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Thursday evening just a few minutes after Illyana returns from Limbo, Jake takes Amanda down to the medlab and she uses the last of her power to de-cootify Shiro. It's followed by a brief talk and reinforcement of Shiro's self-esteem.


Shiro lay nearly unconscious on a bed in the medlab. Shinobi had brought him down after they'd managed to escape from whatever it is they were, and Dr. McCoy immediately set to working on the boy. What should have been three wounds simple and shallow enough to clean up were not agreeing with medical technology. Shiro's skin was pale as if he'd lost a lot of blood, although his blood pressure was just below normal. His body shook violently every so often when he coughed, and a thin line of blood dribbled from his mouth.

"This doesn't make sense," McCoy muttered to himself, for once settling for words of one syllable. He looked up as Jake came into the medlab, supporting Amanda. The girl's face and shirt were covered in blood.

"Um, doc, I know you're busy..."

"What in the name of everything is going on up there? First young Mr Shaw brings Shiro down in this state, and now you have another patient for me..." Hank's confusion was interrupted by Amanda's horse words: "He's gunna die if I don't fix him."

"Beg your pardon?" Hank asked, looking between Amanda and Shiro, who gave a particularly nasty cough and groaned almost inaudibly.

"It's nothin' you can fix, Doc. It's a poison, a demon one, an' it'll kill him if you don't let me do somethin' about it." Amanda pushed Jake's arm from around her waist. "Go an' ask Pete for me stuff. Tell him what happened," she said. Jake hesitated a moment, and then nodded.

Hank had seen her work her wonders before, so he stepped aside to give her enough space to help Shiro. "Care to explain what happened?" he inquired.

"Hell?" she replied. She rubbed the back of her hand across her face, smearing the drying blood further. "Fuck, there goes me last shirt," she muttered. At Hank's impatient noise, she explained. "Somethin'... tried t' take 'Yana. Somethin' not from this dimension. We went after her. An' if you thought you were busy, you should see Remy - Bartlett's lookin' at him. They shredded us." As she spoke, she had laid her hands on Shiro's chest and forehead, sensing the extent of the poison. "Demon's are nasty fuckers."

Shiro hissed at the feeling of foreign hands on his body, and his back arched up slightly in response. "Where is Illyana currently?" Hank's expression, although calm as ever, held a trace of worry. "Is she hurt?"

"Piotr's bringin' her down. She's a bit cut up." Amanda shifted, not sure how to explain the full story. Fortunately just then Jake returned, carrying a cardboard box. "Pete give you trouble?" she asked, moving to take it from him. It slipped from her hands, and Jake took it back from her and put it on one of the equipment tables.

"He... doesn't know yet. He wasn't there, so I had to pick the lock and get it. You said it was an emergency," he said defensively as Amanda's eyebrow rose at his admission of burglary.

"Yeah, it is. Doesn't matter, I'll explain later." She pulled a large leather-bound volume from the box and thumbed through it, leaving bloody prints on the pages. "Right, here it is. Can you hold the book for me?"

"Are you certain... I mean, you've been magic-free for a while, do you think this is wise?" asked Hank.

"Doesn't matter," Amanda replied. "He needs it, an' I can do it." And with that she began to read the words on the page, written in a language eons dead.

Shiro barely registered what was going on around him, although the sound of the incantation did reach his ears. As harsh as the words sounded, a calm began sweeping through his body. He groaned at the sensation, and involuntarily clenched his fists. Only well-trimmed nails kept him from drawing blood.

While Shiro might have been filled with calm, the opposite was happening to Amanda. The spell was a hard one, drawing the last of the Limbo power from her, and it wasn't coming easily - fresh blood dribbled from her nose and she wiped it away almost angrily with her hand. Tremors racked her, and Hank quietly came up beside her, ready to catch her should she fall. But at last the final words fell from her lips, and a bright white light encompassed the Japanese boy, burning the poison from his system.

His body tensed as Amanda poured magic into his body, even though inside he felt good. And as she completed the spell, he fell back onto the bed, looking much more relaxed. Although the cuts still remained open, the infections were gone and color returned to his body. His discolored arms no longer contrasted so much with the rest of his body. "What?" he muttered in Japanese as he opened his eyes and looked around.

Amanda couldn't resist a small, triumphant smile, even as she struggled to remain upright. "He's all yours, doc," she said, taking the handful of tissues Hank offered to her and holding them to her nose.

"As are you, I think, my dear. Or are you going to tell me all that is costume blood? Sit." Hank indicated the other trolley, and Amanda sat with little grace, as he returned his attention to Shiro.

"I'll take these back," Jake offered. "If we're lucky, Pete will never know they were gone."

"Nice offer, but I'll tell him. Bit hard t' explain things otherwise," she said. Jake nodded and left, carrying the box.

Shiro struggled to sit up, but a firm fuzzy paw kept him lying down so Hank could clean and dress the wounds. "Not in Hell anymore . . ." Shiro said softly, his accent unusually thick, rubbing his eyes.

"It wasn't hell. Well, not exactly. I mean, it was a hell. But not the hell." Amanda looked apologetic as Shiro cast a bleary eye on her. "Um, sorry?"

"Hell is Hell." As Hank finished wrapping bandages around Shiro's chest, he sat up and carefully looked at Amanda. "What happened to you? You look worse than I feel . . ."

She shifted uncomfortably, and the movement renewed the pounding in her head. She winced. "It's nothin'. Just learned there's limits t' how much mystic power I can absorb."

"Bleeding from that many places is hardly 'nothing'," Hank said crisply. Amanda pulled a face.

"You . . . helped me?" Shiro asked rhetorically, knowing the answer but politely asking for confirmation anyway. He inclined his head, and winced a bit at the soreness in his body. "Thank you."

"Yer welcome." She shrugged, carefully, not wanting to jolt her aching head overmuch. "Wasn't doin' anythin' else..."

Shiro's lips quirked, but he carefully kept control over his expression. "Where are the rest?" A sudden realization hit him, and he would have jumped out of bed if he could have. "Illyana? Is she safe?"

"We got her back." Amanda left it at that. She wasn't up for an explanation of differing time flows between dimensions, not with a five-alarm headache steadily working it's way to eleven. "Everyone's back, more or less in one piece. Remy's a mess, an' Shinobi's gunna need a new suit, but we didn't lose anyone. The relief on her face extends past concern for her fellow students and teachers. No-one was lost.

Shiro visibly relaxed at that, any worries he'd had about the whole event leaving him. He stretched, cracking various joints, and realized that his arms were black again. Most likely from the two large expenditures of power, he decided. Embarrassed, he reached over to grab his ripped shirt and pulled it on. "I'm sure Shinobi will love the excuse to go out and buy himself more clothing."

"Least he's got the money t' do it," Amanda said, grimacing at both the realization she'd just ruined her last set of decent clothes, and at the light Hank was shining in her eyes. Shiro's discomfort registered. "Does that happen usually? When you use yer powers? That was pretty impressive, by the way."

"Thank you," he muttered, looking down at his hands. "And yes, it's a side-effect. I don't know yet what causes it," he said, glancing at Dr. McCoy, who looked back at him momentarily before turning back to Amanda, "But it is being investigated." He sighed and looked up again. "It's ugly."

Amanda made a noise that would have been a snort, had Hank at that moment chosen to wipe the blood from her face - and more importantly, her mouth - with a cloth. When he had moved onto other areas, she said: "It's not ugly, it's part of yer powers. An' that makes it yours."

"Are you calling me ugly?" Shiro asked, his tone as neutral as usual, although he really was just joking. "I appreciate the compliment, but the fact remains that it is an abnormality. It's not something to psychoanalyze and tell me it makes me 'beautiful.'"

"Fuck no. Heard that one enough meself." She shrugged. "Just tellin' you, it ain't that bad. Sorta interestin'. Nothin' t' be ashamed of."

Shiro gazed at his right arm for a moment, considering her words. He'd never thought of it as 'interesting' before, only disgusting because if it ever covered his face he didn't look Japanese, and he felt ashamed of that. Looking up, he offered Amanda a small smile and removed his tattered shirt again. He wasn't too comfortable wearing it anyway.

She grinned back, nodding once approvingly and then wincing at the movement. "'M gunna need an aspirin the size of a truck," she muttered.