Recoil glanced down at Alana. It was getting a little difficult balancing her and the rifle at the same time. On one hand, he needed to remain alert and vigilant; he had to keep his eye out for any signs of those droids. On the other hand, he also wanted to reassure her it was safe, and he couldn’t very well do that while he held a blaster against his opposite hip. Mentally, Recoil sighed. This was why he never liked getting caught up in civilian matters; they were too delicate, too messy if you got something wrong, and you had to appease everyone all of the time. It was difficult dealing with the public. Recoil was happy to leave those public relation bits to the professionals, people who were nothing like him and his soldiering brethren. Let the politicians and the generals deal with the limelight and the civvies; Recoil just wanted to blow stuff up and shoot anything they called an ‘enemy.’ It was a simpler existence that way.
He stared down at Alana, bright green eyes somewhat troubled and uncomfortable. How did he explain all this to a kid who probably wasn’t even five yet? “Er, sometimes,” he said, trying to reason with her. “But only if they’re the bad guys, like the droids. And sometimes there are other bad guys who don’t look like the droids, and they want to hurt my brothers and I. So we have to make sure we protect ourselves against them, and hurt them before they hurt us. But we don’t hurt good people, like you and your mother.” He nodded, and managed to knock his forehead lightly against hers. “Understand, Alana?”
Trinket furrowed his brow; her ribs. He pressed his hand against her shoulder, his eyes locking onto hers for a brief moment. “Stay still. Keep calm. Don’t freak out,” he said, as if talking to himself. “I can get it out. I’ll find it.” Yet, he wasn’t even quite sure where it was. He removed his hand from her shoulder, and then pressed it against the exposed skin of her ribs, gently feeling for any abnormalities. His other hand kept quite still, holding the gauze against the open wound he’d created himself. Trinket slowed his breathing, all senses attuned to the delicate task of finding whatever it was they’d stuck inside of her ribs. His fingers pressed on a spot near the open wound, and he felt something slide beneath the skin. That must’ve been it; no bone would have done that, unless drastically broken, and if Kasari could move, then that mean there weren’t many broken bones in that vicinity.
“Found it,” he breathed, sighing in relief. It wouldn‘t be too difficult to get out. He expected that whoever had put it there hadn’t been anticipating the woman knowing about it, or that anyone would try to remove it immediately; they’d obviously thought it was going to be there for a while. Trinket glanced up at Kasari’s face for a brief moment, before he sliced the scalpel along the skin, opening the wound a bit more so he could get his fingers close to her ribs. For anyone else, this probably would’ve been traumatizing. For Trinket, it was just another day on the job. “You might not want to look, ma’am,” he said in that same, ever-quiet voice he rarely used.
Lifting the skin with one hand, he packed the gauze into the wound, before inserting two fingers carefully into the place where the chip was located. His gloves were slick with blood, and for a moment, he almost thought he’d lost the chip. But after a few desperate minutes of grasping blindly, he managed to grab the chip and pull it from her body. It resisted, as if it had been sewn in, but Trinket yanked on it lightly, and it soon slid out with ease. Breathing a sigh of relief, he placed the chip on his raised knee, before pulling a needle and some strong medical thread from his pouch with his clean hand. He threaded it carefully, and slowly began sewing up the wound, removing the blood staunching gauze as he went.
[8/16, 8/18]