Cloudy Skies 11.m
Friday, July 1
The clock rolled over to two o'clock, and Howard sighed. Yet another sleepless night. These had plagued him throughout most of his adolescence up until he Triggered in his senior year of high school, but after that he had actually been able to rely on a solid eight hours a night. It was about the only part of his powers he had liked.
Now that his powers had been stripped away, though, he was getting them again.
A faint snore came from beside him, and he could not help but smile as he slid out of bed. Here he was, awake despite his best efforts, but once Adam was down there was no getting him up short of maybe an earthquake. A big one. Adam had a right to be tired, though. He had spent the last couple of days spanking the rival gangs that had taken over their old base, and even wrapped Gevaudan up nice and pretty in a length of chainlink fence for the Protectorate to pick up. The old wolf would not cause anybody any problems now.
Howard pulled on some clothes and took a step outside their bedroom before coming back to grab the copper bracelet that was the fount of his newfound powers. It was strange to rely on a bit of jewelry when he had gotten used to relying only on himself, but he was sure he would adjust to it. He had only had it for three days, after all.
"Distress?" piped up a voice from his wrist.
"No, no. Nothing like that. I just can't get to sleep." He flopped onto the couch and stared at the blank television. He made no move to turn it on. There was basically nothing good on this early in the morning, just reruns of old shows and infomercials. Maybe he could flip through Adam's movie collection, but none of those sounded good either. That was the problem with nights like these; he couldn't sleep, but there was nothing for him to pass his time with. "Hey, Hiallus? You got any ideas for something we could do? Did Shipwright load up any games or something onto you?"
"No, sir. Entertainment not anticipated." Howard sighed, though this was really something he should have expected. He had asked for something to help him control his magic, not a personal computer he could wear around his wrist. "Will search for programs. Suggestion. Sir using Boost spells, but not practiced healing magic."
Well, no. He had not needed to. He had been using his Cape Boost spell liberally while he and Adam were working, but between his enhancements and defensive clothing and Adam's telekinesis and bullet spell, neither of them had gotten a scratch on them, let alone injuries to the extent that they needed healing.
It would be nice to go out and do some healing though, wouldn't it? Most people would assume he was a villain through and through since he had been the second-in-command of a gang, but before Adam found him drifting through the Midwest he had been a hero. The only reason he had even agreed to join the Adepts in the first place was because he had needed something to keep him going after all his friends had died to the Machine Army, and this newbie villain Epoch had promised him that they were not going to do anything too terrible. Just enough that they could keep on practicing.
He hadn't even bought into the whole magic thing, not at first. It had just been something to do.
But now? The Adepts were gone, and while Adam was focusing on punishing the gangs that had tried taking their stuff, that was not going to fuel them forever. They needed something else to work on. Going out, doing some healing? Maybe he could scout out a new role for at least himself in addition to doing something unreservedly and unarguably good for a change. If he put his name out, he might even be able to wrangle a contract job out of it eventually.
He smiled. Adam would fuss about it for a while, the same thing he always did when it came time for a change of some kind, but if anyone could figure out a way to leverage their powers as Rogues, it would be him.
Howard rolled his shoulders with a couple of cracks and a grin. This was exciting! "That sounds like a good plan, actually. How many hospitals are there around here?"
"Twenty-three hospitals in Manhattan borough. Sixty-one within incorporation limits of New York City."
…Wow. That many, really? "Let's focus on just the ones in the borough for now. Can you give me a list or something?"
A transparent screen appeared in front of him, and he let the text scroll up almost without reading it. He had never been much of a tech guy, so the fact that he now had a supercomputer sitting on his wrist was something he knew he was going to need to get fully comfortable with. One word popped out at him, and a gesture stopped the text so he could actually read the name. "Yeah. Yeah, I think that should work out just fine."
It took a bit of a walk to get to the metro station, but after that it was a straight shot on the 6 line to get to 96th Street. He wandered up the street and took a right, and then it was just a matter of finding an alley close enough to his destination that he wouldn't have to walk around in costume on the Bowlers' turf for long but still far enough away that no one would be able to connect his real face to his cape appearance. Green light filled the cramped space and dimmed away to reveal his monochrome grey pants, shirt, and sleeveless hooded jacket. A gesture also conjured up the two biker gloves he kept in his Device's storage space. Hiallus beeped from its new position on his left bicep as it ran the scan he had made a routine operation after every transformation. «No observers detected. Clear to proceed.»
"Alright. Let's do this and hope nobody gets trigger-happy. I didn't like getting tased and shot at even when I was a Brute."
Maclibuin's new duds did not have much in the way of pockets, and what it did have were all on the inside of the coat, so he did not have anywhere to stuff his hands as he strolled up to the building and through the revolving door. A young woman looked up from the desk and blinked her eyes blearily. Not that he could blame her; the rest of the room was empty as it should be at this time of night. "Welcome to Kravis Children's… Hospital…"
Her eyes grew wide, and he sighed. This was what he was afraid would happen. He knew he did not have the gentlest appearance, not with the scars on his thick arms and his overall size. The fact that he was obviously a cape was just the cherry on top. Nobody looked at someone like him and thought, 'This is obviously one of the good guys'. He ran into this reaction a bunch even when he was a hero.
Still, that did not mean he had no clue what to do in this situation. He hadn't when he first started in the cape biz, but that was something Drowser had hammered into his head back when Hammerstroke and the Minor League were still a thing. Raising both hands with his palms out, he sighed as he saw her reach under the desk. Silent alarm. Great. The response was actually pretty good, and an armed guard and a couple of nurses came out before stopping in their tracks.
The guard started moving his hand towards his radio. Clearly the first course of action, letting everyone see that he wasn't threatening anybody, was a bust. "Nobody panic," he said, wincing when the staff took an involuntary step back. It wasn't his fault he had a deep voice! "I'm not here to start any trouble. Just looking to help out a little."
"You want… to help?" asked one of the nurses. An older lady, somebody who had clearly been doing this job a while. She actually had more spine than the guard did if the way she walked past him was any indication. "How exactly were you thinking you would help?"
He moved his hands down from near his shoulders back to his waist and smiled when she did not so much as flinch. The same could not be said about the security guard. "I know I don't look it, but I'm actually a healer. Couldn't get to sleep, so I figured if I'm going to be awake anyway, might as well do something useful with my time."
"And you just decided wandering up in a children's hospital was the best way to spend it?"
"I was already in the area," he lied. "If you want me to leave, just say so, and I'll be on my way. Like I said, I'm not here to cause trouble. But, if you have some kids who could benefit from my powers, that's who I'm here for."
The nurse glanced behind her at her colleague before turning back to him. "Give me a minute to call the floors. Just stay here, please."
He waved her to go ahead, but he could not help but worry. He was technically a villain, and if anybody mistook this as him attacking a children's hospital, going to prison was going to be the least of his concerns. Especially since all his powers were now tied to a piece of jewelry that could possibly be taken away from him.
On the other hand, he might just be panicking about nothing, and he hoped that was the case. She could very well be calling someone just like she said, and even if she did call the Protectorate, he was just standing here not doing a single thing wrong. Between heroes not wanting to start a fight here any more than he did and the incredibly small number of healing capes, they would treat him with kid gloves. That assumed they believed him about the healing in the first place, which…
The nurse came back before he could spiral too far into his fears. Her expression was less stony now, more contemplative. "You're really a healer?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Okay. Come with me. There are a couple of kids one of the docs said to show you."
Into the maze of hallways they went, climbing a flight of stairs to the third floor. The sign over the door she eventually led him to made him gulp. This would be the first time he used these particular powers, and he was being taken to an intensive care unit?
If he screwed this up, he was never going to be allowed back in this hospital.
A scruffy man in scrubs was waiting for him a short distance past the door. "You're the healer, I'm guessing," he said, holding out a hand for Maclibuin to shake. "Doctor Coss. I'm in charge of the ICU tonight."
"Just call me Mac."
The doctor nodded. "You're the first healing cape I've had the chance to meet, so I have to ask. What kind of healing do you do? No point throwing you at someone you aren't able to help, you understand."
That was an interesting question, especially since he did not truly know just what he could do anymore. Honesty was going to be the best policy, he knew, but that did not mean he couldn't pretty it up a little. "I know I can heal injuries"—because Shipwright had told him so—"but beyond that I'm not totally sure. Haven't had a chance to test them out. I haven't had these powers very long."
The other man stared at him for a moment before snorting. "Well, I guess you're in the right place, then. Here we can try to fix the kids in case something goes wrong. But if you know you can heal injuries…" He trailed off before nodding. "Come with me. There's somebody I want you to see."
The went to the other side of the room to find a little boy lying in a bed, a woman who could only be his mother sleeping in a chair next to him. Coss went over to shake the woman awake and whisper to her. Maclibuin, on the other hand, stopped at the near side of the bed and knelt so he would be closer to eye level with the boy who was already awake. "Hey, kiddo," he said in lieu of anything better to open up with.
"Hi," the kid whispered back. "I'm Phil."
"Nice to meet you, Phil. I'm Howard." Giving out his real name would get him flak most anywhere else, but a kid? Not even Adam at his most paranoid could get upset with this. "How you doing?"
"Okay." Phil didn't look okay, not with all the tubes coming out from under his blanket. He blinked at Maclibuin. "Are you a cape?"
"Yep. I'm a healer cape."
Phil looked him up and down. "You don't look like a healer cape."
He laughed a little at that. "Oh, really? And what's a healer supposed to look like?"
"You're like a doctor, right? That means you're supposed to wear white."
That actually wasn't a bad idea, he had to admit with a wry smile. It was too bad he hadn't thought of that when his Device designed his clothes. He probably could not change it now—
A faint breeze out of nowhere rippled the ends of his coat and worked its way all the way up to the top of his hood before spreading to his mask. Phil was staring at him in amazement, so he glanced down to find that what he could see of his coat had changed from grey to a pure white. «Alterations to sir's approval?» asked Hiallus in his head.
«Yeah. Yeah, it's good,» he tentatively thought back.
Coss had apparently finished talking to the mom because he tapped Maclibuin on the shoulder and gestured for him to step outside. "I explained what's going on to Phil's mother. She's agreed to let you try to treat him. I don't know how much backstory you need, but the long and short of it is that he had to have surgery for a tear in his intestines, and the damage was more extensive than anyone expected from the CT. The surgeons had to take out large chunks of his bowel. Since then, he's been in a lot of pain, and he isn't doing well, which is why he has all the tubes. This is probably the closest case we have to a traumatic injury, so it shouldn't be too unfamiliar to you. Give it your best shot."
And if his 'best shot' wasn't enough? Maclibuin shook his head and shoved that thought away. Confidence, this was a time for confidence. Walking back into the room, he gave the mom a small nod and smile before he turned to Phil. "I'm gonna see if I can get you feeling a little better, alright? This may feel a little funny, but just bear with it." He rolled his shoulders a couple of times and held one hand over Phil's belly. «Ready, Hiallus?»
«Yes, sir.»
Here went nothing. "Physical Heal."
A thick circle with runic writing on it appeared beneath his feet, a pentagram drawing itself inside the ring a second later. He had no clue why his shape was so different from the circles and triangles Calamity Witch used, but he was not going to complain about a cosmetic issue. A light green halo formed around his hand to shine on Phil, and then the light gave the boy an aura of his own.
The seconds counted down in awkward silence, but he at least had the option of focusing his attention on the flow of mana through his body and what little he could feel as it interacted with Phil's body. He hoped it was doing its job right; he could feel it clustering up in a few distinct spots that should have been where the surgeries were done, but he had no way to tell. A minute passed before he felt the rush of magic into Phil dwindle away. "That's as much as I can do," he told the doctor and the mom. "There's only so much somebody can take before more power has no extra effect. I don't want you to be surprised or worried if he's not fully healed. How do you feel now?"
The boy twisted a little bit, then poked his tummy with a finger. "I don't hurt anymore."
"That's a good sign," Coss said. "The nurses are going to take you downstairs for another scan in a few minutes, Phil. We want to see how much better you are now. Mac, if you'll come with me. I have a few other people I think you might be able to help."
They saw a total of twelve patients together, anyone who had a parent around to give him permission to heal their kids. Only one of them refused, the emblem of a prominent anti-cape group dangling from her wrist explaining why much more eloquently than the vitriol she spewed at him. In addition to scratching the itch to do something altruistic, it also gave him the chance to find the limits to his powers. Limits like the fact that he could apply his spell to infections and organ failure, though it was not quite as effective as when he treated injuries. Or maybe it was simply that the results were not as obvious. He also proved that the thing with Phil wasn't a fluke; his spell had an upper boundary beyond which he simply could not do any more, although if whatever disease he was working on had hit multiple areas of the body, he could approach each area independently and eke out a little more bang for his buck.
And finally, even though his Device made his spellcasting more efficient, his mana was still a finite resource.
"I'm sorry, but this is where I tap out," he told Coss half an hour or so after they started. "I don't have anything left in the tank."
The doctor smiled. "Trust me, that's nothing to apologize for. I'm amazed you were able to do as much as you did. Some of these kids have kept us busy the last few nights, and even if you couldn't get them back to a hundred percent, you managed to help stabilize them. That's going to give them a better chance than they had before you got here." A nurse cleared her throat and handed him a few sheets of paper, and his smile grew wider. "Do you want some good new before you leave? This is the read for Phil's CT. It's worlds better than it was this morning, good enough that we can transfer him out of the ICU to the regular surgery floor. It's a huge step to getting him back home."
That was good news, and it made him wonder something. "Hey, I've got a question for you. What should I do if I want to swing over here some other night? Or even during the day?"
Coss tapped his chin in thought. "Most people who want to volunteer I'd send to that department, but they aren't directly involved in patient care. I don't think you want to go through the same rigamarole every time if you just show up in the ER, either." He nodded to himself. "Let me bring this up with the bigwigs and see what we can work out. Do you have a phone number or email address where I can reach you?"
"Would a PHO account work?"
Contact information exchanged, Maclibuin was guided by another staff member back to the ER entrance. He felt quite pleased with himself if he were being honest with himself. This was a good night.
Of course that was when everything went to hell and the sky exploded into light.
Maclibuin blinked the spots out of his eyes, and when he looked up it was to see a man in an iconic blue bodysuit hovering in the air. That was the problem with being a villain in New York City. There was no telling when he would suddenly find himself standing on front of Legend.
He wasn't getting blasted by every gay man's favorite cape just yet, though, so maybe he could get out of here without too much of a scrap. "Good morning," he called out.
"Good morning to you." Legend drifted down to the ground, his arms hanging at his side instead of crossed over his chest. Another good sign. "It's a little early to be out and about, though, isn't it? Even for a trip to the hospital."
"…They called you, didn't they?"
Legend nodded with a rueful smile. "They called us. In their defense, it isn't an everyday occurrence that a new healer shows up in town and volunteers his services to children in need. They called us just as a precaution. They also told us a couple of minutes later that you were exactly what you advertised yourself as. I came mostly to welcome you to the New York cape scene."
…Legend had no clue who he was, did he? Maclibuin would have assumed that his size and scars would give away the secret, but then again, everyone who knew about him knew he was a basic Brute. He was not supposed to have any healing powers. That must be enough that Legend was willing to chalk up the physical similarities to coincidence. "Thank you for that. Most people don't have Legend popping over to say hi."
"Not enough hours in the day to do that, much as I would enjoy it. If I may ask, the hospital staff didn't get your name, at least not when they called us."
"I… I haven't thought up a good one yet," he lied. He liked his name just fine, but he could not give it out without wrecking what was so far a perfectly pleasant conversation. The idea that there could be two capes with the same name and appearance running around in the same town was too much of a coincidence to overlook.
"Yes, I was lucky to get in on the cape scene early on before all the easy names were taken. I'm sure you'll find one you like soon enough.
"Unfortunately, I meant what I said about being here mostly to welcome you. I also need to give you a warning." Oh no. "I'm sure the staff here are all good people, but if you make a habit of coming to the hospitals and healing people, eventually one of the gangs will hear about it and try to conscript you. I doubt they'll be gentle about it, either." He stretched out his hand. "If you ever feel like you're in danger, please don't try to handle it on your own or suffer in silence. Go to one of our bases. We can keep you safe."
Was Legend really offering a safe haven just like that? Or was it a recruitment pitch dressed up in concern? There was no way to tell, and despite having no great love for the Protectorate as a whole – there was a reason he had not joined their ranks when the rest of the Minor League was killed – he did not want to blindly assume the worst of Legend of all people.
"Thank you," he said again, shaking the other hero's hand. "I hope I never have to take you up on that, but I appreciate the offer all the same."
Legend took off back into the sky, and Maclibuin walked back to the alley with a spring in his step. Tonight hadn't been a bad night. Not at all.
Epoch's and Maclibuin's character sheets updated.
I try to be as accurate as possible when it comes to real places, but I couldn't find a good map for the layout of Kravis Hospital. Finding out where the PICU was located was difficult enough. You'll just have to cut me some slack this time around.
Anyway, now that the whole Ziz thing is done, we can finally vote on Tim's build schedule for the week. Because of the Unison Device, he has THREE build slots to play with. If you need ideas, there's a running list threadmarked in the Informational tab. Don't forget you also have Bakuda bombs you could analyze, which have been elaborated on in his inventory.
Take 24 HOURS to think about what you're going to do.
