Slowly, he walked to the front door and went outside. The morning was sunny, almost hot, with just enough of a breeze to lift his shoulder length hair and cool his skin. Too used to candlelight, he was almost blind, but this was too good to leave. It was freedom. He'd forgotten what that was like too.
He wouldn't go back to the tunnels, he decided. He'd healed as much as he could down there and now it was time to be around people again. Otherwise he'd just be locked in that same cylinder again, only this time he'd be his own jailer.
He heard laughter and walked around the house to see the X-Men playing a game of baseball in the backyard. Rogue met him there.
"Ah wondered where ya wandered off ta."
He smiled. "I'm stayin'," he told her.
"Ya are?" Her face beamed. "That's wonderful!"
He continued to smile and looked towards the game, half wondering if they'd mind another player.
"Ya know, sugah, there's somethin' we've all been wantin' ta do since th' first time we saw ya." She reached up, grasped both sides of the collar latched around his neck and snapped it in two. "That's much better." She handed the pieces to him.
He stared down at the broken device, his neck feeling unnaturally light without it. This was the last sign of his imprisonment, that which Sinister most used to control him. Without it, he'd never have been able to keep him in that lab.
His teeth ground together, all of the anger and grief he'd buried boiling out of him. He didn't rage or cry, though. Instead, he sent it into his hands and from there into the metal until it glowed an impossible colour and Rogue backed away.
Then he threw them, as hard as he could, one after another in quick succession. They screamed away from him and exploded against the ground, throwing chunks of dirt and rock everywhere. The X-Men dove for cover.
Rogue gaped at the twin craters. "Ah guess that answers th' question as t' whether ya an Alpha class mutant or not."
"I guess it does." He looked at her and grinned, feeling more like himself than he had in a lifetime. "T'ank you, chere," he told her and turned again, readying himself to meet the approaching X-Men.