Kurotsuchi Mayuri likes test subjects (black_soil) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-01-12 14:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, alma wade, mayuri kurotsuchi |
Who: Alma Wade, Mayuri Kurotsuchi
What: Labratory fun times with viruses and medicines, discussions about science, and strange things are afoot in that section of the lab.
When: After Alma's post offering to help out.
Where: SRDI, research and development institute.
Rating: Medium, for critters being given medicines (no real details of testing) and some ghosty creepy.
Status: Complete!
If there was one thing Mayuri Kurotsuchi loved, besides surgical procedures, chem bombs, and genetic manipulation? It was things that were deadly. Germs, bacteria, viruses, neurotoxins, run off from pharmaceutical and fertilizer corporations? He was all over it. What more, he could somehow make it useful. Either for himself, or he could manipulate it and put it to some good use for the military or food industries. Sure, the food things probably weren't entirely safe, but with the pesticides and chemicals and bio-engineering already in the food supply, it wasn't any worse either.
It was his passion and his livelihood. That was why, he had the number one bestseller of diarrhea lollipops in the country, popular with frat boys and mean girls the world over. Disappointingly enough, it wasn’t at all toxic, but contained a dose of vegetable laxative and apple fiber. Stupid FDA and their heavy-handed laws against things like a few measly microparticles of campylobacter bacteria. It wasn’t like a few doses of fluoroquinolone antibiotic couldn’t clear it up. It was enough to make him shake his fist in the air with frustration and outrage.
In the meantime, he was happily playing with a fascinating little virus, that he wasn’t entirely able to determine what influenza strain it had mutated from, and was waiting for the guards to finish frisking his new temporarily lab assistant. The SRDI didn’t allow cameras, recording devices, cell phones, or any sort of other technological devices past it’s main entry way, and all other labs were sealed off from prying eyes. With explosives, toxins, and poisonous gasses. If there was one thing Mayuri was, it was thorough. He ran his lab like a dictatorship. He didn’t tolerate fools or anyone nosing around in his business, and if he was gone, no one was let in, under any circumstances.
Fortunately, he had some decent lab assistants, like Akon and the others, who kept their mouths shut, and were only privy to certain projects, since Mayuri kept them all split up and divided, so no one person knew everything that was going on, at any given time. He made sure to that, with their access keys. Anyone foolish enough to step out of bounds past the strict security measures, deserved whatever end met them.
While he waited for Alma to be escorted to the decontamination chamber, Mayuri was hunched a microscope studying some lung tissue samples from test group number two. Even in a biohazard suit, he managed to gussy it up, by putting a froofy purple sash around his waist. It wasn’t cloth, but a vinyl composite. And yes, he had his full makeup on, underneath the helmet.
Nothing else suited crazy Captain Clown-Face, after all.
It was a bit like entering a military facility. It reminded Alma of the labs she'd grown up in, uncomfortably. Mayuri gave her the heebie jeebies and from her research on the net she didn't think he was very ethical. Effective, but not ethical. In part, she felt it was her duty to keep research on this virus from going wholly unethically. Mostly, she'd promised Thea she wouldn't die, and had decided she couldn't stand by and do nothing while people suffered.
She felt momentarily guilty. She hadn't told Beth, or Wrex or Shepard about this. She knew they'd tell her not to.
As she waited, she masked her womb with her powers. An anomaly would probably be better than the baby showing up, even if it would pique the scientist's curiosity.
Ethics. Pfft. What mattered was science and solutions and how what was developed could be applied for both his financial benefit (to fund future projects) and the most useful ways, imaginable.
Luckily, Mayuri was very meticulously careful about the sort of things he let float around on the net, where he was concerned. He was low-key in his more babied projects and maintained a lot of military like hush-hush silence. It also resulted in his overabundance of safety measures, because he was hell bent on letting anything of his get out unless he was ready to let it out of the lab, and equally hell bent on keeping everyone out that he didn't want poking around. It was a wonder he’d let Alma in, other than her credentials seemed sound, he was curious about Armachan, and he could use the help.
He was known for operating an incredibly heavy-handed but well run business. The quarantine laboratory was perhaps the most well lit and bright white of all the other lab stations in the research institute. If there was so much as a speck or a spill or a tear, it was not only going to sound an alarm, but it would be easily seen and located.
Unluckily for her, Mayuri already knew he was a soul reaper, essentially a god of death, and had already regained a arsenal of information and abilities. He wasn't at his full level, not quite yet? But he could sense spiritual pressure in other people. Any shinigami worth their salt could do that, in their sleep. A mask might only last for so long, and his curiosity about why he might not be sensing things as he would other more baseline humans, was likely going to win out.
He was also smart enough to not dissect her though, if he found out. Simply because their agreement had been reached on the network, in public. Even though he may look crazy, Mayuri was no fool.
Mayuri had also been responsible for Roy's arm, which Alma was conflicted on, mostly because she didn't know what sort of side-effects there might be with such an experimental procedure. Her attachment to Roy simply made her wary. There was also something unusual about Mayuri, that she sensed the closer she got to him. She was running on passive sensors, as it were, and could tell no more than that he might be a bit like her. That was anything but reassuring. She sensed death.
She'd worn a clean pair of white pants, and a white button up shirt, as well as her old lab coat, and she had her hair tied back into a ponytail. She went through decon patiently.
If it wasn't a safe procedure, then he wouldn't have sold it for testing with the military, for use out in the field when people lost a limb when encountering an explosive. It was in the testing phase with their own labs, but had shown no adverse effects. In fact, he'd used it on his own left arm, after he hacked it off at the elbow, and regrew his fingers countless times. It had worked perfectly for him, enough that he could manipulate his syringes and scapels, with no loss of sensation or manipulation.
With Roy, he had his arm strength with firing his bow, but some finer motor control was off. It might require a new regeneration, if there was a nerve cluster that was malformed, or it might simply require time. Mayuri tended to experiment on himself quite a bit, in the starter phase, before he moved on to live test subjects. The only exception being this virus, which he was too busy trying to figure out what it came from and why it was behaving in the way it was. It was quite the mystery, especially how to stop it. He was sure that annoying woman, Unohana, would have as much of a field day with this, as he was.
As he waited for Alma to get into her biohazard suit and hooked into the oxygen and filtration system, he looked like he was concentrating on what he was looking at. In the back of his mind, it was a different story. He sensed something...or someone...in the vicinity that was radiating a different vibe. It wasn't the same as the rest of his lab assistants or the guards that patrolled the area. It was much like a hollow was in the vicinity, but this was different, and he couldn't put his finger on that, either.
So now he had two things to ponder over, as he raised one hand, pointed a finger, and applied it down onto a intercom system, so Alma could hear him, "Enter in nine-three-six-one, beta, zed, alpha, quad. That is your temporary code, for the remainder of today."
"Understood, nine-three-six-one, beta, zed, alpha, quad." Alma replied, fleshing her fingers and checking her seals one more time before entering in her code. As she entered into the lab, there appeared for a brief blip of a moment, a little girl in red, skipping after her. She seemed to fade away, like ash blowing in the wind, one of the aide's cups of coffee rattling.
Ah! If only Mayuri had caught it, but he raised his head only a few seconds too late. Even so, the reason for his lifting his head was that there was a fleeting feeling of something out of place, if only for the blink of an eye. Mayuri's golden-hued gaze fell on Alma, and then he squinted over at the coffee cup, wondering who would have left that anywhere in the lockdown lab. No one can drink coffee with a full, sealed helmet on! THE INEPTITUDES.
Maybe they stored some of the animal phlegm in it, since there was a scramble at one point, to try to collect most of it from test group twenty-three, when given high doses of guaifenesin type drugs. Someone was going to end up in the mail and filing room, instead of being a lab assistant.
"Hmm, so you are the girl who worked with Armachan," Mayuri cooed, like that was delightful. That delight showed on his face as his lips pulled back from his gold-plated teeth and pale gums, into a cheshire cat smile that might send The Joker screaming and scurrying away. "Are you ready to work, Miss Wade? I hope you are well-versed in manipulation of viruses and medicinal compounds."
"My father ensured I was, sir." Even if she'd been the actual test-subject, in all of that. Harlan Wade had studied her, and tested her and run her through a hundred secrets tests. It was her suspicions that had led her to investigating the lab computers and discovering her true nature.
Alma could be nosy.
Maybe there she could be nosy and find out her true nature...but Alma was not going to be nosy in the SRDI. Mayuri had his eyes everywhere with a monitoring systems and precautions, for when his back was turned. He knew where everyone was, and who had access to what things and for how long. It also helped him continue his building-wide ban on onions. In fact, he had created an onion sensor and it went off whenever someone even so much as had onion breath. Then mandatory (experimental super-strength) breath mints were issued.
But for right now? Now Mayuri was determined to have an eye on her like a hawk. There really was something strange about the girl. It was so interesting to him, that his head fell to one side like it was run by clockwork. It was done to such an extent that where his ear once was met that shoulder, with the sound of his vertebrae popping up and down the length of his neck. It gave him the look of a very intrigued owl, staring at a particularly fascinating and yummy looking mouse.
He blinked. Once, twice, and then let out a soft and airy 'ooooooo' as he exhaled, like this was an exciting development.
"You might be useful, then. Your lab table is there." He pointed with one gloved hand, but that glove had been specially manufactured, to accommodate the long fingernail on that hand. When his fingers curled in as he pointed, it went well past his wrist onto his lower arm. "You may use your code to gain access to that computer terminal. It will not work on any other terminals, or allow you access anywhere else."
His head righted, suddenly, like a puppet that had it's strings pulled taut. That cheshire cat smile never left his painted face.
"While we work and you review the data on your terminal, I have always been interested in Armachan. Perhaps you can tell me more about what projects you were able to work on."
Alma might be overconfident. She was regressing a little, to her behavior in a lab, which had been efficient. There was one key difference, however. She could sense the animals suffering now, and had to swallow her nerves, and put up a shield, to keep it out.
Mayuri seemed paranoid. It wasn't like she was going to steal his secrets and sell them. She entered her code in and brought the terminal online. "Most of the projects were designed to fail from the start. I saved about half of those. There was an attempt to improve search and rescue animals. That had moderate success."
Mayuri liked people who were over-confident. It left them open, so he could stab them in the back when he deemed the time was right and they were being boastful or thinking they were getting away with something big or small. Being paranoid had it's fun fringe benefits, after all. He had fond, fond memories of stabbing Kageroza Inaba in the back, thereby injecting him with that delightful drug that interrupted thought processes. It was something he was working on re-synthesizing, in his head. It could probably be used on incredibly violent individuals, to lull them into submission. Like a lobotomy in a bottle.
It made him giddy that he knew how to recreate it, and that he could think of a practical application for it. Now, if only it would wear off and not be permanent. Hmm.
"Genetically modified animals? How incredibly fascinating." He sounded so pleased. "But incredibly disappointing that they were projects designed to fail. What is the purpose, if not to make something better?"
The way Mayuri saw it, those animals were being used so that people who were infected didn't die faster than they already were. They were, as Mayuri liked to think, dying as part of a necessary evil. Besides that, he'd only gone through a few dozen, chopping their little limbs off and regrowing them. He even kept Gimpy, the fat white rat that was on his desk in his main office, with a blob instead of a back foot.
"I am not striving to create perfection, but failed experiments make me irritable," Mayuri said, his voice a soft coo, almost like he was singing to himself as he talked. "It is a waste of time and resources, with nothing to show for it. I strive to complete things and have them be useful. I was not aware that Armachan was so...wasteful."
He waved one hand outward, as though to dismiss it, and his sleeve caught the edge of a empty beaker, so that it toppled precariously on the edge of the lab table.
"To test me, my knowledge, and my ability to adapt and learn," Alma replied, simply. The vial rattled as it was caught, then tumbled off of the table. She turned her head, and it stopped an inch above the floor, then dropped and rolled harmlessly the rest of the way, without shattering.
"...how...interesting," Mayuri stated, quite simply. That was both to her answer and to the beaker of glass not breaking, when he had seen the entire thing. Mayuri was physically gone in the blink of an eye, but seemed to pop out of nowhere by Alma's side, the next blink of that eye. The glass was held in one hand, unbroken, like it was an important piece of evidence. "Explain how you did that? I am capable of many things, girl, but I am not able to stop a falling object in such a manner, to keep it from breaking."
He could have used kido, even without the incantation most would have to use. This was a fascinating development. The smile on his face meant the wheels were turning in his head and he was inspecting her, much closer now, than before.
"Tell me, while you work," he was saying, "what sort of things you adapted to, and learned about."
It was the same tone of voice one would use with an exotic moth having a pin pushed between it's eyes. The sort of tone that said Please do not struggle? I would hate to ruin this specimen.
Alma tensed. He'd moved so quickly it couldn't possibly have been human agility that had propelled him. She saw no point in pretending nothing had happened, and she didn't really regret it. Accidental exposure would have been worse. Instead of answering him directly, she said, "I thought it should not break, and it did not."
She entered in a few commands to run a test sequence, then rested her hands next to the keyboard as she read the results. "How to adapt to failure."
Mayuri's smile turned upside down, into a frown. His eyes narrowed, and if he had cat ears, they would have been angled back against his head. The girl raised his suspicions, and there was still something he couldn't put his finger on, about her. He'd already used flash step to bridge the gap between them, because if one showed some power, it was a natural move to let that one know that the other wasn't weak or to be trifled with, either. It was basic tactics and strategy, and Mayuri liked to be at least one step ahead of others.
This development, however, hadn't been expected. It almost reminded him of what he told that arrancar about detesting perfection, but this was in reverse. It was detesting an experiment that did not live up to it’s potential, even in the form of a human being.
He sat the glass beaker down, within her reach, with a slight sneer.
"Tch. Then they taught you nothing of worth or usefulness," he announced, his voice no longer softened at the edges, but sharp and raspy. "The purpose of science is to improve. It is the flaws that make things interesting, but one must aim to fix them, not accentuate them into greater flaws. You will never gain your full capabilities, if you are adapted and conditioned to failure."
He motioned toward the glowing screen of the computer terminal, where the data was displayed. "Tell me that you understand what we are now dealing with, with this virus, and we shall begin our work."
"Thomas Edison said he had not failed, he'd found ten thousand ways that will not work. Every scenario has a chance of failure, some very high. You have to learn how to avoid failure to succeed." She furrowed her brow as the data ran down the screen in front of her. It was like nothing she'd ever seen before. "It is highly aggressive, and targets the respitory system relentlessly. I do not believe it mutated from any known flu strains as the genetic modifiers are different. It is also too perfect."
She straightened, and turned towards Mayuri. She exhibited no disgust, or fear at his appearance. "If we do not find a way that works, far more than ten thousand people will die."
"Science moves forward to explain and improve, it seeks not to fail. You rule out what did not match a theory or hypothesis, you ask why, you find out why, and you finally have an answer. If not for that natural curiosity, then nothing would ever be discovered or utilized. And if all you were taught was to expect failure, then you have missed the point as a scientist. In all my experiments, I have never failed. I fear that you can not say the same."
Being a genius helped, but so did the fact that he didn't shy away from experiments that would make other people squick. If it needed done, Mayuri wasted no measure, and every corpse, every hair, every ounce of spit? It was a treasure trove he delighted over.
If it was possible to pity the girl and her decidedly narrow point of view, he would have. But he had no incentive or time for pity. Nor did he have the time to educate.
"That is my conclusion. It is a foreign entity, and too highly evolved." He moved back toward his tissue sample, bring it back over to show her, in her microscope. "That is the nature of these things, to spread from one person to the next. It could kill ten thousand or ten million. However, I do not think we are doomed to fail. It is a matter of when it can manipulated or the right sort of medicines can stunt its growth. Such as the inhaler that has been bandied about. Or some way or means to genetically manipulate it, so it is treatable."
He'd tried several known antibiotics. Nothing had made a dent in it. While it was daunting, Mayuri would not - ever - admit defeat.
"There must be something, somewhere, that can stop the spread," he mused. "Some measure or chemical, that will not kill the host. If there is not anything that already exists, then it has yet to be created. It is as simple as that. So I will begin mixing compounds and we shall administer them to the test groups."
"I did not say we were doomed to fail, simply that there would be consequences if we did." She peered at the data again, bringing up a visual of the virus as it worked in the lungs of a subject. She thought it showed the hallmarks of being modified. "Nor did I say I was taught only to fail. Everything you have tried thus far has not worked. You only fail if you give up."
She could see what had been done before, and knew enough to not start asking if A had worked, or if B had been tried. C looked particularly effective, except it eradicated healthy tissue as well.
"What sort of consequences?" It was asked sweetly. Too sweetly. "You implied you were geared toward expecting failure. I implied that I am not, and it is the trying and re-modifying, that is a means to an end. Failure is not an option, and it is the search for solutions that is the most enjoyable aspect of science. Now, while you study that and I prepare another mixture for test group eighteen, tell me what sort of consequences?"
He began to measure out various colored powders into a sifter, which waggled and swayed them down until they mixed into a murkier chartreuse color.
"You are familiar with the flu pandemic after World War I? If this escapes the county it will be much worse. It seems to be universally fatal, in all age groups and health brackets. With how interlinked the world is today, we could see a large percentage of the human species wiped out." She said this terrible news as though she were delivering a lecture. She’d come to the realization..."If we fail, it could mean extinction."
"And that is why we must not accept failure as an option," Mayuri told her, as though he was lecturing her right back. "It is the hope that exists in despair, that something can be found to stall it's progress, before it goes global. They can quarantine. We are safe within this laboratory, and there is enough food and security to last for a year, if not longer, until people who are infected die out, and there is no danger. But I would rather not let it get to that point."
He turned to look at her, a maniacal gleam in his eyes and a wide smile on his painted face. The paint hid the lack of sleep and too many nights racking his brain with ways to kill the virus off, but not the people who had the virus.
"It is bad for several of our collective businesses and the perception of our expertise, should we let that happen. We have the means to stop it, but it is a matter of time. And time is a luxury we do not have. So we work."
He stared at her and then his eyes skimmed downward, to the middle of her body, then back up again. He flashed a smile that was a little too wide, before he went back to mixing medicines together.
"I would rather not watch my girlfriend die. Do you have a personal stake?" She turned back to the console. It was still odd to call Beth 'fiance' as it had been a rather informal proposal, but she'd get over the oddness eventually. The shield around her womb pulsed, and grew stronger, almost on instinct. She felt something, and blinked. While following a possible lead on a compound, she went over math in her head.
It was far too soon for a baby to kick, and yet, there it was.
"You have a compound labeled Green 334 here. What have you tried mixing it with?"
"My pride as a scientist," was Mayuri's response. And the knowledge that - somehow, somewhere - that many souls carried over to the afterlife would cause an imbalance between that world and this one. If anything, Mayuri knew all about being tasked to monitor and control a balance to prevent the collision of two worlds, the living and the dead. So far? So good.
His smile widened even more, like he knew now that something else was there and had taken some measure of it. Mayuri tilted his head and let out a long 'oooo' of an exhale, like he was thinking of ladybugs and fluffy bunnies. And how to turn both pleasant things into hideous manga beasts.
"Green 334 was mixed with Pink 22 and Yellow 890a and Yellow 890e. It was meant to create a drug to expel excess mucus and simultaneously open the airways to the lower lungs, but it was ruled out as a failure. Perhaps Pink 22 should be mixed with Purple 47. Hmm. If you'd like to try that on test group 13, that might be yield some sort of result. We will also continue attempts to manipulate the virus into a weakened format for creation of a flu vaccine. So far, all attempts have been equally deadly."
It was unfortunately very highly evolved. There was no way that Mayuri would ever claim it had evolved to the level of perfection. That simply didn't exist, in his mind.
"I will try that. I would also like to see how it would react with Orange 3, is there a free test group for that?" Alma tried to ignore the baby, or the fact that it seemed to have aged two weeks in just a few days.
"Test group 49. They were infected yesterday," he informed her, before adding, "Do take the necessary precautions? Sometimes they like to try to bite when the medicines are administered. There are protective gloves at the end of every row of cages. I would hate for something to happen...."
To her or her unborn child, was that which remained unspoken. Then again, if something did happen? He'd be able to test progression on a human, since it would go toward his 'never waste a body, alive or dead' way of sciencetudes. It was also a waste of an able body who knew her way around a lab. He didn't need that either, really.
Bah humbug.
Alma worked diligently, and with great care to avoid being bitten. The animals seemed to be particularly docile around her, a product of her effectively sedating them as she administered the shots. As she worked, a little girl sat in one of the cages, petting a pig. She seemed to be humming some sort of melody, but if anyone looked directly at her, she would vanish a split-second later.
One of the monitors suddenly started to snow, like an old-fashioned television. Alma rested a hand momentarily on her stomach, and the monitor returned to normal.
As he administered that round of meds and infected a new test group, Mayuri had looked in the little girl's direction. It hadn't taken long for him to catch on, averting his gaze with a sly smile, like he saw what that little girl did there. He also worked silently, humming to himself, and eventually - to see if it had any effect on Alma - humming the same melody as the little girl had. He didn't even fully devote his attention to the monitor, either. But it was all noted. Everything was. Mayuri's mind was like an ongoing, never ending series of observations and theories and results.
He waited until there was no danger of the animals pitching a fit and biting her, to be by her side in an instant again. A total abuse of his powers, but he had never been shy about utilizing them anyway. He had one of the largest zanpakuto in Soul Society, after all. It wasn't as big as wolf-face Komamura's was, since that was titanic godzilla huge. Someday, Mayuri would modify his to bigger and better than that. For now, he simply used what he had, in order to get close enough to study Miss Wade.
"This round of medicines has been administered. A new test group is infected. Tell me. Of what nature is that thing that grows within you?" Mayuri asked, sounding more like a curious child than a full grown scientist. He even tilted his head quizzically, his eyes rounded a little bit as they rolled in their sockets. "Is it fully human?"
Alma had stiffened when he started to hum the lullaby, and her eyes darted to the apparition, who giggled and disappeared. Her spine went even more stock straight, and she turned. She was short, but glared up at him, her jaw set tightly. Whatever he was, she couldn't hide from completely. She swallowed her fear. "She is not a thing, and she is fully human." Left unsaid was no matter her origins.
It was not left unsaid, because Mayuri leaned in a little, gleefully studying her and her obstinate expression.
"Who has contributed their genetic material into the making of that creature?" At least he had upgraded from thing to creature. One arm moved so he was pointing at her stomach, with his gloved hand. "You touched that, when the monitor flickered. I have it recorded."
That hand moved, so that it indicated a camera in the corner of the lab. Then another, in the opposite corner. All while he stared at her. All without looking at where he was pointing, because he knew where everything was situated. Even in the dark.
She narrowed her eyes, having not really considered something like cameras. She felt vulnerable, and a little angry that he’d take such an interest in her baby. Her fingers tightened protectively over her stomach. "That is none of your business. We have work to do."
"If you have finished, then we need to look at other medicinal measures and look at the virus, itself. But make no mistake," Mayuri was saying, his voice lowering down more and more, "I have my eye on you. I also know that creature in you, has abilities beyond the capabilities of a normal human. As do you."
There was a pinkish glow around him, faintly, for a moment. While it wasn't something so much seen as it was felt, the feeling of being subjected to it was like relentless waves crashing against a shore. It was also enough to send every animal nearby cowering into the corners of their cages. If they were among those still able to move. Some of them weren't so lucky, and those barely managed a squeak if they were able to breathe well enough.
It was gone as quickly as it came on, and Mayuri smiled at Alma. He was moving back to his lab work already, all while saying pleasantly, "Now let us see if we can manipulate this virus so it behaves better. I would hate to lose so many test animals. It is a chore to replace them."
"Yes sir," Alma said, while her own energy pushed back against the relentless waves, acting more like a lone boulder that the water washed around. She knew that even the unmovable earth could be worn down, over time.