Lord_Bahumat

Personally, I adore the idea of the civil rights struggle hinted at through the Might for Right Act in the game.

I'm curious; is there any interest to focus any writing on the ideas of the mortality behind the mask? Of people dealing with the traumas and costs that hero-work would require? How about simply the pains and scars a lifetime of dying (repeatedly) for justice?

Some of my favorite fanfics written and handled dealt with the fundamental humanity that has to be maintained in a dehumanizing job. Do you have any personal favorites in that vein?

Right in the City of Heroes comic books; check the written stories.

Nice to see another pro sf/f writer around here. Though, given our mutual habits for storytelling, if you're going to find us anywhere, it'd be in the role-playing forum.

Of course, now you're going to drop the bomb and say you're Harry Turtledove (who's been doing some CoH fanfic, I've noticed), or some other author I have to nudge my agent about and say "See?! See?! Why can't you find me gigs like THAT?"

Does anybody know any RP supergroups in Victory server?

Excerpt from Combat Medico's journal, cleared to Security Level 19 and higher at time of recording.

---

Excerpt Begins

"... waking up is never ideal. The dull ache in the right arm, below the elbow; my gloves twitching. I can feel cool air on my skin, which is bad, because it means my suit has been breached and I'm bleeding.

I force my eyes open, and strain my senses. There's mechanical sounds in the distance. My right arm is broken; a spiral fracture, I think. To my left is Icey Dragon. She's laying, blank-eyed, blood still pooling from the gash across her throat where the Clockwork Knight took her.

Colussi is to my left. He smells of overcooked bacon; electrical burns cover his body, and he's still shuddering a bit. He'll be dead soon.

And ten metres behind us, somewhere, are the remains of 9th Block when the Assembler Prince's iron carcass fell on him. If he's not dead yet, I know it won't be long, and the Portal won't get a lock on him with that much mass pinning him down.

Around me, the ticking, grating sounds of gears, but nothing closeby. I whimper in pain; my gloves twitch again, wanting to do their work. The technology is willing, but the flesh is weak.

I lay where I've crumpled, smelling the electrical burns and ozone on my own body, and fight the urge to weep. I'm just a nurse, I tell myself. I'm just a nurse. Not a hero. It's not my job to save the city, just one life at a time.

I'm just a nurse.

Just one life at a time.

Physician... heal thyself!

I bite off my own scream as I plant my hands against the floor, and lever myself onto my feet. The pain makes me dizzy; I almost vomit, before I can lean against a wall, clutching my arm. I take a slow count of ten, find it's not enough, and take another. My head starts to clear.

First things first, my body. If I get noticed again, I'll need to run. Time to get to work.

The gloves twitch as I subvocalize the command triggers. The green glow on my hud shows a modern miracle of technology occuring. Somewhere in a Crey laboratory, a supercomputer is hungrily humming along, nuclear resonance imaging data streaming from my gloves to the Paragon City Medical Forces servers, and the damaged cells are being teleported out individually, and replaced by generic stem cells. They'll fuse in seconds to my flesh, and while they're at it, repair the smartmesh armor suit.

I'm exhausted by the end of it, but I wait a few more seconds. Icey Dragon's eyes are open, supplicating. She can see her own blood slowly flowing from her, and she knows what it means. I'm down on my knees beside her in an instant.

I'm just a nurse, I tell them. I can only save one life at a time. But maybe, just maybe, I can save the lives of the ones who save lives... then, just maybe, I can do more than I could before.

The glow is more intense this time, and I look cautiously down the hallway. There's some clockwork about seventy meters down the hallway, but they're intent on the metal scraps they're scraping from the warehouse floor.

Icey Dragon shudders as her breathing starts to work right again, patting herself in momentary disbelief, then biting back tears of relief. Hell, so am I. Maybe some heroes in Paragon City have been through it enough to shrug it off, but I've never met one. Realizing you're dying is never good for your psyche. Being brought back from it isn't always much better.

I pat her shoulder softly. We're both shaking, just a bit, but fear is sublimating to anger. We're going to damn well stop this.

I turn to Colussi, and this time my motions are efficient. Letting the gloves do the fine work, while I get my hands dirty doing the basics; holding together wounds to let them close. He's unconscious, mercifully, through it all. Only after the last few burns have patched do his eyes open. I note with approval that Crey even matched the fabric tones on the suit. Nice touch.

Colussi jumps to his feet violently, eyes wide, head snapping around each way. It's a panic reaction; and I hold my breath. If he sprints down that hallway we're going to be dead all over again. But a few steps into a blind flight, he pauses, then stops. In control of himself again.

I walk by him and smile, a thin twitch of my lips. We're angry now, all angry, that some irresponsible power-hungry [censored] couldn't just work for the good of mankind. Brilliance like his could have done so much for the city. If he'd ever turned his mind, and his resulting minions, to repairing the city, what a city, what a country, what a world we'd have built? But instead we're in this godforsaken warehouse. And we're cleaning up the little toys while the high-powered heroes knock another Babbage around town.

9th Block is, to my surprise, alive. Trapped, but alive. I chuckle a bit, and he grins back, his quiet, soft-spoken Jamaican accent easy: "Commbaht, I waz a'wunderin' whun you'd get around mah way, girl."

I can't help it, I grin back at him, as Icey and I grab the shoulders of the Assembler Prince and drag it off to one side. "You know I always save the best for last."

He chuckles weakly. His left leg is crushed, and the pain must be excruciating. He doesn't say a word, and neither do I. But I've healed worse, and he's had worse.

The last green glow off my gloves replaces his leg whole; and I know it will be months before all the stem cells in it are fully integrated with his body. But it's better than crippling him for life. He flexes it experimentally, and nods, sitting up.

"Hay, bays and girls. What you say we go return da favor, mon?"

We're all on our feet, and sprinting down that hallway again. Ready to change the tide.

I'm just a nurse, I tell them. But sometimes they make me feel like a hero.

The following speech was given to the Paragon City Medical Forces, city-sponsored recruits graduating to full service in their supergroup.

---

I'm a nurse. I tell myself this when the reality of my life gets to be too much. I'm a nurse, I claim. Just a nurse, who happens to have some spectacular technology. It's not even mine.

My identity is Combat Medico. Unlike a lot of superheroes in the city, my name isn't a secret. But it's not important, either. Because I'm not a superhero; anyone with my training and the same equipment could do my job, and they are. You will be. I'm one of dozens of the Paragon City Medical Forces, just like you. They asked me here to talk to you all today.

The first fifty of us graduated from the medical academy like you; hired by the city's federal task forces to help support the
superpowered individuals who, for better or worse, are like us: We want the pain and war in this city to end.

Out there is a battlefield. Most of you know this intimately; many of you came from Boomtown, or what is now Grendel's Gulch. We watched brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, fall in this ongoing, insane war. Family lost to drugs, disease, illness, crime. You've all come forth, and offered to to make the world a better place the best way you know how.

You've all been issued gloves and suits. You've all practiced with
them; healing, defending yourselves. You've spent the housands of hours in classrooms around the city, learning strategies suited for supporting this city's allies... and for learning how to deal with the unexpected.

So I'm here to tell you today to celebrate, and put to use, what
you've learned. And to caution you that instinct will be every bit as important as training. Your suit may be bulletproof, but you're not. Keep your head down. Keep your men and women alive. Trust in their abilities, trust in yours... and trust the instinct to run. A hero isn't much good to anyone dead.

Be ready for the first time you die. We're playing for keeps out
there. The bad guys don't get portals to hospitals, and they know it. They'll knock you down and try to finish you. Portals to the hospital aren't always there in time. Bear your scars with pride; they are your badge of service.

People are going to die under your watch. Some permanently. And even if you learn to forgive yourself, you will always live under that knowledge. Physician, heal thyself. If you couldn't save them, it's doubtful anyone could. We want to believe our superheroes are invincible, that they're too virtuous and strong to be brought down. We want to believe, but we know better.

This is a war. And it has it's sober horrors. And you will be
constantly assaulted by them, unrelentingly. It's your job to fix
those horrors that you can. One person doesn't seem like much. But one person can save a lot of lives. And when those lives saved are busy saving other lives, you discover, very quickly, just how powerful one person's effort can be.

Paragon City Medical Forces graduating class of 2005: I thank you, and this city thanks you. You're saving this city, one life at a time.