275/Once More Into the Meguca Hospital

Once More Into the Meguca Hospital
Date of Scene:	10 August 2015
Location:	Dr. Iris Shelby's Magical Hospital
Synopsis:	After being considerately dropped off at Iris' illegal meguca clinic by his attacker, Tuxedo Kamen eventually wakes up to her capable ministrations and has a long talk with her about danger, depression, overcommittment, and time management. Also she finds out two of her patients are the same dude and it throws her for a loop.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Iris Shelby

---

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's a knock on Iris' door; there's a familiar face at the other side, but it's significantly lower than normal today. As in, Tuxedo Kamen -- the mysterious benefactor Darien Shields -- is literally in front of her apartment door, on the floor, looking like he took flamethrower damage and out like a light.

Whether or not there's actually a noise when Guardian Hino leaves, it's while Iris drags him in that the destroyed finery unceremoniously retcons itself into civilian clothes, and the mask into a pair of glasses on Mamoru Chiba.

Iris Shelby has posed:
A knock interrupts Iris from an unfulfilling night on the couch, watching more junk television. It turns out that political arguments here in Japan occasionally, very occasionally, turn into judo brawls with someone getting flipped over-shoulder or by someone falling and using their foot to launch the opposition. Funny in a sad, pathetic way... but not exactly mentally stimulating.

So she's initially glad for the distraction, if very surprised by it. "Huh? The only people who come knocking here would be... I should go look." She has a pretty good idea what's on the other side. Someone hurt, with their friends dragging them along to get help.

Well, she's half right. "Mr. Mask? Wait, nobody's here, how did you get to my door?" Winged hairclip removed, she leans down to begin scanning him and gets an unexpected twist when he turns into 'Unknown Patient #3'. "What!?" The notion of secret identities, shielded by magic is very new to her, and this is a very strange way to discover the possibility as her mind now hurries to reinterpret several recent events with this new knowledge.

This means 'Mr. Mask' is also the forced-suicidal patient from earlier, and might be the origin of the checks whose envelopes had a ballroom mask symbol hidden in each one, always paying for some recent thing she did... and usually close to what rates she would have charged (figured on a basis of 'normal market price, minus malpractice insurance because I cannot get that, plus markup for buying medical supplies from shady sources because I cannot buy them through proper channels, minus a small discount because I am not out to gouge people', Iris' mental math had always been for such invoices). That is very interesting to find out in the middle of the night!

Yet Iris does not drag him in. She's better than that. Instead, her hairclip speaks in its mechanical-female voice, <Preparing to transport patient. Shield Carry.> Manifesting Iris' magic into a thin red 'sled' of energy beneath Mamoru, this will have to serve as a stretcher. It floats, letting Iris guide him to the couch and gently set him down there. The energy fades, and she begins running Valkyrie Wing over Mamoru's unconscious form. It speaks, announcing finer details on its work. <Merging records of patients previously thought to be different individuals. Complete. Scanning. First degree burns, magic-induced. First degree burns, magic-induced. Second degree burns, magic-induced. Burns bordering between second and third degree, magic-induced. Alert! Doctor! Linker Core diminished compared to baseline for this patient!>

And that is where this gets extremely interesting. Iris looks at the scans. This isn't just 'diminished', it's very low and she realizes aloud: "This is about the same as the last time. Oh dear..." She's going to have to ask him just what happened. She can gather some clues, traces of whatever energy was used to take this from him, but the patterns are faint and not in line with what she would normally expect for such things.

Nonetheless, first things first. The burns. Pulses of red energy begin to emit from her hands, serving as healing magic. Unfortunately, this is not a miracle. It amounts to clean-up; treating the very edges of some burns and smoothing over the rest to prepare for conventional treatment. This is simply the smallest of steps in helping him, even a dedicated medic like herself cannot just 'magic away' harm like this. "Hang in there... you're going to be okay," she offers, unsure if he can even hear her.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Apparently he can't hear Iris, because Mamoru was well and truly out when he was dropped off; he's silent and still, and it's not until she's taken the edge off the burn damage with magic and begun the process of applying burn salve and other conventional treatments that he's no longer teetering on going into shock. Whoever it was that left him there at least took him there pretty fast.

It's not until she's close to finishing that he becomes responsive at all, hazily clawing his way toward consciousness. He's far too low in energy to heal himself, and too injured to be able to regain his magical energy -- it's a catch-22 situation, and exactly the reason that he is so very grateful Iris does what she does.

Bandages go on-- Iris is also quite lucky in that when Mamoru's been here, he's been too drained or too injured for any of his powers to work, and well, that doctors use gloves. All hail gloves.

His breathing changes pretty obviously, because it hitches and he hisses in pain at the contact. Guess someone's awake. "S-sorry," he says through his teeth, finally, "thanks."

Iris Shelby has posed:
Self-proclaimed doctors who are actually former combat medics, faking it by acting as some sort of 'magical general practicioner' probably use gloves too. Iris goes about her work patiently, and smiles when Mamoru stirs. "Mr. Mask... or should I say, Mr. Shields, I'm glad you're back with us. Don't worry, you don't have to explain anything now. I already know. You're a hero. This,"

She points at - but does not touch - one of the bandaged burn sites, "And this and this and this," several more get indicated with a finger too, "solve the whole mystery. /You're/ the one who ran into the burning orphanage to save all those poor children! Don't worry, this one's on the house." She winks, "I don't charge child-saviors."

This is incredibly off-topic, but she seems delighted by her ridiculous conclusion as to how he got hurt.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The boy on the couch huffs out a laugh, but it's accompanied by a grimace, and after the motion sets off all his crispy nerve-endings again, he does his best to just remain very still and cope. "Chiba," he says, finally, gathering his wits somewhat. "I think you give me too much credit as it is," he says, then eyes her sidelong to watch the crater form from joke impact.

His gaze slides away, and the joke was just an underhanded seizure of opportunity, because he doesn't look like any kind of mood-lifter is going to stick right now. His expression's a low-grade cross between grim and bitter, with a side helping of growing depression. "It wasn't anything heroic. And-- I will actually concede to needing to stay, this time."

Iris Shelby has posed:
"Mr. Chibamask Shields, then," Iris intentionally mangles his name. "And no, I don't give credit. I do offer alternate payment terms, but not credit." She likewise misses what kind of 'credit' he meant, on purpose.

Then she turns more serious, while wrapping up the last few bits of bandaging... trying to be delicate about it, well aware that Mamoru is awake and feeling it now. "I'm glad you understand. Because if you tried to walk off now, with what I know, I would have to stop you. The burns will probably clear away good-as-new in time, you seem really tough like that. They're just one part of the problem, and if they were the only thing wrong I actually might be willing to let a friend just take you home tonight. But you know what's going on, and I have some idea about it... and even though you're agreeing to stay here, I want to impress something on you."

She takes a breath, a deep and important thing to gather her thoughts. "My patient records for you show an attempted suicide, at roughly the same time your Linker Core got hurt about this badly. You gave me your promise, but I'm keeping you for observation anyway. Because in my professional opinion," and for once she's being professional, "You are at tremendous risk. You can tell me what's happening or not, because I'm not going to pry. That's part of my service, people can hide things if they think it's best. But with everything I know right now, I am worried that you are in danger of dying. That's even if I presume your promise is solid, and I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it is. Whatever's going on to cause this..."

Her expression becomes very grim. "It has to stop. If you're facing these Witches alone, get friends to help. If you're exposing yourself to too much risk in any given fight, scale it back. Because this is twice in probably less than two months you have shown up here with a drained Linker Core. That's your magical heart, and it's just as important as your normal heart. If this keeps happening, if the next time the monster isn't stopped before they can finish, if your Core is completely dried out, you probably won't need my services anymore." She has several misunderstandings of what's really going on, but the 'narrative' Iris has pieced together has her taking this quite seriously. 'Deadly' serious, to think of it that way.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru closes his eyes and his mouth compresses into a thin line for a moment. "I'm agreeing to stay here because the last time this happened, yeah, my-- linker core I guess is as good a term as any-- was still too weak for me to transform, was too weak to allow me to resist what the Witch does, and I almost died because of it. I didn't think I took any unnecessary risks, but apparently 'going outside' was such a risk. Even the bad guys are yelling at me for this. This is actually the fourth time in a month. This time I did fight, and all it got me was burns."

He swallows, then looks up at the ceiling, motionless and eyes too bright behind his glasses. "It's stupidly complicated. I don't look for fights. If I can, I get people who can't fight out of the way. I'm the backup guy, I'm evac, I'm rescue. I'm just there to help, or give moral support-- I'm not a front line fighter. I just do it if I have to, if that's what's called for. If I try and do it in any other context, it's-- not right. It's not what I'm here for. I'm here to protect Sailor Moon, and I can't even do that-- and I'm not even needed to do that, they didn't need my help at all, she doesn't need me. Like this I'm not even just unnecessary, I'm an active liability..."

A shake of his head, stiff and slow. He closes his eyes again. "Hell, like this I'm a depression rodeo. Sorry. But no: I was going to lose the fight, and I was already too hurt to get away, so I surrendered so I wouldn't get burned WORSE before he took my magic from me. Believe me. Believe me I don't want this to continue. But I wasn't even DOING anything. I was just going home and I got attacked."

Iris Shelby has posed:
Iris relents as Mamoru gives her a lot more information to go on. There's a lot of this that she still doesn't understand, as her encounters thus far have been limited to a few night-time 'patrols', going off on her own to little obvious effect. "Okay... wow. Alright. I think I'll stow the rest of the lecture, because you're making it really clear you know all this just as well as I do! Well, you're doing the right thing by staying here a while. I promise I won't keep you for fifty years, you won't rot away in here while Sailor Moon," she's assuming that's one of the ones who brought Tuxedo Kamen here the first time, "or Sailor Anyone Else is left alone. So don't worry, you're not being put in a glass jar for safekeeping!" She slips in a joke on that point, trying to dial things down since he seems very upset.

"So maybe we need to look at this from another angle. Are you wanting help with this? I can try, at least. Maybe I can't fix the whole problem, but maybe together you and I can make this less complicated?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"The energy I could have spent running away from that guy tonight, I spent fighting him because I was frustrated and angry, because the guy who attacked me-- he works for the same person who attacked my linker core the last time I was in here. And they're being all tragic 'we must be villains for the greater good' and they think there's no other way and I think that's dumb and it's hurting everyone," Mamoru says, slightly lifting an arm to test the bandages, or maybe because he's actually a masochist. Yes, Mamoru, it hurts when you do that, so don't do that.

He looks up at Iris, blue eyes shadowed. "The complicated part is caring what happens to more people than I can help, and that caring about them costs me, and it's costing more than I can afford because I'm left with not enough to do my job. The complicated part is taking on too much, more than I can handle, because there's so much that matters. If I see something wrong, it hurts if I don't try to stop it, and trying to stop it makes me less effective when it comes time to help *her*--"

Sounds like the complicated part is 'having friends' mixed with 'being compassionate' and 'having a sense of justice'. But the way he's putting it sounds like he doesn't think any of it is normal.

Iris Shelby has posed:
"I wouldn't know anything about that," Iris admits. "It's all news to me. Still, if there are people going around Tokyo doing that then I better keep an eye out." This development could mean trouble for all sorts of people, and she has to wonder if 'these people' will find occasion to attack her. Maybe they'd leave her vulnerable to the same thing that nearly got Mamoru killed? It's something to think about when she's not busy tending to a patient.

Especially when said patient is finally explaining things. "Ah, by the way, if you need those adjusted?" She saw the arm move. "You should ask me first before doing it. And that doesn't mean 'ask, then do it regardless of my answer', it means wait for me to take a look. Now, from the sound of it your problem is a numbers one. Or you're looking at it that way, at least. How much you can afford, how much you can help, how much that takes away from what's left for Sailor Moon," Iris is guessing that's the emphasized 'her', "and whether you can live with all that mess. I'll tell you something interesting."

She waits a second to build suspense, then explains... "Bad people love that. They love seeing someone like you falling into that trap. And no, I'm not saying your morals are a bad thing. You don't have to cast aside your humanity."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru grumbles a little. "Fine," he says -- he really is the worst patient -- then concedes, "I guess it's hard to reach and do it right when everything hurts." There's a pause. "And, uh. By the way. If you need help because of getting too much business-- volunteering to help you isn't the same as volunteering to fight, it wouldn't spread me too thin. So please call me. I can heal a bit, and I'm no medic but I've taken all the city classes in first response that they'll let a teenager take, so if assistance would be useful--"

He would like to be useful.

"--then don't hesitate."

Finally he settles in to listen to the rest, and the distraction is also a blessing: discussing it seems, already, to be helping. His eyebrows go up. "So how do I-- how do I do it without cutting myself off again? Without cutting out the people who matter, or just making myself not see what's going on--?"

Iris Shelby has posed:
"Offering to be a nurse? Well, we'll see if that ends up being needed. Right now I have just enough work to keep putting money back in to my work. It's sweet of you to offer though," Iris responds with a wide smile. "And on top of that, we have a more pressing question. One you just asked. So,"

She paces off to retrieve a chair, bringing it by the couch Mamoru now rests upon; she opted for the first operable surface to leave him on instead of bringing him to the normal patient room, given what condition she found him in. "How /do/ you do it? Hmm, hmm, hmm... that's a pretty big philosophy problem, don't you think? 'If I can save a life, and I do not, am I responsible for it'... or something like that? The answer is yes. But! But. And this is a big 'but'... you have to look at the numbers, because the bad people are too. If they can make you wear yourself out saving one life at a time, then take you out of the picture so they can go on to destroy a hundred lives... did they win? Probably!"

She keeps talking, trying to cut off any protests. And she imagines one would be forthcoming, because... "Now I know what that sounds like. 'Let one person die to save a dozen or a hundred or a thousand.' That's not what I mean. What I'm saying is you can't let them control your 'workload' like that. At some point you have to have something in place so you can call in friends to help. People who can step in and say they've got this, while you recover. And if that's not possible? Maybe there's a difference between 'victory', and 'not failing.' Maybe spending as little of yourself as possible will do, so you can save more for Sailor Moon. After all, if you lead the monster on a wild chase across half a city block while their victim runs away to safety... did you still save that one life?"

Those are a lot of suggestions, some of them made almost at random. She admits as much: "Maybe some of these answers don't apply to your situation, but you should think about them and figure out what /does/ work for you."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Work smarter, not harder?" asks Mamoru wryly, cautiously lifting his less-bandaged arm to take off his glasses, then folding them in one hand and offering them to Iris -- well, wordlessly asking her to put them on a nearby surface. "That's-- I have been, a little bit. The asking for help, or passing word on that someone needs help instead of going and doing it myself. I need to do it more. I'm not used to it. And the other's a good idea, too-- a good percentage of my bag of tricks is distracting and delaying tactics. I should get better with them. But-- I think you're right, and I think your having called my attention to specifically that will help a great deal."

There's a little puff of a pent-up sigh, and an even smaller laugh, voiceless. His eyes drift closed. "I'm not ready to outright join an organization even like Virtue. I don't have a team, but there are people who'll watch my back, it's just that half of them might also stab it. What a terrible day. Thank you for talking with me. I do feel better. I should really sleep before it wears off."

Iris Shelby has posed:
"Well, you can do both. Smarter and harder. But in your case? Yes. Smarter." Iris takes the glasses, placing them down on her couch and making plans to bring out a pillow and blanket from the patients-room for Mamoru to use out here. "Asking for help is kind of like exercise. The more you do it, the better you get at it. You just can't do it too much or something will wear out. ...Probably your friends' patience, in this case. 'Pull your own weight' is a thing too, after all!" She nonetheless sounds pleased that he's coming upon a more positive answer.

"I'll let you get to sleep in just a minute. But don't you worry about not joining groups. I'm not doing it either... once you do that, it opens the door to a pretty unfair arrangement where they take and take and take, then toss you aside. So don't be in too big a hurry to join anything. You and me, we're going to make our own group about not joining groups! And nobody in a group will be allowed, which includes us so we'll be out of the group too, and that will put us in a constant loop!"

She adds a tiny laugh before rising to go get what Mamoru will need for a more comfortable sleep. "You have a good night, Mr. Shieldmask."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"..."

Normally, when Mamoru doesn't have any idea what to say to someone, he's just sort of awkward about it. He's too tired to overthink it, though, so after staring for a second, he chuffs out an equally tiny laugh and shuts his eyes again.

"You too, Dr. Shelby."

He might actually avoid having the worst dreams tonight, after all.