Rania Dressed as a Nurse

"Mr. Arlington, would you like to pray with me?" Rania asked her infirmed teacher, an elderly man with dark skin, heavy wrinkles in his face, and a bush of a gray beard growing at his chin, leaving the upper lip uncovered.

"... Are you two trying to write me off?" he asked, lowering both eyebrows critically. When his navi, MiracleMan, started talking in that crazy preacher voice, others tended to get swept up in it with alarming results. What had started as him getting a minor bone fracture has turned into him dying with his student by his side.

Rania shook her red hair side to side furiously to wake herself up. "Oh, sorry," she sighed in relief. Truth be told, she wasn't religious, so that would have been an awkward experience for everyone. Speaking of awkward, nothing made her feel more so than the white uniform they'd given her to wear along with her job today. The little cross print cap and miniskirt seemed like they must be somebody's prank rather than hospital protocol, because she noticed none of the other nurses were wearing it.

"Come to think of it, Amelie sent over my uniform in a little bag from her house after I washed it over there... this must have been her idea. I should have checked before I left home," she grumbled to herself.

"Kind of interesting that she just had that on hand," Meleeman chimed in. "Course, she'd look pretty damn good in it."

"Shut up! I asked about your little date so can it, okay? I've got to work all day..." she poured, as if she hadn't signed up for the service herself. Disappointment had only set in once she realized she was passing up a chance to meet one of her friends for it.

"Date? That's some bullcrap," Meleeman spat. "When we last saw her she was undergoing huge, unstable physical changes. It's our duty to see if she's coping with them alright. Who knows what might have happened?"

"Your duty to examine her juicy new melons you mean!" Rania exclaimed indignantly, secretly annoyed that she was getting less attention than hypothetical Anyis. She turned to the side and noticed her former school principal watching her curiously. With a small laugh, she stepped outside. "I'm going to prep for the next patient, so tell me if that email comes back."

"Yeah," Meleeman answered, which was code for "no." He had gotten the message a while ago and failed to let her know. It would be funnier if Mill saw her before she had a chance to get out of the outfit... The navi allowed his own eyes to drift up from where his PET sat on the cart, nearly glancing under her skirt as her behind poked out over the bottom tray where he had been set. Wordlessly, he reset his frown and waited.

The automatic doors at the hospital's front entrance slid open as he walked up, prompting Mill to step inside and look around the expansive lobby. Nothing particularly gruesome awaited him naturally, since any real crisis would come through the ER and bypass the check-in. Most of those sitting around the lobby were just well-wishing visitors, though Mill did notice one teenage boy nursing what seemed like a minor sprain. Mill too was just a visitor, as he wasn't sick nor wounded, although he was looking for one of the staffers instead of a patient. "Hah... Why'd she have to be working here...?" sighed Mill, speaking quietly to himself before locating the reception desk at the back of the room.

"Hmm? Are you afraid of hospitals, Mill? Squeamish?" queried Anyis, who was always in earshot regardless of how quietly her Operator whispered.

"Eh, it's not a big deal." assured Mill with a shake of his head, though he still looked a little tense to anyone observing.

"That's convincing." noted Anyis dryly. "Whatever, just bring me to MeleeMan and then you can deal with your phobia."

"Seriously, I'm not afraid of hospitals..." argued Mill hopelessly, before stuffing his PET back into his jacket pocket to prevent Anyis from talking back. Now that he could actually stop and thing, Mill began wondering... where exactly was Rania? She didn't mention a meeting place in the e-mail... Well, if she was working right now, then the receptionist could probably pull up the shifts and find out where. Having figured that out, Mill walked up to the reception counter. "Um, excuse me..."

"Yes? May I help you?" responded the female receptionist, clad in the hospital's stark white uniform, politely.

"Yeah, uh, is there a Rania Firebrand working here right now? She asked me to... deliver something to her." asked Mill slowly, constructing a reason as he went after realizing that 'because her Navi is bored' isn't a very acceptable reason to be granted access to the patient wing.

"Hmm... Oh, the young redhead from the volunteer group. Let me just pull up the shift chart for today..." muttered the receptionist as she began typing away at her computer's keyboard. "While I do that, though, might I ask what you're delivering? We have to check anything and everything that goes in and out of this hospital, of course."

"Oh, of course..." nodded Mill in agreement. Crap. Quick thinking, quick thinking... Mill popped a pocket on his cargo pants open, rustled his hand around in it for a few seconds, before suddenly getting a flash of inspiration. "A spare battery for her PET." he announced proudly, extracting just that from his pocket and showing it to the woman. "The battery she has has been acting a little weird today, so she asked me to bring a replacement before it causes a problem for her patients."

The receptionist looked at the battery, then thought to herself for a few seconds before saying, "Mm, I suppose that would be troublesome if she couldn't access the patient database. Alright, here's a visitor's pass..." She handed Mill a plastic card with a clip to Mill before turning her computer's monitor around and pointing, "And she's taking rounds through this hall today. Do you know the way on your own?"

"Yeah, I've visited here a few times before. Thank you." said Mill with a slight courteous bow before clipping the pass to his jacket and walking off towards the patient wing. Once he was clear of the lobby, Mill's shoulders slumped and he let out an audible sigh. "Guess Rania didn't forward a notice that she was expecting a visitor..."

"I have to admit, I'm pretty impressed. Who would've thought the crap in your pockets ever would've been useful?" questioned Anyis rhetorically.

"Tell me about it, I'm glad I didn't clean them out after I closed up shop this morning." nodded Mill as he walked up to the elevator and hit the up button. The door opened immediately, allowing Mill to step inside and proceed up a few floors. Once the doors slid open again with a ping, Mill stepped out and looked up and down the hall for signs of Rania. Aside from the various patients in each room, though, all he saw was a nurse pushing a medical cart down at the hall's far end. Initially Mill just put a puzzled look on his face, but he soon figured he'd at least ask the nurse if she'd seen his friend.

With that in mind, Mill caught up to the nurse fairly quickly, since he didn't have to gingerly push along a cart loaded with medical supplies. It didn't really click with him initially that her uniform was quite a bit more... trim compared to the standard the receptionist was wearing, so Mill didn't hesitate much to approach her and say, "Excuse me, but could you help me with somethi...?" he began, noticing that vivid red hair just a little too late.

Oooookay this was Rania. At this point Mill made the astute observation that her skirt was extremely short, forcing him to shut up, cover his mouth with his hand, and avert his eyes. "Uh... Hey there?" From within Mill's PET, Anyis had caught just one glimpse of Rania's nurse outfit and was already stifling laughter.

"Yes sir, what can I assist you with?" Rania responded, turning with one of those winning smiles that pleased all of her patients and coincidentally aided their impression that she was about 4 or 5 years younger than she really was. Rania had failed to recognize Mill like he had her, but perhaps with less fault to herself, since he wasn't the most distinct guy she had ever met, even if she liked him.

Her face quickly changed color to match her hair once she recognized him. Meeting her high school principal while dressed in her nurse fetish outfit had been pretty uncomfortable, but this was downright ridiculous. Rania began to ponder exactly how she was going to repay Amelie for the prank, then realized that mental capacity was going to need to be poured into explaining herself. A spare battery in he pocket wouldn't explain it away easily.

"... I got tricked," she sobbed. The truth was embarrassing, but not nearly as much so as allowing him to think she was dressed like a naughty nurse on purpose. She bowed as it in apology, allowing a brief glimpse down the front of the open, impossible-to-button neckline of the blouse. There wasn't much to see, in sharp contrast to what te tight miniskirt offered.

"Waste of a prank," Meleeman snickered, failing to mention his own role in hiding Mill's presence. "Anyways, I hope you brought that navi of yours, Four-Eyes. We've got business to get down to."

"Well, not that it's a huge commitment, but we ought to talk about the NP a little first, right?" Rania suggested, her silly high heeled boots tapping against the floor quickly as she rushed her cart towards the visitor lounge.

"What is there to talk about? NP needs more manpower. More muscle!" her navi retort. The thought of Anyis in a more technical role didn't really cross his mind. "Djinni is in there too, you know."

"Well, at the very least, let me go tell Dr. Thorp I'm out for the day," she sighed. That would be perfectly okay, she knew, as lately she believed there wasn't a lot of necessity in her work service. They seemed overstaffed based on how picky they were in giving her work hours.

With that, Rania scampered through a nearby office door, tugging her skirt down uselessly and doing nothing to hide her exposed thighs. Mill was left with just Meleeman for company. Sensing that such a duo was pretty undynamic, Meleeman spoke up from where his PET had been left to sit (forgotten). "Hey, get Anyis to the kiosk. I'm headed there," he suggested in his most polite demand-barking voice.

Damascus wanted to add "and Magna too," but she was sure he would probably be there regardless. That and she was still a little too proud and isolationist out of habit to make such a request.

"Well, I was wondering what joining the NetPolice volunteers actually entailed..." explained Mill hesitantly, only to be cut off by MeleeMan boorishly inserting his own opinion. From there, Rania quickly darted into the staff room once they returned to the visitor lounge, leaving Mill with the medical cart and two PETs. Only able to awkwardly scratch his confused head, Mill finally sighed, "That was not what I expected..."

"Me either... That went above and beyond the call of duty..." replied Anyis, having spent her laughing fit and thus was now gasping for air. She was absolutely dying to know where Rania got that uniform, because 'that' kind of outfit seemed completely outside the redhead's element.

MeleeMan's grumbling demands weren't unnoticed by Mill, who picked the abandoned PET up off the bottom of the cart and held it opposite Anyis's in his other hand. Before bothering with the kiosk MeleeMan wanted into, though, Mill had something to address. "MeleeMan, before you call me Four-Eyes again, consider two things: one, it's pretty obvious that I'm wearing my contacts today." announced Mill, who'd have pointed at his un-spectacled eyes were his hands not occupied with a PET in each, before continuing. "And two, I have every reason to call you No-Eyes if you're going to call me that."

"Pfft... Heheheheh..." was all Anyis could offer in support, as having yet to fully recover from Rania's obviously-cosplay-and-not-a-real-uniform issue, she got tickled again by Mill taking a shot at MeleeMan's precious bucket helmet. She was lying on her back within her PET, curled up slightly and laughing here and there while trying to catch her breath. Anyis just had the giggles today, it seemed like.

"But anyway, you said kiosk..." added Mill, getting back on point, "... but there are about half a dozen kiosks here in the lobby alone. How about we just hold on until Rania gets back?"

"Sorry, your face is just so boring that I usually don't look at it," MeleeMan replied absently. Mill had some pretty valid points and some pretty witty comebacks, but darn if MeleeMan didn't have a hard time focusing on anything having to do with him. "I don't know what you're talking about with those other kiosks, but the only kiosk that matters is the one in the GNA territory... Huge, lit-up, active place in Internet City. Nobody could miss it." He said this all matter-of-factly, making it sound like he was much more up on the registration process than he was and hadn't just had his first contact with it when he went to apply. "Just jack into the cart, alright?!"

As he said this, he himself was jacked out of the cart (although he'd never actually followed the connection and was still hanging around in the PET). Aggravated, he looked back up to see that Rania had already returned. "What gives? Why not just use the cart?" the navi grumbled, crossing both arms across his chest.

"Because I don't want to stand around with this cart, or tie it up for that matter, while I'm off duty," his operator explained. She still hadn't changed out of the uniform yet, but she had already forgotten that she never explained to Mill exactly why she was wearing it. "Let's find a quiet place where we can sit down and jack in. Somewhere we'll be out of the way," she suggested, leading the way. Strangely, she was headed deeper down the hall rather than back to the lobby.

"Let's sit in here," Rania suggested, flipping on the lights in an empty room. The room looked to be an examination room, based on the fact that the only furniture was a patient's seat and two small, black guest seats, along with one foot stool. It was actually a little claustrophobic. "I know nobody's going to be in here today, judging by our schedule, so we'll be fine!" In reality, her thoughts were something like: "Let's not let anyone else who hasn't seen this outfit already get a look at it." Getting Mill alone in a patient examination room while wearing a spicy nurse fetish outfit wasn't any desire of hers, but things were playing out that way regardless.

Luckily, the office did at least have many things to jack into. The best of these was a patient terminal, made specifically for patients to jack in their navis and use the net if necessary. She took a guest seat next to the terminal, keeping both legs very tight together. Unfortunately, this either put Mill on the other side of the room or on the long, elevated patient's chair.

"Alright, time to get this show on the road," MeleeMan spoke up as Rania jacked him in. "Anyis, I hope to whatever higher power that you know how to get to Internet City, being a navi and all."

((Jacking in))

"Erk..." grunted Mill quietly as Rania coerced him into the empty examination room, his mental discomfort becoming more apparent as he came through the doorway. However much he'd deny having a fear of hospitals, something was clearly bothering him about being here, and Rania's strange insistence to stay was not helping matters. "We'll be fine for what..." he sighed in response to Rania, failing to understand her motivations for hiding in this cramped room.

As the observer, Anyis was split between two possibilities: one, Mill was lying and really did have a phobia of some sort with hospitals, or two, Mill was highly distressed over Rania's short-skirted little cosplay. Either would explain fully why he was acting so awkward all of a sudden, but as much as she would've liked to tease her Operator over the latter, Anyis had to acknowledge that Mill had been tense ever since he stepped foot into the lobby. That didn't rule out the latter, though, so ultimately she just figured it was both. After getting up off the ground from that earlier laughing fit and dusting herself off, Anyis offered, "Fine for hiding, it looks like. After all, you did lie to the receptionist and are now running around a hospital on a fraudulent task, while Rania is trying to literally cover her rear so the entire world doesn't find out what color her panties are today." Straight as an arrow, that was, and just as piercing.

Never minding how that was in earshot of Rania (as was everything in this tiny room), Mill turned his head to look back at the door, then glanced over at Rania for just a second, then darted his eyes towards the other guest chair which he promptly sat in. "... Mm." was all Mill retorted with, before pointing his custom PET at the patient terminal and linking it up wirelessly.

... That was an odd reaction, thought Anyis. She tilted her head in confusion at Mill's subdued reaction to both the guilt trip and the mention of Rania's panties, and ultimately couldn't figure out what the issue was. Her mind ran through a few more things she could say, both good and bad, but Anyis decided to just leave him be for now. Magna had been asleep most of the day thusfar, claiming he needed to recompile data from the last net trip, but since they were moving out, Anyis kicked him awake and lead the way to Internet City.

(Jack In, Internet City)

Both Rania's and Mill's navi and SP pairs seemed as charming as ever. Ignoring them, as she figured her navi could at least avoid creating an incident while on a task as harmless as accepting a mission, Rania turned her attention back to Mill. He looked pretty nervous... At first she thought that might be a good sign, as it could show she was getting a rise out of somebody her own age, which didn't happen as often as she'd honestly like. Upon further inspection, however, she noticed that the discomfort was a little less horny and a little more genuinely stressed.

"It looks like something is wrong... Maybe it's environmental influence? It's easy to get sick in a hospital because you expect to be sick while you're there," she reasoned. If that was the case, she might be able to get some more mileage out of her volunteer service skills today and furthermore have a justification for using the room, should the need for such explanation arise.

"Mill, you don't look too well... Do you have a fever or anything?" she asked. She thought it night make her day if he did. Just seeing color rise to his face as a result of something she'd said would be pretty excellent feedback for her. With a small shake of her head, she tried to stop wishing a pox upon her friend. "I'm certified for routine medical examinations, you know. I doubt mind giving you a checkup if you like."

"Fever?" echoed Mill, suddenly snapping back to reality and realizing his strange behavior. He looked around the room hastily like he hadn't already seen it before, then looked up at Rania for a second, and finally cast his head back down and sighed. "No, I'm fine, thanks. A room like this just... stirred up some bad memories from when I was a kid, is all."

Mill's face honestly did seem a little pale, under the right light. He really didn't have much of a motive to lie about being sick, so maybe it was just a... what was it, psychosomatic effect? Whatever weighed down on his mind was weighing down on the rest of him too, it looked like. After glancing at his PET's screen momentarily to check up on Anyis and Magna, Mill placed two fingers to his temple and closed his eyes momentarily before standing up all of a sudden.

"Can we go outside for a bit? I think I just need some air..." requested Mill, having never properly diagnosed why Rania dragged him into this room in the first place.

Rania smiled and nodded, slipping out the door with Mill and locking it behind herself quietly. Despite the expression she'd put on, she was both disappointed and angry at her friend. "If I'm going to be caught in this stupid outfit, I wish I could at least get the right reaction out of it," she sobbed internally. "Just so you know, we're encouraged not to linger in the hall... but if we go too far, we'll have to find a new jack-in point. Would you like to go to the lunch room? Or maybe the employee break room? But I guess people would wonder who you were..."

Looking at him, Rania began to realize he really meant outside the hospital, not just the examination room. "Oh, yes, let's head outside," she laughed in a spacey way, heading for the door out.

...And just like that, she was standing in the public, streetside entrance to the hospital in her nurse cosplay. The reception was getting to be pretty bad on that jack-in, worse the further they got away from the point. She was just happy that she had been working on the first floor rather than the top; the reception would have been long gone. "We can't go to the beach or anything though... I didn't bring my swimsuit and we are going to lose our jack-in if we keep going."

She briefly reflected over the fact that standing in her current attire outside of the hospital would make her look like a mascot character. "Eeeer, where to?" she asked, wondering if she'd actually be more comfortable if she'd brought her awful bikini.

Mill took a deep breath of the salty coastline air after he and Rania stepped outside of the hospital, which, aside from bothering his sinuses, helped clear up his burdened mind. He hadn't been to this hospital since he was... what, 6 years old? Lilia, his little sister, was born when he was 5, and frequent trips were made back to this place for about a year and a half after as Mill's mother suffered from complications that ultimately led to her passing. That... didn't do a whole lot of good for the psyche of an elementary schooler, but Mill was 20 now, and he honestly didn't expect the memories to rattle him this much.

In the here and now, though, Mill was being unfair to Rania. He'd probably never know the story behind that cosplay (lord knows he'd never dare ask), but in retrospect is was pretty clear she was trying to avoid the public view as much as possible. And yet, here he was dragging her outside because of his own issues. With rational thought now governing his actions again, Mill turned to face Rania and apologized. "Sorry, I wasn't really thinking of anywhere to go... I just needed to get out of the hospital. Um..."

Hastily, Mill yanked his custom PET out of his pocket, looking for some sort of alternative distraction for his eyes after his train of thought derailed completely. One arbitrary check of Anyis and Magna later, not really discerning what the two were doing, and Mill wasn't any better off than before. To evade his mental trauma, he dragged Rania outside into what was possibly a traumatic event for her, and... Crap. Think Mill, think! "Uh... There are plenty of open benches around, and... Ah, here." Since Rania's problem (and to some extent his own too) was that clearly fake nurse uniform, Mill came up with the innovative solution to cover it up. That's why he took the old green jacket off his scrawny body and held it out towards his friend. "If you need to cover it up... and sorry for the junk in the pockets."

He washed it the other day, at least.

"Thank you!" Rania responded with a smile what was vibrant, earnest, and most of all made her look like she may be finishing up her last year of middle school soon. She was genuinely delighted, however. She gave a brief thought to the fact that she had never smelled a man's scent that close before... It smelled... Surprisingly clean. Was that just cleaning detergent? She felt at once thankful that he'd washed the jacket and outraged that she had been denied boy smell.

Well, she'd gotten a pretty good whiff of Dr. Goodall when he ad nearly broken her arm while helping her, but she would sooner forget that if possible. "Yes, a bench will be fine," she agreed. After all, benches were almost like custom for her now. She had met Na'im on one, first talked to Mill and Erin on one... quite a storied history for the humble wooden park bench. "This brings back memories," she sighed aloud, allowing herself to reminisce a little. For her, they were goof mark bench ones. She wasn't aware of Mill's negative association with hospitals.

"O-Oh right, this outfit. I left my clothes to wash at a friend's place and she swapped these in as a joke," Rania laughed, realizing finally that the truth left her relatively blameless except for the ditziness of not checking the bag or asking for a swap. She watched her PET quietly, reflecting over how suddenly happy she was with the situation.

The jacket was, of course, more than big enough on her. What it didn't cover was the front of the miniskirt. As she sat, Rania unfolded her legs and recrossed them easily, no longer worrying about her appearance. There was the briefest flash... not of ordinary white, but of hot, shiny red. One could easily wonder what was going on under there.

Mill sighed, his eyes downcast on his PET as Magna and the unconscious Anyis landed inside. Any Navi is going to suffer some significant damage every once in a while, so he wasn't really torn up about that much. What was depressing was that Mill had been putting off a proper sweep of Anyis's code ever since her reformat, since her systems up to this point had been autoadjusting pretty well, and now with this issue he was going to have to go through aaaaaall of it and learn what's where before even getting to repairing Anyis's damage. All-nighter ho...

"Guess I'd better get to work." announced Mill without much enthusiasm as he got up off the bench and dusted off his pants. "Don't worry too much about Anyis, this isn't anything like last time. I can fix normal combat damage just... Mm." Mill turned to look at Rania while talking, at which point he realized... his jacket. Rania was wearing it still. Right. He did kinda want it back since it was his favorite jacket, but at the same time Mill would feel like a huge jerk if he made Rania walk around any more in that... questionable nurse's outfit. After taking a quick mental tally of his pocket supplies and deciding there was nothing important inside, Mill opted to leave it and said, "Just hang on to my jacket for now, I'll get it back next time we meet up. Later, Rania." With a quick nod, Mill walked off towards the MetroLine.

(Going Home)

Rania wanted to stop Mill and insist that he take his jacket back, but truth be told, she'd be happy to have it for now. Showing off her legs this way was bad, but at least she could have brag about those. Showing off the upper body was another story. "Thanks," she finished. "Let's meet up again soon..." Mill was gone without much fanfare; Rania had finished up her volunteer work and it was still pretty early in the day. "What do you think about Anyis?"

"Like what? Just in general?" MeleeMan asked, not the type for small talk in the first place and especially not sentimental chatter. "I think she looks better with long hair and bigger t-"

"No, her injury," Rania reiterated, restraining a sigh in the interest of cutting back on that particular reaction. "Do you think she's in trouble?"

"Nah, not really. I don't expect much of anything to hurt her, not really, at least... and Egg-Head says he's going to take care of the rest. I'd say I try not to worry about these things but, you know, I don't really worry at all. A guy like me doesn't have doubts or concerns like that," he boasted. "Now, our top priority oughta be getting me some upgrades with all of this Egg-Head cash I got!"

"Mill cash?" Rania questioned, not understanding.

"No, I was talking about NervousMan this time. They're both Egg-Heads," MeleeMan snapped. "The one thing that'd really ruin today is knowing I did all of that science crap for nothing." With that in the bag and Damascus having nothing to add, Rania went home first to change her clothes and chastise Amelie, despite her earlier consent-by-silence to going and spending the new cash right away. Rania's nurse outfit and dude's jacket would get some weird looks aboard the metroline as she rode first to her house, then to the shop.

((Changing off-screen and then heading to Scilabs))