Taylor understood that in this culture, you were supposed to hate Nazis, but she, personally didn't see that they were any more detestable than the Asian Bad Boyz. Both were somewhat detestable, and both were stupid, but Taylor had grown up so far away, temporally, from World War Two that someone cosplaying as a Nazi wasn't any more shocking than someone cosplaying as a Mongol horse archer or il-Khan.
To her, it was very similar to seeing a group of people walk around in Confederate uniforms, pretending they were tough. It was laughable. She thought if you wanted to be tough, a first step would be to model yourself after victors, not losers.
Besides, she couldn't deny people her services and still claim to be neutral, anyway, so there was no profit in pointlessly antagonising any side. "Thank you, Othala. If you could do that periodically, especially when the casualties start rolling in, that would be great. Will Victor be joining us here?"
The skill-vampire had stolen enough medical knowledge and practical abilities over the years that he could be a qualified trauma surgeon in his own right. He had been one of the people she had been rather afraid of, not so much that he would still her medical skills-she was pretty sure they'd just immediately return. However, she had been concerned since she learned about his power that he would gain her abilities to program in computer languages that didn't exist or use computing technology decades more advanced than existed in the present world.
She'd actually considered assassinating him similarly to Shadow Stalker, but it turned out that if he took "computing knowledge" from her, his power gave him the equivalent of knowledge in this world. It was weird, as why would his Agent temporarily remove such skills from the "target" in the first place if he didn't get an exact transfer? But powers were weird. As such, she ended up not caring-the victims of his thefts recovered their skills over time, anyway, except with exposure measured in days.
Othala scowled, "He thinks this is woman's work." That caused Taylor to raise an eyebrow in amusement. So, just having a bunch of high-level skills didn't make you any smarter, it turned out. That was the whole fluid intelligence versus crystallised intelligence debate. Victor clearly had a lot of the latter but was running on fumes as far as the former was concerned, she thought. There wasn't any fancy sniping you could do to Leviathan. He'd be a lot more helpful here, helping keep people alive.
Still, Taylor shrugged, "Has he been tutoring you in first aid, as I recommended?"
That got her to smile and nod, "Yes, that was a good idea. I'm embarrassed that neither of us had thought about it before, but he does know more than an ER doctor and paramedic combined and is a better teacher than most college professors." Taylor could tell Othala liked praising her husband. Although they were, in many ways, murderous psychopaths, it was rather touching. It was like seeing a Corpo executive that actually had a loving relationship with their spouse, and it vaguely reminded her of her dead parents.
Othala's powers were both very useful in triage and not at all useful. Depending on the type of wounds a person had, she could use her invulnerability power to keep them alive for a couple of minutes. If you were bleeding out and she touched you, you'd just stop bleeding. You were "invulnerable."
The way Othala's power worked didn't make any sense; like most powers, it wasn't scientific at all, but it worked. But it wouldn't resuscitate drowned people, and that would be a majority of the casualties in a Leviathan attack.
The downside was also that the invulnerability power would also make it impossible for Taylor to work on the people. But Panacea could. So, besides using her regeneration ability on people after they were stabilised, Othala was a god-send to temporarily stabilise someone dying of severe physical trauma so Panacea could heal them.
Speaking of, Little Miss Easy Mode Bitch was finally here too. She was grouchy-looking, as normal, but she also had an aura of anxiousness about her. Taylor didn't need her encyclopedic knowledge of psychological disorders to know why, either. Her family would be fighting in this battle, and some might not make it through alive. Panacea usually responded to all Endbringer battles and was carefully protected, so she knew the survival rates better than even Taylor did.
Panacea scowled when she saw Taylor and Othala together. Oh, not this shit again. Taylor sighed and said, "Miss Panacea, I would like to take charge of the triage area. You're clearly the heavy-hitter here, and I will funnel all of the time-critical acute cases to you." Taylor considered herself the best doctor in the world, and the work of a doctor, especially in a trauma setting, was akin to a conductor in an orchestra. She would have a lot of unpowered clinicians to assist her, and she was confident in her ability to manage this.
Panacea looked for any reason to decline, but the truth was that this was how she normally operated anyway. She didn't handle triage when she worked in the hospital, and she just healed the people who were placed in front of her. Finally, she hissed, "Fine."
Taylor nodded and sat down, fishing a small set of tools out of her pocket and casually popped her left eye out of its socket. The Tinkertech modifications that made it an excellent medical imager also made it quirky, requiring frequent maintenance. She generally would have preferred privacy to do this, but already the alert from her customised software was indicating that the divergence of the two sensors in each of her eyes was exceeding nominal values. She would have to do it now, as things wouldn't hold for the entire battle.
Panacea yelled, "What the fuck are you doing?!" She was across the room and couldn't quite see what Taylor was up to. To her, it just looked like Taylor popped her eyeball out. The broody girl stomped over, looking grossed out. Hell, even Othala looked a little squicked.
Taylor held the modified Kiroshi optical system out for inspection, "These are cybernetic replacements, optical prosthesis... not the eyes I was born with. In addition to night vision, these allow me to perform thorough, yet non-invasive, medical imaging of anyone near me."
Panacea looked interested and asked, "So they interface directly with the optical nerves?"
Taylor paused, considering her reply. The truth was that Panacea would instantly know her secret identity if she ever touched Taylor Hebert anyway, so there were no real reason to hide or deliberately obscure things, "That is the failover mode. Here, touch me." She held out her hand and allowed Panacea to touch her, which was kind of akin to placing one's head inside the mouth of an emo-acting lion.
Taylor had avoided ever having to shake the healer's hand in the past because she had seen how Panacea healed people and had suspicions that her power was more flexible than the healer let on. It was widely known that Panacea could knock a person out by touching them, but Taylor thought she could do much more, too.
"Woah, what is this in your brain? Inorganic bits everywhere that I can't read, touching almost every part of your brain. This brain structure, too, this isn't normal... wait, do you sleep?!" the girl asked, looking lively for the first time Taylor remembered.
Taylor replied simply, "The inorganic bits are a computer, and yes, I do sleep, but not very much. The computer functions as a kind of sci-fi direct neural interface. The eyes can transmit data through the optical nerve, but by default, they transmit through a direct digital connection to the computer, which takes multiple inputs and composites them together and then transmits them directly to my sensory cortex."
"How the hell did you do brain surgery on yourself? There are signs of serious neurosurgery here that have been healed impeccably, but there are still a few scars on or around your skull. Want me to remove them?" Panacea asked, sounding curious.
Taylor frowned, "Sure. The fewer scars near my brain, the better. And to perform brain surgery on yourself, the key is to do it very carefully." It felt wrong for her to claim the work of her old cybernetics surgeon, but she couldn't very well tell the truth here. She just wished she had a better deck than a Paraline. While it was a super-computer in this world, it was one of the absolute cheapest options back in Night City, and some of the customisations were difficult to do. It had taken her two months to write software that, finally, allowed her to take over the radio chips and emulate cellular telephones of this world.
Taylor didn't bother to really listen to Legend's speech, as she had a lot of work to do setting up some of her equipment and stocks of consumables. Although she was donating her time and expertise, she would bill the PRT for the latter.
Armsmaster found her when she finished setting up and inclined his head towards her, holding out several armbands. "Maeve, here is an armband." Ah, yes. She had forgotten about those. She took one and nodded at the autistic man. She felt that he treated her a little better because she was a Tinker. In fact, after she was declared officially a Rogue, after having a pre-signed kill order hung over her head, he had e-mailed her a few times, and they had discussed collaborating, perhaps, in the future. Her not being in the Protectorate might make that problematic, as everything Armsmaster made was basically considered top secret, and she couldn't reveal her Junior Illuminati membership badge, either.
She nodded at him but didn't thank him for the courtesy. She felt that he didn't really appreciate politeness for politeness' sake. He was doing his duty, so he wouldn't consider his actions worthy of being thanked, so she didn't. Instead, she said, "Try to avoid dying."
His mouth twitched imperceptibly, and he inclined his head once, "I will take your advice."
The user interface of the armband was simple, and the sensors in it weren't anything to write home about, but at least had the virtue of being mass-producible. She appreciated that this version didn't have an anti-personnel charge built-in, too, unlike the ones they handed out, to even the healers, in the Smirugh fights.
She logged in and then immediately configured the system not to show her any alerts unless it involved Leviathan getting near her present position. She wasn't in the rescue team, and she didn't need to know when someone was down or died. She was going to stay right here.
The rain was getting worse, so it was only a matter of time now.
When the casualties came, they started coming fast. A little over half were drownings of various levels of success, which were easy to resuscitate. She had Tinkertech drugs that could even heal minor brain injuries caused by hypoxia, too, if someone was only "dead" for a couple of minutes.
Traumas were a little more complicated, "Othala!" The girl's hand darted in, applying her invulnerability "buff" to the battered, pun not intended, body of Battery. Taylor had just resuscitated her drowned boyfriend a few seconds ago, although that was just her suspicion since they publicly denied any relationship. "To Panacea!" she ordered a nurse, who grabbed the broken body of the heroine and ran off the few metres which separated their working areas. They had run out of gurneys already, so they were making do with some cots in the recovery area.
"Fenja!" Othala gasped as another broken lady was dumped in front of me. Her, Taylor could stabilise herself. "Speed," she said, and she got a renewed super-speed buff and started repairing a number of arteries at super-speed, calling clinicians to start both blood and plasma.
As Taylor was almost done, she heard a noise that was something akin to the cross between a scream and keening from the next room, "No, no, no, no!"
That was Panacea. Taylor glanced at a surgeon to the left of her and Othala to the right. She probably shouldn't leave, but if Panacea has a meltdown, a ton of people will die. Taylor said quickly, "Take over. Finish the sutures on this artery, please, doctor. Othala, keep hitting her with regeneration until I get back."
Taylor backed out and moved with prudent haste to the next "room", although it was just the other side of the tent. Strider was sitting there, panting for breath. He had brought Panacea a patient directly. However, seeing who it was, she didn't blame him for his breach of the procedure. Glory Girl's broken body lay lifeless in front of her sister who kept keening, "No, no, no" while repeatedly lifting her hand, touching her over and over as if that would make her power work.
Taylor, having tons of knowledge of deviant pedagogical psychology, already had a unique idea as to why Panacea seemed so close to her sister, but seeing this cinched it-in fact, it gave her an epiphany about why such a paraphilia might have developed. There were signs of addiction, which she hadn't considered until just now. Her insights weren't useful, though, just like Panacea's power for once.
Panacea's power wouldn't work on anyone that wasn't "alive." This was stupid, in Taylor's opinion, because death was nothing more than a spectrum anyway, a spectrum that could be reversed and traversed. Even hours after a person "died", portions of their body would still be alive on a cellular level. Panacea turned to see me and suddenly started yelling, "You have to help her! You have to!"
Frowning, Taylor scanned her body with her eyes. Victoria Dallon seemingly didn't have a bone that wasn't broken or an organ that wasn't ruptured. Her brain fared best, but there were still signs of significant TBIs. On the plus side, it wasn't leaking out of her numerous cranial fractures, though.
Taylor paused, trying to think about what Panacea's power used as signs of life. Heartbeat, brain electrical activity, probably. Maybe both. "Keep holding her hand and continuously try to heal her. I think I can briefly get her alive enough that your power will work on her."
Panacea nodded, her desperation and grief allowing her to hold onto any possibility of hope. Someone brought Taylor most of her tools, not knowing what she needed. It was enough; she got to work.
It took several attempts, where for a few seconds, Glory Girl was alive enough to be healed. Taylor was doing nothing more and nothing less than tricking Panacea's power, but Panacea didn't heal people instantly. "Focus on autonomic functions, cardiovascular system and all the hemmhorages," Taylor growled at her, who nodded.
Altogether, it took the both of them over four minutes to get Glory Girl "alive" again. Much too long to waste on one patient. At first, Panacea looked so excited, but then she looked even more depressed, if that was possible, "Her brain... there's so much damage..."
