2017-05-31: They Call Us Crazy
- Log: They Call Us Crazy
- Cast: Elhaym van Houten, Kahm Yugh
- Where: Bledavik, Noble Quarter
- Date: May 31, 2017
- Summary: Elly pays Kahm a visit while he recuperates in the hospital only to receive her next assignment, of a sort.
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
It's been a cantankerous past few days for Captain Kahm Yugh.
The medical staff attending the Captain had updated him to critical status by the forces deployed to Adlehyde had returned to Bledavik. Physical trauma, blood loss, and a few broken ribs were nothing they couldn't handle...provided they had the proper facilities.
Said facilities had been running at peak status with the wounded for the past 48 hours, and Kahm's rank was entirely useless in getting his caretakers to let him do anything but lie in bed and be riven with IVs, scanners, and various medigels. Finally, his condition at stabilized that he was moved to general room for a few more days, and even allowed visitors.
Not that the man requested or expected any. The first thing he'd asked (demanded, more like) was a mobile officer's tablet so he could follow up on some reports and mission details while he rested. He was currently in the midst of doing exactly that, tapping at the screen with a constant low-grade level of frowniness.
Nothing he saw pleased him.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Not even... ELLY?
To be fair, Elly got off lucky. She got an abdominal scan but it seems that the crisis healing Ether jolts managed to seal up anything that had separated or started bleeding internally, and so she was put on several days' limited duty to let the bruising resolve and see if the scans were wrong.
And that was it. She had a bruised tummy and was on a liquid diet for two days. Not even one of the harsh ones. It was pretty much just the low residue stuff they feed you before you go on a 36-hour Gear patrol.
Sooooo...
"Captain," Elly says, approaching the bed at which Kahm is reclined. She is in the summer cut of the stock uniform, which practice means 'bare arms.' She stands at the foot of the bed, upright and at attention. She does take the liberty to say, with one of those smiles of hers, "You look like you're recovering well..."
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
There was a brief moment of awkward silence when Elly arrived as Kahm turned a potentially relevant question over in his head: Had he sent her a summons and forgotten about it, or had he forgotten to do that only for her to come by anyways?
"Lieutenant." He spoke as soon as he decided it didn't matter, placing his tablet in his lap and adjusting the bed to set him a little straight. He grunted at the topic of his recovery, "I should be back out there already, but these doctors are a bunch of worrywarts, paid to have opinions and little else. I'll take field medic any day of the week."
Kahm sighed, and noted the fresh cut of the Lieutenant's uniform with modest approval, chafing all the more at the hospital gown he was stuck in for the next few days. "You're looking far better for the wear yourself." He said, finding the Elly's smiling demeanor a far cry from the gaunt-faced, spent woman he'd seen on the ride out of Adlehyde, "Good. I hear the Lieutenant Commander has her hands full with the brass right now-she'll need people like you and Lieutenant Voss to keep the reality of what happened fresh in ther mind." He paused, "...how is Lieutenant Voss?"
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly smiles again. There are hints of dimples. "Don't be in a hurry... you have to be at your best, and we're not in a crisis any more." Sort of. Well. The Metal Demons aren't storming Bledavik, anyway. She takes in a deep breath, and then -
Looks guilty. That comes to her easily. "I slept for a while," Elly admits. "And... it was really bad, but I guess I bounced back. I'm not supposed to get struck in the abdomen until the end of the week, though. They were very specific."
Elly steps towards the side of the bed now - tending to the left - and looks away from Kahm. "Um. I haven't kept up with him, since I suppose they put him straight to work. I don't think he was badly injured. But he was overwhelmed, a little, I think... Ortell had to walk me through doing a spot repair on her, um." Elly gestures vaguely at her tricep area.
"It was all so hellish, though," Elly says, looking towards the gauzy nylon curtain that makes for some pretense of privacy. "... I wonder how many survived..."
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
The Lieutenant might have been around Kahm long enough at this point to know that the way his mouth grimaced slightly meant he knew she had a point. For whatever reason, the demons seemed content to respect the Aveh/Adlehyde border. They remained on alert, but signs seemed to suggest they had no concerns foe a deeper incursion.
"I see. Well, i'm sure he'll be capable with whatever they put it to." The Captain crossed his arms and glowered in silence. He may have been out of his mind enough to have actually said something about Voss's brother before he passed out. May have to make that up later.
"That's...the Lieutenant Commander's bodyguard, yes? New arrival, sports some of that cybertech like one of the Elements does." He nodded at the gesture, "She'll be a good asset. Admirable performance in the field."
The subject of the dead is a grim one by nature, and Kahm points his gaze out the window, somewhat relieved to find a blue sky once again. "I was deployed at Elru when that happened, you know. I'd maybe been on the surface for as long as you have back then." He shook his head, "Hell of a time to start your service, and Adlehyde isn't much better."
But that was the world they lived in, and like it or not they still had a job to do. "It's convenient you came by, Lieutenant." Kahm cleared his throat, "There's actually something i'd wanted to discuss with you."
He turned the tablet in his lap to the side slightly, so the Elly could see what he'd been looking at: Footage of the black gear, SLIDE-1, and it's activities in Adlehyde. It must have been video captured by the carrier craft they'd had.
"Refresh my memory, but how many times have you encountered the pilot of SLIDE-1, this Fei?"
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"Yes sir," Elly says. "She was amazing." It helped that Cardia wasn't hopped up on goofballs like Elly was, but then if Elly hadn't been hopped up on goofballs she would have been even more useless.
Then she looks towards Kahm - and her face colors slightly at the mention, even as she looks at the computer and the video framecaps. "Oh! I."
Elly is silent for about two seconds. "I'd say... four times. During the initial incident, where we were temporarily cooperating in the Dazel forest zone... The one time on the streets in Adelhyde; the time in the tea shop when we conversed and he surrendered into custody, and... Then, if you can count that."
He was looking at me, Elly thinks. Fei... Why did you have to get involved like this? Even after you escape, you didn't run...
If it wasn't for that, I'd probably be dead now, Elly thinks further. Sorrow crosses her face, turning down her lips and lowering her eyelids slightly in its passage.
"I suppose I made an impression..."
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
"That's what I thought, too." Kahm nodded his head, considering each and every event the Lieutenant listed off. Their initial cooperation, Adlehyde, voluntarily surrendering into her custody...and just now. "I was reviewing this video footage ..." He says, turning his attention back to the tablet and drawing his finger across the timer to rewind the recording, "I noticed a few interesting things about his interactions with you."
There's just enough time while Kahm finds the point in the video he's looking for that Elly may wonder what it is he'd seen.
"Here it is." The Captain said, playing the video back on somewhat grainy footage of what Elly had already experience: Her battle with the unknown cultist, Fei's sudden decisiveness, and eventually terrible retribution on the cultist after he'd punched the Lieutenant's stomach back to Etrenank.
"I wouldn't quite call it protectiveness..." Kahm ruminated, pausing the video, "But he does seem to have taken a rather...unique interest in you, don't you think?"
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly's face reddens a little more.
"Er... Well, I suppose so. When -"
Elly hesitates, then completes the sentence. "When I took him into custody, he asked me to take care of a piece of personal property - it was a sketchbook. I ran it through a scanner and it was just what it appeared to be. It seemed to ease his mind, and I thought it was likely he'd end up transferred after being debriefed..."
Elly didn't mention that in the report, of course, although the picture of Fei her report has presented are best summarized as 'muscular and reasonably clever, probably being gulled by 'the Doc'.'
After this she trails off, though from her posture she's expecting chiding.
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
Kahm says nothing for a moment, leaning back into the raised part of his bed and knitting his brow in contemplation. Elly seems safe from any upbraided for now.
"I've had a lot of time to think in this damned bed." Kahm admits, looking over at his IV feed, "More than I would like, obviously. Like your report proposes, I agree that this 'Doc' is the true mind behind the scenes. Whether's he's a some rogue terrorist or some other kind of agent altogether I can't say, but he was probably the driver of the vehicle that delivered SLIDE-1." And wouldn't you know it, not a single eye in the sky they'd had managed to get a good look at who was behind the wheel.
"Whatever else he may be, neither you or I should forget that Fei is a 'lamb'. Dangerous, yes, but also easily led."
He turns to Elly then, eyes clear and principled, "There's only so much I can rightfully command you to do as your duty, Lieutenant. We're soldiers after all, not spies." He said this, blithely passing over the fact that everything they'd done over the past few months seemed more in line with spywork, "That said...his fixation on you may be to our advantage. If he'll help you when he thinks you're in danger, than it may be possible he'll help lead you to this 'Doc'."
Kahm shifted somewhat uncomfortably in his position-they had better let him walk soon. "I'll want to clear it with the Lieutenant Commander first, but.." He tilts his head, "You getting closer to him could bring us closer to resolving this issue than all of my efforts have done."
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly looks at Kahm then as he speaks, attentive and even piecing together what he is saying. Her eyes turn downwards then when the discomfort enters Kahm's voice, but then she can see the thrust of matters.
Elly's eyes close for a moment.
She thinks back to Loren saving people in blood and agony; to the stout men who, for all their pigheaded idiocy, have fought with honor and dispatch on the front; to Cardia, whose own body has been ripped apart. Kelvena, her comrade Tolone. Even the Lieutenant Commander herself.
Even the Black Ties. Criminals! Robbers! Arsonists! And yet they fought with bravery even if it may have been blind and crude, forged in the dirt of the surface. What have /I/ done, Elly thinks, other than throw my body in the way of a maniac and take notes?
"... I understand, captain. I'm willing to do it." Her eyes open again, though she doesn't look at his face. Smoothing her skirt out of perhaps an overabundance of nervous tension, she says, "I suppose I'm suited for this, aren't I?"
<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.
"Look at me, Lieutenant."
Provided Elly can, she'll find the Captain with a flat, serious expression. His eyes hold all the gravity and resolve in them as when he was ordering them in Adlehyde.
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not telling you to even do so much as hold his hand. I'm telling you to use your intelligence and resourcefulness as a soldier to get close this man, this dangerous man, and bring him and his associate into our hands before they can do more damage. I wouldn't ask you to do this if I didn't think you had more than your looks to serve you, so drop the pity party."
Grunting, he pulls himself back up, inspirational fire simmering in his voice "None of us are here because we were the darlings of Etrenank. Back there they call us crazy for even thinking of leaving the safety of Solaris, for daring to think we could actually do something of consequence for this miserable world." He frowned, his eyes narrowing as if seeing something very far away, "But I don't need their somnolent sense of safety, and I suspect you don't either. You, Loren, myself...even the Lieutenant Commander. We all had our reasons for coming here."
Kahm gave her a commanding look that far outstripped his present state and said, "Whatever yours is, remember it. Remember it enough to hold your head up high and do your duty with pride."
At that, a sudden cough to the side interrupts the diatribe, drawing their attention the silhouette of a nurse behind the curtain. "Sorry to bother.." Her nasally voice spoke, "But we need to take a few daily diagnostics on the Captain."
"Vultures." Kahm muttered, heaving his shoulders helplessly, "Well Lieutenant, I suppose you're dismissed." Even though he hadn't formally summoned her, "Mind your injury, and i'll be in touch."
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly can, and does.
And then she's trapped in eye gaze rays again! This keeps happening to her. She winces faintly but discernibly when the pity party is called, but guilt is a motivator.
Maybe I don't need it, Elly thinks.
Maybe I do have an inferno in me, like they said. Straightening up, she says, "Yes, sir!" With more emphatic force than she expected. It did not, perhaps, light a fire in her eyes, but between that moment of being abashed and that connection, the effect is electric.
Of course she can't just march out and go seize SLIDE-1 on her own. Especially when a nurse is present. Elly ends up sidling aside, saying to her, "Oh, yes, of course, thank you so much -- Please take good care of him --"
Well, the fumbling apologetics will take time. Nothing is instant. Having been dismissed, Elly lingers in the field of view outside of the curtain for a moment, raises one hand in a salute, and about-faces on out the door.
LATER, Heimholtz says, "What got into her?"
Renk looks up from his foil-wrapped pouch of meat floss. "Something. Hell if I know."