On the trip from the port city to Free City the healer did their best with the ARMS that they had access to. It was several steps above what was being used to treat him before, but it was still not enough to get him back up on his feet immediately. The motorized carriage raced to their destination with the hopes that Jason would recover by the time they arrived.

Meanwhile, word had been relayed to the medical facilities at Free City so that they knew what to expect. Jason would arrive in the next day. He could hold on till then. They just had to be patient and wait. An explosion blew a hole in the side of the hospital. The news was found to be unacceptable by one particular individual; Rina. Before the smoke had time to clear the figure of a full grown woman ran through it, launching herself into the air flying at high velocity in the direction from which Jason would be traveling. Rina had grown up since the city had been established and gained in equal measures ability for both healing and destruction. Despite the outburst, Rina tended to be a quiet and conservative woman at most times, reflected in her clothing. She wore a black pencil skirt that went past her knees and a yellow dress shirt that had black epaulettes and cuffs. The wind blew wildly through her hair which she had long since grown out of keeping in twin pigtails, instead opting to keep it shoulder length with no particular styling. Several items floated around her. They looked to be rifles for the most part, but two cases came along with her. To outside observers it looked like she was flying with the aid of rifles that served as thrusters, strangely detached from the thing they were meant to provide thrust to. Truth was that she had learned much about the ARMS and the various skills that be used in conjunction with each other over the years. She couldn’t really fly. What appeared to be flight was just a skill that increased her speed, another that reduced her weight, and a little bit of natural physical ability to run and jump. A set of abilities she hardly ever gets the chance to show off in her high heeled shoes, but this was an emergency so she kicked them off and proceeded out the hole she made. The items that hovered around her were the result of an experimental piece of equipment Mya was designing for the soldiers. Rina accepted that they had to make sure that rifles worked with it, but she’d modified it to carry other equipment, necessary to do her job. The inertia of her jump carried her out of city limits before she touched down. The moment she landed she took off running as fast as she could, leaping over obstacles along the path as needed.

The carriage carrying Jason sped across the landscape towards its destination. The roads were rough causing it to shake unbearably. The healer tried her best to keep her focus and keep casting the healing skill on Jason. The former scout drove forward, pushing the machine to its limits. It had never been driven so hard or fast and it was unknown whether it would hold up, but the scout felt she had no choice. In the distance the figure of a woman quickly approached. she came at them fast, easily overcoming the carriage’s speed. One would not be amiss to say that she was going too fast.

Rina spotted the carriage. Unfortunately for her, she was using skills that, while yes, they got her where she needed to go as quickly as possible they also had one large flaw. There was no way to control the direction of her movement or a way to stop practically and at the speed she was going smacking into something going the opposite direction probably wasn’t the best of ideas. She hadn’t put much thought into what she was doing. She heard that Jason needed medical attention so she took off as fast as she could, not preparing for anything other than to treat him and by the time that she had the thought that she had no way to stop it was too late. She was on a collision course right for them. Rina didn’t lose a beat though. She did the math and applied the basics of physics to her situation. Her hands reached down for an invisible control unit handle for the rifles. The moment she touched them they became visible. Rina lifted them so that the rifles hover around her repositioned themselves to point forward. Lights on each of the rifles started showing that they were charging up. Halfway between where she spotted them and the carriage’s location the rifles discharged several beams of energy blasting the landscape around the vehicle, making it explode into clouds of dirt. Simultaneously, a sphere of red glowing energy formed in front of her. It grew in size till it was about the dimension of her head. Then as if on cue, the orb burst into flame before firing off a torrent of flame just above the carriage. The combined fire thrust her back and down with enough force that she fell from the sky. She’d aligned herself so that if she timed it right she could land perfectly in the back of the vehicle, but one should never expect perfect execution. Rina fell head over heel into the back of the carriage, rolling from the front to the back, only stopping due to the gate being raised and blocking her from rolling further.

The scout became alert suddenly being surrounded with what seemed to be enemy fire. There shouldn’t have been any enemies so she questioned what was going on. Her reaction, however, came too late for her to have done anything. Rina dropped in from overhead and was inside the vehicle before any of them knew what was happening. The medic jumped, going from a kneeling position next to Jason to standing, as Rina crashed into the back. Simultaneously, the scout hit the brakes and turned the carriage, making it skid to a stop which in turn tossed all of those in the back compartment against the side. The medic was thrown to the ground. The scout got up from the driver’s seat and turned to the back ready for a fight, but before she had pulled out her weapon she stopped seeing that it was a familiar face.

A teal aura glowed around Rina. She hadn’t hurt herself badly, but the speed with which she was traveling followed by the car tossing her before she could brace herself had left several bones broken. The glow was an automatic healing ability that was triggered by any trauma significant enough to kill or slow her down. She was on her feet almost instantly, almost as if crashing into the grown had no effect on her, or she would have been if that was her intent. Instead she was on her knees over Jason. The black of the default ARMS material extended out from under her clothes, wrapping around her arms and hands. In her palm formed a jewel with a faint glow in the center. She placed her hands over his chest, one over the other. A light emanated from the jewel projecting itself over Jason’s entire body. What had taken the efforts of dozens of other healers over the course of a day a half just to maintain was put to shame. Jason’s cells were instantly regenerated. However, anyone that had no clue what was happening would think that what Rina was doing was having the complete opposite effect.What appeared to be black goo oozed out of Jason’s oraphice’s. It was the nanomachines that had been building up over the day. The scout, seeing that it was Rina, relaxed, but then when she saw the goo she rushed to Jason’s side, “What’s going on?!”

“I… I don’t know. This has never happened before.” Rina replied

“Quick, get him on his side,” the scout ordered. Back on Earth she was the elder sister of a brother who had epilepsy. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to watch as someone convulses uncontrollably, but when she saw the goo memories that she’d long put away resurfaced and she knew that if they didn’t act quick he could very well die from asphyxiation.

Rina and the other medic help roll him on his side. The black substance poured out of his mouth and ears pooling beneath his head. For several minutes it continued. It just kept coming like there was an endless supply of this stuff. Soon the entire floor compartment was filled with a layer of the nanites. Then it stopped. Jason took a deep breath, coughed, and spit out some more of the material before slowly opening his eyes.

Jason’s eyes were blurry and his ears were ringing. Luckily for him, it didn’t last too long. He pushed himself up to a sitting position groggily. Spit out more of the goo before turning his head to the side and smacking the top face ear, trying to more of the black stuff out of ihs ears. Her turned the opposite way and repeated the process. When he was done he looked around his setting, trying to get his bearings. When his vision cleared he was able to make out Rina, “What happened?” was the first things out of his lips.

“You almost died is what happened” Rina shouted at him.

“Yeah, but I mean, other than that,” he replied.

The scout jumped in, “one of the Captains shot you out of the sky. Then, a few of the guys that stayed behind dragged your carcass to the docks and got to the port. I took the liberty to bring you back to the capital.”

“I… see,” he said, trying to determine whether what they were saying was true or not.

“The city was taken, but we managed to get everyone out. We’re on our way to the capital. I was taking you to see Rina and get you back there as soon as possible. Had we not… the medics were just barely able to keep you alive as it were”

“Ok,” he said roughly, “Thanks. How long till we’re there?”

“We still got a ways to go. You should rest till we get there.”

“Agreed,” Rina chimed in, “Just because I fix you up doesn’t mean you’re ready to get back out there.”

Jason nodded and adjusted himself to lay against the wall of the back compartment of the carriage. Even though she’d used the ARMS to heal him, which have always proven to be effective when one matched the level of the ARMS tech with the severity of the situation, Rina still went to work checking his vitals, first taking his blood pressure through taking his wrist in hand and counting out the beats of his heart, next by placing her forehead to his to attempt to test for fever. She was dubious about how accurate that worked, but she remembered from her childhood that her father would do that and it always made her feel comforted no matter how sick she was. When she was finished she made herself comfortable next to him, leaning against him, with her head on his shoulder. “If you do that again, I’ll kill ya,” she said with a contented look on her face.

Meanwhile, the medic that had traveled along with the scout and Jason attempted to collect some of the nanites before they all disappeared so that she could study them and figure out what they were. They seemed to be dissolving in the air the medic observed. She looked out the back to see if they were leaving a trail from them leaking out, but there was nothing. That’s when she started to try to collect a specimen. She wasn’t hopeful, but there wasn’t much more to do till they got to the city so it was something to entertain her in the meantime.