This is your strikeback wakeup call (open)

[Laurie Collins]

[[No one in particular, just accounting for my character with an obnoxiously long post I wrote while I was sick. Feel free to come play or run away. Oh the rhymes.]]

At 7:00 AM Laurie Collins is curled on her side with her comforter wrapped around her and pulled up to just below her mouth as she breaths deep, easy breaths. She is still halfway lost in a musing about a homework assignment for biology that has flitted across her brain and in her sleep-inebriated state the musing is often interrupted by other inane thoughts halfway to further dreams. She is peaceful, drowsy and warm, wrapped up in covers and safe in her bed during her favorite time of the day.

When she first hears pounding footsteps a few minutes later she thinks nothing of them, she’s learned not to jump at every noise that disrupts the still of the night at Xavier’s with its residents who keep odd hours. Who keep odd everything. Then the screaming starts and she sits bolt upright in bed as if propelled by a spring. A roar of anger, a shriek, more footsteps coming closer, and her heart is pounding now because even for Xavier’s this is not normal.

Though she won’t remember it later and would be embarrassed if she did, as the first strike shakes her locked door in its frame she whispers, “Mom?” She’s not expecting her mother’s presence consciously, she’s pleading, the way she had when she was six and she’d broken her arm falling down a set of stairs in their apartment. “I want to go home!” she’d wailed then, hysterical in the greatest pain she’d ever known, even though she was home, even though she had no other home to remember. And so as the door bursts open and she half-falls from her bed in shock her hands reach out as if she’s expecting to be caught by Gail Collins who is currently thirty miles away rubbing her forehead to massage away a headache and missing her daughter as she backs her car out of the driveway, heading for work.

This, like a dream, is the matter of moments, of quick gestures and quicker thoughts that fear captures and preserves like bugs smothered in amber. Laurie rises to her feet, a scream bubbling up in her throat as she sees the squadron of three that has burst into her room, their faces cold as any mask, their guns with their Cyclops eyes on her, and their black-clad figures closing in a ring around her. She isn’t wondering why they are here, for who, how, or what will happen- she is just afraid in the pure and simple way of nightmares and the time just after sleep.

From her pores, invisible, intangible, her pheromones carry her terror in clouds of musk that seep into her would-be attackers, into their nostrils, mouths, and every other orifice like black flies on a carcass. The man on point shakes but holds his gun level, even with trembling hands. His comrade is worse affected, he screams and lashes out wildly and Laurie throws herself to the ground to avoid his flailing limbs in the very moment that the woman behind the girl panics and fires her gun. It’s loud, louder than in the movies, each shot enough to stop Laurie’s heart she’s sure, and there seem to be thousands of them. The sounds they make as they hit the flailing soldier are fleshy, wet little thuds. She feels something splatter onto the back of her neck and the scream in her throat rips its way out as the shots cease. She leaps to her feet, no thought but ohGodohGodohGodohGod a constant non-religious refrain with run as its punctuation.

She makes it two steps towards the woman behind her- who she’s spun to face, blind panic making her insensible to the face that only the window is beyond her human obstacle- before the woman swings out with her empty gun, catching Laurie hard across the temple and sending her tumbling to the ground, hitting her head on the corner of the bed frame as she goes down to lie still.

The leader makes a hand signal and the woman steps over first Laurie and then the prone figure of her comrade who reaches up a hand and makes a wet sort of moan as she passes, unheeding. There’s a brief conference in the doorway about further measures, but in the end they settle for barricading the door from the outside with a chair taken from the desk (the girl doesn’t look like she’ll be breaking down doors any time soon and they have other ‘low threat’ students to neutralize) and move on.
------

Laurie wakes after what could have been hours and could have been minutes but is most probably the latter because the man whose squadron mate shot him in a panic is still breathing, gurgling blood up through his lungs to froth out from between his open lips in little, translucent bubbles of red.

His name is Gregory Lisser and he is twenty. As he is dying of blood loss he is thinking of a brown haired girl who winked at him yesterday in a bar. He remembers the way she smiled and he wishes he knew her name because somehow he feels that if he did… if he could want… if he had a reason… pain brings him up from delirium to gasp all he can of a cry before the tide of shock pulls him back down and then again releases him to pain. On and on and on and now he wants nothing more than sleep, than the end.

Laurie, of course, can know none of this. She is feeling gingerly at the drying blood matted into her blonde hair, making its strands stiff, smelling of metal and salt. She has a concussion, it’s evident in the way one of her pupils is now bigger than the other, pulsing and dilating, but she can’t know this any more than she can know Gregory Lisser’s name or his dying thoughts. She looks up and sees the young man lying before her, rasping out his last, pained breaths on the carpet of her dorm room. How? she thinks, remembering nothing for the moment, she’s too disoriented to be uneasy so she doesn’t feel afraid or sad, only curious, and she pulls herself towards him.

It comes back in snatches as she reaches him: sitting up in bed, guns aimed at her, fear, ducking, gunfire so, so loud and then the splatter on the back of her neck… a moan pulls itself up from her depths long and low and despairing. She reaches out with shaking hands and places them lightly on the young man’s bloody chest. He coughs again and glares up at her, still aware enough to know and hate an enemy even through his pain.

I’m so sorry she wants to tell him, would tell him if she hadn’t somehow forgotten how to make herself speak I was just scared, just scared, I didn’t want… I didn’t mean… I was just sleeping… sleeping… Somehow this triggers another memory, another synapse lit up in the seemingly random constellation of pathways tangled up in her jostled brain. The poem she’d always demanded from her mother in her younger years as a bedtime story or a soothing antidote to her nightmares flashes back in parts, little fragments of speech whispered in the dark coupled with the touch of a cool palm against her cheek and she lets it rush every other thought from her mind like a tidal wave.

“I’d like to sing someone asleep now,/ be with someone and sitting by,/ I’d like to rock you asleep now and at sleeping and waking be nigh.” she begins in a voice that she would be surprised to know does not falter or stumble, for once flowing effortlessly through her now blood-moistened lips. She feels her pheromones wafting from her, though it’s not so much a physical sensation as a mental certainty sleep, sleep, sleep they command against all pain and fear. She can’t say why or how she’s doing it- with her emotions shuttered away by the after shock of fear and trauma it all just seems simpler somehow. She forgets sections of the poem’s middle, paraphrasing the sentiments of wishing to be the only one in the house who knows how cold the night has been and who has walked by down on the street. She finishes, “Then all grows silent. I’ve laid them so/ wide-open on you, these eyes;/ and they hold you gently and let you go/ when sounds in the dark arise.” She squeezes her eyes shut, feels deep, relaxed breaths push the broken chest beneath her palms up and down, in and out, peaceful rhythm defying the pain that should pull the young man from his sleep.

At 7:15 AM Gregory Lisser’s chest falls and does not rise again. On his face is a soft smile, a tender expression, as if in a pleasant dream. Laurie removes her now gory hands from the ruined body and brings them to her face, tangling them in her hair, mixing his blood with the crusted remnants of that which had flowed from the cut on her temple, scalp wounds always such dramatic bleeders. How? she thinks again, but has no specific target in mind for the query. Slowly she brings her hands away from her face and holds them, shaking, before her blank, unfocused eyes, watching the blood dry.

[Toni Craft]

When her door slams against the wall after being forcefully opened, Toni just rolls over and smashes her alarm clock into the wall, not ready for the day to begin just yet. But then the heavy footsteps march into her room, and she groggily realizes that it wasn't her alarm clock that had made the infernal racket.

"Matty, seriously, get a real fucking life and go back to bed. It's too early in the goddamn fuckin' morning for your let's-plug-her-nose-until-she-wakes-up shit." To say that Toni wasn't a morning person would be a very clear understatement. She pulls the blanket up over her head and curls up in the warmth of her bed.

"Wakey wakey, mutie." Oh...that doesn't sound like Matty... So she manages a small peak through sleepy eyes.

"You know, I've always found something attractive about a man in a uniform. And chicks always dig a man with a gun." She was really too tired to care at that particular moment, but when the sound of gunfire rings through the halls of the mansion, originating from the student's dorms, Toni snaps wide awake.

"Wha? Fuck, and here I thought I was having another one of those surprise wild sex dreams. Automatic rifles just make the best sex accessories, don't you think? I know you've tried it with the chicks all the time." How she managed to ramble on like that without getting shot, Toni'll never know, but her chatter is certainly enough to make the young soldier falter. "Speaking of home, you're in mine. Now kindly leave before I ram that rifle down your--"

Cha-click.

"Oh shiznaz on a--" She kicks her leg from beneath her covers and hears the satisfying snap as her iron foot collides with the soldier's side. Toni guesses it's the equivalent of Shaq taking an aluminum baseball bat to his ribs, and can't help the small cringe at the feeling of splintering bone against her foot.

The soldier's rib cage absorbs most of the impact, but he's still sent careening into the wall. An instant later he's on the ground, unconscious, but groaning.

Toni's about to make some typical smart-ass remark, but the sound of more gunfire draws her attention away. "Fucking Jesus fucking H fucking Roosevelt fucking Christ! What the fuck is going on? This place is infested with Stryker wannabes!" Had she been any lighter, Toni surely would have flown from her bed, but with an extra few hundred pounds in iron weight, flying is nearly impossible. Nevertheless, she comes damn near close as she launches out of bed and runs for the door.

As a precaution, Toni armours up, letting her skin solidify into plates of iron.

But the hall is empty. Apparently the soldier they had sent in her direction had been alone...probably due to the fact that they're forces were more concerned with other matters. Yeah, other clawed and lightning tossing matters.

Sure enough, after a quick inspection, the other faculty rooms are empty. Great, leave it to me to sleep through anything. Toni pounds her metal feet against the floor as she bolts for the students' rooms, eager, though dreading, to see the damage.

She skids to a halt when she spots one room held shut from the outside, no doubt the handy work of someone trying to keep somebody else sealed in. Without bothering to pull the chair away, Toni shoulder checks the doors, causing the doorknob to snap and crumple.

Inside she finds a very upset Laurie Collins, hovering over what looks like a body of a soldier, covered in blood. In an attempt not to scare the student, Toni retracts her armour.

"Yo, kid, you alright? You're not lookin' so hot." She'd rather not speculate just how the soldier ended up so dead and bloody, but something tells her that Laurie's incapable of that type of violence. "Listen, we gotta get out of here. There's bad dudes all over the place and I'd prefer it if I didn't get shot today. Just had the amour polished if you know what I mean." Toni sticks her head back out the doorway and squawks when she sees another two soldiers heading her way. "Your dead buds got a couple of really pissed friends, so I suggest we get the hell out of here. This ain't the time to be cryin' over the enemy, no matter how fucked up this whole situation seems to be. Now move!" Always knew impersonating Mom's drill voice would come in handy.

And I still have no idea what was going on...

[Laurie Collins]

The door bursts open under a heavy weight for a second time that morning but Laurie doesn’t turn, keeps her eyes focused on her palms. Blood to blood and then to skin, into the crevices and cracks, sealing up the little indents in the flesh over her knuckles, hers and his and both red-rust clogging up the machinery. She doesn’t much care if the new intruder is another soldier, she doesn’t have much left to feel about anything right now, not so much defeated and submissive as tapped, run dry by her earlier emotional exertion.
She’s not emitting pheromones at the moment, though she has no idea how she can be certain just thinks rather distantly that she would know now because she’d felt it a moment ago and perhaps the sensation has slotted into place now like the first time you smell a new scent or try a new food and ever after you recognize the sensation of smell, the taste, even in a different setting.

"Yo, kid, you alright? You're not lookin' so hot."Not a soldier. Someone else, maybe familiar maybe not, and in place of an answer she rises to her feet slowly, swaying as her vision fuzzes and blurs- a product of her lopsided pupils which are in turn a product of the concussion- and turns to face Toni, hands held out a little ways in front of her. The gesture is a mix of supplication and amazement, as if she expects the blood to go away when she blinks. She’s a sight- hair matted down to her scalp with blood and what strands have remained unmarred standing away from her head with static as if repulsed. Dried blood is caked in tear tracks down her temples from where the gun struck her and smeared across her cheeks from where she covered her face with her hands after laying them on the dead soldier’s bullet riddled chest. Her lips are parted, quick, shallow breaths issuing forth and her pupils can’t seem to decide how much light is in the room, never quite seeming to match as they expand and dilate. All in all though she’s clearly more shocked than injured by surreal and violent awakening she’s received.

"Listen, we gotta get out of here. There's bad dudes all over the place and I'd prefer it if I didn't get shot today. Just had the amour polished if you know what I mean."
Laurie doesn’t seem to hear her, blinking slowly, laboriously, as if each time her eyelids meet their lower counterparts they debate rising again at all. “I took too long.” she whispers, mostly to herself, “I didn’t know it sounded like that… all wet and soft like he was just skin and blood… and then they just left him all alone trying to breathe.” a still wet patch of blood becomes saturated and sends a droplet falling down from her left wrist to the carpet. “I told him to go to sleep… at least then he didn’t feel… I should have…” her speech dies as incongruously as it began, trailing away to nothing.

"Your dead buds got a couple of really pissed friends, so I suggest we get the hell out of here. This ain't the time to be cryin' over the enemy, no matter how fucked up this whole situation seems to be. Now move!"
The harsh tone seems to snap her back to reality, at least enough to get her stumbling obediently towards Toni. Laurie’s always been one to respond instinctively to authority and through the haze of injury and shock she seizes on the order, shaking her head slowly to clear the fog from it and wincing as she realizes that moving her head is going to come under the heading of ‘very bad plan’ for awhile.
-----
Out in the hallway the soldiers spot Toni when she spots them and confer quickly as she ducks back in to Laurie’s room. “Two targets. Neutralizing.” One says tersely into the radio then a moment later reaches for the radio again as he recognizes Toni from a staff/ major threat profile they’d received in their briefing, “Backup requested, standard gunfire ineffective against one target.” He’s seen the reports of the damage this one had done on the recent raid by this facility at Magneto’s Brotherhood and he pauses for a moment to gather himself before nodding to the other operative on his left, “I’ll contain this one, put the younger one down then assist me.”
----
As the operatives finish their conversation Laurie draws up beside Toni in the doorway and looks up at the older mutant (teacher? she thinks, sluggish, over-taxed mind scuttling to find an answer to the identity of the older mutant before it thinks to consider just why armed soldiers are invading her school) and lowers her hands slowly, seeing the soldiers advancing rapidly. One part of her mind screams at her to duck, to run, to defend herself, to try and emit pheromones, any pheromones but what she settles for at the moment is pulling herself together as much as possible- which feels rather like diving for pennies in muddy water that sucks at your limbs as you move through it- and moving back a little behind the edge of the doorframe, waiting to see what the one person who doesn’t seem to want to kill her and who seems more capable than herself will instruct.

[[Choose your adventure!: Turn to page three to shoot the soldiers, turn to page fifty to duck, turn to page twenty-seven to offer them cookies. 0.o]]

[Toni Craft]

When Laurie's distraught and catatonic expression suddenly changes to one of alarm, Toni instantly know that whatever it is she's starting at behind her, it can't be good.

The two soldiers enter the room, weapons raised and eyes staring through their sights. Toni, without turning to look, grits her teeth angrily and swings her right arm forcefully around behind her, her body eventually following through.

But instead of hitting the soldier and sending him flying backwards, he digs his boots in, drops his rifle, and catches her arm.

"Wha--?" No human would ever be able to make a save like that. As Toni whirls around and brings her other fist up for a punch, the soldier stops her in her tracks with a hand at her throat.

His reflexes weren't extraordinary, but his strength was astronomical. With just that one hand, the soldier digs his fingers into her skin and lifts her clear off her feet. Angry, alarmed, and choking, Toni grips the assaulting arm with both hands and tries furiously to pry him off. None of her attempts come through as successful and she can see a circle of black forming at the edge of her vision.

But suffocation isn't her biggest worry at that point. He bites into the glove of his free hand and pulls it off with his teeth, grinning maliciously the whole time. Toni watches (and while normally she would have been far beyond intrigued) through dimming vision as stares at her and wiggles his fingers.

"Let me know if this stings." Right like I can feel anything with you hanging me like a fuckin' pinata--

"Heeerrk--" A sharp, hot pain rips through her right shoulder and Toni can feel the source of her agony lodge itself deep into her iron muscle tissue.

But as much as it hurts, the pain begins to fade along with her sight as the soldier's fingers squeeze her throat a little tighter.

Unknown to Toni, the second soldier advances on Laurie, rifle raised and ready after spotting his fellow fighter's dead body.

[Laurie Collins]

Laurie stumbles backwards as the soldiers enter the room and divide their attention between herself and Toni. Her eyes are huge in a face so pale that her scattering of freckles becomes almost three dimensional in contrast as, for the second time in her life and the second time in under an hour, she’s staring down the wrong end of a gun’s barrel. This time she’s at least been awake for more than a few moments and has the presence of mind to surrender instead of running about like a chicken with its head cut off, raising her hands slowly, palms facing outwards and fingers spread. “We’re not… j-just don’t…” she pleads quietly, still too disoriented to be really coherent.

"Let me know if this stings."
"Heeerrk--"

She turns her head away from the gun pointed at her face to see the other soldier holding Toni up by the throat, opens her mouth to suck in air for a gasp and a moment later releases it as a scream when three barbs worm their way from the man’s fingertips and plunge into Toni’s shoulder. So much for surrender.

----
“NO!” His target is screaming, running towards the woman his superior is currently occupying, and the soldier raises his gun, swinging it to follow her, finger tightening on the trigger—and then the sight of his comrade’s body hits him, really hits him, and he wonders why it hasn’t until now, why he didn’t realize that this girl killed one of their operatives and he has no idea how and now she’s heading pell-mell for his superior officer and what if bullets don’t work… he fires in a blind panic, the ruin of his comrade’s chest flashing before his eyes in vivid memory, but the bullets go wide, taking out the windows, thudding into the bed, and going through a wall.

The officer turns his head sharply at the sound of gunfire, tightening his grip on Toni and sees the girl heading for him. He feels a spike of absolute terror leap up from his stomach and tries to dismiss it as unreasonable, the occupant of this room is classified as low threat after all, but all his instincts are screaming at him that the classification is wrong that no matter how harmless and young the girl might look she’s moments away from doing something terrible, something unspeakable, and his companion is already panicking… “Withdraw to the hall!” he yells, dropping Toni unceremoniously on the floor, “We wait for the reinforcements!”
----

The soldiers’ submission to Laurie’s pheromones and decision to retreat is the matter of moments and by the time Laurie has reached the older mutant the two soldiers are already backing away. She whirls away from Toni as soon as she reaches her, covering her face and taking deep breaths, she’s still emitting, she can feel it now, like a long sigh after a series of hitching, shallow breaths. It feels easy, right, and even though she’s calmed for the moment as Toni is evidently not going to be joining the body count, she can’t stop herself any more than she can stop her limbs from shaking wildly. “It’s just me, I’m emitting again, I’m sorry, please, please don’t run away.” she whispers frantically to Toni.

[Toni Craft]

Toni feels completely helpless as the string fingers squeeze off both her blood supply and her airway. As her mind borders on unconsciousness, she tries one last time to wrench herself free from his hold, but her strength is nearly gone. Just before everything goes black, she hears a scream and gunfire.

Then there's just nothing.

Thud.

Her eyes snap open as she gasps for breath, lying on her side on the floor. For a few moments she opts for not moving, and just lets her body catch up on the few moments of oxygen. Her chest heaves and she rolls over onto her back, groaning at the residual pain in her shoulder.

"Ow. Fuckin' ow." Toni tries to move her right arm, but earns a sharp stab in response. Whatever it was that the soldier had stuck her with, it had been strong enough to puncture her iron skin, and it had left little gifts behind. She could feel them deep in her shoulder, little sharp barbs tearing up her muscle, all but rendering her arm useless. "Well, those'll be fun to pull out later." She grumbles, and uses her left arm to heave herself up into a sitting position, her hand feeling her bruised throat. "Someone's about to go fuckin' La-Laland in a body bag."

Laurie scrambles over to her, shaking violently, eyes wide with fear.

“It’s just me, I’m emitting again, I’m sorry, please, please don’t run away.”

"Run away? From what?" Toni blinks a few times and stares at the student, her whirling mind, trying to remember exactly who she was. "Oh! Right! You're the pheromone chick that Matty has the hots for!" Whoops, Matty's gonna kill me for that. Hehehehe.

But Lauries pheromone powers were the source of the girl's worry; she thought that Toni was going to scream bloody murder. Toni, through the pain and aches, smiles.

"Relax kiddo. Your pheromones do squat to me. Has to do with you being made of carbon, and me being made of iron, but we have more important matters on our hands." Toni hisses in pain as she pushes herself to her feet, wobbling slightly before steading. "Now, should we try and get out of here? Or is there a surprise party waiting for us out there?" She nods toward the door, and chooses to ignore the trickle of blood running down her side.

[Laurie Collins]

"Run away? From what?"

Laurie blinks, actually shocked out of being scared for a moment by the fact that aside from the obvious problems of bleeding all over the floor Toni seems completely nonplussed by fear coming off her in torrents. She opens her mouth to try to explain when Toni bursts out with-

"Oh! Right! You're the pheromone chick that Matty has the hots for!"

At which her face somehow accomplishes the amazing feat of turning about five different shades of red. “H-he uh, what?” she squeaks out, and if the soldiers had still been in the room they probably would have begun to check their armor sure that some completely humiliating gap in protocol had occurred because why else would they be so very embarrassed and flighty-feeling? Hey! Blood! Guns! Fear! Be a fifteen year old girl and realize that you will never be able to look at him again without blushing regardless of the truth of that later! a slightly hysterical voice in the back of her head chides and this, along with the sorry state of Toni’s arm and the ongoing invasion help her to pull herself back to the matter at hand.

"Relax kiddo. Your pheromones do squat to me. Has to due with you being made of carbon, and me being made of iron, but we have more important matters on our hands."

“Oh…well…good. Iron. That’s…good.” Laurie says rather lamely, too dazed by the surreal barrage of the morning to really react to the fact that she’s finally found someone at the institute whose reactions she can trust.

"Now, should we try and get out of here? Or is there a surprise party waiting for us out there?"

“I don’t know.” Laurie says quietly, biting her lip. “I heard him say they’d retreat to the hall then return with backup so maybe we should try to get away now… but one of them already hurt you and I can’t control my, um, pheromone things. Though I might get scared if I see them again. But last time I got scared they just shot each other and knocked me out and that didn’t work out very well at all, obviously, and I don’t really know what would happen and where would we go even if we did get away?” she stops herself by actually putting a hand over her own mouth as she realizes she’s descending back into mild hysteria.

[Toni Craft]

“H-he uh, what?”

“I’ve already said too much!” Toni puts up her hand and grins through the searing pain in her shoulder. Matthew had never actually said that he was attracted to Laurie, but he didn’t need to. Toni often wondered if her ability to pick out her brother’s crushes should be considered another part of her mutation.

The joking behaviour also helps Toni’s state of mind, knowing she could still be an erratic idiot while she was in pain, bleeding, and wanted dead by who knows how many soldiers. Of course, she assumes that later on, that’s liable to be attributed to blood loss if she doesn’t take care of her wound in the near future.

“Oh…well…good. Iron. That’s…good.”

“It definitely has its perks, like discounts at MacDonalds!” In their particular situation, it is obvious where the benefits lay (mainly, Toni isn’t screaming or even reacting every time Laurie lets out a burst of pheromones). But iron-based wounds certainly weren’t easy to take care of. Well, that’s not entirely true. Because of her abnormal composition, Toni was not susceptible to normal contagions, so the injury probably wouldn’t get infected. But that also meant she couldn’t use any painkillers, as they were all designed for carbon-based humans or mutants. And that meant that she was going to be hurting for a very long time.

With her wound in mind, Toni looks around the bedroom, trying to find something that could be of some use to her. Primarily something made of iron.

Unfortunately, she comes up empty but does spot and lamp. Using her only good hand, Toni rips the cord from the base and proceeds to pull the plug from the wall. With her teeth, she peels back the plastic coating and grins.

“Perfect! It’s copper!” Copper meant she couldn’t absorb it, which may have been a problem if it had been a steel wire. Fumbling for a minute, Toni wraps the wire up around her shoulder and down under her arm, making a impromptu sling. “Laurie? Be a doll and tie that for me, will you? Can’t have myself flailing around while savin’ the kiddies now can I?” She pulls the cord a little tighter and winces as a sharp jab courses down her arm.

“I heard him say they’d retreat to the hall then return with backup so maybe we should try to get away now…”

“Damn straight we should, kiddo. I don’t really feel like staring down another gun or getting ripped apart my Mr. I’m-a-mutant-but-I’m-working-to-kill-other-mutants.” There was more gunfire from another area of the mansion.

“I can’t control my, um, pheromone things. Though I might get scared if I see them again. But last time I got scared they just shot each other and knocked me out and that didn’t work out very well at all.”

“Well then, darlin’, besides the getting knocked out part, you’re probably my best asset right now…second only to my undeniable feminine charm and good looks.” Toni grins and heads for the door. “So…any time you wanna start scarin’ off the bad dudes, you go ahead. I won’t try to stop you.”

“Where would we go even if we did get away?” Toni pauses and thinks seriously on the question for a few moments.

“Pizza Hut. I don't know about you, but I’m going to be reeeeeaaaally hungry after this.”

[Laurie Collins]

“It definitely has its perks, like discounts at MacDonalds!”

Laurie gives Toni a gape-jawed stare as the professor keeps talking about her brother (which she’s not thinking about right now, thank you kindly, even though strikeback operatives hopped up on teenage girl stomach-butterflies would be quite a sight) and joking about McDonald’s discounts while she bleeds and the shrieks from outside grow louder. Laurie jumps at a crackle of something Thunder? Lightening? Inside? then forces her attention back on Toni as she speaks again,

“Laurie? Be a doll and tie that for me, will you? Can’t have myself flailing around while savin’ the kiddies now can I?”

She nods numbly, taking a few steps closer and attempting to tie the wire with shaky hands, pausing several times and muttering “Sorry, sorry.” as she tries to steady herself enough to finish the simple knot. When she’s finished she rocks back on her heels, giving Toni a critical look, her eyes obviously concerned even through their concussion-induced haze. “Are you going to be okay?” she asks softly, wincing as she realizes what a stupid and unanswerable question that is. “I-it’s just there’s… there’s a lot of blood…” she adds in a whisper, her stomach lurching as she takes it all in, the dead soldier’s, hers, and now Toni’s, soaking through the carpet so very, very much more than she’d thought could possibly come out of ten people let alone three. She has a mental flash of it soaking through the wood of the floor, dripping down drop by drop into the classrooms below… she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to exorcise the image, and listens to Toni forming their plan while she tries to ride out the waves of pain and nausea rippling through her.

“Damn straight we should, kiddo. I don’t really feel like staring down another gun or getting ripped apart my Mr. I’m-a-mutant-but-I’m-working-to-kill-other-mutants.”

That gets a tiny nod, though Laurie’s eyes stay closed. Pull yourself together, come on, she almost pleads with herself. She’s right, we’ve got to get out of here or more people are going to… going to… the picture of the dead soldier’s bullet-riddled corpse is burned onto the insides of her eyelids, will be for a long time she’s sure, and she swallows another bout of nausea.

“Well then, darlin’, besides the getting knocked out part, you’re probably my best asset right now…second only to my undeniable feminine charm and good looks. So…any time you wanna start scarin’ off the bad dudes, you go ahead. I won’t try to stop you.”

“Use my pheromones against people? On purpose? I can’t-“ she hesitates, a snatch of her conversation with Bob from a few days earlier filtering back.

”What would ever give me the right?”
"The same thing that gives anyone the right to influence anything, ever: the well-founded belief that the consequences of inaction will make the situation worse.”

”The consequences of inaction…” Another fight. Toni hurt worse, herself hurt again, both of them maybe dead and taking down who knows how many soldiers with them. ”The consequences of inaction…”

Laurie takes a deep breath and opens her eyes, crossing slowly towards the doorway and hesitating just inside it. No. Nonononono. I can’t… I won’t… oh please… she doesn’t try to calm herself down, rather letting it escalate and doing all she can to ratchet it up because she knows she’ll need this. She takes a minute to shake, clutching the doorway like she’ll come unhinged, like gravity’s scorned her and she’ll fly away into empty dead-star space if she doesn’t hold on to something. Terror, revulsion, guilt for the body on the floor, grief, and somewhere lacing all through there’s anger, there’s ‘how could you?’ stabbing through her mind like the finest blade.

“Pizza Hut. I don't know about you, but I’m going to be reeeeeaaaally hungry after this.”

A slightly hysterical laugh rips its way out of her and she looks over her shoulder at Toni for a moment, eyes unnaturally bright, blood-encrusted face scarier than someone like Laurie has any right to look. Then, because she can’t hold on to the extreme of the emotions much longer without losing control enough to move she throws herself out into the hallway without so much as a warning to Toni, letting out a scream that might have startled the soldiers enough even without the pheromone cocktail that bursts their way. Her scream is swallowed up in a chorus as the two soldiers who had threatened them turn and run, smacking into the reinforcements with strange looking weapons- designed for Toni’s immunity to bullets no doubt- who stumble backwards as they catch their own whiff of the volatile emotions in the air. Some run, two begin vomiting on the floor, one throws himself down sobbing, and another fires his gun randomly, barbed bullets like those the soldier had shot out of his hands thudding into the ceiling and ricocheting off the walls and hitting one of the few soldiers who’s mastered himself enough to push forward.

Laurie stops screaming but her mouth stays open for a moment, gasping quick, shallow breaths as her eyes droop almost to slits and she slides down the wall. The soldiers are out of the way for a good few moments, hopefully long enough to get away, but Laurie’s down for the time being as well, completely drained of emotion. I have to learn to… could’ve… hope Miss. Craft can drag me for a little while with the good arm…I didn’t know… she thinks dimly, raising her head slightly to look around for the professor.

[Toni Craft]

“Are you going to be okay? I-it’s just there’s… there’s a lot of blood…” Toni's grin subsides momentarily and she looks down at the burning wound in her shoulder.

"Hurts like hell, but it's nothin' I can't handle." She purposely omits the 'Oh, and if I don't get some medical attention soon, I'm probably going to drop unconscious in the middle of a fire fight and leave you to fend for your own.'

She's actually bleeding much more than she would have ever expected. No doubt the barbs that still remained in her muscle were keeping the laceration open, tearing at the flesh every time Toni moved.

“Use my pheromones against people? On purpose? I can’t-“

"Never say nev--er can't, doll. I just watched you...or rather, I like to think I just watched you (I was a little preoccupied with my annoying necessity for oxygen at the time), scare the shit out of two big tuff dudes. It was actually really cool!" Toni blinks a few times after experiencing a momentary 'floating' moment. The loss of blood was already taking its toll.

When Laurie laughs at her few phrases of randomness however, Toni grins again.

"Wha--? Woah, kid!" She yells as Laurie bounds out the door, no doubt with the pheromones pumping....at least thats what Toni hoped. Ignoring another bout of light headedness, she rushes out after the student and armours up. Or rather, she tries, and reasonably succeeds though it's weak and not nearly as thick as she had hoped. Hopefully it would be enough to fend off the guy who had tried to strangle her earlier--

"Oh...nice...I need to hang around you more often. Imagine all the creepy dudes that wouldn't hit on me!" Toni mutters, dropping her feeble armour when she realizes that most, if not all of the soldiers are either occupied or running away. One of the vomiting men looks up as she approaches, his face twisted in fear as he scrambles to get back onto his feet. With a muted thwack, Toni hits him up the side of the head, instantly knocking him unconscious. The other lingering soldiers manage to get up and run before she can get to them, which is probably all the better, Toni doubts she could even chase them in her state.

She turns back to Laurie, only to find her in an almost catatonic state, and she doesn't look like she's going to be moving anytime soon.

"Crap. Okay doll, hang on just a sec. This ain't gonna be comfortable." Toni does the only effective thing she can with her good arm, she reaches down, grabs the girl around her waist, and hoists her up over her uninjured shoulder. "Jesus girl, what do you weigh? Like 80 pounds? Remind me to get Matty to start cooking for you. He'll blow your fuckin' mind away with that spaghetti of his." Not exactly the best choice of words at the moment...

Toni, with Laurie unceremoniously thrown over her shoulder, makes her way down the hall, praying they don't run into any more armed soldiers.