Pick Your Poison
Heat 5.1
[Sunday, December 5, 2010]
After I piled into a skiff with the clinic staff and Rocksteady, the huge archway rippled in an opaque splash of white and we all poured through it in an orderly line. I listened to the chatter from the cockpit as I experienced the novel shock of going from nearly dead of night 9pm EST to I guess early morning in Pakistan, maybe around 6am their time from the sun?
Whatever, that wasn't important. What was important, was that Sherrel managed to inform the gathering Protectorate and other unified forces that we were providing evacuation support and medical support, so we weren't put under fire thankfully. I couldn't say that of the hills and fields to what I guess was the Northeast of Karachi. I could see it even from here.
The hulking monstrosity that was Behemoth was vague at this thankfully large distance, but the way the sparse shrubbery of the hills and mountains ignited and spread rapidly from him, creating a climbing and fast-growing haze of dangerous smoke, further emphasized his glowing maw/eye and the shimmering aura of pure heat and radiation he put off.
"Hold on back there! We're going to set down hard and fast at the rally point! Get ready to jump out!" The pilot screamed back at us as we and several of our boxy flying vessels flew with incredible speed towards the Northwest part of the city, and we pulled low and fast into a massive training yard of sorts where emergency tents were already being erected. "Go, go, go!"
We all scrambled out of the skiff, and once the last of us were off, the pilot shot straight up into the sky and flew towards the inner city with the others once they disgorged their riders. At that, I looked around frantically for the medical tent, only to realize most of the tents were all medical tents. "Holy shit. Okay, spread out everyone! One case of Stim each, we share across tents. Only the worst cases and amputees get Stim!" I directed as I headed for the nearest group of men in police-like uniforms who seemed to be organizing things here. "We're here to help."
"حضور پاڪ! اوه ... ساڻس ڳالهايو."
I...had absolutely no damn clue what the officer just said, but he pointed to an older man a bit aways and gestured intently, so I figured he wanted me to talk to him. I moved swiftly to the older man. "Hey, uh, we're here to help."
"Good grief. We're getting dinosaurs?" The grey-haired deeply-tanned man with a nasty scar on his brow scratched his head. "What're you here to do? I figured any of you tough ones would be out there trying to fight that thing."
"I'm not exactly able to do that, but I and my crew are here to provide medical aid." Thank god someone here speaks English. I don't think I'd be able to function with whatever language these people apparently speak as their main language.
"Ah, that's a relief. We're a police academy, not a hospital. We may have had plenty of supplies and emergency rations to use, but any help on that front we'll happily take. Each tent has a translator, but some of the people we get might not speak Sindhi, in which case we'll just have to hope for the best." The man gestured me off, and I hurried to the nearest tent emblazoned with a red cross as he shouted at the other officers in what I guess was Sindhi with such volume I wouldn't be surprised that he might even be a drill sergeant at this police academy.
"Well isn't this a surprise." I blinked in honest surprise at almost barreling into Panacea, now in her wooden armor but with her old hood and cloak on over it, likely for identification reasons. "I'm glad you're here, but when you didn't show up with Squealer and Skidmark at the PRT building I thought you were sitting this out. How'd you get here without Strider?"
"Let's just say Leet and Squealer are bullshit and leave it at that." I nervously looked around the empty tent. "This is...surprisingly barren."
"I hear it's rare to have the evacuation zone ready so early, but the Sindh Police are very efficient and prepared. Usually I have to deal with victims before the first tent is even set up at less serious disasters I've volunteered for. But this is the calm before the storm Dealer. Be ready to witness the absolute worst humanity can display." We both flinched at a heart-startling roar that echoed out across the entire city from Behemoth's direction to the East-Northeast. "And it starts." Panacea whispered shakily, taking calming breaths. "It's almost worse being here than out there. I'll never know if anybody I care about will come back, and I could've been there to save them if not."
"Sorry Amy, but no. That's Behemoth out there. Anything we try would be useless. Chiefly because his radiation would instantly kill any of my creations, and you're a contact biokinetic, which again, is useless against radiation." I stressed to the healer, who gave a despondent sigh and nodded to my deductions.
"You're right. Doesn't make me feel any better." Amy grumbled, to which I patted her shoulder.
"It wasn't meant to." I replied, and Amy scoffed and shrugged off my hand before weakly punching me in the chest.
"Thanks anyway then you jerk." Amy said with humor in her tone, so I knew my bit of needling had helped a little, but our moment of camaraderie was interrupted by a policeman running into the tent.
"First wave incoming! Mostly just first evacuees, but might still have some injured." He declared, and then stepped over to the corner nervously. He was fairly young, and his English was a little halted, but I guess he was our translator.
Sure enough, within minutes, a few skiffs swooped in and disgorged a large number of the locals, some were injured, probably from being trampled or other accidents in their frantic evacuation and were being helped by their neighbors now that they were no longer in immediate danger. "So how does this work Amy?"
"Triage is simple. Most severe or about to die first, but if they're too bad they're a write-off. Moderate to severe but stable injuries are second, and minor injuries are last. Most of these people would be in the last category, but lucky them; they're here first." Amy went out of the tent and gestured the evacuees towards us. "Over here! I'll get you patched up before more come!"
"شفا ڏيڻ لاهوتي اچو!"
Our translator helpfully provided, and the injured evacuees were quickly brought over. I didn't see anything bad enough to warrant Stim though, the worst I saw were minor broken ankles or wrists. "I don't think using Stim here would be wise."
"Good call. Save your own brand of healing for moderate to severe Dealer, I'll take care of these folks for now, but I hope whatever paramedics and other medical staff they've got on the way get here soon. We can't be tied up dealing with every little boo-boo and owie." Amy grumbled as she practically poked the injured and the people watched in awe as they simply returned to normal. "Uh...on second thought, it was a good thing I did, this guy had early stage testicular cancer. Hey, tell this guy he had testicular cancer, but it's gone now." Amy said to our translator, and I cringed at the very idea of that heinous cellular failure targeting such a sensitive area.
My balls may be internal now, but still, the family jewels are precious. "This makes me wish I made an easier-to-produce one-time healing remedy that did more than Salve's surface treatment." It was bad enough I'd be responsible for possibly hundreds of people here becoming genetically immortal. "Oh, right, we should also add the side-effects of Stim being agelessness and youthfulness to those we're treating with it."
"Surge is more responsible for the second one, but yeah, Stim is chiefly responsible for that valuable side-effect being permanent." Amy said as she finished with the first wave, but the second wave was already on the way, and the various Mover parahumans were also bringing in civilians now that they were in the thick of fighting/stalling Behemoth if the explosions and regular body-shaking roars meant anything, and were clearly actively evacuating civilians closer to the battle with their teleporting and other unique methods of transit.
Dear god, what have I signed up for?
[Pick Your Poison]
"Hold him down!" I ordered to the orderlies, who had thank fuck finally arrived from whatever useless medical institution this backwards city calls a hospital! The patient at hand was a parahuman, one I didn't recognize with his cyan swirling bodysuit, but he was missing an arm and leg, and half his fucking face and flesh all on the right side of his body. He was also a minor Brute if him shrugging off the orderlies in his delusional flailing meant anything.
Usually Panacea would be taking a case this serious, but he wasn't bleeding out due to the burns having cauterized his wounds and she was dealing with a much more severe case that was indeed bleeding out two cots over.
Sick of my patient's lack of compliance, I took out my small spray can of Knockout and puffed his hyperventilating face, which instantly made him pass out. With him subdued, I jabbed a needle of stim into his remaining thigh, and I sighed as I let him go and tossed the needle into the biohazard disposal bin, which aside from several empty Stim needles, was also filling up fast with other medical waste. "Next!" I shouted out, and got flagged down by one of the English-speaking citizens who volunteered to help us non-natives save the hurt and dying.
After passing by a few cots with less severe injuries, I made my way to the deathly pale man I was directed to, who was weakly shaking. I shook my head ruefully. "Great, another radiation victim. I'm surprised any of you are even making it out of that bastard's aura range." I prepared a dose of Stim. It was all I had that might help since Stim uses DNA as a template to work with, but with the radiation damage to his body, he might not make it long enough for the Stim to do it's work, but I had to try. Amy couldn't do anything without an equivalent mass of normal flesh to replace the irradiated tissues, so I was put on trying to help the people who would usually be put out of their misery.
I injected him in the thigh and sighed before I took another breath. "Next!" The helpers again started pointing me towards another patient, but suddenly, without warning, Alexandria flew in and beelined straight for me.
"Dealer, come with me. Have someone else use your healing equipment." Alexandria, with her grim grey appearance and serious demeanor practically ordered, and I huffed before waving over one of the nurse/orderlies and gave him the currently half-empty case of Stim, which he hurriedly rushed over to where I'd been directed before the Library of Alexandria showed up.
"So what's this about? I can't be any use out there." I curiously demanded, at least somewhat thankful to be out of that insane situation, even if the near-constant tremors of Behemoth's march towards the ports interspersed with explosions, roars, and blinding light from his direction was far more unpleasant than the wails and screams of the dying.
"I'm not taking you out there. That'd be a waste of your talent." Alexandria stated as she guided me between two of the buildings away from the open area and out of sight. "Door Me: Lab." My eyes widened and my heart sank at hearing what she said, and my plumage flared under my coat as the snapping sound of reality rending asunder heralded the opening in the air. "Go inside, and make something to either negate or weaken Behemoth's radiation."
"Uh, what? I make microbiological miracles! That's the exact opposite of nuclear physics! Anything I make would just instantly die from almost any serious amount of radiation." I stressed, only for Alexandria to grab me by the throat with her right hand and pick me up like I was a weightless ragdoll. Can't breathe. Oh god. She's gonna kill me!
"Contessa says you can make things that affect radiation, so you will. Now get in there, make it, and when you're done, Door yourself back to here and get the command tent to hail the Triumvirate, code Alpha Echo Hotel Lima." She then tossed me through the portal, and I impacted head-first with a wall, which cracked while nearly breaking my neck. I groaned and weakly got to my feet as the Doorway snapped shut.
"Bitch. Should've guessed the Triumvirate is involved." And now Alexandria was on my shit-list. Fuck her. If I find out a weakness for her I'm going to carry it on me at all times. Hm...she still needs to breathe, doesn't she? Heh. She just fucked with the wrong Tinker. Next time I see her, I'm making her shit herself, vomit, and experience intense itching that I bet she can't deal with.
Vengeance aside, if Contessa says I can do something, I guess I can. Probably. Better get to work then. Hm, doesn't cannabis have some natural properties that absorb or speed up the decay of radiation? "This is a nice setup here…." I felt myself drifting from the vast clustered spread of herbs and other medicinal plants along with what looked like a sealed library of common bacteria. Before I knew it, I had an arm hooked under my left armpit, and pulling me away from my blissful fugue.
"That's enough for now." Contessa stated curtly, holding up a canvas shopping bag filled with-.
"I MADE BOMBS?!" I've never made bombs! These look like more properly manufactured pipe bombs than anything, to which I had to backtrack my thoughts to realize they were just the dispersal method for the radiation-soaking/decaying/isolating microbes I'd developed. The bombs were already here for me to put them into. "Uh, okay then, thanks. Door Me: Sindh Police Academy." I declared as I took the bag of bombs from Contessa with a nod, and rushed out of the hole in the air conveniently in the same spot I left.
Wasting no time, i ran towards the command tent, which was full of Protectorate Thinkers helping coordinate as best they could. The guards at the entrance tried to stop me, but I shoved past them. "Hey! Alexandria asked me to get her this. Uh, code Alpha Echo Hotel Lima." I rattled off from my hazy memory, and one of the troopers at the portable console immediately started hailing for the Triumvirate.
"What did Alexandria supposedly ask of you?" Warily and archly demanded one of the domino masked thinkers at the small holographic display in the center of the tent.
"To make these." I held up my bag of IEDs and took one out, which made everyone flinch. "They're loaded with harmless microbial colonies of various strains that symbiotically work together to rapidly absorb and decay Alpha/Beta radiation and block Gamma radiation...if that's the kind Behemoth puts out, hopefully."
"He's been observed utilizing Alpha/Beta radiation on occasion, but it is his gamma radiation that is the most apparent and dangerous. If those work, we may have you mass-produce them to help with cleaning up Behemoth's fallout and for future battles against him." The thinker changed his tune quickly, and just in time for Legend to suddenly bolt into the tent in a bright flash of light.
"You called?" Legend briskly and curiously asked, and I held up the bag.
"These IEDs are loaded with a special compound that might negate, or at least weaken the radiation Behemoth's releasing along with any lingering radiation." I declared, and Legend hurriedly grabbed the nearly full-to-overflowing bag, and grabbed a note pinned to the side of the inside I hadn't noticed, and he then flew back off to the raging battle with his insane speed. "Now then, I've got sick and injured to tend to." I declared before I rushed out of the command tent and back towards the triage tents.
[Pick Your Poison]
I slumped in exhaustion against the firmly-pinned tent wall, sinking down to my butt and letting my tail feed under the canvas. The 'battle' was over. I wasn't going to bother asking about the death toll, I didn't want to think about it. I've already lost several patients who were too bad on the way in for me to save and Amy couldn't get to them.
How does she do this? Every. Time? I mean, I think this is her first Endbringer Battle, but she's been to natural disasters and other local tragedies States-side.
Besides, I was already going to dread the losses the crew have suffered. I heard that at least two of the Skiffs, loaded with evacuees even, were targeted by Behemoth and blasted from the sky with a pinpoint lightning blast.
"Hey." I blearily looked up, too tired to think of looking at the still ongoing chaos of the triage center. I have no idea what time it is now, but I basically just stayed up overnight and into the next day on top of all this, the same for all of us from the States. "This spot taken?" I didn't recognize her. She was a waifish young woman of Asian descent judging from her skin tone, body type, and her dirty straight black hair. She wore an empty bandoleer that seemed to be for grenades and a menacing gas-mask with a glowing red visor over casual clothes.
"Nobody's name on it." I replied weakly, and she sat next to me awkwardly, as if she didn't know what to do next. "Who're you?"
"I'm...well, I don't have a name yet, but I was thinking something cheesy and anime like Bakuda or something." The young woman answered before pulling her knees in with her arms. "I just kinda jumped in when I heard the local PRT branch in my town as asking for local parahumans to assist in the battle. I wanted to see if seeing what it was like would inspire anything new." She then looked up at the wailing screams of a woman as Amy apologized and moved on from who may have been the woman's husband.
"Did you see what you were hoping to?" I asked snidely, crinkling my snout under my mask a bit in disgust at even thinking of using a situation like this just for inspiration.
"...To be honest? Yeah. I did." She shuddered, and took a cleansing breath. "My counselor told me I needed a new perspective. Something to give me direction when my Major in school suddenly didn't look so attainable." She looked at me again. "I hear you made those bombs that pissed Behemoth off so much he threw the equivalent of a tantrum at getting swarmed up close for once and ran off when he started getting whole chunks torn out of him."
"The bombs were just the dispersal method for my microbes that in layman's terms, eat radiation. I didn't put in a self-terminating failsafe though, so hopefully I won't have to scrub anything if they infest a nuclear power plant." I joked, though quite seriously, they would definitely shut down a power plant, so hopefully none of the bombs reached one. I don't want to be accused of terrorism.
"So they were just the dispersal method then…." Bakuda said with a considering tone. "So, where're you based out of? Just out of curiosity." The girl asked, and I figured if she came here to help, even if for a selfish reason, she couldn't be too bad.
"Brockton Bay. I'm Dealer of the Merchants." I weakly extended a hand and she shook it.
"Oh! That place! I've heard of you guys, making names for yourselves, fighting the 'good fight' or something?" Bakuda commented, before humming, and standing back up. "Well, the fighting's over, and my part's done. I'm gonna head home, have a think. See you later." Bakuda waved goodbye as she left the tent, and I had a niggling feeling I'd probably done something stupid in my exhausted state of mind.
"Dealer!" I blearily snapped awake as Amy pulled me up and moved me to a cot. "Your crew is out of Stim, I can't handle everything. I'm going to be cloning your Stim." Amy informed me as a brutally mangled corpse was put on top of me, and she opened a hole in my arm while the corpse melted into my chest. Of course I couldn't feel any of it, or the Stim-filled blood dumping into a bucket. Swell. I'm a blood donor now. "I'll be putting you under in a second Dealer, thanks for all the help." Amy said, moments before I felt myself blacking out….