The first bomb site we get to reeks of the sea.

The tourists always take a minute to close their eyes, flare their nostrils, and take in the scent of dead fish but when the aroma is with you day in and day out it fades into the background.

At least, not unless it's really strong.

The street is basically untouched. Nothing is broken, or shattered, or trapped in some weird Shaker effect. It just smells like salt. A few grains dance along the sidewalk, swishing and scratching quietly.

"What happened here?" Laserdream wonders aloud for the both of us, floating to the door of a cafe and pushing it open. I follow her, the scent of salt growing stronger as we travel along the short wooden hallway. She pauses after pressing through another door with "Coffee-nation Grounds" stenciled in black on frosted glass. What stopped her? I walk up next to her and look.

Inside, a line of clothes lying half covered in salt lead to an old-timey cash register with an apron draped across it. Salt dusts the countertop. Display cases containing small white plates and now-inaccurate punny name cards sit filled with mounds of salt. A stroller holds a little onesie, salt flowing from the hand holes and neck, with a green summer dress lying carelessly on a chair next to it.

I count the number of large piles. Five in the line, six at tables. One or two behind the counter, some number in the kitchen. Plus whichever restaurants were also in the blast zone. Plus whoever was blown away in the street by the wind.

Bad math puts the body count at something like twenty people. Probably more.

Beside me Laserdream pulls out her phone and calls someone, speaking in a shaky, hushed tone. I break a toe. Then a rib. Then several ribs, trying to push down the urge togo down to the docks, drag every vaguely-Asian person into the street and shred their limbs until they scream out the secrets of the ABB and lead me to-

"Um, White Rose?"

I freeze my chain of thought. "Yes?" I reply. There will be time for murder later.

Wait, what?

"...Nevermind," she finishes, going back to her phone and speaking quietly again. Something about patrol schedules and the Protectorate. I take another look at the room, empty but for us and salt. Something churns within me and I move out the door, make my way to the nearest dumpster, and puke my guts out. The smell and taste of bile cut through the aroma of half-decayed garbage wafting from the rancid trash. I notice that I can't smell the salt through the cloying musk.

The thought of the onesie filled with salt brings another wave of vomit to my lips.

Just... why? Money? Dead people don't pay. Revenge? Who is worthy of this level of collateral and frequents a fucking coffee shop? There has to be a reason behind it. Something I'm not seeing. It'll be... not better, when I figure out the motivation. But maybe figuring out how it all fits together will eventually let me keep a meal down.

By the time I'm done voiding my stomach Laserdream is off the phone, the PRT have established a cordon up and down the street, and the only thing coming up out of my body is a slimy, clear fluid. An officer is standing silently near the end of the alleyway, gun held across their chest. Right. Crime scene. First to it. They probably have a lot of questions.

I snap a toe bone to sharpen my mind and move towards them. My knees go weak, and I stagger for a moment. The guard moves towards me, a hand leaving their weapon to offer me support.

No.

I seize control of the bone around my legs and steady myself while bringing one arm up to deflect the assistance.

"I'll be fine," I say, and snap a bone to keep the quiver out of my voice. "Now then, do you need me for anything?" I ask, channeling my inner Jane Eyre.

"Just your account of what you saw, ma'am," an oddly high and feminine voice answers, unused hand falling back to her weapon. "If you could talk to Officer Caspen, he'd like to ask you some questions."

I nod wordlessly and let myself be led to Caspen. His helmet is off, and the grey at his temples stands out against his coal black skin. We go through some simple questions and after a few minutes he dismisses me. Which would be a relief, but I have no idea where to go. Eventually one of the PRT soldiers taps me on the shoulder and asks me to leave.

So I move. Slowly, then faster and faster as I fall deeper and deeper into my power, trying to bury the thought of salt beneath as many layers of bone as I can.


I don't remember how I came across the second bomb site. I do remember being told by some first responders about how I have to double check every piece of debris and that shifting them can sometimes do more harm than good. I let them order me around, making lattice pillars between the ground and collapsed walls then expanding them. When there's not enough room for that I dig, the careful eyes of a grizzled EMT warning me when he sees the rubble shaking.

We pull three corpses out of the building and six people who aren't much better.

I don't throw up this time. I'm not sure I like that.

Once they're pretty sure no one else is left in the ruin they tell me the location of another bomb site. They ask me to help. Like I wouldn't.

I leave a marigold for every person still breathing and get moving. Two limbs aren't fast enough, so I try four. Then six. Then I stop counting and focus on moving to the next disaster.


Credit where credit is due, the firefighter trying (and failing) to put out some black flames that are flickering far too slowly to be natural doesn't bat an eye when a multi-limbed bone thing collapses into a six-foot knight-errant in front of her. She has me scrape the Tinkertech fallout into a box and then sends me off to the next location. A conventional bomb, but bigger and hotter.

A few minutes later I'm elbow deep in dirt and ash trying to get to a sobbing voice behind half a dozen charred beams. Then someone tells me to get out of the way, Vista's here. I retreat and watch in awe as a gap the size of a flute balloons into something I could walk through with clearance on every side. A soot-stained child is pulled out by a weeping mother, and the two get escorted to an ambulance by a police officer speaking in soothing tones.

I don't remember much of what I read about Vista, the youngest and longest serving Ward in Protectorate ENE. A Shaker with the ability to warp space, limited by the number of people in it. An abstract description that covers most of the details.

That doesn't tell the whole story though. Vista is very much a girl, a full two heads shorter than me in my armor. And yet here she is, white costume going grey with dirt, a grim set to her lips as she expands minuscule gaps into paths to freedom.

Looking at her surrounded by destruction is like looking at a blue rose in a mass grave. Fundamentally wrong on half a dozen levels and yet there probably isn't a better place for her to be.

Then someone grabs my elbow and points me at a a smaller lump of collapsed building and there's no more time for literature.

Later, when the wounded are in ambulances, the dead are covered in white sheets, and I'm staring at nothing, Vista comes by and sits down next to me. We both just stay there, listening to the subdued chatter of the professionals.

"It's not usually like this," she comments idly. I turn to look at her, then adjust my gaze downwards. "They try to keep the kids away from the fighting," she explains, leaning her head back and looking at the sky, a note of bitterness in her voice, "But when things get really bad, they ask us for help."

"Anyway," she says, her voice shifting towards something closer to cheer, "This is the part where I pitch the Wards. Decent pay, good training, better back-up, and a whole host of other quality-of-life benefits. Armsmaster said that he had already tried selling it to you though, and not to press too hard. So, yeah. Just remember it's an option," she finishes, standing back up and heading towards a PRT van.

"Hey," I call out, getting up and following her. She turns, and I form a sunflower in my palm. Just the blossom. I snap it off and toss it up, the arc long and high. Some of the sky warps, and the flower falls directly into her waiting palm. I sketch a smile on my mask and get back to moving, this time towards the hospital.


"Three inches, finger width, two" Isidis says, holding out a hand. I dutifully grow and snap off the requested pieces, and she quickly presses them to the stump of an arm. The bones looks soft for a bit as they warp and fuse to the rest of the shattered limb, and once they're in place she dips one hand into a bowl of shredded flesh that reads "arms" and waves me away with the other.

"I'll be busy here for a bit, get to work on some of the compound fractures. I'll call you when I need you." The pile of flesh in her hand is already fusing to the bone and reforming into something usable. I nod and step out of the operating theatre.

The emergency room is packed. Not as bad as it was when I first got here but the less injured are still standing around waiting for treatment. Nurses rush to and fro carrying bandages and antiseptic to people coming in with open cuts while those who are waiting for more intensive treatment try to keep their moaning to a minimum. A doctor with designer bags under her eyes catches sight of me and strides over, stepping between a pair of gurneys carrying amputees towards the operating room.

"We've pulled the people with broken bones aside," she shouts over the crowd, jerking her head towards a different operating room. "Are you up for more?"

The room for people with fractures is maybe a five minute walk away, and it's less full than the last few times I've been here today, maybe half a dozen people. It's a strange feeling, setting bone right for once. Not an unpleasant one, but weird.

I have Isidis to thank for this development. A question about the smoothness of the fragments I was giving her turned into a question about my limitations. This led to getting a pair of surgeons to cut up the arm of a person with a compound fracture. I fixed his radius and ulna and then suddenly had new responsibilities besides feeding Isidis bone. I'm still slower at fixing breaks than Isidis, but she can't be in two places at once.

Part way through mending some ribs I realize that this could be a job. The pay would be decent, I'd be having a positive effect on the world, and I have friends already doing it. It might be a pretty sweet deal.

Then I imagine being here, day in and day out, doing the same thing over and over again. I imagine long days of low-interest, high-difficulty labor. I imagine fucking up and having to explain why a patient might need to stay in the ICU for longer because of me. I imagine doing it multiple times, until it becomes routine.

It sounds horrible.

How can Isidis stand it?


By the time casualties stop coming in it's well past seven. Someone brought food for the two of us and now we're unwinding in the hospital cafeteria while snarfing down cheap burgers. I resolve to demand better food next time. They can take it out of my paycheck if they have to.

"So, are you going to be a regular?" Amy asks in between bites of greasy meat and pint-sized vegetables. "I'd like to know if I should get used to having a 3-D printer on hand in emergencies."

I think about the number of times today I had to snap a rib to keep from vomiting. Then I balance it against the number of people who have to deal with stitches instead of casts and the number of people Isidis was able to speed through because she had me at her side. The battle between the collective good and an individual's right to determine their own fate isn't something I think anyone's fully figured out yet, and trying to wrestle with it myself is a bitter thing. I don't like that getting more options has reduced my freedom to choose. That it could put me back under other people's control.

"I have yet to decide," I offer, and Amy nods, taking another bite of her burger and shrugging.

"You've been in the game for, what, four days? It'd be weird for you to have an answer already. Not unheard of, which is why I'm asking," she says around a mouthful of food, "But if you don't want the pressure, then don't make the commitment. Anyway, things seem to have died down, so you can probably go home."

"Will you?" I ask. It seems like a poor decision for the healer to leave a hospital in a crisis.

"Around nine or ten," she answers. Some of my concern must show in the way I tilt my head because she barks out a brief laugh before responding. "I can replace organs in minutes and create counter-plagues with a touch, but everything else? The doctors here get by just fine without me." She nods towards a group of medical staff sitting at another table, still in uniform. "I supplement, not replace them. I can get some sleep during the off-peak hours and in return they get to work fewer 24-hour shifts."

I nod and push away the rest of the burger half-finished. "I'll take my leave then," I say, standing and cracking my neck. A neat trick, and one that helps relieve muscle pain. Not sure how, but it's nice.

"Want a ride home?" Amy asks. I turn to look at the superhero without a mask, who's parent lost a teammate because of their decision to play fast and loose with her identity. Amy reads the thought in my silence and shakes her head. "Not home. But the general direction. Vicky's pretty fast, if you don't mind heights."

I do some mental math while looking at the clock. Dad usually gets home around nine-ish, so if I sprint I might be able to make it before his truck pulls in.

Or I could try flying.

"When can she get here?" I ask.