Author's Notes: I would like to apologize for the long delay since the first chapter. Most likely my readers are staying awake at night, wondering what happened to Spirit and Spy, or at the very least are quite eager read the climax. Part of the reason for this is that Spy has just had her first child a few months early, named Myra after her late friend. At first we were all afraid that little Myra wouldn't pull through her first few days of life, but now she is doing well. Her parents are now rather busy, but Spy has managed to scrape some time together to help me with this chapter. I myself have been preoccupied with various affairs, and we haven't been able to meet for a while. This chapter is the most important in the story, and I had to wait for a time in which I could write with full justice to the subject. This is NOT the final chapter, and I promise that at least one, maybe two, chapters will follow.

I have been told many times in my life that courage is not fearlessness, but willingness to face fear. Since the experience that Spirit and I had, I have wondered how many times the heroes that we admire today did the things they did simply because they had no other option. But I digress. The point is that I certainly don't think I was brave. If we had failed on our mission, we wouldn't have seen the light of day again.

The three of us whispered quietly throughout our journey, mainly trying to fill the horrible desolate emptiness around us. My friend walked straight ahead to shorten the time, even passing through the rocks spread across the plain. Her father didn't seem to have feet. Instead he appeared to flow like a bright liquid fountain beside us, at times shooting up and gliding for a few feet, then dropping down again. I asked him what this was for, and he admitted, "I'm a bit restless. I would rather have this over with, but I have to go at your pace."

A sinking feeling was growing somewhere between my stomach and neck. After a while, I realized that it was fear. Several times I repeated, "I am going to encounter a psychopath. He's a lot older, and has hurt me before. He's had practice. He wants to kill me. And I'm going to be ALONE. I am going to encounter a psychopath. He's a-"

Spirit gripped my hand tight enough to hurt. "I do that every day, Spy."

"Huh?"

"I expect the Professor told you how my powers manifested. Guess what, Spy, you're not the only one to deal with an attempted murderer."

There was a long silence. "I'm sorry," I began.

"Leave her alone," whispered Mr. Sing. "She tends to sound like this when anxious."

"In fact," continued Spirit bitterly, "I technically AM a murderer, so you really can't come across anyone more frightening than me..." She suddenly changed tone. "Oh Dad, I'm sorry. It's the first time I've seen you for years, and this is how I act. Forgive me, please, Spy. I'm such a jerk."

"You're freaked out. It's okay. We both are. Don't be upset about...that. It was an accident, and was in self-defense anyway. I'll make a deal with you. I'll stop whining if you stop putting yourself down." I breathed in sharply. "We're really close now."

Spirit's father said, "Let's get behind a rock." He stood and peeked around the side towards the building. My friend sat down and leaned against the rock, facing the other way.

"Remember what I've told you," she said to me. I bent down so I could hear her better. "When you go in, we will call the rest to us. We will be waiting for you when you come back out. I promise I won't leave you here. Stryker will be able to make anything happen inside that cell. He can even make it larger on the inside than on the outside, for this is his domain. If you want to be afraid, then be afraid. But remember that I believe in you." With a ghost of a grin, she added, intensely, "Hey, you get a chance at being as b as you want." Reverting to her former seriousness, she said, "God bless you."

I smiled weakly. "Good luck," Mr. Sing said to me, and shook my hand. "It's been a pleasure meeting you. I only have one thing to tell you, before you enter. If you choose to be strong, you will be stronger. If you choose to have hope, it will surely come. If you choose to succeed, success will not escape you." He paused and whispered, "I know you feel terrible about your parents not loving you. It happened to me as well. Someday they will realize your worth."

Okay, I told myself, now or never. I walked from the shelter of the rock to the open space beyond. The cell glowed eerily. My heart was pounding. I touched the wall, and my hand went through. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and walked through.

The only sensations I had were alternate freezing and scorching. For a millisecond I would be enveloped in the most bone-crunching cold imaginable. Then it switched to terrible heat, an extreme of temperature that felt hot enough to melt adamantium. They alternated dozens of time in about five seconds. Then I was through.

My shadowy self seemed pathetically small and dim in the interior. As Spirit had told me would be possible, the inside was huge compared to the exterior. There seemed to be no source of the evil light. It was more bleak and forbidding that the fluorescent lighting that is installed in prisons and mental hospitals. The ceiling seemed to be incredibly high, though it was difficult to judge, since it was all white. The walls also seemed to be long and wide enough for a football stadium. A forest of forbidding columns stretched from floor to ceiling. When I stepped, there was a dull "click" that echoed through the vast openness. "Stryker?" I said with a quaver. Then, more resolutely, I called out again. "Stryker!!"

All the lights suddenly vanished. I was in complete darkness, which was just as bad as excessive light. Stretching my arms out to find a column, I instead hit a smooth wall. I reached out with my other hand in the opposite direction, and at my arms' length was another wall. I could touch the ceiling without standing on tiptoe. "Okay then..." I said to myself. Then I felt the walls closing in on me, getting tighter and tighter. At first I felt a wave of panic, then I remembered that I could go straight through the wall if I needed to. Once the walls had shrunk to the size of a sarcophagus, however, they stopped. "Sorry to disappoint you," I announced, "but I'm not claustrophobic."

A long hiss answered my question. There was now dim lighting, enough to see that snakes, frogs, and bugs slithered and hopped around my feet. One snake began winding itself up my body. I saw its tongue flicker in and out. The slit pupils of the reptiles' red eyes glinted at me. Though it was decidedly creepy, I knew that they weren't real and couldn't really hurt me. "Could you please stop this? I need to talk to you!" I said to the dimness. "Stay right where you are, buddy," I told the snake. It hissed once more then melted away like mist, along with the other animals.

I began to walk forwards. The tiles I was standing on rose up, while the rest of the floor sank until I was miles high over the ground. Wind howled like a hurricane, and thunder boomed ever closer. The narrow pedestal I stood on rocked back and forth, to and fro, first gently, then with increasing violence. Crouching down and gripping the sides as hard as I could, I shrieked, trying to hide my terror, "Enough already! Are you too scared to deal with one little GIRL?" Later I realized that this had been at normal screaming volume. I still don't know why.

The tiles sank back down. In front of me stretched two paths, two open doors. One doorway seemed to lead to a green meadow, with a blue sky, white clouds, and the sounds of birds chirping and streams flowing. Off in the distance was a building, one that looked awfully like the Institute. It just oozed pleasantness and calm. The other doorway seemed to lead to a graveyard, with a dark sky, thorny bushes, and high moans wafting through the air. Fierce dogs and wolves growled at each other, and bats fluttered past the dead trees. With a sigh and another pang of anxiety, I went through the second passage.

Once I was through, it was nothing like it had appeared. It was a long, long corridor, with flickering, sickly green lights. The end was extremely anticlimactic. I came upon a stark white room, with a white chair and desk, and six large black screens. Sitting at the white desk was William Stryker.

I raised an eyebrow, a talent that took me several years of practicing in front of mirrors to develop. "Scaaaaaaaaaaaaary," I drawled, with the most sarcasm that I could inject into a single vowel. I noticed that my voice was now normal. Weird, but I didn't have time to worry about it. My plan was to be as much as a pain in the neck as I knew how, until I figured out what buttons to push to make him REALLY mad at me. Teenagers have never been known for being bad at annoying people. But he was so relaxed and detached that I decided this would be tricky.

"Enough people seem to think so," Stryker replied, calmly.

"Who died and made you God?" Between our arrival in the ghost world, and my entrance into Stryker's cell, I'd had plenty of time to come up with insults.

"I died, little girl. You should have told the Wolverine not to kill me, before it was too late. So sad for you." He leaned back and stretched in the chair.

"You don't know anything about me," I hissed. "You don't even know my name."

"True, but how much do you know about me?"

I gave him a list of what I thought of him, what jerks his ancestors must have been, and how ashamed they'd be to know he was related to them. I finished off saying, "Mutant-hater."

"With pride."

"Murderer."

"Excuse me, but I never succeeded in eliminating anyone. Unfortunately."

I retorted, "Yes you did. You killed the woman that you enslaved, by keeping her drugged, never letting her be her self, even when you sent her to her death. You killed Wolverine's old self, his real self, his past, his identity, and his future. You killed Nightcrawler's ability to survive on his own, destroying his career and making him a fugitive. Jean Gray was forced to sacrifice her life because of you. You killed-"

"I get the idea." I detected a faint hint of irritation. Good.

I sighed, overly dramatic, and began to walk in a wide circle around him. At intervals I shook my head, stuck my tongue out, or did other insulting gestures. I'm not trying to encourage that sort of behavior, but the fact remains that I acted rather immaturely. "Oh, hurting mutants doesn't matter to you. We're not really people, right? Uh huh. But all those soldiers you sent to the mansion, all the ones guarding your Cerebro replica, and all the people that were working on that plan of yours, you sent them to their death."

"Child," he said, in such a way that it was a deadly insult, "soldiers know that they may die, serving their country. It was a decision they made."

I held up my hands in 'surrender' mode. "Whatever. Whatever. It was 'cause of your scheme that they ended up not going home, but that's your call. I thought that murdering your son, Jason, and forcing him down a path that lead to your wife's suicide might bother even you, though." I shook my head and sighed again. "Tsk tsk tsk." I waggled a finger at him, a finger that is not ordinarily used for moral admonishing. It was the finger that tends to be displayed during rush hour, and is never displayed in G rated movies.

He inhaled sharply and said one word. "Explain."

Sore subject, I thought, yep yep. My following speech wasn't completely fair, but remember that my object was to make him angry enough to chase me out of his complex. "The Professor, who you are not worthy to lick the boots of, told me about your most recent encounter. You told him that your son was dead. What killed him? When you destroyed all humanity in him, obliterating his chances of normality, and you taught him the meaning of pure, unjust hatred. Jason shouldn't have done what he did, but if you had treated him like a son, he would've acted like one. If you loved him, he would've loved you."

"You know nothing about it," he growled, with teeth gritted together.

I shook my head condescendingly. "I don't? When my parents discovered that I had mutant powers, they wrote me out of their will, destroyed all the pictures of me in the house, and moved after dumping me at the Institute. I think I might have a little insight on how a suddenly reviled and feared child feels. But YOU don't care. I should've known that you're too much of a slime-encrusted, parasitic nematode to let anything like prejudice, abuse, and attempted genocide bother your noble soul." In my mind, I envisioned a little thermometer that indicated his anger rising, degree by degree. Soon it would be time to try making it explode. "When will I stop being so naïve?" I asked rhetorically.

He rose from the chair, and began walking towards me, trying to back me into a wall. I kept going sideways, trying not to sweat too hard. "I may not know your name. I do not know how you made it here. I am not particularly interested. But this is MY domain. It goes by my rules. So far I have been patient, but remember that I can subject you to your worst nightmares, over and over, for as long as I want. So I'd advise you to leave my personal history alone. For your own good."

I started laughing. That hadn't been planned, but I honestly couldn't stop. The incongruity of the whole situation had just struck me. Here I was, in a ghost world, transporting myself supernaturally, sent on an essential mission by my dearest friend, enduring various terrors to reach this point, just to insult and demean a late middle-aged man. Also, sheer nervousness made me seek relief in laughter. Though I had never meant to laugh at Stryker, it proved to be the most terrible wound on his pride that I could manage. It set the fuse off, igniting the gunpowder I had piled up.

I hooted and shrieked for about thirty seconds in front of his disbelieving eyes. Then I stopped, for he began to fume incoherently. This grew to a flood of sound, full of four-letter words and descriptions of his thoughts on my genetics, pedigree, chances on living to a respectable adulthood, and various unpleasant things he planned to do to me. I tried to back out through the wall. To my dismay, I couldn't pass through. The only escape for me was the way I came. Hiding my panic under a cloak of bravado, I shrieked, "Remember me as Spy, you insult to scum!"

Sprinting out the door, I heard his shouts come after me. I am a decent runner, and I was confident that I could outdo a (to me at that age) old man. A cliff rising in front of me out of thin air stopped me in my tracks. When I shut my eyes, though, and charged straight ahead, I felt only a sensation of freezing cold. Other obstacles came, water, fire, ice, phantom lions and tigers threatening to tear me apart, but if I forced myself to disbelieve in the illusions, I could pass through. Some made me feel prickling, electrical, or burning heat as I ran, but there was no lasting damage done. The distance I'd covered earlier seemed a LOT farther this time around. My legs began to burn with acid, my heart began to thump, and I had to gasp for air. Slowing down was out of the question. Once or twice I felt him come up right behind me, but I put on an extra burst of speed to get away. At one point he even caught my ponytail, yanking several chunks out by the roots. When I felt that I was absolutely done for and could not run another inch, I came up to a solid wall. My heart lifting, I dashed through.

The brightness nearly blinded me. I ran for a few more feet with my eyes blurred and half closed, then collapsed onto the rock. When I'd stopped hyperventilating, I opened my eyes and began to pay attention. At first I could only see light, overpowering light. It was far from the cold, inhospitable whiteness of the 'office' I had just run from. This was a celestial glory, pure and strong and good. As my eyes began to focus, I could see a dark shape in the distance. The figure shouted, "Too scared of me to come on your own? You are all cowards! Do any of you dare to face me single-handed? None of you could take me away from here! I'm invincible here! You dead mutants are just wasting your time!" I recognized Stryker's voice.

A warm hand grasped my arm and pulled me to stand. "Good job," whispered a voice. "You're a brave girl." I turned my head and looked into a face that was almost too beautiful to bear. It showed the same white glow that Spirit's father had shone, but this was a female face.

I coughed feebly and tried to inflate my lungs so I could speak. I asked, "Who are you?"

She smiled. "Myra's mother. Now come with me. I know where she is." And with that she lifted me up in her arms, flying out and away from the crowd of what I now knew was a legion of angels, Silent Spirit's angels. Lily Sing set me down again next to Spirit and Spirit's father.

"Hi, Spy," whispered Spirit, smiling, but with tears running down her cheeks.

"Hey," I replied.

In the distance I could hear the ghost challenging the multitude. A lone woman's voice cried out, "William Stryker, I have defeated you before and I can do it again!"

"That's Ms. Gray," Spirit told me. "She volunteered take him on."

"What are they going to do?" I asked.

Mr. Sing said, "It will be Jean's job to try to persuade him to come quietly. If he won't, she will begin the...process needed to take him to where he belongs. He will have to be forced into the world of spirits at rest, and stop being a restless ghost."

Mrs. Sing continued explaining to me. "The rest of us are here to destroy this void, and try to heal the damage that he has done to the minds and bodies of your teachers, who are now all asleep."

"How..." I began. Then I stopped and asked them, "Does this fall into the classified category too?"

"I'm afraid it does," the female Sings told me.

My friend added, "It's time to go now, Spy. It's now in their hands."

Her father shook his head. "Not ours. Never ours. We follow the commands that we are given. But goodbye, Spy. It has been a pleasure. I do not fear any longer that my daughter will be lonely."

"We'll ask Myra about you," Mrs. Sing assured. "If you feel a need for parental love, ever, just remember that we love you for the wonderful friend you are."

"Thank you," I said, gratefully. "So what do we do now, SS?"

She gripped my hand with hers. "Just visualize the Mansion. As before, keep a hold on my psyche while you reach yours out to the destination. Remember the teachers, our classes, Friday movie nights, the woods outside, the pictures on the walls, and all the other things that make it home. Goodbye, Mom and Dad. See you in a while."

"A while. Not too short, not too long." I wasn't sure which parent said this, for I was concentrating too hard on my clairvoyance. I thought about getting inside my body again, and leaving this place forever. A powerful, warm rush flowed over the two of us. The last thing I heard there was a victory cry, somewhere between a shout and a chord of singing. The last thing I saw there was the angels rushing with unspeakable beauty in every direction, and a sudden blaze of light that burst from where Stryker had stood.

Then a roar of wind and water filled our ears, and darkness filled our eyes, and we knew no more of that ghostly land.