2019-03-29: Diagnosis

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  • Cutscene: Diagnosis
  • Cast: Elly van Houten, guest starring Citan Uzuki
  • Where: Shoreline, near Luca
  • Date: Shortly after arrival from Filgaia.
  • Summary: Elly is removed from the active party.

Elly watched the sun as it slipped behind some clouds. Her tremors had eased. Now, she could hardly feel them, unless she tried to move. So, she did not move.

She had eaten the soup that Fei had gotten her an entire world away. Dr. Uzuki - somehow, like a miracle - had come with them. He had arranged Elly and helped her out of her coat, which had been left in the sun to dry. The rest of her had laid comfortably enough on this soft sand beach.

Dr. Uzuki had given her a tablet of something and left her thus arranged, to tend to Leon. He had left her; a while later he had returned and done something with Ether. Elly could tell that the two of these treatments had helped. Dr. Uzuki had assured her that he did not expect a concussion - and as such, she could sleep if she wanted.

She did, a little, and woke up briefly - there was a commotion - but it was only another drifter, someone she didn't know. She saw Dr. Uzuki help the man ashore and had dozed again.

But now Dr. Uzuki was coming back to her.

"Elly," Citan said. Elly turned her head to look at him.

"Are you comfortable?"

"Yes," Elly said. The stammer in her voice was gone, though she spoke more carefully than she did.

"I apologize that I have not been able to sit with you. However, the hour draws late. I do not believe that Fei and the others are in any great danger or there would have been an alarm from the nearby settlement..."

Elly toyed with the soup cup.

"... My apologies. I have lost my focus."

Citan crouched down low, knees on the sand.

"I have made a preliminary diagnosis of your condition, Elly. I am afraid that I must speak in generalities and probabilities, as I do not have the tools necessary to confirm some of the details. As such, please take heart that I have described a 'worst plausible' scenario, and you are likely to exceed my expectations."

Elly's grip on the soup cup tightened. She could feel her stomach shifting, her abdomen tensing. She could feel the scared-mouse coldness and anxiety trickling out of her kidneys. She kept her eyes on Dr. Uzuki and said, quietly, "Alright."

He seemed as if he were waiting for that. For permission.

"Based upon your physical demonstration and lack of external injury, I believe you have suffered a quasi-hypoxic injury to your somatosensory cortex. This has led to a severe but reversible loss of fine motor control, but I cannot assess the injury to your quasi-visual responsivity levels due to the lack of neuro-imaging resources, here, it seems, upon Lunar."

Elly blinked several times. The words Dr. Uzuki spoke were, mostly, words she knew, but they swam in her mind. Had she heard him right? Was she too confused? 'Severe'. That was the word that stuck in her mind. She blinked once more.

"... Ah; I am getting ahead of myself! To express this in more pragmatic terms... you pressed yourself past a breaking point, and it has caused other injuries."

Elly protested, without much force. "I understand the anatomy of the brain a little, Dr. Uzuki..." She squirmed back against the rolled-up coat that Citan had set for her to recline against. "You're describing... Ether, right? Visualizing Ether circuits?"

Citan pressed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. "That is correct. You could think of that portion of the brain as being one, although not the only one, connected to 'Magical Abilities'. Symptoms such as yours are more familiar to me in the context of those with a low response factor using Symbological inscriptions to excess... normally, this is rare, as physical exhaustion sets in well before any risk of hypoxic injury to neural tissue. However, some individuals in excellent condition still management."

"I had never heard of such a thing," Elly said quietly, feeling like something had begun to seep out of her stomach. The coldness leaked.

"You were forced against an individual, or an individual-equivalent, of comparable ability of your own, yes?" Citan asked.

Elly nodded her head.

"Hm... they were superior in ability to you, weren't they?"

Elly did not reply, her eyes returning to her soup cup, empty though it was.

"Then, I imagine that the visualization effort of defending yourself from direct Ether circuit formation, combined with whatever counterattacks you made, overstrained the cells," Citan continued. "You were certainly occupied with other matters at the time, and the effects would take some time to manifest in any case..."

Citan trailed off.

Elly's attention returned to him.

"Elly... in the immediate aftermath of this encounter, did you have any perceptual changes?"

"Well... I found it harder to see all of the Malevolence around," Elly said, feeling embarrassment trickle up her cheeks. Would she have to explain Malevolence to Dr. Uzuki? Would this make sense? She wished she had hard copies of the training modules that had guided her in the growth of extra sensory perception. She wished she had anything. She wished Fei was there. She wished for a full second before Citan spoke.

"I see," Citan said. "This complicates matters."

Elly squirmed again. It was not voluntary.

Citan's tone became a full note gentler, and that, obscurely, was more frightening than what he said. "It is possible there is organic injury. But I doubt it will worsen. My "Sazanami" treatment would have repaired capillary injury, and as a first-class Solarian, you would have no organic prediliction to..."

"My mother was a surface-dweller," Elly said. Huffed, really.

"... I see," Citan said.

The doctor breathed deeply. Elly looked out at the sea again. It seemed less beautiful, now.

"... There are practical realities that you must be aware of, Elly, but it is not a matter we must discuss now. It may be easier if we await Fei's return," Citan said then: "Or, if Leon is awake..."

"It's bad, isn't it," Elly said, looking out to sea.

Citan began to say something - it sounded like, "From a certain," - and then he stopped.

He settled back to sit on the sand.

"Potentially," he said then, instead.

Elly looked at him. She blinked once, slowly.

"Do you wish to wait for Fei, or for us to join Leon?"

"... No," Elly said.

Citan nodded once.

"The scope of the injury is not clear to me," Citan said, "and so I must err on the side of caution. It would be extremely dangerous for you to use Ether in your current condition. Structuring even a simple circuit could lead to neuron cell death and capillary rupture, worsening your situation."

"Would I feel anything?" Elly asked, voice fainter.

"No," Citan said. "That is what makes this complex. The brain in and of itself does not experience pain... many neurological operations are done with the patient only partially anesthetized for this reason. The sophistication of your quasi-visual responsivity increases the danger... You could formulate a circuit and then close it - only to experience both circuit failure and neurological feedback."

He fell silent. Elly joined him. The Sun moved, just a little, before she spoke again, not really feeling the words.

"Will I get better?"

"Certainly," Citan said. "You are already recovering! You will need to retrain many of your physical skills, but you have not suffered serious physical injury other than this. Within several days you should be able to perform almost all life activities, and -"

"That isn't what I meant!!"

Citan fell silent, adroitly.

"We're trapped here, aren't we...?? We're on Lunar again, in unfamiliar territory, and you're telling me that I can't even use the one thing I'm any good for," Elly cried.

It was a cry in several senses of the term. Elly loathed how she felt like she was blubbering, loathed how the faint over-doing of laying in the sunshine was making her cheeks feel hot, hated how she knew absolutely that her face was getting puffy, hated how this miserable little nasal tone crept into her voice.

"I can barely walk and now I can't even stop a - a - wh, what -"

Citan shifted forwards and placed a hand on Elly's shoulder.

She froze. Slowly, she relaxed.

"My professional advice... is to treat this as if you had broken both your legs," Citan said.

Elly blinked several times.

Citan continued: "If Fei had broken his legs in battle... it would be weeks, at least, before he could fight again. Even with restorative Ether techniques the bones would take time to set, and he would doubtless lose some physical condition while healing. If he were to express feelings of uselessness to you during this period, what would you say?"

"He wouldn't be useless at all," Elly said, "but... that isn't,"

Citan slipped into the hesitation in Elly's voice with surgical precision: "Consider the attitude that you would hold, and apply it to yourself."

Elly's lips pursed up into a small, tight frown. Then they trembled. And shook more. She relaxed the cramping muscles of his face, and as Citan straighten up, he spoke with an air of conclusion.

"You should be able to walk with assistance by dawn... I will carry you for a short period, if it is necessary, Elly. You are a little smaller than my own wife, you know...!"

Elly felt a deep sudden surge of guilt as that fact slipped into her mind. Dr. Uzuki had been following Fei, she had known that much; he had been working with the Yggdrasil crew, but his wife... and he had had a child too, hadn't he?

They were on Filgaia, if they were alive at all, Elly knew.

Citan gazed out to sea.

"... Though," he said.

Elly's eyes opened again and turned towards him.

He cupped his chin in one hand. "You did not SOLELY learn Ether techniques in Jugend, yes...? Hm, hm. Perhaps that would speed recovery of motor control... Low-impact in the first days, of course... Yes."

"I have a recovery plan, Elly," Citan said. "But let us speak of this later. It is getting dark..."