A/N: Once again hello and good day to you! Hoping that you are all having a good time reading, and please give constructive feedback if you haven't done so already. I will now briefly take the time to apologise for the delay, but exams loom closer and closer and my desktop has keeled over and died. For this reason expect delays in me responding to any reviews as I can't access my emails.

Also, if I continue to get annoying messages from people who clearly know that you cannot get a reply as an anonymous reviewer, anonymous reviews will be disabled. Rant over.

The X-Men stood assembled by the Danger Room, tightly assembled and still clearly licking their wounds from the final fight against the Inner Circle. Beast stood at more of a hunch than normal, Forge was being forced to support himself on a cabinet while his bionic leg began a slow repair of itself. Jean was still confined to the medical room, claiming that her energy seemed to come and go without any notice, while Cyclops tried to avoid wincing from the chest injury he had acquired in the battle's climax.

"X-Men, as I'm sure you're aware, the recent few months have been a trialling ordeal for us as a team. However, we've proven ourselves able to unite despite the fact that Professor Xavier is twenty years in the future. It's this ability that doubtlessly saved our hides, but we cannot rest on our achievements for too long. We must choose a new course of action to pursue, particularly in the wake of Emma Frost's apparent death. Hank, if you would present the others with our ideas."

Beast nodded, limping forwards slightly as he did so.

"The loss of Emma Frost leaves us with the problem of not having a reliable operator of Cerebro. Obviously, Jean is a capable operator, but due to her present condition we would have no option but to rule her out. In normal circumstances I would be content to let her rest and recuperate, but as you are all aware nothing can really be defined as normal for any of us in this room. Jean must be placed on active duty as quickly as possible, by any reasonable means I can find."

The group reluctantly gave an understanding nod at the statement, before Beast continued.

"Until Jean is fully active for her duty, we need to be more reliant on other news sources. So I've come up with some rough blueprints of a device that would allow us to hack into MRD and SHIELD frequencies and acquire intel the same time they do. It's not as ideal as Cerebro, but we can't really pick and choose at this time. If I can acquire your help later on, Forge, it would be appreciated."

Iceman raised an eyebrow.

"Won't your SHIELD pals get a bit ticked if you end up interfering into their personal business?"

Wolverine snorted.

"It's never stopped them hiring me for the janitor work," he growled. "And in this case, it's a desperate measure for a desperate time."

Forge shook his head.

"Oh, brother... I wish there was a different phrase we could associate with ourselves. Every time we take one of those measures we keep on having to take even bigger measures. It's escalation, pure and simple."

"This time we mean it, Forge. If I had any other option, I wouldn't be doing this."

"Again with the catchphrases..."

Wolverine ignored his teammate, pushing forwards with preparation.

"Until we come up with further data reports from whatever we have left, our next priority is stopping the Inner Circle's telepaths from escaping American custody. The five of them are strong enough to summon the Phoenix Force- alone they are still formidable. For all we know, they may be planning some sort of comeback on behalf of their bosses."

"And if they aren't?"

The Canadian shrugged, muscles rippling underneath his costume.

"Still thinking about that one." A pause as several of the X-Men tried guessing what he meant, before he nodded to dismiss them.

"Meet at the Danger Room in a few hours. Until then, just stay on your toes."

After the team's acting leader left the area, Iceman raised an eyebrow in slight disdain.

"He's starting to lose it, I can tell."

Rogue frowned slightly at him, hands beginning to remove her gloves.

"And since when were you made team psychiatrist?"

"The day he was made leader, Rogue. Let's think about this a sec. Our chain of command is completely screwed, and he's not as happy in the position of leader. I think that he feels that he needs to keep the team moving after the last couple of days. Not to say I blame him, but I think the pressure's soon going to kill him."

A short one here, but one to just bring the series back to existence for a short while. Please don't rage, I am very busy.

While on the subject, there is a Facebook page called "1 Million to Save Wolverine and the X-Men". It's exactly what it says on the tin and it presently has about 15,000 members, so a long way to go. Just type it in the search bar and click the like button. It has some user on here promoting it as well, but to be honest I've no idea who. So yeah... Facebook users get clicking! If there's no other incentive for you, they do host a lot of pics and trailer links.