3/28 Instance: A Practice Polish

[Starfish]

((Time-lined current))


Christopher: Chris played around with a few beakers each half full of the emptied contents of a few different kinds of metal polish. "Ugh now I know why she wanted some better scented kinds of this stuff if she was gonna use it on herself. This stuff is horrible. Hmm I wonder when J will get here. I could use some help." He grabbed a few different bowls with pestles and some other random substance he'd already started crushing up.

J: J made his way into the science lab, seeing Chris already at work. He walked up and instinctively covered his nose with his hankie as he got close. "Oh my... That smells awful... What are you doing?" He looked over what Chris had out on the table.

Christopher: "Yeah these polishes smell god awfull! Well I told Cessily I could prolly figure out a polish for her, she'd mentioned something about wanting to try to use it on herself but that normal polishes smelled horrible. I now have to agree with her." He covered his nose. "Think there any gas masks around here?" He laughed a little and then gave J a feint smile, the smell making it hard for him to be happy. "Glad you came to give me a hand."

J: "There certainly are, but I think it'd be more prudent to use the fume hood. That is what it's for..." He smiled and pointed to the fume hooded table with his free hand. He picked up a few of the things and started to transfer them over, setting each piece of equipment inside one at a time while talking, "So we are making a metal polish for Cessily." He thought about it, "Liquid mercury... Hm... Well normal mercury would be poisonous to touch... which thankfully Cessily is not... Think it would be most prudent to use a solid state metal polish... Chrome or Stainless steel... Isolate the compound causing the repugnant odor, erase it, and find a suitable one."

Christopher: "Exactly what I was thinking. I got a couple of stainless steel polishes and emptied their contents into those beakers and also kept the cans for their ingredients listings. Also I gathered up a couple different flowers as well as perfumes. Hmm so how should we isolate what's making that god awfull smell." He swirled one of the beakers around slowly.

J: "Hmm... Well, spectral analysis, find out the exact molecular make up, break it apart piece by piece till the smell is gone, and rebuild the parts we eliminate with a hopefully better smelling version." J smiled, sure in his plan, bringing up all the knowledge he had stored on the subject, his mental search engine pulling out everything needed.

J: Didn't take long and J got to work, pulling samples from each beaker and running them through the analysis machine, smelling each of the flowers and perfume while he waited for the results.

Christopher: "Got any idea which particular scent she'd like? I don't know much about her. I perfer the vanilla personally." He watched as the analyzer started running out all the information they wanted.

J: "Um... Not certain. But she does wear flowers fairly often in her hair and on her clothing... So maybe a mixed floral scent?" He offered, holding up combinations of flowers together to sniff them, glancing over at the machine to check it's progress.

Christopher: "Yeah, I grabbed a fair amount of them." He looked around the room cautiously. "I hope no one will miss them." He gave J a little chuckle. "Hmm there I wonder if there's any sort of masks around here this stuff is just horrible." He started searching through the drawers and cabinets.

J: "Check the tall cabinet, third shelf inside the box." He pointed behind himself over by the teacher's door. "No, I am certain this is fine... Unless you took them from Professor Ororo's green house... Then she might strike you down with a lightening bolt." He said off-handedly, putting a few of the flowers together and nodding. "Try these... Tell me what you think." He set them to the side and went to get the readouts.

Christopher: "Hmm I wonder if I can survive that. I mean I survived a Mac truck nailing me head on." He got out two masks and tossed one towards J. "Catch bro." He put his on and breathed through it letting it filter out the horrible stench. "So what have you been up to lately? I've been kinda oblivious to the goings on around here. Been stuck in my room studying. Math's kinda kickin my ass right now."

J: "Well, a lightening strike has no kinetic part to it... would have to rely solely on your healing factor, and since the lightening would cauterize the wound... I think it would be best not to try..." He said with a smirk as he caught the mask. He put it on quickly and shuffled through the papers.

J: "Working on converting info from brain to note pad for the professors, studying, working out, hanging out with .. People." He knew Chris had a crush on Kitty, so he didn't want to name names.

Christopher: "Yeah I'm not saying it wouldn't fuck me up. Just wondering if I'd survive or not. And sounds like fun I've been mostly emersed in books. Beatin down the punchin bag here and there too. Hope that duct tape I used to fix it last time holds."

J: J grinned, "We need to get the DR back up so you don't break anything else." He read through the lists, trying to pick out which compound would be easiest to dissemble. "Alright, think I have found our target. This isn’t the smallest, but it looks like the most fragmented structure... So should be simpler to break apart."

Christopher: "That's good." He read over his J's shoulder making sure he agreed with what he was saying. "Yup lets get this show on the road. And yeah there's a few trees out there that aren't quiet the same, went on a walk the other day and got a little bored."

J: J headed over to the fume hood, pulling out the samples they needed and reactants that they could use to break them apart. "Alright, let's." He grinned as they got to work, trying out combinations of chemicals, slowly but surely working towards their goal.

Christopher: Chris joined in with the different combinations while watching to make sure he wasn't doing the same ones as J. "Hmm this is going well enough."

J: ((Time passes))

J: A little over 2 hours later J and Chris were still working diligently on their experiment. Slow going, but they'd have some decent results, and utter failures. Was turning out to be more difficult than thought to pull apart the compound and still retain functionality.

J: "Ok... Hand me that one please... and let’s try it with this batch... Would be the closest match thus far... But we've still not even been able to work a new scent in..." He was starting to get a bit frustrated, his borrowed power should have kicked in by now, but it'd not triggered yet.

Christopher: "Sure." He reached over and grabbed the bowl full of lilacs. "Hope this one will work. This shit's gettin annoying." He handed it over to J carefully.

J: He took the flowers, the prepared broken polish and a reagent he hoped would bring them both together. The flowers went in after the liquid polish, and he looked to Chris for a moment before dropping in the reagent and prayed.

J: And for a moment, it almost looked like it would work.

J: Smoke billowed out of the beaker, purples and grays, and a smell so foul even the fume hood and the gas mask barely contained it. J pressed the power vent to suck up the foul air.

Christopher: "Oh holy shit that didn't work." He coughed hard and backed away from the fume hood. "Damn that smells awfull."

J: J backed up as well, watching the certainly toxic smoke get sucked out not nearly fast enough. "No... No it didn't..." He shook his head, the fumes and his minor irritation at failing starting to cause a slight headache. "Alright... Back to basics. We want to make a metal mutant shiny. Er." He looked over the materials at hand, seeing sunflowers mixed in with the others they’d discarded earlier.

J: "Ok. ok ok.... How about just an oil. Will be much easier to put together a scented bio-oil... like massage oil. Synthetic oil is just not going to work." Restarting sparked the creative power inside him. "I've got it. We need seeds."

Christopher: "Uhmm okay what kind of seeds. Sunflower look like the only ones we've got here." He went back over after the vapors were vented out and grabbed the sunflowers and handed them over. "Think these'll work?"

J: "Yes. Shell them and then mash them to a paste... Wont make much, but should be enough to coat her body at least a few times." He shrugged and went to work putting together the scent they were wanting to imbue.

Christopher: He de-shelled all the little seeds and put them into a bowl starting to mash them up with a pestle. "Yeah this is just a test kinda thing. Don't even know if she'll like it."

J: "Oh... Alright. Well, will be good to do our best at any rate." J smiled as he worked, "Do not want my name on something that is a sub-par product!" He joked and started to hum a little song as he took a whiff and kept working.

Christopher: "Hehe yeah and maybe if there's some other metallic mutants out there we can market it." He laughed a little. "Just kidding." He started crushing up other flowers and deseading more sunflowers.

J: "Ha.. Well I am not certain how many there are in the world, so not certain if we can make too much money on it." He shrugged, "Ok, can you hand me the ground seeds?" He asked as he finished with the flower petals, his mind already a few steps of where they were at.

Christopher: "Yeah here you go, they should be pretty well ground up. Oh got a little more lilac if you wanna try that again, but I don't think the first smell matters as long as it's better than the original odor. I can still smell that crap lingering around here." He handed over the ground seeds and offered the other ones after he took the seeds.

J: "Yes, do not think we have to worry about it not smelling as good as that last batch..." He shook his head and started to extract the oils. "This does smell pleasant though." He said off-handedly to himself as he worked.

Christopher: Chris started doing the same so atleast they'd have two batches and two different smells if it worked right. "So how's classes treatin you man? Math's really kickin my ass lately."

J: "I am doing fine. Most classes here are a breeze thanks to my mutation... It's really just a matter of turning things in." He shrugged, "I can do most of my homework while mentally sifting through the info from the infiltration, and typically have a movie or TV show on in the background as well..."

Christopher: "Yeah I'm not so lucky. Been hittin the books but my own studies keep dragging me back to my biology books." He sniffed the bowls. "Yeah they're smelling pretty good."

J: "Uh huh..." He started to infuse the oils, letting it pull out the scent from the flower mixture. "I believe this is just about finished." He got up and went to get a bottle for the mixture. He looked over at Chris' batch, coming along well, "Just make sure to press it .... There ya go." He smiled and went back to his own station.

Christopher: "Yeah I'm a BIG science guy. I know what I'm doing." He kept it up and then headed over to grab a bottle as well. "I'm mostly biology, but I like to play around with science too."

J: J smiled, "Oh, alright. Just making certain." If he knew what he was doing why did he as for help... He joked in his head while he poured the oil into the bottle, putting a strainer over the opening as he put the lid on. "All done!"

Christopher: "Same here." He sniffed it. "Smells pretty good to me." He offered J a sniff. "What do you think?"

J: "Oh." J looked over at him, a confused look on his face, "Really?" He walked over to take a whiff. "Smells good." He nodded and put the bottle next to Chris. "I hope she will like them." He smiled.

Christopher: "Yeah me too. So this is just like a lotion or something? Maybe we should try it on some metal?" He looked around the room for some stainless steel.

J: "Umm... More like a massage oil actually. Lotion would be thinker and include a moisturizer and an emollient." He looked at the spectral analysis first, "Hm... Better not... Might throw off calculations..." He mumbled to himself and spotted a steel plate and brought it over. "Here we are..."

Christopher: "Hmm lets try yours first. I think I'll trust the smartie pants over the guy that just likes to read." He laughed a little.

J: "Alright." J put the plate on the table and went to grab a pair of rubber gloves. He smiled as he put them on, "Sorry... Hate unnecessary oil on my hands..." He poured a small button size bit on the plate and rubbed it in, moving his head to see how well it caught the light. "Hm... What do you think?"

Christopher: "Looks pretty good to me. Let me give mine a try." He did the same as J and wiped it around making the metal just a bit less shiny. "Hmm I musta messed up a little mine doesn't work as well as yours. Still looks better than before though."

J: "Much better." He nodded, "And smells WAY better than metal polish!" He grinned, "Well, this way she can look like she has a bit of a tan maybe?" He joked and put the lid back on the bottles and pulled off his gloves, tossing them in the bin. "Think they are good for delivery."

Christopher: He offered J a high five for the awesome work. "Hopefully we'll have one happy shiny girl walkin around the mansion soon enough." He smiled and carefully packed his bottle into his bag bundled in a few torn up shirts he'd accidentally destroyed.

J: J grinned and gave a soft high five, not wanting to get his hand hurt. "One can hope!" He watched Chris pack his bottle away and offered his own, "Just need to remember the mixtures for later just incase she likes them." He cleaned up his mess and put things away.

Christopher: "Yeah I took a few notes, mind jotting me down what you did so I can improve on mine?" He packed J's bottle away in his pack as well.

J: "No problem. I'll email it to you later." He smiled, "Just let me know how they work out." J looked over the lab once more, making certain he wasn't forgetting anything. "Alright, well I am going back to my homework. Have a good evening Chris."

Christopher: "Hey hold up a sec you need my e-mail bro." He laughed a little while jotting down his e-mail address and then handed it over to him. "Have fun with your homework man. I'll just be studying in my rooms. Hopefully gettin the hang of that damn math."

J: "Ha... Thanks. I might send you some of my math notes too if I remember later." He offered good naturedly as he slipped the paper into his pocket. "See ya Chris." He turned and headed out.

Christopher: "Thanks man, that'd probably help me out a lot." He gave him a short wave and then headed off in a different direction looking for something else to do for the rest of the day, but mostly looking for Cessily.

[Raven Hare]

LOL! Cess is gonna be one happy girl! It's good to see her around again!