Star Harbor Nights

"Oh my God!" D.J. cried.

The broken robot limb was still moving, wriggling its three spiky fingers around inside the wounds in Perfect's back. D.J. was down beside her in a flash, snapping each of the digits off at the joint and then ripping them out as quickly as she could when that didn't stop their movement.

"Is that... is that blood?" Pamela asked as dark, wet crimson welled up within the ragged holes.

"What do you mean, is that blood?" D.J. shouted. "What's it look like?"

Pamela went nearly as pale as Perfect. She doubled over and heaved up her drink on the debris-strewn roof.

D.J. ignored her. Her eyes were drawn to Mr. Buttons, the damned stuff rabbit. He was hanging halfway out of the quiver on Perfect's back. She noticed a white strip of tape wrapped twice around his midsection.

"Tape," she muttered. "Medical tape. Perfect must have medical supplies." She spotted the hip pouches and opened one, pulling out a small pen recorder, a length of insulated wire, and other odds and ends. Pamela was shaking, as though she was silently sobbing. D.J. looked up. "Are you going to help me or not?" she demanded, her body suffused with an angry red glow. Her eyes couldn't have bored more deeply into Pamela's invulnerable hide if they'd been lasers.

"I..." Pamela began, but her voice faltered. She kneeled on the other side of Perfect and reached for the other pouch, but she'd no sooner touched it than she turned aside and retched.

"Oh, for fuck's sake... move!" D.J. said, pushing her away. She found some antiseptic wipes and the adhesive bandage roll. Working fast and with machine like precision, she cleaned the wounds as best she could and then butterflied them shut with short strips of tape.

Pamela did her best to look at everything but Perfect.

"What's that?" Pamela asked, pointing to a small scroll of paper that had fallen out of the pouch.

D.J. grabbed it and unrolled it.

"It's part of the info sheet that Broker hands out... numbers and addresses for doctors who'll patch up masks on the sly."

"That's what we need, right?" Pamela asked.

"No, these back alley docs are good for stitches, but those fingers got into her pretty deep.... she's going to need a lot more," D.J. said, looking at the list. "I'll take her to the hospital to save her life, but that'll be the end of her career... and her father's. I'd do it, but I'm not sure she'd thank me. This last one on the list, it just says 'A. Llyonesse, Healer'. No phone number, but... healer... that'll either be mutant or magic. That's what we need."

"I know that building," Pamela said, noting the address. "It's in Twistville."

"Then that's where we're going," D.J. said.

"But..."

"It's the middle of the night. Twisters are suspicious of outsiders," D.J. said. "You know the area, so you can't be a total stranger there... and you're a mutant."

"What are you?" Pamela asked.

"Something else," D.J. said. "I'll carry her. You don't have to get any blood on you... as long as we get her there in time."

"But..."

"She's hurt because you lured her out here tonight," D.J. said angrily. "You're supposed to be the big 'American Hero', Pummella... are you going to act like it?"

"I..." Pamela started, then simply nodded, swallowing hard.

D.J. stooped down beside Perfect again. She unbuckled the strap that held the quiver with Mr. Buttons on Perfect's shoulder, and fastened it around her own, then put her arms beneath the fallen vigilante's body and lifted, keeping her level and steady with computer-assisted precision.

"I'm going," D.J. said. "You're coming with me. Try to keep up."

Then she was off.

D.J. had moved as fast as she dared. Her synthetic frame adapted to whatever directives her human brain gave the computer. She thought of her need for a swift yet smooth ride, and her feet and legs moved as was necessary to absorb every shock along the way even as she ran and jumped across town at speeds a cheetah would envy. She kept one ear on Pamela's progress, making sure that the giant blonde didn't simply try to ditch her.

When D.J. reached the mutant neighborhood of Twistville, she stopped down on the street until Pamela arrived. She hated to delay, but she didn't want her arrival to be seen as an act of aggression. She let Pamela lead the way to the address of the healer, which was on the third floor of an apartment building. There was a speaker by the front entrance, but the keypad had been ripped out, leaving hanging and frayed wires exposed. The door wasn't locked.

They climbed the stairs to the third floor and sought out apartment D. There was a heavily tarnished plaque on the door with flowery calligraphic letters engraved upon it. D.J. couldn't be sure, but she thought it read "Elfmaid."

After a look from D.J., Pamela knocked on the door a little sheepishly. It was so soft, D.J. was sure that nobody could have heard it, and she was about to tell Pamela to knock again for real when she heard movement from inside.

"Who's there?" a muffled voice asked, high and somewhat flinty. D.J.'s tracking software put the sound's origin off to the side of the door.

"Heroes with injured," D.J. said. She added, in case famous names held any cachet with the mysterious woman, "D.J. Harmony and Pummella."

"Those names mean nothing to me."

"My friend is bleeding badly," D.J. said.

"Show me."

D.J. stepped back from the door so that Perfect's body would be framed in the view through the peephole. A few moments later, there came the sound of a series of bolts being drawn back, and then the door swung open, revealing a tall, thin woman with green hair and skin the color of tree bark. Her limbs were slender, her fingers especially so. Her eyes were large and piercing, her nose slightly long, and her ears tall and distinctly pointed.

"Are you the healer?" D.J. asked her.

"I am Avalla Llyonesse," the elfin woman said. "You may enter."

She stepped back, allowing the heroes into her apartment. The door opened directly into a large living area, decorated with a fantasy motif. There were dragons, faeries, unicorns, and wizards all around the room, in the form of statues and prints and tapestries and miniatures. There were also a wide variety of gleaming medieval weapons scattered in among the objets d'arts. D.J. didn't have any particular knowledge of such things, but they didn't look like any cheap mall store replicas to her.

"Bring her into the kitchen," Avalla said, leading the way ahead of them.

The combination kitchen and dining room was much more plainly furnished, with no decoration at all except for a clock and a calendar with a picture of a swordswoman on it. The table was tall and wide with a steel top. D.J. gently set Perfect face down upon it. She slipped the quiver off of her shoulder and leaned it against the wall by the doorway.

"Are there any other wounds?" Avalla asked.

D.J. shook her head.

The tall, willowy mutant ripped all three of the butterflies off. The wounds slipped open like yawning mouths, making a sucking noise that was unfortunately just audible to D.J.'s enhanced senses. She winced. The healer showed no reaction to the appearance of the ragged holes, but simply plunged her finger into the first of them, probing around inside it.

D.J. jumped at the sound of Pamela's body hitting the floor in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Though she'd fallen backwards, she'd managed not to hit anything breakable in her faint.

"Is that... hygienic?" D.J. asked Avalla, watching her work.

"My aura heals infection as well as injury," Avalla said absently, pulling her long, slender finger out and then jabbing it back into each wound again and again. Though her finger came out bloody, the bleeding seemed to stop with the first application. "Deep wounds are the messiest. I don't have a tremendous amount of range, so I have to heal the internal injuries first, before the wounds close. Sometimes I have to re-open them. These are just wide enough that I don't think I'll have to."

"Is it tiring at all?" D.J. asked.

"No, my healing field is always there whether it's being used or not," Avalla said. Apparently satisfied with her healing of the internal damage, she splayed three fingers, putting one in each of the wounds. She slowly drew them out. D.J. watched with interest as the flesh visibly regrew around her, so that when she finally pulled her hand free it was with a series of small popping sounds. She passed her fingertips back and forth over the three dimples that remained, until there was no sign of injury... if you ignored the blood.

"Is there any, you know, after-care?" D.J. asked.

"No," Avalla said, shaking her head. "When she wakes, we should ask her about pain. If there's any, it means I missed something... and then we've got the choice of cutting the whole area open and starting from the bottom up, or trying a hospital... but I'm fairly sure that that I didn't."

"If it comes to that," D.J. said, taking a deep, steadying, and purely cosmetic breath, "I'll do the cutting."

Avalla nodded.

"I don't think it will," she said.

"Do you need any... I mean, do we..."

"You can leave money in the bowl by the door when you leave," Avalla said wearily. "And then I don't want to see or hear from you again, unless the need is great. Let's go sit down in the living room until your friends recover."

They went back to the living room. D.J. looked all around, taking in the baubles and statuary. Everything had been precisely arranged and lit flatteringly with overhead track lighting and back lighting. There were no lamps or overhead lights, but the overall effect was that room was somewhere pleasantly between dim and bright. There was a light fixture over the small hallway that lead off the other side of the room from the kitchen, but there were no bulbs in it. None of the lights from the living room fell directly into the hallway. The room at the end of it was pitch black.

D.J. couldn't help but notice that Avalla's chair was positioned so she could see down that hallway.

"So is Elfmaid your hero name?" she asked her hostess, remembering the plaque on the front door.

"It's my mutant name. I'm not a hero," she said. "I haven't been for years."

"Why'd you quit?"

Suddenly, Avalla looked up at the darkened doorway, as if she'd heard something stirring within. Her big pointy ears must not have been simply for show; D.J.'s sensitive audio pickups hadn't detected the slightest movement.

"Go to sleep, Morgan," the mutant called, a little sharply. "Go back to your bed."

"But it's night," said a child's voice, plaintive and quavering, from within the darkness. "I'm hungry."

"One moment," Avalla said to her guest as she hurried towards the bedroom. She shut the door behind her. D.J. didn't want to pry, but her curiosity tugged at her. She settled for not boosting her hearing beyond its normal augmented levels. All she could make out was a few murmured words, and then silence.

"My daughter has some special needs," Avalla said when she returned, closing the door behind her. "Caring for her is why I've... retired... from heroics. I think we should probably check on your friends."

D.J. hadn't realized her synthetic skin was capable of feeling goose bumps. They were probably a phantom nerve signal, but they felt real all the same. She was glad to get back into the brightly lit kitchen. Pamela was still out like a light... they had to step over her... but Perfect was stirring on the table.

"Perfect! Do you feel any pain?" D.J. asked her.

"No, why would I?" she asked. "And where am I?"

"You got hurt in the fight," D.J. said. "We took you to a healer."

"No, I really don't think so," Perfect said, shaking her head dazedly. "I... I think a robot punched me in the back, but none of the others came close."

"It punched right through your back, you mean," D.J. said. "You were too keyed up on adrenaline... and maybe alcohol... to notice."

"Oh," Perfect said, reaching behind her and feeling around the spot where the wounds had been.

 "The wound's completely gone... this woman healed you," D.J. said, indicating Avalla.

"Elfmaid," Perfect said, blinking rapidly as she called the information to mind.  "Avalla Llyonesse. Grant mutation. Centimeter-range healing aura, multiple enhanced senses accompanied by exaggerated sensory organs. Olympic class..."

"Who sent you?" Avalla demanded, suddenly suspicious.

"She's got an encyclopedic mind for this kind of stuff," D.J. said. She gave a small laugh to cut the tension. "She's probably got all the 4B registration files memorized."

At the mention of 4B, Avalla's nostrils flared and her eyes went wild.

"Get out!" she yelled.

"I didn't mean any..." Perfect began.

"Take your giant friend and get out!" Avalla shouted.

Perfect hopped down off the table and hurried towards the doorway, scooping up Mr. Buttons and his carrier as she went. D.J. followed. She bent down and grabbed Pamela's feet, dragging her towards the front door. Avalla followed them, holding the door open and slamming it shut behind them. The multitudinous locks slid shut with faster-than-human speed. D.J. didn't care. She dropped Pamela's legs with a thud.

"So, you're really okay?" D.J. asked Perfect.

"I feel fine," she said. "Did Pum... Pamela get hurt, too?"

"No... she just can't take the sight of blood," D.J. said, a little scornfully.

"Growing up invulnerable, she's probably not seen much up close," Perfect said. "She fought alongside us. You could try being a little nicer."

"We did kick ass together, but we wouldn't have been in that fight if she hadn't lured you out to seduce you," D.J. said.

"Oh, please don't start that again," Perfect said, waving her hand dismissively. "Anyway, we should try to rouse her." She knelt down by Pamela's head and began to lightly slap at her cheek. "Does being invulnerable make one less sensitive to tactile pressure and shock, I wonder? Her skin feels soft, so I wouldn't think so... oh, I think she's..."

Pamela's eyelids fluttered a few times before she came around properly. She blinked in the harsh light of the apartment building hallway before she could focus completely on the sight of the young woman whose face hung over her.

"Perfect! You're okay!" Pamela cried, sitting up and throwing her arms around Perfect in a crushing embrace. The young woman went very stiff; so did D.J.

Pamela's hands were sliding down inside the back of Perfect's tights, cupping her ass. Perfect looked almost as pale as she had when she'd been injured.

D.J. put her hand on Pamela's shoulder and squeezed with all the power her motorized joints could muster. It wasn't enough to hurt the resilient giantess, but it got her attention. She jumped and looked up at D.J. with a look on her face like a kid caught reading a comic book in church. Her hands flew up.

"Get... out," D.J. said, her eyes blazing red.

"What? I just..." Pamela stammered.

D.J. mouthed the word "out" again. She wasn't even able to modulate her vocal processor. Her whole synthetic body trembled with the effort it was taking to restrain herself. Pamela stared, a mixture of fear and shame on her face, and then she fled down the hallway.

"Perfect? Honey, are you okay?" D.J. asked.

The girl was shaking, her lower lip trembling and her eyes bright and wet.

When she finally spoke, it was in a voice that was very small, very child-like, and very far away from the dazzling warrior woman that had fought off the Portalien probes on the rooftop earlier that night.

"Mr. Buttons was right."