049 Faithless Observer: Short chapters are a let down, but that's the time I got, folks! Be glad with what you get, you whippersnappers! (Although I doubt many of you are actually younger than me. :3)
Cloner4000: Heh, glad that worked out. I was going for the overbearing older brother attitude anyways. As for the wrench count increasing… well, yeah, what more can I say.
skycomv2: Funny, that first sentence took more than five words. :O Isara never really had many disagreements with Welkin, aside from that one "none of your business" comment, but it's no huge stretch to see her making such deadpan snarks. As for the Gallians not realizing that Isara wasn't in mortal danger, that's because they thought she had a full day – which, upon finding a competent surgeon well within this time, leads them thinking "oh that wasn't too bad", although I suppose that is a bit cavalier for someone getting shot. Celes is going to drop the bomb on them with his own estimate… (gratuitously supplied by word of god).
And so, the conversation continues. Further character development and exposition occurs, as well as some shameless railroading to get everything back on track. Read on, if you enjoy something is isn't drivel!
/shamelessboasting
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As Alicia struggled with Welkin, Celes, mind still preoccupied with his trade, realized that it was about time to inquire about exactly why such a young girl was in the way of lethal gunfire.
"Isara, might I ask what you were doing, to put yourself in a sniper's sights? With all due respect," he coughed, "you hardly look like a front line soldier."
"I've wanted to know as well," Lieutenant Karst added.
The Darcsen girl, still smarting from the scuffle seconds before, glared at both of them. Without backup from her two compatriots, who were still struggling with each other, she sighed. "I really don't know. I was working on the Edelweiss –"
"Edelweiss?" Celes cocked his head inquisitively.
"The tank. What we came in, right, Welks?" She turned her head to her still flustered brother, who by now was less angry than awkward at having Alicia's hands on him.
He shook off the attention – Alicia returned to her seat, but cut in as Welkin opened his mouth. "Yes. It's her father's masterpiece," she said, just a little proudly. "It's a prototype model –"
"There's no other vehicle like it in the world!" Isara cut her off in turn, launching herself into what promised to be a long soliloquy about the marvels of engineering. "My father designed in for the late general, Welkin's father. I've heavily modified it since we enlisted and I –"
Celes swiped his arm horizontally to halt the tumble of words. "You won't get to modify it at all if you don't answer my questions."
Alicia grimaced. "Is that a threat?" She pawed at her knife hilt, but let her hand drop away when the Lieutenant shook his head. Celes sighed. No one respected doctors these days.
"If you weren't so ignorant, maybe you Gallians would have realized just how close Isara was to death when you brought her here," he snapped.
Welkin, now slightly mollified, brought up his own opinion. "Well, our medic said she had a day –"
"Your medic is an imbecile."
"Not true! She's kept us patched up throughout this war –"
"That's all she's done. And yes, she is competent in first aid." He felt himself sinking into his own vein of expertise, and pressed on. "But when it comes to matters of internal surgery, she probably hasn't even taken the elementary courses."
Isara opened her mouth to protest, but couldn't find an argument for that. They really didn't know if she was qualified for that, after all.
"You of all people should be angry, Isara."
She narrowed her eyebrows at him. "Oh? And why should I betray my friends so, to have no faith in their skills? We're all people, aren't we?"
Celes's ire rose as he squared off against Isara again. Some petty part of him felt that he would have been much better off letting her die on the operating table – but he quashed that idea immediately. That was heresy to the highest degree for his art. "There's a difference between faith and willful ignorance, child!"
"Oh? Just how old are you?" She stood up straighter, facing off as well. "Your lieutenant said you were 'volunteered' out of your school, so obviously, you can't be any more than five years older than me."
He paused, stymied by the new direction of conversation. "Medical education can last for more than a dozen years," he offered.
"Answer the question."
The former medical student flushed, feeling the amused eyes of the older three soldiers. "Seventeen."
Isara's eyes widened. "I… that's only one more than me."
Sixteen, then, but more importantly, did he really look so old? "I look much older than that, don't I?" When no one spoke, he nodded, pulling back a stray lock of silver-streaked hair, taking the opportunity to ham up the moment. "That's what happens to a man who has his comrades die in front of him, over and over again, and there's nothing he can do about it." He moved a finger to touch the gauze band over his left eye, as if reminiscing – inwardly, he was childishly awaiting some words of praise or awe.
Isara didn't give it to him. "How do you work with only one eye, anyway? What happens to your depth perception?"
"How did you know about that?" he asked, impressed.
"Oh, well, when I'm working on the Edelweiss, and I'm in a tight spot that I can only get one eye into, I have so much trouble determining just how far away some component is," she admitted, as if any sign of weakness in her craft was extremely embarrassing.
Celes decided to refrain from revealing the full truth – that the perfectly healthy eye could still see through the gauze, which obviously let him keep his depth. "You get used to it," he offered.
"How long?" Welkin asked.
Again, he chose not to tell the real story, that he'd had it since he was a toddler, but couldn't think of a particularly solid alibi. Instead, he went for the evasive answer. "Grenade," he lied in a low voice.
Isara stared at his face for a while, and it was then that Celes wanted to bang his head against a wall. A blast that took out his eye probably would have left other scars, scars which were nonexistent on his young face.
Fortunately, Lieutenant Karst stepped in. "You're off topic again." It was a chiding statement, almost as if he was speaking to children – but it had the result of distracting them from that contradictory evidence on Celes's face.
They all jumped a bit, and Celes reverted back to the field of medicine. "In any case, I follow all of the most prestigious medical journals published by the Vaclav – well, I should really say I followed. Past tense, I'm not there any more." He smiled sheepishly – inwardly, he cursed the headmaster again. "Unlike my peers, though, I look elsewhere for the latest ideas in medicine. Did you know that if a person has stopped breathing and their heart has stopped beating, if their tissues or brain aren't overly damaged, you can start those rhythms again simply by manually compressing the chest and giving your own breath? Thump the chest, press your mouth to their own, and breathe. Kind of like a kiss of life." Celes winced to himself – he hadn't meant to bring that up…
Alicia's eyes widened at the thought of a person coming back to life with a mere kiss – not at all what the procedure actually entailed, but she hardly knew better. "Really? Where'd you hear that?"
The former medical student glanced at Isara – a quick moment loaded with significance – and then down to his clasped hands. "A source publicly thought of as disreputable, but one that I've followed diligently. It's quite good…"
Isara didn't miss the look. "Who?"
Celes burrowed his head into his shoulders, refusing to meet her gaze. "A Darcsen," he offered, embarrassed. He knew that there was no real reason – he was half, anyways – but he still thought of himself as an Imperial. He couldn't seriously hold any negative feelings for the persecuted group without being hypocritical, but it was still a less-than-pleasant moment for him.
Isara smiled victoriously, like a cat in cream. In a fit of impish anger, Celes wished for nothing more than for her to drop – dead.
He got half his wish when she her exultant expression collapsed, and she suddenly swooned into the couch's back. Her friends rose up to support her, but Celes waved them off. "Let her rest. She was almost inches away from death…" Irritably, he realized he still hadn't gotten to make his point. "She also bled a lot before she got here. I actually had to give her a transfusion."
"From who?" Welkin asked, hands twitching as if they still wanted to take Isara's shoulders. "I didn't think you had a supply available, and you were the only person down there…" Realization dawned on his face, and suddenly he appeared a lot more respectful of the young man in front of him. Meanwhile, Isara stirred, clasping at her borrowed jacket and wrapping it tighter around her, murmuring something about cold.
"Yes, that's right, I had to provide it. Don't mind the complications, I've type O. Universal donor, she'll be okay – but as you can see, the loss is hitting her now. She'll feel weak, dizzy, and cold until her body catches up with the losses," he snapped. Why was he so riled up about that fact? Was it the knowledge that he had had to help such an ungrateful patient?
Grey started to creep into his vision. Celes suddenly realized what was wrong, and committed his last seconds of consciousness to a tirade. "I don't know how much I gave to her – idiot me – but it feels like it was a bit much for me." He planted an arm into the couch's seat, struggling against the rising mists. "Get some blankets, lay us down… keep us warm. We can't retain much body heat… so if you can get some heating somehow, that'd be wonderful." A shiver ran up his own body – he hadn't noticed before, coming out of unconsciousness, but he did feel abnormally cold. Humiliating for him to be preaching about medicine in such a state.
"But keep me in the same room as her," he forced out. That girl was a hellcat – he had two lumps on his head already. "If there are any complications, I'll need to respond instantly. Oh, and if she wakes up before me, remind her to not move her left arm much… especially not above the shoulder. The pain should be enough of a deterrent, but if she forces it, the muscle could tear and I'd have to work a case of… internal bleeding. Unpleasant."
Speech started to leave him. He could see the senior officers scrambling to meet his demands, but it all seemed so far away…
"Take her wrenshez awah… if sche attakshes me with thoshe a third time, I'm going to leave her to rot…" The threat landed flatly as he began lisping through speech. Imitating Isara's position of huddled cold, he gave up full awareness, and let himself fall into a pair of waiting arms.
He smelled bread – perhaps it was Alicia, with her ridiculous bakery scarf – and heard a motherly voice – was she really so kind? A more patriarchal tone filtered in, probably Welkin, farther away. Several clipped commands were made by a third voice, definitely the Lieutenant. There was activity around him, some slipping sensations, warm cloth against his skin, but then a cold lump settled next to him. Celes uncomfortably pulled away from it as best he could, but he was restrained by some sort of large barrier, and he gave up, settling into full unconsciousness.
And in time, the lump warmed. Completely lost in dreams, he snuggled next to it – it mirrored the movement.
It was a fortunate thing he was fast asleep, else he might have had a completely different idea.
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You don't get a cookie for guessing what just happened. Hilarity will most certainly ensue tomorrow.
Dialogue needed for exposition is a pain to write, and the officers of each side have a lot to say to each other that isn't interesting. I'm going to let logistics be handled outside of the writing, and start focusing perspectives on either Isara or Celes instead of other characters – except for the occasional outside character where relevant for some dramatic irony. Expect the cast you know and love to start disappearing from my writing. This is the beginning of a new arc! They must go, else I break canon!
I considered having this blurb from Isara's point of view, but ultimately I decided that Celes could use a bit more exposition before I start wading around in Isara's – also, because whatever "supplementary" exposition I do with Isara's past might be a bit awkward with remaining canon cast lurking around. It might break strands I weren't aware existed. The next blurb will be Isara, I promise.
This is also what I call "unconciousness ex machina". It works, sometimes.
I'm really sorry that I can't write longer blurbs/chapters, but time is time, and if I had more of it, I'd work longer. But I don't, so… yeah.
But hey, that I can make time in my schedule at all is because I'm motivated by feedback, glorious reviews! Leave your comments, suggestions, insults, encouragement, anything in the window that the below button pops up!
Oh, and to sweeten the deal, there will be a vote. Who wakes up first, Celes or Isara? You decide. Now go forth and RESPOND!
