TCOC - Week One - Formalities

[Farskit]

"Hey."

Toba shook the new guy by the shoulder.

"Hey," he repeated. This time it elicited an answer, the man startling and turning his face to look at him.

"You are going to want to get up," said Toba. "Unless you want to be..."

There was a soft but sickening wet sound against the man's left arm, lying inside the gutter.

"Yeah, that was part of a brain."

Much to his own surprise, Toba hardly felt digusted, though some part of his mind seemed to be wanting to scream at his innards to upheave when the man moved his arm out of the way and a minuscule tidal wave of fluid ran down the gutter, small parts of brain matter floating lazily behind it.

"Did they move you, too? They moved me."

"It's not a good sign," he added gloomily after a small moment. "I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here at all, I don't want to become... One of these," he said with a gesture at the opposite side of the row. As if on cue, someone - something, Toba corrected himself with a shudder, rammed itself against the bars in a nearby cage and began screaming. It seemed impossible to Toba that any human organ could have made that scream, yet it was unquestionable human hands gripping the bars.

"They're making them crazy, I don't know why. But you look sane."

[Inquisitor023]

"Lost a bet against my commanding officer," Donal began, "And to pay him back I had to dance the Imperial Salute on the lead Russ of an attached Support Company. Somehow, it brought me here."

Donal looked at Jesse for a moment - his face completely blank - before he smiled. "I'm kidding you, lad. Trying to lighten the mood. In all seriousness, we were taking on Orks and my Regiment was deployed to the rearguard. And before you claim coward, Artillery doesn't fare well in front of an Ork charge. At any rate... Them bastards out there came outta the sky and snatched up a bunch of us. Ended up leaving when they got caught. Made off with about a Platoon of men... And yourself, Jesse?"

[Anne Marie]

Vesper waited for Donal and Jesse to introduce themselves before she grabbed a hold of the man's broken arm and in one quick move, set the ulna. Donal's face went shock white from the pain, but he held back a scream and settled for making a high-pitched sound in the back of his throat. Or he did screamed, one voice drowned out by the mad cries of the others in cells further back.

"Always better to set a bone when you don't expect it. The anticipation isn't something anyone enjoys. If you're lucky, your radius isn't fractured but if it is, there's not much I can do about it. You might need a sling to hold your arm." With her limited medical experience, she set back Donal's nose, wiping his blood on her pants when she was done. Vesper nodded over at Jesse. "Do you have anything which needs to be fixed?"

[akiel"the conqueror"smith]

..." and yourself jesse?"

Jesse fidgeted uncomfortably and he looked down at the floor, shame shrouding his features. He sighed and would have answered if it were not for the audible crack, quickly followed by the scream, of donal's fractured bone being reset to drown out his reply.

His eyes widened as the medic dispassionately explained her healing method.

"Do you have anything that needs fixed?" Jesse shook his head vigorously. Even if he did have something that needed fixing he felt that maybe roughing out the injury would be best as opposed to the alternative.

"Wha-what about you,miss? How did you..." jesse paused as he turned his head over to the right and scanned the darkness as a particularly nasty scream was let out by someone further down the hall. "oh we're going to die..we're going to die" he said pitifully repeating the mantra while covering the top of his head as if expecting artillery fire from above.

[Anne Marie]

Watching the kid - and he couldn't have been older than twenty - rock back and forth on his heels, Vesper pursed her lips. For those who were still sane, they quickly distanced themselves from others. It was better not to give names, while learning them was useful only in as far as calling them out on the favours they promised. Those who were insane quickly ran the jailers or the bars to die through some maddened charge. And the few who hung by a very slim thread, such as Jesse, could go either way. Vesper hadn't been in the medical field long to have a trained eye for such things, though she knew people needed to talk about what happened to them. Commiseration, knowing that no matter how bad it was for you, there was someone else out there who had it marginally worse. A silver lining on a cloud piled high with skulls.

"At least you've come to the conclusion we all die, Jesse," she began. The boy looked ready to sob; Vesper scratched her head again. Turning to Donal with a shrug of her shoulders, the medic sighed. "You seem to be giving off more bluster than I ever can. What were you, a Commissar in training before you were captured? Maybe say something from the Primer to motivate the spirits or else Jesse might lose it here."

[Inquisitor023]

Donal managed to hold back a scream, but instead allowed a high-pitched noise in the back of his throat to come forward. The pain was total. He couldn't make out what Vesper said to him as the sound of his heart beating managed to block it out. He rolled face first into the ground, ignoring the dust, grime and unmentionable bits. After a few minutes he picked himself up. His hearing was returning, his control rushing back. Vesper was speaking to him again.

"-re you, a Commissar in training before you were captured? Maybe say something from the Primer to motivate the spirits or else Jesse might lose it here."

Donal nodded to Vesper softly - mostly understanding what was asked of him - before moving over to sit with Jesse. "Hey, kid. Look at me. Come on."

Jesse raised his head softly, half-looking. Donal decided it was enough.

He noticed how badly Jesse looked. He was pale and dirty and very much withdrawn.

"I served at this place called Attero, right? Worst place you could imagine. It was too hot, sandy, equipment broke down and there were no beautiful women. There were also these Orks. There was a lot of them. It was something like four groups of. I don't know. I was just a Trooper back then."

He paused for a minute and tried to read how the story was effecting Jesse. He couldn't tell. He looked at Vesper again, trying to read her. Again, he could not. He wasn't the best people person. It was what kept him an Armsman and not a Sergeant.

"Well," Donal continued, "The Orks were attacking us constantly. We all thought we were going to die. We didn't though. We pulled through." He smiled softly to Jesse, "Cheer up kid. We'll pull through. We always do."

He sought to remember some of the Prayers from the Primer. Something that might cheer him up.

"Do you remember the Prayer for Safe Return?" Donal asked. He didn't get a reply. He sighed softly and began to recite it. He knew this one well. He was afraid of Warp Travel.

"O Eternal Emperor, Who alone watches us, And rules the tides and storms, Be compassionate to your servants, Preserve us from the perils of the Warp, That we may be a safeguard to the Domain of Men."

[Salvin]

Seamus reamained limp as the pair of xenos dragged him along. He'd tried to escape already, the swollen eye and his blood stained jaw were testament to how well that plan went.

Finally his captors stopped in front of a cell. As he looked up he noticed it was already occupied by two people, although his eyes couldn't make out any details. He thought he recognised the sound of an Imperial prayer coming from a cell somewhere behind him, but just as he was beginning to hear some of the words he was uncerimoniously thrown forward into the cell, landing with a wet squelch in the gutter. His vision became blurry and it felt as if the cell was spinning. With a half moan half grunt, Seamus blacked out.

[Brannick]

Garvan attempted to blink the stars from his vision, they were like a shower of countless rose petals tumbling from the flower. His head swam as he got to his knees, his body ached in too many locations to count. His jaw was a constant sensation of venom barbs lancing time after time in to the sensitivity of the nerve endings, one moment excrutiating pain and then easing the next. As his vision slowly returned he made to vigorously shake whatever manner of awfulness was coating his hand - the splatter sizzled across the power field that kept them contained.

'I know what that is lad.' Garvan thumbed towards the creature in the cell across the way. 'And you gotta trust me when I say you don't want to be getting up close and personal if you catch my drift.'

'Shhhh, they're coming.' Huss was ungraciously hauled across to the far wall by his scruffy blond-haried cell-mate.

'You can't mistake a Cormek accent, am I right?'

'For Throne's sake, shut the hell up.'

Two of the dark keepers deactivated the power field and another unfortunate was thrown inside to land with a gelatinous splash across the gutter - the captors uttering some unknown dialect as they reactivated the shield and left.

'That poor bastard smells worse than I look.' said Garvan, his cell-mate just rolled his eyes as they both went to aid the new occupant.

[akiel"the conqueror"smith]

Jesse listened to Donals story intently, internally confused as to the moral of the story, other then he and his squad 'made it through'. Alot luckier then me and my lot then...

Panic rose to overwhelm him again as his mind took him back to when he and his squadmates and best friend were taken slowly one by one by the eldar.

"O eternal Emperor-"

He felt the panic rising in his gorget fall away slowly as donal recited the prayer of safety, anchoring himself to it and mouthing the words alongside him. He gulped to get a better grip on his fear and sighed.

"Thank you mate." was all he could manage before he reclined his head on the wall behind him and closed his eyes.

[Farskit]

"Help me put him in that corner."

Toba and Garvan rolled the inconscious soldier on his back and, together, managed to push him against the cell's wall with only a few instances of having the man's head accidentely bang against it. Propped up in a corner of the cell, he looked almost like he was sleeping, which worried Toba.

Please, let it not be one of the crazies.

He eyed the still unconscious man, half-expecting him to wake up with a scream at any time. When that didn't happen, he crouched in front of him and slapped him a couple of times, lightly at first then with more conviction. Seeing this yielded no result at all, he reverted his attention to Garvan.

"Cormek, that's correct. Not the Hive soldiery, mind you," he added, gathering his last remnants of pride to show his sleeve at his cellmate. "Airfleet crewman."

There, on the worn out fatigues, one could still make out the two steel wings on either side of two coiled serpents biting at each other. "They got us off-guard, that's how they did. Even the Commander didn't see them coming and they took us. Not all of us, but many, and then they turned and ran. That was yesterday, only yesterday."

"We were on our way home," Toba said miserably. "One jump away, even. I don't even know what they are - they're Xeno, aren't they? They kind of look like us, but they're not like us."

He thought briefly of the barbed armours, of the horrible tongue they spoke, of those vision slits that seemed lit from the inside by some otherworldy, unholy light and shuddered.

"How long have you been here? Do you know what they are?"