Fill: 500cc (1/3)
anonymous
February 18 2016, 19:10:53 UTC
Usually, desk duty at the refugee docks is fairly quiet. Harrowing, sure--there's nothing for fostering a true, gizzard-deep understanding of the dire straits the galaxy is in quite like staring its destitute collateral damage in the eye day after day, trying to offer whatever small reassurance a body in a familiar uniform can provide in the face of incomprehensible cosmic evil.
Today, C-Sec Sergeant Ictor Aureolus almost misses the usual banal day-to-day horror.
“Chelsea,” he says, addressing the young human refugee he's lately taken under his wing in a figurative way, and more immediately under his arm in a literal way, “Please, you're bleeding from your head, I'm worried you’ll do yourself permanent damage like this--”
“It’s just a light scrape,” she says, “head wounds always look gross, now let me go!”
“She’s right, actually,” says the asari medic he'd paged over the moment he first waded into this situation. Gailani, says her name tag. “Human scalps bleed like crazy when they're nicked, but it usually looks uglier than it really is.”
“She can't possibly be ok,” says Ictor. “If a turian was bleeding like that--”
“Turians have layered chitinous playing over most of your heads,” Gailani says. “You'd have to literally crack your skull open to be bleeding like that.” Indeed, Chelsea’s yellow hair is streaked with a jarring sticky red by now. “Humans are softer, but able to absorb a lot more damage. You sometimes don't even start seeing symptoms of hypovolemia until they've lost over 15% of total blood volume. For a female this size, that's about, eh, 500cc, maybe? Considerably more than this, anyway.”
Ictor clicks his mandibles in horror. “Spirits. That's--”
“Still, never pays to be careless, especially with head wounds,” continues Gailani blithely. “There's all sorts of things that can go wrong where you can't see. So kindly hold still, kiddo, so I can look you over?”
“But I--”
“Yes, it’s still a head wound,” Ictor says, recovering swiftly. “You're injured and likely not in full possession of your faculties, especially considering I just saw you bum-rush a krogan!”
Chelsea huffs, but subsides, and he releases her to the tender mercies of the medic, who starts a medical scan on her omnitool.
The krogan in question, an unusually large specimen in silvery-white armor, is sitting compliantly on a bench across from them.
“Actually, she was aiming for the other human,” says the krogan. The other human--a large male, pale skin with brown and white hair, probably of middle age judging by the two-toned hair and subtly textured skin--is laid out groaning on the floor, having been checked over by the medic already. “I just got in the way.”
“And why did you do that?” asks Ictor. At the base of his skull, he feels a dull headache threatening to take hold.
The krogan shrugs.
“Wasn't on purpose. Figured he did something to deserve it, the way she was shrieking at him.”
Ictor looks at Chelsea, who has the grace to look embarrassed.
500cc (2/3)
anonymous
February 18 2016, 19:13:23 UTC
“He said… some things. About my mom,” she says, not meeting his eyes. “He was from the same colony as me. He moved away when I was little, I think he lives on the Citadel now. He saw me and he said, hey, aren't you Melissa Sweeney’s kid, and I said, yeah, but it's Melissa Hardt now, and then he… called her some names, and said a bunch of gross things.”
The other human puts in, “Fucking bitch whore--”
“Shut up,” says Ictor. He feels a wash of disgust at the man. “You, krogan. How did you get involved?”
“Eh, I was passing by, on my way to meet a friend,” says the krogan. “The male and the girl are talking, and it looks unfriendly and they don't smell like they're related or anything, so I thought I'd stick around and see if I could figure out what was up. Then he grabs her around the shoulders and she just--wham! right in the face. Heh heh. It was impressive, she's got fire for such a tiny thing.”
Chelsea gives the krogan a shy grin at that. Spirits grant me forbearance, thinks Ictor.
“Probably where the head wound came from,” the krogan adds to Gailani, who is carefully applying medi-gel to Chelsea’s scalp, having cleaned the worst of the blood from her hair. “Human faces are full of little crunchy bits.”
“Of course,” says Gailani, drily.
“Anyway, so, that sends the guy staggering, but then he recovers and gets even madder and they shove at each other a bit and he pushes her into me.”
“Didn't you say he had a broken nose?” Ictor asks the medic.
“Yep. Pretty nasty,” she says.
“Was that from after...?”
“Can't think of when else it would have been,” says the krogan. “She got him good with that headbutt. Heh heh heh.”
He looks down at the human male, who is making what is, from context, obviously a rude gesture with his many-fingered hand.
“I suppose I shouldn't bother to ask why you didn't think to alert C-Sec by that point,” Ictor says to the krogan.
“Nah, she was doing pretty well for herself, actually.”
“That’s not what I--” Ictor sighs. “Oh, never mind. So, he pushed her into you.”
“Right. So she starts clawing blindly at me and they're both still yelling at each other and I figure, ok, this is getting kind of stupid, so I put him down gently--”
“This is gently?” snaps the human man.
“If it wasn't, you wouldn't be conscious to know it,” says the krogan. “But instead you get to lie there and whine, because I didn't do any major damage.”
“Astonishingly, you didn't,” says Gailani. “The worst of it was the broken nose, which we’ve just established he most likely already had before you touched him. Other than that, he’ll be sore for weeks, but he’ll be fine.”
Spirits, thinks Ictor, if he were turian he'd probably be down for the count. Apparently humans are squishy because they don't need natural defenses.
“Yeah, see?” says the krogan. “Anyway, that's about when you showed up,” he adds to Ictor.
Ictor sighs.
“Alright, well,” he says, “I'm going to have to take you down to the precinct to get statements, and--”
“What, this didn't count?” says the krogan.
Gailani says, “Hang on. Officer, that's a juvenile.”
500cc (3/3)
anonymous
February 18 2016, 19:15:17 UTC
“I know she's a juvenile,” says Ictor.
Gailani rolls her eyes. “I didn't mean her. The krogan, too.”
Ictor looks at the krogan, half wondering if he might have gotten smaller suddenly while he wasn't looking, and then back at Gailani, to check if she's just giving him a hard time.
She must see the disbelief on his face because she sighs and says, “The fragmented head plate, the pale coloration, the low hump. He's post-pubescent but still sub-adult, at least three molts out from full adulthood. Honestly, doesn't C-Sec do interspecies sensitivity training?”
And there's the headache.
Chelsea is giving the krogan an entirely alarming speculative look too, sweet Spirits have mercy.
“Alright, krogan-- kid-- what's your name?”
“Urdnot Grunt,” says the krogan kid.
“Urdnot Grunt. Right. Am I going to have to file the unaccompanied-minor-in-incident forms twice, or do you have a, uh, responsible adult somewhere...” the krogan is giving him a clearly bewildered look. “...that is to say, a parent or any other adult who's legally responsible for your wellbeing?”
Urdnot Grunt scratches at his chin, still looking confused.
“Urdnot Wrex is my clan leader,” he offers.
“Really don't think we can get ahold of the king of all krogan from here,” says Gailani.
“Do you have someone on the Citadel?” asks Ictor.
“Shepard’s around somewhere,” says Grunt. “My battlemaster. I served on her ship. She's talked to C-Sec for me before.”
“Your father is the king of the krogan, and your mother is Commander Shepard,” says Ictor flatly. He feels the headache really starting to set up camp in his skull.
“No, my mother was a tank,” says Grunt--in utter earnest, even though it's utter nonsense. “And Wrex isn't my dad, either. If you don't want to bother Shepard, I was going to meet Garrus over by the turian camp back there. He participated in my Rite of Passage. Is that legal enough?”
“Garrus,” says Ictor. His headache has started digging trenches and erecting fortifications. “By Garrus, you mean Praetor Vakarian?”
“Thingy Vakarian,” says Grunt. “Yeah, him.”
Ictor glances at Gailani, who shrugs and shakes her head.
“Alright,” he says, “I... suppose he’ll have to do, much as I hate to make demands on his time either.”
“Well, my job here is done,” says Gailani, patting Chelsea on the shoulder. The kid smiles radiantly up at her. Funny how she'd been doing her damnedest to resist treatment not five minutes ago. “I'll flag him down on my way back.”
“Thanks,” says Ictor.
“Fucking get me some painkillers,” says the other human.
Grunt says, “Ah, stop sniveling, you haven't even lost 500cc of blood.”
Ictor’s headache has by now probably planted a flag in his forehead and declared sole sovereignty... but, he thinks, at least the kids are alright.
Re: 500cc (3/3)
anonymous
February 18 2016, 22:20:26 UTC
Beautiful use of ambient dialogue characters! I was already delighted by Chelsea's spirit and Ictor's growing shock at 'squishy' humans' durability, and then Grunt started namedropping 'parents' and I cracked up laughing.
Later Garrus tries to give Grunt shit about his tiny new girlfriend but Grunt is just like FUCK YEAH I IMPRESSED A FEMALE, SUCK IT TURIAN and Garrus has to reevaluate his honorary non-conspecific adolescent not-otherwise-specified-relative teasing strategies.
RE: Re: 500cc (3/3)
anonymous
February 20 2016, 00:48:47 UTC
Gosh, your fill was good too! Put-upon turian cops who are too jaded for this exotic human nonsense for the win, we can always use more of that. +1 to the shipper anon as well, I'd totally ship them--or both of them with the human dude, even. Maybe after he comes down from his adrenaline high, haha.
Re: 500cc (3/3)
anonymous
March 5 2016, 02:15:17 UTC
OP here! I meant to comment on this ages ago but I couldnt do it on my phone for some reason? Anyway, this is amazing, like im so blessed two ppl filled my prompt w/ two amazing fills?? legit happy tears, i laughed really hard at the ending, A+ work!!
Today, C-Sec Sergeant Ictor Aureolus almost misses the usual banal day-to-day horror.
“Chelsea,” he says, addressing the young human refugee he's lately taken under his wing in a figurative way, and more immediately under his arm in a literal way, “Please, you're bleeding from your head, I'm worried you’ll do yourself permanent damage like this--”
“It’s just a light scrape,” she says, “head wounds always look gross, now let me go!”
“She’s right, actually,” says the asari medic he'd paged over the moment he first waded into this situation. Gailani, says her name tag. “Human scalps bleed like crazy when they're nicked, but it usually looks uglier than it really is.”
“She can't possibly be ok,” says Ictor. “If a turian was bleeding like that--”
“Turians have layered chitinous playing over most of your heads,” Gailani says. “You'd have to literally crack your skull open to be bleeding like that.” Indeed, Chelsea’s yellow hair is streaked with a jarring sticky red by now. “Humans are softer, but able to absorb a lot more damage. You sometimes don't even start seeing symptoms of hypovolemia until they've lost over 15% of total blood volume. For a female this size, that's about, eh, 500cc, maybe? Considerably more than this, anyway.”
Ictor clicks his mandibles in horror. “Spirits. That's--”
“Still, never pays to be careless, especially with head wounds,” continues Gailani blithely. “There's all sorts of things that can go wrong where you can't see. So kindly hold still, kiddo, so I can look you over?”
“But I--”
“Yes, it’s still a head wound,” Ictor says, recovering swiftly. “You're injured and likely not in full possession of your faculties, especially considering I just saw you bum-rush a krogan!”
Chelsea huffs, but subsides, and he releases her to the tender mercies of the medic, who starts a medical scan on her omnitool.
The krogan in question, an unusually large specimen in silvery-white armor, is sitting compliantly on a bench across from them.
“Actually, she was aiming for the other human,” says the krogan. The other human--a large male, pale skin with brown and white hair, probably of middle age judging by the two-toned hair and subtly textured skin--is laid out groaning on the floor, having been checked over by the medic already. “I just got in the way.”
“And why did you do that?” asks Ictor. At the base of his skull, he feels a dull headache threatening to take hold.
The krogan shrugs.
“Wasn't on purpose. Figured he did something to deserve it, the way she was shrieking at him.”
Ictor looks at Chelsea, who has the grace to look embarrassed.
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The other human puts in, “Fucking bitch whore--”
“Shut up,” says Ictor. He feels a wash of disgust at the man. “You, krogan. How did you get involved?”
“Eh, I was passing by, on my way to meet a friend,” says the krogan. “The male and the girl are talking, and it looks unfriendly and they don't smell like they're related or anything, so I thought I'd stick around and see if I could figure out what was up. Then he grabs her around the shoulders and she just--wham! right in the face. Heh heh. It was impressive, she's got fire for such a tiny thing.”
Chelsea gives the krogan a shy grin at that. Spirits grant me forbearance, thinks Ictor.
“Probably where the head wound came from,” the krogan adds to Gailani, who is carefully applying medi-gel to Chelsea’s scalp, having cleaned the worst of the blood from her hair. “Human faces are full of little crunchy bits.”
“Of course,” says Gailani, drily.
“Anyway, so, that sends the guy staggering, but then he recovers and gets even madder and they shove at each other a bit and he pushes her into me.”
“Didn't you say he had a broken nose?” Ictor asks the medic.
“Yep. Pretty nasty,” she says.
“Was that from after...?”
“Can't think of when else it would have been,” says the krogan. “She got him good with that headbutt. Heh heh heh.”
He looks down at the human male, who is making what is, from context, obviously a rude gesture with his many-fingered hand.
“I suppose I shouldn't bother to ask why you didn't think to alert C-Sec by that point,” Ictor says to the krogan.
“Nah, she was doing pretty well for herself, actually.”
“That’s not what I--” Ictor sighs. “Oh, never mind. So, he pushed her into you.”
“Right. So she starts clawing blindly at me and they're both still yelling at each other and I figure, ok, this is getting kind of stupid, so I put him down gently--”
“This is gently?” snaps the human man.
“If it wasn't, you wouldn't be conscious to know it,” says the krogan. “But instead you get to lie there and whine, because I didn't do any major damage.”
“Astonishingly, you didn't,” says Gailani. “The worst of it was the broken nose, which we’ve just established he most likely already had before you touched him. Other than that, he’ll be sore for weeks, but he’ll be fine.”
Spirits, thinks Ictor, if he were turian he'd probably be down for the count. Apparently humans are squishy because they don't need natural defenses.
“Yeah, see?” says the krogan. “Anyway, that's about when you showed up,” he adds to Ictor.
Ictor sighs.
“Alright, well,” he says, “I'm going to have to take you down to the precinct to get statements, and--”
“What, this didn't count?” says the krogan.
Gailani says, “Hang on. Officer, that's a juvenile.”
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Gailani rolls her eyes. “I didn't mean her. The krogan, too.”
Ictor looks at the krogan, half wondering if he might have gotten smaller suddenly while he wasn't looking, and then back at Gailani, to check if she's just giving him a hard time.
She must see the disbelief on his face because she sighs and says, “The fragmented head plate, the pale coloration, the low hump. He's post-pubescent but still sub-adult, at least three molts out from full adulthood. Honestly, doesn't C-Sec do interspecies sensitivity training?”
And there's the headache.
Chelsea is giving the krogan an entirely alarming speculative look too, sweet Spirits have mercy.
“Alright, krogan-- kid-- what's your name?”
“Urdnot Grunt,” says the krogan kid.
“Urdnot Grunt. Right. Am I going to have to file the unaccompanied-minor-in-incident forms twice, or do you have a, uh, responsible adult somewhere...” the krogan is giving him a clearly bewildered look. “...that is to say, a parent or any other adult who's legally responsible for your wellbeing?”
Urdnot Grunt scratches at his chin, still looking confused.
“Urdnot Wrex is my clan leader,” he offers.
“Really don't think we can get ahold of the king of all krogan from here,” says Gailani.
“Do you have someone on the Citadel?” asks Ictor.
“Shepard’s around somewhere,” says Grunt. “My battlemaster. I served on her ship. She's talked to C-Sec for me before.”
“Your father is the king of the krogan, and your mother is Commander Shepard,” says Ictor flatly. He feels the headache really starting to set up camp in his skull.
“No, my mother was a tank,” says Grunt--in utter earnest, even though it's utter nonsense. “And Wrex isn't my dad, either. If you don't want to bother Shepard, I was going to meet Garrus over by the turian camp back there. He participated in my Rite of Passage. Is that legal enough?”
“Garrus,” says Ictor. His headache has started digging trenches and erecting fortifications. “By Garrus, you mean Praetor Vakarian?”
“Thingy Vakarian,” says Grunt. “Yeah, him.”
Ictor glances at Gailani, who shrugs and shakes her head.
“Alright,” he says, “I... suppose he’ll have to do, much as I hate to make demands on his time either.”
“Well, my job here is done,” says Gailani, patting Chelsea on the shoulder. The kid smiles radiantly up at her. Funny how she'd been doing her damnedest to resist treatment not five minutes ago. “I'll flag him down on my way back.”
“Thanks,” says Ictor.
“Fucking get me some painkillers,” says the other human.
Grunt says, “Ah, stop sniveling, you haven't even lost 500cc of blood.”
Ictor’s headache has by now probably planted a flag in his forehead and declared sole sovereignty... but, he thinks, at least the kids are alright.
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Apologies for any medical inaccuracy, I am not a doctor of any kind.
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And I ship Chelsea/Grunt now.
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Glad you liked it!
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Anyway, thank you!
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