You must wonder what we're doing here in your part of the world.

[bestsir]

Who: Harry Goodsir and anyone who promised him some stuff, or hell, if you just want to bug him in the coroner's office in the hospital, so literally anyone.
What: Dr. Goodsir's office hours. Bring him things, come to chat, or tell him to clean his overgrown curiosity cabinet out of the hospital posthaste.
Where: Harry's office and impromptu lab in the basement of the Riverview hospital.
When: Anytime in July.
Warnings: Harry's doing an autopsy with Victor Frankenstein. Potential for grossness having to do with critters.

The truth is, there isn't that much for the Riverview coroner to do on a good week. There was a brief increase in activity after the business with the cult, but otherwise Harry is very much left to his own devices.

Hence letting his naturalist's instincts out to play. He now has a pet eyeball-eating lizard (he is still trying to work out a system of nomenclature and is hoping someone might have some ideas) and a couple of moths in a jar, a lot of botanical specimens, and some assorted feathers, bones, and other items that he's collected or that have been brought to him by friends.

When he's not attending his classes at the university, you'll probably find him here, working or studying. He does go back to the communal housing on a nightly basis, but he keeps very late hours. Come see.

Comments

[unmakeme]

Natasha follows him through to his prepared store room. She's not sure what his plan is when the foxes start spitting fire and the rats start screaming, but that's no longer her concern. "They'll all be thirsty when they wake up. Given that the rats scream for damn near anything, you might want to be prepared."

She collapses the cages as he empties each one, and when they're down to the crab dog, growing increasingly furious in its plastic prison, throwing itself against the walls, she sits on top of it. It needs some sort of weight to keep it from forcing its temporary prison across the room, and she's heavier than she looks.

Before she brings up the matter of the moths, or what exactly his plan is for the irate crustacean, she opens the financial app on her device and brings up a screen so that he can pay her with his tap card. "Speaking of. Perhaps we should get the business angle of this wrapped up before any of that happens. You might find yourself suddenly extremely busy." She's also charging him for the plastic tub. He's free to make a case against paying for it, of course, but it's down there in the memo section.

[bestsir]

"Ah—yes, of course." He digs the card out of his pocket (he will never get used to this thing, or the sneaking suspicion that one day it will simply stop working) and taps it to her device, delivering the payment as promised.

He checks the cages to make sure that the water bottles have been topped up and steps out into the hall again. He goes to the storage room with the Dutch door and unlocks the top and bottom halves. There's still some random odds and ends of furniture piled up in this one, but needs must and all.

"Here—you can release the crab into this room, and I will shut the door behind it."

[unmakeme]

She looks at him with a fair amount of skepticism, but after a moment she just shrugs and reaches down to undo the catches on the straps. Then she slithers her way along the length of the container so that she goes from sitting on top of it to crouching next to it with her arms wrapped around it without ever taking her weight off of the lid. "If you say so. Your problem now." She hauls it into the air with relative ease and follows Harry to the door, waiting for him to open it. After a few moments of looking back and forth between the creature in the container, angrily scratching its pinchers against the plastic as it tries desperately to grab her, and the room, she nods her head. "Right, on three I'm going to throw the whole thing in, you slam the door. It'll make it out of this box in a second or two and then it'll be coming for us. Ready?"

She waits until she's certain he understands that she's not kidding, then she counts to three, rocking on the balls of her feet with each number, and chucks the box into the room on the forward swing when she shouts three, backing up immediately, hand on the gun at her hip. Just in case he's not quick enough. She's seen pinchers just like those take chunks out of people. Probably her own fault for bringing him one of the larger ones, but he did say he wanted to study them. Larger/older is better, right?

[bestsir]

Harry nods and when she flings the box into the room, he slams the lower half of the Dutch door shut with a bit more speed than she might have been expecting. The crab explodes from the box and after some disoriented scrabbling, turns around and flings itself into the door. The door, fortunately, is metal, so all it does is take great gouges of paint off and make a lot of dents.

Meanwhile Harry is standing on his toes, looking over the door at the crab with curiosity. "Remarkable," he says. "How did you capture it? It looks quite mature and—" He flinches backward as one of the pincers sweeps up, "—very active."

[unmakeme]

Natasha is not nearly as interested in the creature as Harry is, but she's leaning against the wall and watching the way he watches it. What she wants to determine, now that she's made a soft commitment to take this man out beyond the relative safety of the city and be somewhat responsible for him, is how likely he is to put himself in danger for the sake of curiosity. In her personal experience, very intelligent people also have the capacity to be incredibly dumb.

"Highly conductive metal net and lots of electricity. I miscalculated on the first one... ended up basically cooking it. This one is just angry. Can't say I blame it. Hopefully it calms down a little." She rather doubts it, but who knows? It could just be her. Animals are very hit or miss when it comes to Natasha - some don't seem to mind her presence, and some very much do. This particular animal happens to be one of the only ones with an actual reason to hate her. "What are you planning to do with them all?"

[bestsir]

Now that he has some sense of the creature's reach, he's not leaning too closely over the door to observe it. Her comment on using electricity to capture it gets an approving nod, and Harry wonders if he ought to acquire one of those taser devices, for his own safety.

"I plan to study them in the convenience of close quarters. Their behaviour, their feeding habits, and so forth." He smiles wryly, and a little wistfully. "My brothers and I did the same in our lodgings in Edinburgh. At one point there was a dog, a cat, a monkey, a guinea pig, a pair of hedgehogs, two birds, and any number of molluscs and crustaceans in tanks in the attic. Oh—and the golden eagle we kept outside. Looking back, I wonder at the patience of our landlady."

[unmakeme]

"Sounds--" Natasha casts around for something positive. Something other than noisy, cramped, awful. "Cozy. I had a cat once. Well... I mean, I fed it. I'm not sure I'd have called it mine." Not that it matters. Suit is a long way away now, and it'll be years before Natasha makes it back, if she still buys into the official version of this place, which is getting harder and harder to do. No, Suit is on her own now.

The crab dog flings itself against the door again and makes an unsuccessful swipe for Harry's face. "So you've got a plan for the screaming and the fire breathing and the drug trips?" Which reminds her. "Oh, I also got the moths. They're in that bag over there." She nods her head at the tote with the sealed jars. "If you're going to let them out, please do it very far away from me. I don't like the way they smell."

[bestsir]

"Oh, it was chaos, make no mistake," he admits. "It is what happens when you put four naturalists who might also be considered eccentric into close quarters." He's under no illusions about what a mess their rooms were. Still, he misses it, which is possibly why he's doing what he's doing here.

"I suppose it is only fair to warn you that this will be a first practical test of the containments that I have devised." He's scavenged here and there for soundproofing materials, non-flammable cage-crates, and air filters for the moth tanks. "Perhaps you would prefer to wait outside whilst I remove the moths to their tank."

[unmakeme]

“So we’re the test run. Awesome. That’s a theme in my life, I think.” Can’t even get away from it here, it seems. She’s the eternal guinea pig. At least this trial has almost no chance of literally blowing up in her face.

Natasha moves away from him, poking through some of the random clutter along one work table. She fits an oxygen tube onto a mask attached to a re-breather bulb. It’ll do well enough, provided she doesn’t get too close. “You go ahead, make with the mad scientisting. I’ll be over here, keeping a safe distance with my finger on the trigger.” Metaphorical trigger, of course. Her guns are holstered. Not that it makes her any less dangerous.

She hops up on top of a short stack of heavy duty plastic crates, mask held to her face with one hand, the other waving him on. Please. Continue. If something amusing is about to happen, she’d like to see it. Also, if something is about to wake up, get loose, and attack him, she’s ready to shoot it.

[bestsir]

Harry also puts on a mask before decanting the moths into their filtered tank. Actually, it all seems to be going shockingly well—the foxes, on waking, singe their cages a little, but nothing burns down, and while there is definitely a high-pitched shrieking coming from inside the rat cage, it's tolerable. Even Harry is pleasantly surprised that his plans seem to be working.

That's when the crab, through some lucky chance, manages to snap off the doorknob of its prison. In so doing it breaks the door's latch mechanism—and the door flies open.

Hello, there's an angry crab-dog on the loose in the hallway. At least the stairs are behind a fire-door and the elevator door is closed, so it can't go charging up and cause havoc on the main floors.

(This may be the last straw that gets Harry's menagerie ejected from the hospital basement.)

[unmakeme]

Natasha gives the moths a very wide berth, even after they’re sealed in their tank. She’s not as hesitant about the other creatures, though. The rats are still deeply unpleasant, but the foxes are sort of fascinating, now that she’s not in danger of being lit on fire. “The rats like to go for hair. I’d be careful handling them out of the cage. If you plan on doing that. I’m also pretty sure that--“

She doesn’t get to finish her thought before the screech of wrenching metal cuts her off. She’s dragging Harry for high ground, the closest option being his desk, even as she turns to confirm that the angry little crab is loose. “Shit.” So much for containment. She just had to pick the rowdy one, didn’t she? “Who else is down here?”

[bestsir]

Harry doesn't need to be told twice; he's on the desk in an instant.

"No one, unless the cleaner—"

There's a panicked shriek from down the corridor. That would be the janitor. Who is a decent ways away, at least, but still—Harry really hoped that she wouldn't be down here right at this particular moment. She dislikes his offices enough as it is.

[unmakeme]

"Stay," she says, sharply, pointing her finger at him as though she could possibly mean anyone else. Then she's running for the door. "Might have to kill it!" she throws back over her shoulder. "Try not to."

An attempt will be made. Though, honestly, this thing is fucking strong. A smaller one might be a better fit for his set-up. There will be a lot more trial and error, finding a voltage that will stun and not kill. Good thing they're tasty.

These are all thoughts that run through her mind as she sprints down the hallway, toward the janitor, slightly faster than the crab. Natasha gets the impression that pulling out a gun will only make the situation worse. The darts are no good. She won't be able to get the pins of her taser past the shell. If she can catch it, though...

It's as dignified as a leap through the air to tackle a dog sized crab monster can possibly be, and she brings one charged fist down on the back of the body of the shell near the eyes. It stops moving, so that's good, Natasha and the janitor both get to keep their limbs whole and unharmed for another day. "Sorry about that," she says, standing and hooking her arms awkwardly around the thing. "Got away from me."

Leaving before the woman can speak, that's the new plan, and Natasha hauls ass back to the office, giant crab in tow, heaving it up onto one of Harry's work tables. "I'm not sure if it's knocked out, or cooked. How do you tell if a crab is breathing?"

[bestsir]

Harry has already climbed down off the desk when Natasha returns, and he turns his attention to the crab immediately. He prods at the mouth parts, pulling them down slightly; they stay open. He prods it in a few other spots, testing it the same way that he would a terrestrial crab, then shrugs.

"I don't think it is cooked," he says, "but it is well past stunned. Quite dead, I think." He's only a little chagrined at this; he was hoping to spend some time observing it, but—well, there are other crabs, no question. It's hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened, and it's much easier to be unsentimental about a crab than, say, a mammal.

[unmakeme]

Natasha is largely unsentimental about anything that ends up being food. It's about as far as she can manage to make it down that path of heartlessness. If it ends up on a plate, better it than her. Targets, that's a little bit tougher. She can make the justifications that let her sleep at night. They mostly have to do with the greater good. The success is varied.

"Yeah, sorry about that. Good news is that the janitor is whole and unharmed. She... might be kind of mad at you for a while, though. Hope you're good at keeping your own space tidy." She prods the giant crab with one of her batons, considering. "I'll get you another one for half price, if you want it. A smaller one. Less likely to bust through doors. Or... three for one? You can watch them interact. Is that part of what you do? I'm not entirely sure what a naturalist is, in practice."

[bestsir]

"She has not liked venturing in here for some time. I should go apologise—" Well, perhaps not now; he hears the firedoor to the stairs slam open and footsteps pounding up the stairs as fast as she can go. "—as soon as I can, at any rate."

As to the crab: "I would not say no to a pair of small ones. Observation of behaviour is indeed part of what I do, so that would suit my purposes well."

[unmakeme]

Natasha also turns her head at the sound of the fire door slamming open and then shut, teeth clenched together as the corners of her mouth pull down in an exaggerated grimace. Very happy she doesn't have to interact with the woman on a daily basis. Better you than her, Harry. "I'd bring flowers." If this little incident ends up getting him fired, she's going to feel genuinely awful about that. For days, at least. Maybe she should say something on her way out.

"So..." Another prod to the tough outer shell with her baton. "Are you going to dissect this one? Second question, very much related to the first, have you had lunch yet?" She hasn't, and she's hungry. She was going to go home with a couple of claws from the stockpile she's got going in the big walk in freezer, but this also works. It might even be considered some sort of scientific research, if Harry hasn't already eaten one. Maybe. That seems like something that might fall under the umbrella of naturalism.

[bestsir]

He looks at the crab, shrugs. He would not be the first biologist in the history of science to eat a late specimen, and he won't be the last.

"It would be a shame for it to go to waste either way," he says. "I have had lunch, but I should be happy to share the edible parts with you, if you like."