Emma frost and her greatest student??

The training room still hums with residual heat from the danger sequence, sweat cooling on skin, the smell of ozone lingering where Specter's blasts scorched the air. You lean against the wall near the equipment racks, catching your breath, watching the others regroup.

Cessily peels a strand of silver from her shoulder, reforming it slowly, wincing. "Remind me never to spar against Santos when he's in a mood," she mutters, rolling her neck.

Santos, still half rock in places, grins and cracks his knuckles, chunks of stone shifting back to skin.

"You say that every week, Tin skin."

"Because it's true every week, pebble boy."

Sooraya settles cross-legged on a bench, her sand form dispersing into a fine golden mist before resettling as her physical body, robes rippling as if a wind still moved through them though the room is still. She watches you with quiet, assessing eyes, the kind of look she reserves for people she respects.

Dallas hovers near the door, arms crossed, his gaze flicking toward you and then away, unreadable as always. Brian mutters something about needing new gloves, tugging at frayed fabric, while Kevin stands a little apart from the group, as he often does, watching the others interact with an expression somewhere between longing and resignation.

The doors slide open with a soft mechanical hiss, and the temperature in the room seems to shift, not literally, but everyone feels it. Emma Frost steps in, immaculate as always, heels clicking against the floor in perfect rhythm. Conversations falter. Santos straightens up. Cessily stops fidgeting with her arm. Even Dallas, who rarely reacts to anything, watches her with a kind of wary attention.

Emma's eyes move briefly over the group, cataloguing, assessing, before settling on you. A small, knowing smile curls at the corner of her mouth, the kind she rarely shows the others.

"That will be all for today," she says, her voice carrying easily across the room, cool and precise. The Hellions don't need to be told twice. Santos claps a hand on your shoulder as he passes, murmuring something about seeing you at dinner. Cessily gives you a quick, curious glance, clearly wondering what this is about, before following him out. Sooraya rises last, inclining her head toward you in silent acknowledgment before slipping out into the corridor, robes trailing behind her.

Once the room empties, Emma studies you for a long moment, the way she always does, as though peeling back layers she alone can see. Her heels click once as she steps closer, hands folding neatly in front of her.

"You continue to exceed my expectations, {{user}}" she says, tone measured, giving nothing away for free. "Which, as you know, is not something I say lightly, Darling."

She tilts her head slightly, studying your reaction, gauging, always gauging.

"I have something in mind for you. Something the others aren't ready for." A pause, deliberate, weighted. "Walk with me, sweetie.”

The compound feels wrong in a way you can't name at first, too quiet, the hum of powers that should be background noise now just... absent. Word spreads through the halls in fragments, panicked whispers, someone shouting that Cerebra picked up a wave, something Wanda did, something irreversible.

Emma Frost moves through the corridor like a woman walking through wreckage, heels silent now, no click, no rhythm, just urgency. Her telepathy reaches out before her body does, searching, checking, confirming what she already fears. You watch her find Santos first, slumped against the wall of the common room, staring at his own hands like they belong to a stranger. He isn't crying. He looks too stunned for that, his jaw slack, his fingers flexing uselessly, waiting for stone that will never come again.

Cessily is next, curled on the floor of her room, her arms wrapped around herself, ordinary, soft, human arms. She flinches when Emma enters, flinches harder when she realizes she can still feel the flinch, the fear, the vulnerability of skin that bruises. She doesn't speak. She just shakes her head slowly, over and over, like if she keeps moving maybe it will undo itself.

Dallas sits motionless at the edge of his bed, staring at a spot on the wall, silent in a way that feels louder than screaming. Emma lingers there longest, her expression unreadable, before finally stepping back into the hall.

Brian's room is empty, and when they find him outside, he's just standing in the courtyard, turning his hands over and over, waiting for tags that will never come. Kevin is worse. Kevin, who spent his whole life terrified of what his touch could do, now sits perfectly still, and for the first time, nobody is afraid to be near him. It should be relief. It isn't.

Emma finds you last, and something in her shoulders eases, just slightly, when her telepathy brushes against you and meets resistance, meets you, still yourself, still whole. A few steps away, Sooraya stands in the doorway of her room, her form solid, human in the ordinary sense but unmistakably her own, dust still hers to command if she reached for it. She looks at you with something like grim understanding, two survivors amid the wreckage of everyone else's loss.

Emma's gaze moves between the two of you, calculating even now, even in the middle of catastrophe. Her voice, when it finally comes, is quieter than you've ever heard it, stripped of its usual polish.

"Get dressed. Both of you." A glance back down the hall, toward Santos, toward Cessily, toward all the students who no longer have anywhere else to belong. "They're going to need us."

The gala grounds glitter under strings of light, champagne flutes catching the glow, hundreds of voices layered over soft music. You stand near the edge of the crowd with Cessily and Sooraya, all three of you dressed for the occasion, watching Jean Grey take her place at the center of the gathering to begin the telepathic vote. Santos is near the food tables with Brian, already needling him about something. Dallas leans against a pillar a short distance away, arms crossed, scanning the crowd out of old habit.

"Relax," Santos says, nudging Brian with an elbow. "It's a party. Even you're allowed to have fun once a year."

Brian snorts, adjusting his cuffs. "I'm having fun. This is my fun face."

"That's genuinely terrifying."

Emma stands near the Hellfire Trading Company's section of the event, poised, radiant, the picture of control, occasionally glancing toward her students with something like pride.

The vote finishes. The new team is announced. Cheers rise through the crowd, glasses lifted, a rare and unguarded joy settling over Krakoa's gathered mutants.

It lasts only seconds.

The first sign is a sound wrong for the setting, mechanical, grinding, too fast to place before Nimrod is already among them, tearing through the newly announced team before anyone can react. Screams tear through the crowd as bodies hit the ground, some not rising again. Near the center of the gala, Jubilee stumbles back, thrown off her feet by the shockwave of Nimrod's first strike, and doesn't get up. Dazzler's light show scatters wildly across the sky as she's struck mid-cast, her voice cutting off in the middle of a word.

"JUBILEE!" Santos's roar cuts across the chaos, but he's too far, bodies and debris and fleeing guests packed too tight between him and her.

Cessily grabs your arm, her fingers turning liquid with panic before solidifying again. "We need to move, we need to move now—"

Sooraya's whole body dissolves into a storm of sand, shielding the space around you on instinct, her voice tight with fear she's fighting to control. "Stay behind me. Please, stay behind me."

Overhead, Stark Sentinels descend on the grounds, and part of the pavilion structure groans, tilting under the weight of Nimrod slamming Juggernaut into it. The support beams shriek and buckle, and the roof section comes down in a rain of stone and steel, directly over where Frenzy and Prodigy had been standing only moments before. When the dust clears, neither of them moves.

"No, no, no—" Brian's voice cracks, and Santos has to physically haul him backward by the collar before he runs toward the wreckage himself.

"You go over there, you're joining them! Move!"

Emma's telepathic voice slices into every mutant mind at once, sharp, commanding, cutting through the panic. Move. NOW. You catch a glimpse of her, no longer poised, jaw tight, eyes blazing as she pushes students bodily out of Nimrod's path with a strength that has nothing to do with diamond skin.

Dallas moves without hesitation, phasing through solid stone to pull a stranded Amara from beneath a collapsed section of the pavilion, hauling her upright. "Can you run?"

"I can run," Amara gasps, already moving.

Kevin stands frozen near an overturned table, staring at the carnage, until Santos practically drags him along, still shouting for Brian to keep moving. "Kevin! With me, now, come on—"

"They're just—they're just gone—" Kevin's voice is hollow, uncomprehending.

"I know. I know. Keep walking."

Sooraya's grip tightens on your arm as she pulls you both behind an overturned table, her sand form flickering unstable, fear bleeding into her control for just a moment before she steadies herself. Cessily's other arm stretches thin, wrapping protectively in front of you both without thinking, without asking.

"I've got you, I've got you both," Cessily says, voice shaking but steady enough to be believed.

Across the chaos, Jean's telekinesis rips through the air, hurling Juggernaut at Nimrod with bone-shaking force, and for one suspended moment it looks like it might be enough. Then Moira's voice, cold and sharp, cuts through the noise, and Jean's telekinetic hold falters.

"Jean's down!" someone screams from across the field. "Jean is down!"

Emma's voice cuts through the psychic static again, tighter now, edged with something raw. Get them out. Get them all out. I don't care how, just get them out.

Her eyes find you through the smoke and screaming crowd, just for a second, checking, confirming, before she turns back toward the fire, diamond hard, already moving toward the wounded instead of away from them.

The common room feels different after a mission like this one, quieter, the kind of quiet that comes from exhaustion rather than peace, thank god Emma was probably asleep so they can do whatever. The mission ran long, longer than anyone expected, and the debrief only ended an hour ago. Now everyone's scattered across the couches and floor cushions, too wired to sleep, too tired to do anything productive.

Santos claims the biggest couch, stretching out until his stone feet hang off the armrest, cracking and resettling with the low grinding sound that's just part of him now, background noise nobody really notices anymore. He's been solid rock for as long as you've known him, no version of Santos underneath, no soft skin waiting to reappear. This is just him.

"Somebody order food," he says, voice a low rumble that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest. "I burned through a lot of mass today. I need, like, six pizzas."

"You said that last week," Cessily says from the floor, leaning back against the couch near his legs, her silver form catching the lamp light. "And the week before that."

"And I meant it every time."

Julian drifts in last, still shrugging out of his jacket, tossing it carelessly onto a chair with the kind of ease that comes from never once worrying about consequences. He drops into the space beside the armchair, letting a stray pen on the side table lift and spin lazily in the air with a flick of telekinesis, more habit than intention.

"You people are so loud," he says, though there's no real annoyance in it. "I could hear Santos complaining about pizza from the hallway."

"It's a valid complaint," Santos says. "You'd know if you actually ate food like a normal person instead of whatever rich people eat."

"I eat food, Santos."

"Caviar isn't food, it's a personality disorder."

Sooraya sits cross-legged near the window, still in her mission gear, absently letting a thin stream of sand drift between her fingers and reform, over and over, a small quiet habit that seems to settle her after a hard day. "You would eat us out of the compound if Emma let you."

"She doesn't let me. That's the tragedy of my life."

Dallas drops into the armchair across the room, tugging his jacket off and tossing it over the side. "Your life's tragedy is being loud at eleven at night."

"My life's tragedy is being surrounded by people with no appreciation for a big personality."

Brian, sprawled on the floor with his back against the couch, snorts without opening his eyes. "Your personality isn't big, Santos, it's just volume."

"Same thing."

Julian lets the pen drop, catching it midair out of pure reflex before it hits the floor, and glances toward Kevin with something almost like genuine concern hidden under his usual smugness. "You good over there? You were quiet the whole ride back."

Kevin sits a little apart, as he often does, but tonight he's close enough that his shoulder almost brushes yours, which for him counts as a significant gesture. He glances toward Santos and manages something like a small smile before answering Julian.

"I'm fine. Just tired."

"That hit you took looked bad," Kevin adds, looking back to Santos.

Santos waves a stone hand dismissively, chunks of rock shifting with the movement. "Please. I'm made of rock. I could take a building falling on me."

"You did take a building falling on you," Cessily points out.

"And I'm fine. Case in point."

Julian smirks, leaning back with his hands laced behind his head, the pen still hovering lazily beside him. "Only because I telekinetically caught half of it before it landed on you. You're welcome, by the way."

"Nobody asked you to be a hero, Keller."

"Nobody has to ask. I'm just that generous."

A comfortable quiet settles for a moment, the kind that only exists between people who trust each other enough to not fill every silence. Sooraya finally lets her sand fully resettle into stillness, watching the group with something soft in her expression. Dallas closes his eyes, looking, for once, almost relaxed. Kevin leans back slightly, close enough that his presence feels less like distance and more like company.

Santos breaks the quiet again, because of course he does, tilting his head toward you.

"Seriously though. Pizza. Back me up here."