There's a sense that she can push the sparks within her away; a feeling like being full for a time, not forever.

The two sparks that like each other (not feeling pain and being good at setting bones) also draw her attention — it feels like she could push them closer together, and open up space that way.

Oh. All right then. She would like a light source —

— no, wait, what she most wants, right now, is a mask. Or for that matter a disguise of any sort. Can she become good at cutting fabric in the dark by feel? Can she outright create items of clothing (in, let's say, under two minutes, she thinks when remembering “slowly generate rods”)? Can she become invisible, or shrouded in fog? Can she just teleport out of here??? Can she —

She can do so many things! There's a faint sense of being overwhelmed.

Does she want to have an intuition for what kinds of powers are possible for the gift to give her?

Not helpful!!

Take a deep breath. Another.

If possible, she would like to become good at cutting fabric in the dark by feel. That will provide a path to solving her time-sensitive problem without further planning and it seems in scope. Yes?

Another spark blooms to life in her chest. This one doesn't seem to like any of the others.

There's a sense of fullness and ... stableness, perhaps. The light mental touch of the gift fades into the background.

But now she has the muscle-memory and visualization skills required to cut fabric in the dark by feel.

Then she will set about cutting her saved car-seat fabric into a mask. Parts along the edge can become thin strips tied to more cut strips to tie the thing onto her head. It is badly fitting, scratchy, and smelly, but it will do. Are there any helpful-sounding noises from above, by now?

It's so hard to judge what noises are "helpful", and so easy to let your fears be magnified by the darkness, isn't it?

But in this case yes: a siren can be heard after a few minutes, and shortly after that someone shouts at her to back away from the plate.

“OKAY!”

She moves what seems like a good distance away down the tunnel and sits down on the floor, legs carefully laid out to not be further jarred.

It will be over soon. Well, some of it will be over soon. Some of it will be over soon.

A few minutes after that, there's an amazingly loud sound as someone begins drilling through the tar that was (incorrectly) used to seal the plate to the pavement. Eventually, they get enough of it away for a car-portable jack to lever the plate up with a resounding bang.

A hard-hatted head pokes into the hole, playing a flashlight around to try and spot her.

“Hello! Sorry for the trouble, but I was injured and stuck here!” And I kind of wish you were less efficient at covering holes in the street, she doesn’t say.

When the light finds her she waves. And lifts up and floats slowly, shakily towards the hole.

(She could not demonstrate any powers, and not wear a mask. But that would leave a possible mystery. She has spotted enough bad infosec from people posting on PHO, where cape business is already on everyone’s mind, to know that you can’t just let the let the little things slide and hope nobody notices.)

He does a double take when she starts to float, and then backs away from the hole to give her space.

Up on the surface, the hole in the street has been closed off with cones, and a crew of people in high-visibility vests stands around it with tools. An EMT pushes past them, and then stops when he sees her float out of the ground.

Sunlight! (Ow, sunlight.) Fresh air! (She is now colder and can see her filthy and ripped clothing.) People!

She would really, really like to just sit down and let other people deal with the situation now. But she still has a broken leg. She should say so.

She pointedly stops moving and settles onto her good leg (in a way that doesn’t, actually, balance) and beckons the EMT. “I — My car fell a very long way down. My left leg”, the one that is still floating, “is broken. And — uh, everything hurts.” And she has had too much adventure today and would like to stop.

The EMT sighs in relief; he doesn't know how to handle flight, but he can handle broken bones and blunt force trauma.

He efficiently transfers her to a stretcher, and starts splinting her leg in a practiced way.

"It doesn't look too bad," he tells her. "Well, I mean, it looks like you were in a car accident. And I'm not a doctor. But it looks like you don't have too much blood loss, and you're still conscious, which is good."

A few minutes later she's in the back of an ambulance making its way through downtown traffic on the way to the hospital.

This is tedious and would be painful, if not for the helpful sparks. As it is, it's mainly just not what she wanted to be doing with her afternoon. Hopefully she does not end up stuck in the hospital for too long without even a working phone.

While we’re waiting: helpful sparks, how about that “being closer together” thing? That won’t have any effects on the outside world, right? Nudge.

There's a slight resistance — just strong enough that she has to give them a deliberate push — and then the two sparks snap together like magnets, merging into a single brighter spark.

A sort of shiver runs through her. Before, she had skill with setting bones and the ability not to feel pain. Now, she has the ability to set bones while suppressing the pain of those she works on. Luckily, she counts as having worked on herself, so her pain remains at bay. But now keeping it at bay is an active thing that she is doing, and that she could stop doing if she's done fixing her leg.

Her skill with setting bones suggests that would be a bad idea, though; inhibiting her pain response is reducing inflammation, which is preventing some secondary tissue damage.

Okay, so, she can have more capacity but less individual flexibility. Or is it more like swapping them out for a replacement ability that happens to cover both uses? Hey you. Are you really a power for setting bones (only) and suppressing pain (only) or do you do other things too? Could you do other things?

The combined spark does feel more powerful, for whatever that's worth.

And there are lots of things that are part of setting bones and suppressing pain, aren't there? She has to have some other medical knowledge to set bones safely, and some ability to identify bones, and some feedback to tell whose pain she can suppress or stop suppressing (right now, just her own, but there's a vague sense that she could do something to the EMT's face). She also feels like she could suppress just a part of her pain. And "pain" is a wiggly enough category that she can do some not-strictly-nociceptive numbing. She's keeping herself from feeling the bone splinters moving in her leg as the ambulance goes over a bump, right now, which would be disconcerting even without pain. Plus she is getting some feedback about inflammation via her pain-suppression, now that she pays attention, since those are tightly linked. And that information is feeding back into her skill at setting bones to tell her more about the injury ...

Hmm. Flight, you’re not a combined spark, but can you do more things? Can you tell me things about this here ambulance reference frame?

There's a feeling like an omnidirectionally symmetrical ball of light shrugging.

Does she want to instinctively apply gentle uniform forces to her body in a way that incidentally largely nullifies the effect of gravity? Because if she doesn't want to do that, the flight spark can't really help.

Well, how about largely nullifying the internal effects of non-gravitational acceleration, like smoothing out this ambulance ride? That would be in-scope, wouldn’t it? She would like that.

Well ... she can hover? And then she won't be in contact with the ambulance, so it won't transmit forces to her!

There's a sense of pride in having solved a difficult problem (i.e., one not directly related to applying gentle forces to her body).

Then she would run into the ambulance. That would only be good if she wanted to go somewhere else than where the ambulance is going. Sorry.

Ah. Well, if she wants to apply gentle uniform forces to her body, it will be ready!

Brockton Bay traffic is bad, but Ambulences have some special advantages in that area. She arrives at the hospital in not much longer, where she is subjected to normal hospital things: properly securing her leg, getting an x-ray, being fitted for a cast, having her scrapes bandaged, being checked for concussion, etc.

Everyone is being very careful not to disturb her mask, but she may notice a number of stares from nurses, doctors, and other patients.

Yep, all as expected. She is pretty sure she doesn't have any injuries it would be hiding. Yes, really. And there is plenty of access to her scalp and neck and so on. How's her spine doing, considering how she fell?

She doesn’t suppose they can supply a less improvised replacement mask? This must come up sometimes? No? No, a surgical mask does not really count. How about clothes that are not soaked in foul water? That's of actual medical benefit, isn't it?