[sup][color=cf9a9a][h2][right][b]Daro'Shuris nar Konesh[/b][/right][/h2][/color][/sup]

Picture this: a Quarian leaned down to help another of her kind, his suit ripped open by rapid gunfire; skin singed and punctured by explosives. It took her twenty seconds to hunt for a pulse manually – especially since her omnitool was running on emergency power and glitching like someone had tried to hack it – and ten more to realise there wasn't one, and he was dead. In one fluid movement, Daro held her fist to her chest and switched off the mask's back lights with her free hand in a preemptive move to prevent her from checking the body twice by accident.

After a brief pause that wasn't really hesitation so much as it was a tired, disgusted sigh, she turned over the corpse and inspected the integrity of the medigel packs built into his suit. Aside from the notable scorch marks, they were perfectly intact. Beggars couldn't be choosers, not even when they were winning.

Gunfire erupted a few streets over and she hurried up the salvage with slow yet steady fingers, head ducked low to avoid any security drones or retreating soldiers from the other side. From somewhere to her right, there was a rough grunt of amusement and the sound of a rocket launcher being dropped heavily on the floor with force enough to make Daro wince. "We've got a live one, Doc!"

Ah, her Krogan guard-slash-assistant was tentatively toeing the still form of a Turian with one armoured boot. Daro cursed under her breath and hoped that the translators didn't pick it up. [i]This[/i] was why she worked alone, or at the very least with trusted comrades rather than strange, probably brain damaged mercs with less sense that the comatose Nikusiil.

"Go through the checklist," she prompted, wiping her hands clean of coagulated blood and other miscellaneous liquids on the formerly white fabric of her suit, now with a rainbow of several species' bodily fluids staining it. "Is he bleeding out? Is he responsive? What are the life signs on his suit?" At the ensuing silence, she forced herself up onto unsteady legs and braced herself against the makeshift barricade as nausea took over.

Her eyes were closed when the Krogan responded, "He looks like he's just stunned." Daro cracked a smile at that, more so at her apparent position of authority than the prospect of someone actually being reclaimed from the wreckage of a battle two days after its climax. She didn't really count it as 'surviving' until they walked and-or crawled out of the field clinic that had been set up in Jek's main base.

"Pick him up then!" Somewhat belatedly, she continued, "Don't pull out your stitches while you're at it– again. Just take him back somewhere safe." The Krogan, with some great deal of effort considering he had practically been glued back together, did as she asked. Turning back towards the scene of destruction and devastation briefly, she nodded to herself.

That was her downtime, the calm period in the eye of the storm. It was time to get back to work.

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"Everyone on triage! Stabilise the critically injured first, then the moderately injured, and then the easy-to-treat wounds!" A wave of dizzying exhaustion hit Daro, then a brief tremor as the stimulants kicked in automatically. The mark for spending twenty-four hours awake had been hit [i]twenty-four hours ago[/i], but it had been made clear to her that the survival of the mercenaries at such a crucial time in the assault was imperative. They couldn't back off now due to lack of numbers – not when they had them on a failing defense and were grinding them down like desert wind on a sandstone rock.

The fight raging outside, bullets ripping past fleshy targets and into the walls with a sound as loud as thunder, was the worst – or the most difficult – they'd had since the battle that left her team leaderless and, ultimately, [i]stuck[/i]. Daro closed her eyes for a moment as her borrowed omnitool (an old make, far too old to run the diagnostics she usually did at full speed) monitored the vital signs of all the current patients.

She wasn't sure what the others were doing, at present. Probably sniping, or blowing up, or ripping apart enemies with their bare hands. It wasn't that Daro [i]couldn't[/i] fight with them at times like these, but even Jek reckoned that her skills were best put to use indoors where she could perform surgery in a mostly-sterile environment (barring, of course, the copious Vorcha guts that splattered across the floor after every shift). Honestly, she didn't know if that was true or not: she worked harder, faster, [i]better[/i] crouched behind cover, one hand providing blind covering fire over it and the other staunching an ally's wound before he or she bled out.

Her Krogan 'assistant' certainly believed so, injured though he still was. It wasn't everyday someone took a rocket to the face and was fixed up with minimal trauma. Kranesh, as it turned out, had a lovely bedside manner, except when he took a dizzy spell and rammed the trolley of medical supplies into the bed of some sorry soul. Daro shook her head as the mercenary whizzed past. Her hands were already preoccupied with tying a knot on a Salarian's bandages to hold the gauze in place. Medigel was in much shorter supplies these days, and no matter how selfish it might have been, Daro reserved the military grade stuff for [i]her[/i] team, just in case they were ever in danger.

They had plenty of drugs to numb the pain, however. Some legal, some not so much. Jek had made her a deal – well, she hadn't asked for it, but he offered – that for "every time she'd saved some fucker's life, he'd hook her up with some". Paraphrased, of course. Daro already had a stockpile of the necessities in her quarters and, unless the makeshift clinic ran-out of them, she didn't have to tap into that resource. All hers.

During a short break whilst the two Salarians working alongside her went [i]somewhere[/i], Kranesh must have noticed her rubbing the back of her tense neck. "I'm taking you shooting tomorrow, doc," he hollered over the beds of mostly-sleeping patients. "You need to work off some steam!" It probably said something about her worsening character that she considered taking pot-shots at the enemy's Vorcha a good time.

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"Now, watch what I'm doing, Doc," said Kranesh as he reached around for his heavy pistol and, in one smooth movement during which no breath was taken, the Krogan shot the speedy, salivating Vorcha as it rushed towards them. Daro wasn't entirely sure what she was meant to be looking out for because that Vorcha was one of many in a wave of the creeps assaulting the walls of the outpost deep in their enemy's territory.

Jek had looked thoroughly bemused when she informed him that she was leaving the half-empty clinic to help out on the other side of their defenses. Maybe this was why?

Daro was having the best time she'd had in weeks, however, because she had been going stir-crazy trapped behind the walls of the compounds with only a few hours break outside each time. She promptly followed Kranesh's instructions, removing her own weapon and aiming it at the next Vorcha, but it took three shots before one landed dead-center in its skull. By that time, its claws had already outstretched, ready to pounce upon her like a wild animal.

They weren't giving them proper armor or any weapons at all. They probably couldn't afford it.

"Not bad," said Kranesh, who Daro would've said was trying to make her feel better if it was not for the Krogan's brutal honesty when ever she did something wrong. "Next wave's incoming. Get ready to do it again– but, uh, reload first." She did so, again and again until Kranesh accepted the fact that he'd probably bitten off a task too large: try and get Daro'Shuris nar Konesh to shoot properly rather than like a scared rabbit.

He claimed that she was getting much better at it though, to which Daro could only manage a meek, "Thanks."

"You'll be wanting to use that fire thing of yours more often–"

It was at that exact moment that one of Jek's lieutenants stepped around the fortified entrance way, reminding her that she had to attend a meeting of some sort with his mere presence. As soon as they made eye contact – or at least, as soon as Daro's head twisted around to see him, helmet included – she turned back to Kranesh with a polite bow. "I have to go now," she told him. "But thank you [i]so[/i] much for the lessons. I'll see if I can try and use them to keep myself alive, yes?"

Kranesh let out a hearty laugh. "You do that. And, Doc? If you ever need any help, you give me or one of my brothers a call and we'll see what we can do, Jek be damned." Daro waved again on the way out.

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It was good to see her team again. As kind as some of Jek's men were, she didn't have the same sort of camaraderie with them that she did with Hazan, Raya and even Ardan. If they were anyone else, even slightly meaner or more menacing or murderous, Daro wouldn't have even considered taking lessons from a Krogan so as not to bring the team down on the field.

What she did [i]not[/i] expect was for Nik to be back on his feet again, led to them by Jek. "Nik!" she greeted with a small gasp of surprise. "I knew you weren't brain-dead! I would've found flowers or something to bring in for you in case you woke up, but, ah, I was busy." She had, after all, barely been thinking about their leader – just in case he [i]was[/i] dead.

With that said, she moved back a bit to let others do their greetings, turning her head to the side quizzically to see Hazan playing with a new rifle, inspecting it. "It's very... [i]large[/i], isn't it?" she said a bit awkwardly when he asked everyone what they thought of the weapon. "I dare say that could rip through any Krogan's shields [i]and[/i] armor."