Summus Proelium

So, with help from Peyton and Sierra, I went into the Seraphs headquarters. Paige and the others waited outside, both because we didn’t want to be a whole crowd barging through the facility, and because Paige had some bad memories about this place since it was where she had been reprogrammed and put more firmly under Pittman’s control. She had made it clear on the way over that she had no intention of going into any of the buildings if she could help it. But she would be monitoring things through her connection to Sierra.

Once we were inside, I spoke to Tricia, the kindly old receptionist I’d talked to before while I was visiting to do that extra work. She looked frazzled and tired, like she’d been run ragged keeping up with everything that was going on. Which I supposed put her in the same boat as basically everyone else. Despite her obvious stress, however, she was still incredibly polite and seemed horrified by my appearance. Maybe I looked worse than I thought with my half-broken helmet and the way I was limping along with the help of Style and Alloy. Or maybe she was just overreacting.

Either way, she came around the desk and insisted on personally escorting me, along with the other two, through the facility to meet with Patchwork. I wasn’t sure if she thought I would pass out and the other two wouldn’t be able to carry me for some reason, or if she thought I’d find an excuse not to actually see the medical Star-Touched and simply leave. From the way she kept a sharp eye on me and kept herself between us and the exit, probably more the latter.

Jeez, between these two insisting on half-carrying me, and Tricia marching us straight through the building, it was like these people didn’t trust me to get medical attention when I needed it. Which was clearly ridiculous. I may have been a little bit of an action junkie, but I didn’t hate doctors or anything. Besides, I wasn’t even that hu--ohhh boy, I nearly fell over as we went into an elevator and the other two let me lean against the railing. They had to catch me as I slipped to one side, which wasn’t a fun experience. I may have let out a bit of a pained grunt that was decidedly unimpressive. Which only made Tricia look more concerned. I was not doing a very good job of looking like a stoic and badass hero right then. Or ever. Probably ever. Honestly, a lot of words probably came to mind when it came to the impression I gave off as Paintball, and ‘stoic’ wasn’t any of them.

Eventually, we reached the medical examination wing. Or one of them, anyway. I could see several doctors running back and forth, which did admittedly make me tense up a little. I couldn’t afford for them to look at me too closely. Or really touch me that much. I might not have had a lot in the way of a chest, but it was still extant and I was pretty sure they’d notice it if they had to touch me very much. And I didn’t know exactly how I would tell them I didn’t want to be touched without making the reason for my objection obvious. So maybe I did have a bit of a problem with medical professionals after all.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about it too much. We went past all those doctors and to a small room where Patchwork was already waiting. While the other two helped practically carry me inside, I took in the older girl’s appearance. As usual, she wore green chest armor with a black mesh shirt over it, a matching green visor over the top half of her face, dark motorcycle boots, and black leather pants. Her hair was cut in that same short, spiky style and still dyed green. She looked completely out of place in a hospital type environment, to say the least. Which felt like an intentional thing.

“You know, normally I’d give you a lot of shit about getting yourself hurt by running into a room full of psychopaths with no backup,” Patchwork noted as I was carefully brought in and allowed to slump down in a nearby chair. “But in this case, I’ll make an exception. From the sound of things, you didn’t have much of a choice.”

I felt myself blanch under the mask and broken helmet. My voice was a bit weak, audibly cracking. “Oh, god, I must be dying if you’re being nice to me.”

Her response was to flip me off. “Don't be a dick, kid. Or I'll change my mind.” Her posture softened a bit and she pulled a chair up to sit in front of me. “Seriously, it seems like we wouldn't have a Minority left at all if it wasn't for you.”

“Not just me,” I insisted. “I had help finding the place. And I got lucky. We don't even know what happened to that Jennica girl. If she'd been there, if she'd been able to control the Touched they abducted, it would've been a lot different. A lot worse.”

“Actually,” Tricia spoke up, “we do know what happened to that awful girl after all. A ahhh… Touched who was part of the original Minority here, Echo--”

“I’ve heard of her,” Peyton put in quickly. “She took off to become a Sell-Touched merc, right? It was a huge deal like a decade ago.”

“The very same,” the elderly woman confirmed. “Well, it seems she hasn’t completely abandoned her sense of responsibility for this city. She’s returned and captured that girl. She just turned her into the authorities a few minutes ago.”

Well that… huh. I’d been expecting all sorts of possible outcomes to that situation, but ‘she’s been safely apprehended by someone who came back to help’ wasn’t one of them.

Patchwork exchanged a look with Tricia before waving her off. “I've got this. He'll be fine in a minute.” As the elderly woman left the room, she turned her attention back to me. “You wanna tell me what hurts, or should I just start guessing?”

Before I could say anything, Style spoke up. “Here, it's a full list of his injuries.” She handed over a piece of paper with an awful lot of writing on it. Which confused me momentarily, but then I realized she and Paige must have given me a thorough examination with whatever extra senses their bodies came with. Useful, that.

Patchwork took the list and scanned it with an audible grunt of disbelief before giving me a dirty look. “You know, maybe I should give you a hard time after all. Because it sure seems like you're trying as hard as you can to get yourself killed out there. What’d you do, dare them to hit you as hard as they could?”

My head shook quickly. “I swear, I'd rather live. I‘d just, you know, also prefer that other people get to do the same. And those guys didn’t need any encouragement to hit me.”

Snorting at that, the woman turned to the other two. “Okay, well I need to copy healthy parts over to him. So which of you wants to volunteer for that?”

That was how her power worked. If she wanted to heal something that was injured, like a broken bone, she had to touch a healthy version of that part. Then she could copy the status of that part, or whatever, and paste it onto the injured part of the other person. She didn't actually move any physical structure or anything. It just made the second body part be in the same relative condition as the first. And it was only permanent if you were Touched. She could do it for Prevs, but the effect would fade after a couple hours. Which was probably a big reason for why she had any free time at all. If her power worked to completely and permanently heal anyone she used it on, I was pretty sure she'd never be able to leave the hospital. It felt like that would drive anyone insane. Especially if it came down to finding out people were dying whenever you had to sleep. I couldn’t even imagine how stressful that would be.

On the other hand, she probably also felt guilty that she couldn’t heal people like that. She was so close to being able to truly save almost anyone who needed her, and at best she could function as a delaying action to help non-powered people survive long enough to get regular medical aid. The whole situation was probably pretty frustrating no matter how she came at it. Which just made me glad I didn’t have her power, or her responsibilities. I was having enough trouble with my own as it was.

In any case, Alloy stepped forward and held her hand. “You can use me for all of it.”

Yeah, that was probably a good idea. I had no idea if Patchwork would be able to tell Style wasn't a normal human body, but it felt like a risk we should probably avoid. This whole thing was dangerous enough with avoiding letting her figure out the obvious differences between my physical body and what she would be expecting from Paintball. We absolutely had to avoid any more unnecessary risks. Even if she would be a completely perfect match for all of my body parts, at least physically.

Yeah, that was probably something we wanted to avoid giving away too.

I sat there for the next few minutes while Patchwork repeatedly touched Alloy, copied the health of one of her body parts, then touched me and passed it over. Obviously, there were a couple tense moments where she had to touch my chest. But if the woman noticed anything, she didn't give any indication. And through it all, I rapidly felt better. Pain that I hadn't even realized I was feeling melted away, along with all the pain I absolutely had noticed. It left me half-slumped in the seat, a soft murmur of relief escaping me before I knew it was coming. God, how hurt had I actually been to feel this good just because it was taken away?

Left with that somewhat scary thought, I straightened up and extended a hand to the woman. “Seriously, thanks. I didn't even realize I needed that so much.”

She took my hand, frowning. “You know, there's a lot I could say to that, and most of it is probably a bit more rude than you deserve after everything you've done. So yeah, you better get out of here while I'm still feeling all nice and polite.”

But instead of releasing my hand, she held tighter for a moment and added, “I meant what I said before. We wouldn't have a Minority anymore if it wasn't for you. Thanks. But be careful out there, okay? Pencil was already pretty pissed at you, and something tells me this isn't going to make him feel any nicer. Watch your back and make sure the rest of your team does the same. I really don’t need to get another call that one of you has to be saved from something even worse than what you got dragged in here with.”

“Oh, speaking of things Pencil is going to be pissed at us for,” I put in, “can you spread the word that he’s not really completely immune to everything but actually has a limited number of defenses, so if you hit him enough times with the same thing you’ll eventually break through and be able to hurt him?”

I said it distractedly while yawning a bit, only to glance that way to find Patchwork staring at me in disbelief. “Oh, right. Yeah, that’s something we found out earlier. I’ve been trying to get the word out through the right people. It’s a really long story, but the gist is he’s got limited defenses as long as you hit him with the same thing over and over again and don’t let him recharge or whatever. He can be hurt.”

For a long moment, the woman continued to stare at me. Then she took a radio off her hip and said something into it about needing to talk. Once a confirmation came back from whoever she’d sent it to, Patchwork gestured for us to leave. “Go on, he’ll want to talk to you too. So tell him all the details I should be demanding you tell me right now.”

As I picked myself up and headed for the door with Sierra and Peyton, I wondered who ‘he’ was very briefly. Then the three of us passed into the hallway, and I immediately saw Lucent perched on a nearby windowsill.

“Papa!” I blurted with a grin despite myself, extending a hand for him to flap over.

“My boy!” His voice was a mix of pride and exasperation, as well as enough tiredness to remind me that he had clearly been going through a lot as well throughout this whole thing. Everyone who was still conscious and unaffected by that bio-attack were being run ragged. Lifting a wing, he touched it against my forehead. Or at least against the helmet. “You've been up to your usual amount keeping yourself busy, I hear.”

Snorting at that, I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. But what about the others? Have you heard anything about Syndicate and Raindrop?” I tried to keep the right amount of worry in my voice. I couldn't afford to let them know just how anxious I really was about Izzy. Though the simple fact that I had managed to stop myself from demanding to go with her was a pretty strong testament to my willpower, to be honest. Maybe it had helped that I was so exhausted and sore. But now that Patchwork had helped me feel better, I was back to just being terrified for my sister.

“As I understand, the cure you supplied the notes for has been synthesized and determined to be safe for consumption,” he informed us with a glance toward Style and Alloy. “The last I heard, they were about to administer it. If you would like to adjourn to the waiting room to hear how it goes, I am quite confident the doctors would be willing to share information with the one responsible for providing it in the first place.”

“They’re here?” I started to ask before coughing. “Right, of course they are. This would be the best place to put something like that together on short notice, and analyze it to make sure it wasn't going to do anything bad.”

“Just so,” Lucent agreed. “Though that does of course leave us all with the rather obvious question, despite your greatly earned gratitude.”

“I can't tell you where I got the cure from,” I replied with a wince. “I'm sorry, but they’re an anonymous source. And you see why they need to remain anonymous, especially if this works the way it's supposed to.”

I could feel the way he was staring at me intently, clearly trying to see if he needed to say something more than he already had about who these people were. But in the end, he simply nodded. “Whoever they are, I'm glad you have enough contact with them to be given something this important.” There was a softness and understanding to his voice. He may not have known exactly what was going on, but it felt like he knew how hard it was for me to refuse to talk more about it. “Now, would you like to see how the procedure is going?”

“I know I sure as hell would,” Alloy piped up. “Those guys didn’t look very good when they were being loaded into the ambulances. I mean--” She looked quickly to me, then back to Lucent on my arm. “I’m sure they’ll be okay.”

“Let’s go see about that,” I managed, doing my best to stop my voice from cracking too much. I had to keep my breathing steady, telling myself not to shove everyone out of the way and run straight to Izzy. The fact that I didn’t know exactly where she was would seem to have helped with that, but to be honest, I really didn’t think that would’ve stopped me on its own. If I let myself lose control, I would absolutely go tearing through the whole facility until I figured out where they were keeping her.

Fortunately, I didn't need to go through all that. Instead, we just walked through the building the way Lucent directed us. On the way, I stretched my arms and rolled my shoulders a bit. “Man, Patchwork does a really good job with that healing stuff. I feel like I should come see her after every little scrap if she can make me feel this great.”

“I would recommend against calling what you just went through a little scrap,” Lucent noted, “and against getting into such situations regularly.” He paused briefly before adding, “Finally, I would recommend against requesting Lady Patch’s services too often. She tends to become somewhat grumpy in such instances.”

Snorting despite myself, I gave my best scout’s honor promise to avoid throwing myself into fights against near-impossible odds for at least the rest of the day. Even with that caveat I made sure to cross my fingers.

Soon, we made it to the waiting room outside the experimental lab where they were working on Syndicate and Raindrop. The other Minority Touched were already there. Well, Carousel and Wobble were anyway. A quick conversation with the two of them confirmed that no one knew where That-A-Way was yet. She hadn’t shown up and wasn’t answering any messages. Which, honestly, I didn’t blame her for. After everything she had been through, the girl deserved some time to herself. Or just time with Pack, if that was what she needed. When she was ready, she would show herself again. And from the way the other two were talking, they felt similarly, though probably still frustrated about not being able to help her themselves.

While we were sitting there, I gave Lucent as well as the two Minority members the details about how we had discovered what Pencil's weakness was. All three of them were very interested, especially when it came to the bit about our new (currently unnamed) friend punching that fucking bastard in the face and actually managing to hurt him. They wanted to hear every detail, and I had to promise that they could hear the story from Rubi herself soon enough.

At the very least, that helped distract Carousel and Wobble from worrying about their other two teammates (not to mention my little sister) for a bit. And we got an update pretty quickly. They had been given the cure and were awake. Apparently it worked pretty quickly, which encouraged the doctors. But they were still going to be thoroughly examined and wouldn't be allowed to see us for at least an hour. Still, the nurse who gave us the update assured us that they seemed to be okay and that all signs were positive.

Letting out a deep breath, I turned to the chair Lucent was perched on the back of. I desperately wanted to check on Izzy myself, but I was going to have to be satisfied with being told she was okay. For now, at least. Fortunately, I had a good way to distract myself. “Well, now that that's settled, would you mind coming to the van with us?

“I've got a little friend who really wants to meet you.”