[Open] Love, Blood, and Rhetoric

[hellonspectacles]

Who: Palamedes Sextus and you!
What: Blood science!!
When: Early February
Where: The infirmary, or anywhere you feel like finding Pal
Warnings: As you might have guessed, there's blood.



[I. He Blinded Me With Science]

For months now, anyone who enters the Serena Eterna infirmary would have noticed the set of test tubes and petri dishes lined up in one corner of the room’s counter, and labeled with a large note:

Property of Palamedes Sextus, Room 105. DO NOT TOUCH. I will know if you do.

The test tubes each contain a sample of blood taken from a ship-board volunteer: young and old, human and non-human, alive and dead. The petri dishes are for his various experiments. Once upon a time, his question had been simple, or so he thought: could you tell if someone had died, either on the ship or before arriving, by studying their blood chemistry? But like so many matters about, things have gotten much more complicated since those early days.

And they are about to get more complicated still.

Pal spends most Saturday afternoons in his makeshift lab, and today is no exception. Back in January, he had started an experiment regarding the rate of cell decay. Everyone knew that the food on the ship didn’t rot. Everyone knew that people who died returned to life—usually. But what happened to the living on a cellular level? And could that affect be manipulated to guarantee resurrection upon death?

Humming tunelessly to himself, Palamedes inspects each sample in the petri dish, visions of cell clusters dancing in his head. Each time, he notes the thanergy and thalergy levels. Each time, he counts the number of living blood cells. He double-checks the numbers, triple-checks them, quadruple-checks them.

There’s no getting around it: after a month, absolutely no cell death has occurred.

Pal takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes a sheen of blood sweat off his forehead.

“Well, fuck me.”

[II. Wildcard!]

Want to hang with Pal, but don’t have a reason to visit him in the infirmary? I welcome your prompts! Pal is often in the library or drinking tea in Sand Dollars, or curled up in a chair in the lounge. Gimme what you got, or hmu on Plurk

Comments

[neverleave]

"...you've got a point. I'd rather leave that to you, though. I know how to be blunt, but... I'm not so good at cunning interrogation. Not with eldritch powerful creatures, at least."

Winning a battle of wits against other teenagers hardly prepares you to cheating a genie, even if said genie is a childish coward.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes smiles faintly and doesn't argue with Natsuno's self-assessment. For all his many assets, subtlety is not his strong suit.

"...I may have some related experience, when you put it that way," he confesses. Pal has tried to speak with the Captain on a number of occasions without success, but maybe it's time to try again.

[neverleave]

Natsuno's starting to reach out for a scalpel. He came here to ask Pal to check something, after all - but his friend's words grabs his attention enough for the hand to drop.

"What, with eldritch creatures? Like something you summoned?"

[hellonspectacles]

“I don’t know if I would say eldritch,” says Pal, though given some of what Gideon has told him of Cytherea’s state after his explosion, maybe the descriptor isn’t too far off. “But I’ve had experience with what one might call the cunning interrogation of a powerful and ostensibly immortal creature. I met her whilst she was pretending to be someone else. We had a rather intense confrontation about it.”

Pal squints at the middle distance. “It’s a long story.”

A crazy all-powerful necromancer killed my girlfriend and a bunch of other nice people because she was mad at God, so I blew her up, is not actually that long of a story.

[neverleave]

"I've got time, if you want to share." He'll back off if Pal doesn't want to elaborate and we want Natsuno unspoiled for the explosion. "I actually came because I wanted you to check something."

This time he does pick up the scalpel. "I already gave you a blood sample, but I got a paper cut today and - "

Natsuno slices his forearm without as much as a wince. His pain tolerance had gone significantly higher over the last year. The blood flow stops almost as soon as it starts and the incision closes as usual, but the color? Glowing.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes is more than happy to let Natsuno change the subject, and when that glowing blood blooms over his skin, Pal nearly forgets what they had been speaking about entirely. That eerie sheen is terribly familiar; it’s not so different from the color Natsuno’s veins had been after he had taken the sun solution.

“Do you have any other lingering symptoms? Fatigue, nausea?”

[neverleave]

"Some fatigue, but it's getting better every day. I don't feel any different, but I'm worried something got - permanently messed up inside."

[hellonspectacles]

“Something may have permanently changed,” Palamedes concedes. “But that doesn’t mean it’s messed up. May I?” The last he asks as he reaches for Natsuno’s wrist. Assuming his friend doesn’t object, he’ll take his pulse and test his blood pressure.

“Your vitals seem normal, but I’d like to take another blood sample if you don’t mind. Something has obviously changed about its chemical makeup, and even if it is having no effect on you, we should still know what it is.”

[neverleave]

"Sure. Take what you need."

He holds out an arm readily.

"Ava thinks I might've turned into some sort of sun freak," he says, making a face. "Like Ebalon was a moo freak."

[hellonspectacles]

“Ava thinks I’m going to turn into a mad scientist and kill everyone, which is rich, given the company she keeps,” Palamedes says with a shrug. He fetches disinfectant and cotton balls from he cabinet and cleans Natsuno’s arm, then carefully cuts into it with a scalpel and let the glowing blood dribble into a small crucible. “I wouldn’t trust her opinion. Squeeze your hand into a fist, will you?”