If the space the gift moves through is vague on direction, it is equally vague on quantity. It finds an opportunity, and it reaches out. There's a sensation of something outside herself gently brushing across her mind.

Does Kaitlyn want to stop feeling pain?

The question comes with the impression that nothing bad will happen as a result of her choice. The offer is just there — a thing she could choose to do now, in response to that questioning feeling. She could stop feeling pain.

She what?

The sensation conforms itself to her mind, trying to find the offer that will help her.

Does she want the ability to set bones well? That is also a thing that she could do. That offer is not going to make anything bad happen either.

She gets the feeling that that part is important — she has the choice. But before, her choices were things like "try to shout more" or "pray". And now her choices include ceasing to feel pain, or knowing how to set bones. Or rejecting the gift.

…

Much as she would like to stop feeling all this pain (broken bone, bruised ribs, assorted bruises and scrapes, ears ringing from airbags going off), her leg is actually more important.

A wordless intuition opens up to her, and it feels like a dim ball of light igniting within her: this is how to set a bone so that it will heal best. Not only the theory, but the muscle memory for how to do it. It doesn't force anything — she doesn't have to set a bone — but she knows that she could, now.

Several feet of filthy water is not the best place to do anything, but it does have one advantage over other kinds of being stuck in a hole in the ground: buoyancy. She swims to where she can brace herself against the car’s hood with her back and the rock wall with her good leg, and reaches down —

— okay actually can she also be not in pain for this?

Yes!

There's a faint sense of distant satisfaction. Another ball of light blooms inside her, the two balls spinning around one another. Her pain fades away.

She can still feel that she's hurt, it just isn't the attention-grabbing, lightning-hot, sensation of pain anymore.

Okay. Reach down, carefully feel the shape the bone makes through the skin, relax the muscles, push — ugh. It may not hurt but bones still should not be doing that. Especially her bones. There. Done.

Breathe.

The next thing she could use is a splint. She has a knife in the glove compartment and she can use it to cut up the seatbelts to use for rope. But what does she have that's stiff, straight, and long enough? Maybe something in the car’s emergency tools — which are kept in the rear, which is now the uppermost part of the car, sticking out of the water. Great.

Hey, mysterious helpful thing in her brain, got any recommendations? Or maybe flight powers? Flight would be great.

Sure, it can help her fly. This ball of light doesn't seem to like the others. Also, now that she is not being distracted by her leg, she gets the impression of increasing fullness.

Does she want the ability to slowly generate rods?

She is not really a powers nerd but she is pretty sure most of them don't work like this.

Right. Anyway. Fine. Hold off on the additional extremely specific powers. Carefully float up — she doesn't know what there might be to bump her head on and she certainly doesn't have a helmet — and — oh, car's dead, the hatch is not going to open. Okay. Even more carefully open the back door, lower the back seats, slide in and bend and keep your leg sticking out touching nothing, extract the tool kit, park it on the back of the driver's seat as a table, rummage. Argh. Not super helpful. There's the towing eye, which is mostly a straight rod, but it's too short to really help immobilize the break, and there’s the — what do you call it anyway, the cross-shaped tool that you take the nuts off with, which would stick out and could get caught on things.

Hey, flight, can she just float out of here all the way up to the surface, no legs needed?

The flight she has now should be perfectly capable of lifting her out of the hole.

Assuming, that is, that she knows which way to go.

The hole is, after all, incredibly dark.

She has quickly acquired a lot of experience at feeling around in the dark, and she is pretty sure that the direction she needs to go is primarily up, or her car wouldn't have gotten down here the way it did.

Step 1: collect everything that is useful. Get her bag, ditch the probably-thoroughly-dead laptop (she has backups) and everything that will have been ruined by the water. Take the tools from the glove compartment. Dump the bulky parts of the car’s break-down toolkit. Cut off the seat belts and roll those up and stuff them in the toolkit, just in case she turns out to in fact need something rope-like.

Step 2: … she has apparently acquired powers. She should preserve the option of a secret identity given that she is most likely going to float out onto a public street. She is probably sufficiently bedraggled that she does not need to worry about anyone recognizing her outfit and hair, but she should have a mask. Unfortunately, all her clothes are soaked in filthy water. What else does she have? A dry half of a car. The seat belts don't seem like they will help, but she can cut a big piece out of the seat upholstery and hope that when she has a little more light, she can try to cut it into something that she tie around her face somehow. Or maybe the helpful powers will say, no problem, you can just go invisible! Who knows.

Step 3: Go up, very slowly, hands ahead. Feel for air currents, make a noise and listen for echoes. Try not to acquire another injury.

The hole is jagged, dark and deep.

... but it's just a hole, and therefore rendered much less threatening by the power of flight.

It remains pitch-black, but she eventually feels her way up into what must be a tunnel of some sort. The walls feel like stone, which is a bit odd. She can hear running water, which is probably what caused the subsidence.

Does she want to float along the tunnel, or try to feel around the ceiling more for the presumable path upward?

A faint skittering sounds from further down the tunnel.

Is there any light at all in the tunnel? Is there a draft through it? She doesn't know what a storm sewer smells like, but does it smell like it's been wet for a long time, or more like something else, that is only recently broken into by the water?

The thing about Brockton Bay that many people seem to forget is that it is — for some unfathomable reason — on an aquifer. So even if this tunnel had been used for something else originally, it would probably still smell pretty wet.

In this case, it smells pretty strongly of stagnant water, damp earth, and quite possibly rats.

And, indeed, there is no light. Which is strange, because her car could hardly have traveled that far, and even at night the city has lights.

There is a draft, but it's quite weak. It feels like air is blowing from her left.

There must be a way up that she came down. Exploring possibly-dead-end tunnels seems like a significant sidetrack from getting out of this hole and to a hospital, even if she were equipped with, say, a waterproof flashlight and a sense of adventure. Up first.

Her car must have slid a little bit sideways with the collapsing earth, but not that much. Finding the hole in the ceiling is fairly straightforward.

But as she reaches higher, her fingers meet a cool metal plate. It seems as though someone has already thrown a temporary patch over the subsidence. There's a dull thump-thump as a car drives over the plate.

It sure would be convenient if they checked if someone had fallen in the hole before covering it up!!!

To be fair, it was a really deep and twisty hole, but still.

She will try the less getting-lost option first. Get the towing eye (a solid chunk of steel itself, if not as massive as the plate) and bang on the underside of the plate. Someone might notice — if she’s really lucky, the crew that put the plate down is still here. She will try periodically for a few minutes. Ow, ringing noise. She will try with the fabric wrapped around her ears to muffle it a bit.

Up above, the bystander effect occurs, leading to a nerve-wracking period without a response. Eventually, someone thumps back on the plate in a communicative way and shouts.

"I've called 911!"

“THANK YOU!” she yells back. She crazily thought momentarily about saying that she is okay, just stuck, and there is no rush, but that's really not at all true, what with the complete darkness and the broken leg; it's just that she is in contact with civilization again, and suddenly in a position where waiting is the correct action.

Now, how is she going to explain how she got where she is? Plan “float out of the hole in the street wearing a mask” is currently difficult to execute because she was hoping to have some light with which to attempt construction of a mask. She could claim to have climbed up this far, but she has no idea how plausible it is to in fact have climbed the path she found. She could deflect and just insist on medical care. She could give up trying and tell the complete truth. She could —

— oh there’s the suppressed panic, now that she has nothing to do. What if she just sits here and shakes.

Does she want to be good at calming down and accepting the situation? Maybe she would like to glow, instead?

...

She doesn’t know how this works.

What is up with the sensation of increasing fullness? Is she — frame it carefully, now, just in case — the things she wants do not include being full of miscellaneous powers and not having more choices in the future. If she does nothing, she will probably get out of here just fine. Well, adequately okay. That is her situation. Any comments?

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?

Yes, the nurses are happy to get her changed into a gown. And they're sorry about not having a mask on hand. But actually ...

A man with a glowing helmet and a spear knocks on the side of her open hospital-room door.

"Hello! I'm Dauntless."

He flashes a practiced grin.

"Do you have a few minutes to talk?"

He reaches into a pouch subtly built into his costume and comes out with a one-size-fits-all black domino mask and a pamphlet, which he holds out toward her enticingly.