A Fantasia of Faint Familiarity

[Joline]

Wow.

Everything’s horribly blurry at the moment. All bright lights and reflective surfaces on buildings and glass and crystal-like materials shining in the sun…

“...She new around here, or should I be worried?” the armored man inquires, and the machine cradling me does not answer. I do, however, notice something - something familiar. A big, tacky, banana yellow car… except it’s floating, and its wheels are facing down. Weird… but cool.

“Taxi,” I remember. “Let’s… let’s go for a ride.” This request is followed by a very confused look from my current mode of transportation, but I persist. “C’mon.”

The acquired taste of chung-ka-chung meets my ears, just audible under the sounds of horns and chatter and such. Something about it is welcome - the strange, unfamiliar noise amidst the sort I almost seem to feel are normal.

Except… it’s very clear, as I look around, this place is not normal. It’s not like something I would see in a storybook, like Camelot’s rolling fields. It’s…

...The kind of thing I might hear about being the future.

Next thing I know I’m being set down on a cushy leather bench and a door’s being shut. An odd, unidentifiable scent I’ve come to just think of as leather greets my nose, and my head rests uncomfortably on the lap of a discomforted robot. “Hospital,” I request further, bleeding a little on the leather. Outside the window I notice the armored guy walking off and looking confused.

A tired-looking taxi driver looks back, his expression deadpan. “Hospital, huh?” he repeats, eyeing me with curiosity. “...Primes, aren’tcha?”

I nod, shutting my eyes and smiling a little. “Everything hurts a lot,” I add. “So… could you please go fast?”

I don’t get a reply to that. Instead I look up to who I can only very generously call my saviour. “...So, what’s your name?” I ask. “I’m Joline. But, er, I guess people call me Jojo now.”

“Colonel,” he replies. “Greetings, Joline.”

“People call me Jojo, but I guess you’re not a people,” I mumble thoughtlessly.

After a minute or so of silence, I squint. “What’s that about there? Lookin’ like ouch.exe is taking up more CPU capacity…” I add, trying to look through the windows again.

“...Suppose I can understand the logic behind that observation,” says Colonel, looking out the taxi window, and blocking out my view into his. Damn. “After all, I am a toaster in your eyes.”

He pauses for a moment and looks back to me. “Though you are a meatbag in mine.” Again, I’d normally laugh at that. But there’s something about this guy that gives me the willies… and something that makes me reeeeeally not want to joke or smile around him. Maybe it’s the whole ‘he almost killed me’ thing.

I look to the window, wondering what might be out there… what it looks like to see this place from above. It feels like we’ve gone higher than the ground - or at least that’s how it seems in my gut. A thoughtful hum from Colonel catches my attention, and a pair of large, metallic hands hoisting me into the air near the window pulls a quiet eep out of me.

And… a louder one as I peer out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city like this from above… or any city from above ever. Seeing the place like this makes me realize what a maze it looks like. I can’t even see anybody down there, and what I can see all looks so insignificant. Then there’s the colossal skyscrapers and towers.

“Gods,” I whisper. “It’s… beautiful.”

We start to descend almost comically quickly, and I immediately cling to one of Colonel’s arms fearfully. “We are landing,” he explains, sounding as though he’s speaking not to an injured person but a horribly drunk one. “We are not crashing.”

He’s about as unfazed by my reaction to this place as I thought.

I must have lost track of time, or we traveled really quickly, because before I know it, we’ve arrived. I produce a messy blob of Omnilium for the driver before we leave, and Colonel produces a more tidy and slightly more sizeable one. We emerge to face a particularly tall building with a dark but still familiar red plus above its sliding glass double doors. They part as we advance and the chung-ka-chung resumes.

...When was the last time I was in a hospital? Can’t remember...

[Albert Wesker]

There had been a big, unnecessary scuffle and flurry of activity once the hospital had been entered. As they were prone to do, the staff reacted quite earnestly to seeing the state Joline was in. When they discovered she was a prime, the haste and fervor in their actions diminished slightly, but an entirely different kind of swiftness took hold of their movements. Gone was the frantic rush of furious activity desperate to save a life that was irreplaceable. No frenetic rush of haste and preparation to placate the searing pain, both mental and physical, and pull an apparent child back from the precipice of death.

No, there was undeniably a certain brisk rush to the movements. A haste born of professionalism, and of a desire to finish a task quickly, efficiently, and with grace. It was the bearing of a group who had just been presented with an opportunity. And it took only a short look around, spotting one of the nursing staff speaking with someone bearing an insignia on the shoulder of their uniform, for the soldier navi to hazard a guess as to why. A quick image capture, upload, and dataverse search turned up enough results to confirm his guess. The Empire Peace Division. Always looking for new recruits, and doing whatever they could to get primes in their good graces to offer incentive to join. The efficiency and lack of panicked rushing that this revelation brought to the table was undeniably appreciated, given the situation, but it served only to tighten the scowl on the features of the otherwise stoic machine.

Bureaucracy, he thought to himself. The inner workings of places like this were always complex and convoluted, with endless schemes to get what they wanted.

Regardless...matters were being taken care of. The medical attention that Joline had wanted -- and needed, even with the resilience and natural healing ability of primes, given her newness to all this -- was being administered. And he had been promised, somewhat awkwardly, she would be fine in short order. Most primes could recover from injuries even that bad in just a couple days of rest, if they put their minds to it. With some proper medical treatment, they assured, she'd be right as rain by tomorrow, at the latest.

Colonel would believe that when he saw it.

For now, he sat quietly in a waiting room. One of, he had been informed, several. Why there needed to be more than one, he didn't know, and wasn't going to question. What he did know was that he had been required to spend several minutes to pool together a bit of omnilium and summon forth a chair large and sturdy enough to support his damaged, still-sparking bulk. After one of them had creaked and groaned in distress just from his gaze settling on it, he had wisely decided ahead of time to just not risk it. In some corner of his mind, he could see the comical situation: taking a seat, and the flimsy thing giving way under him, or catching fire from an errant spark in his battle-damaged systems igniting it. There was no scowl fierce enough for how much he did not want to have that happen.

And so there he sat, in a sharply contoured beast of steel. It looked highly uncomfortable, made solely of metal supports and structuring, with nary a trace of padding to be seen. But it was sturdy, and with nothing for his marred, mangled plating to catch on, and nothing for the occasional flickering spark to set alight. He settled into it, slowly leaning back and shifting his tattered — all but shredded, really; just about completely ruined — cape over one shoulder to drape over the back of the chair, and let his eyes slowly drift closed.

He drew up his internal diagnostics, turning his systems toward analyzing and setting to repairing the damage he'd sustained. He re-routed the new programs and routines he'd developed for omnilium to assist with the task, taking full advantage of a prime's natural regenerative capabilities. He doubted he'd make much progress in the short time he planned to wait here to hear word of the progress on his unlikely companion, but if he could at least take care of the worst of the internal 'bleeding', as the analogy had been made to him by a doctor upon a cursory examination of his damaged state, it would be satisfactory for him.

By the estimation of his internal clock, it was scarcely twenty minutes later that he was roused from his partial slumber, by a light plink against his shoulder and a simple "Oi, toaster." His eyes cracked open, with a flicker of green. Momentary static greeted his vision, his field of view shrouded in snow as it sparked and fizzed, slowly clearing away to reveal the form of Joline standing there, looking at him with a strange expression on her face.

"Not lookin' so hot there," she said, hands on her hips. "And here I thought I was supposed to be the one here for medical treatment." The cheeky grin on her features made her teasing evident, but it practically fell apart when the cybernetic soldier slowly placed his hands on the armrests of the chair he sat in, and levered himself up into a standing position, once more towering over her. He didn't say a word for several long, tense seconds, during which Joline's expression rapidly dwindled into a nervous frown. "Uh...y-you, uh...okay, there? You look--"

"Why are you here?" he cut her off in mid-sentence, his tone cold and sharp. "Even with a prime's regenerative abilities and proper medical treatment, you couldn't possibly be recovered yet."

The young girl looked away for a brief second, muttering something under her breath that the warrior program's damaged systems couldn't pick up. "I, uh...it wasn't as bad as it looked," she finally said aloud. "Or something. They got me all patched up and I'm okay now." She looked back up, and found Colonel's unblinking gaze still leveled on her, and she visibly flinched. "R-Really, I swear!"

He said nothing, just continued to stare down at her. For nearly a minute, he remained motionless, impassive, and impossible to read. But finally, his eyes closed, and he shook his head. Without breath to draw, he couldn't sigh, but he did a very reasonable approximation. "...then we should be able to leave here, if you are sufficiently recovered." And he turned aside, starting to walk off with his signature, heavy stride.

"Yeah, I guess so..." came the uneasy reply of the girl as she started after him. There was a quartet of steady steps, then a matching set of uneasy shuffling strides, and a spattering of unsteady stumbling and a heavy thud.

The digital soldier stopped in his tracks, his gaze fixed forward. "....Joline." He spoke the name with a sharp, cold tone in his voice as per usual, slowly turning around to survey the scene, and finding her all but collapsed on the floor. He could detect the recoiling as his gaze fell on her, a look of complete indignation practically laser-etched into his features. A sharp, viridian gleam sparked in his eyes as he took a stride back toward her, and knelt down, the displeasure radiating off of him almost palpable. "I believe you lied to me."

She looked up at him, confusion written on her features as she tried to regain her posture. Limbs trembled weakly as she made a valiant struggle to get her legs under her again. "Huhwha...? Whaddya mean, 'lied'...?"

"You told me you were alright. That you had recovered." In his internal heads-up display, his targeting systems were already scanning the girl before him over. Several reticles and targeting icons flickered into view, locking onto various points. Trembling limbs, points of weakness, still-visible bruising and only mostly-sealed wounds, already threatening to bleed again. His expression softened, almost imperceptibly. The stark, steel-cold glare in his eyes faded, replaced with something almost approaching genuine concern. He had worked too hard, and made too many decisions he was still calculating over to let this silly girl prevent herself from getting proper treatment and recovering for whatever inscrutable reasons she had in her head. "You have clearly not recovered anywhere near as much as you think you have."

"No, no, I'm totally fine!" she insisted, smiling weakly while looking at a point several inches to his left. "Yeah, the nurses let me out. Oh, hey, and there was this really cute one that Iiiiii'mgonnatakeanap--" Her struggles finally ceased, and she fell flat to the floor, sprawling out on it with a pitiful-sounding thunk.

Colonel stared down at her, his expression as impassive and inscrutable as ever. He merely heaves another faux-sigh. Slowly he rises up to stand, turning to go alert the staff of this place there patient had taken it upon herself to decide she was sufficiently recovered.

He was really going to need some rest after this.

[Joline]

--ning.

...ood morning…

“...stop it…”

The world blurs and sharpens, falling in and out of focus at random as I reorient myself. I honestly can’t recall the last time I was awake - was it outside the hospital? In the taxi? No, was it in the halls…? Maybe it was out in the Nexus… with a few grumbles I myself can’t even understand, I let my eyes open.

...Eyes. Open.

“Eyes…” I hiss irritably. “Eyes, open…” I try to raise my arms to physically pry the star-crossed lovers that are my eyelids apart, but… I can’t seem to move my arms.

Sleep crumbles off my eyes like rust off old, creaky steel doors as my eyes finally give, revealing the blindly white decor of a hospital. Oddly enough, this feels familiar in its own weird, sick way. But… everything’s a bit fuzzy still, and I can’t quite make any details out.

Humming at my side. Familiar humming, to my right… a voice which shouldn’t reach that high. A woman, all brushed-straight rouge hair and big brown eyes. I… almost worried I’d never see her again, and looking back, I realize how silly I was.

“...Ciamath,” I breathe, and I feel a little tear in the corner of my eye. “How did you…?”

My eyes widen as a black-gloved finger is placed over my lips. “Shhh. No questions,” she interrupts. “You need to relax. You’re in no state to be speaking as much as that would demand.”

“Or moving,” adds another voice. Another, much less familiar one. One which I immediately associate with a kick to the stomach, and almost instinctively heave at. It’s her - with her faded golden eyes, slightly grinning in a way that deeply unsettles me. “That won’t be happening anytime too soon, either. Never seen that many broken bones in someone still among the living…”

“What? I…” I shake my head, moving the finger from my lips with what little strength I can muster. I look down at a blanket covering most of my body - almost everything below the shoulders is covered by the thin, light-grayish sheet of fabric which makes me itch a little all over. Trying not to wrap myself up too much in how much I hate the texture of wool, I try to raise my arms to lift the blanket and get a good look at myself.

“Agh-- Gods!” I shout, clenching my fists until my knuckles go white. Pain surges through my body suddenly, and my eyes follow to each point where I feel it - burns along my arms and legs, joints bent in ways they should never be, skin and tissue in all different colours of the bruised rainbow, even stiched cuts and gashes in more than a few places. “Ow! Gah-- fuck! Ciamath!” I wheeze at last, my voice nearly giving out as I speak her name. I reach out a hand to her, hoping for my fingers to lock between hers.

As my arms fall limp at my sides, I let my eyes look to where she once sat. There is only an empty chair beside some sort of monitor showing my vitals, on which a number of lines in different colours all spike up at one point growing slowly more and more distant.

That tear finally drips from my chin and I grip at the sides of my bed. My whole body starts to shake and my face starts to feel hot. I thought…

I never thought it would be like this.

That I would feel so alone.

My eyes and nose start to run beyond my control. My lips move in unfamiliar ways as my mouth produces alien sounds and syllables, catching the awful, salty taste of sadness on the corners of my mouth where I fail to wipe it away. By the time I can hear or see anything outside my own little world, I’m being shook violently at the shoulders by a pair of big, metallic hands.

“Joline. Joline. Joline.”

Through a haze of moisture I see a familiar figure, a towering one which I instantly recognize as the one which beat me to a bloody pulp. The trembling sets in again and I feel the overwhelming urge to run as fast and far as I can, and yet…

I don’t.

And it’s not like I feel like I can’t, either. I try to move my body again, and… though stiff, my arms and legs seem to move relatively normally. How much time passed during all of that…?

“You’re…”

I gulp and glance around. I notice a tissue box where I once saw Elise sitting. Grasping at one, I dab at my eyes and hastily clean my face off. I know what I want to ask, and I know that I shouldn’t ask it. It’s a stupid thing to ask. Instead, I just let myself smile. Everything has to be fine. I… just have to tough this out, and I’ll be perfectly fine.

“...stand me up, would you? I’d like to take a quick look at myself...” my eyes flick about the room for a moment. “...in that mirror over there.” They land on a mirror about seven feet tall embedded in the wall - or at least that’s what it looks like. This place is… sci-fi-y. Could be something else for all I know.

Looking unimpressed, Colonel faux-sighs. “You fell over twice the last time you stood. No.”

“If you won’t, then fine.” I roll out of bed and, in an act of acrobatics unfamiliar yet natural to me, I break my fall with a somersault. “I will.”

As I stand, I lazily adjust my patient’s gown, untying and re-tying a pair of thin strings at the back into a relatively nice bow. I take a few steps toward the mirror with one eye shut and the other squinted, dreading what I’m about to see--

And… comparatively, at least when I recall how I looked under the blankets… not horrible. How long had passed? What happened? Maybe this was one of those weird Prime things. I notice, as I squint at my reflection, there’s flecks of Omnillium glowing in my injuries. Maybe I packed the stuff into my wounds while I was, er… losing it a little?

I puff out my cheeks and take a long, good look at me. As Colonel approaches to make sure I don’t keel over, I can’t help but draw parallels from what was only a day ago, or at least I think - looking at myself in the mirror at Falconsflight Smithy. For a moment I swear I see that girl, the one with a sword and shield slung over her back and a cheeky grin as she thinks, I’m going to be a hero.

...Gods. It’s only been two days here and I’m already looking back on my life like an old woman, I think. But… those don’t feel like my thoughts.

Who else is in here…?

Who else could be?

I catch myself in the mirror - my hands are moving seemingly on their own. They pull a series of hair elastics out, taking them from keeping my hair up and… doing the only thing that they could - letting my hair hang down all the way to my waist.

Following watching this, I rub at my temples. “How many times did you hit me on the head, now…?” Immediately I hold up a hand. “Nevermind. Not… not important.”

Taking a moment to look out the window, I puff out my cheeks and roll my shoulders. I get the feeling I’ll need to stretch a lot - I feel stiff all over, among other, more unpleasant feelings. “I don’t know about you, toaster-man, but I don’t know where I’m headed. I… think I need some time to myself before I go looking for her.”

I can feel confusion emanating from the toaster over my shoulder. Whether that’s a delusion or not, I’m not really sure. I look over my shoulder, opening my mouth to explain, only to see… a man adorned in a fancy-looking military-style getup. Next to Colonel, he doesn’t look too tall… nor too out of place. In fact, their expressions look interchangeable.

I giggle a little bit, mentally swapping their faces for a second. I needed that.

“Greetings, Prime. I would be Captain Aldridge, representing the Emperor’s finest. How have our doctors been treating you?” goes Military Man, sounding awfully… formal and important, for lack of better words.

I immediately draw a blank. Somewhere in my awful, foggy memory I recall… generally good things. I think I got a cookie and some orange juice at one point. I also think I hit on one of the nurses… the line ‘did it hurt when you fell from Heaven, because you’re the only ten I see’ rings painfully loudly in my mind.

I choose to omit the details. “Pretty well. Thumbs up.” Clearing my throat, I add, “so… Captain, is it? What’d I do to deserve this kind of attention?”

Colonel stands silently beside the conversation. I catch a knowing look in his eyes, almost as though if he hasn’t experienced something like this before, he knows the motions that are being gone through. Unfortunately, I don’t. “Do you recall Omni’s words? Or shall I refresh your memory?”

Actually, I don’t. “Nope. Don’t remember that, actually. Don’t remember a lot of things, in fact, but… I think I know what I have to. Oh!” I snap my fingers and smile a bit. “It’s the Prime thing, isn’t it?”

“That would be correct,” he replies. “If you are interested in compensating us for the medical assistance we provided, you could offer your services to the Empire. Positions are always in need of filling, and given what you are… you might have an advantage getting into one.”

Well, if this doesn’t sound like a perfect idea for getting a bit of a break, I don’t know what does. “Don’t have to sell me,” I reply. “I think I already am. Sold, that is,” I add.

This grabs a look of faint concern from Colonel. “Well? Where might you be headed off to, toaster?” I inquire, gently elbowing the tall mass of steel to my side.

“I have no plans for the immediate future,” he notes. “However, I am afraid I will have to decline this offer, should it also extend to me.” His eyes flick over Aldridge as he says this.

“That is understandable. You and I have a few things to sort out, then,” goes the Captain, first to Colonel and then to me. “A residence has been arranged for you on Tier 2. If you have a Dataverse Device, I can provide its coordinates to you. I will meet with you again tomorrow, to discuss what it is exactly you will be doing under my command.”

I rub at my arms, making sure not to irritate any of my mending wounds. “Sounds about good. Especially because tomorrow I’ll have more on me than… this.” I eye the serviceable but not particularly flattering patient’s gown which is… just about the only thing on my person. “Speaking of, where are my clothes?”

Silence. At last, Colonel chimes in. “Almost too torn and burned to be considered clothing, much less function as such,” he responds. “They were likely thrown away. You can summon a new set, if you had any particular attachment for what you were wearing.”

I shake my head. “Not… really. At least, not right now.” I rub at my neck. “Probably best I get something new, though. Something that might make me stand out a bit less.” Curious as to how well my gown’s staying on me, I shift a little and adjust it, hiking it up a bit around my chest.

“That would be wise,” notes Colonel. Aldridge adds, “if you’ve any interest in not standing out, as you say… you may want to fully enjoy what the Verse has to offer. Go shopping. Live the city life a little, rather than relying on Omnilium. Surely it has its uses, but it can be time-consuming and uninteresting, or so it’s said.” He clears his throat. “This choice, however, remains yours.”

He excuses himself with a few formalities which immediately slip my mind. Colonel and I go off on a bit of a walk after I produce some relatively normal clothes for myself. After a while I decide to produce a cane, because my legs decide a few times to have a bit of a nap.

It takes a while spent wandering around. Eventually I just get tired of walking, get rid of my cane and just get Colonel to give me a ride on his shoulders. It takes until what’s just about sundown to finally make way to the right place.

Apartment 5-E of Valtheim Towers, Central Avenue, Coruscant.