#crucialelement

“We do, but at this rate I don’t trust these few will properly sanitize the area first and I’d rather not have to keep administering IV antibiotics. They’ve all been through combat medicine courses and should know to properly bandage wounds and use tape to keep gauze, not skin, in place.”

They watch impassively as she rotates around in the swivel chair. Eba takes a moment to note every quirk: the pitch of her voice, the smirk on her face, the choice of words... then the wavelength of her hair, the position of her eyes.

This one was named Emily. Nicknamed Tundra.

At the extended hand, they mimicked the gesture to grasp with a handshake. The texture of their skin notably pliable and cartilagenous, but still warm.

"Tundra," they repeat, since they noted that nicknames and callsigns seemed to carry more significance.

"The munitions are useful for those in the Guild who have limbs," they nod, "Mostly the human ones. And most of them are sick."

Eba consciously breaks their gaze from Emily, fixing their eyes on the ground, "We're a close-quarters combatant."

They can't hear it, but he breathes out a sigh of relief. He doesn't respond right away, first order of business was rerouting the dispatch to take on an other call. To say they were swamped was an understatement, it's like all the criminals got together and just decided to do crimes at the same time. This was the first time he had an other unit contact him, he messes with his headset to set up the two way comms. "Berkhoff? happy to have the help"

Four Headcanons

When Emily first came to the Guild, there was a questionnaire about what food allergies she had, and then a separate section for "does cilantro taste like soap [yes/no]". She later learned that this goes into Nighthawk's consideration for nights he homecooks for the Guild, as sofrito is a staple in his cooking.

2. Both Emily and Hawk stand out among the people of the Guild for their apparent "normalcy".

3. She's keen on the naming conventions of tac-names, and experienced firsthand why he has the nickname "Nighthawk". During one of the few missions with hostile human militants, he demonstrated how well he could jink an aircraft. This makes him both the best and worst person to fly with. Her blood pressure and heartrate spiked considerably for a while after that maneuver.

The last thing Chris had remembered was pure, agonizing pain. He'd wished for death and it hadn't come. Instead, Miranda had gotten exactly what she'd wanted. He'd woken up on the table alone and barely clinging to any semblance of life. His entire body hurt beyond measure and his heart... The beats were sickeningly off and unnatural.

Chris had somehow manged to stumble his way out of the caves of Miranda's lab without being detected or chased. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that meant she was purposely letting him go. He wondered why if he was just going to die in the cold. Still, he pushed forward through the village in the snow that made his broken body shiver uncontrollably.

Somewhere along the way, Chris's legs could carry him no further. His knees buckled under his weight. He lie on the ground, ready for death to show some sort of mercy and take him when he made out a familiar form above him. His teeth chattered, but he could barely hear it over the increasingly off heartbeats thumping in his chest.

She looks so much like Svetlana it makes his mouth curl into a snarl without him even realizing it. She thinks she is hidden because she is dressed down. Her movements are too perfectly ordinary, too coordinated in the fidgeting and stretching and other meaningless minutiae meant to blend into the civilian scenery. She is watching things around her, either for information or danger.

"No flash photography!"