this is the anti-spam log: take 2 [semi-closed]

[substitutable]

Date & Time: throughout June; label your own dates!
Location: places!
Characters: the Mekakushi-dan + friends (one-on-one threads, open through plotting!)
Summary:

a collection of threads throughout June following the Dan's activity with one another as well friends connected to the Dan, put into one post to avoid spamming the comms. Sometimes a dan roll call.

Warnings: Uuuuuh idk lots of gross sick people. Dying! Sad teenagers and friends!

The virus is spreading, and even the Dan is catching it. And so are their friends. This is whatever they decide to do during June while sick. Prose and action spam friendly!

Comments

[silenceandcards]

[He judges the urgency of that request by the tone of Jade's voice, and moves with appropriate speed to the fridge while mindful of anything stacked on the floor. It would hinder Jade's work should he accidentally knock something over. He learned, from experience, the first time he knocked over a stack of papers at the Daily Days when he moved to avoid a little girl scampering through the room.

As he takes the container with the mixture out of the fridge and places it where Jade can reach, he eyes the work, then thinks about what he was told about the conta é oro fo the Martillo Family he knew back home. An alchemist. A strange sort of scientist just like this guy.]

... Thought you were a soldier.

[clinical]

[Keith is good—in fact, he is probably better than any lab assistant Jade has ever had. He doesn't have Dist's whiny loudness, nor Jasper's quiet hesitance. Then again, Jasper was dealing with a truly unethical science; his scruples can't be held against him.

Yet Jade finds it easy to work with Keith. He finds Keith's company comfortable. Jade appreciates the way Keith communicates.

In return, Jade speaks with Keith differently than he does with others. For most, people hear twists in his tone: the turn of sarcasm, the bite of wryness, the rise of mockery. But when Jade talks to Keith, his voice is almost uninflected. He does not use all the tricks he learned over the years to compromise with the world that found his coldness strange. His tone returns to the monotony it had when he was a child.]

I was involved in military research. [Jade is so used to it being past tense that it's with dull surprise he remembers: he is involved in military research. He is an active researcher again.] Am, rather. Though my interest in medicine is unrelated to my work in the science division.

[As he says it, he finishes stirring in the one mixture. He moves to the one Keith brought for him—] The white bowl, please. [—and places his palms to the table beneath it. A glyph appears, and fonons gather.

A perfect duplicate of that mixture appears beside it. Jade repeats the process so that he has four times the quantity of the mixture.]

[silenceandcards]

[There were a few white bowls. Keith glances at them all quickly, and stacking them together, carries them over before lining them up by size. He figures it was one of the bigger ones, but it didn't hurt to bring them all. He'll take away the rest once Jade chooses what he needs.

Having taken an interest in the alchemy that made him and the others immortal, Keith had taken some time since coming here to read up on it in the library, although it seemed that there were slightly different forms of it in all the different worlds that connected to Exsilium, so he couldn't learn which was most relevant to him. In the end, he took what information he remembered from the readings, deciding it was probably not necessary for him to know beyond what resulted from the alchemy, rather than happenings in the past that resulted in his body.

What he did know, was that people called it science more often than they called it black magic. So he doesn't raise a protest to Jade calling whatever he was doing science. He wasn't going to complain, when he knew the man was trying to make medicine for the kids across the hall and their friends.]

It's useful now.

[And that seems to be all Keith thinks about Jade's interest. Everyone had a hobby or an ambition outside their career.]

[clinical]

[Jade nods in agreement. The quadruple quantity of the mixture goes into the top white bowl, and then he adds in what was on the stove. He pours it into a glass distiller.]

This will take half an hour to distill. Then it should be ready to give to the children.

[He leans back against the counter, hands in his pockets. There is probably something else he should do. But he also knows that he needs at least some rest.]

Do you know how your immortality functions? [Good job just easing into that question, Jade.]

[silenceandcards]

Everything that leaves my body returns to it. If I die, I revive in minutes; the more I get one type of injury, the faster it heals.

[Those are surface facts, merely those he had observed on his own since coming to Exsilium, mostly during the battle in his world a couple weeks ago. Even if Firo had that Szilard guy's memories, what the kid had wasn't everything. And no matter how well Maiza could explain, it would've been simply impossible for him to get uneducated thugs like Firo, Keith, and Berga (Luck might've managed, but even Luck only learned from books) to wrap their heads around some magical mumbo jumbo. So they hadn't tried. He can't tell Jade anything else.]

Water?

[clinical]

Thank you.

[Both to the question and the declaration. He thinks about it.] Do you think it would be productive to examine a sample of your blood for a cure or vaccine?

[silenceandcards]

No.

[And instead of explain, he'll show. He could easily use any cutlery Jade left around the table since it's not like it'll leave contamination or stains anyway, but he reaches into his own pocket regardless, pulling out a small knife and pulling the blade out. Rolling his sleeve up, he extends his arm where Jade can see. He doesn't hesitate.

As any normal human arm would when cut with a knife, blood bubbles up through the broken skin and trickles down toward the ground Although he cut himself quite deeply Keith shows no reaction to it, quietly watching and waiting -- and soon, only mere seconds after, the blood starts to resist gravity. It slows, then quivers, vibrating back and forth as if unsure which direction to go, and then it starts to move backwards. As if time was rewinding, like a swarm of fire ants crawling back to its nest, Keith's blood disappears back into his body, leaving not a drop behind.

When it's over, there's no sign of a wound left on Keith's arm, and he unrolls his sleeve again.]

You wouldn't be able to keep it out.

[clinical]

[Jade observes. He can't afford to ask himself the questions that must be asked in the face of this by Jade the Necromancer. There isn't the time for that kind of certainty.

He could replicate it. But if he did, would that then leave Keith with a greater quantity of blood attempting to find a place in his body, a place already occupied? Or, if the blood didn't return, would the replicated blood fail to carry over the immortality that makes it worth study?

The risks would simply be too great. He couldn't ask such a thing.]

Unfortunate. Thank you regardless, Keith.

[silenceandcards]

... It isn't immunity to illness.

[This, he at least understands. Explaining what he does know would be helpful to Jade, he thinks, and so he will. All his sentences are short, and while he usually maintains his silence around the roommate, for now he opens his mouth.]

Time doesn't move forward. If it does, it goes back.

[clinical]

[Two thoughts: one, that this does indeed make it useless to what he needs.

Two, the words that Professor Nebilim taught him. It's precisely because there is a limit to life that people can change.]

I see. Then it indeed won't serve our purposes.

[silenceandcards]

[He nods, not apologizing because it's not like any of this is his fault.]

But I won't get sick, so if you need an able body, you know where to find me.

[clinical]

[And of course, Jade doesn't hold Keith to blame for it.]

That will be helpful shortly.

[It should be done now. Jade stirs the mixture one last time, then pours it into separate bottles. These have already been labelled with the kind of medicine and the recommended dosages.]

Would you like to take these to the children? I imagine they need checking up on about now regardless.

[silenceandcards]

I can take them. [So he holds out his hands, thought not demandingly. He'll wait for Jade to hand them over before he looks at his roommate and tells him he should rest too.]

[clinical]

[Jade hands over the bottles. And does not have a hard time deciphering that look. He has to smile just a little.] Overworking is a folly of the young. I'm old enough to remember that I need an afternoon nap.

[silenceandcards]

[It isn't a folly of the young, in Keith's opinion. Last he checked, his father wasn't that young when he finally worked himself to his death.]

Good. You need anything?

[clinical]

Not at the moment. Thank you, Keith.

[silenceandcards]

[He nods. He also takes one more look at Jade to make sure he really is (as much as he can tell, with 1920s medical knowledge and Kate really being better at this sort of thing than he ever was), before he will go to deliver the medicine to the children.]