Some Free Time
X-ExperimentsIndex:
(DH) – Daehyun speaking
(L) – Myungsoo speaking
(BY) – Yongguk speaking
(S) – Sungyeol speaking
(YA) – Yoona speaking
(J) – Jessica speaking
(JI) – Jieun speaking
(LJ) – Joon speaking
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“Wow! This puppet is so cool!” The little kid couldn’t help but marvel at the little puppet’s strength as Bartholomew pulled the cart with little to no problem. Despite there being various objects and four knocked out people within the cart, Bartholomew seemed to make things look easy. “I want one too!”
“I think it’s too tough for you.” (LJ)
“I’m strong too!” Joon looked down to see the kid staring up at him with an angry face. Luckily, the kid put his attention back on Bartholomew before things got a little too awkward. With a shrug and a shake of his head, Joon looked forward. He had his cryston active to keep a map of the area up in case they needed it, but so far, it was pretty simple navigating the mines.
Slowly his thoughts began to wander back to Daehyun, Sungyeol, Jessica, and Jieun. Why was it that there had been a delay before they were knocked out? Judging by the laser marks all over their body, they should’ve fallen unconscious before they were even given the chance to call for help. Maybe it had something to do with the experimentation that they’ve had to go through, but he was just going to have to wait until they got back to the Resistance Headquarters before he could get any actual answers.
“What are we going to do about the animals?” (YA) Joon briefly glanced over at Yoona before attempting to think of a solution. They hadn’t really found an answer while they were in the laboratory, but their only hope at this point was to look through the data cubes and hoped that one of them had the solution. If not, then they were going to have to find another way. Maybe there was a different laboratory somewhere else in the mountains, but if that was the case, then how were they going to find it with the mountains as vast as they are?
First things first, they had to make sure that the four in the cart were okay. Once they did that, then they could decide what to do after that. If he brought them to a doctor, maybe the remaining four could stay at the inn and take a look at the data cubes. Okay, so they most likely wouldn’t know what they were looking for and they probably wouldn’t know how to use it, but they had to do something while they waited, right?
As they progressed through the mines, Joon listened to the echoes of everyone’s footsteps. Besides the sound of the wooden wheels rolling along the stone ground, there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Even if that was true, they had to make sure to remain on guard in case anything decided to attack them yet again. With Daehyun currently out, Joon didn’t want to hope that Bartholomew would be able to save them like last time.
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“I’m still surprised that you all woke up so quickly.” (LJ)
“Is it weird?” (DH) Joon merely shrugged as he continued to try and figure out how to use the data cube. No matter what he did, the data cube didn’t reveal any information that it contained. So, with a sigh, Joon placed the cube down before falling back onto the bed in defeat. Almost immediately after, the other people in the room had moved in and surrounded him.
“Did you find out how it works?” (L)
“What’s in it?” (JE)
“Can we fix the animals?” (YA) Question after question, Joon heard everyone relentlessly bombarding him despite the fact that they may have asked that question already. With an annoyed groan and his hands over his ears, he quickly sat up before letting out a scream. Immediately, everyone went silent as they took a step back while staring at Joon.
As the room fell silent, Joon waited for a moment to make sure that they really weren’t asking anymore questions. Slowly, he pulled his hands away and opened his eyes as he carefully looked around. The stares were very awkward and he was definitely embarrassed by his actions, but he needed to get them quiet. He was already annoyed with the data cube and then having to handle all of those questions at once just wasn’t something he was used to. If anything, those kinds of questions were usually transferred to Byunghee or one of the scientists or whoever was a higher up! How they could handle it, he didn’t know, but now he was starting to rethink the possibility of being promoted. “I… don’t know how to access the data… Okay? So… let’s go to sleep and then head out.” (LJ)
“Um…” (JE) Almost immediately, everyone looked at Jieun, whom seemed to be a bit hesitant to say anything now. However, since she already drew everyone’s attention, Jieun cleared as she held her right arm with her left hand. “I… saw the components in the vials being used and um… I think those were used to make the animals the way they are… so um… I think that I can recreate it.” (JE)
“What? How can you do that?” (LJ) Jieun looked off to the side as she rubbed her arm a bit. How was she supposed to explain this? That she could just somehow see the elements and how to either combine them or break them down? It would be a little hard to explain, so it might be best not to explain it for the time being.
“Just let me try… okay? If I can figure out how to make it, then I might be able to make something to fix it.” (JE) Joon rubbed the back of his head, but he decided not to question it. It was better to at least give it a shot than to just immediately believe that there was absolutely no way for any of them to be able to come up with a solution to their problem. Okay, so he did believe that it was impossible, but he was curious to see how far Jieun could get.
“I guess you can give it a shot. What do you need?” (LJ)
“Oh, um… Let me go check the cart first!” (JE) With a happy hum, Jieun turned before leaving the room. Joon wondered why Jieun was happy about this, but he assumed that maybe she just wanted to prove herself… for whatever reason. With a simple shrug, Joon picked up a random data cube before looking at everyone else in the room.
“Well… I’m going to call headquarters and tell them we’ll be a little late. You can go outside, buuuuut! Don’t talk to any of the guards. In fact, you should avoid them. Don’t let them see you and travel in groups of at LEAST two, got it?” (LJ) Everyone’s moods seemed to instantly brighten up as they all voiced their acknowledgement. Almost immediately afterward, everyone but Joon filed out of the room, talking about what they may be able to see out in this town.
As he made his way over to the chair by the window, Joon held the data cube up and examined it once more. Whatever was in here had to be important, or at least, that’s what he kept telling himself. Everyone has always lived in fear and poverty because of what the prince and Himchan are doing to everyone. Taking money from the poor and forcing them to starve or just taking children off of the street just to perform hellish experiments was something no one should be forced to live with. Even those who had good standings with both the prince and Himchan still had to worry about finding themselves on their bad side.
If they could just find a good ruler to lead the people, then maybe it could get better.
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“What do you think that is?” (DH)
“Why don’t you go find out then?” (L) Daehyun looked at Myungsoo for a moment before looking up at the object in question. It was a device with a sort of pointed needle in the middle surrounded by three rings. The device was approximately as long as a person’s torso, if not a little longer, and the rings were about as big as a person’s arms when they create a circle. It was most likely powered by crystals simply judging by the way it glowed as well as how it hovered in placed, but that still didn’t answer their question of what it was or what it did.
“How do we find out?” (DH)
“Maybe we touch it?” (L) Daehyun remembered the last time that they tried to touch something that they didn’t know about and it ended up resulting in them getting scolded by a guard. Of course, it was a fountain and they were climbing on top of it, so maybe this might be a little different. Who knows? Maybe they’ll be allowed to touch it this time.
Deciding that Myungsoo’s idea seemed to be good, the duo walked up to the device. Reaching forward, Daehyun was about to touch it, but an object quickly slapped Daehyun’s hand downward, causing them both to jump backward as Daehyun held his poor hand. “What do you think you two are doing?!”
“Wha- We were just going to touch it!” (DH)
“What?! Why were you trying to touch the distaren?! You could’ve lost your hand!” Daehyun gasped as he quickly looked down at his hand. He touched it with his other hand, as if he couldn’t believe that his hand was still there at all. The other person let out an sigh as they shook their head a bit. “What, you’ve never seen a distaren before?”
“Is that what it’s called?” (L) The person looked at them, a bit dumbfounded that they may truly not have known what a distaren was. It was probably a good thing that she was here then, otherwise they could have possibly broken something. Okay, so it was a bit difficult to break a distaren since a shield had been implemented around the thing to prevent it from being moved or killing someone, but that didn’t mean that they still couldn’t break something!
“Just go! Shoo! It’s a distaren and it’s used to shield the city! Got it? Now go! Get outta here!” The woman began shooing them away, forcing them to go back off to where the main road was. Once the woman was gone, Daehyun and Myungsoo both looked back up at the distaren.
“So it’s a shield?” (DH)
“Guess so.” (L)
“So we can’t touch it?” (DH)
“Guess not.” (L)
“Probably a good thing then.” (DH)
“Probably.” (L)
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Out of mere curiosity, Jessica couldn’t help but peek over Jieun’s shoulder as she watched her mixing various liquids together. She wanted to learn how Jieun was able to do something like this so easily, but she remained quiet just in case she ended up ruining Jieun’s concentration. Soon enough, Jieun let out a small sigh as she straightened her posture a bit. Jessica immediately took this opportunity to see how things were going. “Are you done?” (J)
Jieun jumped, nearly bumping into the table in the process. Placing her hand on the table to keep herself stable, she put her free hand up to her chest as she took in a deep breath to calm herself. Turning just enough, she looked at Jessica before looking back at the concoction that she had produced. “Y-Yeah… I’m done, but… we have to test it to see if it’s the right one I saw.” (JE)
“Okay! I can help with that! What do we do?” (J) Jieun hesitated for a moment as she stared at the concoction. It was easy to say that they could test it to see if it’ll work, but actually using it wasn’t something that Jieun was looking forward to. After all… if it worked, then that means that the animal they use it on would end up being transformed like those birds and moles. However, if it wasn’t the right mixture, then it could potentially be something worse.
“We… have to test it on one of the animals.” (JE)
“So... we have to experiment on them…?” (J) Even without Jieun saying anything, Jessica already knew the answer. They have been through too many similar situations not to know that anything with science always required some sort of experimentation. The only question was… were they willing to go through with it? “How… do we do it?” (J)
“Do you remember what that Park Bom lady was doing? We have to… use a needle to inject the liquid into them.” (JE) Jessica shivered at the very thought of having to go near a needle. It was a horrible experience and she had hoped not to have anything to do with something similar to such an experience ever again, but it seemed like life was just not all that fair.
“Can we get… someone else to do it for us?” (J)
“Maybe we can ask Joon.” (JE) That seemed like a sound idea. Neither one of them were comfortable with doing it themselves, so maybe it would be okay if he were to do it. Once they agreed with one another, the two took the mixture before they made their way to Joon’s room.
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“Wow! Look at all this food! Isn’t it so good looking?” (YA) Yoona and Sungyeol, with the money that they got after asking Joon, were currently seated at a restaurant with the two dishes that they ordered. While Yoona was excited over trying new things, Sungyeol stared at their food for a moment as he tried to see what it was to get excited over.
“I guess… but food is food, right? As long as we can eat it, it doesn’t matter what it looks like...” (S) Yoona slouched a bit in her seat as she looked at her food. He did kind of have a point, but if it looked good, then it had to be much more delicious than any other food, right? “What do you think love is?” (S)
“Huh?” (YA) Yoona instantly sat up, pulled from her thoughts upon hearing Sungyeol’s voice. She didn’t completely hear Sungyeol’s question, but she did at least catch the last part of it. With a quiet hum, Yoona spun her fork in the pasta she had ordered as she looked off into space. “Love… I’ve heard of it from the cryston. It’s when two people have really big affection for one another.” (YA)
“… What’s affection?” (S)
“Well…” (YA) Yoona leaned forward a bit as she set her down on top of the table before resting her chin in the palm of her hand. She picked up the rolled up pasta and stared at it for a moment before tilting her head to the side a bit more. “When I looked it up, it said a gentle feeling of fondness or liking.” (YA)
“Are fondness and liking the same thing?” (S) Yoona merely shrugged as she stuffed the rolled up pasta into . Sungyeol slouched in his seat a bit as he looked down at his food. He rolled Yoona’s words around in his head as a faint tint of red began to creep up onto his cheeks. Sungyeol didn’t necessarily understand this feeling, but maybe what he felt was… love.
“Why do you ask?” (YA) Sungyeol instantly sat up as wide eyes stared at Yoona. As the question played in his head once more, Sungyeol cleared his throat as he slouched in his seat yet again, his eyes quickly looking away as his face seemed to get a deeper shade of red.
“N-No reason…” (S)
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“D-Don’t hurt it…” (JE)
“I won’t.” (LJ)
“You’ll be careful…?” (J)
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be careful.” (LJ)
“… You won’t mess up?” (JE) Joon let out an annoyed sigh as he set the syringe back down onto the table. He had managed to a wild animal to act as a test subject to see if the concoction that Jieun produced really was the thing that was mutating all of the animals in the area. After putting the animal to sleep and strapping it down to keep it from running, both Jieun and Jessica had been saying the same thing over and over again for the past fifteen minutes, making it near impossible to safely inject the substance without any problems. Heck, the only reason he was the one doing this was because no one seemed to be up to it.
“Look. Just stay quiet and let me do this, alright? I NEED silence to concentrate!” (LJ) Jieun and Jessica both hummed in response as they stood off to the side as far away as possible. Jessica was hiding behind Jieun, looking over her shoulder to see what was happening. Jieun would’ve hidden too, but with no one else there, she decided to use her hands to cover her face. Just like Jessica though, she couldn’t help but watch through the spaces between her fingers.
They stood there for a moment or so before Joon deemed that it was finally time. Picking up the syringe, Joon crouched down a bit more so that he could carefully look at the little sleeping rabbit in front of him. Bringing the needle close to the rabbit, Joon held his breath as he made sure to proceed as slowly as possible to prevent any sort of accidents from occurring. A lump soon formed in his throat as the needle slowly penetrated the rabbit’s delicate skin. Using his free hand, Joon held a ball of cotton up to the area as he made sure not to push the needle too far into the poor rabbit. Slowly but surely, Joon soon began to inject the concoction into the little rabbit’s system. One thing did suddenly pop up in his head though.
“Uh… how much am I supposed to inject?” (LJ) Joon briefly glanced up at Jieun, but he didn’t receive an answer. That didn’t exactly help in this sort of situation, but Joon knew that keeping the needle in the poor rabbit wasn’t a choice. So, after injecting at least half of the serum, Joon pulled out the needle slowly. Once it was completely out, Joon applied pressure onto the area before using medical tape to tape the cotton ball in place. “Well... I guess we wait now.” (LJ)
“How long do you think it’ll take before it-” (J) As if on cue, the rabbit began violently twitching. Despite it being under anesthetics to keep it from feeling any pain during the shot, the rabbit had immediately woken up as it began making squealing sounds of pain. The twitching quickly turned into thrashing, as the rabbit seemed to be trying to escape from its confines. The squealing only seemed to grow higher in pitch as finally, physical changes began to occur to the poor creature.
Due to the growing changes in the rabbit, the fur it held wasn’t enough to cover every inch of the rabbit’s skin anymore. In fact, the fur more resembled a human’s body hair as opposed to fur, making it look like a giant rabbit as its growth continued. However, upon reaching the height of about five feet in length, the growth came to a stop and fur began to grow rapidly, covering the rabbit’s skin once more. The binds that held the rabbit had grown to accommodate the rabbit’s new size, but despite the stop in growth, the rabbit was still thrashing about. The three had taken quite a number of steps back away from the rabbit and now that they knew that the concoction they made was the one behind the mutations, they weren’t sure where to start on making a remedy.
“Wha-… What do we do with the rabbit…?” (J)
“Uh…” (LJ) Joon rubbed the back of his head as he continued to watch the rabbit pull on its binds. They couldn’t exactly let it loose, but it would be worrisome to just leave it where it was. He had managed to get the mayor to allow them to use a room at the research facility, but he didn’t exactly know how long they could use it for. “You work on a cure and I’ll… uh… go talk to some people about this.” (LJ)
As Joon left the room, Jessica continued to hide behind Jieun as the two stared at the rabbit. It seemed to have caught onto their presence at this point as the rabbit seemed to continually look back at them. It would snarl every now and then, but due to the binds that it was in, there wasn’t anything else it could do. “So um… L-Let’s just move to the side… a bit…” (JE)
The two moved little by little towards the table farthest from the rabbit. Once there, Jieun reached for the notes that she had left there before carefully flipping through it. A cure should be relatively simple since she knew what would be needed to break down the concoction, but being able to reverse the effects was an entirely different story. Just looking at the rabbit allowed her to see the changes done to its DNA structure, so she wasn’t sure if she could do something like this on her own. It’s not like she knew everything and unlike the scientists here, she hasn’t had the chance to study or do research on something like this.
Still, she had to at least try.
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“Why is she dressed like that?” (DH)
“Maybe it makes her move faster when fighting.” (L) The two continued to ponder about the poster up on display through the window, but no matter how much they thought about it, it made no sense. The woman in the picture was wearing only enough to cover her naughty bits. Sure, there was a see through layer connected to the shirt, but it provided practically nothing in terms of coverage. “Maybe she forgot the rest of her clothes.” (L)
“Why would they show her then?” (DH) Myungsoo merely shrugged as he folded his arms and shifted his weight to his other leg. Daehyun wanted to go inside and ask the employee about it, but before he could do so, the sound of an old woman clearing quickly caught their attention.
“My my my… The youth these days just boldly gawking at such erse things… and in public, no less! My… such handsome young men too…” Daehyun looked at Myungsoo for an answer, but Myungsoo merely shrugged. The two fully turned their attention towards the old woman, whom had not moved from her spot yet.
“What’s erse?” (DH)
“Do you know why that girl is wearing little clothes?” (L) The old woman looked at the two for a brief moment, attempting to figure out whether they were truly as erse as she said they were or if they were truly clueless about the situation. However, judging by the looks on their faces and in their eyes, the second option seemed to be more valid.
“Innocent youth being lured in by a hussy! Dear me… Come! Move away from such erse things.” The old lady motioned for the two to follow her before she moved away from the store. Once they were a comfortable distance away, the old woman turned to the two before motioning for the two men to lean in a little closer. Daehyun and Myungsoo both looked at one another for a brief moment before crouching down a bit. The old woman spoke in hushed tones, only loud enough for Daehyun and Myungsoo to hear her. “The picture on the window is very very naughty! Good boys like you shouldn’t be looking at such things. It’s to lure good boys like you into doing naughty things with frivolous women. Do not fall for it, okay?”
“What’s frivolous?” (DH)
“Loose women! Now, follow as I say, okay?” Neither male could find themselves able to defy the old woman’s request as they each nodded without fully understanding why. The old woman gave a warm smile as she reached into her purse and pulled something out. Once she handed something into each of their hands, the two looked down at it to see a small, yellow and circular hard object lying in their palms. “Some candy for good little boys like you two. Make sure to let it melt in your mouth, okay? Don’t swallow it whole or you’ll choke.”
Without another word, the old woman merely reached up and patted their heads before going on her way. Daehyun scratched the side of his head as he examined the piece of candy for a little bit before looking at Myungsoo. “Um… is it okay if we eat these?” (DH)
“She said to let it melt in our mouth… It’s the same thing, right?” (L) With little to no care about what had just happened, Myungsoo opened the wrapper and took the piece of candy out of its confines before putting it into his mouth. Daehyun watched for a moment, a bit surprised that Myungsoo knew to open it before eating. Judging by the look on Myungsoo’s face though, it seemed to be good. “Well? Try it!” (L)
“R-Right…” (DH) Daehyun followed Myungsoo’s actions before eating the piece of candy as well. Daehyun couldn’t help but find himself smiling as the flavor seemed to somehow spread in his mouth. “Wow! This is great! Do we get more if we keep being good?” (DH)
“I dunno.” (L) There wasn’t any way of finding out that answer, but regardless, the two soon decided to head back to the hotel.
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[[ My Own Thoughts:
For those confused,
Daehyun and Myungsoo were looking at an advertisement for lingerie.
Wasn't for swim suits. -/nod-
Comments are loved!
I love talking with everyone.
It’s also nice to know how I’m doing with each of these chapters. X3 ]]
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