The Phoenix's first pass at them was either a test run, or she was toying with them, a giant cat flipping a mouse into the air only to catch it again. The ephemeral fiery raptor whirled, seeming to head straight toward them, her claws extended, yet it was only her wingtips which brushed their aircraft. The form of Jean herself was visible only as a dark wisp within the bird-shape, the wick within the candle flame.

The Blackbird tumbled as if it were no more than a paper airplane in a sudden breeze. The Toad did his best to right them. "More of this, and the wings are gonna snap off!" he shouted over the chaos.

"Jean!" Scott cried out. "Jean, don't do this, fight it, fight it!" Colossus prayed in Russian, his first language.

"Kitty!" The Professor leaned toward her. "Concentrate. She's coming back around. She's coming straight for us. I want you to make the Blackbird intangible for a moment—just before she hits us."

"I've never phased anything so big!" Katherine Pryde stammered out.

"I know. But it need only be for a moment. A second or two, that's all we should need. Rogue has to touch her, do you understand? Rogue, you have to be ready."

"Ah am."

"I—I." was all Kitty said.

"That's the plan, Professor?" asked Scott, stung. "That's all?"

"Under the circumstances, I have no other. Here she comes!"

A living solar flare uncurled on their horizon, growing larger.

"I'm afraid, Professor!" Kitty confessed.

"So are we all. Wait for it. Wait for it—Now!"

The Phoenix would have ripped right through the Blackbird, a hot knife slicing through butter. Kitty's power made the aircraft as substantial as any of the clouds around them, however, just long enough to encase the fatal firebird before becoming uncompromisingly solid again.

The rapid deceleration tore a gash in the flooring eighteen inches deep and a yard wide, tearing up the seats, exposing wiring and vital systems before Jean Grey crashed into the back wall, momentarily unconscious. There was certainly enough damage done to doom all aboard, reducing them to no more than a smear of metal and organic matter on the landscape below.

Rogue threw herself on Jean, and as the Phoenix moved from the woman to the girl, the inferno bloomed again. Only now it was in shades of blue and green, tinged with lavender, rather than the oranges and reds Jean had manifested. "No!" protested the Phoenix, through Rogue's lips, and the struggle tore the Blackbird apart.

On the molecular level.

And, with the exception of its hosts, all the occupants as well.

Afterward, Professor Xavier would describe that moment of discorporation, of being so suddenly dead, as 'chilly'.

Fortunately, it didn't last very long.

To Rogue, pulling the Phoenix off of Jean Grey was like using a fire hose for a Waterpik. The Phoenix flooded her, overwhelming her, spilling over and out of her, and in the process, ripped apart the plane and the people around her. All she could do was scream "No!" as they died, and she couldn't tell whether it was her own word, or the Phoenix's, as it burst from her.

Perhaps it was both.

They lied, she thought as she spread her wings and headed for the ground. The voices. Now the Professor and all of them are dead, and…

"We didn't lie," said her left-hand Mehndi-paint snake bracelet. "Your friends will be all right. Watch and sssssseee. Now come here, little one."

"I am here!" Rogue said, soaring on the Phoenix's wings. She folded them as she alit on the desert sands.

"I didn't mean you." It/ they reached out, took hold of the Phoenix—and stopped Rogue's heart.

Nononooooooo. Cried the Phoenix.

Bereft of the power, bereft of life, Rogue dropped like a stone.


AN: Okay, it's very short. Think of it as a preview. The next will be longer and come sooner. I promise!