Interlude: Uriel
Uriel wasted not a second as he, she now, began to work. She was unused to a body as limiting as this one even if it was hardly a new experience. She well remembered when he - at the time - had sacrificed every power he had to divert Nicodemus' scheme and prevent countless tragedies. She shook her head. There was no sense to waste thought on past actions and tragedies. She had so many to save and so little time. She wasn't going to waste any second.
Disregarding the mortal medical personnel all around her, she walked past them up to the man himself. A quick flash of Intellectus revealed to her all she needed to know. One of the worm parasites had already made a connection with the man. She considered for a moment removing it, but quickly discarded the idea. Its effect, enhancing the density of Danny Hebert's genetic structure and dispensing the damage he suffered into that very process was the only thing still keeping him alive at the moment. Not to mention Taylor Hebert wouldn't survive the dispensure of energy necessary.
Laying her hands on Danny Hebert, she began, with the utmost care, to draw in the fires of creation. Existence as an archangel within these planes of creation was a constant balancing act. A solemn unshielded thought could unmake galaxies, careless movement destabilize the entire dimension. Now she had to channel considerably more than either of those acts through the body of a little girl.
She had overcome harder tasks in her life, but those usually involved such things as ambushing Lucifer and driving the Urblade through his being.
Power derived in equal measure from herself and Taylor she drew in a wide blanket of silver light, noting that Taylor's body increasingly deteriorated as ever more of her strain was transferred to her, eroding more of her body and soul. She wouldn't be able to repeat actions like this for a considerable span of time.
She considered for a moment obliterating Danny Hebert's damaged body parts and reforming them anew, before dismissing it. It would cost too much of her power and she wouldn't be able to help the other people in this building without damaging Taylor's body further.
This was not acceptable.
Unfortunately, this also meant things had to become a little graphic.
Ignoring the horrified protests of the medical personnel, she pushed the fire of creation over her patient, weaving an retroactive effect into it and reversing the effect of the Shard as she pushed limbs back into the right places, disregarding the spurting of blood and cracking of bone. Sacrificing some of the fire, she replaced the lost skin and bone and closed the wounds in question, before allowing the parasite's effect to flood back into the man. It was lucky indeed that it happened so recently. Things could have been trickier otherwise.
After she was done with his exterior, she reached inward, dispersing clogged clumps of blood in his veins and brain, crafting again parts of organs that couldn't be saved. All in all it was not a particularly difficult task, not even needing Intellectus as she knew the cellular makeup of a human from memory.
Still, that she had to adhere to the linear time of this plane was irritating. She spent more than three minutes on this procedure, having to carefully check for any complications of hidden internal injuries and then dealing with any that were found. She had for a moment entertained the idea of waking the man from his coma but quickly thought otherwise. Without his injuries he would soon awaken on his own anyway. How things proceeded from there was up to Taylor.
She decided she would not tell her how her fatherr' soul was distorted and showed damage in a manner that showed strong similarity to damage done by the husk that had been one Oni Lee. The child did not need further grief in times such as this.
Quickly walking out of the room once her duty was done, she was greeted to a sight not too dissimilar to the one she just left. Sure, many of the people in the rooms and stretchers surrounding this one had far less severe harm done to their hulls, but their souls all wore similar scars and wounds to Danny Hebert. All had been marked by Taylor. And most of them looked at her with various stages of fear, some even trying to run away from her, despite the aggravation of their injuries.
"Be not afraid. I'm here to aid you." Her voice in this form lacked the grand authority inherent to any archangel, but it was still more than enough to calm the people in this instance, as her intent carried it to even the most distant people within the edifice, with few managing to resist her though some began to fight it with remarkable determination.
Still, it was sufficient to prevent a panicked flight and that was what mattered at the moment. With a wave of her hand she sent several dozen strings of fire, engulfing broken arms and legs, reestablishing severed nerve connections, fixing what injuries and damage their bodies had sustained as a consequence of Taylor's actions. While she was at it, she also fixed bad lungs, poisoned from years of smoke, reversed arthritis in the joints of the eldery and in the case of an older woman she remade an arm that had been missing for ten years at this point.
By the time she finished, her compelling had already worn off but the people weren't running from her. No, on the contrary, they were looking in amazement as not only the recent injuries but pains that had plagued them for most of their lives simply ceased to be. The sight filled the archangel with a familiar warmth. Nothing was better than helping God's children and she could feel how the acts of kindness strengthened Taylor's soul and reinforced the fire of creation she was wielding.
Stepping through their ranks, after relieving them of their pain and stress, Uriel walked into the nearest room, finding another operation going on in there. A man, by his looks most likely one of those that styled themselves after the Nazis. Not even 25. He was suffering from a gunshot to his stomach, the bullet dug deep into his guts. For a moment she considered not helping him, but felt ashamed of it a moment later. This man wasn't responsible for the butchery of her people, his soul had not yet been condemned by his actions. There was a path to redemption for him. As she healed him, she could only pray that he would use this chance to make more out of his life.
As she moved to the emergency floor, she healed everyone she could find. Innocents and criminals, which belonged to all the factions of the Bay alike. Only two she slew, one trafficker who treated God's children like cattle and one "nazi" who had only recently defiled and then killed two people, two women who had dared of having a slightly different skin colour as well as having the - in his mind - audacity to find comfort in each other. The doctors toiling to save him were not even aware of his actions.
She wasn't brutal when she ended them, only cutting some sections in their brains. They died not even feeling the pain. Lucifer, her pitiable brother, would see to their punishment.
It took her not twenty minutes to rid the people in the emergency section of all their ails and ills. Slightly longer than she had hoped, and she spent more of her fire than she would have preferred even if her benevolent acts restored her reserves to some extent. She still had forty minutes available and this was a large building, full with people in need of aid. Aid she was going to provide.
"You, Rafael." She pointed to a particularly young man in a helper's clothing, who looked a bit like a frightened rabbit at being talked directly to by her. "Call the people in this city that are in need of healing but cannot afford so or are waiting for Panacea to find the time for them. I will help them." For a moment it looked as if the man hesitated, then he turned away and took off running. Good, he had understood quickly what she meant to do. She was going to use every moment of her time.
...
The medical ecosystem of Brockton Bay was special in that it contained the most capable healer of this world. As such many desperate people came here, bearing diseases incurable by any other means of this world in the hope that Panacea would save them. As remarkable as the girl in question's effort was, she was only human and could only help so many. She, unfortunately, was also in possession of a particularly unpleasant personality and was rash, making hasty decisions on faulty information. There was also a particular vileness within her that could cause great sorrow should she fall to it.
Thus she found herself staring with more than a little annoyance at the small, brown-haired girl that was scowling back at her.
The archangel had been busy purging the defective cells that made up the blood cancer of a young boy with the name Samuel, saving the eleven-year old from a regrettable fate. It had been a more difficult task than curing the various other "incurable" illnesses around here, like various forms of cancer, Parkinson's, and over one hundred cases of Alzheimer's, some that were severe at present, while others would only flare up in ten, twenty, thirty years. Seventeen people who had been in prolonged comas, she woke up.
All in all very busy work, and less than seventeen minutes were left of her pact with Taylor. She had dealt with most of the sick people in the hospital and had also given something of a revitalizing treatment to the health workers here. Who would have guessed that those that worked the most with medicine would live so unhealthily.
Still it came as a bit a surprise for her mortal body to suddenly start convulsing, from what seemed to be a number of entirely new bacteria that had found herself on her skin, and to be confronted by the local healer at the same time. Judging by the panicked look on her face, barely-hidden by her scowl, the girl had just recently shook of her compellation.
That was problematic.
"- are you even listening to me?" The girl sounded angry and given that she did create the biological agents currently assaulting her, Uriel made the executive decision to at least feign listening. "I said I won't let you keep mastering the people around here and do whatever you like to them! I-."
"Come to the point. You are wasting time I could spend helping people." Using Intellectus she located the various points on her body those things had landed on, while she attempted to look like she cared what the little human was saying. Normally she would gladly listen and converse with her, possibly help her with her obsession, but now was neither time nor place for that.
Considering how she blustered at the casual dismissal, Panacea also had a short temper. Such charm. "What I'm saying is that the PRT will be here any moment now to put a stop to whatever machination you thought was a good idea to carry out in a hospital, and until then I'll keep you restrained and-"
A roar of silver fire interrupted her as the archangel purged the surroundings of any bacteria. Before Panacea could move again, she spoke again. "No machination. There are thirty people that could have been helped with the energy that was spent in this."
For a moment she considered compelling Panacea again, before deciding against it. She had only used it before to avoid a general panic and to avoid the people in this building hurting themselves that way again. To use it to force her will on Panacea was not an acceptable use of it. Still, the healer was standing in her way and had forced her to spend a remarkable amount of power and time on protecting herself. Time and power that were far better spent elsewhere.
"You don't honestly expect me to believe that? You mastered hundreds of people, you mastered me!" She once again began to work on some kind of contaminant while she talked. An admirable attempt at distraction but useless against someone like her. For a moment fire glowed in her eyes, all of them, and the other girl stopped. No doubt she had read about her host's fights with the ABB and knew how open to fatal force she was. Of course, what she didn't know was how unlikely such an use of force was against an opponent who was not nearly as depraved as those men and women had been.
"My goal had been to avoid a general panic. If I desired you or anyone else here harm, I would have done so already." Uriel grimaced at the wasted time and pushed past the human, her eyes open for any other attempt at her side to infect her with something again. Instead she rushed off to check on the people the archangel had already saved.
It mattered not.
As she walked outside of the grand hospital, she saw a decent commotion outside. PRT troopers, undoubtedly called by someone from within the hospital, maybe even Rafael. Weird. She had expected most of New Wave to also make an appearance, as their family member was under "threat". It was after all not as if they knew that she had no hostile intentions. Maybe the commander of the local forces had simply not told them, to preserve their last momentary sole cape force until the others were cleared of their containment.
What an exceedingly unlikely situation.
Besides them, she saw numbers of people who had been called by Rafael. By the looks of it, the only ones present were those who looked so bad, that they probably had not long left. There were not many, caution had keeped away all but those without hope anyway.
Well, time to give them that hope back then.
She worked quietly, spending much of her remaining time and energy onto them, while the PRT force quietly watched. Once or twice, one of the PRT troopers tried to step forward but was stopped by the lead trooper.
When she was done she accepted their thanks and turned around, walking along with the leader into that van of theirs where the both of them sat down.
She was silent for a moment, thinking about the last couple of minutes she had in this body. Shifting her eyes onto the "trooper" she did draw a little bit of pleasure out of her well hidden unease at it.
"Pretty brave to come to me in person. Risking yourself like that."
"Distance would have hardly mattered now, if you were hostile."
Uriel couldn't help but laugh at that response. At least they weren't as arrogant as she had feared. "Well, at least you are aware of the position you are in. Let us talk." The Archangel did have a couple minutes still. Why not use them?