So many injuries, so many replacements and none had prepared Kang for what would come of a consciously made, sound of mind decision despite the skepticism there had been from outside parties. He doubted they would understand – not without a thesis and persuasive presentation – but in due time, when the junctions had settled, the hydraulics properly oiled, and he could move his limbs with the same, if not more, efficiency than before, he knew he wouldn’t have to. Action would show what words under a deadpan expression and, in the present, jerky movements couldn’t: That willingly giving up his arms would be worth it.

So many injuries, so many replacements and none had prepared Kang for what would come of a consciously made, sound of mind decision despite the skepticism there had been from outside parties. He doubted they would understand – not without a thesis and persuasive presentation – but in due time, when the junctions had settled, the hydraulics properly oiled, and he could move his limbs with the same, if not more, efficiency than before, he knew he wouldn’t have to. Action would show what words under a deadpan expression and, in the present, jerky movements couldn’t: That willingly giving up his arms would be worth it.

There aren’t many, but he supposes there are regrets as he stares at the lightweight metals and plating of his arms, bare of synthetic skin. No, his arms wouldn’t have worked as well on a surgical front, but movements wouldn’t have to be so nuanced, so careful, as to not overpower. They might not have been as strong as they were now, but he may have been able to feel more with no worry that a technological failure would remove all processes entirely. They would tire, they would ache, they could be injured, but none of that had changed now, only moved to strain existing human parts; but would he ever go back if he could? Never.

She showed up on the steps of the clinic, no sign of a drop off and no aid which suggested she had walked there herself – somehow – in the condition she was in. Identification documents had been negligible, something they would find out in due time after they had ushered her into a room, working hastily to record and analyze her complaints, common as they seemed; but what wasn’t were the incisions, long and specifically placed though unprofessional in closing sutures. What wasn’t were the missing organs, the bits and pieces taken for no yet known reason. What wasn’t was the call he had to make to Terminus Security after or the steps taken to retrieve them in hopes of making sure the body was buried in one piece – or at least as close as he could make it.

They’re some of the worst dreams – nightmares – not because they’re made up of traumas experienced firsthand or built up into spiders of mechanical parts, but because Kang knows they can just as well be reality. He knows that, given the opportunity and the lack of restraint, he might have been able to be that person cutting away flesh and sawing through bone to replace with carbon fiber bone and synthetic skin, breaking and cracking ball joints to replace with pins and rotors, taking away every little organic part with painful efficiency to replace with something he hated the most in such sweet revenge.

In any other situation, they might have gotten along, Kang and this Alliance uniform, but the reason for their partnership isn’t ideal – not for Kang. The fees, he doesn’t care about paying. The tests, he doesn’t mind taking. The questions, he hates answering and he definitely doesn’t like him in his home, but there’s no choice for Kang otherwise. He just bites his tongue and… he doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t frown either as he asks the same questions he did the week before and Kang, track of good behavior maintained, gives the same answers until…
“You have to realize how stupid this is?”

It could be said he is much too young to be burning the candle at both ends, but such things – studies, homework, exemplary scores on exams – are some of the most important to someone who, frankly, has only ever known diligence, perhaps detrimentally. Meals: Some have been forgotten. A social life: That has been ultimately ignored. Romance: Negligible against the hopeful promise of a future built on hard work; but even Kang has his limits. Even he has his basic needs that must be met though he tries, valiantly; to ignore those that take up time that could be better used studying. It comes to a head as he falls asleep on his keyboard, on his notes, a steady stream of ‘N’s filtering onto the screen instead of the words he meant to write; and he can only hope there is a chance to make up the exam missed in his hours spent asleep.

It is an emotion, a feeling, that he doesn’t need to know to read, to feel, the disappointment on his mother’s face followed by the quiet chiding of his father for something as brutish as taking a swing at someone. It isn’t to say pacifism runs in the Han Family, a sister notorious for a fiery attitude more than known to get in a scuffle from time to time, but from Kang, from someone far less impulsive, it comes at a surprise and that weight on his shoulders that he had done something wrong even if, at the time his bare knuckles collided with a peer’s jaw, it felt right.

He hasn’t done it, thinks better of it when the opportunity presents itself, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to scratch that itch in the black of his mind that strips away, tears off, any semblance of altruistic kindness from the very fiber of his being to delivery just desserts; and he can do it. He has the ways, has the means, to make examples of black market organ thieves and anti-cybernetic fanatics; has the skill, the tools, to make their lives inexplicably worse – perhaps even worse than those they wronged – but there’s no benefit to losing humanity, not when it just makes them as bad, if not worse, than the monsters themselves.

Apologies – they’re unimportant in the form of words that can be so readily falsified, that can be contrived, that don’t prove that such a sleight won’t happen again or that something else won’t happen that calls for it. They’re not to be trusted, always questioned, forever doubted, but then again, it isn’t often they come around. It isn’t that Kang hasn’t heard them, genuine and sincere, before, but from those that might have bared the most weight, the most importance, they don’t come. They’re condolences and slight errs that, in a grand scale, aren’t worrisome. The big one though – those require action.

There is no such thing as perfection no matter how much one might strive to achieve it, Kang no exception to the ever-sought, but never-found chase to do when it comes to his work – whatever it might be, be they the ever-important progression of improvement in cybernetics, pieces, builds not considered without a thorough consideration of the ‘what if’s or the far more whimsical landscape of side ventures where taste and plating, atmosphere, only works when fine tuned. Work – it keeps him busy, keeps his mind occupied, keeps his hands busy at a level that almost – almost – borders on obsessive.

It’s just beyond the Expansion War, post-armistice, that Kang finds himself in their company, a bunch of soldiers still in holding pattern from prior operations or brand new to the field, barely graced with their military identification showing rank and title, there is very little that separates them beyond record. It’s a family, perhaps even beyond the long-stretched hems that keep his own together, and personal opinion of individual characteristics be damned, they all know what to expect by the time they’re stuck on a vessel, floating in the vast of space, for how long – that is hard to say, but it doesn’t change his welcome when he comes back two arms less, mechanical parts in tow.

Life on Scheria isn’t without moments like this: Someone, an Alliance worker, rushed into the emergency room with nothing but a splattering of bone where an arm should have been. When someone meant to be repairing ships is yelling, screaming, crying out in pain and they – the corpsmen – are there to help him, to fix him, before something worse happens. The emergency technicians have done what they can to triage and treat the patient, but it is in Kang’s hands, in his team’s hands, that their patient inevitable ends up and, above all else, they must remain calm despite the direct orders shooting out of his mouth. This is where he has his voice, where he belongs, and for the moment, this patient is his only concern.

It isn’t until college that he meets someone, charismatic, charming and everything he isn’t; and he’s drawn to him, like a moth to a flame, just waiting to meet a cruel death by electroshock. It doesn’t help that he is what one would call “out of his league” and any advance is always over-thought, questioned, doubted under the uncertainty that Kang isn’t anything wanted - not because of stature, not because of appearances, but simply because of biology. Still, there are moments where he drums up courage, moments that, much like the one he is facing now, that shrink and shrivel in light of clear opportunity. He opens his mouth to speak, to try, but nothing comes out.

He isn’t much of a joke tell. They aren’t obvious, nuanced, often bathed in sarcasm or situations where cleverness overshadows the humorous value to be found. A few can read them easily, most let them breeze right by without regard, but once in a while, when the situation calls for it, Kang let them slip. They aren’t good – the groans from his employees in earshot and the rolling eyes of his personal assistant suggest as much, but he still grins all the same, proud of himself for something so readily unexpected out of the all-too-often stoic individual. “What did the surgeon say when the patient told him he'd accidentally ingested a spoon?”

“I need you to sit still and not stir.”

It’s foolish, perhaps, to shed a doctor’s coat for something far less orderly; to brace his arms with tungsten reinforcements to avoid the possibility something could happen to the mechanical parts within; to willingly sign up to storm a ship – a corporate one at that – he has little to no experience with; but there are reasons for it – important reasons – and there’s no question in Kang’s mind of what has to be done. They’re rag tag but they usually are, a bunch of people signing on for a singular purpose, but there is still no question in Kang’s mind that they can pull it off, dangerous or not. He’s just there at the docks when need be, no questions asked, to rush the Dauntless.

He can’t explain why, but it seems the right time to throw caution to the wind during this amalgam of scenes, of genres, of tropes that has suddenly taken the station by storm. Maybe it’s the itching feeling of doom catching up to him despite a trail gone lukewarm or maybe it’s the revelry, the songs, the dancing, that has otherwise graced the black and white frame or maybe – just maybe – it is the push of want, an embrace of selfishness, to feel something other than weighty loneliness. Maybe it’s love, but it rises and sweeps with the music and a kiss, given outright without worry, that even when the smoke clears and color returns to his vision, blooms against all doubt.

It’s never easy to watch a patient die; to know that despite everything, despite all the help given and all the hard work to maintain life, it doesn’t work; but even as the time of death is called, even as the machines are turned off and life support removed, Kang remains steadfast in his stoicism. This patient, they aren’t family and they aren’t friend. They aren’t unimportant, but at the same time, Kang knows that if he has wept for every corpse draped in medical white, there would be no room to work, to function, to breathe or to simply be. He’s distant – not because it makes it easier, but because he knows it is what he has to do.