About a week later Kadance and Dr. Bugs were summoned into the administrator's office. There they were met by not just the administrator but with Jayse, Thompson and another man. The administrator welcomes them, "Dr. Bugs, Nurse Kadance this is General Rueton from Warrior Command. Lt. Jayse and Corp. Thompson I believe you already met." As the greetings died down the administrator excuses himself and leaves.
Kadance and Dr. Bugs look at each other in surprise the administrator never leaves people alone in his office. Before the surprise wears off completely the general asks them both to sit down. The general himself takes the leather chair behind the desk. The only comfortable chair in the room. Kadance smiles to herself at that.
Rueton's voice breaks into her revery. "Let's get down to business should we? First off Dr. Bugs, we've had our eye on you for quite sometime. We haven't contacted you before because, well quite frankly we thought your attitude would cause you trouble. From the reports here it almost cost you your life. I think had it been anyone other than Lt. Jayse here you'd be dead and this conversation would never have taken place. Yet, he assures me in this report that you are able to learn from your mistakes and even be humble enough to apologize. Is that so Dr.?" The general pins the Dr. with his stare.
"I, yes, sir." Dr. Bugs stutters out.
"Amazing a doctor that is humble. I didn't know it was possible." The general stares at the doctor for a bit longer before returning to the papers before him.
"An offer was made to you, by these men and approved by Command to become part of the Warrior class. You see doctor, we need men that learn from their mistakes. We soldiers have a tendency to be arrogant. We take chances. We need good doctors, the best, to save our hides. If you think you're that man we want you yesterday. Are you able and willing to join our Medic team?"
More than a little dazed doctor Bugs manages to nod his acceptance. Then General brings out some papers. Thompson goes and collects them and hands them to the doctor. The general continues speaking as Dr.Bugs looks over the papers. "Go clear out your domicile. You have until 1400 tomorrow. Report at Gate 27, 1400 to be transported to your training. Those are your orders and information you'll need." Dr. Bugs is clearly stunned at how quickly things were moving and barely managed his leave taking.
The General sits back in his chair with his hands together fingertips only touching. He watches Kadance. Kadance gets tired of being looked at like an insect on display.
"Do you always watch people like they are flies pinned on a board and you're trying to decide how to dissect them?" Then she adds on a belated "sir."
That startles a laugh out of the general. "No, nurse. Not everyone, just the most interesting ones. You were brought to our attention ten years ago, but disappeared before we could contact you. Then Corp. Thompson sent us this." The general dims the lights and brings up a 3d vid. It starts out with the footage from the day she lost her sister. Then the simple words typed in 'we found her'. Then the new video starts up with her reining in Jayse at the diner and then cuts over to the beach were she reams into Jayse.
The audio is crystal clear. She refuses to watch the video. She remembers all to well the scene that takes place. Her face turns bright red as she listens and remembers what happened that night. At least by the time the end comes it's too dark to see anything. But the words are crystal clear.
When it finishes the general speaks, "When the Command staff played that, you had us frozen in our seats. For a full five minutes after we couldn't speak for our amazement." Here the general leans forward in his seat, "No one has ever managed to stop a, what's the term Thompson uses? Oh yeah, 'redline suicider', appropriate that term, once they started their action. Not once, ever without a great many deaths first. Yet you stopped him before he made his first kill. Before you could have even registered he'd moved. You stopped him flat.
"Thompson would've tried. That's why he was following you. But the chances are you and closer to 90% of this city would've been dead before we could've finally neutralized him. You stopped him cold. Then after taking him away from others you give him a lecture that takes away any ability he has of ever going suicidal, without major provocation, ever again. You cut out the ground from beneath him. Then you made him laugh. Then you strike him. Never before have we seen anyone do anything so brave. Once we could speak we all came to the same question," the general pauses for a bit. He likes a little dramatization at times.
As the pause lengthens he watches her quizzically, "We want to know the answer, are you willing to join us? The video ends before the answer is given." Rueton gives Thompson a hard look for that. Thompson just smirks and shrugs.
Kadance looks at the General in disbelief, "The offer is real? But I'm nothing special."
The general starts sputtering and choking at her response and signs for Jayse to talk for him.
With devilish amusement dancing in his eyes Jayse turns to his superior, "Told you. No arrogance at all." Then Jayse goes to kneel at Kadance's feet. He gently takes her hands in his and talks softly, "I told you before that once the offer is given it cannot be rescinded, just refused or accepted. The general said, in his roundabout way is that they are slavering to have you come on board. What he's not telling you is, is that redliners are a problem. No one can control them. If one goes suicidal it's not pretty. Yet here you are with the ability to stop one of us in our tracks. You stopped me without any loss of life then you ripped me up and down afterwards. You did things that have our strongest most brave soldiers too scared to do. No one, but no one does what you did. If we could have a hundred people as brave as you it wouldn't be enough. They want you so badly that just about anything you asked for would be yours. You are quite possibly the single most important person in the entire Unified Planets.
Jayse gets a bit of a devilish smile as he continues. "Something else the general hasn't told you is that word of what you've done has spread and all single warriors are waiting for a chance to woo and win your attention. You are about to be bombarded by warriors." Jayse loses the devilish look and turns serious as he squeezes her hands.
"Just remember me and promise to give me a chance please. Please, join us Kadance, we need you." Kadance isn't sure but she thinks that she hears him say that he needs her.
She takes turns looking down at Jayse's imploring face to the generals intense gaze to Thompson's slightly grinning one. She focuses on Thompson.
"It's true? All of it?" Kadance is overwhelmed.
"Yes, and I want a chance if you turn Jayse away. Please, Kadance we need you." Perhaps it is the pleading note in Thompson's otherwise carefree style that assures Kadance that it is true.
She shakes her head in confusion and all in the room are afraid that she is going to turn down the offer. They are pleasantly surprised therefore when she says, "If I agree I want to meet my nephews and have regular updates." The general is thrilled that she wants something so easy and quickly agrees.
Kadance closes her eyes and breathes deeply, then she continues,"I'm not born and raised a warrior. I will NOT do well in martial classes. My abilities lie in healing the injured not causing the injuries. I will concede the need to take small arms lessons for protection, but I refuse to take any other martial classes." Again the general finds her request simple to allow. She wasn't going into combat after all.
"Finally, I don't know how to deal with how did Jayse phrase it? 'oh yeah, hordes of warriors waiting to woo and win my attention'. I've rarely had anyone interested in me. So I ask for personal bodyguards be assigned to me. But I don't want active duty soldiers. I won't take needed men from the fight. I want those that I help be the ones helping me. I want Redliners only. Starting with these two. They can choose others that they may deem necessary and I will take it under advisement.
"But no matter the amount of guards I have one of these two will always have to be on duty. I don't trust any others yet."
She takes a deep breath and looks each one in the eye in turn. "You see general and gentlemen I know how to incite violence as well as take it away. I could just as easily take a redliner over the edge as bring them safely away." She looks directly at general Rueton as she continues, "If I am ever betrayed you'll wish you've never offered, begged me to join you."
Rueton actually finds himself afraid of her in that moment. He fears that possibly he's made a mistake, but it's too late now. He is unable to force any words out of his suddenly dry mouth.
"I'll never betray your trust Kadance. I promise you that," Jayse says softly. Kadance looks down on him and gives him a small but warm smile. Jayse had managed to hide the shiver of fear that raged through him at her words.
"I hope so Jayse, because I'm going to be leaning on you and Thompson quite heavily." Kadance whispers holding back the fears that she herself feels. Not at the job she's accepted but at the start of a new life.