This post is William's IC inbox at ataraxion. You can drop network or action stuff that doesn't quite feel like it fits or warrants a post on the main communities in here.
( she's never that far away, given her... complete lack of anything to do besides work, at the moment, so he isn't obliged to wait long before she joins him, and closes the door in the decisive sort of way that sometimes happens in movies about serial killers.
it's okay. she's probably not a serial killer. )
I'd like to discuss something- privately, to do with my credentials.
[As William is a notoriously excellent judge of character, he trusts her immediately!
Stands up, turns around. Gestures for her to join him in another nearby rolly chair if she would like.] I always like the sound of more credentials, [he says, honestly, thinking she must mean something like surgery. More surgeons is fantastic.] If this is private enough for you.
( welp, it'll do. --her manner seems to say, as she sits down and, despite a tendency to wear a pair of heels that push her another half a foot-ish, fails entirely to appear any smaller. six foot and lovin' it. )
I've mentioned before that I've not practised medicine so directly in the past, ( carefully choosing her words. ) I've failed to mention that I've been out of the field entirely for about five years. My last employment that made use of any of my degrees was-- probably six years ago. Easily. I have the qualifications that I do because I was, from undergrad until then, a part of a tradition of mages who approach magic with the scientific method.
( brief, wintry smile: ) You become a polymath or they kick you out of the treehouse. I left, for personal reasons, and went on to join a more...traditionally-oriented practise of witchcraft.
( mila pauses, briefly, and then, ) I'm explaining this to you because while I'm a serviceable diagnostic and research tool, I'm a more effective healer magically than I am with anything I studied as an afterthought ten years ago just to show someone I could. Discretion is both habit and, at home, a matter of survival; I chose not to bring it up previously because I can't fully discuss the background.
Ooooh that's interesting. William's eyes sharpen and he sits straighter, even though he still of course clocks in much shorter than Dr. Gallo. It's not a race okay. These cultural differences are extremely interesting to him, however; he's recently come into the acquaintances of angels and cyborgs and all sorts of magical people.] Most worlds I've heard of haven't really got room for both science and magic, so it's interesting to hear about another one, [he says.]
That's brilliant. Your magic works for injuries and normal diseases, yeah? I assume you wasn't holding out on us with the nanite fiasco-- my own gifts wasn't doing shit for anything but temporary symptom relief. [No grudges then, for her discretion.]
[William looks very curious at the start of that sentence, What I mostly work with; by the end he looks slightly nervous, but only a little. It sounds powerful.
What other choice do they have but to use the powers they wield?] Manipulation don't sound confined to healing, isn't it? Clearly we can say the same thing about fucking nanotechnology, but I just want to make sure I understand that-- about what you can do.
( levelly, as if she'd been prepared for that question and had rehearsed her answer - maybe true, maybe not - milagros inclines her head and says, ) Nor is it confined to human bodies. A colleague of mine has a bond with his rose garden some might call slightly perverse.
( that's actually a joke, although he'd be forgiven for not being able to quite tell. solomon's communion with nature is a source of great amusement for mila, who enjoys a slightly less intimate relationship with the natural world as trees aren't great conversationalists, sol, do you not have friends.
not that she's asked him that in a while. not that she thinks she ever will again, when they'll look at each other and remember calista. )
No. What I'm talking about is exactly what it sounds like. My kind are the demiurge of our world, and creation goes hand in hand with destruction. Such is nature.
( for all that she sounds so clinical, what she's describing is base, passionate and, as he's already realized, intensely powerful; her appearance is deceptive, and her practise of magic is joyously brutal. )
You mean flowers? What, that sounds, [William's brown furrows.] Um, very fucking fragrant but covered in very numerous, small, fine scabs-- [roses. What. He's almost losing track, catching on the detailed minutiae, but he takes a moment to back up, look at the bigger picture that Milagros is conveying here.]
Well I appreciate you signing up to Medical so we've got your abilities at play, [he says.] Sounds like Agriculture could use your talents too, but you're certainly needed here. I won't do you the disservice of reviewing the Hippocratic Oath-- the absence of licensing boards and malpractice insurance is complicated enough. [William taps a finger on the table, considering her, deciding specifically this is not time to be afraid.]
Did you have notions for when you'd like me to make magical referrals?
( mila tries not to laugh. also, she can probably smell fear.
... all right, no, not literally, but she's certainly attuned to the response in others. mildly, ) I do know the difference between medical assistance and torture, William, and I don't take either lightly. I took that oath when I finished med school.
( she's qualified to provide both services. that she says 'torture' and not just 'killing' is itself a conscious admission - he recognized immediately the possibilities of her power, and she's not going to insult him by pretending that they don't exist or, for that matter, that she's not equipped to use them in that way. she's as experienced at tearing apart as she is at putting back together, by necessity.
but that isn't what she's here to do. simple as that. if it becomes necessary, that's something else-- but it's not going to become necessary in the medical bay, outside of some pretty farfetched scenarios. )
I know that there are always going to be people who mistrust either science or magic. I'd like to be available for those in the former category-- I will do particularly well with people of earlier time periods and those who expect magic to have an ... earthy quality to its practise.
( in her pristinely professional get up and with her crisp, clinical conversation-- he'd really be forgiven for querying that assessment. )
I seen loads of people who fit that description around on the network, [William decides. He nods.] Absolutely. It's brilliant, having a double-edged sword like you around. I can do a bit of both myself, but my training aren't as advanced, nor my abilities, I think, match yours for power. [William is effusive. Not in a greasy, overinflated, false sort of way-- genuinely appreciative, impressed.
And pragmatically knowledgable that horrible shit is around the bend at any given moment.] We've had a fairly low rate of injury these past few Jump cycles, but that's wont to change soon. The corridors seem to've opened up, and that usually invites all sorts of mishaps. Despite being necessary, I think. To figure out what the fuck is going on with this ship. [William leans over and picks a tablet up off the table.]
Are you familiar with the long and violent history of the ship? Manticores and noxious rats and that kind of shit?
What I lack in built-up power, I make up for in flexibility and more varied experience, ( a little wryly. she's been practising magic in one tradition or another since she was barely an adult; if she'd been committed to one from the start and remained with them, she'd be even more of a force to reckon with...but she wouldn't be able to offer the same breadth of experience and familiarity. her scientific background complements what she does now, and she's learning to better appreciate that in this context. )
I've familiarized myself mainly through our medical records.
There ain't a measure of raw power, so we won't be pitting you against the Potter bird to see who tops out or anything like that, [William answers, affably. He makes a mental note though, Mila doesn't think of herself as a raw powerhouse. He still has little doubt that her ability to affect the human body in direct, measurable ways is greater than his, in terms of speed and effort, probably. His is slow as fuck, really. As for the medical records,] Brilliant.
I've got some notes that Professor Severus Snape and Kate Bishop have been fleshing out, if you'd like to have a look as well. It's got some decent coverage for the sorts of medical phenomena we can expect, from crush syndrome if anybody makes it out of the singularities to the bite wounds. [When he turns around the tablet for her, it's a colorful hodgepodge of grammatically abbreviated sentences, network links, and labels.]
( a delicate little nose-wrinkle-- ) 'Raw' power is a term I don't find particularly useful. Anyone can have 'raw power', and anyone frequently does. It's the experience and knowledge that come with wielding it that make it valuable. Those are the people who live long enough to become interesting.
( it isn't that mila doesn't see herself as powerful - she does - or even that she doesn't see herself as experienced - she is - but that she knows she isn't honed to the degree that a mage of her seniority should be. would be, if she'd had more consistency. but that's just another way in which she is, as he describes her, a double-edged sword; her experience and her knowledge are broader, and no longer having access to the powers she wielded as an etherite doesn't mean she took nothing from her former tradition when she left it. )
I imagine that's true here as much as anywhere else. ( she further imagines it's not an irrelevant observation as she leans forward to skim over what he's showing her, something she'll have to take a closer and more detailed look at when she has the leisure to. )
Well I don't know about 'anyone,' [William says, but he's mostly talking about himself. He doesn't think he's powerful, but his healing works slow, none of his powers have an explicit offensive use or generate many joules of energy on any subscale known to man.] But I take your point.
[The tablet display is a lot of words and colors.] I reckon we've still got to expect the unexpected up here, because shit must necessarily happen all the fucking time. But it could help to know what's gone on before. Hallucinations seem like an unfortunately common occurrence but the content and details of the presentation are extremely diverse, and the matter seems confused with... with-- [he gestures.] Other aspects of reality manipulation at play here.
It varies - what's been done to them, how strong they are, how much time we have, if I can stabilize them to move or if I have to act in the middle of... ( a gesture. ) The devil's always going to be in the details. I've survived things I shouldn't have running on nothing but magic and fumes.
[William nods his head. He is often a creature of twitchy fingers and scribbles and notes and incessant network recordings, but whatever he's thinking about he seems to prefer to commit to memory, considering her in solemn silence. For a moment, he looks slightly outside of himself.] Useful, [he says.]
Do you know what the stabilized, post-recuperative changes are in the case of healed brain damage? [he asks.] Would we expect to see memory loss or personality changes, fun shit like that?
( it takes her long enough to decide how to answer that he might wonder if she just didn't hear him. it isn't an awkward silence, per se, it just ... goes on for a while, and more than anything else she's so fucking tired, sometimes, when she thinks of how much she can't do compared to how much she can.
there's so much more she can't fucking do. it's different, here, but she's lived the alternative for much longer.
slowly, not ashamed of herself but aware that what she's about to say is both not at all the helpful answer he's looking for and also potentially very, very unwelcome in itself, ) The kind of injury you're describing isn't something I've encountered in a scenario where we had the luxury of options beyond making it fast.
( mila isn't a healer; she's someone whose abilities are applicable and who has, out of necessity, applied them. it hasn't always - ever - been pretty. )
Ah, [William says. He sounds more thoughtful than worried, but then, they all have their limitations.] I'll note you down for last resort, sure.
But if you care to speak to it to further detail and shit. [He makes a 'by all means please' gesture. While he does not personally have plans to experience traumatic brain injury, poisoning, asphyxiation, or other neurological injuries anytime soon, it's one of his own limitations. It's a practical curiosity.]
It's not that that's the only option there theoretically is, ( a little wryly, ) it's just the only option we've ever practically been able to achieve without getting everyone killed.
( sometimes when it comes down to saving one person or risking everyone, you don't get to be a big damn hero about it. you don't get to say no, damn it, we don't leave anybody behind unless you want those to be your last words, never quoted. you make a hard call and then you live with it, and sometimes you wonder, but it's done and it's all you could do. maybe they'll understand, in the next life, why you chose that way. maybe they'll live longer, the next time around.
or maybe they won't. the world's getting worse and not better, every passing year. )
My experience as a healer is essentially battlefield medicine from the thick of it. When I talk about stabilizing... ( a 'hhfff what can I say' kind of sigh-- ) Let's say you lose a limb. If we move fast enough and if we can get out, I stop the blood flow. I trick the limb into believing it's still attached to a living body. We have a window of time in which I can reattach it without any lingering damage or side-effects. Without a scar, if that's the kind of thing you like.
( the verbena don't, really. they like their scars just fine. )
[Not everyone does, though. And cloning has its inconveniences, its side-effects; Kate Bishop made that clear. William's eyes widen. He looks immediately interest. If you lose a limb.] That's brilliant, [he says.] Absolutely brilliant.
I can see that working in conjunction with the usual nature of violence aboard here and Medical Bay really well. [William nods his head a few times, scuffing his knuckles along his chin.] You fucking did that, though? [He looks at her curiously.] You reattached some poor cunt's leg?
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In the back
[With his accumulated hordes of analysis equipment, presumably.]
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it's okay. she's probably not a serial killer. )
I'd like to discuss something- privately, to do with my credentials.
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Stands up, turns around. Gestures for her to join him in another nearby rolly chair if she would like.] I always like the sound of more credentials, [he says, honestly, thinking she must mean something like surgery. More surgeons is fantastic.] If this is private enough for you.
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I've mentioned before that I've not practised medicine so directly in the past, ( carefully choosing her words. ) I've failed to mention that I've been out of the field entirely for about five years. My last employment that made use of any of my degrees was-- probably six years ago. Easily. I have the qualifications that I do because I was, from undergrad until then, a part of a tradition of mages who approach magic with the scientific method.
( brief, wintry smile: ) You become a polymath or they kick you out of the treehouse. I left, for personal reasons, and went on to join a more...traditionally-oriented practise of witchcraft.
( mila pauses, briefly, and then, ) I'm explaining this to you because while I'm a serviceable diagnostic and research tool, I'm a more effective healer magically than I am with anything I studied as an afterthought ten years ago just to show someone I could. Discretion is both habit and, at home, a matter of survival; I chose not to bring it up previously because I can't fully discuss the background.
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Ooooh that's interesting. William's eyes sharpen and he sits straighter, even though he still of course clocks in much shorter than Dr. Gallo. It's not a race okay. These cultural differences are extremely interesting to him, however; he's recently come into the acquaintances of angels and cyborgs and all sorts of magical people.] Most worlds I've heard of haven't really got room for both science and magic, so it's interesting to hear about another one, [he says.]
That's brilliant. Your magic works for injuries and normal diseases, yeah? I assume you wasn't holding out on us with the nanite fiasco-- my own gifts wasn't doing shit for anything but temporary symptom relief. [No grudges then, for her discretion.]
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What I mostly work with is something called vitakinesis - manipulation of the living, physical form at its most basic level.
( if that sounds super easy to weaponize, that's because it is and she has, extensively. )
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What other choice do they have but to use the powers they wield?] Manipulation don't sound confined to healing, isn't it? Clearly we can say the same thing about fucking nanotechnology, but I just want to make sure I understand that-- about what you can do.
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( that's actually a joke, although he'd be forgiven for not being able to quite tell. solomon's communion with nature is a source of great amusement for mila, who enjoys a slightly less intimate relationship with the natural world as trees aren't great conversationalists, sol, do you not have friends.
not that she's asked him that in a while. not that she thinks she ever will again, when they'll look at each other and remember calista. )
No. What I'm talking about is exactly what it sounds like. My kind are the demiurge of our world, and creation goes hand in hand with destruction. Such is nature.
( for all that she sounds so clinical, what she's describing is base, passionate and, as he's already realized, intensely powerful; her appearance is deceptive, and her practise of magic is joyously brutal. )
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Well I appreciate you signing up to Medical so we've got your abilities at play, [he says.] Sounds like Agriculture could use your talents too, but you're certainly needed here. I won't do you the disservice of reviewing the Hippocratic Oath-- the absence of licensing boards and malpractice insurance is complicated enough. [William taps a finger on the table, considering her, deciding specifically this is not time to be afraid.]
Did you have notions for when you'd like me to make magical referrals?
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... all right, no, not literally, but she's certainly attuned to the response in others. mildly, ) I do know the difference between medical assistance and torture, William, and I don't take either lightly. I took that oath when I finished med school.
( she's qualified to provide both services. that she says 'torture' and not just 'killing' is itself a conscious admission - he recognized immediately the possibilities of her power, and she's not going to insult him by pretending that they don't exist or, for that matter, that she's not equipped to use them in that way. she's as experienced at tearing apart as she is at putting back together, by necessity.
but that isn't what she's here to do. simple as that. if it becomes necessary, that's something else-- but it's not going to become necessary in the medical bay, outside of some pretty farfetched scenarios. )
I know that there are always going to be people who mistrust either science or magic. I'd like to be available for those in the former category-- I will do particularly well with people of earlier time periods and those who expect magic to have an ... earthy quality to its practise.
( in her pristinely professional get up and with her crisp, clinical conversation-- he'd really be forgiven for querying that assessment. )
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And pragmatically knowledgable that horrible shit is around the bend at any given moment.] We've had a fairly low rate of injury these past few Jump cycles, but that's wont to change soon. The corridors seem to've opened up, and that usually invites all sorts of mishaps. Despite being necessary, I think. To figure out what the fuck is going on with this ship. [William leans over and picks a tablet up off the table.]
Are you familiar with the long and violent history of the ship? Manticores and noxious rats and that kind of shit?
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I've familiarized myself mainly through our medical records.
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I've got some notes that Professor Severus Snape and Kate Bishop have been fleshing out, if you'd like to have a look as well. It's got some decent coverage for the sorts of medical phenomena we can expect, from crush syndrome if anybody makes it out of the singularities to the bite wounds. [When he turns around the tablet for her, it's a colorful hodgepodge of grammatically abbreviated sentences, network links, and labels.]
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( it isn't that mila doesn't see herself as powerful - she does - or even that she doesn't see herself as experienced - she is - but that she knows she isn't honed to the degree that a mage of her seniority should be. would be, if she'd had more consistency. but that's just another way in which she is, as he describes her, a double-edged sword; her experience and her knowledge are broader, and no longer having access to the powers she wielded as an etherite doesn't mean she took nothing from her former tradition when she left it. )
I imagine that's true here as much as anywhere else. ( she further imagines it's not an irrelevant observation as she leans forward to skim over what he's showing her, something she'll have to take a closer and more detailed look at when she has the leisure to. )
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[The tablet display is a lot of words and colors.] I reckon we've still got to expect the unexpected up here, because shit must necessarily happen all the fucking time. But it could help to know what's gone on before. Hallucinations seem like an unfortunately common occurrence but the content and details of the presentation are extremely diverse, and the matter seems confused with... with-- [he gestures.] Other aspects of reality manipulation at play here.
We'll probably see a lot of maimings.
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( nice worlds with nice witches don't produce women like mila gallo. she learned to heal by necessity, up to her elbows in blood; it is what it is. )
cw c-word
[There's a brief smile for that. No mirth in it.]
How close to dead can a person be before you can't bring the poor cunt back? [William asks.] Do you know?
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( she knows. )
It varies - what's been done to them, how strong they are, how much time we have, if I can stabilize them to move or if I have to act in the middle of... ( a gesture. ) The devil's always going to be in the details. I've survived things I shouldn't have running on nothing but magic and fumes.
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Do you know what the stabilized, post-recuperative changes are in the case of healed brain damage? [he asks.] Would we expect to see memory loss or personality changes, fun shit like that?
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there's so much more she can't fucking do. it's different, here, but she's lived the alternative for much longer.
slowly, not ashamed of herself but aware that what she's about to say is both not at all the helpful answer he's looking for and also potentially very, very unwelcome in itself, ) The kind of injury you're describing isn't something I've encountered in a scenario where we had the luxury of options beyond making it fast.
( mila isn't a healer; she's someone whose abilities are applicable and who has, out of necessity, applied them. it hasn't always - ever - been pretty. )
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But if you care to speak to it to further detail and shit. [He makes a 'by all means please' gesture. While he does not personally have plans to experience traumatic brain injury, poisoning, asphyxiation, or other neurological injuries anytime soon, it's one of his own limitations. It's a practical curiosity.]
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( sometimes when it comes down to saving one person or risking everyone, you don't get to be a big damn hero about it. you don't get to say no, damn it, we don't leave anybody behind unless you want those to be your last words, never quoted. you make a hard call and then you live with it, and sometimes you wonder, but it's done and it's all you could do. maybe they'll understand, in the next life, why you chose that way. maybe they'll live longer, the next time around.
or maybe they won't. the world's getting worse and not better, every passing year. )
My experience as a healer is essentially battlefield medicine from the thick of it. When I talk about stabilizing... ( a 'hhfff what can I say' kind of sigh-- ) Let's say you lose a limb. If we move fast enough and if we can get out, I stop the blood flow. I trick the limb into believing it's still attached to a living body. We have a window of time in which I can reattach it without any lingering damage or side-effects. Without a scar, if that's the kind of thing you like.
( the verbena don't, really. they like their scars just fine. )
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I can see that working in conjunction with the usual nature of violence aboard here and Medical Bay really well. [William nods his head a few times, scuffing his knuckles along his chin.] You fucking did that, though? [He looks at her curiously.] You reattached some poor cunt's leg?
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He needed it. We needed him. We were lucky enough to be able to get him out before everything went tits up.
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Is there anything else I ought to know?
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