Power Swap: Explain this nonsense! (Sean)

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean shook his head before she could finish the thought. With all of Hammel’s resources and connections, when operating at its peak efficiency of staff and morale, they could not intervene quickly enough in the lives of all of the newly-manifested students. Even with the increased knowledge and awareness of meta-humans and the cooperative networks across their jurisdiction. Without their full resources, how could they possibly prevent a tragedy, when they did not know who was affected and what they had manifested, or how far this had spread. “The hospital ER is on the lookout after a conversation with Yvette, but that isn’t preventative.” Merely a precaution for later intervention.

Sean pursed his lips together in thought, running through a mental list of the confirmed changes and losses, as of the staff meeting and panicked email chain to which he had been a party this morning. “About half of our trainers have lost their powers,” he replied after a long moment. That put them at half-capacity as a starting proposition. “And so did about a third of our recruiters.”

Which meant that finding those who had recently manifested before a tragic accident befell them, their loved ones, their casual acquaintances, or any strangers that crossed their path became exponentially less likely. They had experienced natural disasters with more qualified staff on hand than they currently possessed.

The psychiatrist placed his hands on his knees, using the leverage to rise to his feet so that he could pace.

He missed Robert. Surely, his mentor would know what to do if confronted with this situation. However, the dead had no answers for the living, and Robert had died so long ago.

"I don't like to admit it but I don't see Hammel as a cure-all."

[Sophie Tillman]

Half?! Sophie almost blurted out, alarmed by his estimation. Those were terrible odds, even setting aside how many students relied on each trainer for help and lessons. With that in mind, Hammel sounded less like a refuge during this fiasco and more like a time bomb. Potentially every student had been affected, and the trainers yanked out from under them; had she still been a teen at the school, Sophie thought, she would barricade herself in her dorm, waiting for a smoke alarm to go off so she could flee out a window.

When Dr. Neville got up to pace the room, Sophie watched him enxiously. It was rare to see him so agitated; given the circumstances, she obviously couldn't blame him, but it was certainly not the vote of confidence she'd hoped for when she'd decided to visit.

"How much does the rest of the town know?" she asked? Sophie hadn't had much time to catch the local news, but the bulk of Pilot Ridge's citizens were aware of the higher-than-average meta population. Plenty of them must have noticed something was awry, even assuming they hadn't been affected themselves. "Has the mayor made a statement or anythin'?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean knew that the odds sounded terrible. They odds were terrible, but that was the hand that they had been dealt. Unable to reverse it, for now as they did not know the cause, their only option was to cope to the best of their abilities.

He needed to crawl out of this funk if he was to be useful. At least he had improved since yesterday, in that he was out and about and could speak coherently. Nobody save Josh could know how badly affected he had been the day before.

“Very little, I would imagine. As far as I know, nobody in the administration has spoken to the local politicians or to the media.” By which Sean meant that nobody had informed him that they had done so. Without his telepathy, he found himself limited by the same social and information constraints as the rest of the world, and he did not care for it. He felt so impotent.

He paused in his tracks, shaking his head a single time. “There haven’t been any announcements. I don’t think they would make one.” This constituted a Hammel emergency and an emergency for the meta-human population at large. From Sophie’s descriptions, non-powered people had been affected as well, but nobody knew the cause, and, as such, the psychiatrist did not expect an official announcement or a press conference.

“I suppose someone from Hammel should go to the Hall of Records so we can match names and addresses.”