trans_9 | "OW! That so totally hurts!" -- Charles Xavier

Down in the Hangar, the airlock was closing.

The Dart limped dutifully through the rows of parked ships, some pristine like she had been, some damaged and parked for the same reasons she was now here. Her seamless hull of polished black metal was spattered with Ohm, little bits of them having managed to cling in the vacuum, now dropping behind her like a sickly trail of inhuman blood. The nose and cockpit were completely smashed inwards, though by now her internal repair systems had somewhat rectified this problem, but the windshield was still missing and there was that problem of keeping the makeshift plasma barriers up and the vacuum out.

Otherwise Dustin would’ve stayed in the battle.

He parked his ship near the front, landing somewhat ungracefully with only his prosthetic to guide the Dart’s descent. The opaque shielding fell soon after, the engine died down, and the pilot stared out blankly in front of him.

…Welp, no time like the present! Dustin smiled drunkenly and undid his harness, pressed the release mechanism on his pressure suit—metal grated against metal as it contracted away from a lower limb pinned under the dashboard, freeing the shattered flesh and blood-soaked trouser leg with a burst of pain that quickly pulled Dustin’s addled mind in order. Said suit was soon forgotten in favor of examining his now revealed injuries, most of which he was already quite aware; his whole right side was, in effect, crushed in like the front of his ship, sparing his arm in favor of crippling his shoulder, and thank whatever deity may exist that the extent of his internal injuries was restricted to a collapsed lung, which had by this point been mostly reinflated and drained of trapped air and blood, though it was no less painful to breathe. If the ASIS hadn’t worked so diligently at the first instant it could Dustin would’ve bled to death a while ago—as it stood he was still covered in red, dried blood caking his chin and front, staining his teeth, adding a sickly tint to the black fabric of his pants, occasionally spotted by the protruding ends of stark white, jagged bone.

About this time his mind slipped again and Dustin, ever the optimist, realized that he’d just piloted a spaceship for the first time, was shot down, survived falling into the vacuum of space, managed a few more shots and made it back here with one arm that wasn’t even real. The awesomeness of this produced a giddy smile that strained against the grimace of clenched teeth, and with a hoarse laugh he cried, ”I made it!” into the open space, accompanied by an exuberant fist pump.

And then he promptly fell unconscious.

"Jesus, Mary, Joseph," Trudy said, feeling every inch of every muscle screaming at her as she climbed down from her X-wing. The G-forces she had been pulling were not at all comfortable and not anything she was used to for that long. Her stomach tried to express its displeasure at being back on a relatively unmoving surface so suddenly and Trudy swallowed hard to keep it in its place.

That's when she spotted Dustin. "Oh, hell, couldn't you have waited to get to the Medbay before you passed out?" she snarled at him, limping over. She whistled through her teeth as she got a look at the damage, nudging him with her foot to see if he stirred. "On second thought, it's probably a good thing you passed out. This would be a hell of a trip if you hadn't."

She had to take a few deep breaths to steel herself before she hauled his skinny frame up on her back with a grunt of effort, staggering slightly as she made for the nearest transport tube. He was light - practically weighed nothing at all - but even that little bit was an effort.

By the time they finally got to the Medbay and were greeted by the EMH, Trudy was ready to pass out. She laid him down on the bed. "Well, you want it in order of seriousness or from the top down?" she asked, and then made a face. "S'cuse me," she said, leaning over to grab the nearest empty basin before throwing up.

Dustin would’ve agreed with her if he was conscious long enough to do so—or rather, in any sort of state during those brief spans of cognitive activity to express his extreme displeasure at being transported in the manner which she had chosen. Once or twice he had attempted just that; the frail figure draped over Trudy’s back would let out a wheeze, thick eyebrows knitting together, jaw regaining some tension as he adjusted to his position, a stream of curses would buzz noisily around his subconscious and then he went limp yet again. By the time Dustin had been deposited on that cot he was in a state of fitful slumber, expression contorted and forehead dribbling with sweat. His lips were turning blue underneath the blood, his chest move erratically with each breath, ribs grating nigh audibly no matter how he moved—or was moved—to support them.

”At least you’re out of that ship,” came the reassuring thought through the misty haze of agony clouding the genius’s mind, and for a moment he seemed almost tranquil again, ”The ASIS wouldn’t set your shoulder and leg until you were put somewhere level, so that should be over with soon—barring any inconsistencies of course, but that’s what we have the phone for, right?—“

Oh good god, his phone! His backpack! Dustin’s eyes shot open, panicked; he made a motion to shift his head from its prone position on the left but all he managed was a weak neck spasm, cheek flopping against the thin bedding. A new layer of perspiration soaked what misaligned bangs happened to be in the way, creating thick strands of dark brown ringlets that stuck to his brow.

Presently, after some frantic gasping, Dustin found he had enough air in his one and a half lungs to express what was so dire. “—Where—where is—“ He paused and grimaced; right on target, carbon tendrils began appearing just under the skin of his mangled shoulder, outlining a crack in his clavicle, a spiral fracture at the top of his humerus. “—my phone, it’s—plugged into the steering—“

"Hey hey hey! Hold still!"

Luis was, at this point, trying to assess his condition-- an internal injury was beyond what he felt all right doing, but he could at least try to speed things along.

"Somebody will go get your phone, amigo. Quit moving."

Dustin obstinately ignored him, trying a more coordinated approach at shifting his head; the movement started in his foot, arced through his back and branched into his prosthetic, which found a firm grasp on the edge of his cot and pushed, lifting him just enough to where he could flop over and, glaring with bright green, bloodshot eyes, get a better idea of just who apparently had him under his jurisdiction. The face was vaguely familiar, not enough to ring any immediate bells in his delirious mind, but that wasn’t exactly what Dustin was concerned with. If he was where he suspected he was, then he already didn’t like this person.

No time like the present to ask, though, and Dustin had his priorities. He fell back with a wet sort of sound on the bedding and turned his gaze to the ceiling. “…Where am—?“

—Wait, no, that was a stupid question, he knew where he was. Dustin squinted his eyes closed as he attempted to gather his thoughts—and succeeded, though his memory slipped, and the location was a little off.

“—Where’s Clay?” Another pointed glare in Luis’s direction, though it was obviously unfocused. “Tell the front—Doctor Epps—They’ll know—“

Somebody was kind enough to pull her hair back over her shoulders and hold it out of the way.

"Take it easy, bonita. Why don't you grab a bed?" Luis offered, rubbing her back between her shoulder blades. "I mean... when you finish up here."

Trudy gave him a thumbs up while she was in the middle of retching, pathetically grateful for the grip on her hair. It wasn't like she wanted to get vomit in it, but she didn't have the coordination to hold it back right now.

When she finished, she spat into the basin a couple times, trying to get the taste out of her mouth. "I am not used to flying that hard," she said, and spat again. "I think the last half hour might have been a little much."

That was clearly an understatement - without her flight suit, the harness for the inside of the X-wing had left beautiful purpling bruises on her collarbones, her ribs, the insides of her thighs. She leaned gratefully into Luis and trusted him to steer her to the nearest bed. He was pretty good at that, after all. "Lemme take a quick catnap and I'll be back out," she said. "The G-forces aren't that bad once you get used to them."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I've never flown myself at all and I'd probably have started crying just after takeoff," he offered, and caught a glance at her bruises as he helped her over to the bed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa-- you might as well get comfortable, baby, we'd better check you for internal with bruising like that."

Trudy grunted as she propped herself up on one of her elbows, watching him move around the medbay. "Don't start getting protective on me now that we just got friendly," she said mildly. "I know what internal bleeding feels like and I don't have it. General Antilles is going to nail my hide to the wall for not wearing my flight suit, but other than that I'll be fine."

She knew what internal bleeding felt like because being in combat usually resulted in it at one point or another. Two separate occasions, actually - once when she'd taken shrapnel while she'd still been in the Marines, and once in SecOps when a Na'vi warrior had thrown her against the side of her own chopper.

"A morphine drip would be nice though," she added.

"Hey, who's being protective? I'm just doing my job," Luis teased her, crossing his arms. He got to work prepping the area around her bed for the bed to have somebody in it.

"Well... sort of. Anyway, you're already here, and I'd rather look you over now than have you carried back here later with your insides all leaking. If you behave, I'll give you a morphine drip. How's that?"

Trudy scowled at him, clearly a little ticked off at being coddled - well, he could call it what he liked but she knew her limits and would only push herself beyond them when absolutely needed.

Unfortunately, now was when she was absolutely needed. "You're a sadist, how did I not know that about you before?" She did lay back, however, staring at the shifting ceiling. "On second thought, I can't really fly a fighter hopped up on painkillers, so how about you make sure I'm not bleeding and I go?"

She wasn't in any shape to go anywhere, really. She'd been pulling a series of ridiculous maneuvers with high G-forces and adrenaline spiking all over the place. Now that she was sitting still, she could feel herself starting to crash.

"I'm a sadist?" Luis said with mock horror. "Why, Captain Chacon, I'm hurt. You're one of the last beautiful human women in the universe, of course I've got to keep a careful eye on you." He was actually a masochist to be taunting a woman who could easily beat the hell out of him.

He pulled up a stool on her left side and pulled an IV drip out of the wall, taking hold of her arm and sliding it into a vein. "Just a little saline," he assured her, a boldfaced lie. "Now let's have a look at you. I love this job."

"I'm sure you do," Trudy said, amused. It's not like he hadn't seen her undressed before - but those kinds of thoughts were better suited to after the battle was over.

It was deeply weird in a way to be examined by a male medic - deeply weird because the military had been very careful to assign female medics to female soldiers, and deeply weird because this was Luis, who she had been dancing (and more) with less than a couple days ago.

Although some of that deeply weird feeling could have been that she was staring to get a little muzzy. "I think this adrenaline crash is hitting me pretty hard. You got a caffeine booster somewhere you can give me?" Nope, she was totally not catching on to the fact that there totally was morphine in her drip.

She probably would have been even more weirded out to hear Luis had no medic training-- but he had worked as a medical researcher for long enough that he knew all the ins and outs (heh) anyway, and as long as it wasn't life-threatening or necessitating surgery, he could wing it well enough to help out.

"Amiga, I am pretty sure there's no doctor in the world who'd inject straight caffeine into a patient," Luis teased her as he felt for any irregularities around her torso. "Just relax. You only get a few minutes off, you might as well enjoy them, sí?"

She mumbled something vaguely like agreement and waved a hand at him, closing her eyes and trying not to yelp as his fingertips came in contact with one of the bruises on her ribs - one of those may have been cracked-

Then her eyes slid open again as she abruptly realized that she didn't feel very much pain at all when he prodded at her. And then she realized that her brain felt wrapped in a wool blanket. "I can't even believe you," she said, staring at him. "You drugged me, you conniving little bitch."

Don't take it personally, Luis - she actually sounds kind of admiring.

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And then, apparently, he got dragged to the MedBay, where a bloodied and wounded and limping and &*$%in' tired Yoshimi finds him, eyes glazed enough that she skims over him when she first hobbles in.

Being guided to a free bed, an EMH probing the deep gash in her torso with some science-y looking thing that makes her uncomfortable because it looks like something GlobeTech would produce, Yoshimi tries her hardest to not imagine the thorough chewing out she's probably (hopefully) in for when Dustin learns that she hasn't had her gauntlets on her at all times and consequently has deeper injuries on her hands and forearms and upper arms than the last time she fought on or around this damn ship, because, surely, it'll be loud and angry and make her want to apologize, which she hates doing. Except that, several seconds after she's been seated and the buzzing, babbling doctor-person starts tending to her wounds and blood loss, her eyes focus long enough to realize that she knows that head of messy hair like the back of her own hand, and her heart leaps into her throat as she leaps off the bed, ignoring the cries of alarm and caution about that bloody mess that once was her side, ignoring the jabbing, angry bursts of pain coursing through her body.

"Holy shi--Dustin?"

And Dustin, having long since been filled with enough painkillers to down a small horse, was in the midst of a dreamless sleep when Yoshimi finally noticed him, looking surprisingly comfortable despite his condition, if not considerably more pale and blue in the cheeks. That AI Doctor fellow had done a good job of patching him up—well, aside from what the ASIS had already accomplished, but he was definitely healing faster and less fitfully. The blood was cleaned from his front, his chest was wrapped in several layers of cushy bandages, frail arm in a sling, leg and torso were propped on pillows for drainage purposes; the various alien monitors keeping track of his vitals showed that he was in a fairly stable condition at this point and was at least breathing regularly, more or less.

At least until he heard his name, and considering that it was preceded by an expletive his spike in heart rate was understandable. Dustin blearily opened his eyes, scanning either side of his bed with indecision. A moving figure with pink hair caught his attention.

“Yoshimi?” he croaked. A twinge of fear pulsed behind his irises as he registered another color—deep red. “—What are you—?“

She considers letting the doctor-y person now hovering behind her, telling her that she really ought to lie down and let him finish, do his job, because yeah, her side hurts ~~like mother&*$%ing hell~~ pretty badly, but lkajfoijawefkjawfa LOTS OF BANDAGES. WAY TOO MANY BANDAGES. ON DUSTIN. WHO IS IN A HOSPITAL BED WITH BLEEPY MACHINES.

"What. happened." She's not even asking--no, it is an order. And yes, she's going to ignore that semi-articulated question. And the continuing-to-hover doctor-y person. And the "Sonofabitch, can you not poke that? That is kind of a very large laceration, and it hurts enough without you poking it! Go away!"

"Ow."

He stared at her for a few moments, eyes focusing steadily, but the intent look on his face masked the fact that most neurological impulses running through him currently were delayed by a round ten seconds, and thus the seriousness of her statement did not register at all. Instead Dustin settled with a simple reply, a non-answer that he figured she would be happy with hearing, because it was true and true things were good right now. Mmhm.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, leaning back into his plushy tower of pillows with the same curious squint, realizing that the AI was following around this pink-haired person and she was actually kind of bleeding. A lot.

“I think you should go lie down.”

"That" she says, distressed expression turning into a pained glare, "is not an answer. I asked you what happened. And please don't tell me you got blown up or something, because that would be just peachy." And she throws her hands in the air and winces and hisses and again considers letting the doctor-y person do his job, the thought obviously seconded by Dustin's assertion.

Never one to take advice, she arches an eyebrow at him, clutching at her gaping, bleeding wound in an absentminded fashion. "I'll lie down when I want to lie down, Scruffy McJackass."

Dustin pretended to be distracted by something on the ceiling.

“…Maybe…” And he earnestly corrected himself. “—It was a little explosion though.”

Aaand Yoshimi stared at him, face quite blank as she fought her instincts to not whap him upside the head, because surely that would just aggravate his injuries, and getting blown up is probably enough for one day. Probably meaning maybe.

"You know I never believe you when you say it's a little explosion," she intones, a hand coming down heavily on his apparently uninjured upper arm, eyes squeezing shut as she exhales very, very carefully. In Yoshimi Sign Language, this means "Thank &*$%ing Kami-sama you're alive."

Dustin continued to stare at the ceiling, mostly because he could feel that look Yoshimi was giving him and, therefore, he found it satisfactory to direct his visual stimuli elsewhere; secondly it was because he didn’t feel like moving around much, a fact that he attested to when a hand came down on his uninjured arm with just enough pressure to cause discomfort.

Or perhaps he simply wanted to watch her squirm. Dustin wasn’t feeling too fantastic anyways, what with being conscious and all, knowing that his compacted rib cage was grinding pleadingly with each breath and getting the occasional twinge from the ASIS while it adjusted the various splints holding him together. So it wasn’t that hard to fake a flinch and a set jaw.

“Which is funny, because they usually are,” he mumbled after the preceding theatrics, trying on a strained smile, “It’s okay, though, really. I’m not dead.”

Because he should be.

“I really think you should go lie down.”

She twitches back when he flinches, frowning at him, knowing that he has more pain tolerance than that, but fully aware that he's allowed to feel pain when he wants to feel pain. She stands there for a second, not really knowing what to do, because she really wants to hug him, but that's obviously not going to work too well right now.

She winces.

"Well, yeah, but would you believe you? Actually, no, that's a stupid question." Rubbing at her eyes, behind which a devil of a headache is developing, she sighs. "Just... yeah. Thank you for not being dead."

The slowly growing puddle of blood on the floor at her feet is a bit worrisome, yes. She has the grace to look a little sheepish as she notices this.

"I've had worse," she says, determined to not admit that she needs to lie down, because that would somehow be related to admitting that she totally didn't need to come flying across the room like some crazed and concerned girlfriend. Oh wait.

The blank stare being returned said several things, mostly that Dustin was probably going to fall asleep in the next few minutes, partially that he agreed with Yoshimi’s sentiments about her question being, as she said, ‘stupid’, and partially that he was also extremely thankful that he wasn’t dead, because that would be unfortunate. The skeptical, kind of pained expression that followed was completely unrelated and was either honestly caused by discomfort or was from preparatory fear of the bit of snark that managed to sneak past his lax, drug-filled personal censors:

“…Well at least get that closed up so that you stop bleeding everywhere. Someone might slip.”