Soban
Convention Veteran
The Mark of something Sacred
YSS Kaiyo
Sickbay
Sacre strode into the medbay with Mark in her arms. She had no idea what was happening. His eye and arm didn't look good. Sacre wondered if she was going to have to cut his arm off to stop the spread of, well whatever it was he hand been hit with. She laid him on the surgical table and turned to wash her suited hands.
Mark was out of it, his mind still reeling from the experience, having passed out in shock during the trip to the medbay. After being placed on the table he stirred, the cold sterile surface a relief against the residual heat of the change. Closer inspection of the arm and eye would find they were not spreading. Thorough scans would reveal much more.
Mark slowly opened his eyes as he heard sobbing in his head. The room was hazy at first and something about his vision was off.
"W..where..am...I?", He asked weakly his eyes still searching in dull panic for something, someone familiar.
Sacre turned back to Mark, her suited hands clean and holding a Medical scanner as she urgantly started to scan him. "Your in the Medbay of the Kaiyo. Everything's going to be ok." She responded, trying to reassure him, but not at all certain that everything was actually going to be ok.
"Why am I..here? I can't remember what happened. Last..I..I can recall was there inner sphere.", Mark's body felt strange, and his mind was trying find some answer it had shunted away itself.
"I don't know exactly. All I know is that you transformed and then seemed to disappear. I thought the sphere got you untill I found you writhing in pain in the powered armor bay." Sacre explained as she scanned the arm.
Mark turned his head to see what she was scanning, "Sacre wha-...the ..hell.", he stammered as he saw it.
Sacre nodded, "It's stopped spreading for the moment, but whatever has happened to your arm has turned it into this claw thing." She said, not completely sure of her readings.
"Shit no no no no,...oh god the power armor bay. How many people saw me? How many know now?", Mark closed his eyes, as he didn't want to see it anymore. A quite moment past and a more frightening question came to mind as something he struggled to recall came to mind, "Sacre.....where is the Kaiyo currently?" He asked in an unsteady voice.
Sacre wasn't precisely sure, "We were recovering from the mission, so everyone? The captain said we were back home in the Kikyō Sector, I don't know where." She responded.
His breathing grew heavy as fear set in again, "It's hard to explain, but I had a supernatural run in back in ayenee. Only Alastair and Care knew about it.. This mutation..is related to that."
Sacre was annoyed with Mark. He hadn't told her about anything that could effect his health. Her eyes narrowed. The Scanner was put down havily. "What foolishness have you gotten yourself into?" She asked icyly.
Mark deserved the cold in her voice and continued with a tear, "The kind that if not handled carefully would have cost lives. Lives I care for. To put it basically,. I..I made a deal with a demon. The incident that landed me in the medbay with a tree branch through my abdomen was the beginning of it. The incident in the fog that weekend is where it went to hell. The demon's name was Orias, and she wanted me as a host so she could enter the material world. I fought her everyday, suffering outburst of anger, and hate that were not my own. Nightmares she made me watch of me killing friends. I finally broke down and made a deal, I would be a willing host, and in return she would spare and protect the crew. In the process, she made me something else, something like her. I know Eden saw "it", what I had become, a monster crawling in the bays rafters. Now Ive payed with not being strong enough, to become...some freak show on a table. She's still in my head too, whatever happened when the ship jumped back to our dimension hit her too." He finished more tears following the first, but a slight relief to be open on what he had faced alone while they were in Ayenee.
Sacre nodded, listening. "So the arm and the eye?" She asked, lifting the scanner to his eye to scan it as well.
His vision had been off, half of it being a odd crispness of color, and something else about it. It hit him why now as she said the word eye, "Eye?..w.wh..what about..my eye? Sacre, what is wrong with my eye?!" Sacre wordlessy put the scanner down and turned the table to the side so that he could see himself in a mirror.
His breath caught sight of the black schelera and crimson reptilian slit pupils staring back, it's pupil narrowing as his eyes focused on it's reflection. He was too hysteric for the small part of him to be worried his vital were being monitored as his heart thumped rapidly in his chest.
"My..m.m.my eye, *deep breath* no no no.", Mark was panicking now.
Sacre touched his shoulder with her hand. "Calm down, your not dying, well not immediately. We might be able to fix this."
He was still panicking, but his breathing and heart beat slowed with the small comfort the hand brought, "This has to be genetic, my HUD still works with "that" eye. So it's my eye, but changed. That can't be removed, the tech is so infused in my central nervous system. Removing it would just make me blind in that eye. And the enhancement process was too painful, no I'm not doing that again. Whatever happened to me in the armor bay was agonizing, but that...I asked for a bullet when that happened." He explained trying to fight panic with logic. He was doing what he knew to do, reminding himself he was a soldier, he'd been through worse. Not really true, but the lie helped.
Sacre nodded, "Far as your body is concerned, the changed appendages seem to be interfacing perfectly. If you showed up like this to an entrance medical, I'd check to make sure that they work properly and then note that you are Chimera and move along. We've had weirder in the army. It's just that showing up like this, the sudden transformation. It's not exactly something we have a form for." Sacre explained.
"Damnit. Guess I gotta get use to being the monster still.", Mark said humorlessly putting a hand over his eye, "I..guess I'll just have to learn to hide it."
"Calling you dumb as a rock may be an insult to rocks, but it sounds like your heart's in the right place. Your not a monster, Orias is for making you do this. A bit daft for going along with it, but not a monster." Sacre said with a suprising gentleness.
"Only good she ever did for me was restore my memory. I wish she hadn't. My life is one mistake after another, and it seems like anytime I get close to people I just fuck up everything. In the marines, in the USO, and now here.", Mark gave a sad smile.
"Not like my real name matters anymore, and I feel sorry for Mark. Returning home is not going to be like he expected."
Sacre paused, her off hand palming a scalpel that Mark couldn't see and hiding it in her hand. "Really? Why not?" She asked, keeping the suspiciousness out of her voice.
"Our name used to be Jack Pine. We were the director of a group called Section 6, they developed the implant in my neck. They have ST tech, and we were gone for six months. He'll go home to find yet another copy. Having taken his job, home, kids,...wife. And of course he'll still be mark, just a stranger to them. I don't envy him, as yet again he'll lose everything. I'm just a copy, living the life he wanted to keep, but thought foolishly had one waiting for him. At least he has Chlorate.", Mark explained, oblivious to the scalpel, the tears coming fresh again.
"Jack Pine..." Sacre said, the name tickling something at the back of her memory of something Ven had been doing right before the information about the Kiyko sector had been implanted forcibly in her brain. The buisness with Alpha Forks bothered her. She had at least one alpha fork running out there. One that had crossed paths, violently, with Jack Pine.
"It seems like there's copies of us everywhere these days, and before we left for Ayenee. A vile murderous man. He did a home invasion on 604 and took Jack's son, and murdered his pregnant sister. I hope those two can bring him to justice. Especially since he's a clone.", Mark was rambling slightly now as his mind adjusted to the situation. Strange, he hadn't talked about his past this much since Kasumi was aboard.
Sacre didn't mention that she knew exactly how the invasion had went down because of her personal intrest in it. The fact that it and everything releated to her rouge alpha fork was the main thing she had held on to. "I hope they can too." Sacre said quietly, still trying to determine if this was really Mark or something else that had somehow taken his form.
"What will Nerai think of me now?", Mark had been dreading that thought. It's answer even more so, "how will anyone think of me now, with the freak I've become."
Sacre nodded, putting the scalpel back into it's place quietly. She slid the armor into a corner and stepped out. She slid back to Mark, the two deeply scarred figures stood together for a moment. The marks in their flesh a monument to the pain that they had both experianced. "Your not the only one who's been left scarred by thieir experiances. Left broken, ugly, and used. Orias broke you, has made you ugly yes, and is probably still using you. However, there are still those who will look past our scars to love us anyway. If they don't they probably don't deserve your love in the first place." Sacre said, then continued to a locker and tossed a shirt and some pants to Mark.
Mark was a little red in the face as she came back minus the armor. When the shirt and pants were tossed to him he blinked confused, that was until he looked at his bare body.
"Oh geez, thank you!", He said scrambling to put the clothes on.
Sacre slid into the uniform she kept in the Medbay. She was here often enough that having an extra uniform or two laying around was useful. "No worries, you would be suprised how often we have to cut someone out of their armor or something." She said.
"I've been thinking about it, and I think I might be able to swing that the radiation from the sphere activated latent DNA in your arm and eye with a note that they appear begin but they might change and become cancerous." Sacre suggested.
"Uh what does that do?", Mark asked finally slipping the shirt on covering over the back tattoo last, the new arm making it a little more difficult than usual.
"We need to keep an eye on what the demon changed. Offically it's just an activation of latant Chimirism. They'll want to take a look at you closer when we get back regardless. However, my report should prime the pump of a conclusion that lets you stay in the Army. If they ask, I can say I didn't know anything about demons. I'm an atheist." Sacre explained.
"That still leaves her in my head. Which I have a possible solution for. Do you have any idea on how I can track down a AI, or SI module? Orias is a separate neural pattern all her own in my head. If I can isolate it, then I can download her into the module. Then I can decide what to do with her the.", Mark said thoughtful as he curled his toes from the cold floor. He looked in the mirror again at the eye, "um I don't suppose you have an eyepatch around do you?"
Sacre shook her head, "We are equpped for backups, not building a new body from scrach." Sacre explained as she made her way to a cabnet in the sugury and took out a small packet. She threw it to Mark, it contained a simple black medical eyepatch that would adhere to the socket of his eye.
"Ah, arigotō.", Mark said placing the patch before looking in the mirror again.
"Better, shouldn't appear as unnerving."
"I wouldn't worry about it too much, you sent children running before Orias screwed you up." Sacre said.
Mark paused at those words, how true they were. "Yeah, yeah I did.", He said quitely.
"I guess I better go report so nobody pops another of me out of the tube. Void knows we only need one of me around here."
"Yhea we wouldn't want two useless mopers around to drive down efficentcy." Sacre said sounding serious.
"Ouch, you know you love mopey me though, two would just ruin the charm.", Mark joked trying to sound like he was feeling better as he turned to the Separashan, "Am I clear to leave, or are their any other tests you still to run?"
Sacre grabbed a second patch of some sort and slapped it onto the changed arm. "I probably should slap a medical monitor on you, make sure that this doesn't spread. Oh, look it's done. You can shower with it, just don't take it off. It will make me think your dead. That would be bad, I'd probably have to kill you myself when I found you. Now get out of here before I figure out some more tests to run."
Mark actually chuckled, "Are you sure, I'd be willing to volunteer. Granted it was under less than positive circumstances, this is the first time we've really talked. Minus the mutation part, I enjoyed it. Your a good woman Sacre. The crew is fortunate to have you."
YSS Kaiyo
Sickbay
Sacre strode into the medbay with Mark in her arms. She had no idea what was happening. His eye and arm didn't look good. Sacre wondered if she was going to have to cut his arm off to stop the spread of, well whatever it was he hand been hit with. She laid him on the surgical table and turned to wash her suited hands.
Mark was out of it, his mind still reeling from the experience, having passed out in shock during the trip to the medbay. After being placed on the table he stirred, the cold sterile surface a relief against the residual heat of the change. Closer inspection of the arm and eye would find they were not spreading. Thorough scans would reveal much more.
Mark slowly opened his eyes as he heard sobbing in his head. The room was hazy at first and something about his vision was off.
"W..where..am...I?", He asked weakly his eyes still searching in dull panic for something, someone familiar.
Sacre turned back to Mark, her suited hands clean and holding a Medical scanner as she urgantly started to scan him. "Your in the Medbay of the Kaiyo. Everything's going to be ok." She responded, trying to reassure him, but not at all certain that everything was actually going to be ok.
"Why am I..here? I can't remember what happened. Last..I..I can recall was there inner sphere.", Mark's body felt strange, and his mind was trying find some answer it had shunted away itself.
"I don't know exactly. All I know is that you transformed and then seemed to disappear. I thought the sphere got you untill I found you writhing in pain in the powered armor bay." Sacre explained as she scanned the arm.
Mark turned his head to see what she was scanning, "Sacre wha-...the ..hell.", he stammered as he saw it.
Sacre nodded, "It's stopped spreading for the moment, but whatever has happened to your arm has turned it into this claw thing." She said, not completely sure of her readings.
"Shit no no no no,...oh god the power armor bay. How many people saw me? How many know now?", Mark closed his eyes, as he didn't want to see it anymore. A quite moment past and a more frightening question came to mind as something he struggled to recall came to mind, "Sacre.....where is the Kaiyo currently?" He asked in an unsteady voice.
Sacre wasn't precisely sure, "We were recovering from the mission, so everyone? The captain said we were back home in the Kikyō Sector, I don't know where." She responded.
His breathing grew heavy as fear set in again, "It's hard to explain, but I had a supernatural run in back in ayenee. Only Alastair and Care knew about it.. This mutation..is related to that."
Sacre was annoyed with Mark. He hadn't told her about anything that could effect his health. Her eyes narrowed. The Scanner was put down havily. "What foolishness have you gotten yourself into?" She asked icyly.
Mark deserved the cold in her voice and continued with a tear, "The kind that if not handled carefully would have cost lives. Lives I care for. To put it basically,. I..I made a deal with a demon. The incident that landed me in the medbay with a tree branch through my abdomen was the beginning of it. The incident in the fog that weekend is where it went to hell. The demon's name was Orias, and she wanted me as a host so she could enter the material world. I fought her everyday, suffering outburst of anger, and hate that were not my own. Nightmares she made me watch of me killing friends. I finally broke down and made a deal, I would be a willing host, and in return she would spare and protect the crew. In the process, she made me something else, something like her. I know Eden saw "it", what I had become, a monster crawling in the bays rafters. Now Ive payed with not being strong enough, to become...some freak show on a table. She's still in my head too, whatever happened when the ship jumped back to our dimension hit her too." He finished more tears following the first, but a slight relief to be open on what he had faced alone while they were in Ayenee.
Sacre nodded, listening. "So the arm and the eye?" She asked, lifting the scanner to his eye to scan it as well.
His vision had been off, half of it being a odd crispness of color, and something else about it. It hit him why now as she said the word eye, "Eye?..w.wh..what about..my eye? Sacre, what is wrong with my eye?!" Sacre wordlessy put the scanner down and turned the table to the side so that he could see himself in a mirror.
His breath caught sight of the black schelera and crimson reptilian slit pupils staring back, it's pupil narrowing as his eyes focused on it's reflection. He was too hysteric for the small part of him to be worried his vital were being monitored as his heart thumped rapidly in his chest.
"My..m.m.my eye, *deep breath* no no no.", Mark was panicking now.
Sacre touched his shoulder with her hand. "Calm down, your not dying, well not immediately. We might be able to fix this."
He was still panicking, but his breathing and heart beat slowed with the small comfort the hand brought, "This has to be genetic, my HUD still works with "that" eye. So it's my eye, but changed. That can't be removed, the tech is so infused in my central nervous system. Removing it would just make me blind in that eye. And the enhancement process was too painful, no I'm not doing that again. Whatever happened to me in the armor bay was agonizing, but that...I asked for a bullet when that happened." He explained trying to fight panic with logic. He was doing what he knew to do, reminding himself he was a soldier, he'd been through worse. Not really true, but the lie helped.
Sacre nodded, "Far as your body is concerned, the changed appendages seem to be interfacing perfectly. If you showed up like this to an entrance medical, I'd check to make sure that they work properly and then note that you are Chimera and move along. We've had weirder in the army. It's just that showing up like this, the sudden transformation. It's not exactly something we have a form for." Sacre explained.
"Damnit. Guess I gotta get use to being the monster still.", Mark said humorlessly putting a hand over his eye, "I..guess I'll just have to learn to hide it."
"Calling you dumb as a rock may be an insult to rocks, but it sounds like your heart's in the right place. Your not a monster, Orias is for making you do this. A bit daft for going along with it, but not a monster." Sacre said with a suprising gentleness.
"Only good she ever did for me was restore my memory. I wish she hadn't. My life is one mistake after another, and it seems like anytime I get close to people I just fuck up everything. In the marines, in the USO, and now here.", Mark gave a sad smile.
"Not like my real name matters anymore, and I feel sorry for Mark. Returning home is not going to be like he expected."
Sacre paused, her off hand palming a scalpel that Mark couldn't see and hiding it in her hand. "Really? Why not?" She asked, keeping the suspiciousness out of her voice.
"Our name used to be Jack Pine. We were the director of a group called Section 6, they developed the implant in my neck. They have ST tech, and we were gone for six months. He'll go home to find yet another copy. Having taken his job, home, kids,...wife. And of course he'll still be mark, just a stranger to them. I don't envy him, as yet again he'll lose everything. I'm just a copy, living the life he wanted to keep, but thought foolishly had one waiting for him. At least he has Chlorate.", Mark explained, oblivious to the scalpel, the tears coming fresh again.
"Jack Pine..." Sacre said, the name tickling something at the back of her memory of something Ven had been doing right before the information about the Kiyko sector had been implanted forcibly in her brain. The buisness with Alpha Forks bothered her. She had at least one alpha fork running out there. One that had crossed paths, violently, with Jack Pine.
"It seems like there's copies of us everywhere these days, and before we left for Ayenee. A vile murderous man. He did a home invasion on 604 and took Jack's son, and murdered his pregnant sister. I hope those two can bring him to justice. Especially since he's a clone.", Mark was rambling slightly now as his mind adjusted to the situation. Strange, he hadn't talked about his past this much since Kasumi was aboard.
Sacre didn't mention that she knew exactly how the invasion had went down because of her personal intrest in it. The fact that it and everything releated to her rouge alpha fork was the main thing she had held on to. "I hope they can too." Sacre said quietly, still trying to determine if this was really Mark or something else that had somehow taken his form.
"What will Nerai think of me now?", Mark had been dreading that thought. It's answer even more so, "how will anyone think of me now, with the freak I've become."
Sacre nodded, putting the scalpel back into it's place quietly. She slid the armor into a corner and stepped out. She slid back to Mark, the two deeply scarred figures stood together for a moment. The marks in their flesh a monument to the pain that they had both experianced. "Your not the only one who's been left scarred by thieir experiances. Left broken, ugly, and used. Orias broke you, has made you ugly yes, and is probably still using you. However, there are still those who will look past our scars to love us anyway. If they don't they probably don't deserve your love in the first place." Sacre said, then continued to a locker and tossed a shirt and some pants to Mark.
Mark was a little red in the face as she came back minus the armor. When the shirt and pants were tossed to him he blinked confused, that was until he looked at his bare body.
"Oh geez, thank you!", He said scrambling to put the clothes on.
Sacre slid into the uniform she kept in the Medbay. She was here often enough that having an extra uniform or two laying around was useful. "No worries, you would be suprised how often we have to cut someone out of their armor or something." She said.
"I've been thinking about it, and I think I might be able to swing that the radiation from the sphere activated latent DNA in your arm and eye with a note that they appear begin but they might change and become cancerous." Sacre suggested.
"Uh what does that do?", Mark asked finally slipping the shirt on covering over the back tattoo last, the new arm making it a little more difficult than usual.
"We need to keep an eye on what the demon changed. Offically it's just an activation of latant Chimirism. They'll want to take a look at you closer when we get back regardless. However, my report should prime the pump of a conclusion that lets you stay in the Army. If they ask, I can say I didn't know anything about demons. I'm an atheist." Sacre explained.
"That still leaves her in my head. Which I have a possible solution for. Do you have any idea on how I can track down a AI, or SI module? Orias is a separate neural pattern all her own in my head. If I can isolate it, then I can download her into the module. Then I can decide what to do with her the.", Mark said thoughtful as he curled his toes from the cold floor. He looked in the mirror again at the eye, "um I don't suppose you have an eyepatch around do you?"
Sacre shook her head, "We are equpped for backups, not building a new body from scrach." Sacre explained as she made her way to a cabnet in the sugury and took out a small packet. She threw it to Mark, it contained a simple black medical eyepatch that would adhere to the socket of his eye.
"Ah, arigotō.", Mark said placing the patch before looking in the mirror again.
"Better, shouldn't appear as unnerving."
"I wouldn't worry about it too much, you sent children running before Orias screwed you up." Sacre said.
Mark paused at those words, how true they were. "Yeah, yeah I did.", He said quitely.
"I guess I better go report so nobody pops another of me out of the tube. Void knows we only need one of me around here."
"Yhea we wouldn't want two useless mopers around to drive down efficentcy." Sacre said sounding serious.
"Ouch, you know you love mopey me though, two would just ruin the charm.", Mark joked trying to sound like he was feeling better as he turned to the Separashan, "Am I clear to leave, or are their any other tests you still to run?"
Sacre grabbed a second patch of some sort and slapped it onto the changed arm. "I probably should slap a medical monitor on you, make sure that this doesn't spread. Oh, look it's done. You can shower with it, just don't take it off. It will make me think your dead. That would be bad, I'd probably have to kill you myself when I found you. Now get out of here before I figure out some more tests to run."
Mark actually chuckled, "Are you sure, I'd be willing to volunteer. Granted it was under less than positive circumstances, this is the first time we've really talked. Minus the mutation part, I enjoyed it. Your a good woman Sacre. The crew is fortunate to have you."
