re: Crisis Core
Apr. 20th, 2008 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonsheenQuestion: "So what's it like going through the surgery required to be in SOLDIER?"
Answer: "Like having your wisdom teeth out and then getting punched in the crotch."
He goes through about a million tests before they clear him. They take blood samples. They take a bone sample. They measure every single available fluid his body provides.
He’s run through an obstacle course ten times. He’s run through a full routine in the training room three times. They test his competency with swords, firearms, bare hands.
They weigh him in the morning. They weigh him at the end of the day. They take his height, too. He gets smart about this. He asks, ‘So, hey. I shrink any?’
The scientist with the tape measurer says: ‘Well, yes. The human body collapses on itself during the course of an active-’
‘Forget I asked,’ he says.
They stick sensors on his temples when he sleeps. They make him match numbers to colors. They interview him five times with the same questions. They throw things at him to test his flinch reactions. They give him an eye exam.
After about a month of this, he’s given a clean bill, told not to eat anything in the next twenty four-hours, and prepped for surgery. They take him to a small room where they have him sign a whole ton of papers. Formality, they tell him, as they list all the possible side effects.
‘Discomfort, swelling, nausea....’
‘What are my chances?’ he jokes.
‘Oh,’ says the startled assistant, sticking the pages in a cream-colored folder. ‘In your case? Approximately sixty percent.”
‘Sixty?!’
‘That’s very good,’ swears the assistant, looking nervous now. She fixes the folder, and goes back to the list: ‘Loss of appetite, irritability, disorientation, hair loss.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Only in about forty percent of all candidates in these last few generations.’
‘Does it grow back?’
‘Most of the time.’
It’s his fearlessness that puts them most on edge. He signs everything they give him. He strips down and puts on the drafty hospital gown. He laughs when they wheel him into the isolation chamber, flirts with one of the technicians as she checks the equipment, and the doctor when she arrives.
‘We’ll need you conscious for this procedure,’ she tells him, as they fix more sensors to the back of his neck, wrists, armpits. He lies on his stomach.
‘Good thing I’m used to needles.’
The needle for the injection turns out to be as long as his arm. The technicians set a heavy case beside the doctor. She inserts the needle into the valve at the top, measuring out a full syringe of hot green liquid that glows like the lights of the Midgar theater district.
Afterwards, they wheel him to a recovery cell. He spends the next seven days in agony. There’s swelling. He pukes up his stomach lining. Every inch of his insides feel like fire. It pumps through his heart, into his arteries, to his fingertips, then back into his veins.
He spends fitful moments between wakefulness and sleep, but he’s assed if he can tell which is which. There are hallucinations. First auditory—snatches of conversation from people he thinks he knows, and then shouting from people he doesn’t think are human. After that it’s low sobbing like a little girl, or an old woman, coming out of the floor, first softly, and then louder, louder, and louder until it’s all he can hear over the roar of the burning blood in his ears.
The visions come next. It seems like everyone he’s ever known comes to visit: his mom, his dad, the family dogs, his buddies back home, his recruitment sponsor, that cute girl from basic, General Sephiroth, the lunch lady from the staff cafeteria up near the offices...
When he wakes up on the seventh day, he’s shivering and still has all his hair. They tell him he’s survived internal temperatures that would’ve fried most people in their own juices. The fact that he’s survived makes him a SOLDIER.
First thing he asks is if anyone’s got a sandwich. Second thing he asks is if they’d switch off that weird light they’re shining on his face. They bring him some kind of porridge and a hand mirror. He gags on the porridge and has to wait for a needle packing the proper nutrients instead. He checks the mirror carefully. His skin is as white as paper. His hair is stiff with sweat and who knows what else. His lips are purple. His face is narrow and wasted. He has dark splotches around his eyes. His eyes are a hot, crackling electric blue. They burn back at him in the glass.
‘Not bad,’ he admits, hoarsely.
‘oh god shut up,’ croaks the next guy over.
The recovery period takes another month. He’s lost forty pounds in the process. He gains it back in muscle in about fourteen days. He can see in the dark. His heart now pumps at twice the speed. He eats more than a freshly aired chocobo. The only mark on him is a round burn scar at the insertion point, about the size of an egg. They put him through the tests again. He passes them all without breaking a sweat.
Answer: "Like having your wisdom teeth out and then getting punched in the crotch."
He goes through about a million tests before they clear him. They take blood samples. They take a bone sample. They measure every single available fluid his body provides.
He’s run through an obstacle course ten times. He’s run through a full routine in the training room three times. They test his competency with swords, firearms, bare hands.
They weigh him in the morning. They weigh him at the end of the day. They take his height, too. He gets smart about this. He asks, ‘So, hey. I shrink any?’
The scientist with the tape measurer says: ‘Well, yes. The human body collapses on itself during the course of an active-’
‘Forget I asked,’ he says.
They stick sensors on his temples when he sleeps. They make him match numbers to colors. They interview him five times with the same questions. They throw things at him to test his flinch reactions. They give him an eye exam.
After about a month of this, he’s given a clean bill, told not to eat anything in the next twenty four-hours, and prepped for surgery. They take him to a small room where they have him sign a whole ton of papers. Formality, they tell him, as they list all the possible side effects.
‘Discomfort, swelling, nausea....’
‘What are my chances?’ he jokes.
‘Oh,’ says the startled assistant, sticking the pages in a cream-colored folder. ‘In your case? Approximately sixty percent.”
‘Sixty?!’
‘That’s very good,’ swears the assistant, looking nervous now. She fixes the folder, and goes back to the list: ‘Loss of appetite, irritability, disorientation, hair loss.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Only in about forty percent of all candidates in these last few generations.’
‘Does it grow back?’
‘Most of the time.’
It’s his fearlessness that puts them most on edge. He signs everything they give him. He strips down and puts on the drafty hospital gown. He laughs when they wheel him into the isolation chamber, flirts with one of the technicians as she checks the equipment, and the doctor when she arrives.
‘We’ll need you conscious for this procedure,’ she tells him, as they fix more sensors to the back of his neck, wrists, armpits. He lies on his stomach.
‘Good thing I’m used to needles.’
The needle for the injection turns out to be as long as his arm. The technicians set a heavy case beside the doctor. She inserts the needle into the valve at the top, measuring out a full syringe of hot green liquid that glows like the lights of the Midgar theater district.
Afterwards, they wheel him to a recovery cell. He spends the next seven days in agony. There’s swelling. He pukes up his stomach lining. Every inch of his insides feel like fire. It pumps through his heart, into his arteries, to his fingertips, then back into his veins.
He spends fitful moments between wakefulness and sleep, but he’s assed if he can tell which is which. There are hallucinations. First auditory—snatches of conversation from people he thinks he knows, and then shouting from people he doesn’t think are human. After that it’s low sobbing like a little girl, or an old woman, coming out of the floor, first softly, and then louder, louder, and louder until it’s all he can hear over the roar of the burning blood in his ears.
The visions come next. It seems like everyone he’s ever known comes to visit: his mom, his dad, the family dogs, his buddies back home, his recruitment sponsor, that cute girl from basic, General Sephiroth, the lunch lady from the staff cafeteria up near the offices...
When he wakes up on the seventh day, he’s shivering and still has all his hair. They tell him he’s survived internal temperatures that would’ve fried most people in their own juices. The fact that he’s survived makes him a SOLDIER.
First thing he asks is if anyone’s got a sandwich. Second thing he asks is if they’d switch off that weird light they’re shining on his face. They bring him some kind of porridge and a hand mirror. He gags on the porridge and has to wait for a needle packing the proper nutrients instead. He checks the mirror carefully. His skin is as white as paper. His hair is stiff with sweat and who knows what else. His lips are purple. His face is narrow and wasted. He has dark splotches around his eyes. His eyes are a hot, crackling electric blue. They burn back at him in the glass.
‘Not bad,’ he admits, hoarsely.
‘oh god shut up,’ croaks the next guy over.
The recovery period takes another month. He’s lost forty pounds in the process. He gains it back in muscle in about fourteen days. He can see in the dark. His heart now pumps at twice the speed. He eats more than a freshly aired chocobo. The only mark on him is a round burn scar at the insertion point, about the size of an egg. They put him through the tests again. He passes them all without breaking a sweat.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 05:41 am (UTC)