<span style="color: green">"Damn it! This isn't the best down to break down!"</span>Ayla quietly hissed to the medic huddling close to her. The wound in her side ached in response to the woman suddenly leaning on her instead of the other way around. She wrapped one arm around Sydney's midriff, the other holding her heavy pistol.<span style="color: green">"Your God isn't around, so you need to save yourself. Crap, just...hold on to me. Help me here, please."</span>Ayla did her best to try and comfort Sydney.<span style="color: green">"You've done great already. Saved my life, really. Don't break down now and let that go to waste. I and everyone else here need you."</span>She really couldn't blame the young woman. She suspected this was Sydney's first real confrontation, and lacked the cold calculating mindset long-serving soldiers adopted sooner or later.<br/><br/>Ayla glanced at the others as she tried to help Sydney out of the shuttle onto the forest floor without hurting herself further. She glanced briefly at the dead bug and the unfortunate marine that had his corpse serve as bait as she set off to hobble past the scene to follow Genie. It was hardly the worst thing she had ever seen, and it failed to affect her in any way. That was probably a bad sign, but it wasn't like a failed clone was supposed to outlive a war and re-integrate into society. Deaths, no matter how horrifying, quickly became a statistic. Gruesome acts like this became means for survival. A soldier couldn't afford to stop and think about matters. A soldier couldn't afford to be human. Ayla scoffed quietly, pondering if this is why clones were such effective soldiers. They weren't "human" after all.<br/><br/>She glanced at Sydney again, looking at the medic's face. Ayla smirked, making a silly face and poking Sydney's gut with the back of her pistol.<span style="color: green">"Hey...remember. You made a promise back on the ship remember? To fuck the first guy you saw? You don't want to leave some fresh rookie looking for a nookie hanging by dying, right?" </span>She hoped the absurdity of bringing this up now would pull the girl out of her shocked state and make her forget the trauma long enough to at least get her walking on her own force.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>