Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kairi gasped as she looked around, seeing she was on the play island. Those colourful monsters had been scary.

“What do you wish?” asked a melancholy blue-haired woman.

“To deliver healthcare to everyone who needs it!” Kairi replied with determination, before being overtaken with light.

.

.

.

“Ow! It hurts!”

“That’s definitely broken.”

“Somebody help!”

.

..

…

Kairi gasped as the residual panic from the dreams she had been having slowly faded from her consiousness. Sighing as she ran through her morning routine, Kairi snatched some breakfast before dashing out of the door to the clinic.

It did not take long for her to reach her destination.

The wooden building was larger than the surrounding buildings, and as she walked in the main entrance to central ER, she noticed a familiar face sitting on one of the chairs set out for patients awaiting treatment to sit on.

“What are you doing here, Sora?” she asked, sighing for the second time that day.

“Jellyfish sting.” Sora replied shortly, glancing down at his leg.

“Of course,” Kairi huffed. “Let me get changed and I’ll see you in exam room 1.” the redhead ordered, seeing it was free.

Destiny Islands Health Clinic West - commonly abbreviated to just simply “Destiny West” - had 2 bays in the emergency room, and 2 examination rooms. Although the clinic covered a large area, the population density was lower than in other areas of the Destiny Island chain.

Kairi headed for the locker room to quickly get changed into her scrubs, passing the receptionist and administrator who was currently sorting some paperwork at the central emergency room desk. Since the clinic was fairly small, it also doubled as reception.

“Afternoon, Kai!” he replied cheerily. “Sorry for giving you the twilight shift today. Chiyo-sensei’s ill.”

“Shit happens,” Kairi responded with a shrug, unbothered, as she leant on the reception desk. “Anything interesting happen today?”

“Not really. Mizuki-sensei and Iroh-san are handling a moderate laceration in 1, we got a call that we have a broken arm incoming from a neighbouring island in 30, and there’s the tetanus vaccination clinic at six.”

“Gotcha. I’ll deal with Reckless-kun over here.”

After getting changed into her green scrubs, Kairi met Sora in the examination room. Pulling back the curtain, Kairi was greeted with her friend and patient lying on the medical bed.

“What have I told you about jellyfish?” Kairi asked sternly as she prepared to remove the residual tentacles with appropriate gloves.

“Wash them in seawater?” Sora replied sheepishly as Kairi treated Sora’s leg, removing stray spines that still remained. “Can’t you just use a potion on this?” he complained.

“No. You know my stance on potions: you can build a tolerance very quickly, and then they won’t work when you really need them. Anything else?” Kairi asked impatiently.

There was an awkward pause.

“Don’t go swimming if jellyfish have been reported in the water.” Sora mumbled, knowing that Kairi wouldn’t budge.

“Good. Please at least try to remember what I tell you?” she pleaded. “There. Keep this hot pack on there for at least 30 minutes. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much pain are you feeling right now?”

“Hmmm, I dunno. About a six?” Sora replied far too casually for someone with several long and likely painful red marks on their leg.

“Okay. I’ve already applied 2% lidocaine cream, and I’ll prescribe some for you to take home. Use it up to 3 times a day for 7 days.” Kairi rattled off, already writing the prescription and handing it to Sora.

“Thanks Kai! You’re the best!” Sora grinned as he moved to get up.

“No problem, but you’re not getting out of this one. 30. minutes. You have some swelling there. While you don’t have a history of a reaction, let any of the clinic staff know immediately if it gets worse.” Kairi lectured, and Sora slumped back onto the bed. “I’ve got to prep for an incoming patient, so I’ll see you later.”

“You sure I can’t do 15 instead?” Sora asked hopefully as Kairi turned to exit the room.

“No. 30 minutes, and I’m telling Mamoru-san you’re staying here until every second of your time is up.” Kairi replied flatly, and Sora knew he would not get any more leeway out of anyone today. Perhaps it was worth being a bit more careful next time?

Of course the slowest day in weeks had a catch. grumbled Kairi that evening as she sat down to deal with her paperwork. There’s always a catch.

It was now late evening, and a fierce storm was raging outside.

“Yo, I’m heading out in 10. I’ll walk with you if you like - this storm’s nasty.” Iroh-san, one of the nurses called across central ER as he headed to the locker rooms.

“Sorry, I’ve got another 2 hours on the clock.” the young red-haired doctor denied. “Thanks though!”

“Stay safe!”

After finishing her paperwork, Kairi checked on her patient with the broken arm she had operated on earlier that day. It had been a complex break, but the surgery had gone well and now they were sleeping peacefully in recovery.

Looking out of the window, the storm was intensifying rapidly.

It was getting so bad that both Kairi and Mizuki-sensei - the evening crew, since they were a small clinic that was short-staffed they had to operate an on-call system if additional staff were needed - were starting to get nervous.

“Lucky we don’t have anyone on life support right now.” Mizuki-sensei, a kind old man, commented in relief.

“What is that?” Kairi asked nervously, peering out of the window towards the play island.

Kairi’s memory went fuzzy after that.

A purple orb in the sky ate the entire world piece by piece.

Strong winds tore everything to shreds, leaving her and others hanging on for dear life.

Darkness crept in on her vision, before she finally lost consciousness.

When she next awoke, she was in a completely different world.

A week after that fated day found Kairi in the third district on Traverse Town in the vacant house. There was an informal ‘Traverse Town Safety Committee’ meeting that was about to start, which basically meant the small group of people who took it upon themselves to keep the second and third districts safe (or as safe as they could without a keyblade, anyway) got together in a room.

That group now included Kairi, whose strong personality had refused to back down when Leon and the others had attempted to protect her to ‘keep her safe’.

A lot had happened in the week since Kairi had arrived. Sora had left with Donal and Goofy with a keyblade on a mission to save the Realm of Light. The number of people arriving in Traverse Town had accelerated - it was estimated that in 2 weeks time Traverse Town would have to do something to house the influx of new people.

Kairi had been forced to adapt to living in a completely different world.

She wasn’t sure which was worse: the whole ‘adapting to a new world’ thing or the fact that Traverse Town never saw the sun - something that all Destiny Islanders had an intimate connection with.

“Okay everyone - thanks for coming.” Leon announced as everyone stood around the table. In total, there were 8 people there including Kairi and Leon (who was basically the de-facto leader no matter how many times he tried to deny it): Aerith, Cid, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and Merlin the Wizard. “I’d like to introduce a new member of our little ‘committee’ today. Say hello, Kairi.”

“Hello,” she waved nervously. She still didn’t know anyone here all that well. “I’m from Destiny Islands - the same as Sora.”

There was a chorus of hellos as Kairi mentally kicked herself for not introducing herself as a medic. Maybe adjusting to a completely new world was getting to her. They wouldnt’ve believed her anyway; inexplicably she’d woken up in Traverse Town in her civvies rather than in the doctors’ scrubs she had been whisked away in, with only the advanced first aid kit she’d grabbed before she lost consciousness.

“Welcome, Kairi. We’re here to discuss patrol shifts for this week.” Leon opened the meeting. “Along with an influx of the new arrivals, we’re also seeing an influx of heartless.”

The mood in the room sobered at that thought.

“To this end, I propose implementing a buddy system.” Leon suggested. “Nobody would be on patrol alone.”

“Sounds sensible. If one of you gets into trouble, the other can get help.” Merlin agreed, twirling his staff absent mindedly.

“But that would mean doubling ever’one’s shifts!” Cid raised his voice in indignation. “Yer crazy lad if you think we can keep that up - we’re stretched thin enough as it is!”

Murmurs of agreement went around the room.

“I think we need to recruit some of the new arrivals to help.” Aerith mediated tactfully.

“We’ll have to do it quickly.” Leon sighed. “At least having the keyblade-”

“Sora,” Kairi corrected firmly.

“Right, Sora. Sorry.” Leon coughed awkwardly. “At least Sora cleared some of them out for good before he left with Donald and Goofy, which buys us some time. Huey, Dewey, Louie, can I leave it to you to recruit us some extra people for patrols? Here’s our current schedule.”

“Leave it to us, Leon-san!” the three young ducklings chorused.

“Great. The other thing I wanted to discuss was that of newcomers.” Leon moved on professionally.

“Confound it all, they keep getting lost!” Merlin exclaimed, exasperated.

“Our current system isn’t working any more,” Aerith agreed.

It wasn’t. Now that people were arriving almost daily - and often in a panic as soon as they woke up - which often resulted in them ending up in the second or third district completely unprepared for the heartless that often roam around everywhere but the first district.

“We’ve noticed that new arrivals often check the café, but it isn’t always manned.” Louie pointed out.

“Maybe if we had someone staffing it 24/7, it would help?” Huey added.

“More people.” Leon sighed. “Can you find some people to do that?” he asked hopefully.

“Leave it to us!” Dewey replied enthusiastically, Donald’s three nephews jumping up and down.

“That’s one less problem.” Cid commented, seemingly relieved.

“You said it.” Merlin agreed.

“Right, thanks you three.” Leon thanked. “Those were the two big things I wanted to mention before opening to discussion. Does anyone have anything to mention?”

“Yeah. The-” Cid started, but he was interrupted by the door to the vacant house that the meeting was being held in being smashed open with a loud bang.

Everyone jumped and was instantly on guard against the intrusion - including Kairi, who had pulled out a pair of daggers she had strapped to her hips. When she hadn’t been on shift as the local trauma surgeon, she had sparred with Sora and Riku. She was nowhere near as good as they were, but she had enough of a grasp to defend herself.

She never thought she’d have to use those skills in life-and-death situations on the daily, but hey. Her skills as a surgeon worked strangely well with daggers as weapons!

“It is I, the great ninja Yuffie!” a loud voice shouted, before the voice let out a shout of pain. “Ow! Shit. Running on adrenaline from a broken wrist.” Yuffie finished in a decided lower voice when she saw the panicked and defensive positions the occupants of the room held.

Everyone dropped their defensive positions as the door creaked shut once more on its own accord.

“Yer gotta stop scarin’ us all like that Yuffie!” Cid yelled to fill the silence, before the penny dropped and the panicked looks returned.

To all except Kairi of course, who sighed.

“Yuffie… what’ll do with you?” Aerith shook her head. Aerith paused to consider her words, taking a breath and releasing it again.

The air in the room shifted tone once more to a decidedly tenser atmosphere.

Kairi bit her lip to keep herself quiet. She wanted to see what they would do. Yuffie was at least supporting the weight of her broken wrist, so there was that.

“Yuffie, my dear girl, you do know how fickle the healing arts can be, right?” Merlin asked, uncharacteristically serious.

Oh boy, Kairi thought to herself.

“You can just heal me up, right?” Yufiie asked, not yet getting the hint.

“Not so fast. If I used Curaga right now, it would not heal the bone correctly.” Merlin explained, face knotted in thought to desperately think of a way around the issue.

“What about a hi-potion then? The moogles have an elixr for like 2500 munny right?” Yuffie asked, her own panic starting to rise as she faced walls she didn’t expect.

“Yeah, ’cause that’d work so much better.” Cid grumped. “You and I both know it kid, we’ve all used so many potions we’re all built up such a tolerance that wouldn’t work.”

“Not to mention even a megalixr can’t set a broken bone.” Merlin added.

“I hate to say it Yuffie, but we’re stuck on this one. Without some way to set the bone, I’m afraid there’s little we can do.” Aerith explained with a sad smile.

Yuffie’s anxiety skyrocketed, and just before she was about to speak, Kairi exploded.

“What have they been teaching you?!” the destiny islands medic roared, both her sense of justice and her medical knowledge thoroughly ticked off. Her anger had been steadily building until she couldn’t take it anymore.

Everyone turned to look at the redhead who had been silently listening in shock.

“You call yourself first aiders and a healer?!” she asked rhetorically, forcing her mind to remain calm but keeping her voice raised. “Honestly, even Sora could do better than that.” she raged. “Yuffie, come here. set your wrist on the table and don’t move.” she commanded.

Spooked, Yuffie wordlessly complied.

“Kairi, that is no manner to speak-” Merlin started, but was cut off.

“What’s yer deal, redhead-?” Cid started to rant at the same time.

“Kairi!” Aerith gasped.

“Be quiet.” Kairi commanded the three with the all the authority of a doctor.

“What are you gonna do?” Yuffie asked with some trepidation, moving and setting her wrist down as instructed and sitting on a chair.

The room’s other occupants subconciously stood back to give the pair space.

“Why, I’m going to fix your broken wrist - or try to, at least.” Kairi responded, matter-of-factly.

“How…?” Yuffie asked, before Kairi cut her off too and explained.

Sue her, she was stupified by the sheer level of medical incompetence that had been on display in this room just moments earlier.

If she had been in her right mind, maybe she wouldn’t have been so rude to a powerful wizard and a soldier just under twice her height. On second thought, she absolutely would have done anyway. She did it all the time back on destiny islands when people talked down to her about her medical abilities.

If there was one thing she excelled at, it was medicine.

“We don’t have an x-ray machine, so I’m going to use a spell as a replacement. If its a clean break - which it looks like it might be - I’ll perform a closed reduction to set the bone, before wrapping it in a cast. It’s quite a painful procedure, so I’ll administer an injection of lidocaine to numb the pain.” Kairi explained professionally, like she had done hundreds of times before.

“Woah, that sounds cool.” Yuffie enthused.

The adults who now stood behind the two wisely kept silent upon seeing Kairi’s glare that was directed in their direction.

“The scan may feel quite uncomfortable - like a horde of ants crawling over your skin. Do I have your consent to proceed?” Kairi asked, now calmly focused on treating Yuffie.

Nothing else mattered except the two of them right now.

“Sure, Kai-sensei - hit me with it!” Yuffie replied with altogether far too much cheer for someone with a broken wrist.

“Okay. Give me a moment and hold still. Do you have any other pre-existing medical conditions?” Kairi agreed, and started to whisper under her breath. Heh, she’s not too far from the truth! she smiled to herself.

“No.” Yuffie responded, not wanting to disurb her focus.

After a moment, her hand lit up with a dim white glow. Kairi traced a circle above Yuffie’s wrist, before filling it with finger-drawn runes.

It definitely wasn’t her first choice of spell to cast on an evening - or at any time of day really, given the mana cost it took. Mizuki-sensei, the kind old doctor and surgeon who had taught her basically everything she knew - had sent her one night to one of the village elders to learn the basics of the art of magic. It was a lot of meditating and learning a strange language, but it had paid off when Mizuki-sensei had taught her the spell she was about to use.

“Needs must,” she muttered as she drew, finally completing the circle a few minutes later, adding a series of extra runes so her patient (and those looking over her shoulder) could see what she was doing.

“Close your eyes. Sight!” Kairi shouted as the spell grew in brightness to blind everyone who hadn’t heeded her warning.

Once it had dimmed, a small transclucent loupe with fuzzy edges replaced the magic spell. She’d coded it to display x-rays, so it currently showed Yuffie’s wrist.

“Woah!” the room gawped at the display of magic before them.

“My word, I’ve never seen a spell like that before!” Merlin exclaimed. “Where did you learn it?”

“Questions later; I can’t keep this up for long.” Kairi answered shortly. “That’s definitely a simple closed break of the dorsal angulation. Hold still while I draw the lidocaine.” Kairi tilted the sight spell to the sides.

Nobody dared disobey her as she worked. Hastily but accurately Kairi opened her medical kit and extracted a small vial of unopened lidocaine and prepared to draw some into a needle.

“30 gauge needle, 2% lidocaine… you’re about my age. Quick, how much do you weigh Yuffie?”

Yuffie looked offended for a moment, before remembering where she was and the situation she was in. “About 47kg*.” she stated with some amount of annoyance at being asked.

“Thanks.” Kairi replied, distracted. What kind of medic was she: she should’ve asked Yuffie for that before! No wait, treat patient now, overthink later. “47… 2%… 200mg lidocaine.” Kairi mentally calculated, completing the draw. “You might feel a little pinch. All done.”

“That’s weird. It’s there, but I can’t feel anything anymore!” Yuffie observed a tense minute later.

“Good, because the next bit won’t hurt then.” Kairi stated flatly, preparing the sugar tong splint she kept in her medkit before gently picking up Yuffie’s wrist and raising the x-ray lens.

She paused for a moment, before making a series of movements to set the bone quickly enough that nobody had a chance to protest.

“Ouch!” Yuffie yelled, reflexively trying to pull her arm back, but the movement was expertly stopped by Kairi’s hand.

“I said hold still.” Kairi reminded. “I’m almost there. You’ve done really well, just a little longer.” she encouraged, wrapping Yuffie’s forearm in the splint.

“All done!” she announced, dropping the spell with a sign of relief.

The tension in the room was replaced with disbelief. Quickly before anyone could quiz her, Kairi rattled off the care instructions. “No lifting anything with your right arm, but otherwise try to use it normally. I’ll do a checkup every 2 weeks - it usually takes about 6 weeks before we can remove the cast. The lidocaine will wear off in about an hour: I’ll write you a prescription for pain, and some care instructions.” Kairi lectured, and for once in her life Yuffie paid attention to the instructions Kairi was giving her.

“You’re the best, Kairi-sensei!” Yuffie thanked profusely.

“No trouble at all. Behave yourself now - I don’t want to have to set that again.” the redhaired doctor reminded, and Yuffie nodded in understanding.

“How did you do that.” Leon asked in a warning tone, receiving a glare from Aerith.

“I’m a doctor.” Kairi replied simply, an innocent smile lighting her up face. “Misaki Kairi-sensei, trauma surgeon on shift from Destiny Islands Health Clinic West at your service.” she finished with a small bow.

The look on everyone’s face was priceless.

Kairi held the moment for long enough they’d know she was serious, but then she couldn’t help herself from laughing.

“Are you mocking the seriousness of the situation?” Leon growled, offended.

“After she just fixed my broken wrist? Awww, give over Squall.” Yuffie objected playfully, turning to stare up at the tall man.

“It’s Leon,” Leon reminded automatically, knowing he wouldn’t get Yuffie to change.

“No, no,” Kairi reassured, regaining her composure. “I really am a trauma surgeon. I was qualified to perform surgeries on my own just over a year ago, but I’ve been helping out at the clinic practically for as long as I can remember. I’ve performed numerous surgeries and procedures. Just ask Sora: I’ve been patching him and Riku up for years.”

“It was most impressive.” Aerith praised. “We don’t have medicine – or spells, for that matter – like that on our home world.”

“And I thought Destiny Islands was bad. I dread to think what healthcare is like on your world.” Kairi grumbled as she started to write out a prescription and care instructions.

“Hey! We had potions…” Yuffie countered weakly.

“Nope, not gonna think about it.” Kairi declared as she stamped the prescription, mostly to herself. “Here, take this. It should be accepted by all moogles. And for the love of everything read the care instructions!”

“Right.” Kairi continued, not giving anyone a word in edgeways, sideways, or upside down, “Since you clearly can’t be trusted to have any medical knowledge whatsoever, hi-potions and above are hereby a prescription drug only. I’ll also teach a first aid class every Wednesday evening that I expect everyone on patrol duty to attend.”

“You can’t do that!” Leon declared, voice rising despite himself.

“I can, and I will.” asserted a resolute Kairi. “As the highest-ranking medical person here, I have the final say on all medical matters.”

“Get schooled, Squall!” Yuffie laughed, pointing.

“That applies to you too, Yuffie.” Kairi pointed out. “You’ll notice I prescribed paracetamol/ibuprofen instead of a potion.”

“Nooo! Para-whata?” Yuffie asked and complained at the same time, confused.

“Paracetamol. You know, pain medication? Hi-potions and above should ideally be reserved for managing serious and/or life-threatening situations only. You’ve compromised that, so it is critical we reduce that tolerance as fast as possible.” Kairi lectured once more, and nobody found they could argue with her. “Thank goodness potions aren’t addictive.”

“Okay, okay, we get it doc.” Cid waved her off.

“Since this meeting has clearly been derailed, I move that we all retire for the night.” Merlin suggested, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief at the suggestion.

As the moment broke, everyone collected their bearing and started to head out of the house, moving in groups back to the apartments the town had created for them to stay in.

“Thank you, Kairi. I had no idea you were so highly qualified. I shouldn’t have doubted you: we honestly don’t know what we would have done without you.” Aerith thanked genuinely.

“It’s no trouble.” Kairi answered easily as she, Aerith, Yuffie, and Ducklings split from Leon and Merlin to head through the first district.

“You should set up a clinic.” Yuffie suggested jokingly.

“You know, that’s a fabulous idea.” Kairi grinned, and everyone gulped.

“You’d need people, materials, a building…” Huey, Dewey, and Louie started to list off.

“Knock on enough doors and I’m bound to find the people I need. I’m sure Traverse Town will provide a suitable building, and as for supplies…. I’m sure moogles can be negotiated with.” Kairi answered airily. “I’ll turn healthcare in this entire town upside down!”

Negotiating with moogles? For that kind of thing? Aerith and Yuffie thought simultaneously. Kairi was one heck of a scary girl.

Chapter Text

The next day found Kairi stepping out of the flat she had in the second district with a pep in her step as she headed straight to the first district where she knew a moogle had set up shop.

She entered the accessory shop with a distinct air of purpose around her.

“Good mornin’ to ya, kid!” Cid greeted her as she strode towards the ladder that lead to the synthesis workshop that was run by the moogles.

“Good morning~” Kairi sung, and Cid tensed. It seemed like the redhead had an idea, and from the looks of it the entire town - maybe not even the realm of light - was ever going to be the same again.

Kairi continued up the ladder at pace, and then as soon as she caught the eye of the moogle on duty she grinned.

“Just the moogle I wanted to see!” she beamed, and the moogle sweatdropped.

“Kupo, it’s you again. Haven’t you had enough freebies yet, kupo?” the moogle - named Mog, Kairi remembered - sighed and massaged its pom-pom.

“I call it an insurance policy for your customers,” Kairi corrected. “Speaking of which….”

“Great kupo above, here we go again.” Mog whispered to Mogette, who was working at the table next to them, shuddered.

“Speaking of which,” Kairi repeated, “you wouldn’t believe how awful healthcare is around here.”

“This is a town of refugees, kupo. What do you expect?” the red pom-pomed moogle asked dully.

“At least a clinic!” Kairi raised her voice, already exasperated. “By paopu, do I have to do everything around here?! Honestly, the level of disorganisation is shocking. Truly disastrous, I tell you.”

There was an awkward pause, as the implications of Kairi’s frustration started to become clear to both moogles present, Mogette having turned unwittingly into the conversation that would change Traverse Town forever.

“No. No no no no no. You don’t mean.” Mog stared in abject horror.

“If I don’t open a clinic, then everyone will permanently injure themselves or worse from potion tolerance alone!” Kairi reasoned, and Mog hated how they were already unintentionally thinking along the lines of their most troublesome ‘customer’.

…she hadn’t even spent anything with them yet!

“So why come to me? Not like I can help you with that.” Mog asked warily.

“Why indeed?” Kairi mused. “You did such a good job with the first aid supplies, I couldn’t help but ask if you had anything on my clinic list.” the redhead explained with a delighted expression on her face.

Mog emitted one of the deepest and most long-suffering sighs ze had in a very long time.

“Depends if you have the munny to pay for it, kupo.” Mog replied shortly. “Kupo, you’re a customer, just like anyone else.”

“One that hasn’t even paid anything yet.” Mogette pointed out crossly, echoing Mog’s earlier thoughts.

“Without a clinic to ensure the health of the residents, you wouldn’t even have any customers.” Kairi countered. “And don’t moogles get free healthcare at Mognet Central?”

“How did you hear about that?!” Mog hissed in alarm. “That’s a secret!”

“She does have a point though,” Mogette conceded.

“You don’t agree with the customer!” Mog panicked further. “The customer is always wrong! Especially this one!”

“Oh dear oh dear. I do suppose you’ll be going out of business then.” Kairi turned away, feigning disappointment. “So many residents here already have a dangerously high tolerance of potions, I imagine you’ll have to close up shop due to lack of business soon. Even travelling adventurers will be too injured to go on, causing your most lucrative and profitable business to dry up and vanish….”

The moogles thought consequences over. Business had been a bit slow lately - especially from travelling adventurers. Maybe the redhead had a point?

The pair huddled to discuss, and a rather animated argument promptly ensued.

Eventually, they reached a decision and turned back to Kairi.

“We’ll have to check with HQ, kupo.” Mog replied eventually, voice making it clear ze really didn’t like what ze was about to agree to. “But let’s see your list.”

“Oh really, you mean it?” Kairi asked in elation. “This is just the starter list. I’ll draft a phase two list ready for tomorrow.”

Kairi handed over a rather long piece of paper. Mog took it and began to read, eyes widening and pom-pom reaching further and further towards the ceiling.

“This is-” Mog started in disbelief. “I don’t even know whether to be scared that you actually know what half of this stuff is, or terrified at how much all of this is gonna cost, kupo. Transport is tight at the moment with all this darkness going around you know!”

“I’ve marked stuff by priority.” Kairi elucidated. “Circles are essential. Triangles are very useful, but have alternatives marked. Squares are optional.”

“Phew! You’re going to make my pom-pom go grey at this rate, kupo.” Mog muttered, but froze upon reading item twenty-three on the list. “MRI scanner….?! What do you think I’m made of?!”

“Magic?” Kairi guessed, still holding onto hope as long as she could. She mentally made a note to start working on her mana pool as soon as possible - it was looking like she’d probably have to operate with limited resources.

At least Mog knew what an MRI scanner was….. Whatever! They did that all the time back in Destiny West.

“That’s just a fairy tale.” Mog denied in annoyance. “You know what?! Fine! I’ll see what I can do. But you better kupo well make your clinic of inter-world fame!”

“You can count on it!” Kairi met the moogle’s challenge with vigour. “I’ll have it up and running within a week!”

“A WEEK???” Mog nearly fainted. “Are you crazy?!”

“People have called me that.” Kairi acknowledged with crossed arms and a sageful nod. “But I’m also a doctor who has patients but nowhere to treat them, so the rest should be obvious.”

“Go on, get outta here then. I have a lotta work to do! Shoo, kupo!” Mog shooed her away, not wanting her to stay even a moment more just in case she somehow managed to extract even more out of hir.

“Alright, thanks Mog-san!” Kairi thanked as she ran over to the ladder.

“And call Cid up here, will you kupo? We have matters to discuss, no thanks to you!” Mog called. “And don’t come back for at least another season - my wallet can’t stand it!”

Later that day (or was it night now? it was so hard to tell in Traverse Town), Kairi slumped against the wall of the building that she hoped would become the clinic and groaned.

“So tired,” she whispered to herself with a large yawn.

Over the course of the day, Kairi had systematically spoken to what felt like a significant proportion of the residents of the refugee town to see if anyone would join her in opening a community healthcare clinic.

It was a big ask of anyone to just request that they start working shifts literally days after arriving in the town in some cases.

Would she even get enough people to believe in her idea? Twelve-hour shifts for basically no pay - not that Kairi had been paid much on Destiny Islands anyway, but that was besides the point.

What about enough supplies? Would Traverse Town even hear her plea and open a door to a space for her to open the clinic in directly behind her?

Even if it did, would the notoriously profit-hungry moogles pull through?

So much uncertainty!

Maybe she was reaching too high. Asking for too much.

While she was allowed to perform surgeries independently now, she had still been learning from Mizuki-sensei. She had no idea how to manage a clinic! Could she really do this on her own?

About to get burned by the sun like Icarus.

“Now now, why the long face dearie?” an old woman with a walking cane shaped like a syringe asked her, bending down to meet her eyes.

Kairi looked up at her, and there was a long silence as she figured out how to respond to that.

“Where to begin?” she asked with a humourless laugh. “Is this even going to work? I mean even Mizuki-sensei didn’t set up Destiny West from scratch!”

“I found your argument to be quite compelling,” the older doctor stated, though not unkindly. “And your surgical knowledge too. Who would have thought that there would be a world out there from which such a young - and competent - surgeon could hail? I wouldn’t have believed you until you explained - rather beautifully, I might add - how to perform a transanal approach Laparotomy.”

“You did?” Kairi asked, internally attempting to pull herself out of the pit of anxiety and self-doubt she had found herself in.

She could hear the whirring of an oven fan in the kitchen of the adjacent café, a sweet smell coming through the open counter. The café being manned 24/7 in case of new arrivals was already giving newcomers - there were more by the day - a first point of contact.

Maybe that would mean they wouldn’t be as lost as she felt right now.

“Of course. You don’t have to do this on your own, you know.” The old woman reminded the young surgeon, moving to kneel down on the ground next to her. “I for one will support you every step of the way.”

The streetlights of the town cloaked in eternal night flickered softly in the coolness of the night.

It was always night in Traverse Town. Tonight was cool but not too cold - a nice change from the biting edge the temperature had when she had first arrived.

Curiously, it had never rained yet here-

Focus, Kairi! she reprimanded herself.

“But why? We’ve barely even met!” Kairi protested, bringing herself back to the conversation at hand and reaching a hand out to help Chiyo-sensei up, but having her hand swatted away.

“I may look old, but in my home world I’m still a professional hero.” Chiyo-sensei rejected the offer of help, a stray strand of grey hair waving in the gentle breeze. “But to answer your question sonnie, I’m a Doctor.”

“That’s not an answer,” Kairi observed grumpily, feeling very much like the child she was in front of the ‘professional hero’ in front of her instead of the doctor facade she often put up when handling both patients and unfamiliar situations.

How does one become a ‘professional’ hero, anyway? Her home world sounded wild.

“If you can use it as an answer then so can I,” Chiyo pointed out, and Kairi knew she had her there. “Goodness knows it’s dangerous enough around here what with those ‘heartless’ roaming around and everything. At least they aren’t immune to a good thwack from my cane…”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Kairi groused, leaning against the wall that was very much a wall and not a door.

Kairi sighed. “Things would be so much easier if Traverse Town would just open a door right here.”

“Here, have a gummy.” Chiyo-sensei offered the girl, who took it cautiously before popping it in her mouth and chewing.

The two stood in silence for a moment as Kairi wordlessly ate, the gummy turning out to be surprisingly sweet and fruity.

“I don’t know much about magic, but I do know about Quirks - superhuman abilities from where I come from.” the doctor from the City of Heroes - inexplicably everyone knew the name of their own home worlds - continued eventually, the silence of the First District wrapping around them like a blanket.

It was wild having to explain to everyone what a Quirk was - perhaps with the lack of knowledge - and hence prejudice - the world she hailed from could learn a thing or two from here. Maybe she’d start referring to Quirks as ‘powers’ or ‘abilities’ instead.

While everyone in Traverse Town had their own internal circadian rhythms - especially given the sunless sky - some times were quieter than others.

Now was definitely a quieter time.

“Often with powers and abilities it can be about visualisation and imagination.” Chiyo suggested, thinking back to when she was helping Mirio gain control of his permeation powers. At U.A. High School.

“That’s stupid,” Kairi protested petulantly, but with no heat in her words. Magic was real, and she had learnt it at Mizuki-sensei’s behest. She’d even heard a theory that every world had its own heart. “So, like you’re saying if I visualise what I want the clinic to look like it’s as easy as that?”

Why not at this point?

“Stupid, but don’t knock it until you try it sonnie.” Chiyo remarked with a wave of her cane to enunciate her words and a knowing smile.

Feeling rather silly, Kairi sat down once more and automatically assumed the meditative pose the village elders had drilled into her head.

At the lab-coated grey haired lady’s quizzical look, Kairi clarified. “Meditation. Village elders drilled it into my head when I was learning magic.”

Well now, didn’t that open up a whole barrel of questions? How did magic compare to the powers and abilities from her home world?

Chiyo kept silent but raised her eyebrows as Kairi cleared her mind and focused on her immediate surroundings. Now leaning against the back of the wall with more purpose, Kairi concentrated her mind of visualising the changes she so desperately wanted.

An L-shaped area, with the building behind her going back further than it looked….

Wide sliding double doors - no, probably not sliding since it wouldn’t fit with the theme of the world - opening into a wide room jumped into her mind.

2 emergency bays were at the back, with the central desk in the middle with medication stores behind it, the clinical nature of the space clashing in her head with the homey cosy nature of Traverse Town’s still-foreign nature.

Kairi visualised a range of other rooms for various other purposes, such as seeing patients, imaging, stores, and even an operating theatre.

With windows being generally less of a thing in Traverse Town, she wasn’t sure whether it would do any good but she pictured some large windows in the waiting area anyway.

So focused on her meditative visualisation was she - she lowkey detested how well the village elders had taught her to ‘sit still’ - that she didn’t notice the changes happening around her.

At first nothing happened, but as Kairi started to shift her attention to what a clinic would mean for the town and how much she wanted to make a difference the wall behind her began to shift and change.

A purple smoke covered the entire area, and Chiyo took a step back in surprise. Before long there was a mighty poof and a creak and Kairi fell backwards in confusion, eyes rapidly blinking open.

Wait, backwards? And on wood too?

Kairi spun around to find she had fallen through a wide pair of double doors, the cool cobbles she had previously to her back having had given way.

Looking up, the room appeared to be suspiciously similar to what she had visualised in her head…. just barebones and devoid of everything that would make it more a clinic than a bare room.

Kairi would not be ashamed to admit she emitted a squeak at seeing it had worked so well as she picked herself up. She felt the tight grained bamboo planks that were interwoven with each other beneath her hands that were toughened from regular washing from her experience as a trauma surgeon and from play sword fighting with a Sora and Riku nope, not thinking about that right now as she pushed herself up once more.

At the transition to the clinical space, the bamboo floor looked to give way to a neatly tiled floor similar to the design third district sealed with resin*. She hadn’t expected the town to even know resin-based floors were - much less replicate one across the rest of the clinic’s space - but she would take what she could get.

Blue-themed large stained glass windows allowed the dim light from outside shine into the waiting area, and lanterns lined the walls to keep light levels bright but homey and not overwhelming.

And, of course, everything was at just a slightly jaunty angle - just like the rest of the town.

“This is-” Kairi started in disbelief as she attempted to pull her thoughts back from practicalities.

Anyone who had stayed in Traverse Town for more than 24 hours would know that the town had a habit of making sure things were just there when you needed them. It was usually small things - a key to a flat here, a fridge full of food there, your toothpaste tube never running out, a notebook appearing in a drawer when you weren’t looking.

That sort of thing.

Everyone had quickly developed habits of re-checking unused drawers and other obscure places to see if ‘the town’ had placed something inside for them.

It was much less common for Traverse Town to pull through in such a spectacular fashion, changing the entire face of a wall in the first district into a healthcare clinic.

She stepped outside the empty building again to meet Chiyo, who was looking up at a sign that was melting into place above the door.

“Something resembling a community healthcare clinic, wouldn’t you say?” the older woman suggested helpfully, finishing her earlier sentence with eyes smiling.

Kairi-sensei would go far.

“Traverse Town Community Medical Clinic” Kairi breathed in wonder as the words shimmered into place on the blue and white sign.

She could work with this!

Chapter Text

It was barely a week later that Kairi stood poised to open the front door of the fledgling clinic into a room that now had the makings of a clinic and emergency room with a dozen or so rather confused people.

She had woken up early after her second sleep - everyone seemed to drift quite quickly into a biphasic sleeping pattern after arriving in Traverse Town - and then eaten a more complete breakfast than she was used to. On account of this being - if all went well - the first full day of the clinic being open, she was probably gonna need the extra energy. After eating, she had donned her new scrubs and skipped from her room on the third floor of a house in the side street of the second district all the way to the clinic.

Traverse Town Community Medical Centre

Kairi gazed up at the funky sign above the door, designed in the same fashion as all the others spread across the rest of the first district and glowing steadily in the perpetually tranquil evening.

She did this!

She was making a difference!

Kairi smiled to herself. This way, she could be useful, even if Sora and Riku have left her behind.

This way, she could help.

Her scrubs were very different to the ones she was used to at Destiny West. The most obvious thing was that she was wearing dark purple instead of green and the material didn’t feel quite the same, but there were other changes too.

It was also well established in the years before Kairi had arrived in Traverse Town that everyone should carry a weapon and be trained in how to use it for self defence - for most people this was just a simple stick or a pole unless you were on the defence rota or had something special from your home world.

Just enough to keep yourself safe until help could arrive.

In Kairi’s case it took the form of a crude wooden weapon she was told was a raiper, since she preferred something lighter and more agile than the play swords they used on the play island back home.

She had daggers too, but they were metal and quite heavy. The longer reach was helpful in avoiding sharp claws and other surprisingly sharp appendages the heartless had. She would only carry both if Leon and the defence patrol team forecast an increase in heartless activity.

It wasn’t practical to carry weapons while inside though, so they had a rack in the waiting room for patients - and staff volunteers - to hang up their gear.

Anyway, not long after Kairi had left the moogles the journey had started with Cid almost having an aneurysm when the moogles had taken Kairi’s list to him and asked him about some of the more complicated items on the list - particularly the X-Ray machine, CT scanner, and MRI scanner. As soon as Cid had seen the list, he’d gone straight up to Kairi and asked what on earth she was doing.

His face was priceless when he realised that she was being completely serious when she said that she would be opening a clinic, and his mouth dropped open when he then realised shortly after that she had the backing of Traverse Town itself.

After that there had been a flurry of activity as boxes of medicines, machinery, scraps had turned up in the clinic - courtesy of the moogles.

As it was, the situation with darkness spreading across the realm between (it was wild she was technically in a different realm to Destiny Islands right now) and the realm of light had made it so that the transportation of items across the realm was difficult at best, with the Gummi ships that the moogles used to support their vast network of commerce being at risk of heartless attack.

A solid thirty percent of the shipments the moogles had brought in had been either lost or damaged enroute, with a small flurry of stranded moogles turning up in Traverse Town in escape pods in the landing zone out the ‘front door’ of the town.

Donald and Goofy’s gummi ship was pretty special in having any significant weaponry to defend against attack!

Anyway, it had all meant that Cid, Kairi, and all those who had agreed to volunteer their assistance somehow had needed to assemble most of the essential kit required from scraps. Mercifully, they had been able to scrape together and setup enough equipment to open the clinic starting today… even if they would be operating on scarce resources for the foreseeable future.

Some assembly required indeed!

Eh, it wasn’t like resource scarcity was anything new.

But what about the others?

Kairi paused with her hand on the door ready to push it open.

Wait, she thought. What about the different experience levels of everyone she’s asked? Everyone will have had different training. They’d talked about it before, but the more she thought about it the more complications came to mind. Oh by paupou….

Whatever, they would have to deal with that particular problem as it came.

Kairi gathered up the courage, and pushed the broad double doors open to see everyone else had already arrived and were gathered around the curved semicircular reception / nurses’ desk (the clinic wasn’t big enough to have two separate desks, so they would have to make do).

A dozen faces turned to look at her, and she shrunk in on their gaze slightly before remembering that she was the reason any of this had happened in the first place, and she needed to be confident on the first day.

She hung her wooden rapier up on a peg and headed towards the gap in the circle of people dressed in scrubs gathered around the main desk that had opened.

It was time to face the music!

.

.

As soon as she entered the loose circle of faces present all chattering ceased.

“Hi everyone!” Kairi waved as she approached and leant on the green wood of the reception desk for a moment.

“It’s our main girl! Everyone give her a round of applause,” a red-haired boy who looked to be in his teens announced, and everyone dutifully joined in and clapped for her.

Kairi felt embarrassment rush up her cheeks. Everyone had done so much! It wasn’t fair on everyone else.

“But you had the idea,” a girl only slightly taller than her who was making her blue scrubs look rather elegant pointed out.

“I said that out loud?!” Kairi squeaked, and everyone chuckled as Kairi regained her mental balance.

“I think this is the first time we’ve all met together at the same time,” the younger boy with dark hair mentioned, speaking up for the first time.

“Hows about a speech from the good lady, and then we introduce ourselves?” the redhead suggested, his outfit a darker blue than the rest.

“Indeed, that sounds most sensible dearie,” Chiyo-sensei - the old lady who had given Kairi the advice and courage necessary to communicate with Traverse Town to get the clinic they were all standing in.

Kairi reassured herself once more and dutifully swept the lingering panic at being put on the spot away (she had almost expected something of this nature) and began to speak.

“Hi everyone!” she introduced again. “I’m Misaki Kairi-sensei from Destiny Islands.” she bowed slightly as she introduced herself, “- and when I wasn’t in school I was the trauma surgeon on shift at Destiny Islands Health Clinic West.”

“When I found myself in Traverse Town, it surprised me that there wasn’t already some form of clinic setup here. Fast-forward a week and given the dangers of the heartless, I realised that someone had to do something, and so here I am.” Kairi explained, and everyone nodded along.

Everyone’s moods sombered at the thought of the heartless.

They had already claimed at least one life due to lack of immediate medical treatment.

“We all come from different worlds. Worlds that have fallen to the darkness. But that doesn’t mean that we have to fall to darkness and despair ourselves when there’s something we can do about it.” Kairi continued, building her resolve. “I can’t tell you all to work 12 hour shifts when the loss of your home worlds is still so fresh in some of your minds, but for as long as I’m here I’m going to do something to help. Something to be useful. Something to help people.

“And so I ask you, will you join me in setting up this clinic? I can’t promise it’ll be easy, or that we won’t lose people along the way. But I can promise that we’ll help people who are hurting from the loss of their own worlds in some small way.”

A silence hung as Kairi paused, everyone considering the meaning of her words in their mind, before Chiyo-sensei raised her walking stick (a giant syringe? that thing was scary) into the air and cheered.

“I’m with you!”

“Let’s do it!”

“Yeah!”

“Hai, Kairi-sensei!”

“Do you think I would have shown up in these scrubs if I wasn’t ready and willing to help?!”

“Sure, I don’t have anything else to do.”

Soon the waiting room-slash-central-accident-and-emergency was filled with cheers and shouts of support, and Kairi was immensely grateful that people believed in her cause enough to give so much time and effort to her cause.

“Thank you everyone, I really appreciate it.” Kairi thanked appreciatively with another bow and a tear in her eye. “I know I’m not the most experienced person here - I was only cleared to perform surgeries on my own a little over a year ago -” she looked to Chiyo-sensei with a nod, “but I’ll do my best!”

Another round of cheers went around the room before the introductions were started.

“How about we get some introductions started then people?” an androgynous-looking person with orange hair that somehow worked with his blue scrubs proposed, and everyone nodded.

“Okay then, I’m Yun.” they introduced. “Pronouns they/them, I’m from the Kingdom of Kouka. All the tech around here is pretty new to me, but back home I was a healer so I know a thing or two about patching idiots who try to be heroes up. I’m a pacifist, but these ‘heartless’ are making sticking to that stance difficult.”

Yun nodded to the person standing next to them, who happened to be Chiyo-sensei.

“Hello dearies. I’m Chiyo-sensei - or the professional hero Recovery Girl as I used to be known. She/her pronouns.” the old woman introduced, wearing the same purple scrubs that Kairi was.

Certainly very different to what she was used to, but a welcome change nonetheless.

“In my world - the name ‘The City of Heroes’ doesn’t do it justice - 80% of people had a superpower we called Quirks. Everyone was so focused on the fight between heroes and villains that they lost sight of everything else.

“My power allowed me to accelerate the body’s natural healing process with a kiss. I’ve lost it now that my world has fallen, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a fully qualified doctor for nothing. I’ve got 40 years experience under my belt in a wide range of situations, so honestly losing my quirk has been a bit of a breath of fresh air to tell you the truth.

Everyone was captivated by the experienced doctor’s story. To hear someone talking so candidly about the failings of their home world - maybe there were some small silver linings about being dumped in this place.

“I’m not arrogant enough to think I know everything though, so I’m looking forward to learning about new techniques to heal people that don’t exist in my home world.”

There was a small silence as everyone considered her words, before the clinic’s resident redhead dressed in darker blue scrubs spoke up. “Hey everyone. I’m Akabane Karma, he/him, fresh from Kunugigaoka and a rank C healer. For those of you at home, that means I can heal most minor injuries with my voice by singing, though I had to study and practice all that practical medicine stuff too, hence these sweet darker blue digs.

Karma could feel the interested and calculated gazes from his casual mention about healing people just by singing.

“It takes a lot of practice and I don’t have much sheet music here,” he clarified quickly. “I’ll be available to answer questions later. Fun fact from my world: some people - such as myself - have ena, which is a coating on the skin that lets you breathe underwater.”

Karma held his hand up to the light of the lamps that lined the walls and everyone noticed a shimmering effect covered his hands. Kairi’s mind whirled with the implications of that with respect to most medical procedures and decided research was absolutely required on the subject.

“It’s complicated and causes headaches and butterfly effects all over the place. There are a few other people around with ena too, so send ’em to me first if you encounter them.”

Even without spilling their life stories, it was clear that everyone who had volunteered for this operation had their own unique experiences and backgrounds. Just what could everyone learn from those around them?

Karma was at the leftmost point in the circle and they were going clockwise, so he nodded to the younger boy on the opposite side of the semicircle to go next.

“Hello! I’m Noctis Lucis Caelum, heir to the throne of Lucis, but just call me Noct. He/him. I’m 10 years old! My dad told me I had to learn first aid, so I hope I can help.” Noct introduced himself, staring down at the little logo stitched into his lighter blue scrubs in awe.

There really were all experience levels here, weren’t there?

Next it was the turn of a girl with green-blue hair.

“Heya! I’m Patema - she/her. My world is…. complicated, but until recently I was used to walking around on the ceiling - so everything is pretty new to me here. I’m used to treating myself and other troublemakers in my underground village, so since there’s nothing else to do around here I might as well help out right?”

Second to last was a girl with brown hair who was the owner of an elaborate looking staff that had been left on the rack near the door.

“Hello, my name is Yuna. She/her and 14 years old. I’m from Destiny Islands too, but I only started volunteering at Destiny Islands East relatively recently so I haven’t actually met Kairi before. I’m told I have an aptitude for white magic, but I haven’t really explored that yet.” Yuna introduced. “I lived basically on the opposite end of the Destiny Islands chain.” she added, as if to clarify.

While the Destiny Islands were generally a small tight-knit community, it was in fact an entire chain of islands. They were quite spread out and travel between them was limited to either rowing or small sailboats in good weather, so communities at either end of the island chain often found it somewhat challenging to stay in regular contact.

In Kairi’s case she somehow hadn’t met Yuna before and also hadn’t known she was also from Destiny Islands. Excitement bubbled up unbidden at knowing that someone else from her world had escaped the darkness.

She’d have to go and talk to her sometime!

Finally, the only other person in the room that Kairi had met before was to her immediate right and she stepped forwards.

“Hello, I’m Aerith - she/her.” Aerith introduced. “I’m from Radiant Garden, and out of everyone here I think I’ve been here the longest. I want to thank Kairi for bringing together so many talented people in such a short space of time to improve medical care for everyone.

“While I don’t have much to offer beyond basic first aid, I myself am trained a white mage.

“Before you all arrived, we were struggling with a lack of healthcare and a potion tolerance approaching critical levels. I’ve got some basic first aid experience - though after last week I think I’ve got a lot to learn.” The room laughed at that. “-and experience with treating injuries tainted by darkness. I hope that - with your help - we can provide some hope around here.

“Aye aye.” Karma agreed casually.

Everyone stood around awkwardly for a moment and looked at each other and wondered what came next until Chiyo spoke up.

“Goodness me dearies. You’re all looking like lost cabbages!” she admonished lightly. “How about we set an agenda for the rest of the day, hmm?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Kairi agreed.

“We should all tour this place together,” Patema suggested helpfully. “Know what we’re working with.”

“Good thinking. I remember Cid and the moogles mentioned that they weren’t able to get everything on the list.” Yuna agreed. “I didn’t spend long at Destiny East, but something I did learn was that resource scarcity was pretty normal.”

Kairi folded her arms and nodded along, agreeing with her comrade-in-arms. They would have to meet up later to swap stories.

“We should chat about who is doing what.” Yun pointed out. “It’s all very well opening a clinic, but we need to organise who will sit the desk when.”

“…and there’s the 2nd shift to worry about,” Karma added. “I bet we’ve only got 1 shift’s worth of people right here given the number of people in the town and how much we don’t know about each others’ experiences.

“I can see already our biggest problem is going to our differing levels of experience and training. Since we all come from different worlds, we’ll all do things differently and have different checklists for different situations. We’re gonna hafta do a lotta sharing of our knowledge and experiences or we’ll all just get confused.” Karma lectured, thinking back to all of the hours he spent with his shishiō, Karasuma Ria-sensei, and her other apprentices studying together.

“Well said, sonnie.” Chiyo-sensei nodded approvingly. “In that case, we ought to have a single shift and use an on-call system for out-of-hours support, so to speak. A situation such as this one would be unthinkable back in my home world, but since qualifications mean… little here and there are people who clearly need our help, we’ll have to do the best we can.”

“Okay, I’ve got shifts and job roles down. We’re all going to need breaks and rest days, so we’ll have to organise something there - though we’ve already had initial conversations the other day about experience levels,” Kairi said, having pulled a notebook and a pencil from somewhere. “I’ve also got a tour, equipment discussion - both static and consumable - and of course training and knowledge exchange as an ongoing.”

“Woah, that’s a lot of things to talk about and organise,” Noctis pointed out. “It will take all day!”

“That it will sonnie. Setting up a new clinic from scratch is no easy task!” Chiyo-sensei observed.

“Then let’s get started!” Kairi declared with purpose. “Who’s up for a tour? We can discuss equipment - and spells - along the way.”

“Spells?” Patema asked quizzically.

“Ugh, don’t ask,” Kairi slumped dramatically. “Cid said the X-Ray machine won’t be ready for another 2 days, and it’ll be at least 2 weeks until we get a CT. We can talk about that later…..”

Everyone cringed at the thought. Diagnostic equipment was essential for treating patients, no matter what level of experience you had.

What followed over the next three hours was the world’s most in-depth tour of the admittedly rather modest establishment. If Kairi had to guess, it was about two thirds of the size of Destiny West, and barely half the size of Destiny East - which she had visited a few times for various tests.

It had 2 emergency bays opposite the waiting room area, and 1 separate exam room. Certainly not ideal given they had 8 people, including 2.5 doctors, but they could manage.

After that, they had ended up spending another 3 hours talking about all manner of things that were necessary for running a clinic. Procedures, different ways of treating illnesses, first aid - and don’t even start on the paperwork!

Honestly, the whole thing was rather exhausting, so by the time they reached the eighth hour everyone was starting to get a bit on the tired side.

They had agreed on 12 hour shifts though, which was starting to feel like less of a good idea than it seemed at first glance.

Not that they really had any choice given Traverse Town’s rapidly growing population.

They decided to operate the nights on a rota, but starting in a week or two to give everyone time to get settled and start sharing knowledge. Currently, the plan was to assign two nurses to night shifts - 1 with more experience and 1 with less experience, with everyone else operating on an on-call system - but they’d see how they felt at the time.

For now, since the café was now 24/7 that could act as a stopgap measure.

Anyway, the ninth hour found Kairi, Karma, Yun, and Patema in emergency bay 2 running an experiment with the ultrasound machine Cid had delivered the day before.

“Eeek, that’s really cold!” Patema complained from her position on the emergency bay bed.

“I did warn you,” Kairi pointed out, picking the gel-covered probe up and handing it over the Yun, who took it cautiously. “You could have joined Noct and the others in the exam room for bandaging and first aid. Here, put the probe against her lung just here.”

“What’s this supposed to help with again?” Yun asked dubiously, doing as instructed and staring at the old single-colour monitor that had been built by Cid out of scraps and gummi blocks.

“Honestly? All sorts of things.” Kairi replied. “By looking inside a patient’s body, you can diagnose all sorts of conditions with it. After traumatic accidents a common condition is a pneumothorax, or more commonly known as a collapsed lung. If you go into m-mode - motion mode,” Kairi pointed out a button that Yun pressed, “you would see a striped line instead of - take a deep breath please Patema - this nice pattern here.”

“You’re pretty swish at diagnostics, Kai-sensei.” Karma remarked from the opposite side of the bed.

“Nowhere near as good as Iroh-san from back home,” she replied quickly. “He could spot a heart attack damage on an ultrasound without even going intracardiac.”

Karma whistled. “Yeah, my shishō is pretty awesome too. Her vocal diagnostic abilities are unmatched.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment as the two reminisced, before Patema broke the silence.

“So how would you treat a pneumothorax if I had one then?” she asked, turning to peer over at the screen too and accidentally disrupting Yun’s hold on the probe.

“We’d aspirate.” Kairi replied. At the confused looks, she started to elaborate. “Basically stick a needle in their chest to remove the air. I’ll show you when we get a patient for it.”

“When?” Yun questioned with a raised brow. “For an upbeat girl, you can be really a real downer about this sorta stuff.”

“There’s always a patient,” Kairi nodded sagely, to which Karma shared a knowing smile.

At that moment, the doors to the clinic burst open and angry quacking filled the air.

“Speaking of which,” Karma noted.

“You just had to jinx it, didn’t you?” Yun noted, wiping and disinfecting the probe as Patema got up from the bed to redress.

Kairi rolled her eyes playfully, before moving to the curtain to exit and see to the patient.

“Who knows? They might have a pneumothorax.” she suggested.

“Or an appendicitis!” Patema remembered from some of the reading material she had been reviewing as she was re-scrubbing.

“That too.” Kairi confirmed, stepping outside the curtain to see Sora arguing with Donald.

“All I’m saying is that I really need to get it looked at!” Sora protested, raising his arms up in frustration.

“You should just down a potion and you’ll be fiiine,” Donald denied what looked to not be for the first time.

“Kai-sensei!” Sora exclaimed, jumping forwards and then wincing in pain and clutching his side. “I knew you could do it!”

“Hello to you too, Sora!” Kairi couldn’t help but smile even despite the situation.

Without even realising it she had been missing Sora, Riku, and everyone on the Islands since they fell to darkness.

“I can’t believe you’ve got a clinic open already!” Sora enthused. “This place is so cool!”

“We were planning on opening tomorrow actually,” Kairi replied, “so you’re our first patient.”

“I’m Karma, head nurse. What can we do you for?” Karma asked with a casual wave, hopping over the desk with a vault and sitting down in one of the chairs.

“Nice to meet you!” Sora greeted, wincing again and holding his side. “Donald and I hurt ourselves in battle.”

“I can see that,” Kairi observed, slightly amused since it was obvious that while he was in pain, he wasn’t in any immediate danger.

“I did not!” Donald vehemently disagreed once more. “I am perfectly f-II-ow-iine!”

“No you’re not.” Karma corrected eyeing how the court wizard was holding his own side, leaving no room to argue.

“If you head to bay 1, I’ll be with you in a moment Sora.” Kairi instructed, and Sora saluted as he headed over to the bay indicated to lie down, just as Patema exited bay 2 to join Yun who was observing how Kairi and Karma were handling the situation off to the side.

“Karma, can you handle Donald in 2?” Kairi asked. “I’d suggest the exam room, but Chiyo-sensei is still with Noct and the others.”

“Sure thing doc, but I’ll probably need Chiyo-sensei’s advice. I’m not trained on non-human anatomy.” Karma affirmed. “Yun, wanna join me?”

“Why not? The first case just has to be a difficult one….”

“Hey! Who’re you calling a difficult case?!”

Kairi left them to it as she beckoned for Patema to follow her to bay 1.

“Well well well, what do we have here?” Kairi posed in mock thought.

“Urgh,” Sora groaned from his position on the bed. “I slammed against a tree in this jungle, but I got scraped by a bunch of thorny branches. I’ve tried to bandage it but with the thorns I wasn’t sure if a potion was a good idea.”

“I see,” Kairi nodded, inwardly proud that Sora had infact taken some of her lessons to heart. “Well done on holding off on a potion there. Are you okay if my colleague joins me for this examination? It would be a helpful learning exercise for her.”

Sora nodded, and Kairi peeled back the curtain a bit to wave Patema in as he heard a call from Karma to ask Yun to fetch Chiyo-sensei.

That’s right, they needed a pager system so badly…. but diagnostic and operating theatre equipment came first.

“Heya, my name is Patema, and I’m a nurse here at Traverse Town Medical.” she introduced herself, inwardly glowing at the title.

She had learnt so much today already and there was so much left to learn, but still! She was a real nurse, at a real clinic!

“Nice ta meetcha!” Sora grinned and waved, before wincing again.

“Let’s take a look at that side, shall we?” Kairi suggested, and Sora slumped back into the bed and nodded.

Sora pulled back his shirt to reveal a wide white bandage, and Kairi inwardly winced at the size.

“I can see why you came to find me,” Kairi commented as she donned a pair of gloves and peeled the gauze back to reveal an ugly series of slices against Sora’s side. “None of these look too deep, but we’re going to have to remove the thorns - you should have done that already - and you will probably need a few stitches for this one here.” she pointed to a larger central one. “You also have yourself a one-way ticket to a tetanus vaccination right here.”

“Really?” the brunette asked in disbelief before sighing and (delicately) flopping onto the medical bed. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

“Have you had experience of this before, Patema?” Kairi asked, and Patema nodded.

“Yeah, we’d get stuff like this all the time in the underground.” the green haired girl confirmed.

“In that case, how about you handle this?” Kairi suggested, and Patema panicked for a moment before steeling herself and stepping forwards in something that wasn’t quite confidence but close to it.

Picturing the situation just like one back home in which she was patching up one of her friends, Patema stepped forwards and putting some gloves on with a nod.

“Okay, Kai-sensei.” she affirmed. “Do I have your consent to proceed?”

Sora nodded as much as he could from his awkward position lying down on the bed, and Patema took that as her cue to start.

“There sure are a lotta these…” she muttered as she worked to methodically remove the thorns with a pair of tweezers, dropping them onto a tray Kairi had waiting for her. “What happened, troublemaker?”

“Hey - ouch! We were in this world called ‘deep junGLE’ ouch! and it was SO COOL and we swung from VINes but some of THEM had thoRNS and I SWUng into ONE.” Sora rambled, voice uneven from the pain of the thorns being removed.

“Vines: 1, Sora: 0” Kairi commented as she watched Patema’s work approvingly, and Sora grumbled at her.

“There… done.” the green-haired girl announced, before reaching for a non-alcoholic cleansing wipe from the medicine cabinet on the wall, tearing open the packet, and going through to clean Sora’s wounds, and Sora winced and tried his best not to yell.

It looked like he had done it already, but you could never be too careful and they had just removed a bunch of thorns.

Blood slowly seeping out from where Patema had removed thorns soaked the wipes before she popped them into the clinical waste bin.

“Next up: stitc- err - sutures, right?” the former invert asked hesitantly.

“Yep,” Kairi-sensei confirmed, already on her way to the curtain to fetch a kit from storage. “What size?”

“Erm, 2-0?” Patema guessed, and she must have been correct because Kairi went to fetch some.

After a moment, Kairi came back with a suture kit, a small vial, and an injection kit.

“Before you start you might want to inject poor Sora here with this.” Kairi suggested, handing over the vial and injection kit.

“1% lido-caine?” Patema asked, unsure. “What’s this?”

“It’s a local anaesthetic.” Kairi explained, doing her best not to let her shock show that Patema had been doing stitches without it. “You haven’t seen it before?”

“Nope. How do you draw the liquid and how much?” she asked, confused, and Kairi decided to take over for a moment.

“Here, I’ll show you.” Kairi changed took the lidocaine and the injection kit and began to prepare.

Sora was silent as Kairi instructed Patema on lidocaine dosage calculations and safely drawing medication¹² from vials.

2 minutes and one injection later, the local anaesthetic was in effect and they were ready to begin the sutures.

“Honestly, Sora.” Kairi was lecturing while they waited for the lidocaine to take effect. If she weren’t wearing gloves then she would have put her hands on her hips. “If this were much deeper there would be a risk of pneumothorax. Maybe even a hemopneumothorax! Before you leave town again, you will speak to Merlin about getting some protection against being stabbed, burned, scratched, or whatever it is you get into next.”

“Okay okay, I get the message Kai.” Sora agreed exasperatedly, saluting her. He was already visibly more relaxed, being under the effects of the lidocaine now.

“You know each other really well, don’t you?” Patema observed.

“Yeah, ever since I arrived at Destiny Islands.” Kairi agreed, before swiftly moving on. They were treating a patient: there would be time for stories later. “Anyway, I think it’s about time we start those sutures. Run me through your process, Patema?”

“I’ll do some simple interrupted sutures. Normally we’d use nylon and remove it after a few weeks.”

“Sounds good to me. We’ve got some absorbable polydioxanone here though, because we don’t know when Mr. Keyblader here will be back here to let us take the stitches out.”

“Makes sense.” Patema agreed, opening the suture kit and bringing the eyeless needle to Sora’s side as he turned to let her do the sutures one more. “I’ll start now, if that’s okay?”

“Go for it,” Sora sounded slightly strained at the thought of having a needle stuck in him for the second time that day.

Patema brought the semicircular needle to the primary wound and began to suture it closed.

“You’ve had stitches before - it doesn’t hurt, remember?” Kairi reminded her patient and longtime friend.

At Sora’s surprised face at feeling just a small pinching feeling instead of a painful injection Kairi suppressed a chuckle.

“You’re a good doc, Kai.” Sora remarked, having heard the way that she had instructed Patema.

“Of course I am! I’m the best doctor in the entire multiverse!” she declared dramatically, and Sora giggled.

“Hold still! Almost… there. All done!” Patema finished the stitches, dropping the relevant items in the sharps and biohazard bins respectively. “You’re all good to go! Try not to pull on them too much, and please change the dressing at least once a day.”

Patema redressed the wound with the efficiency of someone with years of practice, and Sora pulled his clothes back down and made to stand.

“Thanks so much Patema, Kai-sensei!” Sora thanked, visibly feeling a lot better. “When will it all heal?”

“Hmmm, maybe 2 - 4 weeks?” Kairi suggested, as doctor and nurse began tidying up after the procedure.

“That’s waaaay too long! Donald will never let me off for that long…” Sora complained as a heated discussion between Donald and the others seemed to be going on in the adjacent bay.

“I can probably authorise you for a Cura the day before you leave,” Kairi reasoned, and Sora visibly brightened. “Oh yeah, that reminds me. You, good sir, need a tetanus vaccination. I think we have a few doses that arrived yesterday.”

“You mean it?” Sora asked hopefully, hoping to avoid the third needle of the day.

“Why not now?” Patema asked quizzically. “If it’s like a free heal…?”

“It’s not,” Kairi sighed. “Because it’s magic, there’s always a risk of it healing incorrectly. Given the depth of Sora’s wound I’d feel a lot more confident if we got in at least a few days of natural healing first before we start intervening like that. Less chance of the Cure spell going wrong.” she lectured. Sora had heard it all before, but it was new to Patema.

“I understand,” Patema agreed.

“But yep, just pop by here and we’ll sort something out. Patema, want to join me for a moment? We’ll be right back - just need to fetch that vaccination.”

They’d have to have an entirely separate discussion at some point soon about the intersection of magic and medicine. It was becoming increasingly clear that there were many different types, approaches, and styles of magical healing…. knowing what to use when was really important!

Not to be distracted, Kairi ducked out of the medical bay, and Patema followed.

The redhead fished a multi-dose tetanus vaccine vial, a pair of needles, and a syringe out of a cabinet and handed it to Patema.

“Want to give this a go? It’s basically just like I showed you with the lidocaine, but a vaccine instead. Draw with the larger needle, and switch to the smaller 25G needle to give the injection.”

“Got it.” Patema affirmed. “How much should I draw?”

“It says on the label.” Kairi explained, pointing at the number.

Tetanus, Diphteria, and Polio Vaccine // 3ml multi-dose vial※

0.5ml / dose. Do not give to children under 6 years of age. For intramuscular use.

After drawing the vaccine, the two headed back to bay 1 to see to Sora.

“Eugh, I always hate having vaccines,” he complained. “Get it over with!”

Patema stepped forwards and quickly administered the vaccine, and Kairi dabbed the injection site with a cotton wool bud.

“There we go, all done!” Patema said, disposing of the used materials.

“Thank you both so much,” Sora thanked as the three headed back to the desk. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.

“I dunno. That reminds me,” Kairi mused, before directing her gaze squarely at Sora. “Please, for the love of everything, be careful with that for the next few hours? It might not hurt for the next few hours, but lidocaine is a heck of a good painkiller,” she reminded.

Sora nodded resolutely, determined to follow her advice.

“Here’s a paracetamol prescription, but the moogles should have something without it.” Kairi stamped and handed over a slip of paper. “Now, go on, get outta here and take it easy. We’ll deal with your fine feathered friend and have him back to normal in no time.”

“Thanks again!” Sora waved on the way out the door.

After a moment, Patema breathed a sigh of relief.

“Stressful?” Kairi asked with a knowing smile, the two sitting behind the desk to take a moment to breathe.

“Yes,” Patema agreed with a vigorous nod and another sigh of relief.

“You’ll get used to it soon enough,” Kairi said airily, before turning to the half-used vial. “Hmmmm, we’ll have to do something with the rest of this or else we’ll have to throw it away. There are 5 doses in here too. Maybe we could see if there’s anyone on the defence patrol team who needs one?”

“Hey Kairi-sensei, you finished with Sora?” a voice came from Yun in bay 2. “We need an X-ray over here!”

“Coming!” she called back, internally wincing at the headache she’d have tomorrow from doing multiple x-rays in 1 day.

One x-ray, one trip around Traverse Town, and 5 vaccinations later, Kairi was dragging herself back to her flat.

“Yikes,” Kairi mumbled to herself, raising a hand to her face and rubbing her eyes.

At least Donald only had a sprain and not a fracture. She suspected that even Chiyo-sense would have trouble setting a bone in Donald’s wing given his temperament.

“Need a hand?” Karma asked, hopping up beside her as she headed for the second district entrance. “You look a little unsteady there.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Kairi dismissed, before wobbling again and being caught by the male redhead.

“Yeah, no.” Karma denied, supporting the shorter of the two. “Are you sure you’re up for 12 hour shifts?”

Kairi grumbled some more before giving in as the doors to the second district opened.

“Sure I am!” Kairi asserted as confidently as she could manage. “I did it all the time in the school holidays and after mass casualty events.”

Karma nodded slowly, not at all looking like he believed her.

“Really, I’m fine! We need that x-ray machine and I need to build up my mana reserves is all…. 3 x-rays in a single day is a bit much.”

Karma looked at the young doctor sceptically and raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Kairi asked after a moment, somewhat exasperated.

It had been a bit much, but Kairi wasn’t about to admit anything. After all, it was her idea to start the clinic, so she had to just suck it up and deal with it, right? She barely even knew the people she’d asked to join her!

Over the last week she had been working her mana pool to the limit by draining and meditating to refill it as many times as she could. It drained her bones and left her with a heavy feeling in her limbs, but her pool had already increased by half.

Maybe she’d have to cut back on that given the amount of practice it seemed like she was going to be getting on a day-to-day basis….

“I never said anything,” Karma replied suppressing a grin. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your apartment. It’s next to mine anyway.”

“Ugh, fine. Take it away redhead.” Kairi grumbled, pointing at Karma as they ambled down the right hand side of the second district.

“No problem!” Karma replied easily, now letting his grin from earlier fill his face, and Kairi groaned.

“Thanks for helping out today,” Kairi added in a much smaller voice as they reached the door not far into the alley.

“You’re welcome.” Karma replied, not missing a thing. Since arriving here, you’ve given me a purpose again.

Thank you.

Chapter Text

“Huah!” Patema shouted as she vaulted over a wall between two lamp posts in the third district, landing in a crouch, hesitating for a second, and then doing a safety roll.

It was the evening after the first ‘official’ day of the clinic being open. Kairi had done a fabulous job bringing everyone and everything together so that they could open it so quickly.

But goodness gracious was it Eeeeexhausting with a capital E.

They had underestimated just how busy it could be on the first day. It got so bad that Yuna had to be put on triage duty and Aerith had to start an appointment book.

“Owww…” she rubbed her back awkwardly. “I really need to sort out my safety rolls. That and translate into a safety roll more smoothly - it’s a bad habit…..”

Patema was exhausted, but despite that she somehow still had a bunch of energy in her system she needed to work out before she could even consider starting her nightly routines.

Since Sora was here, he had cleared out a bunch of heartless that had been plaguing the safety committee for weeks. As a result, the third district was a lot safer than it had been.

Just the perfect conditions for doing some parkour training that she was looking for!

Stepping away from the wall, Patema spun around and started running - slowly at first - straight at the wall. There was a gasp and then some hushed voices to the side, but she ignored them and planted her foot firmly on the wall. One foot, then a second, then vertical motion that translated into Patema getting her hands on top of the wall that was much taller than her.

Pulling her core in, she raised her hips up and stood on the wall in one smooth motion, before jumping forwards lightly and walking to the side in one smooth motion.

After internally congratulating herself, she turned around to see she had a blue-haired onlooker.

“I’m you, as a friend….”

“Your time has not yet come.”

“The timeline has changed!” horror filled th-

* static *

She shook the strange memories that (probably) did not belong to her from her mind, and waved.

“Hey! Didn’t expect to see anyone around at this hour.”

“It’s always midday for someone around here,” a voice belonging to the rather diminutive boy replied, before they ran forwards and repeated Patema’s moves just to the left, before taking a running leap to the side and landing neatly on the blue pillar. “I’m Nagisa.”

“I’m Patema. Karma has talked about you! You have ena right?” Patema greeted, and Nagisa nodded. “And wow, you’re pretty good at parkour.”

“Yes, and…. something like that. There’s not a lot of water around here though, which makes me nervous.” Nagisa replied, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment before surveying his surroundings to decide where he was going to jump next. “Let’s just say…. I had a lot of motivation to learn.”

“Care to train with me?” Patema asked, hopping forwards on the top of the wall to the side of the wide stairs that led to the first district. “I find it’s good exercise and it helps me clear my head.”

Left unsaid was how it helped her stay connected with her home world. Back there, in the underground village, everyone had to do at least some parkour to get around - be it exploring to find food, or even just navigating the village.

Unbeknownst to her was that Nagisa was just the same. While he didn’t have to forage to find food in vast underground tunnels, it was just as much a part of daily life for him as it was for her.

Mr. Karasuma, their P.E. teacher and monster of a government agent had only just introduced parkour a month ago so while he and the rest of the class were still quite new at it, it had already been proving invaluable in their quest to kill their teacher: Korosensei.

If he could continue to practice here? Then that was just an extra opportunity to gain some extra skills he could make use of when he got back home.

When, not if - because he would stop at nothing to get back to that classroom that gave him some self-worth for the first time.

That, and a future.

“….sure,” Nagisa agreed. “Just let me warm up first.”

«The next ‘morning’ found…. a pint-sized chocobo? That can’t be right.»

A small chocobo - maybe ten centimetres tall at most - brushed itself off after taking a tumble from a nearby roof.

Its memory was fuzzy, but it was back at a sleepy ranch in the countryside before everything went dark and then they woke up in this mysterious old town.

Why was everything so big now though?

Something was clearly very wrong here.

Shaking its body from beak to foot, it hopped down the boxes to go and explore.

«–erm, right. Where is our little friend off to now?»

The yellow-feathered friend peered around the corner of a wood and brick building to see a pile of discarded seeds on the ground and the noise of a commotion happening presumably on some sort of plaza further down.

Best steer clear of that then, but in the meantime there was a snack right here.

The bird’s stomach grumbled ominously, but given its size it came out as less of a rumble and more of an adorable squeak.

«Evidently, it’s time to dig in!»

Trigger warning: Some blood, descriptions of injuries and medical procedures.

Meanwhile, down on the plaza below, a situation was unfolding that - when Kairi found out about it in a few minutes time - would give her a headache that would last for the rest of the day, if not longer.

“-ey, it was pretty fun last night. We should do it again sometime.” Nagisa thanked Patema.

“Who knew we had so much in common, right?” she asked, relaxed.

Nagisa laughed lightly, and turned to enter the accessory shop. “I’ve got an errand to run with the moogles, but I’ll see you shortly.”

“Sure, see you later!” Patema called as the door to the shop close, pleased to have made a new friend.

While Cid had claimed the shop as his own, he was spending less and less of his time in since Kairi decided to open the clinic and had a list a kilometre long of things they needed.

It was unfortunately at that moment that a strange black, white, and purple portal appeared and dumped an unconscious girl roughly onto the cobbles.

“Woah!” Patema simultaneously jumped back, now joined by Cid and a green-haired boy who was almost as short as Nagisa, who had just exited the accessory shop. They’d just caught the end of the strange portal, jogging quickly to investigate.

The girl was about their age and dressed in black and red, with combat boots on her feet and a strange red, black, and steel coloured hunk of metal that was worn but well cared for and pretty complicated in desgn.

“He-hello?” the boy - known as Izuku, Nagisa had mentioned meeting him yesterday - asked, being the first one to step forwards and take a closer look. “Hello?”

No response came, which was not entirely unexpected given that most were unconscious when they arrived in Traverse Town.

Izuku tapped the girl’s shoulders and repeatedly tried to wake her from her slumber. “Hello? Hello? Hello!”

It was no use, she wasn’t waking. He checked to see if she was breathing, and was relieved to see her chest rise and fall, albeit more rapidly than he was comfortable with.

“What’s up wi’ you two then?” a new voice they both knew belonged to the aforementioned Cid Highwind, engineer extraodinaire and owner of the accessory shop in his spare time.

“A new girl arrived, but she’s unconscious.” Patema explained.

By this point the pair were starting to get nervous, but when a patch of blood started to soak through the girl’s black clothes all three parties froze.

For a brief moment, all was still and nobody moved except for the edges of the girl’s dress in the almost imperceptible breeze, which was clearly outfitted for combat.

The moment was broken, however, by a resounding “shit” echoing throughout the district despite the fact that Patema had uttered it quietly under her breath.

Forcing herself to snap out of it, Patema took the lead.

“Izuku, help me turn her so we can look at the wound.” she ordered, remembering a situation where one of her friends was seriously hurt once by an invader from up above back in her homeworld. At the time she had frozen and been rather useless, but she had talked with her grandfather afterwards who had explained that if you found yourself in the unenviable situation of needing to take charge in an emergency, it was best to give short, clear, and direct instructions.

“I-I-I-” Izuku stuttered, suddenly unable to move. It looked like a ghost flew across his vision, and he was white as a sheet.

“Cid, go and shout for some people from the clinic and look after Izuku for me.” Patema moved on efficiently and calmly, clamping down hard on her own emotions so as to not let anything slip.

She could freak out later, but right now she needed to get this unknown girl to safety.

“S-sure, kid.” Cid looked taken aback, and started to bound over to the clinic without hesitation - no doubt past experiences having taught him that time was of the essence.

“And tell them to bring a stretcher!”

Meanwhile, Patema bent down to inspect the girl and put on a spare pair of gloves she had in her pocket. The girl had black hair, but was really scuffed up.

“Definitely didn’t go down with your world without a fight, did you girl?” Patema muttered, keeping watch over a still-frozen Izuku in the corner of her eye.

Dang it all, she really wasn’t cut out for both a physical and a mental health crisis at the same time!

Thankfully, she did not have to wait long for the cavalry to arrive from the nearby clinic.

“Yikes, what’s happened here?” Yun asked as they and Yuna brought the stretcher down next to their mysterious patient dressed in black and red. The girl was currently unconscious but clearly in pain in the recovery position and Patema was applying pressure with her gloved hands to the wound.

“Kairi-sensei would have come, but she’s currently seeing to an asthmatic in the exam room and Chiyo-sensei is due in later after her early-morning call-out.

And it was only their second day of operation!

“No worries. Dropped outta the sky right in front of me,” Patema replied. “Wanna take either end and I’ll take the middle you two?”

“Sure. One, two, lift!” Yun instructed, and the mysterious girl was on the stretcher.

Patema worked with the patient as the other two transported them back to the clinic. Distantly, she could hear Cid seeing to Izuku, but however much she hated it she didn’t have time to deal with that particular situation right now.

She’d have to check in with the freckled greenette and apologise later.

“Hi, you tw- woah! That’s some injury!” Karma exclaimed, seeing the blood soaking through despite Patema’s best efforts. The redhead put his breaktime drink down, stood up, and leapt over the reception desk in one smooth motion, instantly alert and startling the patients in the not-quite-crowded (but definitely getting there - thank goodness for Yuna’s triage work) waiting room to silence as they watched the scene unfold. “Take them to bay 1!”

As soon as the clinic opened for real, they had been absolutely flooded with patients with all manner of ailments - to the point that they had to start prioritising. Kairi had sent at least half of their would-be patients away though, and after discovering that the moogles had delivered barely any blood bags had absolutely insisted that they have at least 5 people donate blood - even going so far as to give people fast-tracked appointments if they agreed.

While those donations were still being processed in the storage room, they were probably going to come in handy sooner than any of them had expected.

“Gotcha boss,” Yun agreed, they and Yuna transporting the prone girl efficiently.

A nasty feeling settled in Karma’s gut, so he bent down to speak to Noctis who was moving some medical supplies from the store cupboard down the hall to the cabinets behind the desk.

“Hey, Noct?” Karma asked, keeping his voice as calm and even as he could. “You remember where Chiyo-sensei lives, right?”

“Oh? Hmmm… yeah! She lives right next door to me n’ Light!” Noctis remembered. While he wasn’t old enough to live on his own, he had been taken in by Lightning Farron, one of the defence patrol team who had arrived mere hours after her.

“That’s right. Can you run as fast as you can and fetch her please?” Karma asked the young boy, with what he hoped was a genuine smile.

Gosh darn it, he was terrible at smiles and children. Dealing with assassinating their teacher was so much easier!

“Huh? But I haven’t finished sorting these supplies yet!” Noct protested, but Karma interrupted.

“I know, and there’ll be time for that later, but a really sick patient has just arrived and we’ll need her help.”

“Even Kai-sensei won’t be able to make her feel better?” Noct asked, worried.

“I’m sure she will, but I have a feeling she might need a bit of help.” Karma replied, glancing back at emergency bay 1. “Now off you go, and be safe!”

“Okay, I’ll do my best!” Noct agreed, before turning to the door and exiting the clinic at speed.

“Hey, Aerith? Send Kai to bay 1 when she’s done with that appointment will you?” Karma called, before turning to the occupied bay. “And keep the patients happy? I think we have a code 9.”

“Okay, Karma, I’ve got you.” Aerith hid a wince and agreed from her position on the other side of the desk.

“That’s game… now for set and match.” Karma muttered to himself as he moved to enter the bay.

Inside, Patema was starting to cut through the girl’s clothes to access the wound.

“Good work, let’s take a look inside.” Karma complimented as he gloved up himself. “Oh boy.”

A large gash cut across the left side of her abdomen, and while mercifully it was not deep enough to rupture any organs, it was much deeper than Sora’s injury from the other day and still bleeding at a rate that made Karma nervous.

Their patient was pale, cold and clammy, which told Karma that their patient was likely going into hypovolemic shock.

“If pressure isn’t working, then what do we do?” Yun asked worriedly. “This is a lotta blood - if this were back in my home world…. we’d be running outta options real fast.”

Karma internally cursed that his shishō, Ria Karasuma, wasn’t here as he raised the bed so his patient’s feet were above their heart. She wasn’t known as the witch of the medicine world for nothing - she could have started singing a song to explore and start dealing with the injury at the same time!

As it was, Karma was a ‘lowly’ C-rank healer without any sheet music, and this laceration was far too severe and the extent too great for him to risk immediate vocal treatment on a case like this with no sheet music in an unfamiliar environment.

Further, these scrubs were nothing like the uniform he wore back at the phoniactric clinic in his home world.

As it was, he was still in charge here and needed to instruct those around him, so he couldn’t start singing anyway.

“We disinfect, use a wet dressing, and tape it down with plastic¹.” Karma declared, opening the cabinet and reaching for the bandages. “Our lovely patient here is also going to need a blood transfusion. Patema, you remember how to put in an IV right?”

“Sure Akabane-san.” Patema agreed.

“Then do that, and call me Karma.” Karma ordered. “Yun, go and fetch a blood bag - O negative - and some antibiotics - Cefuroxime 1.5 grams and Metronidazole 500 micrograms ².”

“Roger that,” Yun nodded, pushing the curtain aside and exiting bay 1 for a moment to a room full of anxious patients with Aerith and Yuna trying handle the situation as best they could.

They only had 3 bags with that blood type, and their patient was a big unknown. It sucked, but they were already eating into their supply and the next delivery of meds wasn’t due for another 3 weeks. Maybe Kairi was right….

Karma was just glad that his Shishō had drilled him on this stuff. He was dangerously close to the limits of his own knowledge, so if Kairi didn’t get here soon they’d have a real problem.

Darn it all, injuries on this level were dealt with in a hospital by his shishō!

“Patema, when you’re done with that IV go fetch Kairi for me, this is worse than I thought. Yuna, help me with this wound dressing?”

“I’m on it.”

“I’ll take the right side, you the left?” Yuna suggested, and Karma nodded as they got to work cleaning and administering initial treatment to the wound.

“Nervous?” the redhead asked with a hidden smile.

“Y-yeah. How could you tell?” Yuna replied, disturbed that Karma could read her so easily.

“You’ve never dealt with an injury of this magnitude before, right?” Karma guessed, noticing the way her hands were shaking slightly.

“No, I haven’t.” Yuna replied slowly, tearing open a packet of gauze as Karma was using tweezers to remove some gravel from the wound. “I’ve seen a lot even in the relatively short time I’ve been a nurse, but trauma was not one of the things I focused on.”

Karma laughed lightly before responding. “I’m sure there will be plenty more experiences where this one came from for you to get your feet wet.”

Yuna looked disturbed, but focused on treating the wound instead of dignifying the redhead with a response.

A few moments later, and their mysterious patient was hooked up to a monitor with a treated wound and the start of a blood transfusion.

Kairi stepped out of exam room 1 with a patient who was clutching a prescription as if their life depended on it and looking much more relaxed, before the young doctor and trauma surgeon was almost dragged into emergency bay 1 by a distressed Patema.

“Wha- hey! What’s the matter?!” Kairi protested, but her objections died upon seeing the patient in front of her. “Oh.”

On the emergency bay’s bed, an unconscious black haired girl wearing a dress that had been cut open was lying with an IV in her arm and two bags hanging from the IV stand. They were rather pale³, and she looked to be in quite a bit of pain.

At least it was quite warm inside the clinic, and they had a blanket to keep them warm.

“Looks like it’s trauma time~!” Kairi sung, taking stock of the situation. “Gosh, I haven’t had a serious trauma case since Destiny Islands fell to darkness.” she mused, before setting her gaze and staring at their patient grimly.

“Do you always look this happy to get a surgical patient?” Yun asked dubiously.

Kairi diplomatically ignored the question and moved swiftly on. “Give me the rundown, Karma.”

“Right you are, Kai.” the taller of the two replied with a lazy half salute. “Unknown unconscious 15 year old girl was brought in. Fell outta the sky not long ago with abdominal trauma and a concussion. Signs of shock with suspected internal bleeding, so I’ve got her on a blood bag and some antibiotics. Wound treated but improvements are slow. Heart rate is 134bpm⁴ and rising ⁵.”

“Could be appendicitis,” commented Patema eagerly, remmbering her training earlier on the ultrasound machine.

“Well shit.” Kairi cursed. “Good work, but you forgot sedation, pain management, and GCS. Is Chiyo-sensei oh the way? By the looks of things this is going to end up in the operating theatre.”

While she was good at her job, she always felt just a little bad for the patients that ended up in the operating room.

Karma moved to facepalm, but stopped on account of still wearing gloves.

“Damn it, sorry. I’m not used to emergency work. But yep, I sent Noct while back - she should be on her way now.” Karma replied, and Kairi breathed a sigh of relief.

“Not to worry, you did what you could and that was good. It looks like that dressing is holding - for now - too. Thank paupou, I’d feel uneasy with just the two of us in an alien environment.” Kairi thanked. Karma really knew his stuff, but ideally surgery needed at least 3 people.

They did operate shorthanded all the time back in Destiny West out of necessity, but that was somewhere she was familiar and comfortable with that wasn’t quite so constrained in the resource department.

“What’s the plan, boss?” Yun asked from his position next to the ultrasound. Things were moving quickly and he was really quite overwhelmed already with all the technology and new medicines, but dangit there was a patient right in front of him who needed treatment - and he never left a patient untreated if he could help it.

“Ultrasound, anaesthesia, surgery, in that order.” Kairi replied deadpan. “Yun, care to start up the ultrasound while I handle analgaesia? Patema, you’re on vitals and GCS. She’s still out because of her trip through the lanes between, but it’s still useful to know where we stand. Don’t forget to check that concussion too. Yuna, could you handle triage out there? I doubt I’ll be handling any other cases for the next few hours.”

A chorus of affirmations reached her ears as she extracted some vials and started to prepare medication.

Bother it all, this entire clinic felt wrong somehow. It was nothing like Destiny West where she learnt from Mizuki-sensei.

Well, whatever the case she’d just have to deal with it.

Kairi shook the thoughts from her head. “Right then, she looks about 50kg⁶, risk of hypotension… we’re looking at a 3 microgram slow infusion of fentanyl ⁷ ⁸ I think.”

Turning to her patient, Kairi got to work.

“Well, on the plus side you’ll be getting your appendicitis case another day Patema,” Kairi observed dryly, peering at the monitor as she guided Yun’s hand in doing the ultrasound, and Patema sighed. “We don’t have a CT yet but it doesn’t look like we’ve got a bleed in the head to worry about, which is odd given the force and injury pattern…. anyway. On the other hand, that looks like a closed ruptured spleen to me - likely from some sort of blunt trauma - which is definitely going to require a trip to the OT.”

“Need some help with that?” Karma asked.

“You know it.” Kairi confirmed. “Want to play operating nurse for the day?”

“I mean, you make it sound like a choice Kai.” Karma replied easily.

It was as Kairi was finishing up the ultrasound and intubating¹⁰ ¹¹ her patient to prep them for surgery that a loud bang shook the building as the doors to the clinic were slammed open. Everyone jumped at the sound, and the bubble of noise emanating from the waiting room was silenced.

“Where’s my sister?!” a loud and clearly extremely frustrated voice rang out and reverbarated off the walls of the clinic.

“Woah, easy there!” Yuna tried to ease the intruder with little success, before jumping out of way to avoid the angry girl’s fist.

“That old man said I could find her here, what have you done with her?!” the voice continued, and Kairi ducked through the curtain of bay 1 to investigate the situation.

“I would calm down if I were you.” Leon warned, just happening to be in the waiting room at the behest of Yuffie and standing up to intervene.

“I’m not calming down, not until I find. my. SISTER!” an older girl with bright golden hair demanded, eyes turning red with effort and smashing a fist against the wall.

Thankfully nothing was broken, but it did leave a spiderweb of cracks….

Stepping forwards, Kairi was about to speak and try to stop the intruder from smashing up the town’s new clinic, when a small bluenetted androgynous-looking person silently stood up, stood between the growing confrontation between Leon and the intruder, and clapped.

The sound reverbarated off the walls and stunned everyone present, with Karma being the only one who was unaffected.

“Now, are we going to talk, or are we going to do this the hard way?” a sweet sounding voice came from someone who looked like they absolutely did not know how to shock an entire room’s full of people by emitting mysterious energy from a clap of all things. “This is a clinic. A place of healing, not fighting.”

That was Nagisa, Karma’s closest friend. Akabane had claimed when she’d first met the guy just the other day that he was stronger than he was - a big admission for the redhead, if the truth were only to be known - and while Kairi had nodded along at the time she wasn’t sure she believed him.

Now though? She would absolutely believe it. In that moment, it were almost as if a viper was stalking it’s prey - and it was terrifying to watch.

She had no idea what the pair’s backstory was or why they refused to tell anyone the name of their home world, but there was no doubt in her mind, by the look in Leon’s eyes, that he’d find his way into the defence patrol team one way or another.

Looking completely unafraid, the boy stood tall against the girl, effortlessly dodging one last swing before the fire left her eyes and slumped, leather jacket creaking as she did so in the silence of the waiting room and the eternal night.

“Thank you.” the boy acknowledged, before handing off to Kairi. “Kairi-sensei?”

Blinking to steady herself, the two stepped aside to let the two speak - but ready to jump in again if necessary.

“Can you describe the one you seek?” the young doctor asked slowly and deliberately, scrubs blowing in the breeze that was coming in the door.

The girl looked affronted for a moment, glancing at the two acting-guards standing by her side before slumping again and starting to speak.

“She’s 15, about this tall, black hair, black dress with red cloak and accents, and wields crescent rose.” the girl - who looked like she would be right at home driving through the wilderness on a motorcycle - explained, desperation slipping into her voice as she held an intricate red lump of folded steel aloft. “Her name’s Ruby Rose.”

An awkward silence descended as all eyes fell on the Kairi. Including, she noted, Chiyo-sensei and Noctis who were standing just outside but hadn’t said anything to avoid becoming a potential target.

“We did see find that weapon outside alongside the girl, but didn’t have a chance to pick it up in the heat of the situation.” she revealed, thanking Patema mentioning it earlier. “Your description matches the unconscious girl who was brought in just now as well.”

Hope blossommed in who was presumably the older sister’s eyes. “You found her?! Where is she??”

“One step at a time.” Kairi reassured. “I know you’re desperate to see her, but we should talk in private first? Chiyo-sensei, Yun and Patema are in 1 with a surgical case.”

“Right you are dearie,” the older woman nodded with a smile.

How she kept that up in all situations, Kairi would never know.

“What happened?!” the girl started to fret, before a haunted look shadowed her eyes. “Darkness, so much darkness….. We were fighting a…. griffon….. in…. emerald……. forest, and she got thrown against a stone wall…..” the girl trailed off and a tear ran down her cheek and Kairi spied a sizable wound on the girl’s arm, bandaged and hidden underneath her clothes.

Well, that explained what happened to their patient - Ruby Rose, as the newcomer so helpfully supplied.

“Are you sure that’s wise, Kairi?” Yuna started to protest, before Karma stepped forwards.

“I’ll join you,” he suggested, lightly but with just that subtle edge that suggested that he would not be taking no for an answer.

“If you would follow me…..” Kairi gestured towards the exam room, leaving the sentence hanging.

“Yang. Yang Xiao-Long.” Yang supplied, as she followed the pair into the exam room as Chiyo moved to exam room 1 and Yuna started talking to Noctis.

“Excellent. This works out quite nicely, actually.”

After getting seated, Kairi spoke from her position at the desk with expectant eyes hanging on her every word.

“I’ll give it to you straight, your sister was not in good shape when we found her. I don’t know what a griffon is, but it sure did do a number on her.” Kairi opened, and a small gasp escaped the lips of the Ruby’s sister.

“How bad?” Yang asked, worried.

“A large laceration on the left side of her abdomen, and a ruptured spleen.” Karma dispensed more clinically than Kairi expected of him, given his usual laid back attitude.

“The claw connected after all…” the haunted look was back, before her gaze set in something akin to determination. “What does this mean?”

“Surgery,” Kairi supplied simply, before adding “your sister is loosing blood. We have her on a transfusion, but it’s only a temporary measure.”

“Do you have to? Won’t she just get better on her own?” Yang asked hopefully, leaning forwards. “I don’t even know you people - heck, I don’t even know where I am! And you expect me to believe that I crash into the pavement right outside a clinic?! I mean, I’m older than you are!”

Ah, the frustration was back.

Karma meant as if to stand, but Kairi subtly gestured for him to wait.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t believe it either.” she acquiesced. “But I can tell you that while I look young I’ve performed surgery before. Many times, in fact. Your sister has a good chance, but only if we operate quickly.”

For a given definition of many, but then again this would be her thirteenth splendectomy and she’d stoppeed counting the number of abdominal bleed cases she’d handled.

Yang sighed again, and rubbed her temple.

“You’re in Traverse Town, town of refugees for those whose worlds have fallen.” Kairi continued, and Karma seemed alarmed for a moment before recognising something in Yang’s eyes and relaxing once more. “We’re here to help: we’ve all been through the same experience. My own world fell to darkness a few weeks ago.”

An image of Sora fighting the heartless across Traverse Town even though he was supposed to be resting flashed in her mind, and an image of Riku wandering a lost world somewhere out there flooded her mind, but the redhead blinked the false memories away and set her gaze on Ruby’s sister.

“Fine.” Yang spoke in defeat. “Fine. What do you need to do?”

“My name is Kairi, and I will be your sister’s surgeon today. First, I’ll need to explain the procedure. Then, I’ll need you to sign these consent forms.” Kairi answered, starting to speak a script she had memorised from countless times back in Destiny West, pulling a form from nowhere.

It took barely a few minutes for paperwork to be completed, and in no time at all the curtain of emergency bay 1 was being pulled back to reveal a prone girl – Ruby Rose – sleeping altogether more soundly on the bed being inspected by Patema and Chiyo-sensei, with Yun having moved on to treat other patients.

“Ruby!” Yang exclaimed with an outstretched arm, seeing her lying on the bed with an IV stuck in her arm and breathing equipment over her face.

“Hello dearie, you must be her sister.” Chiyo greeted. “I’m Chiyo-sensei. Good work, Kairi, Karma. It looks like she’s all ready for surgery.”

“I’m so sorry, Ruby….” Yang brushed her sister’s hand, eying all the medical equipment and longing to reach her somehow. “I should have been able to protect you.”

There was a moment of silence in the emergency bay, before Kairi spoke.

“I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to start the procedure soon. If you would step outside and take a seat in the waiting room?” Kairi apologised.

“Can’t I stay with her?” Yang asked, emotion swirling in her eyes at seeing her sister again, only to have her taken away again.

“Apologies, but it is clinic policy not to allow any relatives in th operating theatre.” Kairi denied, not stating that she had made it up on the spot based on the rules back in Destiny West. She also carefully avoiding mentioning that this was their first surgery that had taken place in this clinic.

“I’ll see you soon, okay Rubes?” Yang said in parting before leaving the bay to do as instructed. “Stay strong for me.”

When she had left, the four clinic staff volunteers got down to business.

“How’s this going to work?” Patema asked nervously. “I’ve never done surgery before.”

“Luckily for you, that’s my job.” Kairi reassured, pointing at herself with a grin.

Chiyo-sensei took a moment as Kairi was commanding the situation to appreciate the young doctor at work. She was taking charge in the situation admirably: if only she were her apprentice back home.

Home: The city of heroes. Such a big and bold-sounding name. Where she was known as The Youthful Heroine: Recovery Girl, and saved countless lives across Tokyo and southern Japan with her medical knowledge. Gave numerous talks to hospital staff up and down the country…. and most of the patients she saw were either injured by villains, injured training to fight villains, or somewhere in between.

More than once, she wished that her homeworld had never developed quirks. Maybe then human-caused natural disasters and the associated rescue efforts would not be a daily occurrence.

Anyway, while Kairi was handling things admirably, the wisened old doctor could tell that it was nowhere near as easy as she made it look. The nervous tic in her foot, the restlessness in her posture…. the poor dearie was most likely still suffering from homesickness, culture shock, and the blow of losing her home world too.

She, on the other hand, had only just woken up after the sweetest little knock at her door from a harried looking Noctis after handling an early-morning call-out to a sprained leg. That meant it was just about time to give a bit of a helping hand.

“While you’ve demonstrated your skills as a doctor admirably thus far,” complemented Chiyo-sensei, “I absolutely insist on joining you in the operating theatre, at least to observe for the first time. You can’t be too careful in a new clinic.”

Kairi was about to protest - she was great at her job, thank you very much! - but stopped herself and forced herself to think rationally about the situation. It was a new clinic with a new operating theatre with new(-ish) equipment and a completely unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people.

Chiyo-sensei was right: it was a situation just ripe for making mistakes.

While she didn’t like it, she remembered her nervousness from before.

“If you remember one thing: someone’s life depends on you. Never forget that.”

“Okay,” Kairi agreed simply, shaking the voice of her mentor from back when she had been allowed in the operating theatre for the first time from her head. “Karma will also be joining us in the OT.”

“What should I do?” Patema asked, looking around unsure. “I haven’t had any surgical experience.”

“Your job will be to administer the anaesthesia and bring Ruby to the operating theatre,” Kairi instructed. “I’ll draw it up, and then you just administer it via IV.”

“Okay, I can do that!” Patema agreed enthusiastically, and Kairi turned to the medicine cabinet once more. “Isn’t she already sedated though?”

“No, fentanyl isn’t a sedative ¹²,” Kairi replied, fishing some vials from the cupboard.

“What mix should you use and why?” came a questioning voice from the most experienced doctor in the room.

“Normally propofol, but with low blood pressure we have a risk of hypotension. I’m not a huge fan of ketamine in this situation either - given hallucinations and our patient wasn’t informed beforehand plus it’s longer half life. So probably a ketamine/propofol mix, with norepinephrine ¹³ to deal with low blood pressure ¹⁴.” Kairi rattled off, thinking aloud as she did so, and Chiyo-sensei looked impressed. “It’ll take me a minute to calculate the doses, hang on.”

“Very good,” she praised. “I’ll see you in the operating theatre.”