Last Orders (Part 3) by Astrodragon

Morgana is in seriously bad shape. Even if Orlan had managed to get away with her, I don't think she would have survived for whatever he had planned. Or have been in any sort of usable condition if she had survived.

Cardiac arrest on an exemplar. That took some serious horsepower to get her started again.

That's some serious limits on blood transfusions. I'm starting to see where Thalia's parents might enter the picture - they may be needed to provide her with blood so she can provide a transfusion for Morgana.

Thulia wasn't kidding when she said she built the body to take a beating. Morgana will need every bit of that strength to pull through the situation.

The fact that Doyle has facilities for putting limbs in stasis says something about the kinds of injuries they deal with on the regular.

Nice to see Morgana's sense of humor wasn't injured.

And the lack of details on the bodies comes back to bite them in the tail. Thulia sounds like she's on the mend at least.

Arguments over who interrogates the mercs. Unfortunately for the cult, Whateley probably isn't going to make the same mistake as Orlan.

And trouble in the form of one protective father and one order of fire operative. Let's hope they're in a reasonable mood.

Reasonable enough, though I think the odds of survival for the Order of red Ba'al are approaching non-existent with the additional firepower. Just as long as they haven't managed to cobble together another conduit.

Ceri and her uncle - Morgana will need the support, but this is the sort of repeat visit neither wanted. I haven't followed the Belfry storylines, so the flowers feel a bit out of left field for me, but they probably know each other from the commonwealth meetings.

Morgana's hand deteriorating in stasis - probably because of the cellular modifications. At least they're bringing Thulia into the loop.

And Thulia opens up. Yay! World building! And Ophelia gets introduced to the madness that is Thalia's Gadgettering trait at work.

Bruce and Ophelia are going to form a support group at this rate. With Grimes as an honorary member.

Good news - Thulia knows when she needs backup. Bad news - She'll risk burnout (or equivalent?) for her Leman.
Emergency surgery (of a sort) on Morgna's essence channels. Why do I get the feeling there will be a notebook (or a binder) in the restricted section containing lab notes after those two graduate. I suppose Morgana getting one step closer to flight is a good thing, even if she'll probably test the arena's forcefields pretty hard.

Welcome to field surgery Thulia. Hopefully your skills won't be needed to keep the OR safe. Even money, Thulia is going to recreate the majority of her lab, much to the chagrin of certain parties.

Interesting briefing by Icejack to the bad seeds. And Twitch is distracted by dragons. Why can I see her getting her hands on the video, even if she isn't supposed to? I wonder if we'll find out who the leaker was.

The risks of PTSD. At least Whateley has open channels to the order of fire if needed. Though they might not be equipped to handle it either.
Never underestimate the power of stupidity in large numbers. At least Morgana has a strong support network.
I wonder what sort of familiar would be a good match for Morgana. Why can I see petshop being dragged into the mix to help create one to Thalia's specs?

Toison escorting Thulia back to Whitman. Nice to see she's nearby if all hell breaks loose.

Adding a PFG for Thulia to Laura's list of projects. Not a bad idea, though I hope the not-a-smurf isn't getting more overloaded. I suspect the offer of a magical item was more than just a 'thank you'. (Why am I suspecting it'll be a 'looks normal' talisman?) I'm wondering if dragons have a need to balance karma as part of their genetic makeup.

And the martial arts instructors are figuring out what to tell the dragon girls in their debriefing. They certainly are living in interesting times, even if the primary source of the interesting is (likely) no more.

I realize only so much can fit into a story, but I'm wondering if we'll get to see the takedown of the order of red ba'al in a later story.

Sunday 29th January, Doyle Emergency Room

A couple of minutes to Doyle while in a critical state, if Falcon hadn't been on the team to fly her back... Sucking chest wound, lost arm, how much damage did those monsters do to her? Open roof entrance, with how many fliers there are at Whateley and helicopter access I wondered about that. Ophelia is ready as she gives orders rapidly in a race to stabilize Morgana. Crap! Just get the remains of her costume cut off when she starts arresting.

Dr. Cody to the rescue with Exemplar-powered CPR, unfortunately, they need to defib her. Dang, a charge strong enough for an Exemplar and still flatlining after the first attempt, 2nd attempt also fails. Adrenaline, Morgana will be in very rough shape recovering from this. Max setting on the defibrillator and with the adrenaline, it is finally enough, her heart has started again, too close.

“Good, now let’s get her sorted, I want some blood and fluids in her, intubate her, then feed her oxygen before this happens again. Next time we might not be able to get her heart restarted.

The race to save Morgana is going to be rough for everyone. Magically active blood and only two litres of her blood in stock, crap. Thulia too banged up to donate right now herself, when it rains, it pours. Crap, the only other option is like giving her plasma, they need a miracle. And a lot more blood very soon.

Informed about Morgana's hand being on ice and that should keep for a while, I agree with Ophelia, I hate how imprecise that is. *goes pale at all the things Ophelia just said to do* Morgana is lucky to still be alive. All this is why Ophelia is the best doctor imo, knows what to prioritize with each patient and who gets priority. Dawn-Renee, glad to see her again, and yes, put the arm in stasis for now. *winces* All very good reasons to keep it in stasis until they have enough blood in stock to reattach the arm successfully.

Morgana opens her eyes still in Doyle, odd and unresponsive body, yup, she is on the good drugs. Oh boy, so out of it she didn't remember at first the loss of her left arm and drugs are keeping her from panicking about it. Morgana, Whateley is full of the best around when it comes to medicine, they already have plans on how to fix that.

Ophelia shows up, good news, bad news time. All that and still very weak and short of blood. So it is long healing as her body recovers before more magical healing can be done. She is told about the surgical reattachment in the future for her left arm. Thulia is stable, doesn't have damage that can't be healed, and they have priority for healing. Ooo, a talk in depth with Thulia about her and Morgana's physiology so Ophelia and the medical staff know how to better help them now and in the future. Back to sleep with Morgana, she needs it.

Early Monday morning, the Headmaster's office.

The remaining mercs tried to escape but were caught and dumped in front of Sergeant Clauser bound. All the rest are dead, good. The were's don't take kindly to threats to Whateley or intruders on their land. Two idiots and ARC is in the lead of who gets to interrogate them, oh goodie.

“Lord Mirdaz, Acolyte Grenstxaripotx, I’d normally say it was a pleasure to meet you, but under these circumstances...”

Crud, Thulia's father is here and he is upset about his daughter being harmed. This is the reason Carson chose Mazarin to replace her when it was needed, he knows how to state things diplomatically. They have seen imagery of the fight and know Thulia is only alive thanks to Morgana's sacrifice. Punitive retaliatory action, in other words, Whateley won't listen to the Order of the Crimson Ba'all when they say Orlun was acting on his own.

Welp, the cult let Orlun off his leash and it will result in their complete destruction. With Whateley and the Dragons coordinating no one involved will escape alive.

“Tracking down the members is something probably best done by humans, your resources are more suitable. However, once the members of this organisation have been reduced to hiding in their secret base, we thought it might be worth paying it some attention ourselves. Have we talked about volcanoes yet?”

Aww, let them, one little volcano destroying an evil cult's secret base is worth it to keep the Dragons as allies and Thulia at Whateley.

Monday , Doyle Medical, Morgana’s room.

Morgana is still drugged out, but people are here to visit her. Ceri and Uncle Tom, I'm glad they were able to visit when Morgana needed them most.

“You can thank A.E.G.I.S and the dragons. When we heard what had happened yesterday to you and Thulia, they arranged to let us use one of their portals to get to New York, and A.E.G.I.S arranged a teleporter from there to here.”

Family of Morgana is family to Thulia now I guess. The Order of the Flame is pulling some strings for Morgana and Thulia, why am I concerned as to what that entails?

Ceri just has to make that comment after seeing Morgana's arm in stasis. Tom wishes to have a word with Morgana's doctor and surgeon, good grief. Cattletonia 'Why Not' flowers, 3 bats on the tag, Morgana is probably right about them being from Belfry.

Monday, Doyle Medical, Dr. Tenents office.

Ophelia tells Dr. Cody about the condition of the girls. The worst thing is the lack of replacement blood due to its unusual nature.

However they are both out of danger, and given a week or two, plus some healing, they should be reasonably fine, at least physically. I’d like to get them back into circulation as soon as it’s feasible; the normal routine will probably do them both good.

Oh, good, I thought they were looking at a month or more before they could go back to class. Rats, no surgical option to put her arm back on soon until Morgana recovers a lot of her blood.

Tuesday morning, Doyle medical conference room.

Crap! The arm is deteriorating despite being in statis and frozen quickly after being severed. A day or so before the arm is no longer viable, arrgh! Neither of the girls is really as human as they look, they need to pump the arm with essence to help preserve it! *starts to hear Mission: Impossible theme as Ophelia details all the problems with doing a surgical reattachment right now*

Bellows is right, the loss of her real arm like this could send her into a depressive spiral. Wyatt, seems to have been coping, and actually coping are two completely different things. The talk with Thulia has been pushed to now if they are going to figure out how to save Morgana's arm.

Tuesday morning, Doyle Medical, Dr. Tenents office.

Thulia is in a wheelchair and in rough shape when Ophelia shows up to talk. I see why her father came in so angry.

“Doctor, some of the things I need to explain are, well, confidential. But as it’s for Morgana...”

Time to find out how Morgana's body really differs from humans. Medically confidential, meaning if someone else finds out they have a leak!

“There are also things I don’t want Morgana to know herself yet, telling her too soon could cause problems, and I want to tell her at the appropriate time.”

Dang, this is going to be a bombshell reveal.

We need the World Trees back in large numbers, if only time manipulation on the one sapling would work. Ah, the Dragons don't know about the Sidhe on campus being mutants who had spirits of Sidhe who don't remember their past bond with them.

But ours is supported by a number of magical volcanoes, surrounding and feeding the Heart Of Fire. Now my experiment was to prove that it was possible to attach a non-native entity to use the network in the same way that dragons and some other entities that inhabit our plane do. We know it happened in the past, Dragons at least aren’t native to the plane, but we no longer have full records of the period.

Wait, so Dragons could be native to Earth who fled to the Plane of Fire when the Sundering happened.

Previous attempts have ended badly, yikes.

There were risks of failure – not huge, but present – and I had assumed the subject provided would know what was happening and be a volunteer and would have been briefed and prepared for what was going to happen, not a kidnapped boy who knew nothing about what he was involved in. That mattered a lot to me, especially after I got to know Rob.

The Order deserves everything that happens now just for that alone.

“I was. In order to make the connection work, I needed to cheat a bit and work with a BIT as it manifested.”

This time, Ophelia looked more than a bit shocked. “Work with a BIT!? How is that possible or safe?”

Even the people behind the BIT Splicer in Gen 1 wouldn't attempt that! Quantum computer array, quite powerful, Thulia says that like it is completely normal!

“Anyway, the traits I needed were Exemplar and Wizard. The Wiz trait to anchor to the Heart of Fire and limit the connection to something she could handle, and the Exemplar one to make the body strong enough to withstand the process – it's pretty strenuous to the body. But it turned out my prediction as to Rob’s BIT and how the manifestation and linkage process would go wasn’t quite accurate.”

Good grief, she took a lot of risk with this project we are just finding out about.

“ I deliberately induced a CTA trait by injecting him with my blood to meld my DNA with his.”

Ophelia stared. “You do realise how dangerous that was!?”

Thulia nodded sadly. “There was no choice, it was the only thing I could do in time that would stop him dying. Trying to stop the process at that point would just have killed him faster by pushing him into burnout.”

*screams internally to not hurt my throat* That is why they are so much alike, I knew she used her blood, but not for that purpose. So many unexpected things, this is why messing with a BIT is not to be done.

“Yes, doctor. I don’t have an additional physical organ to handle the energy I draw in, as many energisers do, instead, it’s handled by my cells in a distributed and coordinated fashion. Including my blood cells. Which is why a normal blood transfusion isn’t going to be effective as the blood cells won’t include those genetic parts, and so won’t be the magically-active blood Morgana needs,”

So her and Morgana's whole bodies take up the strain of dealing with the energy instead of just one specialized organ. Yay! A solution so Morgana's arm can be restored without risking her life. A problem with Morgana's link, not another problem!

Thuila nodded to the doctor. “Oh yes. You’ve seen it in action, that hyper-fire effect she has. It’s not at all normal for a dragon. When it’s active it draws a lot more power than I’m comfortable with through her energy channels, and its clogging them up and distorting them and stopping them being used normally.” She smiled slightly. “I’m sorry, that’s a very simplified explanation but a full one would take far too long to explain.”

Great, they need a dragon doctor to examine Morgana and work with her human doctors to figure out a fix for this problem.

No sooner did I say that than Thulia revealed she has been working on a solution.

But if I can extract the energy, and process it into a suitable supply of blood, I think I can make it compatible with her requirements. I’m not quite sure if the blood would be stable for that long, but then we’d be using it immediately, so it only needs to be stable for a few hours.

A solution to two problems at once if it works right. So risk of it not working and increasing Morgana's stress, but better to try and fail than not try at all.

No, Morgana is in no shape to go to the Heart of Fire any time soon, I don't like that it has its own agenda that might change Morgana in ways she and no one else will like. They have nanite tanks on the Plane of Fire; of course, they are expensive, take weeks to regrow a limb like an arm, limited in availability.

Tuesday afternoon, Doyle Medical centre, an unused storage room.

All this to enchant the blood, I'm sure to save Morgana's arm Grimes will keep quiet about what they are doing and help out eagerly.

Thulia, you care about Morgana, but you have to take care of yourself too, she would be upset if you hurt yourself trying to do something for her. Good, it seems to be working. Ouch, Thulia will go through anything to help Morgana, all the excess energy not used in the ritual goes into herself. Ophelia already got Morgana prepped for surgery while Thulia did the ritual, and Thulia is in for a rare show watching Morgana's arm being reattached.

Watching the one you love going through surgery, just trust in the Doyle team. I will be describing this as little as possible, reading it is all I can handle with stuff like surgery. Yes, Thulia, humans have had to adapt and learn to use these tools without magic being commonplace on Earth. Man, even for a surgery will little detail that was a nailbitter.

“Oh yes, it all went pretty smoothly. Having such a clean cut helped, I didn’t have to trim and fit as much as usual. Her arm will have to fix the tissue damage, of course, but the BIT and some healing will fix that up easily. “

So it was a good thing her foe used basically a type of laser sword. An hour or two before she wakes up, dang, that is fast.

Still no idea of what cut her arm off, hhm. Wait to heal the rest of the damage for a few days, give her time to recover first. One of the few settings that shows the realistic consequences of the strain of magical healing on the body. Uncle Tim is overprotective of the family he has left. Crud, Morgana has to suffer more mental issues, give her a break already.

Tuesday afternoon, Bad Seeds clubroom.

So Peter says he has worked out mostly what really happened on Sunday. Of course, they locked down the incident details tightly, they are planning retaliation already, and the Order won't survive this. Sister Secret worried it might impact any of them, why?

“I don’t think so, at least not too badly. There will be some effects, since Whateley engaged the Protocols on the section of the cult that fomented the actual attack, so some of our parents may be involved, but that’s all firewalled from us. I don’t want to try investigating my parents, if they found out it wouldn’t go well. With some of the players the protocols involved against the cult, I’d rather not try and hack their systems. My biggest worry is that the Order seemed to know the girls were visiting Dunwich, that implies that they had an internal source of information, so of course they will be looking at us as one of the possible sources. So we need to stay pure and honest about this one. No playing fast and loose this time, it’s far too dangerous.”

Wait, Icejack and Sister Secret's parents are in the Order, dang. They didn't rat out Morgana and Thulia's trip to Dunwich, who did?

“Okay. First it wasn’t a strike by the entire order. It was from a splinter group they have officially disowned as having nothing to do with them.” There was a concerted set of coughs and grins from the Bad Seeds “Which was actually a good thing, the girls barely survived as it was.

Second, Thulia and Morgana were lucky – the cult made a few bad errors which played to their advantage.”

Not knowing the full details about Whateley was a fatal error, it is always a fatal error. No wonder Belfry goes to Icejack for data, he dug that up within a few days.

Sister Secret smirked. “Attacking two Whately students a few miles from Campus. Two students who are dragons.” She shook her head in mock sadness. “They REALLY displayed poor prey selection....”

There was a chorus of sniggers around the table, along with a muttered comment of ‘suicide by Whateley’.

Understatement of the century, they should have looked up past organizations that have crossed Whateley and what happened to them. He knows about the Dragons being involved and has a video of the incident, but not for Twitch to watch, too violent.

Wednesday morning, Dr. Bellows' Office.

Ophelia informs Dr. Bellows and Mrs. Horton of the girls' conditions, including worry about their wells running dry during the fight and if human might have to help restart them. A review of Morgana's psychological issues for the time being, oh boy. Thulia with psychological issues and protective of Morgana, I would rather face down an angry Razorback, thank you.

Cody, no teasing Ophelia about the titanium clamp to hold Morgana's arm bones in place. A sling for a week, only the true psychos would dare to mess with her right now.

Ophelia gave Wyatt a look. “Actually, I’d be more worried about what Thulia and the rest of her team would do to someone that stupid. Come to that there are quite a few kids who’d take a dim view of someone picking on an obviously injured girl. I’ve had a busy few days, I don’t need additional work patching up morons.

If they attack Morgana I say heal the most dangerous of their injuries and leave them to heal the rest on their own as a lesson.

PTSD, Morgana already has it and now it will be worse due to the loss of her arm in the fight, nearly dying, and fear for Thulia's safety. Crap, don't let Morgana sink into thinking nowhere she goes will ever be safe again. Good, once the cult is wiped out I'm sure Morgana will sleep better. That is a strong drug he is putting Morgana on.

He smiled at Mrs. Horton. “If it wouldn’t cause all sorts of predictable problems, I’d suggest moving them into a double room in Poe together. “ She smiled back at him. “You know the administration would have kittens if we did that.”

Let them have kittens, I say! Yes, more solutions now while Morgana works on permanent ones.

Subtle escorting once Morgana is allowed to leave campus again, get Belfry, he is good at that. A familiar to bond with to help Morgana, I want her to get something that is cute and dangerous.

Olivia stirred. “I’ll need to give them a checkup every day for the first week at least, to confirm everything is going smoothly.” Her lip quirked. “The girls will love that.”

Please warn everyone in hearing range before Morgana comes in for hers.

Wednesday evening, Whitman, Tanya and Thulia's room.

Toison and Thullia show up, I guess it is time for Thulia to go back to her dorm room.

“Its OK, Tanya, I was coming off a shift at Doyle, so they asked me to help Thulia get back. Her legs are still a bit weak and painful, so they didn’t want her coming on her own, even if they did acquire a runabout to bring us to the cottage.”

They couldn't heal everything in a short amount of time, and Thulia took a lot of damage to her legs. Still has scars and muscle damage, yeow! Good news on Morgana as well.

The Satyr-girl smiled. “Hey, it was no problem.” She passed over a small baggie she’d been carrying. “Medication. Make sure she takes it.”

You are on your way to being a real doctor already, Toison. Painkillers and something to help her sleep, Thulia, take them!

Thursday breakfast, Crystal Hall, M3 table.

Thulia has help from Tanya to get to the team's table for breakfast.

Thulia shook her head at Bianca. “Apparently, Bellows thinks getting her back into classes and relative normality will be good for her, as well as for me.” There were a couple of wry grins at the concept of ‘Whateley normality’. “Although we aren’t allowed to do anything in the Martial Arts classes yet, at least we can watch.”

Ow. Erica, no jokes right now, please. Heh, they told Thulia what they are doing for Morgana, good, another person to remind her not to push herself until she recovers. Aww, Laura would make a PFG for Thulia even if they did pay her or make her a magical item, such a good friend.

Thursday, Dojo meeting room, late morning.

Ito looked thoughtful. “Well, if nothing else they seem to have grasped the lesson about using necessary force and violence, rather than taking things gently. That’s always one of the ones hardest to teach students, especially ones with ambitions to be heroes.”

Sometimes you have to kill to survive, so glad Thulia knows this. Ito, Ms. Dennon, Tolman, all there to talk about how the girls did, no, not homework for surviving an attack!

Ms. Dennon's comments sound like the students should be informed in the first week about the residents of Dunwich, the most durable Dunwich bunkers, and those in Dunwich who can help protect them until help arrives if attacked while in town. How about making a new rule for Whateley students: Always be prepared for combat even if not expecting it. More combat in the sims is needed for Morgana and Thulia, welp, they are about to learn surviving means more lessons and training. Paranoid enough after Sunday, they need to have a teacher with combat training with them whenever they leave campus from now on!

This story started out so nice, a special course on Portals and Gates for Dimension Traveling and Contacting Entities. The Orlun and his plans had to rear their ugly head, we knew he would strike sooner or later, but not this soon. The warnings from Nephandus, all the details they got wrong, I knew they would end up being wrecked, but not how much damage they would do before it ended.

Morgana and the rest of M3 in their clubhouse, it is about time they have a safe place to all meet. The gift for Pastel, was great to see an enchanted item being made and such a great gift for a girl who deserves good things in life. Vic's condition, I knew there would be no easy answers, but I'm glad he at least knows that now and has some idea of the coming changes.

I wonder how things will go with the Elemental Dance group with Thulia injured and concerned about Morgana. She was looking forward to it, I hope the attack didn't ruin this for her.

The sims were an interesting scenario and proved the major issue of Thulia using destructive magic to solve problems a little too much. Information is power. How will the Sims team do while two of their team are recovering? Or will they be benched until they can have a full roster again?

I really wish Morgana had run her divination past Pat before they went to Dunwich. A reading that ominous should always have someone more experienced to help interpret it asp.

I've missed Cecilia and her shop. A professional who knows how to treat her customers and always how to deal with threats to her home and its people. I only wish the girls had gone to see her a lot sooner and could have left the shop wearing their new combat uniforms.

The attack, I've said all I wish to in the previous comments. That was brutal and I hope the whole Order pays for it, not just the part under Orlun's command. Please, no more limb removals from students any time soon.

It was a great story and I hope the girls can begin to recover from their trauma without having it added to AGAIN for a long while. I can't wait to read more of Morgana, Thulia, and all their friends' adventures in the future.