Mirage

//Five: The Town

Despite the fact that their species occupies only a single planet, outside of military circles the ITRA are largely viewed with suspicion and hate. Among some groups, their fangs can be used as currency. This has led many ITRA traveling outside of their home world or Metal City to be violently assaulted and have their fangs ripped from their mouths. Many who resist these assaults are quickly killed.

The six mike hike back to the house wasn't a hike as much as it was an agonizing slug. It took about ten minutes after the raid ended for the mother of an unholy itch to set in on my torso, arms and face, which was very promptly followed by a burning sensation that I could compare to burning yourself with hot glue. That, combined with the fact that my super light materials card seemed to have stopped working, and the fact that my fatigues kind of felt like broken glass ripping apart my skin, told me I had picked up a rather stiff case of Sun Poisoning, fancy way of saying that the UV Raid left me sunburnt as fuck boy. Matter of fact, things were so bad that about 30 minutes after leaving the raid sight I actually lost my legs out from under me because it hurt so fucking badly. That was when I learned that Fish was rather sunburnt herself, and was so tired from it that her Relic couldn't draw enough Veil Energy out of her body to fix the issue, which meant we were going to have to fix it the old fashioned way. Not ideal, given the circumstances. Plans to move out upon cleaning the ash and sweat off were scrapped, as upon arriving back, Ghost, Fish and I all had some rather nasty bleeding wounds caused by our gear digging into our burnt skin. I ended up having to wait until Fish and Ghost were done in the bathroom before I got a chance to get to the mirror and have a look. It took a bit of effort to get my clothes off, due to the fact that they were stuck to the skin underneath, and any attempt to tug at them peeled off more and more skin. When I finally did get them off, I wasn't convinced that they could be saved. They were stained with blood, sweat, Mould Ash and god only knew whatever else that had been leaking out of me during the ruck back. The whole situation was made worse by the fact that, between the three of us, we didn't have enough gauze to go around, and we didn't have any real medicine to treat sun burn. While it wasn't so bad on my legs that I couldn't still wear BDU pants, I certainly wasn't going to be footing a 20 mag split rig and a 100 pound ruck anytime soon. Ergo, I dug out my black night shirt after cleaning and bandaging my injuries as best I could. I never liked medicated ointment much, but bruh I was wishing I had some. Since I was last in the line, the duty of loading and running the washer fell to me. As I was drenching the fatigues with the last of our detergent, Fish, looking red in the face, approached me. The pain and the itch subsided only a little bit, just enough for me to notice it, not enough to matter.

"Sure hope that basic bitch detergent is up to the task." She quipped.

I nodded, "Yeah...sure doesn't seem like its good stuff."

"How bad are you?" She asked.

"Bad. My superlight card quit working", I yawned, "Ruck dug holes into my sides and shoulders, chest rig rubbed a hole in my stomach."

"Lemme see."

Yes, your sister being your combat medic is as awkward as it sounds. I lifted my shirt and she expertly peeled the bandages back, sounding like she felt second hand pain when she observed the holes that my ruck had burrowed into my side. I really needed to do something about that fuckin' sharp ass frame.

Fish grimaced as she replaced the bandages, "Yeah, you're probably the worst of all of us. Luckily the Relic's starting to come back, but it won't be back in full force until I can get some sleep."

"I'm not going anywhere like this, that's for sure. Problem is, who gets to stay awake and keep Ren and Hornet from killing each other?"

"You mean keep Hornet from attacking Ren?" Fish asked, "Dunno. I'm certainly not going to do it. I have to sleep or we lose our healing abilities."