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 Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 10:16 pm
The trend of disasters seen by Civisect may have left the city behind in the Space Race, but as a center for medical science, Civisect was second to none. It was a bittersweet comfort how quickly and smoothly the Emergency Injury and Casualty Clean Up and Relief Response Camp was erected at the edge of town. By now the flames of the space tower's remains had been long extinguished and the site cleared of trolls lacking proper security clearance. From Civisect the scene was no more than a grayish smudge on the horizon. The Relief Camp was a gesture on the military's part to help calm and control the outcry of hurt and frightened civilians. Quality medical care was administered thoroughly, if not brusquely given the scale of the wreckage, to volunteers harmed by the blast. Rows of thick canvas tents formed a neat grid pattern that spanned nearly an entire city block. The majority of the tents contained medical-grade recuperacoons--less organic and more portable than their standard counterparts. They looked like shallow basins attached to gurneys and filled with the minimal amount of sopor slime to stave off the worst of the brightmares. They were lined up and down the lengths of the wide tents and separated from each other by little more than thin curtains and wheeled carts of supplies. It was rumored highbloods were placed in more private quarters, but if such was the case, the technicians were keeping tight-lipped about it. Few trolls receiving treatment were up for talking. Chatter was muted and solemn. Occasionally whimpers and hisses of pain would puncture the silence from trolls for whom the slime was not enough to counter the trauma of what they'd experienced. Technicians were currently busying themselves with early morning checks. Around the tent, wounds were being redressed, and visitors were being gently shooed home before sunrise. Only quite uneventful may post in this thread. When the growth is complete, please quote the mule.
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Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:50 pm
A miracle.
That's what they said she was. A quick look at her physical state was enough proof to show she wasn't. The healers said her arms were still working, somehow. They were just... scarred. And ruined. Most likely unable to be used reliably.
Austri wasn't broken.
The greenblood remembered their offer of prosthetics. She reminded herself how much work she’d put into them. How if she did that, she’d lose the use of powers in her arms.
She’d steeled herself and said no. They were still salvageable. Useable. Of this she was sure. She was still worth something.
Or am I? Austri pondered this as she stared at her bandaged arms, feeling her chest deflate. Her pump biscuit felt strained. She wasn’t sure if it was because of her now compressed lungs, or if it was simply the weight on her chest she’d had since waking up to another troll telling her she was broken. Were any of her decisions worth anything at this point? Normally, she would’ve said yes. Now? She felt doubtful.
She wanted to say they were lying. Accuse them, scream, shout until she got her way. She wished she could trick herself into forgetting everything, pretend it wasn’t real. But it was. And the reality of this was something she’d have to face for the rest of her life. She wasn’t a war weapon anymore, wreaking havoc and eventually becoming an asset to the crown. She was simply a broken toy.
Austri clenched her teeth.
All her dreams, her visions of grandeur... Crushed, right before her eyes. Every second that passed with her sitting in her medical-grade recuperacoon left her more unsettled, hands itching to do something. Anything to regain her lost pride... Something to give her strength. But she was pathetic and ruined, a mere shell of her older self, having succumbed to something she couldn’t punch with her powers. Hell, she couldn’t punch at all anymore.
She couldn’t fix herself, she couldn’t work toward getting better, she was simply stagnant. Her normally entertaining life had somehow plummeted below zero, and Austri couldn’t do anything about it.
What crushed her the most was how she was the one that did this to herself. She hadn’t been fast enough, and being fast... No, being a hero was what she prided herself on. It was what made her friends with Lorata, what fueled her anger to beat Scorpa and Buffel, what pushed her to try harder for Flydra. She was supposed to be a Civisect Siren.
Civisect was wrecked now.
And it was all her fault.
Thankfully she was still a Siren, no matter how honorary that title was. Austri glanced at the presents that flourished the tent with a weak smile, feeling her insides mesh strangely. Lorata… She’d seen everything. Her rise, and ironically-- her fall. She couldn’t remember any of it, remembering pain like none other, but she’d looked so saddened, so hurt.
She’d never seen Lorata like that.
She’d never seen anyone like that. Her sweet, genuine Lorata-- The tent was simply overflowing with gifts, gifts she wouldn’t ever use but just the fact that they were there meant the world to her. Austri would never forget such loyalty, such… attentiveness. And while she’d truly just been playing around with Lorata at first, planning to use her for her own future, to look better and rocket to fame with her seadweller benefits... Austri actually, for the first time in her life, felt bad for even thinking about it. Lorata actually cared for her, and it wasn’t just as a trophy or future hero. It was more than that. It was receiving gifts for no reason in efforts to make her feel better, because she couldn't do anything but that to help. It was seeing the sobbing exhale of relief she’d released the moment she saw she was alright.
Flydra and Scorpa had been there as well. While Scorpa was, well, Scorpa and wasn’t worth much, of course, she’d still showed up, and for some reason, that touched her. It felt better than it should have, especially because Scorpa was supposed to not be worth her time, but hey, she wasn’t going to let herself delve too deep into that. She was there. Austri appreciated the teasing, playful fights, even if they were sincere. And while she knew it might've been just to look better toward the other two... It distracted her from her current reality. And that was enough.
Flydra, meanwhile, had taken it upon herself to decorate her casts with stickers and cute bows. She'd felt awkward, of course, as she didn't usually wear such frilly anything-- But allowed it, wanting Flydra to know she was still okay to some extent and ready to indulge in her smarts. She’d offered her medicine she was making in order to accelerate the healing process, but... While Austri trusted Flydra very much, she wasn’t sure she was willing to gamble her arms, even if it was just chance.
Despite all this, Austri wasn’t used to such genuine kindness from others. Staglebro sure wasn’t normally the one to show it.
Staglebro wasn’t one to do much of anything-- Until he... did? Until he sat outside her tent every night to check on her. Until he guarded her the entire time after reuniting with her broken form. Until he almost beat up the trolls changing her bandages, simply because they gave her pain-- She didn't know what to think. Austri wished he’d exhibited these emotions a little earlier, so she wasn’t so accustomed to practically beg or reach for it every time they interacted. It felt weird, almost foreign to have him always there. She didn’t know if she liked it or hated it. It was weird. Everything was weird.
Looking at her bandaged arms again, Austri tried to move them a little, but was only met with slight movement and a deep frustration blossoming in her chest. She could only slightly move them, and it irked her-- She felt like she needed to train and wanted the casts off, wanted them to be healed already. She’d already waited so long. She was ready to train again, she was so ready to get her life back on track. It was uncomfortable and not in her nature to wait, and Austri felt so angry at the world for ******** up any inkling of a chance she had at a perfect, coveted life.
No... Herself. She was angry at herself. It was this reliance, this dependence on her powers-- That was what ruined her. If she’d just run instead of thinking she could take it… She wouldn’t have been so ******** over. She wouldn’t have watched her doom soar toward her-- Seeing her friends mourn over her like she was some lost, pitiful weakling. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t pitiful.
...Was what she kept telling herself. But she was damaged. Damaged and unrepairable, unless she sacrificed her arms-- Her powers. She wasn’t sure if her powers would work after losing her hands, so… She wouldn’t-- couldn’t take that risk. Not yet. Not now.
She couldn’t lose that, too.
Austri felt her teeth grind against each other from anger, a deep, penetrating feeling she simply couldn’t handle. What was she thinking? Why was she getting all emotional, all pitiful? She wasn’t. She had just clarified that.
Austri needed a distraction. But all she could do was think. And for the first time in her life, she didn’t want to think about her future. She didn’t want to sit around, doing nothing--
...Sit. Legs.
The fire in Austri’s pump biscuit ignited.
She needed to get up. She needed-- She needed to get up, to move and train and focus on something that wasn’t right now. She needed to stop this terrible tangent she was going off on, and she couldn’t deal with the stupid flood of emotions coursing through her body that she didn't need. Looking around anxiously, Austri’s eyes zeroed in on the bandages near her, leaning over and managing to snag it with her tooth.
How the next few moments went were a blur of movement and struggle, and it was only after managing a lucky twirl and that she was able to spin the bandage wrap in the right way to strap her arms behind her back. She grinded her teeth against each other again, carefully stepping out of the medical-grade recuperacoon before slipping and falling unceremoniously to the floor with a yelp. She snarled and kept going, struggling to her feet.
With a set jaw, Austri grabbed the nearest plushie Lorata had given her with her teeth and set out of the tent, feeling her body scream at her as she shoved her emotions down and focused on her goal: Going outside. Carefully pushing the curtain aside with her leg, Austri stumbled out into the moonlight, hearing the silent whispers movement echo in the back of her mind like an afterthought. Her sudden appearance outside made Staglebro sit up, alert of her obvious display of rampaging emotions. She dropped the plushie hastily before stumbling backwards, getting a concerned Staglebro to look toward his charge with confusion.
With her bare feet, Austri slammed a kick into the plushie. Then another. And another. And another.
The last of them was powered, slamming the deflated toy into the side of her tent.
She kept going, uncaring if she heard groans of annoyance from the tents around her. They could deal with it. She couldn’t. She couldn’t deal with the dumb things she heard coming from her mind. They just didn’t make sense to her.
She wasn’t pitiful.
She wasn’t helpless.
She was damaged. But not broken.
It wasn’t like any of these facts would change her goal. It wasn't like her emotions would change her goal. Her sadness and pessimism in losing most feeling in her arms-- Yeah, it sucked, but whatever, she needed to get over it.
She wasn’t someone who allowed herself to be mediocre. That was reserved for the trolls that didn’t try.
Austri was still going places, even if right now, she didn’t know exactly where, nor did she want to stop and think about it. Her new disability prevented her from so much, but it wasn’t like her legs had just suddenly stopped working. She still had her strength, still had her motivation. Even her powers were still alright. Her future was all she had. And while she had no clue as to where it’d take her, she figured if she was a miracle, it couldn’t be that hard.
She was, after all, destined to be great.
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