Warning: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS CHARACTER DEATH! I will not say which character, but I don't think they'll be missed by many.
This chapter may also be overly dramatic in areas. It also has a romantic moment or two that may not appeal to all readers (Nothing explicit or anything like that, it just might not be a pairing you like or you may think it doesn't fit the flow of the story.) Again, elements of sci-fi/fantasy in this chapter.
Now I do a happy dance because I'm nearly done writing this series! *does a few quick checks of current plans for story* I think I've got two or three more installments let to deal with the 'fallout' from this chapter and touch on a few other things. Hooray!
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Falling Down
With the help of the telekinetics, Rogue was able to propel the Eye of Ages through the opening Scott created and she followed the device in which Apocalypse was again entombed to fling it toward outer space.
Focused entirely on using the powers she'd absorbed from the ancient mutant, she failed to notice any activity below her as her morphed body rose higher and higher above the pyramid toward the Heavens hands outstretched to push the Eye even further.
The higher she went in the atmosphere the more strain it put on her borrowed invulnerability and slowly she began morphing back into her true form as the powers started to weaken.
~*~*~
"Lance, stop!" Amara grabbed Avalanche's arm tightly as what she was seeing finally sank in. "It's ROGUE!"
He was too involved in trying to soften the ground around the pyramid so that the stone monument would begin sinking beneath the earth's surface to understand what she was saying.
Breathing deeply to calm herself she turned away from the young man, became Magma and used her powers to try to stop the earthquakes he was creating.
Brian, Ororo and Warren took to the sky as all around them team members were fighting to stay upright on the shaking ground.
In growing confusion and panic they watched the pyramid shaking before them then saw Rogue finally push the Eye of Ages from sight then hover above them in the sky while looking down at something.
The trio watched as the girl seemed to tense painfully then go limp and begin falling toward the pyramid.
~*~*~
Across the distance separating them Logan's worried brown eyes looked with Marie's surprisingly serene green ones.
Ah love you.
Horrified that she would think such a thing now, he told himself that it was just his imagination and she hadn't thought it and he especially hadn't heard her think it.
Then the shaking of the room around him ceased to matter as her eyes slid shut and he watched her go limp before her seemingly unconscious body began falling from its high position in the sky.
Unable to believe his eyes that remained focused on her in the sky, yet unwilling to take any chances he snarled at Kurt, "Go get her!"
"I can't. She's too high up and zhe momentum vould kill us both," Kurt said sadly as his yellow eyes were also locked on the falling girl.
Growling Logan looked at the tired telekinetics present.
"Can you slow her down?"
Without hesitation, Jean and Nate both focused their powers on slowing the girl's decent from the sky as Betsy used her telekinesis to cover Rogue with a protective force screen to hopefully prevent any injuries upon unavoidable impact with the ground.
"This place is coming down, we have to get out," Scott said as a section of wall behind them crumbled and feel in on the floor.
Intently watching those focused on helping Rogue, Charles sensed the pyramid falling apart.
"Mystique get them out," he ordered.
Casting a quick glance up toward her falling daughter, the shapeshifter in her natural form called to all unnecessary mutants and led them quickly up the stairs.
Cybelle, Kitty and Kurt refused to leave, though, in case they were needed.
~*~*~
Exhausted from the strain of creating then trying to stop his earthquakes as well as the dawning horror that he may just have killed his friends, Lance collapsed to his knees on the ground and watched as the shaking pyramid began to fall in on itself.
Brian, Ororo, and Piotr were all rushing toward unstable monument with every intention of racing inside to get their loved ones out.
Before they reached the entrance, team members began pouring out of it.
Pietro passed them by in a blur then stopped a safe distance away to place Plague and Stall, whom he'd carried out, on their feet. He then rushed to the trio to stop them from going inside as Caliban, Evan, Mystique, Remy, Scott and Wanda all stumbled out.
Ororo quickly moved to embrace her nephew, who instantly began urging her away from the collapsing pyramid.
"Where is my sister?!" Brian demanded of the exiting team.
"She's still inside helping the others," Scott replied as he tried to get everyone clear of the stone falling from the shaking pyramid.
Ignoring Cyclops' shouts, Brian charged into the crumbling monument intent on getting his twin out.
~*~*~
Though it seemed to be taking an eternity everyone still remaining inside knew the seconds were passing rapidly as with a cry of pain and exhaustion Jean collapsed unconscious to the ground, unable to focus any longer on slowing Rogue's decent.
Lacking any backup in that department, a weary Nate shifted his focus to join Betsy in trying to protect the girl from death when she hit the ground.
Charles, Cybelle, Kitty, Kurt and Logan remained grouped together and intently watching their teammate as she came ever closer to crashing through the open top of the pyramid.
Not thinking or caring about the illogic of his actions, Logan ordered the others back and braced himself to have her body slam into his when it came down.
"Logan - " Charles shouted warningly.
It was too late, though, to stop anything as Rogue fell through the hole created by Scott's optic blast then quickly slammed into Logan's waiting body, the force of the impact sending them both through the floor which had been weakened by Apocalypse's crashing through it just moments ago.
That collapse seemed to set off a whole series of cave-ins and before any of them knew it, the entire floor had fallen from beneath them and the walls were all coming down.
~*~*~
Brian raced awkwardly through the shaking, crumbling corridors of the pyramid toward where he felt Betsy would be and stumbled to a stop at the top of the stairs leading down into the main chamber just in time to watch her fall along with the others through the floor.
Without hesitation he flew down in to the chaos.
Dust and lack of any illumination in the room blinded him and made it impossible to see where his twin had fallen.
Invulnerable as he was, the heavy stones raining down from the collapsing pyramid over his body were easily ignored, until a large section of wall slammed into his back and threw him into the darkness, pinning him to some floor.
~*~*~
Darkness was all that could be seen when the shaking and falling stopped.
Betsy moved cautiously where she was and was please to find herself free of any debris lying on top of her.
Slowly, with aching muscles protesting she pushed herself into a sitting position and scanned the room.
"Brian?!" she gasped aloud as she sensed her twin's presence in the rubble along with Charles, Cybelle, Kitty, Kurt, Nate and the faint signs of Jean, Logan and Rogue.
She heard stones being pushed aside at the same moment her brother spoke into her thoughts.
~~ Yes, I'm here, Betts. ~~
~~ We need light. ~~
Nate's statement echoed in her mind as she dealt with her surprise at Brian's being there, then she thought to ask her always prepared twin if he had any kind of light.
Within seconds the beam of a flashlight was cutting through the darkness to touch on the unconscious bodies of Charles, Jean, Logan and Rogue as well as the groaning and slowly stirring Cybelle, Kitty and Kurt. It appeared they had all fallen into a small room located beneath the main chamber.
Elizabeth winced when the light was shone in her direction and her pupils dilated sharply at the sudden glare.
"Watch where you aim that, luv," she moaned before moving to take the flashlight from him.
Crawling carefully over shifting debris, she made it to Logan who laid awkwardly and unmoving under Rogue's equally still body. Though Jean and the Professor were showing no signs of regaining consciousness yet, these two were the ones Psylocke was really worried about as the impact from the fall could very well have fatally wounded them both.
Her fingers trembled just a bit with reaction to all that had happened in such rapid succession and she placed them first against Logan's neck then the other girl's. A curse of 'bloody hell' escaped her elegant lips as she found their pulses weak and unsteady, which matched what she was able to sense of them telepathically.
"We have to get out of here," she whispered mostly to herself and swung around in the darkness to face her brother.
She gasped as the moving beam of the light she held touched on a bit of deep purple material.
Eyes wide, she moved focused the light in that direction and moved toward it.
Pushing aside a few obstructing stones, she uncovered the body of Mesmero who laid among the rubble with his eyes frozen open from Stall's paralyzing touch. Disturbed greatly by the expression on his tattooed and blood covered face, she felt for a pulse, sensed no mental activity in the still man and tried to determine if the gash on his temple was enough to have killed the mutant.
"Betts?" both Brian and Nate asked curiously.
"It's Mesmero," she shifted to the side and shone the light upon the mindbender's face for the two men to see. "I think he's dead."
"Ugh. Could you, like, close his eyes or something?" Kitty asked as she looked at the sight then quickly averted her gaze back into the darkness.
"Ve need to get out of here," Kurt said as he too looked at then away from the villain.
"Logan and Rogue need to be moved first," Betsy managed to get Mesmero's dark eyes closed as she told the group this. "Can you port them out?"
She turned away from her grim task to see the Nightcrawler moving cautiously toward his friends.
"As zhey are injured I can only take zhem vone at a time."
"Do it. Get them topside, tell the others what's happened, get us some more lights then come back."
Gladly allowing the British woman to take control of this whole situation, the other conscious team members watched as Kurt carefully shifted Rogue's limp body into his arms then vanished leaving them all waving away the smell of his sulfuric vapors.
~*~*~
Callisto gasped and turned sharply in the pilot's seat of the Blackbird as Kurt suddenly appeared behind her in the cockpit.
"Ve have injured," the blue boy informed her before urging the Morlock to follow him into the cargo area where Rogue was laid out on a medical table that folded down from the X-Jet's back walls.
"Bring me Healer," she ordered while moving toward the injured girl and checking her over with the limited medical knowledge she had.
The Nightcrawler was gone and back with her fellow Morlock within seconds and Callisto moved back into the cockpit to radio Hank on the Velocity while the Healer went to work.
"Beast," she said into the jet's communicator, "you're going to be needed here."
"I'm on my way."
~*~*~
"Kitty, can you phase us out?"
"The one's that can walk, I could try, but I don't know if it'd be a good idea. I think we're, like, underground now and any error in judgement on my part could get us trapped in the ground," Betsy was told by a sighing Shadowcat.
"Give me the light, luv," Brian demanded and with a slight frown Elizabeth did as asked.
The group watched as Captain Britain directed the beam up above them to try and see what was left of the pyramid.
"Can't see the sky, so something's stuck up there," he returned the flashlight to her with a sigh. "Can't try moving it without causing it to fall down on us.
Kurt's sudden reappearance in their midst startled them all, but the boy said nothing to them as he grabbed on to Logan's shoulder and teleported back out with the injured Wolverine.
"I could try and get rid of some of these walls," Cybelle suggested with a wave of her gloved hands. "Melting them away won't weaken the structure and we could see if there's any way out on the other side."
Nodding, Betsy tossed the light to Kitty to shine wherever the Morlock needed then turned her attention to the still unconscious Charles and Jean.
The Professor's mind remained strong and his pulse was steady when checked, but Jean's mental status was erratic like her pulse.
When Kurt teleported back with more flashlights for them, Elizabeth instructed him to get the red haired girl out next.
~*~*~
Scott pushed his way through the gathering crowd of team members who had left their positions at the pyramid to stand outside the Blackbird where they had heard injured teammates were being brought by Nightcrawler. Once inside the jet he knelt next to Jean as she laid on the floor of the cargo bay.
Logan and Rogue occupied the only two 'beds' the craft had been furnished with and Hank and Healer were both focused entirely on those patients.
"Jeannie?" Cyclops whispered as his fingers brushed the hair back from her face and came away bloodied from a cut on her forehead.
His girlfriend didn't respond to him in any way and his blood stained fingers curled into a fist as he bent to kiss her cheek.
"You're going to be fine, baby," he whispered to her before gulping back his emotions and shoving himself to his feet in 'leader' mode. "Who's hurt?"
Kurt hesitated before teleporting away to answer, "Just zhe Profezzer yet. Zhe ozhers are avake and appear to be ok. Mesmero is dead."
After somberly giving that update, the Nightcrawler once again vanished from the Blackbird only to reappear moments later to lay an unconscious Charles down next to Jean.
~*~*~
"Looks like we can get out through here," Kitty was glad to report as Cybelle's acidic hands opened a hole in one wall to reveal a tunnel that slanted up toward what they assumed was ground level.
"I can take more out zhis time," Kurt startled them all by saying as no one had noticed his return.
"You've got to be wearing out," Betsy said worriedly as the strain of all he'd been doing showed on his furry face.
"It vill only take two more trips. I can do it and it is more reliable zhan valking through zhe unknown zhere," his yellow eyes were determined as he looked from Psylocke to the tunnel that had no visible exit.
"How many can you take at once?"
"It is best not to try more zhan three," he replied.
"Brian, Cybelle, and Kitty," she named the trio to be taken and ignored her twin's frown.
With a nod of acceptance Nightcrawler had Kitty hug him while he grabbed on to Brian with one gloved hand and Cybelle with the other before teleporting the quartet from the rubble.
Betsy turned her attention toward the body of Mesmero.
"Should we take him with us?" she asked Nate who slid a comforting arm around her waist.
"We'll get him out of here then leave him for the authorities. No one else on the team needs to see that," the couple looked away from the dead villain and hugged.
Kurt returned and finally they were all free of the ruins that had been the Castillo.