Searching for a Place to Call Home

[Logan]

As a wave of pitch black descended on Logan he found his own instincts begin to kick in. First pushing his way up and out of the fragmented section of the staircase, he ignored the spreading feeling of fiery pain as the insects tore into his flesh. They dripped off of his extremities and surged like a rising tide from the floor, growing in crawling mounds in an attempt to bury him alive.

Logan's body struggled to repair the constant damage that was being inflicted on him. In frustration he grimaced and then with gleaming claws began to shout unintelligible obscenities while hacking through their ranks with deadly blows.

But they kept coming. So he kept moving.

Heading up the stairs he finally caught sight of Hank. Only, it wasn't Hank.

Logan stood there in front of one of his closest friends with a living suit on. They continued to nibble and bite, they continued to rend and chew, and Logan looked over Hank's shoulder at the door. There didn't seem to be any going near the brilliantly lit room.

"No bug jokes," he warned.

[Hank McCoy]

Hank was scrambling to his feet, trying to clear as many of the clinging insects from the skin of his face and hands as he could when he noticed a glassed-in case set into a nearby wall. He reached it in a step and shattered the glass with an elbow.

Reaching inside the broken panel, he retrieved the fire extinguisher he found inside.

In seconds, he had deployed its nozzle and was using the cold blast of foam and carbon dioxide to clear away the most determined of the creatures from himself and the unconscious Jacob.

Jacob wasn't breathing. Hank dropped to his knees and ran a finger through the other man's open mouth and over his nose, clearing away the last of the disgusting insects. He began to administer CPR.

It was then that another appeared. Wolverine. Hank had met him, briefly, on a couple of other occasions. He wondered to himself what brought the Canadian super-agent into this mess.

"No bug jokes," he warned.

"Wouldn't dream of it", Hank responded. Not even if they were funny, he thought to himself.

With a wheeze, Jacob began to breathe on his own. Hank rested back on his heels in relief. "How are you, Logan?", he asked ironically.

[Logan]

Using one sharp claw to brush the insects off of his body, Logan swept them to the ground and then stepped on them with thin hollow crunching sounds beneath the wooden heels of his boots. As the numerous lacerations began to immediately get smaller and disappear, Logan looked up at hairless Hank skeptically while he tried to breathe some life into Desperado. Tilting his head a little Logan decided he wasn’t too worried and half a beat later Jacob started coughing and breathing on his own again.

“Can honestly say I’ve been better,” he said as he stepped on another group of the vicious little bugs. “Guess I could say I’ve been worse too.” He knew they all had. “I’m gonna be pullin’ these little bastards out for weeks,” he complained.

But he got another good look at Hank, and while he took the time to inspect him it wasn’t immediately clear whether he approved or not. “Guess you finally found a razor,” he said with a grunt. “But at least you seem to have some of your memory still intact.”

Stepping down on the last of the crawling insects he moved closer to Hank. “How much do you remember?”

[Hank McCoy]

Hank's brow furrowed.

"Not much", he answered. "I was working with the Professor on this project... It's sort of a training room obstacle course he calls 'The Danger Room'. One minute I'm working on electrical connections wiring this big control console, the next...."

Hank shrugged.

"I'm here", he frowned.

[Logan]

With as much as Logan had been through already, Hank's words didn't come as much of a surprise. "Danger Room, eh?" He shook his head with a laugh. "Well just in case you're wonderin'...that little experiment turns out all right."

Cocking his head slightly he listened intently, fairly sure amid the buzzing chitter of insects that he heard something much larger moving around downstairs. His eyes turned back to Hank, searching him out carefully. "Seen a few others. Alex Summers and Rahne are out there right now lookin' for food and shelter."

Over Hank's shoulder he saw a soot-smeared window. He stepped over and wiped free some of the grime with his palm. "Any idea where here is?"

[Hank McCoy]

Hank shook his head. "I don't recognize any landmarks", he answered.

But he realized that wasn't exactly true. He had seen enough in the moments before dawn broke to hazard at least a partial guess. He had recognized stars. They were landmarks long before anything terrestrial was.

"Earth. Northern hemisphere. Somewhere along the Eastern seaboard of the United States", he amended. "Much more than that, I can't say."

[Logan]

Logan snorted, looking over his shoulder from the window. “Must be pretty bad when you’re at a loss for words,” he said. But to tell the truth not much of what Hank had just said came as much of a surprise to him. He had a feeling that they were real close-proximity wise- to where they’d started.

“No matter how many times I’ve seen it reset,” he said absently as he looked out over the wastelands, “seems to always take place in tha same place.” Well…mostly. For whatever reason this place, which if he had his guess was New York, was some kind of hub.

He glanced up at the sky, taking note of the sun as it made an arc toward the western horizon. “Been here for a few days,” he said, and turned around. “And lemme tell ya…night time ain’t nearly as quiet around here.”

[Hank McCoy]

It wasn't hard to imagine what Logan meant. The part about night time anyway. The rest of it Hank only barely understood, but enough let that take a back seat to the main problem.

Unprepared, he and Jacob would certainly have died without Hank's physical ability and a major dose of luck.

"We were with a few others", Hank said. "They were looking for supplies." There was concern in his voice and the rising notion in his mind that being prepared by nightfall was of more importance by the minute.

[Logan]

"Others?" Logan narrowed his eyes. "What others?"

He glanced back out the window, not seeing anyone from his vantage point. "Not sure how clear I need to be on this," he said. "But lemme try to sum it up for ya, Beast. If this supplies run they're on happens to take them inside one of these run down buildings...they might be in trouble."

Glancing back at Hank Logan grimaced. "They hide in tha buildings in tha daytime." He guessed that the look on Hank's face said just about all that he needed to know. "Grab Desperado," he said. "We gotta get movin' before it's too late. Try and find a place to rest that we can defend if we need to."

As if to emphasize his point a strange hooting howl sounded from somewhere outside. It sounded eerily inhuman.

[Hank McCoy]

Hank lifted Jacob easily. He was still unconscious, but breathing normally.

"I'm not too sure I want to try those stairs again", he said. Instead, he headed toward the outer windows.

[Desperado]

The last thing Jacob remembered was getting swarmed by something crawling over him. It hadn't been what he was looking at, and thus it had caught him completely by surprise. Instinctively, he shut his eyes, his mouth, and would have shut his ears if he had been able to, and began flailing and screaming silently. It was actually lucky that Hank had hit him when he did; otherwise, Jacob would have tumbled over the railing and smashed his head on the flight of stairs below.

Not that Jacob knew that as he woke up, being supported in a fireman's carry over Hank's back. His entire right side hurt from where Hank had hit him, especially his shoulder. His opposite hip hurt from where he had hit the wall. He didn't think anything was broken, but he wasn't exactly in a good mindset to tell.

Hank began walking. Jacob let out a muffled groan of agony.

[Logan]

continued in Inconvenience Store