Challenge #00272: So sharp...

Realising that Wolverine rarely, if ever, actually washes his claws

or

Wolverine getting a hand cleaning the claws, because it’s fiddly when both sets are out and he can’t put them away until all the bits of zombie/dirt/stuff are gone

[AN: Since it’s my birthday, today, you get both.]

“Whaddaya mean, don’t ‘perform field surgery’?”

“What is up with you?” demanded Scott.

Sara looked around at their stunned faces. “None of you noticed?”

“Noticed what?” asked Kitty.

“Logan’s claws can cut anything, but they’ve never gone through soap and water?” Sara prompted.

More blank stares.

“He never washes them!”

One by one, the collective pennies dropped. All stared in horror at a man cutting steak with knives he put away inside his body.

“What? said Logan. ”I never got sick.“

====

The instant the fighting was down to an easily-mopped-up few, Sara started running towards Logan. He was in the thick of the fight, or the thick of what was left of the fight. Enjoying himself.

"Logan!”

“Yeh?”

“It’s vitally important that you do NOT retract your claws after you down the last one.”

“Yeh?”

“Yes. Blood-borne pathogens. They’ll get into you via your claws and the cuts they make.”

The look of horror as he smashed the last one’s brains was almost poetic.

His adamantium talons were coated in assorted ichors from tip to root.

“That’s why you passed out these helmets.”

“Spatter plus orifii equals infection,” said Sara. She got on her team comm. “Kurt? I need you to bamf back to the X-jet and fetch the big blue bag with Zombie Preparedness on it.”

“The TARDIS bag?”

“That’s the one.”

“Seriously?” interjected Kitty. “You prepared for zombies?”

“Where do you think all the helmets and machetes came from?”

“Like, I do not know if you’re crazy-prepared or just plain crazy…”

“Well, I could have just thought of myself and made it a much smaller bag,” said Sara.

“Shuttingup.”

“OOF!” Teutonic cursing came through the comms. “What do you have in here? A portable forensics lab?”

“Amongst other things, yes.”

“Unglaublich…” Static as he teleported. From the sound of things, it was a series of shorter hops than his initial trip to the Blackbird. When he arrived, he was out of breath and perspiring.

Sara immediately dug out the ration bars. “Here. Max calories in minimum packaging.”

Kurt almost inhaled three before he noticed that the taste was not that great. “Gott! These are those awful fruity oat bars you got me to test…”

“You’re welcome,” snarked Sara. She cleared a level space and set up the lab. Took several swabs of ichor from Logan’s claws. Inserted them in test tubes with fluid from numbered bottles.

Kurt had been going through the rest of it. “Since when do you need laminated instructions?”

“In case I get infected, dear. So someone else knows how to use it.” She absent-mindedly set up a small macroscope and began flicking tube contents under the analyzer whilst staring at the screen. “Mmm. Lysol. Clorox… And good old Dettol.”

A wicked grin spread across Sara’s face.

“Tallwater…” warned Logan.

“Wire brush and Dettol!” Sara cackled in Billy Connolly’s voice. A notepad and paper. “Right. Kurt, dear? Here’s your looting list. Try to be quick and careful?”

“Ja.” {BAMF!}

Sara, meanwhile, emptied half the contents of three bottles into a bowl and swished them around with what turned out to be a vacuum-packed sponge. “Let’s do what we can…”

There were no wire brushes, so the team had to resort to steel wool and chemical-soaked paper towels. Two worked on each hand - carefully, of course - to ensure that every last nanometer of adamantium talon was spotless.

Logan grimaced and winced at the steel wool.

“It shouldn’t hurt,” noted Sara.

“No,” squeaked Logan. “It tickles.”

“And done,” said Jean.

Sara took out a very small flamethrower. “Not quite.”

They also burned the sponges and steel wool.

“I didn’t know you could burn metal,” said Kurt.

“With enough heat, you can burn anything,” said Sara. She waved vaguely at the sun. “QED.”

Logan was staring at his claws like a man seeing them for the first time. They were no longer cherry-red from the heat, but they were still too hot to retract properly. “You win,” he said. “You figure out a way for me to wash 'em, and I’ll wash 'em. Regularly.”

“You do care!” Sara chirped. “All we really need to do is install lever-controls on all the taps. That way, you can operate them with your elbow.”

“You like, totally think of everything.”

“Thank you,” said Sara.

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