Jack Pine
Well-Known Member
- RP Date
- 2/12/YE42
- RP Location
- Sirris VI - Obsidian City -------> Guardian Hospital
It was supposed to be a simple drill. Live fire drills, safety is key. Battle buddy movement.
Corporal Spark Pine was supposed to be the NCOIC. She was in charge of range safety. Not that malfunctions happened often. But they happened. And this time, it shouldn't have been this bad. A new trainee, running with his weapon, forgot to safe it before running, and he found out why.
All it took was a misplaced step, the wrong stone or root in the wrong place for him to go sprawling, his hand squeezing the trigger as he went down, desperately trying to keep control of the weapon. The tiniest miscalculation of the friendly fire lock. Five of the ten flechettes hit their target. One lancing through her helmet, shattering her jaw and disintegrating in her neck. The Geist suffered the brunt of the impact, as opposed to her spine, suffering a fractured casement as the tissue around it started hemorrhaging. Two punched into her upper chest, shattering the chestplate. One went into the shoulder, bone, muscle, and skin shredded by the needle fragmenting and disintegrating as designed. Ribs and shoulder blades alike were left a mangled soup of bone shards and rapidly bruising flesh.
The last clipped her abdomen, delaminating the plate, sending shards of graphene plastic deep into her abdomen.
Corporal Pine wasn't aware anything had hit until she slammed into the ground, her suit leaking red blood and the grey of medical nanoes as the trainees and fellow NCOs and officers crowded around, desperately trying to save her life. The next few hours were a mad scramble of alerts sent up the net, scans, and attempts to extricate the wounded giantess from her armor, when her armor was the only thing keeping her in one piece.
It wouldn't take long for Angela to receive an emergency video call from one of the clones under Spark's command. She was visibly shaken, her eyes puffy and red. The four green eyed brunettes had been doing well, and had started to distinguish themselves with short, choppy hairstyles. But today was not a celebratory call.
"A-Angela… There's been an accident. Spark's hurt. She's in critical condition at Mercy Hospital. We were doing battle buddy live fire drills and… She got hit with a Storm Rifle. She's still alive, but they won't tell me how bad it is or if they've even gotten her out of the armor, yet."
~~~
A muffled yell came from within the helmet, indicating consciousness, but the woman trapped inside wasn't just a prisoner of dead armor. Far from it. The armor was actively trying to keep her alive. Her body wouldn't respond, not entirely. A new emotion crossed her, fear. Deep, primal terror that this could be her end, and all she could do was scream through the bio foam filling her mouth and threatening to encroach on her nose.
A man in a 'Hawaiian' shirt, shorts, and sandals entered the room. He stroked at his thick gray beard with thickly muscled forearms, taking in the armor and the various readings on screens about the room.
"Well, you got yourself rightly fucked, didn't you?" he said, sounding ... interested?
He crouched down near her, looking at the damage. "Flechette really did a number on the armor. Need to think of ways to deal with that better. Life support systems seem to be doing their thing, though. A+ to the designers of that one."
The man stood and moved to the opposite side, considering Spark's shoulder. "Mm. Yeah, that's gonna be -"
"Sir! Sir! You're not allowed in here!" came a woman's voice from behind him. He sighed and turned to look at her.
"I assure you, I'm allowed to be wherever I want to be. Part of the deal."
The nurse shook her head. "I don't care what kind of 'deal' you've got, this isn't-"
The man held up his DOARAD badge. It showed a number of security clearances the nurse recognized, and a handful she didn't.
"Even if you are allowed, you can't be in here looking like... this."
"You just motioned at all of me," the man said in a gruff, sardonic voice.
The nurse answered with simple silence. Spark would here grumbling and complaining, perhaps, as the man was outfitted with a surgeon's cap for his long hair and beard both, booties, and a pair of gloves. The nurse apparently decided that the rest of him was a lost cause.
"Now that I'm up to your standards, think I can get back to the armor? I mean - the patient?"
"I... yes. Yes, sir," the nurse relented, looking at the man with skepticism despite her acquiesance.
"Good, good. Carry on," he said, dismissing her. He returned to crouching next to the injured woman.
"Alright. Judging by all the groaning and moaning, I'm going to assume you're still awake in there. My name is Waylan Vulca. I'm one part of the silver bullet that's going to get you out of that thing alive. Once the doctors show up, we'll get started on cracking you open. I'm not going to sugar coat it for you. It's going to get worse before it gets better. When you're up and walking around again, you're welcome to complain to me all you want."
Waylan stood, tapping into her suit's diagnostics with his internal computer. For what was to come, he'd need to have all the data available.
The immediate popup for Waylan was a damage report, along with a medical readout indicating Spark's consciousness and good health, despite her injuries. She was clearly enraged and the ECG reading her brain activity was working, showing her trying to thrash her way free and murder something in her fear and pain.
HELMET CRITICAL DAMAGE
INTERNAL MIC NO SIGNAL
VIEWSCREEN NO SIGNAL
HULL BREACH DETECTED
BIOFOAM DEPLOYED
NANOS DEPLOYED
GEIST CONN. NO SIGNAL
COMM RELAY NO SIGNAL
EXTERNAL MIC OK
HELMET SPEAKER OK
HELMET CAM OK
TRANSFER COMP OK
ECG OK
EKG OK
EEG OK
BLOOD P OK
SPO2 OK
TOXFIL OK
MED SYSTEMS OK
MAIN BODY SYSTEMS OK
PILOT MONITORING
HULL BREACH DETECTED
R/ SHOULD JOINT HYDR. LEAK
ABD PLATES RUPT DETECTED
INTERNAL SHRAPNEL DETECTED
BIOFOAM DEPLOYED
NANOES DEPLOYED
COMBAT STIMS DEPLOYED
PILOT WOUNDS DETECTED
SYMBIOTE DETECTED
PILOT EMOTION STATUS
CONTINUE Y/N
Waylan nodded as he looked through the results. 'Tough broad,' he thought, giving her body a second look. An inch this way or that on any of the rounds still milling about her body and it would be a very different story.
"So," he began, conversationally. He was poking and prodding at her armor, moving it in small ways and seeing what happened. Talking helped him think. "Not the first time you've been trapped in your armor, huh? Becoming a bit of a habit."
One of the nearby monitors beeped at him angrily, so he moved on from the spot he'd been tinkering with.
"The biofoam and nanoes seem to be doing their thing, but it isn't going to make you better. Not with your injuries," he tested the area around her shoulder, hm'ing and huh'ing as he did. "You're gonna need surgery and a lot of it. And some kind of genius to get this armor off of you without killing you."
He waited.
"That's the part where you snidely say, 'Oh yeah? And you're some kind of genius, I guess?'" He grinned, lopsidedly. "I'll give you a pass this time."
A few moments later, the door opened and a small crew of people began to wheel in equipment of all kinds. Some of it was downright industrial - big saws and drills - while others were more indistinct in their purpose. The latter portion had lots of fancy blinking lights, at least.
"So, here's the plan," Waylan said, inspecting the equipment. "We're gonna put you in a bouyancy-neutral fluid suspension that's similar to your blood composition. We'll crack the armor and take it out, bit by bit, letting the fluid keep you in more-or-less the same condition you're in right now."
A few of the techs began to lay out a long cylinder. Small tanks attached to it showed that they were draining into the cylinder itself.
"I'm going to need you to try and stay still as we do all this. Given the condition of your ... everything ... I'd rather not put you under if I can keep from it. We'll use some local anaesthetics, but you'll stay awake. So long as you can keep yourself from thrashing about, you should be in good shape for a proper surgeon. With me so far?"
He didn't expect her to respond.
"Good, good. So the next part is going to hurt. We've gotta get you, armor and all, into the suspension. Then we can start to take it off. Fortunately, it looks like the suit's in good enough shape to come off without too much trouble. Shouldn't need the power tools.
I would like to wait until we've got a surgeon on hand to get all this started. Second opinions and all. And if something does happen to go wrong, it'll be nice to have someone who can stitch you back together.
In the meanwhile.. I got a little somethin' for ya."
One of the new pieces of equipment turned out to be a radio. Somehow, the odd man had gotten ahold of Spark's most used playlist. Folk music, old school style, began to fill the room at a volume that was just barely tolerable for the neighboring patients. "Ah, man, this is the good stuff."
Breath hitched in the helmet, her monitors beeping a completely different set of emotions as her heart rate started to slow, blood pressure returning to something approaching normal. A wetness slid down the sides of her helmet, inside as she screamed at her body to just move. At her armor to release.
But nothing happened. The EEG read the release command and disregarded for user safety. The Geist connection being inoperative didn't help, as the suit had been recalibrated to respond to that, and that was what Spark was trying to do.
The call was near unintelligble, at first. It took nearly two minutes before Kolorsha could calm the frantic Thorn clone down enough to make out what she said, and her words filled the large horse with a cold dread.
First Talos, missing for months, now Spark had been critically wounded in a training accident. How the hell a training accident turns out with this outcome was certianly a valid question, though one for another time. Then the clone had said they needed her help.
Which was why Kolorsha now found herself being led toward one of Mercy hospitals ICUs.
Spark was still in her armor and while it had to be removed, there wasnt anyone cabable of lifting a person in full PA. And that, was where Kolorsha came into the plan.
Shortly, the grey mare found herself scrubbed, and in the operation room where Spark was located. And, to her suprise, some other male who looked more like they should be on a beach, rather than a hospital, though she greeted him with a nod and a raised eyebrow.
Waylan blinked a few times at the newcomer, unfamiliar with Kolorsha's species. He didn't seem bothered by the specifics, but more interested in the woman's general size and body type. A flit of information flashed across his vision, filling him in on the details.
"Kolorsha," he said, looking back to the woman on the floor. "Just in time. We've got to get all of this - ", he said, making a broad motion at Spark's armored form, " - into that." He finished the motion by indicating the large cylinder.
At this point, the cylinder had been cracked open. It was well wide enough to fit the armor and have room to breathe. The open top was just above table height for Waylan. The legs of the whole setup were thick and covered in the usual beige medical plastic, but gave off a feeling of sturdiness that suggested the six wheels could manage the weight of the armor and liquid both. The fluid within seemed to churn ever so faintly due to some circulation system.
"Unfortunately, despite all the time I put into the gym, lifting the gal with all her armor on is still beyond me. If you could do most of the lifting, I'll round up a few nurses to keep her head and limbs stable. Sound good?"
"I'd say most anyone would be hard pressed to beat my natural gifts in the gym, though I have to say, this is an unexpected use of them. I can only think of two others who could come close to lifting her" Kolorsha stated, indicating Spark's armored form.
"One's been missing for months, and the other....well if Spark was able to do this, we all wouldn't be here right now." Kolorsha nodded her large head, her deep blue eyes focusing on the man in front of her. "Yes, I should be able to do that easily enough when the nurses arrive. Interesting though, Spark usually doesn't tell just anyone about her musical preferences..." the unspoken question hanging between them.
The odd man grinned a little and tapped at his eyepatch. "One of the many upsides of my unique.. uh, upbringing. The people who put me together didn't give me super strength or combat abilities like your friend here. Instead, I got a super computer where one of my eyes should be. I don't always use it to hack people's playlists, but it's just as good a use as any."
The door opened and four nurses entered. One of them, the same from before, sighed as she looked at the state of the room. It had been bad enough that there was a soldier leaking out on the floor of the room, but all of this - well, it was less than conventional.
"You called, Mr. Vulca?"
Waylan winced at the name. "Uh, Waylan will do fine. And yeah - we need a few extra pairs of hands. We're going to lower Miss Spark, armor and all, into that tub over there. We need to keep her body stable while we do so. I'll take the head and each of you can take a limb. Our muscular friend here will lift the core of her body. So long as we all work together, the weight distribution won't be so bad. Everyone on the same page? Good."
The man walked around to the head of the armor, crouching down and taking hold. "Everyone in position? Alright- on the count of three.
One.
Two.
Three.
Lift!"
The armor gave a sharp creak of protest as the joints moved slightly, almost covering up the muted cry of agony and helplessness from within the helmet as it came up off the floor.
The group carefully lifted and moved the body into the fluid. Light flickered across the material as the weight settled into it, a sign that the viscosity was responding to the armor. Spark seemed to float, weightless, in the fluid once they had completed the move.
"Well, that was a challenge," Waylan muttered, wiping some sweat off his brow with the back of his arm. "I'm not sure how that would've gone if you hadn't shown up, Kolorsha. Well done."
He gave her a lopsided grin, then turned back to the patient. "As for you - well, I did say it was going to get worse before it got better. Nurses, if you'd stay on hand - I'll need help adminstering the pain killers and such. We're going to start with the helmet. I need access to her Geist."
Waylan began to carefully rotate Spark to one side, moving her right arm in time with the rest of her body. The fluid kept her more or less in the same position she'd been put in. He continued to rotate her until she was face down.
"The fluid you're in, amongst its other amazing properties, is heavily oxygenated. I don't want your lungs collapsing through all this, so.. it's going to get uncomfortable. The good news is, I should be able to get a bypass into your Geist before you have to inhale too much of the good stuff. Dig?"
The man tinkered with the back of her suit. The helmet popped with a muted hiss, partially submerged as it was, revealing the back of her neck. Fluid began to slowly seep along the sides of her head and neck.
Schematics, diagnostics, and more entered into Waylan's vision as he looked at the Geist. MUGIN and HUGIN adjusted their internal clockspeeds to match the task at hand. He grabbed a few tools, idly waving away a few prompts and warnings to get a better look.
"Yeeep, this is pretty fucked. Normally I'd say we should just replace the whole thing, but that's not really an option here."
With one free hand, he lifted a small device off a nearby tray. It wasn't exactly pretty. In fact, it looked like someone had put it together from whatever parts were on hand. Which was true. He looped the devices strap around Spark's neck, letting it trace along the cushion of the power armor's insides, then secured it. The device itself sat a little lower on the neck than where her Geist was located.
He began to carefully cut and work, exposing the parts of the Geist he needed access to. A small panel came away, revealing an interior panel that was thankfully intact. Waylan gave an appreciative whistle and began to connect the device and the Geist.
The entire process didn't take very long. Things would begin to feel more 'right' for Spark as soon as the connection was completed. Despite that, she would find her motor functions even further impaired and her senses largely cut off.
That experience, too, only lasted for a few moments. The device's lights began to blink rapidly. It connected to yet another nearby device, a simple holographic display. The form of Spark flickered into life above it - and then her motor functions and sensory made the switch, as well.
Waylan leaned back and took a breath. "Good to see that worked the way I expected it to. The odds were ah - you know what, nevermind. Miss Spark, it's nice to meet you. I'm Waylan Vulca. As you can see," he motioned at her body, "you're pretty well fucked. I got called to help unfuck the situation. I'd prefer for you not to be yelling and kicking the whole time, so I've subverted your Geist. Your little implant is normally capable of altering your perception, transmitting messages, taking over certain machines, and so forth, but this is definitely not an intended function. If you experience any discomfort, let me know.
So! Any questions so far?"
The figure stopped cussing long enough to cross her arms and give a nuclear grade death glare to Waylan. "Two. One. What the fuck hit me. Tell me that wasn't a Storm Rifle that I just survived. Two. Why can't I move?"
He went to rub the back of his neck, then stopped when the latex glove passed his face. He sighed instead. "Afraid I can't help you with the first one - you're the lucky survivor of a Storm Rifle. A handful of flechettes bounced around inside your armor and have done a number on your - well, let's just say you're lucky. As lucky as someone hit by a Storm Rifle could be, anyways.
As for your second question - you've been immobile for a while now. Your power armor has been working overtime to keep you alive, but your Geist wasn't so lucky. You're pretty well paralyzed for the time being. Now, if you were able to move around, you'd just be making it worse - so, again, lucky. I've shoved you into a hologram projector while I try to put you back together again.
Good so far?"
"Where's Angela?" Her face showed almost boredom. But under that mask of calm, a storm raged as she visualized what she was going to do to that trainee for ruining her career.
"Angela?" he mused, looking off to one side for a moment. "I'm not sure. She's been informed."
He leaned over, beginning to inspect Spark's armor. He began to remove parts of the armor, leaving the chest and right arm intact. Doing it piece-by-piece was not simple, but the emergency releases were made for this sort of thing.
"So, now for the fun part. You uh- shouldn't feel any of this, but if you do, it'll probably be weird. ... Probably."
This was the part that was make-or-break. Done correctly, the armor coming off should have little effect on the state of her body. Waylan took his time as he disengaged the seals, letting the fluid pour in and keep everything in the same position. The engineer's arms strained as he lifted the armor pieces away.
After the last piece came away, he took a small knife into his hand and began to cut away the bodysuit. With her back up, little of concern was exposed. As for the shoulder - well, the whole thing was a pulpy mess. The round had done as it was designed to do, breaking apart upon entry and acting like very, very fine buckshot.
Waylan frowned as he considered the damage. He was fairly certain that he could lift her right arm out of the fluid as it was, not too unlike the bones from his favorite rib place. Too much force this way or that - well, there really wasn't anything there to hold everything together.
A medical readout popped up, giving him something like an x-ray view into her chest cavity. The damage extended beyond the shoulder, partially clipping into her ribs and lung. The fluid had been a solid choice - if she'd been exposed to air like this, they'd likely be dealing with a collapsed lung. The skin and muscle had been pulverized to such an extent that he seriously doubted it would hold form in any other setup.
"Alright," he said in a tone that was entirely too conversational, "This is the part where it would be nice to have a surgeon handy. I've made my fair share of people like yourself, but I don't tend to get too deep into the wetworks."
Roughly translated: Your shit's so fucked I'd rather not mess with it.
Given what he was looking at, the damaged section was her entire shoulder area - starting about midway across her clavicle and halway down her ribs. It was, more or less, useless flesh at this point. The few intact veins and arteries in the area were working hard to keep her arm alive and prevent her body from bleeding out, but that wouldn't last. He knew necrosis would start to set in soon. It was in her best interest, he decided, to have the entire section removed. But he wasn't a surgeon, so - second opinions.
"Your Geist, on the other hand- that's something I'm interested in. So, I'm going to tinker with that."
"Don't look at me, I'm just the muscle here." Kolorsha replied. Indeed, there didn't seem to be much else for the large horse to do. The smell of blood had her prey instincts to run up, and while anyone observing her would see her tense body movements, she had ceased being ruled by instinct years ago, she had it under control.
It was just....well ok, it was a bloody mess, for sure. Even for someone like Spark, how had the woman remained conscious throughout this?
"You okay, Kolo?" The hologram of Spark turned to Kolo, an eyebrow raised as she tried to move a bit closer and take a peek at what was happening in the tank.
The sound of frantically running shoes could almost be heard outside as a certain nepleslian girl burst through the first set of doors. Dragging the security personnel with her from the entrance to the observation loung, they tried to restrain her as the woman fearfully, yet desperately attempted to make it into the ICU wing.
"No, let me go! I have to see *grrrr* see her!", Angela screamed at them as she fought back, but not effectively with the minimal progress she was making.
Waylan looked up from a screen only he could see, frowning at one of the nearby screens.
"Say, Spark - how much do you want to keep your arm?"
The alert was pretty clear - the arm was going to hit a point very soon where the lack of oxygen would cause the tissue to begin dying. Either the arm needed to be put on ice, and soon, or it would be a lost cause.
"I ask because I have some very nice cybernetic arms that I could set you up with. Weaponized or non-weaponized. The arm you came in here with is .. well, it's complicated."
"Define complicated. But biological is preferred, if at all possible. That said, knowing Angela, she's fighting giards to get to me." She leaned up aganst the wall, looking to her equine acquaintance. "Seriously, Kolo, are you okay? You look tense."
The mare nodded, waving off Spark's concern. "Old instincts. I was a prey animal, I believe the term is, before I was uplifted. The smell of blood usually meant trouble, and for a horse, trouble meant run." Kolorsha tapped the side of her head with a finger. "I'm not governed by just instinct anymore. I may be a little uncomfortable, but I'm fine.
"Also, it's not complicated. I'm no doctor, but just by looking at your arm when the armor was removed, most of what connected it to the rest of you is mangled beyond recognition"
At the other man's look, Kolorsha shrugged. "You know as well as I do that sugercoating anything to her would just make her upset" she said, then glanced back at Spark's holographic form. "I mean, there isn't any easy way to say it to you, the joint where your arm is supposed to connect to is fubar, as both you and Aztec like to say..."
"You know Angela as well as I do. Is it a good idea to let her in here or does someone want to move me outside before she's done fighting the guards?" Spark stayed silent, adamant about her decision. Biological or as close as could come. Moreover, she gave a maternal look to Kolo, pointedly offering her a way out of the uncomfortable situation. "I want to see Angela."
"Uhhh, right," Waylan muttered, looking at the area where her arm and torso met. "Biological."
He began to mutter, something about 'grow a new one and use it for parts' and 'make a scaffold and regrow it the hard way'. After a few moments of this and a failed attempt to tug at his beard through the hair net, he looked back at the others.
"You should be fine to take the projector out of the room, but I wouldn't go much further than the immediate hallway, yeah? If you start to feel light headed or something, it means you've gone too far. You may not get a second chance at a connection, so try not to push it."
Waylan frowned, looking off to one side. "Surgeon's been delayed, it seems. I'm going to have to get this started myself. Probably best if you aren't in here for it - this is gonna get, uh, messy."
The engineer began to gather up tools and lay them out on a tray. He kept frowning as he thought through the work ahead, but part of him was looking forward to it. Challenges like this were what kept him going - literally.
He waited for Kolorsha and Spark to depart the room, then began the grisly process of separating the arm from her body. A significant portion of her shoulder area would never be useful again, so he started by removing that. Away came flesh and muscle, all set aside for later disposal. The occasional metallic ting of the flechette's remnants sounded as they hit the metal tray.
Time seemed to go by slowly. Waylan's thick fingers were used to precision work, but they weren't a surgeon's. His HUD guided his movements, clearly laying out what needed to be done and where. Still, mistakes would happen, causing blood to trickle into the suspension fluid before he could remedy the problem. When he finished removing all of the damaged flesh and bone, there was little left of her shoulder but a handful of intact veins and her patched up axillary vein and artery.
Waylan leaned back and took a few beats to regain his energy. "Mm, gonna have to scavenge the arm a bit if we're going to attach anything to this in the future.."
Back to work he went, carefully severing the axillaries and closing the loop - sans the arm. Veins were likewise deadended as far from her core as he could manage, clamps and heat being the main tools for those. At last, he carefully pulled her arm from the fluid mix and set it into another prepared container, this one with a vastly lower temperature. He would need to connect it to something to maintain its circulation - but the cold would give him time for that.
Synthetic skin was the last piece of her shoulder 'fix'. A bio-compatible lattice had been applied, giving her skin and muscle both something to grow on in the future, but the synthetic skin would keep it all held in. His stiches were.. passable. Certainly not something a professional surgeon would be proud of, and likely to leave more than one or two scars, but they would do the trick.
"And that's that," he muttered, feeling the ache in his arms from all the effort. Her abdomen had been cleaned up and fixed up. The flechette's remains had been removed. Her lung was patched and circulation was as good as it was going to get for now with his skills.
~~~
(potential place for you guys to have Spark, Kolorsha, and Angela meet up?)
//yeah, I'll spot the line here and get back to it in a few hours.
"Good a time as any. Not much either of us can do here, and we'd be better off stopping Angela before she drags most of security in here..." Kolorsha replied, picking up the projector, then with a glance at Spark. "Shall we?"
Spark simply gestured to lead the way.
"Right then, let's go before Angela breaks anyone important." Kolorsha replied, walking out the doors of the operating room.
Waylan emerged from the room and into the hall. "Don't mind me, just gettin' a snack," he declared as he worked his way through the group.
Nyx pine had been flying in the skies above Obsidian city, taking a great deal of joy from the flight, double so because she was in her Jassabelle form, and thus she was going through the excitement that she’d never even felt before. The excitement however changed to fear when she got the alert. “No…no no no no! Mothers hands! Not another one “ She flew fast very fast to the location where she knew Spark was. “Hospital? Good hopefully they can help no way in hell will we be losing another family member! “She muttered to herself as she landed and bulldozed through people as she ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
She saw a woman up ahead, trying to fight security, it was clear this woman wanted to be with Spark this she deduced must be Angela. “stand down” she ordered a little gruffly to the security before she saw movement people were coming out, one was someone she hadn’t met before carrying a projector with Spark’s head on it? she blinked her eyes as they began to get dry from not blinking, she really must remember that.
The engineer returned a few minutes later, munching on a bag of chips.
"So, an update, yeah?" he began, not particularly worried about if he'd interrupted, "Right. Your arm's sitting in a high-tech cooler. Your chest is as patched up as it's gonna get. If I'd waited too much longer, necrosis would have started to set in and then your whole body would've been at risk, much less the arm. You're not all fixed up, though.
Your Geist is still a trainwreck and I'm guessing your face isn't much better. The Geist I should be able to fix, but ... I'm gonna recommend that we keep you in your current setup for a while. Maybe a few weeks? You're going to need a lot of reconstructive surgery. I'm gonna need time to come up with a solution for how we get your arm back on when you're missing ... well, a lot. You need a bunch of new bones, muscles, and everything that goes along with it. That's just the shoulder.
I can't imagine the face will be much better. I'm thinking that even after all the work is done you're gonna be in something like a head cast for a good while. It'll match the one on your chest and arm."
He took a bite out of a chip and realized he hadn't gotten a drink. Waylan just shook his head.
"But you're going to live and that seems like it's important. Any questions before I get back in there?"
"Unless there's something I need to know about... No. Just get it battle ready. I want to suit up again. Cybernetics won't keep up in the long haul." Spark looked down the hall, spotting Angela, and immediately walked off the hologram projector, where it adapted, throwing her full sized, imposing figure up in the hallway as she waved. "Angela! Over here!"
"Well, that was a little disconcerting...." Kolorsha remarked, as Spark's projection went from a disembodied head to her full size in the blink of an eye. She set the projector down on a nearby bench, then looked down the hallway toward where Angela was struggling with hospital security.
With the release of those who were trying to hold the frantic girl back, she went from struggling, and into a sort of trippign sprint. Legs righting her stance at the last second, the redhead legged it down the hall before stopping short of the figure of light that was her girlfriend currently.
"Spark, IcamewhenIheard, ohgodsIhopeyourokaytheymadeitsoundlikeyouweredying!? Wh-wa-what happened?!", came spilling from Angela's mouth as she fought the urge to hug her, seeing as there was nothing to actually hug. The poor nep woman's heart was going a mile a minute, the hologram doing nothing to quel her fear, expecting to hear the worst.
"I know it looks bad, it could have been a lot worse, I took a few flechettes to the shoulder and face, probably gonna need a new arm and my jaw and Geist were.... I love you, but I'll be suiting up again as soon as possible." Spark didn't fight the urge, bringing a hand up to Angela's face, cupping her cheek. "I'm okay. Just in surgery at the moment."
Waylan gave Angela a nod and rubbed at the back of his neck, free - at least temporarily - of the gloves and mask that had kept him from doing the motion earlier.
"Ah, about that," the engineer said, not meeting the holograms eyes for a moment. All the right people seemed to be present for his next 'dire' announcement, so he decided to proceed. He met Spark's flickering gaze.
"Assuming everything goes well, you're still not gonna be, uh, battle ready - say, for eight or nine months?"
Spark's head turned. "I kind of expected longer."
Nyx silently made her approach, a feat that was because of her organic form. The guards released their hold over Angela causing her to almost trip because of how much force she was trying to use in getting to Spark. She could tell they loved each other but his aunt was a blasted badass taking a few flechettes to the shoulder and the face she knew that had to be painful, yet she wanted to continue being a soldier.
She gave an exasperated sigh in response to Spark’s words. “Aunt Spark, your some kind of badass aren’t you?” she asked wondering if everyone in her family was. Dang it, she’ll have to be one too possibly.
Angela felt a slight tickle at the back of her mind and throat, something about the doctor's last statement....it was to a degree unsettling. "Spark, I've seen the factory, I've seen these things built, watched videos of you use them. Don't like to me that it will be okay that easily. For all I know, you....y- could be..... Why are you so s-set on running back out again after something like this? Why can't you take a break, rest with me, let your body heal as it should. 8 to 9 months is certainly not injures you could walk back to work unchanged from. How can you be so fucking casual about this! What did they do to you, why are you going to be recovering so long?!"
It was clear she was holding back, a shaky voice that was tinged with anger yet fear and worry. Eyes moistened as she used all her will to not stand there and cry, her mind running through every torturous thought at how bad she must look on the table right now.
"I... Might be missing my right arm. And part of my face. My Geist might also be totaled. Angela, everything will be okay, I promise. Gods, I want to hold you right now." She looked away, casting her eyes downward as her arms folded awkwardly in front of her. "You know how much trouble I have admitting when I need to slow down. And I was hoping to come in today to get that symbiote warning checked out..."
Waylan sighed. He wasn't really good at this sort of thing. Most of the time he'd delivered this type of news it had been in the form of circulars.
"Funny you should mention a symbiote," he began, "I've confirmed the existence of, ah, said symbiote. In fact, it's the reason you're going to be out of commission. Besides all the injuries, that is.
Spark, you're pregnant."
Upon hearing that bit of news, Kolorsh, like the other occupants of the hall went silent. "Well..." the grey mare started, leaning back against the wall. "....that was unexpected."
Angela kinda froze as that last statement registered, a sort of smile feintly on her lips as the shock set in. Her?! A father, and having given birth to a child with Spark?! It was simply something she had even considered, or thought of yet, even with how rough of a ride their relationship had kinda been at one point.
The office woman sort of stood there with that dumbfounded look, only a soft "wut?" coming from her. As the dead stop of emotions and adrenaline hit her, the girl just kind of teetered over as she suddenly feinted.
Spark's instinct was to catch Angela as she fell. And she watched Angela pass right through her arms. "And here I was about to ask when the last time we used kaserine was."
Waylan watched the woman begin to collapse, then looked to the others. "Well, I think I've done enough damage here for the time being. I've got a jaw to rebuild and a Geist to repair. I'll leave all of you to your own devices."
He looked at Spark's hologram projector meaningfully as he said the last bit and chuckled at his own joke. Then he began to clean chips off of himself before going back into the triage room.
Spark was pregnant?! Her eyes widened in shock she was a cousin once more! She loved this, though what she didn’t like was her other aunt fainting. She slammed her foot down as she shot forward, using her AI reaction to force her organic body to move forward to try and catch her even as her eyes saw her pass through Spark’s hologram. She went in between Angela and the floor, making double sure she didn’t hit her head.
Kolorsha shook her head, closing her eyes as she put a hand to her muzzle. "That joke was terrible..." she muttered, as Waylan passed through the doors leading back to the operating suite. Her ears flicked toward the others at a sound, Kolorsha looked up in time to see Angela fall, however she was too far from her to help before the woman would hit the floor. Fortunatly, Nyx was, grabbing Angela before she hit. "Well, at least you know now you two have no trouble having children." Kolorsha replied. "Silver linings, right?"
"One would think." Spark gave an exasperated cock of her head. "Pregnant? For fuck's sake, I... I don't know how to respond to this, my girlfriend is unconscious, and I... I just wanna go home, now."
Nyx looked down at Angela’s fainted form, and she squinted, trying to change her vision type before remembering she was in her organic form, so that was impossible. She carefully lifted the woman as she stood up all the while being careful in doing so. She watched the doctor leave as if he didn’t care that Angela was unconscious but she figured he must be tired. “I don’t know how to react myself, but I’ve seen you with that Separa infant, I think you’d make a great mother.” She said hoping that it wasn’t taken the wrong way.
Kolorsha indicated the projector. "Dont think it has the range to get you there, Spark. Not according to doc Waylan, anyway" she replied.
"Doesn't stop me from wanting it." Spark shrugged nonchalantly. "I'm sorry if I'm too casual about this mess. I'm... I dunno. It's weird, being detatched like this."
As if in response, the pain that had been blocked from reaching Spark's mind flooded through. The missing arm, the extensive work on her torso and jaw, the pain in her side- all of it. The connection between the projector and the temporary Geist in the other room became weak, flickered, and finally restabilized.
Waylan's voice could be heard in the hallway. "Sorry about that! This thing's more fucked than I expected. Tried to bypass into a component that wasn't there."
The pain, now just phantoms of the strong sensations that had come through before, began to fade as Waylan poked his head out the door. He was wearing a surgeon's mask and hairnet.
"I will need to take you offline soon, though," he said to Spark, briefly casting his eyes over the others. "You'll probably be down for a few hours while I get your Geist fully replaced and the new connections finish forming. If you all had anything else to talk about, now's a good time."
He paused, trying to decide how to address his last topic.
"Out of all the work I've done here so far, this next one might be the trickiest. Paralysis and worse are possible." The 'doctor' shrugged a little, barely visible from the small portion of his body that could be seen through the door. "Probably nothing to worry about, but I thought you should know. Back to work."
The door swung closed once again and a faint whistling could be heard as Waylan moved deeper into the triage room.
Kolorsha sighed, watching the odd doctor return to the operating room, her ears flattening to her head in disapproval. "That man really needs to work on his bedside manner...." she muttered, then turned towward Spark, giving her an apologetic shrug. There wasn't much she could do about their current predicament.
Corporal Spark Pine was supposed to be the NCOIC. She was in charge of range safety. Not that malfunctions happened often. But they happened. And this time, it shouldn't have been this bad. A new trainee, running with his weapon, forgot to safe it before running, and he found out why.
All it took was a misplaced step, the wrong stone or root in the wrong place for him to go sprawling, his hand squeezing the trigger as he went down, desperately trying to keep control of the weapon. The tiniest miscalculation of the friendly fire lock. Five of the ten flechettes hit their target. One lancing through her helmet, shattering her jaw and disintegrating in her neck. The Geist suffered the brunt of the impact, as opposed to her spine, suffering a fractured casement as the tissue around it started hemorrhaging. Two punched into her upper chest, shattering the chestplate. One went into the shoulder, bone, muscle, and skin shredded by the needle fragmenting and disintegrating as designed. Ribs and shoulder blades alike were left a mangled soup of bone shards and rapidly bruising flesh.
The last clipped her abdomen, delaminating the plate, sending shards of graphene plastic deep into her abdomen.
Corporal Pine wasn't aware anything had hit until she slammed into the ground, her suit leaking red blood and the grey of medical nanoes as the trainees and fellow NCOs and officers crowded around, desperately trying to save her life. The next few hours were a mad scramble of alerts sent up the net, scans, and attempts to extricate the wounded giantess from her armor, when her armor was the only thing keeping her in one piece.
It wouldn't take long for Angela to receive an emergency video call from one of the clones under Spark's command. She was visibly shaken, her eyes puffy and red. The four green eyed brunettes had been doing well, and had started to distinguish themselves with short, choppy hairstyles. But today was not a celebratory call.
"A-Angela… There's been an accident. Spark's hurt. She's in critical condition at Mercy Hospital. We were doing battle buddy live fire drills and… She got hit with a Storm Rifle. She's still alive, but they won't tell me how bad it is or if they've even gotten her out of the armor, yet."
~~~
A muffled yell came from within the helmet, indicating consciousness, but the woman trapped inside wasn't just a prisoner of dead armor. Far from it. The armor was actively trying to keep her alive. Her body wouldn't respond, not entirely. A new emotion crossed her, fear. Deep, primal terror that this could be her end, and all she could do was scream through the bio foam filling her mouth and threatening to encroach on her nose.
A man in a 'Hawaiian' shirt, shorts, and sandals entered the room. He stroked at his thick gray beard with thickly muscled forearms, taking in the armor and the various readings on screens about the room.
"Well, you got yourself rightly fucked, didn't you?" he said, sounding ... interested?
He crouched down near her, looking at the damage. "Flechette really did a number on the armor. Need to think of ways to deal with that better. Life support systems seem to be doing their thing, though. A+ to the designers of that one."
The man stood and moved to the opposite side, considering Spark's shoulder. "Mm. Yeah, that's gonna be -"
"Sir! Sir! You're not allowed in here!" came a woman's voice from behind him. He sighed and turned to look at her.
"I assure you, I'm allowed to be wherever I want to be. Part of the deal."
The nurse shook her head. "I don't care what kind of 'deal' you've got, this isn't-"
The man held up his DOARAD badge. It showed a number of security clearances the nurse recognized, and a handful she didn't.
"Even if you are allowed, you can't be in here looking like... this."
"You just motioned at all of me," the man said in a gruff, sardonic voice.
The nurse answered with simple silence. Spark would here grumbling and complaining, perhaps, as the man was outfitted with a surgeon's cap for his long hair and beard both, booties, and a pair of gloves. The nurse apparently decided that the rest of him was a lost cause.
"Now that I'm up to your standards, think I can get back to the armor? I mean - the patient?"
"I... yes. Yes, sir," the nurse relented, looking at the man with skepticism despite her acquiesance.
"Good, good. Carry on," he said, dismissing her. He returned to crouching next to the injured woman.
"Alright. Judging by all the groaning and moaning, I'm going to assume you're still awake in there. My name is Waylan Vulca. I'm one part of the silver bullet that's going to get you out of that thing alive. Once the doctors show up, we'll get started on cracking you open. I'm not going to sugar coat it for you. It's going to get worse before it gets better. When you're up and walking around again, you're welcome to complain to me all you want."
Waylan stood, tapping into her suit's diagnostics with his internal computer. For what was to come, he'd need to have all the data available.
The immediate popup for Waylan was a damage report, along with a medical readout indicating Spark's consciousness and good health, despite her injuries. She was clearly enraged and the ECG reading her brain activity was working, showing her trying to thrash her way free and murder something in her fear and pain.
HELMET CRITICAL DAMAGE
INTERNAL MIC NO SIGNAL
VIEWSCREEN NO SIGNAL
HULL BREACH DETECTED
BIOFOAM DEPLOYED
NANOS DEPLOYED
GEIST CONN. NO SIGNAL
COMM RELAY NO SIGNAL
EXTERNAL MIC OK
HELMET SPEAKER OK
HELMET CAM OK
TRANSFER COMP OK
ECG OK
EKG OK
EEG OK
BLOOD P OK
SPO2 OK
TOXFIL OK
MED SYSTEMS OK
MAIN BODY SYSTEMS OK
PILOT MONITORING
HULL BREACH DETECTED
R/ SHOULD JOINT HYDR. LEAK
ABD PLATES RUPT DETECTED
INTERNAL SHRAPNEL DETECTED
BIOFOAM DEPLOYED
NANOES DEPLOYED
COMBAT STIMS DEPLOYED
PILOT WOUNDS DETECTED
SYMBIOTE DETECTED
PILOT EMOTION STATUS
CONTINUE Y/N
Waylan nodded as he looked through the results. 'Tough broad,' he thought, giving her body a second look. An inch this way or that on any of the rounds still milling about her body and it would be a very different story.
"So," he began, conversationally. He was poking and prodding at her armor, moving it in small ways and seeing what happened. Talking helped him think. "Not the first time you've been trapped in your armor, huh? Becoming a bit of a habit."
One of the nearby monitors beeped at him angrily, so he moved on from the spot he'd been tinkering with.
"The biofoam and nanoes seem to be doing their thing, but it isn't going to make you better. Not with your injuries," he tested the area around her shoulder, hm'ing and huh'ing as he did. "You're gonna need surgery and a lot of it. And some kind of genius to get this armor off of you without killing you."
He waited.
"That's the part where you snidely say, 'Oh yeah? And you're some kind of genius, I guess?'" He grinned, lopsidedly. "I'll give you a pass this time."
A few moments later, the door opened and a small crew of people began to wheel in equipment of all kinds. Some of it was downright industrial - big saws and drills - while others were more indistinct in their purpose. The latter portion had lots of fancy blinking lights, at least.
"So, here's the plan," Waylan said, inspecting the equipment. "We're gonna put you in a bouyancy-neutral fluid suspension that's similar to your blood composition. We'll crack the armor and take it out, bit by bit, letting the fluid keep you in more-or-less the same condition you're in right now."
A few of the techs began to lay out a long cylinder. Small tanks attached to it showed that they were draining into the cylinder itself.
"I'm going to need you to try and stay still as we do all this. Given the condition of your ... everything ... I'd rather not put you under if I can keep from it. We'll use some local anaesthetics, but you'll stay awake. So long as you can keep yourself from thrashing about, you should be in good shape for a proper surgeon. With me so far?"
He didn't expect her to respond.
"Good, good. So the next part is going to hurt. We've gotta get you, armor and all, into the suspension. Then we can start to take it off. Fortunately, it looks like the suit's in good enough shape to come off without too much trouble. Shouldn't need the power tools.
I would like to wait until we've got a surgeon on hand to get all this started. Second opinions and all. And if something does happen to go wrong, it'll be nice to have someone who can stitch you back together.
In the meanwhile.. I got a little somethin' for ya."
One of the new pieces of equipment turned out to be a radio. Somehow, the odd man had gotten ahold of Spark's most used playlist. Folk music, old school style, began to fill the room at a volume that was just barely tolerable for the neighboring patients. "Ah, man, this is the good stuff."
Breath hitched in the helmet, her monitors beeping a completely different set of emotions as her heart rate started to slow, blood pressure returning to something approaching normal. A wetness slid down the sides of her helmet, inside as she screamed at her body to just move. At her armor to release.
But nothing happened. The EEG read the release command and disregarded for user safety. The Geist connection being inoperative didn't help, as the suit had been recalibrated to respond to that, and that was what Spark was trying to do.
The call was near unintelligble, at first. It took nearly two minutes before Kolorsha could calm the frantic Thorn clone down enough to make out what she said, and her words filled the large horse with a cold dread.
First Talos, missing for months, now Spark had been critically wounded in a training accident. How the hell a training accident turns out with this outcome was certianly a valid question, though one for another time. Then the clone had said they needed her help.
Which was why Kolorsha now found herself being led toward one of Mercy hospitals ICUs.
Spark was still in her armor and while it had to be removed, there wasnt anyone cabable of lifting a person in full PA. And that, was where Kolorsha came into the plan.
Shortly, the grey mare found herself scrubbed, and in the operation room where Spark was located. And, to her suprise, some other male who looked more like they should be on a beach, rather than a hospital, though she greeted him with a nod and a raised eyebrow.
Waylan blinked a few times at the newcomer, unfamiliar with Kolorsha's species. He didn't seem bothered by the specifics, but more interested in the woman's general size and body type. A flit of information flashed across his vision, filling him in on the details.
"Kolorsha," he said, looking back to the woman on the floor. "Just in time. We've got to get all of this - ", he said, making a broad motion at Spark's armored form, " - into that." He finished the motion by indicating the large cylinder.
At this point, the cylinder had been cracked open. It was well wide enough to fit the armor and have room to breathe. The open top was just above table height for Waylan. The legs of the whole setup were thick and covered in the usual beige medical plastic, but gave off a feeling of sturdiness that suggested the six wheels could manage the weight of the armor and liquid both. The fluid within seemed to churn ever so faintly due to some circulation system.
"Unfortunately, despite all the time I put into the gym, lifting the gal with all her armor on is still beyond me. If you could do most of the lifting, I'll round up a few nurses to keep her head and limbs stable. Sound good?"
"I'd say most anyone would be hard pressed to beat my natural gifts in the gym, though I have to say, this is an unexpected use of them. I can only think of two others who could come close to lifting her" Kolorsha stated, indicating Spark's armored form.
"One's been missing for months, and the other....well if Spark was able to do this, we all wouldn't be here right now." Kolorsha nodded her large head, her deep blue eyes focusing on the man in front of her. "Yes, I should be able to do that easily enough when the nurses arrive. Interesting though, Spark usually doesn't tell just anyone about her musical preferences..." the unspoken question hanging between them.
The odd man grinned a little and tapped at his eyepatch. "One of the many upsides of my unique.. uh, upbringing. The people who put me together didn't give me super strength or combat abilities like your friend here. Instead, I got a super computer where one of my eyes should be. I don't always use it to hack people's playlists, but it's just as good a use as any."
The door opened and four nurses entered. One of them, the same from before, sighed as she looked at the state of the room. It had been bad enough that there was a soldier leaking out on the floor of the room, but all of this - well, it was less than conventional.
"You called, Mr. Vulca?"
Waylan winced at the name. "Uh, Waylan will do fine. And yeah - we need a few extra pairs of hands. We're going to lower Miss Spark, armor and all, into that tub over there. We need to keep her body stable while we do so. I'll take the head and each of you can take a limb. Our muscular friend here will lift the core of her body. So long as we all work together, the weight distribution won't be so bad. Everyone on the same page? Good."
The man walked around to the head of the armor, crouching down and taking hold. "Everyone in position? Alright- on the count of three.
One.
Two.
Three.
Lift!"
The armor gave a sharp creak of protest as the joints moved slightly, almost covering up the muted cry of agony and helplessness from within the helmet as it came up off the floor.
The group carefully lifted and moved the body into the fluid. Light flickered across the material as the weight settled into it, a sign that the viscosity was responding to the armor. Spark seemed to float, weightless, in the fluid once they had completed the move.
"Well, that was a challenge," Waylan muttered, wiping some sweat off his brow with the back of his arm. "I'm not sure how that would've gone if you hadn't shown up, Kolorsha. Well done."
He gave her a lopsided grin, then turned back to the patient. "As for you - well, I did say it was going to get worse before it got better. Nurses, if you'd stay on hand - I'll need help adminstering the pain killers and such. We're going to start with the helmet. I need access to her Geist."
Waylan began to carefully rotate Spark to one side, moving her right arm in time with the rest of her body. The fluid kept her more or less in the same position she'd been put in. He continued to rotate her until she was face down.
"The fluid you're in, amongst its other amazing properties, is heavily oxygenated. I don't want your lungs collapsing through all this, so.. it's going to get uncomfortable. The good news is, I should be able to get a bypass into your Geist before you have to inhale too much of the good stuff. Dig?"
The man tinkered with the back of her suit. The helmet popped with a muted hiss, partially submerged as it was, revealing the back of her neck. Fluid began to slowly seep along the sides of her head and neck.
Schematics, diagnostics, and more entered into Waylan's vision as he looked at the Geist. MUGIN and HUGIN adjusted their internal clockspeeds to match the task at hand. He grabbed a few tools, idly waving away a few prompts and warnings to get a better look.
"Yeeep, this is pretty fucked. Normally I'd say we should just replace the whole thing, but that's not really an option here."
With one free hand, he lifted a small device off a nearby tray. It wasn't exactly pretty. In fact, it looked like someone had put it together from whatever parts were on hand. Which was true. He looped the devices strap around Spark's neck, letting it trace along the cushion of the power armor's insides, then secured it. The device itself sat a little lower on the neck than where her Geist was located.
He began to carefully cut and work, exposing the parts of the Geist he needed access to. A small panel came away, revealing an interior panel that was thankfully intact. Waylan gave an appreciative whistle and began to connect the device and the Geist.
The entire process didn't take very long. Things would begin to feel more 'right' for Spark as soon as the connection was completed. Despite that, she would find her motor functions even further impaired and her senses largely cut off.
That experience, too, only lasted for a few moments. The device's lights began to blink rapidly. It connected to yet another nearby device, a simple holographic display. The form of Spark flickered into life above it - and then her motor functions and sensory made the switch, as well.
Waylan leaned back and took a breath. "Good to see that worked the way I expected it to. The odds were ah - you know what, nevermind. Miss Spark, it's nice to meet you. I'm Waylan Vulca. As you can see," he motioned at her body, "you're pretty well fucked. I got called to help unfuck the situation. I'd prefer for you not to be yelling and kicking the whole time, so I've subverted your Geist. Your little implant is normally capable of altering your perception, transmitting messages, taking over certain machines, and so forth, but this is definitely not an intended function. If you experience any discomfort, let me know.
So! Any questions so far?"
The figure stopped cussing long enough to cross her arms and give a nuclear grade death glare to Waylan. "Two. One. What the fuck hit me. Tell me that wasn't a Storm Rifle that I just survived. Two. Why can't I move?"
He went to rub the back of his neck, then stopped when the latex glove passed his face. He sighed instead. "Afraid I can't help you with the first one - you're the lucky survivor of a Storm Rifle. A handful of flechettes bounced around inside your armor and have done a number on your - well, let's just say you're lucky. As lucky as someone hit by a Storm Rifle could be, anyways.
As for your second question - you've been immobile for a while now. Your power armor has been working overtime to keep you alive, but your Geist wasn't so lucky. You're pretty well paralyzed for the time being. Now, if you were able to move around, you'd just be making it worse - so, again, lucky. I've shoved you into a hologram projector while I try to put you back together again.
Good so far?"
"Where's Angela?" Her face showed almost boredom. But under that mask of calm, a storm raged as she visualized what she was going to do to that trainee for ruining her career.
"Angela?" he mused, looking off to one side for a moment. "I'm not sure. She's been informed."
He leaned over, beginning to inspect Spark's armor. He began to remove parts of the armor, leaving the chest and right arm intact. Doing it piece-by-piece was not simple, but the emergency releases were made for this sort of thing.
"So, now for the fun part. You uh- shouldn't feel any of this, but if you do, it'll probably be weird. ... Probably."
This was the part that was make-or-break. Done correctly, the armor coming off should have little effect on the state of her body. Waylan took his time as he disengaged the seals, letting the fluid pour in and keep everything in the same position. The engineer's arms strained as he lifted the armor pieces away.
After the last piece came away, he took a small knife into his hand and began to cut away the bodysuit. With her back up, little of concern was exposed. As for the shoulder - well, the whole thing was a pulpy mess. The round had done as it was designed to do, breaking apart upon entry and acting like very, very fine buckshot.
Waylan frowned as he considered the damage. He was fairly certain that he could lift her right arm out of the fluid as it was, not too unlike the bones from his favorite rib place. Too much force this way or that - well, there really wasn't anything there to hold everything together.
A medical readout popped up, giving him something like an x-ray view into her chest cavity. The damage extended beyond the shoulder, partially clipping into her ribs and lung. The fluid had been a solid choice - if she'd been exposed to air like this, they'd likely be dealing with a collapsed lung. The skin and muscle had been pulverized to such an extent that he seriously doubted it would hold form in any other setup.
"Alright," he said in a tone that was entirely too conversational, "This is the part where it would be nice to have a surgeon handy. I've made my fair share of people like yourself, but I don't tend to get too deep into the wetworks."
Roughly translated: Your shit's so fucked I'd rather not mess with it.
Given what he was looking at, the damaged section was her entire shoulder area - starting about midway across her clavicle and halway down her ribs. It was, more or less, useless flesh at this point. The few intact veins and arteries in the area were working hard to keep her arm alive and prevent her body from bleeding out, but that wouldn't last. He knew necrosis would start to set in soon. It was in her best interest, he decided, to have the entire section removed. But he wasn't a surgeon, so - second opinions.
"Your Geist, on the other hand- that's something I'm interested in. So, I'm going to tinker with that."
"Don't look at me, I'm just the muscle here." Kolorsha replied. Indeed, there didn't seem to be much else for the large horse to do. The smell of blood had her prey instincts to run up, and while anyone observing her would see her tense body movements, she had ceased being ruled by instinct years ago, she had it under control.
It was just....well ok, it was a bloody mess, for sure. Even for someone like Spark, how had the woman remained conscious throughout this?
"You okay, Kolo?" The hologram of Spark turned to Kolo, an eyebrow raised as she tried to move a bit closer and take a peek at what was happening in the tank.
The sound of frantically running shoes could almost be heard outside as a certain nepleslian girl burst through the first set of doors. Dragging the security personnel with her from the entrance to the observation loung, they tried to restrain her as the woman fearfully, yet desperately attempted to make it into the ICU wing.
"No, let me go! I have to see *grrrr* see her!", Angela screamed at them as she fought back, but not effectively with the minimal progress she was making.
Waylan looked up from a screen only he could see, frowning at one of the nearby screens.
"Say, Spark - how much do you want to keep your arm?"
The alert was pretty clear - the arm was going to hit a point very soon where the lack of oxygen would cause the tissue to begin dying. Either the arm needed to be put on ice, and soon, or it would be a lost cause.
"I ask because I have some very nice cybernetic arms that I could set you up with. Weaponized or non-weaponized. The arm you came in here with is .. well, it's complicated."
"Define complicated. But biological is preferred, if at all possible. That said, knowing Angela, she's fighting giards to get to me." She leaned up aganst the wall, looking to her equine acquaintance. "Seriously, Kolo, are you okay? You look tense."
The mare nodded, waving off Spark's concern. "Old instincts. I was a prey animal, I believe the term is, before I was uplifted. The smell of blood usually meant trouble, and for a horse, trouble meant run." Kolorsha tapped the side of her head with a finger. "I'm not governed by just instinct anymore. I may be a little uncomfortable, but I'm fine.
"Also, it's not complicated. I'm no doctor, but just by looking at your arm when the armor was removed, most of what connected it to the rest of you is mangled beyond recognition"
At the other man's look, Kolorsha shrugged. "You know as well as I do that sugercoating anything to her would just make her upset" she said, then glanced back at Spark's holographic form. "I mean, there isn't any easy way to say it to you, the joint where your arm is supposed to connect to is fubar, as both you and Aztec like to say..."
"You know Angela as well as I do. Is it a good idea to let her in here or does someone want to move me outside before she's done fighting the guards?" Spark stayed silent, adamant about her decision. Biological or as close as could come. Moreover, she gave a maternal look to Kolo, pointedly offering her a way out of the uncomfortable situation. "I want to see Angela."
"Uhhh, right," Waylan muttered, looking at the area where her arm and torso met. "Biological."
He began to mutter, something about 'grow a new one and use it for parts' and 'make a scaffold and regrow it the hard way'. After a few moments of this and a failed attempt to tug at his beard through the hair net, he looked back at the others.
"You should be fine to take the projector out of the room, but I wouldn't go much further than the immediate hallway, yeah? If you start to feel light headed or something, it means you've gone too far. You may not get a second chance at a connection, so try not to push it."
Waylan frowned, looking off to one side. "Surgeon's been delayed, it seems. I'm going to have to get this started myself. Probably best if you aren't in here for it - this is gonna get, uh, messy."
The engineer began to gather up tools and lay them out on a tray. He kept frowning as he thought through the work ahead, but part of him was looking forward to it. Challenges like this were what kept him going - literally.
He waited for Kolorsha and Spark to depart the room, then began the grisly process of separating the arm from her body. A significant portion of her shoulder area would never be useful again, so he started by removing that. Away came flesh and muscle, all set aside for later disposal. The occasional metallic ting of the flechette's remnants sounded as they hit the metal tray.
Time seemed to go by slowly. Waylan's thick fingers were used to precision work, but they weren't a surgeon's. His HUD guided his movements, clearly laying out what needed to be done and where. Still, mistakes would happen, causing blood to trickle into the suspension fluid before he could remedy the problem. When he finished removing all of the damaged flesh and bone, there was little left of her shoulder but a handful of intact veins and her patched up axillary vein and artery.
Waylan leaned back and took a few beats to regain his energy. "Mm, gonna have to scavenge the arm a bit if we're going to attach anything to this in the future.."
Back to work he went, carefully severing the axillaries and closing the loop - sans the arm. Veins were likewise deadended as far from her core as he could manage, clamps and heat being the main tools for those. At last, he carefully pulled her arm from the fluid mix and set it into another prepared container, this one with a vastly lower temperature. He would need to connect it to something to maintain its circulation - but the cold would give him time for that.
Synthetic skin was the last piece of her shoulder 'fix'. A bio-compatible lattice had been applied, giving her skin and muscle both something to grow on in the future, but the synthetic skin would keep it all held in. His stiches were.. passable. Certainly not something a professional surgeon would be proud of, and likely to leave more than one or two scars, but they would do the trick.
"And that's that," he muttered, feeling the ache in his arms from all the effort. Her abdomen had been cleaned up and fixed up. The flechette's remains had been removed. Her lung was patched and circulation was as good as it was going to get for now with his skills.
~~~
(potential place for you guys to have Spark, Kolorsha, and Angela meet up?)
//yeah, I'll spot the line here and get back to it in a few hours.
"Good a time as any. Not much either of us can do here, and we'd be better off stopping Angela before she drags most of security in here..." Kolorsha replied, picking up the projector, then with a glance at Spark. "Shall we?"
Spark simply gestured to lead the way.
"Right then, let's go before Angela breaks anyone important." Kolorsha replied, walking out the doors of the operating room.
Waylan emerged from the room and into the hall. "Don't mind me, just gettin' a snack," he declared as he worked his way through the group.
Nyx pine had been flying in the skies above Obsidian city, taking a great deal of joy from the flight, double so because she was in her Jassabelle form, and thus she was going through the excitement that she’d never even felt before. The excitement however changed to fear when she got the alert. “No…no no no no! Mothers hands! Not another one “ She flew fast very fast to the location where she knew Spark was. “Hospital? Good hopefully they can help no way in hell will we be losing another family member! “She muttered to herself as she landed and bulldozed through people as she ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
She saw a woman up ahead, trying to fight security, it was clear this woman wanted to be with Spark this she deduced must be Angela. “stand down” she ordered a little gruffly to the security before she saw movement people were coming out, one was someone she hadn’t met before carrying a projector with Spark’s head on it? she blinked her eyes as they began to get dry from not blinking, she really must remember that.
The engineer returned a few minutes later, munching on a bag of chips.
"So, an update, yeah?" he began, not particularly worried about if he'd interrupted, "Right. Your arm's sitting in a high-tech cooler. Your chest is as patched up as it's gonna get. If I'd waited too much longer, necrosis would have started to set in and then your whole body would've been at risk, much less the arm. You're not all fixed up, though.
Your Geist is still a trainwreck and I'm guessing your face isn't much better. The Geist I should be able to fix, but ... I'm gonna recommend that we keep you in your current setup for a while. Maybe a few weeks? You're going to need a lot of reconstructive surgery. I'm gonna need time to come up with a solution for how we get your arm back on when you're missing ... well, a lot. You need a bunch of new bones, muscles, and everything that goes along with it. That's just the shoulder.
I can't imagine the face will be much better. I'm thinking that even after all the work is done you're gonna be in something like a head cast for a good while. It'll match the one on your chest and arm."
He took a bite out of a chip and realized he hadn't gotten a drink. Waylan just shook his head.
"But you're going to live and that seems like it's important. Any questions before I get back in there?"
"Unless there's something I need to know about... No. Just get it battle ready. I want to suit up again. Cybernetics won't keep up in the long haul." Spark looked down the hall, spotting Angela, and immediately walked off the hologram projector, where it adapted, throwing her full sized, imposing figure up in the hallway as she waved. "Angela! Over here!"
"Well, that was a little disconcerting...." Kolorsha remarked, as Spark's projection went from a disembodied head to her full size in the blink of an eye. She set the projector down on a nearby bench, then looked down the hallway toward where Angela was struggling with hospital security.
With the release of those who were trying to hold the frantic girl back, she went from struggling, and into a sort of trippign sprint. Legs righting her stance at the last second, the redhead legged it down the hall before stopping short of the figure of light that was her girlfriend currently.
"Spark, IcamewhenIheard, ohgodsIhopeyourokaytheymadeitsoundlikeyouweredying!? Wh-wa-what happened?!", came spilling from Angela's mouth as she fought the urge to hug her, seeing as there was nothing to actually hug. The poor nep woman's heart was going a mile a minute, the hologram doing nothing to quel her fear, expecting to hear the worst.
"I know it looks bad, it could have been a lot worse, I took a few flechettes to the shoulder and face, probably gonna need a new arm and my jaw and Geist were.... I love you, but I'll be suiting up again as soon as possible." Spark didn't fight the urge, bringing a hand up to Angela's face, cupping her cheek. "I'm okay. Just in surgery at the moment."
Waylan gave Angela a nod and rubbed at the back of his neck, free - at least temporarily - of the gloves and mask that had kept him from doing the motion earlier.
"Ah, about that," the engineer said, not meeting the holograms eyes for a moment. All the right people seemed to be present for his next 'dire' announcement, so he decided to proceed. He met Spark's flickering gaze.
"Assuming everything goes well, you're still not gonna be, uh, battle ready - say, for eight or nine months?"
Spark's head turned. "I kind of expected longer."
Nyx silently made her approach, a feat that was because of her organic form. The guards released their hold over Angela causing her to almost trip because of how much force she was trying to use in getting to Spark. She could tell they loved each other but his aunt was a blasted badass taking a few flechettes to the shoulder and the face she knew that had to be painful, yet she wanted to continue being a soldier.
She gave an exasperated sigh in response to Spark’s words. “Aunt Spark, your some kind of badass aren’t you?” she asked wondering if everyone in her family was. Dang it, she’ll have to be one too possibly.
Angela felt a slight tickle at the back of her mind and throat, something about the doctor's last statement....it was to a degree unsettling. "Spark, I've seen the factory, I've seen these things built, watched videos of you use them. Don't like to me that it will be okay that easily. For all I know, you....y- could be..... Why are you so s-set on running back out again after something like this? Why can't you take a break, rest with me, let your body heal as it should. 8 to 9 months is certainly not injures you could walk back to work unchanged from. How can you be so fucking casual about this! What did they do to you, why are you going to be recovering so long?!"
It was clear she was holding back, a shaky voice that was tinged with anger yet fear and worry. Eyes moistened as she used all her will to not stand there and cry, her mind running through every torturous thought at how bad she must look on the table right now.
"I... Might be missing my right arm. And part of my face. My Geist might also be totaled. Angela, everything will be okay, I promise. Gods, I want to hold you right now." She looked away, casting her eyes downward as her arms folded awkwardly in front of her. "You know how much trouble I have admitting when I need to slow down. And I was hoping to come in today to get that symbiote warning checked out..."
Waylan sighed. He wasn't really good at this sort of thing. Most of the time he'd delivered this type of news it had been in the form of circulars.
"Funny you should mention a symbiote," he began, "I've confirmed the existence of, ah, said symbiote. In fact, it's the reason you're going to be out of commission. Besides all the injuries, that is.
Spark, you're pregnant."
Upon hearing that bit of news, Kolorsh, like the other occupants of the hall went silent. "Well..." the grey mare started, leaning back against the wall. "....that was unexpected."
Angela kinda froze as that last statement registered, a sort of smile feintly on her lips as the shock set in. Her?! A father, and having given birth to a child with Spark?! It was simply something she had even considered, or thought of yet, even with how rough of a ride their relationship had kinda been at one point.
The office woman sort of stood there with that dumbfounded look, only a soft "wut?" coming from her. As the dead stop of emotions and adrenaline hit her, the girl just kind of teetered over as she suddenly feinted.
Spark's instinct was to catch Angela as she fell. And she watched Angela pass right through her arms. "And here I was about to ask when the last time we used kaserine was."
Waylan watched the woman begin to collapse, then looked to the others. "Well, I think I've done enough damage here for the time being. I've got a jaw to rebuild and a Geist to repair. I'll leave all of you to your own devices."
He looked at Spark's hologram projector meaningfully as he said the last bit and chuckled at his own joke. Then he began to clean chips off of himself before going back into the triage room.
Spark was pregnant?! Her eyes widened in shock she was a cousin once more! She loved this, though what she didn’t like was her other aunt fainting. She slammed her foot down as she shot forward, using her AI reaction to force her organic body to move forward to try and catch her even as her eyes saw her pass through Spark’s hologram. She went in between Angela and the floor, making double sure she didn’t hit her head.
Kolorsha shook her head, closing her eyes as she put a hand to her muzzle. "That joke was terrible..." she muttered, as Waylan passed through the doors leading back to the operating suite. Her ears flicked toward the others at a sound, Kolorsha looked up in time to see Angela fall, however she was too far from her to help before the woman would hit the floor. Fortunatly, Nyx was, grabbing Angela before she hit. "Well, at least you know now you two have no trouble having children." Kolorsha replied. "Silver linings, right?"
"One would think." Spark gave an exasperated cock of her head. "Pregnant? For fuck's sake, I... I don't know how to respond to this, my girlfriend is unconscious, and I... I just wanna go home, now."
Nyx looked down at Angela’s fainted form, and she squinted, trying to change her vision type before remembering she was in her organic form, so that was impossible. She carefully lifted the woman as she stood up all the while being careful in doing so. She watched the doctor leave as if he didn’t care that Angela was unconscious but she figured he must be tired. “I don’t know how to react myself, but I’ve seen you with that Separa infant, I think you’d make a great mother.” She said hoping that it wasn’t taken the wrong way.
Kolorsha indicated the projector. "Dont think it has the range to get you there, Spark. Not according to doc Waylan, anyway" she replied.
"Doesn't stop me from wanting it." Spark shrugged nonchalantly. "I'm sorry if I'm too casual about this mess. I'm... I dunno. It's weird, being detatched like this."
As if in response, the pain that had been blocked from reaching Spark's mind flooded through. The missing arm, the extensive work on her torso and jaw, the pain in her side- all of it. The connection between the projector and the temporary Geist in the other room became weak, flickered, and finally restabilized.
Waylan's voice could be heard in the hallway. "Sorry about that! This thing's more fucked than I expected. Tried to bypass into a component that wasn't there."
The pain, now just phantoms of the strong sensations that had come through before, began to fade as Waylan poked his head out the door. He was wearing a surgeon's mask and hairnet.
"I will need to take you offline soon, though," he said to Spark, briefly casting his eyes over the others. "You'll probably be down for a few hours while I get your Geist fully replaced and the new connections finish forming. If you all had anything else to talk about, now's a good time."
He paused, trying to decide how to address his last topic.
"Out of all the work I've done here so far, this next one might be the trickiest. Paralysis and worse are possible." The 'doctor' shrugged a little, barely visible from the small portion of his body that could be seen through the door. "Probably nothing to worry about, but I thought you should know. Back to work."
The door swung closed once again and a faint whistling could be heard as Waylan moved deeper into the triage room.
Kolorsha sighed, watching the odd doctor return to the operating room, her ears flattening to her head in disapproval. "That man really needs to work on his bedside manner...." she muttered, then turned towward Spark, giving her an apologetic shrug. There wasn't much she could do about their current predicament.
