Switched Ch. 08 - Paper Doll

"Fuego One, get up!" shouted a voice in my ear. Dizzily, I examined my broken finger. Should I try to bend it back or wait? I knew this. Me and my sweeties had taken those first aid courses. My sweeties and I.

Screw it. I bent it back. No, that was crooked. One more bend. There. Now for the leg.

"Get up!" repeated the voice, and it came back to me, what I was doing and who I was. "Blue!" ordered the voice.

"I've got him." Blue sounded so collected. He probably didn't have all those messy endorphins and such to fuck with his emotions. He'd been one the youngest people ever to express Variant abilities, and what he'd become looked more like a piece from a game board than a person. He was about human height, bowed out in the middle, with two legs and two arms. His face was a cartoonish pair of eyes, nose and mouth that moved around his body. In profile, he was a slender rectangle.

All of a sudden, he was hovering over me. "Fuego One, can you hear me?" he asked.

"Why do you call me that? Is there a Fuego Two?"

"He's conscious. Come, Fuego One, ride on my back."

"Whee—Ow, fuck!"

It was a struggle for both of us to get me on his flat, faintly warm back. He had to make himself a ramp, basically, so I could crawl up onto his back. It was too smooth to gain purchase but he helpfully extruded one of his inflexible arms where I could reach it. When I got a good grip on it, it moved slowly up his body, drawing me along.

His eyes and mouth slid around to this side of his body, right next to my face. "You okay?" he asked. He buzzed faintly when he talked.

I was so not okay, but I wasn't going to say that and risk anyone thinking I couldn't handle the job. "Let's go blow shit up," I suggested. My voice came out as a feeble groan. I had to breathe very, very carefully and not too much to keep the pain to a manageable level.

He rose into the air and told me, "Start preparing another novabomb. You only need one more."

The next bomb was easier. The pain actually helped, which only bolstered my 'holding back an orgasm' metaphor. My whole body hurt like hell, but Blue was a smooth ride even as he dove toward our prey and zigzagged between its questing limbs.

"Fuego One, this is important: After you novabomb, you need to focus on pulling heat in, okay?" His face was concerned. I wondered if he could see where he was going when he did this, or if he'd put a second face on the front of him. The face on his back, the one talking to me, said, "We've got to limit collateral damage, and the target is on a gas station."

I'd thought it was at a home improvement store. Man, I was struggling. I'd lost track of the tactical situation and gotten hurt, and it hadn't even been five minutes. I focused on building my novabomb.

"Put me down," I demanded.

"I am resistant to flames," replied my flying day-bed.

I thought, Is this what we're going to do? Have a fucking power struggle right now? I'm not going to blow up good if I'm worried about hurting you, so go!" I tried to say it, but didn't have enough breath.

Lorelei on the comlink: "Do so, Blue. His flame be hotter by far than anticipated."

Tendrils wrapped Blue faster than he could burn them away and dragged him into a roiling blob. He would have to be far enough away when I went off, because I had no idea where he was now.

Something splattered against my back and I fell forward. I was so full of heat by this point that I was nearly weightless and moved only sluggishly toward the ground. The motion caused my leg to send a jag of pain through my body that stole my breath completely away.

I looked over my shoulder and saw a blackened, sizzling pseudopod recoiling from the blow it had delivered to my back. All I could smell was the acrid stink of burnt fat.

Even through the adrenaline, the fear got me. There was a thing here. It had slain tens of thousands of people and eaten part of a football stadium, it had me surrounded, and it was trying to figure out a way to kill me dead. I imagined I could feel its attention on me. I was literally surrounded by evil.

Something hit me, hard, on the side of the head. I looked around in time to see a burning tendril with a brick falling from its blackened tip. Things blurred. My ears were ringing constantly. There was a distant, urgent-sounding chatter on the comlink but I either couldn't hear or couldn't focus.

It was everywhere. A wilderness of protoplasm all around.

I made the mistake of moving my leg. I screamed in pain and pushed off from the ground reflexively, and that movement saved my life. I floated upward a short distance, and instead of hitting the back of my head, the fast-moving wheel of a fucking car hit me in the back.

The impact was awful, but worse, the tire had melted on impact and was now stuck to me. This was the last little bit necessary to fill my freakout meter to the brim, and with a shout, flames exploded from my body in every direction, but especially the part with the wheel stuck to it, and the thing was flung away.

I was shoved forward and spun, floating, like some kind of dumbfuck balloon. The only way to move about was to use the heat. The intense agony of my leg shifting as I rotated in space told me that no amount of touching the ground was acceptable. My leg hanging without support was utter torment, too, but I knew it could be worse. I could imagine the shards of my tibia grinding together under my weight...

I could feel things flexing wrong in my chest, and every breath was agony. I couldn't move my left arm and everything was blurry because I was pretty sure the prescription goggles had melted off my face.

That thing I'd just done to get the wheel off me had ignited flammables within thirty feet and cut one of the supports for the tall gas station sign. It toppled as if in slow motion. I'd expended my novabomb to little effect, and I had to build another, fast.

In front of me, a dozen pseudopods lunged before I knew what I was looking at. Every one wielded a chunk of debris, and they were now shooting toward me. I flung up my arms to defend myself and saw a cobalt line sweep through, severing the limbs just before they attacked.

The gas station sign hit the ground with an underwhelming crunch.

Blue floated down to my level and lased another cluster of tentacles. The blob was highly agitated, boiling all around, launching attack after attack from seemingly random directions. Blue spun like a gunfighter, taking down limbs as soon as they formed.

The kaiju had been playing guerrilla war with the heroes up until now. Wasting their time with hit and run tactics, stalling while absorbing mass. Now, it was as if it knew it had to kill me.

Country Kaiju wanted to kill me. I got a weird sort of celebrity sighting rush from thinking that.

The side of Blue facing me became a sign: "Novabomb ASAP." I gave a thumbs-up.

Blue already had his hands full stopping the monstrosity's attacks, but it was investing here, sending more pseudopods by the second, and a dark, lumpy shape rising behind it was enough tentacles to overwhelm the hero.

The novabomb would take some time. I could release it prematurely and delay, as I'd done just now, but it would have to be done more and more frequently until it was tepid and ineffective, and then I would die.

A luminous form streaked past. Lady Lorelei, making a pass with her spear and cutting a phalanx of tentacles. She and Blue both had my back. I felt like Lebron James and Dwight Howard had just joined my basketball team.

I put my hope, all my shame, every bit of embarrassment and fear, the whole of my self-loathing into making the most shatteringly intense novabomb I could. As the two veteran heroes wheeled around me, burning and slicing and blocking attacks with their own bodies or their outstretched wings. I built the fire within to a howling storm of incendiary fury. Then I made it even hotter.

Tentacles were no longer attacking me, because they couldn't get within five feet without bursting into flame. Blue used this to his advantage. Bright Angel made sure not to get too close.

I couldn't hold it. I yelled a warning that was accompanied by a jet of orange flames from my mouth, and before I was quite ready, the novabomb slipped loose at last and incinerated the very air itself.

I wasn't at the epicenter of the explosion, I was the fucking epicenter. Calling it an explosion didn't really do it justice. There was absolutely no feeling like it.

It went off much lower this time and the energy of the blast reflected from the ground and kicked me upwards.

I felt the bone shards grinding together in my leg and the pain was otherworldly. My stomach spasmed shut. It had been empty for years, so it was just a stream of stomach acid that came out, and it filled my facemask. I ripped it away and it tumbled from my hand.

I was grateful for the acerbic sting of the stomach acid steam in my eyes and nose, because it kept me from passing out, even though it made breathing nearly impossible.

As I felt myself tumbling blindly through the air, I reached out for the heat. I could still sense that. Couldn't miss it, actually, it was a blanket of fire the size of a city block with a circular hole in the middle where there was nothing left to combust. I was relieved to know how far away the ground was, and in which direction.

"Draw in the heat! Hurry!" urged Hanan.

I applied my will. The flames were pulled to me, gradually at first but with increasing speed. With came a tremendous amount of thick grey smoke that blessedly gave me no more trouble breathing than I already had.

From this high I could see the secondary fires dying out in an expanding ring. There were still many acres of flame left, so I drew it all that I could. The more I got, the less my leg hurt because the less I felt anything. The less I was anything. My body was roaring toward some temperature threshold beyond which it would cease being a body in the conventional sense.

Blue hovered nervously close by, and when I began to rise, he gently pushed me back down. I raised my wrist to speak into my comlink, but it was gone but for smears of burnt plastic.

"Your internal temperature is dangerously high, even for you. Release it," he suggested.

I let it go. Too fast at first, the reaction pushing me down to nearly collide with my fellow hero. It was better to send the heat in all directions, so I glowed gloriously in the infrared for a long while, then collapsed onto Blue's flat back.

I heard voices and wanted to respond but wasn't able to form words. Awareness fled but for a vague, trickling sense of time moving forward without me.

*

I awoke, broken and suffering, fleeing the scene in an ambulance. It was a far cry from the method by which I'd arrived.

The EMT who'd woken me up by touching my leg (ow) asked me about my pain on a scale of one to ten.

"I can do better than that, Babe. Hold still."

I Switched with the EMT. He howled in pain and looked at me in a rising, Cronenburg-ian panic. I Switched back before he lost his shit.

I said, "Felt like about a twelve, what do you think?"

He nodded vigorously and got a bigger syringe. He loaded it and injected something freezing cold in my IV, and I could feel it fizzing as it came up to my scalding body temperature. There was something about my metabolism, maybe, that made it hit me right away.

"Eight,"I said.

"That's good, Mister Fuego—"

"Seven and a half. Seven..."

"You're okay," he reassured me. He reported such into his radio, listened to its reply and told me, "Blue wants to talk to you."

"Okay." He frowned at the spike in my heart rate, but handed over his comlink.

Blue's voice asked me, "Paper Doll, how do you feel?"

"Like an idiot."

"Guilt is a common and understandable reaction to these kinds of events. I hope you don't blame yourself for anything that happened."

How could I not? I broke my leg because I forgot to fly. I was nearly killed because I shot my wad early and got the shit beat out of me. I endangered my teammates, too. I said, "No, I just blame myself for the things I fucked up. Screwed up. Screwwwed." My mouth felt funny. It was stretching my words. Fuck, I'd chipped a tooth! That's a dental bill.

He laughed. It sounded a little like a studio audience laugh from an old TV show. "You've been given something for the pain?"

"Yep. Hey concierge, we're a five point one three nine seven."

"You don't have to update me on the numbers, Sir," the EMT said.

"What sir? I'm a fine-ass woman!"

"Okay," he said, humoring me.

"Your face is a sir."

Blue said, "Paper Doll, please do not attempt to Switch while under the influence. We're quite worried about what could happen."

"You betcha, Baby."

"We prefer to take a report while the memories are fresh, but under the circumstances, you should sleep."

"No sleepin on the job. 'S my first day."

He replied, but I was having trouble focusing. My five point something had dropped to a three and three quarters. I had to check to make sure my legs weren't floating away. They kind of felt like it. Fuck, I was cold. Thank goodness the concierge saw me clutching at my blanket and fetched several more.

Once I started to warm up, I fell right asleep.

I came to, achy and shivering, teeth clenched against a growing urge to chatter. There were medical people surrounding me. Their cutting the dressing off my leg was giving me brief flashes of twelve out of ten again.

One of them checked my eyes and asked me things like what year it was and my name. When I told him it was classified, he declared me okay to Switch.

I Switched back to my original body. The ubiquitous, agonized grind shut off instantly and left me gasping. The disappearing pain almost felt orgasmic.

Well. I did say I'd be a wreck when this was all over.

The body had been sitting in a wheelchair. I took my time getting up, plagued by a lingering ache, while a medical team went to work on Fuego One.

"Whoa, he looks bad," said a voice behind me, and turning, I saw Hanan. "But that's so cool, your power. You can just..." she made a carefree gesture, "leave your problems behind."

She looked immaculate. The only sign that she'd been in a fight tonight was the smell of smoke that clung to her and one artful smudge of soot on her cheek.

"Some of them, I guess," I agreed. "I'm just glad there's nobody home in there. I wouldn't be able to live with the guilt of causing them all that pain."

"I know I wouldn't," she shuddered. "It doesn't bother you, inhabiting a dead person's body?"

"It's a living body. Look, I don't feel like all my troubles are quite yet left behind, so let's not try any more deep questions."

"Fair. I'm Hanan," she said as she extended her hand.

"Paper Doll aka Jessica. It's a pleasure.

"You should leave your mask on, always. The Lady wanted me to tell you that."

"I should have worn two," I admitted. "I can't believe I puked in my first super fight."

"We defeated the thing in the end. I must debrief you. Come."

She took me through a side door and up a small flight of stairs to a small observation room overlooking the one we were just in. Below, the techs had cut away Fuego One's costume and the blood-soaked dressing on his leg.

Hanan addressed me, "The official story is that I've come to tell you what happened on the mission. The mission that you missed. As far as anyone knows, all this time you have been on standby. This is what you will tell them if they ask."

"Got it. I missed the whole thing."

"The super down there," she indicated Fuego One, "is an independent who showed up to help and was incapacitated. No one knows his identity, and he was eventually placed in a medical coma due to his injuries."

"That checks out," I observed uncomfortably. The guy looked like hell. The bone fragments protruding from the leg made me want to scream 'Ew ew ew!' and run around, but superheroes had to be cool. The rest of the guy was covered with hurts of every type, including a long gash across the scalp that I hadn't noticed at the time. The medics were getting very animated.

I was feeling more than uncomfortable, I realized. My leg was throbbing where it had been broken, and my ribs...

No. I was up here, looking down on that injured shell. I was not down there. I was not hurting. I was up here.

"Are you okay?" asked Hanan.

"I think I need a lie-down, honestly."

She was up in a shot. After helping me to lie on the floor, she took my pulse, then unbuttoned my shirt and jeans. I thought, Bad timing, Beautiful, I'm so not in the mood.

The wry look she directed at me in response suggested perhaps I hadn't thought that, after all.

While she was doing that, she was telling her comlink there was a medical emergency. Medical personnel were already en route, it told her. Right, medical data. My comlink probably detected this whatever-it-was and called it in already. Oh, right, I'd melted it.

"Everything's going to be okay," said Hanan. "Put your feet up on this."

She lifted them for me, and I howled in pain. "The leg!" I gritted. "Careful!"

I couldn't get comfortable like this. It hurt so much. I'd lost a lot of blood, hadn't I? Must be why I was so faint.

She detached her fetching little half cape and settled it over me like a blanket. Shit, I was going into shock, wasn't I? Definitely blood loss, then.

It was taking the EMTs a hell of a long time, considering the fact they were in the next room. There they were. Hanan stepped clear and someone set an oxygen mask over my face. They were kind-looking, these medical types. They were so much better off than me. If only I was one of them, instead.

Abruptly, I was kneeling over my own body. My mouth was open like I'd been speaking and the other medic was looking at me strangely. The Jessica body on the floor opened its eyes and looked around in terror, fixating on me with a thunderstruck expression.

I looked at the other medic. "I just Switched minds with your partner by accident, I'm so sorry. Going back now." Inside, I was giving myself a drill sergeant style teardown for being such a fucking idiot. I Switched back in mid-blush.

My heart was pounding from the EMTs residual shock, but calming now. They put away the oxygen mask.

The EMT I'd just been inside shook her head and gathered her wits. "That is..." she began, and let out a mirthless laugh. "It's a hell of a diagnostic tool." Turning to her partner, she reported, "She's experiencing no pain or other symptoms. Let's give her two mils of lorazepam." Back to me, she said, "Ma'am, you're in good hands, okay? You're gonna be okay."

I already felt better. Having a non-fucked-up person in charge of my body for a minute had arrested the chain reaction. "I'm okay," I said. "I just found a downside to my powers."

Hanan crossed her arms and assumed a droll expression. "Looks like you can't leave your problems behind entirely."

When I realized I was going to have to tell Bryan and Tawney about my day, it felt like a kick in the stomach. They'd been so excited for me this morning! My entire midsection was one big mass of sour anxiety. Shouldn't my stomach be empty? Shit, no, that was the other body. I'd had a couple of doughnuts for breakfast.

Maybe we'd be able to smooth this one over and not have another screw up attached to my name. I tried to get to my feet, but the medics stopped me and I slumped back down, defeated by medical necessity.

I tried again, "I'm okay, I promise. Wanna see?"

"No!" replied the medics in unison.

"Then take my word for it. Can I at least sit up?"

They allowed that. I was trying to bargain them up to a chair when Lorelei walked in.

Her Gracefulness thanked the medics, then favored me with a long, compassionate look. I was not gonna cry. I was not.