ArchivedLogs:Not Allowed

Not Allowed
Dramatis Personae Dorian, Jeremy, Lia
In Absentia	26 September 2013 Even arts and crafts aren't so simple for the lab rats...
Location Common Room – Prometheus Testing Facility – Undisclosed Location
The common area of Prometheus is not unlike the rest of the facility, sterile, with near-white walls, and safe, rounded edges on the furniture. Tables and chairs are scattered throughout, in innocuous white and light colors that look as though they may have been bleached and disinfected more than just a few times in their usage. Shelves are stacked with a handful of board games and card games, most of them with their pieces and cards intact, only worn from repeated use; similar can be said of the collection of paperback books on a neighboring shelf, occasionally cycled out with newer material... as far as the lab rats know, anyway. In the far corner, a small TV drones on in front of some chairs, a mindless sitcom glowing out at the handful of mutants that sit in the chairs, watching with empty eyes. However, today is art day. A small army of easels, papers, and sketchpads, with a smattering of water colors and poster paints, air dry clays, chalk pastels, washable markers, and even some crayons. There's a small group of people milling around in the area, some working on art pieces, others just watching - a few are just running their hands through the clay, mashing it pointlessly. One of those over in the newly set up art area is Dorian, sitting in a pair of fresh pale green scrubs, smeared with paints at the hem of the top. A palette of watercolors is balanced in one hand, and he has settled himself onto the floor, with a pad of paper, already smeared with colors and splashes of paint. He's not using brushes, though, instead playing with the paints with his hands, giggling as he works on the masterpiece. Occasionally, the long brown tail that is spread on the floor behind him twitches around - it has apparently seen some of the paint, as well, and is smattered with a handful of colors already ingrained in the fur. Being led into the room by his handler, armed with spring loaded tranq gun and wearing no electronics, Jeremy glances around the room. His muzzle is clamped down, and a cable runs from each arm to behind his back to prevent them from raising up too high. Once inside the room, his handler let go of his arm and gestured forward to the already ongoing art sessions. He gave a simple shrug at the gesture, but he passes his gaze over the available art things, looking for ones that won't leave him too messy and need to go through the bother of extra cleaning attention. Picking up little gray blocks of squishy clay, he sat at the table, and started to squish them into vague abstracts, more enjoying the feel of the squishing than trying to make anything in particular. Looking to the colorful giggling fellow, he recognizes him from the experiment, and vaguely makes a raised hand gesture to that acknowledgement, before going back to squishing clay. Lia is a latecomer to the art room today, some official deciding that it would be beneficial to put her in a room with other people. The pale, dark-haired girl, clad in jade scrubs like all of the other lab rats, and barefoot, is propelled through the security door by a woman who says nothing. Lia remains at the door, arms wrapped protectively child-like around an old-fashioned look-alike doll that resembles a younger Lia in the yellowed, frayed remnants of what might once have been a replica First Communion dress. The girl stays as close to the door as she is allowed while her escort goes to the supervising guard, delivering a verbal reminder to the bored-looking man about 'no human forms' and 'watch the clay' before marching back out the security door. It thuds closed behind the wide-eyed girl, staring at the many people in the room as if this were an entirely novel experience. It isn't clear how long Dorian has been here in the common area, but judging by the amount of paint on him, the watercolor he is working on now - something vaguely looking like a house on a riverbank - is not the first work he has turned out. When the door opens the first time to admit Jeremy, he perks up, the rounded ears atop his head perk up, and his dark eyes regard the door curiously in anticipation. Seeing the young man from the last round of experiments, he sits up from his painting work, quickly wiping his hands down the front of his jade colored scrubs, streaking them with a mix of blue and muddy browns. Once Jeremy is settled, Dorian bounces over, quite literally, and perches on one of the chairs, feet and hands planted cat-like in a crouch on the seat, eyes wide at Jeremy. "Hi," he says, tentatively at first, ears still perked up and attentive, "I'm Dorian. again. 'sgood to see you outside of a test lab type thing. You ok? Ish, anyway, I mean, as ok as you can be?" He sounds a little concerned about the other captive, especially with what their last meeting was, carefully picking up a pad of paper and a bright blue crayon, sliding them towards the muzzled young man. And then the door opens again, and Dorian cranes his head around to look at the new person coming in through the door, waiting patiently to approach. He offers a friendly wave, grinning anxiously at the prospect of a new friend, and then beckons for her to come play, because obviously, that's what the art room is for. Squishing away at the clay, Jeremy blinks at being directly addressed and looks to Dorian. Nodding yes as to being okay, he blinks at the concern, then looks to the crayon and paper being brought to him. He shifts a bit to be able to write properly, apparently using his left hand to write as the right continues to squish. ~Jeremy. I am okay.~ He sets the crayon back down and looks at Dorian, wondering if there is any more questions to be had before he looks back to the clay, thinking. Shifting again, he starts to squish the clay to look like a tree at least, since Dorian had been painting a house and river. Lia remains by the door, observing /intently/, as Dorian bounces his way over to Jeremy's table. When he waves, she frees one hand from the doll, an index finger pointing back to her own chest as her head cants like a deer hearing movement in the distance. The beckoning confirms her silent question, an odd little smile sprouting on the doll-girl's face as she moves toward the table that, in her view, appears to be occupied by a teddy bear-man and some form of marionette-man. She does not walk to the table so much as she sneaks--not the small, furtive movement of one trying to remain unseen, but a graceful tiptoeing that is meant to /convey/ sneaking. She could well be Clara on her way downstairs on Christmas Eve to visit her nutcracker once the adults are all to bed. The girl sidles up next to Dorian, since he seems friendly, offering a silent wave in which each of her fingers bends independently. Tilting his head curiously, Dorian reads the writing on the pad of paper, grinning as he does. "Oh! Jeremy! Ok. Nice to actually know your name. Glad you're ok, though. Does it get cold for you, too, when they do that?" Dorian asks, apparently just a wellspring of questions. He idly selects one of the pieces of clay that was previously untouched, starting to mold it into a small something or other, his scarred hands slightly clumsy as he pokes at the gray mass. There's a gleeful look when the new girl with the doll approaches the table, and he perks up again, offering another wave. "Hi hi. I'm Dorian. And this is Jeremy," he says by way of greeting and introduction, "Haven't seen you around before. But I suppose a lot of people are around here that I don't really get to see, 'specially not in the common area. What's your name?" he asks in a somewhat rapid fire greeting, still perched cat-like on the chair, poking at clay, now starting to form it vaguely into an animal like shape. Offering a little wave to the approaching Lia, Jeremy picks up the crayon again to respond to the questioning otter. ~It is cold dark muffled~ he writes without bothering for punctuation. The tree is scrapped fairly quickly as he mushes it against the table a bit. With appropriate mooshing, it ends up looking a bit more like a mushroom as he sits it on the table. Glancing around the room again, he freed himself from his seat to go get another color, this time it was a bright yellow as he flopped the block of color on the table. Lia pulls out a chair and places her doll in it, scooting the seat back up to the table as if the doll needed access to the art supplies. It is short enough that only its eyes and nose peer up over the table's edge. Rather than pulling out the next chair, she bends and slips herself into it, looking back to Dorian once she is seated. “I have always been here,” her quiet voice claims. She points to herself, saying, “Lia,” then the doll, adding, “Coppelia.” She watches Jeremy's writing with great interest, turning to inspect him with her dark, serious eyes. “Your strings are tangled,” she declares. A tentative hand reaches up so-slowly to touch a finger to the front of Jeremy's muzzle. “Is your jaw cable broken?” Dorian sticks his tongue out in concentration as he pokes at the clay, his painting long since forgotten, making it look closer to an otter-like shape, rough though it is. Once it is completed, the little clay-otter is placed near Jeremy's mushroom sculpture, the young man grinning proudly at the figurine. "Oh, that seems unpleasant," Dorian responds to Jeremy, nodding, "Stupid cage kept me from helping. I'm warm. They usually let me help when people get cold. Not fair." He seems honestly put out by this fact. When Lia introduces herself, and then the doll, Dorian tilts his head again, one ear twitching slightly against his rumpled hair. "Nice to meet you, Lia. And Coppelia," he says with a grin, apparently completely unfazed by being introduced to a toy. "I've been here for a long time too. I think. I don't actually know how long, since it's kinda hard to figure out time when there's no references," he explains, taking another little block of clay and starting to mash it around a bit, abstractly swirling it on the table, "Didja wanna paint or draw or anything? Or clay, the clay is neat. Kinda dries my hands out though," he looks down at his fingertips, stained with paint, and now smeared with colored clay as well. As the hand gets closer to the muzzle, there is a throat clearing from the handler in the corner, followed by a gruff "Do not touch the containment unit," with the vague threat of the hand sitting on the tranquilizer gun at his hip. Jeremy just lets out the muffled sigh and shakes his head to Lia, and writes on the paper ~Stops the void.~ He nods a bit at that, as he looks to Dorian at the helping commentary, curiosity a moment then another head shake. ~They stop before permanent damage occurs,~ as if quoting from someone else, which he probably was. Going back to his yellow clay, he starts to make another animal shape to go with the otter, though its not sure what yet. Lia's hand withdraws as if she had received a shock, when the handler reprimands her. She scoots her chair over as close to Dorian's as it will go, leaning in near him for protection. Her head shakes at the offer of clay. “I'm not allowed. They're afraid. It becomes little people and runs away. Not allowed.” Her tone is somewhat distant with this explanation. When Dorian draws attention to his hands, she brings her face closer to inspect them. “You change colours.” A finger reaches out to brush along a stripe of blue on his wrist, a smile drawing across her lips. “It's soft!” The words from the handler bring a jump from every person in the room, Dorian included. He hunches slightly, looking sheepishly at Jeremy, and then at the handlers across the room for just a brief moment. "Just cause permanent damage doesn't occur, doesn't mean it's not unpleasantly cold," he says quietly, ruffling one of his hands along his upper arm, exposing more of the dark fur typically hidden beneath the scrubs. "Oh," he says in response to Lia, "Well, not clay, but crayons and stuff? Or water colors. Those are neat, and change everything different colors, too." A waggle of his stained and colored fingers at this point, bemused grin on his face - though when Lia leans down to look at his hands closer, there's an instinctive withdrawing, his fingers curling away in a flinch at first, though he forces his hand back to somewhat flatness, the pale lines of scars visible along the inside of each finger when viewed up close. He giggles slightly, at the touch and reaction, nodding, rounded ears twitching slightly, "Yeah. I'm kinda soft and fuzzy, sorta." His free hand ruffles through his hair, depositing a streak of blue clay on the tag pierced through his left ear. The clay animal looks vaguely like a bear. Or a dog with no tail. Okay, Jeremy isn't all that great a sculptor, but it's something, and he makes it tromp around the mushroom and the clay otter. As Lia talks about making them run away, he glances at the beardog thing, then to Lia, and shrugs. He starts signing at Dorian a moment, something about pleasantry that the handlers at least pick up on, then he shakes his head and flips the filled up paper over to write more. ~Most things are that.~ It was terse, and probably meant more to him than to them, but it might be interpretable at least. At the talk of Dorian being fuzzy, he carefully moves a finger closer to Dorian to touch. “I like when things change colours,” Lia muses, the pleasant smile remaining on her face. When Dorian moves to hide his scarred fingers, she pulls at one of her sleeves, pushing the baggy thing easily over her scrawny arm up to the shoulder to reveal a tracery of scars covering her skin. “They change my parts, too. Check the gears, oil the joints.” Her head tilts toward Dorian again. “I wouldn't do that. I don't know the making-parts. Only the magic parts. That part doesn't hurt.” She pets at Dorian's arm when he seems pleased at his own fuzziness. “And you are already in there. Enough magic. No more magic to work.” Jeremy's signing draws her flighty attention away. “You hand-talk,” she assesses, charmed with the thought. Her finger curls back to point at her chest again. “I want to.” Dorian giggles briefly at the tromping beardog sculpture, and picks up his own little otter figure, dancing it around after the yellow figure with an amused smile. He looks confused at the signing and then the written message, "Sorry - I never really learned sign language," he glances down at his hands, looking kinda dejected for a brief moment, his ears sinking low against his skull, "My hands used to have webbing. Makes a lot of the signs kinda hard to do properly. S'pose I could do it now, if I had a way to learn." He does, though, present arms to be petted by those curious, looking quite happy at the contact, "S'mostly just my arms and back, chest isn't as fuzzy. Tail's fuzzy too, but that's kinda a bit of an obvious thing, really," Dorian explains with a look back at his own tail, lips twitched to the side in a bemused look. He tilts his head slightly at Lia, "Magic? The making the little figures run away?" A concerned frown over his face at Lia's scars, curiously reaching out a color stained finger towards them. Frowning as each indicates wanting to learn, Jeremy shakes his head a bit as he scrawls out ~They can teach. Most don't learn, tablet easier.~ He gives a shrug at that, then picks up the beardog as Lia's scars are being shown, and he mushes the little animal back into a little ball again. As they talk of the surgeries he has been lucky enough to avoid, he starts pulling little tentacles out of the ball so its an octopus, at least one with five and a half legs. “They have been putting me together for a long time,” Lia explains. “The magic comes /after/ the putting together. It makes the dolls dance.” She doesn't protest the exploration of her scars. “They teach?” she questions Jeremy, shooting a glance at his handler. “They don't usually teach nice. Do you teach?” When Dorian mentions his back being fuzzier, Lia's other hand actually moves to lift the hem of his shirt to /check/. How else is one to know? Dorian nods, starting to mush his clay up into another figure, this one vaguely deer-like, with wobbly looking antlers sprouting from it. “I think they only really teach if they have a reason to teach stuff. Not like they’re really all that heavily into education or anything here - kinda haven’t really had structured school since I’ve been here,” Dorian explains with a shrug, picking up other colors of clay to turn the deer into a centaur-like deer-man in blue and green. When Lia moves to lift the hem of his shirt, Dorian hunches forward against the table, the motion lifting the hem of the scrub top to bear the thick brown fur that covers his back, beginning to fade to a finer tawny fuzz at his sides and tummy. His ears twitch momentarily, but otherwise he remains perfectly still at the touch. There is a nodding at the question, then the slight squinching of eyes indicative of a frown that is unseen behind the muzzle. ~Can teach, but slow~ Jeremy writes, though he glances over towards the holders with a slight annoyance as if it should be their job. With Dorian’s pronouncement about their reasoning, he nods a bit at that and gestures indicating him as being correct. At the skritching of Dorian, he tilts his head, then focuses more on his octopus-like clay thing. “I...went to school,” Lia says with a confused tone and scrunched-down eyebrows to match, the statement sounding almost like a question. This look disappears as quickly as it came, however, when she sees that Dorian /is/ as fuzzy as advertised! Her lips part in a gleeful grin as she wriggles her fingers into the fluff, petting at the man as one would a beloved family dog. It obviously doesn't so much as begin to occur to her to ask for /permission/ first, or to be concerned that Dorian might protest such treatment. “I got thrown out of school. s’how I ended up here, I think. I guess,” Dorian responds, ears flattening slightly, “They said I was distracting, and too sociable, and interfering with the other students.” Her crinkles his nose up, the tone that of a chastised child, rather than a young adult. He glances at the paper and then at Jeremy, “Don’t think slow is a really bad thing. Not like any of us are going anywhere,” he says with a glance at the handlers by the door. The sudden feel of fingers raking through the pelt elicits a slightly startled jump from the young man, and he glances at Lia, but seeing the gleeful look on her face, doesn’t protest. Instead he leans his elbows onto the table with a sigh, continuing to poke idly at the clay figures, before adding the centaur man to the little collection. His face bears a somewhat resigned expression, as though he’s used to this by now - however - Lia, having her hands on his side, can likely feel the inaudible rumble of a purr. With the two preoccupied, Jeremy just scrawls two words on the paper, presumably in correspondence to the line of discussion. ~Broke everything~. With them distracted by the petting situation, he takes the mushroom he had made and splits it apart, putting the cap on top of the octopus’s head, and then taking the mushroom stem, he gives the octopus a little body with legs and arms, and takes his little illithid over to plop on top of the centaur’s back to be given a ride. Lia has fairly well exited the conversation at this point, focused entirely on her hands and Dorian. When she feels the purr, she gives a delighted giggle, redoubling her petting efforts. A happy little hum comes from her own throat. She fails to notice the more humanoid forms being crafted by her tablemates. The guard who had been instructed to watch for such things, unfortunately, does not. A gruff, “Hey, cut that out!” serves as the only warning before the stocky man hauls himself to his feet and marches to the table. One meaty palm reaches out to squash the centaur-riding illithid, the offending constructs conveniently paired up in one spot. His other hand easily wraps around Lia's scrawny upper arm, with room enough to spare for his fingers to overlap. He pulls the girl to her feet before she has even reclaimed her hands from their fluff-petting quest. She promptly panics, squealing entirely louder than the somewhat-rough handling would warrant, her free arm flailing to slam her small fist into the man's chest repeatedly. Dorian giggles in amusement at the little rider on the centaur figure, quickly grabbing another handful of clay and starting to make another figurine to join the little band of figures, this one starting out as a more humanoid shape. He smiles, gently shaping the figure into something resembling a princess, with a tiny little coned hat and poofy dress, all formed out of neon purple clay. “Broke everything? Guess the cold and dark does more’n just be cold’n’dark. Everyone’s got a story kinda like that here. The ones that can remember how they got here, anyway,” Dorian says, wrinkling his nose and continuing to lean forward to the table, hands gently cradling the tiny princess figurine. His eyes have started to close slightly at the increased ruffling from Lia, although the sudden arrival of the guard makes him jump, dark brown eyes suddenly wide in shock. If Lia’s hands are still in his fur when the figures are smashed, it feels like his fur fluffs up quite a bit at the surprise, his tail visibly ruffling. “Hey!” he responds initially, ears perked up as he looks at the orderly, then at Lia when she starts flailing, his voice concerned as he looks between the two, “You’re hurting her. She didn’t do anything...” Starting to nod at Dorian’s comment, Jeremy blinks at the sudden growling and yelling turns into squished clay. Putting his hands down, lowering his head and backing away from the table, he seems to go into passive mode automatically to prevent any harm to his own person. If he doesn’t watch the girl getting grabbed and hauled away, or what punishment Dorian will probably get for trying to intervene, in hopes that he will not be punished too in the process. Lia's punches seem like they barely register on the burly man's face, the simple fact that she's struggling providing more of an annoyance. “/Dammit/!” the guard curses under his breath, circling one arm around the girl to pin both of hers down handily. “Stay out of this or you can go back to your cage, too, freak!” is all the response that Dorian is likely to receive, provided he interferes no further. A lightbulb of memory seems to click on in the guard's head as he reaches with his other hand to grab the doll from its seat and press it against the girl's chest. Lia immediately stops struggling, the guard loosening his grip enough for her to take the doll. She grips the doll tightly to her chest, face hidden in its hair as she is propelled docilely away from the table. “Call an escort,” the man growls at one of the other guards, restraining the girl again by one arm. Dorian backs off when he he is threatened with returning to his cage, ears flattening against his skull as he sinks back into his chair, looking defeated. And perhaps a little dejected at the loss of the back pettings he had been getting. The growl for escorts gets a low whimper from Dorian, as he crouches lower in his chair, making himself smaller, but knowing the damage is already done, just waiting for his own escorts to get called. He tries not to look at Jeremy, not wanting to drag the other guy further into trouble as well, instead wrapping his arms around his chest to ruffle the fur at the tops of his arms, frowning slightly. Sure enough, one of the nurses has already gotten onto the radio, calling for an escort for Lia as requested, but the whispered discussion drops the name ‘Siccavil’ several times, with a curt nod and a secondary phone call. Dorian’s orderlies are on their way, it would seem. Jeremy waggles his fingers slightly in what might be a good bye to the others. Theres concern in his eyes, since the trouble was caused by his clay shaping to begin with. He stands over to the side, figuring he would likely be collected by his own handler shortly as well. He glances up occasionally surreptitiously to see what might be resulting though. Lia doesn't respond to the wave, or really look up to see it. She is passed from one guard to another when her escort arrives, and walks quietly out of the room in much the same way as she had entered it. As Lia is escorted out, a second set of orderlies appear, faces covered in breathing filter masks, armed with the tranquilizer guns and batons. They esort a small, matronly woman, with graying raven hair and worry lines on her plain features, who simply stands in the entryway, a stern look fixed on Dorian where he has sunk into the seat, still clutching the tiny figure he had made. “Mr. Siccavil,” the diminutive woman in the lab coat says, dark eyes fixed on Dorian, saying nothing else. At the appearance of the doctor, Dorian perks up, but the tone in her voice makes him shudder slightly, ears flattening close to his skull. “Oh. Bye Jeremy. Hope things are ok with you,” he says quietly, scurrying along to escorts, head down, shoulders slumped. He does, however, still have the tiny clay princess that had been saved in his hand, carefully palmed to hide it from view.