Star Dust (A Paladin Adventure)

The next battle approaches

Thanks to Tapiona for the idea for Emma's reward!

When I woke up the next morning, I was surprised to find myself alone in the room. The nurse at least told me where Bucky was: Samuel had sent over new and upgraded components to interface with his organic parts and the yet-to-be built metal arm. These needed to be grafted on, a new collar implanted, and all of this had to be well healed before we could even think about attaching a new arm. Samuel sent along a packet for me too; a presentation for a 3D projector  that had details about the new neural net that he was working on. There were components inside as well as outside. It was going to be a real feat of engineering.

I had a visitor after my morning scan; Forge wanted to see me. It wasn't exactly a hardship to talk to him; he was so smart and creative and easy on the eyes--he was Cheyenne and rather desperately handsome. He was a little bit abrupt, but I thought that this was because he spent so much time inside his head. He carried a lump of metal, flattened into planes here and there, twisted in others, crushed and completely messed up. I couldn't begin to discern its function. I looked up at Forge in puzzlement.

"This was Barnes' arm," he told me.

I huffed out a breath; when Bucky said it had been damaged, I knew he'd been hiding something from me, but I could not begin to contemplate how this much damage had been incurred. No wonder his shoulder had been so messed up. I cradled the arm to me and looked up at Forge.

"Do you know what happened? I didn't think this level of damage was even possible. There's a hefty chunk of vibranium in the alloy."

"Is there?" he asked, sitting in Steve's chair. "I wondered, it's so durable. Everybody in the vicinity saw you go down in the strafing run, then the pilot banked and came around, lower than before, which was his undoing. Barnes jumped onto the wing and started smashing the cockpit area to get inside. He literally ripped through the metal and whatever they use for glass; it's a lot tougher than anything we have."

"Do you have a sample?" I asked, diverted.

He dug in his pocket and handed me a sample. Thinner than I would have expected, it didn't fracture like glass, even shatter-resistant glass. Or plastic, come to think of it. I looked inside and listed out the elements I saw, most prevalent to least. Then we had a chat about my abilities. Forge was interested in Bucky's arm and seemed disappointed that I only made it, but I gave him Samuel's contact information. He had two cybernetic limbs of his own and had some great ideas. I got excited to hear what he was interested in doing, and we had a conference call from the hospital room. Samuel wanted to come over immediately to work with Forge, and after the call ended, Forge left to set it up. I spent some time until the nurse and doctor came by trying to figure out what had been done to the arm. I thought that the twisting came first, then a tear in the wrist, then something crushed a couple of areas, and the flat planes had been produced, I thought, by somebody in a temper who was using it as a club by that time. The inside showed plainly that nothing could be working in it. Attachments had been torn free, all the cables and sensors had snapped, and it looked like a few of the fingers were missing.  I set it aside when the doctor came in with the cheery  that it looked like this would be my last dose of the concussion medicine. Thank heaven. I'd been through not only the ant scenario and the unfortunate orgasm trigger, but also a point where everything had smelled like cheese, where my hearing had become overly acute, everybody's faces had looked like gerbils, my coordination and motor control had gone haywire, it had sounded like everyone had  a Swedish accent, and it had been difficult to read. Then everything had tasted like cake batter, which, given the clinic food, wasn't terrible.

I stayed awake through the bland and uninspiring lunch, then took a nap, waking in mid-afternoon when Bucky was brought back from his surgery. He was still groggy and went back to sleep almost immediately. The nurse said his surgery had gone perfectly, which was a relief. I took a nap too, waking when they brought me in for the afternoon scan. When I opened my eyes, everything was in plaid. I groaned, and when I reported this, the nurse laughed. Apparently they'd had a pool going where they guessed what part of my brain would express something differently. Nobody had picked plaid. This was in hues that I normally liked: royal blue, turquoise, lavender, but I didn't like seeing the world like that. It looked like a freaking Snapchat filter. I hoped this would go away as quickly as the auditory stimulation orgasms had. After the scan, I slipped a little getting back into the wheelchair and I felt a blast of pain. When the nurse took a look, it seemed like the infection had returned. She called the doctor, and they examined the wound, which had started to turn red and white just from this morning. They had to open it up, clean out the pus and affected tissue, treat it, and a drain was installed. When I got back to the room after all the unpleasantness, Bucky was still out, which was good. I needed a moment to deal with this setback. An x-ray had shown that there was no visible foreign objects in or around the injury. The doctor said that they felt that it was something to do with the projectiles themselves; others who had injures from them were also having trouble with infections.