xp_logs | Red X Mission: Plattsburgh, NY

[Wolverine]
The call came in while he was, thankfully, not in the middle of anything. Otherwise, the way he jerked, surprised by the sudden ringing, might've gotten someone hurt.

When he arrived at the burning building, they were already discussing how to rescue the people stuck inside. Sending the fliers up to the roof to get the survivors who'd made it that far seemed to be the consensus. Logan turned to one of the firemen.

"How many people're stuck inside?"

The fireman paused in pulling something from the cab of the truck. "We've got a dozen people on the roof, waiting for rescue, and at least one guy stuck on the third floor. His mom says he's in a wheelchair and the elevators are shut down."

Logan nodded. "You guys goin' in after 'im?"

"We can't. There's a wall that's gone up in flames between us and him. He's up on the third floor, too far in. My guys are pulling out." The fireman looked apologetic, but determined.

Logan stared at the building, then looked at the fireman. "Dammit. /Dammit/." He slipped off his leather jacket and held it out toward the fireman. "C'n y'make sure this don't disappear? I kinda like it." Before giving the man a chance to respond, he walked away.

He could see Marie standing off to the side of a group of firemen and he approached her, brushing his lips over her cheek. "Meet me on the roof in a bit, eh?"

He didn't give her a chance to respond, either.

The doors were already open and he walked through into a rush of heat. The door from the stairwell to the third floor hallway burnt his hand when he touched it. Should've worn gloves, he thought wryly, just before the backdraft hit his body.

He fell back against the wall of the stairwell, screaming. His skin blackened and peeled within seconds and the flames took his clothes with them when they died out. The phone that had been hanging on his hip melted into the flesh beneath and when he was capable of thought again, he thought that might have been the most painful part.

He was wrong. The hall between the stairwell and the origin of the man-scent Logan detected in the air was awash with flames. They licked up the walls, smouldered in the carpet, and danced freely in the aisle. This was why the firemen had pulled out, he realised as he walked through the first curtain of fire.

By the time he reached the apartment, much of his skin had burnt and fallen away. Homo sapiens, mutant or human, has a limited number of layers of skin at any given time and the heat of the fire had been enough to remove all of them, in many places on his body. What was left was charred, black and crisp, and his healing factor had all it could do, just allowing him to breathe through the smoke.

The burns didn't hurt. The worst ones don't, he'd always been told, and glancing down at his hands, he supposed that was true. His lungs screamed, though, and his muscles had contracted in the heat in such a way that made it difficult to move. It was a struggle to remain conscious; the air was nothing but smoke, it seemed.

The boy he'd come after had already passed out due to smoke inhalation, and Logan wrapped him in a blanket before tossing him over his shoulder. The path out of the building was, due to luck and a great sense of smell, mostly free of hotspots, and that saved the young man's life.

The smoky air that met Logan when he reached the roof was a relief, and he laid the boy down on the rooftop as quickly as he could. The wrenching, screaming pain from his lungs and muscles was nearly unbearable and he would have cried, but the water in his body had long since evaporated in the heat.

Logan could see the adamantium of his bones through what was left of his muscles and he threw up on a broken patch of asphalt just as Marie arrived.

[Rogue]

Logan walked away from Marie and she didn't have a chance to tell him to stop. She didn't know where he was going, but she had to trust him. I have to trust him, right? She let him go. There were people screaming.

"I can't breathe, I can't breathe!"

"Madre Dios, get me out of here!"

"I'm dying! Someone help me!"

"Oh, God, I can't breathe!"

She ignored them. Somewhere in her memories, her shoulders were blistering, and she could smell her own flesh on fire. The remembered pain helped separate her from Stanley and Angelo. Fiercely, she shoved them into their place in her mind before they could shake her further, shoring up her partitions with the last of spattered rain on her face, the rivulets that washed away the memory of the touch of Logan's mouth on her skin as he walked away from her and headed to the burning building, easily shaking off the hands of those trying to stop him.

"What did you tell him?" She grabbed the firefighter by the shoulder and turned him to face her. The burly blond man blinked at her in confusion. "The man who gave you that jacket, what did you tell him?"

"Kid trapped on the third floor, some people on the roof, why?"

Oh. God. He's going in for the kid... Marie wanted to be sick but she forced herself to stand.

Kurt was a shadow behind her, radiating anticipation. "We can get the people from the roof," he said, the look of urgency seeming strange on his altered features. The firefighter looked at them both with utter incomprehension, opening his mouth to protest.

Yes. The people on the roof. Marie grasped at the task with her mind, shying away from the knowledge that somewhere, Logan was wrapped in flames and... Kurt grabbed her hand in his. "Rogue," he said brusquely. The sound of that name brought her back to herself and she nodded, squeezing his hand. A moment later, they were in the air, ignoring the shouts of the people below.

The storm winds were fierce, though there was no water left in them to douse the flames, and they only added to the blasts of heat and sucking downdrafts. If it weren't for her experience flying in the snowstorm weeks before, Rogue would never have been able to stay aloft. It was a wide, low building, only about eight stories high, a subsidized housing unit of some sort, and it was old. The wind had sucked the flames through it so fast it was frightening. She could see those on the roof clearly, huddled near the upwind edge of the building.

"I count ten adults," Kurt said in her ear. "One elder in a wheelchair, and three children. We will take them first."

"Can you pop back up safely?" Rogue asked as they landed on the roof. It felt solid enough underfoot, but that was little consolation. It would be a matter of seconds for fire to eat through it from below, turning it into a death trap.

"For now, I think so," Kurt assured her.

The victims didn't flee or protest. Small blessings, Rogue supposed, that they were more afraid of the fire than the mutants. At least Kurt's image inducer reduced the fear people felt at seeing him. Foolish creatures, came the familiar thought. Why do you risk yourself?

"We're going to get you down as fast as possible," she told them over the roar of the wind and flame and water from the firehoses below. "But we don't have a lot of time. You're just going to have to cooperate." She grabbed the unattended child of the three and placed him in the arms of the older man in the wheelchair. The wind changed and a wall of smoke and heat slammed into all of them. Cinders stung her cheek and neck and she instinctively covered the child and the man with her body until the air cleared. She could hear whimpers and gasps from the others.

"This will only take a second," Kurt explained, choking a little and pulling his shirt over his mouth and nose before he reached for the mother holding the other two children. A man somewhere spoke rapidly in an eastern tongue that Rogue didn't recognize. For her part, she lifted wheelchair, man, and child effortlessly.

"You have to hang on," she said quietly. There was a familiar slam of air rushing in to fill where Kurt had been and Rogue lifted off. "We will be right back," she called to the others. The wind hit her again but she set her mind to keeping herself on course and they were down in a matter of seconds. She left them right next to a firetruck and was gone again, twisting in the air to sight Kurt reappearing on the roof.

Two more trips. She didn't even stop to see their faces. The firemen were labouring to bring the blaze under control and still no sign of Logan. The building cried out as it burned; metal contorting and giving way, wood and drywall succumbing to the flame. Fire had life and voice of its own. Erik remembered flames too, with broken glass and wailing. Damn you all, she told them. The older woman still in her arms had inhaled too much smoke and clung to her, gasping.

"I can't breathe." Stanley's whimper bubbled to the forefront of her mind.

"She can't breathe," Rogue said angrily, grabbing a medic by the arm and spinning him to face her. "Do something." She was a ghost of soot and cinder, seeing her own face would have given her some understanding of the hesitation when the man saw her; face white as the locks of hair at her brow save for the tribal streaks of black across her cheeks, her eyes fierce and glowing. Still, he took them to the ambulance and they laid the woman down on a gurney. The medic opened up an oxygen tank and slipped the mask over the woman's face. Relief was swift; cold, pure oxygen poured in to soothe her swollen lungs and feed her blood.

Rogue stepped back, looking skyward, and launched herself to the roof one more time.

The smoke was worse now and the building writhed with the flames rising in it. The roof was hot under her feet, she sank into slicks of melted asphalt and had to pull free by lifting off. There was only one fire escape to the roof and she made her way there through the beating of the wind and clawing of the smoke.

He was there, or what was left of him was, crumpled over on hands and knees, vomiting bile and flesh. The person he'd gone in for lay huddled, wrapped in blankets, against the closed fire door. She didn't know if he could hear her. She didn't even know if he could still breathe.

"I'll be right back." She could see the metal of his shoulderblade where the flesh of his left shoulder had been ruined. Wisps of smoke curled up from his body to join the clouds swirling around them. Damage to the supraspinatus, she thought clinically, careful not to touch him. I did pay attention in Human Anatomy. "I love you."

Rogue picked the young man up in her arms and flew him down to the waiting ambulance. He was unconscious but not too badly burned. Whatever had happened to Logan had happened before he found the man. He'd just kept going. "Blankets," she said to the paramedic. "I need blankets, there's someone else off the roof I need to bring down." A firefighter heard her and handed her a stack from the back of a nearby truck. "Thanks."

Kurt was speaking seriously with a priest who stood to the side, clutching a rosary in his hands. When he saw her coming, he stepped away and held out his hand to her. "What is it?"

"Logan, he's on the roof," she told him. "I need your help." She handed Kurt one of the blankets and plunged the other two into the icy-white froth from one of the firehoses, much to the shock of the men handling it.

"Now?" Kurt put his hand on her shoulder.

"Go."

A moment later, they stood on the edge of the roof.

"How bad?" Kurt held his sleeve over his face.

"We need to cool off his bones," Rogue said flatly, flying them through the smoke. It tore at her throat and eyes but she pushed aside the discomfort and forged ahead.

"Gott in Himmel," Kurt said, and then he saw Logan. "God help him."

"God's welcome to help," Marie said, wrapping the wet blankets around Logan's crumpled body. Tremors of agony shook him and she could hear his breath scraping in and out raggedly. "We need it." Kurt moved to help her, arranging the heavy, wet fabric around their friend with gentle hands.

Logan had flung his left arm up to protect his face, the flesh was mostly gone from the lower part of it, but trying to reform over the still too-hot bones. She took his face in her hands gingerly, trying to see if he even knew she was there. Her gloved fingers slid against his right cheekbone, his jaw on that side was blackened metal. He couldn't open his eyes, but the flesh over them seemed to be intact.

"Oh, God," she whispered. "I love you so much. You're such an idiot sometimes."

Suddenly, they were in the Blackbird and Kurt was pulling down a pallet over the back seats. "He will heal," Kurt said calmly.

"He'd better." Rogue couldn't get Logan to straighten, settled for trying to get his right arm gently into a position where she and Kurt could get the IV into him. "I can't kill him for taking such a stupid risk if he doesn't." She was angry, sick, horrified. The image of Logan's horribly burned body hadn't yet filtered past her defenses. She wasn't fully aware that the smell, the taste, in her mouth and nose wasn't just residual, it was from him now. I just let him go, she thought. I just let him go... I didn't know where he was going. Her hands were steady as she helped Kurt get the needle into Logan's vein.

He was so silent, she didn't know if it was because his vocal cords hadn't healed yet. Kurt emptied two ampules of morphine into the IV bag, pondered a third, and pressed it into her hand.

We need to get him home, her instincts screamed, but her mind knew that time was what he needed. She leaned over him, bracing her arms on either side of him, so she could whisper in his ear, as close as she could without touching him.

"I love you," she said again. It was all she had to give him against the pain. "I love you more than anything."

[Jamie Madrox]
Today, Hubert Weaver decided, was quite possibly the worst day of his life.

He wasn't sure. His head hurt, and it was hard to remember. He was quite sure he'd been awakened by the screaming of the fire alarm in his apartment, and he was reasonably sure he'd made it out the window onto the fire escape, but then . . . somehow he'd ended up in the street. It was very curious. He stopped, blinking blurrily at his reflection in a window--his hair wasn't supposed to be matted down with blood, was it . . .?

"Excuse me, sir?"

Eh? Who was that? Hubert turned around. Ah, there. It was a young man, dark hair peeking out from under a cap with the Red Cross logo . . . or was it? Looked a bit crooked, Hubert thought, but then, he had to admit to himself, everything looked a bit crooked just now.

"What is it, sonny?"

"Just wanted to know if you'd like a place to sit down, sir. Maybe we can get your head looked at?"

It would be nice to sit down, at that. Good old Red Cross. The boy was too young to be a doctor, Hubert thought, but then, they were making doctors awfully young these days. He remembered a time when the doctors were all old men . . .

"Sir? It's over this way."

"All right, all right . . ." Hubert turned around, but stumbled--the ground used to be smoother, too--and there the boy was under his shoulder, holding him up. That was good. Not that he couldn't walk there himself, but it showed the boy respected his elders.

"Jamie Madrox," the boy said, grinning with just that touch of mischief that had gotten Hubert into--and out of--his own share of trouble at that age. But what was he--oh, that was his name, of course. That damnable headache was getting worse.

"Hubert Weaver. Pleasure t'meet you, sonny. How far is it now?"

"Just up there." The boy--Jamie--pointed up the street, and now Hubert saw the big white tent. They must've gotten it up damned quick, too . . .

"You s'pose they'll have aspirin in there, Jamie? Got myself a bastard of a headache."

The boy snorted. "I'm not surprised, Mr. Weaver. Doc Sherve'll fix you up no problem, though, don't worry about it."

And then they were at the tent door, and inside--and Hubert froze. There was the doctor, right enough, and a proper doctor, thank God, white hair and laugh lines, and a pretty young thing with red hair handing him bandages, and a few other poor souls, some of Hubert's neighbors, and . . .

"Jamie, boy? Think I'm worse off than I thought, I'm seeing double. Or . . ." Hubert's brow wrinkled. "What's the word, when it's double, but six of 'em instead? Too damn many of you in this tent, is what I mean, sonny."

Jamie snickered. "Don't worry about it, Mr. Weaver, you're seeing what's there." He tapped the brim of his cap. It wasn't the Red Cross logo, after all, not really--or, it was the cross, all right, just tipped on its side. "Red X, Mr. Weaver. I'm a mutant. All of those guys are me."

"Well, that's a hell of a thing."

Jamie grinned again, and that streak of mischief was a hell of a lot wider. Hubert hoped the kid had a girlfriend, or else he'd get into a whole lot of trouble with a grin like that. "That's what I've heard, Mr. Weaver. Come on, we'll sit you down over here and get you cleaned up."

"Thank you kindly, Jamie."

"What I'm here for, Mr. Weaver. Doc?"

And then the doctor was there with an injection of something that made his headache fade right out, and the young lady--Rain, or something, and a damn shame a nice girl like that had to go and get saddled with hippie parents--the young lady wiped off his forehead with a cool cloth, and then the doctor was back with a needle and thread.

And then somebody shouted, and Jamie ran back out the tent and took half the other Jamies with him, but Hubert never did find out what that was all about.

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From:

x-rahne.livejournal.com

Parts 1-2: *shudders* Very good. *shudders more* And ick. Ow. No, I'm not getting more coherent about that part... "We need to cool off his bones." Gah. *also loves Kurt*

Part 3: Also good, like the way Hubert's thoughts wander... and the "hippie parents" line just about knocked me over.