From the control room, Mystique saw Nightcrawler teleport Storm just as the last door closed, blocking her view of the finish line. She stopped the timers and obstacles in their tracks and breathed a sigh of relief. She honestly didn't know if the team could finish a brand new course with new rules without at least one 'casualty', but they exceeded her expectations by leaps and bounds.
"Whooo!" Quicksilver shouted into the mic, thrusting his fists into the air in celebration. Feedback squealed through the speakers. "You guys are awesome! That was so freaking intense, with the lasers and the tentacles! Oh my god!"
Mystique nudged him out of the way. "Great job guys. A little shaky with the wind machines Storm, but I think-"
"Mystique," said Beast over the P.A. system, "Storm and Nightcrawler aren't here."
"But... I saw them teleport," she said, confused. "Where did they go?"
Peter and Mystique looked at each other. Without a word, he grabbed her, his hand behind her head for support, and ran faster than the speed of sound into the danger room.
A millisecond later, they joined the team on the floor. Jean held her hand to her temple, telepathically scanning for the missing X-Men's thought patterns as the rest of the team looked on worriedly.
"Where are they, Jean?" asked Mystique.
"I don't know, they're not..." she began, then a spark of realization appeared in her eyes.
"Oh. Oh, that's not good."
Kurt opened his eyes. He thought they were open, at least. He was still in pitch darkness. The air was thick, stale, and hard to breathe.
I'm not in pain, he thought, so I must not be dying.
Or I suppose I could already be dead.
He tentatively moved his arms and hit something hard not a few inches in front of him. He was lying on his back against something equally as uncomfortable.
He thought of the box he'd been stuffed into back in Germany, when he was taken to a mutant fighting ring in Berlin. He'd stayed in that horrible thing for at least a day, unable to move, without food or water or a toilet break. Had his kidnappers found him again in New York? Why else would he be in a box...
A coffin. He was in a coffin.
He was dead, they buried him already, he knew it. As he adjusted his arms to try to push his way out of his own grave, he realized he wasn't lying on his back at all. He was standing up.
They don't stand coffins straight in the ground like that in America, do they? he pondered to himself.
He heard someone moan rather close by, startling him.
I know they don't put more than one person in a coffin, he thought.
"What is happening?" asked Ororo groggily. Kurt felt her hand reach out and brush his own. He grabbed it and squeezed, attempting to reassure both of them.
"Ororo, are you hurt?" he asked.
"I don't think so, but..." she stopped. Her hand let go of his. He heard her feel along the wall in front of them, then she begin to moan wordlessly in fear.
"It's all right," he said, feeling for her hand again. "If you're not hurt, then we're going to be fine."
"No!" she screamed suddenly, repeating it over and over. She banged against their dark, stuffy prison with her hands and knees, heard her push and flail frantically. Her screams turned from words into primal, unintelligible screeches.
The rest of the team heard her faint, muffled screams from the direction of the hallway of doors.
"They're in there!" said Jean.
"They can't be," said Raven, her fear quickly turning to dread, "I would have seen them somewhere in the rest of the danger room."
"No, you don't understand," said Jean, "they're inside the door."
"It's... hollow?" said Hank, confused.
"You didn't know that? I thought you helped build this thing?" asked Raven.
"I only programmed it, I didn't build it!" Hank exclaimed.
"Never mind. I'm calling Magneto, he can get them out," she said as she turned to leave. Before she could reach the elevator, the lights flickered, and a low, ominous rumble rattled the walls.
"We might not have time to wait for him," said Jean.
Raven still hurried to the control room and dialed Eric's number, praying that he'd answer.
Kurt groped around in the dark, trying to grab Storm's arm to calm her down as she continued to wail.
"We are going to die!" she screamed. "We are going to run out of oxygen and die!" She broke down into pitiful sobs.
Kurt made a mental image of the control room. It was fresh in his mind, so he might be able to teleport to it without seeing it in front of him, despite his weakened state. He got a hold of her wrist.
"Don't worry, I will-"
Before he could finish his sentence, she ripped her hand away and smashed his face with her palm. He shouted in pain. Blood start gushing from his nose and lip.
The claustrophobic space lit up with tiny sparks of lightning flying from her clenched fists. The air filled with the scent of ozone. He saw a glimpse of her mad, glaring eyes as they clouded over.
She screamed again, placing her hands flat on the door and sending blinding streaks up the side, like sheet lightning.
"This thing is metal, Storm! Are you insane?" Kurt shouted through his bloody lips, pushing himself as far away from her he could. "You are going to kill us both! Let me-"
"No!" Ororo yelled. "You got us in this mess, and I will get us out!" she sent another streak up the side, making Kurt's hair stand on end from the static.
"Storm," yelled Jean from the other side, though neither of Ororo nor Kurt could hear her, "You have to calm down, let me help you!" She concentrated as hard as she could on her friend's terrified brain. Images of darkness, death, fear, and anger roiled around in Ororo's mind like a raging hurricane. Jean had to rip herself away lest she be carried off in the current of her thoughts.
"Well?" asked Scott.
"I can't get to her when she's like this," said Jean, "It's like her mind's on fire. We need to get the Professor."
"On it," said Peter, and he raced upstairs.
Time stretched into a standstill for Quicksilver as he ran through the mansion, looking for the Professor. He passed kids frozen on the stairs, smiling at each other, living statues in the middle of an inside joke. He checked the Professor's room: empty. He methodically checked every open bedroom he could find, to no avail.
He ran back downstairs into the kitchen. No Professor, but he noticed a girl about a centimeter away from chopping off her finger while dicing carrots. He moved her knife just a smidge, stole a baby carrot for himself, and continued on his search.
He zipped around, looking throughout the various parlor rooms on the ground floor, where the Professor usually taught classes. All he saw were kids suspended in various forms of time wasting activities; drawing, reading, studying, watching TV, like some kind of modern Renaissance painting.
He caught a glimpse of the vast lawn through a window near the fireplace and stopped, his surroundings still frozen around him. The trees strained, keeled over in an invisible wind, the clouds a threatening pea green color. In the far distance, he witnessed a streak of lightning slowly creep down from the sky.
He crunched the rest of his baby carrot, taking his sweet time. No need to panic. There was always time, as long as he was using his powers. He watched big blobs of rain fall outside, like liquid floating in outer space, and thought long and hard about where the Professor could possibly be.
He smacked his head. "Duh!" he exclaimed to no one in particular.
He ran to the Professor's office. The doors were closed and locked tight. He slowed back down to regular speed, the people around him speeding up and going about their business as normal. He heard the sound of the wind howling outside. Several heads turned to look as the crack of thunder finally reached the mansion.
Peter knocked like an impatient woodpecker on the Professor's office door. A few agonizingly slow seconds later, a blonde preteen boy opened the door a crack.
"Is the Professor in there?" Quicksilver asked, trying to peer above the boy's head to look into the room.
"Yeah, but..." he looked behind him at his classmates, "we're kinda in the middle of a final."
"Ok well, this is kinda more important than that," he said, trying to scooch his way into the room. The boy blocked him, closing the door a bit more.
"If it was that important, the Professor would know about it already," said the boy.
Peter groaned. He was seriously contemplating how much trouble he'd be willing to get into for ripping the door off the hinges.
"Sam," the Professor's calm, British accent came from inside the room. "Let him in, please."
Peter brushed by Sam, past the students focused intensely on their tests, and towards Professor Charles Xavier sitting in his wheelchair behind his desk. The Professor put a finger on his bald temple, reading Peter's mind as he walked in. His brow furrowed in a worried frown as he realized the enormity of the danger they were in.
"We got a situation downstairs," said Peter, without the slightest hint of tact.
The Professor coughed uncomfortably as the students looked up from their tests. "It's all right everyone, please continue, I'll be back in just a few minutes."
As Professor Xavier wheeled away from his desk, he realized his students' rapt attention wasn't on him or Peter, but something outside. He looked behind him through the window and his jaw dropped.
A tornado was beginning to form right in front of the mansion, quickly becoming darker and thicker in a mesmerizing snake charmer's dance.
A girl screamed, breaking the spell and setting off a chain reaction of utter panic.
"Everyone, stay calm," urged the Professor. He gave further instructions as the kids nearly fell over themselves to escape the room, "Go downstairs, don't use the elevator, and take others with you!"
Before he could turn back around to ask Peter what the hell he was doing still standing around, an ear-shattering kaboom shook the walls, and the lights flickered out for good.
"Well, that's nice," said Peter, picking a piece of carrot out of his teeth.
"Get me down there, you bloody fool!" yelled the Professor.
Clouds were starting to form near the ceiling the moment Peter left the danger room. They rolled like an angry sea, blackening as they sucked up all of the moisture in the atmosphere. It grew bone-chillingly cold and within a few seconds, hail and sleet began falling from the indoor clouds.
Scott glanced up at the control room. He saw Raven slam down the phone, obviously having no luck contacting Magneto. He began looking for anything that could free them faster before Ororo froze everyone to death. He knew the door was blast-proof: his laser beam eyes wouldn't be able to penetrate it. Hank would have no luck tearing through them, either.
"Jean, can you try getting this door apart?" he asked.
She concentrated her telekinetic energy on it, feeling around for any weak points. The door was solid. All of the seams were welded together, except one.
She slowly lifted the door back up into the ceiling, straining against thousands of pounds of pressure and the hail pelting her head. The bottom of the door was riveted shut, but not welded.
"I can keep the door open or tear the bottom part of the door off, but I can't do both at once," she said.
"Can you keep it open from the control panel, Hank?" Scott asked.
"It's the one that sticks," he replied, moving sopping wet fur out of his eyes. "But I could-"
Suddenly, another burst of lightning spread from the inside of the door, the electricity naturally finding its way groundward. A tiny bolt struck close to Jean's feet. She screamed and almost lost her telekinetic grip on the door.
Hank held up his finger and said, "I was going to say, I could hold the door, but now I'm having second thoughts."
"Hank, you hairy coward!" yelled Raven through the P.A. system, "Hold the god damned door open or I will break your kneecaps!"
Hank did as he was told, groaning as the full weight of the door lowered onto his shoulders.
Jean refocused her energy on the rivets on the bottom of the door. The metal screeched and moaned as she ripped out the bolts and slowly rolled the metal back, like a rock solid sleeping bag.
Kurt heard the metal screeching and saw the beam of light from the corner of the door before Ororo did.
"Storm!" he grabbed her hand, risking a horrible electric shock, or another punch in the face. "Ororo, look!"
He finally saw her face as his eyes adjusted to the light. It was tear streaked, her eyes still clouded over and puffy from crying. He couldn't tell if her light brown skin looked deathly pale or if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
She scrambled towards the light, still sobbing breathlessly. Kurt followed inches behind.
Just then, the lights in the danger room went out at the same time as they had upstairs. They continued making their way towards the hole, nonetheless. As they got closer, Kurt gulped breathfuls of cold, fresh air and heard the hail falling from the clouds, bouncing off the metal floor like golf balls.
Jean carefully lowered Ororo to the ground. She still shook and sobbed as the emergency lights came on, revealing Peter back in the room, holding the Professor in his arms.
"Come here, my dear," said the Professor, beckoning to her like a concerned father to his child.
Ororo rushed to the Professor's side, and he put his hands on her temples. Her sobs turned to quiet sniffles and hiccups. Her eyes became clear again, and the hail and sleet finally stopped.
She buried her face into his shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she moaned, her voice muffled by his suit jacket.
"It's all right now, Ororo," he put a hand on her hair, stroking it gently. "You're safe. We're all safe."
Raven watched with bated breath as Kurt slipped out of the hole in the door, all of his limbs still intact. Her relief turned to fear when she saw a stream of blood oozing from his nose and mouth. She ran to him as Hank let the door fall with a loud slam.
"What in the hell happened?" she asked, anger leaking through her concern.
Kurt glanced at Ororo, then looked away sheepishly, unable to make eye contact with anyone.
His timid non-response made her furious. She pointed accusingly at him. "You're going to tell me what in God's name you were thinking, or-"
"Enough!" yelled the Professor. Ororo jerked her head back and wiped away her tears. "Training is over, everyone," he continued. "Go make sure all the children are safe and accounted for."
The rest of the X-Men quickly, silently filed past Raven and Peter, still holding the Professor in his arms. Kurt wiped a bit of dried blood from his nose and teleported away.
"We are going to talk," said Charles to Raven, his words full of barely repressed venom.