Kitty solidifies us once we're on the ground, landing us safely.

Good thing, too. It doesn't look like our safety is going to be guaranteed in the next few minutes. Something that looks like a glowing yellow net has domed out over Mikey, and is quickly enlarging all around him. A group of X-Men are running towards the scene: Beast, Colossus, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Emma Frost.

"Oh man," I breathe, joining Kitty as we run towards Michelangelo. "This is bad. Cyc and Emma aren't likely to care that that's Mikey still in there. They'll do whatever they have to to stop him."

"Is he really still in there, Spidey?" Kitty asks as we slow to a stop and look over the situation. "I mean, look at what he did to Leo. If even Raphael couldn't bring himself to hurt one of his brothers after being possessed by one of the demons, is there any shred of Michelangelo still in there after three of them have started crowding his body?"

"Don't even say it, Shadowcat," I tell her sternly. She can tell how serious I am by the fact that I've quickly relapsed into using her codename. "Where was that thinking when Logan sliced and diced Rogue and Kurt, almost adding your boyfriend into the X-Men salad? Mikey's still in there, and he can see everything that's going on and everything that he's been forced to do. He's a victim in all of this, and he deserves some saving. So be an X-Men and help save the kid, okay?"

"Okay, okay," she says defensively. "I was just bringing it up."

I flinch at a loud cry from Wolverine. He had just tried storming through the net, but it doesn't look like it was exactly a stroll in the park. Beast kneels by his side as Colossus tentatively reaches out a hand towards the dome that's stopped growing—for the moment anyway. His hand quickly darts away after a few sparks fly. "A force field," he confirms. "I cannot breach it."

"Let's see if this can!" Cyclops calls out. He sends out an optic blast towards the force field, but only succeeds in forcing us all to dive away as it ricochets off. I try webbing, but it doesn't take. Shadowcat tries phasing through, but she can't manage it. It looks like Emma's trying to reach Michelangelo telepathically, but to no avail. We're stuck on the outside.

"Fools!" I cringe at the sound of numerous voices speaking through one mouth. Mike's stopped looking at the sky and now has his glowing red eyes fixed on the seven of us trying to get to him. "Even without Death, the Horsemen of Apocalypse will not fail at our task. Your deaths are imminent." Huh, and he's the good-natured turtle.

"You listen to me, you little runt," Wolverine says, finally picking himself up off the floor. "I know you can hear me, Mikey. No brother of Raphael's is gonna just sit there and let some stupid demons have a field day with his body, is he?"

The answer? A bit of the energy field snakes out and heads towards Wolverine. He and Beast both dive to the ground, just managing to avoid it. "That settles it," Cyclops cries out, adjusting something on his visor. "I'm going to have to take him down."

"Cyclops, no!" Shadowcat calls. "Giving him a stronger dose is just gonna make it harder on us when it bounces off." Cyclops says something about going up to full power, but he's cut off by a sound that I'm already way too familiar with.

If someone ever sings, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," around me again, they're getting strung up on a web and beaten like a piñata. That's pretty much what I'm thinking as I'm forced into dodge after dodge as fireballs big and small come flying out of the force field at Michelangelo's beckoning. Most of the other X-Men scatter, though I manage to see that Cyclops needs to push Emma out of there. Either she's still trying to get through to Mikey, or she's been as affected by the recent activity as the other telepaths.

"Face it, you insignificant wretches," Michelangelo laughs as he rises to his feet. "There is not one among you that can pass through our barrier. Demons are not bound by the forces of this Earth, as you pathetic wastes are." He looks at the tall blonde currently in Cyclops' arms and adds, "As for you, Miss Frost, we do not even feel your presence in our vessel's mind. Your psychic powers are useless."

As Mike makes with the scary chuckles that are even worse than Leonardo/Death's mad cackling, Emma regains her footing. "Hardly," she tells him coolly. Sometimes, I wonder if the surname Frost wasn't God's way of warning everyone of her personality. "I've little to gain from searching your mind, or the mind of that reptile that you chose to stow away on. I'd rather use my abilities towards more useful endeavors."

"Oh?" Mike questions. "Such as?"

Raising an eyebrow, Emma smirks, "Such as contacting one who can pass through your barrier."

Mike's face registers momentary confusion. Suddenly, I see a dark-reddish something appear behind him. As it begins to fade away, I realize what it is. Oh no, I moan inside my own head. Even she wouldn't risk sacrificing one of her own for- Then I realize that this is the Ice Queen we're talking about. Of course she would, if it meant quickly snuffing an inconvenience.

Mike whirls around, seeing a shirtless and bandaged Nightcrawler clinging desperately to Donatello. "Mikey?" Donatello breathes as Nightcrawler falls away from him. Grabbing the fuzzy mutant before he could fall, Don cries out Kurt's name in fear. "Kurt! Don't just leave me here! What… what am I supposed to do?"

Fantastic. Emma managed to probe through Nightcrawler's mind and made him just conscious enough to teleport, but not enough to do anything after 'porting. Seeing Donatello in his room, he must have grabbed the turtle without warning. And now that he's too exhausted to even stand, the one person who didn't want a piece of this is thrown right in the thick of it. Way to go, Emma. Wait'll I tell Professor Xavier on you.

"Allow us to give you a hint," the demons speaking through Michelangelo tells Don. "You're supposed to stay very, very still." With a harsh, un-Mikey-like cry, he runs for Don, who seems paralyzed in terror.

"Donnie!" I turn my head to see Raphael running in towards the fiasco, with Splinter and Leatherhead in tow. Looking back at the turtles behind the force field, I see that his family's presence has an effect on Don. Still propping Nightcrawler up, he quickly unsheathes his staff and jabs it into Michelangelo's stomach, stopping him in his tracks. The possessed turtle lets out a sharp cough and hunches over as Donatello speedily sidesteps him, putting Nightcrawler down behind him.

I grab for Raphael as he passes by me. Instead of me pulling him back, he manages to drag me along with speed comparable to that of a freight train's. Either that's pure adrenaline at work, or this turtle's been taking his vitamins. "Raph, stop!" I tell him. "That's a force field, buddy. No one can get in or out."

Raphael says something about being forced to hack his way in, but Colossus quickly steps in front of him and wraps his metal arms around the turtle. "Sorry, my friend. There is nothing you can do for now. Save that fire that Wolverine has taught you to contain." Raphael growls, not exactly happy with the situation, but knowing that there really is nothing he can do.

"I really hate to do this to you, Mikey," Donatello tells his brother as he tightly grips his staff. "But if you can't bring yourself out of it on your own, then it looks like I'm going to have to edge you along."

"And you were presumed to be intelligent," Michelangelo laughs, still charging for Don. "How do you expect to reach your brother if you cannot even touch him without succumbing to-?" He's cut off by a sudden but brutal whack across his chest by Don's staff.

"I'm the passive one, remember?" Donatello tells him, jabbing him yet again. It's obvious that he's being careful to both maintain his distance and keep himself between Mikey and Nightcrawler. "I don't like violence, so my weapon was purposely selected to keep me far away from it." Michelangelo lunges for him again, but Don quickly pivots, his staff crashing down against his opponent's shell and forcing Michelangelo to stumble into his own force field. I flinch at his loud outcry.

"You can't contaminate what you can't touch, can you?" Don asks. I watch as he jumps for Mikey, risking getting dangerously close as his weapon comes down against Mike's head. The opposing turtle falls on his knees and, judging by the way the staff threatened to break, I'm guessing that he's probably concussive. For someone who doesn't like violence, Don's doing a good job at biting back his distaste for it. Then again, he doesn't really have much of a choice.

Standing behind his kneeling brother, Donatello's breathing hard. I can almost hear a whimper just before he murmurs, "I'm sorry, Mikey." He strikes out with his staff once more, the blunt end of it striking a precise spot on Michelangelo's neck.

The assaulted turtle gasps, and I can see his eyes roll upwards before he crashes forwards, unconscious. A pressure point. Of course. It wouldn't cause any lasting harm, but the demons would consider the body useless. As Mike falls forward, I can see the force field shimmer for a moment. Ultimately, it falls away. We're not out of the woods yet, though. Three distinct shadows are rising from Mike's body, and they've got their sights set on Donatello.

"Colossus," I call. "Drop Raphael and go get Nightcrawler and Mikey out of there. Raph, head back inside, quick. Shadowcat, go-" I don't even have to finish giving the command. Shadowcat's already running for Donatello, tackling him just before she makes the both of them go all ghost-like. The demons try to get at the pair, but they can't get a grasp on them.

Colossus drops Raphael, but the turtle tries to follow after him. He's intercepted by Wolverine, who grabs him firmly by both of his shoulders. "Neither of us are going in there, kid. Not taking the chance of getting all evil again." Raphael tries to push through, but he suddenly takes on a glazed look and hypnotically heads back towards the mansion, Splinter and Leatherhead following confusedly after him. That Emma. You can't trust telepaths to mind their own business… or to conduct business within their own minds.

"Nice of you to drop in when you did," I hear Donatello tell Shadowcat. Looking back at him, I see that his hands are wrapped around her arms, partly because he doesn't want to risk going solid too early, and partly because… well, because he apparently knows how to milk an advantageous situation for all its worth. Good grief.

"Don!" I call out to him, seeing Colossus grab hold of Nightcrawler and cover him with his body as the demons try to make for them both. "Anything these demons don't like that we can use to speed them out of here?"

Donatello blinks up at me, momentarily confused. "Extreme cold!" Shadowcat suddenly cries out. "At least, I think that's what I read. Something about them holing in the warm underground because they can't take the- whoa!" She ducks her head as one of the demons makes a dive at her, apparently trying to get her to shut up. Hm, I wonder if that means she's on to something? "Dammit," she breathes out, "where's Iceman when you actually need him?"

"Somebody say my name?"

My spider-sense tells me to duck as Bobby Drake comes surfing overhead on a makeshift ice slide. Did I ever mention that I don't like Bobby Drake? Because I don't. Not particularly. "Sorry about the perfect timing, folks," he tells us. "It's a bit early, and I'm a deep sleeper. Do I hit those turtle-looking things, or-"

"Try the demons," I grumble at him. "And hurry. It looks like Michelangelo's coming to." No sooner did the words leave my mouth that I see Michelangelo stir and slowly try to make it onto his hands and knees. "Hurry it up, Iceman!"

Unfortunately, it looks like one of the demons spots the movement from Mikey as well. While one is molesting Shadowcat and Donatello and the other's still trying to get past Colossus and to Nightcrawler, this one goes straight back into Mikey. He cries out, putting his hands on his head as though he can't stand it. "Mikey!" Donatello yells.

"Demons, huh?" Iceman mutters. "Looks like a turtle to me." He lets out an ice blast towards the screaming turtle, either because he knows that Mike's just been possessed or because he just doesn't listen. I'm willing to bet on a combination of those two.

Michelangelo tries to get up, but his lower half has been encased in a block of ice. Iceman hits him with another blast before turning his attention towards the others. "Get ready for an early blizzard, guys!"

"Well," Beast murmurs as Iceman turns the field into a snowy wasteland, "there go my azalea bushes. Again. I really should invest in an off-site greenhouse."

"That idiot just covered a couple of cold-blooded reptiles under several feet of snow and ice," I exclaim, "and you're worried about your azalea bushes?"

Then Hank brought up a good point. These demons must be pretty idiotic themselves if they knew they had a weakness for cold and yet decided to possess a group of reptiles, of all things. Either Sinister or Death had been the brains of the operation, or they had been impressed enough with the turtle power to not pay much attention to that little flaw. Besides, if they had succeeded in bringing Apocalypse back, chances are that they wouldn't have to worry about weaknesses anymore.

Iceman jumps from his ice slide down onto the newly-icy ground, looking around. There are no signs of the demons… or of anyone else. I can hear people running behind me, and see Raphael stop besides me. He's breathing hard, trying to figure out what had just happened to cause several mounds of frost to appear out of nowhere while he was sleepwalking back to the mansion.

We all start when a sharp crack breaks the eerie silence. Colossus has just broken through a sheet of ice, carrying a weakened and shivering Nightcrawler with him. From across the way, Shadowcat and Donatello phase their way through the ice, solidifying once they touch ground. Donatello takes a wary step forwards, trying to get his bearings straight.

"Um," a muffled, wavering voice says from underneath a pile of snow. "Someone out there? Anyone wanna give me a hand? But no clapping, please." As I recognize the voice as Michelangelo's, Raphael rushes past me and goes straight for the talking snow heap, followed closely by Splinter and Leatherhead. Donatello quickly but carefully makes his way across the ice, as though afraid of his legs giving out from under him.

Raphael brushes the snow away, revealing Michelangelo's head poking out of a block of ice. "Mikey! That really you?" I can't tell if Mike's shuddering or nodding, but he makes some half-hearted sarcastic crack about him being a teenage mutant ninja icicle.

"Get me outta here, bro," Michelangelo pleads. "I can't feel my toes… and I've only got four of them, so I don't wanna risk losing any to frostbite." Though he looks weary and two steps away from either hypothermia or a psychotic breakdown, it's plain to see that he's back to being essentially Mikey. So why is my spider-sense still bugging me?

"Wait," Emma says, appearing behind Raphael and holding his arm back before he can cut through the ice with his sai. "Let me do what should have been done before we foolishly allowed him into the Institute in the first place." Her attitude is even chillier than the ice, and Raphael seems to have picked up on some colorful ways to express his displeasure at her haughtiness. Still, Emma does what she does best—she ignores him.

She softly puts her fingertips on Michelangelo's forehead. Mike looks up at her hand, confused. Then he starts shaking within his confines. "Hee," he giggles despite himself. "What you doing? That tickles! Hey, cut it out!"

Backing away, Emma looks somewhat satisfied, and for the first time since I've known her, that's actually a good thing. "All malevolent energy is gone," she announces. "Nothing remains within his head… and I do mean-"

"Hey!" Raphael barks out. "Don't even think about sayin' it, lady! The only one who gets to make fun 'a his empty head is me!" With that, he begins chipping away at the ice, muttering something under his breath about how someone needs to chip away at her ice.

"Easy there, hotshot," Wolverine tells him as he pushes Emma away and steps up besides Raph. "She used to be a bad guy. So imagine, this is her being good." He offers no other explanation as he releases his claws, helping to break Michelangelo free.

"Eep, careful!" Michelangelo cries out, seeing the adamantium claws hacking away at his icy binds. "My shell's on the other side, and I don't think that even that can stand up to those babies!" Donatello offers him a laugh and places a hand on his head. Looking back at his brother, Michelangelo sheepishly says, "Hey, um… thanks, Donnie. Didn't mean to try and kill you or anything."

"Heck, Mikey," Don answers with a small smile. "It's okay. Just glad I didn't hurt you too badly."

"I never said that," Michelangelo remarks, experimentally shrugging his shoulders as his arms are freed. "You've got no idea what extraordinary effort I'm using to form complete sentences. You beaned me good, you little twerp! Probably got some major brain damage."

"None," Emma reveals. "Despite all outward appearances."

"You know," Raphael growls, "I really don't like you."

"Join the club," Kitty mutters.

I see Colossus taking Nightcrawler back to the mansion, with Beast following worriedly after him. It looks like my little blue buddy's now comatose, and his bandages are bleeding again. Whatever good those healers did, Nightcrawler blew it all. Of course, if he hadn't, Mikey would still be talking like the girl from The Exorcist.

"So, the demons are gone," Cyclops says, always one to state the obvious whenever he can. "And whatever Michelangelo had been up to has been stopped. All that remains is to treat Leonardo and destroy the Halloween store that started all of this, just in case."

I notice the change on Michelangelo's face as Cyclops mentions Leonardo. "He, uh… he didn't… I mean…." He swallows hard, and Leatherhead removes his lab coat and gently puts it over the turtle's shoulders. After wrapping it tightly around himself, Michelangelo looks up at all of us. "I didn't give him nothing... bad, did I? I mean, nothing that doesn't have a cure, like cancer or AIDS or anything… like… that…. Right?"

Raphael and Donatello look at one another. Splinter quietly answers, "You gave him nothing, my son. It was our adversary who wished to take something away. Dr. McCoy and Leatherhead will do all they can, and I am sure that Donatello will assist them once he feels well enough to do so."

"Still," Wolverine tells him with a smirk, "you did a heck of a number on our hallway. Hope you know a good contractor, kid."

Great. Warm fuzzies. Cute jokes. Family bonding. Hope for the future. It's all well and good. And as much as I want to join in on the festivities… my skull feels like it's housing about 2,000 beehives right now. I put my hands over my ears and hardly even realize that I've fallen to my knees as I try to block the sound out.

"Peter?" Cyclops asks, being closest to me. "Pete, what's wrong? You okay? Emma, look inside. Are one of the demons- …Emma?" Somehow through the droning and the confusion, I hear a loud cry coming from Emma Frost. The telepaths. They're still not doing well. Maybe Emma was able to shake it off for a while, but she had dropped her defenses. And whatever it is, it's making my spider-sense go just a little crazy.

"I know that the weatherman probably couldn't predict today's snow," Iceman admits, "but… did anyone hear anything about an eclipse?" My eyes had been clenched shut, and I open them to see that the ground in front of me is enshrouded in darkness. Looking a little higher, I can see Emma on the ground, her hands on her head as Cyclops crouches besides her and tries to figure out what's going on.

I hear Splinter's voice say, "I am afraid Mr. Summers spoke a little too soon when he proclaimed that the demons working through Michelangelo failed at their task." I can see that he's looking up towards the sky, and I somehow manage to tilt my head enough to look upwards. Something's coming. Something big.

"What is it?" Raphael asks. No one says anything. As the large shape gets closer to Earth, I can see it taking on a vaguely humanoid appearance. Only it's pretty obvious that this thing isn't human. And it's also pretty obvious that he doesn't need any Horsemen to squash us all like bugs. Because to Apocalypse, we are bugs.

Trying to push myself back onto my feet, I tell them, "It's the Boogeyman."