We were only a few hours out from Earth, when I finally got though to the mansion. I can't tell you how glad I was when Scott answered my latest hail. Here I was expecting the worse, and I over looked the obvious answer. The comm system at the mansion had been down for the past couple weeks, and the lack of a person who knew how to fix it, namely myself or Bishop, it had remained down until they had managed to track down Forge to fix it for them. Scott appeared to be quite glad to see us, it appears young Sam made our disappearance six months and a half months back sound more like a kidnapping than a request for our help. From the few minutes I manage to speak with Scott, I learn things have gotten much better around the mansion as of late. It would appear Xavier has received a pardon from someone very high up in the government, and is back at the mansion. Bobby's father has made a full recovery in the hospital prompting Iceman's return to the team. From the sound of things, Xavier's dream is back on track.
The fire broke out about half a minute after I took the ship into the atmosphere. I never should've attempted this. This ship, like most in the Shi'ar Empire's fleet, wasn't designed to enter a planet's atmosphere. From what I've seen of their ships, they're made to orbit a planet and transportation to the surface is accomplished by a kind of teleportation device. The problem with using this method is that if this ship had one of these teleportation devices aboard, I had no idea what it looked like or how to work one if I did manage to find it. Also, with the way things have been falling apart on this ship lately, I don't think I'd trust any device on this ship to work right, let alone one that breaks the body down into energy and then back again. I thought with Joseph's magnetic powers to hold the ship together, and Bishop using his powers to draw off the excess heat, that I'd be able to pull this one off. I thought this ship would be able to survive a trip though the atmosphere to the surface in one piece. I was wrong.
The ship began to tear itself apart shortly after the fire started. I heard Gambit shouting out a warning about the oxygen tanks to Rogue, about a second before they exploded, taking out the entire back end of the ship. Something very large tears though the wall behind me and continues past me to smash a huge hole in the large window in front of me. One of my restraining harness snaps as hurricane force winds race though the cock-pit. The other restraining harnesses begin to cut into my skin as the entire ship is de-pressurized. Remy's limp body smashes into the door frame behind me and then makes a bee-line for the hole in the front window. I just manage to snag his right leg... make that his right boot, as his leg rips free of the boot and Gambit is sucked out of the ship. I watch helplessly as his body leaves the ship and tumbles end over end toward the Earth. I don't have time to think about what has just happened. The entire right wing of the ship comes apart sending the ship into an uncontrollable spin. My chair rips free of the floor sending me slamming into the one of the support beams. A red haze crosses my vision as I struggle to free myself from the chair. That's when I smell it...what is that... smells like burning hair. OH MY! I appear to be on fire. The ships hull is red hot and this damn chair has me pinned against it. It looks like I'm not going to make it out of this one alive. I do hope I'm wearing clean underwear.
Where am I? I think I blacked out for a few minutes. I'm not on the ship any more, I don't think. Not unless the ship has been condensed into a very small metal sphere. I'm guessing this vessel is one of Joseph's creations. Sure enough, I raise my head off the curved floor of the sphere and find I'm sharing this cramped vessal with Bishop and Joseph. Oh no, she isn't here... Trish she didn't make it off the ship, I never got to tell her how much... wait there's somebody beside me. She dosen't look so good, severe burns from the looks of it. Trish will get the best medical care, I'll make every thing better... I have to. This accident is my fault, if I hadn't insisted we try and bring this ship to the surface, none of this would have ever happened. My greed overcame my common sense. I wanted to get my hands on the Shi'ar technology contained in this ship. While the ship may have been in horrible shape, it was still decades ahead of the current technology on Earth. I mean what super hero team didn't want their very own space ship... where did it say, only the Fantastic Four could have a space ship to play with. I slowly work my way over to Trish when I realize the horrible truth. She's not breathing!
The next two minutes I spend performing C.P.R., were the longest two minutes in my entire life. I can't tell you how glad I was to hear that first gasp for air. It is times like now that I'm glad I entered the medical field. Trish appears to be breathing steadily even if it does sound a little rough. I'll have to check her for internal injuries when we get to the mansion. She appears to be resting peacefully and there's nothing more I can do for her now, so I turn my attention to the other occupants of the make shift vessel. Bishop isn't in that great a shape... he's using his powers to draw the heat out of the hull, and it really looks like he's discovered the limits of his powers. He's glowing white hot fairly bursting with stored up energy. As for Joseph I do believe the strain of holding this sphere together is considerable. He may not be up to the task, as I begin to notice the cracks appearing in the hull. It is though one of these cracks that I notice the ground rapidly approaching. We're about to slam into a mountain range, doing speeds close to 150 miles per hour!
Two seconds after this revelation something slams into the floor of the sphere, forcing it up a good two feet. I swear I hear a short scream, and then our rapid decent begins to slow dramatically. A few seconds later we slam into the mountain side and the impact shatters the metal shell surrounding us. As I begin to tumble down the steep slope we crashed on, I painfully realize that I'm not dead, yet. Whatever hit the sphere, slowed it down enough to make our crash landing one we could walk away from. I find purchase on an outcropping of rock and manage to keep myself from falling off the side of the mountain. I pull myself to my feet just in time to be hit by a large section of metal sphere, that tumbled down the cliff behind me. My hand rips free of the cliff side and suddenly I'm in free fall, with nothing but air between me and the jagged rocks half a mile below me.
I feel a hand grip my right arm and my fall toward the ground comes to a stop. Looking up I see my savior is Rogue. She's looked better. Right now it looks like she has went a few rounds with the Juggernaut and lost. I can see the pain on her face as we fly up the cliff. The severe burns running across her back tell me she was the one who slowed our red hot sphere's decent, and saved our lives. I begin to gather up the courage to tell her about Remy when I see him sitting on the ledge with Joseph and the still unconscious, love of my life, Miss Tilby. A loud boom fills the air causing me to look to the north and see Bishop releasing a monstrous amount of stored energy into the air. It would appear all of us made it to the ground alive and in one piece, more or less. A few well placed questions later, and I learn the object that tore though the cock-pit window was Rogue, knocked senseless by the exploding oxygen tanks. She came to her senses half a minute later just in time to save Gambit from hitting the ground, and then after placing him safely on this ledge, managed to do the same for us. A very exhausted Bishop staggers up to our little group just then to inform us that he has managed to contact the mansion, and that the Blackbird will be here before nightfall. We're home, safe and sound.
As it turns out Remy escaped our little adventure with the least amount of damage. Aside from a dislocated right shoulder and a minor concussion, Remy will be back in fighting form in a couple weeks. Rogue has severe burns over most of her back, has lost all hearing in her right ear, and the entire right side of her body is a mass of bruises and cuts. Bishop burned the skin off both his lower arms when he pull me out of the cockpit and into Joseph's makeshift escape craft. Joseph... he seem to be in pretty good shape until he wouldn't wake up after the flight. He has massive internal bleeding, I'm not sure if I can help him... I've done all I can. I guess that leaves Trish and myself. Trish has burns to over 80 percent of her body and her body has gone into shock. I've got her pumped full of pain killers, I hope to God she makes it though the night. Myself, I am sporting a great deal of damage myself. I've lost a great deal of my lovable blue fur, burned away by my contact with the hull and leaving behind some very painful burns. Every movement I make hurts. A half a minute after Remy makes his way out of the room I slump into a chair, and seconds later I'm asleep. I wake up with a start, someboby is watching me. That's when I see Jean standing in the doorway.
She looks like she's in pain. The baby! She must of seen the panic cross my face, because she begins to laugh before she tells me that she isn't having the baby now. It turns out her back is killing her and was making sleep impossible. It turns out she came down to the medi-lab to pick up something that would dull the pain a little. As I make my way around the lab looking for a mild sedative suitable for a woman in her condition I hear her begin to scold me for not touching the food Bobby brought down for me... eight hours ago. I was asleep for five hours? Grabbing the bottle off the shelf I bound across the room, snagging a cold drumstick as I pass my dinner, and then after a couple of back flips, I land perfectly in front of Jean. Handing her the bottle, I begin to give her the instructions on proper dosage. While doing this I begin to work on the drumstick... Yuck! I spit out the chicken... what is in this? It tastes awful... I think the chicken's gone bad. I'll be treating a few cases of food poisoning come morning if this is what the rest of the X-men had for dinner. I ask Jean if she had this chicken at dinner as I make my way over to the microscope with the drumstick. I get a startled scream from Jean in response.
Expecting the worst, I turn quickly and see Jean hold her stomach, smiling. The baby just kicked for the first time. Jean invites me over to feel the little guys first temper tantrum. As I place my hand on her stomach I don't know what to expect. Never in a million years did I expect the mass of metal wires that erupted out of Jeans stomach, wrapping themselves in a vice like grip around my entire right arm. I manage a short scream before the wires engulf my head working their way down my throat. Seconds before they cover my eyes I see the skin on Jean's face rip away to reveal a sentinel like robot. I have to warn the others! It's a trap! Those are the last thoughts that cross my mind before I pass out.
It was sad really. Rogue and Magneto had been his parents... they had been his sun and moon. He would of given up his own life to preserve theirs... and now he had killed them. Of course these two hadn't been his parents, they were just shallow mockeries of his mother and father. His true parents had been erased from existence. His true parents had been killed by the X-men. His true parents had died along with the rest of his world when the X-men had sought to play God and decided his world did not deserve to exist. The X-men had ripped his entire world away... and now they had paid for that mistake. The X-men were dead and their world would follow in their footsteps. The X-men had erased his world now he would pay them back in kind. An eye for an eye... a world for a world. By this time tomorrow this world and everyone on it would be destroyed.