The Massachusetts Academy seemed smaller than I remembered it when I first saw it on the horizon. As we approached, I realized why. Two of the buildings had been blasted to bits. The others all showed signs of damage, from broken windows to scorched walls. Rogue gripped the steering wheel tightly, the first to speak. "We … didn't do that. Did we?"

"Nope." Logan opened the door and breathed deeply. "Wrong attack pattern. Probably a Hellfire Club assault."

"Oh, good." Jean got out and stretched her legs. "Just what we need."

"How recent?" I walked over to Scott's motorcycle. It looked fine.

Logan shrugged. "Probably a week or two ago. Musta been a hell of a fight. Wish I'd been here."

"I think we all wish we'd been here." Rogue picked up a piece of broken glass.

We walked toward the main door cautiously, avoiding the odd bits of glass, wood, and other debris scattered over the steps. Logan moved ahead and called, "Hank. Come on out. It's really us."

Further back in the dark hallway, Hank McCoy approached us warily. He wore his full body armor and carried an assault rifle loosely. "What is my middle name, Logan?"

Logan snorted. "Same as mine, for all I know."

Rogue laughed. "Got you there, Hank."

He holstered the rifle but kept his suspicious eyes on us. "Come on. We can talk back in the kitchen. Thankfully, we managed to drive off the interlopers without severe damage to our culinary supplies."

He waited for us to pass him, then followed us as we walked. We heard laughter down one corridor to our right. "What is down there?" I shivered a little.

"Keep moving. The children needed some place to play. We put them there."

"Remy and Scott make it all right?" Logan lit a cigar.

"Our friends are waiting for your arrival, as you shall see in due time."

When we got to the kitchen, there were five people seated around the table. There were three empty chairs. Remy was draped comfortably over a chair he had turned backwards, talking to a woman wearing long hot pink robes with little stars and moons on them and a long conical wizard's hat, also in hot pink. Scott stood at the counter, watching the others, looking relieved, then tensing as we entered. Warren sat next to Remy but was leaning back to ask Scott a question. Rahne Sinclair looked up from her conference with Dani Moonstar to stare at us. She had three long, thin scars down the right side of her face that were probably made by Logan's claws.

Hank cleared his throat and the conversations stopped. The woman in hot pink turned around. She had red hair, brown eyes, and a big smile. She spoke in a Monty Python style British accent. "So, they all made it back despite the soft pillows and now they have to endure … The Comfy Chair!"

A few chuckles met her statement. Rogue stared at her. "Raven?"

She blinked a little. "Marsha? Is that you?" She spoke in an American accent now, deepened her voice and held her hands toward Rogue. "It has been … so long, my dear."

"Oh, God. It is you." Rogue stomped to a chair beside Rahne and sat down. "Just please, don't go into your stupid fake Asian accent."

"Rogue?" I took a seat next to her. "Who is that woman?"

Hank cleared his throat again. "All will be explained in due time. Please … oh, dear. We don't have enough chairs. Well, sit in one if you can, and if not, sit on the counter."

Jean took the last available seat. Logan stood in front of the table, snarling a little at Scott, who pretended not to notice and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Ahem. All of us happened to be away for one reason or another from the mansion when the groups we were with got an urgent message from Charles. He told us he needed you for a special project at the mansion and not to disturb you for any reason. For about a week's duration, we all obeyed the orders we were given without question. But then, some of us began speculating that something was wrong.

"For one, Charles said nothing to Madelyne about Scott's prolonged absence. We told her what he had said, certainly, but for Scott not to try to communicate with her was highly suspicious. For another, Sam Guthrie reported that he had gone by the mansion and saw Rogue outside. When he hailed her, she shook her head, muttered something about canine conniptions, and traversed the grounds back to the mansion.

"So a few of us went to try to talk to Charles. That first group was thoroughly thrashed by you and then the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants launched its first attack against the Avengers, with whom I, Bobby, and Northstar were staying. We became busy taking care of them, calling in other X-teams to bolster our forces, and so on. Then, once we finally had them captured, they insisted they had been hired by the Hellfire Club.

"Well. We sent in a better armed team next time to try to extract you from the mansion, but you still trounced us handily. So the New Mutants – without informing anyone – went in on their own while we were planning to assault the Hellfire Club headquarters." He frowned at Rahne, who squirmed in her chair.

"What else could we do, then? Leave 'em to die?"

"You could have waited. We were thoroughly routed because we did not have your support, and we were counting on it!" Rahne shrank away from Hank, who suddenly did look like the Beast he was named.

"So we had to eat Robin's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing. Yay." Raven smiled cheerily as Hank turned to her.

"Shut up. It's not your turn yet." He paused and wiped a huge hand over his face. "At any rate, we decided at last to do research, rather than run into a situation we knew nothing about and endanger our teammates' lives." He glared at Rahne, who was still cowering in her chair. He then looked at the others present and grinned. "Luckily, I figured out what was going on with some help and a little luck. Mastermind was playing his tricks again. I was not certain what action to take. Thankfully, Dani survived the attempt to free you from the mansion. Raven showed up here, then, as a gift from Dr. Strange." He put emphasis on the word gift.

"What, a wise guy? Soitinly." Raven's Curly Joe imitation went off without a hitch.

"As you say." He rolled his eyes. "Raven, with her magical talent, scoped the mansion out and discovered that our plan, to activate someone's true memories inside in their dreams, would only work on you, Storm."

"Why?" I was intrigued.

Raven turned to me and shrugged. "'Cause you were the only one with mage potential. The others are as Muggle as Muggle can be. Well, except blue, dark, and handsome, but it isn't his magic. He probably grew up with a powerful witch. Or rolls in pixie dust regularly." She hurried on at Hank's angry look. "Anyway, he had the technology, and Dani had the ability to make it real once I did it, but I was the one who actually made them up. The dreams. Especially the last one."

"Why'd it take so long?" Logan loomed over Raven pugnaciously.

Hank spoke again. "Because we had huge numbers of wounded mutants, constant assaults by others hired by the Hellfire Club … you did notice how they helped redecorate the front lawn? … and it took some time to figure out what was wrong and how to help you."

Raven smiled sweetly at Logan. "What he said. It took some time for Ororo to trust her dreams. Also, searching through personalities and for memories is hard work, especially when you're trying to be sneaky about it."

He growled, but turned from her and faced Hank again. "Go on."

Raven spoke again, more seriously this time. Her accent was now similar to Kitty's. "We made up the last dream carefully. Dr. McCoy insisted on monitoring you, Ororo, as we did our work to see what effects it had on you physically. That's how we found out about the baby. You were probably wondering."

I frowned. I had wondered how the dream could have predicted my pregnancy before I knew it myself.

Hank took up the thread of the conversation. "We then sent you that last dream and waited for your response. We thought if it was effective, we would hear from you soon, so I hooked up my communicator to the general grid here and waited for your call."

"Why couldn't we contact Emma?" Jean, like most of us, was frowning.

Hank cleared his throat, but Dani spoke. "She was with the second assault team. You blasted her hard. She got trapped somehow in what you did. We're hoping that when you free the Professor from the astral plane, he'll be able to help her."

I managed to find my voice again. "Has anyone died because of … what happened?"

"A few." Hank looked away from us. "DaCosta got taken down by the Hellfire Club. Sam Guthrie died leading the New Mutants team when they tried to get you out, but that was an accident. Tabitha Smith has vanished. We think she is probably deceased, but we cannot tell."

Silence. Awkward silence. I didn't want to know more.