thearena | to see if i still bleed

Entry tags:

to see if i still bleed

Who| Bruce Banner, Sam Wilson, and OPEN
What| Make-shift infirmary for Avengers, allies, or anyone else who stumbles across them
Where| One of the science labs
When| Week 1, all throughout the arena
Warnings/Notes| Injuries and such within, will update with others as needed. If you'd like a thread with Bruce or Sam or both, feel free to specify!

It didn't take long for the idea of rigging up some kind of makeshift infirmary to get brought up. With everyone's powers back, there's a high likelihood of this getting messy, really fast. Especially after Steve already getting injured that bad at the Cornucopia.

Thanks to Sif, they actually have a medical kit, and the sterile white room of the laboratory they've set up in is far from the worst surroundings that either of them have given medical attention in.

Both of them aren't always there, but chances are at least one of them will be, to help out with any injuries their allies might sustain. Or anyone else who gets through whatever puzzles lead up to the laboratories, and however many of those allies might be hanging around.

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So, Nitou had accidentally killed a dude with whatever was in those syringes he'd gotten. Even though it was too late now, finding out what was in his remaining syringe seems like a good idea. Important somehow, like it might give him a sense of closure, because he feels so guilty over killing poor Gary like that, he'd like to know exactly what he did.

So he's warily poking around the science labs, hoping he can find some sort of science-thing that can magically analyze a syringe of...stuff. He's not too quiet about it, and he's pretty close to the infirmary. He's either bad at hiding, or he doesn't care about it.

Whichever one it is, Sam definitely hears him. He debates it for a few moments, but pretty quickly decides to go investigate. He palms the makeshift knife he has - sharpened metal, pretty much, but it's still decent as a weapon, and he's got three syringes and a flashlight in the belt he's made out of the cord he'd grabbed at the Cornucopia. He moves quietly, guard up, but relaxes a touch when he spots who's making the noise.

It's the guy he'd made mayo scrambled eggs for, that's not something you forget.

"Hey," he greets cautiously, still keeping a good grip on his sort of knife, just in case Nitou's actually the type to attack anyone he meets in here. "Looking for something?"

Nitou shows absolutely no signs of aggression or being just as suspicious of Sam as Sam is of him. In fact, he looks relieved to see a familiar face. "Yeah, I wanna know what's in this thing!" And he holds up his remaining syringe and looks very uncomfortable about it. "I...thought it was medicine, but..." At that, he falls quiet and looks incredibly guilty about something. "But there's gotta be some science-y stuff around here, right?"

Sam loosens up a bit more, when Nitou doesn’t really seem any different than he had the last time they met. And when he’s obviously upset about something having to do with that syringe, which looks remarkably similar to the ones Sam has, actually.

“Yeah, there’s a lot, and there’s even a scientist somewhere around here.” He pauses, then asks, “You okay?”

"I'm okay, I guess..." Nitou hesitates. "But man, I thought this stuff was medicine!" He shudders and gets a little quiet. And with Nitou, quiet's a definite sign that something's wrong. "It's not. It really, really isn't."

Bruce hears the noise. That's not the kind of noise someone who is worried about getting murdered makes.

He considers ignoring it and just letting whoever it was do what they wanted and leave, but 'what they wanted' might involve killing someone on the weird dysfunctional team they'd set up, and Bruce isn't interested in that happening.

So he leaves their little camp--he doesn't have a weapon on him, but that's alright, because he is a weapon--and goes out to see what looks like a young man just... poking around?

He crosses his arms, watching the man carefully before saying, "Are you looking for something?"

Edited 2014-12-22 06:05 (UTC)

Nitou seems surprised to be found. Really, he shouldn't be. He's also far too distraught about something to be worried about what the other man might have in mind. "You know if there's any sort of...I dunno, scientific analyzing machine-things around here anywhere?" He shrugs helplessly. "That's all I'm looking for dude, not any trouble."

"If you're not looking for trouble, neither am I."

Bruce arches an eyebrow, keeping his arms crossed, resembling a skeptical professor looking at a flailing student more than anything. Perhaps because he's getting flashbacks to some of his freshman students back in his teaching days trying to figure out how lab equipment worked.

"If you're calling it a 'scientific analyzing machine-thing', I'm assuming you wouldn't know how to use one if you found it. What do you want to analyze?"

Nitou looks relieved when Bruce says he isn't looking for trouble, either. He's had a long day already. "Just this stuff. And yeah, science isn't my thing, I was kinda hoping for something I could just put this stuff into and press a button and have it tell me what the stuff is." And he produces an unmarked syringe. "It's...well, all I know is it's really not some kind of future space medicine like I thought."

"Well, unless the Capitol has come up with something amazing--" and he wouldn't put it past them, "--there's nothing that works quite like that that I know of. The closest you get would be something like a mass spectrometer, and it takes training to be able to understand the readings it would give you."

Bruce considers the young man for sincerity, his eyes dark and difficult to read. "Luckily for you, I have that kind of training. What happened when you used it?" Who tries to inject a substance they don't know about in hopes that it's medicine?

There's a flicker of hope when Bruce says he's got training, but Nitou grimaces at that question. "I...he...it was bad, man. Really bad." He holds out the syringe, his tone low and dull. "It's probably some kind of poison."

"That's not very specific." He takes the syringe cautiously, tense just in case the young man (teenager, maybe?) tries to stab him with it, and then holds it up to the light to see inside the glass casing. "And if you injected it and it killed someone, it's not a poison. Poisons only work if ingested, not injected. I'm guessing that this isn't a naturally produced substance, so the proper term would be toxicant."

Once a professor, always a professor. He keeps his voice soft and clinical, partially because he's numb to horror and partially because he finds it's usually helpful for people if he seems calm and collected, even when they're not.

"It'd be helpful if you could tell me the symptoms that showed up with this."

"Oh." Normally, Nitou might be a bit louder and more flippant when dealing with science-types spewing semantics at him, but now is not the time for that. "He...got real quiet...and he had trouble breathing, but he was kind of having that problem before I stuck him, and I..." This isn't easy at all for Nitou to talk about. "I just wanted to help, man, not kill him!"

Bruce has to bite his tongue to keep from snapping at the boy. What kind of moron injects a mystery liquid into someone in hopes it was the exact kind of medicine they would need? But the young man is clearly upset and has no training in the area. Bruce can't really blame him for panicking and messing with things he didn't understand in hopes of saving someone.

"I believe you." Bruce's voice is calm. "And you should know that whoever it was is probably just fine right now in the Capitol. We're all brought back after we're taken out of the arena. You can talk to him after you're out too." He gestures for the young man to follow him as he starts to go towards a microscope. "And for future reference... if you don't know what something is, always assume that it will kill someone if injected. Even every day medicine is finicky and can kill people if you don't understand how the dosing should work."

Maybe it's harsh to turn this into a learning moment, but Bruce does try to make it clear that too much harm probably wasn't done, since the dead man is probably alive and well again. The man needs to know right now that playing with syringes is never safe.

Medicine is not Nitou's strong suit. Neither is remaining particularly calm when his friend is dying. "Everything else I got was really helpful, I thought that would be, too..." Because getting some sort of chemical weapon he could kill people with had not occurred to Nitou. That did not strike him as helpful, even in a death arena. "I just thought it was some kind of magic future thing!"

He grimaces. "I know he came back from that, but still doesn't mean I wanted to be the one to kill him."

"I'm sorry. It doesn't work that way. If you don't know what's in a syringe, assume it's lethal." What else is there to say? 'He was dying anyway'? 'There was nothing you could do'? 'You were an unbelievable idiot and your friend died faster because of it'?

None of those feel quite appropriate, so he doesn't say anything. Instead, he squirts a little drop of the substance onto a glass tab before sliding it under the microscope and leaning over to look at it.

The microscope requires some adjustment to see what's on the tab. He focuses it carefully, making a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. He stays in silence for a while, resting his hands on the edge of the table and keeping his brow furrowed as he observes.

"It could be a lot of things, but it's pretty similar to some popular neurotoxins in my world."

"Well, it's nothing I'm gonna try again." At least Nitou seems to be willing to learn from his abysmally stupid mistakes. Willing, and extremely guilty.

"Neurotoxins?" There's a grimace. "What's that even do, anyway?" Biochemical science had not been this archaeology student's strong point. "Just...killing?"

At least that. If he didn't seem ready to learn, Bruce might have thrown something at him.

"Since it's an entire category of toxins, it could do a lot of things. Neurotoxins are defined by attacking the nervous system or the brain. Technically, anesthesia is a neurotoxin. Effects could be anything from seizures to brain damage."

Frankly, death by neurotoxin can be a really nasty way to go. The man was lucky to get enough of it to kill him immediately, but somehow that seems like the wrong thing to say. "It's possible he just fell unconscious and passed that way."

Nitou grimaces. "He was...he was already having problems breathing. It was kind of like he just went to sleep after I gave it to him...would it have hurt? Like does the neurotoxin stuff hurt if it's the stuff that just makes you sleep?"

"There's no way of knowing without asking him. Like I said, different neurotoxins have different effects."

Bruce isn't going to lie. It's possible that it caused enormous amounts of pain by attacking all his nerves without disabling them. It's possible he died in complete agony, unable to scream.

"But it's very possible. It could have numbed any sensation and let him fall comfortably unconscious before killing him. It attacks the nervous system. That can mean a lot of things."

"He was still talking and stuff before he...he died..." Nitou really doesn't like the way this sounds. "He didn't say anything hurt...but he was really out of it..." There's a groan out of him. "Man, everything else I got was good stuff! Why'd they have to stick something like that in there? Or they coulda marked it or something!"

"Everything you get at the Cornucopia is designed to help you in the Games. The goal of the Hunger Games is to survive long enough to kill everyone else. Killing other people is supposed to be a part of that."

Bruce gingerly offers the needle back to Nitou, but he's not sure if the boy wants it back now.

"This is supposed to be a weapon. Maybe it could be an anesthetic at lower doses, but we can't know that with the resources we have. You got what the Gamemakers though you might need.

"Man, I thought this stuff was medicine, like if I got hurt, I'd use it...nothing else in there seemed weaponlike, y'know?" He frowns. "Rhubarb might be a weapon at a bad dinner party or something, but it was edible..."

Nitou stares at the needle. Now that he knows what it does, he doesn't want to kill anyone else with it again. Magically eating someone after a fight is one thing, stabbing someone with a syringe is another. "You want it? You can have it if you want it."

Bruce watches Nitou carefully, then puts the needle aside. "I'll keep it. Who knows, maybe it can be an anesthetic at the right dose."

He keeps watching Nitou. It doesn't feel right to let such a young person go wander around the murder arena alone, but what can he do about it? "Keep safe in the meantime."

Nitou likes the idea that some science guy who knows what's up is going to try to make good use of the syringe. It cheers him up a little, enough to get a bit of his old bluster back. "Hey, don't worry about me--I've made it this long not worrying about too much about safety!" There's a weak laugh, because it's not like the bluster's magically back in full. "But I'll watch out for myself--you too, man! I'll make sure nothing nasty is hanging around your lab for a while!" He gives Bruce a cheeky wave as he rushes off, looking for some kind of adventure to help him forget what he did to Gary.

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to see if i still bleed

Someone please help this wizard with science

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