Open Heart

Somewhere on a world, one that is not Ardea.

"What's going on? Street performer?"

"No. Aarde. News in regards to the Crown Point and Vurnir situation."

"...if the crowd's that big-"

"Yeah. We better go check it out."

It was like a sound baffler had been placed in the area surrounding the short, bearded man as he knelt on the ground, the background noise of the city and a few murmured conversations the only noise produced. The Aarde was still kneeling when the two reached the front, the crowd parting around them.

The future contained more nothing. The male of the pair withdrew a dagger from a sheath, turning it over and around his fingers, at least before the female elbowed him in the ribs and he slid it back in.

"How long does it t-never mind." The man said. The short, robed figure was standing up, drawing dust off the ground, the dust assembling onto the black stone tablet the Aarde was carrying with him. It was another two minutes before the dry dirt finished wafting up to the black stone, the Aarde producing what appeared to be a magnifying glass fused to a pair of large spectacles, the crowd beginning to murmur again as he studied the slab.

"...Vurnir broke the ceasefire. They have utilized...chemical weapons." The Aarde finally said, the tightness underneath his neutral tone betraying his true emotions. "Reports are mixed on whether all the targets were military or if there were any civilian targets..."

The noise came back to the crowd in a rush, an eruption of disbelief and outrage and fear. The man felt the nearby ambient temperature rise a few degrees.

"Crown Point has vowed severe retaliation..."

"I've heard enough." The woman said, gesturing for his male companion.

"We just got dragged into this, didn't we?"

"Vurnir just committed a war crime. When you're pulling that kind of shit with the kind of eyes on you, you're either very stupid or very confident. If you're very confident, that means you have something up your sleeve. When you're acting this way in regards to a WAR, then you are dangerous and have to be put down."

"OutReach is already in the area, aren't they?"

"Don't know. Wouldn't surprise me." The woman said. "We better go get out the working clothes, Brigh. Knowing Ash, some people are going to be taught a lesson in big fishes and small ponds."

-----
 Elsewhere.

What kind of a person goes to war? All sorts? What kind of a person goes into a war without any intent to fight a war? Other sorts. Perhaps lesser in number. War was a great equilizer in motives.

None of that mattered though. Among the set up tents in the small forest clearing, among those who walked through and around them, and those that didn't, among the ones who screamed and cried and begged, and those who made no noise at all, and beyond the forest the terrible deeds that had led to the world inside this clearing, all of that was unimportant. All that mattered in this small now was the man on the table, his chest laid open as carefully as the doctor could manage it outside of a clean, sealed room and on a timetable, muscles carefully cut open and tied aside, veins tied off, blood having long soaked the grass beneath the woman's feet.

"Microsaw."

The human rib cage wasn't too bad for the job it was meant to do; a shield of bone to protect the organs within the greater chest cavity. Human capacity to break, however, was always racing ahead of human capacity to shield. Human capacity to fix? That remained to be seen.

Half of the arrow had already been removed, the length of wood sawed in half. Working around what remained was troublesome, but necessary. When you were dealing with nitroglycerin, you took every precaution. Sometimes it blew up in your face anyway, but you tried.

Pop Rocks, was the nickname for these kind of arrows. The human capacity to break things was always striving to outdo itself, especially when it was competing against people trying to put the Humpty-Dumpties of the world back together again. A normal arrow, or bullet, could cause damage, quite severe damage, if it hit the right spot, but it might also bounce off something. Get stopped cold by armor, if the armor was good enough. Or it just might not do the damage fast enough. Hence, the Pop Rock. A combination arrow and grenade, a small sphere of treated, enchanted mud, bonemeal, and blood just behind the arrowhead. The arrow hit, and then the rock...popped. Instead of a length of wood stuck in a torso or limb, you had no torso or limb at all. Fix that.

No weapon was infallible though. Not even a Pop Rock. So this poor kid under her knife had discovered, when he'd taken an arrow to the chest and ended up with the arrowhead and sphere-explosive stuck inside, making him a time bomb. Somehow, he'd made it to their camp. Somehow, she'd gotten him onto the table and cut away most of what was blocking her path. She liked those odds so far.

The arrowhead had collapsed a lung, but she and her team had compensated for that. The problem was, said arrowhead and the bomb behind it were crammed right between the forth and fifth ribs. She couldn't just pull it out, that could set off the explosive. Which meant something else had to give instead.

"Wipe."

A hand dabbed a cloth across the woman's forehead, and then she began to make the cut. The old familiar scent, that dry muskiness of bone, filled her nostrils, as common to her as breathing air. She was going to have to saw out where the arrow was stuck on either side, one of her assistants having already taken the remainder of the shaft in their hand, and another waiting with tweezers to hold the rib-pieces in place when they were cut free. Once both ribs had been cut, the grip would loosen, and they could carefully draw the arrow out. Once it was gone, the rest was simple...

...new noise. Out in the rest of the world, the unimportant world.

...Bad noise. Different kinds of screams. Not pain, fear. Yelling. Anger. Not the right kind of anger, the frustration of failure....

Ignore it. All that mattered was the world beneath her hands. The rest of the world could pass by...her existence was what lay before her...

Existence, sadly, would not be so kind, as the front of the tent burst open.

"Everyone out of the fucking tent! NOW!" The man snarled. His dirty, battered leathers, colored in browns and muted greens, were in stark contrast to the darkly purple gowns that the several people in the tent wore. The man and woman around the surgeon gasped, instinctively drawing back upon seeing a threat, the arrow holder releasing her grip.

Her hand was replaced by the surgeon's, so swift and smooth it was like they had rehearsed it. She had reacted to the sudden intrusion as well, but her movement was so minimal it might as well have not existed at all.

"I SAID MOVE!" The head of the new arrivals said.

They were aiming weapons at her. They always did. Crossbows, in this case. The surgeon looked up.

"No."

Back to work. If she was going to remove this arrow all by herself, she'd have to concentrate all the harder.

"...you fucking NUTS? MOVE!"

They'd neither shot at her nor moved up to grab her. Good. She could work with this, as she looked up. Normally, she'd want to pull her surgical mask down, draw up her goggles, let the people see her face, but she needed to keep this process as sterile as possible.

"I'm in the middle of something. This man is going to die if I just stop. I doubt his life will change anything about yours. Does it really matter if I stop?" The surgeon said. Four of them. Dirty clothing. Battered weapons, mud-stained pants. Crossbows, knives and other instruments of violence in belts and pouches. On the surface, fine examples of human debris that drift through the wars of the world. It was the leader's glowering face that gave it away.

"You're not bandits."

"What?"

"Your teeth are too good. If you were really bandits there would be less white. Which side are you on, then? Crown Point? Vurnir? You robbing supplies or trying to make your enemy look bad?" The surgeon said.

"For fuck's sake, shoot her." One of the other not-bandits said.

"Look...just take what you want and go. Please. You don't have to play the screaming, enraged criminal. Just please...go."

"That asshole's from Vurnir." A third of the not-bandits said, indicating the man beneath the surgeon's hands.

"Is he? It doesn't matter. Please...just take what you want, whatever medical supplies, and GO. There's already so much suffering and misery..."

"No great loss." The leader said.

The leader of the not-bandits didn't bother with any more words. He just shot the world beneath her hands in the head.

Quiet descended on the tent like a smothering grip. Even the noise from outside seemed to fade away.

The crossbow bolt had found an unexpected setback in its quick path and ultimate destination. Namely that someone seemed to have set up a field of floating, invisible tar around its target. The bolt was still firing, but it had stopped so suddenly and was moving so slow it might as well have been have been frozen.

"...oh shit." One of the not-bandits said. Ironically, the one that had told them to shoot the surgeon. She'd never moved, one hand on the arrow, one hand with her surgical tool, her world beneath her.

"...Please. Take the arrow. Leave." The surgeon said. "It doesn't have to be this way."

"It's her. It's fucking her, it's..."

The noise was returning to the silence in the tent. A third kind of noise. The noise of something going terribly wrong.

"...it's not too late."

"KILL HER!"

And then it was.

---

"Chris? Is everything okay in here? Damn it-!" The young man said as he pushed through the tent flap and nearly tripped over the corpse that lay before it.

"SHHHHHH!" The young woman said. It was a strange sight, watching these several men and women clustered around a table, like the bodies scattered before them were invisible. The young man froze in place. It was a practiced reaction.

Crusted with dried blood, the surgeon lifted the arrow from her world. The small orb remained on the end, undetonated. Slowly, with practiced care, she played it in a metal tray, one of her assistants quickly hurrying over to the young man, even as the surgeon placed her hands on the table, tension flowing from her stance and breath.

"Sir?"

"Huh-what?" The young man said. His contrast was even more than the would-be bandits, silvery chainmail laid over brown and red boiled leather, a black, tattered cloak drifting over his shoulder and long blonde hair a sweaty mess that he'd tried to comb out of his face with his hand.

"Could you, with the..."

"Oh. Right, Pop Rock. I got it." The young man said, one hand seizing onto his sword hilt and the other carefully taking the dangerous arrow from the tray. Sliding the blade out, he pressed the bloodstained remnant of ill will onto the better-wielded weapon. Once it was done, the assistants had begun moving away from the table, looking with dull distaste at the bodies that lay around the entrance, shafts of metal and wood protruding from their heads. "What happened?"

"They recognized me. Panicked...had to defend myself." The surgeon said, her tone quiet, tired, resigned. Her hands held no tools now, the world beneath her responding to her will, the lone assistant removing staples and thread as muscle slid back into place, bone re-fused with bone, a lung re-inflated, skin carefully placed back into position as the cuts made to it closed up. The surgeon removed her hands, checking the small machine that was placed on the table next to her operating table, before she began removing her gloves.

"How many were there, Ash?"

"About ten. I was just coming back with the delivery when they attacked. I dealt with them. Are you okay, Chris?"

"Get these bodies to our morgue. Strip them, autopsy. We could always use more transplants. I tried to talk to them, but they didn't go for it." The surgeon said, directing her last words at the man named Ash. "Get me some fresh scrubs, Ash. The camp's not burning down, so I need to get back to work."

"...We're probably going to have to get directly involved now, Christine."

"I expected that from the moment we got here." Christine said, pulling off her stained surgical gloves and dropping them into a disposal bag. "I had just hoped that the people behind this would have more common sense than to let it escalate like this."

"...I'm sorry, Chris."

Christine looked down at her handiwork. How hard to fix a broken man. How easy to break one beyond repair.

"...So am I." Christine said, and left to find her next world.

 

Somewhere in the depths of space...

"Do you know who I am?"

"I'm the girl born of the sun and stars. My touch shakes cities. Men flee in my shadow. Called to the highest throne that waits, I have left everything and everyone who ever crossed me in burned and blasted ruin in my wake. Their best barely slowed my hand. Even death could not hold me down. I owe debts, and anyone who gets in my way will be added to my bill. So what, horseface, could you possibly bring to bear against me?"

"THE STORM."