MPC-50X: 48A: What Is Known and What Is Lost
May 14, 2018 6:17:12 GMT
Post by Cross on May 14, 2018 6:17:12 GMT
Character name: Cassandra Cross
Word Length: 1074
Reward: Bits Please
It was late. Too late to be called night and too early to be called morning. The witching hour as it were where the only light was the distant soft glowing pollution of street lamps through the shutters of Cassandra’s windows and the soft glow of static from the tv. Cloak and Dagger lay fast asleep on the couch having dozed off during a movie, but their Tamer was absent. Having slipped on silent feet down the stairs to enter her lab. The lab itself was fairly large taking up the entirety to the little two story building’s basement. Though it lacked the professional or homey cheer of the rest of the place with its bare concrete windowless walls lined with shelves and equipment the lab was built for practicality rather than aesthetics. Most of the equipment was functional if second hand having been bought or salvaged on a students and now vets salary. Like above so was it below with the only source of illumination present coming from the computer monitor in front of which Cas sat hunched her legs drawn up beneath her as she stared at the screen with unseeing eyes.
Absently she pressed the enter button once again re-running the calculations and comparisons she’d run twice before. Praying the third time would be different. That she wouldn’t be…wouldn’t be so different. The changes had been gradual. Unnoticed or unimportant in the face of returning home whole and alive with her partners intact, but now in the silence and safety of her own home the variations were becoming much more apparently. Some she could cover with makeup, contacts, careful cocealing clothing and swathes of lies. The external changes though cosmetic and terrifying were not what had the Doctor worried. No…the internal changes were far more medically concerning.
The eyes were the most startling visual indicator of her change. They were red as blood the pupils expanding and contracting like a cats or perhaps more accurately like a demonic digimon adapted to living in a shadowed and darkened climate. In the pitch blackness of the lab they held a dull crimson glow to them. Shining with a light all their own though never nearly so bright as Viktor’s had. Their ethereal illumination a residual reminder of the virus lurking in her system. As a child adults would often teasingly ask from whom she’d gotten her pretty eyes while smiling down at her in that patronizing way that adults so often did when they thought children were far dumber than they expected. Cas hadn’t been able to answer the question then. Her Mothers eyes had been gray as stone not Cassandra’s piercing blue. She could answer the question now though. For it was Baalmon’s eyes that stared back at her in the mirror each morning and made the darkness of the windowless lab as bright as day. Her eyes, like her fangs, and the faded blue slash across her left cheek, all ‘gifts’ from the mad armor evolution of knowledge. Perhaps, she often finds herself thinking, being an armor evolution unused and unheard for so long had driven the digimon insane. If it had then the D-virus certainly hadn’t helped it any for she’d never heard of an even demi-self aware armor evolution before. Yet when Cloak wore such a form it was more like Baalmon was borrowing her Digimon’s body like a puppet. The two’s personalities blurring and mixing into something new and strange and not always entirely welcome.
These new features Cassandra could easily visually attribute to the wayward Digimon, at least until she could get a control sample to run some tests, but it was the other more subtle and sinister oddities that left her on edge. It had been a week since she’d last seen Mikemon and while Cas could struggle through the day the night remained when she was most awake. Not a terrible inconvenience given her clientele, but concerning. More concerning though was the fact she’d almost entirely stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped in near completeness most of the normal, average, functional things she logically knew she needed to do. To the point Cloak and Dagger were becoming concerned despite Cas’s efforts to hide her issues. Perhaps it was best to say that while she still ate she no longer felt hunger. Meals went from an everyday occurrence twice a day to once a day, to once every three days with the doctor craving a massive protein and iron heavy meal when she finally did feel the first stirrings of hunger. Sleep became a thing of the past with long hours of wakefulness and short snatches of rest before some unknown internal clock would rouse the woman to wakefulness once more. The only thing that had not changed was her drinking as she spent the days since stumbling upon Mikemon once more with either a water bottle in hand or a bottle of booze with alcohol alternating H2O depending upon the day as she tried to remain cool as her temperature slowly crept upwards. At first she’d feared she’d contracted a fever or infection, but as her internal temperature leveled out at one hundred in two on the third day and remained consistent since it became worryingly apparent that this was not simply a passing issue.
That was when she’d begun to run the tests. Comparing her current dna with the sample she had on file she’d often used as a control test for her genetics equipment. Yet for the third time though Dr. Cross found herself roused from her thoughts at the blinking indicator light that signaled said test was complete. Reaching out she tapped the enter button as the data began to roll across the screen once more. For the third time she let her eyes drop to the final results and for the third time she stared shaking and terrified at them.
There was a fifteen percent variation. Fifteen percent of her dna was not her own. Was not human. Was something unknown. How much was Baalmon she could not say. Not without further samples and tests, but the numbers never wavered. Even as the world blurred with her tears and a sob wracked her chest clawing her throat raw as her shoulder shook with pain and silent emotion the numbers remained the same. She hadn’t cried since she was twelve, but in the face of her lost humanity.
Cassandra cried.
Word Length: 1074
Reward: Bits Please
It was late. Too late to be called night and too early to be called morning. The witching hour as it were where the only light was the distant soft glowing pollution of street lamps through the shutters of Cassandra’s windows and the soft glow of static from the tv. Cloak and Dagger lay fast asleep on the couch having dozed off during a movie, but their Tamer was absent. Having slipped on silent feet down the stairs to enter her lab. The lab itself was fairly large taking up the entirety to the little two story building’s basement. Though it lacked the professional or homey cheer of the rest of the place with its bare concrete windowless walls lined with shelves and equipment the lab was built for practicality rather than aesthetics. Most of the equipment was functional if second hand having been bought or salvaged on a students and now vets salary. Like above so was it below with the only source of illumination present coming from the computer monitor in front of which Cas sat hunched her legs drawn up beneath her as she stared at the screen with unseeing eyes.
Absently she pressed the enter button once again re-running the calculations and comparisons she’d run twice before. Praying the third time would be different. That she wouldn’t be…wouldn’t be so different. The changes had been gradual. Unnoticed or unimportant in the face of returning home whole and alive with her partners intact, but now in the silence and safety of her own home the variations were becoming much more apparently. Some she could cover with makeup, contacts, careful cocealing clothing and swathes of lies. The external changes though cosmetic and terrifying were not what had the Doctor worried. No…the internal changes were far more medically concerning.
The eyes were the most startling visual indicator of her change. They were red as blood the pupils expanding and contracting like a cats or perhaps more accurately like a demonic digimon adapted to living in a shadowed and darkened climate. In the pitch blackness of the lab they held a dull crimson glow to them. Shining with a light all their own though never nearly so bright as Viktor’s had. Their ethereal illumination a residual reminder of the virus lurking in her system. As a child adults would often teasingly ask from whom she’d gotten her pretty eyes while smiling down at her in that patronizing way that adults so often did when they thought children were far dumber than they expected. Cas hadn’t been able to answer the question then. Her Mothers eyes had been gray as stone not Cassandra’s piercing blue. She could answer the question now though. For it was Baalmon’s eyes that stared back at her in the mirror each morning and made the darkness of the windowless lab as bright as day. Her eyes, like her fangs, and the faded blue slash across her left cheek, all ‘gifts’ from the mad armor evolution of knowledge. Perhaps, she often finds herself thinking, being an armor evolution unused and unheard for so long had driven the digimon insane. If it had then the D-virus certainly hadn’t helped it any for she’d never heard of an even demi-self aware armor evolution before. Yet when Cloak wore such a form it was more like Baalmon was borrowing her Digimon’s body like a puppet. The two’s personalities blurring and mixing into something new and strange and not always entirely welcome.
These new features Cassandra could easily visually attribute to the wayward Digimon, at least until she could get a control sample to run some tests, but it was the other more subtle and sinister oddities that left her on edge. It had been a week since she’d last seen Mikemon and while Cas could struggle through the day the night remained when she was most awake. Not a terrible inconvenience given her clientele, but concerning. More concerning though was the fact she’d almost entirely stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped in near completeness most of the normal, average, functional things she logically knew she needed to do. To the point Cloak and Dagger were becoming concerned despite Cas’s efforts to hide her issues. Perhaps it was best to say that while she still ate she no longer felt hunger. Meals went from an everyday occurrence twice a day to once a day, to once every three days with the doctor craving a massive protein and iron heavy meal when she finally did feel the first stirrings of hunger. Sleep became a thing of the past with long hours of wakefulness and short snatches of rest before some unknown internal clock would rouse the woman to wakefulness once more. The only thing that had not changed was her drinking as she spent the days since stumbling upon Mikemon once more with either a water bottle in hand or a bottle of booze with alcohol alternating H2O depending upon the day as she tried to remain cool as her temperature slowly crept upwards. At first she’d feared she’d contracted a fever or infection, but as her internal temperature leveled out at one hundred in two on the third day and remained consistent since it became worryingly apparent that this was not simply a passing issue.
That was when she’d begun to run the tests. Comparing her current dna with the sample she had on file she’d often used as a control test for her genetics equipment. Yet for the third time though Dr. Cross found herself roused from her thoughts at the blinking indicator light that signaled said test was complete. Reaching out she tapped the enter button as the data began to roll across the screen once more. For the third time she let her eyes drop to the final results and for the third time she stared shaking and terrified at them.
There was a fifteen percent variation. Fifteen percent of her dna was not her own. Was not human. Was something unknown. How much was Baalmon she could not say. Not without further samples and tests, but the numbers never wavered. Even as the world blurred with her tears and a sob wracked her chest clawing her throat raw as her shoulder shook with pain and silent emotion the numbers remained the same. She hadn’t cried since she was twelve, but in the face of her lost humanity.
Cassandra cried.
