[MillietheWarrior]

Recoil glanced down at Alana. It was getting a little difficult balancing her and the rifle at the same time. On one hand, he needed to remain alert and vigilant; he had to keep his eye out for any signs of those droids. On the other hand, he also wanted to reassure her it was safe, and he couldn’t very well do that while he held a blaster against his opposite hip. Mentally, Recoil sighed. This was why he never liked getting caught up in civilian matters; they were too delicate, too messy if you got something wrong, and you had to appease everyone all of the time. It was difficult dealing with the public. Recoil was happy to leave those public relation bits to the professionals, people who were nothing like him and his soldiering brethren. Let the politicians and the generals deal with the limelight and the civvies; Recoil just wanted to blow stuff up and shoot anything they called an ‘enemy.’ It was a simpler existence that way.

He stared down at Alana, bright green eyes somewhat troubled and uncomfortable. How did he explain all this to a kid who probably wasn’t even five yet? “Er, sometimes,” he said, trying to reason with her. “But only if they’re the bad guys, like the droids. And sometimes there are other bad guys who don’t look like the droids, and they want to hurt my brothers and I. So we have to make sure we protect ourselves against them, and hurt them before they hurt us. But we don’t hurt good people, like you and your mother.” He nodded, and managed to knock his forehead lightly against hers. “Understand, Alana?”


Trinket furrowed his brow; her ribs. He pressed his hand against her shoulder, his eyes locking onto hers for a brief moment. “Stay still. Keep calm. Don’t freak out,” he said, as if talking to himself. “I can get it out. I’ll find it.” Yet, he wasn’t even quite sure where it was. He removed his hand from her shoulder, and then pressed it against the exposed skin of her ribs, gently feeling for any abnormalities. His other hand kept quite still, holding the gauze against the open wound he’d created himself. Trinket slowed his breathing, all senses attuned to the delicate task of finding whatever it was they’d stuck inside of her ribs. His fingers pressed on a spot near the open wound, and he felt something slide beneath the skin. That must’ve been it; no bone would have done that, unless drastically broken, and if Kasari could move, then that mean there weren’t many broken bones in that vicinity.

“Found it,” he breathed, sighing in relief. It wouldn‘t be too difficult to get out. He expected that whoever had put it there hadn’t been anticipating the woman knowing about it, or that anyone would try to remove it immediately; they’d obviously thought it was going to be there for a while. Trinket glanced up at Kasari’s face for a brief moment, before he sliced the scalpel along the skin, opening the wound a bit more so he could get his fingers close to her ribs. For anyone else, this probably would’ve been traumatizing. For Trinket, it was just another day on the job. “You might not want to look, ma’am,” he said in that same, ever-quiet voice he rarely used.

Lifting the skin with one hand, he packed the gauze into the wound, before inserting two fingers carefully into the place where the chip was located. His gloves were slick with blood, and for a moment, he almost thought he’d lost the chip. But after a few desperate minutes of grasping blindly, he managed to grab the chip and pull it from her body. It resisted, as if it had been sewn in, but Trinket yanked on it lightly, and it soon slid out with ease. Breathing a sigh of relief, he placed the chip on his raised knee, before pulling a needle and some strong medical thread from his pouch with his clean hand. He threaded it carefully, and slowly began sewing up the wound, removing the blood staunching gauze as he went.

[8/16, 8/18]

[Kallile]

Alana watched Recoil's face for the most part, her worried navy eyese glancing form time to time back down to the rifle opposite her. She'd never seen a real gun before--let alone been this close to one; it was a little unsettling. She wriggled in Recoil's grasp, one little hand reaching behind her and gently stroking the empty air. "I guess..."

"But...what if the bad guys look like good ones? How do you know who the bad guys are?" She creased the space between her eyes; showing that she was trying her very best to understand what he meant. But...no one walked around saying they were good or bad--or wore a sign like those funny people in front of her favorite place to eat, or the people in the cities that her mother told her not to look at or talk to. So...how did Mr. Recoil and Mr. Trinket know who the bad guys were?

Kasari, meanwhile, was staring up at Trinket--trying her very best not to snap at him. Stay calm? Who was he to tell her to stay calm? She'd been ambushed, could have had her daughter kidnapped and taken Gods knew where...and now she was having surgery. Awake. That, in her mind, gave her every right to freak out if she deemed it so.

However, she could hear Alana talking a short distance away. If she lost her composure and did indeed freak out...what kind of trust would her daughter grow up to have in people who meant well? She nodded up at Trinket, closing her eyes as tightly as she could. "Just please make it quick..." She whispered.

She could feel the man moving under her skin. The thoughts of the pain of having the fresh wound reopened now paled in comparison to having someone fishing around underneath of her skin. Her body trembled against her will and tears that she didn't realize she'd been crying slid slowly down her cheeks. Yes, it hurt...but more traumatizing was the fact that she was having to now reason her very much conscious mind that this was for the best and that she was doing a great job of staying still.

A gasp of pain and surprise escaped her head as he yanked at the chip and she could see it being removed from the corner of her eyes. She clamped her eyes closed again and just focused on breathing. Yes--breath in and out. 'In and out. In and out. In and... Oh good gods there's a needle piercing my skin. Inandout. Inandout!"

Her eyes flew open and she looked up at Trinket pleadingly. "Your numbing stuff is wearing off..." She informed him hoarsely, very aware that her cheeks were wet with tears and she had to look terrified. He may be used to this; but Kasari was most certainly not.

[8,9]

[MillietheWarrior]

Recoil sighed; with all the questions Alana was posing him, he almost imagined that trinket had the easier job. He glanced down at her, somewhat confused as to why she was petting the air. It was obvious she was trying very hard to understand what he was saying, but her child-like mind had a hard time grasping the concepts of good guys and bad guys. Even Recoil himself wasn’t sure from time to time, so he knew where she was coming from. “See,” he began, bright green eyes looking down at her.

“It’s like this. The bad guys, to us, are the ones that try to hurt us and our friends and family. Those are the ones we have to stop. We know they’re bad because they do bad things to us. But sometimes the bad ones are the good ones; sometimes someone does something bad that hurts the ones they care about, and they do it on purpose. When they do it on purpose, that’s when we have to stop them. But sometimes someone hurts their loves ones accidentally; then it’s not their fault.” He paused, face scrunching up.

“I know it doesn’t make much sense, but it’s easy for us to figure out who the bad guys are and stop them from doing bad things. You’ll understand a whole lot better when your older.” He nodded slowly. “For now, you and I are keeping watch to make sure none of the bad guys come back. Can you help me do that?”



Trinket blinked; the numbing agent wasn’t supposed to wear off that quickly., Either he’d been given an expired vial, or Kasari was in a lot more pain than he imagined. His eyes flickered up to her face for a moment, and his heart clenched painfully when he realized she was crying. It couldn’t have been from the pain, but Trinket imagined the psychological toll it was taking on the woman was nearly impossible for someone who hadn’t been trained for this kind of thing to bear. She wasn’t used to any of this; she didn’t know what was going on.

It wasn’t as if she was one of his brothers, hurt on the battlefield, lying quietly until he patched them up. They were soldiers and they were acclimatized to wounds and field dressings like this; Kasari was not. Trinket turned deftly and pulled out another syringe with his free hand; without warning, he jabbed it into the skin just below the wound, injecting more of the numbing agent to keep her pain at bay. “Better?” he asked quietly as he set the syringe in a small pouch in his belt.

His hands began their stitching again, and before long, he pulled out a pair of scissors, tied a knot in the string, and cut it. He placed his medical equipment back in his med pack, and stared down at Kasari. “Ma’am,” he said softly, and realized he didn’t know her name. “I’m going to have to move you now. We’ll take you back to the base and get you patched up properly, but I can’t carry you in my arms all the way there. Can you hang onto my neck? I can carry you on my back.”

[9/17, 9/19]

[Kallile]

Alana's hand fisted loosely and relaxed in the air--almost as if she were digging her little fingers into something plush. She scrunched up her face much like Recoil, staring up at him in hard concentration. It all sounded so confusing...how was she ever going to know who was a bad guy or a good guy?

Well, she reasoned, these were good guys; they were helping she and her mother. So...good guys did things to help. She supposed as long as she knew that, everything else would be just like Recoil said--she'd understand when she was older. There were a lot of things in life, she was learning, that she'd understand when she was older. Adults seemed to like that reason.

A small smile rose on her face and she nodded her head lightly. "Uh huh, I can help with that. Mommy always says I'm a good helper..." Her eyes drifted towards the direction that Trinket and her mother were and she frowned. "Is Mr. Trinket going to make her all better again?" She asked softly, hopeful navy eyes looking up to Recoil.


Kasari  closed her eyes as another wave of silent tears rolled down the sides of her face. She winced at the needle, face scrunching up slightly, and she took a shaking breathe. Truth be told no, nothing was really 'better' right now. Her body ached, she was growing more fatigued by the minute from the struggle she had put up and the pain she was trying to stave off, and she had a stranger rooting around under her skin. Nothing about any of that made anything about today better. She only nodded slightly in any semblance of a response.

"Kasari," she interrupted him suddenly, opening her eyes slightly to look straight up at the sky. "I'd really rather you call me Kasair than 'Ma'am'."

It wasn't to be rude, but this whole experience was bizarre. She needed something solid--something that felt familiar. She'd rather hear even a stranger say her actual name; having forgotten that she hadn't given it to him in the first place. Her mind was, to put things bluntly, preoccupied.  She angled her head to look at him and a soft sigh escaped her lips.

"I can always try."

[9, 10]

[MillietheWarrior]

Recoil frowned. “I think he will, kid,” he said, mustering up the most reassuring smile he could. “You and I are going to walk ahead of them, and we’re going to watch out for the bad people. But I have to put my helmet back on, ad’ika, because it helps me see the bad guys before they see us.” He unclipped his helmet and put it back on his head, then knocked lightly against the visor. “If you see anything, you just give the helmet a knock, all right?” He turned and slowly made his way back to Trinket, Alana clutched tightly against his hip. His green eyes met Trinket’s light grey ones as they exchanged a look. Recoil nodded slowly, as if some silent message had passed between them, and leveled his rifle against his hip as he started off at a slow, ambling pace ahead of his brother.

Trinket nodded slowly. “Kasari then,” he said gently as he maneuvered her into a sitting position. “Now, Kasari…I know it’s going to be hard, and I know your tired, but you need to hang on. If you feel like you just can’t, then tell me, and I’ll figure something out.” He smiled nervously, wishing he was better at this. If he was Recoil, he’d have known exactly what to say. Heck, even Solus and Kicks would’ve been better at this than he was. Trinket shook slightly as he kneeled down in front of her, gently pulling her hands over his shoulders and settling her legs around his waist. “Just wrap your arms around my neck,” he instructed quietly, before he lifted her off the ground and into a standing position. He adjusted her gently, trying to be as careful as he could. “You all right?” he asked as he slowly turned to follow Recoil. “If anything hurts, just tell me. We’ll be back at the base in a few minutes.” More than a few, but Kasari didn’t need to know that.

[10/18, 10/20]