#botaniqal

[b1oodburned]

✦ I CANNOT for the life of me remember if I sent this in, but I'm back for more?

* 🔥 𝙋𝙊𝙎𝙄𝙏𝙄𝙑𝙄𝙏𝙔 𝙏𝙄𝙈𝙀 !

you  did  but  i'm  so  down  to  glaze  you  either  way  <3  and  profess  my  undying  love.  your  creativity,  your  spirit,  and  writing  are  simply  phenomenal.  you  could  pull  up  with  a  blog  for  elmo  and  my  ass  would  be  first  in  line  to  follow.

@spearofnubia

[endaether]

❛ These hands ... ❜ Hands face the sky, as though collecting the light in his palms. ❛ They have only ever been used to claim lives. I have never -- until recently, I've --.. ❜ At a loss for words, the man merely shakes his head. ❛ Ignore me. I just.. I wanted to thank you, Claudette, for changing that. ❜

@botaniqal gets a random starter because I'm inspired

[mxlevolence]

❝ st—stop watching me with those stupid eyes. ❞

"I can replace them with yours."

What a charmer.

[fallesto]

one thing that is becoming very obvious in Zeno’s presence is . . . Claudette doesn't like him. for the first time in her life, she's met someone who genuinely gives her the willies and who makes her actually want to take a fist to his eye. he would deserve it. the gleam of those stupid (kinda cool) sunglasses and the sound of his loafers against the lab floor makes her anxiety rise to extremes. there's a part of her that genuinely wants to quit, but there's another part that understands intimately why this would be so difficult to do. Claudette knows too much. and, ironically, Claudette is too brilliant to just allow to slip their fingers. if she wanted to leave, she would need more than just herself. she isn't sure he wouldn't just . . . coerce her to stay? still.

❝ m’sieur Zeno, what a surprise. ❞ though, it drips with obvious reluctance and sarcasm, she greets him like she would any of her superiors. it's annoying to cut a corner and smell that obviously very expensive, overpowering smell of his cologne greeting her. it didn't quite smell as though he used a lot, but it was certainly distinct. it lingered. ❝ what can I do for you? ❞ translation: what the fuck do you want?

Time was a harsh and cruel thing, and despite all that he had the one thing he lacked was time. The cherry of his cigar flared as he took a slow drag, exhaling a thin ribbon of smoke that curled between them like a serpent. His polished loafers clicked against the sterile lab floor, each step deliberate, unhurried. As if he enjoyed the way Claudette’s fingers twitched against her clipboard. "Mademoiselle Claudette." He murmured, the words rolling off his tongue with the same practiced smoothness as the ash he flicked into a nearby tray.

"Such hostility in your hospitality. I’m wounded."

He would stand before her, as his gloved fingers were working at the buttons of his sleeve. The leather peeled back with a soft creak, revealing skin that shouldn’t have been there, not like that. The veins stood out in jagged black tendrils, pulsing faintly beneath the surface like something alive and hungry. The infection had already climbed past his wrist, spiderwebbing toward his elbow in inky, irregular patterns.

“Look, it is getting worse, spreading.”

As he smirked and held his arm out to her, the infection crawling further up his forearm like spilled ink seeping into parchment. It was getting worse, the tendrils pulsed grotesquely beneath his skin, throbbing with a rhythm that didn’t match his heartbeat. The virus spreading now, taking over, and for all that he truly was, even he could not combat it alone, time was running out, until this would end him once and for all.

"Beautiful, isn’t it?" He murmured, tilting his wrist so the overhead lights caught the unnatural sheen of his flesh. "Spencer’s greatest achievement. The T-virus, even after two decades, it still evolves. Adapts. It is slowly killing me, like all the others, I need it delayed." His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, cigarette bobbing between his teeth. "I need another injection to combat it, I need more time to finish our work.”

[fallesto]

❝ your coat is always so nice. I wonder how you keep it clean. ❞ she's, essentially, talking to herself. the ethereal girl cannot answer back as far as she knows, but there is something quite different about them. the way the flowers grow ever lovelier in the sweet creatures presence is enough to let her know she is safe. she is loved. and, Claudette respects that. she's never tried to hurt anything in her life, but she inclines her head respectfully before she approaches.

This human was odd, from the way she carried herself down to the way she spoke as her hooves stilled in the dirt, the damp earth yielding slightly beneath her weight as she caught sight of the girl kneeling among the wildflowers. The human’s fingers moved with a tenderness that made her  chest tighten strangely.

Not with the familiar itch of a hex begging to be cast, but something softer, warmer. The way she murmured to the blossoms, as if they might murmur back should have been absurd. Yet, the air hummed with an unspoken gentleness, a quietude that settled over her frayed nerves like a balm.

Her long ears twitched forward at the girl's words, catching them like leaves in a breeze. The compliment settled over her coarse fur like sunlight. Warm, unfamiliar, but not unwelcome. She tilted her head slightly, studying the human with dark, liquid eyes.

Pride? Yes, that was the sensation coiling lazily in her chest. Not the sharp, acquisitive pride of hoarded knowledge, but something quieter. The way the girl's fingers lingered on her flank, tracing the neat lines of her brushed coat, made her hide quiver instinctively. She exhaled through her nostrils in a slow, warm huff that stirred the girl's tangled curls.

There was no calculation in the gesture. No hidden motive lurking beneath it like a viper in the grass. For the first time in centuries, her body moved without the tension of a coiled spring, without the sharp awareness of being observed.

The girl .. Claudette, wasn't it? Smelled of rosemary and turned earth, her fingertips leaving traces of dandelion pollen along her shoulder where they brushed absently. As she quite, well, she quite enjoyed the company of this one now.

[fallesto]

❝ as I've told you, you can relegate me to the other project. I won't touch that thing anymore. I've told you my professional opinion on it, as it stands. ❞ she didn't care if they or he fired her, at this point.

The market was in high demands, he could not afford delays or someone not doing their work. He smirked as he stood in the room, the sterile white light glinting off his shades, casting sharp reflections across the rows of surgical steel tables. Each slab bore its own grotesque masterpiece, bulging muscle fibers straining against synthetic restraints, exposed rib cages fused with armored plating, the occasional twitch of a half-formed claw.

“I am impressed at the latest creations, finish them and prepare them for transport, we have buyers all around the world demanding more from us.”

The air hummed with the low, wet sounds of breathing tubes and the rhythmic beeping of life support monitors. His polished boots clicked against the macadamized flooring as he strolled past a particularly volatile specimen, its milky eyes rolling wildly in its skull as it sniffed the air, catching his scent. As he walked forward, B.O.W’s. Weapons, lethal, dangerous, deadly, monsters to some, but to him, nothing more than profit to sell and be used in the endless wars around the world.

Dr. Gideon’s assistant, what was her name again? He saw that she hovered near the back, arms crossed tight over her lab coat like she was trying to keep herself from shattering. She’d been vocal about her objections, and that was always entertaining. "Still sulking?" He drawled, tapping ash from his cigarette into a petri dish labeled Specimen 37-A.

"Or have you finally realized you’re standing in the presence of progress? I need this tyrant finished, before the end of the month, my customers won’t wait any longer."

As he turned to her, hearing her voice, whimper and threat. Quitting was laughable. A joke. A child’s fantasy. In this world, there were only two exits: compliance or a body bag. He took a slow drag from his cigarette, letting the silence stretch until the assistant’s breathing hitched. "You think this is a negotiation?" He asked, tilting his head just enough to catch the way her fingers dug into her sleeves. "How adorable." As he chuckles.

“There are no other departments, you understand? Do you have any idea, how many laws you have broken with the work you have done? The things you have seen, the things you have done? Finish the work, and we will move you to another department, I don’t want faulty merchandise with our name on it, going out there.”

[multimatium]

“but i’m cute so it’s okay.” (dealers choice)

She clocked the hell outta that guy. He deserved it, for the things he was saying and doing. And he went out in one punch too!

"Won't see me complainin' Darlin'."

[oathstruck]

❝ I—I think I'd fall off of that death trap. ❞ she isn't coordinated at all ( she means the bike ).

Unprompted Asks || Always Accepting! @botaniqal

"Death trap? Kirin's one of th'safest bikes t'be ridin' 'cause I'm th'one ridin' her."

She's sat comfortably on her bike, helmet resting in her lap while she takes a smoke break. Honestly, she drives fairly safe when she's in the city, it's when she gets into a freeway that she turns into a bit of a menace on the road, at least when she has the clear signs of a straightway. She still practices standard safety, leather jackets made to protect her in the case she fell off and didn't get road rash too badly and a helmet...Not that the latter mattered that much since she'd get pasted across the road if she crashed at max speed.

"Besides, if someone's ridin' with me, I know not t'go at my usual speed. I like goin' fast, but only when I'm th'only one at risk."