xp_logs | The Dark Phoenix

Injured X-Men in the med lab break off into two groups. One to reinforce the Professor, one to mount a defense

The explosions from above ground were growing closer and louder, occasionally shaking the medlab as the various residents were dressing. Amelia was running about, trying to talk some of the still more seriously injured from getting up but there was no other choice. The mansion had been ambushed and children had formed the last line of defense. They could no longer wait and hope for the rest of the team to reach them in time.

"The Professor is underground. He says he's heading for Cerebro. He'll try and slow down the attacker telepathically and help coordinate." Kane said, standing by the intercom. They had shifted a feed from outside and could clearly see the firebird descending on them, with what looked to be Jean Grey in the heart of it. "The India team is inbound but they're still a ways away. We need to slow that thing down."

"I'm well enough. Just point me in the appropriate direction." Even with the borrowed healing factor Marius' wounds were only barely closed, but at the moment he was disinclined to let such details factor into his decision. For days students, residents and volunteers had been doing the heavy lifting in investigation and against extra-dimensional counterparts. He would willingly face a temporally displaced version of himself or a Nazi Jean Grey if it meant the chance to leave the Medlab and his own thoughts and act.

"Right," Angel grunted as she forced her head through a shirt, a surprisingly difficult task that left her wobbling for a moment. "What Marius said." Though for all her talk - which wasn't much to begin with really - she was more plaster and bandages than girl at that moment. But she was also already sick of laying around the med lab and letting everybody else do her job for her - especially the kids.

Angelo had his injured arm wrapped in a sling of his own skin, held close to his body, and hadn't bothered with trying to button his shirt. "If we're it, we're it."

It still felt like her brains were swishing about her skull like someone was swirling it in a soda bottle from when Oracle had pumped trauma into her brain, but Rachel at that moment looked more pissed than in pain from where she was leaning against Angelo. "She'll squish us all like ants if we don't go about this with some kind of plan. Y'know, other than 'let's throw our broken bodies at her'."

"I'm going to help the professor. Rachel, I think we could use you, too." Jim didn't want to voice anything definite, but if this Phoenix's power levels were anything like Jean's had been -- and, to all appearances, that estimate was actually conservative -- then they would need to move, and move fast. The damage to the mansion was appalling, and if her telepathy was on the same level as her telekinesis. . .

"I'll go with you Jim. You will need a non telepath." Lorna leaned against her makeshift metal crutches with her left leg in a cast. "My leg might be broken but I can still throw sharp metal thingies."

"No, can y–Jesus Christ, Amelia, it's fine!" A shout from down the hall resonated through the medlab. Then, a pause and a crash. "See? Bounced right off me. Powers are back. I'll be okay." Moments later, Cecilia appeared, two bottles of extra-strength Tylenol in her hands and a bag slung across her shoulder. "Here." She tossed a bottle to Lorna. "Load up."

"Dr. Vogt and I had a disagreement, but she's staying here." Cecilia ignored what she had to assume was an amused look from Haller and a bemused one from everyone else. "Not really sure what the rest of you are planning, but, you know. Doctors gonna doct." As well as doctors good, anyway, given how much pain they were in after tussling with the super-charged '80s versions of themselves. "Those kids are gonna need help."

She popped the cap off the bottle, tipped two pills into her hand and passed it to her left.

Jean-Phillipe's powers tended to burn off things like painkillers at the best of times, but every little bit helped. He shook out a few pills and tossed them into his mouth, then jerked his head back to dry swallow them. "Merde." His entire body felt like one enormous raw nerve ending. But he could still fight.

Jennie didn't have the help of a healing factor, or an advanced mutant physiology. Barrage had broken three ribs on Muir, plus given her second degree burns. Her head was still a swirl of pain and the medicine to fight the pain, and while she was upright, but using a wall as a support. Her chest taped in bandages, clad in pajama bottoms and a kimono top, she was broken and beaten, and wanting for all the world to find someplace dark and safe to hide. There was a small pat of her that was whispering that this was the night that they would all die. Plus her fear of that other, ravenous part of her, that would rise past the fog of the drugs and pain and hurt whomever it was out there just as much. Her thumb touched the ring on her finger, back in its rightful place.

She swallowed, she would do what she had to. Jennie handed the bottle to her left, she needed her mind as clear as possible tonight.

"Pass. It'll just mess me up more." Kyle's injuries hadn't been apparent until the X-Men had returned home, but pulling Logan out of the fight had left him with dozens of stress fractures to his vertebrae, head trauma and internal bruising that had him prone and fighting vertigo until only hours before. He was still unsteady on his feet, and passed the bottle on with slightly numb fingers. "Not gonna be much use fighting, not my power set." He barked a dark laugh. "And we're not the only hot mess down here. Kids are in the shelters." He hoped.

"Alright, energy casters and anyone not too banged up, follow me. We'll see if we can delay this bitch coming at us. Kurt, way don't you take the others, see if you can dig out the kids and Emma? The X-Men are going to be coming in from that direction."

Kurt nodded agreement, already moving to go and do so.

"Follow me. And let us hope Emma had time to switch to diamond form."

"Wait for me." Sooraya gingerly moved into the room to spare her sore body, tying her hair back with some difficulty. "If we need to dig the kids out, I can at least find them. The quicker we can get them out of here, the better." Accepting the bottle of pain killers someone handed her, she tipped out two and swallowed them dry, before following Kurt.

Jubilee sighed and rubbed a hand along the back of her neck, she'd seen what DP had done to Apocalypse, if she'd had any kind of choice she'd have preferred a nice small civil war, or nuclear exchange between the U.S and Russia then to go outside and try slow her down. It wasn't looking like she had much choice, however. She supposed today was as good a day as any to die.

"Looks like I'm with you, Gar. Let's hope she doesn't turn us all into slag before the rest of the team get here, yeah?"

Jubilee waved away the pain killers when Sooraya offered, and threw them to North instead, cracking her neck to get tired and sore muscles to release a little more. She'd stuffed herself with easy food on their return the mansion but healing all the bruises was going to take awhile. There was something to be said for not standing toe to toe with people bigger then you and letting them punch you in the face.

"Tell me you've got a rocket launcher or something stashed in your pants."

“Or something.”

The older spy flashed an uncharacteristically rougish grin at her and popped three pills, tossing the bottle at Doug’s head as he crunched on them like they were candy. North looked half-crazed – beard matted with dried blood and bandages visible under his tattered trench coat – so much so that it would have been easy to believe that he was overcome with bloodlust. But there was also a calm to his face and steel to his backbone making it also easy to believe that he was in complete control of his senses – all six of them.

He patted the straps sung across his torso for the pair of sniper rifles sitting snug against his back, hip, arm and calve holsters loaded with a set of handguns he had managed to retrieve from a personal stash near the mansion.

“Time to go, I think,” he announced to the room at large, moving towards Garrison with a limp. “Not coming with us, Cypher?”

"Somebody's gotta watch the rear guard." Left unsaid by Doug, though communicated between him and North by eye, was that someone should be willing to do whatever it took, including killing, to protect the students. So it made sense to have one of them each covering a group. "You'll get by somehow without me, Greis."