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When 6 and 17 enter their squads’ hallway the morning after their squads had their fifth growth cycle, there are sounds like chaos incarnate is happening in at least one of the dorms. Even after all this time 17 manages to be just a little bit disappointed that he doesn’t believe for a second that the Shebse's isn’t one of them. Distant bangs against a wall - usually so effective at making everything in the hallway quiet down in an amateur attempt at angelicity - do nothing now.
“I’m not a karking light gunner!”, someone yells.
Fourth cycle and talking about CT coding in a CC dorm. Well, there goes that last flicker of hope that he’ll be proven wrong about the Shebse's involvement.
17 sighs.
6 chuckles to his right: “Good luck with that.”
“Language, Rex’ika.”
Fifth cycle voice, this time. Still rough around the edges. It always takes a couple of months until voices stop cracking (Something that was insufferable to experience himself and absolutely hilarious to witness in the younger Alphas). Even in the unfamiliar voice, the tone and phrasing are distinctly Ponds.
“Thanks.” 17 makes sure the sarcasm practically droops off that one syllable. “I hope your squad is taller than you.”
6 doesn’t seem too bothered by the curse. Just shakes his head laughing, pats 17 on the back and walks into Edee's dorm. There are noticeably few sounds of chaos originating behind that door.
17 allows himself just one more sigh between heading turning into his own squad’s dorm.
Silence erupts. For maybe half a second.
Because one of his regulation cut fifth-cycle cadets jumps up from Wolffe’s bunk, completely forgets that he’s about 20 centimeters taller than yesterday and hits his head on Cody’s bunk above. There’s a roar of pain and Wolffe - because that roar is so very clearly Wolffe - plops back down onto his bunk holding his head in his hands.
17 looks around the room. There’s a blond fourth cycle cadet on the floor. Rex. In a hold from a fifth cycle cadet with buzzed hair. Ponds. 17 decides to politely ignore that as long as the situation has resolved by the time he’s dealt with the Wolffe situation.
The cadet at the edge of Ponds’ bunk is holding a datapad. Fifth-cycle. Cropped hair.
“Bly, medkit”, 17 delegates.
Bly nods and hurries off toward the fresher.
With that taken care of 17 walks to Wolffe and kneels down in front of him: “Hands off.”
Wolffe complies.
“No bleeding. That’s good”, 17 tells him, then “Follow my finger.”
He holds his finger in front of Wolffe’s face and just gets a blank look in response. That’s funny. Kid seems to have forgotten who he copied them from.
Their standoff ends as expected. Wolffe’s eyes shift to his finger and he dutifully - if perhaps a bit pointedly - follows the movement.
“Any concussion symptoms?”
A sigh, long, dragged out and perhaps edging on whining. “No nausea. No dizziness. No ringing. No blurriness. Will let you know if that changes.” An eye roll follows and shoulders hunch forward, body language caught somewhere between embarrassment and annoyance: “I just hit my head, 17.”
Since 17 would very much like to survive this day, he decides not to mention that Sull, back when they had hit fifth cycle, had succeeded in the very thing Wolffe is now claiming to be impossible.
“Funny, I thought that’s how concussions worked.”
“Congrats, Rex”, says the bed above Wolffe’s. “The drawling is almost working for you now.”
Eight years. That’s how long 17 has been managing these karking chaos gremlins - chaos gremlins whom he can’t even can little anymore because they must be almost his height now, with just a centimeter or two to catch up on over the next two years. Even now, he’s still not always sure how to deal with their chaos.
One thing he’s learnt, however, is to just start somewhere, anywhere, or if prioritizing is possible, with whatever seems the most time sensitive. With a bit of luck the rest will have resolved itself by the time that problem is solved.
“Bly, icepack.”
It flies at him in an arc. 17 catches it, folds that little metal late within that starts whatever chemical reaction makes it cold to the touch and hands it to Wolffe.
Then, he gets up and looks at the cadet in the bed above who is still lying there, blanket pulled up under his chin despite the fact that he must know, just as well if not better than 17, that the start time of their scheduled training has now definitely passed.
“Cody, why aren’t you up?”
“I am up. Can’t you see?”
The bluff is half hearted at best, which is kind of disappointing from the kid who seems to have made it his job to get 17 to question his karking sanity at least once a week. Not even an amiable smile, a concerned question aimed at 17’s wellbeing or a suitably plausible explanation why what he is doing is quite obviously The Right Thing To Do.
"Up."
Thin long limbs push the blankets aside (Because it doesn’t seem to matter how much muscle mass 17 makes sure they put on or how much he ups their calorie intake before a growth cycle, they always end up with floppy, long noodles after.) and proceeds to roll off the other side of the bed.
17 makes a distressed sound, already sees himself performing the second concussion check of the morning but Cody does manage to land on his feet. Cody winces as he does and dots connect in 17’s brain.
“Still sore?”, he asks.
Cody nods.
The first night after a growth cycle is always terrible. Muscles pull, bones ache, even the smallest movement can pull the hard won sleep far out of reach. It’s usually over by morning but there’s always cadets who get to enjoy the experience a few hours longer than their squadmates.
“It’s just some exercise and light sparring today.”
Anything else will wait a few days until they all remember where their limbs are located with respect to their torso. Although 17 would pay hard won credits to see cadets do a sim the day after a growth cycle, actually doing one would be uniquely ill-advised. He still remembers 6’s broken nose, blood gushing everywhere, because Spar had widely misjudged the relation between arm length and distance. And that was just supposed to be a ‘light spar’.
“Alright”, 17 says and looks at the rest of his squad behind him, which has now managed to pull themselves together into something that might look like order if one squints. Good enough. “Now, do I even want to know what all the shouting was about?”