Work Text:
#12: Animals
“Bawk! Babawk! Ba-”
The rooster (rooster-person?) was shut up by a hand clamping around his beak. Dalloc sighed as she looked at him, her hand keeping his beak tightly closed.
“You don’t have to make such a ruckus, you know. And I don’t understand why you’re struggling so much. You and your bandmates expressed such interest in those animals, that you even renamed yourselves after the noises they make. All I’m doing is helping you form a closer connection with those animals- you can even sing like them now, you don’t need any instruments or outside tools to make music. I daresay it is better than that horrible noise you called ‘music’ that you used to play.”
Despite her completely reasonable explanation, the man with a rooster’s head continued struggling against the restraints on the chair and her hand around his beak. She sighed and reached behind her, grabbing a metal band. Still holding his beak closed with one hand, she used the other to put the band around his beak, securing it closed with a touch of her tuning fork. With him now muzzled, she took a step back to take in his appearance more fully. She nodded slowly.
She began taking notes on a tablet, monologuing as she did. “Certainly an improvement over the previous attempts… the additional data has helped, both from experimentation from what my associates gathered. The fusion coefficient has increased by 81.3%... the hypothesis that the subject needed some kind of… ‘connection’ with the fusion material seems to have been supported as well. I shall have to thank Ms. Meow for procuring these subjects… at this rate, I shall have a satisfactory end result well before the required date.”
“Ooh, it looks like a success to me!” An upbeat voice called from behind Dalloc, from the door of the lab. Dalloc managed to suppress her flinch and merely sighed before replying.
“Ms. Meow, how many times have I told you to knock before coming in to my lab?
“Not enough, apparently! And besides, how many times have I asked you to stop calling me ‘Ms.”? It makes me sound old, and it’s way too formal for between comrades like us.” She walked up behind Dalloc, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “Or more than comrades, if you’d like!”
The emoji face on one of Dalloc’s monitors flushed, but she shrugged off Meow’s arm. Meow put on an exaggerated pout, before quickly going back to her usual grin- although Dalloc suspected even this was a facade- and speaking once again. “Oh, but forget about that for a moment.”
She walked over towards the restrained, rooster-headed man, speaking again as she did. “Look at you! Finally an actual rooster, just like that old story. Although… ooh, that would be even better!” She turned back to face Dalloc, her grin now wide and manic. “In the story we renamed ourselves after, the animals all joined together to form one larger creature… could you do something like that, fusing Doodle-Doo here with Woof and Heehaw?”
Dalloc raised a finger in protest, but then lowered it, letting out a low, thoughtful hum. “You were quite close, so that additional connection could increase stability. And… three humans and three animals, fused together into one new and interesting being… my, that is a marvelous concept. I’ll have to thank you once again, mi- Meow. Despite how you present yourself, you can be quite the genius sometimes. But… I’ll have to ask you to leave for now, so I can finish my notes on the latest step.”
“Of course, of course, hehe~” Meow giggled, heading back towards the door of the room. She paused in the doorway, turning back to face Dalloc. “But once you’re done, how about we go out for drinks? We could make it a girls’ night and invite Rosie, Kat, or even our illustrious leader… or it could be just the two of us. Keep it in mind!” With a parting wave, she left the room, closing the door behind her.
Dalloc stayed looking at the closed door for a bit, her tablet and experiments momentarily forgotten. “Hmm…” Shaking her head, she turned back to finish her work… now typing faster than she had been before, now having a new reason to get this done sooner rather than later.