Corey Jackson (followthesigns) wrote in downfallrpg, @ 2010-07-17 22:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2015-09-12, corey, corey and dhaval, dhaval |
New Monsters
Who: Corey and Dhaval
Where: Dhaval's room
When: Midday-ish
The storm made it a lot harder to go out like he usually did, but Corey still did it. He came back much sooner than usual, though, and soaked to the skin despite having taken his usually effective coat to keep the rain off. He'd come back with a few more apples, and a few more bags of chips-- useless things, but maybe the kids would like them-- but not much else. Blitz smelled like a wet dog, despite being mostly a cat, and had been very unhappy about it, though she'd been quite happy to get dried off with one of his towels, playing with it like it were some kind of cat toy.
At least he knew what he was going to do with his enforced idleness. The day before he'd sensed three more monsters "waking up" in the hotel, and he could tell those weird eggs had hatched. Now that he had time, he was going to see what was going on with 'em.
The stronger sense brought him to a room on the first floor, where he rapped firmly on the door, though he couldn't imagine who was in there. It looked like it was nothing more than a storage room.
Dhaval was working with Rashmi. He remembered reading that the best way to control an animal's behavior was to train it to perform that behavior. If you had a command to bark, the article had explained (Dhaval liked to fantasize about having a dog), then it would be easy to teach a command not to bark. Since he hated to think of the baby biting anyone, himself included, he figured getting his little dragon to bite on command was a good step. He had what he thought was probably a piece of chair that Rashmi seemed to like chewing on, and in lieu of a clicker, he was snapping his fingers, and had beef jerky in little tiny bits for rewards.
Maybe bothering a baby on its second day in the world was silly, but if nothing else, they were getting used to each other. He had very few new toothmarks on his fingers. That wicked little mouth was fiercely strong, and clamped down solidly on the little piece of stick. He didn't really want to let it go when he heard the knock, and figured it was just Tayne or Taylor. Despite the usual scolding he received from Tayne, the door wasn't locked.
He left off his attempts at teaching Rashmi commands, all spoken quietly and in Hindi. He'd decided to stick with that plan. He straightened as much as he could without letting go of the stick. Kind of precarious. Rashmi had nearly pulled him out of the chair twice. "It's open."
That wasn't the response Corey had expected, but after a pause, he shrugged and opened the door, poking his head in from up by the top. "Hello," he said, eyes going straight from Dhaval's face-- aha, no wonder; it was someone stuck on the first floor, so obviously he had to make due with whatever he could get-- down to the little hatchling monster. They had, indeed, hatched. There was another one under the bed, it seemed like, who had scampered there as soon as the door opened.
Oh, great, scary guy. Dhaval reminded himself that there were plenty of people in the hotel besides the two he actually thought on sort of fondly, and they were free to knock on his door for whatever reasons too. He should at least go to the door. He didn't exactly want to leave... Corey, was it? leave him with the impression that he was welcome as a walk-in guest. Dhaval followed his eyes to the babies. He supposed they were kind of interesting, and considering the guy had a monster pet of his own, he understood the draw. Had he known they were here, somehow? "Um, hello again. This, uh, this is Rashmi." He patted his little dragon on the head and didn't get snapped at for his trouble.
"More interesting name than Blitz, I suppose," Corey grunted, extending a little greeting-type thought to the hatchling. He'd never actually had contact with baby monsters before, unless you counted the near-mindless spider things. These were a much higher order, and even then they still felt like... well... babies. "And who's the one under the bed?"
"I, uh, named him after my cousin." Dhaval kept expecting the oldest of his generational compatriots to burst from the woodwork and, say, pour a beer over his head. There was a reason he'd felt a riotous, bitey little dragon was a Rashmi. "Tayne hasn't really, well, named the little guy yet, so I'm going... tentatively, that is, with 'Tayne Junior.' For the nonce." Which Dhaval had hoped would goad Tayne into giving the poor thing a proper name, but had just seemed to amuse him instead. Figuring training time was being interrupted for now, Dhaval pocketed the little bit of wood. Rashmi squawked at him in indignation.
"Little girl," Corey correct, probably out of nowhere, since the thing he was correcting was a good sentence and a half gone now. He dropped to a crouch and send an inviting, calming sort of thought at "Rashmi", the little dragon-looking thing, trying to lure him over to investigate him, so he could at least introduce himself. He'd much rather introduce himself-- wordlessly, probably-- to the resident monsters than the resident humans.
Dhaval was glad, at least, that he hadn't been hastily judgmental or unjust in labeling Corey creepy and difficult. His memory was not faulty, and he was a decent judge of character. Good to know. He managed to trace the thread of their non-conversation back to the assertion that Tayne Junior was, in fact, more of a Tanya the First. "Guess she'll, uh, need a new name, then. But a proper name. Gotta, well, get on him about that..." Dhaval left off trying to chat and watched instead. At least Rashmi didn't seem agitated by him, just pretty curious. "Um... He does bite. Not aggressively... Just, well, he's a baby."
"He won't bite me," Corey said with certainty. All he needed to do was sense the intent to bite, and he either sent it flitting away in the little thing's mind, or he pulled his hand back. "I'm paying close attention, after all. Hatched yesterday sometime, right?" He hadn't been paying attention to the time, when it'd happened, but he had sensed it. ... "sensed" it, that sounded insane, but how else was he going to think of it? "How'd that go?"
"Um..." How was this guy getting his information, exactly? Dhaval had only a rough idea of what his power was about, and he hadn't realized sensing the presence and, well, entrance of monsters would be part of it. Dhaval found his discomfort around Corey growing a bit. "Well, uh, I don't mind if he chews on my fingers, well, a little. Since he's just tiny and, um, brand new." He sounded like his mother cooing over the birth of a cousin's kid. Ew. "And they hatched, well, just fine. Went pretty smoothly. They hatched, uh, slimy and hungry. But that was, well, pretty easy to address."
"They eating well?" Corey asked, as the second little hatchling crept out from under the bed on wobbly hind legs, staring at him, and as he scratched behind where the little male's ears would be, if he had any. "Seem strong and interact with you like they're alert and paying attention?" He could tell they felt healthy and comfortably fed, for babies, and though they were already maturing quickly for only being about a day old, they were still also obviously mostly in eat-and-sleep mode. But already they seemed to have a little focus, to him.
"Lots." Dhaval was making sure they constantly had food nearby. A point would come where their diets would have to be restricted, for their good and everyone else's, but while they were itty-bitty and trying to grow, he wanted them to have all they wanted. If they were analogous to big birds and maybe even dinosaurs as they'd existed in the old world, then they'd probably grow a lot, very fast. "We, um, keep them well-fueled." He shrugged, wishing Corey would go away. "Not, uh, much attention span, but they like to play and they're starting to learn..." He was trying not to interact too much with Tayne Junior, figuring that it wasn't up to him to train her. But he was willing to play.
Considering Corey couldn't care less whether Dhaval wanted him out, he was ignoring the other man's discomfort, now holding out a hand towards Junior Female, trying to entice her to come out. She hissed at him, but did wobble her way a little closer, too curious about the man who could apparently understand what she was feeling. She didn't think, precisely, but she definitely felt. "You know anything about their parents?" he asked, curious himself, though his eyes and the bulk of his attention stayed on the monsters.
"Not much. Just, um, their mother, and I wasn't there." He'd had her described. But in Tayne terms. Hearing that she was a big bird monster didn't tell him anything about how much her odd offspring resembled her. In retrospect, Dhaval would have liked to take a peek at the body before they stripped her down for dinner, but he hadn't been alerted and if he had been, he probably wouldn't have thought of it. The details of the babies' origins were definitely a closed book. "So, not having met her personally, I can't fill you in." A bit terse, perhaps. Terse was all Dhaval could manage to convey his mild distaste with this situation.
Well, this fellow wasn't very forthcoming, was he? Not that Corey really blamed him. He wasn't very forthcoming, himself. He just wished other people weren't always living up to his own expectations. "Can't even guess, from seein' these two," he commented. The hatchlings were very different, it seemed to him. He scooped up the dark one, Rashmi, by the scruff of the neck. Apparently he had one. He held him that way, looking him over thoughtfully as the hind legs kicked idly, then set him back down in the towels on the floor. "Good looking fellow," he finally said.
Dhaval was inclined to object to someone trying to carry the poor baby around that way. He knew kittens were pretty comfortable, and Rashmi didn't seem to object fundamentally. It just seemed uncomfortable whatever the anatomical allowances. "Yeah, um, he's a cute little baby dragon." Dhaval was a little bit inclined to gush about his new little friend, but something about Corey forbade all forms of gushing. "And, um, the other... sibling is a whole different creature, all over again." He liked that they all looked like completely different animals, though he supposed it didn't bode well for any future attempts at breeding.
Reaching down to grab She-Junior in the same fashion, Corey mused, "Wonder how that worked. Cats can have kittens from different fathers, at the same kind. Wonder if monsters can. Or what." She-Junior didn't like it as much as Rashmi had and she twisted around to try and snap at him, though she couldn't actually reach his fingers. "Now, stop that, you know I'm not gonna hurt you." Corey set her down next to her brother.
"Um, even if you didn't expect someone to hurt you, uh, it wouldn't be that pleasant to, well, dangle above the ground by a flap of skin." Though Dhaval supposed he should be grateful for the knowledge that Rashmi could be carried that way. But he'd only do it if absolutely necessary, he figured. Besides, grown-up cats shouldn't be carried that way, so the babies might grow out of it, too. And fast. "They could, um, all have different dads for all we know... if we get more or, uh, they get old enough to breed, then I guess we'd know more about whether they breed true in any way." He'd certainly like a whole herd of Rashmis. Dragons were even better than tigers.
"Wish I knew how these new animals worked, better'n I do now...." Corey frowned down at the hatchlings, who were looking steadily back up at him, unblinking. He stared them down, and they finally looked away, freeing him to look back at Dhaval. "Might want to keep that scruff thing in mind, at least. With Rashmi, it'll stop him from gettin' into trouble, whenever you do it. Even as an adult, maybe. Worked for my cats. Grab their scruffs, and they go limp and let you get them out of whatever trouble they got in."
"Right now, uh, I'm working on teaching him, well, commands for things I don't... Don't usually want him to do. Like biting. We're working on bite, hold, and release... So, uh, once he knows, you know, when he should bite, he'll know when not to. Easy command." Dhaval thought it was a good theory. "And then we'll work on, um, staying, but for the time being, I think biting is the biggest issue... If they slip off, I don't want them biting anyone who's... Well, not ready to see them." He couldn't have anyone hurt one of the babies by accident.
Corey gave Dhaval a dubious, incredulous look. "He's too young to learn shit like that. He's a baby. That's like trying to teach a six-month-old not to cry. I wish you a lot of good luck, but it probably won't do much good. Wait at least a week," he suggested, a little bit against his better judgment, since it was stupid of the guy to think he could teach a just-hatched creature to understand something like that, "then work on commands. Most you'll get now is for him to understand 'no', and even then it'll be the angry sound of your voice they respond to, not the word. Damn, kid. Are you one of those who'd have their baby watching videos on how to read, or something?" He snorted at the very idea. It was ridiculous, and always put too much expectation on the infant.
"I could read when I was three, and I grew a bit faster than reptiles usually do," Dhaval countered, annoyed enough that he didn't notice he hadn't stammered his way through the statement. Dhaval didn't usually let it show when someone got under his skin, but Corey was annoying as well as creepy. He knew what he was doing. Maybe Rashmi wasn't exactly catching on to his commands, but they were getting along, bonding, so to speak, and it was kind of fun to play tug-of-war with a baby dragon and a piece of broken chair. It was... quality time. The important stuff.
"Three isn't the same as six months," Corey pointed out. "And you were a huge anomaly. You can't expect everyone else to be like you. Especially not if they're animals who barely know what they are yet." He pushed himself to his feet, towering over animals and chair-bound man, alike. "Keep trying, if you really want, I can't stop you. But you're only going to get frustrated, and you'll only upset them, to the point where they'll think you trying to teach them things is a bad thing, and then they won't even try." Obviously the kid didn't know a thing about animals-- or people, for that matter.
"Rashmi's doing well." Dhaval pulled the bit of wood from his pocket, knowing his dragon liked chewing on the bit of wood and giving the command as he extended it, snapping his fingers, and handing over a fragment of beef jerky as a reward. Rashmi certainly didn't seem to object, tugging at the stick with a playful little growl. Dhaval smiled, half forgetting the annoying man who seemed to think he knew more than Dhaval did about his sweet little guy. Maybe he hadn't had a real pet, but he'd read plenty about animal behavior and training. And he had plenty of time to put into this. If anyone worried about a lack of patience, they didn't know Dhaval.
Snorting, annoyed, himself, at the stupid young man's ignoring of good advice, Corey turned away. "Well, don't come crying to me for help when you want to try talking to him, later, when nothing you do works." Not that Dhaval probably would, anyway, even if he had remembered Corey's particular gift... whatever. He shrugged it off. It wasn't his problem. And if the guy alienated his little monster-pet by treating it like it should be some kind of genius-animal at two days old, well, there was always Corey to rescue the poor thing later if need be. He headed for the door.
"Rashmi's such a clever little fellow." Dhaval's primary language had been English since childhood, but he'd still spoken Hindi around his family, and he wasn't exactly rusty. He just hadn't had a chance, and he really didn't want to loose his first language now. He might be the only speaker left in the whole damn state at this point. He wasn't going to say "country." Given survivor rates, there were much bigger areas of Indian immigrants elsewhere. But it was something to preserve. That, as much as wanting to be able to conceal commands, was why he was teaching his dragon in Hindi. Dhaval gave him a pat on the head before he grunted a goodbye to Corey. If Dhaval had been a little less polite, he might have been more articulate.