RP: NSS Nerkat [After-Mission 1] Picking up the Pieces

"Eh, they won't let me touch'm 'cause I'm fresh in from fighting. I already got checked but guess they got their territory stuff. Bet I went to a better med school than him.." The young woman stared over at the officer in charge with contempt, still flinching. "Right yeah, you heard her. I'm cleared for that much."

With that Dream went right to the medic and stood by. "I'll take a needle, need the chief done quick."

'Oh yay, physicals. Won't that be fun.' They said it wasn't too bad, but Amelia rarely trusted their word. She was prepared for the worst. "Best be a female medic..." She muttered under her breath. Then again, maybe she should have the medic dealing with the shrapnel do it. It'd be amusing to watch.

"You want blood samples? Get a jar, Im gonna be pouring it out of the shrapnel holes here in a minute." She seemed a bit agitated, but she knew that they did need to be removed for her sake.

"You say you want a blood sample, then?" Harrison said to one of the medics. He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and moved it towards the medic who was examining him currently.

"Go right ahead."

"Ahaha. Go right the fuck ahead, college girl." The medic in charge replied, guffawing at Rose's comments and pointing her towards a shelf on the far left of the room. His manner was more rough unpolished than deliberately insulting. "I'm sure you went to a better medical school. Stitching gangbangers up and treating overdosed prostitutes as a kid isn't exactly a trip to Omnitech."

----

"Ha! Betcha ya give blood with a handgun and a bucket, eh?" A short dark-haired nurse said to Amelia as she approached the marine, needle in hand. She seemed to have a very pronounced accent, something one would hear in a very rural or working-class neighborhood. "Jus relax an moment, deary. This shouldn' take more than a sec." She said, having already begun to draw a small bit of blood from the inside of her elbow.

----

"Of course, just relax and we'll have this done in a minute. Just curve the inside of your arm outwards so I can get to the veins more easily." A female medic said to Harrison, drawing out a needle. She had obviously cybernetic eyes, stark metallic balls that contrasted heavily with the pale softness of her face. "You know... you should be happy that the Crusade and Mendelev didn't get any casualties, or we wouldn't have been shipped over to help you guys out."

After a last few dry heaves, Trey was beginning to feel normal again. His blood had eradicated nearly all of the poison, and was now getting back to it's normal duties of running oxygen to his body. Trey was lucky, too, the medics had been smart enough to give him his physical before everyone came back, and so he sat, waiting for everyone to come back out and get a move on.

"Yeah, well," Harrison said, "If command hadn't left us in such a clusterfuck due to poor intel and planning, there wouldn't be any extra medics here."

Obviously the ex-merc is still pissed at the officers in charge of the attack because (A) Autumn got fragged, (B) most of his friends got shot, and (C) someone ruined his perfect "I-never-get-shot" record.

"I do whatever's the most effective." Amelia replied simply to the nurse, as if implying she actually does do that. (Not saying she does.) She didn't even flinch as the needle was injected, her eyes still on Fay as he worked, making sure he did what he was supposed to.

Hearing Harrison's comments, she nodded in agreement. "I hear that. Intel dropped the ball on this one. I only hope this isn't going to become a habit for them." She sighed at that thought, more than a little irritated.

Kagura groaned a bit and sat off to the side to let the others get their physicals and repairs first. All things considered, her wounds weren't that bad and she'd probably survive a few more minutes without treatment. "dammit I hate this freaking waiting, will someone get over here and fix this damn arm of of mine? I lost one, I'm not going to be happy if I get gangrene and have to amputate my other one!" she fussed.

"Yeah least you get good vein finding skills there." Rose shot back, coming back to the chief to draw his blood. After a bit of setup, she looked to him. "There it is." In went the needle, without as much as a warning the medic drew the sample. Doing something was giving her focus, making her forget she really, really, really wanted a shower or something.

She didn't even need to grab onto something when in a situation like that. Once she had it, the young woman took another instrument from the counter and sealed the puncture shut.

Harrison said nothing as the nurse's needle slipped into his organic arm, merely shifted his head towards Amelia and started speaking again as soon as the extraction started.

"No shit, eh? If they'd dropped that ball any farther I think the Reds would've levelled the entire planet along with us, then shot our corpses for good measure."

Ran had heard the statement that Rose made about gaining good experience at finding vein points, and sighed a breath of relief. He really didn't want to have to sit through over 15 punctures just because an incompetent medic couldn't find a vein. "So what's this stuff you put in me, doc?" Ran pulled a cigarette out of his back pocket, lit it and took a long drag, being careful to blow the smoke in a safe, non-populated direction. Walking away from the medic, he simply sent a "You look like you need a shower" her way.

"Hurry now, medics. I'd like to get this out of the way. Faster we're done with this and debriefed, the faster I can get shit-faced. And you two." Ran looked to Harrison and Weynolt. "I know command screwed this up royally, but I don't want to hear anymore of it. I'm not going to let that kind of talk breed resentment in the ranks." Ran inhaled more smoke. Although, Command should have gotten their shit together prior to sending us down.

"We're taking blood samples, and using hypolathes to clean out and seal your surface wounds." A medic replied, as he worked to get the scanning equipment active. After a few knocks against a metal bulkhead, there was a faint, but audible hum as the system went active. "Alright, the med scanners are up an running."

"Go in single file, as you are. Don't worry too too much about the system, marines. We're not using radiation or magnetics."

----

"So how long do you think it'll take to clone her back?" One technician said to the medic near him, stroking his chin. A small error with the MEC had made her brain unusable, so Autumn would have to be brought back from scratch, using her CC.

"120 seconds, tops. Call dibs on pulling her out of the tank, by the way." The medic he was conversing with replied, grinning quite brightly. His expression signaled ulterior motives more effectively than any words he might decide to say.

"Asshat."

"Belay that, jackass." Harrison said as he passed by the two medics on his way to the survey area.

"Pull any stunts on my watch and I'll flush you out the airlocks. Just because I happen to have the time to do that now."

The first thing Autumn noticed as she was slowly pulled back into consciousness was a warmth wrapping around her body that permeated through her entire being. She was becoming aware of the sound of her heartbeat echoing loudly in her chest as a jumbled mix of memories flashed before her eyes.

"Point taken, baby!" Rico shouted, waving a hand at Autumn to answer her question as well as he beckoned the rest forward. "I got it all planed out. We're gonna bang up ol' Johnny's place, up town..."

Rico sent a sly grin in Autumn's direction, obviously quite amused by her comment. Rico revved his Vipster once more and laughed shortly, halting enough to let the Armorer board. "Well sweetheart, maybe just this once, ya can enjoy th view from the back, yeah?"

Kagura watched her for a moment, thinking about how to answer it and sighed, laying on the bunk and watched her. "Well Autumn, while you guys were going off to have fun, I got in trouble and ...well" she said, hiding her eyes behind her beret, not wanting to say it but it was clear she was unhappy about it. "I got raped, Autumn...." she said and sniffled a bit.

Autumn looked at Kagura unsure of how to respond to that declaration. The uncertainty was apparent in her face as she thought about a response to that. "Kag..Kagura, I'm sorry to hear that..."

“Attention all Marines,” Ally said over the PA system. “The NSS Alliance will be entering an Interdiction Field being generated around Kennewes in 5 minutes. Estimated time to arrival in extreme low orbit is 32 minutes, 15 seconds. I will be adjusting deployment speeds so that all power armors land within their designated deployment zones. Be ready to deploy within half an hour.”

Ian was slightly dumbstruck, not quite prepared for Autumn to be so... direct. However, he quickly pulled his head back together. "Alright. The minute we're back on board, provided we're both still alive, Starboard escape pods. I'll be there before you." He thought for a moment before continuing. "If we need more than that, we'll check out one of the hotels at wherever we dock."

Autumn chuckled feeling relieved, "It's a date!" Her tone was so bright, you could hear the grin on her face as she gave Ian a thumbs' up.

Autumn felt the harsh stings of the leather belt cut through the thin fabric of her t-shirt as her father disciplined her for costing him another $900 KS on bail money for helping her friends rob a jewelry store. She took the abuse as she felt the skin of her back tear and start to bleed under the pressure. But, despite the tears forming in her eyes, Autumn couldn't hate her father... in fact, she loved him even more....

The mission seemed like a giant cluster from the start. She hadn't really gotten a chance to react better to the mortar bombardment from the enemies before she felt the heat of the bombardment then... there was nothing.

The sounds of a thousand memories from 18 years of life feel away to a pressure and hollow, echo that made her feel like she was underwater.

Her dark green eyes opened and she stared outwards not quite seeing anything but shadows.

Hey. What the hell? She asked herself as she reached a hand forward to try to find an edge or a wall. Did someone give me a cement pedicure or something while I was on leave or something?

"HEY," she said with a fluid garbled breath that she instantly regretted when she tasted the fluid. She felt the wall of whatever was containing her and weakly hit her hand against it.

A random medical technician stood at the monitors for the scanning equipment, boredly letting a bubble of gum pop, then chewing it off of her now very badly chewed up lips. "Hurry up, please." She said, with the voice of someone that had sat through hours upon hours of boring, medical work. Looking up at Harrison, she rolled her eyes rather irritatedly.

====

"I won't have any problem writing in 'Mentally Unfit For Duty' on your personal file, Marine. So please be quiet." The medic quickly responded to Harrison. Typical fucking Marine, he thought. Dumb motherfuckers that'll eventually be poor after their service is up.

"Alright, alright, quit bitchin'." The medic that had swapped mean words with Harrison before had noticed the rapping on the inner wall of the machine Autumn was in, and then signaled for a nearby technician to open it up for her.

Harrison nodded in recognition, coupled with a rough grunt. "Yes, sir." The PFC said as he stepped into the med-scanner.

The was a quiet hiss as Autumn's pod opened up, followed by a dull gurgle as thick fluids were drained away by its internal systems. A hand reached out to her, followed by a deep and slightly distorted voice. "Welcome back to the world of the living."

Autumn felt the fluids around her drain away, leaving her feeling slimy as a thin film of the goop lingered on her skin, slowly dripping. Her vision was still out of focus from the sudden harshness of the medical bay's lights from the muted dimness from the inside of the tube. She felt like her head was still under water... everything was still so garbled and too loud, too bright.

Still, she raised her left hand towards the voice, aiming for the shadow of the hand. "Did I drown?" She asked in a startled voice that was just barely over a whisper, unable to recognize her own voice. "Is my voice box waterlogged?" She asked in a more forced, louder rasp. She started coughing, feeling like something was caught in her throat as she covered her mouth with her right hand, trying to suppress the cough.

"Not quite, but we'll get to that soon. Just keep calm and towel off." The medic pulled Autumn upright and wrapped her in a soft green, foamy towel. His gloved hands were affixed to her shoulders as he did his best to keep her upright. "Your body feels strange because it's only been alive for several minutes now. Do you want me to go into specifics?"

"I am calm," Autumn retorted softly between harsh coughs. It took her a few moments but the coughing fit passed. "The condensed blonder version would do me some good." She moved her hand to grasp at the towel she felt wrapped around her body, "I feel lighter... did I lose pieces again?" She stared at the dark shape of the medic, trying to get a better determination of what his face looked like as her hair dripped steadily cooling fluid onto her bare shoulders.