I had just enough time to look down at the wire, snarled up on the ragged uniform I'd lifted off the ground, before a canister shot up out of the dirt in front of me. My good eye reflexively darted to follow the motion before there was a NOISE and my vision went white,
*BOOM!*
...
Now, I'd SAY that I was sent flying in every direction as chunky salsa, blown to complete smithereens, to the horror of the fleet surrounding me...
But I'm currently describing what happened, so obviously the damage wasn't that bad. The explosion WAS, however, strong enough to make Scooter flinch, bucking me from my seat like a rodeo horse, making me briefly airborne, from the feel of it I cartwheeled at least once before slamming into the soft ground in front of me.
Or at least, that's what I supposed I'd landed on, as I still couldn't friggen see.
"Georgia!" After a few moments, I could feel someone turn me over, and I took the opportunity to realize, for one, that I'd probably not been able to see due to having my face buried in the dirt-
Actually no, still couldn't see, just blackness now...
"Is she alright? Let me look at her!"
"Daddy!"
"Calm down I think she'll be fi- daddy?"
Why was everyone whispering? Oh, right, that's just the ringing, drowning them out, hopefully it would go away in a minute, along with this hopefully temporary blindness, honestly, why is it always the god-damn eyes? Wait a minute...
"Don't ask."
I lifted the smoking eyepatch covering my closed left eye, having to practically peel the slightly melted plastic off, and lo and behold, vision! Albeit it was my Gammie eye, so I couldn't actually move the orb in my socket, I made do by turning my head rapidly, taking in the distressed faces around me.
"I can see!" I shouted, startling the others, "I can FIGHT!"
"Georgia, your right eye..." Chitose said, sitting down in the dirt next to me, as the ringing in my head started to die down.
"What's wrong with it? It's just black, what do you see?!" I said, starting to let some worry color my tone.
Lao sat next to Chitose, leaning in with a mixture of guilt and surprise as Chitose man-handled me, getting me to lay back in her lap so she could see into my damaged eye better.
"It looks like, Kami, Georgia..." Chitose leaned in further, as if trying to look into my eye socke-
"I can see into your eye socket!" -Apparently she WAS.
I turned inwards, "Captain, you alright in there?"
There was a pause, before my Captain responded, "I'm still getting reports from Damcon, give it a sec."
I waited a few minutes, listening to the rest of the fleet fuss over me, before she got back, "No hull breaches, explosion splashed against your armor."
Well, that was good, but still...
"And the eye?" I asked the obvious question.
My Captain repeated the question to a few technicians, getting a few answers before turning to address me again.
Why she bothered and what, exactly, she was turning to address, when she was technically in the equivalent of my braincase I didn't know.
Actually, how did I even know she was turning?
"We don't know yet, I'll send a few girls out to check."
I facepalmed, only to get an odd crunching sound, like broken glass.
Chitose grabbed my hand, pulling it away "Don't do that, you'll make it worse!" She said sternly.
"Make what worse?!" I said, turning to face her, face tilted slightly to the left to keep her in view of my jammed eye.
"Your right eye, it... it's, shattered." She seemed to rummage with her coat pockets for a bit, before coming up with, of all things, a pocket mirror.
"Where did you even get that?" I asked.
Chitose paused, raising a brow, "What, I cant put on makeup just because I'm a Kanmusu?" She asked rhetorically, before remembering the situation and shaking her head, holding the small foldout so I could see, "here."
I looked in the mirror.
My face had a light layer of soot and dirt covering it, as if I'd lit off a firework clenched between my teeth, my hair was blown back, and had more than a few pieces of shrapnel sticking out of it.
Then I finally noticed the doozy.
My right eye was a pit, like, a literal pit. Glass shards lay there in a pile, jostling around where my eyeball had once been, crushed glass from the shattered orb filling the now-empty socket. I couldn't see farther in, it was too dark, but I imagined I'd be able to see the electronics my sensors were made out of.
"Huh," I said numbly, taking-hold of the mirror to get a better look, turning it this way and that to get different views.
Honestly, you take for granted being able to rotate your eyes. I really should have taken someone else's before now to fix it, though, if I had, I wouldn't have worn the eyepatch, so both would probably be busted...
Ah, who am I kidding? I'd have still worn the eyepatch.
"Dear God, I am so, so, so, SO sorry," Lao said, cringing as she watched me poke around the hole gingerly, "I didn't think one of Sentries traps would-" I waved my hand at her dismissively.
"Don't worry, it doesn't even hurt!" I interrupted, tilting my head forward while keeping my eyelids as wide as I could, so the glass shards would fall out. They did, with a tinkle, "I guess it's a good thing I kept the other eye closed, huh?" I asked, looking back up.
Before anyone could respond, I could hear footsteps and swearing coming from my empty socket. I raised the pocket mirror again, seeing twin beams of light stabbing through the darkness, illuminating the dark room. They were flashlights, held by a pair of Fairies that were examining the destruction around them.
"Look at this mess!" One voice said, echoing out of my eye, "all of the protective casing is gone, the entire damn thing is completely stripped!"
"At least the rig and electronics are okay, pretty much the opposite of the other room... hey, you think we should get the casing from the other faulty sensor suite and transfer it into this one?" Another voice answered.
"Hey!" I said, getting the other ship's attention as I addressed the little people in my head, "You girls, the ones walking around in my eye-socket, what the hell happened in there?!" I demanded.
The fairies, who I assumed were part of my DamCon, seemed to startle for a moment, as though they hadn't thought they'd been overheard, "Aaaghm G-Georgia?" One asked.
"Yes? Get on with it, lay it on me!" I asked, making a rolling motion with my unoccupied hand.
"Well, ah, you see, um-" While the first fairy dropped her spaghetti all over the place, the second was a lot more succinct.
"Your eye's fucked."
"Well, nooo, you don't say?" I snarked to... well, myself, technically, "I can tell that much! what I wanna know is: Can you fix it?" I asked.
"Well, from the look of it, there's not much TO fix," The second one said, looking around with her flashlight for something, "What broke was the casing for your sensors, the shutters were open when that explosion went off, must have been too much for it to handle, tripped all the breakers too, from the look of it."
"W-We were just saying, we could probably just take the casing out of your other suite, the one with the fu- erm, the uh, non-operational gyroscope, and plop it into THIS one."
"By 'casing' I assume you mean my freakin' eyeball, right?" I asked, getting affirmation before continuing, "Alright... get the repair crews ready to make the connections, just like what we did with Robin-"
"Like you did with- What?!" Robin asked, purple eyes blinking.
"I assume you have connections that need cutting first or something?"
"Yeah, should only take a minute though, the room is right next to this one. I assume you'll take care of the, uh, extraction?" The Damcon fairy asked.
"Yeah yeah, get on it," I told them, before laying back on Chitose's lap, I tilted my head to look at her.
"So, I only saw it for a split second before it caved my windshield in, but did I just get hit by a depth-charge bouncing-betty?" I asked.
Lao winced again, "...yes?" She said quietly.
"Oh, stop it!" I said, getting a flinch out of her, "it's not your fault I blundered into that bloody-thing! I should have known better, though when I meet up with this 'Sentry' character," my empty socket narrowed along with my other eye, "we are having words."
"I'm sure she set it for a good reason!" Lao said, standing up for her friend, "Just promise me you'll hear her out, okay?"
"She hurt Georgia, what is there to hear?" Hakone said, cracking her knuckles menacingly, Anne nodding in agreement.
"Now, now, children, calm down, I'm still just fine, I just wanna talk to her, that's all-" I started, only to cut off as my remaining eye's vision cut out, "what? You're done already?" I asked my crew.
"Not much work, we're just sliding a few parts out and turning off the connections, you should be able to slide out the casing whenever, it's already free-standing," was the response.
"Well alright, but you'd best be ready in there for it, we break this one and repairs will get a whole lot harder," I told them, before reaching for my left eye.
I paused, looking up to where I knew Chitose was.
I grinned.
"Hey ChiChi? Wanna see a magic trick?" I asked.
I felt the grumble Chitose let out, "My name isn't-!"
I plucked my own left eye out, it came out freely with a *POP*, having been detached by my crew already.
"IEEEEEE!"
...
In retrospect, I should have told them what I was discussing with my fairies.