It wasn't long before the X-Men recovered and were just as baffled about their new surroundings as the Avengers. Aside from the members that battled Apocalypse and his Horseman, other members of the team of this under-appreciated group of heroes were present as well. The first were two X-Men who were not fighting against Apocalypse but instead were part of the mission to try and stop the ancient mutant's conquest of Earth by infiltrating his Pyramid in Egypt.

The first was a tall, skinny man with a demon-like appearance, in that his body was covered in blue fur, possessed black hair, yellow pupilless eyes, a prehensible tail, three fingers on each hand, and two toes on each foot. His uniform consisted of a red shirt with an 'X' symbol on his chest, black sleeves and pants, and white gloves and boots. Despite his devilish looks, this German-born mutant Kurt Wagner was the most light-hearted of the group but still proved his worth in missions under the codename of Nightcrawler.

The second member was a thin, light-skinned man in his late twenties with black hair and a matching black goatee. Like his teammates, he wore a blue and gold uniform but also had a pair of goggles above his brow and appeared to have a metallic, robotic right leg. Not much is known about this man, not even by his fellow X-Men. All that was known about this man were his cheerful and often irritating geeky personality and his intuitive genius with technology that helped him design and build gadgets that helped the team, hence his codename: Forge.

The final three X-Men on the platform did not travel to Egypt to take part in the battle but were instead ordered to stay behind at the Institute to both watch over and defend the students, as well as be the ones to train and create a new team of X-Men in case the mission went wrong.

The first was that of a fair-skinned, brown-eyed girl who appeared to be nineteen years of age, also in a standard X-Men uniform which was a yellow shirt with shoulder pads, blue sleeves and pants, gold gloves and boots, and a belt with a red 'X' buckle. Her brown hair had a short shoulder-length hairstyle when in the past it was longer, and she wore it in pigtails but later decided to cut it short to make it easier when on missions, as well as show Logan and the rest of her older teammates her maturity and did not need to be treated as a child anymore. A feat that Katherine 'Kitty' Pryde accomplished long ago, all while under the codename of Shadowcat.

The next was a tall, young woman in her early twenties with pale skin, green eyes, and auburn hair with white streaks in a bun hairstyle. She, too, wore a uniform, but it was unique as it was a green and yellow jumpsuit with yellow gloves and knee-high boots, and she wore a brown jacket with rolled-up sleeves. Though her born name was Anne-Marie D'Ancanto, she went by her code name, Rogue, for her brooding loner personality, something which nearly cost the girl her friendship with the X-Men when she briefly sided with a mutant terrorist group, the Brotherhood of Mutants. Though she had since realized the error of her ways and rejoined the team, she knew that most of her teammates still didn't trust her and was determined to regain their trust.

And the third was a large, muscular, fair-skinned man with buzzed black hair, dressed in a red and yellow jumpsuit, one which was sleeveless to provide his massive arms, complete with red steel wristbands around his wrists, freedom of movement. The Russian-born Piotr Rasputin was the gentle giant of the group that he considered his second family, and when on missions, he put his strength and power to good use as Colossus. Initially, Piotr chose not to return to the team after the Institute explosion and decided to return to his family in Siberia. However, due to 'circumstances' regarding his little sister, Illyana, he and his parents decided to bring her to the States and over to the Institute, where she could receive the help she needed. However, as he looked around the room in confusion, Piotr began thinking that he and his colleagues were the ones who needed help.

The rest of the X-Men were just as perplexed about the situation, especially Jean Grey. She couldn't help but be astounded. One minute, she was being crushed to death by Apocalypse, then the next, she was covered in some white light and brought to a strange room made of marble. In the midst of her looking around and surveying her new surroundings, Jean spotted something that not only surprised her but filled her with jubilation. "Ororo!"

The sound of Jean's joy-filled words was enough to snap the disoriented Ororo out of her daze, but once she gained a clear head, her grogginess was replaced with shock. Not just in being in this strange place, but the fact that she felt physically fine and healthy! The last thing she remembered was getting impaled by one of Warren's bladed feathers and feeling her blood, not to mention her life, drain out of her body. This prompted Ororo to look down, and her sky-blue eyes grew large when she saw that the feather was gone, and most alarming of all, her wound was closed and healed so perfectly there was no scar! She was then brought out of her stunned state when Jean, her teammate, and best friend, ran in and hugged her, with a grip tight enough to match that of an Anaconda squeezing its prey.

Seeing her friends and loved ones getting gravely injured always hit Jean hard, and though seeing Ororo, who she loved and cherished like a sister, miraculously healed after getting stabbed was confusing, it didn't matter to her. Just as long as she was alive. It wasn't until Jean heard Ororo choking that she released her grip and pulled away, giving her friend an apologetic smile as she coughed. "Sorry!"

Once Ororo finally caught her breath, she gave Jean a reassuring nod and smile, all while rubbing her throat in pain.

Moments later, Jean turned her attention to Ororo's abdomen, and her confusion returned. "Your wound is healed? How is that possible?"

"I…do not know," Ororo replied honestly, just baffled as she briefly touched where the feather once was.

It wasn't long before Ororo's enigmatic recovery soon caught the attention of the rest of the X-Men, particularly Logan, who, while glad that Ororo's life appeared to have been saved, was just as baffled as his teammates about how her recovery was so sudden and in a way that would put his healing factor to shame. However, he kept a cool head for the sake of the team's morale, especially given the circumstances. "Well, you ain't dead, Storm. So, I call that a good sign."

"Obviously," Ororo answered with a hint of sarcasm in her voice but was nonetheless in agreement concerning her life being saved in the most mysterious of ways.

Logan then looked around the room for possible clues until he saw something that made him narrow his eyes in annoyance. Or, more accurately, that 'something' was a certain 'someone' named Forge, who was trying to clear his head from the transfer. "FORGE!" Logan barked, loud enough to snap the mechanical genius out of his dazed and turned to look at him with wide-opened eyes like a dear in the headlights. "What the hell did you do?!"

"Whoa, whoa, Logan, hold on!" Forge replied nervously as he held up his hands in defense, and his anxiety increased when he saw the rest of his teammates glaring at him. "I swear that this is not part of the plan!" It was here that Forge, still uneasy with his friend's anger-filled stares, explained what went wrong in said plan back in…

EGYPT

…more specifically, inside a dark, vast, technically advanced control room located in the center of the Apocalypse's main Pyramid. It was here that Forge was in the far-left corner of the room with his hand-sized computer plugged into the wall and hacking into the Pyramid's computer system. Fortunately, Forge was not alone in performing this dangerous task, for Kurt was also in the room and was in the middle of fending off hordes of humanoid robots in black plate armor with gold bracelets, boots, loincloths, and nemes, and faceplates designed to resemble the face of Apocalypse himself. The tailed X-Man was armed only with a cutlass sword, which was fortunate, considering that each robot wielded two curved ancient Egyptian blades known as khopeshs.

Oddly enough, these mechanical drones were all controlled by one mind, one that did not belong to Apocalypse, but rather a white-skinned man with buzzed black hair and crimson red eyes with a matching red diamond symbol on his forehead. He was dressed in a dark, metallic blue jumpsuit, complete with a shoulder piece with a large collar and hundreds of tassels running down his back like a cape. In another life, this man's name was Nathaniel Essex, a brilliant scientist obsessed with the deterministic interpretations of the natural evolution and emergence of the beings that the world would come to know as mutants. However, after a fateful encounter with Apocalypse, who genetically mutated him, he was reborn as the tyrant's most trusted servant, Mister Sinister. As far as how he controlled the drones, Sinister wore a gold, crown-like device on his head with two wires connected to a desk, transmitting his mental commands to the cpu's of each drone. And though his bread and butter was genetics, he nevertheless found this method of killing the X-Men enjoyable, considering how much they've interfered with his experiments in the past.

Nevertheless, Kurt pressed on in his part of the mission of keeping Sinister and his drones busy, so Forge could get into the Pyramid's computer system and shut off not just the fortress that they were standing in but the other pyramids that were on their way to the different continents of the planet. Fortunately, he managed to stay in one piece through two things. One was the cutlass sword that he held firmly in his right hand and masterfully used it to parry any incoming slash attacks from the drones and respond with a few of his own. The second was his gift, which saved him and his teammates numerous times.

It was the ability of teleportation from one area to the next, which Kurt quickly put to good use when he spotted one of the drones coming towards him and winding the khopesh in his right hand back, intending to take his head off. As such, the X-Man wasted no time concentrating and soon vanished in a puff of black smoke, which the drone ended up slicing through instead. Before the drone could react, Kurt reappeared behind it and cut it's head clean off its shoulders, sparks of electricity flying out of its now open neck. Suddenly, Kurt heard the running footsteps of metal feet, and as he looked over his shoulder, he was alarmed when he spotted two more drones heading toward him. All of this prompted Kurt to vanish again, but this time, he reappeared in mid-air and in front of the drone's now headless body, which was still standing. Here, the tailed X-Man moved by using both legs to kick outward and plant his two-toed feet into the decapitated drone's chest plate, sending it flying backward and crashing into the two drones, causing them to fall to the floor. After flipping backward and landing safely in a crouching posture, Kurt looked around for more incoming drones, and as he looked over his left shoulder, he spotted another drone standing over him, with its left hand over its head and going to split Kurt's head in half with an overhead slash. Naturally, Kurt immediately held up his blade up in a horizontal position and successfully blocked the attack, and out of pure instinct, he once vanished in a puff of smoke, then reappeared behind the drone in a crouched posture of his feet. From there, Kurt quickly threw a right backhanded slash and sliced the drone's legs off at the knees, leading it to fall to the floor.

Upon getting back up on his feet, Kurt looked from side to side to see two drones speeding toward from both the left and right side and holding their khopeshs back with the intent of taking his head off. As such, he took action by waiting for his robot attackers to get close, and once they did, he teleported once again and caused the two drones to decapitate each other instead. From then on, Kurt teleported from one place to another as he fought off the rest of the drones. One moment, he appeared in front of one drone to slice its head off, and in the next, he disappeared and reappeared on one drone's shoulders, flipped backward, and used his legs to throw it into the air and right into threw more attacking drones, causing them to fall to the floor hard.

Though the tailed X-Man's ability was helpful, it did have one unpleasant drawback, namely that every puff of smoke Kurt created when teleporting left behind the smell of brimstone, which obviously wasn't a pleasant experience for the people nearby. And though the drones were not bothered by this, Sinister found the pungent smell irritating and distracting, making it difficult to channel his thoughts into the dashboard and control the drones.

The brimstone was so strong it reached the nostrils of Forge was still hard at work getting into the Pyramid's mainframe with his minicomputer, making it hard for him to focus on his task. Nevertheless, he soldiered on as he looked at his minicomputer's screen, which showed strange, alien images that almost resembled ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that he managed to download from one of Sinister's computers when he and the X-Men rescued Jean Grey when she was kidnapped and taken to one of his labs just a few months earlier. During that time, Forge studied these images, and on this night, he used them to develop a specially made virus, which he now trying to download into the Pyramid's system and finally shut down all of the pyramids. "Come on, Come on!" Forge muttered in frustration as he stared at the screen and saw that the downloading process was going slowly.

Meanwhile, Kurt continued to take down one drone after another masterfully. At one point, the X-Man grabbed one drone's khopesh with his tail and, as if it were a third arm, whipped it in front of him to use the weapon to block an incoming right downward slash from one drone. Now in control, Kurt commanded his tail to push the drone's weapon downward so he could throw a downward right slash of his own and chopped the robot's arm off its elbow, followed by an upward slash to remove its head. After that, Kurt turned his attention with a confident smile. "I'm am disappointed, Zinister," Kurt told the scientist in a laid-back tone reminiscent of the heroes in the swashbuckling tales he heard growing up. "For a man who is zuppose to be an evil genius, I vas expecting more of a challenge." Suddenly, Kurt heard another drone charging toward him on the left side. Without even looking, he flung his tail to that side and realized the khopesh, which was then lodged into the center of the drone's head, splitting it in half as it dropped to the floor. Even when Kurt held up his blade to stop another slash attack from a drone attacking from the right, his smile remained as he heard Sinister grunt of frustration, making the drone's movements sloppier, confirming that his plan of distracting the scientist was working. At one point, Kurt vanished again to avoid another drone that attempted to drive its curved blade into his face, then reappeared in another part of the room with a large screen. And just as he squared up for another attack, Kurt noticed the screen through the corner of his left eye, and what he saw caused his swashbuckling attitude to vanish and instead be replaced with fear and concern.

It was the image of Ororo dying on the sand with a feather blade in her abdomen, his teammates being beaten by the Horseman, and a now giant Apocalypse holding and squeezing Jean like an empty soda can.

"NEIN!" The horrified Kurt cried, unknowingly leaving himself open for a stiff right elbow strike to the jaw by a drone, and tumbled down to the floor like a ton of bricks.

A sight which pleased Sinister greatly, so much so that he ordered two drones to grab the dazed Kurt by his arms and hoist him up off the floor. Moments later, the scientist noticed the screen and saw that Apocalypse and the Horsemen were standing triumphant over the X-Men, which led him to rightfully deduce that this was what caused Kurt to lose concentration, all of which caused Sinister's evil smile to spread wider. "Ah, the sight of one's friends in trouble. One of my favorite weaknesses to exploit!" Sinister declared with evil glee, then commanded the drone that held Kurt's right arm to pull out its khopesh and hold it up against the X-Man's throat. "Normally, I'd let you watch the demise of your comrades before finishing you off, but you're obviously a nuisance that's too dangerous to let live!" Suddenly, Sinister is alerted by another sound of a young male voice in a hopeful but still anxious tone…

"Almost there!"

…this caused Sinister to turn to the direction of where he heard the voice and saw that it belonged to Forge, who saw that the virus was almost entirely downloaded, causing the scientist to narrow his red eyes in disdain. "And so are you," Sinister said in aggravation, then sent a mental command to one drone to throw its khopesh at the unsuspecting tech geek.

As for Forge, he was alerted by an incoming wheezing sound, and as he turned to see what it was, his eyes widened when he saw it flying toward his face. "Oh, sh-!" Before the horrified Forge could utter what would've been his last words, he was soon enveloped by the cosmic white glow, along with a surprised Sinister and a semi-conscious Kurt. It didn't take long for that same glow to turn into a brilliant flash of white light that enveloped the entire room, and Forge, Kurt, and Sinister were nowhere to be found. And the two X-Men now founded themselves in…

THE BEOYNDER'S THRONE ROOM

…where Forge, now safe and sound, still found himself on the receiving end of furious glares from not just Logan but also the rest of his fellow X-Men. The only positive thing he could think of was that his new uniform concealed not just body heat and fluids. Be it sweat or the other liquid that 'used to be water' but came out due to fear of getting his head split open by a khopesh and the cold stares of his teammates. "But I swear, I didn't mean to bring everybody here!" At one point, Forge noticed Kitty, Rogue, and Piotr and was confused to see that the three members who were supposed to stay at the mansion were also in this strange place. "And I do mean 'everybody!'"

Naturally, this remark caused Logan and the rest of the X-Men in Egypt to turn around and were just as shocked to see Kitty and the other two X-Men tasked with watching the younger students here with them. However, out of the two X-Men in both opposite groups, Bobby and Kitty were the most shocked to see each other. However, upon catching a glimpse of each other's faces, they turned away and avoided each other's gaze. The reason was that they dated at one point but had recently broken things off, and, suffice to say, things were awkward between them.

While the rest of the X-Men stood in stunned silence, a wide-eyed Logan chose to be the most vocal about this development. "What the hell are you three doing here?!" The gruff mutant yelled as he knew that they, Kitty and Rogue, at least, tended to disobey orders and come along on missions. As if that weren't enough, Logan received another surprise when he heard the familiar voice, one that he knew from all the way back in the Second World War…

"Logan…?"

Upon hearing this voice, Logan curiously turned around and was shocked and confused to see his former fellow Howling Commando, Steve Rogers, as well the Avengers, all of whom he had not seen since Galactus's invasion. Moments later, Logan's eyes soon shifted to Tony Stark and the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards, causing his eyes to narrow and for him to assume that those two 'eggheads' must've teleported them here as part of some experiment. All of which made the already grouchy mutant mutter this under his breath. "Just friggin' perfect."