M-Angel: Okay, so Happy Mother's Day Weekend everybody! Hope you remembered to get something for your Mothers. XD So, I had to send this to Knight, otherwise I'd lose my train of thought.
Knight: I know how that is. Editing is fun, but man, that fight scene was awesome! I did alright, huh?
M-Angel: Yeah! I hope everybody enjoys this!
Knight: Ditto, and thanks for all those awesome reviews!
Chapter 4: Dead?
My feet took off before my mind could process why. An explosion meant people would be hurt, which meant I'd be needed. I was dimly aware that Jacob was behind me and as we entered the room, all I heard was screams coming from Commander Shepard as she rushed over to a still figure. Talking a deep, calming breath, I went to work. Jacob pulled the Commander off of the body while I took in the damage. He was a Turian, male, about thirty years of age, and looked like he'd played chicken with a rocket. There was blue blood everywhere. I carefully pulled him down off of the crate he was on, and put him on his back. I took gauze and dressings out of my pack and began to assess the damage done. Right mandable heavily damaged, will need reconstructive surgery to fix.Suddenly he groaned in pain, more blood poured out from the wound. I injected him with a heavy turian-friendly painkiller, along with a sedative. We have to get him out of here, to a doctor. I continued to patch his face up the best I could. I had only packed the necessary things in my pack for this trip. I wasn't expecting to do a full-on surgery!
When he was stable enough to move, I nodded to the Commander. She had been calling for help on communicator. Then I heard another explosion nearby. Mi, I thought as the building he and his men were in went up in flames.
Don't ask me how it happened, because I don't know, but one minute I was helping them get the turian on the stretcher and in the shuttle, and the next minute I was on their ship.
We headed down to med-bay on the SR-2 Normandy. The doctor met me at the doors and shooed everybody out, except for myself. We stabilized him with IVs for fluids and painkillers. For the next two hours we took out dead tissue around the affected area and realigned the serviceable bones to their original places. We stapled and nano-glued the fractured bones together, and painstakingly took out bones that were too shattered. Those we replaced with cybernetic parts from the fabricator unit. A mandible had to be completely remade, with four of his teeth removed. Good thing Turians regrow their teeth continuously throughout their lives, I thought. The root structures were more complicated than the bones, and we had enough to do already. Skin was sliced and peeled back so that we could operate on most of his face, stitching muscles, ligaments, and tendons in the original form.
So by the time the surgery was complete we had already left Omega, which left me as a new member aboard the Normandy. I'll have to report in to Ylara when I can, I thought as I walked down the catwalk to the CIC where Commander Shepard was with some of her crewmembers. I still couldn't believe she was working for Cerberus. How could she? They're terrorists! Back home she'd be counted as a traitor. She'd be locked up in Gitmo or something, I thought as the doors to the CIC opened.
When I entered it, I saw that the galactic map took up half of the room. A redheaded woman looked up from her terminal and smiled as she ap[roached me.
"You must be the medic we picked up," She said. "I'm Kelly Chambers, if you need somebody to talk to I'm that person."
"Serena Lavargus," I said. "So you're some sort of therapist?" Head doctors. I hate them.
"Kinda," She said. "I make sure the crew is mentally stable,"
"Yeah, that's probably pretty useful. How stable can a person be if they choose to kill things?" I wondered aloud.
"Surprisingly, pretty stable," She said and then frowned. "Except for Jack. You might wanna stay clear of her. She's the one with all the tattoos on her body."
I blinked. "Thanks," I said carefully. "Is there a terminal I can use? I have to contact the Hadasah and report to Spectre Ylara,"
"That has already been taken care of, Miss Lavargus," Came a soft voice as a blue eye-ball appeared in front of me.
"Nice VI," I said, "What's its name?"
"I am not a VI. I am an AI, created by Cerberus for the Normandy," It said. "I am called EDI."
I blinked again. Okay, I thought AI's were illegal?
"Your response isn't what I expected, Miss Lavargus," EDI said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Most organics exhibit fear when they hear that I am an AI," She said. "You were calm, but confused. May I ask why?"
I shrugged. "Don't have any reason to hate AIs just yet," I said. "Do you plan to kill me in my sleep? Take over the galaxy? Kill all organic life-forms?"
"Not just yet," She said in humorous tone that almost mirrored mine.
"Then I have no problem with you." I said with a smile.
"You are a curious person, Miss Lavarus," She said, and then vanished.
"Interesting perspective you have," Said a voice behind me. I turned to find Commander Shepard standing there with her arms crossed. Next to her was Jacob and a woman with a tight-fitting Cerberus uniform that exposed a lot of curves. Doesn't leave much to the imagination. For some reason, I disliked her immediately.
"You've met Jacob Taylor, my weapons officer. And this is Miranda Lawson, my Executive Officer," She said.
"Charmed," Miranda said smoothly, her Australian accent very audible. "Pleasantries aside, when I ran your name through our database it showed nothing until the last year. Even the unimaginative spies have some falsified information-"
"A spy?" I asked incredulously. "That's the best you've got? And here I thought Cerberus was imaginative," I said, putting my hands on my hips.
"If I was in your shoes, I'd figure that a clandestine organization well-versed in espionage and backstabbing would know one of their own, but I was obviously mistaken-"
By now Miranda was seething, which was causing Shepard to place a hand over her mouth to stop from laughing.
"That's enough!" She yelled. "If we can't find anything on you, then you're an unknown quantity. A vulnerability. Cerberus handles such problems very efficiently, so I'd watch my back if I were you,"
"Lawson...," Shepard said, "She's staying, at least for a while. Get used to it."
Miranda stomped out of the CIC like a spoiled brat that didn't get its way.
"Some looser clothes would probably fix that permanent wedgie you've got back there!" I shouted at her back victoriously. At that, Shepard burst out laughing.
"Damn," I looked to the side to see a man wearing a ball cap and leaning against a table with his arms around his chest.
"And here I thought only Jack could get that kind of reaction from Miranda. And by the way, I like that excessively curvy look she has going, wedgie and all. So do most of the guys around here,"
"Hey, Joker," Shepard said. "Shift over?"
He nodded. "A pilot's work is never done. But yeah, Commander," He said. "Thought I'd see what all the racket was all about," He looked at me and gave me a sly smile.
"Can't say I'm disappointed."
"I have a gun." I said.
"Ouch." He said mockingly. "And I've got Vrolic's Syndrome."
"Oh really," I said. "So in other words, if slapped you I'd break your jaw," I gave him a smile that said I was joking. "Nice to know you're such a softie."
"Yes ma'am, but blown kisses are more than fine," He said, his smile getting bigger. "I like this one, Commander. Can we keep her?" I scoffed at him. Shepard looked like she was trying her best not to laugh at us and shook her head and left.
Come morning I went to check out my patient. He was awake and quite upset that Dr. Chakwas wouldn't let him leave until his "attending physician" was there to give the okay. He looked over at me as I wrote down on the data-pad the statistics on the various machines he was hooked into. I thought he was fine, but the doc said she wanted him to rest one more day. The Turian's retaliation to that statement said he'd 'take it easy.'
I shook my head at him and chuckled. He was headstrong, that was for sure.
"Fine, go," I said. "But I'm telling the Commander no ground missions for two more days,"
That caused him to grumbled something in Turian and he walked out.
"You were too soft on him," Said a British voice from behind me."With men like that, species doesn't matter. He'll cut the wait time in half,"
"I think he's has enough of the med-bay," I said. "And I think he's learned that he can't bite a rocket to stop it,"
That caused her to laugh. "Garrus has always been strong-willed," She said. "Always will be… When I first met him, I actually thought that he and our Commander would have problems. They're both leaders, both do what needs to be, and they both will go to any length to get it done. I expecting their strong personalities to clash. I was pleasanty mistaken," She chuckled.
"Now, I think it's only a matter of time before the two of them realize how much they care for each other,"
"Wanna make a bet?" I asked.
"I'm listening," She said with a smile.
"I bet five hundred credits that the Commander will make the first move." I said with a smile.
"Move? What the fuck are you talking about, blondie?" We both turned to see a woman covered in tattoos, and a man with a scar across his face. They were standing at the entrance of the med-bay.
"I'm making a friendly bet with Doctor Chakwas that Shepard will make the first move when it comes to a relationship between her and Garrus."
"Shepard's as straightforward as they come. My five's on her," The man chuckled like gravel.
"Of course you will, Zaeed," Chakwas said. "And yes, I'll take that bet. Five hundred credits says Garrus will make a move before this is all over with."
"Fuck," Jack cussed good-naturedly. "I'll take that bet, Doc,"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Eh, okay," I said with a smile.
As the day wore on I was called to the training room by Jacob, who had a smile on his face. Next to him was a Drell. His name was Thane and he was an assassin. Scary as that sounded, it turned out that Miss Chambers had a thing for him, which made it worse. The image of redheaded lizards running around just wouldn't leave my mind.
"You've got some skill," Jacob said. "But it's not as honed as it could be. It's been decided that you're going to receive training from some of us here," He said. "If you want to help against the Collectors, you'll be better off with more advanced training,"
Aw, crap, I thought. I knew being a field medic on a ship would come and bite me in the arse one day. I grimaced. Arse? When did I start saying that? Dang it Chakwas!
Thane took a step forward. "I'll be teaching you stealth techniques," He said. "These techniques come straight from the Tala Han, the ancient combined military teachings of my people and the Hanar,"
"Er… thanks. But I'm just a medic," I shrugged. He smiled politely.
"These skills serve all branches and specializations well; I'll only have time to teach you the basics. But a combat medic with the ability to go unseen is a medic that can treat the wounded unnoticed."
Jacob nodded. "I'll be teaching you some close-quarters techniques that'll help if and when you get into trouble," He paused and sighed. "Garrus was supposed to be here...,"
"And I am," He said as he walked in. He looked at me. "Jacob told me you could use some help with targeting exercises. Being able to shoot in a fixed position is useful, but a real firefight requires the ability to shoot accurately at a dead run. That's what I'll be teaching you,"
Jacob laughed. "Shooting in a fixed position was enough to give me some new scars,"
Garrus's mandibles parted a bit and looked at me. I shrugged.
"Blame my teacher," I said. "I only went to an eighteen-week medic school that was for C-Sec,"
I heard Garrus groan and both Thane and Jacob chuckle.
"I was operated on by a C-Sec Medic-" Garrus started, but I didn't catch the rest. He suddenly switched to Turian. I shook my head. This should be fun.
M-Angel: I should probably mention this to everybody, that I may or may not go MIA again for a little while. My phone may get turned off for a few weeks...*cough*...month or so...
Knight: :0 What the crap, Angel? I wanna know what happens to Serena! And the Garrus/Femshep thing!
M-Angel: Any way I don't want anybody to panic, I will be back. So until then I'm going to be punching out as many chapters as I can.
Knight: I don't know where this plot is going; I get the chapters a day at most earlier than you guys. This sucks!
M-Angel: Sorry! So leave reviews, I'm starving for them!
Knight: *Mumbling conspiratorially as he walks away*