LeeLee versus Dr. David MacBeth!!
Here is the link to Leelee's char page: linky
The Doctor's char page can be found in my sig.
Spoiler (Click to Show)
“A rabbit? You’re serious about this?”
Dante nodded. “Yep. Well, not like a normal rabbit, obviously. A giant mutant super powered rabbit. But yeah, the girl’s kinda a bunny.”
There was a suggestive chuckle from the other side of the room, where Altaer sat in his casual clothes, sampling a variety of David’s fine liquors. “Heh, bunny. Term’s got a lot of implications, you know. Some rather pleasant implications. I’m sure some one-on-one time with me would serve our purposes, don’t you think, Davie?”
David sighed. He passed no personal judgment on anyone, but still…sometimes he wondered why some of the best people in his life were also the most dissolute.
“Dante did not bring us this information about Sanctuary just for you to be Mr. Playboy. You’re in this discussion for tactical advice, not sex jokes. And do NOT follow up on his comment, Dante.”
David maintained the silence just long enough to make sure everyone present had some level of composure, and then waved Dante on. “Please, continue.”
The man shrugged. “There’s not much to say, I guess. She seems super sweet, certainly the most accessible of all of the Sanctuary members. I mean, I wouldn’t want to see anything bad happen to her, you know?”
David furrowed his brow. Dante Rockwell had proved himself to be a key player, now intrinsic to the operation of The Coils. David trusted his judgement, but still…Dante was relatively new to the ways of Nehushtan. Niceties were not a consideration when dealing out reprisals. He shot a questioning glance at Altaer, who took a moment to notice after studying a glass of Amarulo.
“Damn good stuff. Shipping from South Africa has to be a pain in the ass, though.”
David merely rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. Altaer snorted, but answered the implicit question.
“Yeah, when Dante first mentioned her to me, in addition to telling him to speak to you about it I tapped into both my own contacts and our Serpents. I doubt there is one fleck of anything bad in that girl – not that she can’t fight, because I’ve checked out her records, but just that while she is certainly a fighter and hunter, war isn’t in her blood. Terminally naïve, would be my pegging. Not stupid, but just too damn new to this whole shithole we call normal life to know what the fuck she’s gotten herself into. Sanctuary just seems like a nice place with nice people, you know? On the surface not a hell of a lot different from us. She’ll trust anyone who can play their cards right, and Lord knows you’re the master of that, Doc.”
A slow smile rose and fell across David’s face. Naïveté stemming from plain idiocy was something he abhorred: childlikeness, however, was something he considered a rare treasure in the world these days. He hoped Altaer’s estimation was correct. Besides, it made the process of persuasion incredibly easy. He put his head down for a moment, an almost prayer like position when considering his steepled fingers, then darted his eyes up.
“Very well, my friends. What I say, do, and do quickly.”
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The infant’s first breath was a tiny miracle, and David could not help but pull his mask down so he could beam at the new mother as he passed her son to her.
“I’d like you to meet your son, Alice.”
He politely stepped back as the father of the child crowded in beside his wife to see, and nodded to his interns to finish the procedures for him. He quickly shed his medical gown, cleaned himself up, and rushed up the stairs.
He mentally checked his list of patients, and inwardly groaned as he stopped in front of room five. His face, of course, showed his usual impenetrable smile. No one knew who might be watching, therefore he made it a habit to never show any emotion except when alone or when the effect was fully calculated. So, he merely swung open the door and remained as jovial as ever.
“Becky, how good to see you again. Has Duke’s paw healed from that nasty break I heard he had?”
She shifted from where she had been lounging on the bed and smiled at him. “Yes, he’s much better, thank you. And it’s good to be here again.”
He snapped on a pair of gloves. A glance at a spreadsheet told him Valera had already taken all of her information, and he garnered that there was not anything new to think about. “Well, let’s move along with your examination. You know the drill.”
Becky was not one of his favorite clients. She was an attractive young blonde, and certainly nice enough. But she was also just too eager to undress for her gynecological exams and mammograms. Besides, she made appointments for these sorts of exams every two months, when his maximum recommendation was once a year. It was not that her beauty was lost on him, of course, but merely that he had cultivated a distaste for this sort of woman over the years. Perhaps he was “old-school” in his mindset, but he believed a lady should always behave as one – and Becky’s behavior before, during, and after each visit told him she was no lady. Just as he was wistfully contemplating making a call to Altaer to see if he could solve the “Becky-problem,” Valera slipped into the room. Her words were terse, as usual.
“Your special appointment is here.”
David heaved a sigh. “Well, Becky, I’ll have to let Miss Braginsky finish your exam. I’m sorry, but this is a highly important appointment I must take immediately.”
As he passed by Valera, he rolled his eyes upwards as a sign of gratitude for her timely appearance. This made even her suppress a laugh.
He moved to the last room in the hall, and knocked. A chipper, girlish voice called out. “Come in!”
David swung open the door. Leelee was sitting on the edge of her bed, swing her rather prodigious feet cheerfully. He smiled and walked up to her.
“Good morning, Leelee! I’m Dr. MacBeth, although feel free to call me David. So, what brings you in to see me today?”
She shook the hand that he offered. “Oh…one of my friends told me that you were the best doctor for the RHG, so here I am!”
David nodded. Dante had done the first stage of his job well. He set his notepad to the side and stood.
“Well, first off your Gladiator sheet tells me that those paws of yours are actually gloves. Could you remove those please?”
“Sure!” Leelee did as she was asked, and then David proceeded with the usual diagnostics. Everything – her pulse, breathing, BMI, neural responses, senses – was perfect, at least based off of his calculations. He took a blood sample to run tests, both legitimately for her own good as well as to develop a full record of her nature. She was definitely someone he wanted to research further.
When he was done, he poked around her gloves for a few minutes before handing them back to her. “Well, I guess we’re all set. I’ll have your blood-test results back as soon as possible. I will contact you through the RHG system to set up a follow-up appointment to go over my compilation of data. Overall, it seems to me you are in excellent condition, but the final interpretation of data will depend upon more precise calculations.”
Leelee hopped up, slipped on her gloves, and gave Dr. MacBeth a huge hug.
“Thanks doctor! You’ve been so nice! I’m glad Dante suggested I visit you. You’re clinic is soooooooo much nicer than the RHG hospital!”
David accepted the hug warmly, and beamed another smile. “Well, I certainly am glad to hear that. I look forward to seeing you again soon, LeeLee. Don’t forget to stop by Miss Belladonna on the way out.”
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It was three in the morning when Valera padded up beside him with a yawn and a two cups of tea. MacBeth stretched his neck, smiled, and accepted the cup of tea. He slid a long arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close for a moment, then let go.
“Thanks for the tea, sweetie. Couldn’t sleep, or just thinking of me?”
Valera gave a sleepy smile and wrapped both hands around her own steaming cup. “Both, I guess. Curious about how the lab work is coming, but I had to pass the work kitchen anyway, so why not grab something hot. I don’t plan on staying up, though…mine’s chamomile.”
David shifted to one side so that she could see his work, and she slid in to look. He narrated what the glowing screen was displaying. “Basic blood composition overall pretty normal. Ton of platelets and related compounds, though. Hemoglobin levels are out the roof. Immunity is really clean, oddly so.”
Valera didn’t bother looking away from the screen. “You’re right…this looks like the kind of immunity you would expect in someone just out of infancy. Almost no signs of it being exercised.”
David looked down on her, proud that his daughter was so intelligent. “Yes…one would think she had spent most of her life inside of a primarily pathogen-free bubble, which would not be too unreasonable of an assertion. What’s been keeping me up, though, is trying to untangle her genetic code.”
He flicked a dial that brought up a 3-D molecular display on the screen, with a massive list of chemical formulas shown in a sidebar. Valera let out a small gasp. David grunted in agreement. “That’s what I thought. First things first, though, this isn’t natural. This kind of composition is selective, meaning that select portions of her DNA have been replaced with engineered substances. Base format I would definitely say is human, but things have been taken a good way from there. Whoever did this was a top-tier master of the art. I’ve isolated the engineered portions and have already analyzed several series of codes, so I should have it fully sequenced and analyzed by mid-morning.”
Valera stepped back, and gave him a knowing look. “I know you’re using this to get a better grasp on Leelee, but I also know the way you think. After you finished studying the DNA itself you’re going to get forensic on this, aren’t you?”
David only gave a crooked smile. “Why, of course dear. Right, as always. I like to know the players in the game. Players of this caliber are rare.”
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The day was cool as he David rode through the woods outside of his Lake House. He had just received another shipment of ammunition for his P-51D Mustang to replace what he had poured into the mental monstrosity. He found it humorous that – after Genesis managed to reboot, escape, and rebuilt its suit, his Serpents told him that the machine was inadvertently crushed out of existence by a spaceship. The being in the spaceship, however, was a subject about which he was still gathering reports.
For now, David was enjoying a few moments of free time. As they moved deeper into the woods on his estate, however, his stallion nickered nervously. Mist of the Moors was the choicest horse from the stables at MacBeth Manse in Scotland, a giant fog-grey steed whose forebears included champion thoroughbreds, the family’s ancestral war-mounts, and American mustangs. David had personally trained this beast to be fit both for war and competition, although he had never had need to ride him in either. At eighteen hands and pushing a half-ton, plus David’s intensive training and bonding, Mist should not have spooked in these woods. The horse’s ears flicked forwards, and David strained his own eyes to reach into the shadows.
The dew still clung to the ground, turning the layer of fallen multi-colored leaves from dry and crackly to a moist sound-dampening cushion. Despite the fact that they were becoming increasingly bare, the thickness of the trees combined with the feeble morning rays limited sight to only just over a hundred feet. David inhaled deeply, then held his breath. He could not hear anything, and he smiled as he reached for his saddlebags. That told him precisely what he wanted to know.
The joyride had ended. The hunt had begun.
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Leelee loved car rides. She, of course, could not drive yet – both because regulations said she was too young, and because he feet were simply too big to fit on the pedals. She especially liked this car ride, though, because they were leaving the city and driving for a couple hours out into the countryside.
She knew Dante was enjoying himself too, but for other reasons. Just when he was trying to decide between getting a rental car and a taxi, a strange man with scars on his face wearing rust-colored pants and a huge leather duster drove up in front of the park where they were waiting. He slid out of a 1930s Ford “rat-rod” as he called it and tossed the keys to Dante. His smile was kind of odd, and Leelee remembered thinking that his rust-colored pants smelled like a kill from an old hunt. But he stayed only long enough to drawl out “I’ve got three, so I figured you’d like something better than a taxi. Just don’t let four-fifty horses get the best of you.”
Now, though, Leelee was truly in her element. The gates to Dr. Macbeth’s estate had been locked, so Dante parked out front and let Leelee out to walk down the winding drive that led to the house. Hopping over the gate was no problem at all for her, and she was soon merrily on her way. It was wonderful to be outdoors and away from the city, a bit too wonderful for her to keep her focus. She could hear the faintest sound of something hooved moving through the woods. Her stomach immediately reminded her that she had skipped breakfast to make this early appointment, and the thought of fresh game slipped into her mind.
Her whole appearance changed in that instant. It was not an external change so much as the subtle shifting of the eyes, ears, and body positioning that radically alters the visual impact of a being.
She had become the predator.
Her movements too were changed: no longer the bubbling carefree actions that were normally characteristic of her, but rather the fluidity of a calculating hunter. Time became irrelevant as she drew ever closer to her target. Before it was in sight, however, something else drew her attention. Something shifted off to her left, nothing more than a splotch of green that seemed slightly out of place. Leelee leapt straight up into the air as a crossbow bolt sang under her, driving all the way up to its fletching in the trunk a weathered poplar behind her. When she landed, she spun to face her attacker, charging forward at full speed, claws bared.
Instead of being frightened, the figure remained hunched over, and for a moment it was impossible to tell what it was doing or even what it was. Moments before she pounced, however, it straightened and let fly another bolt at point blank range. Leelee let out a sharp cry as the titanium tip bit tore through the upper left side of her chest and punched through her shoulder-blade. Her instinct was to try to rip it out, but one touch was enough to tell her that the bolt was equipped with anchors or barbs that would make it impossible to remove.
A click brought her focus back to the battle at hand as she saw the crossbow raised for the third time. This time, though, she was not going to let it be fired. Her powerful legs coiled under her, and she launched bodily at the hunter, claws bared and ready to tear into flesh. The man wisely tossed the crossbow aside a