B26C11/12 - Heals off Howler Flechette Gun

Marco seemed the least affected. He swung a cement-block fist that hit the Howler on his arm and spun the creature sideways.

I got to my feet, hoping to attack while the Howler was off-balance. Except the Howler wasn't off-balance. The ball-bearing waist twirled him all the way around, using the force of Marco's blow to spin and bring the now-regenerated hand up to a weapon.

F-t-t-t-t-t-t!

He had fired! A dozen steel darts, tiny triangles, ripped a messy hole through my left front leg. I stumbled. The pain was intense.

Marco swung another fist, missed! The Howler turned the flechette gun on him. A bloody hole you could have pushed a Coke can through appeared in Marco's back.

He dropped like a load of bricks.

Cassie had recovered enough to bound into action, using Marco's fallen mass as a springboard. The Howler raised the gun, but too slowly. Wolf jaws clamped down on the arm and Cassie held on like a bulldog, ripping, tearing.

(...)

I jerked up, eyes wide, hands flailing, fending off an attack.

"Chill, chill," Marco said. He grabbed one hand and Rachel grabbed the other. "It's okay, dude, fight's over."

I looked around, still wild. A room. Walls of solid colors, one red, the others yellow. Still in Lego Land.

I slapped my legs. Human. My arms. Human. All me, with no ragged holes.

I'd made it out of morph. I looked around the room. Rachel and Marco. Tobias sitting on the back of a strangely shaped chair. Erek standing alone, head down in thought. Ax as far from me as he could get, all four eyes turned away.

"Cassie?" I asked.

"I'm here," she said. I realized she was behind me. I felt her palm on my cheek. Then she put her arms around me and hugged me from behind. It made me want to cry.

"It's taken you a while to wake up," Cassie said. "You barely demorphed in time. Then it was like you were in a coma, like you weren't going to wake up at all."

I remembered dreams. They were dreams, weren't they? Hard to be sure. Reality itself was weird enough to be a dream.

"The Howler?" I asked Rachel.

Her mouth was an angry line. "We hurt him. But he walked away."

"Six against one and we got a draw," Marco said angrily.

"Not six," Rachel corrected. "Seven. Erek saved our butts. He was the only one who could handle the howls."

"Yeah, right, thanks a huge load, Erek," Marco said angrily. "He gave us directions. Not to hurt the Howler, you understand, 'cause that would violate his programming. But directions on how to crawl out of there."

I held on to Cassie's hand. I didn't want to get into this. I wanted to hold on to a moment of feeling glad to be alive, glad to feel Cassie's concern.

Then I sighed, squeezed her fingers, and pushed her hand away. "Erek did what he could, Marco. You know that as well as I do. My brain was scrambled. I'd be dead without him. That's enough for me."

Marco looked like he wanted to say something else, but then his anger collapsed. "Yeah. We all did what we could."