Cain796

Soul Extraction

Don't be a chicken... Quackshot thought, trying not to utter a sound. He held the beak of his mask with one hand to keep any squawks or clucks contained, even though the beak was in no way connected to his actual mouth. Make them think this is my real face. 'Surprise! I'm literally a bird-face man!' He bit his lip to keep from chortling at his own sense of humor. He kept his other hand close to his scalpel, the recently named Talon, which was sheathed safely in a coat pocket.

As they walked slowly into the massive sewer room, he cocked his head around looking for anything suspicious. The darkness, his lack of proper night vision, and his usual state of paranoia made it difficult to see everything clearly. Shadows were always dancing in the corners after he and his friends had been ambushed by the shadows on the ceiling of the Plug.

"What do we do now?" he asked in the lowest whisper he could muster. It was like the soft cooing of a church pigeon in the rafters of a bell tower. "Aren't there mutant gene mods living down here? Is that a myth?"

Soul Extraction

"You're not dumb, Lyra," Quackshot said, closing and stowing his flask away. "And I told you the weather was a fit for waterfowl. I trust you let that wound heal properly, yes?"

He cocked his head towards her at the mention of Bianca. "You named your weapon? Jonah, Ronnie, do you name your weapons, too? Is this a common practice to name weapons in this day and age?" He pulled out one of his scalpels. "I'll call you Talon. Yes, that's a good name for you. And I'll name my forceps Beaky."

He distracted himself by trying to name all of his medical tools, personalizing them and softly cooing to them like a church dove to her chicks.

Soul Extraction

"Ronnie, do you want something for the pain?" Quackshot called after her, feigning to fiddle with his mask to switch it to 'night vision.' His eyes were far superior to the average human eyes and could adjust to the darkness. "I have a lozenge that tastes like strawberries for pain." He followed after and quickened his pace to catch up with Jhona.

"I'm Dr. Quackshot," he said, holding out a hand tentatively to Jhona. "Alfred made it seem like you're his little duckling, but I believe you are more mature than he lets on. Perhaps you are growing into quite the mallard. But who am I to say?"

With his free hand, Quackshot took another drink from his flask through his curly straw.

Soul Extraction

Did we just become glorified baby-sitters after being kidnapped? Quackshot thought as he collected the bag apparently meant for him. He was pleased to see his flasks of alcohol and tin of candy and lozenges survived, and the added supplies like basic rations and field medical tools. There were two other items that he had no idea what they did: a metal box with a button on it and a black sphere. The fuck are these? A garage opener and a smoke bomb? He wanted to show them to Lyra, but feared there may be cameras. Cocking his head about quickly, he spied a few mechanical prying eyes. His flash of anger from earlier shifted back to his usual state of panic.

"Is is Joe-nah? Or YO-nah? Ja-ho-na?" Quackshot squawked impatiently. "Young man, how do we get out of here quickly? The walls have eyes and I would rather our collective goose not be cooked."

He took a shot from a flask. It was cherry margarita.

Soul Extraction

Quackshot cocked his head at the old man's approach, leering incredulously at him behind the bird mask.

"Two things, wait, no, three things," Quackshot chirped up quickly. "One, the only Hemingway I know died centuries ago and was a writer. I assume you mean the dead body with the red hair. Two, I tried to save that man from dying when Ronnie brought him into the bar, but he looked like a member of the Rats who apparently died weeks ago. And three, do you really think we would lie to you now when you can so easily kill us?"

His feathers felt ruffled as he sulked, still leering at the new arrival behind his mask. A lot of questions were circulating in his head and his panic was shifting into anger. He and his friends had done nothing wrong and yet here they were, sitting as prisoners with an old man wanting information from them and telling them to take his charge with them to the Garden District like a group of Gutter-dwellers taking care of some rich kid wouldn't look super obvious in the same district as all the other rich people.

Soul Extraction

In both senses of the word, Quackshot was shocked. He was surprised by the sudden arrival of gunshots, causing him to squawk loudly again and dance around to avoid bullets. He was also surprised by the sudden, painful jolt of electricity that coursed through his body. It was all just so... shocking. The last thought traveling through his head as he felt himself collapsing into the blackness of an unconscious void was something his parents had said when he was younger and hadn't left the nest yet: "You have special eyes. Look, look with your special eyes. What do you see? You can see everything with just a glance..."

He awoke sore and immobile, a sharp chirping pain still pecking at his muscles and nerves throughout his body. He didn't like this feeling of being a caged bird. Panic bubbled up in his throat as he looked around the unfamiliar space. He tried to squawk again, but it came out as a faint gasp. He was aware he was still wearing his mask, but he didn't know if it was ever removed from his face between the time of him being knocked out or waking up.

The panic bubbled up higher and he bit his lip nervously to keep it contained. What if they saw my face? My actual face? Fuck!

He looked around at his friends. Lyra was looking around slowly, a look of constipated concentration on her face. Whatever she was doing, she didn't look too happy about the results. Ronnie still looked to be waking up and Quackshot assumed she might be in worse shape than either of them. While he didn't know much of anything regarding cybernetic mods, he did know that metal conducts electricity and that nerves send electrical signals to each other to make the body move. With those two pieces of information, he guessed Ronnie would have to reboot her mechanical body parts following such a hard shutdown. Like using a defibrillator... he thought absently, trying to refocus on something that would cause him to panic less than the current situation.

Niklas didn't seem to be tied with them and Quackshot bristled. He's dead. Why else would he not be here?

"What happened?" Quackshot asked aloud, fishing for his friends to respond to him. "Are you both alright? What happened to Niklas? I think he died, but I don't know. Where do you suppose we are?" He lowered his voice, "What should we do? We're just sitting ducks like this."

Soul Extraction

"'Why leave?'" Quackshot parroted, darting around the room. The train of his trench coat flapped about behind him, always a few paces to slow to keep up. "We leave because that corpse, and likely the person we all had thought to be a Rat, was from the Development District. This means they figured out a way to make someone look exactly like someone else, be it a gene mod of something else. That's besides the point. The point is that there was a figurative rat in the Rats. ThysenKrüpp could be barging in here at any minute!"

As he passed by each person while rambling, Quackshot tugged at their elbows and patted their shoulders to get them all to move towards the exit. He was more urgent with these actions with Ronnie than with Niklas or Lyra. Truth be told, Quackshot felt responsible for the death of Ronnie's brother. It was an errand he had sent the poor boy on that killed him. Quackshot blamed himself for how reckless Ronnie had become following her brother's death. He wanted to take Ronnie under his wing to make it up to her, somehow, for his part in her brother's death. It never seemed to work though. He was not quite fit to be a parent, especially for someone as independent and strong as Ronnie. He could never hope to fill whatever void she might have in her life. The best he could do was be a mother hen of a doctor for her when she stopped by for a checkup or medical aid, but he was always a mother hen for the patients he came to know personally and called "friends."

He shook his head once, refocusing on the present problem.

"We live in dangerous times, Ronnie!" he squawked. "There's chaos afoot!" He screeched and spun around dramatically, anxiety creeping up his spine. He was putting on his best show of panic he could muster, even if most of it was actually genuine. If I really sell how dreadful this situation is, I could convince everyone to leave for safety. "If we're caught here, they won't just kill us, they will torture us for every scrap of knowledge we may possess! It will be worse than having your body parts replaced with cybernetic mods or getting a gene mod without anesthesia. It will be worse that anything any of us have ever experienced. You will wish for a quick, painless death after they catch you. Trust me, I have seen some of the bodies while I was harvesting organs for 'donations.'" He tried to chuckle at that last bit, but it came out like a strained wheeze.

"Please, let's just go now while the getting is good." He shortened the rate of his breathing to play up his panic. The air whistled sharply as it passed through his mask. Quackshot started to wring his hands, sway quickly back and forth, and jostle his leg. In his panic, he thought he saw shadows moving outside the windows and along the ceiling of the bar. "Come on, everyone! Let's go!"

Soul Extraction

When the the flashbang went off, Quackshot let out a series of loud, panicked squawks and flapped his hand before his eyes to shield them from the bright light. His ears were ringing and flowers of translucent color blossomed within his eyes.

Upon regaining his senses a few minutes later, he found he was sitting on the floor a few feet away from the body of the Rat, or at least what was once the body of the Rat. In its place was the body of a middle-aged man, though the wounds were all the same as the previous body. The change was astounding and needed to be tested further, if only there were time for such a luxury as to transport the body to the Medical District for a proper autopsy.

Hearing Niklas' suggestion, Quackshot scrambled to his feet and cocked his head about quickly to survey the establishment.

"Is everyone alright?" he called out. "Does anyone need a doctor?"

He swooped over to his satchel and slung it over his shoulder with a gloved hand poised to withdraw any supplies from it if need be. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, anxious to leave right away.

Soul Extraction

If Quackshot could cock his head any more in confusion, he would have. He certainly tried, though. The grotesque display of Ronnie and the corpse was baffling and oddly amusing.

"None of my medical experience can explain such an odd pattern of twitches and movements. It looks mechanical in nature, but the man had no cybernetic mods that I could find. And I trust Ronnie is accurately trying her best to reproduce how he moved, so this is no fault of her's. It is possible he had a brain or neurological condition that could cause these twitches, but I can't test for it now with my limited equipment. Or he could have been faking the twitches all along. Niklas, when you saw this man, do you recall him twitching as Ronnie showed us? Lyra, do you know if any of your tenants might know who he is?"

Soul Extraction

After looking over the body once more, Quackshot said, "No, I don't see any cybernetic mods, though some organ could have been replaced for machinery. I doubt it though as they would have acted up upon the body dying. As for genetic mods, I can't determine that here. I have no way to test for it quickly without a genetics hospital's equipment. And there is no telling what exactly the genetic mod was for in some cases."

He looked to Ronnie. "What kind of a twitch did he have? was he acting a particular way? Skittish, paranoid, or aggressive. Or was he aloof or apathetic? Ronnie, we need clearer answers from you and possibly a more in-depth explanation of what you two were doing and how he got shot. If what Niklas said is true, then we need to figure out why or how it all happened. Since I am not a geneticist, I don't know if any gene mods can raise the dead."

He paused, mulling over all possibilities. Twins? No, the chances are unlikely. But what about a clone? Or a plastic surgery? Science has progressed a lot, so it could be possible. Or there is necromancy, but I really doubt anyone could wield that kind of power.