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I regain consciousness and almost regret doing so. I'm at least still alive I guess, but my head is pounding, my body is sore and my mouth tastes strongly of vomit. I look around and see both the doctor I first saw when I got here and Hammer talking over me, their words like hammers at my skull.

"So you're awake," the doctor comments.

"What happened?" I ask, finding it very difficult to focus on much of anything with the pounding in my skull.

"You were drugged leaving the studio. They've sent a formal apology and offer their condolences for you and wish you a speedy recovery. That's their formal reply at any rate."

"How bad is it?" Hammer asks.

"My head," I moan, raising up an arm at it and finding at least it is still my normal arm, though once again I seem to be in a hospital gown. Understandable I guess considering where I ended up. No clue where the suit went, if it went back to Ingrid, went to my room or simply destroyed but it's not in this room.

"Yeah, that'll be the worst of it. From what I can tell from the remainder from that dart you were hit with it's a drug that will be like having a hangover like none in the world have experienced. However, the good news is that it is by no means fatal. I'd say in about a day it'll have fully worked its way out of your system and you should be then back to normal."

"Can it be cured faster?" Hammer asks.

"Unfortunately no. The compound Rose was hit with is very complex and healing magic and whatnot isn't good at flushing out drug cocktails. With magic I would be able to alleviate the symptoms, but those will return very quickly after the spell is ended. However, if you absolutely need to be cured immediately using the Release spell should still work to completely flush it out of your system."

"I'd rather not release if it's okay," I state, trying to stand up and succeeding though I am extremely woozy from doing so.

"Well damn. Looks like we'll have to go into tonight's mission one man short."

"Not necessarily," The doctor adds. "Rose may not be able to fight in the condition they're in right now, but it'll be a good idea to at least bring him with you. It's not like you were planning on putting him on the front lines yet anyway, were you?"

"Well, no. There is that. I want at least another few days of training before I'd even consider putting Rose in the thick of it."

"Just let me have my spell book and put me in a nice, quiet room and I'll be fine," I reaffirm, not wanting to be considered useless because of my insistence on not instantly clearing out the drug pouring through my veins. "If I'm needed I'll just release and then help out. Else I can still make mines and heal minor stuff."

And that is what we ended up doing. I spent an hour writing up the mines as best I can, though this time I left the sigil blank. Writing up the blank spell is one thing, having to concentrate hard enough to make sure all the sigils on the papers and the people are perfect is another. Jack decides to be the one writing up the sigils and even does the benefit of putting it on everyone. They end up putting me into a building well off to the side of the battle, a store that was once a fast food joint but had since been well boarded up. I take shelter in the back, in the kitchen, my book on one of the tables. The entire day I had not been able to keep anything down. Not that I had much of an appetite but I wasn't even able to drink water. Even that would come back up. I had to settle on putting water in my mouth just to clear out the taste of vomit but could do no more than that and had to spit it all back out.

I spent much of the battle focused on healing magic, trying to find something that could be useful, but thinking made my head hurt and periodically I'd have to go sit in a corner that's fairly dark and hold my hands over my eyes and rock myself to distraction, trying to drive away the pain, or at least make it less intense. It is during one of these rocking sessions that there is a lot of commotion in the facility. A bunch of people are rushing over to the kitchen area I'm near and knocking things around as they lay someone on a table. There's a deep gash in their chest but they seem perfectly calm and still. If not for the rising and falling of their chest I'd have sworn that they might have been already dead.

"What happened?" I ask, wanting to be informed so I could know how to help.

Turns out the reason they rushed into the back is because they knew my book was here as someone has already started flipping through the pages frantically.

"Be careful with that thing," I complain.

"He was stabbed in combat," the leader of the team answers. "Was dueling with one of them, holding his own and then he got hit with some sort of wave of air and then simply stopped right where he was. The other got in a really deep blow before we could get in to grab him and help."

"You need to stop the bleeding," I try to say, my voice weak from exhaustion and the headache.

They don't seem to be hearing me as they're talking about various spells trying to find one that could counteract what they were hit with. I try to reiterate my command but I'm again completely ignored. Seems they could care less and I'm too weak to do much of anything about it. Ah hell. As much as I'll hate myself for having to resort to this I'd hate myself far more if I had the ability to act and didn't because of my own selfishness. I scratch the itch.

I can feel it building inside me, the warmth overcoming me as I seem to grow. I start pushing myself upwards against the wall, going up and up as my body changes. Thankfully there is no pain. Nor was there before but this time it's more of a relief since I know this will make me hurt less since it'll get rid of the drug. My feet make the task all the harder, my feet tearing through the shoes I was wearing at the time and squashing them, putting me into a digitigrade stance. My tail begins to flow longer as I rise up, as if someone held the tip of my tail and wouldn't let it go any higher up than it was when I was kneeling. And even with this sacrifice, even as the bumps begin to resurface on my chest and I know that that other area is leaving they pay no attention to me, not the slightest bit. I try to grab their attention but again all they seem intent on doing is bickering about what spell might or might not work. Growing enraged at being ignored and frustrated at my own situation I shake my head, the last of the headache gone and roar.

"Shut the hell up!" I order, causing everyone to finally notice that I am actually in the room. "Ignore the damn wave. Worry about that later. That won't kill him. You need to stop the bleeding for fuck's sake."

"How can you be so sure?" The leader demands, trying to take back control of the situation from me.

"Because he's not fucking dead already. If it was a poison it would have finished him off long before. Instead you're just letting him bleed to death while you bicker like children on what spell to use to counteract the one thing that isn't going to kill him. Now which of you fucking know the stop bleeding spell?" I demand, refusing to give up any control. One of them raises an arm meekly. "Get to work on it then," I order and take a step forward before being hit by a dizzy spell. The drug may be out of my system but I'm still extremely dehydrated and haven't eaten anything today. "Someone get me some water," I add, noting one of them tossing me their water skin. I open it up and pour as much as I can into my mouth. It won't help too much but it will take the edge of the dizziness off.

"Now, what I want the rest of you to do is go to the healing spell called 'Transfer Essence' I want you all to memorize that spell as fast as you can and then I want you all to start using it on him as soon as possible. When one of you is drained, step back and let the next one step in. It's going to drain you like fuck but it'll prolong things. The better you can use this spell, the longer your friend has to live."

"And just what all are you planning on doing?" their leader demands, still not liking the thought of being ordered by someone who is still in their first week.

"I'm going to save his fucking life, if you guys can keep him alive long enough."

I move forward, thankful that the one with the stop bleeding spell has at least started casting it already. Most of the spells I need would need me to have access to the body part in question to heal it. So I'm going to likely have to jam my hand into the body to fix the internal damage first. I take a look at my hands as I approach and notice them covered once again in fur. But that's an easy enough fix to make as I ignite my hands and scorch off all the fur. I guess that's one way to sterilize my hands as well. Unfortunately I won't be able to use my book. The others need it more as they apparently have found the spell in question as the pages stopped flipping around. I'll just have to wing it.

"And I swear if you got one drop of blood onto my book I will make you suffer like you wouldn't believe," I shout at them, still angry at the situation as I look at my patient. Based on their mouth probably internal bleeding, possibly even a torn lung. Guess that's what I'll have to fix first. With a sigh I charge my hand with some generic healing magic and plunge my fist right into his chest.

I step out of the building and find Hammer leaning against the side of the building, staring out into the distance casually. I've been here long enough to see the hint of awareness. He may look nonchalant but he's still aware of everything going on in the nearby vicinity. He nods a greeting at me.

"Give me a target," I say, clenching my fists and conjuring up some fire into each of them, "I want to blow something up."

I take a step forward to try and march back into the battle. Or at least I tried to. After taking a step a wave of dizziness comes over me and I almost fall over. I would have if not for Hammer's quick action. As I started to fall downwards he manages to catch me and steady me, bringing me back to rest against the wall right next to him, his one arm still clutched around my far shoulder just in case. I sigh, feeling so helpless at it all. I stare down at my clothes. They're completely ruined at this point. Both shirt and pants are rather torn and are covered in blood. To gain some freedom of motion I had also torn them up a bit more, especially at the sleeves and where my knees currently are. Even still my shirt is somewhat tight, exposing those little bumps a tiny bit. But then, I guess that just goes to show the difference in anatomy, that this body has a bit more barreled out chest than a human one does. And yet, the cold doesn't bother me. I almost even feel a tad bit overwarm from the fur.

"No need. They've already called in the two reserve teams to our area and informed them of the risk and what to be aware of. Our current mission is just to protect this building and everyone inside it."

"Well damn," I frown, somewhat disappointed.

After a second he reaches down a bit and grabs his grenade launcher, bringing it over and holds it close to me, his hand on the grip fairly loose. I look at it curiously.

"Here, why don't you use this to go blow up that truck over there," he nods at a truck about in the parking lot of the building we're in. "You've earned it."

I take the launcher and take a moment or two to get a grip and figure out the mechanics of it before taking aim at the truck. I charge a bit of fire magic into the canister and let it fire. The projectile does a rather lazy arc but it hits the truck and causes it to explode, even going so much as to explode upwards slightly and flip over somehow. I must have almost barely missed and hit the bottom corner of it or just below it. But it is a satisfying explosion, even more so when the gas tank explodes creating a secondary explosion. My task done I hand the launcher back. Hammer takes it back and puts it back to where it was resting without any thought.

"Feel better?" he asks.

"A little," I reply.

We both stare at the burning truck for a while, Hammer's eyes wandering from time to time making sure that there is no threat coming. Cathartic it might have been letting me blow up something like that would have alerted anyone nearby of where we were. After a moment or two of seeing no motion in the distance his speaks up again.

"So what's the verdict?" Hammer asks, choosing not to look at me, just keep staring straight ahead into the distance while keeping his arm holding my far shoulder.

I sigh again, "He'll probably need to release anyway."

Hammer closes his eyes for a moment and nods, a sense of relief coming from his breath and expression. It was an answer and said everything he needed to know about the situation. With that, I could probably just leave it as it is and say nothing more but for my sake I feel the need to express more.

"He lost a lot of blood. Everyone in there is drained to uselessness at the moment," I comment, half waiting to see if he'll try and turn that into a joke about me being in the same condition since I nearly fell just trying to walk. But he declines, instead choosing to just listen and watch the scenery. "One of them even passed out. It was my first time doing something like that. I had neither the time nor access to consult my spell book so it was very much a hash job. On top of that considering the constraints I didn't really care how much harm I was doing so long as everything that could have killed him were taken care of. He's got a few broken ribs, some torn muscle groups and I wouldn't be surprised if I had done some nerve damage to top it all off. It'll probably be excruciating for him to even breathe. Without release I imagine even with magic it will take weeks to heal all of the damage. You know it was a benefit that the paralysis he was under was so complete. We didn't bother with anesthesia and didn't have any restraints handy so it would have expended a lot more of our energy trying to hold him down while I had worked."

"I'm sorry," he states, giving my shoulder a little squeeze.

Taking it for what it truly means I smile faintly and stare off at the flaming truck, watching it burn.

"I know, life sucks," I admit, knowing that he wasn't talking about the patient's situation but my own.

"So," he states after another moment of no activity in front of us save for a burning truck. "Do you think you could have done it without releasing?"

I sigh, looking down briefly at my form again. At the lumps on my chest. At my elongated feet and tail.

"Probably not. I wasn't in any condition to have been able to do anything nearly that complex at the time. I'd have probably chosen to just do the stop bleeding spell myself and had everyone else scour my book for some sort of spell to either counteract the paralysis or trigger the release even without them being able to move and probably would have passed out trying. Might have even given up and released anyway but then it would have been too late."

No more words are shared, just the two of us watching the truck burn.