But among the two options, I picked this one mostly because I'm curious about what panacea might see in Taylor with her power, could she see magic circuits?
I do wonder what the confidentiality requirements are around medical testing discovering that someone is parahuman. (Even if the CT scan abnormality isn't that, it will show up on an MRI, and we will probably get one).
While we certainly don't know enough in character to make Medhall a notably worse choice than the others, the fact that it's nevertheless on the list of options makes me think we should consider it more like a "determine the direction of the quest" vote. Confidentiality laws be damned, if we go to Medhall the Empire will find out, at least, that Taylor is a parahuman, and the consequences of that will probably be a whole arc - the outcome of which Kaiser will likely not be happy with.
I for one am very tempted to let it play out.
[X] ...to take up Miss Alyssa's offer for Medhall.
Let's go with Medhall so we can have an in-character excuse to let Herc murder-rampage through the E88 when they inevitably pull some BS.
[X] ...to take up Miss Alyssa's offer for Medhall.
I'm like 60% convinced that Kaiser is only making this unique special offer because he already knows Taylor is a parahuman, given that he is making the offer based on abnormal CT scans of her brain, and thus I expect BS to begin basically immediately.
[X] ...to stay with the current hospital for future tests.
I wanna take Alyssa's offer but I'm kinda leery with Medhall's connection to the empire. Also Panpan can detect Parahumans right? That's just a disaster waiting to happen. Or maybe something interesting.
Medhall was probably the smartest choice if Taylor was being honest.
Their hospital was well-known and had managed to stay competitive with essentially Panacea in the medical-tourism market by doing what she didn't do and being as close as second as they could be without having literal superpowers in everything else.
But, she was afraid of the other shoe dropping- it was an private hospital that their health insurance most definitely didn't cover.
Taylor asked her dad if they could try Panacea's wait-list.
He had a stipulation.
Namely if they didn't get seen by her in three days, that they would go for what their health insurance would cover. Three days was basically the time that Taylor was required to stay under observation. It was a stipulation that she really couldn't fight given that it was entirely understandable. Plus she didn't want to be kept waiting forever to see if Panacea could see her or not.
...Taylor was also hoping that since her issues were probably power related that Panacea might be better able to understand them if it came down to it. If she was giving herself brain damage every time she used her power, she wanted to know as fast as she could.
…
…
…
She was really hoping that the giant wasn't giving her brain damage.
With the decision made, her dad stepped out of the room after one more hug, leaving Taylor alone for the first time since she woke up.
Well, besides the giant.
The hospital room was inoffensive; an off-white colour. A privacy curtain that was pulled back. A smattering of chairs. An older TV on the opposite wall. A door leading to presumably the bathroom.
All of this ignored the teddy bear and the flowers.
Which were from Nikki according to her dad.
After a moment of silence, she reached over to the nightstand and fumbled through the bag to pull out the cellphone.
It's charge was low but it didn't seem to be in poor condition otherwise.
She had no idea if her dad had actually looked through it or not. She had tried to set a lock on it when she first got it but got the equivalent of butt-dialing the lock code a bunch of times causing it to wipe a few times in a row and had left it without a lock since then.
She had unread texts from Joanna and Nikki. From Joanna it was a single message;
'Hey Taylor, mom an I are currently looking over aide for Australia. Gonna be no contact for a while as the work gets done.'
Which made sense. From Nikki it was several;
'My Babushka is okay. I hope you are okay too. Would you like to meet up tomorrow?'
'Taylor?'
'Taylor?'
'Are you okay?'
'Did I upset you?'
'Taylor?'
Five missed calls with voicemails.
Taylor stared at the phone.
Fuck.
She texted both of them; 'I'm awake now.'
Approximately three seconds later the phone buzzed with a new text from Nikki: 'Are you well? I am coming over.'
Taylor blinked. That was fast.
'I think so? They don't think I'm going to keel over. You don't have to come.'
Again, the reply was nearly instant.
'I am coming. I will pick up work assignments from school so you won't miss anything.'
Taylor was confused. There was no way she was going to be doing any homework here.'Okay. I'm getting set up on Panacea's wait list.'
'Does she not do it at random?'
'No?' She didn't think so.
'I mean, does she not go for Terminal cases? You are not terminal correct?'
'The doctors don't think so; they said it might be interesting to her.'
'I dislike them treating this as a curiosity. People do not randomly collapse without reason.'
Taylor frowned. 'If morbid curiosity gets me Panacea, I'll take it.'
'So you say. I will be on my way there. No text while driving'
Nikki really seemed to want to visit her. Taylor stared at the phone. It sounded like she was dropping everything to visit.
'I'll be here tomorrow if traffic is too bad.'
She got no response.
There are going to be three rolls, one for each day to see if Panacea is around/available/bored.
DC for day one is between 43-57.
1D100
Result=55
Ummmmmmm… I guess we get it. Praise KindredVoid if you wish?
The shadow could only observe as the girl jumped at the sound of someone knocking on the door to the room.
It prepared to eviscerate the intruder.
The girl after trading a glance with her father called, "come in."
It was still ready regardless.
The first three people through were middle age healers, wearing similar white coats. The shadow had seen many in the building throughout the girl's stay. It seemed to be one of the uniforms of those that worked here.
The fourth person that came through the door was different.
She was at least two decades younger than the others, close in age to the girl and was wearing clothing that looked wholly separate. A bleached cloak hiding the unhappy figure inside of it, covered in sanguine symbols that evoked something in the shadow; half remembered things.
"Uh… hello Panacea?"
The shadow stared absent of malice.
The ever encompassing red retreated a shade.
The word was uniquely familiar even if the pronunciation was completely butchered.
The universal cure all, the remedy for all ills.
Impossibly curious amber eyes.
A shy smile.
PANAKEIA
The red deepened.
For a moment, the shadow had not quite felt like a shadow.
"-is unable to work on brains but she can analyze them and can see the whole picture better than an MRI can." One of the white coated healers was explaining something to the girl and her father. The cloaked girl seemed to be checking something on a similar ubiquitous communication device that the girl also possessed. With a click she closed it.
The girl stared at the cloaked one with unconcealed awe and trepidation.
"Can I touch you to start the analysis?" Her voice was raspier than the shadow had expected.
"Oh, um, yeah. Sure. Thanks."
The cloaked girl laid a few fingers on the girl's arm.
Something happened.
The shadow was unable to divine what it was.
The cloakgirl's eyes widened.
After a breath she began to list terms that the shadow did not know the definition of except that the half of every phrase related to the body in some manner.
Heart, Kidney, Stomach, Lungs, Liver, Intestines... it knew the terms for the organs. Yet the cloakgirl kept listing unfamiliar terms. This continued for some time. Each of the white coated healers were frantically recording it as she kept speaking. Their professional mien did not change a single iota as they wrote.
After a point the girl shared a look with her father. Both seemed confused.
When she finally stopped, one of the white-coats left the room.
Now there were only four threats to the girl in the room.
The cloakgirl continued to touch the girl.
"It's strange," she spoke directly to the girl for the first time since touching her. "I'd almost say that this was parahuman-related but there isn't an entry point. Usually with parahuman powers, they have some point at which they start or an external sign in the body of where it began but… nothing."
The girl looked intensely uncomfortable.
Amber eyes focused on the girl. "Do you want to hear what I found?"
"Y-Yes? I mean yes."
The cloakgirl looked at the father.
He nodded.
The cloakgirl looked back at the girl.
"You experienced complete mass organ failure. I don't mean some of your insides stopped working, I mean all of them. Simultaneously."
The girl paled.
"I can't see anything going on in your brain that would relate to that or even injuries from a fall." The cloakgirl hemmed and hawed as she worried at her lip. "That's fascinating on its own. A vector for this kind of cascade should start there if any place. But nothing. Rather… the real fun is that it stopped."
She looked directly into the girl's eyes.
"Your body began to shut down in a way that shy of being in the same room as me would be fatal and then it stopped."
The girl looked as white as the pigeon-augur that the shadow had failed to kill.
The cloakgirl pulled her hand back, with reluctance, "what exactly were you doing right before you passed out?"
"I-I got a ride home from school from a friend's mom? We- I- I opened the door and walked into the house. I-I think I started to get a headache and it felt like someone was driving a railroad spike into it and then my legs just… g-gave out?"
The cloakgirl poked the girl again. She hummed. The girl looked stricken. She started to murmur several words. She seemed to be disagreeing with herself.
"Your brain looks fine… hm. How about… no, what about? No, no, no. Couldn't be that."
The frown that the cloakgirl had entered the room with was gone. She reminded the shadow of a child being given a puzzle.
She blinked and seemed to shake herself out of whatever had taken hold of her. "Do I have permission to heal the damage?" She said it by rote.
"S-Sure?"
The girl let out an audible gasp. "Thank you Panacea. I didn't realize…"
Cloakgirl seemingly didn't notice what was being said to her.
After enough time that the girl had become seemingly more bored than anything the cloakgirl let go of her arm. "I think I found the origin point of where the headache started but not the cause." She then turned to one of the white-coats and started rattling off more terms. They nodded and started writing.
Then she turned back to the girl.
"That's all I got unless there is something I'm missing?"
Taylor had a choice.
It wasn't a choice she thought she'd be making when Panacea walked into her hospital room.
She didn't think the backlash from overdoing her power would be so severe as to the point of having mass organ failure, nor that it had stuck afterwards… that wasn't how powers normally acted, was it?
Or was it?
Taylor didn't know.
But Panacea might.
[] Taylor reveals she is a parahuman to Panacea in private.
[] Taylor decides to stay safe in her anonymity.
Author's note: New chapter, let's goooooooooooooooo!
Honestly, I'm not happy with this chapter but I'm going to stick with it.
I'm really trying to bust my ass to get these out. This one felt a bit… scattered. Canonically Medhall is a big pharma company. They also have a hospital here. We also missed a rather amusing doctor from Medhall but ah well, this is fine.
The funny line was originally "The girl looked as white as the pigeon-augur that the shadow had failed to kill." in keeping with the giant's naming scheme, I found pigeon to be too bland so pigeon-augur is what it became.
Please vote! The response I've been getting is why this went from an update like twice a month to thrice that.
I am…interested in the possibilities in telling her. Of course, I know Amy has plenty of negative traits but this doesn't seem like something that would put us on a path to her becoming our enemy…that and I wanna see some react.
On the other hand, longer term build up makes the reveal sweeter.
I like how you always get across this feeling that the shadow is a microsecond away from terrible violence, a taut spring held in place by nerves of steel.
I like how you always get across this feeling that the shadow is a microsecond away from terrible violence, a taut spring held in place by nerves of steel.
I think the best way I did that this chapter is when it says "four possible threats remain to the girl" and the room consists of two doctors, panpan, Danny and Taylor.
