Hospital Center
Junko blinked, the blackness lifting only to be replaced by a fog. That too lifted shortly and she glanced around. It seemed that she had been transferred to a recovery room while unconscious. She was lying in a comfortable bed in a curtained-off area, wearing the same hospital gown she had donned before the transition. Something seemed wrong though, as if the light slanting in from the windows was subtly off-shade, or the fabric of the bed sheets was slightly too rough or too soft; she wasn’t sure which.
She lay there, aimlessly rubbing the sheets between her fingers and repeated widening and narrowing her eyes in experimentation until a busy looking Shoi in Medical teal bustled through the curtains. The neko gave Junko a once-over before tapping inputs into her ICP.
“Well, Heisho, how is everything?”
“Fine, ma’am… though might the calibration be a little off?” Junko replied, a little hesitant.
“No no,” said the Shoi, not bothering to look up from her display. “Your readings are all solid. Femtomachine statuses are all green. You’re perfectly normal; anything odd is just psychosomatic.” She looked up with a half-hearted, rote smile. “Welcome to the future. The nurse will get you checked out.”
Turning, the doctor passed back through the curtains as quickly as she had come. The nurse came in a few minutes later and, after taking a few final observations and notes, gave Junko the electronic status update and dismissal paperwork; the former would pass along her new body type information to the Eucharis and Personnel Management, and the latter would let her escape the hospital unmolested.
Out of the hospital gown and back in uniform, Junko gathered up her bags and traced her way to the exit. She had confirmed, with extensive examination in the mirror, that her appearance was identical post-transition but for all that the doctor had reassured her it was in her head, she was sure that she could actually tell something was different. That went for her emotions too. She felt fragile, brittle, caught between a sunny day and a looming storm front and had no clue which way she would break.
As she rounded a corner on base and the landing field came into view, the Eucharis perched in the distance, she was grateful that at least the open emotion, the tears hadn’t returned. She could admit she was having a tough time and admit that it was going to take a while to get everything sorted out in her head, but she would be damned if she let a single piece of that interfered with the performance of her duties.
The tarmac fell away beneath her feet and in a few moments she was back ascending the Cargo Bay ramp. It seemed some of the crew had already departed, but her mental cataloguing was interrupted by the sight of Suzume and Takeyu double teaming Mitsuko. She frowned; the logistics specialist had seemed to be getting her head on straight when last she’d seen her, so why a public confrontation over what had seemed a simple, solvable moment of interpersonal doubt between roommates was suddenly required was beyond her.
She came to a stop a couple meters behind the new NCO and officer, seeing no reason to further gang up on Mitsuko. Dropping her bags on the deck and settling her hands on her hips, she listened with one ear even as she mentally queried Charisma to get caught up.
