- Four -
(Hanna is Not a Boy's Name/HiNaBN (c) Miss Tessa Stone --- Fanfiction Text (c) L.Q. Coverdale)
(Content: Mentions of violence and language in the text as a whole; chapters may vary in amounts. Spoilers for Chapter Two: In Which a Ghost Becomes Too Much of a Theatre Critic, are in this particular chapter.)
Veser liked mutts.
He had never been much of a cat person, but he liked dogs - especially the mixed breeds. The Hatch family was, in all truth, the union of a human-like creature and a human himself. Though the affair was a forced one thanks to a stolen pelt, it had produced quite the odd-looking son: a shark-mouthed, mouthy, unusually bright-eyed lad who happened to have been used as a punching bag. Every time Veser flipped through the channels and caught one of those "animal cop" shows on, he saw much the same thing. Except, instead of half-selkies, most that took the brunt of the abuse were dogs.
Now he stood staring at another mutt - the lion poisson. Worth refused to go near the thing after it had nearly bitten through his arm the day before. He only approached it after sedating it with who knows how many drugs, deciding it was too much trouble to try and get the harpoon's point out. With one hand and a few downed painkillers (as well a rune from Hanna; Veser would have been seriously doubting Worth's humanity at that point had Hanna not explained the nature of a pain-blocking rune), he cleaned the wound up. After that, he gave the lion poisson some sort of antibiotic, and told the group to leave it be. Veser had listened, for once, not wanting to make the creature panic should it somehow wake up.
Lamont and Worth were now discussing how to get rid of the thing - Worth couldn't keep the monster in his office for much longer. The place was reeking of dead fish, and the Australian being injured wasn't a good thing; apparently, he was the only doctor Hanna could bring Dinkleburg and Conrad to. It made sense, as any normal doctor would probably have called the nearest government agency, shipping off anything remotely supernatural to be poked and prodded at with needles and scalpels. The doctor's business also meant that, if anyone of an official nature caught wind of him operating on people, he would probably be shipped off to the nearest jail for working without a license. The man had freaking cockroaches scurrying around his office, after all!
"Hey," said a familiar voice behind Veser, the teen turning his head to glance at Hanna. "You okay there? You've been staring at that thing for, like, the past ten minutes."
"Really?" said Veser. "Sorry, just thinking. Is Doc Worth done talking yet?"
Author's Note: I realize, to some, that Hanna knowing some sort of "pain-blocking rune" might not make sense, considering all the times he could have used it. However, with this latest chapter of HiNaBN, it could be argued that Worth might have used one in the gaggle of runes Hanna was said to have given him. For someone like Worth, it seems reasonable he'd use it to give himself superhuman pain tolerance for something.