OOC:

Seeing how Crest was heavily injured in the HSC, this is just a quick story detailing how he is healed and returns to active combat status.

As usual questions, comments, feedback, critisms, and inconsitencies should be PM'ed to me.

Blackness pulsed in his vision. The only thing in front of him was white. White was the ground. White was the sky. White was everything. White was nothing. White was second only to black, which was attempting to choke it out. White versus black. The white put a courageous fight, but, just like sand when it fights the ocean, it was losing.

“Nurse! Is he alive?” somebody yelled. It didn’t sound like a Blackjack trooper voice, a cheerful voice with a measure of crazy in it, nor was the voice one of the Blackjack’s commanders, both of them unique in their own way. The voice was seasoned and grizzled with an even temperament, one unique and not from Blackjack. The only other group of friendly soldiers with them was the Advanced Recon Commandos, so it had to have been one of them.

The omnipotent, pulsing blackness snuffed out the white, like a candle without oxygen.

------------------------

“Casualties go this way! Casualties go this way!”

“Hey, Hey! We’ve got three over here.”

More shouting ensued. If the noise was any indicator of orderliness, the entire area was in chaos.

Words, more closely uttered, were heard. “Man, he looks bad. What happened?”

“Uh, we don’t know, actually. We weren’t with him at the time. He just came crawling back in horrible shape.”

“He’s gonna be a challenge for the medical team.”

------------------------

“He’s stabilized for now, but we’re going to have to monitor him every second. If something goes wrong, we’ll have a very narrow window to correct it or else we’ll lose him. Miake will be here in five hours to relieve you. You’ll come back ten hours after that to relieve Arutikar from his shift.”

“Will he get better?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

------------------------

“No, YOU don’t understand! Somebody with a bigger paycheck than both of us wants him to be able to go back into combat. He’s one of those rare SCOPE troopers. Not to mention, I’m being pestered for these annoying ‘situation reports’ nearly every six hours. Get him up and moving.”

“His skin’s shredded. His muscles are torn up, and he received inadequate care on the ground, which even further harmed him. He won’t be moving anywhere near combat for the next six months, if you factor in rehab!”

“Then why in the world are you dumping him in bacta when you could be giving that tank to someone else!?!”

“Do you want him moving in six months or never to move again!?!”

Silence ensued for a moment.

“I don’t care what it takes, and I’ll give you anything I can. Get him up and moving within four days.”

--------------------

“Have you already got a plan within six hours?”

“I called my team together, and we came together with this idea.”

“Hmm...wait, you need an IG-100 Magnaguard? Why?”

“One thing we factored in while we were brainstorming is the closeness of the droid’s structure to the form of the body of the patient. Also, remember that a Magnaguard was a combat droid, so its servos would be quite durable.”

“Okay.”

Silence was punctured by beeping of the status monitors attached to the bacta tank.

“So let me get this right. You want to remove the droid’s wiring, replacing them with his nerves, and integrate the entire droid, minus the head, into him. Then, you’ll quickly clone skin and put it into him. However, you did not specify a recovery time, and, while you’re at it, what are the risks and side-effects?”

“Yes, you got the plan quite right. This’ll allow the droid’s structure and servos to keep him up until the muscles recover. Once the muscles do recover, his strength will greatly gain in a short time, before leveling off. The skin we’ll clone will be altered so that the fringes of it die off first, allowing the true skin to grow in seamlessly. The risk would be nothing that is not already involved in any surgery. As for the side effects, while the muscles will recover significantly, they will probably never be able to return fully to their former strength and will have to be complemented with the servos for the rest of his life, if he wishes to stay within a combat capacity. As for this surgery’s recovery time, it’ll be maybe a hard day at the obstacle course to get used to the droid’s muscles. There is one thing, though. This surgery will take thirty-six hours, so my team will have to be relieved from all of our duties for two days. We’ll split into two teams and, in three shifts, conduct the surgery.”

“Do it, and...good luck.”

--------------------

“Can you hear me?”

Crest shook his head slightly, trying to clear it. Bright lights shone onto his face, and he instinctively shut his eyes trying to clear the white out. It still shone through, though. He tried to bring his hands to block the light. They were stopped immediately by something that was padded.

“The light’s hurting him. Turn it off! Turn it off!” somebody yelled and then continued in a gentler voice, “Hold on, just relax, we’ll turn it off. Don’t worry.”

The light shutoff and the dim secondary lighting of the operating theater revealed Crest’s surroundings. The room was packed to the brim with various machinery, including a bacta tank resting in the far corner.

“We need to check for amnesia, so just bear with us, please. Can you tell me your name?”

“Titan Godown.”

“Good. Your rank comes next.”

“Private Second Class.”

“Technically incorrect, but since that was the last rank you knew, I’ll let it slide. You’ve been promoted to Private First Class.”

A promotion? I was promoted? I wonder why.

“Alright, next thing is ID line.”

“Trooper, Private Second, sorry, First Class Titan ‘Crest’ Godown, Third squad, First platoon, First Company, First Battalion, First Regiment.”

“Alright, there’s just one last thing. You’re going to have to demonstrate your skill on the obstacle course. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not one bit. In fact, I’d enjoy it.”

“Good, just be careful.”

Bending over, the doctor released the padded straps on Crest’s neck, wrists, and ankles. Crest swung his legs off the table and proceeded to take a step. His foot shoved him forward, beyond normal strength. It was as if his foot had not lost strength, but it had gained it strength at an exponentially high rate every day that he had had no consciousness. 

“It’ll just take some getting used to. Don’t worry. You’ve just lost some of the control over your body that you had.”

The doctor led him out of operating theater and into a maze of hallways. At the end of the confusing route, the doctor opened up a door leading into the obstacle course, resembling one of those which had been one of Dirge’s favorite torture tools to use on the recruit (and his fellow recruits) that messed up.

“You’re going to go through the obstacle course. I’ll be back soon enough.”

The doctor walked out. Crest lined up on the first stretch, which was essentially a fifty meter dash, followed by a ten meter swim. He lightly flexed his foot, this time attempting to be ready for the unusual push it was to give him. He still wasn’t anywhere near ready. He lunged forward and dived ungracefully onto the floor. He pushed himself up using his arms, and promptly completed an ungraceful back-flip. His arms, like his legs, were much more powerful than before. The doctor had done something, which the doctor was not quite ready to share. Crest knew he would have a battery of questions for the doctor when he came back. Until then, though, he was going to have to get used to his new strength that he had. He gingerly pushed himself up, managing to get on his feet without further incidents, and walked forward into the obstacle course.

Running can come later; right now, I’ll settle for just functioning.

--------------------

“It’s been twelve hours, and I’d say he’s doing pretty well with his new body.”

Two cursory glances, by two different people, showed that a leaping, running, and blurred form was running the obstacle course.

“Okay, I’ll get down there.”

--------------------

Crest leaped off the line of pillars that served as the obstacle course’s ending, just as the doctor entered the course. Instead of slowing down, Crest pushed his new body farther in speed than he had yet. The doctor calmly stood there, fully expecting Crest to slow down and stop. However, Crest had a radically different idea. He struck the doctor, shoulder first, slamming the doctor into the wall. Not waiting for the doctor to recover, Crest stepped back and clamped his hand onto the neck of the doctor. Pushing him against the wall, he raised the doctor, so that his feet were dangling about two inches off the ground.

A menacing tone emanated from Crest, “What did you do to me?”

“Just... let... me... down, and... I’ll...explain.”

“NOW!” yelled Crest, slamming the doctor against the wall.

“We... had to... integrate...a Magna... guard...into you... to support... you”

Dropping the doctor, he let this new information sink in.

So they did do something. And that explains the extra strength.

“Fine, you did what you had to, but I’m done with you. Where’s my squad?”

OOC:

Uh...Uh...Uh, that's it, folks.

Anyways, back to useful comments.

The title of the story has multiple meanings and allusions:
1. The state of how Crest is (well, was now)
2. The writing style I employed
3. How he was put into such a state (a frag grenade, check the Blackjack HSC thread.)