THE SQUAD GETS BUFFED: POST-PLOT HEALING LOG

[wildermods]

THE SQUAD GETS BUFFED: POST-PLOT HEALING LOG
OOC POST
Refuge can be found in the forest beyond Weathertop. No matter what path they all take, everyone somehow finds their way to the ruins of the long-lost mystical city of...

Philadelphia?

Wait, what?

The forest gives way to ruins that are clearly a chunk of Center City from the US city of Philadelphia. The ruins are very strange due to their placement: the trees of the forest are large and ancient but not large enough to hide the chunk of city, yet here it is, cradled in a secret place in the forest's center even though it wasn't visible from a distance.

Many of the buildings are overgrown with massive vines that have threaded in and around their structures. Most of the streets are broken up, with plants growing between cracks of asphalt. A long stretch of Market Street is now one long grass-filled path.

The sky seems caught in a strange eternal twilight, forever early evening, as if the city has decided it will be rush hour until the end of time. There's always enough light to move around in but the sun never sets or rises or any higher. The crescent moon is always just slightly visible in the sky above, never shifting its place. An effect that looks like a green aurora can always be seen in the sky ahead. This is the only part of the sky that moves, shifting like a normal aurora. Sometimes it crackles slightly and briefly changes blue or red.

Something calls out to them, urging them to the Parkway Central Branch of the Philly Free Library. Stragglers may find the quest magic teleporting them here after the majority arrives. Here, they'll be able to help each other out, heal each other and offer first aid or any food/water that was salvaged, and comfort each other after what happened.

---

NOTES
✦ Setup: Please only do top-levels either with characters that require some kind of care, first aid/conventional medical treatment, healing, food/water, psychological comfort OR with characters that are capable of offering it. All other characters can tag around and meet/visit people.

✦ General open logs: For general open logs, do not use this log, instead do your own open posts set in the area. This log is purely to provide a centralized place for healing since so many characters were injured or made ill.

✦ Background Info: Please see the related camp OOC post for any background info about the library and area.

Comments

Trance - offering healing

[easy_as_cake]

[In the confusion of arriving... here... wherever here is, she's gotten separated from Harper for the time being. But that's okay, because there's plenty to keep her busy. As Andromeda's chief (and only) medical officer, she can't just stand by and let people who are injured suffer. Something in her is saying she can do more, even without Rommie's usual assistance.

To everyone else, there's a strange, purple girl that hasn't been with their group before wandering around, looking for anyone who appears upset or hurt. A prehensile, pointed tail curls behind her, and between the multicolored hair ornaments and the comfortable-but-very-impractical jumpsuit she's wearing, she's obviously Not From Around Here.

As soon as she sees someone looking less than okay, she's quick to hurry up to them.]

Are you okay? Let me help.

[awfulcer]

[Dixon is just about the very definition of looking less than okay. In his bedraggled state, for once the nasty burn scars on his face aren't the first thing one would notice about him; that would be the spills of blood down the back of his once-white t-shirt and the attendant smears all over the rest of him. He's got specklings of blisters and burns all over his hands and arms, and overdoing the magic has left him with the vacant, bleary, and highly-recognizable stare of the extremely hungover.

In spite of all this, he has somehow managed to get to the Wawa, ransack behind the counter, and come up with one (1) pack of cigarettes, and as far as he's concerned that's peace on Earth, good will toward men, praise Jesus it's even menthols. He's sprawled on the steps to the library, watching the orange tip of his cigarette in the dusk, one earbud of his faithful ipod in playing Verdi.

Purposefully not thinking. If he thinks - if he even skims the surface of thinking - all he can think about is the rest of the group, the kids especially, bloodied and catatonic and hexed, and him unable to do anything about it. Bart tortured and Shuichi and Sothe rendered despairing to the point of unconsciousness, and him unable to do anything about it. Them suffering now, being tended to be the people who can do something about it, and maybe dying, and him unable to do anything about it. And when he starts thinking about that he starts crying, so he's just going to not.

He considers that he might be dying, that that's a lot of blood and he doesn't know what kind of vital organs or nerves or arteries could get hit by a knife to the mid-back, but that it hurts like all hell and cold seems to radiate from it. But if he's going to die, fuck it, he's going to do it with a smoke and an evening sky and La Triviata, and not a damn thing on his mind.]

Huh?

[His reaction to her is sluggish, disengaged - the reaction of someone in some kind of shock. He doesn't know her. That doesn't surprise him; people have been popping up a lot lately, more slowly than before but still a lot.

She looks like the skyline, all twilight-toned. Pretty, but not in a way that he'd be attracted to her, just visually very pretty with that lovely color. He raises his eyebrows at the tail but doesn't say anything about it.]

Y'all done helping the kids?

[easy_as_cake]

[She hesitates just the tiniest moment, because that is a lot of blood, like Dylan on the bridge a lot of blood, but she fixed him, and something in her says she can help here, too. She hopes.

But hope is what they have, right? It's all anybody ever has, really: hope and maybe determination if they're lucky. So she crouches down in front of him, balancing on her toes, arms crossed on top of her knees. The look she recognizes from Harper lately. Her Harper, anyway, if not the one here. She doesn't know enough about the one here yet for there to be a lately. The burns are obvious, too. The blood... she'll figure out.

The cigarette gets a small, unhappy grimace, just a flash of an expression and gone. One thing at a time. For now, she meets his eyes, as well as she can considering, and smiles.]

I haven't seen the kids yet, but that doesn't mean I can't help you, too.

[Her expression is soft and careful, not as sure of itself as her words.]

I'm Trance.

[awfulcer]

You should start with them.

[It's not that he wants to just be left to die, but he's apathetic. The encounter with the Dementors and the dread powers of the Nazgul carved out his survival instinct and any joie de vivre that he managed to hold onto before the last six weeks crashed down on top of him. It's carved out just about everything except for detachment.

He actually wants her to stay, if only for the company. Talking to someone keeps him from thinking too much, and that's a good place to be, too tired and distracted to think, and she seems nice. Nice and optimistic.

Dixon's so desperate for kindness, and raw, and the gentleness in her voice makes his eyes well up.

He tries to sit up straight a bit, but then feels woozy and sick and slumps back down. He takes a drag of his cigarette; it quells the nausea some. He's shivering and his face is pale; the agonizing cold seems to radiate across his spine and up his shoulderblade, aggravating where he dislocated it a few years back and then again a week ago.]

Dixon. Hi. [He holds out the earbud he's not using to her. Some tinny opera drifts out of the speaker.] You can listen too if you want.

[easy_as_cake]

[Once upon a time, she'd have thought saving someone against their will was a terrible idea. Take away a person's choices and what do you have but the iron control of the Abyss? It was the opposite of everything she'd ever wanted or been made to be.

But she's come a long way from being that entity. Choice is good, and necessary, and important, but she is not losing anyone to their bad choices ever again, not if she can help it. Not even a strange human she's only just met. A strange human she's only just met who looks quite a bit like he's never had someone care about him before, and she won't have that, either.

She doesn't know what he's offering her, except that she can hear the music coming from it. Spend long enough with Beka Valentine and anyone would learn to appreciate the togetherness music can bring. Her smile grows as she reaches to take it from him.]

Hi, Dixon. I'd like that. Thank you. And sorry.

[Except instead of taking the tiny bit of plastic, she takes his hand. At first, nothing happens. She's not used to this power yet, but she knows how to reach for something incorporeal, to change reality for no reason except that she likes it better the new way, and it only takes a few moments where her smile falls into a frown of concentration before a soft light begins to flicker around her fingertips.

Slowly it grows to cover their hands before almost sinking into Dixon's skin. It's warm and comforting, like sitting in a sunbeam on a lazy afternoon. It moves through him, urging new skin to grow where he's been burned, the wounds aging to shiny, day-old scars. It clears his mind, chasing away any lingering hangover effects.

And then it curls through his shoulders and down his back and touches the wound there.

Trance drops his hand with a gasp.]

[awfulcer]

[He's so dazed that when she surprises him by taking his hands instead of the earbud, he doesn't pull back. He just watches her, too dim and tired to anticipate or even spend time wondering about what she's going to do as she focuses. He doesn't really mind, or rather, doesn't really care. And the more the knifewound throbs the less and less he cares about what's happening to him or what she's doing to him.

The healing spell falls over him and he closes his eyes, relaxes into it without even thinking, almost thinks he could fall asleep. There's a strange sensation - healing doesn't hurt, but it feels like something as the blisters fill with plasma and scabs and then with fresh skin, healing in quick motion. His head goes clear, that queasy, vertiginous malaise and sensitivity parting to just lightheadedness and fatigue.

Then there's a pang that feels like getting stabbed all over again when the spell reaches the injury. It's as if his body fights the healing, like a rattlesnake striking back at the sweet feel. A pained cry stifles itself against the roof of his mouth and he grits his teeth.

As soon as she drops his hand it's back to the throbbing pain it was a moment before.]

What was that? [He looks vaguely alarmed, almost guilty to have hurt her, confused, grateful, shivering still.]

[easy_as_cake]

That was... Well, I was trying to help. [She sounds just as confused as he is, although with an extra large helping of guilt. She's not hurt, just startled, but she's pretty sure she did hurt him.] It was supposed to be, you know, healing? Like magic? It didn't do that before.

[She bites down on her lip, trying to think of a reason the power would react like that. Admittedly, she's not exactly an expert in it yet, but it really hadn't done anything like that the first time. And he does look better! So it has to have worked at least a little bit. So then what...

Could it be something beyond what she can heal? But why would that hurt him? Why wouldn't it just pretend whatever it was wasn't there, like with Harper's... right. Like that.]

Can I maybe take a look at your back? I won't try the spell again. Promise.

shuichi saihara | black breath'd | open

[shyhara]

[Shuichi is definitely Not Okay. Unfortunately, in this case that just mostly means miserable and quiet. And that's nothing strange or worrisome, right? Who wouldn't be miserable in this situation, trapped here with effectively just a bunch of strangers, after everything back at the school and everything in that encounter with the phantom monsters and the people in masks? And he's always been a quiet kid to begin with, anyway.

If he's looking kinda pale and a little shaky, well. That's a bit harder to notice for himself.

Thete is still a part of him that, more rationally, thinks he should probably get one of the "healers" to check him out, because abruptly fainting like he had out there definitely sounds like something that could be a sign of something negatively affecting one's health. But he feels alright enough, physically anyway. There's no point in wasting anyone's time on him. Besides, it's not like he really believes in the magic healing nonsense anyway.

He's just...tired, mostly. That's perfectly reasonable after the the chaotic fighting and escape they just endured. He doesn't want to get up to explore or maybe gather supplies or anything else useful, let alone bother anyone. But he doesn't want to let himself sleep, either, not after the awful dreams he'd had while briefly unconscious out on the battlefield. There are things he'd never wanted to see again, let alone so vividly and all one after the other like that. Sleep somehow sounds more exhausting than staying awake right now.

So he just kinda...hasn't moved. He'd dropped himself against a wall out of the way as soon as the group had deemed the library safe temporary shelter, pulled his legs up closer to his chest as if to make himself even smaller, and stared blankly out ahead. He might fall asleep if he rests his head on his knees or anything, so fuck that.]

[awfulcer]

[Guilt is Dixon's new lot in life. It has been since he got set on fire a few weeks before the Green, so he's starting to get refined in the skill of beating himself up. It's taken him about seven hours to get together the courage to go talk to Shuichi, to check in on him, to follow-up on his disastrous attempt to get5 Shuichi and Impulse off the battlefield.

He shuffles instead of walks up, trying not to aggravate the cursed wound on his back. It feels like an icepick, with freezing cold radiating up under his shoulderblade, exacerbating the old injury he got there when he drunkenly wrapped his car around a tree a few years ago. Trance told him the wound looked both bad and evil, that it already was necrotizing and blackened. He believes it.

He brings Shuichi a blanket from one of the packs people were carrying. He's pretty sure what happened to Shuichi is the same thing that happened to Sothe, and Sothe felt cold, so after a while of thinking what to say or do Dixon finally a logical conclusion.]

You okay? [Shuichi definitely does not look okay. He looks vacant and lost.

Dixon gingerly sits down next to him and puts the blanket in Shuichi's lap.]

[shyhara]

[He's so zoned out that he doesn't notice Dixon until the man is already beside him and dropping the blanket on him. Shuichi startles a little, blinking up at Dixon for a moment, before he collects himself and diverts his gaze back to his now-blanket-covered lap.]

'M fine...

[Maybe someone being worried about him should make him feel a little better. And this is Dixon of all people too, who hadn't seemd very interested or concerned with him when they first met, beyond the basic human decency of making sure he didn't die lost in the woods. People care. That should be nice.

But it just makes him feel vaguely nauseous, hyper-aware of how burdensome he must be. It's bad enough that he's in such a mood himself, surely no one else needs to be dragged down with him.

He fusses idly with the edge of the blanket in his lap. It's a thin bit of warmth but comforting all the same, and he'd like to wrap himself in it entirely. But he resists the urge, afraid that would look even more worrisome. He's not sick, so he shouldn't be giving anyone reason for concern.]

I'm fine, so...you don't have to waste your time worrying.

[awfulcer]

[Dixon doesn't get up and go anywhere; part of it's that he's still making sure Shuichi is okay (Shuichi's response is the least convincing Dixon's ever heard, and he used to bust pre-teens for skateboarding on public property, so that's saying a lot); part it's that now that he's sitting, he doesn't particularly want to stand for a few moments so he can steel himself against the pain that standing up with this stupid knifewound will cause.

The look he gives Shuichi is pure concern. He's concerned for Shuichi, and he's worried for himself, what he's going to do if his slow response to the danger and inability to protect the teenagers has had long-term consequences. He's worried about them and he's concerned that he, too, is on some kind of emotional chopping block, waiting for the hatchet of actual consequences to come down.]

That's what I been telling everyone about me all day. [He pulls out his pack of cigarettes but doesn't take one out. He's trying to stretch this one after the living hell that was the first week without nicotine. He just taps it against his palm in a meditative fidget.]

He got you pretty bad, though. You went down like a sack of potatoes. Glad you're conscience and stuff.

[shyhara]

Uh. "Conscious".

[Awesome, Shuichi. That's definitely how you get people to like you. By being a pedantic asshole correcting harmless mistakes. Good job.

Frowning, he curls in on himself a bit more, quickly trying to change the subject.]

Did you get hurt...?

[He didn't really register much after he got Nazgul-whammied, even once he was "conscience" again.]

[awfulcer]

That's what I said. [It's not what Dixon said, and he knows it, and it stings, but the defensive combativeness that usually radiates off him has been seriously dampened by the encounter with the Dementors and the presence of a not-all-there teenager. Not that he's above returning fire at a teenager, but still.

He shakes his head.] Just stabbed. It's not a big deal, actually. [It feels like a big deal, but Dixon's about had it with people fretting over it and then not being able to do anything to fix it. It's not killing him, it's not going to stop hurting, and with these two facts as constants he doesn't care to talk about it any further.

He figures, by Shuichi's reaction, that the kid doesn't particularly want to discuss the particulars of his condition either. He doesn't want to up and leave the kid in what looks like a less than stellar state, but he's at a lack of other topics.]

Seen any good movies lately? [He pauses.] I mean, before this.

[outofresets]

[ It probably would have been more polite to announce himself, especially with how spaced out the other boy appeared to be, or to at least ask if he was okay with him sitting with him, but if forethought was a rarity for him under normal circumstances it was only worse when he was feeling nervous or guilty. And he was feeling a fair bit of both at the moment.

So instead of doing the polite thing he just flops down against the wall next to him. ]

Hey.

[ For a moment he doesn't say anything else, and doesn't really look at him, instead pulling the ratty looking messenger bag he was carrying with him, into his lap and fidgeting with it nervously. ]

You um...you doing alright?

[ It feels like a stupid question because he certainly didn't look alright. Though Imp didn't exactly know him, so maybe this was what he was like when he wasn't fighting for his life? But considering what had happened, he sort of doubted that. ]

[shyhara]

[Shuichi's usually an observant sort, but his thousand-yard stare doesn't seem to actually be taking in any information right now, because he visibly startles when Impulse suddenly drops to sit beside him. It takes a second to long for him to collect himself, flushing a little with embarrassment over his own dumb overreaction.]

Y-yeah. Fine.

[I mean. It's honestly not too far off from his standard, not-in-immediate-danger self. That's the tricky part. He feels...not fine -- he feels fucking awful, to be honest he could probably just continue sitting here until he died and that'd be okay with him -- but that doesn't mean something's wrong with him. Nothing that anyone can help him with, anyway. Short of shoving him in a shower and forcing him to eat something, but he can hardly expect anyone here to waste that much effort on him. He barely even knows them.

And he especially can't expect so much after some of them already had to drag him out of that mess back on the hill, too. He's hit with a surge of guilt and he frowns, staring at his knees because he sure as hell can't bring himself to look Impulse in the eye right now.]

I, uh...heard you were hurt.

[outofresets]

[ It seemed that neither of them was doing well at meet the other's eyes. To a passerby, it might have looked like they were each having their own separate heavy conversations with their kneecaps.

At the assurance he was doing fine, Bart nodded but wasn't sure if he really believed it. The conversation over the mirrors had made it sound like the people who had passed out because of those cloaked guys now had something that needed to be cured. Maybe Shuichi really wasn't as affected by it as much as some of the others that got hit with it, or maybe he was better at dealing with the symptoms. Or maybe he was just pulling the whole selfless, 'I'm fine' act that both he and his friends had been guilty of in the past.

Speaking of which- ]

Oh. Yeah, kinda. It's not a big deal, though. [ He shrugs, and at least this isn't a complete lie. The pain had only lasted as long as the spell had, and thanks to Dixon that hadn't been long. He didn't even feel any after effects. At least no physical ones. All things considered, he'd been lucky. Extremely lucky. ]

It was just some magic junk, and Dixon was able to stop it pretty quick. It was almost like he came out of nowhere just to punch that lady in the face. Or at least I think that's what he did.

[ It was a bit hard to tell exactly what had happened, honestly. He'd been out of it, to put it lightly, and had been actively trying not to think about the moment too hard. Both out of guilt and because the event had managed to drag up memories he'd only just gotten better at pushing down.

But from what he could piece together from the event, that seemed to be what happened.]

You sure you're all right, though? Some of the guys over the mirrors were talking about people who had fallen unconscious on the hill, and said something about it needing to be cured.

[ Fidgeting with his bag again, he opens it up, pulling out what looks like a very sweet smelling weed and holds it out to the other boy. ]

This stuff is supposed to help. I gave most of 'um to the people that actually know what to do with them, and they should hopefully be around soon enough, but I thought...I...that maybe-...[ That maybe the plant itself would help without being steeped, or applied, or given out by a king? Despite the fact that those had been the exact instructions? Now that he was trying to put it into words the idea just felt stupid. ] I don't know what I was thinking.

sothe (black breathed, open!)

[followingdawn]

[ There's an unconscious thirteen-year-old, wherever in the library Dixon and/or Revan wound up putting him.

Curled up in a ball, shivering, and clearly not having a pleasant nap. ]

Re: sothe (black breathed, open!)

[wherenoonegoes]

Having a description of athelas's scent makes tracking it down incredibly easy. It pays to have a best friend with an excellent sense of smell.

Hiccup lets the crushed plant's leaves fall into the boiling water, and an entirely different scent from the original sweet smell hits his nose. The smell of an isolated cove on a northern island wafts over him, and it's clear that the athelas is much more than it appears.

Hiccup brings the water over to Sothe, letting the steam drift over the boy.

"Sothe? Sothe, can you hear me? You need to wake up."

[followingdawn]

He can't hear him, at first.

But then the scent has a moment to sink in, and there's finally something other than a dark, lonely void going on in his head. It smells like the morning - that fresh, crisp air from the first light of dawn, before the world wakes up in earnest. But more than a certain time, it makes him think of a certain person -

You need to wake up.

"Mm..." His face twitches slightly. "...caiah?"

[wherenoonegoes]

[Hiccup breathes a sigh of relief and places the water to the side.]

Sorry, it's just me. How are you feeling?

[followingdawn]

[ He stays like that for a bit, lying in the same spot, but with his eyes finally open. Staring at the ceiling. ]

Kind of crappy. Where...are we?

[wherenoonegoes]

[Hiccup feels Sothe's forehead, checking his temperature. It doesn't feel particularly cold to the touch, so it seems the magically induced hypothermia has ended.]

In a library. Specifically in Philadelphia. Never heard of it myself, but apparently it's a city some of the others are familiar with. It's abandoned now, all covered in plantlife and ruins, but there's these massive towers of steel and glass outside.

Loken, morgul blade struck, open

[greyerrant]

[ Garviel lies in a corner of the Library, reading an old copy of Dune over and over, a makeshift binding on the morgul blade wound seemingly doing little to staunch the bleeding. He looks like he's going to need some serious help, and soon. But as he calmly pages through his already-read book, he seems content to wait for help, assuming there are others in more need of help. But day by day, the burly warrior grows more pale. ]

Re: Loken, morgul blade struck, open

[wherenoonegoes]

[Hiccup carries a bowl of hot water and boiled athelas over to Garviel. As Hiccup approaches, a scent that will hopefully remind the space marine of the places or people that feel most like home to him.]

I've got the athelas here. We're going to need to strip the binding, and add it as a poultice.

Re: Loken, morgul blade struck, open

[greyerrant]

Let's begin, then. [ The scent is a good one, and the marine relaxes slightly at the approach of the boy, giving him a smile to mask his agony. ]