Healer

{{#if:VictoriaShadow 5.5|

“	True healing powers were something comprehensive and powerful, to cover the bases necessary for all the various sicknesses and maladies, while also wreaking meaningful change. Powers themselves didn’t lend themselves to healing, as a general rule, either. Not unless they were selfish.	”
{{#if:Victoria| —Victoria{{#if:Shadow 5.5|, Shadow 5.5}} }} }}

'Healers' are rare<ref name="II7.10">“I was a support card. Not a lot of people used me because I couldn’t be summoned into a fight,” Kenzie said. “Kind of a bummer.”

Amy had been a support card for that game, I was pretty sure. The effect had been downplayed a lot, but her card had still been popular, because there weren’t that many heals. - Excerpt from Torch 7.10</ref> capes who can alleviate injuries in others. As no two powers are the same, barring special circumstances, no two heal the same way.

Examples

• Bitch<ref>I looked at Rachel, but she only shook her head.
  
  Rachel’s power healed animals, but this one was gone. - Excerpt from Extinction 27.1</ref> (canines only)
• Bitter Pill<ref name="10.x 1">Tattletale raised her feet, closing one eye slightly in a wince.  “Ninety percent better.  Turns out taking untested, black market drugs have their merits.” - Excerpt from Interlude 10.x II
  
  “What’s it going to take to heal them?” I asked.
  
  “I have the stuff.  Healing.  It should get them to ninety, ninety-five percent.  They’ll be hungry.  Good enough?” Bitter Pill asked, a condescending note in her voice, her gaze too casual and distracted. - Excerpt from Blinding 11.1</ref> (tinker)
• Bonesaw<ref name=22.4c1/> (tinker)
• Mr. Bough
• Cask (tinker)
• Eidolon<ref>Siberian was there, kneeling on the bed, her body marked with stripes of jet black and alabaster white, her arms slick with blood up to the elbows.  The man who lay on the bed – there would be no saving him, even if Eidolon manifested healing abilities.
  [...]
  Eidolon was trying to heal Hero, to teleport people out of danger when Alexandria and Legend proved unable, and changing up his abilities every few seconds to throw something new at Siberian in the hopes that something would affect her.
  [...]
  Alexandria sat in the hospital.  Eidolon’s healing had only been able to do so much.  She held a glass eye in one hand, the remains of her other eye in the other. - Excerpt from Interlude 15.z</ref> (Depending on the powers he has at a given moment)
• Lionheart
• King of Cups<ref>The Suits were among the injured, and King of Cups was patching up the damage.  Limbs were replaced with pitch black simulacrums that caught the light in odd ways that only highlighted the very edges.
  [...]
  I wasn’t sure how that worked.  The lines of pain on his face seemed to ease as his power replaced the injured parts.  Was there some sort of interaction there?  A connection of nerves, arteries and veins? - Excerpt from Venom 29.2</ref><ref name=22.4c1/>
• Lab Rat (tinker)
• The Leper (disease only)
• Lizardtail I
• Lizardtail II
• Othala<ref name=22.4c1/>
• Panacea<ref name=22.4c1/>
• Perdition<ref>Wildbow on Discord</ref>
• Sanguine<ref name="27.5">Sanguine was tending to two injured.  Not Irregulars, but not capes I recognized either.  The boy had hair and skin with a texture and color like clotted blood.  The injured had blood piled and crusted over their wounds, scabs bigger than my hand.  Or my claw.
  [...]
  “Might get a few more recruits,” Sanguine said, not looking up from the wounded.  He had hands extended to two different wounds on one individual, and was drawing blood into one hand and letting it snake out of the other, flowing into the wound.  Was he cleaning it? - Excerpt from Extinction 27.5</ref><ref name=22.4c1/>
• Scapegoat
• Semiramis (Refined with later developments)<ref>Semiramis was out there, with Tattletale.  As Tattletale gestured in my direction, I felt my collarbone pop.  My costume shed crusty blood.
  
  [My first thought was that it was a trap, that she was rewinding my memories as well, in a final action of regret.  But I didn’t feel anything slipping away.  I felt better, as the worst of my wounds were targeted.]  Undoing what had been done.  Giving me just a bit more strength, a bit more of what I needed.
  
  [Which fit.  Outreach, possibly final, from Tattletale.  It served as a push forward, and recognition that she understood, even though she’d never be able to use words to voice it.] - Excerpt from Last 20.9, [indicates text added from the] original</ref>
• Trophy Wife<ref>“Uhh, what about you?” Clockblocker asked Trophy Wife.  “Your arm?”
  
  She had some fingers that were pretty badly mangled, bending the wrong ways, broken in multiple places.  One of her ears was missing.
  
  "I don’t need anything.  I regenerate slowly.”  She indicated the trophy rack that was mounted on her back, there were bits of meat, gristle, one eyeball that wasn’t human, and two fingers attached to it.  She touched a dead, dried, tailless lizard.  “It’s not much, but I’m granting some benefits to everyone in this craft.” - Excerpt from Last 20.2</ref> (dependent on trophy)

Details

Part of the rarity of healers has to do with how objectively complex the human body is,<ref name=22.4c1>There -can- be very few people with healing abilities. Bonesaw, Scapegoat, Panacea. Others with niches (neurology only, or cardiac systems only), others still with limited capacity (Othala with the ability to grant regeneration).

That’s setting-relevant and a reality when healing is actually something monumentally complex. - Comment by Wildbow on Cell 22.4</ref> how few superpowers can parse human biology and its more delineated physiology.<ref name="19.2 c1">Psycho Gecko:
Wonder what would have happened if she was on her period.

Wildbow:
Nothing. Scapegoat uses his own body as a template. He can’t absorb symptoms to parts he doesn’t have. - Comment by Wildbow on Scourge 19.2</ref> Generally, healing should be seen as a byproduct in a power meant for something else.<ref name="dm29">“A healing power,” I said.  I watched as Scion reached out for another vial.  He held it next to the one he’d already retrieved.
[...]
“There aren’t any healing powers,” the Doctor answered.  We continued backing away.  “When they crop up, it’s a fluke, pure chance, an extension of another ability with a different focus.” - Excerpt from Venom 29.7</ref>

Since healing exists in gray areas of power mechanics healers have to be aware of power interactions; healers canceling each other out or exacerbating an issue is a possibility.<ref>Panacea - Would probably work.
Edit: Worth stating that timing would be key with Panacea. Using her powers on someone freshly 'goated would just return to the person originally injured. Easier to just use Panacea first, with no 'goating.Scapegoat power Synergies (Wildbow, reddit.com, 2017-05)</ref>

Despite their rarity, the uncanny ability for powerful and successful capes to gain access to critical healing creates an air of invincibility. As anything short of death can potentially be remedied, it is much harder for a cape to suffer a career-ending injury so long as they can avoid a fatal blow.<ref>The availability of healing made for an interesting, if ugly, dynamic.  Capes like Tattletale, capes like me could be reckless, we’d get our faces slashed open, our backs broken, our throats severed, blinded and burned, and we’d get mended back to a near-pristine condition.  Tattletale still had faint scars at the corners of her mouth, regenerated by Brian after his second trigger event, but she’d mended almost to full.  I’d had injuries of a much more life-altering scale undone by Panacea and Scapegoat.

If we died, we were dead, no question, unless I gave consideration to Alexandria’s apparent resurrection.  But an injury, no matter how grave?  That was something that could be remedied, it lent a feeling of invulnerability, an image of invulnerability.  So we continued being reckless, and we would continue to be reckless until something finally killed us off. - Excerpt from Crushed 24.3</ref> As healers are able to return wounded and disabled capes to the battlefield they are by definition a force multiplier.

Consider the specific example of the various time manipulators. Grey Boy, Perdition and Semiramis can both loop time to reverse injuries, but Perdition and Semiramis can alleviate pain and undo injury and the target is then free while Gray Boy is a banal torturer. In Semiramis and Perdition's case the 'healing' is merely a byproduct, as previously covered,<ref name="dm29"/> of a power meant to manipulate time.  Both can also heal themselves as well of any damage. Dispatch is also a time-manipulator, but his healing is solely through medical training and equipment rather than a direct function of his power.<ref name="24.3 e1">Dispatch, vice-captain of the Houston Protectorate team, zipped over to a group of wounded with accelerated speed, only to seem to pause, as though he and his immediate surroundings were only video footage. Color and space distorted violently in an irregular area around him as he hung there, just an inch over the ground, one hand at his belt and another reaching for someone with intense burns.

A half-second later, the effect dissipated, and they were all moving. Dispatch was carrying one of the most wounded, gloves off and the sleeves of his costume pulled up, dried blood up to his elbows. Others were bandaged and sutured. His name, I knew, came from his ability to pick out targets in a fight, closing the distance to them and catching them in his temporal distortion effect. He’d have minutes or hours, however long it took the air within the effect to run out, to end the fight with his super strength, durability and the close confines of the bubble. To any observers, it appeared as though he’d won the fight in a heartbeat. Apparently the idea extended to medical care. - Excerpt from Crushed 24.3</ref>

For contrast, self-healing or regeneration is not unknown in brutes, breakers, and changers, but in those cases, it also can be seen as a byproduct, specifically, an extension of their personal safeguards.<ref name="I5">In the end, though, scholars in the setting haven’t fully researched and understood the Manton effect and why it exists. So the fact that there’s some confusion on the matter (to the point we may be talking about different effects that are all being (erroneously?) gathered under the same umbrella) is perfectly ok. -  Comment by Wildbow in Interlude 5</ref>

History

Background

Similarly to mass-teleporters are always considered a valuable asset.

Story Start

Needed for endbringer incursions.

Gold Morning

Were extremely valuable in reducing fatalities.

References

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