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Post by Alma on Mar 10, 2021 0:22:32 GMT -6
“Right. Fainting thing. Got to fix that later, but I won’t throw them directly at you anymore. That sound alright?” She deliberately left out his name as he snapped up the treat before standing. “Going to take a while with you. Labs makes plenty of smarties, some so smart that they learn in minutes what it takes others an hour, but you’re not one of them. Good thing too, I like you more this way, Chirin.” She dragged out the last word, and he looked up to find a glove and treat within range. One set of nipped fingertips later, and Alma was back to her earlier chatter.
He caught on quickly despite not being one of the aforementioned ‘smarties’, and soon he would look up at her even if there was no immediate reward of meat, even though the soft words given in their place did little to fill his belly.
(Chirin-Name 5 Chirin-9.0)
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Post by Alma on Mar 10, 2021 0:22:57 GMT -6
With the edge taken off from his hunger by the constant treats, the praise worked away at his fear. He stayed closer to her, sometimes lingering after she called his name. He still froze and fell when she moved too quickly, the speed of what was too quick rapidly changing from things like a quick turn after a relative lack of movement from her to a slow wave of the hand that might have ended in a pat had he not fallen beyond her reach.
He still wanted food, and the nice sounds were a close second, and so he took to looking up at her the instant the word “Chirin” was called, and alternately basking in praise or devouring a treat and whatever grass clung to it. It was easy enough to see on the bluish grass at least, the pink standing out brightly to him.
“Well, Chirin,” Alma said, handing him the last piece of meat as he looked up at her, “think you’ve got the name down.” She smiled down at him, a crooked thing made worse by her scar. “Just a gajillion more to go, yeah?
(Chirin-Name 6 End?)
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:23:43 GMT -6
Alma woke to roars.
That in itself was nothing to be alarmed about. On her farm, the walls did little to muffle the sounds of her drakes when they woke and remembered that they were not alone in their stable, but they did muffle the enraged shrieking enough that she could leave open her windows and fall back asleep the few times she did not need to get ready for work. Her bed there was built for that, a perfect balance between soft and firm so she could flop onto her side and be back asleep before she even needed to try smothering herself with a pillow. And a brief, half-awake glance at the quietly buzzing display in the wall next to her was all the reminder she needed that today was one of several lovely days that she did not need to hop off her bed and start donning gear.
The roars continued, echoing oddly, and Alma was annoyed to find she was still awake to notice the way they seemed to overlap and repeat. With a sigh and her eyes still held shut, she reached out for one of the spare pillows that she kept on her bed for this very reason.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:23:54 GMT -6
Alma reached out farther as her hand found only empty air, and felt her bed move underneath her. She yanked back her hand as she tried to push up with her other hand, the faint red light coming from the wall providing just enough light that she saw as well as felt her ‘bed’ fold over her hand and twist to the side, sending her into a flailing panic as she fell. She hit the ground with a wheeze, back hitting something fluffy. She rolled off of it onto the cold floor, then into the wall with the time displayed on it.
That jolt did more than the roaring and the fall had done, and she pushed herself up off the tiles with a groan. She slapped at the display until a painfully bright light came on to sear her eyes, and she slapped her hands over them as she cursed the damned kennel controls.
The roaring continued off somewhere in the distance, still audible as she squinted and sacrificed the protection of one hand to poke at the screen until the lights dimmed to a more manageable level. Now she could see the room, the broom closet of a control center that she had slung a hammock across the normal walls.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:24:12 GMT -6
Order, why the hell was she in that damned place? She should have been in her fancy little bed, surrounded by all her finds and trinkets that needed categorizing, not back at the storage hell she kept the living, pain in her ass part of the collection. She rubbed at her temples, eyes squeezed shut as she thought about the previous night. She had been switched to a different shift, gotten a few days off after handling some lunatic that had thought themselves a bird and thrown a fit after the healer fixed them up with their old, skinny arms, and she had thought to celebrate by looking around and having a good read while she had a drink.
The book was there now, and the image on the front brought back the inklings of an idea she had had, the fierce cat on the front roaring and looking as if it could take on the world with a pack of smaller ones behind it, and she rested her forehead against the wall. The roars seemed to grow louder as she remembered joining, maybe even organizing a group. She had a feeling she knew what was roaring now, and it was nothing so easy as her sarane throwing their usual hissy fits.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:24:24 GMT -6
She should have realized it earlier, might have if she had not stayed up all night pulling up bits of information that slipped away from her now like an ice cube on glass. Sarane roars were different, having almost a shrieking quality to them at times. Had it just been some mistake, that she had left some valve or door open that let her two sacrificial brown drakes remember that the other existed, it would be like listening to a deep-voiced instrument doing it’s best imitation of a little girl’s scream. These were rumbling things that she could feel in her chest, not nearly so painful to listen to as a drake’s though she doubted they would remain so easy to listen to when she got closer.
And Alma would have to get closer. She was hopeful that maybe she had more to drink than she thought she did, and imagined the whole mess she expected to find. The roaring was not promising on that front. She went over to the small hamper that hid beneath the hammock, pulling out a pair of wax and cloth plugs, shoving each into an ear with a grimace. The roars immediately dropped away beyond the slightest buzz in her chest and at the edges of her hearing.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:24:35 GMT -6
Alma fidgeted with the plugs for another minute, finally giving up on making them comfortable as she tapped through a few windows on the screen. It was a strange thing, and she would not have been able to flick through it so quickly had she not spent a good amount of her years in the city, but she was slightly disappointed to see that there were no flashing lights or warnings popping up to distract her from the source of the roars. Another tap against the screen showed her where she had planted the seeds last night to ruin her day off, the two rooms right across from one another. And, of course, neither of the two rooms had something that would spit out food for the two large, roaring predators she expected to find. The bloody, possibly living food they would need to eat.
She slapped her hand onto her face as she considered finding whatever folks had taken her sudden mania for a promise and explaining that she was just an idiot. She could still feel the roars as she tried to remember their faces, or exactly how many of them had agreed to join in her silly little team.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:24:50 GMT -6
Alma hit one last button, the squares and words on the screen replaced in an instant with the same time display from earlier, albeit with now higher numbers shining out at her. She could have sworn the damned thing was running fast, that she had only spent a minute or two looking over the lights and words, but doing so aloud did nothing to convince the clock to return to a more expected time. Neither did slapping at the unlocking wall that held it, but that at least made her feel a little better before she turned away to put on something a little more substantial than her night clothes.
She could feel the angry beasts still roaring away as she pulled up her boots, lacing them with extra care as she wondered if the creatures would allow her to feed them something dead and faceless, something that was little more than chunks of flesh that resembled nothing she had seen wandering around. They would likely be starving with the amount of bickering they were doing already, and she did not think the excuse “Oh, they were too picky and starved to death” would get her out of the work she had signed up for.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:25:00 GMT -6
Not that she would starve them. They might be things made in creepy tiled places like the kennel control room rather than the offspring of a rutting pair of natural beasts, but she was not keen on starving any of the poor things to death. Besides, it already had put a dent in her collection when the labs had decided to do, well, whatever it was they did to the critters like the vulticus when their half-baked new versions came out. She was still a bit bitter about that, refusing to discard the freezer-burned corpse of her old tainted.
As well as the ear plugs worked to block the roars as she bemoaned all the dead creatures she could not add to her collection, she could still feel the roars buzzing away in her chest like she had swallowed a fly. With her boots laced, and neither flying free or sliding as she gave each a quick kick, she began her jog towards the part of the facility that housed the two beasts who were lucky enough to steal a chunk of her vacation away from her.As she drew nearer, the earplugs were only muffling the worst of the roars rather than completely blocking them.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:25:11 GMT -6
She was almost there, the roars sounding all the more furious now that the shields of wax and cloth prevented them from deafening her completely, when she remembered two things. One, the first thought that slowed her from a jog to a walk, was that the rooms had no built in way to supply the angry predators with food. The second thought, which sent her jogging back to a nearby room she had passed earlier, was that if she did not bring any meat, the beasts might realize she was, in fact, made of meat. It was a great deal harder to train things that decided their trainer was breakfast. “No person would listen to what their pancakes would say, now would they?” she asked the machine dropping a varied assortment of skinless parts into a pair of linked carts, careful not to stare too long at the pink clinging to white bone. “Well, no sane person,” she amended with a shrug at the dispenser, hitting the button to stop the flow of meat.
Pushing the two carts brimming with meat proved to be much more difficult than just moving along the hallway, and her pace slowed to a walk as she fought to keep them from splitting apart and trying to make friends with the walls.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:25:23 GMT -6
The roars were more sporadic now, though she was not sure if that was due to the smell of fresh meat that invisibly preceded her or if the pair was finally tiring out.
It was a pair of beasts she had agreed to train, was it not? Just two, a pair already too much, and no more than that? The wall had told her the rooms were occupied, but she had failed to do more than note the glowing color signifying a cage was active and closed. Alma found herself trying to increase her walking speed, the carts remaining steadfast in their plan to break apart and end the journey early. “You carts ain’t alive. Right? The labs wouldn’t-No,” she glanced at them suspiciously as she strong armed them back together. “No. Y’are both carts. Just carts.” A pause, the two slamming together with a clang as they reached the two rooms. “Better just be carts.”
She abandoned the two carts in the hallway, the metal things standing still and innocent when she glared at them. Her expression did not so much soften as twisted into a grimace as she looked at the two doorways, both with their doors wide open to allow the beasts to shout at each other to their heart's content.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:25:41 GMT -6
“Well, I was gonna have to see’em some time. You both just stay here,” she told the carts, holding up both hands as if pleading with a pup and not two lifeless pieces of evil metal. When they did not take off down the hallways with shrieks when another set of roaring began, she looked between the two door holes. Figuring that she would need to visit both of them anyways, she walked over to one of them and peered around the metal frame.
Alma felt a little silly peering around the edge like a kid trying to sneak a look at something gross. Sure, the display had said the cages were still intact and inhabited, but it only took one beast breaking free of the fancy pens to put an end to someone as squishy as her.
The roars behind her seemed to demand her attention first, but she forced herself to move for a better look at the one she was currently by, reasoning that, “It’ll just eat the damned carts if it’s loose.” The better angle showed her the pen-cage, the rocks and plants safely contained within it looking like a plain had suddenly burst from the tiled ground. The inhabitant there roared at her as she tried to figure out where it was.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:25:51 GMT -6
“Ah, yeah, guess plants don’ have great big tusks, do they?” The custom was wandering through the fake plains, pacing alongside the very thick and definitely strong bars that Alma completely trusted to keep it from getting out. It seemed to be bouncing on it’s toes, tail held high and presenting Alma with the lovely image of it’s rear end as it roared again. It reached the end of the cage, and she ducked back out of the room before she could even see the color of it’s eyes.
So she had gone out, joined or made up some group for the big beastie fights, and spent close to two months pay on that green and brown balgor throwing a hissy fit to rival her sarane. “‘Ope you rival their strength too, you oversized cat.” she said after it roared again, quietly so that it would not take to testing the bars of the pen.
The other balgor was still roaring back to the custom, and she edged towards the other doorway with all the speed of molasses on a cold day. She had known about the custom, faintly remembering having a conversation about it and its abilities with the seller before throwing away her credits, but she was not too sure what her last-night self had decided to pair it with.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:26:02 GMT -6
She had bought something else too, had she not? Another special balgor that she had thought would work well with her collection if nothing else, this one blue and kind of see through-
“Oh. Carts, you know something funny about these pens?” she asked the carts, both patiently waiting for her to speak as the beasts roared again. “I got some special ones elsewhere, ones that stop the ghost-ish ones from just floating their way out. Really good at what they do.” She smiled at the carts and their filling of meat. “These, well, they don’t do that.” Nor would a ghost want to go after the meat in the carts, but she was not very concerned about what might befall them.
There were more roars as she stood by the door, wondering if the balgor might be waiting just out of sight for something to pounce on. The beast would not have even the barest hint of loyalty to her, not that she was sure how she would build any if she could not even feed it, and she had not taken any of the other creatures that might have been able to defend her. Hells, she did not even have her fancy fire knife to try to scare it off with.
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Post by Alma on Apr 17, 2021 23:26:12 GMT -6
“Well,” she thought quickly, glancing between the two doorways as the balgor continued shouting like old men, “if the ghosty cat is floating around in there, maybe there is some special stuff in the bars. Maybe the element-stopping stuff kept it in. After all, why wouldn’t it’ave gone to yell at green-butt directly if it could?” The carts offered no reply, but the thought was enough to let her wander closer to the second doorway.
The other one was still roaring away behind her, this one was roaring away as if it needed to prove it could shout louder, and she was pretty sure she could at least tempt the ghostly one to take a swipe at the meat carts before trying for something fresher. Alma reached the doorway with the same caution as she had the first, slowly peeking her head around as the image of the beast jamming its head through the wall and biting hers off appeared to her. With a shout that was more like a squeak, Alma dove for the floor and looked into the room.
There was no headless body pressed against the wall. In fact, the room looked nearly identical to the one the custom inhabited, the same mix of mostly stone and a few plants trapped behind the bars.
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