Fury Said To A Mouse: Regrouping

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After the ambush, the team regroups.



The partially collapsed school provided little shelter. In terms of amenities, it boasted flat space for triaging the wounded and running water that could be boiled. That was it.

Critically, it did offer the only thing they had yet found to work against their enemy: plenty of space for an immediate retreat.

Though ashen-faced, Marius tried not to show any obvious discomfort or evidence he was still having trouble breathing. A punctured lung meant athletics were out of the question, effectively sidelining him. Nonetheless, he counted himself lucky. He at least had Kyle's borrowed healing factor to do what it could. Others did not have the same advantage.

"Everything's off-line," the Australian continued, trying not to stare at the band of gauze where his commanding officer's eyes should have been. He turned instead to where Lorna was distributing medical supplies they'd taken from the plane to the two medics. "Blackbird, comms, even the satellite phone. Switched out what we could, fuses and that, but no luck. We couldn't get any of it workin'.

Scott sighed, raising his hands towards his face before he caught himself. He stopped the gesture with his hands halfway to his face and forced them back down to his lap, clutching them together as he turned his head towards Marius. "Damn," the X-Man cursed, "I know that it had gone after the military radios but I was hoping that it would have missed the Blackbird." Scott sighed. "So we're stuck here with the Fury." Scott's fists clenched harder. "Not that we'd be able to run. We can't leave it intact and you saw it. It's rebuilding. I don't think we have all that much time left."

"I can probably tow us out of here on the Blackbird." Looking over at Marius and then back at Scott. "But I think we need to come up with a plan for the Fury." Lorna finished putting an ointment on her burns and knelt down next to Blink to look at her shoulder. "I've seen it rebuild. It takes the corpses and it learns. My powers are being manipulated by it. What...what if we deprive it what it needs to rebuild?"

Angel would've killed for a healing factor right about then. She was slumped against a wall, her broken leg stretched out in front of her, set and killing her. And useless. Absolutely useless. "It's using microwaves too," she reported, pulling her hair out of its ponytail and trying to fix it. She couldn't exactly get up and walk around and she needed to be doing something with her hands right then. "Just a fun fact, might want to keep your distance from that. Nasty stuff." She finished fixing her hair, turning Lorna's words around in her head. "You mean like...get rid of the bodies and stuff?"

Tabitha struggled to open her eyes. She swallowed against the ever-present pain-induced nausea. "We can blow them up," she said. Even the thought made her stomach want to rebel even more. "It may be our only chance at slowing it down." She took several breaths through her nose. "If someone can cart me around, I can get started."

"There has to be another way," Yvette said, putting her hand carefully on Tabitha's shoulder. "And you need to stay still, or you will hurt yourself more."

Jean was silent as she worked. Hitting the wall had given her a collection of scratches, bumps, bruises, and a broken pelvis that felt like being stabbed by a hot poker around her stomach area when she moved. But she had to move. She and Clarice were the only hope they had to take care of the majority of the team's massive injuries before they got too bad. There was an office chair with wheels that they'd found that she had initially used to try to wheel herself about, but it was doing a poor job. Most of them were in no shape to do any more fighting. They needed to be in a hospital.

My shoulder fucking hurts, it shouldn't feel this warm, that's not a good sign.

Not healing fast enough, don't know what I can stack it hasn't already countered.

I'm not gonna be able to get around, Jesus Christ. Can't even fly with that that thing running around. Useless. Hungry. No, focus Angel. Gotta stay focused. I don't wanna burn bodies.

Dammit. Fucking thing. What the fuck was that thing? Fucking fuck. God, my eyes hurt. Hard to focus. Everyone's so hurt. Suck it up. Breathe. God, I wish I could kill that thing again. Kill it. Kane's gonna kill me afterwards for that crap with the wall. Scared the crap outta Yvette. Dammit. Should say I'm sorry again. Couldn't think. That fucking thing. So close to Yvette. Too close her and Kane and Yvette and Lorna and Yvette. With its fucking eyes and that mouth. Like something outta a fucking Troma movie. Gotta calm down. Gotta try and calm down. Still hear my heart. Sounds like a Weezer Song. Ow. Ears hurt too. Didn't notice. Eyes still hurt. Dammit. No. Calm down. It's dead. It's dead. It should be dead. Put it down like Moreau. Monsters don't get to keep being monsters. They get fucking put down. We put it down. Can't come back. Can't can't can't. Calm down. Breathe....Dammit.

Their thoughts also buzzed about incessantly, talking over one another like someone had left on all the televisions and stereos in a department store set to different stations. She'd tried to shut them out but she was doing about as well as the chair she was sitting in. Her head was starting to pound, and her eyes were watering from the cracked bone, but she brushed them away and kept working.

"Can I take a look at your arm?" she said to Clarice, looking her hard in the face to try to read her lips since listening in on the actual conversations was difficult. She was trying to listen as best she could, but it took much of her concentration.

With the cavalcade of injuries, it would've been hard to choose which to look at first had she not been trained in triage.

"Sure," Clarice replied, twisting at the waist a little to give her a better view since moving her shoulder sent stabbing flames into her shoulder, arm, torso and back. Damn muscle connections. She felt warm and slightly feverish, but she was trying to ignore that, "I think it's straight through and Lorna took out the metal and stopped the blood. No major arteries hit, shockingly," how that had happened, she had no idea.

Jean's eyes narrowed at Clarice's arm, letting out a sigh of frustration. She shook her head, clenching her jaw.

"You shouldn't be showing signs of sepsis this rapidly. It must be something to do with the Fury's attack. The supplies we found aren't going to cut it." She wasn't going to sugarcoat things for Clarice, she knew the symptoms.

"Awesome," Clarice replied, eyes closed. Just great, she had hoped maybe that her sense of time was skewed. Apparently not. "Then we do what we can with what we have. Won't matter if we don't make it out of here and I sure as hell plan to make it home. So let's keep figuring out a plan."

"Suppose I could go back to the lab for those documents," Marius offered to Scott. "Might be something we missed."

"While ya'll are doing that," Fred managed between puffs on his eighth cigarette since coming inside, "...Ah can go back out there. Ah'm fine, and if it's..." the thought bothered him enough to make him pause, "If it's comin' back...Ah can keep it busy. Ah ain't hurt, and the closer Kane or Angel or Lorna get to it, better it seems tah learn. It couldn't take me last time, an it can't take me now. Why'll ya'll are figurin' it out in here, Ah can keep it out there."

"I don't think assuming any of us can take it alone is our best option." Garrison's skin was starting to calm down slightly, but he still looked like a patchwork man. "We need to protect our wounded first. Get the worst back to the Blackbird."

Scott took a moment to consider that before he shook his head. "We're all the walking wounded right now," he pointed out, turning his gauze covered face in the direction of his friend's voice, "but we know for sure that the Blackbird isn't safe right now. Besides, if we split the group we'd have to leave enough firepower in each team to hold off the Fury, and I'm not sure we have that anymore. If we're going to beat it then we have to all stay together and out-think it."

"Perhaps..." Yvette sounded hesitant, still not used to suggesting strategy in team situations, especially not with experienced X-Men present. "Perhaps there is somewhere we could lead it? Where it does not have the bodies to repair itself and it cannot move around as much? It might make it easier to bring it down?"

"Anchor, Blink and I found a quarry just outside of town." Lorna looked at Yvette before looking at the rest of the group. "There were no bodies there, at least not in the radius of the quarry."

"I can provide mental comms," Jean said, doing what she could to try to slow down the infection inevitably working its way through Clarice's body.

"But expect the potential for interruption or mental feedback. My mental walls are gone. It tore them apart. We need to keep within contact, though." But with the actual comms down there was no other way to do it. She was also.not entirely comfortable with Clarice or some of the other injured people going back to fight but that was another thing they had no choice about in the matter.

Scott nodded slowly, his face twitching slightly as the movement dislodged his false eye, sending it into a spasm of movement. The X-Man silently reached up to his face, pulling the false eye loose and feeling it twitch uncontrollably on his hand, a visible crack running along one side. After a moment apparently lost in his thoughts, Scott closed his fist around the eye and drew back, the shadows obscuring his face as he continued speaking. "We can use that, comms and a location." As the X-Man outlined his plan his fist clenched tighter in the shadows next to him. The false eye digging into his palm continued to twitch erratically.

"And here's how we're going to take it apart."