Cag clung on hard, digging his hard fingernails in deeper. He was having trouble due to an extremely large protuberance underneath him, poking his solar plexus each time the bounced on the creatures back. He grunted and saw the white dragonling fly and smash a jar upon the creature's nose. It was perfect. The monster raised it's head to roar and snap at the dragon, and Cag hurled the jar. It smashed against the creature's head directly between it's eyes but slightly down it's muzzle. Cag retracted his hold upon the creature, pulling claws from the monster's flesh as it flung itself again to get him off. He sailed through the air, somersaulting and hitting the ground feet first. He bents his legs as he impacted, letting strong thigh bones take the brunt of the force and he slid back several feet through soft dirt.
He looked up, watching the spinosaurous with interest to see if it was going to continue attacking or not. The magnificent saurian stumbled slightly in Mengele's direction, then collapsed face first into the dirt, a leg twitching slightly behind it as passed out. Cag walked towards the behemoth, and looked it up and down.
"Dr. Mengele!! You need to come see this now!!" He sat, staring at the odd lump that had been pressing against him. It was something severed off, other teeth and claw marks around the odd bump. Cag went around to the other side of the beast and gasped. Flattened against the body, almost grown back into it from apparent lack of use and movement, was what appeared to be the remains of a wing. The bone make up of the ribbed exterior where the flaps of flesh would go, and the powerful bone. That was what had been pressing into his chest. The remains of the mainstay of the wing on the opposite. Apprarently that wing had been ripped off long ago, in infancy and the creature had never had the opportunity to use them, so it simply kept this one folded out of the way so long it had slowly began to grow back into it's body.
Post by Joseph Goebbels on Aug 16, 2011 19:12:40 GMT -5
Mengele came over to the beast and ignored Caguuror. He knelt and began taking vitals. A beast of this size should be in the area of twenty to forty beats per minute...he pushed his palm against the animal's neck, then scowled and tucked a hand inside of its thigh. There. A large vein about the thickness of his hips was pulsing powerfully. He counted the beats under his breath, then satisfied, went to the dinosaur's eyes and lifted a lid. He shined a small pen light against it's retinas, seeing them retract under the sudden invasion. "Stable." Mengele grunted, clicking off the light and taking out some instruments from his bag. "Bala, measure exactly how long, tall, it is." he instructed sharply, tossing a tape measure to the dragonling. Bala eagerly went to go measure while Mengele withdrew a needle. He took blood samples from a small vein in the wrist of the beast, then cut away a small skin sample and put it in a jar of alcohol.
Bala eagerly went to Caguuror to see what he'd found. "Josef, it has wings!" he bleated eagerly, but wasn't surprised to see Mengele completely ignore him. All in due time. The doktor had a process that wouldn't be interrupted, even by groundbreaking discoveries. All he cared about was the beast's stability and how much time they had. Bala leapt over the side of the spinosaurus to see Mengele finish cutting through a tendon. The doktor lay aside the great claw and went to work stitching the wound. "I wanted a specimen." he grumbled when Bala gave him a hurt look.
"Faith moves mountains, but intelligence moves them to the right place."
Caguuror glared impatiently at the doctor, tapping his foot and muttering under his breath. When the doctor finally removed a claw he spoke up so the doctor could finally hear him.
"Doctor, I am sure if you would take the time of your day to come look at this, you will find that all your samples taken will be MUCH more valuable! This is no spinosaurus. It is something much more remarkable!"
Cag tried to pry the edge of the wing up and way from the reptile's body, but fail. The wing and grown completely back into the animal's side, leaving the imprint of it and the skeletal structure embedded in the monster's own scales. If Cag had attacked from this side, he would have had a hell of a time trying to find a way to pierce the double hide, but also would have many more hand holds. He walked back around the animal eyed where the stump of a wing was. He gasped again. The wound he had created to hold on had been fairly deep if not really lethal. But it was already healed over, scars formed upon where he had dug beneath it's hide and flesh to hang on for dear life.
"Doctor!! I really, REALLY think you should see this!! Not only does it have wings, but it has healed almost instantly!" Cag shook his head, astounded. What could it possible mean. The wing looked completely draconian, and did the healing rate of the wound. Yet was lay before them was unmistakably a spinosaurus, except for the obvious addition of wings.
Post by Joseph Goebbels on Aug 17, 2011 12:08:31 GMT -5
Josef watched the wound he had just made on the animal's foreleg close over slowly. He peeled away the cloth he'd been using to dab away blood and saw new flesh burgeon underneath the fresh stitches, popping them open. He frowned and saw the small square where he had cut skin off slowly knitting over. If he was right, and this creature had regenerative powers like this...then it would wake up sooner than expected. They had to keep it drugged. Josef went over and unscrewed a jar right next to the animal's face, letting the gas slowly disperse into its nostrils. It wouldn't overdose, just keep it asleep.
He walked over to the dragonling and the shapeshifter to see what they were on about. He looked at the vestigial wing and ran his hand along it. It could be just the impression of a wing, an odd birthmark...an extra limb that had grown from birth. Or it could be flight phalanges. He looked at Bala. "Get me the larger scalpel, a squeeze bottle of alcohol, and specimen jars." he told the dragonling. "I'm going to see if this thing began to grow wings at one point in its life." If it didn't have muscles or bones there, then it was just a coincidence. But if it had structure...he would be making one of the most intimate discoveries on the earth.
A pity he didn't have an X-ray machine, then he could dispense with the cutting.
"Faith moves mountains, but intelligence moves them to the right place."
Cag nodded, understanding the need to take specimens of this and find out if this was really a wing. However, from the fact the the other side had the beginnings of the same thing but it had been removed Cag already knew it had grown wings. For somebody like himself, who use to be able to grow wings, it was a simple deduction. But for a man of science like Mengele was, Cag knew it had to be validated with actual proof.
Walking around the creature, Cag eyed it carefully, looking for any other abnormalities. He knelt next to the creature's head, and gazed at it intently. He looked at the long snout like maw and began to press along the edges. Feeling what he was looking for, he pried the mouth open and looked at the two holes leading into the jaws of the creature. He slowly grew a long talon from his fingernail and began to cut along the jawline, following the tube leading beneath the jaws. As he worked, the wound healed up quickly behind him, and he growled with annoyance. Finding what he was looking for, he quickly cut out from each side of the creature's jaws to baseball sized pouches, and simply held them apart, eyeing them as the wounds he had created healed smoothly over.
"Uh, doctor. If you don't mind, can I borrow some glass jars?" He called out. He knew exactly what he held in his hands, and kept them wall away from each other, knowing that if he didn't it would be his life. He held, in his hands, the two fire glands of a dragon. Two separate chemicals that when mixed formed a natural sort of napalm. And he had every intention of keeping them, but separate, to use at a later time. Being stripped of his usual powers, he needed the small advantage this would give him.
Post by Josef Mengele on Aug 18, 2011 12:51:49 GMT -5
Mengele ignored Caguuror for a moment, cutting into the winglike structure and finding a few disjointed bones. Very few muscles, which indicated that this was a vestigial limb that was being reabsorbed into the body. Possbly being repurposed for other uses. Mengele gently amputated one of the flight phalanges and slid it into a jar. He'd analyze it against x-rays of Bala's wing he had in his bag. When he saw blood coming from the creature's mouth he glared nastily and walked to Caguuror. "What do you think you're doing?" he snarled. "You're not clean. You haven't washed your hands, you cut with an inferior instrument, and you've nearly removed glands that weren't supposed to be removed. Set them down immediately before you give it a fucking infection." His voice was low, cold. Of course, Cag's find proved that it was a dragon...perhaps a hybrid between dragon and dinosaur. A unique mixture of genetics. But with the muscles around the flame sacs nearly ruined...who knew if it would be able to breathe fire again, if it had been able to at all?
Mengele would probably never know, and that angered him more than anything.
Bala was upset. His master was taking samples. Small cuts that wouldn't hurt the beast or its chances of survival. Caguuror was trying to remove flame glands. He shifted back and forth, listening to the angry words that Mengele was hissing at Caguuror. The dragonling didn't like what was happening at all. He took off and settled down on the top of the building, looking down at his master and Cag.
Cag let the doctor's words float through one ear and out the other. He didn't really care much if this creature got an infection or not. As quickly as it was healing, an infection wouldn't bother this creature. And the lose of flame glands? Look what it had done to this place! Cag looked around at the carnage it had wrecked upon innocent people. If he had just permanently removed one of this creatures weapons, so be it. And he told Menegle so.
"Who cares! This creature is a menace. It has killed hundreds. You see the result of it's work around us right now. I am willing to risk killing it, which will NOT happen. Look at how fast the beast heals. It's muscles will reposition themselves, and the fire glands will more then likely regrow as well. It is all good." He glared at him, then turned his back and stalked towards the compound, kicking around and looking for glass jars. He kicked through the wreckage, hunting intently. He finally found two small glass jars, and he knelt and carefully used a talon to slice one open and let the extremely viscous fluid to ooze into the jar. As soon as the first gland was empty, he sliced the second open and repeated the action, letting the fluid flow into the second jar. He set both glands on the ground, a ways away from each other and twisted the lids upon the jars hard, checking to make sure no fluid had leaked.
Finishing, he wiped his hands upon his pants and stood. He knelt, picking the jars up and slidding them into pockets on is pants that held them snug so they didn't jostle around to much. He then picked up the glands and eyed them. He tossed one a little ways away and then the other. The second gland landed ontop of the first and the two exploded into a burst of flames exactly as an extremely loud roar echoed from the distance. Whirling around, Cag gazed at the forest across the small stretch of ocean, the trees whipping and swaying as something large, very large, moved through the jungle.
Post by Josef Mengele on Aug 19, 2011 19:31:23 GMT -5
Mengele scowled at the man. The boy. He instantly felt that he was lower than himself, he obviously had no idea of the impact this scientific find would have. He sneered when the man collected the fluid in the flame glands, and balked even worse when he threw them away. Mengele probably would have gathered them and poked the cells to make more of the incendiary fluid...but they burst into flames before he could walk over there. He glared at Caguuror and went back to the beast, taking a small sample from the sail. The great beast must've used it to regulate body temperatures, which in Africa would have been a great advantage. He went back to the animal's thigh and pressed his hand against it. It would wake soon. He eyed the backwards facing pelvis. Hips like a bird. Perhaps dragons had evolved from dinosaurs the same way birds had? Two splits of the evolutionary path?
It would be groundbreaking. If dragon bones were hollow, if they shared the same hip characteristics and breast bones, with air sacs in the vertebrae, he could confirm this theory. He eyed Bala for a moment, then a roar caught his ears. "We must go." he told the dragon, putting his sample jars and bags into his pack. "He will wake soon. He had wanted to get urine and stool samples, but those were fairly impossible with the beast asleep. He'd need it in a lab to get any more complicated samples. "Thank you for creating an explosion to lead another beast to us." Mengele sneered at Caguuror. "With any luck he'll eat us. Into the facility. It will keep us safe for the moment, half of it is underground."
He also wanted to analyze the samples, and needed a lab for such an undertaking. He would not leave until he got the answers he wanted.
Ca'guuror sincerely doubted that little burst of flame, definitely not even classifiable as an explosion, had attracted this other creature. It was to close, to quick. Perhaps a sibling of this one's, or another relative? Heaven forbid it be a mother or father. If this was a youngster, what would an older one look like. He was transfix, wanting to see what this new creature would look like, but he new very well that Menegle had a exceedingly good point. The facility would offer some shelter. Then again, it may not. One just never knew for certain. Cag turned and bolted to the door, jerking it open and holding it as wide as he could get it to open so Mengele could get through and Bala.
As he turned, holding the door, he saw a two dark shadows lift from the jungle on the other side of the small strait. The shadows dropped together in rhythm, then lifted again, and as they continued this pattern a third shadow emerged. Giant, and blocking out a swath of sky as if a freight liner had suddenly sprouted wings. Cag's face went slightly ashen. He had never seen anything such as this beast. It was as hideous as it was large, hardened crests of bone and scales, clusters of spikes and ridges. It looked almost like a hodge podge of things put together.
One thing was for certain. It was definitely draconian, and this creature could certainly breath fire as an enormous, billowing cloud of flames ripped from its dagger lined maw as it flew towards the island. A swath of ocean vaporized at the heat, throwing clouds of steam into the air. Having seen enough, Cag threw himself backwards into the door, kicking it shut after the others had enter. He stood up slowly and looked at Mengele.
"It would seem, my good doctor, that we managed to piss off mommy exceptionally well."
Post by Josef Mengele on Aug 20, 2011 22:01:38 GMT -5
Mengele listened to the larger dragon outside. She posed a serious threat to the facility, and, like Caguuror had said...was quite possibly the female looking for her son. He felt the blast of heat from the doorway as Bala squirmed through, then the slam. They were in darkness. Mengele moved to flick a lightswitch, but a small explosion and a loud hiss from outside told him she'd just murdered the generator. He curled his fingers away from the switch in the darkness, putting them on Bala's head. The dragonling whimpered, disliking the darkness. "Come." Mengele told him quietly, walking down the hallway. This was one of the few times he depended on the dragon. Bala could see in the darkness with his nictating membranes. Mengele, with his eyes being of simple construction, could not.
Bala led Mengele downwards, into the very rock of the island, where the rooms were dark and cool. He whimpered when his bulk accidentally ran into a hospital gurney. Mengele put his hand on the lightswitch, and prayed. He flicked it up. The sharp buzz of electricity met his ears, and the fluorescent bulbs flickered to life. A laboratory...he missed such a beautiful sight. White tiles, cleanliness, specimen containers, gurneys with strong restraints...he almost sighed wistfully. Bala edged away from the creepy contraptions. "I'm...I'm going to go find somewhere to sit." he mumbled, beating a hasty retreat into the darkness. Mengele sneered at his back and set the specimens out on the counter.
Ca'guuror followed the two, not really able to see all that well but listening to their foot steps and moving behind them. When a bang sounded, he stopped and held still until light suddenly flared to life he blinked and his eyes adjusted quickly enough. He looked around the room, it was obviously a laboratory of some kind, perhaps a hospital even.
He reached out and pushed a gurney slightly, and it moved with no hesitation or squeaks. A very well taken care of place indeed, up until recently when all the people had been slaughtered. He paused, listening to several loud bonging like noises drifting down the hallway they had just left. He really hoped the momma dragon gave up sometime soon. He would hate to have to go out and fight her. The doctor didn't seem like he would be much help, and Bala was to young and couldn't even really use his breath weapon. Though perhaps he could get the dragonling to let him have some. He stepped towards Mengele slowly.
"Doctor, I have a question. Bala's breath weapon is acid. Is there anything it won't eat through? Perhaps something we could store a little bit in. If the she-dragon does not give up, we might actually have to do something. If we can store up some of Bala's acid, we could throw it on her where it could prove to be extremely painful. Not enough to permanently damage or kill her, just to distract her so we can get away. I want to make take precautions before that time comes."
Post by Josef Mengele on Aug 20, 2011 22:34:41 GMT -5
"Wood, metal, glass, flesh." Mengele said, putting the blood samples into an anti-coagulating tray. He turned the machine on, watching the vial being gently tipped back and forth. Clots couldn't form if blood was in constant motion. "She will give up once she realizes that she cannot get in. Or if she does, she will merely seal us underground. Once her pup wakes she'll be so absorbed in making sure he's alright, and getting him to safety, that she'll ignore us. She will however return once her babe is safe, but it gives us a window of opportunity." he said, putting the claw in a specimen tray. He had skin samples to look at, blood to analyze, and the phalange from the wing. Unfortunately if this beast ever planned on flying that wing would be almost unuseable...but from what he'd seen the wings were more of a vestigial thing. Not so in the mother who was clearly flight capable.
Regressive mutation then?
Had to be. "Go play with Bala." he told the shapeshifter dismissively. He didn't like him after what he had done. Mengele's alterations were those that seriously wouldn't impact the beast. Caguuror removing its glands meant it might die from being unable to use a breath weapon. Bala relied pretty heavily on his in a fight.
Cag sighed, rolling his eyes. Obviously the doctor didn't like him much, if at all. Frankly, Ca'guuror didn't care. You could have some people like you, but not all people. Cag simply did what he thought was best. And being prepared was best right now. The she dragon might give up and check on her offspring, but what if both didn't leave and ended up attacking the base? It was a slightly frightening though. He grimaced and moved after Bala. Spotting the dragon, he walked towards his and knelt beside him.
Cag sighed, and leaned against the young drake. He was getting irritable and frustrated again. He needed to calm himself and think clearly. There had to be a way out of this base besides the main entrance. There was always a secondary escape, just in case of emergencies. He wondered if Bala would help him, but he didn't know how to ask the drake. He rested his elbows on his knees and laid his face in his hands, pressing on his temples and trying to think clearly.
Post by Josef Mengele on Aug 20, 2011 23:16:24 GMT -5
Bala lifted his head when Caguuror came in. "I know he's harsh. But you get used to it." he told him in German, gently. He put his forepaw, lacking the the index claw, over Caguuror's knee. "Oh I wish we could talk..." he grumbled under his breath, getting up. "Hey! Want to see something? I've been hiding it." he said. It was in german, but the conspiratorial, excited tone was something easily translateable. He sat back on his haunches in front of Caguuror, and closed his eyes. He bared his teeth slightly with effort...but his draconian features started to pale into something else entirely.
In a few moments a boy with completely white hair and large, beautiful blue eyes sat before Caguuror. "Now you've got to keep it secret....erm.." he struggled for the english word. "Secret. Hidden?" he stumbled over the word. He settled down. He was quite naked, being new to magic he hadn't thought up getting himself any clothes before trying the transformation. He was also missing half of each of his index fingers, amputated neatly at the second knuckle. When he grinned he was also missing his baby canines, the replacements for which were cutting through his gums.
Cag smiled as Bala put his forepaw on his knee, then nodded slowly as he spoke, with that tone of voice that meant it was secret. His eyes widened greatly as the dragon shapeshifted in to a young boy, and Cag gave him two thumbs up with vigor. He smiled, and slowly let his own features shift and melt slightly. His hair became black and cross cropped to his scalp, and his eyes went from solid gold to a steely grey. His muscles toned down slightly and he became almost average looking as he used his own shape shifting abilities.
Looking over his shoulder at the doctor, he made sure to stand infront of the young dragon, now in human form to hide his new found power. He held his finger vertically across his lips, then jerked a thumb at Mengele and shook his head, smiling happily. This was something he knew about. Shape shifting was his power, his innate gift. He had been born one. And it was the only power he had left after he lost all his others. It was exciting to see somebody else be able to do it. Bala's nakedness didn't bother Cag or even phase him in the slightest. He had that happen for a long time untill he had learned to form clothing and stuff upon his body when he shape shifted to avoid drawing attention.
