All his life, he'd been met with unknowable standards and expected to meet them anyway, test after test, experiment after experiment. It's only here, on some other planet, that he finally can see what those standards even are in three examples of what a First Class SOLDIER is supposed to be (and one that thought he was but didn't quite to his estimation measure up, but A+ for effort). Even taking himself out of the equation, they seemed .. utterly fearless. Unburdened by the worries and anxieties that plagued him in spite of what seemed to be an extreme level of emotional involvement. These changes, nothing more than the latest irritation and not a life altering, horrifying loss of control.
The edge of the blade flashes in the lamplight, and he turns his gaze away from even where it might reflect, eyes closed. Asking Angeal questions always came at the dubious risk of a story, and when it seemed this too would, it's accepted. In the face of everything else, it was nothing to be bothered by, and he maps it onto what little he knew of the simulation automatically even with a thin sheen of sweat breaking out, driven by adrenaline.
A bite of cold metal and then pain is marked only by a brief hitch of breath and clenched teeth. The Professor tolerated no cries on his table. No thrashing. No complaint. Lessons he can apply here, while focusing instead on the endless differences between a sterile lab and a dirty dark cellar. And Angeal isn't a scientist.
They wouldn't be so gentle in the gradual excision of a trapped limb they wanted to get a look at. The blood inside, older and thicker, is clotted and dark, sticking to an array of what looks awfully like short, thick pinfeathers when exposed to air, little more than dark keratin knobs. Not the elegant, fully feathered things that was a hallmark of Jenova, for better or worse, but the unfinished look of a hatchling, if that hatchling happened to have wings that looked crossed with the handlike limbs of a levikron. But for all the bright pain of cutting blade, there's more relief than agony in having the immense pressure of too-tight skin suddenly released.
This was not the story of a hot spring turning people into dragons that he'd heard before. This was .. more specific. Why the darkest part of Genesis' personality would be birdlike, or Mithrun's, who seemed a terribly sober and unchirpy sort of person to him, he didn't know. There was likely some meaning to it he didn't grasp. "Did it?"
Angeal wasn't describing what form this 'she' changed him into. "Pass." It must still hurt, nectar or no nectar, by the wire-tight tension in every muscle, words as steady and articulated as he could make them. Obviously Angeal looked human now - or ... had, before progression towards dragon began changing that too. When my brain wasn't otherwise compromised had an ominous tone. How often was he compromised, to not hate it? To not, perhaps, fear it?
A simulation that could change the body could surely also warp the mind. Like the whispers of a long dead dragon.
There's no sudden flail for freedom as cold bites far deeper than it ever should. It's strange to move limbs he wasn't born with, to try to sort out moving only one and not both, to deliberately try to fold what seemed like fingers but couldn't be up against the naked wing and with awkward imprecision begin a more controlled effort to wriggle the thing free in little cautious fits and starts. It's not as coordinated as he'd like, the untried muscles weak. "That's not the ... the dragon spring, was it?" It's not really a question.
no subject
The edge of the blade flashes in the lamplight, and he turns his gaze away from even where it might reflect, eyes closed. Asking Angeal questions always came at the dubious risk of a story, and when it seemed this too would, it's accepted. In the face of everything else, it was nothing to be bothered by, and he maps it onto what little he knew of the simulation automatically even with a thin sheen of sweat breaking out, driven by adrenaline.
A bite of cold metal and then pain is marked only by a brief hitch of breath and clenched teeth. The Professor tolerated no cries on his table. No thrashing. No complaint. Lessons he can apply here, while focusing instead on the endless differences between a sterile lab and a dirty dark cellar. And Angeal isn't a scientist.
They wouldn't be so gentle in the gradual excision of a trapped limb they wanted to get a look at. The blood inside, older and thicker, is clotted and dark, sticking to an array of what looks awfully like short, thick pinfeathers when exposed to air, little more than dark keratin knobs. Not the elegant, fully feathered things that was a hallmark of Jenova, for better or worse, but the unfinished look of a hatchling, if that hatchling happened to have wings that looked crossed with the handlike limbs of a levikron. But for all the bright pain of cutting blade, there's more relief than agony in having the immense pressure of too-tight skin suddenly released.
This was not the story of a hot spring turning people into dragons that he'd heard before. This was .. more specific. Why the darkest part of Genesis' personality would be birdlike, or Mithrun's, who seemed a terribly sober and unchirpy sort of person to him, he didn't know. There was likely some meaning to it he didn't grasp. "Did it?"
Angeal wasn't describing what form this 'she' changed him into. "Pass." It must still hurt, nectar or no nectar, by the wire-tight tension in every muscle, words as steady and articulated as he could make them. Obviously Angeal looked human now - or ... had, before progression towards dragon began changing that too. When my brain wasn't otherwise compromised had an ominous tone. How often was he compromised, to not hate it? To not, perhaps, fear it?
A simulation that could change the body could surely also warp the mind. Like the whispers of a long dead dragon.
There's no sudden flail for freedom as cold bites far deeper than it ever should. It's strange to move limbs he wasn't born with, to try to sort out moving only one and not both, to deliberately try to fold what seemed like fingers but couldn't be up against the naked wing and with awkward imprecision begin a more controlled effort to wriggle the thing free in little cautious fits and starts. It's not as coordinated as he'd like, the untried muscles weak. "That's not the ... the dragon spring, was it?" It's not really a question.