Bianca was livid. It took all her willpower to not gather the various department heads and storm L3, but she had invoked blue ring protocol for a reason. Much like it’s namesake, blue ring protocol meant that the situation was slippery, multi limb-ed and potentially fatal to touch. A knock on her door took priority over stewing in anger so with a sigh she told whoever was outside to enter.

“Bagged the doc without a hitch Ma’am.” Benaiah said with a brief but crisp salute.

“It’s a good thing she isn’t a bag seat driver.” Jenny said, saluting with the wrong arm and getting a swift cuff to the back of the head for her trouble.

“Good work, I need you take your support teams and start scrubbing the footage from the GM’s, the Cerberus, and the Hydras. Esperanza has already been filled in and is waiting on you before she pulls the cores.”

“Yes Ma’am.” They said in unison before hustling out and leaving Nadia alone in the room with Bianca.

As soon as they had the slightest illusion of privacy they embraced each other, Various business and circumstances had aligned to keep the good friends apart and they were glad to see each other even under such unfortunate circumstances.

“Ah fuck, your arms are frigid.” Bianca griped.

“I came prepped for surgery so I’m wearing my specialized prostethetics.” Nadia replied.

“The synthetic skin looks perfect to the naked eye, remind me to get the manufacturers name before you leave.”

“Of course, not many people are skilled enough to have their work stand up to such a wide range of temperatures.”

Lets walk and ‘talk’, Nadia.” Bianca said, using air quotes with the word talk.

“We set up a prefab med bay in what used to be a servants communal bath.” Bianca sent as they went down a hallway lined with what looked like Horses heads mounted and stuffed along the wall almost touching the high ceiling. “Given the fact that we were attacked a few hours ago by the Cult of Echidna I thought it best for this to be done deeper within the palace.”

“Of course, I’ve worked in harsher conditions. What’s his status as far as you know?”

“Coffin reads as stable and he has a broken arm. We wont know what else is wrong until we open the coffin.”

“And how’s the other matter, the mole hunt?” Naomi sent.

“Lumi was contacted, she’s checking out an odd lead.”

They went down hallways and a myriad flight of stairs, various opulent indulgences on display. Statues of previous Queens of the realm, Paintings of favored paramours and consorts. Each Patrol they passed seemed shocked to see Bianca with only one other person with her and offered to escort her to her destination. She rebuffed them all of course, a gleam in her eye that some would interpret as malicious. Fitting for the woman known professionally as The Ice Queen, Nadia thought to herself.

She couldn’t help but worry about her patient. Elijah was always a sweet boy, eager to please others. It seemed all the men of the Winter line were, she remembered his father and grand father were much the same in private. This was a hard life at the best of times and she knew with his more esoteric skills that living a quiet life would need a truly massive of amount of work to maintain. Of course its not like someone who takes up arms for the family business should expect a quiet life but people were often contradictory.

Finally they had arrived at the makeshift med bay, the modern walls and door sealed with a keypad looking surreally out of place in between the large communal tubs lined with copper and gold. The swirls of green and blue along the walls were upon closer inspection various cuts of malachite, blue beryl and sapphires depicting various scenes of couples in love, astounding in the fact that it seemed to depict servants and peasants rather than warlords, kings, and queens.

Nadia was startled out of her reverie by a guard addressing her and Bianca.

“I thought I heard singing.” He said snapping off a salute.

“I was never a fan of Powerline.” Bianca replied.

“Then I guess we don’t eye to eye.” He replied with a smile before gathering the rest of his fireteam and exiting into the hallway they had just come through.

“I hate you. You and your terrible challenge phrases.” Nadia said while watching Bianca fiddle with the keypad.

“No you don’t.”-“You love it, we should be alone now.” Bianca both said and sent simultaneously.

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

The hand off had gone smoothly and Lumi hurried to L3, the audience chamber beneath the gorgeous and ludicrous throne room. The door was engraved with the face of a snarling hyena and left slightly ajar, red light spilling out of the interior. Lumi once more flared her power and felt an icy finger trailing down her spine followed by a brief sense of vertigo. The message of her danger sense was muddled, a clear image would have been simple to interpret but this? Something she wouldn’t like was probably in the room and while the danger wasn’t exactly aimed at her, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t dangerous to her.

She drew her knife and pistol and cautiously entered the audience chamber. The room’s red glow was irritating and set her teeth on edge, to her left frescoes depicted various petitioners in poses of torment and agony, to the right the righteous sat judging them unflinching. The lion, hyena, and serpent of the Royal Family’s crest was carved and inlaid with gold and damascus steel. The entire chamber was designed to unnerve those already weary from travel, here to petition their rulers.

Descending from the staircase was a woman, easily 2 meters tall. She wore the standard Solstice Security Solutions uniform emblazoned with a patch depicting a triple S backed by a snowflake, her long black hair tied back with a pale blue bandanna. She had no firearm that Lumi could see, seemingly favoring an absurd set of gauntlets on her hands. She was sure that she had a similar look of surprise on her face as the woman was easily recognizable. Coming down the stairs towards Lumi was none other than Penelope Evert, one of SSS’ pilots.

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

The light was almost blinding and as he moved to sit up Elijah bumped his head. That’s too many, Elijah thought.

“Did I score Heaven or Hell? Not like it matters, either one beats out just nothing I guess.” He muttered to himself.

As his eyes adjusted he realized that the bright light was in fact a screen uncomfortably close to his face. A text message scrolled along it that read “Hey there Hero! Thanks for the save, your mom says just lay there till we sort this all out.” He blinked dumbly at it as it repeated. Sort what out, he thought. The Pain he was in made it hard to focus so he did his best to wedge himself into a corner, turn on as much of his side as he could and settled in to wait.

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

Doctor Nadia Chase had never been to the palace before and pitied the fact that it was an emergency that brought her here. She would have to be sure to properly take in its splendor once the current crisis was resolved. She quickly changed into theatre blues and scrubbed in, her patient had been waiting long enough.

The room past the staging area was a sterile bright white and each peace of material and equipment was untouched by human hands. This was standard for all medical equipment that was rated purple. Standards had quickly been established after the Aura Bloom incident then refined further still after the Shima massacre. She sincerely hoped that Elijah’s power hadn’t broadened in scope to something more closely resembling traditional psychometry.

Back before the Glorious Era, before ESP was widely accepted as fact rather than flim flam Aura Bloom worked for her local police branch as a psychic. Her abilities allowed her to see the history of any person or item she touched and while her gift was wonderful and she used it responsibly her clear instructions for medical practices that treated her were scoffed at and promptly ignored. This was fine day to day, she had the means to be treated privately but unfortunately accidents occur.

No one alive today remembers quite how it happened, the stories all wildly different depending on who was telling it, but somehow Ms Bloom ended up in a hospital that was either unfamiliar with her medical requests or more likely dismissive of them. As the story goes her doctor was a veteran and a field medic, her nurse on his second strike and the bed was one rotated between floors but mostly used in the terminal ward. The situation was the perfect storm but if only she had died her loved ones would have mourned her and moved on.

What made her and her story infamous was that the amount of trauma and death in the room caused her powers to lash out showing every single moment of death and pain and sorrow and rage that had ever taken place there. The nurse, the doctor and the initial rush of staff that came to investigate all died screaming.

From that point on the government of which ever country this had happened in sheepishly admitted to being aware of legitimate psychics and a registration system and hospital practices and safety standards were put into place. It even worked, for a time.

Originally registration was a private affair and would likely have stayed as such but as is the case many times an individual had ruined that for everyone. A young man simply remembered as Shima-san had hidden his registration status and so the hospital he was taken to had no frame of reference for what would set him or his powers off. The resulting damage had taken out the hospital, a few city blocks, a stretch of highway, an arena and an orbital satellite. From that point the purple ID collars of today were mandatory for registered psychics in most cities.

If Elijah’s powers had evolved beyond their original scope it could be a potential disaster waiting to happen.

If Nadia still had her original hands they’d probably be shaking. She gave the signal to Bianca to open the coffin and approached it. Inside was Elijah looking miserable, though upon registering who it was that was looking down at him he smiled.

“Hey there Auntie N. I’m glad to see you, did anyone get the plate number of whatever hit me?” He asked.

“From what I hear you took care of that yourself.”

“I guess I did. How much trouble are we, or I guess am I in?”

“Could be worse. Secrets are currency in this family after all and we have plenty to spend and spread around.” She said as she carefully brought a tray with two scalpels on it towards him. One sealed in plastic, the other bare. “Before I can treat you we need to know if anything has changed, please touch the unwrapped scalpel with your power.”

“But It don’t exactly work that way?”

“Just humor me please, its purple stuff.”

“Purple stuff. Fuck. Okay I’ll try.” He swirled his power and reached out to touch the scalpel with his hand. He waited a beat but no warmth or message was forthcoming. “Nothing.”

“Good, one last check then I can safely get you fixed up handsome.” she bent her elbow in his direction. “Touch my elbow please.”

He did and was soon flooded with the usual warmth and message and told her as such.

“Lovely.” She smiled in relief, the worst case scenario hadn’t come to pass. Everything beyond this point should be smooth sailing.

The ordeal passed quickly, Elijah receiving various shots pokes and prods. The cast was unfortunate but preferable to being dead or lame and in short order he was snuck out and laying in a private bed in the proper med bay. The story for anyone who asked was that he had been found half buried in a sand dune after being flung out of the GM he’d been stupidly using as a sniper’s nest. Flimsy but plausible. He hoped everyone else was having a better night than he was.