Harry Potter and the Oversized Medvac

[Cathul Thuku]

After what she went through on Kaeshana and Mechis 3, where she learned battle meditation, she realizes that battle meditation is still another tool she needs to practice if she wishes to make the First Order tremble. On Mechis 3, she might have been able to use it on 8 captains at great cost, and enabling them to operate that much more efficiently, but it was highly taxing. She also realized that, while Instinctive Astrogation Control, which she used to fly from Mechis 3 to Kaeshana, forces her to use the Force and her brain in bursts (more so her brain than the Force at her level; IAC is more a question of brainpower than actual Force-skill or how big is one's Force-batteries), battle meditation is a sustained kind of thing. The ANS Lothal was tagged as a medical transport on transponders to collect the wounded and the dead from the battlefields around the planet, especially since the battle crest of Therapy Command is mostly a red cross on a white field. Her entire bridge crew is under the effect of battle meditation, that she saw fit to activate only while on the final approach to Kaeshana and in the landing sequence, knowing that naval engagements usually don't last longer than the last leg of a medium-haul hyperspace flight (ca. 3-4 hours). Once the Lothal is close to reversion to realspace, with her temporary student onboard...

"All hands, prepare to initiate landing sequence: land somewhere north of the Citadel of Dawn, far enough to avoid heavy defensive fire but not too far away from it that it makes medvac/casvac impossible to do. We have 2 squadrons of medvac shuttles at our disposal, and a squadron of Neimoidian Yachts for casvac"

"We have arrived over Kaeshana, admiral, medvac crews are underway"

"Landing sequence initiated"

"Oh and [member="Commander Firestorm"], here's your chance to learn Force-healing and Detoxify Poison"

 

[Commander Firestorm]

Firestorm put on his helmet and pressed a button on his wrist controls, activating the vitals scanner on his HUD. "Okay I'm ready." Firestorm stood near [member="Cathul Thuku"] as the ship prepped for landing. He wore all of his gear, plus a few bacta packs on his belt in case of an emergency situation.

 

[Cathul Thuku]

While she knew that some Mando Jedi preferred to rely on their equipment, clearly [member="Commander Firestorm"] wasn't a Mandalorian. Yet, upon sensing in the Force that the time-displaced ARC trooper was activating the vitals part of the HUD. That's understandable, he might not have much Force-sense skill; then again, I know better than to expect Radar of Mandalore-level of skill from a padawan, she thought, while not realizing that her mind was hyperactive, too active for her own good perhaps. Meanwhile, all around her, the technicians assemble the medical equipment in the ship's sickbay, starting with the surgical beds and their surrounding equipment. The Lothal landed in the northern areas close to where the fiercest ground combat in the Kaeshana campaign occurred, with pneumatic hisses being heard near the landing ramps, while monitoring the ship for any repulsorlift or landing gear malfunction. Once the landing ramps are lowered, medvac teams began to collect any injured GA survivors while combing through the battlefield and having to distinguish between First Order and Alliance casualties, if their IFF tags are still active. Before the first medvac/casvac teams are set to return, however...

"Before I begin, any good use of Force-healing begins with locating where it hurts on the patient. If you can identify anything wrong with the patient, whether bones, muscle or other flesh, then visualize that area being restored to its initial condition. Or, if it is an infection, to get the infectious agent(s), virus, bacteriae, spores and whatnot, removed from the patient's body. Doing that, however, requires that you serve as a conduit for the healing energies between the Force and the patient. While Force-healing is useful on the field, it is a mentally strenuous task, and mental endurance is key for the more severe injuries or conditions. Now, I'm sure that you will heed the warning, because you're early in your learning curve of the Force, but I know so many that don't: don't expect near-instant healing every single time"

 

[Commander Firestorm]

Firestorm then pressed a few more controls on his armor, and the vitals HUD shut down, he had just been testing the HUD display to make sure it worked properly in case he need it. He then responded to [member="Cathul Thuku"], "I would not expect to get it on my first try, but I know you don't get any better if you don't keep trying." He looked away for a moment, "My old General taught me that," his voice had a somber tone as he said this. He then turned his attention back to Cathul, "Thank you for giving me this opportunity, I haven't been able to expand my skills much in a long time."

 

[Cathul Thuku]

Now that the medvac teams returned to ship, with patients being triaged inside unfinished sickbays, Cathul had to choose a patient for [member="Commander Firestorm"] to work on. The casvac shuttles bring back over nearly 700 dead Alliance soldiers on the first run: oh, the fighting must have been intense around the Citadel of Dawn! To think that some people among the command staff and the elite troops once complained that the whole engagement was, well, tedious. Yet wars are won, in part, with tedium, especially when individual engagements can only involve a small fraction of a belligerent faction's military and, in particular attrition warfare. Does she have sufficient pull among the Alliance admiralty to warn the rest of it about attrition warfare as it pertains to the First Order? She isn't confident about that. The injured patient lies abed, right in front of the ARC trooper, with an open fracture, screaming in pain.

"Looks like that patient suffered from broken bones. Using the Force to heal does not mean that you shouldn't take other precautions to stabilize and immobilize patients by non-Force means. If the required procedure would normally require anaesthesia to perform, you should also consider using the Force to induce anaesthesia"

 

[Commander Firestorm]

Firestorm stepped up to the patient and raised his hand over the patient, and closed his eyes as he let the Force flow through him, letting him induce a state of anaesthesia on the patient. The patient's screaming died down as the pain was nulled by the Force. He then tried using the Force to find the broken bones and surrounding tissue damage, eventually finding it.

"I've induced a state of anaesthesia and have located the injuries, should I proceed to attempt to heal them?" He calmly asked Cathul.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Now you may proceed to attempt to heal the injuries"

Knowing [member="Commander Firestorm"], the sooner, the better: the Force-induced anaesthesia would not last very long. Cathul knew that broken bones, torn flesh are easier to cure for even beginners; heck, her first Force-healing patient on Mandalore was there for broken bones. Sure Rianna didn't like it much at the time, but now she has no reason left to complain about that. Beginners in Force-healing should only be used to deliver first aid; even so, sometimes all a padawan can do is palliative in nature. And they shouldn't try doing stuff on the magnitude of curing invasive metastases in terminal stage: Cathul tried it and it took six hours under general anaesthesia to do. Meanwhile, the crew working on medical emergencies such as large-scale combat medvac are complaining about how they had to rush the implementation of the medical equipment delivered onboard but that they never got around to install properly. It is less of an issue as it pertains to casvac, however: sure some sanitary precautions need to be made for casvac, but not at the same standard as medvac. To that end, the cargo hold would do just fine.

 

[Commander Firestorm]

Firestorm proceeded with the healing process. The patient's bones and tissue started to mend as the Force healed the damage, fragments and displaced bone also repositioned and mended themselves. The healing process lasted around a minute before Firestorm finished. "I believe that should do it. I made sure all the fragments and displaced bone were correctly healed."
[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Even with bone fragments being properly in place with the Force, that does not excuse the patient from needing a recovery downtime"

That was a little fast: then again, he was familiar with combat injuries and that might account for the speed at which he treated the patients. That very case reminds of my first patient as a Force-healer: I had to heal such a thing, I knew the patient needed to be immobilized but Rianna told me to back up then, she thought. And the ARC trooper called [member="Commander Firestorm"] now had a tool to help treat his fellow men that are injured in combat. Now for Detoxify Poison:

"Detoxify Poison is perhaps a little more complicated because you would need to act on the molecules of poison and then break the poison molecules apart"

 

[Commander Firestorm]

"Recovery and rest is an essential part after an operation or healing, so he will need to recuperate. Well we shouldn't keep a poison victim waiting, who knows how dangerous or lethal the toxin might be." He pressed a button on his armor's controls, activating a toxin identifier to help him see what kind of toxin he would be up against. "I activated my toxin identifier, it should help me figure out what the toxin is made up of so I can properly neutralize it at the molecular level."

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Now, based on your findings, you may start neutralizing the poison in the patient"

The main problem of Detoxify Poison was identifying the poison involved and the weak spots of the poison at the molecular level. Sure chemical knowledge would be nice, organic chemistry, biochemistry, organometallics, but there were so many possible substances that it was pointless to know a possible Force-antidote to all of them, especially since some of those had so many atoms in it that molecular pieces may have to be broken down again for those not to pose any risks. That is why Art of the Small practitioners tended to be skilled in using Detoxify Poison (if light-sided) or alchemy (if dark-sided). And also others that waited until later in life to train in the ways of the Force that were skilled at using Art of the Small and/or Detoxify Poison were often people who knew chemistry and/or physics at an advanced level. [member="Commander Firestorm"] may not know nearly as much about the Force as Cathul does, but that was what she was there for.

"Sometimes you may find that you may have to break down poisons multiple times due to the poisons' molecular complexity, and, as you gain in skill, you will be able to deal with poisons of increasing complexity"

 

[Commander Firestorm]

Firestorm began the process, focusing on the task until he finished, several minutes had passed and he panted slightly, having not done this before.

"There I...finished *PANT* the process."
[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"It worked, just that you're now out of Force-energy. Perhaps you should just let your Force-batteries recharge. Also, Force-sense is useful for diagnosis purposes should an EMP fry the equipment in your armor"

Upon realizing that [member="Commander Firestorm"] was out of Force-energy, she would need to call it a day, even though his attempt worked. Now he could act as a field medic in an emergency. And then she realized that, as much as he relied on his HUD and the equipment inside his armor, it was possible that EMPs could fry his electronics, and this is where, from experience, she knew that the Force was more important to possess in those situations. That was the main reason as to why she preferred to eschew some of the electronics (thermal sensors, HUD) on her own suit of beskar armor. Perhaps it was time to go teach him about the Jedi Code and to ask him to what extent he was able to do such a thing. Then again, she knows better than to underestimate ARC troopers. In her recollections of history, some Jedi tended to think of clone troopers, even ARC ones, as having a one-track mind, but here clones are confronted with their individuality.

"There is no emotion, there is peace, there is no ignorance, there is knowledge, there is no passion, there is serenity, there is no chaos, there is harmony, there is no death, there is the Force. To what extent did your previous master teach about the Jedi Code and the implications of following it?"

 

[Commander Firestorm]

She taught me the code, to detach myself from emotions and feel the force in and around me, to treat knowledge as an ally, and find beauty and serenity in my surroundings, wherever I may be, because the Force surrounds and binds us, it is a part of us and we are a part of it, my master taught me meditation as well so I may reach out to the Force and become one with it, to feel peace. To stray from this is the path to the Dark side and the pain and destruction that follows it." He spoke calmly, having removed his helmet, he had a small tattoo of the symbol of the old jedi order above his right eye (near where Fives had his tattoo).

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"I begin to suspect that it's far from complete: even though the Force is infinite, anyone's ability to use it is not. Even though the concept of accountability is nothing new to you, there is stuff you might have to be wary about. There seems to be so many ways to fall to the dark side, such as arrogance, inflated ego, lack of knowledge of one's own limitations, impatience, frustration, so it's important to know what triggers you, and be mindful of any of those things, which could be used against you. I know several Mandalorian Jedi will simply jump into battle and fight Sith lords while it's otherwise out of their league, and get themselves killed or otherwise got nasty stuff happen to them without need, because they were overconfident or something"

Yes, she knew Mandos, much like [member="Commander Firestorm"] is a clone of a Mand'alor, Jango Fett (as is the case of all the ARC troopers from that era), often wanted to fight targets that were stronger than they themselves were but, in her mind, approaching such targets was to be made with caution: they can fight stronger than themselves, all right, but if it's someone they know it's too strong for them on their own, they should fall back and regroup. There is, so to speak, some sort of yellow zone where they could engage at their own risk and where a Mando should be fighting. However, she knew that there were so many paths to the dark side - that, even though she was initially trained by a dark-sider without having fully embraced the dark side herself. Despite her dar'manda-ness, to Mandos' eyes, she is the testament of the kind of effort required to resist the dark side while being trained by a dark-sider. Yet, even as a dark-sider, the one who trained her wasn't one's ordinary Sith.

"Jedi from your era like to talk about the no-attachment rule, but what Jedi of that era often said about attachments were that, in fact, it could lead someone to the dark side, but I would instead say that it can lead somebody in either direction, from light to dark, and also from dark to light"

Once again, it seemed to harken her back to her days as a therapist, reminded of her moments with all sorts of Force-using patients. In fact nearly every single FU on Mandalore that went to therapy went straight to her until her career as a therapist went poof. She knew that feeling loved by someone can make another person go to great lengths in either direction out of love, but she'd rather not tell about specifics just yet.