Shattered

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

> "That little piece of me, that constant reminder, while she's alive you'll never be rid of me and you've kept her close haven't you?"

Josh scowls, compressing the telekinetic field holding Garrison slightly. "We're more than DNA sequences. We're people - and with any luck, Laurie's avoided most of your more charming behavioral qualities."

[Warren Worthington III]

Josh surprises him with a rapid recovery, taking Primer down with a thought and a gesture, and Warren grins in admiration. His grin turns into a frown when the conversation takes a decidedly more unpleasant turn, but he doesn’t interfere… talking is better than fighting, at least as long as nobody’s pumping out pheromones.

Unfortunately, it turns out Primer was just giving Caleb a chance to recover, and within seconds the fight breaks out again. Warren weaves through a pattern of force-blasts, vaguely aware of them blasting holes in the wall behind him as he closes on Caleb, smashing him against the nearest wall.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

Caleb is able to get to his feet, and Warren smashes into him. This entire thing is getting out of hand. What does Garrison care for Laurie and her mother? Josh solidifies his grip on Garrison. He assumed the pheromones had tapered off, because he was feeling much better. There was some residual panic, but he suspected that was from Laurie, who was safely behind him.

Behind him. Josh’s eyes narrow, and he focuses in on the link between himself and Warren, specifically Warren’s enhanced hearing. Crunch crunch crunch. Footsteps. Behind them!

Josh spins out of the way of Mercury’s punch, dragging Laurie with him. The two of them collapse in a heap a short ways away, and Garrison drops to the ground with a thump, Josh’ concentration broken. Damn. A slivery blade shoots forward, embedding itself in the wall between their heads. Josh lets out a yelp. “Laurie, look out!” He catches Mercury in a mental grip and slams her backwards, straight through plaster and drywall.

Mercury screeches, but Josh holds on to her, and smashes her through another wall, and finally she punches clear through the brick and aluminum siding façade of the side of the house. Winded, Josh takes a breath in, and tries to get to his feet.

“You okay?” He has a bad feeling that she’ll be back in a few seconds… but he doesn’t have any other strategies to deal the woman besides bashing the crap out of her. A random energy blast zeroes in on them, but Josh throws up a telekinetic shield. The shot impacts and dissipates.

[Warren Worthington III]

Warren is beginning to get tired of this energy-blaster refusing to stay down... apparently his powers include some kind of superhuman defenses. Still, the guy is reeling, and Mercury’s been pushed back outside, which is a good sign that they’re targeting the right opponents now. "OK, this is getting too close for comfort. Laurie, get your mother out of here; Josh, keep Mercury occupied, I’ll finish this guy off. "

He doesn’t bother suggesting that Josh try heat or electricity against Mercury; they’ve been through the same combat training and Josh is more experienced in fieldwork, and Warren is confident Josh will come up with something. He’s a little more worried about the Collins’ freezing up, but can’t spare the attention to worry about that now.

Dodging Caleb’s energy-blasts isn’t very difficult, even in such an enclosed space, though doing so without letting anyone else get hurt keeps him on the defensive for a while. Finally he manages to maneuver his opponent into the position he has in mind, sends the kitchen table flying at him with a sweep of one wing, closes on him as he blasts the table to shards. They both go tumbling through the door and down the basement stairs, Warren making sure to stay on top as they hit the cement floor and landing lightly on his feet as Caleb dazedly rises to his own.

"You might as well just give up. You’re never going to hit me." It’s not even a bluff, really… Warren has developed enormous confidence in his ability to evade any ranged attack his windsense can detect, as long as he has room to dodge in… and the basement is roomy enough to qualify. The only question is how much punishment Caleb can take.

Or so he thought. It’s only after he leans to the left to evade a blast that he realizes he was standing in front of the building’s gas meter. Oh hell – get everybody out of here, J! The place is going to blow! He’s most of the way up the stairs himself when the concussive wave hits him, and it’s all he can do to steer himself through the hole Mercury left in the wall before it sends him flying teeth-over-tailfeathers through the air.

Fortunately, his TK aura protects him from the world’s worst case of road-rash as he hits the sidewalk and skids approximately forty feet before smashing into a parked car. Dazed but mostly undamaged, he gets back to his feet and stares, dismayed, as flames climb aggressively up the walls of Gail Collins’ house.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

>"OK, this is getting too close for comfort. Laurie, get your mother out of here; Josh, keep Mercury occupied, I’ll finish this guy off. "

Will do… Josh makes sure Laurie and Gail begin picking their way through the rubble to the door, and turns his attention back to Mercury. Where are you, you pain in the ass… Through their link, Josh had caught Warren’s line of thinking on how to deal with her. Having Storm along would have been useful, but telekinesis is nothing if not versatile.

Already, Mercury is climbing back through the triplet of holes that mark her passage out of Gail’s house. Laurie’s mom is going to kill me… we totally trashed her place. “You just won’t drop, will you?” Josh mutters to himself, and braces himself.

Mercury jumps at him from across the room, her body stretching oddly, and he catches her in a telekinetic grip, deflecting her progress and slamming her through another wall. She growls and reforms, throwing out an extended hand that sends him flying backwards. In midair, Josh sees Garrison slowly edging along the wall towards the door.

After hitting the wall and picking himself off, Josh looks around. There. A lamp sits on one of the living room endtables, somehow having avoided destruction. He narrows his eyes, and it lifts into the air. Mercury’s eyes widen, and Josh smashes it over her head. Sparks fly, and the room begins clouding with smoke as his adversary drops to the ground. She attempts to reform herself, but her body is strangely droopy, and puddles back on the ground.

> Oh hell – get everybody out of here, J! The place is going to blow!

Uh oh… Josh can feel the pressure in the house change as Warren’s voice bounces through his mind. Just as quickly, a mass of husband-and-feathers goes skidding through the hole in the wall, and suddenly the room is full of fire and heat and shrapnel.

Josh gathers his telekinetic power to himself reflexively to shield himself from the inferno. He throws himself upwards with his powers, dimly noticing the roof giving way, and thanking Gail for buying a single-floor home…

Outside, the house explodes in huge fireball, throwing pieces of its structure in all direction, and setting the grass and shrubbery on fire. A body comes bursting out of the apex of the inferno. Ack! At the top of his arc, Josh loses all control, and goes plummeting towards the front lawn. He hits the ground, and lies there unmoving.

[Laurie Collins]

Laurie stands by, silent and still, as Primer drags her through his twisted analysis, transforming her in a moment back to the inconvenience, the potential weapon, that she had been, or had thought she had been and has spent most of the past year trying to distance herself from. Now she wonders how meaningful that distance, this year, has been because in a matter of moments she feels it crumbling away, all these little affirmations and determinations, like a house built on sand when the winds rise and the tide comes in. A reminder, an echo, you’ll never be free of me, you’ve kept her close… she doesn’t realize she’s edging away until her back hits the wall. He’s not even looking at her, eyes trained on her mother instead, and she feels for a moment as if she isn’t a person at all, just a piece on a game board, an important one, competed for with strategies built around it but a piece all the same. It all depends on who has possession. I haven’t hurt anyone purposely, she thinks, mental voice almost pleading, I haven’t…I’ve done nothing. But something about that isn’t comforting at all.

Then she’s thrown roughly to the floor as Josh drags her out of the way of Mercury’s blows and they both come up hard against a wall where they rest for only a moment before a blade implants itself in the wall between their heads. Josh yells her name and she shakes herself out of the last of her meditative disorientation. She’s running, head down, across the room to her mother’s side before Warren even orders it and Gail meets her halfway, wrapping an arm around her daughter’s shoulders and half shoving her out the kitchen and then front doors and onto the lawn. Laurie tries to stop and look back but her mother shakes her head and yanks her down onto the street where she’d parked their car- a rust bucket of an old Volvo that’s built like a tank and looks sad and embarrassed next to the Institute’s sleek sports car- crouching down on the other side of it with Laurie beside her. “You are not surviving that and then getting hit by some stray…laser thing…” she informs her daughter sternly, as if Laurie has expressed a fervent desire to get fried.

A moment later she’s glad of her mother’s neurotic protectiveness as their house goes up in a ball of flame and Mr. Worthington comes careening through the air, skidding past them in a way that makes her wince and start to panic until she sees him rising to his feet. The relief of that has barely had time to register when Josh shoots out of the burning house like a missile and lands in a crumpled heap on the lawn. She starts to jump to her feet but her mother beats her to it and presses a hand down on her shoulder before jogging towards Josh herself. Laurie huffs out a sigh at the unspoken but clear message to stay behind the car and watches her mother reach Josh’s side and kneel down next to him, body language similar to someone inspecting an injured snake, and she winces at what she suspects is the conflict- the inherent fear her mother probably feels for mutants warring with her natural desire to help an injured schoolmate of her daughter’s. She’s considering disobeying her mother and running over to the scene anyway when a car screeches around the corner and she throws herself aside quickly, catching a glimpse of Primer in the driver’s seat, unharmed but furious with someone she doesn’t recognize in the passenger’s seat. They got out then… she thinks, and suddenly it feels safer where the others are, even if that’s near a burning house, and she darts across the lawn to join them, hovering behind her mother and looking at Josh worriedly.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

Josh rolls over, dazed, and stares at the wreckage of Gail’s house. Laurie’s mom is going to kill us… Somehow, it’s all he can think of, as if he was the direct cause of the carnage. The house continues to belch explosions intermittently as everything inside slowly incinerates.

He starts coughing violently, and drops onto his stomach. “Where’s… Warren?” The words are hard to form. He can feel the presence of his husband nearby, but the last 30 seconds had taxed him nearly to his limits, and he was exhausted. “Laurie… you okay?” Josh tries to get to a sitting position, but drops onto his back, heaving. “Ugh.”

[Warren Worthington III]

Warren huddles behind his wings when the house explodes, wincing as bits of flaming wreckage bounce off of them. They’ll heal, he reassures himself.

He’s aware of Josh being caught up in the shockwave and of Gail taking charge of Laurie (his enhanced hearing even picks up Laurie’s sigh, which almost gets a chuckle out of him) and checking out Josh… and of Primer’s team escaping. He could catch up to them, but… no. The point of this mission was to protect Gail, after all.

“Where’s… Warren?”
"Right here. We’re all OK, I think… and Garrison’s taken off." Josh is obviously dazed and exhausted but doesn’t seem injured, and Warren crouches down next to him and slips a wingtip behind his head. "You just relax and get your strength back."

He looks up at Gail then, who is staring at the two of them with an intriguing combination of concern and fear. " I’m sorry about your house, Mrs. Collins, but I’m glad you’re both all right. That was impressive, getting yourself and Laurie out of there and behind shelter. "

He’s careful to keep his voice neutral and to not actually look at Laurie when he adds "That’s the kind of quick thinking in a crisis we try to entrain in our students." With anyone else he’d have made it a more pointed comment, but he’s pretty sure Laurie will take the message to heart without his having to be unsubtle. "Somehow, crises never seem to be too far away."

[Laurie Collins]

" I’m sorry about your house, Mrs. Collins, but I’m glad you’re both all right. That was impressive, getting yourself and Laurie out of there and behind shelter. That’s the kind of quick thinking in a crisis we try to entrain in our students."

Gail arches her eyebrows silently at Warren, obviously rather unimpressed with being spoken to, if not condescendingly, then certainly with little regard for the fact that she's almost twice his age. The stress almost makes her snap out something about not needing or particularly wanting a pat on the head from the teenage (or practically anyway) mutant spokesman while her house burns down in the backdrop. Then she notices Laurie blushing and tucking her head down a little and she goes over that sentence again, this time noticing the implied criticism of her daughter and bristling anew. She actually opens her mouth this time to ask him if they also try to entrain in faculty members the idea of making sure sixteen-year-olds entrusted to their care are out of harm's way before charging in after someone who isn't their responsibility. Laurie, seeing the look on her mother's face, jumps in first with uncharacteristic boldness and a bit of a challenging look directed at Warren just in case he was thinking of responding negatively to Gail's implied distrust, plainly feeling a bit protective at the moment herself.

"Thanks, really, if you two hadn't come..." she ventures, tone earnest though she's speaking mostly to distract her mother. Gail, looking a bit chagrined as the initial shock of the experience abates a bit and her urge to snap at someone subsides, nods in agreement, looking down at the boy who doesn't seem much older than her daughter and letting her expression soften again. "Yes, thank you." she manages.

The teacher, Worthington, seems relatively confident that he'll be all right and so she turns away from them for a moment, back towards the house, letting her posture subside into a slump. She thinks for a minute of all those things- pictures, books, a blanket her grandmother had made, all the little artifacts of Laurie's childhood she's hung on to- that she's toted along with her through Sean and endless moves only to lose it all here, like this. How the hell am I going to explain this to the insurance company? How am I going to afford somewhere to stay? And... she pauses before the terrifying impossibility of Sean's return into her life, sighing and turning silently back toward the small group on the lawn, conscious of her daughter's concerned gaze but unable to rally any reassurance yet.