There sure were a lot of tubes required to replace the function of a single organ. We had so many of those things too, but it seemed it was hard to get by without some of the more important ones.
As predicted, Shockfire was conscious. Conscious-ish, at least. He grimaced. “My powers really weren’t happy about that thing,” he said, referring to an already removed artificial liver. “I could have kept it in check while conscious, but that means a third of the day I’m fighting myself.” He shook his head. “There was some talk about getting some sort of super-immune suppressors, but that’s not something they could set up immediately.”
I frowned. I didn’t like any of this. And it was kind of my fault. No wait. It was the fault of whoever had the crappy security that let this guy escape in the first place. Doctor Patenaude had words to say about blaming oneself for things that they couldn’t control, and I was trying real hard to believe them. “I’ll rip out his liver and give it to you,” I said.
Shockfire laughed, and then groaned. “While I appreciate the gesture, chances are he wouldn’t match. And someone might raise some ethical issues.”
“What about regular organ donation?” Rasmus asked. “Surely that would work better?”
“Lists are pretty long,” Senan said. “And they can’t just openly prioritize supers. Or if they did, it would be heroes.”
Midnight was quiet, though I could feel his consternation. It seemed like something I should ask about later.
Nobody said much, but Rocker was the last to comment anything of note. “I don’t know about taking his liver. But we’ll definitely rip Deimos apart when we catch him.”
When we caught him. Yeah. The hunt was going to be on, once we caught wind of his location. I wondered if he still had protection from Scrying? That was something I should have looked into as soon as I caught wind of his re-emergence.
-----
“So what were you thinking?” I asked Midnight as I headed to the mostly-empty room with my Scrying ‘orb’. “I got the feeling it wasn’t something that would make Maks feel any better about his situation.”
Midnight nodded. “Yeah, the thing is… if he was Celmothian, we have the technology to grow a new liver just for him. But even with my… status… I doubt I could convince anyone to put in the massive effort to retune that stuff for humans.”
“Yeah, I guess that didn’t need to be said. Have you asked, though? Like, maybe it’s not that hard to focus it on different DNA.”
Midnight frowned. “I suppose I should.”
“Great. You use Sending while I deal with this.” He’d be able to watch the recordings anyway.
I made sure everything was ready- Calculator would hate it if I wasn’t recording when I spotted some critical information. Then I charged my mana for the spell, and swirling mists began to fill the huge cube in front of me.
I knew Handface well enough. That scar tied us together, along with his history of being a jerk who tried to kill me for no reason. I pulled on that thread, and soon got something like an image.
The problem with Scrying Handface had been that he had an annoying willpower, and he used to have Scrying anchors from Doctor Doomsday. We didn’t know if they were still working together.
Fortunately, I got the feeling he wasn’t around a scrying anchor. But as soon as he began to come into proper view, I could tell something was wrong. I could barely see him, let alone his surroundings. Then he glared at me, and I felt the spell tear apart.
Hmm. That wasn’t right. Willpower or whatever was one thing, but for the spell to not function right before he noticed it? Something was quite wrong. At least it made me feel better about not trying it before. Or it should have, but I couldn’t help but think that maybe I could have caught him off guard or something.
-----
Midnight got bad news back. Which was to say, the news we had both expected. Jet had looked into the possibility of making a non-Celmothian organ, and all of the equipment was finely tuned for them specifically. It had taken a massive project to deeply understand their own genome, and they didn’t have any real information on humans. While we could get them some DNA, even if they were willing there were other issues.
Like the organ cloning devices being cat sized. A human liver absolutely wouldn’t fit, and with such delicate devices simply making it bigger wasn’t going to cut it. So that was a dead end- not that we could have expected results in anything shorter than years.
We had to remind ourselves that Shockfire was going to live. He would eventually get a liver donated. The Brigade would take good care of him until then. But after months in bed, could he continue a career as a super? How long would it take to recover, if he could even catch back up?
No, it was unacceptable to just wait. And there was some chance his powers would reject organic tissue just as much as synthetic. “Uuuugh!” I let out my frustration verbally. It barely helped. Which did mean it helped just a little. “I hate situations that can’t be solved with magic.”
“Can’t it?” Midnight asked.
“Is there a single healing spell on our spell list?” I asked. “I mean the potential one, not what we have right now.”
“Well… yes?” Midnight tilted his head. “If you count all the life draining ones and the false life boosting things, it kinda combines into one thing. But that’s not what I meant. We know other people with magical healing. Paladins and… a druid. Can they do anything?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Uhh. Paladins can do a lot of things, but outside of patching people up to survive a combat they’re not great at healing. Druids, though…” My phone was in my hand in a few moments.
“Hello? Turlough?”
“How many points do you have?” I asked.
“I- what?” Ceira asked confused.
“How many points. From leveling up.”
“Oh, uh… a lot? I haven’t found a good reason to use them.”
“More than forty?”
“Yeah, actually. Should I… should I be spending those more? I really don’t know what spells I’m supposed to have.”
“Uh, maybe,” I said. “But I need you to do me a favor that will require spending a bunch of them.”
“I mean, sure,” Ceira said. “What spell do you need?”
“Regenerate.”
“One second,” Ceira replied. I could vaguely hear her talking to herself after she put down the phone. Then she spoke properly again. “Uh, wow. That’s pretty high level. That’s twenty-nine points.”
I didn’t like to pressure friends for favors. I preferred them to be happy to do them. But… this was important. “I did save your life, you know.”
“That’s not the issue. I’ll totally purchase the spell. I just uh… don’t know if I can cast it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. What level are you now?”
“17,” she said.
That was… actually not that bad. It was some levels lower than Midnight, but he’d been gaining experience for longer and was involved in pretty much every mercenary battle I’d been part of. I just got more experience for combat specifically, so I was quite a bit ahead of him still.
“So that means your fatigue point is like… 11?”
“And it’s a level 15 spell,” Ceira said. “So I can cast a little over two-thirds of it.”
I sighed. “That sucks. I don’t know if that will work.”
“Well, I can try, right?” Ceira said. “What do you need this for anyway? What does it actually do?”
“It heals old scars and regenerates lost limbs and damaged organs.”
“Oh,” Ceira said. “... This is a thing I really should have gotten eventually anyway. It really does that?”
“It should,” I said. “I haven’t met any high enough level druids, nor needed it before.”
“... Wait, did you lose an arm or something?” Ceira panicked.
“One of my companions,” I said. “His liver got destroyed by a villain. And his powers aren’t happy with artificial organs.”
Ceira sighed in relief. “Look, I’ll try to cast the spell. But…”
“No guarantees it will work, I get it,” I said. “Thanks for being willing to try.”
-----
It didn’t take too long to get authorized to pick up Ceira and bring her to the Brigade. After all, Captain Senan was familiar with her already. The longer part was arranging things so that she wasn’t noticed by outsiders. She might already be in danger because of her association with me, but it was better not to draw attention. There were already plenty of armored vehicles moving in and out of brigade HQ throughout the day, so one more wouldn’t change anything for those watching.
The doctors wanted to reduce the number of people crowding into Shockfire’s room, but as the resident expert on magic I needed to be there, Midnight didn’t really take up space, and Ceira obviously was the most important part. Doctor Martinez was there to check the internal effects.
I was filled with anticipation as Ceira attempted to cast Regenerate. It took just a couple seconds for her to gather the mana, but as she pushed to her limits and attempted to make something happen, she passed out. That was expected, of course, and I was there to cast her. But…
“I didn’t feel any magic flow out of her,” I shook my head. “The spell wasn’t complete.”
Everyone just waited in silence for Ceira to wake. It was similar with pushing the fatigue limit and mana exhaustion, unpleasant but ultimately short term consequences. Ceira’s eyes fluttered open. “How did it go?”
I shook my head. “The spell didn’t seem to be completed. I would suggest trying a reduced version. Maybe ten points?”
“Right,” Ceira nodded, “I’ll do it.” This time she remained conscious, but that just meant we could all feel the spell fizzle out as it flowed into Shockfire. “Ugh. It’s not enough…” she said. “Maybe if I bought upgrades? I could get three…”
“No, the spell wouldn’t be complete,” I cautioned. “Maybe if it were closer, but… I don’t think this will do it. Though we can see what Doctor Martinez says.”
Watching the man use his powers didn’t look like much, though I could feel a sort of flat sheet of power sliding back and forth, scanning layers of Shockfire’s body. Eventually, Doctor Martinez shook his head. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have begun any sort of regenerative process. How long is it supposed to take?”
“Uh… a few minutes?” I said. “Something like that. It should be obvious.”
“Then I can conclusively say it didn’t take.”
“... Sorry,” Ceira hung her head.
“It’s alright,” I said. “You’re not the first solution that has failed. But I have to ask… what if your companions were here? Could you share the spellcasting burden with them?”
Ceira shook her head. “No. You talked about that, but I don’t get the feeling they’ll ever be able to do that. They’re not familiars, and especially not a unique one like Midnight.”
What else could we do? “What if I shared the load with you?” I was just spitballing, but… “Ugh, we can’t test that here, though. Split casting with Midnight with our innate coordination was already problematic enough. Would you be willing to try something like that… elsewhere?”
“Absolutely,” Ceira said. “How could I not try?”
Outside the room, I was glad I hadn’t invited the others. Only Captain Senan was there, and he alone was already doing his best to hide his disappointment. Maybe I’d been providing miraculous solutions too often.
“We’ll figure something out,” he said, half to me, and half towards our companion in the room. “I promise.”
Shockfire was spending a lot of time sleeping- understandably, given the strain on his body and the medicine they had to pump into him to keep him stable.
Now then, we only had a question about where we should experiment. A park would be good for Ceira, but it was rather public. Then again, if Handface could watch our every movement he would have probably taken me out at home a long time ago.