sing and dance a jig [Nim&Jigsaw]

[nim]

Hundreds upon hundreds of pairs of eyes. Scared eyes. Hateful eyes. Eyes that struggled between disgust and wonderment.

Eyes were very interesting things, to be certain. Some called them gateways to the soul. Nim had never given much thought to the latter; souls that is. Partly because he didn't really understand the concept of a soul. Was it the true being beyond a true being? A manifestation of the mind? Or was it just some made up fairytale used for insults and justification for not doing what needed to be done? The virus shook his head. No. He was thinking about eyes now, not souls.

He stared up at those gathered on the other side of the glass, not afraid to lock eyes with them. Their eyes revealed their weakness. They were weak, oh yes. Oh so very weak. One bite from him an any one of them...well...he supposed the medicine available to those that lived on the other side of the wall the 'normal' population, the keeper's kind, was slightly better than the limited supplies which could be scrounged up by the rings. Still. Killing any one of them would be easy, were he on the same side as they. Nim would take his time though. He'd bring them down a peg or two, wait until their eyes showed they realized just how powerless they truly were.

Smiling mischievously he took a step closer to the wall. His smile broadened as he watched the humans become antsy. Another step. Another. Some of the humans were casting worried glances to their fellows. How strong exactly was the glass between them and the monsters on the other-the virus was running now, changing. His form ripped apart as he shifted, becoming a monstrous (but noticeably skinny) canine beast. Owl wings pumped once and he launched himself at the wall, sending the humans springing away. They tumbled over each other in their flight, forgetting for the moment that there was no chance of the beast breaking through.

The shift lasted only seconds and soon Nimet was on the ground, returned to his human form. He laughed as he watched the panicked crowd. Such weak creatures. none of the bravery of his usual prey. The virus glanced warily to the side, pausing in his laughter. Was that the shimmering of a keeper? No..wait, yes...it had been. It was gone though. He wondered briefly if his little display had gone into his file as further notes, and returned to watching the crowd. There was a keeper there now, reassuring them--the same keeper that had appeared within the menagerie before he supposed. The virus laughed again, sprawling out on the ground.

There were days in The Menagerie when life was good.

[jigsaw]

And the first rude sketch that the world has seen
was joy to his mighty heart

Fretting endlessly to and fro, caught up in the derangement that there was somewhere to be in this hellhole of his. He was filled with the illusion, that day, that certainly there was somewhere he was supposed to go. Blood dried and peeled across his pallid hands; the sanguineous liquid was still moist beneath the curved, feline nails that extended forth from his fingertips. Still damp and unpleasantly sticky, waiting to crust and dry—Jigsaw grumbled his quite irritation in the form of a strangled, choking growl. He bit down on its tongue to keep it from surpassing the threshold of his lips, only to discover that his mouth filled swiftly with blood from his sharp canine teeth. He shrugged it off. As of yet, the day had been fairly productive. He’d stumbled across numerous Shifters, and just as many had been infected or killed outright. Despite himself, in the end, Jigsaw had very little restraint when it came to pleasing his own sick pleasures. The most recent victim, a woman, had begged him. Pleased for mercy as he perched curiously above, asking meaningless inquiries that ought to have come from the lips of a toddler. Jigsaw was oftentimes more inquisitive than was for his own good.

He brooded over the dark words the woman had said—she’d pleaded to someone named God, and when Jig had asked exactly who God was, she said outright that it didn’t matter. She told him, quite frankly, that he’d end up in a place called Hell when he died. Jigsaw, of course, had looked at her with puzzlement and said, ”But I won’t die.” A rather interesting conclusion to come from one such as Jig—after all, he dealt out death. As a result he should have understood it better than anyone else, but failed to see where it related to him. He was invincible; those scientific Keepers would patch him up if he ever got broken, or at least so it went in his mind. To Jigsaw, the Keepers were gods, no matter what the Shapeshifters said about them.

Jigsaw flexed his shoulder—it was sore, hurting. The muscles throbbed frequently; blood gushed from the wound, however shallow it may have been. The woman’s shift, it turned out to be, was some sort of brutish black bear. She had been large enough in size to damage the slender, lightweight being such as Jigsaw. What, with his hollow bones and all, it was a wonder she hadn’t broken anything when she shifted and swiped mercilessly at his shoulder. In the end, the only thing that truly saved Jig from furthermore injury was the fact his shift was utterly massive in comparison. He pounced and savagely tore the woman limb from limb and she wailed, his teeth searing into her flesh like a firepoker would tear mercilessly through butter.

Jigsaw was still covered in her blood, to his dismay. He didn’t like to be so dirty; it disgusted him, despite the fact he never truly knew what clean meant. His entire body was encrusted in a thin layer of dust, blood, and other grimy thing. He’d rubbed his skin until it turned red and raw trying to get the blood off his face and forefront, and he still had yet to be clean. And, damn, his shoulder still hurt. His membranous wing throbbed with the dull ache of the injury as it spread up through the tendons, muscles, and bones. He flexed it once, painfully, and then again to no avail. The blood that came pouring from the shallow injury was not ceasing any time soon, although the trickle had long-since slowed.

The Virus sighed in consternation, as he sauntered on the rim of FallenRing territory. He was patrolling the Wall, as he sometimes did. The humans on the other side amused him—if only he could reach through the glass! Not even maliciously, but simply to ask them endless questions he had about their race. Unlike many Viruses, Jigsaw did not want to be human or a shifter, nor did he envy them. They just left him curious and seeking out more answers. He looked at them wistfully now, fingers trailing along the thick glass as he walked by. Terrified glances met his own, along with disgusted ones (all emotions he could scarcely interpret). He paused in his stroll, watching intently as a teenage boy ambled tensely up to the wall. He glanced behind him once, gaze landing upon a cackling bunch of boys his own age.

Acting on a dare, no doubt, he laid his hand against the glass where Jigsaw paused, looking daringly at the Virus through panes and panes of a transparent wall. Jigsaw grinned, a bloodied-mouth grin that widened when he saw the look of terror on the human’s face. Indeed, the leftovers of the woman he had slaughtered still remained a sickly sanguineous mixture that swam repeatedly in his mouth as he sloshed a pool of her blood about over his tongue. His own deadly saliva was intertwined with it, and the teenager boy looked at Jigsaw until he could no longer bear it. Jig saw the teenager’s lips move, uttering out some unheard curse.

Jigsaw shrugged and continued down the wall. He wasn’t even looking in front of him, but rather, through the glass and onto the other side. He saw the crowd part, and then saw the white flash of a Keeper in uniform as he attempted to calm the throng of people down. The Virus picked up his pace in the slightest, having an infinite wish to see what the commotion was about. He nearly tripped right over the cause of it, in truth. Only Jigsaw’s nimble ability to move saved him from that. He sprung over the stationary body on the ground, landing fluidly upon coiled haunches. He kneeled, turning to face the individual splayed across the ground. His gaze was curious, seeking, and idly Jigsaw wondered if he would get another victim in for that day…

However his thoughts were disturbed when he realized the boy beside him was none other than a Virus—the normally impassive Jigsaw eased a grin from his lips, the smirk still bloody but less so since he had swallowed the sanguineous spit. His amber-red eyes glittered with foxlike mischief. He could not recall seeing this particular Virus around before. His ears flicked forward, tiger-tail curling against his calves. He painfully flexed out the contours of his membranous wings once more, but quickly fit them flush against his back. ”Hey.” He conveyed many things through speech and expression alone—right now Jigsaw was all feline; his voice emerged as a whispered purr. His idiom was mild interest, an indolent and thoughtful glance directed towards the other Virus. Jigsaw glanced sidelong at the wall, before his skittering red gaze returned to Nim. ”What are you doing out here?”

till the Devil whispered behind the leaves
"It's pretty, but is it art?"

[nim]

Clearly someone was out to make this a good day for Nim. A wonderful joke, laughing, and now another virus? Very fortunate. He flinched slightly as the virus jumped over him, he had come a little too close to being sqooshed...but he supposed the important part was that he hadn't been sqooshed, upholding the day's status as good.

Tiger tail, bat wings...talons, not entirely unlike his own...yes, it was certainly a fellow virus. Nim smiled in return to Jigsaw's-an acknowledgment of a sort of comradeship. Brown eyes gave the other virus a once over, nothing contemptuous, just something to take in the bloody figure as a whole. Bloody. Yes, there was really no other word for it. He was quite literally drenched in the red liquid, which from its scent, was probably a mixture of his own and some shifter's. Nimet guessed that the shifter had come off worse, although the virus appeared to have a gash or two of considerable sizes.

"That...is a lot of blood. Prey give you trouble or did you just fly through a tree?" The jest was good-natured. Verbal maliciousness would seem odd coming from the innocent eyed man, despite the fact that he was a virus, and blatantly so. He wore no gloves to cover his talons and though the feathers at the back of his neck couldn't be seen, his tail certainly could.

Nim returned to staring at the wall. The humans still seemed shaken, but the keeper had managed to calm them down for the most part. The draw of two oddities in the same place at the same time was enough to have some of them return to their close positions at the glass. To them Nimet gave a wolfish grin.

He turned back to the other virus as it registered that a question had followed the greeting. What had he said? ...Probably something about what was going on or what he had been doing.

"Hm? Oh...ah well, just playing a little joke s'all."

[jigsaw]

Jigsaw examined the other Virus with thoughtfulness, his eyes narrowed into the essence of consideration. Nonetheless, his expression was not hostile—in fact, Jigsaw was rarely hostile with creatures of his own kind, unless they in some way provoked him. Rather, he found Viruses as another type of toy entirely. They were not fragile like humankind, but durable and fixable and strange. They shared his same twisted, sick ideals, or at least on a normal basis. Thus far he’d discovered that each mutant usually had a distinct twist and different thoughts about killing their ultimate targets. Just as the other Virus took in Jigsaw’s mutations, Jig took in Nimet’s in return.

At the creature’s comment, Jigsaw’s eyes caught a glimmer of humor. Another smile eased itself across his face, as he shifted his position. That gash was really hurting—nonetheless, he knew the keepers would stitch him up if he went to them. ”Flew through a tree, of course.” That grin on his face could almost be considered charming—it didn’t seem right placed on the face of such an oddity, considering he was very not normal in appearance. And, covered in blood as he was, the chaste gesture of a smirk was very contrasting. Just as the innocence in Nim’s gaze was contrasting to the creature he was.

Jigsaw sent a red-eyed glance towards the wall of the Menagerie—unlike many, Jigsaw had never even had thoughts of escaping the massive glass dome. However, now he did, staring meticulously at the curious and horrified faces outside. What would it be like to be in that world? The vastness of the thought exceeded him, and Jigsaw merely shook his head. There was no getting out of this haven, and he didn’t want to escape either. He like it where he was, although the rumors of outside were beautiful. Shifters far and wide had told him stories… ”Is that so? Jigsaw glanced at the other Virus, light humor coloring his tones. ”Do ya mind if I join in? Or are you finished with your joke?” He cast another easy smile in the direction of his comrade, staring out again towards the people who stared directly back.

His head was filling with those wayward dreams, and that same old question—what’s it like, out there?