Logs:Maximum Carnage

Maximum Carnage
Dramatis Personae Joshua, NPC-Carnage	2021-11-04 "Nobody's ever tried to take a bite outta me before." - CW: LOTS of blood, some violence.
Location <MA> Dirac Research Laboratory - Testing Chamber
Joshua has been placed inside a small isolation chamber -- electronically locked doors behind him and in front of him -- as part of a quarantine protocol. He has been given explicit instructions: Wait for the interior door to open. Step inside. Observe the mutant inside the testing chamber; when the signal is given, the suppression field will be lowered. Make an attempt to simulate this mutant's powers. Joshua has been given... very little information other than this. However, if he's kept his ear close to the grapevine during his stay, here, he might have heard a rumor or two. Something about a 'Dracula'; a beast. A mutant-eating monster. Some horrifying thing they keep in the basement -- a thing that drinks blood. The electronic door produces a pneumatic hiss; the locks disengage. The door swings outward, revealing... a sleek, sterile, heavily monitored space. Approximately the size of a large living room; perhaps significantly larger. The ceiling is higher than one would expect, with LED panels above. What is presumably the opaque-side of a one-way mirror dominates the northern end; the southern end is the end that Joshua can enter through. The walls have some unusual markings. Claw-marks -- some of them far too wide apart to be made by a human. There are stains, too; old ones. The kind that have been there so long they're effectively just part of the decor, now. Rust-red. A gray plastic table is at the center of the room, along with several uncomfortable folding chairs around it. Seated in one of those chairs is... the test-subject. A pale red-headed man, probably in his 30s -- freckled face. One empty, hollow eye-socket. His left forearm is missing just past the elbow. Dressed in patient scrubs, leaning back in the chair. Cletus Kasady grins toothily at Joshua. "Yo. You brought any snacks?" Joshua has listened to all this impassively, agreed with a minimum of questioning; probably unsurprising to the researchers, the taciturn labrat a well-documented entity for them by now. He's still quiet when he finally enters the testing room, one hand in the pocket of his matching scrubs and the other holding a thermos. He shrugs at the other man's question, eyes sweeping over Cletus appraisingly as he pulls out another one of the folding chairs. Seats himself in it. "Got coffee," he offers, nudging the thermos across the table. "Haven't had much appetite." Cletus makes no move for the thermos. He's laid back, relaxed -- like he owns the place. He leans back, his remaining hand on the table, the other arm extended behind his back. "You been here before, ain't you? You can always tell." His nostrils flare. "Never got a sniff of you, though." The grin doesn't fade. "Anyway, the lab-coats tell me I ain't supposed to eat you, so... try not to piss your pants at this next part. Arright?" "Third time's -- what do they say? Charm? Or maybe I'm out now. You a lifer here?" Joshua takes his thermos back. Pops it open, takes a swig of the coffee. One of his eyebrows raises at eat you, and he sets the coffee back down. "What do you do, exactly? Easier for me to clone it if I see it first." "Oh, yeah. I slipped out a couple of times, but always ended up back in here. S'free meal ticket, y'know?" Cletus watches Joshua drinking that coffee with just enough interest to make it uncomfortable. Licks his lips. "Me? Oh, I'm just... y'know. Regular ol' garden-variety monster." The grin widens. Above, a red light flashes. It's accompanied by repetitive beeping. Metal shutters roll down across the mirror. Judging by the way Cletus doesn't even look back, he's familiar with this whole procedure. He rolls his neck back, popping joints. "Remember: No pissing or shitting, yeah?" There's a faint tingling; the suppression field is starting to come down slowly -- little by little. Where Cletus's eye socket was once hollow, there's now... redness filling it. "That -- doesn't help me at all." Joshua's eyes flick to the mirror when the shutter begins to roll down. His jaw tightens, and though he's still slouching, by all appearances at a lazy kind of ease in his seat, his attention has sharpened intently on Cletus as the suppression field comes down. His own ability is focused fully on the other man, trying to feel out the edges of what is happening with Cletus's power. His brows furrow, just a little. He sits up -- a little straighter in his seat. "What, uh -- exactly am I supposed to do here aside from. Get pinkeye." The redness solidifies. There is a crinkling sound -- the sound of plastic cracking, splintering. Cletus is no longer missing his left forearm; it is now here, but blood-red -- some of it darker, some of it more pale. The redness is... liquid, but only in places; in other places, it's solidifying into something sharp and angular... crystallizing into harsh, jagged edges. His fingertips are like elongated blades... blades that dig into the plastic, carving into it little by little. "Dunno," Cletus says, and now his gums are blood-red, his teeth extending into sharp, jagged points -- the redness in that socket 'opens', and a moon-yellow orb peers out. His face is turning pink... blood is literally seeping out of his skin. "Not my job to tell you what to do, buddy. All they told me was not to fuckin' eat you." Joshua can feel it; the edges of it. The power to control blood. Harden it; soften it. Mold it. But only certain types. And beneath the surface, burning... hunger. Ravenous, mindless, feral hunger. He can feel it, in that moment -- as the plastic creaks and shreds beneath Cletus's red hand. It's like you're drowning, like you're desperate for air, your lungs burning -- your mind sinking into a panicked, feral state where you're fighting for a gulp of oxygen. Except it isn't oxygen that this power needs. It's blood. Blood that's throbbing, pulsing, flowing throughout Joshua's veins. Joshua is watching this transformation with slightly wider eyes, his hand pressing a little bit harder to the table, his breath just a bit quicker than it had been. He'd started to reach for his coffee again but some tie around when the knifelike-fingertips solidify, carve into the tabletop, he seems to lose much taste for this, just dropping his hand to his lap and instead focusing on the feeling of the warping blood around him. His teeth grit when he starts to pull this power into himself, make it his own -- it's somewhere along this process that the change happens. A shift from seeing the mechanics of it to truly knowing it, feeling it. For a beat his breath catches, eyes snapping to Cletus as he presses his palms down against the table, presses back in his chair -- -- but that reeling-away doesn't last long. The borrowed power is settling more comfortably into his skin -- his nostrils are flaring, his teeth baring. In the next moment he's lunging across the table toward Cletus, a snarl tearing up out of his throat; the jagged protrusion that breaks the skin of his forearm does so with a lot less fluidity than the other man's work, forming one solid sharp spike that's driving toward the other bloody forearm. "...!" Cletus -- Carnage -- makes a sound. His voice is different, now; deeper yet somehow more shrill, like a thunderous shriek. It sounds like an animal hissing. He lunges his blood-red forearm up, just as Joshua stabs into it -- through it -- with his own blood-red spike. And for a moment, blood mingles with blood, as two networks of writhing crimson wrestle with one another for control. The hissing, chittering sound grows louder and louder. Carnage is... growing, rising out of his chair, more slow and deliberate... threads of gleaming red-tinged saliva dripping from his sharpened teeth, the screeching hsss-hsss-hsss growing -- -- when the alarms blare and the suppression field comes slamming down. All at once, the blood evaporates, pulled back in to Carnage, and the hss-hsss-hss sound morphs into what it is -- wild, raucous laughter: "--oly SHIT, mother-fucker -- you're trying to eat ME?!" Cletus cackles, his 'good' arm gripping the table, leaned forward with a wide, manic grin. "Holy SHIT!" He seems gleefully pleased. Joshua slumps forward when the suppression field slams back into place, shoulders hunched, palms pressed hard against the edge of the table. He's a good deal paler than he was before, an ugly scab crusted on one forearm where the thick blood-spike had been. He's looking a bit queasy, now, his head shaking slow. "Holy shit," he's saying, too, though there's no laughter undergirding his words, just a heavy dragging horror. "-- holy shit." He swallows, lowering himself slowly back into his seat. "I don't think," his voice is almost steady, here, his glance toward the one-way mirror brief, "I want to do that again." He looks more directly at Cletus than at the glass. "I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting --" He shakes his head. "How do you control it?" "Ahahaaa, fuckin' hell that's--" Cletus is leaning up real close to Joshua, now -- to the point where it's probably a bit uncomfortable. Particularly considering just how wide that grin is. "--that's a first, goddamn! Nobody's ever tried to take a bite outta me before." He seems positively energized by this. Exhilarated, even. He reaches forward to touch the tip of that protruding scab, the gesture full of gentle fondness. Oh, the memories. "You ain't too good at puttin' it back, though. That's what gets you -- you gotta have a plan to put back every drop. Else you just squeeze yourself dry." Cletus's answer to Joshua's question comes a moment later. His eyebrows spring up; standing, he leans back, giving Joshua a bit more space. "Control it?" he says, his voice breathless with laughter and joy. "You don't control it, lil' Drac. It controls you. Only thing you get to do is decide whether you starve it..." He grins. "Or feed it." Joshua shies back again when Cletus leans in close, though there's not far for him to go, pressed against the hard plastic of the folding chair with a distinctly discomfited expression on his face when the other man reaches for the scab. A spasm of nausea crosses his expression, his gaze turning aside. "-- that's what gets you. Right." He doesn't fully manage to repress the shudder that follows when he folds his arms across his chest, his own fingers brushing over the scab. "That's it? That's no choice at all." Cletus shrugs, slumping back to his own chair -- the high from seeing someone actually take a stab at him (literally) seems to be waning; in its place comes the gnawing sense of hunger. For just a moment, the grin seemed genuine; now, it's just a face he's wearing, again. "Eh. Whaddya gonna do?" He shrugs. "Eat when you can..." His eyes, however briefly, flick back toward the opaque glass. "...starve when you can't." " What's can and can't, in here?" Joshua's hand lifts, turns over; he looks down at the scab, the flakes of blood still crumbling off his arm. He doesn't glance to the mirror, this time, though his head starts to turn just slightly that way when Cletus does. He just sinks further in his chair, exhaling heavily. "Feel like it's not just this thing controlling you." "Drink lots of water," Cletus mentions absently as Joshua picks at the scab. "Veggies, too -- anything with iron in it." He licks the back of his teeth, slumping even deeper into his chair. There's a whisper of a laugh, just a wisp of it, at Joshua's insinuation. "Maybe, yeah. But... monsters belong in cages, yeah? And you gotta admit..." Something authentic flickers behind that grin. "...they built me one hell of a cage." "Oh, yeah? I'll make sure to order extra steak next meal." Joshua tips his head back, looking up at the ceiling -- then over at the mirror. Back at Cletus. "I don't believe in monsters. Just people, and the choices we make." His mouth pulls to the side in a grimace. "Don't really believe in cages, either, but you're not wrong they made this one a bit overkill." "Overkill? Oh, man," and now Cletus's eyes roll back, like he's basking in some distant memory. "Like I said, it's a hell of a cage, but you ain't seen what they use it to hold. You just got a taste -- you saw what it's like when I'm starvin'." Lines of straight white teeth bare themselves in something that resembles the half-way point between a manic grin and a grimace: "Wait till you see me when I feed."