For Treason, Act IV, Scene vii
Jun. 4th, 2026 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsIncinerate, isolate, incapacitate. Firestar, Emplate, and Dominion get to deal with Kyle and his adamantium.
TW: violence, gore
The hallway lights flickered, then started to melt as a massive blue fireball blazed through. The infiltration team had found Kyle south of the entrance, and that was where Angel was heading. She wasn't bothering to be quiet - Kyle would hear her coming no matter what.
Instead she went fast, blitzing through the corridors like a giant firefly, eyes darting around until she finally turned a corner and found him.
"Yo, Kyle!"
Angel abruptly stopped mid-air, but the fire kept going, consuming Kyle.
At least she wasn't trying to talk him down. Kyle braced against the wash of blistering heat. Let himself look at his former friend, her cute little bob haircut and her body armor and the licks of fire around her like a corona, and then ran for her, booted feet making heavy thuds against the ground until he had her by the middle. He ignored the smell of charring meat and the pain in his arms and shoulders, and slammed her down on the ground. "Stay down and I won't have to hurt you."
Angel didn't need to win. Her job was to distract. But also that was pretty rude of him.
"Don't worry, man," she said as the air around her started to heat up and waver. "Whatever happens, I'll forgive you later."
She dissolved back into flames as she propelled herself forward to tackle Kyle. She didn't have a chance in hell of moving him, especially with the adamantium coating his bones, but that wasn't important. What she wanted to do was keep him right at the center of the fire, where it was the hottest and would burn the fastest.
He could feel the skin peeling off his muscles, cooking right there, and ignored it. It'd heal. Wildchild got his legs up into his chest and kicked out, boots impacting into Angel - no, Firestar - Firestar's stomach hard, throwing him off her and into the wall. He rolled and kicked upright, and peeled the charred skin away to reveal pink burns, and fresh blood. "That all you got?"
Angel was momentarily winded between the kick and hitting the wall. She pushed herself up, smirking a little. The hallway was still far too hot - she didn't need to touch Kyle to hurt him. "Yeah, I'm kind of a one-trick pony. But it's a pretty good trick isn't it?"
"No." Wildchild shook his head, wiping blood from his upper lip and nose. "Don't need a lecture from a walking fireball" He shuddered, cocked his head and then growled and pulled the pistol off the holster at his side, firing rapidly before the grip got too hot to hold.
"Thing about the one trick pony-" A hand closed on his pistol, ripping it away from his grip and shattering it on a far wall. "They aren't the whole herd." Garrison said, staring at his student. He swung, but was countered, ripped sideways and then flung deeper into the facility, tumbling end over end.
"That won't slow him long." Kane said, grim faced as he pushed in further.
"Well," came the nearby reply, "that's me then, isn't it?"
Steeling himself as he stepped into view, Marius cupped his hands to his mouth and called, "Oi, Kyle! What happened, fighting me make you nostalgic for a good brainwashing of your own?"
The corridor was half aflame when Wildchild pulled himself out of the wall he'd crashed into. His claws dug furrows into the fiber-reinforced plastic walls as he stood. He shook the dust and shards off, spat and staggered back to avoid the figure wreathed in flames launching herself towards him.
Angel was quick enough to avoid hitting the wall. Instead she kicked off of it to propel herself the other way again like a ball in a pinball machine. She re-oriented herself to shoot at Kyle again.
Fuck it. The snarl rattled his ribs and sternum. He threw himself at Firestar, an inelegant leap that sent both of them into the floor. Wildchild's knees clacked hard with the impact, his skin bubbled under Firestar's power, and he drove both reinforced elbows into her ribs hard.
There was an audible crack as his adamantium-coated elbows connected with Angel's thin body. She cried out breathlessly, coughing as she gasped. Ah fuck, she thought dizzily. That was definitely a rib.
Flight. Was a problem. Firestar throwing fireballs at him was a problem. The blistering skin peeling off his face and arms again was a problem. Wildchild wrapped one heavy arm around Angel's leg, and pulled up hard until he could hear the sickening pop, and her muffled wail. "And -stay- down." he muttered as he stood, and kicked at the rib he'd already cracked.
Something hit him from behind: Marius, crashing into him with spine-jarring force to send him crashing away from Angel. In the brief moment Marius was on top of Kyle he raised his fist high. Blood sprayed.
"Dominion!" yelled Marius, and drove a pair of newly-formed bone claws deep into the feral's shoulder.
The best way to move an injured person was to isolate and secure their body, but there was no time for that. He pulled her back behind him by her collar. "Angel, please tell me you're not dead yet."
"Psh." Angel made a noise that sounded somewhat like a deflating balloon. She was probably still running on the adrenaline of the fight because it only a hurt a little and that definitely wasn't right. "Gonna take more than Brainwashed Kyle to put me down."
"Stay back. We don't win this one by brute force." Kane said cryptically as Marius and Kyle fought.
Marius didn't dare take his attention from the feral. He leaned over Kyle, his full weight pressed against the claws in the meat of the other man's shoulder. "I'd tell you to stay down," he said, "but I know you won't. Split the difference, then, and let's both try to keep the damage to something you won't regret. I'll go ahead and put Angel's Get Well Flowers on my tab, shall I? Consider it a wedding gift."
The response was the hot sulfurous stink as Wildchild roared in pain and snapped teeth at Marius' face. His arm came up and short metal claws tore at Emplate's forearm as he dug them in and pulled up hard, tearing the bone claws out of his shoulder with a splatter of blood and shredded flesh. His injured arm twitched as he twisted and slashed back across, aiming for Emplate's neck and cheeks.
The strike whipped Marius' head to the side, but there was no blood. The X-Man snapped his head back to his friend, and the side of his face hung off him in ribbons. Beneath the torn skin was a dark amalgamation of stone and metal, bloodless and untouched. His nostrils flared.
"You smell sick, mate," said Marius. "And you're slow."
Marius whipped his head forward and slammed his stone forehead directly into Kyle's face.
Any response was cut off by the jarring impact, like a concrete block smashed into a steel girder. Wildchild's skull rang off the ground, and he bit through his bottom lip, even as he twisted hard to the side to flip himself and Emplate over, throwing the smaller man off him. His bad arm came down to brace and collapsed under him, still hanging half limp as he struggled upright.
Marius fell hard against the ground with the same sound as a cinderblock being dropped onto cement. Unfazed, he got his feet under him and turned back to face Kyle.
"You really want to keep this up? Come on, Terry's waiting-"
A roar of no, not even really the word, just denial writ bold with incoherent rage came out of Wildchild's throat. A burst of raking claws came along with it, opening rents in Emplate's uniform and tearing through leather and cloth and hardened skin alike. It left pieces that fell with a clatter like gravel and sparks where metal claw met stone flesh.
No pain, but sensation -- of mass being cleaved away, of claws carving through him in a frenzy. Even in this state, how much of his body could he lose before he became too compromised to function? He could husk, revert to an organic form and allow Logan's healing factor to take over, but could he heal fast enough?
What would Kyle have to live with afterwards?
Marius' eyes glowed a pale grey, and something in his body shifted. With a sickening screech Kyle's claws suddenly met a substance they couldn't pierce, and Marius used the moment to thrust a hand between his torso and Kyle's attack.
Snikt.
The claws extended again, now gleaming adamantium, intercepting Kyle's attack -- and then they grabbed. They split apart like streams of water and flowed into Kyle's own, fusing his raking fingers to the blades protruding from the back of Marius' hands. Marius held his arm locked against his body, forcing the other man to stay close.
"She's waiting for you," Marius repeated, softly.
Wildchild pulled against the fusion frantically, tearing out one of his own claws in the process but gained no release. With each yank he grew more desperate, kicking against Emplate's shins and knees. "No no no no no..." repeated desperately with each hasty movement. "Not her, not here, not here..." He grimaced, and got one hand free, fingertips bloody and torn and pulled at his hair and then resumed the frenzied attempts to escape, slashing at Marius with the remains of the claws on his free hand.
The claws screeched harmlessly off Marius' now wholly-adamantine form, but the bond fusing the adamantium together abruptly reverted. No longer joined to Kyle, the force of the blow threw Marius back and into a wall. He struggled to rise, but his body wouldn't respond right. The gouges Kyle had managed to carve in him before he'd managed to change matter were now bright-edged and flowing like mercury, as if Gaia's warping powers had merged with his borrowed healing factor in an attempt to repair the damage, but it was leaving his muscles just as unstable. The man could only lay there, stunned.
Kane stepped forward, putting himself between Kyle and Angel, watching the younger man carefully. "Looks like they fucked you up in all kinds of interesting ways, kid." He said finally. "Why don't you pack it in and come home? Let it fix this."
~home~ ~you are home~ ~we are home~ His thoughts were already sodden with that swamp molasses sinfully sweet voice but it was popping and hissing like a dying radio, and Wildchild spun away from Emplate to face Garrison Kane. "I'm not your kid." His shoulders were shaking with the lingering pain of the burns, and fighting Emplate and his voice cracked on the words.
"No, you're not. You've earned that." Kane said, taking another step. "But you're still my family. So stop this." Kane didn't hold out much hope of breaking through the conditioning, but maybe her could rattle him. Keep him off balance.
Stop? How could he stop? Wildchild shook his head slow. He went still like he was bracing against - gravity, maybe. Pain. Encumbrance. And then he stepped in, aiming a closed fist hammer blow at Kane.
Kane sidestepped, grabbing Kyle's wrist and pulling him off balance and sending him tumbling. He circled slowly, using his speed. "I'm not going to hurt you again, Kyle. You might kill me, but I am not going to hurt you again."
He rolled, and came back up, one set of claws out and heavy, the other hand still blunted from the fight with Marius. "Then leave." He pointed down the hallway. "Take Firestar and Emplate and get out." The alarms that had been chirping - relentlessly high pitched - had stopped, and the silence distracted him for a moment. Kyle's eyes flicked around the hallway, resting on the amber emergency lights and then went steady to Kane and he put his shoulders down and charged.
Kane's tactical chip had already picked up the change in how the younger man fought; heavier, a bit slower than normal. He'd heard enough stories from Logan about his fragmented memories and impressions of when his skeleton was bonded with adamantium to guess at the reason. At the last minute, Kane pivoted, the claws cutting through the uniform armor at his torso but just scoring the flesh. He put his hand on the back of Kyle's neck and pushed, using the momentum against him, turning the charge into a stumbling run before he lost his balance and crashed into the ground.
"I wouldn't leave a person I hate in the middle of Hell. What's the likelihood I'd ever abandon you here?" Kane said, once again circling him. "Either you're coming home or I don't leave this place. Is this what you really want?"
Kyle turned and his expression flashed between doubt and grief before it went back to that all consuming fury. "My kids are here!" He picked himself up again and lunged wild and clumsy at Garrison.
Kane caught the blow at the junction of his elbow, robbing him of the power. They stood locked together. "No, my kids are here. And your fiance is waiting for you." He hip tossed him and created distance. "I trained you. I led you into battle. Whatever happens to you is my responsibility. Come home."
"They're mine!" Kyle staggered up, stumbling into one of the walls. "They're -mine-, Kane. I can't leave them here." He shook his head, eyes unfocused and lunged - staggering and slow and too heavy. "I'm this way and now they're my kids and I can't leave them." He threw a wild punch, and then a pointless shove that didn't even move the older man.
"You can't save them this way. You know that." Kane grabbed him, pulling him off his feet, feeling the additional weight of the metal in his frame. "And you know we will." he twisted his grip and sent Kyle sprawling into the dirt. He knew he wasn't going to talk him out of professional mental conditioning. Sadly this wasn't an episode of a teen drama. But Kyle was fighting against himself as much as Kane, leaving him openings.
Kyle got one foot into Kane's thigh and tried to pull out of the grip even though his metal coated claws tore through the uniform and then Garrison's shoulders. "I don't, you never came for us! It was months!" He knew now it hadn't been. It couldn't have been, but the time had felt so real. "Let me go! I need to get to my damn kids!" He wasn't even making anything like headway, and panted between swings, worn down by the burns from Firestar and the battering Emplate had given him and now the persistent struggle against Dominion.
Kane broke the attack, twisting Kyle around. His thumb dug deep into Kyle's carotid. The secret to a healing factor was that you couldn't accelerate it. He locked his limb, leveraging his powers to keep Kyle bound.
Kyle snarled, but it broke halfway through, buckling into something wet and miserable. His claws dug hard into Kane's arms, leaving bloody furrows.
He kicked, reared his head back into a failed headbutt, his boots scrabbled against the ground, he fought hard all the way through the world going static and then his knees buckled and he sagged, all that heavy weight still and silent.
Kane eased him down, slumping him against the wall and touched his comm. "I have Wildchild." He said finally.
"We'll need a medical transport for Firestar as well," added Marius into his own comm. He'd finally managed to get to his feet, though it was too late to be much good. Between the two casualties he hoped Clarice or Jean were available; Kyle was out cold, and while he didn't know what sort of shape Angel was in, one of her knees was hideously swollen. Neither of them would be walking out under their own power.
Still, as he watched Garrison carefully monitoring their fallen teammate he remembered something Kyle had said.
'Months'?
TW: violence, gore
The hallway lights flickered, then started to melt as a massive blue fireball blazed through. The infiltration team had found Kyle south of the entrance, and that was where Angel was heading. She wasn't bothering to be quiet - Kyle would hear her coming no matter what.
Instead she went fast, blitzing through the corridors like a giant firefly, eyes darting around until she finally turned a corner and found him.
"Yo, Kyle!"
Angel abruptly stopped mid-air, but the fire kept going, consuming Kyle.
At least she wasn't trying to talk him down. Kyle braced against the wash of blistering heat. Let himself look at his former friend, her cute little bob haircut and her body armor and the licks of fire around her like a corona, and then ran for her, booted feet making heavy thuds against the ground until he had her by the middle. He ignored the smell of charring meat and the pain in his arms and shoulders, and slammed her down on the ground. "Stay down and I won't have to hurt you."
Angel didn't need to win. Her job was to distract. But also that was pretty rude of him.
"Don't worry, man," she said as the air around her started to heat up and waver. "Whatever happens, I'll forgive you later."
She dissolved back into flames as she propelled herself forward to tackle Kyle. She didn't have a chance in hell of moving him, especially with the adamantium coating his bones, but that wasn't important. What she wanted to do was keep him right at the center of the fire, where it was the hottest and would burn the fastest.
He could feel the skin peeling off his muscles, cooking right there, and ignored it. It'd heal. Wildchild got his legs up into his chest and kicked out, boots impacting into Angel - no, Firestar - Firestar's stomach hard, throwing him off her and into the wall. He rolled and kicked upright, and peeled the charred skin away to reveal pink burns, and fresh blood. "That all you got?"
Angel was momentarily winded between the kick and hitting the wall. She pushed herself up, smirking a little. The hallway was still far too hot - she didn't need to touch Kyle to hurt him. "Yeah, I'm kind of a one-trick pony. But it's a pretty good trick isn't it?"
"No." Wildchild shook his head, wiping blood from his upper lip and nose. "Don't need a lecture from a walking fireball" He shuddered, cocked his head and then growled and pulled the pistol off the holster at his side, firing rapidly before the grip got too hot to hold.
"Thing about the one trick pony-" A hand closed on his pistol, ripping it away from his grip and shattering it on a far wall. "They aren't the whole herd." Garrison said, staring at his student. He swung, but was countered, ripped sideways and then flung deeper into the facility, tumbling end over end.
"That won't slow him long." Kane said, grim faced as he pushed in further.
"Well," came the nearby reply, "that's me then, isn't it?"
Steeling himself as he stepped into view, Marius cupped his hands to his mouth and called, "Oi, Kyle! What happened, fighting me make you nostalgic for a good brainwashing of your own?"
The corridor was half aflame when Wildchild pulled himself out of the wall he'd crashed into. His claws dug furrows into the fiber-reinforced plastic walls as he stood. He shook the dust and shards off, spat and staggered back to avoid the figure wreathed in flames launching herself towards him.
Angel was quick enough to avoid hitting the wall. Instead she kicked off of it to propel herself the other way again like a ball in a pinball machine. She re-oriented herself to shoot at Kyle again.
Fuck it. The snarl rattled his ribs and sternum. He threw himself at Firestar, an inelegant leap that sent both of them into the floor. Wildchild's knees clacked hard with the impact, his skin bubbled under Firestar's power, and he drove both reinforced elbows into her ribs hard.
There was an audible crack as his adamantium-coated elbows connected with Angel's thin body. She cried out breathlessly, coughing as she gasped. Ah fuck, she thought dizzily. That was definitely a rib.
Flight. Was a problem. Firestar throwing fireballs at him was a problem. The blistering skin peeling off his face and arms again was a problem. Wildchild wrapped one heavy arm around Angel's leg, and pulled up hard until he could hear the sickening pop, and her muffled wail. "And -stay- down." he muttered as he stood, and kicked at the rib he'd already cracked.
Something hit him from behind: Marius, crashing into him with spine-jarring force to send him crashing away from Angel. In the brief moment Marius was on top of Kyle he raised his fist high. Blood sprayed.
"Dominion!" yelled Marius, and drove a pair of newly-formed bone claws deep into the feral's shoulder.
The best way to move an injured person was to isolate and secure their body, but there was no time for that. He pulled her back behind him by her collar. "Angel, please tell me you're not dead yet."
"Psh." Angel made a noise that sounded somewhat like a deflating balloon. She was probably still running on the adrenaline of the fight because it only a hurt a little and that definitely wasn't right. "Gonna take more than Brainwashed Kyle to put me down."
"Stay back. We don't win this one by brute force." Kane said cryptically as Marius and Kyle fought.
Marius didn't dare take his attention from the feral. He leaned over Kyle, his full weight pressed against the claws in the meat of the other man's shoulder. "I'd tell you to stay down," he said, "but I know you won't. Split the difference, then, and let's both try to keep the damage to something you won't regret. I'll go ahead and put Angel's Get Well Flowers on my tab, shall I? Consider it a wedding gift."
The response was the hot sulfurous stink as Wildchild roared in pain and snapped teeth at Marius' face. His arm came up and short metal claws tore at Emplate's forearm as he dug them in and pulled up hard, tearing the bone claws out of his shoulder with a splatter of blood and shredded flesh. His injured arm twitched as he twisted and slashed back across, aiming for Emplate's neck and cheeks.
The strike whipped Marius' head to the side, but there was no blood. The X-Man snapped his head back to his friend, and the side of his face hung off him in ribbons. Beneath the torn skin was a dark amalgamation of stone and metal, bloodless and untouched. His nostrils flared.
"You smell sick, mate," said Marius. "And you're slow."
Marius whipped his head forward and slammed his stone forehead directly into Kyle's face.
Any response was cut off by the jarring impact, like a concrete block smashed into a steel girder. Wildchild's skull rang off the ground, and he bit through his bottom lip, even as he twisted hard to the side to flip himself and Emplate over, throwing the smaller man off him. His bad arm came down to brace and collapsed under him, still hanging half limp as he struggled upright.
Marius fell hard against the ground with the same sound as a cinderblock being dropped onto cement. Unfazed, he got his feet under him and turned back to face Kyle.
"You really want to keep this up? Come on, Terry's waiting-"
A roar of no, not even really the word, just denial writ bold with incoherent rage came out of Wildchild's throat. A burst of raking claws came along with it, opening rents in Emplate's uniform and tearing through leather and cloth and hardened skin alike. It left pieces that fell with a clatter like gravel and sparks where metal claw met stone flesh.
No pain, but sensation -- of mass being cleaved away, of claws carving through him in a frenzy. Even in this state, how much of his body could he lose before he became too compromised to function? He could husk, revert to an organic form and allow Logan's healing factor to take over, but could he heal fast enough?
What would Kyle have to live with afterwards?
Marius' eyes glowed a pale grey, and something in his body shifted. With a sickening screech Kyle's claws suddenly met a substance they couldn't pierce, and Marius used the moment to thrust a hand between his torso and Kyle's attack.
Snikt.
The claws extended again, now gleaming adamantium, intercepting Kyle's attack -- and then they grabbed. They split apart like streams of water and flowed into Kyle's own, fusing his raking fingers to the blades protruding from the back of Marius' hands. Marius held his arm locked against his body, forcing the other man to stay close.
"She's waiting for you," Marius repeated, softly.
Wildchild pulled against the fusion frantically, tearing out one of his own claws in the process but gained no release. With each yank he grew more desperate, kicking against Emplate's shins and knees. "No no no no no..." repeated desperately with each hasty movement. "Not her, not here, not here..." He grimaced, and got one hand free, fingertips bloody and torn and pulled at his hair and then resumed the frenzied attempts to escape, slashing at Marius with the remains of the claws on his free hand.
The claws screeched harmlessly off Marius' now wholly-adamantine form, but the bond fusing the adamantium together abruptly reverted. No longer joined to Kyle, the force of the blow threw Marius back and into a wall. He struggled to rise, but his body wouldn't respond right. The gouges Kyle had managed to carve in him before he'd managed to change matter were now bright-edged and flowing like mercury, as if Gaia's warping powers had merged with his borrowed healing factor in an attempt to repair the damage, but it was leaving his muscles just as unstable. The man could only lay there, stunned.
Kane stepped forward, putting himself between Kyle and Angel, watching the younger man carefully. "Looks like they fucked you up in all kinds of interesting ways, kid." He said finally. "Why don't you pack it in and come home? Let it fix this."
~home~ ~you are home~ ~we are home~ His thoughts were already sodden with that swamp molasses sinfully sweet voice but it was popping and hissing like a dying radio, and Wildchild spun away from Emplate to face Garrison Kane. "I'm not your kid." His shoulders were shaking with the lingering pain of the burns, and fighting Emplate and his voice cracked on the words.
"No, you're not. You've earned that." Kane said, taking another step. "But you're still my family. So stop this." Kane didn't hold out much hope of breaking through the conditioning, but maybe her could rattle him. Keep him off balance.
Stop? How could he stop? Wildchild shook his head slow. He went still like he was bracing against - gravity, maybe. Pain. Encumbrance. And then he stepped in, aiming a closed fist hammer blow at Kane.
Kane sidestepped, grabbing Kyle's wrist and pulling him off balance and sending him tumbling. He circled slowly, using his speed. "I'm not going to hurt you again, Kyle. You might kill me, but I am not going to hurt you again."
He rolled, and came back up, one set of claws out and heavy, the other hand still blunted from the fight with Marius. "Then leave." He pointed down the hallway. "Take Firestar and Emplate and get out." The alarms that had been chirping - relentlessly high pitched - had stopped, and the silence distracted him for a moment. Kyle's eyes flicked around the hallway, resting on the amber emergency lights and then went steady to Kane and he put his shoulders down and charged.
Kane's tactical chip had already picked up the change in how the younger man fought; heavier, a bit slower than normal. He'd heard enough stories from Logan about his fragmented memories and impressions of when his skeleton was bonded with adamantium to guess at the reason. At the last minute, Kane pivoted, the claws cutting through the uniform armor at his torso but just scoring the flesh. He put his hand on the back of Kyle's neck and pushed, using the momentum against him, turning the charge into a stumbling run before he lost his balance and crashed into the ground.
"I wouldn't leave a person I hate in the middle of Hell. What's the likelihood I'd ever abandon you here?" Kane said, once again circling him. "Either you're coming home or I don't leave this place. Is this what you really want?"
Kyle turned and his expression flashed between doubt and grief before it went back to that all consuming fury. "My kids are here!" He picked himself up again and lunged wild and clumsy at Garrison.
Kane caught the blow at the junction of his elbow, robbing him of the power. They stood locked together. "No, my kids are here. And your fiance is waiting for you." He hip tossed him and created distance. "I trained you. I led you into battle. Whatever happens to you is my responsibility. Come home."
"They're mine!" Kyle staggered up, stumbling into one of the walls. "They're -mine-, Kane. I can't leave them here." He shook his head, eyes unfocused and lunged - staggering and slow and too heavy. "I'm this way and now they're my kids and I can't leave them." He threw a wild punch, and then a pointless shove that didn't even move the older man.
"You can't save them this way. You know that." Kane grabbed him, pulling him off his feet, feeling the additional weight of the metal in his frame. "And you know we will." he twisted his grip and sent Kyle sprawling into the dirt. He knew he wasn't going to talk him out of professional mental conditioning. Sadly this wasn't an episode of a teen drama. But Kyle was fighting against himself as much as Kane, leaving him openings.
Kyle got one foot into Kane's thigh and tried to pull out of the grip even though his metal coated claws tore through the uniform and then Garrison's shoulders. "I don't, you never came for us! It was months!" He knew now it hadn't been. It couldn't have been, but the time had felt so real. "Let me go! I need to get to my damn kids!" He wasn't even making anything like headway, and panted between swings, worn down by the burns from Firestar and the battering Emplate had given him and now the persistent struggle against Dominion.
Kane broke the attack, twisting Kyle around. His thumb dug deep into Kyle's carotid. The secret to a healing factor was that you couldn't accelerate it. He locked his limb, leveraging his powers to keep Kyle bound.
Kyle snarled, but it broke halfway through, buckling into something wet and miserable. His claws dug hard into Kane's arms, leaving bloody furrows.
He kicked, reared his head back into a failed headbutt, his boots scrabbled against the ground, he fought hard all the way through the world going static and then his knees buckled and he sagged, all that heavy weight still and silent.
Kane eased him down, slumping him against the wall and touched his comm. "I have Wildchild." He said finally.
"We'll need a medical transport for Firestar as well," added Marius into his own comm. He'd finally managed to get to his feet, though it was too late to be much good. Between the two casualties he hoped Clarice or Jean were available; Kyle was out cold, and while he didn't know what sort of shape Angel was in, one of her knees was hideously swollen. Neither of them would be walking out under their own power.
Still, as he watched Garrison carefully monitoring their fallen teammate he remembered something Kyle had said.
'Months'?
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Date: 2026-06-05 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-06-05 09:13 pm (UTC)