All Epilogue 02 - Studying Anatomy

Apologies for interrupting. I’m confused about myself. You’re the only doctor I can ask, and likely the only capable one. Time and place to meet?
Sending cannot express my excitement. Tomorrow, 10am, my time. Dionysia Two.
----
“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting other work or something…” Pierce ventured.
Cohen waved his fears away, “Oh please, this is possibly the most interesting thing I’ll get to do this year!”
Pierce raised his eyebrow, “...Compared to what we just did?”
“Research-wise,” Cohen amended. Pierce hummed his affirmation. Turning around to face him properly, the doctor said with a seriousness, “I will apologize in advance: I am terribly interested in your biology, and I will undoubtedly talk or act with a socially-unacceptable level of ‘creepiness’,” he gestured sarcastically, putting scare quotes on his last word.
Pierce’s mouth twitched into a grin, “I already knew you were an ass, I’m not going to be surprised by it now.”
Cohen returned the smile, “I was telling you to not be offended. I’d be disappointed if you were surprised.”
“Well, you’re doing me a favour, really. You figure out,” he gestured vaguely about, “whatever I’m supposed to be, and I won’t get uppity about your bedside manner.”
“Excellent!” He turned back to his things, sorting out various medical equipment. “I spent 6 months with some of the most biologically interesting people on the planet, and I managed to keep my uncouth curiosity to myself the whole time. I’m proud of myself, honestly. Now I get to be the first to log the species characteristics of a brand-new Materian race! That’s some karma right there.” Spinning once more, he said, “We’ll do a thorough analysis, focusing on your senses particularly, since you said those were bothering you.” Pierce nodded. Cohen smiled, “Then let’s start!”
----
“So, I float constantly,” Pierce said flatly, shrugging.
“Only this high?”
Pierce nodded, “I can’t go higher, but I can move side-to-side, and can push myself down.” He demonstrated, touching down on the ground, apparently with some difficulty.
Cohen watched closely, scribbling notes. “You look tensed. Are you using muscles for this?”
“Yeah, I have to push,” he nodded. “It’s like...trying to push down on a balloon? Or reversed magnets. It takes work; I have to step down hard and keep pressing on the floor.”
“Well, that’s interesting. Permission to try some things?” Pierce shrugged, floating back up a few inches as he stopped trying to hold himself down. “Alright. Try to fall over.”
“What?”
“Fall. I want to see if you’ll fall, or whether you’ll float backwards.”
“...Ok…” Leaning precipitously, Pierce fell backwards roughly, hitting the ground and bouncing back upwards so that he rested on a few inches of air above the ground. He frowned, starting to pick himself up as Cohen scribbled quickly.
“Wait, don’t get up!” Cohen stopped him. He directed him to push in a few different ways.
After some experimentation, they determined that Percival permanently rested a few inches above any horizontal surface. Pressing down would bring him in contact with whatever he was above, but there was no such repulsion against vertical surfaces. Oddly enough, whatever forces kept him afloat did not extend to his arms, which meant that nothing interfered with his ability to pick up, move or lean on objects; it would likely have made it awkward to push himself upwards, if his arms also hadn’t lengthened roughly the same amount. Despite his difficulty moving down, and inability to hover any higher, he could move easily side-to-side, regardless of orientation. Attempts to move off of edges resulted in several falls, proving that he could not maintain altitude and was restricted permanently to a precise six inches above whatever surface was below him. Falling with force would knock him to the ground, though he would immediately rebound; though he could still move and float while carrying objects, carrying loads heavy enough to test his strength would pin him to the ground. This led to several other discoveries, including his massively increased lifting capacity, and a means to weigh him (which in and of itself required a rather large scale).
Cohen noted the weight, subtracting the weight of the rock Pierce struggled with. “How much did you used to weigh?”
“About 150, 160?” he replied, dropping the load heavily. “Why?” looking down at himself, “I don’t look like I gained weight…”
“Well, you gained something. Your body make-up is different, remember. If this is right, you weigh somewhere around 300, maybe 350 pounds. It’s difficult to weigh things this heavy with any accuracy,” he gestured vaguely at the very large rock, ”and I’m not going to rig up a larger scale, we have more important things to consider than to fixate on this.”
“350 pounds??” Pierce said with disbelief. “How does that even work?!”
Cohen shrugged, “I don’t know yet. Maybe you have increased muscle mass, explaining your honestly insane lifting capacity? Maybe you’ve substituted bodily components for heavier substances, metals or something, explaining your skin tint? Maybe magic, since that’s obviously what’s powering your flight? I’m provisionally considering that your ability to hover is the only thing that’s letting you move about without difficulty, but, I don’t have enough information to confirm that yet. Moving on!”
----
“I still don’t think this is a good ide-AUGH!” Pierce yelled as Cohen pushed him down a flight of stairs. He tumbled down the length, ending up in a heap at the bottom.
“Report!” Cohen called down, holding a notepad.
“You’re an asshole, that’s my report!” Pierce retorted, picking himself up.
“That’s old news!” he waved the comment away.
“It’s not news, it’s a weekly column,” he said bitterly as he floated back up the stairs, not needing to lift his legs. Cohen watched this with interest.
When he reached the top, Cohen glanced him over, “Bruises? Breaks?”
“Not for lack of trying…” Pierce muttered, investigating himself for damage.
“Ok, now this time, try to balance.”
“I was trying!”
“Try harder!”
“Why is this important?!”
“Ugh,” Cohen sighed, “You fall, so you’re affected by momentum; you can’t perfectly control your motion. Whatever you’re doing isn’t like a proper Fly or Levitate spell. I want to see, if you’ve got momentum going, if you move forwards faster and whether you slow down or not.”
Pierce glared at him, unimpressed. “...And this requires you to push me down stairs.”
“Stop whining and try not to fall over this time,” Cohen said, shoving Pierce once more. As he teetered, he made a gesture behind him that Cohen did not notice. Rather than pitching forwards, Pierce flailed but managed to stay on his feet as he slid down the staircase like a child sliding down an icy hill. He skidded along the floor at the bottom, headed for the adjacent wall. He snapped, and a round portal appeared in front of him. “What…?” Cohen barely had time to acknowledge what Pierce had done before the other man crashed into him. This time, it was Cohen who tumbled awkwardly down the staircase.
“How do you like it?” Pierce shouted down, the collision with the doctor allowing him to stop himself from falling a third time.
“Auugh, only one of us feels pain, you miserable ingrate!” Cohen called back, picking himself up but not looking altogether upset. He stepped through the portal that Pierce had left at the bottom of the stairs, immediately returning to the top. As Pierce waved away the portals, Cohen rubbed his neck and suggested, “Fine, let’s go try something else.”
“Agreed.”
----
“R...U...and J? ...And I honestly can’t see the next row.”
Cohen considered the diagram, before turning back to Pierce, who floated gently above a chair. “Wow. You are officially more blind than me.”
Wincing, he replied, “It’s a bit masked, because I can see through the Shares, but...yeah. I can’t see very far at all. Neither can any of them. We’re all basically blind individually.”
“If that’s how far they can see, no wonder they had a million of them and still couldn’t find us.”
Pierce just shrugged, adding, “I’m colour blind too.”
“Really? Red/green or…”
He shook his head, “Everything is black and white. I can see contrast just fine, but it’s all shades of grey.”
Cohen grinned, “Well, clear if it’s 5 feet from your face.”
He sighed exaggeratedly, “Yes.” Straightening, he continued, “I didn’t notice right away, actually.” This evoked a raised eyebrow from the doctor, so Pierce explained, “Well, with everything happening, I was too overwhelmed to really notice, and afterwards...well, none of them know what colour is, so it took me a while to remember that I did, and it wasn’t there. I can't even really...remember what colour is like, actually. It's like trying to remember a scent.” He leaned back and looked away thoughtfully, “It's difficult to parse, my thoughts and theirs. I want to think that what I am is horrible. I should be panicked and despaired, but...there are thousands of people sharing my thoughts. They know something is wrong, of course; they know that they aren't what they used to be, but they're coming from a very different place. They didn't have any sense of self before this, they don't know anything about Materia, and they've never been so alone. But then, there's me." Pierce leaned forwards, staring wistfully at his hands as he spoke, "As far as they're concerned, I know everything there is to know about the world. They're like children, looking at a parent. I can’t explain to them that I’m a monster and they aren’t; that's not something they'd understand, and they don’t deserve to think that they shouldn’t exist. It's bad enough knowing that none of us are what we used to be, but it so much worse to think that what we are isn't right. I won't put that on them. But...then, it's more than that. I'm not just listening to them and vice versa. I am them. I can’t, not won't, can't, worry about something that they don't worry about, because we're all the same, on some level, and because they believe we aren't monsters, I believe that too. So, I know…” he looked at his hands, “I know this should be horrifying, but...but it’s not. Heh,” he grinned slightly, still staring at his hand.
“Could you?” Cohen asked.
“Hmn?” he looked up.
“Could you actually influence them all like that? Make them all believe something?”
Pierce nodded, “Definitely. There might be some holdouts, but I’m the only one right now with enough sense of self to direct the group, and they’re all looking to me for guidance. As All, they really weren’t anything more than...limbs. They don’t know what to do with free will. If I feel something strongly enough, they’ll copy me. They know what I know, they’re watching what I’m doing, just like I’m watching them, but I’m the only one who knows how to act without orders and direction from the All. The Completes are smart though. They’ll get their own ideas and feelings. They’ll learn to be individuals.”
Cohen looked thoughtful, “Do you think they’ll outgrow you? Resist you?”
Frowning, he considered that before replying, “Maybe? I...hope not. Like, I want them to grow and learn and be people, but I don’t want some sort of internal civil war.” He chuckled slightly, then got a far-off, almost empty look as he said, “We won’t fight. We were All. All doesn’t fight. All will fix opposition, but opposition is not internal. We will grow, we will improve, our pieces will diverge, but our goals are always one.”
Cohen watched this with a considering expression. “...Alright. Careful you aren’t subsumed.”
Pierce blinked, snapping back to a more human expression, “I’m sorry, that sounded…”
Waving dismissively, Cohen cut him off, “I have no idea what being part of a hive-mind is like, I’m not going to judge. The fact that you can literally be thousands of creatures at once and still be Percival Webber is astonishing enough, I’m not going to fault you for slipping out of sync once in a while. Just make sure that you keep a handle on yourself as you grow.”
“Heh. Noted.”
----
Cohen poked two needle onto Pierce’s hand, starting them side by side and slowly moving them subtly apart. Pierce’s eyes were closed as he said, “One...one...one...two.”
“Hmm,” Cohen looked moderately impressed as he scribbled more notes down. “I would have guessed your hands to be less sensitive, considering their hardness, but they appear to not only be the most sensitive part of your body, but also more acute than most human sensation.”
“Doesn’t quite make up for being nearly deaf, I think,” he said.
“Well, we can make you some very nice hearing aids,” Cohen replied. “I wonder how they’re ennervated…”
“How would you tell?”
“Exploratory surgery.”
Pierce frowned, ”That’s a little much…”
“Oh, don’t be a chicken now. You can’t feel pain, you self-repair, you don’t seem to bleed; if Komatsu can cut his own heart out, you can suffer a few cuts to find out how your body works.”
Pierce gave a look of incredulity, “When did he do that?!”
“Oh, after he decided to bail out of the deal with the devil in the desert. You were sleeping at the time and out of it besides.”
“Huh…” Pierce said. He paused for a minute as Cohen wrote something down. “...I’m sorry about that, again,” he added.
“Are you going to stop apologizing for that? Because if you aren’t aging, and I seriously doubt you are, this is really going to wear thin after a few decades.”
“I know, I know...I’m just...I’m sorry, about the curse part, specifically. You’re still under the wolf curse, aren’t you?” Cohen flinched uncomfortably, giving Pierce his answer. He continued, “I got him to remove mine, and I didn’t even think about the rest of you. I wasn’t thinking at all, admittedly, but...I was a selfish prick, I know, and I’ll stop apologizing for it if you’re sick of hearing it, but, if you want, I can try to find some other cure. That doesn’t involve extraplanars.”
Cohen stopped in what he was doing, considering something very carefully. Eventually, without looking up, he replied, “...I’m investigating a possible solution myself, though I’m nowhere near having anything to show for it. It could be years. But I will find a solution on my own. I’m not going to ask for your assistance.” He paused, “...But if, in your independent endeavors, you happen to find a treatment of some sort, I wouldn’t begrudge it.”
“...Alright.” Pierce looked off to one side and grinned again, “I have over two thousand bodies, and I don’t sleep. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with my ‘independent endeavors’ with all the time I have.”
Cohen grinned, “If you’re all learning and pooling your knowledge, you are going to be an undoubtedly horrifying collective in a few centuries. I look forward to seeing what your endeavors are.”
“I...I guess…” he said, suddenly hesitant. After a minute, he asked, only partially sarcastic, “...You’re not going to try and exterminate us for Materia’s sake? If we get too smart for our own good?”
“Why would I do that?” Cohen replied congenially. “Provided you don’t go insane and start some sort of murderous rampage, I certainly don’t care if you become the most intelligent overlord on the planet, as unlikely as that is: you’re still Percival Webber, after all,” he said with a sardonic grin that Pierce returned. Cohen continued, “Why would I care what you do; you’re all perfectly Materian, playing by Materia’s rules. If we’re right and you’re sterile, it’s not like you’re going to numerically overtake anything. It’s not like the undead have ever become prominent, despite their longevity and skills, and they technically can reproduce. And if, in spite of everything, if you do somehow manage to supplant the current races for dominance, well, that just shows me what the next step in evolution is. But that is a very distant and hypothetical future. For now, let’s focus on figuring out how you work.” Pierce nodded.
----
“This is really uncomfortable…”
“You feel something?”
“I feel the knife, yes, why wouldn’t I?”
“But it doesn’t hurt?”
“N-no, it’s just...it feels wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Like...like something jabbing you, that’s not supposed to be there that doesn’t hurt, it’s just really uncomfortable.”
“Alright…” Cohen scribbled that down. “Should I stop?”
“Are you done?”
“I’ve only just started, but I can be done if you want.”
“...No...No, you can keep going…”
Some time passed before Pierce commented, “Something smells...wrong.”
“I don’t smell anything,” Cohen replied nonchalantly, not looking up.
“I smell something, and it’s nauseating. And it’s not even proper, because even if I’m not breathing I still smell things, and nothing is recognizable. I don’t know how to stop it. It’s probably the most frustrating thing so far, and of course, no one is any help because they don’t know either and are waiting for me to figure it out.”
“I honestly don’t…” Cohen looked up and paused mid-sentence. “...Are you crying?”
“Ugh, I don’t know, maybe? I have a blindfold on, but...it feels like my eyes are watering, yes.”
“That is certainly not water…” he mumbled. “Hold on.” Pierce heard Cohen move away; when he returned, he felt something being moved on his face.
“What are you doing?”
“Collecting this,” he replied. “You’re crying the same black fluid that the All bled when we attacked them. Well, I say the ‘same’, but that might not even remotely be correct. Regardless! You look like you’re weeping ink.” He put the vial to the side, “Alright, you smell something; it's an awful smell, and it wasn’t there before, yes?”
“Yes! And...and it's agitating. It makes the others worried.” 
"Interesting!" Cohen exclaimed. 
Pierce sat quietly for a few seconds before asking, “...Are you going to do anything about it?”
“...Yes. But I will have to wait for you to patch yourself up. Should only take a few minutes...” When Cohen ceased his incising, the wounds began to slowly close themselves as Pierce's body repaired itself. As it did, he stopped crying the black ichor. As the doctor cleaned and disposed of the tears, Cohen asked, “Is the smell lesser now?”
“...Yes…” Pierce replied hesitantly.
“Hmmm. Now that’s interesting…” Cohen said. He turned to the vial that he had collected. Opening it, he held it out to the other man. “Worse?”
“Yes.” Pierce frowned, “...That’s what I’m smelling?”
“Well, a component of it, probably. When I cut into you, you didn’t feel pain, you didn’t bleed...but you began to secrete that fluid, which you found foul smelling and agitated the Few." Cohen considered that for a moment before continuing, "It’s probably a defense mechanism; a means of identifying wounded members, perhaps, in the absence of pain. I’ll have to study its composition. First though…” he held the vial out to Pierce’s nose. “Stronger?”
“Yes...but, not very…” Pierce replied. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter if I breath or not.”
“Then it’s probably being sensed by your skin…” Cohen muttered.
He moved the vial around various parts of Pierce's body. “No different…” Pierce muttered as it moved. “...Less…More…More..." Cohen made note of the various responses, until he had an idea. 
He raised an eyebrow. “Hold still…” he took a strand of Pierce’s hair and fed it into the vial.
Pierce recoiled, “What are you doing? That’s horrible!”
Cohen chuckled, looking excited. “Your hair! Hold on,” He took off the glove he had been wearing and reached out, ruffling Pierce’s hair. 
Pierce recoiled again. “Gah! What are you doing?”
His good humour was unabated, "Does that smell like something?"
"Yes! And it feels wrong," Pierce said, shooing Cohen's hand away.
"Oh, you can feel it too?" He swept Pierce's hair about inquisitively, annoying him. "I suppose your hair in enervated. Interesting!"
"What?"
"I'll investigate further, but it seems your hair is sensitive to touch; it might be enervated like an animal's whiskers. It's somehow linked to another sense as well: some sort of pheromone sense I'd suppose, in lieu of a broader sense of smell. That is terribly interesting. You only smell things when you’re with people? That’s what you said?”
“...Yes…”
"You must be set up to respond to some sort of biochemical signatures. If you can only smell other Few and humans, I'd guess you're designed to read your own signatures, which are close enough to your parent races that you can pick up on them as well. We won't be able to test that particular theory without some All, but that's almost besides the point. I wonder what you're detecting, specifically? Certain hormones? No wonder you said you didn't recognize anything; it's outside normal human perception." He grinned, "Oh, this will be a fun little biochemical experiment! But, that will take some setting up, so we’ll do that later."
The outpouring of information threw off Pierce once again. "I...what?" 
"The summary is: your hair has been replaced with sensory organs.”
“That’s…” Pierce trailed off, at a loss.
“Terribly interesting, yes!” Cohen picked up for him, grinning. Pierce gave him a tired smile back.
----
"...Huh!" Cohen exclaimed. When he didn't get a reply, he muttered, "Oh, right, yes. Breathing. I'll give you a minute."
After Pierce had healed enough for his lungs to function again, he said, "Alright. What was it?"
"Your lungs are rather interesting!" he replied chipperly. "No respiratory function at all! But they appear to be chambered in a rather interesting fashion, and they're much smaller than human lungs. They likely have similar flow volume, but I'm just guessing on passive observation. Though, the way they're connected makes me wonder: can you inhale and speak at the same time?" Pierce raised an eyebrow, causing Cohen to roll his eyes. "Just...ok, try this. Hum for me." With a look of uncertainty, Pierce hummed a single unbroken note. "Good! Now, see how long you can hold it." He did as he was told, and shortly ran out of breath. "No, no, no. Augh, you're useless! I've seen your organs; I can tell they're designed for that. I have yet to find a single thing resembling anatomy in you that lacks a very obvious purpose. The only reason you still have lungs and a mouth is to produce sound, so, you're able to exhale and inhale at the same time in order to continually produce sound. Now, do it."
Pierce looked like he wanted to argue and refute the doctor, but his retort collapsed before he had even opened his mouth, and he looked down with a dejected expression. Quietly and downcast, he tried again, and after a few attempts, managed to grasp the skill that he apparently possessed, allowing him to hum without pause. Though he seemed rather unsure of what to make of this, the other man grinned, "I'm sure there are musicians who would kill to have that trick just handed to them." Pierce rolled his eyes.
-----------
“Well, that explains that!” Cohen said brightly.
“What now?”
“Your weight, your strength, your stiffness...lots of things.”
“...Ok. And the explanation is…?”
“You have no abdominal cavity. Very little in the thoracic cavity area either.”
“Huh?”
“...You know that space where people keep their intestines and liver and such? You’re just solid all the way down. Muscle, apparently, though your tissue composition appears to be different than normal mammalian muscle." Cohen stepped back, rearranging his tools and allowing Pierce to heal. "In summary: you have very simple anatomy, from this initial investigation. You're likely closer to a construct than anything vivan, so what biological systems you do have are simplified and have very obvious purpose." Pierce sat up, listening to the doctor summarize his results. "You don't have a need for food, water or air, so you have none of the organs dedicated to dealing with those. You have no digestive system, so don’t try to eat anything. You have no heart or blood vessels, and your lungs are hollow, since they're only needed to move fluid for speech. All of the space where organs would be in a human torso is solid muscle tissue. Your arms, for whatever reason, are also seem solid, but not of bone and muscle. They're more like the limbs of All, I'd guess: almost like an enchanted metal, or carbon fibre. I'd have to do more tests to find out what they're made of chemically, but I know I couldn't easily cut into them with the tools I had. You have no reproductive system, and though you definitely have nerves and a brain, I am no brain surgeon. I can tell that your overall nerve layout is different from a human's, since your hands and hair are extremely sensitive and you lack a variety of other senses, but the tissues you have are not at all human, so they will remain a mystery for now. Your skin and muscles are also not humanoid, so I can't judge much about them, although we have learned that your tear ducts now secrete a black substance meant to chemically signal physical damage to other Few.” Pierce looked a bit disappointed and sighed as Cohen finished. “...What?”
After a moment of tight-lipped silence, he replied, “It’s just...a lot…”
“Of course it is,” Cohen said, stepping away, “But if you can handle saving the world, I’m sure you can handle this. And it’s not like you’re alone.”
“Hmph,” he snorted bitterly.
Cohen raised an eyebrow, “...I was referring to your friends, not the Few. I know you’re still talking to Cress and his family, and you said you’d been spending time with the devils.”
“Oh...yeah, yeah you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“That was a bit harsh. Did your wife not take the results of your heroics well?” Pierce sat silently, looking away. “That poorly, hmm?” Pierce still didn’t answer. Cohen stopped what he was doing and looked at him, “...You did tell her, right?” Still no response. “Please tell me that, after the chaos in Kalleander, you went and saw your wife, whom you complained about missing everyday for six months.” Pierce stared defiantly at the floor. “Do you even know that she’s alive?”
“Of course I do!” Pierce snapped, voice a bit too loud. “Of course I checked,” he said, bringing his voice down. “I made sure she was safe on the very first night. I just...just…” he hunched over, “...couldn’t.” His voice was quiet as he said, “Her and the girls are safe. They’re staying in Rochester now, with my brother, while Kalleandar is being fixed. I don’t...they don’t…” he trailed off, leaving his sentence unfinished.
Cohen sighed.
Category:Advent of the All