Medigel was an amazing thing. Though BaAt wasn't exactly outfitted with the battlefield-grade stuff with it's 'take four bullets in the chest and keep going' level anesthetics, as the gloved hands smeared the stuff over Yoroi's chest the relief was palpable. With as little idea of what the stuff actually was as ninety percent of the other students, he couldn't help wonder if it was some strange organism that dissolved into the meat of him, felt around in his muscles for the aches and pains and soothed them. It seemed awfully targeted for something so generally applied, as if guided to the parts of him that weren't whole, and he couldn't help thinking of it like some form of bonding amoeba. As its cool, tingling numbness spread bone-deep to his ribs and the station medics began to press them back into place, Yoroi's mind wandered. Had he, he wondered, had a more significant injury? He wasn't sure that he wouldn't have died had both of the rolling biotic spikes punched through him. It didn't matter. He lived through it, and he would live through it again. Or would he? He'd meant it, when he asked Madan if they would die here. A stupid thing to say, really, the instructors had it in their best interests to keep them alive, but it wouldn't be the first time. Accidents happened, and how many were actually accidents as opposed to 'accidents' called such after the fact was questionable at best. But Yoroi was beginning to feel that he really [i]might[/i] die here--that one day he would either kill those fucking hawks or be killed by them. That he couldn't think of it any other way was both telling and frighting to him, as was his acceptance of both of these facts. What was there left to say? They'd taken something from him, some deep sense of security, and he wanted it back. What would it even be [i]like[/i], now, to be in control of himself? To run his own life? To be a civilian again? That he couldn't picture it, as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath against the slowly dissipating searing in his chest, was telling. [hr] No one could look at him. As he made his way back into the lounge some hours after he entered the medical wing, not a one of the students would meet his eyes. That was fine--he didn't need them. What would they have done? Apologized? Lied to him and pretend it had been a good fight? He didn't have anything to say to them, and they nothing to him. He felt as alone as he ever had, and for the first time he found himself wondering if Madan felt like this. Step Nine. Instructor level, high enough up in the rankings to warrant your own room. Instructors' privileges, the right to command students. What would it be like, with eyes constantly on your back? Was it like this? He could feel them, as he made to take a seat at one of the tables, burning holes in his back and whispering. His wrist still had the red medical tag on it, the one that said he wasn't allowed to participate in training for the remainder of the calendar day, and he toyed with it as he closed his eyes and tried to ignore what he could hear of the murmuring about the room. [i]Fucking dumbass...[/i] [i]Did you see that? How does someone survive that?[/i] [i]He'll bring the instructors down on all of us, you want and see...[/i] [i]Hope he--[/i] His nose was bleeding. He swiped over his lip with a thumb, snagging the crawl of red on the calloused skin and observing it for a moment. Not long ago he'd been practically spitting the stuff, but somehow it was more terrifying to see it now than it had been then, all the claustrophobia of the station hitting him at once. He wondered if this was what panic attacks were like, if this was one of them, these moments where the world seemed to blot out and all he could see was the red of his blood. Some kids got migraines--Yoroi got nosebleeds. Bad ones, sometimes, the kind that didn't stop. What if it [i]didn't[/i] stop? What if he'd blown something this time? A little pop, somewhere in his head, trying so hard he just couldn't-- His shoulder jerked forward as someone knocked into it in passing, an elbow jarring him forward roughly enough that he had to catch himself on the table. Looking over his shoulder to see Al-Tariq pointedly not looking at him while he walked over to chat up one of the younger girls in the program, Yoroi found himself surprisingly dispassionate about the matter. Yesterday, this morning, he'd have jumped up and made a show out of it. Pulled rank, reminded him who was who in their little biotic food chain. Now... Now he just didn't have the energy. He had bigger fish to fry. [hr] He woke to the same sound as ever, that piercing klaxon that sounded the shift from dark to light. Would he ever get used to it? Some of the others had, waking up beforehand and killing time until the inevitable, but for whatever reason Yoroi was always one of the few that woke up to it. His body resisted acclimation, a circadian rebel, in tune with some time-schedule from a world far enough away that it was meaningless to him. There was only the ship now, only the training. The students. The turians. Yoroi got up and followed the rest to breakfast, back straight and head held high. If they wanted to see him broken, they would have to try harder than that.