The Sailor Guardians waited in the mansion's main living room while Illyana changed into clothes that were not torn, together with Xavier.
The professor had sent the New Mutants into town to enjoy themselves. When he had read the guardians' minds and learned of the events which preceded Illyana's test in the Danger Room, he sent the X-Men off as well.
There were several times when Xavier opened his mouth to say something, but each time he shut his mouth before saying a word.
"You didn't know," Mina observed.
"I didn't … or rather, I didn't want to know," he admitted.
When S'ym had attacked the mansion, he referred to Illyana only as the Darkchild, and his manifested fears had appeared as Illyana in a demonic form very similar to what the guardians had just witnessed. Xavier had given no thought to those details until now, when their true implications had become apparent.
He needed to understand this strange, empowered form his student had taken, both to gauge what risk it presented to the school and its inhabitants, and to decide how and if it should be revealed to the X-Men and the New Mutants. He was not looking forward to Piotr's reaction to what his baby sister had become, and if the New Mutants learned of it, it would likely spell the end of any chance Illyana had of integrating with her peers and becoming a true part of the team.
They looked up as Illyana appeared at the top of the staircase. She had changed into a plain light blue t-shirt and a new pair of jeans. And was holding a small object which they could not make out.
"So … what's the big secret?" Lita asked.
Illyana shook her head. "Not here. The only place where I can explain it properly is in Limbo."
She glanced at Xavier. "I'd rather this be kept private."
Xavier paused for a moment, then nodded. She was asking him not only to stay behind for now, but also not to read the guardians' minds to learn everything she was about to reveal to them. He could do that for now, provided she spoke with him herself afterwards.
The guardians gathered around Illyana at the bottom of the staircase, and a stepping disk whisked them off to Limbo.
It was pitch black when they arrived. There was so little light that they could barely make out the shape of the person next to them, let alone their face.
"Rei, could you give us some light?" Mina asked. Rei transformed and produced a small fire, lighting up their surroundings and making them gasp.
In front of them and behind Illyana, the corpse of a large man hung against a cave wall. His chest had been caved in, and his metal flesh was unmistakable.
"That's your brother!" Ami yelled.
"How in the-" Lita began. "But Colossus is alive. We just saw him at the mansion!"
Illyana bent down and picked up an abnormally large cigar from the ground. It was the same cigar with which S'ym had first revealed Piotr's dark fate to her, and which had laid at that spot ever since he dropped it when Cat had stabbed his tail with her sword. She put the end of the cigar in Rei's fire and held it up as a torch, further illuminating the cave.
The guardians looked the cave. Wherever they were was deep underground, as there was no sign of an exit.
Illyana handed Mina the small object they had noticed earlier, a normal photograph.
With the two fires providing light, the guardians gathered around Mina to look at the photograph. It depicted three people. Kitty and Piotr were holding between them a little girl of about five or six years old.
Kitty appeared to be about one year younger than she now was, being a few inches shorter and still having a little baby fat in her cheeks which she no longer had. She was pinching the cheek of the little girl, who was laughing hysterically and wearing a party hat which did nothing to cover her distinctive bangs.
"Hey, that kid looks a lot like you," Lita said. "Do you have a little sister?"
"Nyet," Illyana said as she began speaking in Russian, the language she was most comfortable with. The guardians looked at her in confusion, as even Mina, who knew the most languages of any of them, barely knew any Russian.
Illyana stopped, finally realizing what language she was speaking in, and took three breaths before continuing in English.
"That … is me."
"But that's not possible," Amy said. "You and Kitty are the same age. And your brother would look very different if this was taken so long ago."
"That picture was taken a little over a year ago," Illyana stated, "at my sixth birthday party."
She sat down on the floor of the cave, and the guardians once again saw the corpse of Colossus above her. Mina realized that Illyana had been careful to face away from the body the entire time.
"Not long after that, I was taken to Limbo by its ruler, a sorcerer named Belasco. He told me he loved me and made me his apprentice. For years he taught me to be a sorcerer like him.
She took her medallion out of her shirt and held it in her trembling hand. "The things he did to me … the things he made me do … He made me into that monster you saw earlier. When I grew up, I was supposed to be his ultimate weapon to invade the earth and damn all of humanity."
The guardians stood there in stunned silence, waiting on baited breath as Illyana continued her story.
"When I was 13, I discovered how to use my own life force to create a weapon and forged my soul sword. With that, I was finally able to fight Belasco. I defeated him and drove him from Limbo, making me its new ruler.
She glanced up at them. "You want me to be a princess, but I'm already a queen, the queen of hell."
"Time works differently in Limbo than it does on earth. So when I was finally able to leave, seven years had passed for me, while on earth, only moments had passed. One minute I was a kindergartener, the next I was a teenager.
Amy took the photo from Mina's hand and looked at it with growing horror.
"Because of the way time works here, when the X-Men came to try to rescue me, two versions of them from different timelines ended up in Limbo. One group escaped without me. Those are the X-Men you know. The other group became trapped in Limbo along with me, aging along with me.
Illyana closed and covered her eyes. A stream of tears began to flow from under her fingers. "One by one, all the X-Men who tried to protect me were killed. Some of them … like my brother … at S'ym's hand."
Mina winced. "Now I get it." The other guardians looked to her as she explained. "The reason you hit me, the reason you were so hurt when we said our mission was to protect you ..."
"It wasn't about our not being there when you were small. It was about what happened to the last group of people who tried to protect you. You weren't angry at us at all, you were scared that if we got involved with you, we'd suffer the same fate as the X-Men."
"So trying to make us hate her was her way of protecting us?" Lita asked.
"That's why it was so important that we prove we could defeat S'ym," Amy realized.
Rei looked at the corpse with its caved-in chest. "S'ym did this to your brother, and you still let him live …"
Mina knelt down and put her hand on Illyana's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize that just by saying we were going to protect you we'd be dredging up such horrible memories."
Illyana still had her eyes covered. "I can't-I can't go through that again."
"Look," Mina said, "I can't promise that this will have a happy ending for all of us. I wish I could, but I can't. We all know the risks, and we've accepted them as the price we pay for fighting to protect our world and everything we care for."
Lita agreed. "We're in this for the long haul."
"This is our choice," Mina said. "Can you respect that?"
Illyana wiped her eyes and lowered her hand. She slowly rose back to her feet. "If you can respect that I'm not who you want me to be, that I can't be that person."
Rei looked around the cave. "I guess … it'd be impossible for anyone to be that person if they were forced to grow up here."
"You said S'ym killed only some of the X-Men," she observed. "What happened to the others?"
Illyana stumbled back at the question and would have fallen over if Mina had not caught her.
"We've got the answers we asked for. There's no point in making her relive more of this."
Rei looked at Illyana's face and quickly looked away in guilt. The young sorceress looked pale and sickly after recounting the story of her lost childhood.
"We're the first people you've told this to, aren't we?" Mina asked. "At least in this detail."
Illyana nodded. "How could I tell my brother what his little snowflake had become?"
Mina turned back to her. "Thank you, for trusting us with this. Let's get out of here. We've spent enough time in hell."
The stepping disk which brought Illyana and the Sailor Guardians back to earth was so close to the one which took them to Limbo that it appeared to Xavier as if it was a single stepping disk which did not transport them at all.
It took him a half-second to register that they were standing in different positions, and another to realize how bad Illyana suddenly looked. Whatever had transpired in Limbo had taken more out of her than S'ym's attack on the mansion or the fight with Demon Bear had.
Xavier's fatherly instincts kicked in immediately and he moved with an alacrity the guardians did not believe him capable of.
Illyana was too unsteady on her feet to go up the stairs, so he helped her to the infirmary on the ground floor instead of her room. He prepared some water and medicine for her and put her in one of the infirmary's beds to rest and regain her strength.
Once Illyana had taken the medicine and tucked herself in, Xavier allowed himself to slowly exhale. All of his students were like his own children, and seeing any of them in this state broke his heart.
"Rest now, child," he said in a reassuring tone. "Everything will be all right."
When Xavier returned, Rei, Amy, and Lita were sitting on the couches in the lobby while Mina stood by the stairs, holding and staring at her crescent compact. The others stood up when they saw him.
"How is she?" Mina asked.
"Resting," Xavier answered. "I knew it wouldn't be easy for her to open up about what happened to her, but I never imagined it would be this difficult."
"I'm sorry," Mina said. "We didn't mean to-"
"Don't apologize," Xavier assured them. "If anything, I should be thanking you. You're the first people Illyana's ever been able to talk to about her experiences. The first time is always the most difficult. Maybe now we'll be able to do more to help her."
"So it's all true?" Lita asked. "Illyana's really six or seven years old?"
Xavier nodded. "I'm afraid so."
"And there really was a second group of X-Men who all died in Limbo?" Rei asked.
A visible lump appeared in Xavier's throat before he answered. "I'm afraid that part is also true."
Mina put her compact away. "We understand now why you and Kitty couldn't tell us what happened. And we understand what Illyana was trying to do when she hit me. But it had to be in Limbo, or we wouldn't have been able to believe it."
"I'm still not sure I can fully believe it," Rei said. "Even after seeing Colossus' body."
Xavier shut his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "She took you there? No wonder she's in such a state."
Opening his yes again, he asked: "What will you do now?"
"When Illyana's feeling better, we'll take the rainbow crystal she's got and combine with ours to reform the Silver Crystal," Mina answered. "Once she's mastered using it we'll be able to take the fight to the Dark Kingdom and finally put an end to all this."
"You'll have whatever assistance we can provide."
After Xavier left, Lita turned to their leader and asked: "So what is our role in this going forward? It doesn't look like Illyana needs our help to fight, let alone our protection."
Mina shook her head sadly. "She ma need our protection more than we thought."
"How so?" Amy asked.
"She's got survivor's guilt. When she was telling us about the X-Men being killed, she was wishing that she had died with them. We've got to watch out in case she's not careful for her own safety. And … "
She scowled "… we still have to keep an eye on her in case she transforms again, and be ready to stop her if that happens."
"That was the worst evil I've ever sensed," Rei recalled. "What did you sense from her then?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Mina answered. "I don't think it was the same kind of desire for death and destruction I once sensed from Metalia. It was just as intense, but that thing wanted to destroy for destructions sake, because that's what it enjoyed. Illyana … I think when she was in that form, she wanted to destroy because she wanted to make the whole world suffer feel the same pain she was feeling."
"There's one other part of our mission now," she added.
"What's that?"
"We have to survive. All of us."
Lita rubbed the back of her head. "It's not like I was planning on dying, but I see your point."
Ami interjected: "We're forgetting something."
All eyes turned to her as she continued. Amy had a photographic memory, and could often pick up on details the rest of them missed.
"This may not be important, but it needs to be considered. We know that Illyana didn't kill Zoisite earlier, and she didn't kill S'ym."
"We know," Minda said. "She shows mercy to her enemies when we wouldn't. What's your point?"
"She never said that she killed that sorcerer," Amy said gravely. "Going by what she said, he must be here on earth."
