The man known only as Logan walked to the other side of the vehicle facing the mansion. He opened the passenger’s door and then leaned up against the side of his jeep, waiting for his two perspective passengers.

It was only a moment later that Ororo Munroe and Bobby Drake stepped out of the mansion, making their way down the porch steps to the jeep. Both were dressed in sharp contrast to their longtime friend and teammate for their night out.

Ororo wore a long dark skirt that hugged the curves of her body, standing tall in a pair of black heels, with an oversized belt hanging loosely off of her hips, and was adorn in modest jewelry. Bobby stood in a pair of dress boots, wearing Dockers and a dark blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

They were both ready for the double going away party that night. Samuel Guthrie, one of the guests of honor, was already at Harry’s Hideaway along with Marie Charleston and Hank McCoy. The injuries that Sam sustained during the team’s latest mission had left him deserving of some downtime, downtime in which he had chose to spend with his family in Kentucky.

Ororo was the other guest of honor, having long ago decided to leave the team once she had rescued her lost teammates from the Byron Agency and brought the villains down once and for all. Those tasks succeeded, it was time she recover spiritually and emotionally from the trials and tribulations that she had faced in recent months.

To do that, she would need to leave her friends indefinitely, but not without having one last night out on the town. Unfortunately, Beatrice - or simply Domino - hadn’t been seen in days and couldn’t join them. Regardless, the night would go on.

“Hey-o Logan-o,“ Bobby greeted as Ororo and he walked up to the jeep.

“We got everything set up over at Harry‘s,” Logan said, referring to the going away party that he and his two other teammates had planned. “You two ready to go?”

“Yep. I call shotgun!” Bobby declared, darting passed Logan and leaping up into the front passenger’s seat of the jeep. Before he could settle in, Logan grabbed him by the back of his shirt and jerked him out of the jeep. He fell to the driveway pavement and landed on his back, letting out a painful yelp.

Nonchalantly, Logan offered his hand to Ororo to help her into the front seat of the jeep.

“Thank you, Logan,” Ororo said with a smile. She took his hand as she stepped up on the nerf rail of the jeep and sat down into the passenger‘s seat. “It’s always a pleasure to be in the company of men who know how to treat a woman.”

Logan tipped his cowboy hat to her. “What I‘m here for, darlin’.”

Bobby stood up and dusted off his pants as Logan shut the door behind Ororo. He shot Logan the stink eye.

“And here I could’ve swore you were here to punch and claw things indiscriminately,” he quipped. Logan glared back at him, then unsheathed a pair of claws and slashed at Bobby half-heartedly. Bobby skipped out of the way of the attack and ran around to the other side of the jeep, laughing all the while.

Logan jabbed a finger from his unsheathed hand at Bobby, narrowing his beady eyes. “Keep talkin’ like that, bub, an’ you’ll see how discriminate I can be.”

Ororo chuckled lightly as Bobby climbed into the back of the jeep, settling down in the middle. Logan strode around the jeep to the driver’s side and climbed in. It was then that Scott and Jean walked out of the open door of the mansion and stepped down from the porch of the mansion, beginning their approach of the rumbling jeep before the three drove off.

“Have fun,” Jean called out.

“Are you two sure you won’t be joining us?” Ororo asked for the third time that evening. Jean shook her head ‘no’ with a frown.

“Sorry. You know that we’d love to, but we haven’t had the mansion to ourselves for some time. We really need the alone time together.”

Before Ororo could respond, Bobby whistled flirtatiously and Logan cleared his throat, resisting a perverted chuckle. Ororo turned to them and lightly slapped Logan as a warning to them both, then looked back to the couple.

“We understand, Jean,” she said with a nod. Jean smiled meekly, leaned over the door of the topless jeep, and hugged her friend. When they released their embrace, Jean stepped back from the jeep to join Scott at his side.

“Bye you guys,” Jean said with a wave.

Bobby saluted playfully, Ororo waved back, and Logan simply nodded as he shifted the jeep out of neutral. Scott and Jean watched them as they drove down the driveway away from the front of the mansion, around the front yard, and out the main gains of the estate.

When they turned the corner and were gone, the quiet evening settled in for Scott and Jean. The rumbling of Logan’s jeep in the distance faded, the chirping of crickets became more apparent, and the trees in the surrounding orchards began rustling as a gentle, cool breeze blew by.

“So…“ Jean broke the silence. “I guess we should talk.”

“Yeah,“ Scott said quietly, nodding. “I guess we should…”

Jean gasped as she was thrown back onto the bed of her and Scott’s bedroom in the boathouse of the Xavier Estate, her husband falling atop of her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and twisted her mouth sideways to meet his as he took hold of her legs and lifted them up, meeting his lower waist with hers.

The two kissed each other with passion, their hands moving eagerly across each other’s bodies to undress the other. The first to go were the shirts, and then with the combined efforts of her nimble fingers and the wiggling of her waist, as well as the tugging of her husband’s hands, came her pants. Next were his.

The last few weeks had been immensely stressful for the two of them. If they weren’t fighting for their lives against the forces of the Byron Agency, they were tirelessly searching for their lost teammates or working to uncover government conspiracies. If it wasn’t any of those things, they were avoiding each other out of fear that they would have to face the mounting problems in their marriage since the death of their mentor, Professor Charles Xavier.

With their troubles behind them and with the estate all to themselves, it was a night of comfort and release that they needed before they could truly talk about their problems. In their underwear, the two embraced once more, longing for each other. After a moment, though, Jean called out to him.

“Scott,” she whispered, prompting him to stop and look to her. His wife nodded to the nightstand beside the bed. “The drawer.”

Scott paused for a moment, then smirked mischievously. “Oh, right.”

He picked himself up off of her and leaned over to the nightstand, opening the door. Inside were several items - Rolex watch, a necklace with a Phoenix pendent on it, bottle of perfume, and the likes - that he riffled through until he found what he was looking for. A small, golden, square package.

“There it is.”

“And there you are,” a man’s voice replied.

Scott’s face hardened and he rolled around to face his wife, but in her place he found a man laying on his side, his elbow bent on the pillow his head propped up on his hand. Long, red hair draped off of his shoulders similar to Jean’s, and he bore a seductive, mischievous grin on his face.

Telekinetic fire erupted from the pores of his muscular body and hairy chest, his body barely covered in the same bra and panties that his wife wore, and he reached out to Scott and inched a finger towards himself.

“Now, come to daddy!” Addison Falk, the Grey King, said as he clenched his fist and the flames exploded outwards, consuming the room in its entirety.

When Scott began to regain some semblance of reality, he found himself sprawled out on his back across the grassy lawn under the night’s stars, head swimming from the unexpected assault of a once thought dead enemy. He brought his elbows back to prop himself upright where he gazed upon the razed boathouse that Jean and he had shared together since marrying, watching as it collapsed in on itself and was bathed in telekinetic flames lighting up the estate’s grounds.

Addison Falk was telekinetically held aloft in the center of the flames with a self-indulgent grin plastered across his face, long red hair flowing in the evening breeze. The lingerie that was previously adorning his wife’s body was perversely covering his masculine frame as he drifted towards Scott, but they were quickly replaced as telekinetic flame swirled about the villain’s body. In seconds, he was attired with a pair of black boots, leather pants, and a bright green muscle shirt with a gaudy Phoenix raptor displayed across the chest.

“Ah, Scott Summers!” The Grey King hailed. “It looks like we meet again… or should I say we finally meet at last?”

Scott shuffled up to his feet quickly, fists clenched as he moved into a fighting stance. “Addison! But how…?!”

“Dead means dead doesn’t always mean dead, ‘friend’,” The Grey King remarked cryptically as he hovered imposingly over the leader of the X-Men.

Scott’s vision blurred as the villain’s body flashed back and forth between him and an image of Scott’s wife, tormented and helpless, prompting the X-Man to do a double-take in shock. It was then that Scott felt the truth boil to the top of his subconscious.

“You’re… you’re in Jean’s body! I can feel you through our rapport!”

The Grey King‘s demented grin only grew larger as he shook his finger at Scott, signifying that he was right.

“You‘re a quick one, aren‘t you?“ he said, a mere telepathic illusion superimposed over Jean’s real body. “Stowed away in her mind just before you could have me killed back in West Virginia by that Cajun man-whore and have slowly been making myself at home ever since. Neat trick, eh?”

Everything was happening so fast. Scott’s rational thought was lost in a flurry of emotions due to The Grey King’s revelations. Jean’s power fluctuations, the team‘s miraculous survival outside of Washington D.C., the manifestations of Phoenix raptors, the tormenting and dogmatic visions… It was all Addison’s doing.

“LET HER GO, FALK!!” Scott screamed as an optic blast erupted from his visor, prompted by a mental command.

The Grey King had mere microseconds to react to the attack, but the red beam of force energy sparsely passed his shoulder to his confusion, regardless. “Err… you missed! Rage made you sloppy -- ?!”

Before The Grey King could gloat further, a loud wooden cracking noise caused his eyes to widen in realization. He began to twist in midair, but was slammed from behind by a large and tall oak tree split in half by Scott’s blast, sending him crashing into the estate’s lawn. “ARGH!”

Scott hadn’t hesitated in following up his attack with another fierce optic blast from his visor into the heap of tree branches, leaves, and trunk that covered The Grey King’s body. The force of the attack sent the former leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants skidding across the lawn, leaving a long trail of unearthed grass and dirt in his wake as the blast carried him towards the lake.

The Grey King erected a telekinetic shield only moments before he was drilled into the estate’s lake and it allowed him to roll with the attack, stumbling up to his feet and taking a hard stance again ruby beam of force. Scott continued his stream of optic energy into The Grey King as he marched towards his position, but his enemy raised his hands up to reinforce his telekinetic shield and pushed back against the blast, similarly marching towards Scott.

“Would you… would you really kill your wife just to keep me from coming back to this world?” The Grey King asked through gritted teeth. “Kill her so mercilessly like you killed M-Mark Rogers?! Like you tried to have me killed?!!“

Scott was uncharacteristically caught off guard by the question, allowing The Grey King to capitalize on the X-Man’s respite. With a burst of telekinetic might from his hands, he deflected the optic blast away from him into the sky and lashed out at Scott, knocking him onto his back.

“Oof!” Scott huffed as the air was forced out of his lungs from the blow.

He struggled to catch his breath until The Grey King moved upon him, taking a telekinetic grip over his throat and lifting him into the air where he began to strangle the life out of him. Scott desperately grasped and pawed at his throat, legs kicking and flailing about wildly as desperately tried to peel away the invisible force choking him to death, but it was to no avail.

“No?!” The Grey King demanded of Scott, his visage fluctuating between that of his enraged telepathic illusion and that of Jean’s bruised, bloodied, and dirt covered, barely clothed form. “That’s too bad. Probably was your only chance to walk away from this alive yourself!”

Scott’s vision began to spot and darken as he was strangled by The Grey King’s telekinetic powers, his legs kicking frivolously in the air.

It was then that his eyes rolled back into his head and the world went black.

Scott suddenly gasped and his eyes shot back open, shaken to his very core by his near death experience. His visor-less head darted from side to side, brown eyes taking in the magnificent sights of what appeared to be the deep recesses of space itself. As if he were truly seeing with his natural eyes, uninhibited by the red tint of ruby quartz lenses, he witnessed floating rocks and asteroids, supernovas lighting up the distances, purple mists and clouds swirling about, tiny stars littering an infinitely black backdrop, and much more than he could ever hope to describe.

He had been transported to the Astral Plane.

“What?! No! This can’t be!” a voice cried out in defiance. Scott shot a look in the direction of the voice, seeing The Grey King standing on an invisible ground not far away, seething with anger. “How did we get here?!” he continued.

It was then his eyes widened in damned realization. He looked to his right and in the distance a cage spontaneously appeared in midair, suspended by some unknown force, with a young redheaded woman bound and gagged on her knees before the cage‘s steel bars. Scott’s eyes fell upon the cage in the same realization.

“YOU!” The Grey King yelled accusingly. “You did this!!!”

Jean Grey-Summers merely stared at her captor, her face stone but her eyes lit with a burning fire that sought to consume him. Her body may have been taken over by him, but she was able to transcend all three of them to the Astral Plane before Scott had been killed. It was all she could due to prolong their demise.

The Grey King tried desperately to reverse this, but found himself neutered in that regard. He clenched his fists as his astral form exploded in psionic flame, letting out an agonizing battle-cry before flew towards her, wanting to destroy her mind once and for all so that he could resume control over her body in the mortal realm. When he came upon her, he summoned a flaming broad sword composed of psionic energy and drew it high above his head, preparing a killing blow.

It was then another astral form collided into him, tackling him to the invisible ground that gave off the appearance of them rolling through space. They both recovered to their feet and backed away from each other, then slowly began to pace around one another. As they did, Roman body armor - complete with gauntlets and helmets - appeared over their astral forms along with shields and swords. The Grey King’s armor appeared as that of an emperor’s, whereas Scott’s appeared as that of a soldier’s, contrasting the sharp differences in each other’s self-image.

“You think you can beat me here?!” The Grey King taunted, twirling his sword around by its hilt. “This is the Astral Plane! You’re in my element, X-Man!”

Not giving Scott the courtesy of a response, The Grey King lunged forward and brought his sword down upon the X-Man in a swift motion. Scott braced himself with his shield and seemingly blocked the sword’s descent upon his torso, but as it collided with his shield he felt his mind wracked with anguish.

The vivid spell of memories passed as quickly as it came, allowing Scott’s consciousness to return to the Astral Plane just before The Grey King followed his attack up with a horizontal slice. Scott ducked beneath the sword and rolled to the right of his opponent at an angle so that ended up behind him. The Grey King tried to pivot on his feet so that he could face Scott, but the leader of the X-Man leapt up to his feet and delivered a strike to The Grey King’s backside.

“Agh!” he cried, stumbling forward. Scott ran forward with his sword drawn back to strike again at his enemy’s back, but The Grey King successfully spun around and backhanded his shield across the X-Man’s face, sending him recoiling.

Mark Rogers rose to his feet amongst the bound and gagged hostages littered around the high rise office, a detonator in his hands connected to the various explosives strapped to their bodies. Wind was blowing carrying rain in from the shattered windows, crying and muffling was heard in the distance, and Rogers was about to press a red button on the handheld device…

Then a sleek, navy blue jet descended upon the front of the building before one of the broken windows as a storm raged outside. It’s hatch slid open and a thin optic blast exploded from the man who stood behind it, ripping a hole through Rogers’ chest and sending him flying back. He would be dead before he hit the floor.

A dark future foreseen by only Professor Charles Xavier and Scott Summers was prevented with his death, the lives of numerous hostages and two of his teammates were saved, but it would all be at the cost of the X-Men’s mantra to find a better way as icons of a generation, and that terrified so many others.

Scott fell to his back on the Astral Plane, his senses and psyche simultaneously wracked from The Grey King’s blow and the consequences of his past actions. It left him more disoriented and confused than he could ever remember feeling, which presented the Grey King with the perfect opportunity to capitalize on the fight.

The Grey King spun his sword upside down in his hand and took hold of the hilt with both hands, driving it downwards toward Scott’s chest with a mighty battle-cry. Scott managed to roll out of the way just in time, and The Grey King continued to drive the blade down again repeatedly, each time barely missing the X-Man’s head or torso.

Upon the fourth or fifth missed strike, Scott gained a burst of momentum and spun his leg around into the back of The Grey King’s, sweeping him to the ground of the Astral Plane with a powerful thud. As Scott rose to his feet and brought his sword and shield to the ready, The Grey King began to backpedal on the ground, moving away from his opponent as quickly as possible while on his back.

It was Scott’s turn to turn his blade upside down, and he lunged at The Grey King’s fallen form to plunge it into his chest. The Grey King lunged upwards into the X-Man’s way and swung his shield across Scott’s blade, knocking it away and clearing a path to his chest. It was there he drove his sword into Scott’s stomach, causing him to gasp out in pain and horror.

Scott gasped once again as he was forced to experience all of the guilt and rage that he had allowed to effect his life in recent years, that he had allowed to nearly tear the X-Men apart, that was destroying the very spirit of what he stood for. The Grey King twisted the blade in Scott’s stomach and pulled it out, causing the X-Man to drop his weapons and stumble forward onto his knees, cradling his stomach.

“And now… and now… it can finally end!” The Grey King panted and heaved. He readied his sword once and for all to drive it through the X-Man’s fallen form. Scott looked up to him weakly as the blade fell down on him, but The Grey King gasped in shock at what happened next.

Two blurs fell down onto the blade on both sides, capturing it and holding it in place nary an inch before Scott’s face. It was both of his hands, holding the sides of the sword flat between his palms.

The Grey King was taken aback at first, but then gritted his teeth and pushed it down even further. Scott held it in place just barely away from his head when he slowly rose up on one knee, then to both feet, forcing The Grey King to step back away from him. Then the X-Man brushed the sword aside before The Grey King could plunge it into him and delivered a back-fist strike into his enemy’s face, causing him to double back from the blow.

Dropping his shield, The Grey King continued to stumble backwards, even seconds after the blow, and Scott approached him, slowly and methodically. Something was different about him now. It was as if a revelation had dawned upon him. With hands clenched into fists, he struck The Grey King across the face with a right cross and then a left cross, both as powerful as the other.

Bombarded by the blows, The Grey King reached up to cover his face, but Scott merely closed the space between them, took hold of the back of his enemy’s head, and delivered an uppercut into his torso. The Grey King fell forward into Scott’s arms, the wind seemingly knocked out of him, and Scott took hold of The Grey King’s throat, lifting him upright with both hands locked around his neck.

The Byron Agency's forces fell in hordes as the X-Men fought through them, led by Cyclops, in the battlefield of his memory. The Hierarchy watched them fight through a valley of countless enforcers, Taskmaster's strike team, the Constrictor, helicopters with machine guns, and suicide bombing Sentinels. It was all until Cyclops reached that one defining moment...

“Do ye really think ye can change th’ world?!” he heard Sean Cassidy yell defiantly as he was held at the leader's mercy.

"Maybe not the world, but for now... I'll settle for my corner of it..."

And then he unleashed one final optic blast.

The Grey King struggled to recover from the attack, and Scott positioned his fingers around his neck in preparation to snap it off of his shoulders in one final display of vengeance and rage at the man who had caused him so much pain…

… but he instead dropped The Grey King to the ground of the Astral Plane, leaving him sprawled out in defeat.

Scott looked to the psionic cage his wife was bound and gagged in by The Grey King. With the madman‘s reign over her mind over, Jean began to stand upright as her binds and the cage disappeared. The two locked eyes, distant and longingly, but they were nevertheless hardened by the trials and tribulations of their marriage.

Those final words echoed in the recesses of his mind, chilling him to the very fiber of his soul. It was then that the Astral Plane faded away.

Opening their eyes simultaneously, Scott and Jean found themselves standing before their leveled boathouse facing each other. Their eyes met for a brief moment, remorsefully and longingly. Even though The Grey King had total control of her body and mutant abilities, Jean was able to feel and empathize with everything her husband experienced for the first time in months. Likewise, Scott understood the emotional depth and full reach of his actions.

There was so much they wanted to say to each other, so much they felt they needed to explain, but the look in each other’s eyes conveyed it all. That was probably why they couldn’t bear to lock eyes for more than a few moments and as so averted their gazes uncomfortably away from each other.

Scott reached to his visor with one hand to make sure that it was still secure, then began to massage his throat with the other hand, rubbing away the discomfort from The Grey King’s telekinetic stranglehold. Jean simply wrapped her arms around her bosom as she felt the evening’s cold breeze blow by, needing a moment to regain her telekinetic bearings to raise her body temperature. Unlike the image The Grey King portrayed of himself, she was still in her undergarments, covered in bruises and cuts by the trauma of the evil mutant’s possession of her.

Eventually, they looked back to each other.

“Are you okay?” Scott was the first to ask. His wife nodded to him with a sigh.

“I believe so,” Jean started, still processing everything that had happened. Her expression softened as it all came together, as it all began to make sense. “I can’t feel Addison’s presence in my mind anymore. I think he’s passed on, and I feel… so different… Like a burden’s been lifted. Even my powers feel right again.”

Scott nodded his head in understanding. It was just too bad that he felt a new burden. His battle with The Grey King had put everything into perspective, although he was sure that The Grey King in fact was trying to do just the opposite in telepathically forcing him to relive his controversial decisions and the conflicting emotions that led him to make those decisions.

He began to reach out to his wife, but stopped his hand, instead looking down to the lawn of the estate.

“Jean… I’m sorry…” he began. Jean seemed confused.

“For what?” she asked. He turned away from her in shame.

“For everything,” Scott continued. “The way I’ve led the X-Men after Xavier died, how our marriage has turned out, for what I had Remy do to Addison and how that caused his consciousness to stow away in your mind and cause you so much pain and confusion these last several weeks…”

Jean approached her husband‘s back and put a hand on his shoulder. “Scott… For everything that’s happened, especially this… I don’t blame you…”

Scott suddenly tensed up with those words.

“I need to go,” was all he said. Then he walked away from her toward the rubble of their home away from home to find some clothes, leaving her standing there alone on the lawn of the estate as the breeze continued to blow by.

Several hours later, Jean had assembled the remaining members of the X-Men down in the War Room to brief them on what had happened that night. Marie sat beside her at the briefing table, seeing that she was obviously distraught, whereas Bobby and Logan spread themselves out somewhat more spread out from the two. Hank had decided to stand, compassionate of his longtime friend’s heartache, but feeling the need to distance himself from what he saw as an impending situation.

“Then when our consciousnesses returned to this plane of existence, Scott just seemed so… distant, yet apologetic,” Jean explained, her cheeks flushed as she fought back tears. She wiped the wetness away from an eye and patted it dry with the back of her hand, then continued her story. “We went through the wreckage of the boathouse for what we could find, and he was just so quiet the entire time, then we went back to the mansion and he finally opened up.”

“He said that he realized how much harm he had done as leader of the X-Men since Professor Xavier died, and now that all of his loose ends were tied up and he did what had to be done to protect us, that he needed to leave and get his head straightened out. Then… he just left…”

With those words, Jean propped her elbows up on the War Room table and leaned her face into her hands, closing her eyes. Hank, Marie, Bobby, and Logan didn’t want to say anything, but they heard her quietly weeping to herself. After a moment, Marie broke the silence and leaned into her teammate, wrapping an arm around her and placing a hand on her shoulder in order to console her.

“Damn, sugah,” Marie said with a sigh, allowing Jean to lean into her. “What’s gonna happen with you two?”

Jean took a deep breath and sat back up, again wiping the tears way from her face and attempting to collect her composure before she answered.

“I honestly don’t know,“ she replied bluntly. “I mean… I asked him the same question, and he just blamed himself for what happened with Addison, saying if he had never had gone after him the way he did that I wouldn’t have gone through everything I had with my powers and The Grey King’s manipulations.”

Bobby leaned back into his chair and put a knuckle to his chin, his elbow resting on the arm of his chair. “So that’s it then. Scott’s no longer with the team,” he stated the obvious. “I’m just like… what does that even mean?”

A cigar wedged between his index and middle finger, Logan drew the stogie up to his lips and lit it with a Zippo lighter. He took a few slow puffs, then cocked his head to the side, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“Every man needs his rest from time t’ time,” Logan said quietly. “Scott’s had it rough since Chuck kicked it. Suppose it’s time he had his time off…”

Marie shook her head, anger and disappointment in her voice. “This don’t sound like rest to me, Wolvie. It sounds like he’s quittin’ on us an’ quittin’ on his wife.”

Logan shrugged slightly, unsure. Another X-Man wasn’t so nonchalant.

“Now that’s not fair,” Bobby cut in sharply. “Scotty’s always been there for us, and the guy’s been in the game longer than anyone else to boot. He doesn’t deserve to be called a quitter for knowing when to step down and get his head together.”

Marie had a retort ready, but Jean stopped her.

“Bobby’s right, Marie,” she said to the other X-Woman’s surprise. “Scott… I understand what he must be feeling, but I chose not to go after him for a reason. I chose not to ask him to let me go with him.”

“Whaddya mean, sugah?” Marie asked, furrowing a brow. Hank, Bobby, and Logan looked on, similarly curious as to what she was getting at.

Jean wiped away the last of the tears on her face, her cheeks having gradually returned to a seemingly more natural complexion as they dried. “If he needs his time away from the X-Men, if he feels that we would do better without him, then so be it. But I won’t be leaving you all. Not when you need me. Not when… I need you…”

“That’s the spirit,” Logan said as he set his cigar in an ashtray and reached for a bottle of beer that he had resting on the table for him, twisting off the top. “I can’t say there’s much of a team left what with Ororo and Sam goin’ their own ways, and Domino disappearin’ and all, but there’s still the five of us.”

“Hey, five’s not a bad number,” Bobby interjected. He shot a finger at Jean and Hank and waved it between the three of them, saying matter-of-factly, “That’s how we started out, after all, yeah?”

In spite of her friend’s attempts at levity, Jean frowned somberly, her brow hardening. “You’re forgetting that we also had Xavier back then.”

“Yeah, but you’re forgetting that Hank’s got a PhD now,” Bobby shot back, looking around at his teammates for mock-support. “Let’s just break his legs and buzz him. It’ll be like the old days all over again!”

Jean couldn’t help but laugh at the tactless joke, dropping her head back into her hands as Marie chuckled. Logan simply grinned and took a swig of his beer. They all looked to Hank for his reaction, who simply smiled politely. A faint vibrating noise in his pocket, followed by a muffled symphony-like ringtone, kept him from replying in kind to Bobby‘s jokes.

“Excuse me for a moment, everyone,” he said as he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and looked at the caller ID screen to confirm that it was who he thought it was. “It’s imperative that I take this call.”

“Sure…” Jean said, but Hank was already heading to the corner of the War Room to better speak as well as he could without interruption. She turned back to her teammates and took a deep breath.

“Well, Ah’m wonderin’ who’s gonna be leader now?” Marie asked. Bobby gasped and sat upright, the words flying from his lips.

“One-two-three not it!” he spat.

“Not it!” Jean added playfully.

“Not it,” Logan grunted casually.

“Gah!” Marie nearly face faulted, suddenly finding herself the leader of the X-Men in a matter of seconds. “That ain’t fair!”

“Them’s the rules of ‘Not It,’ darlin’,” Logan explained without remorse. Jean tried her best to suppress a giggle.

“But Jeannie, you and Scott are the ones who inherited Xavier’s estate, an’ Bobby here was a super-hero way before me!” Marie argued. “And you, Wolvie… you’re like firkin’ a hundred years old. Far more wise an’ sage like than me.”

Logan let out a loud belch, then took another swig of his beer.

“Every team I ever led not made up of psychopaths has ended up dead, and even a couple of those nuts still got killed, fer good measure. Trust me, job ain‘t for me.”

Marie turned to Bobby, who was picking his ear.

“And what’s your excuse?”

Bobby looked up at the rest of the team quietly, noticing that the attention had fallen on him with his finger in his ear. He slowly withdrew it and wiped his finger off on his jeans as discreetly as possible.

“Oh, uh… yeah, right,” Bobby began, clearing his throat. “You know how early Scott and Ororo used to wake-up? I mean, unless there’s like a Transformers marathon on or it’s mass or something, y’know… mornings aren’t really my thing…”

Marie sneered and began to argue back with that logic, but Bobby spoke over her just as vehemently, making it near impossible to follow their bickering. Jean simply watched them with an air of amusement as Logan downed his beer.

These were the X-Men, Hank thought to himself as he looked over his shoulder at his teammates before finishing his conversation. For better or worse, they were now what he had to work with from this point on.

“Alright. We’ll see you in a moment,” Hank said into his flip phone before closing it shut and pocketing it. With a deep breath, he turned back to the briefing table and approached his teammates with good news. “Everyone can relax. We’re not going to have to make Robert leader.”

Bobby smirked and waved a hand across his forehead, wiping away imaginary sweat. “Whew. That’s a relief.”

“What do you mean, furball?” Logan asked, suspecting that he had something in mind. Hank saw by the expressions on his teammates’ faces and their collective curiosity that they must have drawn the same conclusion.

“I was just on the phone with an old friend of ours that’s been considering collaborating on a little… academic and social venture that I have in mind,” Hank explained, careful with his words. He went on, pacing around the table. “With Scott having left the team, this could be the perfect opportunity to rally the X-Men behind a new cause, behind a new direction, a new purpose...”

Jean narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about, Hank?”

Before Hank could go into further detail, the sliding metallic doors that led in and out of the War Room parted with a metal groan and the sound of depressurizing air. A man with shoulder length blonde hair and a set of angelic wings on his back confidently passed through the doorway, stopping before the briefing table.

“He’s talking about our future, Jean, and how it‘s time that we finally achieve Xavier‘s Dream on our terms with our own ideas,” Warren Worthington III said without skipping a beat. “The only question is… who‘s in?”

Walking along the deserted back roads of Westchester County that late evening, Scott Summers had nothing but time to think about his recent decisions and the consequences they yielded.

After Professor Xavier had been assassinated, the X-Men found themselves fighting to protect a world even more dangerous than ever before, and without a doubt his leadership had gone a long way in addressing those new threats in a swift and decisive manner. However, it seemed that was at the cost of his marriage and personal relationships. Most importantly, it appeared to be at the cost of his morals and values, those he once clung to in even the darkest of times.

That’s why he could no longer lead the X-Men.

Duffel bag over his shoulder, Scott never broke stride as he continued his trek into town, even as he found himself struggling with a lack of certainty for the future. His conflicted thoughts were probably what kept him uncharacteristically distracted even as the head lights of a vehicle approaching from behind fell onto his back. When it came close enough for him to hear, the driver honked the horn twice, prompting him to turn and face the road, curious.

It was then the topless jeep came to a stop beside him. In the driver’s seat sat a woman with white skin, shoulder length jet black hair, and what appeared to be a black birthmark over her left eye. The mischievous smirk that she bared when the two former X-Men locked eyes complemented her harlequin-like appearance.

“Need a ride, stranger?” the woman called Beatrice, also known as Domino in ‘professional‘ circles, asked. Scott looked over the familiar brown jeep, recognizing the peculiar scratches and dents spread across its body.

“That wouldn’t be Logan‘s jeep, would it?“ he asked with a reserved smirk of his own.

“Maybe,” Beatrice said coyly. She nodded to the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “That wouldn’t be his duffel bag, would it?”

“Uh, well, yeah…” Scott admitted, scratching the back of his head and shifting uncomfortably. “I’m not going to lie. It looked cooler than mine.”

Beatrice shrugged and nodded. It was true.

Figuring he had no where else to be any time soon, Scott walked around to the back of the jeep and dropped the duffel bag off of his arm, tossing it into the back of the vehicle.

“Where are you heading?” he asked as he continued to the passenger’s side.

“Got a few places in mind,” she replied, knowingly. “Hop in.”

Scott opened the door to the passenger’s side without question and stepped up on the jeep’s nerf rail, pulling himself into the passenger’s seat and shutting the door behind him. As he put on his seatbelt, Beatrice pushed in the clutch and shifted out of neutral, then stepped on the gas, continuing her drive down the back road of Westchester County even as silence settled in between the two.

Her new passenger used those moments to glance over the various items strewn about the cab of the vehicle. A long barrel .45 magnum, an image inducer, a portable Cerebro unit, and a map of Genosha were among those items that caught his eye.

“Must be some vacation you have planned,” Scott remarked, shooting Beatrice a curious glare. She cocked her head to the side and bit her lip, smiling.

“What can I say?” Beatrice retorted. “I’ve heard that the beaches of Hammer Bay are supposed to be quite beautiful this time of year…”

NEXT ISSUE: This marks the end of X-Men (Vol. 2), but the beginning of a new direction! Set six months after the events of this issue, the Xavier Institute and the X-Men have a new mission statement, a new leader, a new team roster, and a familiar threat with a new modus operandi. Be here in no time at all for New X-Men #1 by Cory Wiegel, and don’t forget to check out Uncanny X-Men #1 after that!!!

I more or less had this issue finished a couple of weeks ago, but there were a few tweaks I wanted to make to it and some things that I needed to clean up before it could see the web. There was a lot more I wanted to, and I'm sure some of you can tell this issue was a little lacking because of it, but I just couldn't find the motivation to make them happened. Because of that I have mixed feelings about how this issue came out. However, this issue ties up all of the loose ends left in my run and sets up my new direction nicely, so I guess that's the important part. Here’s hoping you all enjoy what’s passed and what’s to come!

Thanks for being such loyal readers. I hope you all stick around.

- Cory Wiegel
  August 18^th, 2008