Aaaah, There's blood EVERYWHERE!!111

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

The medical lab doors open sedately, and the lights come up smoothly. This stands in stark contrast to its new occupants.

Josh limps through the circular doorframe, and wipes absently at a bit of blood with his free hand. It was dried, of course. His other hand is suspended in midair, directed at the unconscious Danny, who drifts at chest height above the ground.

Around him, a few students and staff start filtering in, and the hum of conversation picks up. Several of the students with only scrapes and bruises begin pulling bandages and compresses out of one of the cabinets. Josh sets Danny carefully down with his powers onto the exam table in the center of the room, and moves quickly over to the sink and starts washing his hands.

He starts running through techniques as he mentally triages their group. Danny, first. He has multiple cuts and is still bleeding. He'd tried to stop the bleeding on the Blackbird, but their medical supplies had been limited. I should fMRI him, what the hell was with the collapse and the nose bleed? And it didn't help with Toni tossing him around like a doll. Hopefully there aren't any internal injuries.

Josh grabs a paper towel and begins drying his hands. After I stabilize Danny, I should look at Arthur... Jack threw him around quite a bit. Josh didn't want to be patronizing, but the older teacher had always struck him as rather delicate, and he frankly looked like hell at the moment. Veronica is also bleeding... and Hector must be...

He picks up bandages, gauze, antiseptic, and a few packs of sutures. Josh drops them onto a tray and moves over to Danny. Finally, he turns to Jack. "Okay, now what were you worried about?" He'd rarely seen Jack so upset, but he'd needed his full concentration to get everyone down to the lab. He was pretty sure he'd heard the word 'bite', which seemed ominous.

[Jack Russell]

Following close behind the group, Jack has returned to his human form, ushering Arthur to the nearest chair while his foreign entourage stands around, murmuring in their respective languages in hushed tones; the youngest of the five has even started to whimper, frightened by her teacher's condition and the nervous anxiety simmering in the room. Arthur tries to offer comfort, but Jack comes in between them, rolling up his own sleeves before starting on Arthur's, inspecting the wound.

"Does it burn or itch?"

"Jack, I'm alright I--"

"Answer me, dammit!"

A hush settles over nearby students, and the little one starts to sob. Jack stares intensely at Arthur, knowing he can't see, but by the way he shivers Jack can tell he feels the hysteria raging inside him.

"No. It.. does not."

Jack turns away suddenly, only slightly relieved. He moves to other students, trying to distract himself. The damage is mostly minimal, just a few cuts and scrapes, but even small lacerations could be infected. Meanwhile, Arthur has pulled the small, Italian girl into his lap.

Glancing back over his shoulder, Jack clears his throat. "Arthur." In response, Arthur turns his head in Jack's direction, listening.

'I'm sorry' lingers somewhere near the back of his throat, but Jack can't say it. "Just.. keep her away from your arm.. okay?" He turns back, not expecting a reply, looking over a particularly painful-looking bruise on one of the students. Okay, now what were you worried about? Jack turns again--Josh. He stands up straight, tensing his shoulders and rubbing the back of his head nervously, his mind working several miles a minute.

"I.. God.. I..,"--how do I say this?--"..when I was... um.. trying to get them out you know.. I mean, it all happened so fast. And I.. I was just trying to scare them and I wasn't pulling hard but.. it just happened and my teeth.. and his arm.. I uh.." He drastically lowers his voice. "I.. broke the skin.." A distraught expression grips him, and Jack clenches his hands.

"He could.. I.. he could be infected.. I don't know for sure.. but.. God. Josh I don't know, this's only happened one time.. and I don't even remember it.." He keeps prattling on in his nervous stop-and-go with no end in sight.

[Toni Craft]

Since when did she become the resident gurney? Sure, she’s the strongest one in the institute short of Peter when he’s all shiny, but that doesn’t mean that they can just keep piling on unconscious students. This was her third load from the jet. With a huff, Toni adjusts her hold on the tubby kid on her shoulder as she steps into the medical lab.

Finding the closest open examination table, she unceremoniously plops the student down and searches for the next open space to rid herself of the other two bodies someone has dumped on her. Considering the two kids still left simply just fainted, Toni figures that the floor is as good of a spot as any for them.

Brushing herself off and straightening back up, Toni looks around the crowed lab. Students are crying and bleeding and bruised, but really the only seriously injured ones are those who tried to deal with the dinosaurs. Josh is over at the far side of the room, looking a little dirtier than was normal and dealing with Arthur and Jack.

Curious, Toni wanders in their direction, stepping over huddled kids as she goes.

"..when I was... um.. trying to get them out you know.. I mean, it all happened so fast. And I.. I was just trying to scare them and I wasn't pulling hard but.. it just happened and my teeth.. and his arm.. I uh...I.. broke the skin.." Oh that’s right, she’d heard rumblings about Jack biting Arthur while on the jet, but she hadn’t seen the incident herself. “He could.. I.. he could be infected.. I don't know for sure.. but.. God. Josh I don't know, this's only happened one time.. and I don't even remember it.."


She slinks up behind Jack and drapes an arm over his should, grinning in that non-caring way she always does. “Com’on, lover boy! So maybe Artie’s gonna be a big furry whoosit like you. So what? Just imagine all the cool doggy stuff you could do together! Like sniff each other’s bums and eat roadkill and—” There are people staring at her and none of them seem as amused as she is. “Why am I the only one who’s finding this so amazingly awesome?” Toni kisses Jack’s cheek and gives him a happy poke in the side. “Seriously, how bad could a wolfy Artie be? It’s not like he’s gonna go off and eat anybody or anything, right Artie? That’s just totally not you.”

[Veronica Devereux]

Hobbling into the room, Veronica had one hand checking the back of her head every few seconds, and the other one cuddling Charlie tightly against her chest. finding an empty chair, she plopped down, her eyes closing. "I just had to try and be Ms.Cowboy, didn't I, Charlie?" the girl asked, looking down at her reptilian companion. Getting no answer, she shrugged, but stopped midway from a sudden pain that shot through her back."Aah!" a groan escaped the female's lips as she reached behind her, carefully placing her hand where the pain had started.

Bringing the phone back in front of her, she sighed as small splotches of blood that decorated her hand."Great." she thought to herself as she reached for a pad of gauze. Holding the white material in her hand, she held it against the back of her skull, feeling it soak up the blood. Closing her head, she leaned forward, hoping it would stop the bleeding, if only slightly, so she could be at ease. As she leaned forward, she glanced down at Charlie and used one nail to trace his shell."Where exactly were you when I was bucking on a skeleton, huh?" she scolded, making a displeased face at the creature.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

Josh starts cleaning out the largest of Danny’s injuries. After sterilizing the area, he quickly starts suturing the gash shut. This thing isn’t closing without some help. A variety of medical supplies drift lazily in the air over Danny. When Jack starts explaining, though, Josh jerks and almost drops the needle-holder.

> "He could.. I.. he could be infected.. I don't know for sure.. but.. God. Josh I don't know, this's only happened one time.. and I don't even remember it.."

Holy crap. Infected? Josh didn’t really know the particulars of Jack’s mutation – only that the full moon was a bad time for him. Is Arthur going to…? That kind of transformation seemed like it could be lethal, with Arthur’s lack of fortitude. “Jack, I have no idea how your mutation works. If you don’t know…” Josh stops for a second while tying one of his sutures. “Okay, let’s just stay calm. Dr. Grey kept full records on everyone’s mutation… let me look up what we’ve got on you. In a second.” His tongue pokes out between his lips as he finishes one injury and moves onto the next.

A new suture moves into place and threads itself around the needle. Josh glances up for a second at Jack and Arthur. “I should take a blood sample, Arthur. If anything weird is going on, it’s likely to show up there.” He didn’t add that his only real experience with werewolves came from the Underworld movies, which probably wouldn’t reassure any of them.

> “Seriously, how bad could a wolfy Artie be? It’s not like he’s gonna go off and eat anybody or anything, right Artie? That’s just totally not you.”

Josh rolls his eyes at Toni and finishes up with the second major injury on Danny. A couple of the others could probably use stitches as well, but Arthur had suddenly jumped the queue. “Toni… do you think you could clean up some of Danny’s cuts? I need to take care of Arthur.” The idea scares him slightly, but Jack was so freaked out he probably couldn’t remember his birthday, and everyone else was injured. Metal skin comes in handy, I guess.

While rewashing his hands, he assembles a tray with the necessary supplies with his telekinesis. Thank god I’ve got the TK – I can be the doctor and medical assistant all in one. Josh moves over to Arthur and cleans a spot along a vein near where Jack broke the skin. He’s as careful as possible, and tries to keep his voice even. “Don’t worry, Arthur, you’re in good hands. We’ll figure this out.” He guides the needle in to take a sample. The tray, forgotten, stands in midair.

After finishing up with blood sample, Josh pulls a swab out of a wrapping. "I'd like to take a DNA sample so I can compare it to what we have on record - if nothing shows up in your bloodstream we'll look into that next. Just rub it along the inside of your cheek." Josh hands it to Arthur and then stops to survey the room. "Is anyone losing any vital fluids that I should know about? Otherwise, I'm going to take a few minutes to look at this."

[Jack Russell]

In the middle of Jack's rambling, Toni sidles up to him, throwing an arm about his shoulders and giving him a firm kiss on the cheek. He doesn't seem to notice the playful poke she gives him in his side; she is blissfully unaware of the consequences that could ensue. Seriously, how bad could a wolfy Artie be? It’s not like he’s gonna go off and eat anybody or anything, right Artie? That’s just totally not you. With each passing word, Jack stiffens and a horrified look comes across his face as he imagines the torture his friend would have to go through.

"No, no no.. you don't understand!" Pulling--almost stumbling--from her grip, he grows more and more frantic, his hands gripping the sides of his head. He'd rip his hair out if it were long enough, and he's started a jerking pace back and forth across the med lab. Fear is festering inside him, churning in his heart. It's like turning Xander all over again, but then it wasn't, Xander was healthy and young when he first changed. Arthur is fragile and older and timid. The Wolf is ravenous and unrelenting; Arthur couldn't handle the strain or expect to live or retain any soundness of mind even if he managed.

But he doesn't have to tell Arthur that. The fear is written across his face as he balances a child in his lap with one arm and gives his blood with the other that will foretell his future. He murmurs a reply to Josh before he shakily performs the DNA sample on himself, rubbing weakly with the cotton end of the swab, keeping his unrelenting hold on the girl. She is frightened, but not as nearly as frightened as Arthur or Jack.

[Veronica Devereux]

Surveying the room, Veronica saw many of the students had critical injuries, while she had a few cuts and bruises.How the hell were they near death when they didn't even fight? However that had happened was beyond her. Rolling her eyes, she patted at the wound on the back of her head a few more times before checking the gauze pad. No new blood seemed to coat the material, so she figured she was healed, err, bleeding-free. Sighing, the girl looked down at the tortoise, which was comfortably snoozing in her lap.

"Gee, thanks Charlie. I'm glad you could comfort me in my time of need." the girl joked, sarcasm heavy in her voice.

>"Is anyone losing any vital fluids that I should know about? Otherwise, I'm going to take a few minutes to look at this." Upon hearing Josh's voice, she looked up at him, seeing the medical supplies floating still around him"Clever." the girl thought to herself as she checked her arms and legs for any cuts that had gone unnoticed."Just some cuts and bruises, nothing a few days, some band-aids, and some love couldn't fix." she explained, looking down at Charlie once more."Seeing as how this helpful thing decided to snooze on me, I'll need that loving from someone else in this room." she joked, letting a small giggle escape her lips. for someone who had just fought a skeleton, and nearly had her finger chomped off, she was quite cheery.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

> "Just some cuts and bruises, nothing a few days, some band-aids, and some love couldn't fix."

Josh nods. "Let me know if you need anything." He was relieved that Veronica was okay - despite their confrontation in the middle of it, she had distracted some of the skeletons long enough for Danny to deactivate Hector's power. Where was Hector, anyway? He'd thought that Toni had brought him in.

He moves away from Arthur and Jack and pulls a stool up to the lab area on the other side of the room. Josh pipettes a portion of the blood into a small tube, which he locks into the centrifuge. The device begins spinning as he starts preparing a microscope slide with some of the remaining sample.

Josh brings up the faculty medical files on one of the flatscreen panels. Jack's mutation history begins filling the page. More than I thought. I'll have to read through it carefully after things settle down. He momentarily flips to Arthur's page, and then looks up from his work. Most of the students in the room were staring expectantly in his direction.

"Um... I think that anyone who wasn't injured in the fight or only has scrapes and bruises should leave. I'll check you out later, but we need to take care of some other things first." Josh puts as much authority into his voice as he can. He taps his temple. "I'll know if you try to listen at the door." That elicits a few guilty giggles. Grumbling begins, but soon almost all of the younger students have left, leaving the staff and older students. Good to know I can still call 'em. Arthur doesn't need this to turn into a spectacle. Josh turns back to work.

[Tempero]

A tingling feeling on various parts of his body, and then a short flash of light as his eyelids open and his retinas burn, and he is awake, stirring from the comatose stupor into somewhat of a conscious state. Danny first looks around only to see a number of people filing out of the room, and then notices a very nervous Mr. Russell pacing this way and that.

Mind still not able to process information properly, he wonders if Toni is having a baby and he somehow ended up being the unlucky person to have their arm squeezed to death by her very potent hands, but the thought is discarded as preposterous-- why, Toni was way to active yesterday to be pregnant.

And then he flashes to "yesterday" and the memories become clear and ordered. Yesterday is too far back in time, so he just settles for calling it the Day of the Living Fossils, which happened maybe a few hours earlier.

He stirs slowly up into a sitting position and looks around stupidly, blinking at the panic that Mr. Russell is going through, and then at the pale masque of death that Mr. Coleman seems to have decided to wear. Green eyes land on the wound on the man's arm, and Danny figures it out.

But...it was just a scrape, wasn't it? Does he turn nonetheless?

He looks at Mr. Coleman for a long time before remember that nifty little aspect of his mutation. "Er..." he starts, and then focuses in on the vision, everyone slowly fading from the scene and being replaced by colorful strings. Mr. Coleman only has the slight traces of pink and the very deep blue on him, as well as a few strings of light blue. Danny hasn't figured out what the pink is yet, but it has been there for as long as he can remember. Mr. Russell's decidedly dark green mutation is nowhere near Mr. Coleman.

"Um...there are no traces of um...Mr. Russell's mutation on...er...Mr. Coleman...I don't know if that helps or not, but..." he ends with a shrug and winces a bit as the two major gashes groan in protest. He looks at one of them and picks at it lightly, wondering how is it that he got so hurt.

As he looks at it, suddenly it moves. Blinking, Danny takes a closer eye to the gash. It moves a slight bit more. It takes a number of seconds of intent watching, but finally he realizes that they're healing. Healing!? I don't have a healing factor!

"Er...Josh? Sorry to interrupt but...er...did you give me some...um...fast healing drugs or something? 'Cause..." Danny says, waving towards the gash as a filler for that last sentence. He is aware that what's going on with Mr. Coleman is probably more important, if nothing else more worrying, but he can't help but be more than slightly freaked out at this completely unrelated mutation development, or whatever it is. That, and he has a strong feeling that Mr. Coleman is in no danger. True, he doesn't know if Mr. Russell's mutation actually would register, but he remembers how Hector's worked, and decides that it is somewhat similar to that.

"Um...when I was blocking out Hector's mutation, the dinosaurs were still moving around. It was like they had mutations of their own, that were the same as Hector's. So I had to block out all of the dinosaurs, and I was still blocking Hector, just in case it would wash off some more or something weird like that. I think that Mr. Russell's mutation might work something like that...you know...kind of spill over? Because Mr. Coleman would have to have that kind of mutated gene to turn, and um...I'm not seeing any...but Mr. Russell's full of them..." he offers his little bits of useless information, for a moment forgetting about the bizarre fast healing that is going on all over his body right about now.

[Hector Vidal]

Hector awakens slowly, and does his best not to let anyone know it.

He’s mildly horrified to find himself in what seems to be a medical lab of some sort (and it occurs to him that prior to meeting this crew the phrase “mildly horrified” would have stuck him as oxymoronic, whereas now it seems perfectly sensible… one needs a graduated scale of horror to capture the range between, on the one hand, being stalked by zombie dinosaurs, and on the other hand, waking up on an examination table in a mutant-run medical lab), but relaxes a little when it becomes clear that nobody is paying much attention to him.

> " I think that anyone who wasn't injured in the fight or only has scrapes and bruises should leave. I'll check you out later, but we need to take care of some other things first. "

Hector is fairly sure Josh didn’t mean him, but it seems like a good opportunity regardless. He gets up quietly, trying not to call attention to himself as the other kids in the room head towards the door. He joins them, trying to look like he belongs.

[Jack Russell]

Shoving his hands down into his pockets, Jack grimly watches as Josh sets up the blood sample, pulling up his medical file which rapidly starts to fill up the screen. He remembers the days long gone when Dr. Grey and The Professor tried to log his mutation, which in essence would have been a lot shorter if they'd known the truth. They never did finish the file.

...shows a certain, heightened aggression around the full moon and appears to be affected by the lunar cycle in general. ...severe allergy to silver, wounds inflicted by such should be treated immediately with extreme care... ...does not retain whole memory upon transforming into an alternate form during full moons; highly dangerous at this time; must be restrained.. ...saliva samples proven to be highly reactive in wolfen form; avoiding contact--with ally or foe--with teeth and mouth is advised... ...meditation and other techniques have proved useless on hindering beastial personality... ...no known cure for mutations that stem from contact with saliva and open wounds...

It was necessary. --a precaution, Jack. We want to be able to take care of you. The Professor had told him that with an understanding smile, but he didn't have to finish the rest. ..and the people you could come to harm.

He turns to look at Arthur, trying to imagine what kind of wolf he'd make, if he didn't drop dead from the strain first, half-transformed and stuck between man and animal.

Danny suddenly sits up in his line of sight, looking confused. Er... Both of them are looking at Arthur now, but for different reasons. Jack turns away, finding no answer standing and staring at the blind professor and trying to envision the future. Um...there are no traces of um...Mr. Russel's mutation on...er...Mr. Coleman...I don't know if that helps or not, but...

Jack does a double-take. "...what?" He approaches Danny in a few hurried strides, looking back and forth between him and Arthur. The revelation is good, but it doesn't ease the worry etched into Jack's expression. "What are you talking about? How do you know that?"

[Tempero]

>"...what?"

While Mr. Russell himself does not seem to be overly threatening a person, merely because of the restraints he puts on himself, the way he is immediately there, in front of him, makes Danny draw back on the bed, scooting up towards the headrest and away from the man. A problem Danny has always had with his mutation is that reactions like these would make him absolutely certain he's doing something wrong.

>"What are you talking about? How do you know that?"

Danny looks at him blankly, as if he were asking a question too complicated to answer, or perhaps to simple to deserve an answer. He clears his throat a bit, having something stuck in it, and then looks back at Mr. Coleman, and then at the man addressing him.

"Well...um...part of my mutation is to see other...mutations. It's kind of like strings of color. Yours is dark green, and um...Josh's is blue...and Mr. Coleman's has three different colors...So I see not a single trace of your mutation on Mr. Coleman's genes..." he explains, glancing sideways every now and then as if it were possible to answer the question wrongly.

He scratches a spot on his arm absently, and only afterward figures out that that very spot is supposed to have a cut on it. Why am I healing so quickly?

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

As Hector slowly comes to, Josh catches his mental presence telepathically. Mmm, there he is. The boy had been on the other side of the room on an exam table. He’d seemed exhausted rather than unconscious on the plane ride back, so they’d left well enough alone.

Josh speaks without pulling his gaze from the microscope. “Nice try, Hector, but I’d like you to stay here for the time being. You don’t seem to have control over your powers right now, and I’d rather you not destroy the rest of the school.” Hm, we’ll have to take a DNA sample and see how his mutation works. Maybe we can test things out in the Danger Room, too – the sooner he gets things under control the better. The science nerd in Josh is cheered, and he goes back to work.

> "Um...there are no traces of um...Mr. Russell's mutation on...er...Mr. Coleman...I don't know if that helps or not, but..."

Josh listens to the conversation thoughtfully. He didn’t really get how Danny’s mutation worked, either, besides the obvious effects on other people… but it sounded like good news for Arthur.

> "Er...Josh? Sorry to interrupt but...er...did you give me some...um...fast healing drugs or something? 'Cause..."

This, finally, pulls Josh from the eyepiece. He crosses the room towards Danny. “Hey, don’t move so fast yet, I don’t want you to pull any sutures out…” Josh trails off as he reaches Danny and takes the boy’s upper arm in hand. There they were, sutures he’d just put in… on perfectly healed skin. “What the…” He starts digging in his lab coat pocket for another swab. What is this, Mutation Day?

The events of the last few hours flick through Josh’s mind. Lunch. Falling ceiling. Attacking dinosaurs. Danny… blanketing Hector’s mutation. “Hector.” Josh turns to the other boy. “I saw you get hit with ceiling debris. Do you have any cuts or gashes?”

[Veronica Devereux]

>" I think that anyone who wasn't injured in the fight or only has scrapes and bruises should leave. I'll check you out later, but we need to take care of some other things first. " At hearing Josh's instructions, Veronica ignored the man's words, hoping he was talking to everyone but her and a few other people. Seeing everyone file out, she leaned back and closed her eyes, covering herself and Charlie with her pink wind breaker, hoping to provide some sort of warmth for them. Snuggling into the cold piece of clothing, she felt herself almost doze off into a deep sleep, although she was somewhat aware of the outside world.

[Hector Vidal]

> " Nice try, Hector, but I’d like you to stay here for the time being. You don’t seem to have control over your powers right now, and I’d rather you not destroy the rest of the school. "

"Damn. Busted." Hector mutters. He’s still not really sure what “powers” the guy is talking about, but he’s getting more used to the idea that he’s a… that is, that he’s one of these… Oh come on, you can say the word, Hector: mutant.

It’s more difficult, even in the privacy of his own mind, than he’d expected. He’s really not looking forward to telling his folks.

> " I saw you get hit with ceiling debris. Do you have any cuts or gashes? "

Hector reflexively reaches back to rub the back of his head, where he remembers being struck by debris. It comes back flaked with dried blood, but his head doesn’t seem injured. "No, I’m cool. Don’t worry about me…"