The Start of Something New

[Swan]

CORELLIA Dusk

[fancybox4=http://i.imgur.com/Kjsenn2.jpg?1]Teelo Swan sighed an angry sigh. A sharp outburst of air passed through the thin mask covering her mouth and nose. She had been wearing this protective gear for over an hour and it was starting to irritate her. Not only that, but her partner was late. They were supposed to travel together on the same shuttle, but Lanna Singh had been missing. Teelo could only hope her slightly older counterpart would actually turn up, although she had no prior experience with her, so she couldn't even be trusted with that. Their relationship wasn't off to the best start.

The reason Teelo had been shipped off all the way back to her home planet was a recent outbreak in the 'Jewel of Corellia', Coronet City. The two Initiates were assigned aid duty on the planet's surface, working with medical staff to care for the infected individuals. It wasn't particularly serious, as to be expected from the cumulative lack of experience the Jedi Army had sent, but it sent a simple message: the Jedi Army were more than the violence and conflict they had gained a reputation for.

Whatever the reason, Teelo was thrilled with the opportunity to help people, even if they lived on a planet she despised. This was no different from any other help. It was active, working directly where the people were affected. The staff were overworked but had been friendly, quickly helping Teelo with getting set up at a small desk in the corner. That's where she was sat now, looking out at the vast open-plan warehouse of sick beds, busy staff and worried civilians.

The 16-year-old turned back to the matter at hand. Her hands were bound in a pair of flimsy plastic gloves, which made holding her pen difficult. She had been assigned to paperwork, which was unsurprising, but the stacks and stacks of clipboards, patient files and medical histories which piled next to her were foreboding. If Lanna had been here for the last hour, then perhaps it would be half as tall and falling much faster, but no, now it was down to Teelo to sort all by herself. The pen scratched hard on the desk in frustration. Dr. Kramon, a Mon Calamari, was calling for her assistance.

Teelo's patience was running out.

-

@Zenya[/fancybox4]

 

[Zenya]

Corellia was a bleak planet. Almost like a dimmer version of Coruscant. It actually reminded the young Jedi Knight of the place, except for the lack of interest it sparked in her. Not to say that was entirely a bad thing. She always liked going new places and seeing different things, even if they were not particularly awe inspiring. She was tired. The girl had just come from a gritty run in with two Sith on Umbara. Both dark siders gave she and her group of allies quite a few issues to deal with. Luckily the whole ordeal was resolved.

The event left her worn out, and wanting to be alone. Of course, the Army had different plans for her. She was swiftly shipped off to Corellia, so she could assist in healing the infected victims of a new outbreak. She had dealt with disease before, and it was no simple task. But medicine was always something that seemed to interest her, so she accepted the occasion. It was better than cleaning out the base on Dantooine after all of that social gathering madness.

Instead of going straight to the location, she meandered around. She had time. She went into a bar.

She had never really walked into one alone, but she figured it was no different then she had previously experienced. Taking a seat, she kind of hunched over like she would imagine a sulking, self-loathing individual would, and laid out her credits out for the bartender to take.

He gave her a downcast glace, then asked what she wanted. She shrugged, and he continued to pick something out for her. Downing the glass of alcohol, she dropped it back on the table with a small thud.

***
​

She hadn't gotten drunk. However, she did have a few glasses of the stuff. It felt like the thing to do when you were in a mood. Lanna knew that wasn't true, but why choose wisdom when you had the excuse of ignorance and youth to pay for your actions instead? It seemed logical enough, at the time.

Stepping out of the speeder she had arrived at the hospital in, she waved to the driver, and he drove off, down the street. She assured herself that she didn't need the driver because she was impaired, but simply because she had no license. Driving was not her strong suit, so she invested in transportation instead.

Lanna stepped inside the hospital where nurses and the like, all seemed to be scurrying about, trying to tent to the needs of their patients. Urgently, someone handed her a mask to cover her face. She wouldn't want to catch whatever it was that happened to be making these people sick. The very thought gave her anxiety. For someone who enjoyed medicine so much, the thought of getting sick was enough to make her reconsider if the hobby was even worth it.

After she was directed to an area off to the side of the chaos, she took in the image of a massive stack of paper, and the girl about her age sitting behind it.

Sighing, she approached the girl.

"Hi. I'm Lanna Singh. Jedi Knight, and apparently assigned to this specific post. Looks like we're doing paperwork." She reached out her hand to shake the girl's, and gave a polite smile. Even though her demeanor was kind and cheerful, her eyes were dim and solitary. "And what would your name be?"

 

[Swan]

[fancybox2]Teelo crossed over to Kramon's desk. He was a large creature, his great salmon chin almost reaching his chest. It wobbled slightly as he talked and Teelo couldn't keep her eyes away from the movement.

"I just wanted to say we appreciate all the work you're doing here, not just today but on Corellia as a whole over the past few weeks."

Teelo couldn't focus on his words, just the great pink mass that swayed to and fro as he uttered them. The Mon Calamari stood, which only furthered the convulsions, as if his chin had a mind of its own. Reaching into the top drawer of his desk, he pulled out another stack of papers.

"These just came in. We're making real headway with this, Initiate Swan, I'd love for you to finish these for me."

Giving Dr. Kramon a courteous nod and a smile, Teelo spun around and rolled her eyes, carrying the fresh stack of paperwork back to her desk. If only Lanna could turn up, she wouldn't have to deal with Kramon and wouldn't have half as much work to do! She set back to work, muttering under her breath about lazy Jedi. What made it worse was Lanna was technically her superior: while only a year older, she was a Jedi Knight after all. Teelo would have to tread carefully. Her patience would be tested in the next five minutes.

"Hi. I'm Lanna Singh. Jedi Knight, and apparently assigned to this specific post. Looks like we're doing paperwork."
Teelo looked up from her work. Lanna stood above her, not quite towering over her.
"And what would your name be?"

Teelo stood. While Lanna's eyes revealed the apathy behind her gentle smile, Teelo's eyes glared at her partner, her lips straight and thin. She shook Lanna's hand after peeling the glove off her right hand. "Initiate Teelo Swan. It's a pleasure." The sarcasm was crude and heavy handed, but she was in such a foul mood she had no time for wit.
"Yes, I've been climbing this mountain for the past hour or so." She pointed to the stack of papers. Lanna would easily point out the added emphasis on her mention of time.
"Not the most befitting task for a Jedi, let alone a Knight such as yourself."
Taking a seat, Teelo put her head down and carried on with her task. Date, time, location, medical histories; all had to be checked, double checked then signed off and stacked on the ever growing 'completed' pile. Then grab another from the unchanging 'incompleted' pile and start over. The sooner they finished, the sooner they could go home, and the less Teelo had to talk to the main cause of her frustration the better.[/fancybox2]

 

[Zenya]

The girl sensed a level of unease in her new acquaintance. She seemed like she was especially focused on the business she was attending to, and was possibly even annoyed that Lanna was bugging her.

Shaking her hand, the young woman looked Miss Swan in the eyes, and swallowed. This was going to be a challenge. Teelo obviously wasn't a fan of paperwork, but neither was Lanna. Despite that being the case, she would still make sure everything was done, and that it was done well. If she worked from the bottom well enough, she would eventually have the opportunity to move up.

Pulling out a chair, she took a seat, and grabbed a chunk of papers from the enormous stack. "I'll start on these. Maybe if we get it done fast enough we can go find something else to help out with."

She clicked her pen several times, and squinted her eyes at the paper. Beginning to fill out the dates on all of the pages, she blinked away a slight pesky blur that entered her vision. She was tapping her foot, and fidgeting a bit.

"Sorry I was late. I got caught up around the city." She said, continuing to fill out the information she needed on he sheet of paper. "Have you ever been to Corellia before? his is actually my first time. I did actually know someone from here, but I haven't run into him in a while."

She wasn't paying too close attention to her counterpart, but her surroundings. The bustle and overflowing workload on the people around her, was intense.

@Swan @Deviant

 

[Deviant]

ll across Coronet City, men and women sail on colorless avenues, squirm between narrow crowds, squint into flashing advertisements nailed against high-rises. The nexus to intergalactic manufacturing is ablaze with life, drumming along as daylight tucks itself behind smog in resignation to an approaching night. Bars simmer with overworked patrons and tanked drunkards. Hustlers lurk on street corners and beggars slouch against alleyway dumpsters. Junkies offer dull, somber glares to the sky, their arms exposed and riddled with needle holes. Yet, Adrián del-Nevaréz is nowhere to be found among them.

Stubble short and eyes drooping, the doctor prods along the open air of the makeshift hospital. One hand fastened to a holographic file, he sifts through the records of a thousand patients. Subject history, diagnosis, treatments: the lives and futures to so many rests in his care. Eighteen years ago, he would have never imagined himself as he is now, dressed in a bleached medical uniform and spearheading one of the largest provisional clinics in the Core. To even wonder of how he vaulted from roving crackpot to renowned physician in such little time still amazes him. But he does not have time wonder. With the recent outbreak of a Corellian flu strain, he struggles to tend to the droves of infected.

The comlink twined over his wrist rings twice, followed by the voice of a medical droid: "Doctor Nevaréz, your immediate assistance is required in Corridor B."

He twirls around, legs racing through aisles of full beds and empty faces. A child squeals as a nurse pricks them with a pointed syringe. An old woman attempts to lift herself from a hospital bed. Sickly strangers moan with complaints. Adrián tries to ignore them, but as a doctor, he knows it's impossible. Regardless, he winds down to Corridor B, where a worried nurse and a young girl lying on a stretcher greet him in silence. Her cheeks are bloodless, and eyes void of emotion. She's dying.

"Doctor, her symptoms are unlike anything I've ever seen," the nurse says. "Erratic seizures, encephalitis, jaundice. This isn't like the other patients or a mutated strain of the flu. It's an entirely different disease in itself."

Adrián shuffles forward to take a closer look. Gloves stiff against his fingers, he examines the inside of her maw and each eye with meticulous technique. A foul smell pours from her mouth, ulcers speckle her tonsils and palate like stars. Deep hues of yellow cloud her deadpan stare. Deterioration of the respiratory system? Liver failure? Speculation runs through his mind, yet before he can further examine the girl, her pupils begin to rapidly dilate. He stops and recoils immediately, right as she begins to violently convulse. Thrashing around, she digs her nails across her body, leaving behind savage lesions and a trickle of blood.

"That's no damn seizure!" He says, watching in shock as the stranger starts to tear herself apart. "Someone— I need help over here!"

His gaze instantly falls onto a pair of young ladies perched at a desk and enclosed in stacks of paperwork. "You two, drop whatever nonsense you're doing and hold this woman down. Now!"

Expecting them to instantly rush over to help, Adrián pulls a sedative from his pocket. One false move, and he could have his first patient death since arriving on Corellia.

@Swan @Zenya​

 

[Swan]

[beebox3=70%]"Sorry I was late. I got caught up around the city. Have you ever been to Corellia before? This is actually my first time."

Teelo clenched her pen hard with her first two fingers and her thumb; Lanna's detection of unease would be an understatement. The last thing she wanted to do on her old home planet was to admit it was her old home. The orphanage had been a long time ago and she had worked hard to put it behind her and focus on the present, if not the future. After a long pause and an uncomfortable silence her response was curt.

"A couple of times, yeah."

Teelo didn't even bother to look up at Lanna as she spoke. The vast number of bodies in the packed warehouse made the heat rise to a borderline uncomfortable level, which made Teelo's hands sweaty and slippery underneath her thin plastic gloves. She was just finishing what must have been her hundredth signature of the day when the pen slipped from her tight grip and spun away onto the floor. Teelo cursed loudly and pushed her chair back before dropping to the floor. Each of her actions was aggressive and exaggerated as she scrabbled around on the floor, a by product of her poor mood. It was at that moment, as Teelo grabbed her pen again, that she heard a man's hurried voice. It was audibly shocked and stressed and luckily not belonging to a Mon Cal.

"You two, drop whatever nonsense you're doing and hold this woman down. Now!"

Teelo rose quickly, banging her head on the underside of the desk as she did so. She cursed again, this time under her breath, before rushing to the physician's side. It was just a room over, but even then it took a moment or so to push through the thick density of people and equipment in the bright corridor , and Lanna would have almost certainly beaten her to it.

Teelo's hands closed around the woman's right shoulder before she had a chance to process what was really happening. The girl laid in front of her was little older than herself and Lanna, maybe eighteen or nineteen, but she was thin and pale skinned. Her eyes sunk deep into her skull, she peered out into the synthetic lights of the room as if searching for something in a thick fog, eye line not meeting any place on the ceiling but just staring. It was unnerving and Teelo was forced to look away from the yellowing eyes. The rest of her body was even less appealing. Despite the blemishes around her nose and mouth, Teelo could tell she had once been pretty. She had good bone structure, pronounced cheek bones and a symmetrical face, with features exaggerated by her weight. Her arms were eerily thin and the loose fitting white rag she had been wearing did nothing to hide her concave torso and skeletal rib cage.

Each arm was now under control fairly easily, although Teelo hadn't expected such strength from the girl. Dark lines of blood glistened as they trickled down her arms, chest, legs, anywhere she had been reaching for. The parts of her that weren't restrained still twitched and shook, like her wrists, which flicked around as if burning in acid. Her fingernails were yellow with stains of blood and the scaring on the back of her hand was gruesome. It was her legs that had the most scars, perhaps just because their length and lack of mass defined the scarred tissue, or perhaps because it was the easiest place she could reach with her nails. They kicked and struggled, making sharp sickly cracking noises whenever they came into contact with a solid object, but the girl didn't seem to notice.

Whatever had held this girls mind, it was horrific to watch and Teelo was thankful when the doctor sunk a long needle into the crashing lower thigh. Her movement instantly subsided and Teelo turned to see what Adrián was to do next. She was awe struck and speechless.[/beebox3]

 

[Zenya]

Lanna paused to look up, eyes flashing with minor surprise, when Teelo made her intentionally harsh words, apparent. She glared at the younger girl with wide eyes, mostly just curious. The girl's bad attitude didn't bother Lanna, so much as it made her wonder what her issue was. Sure she had been late, but it wasn't worth getting uptight about. At least, that's what she thought. It was easy to take the moral high ground when her counterpart with making it so simple to look like she was innocent, just by sitting back and being calm.

The girl cursed when she dropped her pencil, and Lanna looked back down at the documents, trying to make it seem as if she wasn't terribly interested in the girl's temper.

It was then, that someone called for them to come to his aid. A doctor. Lanna's attention snapped up and over her shoulder. There was a man tying to keep a woman down on the table. She was struggling, and convulsing, to the point that it looked painful for the woman. Jumping to her feet, the girl ran over to the doctor, along with Teelo. Teelo grabbed the woman's shoulder and arm, and Lanna tried to keep the young lady from kicking her legs out.

The scene itself was unsettling. The animalistic panic she seemed to be in, left scratches and bruises all over her body.

There was a moment when Lanna slammed her hand down to catch the girl's ankle, but she missed. By a lot, actually. Her leg snapped up, and nailed Lanna in the side of her head.

"Agh!" She brought her hand up to cover her now throbbing temple, just as the doctor managed to sedate the woman. Her partners in the ordeal pulled back, and Lanna wavered. Dizzy.

It was at that time, she let out a muffled cry, and sank to her knees. The lady had grabbed an unguarded needle, and sunk it deep into Lanna's side, just before she passed out. Lanna reached over, and yanked it out of her side, wincing.

"What is wrong with that woman...?"

 

[Deviant]

he pointed cusp of the syringe melts into the girl's lower thigh, the vastus lateralis, with utmost precision. Sedative agents surge through her arteries, streams to the heart, and floods into the remainder of her bloodstream in moments. A finger twitches, one eyelid pulls into a close. Her breathing slows as she rolls her head back against the stretcher. At last, her frenzied thrashes and wild convulsions recede into slumber. Although to his own surprise, the young woman did not go down without a final act: a separate sedative right into one of the attendant's side.

He rushes over as she drops to her knees, plucks the needle out, and slumps into unconsciousness. His arms clasp at the back of her neck, letting her head own loll across it if only to stop her from face-planting into the floor. An exhausted sigh floats from between the corner of his lips, framed into a wrinkled grimace. "It's moments like these I wonder why I'm still a doctor."

Pushing off from one knee and with one arm perched beneath her legs, Adrián lifts the girl into the air. He grunts. "You've either been eating one too many chor-cakes, or I'm just out of shape." Legs stiff, he shimmies forward and spreads her limp body on the nearest open stretcher. "Perhaps both."

A random, heavy snore whistles from the back of the girl's throat. Adrián stops himself from cackling— this was serious business, and in no way should an acclaimed doctor such as himself be so immature as to laugh at another's dilemma. Well, and her apparent friend was undoubtedly watching: he wasn't looking to alienate the pair who saved him from getting kicked in the face himself. So, turning around, he smiles down to the other girl. "Miss whatever-your-name-is, might you pass me that stimulant on the empty stretcher to your right? Can't have your friend, miss what's-her-face, sleeping on the job just yet."

@Zenya @Swan​

 

[Swan]

[beebox3=70%]Teelo only watched as the girl's foot cannoned into Lanna's temple, wincing slightly before Lanna collapsed and the girl's writhing subsided. What a disaster! She didn't believe in karma, but there was a shred of satisfaction on her face as Adrián struggled to lift her counterpart onto a stretcher. A hint of a smirk crept onto Teelo's lips, but it was immediately gone when Adrián turned to face her.

"Miss whatever-your-name-is, might you pass me that stimulant on the empty stretcher to your right? Can't have your friend, miss what's-her-face, sleeping on the job just yet."

Teelo let go of the girl's arm. She had been clutching tightly completely subconsciously and now her fingers were pale and stiff. Blood covered each digit, coming up to just before her second knuckle. Her plastic gloves protected her from any hygiene risks, but it didn't stop the wet smear transferring onto the glass casing of the stimulant Adrián had requested.

"It's Swan, by the way," she asserted as she handed over the now bloodied stimulant. "Teelo Swan." A hint of pride mingled into her voice. Whether or not Adrián would pick up offence at the comment 'whatever-your-name-is' was unsure, but it had definitely pierced Teelo's skin a little.

At that point Teelo looked down at her hands, covered in another girl's blood. She shuddered and peeled off her plastic gloves frantically, dumping them in a nearby disposal unit.

"I'm sorry sir, let me go wash my hands, I'll get some new gloves and be right back. I think I have some more paperwork to get on with anyway." She trailed off at the end and turned to go, though Adrián could easily stop her if he required her help urgently with other cases around the hospital (or, in fact, assisting in the care of Lanna herself).
[/beebox3]

 

[Zenya]

Lanna grogily opened her eyes. She was tired. Obviously. And the alcohol, mixed with the sedative, mixed with the stimulants, were not a good combination.

"Ouch," she muttered, stretching a bit. Above her was the doctor, and to the side of her was her new so called companion. processing the current scene, she put her head back down, and closed her eyes. Moaning in dramatic agony, as an immature teenage might in this situation, she rolled into her side. Then slowly into an upright position. Then, jumped to the floor.

Turning to the doctor, she reached out her hand to shake. "Hi, I'm Lanna. It's nice to meet you. You seem very attentive to your occupation. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to excuse myself, and I will be back early tomorrow morning. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm not sure you can't use me right now."

She held up a hand to show him that it was shaking ever do slightly.

"I do apologize." She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "Oh, and Teelo. I'll be looking forward to working with you in the future."

With that, she left the hospital.

@Swan @Deviant