snowblindrpg | [log] Blood Writing On the Wall [closed]

[After a day of collecting glass shards and jumping as every single window in the school kept seeming to shatter as soon as he got near it, House makes his way to the equipment shed. He hasn't been eager to see other people for some time, but Kesara and her microscope have piqued his waning interest. He doesn't really care that she wants lessons or whether she's gotten her saltpeter and sulfur. He just wants that scope.

He's the first into the shed and sets about polishing up his glass shards for later use. When the door opens, he glances up to see who it is.]

Hey, kid.

[Despite her excitement to be delivering the microscope, and seeing what reward it might bring, Kesara is in a foul mood. She'd bungled up the business with Zach and Dr. Epps something absolutely terrible. And it was her own fault - all her own fault, and to be angry about it, even at herself, is the only sensible choice when the other option is to agonize over driving Zach away. How could he have gone away? He was hers.

She can't repeat the mistake with Dr. House. She is grim and resolute, which is a strange expression on her young face, softening only slightly at the sight of him. Do things right this time, think and do right...

She steps up with confidence, already sliding her pack off her back.] Hullo, Dr. House, sir. I have the - oh, what are you doing?

Sample slides for your 'oh.' [He quirks a brow.] Let's see it in the cold and compound magnification flesh.

Ohh. You won't need those.

[Some good cheer breaks through the steely resolve. She kneels and retrieves a well-wrapped bundle - a fabric storage-case, inside of which is a massive fluffy towel, inside of which is a pillowcase. From there, finally, emerges the microscope, and after it a book, which Kesara opens to reveal a handful of sample slides stored safely between the pages.]

I have everything. See!

[He nods his head. Okay. Impressed.]

I'd take my hat off to you, half-pint, but it's freaking cold. Set it down over here. I can prop my tablet up for light.

[While Kesara places it where he's indicated, House turns to hi bag and pulls out a scalpel along with his first aid kit. Band-Aids should be enough for this. No need to bother with the liquid stitches.]

You got your own paper and pen? While I'm getting this set up, I want you to write the words you know in Chinese. Then give me a list of things you wanna learn.

Your hat isn't as nice as mine anyway.

[The joy of impressing bolsters her mood yet further, and she's happy to put down the microscope as asked, though she looks curiously at the scalpel once she's done. Would he cut himself? Well, he is a doctor.]

Don't hurt the hand you write with. [There - that sounds disinterested enough, she thinks. She can get to the task of writing, which she sits down to perform with zealous concentration with her little notebook and charcoal sticks. Exile in Norbinfury had not stopped her practising. As for the list of things to learn... he already knows she can't write that, so she starts thinking and memorising one, mumbling now and then through her memory tricks.]

Damn. Here I was gonna dice up a finger or two over here. [He wiggles the fingers on his right hand before going back to his efforts. House gets a slide and band aid ready and carefully pricks one of the fingers on his left hand with the scalpel, squeezing out a drop of it onto the slide, setting the cover, and moving that to the microscope. It takes him another minute to get his light sources set and bandage his finger, but then he peering into the scope, adjusting the focus.

He clicks his tongue, annoyed, as he sits back on his heels.]

Resolution isn't high enough. Maybe...

[He checks and there is a free slot, so he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a pair of binoculars.]

Good thing Quark found these.

[And he'll set to work pulling the binoculars apart with his tools to get at one of the lenses. Sorry, Kesara. This is good, but it needs supplements from Quark's find to make it worthwhile. Teamwork! Or failure on your part.]

Edited 2016-05-27 02:28 (UTC)

[It's a little hard to focus when she longs to see what he is doing, but he gave her an instruction and she knows how adults of Dr. House's type hate being hovered about. So that she only sneaks up minute gazes from her work, until she hears Quark's name.

Her ears are immediately pricked. What's this about Quark? What did he find? Kesara looks up from her notebook, gaze sharp as it lands on the binoculars. Her mouth pulls down and forehead crinkles tightly. Quark had those? A prime piece of surveying equipment. What would Quark do with them, anyway?

She doesn't need to ask what House is doing with the lenses. She isn't stupid. She does sound a bit nettled when she does talk, though.] Where did he find them?

[Someone's jealous. Interesting.]

Shelley Derricks' house. That's where he gave 'em to me, anyway. I'm sure you kids can talk all about it when he gets back.

[House extracts a lens as he speaks and carefully polishes it up before setting it down. He uses a little water to thoroughly clean his scalpel, then pulls out his hammer and olive oil. A bit of the oil goes on his fingers and he smears that across the edges of the lens before laying it flat on the floor and bowing over it to begin scoring the glass with his scalpel. It won't be enough on the first pass, but that's what the hammer is for.]

Is he the only one with you?

[Oh, they will talk, all right. She's heard the name Shelley Derricks before. What does Quark know about her? Why must Quark be in the way?]

At the school, yes. Terezi and Vriska travelled with me too... did he also make a deal? Are you teaching him too?

[She manages to sound flippant, because a respectable amount of her attention is also occupied by watching him work the lenses. She'd seen glass-workers before, but not lens-makers, and she follows him with the fascination of children the world over observing the new and strange.]

Where did you learn how to do that?

Nope. He's just an idiot who gives me things for free. [So you have that on Quark, Kesara. Or maybe not? Quark is a useful minion that House doesn't have to worry about paying back. Is that better or worse than the clever girl who charges?] Started teaching him piano, though. I was bored. [And he teaches Quark on a whim rather than demanding payment. What fun!'

With the initial lead line, House picks up the hammer and begins going back over the score with his scalpel, adding gentle little taps. He has to pause and honestly consider Kesara's question, though.]

We were making mosaics in class when I was seven or something like that. Teacher wouldn't let me cut my own glass, so I watched him and improvised. The asshole gave me detention. Apparently a lot of grown-ups get pissed when you're smarter than they are.

[Precocious child, meet former precocious child. You probably don't want to grow up to be him.]

[They are exactly the kind of circles that her mind is set to spinning at, though not without wondering - she is precocious - if House is deliberately leading her on them. He's like her. He's a liar and he gets what he wants in the ways he knows. What does he want? The microscope for the lessons was a fair trade, if he makes good on it. She doesn't mind if he teaches Quark something useless like piano - any old officer's wife in Simla can teach piano. She doesn't care.]

Oah, that annoys everyone. Children, too, [she notes dryly. This is hardly any kind of adult wisdom.

She takes a little time after that to complete her list of characters. He can work. She also needs to work. And brood - no - scheme.]

I'm done! [The announcement is cheerful. No brooding for him. It's none of his business what she's going to do about Quark.] Are you done? I'm curious too.

[He is done and presently just adjusting the focus on... well, now. That's interesting.]

Come look at this. [House motions to her, moving aside.] Tell me exactly what you see, everything. I'll tell you what I saw after.

[It's not quite the microscope she was interested in, but that too will do - it will definitely do since he seems to want her opinion, and she approves of that. She comes up, a little excited, and peers in.]

I see... there are these little specks? Is that normal? I've only seen blood through a microscope once before.

[Excellent. House doesn't let on quite yet that he's pleased. He's also pulling off his band aid as he sets up another pair of slides for use.]

Nope. Not normal at all. Could be a fluke. We'll get some additional samples from me. [There's a pause before he looks at her.] Wanna see your own blood under the scope? [It would help to have more than one subject to check.]

So there is something! [She is immediately alert and pleased, forgetting, for the moment, the issue of Quark and the part of others in the discovery. Discovery itself is the important part, in the end - she may not always remember that, but these moments remind her. Like a little breath of fresh air.

She nods at once and holds out her hand without even hesitating. He can prick her with the scalpel all he wants. After stabbing herself up the nose with a bit of rubble, she considers herself inured to pain.]

Here, do it!

[He uses water and then some of his hand sanitizer to clean the blade of the scalpel. A daub of the sanitizer is also placed on the pad of her ring finger. He sets everything up again before taking her hand - his own have the barest tremor to them and look thinner than they should be, rather like the rest of him. House steadies himself before taking the blade to her, though.

It's a momentary pain, and then he's turning her hand over, squeezing out three drops of blood onto a succession of slides. Then it's a swipe to clean things up, and she has a band aid placed over the wound.

He gets one of the slides set up for her, then prepares the scalpel and more slides for himself.]

Tell me what you see again. Like it was with mine?

[True to her bold declaration, Kesara never flinches at the process or the prick, just watches it all with interest. Not just the technical details - House's hands, as well. When she feels the faint trembling in them, there is an odd swelling of pain in her stomach. She thinks he must be very tired, and is very sorry that she'd lost her tea brick. She would very much have liked to make him a cup of tea.

There's no option of that, though, and she isn't sure he'd appreciate it anyway - not enough to make up for being upset at her catching him being tired. Maybe she can think of another offering. For now she just steals a glance up, just to look at his face, a gesture meant to reassure her more than him, really. She's subdued as she heads for the microscope again.]

It's the same, yes. [The implications of that dawn after a moment. She looks away from the lens and down onto her hands with sudden suspicion.] Are we sick?

Yes. [People are randomly developing phantom pain and other maladies. He's not going to pretend for the sake of her feelings.] MN Poisoning. Ten to one, those specks are our MN. Which I'm pretty sure are Medical Nanites or Nanomachines... maybe Nanobots. Tiny machines, medical purposes. Our blood is saturated with them, which means any crap they're pumping out while they're working is getting put directly into our systems - every system because your blood goes everywhere.

[He pricks himself again and squeezes out more blood, two more slides for himself.]

[Kesara is not particularly fussed over feelings - not of fear, anyway. Perhaps they are sick, but she's not feeling it, so working herself up to feeling it would be a mistake she knows better than to make by now. She sits back and keeps looking at her hands, carefully turning them one way and another, wondering how many MN fit in each finger.]

That's very silly, [she concludes after a long moment's contemplation.] If they are for medical purposes, why are they making us sick? It can't be what they normally do.

Ever heard the phrase 'The dose makes the poison?' Anything can kill you. Medication can kill you if you take too much of it. That's why you get prescribed a certain amount, and you take it like the pharmacist or apothecary or whatever the hell it is in your time tells you to take it. They're making us sick because there are too many of them, would be my guess. Or we've got an older model, if you wanna believe Winter that MN poisoning is a thing of the past. Technology improves. We find out something we thought wasn't dangerous actually was. The machines they're using on us might be something that didn't get its factory settings fixed to deal with the problem.

Or maybe they just broke. [That honestly sounds like the simplest explanation to her, who comes from a time in which machines break as often as they work.]

So much else in this town doesn't work like it should. The tablets don't - not really, since there is so much Alexander says he doesn't know... I bet he wouldn't know how to fix them either, but I can ask. Unless you think it's some sort of secret. A scientific secret.

Partially, maybe. [He'll allow that as a possibility, but he's dubious given the regular injections.] Not completely. They're still working well enough to stop that spider chick killing herself when she chugged drain cleaner, or whatever it was she was drinking. Plus, that's what was healing us back before the Admin shut down their emergency protocols.

Go ahead and ask, though. Only reason we found out we could prescribe anything is because someone asked when we thought we couldn't.

[He'll give Watson that credit, at the very least.]

[One more day around the school before he heads south again. The piano is too much of a temptation not to, even when he knows he needs to go and repeat his experiment for more answers... or simply to have an end to things.

He does some warm-ups and then finds himself playing a rather wistful tune. House doesn't sing, but the character of the song may be plain to anyone listening in the school today. Most of the rest of the songs he'll play until disturbed are in this and a jazz theme.

House is planning to make another announcement about the blood, though. For now, though, he's just playing for himself, rather than to be an ass.]

[log] Blood Writing On the Wall [closed]

Day 115

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Day 116

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