not this one specifically, the one taken from the corpse of some poor random sod he had happened to find that was available, but the concept of essence itself - ever since he had first laid his eight eyes upon it he had known this was his purpose, and almost every day since he had spent figuring it out, improving how he touched it, changed it. Even when he was talking to people or performing a task he always had his thoughts focused on essence, regardless of if it was his own or someone else's.

His fellow scientist seemed shocked. Not in awe, or in disgust, but in that sharp feeling of new knowledge being shoved upon you that sort of overloaded anyone, depending on how severe of a revelation this was. He wondered if her world was being turned upside down, or if this was just a neat thing to her. If it was a curiosity or something that seemed to explain so much.

He thought on what she said for a few seconds, some of his eyes flicking towards her, while the rest were still focused on the blob in his grasp, which was currently being turned as if he was looking for something on its surface. "Yes, manipulated own essence, made eyes react to emotions." He sort of assumed that the "this" she was referring to essence in general, and not this specific essence - he gave people the benefit of the doubt most of the time, until they proved it to be given unfairly. "Essence is main focus of own research. Have also developed medical skills, general biology knowledge. Essence, relatively more important to self." He thought for a moment about what she might be interested in, and decided to say, "Also able to manipulate essence of subjects other than self."

tags - "speech"

[aya]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 55%; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"]The tortoiseshell's ears perked at this information, very interested in the emotion-based eyes. "Your eyes are flecked with yellow. What does yellow mean?" She assumed white was neutral or calm, since it was the only colour aside from yellow she'd seen from Abathur so far. It'd be funny if white was searing rage, she thought briefly, before then deciding that actually she wouldn't find it very funny if that actually was it. She'd be kind of concerned.

"You can manipulate other essences?" She repeated back, letting that information sink in. "So you can use essences to mutate people? Is the mutation inside the essence themselves, or do you insert a mutation somehow and put the essence back with that?" So many questions, Aya thought, her mind buzzing with them. She took a step back, nose crinkling as she remembered the smell again. "Don't give yourself a sense of smell if you're going to be working with essences for the foreseeable future. It smells really bad."

[ABATHUR .]

Yellow? That was... an interesting question. He didn't think he'd had yellow before. "Have not documented yellow in current body. Based on emotional state, means happiness." Not that his eyes being anything other than yellow made him sad. It just meant that he wasn't feeling joy, just something else, usually a calm and peaceful emotion that had evolved from the robotic uncaring cold calm that be used to carry within him. Yellow was the same, then. He knew there were differences, too, because green meant curiosity or general interest in something, when before it had been indicative of fear, for some reason. The eye color mutation clearly didn't care about his natural eye color making sense, he supposed, though he didn't know why it would.

"Yes. Have utilized essence in past to give others mutations." That answer made just about everything clear, he imagined, besides who exactly he used it on or examples of him using it. She was also asking more mechanically oriented questions, which was certainly fun to answer,
letting him go in-depth on a system he was deeply interested in. "Depends on mutation. If additive mutation - wings, fangs, horns - requires genetic data from animals with body part. If augmentive - eye color mutation, thicker flesh, dietary modification - can use other essences for more efficient mutation, but possible without." He hoped that made sense to her, because if it didn't it meant he wasn't being efficient enough with his speech, which would mean he had to put effort into improving it, which was difficult to do.

On Aya's last note, he turned his gaze back to the green globule, and grunted. "No intention of giving self olfactory glands, but will take into consideration for future."

tags - "speech"

[aya]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 55%; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"]Happiness? "Happy to be dissecting something, or happy to have essence?" Not for a second did Aya consider it had anything to do with her, or even just that Abathur liked to talk. Her tail flicked as he continued to explain, absolutely engrossed in his calm but riveting explanations.

"Amazing." The tortoiseshell breathed, eyes shifting back to the essence. All that in an ice-cream-scoop-sized ball of glob? Her ears tilted forward a little at what Aya assumed was a joke, chuckling at the little grunt that came from the spider. That was such an unusual sound for a spider, she couldn't help it. Her tail swished as her mind was drawn back to her original purpose for coming here, which she had totally forgotten. "Ah, I actually had a reason for coming here, by the way."

She paused a moment to let Abathur react to that at all, but she didn't expect much. "I'm building something, birdeater - someone." She expected at least some interest in that, though frankly she'd be a little disappointed to find out that Abathur had done it all before. "I have a theory, and I'd like to test it. Are you in? It's sure to be groundbreaking, even if unsuccessful the first time." Her pale eyes watched Abathur with interest, nervous about whether he'd accept. It was a bond like no other, the bond of two scientists - and truth be told, she liked Abathur. She thought he was interesting, and a cool person otherwise, though no more than that, for now.

[ABATHUR .]

"Happy to share work," the mygalamorph stated matter of factly. Any other person would probably be awkward, tip-toeing around how they felt, because it could be interpreted as embarrassing, not something you want in public knowledge - but he didn't care. What people knew about how he felt didn't matter, since it couldn't affect him; not like anybody could figure out a way to kill him based on how he felt, after all, and if it couldn't kill him what greater threat did it serve? Everything about the conversation up until the big reveal wasn't of much note. Some chuckling and other reactions to what he was saying, and besides the teaser for the whole reveal, nothing was being said. The largest amount of action was the white in his eyes darkening to a slight red at how long the reveal was taking, as if he had anything to say while she was clearly supposed to say what she was here for instead of waiting a few seconds for his opinions on nothing, though that all cleared up when she began to speak again.

Sort of.

"Subject Aya... resurrecting life?" A Frankenstein's monster, huh? But... he was reminded of something. Something awful he'd done, what felt like such a long time ago, but likely wasn't, when he developed a complex about death so severe that he desecrated the grave and body of a former comrade's daughter just to see if he could bring someone back. His eyes flashed a brief orange, before it melted down into a deep blue, with him taking a step back from Aya. Damnit, damnit, damnit, he thought he had all this under control, he thought he wouldn't have a severe reaction to what he'd done, but the thought of the growling, of the looks on everybody's faces, of the word "Aba," it all just...

The worst part of not having mental manipulation was that he couldn't dispel the irrationalities faster.

It took him a second to calm down, a streak of white cracking down each of his now blue eyes, but it happened, and even if he was maintaining the sadness that stemmed from even thinking of his little stint with necromancy, he would continue the conversation. Aya wasn't even suggesting bringing someone back, she wanted to shove together some organs and hope it made a new person, which he could respect. He had no right to deny her this, especially since it could prove to be good progress scientifically. So, with a metaphorically set jaw, he said in a voice untinged by the melancholy that he was hoping would fade away soon, "Will participate. Could be worth something."

tags - "speech"

[aya]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 55%; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"]Aah, it was sharing his work that made him happy? Well, Aya was happy to listen. Still, when the other colours intruded into Abathur's otherwise solid gaze, The tortoiseshell's ears were pinned back. Orange.. Blue.. If she was going by societal connotation, she'd think Abathur was upset, but why should a mutation follow societal connotation? Still, she watched as the colours calmed back into a white, and he agreed to help.

The happiness that Aya felt upon his acceptance was somewhat dampened by concern - had she hit a moral issue? Still, she smiled at the spider, and said, "I'm glad you agreed! So far, I've just been planning and collecting necessary parts, but having both of us will definitely speed the process along." Her inflection was cheery, excited, but there was the hint of concern she couldn't remove. She just hoped Abathur wasn't agreeing to something he didn't want to do.