Fury Said To A Mouse: The End II

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Despite the best-laid plans, it comes down to Dominion, Anchor and Penance to put an end to things.

Warning: Graphic violence.


The cybiote's midsection was already compromised, and its neck had taken heavy damage from Yvette's talons. It did not have the leverage to free itself from the remaining attacker. It would need a more elegant solution.

Fortunately, its encounter with the teleporter had shown the Fury the benefits of running redundant consciousnesses.

Flesh compressed in Fred's arms, and suddenly the Fury simply split. Head, torso and legs fell to the ground in a greasy pile like a play-doh man squeezed through a fist, but almost instantly the pieces were moving again. Drawn together by stolen magnetism and its own inherent ability to manipulate flesh, the Fury began to reform: metal and meat writhed as it pulled its dismembered parts back into position, rolling away from Fred as it did. The rebar jutting from its side liquified and flowed to join the Fury's skeleton, the dangling canon-arm slid back into the stump. It somersaulted into a standing position and turned to the X-Men, a new compliment of lenses nearly complete.

The entire process had taken only seconds.

Fred wasn't even surprised. He wasn't even shocked. Of course it could move like it was made of silly putty. Why wouldn't it? It was gross, it was infuriating, and it was terrifying. The top three words Fred would've used to describe the fucking thing so far. He was still trying to remember his training. Still trying to keep his fears about Yvette down, like bile resting in his neck. Hell, he was still trying to focus his eyes through the trace remnants of the earlier microwave attack.

But to hell with it. Fred laughed. He was just so...incredulous. It was a short, humorless laugh as he moved his bulk to be in-between Yvette and Kane and the reforming monster.

"Of course you can move like that," he said when he'd calmed down, finally voicing his thoughts from seconds ago.

In a likely welcome reprieve from the potential (perpetually continuous) grudge match to follow, Jean's mental command came through.

~Dominion, Anchor, Penance, fall back to designated positions. We're ready.~

Marius was only distantly aware of his teammates' retreat; he had a vague sense that something about Yvette's silhouette was wrong, but he was falling too fast to spare the thought more than a moment. He had only one target in his sights.

The X-Man hit the cybiote squarely on the shoulders. His weight barely rocking the creature, and he hadn't expected it to; Marius couldn't match the damage done by the others, and he wasn't here to try. Instead, he took hold.

The crushed and dismembered bodies of the town, the bloody socket where Scott's eye had been, the hitch of Jean's breath as shifted her weight, the unnatural bulge in Angel's leg and the shard of white poking from Tabitha's arm, the livid blisters on Lorna's skin, the sick grey mottling of Garrison's healing face, the dying tissue of Clarice's arm, the haunted look on Yvette's face, the stiff set of Fred's back, even the revolting feel of Lionel's flesh sliding down his throat -- Marius let it all flood over him as he drove clawed hands into the Fury.

Clarice had been healed by calming his mind enough to find what was wrong and eradicate it. Now he did the opposite.

Finger deep in the meat of the Fury's shoulders, Marius leaned into where its ear should have been and snarled a single word:

"Rot."

The Fury let out a screech as an outside force reached into its nervous system and twisted. Muscle loosed from bone, nerves peeled from wires. Carefully cultivated organs began to shut down as cells began to die. The cybiote reacted instinctively, fighting every command for the immediate cessation of its vital functions in a painful clash of power. The strain on both parties was brief as it was vicious; an instant later the Fury had seized Marius by the wrist and hurled him away with all its strength.

The flying Marius was stopped in the middle of the air as Lorna gently put him down onto the ground by the metal hanging around his belt. "I got you."

"Cheers," Marius managed. He wanted to make some comment about the potential marketability of her powers for people who wanted the experience of skydiving without the expense of a parachute, but the throw had dislocated his shoulder and he could not form a suitably pithy joke.

"Emplate, Emplate come in," the thought echoed weakly around Marius' head as Scott called for the Australian. Piggybacking on Jean's telepathy, he had seen the younger man tossed away by the Fury and Scott had to know if he was ok, or if Marius had fallen victim to the weapon.

"Here," Marius replied, trusting that Jean's telepathy would pick up on the thought behind the verbalization. He glanced over at Lorna. "I'm all right." He meant to refrain from mentioning his arm, then realised the pain was already gone. It seemed Jefferies' power worked for more than just the Fury.

Scott sagged against the wall in relief. "Glad you're ok," he told the younger man sincerely. "Did it work?" They'd risked everything on this roll of the dice. If it didn't work Scott wasn't sure how they'd manage to beat the Fury. Not that they had much choice: they had to take it down one way or the other.

"No." The reply leaked with anger and bitter disappointment. "Couldn't kill it -- attack was too direct, it fought too hard. But . . ."

Marius looked down at the Fury. It stood, but its limbs twitched spasmodically and two of its lenses were flickering. Plasma dribbled aimlessly from its arm-cannon. A vicious smile stretched the young man's face.

"It's hurt," said Marius, the statement certain. "I felt it. The bit that lets it rebuild like it has been, that's been lettin' it adapt -- I shredded them. Its organics are a mess. It's crippled."

"So it can't heal and can't adapt any more," Scott mused aloud. The X-Man couldn't deny that he had hoped that it would have been enough to drop the Fury, but now they could hurt it, they could beat it. "Thank you," he sent to Marius before transferring his attention to the fighters around the Fury.

"Dominion, Penance, Anchor, it can't heal anymore, take it apart," he called. He hated to leave it up to them without any back up, but the Fury was still immune to all their remaining long-range hitters. It was up to the three close range fighters to finish off the fight.

The Fury was performing its own calculations. Its systems screamed that something had gone wrong with its biological components. The remaining tissue no longer responded to attempts at renewal; damage that had been a temporary inconvenience mere moments before suddenly posed a very real danger. With its repair systems compromised the three physically augmented targets would exact too much of a physical toll to engage. At the very least it needed more raw material. Reserves.

Its scanners detected multiple targets on the lip of the quarry above -- all familiar, all wounded. Easy targets.

It did not wait for Scott to finish his orders. Moving with a speed the beggared its size, the Fury sprinted from the three X-Men and leapt.

Not even the haze of pain could slow the adrenaline that spiked through Tabitha's body when she saw the Fury again. She dragged herself into a better position with her good arm and leg. Sparks danced across her vision as she built another bomb as quickly as her body would let her. She threw with all her strength as one appendage appeared over the lip of the quarry.

The explosion sent the Fury spinning back into the basin. It bounced once, then rolled into a crouch. With single-minded purpose the cybiote gathered itself for another leap.

It had just sprung when it was twisted viciously sideways as the speeding Dominion tackled it from the air. He had hit it hard, moving as close to top speed as he could, and the two of them smashed into the rubble. Kane's skin grew darker and darker as it increased its density to try and absorb the rain of blows that the Fury and Garrison were trading. His fists were merely blurs as he knocked it back, keeping it off balance.

"I could use a hand here." He hissed through clenched teeth, as a blow broke his nose and shattered his cheekbone.

There was a snarl as Yvette leapt at the Fury from behind, hands shaped into long scythe-like blades. She landed on the Fury's shoulders and began slicing away, long, deep blows aimed at removing the monster's head from its body.

The cybiote writhed. Short of resources, it sought to mimic the protection of Garrison's omni-skin and reinforce its battered flesh. Microscopic beads of metal flooded to the site of its injuries like blood to a bruise. Yvette's slashing blades began to meet metal plating as the cybiote attempted to shield its spinal column, renewing the plates almost as fast as she could rend them. Its resources were finite; it knew the solution was only temporary. Desperate, it deployed its harpoon. It had meant to hit Garrison, but its aim was fouled by the girl on its back and the change in its stance too obvious; the Canadian was able to read the move and avoid it with ease. It switched tactics once more.

The enormous chucks of rock moved silently through the air as the Fury lifted them and pulled them closer to the fight. Fred had only noticed them because he'd turned back towards his teammates while trying to get an arm lock on the damn thing. He should've shouted, should've tried to move the fight. But with the blood pounding in his ears he couldn't think of a better option than running past Kane and throwing himself at the largest sheet of rock. It was hard to tell what made more noise: Fred's screaming, or the sound of the stone rending to pieces after hitting him at such speed.

"Oh no yah don't! No getting any more fucking cute now!" he shouted, lifting one of the larger pieces of stone he'd created and throwing it at another piece the Fury obviously had meant for his closer attackers to break that one as well. If it was this desperate, then they had to be close, and Fred could run interference for the others all day.

The Fury, realising its peril, swivelled again, so that girl on its back was between itself and the one with the rocks. The red creature was connected to the large one, that much it sensed. The creature would serve as a shield.

Kane slammed an improvised club into its head, trying to stun it and leave it helpless against the onslaught. But several blows failed to shut it down and it was all he could do to fall back.

"Penance, incoming! Get clear!"

For a second it seemed that she wouldn't respond, so intent was she on the damage she was causing, the bloodlust driving her. But for all that she had tapped into her mutate self - or perhaps because she had, and retained the mutate's mindless obedience - she reacted to Garrison's direction, pushing herself off the Fury and leaping clear.

The chunk of stone hit the cybiote in the back, but even as it pitched forward the Fury utilized its full range of motion to let its head twist until it faced backwards. Its lenses glowed like stoked embers as it fixed its sights on the largest and slowest of the targets.

Unlike itself, the Fury knew humans could not survive the loss of a head.

Fred had been moving towards it with the intent of cleaving it in two with of the larger, sharper rocks it had tried to throw moments ago. The rock was in front of his face when he heard something coming from the Fury. Like a train whistle, but far away.

And then his world exploded.

The beam lanced through the rock like it wasn't there, microseconds before the energy actually destroyed it. The optic blast cut the air as the washing, warbling heat of the microwaves turned the ground under it charred black. The beam hit Fred, the microwaves hit Fred. Then, like a camera coming into focus, they snapped into the same space in the air and hit Fred in the face. Rocks shifted as the run-off energy from both attacks cooked off the smaller pebbles like popcorn or simply obliterated them in stray crimson kinetic ribbons. It was nothing compared to the energy pouring over Fred's head.

His feet locked into the ground and Fred put his arms in front of his face. The shielding did nothing to stop the shriek of pain from him, barely audible over the release of energy from the Fury. Fred didn't feel it when the plasma attacks hit his arms, but when they burst over and over and over... Still shouting, still bleeding, still trying to move, Fred's feet buckled as his gravimetric hold shattered the rock under his feet trying to keep him upright.

The Fury closed the distance. More plasma, focused and bright and furious, finally jarred Fred's arms from the front of his face. The lenses where inches from Fred as the fat cells shifted under his skin, trying desperately to keep some semblance of shape. The blast started again. The microwaves and the kinetic energy seemed to cut right through Fred as the red and pink and orange energy signatures splashed and crashed past the mutant's head. Tissue flew off of his eyes his nose his ears, swept off in a moving pyre, as the lenses shifted and flinched sending an endless swirling focal power of energy across Fred's face. The stray swirls of clouds and smoke seemed to evaporate from around the two figures as the microwaves became more powerful and focused.

Fred stopped screaming. The energy finally ebbed. He tumbled backwards, looking like a discarded match as his charred head smoked and cracked under the cool gray sky.

The Fury turned back to Kane and Yvette.

“…no.” It was barely a whisper and then Penance – no trace of humanity left now, only retribution and fury – plunged at the Fury. Long deadly spikes erupted from her body as she ran on all fours towards the cybiote, any human characteristics left beneath her armour obliterated. She leapt at the Fury, intent on shredding the creature, eyes blazing …

The copied tactical chip read the blind momentum in Yvette's charge; the target was no longer displaying any evidence of strategy or personal safety. The Fury saw its opportunity.

The cybiote's barrel-chest unfurled in a blood eagle of glistening ribs and acidic digestive fluids as it pivoted into Yvette's leap, arms spread wide in an embrace. Instead of hitting its chest, Yvette dove talons-first into the Fury's maw -- which closed behind her.

"Great fuckin' muppety Odin!" Kane reeled back as the creature transformed, all but spitting its guts out to capture Yvette. It landed in a huddle, wiggling around as if it was trying to hug itself. Garrison couldn't tell if Fred was alive or dead and Yvette had completely disappeared into the centre mass. They were out of X-Men and out of tricks. Near the struggling Fury, he could see a conduit sparking; obviously a power cable torn up by the destruction around them. His omni-skin had taken a beating all day and there was a very good chance that he'd end up like Fred instead of helping, but he could see no other option.

Garrison dove forward, grabbing the power cable in one hand. Electricity lanced through him as his skin mottled, turning blacker and blacker. The pain and shock nearly ended Kane. But with each second, it ebbed away as the energy started to flow harmlessly through him, sleeting across his now rubberized skin. He reached out and with his tremendous strength grabbed the Fury. He wrenched it back, holding it next to him in an armlock, as the electricity flowed through him and began to cook and burn its vulnerable flesh.

Little pockets of fat popped and sizzled as its muscles jumped with convulsions. The Fury writhed as it tried to tear itself from Garrison's grip, its cannon-arm flailing helplessly. In hopes of breaking down the Canadian's omni-skin the cybiote began to force globs of its corrosive digestive fluids to the surface, but Blaquesmith's work was not so easily compromised. If its attacker noticed at all it gave no sign.

It was so distracted by the electrical current that it did not realize what was happening in its core.

Rolling bulges appeared from inside the Fury, moving across the muscle and skin. The Fury writhed, struggling against Garrison's hold but the Canadian's grip was steel. Across its back, another bulge rose, paused… and then great tears appeared in the half-cooked skin, followed by long finger blades and spiked hands. They moved apart, ripping apart muscle and fibre, creating a great hole in the Fury's back. Penance's head - barely recognizable under the gore and fluids, except for the eyes glowing blue - appeared in the hole, and she squeezed herself out, body spikes catching and tearing on the Fury's internals as she went. Finally, she was free, festooned with gobbets of flesh and fragments of wires, coated in blood and oil and lubricants, panting harshly as she staggered a few steps away out of reach before falling on her knees beside Fred.

The Fury screeched and toppled backward over the wound carved by Yvette's exit. The back muscles supporting its torso had been annihilated; only a hasty reinforcement of its partially severed spine kept it from falling in half entirely. Viscera and wires dangled from the empty cavity like a grotesque train.

Half-crippled and still physically incapacitated by Garrison, the cybiote launched an assault of its own. The air around it began to distort. A deep heat started to build inside the the X-Men as the Fury pushed what electricity its techno-organics could siphon from Garrison's assault into a wall of microwaves increasing with every passing second.

Intent on boiling Garrison and all the others who had hurt it alive.

Smoke started to rise from Garrison as his uniform and hair began to burn away. It thrashed in his grip as the energy intensified. His skin began to take on an iridescent shine, as the waves of energy flowed over him. Kane clenched his teeth, eyes shut, trying to ignore the heat as it built around him. No matter how much his omni-skin tried to adapt, the heat kept building. Finally, he had to let going, reeling back with his arms covering his face, blindly scrambling to try and get out of the intense heat.

And then there was someone else with him, an arm wrapped around his hips since she couldn't reach any higher, helping him along. It was Yvette, still covered in gore but the worst of the spikes receded back into body armour, jagged edges catching on Garrison's uniform. Her face was set as she looked back once at Fred and then focussed on getting Garrison out of range of the microwaves. Fred couldn't be helped. Garrison could.

She turned back to focus on staggering forward, acting as Garrison's eyes even as her heart was breaking.

Angel was sitting on the edge of the quarry, watching in horror and hating that she couldn't get near the thing. The plan was for them to hang back while the heavy hitters took care of the monster...

But it was clear that wasn't working well. And when the Fury started driving up the temperature she snapped, taking off into the air and diving in. The thing was using microwaves, and the others wouldn't be able to hold up against that.

She could, though.

Manipulating microwaves created but others wasn't something she had ever really tried before, but now was as good a time as any to learn. She hovered in the air, arms spread out as she tried desperately to contain what the beast was sending off. It worked, to a point -- she managed to contain the microwaves, but only to a point.

"Up to where I am is safe!" She called down to her teammates on the ground. "Past that though the thing'll fry you!"

Below her the Fury sensed its assault being thwarted, but gave it no mind. It was generating too much heat for a normal human body to survive in close proximity. A smattering of small fires started wherever its influence touched organic life; the heat was enough to split rocks beneath its feet.

Secure in its current defense, it turned to where the largest target had fallen. Its flesh seemed more resilient than the others. The observation pleased it; with its repair system compromised charred flesh would have been vastly less useful.

To say the fight was not going well was a severe understatement. From their makeshift 'command center,' Jean watched the latest assault on her teammates...The blood on the ground. The cries of pain. After a point she had to turn her shock off and look at it from a soldier's standpoint, to find the quickest way to end things safely for everyone involved.

Her mind was going over possible solutions as she noticed the Fury start his way toward Fred. It was trying to divide and conquer, a natural solution given its programming, but one she would not stand for.

~ ANCHOR! WAKE UP! THE FURY'S COMING FOR YOU. MOVE! MOVE!~

The mental scream in his head was almost searing. It was unintentional due to her current amount of control, but it was either that or death.

Fred was up on his feet before the telepathic scream finished. There was no...pain? Fred barely even understood why he should expect pain. Something that had happened? The way he was 'seeing', several angles through several different eyes...he should've been nauseous, right? But it felt like the most natural thing in the world, so see from different perspectives. When he saw the Fury, everything in him wanted to rush the fucking thing and fold it in half and eat it...but he didn't. His brain said 'move' and that's what he did. It felt...warm as Fred shoved hard past the Fury and began making his way up.

Unwilling to let its prey escape the cybiote automatically moved to close. With each step its top half wobbled like a jack-in-the-box designed by John Romero, but it did not stop. It was spurred by more than its mission; now, finally, it understood the concept of self-preservation.

As it neared Fred its face rose to regard the group above. Just for an instant Jean felt the full weight of its attention focused through those glass eyes, and in that instant knew it remembered precisely where they were -- and that once it had finished with Fred they would be next.

The thought hit her like a bucket of ice water. Before, she knew with complete certainty that they would accomplish their task. It was naivete, culled from doing it so many times that it was almost easy despite the inherent hardships in the act of it. But this was something different, so much so that the idea of what she was about to ask had her stomach twisting itself into knots.

~Fred, I need you to stop it. You're the only one who can. And...~ Swallowing, Jean rubbed the blood and dirt off her face, clenching her fists so hard her nails dug into the skin.

~And I can't promise you'll live through it. But it'll kill us all if you don't. I saw its mind. It won't.....it won't stop. Once it's done with us it'll kill everything, everyone in its path.~

She would trade places with him in a heartbeat if she could, but she was essentially powerless. They all were, save for the brutal simplicity of physically ripping it to pieces.

~ I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I would do it myself but I--I can't....~ She wanted to give him another option but they'd come to the end of their rope.

~...do it.~ Fred wasn't in the clearest of minds, but the small short thought rang through Jean's mind clear and strong and simple.

Fred turned back to the Fury. He wasn't running anymore. The thing was three steps behind him, two steps, he was face to face with it. Fred screamed at it as the heat rose. He didn't feel it. It fired staccato scarlet knives from its lenses at his wrapped his fingers around its neck. He didn't feel it. It swung at his joints and face as he twisted and threw it from his friends. His heart rate spiked and pumped and drummed. He felt it.

"AH'LL FUCK YOU IN HALF!!!" Fred howled as he jumped down to where he'd thrown the Fury, landing on its legs with every ounce of fat and muscle of his body. From the vantage points, the eyes of the others we was seeing through, he could see the Fury leaning up and its eyes glowing in preparation for another blast. Fred lashed out with an open hand larger almost than the Fury's entire face, " NO MORE OF THAT SHIT!! YAH DIE NOW, FUCKER. AH'M GONNA SEND YOU TAH HELL, YAH HEAR ME!?" The heat spiked again, leaving the rocks beneath them steaming and cooking. Fred kept slapping and backhanding and ramming the Fury's head into the hot rocks, Jean's power keeping him from feeling nearly any of the attacks from the monster. Fred dug his thumb into the side of the Fury's head, and shouted into the improvised ear he'd gruesomely made in the thing's head, "AH SAID DID YAH HEAR ME!? AH'M GONNA SHOW YAH WHAT THE DEVIL IS! AH'M GONNA TEACH YAH HOW TAH BE AFRAID!!"

The Fury heard, but did not understand. All it knew was it was under assault, that something was destroying it, and that it could not escape. The cybiote shoved its cannon into Fred's stomach and fired: nothing. It sent a blast from its three remaining lenses into the meat of the arm holding it: nothing. It intensified the microwaves to the point the air was thick with the stench of its own sizzling flesh: nothing. It exuded acid from the hole punched in the side of its head in an attempt to at least make the target move its hand.

Nothing.

It was making a sound. Not a short, pained vocalization, but a sustained cry. It was piercing, and involuntary, and gradually the Fury came to realize it had heard such sounds before.

It was screaming.

Fred could hear it scream through others' ears. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. It tried to stab at him with the optic blasts again. Fred scooped out one, two, three lenses with his bare hands, laughing by the time he ripped out the third one. The Fury raised the cannon on its arm. Fred's mouth, already open from laughing, dropped low and wide and with an enormous twist of his shoulders and neck he pulled the tubing off with his teeth, chewing and eating it between laughs. They twisted over one another like lovers; the Fury scrambling to get away from its larger attacker, and Fred grabbing and yanking and squeezing and rending whatever was in front of his hands and mouth. When it spun to the ground to get away, Fred put his right foot on its back.

It was a funny thing about Fred's power, one that really only Kane had become familiar with during their sparring matches. Once Fred tried to 'sync' with the gravitational field of the ground around him, the field tried to get him as close as possible to the hardest ground. That meant on the second floor of a building, the floor would begin buckling under him, or in soft ground his feet would actually sink into the dirt with each step.

Or if there was something between his feet and the ground, like a flailing cybiote, it would get crushed.

Fred had his foot on the things back and turned on his power. It pushed the thing to the ground. Then the foot sank into the writhing, injured creature. It sank in deeper. Deeper. When the Fury reared up, Fred's foot went through the mouth-like chest cavity of the creature as it impaled himself on Fred's leg. Fred leaned over. He grabbed its arm with one hand, and that fucking club with the other. He pulled up, righting himself with all the strength left in him. He pulled and pulled and pulled until there were three parts of the creature, separating it from its legs and tearing its top in half like a wishbone from his grip on its arms.

The top half of the cybiote dangled from Fred's grip, maimed and broken and utterly helpless. It no longer had the power to maintain the microwaves, nor did it have any reason to try. It couldn't fight this. It couldn't heal from this. Teeth began to envelope its failing optics, and for the first time in its short existence the Fury defied its programming.

It gave up.

She'd thought Fred was dead. Surely he had to be, with the injuries he'd sustained. But then he'd gotten up again, jerkily, moving like a puppet at first, then more smoothly. She'd watched, heart in her mouth, as he'd fought on against all odds, ignoring every bit of damage, every hurt, until the Fury was in pieces. arm and cannon club dangling from Fred's bloody hands. Yvette took a couple of faltering steps towards him, eyes glowing with hope. And then he'd sunk his teeth into its face and she'd stopped, in horror. The action wasn't necessary for battle. It wasn't part of a battle plan.

It was the act of someone pushed beyond the edge. Would he able to be come back from that? Would he want to?

"Oh, Fred..." she whispered, clasping her long hands in front of her.

He didn't hear her, or didn't seem to. Fred hammered at the legs of the thing with the two pieces of it still in his hands. When they finally disintegrated in his grip, Fred slumped to his knees and drove his fists into any piece large enough left on the ground to hit. He picked up what was left of the things head and crushed it, ripped it, until there just wasn't anything left to break. He was making...sounds. It was hard to tell if he was crying, or laughing, or screaming, but it was loud over the rumbling thump of his hitting the ground with his fists.

The guttural noises ended abruptly, like a radio being turned off, and Fred suddenly went slack. He would have hit the ground had it not been for an invisible force keeping him upright and floating him over to a clear spot amidst the debris. It was not as elegant as it might have normally been, and he bobbed up and down like a buoy on the ocean.

Jean would have to move him again later but she needed to rest a moment. Keeping him asleep was her current concern. She knew the moment she turned back on his pain receptors he'd be in for hell. He had no healing factor, and no face. It was just a gooey mess. If he wasn't dead soon he'd wish he was.

Staring at the ripped apart cybiote, Jean studied the pieces, searching for a spark of life. Her mind reached out tentatively, afraid of what she might find. When sensed nothing she let out a sigh as she slumped back down in her seat, breathing heavily.

~"It's dead. But we should keep the pieces as far apart from one another as we can just in case. ~

She glanced at Scott, then back down to the others. ~"If you need medical attention make your way to Jefferies' old lab. I'll be taking Anchor there immediately."~

At this point she pretty much expected almost everyone to head that way eventually.

Marius hesitated. Lorna had set them down on the lip of the quarry with the others, well out of the Fury's range and Fred's rampage. He glanced at where he'd left Clarice; she appeared to be asleep, or at the very least resting her eyes. The red streaking from the infection had not returned.

"I'll go with," he volunteered. "Jefferies was a healer."

Jean blinked, then quickly nodded. After all that had happened she'd almost forgotten. Marius had that ability now.

"That will come in very useful if you don't mind. We need to work on Anchor quickly." She didn't think he'd last another 10 minutes if Marius hadn't volunteered.

Marius nodded, hoping Fred was the only one they needed to worry about; he wasn't the only one who'd been toe-to-toe with that monster. The other two were still moving, and despite the alarming change in Yvette's battle form none of the gore covering it seemed to be hers. Garrison was more alarming -- even from here he could tell Garrison's skin looked . . . wrong -- but the Canadian was still upright. That put him above some of their teammates, at least.

Scott nodded as he heard Jean making plans to take care of the medical procedures, he knew he'd need to head down there himself eventually but he had one piece of business to take care of first. "Firestar, Polaris, I don't want any of the remains left in one piece for anyone to find." The X-Man grinned ferally, "Go wild,"

Angel was still up in the air, hovering above everyone, her arms hanging limply at her side as everyone talked about the medical stuff. Every single bit of her was just plain exhausted.

But she sure as hell had enough energy left for lighting that godforsaken thing on fire.

Tabitha stirred, spoke up to Lorna. "I can help. We can wipe that damn thing from existence."

"Good. Lets end this." Lorna said in agreement with Tabitha.

"Clear off," Angel called, her voice flat as she floated down to hover about a foot off the ground, staying about five feet back from the bits of Fury. There were metal parts in there that she obviously couldn't do anything about, but Lorna could take care of those. The organic bits were hers.

Fire sparked to life between her fingers, and she swept her arms out in front of her, sending the fire off. It swept over the Fury's remains in a wave, and the organic parts instantly went up in flames, burning and turning black as the flames burned bright blue.

A safe distance above her, Lorna and Tabitha began their own measures. Green and gold energy joined the blue. What mechanical parts did not burn were shredded, and all of it, from charred flesh to disintegrating circuitry, vanished in a rain of bombs.

The glow of fire, a hail of plasma, and the twist of blackened metal: in this way did the legacy of Lionel Jefferies come to an end.