Fury Said To A Mouse: The End I

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With the Fury reactivated once more, Polaris, Meltdown and Firestar lead it into their teammates' waiting ambush

Warning: Graphic violence.


The Fury was patient. It had not moved since the building had collapsed on it, instead sending forth tendrils to probe the surrounding wreckage for resources. Until the time was right it would exert no more energy than was required.

Now it was ready.

The rubble exploded from the cybiote in a blast of telekinesis. The Fury clambered out, the torso still legless but now much larger. Most of the additional mass came from metal and minerals it had incorporated into its design. Its forearms had been correspondingly increased to support the weight.

The reliance would not be necessary for long. With swift, simian movements it knuckled through the wreckage, dragging a tangle of nerves and wire behind it. Locating its discarded lower body, the Fury joined the two halves as easily as a foot slipping into a shoe. Nerves connected, processors came back on line. Mass was rapidly redistributed.

Complete once more, the Fury stood.

Lorna had created a large metal sled for Tabs and Angel as they were injured. Any extra metal Lorna had been storing near her as she was spiking dead bodies away from the Fury's last known location. "Okay...I think we are..." She was interrupted by the movement of metal. "Shit balls, Fury is on the move." Looking over at her two teammates. "Are we ready for this? We need to keep the bodies away from him. Meltdown, do you think you can keep him busy with your bombs? I'll be carting you around so he can't use you for parts but we need to deprive him of corpses..." Lorna winced as her magnetic vision was starting to become a bit unbalanced and rubbed at the bridge of her nose.

Tabs flexed the fingers on her working arm. "Yeah, I can make 'em big enough to keep it occupied." If she were a little less injured, she might have enjoyed herself. She didn't often get to make big, high damage bombs.

Angel took a deep breath, eying the bodies wearily. "Sorry," she whispered, holding her hands out. Fire sparked to life between her palms, and she sent it off, cringing as the bodies went up in flames.

"Good. Lets do this." Lorna lifted the metal sled with her in the front. ~RED! THIS IS GREEN! WE ARE GOING IN!"~ She formed a large shovel to start scooping up the corpses as she carried her team towards the Fury. She really hoped this worked.

From her perch with Scott, high above the melee, Jean put her hand to her temple and glanced up, her gaze scanning over toward their intended eventual target with a nod. ~Copy that, Green. I'll inform the others. ETA?~

~Five minutes. Maybe six. I hope.~ Lorna looked behind her to make sure her passengers were doing okay as she continued towards the Fury. "Meltdown, do your thing."

The cybiote's sensors, completing its final system diagnostic, were suddenly snapped to attention by a not-too-distant explosion. The approximate location indicated it originated from the same area an electromagnetic distortion. The plasma-creator, then. It could detect the other energy-manipulator nearby.

Three targets, clustered together in its immediate proximity. The Fury started on its way.

It sprinted forward with hydraulic stamina, noting the explosions continuing at regular intervals. They seemed to serve no particular purpose. However, when it came to what it calculated to be the epicenter of the disturbance it shambled to a halt. While it detected lifesigns it saw nothing nothing. Though energy-manipulation lit up its sensors, those same emissions were distorting its ability to pinpoint their exact location. Methodically, the Fury began to conduct a visual sweep of the area and cycled its scanners to infrared.

It was not prepared for a detonation just over its head.

Tabitha used every trick she knew to make that bomb blow the Fury over. Non-metal shrapnel and concussive force packed into as tight a space as she could, and just enough plasma to pop the eardrums of anyone within the blast zone. "Eat that, you Frankenbeast!" Well, she would have shouted if she weren't on the edge of unconsciousness.

The cybiote rocked back as three lenses shattered from the force of the explosion. It turned to regard the three mutants hovering overhead, the fissures in its glass eyes already beginning to fuse.

Then it leaped.

She saw it move through the black spots dancing across her vision. Tabitha struggled to put together one more bomb. It was sloppy, and she wasn't entirely sure what kind of explosion would ensue.

But she lobbed it with the last of her strength anyway.

The bomb caught the Fury in mid-air arc just yards before it made contact with Lorna and the makeshift gurneys. It may have been largely immune to the damage, but it couldn't adapt past the laws of physics: the force of the explosion sent it pinwheeling back to earth like a ragdoll.

"That was close. Too close." Lorna flew forward towards the quarry with the makeshift gurney. "Is it still following us?"

Angel looked back, making a noise that was somewhere between a yelp and an "eep!" "Yeah, still on us," she reported. "And it's...its eyes - I think they're its eyes anyways - they're glowing red, think it might be about to do-"

An optic blast struck the edge of Angel's gurney, deforming the metal and narrowly missing her injured leg. Another came within a hairsbreadth of Tabitha's head. What accuracy it lost by employing multiple lenses it made up for in volume of attack: it fired again and again, filling the sky with short, violent beams of crimson.

Lorna felt the metal warping and she did her best to keep her passengers safe. "Shit. Hold on." Lorna said as metal bars and straps appeared from extra metal pieces that she had on her. Lorna made a zig zag movement and kept her pattern unpredictable - she wasn't sure if that thing could mind read. ~Red! We are coming up to the quarry and HOT!~ She made a dive back to earth before making another twist and turn before coming back into the sky, very high up. "Did I lose anyone?" She wasn't looking back, she kept going.

Tabitha's one usable hand maintained a white-knuckled grip on the edge of her make-shift gurney. Light-headed from pain, she still managed to speak up. "Still here," she said.

Angel shook her head, taking a deep breath. "Present and accounted for," she called shakily.

The Fury seemed to have heard that. The hail of optic blasts subsided, but an instant later the electro-magnetic fields supporting the three X-Men began to distort. The gurneys started to pitch and wobble; their pursuer was testing another tactic.

"I don't think so..." Lorna felt the gurney being tugged and she turned towards the gurney as her eyes glowed bright green. She wasn't going to allow Fury to win; she created a shield to block her own powers from being used against her. "Meltdown, we need another of those bombs..."

Tabs nodded her head and poured her energy into another bomb. "Yeah, gimme a minute." She panted with exertion as the bomb grew in size. Tabitha struggled to sit up, and threw the bomb with more or less decent accuracy.

The blast stumbled the Fury, but did not stop it; the distortion to the EM fields lessened for only a moment. An instant later it redoubled, clashing against Lorna's shields as it sought another way in. Below them the cybiote pounded on, patient and implacable.

"No you don't!" Angel snapped, focusing on the thing, and the temperature around her flicking to life in the air, and she directed it all at the Fury, smiling grimly as she watched it catch fire.

The pressure on Lorna eased. Reacting to the immediate threat, the Fury had automatically tuned itself to Angel's spectrum. It could not extinguish the fire she'd already lit, but it could stifle the force creating them. As it did so it pumped its meager bloodflow into damaged tissue, forcing singed flesh back to life. Its systems reported that it would presently require another infusion of organic material, but there seemed to be no corpses to hand. A potential problem -- eventually.

It would concern itself with "eventually" later.

Lorna stopped as she was over the quarry and left her teammates floating above as she dived back down to get the Fury into position. Seeing the steel grider encased in cement, Lorna's hands glowed green as she focused on picking it up. It lifted off the ground with ease and Lorna got into position of lifting it high above her own head and then bring it down to the Fury down below, like golf. ~It is in position!.~ She sent off after her makeshift club hit the the Fury into the quarry below.

The Fury hit the quarry basin like a cannonball. It was stronger now, too strong for its skeleton to suffer any damage that could not be repaired almost instantly, but it was disoriented. For a moment it simply crouched in the shattered stone. Recalibrating.

No crouching. No calibrating. No Next Round. No copy of the fucking Home Game. Fred was moving towards it as soon as it landed, hefting a heavy mass of stone from the quarry. He was staying in front of it, making plenty of noise, trying to keep its attention. No matter how strong it'd gotten, he was betting it couldn't hurt him. And keeping its attention meant it didn't get a chance to try and scan Yvette or Kane.

Fred threw the rock at it as hard as he could. He didn't care if it blocked it or dodged it; he was nearly at 8 feet again, almost thrice his normal mass, and he was coming in right after the rock fists up and swinging.

Yvette winced as Fred closed with the Fury, but stayed where she was, perched on an outcropping of stone on the wall of the quarry. Her role was a vital one, and as much as she wanted to jump in and help her boyfriend, she knew if she was knocked out of the fight early, the whole plan might fail. Instead, her feet and hands dug into the stone as she watched from the shadows, waiting for her opening.

Instead of meeting Fred's charge head-on, the Fury reacted with alarming grace. Sidestepping the massive mutant, the cybiote seized Fred's extended arm and spun, allowing Fred's own momentum to carry him down and complete the armlock. Planting a stumped foot on the downed X-Man's back, it began to pull.

Trying to rip off an arm was a highly specific way to make Garrison Kane extremely mad. Even as the Fury pulled, the Canadian came in low and shifted up, again against the normal functioning of his tactical chip with a strange seemingly off-balance move. At the last minute, he grabbed the Fury's knee and violently shifted to flank him, driving his blade hand into the armpit, crushing the bones and tendons below. The blow destroyed his hold on Fred, forcing him off.

With the Fury occupied by both Garrison and Fred, Yvette made her move. She leapt from her perch onto the Fury's back and shoulders, digging in with her feet so it couldn't shake her off. Then she started carving off great chunks of flesh with her hands, long blades filleting the behemoth and flinging the pieces as far away as she could, to stop it from reusing them.

Overbalanced by both Garrison's blow and the sudden extra weight on its back the cybiote stumbled away, but even as it did metal beaded from its pores to reinforce the leg Kane had damaged. The target on its shoulders was tearing into muscle. The Fury's head swiveled with the range of an owl, giving Yvette only a terrifying split-second face-to-face with an array of lenses emanating a crimson glow before an optic blast hit her squarely in the chest.

Yvette flew across the quarry, flesh still clutched in her toes, her back hitting the stone solidly. She slid down the wall limply, to lie in a small crumpled heap at the bottom.

The next scream was from Fred. He knew, rationally, that Yvette was probably just stunned by the blast. But Fred wasn't in the most rational state of mind after watching this thing get back up again and again. He came in close, within the reach of the Fury. The thing was already three steps ahead of him, clubbing him at his joints and rearing back its small plasma arm to fire. Fred didn't care. The thing had absorbed a lot of tricks from Kane, but it apparently hadn't learned entirely how to deal with Fred when he set his feet. No blow from the Fury moved Fred from where his feet were gravimetrically locked into the ground. The gout of plasma sheared another swath from Fred's uniform. He didn't care. He screamed again. It sounded like "Don't touch her.", but there was no way to be sure over the noise as Fred planted his thumbs in two of the smaller lenses on the thing's face and pushed in until they gave, until his thumbs were wet and well past the outer rings of the lenses.

The cybiote yanked away from Fred's grasp and hinged backwards at the waist. Its arms swiveled around to catch its fall, and once all four limbs were in contact with the earth it scuttled backwards like a giant crab. As soon as it was out of range it handsprung back onto its feet, giving the young man a clear view of its empty sockets already beginning to crust with fresh crystalline structures.

Telekinesis shattered the stone beneath Fred's feet. It didn't move him much, not on such solid ground, but he staggered. The Fury didn't know how to deal with him, not yet, but it was beginning to experiment.

"Get it together, man." Kane hissed as he sped past Fred. The younger man was acting on rage as opposed to thinking and it was bound to hurt him. Fortunately, he seemed to have all of its attention as Kane went for the internals that Yvette had exposed. He leapt over a vicious swipe and landed hard with both feet in the centre of the Fury's back. The impact smashed it to the ground, temporarily pinned under the Canadian. He smashed both fists deep into the wounds, clenched his fingers and with a tremendous effort tore out a double-handful of what he hoped were its guts.

Flesh convulsed under his hands. He'd reached too deep, penetrating the substrate of the Fury's complex internal structures. Gore-slicked wire filament snaked from the innards to tangle Garrison's fists like a net and began to winch him closer. Lenses still repairing, the Fury raised its canon-arm and planted it against the Canadian's temple.

Long razor sharp blades sliced into the canon-arm at the 'elbow', tearing through muscle and wire and metal with a screeching noise. A foot, heavy with "armour" formed by overlapping plates of hardened skin, toes as long and deadly as the hands, was planted on the Fury's face, toes digging deeply into the eye sockets, shattering the newly repairing lenses. Yvette's eyes blazed incandescent, breath coming in short pants as she collected herself for another strike.

In Genosha, she had had her genetics bonded with a feral of some sort, someone larger, wilder, fiercer than she was. The effect had been to create a killing machine, impervious to harm, with a 'battle form' that came from the realm of nightmares, spikes and heavy plating rendering her almost completely inhuman. That splicing had been reversed, the extra mass and bloodlust removed from the quiet, thoughtful young woman, and while she had begun to develop her own battle form, it was nowhere near like the horrifying creature she had been as Mutate 105.

Until now.

The impact into the quarry wall had been blunted somewhat by her powers, her skin reacting to her subconscious panic and thickening over her back and protecting her internal organs. She'd been winded and momentarily dazed, but not severely injured. And for a moment she considered remaining where she was, out of the fight, not having to deal with the monster that was certain to kill them. To give up.

The sight of the Fury's near-victory over her teammates filled her with guilt. She couldn't leave them there to die, not Garrison and certainly not Fred. She'd pushed the fear away... and something else had surfaced. Not consciously - Yvette was far too adept at hiding from herself - but riding on instinct and the smell of blood and sweat and terror. Riding on memory. And in that moment, Yvette's conscious mind had subsided, letting that part take over, the part that was a monster, but a monster designed specifically for one thing - to fight and to kill.

Yvette's bladed hand slashed again and again at the canon-arm, until it hung by the slightest thread. Her feet shoved deeper and deeper into the Fury's face, grasping at the remaining flesh and the pieces underneath - if the Fury batted her away again, it would rip off most of the material comprising its face.

The Fury reared back, the filaments trapping Garrison's hands shredding against sharp edges of the smaller X-Man's thrashing battle form. Blind, it took a few ponderous steps away from the Canadian and groped at her with both hands, seemingly unaware one was barely attached. It could not detach her.

So it did not try.

The cybiote slammed to its knees and ratcheted its midsection forward with the speed of a beartrap, slamming its own face -- and Yvette as she clung to it -- into the quarry floor again and again in an attempt to jar her loose.

Kane said get it together. Fred had to try. He got his footing back and was again locked into the ground itself. There was something in him, in all those training sessions and cadet missions, that had to be able to focus. He took a step, than another. He saw Kane engaging it. He knew he could run interference, keep the thing off balance, if-

Then Yvette was there. Or what was her at the moment. Red lines cutting through the air, cutting through everything. Every move, no matter how small, custom built to hurt the thing. Fred smelled tropical air. His eyes squinted against sunlight in a memory. Oh no. Please God. No, not this.

It took precious split seconds for him to pray. He hadn't done it in so long, he wasn't sure he'd done it right. It took the rest of that one second to notice how focused Yvette was on the Fury. She wasn't trying for him or Kane. Just the thing that was hurting her friends. It wasn't Genosha. Not again. Wasn't wasn't wasn't.

Fred cut across the ground in front of Kane as the thing started to slam Yvette for the third "again", yanking at the scant loose filaments still lightly holding the senior X-Man to The Fury. His hands caught the thing as it came back up and swung around to its back.

His feet touched ground and didn't move again. Arms almost as wide across as the Fury itself wrapped around its midsection and neck, careful not to inhibit Yvette -it's still her it's still her just stay calm- whatsoever. He tightened his hands until the soft outside fat of his arms sunk into the flesh of the creature. The Fury thought it was in a fight. It wasn't. It was in a butcher shop, now.

"Better." Kane muttered, scrambling back from where Fred had stopped the creature cold. Now that it couldn't lunge, there was nothing stopping Yvette as she continued to shred the creature. He got to his feet, flanking the struggle. He reached into the debris and came up with a piece of rebar.

"Try, try again." Garrison said wryly as he got behind the creature and smashed the rebar into the small of its back. Each blow was like a steam hammer coming down, trapping it between the vicious blows, Fred's immobilizing hold and Yvette's claws.

Such an assault would have disoriented any other organism, but the Fury had multiple processors through which to spread its attention. Even as it was torn and beaten the Fury cycled through its options: it was taking damage, but its priority was to regain mobility. It set a course of action.

The rebar in Garrison's hands abruptly fused itself to his target. The cybiote did not allow the Canadian the opportunity to dislodge it: it immediately followed with a telekinetic blast that threw both Garrison and Yvette back by two dozen yards, though the latter took yet more of it with her. Two down. One more to consider.



Safely out of harm's way, Blink and Emplate struggle to make the others' efforts count.


Scott settled his back against a nearby rock. He could hear Jean, Marius and Clarice moving about nearby, and further in the distance the sound of combat as the X-Men re-engaged with the Fury. And he was trapped up here, safely out of the way. Scott clenched his fists and forced himself to take a deep breath. He just hated the helplessness of being completely sidelined and unable to help. The sound of a shift in air and a squelch of flesh hitting the ground nearby broke him out of his reverie. It sounded like the plan was on track, that was at least something he could do. "Any luck finding what you need Emplate?"

"Not yet," the younger man's voice grated from somewhere beyond the blackness of Scott's gauzed face. "Blink?"

Clarice's fever was running high and it was all she could do to stay upright and focus on what she needed to do and even that little seemed to be more than she could handle. "Working on it," she replied, voice sounding distant in her ears as she teleported more of the Fury's flesh from where Penance, Anchor and Dominion were slicing it off. It was disgusting and she was pretty sure she was never eating schwarma ever again. A moment later, more meat appeared.

Marius spat invectives, hurling away useless chunks as he did. Nothing yet. Had it already been destroyed, or was it just too integrated with the constant repairs to find? "Still no joy," he reported, trying not to think too much about the flush to his teammate's purple skin or the livid red streak crawling towards the lymph node in her neck. He kept looking. If they didn't get something soon Clarice was going to keel over -- or worse.

Scott cursed under his breath, this was taking longer than he'd hoped for. "Keep at it," he encouraged the other X-Men. "There has to be a piece in there somewhere. We just need to keep looking." And hope Yvette, Garrison and Fred could keep working the Fury over until they did.

The Australian tried to fight down the sick feeling in his stomach as he kept looking. He felt exposed even though no one looking at him. No one could look at him. Jean's face was turned, swollen and still covered in blood and grime. Her gaze seemed fixed on the fight below, but he knew better than to think she was concentrating her attention on the visual. Scott couldn't see anything at all, but somehow not being able to see his eyes when he faced Marius was even worse. Brown and yellow fluid had begun to soak through the bandages. The pressure from his eyeless gaze was almost unbearable.

As he pawed through the growing pile of rancid meat Marius noticed more and more debris being teleported along. Gravel, ancient leafmould, even slices of stone. Clarice had been an X-Man almost as long as he'd lived at Xavier's; her precise spatial awareness and years of training had given her excellent control. He knew slip-ups had to happen sometimes, but he'd never seen anything like this.

"Clarice?" he said, alarmed.

"Working on it," she grunted, sweat pouring over her forehead, all her concentration going towards what she was doing. She could get this. She would. Or she would die trying. It was simple and not something that she was overly concerned about right now. She'd been in enough situations where she'd had to make peace with dying young. It would happen or it wouldn't, but worrying about it helped nothing.

Marius tore his eyes away from his teammate. Infection was eating at her organs and fever at her brain, but Clarice was still all business. He had to be, too.

The slimy flesh reeked like raw steak left in the sun. Marius clawed through it, shutting out everything else. Not that, nor that, nor that--

--There.

"Apologies, I'm seeing nothing new." Marius lowered the recovered packet in disgust as over to one side Jean worked to stablise Tabitha's broken arm. "This bit's all about 'Dr. Jefferies is a world-renowned doctor with a distinguished medical career, Dr. Jefferies is the only one with the ability and medical knowledge capable of creating our proprietary cybiotes,' et cetera et cetera. Your typical investor-ready resume. Nothing about how to take it apart." The Australian's voice turned even more sour. "Pity Dr. Jefferies isn't around to clean up after himself."

"Part of him is," Scott replied, mysteriously gesturing in the direction he hoped the papers Marius had been leafing through were. "We know that the Fury can absorb organic matter to rebuild itself, but now it's adapting and using powers that weren't in the file." Scott gestured towards his own face. "There was nothing about it being able to shoot optical blasts, or generate EMPs. It's modifying its flesh. It's using Jefferies powers, its base powers, so I'm betting that it's got a lump of his flesh in there. And if there is then we can use that," he noted, turning his head in Marius' direction.

"What, so I should -- take it and use his power? I did get that read off a bit of it initially, but . . ." Marius grimaced, but forced himself to work through the suggestion. "I use stored blood samples, so I suppose it needn't be fresh. Never tried it with tissue that's gone off before, not including whatever else has been mixed in. Not sure it'd work. Did manage with those dirt golems, though, so I suppose it's worth a try." He winced. "Problem is gettin' the bits. I can't even run."

She was terrified. And the last thing she wanted to do was engage the Fury at close quarters again, not after the last time. But she was an X-Man...

Yvette's voice quavered slightly, but she held Marius' gaze steadily. "I can be getting the pieces for you, Marius. If there is someone to help distract it for me?"

Scott shot a concerned look at Yvette before nodding, "We can send Anchor and Dominion in with you to provide cover you while you slice him up. The three of you are the most mobile and durable people we have. And your powers are the hardest for it to adapt to. We just need to find a way to get the flesh away from the battlefield and to Marius without putting him in danger from the Fury following." The X-Man looked hesitantly in Jean's direction, "Maybe Jean could levitate them away so it can't track us."

"I can do it," Clarice piped up from where she was sitting. She'd been quiet, trying not to make the painful throbbing in her shoulder worse. Her fever wasn't helping either.

Scott swung his head over in Clarice's direction. "It sounds like we have our plan," he told the room as he pushed himself to his feet. "Everyone get ready, we move out in 15 minutes."

"Think this is it," Marius told Clarice, holding the chunk in his hand. This was the part he had tried not to think about during the planning session, but it was the only way. He drew a deep breath, held it, and crammed all that remained of Lionel Jefferies into his mouth.

It almost came right back out. The implications, the taste -- even the texture was revolting, somehow simultaneously grainy and semi-liquified. In the rare instances he'd been forced to extract powers directly from flesh Marius been able to chew until he had the blood he needed and spit out the rest, but this tissue was old, and if he was getting any blood it was so rotten he couldn't even tell.

He wanted to throw it up, to tell Scott he couldn't do this, but Yvette and the others were down there risking their lives for this plan while Clarice overtaxed her already weakened body to bring him the results. This was the only piece they had. Maybe their only chance to disable the Fury without further harm to the others.

For that reason, and that reason alone, Marius forced himself to swallow the whole thing.

Clarice wanted to claim that her eyes were closed because it was too gross and disturbing to watch her friend and teammate eat that. In truth, she was too tired to give a shit. She just didn't care. "Awesome," she mumbled, body going limp now that she didn't have to force it beyond its ability.

Marius made strangled retching sounds as he struggled to master his gag reflex. His throat was convulsing to the point it made his eyes water, but finally he managed to keep the contents in his stomach. Once he felt like he could open his mouth safely he nearly called out to Scott, then realized he had an unexpected problem: he had no idea if it had worked.

Generally a borrowed mutation took hold almost instantaneously. Those that were visible manifested rapidly, and familiar mutations created a subtle sense of change. Lionel's did neither. If only there was some way to test--

Inspiration struck. The X-Man scrambled over to where Clarice lay sprawled on the stone, ignoring the slick, organic debris under him as he did. "Oi," he said urgently, hoping she could still hear him. "Oi, Blink, I need your shoulder."

Like she was moving it or anything else? Making a face but not arguing it, she slowly turned enough to give him access. She was trying to decide if this was worse than having radiation poisoning or not. It was difficult to say.

At least she was alert enough to make faces at him. Trying not to jostle her and thankful that part of her uniform had already been cut away when Jean had cleaned and dressed the wound, Marius quickly undid the bandages.

What he found beneath was horrifying. The bacteria introduced to her system by the Fury's attack had been devastating. The skin immediately around the wound had turned dark purple splotched with black, and red streaks radiated down one arm and up her neck. The site around the puncture wound had swollen to half the size of a cantaloupe. He couldn't believe she was still conscious, let alone able to use her powers as much or as long as she had. It didn't matter if she survived the infection. Her arm was already gone.

Unless he was correct in his guess of the source of Dr. Jefferies' medical prowess.

Forcing himself to focus, Marius touched two fingertips to the girl's shoulder. He could feel the heat of the infection, and not just from her temperature. He couldn't describe how he knew, but he the foreign bodies in her blood stood out to him like a pebble in the heel of his shoe. Drawing on what he recalled of using Masque's power all those years ago, Marius drew his fingers over the lips of the wound, concentrating on forcing out the "wrong" and reinvigorating the dying tissue. The dark spots began to lighten as the streaks receded; though still slightly discolored, the swelling around the injury was greatly reduced.

Her skin was cooler now. Marius retracted his hand. There was more damage there, much more, but time was short -- this would have to do for now. "How's that?" he asked.

Wrenching her eyes open slowly, Clarice turned to look at the wound, "Sepsis is fading, amount of desiccated tissue is less... still hurts like a son of a bitch. That's better, yeah. I still want the good drugs," she still felt weak and feverish, but less like death. Maybe she'd only lose the arm and not her life.

Marius flashed her a relieved grin. "Glad to hear it. Alas, I have no drugs. I'll be more than happy to treat you to a drink of the appropriate proof once we're back, however." The X-Man rose and turned to Scott. "Cyclops, I've got it!"

Scott flashed a smile in Marius' direction. "Excellent, then it's time to move to phase 2." The X-Man turned to face Jean with a nod, the psychic link telling him exactly where she was, "Signal Polaris and the others, it's time we ended this thing." he noted with finality.