Just a Checkup

[Felix Lucas]

Felix couldn't believe the sorry state that the person whose records were in front of him was in. Not a single vaccine, hardly anything in family history (as in, nothing in the section. At all.), and the birthdate said that she was from the 10th century. As in year 900. If he hadn't checked the seals he'd think this was some sort of prank. As it was, he was running around the infirmary, scrounging up vaccines that hadn't needed to be administered to anyone since... well, the 1800's at least.

He'd assembled most of the major infectious diseases on a tray in front of him; polio, smallpox, seven different kinds of flu shot, tetanus, TB, and shingles. The pyramid of needles was set next to the comfiest chair in the infirmary, the only kindness Felix could think to afford his patient, or, as she'd probably see herself after feeling her arm, victim. He had a dose of Nitrous Oxide ready in case she opted for laughing gas, but it was a low one that wouldn't really do much. He wouldn't say that.

He was just tapping the side of the shingles syringe when he heard the door to the infirmary open behind him. He pulled on a glove quickly to hide his metal hand, not wanting to make the ancient woman nervous. "Miss Arminia?" He addressed her without turning around. "I'm Felix Lucas. I'm the Head of Health here in South City, which makes it my job to make sure you didn't bring any nasty little bugs with you from the past, as well as to make sure you don't catch anything that could spread. No telling what the years since the 10th century have done to your immune system. We'll be conducting a full physical."

Of course, Felix neglected to mention his lack of a doctorate in medicine. Not that he wasn't trying to get one, but he didn't have it yet. Alkahestrists, particularly healing practitioners like Felix, were still more than qualified to treat people. Otherwise, he wouldn't have this job.

[Crassus]

Adjusting to the world around her was slow, to say the least.

Crassus was a curious figure by nature, but she found that all of the world around her was locked away. Not by force, but by words. In her time, reading was something for the rich, for the elite and scientifically minded. Not the common man and woman, certainly not the soldiers. And yet, in her new life, EVERYTHING was written in the detestable word. All the world's history, all the things that happened after her time, was locked off. And then there was the language, evolved above and beyond the Amestrian that she knew. She could understand the individual words, but not the structure. Nouns went first, verbs came last, that was how she believed language to work. Now? Now people used words all over the shop, and had all sorts of new words that she had never heard. What was a spanner, what was a car, what was it to be swag?

One of those words she didn't understand? Vaccination.

Crassus walked into the door that she was sent to. She was told that she needed to have these weird 'vaccination' things that had something to do with disease. Crassus was quite lucky in avoiding the new 'Deadlight' virus but it was difficult to not hear about it. Worse, there wasn't an adventure to be had in finding the cure; no distant mountain flower's nectar to drop in the eye of the king's son. No tome that detailed what the disease was hidden in a forgotten library. Just surviving and letting the men in labcoats sort it out. And there was another word she didn't understand; labcoat.

She looked around the room and saw what was presumably her chair, right next to... a multitude of needles. Crassus glared at the back of the man. She was not going to enjoy this. Her fingers tightened on the flail that she had wrapped around her waist; while her battle armour did cause people to stare as she walked by, it didn't matter. An Ostrogoth was never without their armour and their weapon, and not even the Amestriahauptling would change that.

"Miss Arminia?" The man addressed her without turning around. "I'm Felix Lucas. I'm the Head of Health here in South City, which makes it my job to make sure you didn't bring any nasty little bugs with you from the past, as well as to make sure you don't catch anything that could spread. No telling what the years since the 10th century have done to your immune system. We'll be conducting a full physical."

Crassus simply stood still. Nope, she didn't get any of that. Something about spreading insects and immunity to physical conductors or whatever.

"A fair proposition," she remarked. She had learned quite a bit about this time period despite her difficulties, mainly that people reacted better when you pretend that you've understood everything rather than ask what was happening. "Everyone else through this have suffered, I suppose, so I too should suffer it." Her eyes cast uncomfortably over to the massive pile of needles right next to the seat. "I don't need my armour removed, do I? Multiple places that those needles should not go I can think of."

[Felix Lucas]

Felix fought the urge to throw something at the mangling of Amestrian that sounded behind him in response to his addressing Crassus. The sound of metal striking wood was heard as his left hand came down on the table in front of him, his way of redirecting his frustration away from the patient. It wasn't even her fault. Official the files may have been, but some small part of him was hoping, praying that this would've been a prank. He composed his face into the trademark doctor half-smile that haunted the childhood of every child across the western world, carefully calculated to try and defuse the tension of the impending avalanche of needles, then turned around. 

His first thought was that Crassus was a little short for an ancient warrior woman. The 160 centimeter high woman asked if she needed to remove the armor. He hestitated, replaying the Amestrian in his head and making sure the old dialect hadn't mangled the meaning too much. "I need to see your arms. Normally, I'd give the shots in your weaker arm, but you're... really behind on vaccinations. Has someone explained all this to you yet?" He gestured to the chair with his gloved left hand, then returned to tapping the sides of the vials with his fingers. "Could you maybe leave the flail out of arm's reach? This... isn't going to be pleasant."

[Crassus]

The doctor's face wasn't a particularly helpful one. Crassus didn't know much of the social cues of this world, but she wasn't stupid; she knew a fake smile when she saw one. A smile born of reassurance. You only smiled to reassure someone if you knew that something was about to go wrong, or in this case be very painful.

"I need to see your arms," the man said. "Normally, I'd give the shots in your weaker arm, but you're... really behind on vaccinations. Has someone explained all this to you yet?" To this Crassus shook her head.

"No," she murmured. At least the original Ostrogothic words of 'yes' and 'no' were close enough to Amestrian to be recognised, and it was the language she preferred to speak in even if anything beyond determiners, the aforementioned yes and no and greetings was completely unrecognisable to modern ears. She just hoped against hope that she'd find someone who still knew it. "Knowledge I enjoy finding, but most people with that knowledge say 'Oh, we'll tell you that later'," she explained, before sitting down where the man gestured her to.

"Could you maybe leave the flail out of arm's reach? This... isn't going to be pleasant."

The moment he said it, Crassus glared at him like he was the stupidest man in the world.

"That is why within arm's reach my flail I want," she replied, her hardened features scrunched in scrutiny. "Besides, however many needles my arm poked with will matter not, more than the burning tip of an Ishvallan dziagheghnavor's flaming arrow or a Rouenian legionary's gladius edge it will not hurt." Her boast was made with a pride anyone familiar with an Ostrogoth of her time would call typical, but even her boisterousness couldn't cover her occasional worried glance to the mass of razor-sharp points on the table by her.

[Felix Lucas]

"That is why within arm's reach my flail I want."

Again, Felix replayed the archaic Amestrian in his head to make sure everything made sense in the scrambled order. He looked up at the ceiling, away from the glare of the short warrior to avoid meeting it with one of his own. "Fine. Let me explain while you make sure I won't stick any leather. Some of these smell pretty bad if you leave them out in the sun for too long."

The Alkahestrist hooked a rolling stool with his foot and brought it closer, taking his own seat so that any swing with the flail would be coming from his left. The automail was good for a lot of things, after all. "By the way, you'll have to tell me what a dziagheghnavor is later."

Felix reached over to the table with his left hand, picking up a syringe by its needle to show that he wasn't using it yet. "This is a syringe. The needle is hollow inside, and connected to the plastic tube, here." He tapped the side of the plastic, causing a bubble to float upward in the vermilion liquid, dyed for identification as a specific strain of flu vaccine. He decided to go with the simple version. "Inside the liquid in each of these, there is one of three things; a dead disease, a weakened disease, or the cure for a disease. If it's the first two, your body can learn how to fight the disease inside on the dead or weak ones, then use that on any of the real thing that gets inside you. With the third, your body retains the antibodies inside and makes more of them, with the same effect. This doesn't mean you won't get sick, and you'll actually feel like hell for a couple weeks. What it does mean is that you won't catch any of these diseases, which makes medical treatment for everyone safer and easier. You're in the Amestrian Army, so you don't have a say in the matter, and since you spent a good chunk of time as an ice sculpture, you missed out on them before. We're remedying that now."

Felix replaced the flu shot he'd been holding and picked up a different, clear syringe; a tetanus shot. He held this one normally in his right hand, left arm at a discreet anti-flail angle just in case. "I'm not gonna lie, you're going to loathe the sight of me by the time we're done here. But you won't die of tetanus, so that's well worth it. Let me know when you're ready, and try not to think of needles. It makes it worse."

[Crassus]

To the credit of the Ostrogoth, she managed to follow the words of the doctor relatively well. She didn't fully understand what antibodies were and she came from a time when disease was, as far as anyone was concerned, a sign of demon possession or just some odd nebulous force, but the basic principle of what this 'vaccine' was and did wasn't out of her grasp. Letting the body get used to disease was a concept that she understood if the mechanics lost her. Besides, she enjoyed hunting for new knowledge and things, so she was able to nod along and understand.

"I'm not gonna lie, you're going to loathe the sight of me by the time we're done here. But you won't die of tetanus, so that's well worth it. Let me know when you're ready, and try not to think of needles. It makes it worse." Crassus simply looked to the man in front of her. She was shorter than him, certainly, but she was bulkier, stockier and (she hoped) tougher. With this knowledge, she laughed a little.

"Someone like you cause to worry it might give; this world is far softer for all the stone and iron that around us surrounds," she boasted, Ostrogothic pride covering and suppressing her anxiety about the needle tips. "An Ostrogoth does not scream. I've been shot at, stabbed, cooked and nearly eaten and into the ocean I've been dropped." She then held out her arm, a smug smile on her face, though in her eyes was a little hesitance. "As hard as you like. And yes, that a dziagheghnavor is unknown to you is to me surprising. It's for them the Ishvallans are famed, on their horses in a circle riding, arrows so numerous that the sky is blotted out. Bows and arrows guns may have replaced, but is that not still done?"

[Sponsored content]