She's looming and her aura is magnificent. She is so alive in her power and I am experiencing the sensations with her. I am inebriated by the tangible passions of the Phoenix and within this telemetry a desire, beyond anger or rage, grows to consume her to enrage her unto the complete flowering of her powers.
The bird manifestation is harrowing, majestic, her wings spread their full span and her words echo; the final syllable following the first word as if it were an anticipated second.
The winds rage about me in a tight orb and I weave lightning through the circling dirt and debris. The wind moves at speeds that make the dry dirt like a sand paper that would skin Colossus, fully armored.
Her tone is reasoning and beautiful, as she wracks against the anger I have infused within her, the words are lost on me following the onslaught of immeasurable passion.
The mansion was destroyed by her knee-jerk reaction to the sudden influx of power. The X-men have survived the Phoenix's cresting, miraculously, and I'm taken aback by their expressions of awe.
I remember when we fought Phoenix; we were consumed with plans of strategy and survival. Now they look as helpless as babes.
"Aren't you here to help me X-men?" I ask, freeing myself from my barrier; the air is still and I needn't any winds to stay aloft.
"Aren't you here to show me a better way?"
"We weren't aware that you needed any help!" Kitty screams, defiantly, tears threatening to escape her lids. Her anger is almost sobering and I notice her body fighting a flood of sobs, intent upon staying angry with me.
"You've always been untouchable Storm," she continues. "Help? You're a goddess now! I've never seen you ask anyone help!"
It's almost automatic, how I reassert myself, her pain becomes immediately negligible and I recognized the task at hand.
"I am going to attack you, Jean," I say, turning away from my teammates. "You'll need to protect yourself as best you can, have no allusions, I will take you're life."
Her tone is pleading, but indiscernible through the roar of my intent.
I rush toward her as quickly as I can, naked without my shield. I crash against the fires of her shield and feel nothing, I wonder if she is as numb to my touch.
Her claw is white hot and she holds me in it, trying to restrain me and I don't know where I pull the wherewithal to break her grip, briefly destroying that part of her. I learn now that the bird manifestation isn't a shield but a living, feeling extension of her, her scream is wildly comforting.
I have taken full measure of her capabilities and stop holding back.
I concentrate on the belly of the bird and watch as I cause it to slowly fizzle away, her screams are deafening but I doubt that the pain is comparable to the pain I felt during the ancestral regression.
I increase the depth of my intent and although her pain has increased her screams cannot become any more pained or express added agony.
She has reached the zenith of expression.
I haven't time to consider the finely concentrated optic blast that would flatten a mountain. I am beyond the physical now, while I am still palpable I believe that I am beyond the pain that humans could incur.
The bird is gone; Jean lay on the scorched knoll, alive but lifeless, twitching from the residual.
I could have removed the Phoenix force as easily as I gave it to her, but the pain of a being with power almost as boundless as my own gave me life; expelling the numbness and in it's place, jubilance.
When I land I hear the heavy breathing of Wolverine, racing toward me. I keep my back to him, inviting him to stab me with his claws, wondering what will happen.
The unbreakable breaks and he howls in pain, forgetting himself.
Instinct would have me repair his wrist, but I decide to leave the task to his mutation.
No one else attacks me; they merely allow me to walk away.
It is disconcerting that I no longer have a place among the X-men, the only true family I've know in my adult life. The memory of my mother and father is so clear in my mind, yet I have no rational love of them, merely the memory of a child's limitless affections.
And while for the most part I would give the moon to get to know them in an adult fashion, a large part of me fears the reality of who they are. I only know my parents through the abstract and I'm afraid that once the pieces of them sync up, or the pieces of me, all of the love that I harbor for them will prove itself a fraud. It's a terrifying prospect that what I found so perfect will petrify and my idolization with fester, killing the only humanity I have left.
They arrive in a hoard, and I know them without meeting many of them: Some are many of the most powerful magicians ever to bow onto this planet, while others are of lesser power. The crowd is crushing and it's difficult to estimate how many have gathered to challenge me, no more than two hundred.
Forge is at the helm and they arrive into gestalt almost immediately, letting him serve as their hand. The rest seem lifeless, hovering less than a foot from the ground; they easily match and exceed the power of the Phoenix.
I pick them off one by one, their individual defeats are small pleasures, I crush their centers; the pain for them individually is nothing in comparison to what Jean felt. Human beings simply do not have the capacity for such pain.
Forge is last and I hesitate, while longtime friends Illyana and Stephen Strange lay with a mirrored margin of Jeans residual pain. There's something to his rugged, tattered handsomeness, something beyond just physique; he's beautiful and it humbles me that I know he genuinely feels the same way about me.
It's crippling, the longing for him, it smothers me and I realize that there isn't a such thing as rational adult love; it's crazy and limitless.
Salty tears burn my eyes, the realization that there is some truth to what Kitty said, that I don't ask for help. I have become an escapist hiding behind the façade of the unreachable goddess, putting myself above my peers and burying myself under the debris of my responsibilities to the X-men.
It is as easy as it looks.
"I take it back. I take it back."
It isn't unlike watching a video tape in a VCR being rewound, and her memories are being erased in kind. She struggles to keep her knowledge of the acts she's destined to commit but they're wiped clean in reverse until all that she can remember is the time before she arrived in her village.
Ororo Munroe stands where she began this journey, in both time and place, with a tugging intuition that she should leave her village, grounded, and return to the X-men.
She takes two steps forward before turning, abandoning her heritage.