Rogue got a first hand look at the kind of destruction that Magneto's death squad, his brotherhood, were capable of. Despite being only three in number, they moved with the ease of well-orchestrated team. All ridiculousness aside, Toad took out one guard after another walking along the Ellis Island beach, catapulting down on top of them from the platform around the statue above. The hairy man, Sabretooth, and Mystique effectively disabled the crews of the two patrol boats. Sabretooth mercilessly slaughtering all those aboard, and Mystique masking their deaths with an array of forms and voices. It was all over in a matter of minutes, and Rogue had a front row seat from where she was now chained to a circular contraption on the back hull of Magneto's boat.

"Ah can't believe Ah'm doin dis," Remy complained once again, tugging at the sleeves of his uniform. "'Dis just ain't natural."

"It's a little small, I know," Jean said with t a shrug. "It's one of Scott's spares, and I'm afraid you've got a few more inches you than he does. But trust me, first time you get hit with a laser beam or something, you'll be glad you've got it." Remy grunted in reply before throwing his coat back on, trying to conceal the black leather as much as possible.

"Dat's all fine an' good, but Ah'm not sure Ah can bend over in dis ting, so let's all hope none o' dats gonna be required on dis here little mission."

"I think you'll find that that's going to be the least of your problems, bub," Logan jeered, getting over his own uniform reservations rather quickly. The two exchanged dirty looks, and if it hadn't been for the ever-present threat of the return of the claws, Remy might have wiped the smug looks of the older man's face right then and there. However, as he'd told Jean before, he was a great many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. He let the comment slide, but Storm was feeling less amenable towards all the male posturing going on behind her.

"Logan?" she asked, raw fury evident in her voice. "You want to get Rogue back safe and sound right?"

"Well yeah, but," he started to reply but she cut him off.

"Good. And you," she said, jerking her head in Remy's general direction, but at a complete loss for his name, "kid? You want to get her back too."

"Dat's why Ah'm here, chere," was his glib reply.

"Fine. Then until we've accomplished that mutual goal, the two of you are going to get along, or you're going to find out why that old quote ought to be 'hell hath no fury like a woman named Storm.' Got it!" There were audible gulps from both men and they quickly replied in unison.

"Got it."

"Excellent," Ororo responded, her voice returning to it's sweet, mellow pitch. "New kid," she started to say.

"Da name's Remy, petite," the Cajun interjected.

"Remy then," Storm corrected herself, "come up here and get the mission rundown. We're almost there and if you're coming with you need to know what's going on." Naturally, the thief approached the cockpit with some trepidation. And who could blame him. After all, the woman claiming to be his doctor had just given him a beating that made Mama Cece's worst look like child's play, and the other woman with the white hair had threatened to drop him from a plane and kill him. However, he fought his growing fears regarding the female of the species and stuck his head up between the pilot and co-pilot chairs.

"A'right, what's dis situation?" he asked pleasantly, leaning against the side of Jean's chair. He tried not to notice that his uniform squeaked like clean linoleum when it rubbed across his skin. Jean took over, since most of Storm's focus was on an getting them into the harbor unnoticed.

"First things first, I'm Jean Grey," she said, sticking out her hand. "I'm your doctor, we met earlier." Remy took her hand willingly and gave it a shake.

"Ah do recall our first meetin', doctor," he said. "Seems ta me it occurred while you were strappin' me to a bed. Not dat Ah minded da bed part. It was da giant needle dat you jammed into mah neck dat really bothered me." Jean didn't need to be a telepath to detect his sarcasm.

"Yes, well I'm sorry about that. I'm afraid you dropping in on things at a very difficult time, and we weren't as ready for the challenge as we'd hoped," she explained, her mind drifting back to where her mentor and fiancé lay comatose in the medlab. Her expression dropped notably. "Two of our team members were attacked and taken out of commission recently. That, in conjunction with Rogue's kidnapping and this event…it's been a lot to handle." Remy instantly regretted his words. After all, hadn't his family tied Rogue up in his basement just days earlier?

"No harm, no foul, chere," he said softly, inclining his head slightly in Jean's direction, and putting on his best charming smile. "Let's just call it even an' move on. Who be dis pretty thing sitting next to you?" he asked, turning to Storm and giving her a jaunty wink. The older woman never took her eyes off the sky.

"This is Ororo Munroe, but you'll refer to her as Storm in the field," Jean explained. "She's in charge here, and if you want anything to do with helping get your friend out of this jam and, you know, saving the leaders of the free world while we're at it, you'd better be ready to take orders from her, clear?"

"Absolutment," he said, with a slight flourish of his hand. "Stormy, pleased to meet you. Ah'm gonna guess dat by da nickname, you da one causing dis sudden fog?"

"That would be me, yes," the whether goddess said, he eyes going milky white as she tapped into her powers. "A little bit of cover just to make sure we aren't discovered. We're coming up on the bridge now," she finshed, directing that final comment at Jean, who nodded in response, and tapped something on the radar screen behind her.

"And I believe you and Logan have already met," the redhead said with some reserve. The less those two interacted, the better.

"Yeah, the hairy one and Ah have been introduced already. Who cares. What Ah want to know is who we really gonna be fightin'," Remy finished, feeling the adrenaline beginning to pound in his veins. As the giant statue symbolizing American and all it's freedoms became visible through the dense fog, he felt raring to go. It was time to get down to business; it was time to finish what he'd started.

He promise Rogue he was going to help get her out of harms way, and now he was going to do just that. His attention elsewhere, he missed the small smile that Jean gave him, before jumping back to business.

"His name is Erik Lehnsherr, but the world knows him as Magneto…"

All his preparations ready, Magneto approached Rogue, where she sat on her knees, hands bound to the metal pylons of his machine. The girl regarded him with a cool stare, but said nothing.

"It's time," he said quietly. "You should know that you will be credited with the survival of our species. I'm sorry that you can't seem to accept that." Rogue tried hard to resist silently, but she was just couldn't.

"You won't get away with this!" she blurted out. "The X-men,"

"-Aren't coming, I'm afraid," Magnus finished for her, what little sympathy he'd had for the girl completely gone. "I've seen to that. Mystique was gracious enough to make sure that both your Professor and his pet Cyclops would be unable to intervene. It would have been easy to kill them both," he boasted, "but they just might prove useful yet. Unlike you're thief friend, I'm afraid." Rogue's blood ran cold, her heart beating erratically. It was an effort to push her next question past her lips.

"What did you do to him? What did you do to Remy?" she demanded, her fingers itching to grab the old man by the neck and squeeze until he turned purple. Her desire to do so doubled when her captor grinned smugly.

"My dear, he was white trash. Mutant or not, her was no good to anybody. I saw to it personally that he would no longer be a drain on the resources of the planet." A fire unlike anything else rose in Rogue's chest. She lashed out, straining against her bindings, trying desperately to reach the deranged man before her.

"You son of a bitch!" she screamed. "You evil bastard. I hope you rot in hell, she cursed, the blood pounding behind her eyes, her heart in her throat. There was no grief for her fallen comrade, her friend. There was only a blinding rage, thick as molasses, gripping her heart.

Magneto leaned close to her, gloating proudly and reveling in his prowess over her. "I'll see you there, m'dear. You, and the little thief, and his blonde, bombshell girlfriend. It should be one hell of a time." Rogue rocked backwards, shocked by what she'd just been told. If it hadn't been for the handcuffs binding her upright, she'd have tumbled off the machine platform. And at that moment, the machine platform was suspended 15 feet in the air and climbing. It was only as she rose, that the actual sadness stuck her. And the blow was sharp. Hard. Painful.

Closing her eyes tightly, Rogue allowed only two tears to escape from her control.

One tear for Belladonna. One tear for Remy.

Rogue's eyes were dry by the time the faux torch, and the machine were both in place. She was dying inside, but she wasn't going to give Magneto the satisfaction of seeing her cry. It wasn't as if she had that long to live herself. If she was going to die, she was going to go down fighting and with her head held high.

It's what Remy would have wanted her to do.

"Remy, humor me, what's your last name?" Ororo asked, furrowing her eyebrows together. There was something familiar about the man that she just couldn't place. Not anything specific, just the certain way in which he spoke, in the slight sway in his step, in the way he seemed to be constantly analyzing his surroundings, that stuck a chord in her memory she just couldn't place.

"LeBeau. Remy LeBeau be mah given' name chere. Pourquoi?" he asked off-handedly as they crossed over the dark tableau at the base of the towering statue. Inwardly, Storm groaned.

"I take it that you're the son of Jean-Luc LeBeau, then? Of the Guild?"

"Ah'm his adopted son, but yeah…how'd you know dat?" he demanded, at least having the sense to be quiet about it. He turned in around and walked backwards, regarding the white-haired woman quizzically as he went. "Mah reputation proceedin' me again?"

"Hardly boy," was the goddess's sharp reply, "but your old man and I crossed paths more than once in our lives. Learned a lot from him. Good man, Jean-Luc was. Damn good at what he did, too," she said, her voice soft and reminiscent. If the boy was half as good as his dad was, he might be more of an asset to the team than even Jean could understand. Remy, however, was still in a state of shock, and promptly tripped over a raised crack in the pavement, falling flat on his ass.

"You?" he stammered, still on the ground. "You mean to tell me dat you picked wit mah old man?" He stared at Ororo incredulously from the ground, unaware that he had even fallen until she offered him a hand.

"Sure. I wasn't always a teacher," she explained, hauling the young man to his feet with more strength than he'd anticipated. "When my parents died I had no one. I picked in Cairo to pay for my passage here, and I picked here to survive," she said. "I ran across your dad in Georgia when I was sixteen. He was running a gambling ring outside of Atlanta. I flirted with him and he taught me the best tricks in the book," she added coyly, catching Remy totally off guard. He chuckled lightly at her last remark, though.

"Yeah, ol' man did always have a ting for de ladies. Ah'd be disappointed ta call him father if he'd passed up you," the Cajun said with a sad smile. He tried his best not to think about all the things he was leaving behind, but it was impossible to forget them all. The guild had been the only family he'd ever known…and he would never be able to show his face there again. Not to mention that person's he'd left his life behind for might be dying as they speak.

"You be sure to give him my regards next time to talk to the man, alright?" Ororo said, reveling in her memories of days past. Keeping pace with her, Remy nodded weakly.

"Ah'll be sure to do dat," he said quietly, burying his hands in his pockets. 'Ro caught the change in his tone. Lowering her voice, she said,

"You risked everything to get her out, didn't you?" His only response was a nod and a slight shrug. "You're talking to someone who understands better than you think, Remy," she went on, trying to be sympathetic. "I know what that kind of life is like, I know what you must be going through right now, and I want to be the first to say thank you for what you did." He turned to look at her in surprise; his red eyes eerily illuminate in the darkness.

"Why?" he asked incredulously as the foursome approached the main entrance. Storm smiled.

"Because it was noble. So let's go make sure that your sacrifice wasn't for nothing, alright?" Remy couldn't help but return her smile, feeling his confidence bolster. Next to them, Jean prepared to dispense of the lock, but close inspection revealed that it had already been taken care of-in a way that left a gaping hole in the door.

"Here we go," the doctor muttered grimly. "Showtime." Remy gave a slight bow and waved his arm out in front of him.

"After you, fearless leader." Storm winked at him slightly as she strode past and inside.