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vagabonddawnTitle: with your hand in my hand and a pocket full of soul
Summary: Roleswap!AU.
AE3803: a white blood cell with no sense of direction. U1146: the red blood cell she always runs into.
—
—
"Ah, this one has red hair," a Hematopoietic Stem Cell says, as the capsules in the bone marrow nursery release another Progenitor Cell. "I guess she should be a red blood cell!"
She picks up the infant and carries it over to the sorting area. The large circular mat is teaming with Progenitor Cells and Hematopoietic Stem Cell nurses hovering over it to select and sort the newborn cells into appropriate categories and onto the conveyor belts that will take them to the parts of the bone marrow where they'll grow up and be trained.
"As good a reason as any," another Hematopoietic Stem Cell says, leaning over the sorting area. "I need another two Eosinophils, has anyone seen any good ones?"
Another Hematopoietic Stem Cell shakes her head. "No, but this one has white hair! That's got to make him some kind of White Blood Cell, right?"
They giggle as they move around. Sorting new Progenitor Cells into jobs is critical to the function of the body but that doesn't mean they don't have fun with it. The new infant cells can be so cute.
"Oh, look at this one! She's so cute!" A cry comes from the other side of the room. "She has to be a macrophage, right?"
Eager to see, the Hematopoietic Stem Cells put their charges down onto the conveyor belts designated for red and white blood cells.
And fail to notice they've put them down in the wrong places.
—
"Transmigration practice today!" Neutrophil-sensei says, leading the class of young Myelocytes to the practice hall. An obstacle course has been set up, made out of cardboard boxes and tubes and designed to look like the body outside the bone marrow — where the white blood cells will one day be grown up and defending from bacteria and germs.
"You need to get from one side to the other," sensei says. "There are a lot of different paths you can take! You might go through the streets. Or jump over the walls. Or climb through the ducts or below ground pipes. Whichever way you choose to go, you just have to get to the bacterium at the end!"
He helpfully holds out the cardboard cut out of the green, wavey armed bacterium — Pseudomonas Aeruginosa the kind that they've been taught to recognise and attack on sight.
AE3803 swallows nervously. Even a cardboard bacterium is scary, but worse is the maze of the obstacle course. It's not a straight line, with all kinds of different sized walls and sharp corners. And there are vents and grates and secret passages which are really what Neutrophil-sensei wants them to take to get to the bacterium. White Blood Cells ought to be able to cross cell boundaries and move through the body without staying in the circulatory system.
But at least the circulatory system has maps! She thinks, indignantly. Maybe she wouldn't get lost so much if she had a map.
But she shakes her head, annoyed at herself. It does no good thinking like that.
"It's okay," Eusinophilic Myelocyte whispers, taking her hand. "You can stick with me."
"You're so nice," AE3803 whispers back, clutching at her. Eusinophilic is so cool — she even has a wooden sasumata weapon instead of the rubber knives that all the other Myelocytes have. And she gets to wear a pink shirt, instead of white.
"But," AE3803 says, determined, "I'm going to do it all myself. I won't get lost! Not even once!"
"Annnd, go!" Neutrophil-sensei says.
The class charges into the maze.
I've got this, AE3803 thinks, turning right. And immediately hits a dead end. Oh no! But there's a grate high up above her so she scrambles up the wall and pulls it free, holding on carefully with one hand so that she can twist herself into the tunnel and pull the grating back into place behind her.
The tunnel is so tight and dark. It's metal and cold and a little scary.
AE3803 makes an unhappy noise as she tries to wiggle her way through the ductwork. If I keep going straight, that will take me to the end of the maze, she thinks, carefully trying to remember the layout of the obstacle course. She'd been right at the start, so as long as she keeps going —
— the duct stops abruptly, and she nearly bumps her head against the wall of. It branches in two directions, both similarly dark and silent.
AE3803 looks down one, then the other, then the first, indecisive. Which way…?
Right, she thinks, and wiggles her way onwards.
The tunnel goes on for a long, long way. Or maybe it just feels like a long, long way because it's so quiet. It's a little strange that she can't hear the other Myelocytes — or that none of them have tried to use this tunnel.
Maybe they've already finished. Maybe she's going to be the last one again. AE3803 sniffs and tries not to cry. No matter how hard she tries she always seems to be the last one to finish anything.
But when she finally gets to the end of the tunnel and pulls herself free — dropping to the ground ungracefully and hurting her leg — she's not at the end of the obstacle.
She doesn't know where she is.
She's not in the practice hall. She doesn't look like she's in the white bone marrow at all. The corridor is large and wide, with arches and a balcony overlooking… a Red Blood Cell storage depot?
There are a lot of cells moving along, cheerfully carrying boxes and talking to each other, each doing their job to the best of their ability.
AE3803 watches in fascination and forgets that she's lost because it's so cool to see the grown up cells working.
Someone taps her on the shoulder. "Ah, I'm so sorry," she says, spinning around and starting to bow. "I was lost—"
All the colour drains from her face. Because the person that tapped her on the shoulder wasn't sensei like she was hoping. It's not even another cell.
It's a green, wriggling bacterium, just like the cut outs that they train with.
Only bigger, and moving.
"Sen… sei...?" she asks, voice trembling and starting to inch backwards. What would a bacterium be doing here inside the bone marrow? Surely, surely this is just another test. Maybe it's a suit, like the bacterium hand puppets that the sensei use to scare the erythroblast.
"Hmm," the bacterium says and it's definitely not sensei. "I guess you can call me that. I am far superior to you. And I will teach you one last lesson…" It's mouth opens and it has so many sharp teeth.
AE3803 is struck with more terror than she's ever felt before. She's not big and strong like sensei, she's not really even any good at fighting or phagocytosis—
— but she doesn't want to die, either. She screams, and it doesn't sound anything like a war cry, but she throws her practice knife at it. It bounces off, rubber and harmless, but her aim was true and even a rubber knife striking an eyeball is enough to make a bacterium flinch.
Then she turns and runs. "Sensei!" she screams, calling for help.
The sound of the bacterium chasing her only spurs her to run faster but she doesn't know where she's going. And, inevitably, she comes to a dead end. There's a giant door, leading out to the blood vessels in the body but it's locked — an immature Myelocyte can't open it.
"Hey!" A voice says.
AE3803 spins around, eyes darting wildly. There's a young Erythroblast boy waving at her, tucked around a corner in a small hallway she hadn't seen.
"You should run!" she says, wiping the tears off her cheeks, and turning around so she's facing the oncoming danger. "There's a bacterium! Go!"
It's the job of the White Blood Cells to protect all the other cells in the body, after all. Even if she's not any good at it, it's still her job.
The Erythroblast catches her hand though and pulls her into the hallway. "Come this way!" he insists. "We'll be able to get to safety."
AE3803 hesitates, but when he tugs on her arm she goes. The bacterium chasing them is slowed a little by the narrow hallway, but she can still hear it taunting them as it chases. If it catches them—
She's got to do something.
But the Erythroblast seems to know where he's going, pulling her through a dizzying twist of corridors and hallways, until he crashes into a large classroom.
"Macrophage-sensei!" he yells, half bent over panting.
The woman at the head of the class blinks at him. She's beautiful, with her hair tied back and tucked under a lace cap, wearing a full beige dress with white apron. "Oh my," she says, voice light and sweet. "Where have you been U1146?"
"... bacterium!" AE3803 cries, pointing behind them. She glances about the classroom at looks at all the frozen and afraid Erythroblasts and her stomach drops. This is worse than the hallway — they've led it right to a whole lot of innocent cells.
"Oh my," Macrophage-sensei says, not sounding any different or more alarmed, as the Pseudomonas Aeruginosa appears in the doorway, tentacle arms waving threateningly.
"Oh ho!" the bacterium cheers. "A whole bunch of helpless Erythroblasts to bully and consume. It's my lucky day."
Macrophage-sensei blinks at him, and without disrupting her serene expression, picks up her solid oak desk in one hand, lifts it high above her head and slams it down on him like a hammer.
The bacterium squishes flat, exploding into cytoplasm and splashing red liquid across the floor.
"I'll clean that up in no time," Macrophage-sensei says, sweetly, stepping daintily over the red cytoplasm and lifting her skirts out of the way. "But I think you need to go back to the white blood cell class!" She bumps AE3803 on the nose with one finger, and smiles.
AE3803 nods, eyes welling up with tears again now that the danger is over. She clutches harder at the Erythroblasts hand, and then makes herself let go. "Thank you for saving me!" she says, bowing. "Do you think… that we'll meet again?"
The Erythroblast blinks but to her relief he doesn't seem any less scared than her. "I don't know," he says quietly. "But maybe, if we both grow up and work in the blood vessels of the body… we'll run into each other again."
AE3803 nods and smiles at him. "I hope so," she says, and waves at him again as the Macrophage leads her back to her classroom.
Neutrophil-sensei is relieved to see her — not even mad that she left class — and the rest of her class is busy pulling apart the obstacle course maze.
"We thought you might have gotten stuck in the vents," Neutrophil-sensei says, sheepishly scratching his cheek. "But I guess you're a real genius at transmigration." He winks. "You migrated right out into the bone marrow. I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on you."
—
Ping goes the antigen receptors.
"Die germ!" U2001 shouts immediately, pulling out his knife and moving aggressively around the blood vessel.
"R-right," AE3803 squeaks, pulling out her own knife and clutching it too tightly in her hand. "Germs. Die." She doesn't sound even remotely confident, not dangerous or protective like all the other White Blood Cells. She sounds about as scared as she feels.
"It's Pneumococcus," U2048 says, homing in on the group of purple bacteria in the blood vessel ahead of them. His grin is a little bloodthirsty and AE3803 wishes she could enjoy fighting as much as they seem to.
It's just scary to her.
"Pneumococcus," AE3803 murmurs to herself, following after her senpai. "Full name, Streptococcus pneumoniae. A type of bacteria which can cause illnesses such as pneumonia in the respiratory tract. Has a cell capsule and is extremely virulent."
She hangs back, just a little, as her senpai take care of the main threat — and that's why she sees the one to the side going after a Red Blood Cell. The Red Blood Cell ducks out of the way, holding tight to an O2 package, but unable to fight back.
He's in danger and she has to help. It's her job.
"Eee!" AE3903 says, which sounds more alarmed than a war cry. She darts forward, slashing with her knife, forcing the bacterium to turn to fight her. It lashes out with its flagellum and she's not sure which of them is more surprised when she catches it. "Die, germ!" she says reflexively, yanking the flagellum until the Pneumococcus is off balanced and practically falls into her knife.
"Way to go, AE3803!" U2048 says, still fighting further up. He takes a break to give her a thumbs up, though.
AE3803 goes just a little red, pulling the brim of her cap down over her face to try and hide it. "Um, are you hurt?" she asks the Red Blood Cell who had been attacked by the bacteria.
He shakes his head. "No. I'm not. I mean, thank you for saving me."
AE3803 goes even redder. "Oh, I mean. You're welcome." She bows. "Um, but you should probably go! Bacterium are dangerous! And thank you for all your hard work around the body!"
She watches as he picks his O2 package back up and merges into the flow of Red Blood Cells in the vessel, then squares her shoulders and goes to help her senpai.
She has a job to do.
—
She runs into the same Red Blood Cell again just a little later. And by 'runs into' she means she literally crashes into him as she races around the blood vessel.
Her antigen receptor keeps going off and the White Blood Cells all know that one of the Pneumococcus from earlier escaped — but she can't find it. The receptors give them a radius of detection, but they don't indicate direction so AE3803 is left just wandering around in circles hoping she'll stumble into the bacterium.
Which happens a lot more than she'd like to admit, frankly. But that only means she's good at her job! Finding bacterium is a critical part of being a White Blood Cell, after all.
"Ah, I'm so sorry!" she says, scrambling to her feet and helping him up. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Have you seen anything suspicious around? Like a bacterium?"
The Red Blood Cell — she checks his ID on his hat 'U1146' and the number seems to ring a faint bell in the back of her head — gives a long slow blink. "I'm fine," he says, calm as if to provide a counterpoint to her own flustered questions. "I haven't seen anything like that around."
Which is the exact moment that the door to the storage room that they're standing beside swings open.
The Pneumococcus stares at them, blinking in shock. AE3803 blinks back. Then she reaches forward, gently grabs the door knob and swings the door shut again.
"Run!" she says, pushing U1146 out of the way just as the Pneumococcus bursts through the closed door. Her knife slashes at it's flailing flagellum, but it's more prepared for this fight than she is and she doesn't have time to grab her communicator and radio for backup.
And then the Pneumococcus deploys a capsule net and flees. AE3803 and U1146 end up tangled together, struggling to free themselves.
"Ah, I'm so sorry," AE3803 says, mortified. "I wonder what he was doing here, though." She opens the broken door to the storage room and the answer becomes obvious. There's a large map on the wall, disused and dusty, but there's a handprint where it's been wiped clean when someone checked directions recently. "The lungs! Oh, that's bad. I have to go right away!"
Her receptor is still standing, still detecting, so she can't be too far behind him. She just has to hurry.
"Ah, excuse me?" U1146 calls, as she takes off. "The lungs are the other way." He's pointing back in the opposite direction to the one she'd taken.
AE3803 stops. She pulls her cap down over her face to hide her embarrassment. "R-right," she says. "I knew that."
"I'm going in that direction too," U1146 says. "We should stick together since our destination is the same."
Even though her lack of directional sense is embarrassing, AE3803 can't help but smile at him anyway. It's not often that other cells talk to the immune cells — no matter how friendly she tries to be, there's something scary about cells whose job it is to fight.
I loved this so much I had to go watch the show
Date: 2019-01-21 03:36 am (UTC)Anyways, this was so clever and you really managed to keep them in character while still changing their circumstances and it's just great. I'm so proud of AE3803. She's so brave.
Re: I loved this so much I had to go watch the show
Date: 2019-01-21 04:13 am (UTC)I don't think changing jobs would change their characters all that much - but the idea of white blood cell AE3803 is so fascinating to me. She works so hard and puts so much effort into things that she's not necessarily good at... and of course, winds up in all the trouble.