Utterly Mad

Something touched Catnip's shoulder lightly and although the touch didn't feel particularly aggressive, Catnip spun with a snarl and brandished her fists before seeing who it was that had accosted her. The leftover gale from the stones discharge had masked L's approach from Catnip's whiskers and her smell from Catnip's nose. That same calamitous exhale had also seemingly blown Catnip's ear drums. That second lost sense had confused Catnip and she'd spent the better part of a minute between bouts of retching and heaving. L said something, but Catnip only cocked her head and gestured to her ears. All she could hear was a high ringing keep at the center of her head.

"What?" Catnip shouted, tottering on her feet. Balance wasn't coming easy, and just as she'd thought she had finally got it back, the walkway suddenly rose up to meet her and the blackness of unconsciousness took her.

---

Below, the barrier had fallen and the Shattered Helm and Searing Spear were filing into the complex and seeking out those infected with Mycus. It wasn't difficult. The howling tower did most of the work for them. Those infected were stricken with shooting pains through their body, and those too far gone to help simply screamed in pained agony. several stories below L and Catnip, the form that had been Tenny Parsons stayed deathly still among it's rapidly fading cloud of spores, and the grey dusty smear of the mycus that couldn't remain in cohesion about the withered corpse. No one could really figure out why she'd turn on the project and the town it was meant to protect, but L could guess. Later, she would collect the small silver chain from what was left and muse over it while waiting on Catnip at the clinic. As she figured it, Tenny hadn't been able to move on.

"Some people turn to the needle or the bottle Nip..." She would say to Catnip while she lay unconscious under a constant regime of RX12 and antifungal medication, "Some people turn to dice... If they're really desperate, they might even make a deal with the devil." L would slip the chain into a deep inside pocket of a new vest along side the rolled up paperwork. L wasn't free from debt, but her contract would be passed onto Catnip, as per her request to the Misling council, should the mechanic survive.

As for Catnip, it would be a week before she would be allowed to leave the clinic bed and another month before she could leave the clinic. A sprained wrist was the least of her problems. The pins in her back had kept her spine from breaking on impact with the railing, but the half cell that had rocketed out of her hands and hit her in the stomach like a ton of bricks had done more than a serious amount of damage. Three broken ribs, a ruptured gut, and a bruised lung. She'd heal fine thanks to the quick and proficient surgery of the clinics doctor, Efram Marsh, and a dangerously high dose of RX12, but like all the wounds the mechanic suffered over the course of her life, they would add up. She also needed to be on antifungus at all times. Back in New England, it had been a trivial matter to use the panacea that was RX12 on just about everything, but here in Arizona it was risky. The medicine had it's normal, deadly, side effects of course, but the real problem was this; it promoted the growth of Mycus in the body. If Catnip was infected, then it was a serious risk even with the Howling tower going full tilt.

L turned over something else she'd recovered. Something had told her that it would be needed, that Catnip would need it. The wind cell lay not far from where Tenny's sad existence had finally come to an end, and inside the somewhat misshapen half she found, was a pristine pink stone the shape of a tear drop and covered in tiny little depressions. Each was placed irregularly about the surface of the stone and no two were the same depth or size. The stone itself seemed to have been carved into a shape like one of the cone spiral shells some sea mollusks had. Her eyes were drawn to it. Drawn into the little depressions and following the line of each as they twisted down and down into some unseen infinite apex. L had to shake herself sometimes and wrench her gaze from it, as it felt like she would be sucked into the thing if she stared too long. It felt right though.

Nearby, Catnip's breath hitched. Dr. Marsh had told her that it was normal, her right lung had been injured after all. L gave the stone another look before placing it back in Catnips bag, and she could have sworn that as she did so, the bag seemed to aspirate, and Catnip's breathing regularized with it. It was a ridiculous notion, but all the same... L went out from Catnip. There would be time to come back again and contemplate the strange object more tomorrow and visiting hours were almost over. L had a deposition to make on the just what had happened in the Howling Tower facility, and she didn't want to be late. A look back and then she was gone. Strolling up Chief Street L felt her step grow lighter and realized that she had finally begun to heal, and move on.