01-09-2011, 02:32 AM
“Get your hands off of me, you asshole!”
“We’ve got to take you to the medical bay, sir,” the male nurse implored him, tightening his grip on the half-Saiyan’s arm. Juno’s scowl deepened, and he jerked away from the medic, panting heavily.
I’m not going to some damn med-bay.
The medic’s expression mimicked Juno’s; a frustrated frown. He bent his knees, and began to dig around inside the fanny-pack that was hanging off of his waist — Juno had to stifle a laugh, because he seemed to be having a rather tough time searching blindly for whatever it was he was searching for.
Of course, none of this was his fault — he had enough coherent thoughts to know that the pilot of the shuttle was to blame. He’d been through space before, and was very comfortable with the journey. But this pilot, whoever the hell they’d hired to fly this batch of recruits from Earth to Namek, obviously hadn’t aced his end-of-course exam when he was tested for his flying license. The turbulence had been absolutely ridiculous; even with his seat-belt on, Juno had been flung this way and that around his corner of the ship, and the result was a churning stomach.
One trip to the in-flight bathroom to puke a little, and they thought he had a terminal illness or something. It wasn’t that serious — and the more this encounter continued, with other recruits filing past them as if nothing was disturbing their sunny day, the more he began to think that this gender-bending male nurse was the only one who viewed the matter with even the slightest sense of urgency.
“I was a bit seasick,” the seer proclaimed, “Nothing to be worried about. Focus your efforts on someone who really needs them.”
“Sir, you weren’t on a boat, you’re having delusions,” the nurse evaluated, pulling a syringe out of his fanny-pack and approaching the black-haired boy. The impulsive warrior scoffed, and lunged forward, grasping the wrist of the hand and holding it steady. This guy wasn’t going to inject anything into him — especially not a sedative, which he had a sneaking suspicion was what the shot was filled with.
“It’s a mutually-exclusive expression,” Juno informed his counterpart, “Don’t we call the vehicle that traverses the galaxy a spaceship? I see no reason why seasick isn’t an applicable term — mainly because spacesick just sounds plain fucking stupid.”
Juno chuckled a bit — it did sound really idiotic, spacesick. He let go of the nurse’s hand, and smirked victoriously, turning to walk away. Unfortunately, the meek little man wasn’t about to let what was probably his first patient ever get the better of him. Seconds after spinning away from his adversary, Juno felt the cold metal of a needle sinking into the back of his neck, and slowly, his senses washed away from him, and he was out like a light, just one word escaping his lips before he’d lost the ability to speak altogether.
“Shit.”
Slowly, things began to return to focus.
Juno jolted upright as soon as he’d woken up — perhaps a bit too quickly, to be completely honest. A dizzying sensation attacked him, and he squeezed his eyes shut to attempt to maintain focus of his thoughts. After a few seconds, he remembered the events that had transpired just before he’d fallen unconscious, and Saiyan fury began to bubble in his veins.
White, fluorescent light filled his vision the second he opened his eyes, and after a couple of moments and an adjustment of his vision, he noticed that he was inside a small, makeshift hospital room.
The walls were whitewashed, like a hospital’s, but if he recalled right, most of the buildings on Namek were either a light grey or hospital white, both on the inside and on the outside. Forced to look for other signs of his location, he had spotted a tray of different drugs and medicines sitting on a small push-cart to his left, and that had given away his location.
That meant that the male nurse had been successful; he couldn’t specifically remember how — it must’ve been some sort of trickery; it didn’t seem likely he’d beaten Juno in a fight — but he knew that was the way he’d gotten in this predicament.
“Alright, soldier, vitals look clear,” a voice said from his right. Juno’s head whipped in the direction of the doctor’s analysis, and shot a glare that would kill if looks were weapons. “You don’t look to be as sick as Nurse McCoy thought you were, so I’m going to go ahead and let you go register, all right?” Narrowing his eyes, Juno slid off of the bed, and brushed past the doctor, going out the door without another word.
Nurse McCoy… ha, Juno simmered. Who did this guy think he was, the badass version of a Grey’s Anatomy slash Law and Order crossover character?
“Juno — uh, sir,” the doctor’s voice shouted from behind him. Juno spun around casually, looking at the medical officer with a quizzical expression. “I was just wondering if you’d registered at either of the locations, yet. Warriors, troops… you know.” The half-Saiyan’s puzzled expression almost gave away his answer.
“If I have, I haven’t been informed of it,” he replied.
“Good, good,” the doctor nodded, “Because I could actually use you here, if you’re interested.” Juno raised an eyebrow, interested, and allowed the doc to continue his proposal. “You see, there’s plenty of men and women out on the front lines — which means there’s plenty of men and women that are going to be wheeled in here, and to be honest, I’m not sure if my paramedics can get into the more hotly contested zones to pick up the injured folks before the enemy gets to them, and either captures them or finishes the job. Under any other chief medical officer, those guys might’ve been left to die, but I think that they’re salvageable; so I need stronger folk like you — I checked your power level, yes — to go in there and get them.”
The hybrid stood for a moment, silent. He mulled over the thought in his head — he’d always been on the front lines, and while he hadn’t been the most sucky soldier in his regiment the majority of the time, it had never really worked for his tastes. Perhaps working for this doctor, as sort of a fighting medic, for lack of a better term, was his calling… perhaps Nurse McCoy had had a (albeit undiscovered) purpose, and getting Juno to this place was the entire reason he’d had to go through being spacesick, and being sedated.
But all of that predestination crap was getting dreadfully overdramatic, and he didn’t want to feel hypocritical after the dramatization of the war that had already taken place in the foreboding ‘distress signal’ pipelined to different television screens across the galaxy. If nothing else valuable could be divulged from this, then, he would’ve turned and walked away, ‘defied fate’ and given up on this opportunity to go be a member of the gun-toting, hoo-rah army. But this was a new, intriguing job that he could try, and plus, it guaranteed that he’d be right in the middle of the action, just in the job description. It seemed like too exciting an offer to pass up, so Juno looked at the doctor, and smiled approvingly.
“I’ll do it, doc.”
“Oh, that’s absolutely outstanding!” the white-bearded surgeon cheered, almost dropping his clipboard in the excitement. “Your team — the first team of ‘militarized medics,’ as I like to call them — is waiting in the Medical Docking Bay. Go familiarize yourself with them; they’re a motley crew, but they’re exceptional at their jobs.”
“I’d settle for nothing less,” Juno nodded with a smile, and followed the doctor’s pointing finger down the hall. A slight nervousness made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle, but he knew he probably had nothing to worry about — his powers and techniques were unique, and they were useful, so he was quite sure he’d find his place amongst this ragtag band of fighters.
“Hey, dude with the tail!” a grizzly voice yelled; the half-Saiyan’s tail perked up at a mention, and its owner turned toward the source of the voice. A red, reptilian alien leaned against a ship, smoking a cigarette, and holding a shotgun in the other hand.
Next to him, a short, stubby purple alien nursed a can of soda before crumpling it up and tossing it aside. It was obvious that Juno was going to be the intellectual one in this group before he’d even reached them. After his initial observations were completed, he took several long strides, and reached the two alien warriors in a matter of fifteen seconds. The shotgun-toting alien was the first to speak; he seemed to be the owner of the grizzly voice, which just made him sound more badass than he already looked, thank you very much.
“I’m Boomstick,” he nodded, spitting the cigarette onto the ground and then squelching its fire with the stamp of his boot.
“Is that because of… uh, your big boomstick?” Juno asked with a chuckle, gesturing toward the shotgun.
“Don’t flirt with me, monkey boy,” Boomstick replied, painting a smirk on his crimson face and lifting the shotgun into a readied position. The purple alien, who was, again, considerably shorter than either of the two warriors, grumbled angrily.
“Oh, look, Boomstick’s got him a jokester friend he can flirt with,” he mumbled impatiently, “Anyway, I’m Rex.”
Juno nodded, smiling. “Appropriate.”
“How so?”
“I don’t actually know, it just seemed like the right thing to say,” Juno laughed, “But I’m Juno. I don’t have any big guns or a big mouth, but I’ve got big power. Like, abilities and all that shit.”
“Sounds like your mouth’s pretty damn big to me,” Rex smirked.
“Well, we’d better head toward our ship — the battle’s already begun,” Boomstick relegated the topic back to their duty. Juno frowned.
“Wait a hot damn second, there’s no chicks in this squad?” the lady-killer asked. Rex shook his head no, and the half-Saiyan cursed under his breath. It’d been a while since he’d worked with a fighting girl, and besides, he always worked better when there was someone to flirt with fighting alongside him. It was just sort of a motivating factor for him, that’s all. “Well, damn,” he said, “This is a frigging testosterone overload, how do they expect us to get anything done?”
“Well, there was supposed to be a girl, but she hasn’t shown up yet,” Rex mused, “So Boomstick and I figured she’d chickened out. But he’s right — we’d best head toward the hover-cars, see which one we’re assigned to. The war’s started, people are already dying, so we’ve got to get moving.”
The hybrid sighed — well, he supposed that the excitement of being a ‘militarized medic’ was a fair tradeoff for not having a hot girl to stare at while he fought. And, he thought, in times of need, he could always just reminisce about fighting alongside chicks such as Sophia, or Sage, or even that pink-haired vixen Victoria he’d met during that civil war.
He smiled, pleased with himself. He prided himself on his intelligence, and his ability to always find an efficient solution for whatever personal problem was currently plaguing him on the field of battle. A hell of a soldier, that Juno.
“We’ve got to take you to the medical bay, sir,” the male nurse implored him, tightening his grip on the half-Saiyan’s arm. Juno’s scowl deepened, and he jerked away from the medic, panting heavily.
I’m not going to some damn med-bay.
The medic’s expression mimicked Juno’s; a frustrated frown. He bent his knees, and began to dig around inside the fanny-pack that was hanging off of his waist — Juno had to stifle a laugh, because he seemed to be having a rather tough time searching blindly for whatever it was he was searching for.
Of course, none of this was his fault — he had enough coherent thoughts to know that the pilot of the shuttle was to blame. He’d been through space before, and was very comfortable with the journey. But this pilot, whoever the hell they’d hired to fly this batch of recruits from Earth to Namek, obviously hadn’t aced his end-of-course exam when he was tested for his flying license. The turbulence had been absolutely ridiculous; even with his seat-belt on, Juno had been flung this way and that around his corner of the ship, and the result was a churning stomach.
One trip to the in-flight bathroom to puke a little, and they thought he had a terminal illness or something. It wasn’t that serious — and the more this encounter continued, with other recruits filing past them as if nothing was disturbing their sunny day, the more he began to think that this gender-bending male nurse was the only one who viewed the matter with even the slightest sense of urgency.
“I was a bit seasick,” the seer proclaimed, “Nothing to be worried about. Focus your efforts on someone who really needs them.”
“Sir, you weren’t on a boat, you’re having delusions,” the nurse evaluated, pulling a syringe out of his fanny-pack and approaching the black-haired boy. The impulsive warrior scoffed, and lunged forward, grasping the wrist of the hand and holding it steady. This guy wasn’t going to inject anything into him — especially not a sedative, which he had a sneaking suspicion was what the shot was filled with.
“It’s a mutually-exclusive expression,” Juno informed his counterpart, “Don’t we call the vehicle that traverses the galaxy a spaceship? I see no reason why seasick isn’t an applicable term — mainly because spacesick just sounds plain fucking stupid.”
Juno chuckled a bit — it did sound really idiotic, spacesick. He let go of the nurse’s hand, and smirked victoriously, turning to walk away. Unfortunately, the meek little man wasn’t about to let what was probably his first patient ever get the better of him. Seconds after spinning away from his adversary, Juno felt the cold metal of a needle sinking into the back of his neck, and slowly, his senses washed away from him, and he was out like a light, just one word escaping his lips before he’d lost the ability to speak altogether.
“Shit.”
~ + ~
Slowly, things began to return to focus.
Juno jolted upright as soon as he’d woken up — perhaps a bit too quickly, to be completely honest. A dizzying sensation attacked him, and he squeezed his eyes shut to attempt to maintain focus of his thoughts. After a few seconds, he remembered the events that had transpired just before he’d fallen unconscious, and Saiyan fury began to bubble in his veins.
White, fluorescent light filled his vision the second he opened his eyes, and after a couple of moments and an adjustment of his vision, he noticed that he was inside a small, makeshift hospital room.
The walls were whitewashed, like a hospital’s, but if he recalled right, most of the buildings on Namek were either a light grey or hospital white, both on the inside and on the outside. Forced to look for other signs of his location, he had spotted a tray of different drugs and medicines sitting on a small push-cart to his left, and that had given away his location.
That meant that the male nurse had been successful; he couldn’t specifically remember how — it must’ve been some sort of trickery; it didn’t seem likely he’d beaten Juno in a fight — but he knew that was the way he’d gotten in this predicament.
“Alright, soldier, vitals look clear,” a voice said from his right. Juno’s head whipped in the direction of the doctor’s analysis, and shot a glare that would kill if looks were weapons. “You don’t look to be as sick as Nurse McCoy thought you were, so I’m going to go ahead and let you go register, all right?” Narrowing his eyes, Juno slid off of the bed, and brushed past the doctor, going out the door without another word.
Nurse McCoy… ha, Juno simmered. Who did this guy think he was, the badass version of a Grey’s Anatomy slash Law and Order crossover character?
“Juno — uh, sir,” the doctor’s voice shouted from behind him. Juno spun around casually, looking at the medical officer with a quizzical expression. “I was just wondering if you’d registered at either of the locations, yet. Warriors, troops… you know.” The half-Saiyan’s puzzled expression almost gave away his answer.
“If I have, I haven’t been informed of it,” he replied.
“Good, good,” the doctor nodded, “Because I could actually use you here, if you’re interested.” Juno raised an eyebrow, interested, and allowed the doc to continue his proposal. “You see, there’s plenty of men and women out on the front lines — which means there’s plenty of men and women that are going to be wheeled in here, and to be honest, I’m not sure if my paramedics can get into the more hotly contested zones to pick up the injured folks before the enemy gets to them, and either captures them or finishes the job. Under any other chief medical officer, those guys might’ve been left to die, but I think that they’re salvageable; so I need stronger folk like you — I checked your power level, yes — to go in there and get them.”
The hybrid stood for a moment, silent. He mulled over the thought in his head — he’d always been on the front lines, and while he hadn’t been the most sucky soldier in his regiment the majority of the time, it had never really worked for his tastes. Perhaps working for this doctor, as sort of a fighting medic, for lack of a better term, was his calling… perhaps Nurse McCoy had had a (albeit undiscovered) purpose, and getting Juno to this place was the entire reason he’d had to go through being spacesick, and being sedated.
But all of that predestination crap was getting dreadfully overdramatic, and he didn’t want to feel hypocritical after the dramatization of the war that had already taken place in the foreboding ‘distress signal’ pipelined to different television screens across the galaxy. If nothing else valuable could be divulged from this, then, he would’ve turned and walked away, ‘defied fate’ and given up on this opportunity to go be a member of the gun-toting, hoo-rah army. But this was a new, intriguing job that he could try, and plus, it guaranteed that he’d be right in the middle of the action, just in the job description. It seemed like too exciting an offer to pass up, so Juno looked at the doctor, and smiled approvingly.
“I’ll do it, doc.”
“Oh, that’s absolutely outstanding!” the white-bearded surgeon cheered, almost dropping his clipboard in the excitement. “Your team — the first team of ‘militarized medics,’ as I like to call them — is waiting in the Medical Docking Bay. Go familiarize yourself with them; they’re a motley crew, but they’re exceptional at their jobs.”
“I’d settle for nothing less,” Juno nodded with a smile, and followed the doctor’s pointing finger down the hall. A slight nervousness made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle, but he knew he probably had nothing to worry about — his powers and techniques were unique, and they were useful, so he was quite sure he’d find his place amongst this ragtag band of fighters.
“Hey, dude with the tail!” a grizzly voice yelled; the half-Saiyan’s tail perked up at a mention, and its owner turned toward the source of the voice. A red, reptilian alien leaned against a ship, smoking a cigarette, and holding a shotgun in the other hand.
Next to him, a short, stubby purple alien nursed a can of soda before crumpling it up and tossing it aside. It was obvious that Juno was going to be the intellectual one in this group before he’d even reached them. After his initial observations were completed, he took several long strides, and reached the two alien warriors in a matter of fifteen seconds. The shotgun-toting alien was the first to speak; he seemed to be the owner of the grizzly voice, which just made him sound more badass than he already looked, thank you very much.
“I’m Boomstick,” he nodded, spitting the cigarette onto the ground and then squelching its fire with the stamp of his boot.
“Is that because of… uh, your big boomstick?” Juno asked with a chuckle, gesturing toward the shotgun.
“Don’t flirt with me, monkey boy,” Boomstick replied, painting a smirk on his crimson face and lifting the shotgun into a readied position. The purple alien, who was, again, considerably shorter than either of the two warriors, grumbled angrily.
“Oh, look, Boomstick’s got him a jokester friend he can flirt with,” he mumbled impatiently, “Anyway, I’m Rex.”
Juno nodded, smiling. “Appropriate.”
“How so?”
“I don’t actually know, it just seemed like the right thing to say,” Juno laughed, “But I’m Juno. I don’t have any big guns or a big mouth, but I’ve got big power. Like, abilities and all that shit.”
“Sounds like your mouth’s pretty damn big to me,” Rex smirked.
“Well, we’d better head toward our ship — the battle’s already begun,” Boomstick relegated the topic back to their duty. Juno frowned.
“Wait a hot damn second, there’s no chicks in this squad?” the lady-killer asked. Rex shook his head no, and the half-Saiyan cursed under his breath. It’d been a while since he’d worked with a fighting girl, and besides, he always worked better when there was someone to flirt with fighting alongside him. It was just sort of a motivating factor for him, that’s all. “Well, damn,” he said, “This is a frigging testosterone overload, how do they expect us to get anything done?”
“Well, there was supposed to be a girl, but she hasn’t shown up yet,” Rex mused, “So Boomstick and I figured she’d chickened out. But he’s right — we’d best head toward the hover-cars, see which one we’re assigned to. The war’s started, people are already dying, so we’ve got to get moving.”
The hybrid sighed — well, he supposed that the excitement of being a ‘militarized medic’ was a fair tradeoff for not having a hot girl to stare at while he fought. And, he thought, in times of need, he could always just reminisce about fighting alongside chicks such as Sophia, or Sage, or even that pink-haired vixen Victoria he’d met during that civil war.
He smiled, pleased with himself. He prided himself on his intelligence, and his ability to always find an efficient solution for whatever personal problem was currently plaguing him on the field of battle. A hell of a soldier, that Juno.