Okay,now he knew he had a head injury.

Senses came back first:the hollow white noise echo of the explosion ringing in his ears,the salty copper taste of his own blood in his mouth,head and muscles still aching from the force of the shockwave,the smell of charred wood and fabric and combustible chemicals abrasive to his nose,as sharp as a splash of acid.

He knew without quite knowing how that it had been something like a concussion grenade,heavy duty-it wasn't meant to kill them,simply put them down until he could finish the job.Up close and personal.After all,he was a blade man.

And he was here,wasn't he?

There was a crunching noise in the ruins,faint but growing louder,growing closer,and Logan cautiously opened an eye,only to find he was stomach down on the floor,head turned somewhat painfully to the side,yet away from the noise.There were small particulate clouds of plaster dust still suspended in the air as if frozen in time,occasionally riding the swirls of air currents from the outside,and the floor of the loft was covered in pulverized glass that glittered like ice,the rays of the dying sun turning it bloody crimson.

At least he hoped it was just the sun.

Logan then understood it wasn't only because Krek wanted to finish the job himself that the explosive had only been concussive-he wanted to preserve as much of his stuff as possible.Capitalism at its finest.But hey,Bob had just fucked over his bank accounts,so maybe he needed to save everything he could.

The crunching was louder now,footsteps on broken glass and chunks of plaster ,and on top of that,he could hear the man muttering to himself,his voice like dried bones being ground against the sides of a coffin,"Too easy,too easy."

Then there was the sharp and deadly noise of a sword being withdrawn from its sheath,a noise that felt like ice water,and he turned his head,suddenly aware he was not the target.

Several feet away from him in the debris blasted loft was a form that could only be a person-who he couldn't tell-and the dark, thick figure of the demon seemed to grow out of the darkness around them,a sword in its hands glinting dull silver in the dim light,and as Logan watched-either unnoticed or dismissed as helpless-Krek raised the sword like Merlin about to plunge Excaliber into the stone.

Although there seemed to be a significant lag time between his brain and his body,Logan mentally screamed at himself to move and he did,getting up to his knees and lunging at the targeted person,hoping he had moved in time.

Luckily-and yet sadly-he had.He had just draped himself over the insensate form when Krek drove the sword home,straight into Logan's back and through his body.

But not all the way through.

He felt as well as heard the blade hit one of his adamantium ribs,and with all the force Krek had put on the sword to try and skewer the both of them,the blade snapped deep inside Logan's body,unable to break through the virtually indestructible metal. Krek made a noise of horror (favorite sword?) at the loss while Logan,unconsciously snarling from the pain-which had also, ironically,energized him,dumping adrenaline into his system by the truckload-popped the claws of his right hand and slashed out,ripping across the thick leg of Krek and tearing out big chunks of rubbery,ghost white flesh on his thigh.

Krek screeched in pain,stumbling back a step as Logan threw himself off the body (belatedly,he realized it was Bob.Which made sense-take out the most threatening figure first),trying to draw Krek's attention away from the others and towards him. Not that he knew exactly what he was going to do.

Krek was the weirdest looking demon he had ever seen.Slightly taller than Bob and almost twice as thick,he could have passed for human if you were extremely myopic:his flesh was a ghostly white,but up close seemed to have faint scales like a snake,and his short white hair looked more like fiber optic cables springing from his bulbous head,which seemed to grow straight out of his broad shoulders without aid of a neck,like a canker.His face was flat and almost featureless,save for his narrow pink slit eyes,pencil stub like flat nose,and dark slash of a mouth that seemed as lipless and wide as a reptile's toothless maw.

His six thin arms were arranged three a side from his shoulders to his waist (which was the third arm?),which you'd think would make it impossible for him to buy clothes,but he wore body armor of black metal mesh that could be mistaken for actual clothes if you didn't look too closely,or hear the faint jangle of metal as he moved,on two thick legs that could have doubled as marble pillars.

But as he watched,the gash on his thigh healed up as instantaneously as if the wound had been made to Logan instead.Krek may have smiled at him,but without lips his mouth looked like a raw pink wound that never healed,so there was no differentiation between a smile or a scream."Still got some fight left in you,ronin?"Krek hissed,proving he had been listening to their conversations since they entered the house :a ronin was a samurai without a master.

The blade was still wedged in Logan's back,a deeply unpleasant,cold sensation that didn't hurt as much as the strange twinge on the right side of his chest;something deep inside his torso was tightening like a fist,making it harder and harder for him to breathe.It was a familiar sensation,bringing back memories of the time that Wesley,under Shrike's control,shot him in the back-Krek had managed to puncture one of his lungs.At least it was just the one this time:Wes had taken out both.

Even though Krek had nothing more than a hilt with a jagged stump of a blade left,he still lunged at him,either snarling or yawning (really hard to tell),and Logan jumped up to meet his charge,claw slashing.Even as the remained of the sword shattered into a thousand silver slivers,Logan knew it had been a ruse,but it was too late.One of Krek's snake like arms had grabbed him by the hair and flung him backward,straight into an intact wall.

And the impact shoved the blade in his back all the way through.

Logan screamed at the pain as he felt the blade,forced into a new angle by impact,literally spark against an adamantium rib and puncture his newly healing lung as it burst through his chest,just beneath his right pectoral muscle.The pain shot red sparks in his vision,the sensation of an invisible band wrapping tight around his chest increasing as he panted for breath and grabbed the bloody tip of the sword that was sticking about two inches out from him.The blade was so sharp it sliced into his hand as he grabbed it,but even with blood pouring from his hand,making his palm slick,he held it tight,growling through the pain even as it scraped the adamantium bones in his hand,and started pulling the fucking thing out.

His consciousness felt slippery-he had to lean back against the wall as his knees threatened to buckle-but he focused on the pain,a red light in his vision growing brighter and painting the room a relentless crimson hue.But even as he felt the blade starting to give,ripping through the muscles of his chest walls as he pulled it through,his body trying to heal over and around it,he could see Krek flowing towards him,seemingly gliding more than walking,as quick as a raptor swooping down for the kill.And even though his sword was gone,something new and silver gleamed in the demon's hands.

As he slashed it towards his face,Logan pulled the broken blade through his chest,and rammed it straight into one of Krek's albino pink eyes.

He screamed in horror as much as agony as the sword blade punched its way into his skull,while Logan reeled from  the knife blade that slashed across his face,cutting open his left eye and leaving him with nothing but a view from the right.He wasn't concerned-his eye would heal.But would Krek's eye grow back?

He gave Krek a boot in the midsection to try and back him off,but even with a blade jammed in his eye socket the bastard remained where he was,a statue made of granite,and he saw the knife slashing down into his left side blind spot so he popped the claws of his almost healed left hand and slashed out,hoping instinct would guide him.

It must have,because Krek shrieked again,a high,harsh sound like a tom cat on the losing end of a fight,and some sort of whitish fluid splashed on his torn and blood soaked shirt.Krek's blood?

Yes-there was a hand grasping a knife now on the floor at his feet.

Logan popped his other claws and lashed out-if he had no arms to fight with,what good would he be?-but even as he knew he hit home and severed at least one more of Krek's arms,another of Krek's arms grabbed his throat on the left side and he felt something sink in as he slashed through the arm,prick his skin like the stinger of a wasp.

Krek knew he was getting less limbs to lose by the minute and quickly backed off,but as Logan tried to move in for the kill,his left leg seemed to buckle,and he crashed down onto his knee,a pain that was negligible to all the others.

"My own fucking blade,"Krek rasped,grabbing the sword fragment wedged in his eye socket and yanking it out with another scream of pain and a slight stagger.He had only three arms right now-well,at least for the moment-two on the left and one on the right,so he looked lopsided.But he seemed to regain his balance quickly,and tossed the sword remnant aside."You knew how much that would hurt,you fucking freak.Wanted to kill me with my own sword.Asshole!"He sounded righteously pissed, even if his froggy face was just contorted into an unreadable expression.

His left eye socket was now an empty black hole,although there looked to be a splash of something gelatinous on one of his broad,flat cheeks that could very well have been vitreous humor.Logan kept trying to get up,but it was as if his body was shutting down and no longer taking his commands.And he felt something acidic in his veins,burning through him like black fire,and as he struggled to breathe,he remembered what Bob had said about Krek's third claw:"...deadliest neurotoxin in the known universe..."

Oh shit.He hoped his immune system was up to the task of fighting it off.

"Shithead!"Krek continued to rant,white blood continuing to flow from his three stumps like water from a garden hose."What if my arms don't grow back?!"

Logan wanted to answer that-oh,did he-but attempting to work his throat he found he couldn't;he couldn't even swallow.He tried to keep his balance,tried to will away the black fire flaring through his bloodstream,but he couldn't.He fell over onto his back,his body a useless side of beef,numb and immobile,except it still felt pain.His left eye-which had cycled through black nothingness to the more hopeful red nothingness-still burned,and he could feel the vise like tightness in his chest increasing, as the neurotoxin seemed to interfere with his healing process,and his lung was caught in mid-recovery.His heart was now beating an erratic tattoo that made his blood roaring in his ears sound like a tsunami,almost but not quite blocking out the sounds of Krek.

He heard him crossing the room,and feverishly hoped that Krek didn't start killing,because he couldn't move,he was paralyzed like he had been in that fucking Alkali Lake tank,and if he started killing others while he was forced to lay here and listen,unable to do anything about it,helpless to even scream,he would go fucking mad:his fragile mind would shatter like spun glass.

He could feel muscles in his body spasming now,as if his system was trying to rally a physical defense against the poison,but it wasn't working;muscles stretched,went taut to the edge of their limits and nearly beyond,and he realized these involuntary spasms might actually tear tendons,pull muscles away from bone,and the pain was excruciating.He tried to take some comfort in the fact that he had cut off the fucker's third arm as soon as he 'stung' him:he couldn't kill anyone else like this.

The vision in his right eye was going now,a grey fog slowly eclipsing the light,and he wondered if it was real or all in his mind.

"This was the katana you were admiring,wasn't it,ronin?"Krek said,the anger in his voice replaced with a frigid coldness that went all the way down to bone.Eventually,he entered Logan's extremely limited range of vision,a white form like the negative of a shadow,holding a slim bladed sword that looked almost black in the rapidly dying light.His lungs and brain were now screaming for oxygen,but up until that point,he had been unaware he had stopped breathing."You know,I was given the word to spare you,and I intended to,but you had to be a mutie moron and piss me off.Course,if I knew you were this much of an asshole,I'd never have even considered it in the first place."

Logan's vision had faded down to a pinhole of light in a very dark tunnel,and suddenly things didn't hurt so much anymore: he felt like he was hovering inside his own body,floating on a lake of fire,and it occurred to him he might actually die for good this time.A part of him didn't want to die and struggled to hang on,to urge his body to fight this off,while another half of him could only think of the peace:no more fighting,no more searching,just blissful nothingness-sleep at last.He really didn't know which side was winning,or which one to root for.

Krek stood over him and raised the sword like he was going to chop his head neatly off-impossible with his adamantium spine,but surely very painful-and said something that sounded like,"Que sera sera."He wasn't sure:the thudding of his frantic heart was almost all he could hear now.

But just as the blade was coming down,a swift arc of shadow that seemed unreal somehow,dreamlike in his dying moments,he heard very faintly,as if shouted from another room:"You're dead."

That seemed funny to Logan-he knew that already-but rather than the blade continuing its downward arc,Krek himself seemed to fold,crumple like a piece of paper tossed into a fireplace,and hit the floor beside Logan,almost falling on his own sword.

Logan was distantly aware of the feeling of impact beside him,but didn't really hear it.

Just as everything faded to black he saw a face with neon blue lights for eyes leaning over his,maybe saying his name,but he didn't know or care.Logan could do nothing to stop his own fall into that final,blissful sleep,and would never know if he even tried to stop it or not.

Explosion-again.Goddamn it,how many times did a guy have to get blown up in his life?It seemed so bloody unfair.

Through the hazy black fog of pain,his head began to slowly clear,and he heard mumbling,by a voice so painfully raspy it was hard to listen to.It said something about a katana,though.

It was then he smelled it:oh sure,the smell of the blast,charred material and the scent of the grenade itself,like an ozone charged burst of smog,but there was a cloying scent too,closer and far more familiar.Blood.

Not his own.

His sense of smell was not as well developed as a vampire's-or Logan's-but thanks to their little escapade in Death Valley,he knew the smell of Logan's blood and how it had a very different smell than most human blood.It was an undertone really;it had a sharper metallic bite,probably due to the adamantium in his body,but really that was just a guess.It was possible it always smelled like that.

He could smell it now,and even before he opened his eyes he knew the wet patches on his shirt,making it cling to his chest, were spots of Logan's metal heavy blood.

He was instantly concerned,regardless of the fact that he always healed;if the blast made Logan bleed for any length of time,it was a bad one.Also,he hadn't been that close to him in the room,had he?

He opened his eyes,which were determined to remain unfocused for just a second longer,and found the light was still heavy and crimson,like a red gel light had eclipsed the sun.In his mind,something insisted on saying 'Red sky at night,sailor's delight'.That's what happened when you got blown up too much.

There was a strange noise off to his left,in the direction of the painfully harsh voice:a sort of faint,not quite rhythmic tapping. He looked,and in a single second his still foggy mind took in several things simultaneously.

Krek was obviously here,but several of his arms had gone mysteriously AWOL,and he was bleeding like a fountain.In two of his remaining three arms he held a samurai sword,much like the one Logan had seemed to recognize;Logan was on the floor at Krek's feet,not moving,except for violent spasm in his arms (the tapping noise-the claws on both hands were still sprung, possibly now locked due to muscular contractions,and the tips of his claws hit some debris with every other spasm).He had a big rip in his white blood spattered shirt,where it was possible to see the remains of a mysteriously unhealed gash,although it was not quite as raw and livid as the horizontal slash across the left side of his face,which had cut open his left eye and left it as red as a ruby.It was also obvious he was no longer breathing,his body strangely still even as the paroxsyms in his muscles made it look like he was moving.Krek was talking to him,but Bob barely heard him,as a scene suddenly came together in his mind.

He had Logan's blood on him because Logan had fought for him.He either didn't lose consciousness,or didn't lose it for long; either way,Krek came for Bob first,and Logan intervened,getting injured in the process,although he obviously took the battle to Krek and relieved him of several superfluous arms.

But not the third one,not in time.The toxin was killing Logan,but Krek wanted to get in one last blow,one last hurt,so he would be the last thing Logan saw,and he could get a personal jolly off of watching him die.

Bob still felt weak,his limbs were like jelly,his muscles still reverberating the shock of the explosion that might have hurt the others very much-they were not as indestructable as he was.Or Logan.

But he was instantly furious,like he had not been in a very long time:anger was a roar that filled ears,and sharpened his vision to a bright and deadly hue of pure electric blue.

Nobody died for him,nobody died in his place.It did not happen,not on his watch.Not when he could stop it.

Krek raised the sword over his head and brought it down,and Bob spat at him,"You're dead."

And just like that,Krek was.

His body seemed to fold in on itself,as if given a fatal blow by an invisible assailant,and collapsed bonelessly to the floor beside the supine and dying Logan.