"Scott, stop!"

Just back from the site of the latest Chaos Crew rampage, the eldest Tracy froze in place in the hanger, instinctively responding to the voice of command from Kayo. Before his brain could catch up she'd slipped in front of him, deftly unclipped his damaged helmet and taken his face between her hands, examining him closely. "Stay still." She told him in a voice that brooked no opposition when he tried to pull away from her scrutiny.

Kayo gently drew her thumbs across the suspicious dark smudges she'd spotted under his eyes, right on the bottom arcs of his eye sockets she realised, and hissed softly when the marks didn't come away like she'd half hoped they would. Bruises, not soot stains. Ever so carefully she checked behind his ears and saw the tell tale bruising starting to bloom there too. "Battlesigns. Scott, what hit you?"

"Fuse. Right on the back of my head." He told her, just the slightest slur in his voice. If she didn't know her brother's voice so well she would have missed it. "But it's okay, the helmet took most of it."

"And you flew back after taking a coward's punch from Fuse!?" She demanded, pitching her voice just loud enough for it to carry to where the others were clustered around Brain's mobile lab and chatting.

"WHAT!"

Scott winced and swore softly as pounding feet heralded Virgil, half out of his uniform and looking worried. He took Kayo's place, eyed the battlesign bruising with concern and carefully ran his ungloved hands through Scott's hair despite the elder brother's protests, looking for the expected swelling and frowning deeply when he found a suspicious lump on the back of Scott's head. "Kayo, medscan."

"Way ahead of you." She produced the palm sized device and ran it over Scott's head. Amber lights flickered into life to highlight hairline fractures at the back of the skull, but thankfully no brain swelling yet.

"Scott, what day is it and how much fuel did you have left in the tank when you landed?" Virgil's stance relaxed slightly at the report, but not by much, and shifted to hold Scott by the shoulders to keep him from twisting away from his scrutiny.

"Tuesday, down to 23.7% capacity. Seriously Virg, I'm fine." Scott tried to insist.

"Follow." Virgil held up his right index finger and moved it back and forth, then up and down, watching Scott's eyes as he tracked it. "Okay, left index finger, your nose my finger." He ordered next. Scott obeyed grudgingly, touching his finger to his nose then to Virgil's finger, repeating it three more times as Virgil moved his finger to new locations. "Good, now say 'British constitution'."

"Britissh constitushion." Scott recited, then blinked and realised it hadn't come out quite right. "Aw hell."

"Yep." Virgil sighed and shrugged back into the top half of his uniform. "You're off to Auckland Hospital, we can't take care of it here if you're already slurring. We'll take Two. Kayo?"

"Two overnight bags, landing clearance at Auckland airport, ambulance from the airport to the hospital and tell the others, got it." Kayo nodded and turned on her heel. Draped down the side of an extinct volcano, Auckland Hospital didn't have a big enough landing pad for any of their ships. While they did have permission to land in The Domain park beside the hospital, they tried to keep that for serious emergencies only.

Scott glanced between the two of them, feeling uncomfortably not in charge of the situation. "You two are scary when you start coordinating." He told Virgil as he was turned and gently propelled over to the main hanger by the broad hand planted between his shoulder blades.

"We've had a lot of practice." Virgil's tone was flat and his face was serious. "How many times do we have to talk about not flying with a serious injury? What if you'd passed out at Mach 15? Scott, you're not indestructible! What would Dad say if you took a risk like that in front of him?"

He was pleased to see that cut off Scott's pending rebuttal at the knees.

"I know you feel you've got big shoes to fill, but there's eight of us, ten if you count Max and EOS." Virgil went on as they walked. "Share the load before you crash and burn. You're stressed and your patience is getting shorter by the month. Your judgement is already affected and it's going to get someone hurt or risk a mission failure somewhere in the near future." Virgil paused and lowered his voice slightly, aware of how voices could carry in the cavernous spaces of the hangars. "I thought we'd had this conversation already Scott, when we were on the Aurora Generator mission."

Scott ducked his head and frowned in the way Virgil recognised was him processing what he'd been told, weighing up the information and measuring his conclusions against the metrics and standards he'd set for himself, but for now kept his thoughts to himself.

Virgil sighed and flicked his fingers over his wrist controller to tell his 'bird to let them in. It wasn't the response he wanted, but at least Scott was thinking about it. Until that skull damage healed up he'd have to be content with that.

A/N: So not technically a fluff fic, but I had a bout of frustration with how head injuries/potential concussion are assessed in fics.

I've seen a lot of the classic 'shine a pen light in the eyes', but sluggish pupil response or one pupil larger than the other (known as a 'blown' pupil) is actually a late sign, it's highly unusual for it to show up early and as the only symptom. The cause of pupil/vision issues is the brain swelling and putting pressure on the optic nerve and that takes time. I'll do the check if I'm looking at the patient and something seems wonky with their eyes, but not as the first check.

What Virgil is doing is using the more common symptom checks, and he'd be repeating them about 20-30 minutes later to track any changes/worsening symptoms/new symptoms. It can take up to 48 hours for symptoms to show up so Scott showing symptoms relatively soon is a problem.

First check is for short term memory issues- day of the week, immediate events prior, what you had for breakfast/lunch/dinner, did you wake up on the floor (if someone got KO'd and woke up on the floor that's an automatic hospital stay) are the standard questions. I figured for Scott day of week and how much fuel was in the tank would be appropriate short term memory questions for a pilot.

The second and third checks were for Scott's ability to obey commands and hand-eye coordination. The classic 'How many fingers am I holding up' is an option but not commonly used. You can also ask if they're having any visual disturbances- spots, grey around the edges, tunnel vision, blurriness- but again that's a later problem.

The last one is looking for slurring, there's all manner of phrases you can use but I like 'British constitution' because it's got a nice cluster of 's/c' sounds that really emphasise any slurs.

I hope that helps!

-Maria