"I know, it's been a while….and I'm so, so sorry I left you guys," Kitty said. "But it's me, Kurt. I promise. What's going on? Where did that other teleporter take you?"

"Outer space," Kurt mumbled. After looking at Kitty's unsure stare back, he continued, "No, that's not a joke. Not at a… *cough*… time like this."

"Then it's a miracle you're still conscious," said another, male, voice. "We've got to get you back onto one of the helijets for medical attention ASAP."

With Kitty now supporting him, Kurt managed to gather enough strength to lift up his head and turn his field of vision up at the individual who had just spoke—someone who was significantly taller than either of them.

Kurt let out another dry chuckle as he took in the star-spangled superhero standing before him, who was re-affixing his circular metal shield to his forearm, having hurled it a few moments earlier at Blink to knock her out.

"Captain America?" Kurt laughed nervously. "Now I know I'm dead. Or unconscious. Or hallucinating…"

"You're not hallucinating, son," Captain America said, moving one of his index fingers back and forth in front of Kurt's eyes and tracking the furry Mutant's pupil movement. "Not suffering from a concussion, either, though you've definitely gotten some internal bleeding, judging from what you've been hacking up there on the sand."

Signaling with one of his hands for someone outside of Kurt's field of view to come help him, the Captain continued, "Shadowcat, I'm going to need you to help get… Nightcrawler?... here onto a stretcher."

"Got it," Kitty nodded as two medics wearing S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms ran up in between the two X-Men and Captain America, carrying a white cloth stretcher in between them as they lowered it down to about knee height.

"Alright Kurt, right leg up," Kitty continued to a rather bewildered X-Man as she began to lift up one of his sides. Given the unbelievable scene playing out before him, Kurt numbly did as he was told. "…Urf… alright, get that tail there too, you guys, get it… aaand…. Good."

Kitty let out a sigh as she let go of Kurt gently into the stretcher. "I bet you've got a lot of questions."

"Just a few," Kurt said, smiling lazily as the medics began examining his wounds and listening to his heartbeat while Captain America continued to gesture to other personnel outside of his field of vision, a dozen or so S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers passing by them, equipped with weapons Kurt had never seen before. "Let's get the important one out of the way first, since I'm not gonna believe that other guy who should've passed away about eighty years ago. Am I dead?"

Kitty couldn't help but smile. "No."

"Okay," Kurt breathed, "That's… that's good. Now, what's up with all the S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets I've seeing *cough* coming down here? Why are they here? Why is Captain America here? Why are you here? What's with the new outfit? That's just… y'know, off the top of… *cough*…my head…"

"Alright, he's stable enough to carry back to the nearest helijet," one of the medics intervened. "His left eardrum has burst. Shadowcat, you're going to want to keep talking to him on the side you're on. One lung is slightly punctured, but if it's not aggravated any more we can get it fixed up. Let's walk and talk back to the helijet, folks."

"Well, first off," Shadowcat said raising her voice more as the sound of the helijets became louder, the group of them starting to wade their way into the water, "Made the outfit myself. Admittedly it was a bit of a rush job."

Kitty's new outfit had ditched the color purple in favor of yellow, which was along the shoulder pads, wrist guards, belt, and on two straps on her right upper leg, which held additional paraphernalia in a manner similar to a tool belt. The rest of the outfit was made of a black material, with a higher collar than her old costume, though there was a gap that bared her midriff and her bare fingers poked through holes in the fabric at the ends of her arms, as opposed to the purple gloves she used to wear. In addition, Kurt noticed that Kitty had cut her hair since he had last seen her—there was no more ponytail, with her straight brown hair now ending slightly above the chin.

"But why? Are you working… for S.H.I.E.L.D. now or something?" Kurt asked.

"Ummm… see the 'X' symbols?" Kitty said, pointing to the red letters on her shoulder pads. "I've got an 'X' on the belt, too. So yeah, still an X-Man. Unofficially for now, anyways."

"So then how…?"

"Kurt, I understand you're, like, really confused right now, but we're a bit short on time, and-"

"Actually, we're a LOT short on time," said a familiar white-haired colonel with an eyepatch, who just entered Kurt's field of vision as his view of the morning sky above quickly transitioned to the interior of a helijet. "Especially since, officially, we're not even supposed to be here."

Kneeling on the edge of the helijet, Nick Fury continued, "Nightcrawler, you and your little friend here can chat later. We've got a lot more important things to worry about right now. We already have a general layout of the island and the situation, but is there anything you can tell us about Genosha right now that would be particularly… helpful?"

"Oh, DO I," Kurt said, smiling weakly. "You might want to *cough* take notes, Colonel Fury. This is going to take a few minutes."

"Before I do," Nick Fury said, "I need you tell us the comlink frequency your team is using. I want to make sure Xavier can get mental blocks in all of us before we head out."

*Magneto.*

Magnus stopped his approach down the hallway towards the jail cells and held a finger up to the side of his helmet, under which was a comlink, reaching around his ear with a small microphone extended towards his mouth.

"Five-in-One. I trust you have good news this time?"

*Partially.*

Magneto glowered. "Explain."

*All four of the invading teams have been driven back, nearly to the sea at this point. However, they're about to get… help. We're picking up about four dozen new mental signatures, arriving on the northeast shore of the island, most of them spreading out.*

"Mutants?"

*Three of them are… at least according to our scanners. One of them is Nightcrawler, another Shadowcat, the third… unknown at this point. Some of them aren't mentally shielded, but the number that aren't are… dwindling. Someone must be employing some sort of technology or Mutant power at the moment to hide them from us. As for the rest of the signatures, they're human. They're…. reinforcements from S.H.I.E.L.D.*

Magneto couldn't help but mutter a curse before responding. "I thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was dispersed after the Nimrod incident. Do they have Sentinels?"

*We're doing quick mental scans on the ones still vulnerable…. No. No Sentinels. But—*

"Then let them come at us," Magneto interrupted. "If they don' t have any Sentinels, they're nothing for us to worry about."

*-BUT.* the Five-in-One responded, their tone tinted with just the slightest hint of annoyance. *They're carrying some kind of new technology….blasters modified from… Nimrod tech. They…. they can temporarily nullify Mutant powers.*

Immediately the entire hallway around Magneto creaked and groaned, buckling in towards the Acolyte leader as he clenched his fist. Inadvertently, he also caused the comlink he was wearing to quickly become twisted and warped under the extreme magnetic fields being manipulated, and it fell to the ground, sparking.

Magneto merely stomped on the malfunctioning comlink and responded to the Five-in-One the "traditional way".

Then continue to focus the teams on eliminating as many of the X-Men as possible before S.H.I.E.L.D. reinforcements can arrive, Magneto thought. As for those who aren't facing the invaders, concentrate them around the main building. Make SURE no one can enter the Hub! I'll take care of things around the cells—if things continue to fall apart, I may have to use the prisoners as hostages. Magneto out.

There was mental silence for a few moments before the Five-in-One finally responded.

…Understood.

Magneto stomped further down the hallway until he emerged in a large underground chamber with several thick steel doors at the opposite end, four of them under heavy guard.

"Magneto?" asked the Acolyte Magneto recognized as M, a tan-skinned teenager he remembered as having superhuman strength and the ability to fly. "What's going on?"

"I don't know how, but somehow Xavier has gotten S.H.I.E.L.D. involved in his big assault, as well. All of you, get the remaining prisoners out here. If things go poorly, we may need to use them as hostages. Keep an eye pointed at them at all times, and kill them if you see the slightest hint that something is amiss, is that understood?"

"Yes, Magneto," said the eight Acolytes present, as they began to open the four cells that were holding the prisoners.

"Let's just hope my recruits out there are competent enough to keep things from coming to this," Magneto muttered to himself.

"Hard to believe things have come to this," Nick Fury said wistfully as he looked at the flashes of fire, ice, and other energy blasts coming from a few spots on the horizon. Captain America stood in front of him, binoculars up to the superhero's face as he scanned the island, motioning to the troops behind him with hand gestures. Passing to either side of both of them were most of the remaining squadrons of S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers armed with their new blasters, beginning to make their way to battles on the island that Captain America had directed them towards.

"Well, things might NOT have come to this if you hadn't completely dropped out from the X-Men's radar after screwing things so badly with Nimrod and everything," Shadowcat said as she walked up behind them, water dripping from her boots as she came up onto the sandy shore. A short distance behind the three were ten different helijets that were hovering just off the coast. A few remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers were quickly filing out of the five that weren't holding Nightcrawler, the weapons they were carrying beginning to hum with a pink energy as they began to charge them.

"I'm sorry, is the girl who quit the X-Men a few months ago lecturing ME on abandoning my duties?" Nick Fury said, turning around to fix Kitty with a glare as he took the ever-present toothpick out of his mouth. As Kitty's gaze shifted uncomfortably to the ground, he continued, "Besides, it wasn't my decision—our funding was cut, but now it's been reinstated in wake of the panic over the terrorist attacks on the registration centers."

"Really?" Kitty said skeptically, her gaze rising again to meet Fury's. "This was all just a spur-of-the-moment thing, huh? Then where did THOSE come from?"

Seeing Kitty point towards the guns the S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers were carrying, Nick Fury absentmindedly put his toothpick back into his mouth and continued, "Like I said, our funding was cut. Not eliminated altogether. Yes, those guns were adapted from Nimrod's tech, but that's it."

"Just like Nimrod was adapted from Sentinel technology," Kitty retorted, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Alright, I've had it up to here with all of these questions," Nick Fury said indignantly, walking up to her until their faces were mere inches apart. "As I recall, you were the one who got a hold of US and asked to get a ride, NOT the other way around. So I expect you to do what I say, when I say it, and if anyone besides the X-Men ever asks you if we were here, you respond with a negative, you got that?"

"Ease up, Fury," Captain America said, putting away his binoculars and turning around to face both of them, all the squadrons having been directed towards their destinations. "She's been through a lot lately."

"Haven't we all, Rogers, haven't we all," Nick Fury muttered, though he nevertheless backed away a few steps from Shadowcat and towards Captain America. "So what's the layout, Cap? Can we get to the secret entrance or not?"

"Every team that I can see is being pushed back towards the coasts," Captain America replied, motioning towards the island as he did so. "The X-Men are being overwhelmed, and quickly. It'll be minutes before casualties start to mount, though since Shadowcat contacted their team leaders via the comlinks and relayed to them all of Nightcrawler's intelligence, they at least now know we're coming. If we're discrete, we should be able to get a small unit to the entrance… but from what you've told me about the old abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. facility on this island, the door is tightly sealed, and we can't carry with us ordnance that's heavy enough to take it out."

"So I'm going with this unit, I take it?" Shadowcat asked.

"Right," Steve Rogers nodded, "Though we're going to need to take a bit of a detour first, as you're not going to be able to do everything that's required by yourself."

"What gets me," Nick Fury spoke up again, "is that in spite of all the other crazy stuff Nightcrawler told us, he said that that headband his belated mother gave him was supposed to ward off psychics. But it's not working. Shadowcat, have you figured out what's wrong with it yet?"

"It's totally fried," Kitty said, holding up the electronic gadget Kurt had given to her after he had finished explaining what had happened to him. "Not only that, but there's no vibranium in it, and Beast explained to me some time ago that vibranium's the only known material that can keep out psychics—Magneto's helmet is made of it, after all. I've examined it rather thoroughly, and I don't have a clue as to what it's supposed to really do. It has a receiver array, so it's a transmitter of some kind… but beyond that, I'm not sure."

"A transmitter? I hope that doesn't mean what I think it means…" Captain America said.

"I think someone might have been toying around with Kurt, somehow," Kitty said reluctantly. "Not sure how or why, though. If we hadn't drugged him up with all those painkillers after he had relayed his info to us, we could ask him a bit more… but he was in so much pain, I'm kinda glad he's out at the moment."

"Regardless, we need to get a hold of Moonstar," Nick Fury began. "Shadowcat, Cap—you know where they are. Get to it."

"PAIGE!" Maverick yelled as the X-Man standing next to him took a fireball right in the chest, the extreme heat immediately igniting her entire body, given that its current composition was a flammable, acidic substance.

Husk choked as she fell down to the ground, a gaping, flaming hole beginning to form in her chest as, in extreme pain, her mental control over her gelatinous form began to slip.

The Acolyte who had launched the fireball—literally nothing more than a skeleton wreathed in fire, with no obvious means of talking—cackled dryly and advanced towards the rest of the small team.

"Get over there and help her, Maverick!" Xavier yelled. "I'll take care of the aggressor!"

"N…no!" Maverick grunted as four other projectiles almost simultaneously impacted him, the kinetic force being absorbed and then redirected back at the Acolytes. The huge blast managed to barely hit a flying Acolyte, sending her spiraling backwards, but otherwise it missed its intended targets. "Everyone knows you're a… priority target, Charles, and your concentration… is fading, I've noticed. I've got to stay here… protect you!"

"I just… I need some time install all these mental blocks!" Charles yelled as another barrage aimed at him was absorbed by Maverick interceding. "It's quite a demanding task…"

Driven back to the sandy beach itself, the team of X-Men didn't have much ground left to give. Maverick was acting as a shield of sorts for Xavier, who instead of his normal wheelchair, had switched to a sort of miniature yellow personalized hovercraft for better maneuverability on the field. Sunspot was currently trying to protect Husk, punching out any Acolytes who came near them, though he was obviously starting to get tired—his form was more hunched over, his super-powered punches and lunges more haphazard.

X-23 was the most adventurous among the small team of five, incapacitating Acolyte after Acolyte with her adamantium claws, not even bothering to dodge any attacks that weren't melee and letting her healing factor do the work as she hacked and slashed her way across the shoreline. In most cases, her cutthroat tactics would have made the difference, and they had early on as the team advanced towards the nearest tower—but now there were simply too many Acolytes, and with the sheer amount of projectiles directed at her it was slowly starting to eat away at her faster than her healing factor could regenerate. It was all painfully obvious they wouldn't last more than a few more minutes.

"Charles," Maverick said as another Acolytes with superhuman strength downed Sunspot with a solid punch to the side of the face, "I know this is what we thought would happen… but if they don't get here soon…"

"Don't say such things," Xavier said, his mind temporarily abandoning its current task and focusing on another, the skeletal Acolyte on fire suddenly turning and flinging balls of flame at his comrades. "It's not over yet—"

Maverick looked about to respond to something, when a flying Acolyte streaked low overhead, dropping a Mutant onto Maverick who looked like he (she?) was made of simply a gelatinous blue blob with a humanoid skeleton and brain deep inside it.

"Yeah… yeah, it's over," the Acolyte burbled as Maverick—unable to redirect any real kinetic force—struggled to escape the blob as he was enveloped, cutting off the former H.Y.D.R.A. agent's supply of air.

"N-no!" Xavier stammered right before a pink ray blast struck the Acolyte in front of him. Suddenly—and with apparent great pain—the Acolyte cried out, the gelatin-like blob around his skeleton and brain beginning to liquefy as he began to "melt", freeing Maverick from its grasp a few seconds later.

The instructor gulped in a few precious breaths of air as the Acolyte literally fell apart around him.

Immediately multiple other pink beams filled the air—some of them missing, but many of them striking other Acolytes. The fliers they struck abruptly plummeted to the ground, the Mutants with projectile powers who had gotten hit suddenly were unable to launch further attacks, and the Acolyte Xavier had been mind-controlling abruptly crumpled to the sand, his flames dying out as he did so.

And just like that, a dozen or so S.H.I.E.L.D. troops emerged from hidden positions to the west of them, firing their pink laser-like weapons off into the crowd of Acolytes.

"I think…" Husk gasped from her position near the ocean, which she had apparently managed to ooze toward to put out the flames, "…that we finally got….help…"

"Husk… you're okay!" Maverick cried, wading out of the Acolyte that continued to dissolve around him.

"Glad they got me… in a state like this…" Husk managed to bubble out of her mouth. "I need a few minutes, though… solidify my form again… before I'll be of any more… help."

"Take a minute to gather yourselves… then follow us as we move towards the island's interior," a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative said as he ran up to them, pausing to take a shot at a fast-moving flier that was incoming, the blast causing her to lose control of her flight and slam into the shallow ocean behind them instead.

"Why are you here?" X-23 said directly, limping up to the operative that was communicating with them all, her form little more than bones and quickly-regenerating musculature at this point, with almost no skin still intact on her body. "We didn't ask for your help."

"Well, you're welcome anyway," the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative replied, his lips twisted into a slight snarl. "Anyways, the other S.H.I.E.L.D. squadrons should have already met up with your team on the northern end of the island, and we're quickly advancing on the teams at the western and southern ends—we should be there shortly."

"Thanks for the save, friend," Maverick said, giving X-23 a stern look that essentially said, Don't push it.

"We're not done yet, not nearly," the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldier said. "We still need your help."

"Of course," Maverick said. "You DID just save our lives, after all."

"How many S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers do you still need to put mental blocks in?" the soldier asked Xavier.

"About twenty," Xavier replied. "But each one… expends a bit more effort. It will take time, and I'll be in such a state of concentration that I'll essentially be incapacitated for a bit. You'll also need to inform Colonel Fury that, with enough concentration, it has been shown that someone on this island CAN break my mental blocks, so it's not foolproof. Maverick, could you… stand guard for a bit while I do so?"

"Of course… but one thing first."

Maverick turned to the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative and made a hand motion to give him the power-nullifying gun.

"What? No!" the soldier said, instinctively backing away from Maverick a few steps. "This is S.H.I.E.L.D. property. I'm under orders not to—"

"You want Xavier to put mental blocks in all the shield troops?" Maverick interrupted, "Then give me. The. Gun."

"You heard him," X-23 said, surprising the soldier at how quickly and quietly she had snuck up behind him.

"I… why?" the operative asked Maverick. "You haven't had your powers nulled, you're in fighting condition! I need this!"

"I need it more," Maverick replied. "You've got the rest of your squadron. I'll be back here, just myself and Professor X. I need one in case I come up against an Acolyte I can't handle by myself."

The soldier hesitated for a bit, but finally gave into the stern look and tossed his gun to the X-Man. "Alright, fine. But you'd better give it back to us if-when—this all ends."

"Hrrm," Maverick said, looking the gun over. "It's definitely Nimrod tech, that's for sure. How long does it last?"

"Twenty to thirty minutes," the operative replied, "With the more powerful Mutants tending to get over it more quickly."

"Good to know," Maverick said, continuing to inspect the gun. "There's a weakness in this design, you know. All I need to do is reverse the power couplings and the gun will basically reverse the effects. Just something I thought I'd tell in case S.H.I.E.L.D…. you know… tries to take advantage of the situation once the Acolytes have been subdued."

"I…" the soldier said, his eyes betraying his surprise and fear for a minute before he regained control of himself. "…I should go. The other ones on your team here—they should probably come along. Even with our guns, we're still going to need help."

A recovering Sunspot, a recently-recovered Husk, and X-23 both looked expectantly at Maverick, who motioned for them to go along. "Keep an eye on both sides, kids. Remember that."

"Got it," Husk said, her reformed acidic gel-skin peeling away to reveal normal skin underneath as the three of them followed the nervous soldier down the beach in the direction the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops had advanced.

"Toad, what happened?!" Blob said, pushing aside the heavy pile of wet sand that had been holding the Brotherhood member down.

"Ugh…" Toad murmured, slowly sitting up and rubbing his head as he took in his surroundings. "…You tell me…"

"We're still not completely sure," the Scarlet Witch said, walking up to where the two were and pointing back to where Storm and Surge were discussing something with a few S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers. "Storm was the one who received the communication from S.H.I.E.L.D. She told us to expect help, and then a few minutes later a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers showed up, all brandishing these weapons that seem to take away Mutant powers. With their help, we were able to drive the rest of my father's flunkies back… at least for now. Storm is discussing what our options are next, and Surge is… well, she's listening. To make sure neither of them decide to use those new weapons against us."

"You really think they'd do that?" Blob asked, scratching his head.

"Now? No," Wanda replied. "But if we manage to take out Magneto and the rest on this island? We'll have outlived our usefulness to them then, and then they'll wonder what to do with us- those guns being the most obvious answer."

"Alrighteveryone, quickupdate," Surge said quickly, zooming up right next to them before disengaging the electrical discharge from her gauntlets. "The same S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers that helped us? They're helping out the other teams on the island, too. The team on the south side of the island should be the last team they reach. Once that's done, all teams will be meeting up at a point a little north of the central tower and its surrounding buildings, where we'll all do one big final push to enter that structure. Even if it's not the most important building on the island, it's the biggest one, so it's got to have SOMETHING vital in it. Maybe something to shut down this radiation all over the island, I dunno. But the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldier said they needed Moonstar for something. Shadowcat and somebody else 'special' are on their way here."

"I thought Kitty quit the X-Men," Wanda stated, raising an eyebrow.

Surge shook her head. "I thought so too, but she's here. Apparently she was the one who contacted Storm and the others."

"Hey, speaking of her, where IS Moonstar?" Blob asked, looking around. "I lost track of her during all the fightin'."

Toad's eyes widened at the mention of the X-Man's name, and he immediately stood up. "Aw, crud… Moonstar! Aw, she was at the beach… Rockslide had 'er…"

"Rockslide?" Surge asked. "I never saw Rockslide around here."

"He snuck up behind us," Toad said over his shoulder as he hopped towards the water's edge. "Took me out quickly—no surprise there, I guess—and had Moonstar in a chokehold. Oh, man, if she ain't here, then he must've… taken her into the ocean…"

"So we are down one," Wanda said, shaking her head sadly. "She's not one of us, but still…"

"Not down one just yet—look!" Surge said, pointing a few dozen yards further down the coast, where a short female in an X-Man uniform was slowly crawling out of the ocean, stopping every few steps to vomit up a bit of salt water.

The Brotherhood members made their way up to the trembling X-Man as she crawled onto the beach, continuing to hack up water.

"But… she'd have been down in that water for a while by now…" Toad said. "No way she could've held her breath that long."

The Brotherhood members waited a few minutes for Moonstar to stop coughing up sea water before Wanda kneeled down and helped the trembling X-Man to her feet.

"What happened?" Blob asked. "How did you get rid of Rockslide? 'Cause, man—that guy's a real pest to get rid of!"

"I didn't," Moonstar said, her voice still wavering. "He held me underwater… thought I was going to drown, felt like… felt like my lungs were going to burst, but they just… didn't. And suddenly… suddenly I didn't feel like I needed to breathe anymore, but I played like I had suffocated anyways, so he would leave me alone… I didn't see where he went next…"

"Wait a sec, how can you just not need to breathe?" Toad asked.

"As far as I can figure, I think my powers… I think they kicked in again," Moonstar explained. "It happened before—when I was stuck without food and water for a long time, my brain… put my body in a state of hibernation. And then when I tried to…well…mentally project an illusion into Nimrod's mind, my brain ended up… adapting itself to the situation, and since then I've been able to… 'read' computer code and re-write it. Now, when I ran out of oxygen… I think my brain adapted to that, and altered itself… so that I wouldn't need oxygen."

"Wait, uh… I thought your powers allowed you to do that mind illusion stuff?" Blob asked, scratching his head.

"So did I, for a while—but that's just a side effect," Moonstar said, dusting the sand off her legs as she motioned to Wanda that she could stand by herself now. "My real Mutant power is the ability of my brain to adapt to survive—but only if it's a life-or-death situation, apparently."

"So, you not needing to breathe… is that permanent?" Wanda asked.

"Not sure," Moonstar shook her head. "If we all get out of this, I'm sure Xavier and Beast will want to get a look at me again when we get back to the Institute… I still feel awful, having all that sea water that had been sitting in my lungs… but at least I'm not… dead."

"Danielle!" came a familiar shout from further down the beach.

Moonstar and the Brotherhood members assembled around her turned to look in the direction of the voice.

"…Kitty?!" Moonstar said in disbelief.

"Yeah, she's back," Surge said. "Not sure why."

It wasn't long until Kitty ran up to Moonstar, both of them embracing each other for a moment, the other person that had come with Shadowcat still a bit further back on the shoreline.

"Kitty, what… what are you doing here?!" Moonstar asked as they let go of each other. "How—"

"We've got plenty of time for questions later," Kitty interrupted, "But we're in a real time crunch now. Though I'm really glad to see you're okay—none of the S.H.I.E.L.D. members I talked to knew one way or the other."

"It's, uh… it's been a memorable morning, that's for sure," Moonstar sighed. "So, why did you need me?"

"We all need you," emphasized Captain America, making his way up behind Kitty. "Her, you, and I are going in a team by ourselves to a small cove about a half-mile further down the coast. According to Colonel Fury, there's an old secret base entrance located there, back when this island was a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison facility during the Cold War. But it's locked up tight, and we're going to need Shadowcat's powers and yours as well in order to get inside and hopefully find a 'back door' into Magneto's base of operations."

"Wait a second," Toad laughed. "Why're we takin' orders from some idiot dressed up like Cap'n America?"

Instead of a response, everyone in the group just turned their heads towards Toad, their eyebrows raised.

"….Oh. Oh, no way."

"You won't… get away with—"

*KONK!*

A final blow to the head by Colossus managed to knock Omega Red unconscious, the latter's powers having been rendered useless by the arrival of S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers.

"…and you'll take good care of them?" Cyclops said, questioning the S.H.I.E.L.D. medical personnel who had gathered around Wolfsbane and Iceman's unconscious forms.

"Wolfsbane got a pretty hard knock to the head—we're going to have to see if there's any permanent damage," said the doctor giving her a cursory examination. "But other than that, there's simply burns, scrapes, and bruises. Nothing she won't be able to fully recover from within a few weeks. As for Iceman… well, as you said, he was subjected to very high temperatures by one of the Acolytes, and he has a weakness for things like that. But once he regains consciousness, he should be able to 'ice up' and feel relatively normal again. The problem is getting him to do so…"

"Hey bro, c'mon," Havok said, putting his hand on his older brother's shoulder. "The others are heading towards the center of the island—we gotta be with 'em."

"Yeah, it's just—alright," Cyclops said, interrupting himself as he reluctantly turned back and followed the rest of his small squad—Colossus, Havok, Mercury, and Magma—along with a nearly a dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers towards the island's interior. "I suppose there's nothing more we can do here."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Havok replied as they walked away from the shoreline. "These S.H.I.E.L.D. guys, man, they really pulled it off—those new guns of theirs totally saved the day, and they've been friendly enough, so why wouldn't they give the best care possible to Rahne and Bobby?"

"You haven't had as much direct experience with them as I have, Alex," Cyclops replied. "Yeah, S.H.I.E.L.D. generally tend to be the good guys, but, well… let's just say their reasons for doing things aren't the same as ours, and their values tend to be… shifty. The ends usually justify the means with Colonel Fury. I generally think we can depend on them, but… I don't know. They weren't there when the country needed them during the whole H.Y.D.R.A. incident, and now suddenly they're back, with guns that can basically render any advantage we have void. We just… we need to keep an eye on them, that's all I'm saying."

"Not to mention things aren't quite adding up," Magma interjected as the Summers brothers caught up with her and the rest of the squad. "From the details we've been getting over the radio via the others, Kurt was apparently the one who downed the force field, but he says he was helped out by Cessily."

"Yeah, and I was never even there," Mercury said, a quizzical look on her face. "I didn't even know Kurt was still alive until those S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers told us."

"So someone was somehow impersonating Cessily in order to help Kurt sabotage the force field," Magma said. "We know it wasn't any of us, and though there are definitely plenty of Acolytes able to do so, there's no reason why they'd want to be instrumental in taking down their own. Unless…"

"…Unless Magneto's forces are not as united as we think they are," Colossus continued. "There is one Mutant I am surprised nobody has run into yet. Back when the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors were first looking over Rahne and Bobby, I radioed the other squads—but they have not run into him, either. And he is one of the most powerful Mutants on this island that we know of."

"Who are you talking about, Magneto?" Havok said. "It'd be just like him to wait behind an army of his own before trying to take us on directly."

"No, not Magneto," Colossus said, shaking his head. "I am talking about someone who could probably beat Magneto into a pulp if he had his powers under better control, and who is quite capable of using mental misdirection to create an illusion in the mind of Nightcrawler. I am talking about—"

Legion.

David turned away from the window he had been looking out of and almost jumped at the sudden appearance of a blonde teenager in the middle of the room with him.

"Who…?" David asked, looking oddly at the female standing rather stiffly in the middle of his bedroom. "And what are you doing in my room?! MOM—"

Your mother can't hear you, Legion, the female said. Or—David thought she said. The girl's mouth didn't move at all when she spoke, and yet he heard her words as plainly and as loudly as if she had. Nobody can… except for us.

"…Us?" David asked, though no sooner had he asked the question than four more teenagers were standing in the room alongside the first—all of them identical to the first.

David took a step back, towards the window. This was really starting to creep him out. "That isn't poss- what are you?!"

We're slowly going to start rolling back the memory blocks, the quintuplets "said" to David, seemingly ignoring his question. Though the illusions will stay… for a moment. It's best to get you out of this state slowly.

"What—the heck—are you talking ab—"

And suddenly David remembered. He was a Mutant. He had found his father, Charles Xavier—only to be ripped away from him—from reality itself—by Lucas.

Only—he was Lucas, as well…

In the blink of an eye, the walls of David's "bedroom" turned transparent, and on one side—in a separate room—was Lucas, leaning against the invisible barrier between them.

"It's about sodding time," Lucas said from the "room" next to David's. "Out of your little fantasy world, David? Because it's about time you woke up. It's about time all of us did."

"All of us?" David asked.

Again, no sooner had he asked the question than the transparent cells around him multiplied, suddenly filling themselves in with different people—some of whom he recognized.

Different people who were, in fact, all him—or, perhaps, some aspect of him.

There was Bart, the wide, muscular strongman… Ian, the mute child with the power to create psychic fire walls… Emerald, the girl with power over water…

And then there was….

Then there was…

David didn't recognize the others, but there were plenty of others. Perhaps twenty, now.

"Don't know who most of them are, Dave?" Lucas said patronizingly. "Well, let me fill you in a bit—being the 'original' one of us and all, I guess you deserve to know, since you're the one responsible for it!"

David slowly sat down. He didn't know what Lucas was talking about, but—somehow—he also knew that it was true.

"Here's the scoop, David," Lucas continued. "We've—you've—been getting worse. At first, once I managed to trick dear old Daddy into isolating you and Ian from myself, I had the run of the place—'the place' being your body, in case you're having trouble keeping up.

"Anyways, after a while, I found out that I had to start sharing the joint with Bart and Emerald, there. And then, after we moved to Genosha, Ian showed up again, along with—briefly—yourself, though Mastermind managed to subdue that part of you and lock it away again.

"But that still didn't work, David," Lucas said, pressing his face against the invisible barrier between himself and the person he was addressing, his tone becoming increasingly unhinged. "New ones—new personalities—they kept surfacing. A day would go by, and another one would show up. Another week, and two more! Before you knew it, it was getting awfully crowded in here.

"And so finally, it seemed like our wonderful boss had had it!" Lucas continued, his face now positively red with rage. "He got tired of all the alter-egos you were cranking out, David, and—coincidentally—he had a problem. You see, he was gaining new recruits—real new recruits, not just more of us—every day. And they needed power—power to sustain their growing civilization. Sure, they could just teleport in a few base materials, but not something as big and self-contained as an entire reactor, and they needed something fast. Something that they didn't have to build from scratch. Magneto TOLD the others that Blink had finally found a small experimental reactor in some top-secret government facility. He told them that he had sent Blink and a couple of his other top Acolytes—me included—along to help secure that special, wonderful new power source. Only we supposedly were 'killed' in the process of retrieving it."

Lucas finally managed to regain some of his composure, and stood back a few steps before gesturing to David's left. Instinctively, David knew where to look—and on the left side of his cell, a couple of blocks down, was a stick-thin alter-ego of his with spiky hair, radiating electrical energy from every square inch of his body—including his eyes.

"Pl-please… h-help… m-me…" said the alter-ego pitifully, trembling, unable to move.

"Can you guess how this tale ends, David?" Lucas asked.

"N-no… no, this can't… this can't have happened…" David mumbled, tears welling up in his eyes. Turning to look at the somber-looking quintuplets still in the cell with him, he asked them, "Y-you… you five… you dug into my head… separated ALL of the other personalities from coming out—except that one? Because you needed the power?"

And you've been in a reactor ever since- your power enough to sustain the entire island's electricity needs, the Five-in-One thought back sadly.

We wanted to keep this from you, David, we really did… but we need your help.

"Really?!" David said, finally finding his voice and standing straight up, nearly shouting as he continued, "And just WHY should I help such AMORAL, BACKSTABBING little… little…"

Because if you help us, David, the Five-in-One interrupted, We can make all of this…this nightmare your powers have created… go away.

"This is it, according to Fury's schematics," Captain America said, looking up from the datapad he held.

Moonstar cocked her head, staring at the obstacle ahead of them. "But… it's just a rock cliff. It doesn't look any different from the rest of the coast on this end of the island."

Indeed, as the trio had said goodbye to the others and moved further down the shoreline, the sandy beach had gradually disappeared, becoming a rocky coastline on one corner of the island. Carefully, Moonstar, Shadowcat, and Captain America had navigated among the sharp, tight rock outcroppings, until they had come to this seemingly innocuous point on the cliffside, the ocean waves lapping against the rocks about twenty feet below them.

"I think that's the point," Shadowcat said. "Hold on while I check."

Phasing into the cliffside, a few seconds later Kitty came back out.

"Yeah, there's a corridor behind there," Shadowcat nodded. "Though from the smell of things, it's pretty dusty inside—hasn't been used in a while, which is good. C'mon, grab my hands."

Doing so, Kitty phased Moonstar and Captain America through the two feet or so of rock, into an open—but completely black—space.

Moonstar coughed. "Ugh, you weren't kidding. I think I'm going to try holding my breath again…"

A beam of light suddenly appeared in the corridor as Captain America took out and activated his flashlight, followed quickly afterwards by Shadowcat and Moonstar, who also had been given the same tools.

Coughing and waving a branch of cobwebs away from his face, Captain America took point and started to venture further down the corridor, the three of them moving their flashlights all around to make sure there wasn't anything they were missing.

"I wonder why Magneto and the others never saw fit to use the existing base?" Moonstar asked. "I mean, it was already here…"

"Look at the dimensions," Captain America said as he continued to walk down the cobweb-covered corridor. "This hallway… it's about a foot or so taller than I am. Big enough for almost any human, but some of the bigger Acolytes—like that Rockslide fellow that you mentioned nearly killed you—wouldn't be able to fit in here. Often building entirely new structures is less time-consuming than renovation."

"So, what are we looking for, exactly?" Shadowcat asked, pausing to cough up some dust that had gotten caught in her throat. "Shouldn't we have come across a room or something by now?"

"Considering it came all the way to the shoreline, I think this is an emergency escape tunnel of some sort," Captain America replied. "According the schematics, it sure looks like it. We have a way to go before we get to any rooms."

"And when we do, what then?" Moonstar questioned.

"Well, that's where your abilities come in," the Captain answered. "All S.H.I.E.L.D. bases, when they're decommissioned, still have one core computer system kept online- just in case. Supposedly there's enough power left in the computer's backups to keep it in its 'standby' mode for over a hundred years, so there's no way it should've gone dark already. We find that computer—which, if I remember the standard base layout correctly, we should have no problem finding—and then you can reactivate it using your powers, Moonstar. Perhaps we can use it to activate some old ordnance stored in this base somewhere… or, if it's been hooked up, we could even access Magneto's network, if we're lucky. Anything to give us a potential advantage as the others above converge on those buildings in the center of the island."

No sooner had the Captain finished his sentence then the corridor abruptly opened up into a medium-sized room with steel walls—most of the furniture had been cleared out, presumably by either S.H.I.E.L.D. or Magneto's Acolytes, so the room's former purpose wasn't entirely clear from a cursory scan with their flashlights.

"Hrrm," Captain America said, his flashlight focusing on a selection of large closed-off connection sockets behind a counter in one corner of the room. "According to the schematic, this used to be the mess hall, and that looks like a closed-down cooking area, which pretty much confirms it. That means this schematic is still relevant—that's certainly good. We should go left, here, towards the terminal room. C'mon, let's get going. Every second we waste is another second Magneto has to prepare."

Shadowcat and Moonstar both glanced uneasily at each other before following Captain America as he ran down the corridor leading away from the left side of the room.

"There," Captain America said several minutes later, pointing with his flashlight to a terminal housed on one wall in the room they had just entered. "That's the terminal we're looking for."

"Are you sure?" Moonstar asked, walking up to it. "It looks like it's offline."

"It's meant to," Captain America replied, "At least according to Fury. I haven't really… been around… since computers were invented, so I don't have much personal knowledge of how they work…"

"I got it, then," Moonstar said, her glowing eye flashing more brightly as she knelt down to the computer's interface, her powers at work.

A few seconds later, the lights came on, though a few kept flickering.

"Good," Shadowcat said, putting away her flashlight. "Now this place doesn't look QUITE so creepy."

The room was silent for the next few moments, as Moonstar used her powers to continue to hack into the base's old system and reactivate old nodes. Shadowcat and Captain America leaned against the wall. The near-complete silence was awkward enough that Shadowcat felt compelled to say something just to break the tension.

"So, uh… Captain America… how long have you been, y'know… awake?"

"You knew about my being in a deep freeze?" the Captain said, turning towards Shadowcat, an eyebrow raised. "Hrrm. Logan must've told you all more about my history than Fury assumed. Classic Logan, never quite playing by the rules…"

"Well, Mister Logan had actually told Kurt a few years back, and then a few weeks later Kurt had told me… as well as the rest of the X-Men," Shadowcat shrugged, sighing.

"Fury had told me Logan died a few months back, on this same island," Captain America said, his gaze lowering to the ground. "I'm… sorry. To think that I've actually outlived him… well, I never would've guessed it."

"Yeah… yeah, I really miss him," Shadowcat said, her voice wavering slightly before she cleared her throat and brought her emotions back under control.

"So do I…" Captain America said, before wiping his eyes and continuing. "So, anyways, to answer your question, I've only been 'awake' for about two days, now. Since then, well… it's been quite an info dump. I'm still getting used to this whole 'Mutant' thing. Well, that and… heh… all these computers."

"Really? Just two days?" Shadowcat asked, astonished. "Was that a coincidence, or…?"

"No, it wasn't," the Captain replied, his tone becoming a little perturbed. "That, after all these decades, I was raised back into consciousness only to deal with an international crisis isn't lost on me. After this is all over, Fury and I… we're going to have a few words."

"So how did they…?" Shadowcat began.

"They spliced my DNA with a bit of some taken from Logan… don't ask me how they got it," Captain America replied. "But regardless, once they integrated it with my bodily systems, Logan's healing factor stopped and reversed the cellular decay that had been a long-term side effect of my undergoing the Super Soldier process. I'm officially classified as a 'half-Mutant' now... whatever that's supposed to mean."

"I hope that doesn't mean you'll be affected by the radiation Magneto's been enveloping this island with," Shadowcat replied. Gesturing to Moonstar, she continued, "I know with this big of an area, it's slow-acting, but Moonstar's hair is already speckled through with gray—a sign that it's affecting her—and she's only been here for a few hours."

"I don't want to alarm you, but I'm starting to see a few white hairs around your temples, as well," Captain America said. "The sooner we get this whole operation shut down, the better."

"Well at least it's making this whole 'hacking' thing a little bit easier," Moonstar replied, still making her way through the computer's systems. "I'm farther than I thought I'd be. I've almost got the whole system rebooted at this point… Anyways, I don't know if the brainwashing aspect of this radiation is working. If it worked like Professor X said it did, than I should slowly become less emotional… but if anything, I'm MORE angry at Magneto than ever."

"Oh, that's right, you weren't around when I briefed the others over the comlinks on the info Kurt picked up," Shadowcat said. "From what he told us, before the Cyttorak gems were even, like, powered up, Mystique—posing as various other Acolytes, of course—managed to gain access to the radiation controls and tweak them slightly. Like Magneto, she wanted more powerful Mutants, so she kept that part of the programming intact—however, she altered the wavelengths to inflame emotions, not suppress them, so that the Acolytes would be MORE likely to rebel."

"And no one caught on?" Moonstar asked.

"Hey, this is the same woman who switched Juggernaut with Xavier in the Stone Penitentiary, remember?" Kitty responded. "I'm sure she masked her intrusion somehow—according to Kurt, it didn't take a radical change in the radiation wavelength."

"Wait a minute…" Moonstar said, looking like she was about to respond to Kitty's statement but was interrupted by whatever part of the system she was hacking into. "Ah-HA! There is a link into the mainframe from here…"

"Where?" Shadowcat asked.

"The west wing, room…. 2F. It's a direct connection—Magneto must have been rummaging through old S.H.I.E.L.D. info for something. Or at least, one of his subordinates was."

"2F… according to the schematics, that's not far from here," Captain America said. "If it's a direct connection, there could be a way into Magneto's base proper in that room. Good job, Moonstar—let's get going."

"Wait, hold on a sec!" Moonstar said. "I'm now in HIS computer system… I can't believe he'd… woah. Okay, guys? I think we have a target."

"What? What is it?" Shadowcat asked as Moonstar stood up, apparently disengaging from her cyber-link as her glowing eye dimmed back down to its normal brightness.

"Captain America, unfortunately you're wrong. There's nothing larger than a cable leading into Magneto's base from 2F... but I've got something better. The power center for this whole island is located in a sub-floor of the main base, below everything else—it's even located below the level WE'RE on. I also know where they're probably keeping their prisoners, but… if we knock out this power center, everything on the island will shut down within minutes—including the towers spewing radiation. But… I'm not sure if you actually WANT to destroy this power source…"

"What? Why not?" Captain America questioned.

"Because it's not a typical reactor, it's—well, it's got a Mutant in it—he's being held there, against his will. It's… it's Legion."

"Legion?!" Shadowcat asked in disbelief. "How is that even possible? His powers can't—"

Kitty's inquiry was drowned out as a huge, muffled explosion sounded from far above, and the world around them collapsed.

Something's not right.

Magneto looked around the hallway where he and a small group of Acolytes were stationed, awaiting further updates from the Five-in-One.

But it had been at least ten minutes since the last update. Far too long. Oh, he had been contacted further by them, the reports confirming that—as expected, unfortunately—the other groups had either fallen or retreated back to the main tower and its surrounding buildings, as those accursed S.H.I.E.L.D. troops essentially negated their gifts. But that had been it.

Five-in-One? Magneto asked, cautiously taking off his helmet.

No response.

FIVE-IN-ONE?!

Still nothing.

Magneto cursed and turned around to his subordinates. "Have any of you heard ANYTHING from Five-in-One?"

All of the Acolytes present shook their heads.

"I'm going back down to the Hub," Magneto said, "Try to find out what the blazes is keeping them from updating us. If you hear anything amiss, you shoot to kill, understand?!"

All of the Acolytes nodded—save two.

"Skin? DJ? Do either of you two have a problem with my orders?" Magneto snarled, walking up to the two of them. "Skin" was using the extra skin drooping from his arms to keep a nearly-unconscious Pyro in a standing position, while "DJ" had a gun pointed at the prisoner's head.

"A little bit, yeah," DJ said, removing his shades and turning the walkman he always carried around with him to a different track, his eyes turning an icy blue as he did so. "We're getting' a bit tired a' you being so… what's the word, Skin?"

"Flippant," Skin spat out.

Magneto was honestly surprised. When they had been brought here, Skin and DJ had both been ideal Acolytes—always following orders, never questioning what they were told… at least vocally, anyways.

So why this sudden rebellious streak? Why now? If anything, they should be even more obedient than they've been because of the radiation…

Magneto put back on his helmet, never taking his eyes off the two. "So. It's mutiny, is it? Why now?"

"Because you've been pushin' us all around for too long now," DJ began, the icy glow of his eyes glowing brighter as he continued, "And we're not gonna—"

A sudden loud crack sounded from one side of the wall as a jagged shard of metal was torn off of it, followed a fraction of a second later by two wet, dull thuds as both DJ and Skin fell suddenly to the ground, blood flowing from the new gaping wounds in their heads onto the cold metal floor.

Magneto could tell the other Acolytes present were taken aback—just as he wanted.

"Let that be a lesson to you all," Magneto said, dropping the shard of metal that hovered in the air behind the two bodies to the floor. "If you think you can disobey my orders, NOW of all times… you are wrong."

"Y-yes, Magneto," stammered the other Acolytes still standing.

"Now, Primal—grab a hold of Pyro, and crush his head like a melon if he moves," Magneto ordered, gesturing to the Brotherhood member who had been dumped on the ground, just barely stirring. "M, you will take sole responsibility of making sure Rogue stays in line—do you both understand?"

Both nodded wordlessly.

As soon as the Acolyte named Primal had put an arm around Pyro's neck and hoisted him up into the air by it, Magneto turned around and walked quickly in the direction of the elevator that would take him down the Hub.

He was just about to enter said elevator when a huge explosion sounded from behind him.

It was an unusual scene, down in the Hub.

None of the Five-in-One were at their stations, connected to the Cerebro Mark II. They had abandoned their headsets, and currently stood around the reactor in the center of the room—a reactor that housed—in one of his many personas—Legion.

"Can you see us, David?" the Five all asked.

"I…. I… I think I can," Legion said in David's voice, though visually he still looked like the stick-thin electricity-spewing alter-ego seen inside Legion's mindscape. "How… how is this possible?"

"We're giving you direct control over the sight of one of your personas—namely, the one that's in control right now," the Five replied.

"You… you can do that?"

"We're psychic Mutants with a partially shared hive mind, David. Individually, we're not particularly powerful, but together—as we all are now—we're the most powerful telepaths in the world. Because of recent events, we've come to the conclusion that we're… even more powerful than your father. Nearly anything that is possible with the mind, we can do."

"Then how c-come you don't… just… erase the others?!"

"Two reasons. First, your psyche has been fractured for too long, with different portions of your brain—your other selves, if you will—developing in different ways, at different rates. If we were to wipe them all out, a large portion of your brain would shut down. You would be, effectively, a vegetable. Second, your current 'active' persona is able to withstand extremely high temperatures and pressures in that reactor—that's the only reason you're alive. If you were to fully switch to any of your other personas—which, under Magneto's command, we mentally locked this persona from being able to do—you would die almost instantaneously, before the reactor had a chance to cool down and de-pressurize."

Legion stood there in the reactor for a moment, a heartbroken, hopeless look on his face slowly forming. "S-so, then… if that's the case… why did you free me? What do you want me to do?"

"We now see that Magneto's use of you as only an energy source was misguided, David. We don't—no one deserves to live like this. We see that now. And so we want to set you free."

"You want… you want me to change to a different personality on purpose? To…to kill myself?" David asked.

"…Yes, David. We understand it is not an easy decision to make, but compared to…this… we think it would be a release."

"Wait… hold on… WHY now?" Legion asked. "If I'm going to do this, I want to know… What made you change your mind on this?"

He's asking too many questions, one of the Five—Celeste- said telepathically to her sisters. I told you it would come to this.

And so? thought back Mindee. Why shouldn't he know? It's not like he'll be alive long enough to do anything about it.

But he still made us promise not to tell anyone else, outside of the two who already know, Phoebe replied. If he finds out that we told anyone else—even Legion—which he very easily could…

Phoebe is right, Sophie said. We can't take that chance. Not for something like this.

It's agreed, then? thought the last sister, Esme. We do this—we make him change—and then we leave. No looking back.

Legion—or David, rather—was growing anxious at the sudden apparent silence among the Five. "…What's wrong? Why won't you tell me?!"

"We're sorry," the Five replied. "We truly are. We wanted you to go to your death believing that you were dying for a better cause—to deal a blow to your father's enemy, Magneto. But now, because you had to keep asking questions… now we simply must tell you. You are something in the way—something that will prevent us from achieving a better future. He said you must be eliminated… you are too unpredictable. Your presence would jeopardize the future of the Mutant race itself."

"No…." Legion said sadly. "You can't! I have to tell my f-"

But they did. Immediately Legion changed form into David, who let out a shrieking, horrifying scream of agony as the intense heat and pressure cooked him inside the reactor in less than a second.

A charred, flaming skeletal corpse slumped to the bottom of the reactor core.

"We've got less than a minute before the reactor output isn't able to sustain power throughout the building," Mindee said urgently. "We need to get back on Cerebro and call her—she said she would be ready, whether she had taken care of the intruder or not."

Esme looked about ready to respond, but was interrupted by the sound of a large explosion far above them.

Boom Boom pinched her sinuses.

She had been instrumental in getting one of the radiation towers operational, and thus had been occupied during the X-Men's surprise attack on Genosha. She had been ordered to go back to the main tower in the center of the island as the assault had begun, and then had been one of the many sent out to look for the mysterious Mutant signature that had popped up inside the force field afterwards.

Like all of the others, she had returned empty-handed—but unlike most of the others, she had stayed out considerably longer. She had been hoping, praying that the lone X-Man on the island had been Magma, just so she could have the reward of killing the traitor herself.

It had only been after several hours that she had reluctantly turned back towards the base—only to see as she got back Acolytes going spreading outwards in every direction from the tower. Apparently that lone X-Man—or someone else—had managed to get the force field down, and now there were four invading parties coming in from all cardinal directions.

She had followed one of the groups, from the rear given how tired she had been from already going to-and-fro all over the island—only to discover that, of course, the group they had engaged hadn't included Amara.

Still, she had been able to take comfort in the fact that given how vastly they outnumbered the X-Men, it wouldn't have been long until they were all dead…

…Until those cheating S.H.I.E.L.D. flunkies had shown up. With their cheater weapons. And ruined EVERYTHING.

It hadn't taken her long to see where things were going, and so she had retreated to the center of the island, where the main tower and a couple of locked-down blocks of newly-erected housing for the various Acolytes were located.

Despite how tired Tabitha was, she had booked it to the center, because she knew that everyone would be coming here soon enough. So she had laid an ambush for them, creating several of her energy spheres—some of the biggest she had ever created, thanks to the increasing effects of the island's radiation on her—and hidden them in the various nooks and crannies among the Acolytes' housing around the tower, planning to trigger them as soon as the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers and X-Men entered the area, essentially opening up a huge sinkhole underneath them all. Like most of the other Acolytes, she knew about the fairly extensive network of underground tunnels spreading out from beneath the main tower and thus under the Acolytes' housing, as well. Charges as big as the ones she had laid were bound to send the very ground crumbling out from underneath all of them. She had tried to get the attention of any of the Five, to let the other Acolytes know—only to find that, for some reason, they were no longer responding.

Still, she reasoned, this was their last chance. Magneto and a few others were still hiding in the main tower, but it wouldn't be long. The depowered Acolytes were retreating at a full pace back towards the main tower— that is, the ones who were still alive. A few of them, like poor Chamber, had died as soon as they were depowered, their Mutant powers having been the only thing keeping them alive. Some of the Acolyte fliers had also had the unfortunate predicament of being high up in the air when they were hit with the depowering beams.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers were chasing the depowered Acolytes, shooting a pink beam from their "cheater" guns every now and then to keep the retreating Acolytes depowered. They were followed in the rear by the X-Men and Brotherhood members, who were slowly but surely catching up with the retreating members of her side.

Tabitha knew that no matter what choice she made, some of the Acolytes were going to die as a result of her actions here. She hadn't expected the incoming enemies to be so organized—the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops were all at the front of the charge, the X-Men and Brotherhood taking up the rear. She had been hoping to take all of them out at once—but if she waited much longer, the S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers would be too near to the center tower, and would likely be spared from the blasts of the energy spheres she had laid down earlier. And, as much as she hated to admit it, they were the real threat here.

Boom Boom finally stopping pinched her sinuses and cursed. Fraggit, she was getting tired of waiting. It was the Acolyte's own faults if they couldn't get out of the way of what she had laid down.

So, from her position hidden amongst a couple of trees on a rock outcropping overlooking the whole fledgling Acolyte "city" about a half-mile outside the "zone of destruction", she snapped her fingers.

And immediately several ear-splitting booms sounded from all around the city—incinerating many of the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers immediately, as well as at least a dozen Acolytes.

Tabitha shielded her eyes, and when she deemed it safe to look towards the center of the island again she could already hear the rumbling—holes in the ground started to appear under the epicenters of the explosions and then rapidly spread outwards, pulling down almost all of the armed S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers. The huge expanding sinkholes began to merge, forming a thick ring around the central tower—and before they could do much about it, some of the groundbound X-Men and Brotherhood members fell into the edges of the utterly massive circular sinkhole, although as the massive cave-in slowly came to a stop, Boom Boom was intensely disappointed to see many of them had managed to back up in time to avoid sliding into the massive hole of dirt, debris, and dust with their comrades.

Still, on the other hand, she was elated to see that a certain familiar flaming female was among those who tumbled into the massive hole.

Time to finish this, Boom Boom thought, beginning to climb down the rock outcropping and make her way quickly towards the sinkhole, dirt and dust beginning to rise in a thick cloud from the ring around the central tower which, from the sounds of things, had finally stopped expanding, now roughly three hundred feet wide from the outer to the inner edges. A few moments later, when she felt she was out in the open enough where some of the others might have been able to see her despite the dust, she slouched onto the ground, the tall grass hiding her form as she continued to crawl her way forward.

As soon as the people holding her captive looked up at the ceiling in confusion at the sound of a massive explosion, Rogue—not quite as out of it as she had played—immediately took advantage of the opportunity.

Using M's stern hold of her arms as a pivot point, Rogue swept her legs underneath M's, attempting to get the strong—but average-sized—Mutant to fall down to the floor.

In an attempt to keep herself from tripping over Rogue's feet, M reflexively grabbed hold of Rogue's arms—only for, in the moment they were out of M's grasp, Rogue to move her hands just enough where M grabbed her power-sapping manacles. Because of her superhuman strength, M broke the manacles as she fell down—and Rogue couldn't help but smile as she reached down and grabbed a hold of M, sending the Acolyte into a coma and granting Rogue her powers.

"What th-?!" yelled an Acolyte that was holding onto Jean. "Primal, get—"

He was interrupted as the ceiling above them suddenly led out an incredibly loud crack, giving way to the explosion's initial, massive shockwave. Rogue barely heard one of the Acolytes cry for everyone to retreat, right before the ceiling collapsed on top of her.

"Something's happening way up there," Celeste said as the entire Hub room began to shake from the shockwaves of the explosion.

"Then it's time for us to get out of here," Phoebe replied, running over to one of the Cerebro Mark II interfaces and putting on the helmet. "Now, before the power runs out and this is unable to function…"

As Phoebe closed her eyes and concentrated, the other four turned their attention to the ceiling, which was shaking wildly, despite the explosion apparently being so far up. The reinforced structure of the room was the only thing keeping the room intact at all, that much they were certain of.

A few seconds passed, and Blink suddenly appeared in the room, falling onto her back as the last shockwaves made their way through the room.

"Blink!" Esme called out in concern, she and Celeste running over to help up their purple-skinned friend.

"What happened?!" Celeste asked.

"Nothing…. It's nothing," Blink said, wiping the blood from underneath her eyes and ignoring the large welt on her forehead. "One of the X-Men got the better of me… would've been for good, given that S.H.I.E.L.D. thugs showed up soon afterwards with some power-sapping blasters. They didn't work on me, though, and I think I know—"

"Save the explanations for later," the Five said as one, Phoebe disconnecting from the Cerebro Mark II as the lights began to flicker. "If we stay here much longer, someone—whether, it's the X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D., or Magneto—will be out for blood. We need to leave before they can piece together anything."

As all of the Five-in-One put a hand on one of Blink's arms, she sighed and said, "Alright, then…. we're taking a quick stop to catch Rockslide, and then we're out of here. Hope you all don't mind cold weather."

And in another blink of purplish pink light, they were gone.

Avalanche slowly got up from his position on the ground near the edge of the massive ring-shaped sinkhole, rubbing his head.

The rumbling and cracking noises had finally faded—now all that lay before him for several hundred yards was a pit, a menagerie of bits of metal and rock making up the bottom a couple dozen feet down—though no doubt there were tons of people buried under that.

"That… was definitely not me," Avalanche said weakly as the Mutants positioned next to him—Quicksilver, about a dozen Multiples, and Beast-got to their feet.

"I thought I heard… an explosion," one of the Multiples said, confused.

"There were several of them," Angel said, landing down next to the group gingerly, his injured wing still giving him a bit of trouble. "All around the central tower—as you can see. This was clearly planned."

"It was a stupid plan," Quicksilver replied, "They just destroyed most of their own structures!"

"And that's not all," Beast said, pointing towards the sky, where the red radiation envelope over the island was rapidly retreating back towards the towers all around the landmass' perimeter.

"Looks like it cut off the power, too," another of the Multiple duplicates said.

"No more radiation problems, then," Angel said, lifting off into the air, "Though we've got plenty of people to dig out!"

"He's right," Beast said, making a careful surveillance of everyone perched on the ground around the edge of the sinkhole. "Those explosions… the resulting collapse, here... nearly all of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops have been buried under that. I'm only counting five that I can see."

*Is… is everyone alright?* came Maverick's voice over the comlink. *What was that loud noise?! Charles seems to be mentally shaken by something, as well…*

"We're most definitely NOT alright," Beast said. "Most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops are buried in rubble, along with some of the X-Men and Brotherhood, to boot. The Acolytes took out some of their own with those blasts, too, but… most of them made it out of the blast radius, and they're crowded around the central tower. I estimate about ten minutes before they start getting their powers back and charging at us again. We're going to need every one of those guns we can afford, Maverick—you and Charles better get here quickly."

*On our way,* Maverick said, the comlink cutting off.

"Hey, look!" one of the Jamies said excitedly, pointing towards the rubble in front of them. "At least SOME of them are okay…"

Below, Hisako—her psychic pink armor surrounding her—was emerging from beneath the avalanche of debris, a grateful S.H.I.E.L.D. agent making his way out from under her. Further away, the group could see a group of boulders melting away as Magma, the Scarlet Witch, and a few other agents came up through them, while a sudden laser burst from the other side followed as Cyclops helped his brother out of that edge of the sinkhole.

"So… what do we do, Mr. McCoy?" one of the Multiples asked. "Do we… do we start digging, seeing if we can help the others out, or should we go after the other Acolytes before they get re-powered?"

Beast glanced at the Acolytes staring back at them from the other side of the ring of debris—all of them were simply looking back at X-Men around them, directionless, leaderless.

Sighing, Hank said, "It'll be at least several minutes before their powers start to come back, and those minutes could mean the difference between life and death for those trapped under all this. Let's focus on our recovery efforts, first. If they attack us again… we'll deal with that when it happens."

"What?! We've gotta take them out while we still have a chance!" Quicksilver said. "If we let my father get away, he'll—"

Quicksilver was interrupted as a huge pile of rocks and debris in the middle of the sinkhole ahead of them suddenly lifted into the air, and out of the middle of them rose—with a roar filled with equal parts rage and frustration—Magneto.

Shadowcat was grateful when she—along with Moonstar and Captain America—finally broke above the piles of debris. She had instinctively phased herself, along with her teammates, just as the whole tunnel they were in had collapsed—and had then phased them through the rock upwards, hoping she and Captain Rogers could hold their breath long enough to make it to the ground level.

They had—but barely. They had obviously been very deep underground—it had taken nearly a minute to get the three of them up to the surface, and with such a sudden collapse and only dusty air to suck in, they hadn't had the best supply in their lungs to begin the journey. As soon as they reached the surface Kitty instantly de-phased them all, as she and Captain America fell to the ground, gasping.

Moonstar, not needing air anymore, took the chance to look up—only to scream a warning at Captain America a second before a huge boulder fell on him from the sky, hard.

The scene was chaos—again. Magneto stood at the center of a huge tornado of rock and metal debris, hurling it every which way at every X-Man, Brotherhood member, or S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in his sight. From what little Moonstar could see of the Acolyte leader, there was no grand speech he was yelling, no taunts—just pure, unadulterated rage at his master plan lying in ruins around him.

"Captain…. Captain America!" Shadowcat gasped, crawling over to the superhero crushed underneath the boulder.

"I'm…. I'll be… okay…" Captain Rogers gritted, blood dribbling from his mouth. "I can feel Logan's healing factor… starting to kick in. I can get this thing off me… myself, I just need… some time. Get…. Magneto."

"You heard him," Moonstar said, helping Shadowcat up and wincing as another boulder was launched haphazardly towards them, Shadowcat phasing them both through the rock as it crashed on to the ground behind him.

"But what can WE do?!" Shadowcat yelled.

Moonstar looked at the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents' bodies around them. Many were mostly crushed underneath the rocks, but a few muffled cries for help could be heard, a few limbs seen twitching between cracks in the layer of debris.

"We can help those who helped us."

"Wanda, hex him already!" Quicksilver yelled, zooming up beside his sister as the other X-Men attempted to avoid or blast back at the rain of rock and metal being shoved in their direction. Several of the Multiple duplicates and remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. agents—along with Storm, Angel, Avalanche, and Colossus—had already been bludgeoned to the ground with debris, though Pietro was certain at least the latter would be completely fine.

"I can't get a fix on him!" the Scarlet Witch yelled back, her hands ready, but unable to find a clear line-of-sight through the whirlwind of rock that lasted for more than a split-second.

"Then we need to CLEAR a path," Quicksilver said, eyeing the duo of Havok and Cyclops blasting away angrily at the debris launched in their team's direction. "And we need to concentrate on one area…. Hold on a sec, sis."

"What-?" Wanda began, but before she could finish her sentence she felt her brother pick her up and her vision become a flash as she was carried at high-speed, the rush of wind against her hair abruptly starting and then stopping in a mere second as she and her brother were finally—suddenly—right next to Havok and Cyclops.

"Quicksilver, what do you need?" Cyclops yelled, his eyebeams blasting out in an almost continuous stream as he deflected or destroyed the debris aimed at him and his team. "We're a bit busy here!"

"We need a path carved," Pietro replied, settling Wanda down. "Just for a minute, at least. To get Wanda in close enough to hex Magneto's powers."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea, with all these rocks in the air," Havok said. "If they all collapse at the same time—"

"You got a better idea?!" Quicksilver yelled back.

A few moments of (relative) silence followed, before Cyclops nodded. "Alright, then get the other conscious blasters here, Pietro, and quickly, before Magneto knows what's going on."

It didn't take more than ten seconds before Surge was there, along with Magma, who had returned to her normal form long enough to be carried.

"Alright, everyone," Cyclops said, nodding quickly to the newcomers. "Everyone that can, fire straightforward and keep running that direction. Fire at any incoming projectiles from either direction, you got it? Make way for Quicksilver, who will take the Scarlet Witch in close enough to hex Magneto's powers away for the moment. Then it'll be a pretty simple matter to take him out."

"Yeah….simple," Surge muttered as Pietro picked up his sister again.

"NOW!" Cyclops yelled, and nearly as one bolts of red energy, fire, and electricity all converged in one path straight down the middle of Magneto's hectic "metal twister", melting or deflecting away the largest pieces of debris, allowing Quicksilver to speedily deliver his sister near the epicenter—and before Magneto could quickly realize what was happening, a hex field surrounded him.

"NOOO!" Magneto yelled as he abruptly began to fall from his position about a hundred feet above the bottom of the sinkhole.

It seemed like Magneto might die from the sheer height of his fall until the huge volume of boulders and debris he had been lifting also all collapsed to the ground as one. Quicksilver did his best to side-step the boulders as they crashed back into the sinkhole, but during his quick dash back-and-forth a medium-sized rock gave Wanda a glancing blow in the side of her head—not enough to knock her out, but enough to cause her to grunt in pain, her hex field temporarily dissipating.

Magneto managed to lift himself back into the air just moments before he was going to collide with the ground.

"It'll take more than a few of you to get rid of—UNH!" Magneto said, grunting as a pink laser impacted him from the side.

"You're right," Maverick yelled, sliding down into the fight from the edge of the sinkhole, the S.H.I.E.L.D. gun he had been given still smoking slightly from the discharge. "So let's turn that nebulous 'few' into 'several', shall we?"

Magneto stood up from his position on the ground, trying in vain to raise any of the debris around him with his powers, and yelling in rage when he realized what had just happened.

The yell was interrupted as Quicksilver flew by him, punching his father full-on in the face and knocking off his helmet before he was able to react.

"PIETRO!" Magneto roared, spitting out a bloody tooth and futilely swatting at his son as he zipped back to a position a couple of dozen feet back, where Wanda was sitting on the ground, rubbing her head. "I freed you from PRISON, boy! You would have still been ROTTING AWAY in a CELL if it wasn't for me! I gave you chance after chance… and THIS is how you REPAY ME?!"

"Funny," Quicksilver said with a sneer, as Maverick, Cyclops, Havok, Magma, and Surge ran up behind him. "You change the accusations, but keep the same sentence at the end… and that's exactly what I would've said to YOU after you left me to Mystique's own devices."

"I'm helping to ADVANCE our kind!" Magneto yelled. "Can't you idiots SEE that? See beyond your own little worlds, and look at the big PICTURE?!"

"You're the one who doesn't seem to get the big picture here," Havok said, firing a blast from his hand and sending the Acolyte leader to the ground. "I mean, I don't exactly consider myself the sharpest knife in the drawer, but c'mon, dude. Look at all the people you've screwed over. I fell for it the first time—like all of the 'Acolytes' you've collected here—which is kind of a creepy term for your team, by the way..."

"…But he learned better," Cyclops continued, firing off a visor blast that pushed Magneto back to the ground just as he was trying to get up again. "We all did. It may have taken some of us longer than the others, but we've all figured out what you haven't been able to admit to yourself—that all anyone ever is is a pawn to you."

"Or just something in your way," Wanda replied as she slowly stood up, sending another hex bolt towards Magneto, who let out a groan of agony as the field enveloped him.

"W-Wanda," Magneto moaned, spreading one of his hands out towards his daughter in a gesture of supplication, "Y-you couldn't control—"

"NO," Wanda snapped back, the hex field around Magneto growing in strength as she said so, her father beginning to writhe in pain. "You won't talk your way out of this one. Not anymore! You locked me up—and then made others MESS WITH MY MIND just to try to cover it up!"

"You left me on my own when I was barely a teenager!" Quicksilver said, zipping past his father and landing several more blows on him. "You managed to turn me against my sister, and then left me behind because I had the GALL to get captured helping out YOUR project!"

As Quicksilver sped back to stand besides Wanda, Havok blasted Magneto with his handbeams, not letting up as he stated angrily, "You turned me against the X-Men before I KNEW any better! You took advantage of me at one of the most NERVE-WRACKING times of my life, and then BRAINWASHED me when I stood WITH you!"

"You attacked the United States!" Magma said, adding her plume of flames to the damage being piled onto the Acolyte leader. "You've KILLED countless innocent people and threatened the entire WORLD!"

"And one of those countless people?" Surge yelled, firing electricity out of her gauntlets at Magneto. "The person who SAVED me from an isolated life inside a cell, and gave me the means to control my powers! And after she had SERVED you loyally for years!"

"You've captured and hurt my friends more times than I can remember!" Cyclops joined in, firing his eye blasts at Magnus. "And I don't know what you've DONE with Kurt, Rogue, and Jean—my FIANCE—but even if they're still alive, you deserve ALL of this, and worse!"

Magneto let out a blood-curdling scream of pain, unable to hold it in any longer—but the five Mutants kept it up. And then, abruptly, the scream died out, and Magneto stopped moving.

Slowly, one by one, the five Mutants let up, watching the battered, charred form of the Acolyte leader lie there on the ground—their expressions a mixture of uncertainty and disbelief. After all this time, after all these battles…

"…Is he finally dead?" Havok asked.

"I'll check his breathing," Magma said, stepping forward carefully, making her way around the collapsed debris everywhere.

She was almost to Magneto when a warning was shouted out by Wanda behind her.

Magma looked up, only to have an energy ball hit her in the back, exploding and causing her to be blown about a dozen feet forwards, a bloody and singed wound showing up through the back of her uniform as her flame form fizzled out and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

"KILL 'EM ALL!" Boom Boom seethed, running towards them from behind, more energy balls forming in her hands as she ran forward. "We can't let them—"

Tabitha was interrupted as Surge swept forward, clocking the Acolyte upside the jaw with her metal gauntlet.

"Not THIS time," Surge said, curling her other hand into a fist as she stood over Boom Boom, who had fallen to her knees, blood beginning to drip out of her mouth, the couple of small "booms" she had formed exploding like firecrackers on the ground.

"ACOLYTES!" Tabitha breathed angrily, addressing the stunned crowd about a hundred yards away, standing near the edge of the small circle of undamaged ground surrounding the main tower. Holding her hand up to her jaw, she continued, "WE CAN STILL—"

Tabitha was interrupted by another punch in the back of her head by Surge, knocking her on her back.

"Stay DOWN," Surge muttered, her gauntlets sparking, "Or those will be the last words you ever speak."

Boom Boom glared daggers at Surge, but finally kept quiet.

Mutters began to circulate among the group of remaining Acolytes, and a few moments later a fairly short, black teenager with a cracked orange visor slowly walked forward out of the group. His shoulders were slumped, and his face looked utterly dejected as he began to scale down the side of the sinkhole towards them.

"WHY are you doing this?!" Prodigy yelled, though his tone wasn't full of rage so much as it was full of hurt, disappointment, and confusion.

"I could ask you the same question!" Cyclops yelled, starting forward, his hand carefully on his visor as Quicksilver ran forward and began to check Magneto's body for any signs of life. On the horizon, everyone present could see the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets coming towards the sinkhole ruins from every direction, the threat of Magneto apparently over. Addressing the crowd of Acolytes, he continued, "Why did you do this?! Why did you follow this—this megalomaniac—and bomb structures throughout the U.S., killing hundreds?"

"Because THIS WAS OUR CHANCE AT UTOPIA!" Prodigy screamed back, tears starting to roll down his cheeks as he saw Quicksilver stand up smirking over Magneto's corpse and kick it, apparently satisfied that his father was dead. "Not just for us—but for you—for ALL OF YOU! We did it for EVERY MUTANT OUT THERE!"

"We didn't ASK you to," Cyclops replied back as Prodigy finished scaling down into the sinkhole. Cyclops slowed his walk towards the Acolyte now, only about a dozen meters separating them.

"And what DID you ask us to do?!" Prodigy continued, gesturing wildly with his hands now that they were free. "You asked us to… TO SUBMIT to humans! Our inferiors—people… people like THEM!"

Cyclops didn't have to look behind him to know that Prodigy was pointing at the incoming S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets.

"Really? Your 'inferiors', huh? Funny, they didn't just bomb dozens of buildings full of innocents. They might not be perfect, but they're people, all the same. Just like YOU. Just like US. Just because they don't have special powers doesn't make them—"

"That's EXACTLY what it makes them!" Prodigy screamed back. "'Special' powers means exactly that! Why should we submit our gifts to THEM!?"

"That's the mistake you're making, drawing lines in the sand here!" Cyclops replied. "Or rather, Magneto was drawing lines in the sand. And you followed him along, with promises of a 'utopia'. And look at you—look at ALL of you—what are your ages, huh? I don't think I see anyone here over thirty!"

Prodigy just stared at Cyclops for a moment, bewildered, before responding. "SO?! What the heck is that supposed to mean?!"

Cyclops stared at Prodigy for a second before lowering his voice. "From Nightcrawler's description… you're Prodigy, right? You pick up knowledge from other people's heads?"

Prodigy nodded slowly.

"Then YOU, of all people, should know the FIRST people who always fall for the propaganda of dictators and the promises of utopia. Who make up the masses of their little pet armies, because they aren't familiar enough yet with the world and eager to find their own place in it, and will listen to anybody—anybody—who will give them a real purpose in life."

"…Teenagers and young adults…" Prodigy said, his eyes darting around as he came to a realization.

"Say it louder."

"YES! YES, IT'S PEOPLE OUR AGE!" Prodigy exploded. "But SO WHAT? That doesn't prove ANYTHING—like you know, the Mutant population is exponentially GROWING, and- and who are YOU to talk down to us? YOU'RE THE SAME AGE! Nearly all of the X-Men are!"

"But we weren't turned to Professor X's side by promises of utopia!" Cyclops shot back. "Almost all of us—we didn't WANT this. He told us that the road to a better life would be long, and it would be hard and it would be thankless, and we would need to understand not only ourselves, but other people's points of view, too! And even when they hated us, we would still HELP them, not only because we wanted to show we weren't monsters, but because it was THE RIGHT THING TO DO! And there was—there IS—no magical, strife-free future ahead of us in this world! Don't you get it?! History NEVER ends that way! Things might get better… for a while, but it never lasts, because of people like Magneto! And anyone who has EVER fought, not just for a better world, but a step further- for some nonexistent 'utopia' where everyone gets along and has everything they want, where nobody ever hates and persecutes anyone else… that has ALWAYS ended in a bloodbath, with the exact opposite result of that intended! Just like it did THIS time!"

"Because of Magneto?! Because of YOU!" Prodigy seethed. "If you hadn't come here and RUINED everything! I've known Magneto for months now, and he wasn't—"

"He DID, Prodigy! He used you—ALL of you!" Cyclops replied, turning his head up to address the crowd of Acolytes. "That's all anybody EVER is to people like Magneto—pawns, statistics, a MEANS to an END! And all it eventually means is that someone eventually gets tired of it, and turns into ANOTHER Magneto with their OWN ends—and the cycle just continues!"

"What on earth are you talking about?!" Prodigy asked.

"As much as I'd like to take credit, we didn't do this all by ourselves! Nightcrawler was led on by someone pretending to be one of us, leading to his disabling of the force field surrounding this island—and we weren't behind whatever created this sinkhole, either!"

"You-you're LYING!" Prodigy yelled. "This is all just some—"

No. It isn't. I almost wish it was.

Everyone turned their head towards Professor X, who was coming up behind Cyclops, along with Maverick. Further behind them, the various S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets were carefully landing on the outside edge of the sinkhole, as emergency medical specialists, a few remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers, and Nick Fury jumped out of the vehicles.

Yes, I'm speaking to all of you telepathically, thought Professor X, his voice sounding off in the brains of everyone around him. It's… much easier on the voice than yelling from this distance.

"Then what do you want?" Prodigy asked, his voice getting louder as he tried to be heard by everyone over the sound of the helijets landing. "We're not—I'M not—joining your little club!"

This isn't about that. Not at all, Xavier thought back. He looked up toward Prodigy, who was surprised to see that Xavier's expression was stricken with grief, a few tears rolling down his cheeks. But I think you—and everyone else here—deserves to know the truth. Colonel Fury and I have been communicating back and forth, trying to piece together everything—and although we still don't have all the answers, we do know some.

Do you know Laurie Collins?

"Laurie… Collins?" Prodigy asked, confused. Shaking his head, he continued, "No. Never heard of her. Why-?"

I thought—I'd have liked to believe, at least—that most of you had little idea what was really happening on this island. And it appears I was right. Laurie Collins—she was an Acolyte, assigned to influence Jamie Madrox's trial. But she failed, and before we could capture her she, along with several others, teleported away. But curiously, I'm not detecting her among any of you, and Colonel Fury told me none of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents ran into her, either. Her powers would have been quite the benefit in a battle like this, but she wasn't there. So where is she? You all seem particularly shaken up by the possibility that Magneto could have killed your own. Which leaves me with a rather morbid option, but one which is by far the likeliest—she was killed, and then her very existence erased from your minds.

Prodigy was just about to cry out in protest, but stopped himself—as, it seems, did the other Acolytes grouped behind him. Now that he thought back… who WAS the Acolyte they had sent to Jamie Madrox's trial? He honestly couldn't remember. There was Blink, and Rockslide, and one of the Five, but they weren't…

Wait.

"The Five-in-One," Prodigy said. "They… they had a psychic connection to everyone in the island. I didn't think they would EVER do such a thing, but… but they could have, and…"

And that's not even the worst part. Do you also remember "Legion"?My son? Less then fifteen minutes ago, he died. But as he died—I heard his cries, psychically. In a fraction of a second, he told me everything. Who was really providing the power for this entire island.

"'Who'?" Prodigy asked. "You mean what. I was in charge of channeling the experimental power source Magneto had found to use, and it was ununtrium, under extreme pressure—"

He was lying. The power source—the power source was David- Legion.

"But—that's not-" Prodigy began. "Wait… how could you possibly know he died while getting us….?"

If you'll allow me, I can explain. And, once we finish digging out all this mess, I'll have an ample amount of proof…

"Wait! Do you hear that?" Shadowcat asked, putting her head down towards the ground, at the bottom of the small sinkhole excavation she, Moonstar, and some of the other X-Men had started to help dig out.

"Who, Professor Xavier?" one of the Multiples asked. "I think he's speaking to everyone—"

"No, not that!" Shadowcat hissed, motioning for Jamie to stay quiet. "Below."

"Help! Anyone up there? Heeeellp!"

It was just barely audible, but it was clearly Pyro's voice.

"Pyro?!" Moonstar yelled back down. "What's going on? Are the other—the other prisoners with you down there?"

It was a few seconds before a reply came back. "Yeah, it's me… I don't how you all got here, but we're trapped—all of us—inside one a' the cells down here! There's a little light comin' in through a crack in the ceiling… The whole place down here collapsed on top of us, but we managed to—mostly—get inside one 'a these reinforced cells right before the whole thing came down. Jean and Gambit are in here with me, though they're both unconscious… some Acolytes are trapped in here too, we've called a temporary truce given the situation."

"Wait… Pyro, where's Rogue?" Shadowcat yelled. "I was told she was with you guys, too!"

"That's the thing…" Pyro said hesitantly. "Rogue and two others—they didn't make it in before the collapse—I don't know if it's possible if they survived or not, but we're afraid to dig outwards without more bloody rocks collapsin' on top of 'em…"

"Then we dig as fast as we can!" one of the Multiple clones yelled back, splitting into five more Jamies.

"I'm gonna phase down there, see if I can help," Shadowcat yelled.

Giving a glance back at Moonstar and the others as they immediately began quickening their pace at digging through the rubble, Shadowcat phased into the ground, hoping against hope that her friend was still alive somewhere down there.

Prodigy wasn't sure when he had fallen to his knees.

But the information Xavier had given to him—as well as everyone else in the vicinity—was simply sickening. He had felt dizzy as he began to piece it all together.

He was tempted to dismiss it all as lies, but it just made too much sense. The Five-in-One had to be behind most—if not all—of this, he knew it. They were in the Hub, and they were behind most of the day-to-day communication between different parties on Genosha, coordinating the building efforts—they had to KNOW Legion had really been Genosha's power source, and since they had gone silent even before the sinkhole had opened up, they must've purposefully cut themselves off from the others for a reason he couldn't fathom. Why NOW, of all times?

Worse still, they were probably long gone. Apparently sometime shortly before the sinkhole had opened up, Blink—who had been captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers and held in a temporary cell on one the helijets—had abruptly sprung back into consciousness, elbowed a trooper before he could do anything, and then immediately teleported out. Given the timing, she had certainly gone to get the Five-in-One, for whatever reason.

More disturbing still was the fact that Blink had been zapped repeatedly with those power-nullifying guns, yet she had still teleported away. It hadn't been nearly long enough for their effects to have worn off yet—they had just recently worn off of Prodigy himself, despite the fact that he had been one of the first waves of Acolytes shot with the guns. (Worse still, the bits of information that his Mutant telepathic powers apparently classified as "knowledge" confirmed that Xavier was not lying—at the very least, he was telling them what he thought to be true.)

That shouldn't have been possible. The guns nullified EVERYONE'S Mutant powers, even Magneto's- who was one of the most advanced, powerful Mutants around. And yet it hadn't phased Blink.

Prodigy barely looked up as Nick Fury—flanked by a few S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers all carrying their power-nullifying weapons—walked up, looking down at him.

"Well, son, you've been given the rundown," Nick Fury said, taking a toothpick out of his mouth and raising his voice so that every one of the Acolytes nearby could hear him. "So, you—and everyone ELSE here—has a decision to make. We're all tired, we're all beat- worn, hurt, bloody. But if you want to carry on this stupid charade—or any of you other Acolytes—we'll still oblige. Thing is, even though you've narrowed our numbers considerably with this stupid sinkhole stunt of yours, we still—"

"Wait," Prodigy said, speaking up again as he looked up at the S.H.I.E.L.D. colonel standing in front of him. "We didn't make that sinkhole. What—you think we would have just BURIED that many of our own?"

"That's exactly what I think," Fury said, putting to the toothpick back in his mouth and chewing it absentmindedly.

"Well, you're wrong," Prodigy said. "Even if Magneto or the Five-in-One DID, none of the rest of us would EVER—"

"I did!" Boom Boom shouted out from her position a few dozen yards away, having been silent under Surge's watchful eye until now. "I placed my own charges all over this place—it was the only way to stop them!"

Prodigy was simply dumbstruck at the admission. Tabitha seemed almost PROUD of her decision.

After a few moments of silence, Prodigy simply yelled back dejectedly, "So… you did what you had to, right? Sacrifice some of us, and who knows how many more down below, just so you could take out SOME of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers…"

"Exactly!" Boom Boom said, relieved that Prodigy apparently saw her point of view. "You get what I did, right? It was them or us—"

"You're exactly like Magneto!" Prodigy yelled, though as sapped and burned-out as he looked given how much his worldview had been destroyed in the past few minutes, he looked like he was using all his remaining energy just to get his voice loud enough so she could hear. "Using us all like pawns… gambling with our lives…"

"I wasn't USING you, you idiot, you were in the—"

"….Surge, is it?" Prodigy asked, looking sadly at the Brotherhood member, who looked back, curious as to why she was being addressed. "Do what YOU have to do."

Surge's confused look slowly turned to a smile, and one her metal gauntlets again connected with the side of Tabitha's head, knocking her unconscious.

"….Well," Nick Fury said after a few moments of tense silence, "Now that THAT'S been ironed out, what I was SAYING is that although I can see some of the Acolytes' powers coming back, we still have our power-sapping guns. Not to mention the X-Men and Brotherhood members watching our backs. So you all have a choice—you can try to fight us again, and although you'll maybe bring down a few of us, you'll fail, and you'll be brought down again—HARD. OR, you could give up this whole idea—seeing as how it's in ruins and everything—and help us dig out any survivors, right before we arrest you and take you back to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. prison capable of handling you."

Looking down at Prodigy, Nick Fury said out of one side of his mouth, "So, how about you, Glasses?"

"I…. I'll go with the latter," Prodigy said softly, his shoulders slumping.

"Smart choice," Fury said. Turning his head up to face the rest of the Acolyte crowd, he continued, "Now, how about the rest of you?"

The End
 

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