My hand was in my pocket, holding one of my masks tightly. I needed to ground myself before I snapped.

And of course, I couldn’t help but steal glances at Faye and the other man. The pain had faded by that point, but the smell of the curse was burnt into my memory. It wasn’t even a real week ago I was debilitated by something similar.

It was honestly scary.

“So what is your connection to Faye?” Dr. Yancy asked the air, and both I and the Doc hesitated.

“She can tell you herself.” I decided to answer. I knew that she kept her involvement with us secret from her other life. She had expressly said that whatever family she had was unaware of her use of magic. They thought she couldn’t cast even the simplest of spells.

It’s why she wears a full-body costume when out and about as Choir, or at least had a way to hide her identity.

All we knew about Dr. Yancy was when she complained about having to work a lot… and what we were learning about him now. I doubt we could keep the full truth from him for long, but it would probably be best if it came from her…

When she’s better.

I couldn’t watch as the Doc slowly cajoled the villainess to take the shot he had tossed together. The memory of having something similar course through my veins was still haunting me.

And the way Faye was taking it didn’t look all that better. I could tell from where I was she was trying to purge it out of her system herself. She actually had a chance to do it as well, her magic practically specializing in it, but it was an obvious struggle.

Eventually, I couldn’t stand to watch, and with Dr. Yancy here asking anything he could, I headed upstairs.

As soon as I was halfway up the flight I could hear Erik and Reed in a heated discussion.

“Michael’s not picking up either.” That was the first thing I heard Erik say. Reed let out an expletive to the news. “I don’t like this.”

“What’s going on?” I ask as soon as I land on the floor, seeing the two villains in the kitchen. Reed was steadily pacing around the table as Erik was zoned out. Probably looking at his internal computer.

“We’ve got literally everyone on their way.” Erik droned with his version of a sigh, “Except Rose.”

“And Michael,” Reed interjected.

“And Michael as well. But he can’t do the kind of healing we need.” If Erik could scowl, he probably would have.

“But we got Sable and Casper on their way.” Reed tried to say with a bit of enthusiasm.

“Yeah, but they can’t undo what has happened to Faye’s hand.” Erik couldn’t look at Reed, he barely acknowledged me when I took a seat next to him. “Sure they can help with purging the curse… fuck… but that still leaves Faye injured. And she can’t heal herself like Archer can.”

I stiffened up a bit when he said that, hoping that they didn’t remember exactly what the Doc said earlier.

“Are we really gonna try to have Archer try and heal her?” Reed said with a bit of concern on his face, he then turned to me. “No offense but… can you?”

“Dude, I can barely heal myself, and that’s with my broken body…” I tried to not let him down too much by my tone, “We’ll just have to hope we can do something.”

Reed stopped walking for just a moment took a breath and continued with confidence. “Okay, so we’ll just have to wait then. Rose has done trickier, we need to just do our best… Also, why do you have stripes?”

The sudden change caused a bit of whiplash as he turned to me. Erik looked confused for a moment before he grabbed my arm and brought it up…

I had tiger stripes on my arm, going all the way up to my shoulders. I quickly pulled my hand out of my pocket and watched as they faded. My fur returned to normal as soon as I let go of the tiger mask.

I was mid-transformation.

“You were losing control.” Erik said with a small laugh, “Weren't you?”

“Uhhh.” I could feel my face heating up from embarrassment, and I immediately started to stutter. “Um, uh, you see…”

Suddenly, I could hear one of the ‘porters going off and I immediately stood up and started to head downstairs again. Reed quickly followed, leaving Erik to begrudgingly get up and trail behind.

It turns out that I was distracted enough to not hear the other three times they went off. Sable was just exiting hers while Casper and Taylor were brainstorming how to actually use his magic to heal something like this. Lucy was talking to Faye. Who in turn was still fading in and out.

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Everyone was ignoring Dr. Yancy and the Doc as they argued about what to actually do with the man Dr. Yancy had brought along.

“I don’t care if you believe you can ‘magically’ heal him. Relying on your powers will not be conducive to proper healing. You have to apply actual medicine to the process or else we will get nowhere with him.”

“And you sound woefully uninformed about the kind of power at our beck and call. We can clearly see here that he has been poisoned by something beyond his control. All we need to do is properly purge his power matrix and we'll be all set.”

“And how do you purpose we do that? I understand that you have the machinery to detect this phenomenon, but actually having the know-how to not permanently injure or even kill him. That is not something you’ve demonstrated to me. Now that I know what the problem is, I can take him to someone who knows how to deal with this.”

“You do not know anyone who can. This is a threat greater than a normal mortal can really wrap their mind about. But action needs to be taken now, and by someone who can actually control the situation.”

“Hey, ladies! Stop fighting.” Erik jabbed as we passed the ‘smart’ people on the way to the others. That one earned some glares.

I ignored that conversation and headed straight to Faye and the others. “How is she holding up?”

“Bareilly.” Faye quietly snarked. “I think I got all of the curse out though…”

Suddenly, there was an exasperated sight to my left. Sable was inspecting Faye’s hand while preparing an empowerment spell of some kind.

“I don’t think I can do anything.” Sable said with a grimace, “I can try and charge her energy up but…”

“I’ve never done well with those.” Faye ended her sentence. “Ugh.”

I froze when I saw the state of Faye’s arm. She had it raised up in the air for everyone to inspect. It was practically mutilated, her wrist was bent at an odd angle, and most of her skin was blackened in an almost burnt kind of way.

Sable shook her head as she let the spell go. “I think the only one who can do anything is Rose at this point.”

Or me…

“Maybe we try to find another healer? Like a super or someone?” Faye said quietly, “I think I know someone… if they're not in jail.”

Or we could spend a few hours at my sanctum…

“Do you think we can get them on such quick notice?” Erik asked.

“No…” Faye cringed, “Not really.”

“Just use Archer’s thing!” the Doc yelled, “Things are already hectic enough, if we can’t get Rose here we don’t need to bring in anyone else.”

“What?” I could almost hear the exclamation from everyone. But I remained silent as everyone looked at me.

I can’t.

I can’t let them near it.

I can’t let anyone near anything in my sanctum, I've already had to reveal enough. I don’t need anyone seeing anything they shouldn’t.

Then I saw Faye’s hand again. The piercing feeling was still running hot through my mind. The healing pad was the only reason I was even remotely okay after the miasma wrecked me and my bodies…

With a defeated sigh I took a few steps away and focused some mana through the bracelet on my right arm. And with my left hand, I snapped, making a ball of light appear.

I tossed it against the wall and watched as a portal to my home appeared. I then silently directed everyone with a nod to head on though.

“Archer?” Reed said, “What’s going on.”

I couldn’t look as I pointed for someone to help Faye. Eventually, Casper caved and helped the villainess to her feet and guided her through the portal. Everyone else slowly followed as I braced myself for what was going to happen next.

Well…

I was about to step through myself when I heard the Doc.

“Give us a minute, I’ll have this sorted out and be right back. Ow-” He had hit his nose on something as he tried to step through the portal.

“You Can Stay Right Here…” My voice growled as I glared at him, and it didn’t stop as I let go of the space in front of him and closed the portal in his face.

“What in the Hells what that?” Taylor’s words were like a yell in my ears.

“So that’s why you use the false fire.” Erik droned, “Also… called it.”

I straightened up and ripped my hand away from my pocket, my fingers now having claws.

I was the tiger. Somehow, I had swapped the masks without thinking.

“Um… Umm…” I started to stammer, “Here.”

I quickly moved to grab Faye. As in I just scooped her up in a bridal carry right out from under Casper. She let out a small yelp and Casper said an indignant “hey” as I moved towards my ‘couch’.

I slowly set her down into the mass of blankets and pillows and felt the ambient magic surrounding the healing pad kick in. Faye breathed in sharply and lifted her bad hand to her face. Nothing was happening visually but she could feel the effects.

“Alright there mister fluffy butt,” Sable said with far more than a bit of annoyance. “Explanation. NOW.”

I shrunk in on myself and had a million thoughts running through my head. Then I sighed. “So a while back, I stole a healing pad.”

“A WHAT!” Erik’s volume suddenly turned up. “Those things are life savers! And you’ve had one all this time!”

“Yeah…” I rubbed the back of my neck.

“How do you power it?” Sable tilted her head, “Don’t these things require a ton of mana to run at all?”

“We’re right above one the ley lines that go to the Doc's nexus.” I shrugged, “It seems to be more than enough for what I need it for.”

“And you’ve kept this from us this entire time?” Erik said accusingly, “We need to move this to the lab.”

“NO!” I panicked. I didn’t know why, but I did. My breathing got harder and my hand went into the pocket, instinctively grabbing one of my masks.

“And why?” Erik took a step closer.

“Oh, gods.” Sable quietly said, “Archer? Is it really that bad?”

I grimaced a bit, as words that were not really mine came from my mouth. “Sometimes… Every once in a while I lose it in my sleep and… I’ve had gills for a while… Or my diaphragm hadn't been working for a whale… Or I wasn’t filtering my blood right for a while… Sometimes I wake up and that’s the only reason I’m still okay.”

The room was silent, no one except Erik was really looking at me. The cyborg was conflicted as if there was something important he wanted to say that was just undercut.

“You should wash these more often.” Faye’s voice suddenly cut through the tension, “It smells like a wet dog.”

Erik face-palmed, “Oh please no.”