xp_logs | Red X

Clarice sat on the airplane, trying not to pick at her nails. It was her other 'bad habit', her

usual one being braiding her long hair. She had already pulled her hair back into a french braid

and didn't want to mess with it. Once more she sat on her hands to stop picking. She tried to

breathe like she'd been taught to calm herself before a bout. It mostly worked, but then the plane

landed.

"Are you okay?" Piotr asked, as they headed with paramedics to a multi-car accident.

"Yeah," Clarice smiled up at him, "Sure."

Piotr nodded, not believing her at all. She looked as nervous as he felt.

"Mutants..." one of the paramedics mumbled as they approached, "I'll be damned."

"Hello, I'm Piotr, this is Clarice," Piotr introduced them to the paramedics they were to work with. "We're from Red X."

"The mutie program? Yeah, come on," The paramedic was curt, "We've got a multi-car accident to deal

with. Not to mention all the other problems. Can you hack it?" He cast a sideways glance at

Clarice, who smiled brightly. His shirt read 'Joe'.

"Bring it on," she replied, pulling her Red X hat off and putting it on backwards.

"Holy Mary, mother of Jesus," he mumbled as he and Clarice taped up some minor cuts on a mother a

few minutes later, watching as Piotr pulled a door off a car. "You all do that?"

"No," she told him, "Different people, different mutations."

"I don't want to be treated by you!" the mother shrieked, trying to snatch her hand from Clarice's.

She held tight, not releasing the woman's hand, "Ma'am, you need your hand bandaged, this cut is

pretty bad. And I'm the only one who can do it right now."

"But you're a mutant!"

"Yes," Clarice bobbed her head, trying to smile, "I'm Clarice, glitter pixie extraordinaire and

your personal hand-bandager. What's your name?" Clarice continued to talk to her, keeping her

attention distracted while she worked to clean the cut and secure it tightly.

"Marie," she replied, dazed, "Are you even old enough to be a paramedic?"

"I'm a part of Red X," the younger girl explained, motioning towards her t-shirt, "it's kinda like

a mutant version of the Red Cross. We're all just here to help."

"Ready, kid?" Joe asked, carefully lifting the stretched into the back of the ambulance.

"Yeah, let's get to the hospital," they quickly packed up their supplies and loaded the child and

his mother into the ambulance, "Piotr said that he will ride in the other one."

Joe nodded, climbing into the ambulance cab. The 2nd rig would be following them in a few minutes.

At the hospital, Clarice sat at the paramedic desk while Joe did paperwork, idly wondering if this

was all she had to do. She had been so nervous about helping and all she had done was put

antiseptic and bandaids on cuts.

Their radio crackled to life, "Rig 465, we're stuck at the Dunbar Bridge, patients are critical,

repeat, need backup, we're stuck!"

"Shit," Joe said, "It hadn't looked too steady when we went over it."

"The bridge we went over?" Clarice asked, "A few miles back?"

"Yeah, the one with the high water."

"I'll get them!" she jumped up before he could say anything, "Make sure the center of room 1 is

clear!" and created a teleportation disk and stepped through it.

"What the hell?" Joe asked, but going to do as he had been told.

Not five minutes later he saw another wihte disk appear and Clarice appear in it, this time with a

gurney. "Do something!" she said.

Almost before she had closed the disk doctors and nurses had already gathered, working to save the

patient.

"What was that!?" Joe demanded once they were back in the hallway.

Clarice had resumed her spot next to the desk as if nothing had happened. "Bob, the other paramedic

and Piotr are trying to get the ambulance un-stuck, I'm supposed to go back in 30 minutes and see

if they need more help," she reported.

"What did you do?" Joe repeated, confused.

"I do more than look funny," Clarice said, rolling her eyes, "I can teleport too as long as I know

where I'm going."

"Come on, kid," Joe helped her up from the chair, "Let's take a walk on the wild side. I'll buy you some coffee."

Clarice smiled, both at the idea of more caffiene and because all her fears about being hated hadn't come true. "And the purple girls go 'do do do...'" she sang under her breath, trying not to skip down the hall. She was supposed to be mature.