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Blood vessels of a real person who dedicated their body to science for display

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Gold Plated Cow Heart

Gunther von Hagens

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"How did such a clever lady find herself in London?"

Never mind finding herself in London, the Rani found herself momentarily thrown by the question. Her mind instantly began to dissect the sentence, looking for ulterior and hidden motives within. Did he mean that he assumed she had only recently come to London? That women of her particular intellect were not to be found in London?

Without answering, she removed a packet of cigarettes from the inside of the sharp jacket she was wearing, and pulled a lighter from the same recess. Within moments, a dark spreading plume of smoke was gently dissipating above them.

The Rani found herself under a strange compulsion to confess something. They came upon her, once every century. She supposed that was the amount of time a being could be counted upon to continue carrying out heinous crimes before some tiny aspect of their conscience kicked in.

Useful information.

Her mind flickered back to London, to London the way it was then, and to all her experiments that were labeled the work of some 'Jack the Ripper'. How common.

She paused, reaching up and removing a small fleck of tobacco from her tongue. "There was a girl. I stuck around for her. You know how these things can be. She's gone now, of course."

She tapped her cigarette, and then reached for her drink.

"And you?" she asked, before bringing it to her lips. "How did you find yourself at the right hand of our most benevolent leader?" And then she giggled slightly into her drink.

'Giggle' is a verb many writers use to detonate an air of silly femininity about their character. But think for a moment - how many verbs exist to create a sense of strong female strength about a character? None? So we must make the feminine ones do all the work we can. So, yes the Rani giggled. But it was not an action which indicated silliness of weakness. Rather it was the sound of one to whom life is a game, and the punchline is several crates of highly volatile dynamite. 

Of Stars And Passing Seconds

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He sighed at her. A sigh filled with something akin to irritation and disappointment.

For a moment the Rani's heart roared, and her head was filled with flames. He tutted her, and as he did so, she pouted and slunked, mind all the while imagining clean steel biting into fresh flesh.

Ah but darling, she trusted him. So, crankily, she hung on to see what was to come.

His frame was pressed flush against her spine, and she had to restrain herself from arching into him, the fresh smell of clay and blood in her nose, telling her to succumb to earthly desires.

But then, this was not her earth. Not as they knew it.

Whispered words in her ears that sent a shiver of gooseflesh down her arms, at odds with his warm breath against her neck.

And then he was holding something before her, a present. A scalpel.

Nothing she hadn't seen before, and she instantly twisted within his arms so that she had the scalpel in hand and was suddenly standing before him, all wicked grins and spinning silver between fingers.

Because she had scalpels before. She had scalpels and electric wires, and axes and kitchen knives. She had dark rooms, and white rooms. She had all the means of breaking a human's flesh down bit by bit, and then the soul after.

But her heart had promised her a present.

And as her fingers glanced and caressed the scalpel beneath then, she noted that it was pure silver.

"Come on love," she purred. "Sell it to me."

Surprise // The Rani & Moriarty

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((Truly, you do. In my defence I just want to hear the pretty noise it makes as it blackens and cracks.))

Raniarty

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Initially, she was disappointed,

There, she said it. There was no point in keeping the fact to herself. She delighted in the whimper and the flinch. The idea of slicing thin slivers out of a prone and barely lucid body held no attraction.

Where was the light in the eyes? Where was the opportunity to see the sparks flash across the nerve endings behind the cornea, the brief moment where pain became a real and tangible sight? Where was the twitch beneath the skin as the cold slim knife moved upon it, as the frazzling and dazzling sparks of a live wire decended against the bare flesh and exposed bone?

Nowhere, that was the answer. She turned and barely glared at her lover. "Is this it?" she asked, her lower lip pouting outwards in a manner that was uncomfortably juvenile, an echo of the various methods she used to push her targets off their game, reminding them of the echos that occurred deep within their psyche - Maybe, deep inside, they really did feel that way.

Her fingers traced along the wall behind her, finely tuned senses picking out the scratches and changes in texture. She felt the gritty texture of granite, and immediately her mind started rifling through possible locations.

Jim's arm was on hers. That was an element that was surprisingly difficult to disregard. His arm was on hers and she could feel the dull heat of it slowly seep through the expensive material of her suit and against her skin.

But... as all this was going on, she found herself engaging in a more time consuming task. The stripping down an slicing up of the man before her - she wanted to reduce him to nothing but meat and psychological urges.

And to do that, she would need a little more help.

Practically purring, she turned back to Jim.

Surprise // The Rani & Moriarty

Her hands are bound.

Her hands are bound, and the mere sensation of it gives rise to a series of memories, each one so deliciously vivid that she’s quite certain that she’s not meant to be having such memories at the moment.

"I have a surprise for you," a beloved voice in her ear whispers, and the mere fact that she would attribute the adjective beloved to this voice is special in and of itself because she has never found anything in this whole wide universe to call beloved.

Before now.

They walk down steps.

The skin of her fingertips traces scratches in the wall. her heart discerns that this is somewhere that people don’t want to go. Her nose smells iron, tin… blood.

And that scent fills her with anticipation, because how many surprises can he have organised that could have this many tactile delight - the gentle tinge of mould on the edge of the sharp blood. 

They walk lower, and lower, and the Rani feels her heart-rate increase, because, well, what’s allowed to happen way underground? Things that wouldn’t be previously allowed in polite society, that’s what.

Which includes all of her favourite activities.

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Her hands are bound.

Her hands are bound, and the mere sensation of it gives rise to a series of memories, each one so deliciously vivid that she's quite certain that she's not meant to be having such memories at the moment.

"I have a surprise for you," a beloved voice in her ear whispers, and the mere fact that she would attribute the adjective beloved to this voice is special in and of itself because she has never found anything in this whole wide universe to call beloved.

Before now.

They walk down steps.

The skin of her fingertips traces scratches in the wall. her heart discerns that this is somewhere that people don't want to go. Her nose smells iron, tin... blood.

And that scent fills her with anticipation, because how many surprises can he have organised that could have this many tactile delight - the gentle tinge of mould on the edge of the sharp blood. 

They walk lower, and lower, and the Rani feels her heart-rate increase, because, well, what's allowed to happen way underground? Things that wouldn't be previously allowed in polite society, that's what.

Which includes all of her favourite activities.

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She's surprised. She doesn't like to admit it, least of all to herself, but... hm, well. So this is the man Moriarty would have as his right hand.

The Rani could hardly find fault, of course. As she herself had seen, this human has the innate ability to calculate the precise moment of an individuals death. But, furthermore, he is not burdened with the inordinate amount of guilt that most find themselves struggling with once the sun comes up.

But the sun is not up now, and the Rani is in a smoke-filled private bar, index finger gently running around the rim of her drink as she observes the movements of her drinking partner.

She suddenly finds herself hard pressed to find faults within the somber, cat-like man before her. But... no, cat-like is wrong of course. He moves like a cat , but then there's an element of prey about it, an element of blood, of death.

He moves like a tiger.

And suddenly she has to stifle the urge to laugh, of course, because that is nothing but a large cat, and she would love to have this instrument of death curl up on her lap

But this one is Jim's. 

It's like a reflex, a jerk.

He belongs to the human.

He belongs to Jim.

But no one said anything about having friends. 

Friends... The very concept is alien, weird. She had come across the concept before she had come across the individuals worthy of fulfilling the definition. But now...

With one swift motion, the Rani finds herself bringing a cigarette to her lips and tilting her head towards her dining partner in a silent gesture of familiarity.

A gesture of recognition.

One killer to another.

"The same, I think. I trust your taste."

But not much else about you, her eyes said, glittering and filled with laughter. As it should be, really. Anything else would be so dull.

Of Stars And Passing Seconds

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She listened to him.

Head tilted to one side, never one to pass up a unique opportunity, the Rani listened. And this was a unique opportunity. She enjoyed the fact that Moran seemed to respect her enough to give her an answer, and enjoyed this brief moment of slipping behind the shark's eyes of the sniper, seeing what he saw, what he sees all the time.

In her mind, people broke down into veins and nerves and capillaries, when she looked at them. All those places so susceptible to a knife, to a gun, to a well placed drop of poison. She imagined that in Jim's mind people broke down into numbers, variables, sets of figures based on usefulness and how essentially expendable they were.

Moran's mind, however.

The Rani wasn't entirely sure how people looked to Moran, and knowing how other people look to a person is the first step in knowing how that person's mind ticks and clicks. Did they look like targets? Like sections to be picked off? Or perhaps they looked like those maps of cows she had so often seen in butcher's - the animal's body covered in dotted lines, neatly sectioning off the useful components.

He was, after all, a hunter.

And then the waiter came, and he caught her entirely off guard by ordering dessert. The Rani laughed out loud, delightedly. One could get so caught up in the brain, that one forgot the lesser elements of the body. Did the dark and dangerous sniper have a sweet tooth? How fascinating.

"Well, seeing as there's no menu on hand, I might as well have the same," she smiled, taking a long sip of her drink. "I trust your good taste, Colonel," she added, almost offhandedly.

Almost.

Of Stars And Passing Seconds

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gif meme | Alice + hair

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The Rani sli the tip of her slim finger around the rim of her glass. "The description of my play is never an insult, but merely an accurate observation," she said, and lifted that tip to the end of her tongue, tasting the moisture there. "And you tend to remove people from the picture, quickly and efficiently, in a series of impossible shots."

And then she smiled, and it was like seeing the sun rise over a dead land. "I do enjoy a puzzle, Colonel."

He asked his question, and she sighed. "You see now, it would be so much easier if you were stupid," she lamented. "If you were stupid then you never would have questioned my intellectual ability, because you wouldn't have been aware of the limitations of the human brain, because your own would have been so very sub-par."She leaned in. "How did I calculate it?" she repeated, fingertips pressed against the dark, polished mahogany of the table. "I'm clever, my dear. I am very, very clever"

Of Stars And Passing Seconds

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((It's just a shame that I didn't have access to two cadavers on Valentines, really.))