The alarm goes off at eight o'clock, Eight-zero AM.

Of course, She's already awake, She's been awake for a hour because she can barely sleep, even with the help of medium-chain fats and trying everything from exercise to red light therapy to high fat diets, arching her back as hard as she can until the cramps of her muscles almost, almost drowns out the soreness her entire body is screaming in. Sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at the blank wall and trying not to stare at the shelf and listen to the white noise crawl through her cube like ants climbing up into her eyes.

Trying. Failing.

The alarm screeches again at Eight-one AM, Her ears almost begging to die along with every single cell in her body, but she still sits there and waits for it to be quiet.

Eight-two AM.

Her head starts to hurt, her brain has already been under assault this strongly after waking up, and she relaxes a little and doesn't gasp at the sudden tremors shooting down her keel to every neuromuscular junction;No, she just reaches over to her bedside drawer and turns the alarm off so that cursed shrill sound won't give her even more of a headache.

Then she stands up and almost, stumblingly so walked to her shelf, grabbing a bottle and popping open the cap with hands that don't look like spider veins, thank you very much.

He, Or she never had thought about it, but the main problem was that, for all it was worth being gifted extra-series powers in the form of magic and a sixth sense, No. it was... Her potential was just... Too big, If there was a word for Arcana overcapacity, That would be it. It was so backed up in her body no matter what she did that it was making her fall apart at the internal level like the arteries of a Type two diabetic, and since she had arrived here, Her life had been a living hell in some kind of purgatory. between the fact she could literally feel her mitochondria disintegrating and her memory cube cracking apart at the seamless finishes.

"Ughh.. Should have thrown out these vitamin K bottles... doesn't matter, they'll just pile again and if all goes well with my daily schedule to get poked by the scientists again, then I won't have to bother with them soon anyway." But shuffling through them looking for the ones that aren't empty costs precious seconds of agony, She made a note to herself to clean this up later.

Three capsules, A Apigenin and NAC supplement complete with a unknown sublingual powder scoop. She could swallow all of this and let the powder dissolve in her mouth if she had to, but she doesn't like that; the bitter taste makes her want to gag before she gets anything even half dissolved. Quite a feat for a shipgirl.

She finds a water bottle with lukewarm water, sets the Alka-Seltzer and Berocca box next to it and then takes her pills while gulping down water before following up with a bite of coconut oil as she let the powder dissolve, swishing it around in her mouth for what felt like a minute before gulping it down, Feeling a slight relief in her weakness as the fats became part of her energy system.

Quite the morning cocktail. She pondered.

No wonder the researchers -Even the cranes and the starter trio were always looking at her like that.

A minute later, She found herself walking out of her room to her chair, feeling more human than she had since she woke up, her muscles almost no longer burning and throbbing after the fatigue flare up and the headache.

She sat down and looked down at the clipboard in front of her, sitting next to her computer and shaking her head to clear away any fogginess. patting her headband into place with a heavy pant, All of this was helping. but she still felt where she had been poked in, and still hated the stinging pain, but routine enough that the burn of having a sample extracted from her barely makes her hiss.

Then she started working on her checklist, going through it, and making sure she had everything she needed. She didn't want to waste time trying to explain things to the higher-ups, and that's why she had a checklist.

And tries hard to not think about it she does, because the more she thinks about it. the more she wonders how much she can keep this up just trying to find enough willpower to drag herself through another day, when everyday is filled with arrows of agony and nausea from the excessive potential that was never meant to be held even in this body.

But she knows what's coming in the far future, and that's why she's trying so hard to get through the day, one day at a time, as much as she can.

Dozens of anti-aging supplements, Sheep's milk. Offals and exotic things. All unproven in a human versus shipgirl model- just to keep her body chugging along while the NAC is meant to chain her body to her mind instead of being in a state of META-like delirium from being unable to think clearly in constant torment. Sprinting her to a even more earlier nightmare, Maybe more soon-it's early each night when the mania returns and she's forced to shift every few moments, searching for some kind of sleeping posture where she can find the right comfortable feeling to alleviate the train of anxiety and dread just for a few seconds, for god's fucking sake, And drugs or no drugs, her abilities were literally making her fall apart at the internal level, like some kind of autoimmune disease on fast forward.

She doesn't know if it's her own fault with her background, Or if she's just too special, or if there's something wrong with her, But she knows that she will never be able to escape the prison of her own body, And that she can only hope to find a way to accomplish before... Well, whatever it was, she didn't remember. All she knew was that she didn't want to end up being Richard META.

Her hands twitch more than shake, and then truly do shake as she saw a slight orange glow in the corner of her eyes, a telltale sign of her immense. now self-eating potential. Whether it's in fear, or in hatred - the mad wish to wrap these fingers around the commander's throat-

And more out of studied frustration than fear, presses her hand around her mouse, shattering the mice into a cacophony of plastic and electronics.

Dedicated to a friend of mine suffering from CFS and Parkinson's