TITLE: The Price Of Survival
AUTHOR: Ananova Crowe ||^_^||
Metallica: Poor Twisted Me (cont.)
So tell me why you've chosen me
Don't want your grip; don't want your greed
I'll tear me open, make you gone
No more can you hurt anyone
And the fear still shakes me
So hold me, until it sleeps
It grips you, so hold me
It stains you, so hold me
It hates you, so hold me
It holds you, so hold me
~*~
The Price of Survival Chapter .3 - Metallic Animals
(Sum up chapter before: Jean has entered Logan's mind and sees how he was kidnapped and another person's admittance into the remaining shards of Magneto's Brotherhood for some odd reason. She then finds out that Logan somehow ends up as another lab experiment with an unknown woman demonstrating on him and a bullet hole in his leg.)
*Jean is still in Logan's mind; present*
Logan awoke with a start, feeling the mud and sweat and blood still streaked across his face. His heart thundered loudly in his head until he commanded it to calm, this was not the time to get excited. It took him a moment to find where he was from his eyesight, which stayed a gray haze.
Bones that he didn't even know he had ached with damage or strain when he tried unsuccessfully to move. It took him even longer to figure out that the cruel device that had locked around him from his dream was really clasped around his body. All except for the mask across his face, which still wasn't much of a comfort.
His claws had been pulled outside from beneath his skin, held out and useless in two metal gloves that splayed his fingers and ran up to his elbows, locking his arms to his side. The cold metal bit down into his skin, pulling his flesh when he tried to move.
He searched quickly for something to get him loose, anything that could help him. Until his eyes fell upon a young girl about the age of fourteen lying on a medical bed close enough for Logan to recognize her, even with his blurred vision.
She had been the one lying on the ground before he had been attacked in the forest, the little girl with the glowing rose. For that, Logan felt absolutely no pain or mercy for her, no matter if she had done nothing to him.
The girl muttered something and turned over with a bit of effort, her face flinching in pain as she rolled onto her other side. Her silent and sleeping face was calming to Logan; all except for the lines snaking out from her arms and the silver microchips along her shoulders and neck, which made her look unreal.
She was stripped down to her skin except for a sterile white dressing was wound around her chest and midsection, covering the still bleeding wound at her stomach. Leaving her shoulders bare and open to the chill of the room, shivering slightly. A soft blanket had fallen down over her legs, but Logan doubted that the girl could reach down and pull it back up by herself.
He was about to shift his eyes somewhere else when he saw two pockets of aligned skin in the middle of her back. They were thin and wide, almost like an opening for something that was hidden inside of her back, under her flesh.
Logan shook his head, tearing his eyes away from the girl and focussing back to getting himself free of the device that claimed him immobile in all aspects. His body screamed for him to quit straining, but he ignored it, taking all his risks blindly and shoving them behind him.
"There is no escape Logan," A voice carried out from behind him, it was cold and lacked emotion. Despite the deficiency, Logan could tell that the voice belonged to someone real, someone who he had unsuccessfully killed in the past.
"Mystique..." Logan spat as if the words were acid in his mouth, he quit struggling to get free and waited until she came into his view, her blue body shining gorgeously in the light. She took no time to walk over to the girl and lean over her protectively, checking her lines.
"What happened to her?" Despite the fact that he didn't much care, he asked anyway, figuring he wasn't going anywhere soon.
"The same thing that you did to me..." Mystique hissed like an enraged snake, pointing down to the three pink scars at the brim of the bottom of her ribcage. Her yellow eyes blazed in fury, widening until them seemed to glow.
"So that's who I got, that's a shame. Too bad I didn't aim higher on you though..." Logan spat, not satisfied with his penetration point on Mystique's belly. He regretted not killing her, or not staying around long enough for him to make sure she died.
"You had no right..." Mystique hissed, shoving her intense blue face three inches away from Logan's. He could feel her icy breath on his lips, and she could feel his breath ignited by a thousand hell's on her lips.
"I thought the Brotherhood didn't take kindly to compassion..." Logan tested her, looking deep into her eyes as if to look into the soul she didn't have. She stared back as intensely, trying in vain to penetrate his mind and see what he was thinking.
"If you haven't noticed lately Logan, there is no Brotherhood." Her eyes suddenly turned soft as she said that, missing her leader, Magneto. Then she hardened again, remembering what she had in her clutches on. "But isn't it amazing how the word mutant is so close to the word mutiny?"
"The war between humans and mutants is approaching, and there will be an uprising. But poor Wolverine is stuck without any relief. Whatever will you do?" She pushed back from him, leaning back against a countertop with her hands spread out to support her.
"Get to the point. What do you want with me?" Logan seethed.
"Your partnership..." Another voice came from someone standing in the room that he couldn't see, maybe hiding behind something. Logan looked back to Mystique, following her eyes to nothing by her side.
Then suddenly, an outline of someone's head melted out of thin air, then melting down in the shape of shoulders and a woman's torso. Continuing to melt out of the air as an outline of a lean stomach and hips, before finally solidifying into a beautiful woman who stood the same size as Mystique.
Bright blue eyes seemed to shine in the green light, glinting awkwardly as they stared at him resolutely. Her pale skin was almost translucent and even from his distance; Logan could make out the veins in the top of her chest. She wore a long-sleeved white shirt that had a low hanging collar.
Black leather pants clung tight to her legs, looking incredibly uncomfortable for her liquid washed body. Her shortly cropped blonde hair hung choppy along the sides of her face. It was segmented as though she had just gotten out of a pool long enough for her hair to only begin to dry.
"Vanish." She introduced herself, not stopping for a moment to continue to explain the situation. "With you, the human race would not stand a chance against us. We would overrule and dominate them, stopping all violence against mutants."
"That's where the problem lies sister, what if I say no?..." Logan said as if he had fair game in their little charade they threw out in front of him.
"Than we have no choice but to destroy you..." Vanish walked silently over to the girl, leaning close to gently kiss her on the shoulder before standing and slowly stroking the girl's hair. "From the inside out..."
Logan's killer left eyebrow arched in confusion, his dark eyes flashing to Mystique who only smiled wickedly, letting her teeth shine through. Logan returned his eyes to Vanish, thinking of her words as much as he dared.
"No." Logan said directly, he was not prepared to join the hanging threads of the Brotherhood, no matter what conditions they were under. And he wasn't going to join them because of some little threat, that was for sure.
"When you skewered her yesterday, she had already lost so much blood that I could not use my healing powers to save her. You, Mr. Logan, punctured one of her lungs and tore her intestines apart just enough to make her die slowly, with more pain than we could ever inflict upon you." Vanish knew that once Logan made a decision, he kept it until the bitter end, which was a pity for him.
"So?" Logan asked simply, watching Vanish intently.
"But from your abduction yesterday, we witnessed your healing ability as much more powerful than mine and may prove useful to save her life." Vanish said, suggesting that she had been the one that Logan had thrown against the tree.
"I don't transfer my powers to others..." Logan didn't quite get that.
"That matters little to us, after all..." Mystique suddenly shifted into the woman from his dreams, the one who had shot him in the leg as an experiment. "It's science..." With a smile, Mystique shifted smoothly back into her regular form.
She walked over to him and pulled down the blanket, revealing a hole in his jeans at his thigh, which was crusted with blood that smelled recent to Logan's enhanced senses. He suddenly realized that he had not been dreaming, that the entire experiment had actually happened and he had really been shot.
"We'll be back in the morning. Meanwhile you need some rest, to keep yourself strong for tomorrow." Vanish smiled and stroked the girl's hair one last time before following Mystique out of the room.
"Oh yes," Vanish came back to Logan's side, pulling a metal mask with a single segmented metal tube snaking out from the middle for oxygen. She pulled the black strap at the back of the mask across the back of his head, securing it tightly. "Can't have you waking us."
Logan's eyebrows dropped into a mean scowl as Vanish leaned down and kissed him lightly on the cheek like a mother. Her lips felt like ice to his skin, and when they left his cheek, he could feel the point of contact tingle as heat returned to it. "Sleep well." And with the hiss of a metal door, she was gone and he was plunged into complete blackness.
~*~
"Good morning. I hope you got a sufficient amount of sleep last night. I know I did." Logan awoke to the icy words, dropping his eyebrows immediately into a scowl, showing his animosity towards her.
"Bad Wolverine, we'll have none of that." She scolded as if he were a misbehaving dog. She took her icy, pale hand and combed it through his hair, petting him nicely before walking out of his view.
It took Logan a minute to realize that they had moved him during the night, clamping him spread-eagle to another horizontal medical bed set on hydraulics. The blood and sweat and dirt had been washed from his face, or he had become so use to it that he couldn't feel it anymore.
He was surprised to find that he was free to move his head, so he took no time into looking down at himself, making sure they hadn't done anything else to him. But from the looks of it, they hadn't. He was still dressed in his worn blue jeans, his Indian-head buckle shining bright in the lights.
The cuffs at his wrists and ankles cut into his skin, making it impossible to move. He relaxed back against the cold, hard surface of the table, the coldness comforting to his bare back and shoulders.
He stiffened when he heard the hiss of hydraulics and twisted his head to the side, seeing the girl in the same position as him, except she had no clamps on her wrists or ankles. The dressing at her stomach had a bloom of crimson blood pushing through, giving color to her drained and tired features.
"What's with the rose?" Logan asked to someone who he sensed close by, noticing the magnificent rose was glowing brighter than ever, a tiny blue flame ignited above it's crimson head.
"It holds her essence," Vanish explained, hooking a line into Logan's arm with a sharp prick. She glanced up to look at the rose, impressed with its beauty. "Well, the part that won't fit." She said with a smile, backing away again.
"Into what?" Logan was almost afraid to ask, but he was left unanswered. Without a word, Mystique walked silently by and returned the oxygen mask to his face that had been removed during the night. The stale, metallic tasting air swept into his nose and mouth, stinging his throat.
Suddenly, the bed began to rise on the hydraulics, the bottom dropping down so he was now rising vertically. His weight shifted down to his ankles, the restraints biting into his wrists as they threatened to pull his hands apart from his arms.
"Congratulations Wolverine. You'll be the first ever to actually supply the life to someone who should already be dead..." Vanish called up with a wicked smile, she was small from the height he was rising at, and he was partially glad to get away from her.
He looked up, seeing the top of his head about three feet from the high roof as his bed hissed to a stop. He took another look down, seeing Vanish rush to help Mystique at the girl's side. They both had her around the shoulders, supporting her as they helped her off the bed and stood reeling on weak knees.
Then Vanish leaned down and whispered something into her ear that made the girl's eyes ignite into a fearsome red light. She reminded Logan of Scott when he got really angry and his visor began to glow. He almost smiled at the thought of ol' four-eyes, but he was pulled from the thought as he witnessed something incredible below him.
Something white and smooth began to grow from the girl's back, undoubtedly from the two holes Logan had seen the day before when the girl lay unconscious beside him. Even from his height he could see two folded rods elevating from her back before spreading wide to show a connection covered with bright, white feathers.
Her dark face further illuminating her angel wings until the wings appeared to glow as brightly as the rose, which looked as if it might explode with power. The girl seemed to transfer her power and anger to and from the rose, before screaming in rage and lifting from the ground.
She fluttered there for a moment, her feet barely off of the ground as she grew accustomed to flight. Her huge, beautiful wings flapped lightly, kicking up tiny clouds of dust from the floor and throwing them to the side. Then she shifted her weight until they were on her wings and shot upward, twisting like a spiraling torpedo.
She blurred as she flew swiftly through the air, pushing her arms out in front of her as if she were prepared to dive into a pool. But she arched and was aimed straight in the middle of Logan's chest, her eyes blazing with fire.
Logan tried in vain to duck or do anything to get out of the way, but his restraints held him fast to the table. His mouth opened to scream, but at the impact and velocity at which Knightmare hit him, he did nothing but tense.
Which was stupid to do and he knew it, but only after he heard the sickening crack of a bone and an intense pain sang out through his entire leg, numbing it with agony. Only after he felt the girl take pose in his spread-eagle position and fill his bones and body, he found his voice as loud a roar that he shook the building and everything within.
The small glass windows high on the walls seemed to immediately shatter, his roar echoing brutally off the walls to come ricocheting back even louder than before. Knightmare's hands crept through his arms like an internal fire, searing everything it touched but slowly enough for him to get as much pain out of it as he could.
His body felt like it was being torn apart from the inside, each of his intestines being set aflame before bursting into a pure white ball of pain. Soon, it was too much for him to take and he fell unconscious, letting his wrists hold his weight as he fell limp against the table.
She was feeding off of him, stealing his powers from his veins and gorging herself to heal her own wounds, taking his body as a protective shell and never vowing to leave. Even through his unconsciousness, Logan could feel the pain in his entire body, sucking him dry of energy and essence.
~*~
"Look!" Scott pointed through the front of the jet to a flash of brilliant red light before the forest returned to normal. "There was a flash of light..." He explained, knowing that Storm could not have gotten up to the front fast enough to see it while the flash happened.
Jean screamed and fell to her knees, clutching her head in pain as the last of the brainwaves penetrated her mind. Before anyone could touch her, she was upright with her eyes clutched closed, looking for something.
"No...No!" She yelled in frustration. "I lost him!" She collapsed back against the control panel in the nose of the Blackbird jet, still collecting herself after the last painful thread of Logan's mind had been ripped loose of her grip.
"What is it? What happened?" Storm looked worried and rushed to her side, taking a quick glance back to Scott who was piloting the jet and couldn't look back at the moment. They were passing low over the forest; the jetlag shaking the treetops as they swept inches away from the tips.
They had been following Jean's link to Logan's mind to get his location, but suddenly she had lost it. Sharing his mind also shared his pain, and at their disconnection, Jean had felt the full force of his pain as his brain suddenly seemed to be overwhelmed by something, or someone.
"He's gone! I lost the connection when Scott saw the light!" Jean tried desperately again to reach his mind, but it was as if someone had thrown up an impenetrable wall between their minds and was not prepared to pull it down anytime soon.
"Then that'll be the first place we look..." Scott said under his breath, pulling the jet into a U-turn back to the location the light had come from. He landed the jet smoothly in a clearing; feeling it unimportant to give himself cover, but making it easy for a fast get away.
Jean, Storm, and Cyclops stuck together as they slunk through the forest, keeping their ears open and their eyes sharp. "You are sure it was here?" Storm asked skeptically, figuring that every inch of the forest looked almost exactly the same as the rest.
"Yes, I sense others..." Jean began, bringing her fingertips to her temples as she concentrated hard on following the strange brainwaves. "There..." One of her hands left her head and pointed out in front of her toward an unusually crowded tangle of trees. Their limbs reached and twisted around each other, fighting as they spiraled up towards the light.
Storm, Cyclops, and Jean all broke into a run towards the trees. Cyclops to the side of his visor with his gloved hand and expertly blasted away some spindling limbs, revealing a brick wall with moss and lichen growing in the cracks and along the bricks.
"I don't think they'll be expecting visitors this time of day. So perhaps we should knock." Cyclops quipped as he discharged the powerful optic blast form his eyes, shattering through the wall as if it was nothing but a piece of paper. He stepped in carefully and surveyed the surroundings, beckoning the woman to follow him before he was gone into the darkness.
"Let's just find Logan and get out, this place is giving me the creeps," Jean commented, brushing away a spider web before it could catch her face. She looked blindly into the pitch-black room, hearing only the sound of constantly dripping water from a loose pipe somewhere in the room and the X-Men's almost silent footsteps.
"Then allow me to shed some light on your location," A Russian voice burst through the room like an earthquake ripping through the ground. Suddenly, a torch hanging high at the far wall ignited with a blazing orange flame. Another hanging torch took flame, followed by another and another until the room was almost completely lighted by at least twelve different torches.
Only the far-left corner was left untouched by the bright fingers of the light, as if it was shunned and held back from the corner. "Who the..." Cyclops began, preparing to flash his beam into the corner to ignite it, but his words were cut short when something emerged from the shadows.
A tall, well-built man with dark skin levitated out from the shadows, he wore complete black, a dark cape flipping gently around the top of his boots. The torchlight broke and scattered across his face, making him appear fearsome as he scoured down on the intruders.
"I am Flame. And you three have just signed your death deeds by your untimely interruption." He slowly floated downward, carefully distancing himself from the three X-Men and landing silently on the floor.
"Ready?" Jean said quietly and turned to face her fiancé, but suddenly Cyclops was ripped from the floor and thrown high into the air, scuffing the ceiling before gravity's hand beckoned him back to earth.
"Jean!" Cyclops yelled down as he reached frantically for anything to hold onto, suddenly he found a pipe and wrapped both his hands tightly around it, preying that it would support his weight. The pipe creaked and shifted, but it sustained its connection to the roof, for the time being.
Flame laughed wickedly, enjoying the moment, he loved watching Cyclops' feet dangle helplessly in the air. It had been too easy to dispose of the boy, and it would be even easier to destroy the two women.
Storm widened her stance and let her eyes become a milky white, pushing all of her power into a giant tornado that suddenly shrieked through the room, only touching down long enough by Flame's side to pick him up and smash him brutally against the wall.
The impact was so hard that the cement began to crumble, huge cracks reached up to the roof and started a chain-reaction in the ceiling. Suddenly, huge cement blocks began to fall, kicking up plumes of gray dust from the floor.
"Look out!" Jean yelled as she ran towards Storm, throwing herself against Storm and pushing her out of the way as an immense chunk of ceiling crashed down where she had just been standing. Jean rolled off and jumped to her feet, looking up to see Scott still dangling perilously from the pipe.
"Get me down!" Cyclops cried out, feeling the pipe begin to tear away from the ceiling, as long cracks snaked towards him, massing and joining as more chunks of ceiling fell away. One large piece crashed down on Cyclops' right hand, knocking that arm loose.
He held on preciously with one arm, his crushed fingers going numb and useless. He tried desperately to throw his dead hand back around the pipe, but his limp fingers slipped lazily off. The pipe suddenly began to sweat and cold water began to drip on his shoulder from a break in the connection above him.
He could feel his leather glove begin to slowly slide around the slick pipe, the condensation making the pipe slippery as if he were holding onto a piece of ice. *That's it!* He screamed in his mind. "Storm, give me a blizzard up here!"
Storm nodded, as she understood what he had meant and her dark, beautiful eyes suddenly turned completely white again. Cyclops could feel the icy winds twirl about him, reaching up to clasp the pipes and freeze them together. Though it would begin to melt soon, it gave Cyclops a minute or two extra to figure out something to do.
"You must hurry, the ice will not last long in this-" Storm was suddenly smashed against the wall by a giant ball of flame that struck her in the back, knocking her hard into the cement and sending another downpour of ceiling to come crashing down.
"Heat?" Flame finished for her, calmly dusting the ashes from his shoulders, a huge gash slit across his face. "Allow me to compensate..." Flame opened his mouth unbelievably wide, unhooking his jaws, as a snake would do before eating, and sent giant blast of fire towards Cyclops.
"No!" Cyclops yelled as the pipe began to creak and groan at the sudden fluctuations of temperature. Then, the pipe could no longer take it, and gave way from the ceiling with an ear-splitting shriek of creaking metal. Cyclops released the pipe just as it was about to swing sideways and smash him into the wall.
"Jean!" Cyclops yelled as he fell swiftly through the air, his arms and legs flailing as if by some miracle he would take flight. But the ground came closer and closer, threatening to swallow him up and crush him like an insect.
Suddenly, he was slowed by an invisible force that pushed up on him, easing him gently to the ground. It took him a moment to realize that Jean was using her telekinetic powers to help drop him to the ground. She was intensely involved in getting him safely to the ground, her eyes closed and her back turned to their assailant, which was an incredibly bad idea.
Just as Cyclops was about eight feet away from the ground, Jean's telekinetic energy suddenly pulled away from under him and he tumbled the rest of the way onto a hard, unfortunately placed chunk of ceiling.
The mass collided hard into his side, sending him spinning onto his other shoulder before finally coming to rest strewn about the ashes of the ceiling. Everything in his body hurt, except for his right hand, which he couldn't even feel, but he knew he'd broken a lot of fingers, if not all.
He lifted his head just in time to see Jean skid to a stop along the pavement, her limp body flipping uncontrollably as she tumbled over remnants of the ceiling and debris, only stopping when she smashed against the wall.
Flame flipped on his heel as a giant thunderclap echoed through the room, coming from the direction of one very beautiful, very pissed woman whose eyes were dead white and blonde hair standing on end, with blue cracks of electricity transferring between them.
"Have you ever wondered if a flame can get burnt?" Storm asked, her voice seeming to echo like the thunderclap before. With that, a huge blue streak of lightening barreled down out of nowhere and hit Flame squared in the chest, knocking him through the wall and on through at least three other cement walls before he came to smoking, limp pile of corpse four rooms away.
"Apparently so..." Storm allowed herself a smile of triumph and hurried to help Jean, who still laid sprawled unconscious against the east wall. Storm commanded the presence of a light shower over Jean's head, waking her with a coughing fit.
"Let's find Logan and get out of here..." Jean croaked as her coughing fit ended, she allowed Storm to help her to her feet. Both women looked back to see Cyclops stumbling through the debris, struggling to walk.
"Scott, are you alright?" Storm called out, leaving her arm about Jean to help support her friend as they depended on each other. "Nothing that can't be fixed," Scott grimaced as he cradled his crushed hand close to his chest and limped as fast as he could to catch up with them.
~*~
"Get back," Cyclops ordered in a hollow voice, the fall had taken a lot out of him and he was bleeding in numerous places, as were the others. They looked like an incredibly miserable rescue party, but it's all that Logan had to depend on.
He poked his head through the hole Flame had created in the wall, checking to see if the coast was clear. "Come on..." With that, he disappeared into the darkness, the two women following with weary steps.
"He's got to be around here somewhere..." Cyclops mumbled to himself, taking a look down to his hand cradled against his chest. His gloves were sticky and wet with blood, and he knew it would be an incredibly excruciating effort to get them off.
He cringed to even think about it, forcing himself to look further into the darkness, his visor barely illuminating their way through the huge, dark building. "What's that?" Jean asked softly, her voice weak and hoarse. She pointed with a shaky hand to a strip of green light peeking from the bottom of a closed door some way up the wall.
"I bet it's what we're looking for..." Cyclops said, quickening his pace as fast as his body would let him. He burst through the door, igniting all the X-Men in a florescent green light. The room was huge, like a giant warehouse crowded with all the greatest medical instruments and experimental equipment in the world.
There was a small whisper of footfalls and Cyclops turned his head just in time to see a shadow slink behind a rather large piece of equipment. He followed cautiously, trying to quiet his footsteps until they couldn't be heard. He held his breath, not daring to make a single sound.
Suddenly, something leapt from the shadows and latched onto his back, a blue-scaled arm wrapping around his neck with three nine-inch long claws protruding from their knuckles. The claws were at his neck in an instant, the other hand secure on his wrist.
"Mystique..." He breathed, the claws pushing harder into his neck as he felt her icy breath ruffling the side of his hair, right above his ear. He loosened his body, preparing to do something that had to work exactly or he would die a bloody, painful death.
With fluid motion, he twisted his body around and flipped Mystique expertly over his shoulder, slamming her to the ground. The claws retracted as she jumped up to her feet, taking on the attack as fast as Cyclops had to take a breath. Her feet flew straight at him, not giving him enough time to duck or jump to the side.
The balls of her feet struck him squarely in the middle of the chest and the next thing he knew he was flying backward and smashing into the giant piece of machinery. He recovered quickly and rolled, as he had been trained to do, and came up on his feet just as soon as a large panel slammed to the ground.
Sparking wires and the smell of burnt leather ignited the room with excitement, casting abnormal shadows across the wall with every crackle of a spark. Cyclops could feel where he hadn't gotten away from the machinery fast enough, his shoulders stung and he could feel the leather melt to his skin.
Mystique took his recovering time to cower behind another hunk of equipment, waiting for her strike, as a lion would do if stocking a gazelle in the African plain. Her yellow eyes were wide and she licked her lips, already hearing the snap of his bones beneath her hands and the final choked cry of her victim as she killed him.
Cyclops quieted his erratic breath, ignoring the pain in his shoulders and body. Feeling had already begun to return to his crushed fingers, which was not something to wallow in. His feeling came in pulses of agonizing pain, as if his heart was pumping the pain into his hand to punish him.
Still he stayed quiet, listening carefully for anything that might give Mystique away. He hoped to god the women were fairing well by themselves, he had no doubt in them, but he still had to be sure.
He couldn't chance a blink or he knew she would have him right where she wanted him. So he stood completely still in plain view of anything, luckily giving himself an ample amount of visual field.
~*~
Jean stumbled backward as a solid kick struck her hard in the stomach, struggling to keep her balance from the impact. She flashed a glance towards Storm who's head snapped back as a wet fist struck her in the face, sending her in a backward summersault before crashing to the ground, face-first.
"Storm!" Jean called out to her friend, kicking up into a shimmering contour of a real mutant who was about to attack her again. It was like kicking a sodden sponge, but she could feel bones smash beneath the toe of her boot as she watched the shimmering woman tumble backwards and splatter to the ground.
Their invisible attacker had come from the shadows, making her assault swift and harsh, putting up a good fight between the two X-Men simultaneously. The only forthcoming to her was the drip of water from her arms and legs, which still wasn't much of a helper.
She struck like a cobra, taking individual attacks on each of the women with one, swift action. Her movements were almost slowed a bit, like running a race in sodden shorts, taking her longer to swing her arms and legs.
But what she lacked in speed, she made up for in power. Her kicks and punches were so hard that Jean often found herself sprawled on the floor with an intense pain in her head or stomach.
Storm and Jean spun on their heels as an intense red beam ricocheted off the cement floor; another one X-ing past it as two Cyclops' battled it out between each other. Mystique had turned to duplication in case Jean or Storm had decided to interfere in their fight without invitation.
Vanish took this moment of precious time to stage her next attack on the oblivious women, her sodden footsteps lost in the extreme battle between Mystique and Scott. Storm turned to face nothing, with wild glances from side to side for her attacker, until her eyes fell upon wet boot prints leading off towards Cyclops' battle.
"Jean..." Storm said quietly and Jean turned with a vacant expression as she witnessed their attacker gone and the smiling face of Storm glinting awkwardly in the green light. "I've got an idea..."
Within a few seconds and her telepathic powers, Jean suddenly knew what Storm's plan was without having her speak it out loud and create agitation if the liquid woman was watching. With swift footsteps, both women crept toward the intense fight of Mystique and Cyclops, keeping watch, as powerful red beams seemed to ricochet everywhere.
Jean strategically placed herself along the line of puddle footprints, looking as if she was dumbfounded at her attacker's position above her. Vanish was perched high on a tall screen, watching the red-haired woman standing directly below her.
This was perfect, she would jump down and if lucky, land right in front of the unsuspecting woman and knock her back against the equipment with a good kick in the head, killing her instantly. She let the smile slip as her watery lips split into a cruel sneer.
With a quick inhale, Vanish jumped down with her legs braced out underneath her. She would use her knees as shocks and bounce herself up and twist horizontally to place her kick exactly where it needed to be.
But just as she hit the ground and began to twist her body, a sudden hurricane of wind beat against her and an invisible force pushed her backward through the air. It took her a moment to realize that the two women were working together, the blonde-haired one making the wind and the redhead using her telekinetic abilities to push her.
Undeviatingly in the direction of the large piece of equipment that Cyclops had broken a panel off of when he had hit it. It took her a moment to realize that she was flying backwards, tumbling head over heels into a tangle of broken, live wires. But it was a moment too late.
Her body shook with electrocution as the wires stabbed and attacked her, burning her liquid flesh instantly and killing her quicker than that, ending her life without so much as an exhale. Soon, her blackened carcass was ashes strewn across the ground.
Storm stepped forward and used her weather-controlling abilities to throw a small blizzard against the smoking machine. The crackle of sparks immediately silenced and bowed to the ice that froze and clung to the ends of the broken wires.
There was a tense moment of utter silence before a stray beam recoiled from the side of a thick, metallic computer side and hit a gas pipe. The hiss of leaking gas was lost as more beams of frying electricity ignited and burned through the room.
"Vanish!" Mystique screamed in rage, turning her attention from Cyclops long enough to see her friend fried to oblivion. Her eyes smoldered the most hatred that she had ever felt in her entire life, even more so than the loss of her love and master. Magneto.
She felt pain, anguish, fear, anger, and incredible loss shudder down her spine as she turned back to take her rage out on the little man before her, but her movement was good and bad at the same time.
Bad in the way that an intensely focussed beam struck her brutally in the arm, ripping off a good chunk of flesh, muscle, and even some bone. But good in the way that she had turned just in time to avoid being shot in the heart from where the beam was aimed before.
She screamed out in pain and gave one last swift kick to the man's chest, sending him flying backwards onto the concrete floor before scrambling away to the clear entrance and fled off into the building. There was no point in battling three X-Men wounded and solo, no matter what it was worth.
Storm was about to follow when Jean grabbed her by the sleeve of her uniform, shaking her head slowly. Her gaze averted back to her fiancé who lay unmoving on his back. She rushed to his side, slamming her knees hard against the ground as she stroked his hair with trembling fingers.
He moaned when she her fingers touched him, his dim visor suddenly brightened as he opened his eyes. "Are you alright Scott?" She asked, gingerly brushing her fingers along the side of a gash along the border of his hair across his forehead.
He flinched and acknowledged the fact she was there and caring for him, but he pushed his aching, protesting body up to stand on his wobbling legs. He allowed Jean to help support him as he re-cradled his arm across his chest; his head still pointed upward.
"There he is..." Scott said unbelievably as he stared upward toward the ceiling, Jean followed his gaze until she found what he was looking at. "Oh my god..." She said unintentionally as realization and horror struck her square in the face.
Storm exchanged a strange look between the two X-Men before following their gazes up to the battered, pale body of Logan. His head was rolled forward and down, facing them with an unconscious facade that looked like it had been mauled by a vulture.
His limbs were spread wide, and even from their distance they could see that the bonds at his wrists were the only things holding him up. Blood and dirt streaked his bare chest and shone from his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a crucified man. "Is he?..." Storm began, afraid to finish her own sentence.
"...No...no, not yet..." Jean's eyes were closed and she was looking deep inside his mind. "But there's something else..." She began, trying desperately to keep the fading shred of Logan's mind within her grip, but suddenly it died away.
"Damn! I lost it..." Her shoulders dropped and she opened her eyes, looking desperately up to the unconscious man. Even though she no longer had a hold on his mind, she could feel his pain and war of emotion boiling deep within his soul.
"Hold on!" Storm suddenly said, taking in the faint but recognized smell of vapor. "Gas...it is leaking somewhere in the room..." It definitely started leaking after Vanish had been thrown into the panel of live wires or the building would have exploded. As long as they didn't light a match or cause a spark, they would be fine.
"We have to get him down..." Scott proposed, ripping his eyes away from Logan as he began to search through the shattered and tangled equipment strewn around the room. "There has to be a lever or something..." He began, then his eyes fell upon a rather large black button hanging from a single wire off a control panel.
"But it's smashed and I doubt it'll work..." He began, trying it out anyway. Nothing happened, just as he had suspected. "I've got it!" As something hit him. "I could blast the hydraulic system and Jean you could..." He stopped as Jean thrust up her hand.
She shook her head in shame, closing her eyes. "I don't have the energy to control him like that Scott," She almost wanted to scream at herself for giving up, but she knew that it was the truth.
"I will help you, Jean. I will use my harness of the wind to help guide him as we did in the Statue of Liberty..." Storm suggested quietly, remembering his heroic save of Rogue that had almost cost him his life. Her dark eyes flicked over to Jean who sighed and raised her head, taking in Logan's beaten and unconscious form.
"Alright, let's do it and get the hell out of here..." Jean said, huddling towards the two other X-Men, she tilted her head back completely and focussed on marshalling her strength as much as she could, eating up and gathering the scattered scraps of her powers and mind.
"Okay, ready Scott?" Jean took charge, slowly opening her eyes to focus unmoving on Logan's calm face. Scott nodded as he rose his hand to the side of his visor, setting it to an extremely thin, focussed beam.
He was going to have to get this in one shot or none; they were running out of time. The noxious smell of the gas soon became overwhelming, clogging their throats and coating their lungs. At such a focus, the beam of optic-energy would hit the third joint of the hydraulics without causing a spark, if he was perfectly aimed.
With a deep inhale to relax himself, Scott clenched his teeth so tight he was afraid he might break them. But with complete control and handling of his power, he spoke without moving anything but his lips and tongue. "Ready?"
The two women nodded, Storm's eyes beginning to cloud over a milky white and Jean's eyes intensified on Logan's face as she stretched out her arm to direct all the telekinetic energy she had gathered.
"Here goes..." Scott said before another deep inhale and with the flick of his finger, the intensely focussed beam streaked through the air, coming to land perfectly where he wanted it to. Cutting the hydraulics loose enough to let the platform Logan was strapped to creak in protest before plummeting downward.
Now it was up to the women who did everything in their power to slow it. Storm's eyes were so white they seemed to glow as a warm updraft swept through the room, pushing hard against the bottom of the platform as it plummeted through the air.
Jean's hand shook as she forced herself to see the platform slowing enough for her to control, everything that happened she took in, an focussed hard on doing. From the speed of Storm's updraft to the tiniest quiver of one of Logan's hairs, she saw it all and controlled it all.
As soon as it had started, it was over, and Logan was safely set upright on the floor. Jean collapsed in exhaustion, Scott able to catch her against his chest with his good arm, gently easing her to the floor. Storm rushed to help Logan, using her lock picking skills she had learned when she was younger, to free him from the bindings. She grunted as the large man fell limp into her arms.
Though she had sturdy and strong arms, three hundred pounds of limp muscle, bone, and metal was not something easy to support, especially in her weakened condition. She gently eased him to the ground, leaning over him and putting her ear to his chest. She could hear the dull thumps of his heart beneath his ribcage.
"He is alive," She concluded, lifting her head and turning to watch Cyclops gently slap Jean awake, she muttered something that neither could understand and quickly got to her feet, stumbling over to fall hard onto the cement next to Logan.
"We have to get him out of here." She said as if she was fully recovered from everything they had just experienced. "Now. There's someone else here..." She could feel them creeping through the darkness, their pain, it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
"Come on..." Jean lifted Logan's limp arm and struggled to lift him, only succeeding when Cyclops and Storm came in and helped her. With all three of them supporting the almost dead man, they slowly made their way from the room and down through the dimly lit hallway.
They were halfway down the hall and close enough to the exit to see it when suddenly they heard a faint, but close footfall. All three X-Men stopped dead in their tracks, turning simultaneously to see a huge black man rise from the rubble.
A downpour of blood hid his face and one of his arms had been smashed in a way that made Cyclops want to puke at the sight of it. His black clothes hung in tattered shreds from his body, barely clinging to stay on.
He stumbled before catching himself on the wall with his almost good arm, his deep purple eyes intense with anger and fright. "If I must die...then...you..." His Russian accent slurred and his words became irregularly spaced and smashed together. "You...will...die...with...with...me..." He seemed to cough out the last word as he unhinged his jaws and prepared to send a fireball their way.
Everything suddenly seemed to happen in slow motion. "No!" Cyclops screamed and instinctively dropped Logan to the ground, jumping on top of him to protect him. Storm and Jean did the same, completely smothering and covering the unconscious Logan with their bodies.
A huge spherical flame spewed from the Flame's open jaws, and as soon as it touched the air, a ghostly blue explosion raced down the hallway, consuming everything in its path. It seemed to lick up all the air in the entire building, sucking it from their lungs and filling them with heat.
The walls shattered and the ceiling crumbled in its path, sending huge chunks of the roof raining down on them. Then suddenly, the world thundered and became dark, merciless, and incredibly painful.
~*~
"Jean? Jean!" Cyclops yelled at his fiancée as he ripped away the remnants of the roof that were piled on top of her. The only way he saw her was her red hair sticking up out of the debris. He dusted away the residue from her back and gently turned her over, checking her pulse.
She began to swat him away, fighting with him as she thought Flame had gotten a hold of her. "Jean...It's me...Scott..." He clamped his hand around her wrists until she opened her eyes and recognized him.
"Oh Scott, you're alive..." She wrapped her arms about him, hugging him as tightly as she could in her weakened condition. "...Yeah...We have to get out of here..." He said, cringing in pain as she released him.
"Where's Ororo?" Jean said, slowly getting to her feet and testing her legs. "Over here..." A weak voice came from behind a line of trees, untouched by the explosion. Suddenly, Storm emerged, limping a little. In the explosion, she had been lifted from Logan and thrown into the forest, crashing through a number of trees and breaking them cleanly in half.
"Are you alright?" Jean said, rushing to her side. "I am alive if that is what you mean, but I am afraid our friend is not fairing quite as well as I." She looked back to a singed, collapsed body of Flame. She had landed on him on her descent to the ground, cushioning her with his burnt body, which eased her connection to the dirt.
Storm suddenly began to fall, her left leg giving out beneath her. She was caught by Jean who helped hold her up with her arm around Storm's shoulder as the group slowly stumbled back to the Blackbird, which lay untouched by anything.
After loading Storm into the jet, Jean and Scott headed back out in search of Logan, who was nowhere to be seen. Jean began to gingerly dig through the rubble of the building while Scott took his time winding through the front section of the forest surrounding the area they were in.
The explosion had singed a couple acres in diameter, completely demolishing the entire building as if it had never been there. A few small fires still lived, scattered around as if to light the twilight that had already begun to fall on the forest. The moon shone bright in the velvet sky, shining as a beacon as if to say there was still hope.
"Scott! I've found him!" Jean called out, loud enough that she was sure wherever her fiancé was he could hear her. Scott suddenly stumbled out through the forest and ran to her side, looking down on a pale, sick hand protruding out from the rubble.
"We may be too late..." Scott said, beginning to pick the top pieces of rubble up and throwing them carefully to the side. If they were not careful, they could move the wrong stone and send an avalanche of rubble crashing down on Logan. Scott could only dig with one hand, which made the entire process awkward and longer.
Within a few minutes, Logan's head and upper torso had been uncovered, along with one of his arms. A long bleeding gash ripped it's way from the top of his hand, all the way up the back of his forearm, to just below his elbow.
He was bleeding from a number of gashes strewn across his head, neck, shoulders, and chest. All the rubble that had some how been wedged beneath him was covered in blood, dripping wet like rain.
"Come on..." Scott said, carefully digging through the last of the wreckage covering Logan's legs. Jean helped, digging away until they could see the blue of his jeans; much of them soaked with blood, turning them maroon.
Without saying anything, both wondered how from beneath all three X-Men, Logan came up the most beaten and bleeding. They hurried to wrap his limp arms around both of their shoulders and carry him back to the Blackbird, as soon as they heard the distant sirens begin to approach.
Scott slipped Logan's arm carefully over his head; extremely careful to make sure Logan's arm didn't bump his visor. When Jean had successfully strapped Logan to a medical bed tucked away in the back of the jet. Scott limped up to the front of the Blackbird and began to prepare for ascent.
"Wait!" Jean called up to him, rushing as fast as she could in her weakened form down the almost closed ramp of the jet and back out into the debris. "Jean!" Storm called out from her kept position on the floor, seeing the distant trees illuminate with the lights of approaching police cars and ambulances.
Much time passed before Jean returned, almost too much time. She returned with her arms full of ice from Storm's recent blizzard she'd scent to help Scott when he was hanging from the pipe. She stumbled into the back of the jet and threw down the ice onto the empty medical bed opposite the one Logan was on.
With the ice taken care of, she hurried to the front of the jet and helped Storm into a chair, securing her tightly with the seatbelt as she had done so many times when driving the Professor somewhere. "Everybody in?" Scott yelled back, placing his good hand readily on the controls.
"Go! Go!" Jean yelled, hurrying back to Logan and begin to care for him. She braced herself against the wall as the bottom of the jet began to shake with power and they were off into the night, safe and sound.
AUTHOR: Ananova Crowe ||^_^||
Metallica: Poor Twisted Me (cont.)
So tell me why you've chosen me
Don't want your grip; don't want your greed
I'll tear me open, make you gone
No more can you hurt anyone
And the fear still shakes me
So hold me, until it sleeps
It grips you, so hold me
It stains you, so hold me
It hates you, so hold me
It holds you, so hold me
~*~
The Price of Survival Chapter .3 - Metallic Animals
(Sum up chapter before: Jean has entered Logan's mind and sees how he was kidnapped and another person's admittance into the remaining shards of Magneto's Brotherhood for some odd reason. She then finds out that Logan somehow ends up as another lab experiment with an unknown woman demonstrating on him and a bullet hole in his leg.)
*Jean is still in Logan's mind; present*
Logan awoke with a start, feeling the mud and sweat and blood still streaked across his face. His heart thundered loudly in his head until he commanded it to calm, this was not the time to get excited. It took him a moment to find where he was from his eyesight, which stayed a gray haze.
Bones that he didn't even know he had ached with damage or strain when he tried unsuccessfully to move. It took him even longer to figure out that the cruel device that had locked around him from his dream was really clasped around his body. All except for the mask across his face, which still wasn't much of a comfort.
His claws had been pulled outside from beneath his skin, held out and useless in two metal gloves that splayed his fingers and ran up to his elbows, locking his arms to his side. The cold metal bit down into his skin, pulling his flesh when he tried to move.
He searched quickly for something to get him loose, anything that could help him. Until his eyes fell upon a young girl about the age of fourteen lying on a medical bed close enough for Logan to recognize her, even with his blurred vision.
She had been the one lying on the ground before he had been attacked in the forest, the little girl with the glowing rose. For that, Logan felt absolutely no pain or mercy for her, no matter if she had done nothing to him.
The girl muttered something and turned over with a bit of effort, her face flinching in pain as she rolled onto her other side. Her silent and sleeping face was calming to Logan; all except for the lines snaking out from her arms and the silver microchips along her shoulders and neck, which made her look unreal.
She was stripped down to her skin except for a sterile white dressing was wound around her chest and midsection, covering the still bleeding wound at her stomach. Leaving her shoulders bare and open to the chill of the room, shivering slightly. A soft blanket had fallen down over her legs, but Logan doubted that the girl could reach down and pull it back up by herself.
He was about to shift his eyes somewhere else when he saw two pockets of aligned skin in the middle of her back. They were thin and wide, almost like an opening for something that was hidden inside of her back, under her flesh.
Logan shook his head, tearing his eyes away from the girl and focussing back to getting himself free of the device that claimed him immobile in all aspects. His body screamed for him to quit straining, but he ignored it, taking all his risks blindly and shoving them behind him.
"There is no escape Logan," A voice carried out from behind him, it was cold and lacked emotion. Despite the deficiency, Logan could tell that the voice belonged to someone real, someone who he had unsuccessfully killed in the past.
"Mystique..." Logan spat as if the words were acid in his mouth, he quit struggling to get free and waited until she came into his view, her blue body shining gorgeously in the light. She took no time to walk over to the girl and lean over her protectively, checking her lines.
"What happened to her?" Despite the fact that he didn't much care, he asked anyway, figuring he wasn't going anywhere soon.
"The same thing that you did to me..." Mystique hissed like an enraged snake, pointing down to the three pink scars at the brim of the bottom of her ribcage. Her yellow eyes blazed in fury, widening until them seemed to glow.
"So that's who I got, that's a shame. Too bad I didn't aim higher on you though..." Logan spat, not satisfied with his penetration point on Mystique's belly. He regretted not killing her, or not staying around long enough for him to make sure she died.
"You had no right..." Mystique hissed, shoving her intense blue face three inches away from Logan's. He could feel her icy breath on his lips, and she could feel his breath ignited by a thousand hell's on her lips.
"I thought the Brotherhood didn't take kindly to compassion..." Logan tested her, looking deep into her eyes as if to look into the soul she didn't have. She stared back as intensely, trying in vain to penetrate his mind and see what he was thinking.
"If you haven't noticed lately Logan, there is no Brotherhood." Her eyes suddenly turned soft as she said that, missing her leader, Magneto. Then she hardened again, remembering what she had in her clutches on. "But isn't it amazing how the word mutant is so close to the word mutiny?"
"The war between humans and mutants is approaching, and there will be an uprising. But poor Wolverine is stuck without any relief. Whatever will you do?" She pushed back from him, leaning back against a countertop with her hands spread out to support her.
"Get to the point. What do you want with me?" Logan seethed.
"Your partnership..." Another voice came from someone standing in the room that he couldn't see, maybe hiding behind something. Logan looked back to Mystique, following her eyes to nothing by her side.
Then suddenly, an outline of someone's head melted out of thin air, then melting down in the shape of shoulders and a woman's torso. Continuing to melt out of the air as an outline of a lean stomach and hips, before finally solidifying into a beautiful woman who stood the same size as Mystique.
Bright blue eyes seemed to shine in the green light, glinting awkwardly as they stared at him resolutely. Her pale skin was almost translucent and even from his distance; Logan could make out the veins in the top of her chest. She wore a long-sleeved white shirt that had a low hanging collar.
Black leather pants clung tight to her legs, looking incredibly uncomfortable for her liquid washed body. Her shortly cropped blonde hair hung choppy along the sides of her face. It was segmented as though she had just gotten out of a pool long enough for her hair to only begin to dry.
"Vanish." She introduced herself, not stopping for a moment to continue to explain the situation. "With you, the human race would not stand a chance against us. We would overrule and dominate them, stopping all violence against mutants."
"That's where the problem lies sister, what if I say no?..." Logan said as if he had fair game in their little charade they threw out in front of him.
"Than we have no choice but to destroy you..." Vanish walked silently over to the girl, leaning close to gently kiss her on the shoulder before standing and slowly stroking the girl's hair. "From the inside out..."
Logan's killer left eyebrow arched in confusion, his dark eyes flashing to Mystique who only smiled wickedly, letting her teeth shine through. Logan returned his eyes to Vanish, thinking of her words as much as he dared.
"No." Logan said directly, he was not prepared to join the hanging threads of the Brotherhood, no matter what conditions they were under. And he wasn't going to join them because of some little threat, that was for sure.
"When you skewered her yesterday, she had already lost so much blood that I could not use my healing powers to save her. You, Mr. Logan, punctured one of her lungs and tore her intestines apart just enough to make her die slowly, with more pain than we could ever inflict upon you." Vanish knew that once Logan made a decision, he kept it until the bitter end, which was a pity for him.
"So?" Logan asked simply, watching Vanish intently.
"But from your abduction yesterday, we witnessed your healing ability as much more powerful than mine and may prove useful to save her life." Vanish said, suggesting that she had been the one that Logan had thrown against the tree.
"I don't transfer my powers to others..." Logan didn't quite get that.
"That matters little to us, after all..." Mystique suddenly shifted into the woman from his dreams, the one who had shot him in the leg as an experiment. "It's science..." With a smile, Mystique shifted smoothly back into her regular form.
She walked over to him and pulled down the blanket, revealing a hole in his jeans at his thigh, which was crusted with blood that smelled recent to Logan's enhanced senses. He suddenly realized that he had not been dreaming, that the entire experiment had actually happened and he had really been shot.
"We'll be back in the morning. Meanwhile you need some rest, to keep yourself strong for tomorrow." Vanish smiled and stroked the girl's hair one last time before following Mystique out of the room.
"Oh yes," Vanish came back to Logan's side, pulling a metal mask with a single segmented metal tube snaking out from the middle for oxygen. She pulled the black strap at the back of the mask across the back of his head, securing it tightly. "Can't have you waking us."
Logan's eyebrows dropped into a mean scowl as Vanish leaned down and kissed him lightly on the cheek like a mother. Her lips felt like ice to his skin, and when they left his cheek, he could feel the point of contact tingle as heat returned to it. "Sleep well." And with the hiss of a metal door, she was gone and he was plunged into complete blackness.
~*~
"Good morning. I hope you got a sufficient amount of sleep last night. I know I did." Logan awoke to the icy words, dropping his eyebrows immediately into a scowl, showing his animosity towards her.
"Bad Wolverine, we'll have none of that." She scolded as if he were a misbehaving dog. She took her icy, pale hand and combed it through his hair, petting him nicely before walking out of his view.
It took Logan a minute to realize that they had moved him during the night, clamping him spread-eagle to another horizontal medical bed set on hydraulics. The blood and sweat and dirt had been washed from his face, or he had become so use to it that he couldn't feel it anymore.
He was surprised to find that he was free to move his head, so he took no time into looking down at himself, making sure they hadn't done anything else to him. But from the looks of it, they hadn't. He was still dressed in his worn blue jeans, his Indian-head buckle shining bright in the lights.
The cuffs at his wrists and ankles cut into his skin, making it impossible to move. He relaxed back against the cold, hard surface of the table, the coldness comforting to his bare back and shoulders.
He stiffened when he heard the hiss of hydraulics and twisted his head to the side, seeing the girl in the same position as him, except she had no clamps on her wrists or ankles. The dressing at her stomach had a bloom of crimson blood pushing through, giving color to her drained and tired features.
"What's with the rose?" Logan asked to someone who he sensed close by, noticing the magnificent rose was glowing brighter than ever, a tiny blue flame ignited above it's crimson head.
"It holds her essence," Vanish explained, hooking a line into Logan's arm with a sharp prick. She glanced up to look at the rose, impressed with its beauty. "Well, the part that won't fit." She said with a smile, backing away again.
"Into what?" Logan was almost afraid to ask, but he was left unanswered. Without a word, Mystique walked silently by and returned the oxygen mask to his face that had been removed during the night. The stale, metallic tasting air swept into his nose and mouth, stinging his throat.
Suddenly, the bed began to rise on the hydraulics, the bottom dropping down so he was now rising vertically. His weight shifted down to his ankles, the restraints biting into his wrists as they threatened to pull his hands apart from his arms.
"Congratulations Wolverine. You'll be the first ever to actually supply the life to someone who should already be dead..." Vanish called up with a wicked smile, she was small from the height he was rising at, and he was partially glad to get away from her.
He looked up, seeing the top of his head about three feet from the high roof as his bed hissed to a stop. He took another look down, seeing Vanish rush to help Mystique at the girl's side. They both had her around the shoulders, supporting her as they helped her off the bed and stood reeling on weak knees.
Then Vanish leaned down and whispered something into her ear that made the girl's eyes ignite into a fearsome red light. She reminded Logan of Scott when he got really angry and his visor began to glow. He almost smiled at the thought of ol' four-eyes, but he was pulled from the thought as he witnessed something incredible below him.
Something white and smooth began to grow from the girl's back, undoubtedly from the two holes Logan had seen the day before when the girl lay unconscious beside him. Even from his height he could see two folded rods elevating from her back before spreading wide to show a connection covered with bright, white feathers.
Her dark face further illuminating her angel wings until the wings appeared to glow as brightly as the rose, which looked as if it might explode with power. The girl seemed to transfer her power and anger to and from the rose, before screaming in rage and lifting from the ground.
She fluttered there for a moment, her feet barely off of the ground as she grew accustomed to flight. Her huge, beautiful wings flapped lightly, kicking up tiny clouds of dust from the floor and throwing them to the side. Then she shifted her weight until they were on her wings and shot upward, twisting like a spiraling torpedo.
She blurred as she flew swiftly through the air, pushing her arms out in front of her as if she were prepared to dive into a pool. But she arched and was aimed straight in the middle of Logan's chest, her eyes blazing with fire.
Logan tried in vain to duck or do anything to get out of the way, but his restraints held him fast to the table. His mouth opened to scream, but at the impact and velocity at which Knightmare hit him, he did nothing but tense.
Which was stupid to do and he knew it, but only after he heard the sickening crack of a bone and an intense pain sang out through his entire leg, numbing it with agony. Only after he felt the girl take pose in his spread-eagle position and fill his bones and body, he found his voice as loud a roar that he shook the building and everything within.
The small glass windows high on the walls seemed to immediately shatter, his roar echoing brutally off the walls to come ricocheting back even louder than before. Knightmare's hands crept through his arms like an internal fire, searing everything it touched but slowly enough for him to get as much pain out of it as he could.
His body felt like it was being torn apart from the inside, each of his intestines being set aflame before bursting into a pure white ball of pain. Soon, it was too much for him to take and he fell unconscious, letting his wrists hold his weight as he fell limp against the table.
She was feeding off of him, stealing his powers from his veins and gorging herself to heal her own wounds, taking his body as a protective shell and never vowing to leave. Even through his unconsciousness, Logan could feel the pain in his entire body, sucking him dry of energy and essence.
~*~
"Look!" Scott pointed through the front of the jet to a flash of brilliant red light before the forest returned to normal. "There was a flash of light..." He explained, knowing that Storm could not have gotten up to the front fast enough to see it while the flash happened.
Jean screamed and fell to her knees, clutching her head in pain as the last of the brainwaves penetrated her mind. Before anyone could touch her, she was upright with her eyes clutched closed, looking for something.
"No...No!" She yelled in frustration. "I lost him!" She collapsed back against the control panel in the nose of the Blackbird jet, still collecting herself after the last painful thread of Logan's mind had been ripped loose of her grip.
"What is it? What happened?" Storm looked worried and rushed to her side, taking a quick glance back to Scott who was piloting the jet and couldn't look back at the moment. They were passing low over the forest; the jetlag shaking the treetops as they swept inches away from the tips.
They had been following Jean's link to Logan's mind to get his location, but suddenly she had lost it. Sharing his mind also shared his pain, and at their disconnection, Jean had felt the full force of his pain as his brain suddenly seemed to be overwhelmed by something, or someone.
"He's gone! I lost the connection when Scott saw the light!" Jean tried desperately again to reach his mind, but it was as if someone had thrown up an impenetrable wall between their minds and was not prepared to pull it down anytime soon.
"Then that'll be the first place we look..." Scott said under his breath, pulling the jet into a U-turn back to the location the light had come from. He landed the jet smoothly in a clearing; feeling it unimportant to give himself cover, but making it easy for a fast get away.
Jean, Storm, and Cyclops stuck together as they slunk through the forest, keeping their ears open and their eyes sharp. "You are sure it was here?" Storm asked skeptically, figuring that every inch of the forest looked almost exactly the same as the rest.
"Yes, I sense others..." Jean began, bringing her fingertips to her temples as she concentrated hard on following the strange brainwaves. "There..." One of her hands left her head and pointed out in front of her toward an unusually crowded tangle of trees. Their limbs reached and twisted around each other, fighting as they spiraled up towards the light.
Storm, Cyclops, and Jean all broke into a run towards the trees. Cyclops to the side of his visor with his gloved hand and expertly blasted away some spindling limbs, revealing a brick wall with moss and lichen growing in the cracks and along the bricks.
"I don't think they'll be expecting visitors this time of day. So perhaps we should knock." Cyclops quipped as he discharged the powerful optic blast form his eyes, shattering through the wall as if it was nothing but a piece of paper. He stepped in carefully and surveyed the surroundings, beckoning the woman to follow him before he was gone into the darkness.
"Let's just find Logan and get out, this place is giving me the creeps," Jean commented, brushing away a spider web before it could catch her face. She looked blindly into the pitch-black room, hearing only the sound of constantly dripping water from a loose pipe somewhere in the room and the X-Men's almost silent footsteps.
"Then allow me to shed some light on your location," A Russian voice burst through the room like an earthquake ripping through the ground. Suddenly, a torch hanging high at the far wall ignited with a blazing orange flame. Another hanging torch took flame, followed by another and another until the room was almost completely lighted by at least twelve different torches.
Only the far-left corner was left untouched by the bright fingers of the light, as if it was shunned and held back from the corner. "Who the..." Cyclops began, preparing to flash his beam into the corner to ignite it, but his words were cut short when something emerged from the shadows.
A tall, well-built man with dark skin levitated out from the shadows, he wore complete black, a dark cape flipping gently around the top of his boots. The torchlight broke and scattered across his face, making him appear fearsome as he scoured down on the intruders.
"I am Flame. And you three have just signed your death deeds by your untimely interruption." He slowly floated downward, carefully distancing himself from the three X-Men and landing silently on the floor.
"Ready?" Jean said quietly and turned to face her fiancé, but suddenly Cyclops was ripped from the floor and thrown high into the air, scuffing the ceiling before gravity's hand beckoned him back to earth.
"Jean!" Cyclops yelled down as he reached frantically for anything to hold onto, suddenly he found a pipe and wrapped both his hands tightly around it, preying that it would support his weight. The pipe creaked and shifted, but it sustained its connection to the roof, for the time being.
Flame laughed wickedly, enjoying the moment, he loved watching Cyclops' feet dangle helplessly in the air. It had been too easy to dispose of the boy, and it would be even easier to destroy the two women.
Storm widened her stance and let her eyes become a milky white, pushing all of her power into a giant tornado that suddenly shrieked through the room, only touching down long enough by Flame's side to pick him up and smash him brutally against the wall.
The impact was so hard that the cement began to crumble, huge cracks reached up to the roof and started a chain-reaction in the ceiling. Suddenly, huge cement blocks began to fall, kicking up plumes of gray dust from the floor.
"Look out!" Jean yelled as she ran towards Storm, throwing herself against Storm and pushing her out of the way as an immense chunk of ceiling crashed down where she had just been standing. Jean rolled off and jumped to her feet, looking up to see Scott still dangling perilously from the pipe.
"Get me down!" Cyclops cried out, feeling the pipe begin to tear away from the ceiling, as long cracks snaked towards him, massing and joining as more chunks of ceiling fell away. One large piece crashed down on Cyclops' right hand, knocking that arm loose.
He held on preciously with one arm, his crushed fingers going numb and useless. He tried desperately to throw his dead hand back around the pipe, but his limp fingers slipped lazily off. The pipe suddenly began to sweat and cold water began to drip on his shoulder from a break in the connection above him.
He could feel his leather glove begin to slowly slide around the slick pipe, the condensation making the pipe slippery as if he were holding onto a piece of ice. *That's it!* He screamed in his mind. "Storm, give me a blizzard up here!"
Storm nodded, as she understood what he had meant and her dark, beautiful eyes suddenly turned completely white again. Cyclops could feel the icy winds twirl about him, reaching up to clasp the pipes and freeze them together. Though it would begin to melt soon, it gave Cyclops a minute or two extra to figure out something to do.
"You must hurry, the ice will not last long in this-" Storm was suddenly smashed against the wall by a giant ball of flame that struck her in the back, knocking her hard into the cement and sending another downpour of ceiling to come crashing down.
"Heat?" Flame finished for her, calmly dusting the ashes from his shoulders, a huge gash slit across his face. "Allow me to compensate..." Flame opened his mouth unbelievably wide, unhooking his jaws, as a snake would do before eating, and sent giant blast of fire towards Cyclops.
"No!" Cyclops yelled as the pipe began to creak and groan at the sudden fluctuations of temperature. Then, the pipe could no longer take it, and gave way from the ceiling with an ear-splitting shriek of creaking metal. Cyclops released the pipe just as it was about to swing sideways and smash him into the wall.
"Jean!" Cyclops yelled as he fell swiftly through the air, his arms and legs flailing as if by some miracle he would take flight. But the ground came closer and closer, threatening to swallow him up and crush him like an insect.
Suddenly, he was slowed by an invisible force that pushed up on him, easing him gently to the ground. It took him a moment to realize that Jean was using her telekinetic powers to help drop him to the ground. She was intensely involved in getting him safely to the ground, her eyes closed and her back turned to their assailant, which was an incredibly bad idea.
Just as Cyclops was about eight feet away from the ground, Jean's telekinetic energy suddenly pulled away from under him and he tumbled the rest of the way onto a hard, unfortunately placed chunk of ceiling.
The mass collided hard into his side, sending him spinning onto his other shoulder before finally coming to rest strewn about the ashes of the ceiling. Everything in his body hurt, except for his right hand, which he couldn't even feel, but he knew he'd broken a lot of fingers, if not all.
He lifted his head just in time to see Jean skid to a stop along the pavement, her limp body flipping uncontrollably as she tumbled over remnants of the ceiling and debris, only stopping when she smashed against the wall.
Flame flipped on his heel as a giant thunderclap echoed through the room, coming from the direction of one very beautiful, very pissed woman whose eyes were dead white and blonde hair standing on end, with blue cracks of electricity transferring between them.
"Have you ever wondered if a flame can get burnt?" Storm asked, her voice seeming to echo like the thunderclap before. With that, a huge blue streak of lightening barreled down out of nowhere and hit Flame squared in the chest, knocking him through the wall and on through at least three other cement walls before he came to smoking, limp pile of corpse four rooms away.
"Apparently so..." Storm allowed herself a smile of triumph and hurried to help Jean, who still laid sprawled unconscious against the east wall. Storm commanded the presence of a light shower over Jean's head, waking her with a coughing fit.
"Let's find Logan and get out of here..." Jean croaked as her coughing fit ended, she allowed Storm to help her to her feet. Both women looked back to see Cyclops stumbling through the debris, struggling to walk.
"Scott, are you alright?" Storm called out, leaving her arm about Jean to help support her friend as they depended on each other. "Nothing that can't be fixed," Scott grimaced as he cradled his crushed hand close to his chest and limped as fast as he could to catch up with them.
~*~
"Get back," Cyclops ordered in a hollow voice, the fall had taken a lot out of him and he was bleeding in numerous places, as were the others. They looked like an incredibly miserable rescue party, but it's all that Logan had to depend on.
He poked his head through the hole Flame had created in the wall, checking to see if the coast was clear. "Come on..." With that, he disappeared into the darkness, the two women following with weary steps.
"He's got to be around here somewhere..." Cyclops mumbled to himself, taking a look down to his hand cradled against his chest. His gloves were sticky and wet with blood, and he knew it would be an incredibly excruciating effort to get them off.
He cringed to even think about it, forcing himself to look further into the darkness, his visor barely illuminating their way through the huge, dark building. "What's that?" Jean asked softly, her voice weak and hoarse. She pointed with a shaky hand to a strip of green light peeking from the bottom of a closed door some way up the wall.
"I bet it's what we're looking for..." Cyclops said, quickening his pace as fast as his body would let him. He burst through the door, igniting all the X-Men in a florescent green light. The room was huge, like a giant warehouse crowded with all the greatest medical instruments and experimental equipment in the world.
There was a small whisper of footfalls and Cyclops turned his head just in time to see a shadow slink behind a rather large piece of equipment. He followed cautiously, trying to quiet his footsteps until they couldn't be heard. He held his breath, not daring to make a single sound.
Suddenly, something leapt from the shadows and latched onto his back, a blue-scaled arm wrapping around his neck with three nine-inch long claws protruding from their knuckles. The claws were at his neck in an instant, the other hand secure on his wrist.
"Mystique..." He breathed, the claws pushing harder into his neck as he felt her icy breath ruffling the side of his hair, right above his ear. He loosened his body, preparing to do something that had to work exactly or he would die a bloody, painful death.
With fluid motion, he twisted his body around and flipped Mystique expertly over his shoulder, slamming her to the ground. The claws retracted as she jumped up to her feet, taking on the attack as fast as Cyclops had to take a breath. Her feet flew straight at him, not giving him enough time to duck or jump to the side.
The balls of her feet struck him squarely in the middle of the chest and the next thing he knew he was flying backward and smashing into the giant piece of machinery. He recovered quickly and rolled, as he had been trained to do, and came up on his feet just as soon as a large panel slammed to the ground.
Sparking wires and the smell of burnt leather ignited the room with excitement, casting abnormal shadows across the wall with every crackle of a spark. Cyclops could feel where he hadn't gotten away from the machinery fast enough, his shoulders stung and he could feel the leather melt to his skin.
Mystique took his recovering time to cower behind another hunk of equipment, waiting for her strike, as a lion would do if stocking a gazelle in the African plain. Her yellow eyes were wide and she licked her lips, already hearing the snap of his bones beneath her hands and the final choked cry of her victim as she killed him.
Cyclops quieted his erratic breath, ignoring the pain in his shoulders and body. Feeling had already begun to return to his crushed fingers, which was not something to wallow in. His feeling came in pulses of agonizing pain, as if his heart was pumping the pain into his hand to punish him.
Still he stayed quiet, listening carefully for anything that might give Mystique away. He hoped to god the women were fairing well by themselves, he had no doubt in them, but he still had to be sure.
He couldn't chance a blink or he knew she would have him right where she wanted him. So he stood completely still in plain view of anything, luckily giving himself an ample amount of visual field.
~*~
Jean stumbled backward as a solid kick struck her hard in the stomach, struggling to keep her balance from the impact. She flashed a glance towards Storm who's head snapped back as a wet fist struck her in the face, sending her in a backward summersault before crashing to the ground, face-first.
"Storm!" Jean called out to her friend, kicking up into a shimmering contour of a real mutant who was about to attack her again. It was like kicking a sodden sponge, but she could feel bones smash beneath the toe of her boot as she watched the shimmering woman tumble backwards and splatter to the ground.
Their invisible attacker had come from the shadows, making her assault swift and harsh, putting up a good fight between the two X-Men simultaneously. The only forthcoming to her was the drip of water from her arms and legs, which still wasn't much of a helper.
She struck like a cobra, taking individual attacks on each of the women with one, swift action. Her movements were almost slowed a bit, like running a race in sodden shorts, taking her longer to swing her arms and legs.
But what she lacked in speed, she made up for in power. Her kicks and punches were so hard that Jean often found herself sprawled on the floor with an intense pain in her head or stomach.
Storm and Jean spun on their heels as an intense red beam ricocheted off the cement floor; another one X-ing past it as two Cyclops' battled it out between each other. Mystique had turned to duplication in case Jean or Storm had decided to interfere in their fight without invitation.
Vanish took this moment of precious time to stage her next attack on the oblivious women, her sodden footsteps lost in the extreme battle between Mystique and Scott. Storm turned to face nothing, with wild glances from side to side for her attacker, until her eyes fell upon wet boot prints leading off towards Cyclops' battle.
"Jean..." Storm said quietly and Jean turned with a vacant expression as she witnessed their attacker gone and the smiling face of Storm glinting awkwardly in the green light. "I've got an idea..."
Within a few seconds and her telepathic powers, Jean suddenly knew what Storm's plan was without having her speak it out loud and create agitation if the liquid woman was watching. With swift footsteps, both women crept toward the intense fight of Mystique and Cyclops, keeping watch, as powerful red beams seemed to ricochet everywhere.
Jean strategically placed herself along the line of puddle footprints, looking as if she was dumbfounded at her attacker's position above her. Vanish was perched high on a tall screen, watching the red-haired woman standing directly below her.
This was perfect, she would jump down and if lucky, land right in front of the unsuspecting woman and knock her back against the equipment with a good kick in the head, killing her instantly. She let the smile slip as her watery lips split into a cruel sneer.
With a quick inhale, Vanish jumped down with her legs braced out underneath her. She would use her knees as shocks and bounce herself up and twist horizontally to place her kick exactly where it needed to be.
But just as she hit the ground and began to twist her body, a sudden hurricane of wind beat against her and an invisible force pushed her backward through the air. It took her a moment to realize that the two women were working together, the blonde-haired one making the wind and the redhead using her telekinetic abilities to push her.
Undeviatingly in the direction of the large piece of equipment that Cyclops had broken a panel off of when he had hit it. It took her a moment to realize that she was flying backwards, tumbling head over heels into a tangle of broken, live wires. But it was a moment too late.
Her body shook with electrocution as the wires stabbed and attacked her, burning her liquid flesh instantly and killing her quicker than that, ending her life without so much as an exhale. Soon, her blackened carcass was ashes strewn across the ground.
Storm stepped forward and used her weather-controlling abilities to throw a small blizzard against the smoking machine. The crackle of sparks immediately silenced and bowed to the ice that froze and clung to the ends of the broken wires.
There was a tense moment of utter silence before a stray beam recoiled from the side of a thick, metallic computer side and hit a gas pipe. The hiss of leaking gas was lost as more beams of frying electricity ignited and burned through the room.
"Vanish!" Mystique screamed in rage, turning her attention from Cyclops long enough to see her friend fried to oblivion. Her eyes smoldered the most hatred that she had ever felt in her entire life, even more so than the loss of her love and master. Magneto.
She felt pain, anguish, fear, anger, and incredible loss shudder down her spine as she turned back to take her rage out on the little man before her, but her movement was good and bad at the same time.
Bad in the way that an intensely focussed beam struck her brutally in the arm, ripping off a good chunk of flesh, muscle, and even some bone. But good in the way that she had turned just in time to avoid being shot in the heart from where the beam was aimed before.
She screamed out in pain and gave one last swift kick to the man's chest, sending him flying backwards onto the concrete floor before scrambling away to the clear entrance and fled off into the building. There was no point in battling three X-Men wounded and solo, no matter what it was worth.
Storm was about to follow when Jean grabbed her by the sleeve of her uniform, shaking her head slowly. Her gaze averted back to her fiancé who lay unmoving on his back. She rushed to his side, slamming her knees hard against the ground as she stroked his hair with trembling fingers.
He moaned when she her fingers touched him, his dim visor suddenly brightened as he opened his eyes. "Are you alright Scott?" She asked, gingerly brushing her fingers along the side of a gash along the border of his hair across his forehead.
He flinched and acknowledged the fact she was there and caring for him, but he pushed his aching, protesting body up to stand on his wobbling legs. He allowed Jean to help support him as he re-cradled his arm across his chest; his head still pointed upward.
"There he is..." Scott said unbelievably as he stared upward toward the ceiling, Jean followed his gaze until she found what he was looking at. "Oh my god..." She said unintentionally as realization and horror struck her square in the face.
Storm exchanged a strange look between the two X-Men before following their gazes up to the battered, pale body of Logan. His head was rolled forward and down, facing them with an unconscious facade that looked like it had been mauled by a vulture.
His limbs were spread wide, and even from their distance they could see that the bonds at his wrists were the only things holding him up. Blood and dirt streaked his bare chest and shone from his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a crucified man. "Is he?..." Storm began, afraid to finish her own sentence.
"...No...no, not yet..." Jean's eyes were closed and she was looking deep inside his mind. "But there's something else..." She began, trying desperately to keep the fading shred of Logan's mind within her grip, but suddenly it died away.
"Damn! I lost it..." Her shoulders dropped and she opened her eyes, looking desperately up to the unconscious man. Even though she no longer had a hold on his mind, she could feel his pain and war of emotion boiling deep within his soul.
"Hold on!" Storm suddenly said, taking in the faint but recognized smell of vapor. "Gas...it is leaking somewhere in the room..." It definitely started leaking after Vanish had been thrown into the panel of live wires or the building would have exploded. As long as they didn't light a match or cause a spark, they would be fine.
"We have to get him down..." Scott proposed, ripping his eyes away from Logan as he began to search through the shattered and tangled equipment strewn around the room. "There has to be a lever or something..." He began, then his eyes fell upon a rather large black button hanging from a single wire off a control panel.
"But it's smashed and I doubt it'll work..." He began, trying it out anyway. Nothing happened, just as he had suspected. "I've got it!" As something hit him. "I could blast the hydraulic system and Jean you could..." He stopped as Jean thrust up her hand.
She shook her head in shame, closing her eyes. "I don't have the energy to control him like that Scott," She almost wanted to scream at herself for giving up, but she knew that it was the truth.
"I will help you, Jean. I will use my harness of the wind to help guide him as we did in the Statue of Liberty..." Storm suggested quietly, remembering his heroic save of Rogue that had almost cost him his life. Her dark eyes flicked over to Jean who sighed and raised her head, taking in Logan's beaten and unconscious form.
"Alright, let's do it and get the hell out of here..." Jean said, huddling towards the two other X-Men, she tilted her head back completely and focussed on marshalling her strength as much as she could, eating up and gathering the scattered scraps of her powers and mind.
"Okay, ready Scott?" Jean took charge, slowly opening her eyes to focus unmoving on Logan's calm face. Scott nodded as he rose his hand to the side of his visor, setting it to an extremely thin, focussed beam.
He was going to have to get this in one shot or none; they were running out of time. The noxious smell of the gas soon became overwhelming, clogging their throats and coating their lungs. At such a focus, the beam of optic-energy would hit the third joint of the hydraulics without causing a spark, if he was perfectly aimed.
With a deep inhale to relax himself, Scott clenched his teeth so tight he was afraid he might break them. But with complete control and handling of his power, he spoke without moving anything but his lips and tongue. "Ready?"
The two women nodded, Storm's eyes beginning to cloud over a milky white and Jean's eyes intensified on Logan's face as she stretched out her arm to direct all the telekinetic energy she had gathered.
"Here goes..." Scott said before another deep inhale and with the flick of his finger, the intensely focussed beam streaked through the air, coming to land perfectly where he wanted it to. Cutting the hydraulics loose enough to let the platform Logan was strapped to creak in protest before plummeting downward.
Now it was up to the women who did everything in their power to slow it. Storm's eyes were so white they seemed to glow as a warm updraft swept through the room, pushing hard against the bottom of the platform as it plummeted through the air.
Jean's hand shook as she forced herself to see the platform slowing enough for her to control, everything that happened she took in, an focussed hard on doing. From the speed of Storm's updraft to the tiniest quiver of one of Logan's hairs, she saw it all and controlled it all.
As soon as it had started, it was over, and Logan was safely set upright on the floor. Jean collapsed in exhaustion, Scott able to catch her against his chest with his good arm, gently easing her to the floor. Storm rushed to help Logan, using her lock picking skills she had learned when she was younger, to free him from the bindings. She grunted as the large man fell limp into her arms.
Though she had sturdy and strong arms, three hundred pounds of limp muscle, bone, and metal was not something easy to support, especially in her weakened condition. She gently eased him to the ground, leaning over him and putting her ear to his chest. She could hear the dull thumps of his heart beneath his ribcage.
"He is alive," She concluded, lifting her head and turning to watch Cyclops gently slap Jean awake, she muttered something that neither could understand and quickly got to her feet, stumbling over to fall hard onto the cement next to Logan.
"We have to get him out of here." She said as if she was fully recovered from everything they had just experienced. "Now. There's someone else here..." She could feel them creeping through the darkness, their pain, it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
"Come on..." Jean lifted Logan's limp arm and struggled to lift him, only succeeding when Cyclops and Storm came in and helped her. With all three of them supporting the almost dead man, they slowly made their way from the room and down through the dimly lit hallway.
They were halfway down the hall and close enough to the exit to see it when suddenly they heard a faint, but close footfall. All three X-Men stopped dead in their tracks, turning simultaneously to see a huge black man rise from the rubble.
A downpour of blood hid his face and one of his arms had been smashed in a way that made Cyclops want to puke at the sight of it. His black clothes hung in tattered shreds from his body, barely clinging to stay on.
He stumbled before catching himself on the wall with his almost good arm, his deep purple eyes intense with anger and fright. "If I must die...then...you..." His Russian accent slurred and his words became irregularly spaced and smashed together. "You...will...die...with...with...me..." He seemed to cough out the last word as he unhinged his jaws and prepared to send a fireball their way.
Everything suddenly seemed to happen in slow motion. "No!" Cyclops screamed and instinctively dropped Logan to the ground, jumping on top of him to protect him. Storm and Jean did the same, completely smothering and covering the unconscious Logan with their bodies.
A huge spherical flame spewed from the Flame's open jaws, and as soon as it touched the air, a ghostly blue explosion raced down the hallway, consuming everything in its path. It seemed to lick up all the air in the entire building, sucking it from their lungs and filling them with heat.
The walls shattered and the ceiling crumbled in its path, sending huge chunks of the roof raining down on them. Then suddenly, the world thundered and became dark, merciless, and incredibly painful.
~*~
"Jean? Jean!" Cyclops yelled at his fiancée as he ripped away the remnants of the roof that were piled on top of her. The only way he saw her was her red hair sticking up out of the debris. He dusted away the residue from her back and gently turned her over, checking her pulse.
She began to swat him away, fighting with him as she thought Flame had gotten a hold of her. "Jean...It's me...Scott..." He clamped his hand around her wrists until she opened her eyes and recognized him.
"Oh Scott, you're alive..." She wrapped her arms about him, hugging him as tightly as she could in her weakened condition. "...Yeah...We have to get out of here..." He said, cringing in pain as she released him.
"Where's Ororo?" Jean said, slowly getting to her feet and testing her legs. "Over here..." A weak voice came from behind a line of trees, untouched by the explosion. Suddenly, Storm emerged, limping a little. In the explosion, she had been lifted from Logan and thrown into the forest, crashing through a number of trees and breaking them cleanly in half.
"Are you alright?" Jean said, rushing to her side. "I am alive if that is what you mean, but I am afraid our friend is not fairing quite as well as I." She looked back to a singed, collapsed body of Flame. She had landed on him on her descent to the ground, cushioning her with his burnt body, which eased her connection to the dirt.
Storm suddenly began to fall, her left leg giving out beneath her. She was caught by Jean who helped hold her up with her arm around Storm's shoulder as the group slowly stumbled back to the Blackbird, which lay untouched by anything.
After loading Storm into the jet, Jean and Scott headed back out in search of Logan, who was nowhere to be seen. Jean began to gingerly dig through the rubble of the building while Scott took his time winding through the front section of the forest surrounding the area they were in.
The explosion had singed a couple acres in diameter, completely demolishing the entire building as if it had never been there. A few small fires still lived, scattered around as if to light the twilight that had already begun to fall on the forest. The moon shone bright in the velvet sky, shining as a beacon as if to say there was still hope.
"Scott! I've found him!" Jean called out, loud enough that she was sure wherever her fiancé was he could hear her. Scott suddenly stumbled out through the forest and ran to her side, looking down on a pale, sick hand protruding out from the rubble.
"We may be too late..." Scott said, beginning to pick the top pieces of rubble up and throwing them carefully to the side. If they were not careful, they could move the wrong stone and send an avalanche of rubble crashing down on Logan. Scott could only dig with one hand, which made the entire process awkward and longer.
Within a few minutes, Logan's head and upper torso had been uncovered, along with one of his arms. A long bleeding gash ripped it's way from the top of his hand, all the way up the back of his forearm, to just below his elbow.
He was bleeding from a number of gashes strewn across his head, neck, shoulders, and chest. All the rubble that had some how been wedged beneath him was covered in blood, dripping wet like rain.
"Come on..." Scott said, carefully digging through the last of the wreckage covering Logan's legs. Jean helped, digging away until they could see the blue of his jeans; much of them soaked with blood, turning them maroon.
Without saying anything, both wondered how from beneath all three X-Men, Logan came up the most beaten and bleeding. They hurried to wrap his limp arms around both of their shoulders and carry him back to the Blackbird, as soon as they heard the distant sirens begin to approach.
Scott slipped Logan's arm carefully over his head; extremely careful to make sure Logan's arm didn't bump his visor. When Jean had successfully strapped Logan to a medical bed tucked away in the back of the jet. Scott limped up to the front of the Blackbird and began to prepare for ascent.
"Wait!" Jean called up to him, rushing as fast as she could in her weakened form down the almost closed ramp of the jet and back out into the debris. "Jean!" Storm called out from her kept position on the floor, seeing the distant trees illuminate with the lights of approaching police cars and ambulances.
Much time passed before Jean returned, almost too much time. She returned with her arms full of ice from Storm's recent blizzard she'd scent to help Scott when he was hanging from the pipe. She stumbled into the back of the jet and threw down the ice onto the empty medical bed opposite the one Logan was on.
With the ice taken care of, she hurried to the front of the jet and helped Storm into a chair, securing her tightly with the seatbelt as she had done so many times when driving the Professor somewhere. "Everybody in?" Scott yelled back, placing his good hand readily on the controls.
"Go! Go!" Jean yelled, hurrying back to Logan and begin to care for him. She braced herself against the wall as the bottom of the jet began to shake with power and they were off into the night, safe and sound.