Crossover Fan Fiction / Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction / Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction ❯ Reason And Accountability ❯ Exoskeleton Trouble ( Chapter 37 )

Unfamiliar ceiling. It was flickering with light and shadow and I realized I was hearing the sea. It was warm, like Okinawa or maybe further south, like the Solomon Islands near the equator. Where the old Japanese space program used to be located. I sat up in the body I was borrowing. He was kinda fat, out of shape, and wheezed with the effort. I looked around the hut I appeared to be living in, noting some discarded food containers, old magazines, and noted a sense of urgency was compelling me to go outside. I pulled on and buttoned up a Hawaiian shirt and belted on a pair of worn shorts, commando, and some flip flops at the door, because I see no sign of shoes. I walked outside into the bright sun and breeze, toward the sea, where the feeling got stronger and more urgent.

There was some kind of conversation going on between a young man, a girl holding onto his arm, looking very afraid and a woman of around twenty-five wearing an exoskeleton suit which was… walking towards the cliff. WTF? Forgive my English curse there, but nani? I activated telekinesis and grabbed the upper part of the suit before it could topple off the cliff. The suit fought me, but since telekinesis isn’t arms, there’s not much it can do about it. I moved closer, using my other hand to double the effect, lifting woman and suit into the air and bringing it over the ground a few feet up. The suit was still trying to walk off the edge, while the woman inside was panicking.

“Who’s there? Help me!” she cried.

I got closer and yanked on the emergency shutoff lever and nailed the switch, killing it dead as a doornail. Because that’s how you build power tools for medical use. I lowered her to the ground and cast heal on her. Good old fashioned paraplegia. I healed her spinal cord, reattaching all those nerves. There’s a lot and all have to go to the right places, and the ending rejuvenated and recharged so they can physically fire again. It is a huge amount of chemistry involving sodium and potassium.

“What? What’s happening?” asked the woman.

“How do I get you out of this thing?” I asked her. She repeated her confusion. Ah, warning labels for emergency personnel. I fiddled with the exoskeleton’s physical latches to release her from the suit, which was so much dead electric motors and pneumatics and metal and carbon fiber tubing and a few fuel cells. It took a good ten minutes before she was actually clear.

“You should probably get that looked at. Maybe check its computer code? I could swear it was trying to walk you over that cliff,” I warned her.

“I can feel my toes,” she said, surprised. “Who are you?” Took her long enough.

“Can you move your toes for me?” I asked her, still casting Heal on her. Signals got through. Wiggle achieved.

I stroked her calf. “Feel that?” I asked her.

“Yes. Tickles,” she flexed it very weakly. I healed more. This isn’t a fast process. Without being able to move her muscles she’d lost most of her muscle tone, and walking again was going to be a pain and a half of physical therapy. I cast similar heal on the nerves in her other leg and feet. Lots of degradation there too.

“Do you like sushi? How about eggs? You’re going to want to eat a higher protein diet for the next few weeks,” I advised her.

“Are you a doctor?” she finally asked.

“Sort of. A healer, which is sort of like a physiotherapist, only better. Feel that?” asked her, moving her leg back and forth at the knee.

“Yes. And it doesn’t feel numb.”

“Pool exercises, with a life vest to keep you floating, will let you practice moving your legs and build back your muscle,” I advised her. I continued the healing into her thighs, hips, and eventually pelvis. For once there was nothing wrong with her lady parts. She was fertile and healthy without any healing necessary. Some external surgery scars near her spine I took care of and extracted metal pins and healed some spinal bone damage, unfused bones, and healed major nerves. It was a thing. I could see doing this caused a cascade of feelings flow into the woman, probably sensei’s age.

“OOhhh. That felt weird. Not bad, but weird.”

“You’re pretty healthy considering. Get strong enough to walk and you should be able to land a husband without too much trouble,” I suggested.

The teenagers were standing over us, watching this with their fancy tablets pointed at us, recording probably. They wouldn’t see anything. Magic is the 8th color, a sort of purplish-green that only people with magic can actually see, through actual special cells in the eye. Normal people have rods and cones for black and white and colors, respectively. Magical people, including me, have octiron rods in addition to this, letting us see magic. Pretty much the whole population of Skyrim has this. Its probably because their planet is really weird.

I did further healing up her spine, restoring muscle tone and flexibility to the cartilage there. It wouldn’t do to cure her paraplegia and give her a back injury the first time she touches her toes to put on her shoes. Be serious.

“I can wear shoes again,” she realized.

“You’ll be spending how much of your income on them? On the other hand your medical insurance premiums should go down a lot,” I countered. The two teenagers helped her stand up finally, me keeping the spell running to insure she’d have enough muscle control to actually remain so rather than fall over out of weakness.

The owner of this body received a grin from the three islanders. “Thanks mister. What’s your name?”

I told them. “I think I need a nap. I’ll see you around,” I lied, turning to head back to the hut where I’d awoken to this pending drama. Imagine if that woman had fallen off the cliff being remote piloted by some hacker-assassin. What kind of mean freak does that? Probably someone who likes semicolons in their story titles.