#virgi

It took a week for the creature to stir again, which granted wasn't abnormal for an animal to do after an extremely large meal, but Logan still spent the whole week fluttering around the lab, periodically making sure the heat lamp was warm enough and that the water dish was definitely close enough for it to reach if need be. All the paperwork had been completed at this stage, all the samples they'd garnered analysed. There was nothing to do but wait for the creature to wake up,

If it'll wake up a concerned part of him whispered, but he shook it off. Sat at the laboratory desk quietly eating a store-bought sandwich, Logan wholly expected another day of no activity, and was planning work for himself just to get through the day without going sick from worry. Even though he was rather distracted, he still noticed Remy - who was sat on the desk and drinking a truly abhorrent cup of coffee that surely had enough coffee to kill him, but alas - freeze for a moment, before pointing at the enclosure

"Your thing is awake"

Logan's head snapped to the enclosure, lunch thoroughly forgotten as he saw little legs twitching and stirring. His face was pressed to the glass like a child at the aquarium as he watched it awaken, stretching each leg out individually and vibrating in such a way that its carapace rattled slightly before it let out a happy chirp - was that its equivalent of cracking one's back in the morning? Curious.

The creature noticed him, turning its many eyes to look up at Logan, blinking slightly out of sync. Logan backed up, suddenly very aware that not only was his behaviour very unprofessional, but could very easily have appeared predatory and scared the little thing to death. He knelt to be less imposing, and couldn't keep the smile off his face as the creature chittered, chirped, and danced back and forth in greeting. It was so cute, and he'd definitely missed it in the last week.

"Hello, welcome back. I take it you enjoyed your meal, huh?"

Behind him, Remy scoffed lightly as he began setting up a trolley,

"why's it always so cute for you, then when I'm left alone with it, it'll either hiss or just stares me down with its bagillion eyes"

Logan simply shrugged, gently lifting the creature yet again into his arms. And yet again it didn't seem to mind being carried, simply looking around at the new perspective as it was gently placed atop the work bench. It trilled, almost as if asking a question, and despite it being an animal Logan felt the urge to soothe him and answer the question,

"No need to worry, we're not going to hurt you. We'll be performing some non-invasive tests and then as a reward you can…"

Logan glanced around, honestly it wasn't like it needed an incentive or reward considering it had been nothing but compliant, but still - aha, his abandoned lunch was still out, and he saw the fruit he brought from home.

"You can have some banana, yeah? You really enjoyed it last week, so you can have some banana for being a good…" Hmm. They needed to determine its sex soon enough "... For being good."

Remy sat across from him on the bench, with that stupid teasing smile that he wore every time Logan fell that bit more endeared with the creature. Logan scoffed silently and straightened up.

"Have you considered an appropriate classification for it yet?"

Logan blinked. A genuine, work related question from Remy. Strange.

"I haven't, but we can rule out arachnid despite its appearance. It qualifies for an insect strangely enough, though it seems under the carapace plates it has flesh similar to a mammal - plus few presence of lactose could indicate mamalia if it's getting fed that instead of searching for it"

Remy leaned forward, chin on his hands as he stared at Logan behind dark shades.

"It could belong to the Dasypodidae family, or maybe Pholidota . We'll need to test to see which ancestor gave it the extra limbs and eyes though, try and trace if there's any relatives on the tree. We also need to determine a sex, and the hormone processes. If it's a female we'll have to track mating habits and ovulation, if it's staying here long term and we find no males of the species we may have to spay it to stop hormone - related tumours from forming - a life span needs to be determined, we have no idea how old this thing is, if your theory about it still feeding is correct we could have nabbed an infant "

Logan swallowed thickly. He had an idea where this was going,

" As much as you love playing with your new spider pet, girl, we can't keep performing observation after observation, giving it the day off every time it gets upset, and staving off testing. I know you don't wanna hurt it or kill its trust in you, but if we keep providing no information they'll just move it to a different team. You get me, babes?"

Sometimes Logan forgot how intelligent Remy was, how much more perceptive the sassy student could be. He was right, obviously, and Logan had known this but it still stung to have it all be lay out on the table. He took a steadying breath and nodded miserably, looking at the creature that was simply exploring the surface it had been placed on. No attempt to run off or attack - it was just as curious as Logan was.

The creature suddenly turned and looked at Logan and his no doubt saddened expression and scuttled forward, low whistles escaping it as it placed a pedipalp gently on his forearm and let out a long sound that almost sounded like someone trying to enunciate an 'L'

The proud scientist smiled slightly, and gave it a very gentle head pat - which it seemed to enjoy.  He whispered a gentle "thank you" before turning his attention to the apprentice,

"You're right, Remy. Of course you are. I've been putting off invasive testing for my own comfort, but that needs to stop. Contact labs to get some slots open, and bring the kit. We'll… Get as much as possible done in one go."

Remy nodded, looking a little sobered up. Thankfully he most likely knew how much Logan was struggling and was withholding his usual jabs.

--

Testing on a creature you'd grown so fond of was more emotionally draining than one could imagine. They'd tried to be as gentle as possible, giving it small breaks and little snacks of banana in between - but it had stopped accepting after the first two times, perhaps realising that a treat didn't mean finished.

They'd taken fibres from both the carapace and legs - it had squealed on every pluck, and Logan's comforts were not effective when he was clearly the cause of it. After they'd used a harmless dye (fluorescein) to drop into one of its eyes. Remy had to pin the poor thing down while the CT scan mapped out the inner workings of the creature's incredible eyes.

Though Logan couldn't be too excited, the screeching sounded like a baby's wail, and guilt chewed at his stomach even after they'd finished. Once he let it go, it had scurried off, compulsively rubbing at its face with its pedipalps, still releasing the cry-like noise that hurt Logan deeply. He tried to give it some banana, but it felt like poor penance. Logically he knew the creature wasn't in pain - perhaps a little sting at the initial drop, but no more. He still felt horrible knowing he'd stressed it out so much.

"Alright, we need a venom sample this… It's not gonna enjoy this"

Remy clicked his tongue, searching for a vial from the trolley

"It hasn't liked any of this, babes. All you can do is try to keep it comfortable, yeah?"

The scientist sighed, but nodded, taking the vial and re-sanitising his gloves. The vial was sterile, and had a fake skin cork. He needed to get the creature to try and bite it, penetrating the cork and dripping its venom into the vial for testing and analysis. As he psyched himself up, Remy wordlessly moved to pin the creature again, who began its heartbroken screeching as it seemingly sensed another invasive process.

Before he could chicken out, Logan moved forward and carefully gripped the creatures head, careful of the eyes, and managed to pierce the fake skin with the fang, wincing as the noise increased. Small drops of black dribbled out tediously slow, and Logan was forced to rub at the surrounding glands to speed the process up. For once it was trying to resist being held, wailing in distress and trying to escape Remy's clinical hold.

"Shh, shh you're ok. You're ok, shh. Look, darling, we're done now. All Done. All done, there we go."

Remy put the sample away, lipping the word 'darling' at Logan, who promptly ignored him. The student returned with a scalpel and slide, smiling sheepishly,

" This is the last thing. Promise, babes, then you can play with the little cretin as much as you want"

Virgil wailed, Virgil screamed, but the humans didn't stop. He needed papa, it was so scary - he thought the man with the blue tie was nice, he gave Virgil nice food and smiled warm when Virgil happy wiggled. The man reminded him of papa, sometimes, but papa would never do this. He was being held down which was scary enough, but then someone was grabbing his back leg and he hissed on instinct as he tried to pull it back but that didn't work.

The blue man was speaking in low tones, trying to soothe Virgil but he didn't understand why - Virgil could tell the man controlled what happened to Virgil, so if he was as sorry as he looked why wasn't he doing anything about it?

Virgil let out a 'tssssssttssss' at the man, the same thing he cries at papa when he's very upset. A stinging-scratch on his leg makes the volume increase, distressed warbles becoming distorted as his tempest tongue activated. The two men looked uncomfortable, but Virgil was too young to have powers strong enough. At best they probably felt a little tummy-sick and ringing ears, but nothing more. He let up the barbs on his legs, but they hardly seemed bothered.

Papa wasn't coming, was he? He never waits this long when Virgil is crying. Infact, he seems to appear before Virgil even realises he wants to cry, and cuddles the owies away.

Even his brother, as icky and gross as he could be, wouldn't let him cry like this.

The scritching continued, and he could feel flakes of hardened exoskeleton flaking off. Virgil wailed some more, it's all the baby could do. The sound of his own skin popping off was going to haunt him, he's certain.

Eventually the painful scratches stop, and the human with weird eyes backed off as he was picked up. He liked being held - just sitting in the box was boring, and the lack of contact caused his anxieties to mound - but the man didn't spend any time giving him head pats of just holding him close like he sometimes did. He was instead very quickly dropped back into his boring box. He very quickly scuttled into his webbing, scared he'd get nabbed again, and croaked sadly. No cuddles, no papa, no Re-Re.

He climbed up to his little sleeping tunnel, stepping over the lil block, he meticulously began wrapping himself, just like how he caught prey, and allowed the lines to be tight around him.

It wasn't a hug, but it was something.

Logan gently wiped his wet eyes, struggling to maintain a professional demeanour. He'd deposited the creature back into its enclosure, assuming it could soothe itself and would want away from them for now.

Something in its cries, it set off the paternal instincts within him. The level of distress was similar to his son's when he had broken his elbow last summer. Logan had had nightmares for the next few weeks after the incident, and he could honestly see them returning.

He would try and determine an intelligence for this creature, after it has rested sufficiently. The wails seemed to have too much… distress and fear, to be a basic pain cry.

He glanced at Remy, who also looked rather upset. He glanced down at the sample they'd gathered, frowning.

"So, uh, that kinda made me feel like shit." the student confessed

Logan nodded, "I fear I'm going to be guilty about that for quite some time."

Remy looked him up and down, nodding numbly and probably deciding Logan was right.

"I'm, uh, gonna take these samples… We can plan for tomorrow, okay? Get some enrichment, play with it."

Remy left with the sample cart, and Logan hugged himself, head dipped slightly.