One pillar of bone to push away the suicide bomber. Hard and fast as I can, with spikes to keep him on it. One pillar to push away the waiter, flat and firm, not as fast. Don't want to hurt him. One to push away Amy. I vaguely notice Victoria moving to get between her and Oni Lee. Good, she can take a hit.

Also, as much armor as I can create, as thick as I can make it.

Boom. The world goes white and I feel my ear drums shatter. Fuck. A thing to remember next time. If there is a next time.

Also, pain. Not as bad as when Lung burned me raw but still bad enough that I almost want to snap a toe bone to put it in perspective before I remember what's going on.

Move. Have to move. I push my body away from the ledge, not even halfway motivated by my muscles. Too slow. Power needs to take over. I fall towards the street and push out long, thin branches of bone. They flex, snap, and grow, repeated fast enough that I'm only aware of it as a rapidpop-pop-pop of pain and negative acceleration.

Ground floor. Good time to-

Boom. This time behind me. I feel steel make its way through a bone plate and scrape my flesh.

Pain.

I push off and start moving. Maybe not a great idea. Lee's probably got a higher Mover rating and trying to race a teleporter is a bad joke. I duck into an alleyway. Break line of sight. That'll work. Send a spike of bone behind me then branch from it, fill the entrance with sharp, spiny death. That'll delay him for-

Boom. Pain in front of me. A reflex I didn't know I had saves one of my eyes from shrapnel. The other goes dark. Agony, pure and simple. Worse than Lung's fire. Alleyway means fewer escape options, a more focused explosion.

Up then.

I move from the alleyway out into the city streets then pillar my way towards the rooftops. Halfway up something heavy attaches itself to my back and there's a loud scraping sound. I project out spikes. The heavy thing disappears with a whoosh and I taste ash on my tongue. I'm on the first rooftop. Where to go?

Boom. I'm falling from the roof but this time my plates held. Can't think, don't have the time. Twist in mid air, bones shatter to keep me from pancaking, back to running. Longer legs, more speed, have to get away-

Boom. This one too soon after the last for me to react. Another unfamiliar spike of fire in my stomach. I stop trying to escape and push out.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Too many to keep track of so I don't.

When the last echo finally fades away, I'm barely there. I have a hazy feeling of pain on one side and push more bone out. There's more pain, more shattering, but it gets more and more distant. Then there's a weird feeling, like my leg falling asleep, but I keep pushing out and it too goes away.

My lungs are aching. Air. I need air. Too much to retract. Tunnel. I pull myself forward, shaping and reshaping and forcing the less-bone part of my body out of the massive construct. Keep. Moving. My vision is narrowing but my eyes are wide open.

No.

Sunlight. Air. In. Out. Mask on but open, teeth ready to rend and tear and turn the meat of my enemies into hash.

"You want a fight?" I scream, blood pounding through my ears and I'm more bone than flesh and it all feels right. Like this is how things are supposed to be. "Then come on out and try again!"

No one.

Silence.

I spit, bone moving seamlessly in an imitation of lips. "Coward," I utter. Then the wounds catch up to me. Abdomen wounds. Those can go bad really easily. And I still can't see out of my left eye. Isidis could fix-

Amy.

By the time I get back to the restaurant the PRT is on the scene setting up a cordon. She's not there. Hospital then. As I'm stretching my limbs and working up speed someone calls after me. Probably something to the effect of 'stay here and answer our questions.'

They can wait.

Each step on my stilts jolts my abdomen. Can't have that. I grow bone in the wounds. Probably not a long-term solution but it will hold for a bit. When I nearly step on a car for the fifth time I move to the rooftops and try to avoid doing things that require depth perception. Can't show the missing eye. They'll want to put me under surveillance until Isidis can grow me a new one. I grow a rose over the center of the pain. There. Fixed.

I make an unsteady landing outside the main entrance of the ER and take a moment to center myself. In. Out. Mask on. I push through the doors. I need to find a receptionist.

I haven't taken three steps before a nurse is beside me, pulling me towards the trauma ward. "We heard you were fighting with Oni Lee," she begins. "Staff with pre-signed NDAs are waiting in room-"

I shake her off. "I am currently fine," I explain. "Where's Isidis?" It comes out more angry and pained than I want it to but the nurse doesn't seem to care.

"She's fixing herself up in a Lazarus Pit," she says patiently. "Now can you please listen to the trained medical professional and let us take care of you?" The last part is tense, and I have to break a toe bone to keep myself from snapping back. She's probably overworked, I remind myself. In. Out. Pull back the thorns.

I let myself be led to a nearby room where a woman in surgical scrubs is waiting by a bed. There are three laminated pieces of paper on a table next to her. She spends a minute explaining exactly what the laminated sheets mean, asks for and receives my verbal consent, and convinces me to pull my armor back in.

It's... strange, being in the mask and not the armor. The surgeon is quick, examining and bandaging the puncture wounds on my abdomen with a detached professionalism. No organs were hit. Goody. The area where my eye used to be is a bigger problem, and she stuffs it with cotton. Before she can wrap it properly I grow a bone shell around the padding, which is apparently good enough. She sticks an otoscope in my right ear, confirms that the eardrum is shot, and asks how I was able to walk normally. I shrug. She jots down a note in spidery handwriting and tells me I can armor up again. I nod in acknowledgement, already pushing out more bone, and she moves off to the next little disaster.

Now that I'm alone, the rush is well and truly gone. My insides ache, and the lack of an eye is slowly sinking in. I lean back onto the bed and close my remaining orb.

Just a bit of rest.

"Rise and shine," a familiar voice says with an accompanying series of claps. I push aside my gossamer-light dreams and look towards the noise. Amy, Isidis now that she's in costume, is standing at my bedside looking none the worse for wear.

I slowly move up to sitting on the side of the bed before turning to look at her.

"Didn't you get hit by a grenade?" I ask.

She laughs, beckoning me out the door. I follow.

"I can animate and graft dead flesh at will. That includes onto myself," Isidis clarifies, heading towards the now-familiar operating room. "Throw me into a large enough pit of dead bodies and I'll pull back from just about anything. Makes staying in shape pretty easy too," she adds, lifting her arm and flexing as she pushes open the door and motions for me to go in. I mentally raise an eyebrow at the size of her bicep as I pass. Maybe a tad excessive. Then again, she does have to wrestle people down so she can work her magic...

I wonder if she does tune-ups for all of New Wave? Or would that be a gross misuse of resources?

"Are you okay?" I ask, sitting down on the edge of the operating table and trying to pitch the question so the implications are clear. Isidis rolls her eyes.

"This is not the first time I've been hurt, Rose," she states, pulling a trio of small containers out labeled 'eyes,' 'superficial damage,' and 'inner ear.' "It sucks, and when I get home I'm probably going to collapse into a tub of cookie dough ice cream," she continues, popping off the lid of the eye bucket and turning to face me. "But that's Future Amy's problem. Now strip so I can rub dead people on you."

A laugh escapes me. A small one. I pull back the shell on my eye, let Isidis pull out the cotton and have the unique experience of feeling my eye grow back. It's an odd sort of pain, like burning in reverse. Once that's done she dabs away the excess jelly with a damp cloth before pushing me back down.

"I need to see your stomach," she says, sealing the eye bucket and grabbing the 'superficial damage' one. I duly reshape the bone plating to reveal my abdomen. The bandages come off, the meat goes in, and the pain comes back. A few moments later and the pain stops. "Sit up so I can get your ears."

I level myself up and marvel at my vision. Crap.

"I have a prescription," I say. Isidis nods while pushing some meat paste into my ear. It feels like something alive is squirming it's way into my ear and I'm glad that my shell stifles all but the most major shivers because ugh.

"We've got some fake lenses," she says. "Ask a receptionist for some oculataxcin."

"What's that?" Doesn't sound like anything you can get at the drugstore.

"Nothing," she answers. "The person manning the desk will give you a pack of common prescription glasses with easy-replace lenses. They don't know what's in it," she adds, "Just that whenever a cape asks for something, give them the corresponding box."

"Clever." Or competent, at least. It's good to see people are taking cape identities seriously. I'm not sure how much use it would be against a powerful Thinker but there probably aren't that many of those outside of the Protectorate. I can only imagine how many headaches a day trader with the right powerset could cause.

"I mean, I could tear out your eye and balance things out," she says jokingly, "But most people don't go for that."

I don't dismiss the idea so quickly. I mean, I'll have to switch to contacts if I ever want to hero seriously simply because glasses are such a hazard in a fight. On the other hand, contacts are just covering up the symptom of a larger problem and are a pain in the ass to hang onto.

"Oh my god you're actually considering it," Isidis says. "No, I am not going to tear your eye out! Jesus!" The look on her face is exasperation personified, and she waves an aggressively dismissive hand at me. "Shoo, I have other patients that need something more important than LASIK eye surgery!"

I leave the room a little miffed. She bathes in dead people to heal her wounds but replacing malfunctioning organs is going too far? She has some odd hang ups.

A pair of semi-familiar faces await me at the entrance to the ER, one in red and one in silver and blue. Assault and Battery. They look... less than pleased.

"So then, how's my favorite osteokinetic doing?" Assault asks, a smile that looks maybe half genuine on his face. "Certainly not being blown up multiple times in public by a crazy suicide bomber?"

"He instigated it." I haven't done anything besides protect myself. They know this. Why are they actually here?

"We wanted to discuss the specifics of what happened," Battery interrupts, stepping forward. It would probably be more intimidating if I didn't tower over her. "Location, how the fight proceeded, who's responsible for the massive dome of bone in the middle of 85th street..."

Oh.