tushanshu_logs | [OPEN] Eshai Memorial Hospital May catch-all

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[OPEN] Eshai Memorial Hospital May catch-all

Characters: Hospital staff, volunteers, patients, visitors, and everyone else!
Date: All of May
Location: Eshai Memorial Hospital, Metal Sector
Situation: General Hospital a la Turtle-back
Warnings/Rating: It’s a hospital, there will probably injuries/blood/etc at some point.
OOC Note: Everyone, feel free to add your own thread headers for whatever you might need!

There are still signs of the damage taken in the bombings, but repairs are taking place and are obviously not keeping the hospital from its usual busy schedule. Some of the work seems to be plumbing related: with the city water contaminated, they are trying to get a back-up system in place easier to keep purified, and sometimes some of the staff and volunteers can be found doing just that. Everyone needs sanitary water.

Some of the rooms have been reassigned uses until the repairs are finished, usually in favor of keeping intensive care as flexible as possible. First aid training still takes place in the classroom on the third floor, along with classroom-friendly aspects of field training.

Upon request, the list of active field medics will be provided by the front desk, along with who is currently on-call.
Active Field Medics:
Septimus
Raine Sage
Frank Zhang
Zelgadis Graywords
NPC kedan healers

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“How fortunate for you,” said Solomon, “and utterly useless for me, given that I’m the one who woke up broken-legged in a bathtub in a post-Blitz-era turtle-city.”

He wasn’t usually quite so sarcastic, but on this occasion he felt he had the right to be. He was seriously considering holding a grudge. He didn’t often hold grudges, because they made one short-sighted, but on occasion where Pleasant was concerned he made exceptions, and this was the lowest of the low even for Pleasant.

In fact, Solomon was debating closing his eyes and ignoring the skeleton into going away until Gene got back with a healer when Skulduggery’s own question made his eyes snap open properly. He managed not to sit up, but the sudden thrill of adrenaline didn’t do any good for the state of his leg, and he spent a few seconds holding very, very still until the pain had died down before speaking.

“Black armour?” he asked sharply, and then paused to catch his breath and speak more calmly. “There’s been a suit of black armour wandering around? Oh, how lovely.”

Just what he always wanted; to be thrown back into the most terrifying days of the war, as lived by shapeshifters on turtleback. Insanity was really starting to sound like a good alternative.

Oh.

Fuck.

Only ten years' worth of being forced to manage his emotions around Zhang kept Gene's face from betraying his severe distress about being asked this. How much did Skulduggery know? He quickly ran through his head about what he'd logically be expected to know about the armor himself, and for a half-second, the sarcastic thought ran through his head: Yeah, I know a bit about that armor and its occupant. One, he's living in my suite. Two, he's wearing my clothes. Three, his name's Gene Khan...

Skul's offhand comment about dreaming of the armor disturbed him more than he cared to admit as well. He'd never told anyone that he'd repeatedly dreamed of the armor that was his birthright when he was but a child. A coincidence. It had to be. Right?

"I'm afraid I can't tell you much," Gene said, doing his best to sound properly apologetic while managing his heart rate. "Some of the kedan said it was helping in the search and rescue. I never saw it." Because I was wearing it!

All of the above was very technically true.

Skulduggery nodded grimly. "Wandering around and murdering people, yes. Well, one person. Perhaps not even an important person, but a person nonetheless."

Even now, Skulduggery could hardly believe the scene he'd stumbled on happened at all. Either his control was slipping to a very dangerous degree, or... well, the black armour was a hell of a coincidence.

It didn't matter, as Gene turned out not to know anything about the armour or where it was. Skulduggery hadn't seriously expected him to. But if the armour wasn't Lord Vile's, then whoever was inside had an interesting idea of a moral compass. One murder, then hours of search-and-rescue? What if the murder, in that case, was justified? It was certainly the only thing that made even the slightest bit of sense.

A moment later, and Skulduggery shook his head. Wishful thinking. There was still only one set of black armour on the turtle that he knew of which fit the bill.

Something else more immediate occurred to him, however. He turned to Gene. "Some of the kedan? Have you been asking questions about it yourself?"

There was something exceedingly strange happening here. It was obvious that Skulduggery was assuming, or at least suspected, that the black armour was Lord Vile. Yet it wasn't Lord Vile's style to murder one person--only one person? Let alone to then attend to the city's residents. As if he cared. Lord Vile was not a creature who cared.

Given those facts, why would Skulduggery assume Lord Vile was involved in the first place? If he had known Vile was here beforehand, he wouldn't need to investigate. Yet he knew that Vile had changed his tactics, enough to suspect it was Vile to begin with. Neither of which made any sense when put together.

Solomon rubbed his eyes in lieu of shaking his head. His leg still beat wildly with pain, but at least now he was calmer and seated, and focussed on something else. Compartmentalisation was a wonderful thing.

"Murdering a single person and then lending aid to civilians is hardly Lord Vile's style," he pointed out. Pleasant wasn't usually the type to be so subjective he would miss that. What did he know, that made him overlook that very pertinent fact? "It's far more likely to be someone else. We're in another dimension. What are the odds a man in a black suit of armour, not matching Vile's usual methodology, would be Vile himself?"

Something about his own words sounded strange. Something about the man in the armour ...

Skulduggery, Solomon realised suddenly, hadn't been talking about seeing a man in a suit of armour. He'd just been asking about a suit of armour, divested from the man. How very ... curious.

If only his mind could work properly past this blasted injury. Solomon had the very intense feeling there was something very important that had just slipped him by. Then again, that could just be the fact he had been flung into another dimension to ride turtle-back. Things, right now, were extremely strange in general. Very strange, and he was starting to feel lightheaded, and that coupled with the seeping warmth against the padding of the kedan's splint did not bode particularly well.

"Far be it for me to interrupt this fascinating conversation," he murmured, resting his head back, "but I'm still bleeding to death in this chair. Don't mind me, in the least. Please, do carry on investigating a murder while a man dies beside you."

"No?" Gene replied to Skulduggery's question. "Some of the kedan have been talking about it. I mean, it's not exactly a usual occurrence around here." Indeed, the most use Gene had been making of the armor was staking out the palace before Eshai's death, and he hadn't wanted to look even remotely responsible for that, so he'd toned it down.

Then when Solomon began to ask questions of his own, some of the tension in his chest eased. Lord Vile. They're looking for someone named Lord Vile. They're not looking for me. Not for the first time was he thankful that he'd opted to help with the search and rescue operations both in the armor and as his own self. Granted, he'd been seen helping less out of his armor, because the armor made him feel safer and imposed a sort of mental barrier between him and the horror surrounding him.

Still, it would behoove him to find out what this Lord Vile was like so Gene could deliberately act counter to what they would expect of him the next time he donned the armor. "Lord Vile?" he said, sounding puzzled.

Then he realized that Wreath was still in dire need of help. "Right. Sorry. I'll go get a healer." And he excused himself, hoping he could find one quickly so that he could go back to his gathering of intelligence on suspicious armored characters.

Suspicious armored characters who were now confirmed to not be him.

Skulduggery didn't answer either of them. Gene because he left soon after asking the question - which was fortunate, all things considered - and Wreath because he was Wreath.

Maintaining that policy, however, was going to make the next few minutes more awkward than Skulduggery really cared for, so a moment later he folded his arms and looked the necromancer in the eye. Or at least, he looked Wreath in the eye as far as it was possible to, given he didn't have any himself. "The last thing you remember is the fight at Aranmore Farm, isn't it? The Faceless Ones had just come through, your bone was piercing your leg, the entire world was on a tipping point."

It seemed like an eternity ago. Skulduggery had endured far too much since then. Everywhere he looked, it seemed like something was about to end the world, and it didn't seem like he could escape it even by jumping into another dimension.

He sighed. "That battle was almost four years ago for me, and it feels like much longer."

The silence after Gene left was neither surprising nor entirely unwanted. The only downside was that it left the hubbub of the hospital clear to Solomon's ears; the call for aid, the nurses speaking, the pained whines of the injured. War. He'd been glad when it was over. Sometimes he wondered why he couldn't let things be, as his colleagues had accused when he announced he was going to help fight the Diablerie.

It was rather a pity that there was no way he'd be able to sleep without the aid of drugs, or he could very well have dropped off then and there. In fact, he'd have preferred it. Unfortunately, his leg prevented it.

Skulduggery's voice made him reluctantly open his eyes to look at the skeleton. He considered that information. It made sense. It explained why the skeleton's reaction should be so incongruous to what he expected. It explained why Solomon felt as though there was an elephant in the room he couldn't see.

"I see," he said, and arched an eyebrow. "And your overwhelming imperative during those four years was to start a new and very purple fashion? Or was that one of the methods the Faceless Ones used to punish you?"

Skulduggery was altogether too lucid to have been with them all four years, but his sudden shifting moods could be an indicator of some variant of insanity. Which, really, was understandable given the circumstances. Still, none of that explained Pleasant's certainty that Vile was involved in spite of the fact the modus operandi didn't fit Vile's pattern.

Despite everything - or perhaps because of it - Skulduggery managed to laugh, and held a purple-boned hand up as if to reexamine the colour for himself. "This is a more recent addition," he explained. "A magical barrier's sprung up around the Palace of Landed Sky, and touching it has equal chances of knocking you out or turning you a very strange colour."

He hardly thought it fair some people got away with bright yellow hands that were easily concealed with gloves, while his whole skeleton was changed. But alas, it couldn't be helped. Not without buckets of white paint, and Skulduggery didn't quite feel like throwing his dignity under a bus just yet.

"We did win," he added belatedly, after reluctantly admitting to himself that some sort of explanation was probably in order. He did just punch a man with a broken leg, after all; he owed him something. "Drove them back. Got me back. And then Vandameer Craven found a Death Bringer, and let me tell you, that was veritable barrel-fuls of fun."

The Palace of the--ah, yes. Others had mentioned that: the location this dimension's version of Mevolent had secured. And secured well, apparently.

"For an evil madman I can't say I disapprove of his punishments," Solomon said dryly. "At least he has far more a sense of humour than Mevolent. Perhaps we ought to call him Junior. The new and improved." Summoning just by speaking a name wasn't something that had ever occurred in his universe, though he wasn't about to dismiss it; at least here they were aware of the power names held. Besides, there were many during the war who used to believe speaking Vile's name would make him reappear.

That had been a power beyond even Vile, obviously, but Solomon could understand the desire to make sure. Some had said the same of Mevolent.

He would have pointed out that he remembered winning, except that Skulduggery's final comment made him bark out surprised laughter. His leg twinged and he hissed through his teeth, and then laughed again. "Craven found a Death Bringer? Craven? From where, his dreams? Or perhaps the bottom of a barrel full of onions?"

A sense of humour. Of course. That would have been the driving motivation behind Malicant's bombing half of Keeliai. That would have been the irony underlying the murder of the former Emperor. That would be why Malicant seemed to delight in sowing seeds of fear wherever he went, poisoning a large turtle continent so that the people upon its back might starve, or commandeering a palace very likely by murdering half of the Guard and blackmailing or threatening the rest.

There came a point where even the sarcasm in Skulduggery's own mind started to get tiring, and so he stopped.

"An acolyte," he said flatly, "whom Craven drew routing sigils on to loop the power of her Surge near-continuously. She underwent extensive rehabilitation afterwards, as I recall."

Not before murdering most of the Temple, an entire manor full of people, and nearly murdering Valkyrie, of course. Skulduggery still held a grudge over all of that.

An acolyte. An acolyte on whom Craven had been experimenting ... It was actually somewhat frightening that Solomon couldn't immediately state a name. Craven enjoyed collecting acolytes--much in the same way some men, back in the day, thought owning slaves was evidence of their power and nobility.

Most of the time Craven simply used them as runners or cleaners in exchange for a few sanctimonious lessons from a respected high cleric. Some he let compete against one another for his favour, and yet never actually blessed any of them by taking one as an official apprentice. He just strung them along to prove he was a master and they were dirt under his shoes.

No, that wasn't surprising. What concerned Solomon a little more was the extreme cold note in Skulduggery's voice. The last time Solomon had heard a note that cold was in the middle of the war, not long before the Necromancers declared their neutrality. But that had been a very personal matter. This wasn't.

"It's not impossible," Solomon admitted, watching Skulduggery guardedly. "And very like him, to experiment upon acolytes. I presume she failed to live up to his claim."

She had to. Otherwise the Passage would have succeeded and rehabilitation wouldn't have been possible. Still, unease made Solomon's neck prickle. It wasn't impossible for Pleasant to know the term 'Death Bringer'. Acolytes were unwise, and a number of people were aware the Necromancers had a saviour. That Pleasant knew the term wasn't a surprise. And yet ...

"Of course she failed." It was a cheerier phrase than any of the last few had been, but Skulduggery didn't make any effort to add to that cheeriness himself. "She came very close to initiating the Passage, but thanks to yours truly, she did not. You were even a bit of help, at one stage."

Not much of one was a heavily implied silent addition, but Skulduggery generally made it a habit to give credit where credit was due.

"Would there be a point," he added belatedly, "in asking why you've never mentioned the Passage before?" They likely still had one minute before Gene reappeared with a healer, and it was a question Skulduggery hadn't had the chance to put to Wreath back in their own world. No time like the present, or so the saying went.

The implication was almost completely lost in the wake of the rest. Solomon stiffened and it made his leg spark pain, and between the two he took a moment to regain composure. Pleasant knew about the Passage. He must. His phrasing left no doubt of that. In light of that fact ...

In light of that fact, Solomon was surprised he was still alive--here, or in Pleasant's own dimension.

Yet, somehow, it was Skulduggery's final question that was the most confusing. The most ... incongruous. It was as though, in spite of how their relationship had soured, Skulduggery still possessed an element of faith in Solomon's desire to ask him, specifically, for help. Right now, it sounded almost tired, and Solomon had to stare.

"Why would I have?" he asked, bluntly but not accusing. If anything, bewildered. "Why would I have? If you know, I'm surprised I'm not dead." Skulduggery was not the type to show mercy to those doing what he saw as evil. Solomon frowned. "And I helped? Why would I do that?"

Why would he help prevent the Passage? Why would Skulduggery genuinely wonder why Solomon hadn't said anything about it? He still felt as if there were details he was missing, and his leg hurt too much to fully concentrate on the important parts.

Gene had gone off in search of a healer, and found one in Raine. He'd known Raine from the mission they'd gone on a few months ago. She had been kind enough, and a competent healer, and he figured that a decent bedside manner and the ability to heal would be two very important points in her favor, given Wreath's leg injury.

When he found her, he briefly explained the situation (minus a fluorescent skeleton punch or two) and led her back to where Skul and Wreath were talking. Unfortunately, he couldn't catch the meat of what they'd been talking about.

"This is Raine," he said by way of introduction. "She's one of the healers here. She should be able to help with your leg."

She'd remembered Gene well enough, and even if she hadn't, the mention of someone in urgent need of medical assistance would have been enough to roust Raine. Staff in hand, she headed straight past Gene for the obviously injured person, pausing only to nod at the bright purple skeleton.

Whoever had splinted the stranger's leg seemed to have done a competent enough job. "Right," she said, briskly, upon a cursory examination. "You're still losing blood, but it doesn't seem a major vessel's been hit, so that can be safely managed by mundane means. I'll do what I can about that break, though. This shouldn't hurt more than it does already; if it begins to, say something immediately."

That said, Raine lowered her staff till the ornate head was just above Solomon's broken leg, and concentrated. A circle of angular shapes in white light appeared beneath her feet, unsurprising to anyone who'd ever seen her cast before. "Heal," she said firmly, a few seconds later, and the circle vanished in favor of a warm green aura around the affected limb.

It was a display of magic Skulduggery had never seen before, barring a basic demonstration when he first met Raine last month. In another time and another place, he might have been intrigued by it; Raine came from a dimension with entirely different rules to his own, and the exact differences were certainly something Skulduggery could only gain by understanding.

Just then, he couldn't quite bring himself to care. Healing Wreath's limb was apparently possible, and that was all Skulduggery wanted to know. He didn't have the patience to try sorting out what he was feeling, beyond asking one more question of Raine. "How long until he's back on his feet?"

And, come to think of it, another one, which Skulduggery asked almost on the last question's heels. "Do you know anything about a suit of black armour helping with the rescue efforts during the bombings, or any time afterwards?"

Their return couldn't have had better timing. Part of Solomon did want to hear Pleasant's answer, but the greater part preferred to take whatever amnesty the skeleton was apparently offering and run with it. He particularly appreciated the fact that the healer was the straight-forward kind. Small-talk was not on his list of skills at this moment.

"Of course," he said as she lowered her staff, and couldn't keep the relief out of his face. Frankly, that was better than he'd been expecting. They were obviously working with war-time resources; he would have accepted nudging the broken limb into healing within a few days or a week. Walking out of the hospital with a flesh-wound was the best he could have hoped for.

The light-show was new, and Solomon spent a few seconds trying to decipher the shapes, and whether they were sigils. Then they faded and his leg glowed, and the warmth of pure relief seeped through his bone. Some of the tension left him and gingerly he shifted his foot to rest it properly on the ground. The only pain left was the flesh-wound caused by the break, and that was tolerable. He'd need a clean bandage, but that was all.

Solomon exhaled slowly, and then lifted his eyebrow at Skulduggery. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were concerned about me."

Well, that was easy enough. Gene had picked up some basic first aid and minor triage care from helping after the explosions and all, but Raine's method looked to be far more efficient than merely splinting something. Idly he brushed his hand across the rings under his shirt, turning the motion into scratching an itch on his neck, and he wondered if he could turn the rings to doing that as well. The final ring's powers were a mystery to him, and not for the first time he was intensely annoyed by the fact that Eshai, rest her (poor-choice-making) soul, had dragged him to Keeliai mere minutes before he would have had the final ring and been able to take care of this Malicant problem once and for all.

But when Skulduggery mentioned the armor again, it took all he had not to tense up. I could just tell him the story with it and satisfy his curiosity, he thought facetiously. If I could somehow assure him it wasn't this Lord Vile without revealing myself, I'd do it in a heartbeat. The skeleton was a little too interested in this for comfort.

'Lord Vile'...a name without finesse. 'Mandarin' is a far superior title, anyway.

Raine gave Skulduggery a look of mild bemusement, sparked by both the rapid questions and the fact that he was asking things that usually the patient would be asking. "One thing at a time," she said, and focused on Solomon.

"I'd prefer you stay off that leg for now, but I'm well accustomed to people who can't sit still." Her voice was dry, but not unkind. "The wound that remains I don't think is severe enough to absolutely necessitate stitching, but I might recommend it anyway, if you plan to do a lot of walking. There are trained folk here who can help with that. Keep the dressings clean, don't lift heavy objects, keep your weight off that leg as much as is possible, come back here or contact someone immediately if it worsens: in short, exercise a modicum of common sense." These were things she had said before, and would definitely be saying again.

That was the first thing. "As to your second question," she continued, turning now to Skulduggery, and valiantly commenting not at all on his new style choices, "I've only seen one suit of black armor. I can't be completely certain it was the same one you're speaking of, but it was fairly distinctive and I would recognize it if I saw it again. I don't know much about it, however, only that whoever was wearing it has been here more than once, and has been helping each time I've noticed them. Why do you ask?"

Raine didn't know who was wearing the armour either, it seemed. That was annoying.

Skulduggery was about to ask if she'd ever heard the person within speak, but stopped himself before he could. It was a pointless question. Chances were, she hadn't; if the person in the armour had a distinctive voice, it was something Raine would have mentioned. So he simply nodded his thanks to her, glanced at Solomon, and shrugged. "Curiosity. I have far too much of it for my own good. Can't you tell? It killed me."

Did he care whether Wreath would exercise a modicum of common sense? No, Skulduggery decided; he didn't. Wreath was getting the healing he needed, and more besides. What he did from this point on was completely up to him.

"Unless you need me for anything else," Skulduggery added, "I'll be off."

The healer's instructions only proved Solomon's first impression: she preferred straightforwardness over coddling and platitudes. Solomon appreciated that, and smiled wryly. "I'll have it stitched before I leave, then," he said. "Other than an inability to remain off my feet when necessary, I'm quite proficient in the art of common sense."

He lifted an eyebrow at Skulduggery and said deadpan, "Really? I thought you were simply making a fashion statement. Just as well; Bespoke would be horrified if he knew. That purple does not go well with your suit."

Yes, he was going to reap as much amusement out of that as he could. Especially since his head was aching thanks to the punch, and now that he didn't have a broken leg to draw attention he was definitely noticing. He rubbed his cheek with a grimace. At least it wasn't likely he was going to wind up with a black eye. Solomon waved dismissively at the skeleton. "Yes, please go. I don't think any of us need to be blinded by visual horrors."

If Pleasant hadn't killed him in a fit of rage just yet, he had far too much control to do it with witnesses. Right now, Solomon just wanted some space from future-timeline dimensional rivals to figure out exactly what had just happened and what he was going to do about it.

If it wouldn't be obvious as hell, Gene would take this opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief. Raine had his back, even if she didn't know it. That was a relief. It had really been smart of him to help out in the armor to confuse anyone who might think of him as a servant of Malicant. That would be really offensive, anyway! He and the damned thing were completely at odds. Malicant wanted to plunge Keeliai into chaos (and seemed in some ways to be succeeding); Gene wanted to purge that scourge from the universe.

Gene kept carefully silent about Skul's new coat of paint. "I'm glad I was able to help, even if it wasn't very much," he said. "I should probably go, too. It was good to meet you."

Curiosity, Raine understood, but she gave Skulduggery a skeptical look anyway, mostly on principle.

Still, it wasn't strictly her business. To Solomon, she said, "I'll send someone with the right training over shortly. Once that's done and you're bandaged up you're free to go." His honesty and his willingness to take at least some sensible precautions were both appreciated.

"As to you two--" She paused, there. She really didn't know them well, but she didn't know many people here well, and both Skulduggery and Gene seemed good sorts. At least one of them was willing to indulge her usual barrage of questions, which was always promising. "--It'd be nice to see you some time when it isn't an emergency," she said finally, with a little quirk of a smile. "Take care."

"Yes it would," Skulduggery agreed with a tip of his hat. "Take care yourself."

Wreath received nothing more than an acknowledging glance, impossible to read without a face to go by. Gene received a slightly more amicable nod, which was objectively just as impossible to read, and yet somehow managed to convey an extra measure of friendliness. Then Skulduggery turned and left the hospital.

That was alright. Skulduggery received nothing but a blank expression back before Solomon turned his attention to Gene. "Your help was appreciated," he said, a little sardonically. "Do keep an eye out for any further violence by purple skeletons. Apparently it's all the rage these days."

It was said loud enough for Skulduggery to hear as he left, but Solomon wasn't expecting any sort of response or reaction, and didn't turn to see if there was one. Raine was offered more obvious respect, with an acknowledging nod and far less sarcasm in Solomon's tone. "And your help as well, madam. I do hope your other patients are less trouble."

He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Now that the pain was mostly gone, at least he might be able to think.

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[OPEN] Eshai Memorial Hospital May catch-all

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Consider him gone with this tag!

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