FoL Check-up
darthcourt10
Well worn.
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Savato93
Took me a bit to get this written out in a satisfactory manner. Been doing research on spinal disorders so I can get a solid idea of Regalia's condition in human terms... made my own back hurt in the process.
Check-up
XXXXXXXXXX
"I'm sorry, you're looking for what now?"
"Some sort of medical room. Like an infirmary, or a clinic or pharmacy…" The Gothic Lolita shrugged. "Hell, I'll go with a spot in the docks if you guys are willing to let us into the base."
Kasumi folded her arms, eyebrows raised. "And what, exactly, do you need it for?"
In response, Ritou pulled out a clipboard. "Physicals. We've been out in the wild the past few years with minimal maintenance. Now that we've got some free time, Mother wants to make sure we're all healthy and running well."
Thinking about it, the shipgirl eventually sighed. "…I think there's a first-aid center in the hotel to handle emergencies. I'll speak with the staff and see if they might loan it to you."
"Thanks. We won't make a mess of the place, I promise." Turning around, Ritou called out to her sisters in the lobby. "To all the cruisers: if you could come over here and follow me, we can start getting you looked at. Now, it's been a while since I did this sort of work, but Mother gave me a checklist to run through, so if you can just bear with me, we'll try to get through this as smoothly as possible."
"Wait, wait, wait." Kasumi held up a hand. "I thought you said your mom wants to give you all check-ups?"
"She does," Ritou noted, "but she's currently busy. However, I served as an engineer in our old fleet while I was still a Ri-class, so I've got the experience to at least service the other cruisers in her place."
"Busy? With what?"
XXXXXXXXXX
"Do you and Grandma really need me here?"
Tanith tilted her head gently at Regalia's question. "No, I suppose not. But this work… does concern you. It is your body… you deserve to have… a hand in the process. Don't you think?"
Biting her lip, thinking, Regalia nodded. "I guess. I'm just not sure how I could contribute." Stepping up to the door of Hoppou's hotel room, the pair glanced at the "Do Not Disturb" sign attached to it—with a small bit of Japanese underneath it that supposedly said the same. "I don't put much thought into how my body works, most of the time."
Tanith smiled. "Just consider this a… learning opportunity, then." Raising a hand, she knocked lightly on the door. "Mother, it's us. May we enter?"
There was a brief pause before the answer came. "Come in." Satisfied, Tanith cracked open the door, pushed it inward, motioning for her daughter to enter. With a small nod of thanks, Regalia stepped into the hotel room.
The room itself was mostly intact, the removal of the bedside table in favor of a full desk being the only real difference Regalia could spot between this room and her own. Blueprints, charts, and cross-sectional images littered the room, laid out over the walls and any available flat surface save for the bed. To Regalia, it was like looking at pieces of herself—she recognized her general shape, her compartmental layout, all the various weapons that made up her armament. Everything that made her what she was, laid out for all to see.
She felt like she should be embarrassed for some reason.
Shifting her focus, she could see Hoppou wandering about the room, reviewing her work and making small scribbles in the margins of various papers… but she was not alone. There were two others in the room with her—a familiar Japanese woman, and a shipgirl of a design she'd never seen before. "Hi Grandma…" she said quietly, stepping further into the room as her mother closed the door behind them.
Looking up, Hoppou spotted her granddaughter. "Hi, Regalia. How are you today?"
"I'm doing alright, thanks." Regalia cocked her head at the unfamiliar ship. "And you are…?"
Perking up, the shipgirl looked around to face the newcomers. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize there would be two of you coming." She gave Tanith and her daughter a small salute. "USS Amycus, repair ship. Amy for short."
Tanith's eyes widened. "…A repair ship? I was not… aware, that there was… one here in Kushiro."
Amy shrugged. "I'll admit, I'm not quite as renowned as Akashi over in Yokosuka, or my cousin Vestal back in the States. Really, I'm designed to repair landing craft, not other ships. But as long as I have the tools and the blueprints, I can make do." She focused on Regalia. "I take it you're the patient."
"Uh… y-yes," Regalia answered, uncertain. "Does Grandma need your help, or something? Is that why you're here?"
Amy shrugged. "Not really. I'm here more as an observer. Watching the little lady go about her research, passing what I see to the other repair ships. Nothing too sensitive, I assure you." She jerked her thumb to the human woman behind her. "She's here to help."
The woman nodded. "Yumeno Norihara. It's nice to meet another of Hoppou's grandchildren."
"I-I'm Regalia. It's nice to meet you, too," The Re-class said, returning the gesture. Pausing, she gave Norihara a confused look. "So, what exactly will you be doing?"
"Nothing major, just giving you a physical examination." Norihara waved a hand. "Taking a look at your body, testing your joints, checking that your eyes, and ears work; that sort of thing. Is that alright?"
Thinking about it for a moment, Regalia nodded lightly. "Yeah, I can handle that much."
"Great." Norihara gestured to the bed. "If you could just take off your jacket for a bit—don't worry, you can keep your bikini on—and sit down over here, we can get started."
Regalia shrugged. Plopping herself down at the end of the bed, she started fiddling with the zipper of her parka, needing a bit of effort to pull it down. As she shook herself, letting her garment slide off her arms and back, she turned her attention to the blueprint pinned to the wall in front of her. She leaned in closer, trying to make out the scribbles.
"Curious?"
Regalia looked down in front of her to see Hoppou there, another sheet of paper in her hands. "Oh… uh, yeah. I guess. It's kinda weird—I'm pretty much looking at pictures of my own guts." She scratched her scalp. "But instead of being… disgusted, I have this sense of enlightenment. Like, seeing all the little things that come together to make me, in individual pieces. And in so much detail…"
"I wish I could see them the way you all do," Norihara noted wistfully, rubbing her temple. "For some reason, all I get when I try to look at one of them is a headache. Not like the stuff shipgirls work with."
"Maybe it's because we shipgirls just utilize the blueprints of whatever ships we're based off of," Amycus hypothesized. "I bet if you could disassemble a shipgirl and document all of it, you'd get stuff a lot like this."
"Really?" Regalia asked. "You can't read them? I could see right away that it wa—eep!" she was cut off as something cold was pressed against her back.
"Sorry, probably should have warned you about that," Norihara said sheepishly. "Anyway, I'm just going to press this against a few spots on your back, and have you take a deep breath for me each time. This is just so I can check how well you're breathing, in general."
As Regalia complied, inhaling each time the cold, round object came down on her back, Hoppou nodded. "Hoppou not satisfied just knowing her daughters will work when building them. Hoppou takes time. Pays attention to every detail. Makes sure everything fits right, so daughters grow up to be very best they can be." She tapped the blueprint behind her. "Keeping lots of notes on every part of Abyssals is crucial to process."
In her spot off to the side, Tanith frowned. "I thought… most of your documentation… would have been lost in Unalaska."
Hoppou wiggled a hand. "Physical paperwork gone… but basic knowledge of design is in Hoppou's head. Current work is mostly re-gathering Hoppou's supplementary notes and refinements."
At last, Norihara lifted the cold object from Regalia's back. "Okay, your lungs sound clear and healthy, which is good. However, the severity of your condition may be hampering their ability to expand fully; your breathing is rather shallow."
Hoppou looked back from the schematic she was writing on. "Not really unexpected. Crooked hull means asymmetric air flow. Less effective ventilation."
The doctor nodded. "In all honesty, I'd wager a guess that a lot of your internal organs are under more stress than they should be. Humans with similar conditions, their organs tend to wear out faster than they would under the normal aging process. You probably haven't noticed it since you're… how old are you, exactly?"
Regalia paused, looking inward to her archives. "I hatched… April of 2010."
"A little over three years, then. Yeah, if you were actually as old as you looked, you'd probably already be starting to see some organ damage." Norihara came around to kneel in front of Regalia. "But thankfully, that's not an issue for you. Now, shall we continue?"
The doctor continued to go over Regalia's body diligently for the next few minutes. She swung a small rubber wedge into her knees, making her legs spasm and kick of their own volition; she shined a small light into her eyes and ears; she even inspected the articulation of her tail, among several other things. It was a bit odd for the Re-class, but at the same time kinda touching, that this woman was putting so much effort into assessing her health.
Eventually, Norihara sat back and softly clapped her hands. "Okay, we're almost done. Just one more thing for me to go over, and I'll be through with you, but from what I've seen so far, you're pretty much as healthy as can be."
Regalia perked up, intrigued. "What all's left, then?"
At this, Norihara frowned. "Your back."
Regalia visibly sagged at Norihara's statement. "…ah, right."
"If you're not fine with it, we can just call it here…"
The Re-class shook her head. "No, no…" pausing to take a deep breath, she shifted to present her back to the doctor. "Just… please, be gentle? It's sensitive."
Norihara nodded softly. "Of course."
Regalia was absolutely still as Norihara examined her back, gently running her hands over her malformed spine. In some places, she would press a little deeper into Regalia's skin, feeling for the keel beneath the pale flesh. In others, she would tap between the knobs of her spine, looking for the individual bones. Regalia bit back a sound of discomfort as Norihara firmly pressed on the apex of her hump, sending a spark of pain down her keel.
Finally, the doctor removed her hands from Regalia's back. "You… you can put your coat back on, now," She stated, her tone laced with surprise and agitation.
Regalia was apprehensive as she picked up her parka and began to slip it back on. "W-well…?" She asked.
Norihara's expression was dour as she began to write things down. "Orthopedics isn't exactly my specialty, but even I can tell that this is serious." She looked up to Regalia. "For ordinary people, the upper spine curves forward anywhere from twenty to fifty degrees. Your spine? Its curvature measures in the eighties. And all the segments that make up that section of your spine are fused together, making them immobile. That you're somehow not in constant pain from your perpetual hunched posture is a miracle."
Regalia flinched. "I-it's really that bad?"
"From the perspective of a human? Yes." Norihara gave her notes one last look before handing them off to Hoppou, who went over them studiously. "This is the sort of thing that would require intensive surgery: reaching all the way into your spine—typically entering the body from the front—and cutting the affected bones from your spinal cord, jamming metal rods in their place. All with a not-insignificant chance of further complications arising from the surgery itself later on." The others in the room couldn't help but grimace at the description—like ripping their superstructure away to cut out their keel from the top.
Hoppou shook her head, expression somber. "This means full rebuild is even more necessary," she said. "Especially if hump is hurting Regalia's insides, without her noticing."
Regalia could only shudder at that.
"It's okay, Regalia," Tanith told her daughter reassuringly, stepping forward to rest a hand on her shoulder. "You are in Mother's care… a nigh-undisputable master of her craft."
The Re-class simply sighed, taking another look at all the blueprints scattered over the walls. "…Yeah, I guess she knows what she's doing. It just… doesn't make it any more pleasant to think about."
"In that case… why don't we… go do something to… take your mind off it, for a bit?"
Regalia nodded. "That sounds nice. What do you have in mind...?"
"You two be good," Hoppou said as the pair stepped out, putting down her own notes on Norihara's clipboard. "Hoppou will stay here just a few more minutes. Ritou probably wondering when Hoppou will relieve her of duty."
XXXXXXXXXX
"…Nero?"
"Yeah, Mom?"
"Where's Grunt? I don't see him in your hold…"
"…oh no."
Took me a bit to get this written out in a satisfactory manner. Been doing research on spinal disorders so I can get a solid idea of Regalia's condition in human terms... made my own back hurt in the process.
Check-up
XXXXXXXXXX
"I'm sorry, you're looking for what now?"
"Some sort of medical room. Like an infirmary, or a clinic or pharmacy…" The Gothic Lolita shrugged. "Hell, I'll go with a spot in the docks if you guys are willing to let us into the base."
Kasumi folded her arms, eyebrows raised. "And what, exactly, do you need it for?"
In response, Ritou pulled out a clipboard. "Physicals. We've been out in the wild the past few years with minimal maintenance. Now that we've got some free time, Mother wants to make sure we're all healthy and running well."
Thinking about it, the shipgirl eventually sighed. "…I think there's a first-aid center in the hotel to handle emergencies. I'll speak with the staff and see if they might loan it to you."
"Thanks. We won't make a mess of the place, I promise." Turning around, Ritou called out to her sisters in the lobby. "To all the cruisers: if you could come over here and follow me, we can start getting you looked at. Now, it's been a while since I did this sort of work, but Mother gave me a checklist to run through, so if you can just bear with me, we'll try to get through this as smoothly as possible."
"Wait, wait, wait." Kasumi held up a hand. "I thought you said your mom wants to give you all check-ups?"
"She does," Ritou noted, "but she's currently busy. However, I served as an engineer in our old fleet while I was still a Ri-class, so I've got the experience to at least service the other cruisers in her place."
"Busy? With what?"
XXXXXXXXXX
"Do you and Grandma really need me here?"
Tanith tilted her head gently at Regalia's question. "No, I suppose not. But this work… does concern you. It is your body… you deserve to have… a hand in the process. Don't you think?"
Biting her lip, thinking, Regalia nodded. "I guess. I'm just not sure how I could contribute." Stepping up to the door of Hoppou's hotel room, the pair glanced at the "Do Not Disturb" sign attached to it—with a small bit of Japanese underneath it that supposedly said the same. "I don't put much thought into how my body works, most of the time."
Tanith smiled. "Just consider this a… learning opportunity, then." Raising a hand, she knocked lightly on the door. "Mother, it's us. May we enter?"
There was a brief pause before the answer came. "Come in." Satisfied, Tanith cracked open the door, pushed it inward, motioning for her daughter to enter. With a small nod of thanks, Regalia stepped into the hotel room.
The room itself was mostly intact, the removal of the bedside table in favor of a full desk being the only real difference Regalia could spot between this room and her own. Blueprints, charts, and cross-sectional images littered the room, laid out over the walls and any available flat surface save for the bed. To Regalia, it was like looking at pieces of herself—she recognized her general shape, her compartmental layout, all the various weapons that made up her armament. Everything that made her what she was, laid out for all to see.
She felt like she should be embarrassed for some reason.
Shifting her focus, she could see Hoppou wandering about the room, reviewing her work and making small scribbles in the margins of various papers… but she was not alone. There were two others in the room with her—a familiar Japanese woman, and a shipgirl of a design she'd never seen before. "Hi Grandma…" she said quietly, stepping further into the room as her mother closed the door behind them.
Looking up, Hoppou spotted her granddaughter. "Hi, Regalia. How are you today?"
"I'm doing alright, thanks." Regalia cocked her head at the unfamiliar ship. "And you are…?"
Perking up, the shipgirl looked around to face the newcomers. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize there would be two of you coming." She gave Tanith and her daughter a small salute. "USS Amycus, repair ship. Amy for short."
Tanith's eyes widened. "…A repair ship? I was not… aware, that there was… one here in Kushiro."
Amy shrugged. "I'll admit, I'm not quite as renowned as Akashi over in Yokosuka, or my cousin Vestal back in the States. Really, I'm designed to repair landing craft, not other ships. But as long as I have the tools and the blueprints, I can make do." She focused on Regalia. "I take it you're the patient."
"Uh… y-yes," Regalia answered, uncertain. "Does Grandma need your help, or something? Is that why you're here?"
Amy shrugged. "Not really. I'm here more as an observer. Watching the little lady go about her research, passing what I see to the other repair ships. Nothing too sensitive, I assure you." She jerked her thumb to the human woman behind her. "She's here to help."
The woman nodded. "Yumeno Norihara. It's nice to meet another of Hoppou's grandchildren."
"I-I'm Regalia. It's nice to meet you, too," The Re-class said, returning the gesture. Pausing, she gave Norihara a confused look. "So, what exactly will you be doing?"
"Nothing major, just giving you a physical examination." Norihara waved a hand. "Taking a look at your body, testing your joints, checking that your eyes, and ears work; that sort of thing. Is that alright?"
Thinking about it for a moment, Regalia nodded lightly. "Yeah, I can handle that much."
"Great." Norihara gestured to the bed. "If you could just take off your jacket for a bit—don't worry, you can keep your bikini on—and sit down over here, we can get started."
Regalia shrugged. Plopping herself down at the end of the bed, she started fiddling with the zipper of her parka, needing a bit of effort to pull it down. As she shook herself, letting her garment slide off her arms and back, she turned her attention to the blueprint pinned to the wall in front of her. She leaned in closer, trying to make out the scribbles.
"Curious?"
Regalia looked down in front of her to see Hoppou there, another sheet of paper in her hands. "Oh… uh, yeah. I guess. It's kinda weird—I'm pretty much looking at pictures of my own guts." She scratched her scalp. "But instead of being… disgusted, I have this sense of enlightenment. Like, seeing all the little things that come together to make me, in individual pieces. And in so much detail…"
"I wish I could see them the way you all do," Norihara noted wistfully, rubbing her temple. "For some reason, all I get when I try to look at one of them is a headache. Not like the stuff shipgirls work with."
"Maybe it's because we shipgirls just utilize the blueprints of whatever ships we're based off of," Amycus hypothesized. "I bet if you could disassemble a shipgirl and document all of it, you'd get stuff a lot like this."
"Really?" Regalia asked. "You can't read them? I could see right away that it wa—eep!" she was cut off as something cold was pressed against her back.
"Sorry, probably should have warned you about that," Norihara said sheepishly. "Anyway, I'm just going to press this against a few spots on your back, and have you take a deep breath for me each time. This is just so I can check how well you're breathing, in general."
As Regalia complied, inhaling each time the cold, round object came down on her back, Hoppou nodded. "Hoppou not satisfied just knowing her daughters will work when building them. Hoppou takes time. Pays attention to every detail. Makes sure everything fits right, so daughters grow up to be very best they can be." She tapped the blueprint behind her. "Keeping lots of notes on every part of Abyssals is crucial to process."
In her spot off to the side, Tanith frowned. "I thought… most of your documentation… would have been lost in Unalaska."
Hoppou wiggled a hand. "Physical paperwork gone… but basic knowledge of design is in Hoppou's head. Current work is mostly re-gathering Hoppou's supplementary notes and refinements."
At last, Norihara lifted the cold object from Regalia's back. "Okay, your lungs sound clear and healthy, which is good. However, the severity of your condition may be hampering their ability to expand fully; your breathing is rather shallow."
Hoppou looked back from the schematic she was writing on. "Not really unexpected. Crooked hull means asymmetric air flow. Less effective ventilation."
The doctor nodded. "In all honesty, I'd wager a guess that a lot of your internal organs are under more stress than they should be. Humans with similar conditions, their organs tend to wear out faster than they would under the normal aging process. You probably haven't noticed it since you're… how old are you, exactly?"
Regalia paused, looking inward to her archives. "I hatched… April of 2010."
"A little over three years, then. Yeah, if you were actually as old as you looked, you'd probably already be starting to see some organ damage." Norihara came around to kneel in front of Regalia. "But thankfully, that's not an issue for you. Now, shall we continue?"
The doctor continued to go over Regalia's body diligently for the next few minutes. She swung a small rubber wedge into her knees, making her legs spasm and kick of their own volition; she shined a small light into her eyes and ears; she even inspected the articulation of her tail, among several other things. It was a bit odd for the Re-class, but at the same time kinda touching, that this woman was putting so much effort into assessing her health.
Eventually, Norihara sat back and softly clapped her hands. "Okay, we're almost done. Just one more thing for me to go over, and I'll be through with you, but from what I've seen so far, you're pretty much as healthy as can be."
Regalia perked up, intrigued. "What all's left, then?"
At this, Norihara frowned. "Your back."
Regalia visibly sagged at Norihara's statement. "…ah, right."
"If you're not fine with it, we can just call it here…"
The Re-class shook her head. "No, no…" pausing to take a deep breath, she shifted to present her back to the doctor. "Just… please, be gentle? It's sensitive."
Norihara nodded softly. "Of course."
Regalia was absolutely still as Norihara examined her back, gently running her hands over her malformed spine. In some places, she would press a little deeper into Regalia's skin, feeling for the keel beneath the pale flesh. In others, she would tap between the knobs of her spine, looking for the individual bones. Regalia bit back a sound of discomfort as Norihara firmly pressed on the apex of her hump, sending a spark of pain down her keel.
Finally, the doctor removed her hands from Regalia's back. "You… you can put your coat back on, now," She stated, her tone laced with surprise and agitation.
Regalia was apprehensive as she picked up her parka and began to slip it back on. "W-well…?" She asked.
Norihara's expression was dour as she began to write things down. "Orthopedics isn't exactly my specialty, but even I can tell that this is serious." She looked up to Regalia. "For ordinary people, the upper spine curves forward anywhere from twenty to fifty degrees. Your spine? Its curvature measures in the eighties. And all the segments that make up that section of your spine are fused together, making them immobile. That you're somehow not in constant pain from your perpetual hunched posture is a miracle."
Regalia flinched. "I-it's really that bad?"
"From the perspective of a human? Yes." Norihara gave her notes one last look before handing them off to Hoppou, who went over them studiously. "This is the sort of thing that would require intensive surgery: reaching all the way into your spine—typically entering the body from the front—and cutting the affected bones from your spinal cord, jamming metal rods in their place. All with a not-insignificant chance of further complications arising from the surgery itself later on." The others in the room couldn't help but grimace at the description—like ripping their superstructure away to cut out their keel from the top.
Hoppou shook her head, expression somber. "This means full rebuild is even more necessary," she said. "Especially if hump is hurting Regalia's insides, without her noticing."
Regalia could only shudder at that.
"It's okay, Regalia," Tanith told her daughter reassuringly, stepping forward to rest a hand on her shoulder. "You are in Mother's care… a nigh-undisputable master of her craft."
The Re-class simply sighed, taking another look at all the blueprints scattered over the walls. "…Yeah, I guess she knows what she's doing. It just… doesn't make it any more pleasant to think about."
"In that case… why don't we… go do something to… take your mind off it, for a bit?"
Regalia nodded. "That sounds nice. What do you have in mind...?"
"You two be good," Hoppou said as the pair stepped out, putting down her own notes on Norihara's clipboard. "Hoppou will stay here just a few more minutes. Ritou probably wondering when Hoppou will relieve her of duty."
XXXXXXXXXX
"…Nero?"
"Yeah, Mom?"
"Where's Grunt? I don't see him in your hold…"
"…oh no."