Okay, this is the first in a number of ficlets that have accumulated on my computer. All were written in response to the Phanniemay event that happened over on Tumblr.
Valerie winced as she wrapped the gauze around her stomach, her skin inflamed and blotched with varying degrees of red. From the way her ribs ached every time she so much as twitched, Val suspected that at least one of them were, at best, bruised.
A groan made its way past her lips as she moved the roll of gauze behind and around her back, ending in a hiss of pain at the sound's jostling of her ribs. Already she could feel the throbbing fade away as her ribs were bound in place, and it didn't hurt quite so much to breathe. Reaching down, she lightly prodded at the dark purple bruise that lay across her thigh, from a ghost battle several days earlier, and winced at the tenderness.
Fighting ghosts was terrible on her body, and while she sometimes wished so hard to be a part of a team, and have someone on hand to help apply little things like aloe for burns or hug her for body warmth after going against the ghosts that had control over ice and cold. Because of all these injuries she'd sustained, her body was being pushed to its limits and beyond. Especially against the ghosts that had been invading the town lately.
She didn't know what had happened, but the ghosts that usually appeared had begun to vanish, and in their place had been ghosts that could control the weather on a worldwide scale, that could send the entire town into a dreamlike state, that could control plants and were entirely made of them. These were ghosts that she was outmatched to fight against.
But fight them she would. The new suit she had didn't help heal her, but it was connected directly to her mind, so no matter how bruised, how broken she got, Valerie would still be able to fight. She would fight long after the bruises became a broken body, and only let herself fall when she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Amity Park was safe. Until that time, these bruises were nothing to her but annoyances.
