WCH: Flight of the Dove

It was supposed to be a quick physical checkup. It was not.

Today’s doctor was a nervous first-year medical student named Noelle Taube.

Noelle was a young woman of average height, wearing baby blue and pale orange scrubs. She had very light blonde hair barely reaching down her neck, and in her hair was a dark blue ribbon tied into a small curved bow. Her face was flat, her chin was round and her irises were completely black, a condition that she was told was known as “aniridia”, although her eyesight did not suffer for it. Always with Noelle was a light gray teddy bear. She knew she was much too old for it, yet she felt like she absolutely had to be near it all the time, so she quietly withstood all sorts of jeers and jests when she brought it to work. The teddy bear usually occupied a prominent space on a special backpack she usually had around, although if she was feeling nervous, she’d take it out and hold it in her hands.

She had entered Wolcrasi Community Hospital a few weeks ago, and she still had not found her footing yet… she felt like she never would. Noelle looked carefully at her patient, a pink-haired, coarse-looking man with pale skin and a white fur coat. She had his name down as “Connor Rakha”. He replied to her preliminary questions with very terse answers in a thick Asian accent, and entirely declined to make small talk. His blood pressure was quite high, and he gave a resigned sigh when she informed him. His other readings, as far as she can tell, were fine.

He did complain about head pains and sleeplessness on his intake form, and she had no idea what could be causing it. He kept his answers as short and unhelpful as possible, clearly keeping as much detail as he could from her. As she turned around to think, she heard a wet squelching noise, like an enormous bubble popping, and some liquid fell on the exposed back of her neck, feeling warm and wet. The smell of iron filled her nose and she turned around confused, seeing more and more red color as she turned around. Then she saw it: saw her patient’s body sitting down, with his head replaced by a fountain of gushing blood. Blood coated the area around her, and in disbelief, she ran her hand down the back of her scrubs and pulled it back sticky and wet with blood.

Noelle leapt backwards into the corner of the room and screamed. She screamed as loud as she could, as hard as she could. She screeched until her voice gave out and then whimpered in the corner for ages.She eventually caught ahold of her senses again, and still panting, carefully extracted herself from the fetal position she found herself in, and stood up.

Her patient was definitely headless. It was definitely still him from the neck down, with his fur coat now drenched in his blood. Noelle took a very deep breath, picked her blood-flecked backpack up from the floor beside her and extricated her teddy bear from it.

She kicked open the door and dashed all the way to her sister’s office. Dr. Leucine S. Naturae was the Head of Surgery for this hospital, one of the most experienced surgeons on the planet. It probably helped that Leucine was well over a thousand years old and like Noelle, was an immortal devil, appearing human, save for a few features. Noelle’s spiked devil’s tail waved around from the back of her scrubs pants as she ran.

“Lucy! Lucy Lucy Lucy, my patient EXPLODED!” Noelle screamed, not quite out of breath.

Leucine startled out of her chair, and then an alarm clock went off beside her. She slammed a button on it, silencing it. “Dang it, Noelle, you ran too fast for the motion detectors! Where’s the fire?”

“Leuuuuuciiiine, my patient blew up!” whined Noelle. She clutched hard at the gray teddy bear in her hands.

Leucine sighed. “Oh man, again?”

Leucine wore her bright red hair in a high and long ponytail, held up by a small bow that happened to resemble a small pair of horns. She wore a black tube top dress, a jagged purple scarf, a white doctor’s lab coat and black thigh-high boots. A large purple tail poked out of the back of her dress. She had a large upturned nose and bright purple lips usually held up in an impish smile, although today her face had more of the quiet exasperation that the average Wolcrasi doctor displayed when a med student came to them in an utter panic.

Noelle started taking rapid shallow breaths and pointed frantically out the door of Leucine’s office.

“Dove, it won’t get better if you panic harder,” said Leucine. “We have patients blow up now and then. Now, take me there and please take a deep breath or two while you’re at it”

“Dove” was Noelle’s nickname. Leucine said she had earned it in a past life by being a relatively peaceful person, but Noelle did not remember anything about any past life. Nevertheless, the name stuck with people …when they weren’t insulting her over the teddy bear.

“Oh man oh man, it’s this way”, said Dove. “Please Leucine, I didn’t do this to him, patients aren’t supposed to blow up! I swear, I don’t know why-”

“Dove, if you can’t stay calm when a patient dies, how are you going to hold it together when it’s actually your fault some day? Now, I’m here, so I can help you, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, we’ll be just fine right now, just calm down.” said Leucine.

Dove shut up immediately. She opened the door and waved frantically at the headless spurting body.

“Hm…. Interesting. This man’s body is soaked in temporal magic, not entirely unlike my own”, said Leucine, looking deeply, almost past the man. “Can you describe his face before it… uh, blew up?”

Dove said, “Uh, pink hair. Strong jaw. Pink eyes. Looked like a white guy but talked like he’s from Japan. Like, real Japan. He said his name is Connor Rakha.”

Leucine said “Okay. I think I have an idea of who this guy is. Have you noticed that his neck has stopped shooting blood?”

Dove opened her eyes wide. She carefully looked at the fountain of gore emerging from the man’s neck and noticed it was, indeed, frozen in midair. Drops of blood hung in mid-air. She reached out to touch them, but Leucine slapped her hand away.

“Okay, probably overuse of temporal magic caused a runaway feedback loop of some kind,” said Leucine. “I can’t really tell exactly what happened because it’s unique for every person, but he doesn’t seem to be quite the same as us, so his body probably took it badly instead of just getting very tired like you or I would. He’s still quite alive at this point, so don’t worry.”

She took out a small blue-glowing cylinder from her lab coat and gently placed it in the headless man’s blood-coated hands. “That should buy him some time. Well, time from our frame of reference, anyways.”

“So, we have pretty much one recourse”, Leucine continued, taking out a pad of paper. “I’m writing you an order for our hospital’s pharmacological garden. Ask the botanist on duty for a gercranium. Yes, cranium, as in, skull. It’s located on the other side of the hospital, and we have construction going on while the psychiatric wing is put in and repair work gets done. So, the journey will be very difficult. I suggest you change and wash up a bit. Loot a medical supply closet for helpful gear, particularly stuff that can be used for fighting, you’ll need it.”

Dove stared at her with incomprehension, but she took the doctor’s note her sister handed her.

Leucine continued speaking. “Since you mentioned he has pink hair, I suggest finding either Dr. Bella Luna, our pediatric surgeon and temporary pediatrician, or Dr. Grace Vaya, one of our Internal Medicine folks. Mention the pink hair and his last name, and they drop whatever they are doing in a heartbeat. You can also reach Dr. Will Doctorow, but he’s usually busy, doesn’t text much and will probably send one of them to help you anyways. Oh and stay the fuck away from the Duck, he can mess you up for life. Have fun! I actually have a seminar to leave for tonight, so I’ll have to leave you at that. Don’t worry, you can handle it, headless guy will keep for quite a while in this form, just lock the room after you leave and get back to him by the end of the day.”

Leucine abruptly walked off, leaving the bloodstained Dove feeling very lost and vulnerable. She barely remembered what Leucine said.

Dove vaguely recalled putting Dr. Luna and Dr. Vaya in her contacts list. She took out her phone, scrolled down and found Dr. Luna first.

She carefully wrote, “Hi Dr. Luna, I need your help with a patient who is in critical condition”

Dr. Luna replied, “Hi, I’m with a patient, I can’t respond right now. If the situation is urgent, please contact our Emergency Room department, our head nurse Amy Bailey, or physician’s assistant Chihiroe. This is an automated reply; please do not respond unless you really badly need me in particular.”

A second message delivered a bunch of numbers to text instead of Dr. Luna.

Dove wrote back, “My patient has pink hair and he called himself Connor Rakha”. After a minute of waiting and gripping her teddy bear, she decided to hunt down Dr. Vaya on her contacts list instead.

She noticed an incoming text message at the top of her phone. “Meet me in three in front of radiology” from Dr. Luna.

Dove ran off, snagging a fresh set of scrubs from a supply closet. She ripped off her bloodstained shirt and stuffed on the clean shirt as she ran, disregarding modesty entirely.

She reached radiology and took some more deep breaths. A short, tomboyish Filipino woman with swarthy skin and short hair ran sprinted to her. Dove recognized her as Dr. Bella Luna.

Bella wore a black tie and a pink and purple ensemble of shirt, skirt and tights, all underneath the usual doctor’s lab coat. She moved with an unusual grace that Dove could not quite place. She was not breathing hard at all, despite being covered with a bit of sweat and seeming quite disheveled.

“Okay, where’s the patient? Are you okay? You smell like blood.” Bella said.

“His head blew up. He’s in room 401 of the east wing. Leucine said I need a gercranium or something from the hospital garden to save his life.” said Dove.

“His head… blew up? What? What?” said Bella. She clutched at her tie.

“I know, I have no idea what to do! But Leucine said he overused magic or something and now I can save him with some gercranium thing and I trust my sister. She told me to get you to help and said you’d understand,” said Dove. She blushed at how silly she sounded saying that.

“Okay, okay, get ahold of yourself.” said Bella.

“I’m not… I’m not panicking,” said Dove, suddenly unsure of herself and whether she was in fact panicking. She hugged her bear.

“I was talking to myself,” said Bella, still clutching her tie. She rubbed at her neck, and tried to slip her fingers under her tie’s knot. “Man, I don’t remember putting this on this tig- Dove! Let go of your bear!”

Dove suddenly remembered and removed her hands from the bear’s neck. Her teddy bear had a tendency to… project whatever was happening to it onto other people, at least if they were stressing her out. That was the best way she could describe it. It came in handy now and then, but usually it made other people hurt too much. She had tried and failed to wean herself off hugging the bear; it just felt oddly right to do it, no matter the situation.

“I’m sorry Dr. Luna!”, Dove pleaded as she dropped the bear. “I didn’t mean to-“

“It’s okay” said Bella. “No harm done. Just remember, I’m your friend here. So uh, please don’t sic your bear on me.”

She grinned weakly, as if trying to play that off as a joke.

A huge yellow laser beam flew out of upper story windows in the radiology department behind them, illuminating the day lit sky even more.

“Yeah okay, Dove, it’s absolutely not safe here”, said Bella. “Radiology is crazy dangerous, I have no idea how we’ll pass accreditation. Uhh, I mean, let’s just get moving, huh?”

Dove nodded frantically, and picked up her teddy bear.

They walked across the hospital quad.

“So, uh, Dove, you’re new here right? Have you thought about which specialty you want?” said Bella. She carefully eyed Dove’s hands on the bear.

Dove said, “Um, I kind of was thinking of orthopedic surgery. I think my sister started out as orthopedics. But I haven’t really tried it out yet, I guess I’ll find out in third year. But I like bones and joints. Bones are neat.”

Bella said, “Oh, have you considered pediatric surgery? Kids are really easy to cut open! Children’s skin is just so soft and cuttable, it’s a real breeze! Their bones are easy to dislocate and put back if you want to, and their skulls are still soft, so it’s really easy to punch through just like that.”

Bella snapped her fingers and gave Dove a wide grin. Dove broke into a cold sweat, trying to read Bella’s happy expression.

Dove stuttered, “Uh uh uh, what do you… do for uh… okay. Kids, very easy to cut, got it.” She visibly stopped herself from hugging her teddy bear as hard as possible.

If Bella noticed Dove’s reaction, she gave no indication. She still smiled warmly, as if talking about puppies. “Yeah, pediatric surgery is great. Unfortunately, we don’t have pediatricians coming in for a while, so I’m the pediatrics department by myself, and other doctors chip in whenever they can. Regular pediatrics is cool too. If you aren’t interested in slicing open children, you can always ask my dad Dr. Doctorow about laparoscopy.”

Dove made no reply. She clung to her bear, trying not to apply pressure to it.

“So, what’s with the bear?” said Bella. “I noticed the day you showed up…. Uh, you took someone out with it, if I recall.”

Dove shrugged. “It’s always been with me. It makes me feel safe like nothing, not even Leucine, or my big brother Frederick, can. I don’t know, it feels like a part of me somehow. Whenever something bad happens to it, it seems to bounce off onto people nearby. And I can feel somehow feel its pain when that happens sometimes. I don’t know how to really explain. Sorry.”

She spoke with a flat, matter-of-fact tone. Bella tried to hide her wide-open eyes and fearful glance at the innocuous-seeming teddy bear. Fortunately, or possibly unfortunately, something else grabbed her attention.

“Oh poop! It’s the fake security team!” said Bella. “Hide! Hide!”

She sprinted and performed a diving roll behind a neatly trimmed hedge nearby. Dove hesitated in place and then followed her, jumping behind the hedge.

“Fake security?” Dove fearfully whispered.

“Yeah, it’s the Grand Duck! No one messes with the Duck and his crew, it’s really bad. I mean, we kicked their asses once, except the Duck, and the Duck sliced open Willis’ throat just like that! They’re going to try to make an example out of every new staff member they catch; we can’t let them catch sight of you.”

Dove clung to her teddy bear with obvious concern. Bella noticed a lack of feeling strangled. She looked up over the hedge and looked at the source of the Duck’s attention.

The Grand Duck was a small golden-feathered platypus-like creature with an orange metal crown, a massive bill and a facial expression best described as pure hatred or all living things. He was one of the most lethal things in the hospital, and he definitely acted the part. Behind him walked Hank Sokolov, a massive, balding Russian wrestler in a Soviet-themed leotard, THNG the Slampire, a vampire in a basketball jersey and MASSCAT, a large connected ball of kittens wielding tiny but very real weapons and incessantly spouting profanity. They were clearly looking for trouble. The Duck brandished his axe a few times.

Hank suddenly paused in mid-step and put one of his enormous hands on his side. Bella gently put her hand against Dove’s hands and eased her grasp out of the teddy bear, as she had learned many times with children.

The Duck looked up at Hank in a rare moment of concern. Hank said something and removed his hand, apparently dismissing the concern. The Duck continued to walk on.

“Oh crap, they’re going straight for Nurse Bello! All four of them together!” said Bella. “This is going to be messy!”

Before the gang of troublemakers walked Chika Bello, a rather glum-looking woman with very dark skin, long hair interspersed with red ribbons, and a fancy set of dark red scrubs. She was looking down at the ground with her hands in her pockets, clearly not paying attention to her surroundings.

Bella covered her face with her hands. “It’s like her first week, I think! She doesn’t know to run for her life!”

Dove suddenly kneeled up with determination and she held her teddy bear. She looked straight ahead out past the bushes into the scene. She rammed a finger into the teddy bear’s lower leg. Several dozen meters away, Chika gasped in shock and grabbed at her leg in the same spot. She looked around in confusion and immediately caught sight of the Duck and his followers sizing her up. She made eye contact with them like a deer in headlights.

Dove also twitched in pain at the same spot she hit the teddy bear, and, in her surprise, stumbled slightly onto the bush cover, creating a slight rustle.

The Duck turned around at the sound and without hesitation quacked out a few orders to his gang, intently staring at Bella and Dove’s position. MASSCAT started after Chika, while THNG and Hank converged onto the source of the sound.

Chika took off like a bullet. MASSCAT happily barreled along after her, axes in hand, all of the kittens connected in the ball screaming profanity in their little kitten voices all the while.

Bella held a hand to Dove’s mouth and carefully placed her other hand to Dove’s shoulder. She guided the medical student along the hedge as quietly and quickly as she could manage. THNG leapt over the hedge with inhuman speed, just as Bella managed to guide Dove around a corner. Hank smashed his way through the bushes just a meter away from their new position, and both the vampire and the wrestler craned their heads around, searching in vain for whatever so alarmed the Duck.

Bella sighed relief when she saw a glimpse of yellow out of the corner of her eye. She yelped as the Grand Duck came into view.

Dove stared directly into the Grand Duck’s eyes. She froze deadly still out of the hatred she saw in his large anatine eyes, it was unlike any other hatred in its purity and strength. It was like looking into her own death a million times over.

Bella too met the Grand Duck’s eyes, but with defiance, the strength pooling up in herself seemingly out of nowhere. She got to her feet, unconcerned about being outnumbered. She raised her fists, clearly braced for a fight.

“Run”, she said. Dove scrambled up to her feet and ran as fast as she could with considerable speed.

The Duck, shrugged, slightly adjusted the axe in his little claws, and chopped Bella in the thigh before she could react. Bella yelled in anger and fell onto the grass, bleeding profusely.

The Duck withdrew his axe as abruptly as he had delivered it, evaluated Bella with a glance, and then looked back at the retreating Dove. He waved to THNG. THNG gave a fanged grin and leapt several dozen meters forward at Dove, as if the hand of a basketball-loving god pulled her along.

She yelled, “Come on and slam!” as her hands brought a basketball down onto Dove’s head with meteoric force. However, Dove at the last second noticed THNG’s shadow hanging over her and reflexively ducked under her teddy bear.

THNG’s skull deformed slightly as her basketball slammed into the bear’s face and the vampire recoiled from her blow and flopped backwards, twitching and staggering. The vampire spun a little in place, and then fell down with a dazed grin on her face, clearly not in a state to get up again.

The Duck’s wide-open, hateful eyes opened even more. Dove clutched her head as if she had a headache and spun around to look at the source of the impact, before running off. She was not far from the sleep ward building. The Duck waved to Hank and followed him at a dead run after Dove.

Bella slowly picked herself off the lawn and looked her injury over. The moderate amount of wet blood underneath her told her the Duck thankfully missed her femoral artery. Still, a vein bled quite a lot and she would not be moving very quickly from this point forward. She took out the first aid supplies all Wolcrasi staff (even non-medical) always kept on person and carefully wrapped the bandages around the cut.

She saw Hank’s massive footprint craters (impossible to miss) leading into the sleep ward building. She hobbled after it, fighting the pain in her leg as the adrenaline wore off and it reminded her it was there. Bella dragged herself forward harder after she noticed Hank’s footprints tracking dirt into the Sleep Ward building.

Hank Sokolov stood watch over the abandoned lobby of the sleep clinic, his great red and gold leotard a beacon for trouble underway beyond the doors behind him. Bella knew she had to get around him somehow. She quietly folded her white lab coat into one of her pocket, aware it would give her away in moments.

Hank’s eyes entirely missed Bella as she watched him and carefully darted from chair to chair in the waiting room. Beads of sweat danced on her head- Hank had 130 kilograms and 60 centimeters, mostly of muscle, over her. She won a fight with him before, but under far better circumstances than this, and there was no way she was outrunning him if things went south. Hank gave a quiet grunt in alarm and she startled. He walked over to her position. She steeled herself. He scratched his head and bent down to expect what had gotten his attention. Bella carefully examined Hank’s legs, which was all she could see of him underneath the chairs, and took action.

Bella circled around and landed a sharp kick with her good leg, to the inside of Hank’s knee. Hank dropped to his other knee, and before he could react, Bella already sank her fingernails exactly into his exposed hamstring, leaving red welts in Hank’s thick skin. Hank yelped in surprise and pain and turned around to reach her, but Bella was already limping out of the lobby into the sleep ward beyond. Hank crawled after her even more slowly. He started to recover into a limp and then into a slow walk, but as he threw open the doors he was guarding, he found she was nowhere in sight. He shook his head and returned to guarding the lobby, scratching at his slightly injured leg.

Bella walked through the sleep ward. Dove and the Duck’s footprints were much less obvious than Hank’s, but the weirdly spotless floors of this section of building made it easy for her to track the dirt on… one of their feet. Not sure whose.

Meanwhile, Dove was cowering in a corner in the main sleep ward area as the Duck slowly advanced. The beds around them were made of solid wood and large, high-end mattresses- the sleep department had recently come into a lot of money through its head, Dr. Vivi Belgica. Behind them was Slumbear, a massive brown bear that apparently had sleep-based telepathic powers. It was literally always asleep and exuded an aura of sleepiness around it, which currently was affecting everyone around but Dove and the Duck. All around them, various physicians, nurses and patients dozed deeply, either submitting to the sleep aura to catch up on a lack of sleep or for clinical observation by the CCTV cameras all around them. They all slept oblivious to the young woman behind her teddy bear, hiding from an anatine warrior with a white metal battle-axe.

The Duck carefully swiped his free arm forward and Dove quailed in fright. The claws on the Duck’s arm slashed across the teddy bear’s arms and Dove flinched in pain. However, only the Duck received a few gashes across the feathers of his small round torso. The Duck frowned in frustration, his suspicions apparently confirmed. Dove clung to her teddy bear tighter, wrapping herself around its neck. The Duck began audibly choking and seizing as she did so. He still advanced forward despite the obvious pain, his incredible will driving him forward nevertheless. He raised his axe above his head, in position to split Dove’s skull.

Bella burst through the doors of the sleep clinic’s main room. She looked at the Slumbear and suddenly felt like it would be nice to rest now. She shook her head in defiance and then collapsed on the floor, sound asleep by the time her body landed with a loud thump.

Dove and the Duck turned to look at the collapsed Bella for a moment. Then the Duck returned to raising his axe at Dove and Dove cried out in fright again. The Duck rammed the flat of his axe on Dove’s head, dropping her to the ground. She clutched at her head and dropped her bear. The Duck kicked away the bear, disregarding another twinge of pain as he did so, and raised his claws at Dove.

Slumbear stirred at the commotion, and snorted loudly. The Duck turned around in alarm. Suddenly, the Duck seemed visibly gripped by some unnatural force and fell down. Dove was about to pick herself off the ground and sigh in relief when she felt a mental force coming out of Slumbear, once a gentle push she could ignore but now forcibly slamming against her mind. Her eyes felt heavy and rolled back, and her head fell to the ground.

-----

Dove awoke in a bizarre land with gentle orange-pink hills and a green sky. Clouds of bright azure hung still in the sky. The ground seemed to distort underneath the pressure of her feet, rippling and bouncing slightly underneath her footsteps. She confusedly wandered around in a circle for a bit, and then she sat down and tried to make sense of her surroundings. The orange-pink hills in the distance seemed to try to slowly move around and evade her line of sight, and her eyes kept following them away. She was completely lost, and her teddy bear was nowhere to be seen or felt. After a minute of staring in confusion, a bright light shined above her and the air above her stirred into a small storm. She looked at the source and saw a bright pink pair of wings.

Dove screeched in fright, some instinct deep within her telling her this was something to run from. She backed away the ground as a man with pink wings descended.

“Oh thank Rakha a new person”, said the man. “I’m sorry if I startled you, are you okay?”

Dove took a moment to collect herself, not sure why she was scared. She nodded to the man. She did not have anything to hide behind, so she just looked him in the eyes.

The man had dark skin, dull pink hair, pink tattoos all over his face, and an intricate set of robes that vaguely resembled a lab coat. His eyes were light gray, his build was a bit on the heavy side, but still tall and athletic, and his expression was the practiced smile of a doctor trying to reassure a frightened patient.

“I’m Dr. Grace Vaya. I think we met a few weeks ago, Noelle?” said the man.

Dove paused to think. That name was familiar. But Dr. Vaya of Wolcrasi Internal Medicine didn’t have pink hair and he definitely didn’t look like an angel with big pink wings. She stuttered, trying to voice her concerns and failing. She gestured to his hair and wings and gave him a wide shrug of confusion.

Grace nodded. “Yeah, you’re seeing me in an angelic form, normally I’m a human. Much like you have uh, lost your devil tail in here. I guess you’re truly human in your true form. Yeah, don’t worry about it, your sister Leucine is like that too. Welcome to the dreamlands. Reality works a little differently here.”

Dove checked her behind. There was no devil tail coming out. She looked back at him and pointed with concern at his wings.

“It’s okay, Noelle.” Said Grace “I’m a different type of angel, I’m a member of the Court of Rakha. Well, former member. We don’t have a history with devils like you. Look, I’m in a bit of a fix, and I think we will be able to help each other.

“So you seem to be lucid, Noelle, that’s good. I, uh, was helping Nurse Bianca Elias with something in the sleep ward, but I was knocked out by proximity to Slumbear. I guess I just haven’t been around him enough to develop tolerance. So I’m passed out in a supply closet, probably not far from where you collapsed. I’m not experienced enough here to escape on my own, so I’ve been searching around for other doctors. Unfortunately, no one else here is lucid. Actually, Bella just showed up just now, but she is not lucid at all either, so I’ve had no luck talking to her. I’m guessing she came with you, judging by how soon you showed up after her. I can see into the future in this form, but in the dreamland it only works for people who are actually in here, when they get here.”

Grace suddenly froze up in fear.

Then they heard a loud and crude voice squawk out “duck duck!”

Dove’s jaw dropped. A massive round duck-like being waddled into view before them. The Grand Duck had swelled to ten times his real-world size and his every step popped open a hill beneath him, bursting it apart like a lanced cyst.

Dove waved her hands in frustration and confusion at the sight of the giant duck crushing the landscape.

“Uh… yeah… that’s the Grand Duck. His willpower pretty much makes him insanely powerful in here. I think probably we should run.” said Grace.

Dove turned around to run, but Grace put his arms under her armpits and verbally reassured her. He beat his wings beat hard against the air, launching himself into the air with far more speed than he should have. The Duck looked up in frustration at his rapidly disappearing quarry.

Without even looking back, Grace spoke to Dove, his voice laced with worry.

“Shit, I think he’s flying at us!” said Grace.

“How do you know?” said Dove.

“I just see things!” said Grace.

Suddenly, something swung at them and missed. The wind from the movement sent Grace and Dove barreling down into the orange earth below. The ground shook and rippled under their impact, cushioning them quite uncomfortably.

There was no mistaking it, the normally flightless Grand Duck flapped his short fat wings in the air and flew about in clear violation of the laws of physics. He fluttered around with shocking speed, and an awkwardness characteristic of a brain clearly not used to flight.

“The rules of reality don’t apply here! He can fly, just like me here! I’m not sure we can outrun him.” Said Grace.

Grace’s eyes glowed with an unearthly pink color as the Duck bore down on him with a crash. Grace evaded a few dozen rapid swipes from the Grand Duck’s claws, almost like a carefully choreographed dance despite the Duck’s frenzied movements. The Duck quacked in frustration.

“WHAT?” said Dove. “What is going on?”

“Just think of fighting back against the Duck. Try to bring back your teddy bear!” said Grace.

“Um, okay I uh…”, said Dove. Something deep felt like bursting out of her all of a sudden.

Dove’s gray teddy bear, its body now human-shaped, standing upright and rippling with muscles, materialized behind Dove and it moved on its own, flexing from bodybuilding pose to bodybuilding pose. Its hands terminated in bear paws, and it only wore a red bow tie and a thong. Dove cringed and blushed, clearly aware of what was happening behind her.

“Why’s it look that?” said Dove, her face flush with embarrassment.

“It’s a representation of your inner fighting spirit! Only in the dream realm can this kind of thing pop up!” said Grace. “Now hurry up, we don’t have long!”

The Duck lunged forward at the both of them.

Grace smiled and then evaded every swing with plenty of time to spare.

Dove yelped as the Duck’s claws grazed her slightly, ripping at her scrubs. The Duck seemed to notice and decided to focus on her. Dove’s teddy bear manifestation, leapt forward and caught the Duck’s arm in its bear paws. Its muscles shook with exertion, and it threw the arm backwards. As if by magic, the Duck’s claws swung back out of his control and slashed at his own face.

The Duck quacked out in anger, “Duck duck psy yi!”

Grace took off again with another beat of his wings, and looked forward at the Duck. He looked at the Duck with the focus of a surgeon in the middle of an operation, and raised his hands forward with great determination.

Grace spoke to Dove, “We can take him down by hitting him low, his tiny duck legs won’t stand up to your bear’s strength!”

The Duck looked offended. He said, “Duck duck psyduck psy duck duck duck!”

The gigantic Duck surged forward. Dove and her teddy bear lunged forward to meet him. However, the Duck planted his duckbill deep into the ground like a shovel and ripped an entire hill off the ground in one piece at Dove. Dove could not evade and hid behind her teddy bear out of her usual instinct. The astral dirt slammed into the humanoid teddy bear, knocking it past Dove. Seeing an opening, the Duck lunged forward at Dove.

“Shit, his future is insanely hard to read into.” said Grace, still flapping his wings well out of the Duck’s reach. “Dive to your left! No your other left!”

Dove narrowly avoided the Duck’s bill coming down like a scythe on her, with a great dive to her right. She scooted away in fright. Grace swooped down with his great pink wings and buzzed the Duck. The Duck swiped its claws at both of them in frustration, hitting neither.

With a huge scream of “PSYYYYYY YIYIYIYIYI!”, the Duck caused the air itself to flutter and pulse as if alive. Grace suddenly fell out of the sky, his ears slightly bleeding from the sound.

The Duck stepped forward onto Grace’s pinned body. Dove couldn’t see what was happening with the Duck’s bulk obscuring most of her sight, but she decided on the offense for once. Her teddy bear charged forward and slammed its shoulder into the Duck’s feet, sending him crashing to the floor. The Duck rolled back up to a standing position and turned towards her with hatred burning in his eyes as usual.

Dove commanded the teddy bear between her and the Duck again. The Duck simply walked up to the bear, picked it up and threw it far away.

Dove turned to run. The Duck pecked at her with his giant duckbill, taking one step forward for every ten that Dove did. Dove scrambled and zigzagged, missing the Duck’s attacks by a narrow margin that was steadily decreasing. It crashed into the ground beside Dove with a thunderous noise.

Then she heard Bella’s voice yell, “Heart shaped box!”, and suddenly a pink stork with aortic arches coming out of its back flew through the sky. Dove turned to see Dr. Bella Luna standing before her. Her heart jumped. The Duck coolly regarded this turn of events and stopped pecking at Dove.

Bella then sat down. Her stork flew back to her and she petted it and giggled. She pointed to the Duck and said “hee hee, giant ducky! And little bear girl!” She picked at some ethereal flowers on the floor beneath her and skipped away.

“Duck duck!” said the Duck. He turned back to Dove, now defenseless and exhausted. Dove whimpered, trying not to imagine what was about to happen.

A bloodied Grace slammed out of nowhere onto the back of the Duck’s head at a low angle and bounced off. The Duck reeled forward.

“Now!” said Grace. “Hit his legs and he will fall!”

Dove focused and her teddy bear materialized again by her side, already running at the Duck’s waddly legs. The Duck kicked it away. The teddy bear sailed away from the impact, but then reversed course, seemingly bouncing off an invisible surface of some sort, and slammed back into the Duck’s foot. The Duck gave a loud a “psyyyyy!” as he fell to the ground.

The Duck’s ducky voice rang out. “Psy yi yi yiyiyiyiyiyiyi duck duck duck duck psyduck!” It repeated similar phrases repeatedly, the sheer loudness of the voice shattering Dove’s hearing. Dove bent over in pain, clutching at her ears.

“Wait, shit, let me try something!” said Grace, although no one could hear him over the din. He wiped some blood that was pooling over his eyes, and focused his gaze at the empty air before him, as if visualizing a scenario. The dull orange ground beneath him bubbled forth and budded off into a large tall bump of dirt before him. Grace focused more and the protrusion hardened into a tall, branchless tree made of warmly glowing crystal.

“Ha, yes! Thank you Dr. Fidelis!” said Grace. He tore the tree out of the ground with frightening ease and hurled it like a spear at the Duck. The tree caromed off his skull, leaving a nasty gash and causing him to stumble backwards. He stumbled backward, not sure how to handle this.

Grace repeated his feet, summoning another spear-tree quicker than he had the last time. He threw it and this one stuck into his head this time and stayed there. The Duck quacked in pain. The Duck stared cross-eyed at the projectile lodged in his forehead and then gave a ferocious, poisonous gaze at Grace. The ground underneath Grace’s feet bubbled and pooled together.

“Probably shouldn’t have given him ideas”, Grace muttered as the dreamland soil underneath him reached up like an enormous mouth to swallow him. Grace had already started moving as soon as the Duck had started looking, and he looked up at one of the emerald green clouds floating across the sky, siphoning it forward to him. As it elongated, he held one piece of cloud in his hand and made a whipping motion with his arms. The cloud lashed forwards and held one of the Duck’s arms. The Duck stared imperiously at another cloud. The second cloud darted downward at Grace and its wispy mass enveloped both of his arms and his neck. Grace started choking as the Duck continued staring at him with intense hatred.

The Duck then fell down as dozens of bright things wrapped around his legs and formed a chain. A few dozen birds made of brilliant blue crystalline petals circled around and joined into the chain, while Dove encouraged them. Dove picked up a flower and whispered into it. The flower folded into another such bird and joined its comrades wrapping around the Grand Duck, covering his eyes and arms as well.

Dove gathered some of the grass growing off the dreamland’s surface and formed it into a bright pink vine. She looked pleadingly at the ground around her and the grass on the hills around her flew off and joined the vine, pulled as if by a magnet, greatly increasing its length.

The Duck still bound, struggled enough to roll his gigantic body towards her. She offered her hand forward as if in an offer of peace and the vine snaked up and pinned his body to the ground, halting his advance. Dove whispered beckoningly and some of the bird-flowers binding the Grand Duck leapt out away from their prisoner and formed up into a giant flower shape. The flower lunged forward of its own accord into the Duck, giving him a mighty push that halted his movement.

Grace pulled the cloud out of its grasp around him and taking a warrior’s stance and concentrating, molded it before him into an amorphous weapon and shield of some sort.

“How are you able to do this?” said Grace, completely in shock.

“I think… I remember something from a dream… or a memory, a very long time ago. Maybe hundreds of years. It was something similar to this. I had no idea it was more than a dream though, until I saw you actually doing it for real.” she said. She fell to one knee, clearly quite spent.

The Duck writhed in the grip of the crystal chains holding him. They held but he would not relent and kept thrashing about. Shockwaves danced through the ground due to his sheer size.

“I think we should get the hell out of here before he gets good at this too” said Grace. Dove nodded and they took off as fast as they could in their state.

“Okay, we should wake up and take Bella with us.” said Grace. “Unfortunately, I’m not able to wake up on my own, or I would have. Do you have any idea how to do it? Maybe from your memories.”

Dove nodded. She raised her hands and thrust them forward as if in a warm greeting.

As if summoned, Bella skipped forward out of nowhere just a meter in front of Dove’s hands, wearing a crown made of unearthly grasses and flowers. She turned and grinned at Grace, clearly not registering his bloody and battered appearance.

“Oh hey Grace, what are you doing in here?” she said.

“Let’s take her out of here first”, said Grace. He paused for a moment, as if seeing something distant happen before him. “Yeah, okay, that’s a weird way to wake someone up.”

Dove nodded again and the teddy bear materialized again. It grabbed Bella and put her in a sleeper hold. She gurgled slightly and reflexively thrust her entire body forward in a counter. The bear held on from sheer strength, then suddenly let go. Bella fell down and her head disintegrated. The rest of her body drooped down to the ground gently. As soon as it came to a rest, it abruptly faded out of existence.

The teddy bear flickered into existence behind Grace. He nodded and visibly braced himself. It repeated the same feat, putting him in a sleeper hold. For a few seconds, he struggled slightly, almost involuntarily, and his body shook, then his head also disintegrated. His body vanished from sight as it hit the ground.

Dove let herself fall to the ground, her hands pressing down from exhaustion. She trembled slightly and then allowing herself to relax, brought the bear forward to her. It put its enormous paws around her head. Then there was nothing.

-----

Dove sat up with a startle. She had the impression of a very, very strange dream. In front of her was the Grand Duck, muttering and thrashing about in his sleep. She gasped in fright, not sure where she was and why he was there.

Her teddy bear, immobile and cuddly as always, comforted her with its softness against her body.

Dove got up to her feet. Similarly, Bella was groggily shaking off a deep sleep, leaning against a wall for support as she got up. The giant bear sleeping in the center of the room lay there silently, almost like a corpse. A chorus of gentle snoring from the people around and the Grand Duck’s thrashing were the only noises in the room.

Bella and Dove left the room as quickly as their shaky feet would let them.

Bella scratched her head. “Okay, I’m not sure where we were and how we got into the Sleep Ward. But apparently we got rid of the Grand Duck, for now, so that’s good. Let’s continue to, where was it, again, oh yeah, the hospital garden.”

Dove let herself smile a little. Bella smiled back and led Dove out of the Sleep Ward.

As they left, they found Hank soundly asleep on one of the lobby chairs, stretching it out with his sheer mass. They tiptoed past him, careful not to wake the Russian giant. As they cleared the building into the outdoors again, they ran into Nurse Bianca Elias. She had dog ears on her head of short brown hair and green eyes. She wore a set of tan scrubs with a braid pattern on them, a ruffled white headband, and a pair of knee-length boots. She regarded them warmly.

She said, “Have you seen Dr. Grace Vaya? I last saw him in the Sleep Ward, but it’s been two hours and I haven’t heard from him. I’m afraid he might have passed out there. That darn bear knocks out just about everyone but Chihiroe and Dr. Belgica.”

“Uh… the Grand Duck and Hank Sokolov chased us into there”, said Bella. “But don’t worry, they’re sound asleep now.”

Bianca grinned. “Yeah, and MASSCAT attacked the nurses, so we had to beat him up.”

Bianca continued, “I think I heard that the basketball vampire is laid out on the quad, apparently something knocked her out. Wow, that’s pretty good, we can finally have a few hours of peace with those four down.”

Dove seemed to have a realization and spoke up. “Dr. Vaya is okay, he got stuck for a while, but he’s awake now.”

Bianca looked at Dove, not sure what to make of this vague report. She looked carefully into Dove’s eyes and then nodded. “Thank you Miss Taube.”

Bianco looked down and seemed to notice Bella’s bandaged leg. “You should get that bandage changed, it’s already soaked through. Come over to the nurse’s station right here.”

Bella waved her hand and smiled apologetically. “No no, it’s alright, I’ve had a lot worse.”

“I insist”, said Bianca. “It’s no good to alarm patients and staff with a bloody leg like that. And I’m not sure it won’t get worse.”

Dove tugged at Bella’s shirt sleeve. Bella turned to her, and Dove said, “We should take a break.”

Bella sighed. “Okay, but I really don’t want to take longer than is necessary. The guy with the pink hair… he’s a friend of my family, let’s say.”

----

The nurses talked around a break room. Most of them were bright young women in their 20s and 30s, bearing fashionably patterned, unique scrubs. Wolcrasi had managed to order custom scrubs with a bulk discount, thanks to the influence of one of its hospital board members. That board member who happened to be Dove’s brother, although she never mentioned that fact. It was already bad enough that people made fun of her for her bear and thought she was only here because of her sister Leucine, which might well have actually been the case. If word got out she had family on the hospital board too, it would just make the teasing worse. Or worse, get someone fired if he ever found out they were picking on her.

As it was, some of the nurses tittered and pointed at Dove, making snide remarks at the teddy bear in her hands. Bianca, however, seemed to not mind at all. She removed Bella’s bloodied, dirt-smudged bandages while speaking to Dove.

“What a nice teddy bear. What’s his name?” she said.

“Uh… he’s… he’s… “ Dove tried to whisper just enough that only Bianca and Bella heard. “Mister Flufflesbottom.”

Bella suppressed an innocent giggle. Dove blushed. Bianca just smiled beatifically and finished cleaning Bella’s injury.

“Huh. The blood around the wounds is still pretty fresh, but… this cut looks like it’s been healing for several days already. I’m not sure how you’re still moving, too, this looks like it was pretty deep.” said Bianca.

“Uh, maybe I should do this myself!” said Bella, gesticulating at her injury.

“No worries, probably you were exposed to one of Team Xavier’s crazy healing factor drugs. I keep telling them that random, fully-blind experimentation still needs consent.” said Bianca with a sigh.

“Yes, that’s definitely it. I thought my food tasted funny yesterday.” said Bella, clearly relieved and clearly lying.

“Good as new” said Bianca, already wrapping up a fresh set of bandages. “You know, Dr. Luna, I think the Grand Duck is sweet on you.”

“WHAT?”

“Well, he didn’t take your leg clean off, and with that strength of his, he could if he wanted to. Most of our girls can easily deal with his little entourage,”, She gestured over her shoulder to a cardboard box that held a dozen kittens dressed various articles of clothing sewn into improvised straitjackets and gags. They mostly lay where they were or struggled to scream through the gags.

“-but the Duck is really nasty, we’ve had nurses get cut up on a few occasions before we realized he can’t outrun us. Thank god that Dr. Naturae is some kind of idiot sav- uh she’s a brilliant surgeon who can stitch back pretty much anything.”

Bianca looked carefully at Dove, gauging her reaction.

Dove quietly spoke, “It’s okay. Leucine can space out sometimes, but she’s really nice and means well though. Please don’t think less of her if she’s silly sometimes.”

Bianca looked Dove in the eyes. “Well, I do fully mean it, that she is a brilliant surgeon. She can just sew a hand just like that and it’s back on and functional in a few days. That’s why all of our nurses still have our limbs attached. I hear that healing magic of hers only works on injuries she sees happen, so it’s all from skill that she does anything else. It’s incredible; I don’t know how a normal human doctor or even a team could ever replace her.”

Dove smiled and then her smile dropped. “Yeah, I wish I could be like her. My grades weren’t very good in medical school and actual practice is really hard.”

Bella finished putting her lab coat back on. She gave Dove a smile. “Aw, cheer up, Noelle. You’ve just started. Besides, this is Wolcrasi. We have super high standards because of all the supernatural diseases and people we treat, you’d probably rock anywhere else!”

Dove stayed silent.

“It’s okay, dear”, said Bianca. “The first year is always the hardest on medical students. You’ll get used to it. Most of the doctors here aren’t very good teachers, admittedly, this isn’t the first choice for a learning hospital, but they’re all world experts, so you can look forward to picking up some tricks no one else could.”

One of the nurses passing by muttered “that little shit with the teddy bear” a little too loudly. Bianca glared at her hard enough that the offender turned around and scurried out of the nurse’s station.

“So, what kind of specialty are you looking forward to?” said Bianca.

“I was thinking of Orthopedics,” said Dove, looking down at the floor. “I like bones and blood vessels. People think they’re these static things, but they’re really so alive inside and constantly changing and adapting. But I don’t know, I also like cardiology and otolaryngology.”

“Hey, I’m something of a cardio whiz,” said Bella. “Well, you’ll find out when you start rota-“

The entire room fell silent, the lively chatter and movement replaced entirely by the sound of one woman quietly walking.

This woman had long blonde hair, and baby blue and white striped scrubs underneath an elegant, similarly colored dress stepped in. Like not a few of the staff, she had long animal ears atop her head and a long tail protruding from the back of her dress. Her ears had blue accents inside of them and her tail and hair held several blue and white bows.

She stepped through with confidence, carrying a small sheaf of files in one arm. She grabbed a small fat sandwich from a catering tray with her free hand. The rest of the nurses, and even Dr. Luna, studiously avoided eye contact with her. They buried their attentions in case files, cell phones, and lunches. Dove stared, thinking this woman looked really pretty with all the bright blue around her, but then she thought better of it and looked away as well.

The woman stepped out of the door down the hall and the nurses’ chatter resumed as before. Bianca sighed in frustration. “That woman,” she said, with venom in that second word, “is Amy Bailey. Best known as the head nurse but we call her the ‘head bitch’ for multiple reasons, let’s just say. Only one of those is because she’s a canid like me.” Bianca brushed her hand against the dog ears on her head.

“She’s really pretty,” said Dove. “I liked her dress. How do I get scrubs like that?”

“That’s an actual dress, dear”, said Bianca. “Our emergency room people get a few privileges regarding the dress and conduct codes, sort of as a perk. And Amy is always in the ER because some people in power, uh, pulled some strings. Please keep that to ourselves. We try to avoid giving her anything to get worked up over. She can be very harsh if she sees a good reason, and she’s smart enough to come up with one whenever she wants.”

Bella stuttered, “Uh, guys, we-“

Bianca’s gentle expression turned extremely cold, her pupils constricted fiercely and she looked up past Dove. “Oh hello Amy!” She gave pointed emphasis on the name.

Dove’s eyes widened. She felt chills down her back.

Another voice spoke behind Dove. “Nurse… Elias.” The tone was almost a snarl, over an otherwise refined-sounding female voice.

“How are you today? Well, I hope.” said Bianca, venom dripping into her voice, as if she dearly wished the answer was negative.

“Yes, yes. Who is this? A new nurse? Turn around.” said Amy.

Dove scooted around, clutching at her teddy bear. She saw the blonde, dog-eared woman from just a moment ago.

“Ah, Miss Taube. I’ve seen you around.” said Amy, her voice softening a little. “Why don’t you put down the teddy bear? It’s not becoming of a future physician to be dragging this. Not even pediatrics would ever do such a thing.”

Dove shook her head, possibly for the first time in ages. Bella held her breath.

“Come on, Nurse Bailey”, said Bianca. “She has a, uh, semi-magical condition.” Her expression wan’t very sure and her words were a bit empty, as if she was trying to both fully recall something and then make sense of it.

“Really? Is the teddy bear her life support?” said Amy. “Give me that silly thing, Noelle.”

“No!” said Dove, startling all present with the sudden firmness in her voice.

“Noelle, give me the bear”, said Amy, trying and failing to retain some gentleness in her voice. “It won’t help you where you’re going and it’s an infection risk in the OR.”

“Absolutely not!” said Dove. “I’m keeping it, in my hands, right here.”

Amy strained to smile and for a moment, Bella and Bianca could see her thinking about making a move on the bear.

“Come on, Noelle, let’s go, we have a patient who’s waiting for us to fetch those herbs.” said Bella, with great nervousness.

Bella gently put a hand on Dove’s shoulder and tried to guide her away. Dove didn’t budge in the least and retained sharp eye contact with Amy.

Bianca stammered out a half-remembered explanation for Dove’s teddy bear, but it died on her lips before it got anywhere. Amy’s glare drifted at her, and Bianca flinched.

Bella blindly felt for Dove’s hand on the teddy bear, and tried to get her to relax her grip on the bear, lest she choke out Amy, but was surprised to find Dove’s hands were perfectly controlled.

Amy and Dove stared at each other for a few wordless moments.

Amy sighed and said, “Fine, but you will never bring that thing into any operating room I’m in.”

Dove did not reply. Amy walked away, throwing her hands up in frustration. Dove relaxed and curled up around her teddy bear as usual.

“Whew”, said Bianca. “Now, I think you said something about a patient you need to save, Dr. Luna?”

“Yeah”, said Bella. Her stomach rumbled. “But maybe a quick lunch first. Food court is on our way and it’s a twenty minute walk to the garden from there, and a forty minute walk back to the east wing.”

Bianca said, “Yeah, it’s about lunchtime. Let’s go!”

They made small talk on the way there.

“Can I tell her about you, Amy and Dr. Elias?” said Bella.

“Sure”, said Bianca.

Bella turned to Dove. “So, the head nurse and Dr. KS Elias used to be married, but they split up a year ago or so. Then Dr. Elias married Bianca in private. It’s not public just yet, but there’s going to be a big wedding ceremony in a month, I think.”

She turned to Bianca to confirm and Bianca nodded.

Bella continued, “So, Amy’s in a really bad mood because she heard about it. She’s not normally like this, she’s a very responsible nurse, if strict, but that strictness is just taking a different form this time. I hope it will pass after the marriage ceremony.”

Bianca said, “One can only hope. I worked with her in our time together at Medici del Mondo but she turned mean when she split with my husband, then she got better, and then even worse when she heard about me and him. Anyways, what’s this about a patient needing herbs? I won’t pry if you don’t want to tell me.”

“My patient’s head blew up”, said Dove.

“My goodness and you can still save him?” said Bianca. She said it with much milder surprise than one would expect.

“Yeah, he’s kind of special”, said Dove. “Well, that’s what Leucine said. I trust my sis.”

“Hm, yeah, Leucine and Dr. Doctorow have literally seen it all. It’s pretty much not possible to surprise them in the OR.” said Bianca. “And we have some really, really weird plants in the hospital garden. I’m not sure some of them are legal to keep, they’re just so bizarre it seems like the government should be doing something about it.”

She shrugged. “Probably they don’t want to get on Rhiza’s bad side.”

“Rhiza?”, asked Dove.

“She’s one of the hospital’s full-time botanists.” said Bianca. “Literally full time, she lives in the garden. Some kind of intelligent fungus creature that covers the entire building. Not someone you want to upset, ever. Any exotic plant that leaves the premises pretty much needs her explicit permission. No one less than one of the heads can get her to budge on that.”

“Yeah, wow, that’s pretty strict. So we can’t fill prescriptions that need those herbs?” said Bella.

“Nope. Even Cattleya, our toughest pharmacist, and Colleen, Rhiza’s sister, stay the hell away when Rhiza tells them to.” Said Bianca.

“Oh hey, the food court! We’re here!” said Bella.

They stepped inside. It was an unremarkable building, although its food was… eccentric, to say the least.

“I’ll have the… ‘Sturgeon General’”, said Bella. “Hopefully it has actual meat in it.”

“Uh, yeah… I forgot how bad the food is here,” whispered Bianca, rubbing her neck sheepishly. She spoke up. “I’ll take ‘The Alpha and Omega-3’”

“Try to pick one of them that sounds like they have less fiber” said Bella, as she noticed Dove’s very visible indecision. “They all have dietary fiber up to here, but some are better than others…. Less worse, anyways.”

“Okay, um, the, uh, … ‘Gluten-free Gluten Tag’”, said Dove. “With the hot sauce.”

Bella cringed at the words.

“There is such a thing as too healthy,” said Bianca, as she looked over her very dry-looking meatloaf-and-sausage-like dish. “At least yours looks like actual fish.”

“This tastes like tofu used in ways tofu was never intended to be used,” said Dove.

“That’s… probably because that’s what it is.” said Bianca. “Oh hello, Dr. Vaya!”

Grace sidled up to them with his lunch in hand exactly as they were about to sit down, almost as if his arrival were planned. In human form, he was a dark-skinned, well-built man with bit of extra weight that he wore well. He had a pair of glasses on, a beauty mark on his face, and a jaw well accustomed to smiling. He had the usual doctor’s lab coat on, with a teal shirt underneath and a pair of cargo shorts below.

“Why hello, Nurse Elias. You look fantastic today,” he said with a sincere grin. “Do you mind if I borrow Miss Taube, she did some exemplary work in the Sleep Ward recently and I’d like to ask her for a retrospective, off the record?”

Bianca shrugged. “No problem. Dove, you okay with it?”

“Yeah.”

Dove turned her tray around and walked with Grace up to a spare table.

“Today I foresaw that the ‘Low-Calorie High-Caliber Special’ would actually be alright. Do you want to try some?” said Grace, motioning to the enormous salad before him.

Dove shook her head.

“They pick these fresh, and I mean fresh. If you look closely, the leaves are actually still growing. Pity that the mozzarella is no-fat… it’s all casein and junk” said Grace. “Anyways, about our time in the dream realm? Where the heck did you learn to do all that? Dr. Fidelis has been teaching me to dreamwarp for the entire year, I still can barely do anything.”

Dove thought for a moment. “Leucine said, if I remember anything weird, it’s because I’m as old as her, like twelve hundred years, but I can only fully remember the last twenty, because… things happened.”

Dove’s squirming told Grace she was clearly omitting a lot.

“It’s alright Dove. I understand, better than most, that some secrets must stay secrets. Anyways, maybe you could give me lessons? I think you might actually be better than Fidelis.”

“Uh, I kind of vaguely recall how to do it. Like riding a bike, except I’ve never rode a bike. Um, it’s like, muscle memory I guess. I can walk you through it, but I just can’t express it in words.”

Grace smiled. “It’s okay. Thank you for the save. I woke up with a bit of a crick in my back, but I will be more careful around the sleep ward from now on. It got me by surprise; I really thought I was becoming resistant to the sleep magic. Well, that’s not the real reason I wanted to intercept you here. I look into the future, as you probably figured out by now.”

Dove hugged her bear uncomfortably. Grace sped up his pace of talking, trying to get through this faster.

“So, on today’s timeline, there’s this completely unpredictable being that avoids my abilities, running around and throwing everything out of whack. Normally this would be Leucine, but I got a text from Leucine that she just left campus, so it’s not her. And honestly, Noelle, you kind of have the same effect on my angelic foresight, but I can tell this one isn’t you, this one is way more destructive than you or Leucine. Not to say that you’re destructive, just that this thing that’s going around is super bad. So I’m thinking, maybe one of your less behaved brothers and sisters is visiting? He or she is causing a lot of havoc and it’s fluctuating like wild, so I can’t even say for sure what happens; only that something big is going down.”

Dove shook her head. “I have no idea. I didn’t get word of my brothers or sisters visiting. And some of them are nice, they wouldn’t cause, uh, havoc. But some might, I don’t know.”

Grace carefully assessed her reaction. “Okay, Noelle.” He adjusted his glasses. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll probably involve you, but I can pinpoint when it goes down, if not what happens, so I’ll be there as backup at least. Anyways, good luck with your patient. He’s going through a lot. I’ve met him before, but he’s a lot tougher than he looks, like you or me, so I have full confidence you’ll be able to save him in time.”

“But I… uh, I never told you about my patient”, said Dove.

Grace winked.

“Does- does this count as breaching patient-doctor confidentiality?” said Dove.

Grace’s smile dropped. “I didn’t think of it that way. Yeah, now that you mention it, maybe. I think I’ll talk to Peace in HR and legal. She has experience with this future-sight thing too, right?”

“Yeah”, said Dove. “I like her; she’s really nice to me, even though her people and mine used to be enemies.”

“Anyways, I’ll catch you later”, he said, finishing the last of his salad. Dove gawked at how quickly he ate while talking, without her noticing.

“Don’t feel too bad about taking your time getting the cure safely, your patient is the kind of person who’d understand. Now, someone is going to get mauled by a toothy extradimensional horror, I mean literally mauled, if I don’t intervene in the next five minutes, so I’ll see you now.”

He stood up, picked up his tray of salad, and dropped it into a compost bin on his way out.

Dove finished her meal (it actually wasn’t as bad as it looked) and returned to Bianca and Bella.

“Alright, I think we have to go our separate ways now.” said Bianca. “See you later, Dr. Luna, Miss Taube!”

“Bye!” said Dove.

“Bye!” said Bella.

As the three of them exited the building, the sounds of clamoring and shouting echoed from the outside.

Bianca’s face turned into a frown of worry. As they opened the doors outside, they saw doctors and nurses fighting each other in loose formations, swinging IV stands and rubber mallets and getting into impromptu wrestling matches. Bianca slammed the door shut.

“Oh crap, it’s one of the natural vs. synthetic medicine battles! Dr. Xavier and Dr. Seraphim are at war again!” cried Bella.

“Dun dun dun!” said someone behind them.

They turned around to see Amy Bailey striding down the hallway behind them, her blue and white dress and scrubs stained by fresh blood. She carried a massive syringe by its back end like a sword.

“I thought it was only fair you got warning before I had to kick your ass.” said Amy. “Wow, Bianca, I didn’t expect to see you here, now it’s going to look bad if I beat up my ex’s spouse. You’re excused.”

“I’m not going anywhere”, said Bianca, as she extracted an object that resembled a half-meter-long cattle prod from her scrubs sleeve.

“How in- what? How did you hide that?” said Bella.

“Trade secret”, said Bianca.

“Okay, I have to beat up my ex’s wife.” said Amy. ”Fine. As a member of Team Xavier, I have to kick your asses anyways. You’re treating a patient with an herb in the manner of Team Serafim, and that’s against the superior synthetic approach of Team Xavier.”

“Um, we’re doing this on the advice of Dr. Naturae, who’s part of Team Xavier,” said Bella. “And I’m neutral, and Noelle is neutral. Actually, Noelle, you’d side with your sister in Team Xavier right?”

Dove nodded, although it was not clear if she did so out of fear of Amy or loyalty to Leucine.

“Dr. Naturae’s perfidy will be revealed soon enough. We have to stop Team Serafim’s obsession with natural medicine!” said Amy, brandishing her enormous syringe.

“Can we talk this through?” said Bella.

“TEAM SERAFIM FOR LIFE,” Bianca roared. She ripped open the top edge of her scrubs to reveal a faint white patch above her sternum.

“Drat, I guess the temporary tattoo was too long ago. It’s the logo of Team Serafim’s white wing”, she explained, with a bit of a blush. She traced the outlines of the wing.

Amy nodded. “Understandable. Permanent tattoos are a real commitment. Anyways, in the name of Team Xavier, PREPARE TO CONVALESCE, LEAF-SUCKING BARBARIANS!”

On cue, two members of Team Xavier jumped beside Amy. One of them, Noelle recognized as Dr. Vivi Belgica, Amy’s best friend and Wolcrasi’s sleep medicine specialist. She had a long teal dress on, a giant fuzzy scorpion-like tail coming out of her back, long black hair and jagged animal-like ears protruding from the sides of her heads. She was carrying a rifle today with an unusual crazed look in her eyes.

On the other side of Amy stood Chihiroe, the local medical robot. She had pale metallic skin, straight black hair in long bangs and a ponytail, a plate across her lower face that resembled a medical mask, and a tightly fit black and white kimono adorned with a white medical cross on her chest. She carried a shotgun and stared at her opponents with her typical dispassion.

“Oh that’s not fair, you’re not supposed to bring guns to this kind of fight!” said Bianca.

“Darts with my special sleeping formula mix”, said Vivi.

“Beanbag rounds, half-filled powder loads.” said Chihiroe.

Amy took a stance with her giant sword-syringe, the bright red stains on her dress nicely accentuating the bloodlust in her eyes.

“Yeah, okay, I wasn’t expecting two people with guns to jump us.” Said Bianca. “How do you guys feel about running away!”

She grabbed Dove by the neck and dragged her out as fast as she could. Bella took a second to react and follow her, narrowly missing several darts from Vivi’s rifle as she ran.

They all ran outside into the battlefield where doctors and nurses from both ideologies were smashing into each other with all manner of instruments. Bianca waited by the entrance with the stun baton in hand. She jammed it into the first person to run out. Vivi shook and twitched out of the entrance, falling in a heap on the ground. Chihiroe swept the corner around Vivi’s dancing body and took a shot at Bianca, dropping her to the ground with a heavy thud. Bella charged forward and as Chihiroe pivoted to her, relieved Chihiroe of her shotgun and threw the robot to the ground. Chihiroe’s lack of articulation kept her from responding adequately to Bella stomping her into the ground. The second Amy stepped out of the building, she smacked Bella on the back of the head with the giant syringe. Bella flopped onto the floor, clutching her head. Chihiroe stayed down, unable to pry herself out of the dirt.

Dove watched all of this with apprehension. She looked at Amy.

“Sorry, I don’t like beating up interns, but it’s for the best. Team Xavier will come up with a better intervention for your patient than a mere herb.” said Amy, stepping up to Dove.

Dove said nothing, but she started to back away.

Amy lunged at her and swung the round edge of her syringe at Dove’s head. Dove blocked it with her teddy bear and flinched in pain as it cushioned the blow.

Amy stumbled forward in shock and grabbed at the back of her head. Angry, she looked around for whoever hit her. Finding no one nearby, she focused again on Dove and laid another blow onto Dove, again intercepted by the teddy bear’s abdomen.

Amy doubled over and coughed hard, again struck by an unseen attacker. The light of comprehension entered her eyes as she thought about the teddy bear, but she never had a chance to act on it. Dove firmly rammed her fist into the teddy bear’s abdomen.

Amy’s eyes widened and she keeled over onto the ground, rolling around slightly and grabbing at her stomach. The syringe slumped onto the floor.

Dove kicked the syringe away from Amy and went over to help Bella and Bianca off their feet.

They heard shouts of “Break it up! Break it up!” The doctors and nurses fighting around them clamored and dropped their weapons, scattering to the four wings.

Two individuals strolled over, firing weapons at the fleeing staff all the while. One of them was a gorgeous, dark-skinned woman in a revealing black jumpsuit that seemed to reveal the central vertical length of her entire torso. She had dark blue hair, various electronic antennae coming out of her head and a cannon replacing one of her hands.

The other was an androgynous-looking man with long white hair, pink eyes and white cat ears on top of his head. He wore a light blue bomber jacket, with a matching security cap and jeans. He had a cat’s tail trailing behind him and carried a massive longbow from which he shot rubber-tipped arrows.

“Ah, hospital security”, said Bianca. She dropped her weapon in surrender.

Bella held her hands up. Dove just hid behind her bear as if it would make everything disappear.

The pale man with the cat ears walked up to them. “I’m Bianco. Dr. Vaya told us there would be a fight here, and that I should escort you three to the hospital garden. Christina Arni here-” The woman behind him with the arm-cannon waved as she continued to shoot bright energy beams at straggling combatants. “-will secure the scene here.”

Bianco glared at them, but there wasn’t much emotion in his voice. Perhaps a frown was simply his usual facial expression.

“Ah, good”, said Bella. “Thank Grace for me later. Now, let’s move, Noelle. I think we’ve been held back long enough. You okay, Bianca?”

Bianca said, “I’m fine. Beanbag bounced off my shoulder, didn’t seem to bruise. I was going to go back to the nurse’s station for a new assignment, but our head nurse doesn’t seem to be able to give orders.” She pointed to Amy lying still on the ground. “Might as well make this my new assignment.”

She received a smile from Dove.

“Okay!” Dove said. “I think we’ll be okay with four people here. Let’s keep moving.”

“Wait”, said Bella.

Chihiroe, slightly battered, stood up. She said, with the usual robotic tinge in her voice, “Order complete: Participate in Team Xavier skirmish. Awaiting new orders.”

“Uhhh, I guess you can come too.” said Bianca.

“Understood.” Said Chihiroe. She picked up her shotgun.

The five of them- Bianco, Bianca, Chihiroe, Bella and Dove- trudged through the grass.

The team was about to reach the hospital garden when a solitary figure sidled up to them. Before any of them noticed it, it jerked Dove’s bear clean out of her hands and threw it so into the sky so hard it left visible sight within two seconds. Dove was about to protest, when the figure grabbed her and pressed its hands hard against her throat. Dove made a gurgling sound, there was a nasty crunching noise and the figure tossed her aside.

The others pivoted and raised their weapons (and Bella’s fists) at the figure. It clearly was a woman in what appeared to be a ripped medieval dress and tall stained socks. She smiled savagely, her hair a mess of various dark browns, her skin olive in complexion. She had a leopard’s spots on the sides of her face and arms, leopard’s ears coming out of her head, and a leopard’s cat tail, but otherwise seemed entirely human. She spoke in a slight accent reminiscent of the southern United States.

“Well, hey there. I see you’ve amassed a small army. That’s good, you’re gonna need It.”, she said with a wide smile. “Howdy. I’m Leona, Dove’s sister, but you can call me Locust. I’ll be your server today, handing you your asses.”

“What the hell!” cried Bianca. “You just killed Noelle!” She raised up her stun baton, loudly arcing the electricity between the leads as she took a stance.

“Pssh”, said Locust, not reacting to the display of electricity. “A little neck snapping? She’ll be up and bitching at me in no time. It wouldn’t stop me for a minute, it won’t stop her either. I had to defend myself pre-emptively, can’t exactly slug it out against another devil, huh?”

“Oh shit, she’s a devil!” said Bianco. He took a step back.

“What the hell is going on!” said Bella.

“It’s Leucine’s sister, I guess that makes her Dove’s sister as well,” said Bianca. “She’s the worst one of the lot. Locust likes to raid the hospital regularly for one thing or another. She’s worse than the Grand Duck, at least he wanders around randomly most of the time and doesn’t steal the expensive shit. I’m guessing she’s specifically messing with us because someone hired her, because normally she doesn’t go out of her way to kill people.”

“Shucks, you went and talked me up, now I’ve got performance anxiety”, said Locust. “I’m gonna have to hit you harder to live up to expectations.” She cracked her knuckles theatrically.

“Got a plan?” said Bianco, shaking slightly as he drew a sharp arrow on his bow at Locust.

“Yeah,” said Bianca. “Get help.”

“Was it Ghysar that got you to do this?” said Bella.

Locust hesitated, then smiled reassuringly, although the reassurance wasn’t for Bella. “Well, maybe. I never betray a client. But I can say someone has an interest in one hand-delivered patient direct from the east wing. Sans head, maybe, but I’m sure I can fix him once I step into this here arboretum.” Locust’s tone grew cold. “But first, I’m getting you out of the way.”

She pointed behind herself. Dove’s patient’s beheaded body was propped up behind her.

“Oh shit, it’s Chron- it’s Connor Rakha”, said Bella. “We have to take her down, now!”

Locust grinned widely. “Good luck”, she said.

Locust lunged forward with hardly any windup, taking the party off guard. Bianco’s arrow sank directly into her head, but did not draw any blood or get any reaction from her. Chihiroe fired a round that similarly bounced clean off Locust as if striking a brick wall. Bianca and Bella backpedaled from the assault, not ready for her to be that close that fast.

Locust swiped at Bella with one of her hands. Bella deflected the blow, and opened up with a swift sweeping kick. Locust casually hopped over the strike, then danced back through Bella’s barrage of punches and kicks, as if absentmindedly. Chihiroe fired a taser at Locust, who slapped the leads away before it could reach her body. Locust then socked Bella hard enough to send her flying backwards and casually ducked a swing from Bianca. She stamped down hard on Bianca’s kneecap. Bianca cried in pain and fell backwards, her leg hanging at an odd angle.

Bianco drew a knife and sank it into Locust. Locust’s flesh gave way and the knife sank down to the hilt, but Locust gave no response except to turn her head at him. Chihiroe then shoved the shotgun into Locust’s head point blank and pulled the trigger. Locust’s head jerked

backwards, and deformed as if made of sand, particles flying off, but it didn’t seem to faze her at all. As her head reformed into its usual shape, Locust grinned and lashed out at Chihiroe. Chihiroe and Bianco leapt back, letting Locust grab Chihiroe’s shotgun and fold it clean in half. She tossed it away as Chihiroe produced a flare gun and Bianco produced a canister grenade and a gas mask. Bianco dropped the grenade and ran away as it produced a sinister looking white smoke.

Chihiroe fired the flare and Locust casually evaded it. She caught up to Chihiroe and slammed both hands into Chihiroe’s head, sending the robot sprawling to the floor, with Chihiroe’s neck cleanly ripped nearly in half, exposing her internal circuitry.

Meanwhile, Bella recovered to her feet several meters away, blood pooling from her mouth and she circled around the melee. She reached down to Dove and began to drag her away.

“Ah ah ah!” said Locust with a naughty tone and wag of her fingers, and she tramped over to Bella and Dove. Bella mouthed some profanity and searched her pockets for something, anything to defend herself.

Locust’s body rippled as something hit her and knocked her aside.

Bella turned to see Grace and Christina Arni charging at Locust, Christina launching orbs of crackling energy from her arm cannon.

Locust recovered her footing and evaded the next shot from Christina. Grace ran over to Bella and motioned for her to put Dove down. Bella stared confusedly at him, but complied.

Locust suddenly stopped in her tracks and Christina stopped shooting when a small yellow presence waddled onto the battlefield.

The Grand Duck was here. He looked even more pissed off than usual, which was quite saying something. Although it had been scarcely an hour since Bella and Dove had seen him, he looked like he had completely missed a night or two of sleep. His short golden feathers stuck out everywhere, his large eyes were bloodshot, his entire body drooped, and the hints of bags under his eyelids could be seen through his feathers.

He surveyed the situation as if looking to see who to take it out on first, and settled on Locust.

“Psy yi yi, yiyiyiyi duck duck psyduck psyduck psy!” he screamed, stamping his feet up and down.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” said Locust. “This is just a simple snatch and grab operation. I’m carrying this guy, the headless guy over here, over to Big Purple. You know? I’ll be out of your way soon, just these do-gooders tried to intervene, is all.”

“Psy duck duck duck psyduck psyduck psyyyyyy yiiii!” he continued screaming.

Locust looked quite put off. “Well, I’m sorry, but you were nowhere to be found and this is kind of a time-limited opportunity you know? Okay, let’s make amends. 20% for you and you help me take these guys down.”

“Psyduck. Psyduck psy.”

“Excuse me? That’s hardly reasonable considering I’m doing the bulk of the work here.”

“Psyduck. Psyyiyiyiyi duck duck duck psyduck psy.”

“That’s extortionate. This may be your territory, but Big Purple paid me and I’m generously offering to share. I was willing to shoot up to 40%, but oh my god, really. Whoa!”

She flinched as the Duck took a step towards her. But he stopped and resumed staring at her.

Grace interjected, “You know, the Grand Duck, if you were to help the hospital with o-“

The Duck’s head swiveled at him and the putrid stream of hatred in his eyes immediately caused Grace to close his mouth and slowly back off.

Psyduck turned back to Locust, no longer as agitated. “Psyduck, psy yi yi. Psyduck. Psyyyy. Psy. Duck. Duck duck, psyduck.”

“Fine. Take your nap or whatever. We’ll let Big Purple decide what he wants to split with you.” said Locust.

The Grand Duck waddled away with a tired slump. The Locust turned back to her many opponents, who were regrouping and tending to their injuries while she negotiated with the Grand Duck.

“Okay, round two. I’m surprised, none of you have fled, except the white-haired cat guy.”, she said.

An arrow shot out of nowhere and embedded itself just below her eye, burying itself down to the shaft as if in soft dirt. She calmly inspected it and pulled it out, her skin reforming as if liquid behind it.

“Okay, not even him, that’s pretty legit”, she said. “I guess I’m whupping all of your asses.”

Christina Arni fired the first shot, which Locust evaded again, leaping high into the air. Christina hardly had time for a second shot, and then Locust ripped her arm cannon clean off, spilling circuitry and sparks everywhere. Christina stumbled back.

Locust yelped as Bianca Elias, with a stick as an improvised crutch, slammed the stun baton into her back. She beat Bianca with the severed arm cannon, and another arrow entered Locusts’ back, which she ignored.

She then turned in the direction the arrows were fired through, and after a moment of staring, threw the arm cannon at a far-off point.

Bella had dragged Dove behind a pair of bushes while Locust negotiated with the Duck. Grace vaulted over and joined her.

Bella was breathing hard as she propped Dove up against the bushes, trying to keep her profile low behind the cover. “It looks bad. She has a collapsed windpipe, but her pulse is still going. Interspinous ligaments torn everywhere, cervical spine is also torn, and I’m seeing a lot of internal bleeding, I think it’s the jugular vein. She is not healing rapidly like Leucine does!”

Grace tilted Dove’s head back to encourage her to breathe and gently held her neck in place to keep it from rolling to one side. “Sorry for the lateness, I didn’t realize Locust would attack this soon. We don’t have long, Locust is tearing shit up. Our best chance left with the possibility of the Duck attacking her. Now we should focus on getting Noelle up, no way we’re taking her sister on directly.”

“Walk me through this. I could get her up again if we had an hour and an operating room, but we might have seconds right here and now. This is literally impossible. Maybe I can turn into my true Forme...,” said Bella.

Grace breathed in sharply and spoke as quickly as he could. “Don’t. We can’t let Locust see you like that, or she’ll take you straight to Ghysar just like she will with Chronicler. Maybe not today, but some day. Today, we have to put together Noelle without magic. Now, I can’t see how to fix her. Noelle is strange; I can’t read her future, just like Locust. Hm… wait! It would make you very happy if you saved her, right?”

“Yes, yes it would!” said Bella.

“Okay, I can read your future and see which course of actions would make you happiest. Okay, here we go.”

They heard the sounds of Arni’s arm being ripped off. Without looking over the bushes obscuring them, Grace said, “Damn it, Locust just took out Bianca. We’re running out of people. Focus, Bella.”

He took out a few surgical implements from his coats pockets, very much short of a full tray in an operating room. Bella looked them over.

“Okay, we have to induce total unconsciousness in her, as much as possible, in order to induce her devil regeneration”, Grace said, opening Dove’s eyelids up with his fingers and inspecting the reaction of her eyes. “Aniridia makes it a pain to see her pupils, but I can tell she’s not fully out yet. This means we will have to do something that is extremely counterintuitive and drastic. Do you understand, Bella?”

Bella took shallow breaths and then a deep breath. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Grace talked Bella through incising into Dove’s neck, carefully pausing to look forward into the future while she feverishly worked her knife into Dove’s flesh. He noted that Christina Arni and Bianco were now unconscious, but Amy Elias and Vivi Belgica had woken up and were now fighting Locust.

They heard a loud scream from Locust: “Oh come on, where do you people keep coming from?”

He told Bella the next course of action, and Bella protested sharply. But he reminded her that devil regeneration required this. So Bella hastily patched together Dove’s ripped jugular in a sloppy patchwork with simple cloth that make even an intern utterly ashamed. Then she compressed down on Dove’s carotid. Dove gave an involuntary gasp, possibly more of a reaction to her crushed airway rather than to Bella’s actions, but Bella flinched. Grace laid his hand firmly on Bella’s shoulder to calm her. He checked Dove’s muscular reflexes and nodded with approval at her utter lack of response.

“Okay, secondary objective, open her airway. She’ll do better if she doesn’t have to regenerate ischemia as well. Don’t be afraid to cut it open, she might heal from it faster than she will from oxygen starvation. Shit, we’re out of time, Vivi and Amy are down and Locust is done searching for us. She found us, I see myself needing to fight her. Tend to Noelle; I’ll buy what time I can.”

“This is going to be loud, Bella.” Grace threw something small and dense over the bushes and there was a very loud exploding sound, a very bright flash and a scream. Grace then jumped over the bushes to face Locust.

Locust clutched at her eyes and her eyes watered. “I’ll kill you first, doctor boy!” she said.

Grace took a stance. Locust charged at him. He feinted meeting her with a punch, but instead pulled out something from his lab coat with his other hand and tossed it in her path.

That something turned out to be a glass container that smashed against Locust’s head, disgorging its contents into her eyes and face. She yelled as it sizzled and burned at her skin.

“Good, chemicals work, just like Leucine said”, Grace muttered under his breath. He stuffed his hands in his pockets in preparation for his next move.

Locust flailed around a bit and then stopped. Her body went stiff and her eyes quite shut. Her head disintegrated and then reformed. She regained her composure and smiled at him again.

“Good as new!” she said.

Grace’s eyes widened in shock. She charged him again, entirely without fear of whatever he was hiding in his coat pocket.

He whipped out a flare gun in a quick draw, and aimed at her head. Her upper body burst into flames, the fumes around her igniting.

She swiped at him, her vision obscured by the flames, and missed entirely. Grace carefully ducked blow after blow. As she recovered, she managed to tag him with a glancing blow, sending him tumbling backwards.

“Fucking precog”, she said. “How do you like that?”

Grace gasped in shock. How did she know he could see into the future? No, he couldn’t think about that, his concern should be on the here and now.

His last trick was a taser, which he had applied a few seconds ago without her knowing. Locust gasped and twitched under, her flesh moving and writhing unevenly in chunks and sharp segments instead of the defined muscles of a normal human.

Grace used the time to recover from the blow. As soon as the electricity stopped, Locust ripped off the taser leads and threw them away. She looked angry in a way that she definitely had not before.

Locust’s strikes started to change direction and make wide sweeping arcs, cutting off all avenues of evasion despite Grace’s precognition. Grace used the openings this presented to hit her a few times, trying to trip or throw her, but it was like trying to chop down a tree with his hands. He ignored his bruised shins and hands and focused on stalling.

Finally Locust managed a clean hook to Grace’s head, obliterating his glasses and sending him not falling, but slamming hard down into the grass underneath.

Locust kicked the fallen doctor hard, drawing blood from his mouth, and then turned towards the bushes where Bella was. Bella jumped out at Locust. Locust casually slapped her away, sending the smaller doctor flying to the side.

She looked down to see a very, very upset Dove looking at her with a bleeding throat. Dove glared at her with a degree of anger that could please the Grand Duck.

Locust stumbled backwards as if she had stepped on a landmine. Locust whipped out her phone in desperation and pressed a number on speed dial, then dropped it as something lifted her into the air. Her legs waved futilely, trying to run against the ground that was no longer underneath her.

“Where is my bear?” screamed Dove.

Locust tried to speak, but the words came out as a hollow gasping noise as her head started to separate from her body and her neck elongated and started to strain.

“Why did YOU HURT ME AND TAKE MY BEAR?” said Dove.

Locust panicked and flailed wildly, trying to perhaps grab onto something or fight off whatever invisible force levitated her.

Dove gave a wordless scream of anger. She raised a fist and then threw it to her side. Locust’s head flew clean off her body in that direction, sprinkling pieces of Locust’s neck on its way. The rest of her body went limp. Dove mashed her hands together as if mangling paper. Locust’s body folded in on itself and shredded into very small pieces, landing on the ground as hard chunks and small puddles of skin-colored flesh. Dove screamed again and pulled at her own hair, then curled up, trying hard not to cry or puke.

Bella got up and stared in awe. She froze in place, afraid of what might happen next.

Grace willed his body to move again, even though one of his eyes peppered by shards of his glasses entering in, and both of his eyes were crying blood. He knew his ribs were broken, and he only would have the use of one eye for the time being. He walked over to Dove, and bent down as if comforting her, but then lifted her up, ignoring the burning in his torso. His hands pressed together against her neck in a sleeper hold. He almost lost his grip on her as she struggled with incredible force. She went limp, bleeding slightly from the mouth, and he let her flop onto the ground. Grace yelled in pain as he let his broken body fully speak to him and puked a little from the agony.

Bella ran up to him and yelled at him.

“Calm down, Bella”, he wheezed. “Dr. Naturae’s notes to me were very clear, as were the ones she shared with you, if you had read beyond the first two pages…. In her hysterical state, she has to be put down immediately, as her abilities will soon become… rather omnidirectional. She can’t control it without the bear.”

Bella took a moment to gather herself and sat down, her head spinning as much from the situation as her repeated head trauma.

“Okay, I’m going to declare a code orange on campus and direct triage efforts,” said Grace. He pulled out a cell phone and began tapping away, occasionally jerking away his phone away from blood dripping from his face. “Bella, take Noelle somewhere quiet to recover, and secure our headless friend’s body for us. Angel of Peace from HR will get in touch with you, so arrange a private meeting place. Oh, and this is for when you wake up Noelle.”

He reached into his pockets for a paper and stuffed it into Bella’s lab coat pocket, and then turned away and busied himself with giving orders to the few people left conscious from the brawl.

Bella’s phone rang with a text message from Peace. “Meet me in front of the botanical pharmacy lobby.”

As she turned to Noelle’s unconscious body, she heard a loud “psy yi yi yi yi yi”, followed by seeing the back of the Grand Duck waddling away carrying Dove’s patient’s headless body. She started to run after him, but her world turned on its side and she fell down. The Duck was long gone by the time she recovered enough to walk again.

Grace was fully involved in directing a set of newly arrived nurses to clean up the debris and tend to the wounded, despite his one mangled eye. He was apparently putting a lot of effort into merely standing, so Bella didn’t feel like bothering him. She carefully picked up Dove, careful to move her neck as little as possible. Dove’s throat was already mending, and Bella could feel her heart beating strongly even though a normal human would be fading away at minimum, if not already dead.

The hospital garden was a few dozen meters away. But with the weight of Dove’s body against her, the walk felt like minutes. The front of the building read “Arboretum” and all faces of the building filled up completely with vines and vine flowers, as if no one had been here in ages. Bella leaned against a nearby disabled persons’ access button to open the door, and carefully carried Dove in. The lobby place was dead quiet save for Peace.

Peace was a black and white humanoid figure of about a meter and a half tall and much too skinny and smooth to be human. More like a statue that happened to move around. She had two black robotic-seeming antennae on her head, swirling black and white patterns on her torso, and something resembling the tails of a coat emerging from her back. Her head had a pair of dispassionate eyes in the middle of a diagonal swath of white. The rest of her face was stark black. There was no sign of a mouth; one got the impression she was wearing a black mask and had long black bangs over white skin, but her face was completely smooth all the way through. Peace’s arms terminated in hands with five floating “fingers” of smooth shards disconnected from her palm. One hand was white, one hand was black.

When Peace spoke, it was more like an abstraction of sound rather than an actual voice. Peace’s voice did not echo or lose strength with distance or obstacles in its way. It was a little unnerving, but Peace had a very gentle voice, and it did resemble Bella’s own internal voice. How much of that was unique to Bella, she had never remembered to verify with other people, though. That was because Bella could not help but feel that Peace was impossibly cute and it was very difficult to suspect or hate her. It could have been because they were both angels, although from very different worlds and circumstances. Unlike Bella, Peace didn’t have a secret identity of any sort. Her kind had a history with devils like Dove, unlike Bella’s family of angels.

“Hello, Bella”, Peace said. “Grace has apprised me of the situation. Locust was seeking to abduct one of your family members, likely on the behalf of one of the less savory members of the Board.”

Bella had no idea how to react to the news. She felt very numb. She stared blankly forward at Peace.

Peace continued, “Grace has texted me that Locust’s last act before being destroyed by Dove was to send a call to an unknown number. As per Locust’s modus operandi, we will likely be swimming in her fellow mercenaries attempting to recover Connor Rakha. Therefore, we should secure Connor Rakha’s body before we obtain the gercranium. Even if his recovery were not time-sensitive, it will be much easier to convince Rhiza of the necessity of extracting the plant if we have the patient on hand.

“Grace bade me secure the site for you while you attend to your injuries and Dove’s. We can use one of the supply closets here.”

Bella nodded absentmindedly, aware on some level that she was probably suffering from some level of brain trauma.

Peace picked up Dove effortlessly and cradled her over her shoulder. “I will keep her unconscious while you heal yourself. I have, shall we say, literally a special touch when it comes this kind of thing.”

Bella walked through the lobby into a short hallway and collapsed into the first room she found. It was dark and small, so she willed her mortal form to unravel.

The world around her bubbled and twisted before settling in under a hazy, ethereal atmosphere. Hundreds of sparks, each a bright star containing a miniature picture of its surroundings, emitted from Bella’s body as space around her collapsed into a single point and then expanded again, and when it did , in Dr. Bella Luna’s place was a floating human heart with pink angelic wings.

Bella, or Storge as she was called in this form, willed her human body whole again. It was a very fast and thorough process, but unfortunately simply impossible in human form, and difficult even in a hybrid form. She could save so many more patients with these powers, but the list of reasons against that was about as tall as her human body. The policies of Rakha’s angels, the fate awaiting her if Ghysar’s agents ever found out about her, the fact that witnessing such a transformation was traumatic to mundane human minds. She could only transform in the company of people who already knew her secret or were already heavily versed in otherworldly matters (and even then, it wasn’t guaranteed they would react well to it).

Bella felt much more clear-headed in this form, but it also brought back very bad memories. She hastily wished herself back to human. The world collapsed once again in a shower of mirror-like sparks. When it reformed, Bella Luna again stood in place of the giant floating heart. She felt much better now.

She returned to Peace and Dove and saw a third person with them, kneeling down to inspect Dove.

Peace looked up at Bella and introduced the third person. “Hi, I don’t believe you two have met before. Dr. Luna, this is Anne O’Malley, Dr. Fidelis’ assistant in our Supernatural Medicine Department and one of our local experts on the supernatural. Dr. Fidelis is currently engaged, so she will be sending Anne for any necessary magical procedures. Anne, this is Dr. Bella Luna, our pediatric surgeon.”

Anne raised her hand in a dismissive greeting. She was a young, pale woman with dark short swept-back hair, and black lipstick. She wore a black scrubs shirt, short black armbands, a tight pair of dark blue scrubs pants and white athletic shoes. She seemed athletic and otherwise healthy, but Bella got the impression there was something very wrong with Anne on some higher level. Bella shuddered, that feeling reminded her of another patient not long ago. Anne had a bit of an aloof smile on her face as she coolly looked at Bella.

“Oh good, a doctor.” said Anne. She motioned for Bella to look at Dove. Peace laid Dove down.

Remember what Grace said, Bella reached into her pocket for the papers that Grace handed her. She unfolded them to show a crude series of cartoons of a person resembling Bella kneeling down to a small figure resembling Dove. There were speech bubbles coming out from the drawn Bella with a depiction of a teddy bear, a large smiley face and an exclamation mark in the bubble, and then the in the next picture, a teddy bear suddenly appeared to the drawn Dove. The last picture was the teddy bear in Dove’s hands as she smiled.

Bella rolled her eyes. Grace prepared these instructions every morning based on what he foresaw, and he insisted on making them comics for a number of reasons, none of which made sense to Bella. Bella held her breath and inspected Dove carefully. Dove looked perfect, as if nothing had happened. She debated showing Peace and Anne, but decided it wouldn’t hurt to get a second opinion. She handed them the drawings.

“Oh, of course” said Peace. “I think Dr. Naturae told me that you just have to convince her that the teddy bear was in her hands all along when she wakes up and it’ll actually be there.”

“Okay” said Bella. She took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

Anne nodded. “No worries. Let’s have Dr. Luna take the lead, she probably understands children best.”

“Okay. Release her, Peace.”

Peace poked one of her levitating finger-shards into the center Dove’s forehead. Dove took a deep breath and immediately bolted upright, breathing heavily. She looked wildly around herself.

“Oh hey, we found your teddy bear!” said Bella. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Yaaaay”, said Anne, reluctantly.

“Good, we can move on now that we have you up with your teddy bear.” said Peace.

Dove looked around and then her eyes seemed to focus on something below her. Bella thought she saw something materialize in Dove’s hands, but it immediately collapsed and disappeared as Dove tried to wrap her hands around it.

Anne quickly forced a smile and said, “It’s okay, your teddy bear is actually… over there!” and she mimed grabbing out an imaginary plush toy, just out of Dove’s line of sight.

Dove’s hands wrapped around the mimed object as if were solid, and then Dove swore she saw the bear flicker into existence. Dove suddenly frowned and the teddy bear suddenly wavered out of existence as if it were a television turning off. She started to gasp in shock, and then, before any of the three others nearby could react, hyperventilated. Bella rushed to try to comfort Dove with a touch, and then Dove screamed.

Bella started to feel an immense tightness on her head and chest, as if hundreds of kilograms of water were pressing down on her and she could only muster a sputter when she tried to speak or move. Peace also went stiff and her eyes closed in what seemed to be pain as she shook. Anne’s eyes opened up in shock and she lifted off the ground slightly, similarly rendered helpless like Bella.

After what seemed like an eternity of being crushed by an unseen force, Bella felt relief and fell onto the ground, gasping as if her life depended on it.

When she finally felt the strength to lift her head up, and the adrenaline started to wear off, she looked up to see Dove siting there, looking oddly calm.

Dove calmly stared at her through just one eye. It took Bella a moment to notice the blood draining out of Dove’s closed eye and on her hands. There was a linear spray of blood, brain matter and other flesh in front of Dove as if a small-caliber gunshot had exited out of her eyes. But, upon closer inspection, there didn’t seem to be any entry wound. And the blood on Dove’s hands didn’t bode well.

Bella started to ask questions, but Dove interrupted her. Dove said, “It’s okay. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I think I removed my ability to hurt people. I’ll be fine, Dr. Luna.”

Dove shuddered up to standing position. “Let’s go save that man.”, she said. Bella helped support her unsteady walk.

Peace looked over the both of them and tried to support Dove’s other side, but her shoulders were much too narrow for Dove to lean on. She motioned to Anne.

Anne stared for a bit as if recovering from a dream. “Did she just… remove her eye? And… lobotomize herself.” She moved to help Dove’s other side.

“Yes. It won’t regenerate until she is unconscious, but I believe Dove’s abilities work on a deeper level than simple physicality, so it may well be permanent.” said Peace.

Dove said nothing. She merely motioned with her head for Bella and Anne to walk her out of the hospital garden lobby.

“Okay, where next? We could stop by the pharmacy to get something for Noelle’s injury. You can prescribe something for her right, Dr. Luna?” said Anne.

Bella was about to mention a few drugs that might help, but Dove shook her head. She stared determinedly from her one good eye. “No, I feel better now. We need to catch up with the Grand Duck and retrieve my patient before anything else. We’ll talk to Grace.”

The four of them walked past the battle with Locust. Many of the hospital’s service robots were picking up debris, welding together Chihiroe and scooping up pieces of Locust in biohazard bags. Grace still carefully directed robots and nurses while a nurse tended to his injuries.

“Ah, Noelle”, said Grace. “How are you doing? You, uh, decided to take after me, I see.”

Noelle tittered a little, the first time Bella had heard her laugh. “Yeah. We need some pointers with where the Grand Duck has gone”, she said.

“Uh well, that’s not easy to find out, the Grand Duck is elusive”, he said. He looked over Dove’s entourage and focused on Anne. “Does she have clearance for me to talk abo-“

“Yeah, I know, eyeball boy. Do your worst.” said Anne.

Grace graciously waved away the nurse attending to him with a smile. He then dropped the smile and turned to the others.

He said, “Okay, the Grand Duck is basically impossible to scry on. If I can focus on the man he kidnapped I could possibly get a fix, but I only have the one eye right now, which really, really screws with my abilities. You can imagine the broken ribs, and as I have just learned, a lacerated lung and possible closed skull fracture, are not helping. I honestly am not sure why I’m even still able to sit upright, and I’ve had to very vigorously refuse a visit to the ER until everyone else has been taken care of.

“Anyways, you’re on your own is what I’m trying to say. Usually the Grand Duck is an easy person to find, but this is the first time he has a reason to hide and we have a reason to find him. I’m not sure what to do.”

Dove nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Vaya. We’ll think of something. Will you be alright?”

He said, “I’ll be fine, thank you Noelle. You just take care of Chron- Connor. He’s been through enough without all this crap“

He returned to giving the nurses and service robots orders.

Dove started to move and Bella and Anne carefully turned her around. She continued to lean on them as they walked.

“Okay, brain storm time, so what do we know about the Grand Duck?” said Dove.

“He’s a jerk.” said Anne.

“Of the highest caliber”, said Peace.

“He’ll cut your arm off if he doesn’t like you”, said Bella.

“And he can only say the words psy and duck.” said Peace.

“He’s slippery and can fight like hell.” said Bella.

“People here are scared of him,” Said Anne.

“He has formidable psychokinetic powers that come out if you hurt him badly enough.” said Peace.

“And he has a temper.” Said Dove.

Anne said, “How about this? We’ll piss him off. Make it impossible for him to ignore. If not, it’ll at least be cathartic.”

Dove smiled.

----

Anne held the megaphone up to her lips as the four of them stood on an empty stretch of hospital quad. She bellowed, “The Grand Duck is a worthless piece of poultry! No one understands him, and no one should! I can kick his worthless feathered ass any day of the week!”

Anne then spouted a vicious stream of profanity that was entirely at odds with her groomed appearance, occasionally mentioning the Grand Duck or his mother in there somewhere there.

Bella covered her ears. “She’s like MASSCAT but on our side…“she said, referring to The Grand Duck’s previously-incapacitated, foul-mouthed feline helper.

Dove flinched under some of the invective blaring out of Anne’s mouth. She had recovered enough she was leaning on only Bella now. Peace simply stood there, her eyes curled up in what may be happiness. Without a mouth on her face though, it was hard to tell exactly what she was thinking.

They heard a loud and angry squawking of “psy yi yi yi duck duck psyduck psyduck!” emerging from one of the buildings. The Grand Duck arrived and waddled forward with furious haste, crown atop his head and his axe in hand. His one remaining henchman, the Russian colossus Hank Sokolov, flanked him. The headless patient was not with them, unfortunately.

Psyduck pointed forward and said something in his usual incomprehensible language to Hank. Hank replied something and they debated for a moment before turning back to the four challengers and resuming their approach.

“Crap, he doesn’t have the patient with him!” said Bella.

“Well, yeah, why would he?” said Anne. “He’s here for a fight, and he’s not the kind of wimp who’d hide behind a hostage. We’ll just beat the information out of him.”

“Can any of us even understand his quacking?” said Dove.

Bella started sweating. “Maybe we should have brought more doctors to tackle him? We attacked him with three angels and one devil last time and it wasn’t enough. And he has Hank this time.”

Peace said, “Code Orange. Everyone is barricaded up or on emergency response. It’s just us, really. But I think I can take them. Allow me to demonstrate.”

Peace strode forward to meet Hank and the Duck. They walked straight past her. Peace shrugged her arms in frustration and yelled, “Hey, jerks, face me!” They ignored the skinny statue-being yelling at them completely and charged at Bella, Anne and Dove.

Dove leapt out of the way, freeing up Bella. Bella met Hank with a flying kick up square at his head. She ricocheted off and landed on the floor.

The Duck swung away at Anne. However, Anne’s eyes glowed with unearthly energy and she looked skeptically at his axe as if it were fake. The Duck’s axe faded out of existence as it was about to hit her shoulder.

He wasted no time staring down in confusion and instead scratched across Anne’s face with his claw-wings. Anne yelped as it drew blood and she stumbled backwards. The Duck jumped up far higher than a short little being like him should and slammed his duck bill onto her head with a loud sound. Anne yelled, clutched her head and fell onto the ground. The Duck kicked her a few times while she was down.

Dove fumbled for something invisible before her and pantomimed something in the shape of her teddy bear. She hastily jabbed a finger into the center of the invisible object, and her finger met with resistance. The Duck leapt backward a bit, propelled by an unnatural force. He gasped a bit, grabbing at an unseen wound on his chest.

Hank picked up Dove and slammed her onto the ground before anyone could react. She flopped over. Bella tackled Hank, crushing herself against his leg as he completely failed to move. He wiped her off him, and raised his foot to crush her.

Before he did so, Peace leapt over Dove and curled her floating fingers into a ball floating before the palm of her hand. Then she punched him in the small of the back. Hank staggered forward, letting Bella roll out of the path of his foot. Hank started to turn around, then Peace hit him again, and Hank noticeably stumbled and his posture drooped. Hank grabbed Peace by the face. Peace grabbed at his arm and, with no visible cause, Hank slumped onto the ground as if Peace shoved him there. He snored loudly.

The Duck, seeing his comrade in trouble, shrugged off his injury from Dove. His axe flickered back into existence in his claws, but his eyes registered only a brief moment of surprise before he acted again. He ran forward, and with a forward flip that should have been impossible with his short duck feet, lopped off Peace’s leg with his axe. It came off as a single solid chunk, as if he had dismembered a piece of stone.

Peace looked down, clearly discomfited, but not in pain. Then she lost her balance and crashed to the ground. The Duck laid into Peace’s back with his axe, sending shards of her body flying off. She flailed a little under the assault. The Duck, apparently satisfied with his results, jumped up to the recovering Dove and rammed his foot into her face. She tumbled backwards under the blow and curled up in a defensive position. The Duck raised his axe for a coup de grace, but then he hesitated, as if thinking better about it. He opted instead to translate his raised axe into bashing the hilt against Dove’s forehead. Dove flopped down and writhed a bit in pain. The Duck gently laid his axe’s edge against her neck, and she froze in place and whimpered.

Bella started to get up and stared at the Duck with determination, but she froze up when she saw the Duck’s axe against Dove’s neck. Anne also hesitated and stared at the Duck, waiting for his next move. Peace stayed down where the Duck had dropped her.

The Duck said “psy yi yi, duck duck.”

Dove remained very still, barely feeling the razor sharp blade and the Duck’s fishy breath next to her. All of them then heard the sound of a helicopter’s blades beating against the air. The Duck looked up, while Dove stayed down and left the sight to her imagination.

The wind whipped at Dove’s body as the helicopter got louder. She heard things landing around her. The Duck quickly lifted the ax

e from her neck and she, very carefully to avoid startling him, gently raised her head to look around.

There were multiple people wearing tactical body armor and carrying assault rifles. Most of them had animal ears and gas masks on their heads, and tails on their backs, marking them as canids or similar beings. They surrounded the Dove, Bella, Anne and the Grand Duck in a half-circle about a dozen meters away, pointing their rifles mostly at the duck.

One of them, a tall blonde woman with metallic skin and an eyepatch, clad in the same armor as the rest, swiftly walked up and pushed one of her comrades’ rifles away from the Duck.

“Hold your fire!” she said with an electronic voice. “That’s the Grand Duck you’re threatening! I’m not going to be held responsible for him taking your legs clean off your careless ass.”

“Ma’am, he’s only got an axe, what can he do?” said one of them.

“Don’t fucking push it, he’s done things with that axe that you could only dream of even imagining.” said the woman.

“Psy yi, psy yi yi yi, duck duck duck”, said the Grand Duck, quite clearly agitated.

The blonde metallic woman made a gesture up to the sky. The helicopter took another circle around and then left the area. The Grand Duck’s tone and expression changed when he got a closer look at the woman as she turned to look at him. He seemed to recognize her and stopped glaring at her so much.

“Psy yi…. Psyduck psyduck. Duck duck, psyduck psyduck psy. Psyduck psyduck psy psyduck psy yiyiyiyiyi duck duck”, he said.

“Got it in one guess, Duck.” said the woman. “I won’t insult your intelligence by asking for where the target is. We’ll sweep this entire fucking hospital if we have to. Stay out of our way and I’ll cut you thirty percent.”

Someone kicked Bella from behind, knocking her to the floor. She felt a gun barrel against her back and opted not to move. Anne decided to lay down before someone also got rough with her, but she still felt a gun against her head.

Dove felt someone moving very close to her, but then hesitate and leave her alone.

One of the armed men approached the fallen Peace and carefully nudged her with his leg. She stirred and weakly clawed at his foot. He flinched and shot his entire magazine into her, sending slivers of Peace’s body flying everywhere.

“Shit, I think this is one of the secondary targets. Our client had a bounty out for any angels we spot, right?” the man said.

The woman with the electronic voice said, “There’s two kinds, and this might be the wrong one, but maybe he should have been more specific. Bag it up. Use one of the anti-magic canisters; we don’t want it regenerating on us.”

Dove heard the clattering of pieces of something swept up into a large can.

The woman said, “Tie up the hospital staff. We’re seeing a Code Red declared on hospital radio traffic. They should be evacuating everyone now, so leave the civilians here nice and visible. The fewer idiots trying to be heroes, the sooner we can leave with the cargo. Ignore the Duck; he’s already being generous by walking out of this.

“Remember, we’ve measured a response time of at least forty minutes. The cops take their time when it comes to Wolcrasi, but that’s because they’ll go all in once they get involved. We can expect SWAT, the superheroes, and those two spellcasting cowboy cops at a minimum. So, hard time limit. Oh, and if anyone touches Chihiroe and or the local Dorothe units out of anything less than self-defense, I will personally neuter your canine asses with my bare hands. Move out!”

Dove heard some unusual sounds near her and then felt the same sound as someone pinned her down where she lay and restrained her hands and her feet with zip cuffs. Then there was the sound of booted feet walking away. It was a moment before she felt safe enough to roll up on her back.

Bella and Anne were tied up similarly. Peace was nowhere to be found. Dove stood up with great difficulty, bound as she was.

Anne simply stood up and snapped off the zip cuffs around on her wrists and ankles without effort. She took out a pocket knife and started to work on Bella’s zip cuffs.

“Whoa, how did you do that?” said Dove.

“I took control of the person doing it and applied the cuffs improperly,” said Anne. She paused a moment and felt at the scratches on her face as she freed Bella’s arms. “It’s barely ten minutes and I’ve already gotten my host hurt.”

“Host? Control?” said Bella. She stared in curiosity as Anne sawed away at the ties on her ankles.

“Yeah, uh, Fidelis didn’t tell you? Peace didn’t tell you?” said Anne.

Dove and Bella shook their heads.

“Uh, well, this going to be awkward, and it’s a long story, but I’m some kind of extradimensional being inhabiting this girl’s body. Don’t ask me more, it’s honestly a blur to me.” said Anne. “Anne O’Malley is her name; I guess I’m her for the moment, so it’s my name too. Dr. Fidelis couldn’t separate us, so until she figures it out, I’m helping her out with supernatural stuff in his hospital. Anyways, I can sometimes leave my host body to possess other people for a quick moment, but I’m not much of a magician otherwise. Got it!”

She freed Bella’s legs and turned to Dove.

“Well, crazier things have happened here.” Said Bella.

“This has clearly gotten out of hand”, said Anne, grimacing. “We’ve got people with guns running around and the Duck is still loose after kicking our asses. We should evacuate.”

“No.” said Bella. “That’s not happening. We can’t let Ghysar get his hands on the Chronicler.”

“Who? And who?” said Anne.

Bella said, “A member of the Board who- you know, what it’s a long story too. If whoever is paying these mercenaries gets his hands on the headless man, it will be very bad. I intend to not let that happen, as long as I still breathe“

Dove got up, rubbing at her wrists.

“They have guns!” said Anne.

“I’ll figure something out.” said Bella.

“He’s my patient”, said Dove. “I’ll help too. Plus, we should rescue Peace as well. Whatever will happen when the soldiers deliver her to their boss, it won’t be good.”

Anne sighed. “I’d love to help, but this is a rental.” She said, pointing to herself.

“It’s fine, you can get help or something.” said Dove.

Anne seemed frightened by the prospect. “Well, I’ll stay with you for the time being. I don’t like being alone.”

They started walking to the neuroscience building nearby. The usual service and construction robots, known individually as Dorothe, were usually working on the psychiatry wing next doors, but today, they were completely absent. Likely it was because of the evacuation.

Neuroscience seemed quite abandoned, it didn’t have much staff at the moment, and probably even less now that the campus was being evacuated. That said, it was easily one of the most secure locations on campus, with an automated defense system to deal with the possibility of a zombie uprising targeting or originating within the building. That the very visible defense system did not seem to have engaged indicated that no one was around.

They made a beeline for Dr. Chiharu Matsuda’s office. She wasn’t around, but she was well-prepared. Probably in light of the Code Orange and now Code red, she had taken out evacuation and security plans for multiple contingencies. More importantly though, this room had access to the building’s ample CCTV system. The only other place that Bella knew had access to Neuroscience’s camera system was the building’s security room, which was definitely off limits to all three of them.

Anne sat down in front of the CCTV screens while Bella and Dove went through maps.

“Okay, I think our game plan is to run out the clock”, said Dove.

Bella nodded. “The cops will bring an army and that’s what will take them so long to get here. Wolcrasi is too dangerous for beat cops, so they always assume the worst. I don’t think the forty minutes estimate those guys said is accurate, the police took some time to prep the last time they were called. Their arrival will cut off the gunmen’s options, at least, but they won’t move in on campus for maybe twenty minutes.

Dove said, “Okay, so we can expect some relief at forty minutes, but the mercs will probably get desperate if they haven’t found Connor Rakha by then. Where can we expect them to search?”

Anne reviewed the camera feeds while she spoke, “The better question is where the Duck stashed Connor. Does he have any favorite hideouts, Dr. Luna?”

Bella shook her head. “I have no idea. Anne, can you look over the footage of the last hour? If the Duck has been here, the cameras should pick it up.”

Anne played with the controls. “I have no idea how to do that.”

Bella took one look at the screens and shrugged in confusion.

“Okay, well, the CCTV is pretty comprehensive here, so I can assume he wasn’t stupid enough to walk in and risk being spotted.” she said. “Where would be a good place to hide a body on campus?”

Anne said, “Radiology is right out, the odds of the body being cooked by a stray radiation beam are really high. The garden is also out, Rhiza hates him and she can literally smell him from a mile away. That admittedly, does not narrow it down much.”

Bella said, “I think we can also rule out Sleep Ward. The Duck hates that place, and Slumbear would definitely knock him out quickly in his tired state.”

“Shit, visitors”, said Anne.

“Where?” said Dove.

“The peripheral cameras here just went out. And look, another one went out.” said Anne.

“Okay, Dr. Matsuda always keeps some heavy weaponry on hand in case of zombies. Search the room”, said Bella.

“Found it!” said Dove.

She pulled at a gun safe and waved to the others.

“Okay, I’m guessing none of us know the combination.” said Bella. “Let’s ignore it for now.”

She and Dove went through the rest of things in Dr. Matsuda’s unlocked drawers, finding some of them were locked. “A forty of liquor, spare lab coats, notebooks, and … what’s this, a flyer for ‘Friday Night Bitches’? What in-?”

“Come on, Dr. Luna.” Said Anne. “They’re getting close. Lots of screens are going out, real fast. Either they’re not searching thoroughly or there’s a ton of them.”

“Okay, we should either sneak out or take them down. I found a bunch of walkie-talkies if we get separated” said Dove.

“We’re not getting cornered in this room.” said Bella. “Let’s go.”

The three of them snuck quietly out of the room. Dove made sure to leave the door to Matsuda’s office hanging half open.

They heard feet coming up the stairs in front of them. The elevator behind them dinged open at the same time.

“Shit, we’re surrounded!” whispered Anne.

“Go go!” whispered Dove, motioning for them to enter the patient room opposite of Dr. Matsuda’s office. They hid in place. Dove peered out from the hinges of the current room’s half-open door and got a view of a good section of the hallway.

Mercenaries, the same as before, with animal ears, animal tails, and tactical body armor, marched through the hall. They quickly poured in and out of every room, each with a loud yell of “Clear!” They paused around Dr. Matsuda’s office, clearly expecting something.

One of them threw in a small object. Dove heard a loud exploding noise and saw bright flash of light from the room and then they charged in.

“Room clear!” one of them said.

“Secure the plans, they could come in handy.” another one said.

Then Dove heard movement around the room her team hid in. She pantomimed a three-dimension figure in the shape of her old teddy bear, and bashed at the empty air that was its head. On cue, she saw one of the mercenaries in the back of the formation fall to the ground with a loud thump. The mercenaries burst into the room, crushing Dove slightly behind the door.

Anne sat back and went limp and lifeless. Immediately the front most mercenary seized up, then turned around, and smacked his colleague behind with the butt of his rifle, knocking him down. He continued swinging away with his rifle like a club, scattering the soldiers behind him. Someone shot the berserk soldier in the chest, sending him tumbling down. Anne woke up with a gasp.

Dove, still hiding behind the door, pulled at her imaginary teddy bear. Another mercenary in the back of the formation fell down to the ground, dragged by an unseen hand. A few of his allies outside of the room turned around and fanned around defensively at the hallway, looking for an unseen attacker.

Bella winced in anticipation of a risky decision, leapt forward behind a cabinet at one of the mercenaries. She grabbed the rifle from his hand before he could react and bashed it against his face as hard as she could, dropping him like a stone. The one behind him pointed his rifle at her.

Anne stared at the soldier with murderous intent and he burst into flame without obvious cause. Panicking, he fired multiple shots around the room, causing Anne to flinch and cringe in place. Dove, from her hiding place, dropped another attacker by mimicking bending an object, and yet another mercenary curled up to the ground with an unhealthy crunching sound.

Bella, seeing an opportunity, leapt forward and laid into the piled up chaotic mass of opponents as hard as possible. She was a barrage of fists, feet and knees, smashing everything and anything available into as many faces that presented themselves.

One of the soldiers in back started spraying wildly at the door, either from desperation or from losing control of the rifle. Dove gasped and jumped out just in time as pieces of wood splintered off from where she was a second ago. She stumbled out into the open, and saw Bella knocking out soldiers left and right.

Something flew into the fray and bounced around the room for a little bit. Dove looked up and recognized it as a flash bang grenade. She leapt up to seize it, slammed it into a nearby sink in the room and then dropped onto the ground, yelling out a warning and covering her ears.

Someone sprayed bullets around Bella and she was forced back out of her ambush. She dived onto the ground just as the flash bang went off in the sink, causing the entire upper half of the room to light up like a lightning strike and making a deafening noise.

Dove coughed a little as she got up. Her ears gradually stopped ringing. She heard the sound of fast footsteps. A few soldiers lay on the ground unconscious, and the hallway was filled with smoke. Bella was rolled over on her back and barely responding to Anne’s yells.

“She’s been deafened, give her a moment,” said Dove. “I think they’ve retreated, but they’ll be back soon. Let’s go over their things to see if there’s something we can use.”

Anne nodded. She and Dove searched through the soldiers. Bella joined them soon enough.

“Okay, they’re all breathing but unconscious.” said Bella.

Bella grabbed one of their rifles. She checked the chamber, cleared a round out of the gun, flipped the safety, released the magazine and flicked a bullet out into her palm to inspect.

“7.62 millimeters” she said. “This would knock anyone flat instantly. Maybe forever. But check it out, these are rubber rounds. That would explain the lack of blood anywhere, even though people were shooting left and right.”

“These aren’t”, said Dove, pulling out a spare magazine of bullets from another unconscious soldier. “These are normal bullets. I think they keep the rubber bullets in their guns but will go lethal if they need to escalate.”

Bella nodded. “Let’s not assume anything.”

She took a pistol and its holster off one of their bodies. She repeated her earlier drill, inspecting the chamber and examining the bullets in the magazine. She attached the pistol in its holster belt onto her waist. She also grabbed a collapsible baton.

“You’re not taking the rifle?” said Anne.

“Well, it’s hard to hide and if the police show up and see me running around with a big rifle, they’re going to think crazed gunwoman first and ask questions later. Plus, these are chambered in a pretty big caliber and I’m small, it’d knock me onto my butt to shoot it if I’m not braced.” said Bella.

Dove said, “These are changelings from the world of Creation, where the devils and I come from. They’re really strong people, so even the smallest of them can use big guns without a problem.”

“Anyways, I don’t like guns. But I like these.” said Dove, holding up a stack of grenades. “Flash bang, flash bang, concussion, fragmentation, flash bang, stun impact, concussion, incendiary and I think this one might shoot anti-magic powder everywhere.”

She grabbed a backpack off a soldier, emptied it save for a few items, and stuffed the grenades inside.

“How do you two even know these things?” said Anne. “Doctors aren't supposed to know anything about this!”

“Past life” said Dove.

“I spent a long time in a box.” said Bella. “Okay, finish gathering supplies and maybe let’s go through the cabinets. They’ll either be back or they’ll move on without, but we can’t lose too much time.”

Anne shrugged and took a few handy things off them, mostly first aid supplies. She also rummaged through the cabinets while the others were inspecting weaponry, but found little of immediate use.

“Okay, we’re done here. Lock them into Dr. Matsuda’s office and zip tie them.” said Dove.

They dragged the bunch of handcuffed soldiers back into Dr. Matsuda’s office and pressed an emergency button in the office. After a few seconds of delay, the room sealed up behind them.

“Where next?” said Anne.

“The Duck must have a base of operations on campus. He spends all day here, right. There must be somewhere he eats and sleeps.” said Dove.

“Hm, yeah. Somewhere where he could get and store a lot of fish. His breath is always super fishy.” said Anne.

“Now that you think about it, I saw the weirdest thing in the morgue once.” said Bella, fighting to recall every detail. “It was a washed blender and measuring cups in the sink, next to jars of fish sauce, fish paste and onions. When I opened the refrigerator in the room, I saw a bunch of fresh fish and some blood packs in there. The whole room smelled like fish. I assumed it was just the morticians about to play a prank on someone. Maybe that’s where the Grand Duck hangs out? It would make sense; we actually have a small mortality rate for all the weird stuff that goes through here. So, perhaps the building is abandoned enough for him to have his own corner?”

“Probably the best bet”, said Anne. “We’ll have to leave this building quietly. Any ideas?”

“There’s a secret stairwell for exiting the building”, said Bella. “I don’t remember exactly where it was, but it stops at the second floor and there’s a five meter drop to the ground. It’s a thing to prevent zombies from getting in and let survivors out if they have to leave.”

“I think Leucine told me about it once. Let me check my text messages.” Said Dove.

They waited uncomfortably, looking carefully down the halls, while Dove scrolled frantically on her phone.

“Ah, here it is. This way.”

They walked down the hallway. There was a poster of Dr. Doctorow, the head of medicine, in a bloodstained coat pointing at the viewer with a serious look. It was captioned, “only you can prevent zombie outbreak in neurology!” The poster was oddly flush with the wall, tightly clinging to it instead of hanging off as normal paper would.

Dove pressed against Dr. Doctorow’s finger. A button clicked. The entire poster retracted slightly and then slide into the wall beside it. There was a small corridor to enter.

“Wow, good thing we’re both not tall… uh Anne, you may have some trouble with this.” Said Dove.

“I can deal if it means not being shot at.”, said Anne.

Dove crawled down through the corridor and Bella followed. Anne took a sharp breath and crawled in as well.

They found the corridor opened up into a dusty stairway. The air was still and suffocating.

“Note to self- ask Dr. Matsuda if we can install ventilation here”, said Dove.

“Stop writing on your phone!” said Bella.

“I really don’t like the idea of the soldiers returning to see us,” said Anne, gesturing at the still-open corridor.

They agreed and hurried down the stairwell. Bella took out her phone as a torch as it had no lighting whatsoever and was rather claustrophobic.

“Ah, crap, my signal died.,” said Dove.

“We are in a building that is reinforced against siege. The walls are very thick. And stop looking at your phone and look at where we’re going.” said Bella.

“No, we have signal repeaters in here, I remember that during orientation. Someone must have cut off our signal by now.” said Anne.

“Well, anyone that can help us is probably evac’d here or already doing something useful.” said Bella. “And Dove, stop looking at your phone, you nearly made me trip.”

“I’m just checking Twiddler for any updates on the situation here at the hospital. It looks as if everyone is in a panic, but the updates cut off three minutes ago. The police say there’s a situation, but there’s no details.” Dove sighed. “Leucine is still totally unaware; she’s sharing Instablam pictures of her flight.”

“She can’t really help us right now, anyways”, said Anne. “Oop, here we are.”

The hallway suddenly terminated in a trap door on the floor. Dove cautiously opened it up. It was indeed a sheer drop of about five meters down onto the ground. She motioned for Bella to grab her and hold her by the waist. She stuck her head out of the opening and looked around, upside-down, as Bella kept her from falling.

“Clear”, she said “Whoaaaa!”

“Sorry, I thought that was an order to let go”, said Bella sheepishly.

Dove sighed as she regained her orientation. “It’s been a long day Dr. Luna. Just let me do this at my own pace.”

Bella lifted her back up to safety. Dove looked down, took a deep breath and jumped down, rolling awkwardly as she hit the ground. Bella followed her immediately in a smooth, practiced landing. That left Anne.

Anne plopped down like a scoop of mashed potatoes on a plate. She rubbed her rear and winced. “Good thing I have a lot of cushioning” she said. Bella helped her up.

“Okay, let’s take this slow. We don’t know who else is looking or what capabilities they have.” said Dove. “Before we move into the open, do you have any magic that might camouflage us or something?”

“If you mean me, I can’t scry or do precognition like Dr. Vaya can”, said Anne. “There’s not a whole lot I can do, everything I can cast is very temporary by nature.”

“I can’t do any magic right now…. Wait, there’s someone there!” said Bella. She pointed.

They saw a young woman with long black pigtails and a purple and red hoodie running across the hospital quad. She looked distressed and moved quite a bit faster than a normal human top speed.

“That’s Persephone from IT. She’s late for evac. Probably what she gets for blasting super loud music at work. Percy likely missed the evac order.” said Anne.

There was a loud thumping noise and Persephone’s head burst open into a blossom of white matter. Her legs slowed down to an awkward stumble and the white material reformed together into Percy’s head. She took a moment to orient herself, then there was another loud noise and Percy’s chest formed a massive hole, her torso expanding around the displacement as if play-dough. She stumbled again, trying to continue to walk forward, and as her torso restored itself into something resembling a human body, another loud noise blew off her head in a spray of white matter. Her headless body stood still, shrugged her shoulders in a frustrated manner and took another impact that scattered her upper body into white chunks. Her still-standing lower body sat down like a petulant child unable to do anything but pout. She didn’t move, and just remained as a disembodied pair of legs and a series of off-white smears on the ground.

“Yeah, Percy’s very much not human, so she’ll be okay, just pinned down for now, but I think we can reasonably infer there is a sniper somewhere here.” said Bella.

“At least one sniper”, corrected Dove.

“Thank you for the cheery update, Noelle”, said Anne.

“They probably have a very powerful rifle too, to do that much to Percy.” said Bella. “We can’t count on cover to save us if they know where we are.”

“Even cheerier”, said Anne. “Maybe we have, I dunno, good news?”

“Well, I can take out the sniper, or snipers, guaranteed, if we can see them.” said Dove, hugging at an empty space before her as she did to her old teddy bear. “The only problem is that, obviously, we can’t. I think that rifle might be suppressed, so it’s going to be hard to locate it by sound as well. But if I remember correctly, suppressors wear out with more shots, especially with a very big gun.”

Bella agreed, “Yeah, we should probably draw their fire to give us more chances to see them. Something that can’t lead back to us. We already know the general area to look in, because Percy’s got blown apart in the opposite of that direction.”

“I can do an illusion of sorts”, said Anne, “but the problem is that it will have to be very close to us and moving away from us. So that’s right out.”

“Hmmm”, said Dove. “We do have an incendiary grenade. I have an idea. Bella, circle around the other side of the building. Be safer than sorry. When you see the fire, take a peek out and find our sniper.”

Bella nodded and left the group.

“Anne, you do your thing as soon as there’s enough smoke”, said Dove.

Anne barely had time to acknowledge before Dove reached into her recently-obtained backpack and retrieved a grenade. With one smooth motion, she removed the pin and tossed it.

It went up like a massive flame, obscuring the area around them in smoke.

“Illusions, through the smoke. Make it slightly blend in with the smoke, then kill It.”, said Dove.

Anne nodded and focused. As if choreographing a dance, she motioned and gestured playfully with her hands, swinging them almost musically. Anne and Dove’s bodies blurred and seemed to jump forward out of the building into the smoke screen, leaving the real Anne and Dove as near-transparent images. The sniper fired a shot through the imaginary Dove’s head, scoring a perfect hit and burying a bullet into the grass behind it. Anne made a dismissive gesture and the image of Dove dissipated in a burst of smoke. The real Dove suddenly became opaque again. The imaginary Anne crept through the smoke screen and it too instantly dispersed with a loud gunshot. The real Anne became visible the moment it happened.

Bella ran up to rejoin the group. “Same person, on top of the shared testing labs.”

“Okay, we have to act quickly, they’re probably going to send people over to investigate, and we just made a very big scene anyways.” said Dove. “Bella, I’ll keep a lookout for him on the opposite side of this building. We need to distract him one last time. This should do. When you’re ready, yell.”

She pressed a flash bang grenade into Bella’s hand and ran off. Bella waited for a moment, and then hurled the grenade onto the grass.

It flopped against the ground for several seconds.

“Uh poo, I forgot to pull the pin.” said Bella.

Anne shoved Bella behind her and stared at the inert grenade. She stared fiercely at it and then it exploded. She reeled back in pain at the bright light entering her eyes, cursing in regret.

Dove returned, breathing very hard despite the very short walk. “Took whoever it is out. They’re not going to be shooting us with two broken arms.”

“Okay, let’s get moving before they call for reinforcements.” Said Bella.

They carefully ran across the lawn, looking around. Suddenly, the ground beneath them danced, rippled and rippled with chattering gunshots. Dove and Anne jumped down and went prone. Bella sprinted forward faster, drawing the gunner’s fire.

Dove tugged at Anne’s sleeve and pointed up. Anne whimpered while the very noise of gunshots rattled the soft soil beneath them.

Dove yelled to make herself heard. “Gunner’s next to the sniper! They must have a spotter with a machine gun! Cover Bella!”

She slammed her hand down on Anne’s head to try to jolt her back to functioning. Then Dove focused on the building where the gunfire originated.

Bella went down mere meters away from the morgue, blood flowing freely from one of her legs.

Immediately the stream of bullets turned back towards Dove and Anne.

Anne breathed in deeply, and, still prone, focused her posture like a director guiding a movie scene. She flicked her hand forward and Dove’s visible image leapt away from Dove’s body and ran forward towards the gunfire. The spray of bullets focused on the illusionary Dove. Anne strained her hands towards the scene as if holding up a heavy camera. The illusion collapsed all of a sudden, returning the actual Dove back to visible sight.

Anne slumped down, exhausted, and cringed, fearing the worst as the gunfire swiveled towards them again. Suddenly, it flew wildly up into the sky and then stopped as abruptly as it began.

Dove half-collapsed down onto her knees and hands with a mighty sigh, as if she had lifted a very heavy weight. She forced herself back to standing and opened her one working eye. Anne was still curled up in a ball behind her. Dove looked at her, clearly debating what to do with her, but she turned back to Bella, who was lying on the ground, still and bleeding. She walked over to Bella and laboriously dragged her to safety into the mortuary building. She yelled for Anne to join her.

The entrance to the mortuary was all business. It was a cold security corridor with strategically placed runes and fortified cover all over (probably to keep out zombie outbreaks or the local necromancer’s guild).

Today, however, it was quite abandoned, and Dove dragged Bella past the defenses onto a convenient table. Bella didn’t deign to speak, but she seemed entirely responsive and conscious otherwise. Dove opened up Bella’s lab coat and clothes to get a better look at her injuries. There were at least two bullet wounds on Bella, one on her thigh and one in her upper torso. Three if you counted where the bullet left her thigh. She wasn’t sure about an exit injury in Bella’s chest, but she did not want to roll Bella over in this state to check. Bella was bleeding everywhere. Dove could not make much more out of the situation beyond that the injuries were very grave.

Anne ran into the building after them and smacked against an invisible wall just behind Dove. She stumbled backwards and cursed. Dove turned around, confused.

Anne said, “Ugh, the mortuary is shielded by anti-magic defenses of some kind, probably keeps me out because of my, uh, condition. I’m not sure how you two can just pass through like that, I have dozen theories why, but in any case, I’m not getting in without compromising the mortuary’s defenses.”

Dove said, “Okay, Anne, you take one of the walky-talkies. Find somewhere to hide outside and keep watch for us. If you see people evacuating safely, please join them.”

Anne took the walky-talkie, nodded and left the building in a sprint.

Dove turned back to Bella. “Dr. Luna, can you hear me? Dr. Luna? Can you heal yourself?”

Bella struggled to speak, having to swallow blood every few breaths. “N-no. I’m trying. It won’t work until I stabilize. Go through my coat pockets.”

Bella’s hands weakly rustled through her lab coat, trying to remove the objects within. Dove helped her and found a surprising amount of first aid tools and materials.

“Okay, I’m going to walk you through this.” said Bella. She coughed out bloody sputum, and continued in a voice that seemed half-drowning,”Don’t worry about the long term here, you just need to stop the bleeding and I… think I have a pneumothorax and that will need to be fixed too. Let’s go.”

Dove carefully listened. Bella didn’t seem all there, but Dove was surprised that Bella was still conscious and moving. On the way here and way more, Bella had lost way more blood than Dove could supposed could have even fit in her body. Dove would have long passed out by now.

Bella said, “Okay, start with the packet of powder you found.”

Dove said, “This powder?”

Bella stared blankly at the presented item for a bit longer than was comfortable. She spoke emotionlessly as if by rote, “No, the other powder. Yes, that one. Put on the gloves you found, and rub it into my injuries. It’s an extremely powerful local anesthetic, so don’t let it touch your bare skin.”

Bella made no reaction as Dove did so, as if her mind were in entirely another place. Dove wasn’t even sure the anesthetic was necessary; Bella lay there like a rock, still breathing with her eyes open but otherwise unresponsive. The powder soaked into the blood all around, as much as Dove tried to apply it to the flesh beneath.

“Done”, said Dove. She wasn’t sure if Dr. Luna would even respond.

Bella gasped loudly, startling Dove. “Okay…” she said, her voice strained and halting. “Next is… the pneumothorax. Hole in my lungs. Uhhh…. “ Her voice broke into a quiet moan and her throat made a disgusting slurping noise. She coughed out globs of blood, spraying Dove, and was able to speak again. “Okay, chest tube. We don’t have one, so use whatever tubing you- yes that works. Get the needle, the long sharp one with the red tip. Attach it to the tubing, and the other end into the pump…. “

Bella gave another gasp with the sound of moving fluid in her voice, almost like clearing her throat, but sounding so much worse. “Move my body over this way, turn my head so I can blood drain from my throat. Yes, good. I want you to insert it into my chest like so.”

Bella’s arm mimed a very precise movement. She did not elaborate, so Dove hesitated, waiting for more. When nothing else was forthcoming, Dove copied the move. Bella made no reaction to Dove stabbing into her. Her eyes had gone quite glassy. Dove had no idea if she did it right. She was in fact entirely sure that Bella should have far more difficulty breathing with a punctured lung. Bella’s heartbeat seemed normal, and Bella was breathing fine, she only had difficulty speaking. It definitely was not natural.

Bella spoke again. “Okay, turn on the pump. You may have to assist it by hand. I… very good. If the pump starts seizing up, there’s not much you can do, just move it by hand until it passes…”

Bella lay still as the tiny hand pump went to work, with its tinny whirring noise bouncing off the empty mortuary office walls.

“Agghhh.” She said, more of relief than pain. ”Put the pump somewhere stable now. Now, stitch up the bullet wound in my chest. You know how to start, but I’ll walk you through the hard parts.”

Dove actually did not know where to start. Bella raised both her hands up barely above her chest and made careful, complex pantomiming movements that really should not have been possible with her current state. Dove carefully followed along. Bella’s arms flopped back down as Dove worked. Bella kept speaking, her words terse and still gurgling slightly with blood, giving pointers and reminding Dove to perform basic steps. They had entirely skipped antiseptic and wound evaluation, Dove knew that much. Bella again made no reaction to Dove suturing up her wounds, with far less grace and efficiency than the injury deserved.

Dove fought the urge to redo her stitch work, it was awful and even as a total amateur she knew it. Bella directed her to sew over the wound with patches of coarse fabric in a crude, unprofessional-sounding procedure, not bothering to address how unsanitary and brutal it sounded. When Dove questioned her, Bella weakly mumbled something about angels having different rules than mortals.

Dove felt more like a butcher or a seamstress than a surgeon, with the way Bella directed her to simply force the wounds shut, and the way Bella seemed to space out when she should have been screaming or at least wincing or gasping in pain. It was like working on a cadaver that made breathing noises.

They moved onto the thigh wounds. Dove worked up into a thick sweat by this point, her unmasked face thoroughly freckled with Bella’s sprayed and coughed blood. She was almost glad that she only had the one eye right now, she had to wipe blood or sweat out of just one eye often enough. Dove’s hands and forearms were solidly red by this point. She fought the urge to wipe them on something, her gloves were so slick right now, and she wasn’t sure how she was able to even grasp tools. She eventually gave in and cleaned her hands on the few non-bloody parts of Bella’s lab coat.

Bella directed Dove to repeat the patching procedure on the other wounds. Dove did not seem to improve despite having a better idea of what to do, her hands were shaking badly now from nerves. After what seemed like ages of operation, Bella visibly relaxed. Dove noticed her own shoulders and arms were very tense. She couldn’t force herself to relax too. Bella lay there quietly, the floor and table beneath her drenched in what was definitely a fatal, almost comical, amount of blood. Yet she was still breathing as if about to fall asleep.

Dove debated whether to try to rouse Bella. She decided to shake Bella gently. Bella stirred and with a quiet sudden movement, began to sit up. Dove helped her up; marveling at how Bella was no longer bleeding despite Dove’s inexpert fumbling with that barbaric suturing procedure.

Dove removed her bloody gloves and a fleeting thought of concern went into her mind when she saw that they had broken during the procedure. Then again, Bella was unnaturally resilient, so Dove dismissed the possibility of giving her an infection.

Bella seemed like an actual invalid now, leaning almost her entirely weight on Dove. Dove took her further into the building.

“Can you heal yourself now?” said Dove.

Bella shook her head. “I don’t have the energy. I might pass out halfway through. It’s happened before. Grace spent the rest of the month covering it up, he was not happy. Give me some time to rest and I can do it. Okay, here, this is the room with the weird… fish blender thing.”

She motioned to a door that indicated what lay beyond was a break room. Dove, both her hands full almost carrying Bella, carefully nudged the door open with a foot, thankful that the door did not have a handle.

As soon as the door had so much as cracked open, Dove’s nose was full of the most revolting thing she had smelled yet. She almost dropped Bella and fumbled to recover her newest patient back up to a standing position. Bella grimaced and barely caught herself from falling by sticking one of her feet forward.

In a burst of adrenaline, Dove forced herself and Bella through the door. Dove expected the smell to be emanating from a rotting corpse, but she saw instead Hank Sokolov and the Grand Duck.

The two of them were playing cards in the break room. Hank seemed surprised to see a blood-soaked Bella and Dove; the Duck regarded them with a very tired stare through his large bloodshot eyes. The Duck had a horrible looking glass by his side that seemed to be mostly made of fish paste and fish parts, but contained some very dubious looking other fluids inside. Hank had a corsage of pink flowers tied to a dust mask around his face; Dove guessed it kept the horrible smell out for him.

In the corner lay Connor Rakha’s headless body. That strange blue thing that Leucine had inserted into his hands had turned gray and dull now, as if spent, but the stump of the neck was fortunately still not bleeding. The body seemed no worse for the wear. There was a freezer and a blender filled with gore next to the body. Actually, that might be the cause of the smell, whatever hellish concoction involved the adjacent empty jars of fish paste, fish sauce, fish heads and uh… onions. Dove realized the smell vaguely resembled day-old fish at a Chinese market at night… except several orders of magnitude worse. She looked at Bella to see how she was holding up and saw that even the doctor looked much sicker than she did a moment before.

“Psy yi yi duck duck duck”, said the Grand Duck. Hank stared at Bella and Dove.

“Duck duck duck”, the Grand Duck continued.

Hank leaned closer to the Duck, trying to better listen to what he was saying.

“Duck duck, psyduck psyduck duck duck psy! Psy yi yi yi duck duck psyduck psy.” said the Duck. He went on in a similar manner for half a minute.

“I, uh, we need a safe place to stay”, said Dove. “Bella’s badly hurt and there are men outside with guns who were shooting at us.”

Hank spoke in his deep, throaty Russian voice, “The Duck says he is not interested. But he is feeling unwell today and impressed by how much blood you are cover with, so he is soliciting for reason not to kill you here and now.”

Bella took a sharp breath and shot the Duck a pleading look.

“Um, um, well, we… we….” stuttered Dove.

“Psy yi yi.” said the Duck.

“Oh, not you, little Asian doctor, you are okay in Duck’s book.” said Hank. He then added of his own accord, “You stay whenever, just don’t touch headless man or he being tax you one hand.” He nodded to the Duck, who nodded back.

Dove motioned with her head to a spare chair at the table and again to Bella. The Duck nodded again.

Dove carefully let Bella down onto the chair and stepped back gingerly, careful not to make any sudden moves around the Duck.

The Duck seemed to perk up from his sleepless-looking state. “Psy yi yi duck duck, psyduck psyduck psy duck duck duck, duuuuuck! Duck duck, psyduck duuuck duck psyduck yiyiyiyi yiiii!” he said.

Hank smiled. “That is good idea, sir. Duck says you can stay if you can stand one of his drinks. Otherwise, you will being get the hell out, is good?”

Dove retched slightly at the very idea. The smell of rotten fish, blood and vinegar still violated her nose.

However, they had to secure the patient, after coming so far. There was no way that violence would succeed, even if it was Dove’s first choice- Bella was in terrible shape and Dove could not possibly use her unique skills before Hank and the Duck would beat her up.

She agreed. “Okay. But I want to take it further.” she quietly said. “I drink two of these, and you let us take the headless man to safety.”

The duck leapt out of his chair and waved his wings, screaming in his usual duck language. Bella flinched, and then grunted in pain. Dove fought the urge to take a step back at the Duck’s furious display.

“Psy yi yi duck duck psyduck psyduck!” the Duck said. He went on for quite a while. Dove wasn’t sure if he was repeating himself. After a minute of yelling, Hank interrupted, however.

“What? What is meaning of that word? The second last one?” said Hank.

“’Psyduck?’ Psy yi yi duck duck psyduck psyduck psy. Psy yi yi, Psy, psy yi yi yi duck duck psyduck duuuuck.” said the Duck.

“Well, I never heard you say it before. How should I being know what it is in English?” said Hank. He turned to Dove. “In any case, the Duck says it’s not enough. Headless man is extremely valuable to Duck’s business competitor, Ghysar. Therefore, he is valuable to the Duck. Duck will not part with him easily. Ghysar screwed Duck once in a big deal. Duck does not forgive easily, so he is willing to keep headless man safe from Ghysar until negotiations can be made with your boss, Head of Medicine Doctorow. But not until then.”

“I’ll drink two in one sitting. One after another. Then you let us take him to safety when we are ready, no more negotiations.” said Dove.

The Duck’s facial expression changed to raise what would have been an eyebrow if he had eyebrows.

“Duck duck.”

“He says go on.” said Hank.

Dove said, “I think I’ve said enough. No pauses, no breaks. I’ll down one, then I’ll down another without any interruptions, and I’ll keep both down. Just nonstop drinking.”

The Duck said, “Duck duck, psyduck psyduck psy.”

Hank said, “Very well, Duck is interested, but he will cut an arm off if you do something stupid to bypass our agreement.”

The Duck outstretched his hand, carefully folding his wings so that his claws didn’t protrude forward.

Dove shook his “hand” enthusiastically. The Duck felt like rock-solid muscle under his fine coat of yellow feathers, as far as she could tell.

Bella just watched in confusion. She looked quite ill from the smell, and honestly, Dove wasn’t sure how either of them was keeping it together.

The Duck grabbed some fish heads from the nearby freezer and nuked them in the microwave oven. The room got slightly fishier. He flipped onto the break room counter with surprising grace and stuffed fish sauce, fish paste, onions and associated herbs into the blender. He then fetched the fish heads, dumped them into the blender and retrieved a couple of glasses from the cupboard as the blender went to town.

The Duck poured out the foul concoction into the glasses and the intense horrifying smell in the room only intensified. Dove cringed under the olfactory onslaught. He slammed both glasses and the remnants in the blender container onto the table.

“Psyduck psy”, he said.

“When you’re ready”, Hank translated.

“Wait, can I do it instead? I’m used to eating fish heads and stuff. It really can’t be that bad if the Duck likes it right?” said Bella.

“No, Dr. Luna, I can do it”, said Dove.

“I am personally interested if you can do it. Let us being give small Asian doctor a chance before small blond doctor shall we?” said Hank.

The Duck said something, apparently assenting. He nodded to Bella.

Bella picked up first glass and put it up to her lips. “It doesn’t really smell that bad up close, Noelle, I’ve had fish heads and fish sauce before, it’s- ack!”

She jerked the first glass away as if it had scalded her, spilling a small amount. She retched, spat, seized, and made many loud unladylike noises. She coughed until she wasn’t sure she could cough any more, then ran to the sink and stuck her mouth underneath the running faucet, causing blood to leak from her injuries as she moved.

The Duck quacked in a manner that may have been mockery. Then he abruptly stopped and frowned intensely at Dove. He refilled the glass to full using the some of the liquid in the blender’s container.

Dove carefully picked up the glass. Her eyes darted to Dr. Luna, drinking from the sink.

Dove shook slightly and made muffled grunts of pain. Her eyes watered and she clenched her teeth in deep pain.

“She can’t fulfill our deal”, said Hank.

“No! I haven’t started yet! I said one sitting, which means once I start I don’t stop. It doesn’t count until I start!” said Dove, wiping her tears away.

Everyone waited expectantly. Bella wiped her mouth off and turned back to look at Dove.

Dove carefully put the glass to her lips and drank. It was thicker than she expected, and the very texture and viscosity of the fluid was vile. She fought the urge to cry. She drank slowly at first, then quickly chugged it down as soon as it was clear her gag reflex wasn’t kicking in. She slammed her fist with the empty glass down on the table. With a great deal of haste that could have been confused with enthusiasm, were it not for the vile contents of the beverage, Dove seized the second glass in a single smooth motion. She drank down that one too.

She felt at her stomach. That was a lot to drink that quickly. She felt very dizzy, but she kept it down. She sat down at the table and stared expectantly at the Duck.

The Duck stared, speechless for once. Hank’s jaw dropped in shock. He took off his odor mask off as if to check if the drink really smelled as vile as he suspected, and the way he snapped his mask back on and shuddered seemed to confirm it.

“She cheated.” Said Hank.

Dove said nothing and kept eye contact with the Duck.

The Duck stared back intensely at Dove. The hatred in his eyes bore into her very soul.

Then he said, “Psy… psy yiiiii… yiyiyiyiyi!” His eyes shut and he threw his head back.

It was laughing. Dove sighed in relief.

“Psyduck psyduck psy.” said the Duck. “Psyduck psy psyduck duck duck duck psyduck psy yi yiyiyi duck duck. Duck duck psyduck psy psyduck duck duck.”

Hank thought for a second. “Okay, Duck says he doesn’t care if you cheated, it was impressive nonetheless. He can smell drink on your breath, and that’s enough for him. You can carry off headless man whenever you wish, but Duck’s claws are bound, he has agreement with Locust and mercenaries. He cannot do anything else to help you.”

Dove nodded. “We’ll be back, please leave him here. Thank you, Mr. Duck. Oh, would you happen to have first aid supplies?”

Hank looked at the Duck and shook his head. “We destroy any medical supplies we get our hands on and cannot use. It is part of our policy. My apologies.”

The Duck just stared neutrally at Dove. Bella hobbled up to try to leave, and the Duck helped her over to Dove, and then stepped back.

Dove suppressed a smirk and gave a nod she hoped was professional before they left.

As they moved through the building, Bella twisted her head away from Dove’s face. Dove thought Bella was about to cry, her reaction was very intense.

“Your breath!” Bella wailed. “Oh Rakha, why? It smells so bad, I’m sorry Noelle. How did you even stand one sip?”

Dove said, “I uh… I severed my olfactory nerve. With my magic, right before I started to drink. Right now, I can barely taste anything, and I can’t smell at all until I get some healing in. It actually tastes not too bad without the smell.”

“I guess that makes sense,” said Bella, trying not to choke on Dove’s breath. “Just… we’ll need something to cover it up or other people will notice. Maybe from a long distance. Ugh, I think Grace always keeps mints on hand, I should make that a habit too.”

Dove took out the walky-talky. “Hey, Anne, what’s your status? “ she asked.

“Oh yeah, nothing’s happened up here. Percy recovered from the shooting and we’re talking now. No sign of mercenary assholes.” replied Anne’s voice through the static.

“Okay, we’re on our way out.” said Dove.

“Yeah, Noelle’s okay, if you can get past the teddy bear, but Dr. Luna seems to freak out whenever something supernatural happens. It’s pretty annoying.” said the voice over the walky-talky to someone else.

“Anne…your finger’s still on the button.” said Bella, not amused.

“Oh”, came the reply. There was no further response.

Dove dragged Bella over to the entrance, which proved harder than it sounded. Dove felt rather queasy, but she was better off than Bella, who fought to keep her stomach down every time Dove exhaled.

They saw Anne and Persephone talking in the corner of the mortuary entrance room.

“Yeah, I see all these human girls glancing at me too, and I can practically hear the humans evaluating my choice of clo- Holy shit, what is that SMELL?” said Anne, as they approached. “It’s like someone left fish in a basement for a month and then took it in with a straw! Are you getting this, Percy? Ugh!”

Percy made no comment on the smell and just shrugged in confusion.

“I had a drink with the Grand Duck”, said Dove. “It was actually pretty filling, so at least I won’t need dinner now.”

“Ewwww. Well, it’s a long story and one you won’t like. We’ve secured Noelle’s patient”, said Bella. “Now we just need to get ahold of Peace and the gercranium.”

Anne acknowledged this. “Oh, have you met Percy yet?”

Bella shuddered a bit. “Yes.”

Dove shook her head.

Percy waved to Dove. She was a pale young woman with black, slightly wavy hair arranged in a pair of long pigtails and long bangs that covered one eye. She wore a purple and red hoodie with a vaguely tie-die pattern, a long skirt with eye-like patterns and an ordinary set of pale purple jeans underneath that. She had a sharp smile that almost felt like the predatory showing of sharp teeth, but more so out of habit than because of intent. It seemed like her mouth held more teeth than it should have.

“Did you miss the evac?” said Dove.

“Yeah. The campus is a wasteland; don’t even see the assholes with guns around. I hopped around and then eventually saw Anne around here. She’s really cool; I can’t believe she hangs around with you two.” Said Percy.

Anne gave a nervous laugh. “Haha, she’s such a joker. I said good things about you two when you weren’t listening… really!”

“She did. That was my own opinion.” Said Percy.

Dove decided to disregard the commentary. “Okay, we have no leads on Peace then, since Percy didn’t see anything and I’m guessing if you could figure it out with magic Anne, you probably would have… right?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I don’t scry at all. Dr. Vaya has had centuries of practice, and I just got introduced to the concept of linear time a month ago.” said Anne.

“Okay, priority is the gercranium then, we can save Peace if any leads come up”, said Dove. “We don’t know how much longer the headless man will keep. Percy, do you know about the Grand Duck?”

“Oh yeah, we’re cool.” she said, still smiling.

“Great, he’s in the break room in here. Make sure nothing happens to the headless guy while we’re gone, and if the people with guns break into the building, kill them all I guess.” said Dove.

“Kill them all?” said Bella, with some disbelief.

“You have a gun on your waist.” Said Dove. “Self-defense comes first; we can treat anyone who survives after this.”

“She has the right idea”, said Anne. “I don’t think Percy or the Duck are going to feel like leaving survivors if it comes down to self-defense, in any case.”

Percy beamed as if this was flattery. She apparently agreed with everything that was said, because she waved goodbye to Anne, then walked into the building.

“Man, she could have come with us. She can eat up bullets like nothing!” said Anne.

“Yes, but she’s also a loose cannon who will probably charge in and like, eat flamethrower or land mines something”, said Bella. “I don’t know, I think we should try to be more discreet, in case you know, there are more snipers around.”

“We have no time to waste.” Said Dove. She looked at her phone. “I think we still have ten minutes before the cops show up. That’s thirty minutes before Bella says they’ll move in. The mercenaries haven’t gotten their prize yet, so they’ll get more aggressive. Plus we still don’t know if they’ve taken Peace off campus yet, so we should investigate. Let’s go.”

The walk back to the arboretum was tense. Anne covered every step they made, making an illusionary version of one of them jump forward to cover as a decoy before the real Dove, Bella and Anne followed its steps. Bella no longer needed support, but she did noticeably limp.

The arboretum seemed to be under siege. Mercenaries like the ones from before took cover in the bushes, trash cans and benches around the building. The outside of the building was surrounded by scorch marks, craters, and debris from what might have been explosions. Small bulbous, glittering protrusions snaked out over the top edge of the building.

“Why on- is Rhiza keeping them out?” said Bella.

“I have no idea.” said Dove.

“Well, it seems all those people and all those guns aren’t overkill for this operation.” said Anne. “It almost makes me proud this hospital is crazy enough to warrant an army just to abduct one patient.”

“Whatever Ghysar is paying them must be a lot.” said Bella.

Dove thought for a moment. “Well, we’re not getting past the perimeter of soldiers. I’m pretty sure Rhiza might attack us if we do, I heard the stories about her.”

Anne said, “Well, we could try sneaking through the tree line there”. She pointed to an uninterrupted section of trees that led up to the side of the arboretum. I have a spell that can levitate us, uh, sort of. It’s a bit complicated. But we’d be wide open to anyone who does spot us.”

The bulbous protrusions from the buildings suddenly made a loud wheezing noise and one cluster of mercenaries withdrew deeper behind their cover as small projectiles peppered the area around them.

“Poison needles. Something some of the intelligent fungi, like Rhiza, like to use. Their poisons are super potent, so the needles are almost too small to see. Those bulbs around the roof I’m guessing are her eyes and shooters.” Said Anne.

“They’re right in position to see us if we move on top of the trees.” Said Dove. “I’m afraid to move around on the other side of the building. There’s a lot of soldiers, and none of us are particularly stealthy. Plus, Anne, you look pretty tired; we shouldn’t lean on you too much.”

“Yeah, I don’t do a lot of spellcasting most days”, says Anne. Her posture drooped slightly. “Magic is really hard on human bodies and human brains. It’s okay, I can handle one spell to get us in, but I’m not going to be able to do a bunch in a row.”

“Okay, there are way too many of them for me to take on with my bear’s magic, and I can’t outdraw a gun in any case,” said Dove. “Uh, Bella, maybe you can heal Anne or yourself with your magic?”

“No, I’d have to enter my True Forme for that, and I don’t want to risk any of these people seeing me like that, or else Ghysar will have a target on my back forever.” said Bella.

Dove said, “That’s fine, we just need to get in. Hm… I still have one smoke grenade and a bunch of flash bangs. Think those will work on Rhiza?”

“Only for the parts of her that see it. Any other parts will need to be blinded as we see them.” Said Anne.

Dove opened her bag, among the sounds of gunfire. “Okay, smoke for covering us just as we hit the building and get in sight of her other parts. Everyone take one flashbang. You open it like this.” She put her finger around the grenade’s pin and mimed pulling it. “We’ll levitate above the tree line as it unfolds. Throw the flashbangs on my signal. Anne, you throw your flash at that group over there. Bella, there. I’ll take ones on the building and try to blind a few bulbs with sorcery as well.”

Anne raised her hand. “Uh, minority opinion, but why don’t we just wait for an opening in this siege?”

“It looks like a stalemate”, said Dove. “I don’t think it’ll resolve quickly, and although Rhiza is strong, these guys have really large guns, so I’m tempted to call it in their favor if it does resolve.”

As if on cue, one mercenary carefully wriggled from cover and fired a shot from a scoped rifle that blew a small crater in the upper building. One of the bulbs fell off onto the ground with a hard splat. The marksman had already scrambled off by the time other bulbs aligned towards him and filled the area he used to be in with small dust clouds of impact.

“See?” said Dove. “I think I’d rather take my chances with Rhiza than them. They probably already know we’re dangerous and are likely to shoot on sight. Rhiza, not so much.”

Bella said, “We should still wait for a slightly more opportune moment before acting. We need every advantage we can get, especially since we’ll probably still have to fight inside.”

“Okay”, said Dove. “But not too long. They probably have this situation in control.”

They heard clamoring and orders shouted from far away. One of the voices yelling sounded very familiar.

The trio turned to see the source of the commotion in the distance. It was the blonde woman from before, with the metallic skin. She had swept-aside blonde hair, bright green eyes, a green holographic display next to one eye, a dark green bandana on her and a dark blue bulletproof body armor. Most notably, she was carrying this enormous weapon longer than her body that looked like it ought to be on a small tank and hefted it with only moderate difficulty.

Rhiza’s needler bulbs immediately unleashed everything they had on the woman, with many strange clanging sounds as the impacts ripped small tears in her body armor but not her skin. She stood upright, clearly ignoring the shots and smiling as she angled her weapon up slightly.

hen she started firing it.

Immediately Dove’s teeth chattered with very sharp and loud exploding sounds, the cannon rapidly firing massive shots, each of which blew a massive hole in the wall. The ground rattled and the building’s outer facade started falling to bits, carved away as if from a massive knife. Some of the mercenaries started cheering. A massive globule of clear liquid sailed out from and burst next to the woman like a large water balloon. The mercenaries near the impact fled, while she ignored the noxious-looking fumes from the burst fluid and continued firing, even as the grass around her died and pieces of her armor started corroding away. Her metallic skin shined in the afternoon sunlight, and her weapon’s barrel turned a searing red hot.

“Oh my god she’s a robot!” said Anne.

“No kidding. Well, here’s our chance, while everyone is distracted! Quick!” said Dove.

Anne concentrated and raised her hands as if by supplication. “We get about ten seconds. Go go!”

Their bodies lifted up to about seven meters high as if the ground itself lifted up beneath them. They didn’t float as much as stand still in midair. Anne signaled for them to move and they ran above the tree line. Dove heard some of the canine-eared soldiers shout and one of them raised their rifle at the trio. “Throw it! Now!” she said.

Anne, Dove and Bella threw their grenades left, right and forward. The soldiers clamored as the sounds of the explosions deafened them and the light threw off their aims. Bullets flew around the three. Some of the bulbs, unable to see, or still suppressed by the cannon fire, waved around, looking around for the new set of intruders.

Dove pulled the pin on her smoke grenade and threw it into one of the second floor windows, seconds before they dived in through the broken window. Smoke filled the room behind them as they ran down the hallway.

Apparently someone outside took great exception to the breaking and entering because an explosion shattered the room behind them, sending glass and plaster flying all over where they were moments ago. Anne screamed, and Bella hugged her blood-crusted lab coat around her.

Still breathing hard, the three of them looked around for signs of Rhiza. Nothing looked too out of the ordinary, there were a bunch of strange orange-brown tendrils filling the hallway, but no bulbs or moving beings.

“Is everyone okay?” said Dove, still trembling with adrenaline.

“Yeah… I think I’m okay,” said Bella.

“Not sure, but I’m standing” said Anne. “I think that’s the best we’ll have. Rhiza will probably send a body part to investigat-“

They saw a tiny, crustacean-like thing scuttling into the hallway. It looked like a large brown mushroom cap on a bunch of tiny legs. It had a pair of large spots on its top that almost looked like eyes. It would have been cute, except for the part where it froze and fixated the eyespots at them.

The trio froze in place, not daring to move or speak. The tiny mushroom-being sat there for quite some time. Then a second creature of similar color and texture walked in and dominated the entrance. It was a two-meter-tall tripedal creature with three eyes on top, three massive, multi-jointed arms adorned with three claws each and three large fat antennae on its head.

“Oh shit, a treant.” Said Anne. “That’s part of Rhiza, yes.”

It charged at them. Bella pulled the handgun out of her lab coat and fired off a couple shots, then had to dive under a swing of the massive arms, awkwardly rolling up to her feet again. Anne screamed and sprinted straight back away from the charge. Dove ducked under another arm swinging, lodging her body in a corner to avoid the giant’s charge, and then scrambled away from it.

Bella continued firing into it. Dove formed her imaginary teddy bear again and wrenched at its neck. The giant jerked under her movements and the Bella’s bullets went straight through its legs.

Bella reloaded and Dove’s imaginary teddy bear attacked its arms next, severing one of its arm’s hands with a swift pull of her hand. Anne turned around, once she thought she was a safe distance away, and pointed at it, pronouncing a curse. The treant burst into flame as Anne did so, flailing away until a series of bullets from Bella blew a hole into its center.

It collapsed with a considerable noise and the flames on its body went out, leaving superficial burns. Bella stomped down onto it, viciously tearing holes into its body with surprising ease. It flailed a bit more then stopped moving.

“Wow, that wasn’t too bad”, said Bella.

Three more treants peered in through the end of the hallway. They fought to squeeze in through the doorway.

“Oh shit!” said Anne.

“Down!” said Dove. “Frag!” She reached into her bag and threw a grenade at the treants. They couldn’t quite react in time and blew into smithereens. Dust filled the corridor.

Bella shielded Dove and Anne with her body, and shredded pieces of the fungal creatures bounced off her back.

Dove got up, her ears ringing. Bella’s hands clutched her ears. Anne waved away a strange glowing field around her head.

“Okay, I think we’re all okay?” said Anne.

“What?” screamed Dove.

“I can’t hear!” said Bella.

“Oh god, okay, guys”, said Anne, slowly enunciating, “We… have… to move on. Rhiza knows we’re here.”

Dove and Bella struggled to make out what she was saying. Anne shrugged and insistently jabbed a finger down the hall.

They followed her, carefully stepping over the shredded bodies of the treants. The dead treants looked like a large cluster of mold and hyphae inside.

Bella and Dove stared in fascination at the corpses, until Anne forcibly dragged them forward.

Dove wiped away a nosebleed. They entered the central atrium, dazed and rattled.

“What is that smell? It’s like fish sauce and raw onions. It’s just been getting closer. It’s not the Duck, he smells differently”, they heard a female voice say. “Ah, that’s the source. You three, get your hands where I can see them.”

Bella gasped in shock. They were on an elevated walkway in the central atrium of the arboretum, with dozens of bulbs in sight, some pointing at them. Before them were the central gardens and dozens of strange creatures like the treants and the tiny thing that had spotted them crawling on the ground below. They were effectively surrounded and too far from the entrance to the hall to retreat. The floor in the central atrium before them up filled with neatly trimmed rows of bizarrely shaped plants and trees. Many of the fungal creatures were attending to the plants; others seemed to stand at guard.

In the very center of this menagerie was a tan skinned woman with dark orange hair, long pointed ears, and a very spiky looking flower in her hair. Her outfit, a dress, seemed to be made mostly of lily pads, spiked wood, reeds and very large leaves. She would have been beautiful if it were not for a nasty scowl on her lips. Enveloping her, almost like a throne, were the fungal tendrils that pervaded the building.

Anne recognized her.

“Rhiza”, she said. “Or rather, her speaking organ, her dryad.”

“Anne O’Malley”, the woman wearing wood and lily pads said, looking up straight at them. “I suppose I can kill you anytime, so no need to rush. You clearly didn’t come here on behalf of the armored thugs outside.”

“Rhiza, it’s okay!” shouted Bella. “We’re from the hospital; we can take the gercranium safely to the patient. We’ve kept him out of the thugs’ hands.”

“I don’t think you understand,” said Rhiza. “It takes a full year to grow this beautiful and fragile plant. I’m not letting you use it for a pathetic human being. Come back when you have an actual need for it. I’m being nice by giving you the chance to walk away and leave this between me and the bastards outside.”

“It’s okay, Bella. She doesn’t understand how the fate of all of nature is at stake. We’ll find another way, we always do.” Said Anne.

Bella stared in confusion.

“Excuse me?” said Rhiza.

“Oh yeah”, said Dove, catching on. “The headless man’s a guardian of nature. Pink hair, a coat of strange furs, all that.”

She turned to address the trio again, “So, what do you mean a guardian of nature? Don’t lie to me.”

The fungal tendrils on the walls and floor around Anne, Bella and Dove curled in towards them. Treants stepped up the walkway, cornering them.

“Uh, the man is capable of surviving with a head for so long because he’s a powerful magician”, said Dove.

“Yeah, he was complaining of uh, pollutants, affecting his body,” said Anne. “Pollutants that the bad humans made.”

“Yeah, and he was tasked by nature to fight the uh, deforestation, but it was just too much for him.” Said Bella.

“You’re all terrible liars.” said Rhiza. Her human-like figure didn’t make any movement, but the treants moved in on the trio as if she had yelled orders at them.

“Wait!” said Bella. “You know Ghysar? On the Wolcrasi Hospital Board?”

“No, and the Board can go hang”, said Rhiza. “Get out now, or I’ll fertilize the soil with your bones.”

“Crap”, said Bella. “Well, it was great knowing yo- throw it Dove!”

She lunged at one of the treants. It smashed one arm down onto her, knocking her aside.

Dove frantically rummaged in her sack of explosives and produced an incendiary grenade. She hurled it as hard as she could in the direction of Rhiza’s dryad. It burst into smoke, lighting several of the plants nearby on fire.

“NO!” Rhiza screamed. One of the bulbs around her sprayed something on the burgeoning fire, to no avail. Several of her treants ran over to the fire and tried to throw soil over it to put it out, similarly not having any effect on the intense flames. Her concentration seemed to be mostly focused on the fire and the rest of the fungal beings around the area, the parts of her, gathered on the fire and tried to extinguish it.

Dove and Anne struggled as the treants grabbed them, but halfheartedly as if they had better things they could be doing.

Dove took a deep breath as if concentrating. She snapped her arms out of the treant’s grasp and ducked under its flailing limbs at her bag of grenades. She grabbed a number of things out of the bag and with a spin of her entire body, threw the half-full contents of the bag as far as she could towards a cluster of Rhiza’s fungal creatures. She threw the things she grabbed away, revealing them to be small metal pins. Dove then took a flying leap off the walkway into some unoccupied dirt down below and covered the back of her head with her hands.

Rhiza didn’t seem to notice the flying bag, summoning everything she had, all the fungal creatures crawling about, to contain the fire.

“You know what, screw this!” said Anne. She focused and both she and the treant levitated in the air. Their bodies rotated so that the treant’s back faced the bag of grenades. She set them down. The treant tried to let go and move away towards the fire, but Anne seized it by the hand.

Bella hid behind a sturdy-looking tree with a thick trunk and prayed.

The explosion rattled the entire building, completely saturating the walls in smoke, shrapnel and flames. The glass ceiling shattered, sending shards of glass down everywhere. Dove screamed and cried as steel, rock and glass buried themselves around her at very high velocity. The blast wave filled the air with dust and kicked the small fire into high gear, sending it blazing high up.

Anne quickly extricated herself from the shredded remains of the treant she had used as cover, brushing off pieces of glass and debris. Bella leapt out of the way of the collapsing tree that had similarly taken the brunt of the blast for her.

The sounds of the robot woman pounding away with the cannon roared in the distance. The building continued to shake and groan under the assault. The smoke from the grenade blasts cleared, leaving a sizable crater where the explosion had started and a growing brush fire consuming the plants not far from it.

Rhiza’s dryad looked tattered and bled a strange orange-brown ooze, murder in her eyes. The few treants still recognizable crawled or twitched on the floor, torn up by grenade fragments. Pieces of her needle-shooting bulbs hung against the wall like morbid ornaments, most ripped to shreds by the massive explosion. The few bulbs still able to function turned at the intruders and fired.

Bella clambered up on a very strong looking vine, dodging a few shots as she ran up the wall, using the vine to support her weight.

Dove scrambled to run, but wasn’t fast enough and the needles hit her. She shrugged it off, formed her imaginary teddy bear, and jabbed a thumb into where an eye would have been. One of Rhiza’s bulbs popped apart like an overripe watermelon. More needles hit her; she faltered, and then collapsed onto the ground.

Anne looked around for cover and took a few hits from the needles before she could move. She didn’t last as long as Dove, quickly succumbing to their poisons.

Bella, swung from the vine, trying to dodge, as she drew her handgun. The bulbs shooting at her didn’t seem to be able to keep up with her erratic lateral movements as she swung back and forth, pushing off the wall just so at irregular intervals. Bella fired from the pistol with expert accuracy, scoring hits on them, destroying each bulb with a few well-placed shots despite her movements. She managed to reload in mid-air, hanging from the vine with her legs.

Several fungal tendrils surrounded Rhiza’s dryad like a defensive cage. Anne appeared from thin air near her, as the Anne who had been shot by the needles dissipated like the mirage it was. Anne grabbed a pair of gardening shears off the ground, yelled, and hacked into the fungal tendrils with abandon.

The ground bubbled underneath Anne, releasing a huge plume of noxious gas that dropped her to the ground the moment it touched her. Rhiza seemed entirely untouched as the plants around the gas withered and burned.

Rhiza’s dryad yelled, “That’s my underground toxin stores! You may have shot out my eyes of the forest, but I can make it so that you can’t claim your prize, not without being poisoned, and I can simply poison the plants too if you push me!”

Rhiza’s tendrils reached out and retrieved the gercranium, carefully keeping it out of the path of the departing gas cloud. It was a basketball-sized red flower on its outside edges, with sickly greyish petals on its insides vaguely arranged in a skull shape.

Bella looked down and grimaced at her situation. She clung onto her vine against the wall like a mountain climber.

“It looks like we are in a stand-off, human.” said Rhiza, looking up at Bella. “You may have burned and broken my beautiful specimens, but you won’t get what you want, and neither will the brutes outside. Your short-sightedne-”

She was interrupted by a primal scream as Bella swung down on the vine at her with incredible speed. Bella reached out with her hands at the gercranium, but missed entirely. Instead, her foot caught on Rhiza’s head and tore it off with a sickening crunch, sending it flying far away in a spout of red-brown gore.

Bella’s leg from the knee down hung at an unnatural angle and she screamed with pain. She dropped down to the ground and landed with a bloody splat, opening up her old wounds.

Rhiza’s dryad body stumbled around from the impact, sans head, and dropped its flower. She raised one hand as if to say something, and then, apparently disappointed, dropped her hand. She pawed around on the ground with her hands, feeling around for where she had dropped the flower. Stamping her feet in frustration, the headless Rhiza continued to rummage around in vain.

A cable descended from the ruined arboretum window. A dozen of the mercenaries slid down on it, all wearing bright orange hazmat suits. Leading them were was the robotic woman, and a green-haired woman with dark skin, both unprotected from the harsh fungal chemicals in the air.

“Wow, nice, these idiots somehow cleared the way for us. Grab the flower. Fuck up everything else.” said the robot.

One of the mercenaries riddled Rhiza’s dryad with bullets. Another grabbed the gercranium and climbed back up the rappel rope. Others swept the area, pumping bullets into anything that was still moving or crawling.

“The three medical staff here are in critical condition. Let me tend to them.” said the green-haired woman.

“What? Why? We won, Selkie.” said the robot.

“As your medic, I feel a duty to not let people die if it can be helped, Wende.” said Selkie. “In particular, Locust will be pissed if we let the small blonde one die. Plus, I know how much you feel about not owing people. Technically, you owe them this win.”

“I don’t owe them, they just saved us a few minutes of headache” said Wende. “But you’re welcome to do whatever. We’ve secured the headless man, now it’s just a matter of hitting him with the flower and extracting before the coppers move in. Meet up with us with extraction point Bravo in fifteen minutes or enjoy your jail cell. If we’re not there, try point Alpha.”

Wende turned away to better inspect the situation, shouting orders in her electronic voice. Selkie nodded and directed a few mercenaries to grab Anne, Bella and Dove for a moment.

In the damp darkness of the arboretum office, Selkie went to work with her patients. She tended Bella’s wounds almost as a warm-up, somehow clamping the bleeding wounds closed with her bare hands, leaving them sealed as if the injuries were invisibly glued shut. She then turned to Anne, who was quietly gasping for air, paler than usual with asphyxiation. Selkie inspected her for a moment, and then jabbed a finger into Anne’s throat. Anne started gasping for breath harder, and then pulled out an oxygen mask and strapped it around Anne’s mouth. She then pulled a syringe with a strange viscous substance out, palpated for a vein on Anne’s arm and injected her. Within seconds, Anne calmed down and started breathing normally.

Selkie then turned to Dove and extracted the poison needles from her body by hand. She took out a similar syringe as the one she had used on Anne and injected Dove with it.

Bella opened her eyes. She was clearly either unable or unwilling to move, but tried to get a look out of the corner of her eye.

Selkie had very dark skin, short but sharply wavy teal hair, dark green eyes, dark blue lips, and although she wore the same black bullet-resistant armor as the mercenaries, hers had less protection around the shoulders and waist. Over the body armor, she wore a white fur cloak of some sort. The universal sign of the Red Cross peeked out beneath the fur cloak. She carried no weapon, and moved with a rare level of gracefulness that Bella had only seen on Dr. Doctorow.

“I… who are you?” Bella said.

“Someone who wishes she wasn’t a butcher for a bunch of killers.” said the other woman. She discarded the syringe in a sharps container. “Call me Selkie. Woodling antidote will take some time to work. Keep Miss Dove’s airways open and watch for seizures or the like. Also, what’s with the nasty smell on her breath? It smells like super rotten fish, I’m not aware of any poisons that do that?”

Bella could only think to say, “Thank you, Selkie. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“It’s alright. I’m under orders to keep Dove alive, but it’s hard to say how well I did, woodlings’ poison varies a lot and we only had enough time to grab some generic antidote. She’ll have an uphill struggle ahead of her until her regenerative capacity kicks in. If it does. Nothing we can do but make her comfortable. Oof, her breath…”

Dove showed no sign of reacting to either the poison or the antidote. She lay there silent and inert.

“Her vitals are still going”, Selkie mentioned.

Bella coughed some blood out. “Okay, I think we stashed some antidote to Rhiza’s poisons in some of the rooms here. She never bothered to search them. But it’s old. I don’t know how much the poisons have changed.”

Selkie shook her head. “We might overdose Dove if we try multiple antidotes. The cure will be worse than the poison. Now, let me see you. You have a shattered leg. Compound fracture in the tibia. Hold still.”

“Are you a doctor?” said Bella.

Selkie made a few movements that Bella did not catch. Bella felt something cutting open her pants around her broken leg.

Selkie said, “I’m a combat medic. Once, I was a healer, yes, nothing as formal as a doctor, with a license and all that. Sadly, that went down the drain when I was moved to this world. This is how I pay the bills now.

“Okay, this will hurt, Dr. Luna. I’m going to shut off the nerves around here and here. It’ll hurt badly and feel like both your legs are gone. This is necessary for what I will do next.”

Selkie spoke in the practiced tones of a worried doctor reassuring a frightened patient.

But Bella was not frightened.

“Do it”, said Bella. She braced herself.

Bella suppressed a yell as Selkie jammed something into her hip. Then she relaxed as the pain died as quickly as it started.

“Hm…end-stage wound looks a few days old despite clinging to fresh blood. This kind of patchwork on your abdomen here is reminiscent of other first aid I’ve seen on folks who have a natural healing factor. You wouldn’t happen to be one of those hidden angels of Rakha, would you?” said Selkie.

Bella felt herself sweating and warming up all of a sudden. “No”, was all she could manage to say.

“Okay then.” said Selkie. “Our client promised us a bonus the more angels we turned in for them, not just the headless dude, but personally, I couldn’t do that to a patient. Anyways, miss unexplained healing factor, what I’m going to do is reset your bones the best I can. I still have… five minutes.”

“But… it takes hours to repair a fracture. Especially fragmentation. How on earth could you possibly- ?”

Selkie said nothing. Bella heard a large squelching sound from her legs. She mustered her strength to crane her head at her legs and saw Selkie sticking her hands straight into the flesh in Bella’s calves, as if they were made of silly putty. Selkie carefully removed bloody bone fragments from Bella’s legs as if they were incorporeal and examined each one. She felt around for where the bone would fit, as if solving a puzzle, and then stuck them back in. Bella’s legs looked perfectly fine, as if Selkie’s fingers were illusions darting in and out. Bella boggled at the very concept of a surgeon picking out and replacing her bones like puzzle pieces.

“Okay bullet wound next.” she said. “There, done.”

Bella couldn’t believe anyone could possibly work so fast, but when she saw it, she saw her recent gunshot had already not only scabbed over fully, but very neatly.

Selkie swiped her fingers across Bella’s thigh and Bella felt as if electricity surged through her legs. She felt sensation again in her legs for just an instant, then it left.

“If I’ve guessed correctly, this standard of care is far from enough for a normal human, but it definitely will work for you. I’ve immobilized both your legs to keep you from moving, that’ll work in place of a cast for a few hours until you get back up. If your healing factor shrugs the paralysis off, please put yourself in a cast or two. Seriously, you’ll pop your leg bones apart again.”

Bella’s jaw dropped. “You’re…. you’re a magician.”

Selkie frowned. “Some would call me that yes. It’s part of the healing arts of Sidhe. In our world, that’s just how we do things. Did things.”

Bella said, “How would you like to join the Wolcrasi staff? We have a patient in danger, and I think after this, Wolcrasi could really use someone with your level of expertise.”

Selkie said, “I don’t have a medical degree, that’s not a thing where I come from. Hell, I don’t have the paperwork and money to start nursing school and there’s some silly shit about regulatory approval for my particular skills. I guess I’m a mercenary now, since my other skillset is fighting and killing people. Long story.”

“Well, well, the hospital could really use people like you!“ Bella stammered. “I’m sure Dr. Naturae or Dr. Doctorow could cut through red tape to bring you on! It’s uh, you’d be a super good fit at Wolcrasi!”

“Gee, thanks, but I’m on contract at the moment.” said Selkie. “I’ll think about it “

Bella said, “No, seriously, Dr. Doctorow is looking crazy hard for super-tough medical professionals like you. He’s taken on aliens, devils, and stuff super fast! Anne is like some possessing spirit in a human body and she was made a nurse assistant a week after we found her! Dr. Doctorow wouldn’t even think twice about hiring someone who’s really good at medicine! I mean you’re human, right? That’s already like an A-plus.”

Selkie seemed startled by what Bella said, and took a moment to absorb it.

“I’ll have to see what Locust says about it.” Said Selkie. “I already owe her a ton for taking me in. But thank you for the offer.”

She scribbled something furiously down on a notepad, tore off a page and stuffed it into Bella’s hand.

“My fifteen minutes are up.”, she said. “Here are a bunch of long-term care instructions. Don’t wander off now. You’ll open up your injuries and probably get shot by my coworkers. Take care.”

Selkie disappeared from Bella’s sight.

Another voice, this one male, spoke up from where Bella couldn’t see, “Selkie, Wende wants you moving now. Flower and headless man are secured. Let’s go.”

“Aw, she does care”, Selkie said sardonically.

Bella heard two sets of footsteps leaving. A few moments passed, thoughts flying through her head of how she had let down “Connor Rakha”.

She read the instructions that Selkie gave her. She barely had the strength to lift the paper and focus her eyes on it. The medical terminology she recognized as having been outdated for quite some time and the handwriting was much too clear to be a doctor’s, but the suggestions were fairly, though not perfectly, sound. She felt at the prior bullet wounds in her thigh and was surprised that the scab over them actually felt rock solid, like her fingernails could not even pick at it. She wouldn’t be surprised if she could put all her weight on that leg and not bleed at all.

In the middle of Bella’s reading, Dove catapulted up and gasped loudly, causing Bella to startle. She scrambled up to her feet and fell down. She crawled over to Bella.

“Oh my god where are we!” said Dove, shaking excitedly.

Bella glanced over her. Dove looked jumpy; probably the injection had a lot of stimulants.

Bella replied, “Okay, Noelle, one of the mercenaries, someone named Selkie, gave us medical attention, then had to run. She immobilized my legs and told me I’d break my leg if I tried to move anyways. Well, re-break it.”

“That was kind of her!” said Dove, darting her head around to look. “Where’s Anne?”

“Next to you. Take her vitals.” Said Bella.

Dove found Anne, took her pulse, and listened to her hearing. She opened Anne’s eyes and measured pupillary response.

Dove said, “Okay, she’s okay. But I don’t think she’s going to be up in a while, she’s something like, comatose? Is that the right word?”

Bella nodded. “Yeah. Okay, the mercenaries said they have Connor Rakha and the flower. I know they have the flower, but I’m not sure about the headless guy. We should check it out. Drag me out.”

“Dr. Luna? Is that okay? In your state?”

“Yes. It’s okay. I’d rather not ever use this leg again than abandon family to Ghysar. I’m not going to let either happen.”

“Okay- wait, FAMILY?” Dove yelled.

“In the same way as your brothers and sisters, Dove. Not like DNA or blood, but you know… same origins. Devils, angels, all that.

“Okay, uh wait, he’s an angel of Rakha too?” Dove yelled

.

Bella tried not to giggle deliriously at Dove’s shock. She composed herself. “Just get me over there. Anne looks stable. Selkie’s notes here, uh, hm, say that brief exposure to woodling gasses isn’t necessarily life-threatening and she received a human-friendly dose of some woodling antidote. Which evidently worked very well for you, so I think Anne will be fine. Drag me over and let me see her.” said Bella.

Dove did so, rolling Bella over with some difficulty over to where Anne lay.

“Okay, she seems okay”, said Bella, after some inspection. “I think we can leave her here for now.”

“I’m worried about what will happen if we don’t take her along and she gets up by herself all alone here.” Said Dove.

“We should catch up with the mercenaries. Unless you figured out a way to carry two people at once, I don’t know what we can do, Noelle.” Said Bella.

“Fine. Do we have any gurneys here?” said Dove.

Bella opened her mouth to speak. She thought for a moment. There were no hospital beds in the garden, why would there be? But what every building in Wolcrasi did have was wheelchairs.

Dove grunted and strained as she pushed Bella. Bella most likely barely broke 50 kilograms, but then again, Dove also weighed that much. The problem was getting the wheelchair over the debris-strewn remains of the area around the arboretum, covered in needles, rubble and spent weaponry as it was. Several times Dove nearly slipped on bullets.

She eventually managed to get Bella to the mortuary. Hank Sokolov and the Grand Duck stood right outside the building doors, talking with each other. There was also a familiar blob of pale goop lying next to them, covering most of the exterior of the building and a little of the walls.

“What- what- happened?” said Bella.

Hank turned to them with a slightly irritated look. “Locust came over and fought leetle pigtailed girl with too many teeth, punch her out, take headless guy. Was shaping up to become good fight, but over too quick.”

He gestured with his head to the blob next to him. The blob groggily blinked a few large eyeballs with purple sclera.

“Uh, are you okay?” Dove said to the blob. It groaned quietly with Persephone’s voice.

Hank continued, “Duck and I are unable to intervene, him and Locust have uh, gentlemen’s agreement? No more fighting each other. So, headless man was gone, nothing we can do about it. Was about five minutes ago.”

The Duck nodded in confirmation.

“But… Dove blew her up! Ripped her to little shreds!” said Bella.

“I did?” said Dove. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

Hank scratched his bald head. “Yes, but Locust is strangely tough. Duck has not been able to fight her past draw, is very frustrating to him. Me, I cannot even mess up her hair, it is not fair, but that is life, yes? It is not surprise to me that being killed did not stop her.”

“Um, do you need anything Percy? Painkillers?” said Dove, bending down to the Percy-blob.

Percy patted Dove on the shoulder. Bella yelled in concern, made a move at Dove and fell out of her wheelchair. Percy retracted her pseudopod from Dove’s shoulder.

“Okay, we’ll see if you can get you some help after this is all over”, said Dove.

The end of the pseudopod formed into something that vaguely resembled an OK hand sign.

Hank hoisted up Bella like an empty plastic bag and shoved her back onto the wheelchair.

“We have agreement about headless man, however. Perhaps I still help you. Mercenary went that way, I may say that, da?” said Hank, looking at the Duck.

The Duck nodded. He had stayed silent this entire time. Dove could only guess that he was fuming, the way he stared far off into space with his usual level of anger, as if the current subject of his ire was far away.

“Okay, we will see if we can’t retrieve our patient. Thank you, Hank, you’re a big help!” said Dove.

Hank smiled. “No problem. Удачи, little one.”

He raised one hand and gave the slightest wave of the edges of his fingertips. The Duck made no reaction, still glaring far away.

As they walked (or rolled) away in the direction Hank indicated, Dove asked, “How on earth did they find Connor Rakha so fast?”

“Uh, probably the blood trail. See? That’s where you dragged me in. I guess we were in too much of a hurry.” said Bella.

“Okay, I see a lot of red things here. That’s strange, they’re blood drops… suspended in mid-air…,” said Dove.

“Uh oh”, said Bella. “It means whatever caused his blood to freeze up might be wearing off. He might not have much longer.”

They then heard a loud, authoritative voice blaring all around them. “This is the Great Hub police department. Put down all weapons immediately and submit to arrest or else we will come to your house and feed you cookies.”

“Wait what? Cookies?” Dove yelled.

“Uh, yeah, it’s a euphemism for beating the crap out of you and putting you in an armored straightjacket.” said Bella. “I think it’s part of their ‘Friendly, Caring GHPD’ campaign or something.”

“What? That is so weird!” said Dove.

“Yeah, it’s not working for me either. Look, let’s just focus on following this blood trail. Before they extract the headless man out.”

They followed the blood trail to Wolcrasi’s cafeteria. Their ears filled with the beating of a helicopter’s wings as a dark shape flitted overhead. It started circling the building. A few mercenaries looked at it from the rooftop, oblivious to the two blood-covered young women staring at them from ground level.

“Take out the pilot!” said Bella.

“Excuse me? That’s going to kill him and everyone it lands on! At minimum!” said Dove.

“Uh, okay. Can you at least mess him up a little bit?” Bella said.

“I need to see him! The windows on the chopper are blacked out.”

“Okay. We just need to get you closer then. Can you climb up?”

“With people with guns crawling all over the place? Are you kidding me?”

“Calm down, Noelle. I’m throwing ideas out here. Help me out here.”

A small figure with leopard-like features walked up with a headless man in a blood-stained fur coat.

“We’ve run out of time, Dr. Luna! Look, I think that’s them up there. Locust, holding Connor Rakha.”

Bella said, “I see them. Okay, change of plans. Mess up Locust. Can you move her arms?”

Dove said, “Why?”

“Just make her throw him off the building.”

“Uh-“

“It’s a two story drop and he can’t exactly break his neck! Just trust me on this! We’re out of options!”

“Okay, let me try.”

Dove summoned the image of her teddy bear again, focusing as hard as she could. She ran her hands in the air in front of her, pantomiming its general shape. She carefully seized two imaginary objects in her hand and, squinting her one good eye, threw her hands up.

Immediately Locust, still holding Connor Rakha, jerked her arms upward, sending him flying quite some distance well off the building. She immediately pointed her hands and looked around, frantically bellowing out orders and curses. The mercenaries on the roof scattered back into the building. The helicopter lifted up and glided away.

“Oh shit, oh yikes, oh wow,” said Dove, clutching her hair.

Bella said, “Okay, leave me here Dove. I’ll slow them down! Get Connor at all costs!”

“But you’re in a wheelc-” said Dove.

“I have my ways!” said Bella, closing her eyes.

Dove ran as fast as she could, keeping her eyes peeled for Connor’s body. She ran faster than she thought possible. She leapt over hedgerows and darted around. A large team of mercenaries burst out of the building and charged across the sidewalk.

One of them spotted her quickly and gave a shout of alarm. Dove ducked down as rifle fire grazed the area around her. She crawled along, still trying to see as much area as possible. The mercenaries took turns shooting at her, while others advanced and then in turn provided cover fire when they had moved forward enough.

Suddenly, a large floating human heart with white wings burst through the formation of mercenaries, causing shouts and cries of “take down that angel!”

Some of them fired into the air at Bella’s angelic form, distracting them from shooting at Dove.

Dove popped her head out of a bush, imagined her teddy bear again, reminding herself of its shape through pantomime, as before, and twisted the imaginary teddy bear around with her hands.

One of the mercenaries spun around 180 degrees as though by an invisible force, accidentally spraying a few bullets among his colleagues. They scattered with yells, and one of them tackled the errant shooter to the ground.

Satisfied, Dove retreated and continued her search. She suddenly heard some yell “frag out!” and an explosion rocked the area behind her. She ran forward, carefully.

The mercenaries fanned out, some continued to shoot at Bella, to no avail. Her angelic form limped along in the air, but she was doing her best to be as erratic as possible, which her injuries fortunately made easier as one wing worked much better than the other. She spun, looped and dived with a frustrating eccentricity that would put the most annoying housefly to shame.

Bella gasped when she saw Wende walking out of the cafeteria building with a six-shot grenade launcher in hand.

Wende looked up, saw Bella flying high above her, and grinned. She adjusted a few dials on her grenade launcher, and then raised it straight up at Bella.

Bella put more effort into her defensive maneuvers. The first grenade exploded in mid-air a few meters away, buffeting her large heart body with the shock wave. A bit of shrapnel entered her body, but she didn’t let it stop her.

The second grenade followed soon after, knocking Bella about again. Bella dived to lose more altitude, hoping to seek cover among the foliage near the ground. The third grenade went low, right in her path, forcing her to break out of the dive. She grazed the edge of the explosion, sending her tumbling to the ground.

Bella plowed through the dirt and grass and tumbled to a rest. Her angelic heart form was bleeding quite a bit from shrapnel. She struggled and beat her wings furiously to try to move away as Wende approached her.

Dove continued looking for Connor Rakha’s body, crawling and darting from cover to cover. The soldiers rushed through the bushes behind her, swiveling their rifles about, looking for her or Connor. Dove tried to control her breathing, but she knew how bad this situation was.

She darted from the corner of one building and then suddenly ran into one of the mercenaries. He gave a cry of alarm and hit her with the back of his rifle. Dove staggered backwards. She tried to trace her hands in the air in the shape of her teddy bear, but the mercenary dropped his gun and laid into her with her fists before she could finish.

The other mercenaries rushed around her and joined in the beating. One of them hit her in the stomach with a baton, and suddenly she felt a tugging sensation in her throat and a warm fluid leaving her mouth. It was only a moment that the taste and smell of it smashed into her nose with full strength. She screamed inside, as she tasted the full horror of the fishy concoction she drank an hour ago, because her actual mouth was too busy retching.

The mercenaries around her screamed much more audibly, and every one of them recoiled away from her as if thrown back by a physical force. Several seemed to puke as well, their gas masks apparently doing absolutely nothing to filter out the smell. A few of them dropped their weapons and ran away as fast as anything on two legs possibly could.

Dove quietly prayed for death in her mind, cursing her olfactory nerve for having regenerated at some point. The taste was simply beyond compare. If every overfull dumpster she had ever passed by were blended into a mix and shoved in her face, it would be a pleasant potpourri next to this. The remaining men around her hit the ground as if shot, and tried to drag themselves away from the smell. Those who were not fleeing by this point lay on the ground completely motionless, their hands frozen over their faces.

Now she knew why the Grand Duck was so impressed. The mercenaries still conscious, of whom there were fewer and fewer of by the moment, openly wept, begged and puked. Dove yelled as hard as she could as soon as her mouth cleared out enough to let her speak. Around her, the foliage withered and blackened as the air saturated with the smell.

Wende was applying the ends of a taser to the still-struggling heart-Bella when the smell hit her olfactory sensors. She turned around and if her face could wrinkle in disgust, it would have. She laid a few more punches into Bella, and quite frustrated with Bella’s endurance, she picked the giant heart up and slammed it into the ground behind her in a fierce suplex. Bella stopped and seized up upon impact and then after a few moments, resumed her struggling.

Wende decided to investigate the source of the smell and the screaming sounds of her men and Dove. She dragged Bella over as one would to someone else’s petulant child. She did not seem viscerally affected by the smell and just walked over to Dove, who was clearing the last of the fishy abomination from her stomach. Dove looked up with a vomit-stained face and Wende recognized in her eyes a look pleading for a mercy kill.

Wende rolled her eyes. She head-butted Dove hard, knocking her out. Bella kept struggling heedless of the smell, so Wende raised her arm and thrashed the giant heart against the floor a few times to slow her down. She then picked up Dove in her other hand and began to drag the both of them back to the cafeteria. Wende then gave the stunned Bella a few more slams against the floor for good measure. The soldiers all lay on the floor, completely incapacitated by the smell.

Suddenly, Wende heard a trumpet fanfare. She turned and saw Amy Elias sitting on a horse. Her light blue dress was torn, soiled and bloodstained and she carried her giant syringe, now chipped and dented from use, like a short lance. Amy’s pupils dilated to the extent that it was quite noticeable at this distance and she bore a strange grin on her face.

“Halt thou, pale steel warrior, I shall save a fair maiden this day, and vanquish thee”, Amy said.

Wende stared in confusion for a moment before being jolted out of it by Bella’s incessant fluttering. She gave the giant heart a sharp elbow to the right ventricle, again to no effect, and then sighed and dropped Dove to the ground. Dove limply fell to the ground without complaint. Bella continued to fight against Wende’s other hand.

Amy charged forward on her horse. Wende drew a pistol with her free hand. She whipped her hand up in a quick draw, compensating for Bella struggling on her other arm. A bullet from someone else flew out and clanged off Wende's arm, throwing her aim off. Her shot went wild.

The blow of the giant syringe slammed against Wende’s metallic skin and threw her aside. Amy and her steed ran past them in the traditional jousting manner, before halting and slowly turning around.

Wende looked for the source of the gunshot and saw Chihiroe standing nearby with her shotgun. Chihiroe had something that looked like several metallic patches all over her neck.

“Oh hey sis”, Wende said to Chihiroe.

Chihiroe made no reaction to the greeting. She pulled out a taser and aimed it at the other robot.

Wende simply used Bella as a shield, holding her in front with both hands. Then Wende heard galloping behind her and realized her mistake too late.

The impact from Amy’s lance threw Wende forward, causing her to free Bella, who limply tumbled along in no particular direction. The giant syringe snapped in Amy’s hands, sending plastic shards everywhere.

Amy growled, dismounted from her horse, and drew a large tele-surgery machine arm as if it were a trusty sword.

She smacked Wende a few times with the arm. Wende fended Amy off with her arms, and then Chihiroe’s taser darts lodged themselves through Wendy’s armor.

Wende yelled as several thousand volts flowed through her. She twitched and smoked slightly. Amy swung down on Wende with a mighty two-handed blow, shattering the expensive surgical machine arm. Wende folded underneath the blow, dropping down to her arms against the earth.

Amy gave Wende a few kicks to the head, then swore and clutched at her foot.

Chihiroe slipped up to the stunned Wende and applied the taser’s stun drive to Wende’s skin. Wende dropped to the ground completely.

Chihiroe said something to Wende and then, apparently satisfied, stood up and gave the OK sign to Amy. Amy nodded and picked up Dove.

Bella, in her human form, burst out from some convenient cover and ran up to them, looking thankful. She looked in decent shape, but her clothes had shredded almost to the point of immodesty, as if she picked them off from someone who died playing with chainsaws.

Amy averted her eyes, tore off part of her dress and offered Bella the rags. “Court physician, thine immodesty is unseemly, clothe thyself”, she said.

Bella gratefully accepted it and wrapped the pieces of the dress around her. “What the heck happened to you, Amy? Why are you speaking in the worst medieval English accent I’ve heard?” she asked.

Chihiroe looked. “Acute cranial trauma from the altercation with Locust, complicated by a painkiller-induced delusional state. Possible underlying elements of a stress-induced psychotic breakdown. I am currently under orders by Amy Alias to serve as her knightly squire. Ideal course of action is complying with her delusional state until proper medical attention arrives.”

Bella cringed. “Ah, okay, that’s good. Bad. I mean, that’s bad.”

She took a very sharp breath, clearly exhausted, and waved an empty baggy in her hands at Chihiroe. Her words slurred as she said, “I’m on a crapload of painkillers right now too, and I don’t know how long they’ll last. You and Amy go find Connor Rakha, Dove and I will break into the mercenary hideout to find the gercranium.”

“Negative”, said Chihiroe. “Odds are best with maximal attackers. Local law enforcement can obtain Connor Rakha, but they may not be able to secure the flower without our assistance.”

Amy yelled at Chihiroe, “Squire! Hand me your trusty sidearm! I shall rouse the straw-haired fair maiden and together we shall vanish the foul leopard-woman and establish a mighty kingdom!”

Bella flinched at Amy’s yelling. Chihiroe as always remained unflappable and calmly handed Amy a large rubber reflex mallet.

“Yes! Forsooth!” Amy yelled. She bashed it against the unconscious Dove’s kneecap. Dove awoke with a scream as her foot flew up into the air.

“Yea, the evil locust sorceress has cursed this gallant lady with an air of stench most foul!” said Amy. “Come, fair maiden, we shall vanquish the fiend!”

“She called me a fair maiden? What? What happened to Amy?” said Dove. She blushed mightily.

“Head trauma”, said Bella. “Oh my god, I’m in so much pain right now, the painkillers are not cutting it. Let’s go before they wear off and I pass the heck out.”

Dove nodded, her eyes still watering from the residual taste of the fish drink vomit. “I’m on fumes too. Ugh, I can’t do my magic with this nasty taste in my mouth.”

Amy said, “Hark! The fair maiden be a sorce-“

“Shut it!” said Bella. “Just shut up! We have to get the gercranium now, or else-“

“Hey assholes!” yelled a familiar voice from far away. Locust waved at them with the massive flower under one of her arms from the top of the food court building. “Looking for this? You’ll have to come get it!”

She threw rocks at them. Fast-moving projectiles peppered the area around them, raising lots of dust.

“Crap! No time! Charge!” said Bella. She stared forward wild-eyed and ran at the building as fast as she could.

“Actually, the optimal course of act-” said Chihiroe.

“Our most learned court physician doth be correct! Charge!” yelled Amy, so loudly it was as if she wanted the entire campus to hear. She mounted on her horse and charged after Bella.

Chihiroe gave an electronic noise that may have been a sigh and followed them, holding Dove’s hands as if Dove was a small child.

The four sprinted across the lawn into the food court building. As soon as they entered, several mercenaries burst from cover and aimed their rifles. However, the sight of Amy Elias barreling through the doorway atop a warhorse caused them to lower their guns in confusion.

Amy closed the distance instantly and leapt off her horse into the mass of soldiers, swinging her large rubber mallet with abandon. Bella followed soon after and lashed out with her hands, tearing away weapons and smashing in faces. Chihiroe covered them by firing beanbags from her shotgun and Dove hid in a corner.

Bella kicked one over a table, picked another mercenary up, and then suplexed him through the same table with furious strength. Amy hammered away at kneecaps and elbows, causing soldiers to flinch and wither under the unexpected assault. Chihiroe’s shotgun clicked empty, so she picked up a baton and laid into the mass of soldiers with abandon, their knives and batons clanging off her body.

Within half a minute, a dozen mercenaries lay unconscious all over the cafeteria. Dove stopped cowering and gestured at the stairs.

Chihiroe shoved Bella and Amy aside to be the first up the stairs, clearly intent on something. As soon as she did, there was a click and an explosion, and then Chihiroe tumbled down the stairs. As the dust cleared, they saw Chihiroe’s battered body lying at the bottom of the stairs.

“OUR COMRADE HAS FALLEN! FORWARD, MEN!” yelled Amy. She ran up the stairway before Bella and Dove could stop her. Bella and Dove did the only thing they could and followed.

There was exactly one person to meet them at the top of the stairs.

Selkie regarded them with folded arms and dramatically dismounted from a table she was standing on.

“Shit, we can’t keep you out of the way, huh?” said Selkie. “Take your best shot.”

Amy and Bella lunged forward at the same time.

Selkie parried their strikes at the same time and simultaneously lashed out with a kick at Amy’s kneecaps.

Amy’s leg went oddly stiff and she could not bend it again as she recoiled from the strike. She tried to move forward, but could not do much more than limp. She desperately swung her hammer forward, trying to get ahold of Selkie, but Selkie had already moved to interpose Bella in the way of her attacks.

Selkie barely kept pace with Bella’s flurry of weaving swings and punches. Bella managed to catch her with a few hits, but if they did anything, Selkie did not do anything other than grunt. Selkie danced under one of Bella’s swings. Bella caught her with an errant kick, but it ended up barely shifting Selkie’s footwork. This made Bella realized how much bigger Selkie was than her. She was not sure why Selkie would avoid her, and then she saw Selkie run up to Dove and slam her hand into Dove’s one good eye.

Dove stopped whatever she was doing and yelled, grabbing at her eye. Bella did not see anything wrong with Dove; her eye was still intact and not bleeding.

Selkie turned to Bella. Amy leapt at Selkie with her one working leg, swinging down with her hammer. Selkie sidestepped the blow, caught the hammer and jammed its back end into Amy’s face. Amy stumbled back and then Selkie laid her out with a single punch, dropping Amy like a bad habit.

Bella tried not to listen to Dove’s yelling as Selkie took a stance. A thought flashed through her mind about the martial-magical arts of the Sidhe people, something she had vaguely heard about once in rumor. Perhaps that is why Selkie’s attacks had the effect they did without much in the way of force.

Selkie made the first move, a surprisingly quick low kick. Bella slid back out of range and Selkie followed her with equal speed. They danced once again.

Bella had some difficulty keeping up with Selkie, but she managed to get the better end of the exchanges of punches and kicks, careful to avoid Selkie get a precise blow on her after seeing what happened to Amy and Dove. Selkie seemed to ignore Bella’s counterattacks, even as they hit hard enough to move her backward a little every time.

Selkie’s dodges and parries became less and less quick, and she took more and more hits. Bella carefully kept her distance, matching Selkie’s footwork as precisely as she could. Bella wove strike after strike into her repertoire, fending off Selkie’s blows, but not committing too fully at any point.

Selkie grinned as she managed to grab both of Bella’s arms at the elbows. Bella yelled as she felt both of her arms go stiff. She could not move her elbows. Bella, off balance, fell backwards, and tried a kick as she fell. The same thing happened, as Selkie slammed her elbow into Bella’s knee, which then froze in a bent position. Bella fell down in a sitting position, unable to right herself again.

Selkie said, “The nature of my healing art allows me to harden bodily fluids. Handy for sealing wounds, and, like all healing techniques, it can be used to harm almost as well. One to your synovial fluids will freeze your joints in place. One to the eyes is enough to blind. Enough blows to your pleural cavity could prevent you from breathing, or perhaps a blow to the carotid could cause a heart attack.”

“Actually, that would result in a stroke”, Bella couldn’t help saying.

“Oh. Right.” said Selkie, discomfited. “In any case, I’m feeling merciful, so perhaps you’ll crawl off as you currently are and let us claim Connor Rakha.”

“Never. Kill me, I don’t give a crap. You’ll never deliver Connor Rakha to Ghysar as long as I live!” Bella said.

“Ah, right, you’re totally not the flying heart that was flying outside.” said Selkie, the sarcasm evident. “That kind of loyalty is admirable, but give up already! You’ve been fucked up like a billion times, I don’t even know how you’re still in one piece even with angelic healing!”

“AAAHHH!” Dove screamed as she suddenly leapt onto Selkie. “I found you!”

Selkie made a move to tear Dove off her back. Before she could, Dove’s fingers traced the outline teddy bear on Selkie’s back and then Dove drove an elbow into the center of the tracing as hard as she could.

Selkie stumbled and coughed blood, causing Dove to separate from her. Dove landed an awkward punch into the same rough area, causing Selkie to bend over in the opposite direction from the blow, as if an invisible hand slammed into her abdomen. She coughed more and kneeled to the ground. Dove finally kicked at another part of Selkie’s back, which had no effect whatsoever. Dove kicked her a few more times, then carefully felt for where the teddy bear was, and after confirming it, bashed her fist into that part of Selkie’s back. Selkie flopped over, the fight clearly out of her.

Bella inelegantly waved her stiff arms in the air and grunted with effort like a giant turtle. Her stiffened leg wouldn’t let her even start to stand up.

“Hey Noelle, help me get up”, she said. “Let’s leave Amy here; she’s a danger to herself in this state.”

Dove carefully felt around. “I can’t see. Everything is all blurry and weird. Is that you?”

Bella leaned on Dove’s shoulders and gave directions on where to walk. She also directed Dove to fish her pistol out of her lab coat and place it in her right hand, which was probably the only way she could fight now. Bella felt if she tried to force her joints back to moving, it might actually dislocate her bones. They moved past the upstairs dining area onto the roof.

The only person on the roof with them was Locust, her torn dress flapping dramatically in the breeze. She looked in terrible shape, with cracks and bandages all over her skin, presumably where Dove tore her apart. She had a wild, pained look in her eyes, which twitched slightly when she saw them.

She held a submachine gun to Dr. Grace Vaya’s head, forcing him down on his knees before her. Grace was bloodied, battered and blindfolded. His knees seem to have been shot out and then hastily bandaged.

“I’m sorry, Bella, I didn’t see this coming”, said Grace.

“Damn right you didn’t” said Locust, pressing the gun’s barrel against his head. “Now, hand over the headless man. No funny business.”

Bella pointed her gun in Locust’s direction. She tried to compensate for her arm’s stiffness, so her aim was not quite stable.

“Oh please, that’s not going to do anything.” said Locust. “It’ll just go right through my head and out the other side and I’ll just fix it up like usual. Plus, I have a better gun and I’m not crippled.”

Locust quickly fired a burst of bullets, which caught Dove in the thigh. Dove collapsed and Bella fell down with her.

Locust shrugged. “Sorry, Noelle, that’s going to happen when you fuck with the best.”

Dove screamed in pain. “You started it!” she yelled through tears.

Bella rolled over on her side and re-oriented her gun on Locust. “We don’t have the headless patient! We left him for law enforcement to collect.”

“Hmph. I’ll have to tear through them too.” Said Locust.

Dove continued screaming and clutching at her shot leg.

Grace said, “That’s a bluff. You cannot handle all of them. It’ll take you way too long.”

“Yeah!” said Bella.

Locust scoffed. “Bitch, have you met me? I can take anyone. I was trying to play fair before, showing up unarmed in the open and I still kicked your asses until you sic’d another devil on me. Well, playtime is over. You geeks decided to put up a fight, so I had to escalate if I want anything to be done. Selkie seems to have delivered on blinding Noelle, so what chance do you have this time around?”

Bella said, “Well, if you have all the advantages, then why haven’t you shot me ye-“

Bella screamed as Locust fired a shot into her free hand’s shoulder. She nearly dropped her gun from the pain. She swayed from the shock and forcibly bit down her teeth to silence further yells of agony. Locust casually pointed her gun into the air.

“Bella!” Grace screamed.

“Wow, challenging the lady with the gun, the hostage and the superpowers? Not smart.” Said Locust. “Look, all I ask is one measly patient of yours. I already delivered one angel to my client, what’s a second one to you? Are you one of them?”

“Peace! Give Peace back!” said Dove, straining through her injury.

Locust said, “Look, I’m super not a fan of torture, but I can just shoot you more the more you threaten me. Or shoot Dr. Vaya here.”

“We aren’t even threatening you!” Dove shrieked. “We’re just saving a patient!”

“God, you guys are really something else. Okay, how about this? I don’t blow Dr. Vaya’s brains out and you hand over the headless guy. I think it’s okay on your record if you hand it over under duress. Which is what this is.”

Locust waved the gun around as if to illustrate.

Right on cue, small red laser dots surrounded the scene, covering everybody on the roof.

A loud voice blared over loudspeakers. “GHPD. Hands in the air. Do not move, do not resist or we will be very upset with you and feed you cookies, by which I mean bullets.”

Locust’s expression fell. “Ah well crap. I still have a hostage, you know. And gunshots don’t really do much for me, so good luck with that.”

The loudspeaker replied, “Huh, that’s right. Sergeant, do we have any options for Locust? Wait, none? and- what do you mean this thing is still on? Really?“ It clicked off.

Locust saw the hopeful looks on Dove and Bella’s faces. “My god, I’ve eluded them for so long, you think it’s going to be hard at this point? It would have to take a literal act of-“

Suddenly, something fell from the sky and smashed onto the rooftop, sending dust and shreds of fabric everywhere.

Locust’s eyes boggled in fear and surprise as she saw Dove’s now-shredded teddy bear lying in a small fresh crater on the rooftop.

“Dove! Now!” said Bella.

Dove, still laying on the ground, released something that sprayed a bunch of powder all over the scene.

Locust tore her eyes away from the teddy bear and looked at the plumes of dust approaching her “Wait, that’s the anti-magic gren- oh shit.”

Bella fired a shot through Locust’s eye and out the back of her head. Locust dropped her gun and fell down to a sitting position. She stared in shock, trying to concentrate on the hole through her head, but nothing happened as the anti-magic dust surrounded her. She twitched and slumped over, no longer moving. Grace sighed in relief and allowed himself to fall hard to the floor. The police’s laser sights concentrated all over Locust’s fallen body.

“So what was that loud sound just now?” said Dove.

“That was your uh, teddy bear descending to Earth.” Said Bella.

“Bear? Mr. Flufflesbottom!” yelled Dove. She struggled to move, but could not do much more than writhe in place with her injuries.

Grace snickered on the ground through a small puddle of his blood.

Bella dropped the pistol in her hands and felt something tugging her head down. The painkillers finally overtook her and dragged her mind down into a deep sleep.

----

A mercenary dumped a metal can full of shards of material into an ornate room of treasures. An empty purple-gilded throne sat on the far end of it.

A voice rang out without a visible source. Its tone was smooth, alluring and forceful, all the same time, like a snake whose scales flowed seamlessly into each other. It was neither male nor female, but something quite ethereal instead. “This isn’t the angel I expected.”

“You asked for any other angels we found.” Said the mercenary. “Says so on the contract right here. Is this, uh, not an angel?”

“Shit”, said the voice. “I guess it is. Take your payment. But I still expect the delivery of my final prize, the Chronicler.”

“Sir!” said the Mercenary, with a salute. He left the room.

The pieces of the shards of material quickly reassembled themselves into the Angel of Peace. She flexed her floating fingers a bit and looked around in confusion.

The voice spoke to her. “Greetings, fellow angel of the Court of Brethren. I am Ghysar, the mightiest of Rakha’s court of angels.”

“Yeah, you are a member of the Wolcrasi board. Not sure why you want an audience with me in here.” said Peace, staring blankly forward. “Would have been easy to just schedule a meeting. I have a very free schedule and would gladly take time to meet and speak to a member of the board.”

Ghysar’s voice seemed to ignore her. “I am seeking champions to right wrongs that some on the Court have done outside of the caring loving gaze of Rakha. I can offer you anything you wish in return.”

Purple smoke filled the room and the light source, whatever it was, dimmed. In the smoke, Peace saw images of herself standing fair and tall, with a crown on her head, a scepter of jewels in her hand and a pair of scales in the other hand as subjects bowed to her.

“What is that supposed to be? Scales? Am I a merchant or something?” said Peace.

“Yes, you can be rich beyond measure…,” said the voice, its pitch becoming husky with desire.

The purple smoke revealed her surrounded by coins, jewels and treasures from ages long past.

“Wow, that’s a lot of coins to take care of. It’ll take ages to count them all and ensure that none get lost or destroyed under their own weight.” Said Peace. “And all of the historical artifacts ought to be in a museum.”

The purple smoke showed Peace in a penthouse suite on top a skyscraper, with her name all over it.

“Peace is kind of an awkward name for a real estate business. I like my name, but I will admit it hardly rolls off the tongue. ”

The name changed to Brethren.

“It sounds like a hassle to manage all that many buildings.”

The smoke parted and showed Peace surrounded by dozens of beings like her, many with wings and halos, hugging her and crying tearfully.

Peace thought for a moment. “Well, if you could bring back my dead siblings, you wouldn’t bother with recruiting me. I am far from the strongest or smartest, you could just take them instead. Honestly, my abilities are effectively negligible next to the power to resurrect immortals, which would take a crazy amount of energy. Also for future reference, they look nothing like that.”

It then showed Peace surrounded by gorgeous, divinely beautiful men, all tending to her every need.

“I’m female in presentation. Not in gender.” She said.

It replaced the men with equally beautiful, half-naked women.

“I don’t go for either men or women. I wasn’t made with any kind of sex in mind.”

“Throw me a fucking bone.” the voice said. “What does it take to tempt you?”

“Well, I’d like to go home.” said Peace.

The purple smoke started to move again, but Peace said, “As in, Wolcrasi. Not heaven. It is somewhat boring there. Especially since, we are no longer employed as actual angels. Actually, I think if you could bring my dead siblings back, they would hate not having jobs anymore. They’d probably get up to a lot of trouble an-”

The voice sighed. “GET OUT”, it said.

Peace shrugged and walked out. She vanished mid-stride into a puff of white fog.

The voice called out to no one in particular, “Please tell me we have some good fucking news.”

A mercenary peeked into the room and quickly said, “Mr. Ghysar, sir, it turns out we couldn’t secure the Chronicler. Locust and her strike force are currently in police custody.”

He ran away the moment the last word left his tongue.

The purple smoke hung in the air for a bit and then the room shook and the walls crumbled.

“RAKHA. DAMN. IIIIIIIT!” the voice cried.

----

Dove lay in bed, slowly breathing through a tube. Her badly damaged teddy bear lay on the bed besides her, but her hands were by her sides, not on it. Bianca Elias and Anne O’Malley monitored Dove’s vital signs. Bianca carried a crutch and Anne carefully stood by her. Dove looked at them through her one good eye- the other one had not healed up yet.

Bianca held a clipboard in front of her and read off it to Noelle. “Okay, Dr. Fidelis’ notes on your condition. You have burnt up all the backup energy you have as an immortal, so you’re pretty much going to sit back for a week or so before your devil regeneration will work again, and it’ll be slow going at first. You’ll be good as new in a few weeks. No unassisted movement for the rest of the week, and especially don’t use any magic or your condition may actually get worse. Fortunately, you’re our only med student at the moment; don’t ask me how we’re getting away with that. So we can easily freeze curriculum to let you recuperate.”

Anne whispered something.

“I am corrected”, said Bianca. “We have a second med student incoming. Our chief of medicine pulled some strings.”

Dove mumbled something through the tube.

Anne’s nose wrinkled in confusion and she turned to Bianca. Bianca, used to deciphering patients speaking through masks and tubes, simply nodded to Dove and replied.

“Yeah, you won’t like who it is,” said Bianca. “But Dr. Doctorow has assured us she has saved many lives during the incident. Including yours.”

Dove mumbled more things.

“Mind the language, young lady”, said Bianca. Something in her pocket beeped. “Oop, I have to tend to Amy now. I think the other nurses and I will ask for her off ER duty and into something less likely to break her mind. Are you good here?”

Dove nodded.

“Come on, Anne.” said Bianca.

Anne waved goodbye to Dove as she left. Dove weakly raised her hand back.

Dove turned to Bella. Bella was in a similar predicament, with a full-arm cast and a shirt entirely made of bandages covering her torso. Her eyes remained closed, with large bags of sleeplessness around them.

She could speak, at least. Unlike Dove, people expected her, as a supposed mortal human, to spend up to a few months recuperating from the injuries received in the course of duty. She need have to spend at least a few weeks as if Dove would, in any case.

Dove mumbled questions at Bella.

Bella smiled. “Yeah, I plan on having a ‘sudden’ improvement in condition a week or two after you do. I can’t wait to get back to work. Until then, wow, this is really itchy!”

She tried to scratch something and bit back tears, as her free arm seemed to disagree, strenuously, with any kind of movement.

“Well, this sucks”, she said. “But at least we saved Connor Rakha, right?”

By uncanny coincidence, Dr. Leucine S. Naturae and Connor Rakha stepped in that moment to visit the both of them. Connor wore a standard patient gown, with a horizontal set of wicked stitches spanning the breadth of his neck.

Dove mumbled at her sister.

Leucine said, “Trip was great! Learned a lot, I liked the seminar itself, and there were some fine pharma sales rep ladies everywhere! Less great, finding out that Locus waited until I left to make a move on the hospital. She will be spending a while in there until she breaks out like always, but I imagine she’ll be much more hesitant to visit us in the future. Chronny here is doing great too. Big chunks of the campus are under investigation and closed off to the police, I’m surprised they didn’t just take the entire place over. I guess Wolcrasi is too important for that?”

“How are the others who were with us doing?” said Bella.

Leucine stopped for a moment to recall. “So Chihiroe wrote up an after-action report, so I am completely apprised. I think we’ll take it easy with Amy for a while, she lost her mind for a moment there, and still isn’t 100%. Can’t wait for the psychiatric department to open up. Bianco and Christina will make a full recovery, Christina lost an arm, but she’s a robot. Percy and Vivi somehow avoided the worst of it; they hardly need any treatment. Peace said she met Ghysar of the Board and he offered to hire her for something and she said no.”

Bella coughed in surprise. “How about Grace? We left him in really rough shape.”

Leucine said, “Oh yes, Grace is okay, his eyes and knees, uh, wink wink, healed up real nice.”

“You don’t have to actually say ‘wink wink’ ”, said Chronicler, with a sigh.

“Yes, I do. Now, I brought you here for a reason.”

“Thank you for saving my life, Miss Taube. Dr. Luna.” Said Chronicler gravely, with a deep bow.

Dove mumbled something that sounded like “you’re welcome”, and then mumbled a question.

Leucine said, “Oh yeah, the gercranium is magic. It turns into people’s heads if you press it against their necks. Great for pranks, but it’s a bitch to grow like most magical plants are. Take a look!”

She forcibly spun Connor around and lifted up some of the hairs on the back of his head, revealing them as small petals of the same pink color as the rest of his hair.

“It’ll be a while until it fully adapts to his body or the other way around, I forget, but he’ll be fine!” she said with a beam.

Connor brushed her hand away and stormed off.

“He’s not much of a talker.” Said Leucine. “I think you mentioned he’s family, Bella?”

“Eh, loosely.” Said Bella. “What ever happened to Rhiza and Selkie and Wende and all those people we fought?”

Leucine read something on her phone. “Wende is still on the loose, I suspect she just stayed down because she decided this wasn’t worth it. The mercenaries are all in custody. Rhiza is recovering from the ass kicking she took, and she has been a lot more cooperative with the hospital pharmacy ever since you literally kicked her head off? Wow, did you really?”

Bella nodded.

“Nice” said Leucine. “Um, let’s see, oh, uh Selkie… uh, she starts as a med student at the top of next month. She somehow managed to dodge the police for long enough to cut a deal with our Chief of Medicine.”

Dove coughed in surprise. She yelled into her mask.

Leucine said, “Yeah, but she’s useful and she did save your butts and make this all possible. Willis and the board seized on her immediately and had strings pulled to get her out of trial. No charges pressed and, uh, full ride paid, damn, I bet she’s got some serious magic mojo to get snatched up like that.”

Bella nodded in confirmation. With the limited motion in her free arm, she motioned to a bandage on her thigh. “Selkie patched this gunshot up and it didn’t break at all during this entire thing. It’s crazy; I must have bled everywhere, except for here. It does help that she saved my life she had the chance, and gave us a chance to leave. Or she did until Dove messed her up.”

Leucine laughed. “Oh man, that’s quite a sight. I wish I were there. Dove, I hope you got over your teddy bear at last. Or not.” She added the last sentence after noticing Dove glare at her.

“In any case,” said Leucine, with a wink, “We’ll have our chance to make her stay at Wolcrasi less than pleasant. At least until you feel like you can forgive her.”

Dove made a complex facial expression, obscured by her mask. She mumbled again.

Leucine said, “You did good, Dove. Actually, maybe better than I would have in your place, because I don’t do the whole guns and ammo thing. This kind of thing doesn’t happen often and I’m just glad you made it through in one piece. Also, thank you, Dr. Luna, for helping my little sister.”

Bella smiled. Then she winced in pain as she accidentally shifted her body and aggravated an unseen injury.

Leucine said, “Okay, I have a thing in 5 minutes, and no, Dr. Luna, it doesn’t involve sleeping at my desk this time. You both need some rest, enjoy it! Ta!”

She closed the curtains on the ward and left.

Dove reached for her teddy bear beside her. It regarded her with its usual harmless, blank stare. She ran her fingers over its damaged, frayed body. She smiled. She got this far without it. Maybe things would be better without it after all. She closed her eyes.

She opened them again. She couldn’t take it. She pulled the teddy bear closer to her. Dove turned her head to look at Bella. Bella had already fallen asleep.

Dove closed her eyes and settled in for a sleep, her arms around her beaten-up teddy bear. She smiled as she whispered, “I did good today.”