Now.

The night was one without stars nor moon, casting down upon the rundown and abandoned Massachusetts Academy almost complete darkness. It created an atmosphere that was well suited for the two figures that ran through the Victorian-style estate's corridors with the utmost of urgency. They both were dressed in black combat fatigues littered with "X" adorned pockets, belts, and high-impact kevlar. On their heads they wore slender black headsets that acted as walkie talkies between them, their teammates, and their base of operations.

"Just like old times, eh Wolvie?" Jubilation Lee, the young X-Woman known for a while there as both Jubilee and then FX, asked of the man running ahead of her.

"You betcha, squirt," the man known only as Logan and Wolverine said as he ran slightly ahead of Jubilee. He cocked his head to the side and under his breath he muttered, "Well, 'cept the costumes are a lot more reasonable..."

"Think we're gonna be the only two left able to defeat an unknown super force that's quite possibly just decimated an entire of squad of X-Men?" Jubilee asked through her huffs and heaves as the two ran along the darkened corridors of the former Massachusetts Academy. The response she got wasn't the one she expected.

Wolverine winced sickly and came to a sudden stop ahead of, flinging his arm out to his side to block his longtime sidekick from going any further. Jubilee skidded to a stop behind him as she saw his gesture and cocked an annoyed brow.

"No..." he spat sternly and in a nasally voice.

"You ol' fuddy duddy," Jubilee grumbled as she crossed her arms and began tapping her foot anxiously. "If I hadn't known better, I'd say you've lost your mojo -- "

Wolverine's sudden snorting and grunting interrupted the young woman's obnoxious rant and Jubilee's eyes went wide as she saw him cover his face with a hand. Blood was gushing out from his nose and his body was started to tremble.

"Darlin', I mean somethin's wrong..." Wolverine explained to her and starting waving his free hand in the direction they had just came from. Jubilee started backing up slowly, but sped up her movements as her mentor groaned, "Run, kid! Get outta here!"

Jubilee sped around away from Wolverine on the heel of her foot and began into a sprint, but Wolverine knew his attempts to warn her and her attempts to escape were only in vein as a crimson ray of energy shot out of the shadows in front of him and flew past his frame. The beam struck Jubilee square in the back and she cried out in pain as she was sent crashing to the floor with a loud thump. She was unconscious in mere seconds.

"Coward!" Wolverine roared as he charged into the shadows, the twin metal clangs of SHNINKT sounding as three six-inch blades erupted from the back of his hands. An unusual pain followed and blood erupted from the wounds, but Wolverine had knew the significance of it all too well and fought through it.

A set of a half-dozen dark bluish tendrils - elastic yet dense looking, like rubber - shot out from the shadows Wolverine was charging into aimed for the small man. He slashed and hacked at the barrage of tendrils as they struck at him, trying to take hold of his stocky and muscular build, but more and more tendrils kept springing from the shadows onto him, forcing him backwards and into one of the walls of the hallway.

When Wolverine struck the wall, not only was the blood gushing from his nose and hands, but it was now oozing unnaturally from his eyes and mouth as he was overcome by the tendrils. He was growing weaker and weaker by the second when he should be feeling the berserker rage he's known in the past, but he just couldn't find the strength to fight on. And though his face was covered with blood and his vision strained with sudden exhaustion, he knew he was beginning to see a face emerge from the shadows.

His and his teammates' mysterious assailant came into light with a sinister grin on his face that Wolverine recognized all too well, and he knew then that they had been set up to take a fall on their mission into the former Massachusetts Academy. Before Wolverine could say anything though, a wave of crimson energy suddenly washed over his limp body and he let out a battle cry that quickly died in his throat.

Then in those last few moments, much like so many moments in his past, all there was for the man known as Logan was darkness and laughter...

Then.

"Rise an' shine," a voice awoke Emma Frost that early morning. It was accompanied with the echoes of heavy foot steps in a concrete hall and the clanging of a metal cell door as it was slid open, and the imprisoned woman stirred from underneath her covers on her small and dingy bed at the sudden bombardment of such obnoxious sounds.

Emma drew her head up and lifted the blanket from over her body, exposing the diamond-skinned features of her body that wasn't exposed by an orange jumpsuit. Though she had thought she recognized his voice, it was still to her surprise that Agent Sean Cassidy, the Byron Agency's latest induction into its investigative branch, was standing at the open doorway of her cell with a large manilla envelope in hand.

"It's yuir six-thirty wake up call," he said in his Irish accent though more coldly and callously then one jesting at their prisoner's expense, or one trying to even be friendly and playful that matter. "Can I get ye anything to help ye begin the day?"

Emma wasn't so much bemused by his deadpan humor as she was bewildered by her former co-headmaster's presence. Nevertheless, she'd play along.

"Sean... wearing a suit like that, pushing for ambiguous government agencies like you have been..." she thought aloud as she began to rise into a sitting position on her bed. Emma rubbed her diamond-hard forehead with a tired expression and shrugged her to the side. "Well, let's just say that - at the very least - I'm astounded to see you haven't lost your sense of humor."

"I'm not here to play games, Emma," Sean said as he walked into the cell, keeping the manilla envelope in hand. With the history between the two, it'd be no wonder he wanted to get straight to business. "The X-Men's recruiting an' Cyclops wants you back into the fold, albeit on a tight leash, to help teach the next generation."

Emma's eyes grew large for just a brief moment until she caught herself, then returned to her nonchalant disposition. She almost immediately raised a brow, however, and she simply leaned back onto her elbows in her bed.

"Is that so?" she half-wondered of the proposition.

"Aye," Sean confirmed with a slight nod and he paced himself with what he was about to say next. "At my request, the... 'parole board' here has been looking over yuir case."

"I didn't know conspirators and murderers were eligible for early 'parole,' if that's even what this is," Emma said as she stood up from her bed, her eyes narrowing onto Sean. Though imprisoned, her cat and mouse game was still in full effect. "Those guilty of reckless endangerment or manslaughter, perhaps..."

"Stop bein' so damn coy, lass," Sean suddenly spat in disgust and he tightened his grip around the manilla envelope in hand, waving it at Emma almost righteously. "I'm throwin' you a god forsaken life line here."

"A tight leash with Scott Summers at the other end..." Emma mused with an acidy tongue, her icy blue eyes still locked onto Sean. "What kind of life is that again?"

"Don't think of it like that," Sean said as he shook his head and if Emma wasn't mistaken that was empathy in his voice. "It'd only be temporary, anyway. We have... something else in mind for ye and yuir place at Xavier's."

Emma remained silent as Sean handed her the overstuffed manilla envelope he had been holding the entire time and she sat back down on her bed. She didn't hesitate opening the file and starting into it, but something immediately caught her eye.

"Oh bloody hell..." Emma groaned as she skimmed over the first few tidbits of the file. She looked up to Sean, annoyed. "You want me to steal the Xavier Protocols?"

"We're not betraying the X-Men here, I don't want ye to think of it like that," Sean explained with careful words. "We're only doing this for the greater good, ye could say. Right now, the Protocols will be better suited for our purposes," he said, then he looked down to her and with a steady nod - as if to close the deal - he reminisced, "For Paige..."

"For Paige, you say?" she asked sarcastically, not in the least convinced of Sean's sincerity. The man loved their students, no doubt, but they were Emma's life. He had an ulterior motive and she just knew it, but if it got her out of the Byron Agency's clutches it just may be worth it to disregard his insincerity. "Hmph. Well then... I guess we should be doing whatever's necessary... for Paige..."

Now.

A good forty feet below the closed down Xavier Institute for Higher Learning and in one of the many sub-floors that make up the X-Men's base of operations, three of the team's senior members stood before a series of computer consoles in the War Room that monitored the away team's mission in Massachusetts.

The tall and somewhat lanky one was Scott Summers, the team's leader known as Cyclops. The African woman with white hair was Ororo Munroe, code named Storm. She was and for quite sometime has been the team's acting second-in-command. Bobby Drake was the third person in the group, shorter then Cyclops but still of average height. He was one of the founding members of the X-Men as Iceman.

What they were watching on the consoles and monitors was a collection of the away team's vitals, which had fluctuated very rapidly in the last few moments, then slowed down dramatically. When the radio transmissions had ceased just as the vitals slowed down, Cyclops, Storm, and Iceman had all assumed the same thing.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

"Goddess, no..." Storm muttered to herself with a gasp. She touched her face and closed her eyes momentarily, dread overcoming her.

"Scotty..." Iceman began in an indecisive tone, looking over his shoulder to the X-Men's team leader with weary eyes. "What the hell just happened?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Cyclops replied quietly in a mix of confusion and disdain. He cocked his head to the side and concentrated on his thoughts, projecting them outward. "Jean, what can you tell us? Just what the hell did happen?"

"I honestly don't know, Scott," Phoenix quickly replied through their telepathic rapport from her chair in the Cerebro Chamber. Her eyes were heavily laid shut and her uniform was shimmering with an orange-red glow. "I can't establish a telepathic link with any of them, let alone try to revive them."

Cyclops was about to tell his wife to keep at what she was doing until a loud tone, similar to that of what he recognized as a flat-line, broke his concentration.

"What's happening now?" Cyclops said as his attention snapped back to the happenings of the War Room, his eyes immediately darting from behind his ruby-quartz visor in Storm's direction. "Did their vitals just taper off?!"

"No, but it seems that Cerebro has lost our signal with them," Storm explained as she looked over the console she sat at and then typed in a few commands, bringing up new prompts on the monitor. "We can't read their location or get their vitals for that matter."

"There's nada on the radio but static, either," Iceman said as he slid his headset off of his head and over his neck. He looked to Cyclops and shook his head as if he was going to disappoint the man. "No background noise, no breathing, no sinister laughing or gloating..."

"So they just disappeared..." Cyclops deduced as he approached Storm's side, leaning into the edge of her console on his hands. There was a moment of silence as the cogs in his mind worked the way they did and he took a breath before voicing his theory.

"Okay, it stands to reason that if someone could hit them so quickly and unexpectedly, then turn around and disappear with them just as quickly and unexpectedly, that a teleporter must be involved," Cyclops said and he bit his lip, then he closed his eyes and concentrated his thoughts outward once more.

"I'm on it," Phoenix replied simply, though secretly she was trying her best to keep a straight and level head under the dire circumstances. She would have to if she were to wield the power of Cerebro in such a way her husband wanted her to, let alone find out what had happened to her missing friends and teammates.

"We saddling up?" Iceman asked with an arched brow as he looked at Cyclops and Storm looked up from her console to the man as well, wanting to know the same thing. Cyclops shook his head momentarily, still leaning into the console.

"Not yet, but we will be," he explained, that hardened look of determination the X-Men knew all too well forming over his face. "Storm and I were imprisoned and thought dead for months. With that in mind, we're not giving up on the rest of our team so easily." Cyclops turned back up to Storm and Iceman and said, "Find out what Hank and Rogue are up to these days. We're going to need their help."

At that moment another tragedy was taking place in Washington, DC, though it would be one that would have more of an immediate impact on the world. Robert Kelly, the recently appointed Secretary of Mutant Affairs to President George Bush's cabinet of advisors, would remember for the rest of his life where he was when the news of such a tragedy was brought to his attention.

He was sitting at the desk in his personal office, looking over his plans for the new Mutant Affairs branch of the United States government, when one of his personal assistants by the name of Helena Weaver rushed to the doorway and called out to him.

"Secretary Kelly, come quick!" Helena yelled. A homely looking woman by nature, Helena was in her early thirties with auburn hair and dim green eyes. Though she had been with him for a few years now, this had been the first time Senator Kelly had ever seen her so rattled. "It's the President," she said under her breath.

Kelly's eyes went wide for a moment and his brow furrowed, but he stood up from his chair quickly enough and moved to the doorway. Outside in the hall he caught a glimpse of a crowd of Secret Service agents surrounding President Bush as he lay on a stretcher, an oxygen tank at his side with a mask attached to his face.

"There's talk about it being an attack by al-Qaida..." Helena stammered as two White House doctors lifted the President up and they began to move down the corridor. "Or... or mutants!" she added. Kelly shot his assistant a look, staring long and hard at her for a moment as he contemplated just what this could mean for America...

And then he knew.

Then.

The helicopter had only risen a few hundred feet into the air, so the smoldering remains of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning was still visible from the porthole Emma Frost sat at. Sprawled over the lawn was Cyclops, Phoenix, Jubilee, M, and Cerebro, who was handing baby Jacob over to Jubilee as he went to search the rubble for Radius and Magma. Decimated as they were, the X-Men were able to soundly defeat the new Brotherhood of Mutants after the explosion. Emma thought it was strange, however.

If Phoenix, Jubilee, and M were able to dispatch them so easily, Grey King and his cronies must have been a novices. Though with that in mind, how was he able to manipulate Cyclops so easily? Many of the over X-Men, especially Scott Summers, had certain mental safeguards to protect them. She went along with Grey King's claim of manipulation, but if she hadn't known better then she'd have thought Cyclops and him were putting on a show of some sort... But why?

Normally it would be of matter to her, as her mission objectives had all been satisified. But something was definitely wrong down there and she could tell Sean had been eying her the entire time. He might have known what was wrong, but if he did he wasn't telling. For the month or so she was with them, Emma felt she wasn't observing Cyclops and the X-Men. Cyclops had claimed to change, he wanted to try things a new way he said, but he wasn't showing that. She was observing something much different...

"This takes a bit of courage for me to admit, Sean," Emma began as she continued to stare out at the smoldering mansion grounds. "I fear whatever it is that lurks down there. Someone isn't right. Better not be Dark Phoenix or Onslaught again...."

"Aye, but the X-Men will snuff it out, Emma. They always do," Sean reassured her as he approached from the front of the helicopter. He nodded, "We've got our own problems."

"I just hate that I had to do this...now they think of me as even less then cold and reckless, less then self-serving... I'm the enemy..." Emma implored, the last words more under her breath then anything else. She grew quiet momentarily, thinking it over. She concluded, "Killing Paige was just an accident, but manipulating Allison Crestmere so she would do what she did... To them, that's going to be beyond vindication. "

Emma continued to stare out the tinted window of the helicopter at the Xavier Institute's grounds as the next generation of X-Men stood crippled among their mentors. They would recover, no doubt, and with special effort they could become something better from the ashes of the incident... but at what price?

"We've found a way to restore yuir telepathy," Sean suddenly declared and Emma's posture changed from reflection to intrigue. She turned her head slowly to look to Sean, and the man spoke confidently. "The Protocols might hold the key. They released Monet from her Penance form... an' they might be able to help you as well..."

Emma turned away from Sean and looked back out the window. To him her diamond expression was opaque, hard to read, and though he knew she must have been yearning for telepathic abilities for months, he would never know that the same question would continue to repeat itself in her mind.

At what price?

Now.

It had taken the team a few hours, but the X-Men were able to pick-up two of their former comrades and head to the last known location of the away team. Aboard what was possibly the third or forth decommissioned SR-71 Blackbird jet they've gone through, the X-Men were making their way into Massachusetts airspace as quickly as possible. If they had given it more time, they could have recruited others to help them on their mission, but time was of the essence. There was much for the two former X-Men to be filled in on, one of them in particular had especially been out of the loop...

" -- So, at this point in time we assume it was just before Apocalypse used the M'Kraan crystal to ascend to the Fifth Dimension that Apollyon was able to manipulate us - through our emotions, like a sort of mass hysteria - into believing Ororo didn't survive his attack on her," Hank McCoy, otherwise known as the furry Beast, explained in a long-winded breath. Marie Charleston, his estranged teammate Rogue, cocked a brow as she tried to follow the convoluted theory while Beast continued.

"Now, Scott doesn't recall ever waking up before him and Ororo found themselves captured, so it must have been when Jean was trying to exorcise the Limbo demons in Apollyon that he presumed Cyclops's role."

"Wait, so Apollyon possessed Cyke?" Rogue broke in, confused. "But then how'd Cyke end up in Egypt with 'Ro when Apollyon was trashin' Washington?"

"You're still ever the sharp one, aren't you, Rogue?" Beast chuckled and gave the Southern Belle a playful wink. He gripped his blue furred chin and nodded. "Allow me to explain. See, Apollyon's powers are actually quite similar to his fath --"

"Oy. Hold that thought right there, Hankster," Rogue moaned and she leaned her head back hard against her seat. She sighed and said, "Let's just skip th' back story, eh guys? It's givin' me more of a headache then I need..."

"Aww," Iceman cooed as he unbuckled his strap and leaned over his seat into Rogue's, resting his head on her shoulder and looking deep into her emerald green eyes. "Long division gives you a headache, Mississippi Mudcakes."

"Back ten minutes and you startin' with me already, Drake?" Rogue said with a stern, butt-kickin' brow and a wicked grin that was just too hard to hide.

"What can I say?" Iceman remarked and he drew two fingers up, two fingers which he proceeded to use to poke and jab her in the ribs repeatedly with in an attempt to tickle her. "Like you, I got a lotta catching up to do!"

Rogue fought back, pushing and trying to tickle Iceman in retaliation, short bursts of laughter and giggling coming from them both, but it ended sharply. Everyone else on the jet had seemed unmoved by the playfulness of the two, but they weren't exactly approving of it. The X-Men's leader in particular spoke out.

"You two want to put on your A-game already?" Cyclops asked harshly as he looked back over his should to the two. Iceman and Rogue stopped what they were doing and looked over to Cyclops, he simply shook his head and rolled his eyes behind his visor.

While it didn't take much to relate to what was happening to his teammates, Cyclops had taken the matter personally due to his recent experiences at the hands of Apocalypse's and Apollyon's followers. Add into that all of the horrible things that had happened in his absence as team leader and he felt responsible. They couldn't fail in this mission and he wanted as little room for failure as possible.

Rogue cleared her throat suddenly and pushed Iceman off of her and back into his seat. Iceman quickly settled down as Rogue said, "Sorry, Cyke. You're right."

"Heh, yeah," Iceman added meekly with a frown. "Sorry 'bout that."

The jet went quiet from there on out and stuck. Phoenix and Storm hadn't been particularly talkative the entire flight, Storm in particular seeming cold and distant. Both had known what it was like to be imprisoned by one of the X-Men's deadliest foes for months on end, with Storm having been taken prisoner most recently. Though she had one of the strongest wills of the team, being in such an enclosed space for so long had taken its toll on her psyche.

It was times like these she felt like a shell of who she once was. She couldn't help but imagine the same feelings her teammates would end up with if their captivity ends up being as long as hers was. Wolverine and Domino were strong, but the others...

Silence had lingered between the team of X-Men for another ten or so minutes before they arrived in the airspace above the former Massachusetts Academy. Cyclops activated the VTOL systems of the Blackbird and the jet paused over the massive lawn of the estate, then slowly began to descend. The landing went smooth from there.

"Alright," Cyclops said as he finished shutting the Blackbird's engines down. He took a deep breath and bit his lip, considering his plan of attack for a moment, then began unbuckling his restraint harness. "Everyone unload."

Storm, Rogue, and Phoenix began to follow Cyclops's lead and unbuckle their restraints, but Iceman and Beast had long removed their restraints when talking with Rogue and were already up out of their seats. Beast hit a large red button and released the hatch, allowing for the six X-Men to file out.

"So," Iceman began as Cyclops waved his hands, signaling the team spread out amongst themselves across the untended lawn. "We gonna go with intimidating theatrics or straight up "bull in fine China shop" on Emma's Cubic Zirconia ass?"

"I was thinking a mix of both, actually," Cyclops explained as he attempted to scan the estate grounds with the infrared device in his visor. It was to no avail. "On the one hand, we don't exactly know who or what's in there - Jean can't pluck out any thoughts telepathically and there's some strange energy signature blocking my infrared scans. On the other hand, our teammates are possibly still in there, and..."

No one said anything as their team leader trailed off. There was a mutual understanding that their teammates, Wolverine who they had just gotten back and their youngest members in Cannonball, M, and Jubilee were lost as well. Domino... well, Cable would just be really pissed if they let anything happen to her.

"Our teammates are possibly still in there," Storm said, firmly reiterating Cyclops's main point. "And even if they're not in there anymore, it's imperative to find out where they went and who has them."

"Right then," Rogue agreed. She cracked her gloved knuckles and narrowed her eyes on the estate. "Let's make some noise, gang."

Lightning crisscrossed over the sky and an array of deafening thunder claps quickly followed. Rain poured down heavily from the heavens across the overgrown yellow and brownish tinted lawns. The bushy and ragged, dying trees scattered about the lawns and in the orchards swayed from side to side as fierce winds began to descend on the estate. Storm stood silent with her eyes closed the entire time, at her peak.

"EMMA!" Phoenix shouted as telekinetic flame erupted from her body's pours, her voice booming across the grounds in both volume and telepathically. She rose into the air several feet and continued to call out. "We need a word with you!"

But the X-Men wouldn't get that word with Emma Frost so easily. In mere moments after Phoenix called out to the former headmistress of the abandoned school, a loud bang echoed throughout the grounds and piling out from the doors of the mansion was a virtual army of automatic rifle-toting men in full-out body armor. They headed straight for the X-Men, many of which already opening fire at the six.

"Erhm..." Beast, possibly the most well spoken of the X-Men, was himself at a complete loss for words as a hail of gunfire came the team's way. With his mighty legs, he propelled himself into the air as far as he could while the rest of his teammates scattered in their respective fashions. Only one word could describe their predicament, one which Beast reflected in his battle-cry. "CRAP!"

"What?!" Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proclaimed. She slammed down a phone and let out an exasperated sigh whilst shaking her head. "I can't believe this..."

"What is it?" Kelly said as he stood up from his chair, his interest perked. "What's going on?"

"Everyone's dropping like flies," Rice declared and all she could wa skeeping shaking her head. She looked to Kelly and explained, "First the President, and now the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate are coming down with similar symptoms."

"Was this some kind of inside job, I wonder?" Kelly thought a loud. Rice shook her head as if to say 'no.'

"The Secret Service doesn't have the slightest clue of what's going on," Rice said as she began to pace back and forth the office room. "The Vice President seems to be doing fine, though. He was helping to oversee the reconstruction plans of Milwaukee - of all things - when the news came. He's since been moved to an undisclosed area."

"When's he being sworn in?" Kelly asked with a raised brow.

"That's just it," Rice began with an indignant huff. "The Vice President says that due to medical reasons - something to do with the stress of the position effecting an active heart condition - he won't be accepting the position as President of the United States."

"That's insanity!" Kelly spat, his eyes wide behind his round-framed glasses. "America's going to hell in a hand basket, the nation's leaders are under attack by some unknown force - probably one of those damn mutant telepaths, if you ask me - and Cheney won't step up?!" He took off his glasses and massaged the tension out of the bridge of his nose, shaking his head simultaneously. Just think of the fear and... and the wide-spread panic that's going to wash over the country as soon as the news hits!"

"He's not the only one hesitant to take on the job, you know," Rice said as she crossed her arms. Kelly looked up to her and narrowed his eyes, though curiously and not out of shock. He took a step closer to her and she continued to say, "Especially under such circumstances. I... Robert, I don't think I could do it, either."

"Contact the rest of the Cabinet then... have them vote on it and have them take it to Congress," Kelly said certainly. He nodded his head confidently as he said. "Because I know someone in the Cabinet who thinks they can."

The battle hadn't lasted as long as some would expect.

During their time under the tutelage of Professor Charles Xavier, the X-Men had received hundres and hundreds of hours of training in Danger Room scenarios seemingly stylized after the exact circumstances they were currently under. Several dozen armed men attacking from all sides, their intent not to capture or subdue, but to eradicate.

Cyclops, Phoenix, Beast, Storm, Iceman, and Rogue weren't just some of the most capable X-Men when it came to the use of their powers in combat, but they were also more then proficient at non-lethal hand to hand fighting, as well. What had been several dozen armed men quickly became a mere fraction of active soldiers.

"Mercenaries," Phoenix thought out loud as she finally removed a psionic scrambler located near the temple of one of the X-Men's fallen enemies. "These guys are hired guns, here to protect Emma. But... it doesn't seem like she's the one who hired them..." The first student of Xavier shook her head and looked around the battlefield, which was mostly dotted with the defeated mercenaries. "No one hurt them too bad, right?"

"Now why would we ever do such a thing, Jean?" Beast asked as he leaned back onto his shoulders and began peddling his feet into the air as if he was riding a bicycle. In reality, he was pushing a still conscious mercenary up and down in the air several feet, hoping to nauseate his opponent into submission.

"How 'bout 'cuz they deserved it?" Rogue said with a groan as she, with metallic arms curtsy of one time teammate Colossus's catalogued mutant powers, flung one of the mercenaries towards Iceman with all of her borrowed might. The mercenary flew at such a high velocity that if he struck Iceman both would surely be killed.

However, before such a thing could happen, Iceman put out his hand and flash-froze the air molecules around every inch of the mercenary's body except for his head. The mercenary was frozen in place, terror etched deep on his face. Iceman simply waved at him with a malicious grin and looked over to his teammate that threw him his new friend.

"Y'know, Rogue, you really can't fault a guy for trying to make a buck or two," Iceman called out to her. He shrugged and looked back to the mercenary, then added, "Well, at least that's what Democrats try to say to us about drug dealers..."

With the snap of his fingers, Iceman caused all of the ice suspending the mercenary in the air to vanish, dropping him to the rain soaked ground where he proceeded to convulse and shiver violently due to the two extremes his body just undertook.

"This looks like the last of them," Storm suddenly declared as she came down from the rainy, cloud covered night's sky on a gust of wind. To her side was a cyclone spinning three mercenaries up and down in circles. It began to slow down as Storm touched the ground and it dropped the three men to the ground, their dismantled weapons raining down upon them in small parts.

"Yeah," Cyclops agreed as he harshly dropped one of the mercenaries from a choke-hold. He began walking past the line of fallen mercenaries that laid sprawled out across the lawn and headed for his teammates. "If what Jean says is true, then hopefully we didn't end up hurting any of these guys too badly. They're just pawns - post Gulf War, soldier of fortune rejects."

While approaching his teammates after moving back to his feet, Beast's eyes looked strangely concerned with something. He stopped before Storm and his brow rose distinctively, his animal features seeming even more keener then usual.

"What is it, Henry?" Storm asked as she looked around the lawn. Beast stood on his knuckles silent, his nose to the air and his eyes closed tightly as he sniffed about. The rain had since began to trickle off and stop all together since the defeat of their enemies, and all except for a cool breeze washing over the estate grounds, there was an eerie silence as Beast took his time embracing the new sensation.

"Cashmere lined, one-hundred percent lambskin leather... white, too... " Beast detected curiously as he opened his eyes and he turned his head towards the porch of the former Massachusetts Academy, pointing a claw towards the entrance of the estate. "The lovely Miss Emma Frost has come out to play."

The X-Men spud around at Beast's hand and narrowed their eyes on the porch he was pointing towards. A slight shimmer reflected off of a feminine form emerging from the shadows and the white leather that Beast had just become aware of came into plain view. The leather was in the form of a pair of jeans and a trench coat lined with cashmere wrapped around a white T-shirt. There was no mistaking who it was.

"This is your only chance, Frost," Cyclops barked in anger across the rain-soaked lawn. As he began approaching the woman, he raised a hand to his visor and engaged the targeting system in it, taking aim for what he believed to be the flaw in Emma's diamond hide. "What happened to the rest of the X-Men? Where are they?!"

"Yeah!" Iceman shouted and he took a step forward, pointing his finger commandingly at Emma. "And give us back the Xavier Protocols or we'll pawn your ass at Barney's Diamonds and Guns!"

Emma Frost stood on the verge of collapse as their words assaulted her.

"I don't have either!" she proclaimed as the six X-Men began to close in around her. There was no way for her to escape, but one by one each of the X-Men began to realize that she wasn't trying to. "But I might know where they are... I might... I just..."

"What are you talking about, Emma?" Storm wondered aloud as Emma's trembling voice trailed off. The diamond frame of her face was hard to focus on due to its constant shimmering and the nature of its depth, this was true, but something in her strained eyes definitely stood out. If it was possible, they looked like they were moist, as if she had been crying... as if she was still crying...

"It's just that this is all out of my control..." Emma tried to explain, her voice cracking slightly as she spoke to the X-Men surrounding her, and she couldn't continue. Beast and Phoenix traded looks to each other and then looked back to Emma. The once rich, the once powerful, and the once influential White Queen of the Hellfire Club fell to her knees with total disregard to the expensive, white leather jeans and trench coat that she wore, and she covered her face as she began to sob.

First there was the accident with Paige, then the M she knew was gone, and now Jubilee and Penance were lost... The guilt from losing her first students in the Hellions was always heavy on her, but she had never loved them like she had loved the children from Generation X. For the last year she had been playing a dangerous game with their lives, even before she had made a deal with the Byron Agency to steal the Xavier Protocols.

"We're all just in way over our heads..." Emma finally said coldly and she looked up from her hands into the red glare of Cyclops's visor. Her body began to transform from its diamond form to her flesh and bone form and she lifted her wrists up to him as if they had been cuffed together, as if she was giving herself up. "It has to end now."

A man standing behind a large video camera held up his hand, opening and closing it repeatedly. He mouthed the words "five, four, three..." as the number of fingers he held up reflected those words. When the countdown came down to one, he pointed his last digit at the former Senator Robert Kelly, who sat behind the President's desk of the Oval Office. A monitor with a blue background sitting near the stationary camera flickered on and a series of words began to flow upwards in the way of a vertical marquee.

"My fellow Americans..." Robert Kelly started confidently. "As I'm sure many of you have already heard, President Bush has recently been incapacitated due to an illness of an unknown nature. Thankfully, our forefathers have bestowed the American people with a speedy process that works fairly and efficiently to establish and maintain a central leadership in our government in times like these."

"However, despite what many of you know about this process, Vice President Cheney has opted to not take on the executive duties of our government due to health reasons of an unrelated manner," Kelly said and then paused for a moment, looking down at what was now his desk. He looked back up to the camera and readied himself for what he was about to say to the world on live television. "For the duration of President Bush's recovery from his mysterious ailment, Congress has decided that it is I who will be your acting Commander-in-Chief."

And it was with those words the world changed...

NEXT ISSUE: WHAT?! Can they REALLY do that?!?!