Impediment 4.8

I sighed, reading medical texts as I tried to keep an air blade formed without concentrating on it. Getting home I'd healed Herb and Boojack of their bruises, had dinner with them, and settled down after they'd both headed to bed. I could make the blade, and mentally treat it like a sword, moving with my hand, but as soon as my attention was drawn to something else it destabilized, blowing wind in every direction as the air pressure equalized.

Because of this I was working on keeping it stable while working on something that demanded my attention. If I could understand a piece of biology, I could theoretically recreate it. I wasn't going to start playing around with it until I could get Panacea to check what I was doing, my efforts equivalent to cave-painting next to her Botticelli. Regardless, it was worth spending time working on, if only to learn how to learn how to do, and I thought it was coming along pretty well. After several hours, I could manifest, hold, and dismiss the blade at a thought, and had grown to understand quite a bit about the structure of a number of body parts, human and otherwise.

Dawn broke, and my partner rose, sitting down with me to eat the breakfast I'd made. Getting an air blade stable enough to cut vegetables for an omelet being a kind of training all its own, though we might need a new cutting board. Shooting down his offers to help him train, which he accepted easily, adding "Can't blame a guy for tryin'."

Stretching, and heading to a different area then the spot Herb & Boojack were sparring, I manifested the sword, going after an abandoned train car, the rusted steel parting effortless under my strikes, the shimmer of the condensed air the only clue of the blade's existence. I focused on the edge, trying to thin it while keeping it stable, succeeding slightly, but short of some laboratory tech, I couldn't say how well I did. After the thinning though, a couple of my cuts were fine enough that my targets seemed to remain intact until I pushed them, coming apart easily. "I am the anime now," I quipped to no one in particular, amused at what I'd developed.

Considering my weapon, I tapped into my forcefield power that I'd copied from Glory Girl. I'd learned how to use it to reinforce weapons, if blunt their edges, and now I'd learned to create a weapon. It was only common sense to combine the two, but I let go of both immediately as my hand seemed to catch fire.

Tamping down my panic and reminding myself that I was immune to fire I took a deep breath. Manifesting the blade again, I carefully started to cover it in a force field, the area I'd covered catching fire in the deep purples and bloody reds that were the colors of my power. I slowly extended the field down the blade, outlining the nigh-invisible air construct in unnatural ghostly flames, the heatless blaze flickering next to me. I stared at it, giving it a few experimental swings. The air around me rippled as it swung, blowing the gravel about, and just looked absolutely freaking cool on top of everything else.

Taking a stance, I swung down at the side of the cut-up boxcar as hard I could with a shout. The blade cut into the side, but not smoothly, the force of the blow draining the field covering it with the sound of a muffled cannon. The blow pushed me back slightly as it flung the multi-ton piece of steel off the rusted rail it sat on, air gusting away in every direction from the impact, the train car crashing into another two dozen feet away, crushing it with the force of the blow, an ungodly screeching of metal nearly deafening me, ringing through the railyard as the impact was well outside of the sound bubble I'd set up for training. My sword's flames dimmed, becoming a shifting red and purple outline, though the flickers of incandescence started to appear as I felt the field gain in strength again, ethereal but undeniable, the light of them glimmering off the broken glass around me.

I looked at the destroyed mass of steel, the cut I'd made standing out starkly, an open wound in the metal. Dropping a sound bubble around it I pulled out Purity's Lightform, blasting it repeatedly, until all was left was an unidentifiable mess. Barely feeling the beginning of a drop in that power's reserves, I let it fade, flying away before anyone came calling.

Back at base, reading more medical texts, my phone rang. Surprised to see it was Panacea, I answered immediately. "Good," I checked the time, "morning Panacea, how are you?"

"I don't like being blackmailed," was her curt reply.

"Um, neither do I?" I agreed. "Who's blackmailing you?"

"You are!"

"Um, no I'm not?" I disagreed slowly, wondering what the hell she was talking about.

"Yes, you are!" she insisted, leaving it at that.

I sighed, lamenting the communication skills of the average American teenager. "Panacea, why do you think I'm blackmailing you?"

She gave a harsh laugh. "You said you wouldn't heal anyone unless I was there. If you wanted to talk you could have just asked! I thought you were better than that!"

I sighed, harder. "Panacea, in case it slipped your mind, I don't have your diagnostic power. I, quite frankly, have no faith that if I worked with anyone else, and they made a mistake in their diagnosis, they wouldn't throw me under the bus and blame me when I healed something wrong because they gave me bad intel. I know you, and know you never would do that to me, but I've worked in exactly one hospital after getting my powers, and it didn't exactly fill me with confidence in their morality. Add to that all the weird stuff I'm sure they're trying to heal, and the possibilities of getting stabbed in the back are more than I'm willing to risk."

"Oh," was her subdued response. "Well, if you wanted to help I'm at Good Samaritan. They're the ones that told me about what you said."

"I'll be there in a few minutes," I promised.

"Thanks," was her response before hanging up.

On my way out, I ran into Boojack and Herb, both battered, both smiling. "Hey man, could we get some heals?" my teammate asked. "And did you hear that crash? We think it was a bomb."

Healing both their bruised bodies, I told them, "That was me, I'll explain later, I'm going to go heal people with Panacea."

Herb laughed. "Have fun with your girlfriend then! Tell her I said hi!"

I glared. "Do you want me to heal you again, because it's kinda sounding like 'Hey Lee, you don't need to help heal my training injuries, the pain'll help me think more clearly!'"

Boojack laughed at him as he backpedaled. "No dude, I know you don't want to bang her when she's 16. But 18? You're planting that seed."

"Can we not talk about me planting seeds. At all. Ever?" I replied firmly, walking out and taking off, trying to scrub that conversation from my memory. Focusing on my task, I was grateful for modern technology. The satellite view of Google maps was so useful for finding places while flying, and a few minutes later I landed in the commercial district, walking in the front door of my destination. I was quickly led through a maze of corridors until I saw a familiar white and red cloak. The nurse that showed me the way left, and I waited for my friend to finish healing the sleeping woman, before speaking up. "Hello Panacea, how can I help."

She looked up with an expression of, happiness? Annoyance? I wasn't sure what, and it passed by too fast for me to identify. "Follow me, they've set up a circuit." She looked around and seeing whatever she was looking for approached a bit closer than was exactly comfortable, especially with such a determined expression on her face. "But before we start. What happened that night, I don't want to talk about it. Okay?"

I shrugged. It was only the night before last, and if she didn't want to talk about it, I'd respect her wishes. "Okay." I looked at her, noting the slight bags under her eyes, obvious this close. "I'm good for ten hours, then we both need to go get some rest. I was up late getting kids out of danger, and it looks like you were pushing yourself as well. We'll both stop at," I stepped back, checking my phone. "Nine-thirty, get some dinner, and you're going home to sleep. I'm willing to put in another shift tomorrow, but we have no idea how long this is going to keep going and need to pace ourselves."

"But what if someone needs my help while I'm not here?" she argued.

I shot that down, parrying with, "Then they'd be in the same position as if you'd worked yourself to the point of exhaustion and passed out, only this way the hospital staff can plan around it." I put a hand on her shoulder to try to get her to understand the importance of my point, something I'd been trying to figure out how to bring up. "Any healing you do is a net positive, and you're being a person with needs of your own isn't a negative thing. We don't judge the Wards for not running themselves ragged patrolling, or for doctors having time off, you shouldn't hold yourself to a standard that literally no one else is held to. Hell, Miss Militia doesn't even need to sleep, but she's not working twenty-four seven. If you have to view it that way, think of the extra people you'll be able to heal by getting me to help, and the numbers should even out a bit. So, ten hours, we'll only take twenty minutes for lunch if it makes you feel better, and we'll heal a ton of people, more if we're talking metric instead of metaphorical. Okay?"

She looked conflicted before holding out her hand. "Tell me you're being honest."

I smiled, taking her hand. "Panacea, making me take a lie detector test all the time, the lack of trust wounds me deep." I pressed her hand to my cheek so she could read me. "I'm being honest Panacea, I didn't want to heal without you because you're the one I trust to have my back here. I think you're being foolish about pushing yourself too far, but understand why, and want what's best for you. I didn't mean to blackmail you, didn't think of it that way, and if I had I would have said something specifically about that. Now, let's go be heroes, and heal people, okay?"

She pulled her hand back, walking past me, pulling her scarf up around her face. I fell into step with her, and spent the next several hours wading through some of the strangest injuries I've ever seen. We worked through them all, the only words passed were her instructions on how to heal my next patient. One man, early forties, had lost a leg to shrapnel that grew and crystallized what it hit, his limb a quartz weight. I looked at Panacea, knowing this was well in her wheelhouse, but she shook her head sadly, not wanting to reveal the extent of her abilities.

I was tempted to do it myself. Pulling bugs for biomatter I could copy the other, undamaged limb, flip it, and create it, having her take care of all the fiddly bits. If I pretended this was an aspect in which my power outpaced hers, it would work. That was something that I needed to talk to her about though, so instead we removed the stone limb and kept him from bleeding out by sealing the stump immediately.

Moving on she helped me sidestep some problems, such as when one patient, a teenage girl, had been impaled by a spike of cement, but her internal organs were flipped in positioning. That let me heal her correctly, instead of, well, it would've been bad. We worked as night fell, only once being pulled away from our circuit as a bomb went off that burned people pretty badly. Panacea's diagnostics identified they had phosphorous flakes imbedded in their skin from the blast. Any attempts to remove these flakes would ignite them, further burning the victim, and the natural healing process would try to push the foreign substances out, which would again, ignite, burning the victim. After the first patient was treated by staff, only to burst into flame and die, the rest were sent to us. In the face of her power though, the substance was quickly converted and subsumed, reinforcing the victim's bones and teeth instead, dumping the excess, bonded so as to no longer be pyrophoric, into the bladder. As Panacea cursed Bakuda, I had to admire the dead Tinker's ingenuity, the same way one might appreciate the inventive applications of chemistry involved in the creation of mustard gas. Finishing off by repairing the burned skin, we worked through the baker's dozen of surviving victims before moving on.

It was almost ten thirty when we finished, handling a few cases that couldn't wait until tomorrow. Stepping out I sighed, glad my costume was auto-cleaning. "So," I addressed my tired co-healer. "What do you want to eat?"

She looked up, surprised. "You don't have to." At my unyielding stare she shrugged. "Not Asian?"

I laughed, looking up places that were still open. "Steakhouse it is." She started to say something, but I cut her off. "Nope, you said not Asian, so that's what we're doing. Take my hand."

She hesitantly reached out, squawking in surprise as we lifted off into the air. "How?"

"I train to find new uses for my powers. Not to say you don't, but from what I've seen, very few people bother experimenting with their powers." We'd risen above the level of the buildings as I headed towards the restaurant. "I mean, at least you think about it."

She tore her gaze away from the city, our positioning giving her a sense of flight that being carried by her sister probably didn't inspire. "You mean you know about. . .?"

I shrugged. "No specifics, but the things you could do with microbes alone would be damned impressive. Original timeline you only really started cutting loose when you were fighting a Tinker-plague, and you stopped yourself before you got really impressive because you weren't in a good headspace. You never even came close to achieving your full potential, but even then, you came farther than a lot of people who were in much better positions. Name a hero, and I could probably tell you a number of ways they could at least try to improve themselves."

She looked thoughtful as we started our descent, not saying anything as we walked in, and were immediately given a seat, which caused a few people to complain, but the others told them to shut up. We ordered our food, and finally she lost whatever inner argument she was having and said, "Glory Girl," staring intently at me.

"So," I started, dropping a sound bubble, "Her main power's force-fields, right, so-"

"What?" she interrupted. "No it isn't, it's an Alexandria pack-" She stopped herself. "No, you said you saw everything. Forcefields?"

I nodded. "Did she ever go through power testing?" Panacea shook her head. "It's probably a bud from Manpower's shard." That got me another look. "Okay, as powers develop and learn new ways of using their base abilities, they bud off and look for new hosts to learn from. The children of capes are around more likely to Trigger for a whole host of reasons, and if they Trigger, they normally get a bud from their parents or close family. There's more to it, like shards pulling from other nearby shards when they Trigger for secondary abilities, but that's going off into territory I'm not so sure about. Her emotion based abilities are probably because Gallant was at the game she Triggered at, which is also why he's immune to her Aura."

She took a moment to process that. "So, your powers, you triggered near me?"

I shook my head. "If anyone asks, yes, but no. It's complicated, and I'll tell you later, but for now it's something that isn't terribly important. So, Glory Girl, her forcefields are what carry her, letting her fly, create kinetic energy for her to create the illusion of super strength, and take impacts for her. It takes a few seconds to recharge after taking a hit or hitting something else. It's why her weakness is double-tapping, or any kind of automatic weaponry, which she's been fortunate to avoid so far. Thing is, repeatedly draining the field may increase its strength, like a muscle being used. Also, while it's invisible, she could probably extend it to others, to carry," I motioned towards Panacea, "or to use as weaponry. I won't demonstrate that, because we're in a restaurant, but covering an item could let her hit harder than she already does. There's also the entire always hitting things at full strength problem. A lesser strike might not drain her shields, leaving her vulnerable to counter-hits."

She looked thoughtful as she considered her response. "Velocity."

"He's limited in how he effects the rest of the world?" I asked rhetorically. "Get Dragon to whip up some containment-foam grenades. He runs past at super-speed, pulling the pins and dropping them. They start moving at normal speed after he drops them, and explode, neutralizing his target after he's already moved on."

"Armsmaster?"

I paused. "Well, he's a jerk, so don't tell him, but he's a miniaturization specialist? Have him outfit his bike with tech instead of working so hard on his halberd. He's so focused on making that one piece of kit the best it could be, he's hit the point of diminishing returns a while ago. Just think of the number of things he could put in his bike, armor, a secondary ranged weapon? Or, idea, just pair him with the other Tinkers in the Protectorate and all of a sudden their unwieldy or impractical ideas are suddenly doable."

"How much time have you thought about this?" she demanded.

"Glory Girl, an afternoon for the ideas, the other two I'm just spitballin'," I admitted. "But the fact that they're so focused on quantification of observable affects instead of exploration of base causes and new applications from that, really limits them. Same thing's happened to most of the Social Sciences, but that's . . . hmm. Maybe it's a factor of our increasingly technological society? Our focus on software instead of hardware limiting the populace to think about what to do with what they have, instead of trying completely new things?" At her confused look, I shrugged, a bit chagrined. "Sorry, tangent. What I'm doing isn't that hard. Hell, if the PRT payed attention to PHO they might find some new uses all their own. Not all of them would be exactly PR friendly, like making Clockblocker a trap based assassin, but hey, ideas are ideas."

"I'm sorry, what?" she asked. "He's-" she cut herself off, our food arriving, continuing at a whisper once the server left. "How could he be an assassin. I've met him! He stops people, but he wouldn't kill them!"

I took a bite of my filet mignon, appreciating it, even if the price would've made me blanch without my current revenue streams. I waited for her to take a bite of hers, obviously not responding until she did so. "You've seen the video of the truck that hit the paper he froze?" She nodded, chewing. "Now imagine a person running into time-stopped fishing line." She froze, paling. "Or, if he can freeze an object, but not a person it's touching, then something he can throw and wrap around someone, like adding a weight like a yo-yo, so it hits a person and wraps around them, then freezes it, and they now have thin lines with absolutely no give to them holding them in. The first idea someone else came up with, the other is, again, just a thought, no idea if it would work." I took another bite. "This is really good."

"How?" she demanded. "How can you just sit there and talk about this? That's horrible!"

I quirked an eyebrow. "You've really got to get over this thinking the worst of people thing. Just because he could doesn't mean he would, but it's better to have tools you never need to use instead of not having the tools you do. I'm not suggesting he does that to street-level thugs, but isn't there like a bio-tinker that specializes in plant monsters? Blaster, Blister, Boldo? Doesn't matter. Using lethal force against killer plant monsters is just kinda common sense. Also, if they'd tested his powers extensively, the entire truck paper thing would've never happened. There's a difference between thinking about something and doing it, and any morality system that judges a person by nothing more than their thoughts, is one that can't work unless you can read people's minds. Otherwise, only the honest people get in trouble, as the dishonest ones just lie about what they're thinking." I considered the problem. "Also, anyone who judges you by your thoughts is probably a massive hypocrite, projection and all. Thoughts do contextualize actions, yes, but it's by your actions that you truly judge a person, not what they think."

She really didn't have anything to say to that, and quietly ate. After we were done she asked, "You don't do casual, do you?"

I shrugged. "I don't lie to people I like, so, maybe?" She looked at me, visibly tired, as I realized I'd done it again. "Sorry, if you want me not to talk about stuff like that, please say so. Um, so, we did really well today? Have you even seen half of what we ran into before?"

She gave me a thankful smile, shaking her head no, and we chatted about healing, the methods to handle problems, and generally talked shop over dessert. We were told the owners comped our meal, and when I offered to pay anyways, I was turned down. We left, flying back to her house, the lights still on inside even though it was close to midnight. "Thanks for helping," she said as we landed. "Will you be back tomorrow?"

I smiled. "I said I was going to, and I do my best to keep my word. An hour to get to bed, eight for sleep, and one to get up and ready," I measured. "See you there at ten? And do you need a lift getting there?"

She smiled back. "Ten it is, and Vicky'll probably want to take me. I'll call you if she doesn't. Good night Vejovis," she said, giving me a quick hug before turning and walking to her house.

"Good night Panacea, I'll see you tomorrow," I called back, taking off into the ocean of obsidian that was the night sky.

I flew back, spirit high, swooping down and landing with barely a whisper as I entered the base. Herb was there, reading what actually appeared to be the base manual. Good on him. He looked at me, starting to say something before visibly stopping himself, asking instead. "So, date went well?"

I sighed, my good dimming. "I healed a lot of people working with Panacea, made a bit of money, but the PR gains were probably much larger."

He smirked at that for some reason, the ass. "You said that that noise was you?"

I blanked for a second, grinning. "Right! So, Stormtiger's air claws, once you deconstruct it, is pretty much just a shitty air blade. Because of that, I built a sword," I manifested it, the air shimmering where the blade existed, but little else was apparent. It still got a whistle of appreciation from Herb who, once I concentrated on seeing his powers, was borrowing my Power Sight to view it clearly. "But then I thought, I could use Glory Girl's forcefields to cover weapons, and thus," I activated the power, ghostly flames slowly dancing down the length of my weapon.

"Holy fuckin' shit that's awesome," he exclaimed. "That's what did that to the traincars?"

I swung it through the air, the force of its passage creating a breeze that ruffled his clothing. "Yep."

He gazed at it in awe. "It's complete bullshit that I can't copy your copied powers, I hope you know that, because I want one."

"Sorry," I replied unrepentantly, heading past him to grab some supplies from the workshop and back out to the area of the trainyard we'd set up to train. After putting together some targets, I worked on creating, not the air claws which dug out furrows when they hit a target, but blades like my sword that cut a thin line. It took a few hours, but I was able to get them to form and fly at my target, the damage less visible than their original use, but far deeper, cutting a full foot into concrete before they lost cohesion, instead of the four-inch-deep and wide furrows.

After that I started working on the next weakness of the technique. My attacks all originated from me, but there was no actual need for them to do so. The mental maneuvering to make that happen was another thing altogether though, and despite working until dawn, all I managed was creating them a few feet away to my left or right, blades arrowing in on my target, but having to relearn how to aim them in that manner every time I pushed them a bit further. I started to get annoyed at my slow progress, but soothed my ego as in a few hours I'd done more with Stormtiger's power than he'd probably done in a year.

Heading back inside, and making breakfast, I grabbed one of the base's flashlights, adding a few things to the outer housing, effectively bejeweling it, tinker style. Finishing that I flicked it on, the bulb gone and instead the batteries lighting up the outside LEDs. It looked like Tinkertech, and when I manifested my sword, covering it with my shield, the flaming blade seemed to emit from the flashlight completing the illusion. Satisfied, I stowed it in a pocket and headed out, ready to practice flying as I 'patrolled', though if I saw any actual crimes, I'd be shocked.

Out for a while, I was getting a handle on my acceleration and deceleration, turning, and all of the things I'd need to be able to do at speed to really utilize the power when a bright white light caught my attention.

Even in the day Purity was blinding, my own powers dampening her incandescence as she flew right for me. I stopped, readied for an attack, but instead she came to a hard stop a dozen feet away, calling to me, "Vejovis, we need to talk."