xp_logs | The Dark Phoenix

People go in to pull back the survivours. Some don't make it.

They watched as the Dark Phoenix discarded Marie like an after-thought. The assault had failed, piercing the forcefield but failing to gain any ground as her telekinesis was used to smash X-Men to the ground. They lay defenceless, just waiting to be finished off.

Callisto's sharp gaze scanned the scene before her, pulse still racing in her throat. Her whole body felt numb as she took it in, her skin tingling, a strange buzzing in her head that wouldn't go away. What now? You're still here. You can't just... stop. So what now?

"Survivors," she said eventually, hoarsely, starting forward across the debris-strewn ruins of the Mansion. "Get people out."

Kyle pulled himself up, panting and shaking his head back and forth like a stunned dog. "She's right. We grab people and get the fuck out." He kept shaking his head, trying to clear his ringing ears but it wasn't doing much good.

"I'll go far." Korvus said before deftly bounding over some rubble. He was one of the stronger and more mobile X-men; if they needed to exit quickly he should be using that advantage.

"I don't know who is gonna be able to get out under their own power." Kyle said. "We get whoever we can, and..." He'd seen Dori hit the ground hard but wasn't sure where she was now. "and... and we get out."

Callisto reached Angelo first, hauling him to his feet and supporting him for a few steps, though he soon gathered himself together and began to scramble unaided across the rubble.

It wasn't much good trying to follow smells, everything smelled equally of blood and burned meat. Kyle almost stumbled over Angel, half buried under a piece of wooden floor, rather than finding her. He dropped to pull the debris off her - and then almost let it fall as a bushy brown tail popped out from under it.

It was clear how often Dori and Kyle had trained together, because as soon as he pulled the wood away, she pulled herself up out of the rubble and immediately moved to get under Angel's shoulders and put pressure on her bleeding wounds. Together, they got the red-head up and clear of the destruction.

Glancing around, her senses ringing too hard for her mutant 'sense' to really work, Callisto's eyes eventually alit on the slightest movement off to one side, between her and Korvus. He seemed to have spotted it at the same time as her, the pair moving toward one another. A streak of white hair in the dark confirmed that it was Rogue - the movement could only have been her breathing though for as they arrived it became clear that she was barely conscious, if at all, her breathing laboured, her skin pale. Her skin...

"Careful, her gloves are off," Callisto muttered, though Korvus had already noticed and was moving with care as he checked her injuries.

Then she felt it. The tiny vibrations in the ground beneath her. The singing in her ears growing closer. The Dark Phoenix's attention might have been momentarily elsewhere, but she wasn't done with them.

Callisto stepped back from Rogue as Korvus lifted her into his arms. "We need to move." They all felt the ground vibrate this time, and as they began their retreat after Kyle and the others, debris began to lift into the air around them, twisted metal supports, masonry blocks, lumps of old wooden beam. They were just rotating gently in the air, for now, taunting them.

Eyes scanning the vicinity, Callisto soon seemed to have seen what she needed, and she indicated their path of retreat to Korvus with a tip of her chin. "Go," she said, and then again, when it seemed like he might speak, "Go, I'm right behind you."

Following on behind him, Callisto moved over to where she'd seen what she needed, a massive hulking sheet of internal blast-door that had been burst and twisted, one side a roughly serrated edge, the other still attached to the metal beam that had framed it - easily a ton and change in weight. As the debris beneath her feet continued its ominous vibrations she pulled the shard free from the wreckage, her weary muscles screaming in protest as she hauled it up from the ground.

She could almost feel her attention shifting back to them, could almost feel the charge in the air as the energy built up around the asteroid field of floating debris that lay between her and the Dark Phoenix.

The others scrambled across the wreckage as the debris finally made its move - suddenly, picking up momentum what should have been impossibly quickly, almost a blur in the air as they flew toward the retreating mutants. With a final almighty heave, Callisto lifted the shard and planted her feet, barely having time to put her shoulder to it before the onslaught hit.

It hit her like a truck, the noise of stone and metal meeting metal horrendous, deafening, the air drying and burning her lungs as the energy of the impact engulfed her. She could feel the shard itself vibrating, now, the metal heating and twisting in her grip, her burn-scarred skin blistering anew, and it wasn't a shield any more but yet another weapon, another object under the Dark Phoenix's control, and it would surely only be seconds before she used it.

Callisto closed her eyes.

"They're useless."

The air was thick with moisture, with the smell of chlorophyll and compost, and Callisto felt the heat like a wave as she entered.

"Hey, you in there, weathergirl? I know you're in there. I can't run these classes; they're no good, they're just gonna hurt themselves."

"That's where you come in," came the disembodied voice, floating in from behind a particularly enthusiastic fern. "To show them how not to. That's a teacher's job."

"I'm not-..." Callisto moved around the fern, but Ororo had already begun walking down the row away from her, forcing her to trot on after her like a particularly large, skinny puppy. "I'm not a teacher," she insisted, "that's what I've been trying to tell you - I don't know what to show them first, I don't know how they should... stand or hold themselves or whatever, my body just does stuff, I don't know how it does it."

"Then that's the first step. Learn how it does it, and then teach them. I know you're capable, Callisto. I've seen you with them. You want them to be safe, don't you?"

"That's-..." Callisto stopped short when Ororo turned suddenly, and they were face to face, and she felt herself shrink back slightly under the other woman's steady gaze. "That's all I want," she said. "That's why I'm here. But-"

"Then keep them safe. I know you can. I have faith in you."

Keep them safe.

Angelo had seen Callisto floored by a thunder god. He had seen her engulfed in flames and keep fighting. He had seen her back break.

What he saw as he looked back then, he knew there was no coming back from.