"Me and Remy!" Kitty immediately volunteered as she latched onto Remy.  Remy sighed long and hard.

"And Todd is the left over?" asked Logan.  The Red Team nodded.

"Why is it always me?" asked Todd.  "First I'm the leftover on my OLD team and now I'm the leftover of THIS team…"

"I am SO there!" said Lance excitedly as the world shook accidentally.  Sometimes when he gets excited, that just happens.

"I'm just going to sit this one out." Said Rogue with a wave of her hand.  "To be honest with myself, I'm pretty useless unless I have someone to steal powers from and I've been doing WAY too much of that lately."

"Whatever." Said Wanda as she grabbed Lance's hand and held it high.  "We will be entering your challenge."

"And Rogue is not?" asked Logan, eyeing Rogue.

"Right." Said Rogue.

"And what about you, The Pink Team?" Logan asked, averting his eyes to the remaining all-male team clad entirely in bright pink.

"I'm there!" said Pietro with a raise of his hand before Scott or Evan could even realize that there was a question asked.

"I'll go with you!" said Evan.

"No way, Daniels." Said Pietro.  "You'll just slow me down."

"Aw man!" said Evan as if Pietro were the leader and what he said went.

"He's right, Evan." Said Scott.  "I'll go!"

"There we go." Said Logan as he looked as though he was going to launch into an extremely long explanation of stuff but all of a sudden, the Green Team teleported in.

"I hope we didn't miss anything!!" said Jean eagerly.

"Well, you need to pick two people in your team." Logan explained.

"Nothing against you, mein Freund, but Jean and I certainly are the most able when it comes to challenges!" said Kurt truthfully to St. John.

"It's okay!" said St. John even though he was obviously crying inside.

"Okay…so St. John stays behind?" Logan asked.  The Green Team nodded.  "All right, all of you groups of two follow me into the other room.  The rest of you, just stay here."

Logan then led the eight people down the stairs to a basement with four treadmills of different colors.  Can you guess the colors?  Red, blue, pink and green.

"You can probably guess what you'll be doing." Said Logan.  "Run as fast as you can and if you get tired, switch off with your partner.  I'll be back later."  Then Logan left.

"This is a really lame challenge." Said Scott as he turned around to see that Pietro was already on the pink treadmill.

"Don't bother thinking that you're going to get a turn, Summers!" he laughed, feeling way to proud of himself.  "I'll have this won in no time!"

Scott wasn't about to argue as he took the seat next to the treadmill.

"Aw man…" said Kitty.  "Remy, could you like…start or something?"

"I don't know, Kitty." Said Remy.  "I've had an awful pain in my ankle lately and I don't think I can run for very long at all…"

"Please?" Kitty asked.

"S'il vous plait mon ami?" Remy said.

"Oh…" said Kitty.  "I'll start running!"

"I DON'T run." Said Wanda to Lance.

"Well I shake the world!" said Lance as if that had any relevance to anything.

"Well I don't run." Wanda said threateningly.

"Whatever." Said Lance as he got on the blue treadmill.

"All right, Kurt." Said Jean.  "Do you want to start or should I?"

"Well…that's the thing." Said Kurt.  "It's really awkward for me to run unless I'm on all fours but the treadmill is too small and my feet would go right off the end of it.  Silly, isn't it?"

"Oh, that's too bad." Said Jean.  "I'LL do the running!"

MEANWHILE!!!

Logan climbed the stairs and walked outside the restaurant where Todd, Rogue, Evan and St. John were waiting ever so patiently.  "All right you four, I'll show you YOUR task." He said.

"What, we have to do something to?" said Rogue.

"Yes." Said Logan.  "Follow me."

The four remaining team members followed Logan through the restaurant and in the back where there was this isolated little dome building type thing just sitting there beckoning someone to come in.

"Welcome to La Stanza Di Pericolo." Said Logan.

"And for those of us who DON'T speak Italian?" said St. John.

"The Danger Room." Logan translated.

"In Italy?" said Evan with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes." Said Logan.  "It's an Italian Danger Room."

"Am I supposed to know what a Danger Room is?" said St. John.

"Yes." Said Logan.  "But, if you don't, it's simply a dangerous room used for training.  Mainly, there are four colored flags in there and you must go in and find the one that matches your team color.  Once you do, bring the flag to me and I will tell you where to go after that."

"Is THAT all?" St. John said.

"Obviously, you've never been in the Danger Room." Said Evan.

"Obviously not." Said Logan as he pushed Evan, St. John, Rogue and Todd through the door and into an utterly dark room.

Suddenly, the lights flashed on and everyone looked around.

"You may begin." Said Logan's voice over a loudspeaker as the four competitors tore off in different directions immediately.

MEANWHILE!!

"So how are we supposed to know when to stop running?" asked Scott as he watched Pietro, Lance, Kitty and Jean run like there was no tomorrow.

Pietro suddenly stopped running.  "You're not running, Summers." He said.  "You only wish you were so that you could be up to par with me.  Well, you can't!  I'm too fast!"

"Fine." Sighed Scott as Pietro started running again.  "How are the running people supposed to know when to stop running?"

"Do we even know WHY we're running?" asked Remy as he watched Kitty. 

"Well, obviously this is just like a normal race only cheaper." Said Kurt.  "We probably have to run for a certain distance and when we reach that distance, we're done."

Pietro stopped running again.

"Well, I hate to break it to you but I've already run three hundred miles." He said.  "So if that's the case then you guys are going to be running for an awfully long time."

"This…doesn't…seem…very fair…" panted Jean as she glanced down at the little mechanical device on her treadmill to see that she had run only 0.75 miles.

"Well, was it or was it not YOU that voted me as the least useful on our team?" said Pietro with a grin.  Then he pretended to yawn.  "I could go to sleep for the night and wake up the next morning to see that I would still be leaps and bounds ahead of all you slow mos."

Scott secretly did a little jig on the inside.  He would never do such a thing on the OUTSIDE but unless someone could read his mind, no one saw his little jig.

"I saw that Scott." Came the voice of Professor Xavier inside Scott's head.

MEANWHILE!!!

"Why do the lights keep dimming like that?" asked Todd as the lights in the room suddenly shone brighter.

Rogue walked over to him.  "I don't know but if the lights go out before everything starts attacking us then we are screwed."

Just as she said that, the giant machine in the middle suddenly came to life.  From every free spot there sprouted a long mechanical arm with either something sharp at the end, something with lasers or something with projectiles.

Everything pointy gave off a little twinkle just to show just HOW sharp they were before giving an all out attack on Rogue and Todd.

"ARGH!!" they both yelled because neither of them had any way of attacking.  All they could do was run or, in Todd's case, hop away.

Meanwhile, Evan and St. John were having similar problems.

"You know…" said St. John as he narrowly dodged a barrage of buzz saw blades.  "Fire is the best weapon against everything EXCEPT machines."

"I'm pretty useless too!" Evan yelled as he shot a spike at the machine but it merely bounced off as if it were made of plastic.

Suddenly the lights went out completely.  The only light in the room was the flame that was now encompassing St. John.

"Yeah…" he said.  "I really DO have the best power."

And with that, he ran off.

MEANWHILE!!

"Wait!!" Pietro yelled as he went over to the other groups who had dismounted their treadmills.  "You can't stop running!"

"Why bother?" said Kitty as she wiped her face with her shirt. 

"Like you JUST said, you've run over a thousand miles on that treadmill!" said Lance.  "If the point is to see who can run a certain distance, you've already got that won but if we have to run over a thousand miles, I'd rather drop out now."

"But…but…" stuttered Pietro.

"Don't worry, Pietro." Said Scott.  "If Logan comes back in to see who ran the farthest, we'll have won this one hands down."

MEANWHILE!!

"I FOUND MY FLAG!!" St. John announced suddenly.  He was easy to find because the fire he was creating was the only light in the whole place.  They saw his glowing figure run over to the door and leave, leaving them ALL in complete darkness.

"I found my flag!" St. John said as he presented Logan with a red flag.

"No." said Logan.  "You found A flag."

"Yes, that's right." Said St. John.  "Red for the Red Team…wait…"

"That's right…" said Logan.  "Finish the sentence."

"I'm on the Green Team now." St. John sighed.

"Very good." Said Logan.  "Now get back in there and find the correct flag."

St. John hung his head low and solemnly walked back in the danger room.  He took the red flag and wedged it into some crack just to give the Red Team some EXTRA difficulty for having raised his hopes like that.

Meanwhile Rogue, Todd and Evan were just hiding in a corner.  They didn't want to be killed and this race just wasn't worth braving the Danger Room in the dark.

It didn't take St. John very long to find the blue flag because he had his very own build in candle.  After pausing for a moment and staring at the flag, he said some kind of crazy Australian curse and tossed it on the ground and stomped in it a few times while mumbling to himself.  Then he journeyed off to find his own GREEN flag only to stumble across a pink flag.  He, feeling unstable and evil, decided that this pink flag offended him because it wasn't green so he set it aflame.

Logan was observing the darkness of the Italian Danger Room and figured that this was getting really pointless so he went back into the restaurant and went into the basement where everyone was just sitting around.

"We win!!" Pietro said, leaping to his feet.

"What are you guys all doing?" Logan demanded.

"We realized that it was pointless to go up against Pietro in a foot race…" started Lance.

"Whoever said this was a race?" Logan said.  "When you run on this treadmill, it powers the lights in the Danger Room where your other teammates are searching for a flag of their color.  I must say that it's very difficult to find a flag in the dark while things are attacking you."

"Why didn't you tell us before?!" yelled Jean, jumping on her treadmill and starting running.  The appointed runners on each team did the same thing.

"Because that was the point of the challenge." Logan said, rolling his eyes as he left the basement and went back into the Italian Danger Room.

"Hey, the lights are back on!!" Evan exclaimed.

"Aww…" sniffed St. John because he wanted to be the one emitting the only source of light.  But then he gasped and picked up a green flag.  "I found our flag!  Look!  I found our flag!"  He zoomed over to Logan as if he were Pietro and presented the flag to him.  "Do I win?"

"Well…yes." Said Logan, taking the flag.  "You can go into the basement of the restaurant and tell your teammates to come to me."

"All right!" cheered St. John as he ran out of the room and entered the restaurant.

"Do we still have to find our flag?" asked Todd.

"Yes, of course you do!" said Logan.

Meanwhile, St. John reached the basement.

"Guess what?!" he yelled.  "I FOUND THE FLAG!!!"

Everyone jumped in surprise at the sudden entry of St. John.

"And…" said Kurt slowly.

"So let's go, mate!" he continued.  Then he looked at Jean who was still running on the treadmill.  "You can come too…IF YOU MUST."

Then the Green Team ran out of the basement and back to the Danger Room to get the location from Logan of their next checkpoint AND their special advantage!!

"The final checkpoint is in England." Said Logan.

"FINAL?!" yelled St. John.  "You mean it's almost over?!"

"Hey, I found our flag!" said Rogue as she ran over to Logan with the blue flag in her hand.

"Yes…so you have." Said Logan.  "You can go get the rest of your team and bring them here."  Then Rogue ran out of the room and Logan turned back to the Green Team.  "Here's some boat tickets.  They leave from France at the time specified on your ticket.  Here are your train tickets to get to France.  Your train leaves in about a half an hour so I would hurry and get to the station that specified on the ticket if I were you."

You didn't have to tell the Green Team twice!  They were teleported out of there in seconds.  LESS than seconds!!

Then the Blue Team came up and Logan explained pretty much the same thing to them except their train left in one hour instead of a half an hour.  So then the Blue Team dashed out of the restaurant on their way to the train station.

Logan decided that he would give ONE more clue to the treadmill people as he observed the fact that it was super dim in the Danger Room now that two treadmills weren't in use.  So he went into the basement where Kitty and Pietro were running and Scott and Remy were watching.

"It would behoove you two to run as well." Said Logan.  "Now that two treadmills aren't going, there's not much light in the Danger room and it will probably be more difficult to find the flags."

"Do we have to?" asked Remy.

"Um…no, I suppose you don't HAVE to…" Logan said slowly.  "You really don't have to run at all but it would make it easier for your team."

"Well, I'M going to run!" said Scott as he got on the Green treadmill.

Remy looked like he was truly debating with himself on whether to run or not on the treadmill.  "I guess I'll WALK." He said finally turning the blue treadmill on a super slow speed.

AN HOUR LATER!!!

Logan, by this time, was reading a magazine, trying to keep himself from jumping into the action.

"Oh, HERE it is!" said Todd as he tried to pull the red flag that was wedged into the crack out of the wall.  "Yeah, THAT'S real fair!  How was I supposed to find this easily?!"

"Well…here, just take these tickets to your team and just go." Said Logan.  Todd hopped down into the basement to where the running people all were… VERY exhausted.

"Guess what I got!" he declared.

"That like took long enough!" Kitty yelled angrily, jumping off her treadmill.

"We gotta go now." Said Todd, looking at the train ticket.  "Our train leaves in about an hour."  And with that, the Red Team was out the door!

This left the Pink Team behind.

"I hate being in last place!!" whined Pietro.  "It makes me anxious!!"

"Just be quiet and keep running!" Scott commanded.

TWO HOURS LATER!!!

"You know what?!" Evan said, stomping over to Logan.  "I swear, there is NO pink flag in there!!  The only thing that I found that even slightly resembles a flag is this charred blackened remains of one!"

Logan observed the charred flag.  "I think this is it…" he said.  "Even if it isn't, we'll just say it is because I have better things to do than stand around watching you look for a flag."

"Why is our flag burnt?!" demanded Evan.

"I don't know." Said Logan, handing a set of tickets to Evan.  "Well…you missed your train.  But if you hurry and get to France some other way then maybe there's a chance you'll catch your boat to England."