((Mkay, about the characters... They're supposed to be either human or *heavily* mutated, as in, no x-men-esque characters, but more like complete aliens.
'The world' is simply called 'the World' and technology is high like a traditional future Role-Play, though sans hover cars and whatnot. It's nothing like modern day earth; something entirely different. iIf you want nature- you have to find a biodome, which are fairly common. Non-urbanized animals exist only in zoos, biodomes, and research facilities, and they're playing with the genes and making mutants and imprisoning them for study. Most are sentient if they are part human. All are generally housed in terrible conditions, cages are cleaned once a week if they remember, and baths are given the day before or after cleanings. Because most of the mutants have some sort of natural advantage over humans, all experiments deemed potentially hazardous (pretty much anything that can move that also has chemical defenses, claws, teeth, human sized, etc) wear shock collars to control behavior. Not all scientists abuse the tool, but some do, of course. Unless the subject is very lucky, it's probably had some abuse during its life.
Flixe is the mutant, and she's my character.
I'm calling her a she because of the way she thinks, but she's really unisex.
))
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The huge tank was surrounded by glistening white counter-tops, filled with metal devices whose purpose was unclear to the average citizen, everything just as unnaturally immaculate as the countertops. Several of the machines whirred quietly to themselves, while others muttered or clicked almost sinisterly, had the clicking ones not had clocks on them to make it clear that they were for keeping time and making measurements of the controlled climates of the center. Most of the metal appliances had at least one blinking light, and a few just sat there as though waiting for the next victim. These ones were the genetic experiment machines, used by scientists when they wished to play with another subject's DNA.
All around were rolling carts, covered in glass or filled with liquids and tubes and things floating- an ear here, a nose with several pimples there, a human child in another tank, a series of embryos of unclear origin. The one nearest the huge tank was one of those which held a baby. A human baby.... with a fish tail, a falcon's head, and lion paws. Gills could be seen on the neck even through the brightly colored feathers- peacock?- that covered the infant's entire body, save for the scaly tail. It was dead. The form hadn't been sustainable, but they were still running tests on the limp, floating thing.
A tall, severe woman sat in a rolling chair before the tank, looking up at the thing inside, and back down at a clipboard covered in paper nearly as white as her face, where her pen whizzed across the page with the cold efficiency shared by the machines all around. If not for the obvious softness of her flesh that the pen pressed against, she could easily have been mistaken for a misplaced advanced robotics project from the facility down the road. Only the scratching of her pen broke the unnerving humming silence, and even then, only serves to increase the tension. The woman seemed quite unaware or it, or perhaps she didn't care. It might even have been her goal. You could never tell with these researchers, though since Flixe was her experiment, she had a pretty good idea that it was the latter. Frustrated, she kept still, and the silence went on both inside and outside the huge tank. After all, it was well past midnight, and she was in the Diurnal Experiments wing.
All around the room the other, smaller tanks and 'beds' filled with abominations, species cross breeds, humans with odd qualities, many children- human crossbreeding was this particular scientist's specialty, which wasn't really saying much, as most scientists here loved the twisted forms that their tinkering produced- and who knew what was in the far end of the room, one of many in the enormous genetics laboratory complex. It sprawled on for miles, one scientist had said. What miles were, Flixe couldn't even hazard a guess.
But it was not the twisted little things that were being icily observed by the lady scientist that night. It was the thing in the big tank.
Flixe was no definable creature, except that its form it was vaguely human, though it leaned forward as a velocoraptor's body might. The neck snaked up a good two feet from the shoulders, muscled, but slim. It had a sharply angled face and scaly, deep blue-purple skarkskin, a head of long golden hair hung down past the shoulders of the thing in the big tank, appearing more like skinny feathers than true hair. It was unclear whether it was a man- or a woman- thing, for it was entirely unmarked by either sex's attributes. There was a long whiplike tail with a feathered tip protruding from the experiment's backside, swishing slowly in midair, and brightly gleaming talons on both hands and feet. The feet themselves were interesting, with four strong toes, two in front, two in back, in an 'x' pattern for stability. The knees bent backwards; the ankles, forward. A four- or five-inch rounded horn jutted outwards from her forehead, with a couple smaller ones on each side, none were naturally sharp, more like a ramming tool than anything else. On its abnormally long arms, half as long as her body was tall, were membranous wings. The oddity was, they were covered in stiff golden flight feathers, clipped down to uselessness. Her hands extended from the last wing-joint, and down her back ran a series of bony spikes- these were sharp, and like her talons or claws, as hard as condensed spider's silk. She was only allowed to keep them because the scientists could find no way to dull the sharp points. Her mouth had a sort of flat beak, like lips, made of the same stuff as her spines and talons. It would have been perfect for cracking open the hardest of nuts or shells to reach the edible insides. It was decidedly non-dangerous, and so the scientists did not bother with a muzzle.
All of this was recorded to precision on the scientist's notepad, with more scientific detail beneath each heading for every part of her body.
Both arms were folded almost defensively in front of her body as if to cover the nakedness, although there was nothing to see. Intelligence sparkled in her black eyes with only a thin gold iris around the outside, as it watched her captor quietly write down every movement she made. Her tail still swished quietly behind her, the only hint that she was angry, hateful, in the slow movements of a snake preparing to strike. She hissed very quietly at the glass she could not break, and the lady took down notes on the forked tongue and four tiny canine teeth just inside the beak that housed a weak venom- just enough to paralyze for a few moments, nothing more.
Flixe longed to smash through the clear sides of the tank and run, and just keep running until no one could catch her again. If someone was in her way, too bad for them. She wasn't quite sure what would happen if she clawed or kicked at them, only that the humans seemed to fear that she would, and that gave her enough reason to believe that it would cause lots of pain. She knew from experience that that would stop or correct 'bad' behavior. She knew almost too well.
She moved a foot from her odd sitting position and stepped in her own waste and balked, shaking off the scum as best she could before returning her foot to the little clean spot where she slept and watched the humans from. One side of her beak-lip rose, moving almost like skin, in a snarl of undisguised disgust.
But if she did that she would be killed. Life wasn't soemthing she was willing to give up yet, not after watching how they had 'youth-nized' a swimming-type of experiment who had managed to drown a man in his cage. She was twenty-seven years by the humans' count, but what did that mean to her? Her life could last more or less than theirs, could end abruptly for reasons the humans couldn't figure out yet. It had something to do with genes, but their human-crossbreeds unfortunately tended to share at least the human lifespan.
Twenty seven.
Twenty-seven years in this prison of a tank, this hell of a life, with barely room to lie down and sleep with a healthy distance away from waste- her own waste- always assuming they remembered to clean it, or even feed her the vegetables and nuts and meat that made up her diet. She was shockingly skinny, and her rib cage and hips were her widest parts, her stomach, devoid of fat but not emaciated, shrank against her spine as a thin dog's would. Flexing backward in almost a complete arc, she scratched the base of her tail with her beak and twisted back. Frustrated, she slammed her long tail against the walls with a good deal of force. She didn't feel it much, but it created such a loud noise that the lady paused and looked up, glasses magnifying angry eyes. Her face pulled into a nasty smile.
Now came the pain. She was one of the crueler ones, according to the other humans. Even they didn't seem to like her much. She pressed a button, and the collar stuck around her neck administered a bad shock. She fell and writhed, screeching involuntarily as it coursed through her body, and forced herself to her feet again as it drained out, panting from the pain of it.
Flixe hissed in distaste at her filthy condition. Her bath was tomorrow. She'd have to sleep in her own waste tonight,
if this woman ever let her do so. Flixe rushed the thick glass, driving her claws at it again and again, ramming it with her horns, beating against it with her tail, all to no avail. She knew well that she could not break it, and she knew that it gave the woman satisfaction to see her helplessness, but it gave her, too, satisfaction. The satisfaction of proving that she could DO something to that lady- tear her apart, even- if only she could get out. And so they kept her locked up, not that good behavior would change anything.
Pain again.
Tired and steaming slightly from her usually moist sharkskin, she slumped against the back wall, limbs splayed, panting even more heavily than before, and glaring daggers at the woman. It was proof to her that the human was afraid, and that only made her angrier, fiercer, more of an animal and more determined to break free. She did not launch herself at the glass again, but kept her sore body against the warm metal of the back, where they heated her enclosure. She always felt so sluggish when it got too cool, and too much heat made her blood race so fast that she couldn't think straight sometimes.
At the moment, however, the temperature was just right. Grimly, she closed her mouth, breathing still somewhat heavily through her slit-like nostrils. The whole complex was filled with genetic experiments like herself, and countless other facilities all across the world held more, presumably each one was just like this
She would escape. Somehow she'd have to escape.
