[LN] The Doct - er, General Is In

[iamresponding]

Step number one of taking over leadership from Bunny was getting as informed as possible. That was why Rich had commandeered a room to essentially use as an office. It was now packed with books and scrolls to study to get a handle on the lore, magical mechanics, and history of this world.

He'd also managed to get his hands on a tablet to use as a datapad. One lucky thing about the technology he'd used during the war was that he was already used to typing one-handed, due to the datapads they'd used during the war being pretty small. And he was left-handed so he still had his dominant hand.

Still, what he wouldn't give for the medicos he had during the war. He'd lost a leg once, during the bombardment on Daedalus 5, and they'd grown him a new one in the space of a few days. Sadly, they didn't have the technological resources here for organ cloning, even if they possibly had people with the right expertise to do it. They probably had the resources to make him a decent prosthetic to use outside of battle, though, and that was something he planned on requesting.

Something else he needed besides all the lore and info on the enemy was data on all the people here. Skill sets, powers, fighting experience and so on.

So, for the ones Bunny wasn't able to give him info on, Rich was calling them in for a little interview. Each time, he introduced himself (to the ones he hadn't already met, at least) and explained the situation.

"I called you in here because Bunny's going to be relinquishing leadership of our little band of misfits to me as soon as I'm caught up on everything, so one thing I need to do is find out what everyone can do. I just have a few questions to ask you. This is also an opportunity for you to ask any questions of me."

Comments

[the_civilian]

"Kind of already did," Tadashi admitted sheepishly. "Which is aggravating because I didn't program it to be automatic or reflexive and I can't get a look at my own coding to see where the bug or trigger is."

He waved a hand to clear aside his complaint for the moment (if this guy was going to be in charge here, he was going to want to know about what Tadashi's new super powers could do) and get back to the topic he'd been granted permission to broach.

"If you're injured, are you going to melt down or blow up or anything along those lines? Or is there something in place to keep that sort of thing from happening?"

[iamresponding]

"I'm not gonna melt down or blow up. The Nova Force in me is more...integrated than that. Fused in at the molecular level." What was a good way to explain it? "Think energy in a plant's cells more than nuclear reactor. It's just, uh, a very big, very powerful plant." Good question. That said something promising about this guy, that his brain immediately flipped to what was most practical to know. "You mentioned code. Are you a cyborg?" he asked as if it was a perfectly normal question to ask.

[the_civilian]

"Huge plant," Tadashi agreed. He couldn't exactly measure energy produced by a person, but what he was getting was incredibly impressive. It was reassuring to know that the person he was talking to wasn't likely to accidentally turn into a walking nuke.

He blinked at the question he got in return, more confused by the tone than by the question itself. But then, he was talking to a guy wearing some sort of futuristic sci-fi armored costume, who knew what he through was normal? "Only if you consider someone who regularly uses technology for communication and research to be a cyborg. Personally, I was going to save that designation until I got a pacemaker installed or something."

He was never going to need a pacemaker. Tadashi clenched his jaw, swallowed hard, and soldiered on. "I'm -- Back home, I was a robotics engineering student at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. My big project was a healthcare companion robot, Baymax. Somehow, this trip through a few layers of reality gave me abilities analogous to what Baymax can do, plus a sort of...I don't know if it's a healing touch, I haven't experimented with it enough to say, but that girl healed faster than either of us were expecting her to."

[iamresponding]

"I'm guessing all this is otherdimensional superhero stuff is a little bit outside your wheelhouse." That was what it sounded like anyway. "Any experience with killer robots or out of control AIs hellbent on world domination, anything like that?" Again, with the tone that made it sound like that was a normal thing to sometimes have experience.

[the_civilian]

"Pretty much," Tadashi said. He couldn't quite help but chuckle a little, and reached up to touch his new hat. 'Otherdimensional' may be new and weird, but 'superhero' apparently wasn't going to be too weird for San Fransokyo.

"Only theoretical," he answered, though he couldn't quite help but raise an eyebrow. "We concluded that either would be much more of a pain in the butt than zombies, even if it was more of our area of interest."

[iamresponding]

"'We'?" He was just curious, as to whether it was friends or family that was part of the we. He had a niggling feeling asking might tell him something about the guy. Because part of this was learning who everyone was on top of what they could do. Sometimes that was just as important. Hell, sometimes it was the only thing that was important. There'd been many a disaster averted during the Annihilation War because Ronan had been the one there when the enemy broke the line just because he was Ronan.

[the_civilian]

Tadashi smiled self-deprecatingly, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Me and my brother. We're really close, we talk about all kinds of stuff -- he's a genius, I mean, I'm pretty gifted myself, but he's graduated-high-school-at-thirteen smart. He's fourteen now, and he just spent the last few months inventing and developing these amazing microbots--"

Under normal circumstances, Tadashi could probably talk about Hiro and what he got up to for hours, especially now that he was actually using that big brain of his for something besides illegal gambling, he was so damn proud of his little brother. But today, here, he choked off mid-sentence, ducking his head to hide his face beneath the brim of his hat until he could get himself back under control.

He was never going to see his brother again.

[iamresponding]

Now Rich relaxed out leader mode, pushing aside his tablet, and fell back into...well. Into Rich Rider mode. He wasn't exactly Mister Touchy-Feely and never had been but he still tried his best. He'd always tried even if he wasn't exactly Mr. Understanding. God knows he wouldn't have made it through life without all the people who'd taken the time with him. "What's wrong?" he asked gently. "And better question: is it something I can help you with?" That was always the more important part.

[the_civilian]

"Not really," Tadashi said, his words a little wet around the edges. He took a deep breath, then another, and raised his head again. "One of my friends is here too, she's from a few months after I am. She said...well, I don't make it out of the burning building I was in right before I ended up here. There doesn't seem to be an in-house grief counselor, but I've done this before. I'll muddle through."

He sighed and shook his head. "Stupid. So stupid," he muttered to himself.

[iamresponding]

"There's nothing stupid about that, regardless of why you were in it." Seriously, it didn't matter the reason. Shit happened. Whether he'd just gotten caught in it or gone in to help someone, that wasn't stupid. "What's it matter if you didn't make it out from her perspective, though? From yours, you haven't died yet. And we don't know for sure that we'll all pop back exactly where we left off." A pause. "I mean, was there a body? Did anyone from her time actually see you dead?"

[the_civilian]

"I didn't ask," Tadashi said, shaking his head. "I didn't really want to know. There was other stuff we needed to talk about anyway."

Like how Professor Callaghan had tried to kill Hiro and all their friends.

[iamresponding]

"We've got a little mode of thought back home when it comes to death, since we have people disappear so often in explosions or dimensional rifts and so on. 'No body, no death.' Not until we're sure. And even then sometimes it's something strange, where someone slipped away and avoided dying, or there's a fake body, or it's an illusion..." There were ways around this. "And that's why you're in luck. We've got scientists and illusionists and magic-users here. Say there wasn't a body? It could be as simple as saying you got conked on the head, got out, and wandered somewhere homeless and amnesiac in all the time leading up to your friends' time. If there was a body, we can see about our scientists and magic-users working up something cloned - not with a brain, mind you, that'd be barbaric - but there's a lot you can replicate in terms of just tissue and organs without putting a brain in it. " He tapped his left leg. "During the war I was in, the medicos cloned this up for me when I lost it during an orbital bombardment. To not disrupt the timeline, since your friend remembers you dead, if there was a body, we can put in some kinda substitute in the fire and then you'd have a lot of explaining to do but at least you'll be alive." He added, "And just so you don't wind up getting pulled back there by this slingshot affect I've been hearing about, I plan on getting the nerd herd working on a way to maybe secure some of us so we don't get pulled home. You know, volunteers who want to make sure they stay in fight, people who might get pulled back at a point they'd get killed. So that even if we can't go back home easily, we can control where and when some of us go back. Bunny says there's actually a kid they managed that with, because his world was that horrific and he was terrified to get pulled back home, even though it took some kinda really difficult magic. For his mental health they set him up safely with some good myths that are looking out for him, away from the Pole, because he kept thinking they were going to force him into fighting." But at least that meant it was possible. "He said it'll be hard to replicate but not impossible. This world wants us here, after all. I'll make sure you and anyone else that might die if they get yanked back are first in line to get bound here, and then we'll move onto the volunteers willingly opting to stay, so hopefully we can control when and where you go home. Then when all this is over, we can work out how to fake your death and maintain the timeline without killing you."

[the_civilian]

Well, it was a heck of a lot better than dying trying to rescue a man who didn't need to be rescued in the first place. But it also wasn't a guarantee yet, not when he could still snap back. He didn't want his last thought to be an irrational feeling of betrayal.

So he smiled weakly and straightened his shoulders to keep from ducking his head.

"Well, 'how to fake your death' was not really a conversation I ever saw myself having, so at least I'm expanding my horizons here."