POV: Drake
He paced back and forth that evening. They hadn’t made any progress. The entire day spent on healing Runa and keeping an eye on the forest fire she started. The snow and ice didn’t help much, pine trees burned hot. They’d had to move a few times, back the way they had come.
He told himself that he wasn’t angry at them, he was angry at the situation.
Pacing and watching kept him distracted. It kept him moving and watching food get converted into Runa was weird. The meals would fade away and part of Runa would grow back. It didn’t seem very efficient. The food used replaced less mass than the food had. Runa was about 5’ 8”, not a small woman, the magic healing used up most of his protein bars and a lot of the provisions they had acquired at Lakeshire. Baggage didn’t want to use all of one kind of food. It took Drake a while before he realized she was trying to target nutrients without a solid idea of what they were.
He had some vitamins and told her to try them out.
“I’m not sure what they are doing, Kai-dono. They do seem like they’re helping beyond what their size would suggest.” she had said.
Sayaka hadn’t bothered to try the food thing. “I don’t know much more than the basics,” she said. “I do what everyone does and pull from ethereal forces.”
“What do you do if the injury is as bad as Runa’s?” he asked.
“Die,” she answered.
Well, that summed things up quickly.
Not having anything else to do, he practiced with the sword and gun. He’d need a lot more time and ammunition to get his pistol skills back to where they were.
By evening, Baggage declared that Runa’s body was stable and she needed rest before they could try again. The patient in question looked weird. Half of Runa’s body had second-degree burns and patches of missing hair. The other half looked like someone was carving a wooden Runa statue with a chainsaw, but there weren’t any bloody or burned injuries, just a lot of irregularly shaped missing parts.
“Will she be OK?”, he should have asked that earlier.
“Yeah,” Baggage said. If I were a real doctor, I’d be done for the day a few hours ago.
“Can she be moved?” The words slipped out of his mouth.
Baggage smiled wryly. “Yes, the important parts are in place. It sort of depends on what you’re looking for.”
He recognized the look on her face. It was the look a junior employee had when they were about to lecture the dumbass boss (i.e. Drake) on a technical subject. These discussions never had to go that far. The junior employee either needed something or was going to ask him how he wanted the task done. Drake skipped to the end of the lecture.
“Do you need anything?” he asked abruptly.
“What? Um. No?” Baggage was drifting back into useless mode.
“Is this a fast, cheap, or good situation?”
“I- I don’t know what that means.”
Yeah. Useful Baggage was on the way out. It had been nice having her around.
Drake explained the concept of getting something done ‘fast, cheap, or good’. She was confused for a multitude of reasons, none of which were relevant.
“But we aren’t paying any money for anything!” She was making an attempt not to whine. He’d give her credit for that.
“Then think in terms of resources, Baggage. Do we need more food for Runa? Maybe a wild animal?”
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Or maybe parts of a dead orc. He would save that as a private question for Sayaka. Baggage tended to do things by the book and Drake doubted ‘corpses of enemies’ was in her book.
“All the wild animals ran away because of the fire,” said Baggage, still confused.
He stepped back and bit his knuckle to avoid flipping out. She had just done good work. He needed to reward her by keeping cool.
“Sure. No problem. It’s fine. Let’s try it like this: is there anything affecting the quality of your treatment?” Drake did not understand why he had to take these baby steps.
“That isn’t possible,” she said. “We did the hard part. As of now, it’s just magical reconstruction. That’s holistic, like Sayaka told you. I can’t control if her arm fills up more or if I make her hair silky and shiny.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“I never said you did!” Baggage must be trying to piss him off. She was fucking with his head. A reflex from the prison yard kicked in automatically.
“Baggage! This is not hard! Stop fucking around! You worthless little-”
A glowing dagger zipped in front of them.
Drake blinked.
Baggage blinked.
A glowing dagger zipped back and landed in Sayaka’s hand without noise.
“Just practicing,” Sayaka said. “I don’t understand anything you guys are saying. Do you want to tell me what it’s about or have you decided to let it go?”
She flicked a wrist and the dagger flew between them again with uncanny speed before returning to the elf.
“Oops,” she said insincerely.
The conversation had gone from ‘Does Baggage need time or resources to heal Runa’ and into ‘will he let these chicks push him around’. No, he would not.
“Sayaka, I don’t want to be here, I don’t understand why you didn’t get someone else to do the job, and I’ve given up learning why Earth is even involved.”
She didn’t say anything. Meanwhile, Baggage occupied herself by staring at the ground with her arms wrapped tightly around her body.
A part of him thought this would be a good time to use Sayaka’s ‘bathroom and walk’ therapy. The rest of him didn’t care.
“The only thing you guys are to me is an Uber ride back from a place I never should have been in the first place. If you won’t do your job and get me to Earth on time, then I don't need you, but you still need me.”
Drake’s abdomen felt like it had exploded. He looked down. There was a dagger sticking out of him. He was in shock. He knew he was in shock. Were you supposed to raise your feet or head for shock? It was one of them.
The weapon left his body on its own. Blood seemed to pour out of him. He should lie down. He collapsed and it felt like he had been stabbed all over again.
A similar thing happened to a guy in prison. Shivved with a sharpened toothbrush handle. Everyone made fun of the guy for screaming. Drake didn’t want to be a screamer; he did his best not to.
A foot pushed his head until he was looking up. A very long blonde ponytail led up to the face of a bored elf.
“Look at that,” she said. “You need us.”
Sayaka walked away, “Heal him if you want, Baggage. If you don’t I’ll get to it in the morning.”
Baggage sighed and sat next to him. She didn’t say anything.
He’d been a prick. It was their fault for bringing him and they were fixing it. Trying to anyway. Shit, this hurt.
She reached over him as if to grab something.
“Stop,” Drake said between breaths. “Sayaka. Tomorrow.”
“You don’t need to wait for her. I can do it just fine. You saw me.” Baggage said. “Or is this some honor thing? You don’t want me to do this?”
“No.” he gasped. “You should. Wanna.” Talking hurt.
She frowned and her brow wrinkled into shallow furrows. Then her face brightened and her mouth made a little ‘o’. “You mean it should be my choice?”
He nodded his head up and down.
“That’s nice, Drake-dono, but it’s a gut wound. The procedure is to heal you soon. You might be dead by morning.”
Not good.
She waved her hand and did some kind of magic shit. He began feeling better all over.
“Do a bad job.” he croaked. “Get it over with. Leave a cool scar.”
She smirked. “No. It doesn’t work like that, so no shortcuts. And we need you to look nice when you see Lily.”
“Use a protein bar.”
She shook her head while keeping herself focused on the healing. “That would only help if you left a chunk of yourself on the ground. I said no shortcuts.”
Her face brightened up again and she put her hand to her forehead. “Oh! I get it! Options. Fast, cheap, or good.”
He relaxed and let his head hit the ground.
“Drake-dono, you’ve taught me something. Let me teach you something. She took out her quill from somewhere and touched it to his face under his eyes. He wanted to grab her wrist and push her away. She was ‘teaching’ though. He let it happen. He felt a dot under each eye and another dot on the receding hairline of his widow’s peak. He scowled. He was not losing that much hair. Besides, he was forty-two. What did the little chippie expect?
“You didn’t like that? Talk to me about it tomorrow morning. Now get some sleep. I’ll fix you up and move the spare heater near you so you won’t get cold.”
They had heaters?
The healing felt nice. Relaxing. It was like… like… when had be last had a good night’s sleep?
He dozed off trying to remember another piece of his lost life while Baggage healed him, her face neutral and unreadable.
