Disclaimer Saving the Day: This story features the X-Men, who are trademarks of Marvel Comics.  This is an unauthorized work and no profit is being made on this work.  This story is copyright of me.  Download it if you like, but please don't archive it without my permission.

Continuity Note Coming Your Way: This story takes place between X-MEN v. 1 #113 and #114.  Dr. Doom appears courtesy of X-MEN/DR. DOOM ANNUAL '98.

***

{Prologue}

Time Platform Operation Log: Personal Encryption.  Begin recording.

My recent sojourn to examine the visions of my seer have left me with more questions than answers.  In my search through the future for the powerful Onslaught entity (a being seemingly responsible for my eventual death, if the seer's findings were accurate), I have unintentionally explored an outline of the history of the X-Men.

Indeed, while the X-Men of today are little more than a band of costumed mutant striplings, hardly worthy of my notice, my findings show not only is their destiny strongly entwined with Onslaught's creation, but they are fated to burgeon into a powerful fighting force, perhaps rivaling my accursed foes in the Avengers and Fantastic Four.

The ultimate evidence of this lies in the astonishing number of crises I observed in which the X-Men seemed surely doomed, and yet each time I traveled further into the future, they would always be stronger than before.  The only exception to this perhaps being their battle with the Sentinels in the farthest visit I made to their future, and even so, this still insures the X-Men a collective existence of easily fifteen years.

Thus, I must pose the question: If the Onslaught entity has the power my seer suggested--power that overloaded my armor's sensory equipment when I attempted to harness it at the moment of its creation--then how can it be that it failed to destroy its enemies?  The visions showed the creature locked in mortal combat with the X-Men, as well as myself and the so-called heroes of Earth.  If the mutants survived, then could I not have survived as well?

For instance: One of my visits into the X-Men's history was a battle between them and their perennial enemy, Magneto, the self styled master of magnetism.  Magneto had successfully trapped the X-Men within a fortress of his beneath an active Antarctic volcano.  In the course of that battle, the controls which harnessed the geothermal power supply were destroyed, causing the entire facility to collapse and fill with molten lava.  Obviously, Magneto would have escaped, using his powers to levitate through the volcano protected by a magnetic force bubble.  But he would have had no cause to save his foes, and yet they survived regardless.

Of course, one such as I is no stranger to seemingly miraculous escapes.  Surely the X-Men must have found some opportunity one which I had neglected to notice in the short time I observed them.  And while I find this an intriguing puzzle, my conclusion remains the same.  Magneto is certainly beneath my consideration, and if Onslaught could present the same danger to his enemies as Magneto will, then perhaps his power is not worthy of my consideration either.

Then let the creature come ahead then, for if he finds these latter-day  X-Men to be tenacious opposition, then how much moreso will he find DOOM?

End log.

***

"Watch it, Jeannie!"  It was the last time he would ever see them.  Through the ruby/quartz lenses of his visor, Cyclops watched one of his oldest friends, Hank McCoy, the Beast, leap after the love of his life, Jean Grey, the Phoenix.  His inhuman agility had saved her from a downpour of molten lava, only for both of them to be lost behind it as the streams of liquid rock intensified, obscuring Cyclops’s view of them.  Whether they were alive or not, he couldn't be sure.  But he would move heaven and earth to find out.

"Hank! Jean!"  He shouted, both to exclaim his horror at their disappearance and to plead for them to respond with some kind of verbal reply.  "Oh, we're OK, Scottie, don't worry so much," he could imagine the light-hearted Beast chuckling.  But it never happened.  Ever the tactician, Cyclops turned his attention to those who could still answer him.

"Storm, Banshee--Help me blast a channel through this lava flow! We've got to get to them!"

Instead of the usual quick attention he was used to getting when he made a command, all he got were gasps of terror and the voice of another of his compatriots, Colossus.

"Cyclops!  The roof is caving in!" yelled the big Russian.  Cyclops turned and saw what his partner was talking about. He blasted the hot steel girder above their heads and kept blasting until he was sure the others were out of harm's way.  But the rest of the roof--true to Colossus' word--it still heaved and buckled.  They had seconds to go, if even that.  Seconds until they were all dead.

"Cyclops!  Down this corridor! Hurry!"  It was Wolverine.  He and Banshee had found the only doorway in the complex that hadn't been cut off by he lava.  Cyclops rushed to Colossus' side and helped him to his feet.

"We've got to make a run for it, Peter!" Cyclops shouted.  You shield me with that iron hide of yours, and I'll blast any lava that gets in our way.  Deal?"

"You make a good bargain, Scott" Colossus said.  "But what of the others?"

Beside them, Storm had already taken flight, meticulously dodging blobs of glowing red matter as she headed for the archway.  Nightcrawler, with his fabled teleportation powers, had already arrived there in the blink of an eye.  He looked out to the remaining two X-Men and realized what he had done.

"Wait my friends, I can come back and teleport both of you with me!  It would be safer to--"

"Nix that, Kurt!" Cyclops barked.  "You couldn't handle the strain, not without passing out anyway!  And I've got a feeling we'll need every able-bodied X-Man we can muster if we want to get out of this alive!"  He and Colossus were already halfway there as he spoke.  It was in his warning that he suddenly considered Colossus' plight.

"Peter, do you know if you can survive that kind of temperature extreme?" he asked breathlessly.

"Nyet.  I was hoping I would not have to find out, for that matter."  He smiled grimly, his metal masked face reflecting the dim crimson glow of the volcanic rock.

"Fair enough."  Cyclops nodded. In the longest fifteen seconds of his life, the pair of mutants finally arrived at the doorway.  "What's the situation, Wolverine?" he asked.

"Simple enough, lad," Banshee answered for him.  "There's lava in here.  There isn't in there.  I'm hardly a travel agent, but I think that's a sound move, aye?"

He nodded briskly.  "OK, let's go, and close the door behind us.  I don't know if it'll help or not, but let's not pass up an advantage now, no matter how slight."  The six of them scattered in, and Wolverine stood on the inside lip of the door to operate the controls.

"Says here there's a magnetic seal on the door," Wolverine said.  "I just turned it on, from the looks of it.  Maybe we got a chance after all."

"It makes sense," Cyclops added.  "Magneto must have built this place pretty carefully, and he must have considered adding fail-safes in case of an accident during construction.  The sixty-four thousand dollar question is: How long will that door hold?"

"What do you mean," Storm asked.

"I mean Magneto said this place was powered by the volcanic activity around it," he replied.  "Whatever system harnessed that power we wrecked during the fight.  So that means this whole place is without power. Oh, we probably have a backup generator keeping this section safe, but it won't last forever.  And it's a safe bet there isn't a back door to this place."

"In that case," Wolverine suggested.  "I propose we put as much distance between us and this door as we can.  Who knows?  Maybe this place is big enough we can go somewhere the lava can't get to us."

"Worth a try, and anything's better than staying here," Nightcrawler agreed.

Cyclops nodded.  They were all surprisingly composed about this situation.  Maybe the new X-Men were finally starting to gel as a team, he wondered.  In any event, the key to survival was to keep up their morale, and that was best done by keeping them moving.  "All right, let's go.  Everyone stick together."  We don't want to lose anyone else like Jean and Hank, he added silently.  It was all he could do not to break into tears.  But he was the leader.  He didn't dare let them down now.

End of the road, and the X-Men arrived at a small maintenance closet with no subsequent doors to move any further.  "Looks like this is it," Wolverine resigned, knocking on the wall with his gloved knuckles.  "Like the song goes, here we stand and here we fall."

"It can't end like this," Storm protested. "After all we've been through, the X-Men can't lose to Magneto now!"

"Are we even sure that Magneto has fared any better than we?" Nightcrawler asked. "I know his powers brought us down here, but after the injuries he sustained fighting us, could he have still escaped?"

"I've seen Magneto do some pretty amazing things," Cyclops answered.  "For that mater, I thought he was finished when he was reduced to infancy after that scrap with Professor Xavier and the Defenders!  If he can come back from something like that, I'm not sure there's anything that could put him down for good.

"But I'll say this, after the pasting we gave him, if he did escape, then we can take a small measure of solace in that he'll be too busy nursing his wounds to menace anyone else for a while."

"Well, if he could get out of a scrape like this, and if we beat the beastie, then who's to say we can't get out too?"  Banshee asked.

The rest of them looked at him with widened eyes.

"Well, why not?" Banshee asked.

Cyclops put a hand on his shoulder.  "Sean we'd need to go through tons of liquid rock to make it.  We've got powers, yes.  But not the powers we'd need to get out of here.  Maybe if Jean were still alive, she could protect us with a telekinetic force bubble, but..."

"Whaddya mean 'if', bub?" Wolverine demanded.  "Seems to me if she can pull off a trick like that, she and the Cookie Monster might still be kickin'.  And if they made it, then they'll come back for us."

"Yes, and I don't want to give up hope, Wolverine," Cyclops admitted, "but I also don't want to raise false hopes.  If Jean did make it out why haven't we been rescued by now?  And even if they did make it, they'd still have to survive the Antarctic cold.  I'm not saying it's impossible, but we could be waiting a long time to find out."

"Listen to me, both of you," Banshee interrupted.  "I'm saying we could try to get out by ourselves.  Your friend Hank said that as long as we're alive we don't give up.  And that boyo's an Avenger, so I figure that kind of philosophy has gotten him places in life.  We're alive.  Why should we stop fighting now?"

"Are you saying you have a plan?" Cyclops asked.  "Because I'm _very_ open to suggestions right now."

Banshee cleared his throat.  "I'm not saying it'll work, but we're a mile down, right?  Well, that's pretty far, but it's not _too_ far.  Maybe."

"Too far for what?" Cyclops asked.

"We can't go out the way we came in.  I'm sayin' we make our own exit.  Let's dig our way out."

"Oh, goddess..." Storm whispered.

"Are you crazy?"  Wolverine challenged.  "We're not a friggin' mining crew!  How are we supposed to tunnel our way through that much solid rock? If our air doesn't give out, our stamina will!"

"Do you have a better idea, Wolverine?" Colossus asked.

Wolverine snorted defiantly.

Cyclops put a hand to his chin.  It was risky, but there wasn't anything else he could imagine.  And if Jean _was_ alive, then she could still get to them no matter where they were.  It was worth a shot.  And what else did they have to lose?

He sighed as the lights started to flicker in the room.  "Let's do it."

"You're kiddin'," Wolverine said.

"All I know is we can't stay here," Cyclops said glumly.  "Between my eyebeams and Banshee's sonic cry, we can break up the rock with some degree of efficiency.  It's a straw, but I'm grasping for it with both hands."

"All right.  Everybody stand back," Banshee said.  Cyclops motioned for the rest of them to clear out of the room and let him do his work.  Banshee took a deep breath and screamed at the wall.  The wall shattered and gave way to a surface of rock.  That too finally broke apart, and fell to the floor, piling at his feet.

He breathed in again and let out another scream.  Sonic waves smashed against the dimple of stone he had made, and deepened it.

"Well, it's a start," Nightcrawler admitted.

"Start clearing away the rubble," Cyclops ordered.   "Banshee, keep it up, but don't overexert yourself.  I'll take over later."

"Understood, Scott," he acknowledged between screams.

"This stunt doesn't have a hope in hell of working," Wolverine groused.

"Perhaps," Nightcrawler admitted, "but I doubt you'd be terribly satisfied if you are proven right, my friend."

Wolverine nodded and stooped down to clear away the rocks and pebbles on the ground.

Cyclops turned to find Storm.  She was sitting on the ground shivering.  He approached her and put his hands on her shoulders.  "Ororo, are you going to be all right?"

She shook her head nervously. "Scott, I don't want to do this.  I know it's our only chance, and I know it's certain death to stay here.  But I can't do this.  Leave me here.  Please."

Behind his visor, he frowned.  How many X-Men had he lost over the years?  Changeling, Thunderbird, Hank... how many times had he lost Jean believing he'd never see her again?  No more, he vowed.  Not today.

"I'm sorry, Ororo," he said.  "But I won't leave anyone behind.  I know it'll be rougher on you than the others, but you said it yourself.  We can't let Magneto win.  Don't give in now."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  She got up and straightened her back.  "All right, Scott.  I will... try.  I can promise nothing more."

"I wouldn't expect anything more... or anything less from you."  He said softly.  Now, why don't you stay here until we get the tunnel more hollowed out, OK?"

She nodded and sat down to collect herself.  Scott turned to look at the mining project.  Banshee had already cleared out a good twenty feet.  It wouldn't be a quick job, but it might just be fast enough.

"Listen," he said to her.  "I have an idea... you'd have to stay down here for a while to carry it off, and if it works, we just might make even the odds of getting out of here..."

***

His name was Sean Cassidy and he had killed them all.

Not intentionally, of course.  He had tried to save their lives.  He screamed at the top of his lungs over and over again, either in mourning, or in a desperate hope to escape death at the last possible second.

He wasn't sure how long it had been since they started tunneling their way to the surface, but he also didn't know how fast they were going or how much longer they had to go on, so it didn't matter much.  All that mattered was that they kept on going, until the distance was spent or their lives were ended.  Right about now, the odds seemed to favor the latter.

He sat down on a large rock and put his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing while the others cleared away the debris from his last scream.  When he started, he was confident and ebullient, even after the grim battle against Magneto.  He had counted on that attitude to infect the others, giving them enough hope to go along with his idea.

Now his throat was itching with the telltale signs of overuse.  He was like a heavy metal singer after a concert or a politician after a speaking tour.  The only differences being that he couldn't get a much-needed sip of water between tour dates, and there was a lot more riding on his talents than record sales or New Hampshire primaries.  He could rest while the X-Men cleared a path for him to begin again, but that would be all.

And it would have to be enough.  His larynx was the only thing keeping himself and the X-Men alive right now.  By this time, Magneto's subterranean fortress would have surely been flooded with lava, only to solidify and seal off the entrance to the tunnel they had made.  That meant they were down to whatever air was left in the space they had carved out of the rock.  That would have to be enough, too.  If it wasn't, their fossilized remains would be just one more archeological find hidden beneath the Antarctic ice.

No one would blame him if that happened, of course.  After all, the X-Men were dead to rights anyway.  All he had done was to buy them a little more time.  Rather than be cooked alive inside an active volcano, they'd be asphyxiated about half a mile away from it.  No one would fault him for trying.  No one except himself.

He'd blame himself for putting their lives in his hands.  If the X-Men didn't make it, it would be because the Banshee's sonic cries weren't loud enough or strong enough to save them.  Every itch in his throat reminded him of how fallible he really was, how vulnerable he was to much of the same hazards that threatened any other man.

Age for instance.  He was by far the oldest of the X-Men outside of Professor Xavier himself.  Maybe if he were a little younger his power might have been able to cope with this kind of strain.  Maybe if he had told Xavier thanks but no thanks, he would have found somebody else to join his new team of X-Men--someone with the kind of power to get them out of this jam.

Family for instance.  Two of the X-Men's enemies, Eric the Red and the Juggernaut aligned themselves with his cousin Black Tom Cassidy.  Tom was a mutant like himself, and while they had been bitter rivals for years, it had always been between the two of them.  Now Black Tom was just as devoted to the X-Men's destruction as he was to Sean's.  Yes, Xavier had gained an ally in recruiting him, but he had made an equally powerful enemy in the process.

Death for instance.  It seemed to follow him pretty closely.  Each time he managed to come away unscathed working for Interpol, and then his wife took the fall in his place.  And from then on he threw himself into more and more dangerous assignments, eventually joining the X-Men for the most dangerous work of all. One thing he had learned about the Grim Reaper was that he always collected on his debts.  Sean could deal with that, but it would be a real shame if his fellow mutants had to pay along with him.

Self-recrimination for instance.  He suddenly caught himself criticizing himself when what he desperately needed to be doing was waiting before him.  He felt Cyclops' breath on his face as the X-Men's leader spoke to him.

"How are you holding up?" he asked.  "Do you want me to take over?"

Sean shook his head and coughed.  "Nay," he whispered.  "I can still go a little ways more.  My plan.  Got to see it through... long as I can."  Quite honestly, he wouldn't have said even that much to Cyclops if not for the fact that it was so dark that no other form of communication was possible.  Sean rose to his feet and took a deep breath to prepare himself.

"All right," Cyclops admonished.  "But when I tell you to take a breather, mister, I don't plan on putting up with any arguments."

He wouldn't get any, Sean resigned.  It was a foolish thing for him to place the burden squarely on his shoulders.  Besides, he had just been considering how big a liability he was to them, so why not let a few of them carry the load now and then?  In the meantime, however, he had a few good screams left in him.  No sense letting them go to waste.

If they were fated to die beneath the world, it wouldn't be for lack of trying.

***

"But only you possess the quality of leadership." echoed in his mind.

What a joke.

How long ago had the Professor placed him in charge of the X-Men?  At the time it was simply a temporary measure, Scott had believed.  Xavier had to go off on some secretive mission (which was later revealed to be  the beginning of his showdown with his archenemy Lucifer), and he wanted Scott to mind the store until he could return.  His duties consisted of watching the Cerebro computer in case it picked up any trace of evil mutants.  His most pressing problem as commander was that he couldn't go to the malt shop with the others.

In spite of all that, Professor X was quite pleased with his choice and kept Scott in the position of deputy leader of the X-Men.  Again, this wasn't a big deal, since he could just refer all matters directly to Xavier, who was always available through telepathic communications.
And he stayed on board to this day, leading a cadre of raw recruits and molding them into the next incarnation of the mutant fighting team.  His duties currently consisted of tunneling through a mile of solid continent.  His most pressing problem as commander?  See above.

No, scratch that.  His biggest problem to date was keeping Wolverine from using up all their oxygen.  "Give me that!" he snapped, snatching a lit match from his hand and quickly snuffing it out.

"Lay off, leader-man," Wolverine snapped.  "I ain't in no mood to be pushed around.  Least of all by you."  He heard the trademark sound of Wolverine's adamantium claws unsheathing from his wrists.

"Go ahead," he said calmly.  "Kill me, Wolverine.  Heaven knows it doesn't make a lick of difference in this world.  I'm in the middle of nowhere, stuck between an active volcano, a frozen wasteland, and enough air to keep me alive just long enough for me to die of thirst.  So you just go ahead, because I've got plenty of room on my schedule to get stabbed to death over a book of matches."

He heard the claws again, this time retracting back into his arms.  Scott Summers didn't sigh out of relief--he didn't really care if he lived or died at this point--instead he sighed in relief that this was probably the closest he'd ever come to getting an apology from Wolverine.

"Nasty habit I got," he said gruffly.  "Helps me relax."

Scott nodded in understanding.  "Do us all a favor and take up chewing, huh?"

Another sonic cry from Banshee, and they went to clear out the loosened rocks.  Wolverine changed the subject.  "Jeannie... and the furball.  You were close, huh?"

"Two of my oldest friends," he said glumly. "I think the only reason I'm not more upset than am I am is because I'm not totally convinced we won't be joining them."

"I know what you mean," he said enigmatically.  Wolverine never let on much about his pre-X-Men life.  All Scott knew was that he battled the Hulk once, and the Professor was impressed enough to recruit him for the team.  He worked for Canadian intelligence, but that was all he could find out.  "Adrenaline does funny things to a man.  Right now we're so worked up about makin' sure no one else dies, we can't even stop to grieve properly.  When we get out of this, it'll hit you like a ton of bricks."

"No.  It's... different, somehow," Scott said.  "I know what you're saying, but I feel like Jean... I'm not sure how to put it--"

"It's no big secret you two were an item, Cyke," he broke in.  "What you got inside ya, that's personal.  You'd be better off to keep it that way."

What _did_ they have between them, Scott asked himself.  Lately he wasn't sure.  He felt like he'd lost a good friend in Hank.  He thought about all the times they'd shared, the things he'd miss about his old teammate.  With Jean, though.  He felt as if he'd lost her a long time ago.  Mourning her would be like mourning for Thunderbird or any of the other friends who had died in his life.

Which didn't make much sense, since the last time Jean was on the verge of death, he had spent those tense hours thinking about how she was the most important thing in his life.  When she left the X-Men, the only reason he hadn't followed was because of the uncontrollable power of his eyes.  The X-Men was where he belonged, but all he had ever really wanted was to be by her side.

Until now?  No, it was when she became the Phoenix.  When she saved the X-Men's lives by piloting a broken space shuttle through a deadly stream of radiation, and then re-emerged, consumed with unlimited power.  She was a different person all of a sudden.  After that, he realized, their relationship had been changed.  He had been going through the motions, but in the final analysis, had he really been in love with her since she became Phoenix?

And if that were true, what was there left for him in this life?  He had led the team against Magneto--with admittedly successful results to be honest--and now they would have to fight for every continued minute of their lives.  Was it even worth the effort, he wondered.  When he started this mad race to the surface, his primary consideration was the morale of the team.  What about himself?  Did _he_ have any motivation to go on?

Considering how if they did survive this, the first order of business would be to track down Magneto and do this whole bit all over again, the answer seemed to be no.

"Cyclops!" called one of the others ahead of him.  It was Colossus. "Sean is gone!  I called for him and he does not answer!  Now I cannot find him!"

He cursed to himself.  He was supposed to be keeping track of Banshee, making sure he didn't wear himself out too quickly.  Now he'd probably passed out from strain, and they'd have to waste critical moments to find him.  "Feel along the ground," he ordered.  "He may have fainted--"

"I got him, Cyke," Wolverine answered. "And you're pretty close to right.  I don't think he's gonna be doing any operas any time soon."

"What do we do now?" Nightcrawler asked.

Behind his visor, he closed his eyes tightly.  This was the part he secretly hated.  Everyone was depending on him to come up with the solution, and there was none.  They couldn't stay and if they kept going they might still not make it. And he didn't want to even make that decision.  All he wanted to do was understand why he should even care.

"Your optic force beams, Cyclops," Colossus suggested.  "Why do you not use them to relieve Banshee?"

"Because he didn't wanna take the chance, Pete," Wolverine answered.  "If he uses 'em too long they konk out, and he didn't want to risk that until we had gotten as far as we could using every other resource.  Well, it's crunch-time now, One-Eye.  We're dependin' on you to get us through now."

And that was what it was, really.  The Professor had taken him in all  those years ago, gave him a ruby-quartz lens to hold back the power within his eyes, and gave him a semblance of a normal life.  He could have left any time he wanted to, but he never did.  Instead, he became the leader at the Professor's request, and stayed on through thick and thin, because he knew that without him, he would have wound up as some kind of drifter, wandering from place to place hoping to protect the world from his mutant powers as best he could.  Xavier had given him an education, a life, a purpose.  A chance.

He owed it to him to give at least that much to his new students.

"Every stand back.  I'm only going to get one shot at this, so I have to make it count."  He put his hands to the studs on the sides of his visor and turned them until the lenses were opened completely.  A beam of crimson poured out his eyes and smashed against the rock in front of him.  The meeting was violent and short-lived, as the stone crumbled and powdered from the force. Scott moved closer, allowing the full force of his blasts to affect the rock, clearing out foot after foot of space as they went.  He didn't look back, but he assumed that surely the X-Men were smiling at this invigorated progress they were making. Sadly, it wouldn't last long.

He started marching onward, following the trail of destruction left by his visor, and wading past the grains of smashed granite that kicked up around his feet.  His leg of the tunnel would be narrower than Banshee's, in part because he could better control the range of his power and mostly because he wanted to conserve it.  How often had he cursed this irresistible force inside him, only to have it be his only  precious hope in their darkest hour.  That was what he owed to Xavier.  Maybe he couldn't cure his power, but at the very least he'd guide it so it would be put to good use.

And finally, mercifully, the power faded.  Scott Summers removed his visor and wiped his eyes in relaxation.  He had used every last ounce of his eye-beams, to the point where he had become physically exhausted.  He stood there in the darkness as the others caught up to him.

Banshee walked slowly behind them all and stopped to speak to him.  "How far do you think you took us?" he asked softly.

"Far enough, I hope," he said breathlessly.

"Looks like you carved yourself quite an incline here, lad," Banshee added with a wheeze.  "Gonna be a rough climb the rest of the way."

"I'm in a hurry," Scott replied.  "Do you think you can manage any more sonic screams?  Just in case?"

"Aye, maybe.  But I hope to God it doesn't come to that," he sighed.  "For now let's just take a breather and let Pete and the Shrimp see how good a job you did."

His eyes were powered by absorbing ambient light.  As pitch black as it was down here, the man called Cyclops had just become utterly powerless.  He had given everything he had for his team.  Now it was up to them to see it through.

"All I can do," he muttered to himself.  "Might not pay the debt, Professor... but it might have to do."

And Scott Summers closed his eyes to rest, and wondered if Jean and Hank and Thunderbird were waiting for him in a malt shop somewhere.

***
She was in hell.

Or to put it more accurately, she was caught between two hells.  And given the stress of such a precarious place, was the spot she stood on not simply a third?

On the one hand, there was a universe of fire beyond that door.  Like the hell people she had met in America had taught her about.  And endless fire where the damned will burn for all eternity.

On the other, a far more personal hell.  A tunnel, perhaps eight feet across, leading to nowhere.  So much like a tomb, so much like the rubble that had buried her alive when her home collapsed, but she lived on through that hell, and it had followed her ever since.

Quite honestly, she would have opened the door and been burnt to a cinder hours ago.  She'd die either way.  Better to take the quick way out.  Except for one thing.

Her friends had taken the other hell, betting on the slim hope that it could be escaped.

Once, she was worshipped as a goddess.  Her name was the Beautiful Windrider and she watered her people's crops and gave them all the sunshine they could ever need.  That ended when the man came from the faraway land.  His name was Xavier and he challenged the godhood her people had bestowed upon her.  He used words like 'mutant' instead, and words like 'hate' and 'fear' instead of 'worship' and 'love'.  But the one thing he said that rang true for her was 'need'.  Xavier asked her for help, and all he had to offer was a chance to use her powers for the good of all the people in the world.

The offer piqued her interest.  She never fully understood the goddess label.  All she knew for certain was that she was helping people with her unique gifts.  If a mutant was someone who did that on a larger scale, she could hardly refuse.

And so it went.  She had heard tales of gods and their supernatural exploits, and when she joined the X-Men she sometimes considered that her adventures would make a good legend.  She had met others with powers like her own (no less gods then herself), and battled entire islands, giant machines, aliens, and more.  And she had traveled to exotic locations, even to the far reaches of space.

Even to the depths of the underworld.

Xavier promised a world more real than the one she had left behind in Africa, but he admitted it wouldn't always be easy.  She was finding that out firsthand.  She imagined her people telling the latest chapter of her legend, about how Ororo and her allies were captured by their deadly enemy Magneto--clad in bloodstained armor--and buried them  deep below the earth itself.  How fitting that a goddess of the weather should be most vulnerable inside the ground.  She might have laughed if it weren't so horrifying.

She had feared confining spaces since her parents died in a collapsed building when she was a child.  Confinement meant death to her.  When Magneto's base began flooding with lava, she realized just how true that was.  There was no way out, nowhere to go.  And as their breathing room grew smaller and smaller their hopes of survival did as well.  Oh, Banshee had a last ditch effort to escape, and Scott had given her something to do in the hopes of distracting her fears.  But she wanted out now.  Now.  NOW.

There was nothing she could do. In her fear, she had asked Scott to leave her behind, but he couldn't do a thing like that.  If the positions were reversed, she wouldn't have even considered it.  But Scott had been good enough to offer a compromise.

"Stay down here in the corridor and guard the door," he had said.  "When the power fails, the lava will burn through the door, and it may flood the hallway, even reach our tunnel.  It'll be up to you to slow it down as best as you can."

Slow it down?  Madness!  Why would she possibly want to prolong this suffering?  Even the corridor she stood in seemed to get smaller and smaller, and the fading lights didn't help things much either.  She wasn't one to consider suicide, but how much simpler it would be just to dive headfirst into the fire and end it all right there.

But she wouldn't.  Her friends were counting on her to do this.  And she wouldn't let them down.  If it meant taxing her power to the limit, if it meant subjecting her mind to the terror of being buried alive, then that was what she would do.   She was a goddess, wasn't she?  She had to try.

Ororo closed her eyes and felt the winds around her.  It was very different now.  Before, when she had used her powers to fight Magneto, the base had been generating an artificial environment equivalent to the surface, which made it much easier to manipulate the air currents and humidity.  Now, there was melting rock everywhere, spreading between the pockets of air within Magneto's falling headquarters.  What could she possibly do about that?  Volcanoes weren't weather.  They were geological phenomena.  Oh, she could easily contain the damage a volcano might pose to the surface, but to control one from the inside?

That was what Scott had meant, she realized.  "As best you can," because even he didn't know for sure if she could even do this!  Until now, it hadn't occurred to her to even ask.  Some goddess!  All the vanity, but without the prowess to back it up!  It was insane.  What good was a weather goddess a mile underground?

Then it hit her.  That was the answer.  When Ororo was learning the ways of her powers, the biggest lesson had been the delicate balance of nature.  She could make it rain in one place, but to do so would deprive rain from somewhere else.  The same would have to apply to this awful place, she thought.  This time, Magneto had created the unbalance in creating this base underground.  Now that his technology had failed, nature was reasserting the balance.  It wasn't rain and snow, but rock and sulfur.  But it was still a balance of nature, and she could alter it, if she was right.

Around her was an ocean of cold rock.  It was supposed to be cold.  And the lava tributary would eventually cool down here and join that cold ocean.  All she had to do was accelerate that process.  She could do it.  She had the seed of a plan.  All she had to do now was plant it.

She ran down the hall and found a fuse box for the local power grid.  The generator had devoted nearly all power to the magnetic seal on the door, but she had other ideas, and the power to go along with it.  She called forth an electric burst from her hands, and cut the line leading from the generator.  The free cable danced and sparked and finally died, and the world around her went dark.  Storm grabbed the other end of the cable leading up to the box and funneled a burst of lightning into it, fueling the grid once again with electrical energy generated through her own body.

The short interim, however, had allowed the lava outside to burn through the door, rendering it only so much slag.  So all he had left was the air conditioning and the lights.  It was enough.  Reaching out with her influences, she created a gale force wind cycling through the hallway.  Whatever water vapor was left in the air, she froze and sent it blowing through the storm.

Cold, she demanded.  COLD.  The air conditioning made this task a little easier, providing ventilation to dispense the heat throughout the area.  Better yet, she could tap into the already cool air it produced and use it to drain off even more heat.  It didn't have to be fast, it just had to speed the process along.  Transfer the heat from the magma to the air to the walls of the room to the rock outside.  And at the same time, she would have to maintain a pocket of cool air around herself so as not to be cooked or suffocated by the gusts of sulfurous ash.  That part was easy, unless she became overwhelmed by the deadly temperatures she was dealing with.

Soon, the glow from the hot lava subsided, and the bulging blobs of it began to turn dark and crack as it hardened.  Ororo relented, but just a little.  She had cooled enough rock for the moment, but she had to make certain it was enough to block off the rest of it on the other side.

She waited.  And waited.  And nothing happened.  She breathed a sigh of relief, and released her hold on the fuse box.  The lights went out one last time, Ororo walked slowly towards the entrance to the tunnel.  She was exhausted, and deathly afraid, and there were still no assurances they would escape.

But the X-Men had placed their trust in her to save their lives.  Now she would have to trust them to save hers.

***

"Should we go back for the others?" Colossus asked.

Wolverine shook his head.  "No sense doin' that until we got something to tell 'em.  For now, it's a tough road to hoe, and I'm itchin' to do anything right about now."

It was about forty-five degrees from the horizontal, Wolverine estimated.  At times, he had to use his claws to cut handholds in the sides of the tunnel.  It was enough, he supposed.  If he could make the path a little easier to follow for the others, then at least he'd be contributing something.

Colossus, too.  With his metal-clad feet, he simply kicked his heels into the stone beneath him and cracked open instant traction.

"Wolverine," he asked. "are you... afraid?"

"Not like 'Roro, if that's what you mean.  Gotta admit though, she's handlin' this a lot better than I would have guessed.  My respect for her just went way up."

"Da, Storm is a strong woman," Colossus agreed.  "But what I am asking is are you afraid that we will not survive?"

Wolverine shook his head.  Death wasn't an object of fear for him.  He'd seen so much of it in his lifetime that he was used to it, almost.  That was what scared him, and sometimes not even then.

"To be honest, Pete, I ain't that worried," he replied.

"Then you are confident that we will escape?"

"No," Wolverine corrected.  "I mean, I feel a sense of... call it resignation, maybe."

"Ah," Colossus said, his voice betraying a hint of confusion.  "Is that why you were so hesitant to try to get out of Magneto's base?"

Wolverine thought back to that.  After the base began to fill with lava, Banshee managed to save him from a falling blob of the stuff, and Wolverine was grateful for that.  At the same time, though, he didn't really see the point.  "Sooner or later, we'll run outta places to go," he had pointed out then.  And the Beast had responded to that by saying that as long as they were alive, they wouldn't give up.  Noble words, if he hadn't been killed just seconds after saying it.

That was his real issue with the X-Men sometimes.  They were good people for the most part, but stubbornly naive.  Not that he'd welcome death with open arms, but he figured he'd rather have a more peaceful demise than to be dragged to the grave kicking and screaming.

"It's like this," he finally said.  "I'm a fighter.  I fight.  It's what I do.  When the volcano started leaking on our heads, my first impulse was to finish off Magneto before we all bought it.  I got this kinda 'If I'm gonna go, I'm takin' you with me' attitude sometimes."

"I suppose I can understand," Colossus said.  "After all, it was his fault we were down there in the first place."

"Right.  And if we _do_ pull this off, and Magneto _is_ still alive, then I'll be the first one to wanna get a little payback," Wolverine admitted.  "But at the moment, he'd escaped.  I couldn't go after him.  So there was no one left to fight.  I couldn't get out myself, and from the looks of things, I'd be dead in a few minutes.

"Yeah, I suppose I was bein' short-sighted.  Maybe if I hadn't been a loner for so long I'd have realized that the rest of you had enough power to pull off this kinda trick.  But at the time, I figured I was done.  The End.

"And to a guy like me, that has a kinda appeal to it.  I done a lot of things I've regretted in my life.  The idea that I'm powerless to do any more... that's not such a bad thing to me.   It's kind of a no-lose situation for me.  If we get out, I'm alive.  If we don't, then nobody will ever have to worry about me anymore, and my conscience is that much cleaner."

"So it seems that you are more afraid of being alive than you are of being dead?" Colossus asked.

"I guess it's a dead heat," Wolverine answered. "So when you ask me if I'm afraid, I'd have to say no more than usual."

"I see," Colossus answered.  "Then perhaps you are the fortunate one, Wolverine."

He stopped in his tracks cocked an eyebrow under his mask.  "How d'ya figure that?"

"Of all of us, I am the only X-Man who has two families," he said.  "All of you, and my parents and sister in Siberia.  You are a loner, as you say, so for you death is not so bad a thing.  But if I die, I lose twice as much as the others."

Wolverine chuckled grimly and continued on his way.  "Sounds to me like you're the lucky one Pete.  You got the most to lose, but that just means you got the most to gain when we get outta here.  You got an incentive, kid.  Believe me, when you fight for something, it's a whole lot easier when it's something you want."

Colossus was silent for a moment.  At last he replied, "Da, I suppose you are right then."

So maybe he had something to fight for, too, Wolverine considered.  After all, if Colossus could regard the X-Men as his second family, then maybe he could think of them as his first...

Stranger things have happened.

***

Kurt Wagner couldn't see his hands in front of his face.  He wasn't terribly surprised.  With his navy blue fur covering his entire body, he was quite used to blending in with the shadows.  On the other hand, he was also used to having good eyesight in such dark conditions.  Now, even with his white gloves on, he couldn't pick up so much as a faint outline.  Even the most formidable eye couldn't see in this dismal place.

They had left the light behind about ten meters back.  Sean Cassidy's last ditch plan to save them involved digging at an upward angle so whatever luminance shone from Magneto's base was blocked out by the incline of the tunnel.  Of course, by now, they had moved so far from the last light source that they probably wouldn't have seen it if it was still powered.

Now his whole world was engulfed with darkness.  He was used to that, too.  Between his stint as a circus freak in _der Jahrmarkt_ and his new life in Charles Xavier's X-Men, he spent most of his time hiding.  He went to Winzeldorf, Germany to learn, but was hunted by angry mobs like he was the heavy in a 1930's horror film.  And admittedly, he couldn't say he didn't look the part--his hands adorned with three lanky fingers, two matching toes on his prehensile feet, an inhuman tail complete with a devil's point on the end.  Still, he didn't want to hurt anyone, and it was a lot easier for him to keep to the shadows than to lash out against a throng of frightened townsfolk.  He wondered if Bela Lugosi ever had days like that.

So the dark corners became like a home for him.  It was secure there, to be underfoot and out of sight.  And it was a welcome change of pace from the spotlights of the sideshows.

That thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.  Before Magneto had abducted them, the X-Men had already been kidnapped by another of their foes, Mesmero.  No one Kurt knew personally, but Mesmero had a grudge with an earlier lineup of X-Men, and a simple roster change didn't deter him from mentally enslaving the team and conditioning them to be simple-minded circus performers in Texas.  Until the Beast came to their rescue--his own efforts cut short by Magneto's plans--Kurt Wagner had been condemned to live out the circus freak routine once more.  Once again put in the blinding light for all to see his misanthropic features, his arcane teleportation effects, his utter lack of dignity for being put on display like some wild animal.

And thanks to Magneto, he was quickly liberated from that torment, only to be hidden away once again in the dark.  His life was turning out to be one big vicious cycle, it seemed.  When he was safe, he was alone.  When he was exposed for all to see, he was an object of scorn.

"Kurt?" a voice asked, breaking his train of thought.  He turned from the pat he was walking and turned to face the source.  Face, not see, of course.  He was lagging behind the others, but still, he reached out his hand behind him and found who he was looking for.

"Ororo," he replied.  "I take it your efforts were successful if you join us now.  Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Kurt," she asked, the words trembling as she spoke, "I feel as if I am about to suffocate.  Is... there any way you can use your power to save us?"

He shook his head, regardless of the fact that no one could have seen him do it.  He'd explained this at least a hundred times since he joined the X-Men, to the point where it became more second-nature to him than his power itself. "Nein, fair damsel.  Without having seen the surface, I can't teleport anyone to it.  I could assume our position, but I might materialize  a kilometer in the air, or worse, inside solid rock or the polar icecap above.  Believe me, Ororo, if I could do what you ask, I would not hesitate.  I would have done it hours ago."

"I...I understand, Kurt," she stammered.

Kurt swallowed hard.  Yes, his life had become a cycle of dark and light, but now he had manage to drag others in along with him.  Mesmero had made all the X-Men into sideshow attractions, and Magneto had buried them all under the world.  He alone could deal with that, but to have his friends endure it alongside him?  Worst of all, he was powerless to help.  What good was his mutant power when he couldn't even be sure where he was?

"It is so... dark, Kurt," she whispered.  "I am afraid."

He put his arm around his friend and partner.  "Come now," he said, adopting a cheerier tone.  "Surely there were nights just as black in your native Africa, ja?"

"At least there were stars," she challenged, "and the light of the moon."
 
"Well, where I come from," he replied, "the moon disappears about once a month, and the clouds cover up the stars even more frequently.  I would think a lady who controls the weather would know more about such things."

"True," she said weakly.

"And did you know that in Antarctica, the days and nights last six months?" he pressed on.  "It was summer back home, and that means it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere.  That means it will be nighttime on the surface when we get there." He was careful to use "when" and not "if".  "Tell me Storm, is the mistress of the rain and winds scared of the dark?"

She snorted a little in reaction to the jest.  "I should imagine not, my friend.  Still, this is a different kind of darkness.  This is confining, restricting.   I know I sealed enough air inside with us, but still--it is as if we are being crushed alive!  Like--!"

He shushed her and continued his point.  "Use the darkness, my dear.  Since you can't use your eyes, you can let the darkness convince you you're anywhere else you want to be.  You say these things, but you can't actually see any of it, right?  So who's to say we are digging our way underneath tons of rock?  Why couldn't we just as easily be walking down a spacious hallway during a power outage, hmm?"

"I don't--"

"Remember when we visited Sean's ancestral home in Ireland?  You weren't very fond of all those corridors of cold stone, now were you?"

"No."

"Ah, but you still dealt with it, right?  Oh, the Juggernaut and Black Tom attacked us, and ruined our stay, but we still had a nice time until then, didn't we?"

She was less than convinced.  "But they still attacked, and I felt as if I was about to die under all that rock closing in on me..."

"Nonsense," Kurt replied.  "If I recall correctly, you came through right when we needed you.  You put aside your fears in Cassidy Keep, so you can do it here, too, right?  Just imagine that we're there right now, walking along a hallway in the castle, and Eamon forgot to light any of the torches on the walls tonight.  And we're all taking our time because we want to relax this evening before we arrive at the dining hall for dinner."

"I... can't do it, Kurt," she objected.  "All I can think about is how we are really here, and--"

"Ah, but we _must_ be in Ireland," Kurt insisted.  "After all, I'm escorting you to dinner, right?  I'm dressed in my finest holographic disguise, right?"

"You... look charming without it, Kurt.  Although it does make those impressions of yours all the more humorous..."

He took the bait and did his best Groucho Marx.  "Why this place is a disgrace.  A lady of your breeding should leave here in a huff.  Or if that's too fast for you, you can leave in a minute and a huff!"

He heard a nervous chuckle.  "I am blessed to have a friend like you to be with me in this trial, Kurt.  Thank you."

"Always ready to help a lady in distress," he retorted.  "And dis dress and dat dress..."

She leaned on him as they kept on walking down the cavern.  Perhaps he had broken the cycle already, he wondered.  In joining the X-Men, he had found a place where he could be accepted.  There was at least some place on earth where people didn't stare and point at him.  He didn't have to flee the light of civilization because there were others to come to his aid.  And when he was banished to the shadows, he wouldn't be so alone.  Oh, he wouldn't wish what Storm was going through on his worst enemy, but at the same time, he was glad she was here with him.  Her presence was just as comforting to him as he was trying to be for her.  And whatever happened, they would face it together, unflinching.

And maybe he wasn't quite so powerless after all.

***

They weren't done yet.

Peter Rasputin felt like he'd been walking forever.  He wasn't tired, not physically.  His mutant body was very nearly invulnerable and possessed of such phenomenal strength that he could--and had--survive a fall from hundred of feet in the air.  And besides, he hadn't really done any hard labor since this underground trek began.  Physically, he was at nearly full strength.

Mentally--that was another story.

He and Wolverine had taken the point, exploring just how far Cyclops had come with his leg of the journey.  In the space of perhaps a minute, he had burrowed out at least double what Banshee had done with his sonic screams.  There had been no light at the end, but none was really expected.  There was only a bitter night to greet them if they had indeed managed to cut an opening to the surface.

And they hadn't.  Wolverine had guessed as much when he said that he didn't feel or smell any fresh air coming in, and now they had come to the end of the line.  Peter rubbed his hand over the smooth wall of stone that stood in the face of Cyclops beams.

"Hard to believe, ain't it?" Wolverine said grimly.  "But there it is.  Looks like we're not out of the woods yet."

"What now?" Peter asked.  "Cyclops' powers are gone, Banshee is spent."

"I'll go back down to ask," Wolverine said.  "But I doubt I'm gonna like the answer much."

He straddled the footholds he had dug with his heels and waited while Wolverine scurried down the tunnel.  In the dark he brooded, and his thoughts kept going back to the same thing.

The weakest X-Man.

That was what Magneto had called him when they had fought... and lost.  Valiantly, he had struck Magneto with a right hook that could have felled a tank.  Magneto had simply chuckled and levitated his metal body to the ceiling--hung him up and left him there like a toy he had simply lost interest in.  At last, he had attempted to smash him against Nightcrawler, forcing Peter to return to his human form rather than kill his friend.  The impact had simply rendered them both unconscious.

Thanks to Storm and the others, the X-Men had escaped for another round with Magneto, and Peter rushed to the battlefield to redeem himself, hitting Magneto over and over again without giving him a chance to recover.  But in doing so, he defied Cyclops' orders, and risked their entire offensive on his shattered ego.

Since then he had to ask himself: Just how useful was he to the team?  What good were his strength and power if he didn't have the skill or experience to put them to good use?

He turned to face the end of the tunnel and punched it in frustration.  Pieces of rock fell off and he heard them echo as they rolled down the abyss.

Well, why not, he asked himself.  He couldn't make things any worse, now could he?

Again, he struck, harder this time.  The rock fell around him, hitting his face, but he didn't flinch.  Again.  And Again.  And Again.

He heard a familiar sound, like a balloon popping, and he smelled the telltale scent of sulfur.  He had teleported behind him.  "Mein Gott!" Nightcrawler yelled.  "Peter what are you doing?!"

"Get back down there, Kurt," he called back.  "Tell the others to watch out for falling debris as best they can.  I'm going to punch my way out."

"My friend, this is madness!" he objected. "Don't waste your strength like this.  Banshee will be able to resume his part shortly and--"

They didn't think he could do it, he realized.  They thought he was the rookie.  The naive farmboy who let his heart do the thinking for him.  Well, he'd show them what he could do.  He wouldn't let Magneto beat him.  Not this way.  Not ever.

"Go back down and tell them I won't fail them!" he shouted. "I have two families I want to see again more than anything in this world, and I will... not... stop... until I do!"

Lefts and rights.  He began to develop a rhythm to it.  After a few minutes, he had enough room to climb up a little more, and he had more jagged surfaces to stand on.  This gave him added leverage to punch harder.  He pictured Magneto in the rockface.

"This is for Jean, Monster!  And for Hank!  And for all the torture you put Ororo through!  Who is the weak one now?!"

The clangs of his fists against the granite were ringing in his ears.  Had Kurt left?  Was he still there?  It didn't matter.  He'd keep punching until he dropped or the cold winds were blowing on his face. He welcomed that, of course.  The others, they wondered how they could deal with the subzero weather above, but to him, it would just remind him of his Siberian home in winter.  And he would see those majestic snow-covered fields again.  He would feel the wind biting against his face.  It was all right in front of him, he swore.  All there for the taking.  Just one more punch.  One more.

How long had it been?  Somehow it didn't matter anymore.  He was doing something.  He was putting his fate into his own hands.  His muscles ached with the effort he was putting forth, suggesting he'd been at it for a few hours at least, but he didn't care.  He wouldn't stop.   He had too much to fight for.

It was the last blow that surprised him the most.  He knew it was coming, but he didn't realize how much different it would be.  Instead of the rock cracking and falling down against his body, it flew away from him, outward into the air.  His fist went flying out into the open space, nearly dislocating from the sudden lack of resistance.  He stared out into the aperture and looked at the sky.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

"Nice punch, Colossus," Cyclops said as he came up from behind him.  "Can anyone see anything?"

"Comrades," Nightcrawler announced, "I think we have reached the surface." The three of them crawled out of the hole and stretched their legs and arms.  Peter just grimaced and surveyed his accomplishment like a cherished prize.  He had won.  He had proven himself, for now at least.  And behind him, he saw the consequences of that victory.

"Need a hand, Ororo?" Kurt asked as he reached down to help Storm out of the hole.

"Thank you, Kurt.  I can manage," she said.  As she raised her arm to climb up, Peter took her hand in his.

"Let us help you, Ororo.  What else are friends for?"

In the light he could see them all.  Banshee, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, Wolverine.  They were all here.  They were alive and safe.

And...warm?

***

Scott Summers rubbed the stubble on his face and stared out over the pristine wilderness.  A warm gust of air kissed his face.  It felt good.  Refreshing.

The Savage Land.  He still couldn't quite believe it, even three days later.  He'd been here before, along with the old X-Men, and they had wondered at the hidden tropical jungle surrounded by unforgiving ice and snow--they never really did figure out just how it existed out here.  It was by pure dumb luck that they had arrived here--or perhaps Magneto's volcano was one of the ones which provided geothermal heat to this prehistoric realm.  Who knew?  All he did know was that he had spent hours in the tunnel trying to figure out how the X-Men would manage on the frozen wasteland (an ingenious plan that involved Wolverine carving out blocks of ice to construct a makeshift igloo, among other mad flights of fancy), and to his shock it never came up.

Not that he was complaining, of course.  Back in the old days he would spend countless hours studying for the Professor's exams, and often he would discover to his relief that the question he dreaded the most had been deleted from the test.  Now, Professor Xavier was a telepath, and it made little sense for the headmaster to toss out a question when he knew the student was struggling with it.  And one day when he screwed up the courage, he asked him why he had done it.

"A simple probe of your mind showed that you had clearly mastered the principle, Scott," was his answer.  "Your only fault was that you yourself lacked the confidence to realize that."

The Professor was funny that way.  But the lesson was taken to heart.  All of them had gone above and beyond the call of duty in the last few days.  Jean and Hank had paid the ultimate price, but the rest of them refused to let that sacrifice be for nothing.  They clawed their way out of the grave, and if God or fate or Mother Nature wanted to cut the X-Men a little slack, then it was gladly appreciated even if it was long overdue.

The Professor... it occurred to him that the Professor didn't even know about any of this.  He would come to the mansion at some point and find the X-Men all disappeared, and no one would be able to let him know where they had gone or what had become of them.  He might even assume them to be dead, and to a degree... he would be right.  It would fall to Scott now to bring the bittersweet news back to his mentor.  We're OK, except some of us didn't make it.

He looked up at the sky and saw Storm gliding gracefully through the air.  She was chasing after a small winged reptile playfully--as opposed to the king-sized version that had tried to kill Banshee barely two minutes after they had arrived.  He smiled broadly at the sight of her.  After everything she had been through, after all that ordeal, she was back in high spirits, ready to take on the world again.  She had passed through the crucible, and she was stronger for the experience, he concluded.  They all were.

Now it was up to him to bring them back to the Professor so he could se just how far his new class of students had come.  It wouldn't be easy, he imagined, but to be honest, it wouldn't be the hardest thing he'd ever done either.

Not even close.

THE END