The X-Men rushed down the danger room hallway, attempting to outrun a gigantic steel door closing in from the ceiling. Cyclops, at the front of the pack, was the first to reach it just as it closed and locked into place.
They looked around them at the empty section of hallway. They formed a circle facing outwards, prepared for something, anything to happen.
After a few tense seconds, Nightcrawler relaxed slightly, a confused look on his face. "Is this part broken?" he asked.
Suddenly, laser turrets popped out from the walls, firing wildly in every direction. "Hit the deck!" screamed Cyclops, instinctively grabbing Jean and shoving her behind him. The others fell to the ground, dodging lasers and sparks flying from where they ricocheted off the floor.
Cyclops adjusted his visor to full power and pressed the button on the side, releasing a blinding red blast of pure energy from his eyeballs. The beam of force shattered each of the turrets like toy guns and left a line of burn marks around the room. They sparked in fitful death throes, then retreated back into the walls to be automatically repaired.
The door rose, allowing them into the next section. It consisted of a menacing electrical barrier blocking the exit and two gigantic wind machines near the entrance. Before they even had a chance to catch their breath, the fans began to spin, the wind sweeping them all off of their feet and steadily sliding towards the barriers, ready to give them a nasty shock.
"This one is mine!" shouted Storm, slowly coming to her knees. She precariously balanced herself against the tremendous wind. Her eyes clouded over, the barometric pressure dropped, and the humidity rose as she created her own storm, curdling precipitation into clouds from thin air. She concentrated her power at the fans, counteracting their wind with her own natural tempest. It slowed them down, allowing the rest of the X-Men to stand. Against her resistance, the fans began to spin even faster to counteract her.
"I cannot hold them much longer!" she cried to her teammates.
"What about the barrier?" Jean shouted to Beast above the deafening gale, holding on to Cyclops's shoulder.
"You can't ask the programmer," Beast yelled back to her, "Mystique would kill me if I gave you any hints."
Cyclops looked for the source of the electric beams criss-crossing the exit like a chain link fence. The generator was hidden behind one of the walls: it would be impossible for his eye beams to penetrate them in time and blow the generator to pieces before Storm lost control.
"Storm," he called out to her, "hit the fence with lightning, quick!"
"Watch out!" she warned the X-Men, and they scurried to either side of the room. With one hand fending off the wind machines, she focused part of her power in her other hand and pointed to the exit. From her fingers she sent a booming crack of lightning, slamming the fence and instantly shorting it, and it seemed, the power in the entire danger room. The team groaned.
"Sorry," said Storm, adjusting her wind-battered hair.
"Wait," said Nightcrawler, "if the power went out, then why are the timers still going?" Indeed, the timers glowed red in the darkness and were counting down, three minutes left to go. Their glow, unfortunately, couldn't give shape to anything in the blinding darkness.
The door to the next section opened quietly. As the X-Men very gingerly made their way inside, Jean felt a chill, as if something was terribly wrong. She put a hand on her temple, focusing her energy. Her strong sense of telekinesis picked up on something moving silently in the room.
She felt along the floor with her power as if she were using her hand. There were small grooves... no... gaps in the floor stretching across the room vertically and horizontally, making a grid with squares about two feet big.
But what was moving?
Suddenly, she felt it again. Something metal and sharp zipped silently through the gaps, coming dangerously close to Beast's heels. Another one popped up and barely grazed Nightcrawler's tail, making him jump.
"Was war das?!" he yelped. "Something touched me!"
Jean telepathically took note of everyone's positions. She felt their presences scattered throughout the room, their minds on edge and disoriented. Another saw whooshed by from the right, and another from behind. Storm stood directly on a gap, right in the path of the next one.
Jean instinctively thrust her power in Storm's direction, knocking her out of the way.
"Hold on everybody," she said. To the X-Men's surprise, they all began rising into the air. Jean carefully balanced their different weights, hoping no one would make any sudden movements as she scurried across the floor to the exit, dodging saws whizzing by. She gently lowered them back down safely next to the door. The fluorescent lights buzzed back on, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Unfortunately, it was short lived. The next door opened to reveal shining, slithering metal tentacles crawling out of the walls, like the limbs of a giant, mechanical octopus.
"Great. Awesome," whispered Cyclops, oozing sarcasm.
The tentacles faced the door, as if they heard him, and bolted towards the team faster than striking cobras.
They tried desperately to free themselves even though the jungle of tentacles coiled around them from all sides. Storm's rain and lightening did nothing to slow them down. Jean attempted to stop them telekinetically, but there were too many to hold on to. Cyclops's arms were pinned to his sides so he couldn't reach his visor, and Nightcrawler tried teleporting out of each tentacle's grip, dodging and flipping like the nimble acrobat he was, only to be grabbed by another.
Beast snarled as two tentacles grabbed him tightly around the torso and squeezed with hundreds of pounds of force. Grabbing a tentacle with each hand and using every ounce of his raw strength, he let out a mighty roar, ripping them out of the wall like an angry gorilla. The tentacles loosened and clattered limply to the floor.
He clambered around the room on all fours like an ape, ripping all of the tentacles from their sockets and freeing his teammates one by one. The dying metal jittered and sparked all around them, the steel jungle turned into a scrap heap.
Panting, exhausted, and with only 30 seconds to spare, the team faced their last challenge: a series of wide, blast proof doors loomed before them, opening and shutting smoothly one right after the other, like a syncopated, undulating wave.
"This one must be yours, Nightcrawler," said Storm, patting him on the shoulder. "No problem, right?"
Nightcrawler gulped. He needed to be able to see his target clearly before teleporting to it, but he could only catch the tiniest glimpse of the end of the course through the last door before the first one shut a fraction of a second later, starting the wave over again. The doors were bone-crushingly huge with no space in between them. If he teleported incorrectly... he shuddered. He didn't want to think about getting a limb stuck through one of those things.
"I can only take two of you at a time, or I might pass out," he told them.
"Hurry, then," said Storm. "We're running out of time."
He made the sign of the cross, grabbed Cyclops's and Beast's arms, and was gone with them in a puff of smoke.
They were swallowed by a dark, ethereal plane with no floor or ceiling or walls. They floated forward, as light as feathers. Nightcrawler feared they may be just as fragile. Only tiny fragments of light and sound from the real world escaped into void, flittering past them like mosquitoes. He focused entirely on the goal, using all his energy to propel himself forward and concentrate on the tiny peek of the finish line. Suddenly, the void ripped apart and the room materialized before them. He jumped through, carrying his friends with him.
He did the same again, going back through the treacherous hallway to reach Storm and Jean waiting on the other side. He wobbled a bit, feeling dizzy with the pressure of a difficult 'port. He took a few deep breaths and leaned on the wall.
"Are you okay?" asked Jean.
He nodded, put his hands on their shoulders, and they all disappeared.
The void seemed deeper, longer this time, harder to push through, as if the air had grown thick. He tried to focus again, but his mind was fluttering. The image of safe haven didn't come easily to him.
Finally, he saw it: a clear image of Beast and Cyclops waited at the finish line for him and the girls, but something wasn't right. They were too far away, it wasn't where he had 'ported last time. With overwhelming dread he realized his trajectory was in the way of the last door. Thankfully it was still open, for another split second, at least. With the emptiness once again ripped apart, it was too late to change his landing.
He propelled himself forward with all his might. Jean lost her balance and tumbled forward into the room, out of reach of the door, while Nightcrawler and Storm landed on the edge of it. He felt the back of his neck grow cold. Grey oblivion creeped into the corners of his vision.
He forced himself to keep from fainting. Almost there, he told himself.
Suddenly, the door rumbled beneath them. Storm and Nightcrawler fell backwards together as it began to slam shut.
Before their minds could form words to scream, before anyone else had a chance to turn and see their friends crushed, Nightcrawler teleported himself and Storm again with the last of his strength. There was no image in his mind of a safe place in front of him, no specks of light whizzing past in the dark. At the limits of his consciousness, he wasn't sure whether he was really teleporting, or just fainting.
Either way, he and Storm would soon be gone.