(#00141)
[AN: Yes, I am taking ficwar prompts. I’m doing one story a day, every day, for as long as humanly possible. Give me lots of prompts. Feed the beast ;) ]
Friends. His friends were trapped. Kurt tried to get up, and was rewarded by searing pain. He dropped back down. Okay. Think. This wasn’t the first time he’d been unable to use his legs. Last time, they’d been burned.
Bloody Winzeldorf.
His faithful tail still worked, though some movements really stung. Kurt used it to keep his agonizing left arm out of the way.
The rubble was on fire. Not a big blaze, and not a smoky one, thank God. Not yet, anyway.
He knew from experience that smoke killed quicker than fire.
Memories of Winzeldorf threw everything into sharp focus. Even the Lights only he could see.
Good news, bad news. Good news - his panic attack had induced a state in which he could find his friends. Bad news - he was constantly battling flashbacks that could kill both him and his friends.
One good arm, maybe half a leg. Sundry bleeding wounds, but his friends were trapped in burning rubble. He had to travel in a least-cost path from Lights to Lights and hope that someone would be useful. Or helpful.
The first one he found was Lance. The idiot who started this mess.
Kurt did his best to get him free and poked him roughly. “Aufwachen, dummkopf!”
“…uzt…?”
He was not in the mood for this. Full volume. Drill sergeant mode. “[Get up off your lazy arse and do something helpful,] Dreckel!”
Lance shook off most of the dust and was at least sitting up before he realized he couldn’t understand the language he was getting yelled at in. “What t’ hell…?” He coughed. Looked around. Peered blearily at Kurt. “Jeez… you look even more like shit.”
“Your fault,” said Kurt. “Condemned skyscraper. Worst possible place to use earthquake powers. Got that NOW?”
“…where’s Kitty?”
“I can’t see her. I can’t find her Lights, either. Third time lucky[1], ja?”
Unfocussed glare. “Not funny, Fuzzbutt.”
“Try being charming with three broken limbs, sometime.”
“Ha. Must be why you’re more worm than usual, right?” He tried to laugh at his own joke and wound up coughing. It was a dangerously liquid noise.
“Next-nearest person’s three meters that way.” Kurt pointed. “We need to get everyone out before the fire gets bad.”
“There’s a fire?”
Kurt rolled back to glare at him. “How bad is your vision, right now?”
“Uhm. Blurs? I know you’re awful ‘cause even your legs don’t bend like that…” He mimed with both arms.
“There’s no time. I’ll be your eyes. You be the arms and legs. I’ll be the eyes and brains, ja?”
“You want me to shake the rest of this shit down?”
“Depends. Want to kill your friends?”
Silence. Too long by Kurt’s measure. He started dragging himself towards the next set of Lights. He didn’t have time for an arrogant, entitled arschlock[2]…
Who picked him up and slung him on his back. “Okay. Fuckit. Which way?”
Improvised straps helped, and freed up Kurt’s tail to help clear rubble.
“Damn, I keep forgetting how useful that thing is,” Lance muttered. “Who’ve we got?”
“Fred,” said Kurt. “His breathing sounds… awkward.”
“Is he on his back?”
“Ja.”
“Shit. Lardbutt’s got apnea when he lies on his back. Help me out.”
“I can only do so much from this angle, understand.”
It took another subjective forever to get Fred propped up on his side by inserting rubble under the tiny lifts Lance could manage. The unnervingly gurgling snore was, apparently, normal.
The next one they found was Jean. Also unconscious. With a nasty head wound. They got her comfortable, patched her up as best they could, and moved on.
Ororo. Injured and unconscious. Pietro. Same. Toad… delerious and chatty and pinned by something Fred could have shifted in a cold second.
“Why is it,” muttered Lance. “Everyone who’s halfway useful for saving our asses is out of it or too injured?”
“What does that make us, then?”
“Smartass.”
“Rather be a smart ass than a shit head.”
“I could dump you right here, you know.”
“And then how would you find Katzchen?”
Logan. Half-concussed and covered in blood. Still healing and unsteady. He made short work of the beam that trapped Todd, at least. And told them that he could not smell any death under the stinking miasma from the fires.
Good news: nobody had died. Bad news: yet.
Kurt was used to pain. It had been his frienemy since the first time he had tried to play with children who had not come from his village. But even so, it was difficult to stay awake. Had to. For everyone trapped.
“Deep breaths, Elf. We can do this.”
“…es ist ein wenig schwierig…”
Darkness closing in. Logan yelling at him to clench. Lance complaining that his eyes were passing out. And finally… gratefully… the separation of him from his pain.
*
Beep. Beep.
The smell of antiseptic. There was a tent over his legs. Too much white for his tender eyes. There was pain, but it was far away and he could easily ignore it.
And there was also Lance. “Relax, Fuzzy. You still got all your freaky pieces.”
“…sehr gut…”
“ver-y. good.” said a mechanical voice in Lance’s hand. He grinned and held up Kitty’s iPhone. “Translator app. Quacks said you’d be a little bit lala for a while on the pain meds. You’d never guess who saved all our asses in the end.”
“Katzchen?”
“kit-ten.” said the mechanical voice.
“Yeah. She just popped up with Rogue in her arms and complaining that she could hear us, like, five floors away.” He switched into a passable imitation of his erstwhile girlfriend as he was talking.
Kurt found the strength to smile.
“Anyway. Good-news, bad-news. Good news, we got rescued. Duh.” He gestured at the too-white surroundings. “Bad news… we were rescued by some government thing. The -uhm- Strategic Hazard Intervention… Essss…. Es… E-somethingorother. They really wanted their initials to spell “Shield”, okay?”
Kurt drifted back into the happy pink fog where pain didn’t happen. “Ich möchte einige Apfelkuchen, Mama…”
There was a small ‘pip’ noise before the mechanical voice could translate.
“I’ll see what can happen,” said Lance.
[1] Refers to _X Impulse_, where Lance tried to kill Kitty (and her family AND Jean) in a fit of anger, and that episode where his powers caused her to be nearly crushed by a falling episode.
[2] Probably misspelled. Look it up.
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