บท 1845: 29
Extraction 5
Abyssal had a fairly limited range from the medical base to do his searching and rescuing. Despite the number of extra brains I had brought along, it wasn't enough to stretch all the way from the medical base to the actual fight ten kilometers away. There was no way I'd be able to build enough extra brains to reach that area in time, either.
However, I was determined not to let Abyssal be useless. I was already feeling somewhat inadequate in the medical realm, compared to the truly healing-specialized powers, some amateur surgery felt almost pointless in comparison. Outside, I was watching Movers fly or run past my bots, quickly outpacing the speed and range of Abyssal as they went back and forth, shuttling the injured.
Given the fact that we had arrived fairly late into the attack, there was already a long trail of destruction to search through. I wasn't going to let him be useless. I could find a way to contribute. Most Movers had been able to scoop up the easily-spotted casualties on the surface, but very few were talented at wide-area searching or digging.
I made him dissolve and disperse. They swept through the area like a flowing carpet. There was plenty of collapsed ground and destroyed buildings within range. Places where most capes couldn't go or couldn't see. My bots worked their way underground, looking for anyone caught under a building or avalanche.
Being so small, my bots had no trouble finding some of the subtle vibrations of a heartbeat, even in between the powerful tremors of the main battle. I did come across quite a few bodies – already cooling with no heartbeat. I didn't waste time with those. However, it wasn't long before I found someone. I had all my bots converge on to the location.
His armband wasn't active. It took a few more bots surrounding his body before I figured out why. His arm had been crushed when the concrete ceiling had collapsed. In some unfortunate irony, the very reason he was trapped was the reason he survived – although the slab of concrete was pinning his arm down, it had also created a pocket that stopped the other rubble from crushing him completely. The armband had been destroyed, which was probably why he hadn't been rescued. I guess they assumed he was dead instead of just down. Or maybe it hadn't been able to send out its "down" signal for others to find him.
I couldn't even move him, because his arm was trapped. My bots entered his body to check his vitals more precisely. What I found wasn't good. His blood pressure was low, blood oxygen didn't seem good, his breathing was shallow and weak, as was his heartbeat. I was able to stem the bleeding, but he would need proper treatment, fast.
I wanted to cut out the concrete from around his arm that was locking him in, but... if I damaged the slab crushing his arm, I would risk having everything above come down on him. On top of that, I didn't know if I could slice through concrete that quickly. He needed treatment immediately; and if I factored in the time to pull him out and carry him to the medical base.
Adding up a few quick estimates, I decided there wasn't enough time. Cutting through his arm was faster. Most of my bots would have to be dedicated to clearing a path.
I sliced through the flesh and bone easily with my nanobots, preserving as much of the limb as I could. The rest of them sealed it off quickly to prevent any bleeding or infection. With all the other bots clearing a path to the surface, I managed to haul him out in under a minute.
Still, he wasn't in the clear just yet. My bots went to work immediately even as Abyssal formed in full to carry him back to the medical base. I focused first on cleaning the wounds and preventing further blood loss; it looked like he was barely breathing now. I formed a makeshift ventilator with my bots to help force a little extra air into his lungs.
By the time Abyssal managed to bring him up the ramp to the mobile base, I had done what I could for him. I officially took over as Eunoia to help right away, mainly to explain the fact that he had all the bots inside him. Actual healing powers would be needed to take him the rest of the way, though. I just made sure he was staying alive before being passed on to Panacea or Othala or one of those other healers. Abyssal left immediately after dropping him off.
As Abyssal returned out to the field, I watched again as more capes rushed past Abyssal, either off to the fight, or to search for more survivors. I even noticed Laserdream and Lady Photon fly overhead, blasting their lasers alongside Legend himself. My breath hitched as a massive, forking stream of lightning shot through a crowd of capes, and dozens fell from the skies.
They were outside my range; Abyssal couldn't pick them up.
I reminded myself... I didn't have to save everybody. I just had to save those I could. In the meantime, my bots in the field had found another living person underground. She'd suffered massive burns and probably what should have been massive blood loss. She was nearly naked as well; whatever she had been wearing was burned off or fused to her skin. Once again, there was no armband nearby or on her. I didn't know if the armband had been incinerated in whatever attack downed her, or if she was a new trigger because of Behemoth. Either way, she must have had Brute powers; they were saving her life at the moment. I would have to take it the rest of the way.
One life at a time. I didn't want anyone to be overlooked just because of broken or damaged armbands. I couldn't imagine someone else going through the torment of being trapped, alone, in the dark, with nobody coming to rescue.
"All capes, all capes, retreat from sectors SB-3 through 9. Repeat, all capes retreat from sectors SB3 through 9."
I heard and felt the warning at the same time. Dragon's infallibly calm voice echoed the alarm from everyone's armband at once, while the Abyssal-bots, who were still sifting through the rubble to find more trapped survivors, detected the shaking. It was like he was hammering down on the land itself, instead of fighting the capes.
The flying capes continued to hammer away at Behemoth, trying to stop the monster from completely wrecking the entire coast. However, it was basically ignoring them and focusing on turning rock into dust.
Most of the land-based capes took the warning more seriously. They immediately scattered, but they didn't know which direction was safest. The artificial earthquake made nearly every place at risk of more collapsing buildings or avalanches from the nearby mountain.
Morale was certainly dropping by the minute. We were running lower and lower on surviving capes, much less the ones who were still willing to fight. Sure, the Triumvirate were still fighting hard as they always did, but they alone weren't enough. Even the military had taken huge losses, with the waves taking out at least one ship and the waves were now too rough to rescue any of the sailors. Multiple planes had been shot down, and their pilots never had time to eject. Even with all the attacks, nobody could notice any particularly notable damage to Behemoth's body aside from a few flakes of his skin.
Suddenly, there was a flash of golden light. It shone brightly across the sky, so much that I could even see it out the doorway of the healing building. A bright, shining cape had arrived. Scion.
People began cheering as if the fight was already over.
Scion shot a bright, golden beam down at Behemoth. Behemoth immediately abandoned the fight and began to burrow deeper underground. Scion blasted him again into the ground, where Behemoth went even deeper. The battle between the two caused the shaking to intensify even further. The new tremors felt like they increased by an order of magnitude. It went from an earthquake to a bouncy castle.
Large chunks of my bots and several brains disappeared out from under my control. The land was shifting, turning almost liquid-like. Even as my bots attempted to crawl their way to the surface, things were moving so quickly I couldn't retrieve them. A large majority of the bots I had in the ground searching for survivors were swept away in a landslide.
Behemoth was definitely in full retreat, but he was still causing plenty of harm by digging through the ground. Chunks of his body flew through the air as he was struck over and over by Scion, who continued the attack even as the monster's body had disappeared from view. At this point Scion seemed to be doing more damage to the continent than to Behemoth. Probably. Even if we wanted him to stop, nobody could actually stop him from what he wanted to do.
A deep rumbling sound began to grow louder and louder, cutting through the chaos of the battlefield. Where before, the land near the city and coast was shifting, now everything was moving at once. I almost didn't realize it because everything in my field of view was moving together, except some of my bots were moving at different speeds than others.
There was a long, unending crashing sound as waves as the moving earth hit the water. When the waves crashed against Scion's beams, it was instantly vaporized into superheated steam.
"Deluge down, SB4. Tournura down, SB4. Neddy down, SB5. Naufrago down, SB3. Tecnoligera down, SB3..." The names began to ring off almost endlessly. I knew the casualty list was even longer than that; I had disabled the deceased announcements because I couldn't save the dead. From what I could tell, most of the injuries were from the flying capes who weren't expecting massive steam burns. Far too many had stayed in the area to watch it as if it were a victory lap.
Nobody ever really understood Scion. He was a hero, that was for certain, but he also didn't quite understand how his actions were hurting the other capes. Some people thought he was autistic or something. He never talked, and he wasn't very predictable. He had a thing for rescuing cats trapped in trees and other pointless heroics. Or, more like, he had no concept of priority. Stopping and Endbringer was just as important to him as stopping a mugging. He never showed up at the beginning of an Endbringer fight, but once he finally did, it was over.
Without a doubt he was the most powerful cape in the world, but he also seemed... kind of dim-witted. It was almost as if parahuman powers were some kind cosmic irony, a balancing act that always stopped things from ever becoming too good. At least it was better than him turning psychopath like the Slaughterhouse Nine or the Blasphemies.
Not that I was looking a gift horse in the mouth. The fight was over, won by the golden man. The first cape, the most mysterious cape. He disappeared just as quickly as he had arrived. Never stayed for autographs.
Nobody ever "won" against an Endbringer, except for Scion. But we had survived.
"Medical and control teams, evacuate to the north! Medical and control teams, evac, north, now!"
Funny, that voice was familiar. Not Dragon's unerringly calm announcement, but Lisa's.
The announcement caught everyone off-guard. Most people thought the fight was done. No more Behemoth to worry about, Scion had taken care of him. No more collateral damage from Scion, either. The Golden Cape was gone. The healers in the base had just started to relax into a steady pace, with fewer and fewer announcements coming over the armbands.
The shaking and landslides hadn't affected the medical bases too much. The generous distance had kept us safe. If it weren't for the fact that I could see outside with my bots, I would have forgotten that we were working in a mobile platform. It was steady as a building. But when that announcement came, all that devolved into panic, especially when the floor suddenly tilted.
The massive machine the medical base was mounted on wasn't made for speed. Stability and all-terrain movement was its strength. However, when the terrain suddenly went from horizontal to vertical, it proved to be beyond the scope of its intended design.
The ground started dropping out from under us. I could see from the outside, the massive canyon that was opening up underneath the vehicle. It seemed like Behemoth hadn't burrowed straight down into the Earth's mantle in his retreat, but he had taken a route underneath the medical base. The land underneath us was now crumbling and shifting.
Inside, I knew there was nothing else I could do, except for those I already had bots on. Including Panacea and Tattletale; thank goodness the command vehicle was close to the medical base. I had all my bots harden into plates to armour their most critical areas. My own costume wrapped me tighter and fully covered myself as the entire vehicle listed like a sinking ship.
Beds, patients, supplies, and all of us capes started to slide. I dodged out of the way as they started to crash into the wall. Other capes, like Doctor Arachnus, used whatever they had to clamber out of the way. I managed to use my bots in my costume to provide me with glue-like grip.
Others weren't so lucky. Scalpels, needles, and other sharp objects went flying. My costume blocked most of it, and I focused on protecting Panacea with my bots. In the other vehicle, Tattletale was a little luckier, but computers and desks were still heavy and had sharp corners. I had to harden her armour as well. Other people weren't so lucky.
I had zero confidence in the massive machine's ability to handle being upside down. It was heavy enough to support a makeshift building sitting on it. The reverse probably wasn't true.
With the bots I had used to protect Panacea and Tattletale, I helped them to the nearest exit, using their armor as an exoskeleton instead. Tattletale figured things out quickly. Panacea was confused by the assisted strength, but things were happening too quickly for me to try to communicate to her. I just ended up pulling her towards the door.
As we climbed out, the bases were almost tilted vertically. Tattletale was already hopping off the command vehicle. Meanwhile, other capes were either falling off and into the newly-formed canyon, or scrambling along the soft dirt towards safety.
"This way! This way!" Tattletale yelled when she saw us.
We started to move towards each other. I dragged Panacea along as well, because I didn't think she heard Tattletale. Another cape who was evacuating bumped into us – more into Panacea than me. I didn't even have time to take note of who it was, because multiple others were desperately trying to get to safety.
She tripped on an external ladder, sliding off the side of the vehicle and falling into the massive track mechanisms. For a second, I watched in horror as I feared she would be crushed under the power of the massive gears and drive mechanisms. I only breathed some slight relief as she struck a panel on the side, but she bounced off and stopped struggling.
I had protected her with my armour, but one thing my bot-armour wasn't good at was providing cushioning. Crap. She tumbled to the ground, and I couldn't get to her in time.
Tattletale had been watching. "I got her!" she shouted. I made sure to use my bots to help amplify her strength, because I was pretty sure she would have trouble lifting Panacea on a good day, much less catch her as she fell from twenty feet up.
What resulted was not the most graceful rescue I'd seen. Tattletale managed to get underneath Panacea just in time, stopping her from hitting the rocks on the ground directly. But Tattletale herself wasn't able to position herself very well. She essentially ended up falling awkwardly with Panacea on top of her, and she slammed into the ground, hard. I did my best to provide a little extra cushioning with the bots this time, but there was no way to turn a teenager slamming into you at around thirty miles an hour into a comfortable experience.
I found a way to get down safely but quickly – jumping, with more of my bots shifted to my legs. I rushed over to the two of them, where Lisa was waving her hand, trying to push Panacea off her but without any strength to her movements. I had no time to assess them properly. I grabbed both of them as a unit and dragged them towards more solid ground, but my feet were slipping as the newly-formed canyon continued to widen.
"Ames? Taylor? Where are you?"
I heard Glory Girl shout overhead.
"Over here!" I yelled as loud as I could.
Before I knew it, all three of us were being lifted into the air. I watched as the massive vehicles eventually tumbled and flipped over, coming to rest deep down a chasm.
"Oh my god, oh my god, you're alright. How is Amy doing?" Glory Girl asked as she set us down.
"Put her down, I'll check," I said. "I think they both hit their heads, so they might be suffering minor concussions." The bots didn't have far to go, so I had a few extra enter to check on them.
"Definitely a concussion," Tattletale said groggily.
"Hush, you. Let the experts do their job," I said. It only took a few seconds, but yes, they were both suffering from minor concussions. Panacea had it slightly worse, with some bleeding to her scalp but no skull fracture. Lisa had more musculoskeletal injuries, mostly to her back and shoulders.
"They should be fine," I said. "Lisa cushioned Panacea enough when she fell, she should be waking up any second now." Still, I left my bots in there to help speed up their recovery and make sure nothing got worse.
Meanwhile, there were still plenty of other people to save.
"GG, I think we'll be good here for now. We need to find as many survivors as we can," I told her. Lucky for me, Abyssal had managed to retreat back into range. Even though I had lost about a third of the brains I had brought along, the ones that had fallen into the canyon were still within range, and I still had control over enough of them to mount a rescue effort.
The bots I had remaining inside the mobile bases began looking for anyone who hadn't been crushed. Other Movers were already joining in, though there was far less coordination now. Some were digging people out of the the landslide. Some were headed for the vehicles, others were lifting victims up but didn't know where to put them.
Abyssal formed inside the now-darkened interiors. There was some emergency lighting, but it didn't cover all the areas. Not to mention the utterly crushed sections of the vehicle. I located my earlier patients easily, since many of them still had bots inside them. Unfortunately, it also told me who was already dead. Abyssal hauled out those who could still be saved.
"Help!"
Oh, good, conscious people. They were stuck in a dark corner behind a collapsed wall. I sent bots in there to investigate first, and found some familiar faces.
Othala and Viktor.
It seemed like Viktor had been granted invulnerability, and then he used his body to protect Othala. He had taken a steel girder to the back, but it had been utterly stopped by the invincibility power. Unfortunately, it seemed like they were stuck. Othala didn't have room to move, and if she stopped granting the invincibility to Viktor, they would both be dead.
I sighed. It wasn't so long ago that I had been fighting them in the streets to get them arrested. Then again... Endbringer Truce. My bots began to cut away the twisted metal that was keeping them trapped. Abyssal's main body went off to ferry some other people who were in worse shape, and he would be able to pull them out by the time he got back.
Panacea was waking up, too. "Ugh. Fuck. What happened?"
"You fell down," I told her, pointing at the chasm in front of us.
"Right," she said. "I suppose both of you need a bit of healing?"
"No, but others might. You've got a concussion. Best if you don't move. I hope you don't mind if I keep some bots in your brain for the next while," I told her.
"Right. Whatever. Probably for the best," she said, laying back down and closing her eyes. Again, I could tell she wasn't close to feeling a hundred percent, but I knew there would be a lot more healing to come. And, because Panacea and I were both sitting here (with Abyssal bringing more to our spot), we were already becoming a makeshift healing area. We wouldn't be getting much rest.
With no more shaking at all, I think everybody finally managed to breathe a sigh of relief. No more unexpected quakes or landslides. Scion was already gone, probably to feed a puppy or something. As far as we knew, the Endbringers never popped up for a round two. Especially not after Scion.
The entire landscape had changed. When we started, we were tucked safely away from the fight behind a mountain. Now, I could see clearly all the way to the ocean. The entire city of Gibraltar was a completely lost cause. What used to be the Strait of Gibraltar was now filled in with dirt, as well as fresh lava gushing up in the middle. Huge plumes of steam and ash rose from the waters. It seemed like Behemoth had dug a fresh new volcano down to the fault line. Though the avalanche had stopped, the barrier of land was still growing due to the lava. I don't think anyone had the power to stop that.
But large-scale redrawing of the world map wasn't my problem. Finding victims to save was. There were so many we left behind. So many we hadn't healed. So many we couldn't evacuate. Not to mention half of my own clone brains. I lost my connection with them, even as watched other capes fall or get buried to their deaths.
I knew I would never be able to retrieve those people or those bots. The full rescue process would take days, and if we were lucky, we would be able to find more survivors. Some of my bots I could rebuild to speed up and expand the area of the search, but I didn't think I could do that much in time. Two or three days, injured, without food or water were not good chances.
The aftermath cleanup was something that would never be truly complete. Behemoth had utterly wrecked the south coast of Spain. Gibraltar had basically ceased to exist, with a newly formed volcano taking its place. The Mediterranean Sea was no longer connected to the Atlantic Ocean. I had no idea what the long-term effects of that were.
The death toll was actually lower than average, but that was only due to his choice of target. If he'd chosen some place like Barcelona, the numbers would have been far worse. The cape deaths, however, were just as high as any Behemoth attack.
Some of the capes, especially the healers and Brutes, decided to stick around for a little while longer to help rescue people and clear out the shattered lands. Many of them had lost comrades, friends, family. Hell, I even overheard some people mourning the loss of some villain rivals.
I couldn't quite empathize with them – and a part of me truly didn't want to. Luckily, all of New Wave had survived the fight. Only Laserdream and Lady Photon had been on the offensive, and they were longer-ranged than most Blasters. They had been quite cautious. The only real loss I suffered were many of my cloned brains. While it had been uncomfortable and jarring, it never felt like as complete or final as a real death. A part of them always lived on in me, after all. And not in the way that people usually meant it metaphorically.
The remainder of the recovery effort was mostly t he same for us healers. We had been directed to focus on saving capes before, but now that Behemoth was gone, our patient list grew a thousandfold with the civilian and military population needing medical help. At least. But there were normal doctors flooding in, actual international relief efforts coming in. We had more supplies now, more equipment, more manpower.
Me, I needed to make more bots. The more I had, the more I could do, the faster I could work. I was no longer working on the timescale of hours; we had a few days or possibly a week to help with relief. Unfortunately, there wasn't much useful material for me. Behemoth had basically burned through nearly everything, rendering it all useless. I was able to salvage a few components from the slagged machinery, and many of the collapsed homes that miraculously hadn't burnt to a crisp. I also combed through the ground to search for bots that I lost earlier, hoping to reclaim as many as I could.
As I did, found something strange, though. A material I had never seen before, that even my diamond-tooled bots couldn't cut. The material was leagues beyond diamond in hardness.
It didn't take long for me to realize it was part of the Endbringer's body. That stuff withstood tank shells, bombs, superpowered energy blasts and tinker-tech weapons. When Scion had arrived, he was the only one who did any real damage, blowing chunks of the Endbringer's body away. Those pieces had been quickly claimed by the various government and military agencies. However, most of the pieces I found were from earlier in the fight.
I began to gather as much of it as I could. It might not help today, but I knew I could put a superdense material that nearly broke physics to good use somehow. The more I collected, the more I realized how much more I needed to know. Their density and strength varied wildly, with some being scratched and cut easily while others were hard enough to obliterate diamond. They all felt identical to my bots while being completely different. Strange.
For now, I doubted I would be able to figure out how to break it down to its molecular components soon, whatever it was. At the very least, though, I could probably just layer the stuff over my body as armour or something. It was strong, if nothing else. And there was so much of the stuff lying around, pieces too small for most agencies to bother collecting.
Amy and I agreed to hang out until the end of the week, which was how long they estimated it would take for longer-term relief efforts to be established. Beyond that, it was unlikely we would find anyone who had been trapped or lost that was still alive. I knew we couldn't save everyone, but Amy certainly seemed to be trying. She was overworking herself; often times forgetting to eat. I had to pull her away from a patient more than once.
"Panacea? Amy? You have to take care of yourself. You're still recovering from a concussion," I reminded her as I brought a sandwich. My bots were still floating in her head, and I could see that it was only recovering at a normal speed. Most people in her condition would still be getting bed rest. Shame her healing powers didn't work on herself.
"I know, but..." her voice fell away. She didn't seem to have much of an appetite.
"You've done more than anyone else here. You some rest," I insisted. She didn't seem proud of her achievement, even though there was no question she had saved literally thousands of lives personally. It was more than most people on the planet could claim, and she'd done it in two days. But even then, she seemed reluctant to go, that she hadn't been good enough.
"How about you? I haven't seen you sleep either," Panacea countered.
"I don't really sleep any more. I've found a way to use my power that mostly bypasses it," I told her. Mostly, I just took naps while I was working, letting my other brains handle the actual procedures. My other bots couldn't control me the way I controlled them – but most of my work didn't actually need my hands and fingers. So I took naps whenever.
"You're not the only healer here, and you don't have to be," Tattletale said, joining us at lunch. Her job was mostly finished. She'd offered to help coordinate the search efforts to maximize rescues and likely survivors. So far her work had been pretty successful; Glory Girl managed to find a significant number of survivors thanks to her guidance.
"I know," Panacea said. "I just... it's complicated. Just a little more." She ate just a few bites of her sandwich and returned to the never-ending lineup of patients.
I watched her walk away. Tattletale shifted close to me and whispered, "She's got... issues."
"She's putting too much pressure on herself," I agreed.
"No... it's more than that," Tattletale said. "I know, it's kind of a breach of privacy, but my powers are telling me things about her. She, uh... Hm. She's got love life issues. Fuck, I've already said too much. Forget I said that. Stupid power! I only wanted to find out what she liked so I could get on her good side. My power gave me the worst case of TMI."
I decided that was probably better not to ask.
"And what the hell are you planning to do with Amy?" I would have suspected that she would have done something like this for her former boss, but... they'd already broken ties, hadn't they?
"What? It's in my best interest to be friends with the world's greatest healer. No offense, Eunoia, but she's still better than you are. And I want to stay alive."
"You know she'd probably heal you even if you weren't friends. She heals just about everyone. I'd almost say too many," I said as I watched Panacea continue moving from patient to patient.
"She won't heal me if she has a total mental breakdown. Just look at her. Tell me you aren't seeing huge signs of stress in her head. She's practically on the verge of going nuts. I'm no therapist, but if Panacea goes down, it's bad for everyone. Li'l 'ol me not excepted."
I sighed. Yes, that was something I had noticed after having my bots study Amy's brain more. I had left my bots in there primarily to monitor her recovery. I had noticed a lot of stress markers, but I had assumed that was because of, well, Behemoth nearly killing her. Chronic stress, though? It was hard to measure without having a baseline to compare against, monitoring the change over time. I didn't remember exactly what Amy's brain looked like months ago, during the brain resarch experiment. Damn. I would need to keep track of her more closely if what Lisa said was true.
"I'll try to keep an eye on her," I said.
"I'm going to chat with her," Lisa said, taking off her mask.
"Tatt- Lisa, whatever you're thinking..." I hissed at her while grabbing her wrist.
"Look, I know my job is basically scheming, but sometimes plans can actually benefit everyone.," Lisa said. "I'm not going to hurt her. The girl's got problems. If I can help her with those even a little bit, I get a powerful friend, we both benefit. What's wrong with that? Now if you let her problems fester... well, she goes from being the world's greatest healer to the next Bonesaw."
I flinched when she mentioned that. She didn't seriously think Panacea could become as bad as Bonesaw, did she? She was so good at... I froze in my own thoughts. She could heal cancer like it was nothing. She could also create cancer like it was nothing. My bots could see what she did; she created cells basically from scratch. She could, but didn't, always heal perfectly on purpose - I could see it on the microscopic level. Old people stayed old, though Amy could have replaced all their cells in their body and made them fifty years younger. If she really was doing that badly, and something pushed her over the edge... Lisa was right. That was scary.
While I was busy contemplating that nightmare, and Lisa was already chatting with Panacea. A short, snappy one; I doubt they shared more than ten words with each other. Still, Lisa walked back towards me with a grin of success. "Turns out we share favourite drinks. Caramel Machiatto. I'm going to see if I can mix something up for her."
"Really. What an amazing coincidence," I said dryly. "Where are you going to find an espresso machine around here?"
Lisa just gave me her know-it-all smirk. "Supply shipment just came in. Plenty of coffee-addicted Tinkers still around. I'm sure I can wrangle something that's close enough."
I stopped her. "Lisa, I don't want you manipulating her like this. If you actually have anything in common with her, I'm not going to stop you from making conversation. But don't lie to her or manipulate her into being your friend, got it? I'll tell her exactly what you're doing to her if you do."
"Fine. You're right. She'd never trust me otherwise," Lisa said as she skipped over to the rations tent.
I kept extra bots on and around both of them to make sure I could hear what was going on as I worked.
When Lisa returned to Amy, I heard her say, "Got you your favourite drink! Not the best caramel around here, so I had to improvise. And sorry, I kinda lied. This isn't my favourite. I prefer something that hits quicker, like a double espresso with plenty of sugar. I just thought you needed a pick-me-up."
Well, it was a start.
Glory Girl flew back in with another victim. She flew over to the pair. "Ames! How you holding up?" she asked, giving her sister a hug. "And Tats, where's my next rescue?"
Glory Girl was basking in the pride of being one of the most prolific rescuers in the field. It was a bit of a contest she was having against her cousin Laserdream. That was because of Lisa was working with the other Thinkers, and Dragon, to map everything out. People's last known locations, the city's population density, evacuation reports, the distance and direction the land had shifted... all sorts of data was being modelled by the Tinker's computers to produce a predictive map. Lisa took all that and added her own power to it, resulting in some very good predictions.
Lisa directed Glory Girl to the areas that would take advantage of her super-strength and flight, where others wouldn't be as successful, while the options Lisa gave to Laserdream were more limited. Even if they flew to the same spot, Glory Girl was simply faster. That little competitive edge that Lisa gave her made her go back to her for tips often.
It surprised me how quickly they were willing to work together, but after I told Glory Girl what had happened, she seemed to be quite forgiving of the former villain. After all, it had been Tattletale's warning that saved our lives, and even her awkward catch after Panacea fell had been worth a laugh.
Huh. I noted that Panacea was looking a little better; at least before Glory Girl flew off. Lisa must have noticed it if I did. Maybe she would be trying to arrange more quality time between the two sisters.
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