Try as he might the professor couldn't completely shield himself from the grief that emanated from the school. He was trying to strengthen his shields, which were still weak from experiencing Jean's death, when Storm walked into his office.
"Professor, I cannot find Rogue anywhere. She was not in class today but I did not think much of it since I know she has been having a hard time adjusting."
As loathe as he was to do this considering the current atmosphere of the school, the professor opened his mind to the mutants around him in an attempt to locate Rogue.
After a few moments he opened his eyes and Storm could see the perspiration on his forehead.
"She is not at the school. Who was the last person to see her?"
"I spoke to Kitty and she said she had talked to her this morning but no one has seen her since."
"I'll have to use cerebro to search for her beyond the school. My telepathy is still somewhat weakened."
Storm nodded and stepped aside so the professor could exit his office and make his way to the lower levels.
She made her way to the rec room where many of the students had gathered. She hoped someone knew Rogue's whereabouts since she didn't really want the professor to overtax himself if it was at all avoidable.
Storm was about to address everyone at once when the emergency news bulletin on the television caught her attention. In fact, the words "mutants" and "fighting" had caught everyone's attention.
Meanwhile in the lower level, the professor wheeled towards the large chamber that housed cerebro and prayed that his powers would be enough to find the missing girl. He felt he hadn't done right by her since he thought he should have anticipated everyone's reaction to her after learning of Jean's death. He guessed that their scorn, as unconscious and subdued as it was, had probably driven her off from the sanctuary he had hoped this place would be for her.
The professor activated the retinal scan to gain access into the chamber and was completely oblivious to the treachery that had gone on inside only hours before. Just as the professor donned the helmet that would amplify his powers several fold, Storm inadvertently saved his life by reaching out to him the way he had taught all of his X-Men.
~Professor! I have found her. You, Scott and I must hurry to New York.~
~~~~~~~~
Logan and Marie's tender moment was broken up when the former detected a scent he had smelled before. Logan slowly disengaged himself from the girl he was holding and stood up which immediately got Rogue's attention.
Logan looked down at her and tried to smile despite who he knew was lurking just outside the train.
"Don't worry, darlin'. I'll be right back but there's something I need to take care of first."
He could tell she was scared and tried to reassure her again.
"Marie, I'm not gonna leave you but I need you to wait here. I'll come right back."
The scent was getting stronger and he wanted to get out of there so Marie wouldn't be put in danger by being near him like she had the last time. She had almost died in the camper fire after he had been attacked by the large man-beast.
"Someone's heah, isn't there? Logan, Ah can help, let me c-"
"No Marie, I don't want you anywhere near him, it's too dangerous. No matter what happens just wait in here until I come back."
She wanted to protest but just nodded once and watched him exit the train.
Once he got off the train, Logan didn't have to look far until he found the source of the stink that had wafted into the train a few moments ago.
"Hey, bub, lookin' fer me?" Logan said as he looked at the mutant that had almost cost Marie her life.
Sabretooth didn't specify his quarry and just charged the man before him with a roar thinking to take him out as easily as he did in Canada. It wouldn't take much to get the girl that Magneto wanted after this man fell he thought.
Logan easily sidestepped the attack and even managed to graze the larger mutant's side with his claws. Sabretooth didn't have the element of surprise this time and was quickly learning that this wouldn't be as easy as the last time.
"First blood," Logan said with a feral smile and then taunted, "Ya sure you wanna do this? Only one of us is gonna walk away and it's not gonna be you."
Not particularly verbose, Sabretooth only growled and attacked again.
Neither combatant noticed the camera crew that had taken great interest in their fight. They were a news crew filming something totally mundane and happened to be at the right place at the right time.
Unable to dodge the second attack, Logan felt the burn of claws across his chest but answered in kind by plunging his own claws into Sabretooth's abdomen.
The blond-haired mutant howled in pain and with a surge of adrenaline managed to throw Logan a good twenty feet away from him.
Marie had seen the entire fight from the train and thought it was over after Logan stabbed the larger mutant in the stomach. However, when Logan was thrown back as if he weighed nothing, Marie knew she had to do something despite what Logan had told her. She got up and made for the exit Logan had just used but never made it. Her world went to black as she felt a tiny stab in the back of her neck.
After pushing the man with metal claws away from him, Sabretooth took stock of his injuries. The bleeding in his side had stopped even if it hadn't completely healed yet but the burn in his stomach was excruciating. However, since his spinal cord had been spared Sabretooth knew he would recover soon.
Logan sprung to his feet and took the fight to Sabretooth. Closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye, Logan managed to topple Sabretooth over with his smaller but heavier frame. As the larger mutant's skull impacted the ground with a resounding crack, Logan took the opportunity to sink both sets of claws into his chest and thought, 'That's for almost killing Marie.'
For the first time during the confrontation, Logan noticed people screaming and scrambling to get away from the fight and thinking Sabretooth was dead or close enough to it, he was surprised to feel claws rake the left side of his head and mangle his ear. Logan pulled back quickly and managed to parry the claws aimed for his throat with his own.
Sabretooth screamed as Logan's claws sliced though his hand and relieved him of his thumb and index finger. As Sabretooth held his injured hand with his good one, Logan bent down and took back the chain that had been stolen from him in Canada.
"This is mine."
Sabretooth growled defiantly and tried to kick Logan's midsection but he caught it.
"Try that again and I'll cut off yer leg too." Logan released the foot he was holding and then asked, "What the hell do you want with me?"
Before Sabretooth could prove he was capable of speech, Logan heard a voice from behind him.
"My dear boy, although you have done much to aid my cause it was never you we were after."
Logan spun around and saw a middle aged man hovering in the air a few feet away.
"Who the fuck are…" Logan trailed off as he saw Marie's unconscious form slumped over the shoulder of a short man with sickly green skin standing behind the floating man.
Logan popped his claws and made to charge the green man but was stopped before he could take a single step.
"That remarkable metal doesn't run through your entire body, does it?"
Logan was lifted into the air until he was eye level with the hovering man. His arms were outstretched, as were his claws.
Logan refused to show any pain and then snarled, "If you don't let her go I'm gonna rip yer head off."
Magneto was going to tell him it was useless to resist and he should join his cause but the look of pure hatred in Logan's eyes kept him from saying anything. It was obvious that the man held in his magnetic grasp would try to kill him long before joining in his fight against humanity.
With a wave of his hand Magneto sent Logan flying higher into the air until his head impacted with the ceiling above and his entire body smashed through. A large hole was left in the top of the train station and people were running to flee the falling debris.
~~~~~~~~~~
Within minutes of Storm telling the professor where Rogue was, he and his two remaining X-Men had made it to the train station thanks to the blackbird. They could see over a dozen police cars and several officers waiting just outside the station ready for anything that came out the front. None of the occupants of the supersonic jet noticed the large hole in the roof of the train station even as they moved to hover over it. They knew they could be seen but had bigger problems to worry about. On the television back at the mansion, Storm had seen an unconscious Rogue being carried by Toad who they all knew to be one of Magneto's henchmen. She hadn't seen the fight between Sabretooth and Wolverine that had taken place only moments before. Neither the professor nor his X-Men knew that the man who had killed Jean lay several feet below them.
Just as the police noticed the silent jet hovering nearby their attention was immediately drawn to the mutants that came out of the train station.
"HALT! We have you surrounded, surrender or we will open fire."
Magneto scoffed at the threat and was oblivious to the fact that his one time friend Charles Xavier was only several feet above him.
With a slight tilt of his head and a gesture with his hands, the master of magnetism lifted two of the police cars into the air and allowed them to fall onto two cars below.
The officers reacted immediately by taking aim at the mutants in front of them and the sound of dozens of weapons being cocked could be heard.
"You humans and your guns," Magneto muttered to himself before using his powers to take their weapons and turn them against their owners allowing them to hover eerily in front of the officers.
Before Magneto could make good on his escape, Toad's tongue lashed out and wound itself around his helmet. Toad managed to remove the helmet and flung it several feet away much to Magneto's surprise. He was about to demand what Toad thought he was doing but when he felt the presence in his mind, Magneto instantly realized what had happened.
~Get out of my mind, Charles, or I will kill them all. You will not be fast enough to stop me.~
Recognizing the threat as genuine, the professor quickly withdrew his presence and Magneto took the opportunity to magnetically retrieve his helmet to make sure the telepath didn't learn of his plans.
Toad addressed Magneto in an accent similar to the man controlling him.
"What do you hope to accomplish by taking this girl? She will not join your fight."
"She will aid my cause," was all Magneto said in response.
The professor realized he had been wrong about Magneto trying to find Wolverine, it was Rogue he was after all along.
"I cannot allow you to take her."
"If you follow me, if you intervene in any way I will kill her without a second thought."
With Magneto's head once again covered, the professor had no way of knowing it was a very hollow threat. Magneto had no intention of harming Rogue, not yet anyway. Also, since Magneto had kept his minions in the dark about his plans, having free access to their minds was of little help to the professor.
Noticing that Toad was still under Charles' influence but hadn't responded yet, Magneto issued a threat he was more than willing to carry out.
"For every minute that you and yours remain here, I will kill one of these humans. Return to your children and grieve the loss of your daughter but leave me be. You do not have the strength to do what must be done to save our kind."
In the blackbird above, the professor knew his actions during the next few minutes would determine whether or not several people died this night. Beside him, Scott offered a suggestion that shocked the professor.
"Just use Sabretooth to kill him and end it. Just end it all."
As the professor looked at the man he regarded as a son, something inside him fell. Scott was serious. He could tell that after losing Jean, Scott no longer had the will to fight as he had done before. Constantly thwarting the master of magnetism's plans as he had done in the past only to have him escape no longer appealed to the X-Men's field leader. Scott Summers was a very different man now.
"You know I cannot do that, Scott."
"We can't just let him take Rogue."
The professor smiled at that. He knew Scott wasn't particularly fond of the girl because of her association with Wolverine. It had been a very ugly scene at the mansion when Rogue had tried to apologize to Scott on Logan's behalf. However, to know that despite all that Scott still cared about her safety was something. Perhaps someday he would recover from his terrible loss.
The professor decided that his best course of action was to incapacitate Magneto by using Sabretooth.
Magneto noticed the behemoth beside him move and using his powers of flight managed to dodge the blow meant for his head. A shot rang out and a police officer cringed in fear as a spinning bullet hovered just in front of his forehead.
"Eric!"
Magneto looked to Toad and said, "That was very foolish of you but I am not without mercy. Leave now, old friend, and I will spare him. I will spare them all."
"Stop this, Eric. There are better ways to protect our kind."
"I am not interested in your integrationist ideals. It is inevitable that our kind will rule."
"There is no need to rule them when we can learn to live together."
"I know firsthand that they cannot even live together amongst themselves. They will never accept us, this is the only way."
The professor thought frantically on his next move knowing that a man's life hung in the balance.
"I don't believe I will be able to hold it much longer, this human's life is in your hands."
As the jet lifted higher into the air, the spinning bullet fell harmlessly to the ground in front of the petrified police officer.
"Are we truly not going to follow him, professor?" Storm inquired.
"Eric would know and we cannot jeopardize Rogue like that."
"Leaving her with him is not much safer." Storm said quietly, the concern obvious in her tone.
"We will return to the mansion and I'll use Cerebro to find her. We'll rescue her when it is safe and put an end to whatever Eric has planned."
As the blackbird flew towards the mansion, Logan finally managed to stumble to his feet only to fall onto his knees when his legs gave out. He had been sprawled out on his back absolutely immobilized during the tense confrontation that had just ended. His healing factor had been working desperately to repair the damage done to his cervical spinal cord after he smashed through the train station and then fell headfirst onto the hard concrete below. He had been conscious the whole time and although he had only been able to see the dark sky above he had heard everything. He had tired frantically to get to his feet when Magneto had threatened to kill Marie but his paralyzed body had refused to move.
Now that the worst of the damaged had been repaired, he stood up and was able to keep his balance. Marie's scent was much weaker now than it had been when he was lying on the ground but it would be enough for him to follow her. She had been taken by a man that could kill him in an instant but Logan knew he wouldn't stop until he found Marie again.
Heaven help anyone who stood in his way.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The blackbird landed with a small hop in its hangar and the three occupants immediately disembarked. Before they could go anywhere the professor suddenly stopped and sensed the turmoil above them in the mansion.
"There is something wrong. You two should find out what has happened. I'll use Cerebro to find Magneto's underlings. They didn't know his plans when I was in their minds but now that he has Rogue he may be more forthcoming with them."
Storm was the first to object.
"Professor, you were barely conscious after controlling those two the first time. I fear using Cerebro now may do you a lasting injury."
The weather goddess had no idea how prophetic her words were.
"She's right, you need to rest first. After…what happened, overtaxing yourself and passing out isn't going to help Rogue."
The professor could see the logic of their words and decided using Cerebro in his current condition could very well render him unconscious or worse.
"Alright, I'll try a little later, but let's see what's going on upstairs."
As they moved down the corridor towards the elevator, they were forced to go by the doors to the medlab and the professor couldn't help but sense Scott's thoughts.
Before he could say anything, Scott stopped and said, "I'm going to be in here…I'm…"
"I understand."
Scott nodded towards the older man and then walked into the medlab. The professor and Storm continued on in silence until they made it to the upper level.
As soon as the doors opened on the mansion level, they were met with Kitty's serious expression.
"You two need to see this."
Storm reacted first and asked, "What is it, Kitty?"
"It's the news, they've been playing some footage you didn't see before you left. Actually they've been replaying it a lot and I recorded it."
Knowing it would be easier to see the recording rather than ask for a full explanation, the professor and Storm followed Kitty in into the rec room, which now held nearly every mutant in attendance at the school. The professor immediately realized that the tension he was sensing was somehow related to what was on the tape.
Kitty put the tape into the VCR and immediately images of two men fighting could be seen. Everyone watched as Sabretooth and Wolverine viciously clawed one another and after the larger mutant was defeated with Wolverine towering over him they saw Magneto lift him into the air throw him out of the train station through the roof. The images that followed were familiar to Storm, it was when the live broadcast had started.
Although this was an interesting development, the professor wondered why the children were so upset. He had told them that a man had accidentally killed Jean but he didn't tell them what he looked like and he didn't think anyone besides Storm had seen him leave.
Almost as if she could sense the professor's thoughts, Kitty spoke up and said, "Janice recognized him. As soon as she saw the rebroadcast she freaked and said that was the man that killed Jean with his claws."
Now that he understood why everyone was so tense, the professor was worried about Janice. Apparently she had seen more of Jean's final seconds than he had thought earlier.
"Where is she now?"
Bobby answered his question with, "After seeing that guy on TV and telling us who he was she locked herself in her room and won't let anyone see her."
"I see. Storm, why don't you make sure Scott is alright while I talk to her."
"Certainly." Given what she had just seen, Storm was glad Cyclops was downstairs and hadn't seen what was on the tape.
As the professor moved towards the dormitory wing, Storm made her way back down to the lower level. As she walked down the corridor she noticed Scott was sitting outside of the medlab now with his legs in front of him and his arms limply held by his sides.
Storm didn't say anything and just sat down beside him. She kept her silence for over ten minutes until Scott finally spoke.
"She's really gone isn't she?" He hadn't been in denial but only now did he realize what life without Jean would truly be like. He would never see Jean smile again. Never feel her warm body in his arms again. He would never get to hold a little redheaded girl who had her mother's eyes.
At that last thought he couldn't hold back the tears anymore.
"Oh, Scott, I am so sorry." Ororo whispered and then pulled him towards her allowing Scott to cry into her shoulder.
After a few minutes Scott was able to clamp down his emotions again and pulled away from Storm. He stood up and both of them heard the elevator open and saw the professor move towards them.
The professor knew what had just happened but noticing that Scott had hardened his heart so they could deal with the current situation, he decided to do the same.
"I'm going to see if I can find out where they've taken Rogue."
The two X-Men followed the professor to Cerebro's chamber completely unaware of the danger it now held for their mentor.
~~~~~~~~~~