Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 2: Healing

AN: The first part was SUPER uncomfortable for me to write, and even then I chickened out on how bad I could make it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the setting: Basically, ALL THE CONTENT WARNINGS. E88 are Nazis, with all that entails. We've got a good amount of body horror going on, etc.

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Rob followed the members of the Empire 88 - E88 - with his heart pounding hard enough to feel in his throat. The other members had their heads shaved, and their swastika tattoos were proudly on display. 

He understood the need to prove himself to join. To help rid the world of the lessers that threatened to overrun it. He was doing his part to keep his city, his people, safe and secure.

But did they have to do it in broad daylight?

The family of three were tied to chairs, sobbing. The older gangbanger handed Rob a loaded handgun.

“For your family.” He said, gesturing.

Rob steeled himself.

He could do this. For his family.

But at the very least, he could do this in a kind and compassionate way. 

He aimed the gun at the girl’s head, and her parents started screaming and crying through their gags. Even animals had compassion and understanding for their own family. Still, it didn’t stop what needed to be done. He pulled the trigger with only a moment of hesitation. Her brain and bones splattered all over the wall, and he tried to ignore the uptick in wailing.

He screamed as her entire face came back together.

“CAPE!” He shouted, unloading the rest of the pistol into her.

Then the bombs went off.

======

Dr. Nomen was whistling as he performed surgery. Just an appendix, nothing serious. Practically the classic surgery for a resident learning the art. It was as routine as could be. Patient was under, and he carefully cut into his side with a scalpel.

Then the monitors started beeping wildly, and the patient’s side closed up like lightning. Dr. Nomen brought his severed scalpel up, eyes wide as he stared at the perfect cut in the instrument, cutting the head off completely.

Then the patient sat up, and all hell broke loose.

==============

Director Emily Piggot's headache was steadily growing worse, a sure sign that she was pushing things and needed her dialysis appointment.

Then for one brief, glorious moment, her headache disappeared, and the constant ache in her back vanished. An ache that had been there so long, she hadn't even realized she'd been in pain until it disappeared.

For one brief second she reveled in how good she suddenly felt.

Then the bombs went off, and her headache returned with a vengeance.

============

“Being an effective leader is all about fear.” Bakuda monologued to her minions, breathing through her gasmask. Each and every one of them had been implanted with bombs. Trust, but verify. She had verified that her remote detonation technology worked, far away from her lab and surgical suite. The itch of the dead man’s switch on her heart was rapidly fading after a week. “Fear, mixed with certainty and uncertainty. See this little capsule here?” She held out a grey capsule, about the size of the end of her pinky, in front of her wide-eyed new recruit. Said recruit was strapped down to a table, but such was the nature of life in the Asian Bad Boyz gang, the ABB. 

“Yeah, I’m shoving this in your head.” She said. “Maybe on this side?” She tapped one side of the recruit’s neck. “Maybe on that side? Problem is, you’re too much of a dumbfuck to appreciate the difference.” 

He swallowed nervously, and struggled against his restraints.

“Ah ah ah! You wouldn’t want your grandfather to explode, would you?” Bakuda asked with a leer. “After all, he’s already got one of these pretties inside of him.”

“As I was saying! It’s all about fear, certainty and uncertainty. You fuck up? You explode! But the only question is, how will you explode? A nice explosion? A black hole? Maybe you’ll get the greyboy special! Maybe this was the one that’ll turn you liquid! I. Don’t. Know. And if I don’t know, there’s no way in fuck you dumbasses will know. Just know it’ll be painful, and hey! Maybe you’ll take out a family member or three in the process.”

Bakuda grinned, applauding her genius.

“And if you think ‘oh hey, I know! I’ll be a wiseass and shoot Bakuda! That’ll make all my problems go away!’” She mocked in a high pitched tone. “You also get to explode, because I’ve got a dead man switch! You understand? Those in small enough words for you?”

Quick as a striking viper, Bakuda sliced open the side of the man’s head, slipped the capsule in, and sloppily stitched it shut. It didn’t need to be good, just as long as the bomb was in and the targeting system worked.

She quickly looked around her tinker’s workshop. Most of the recruits had their bombs implanted, ready to go out and grab a new set of recruits for her.  Excellent, that crate looked like her grenade launcher, and her stockpile of bombs was still significant. Three more surgeries, then she could go back to tinkering.

Soon, everyone would learn to fear the name Bakuda. The Big One was almost ready, at which point they’d rule the city!

She looked back down at the recruit, only to see the scar vanish, and the ugly deformity where the bomb had been flattened back down. 

The itch in her chest was gone.

Her dead man switch was gone.

And it worked on a ‘fail dangerous’ system.

Shit was Bakuda’s last thought.

Then the bombs went off.

=====

Panacea was at the PRT headquarters, healing the wards from their disastrous fight against the Undersiders, when the first wave of explosions ripped through Brockton Bay.

“Vicky!” She shouted to her sister, who flew through the air across the Ward’s room to get her.

“Brockton Bay Central?” Glory Girl asked, picking Panacea up.

“Yes!” She shouted.

Some of the Wards tried to make a noise of protest.

“It’s too dangerous to go out there!” Gallant said.

Vicky was already ignoring her boyfriend, powering through the hallways and off the roof with Panacea held bridal-style. The two zipped through the air, getting a great view of the Bay.

One spot deep in ABB territory had a burgeoning mushroom cloud high up in the atmosphere. Smoke and fires were spreading across half the town, and more explosions were still going off. Car crashes were everywhere, and the lights from emergency services were going off in every street. None of that stopped the flier and they dropped into Brockton General a few minutes later. One of the nurses rushed up to them.

“Panacea! Thank goodness you’re here.” She said. “It’s a disaster.”

“Where do you need me? Trauma three?” Panacea asked, looking around. Where were the ambulances? The first patients should be here by now.

“Oh. No, not that. A bunch of coma patients have woken up, and everyone looks like they’re suddenly in great shape. We need you to check them out and make sure nothing’s wrong.”

What. Panacea thought, not processing. All the explosions going off… and no patients?

“What.” Victoria said.

“EMTs are skipping over people that are just rattled.” The nurse explained. “They’re looking for anyone hurt, but they’re finding nobody. Glass statues or perfect health, there’s nobody in between.”

“What.”

====

“The hip bone’s connected to the, head bone.” Bonesaw hummed. “The head bone’s connected to the, hand bone.” She continued humming as she stitched together her latest creation, spiderbots scurrying all over the surgical theater. It had been a preschool just a few hours earlier, now it was the site of the Slaughterhouse Nine’s latest atrocity.

This one might even make the papers!

“How’s it going, poppet?” Jack Slash asked Bonesaw. “What are you working on?”

“Oh good! I’m going to call this one Murderrat!” Bonesaw beamed, her blonde ringlets bouncing up and down with her. “She’s going to be able to teleport, and-”

What else Murderrat - an unholy abomination made by stitching Ravager and Mouse Protector together, while they were still alive - was going to be able to do, was interrupted by a wave of magic washing over them. The one body explosively split into two, half-flung against the walls of the preschool. Mouse Protector was naked, dazed, and her brain was just starting to put itself back together - literally - but she had enough presence of mind to get out when surrounded by the Slaughterhouse Nine. She teleported to one of her beacons, resolving to find a way to call in the PRT as quickly as possible.

She didn’t know what had happened to make Bonesaw’s dozens of spiderbots explode and turn into toddlers, but she was not going to leave a bunch of babies to the tender mercies of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

A man with a tattoo of a white swan staggered into the preschool, and Jack’s eyes opened. That was not how he had last seen Manniquin. 

“Interesting.”

====

Dinah thrashed and turned on the bed. The IV was plugged into her arm, and drugs to make the 12 year old compliant were flooding through her veins. The numbers for her ever getting out were terrible.

9% chance she’d ever be free.

3% chance she wouldn’t have a drug addiction for the rest of her life.

Then a wave of healing passed over her, and the needle was healed out of her arm, spraying fluids all over her. The numbers shifted.

98% chance she wouldn’t have a drug addiction for the rest of her life.

===========

The itching in Lung’s groin suddenly vanished. The gang leader sat up a hair in his jail cell, and pulled up the band of his sweatpants.

He flopped back with a grin.

Dignity, and honor, had been restored.

He would have to do the parahuman responsible a favor.

After he crushed the bug girl that landed him here in the first place.

========

That was a lot of explosions.

A lot of explosions.

A mushroom cloud was lighting up the sky to the north. Bombs were going off like staccato. The troopers around me were shifting around nervously.

This totally wasn’t my fault. Just good timing. Yup. Imagine how bad this would’ve been if I wasn’t healing everyone!

But yikes, that was a lot of mana. Either the population of the city was far greater than the books suggested, people were far worse off than my sample suggested, or those had been some serious bombs and I was keeping thousands of people from flying apart into millions of tiny unidentifiable pieces of charred flesh and smoke.

The lovely part about my healing range? I didn’t need to lift a finger. I was just as effective here as I would be in a hospital, or positioned in the middle of the city. Unless hundreds of bombs going off was a country wide or worldwide phenomenon, at which point I’d need to get flying and play “how many cities can I hit in a day?”

“Continue to bring the unknown Parahuman back to headquarters.” Armsmasters gruff voice came over the comms, then the man roared away on his motorcycle. 

I sighed and cracked open one of my borrowed books. 

Why did I have the sense that this was about to take a lot longer?

====

The Simurgh hung in orbit, plotting. 

During a single corrupted frame of one of the cameras watching her, she twitched a single feather of her wings. A photon bounced off one of the feathers, hitting an orbiting satellite. It flipped two bits on the RAM, changing the signal being sent. One changed a number in the file, the other changed the checksum of the file, marking it as still valid. 

The file in question finished downloading on an analyst’s computer, and she worked through the night on it, checking the numbers and figures. It wasn’t a hard analysis, but she was paid to forecast the company decisions, and thus, hundreds of millions in spending.

The results were clear and reasonable. She got to work, making a Powerpoint presentation for her bosses tomorrow. It wasn’t a controversial position, but it’d help the company profit in the upcoming year.

Apples were in.