Notes:
tw: food withholding, nomufication, human experimentation, body horror...
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30 October xxxx
Test #35
You draw your eyes over the deep lines carved into the floor, checking the sigils one final time before your experiment starts. Everything appears to be in order; all the glyphs are in their proper places. You carefully measure the exact amount of each element (Oxygen, 43kg; Carbon, 16kg; Hydrogen, 7kg; Nitrogen, 1.8kg; Calcium, 1kg; Phosphorus, 0.78kg; Potassium, 0.14kg; Sulfur, 0.14kg; Sodium, 0.10kg; Chlorine, 0.095kg; and Magnesium, 0.019kg. Human beings are so cheap to create.) and place each container at a point of the star inscribed in the center circle. You step back and make sure the containers are perfectly positioned before you fetch the contents of the two adjacent circles.
A dog you found in the park a few blocks away, a beaten leather collar around its neck.
A child from the mall, whose mother entrusted it to you, about a month ago.
You've rationed their food carefully in the past week, giving them enough food that they stay alive but are too weak to move around much, because you're not sure whether or not the iron cages you've kept them in will have an impact on the experiment if they manage to touch the bars containing them. If they're physically incapable of moving, if they're almost -but-not- quite starved then that no longer presents an issue. You're fairly certain it wouldn't matter either way, but you aren't willing to take that might invalidate years of work - and neither you nor your... sponsor would be too pleased with that.
And, of course, you'd prefer that they not be able to escape.
You've triple-checked; there's no way out.
Not without your say-so.
Other than death, of course, but that would be such a waste of two perfectly good lives. It's hard, finding animals no one will miss - let alone people. Scoop up too many of the homeless in one area and people start to notice. You would rather not have to find another place to conduct his experiments. It's difficult to find anywhere that could be classified as a 'lab' under such short notice - and anywhere that might be able to be converted would take far too long to actually finish, let alone be up to your standards.
The police might be onto you, but the heroes certainly aren't, and everyone knows which ones really matter in that equation.
Still, you'd best pick up the pace a little. There's no use fretting about the past - or even the future, really.
Not when your present is this exciting.
You pick the puppy up from its cage, setting it carefully in the circle on the left. You watch its chest rise and fall for a moment to assure yourself that it's still alive - it would be incredibly irritating to have to find another live animal at this stage - then check its pupils, which do contract with light despite their dull, brown lustre. It twitches its paws feebly, but doesn't seem capable of rising to its feet. Good, you've rationed its food correctly.
The child has a bit more fight in it, a little spark in its blue eyes, but you settle it into the circle on the right easily enough. It glares balefully at you from where it's lying, curled up on its side, wings twitching. You note, absently, that if this time doesn't work then you'll have to give even less food to the next one. Or perhaps not. This particular child had been close to being overweight when you'd picked it up. That may have had some effect. But, presumably, its wing quirk would burn a significant amount of energy as well…
You love being a quirk doctor and finding the answers to these burning questions.
Finally, everything is in order. It doesn't take much more than a clap of the hands and a flip of a switch to send salt water running through the neat lines and methodical curves you've carved in the stone, then a tap of a button sends electricity arcing through the water. You think you've found a way around the law of thermodynamics, and by adding extra ingredients as a sacrifice you think that you might be able to compensate for losing matter to heat and other discharges.
You wait for the bright explosion of light that appears when the waves of electricity meet the ingredients of your experiment to die down before using your quirk to complete the process, blinking the spots from your eyes. Perhaps you should invest in a pair of safety goggles with UV protection. But, then again, it appears you may not have to.
Standing in the center circle is the result of your experiment, surrounded by an odd fluid that has never been a byproduct before, so you hasten to document it. One hand is a human's, one leg is a dog's, and wings sprout from its back, but its other body parts are an unattractive medley of the two. The color of its body has homogenized into a pale shade of grey, not something that is particularly aesthetically pleasing. Its eyes are dark and dull, a small spark of life just barely visible in their vast, disconsolate depths. One is mostly brown, bled through with the navy of the other.
You sigh.
It isn't quite what you'd hoped for, another defective noumu. You make a few notes in your log, changing a few symbols in the outer circles, adding a few possible courses of action for your next experiment. You doodle a flower in the margin next to a sketch of your desired outcome: a perfect amalgamation of canine and human, bodies and quirks and souls.
Just because.
"Ah…"
You glance up at the soft noise, vaguely intrigued. You watch as your creation opens its mouth.
"Grand...pa…"
You record an observation: Product can speak words (English), human age factor in dominance?
"I...want...to...die…"
You strike out 'words' and replace it with 'sentences.'
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Notes:
title from Saftey Pin (5SOS)
heavily influenced by fma