[fin] Something Strange

[Gwennythe]

It wasn't long before Tambrey had thanked Nia and then made her way to slide into the booth that KO had indicated.

Safely settled, she couldn't help but lean forward to enthuse that;
"This place is /really/ nice..."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Isn't it?" KO beamed at Tam's approval as he removed his vest and set it a fair way aside on the sofa. "Home away from home." And a good place to speak unmonitored, especially when you set aside the vest that had your dex in a hidden inner pocket.

KO poured out two servings of the cocktail, passed a glass to Tambery and raised his own. "To days off and making the most of life?"  

[Gwennythe]

It might have been that she realised why she was taking off his vest, or it might have been coincidence (it was likely the latter) but Tambrey pushed her bag, where her own dex rested, in almost a mirror movement to what KO did with his vest.

She gave a nod and raised the glass she was given.
"To days off and making the most of, uh, life!" She agreed, then quirked her mouth.
"Speaking of such..."  

[TawnyAngel]

KO took a deep swig of his drink and banged his glass back down on the table. "Okay, so how am I not dead? I try not to be paranoid but something strange has gone on here. I wanted to talk to you about it when we met up first but, well, you know that the walls at home have ears and also recording devices. They didn't tell me what was going on, so I figured that speculation could be bad for my health... and the health of anyone else taking an interest too."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey sipped her own drink and gave a little nod as she listened; she definitely agreed that it was odd.
She wasn't /as/ sure about listening devices and the like, but she supposed it might have been a valid point, and it was better, and rather nice, that he was taking the concern to be rather safe than sorry.

"I've, um, been struggling with that too." Tambrey admitted. "It /is/ strange. Very strange. You... Well, you -were- dead. I, um would have sworn on it. I /know/ near death can be mistaken and such, but I have seen death before... And you shared the jet with us. You were on the jet. Right there..." Along with lots and lots of blood...
She shuddered slightly as she thought back on it, and then glanced to see him... sitting right there having just finished a drink.
"Franklin... Uh, sorry about her by the way... Franklin thinks it was aliens or that you're an alien. I, um, think I need to limit her movie privileges a little, but... Even she knows /something/ is up... What, um, odd things have you noticed? Or, uh, just the obvious?"  

[TawnyAngel]

Tambery's shudder sent a chill down his spine too. Everyone on that jet had thought he was dead. Everyone. KO licked his lips, resisting the urge to reach up and touch the scar on his chest. "Well, a few things," he began, leaning forward a little so that he could lower his voice, just to be sure. "First of all, I woke up. I mean I just woke up. That isn't how people come out of comas, certainly not month long comas. And where I woke up; it was an infirmary room, nothing too strange about it in itself, but I wasn't hooked up to anything." KO showed Tam the backs of his hands. "No mark from an IV line and I checked my arms too. That I could buy perhaps; maybe they figured I was waking up and removed everything and the mark healed up while I was on the boat without me noticing it but on top of everything else...." He trailed off, frowning and shaking his head.

"Then of course there's just the fact that I'm, well, I'm fine. Not that I'm complaining about that you understand but I shouldn't be fine only about six weeks after that and certainly not if they were spent in a coma. I've lost a couple of pounds but not much, and a few minutes after I woke up I was just able to stand up." KO paused for breath, shaking his head again and taking another sip of his drink. "It doesn't make sense and that's just when I woke up."  

[Gwennythe]

Okay, so it -wasn't- just the fact that he -did- look... too good to have just come out of a coma. That he was walking about, seemingly fine... That he'd come out to drink /alcohol/ in fact...
These things, they weren't something she'd noticed and just... had misinterpreted; no, he was confirming for her, first hand, that things were /weird/.

She frowned, thinking it over, adding a nod where she agreed, or heard something the gelled with the things she'd noticed.

"Go on?" She prompted, at his last statement, feeling there was more...  

[TawnyAngel]

"Well." KO exhaled and tried to work out what to say next. "Well, the Kalos base? Creepy. The infirmary was dead quiet, there was nobody except me and Jim so far as I could tell but I could just have been in a segregated area I suppose. What was really strange was how everyone just completely ignored us." Wait, back up, context. "So we were heading to the ship; this was only a few minutes after I woke up and I didn't notice at the time but as we passed people they didn't even glance at us. I only noticed when we were coming off the ship when we reached Kodo, it was definitely deliberate.... And there's another thing. My communication type has changed."

KO rubbed his jaw, shrugged, and shook his head; he was deeply confused about that and on top of everything else it left him more than a little perturbed. "I let my team out to update them but I found that I couldn't understand Bruce any more than I could have before the effects of the egg. I wondered if I'd just lost the ability altogether somehow, I mean we have no idea how it works, but I thought I'd try all the pokemon I have. The last one I let out is the Flabebe that I'd got on the training mission, hadn't done anything with it yet. It looked around and asked me where its trainer was, and I understood clear as I did poison types before."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey had been about to take another sip of her drink while she listened.

"Possibly an experimental research facility..." She muttered, mind wandering around ideas that might be similar to those who thought about 'Area 51', though her idea of 'experimental research', though clandestine, was rather more mundane, regarding medical technology.

She nodded a little, the behaviour... not entirely dismissing her theory; in fact, the behavior of ignoring a subject might reinforce the idea, she considered.

She put her drink down upon the last revelation though, jaw dropping open, and her, already naturally pale, complexion dropping a shade.

"It... It's changed? It's... Absolutely, for certain, changed?" Of course, the communication typing was little understood still, but there'd been -no- indication that such a change could occur as far she knew.
A creeping sensation of suspicion- a half recognition of a fact that wouldn't quite show itself- spread around her mind...

This was the confirmation, for certain, that things were -not- as they were being led to believe...  

[TawnyAngel]

"No doubt," KO affirmed with a nod. "On the mission, poison types. Getting back to HQ, fairy." He should have been dead. Everyone had thought he was dead. Circumstances around his awakening didn't add up, and now this. "That's another thing," KO added as he recalled the detail. "My thoughts about my injuries had been... well, rather centred about the chest wound - that horn definitely hit an artery near my heart, I should have bled out in a couple of minutes max - but I remembered the other day, my legs were broken too. No sign of that."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey recalled the mission; she remembered he could understand Bro, could talk with poison types, for sure... Understand Neph, even...
"Yes... I remember... But, fairy now."

He'd been dead.
Dead for sure. Arterial bleed out from the chest wound; she grimaced. She remembered the mission...

The mission to capture a legendary that happened to be known as the legendary of life... and a fairy type.

She shook her head; she didn't like logically arriving at 'myths' for a 'solution'... But myths and legends did often start with a seed of truth...
Biologically, however, how could one who had very much died, and been dead, she'd assumed, for some time, have... come back?
She was beginning to suspect that, biologically alone, she wouldn't find an answer...

But then more mysteries...
Healed injuries... This wasn't making any sense. Sure they'd worked on, and she was sure KO probably knew more about such formulas than she did, healing accelerators, drugs that aided the body in repairing itself... But KO's recovery, even without being dead, far outstripped anything she understood about such...

"You, uh... You know how that sounds, given what we were sent to retrieve?" Tambrey queried, wanting to make sure.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Well, yes but...." KO shifted uneasily in his seat, trying not to keep following the train of thought. He should have died. Everyone had thought he'd died. "But..." He shook his head and looked over at Tambery, his growing discomfort written plainly on his face. "But it's a myth right? It's not... it's not possible. I mean I couldn't have...." That was crazy, surely not possible. "They must just... just have been developing new techniques over there." Right? That made more sense than... well, the alternative.

But Tambery said she'd seen him die.  

[Gwennythe]

Now Tambrey managed to drain her cup without even thinking about it, before placing it back down... and then poking it until it fit back right into the place she'd taken it up from.

"It is." Tambrey agreed; that's what she believed as well; a myth. Common sense would dictate that they'd simply developed very very good medical techniques yet unless KO had been frozen when he lost all his blood, and put into a full, or semi, cryogenic state, Tambrey could reconcile his survival even with the idea of advanced medical techniques... You couldn't just have someone be -dead-, so low on blood for however long it had been (far longer than possible, she suspected) and then... have them be find and walking around...
She thought hard about studies she remembered that 'brought animals' back to life, or entirely replaced their blood with something synthetic... Even at those levels, she knew, they'd never had a success that hinted at anything close to what would have had to happened to bring KO back...
"I do think they're developing new... techniques." Tambrey agreed, but chewed on her lip.
It seemed as good a time as any to drop what, now, seemed even stranger to her, and yet conveniently played into what they were being led to believe.

"I, um, put a rush on sequencing your DNA. I couldn't risk using the, um, Metagross sequencers, so I only have... partial results so far, but I've had a Porygon-Z aiding me, um, compare to a baseline... It's, well. It's normal."  

[TawnyAngel]

Normal. KO looked a little relieved and then, abruptly, a little concerned. "Well, I'm glad to know that I seem to be 'me' so far even if that means no clues... Just be careful, okay? I don't want you getting yourself into trouble over this. Even if you're not using the main systems you could easily get found out, and the fact that you're not would indicate to whoever found out that you knew you probably shouldn't be doing it. Perhaps I'm worrying too much, but I've known superior in the past who could ah... overreact to small infringements shall we say."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey gave a little nod and a smile, but didn't look much further concerned than she already had been.
"I thought about that. Science is, um, rather full of subterfuge. If I'm called up on this, if they detect it, one, it'll prove that someone is taking notice of this sort of thing, uh, being noticed... Which, um, might actually work out in my favour, scientifically, as long as they're thinking along that route," that was one risk, of course "and, um, two, I can claim that I wasn't at a stage where I was comfortable, uh, wasting time on the main systems if it turned out I was chasing a red herring, which, um, someone who worked into a scientific research setting might view as an excuse for 'I didn't want to embarrass myself by revealing I was chasing something that was possibly not as substantial as I thought'... I am, and, uh, will be careful though. There could be those like your superior involved I suppose." She agreed, remembering the reputations of one or two higher ups she'd heard over time.