Final Strike

Cable had split his team into two groups, to search for Hodge. He and Storm took the lower levels of the Citadel while Rictor and Wolfsbane took the upper levels. As it turned out Ric and Rahne were the first to find him. Rictor immediately signaled Cable via the wrist communicator Cable had given him.
"Cable! It's Hodge! We've found him!"
Wolfsbane went into a rage and wanted to attack Hodge than and there. Ric tried to hold her back but was having little success. He signaled Cable once again.
"Cable--we've got a situation here!"
"Ric, try to control her! We'll be there!" Cable told him, and turned to Storm and said, "Rahne's not listening, Storm."
"The Genegineer changed her, Cable. She's no longer the gentle, obedient girl we knew. I fear that in her wolf-girl form, she no longer thinks quite rationally, and she loathes Hodge."
"With good reason!" Cable told her.
"They're too far away for us to reach quickly via stairs or elevator." Storm said.
"We're not taking the stairs." Cable said as he kicked in the vent on an air shaft. "This air shaft--and your wind power--give us instant access to the floors above."

Meanwhile, Wolfsbane had pushed Ric aside and attacked Hodge. She leaped for the thick cables that formed Hodge's neck and proceeded to bite through them. Hodge used the same trick he had before and sent some high voltage through the wires shocking Wolfsbane. He than scooped her up to finish her off, but before he could do so Rictor cut loose with his seismic power and forced Hodge to drop her. Before Ric realized what was happening Hodge lashed out with another of his countless tentacles and slammed Ric into the wall knocking him out.

Meanwhile, Storm was rapidly lifting herself and Cable up through the many levels that seperated them from Ric and Rahne.
"Stop here! Into this horizontal shaft." Cable told her.
"You know where we must go?" Storm asked him.
"I memorized the Citadel's layout from the S.H.I.E.L.D. documents Val Cooper gave us." Cable told her.
They had reached the location of the fight and Hodge heard them crawling through the vents and stabbed his massive scorpian like tail through the vent and through Cable's shoulder as well. With Cable still impaled on his tail, Hodge slammed him to the floor and turned to meet Storm's attack.
"Storm...you can't...stop him alone!" Cable said as he again triggered his wrist communicator and said, "Cyclops, hear me...Storm...and Hodge...she needs help..."
"We'll be there, Cable! Soon as we can!" Cyclops answered form several levels below. "Archangel, can you hear me?"
"They're not far away, Cyke! I can hear Storm's thunder. I'm on my way!" Archangel answered and rocketed towards the battle.
"Go for Hodge's back hump! Forge thinks it's his phasing mechanism!" Cyclops told him.
Hodge, meanwhile, had opened up on Storm with lasers. She sought to retreat back to the air shaft and attacked Hodge's lasers with her own lightning taking them out. Hodge however phased up into the air shaft after her and reached out with several of his tentacles and pulled her back out. Archangel arrived while Hodge was still half-way phased into the ceiling and immediately took out his back hump. Depriving him of his phasing ability, but Hodge just tore the ceiling down freeing himself and covered Archangel with a molecular adhesive which kept him from moving his steel wings or from releasing his wing darts. Hodge than lifted him up and brought forth a tentacle with a spinning sawblade to cut off Archangel's head just as Archangel had cut off his head before. Just as the blade was inches from Archangel's throat, it was shattered by a plasma blast with Havok's energy signature.
"Drop him Hodge, or I'll blast you to kingdom come!" Havok told him.
Hodge replied by throwing Archangel with crushing force into Havok. Hodge than made to impale them both with his massive tail as he had done to Cable. Just before the tail struck, however, his intended victims were whisked out of harms way by Jean's TK. Cyclops, Jean, Havok and Wolverine than attacked as one. Cyclops and Havok blasted away at him while Jean lifted Wolverine up onto Hodge's back where he could hack away at his neck stem. Hodge immediately lifted his tail and ran it through Wolverine's torso and slammed his tail down on Jean and slammed it down once more bouncing Wolverine off the floor. Cyclops and Havok redoubled their efforts and Hodge retreated to the roof of the Citadel. Cyclops than checked on Jean and Logan who were both wounded pretty badly. He ordered Logan to take Jean and rendezvous with the others and to keep them all safe while he and Havok went after Hodge.
They found him on the roof and cut loose with their full unfettered fury. They blasted away and didn't let up for a second, until nothing was left of Hodge except for his head and a few trailing wires. Cyclops than blasted the head over the edge to fall the full one-hundred and sixty stories to the hard concrete below. Havok walked to the edge to make sure he was finished but Hodge had grabbed on with some of the trailing wires of his neck and shot out another to grab Havok around the neck and pull him over. Cyclops barely grabbed him time, but could feel his grip slipping. As he finally lost his grip completely and they all three fell, Hodge was suddenly dislodged from Havok and Cyclops and Havok's fall was stopped, all by Jean's TK. Hodge fell the full 1600 feet to the street below, where Cable and all the others waited. Rahne leaped upon the still living head and proceeded to rip into it in a blind rage. Still Hodge lived. Finally she threw it into the Citadel and turned to Ric. Rictor took his que and used his seismic power to bring the Citadel down on Hodge.
"If that horror won't die...we'll bury him alive!" Rictor yelled over the crashing of the Citadel. The symbol of human domination over the mutates for years was now only a huge pile of rubble.

Several days later, magistrate Anderson made a public announcement that their president had been insane and that the military had overthrown her and taken control of the government pending new elections. Cable and the others had healed and were making ready to head home. When Havok and Wolfsbane shocked them all by announcing that they were staying. They were sympathetic to the mutates plight and wanted to stay and do all they could to help them. Cable and the others tried to change their minds, but to no avail. Finally, after sad goodbyes all around, Cable, X-Factor, The X-Men and The New Mutants headed for home.

Days later, on the ground of a cemetery, in Salem Center, New York, the members of The X-Men, X-Factor and The New Mutants stand in funeral garb to say a final farewell to one of their own...
"Goodbye, Warlock. You're with Doug now. Your best friend." Tabitha spoke as she knelt and poured out the ashes on Doug Ramsey's grave. "Goodbye, Selfriend. We're going to miss you."
"You and Doug, rest in peace." Ric added.
"A country has been freed from slavery, but at a terrible cost." Roberto said.
"I only hope that Rahne is right, and that a greater good will continue to be served by Warlock's sacrifice...!" Cable said as they all turned and walked away.

Beneath the azure sky, the mound of ashes seems to flash in answer. Is it merely the sunlight glinting on metallic dust...or the promise of something more?

The next morning, Cable, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm were in the "War Room" looking at a world map with the locations of their major enemies highlighted. Storm spoke first.
"Behold, my friends, our world, the forces arrayed against us, and as best we can determine, their location. The question now becomes, What do we do about them?"
"The answer's simple, Storm." Cable told her.
"Perhaps to you, Cable." "To anyone, Lady, with the brains they were born with. Do unto them what they've surely got planned for us. Hit 'em hard an' fast. We got the power, People, past time we used it."
"Is violence your only solution, Cable?" Storm asked him.
"Works for me, Doll, and gets the job done." Cable answered her.
"We're not you." Cyclops said.
"No kidding." Cable replied.
"Combat may be your second-nature. It doesn't come as easily to us." Cyclops added.
"So maybe it's time you learned. Isn't that why Storm took the X-Men underground. Letting the world, friends, foe, even family believe they'd all been killed in Dallas? In order to give them the freedom to strike at the bad guys with a greater degree of impunity, to put the fear of mutants into 'em? Am I right, Storm?" Cable asked turning towards Storm.
"It may have been a mistake. My mistake." Storm answered.
"Then perhaps you grown-ups need me as much as the kids." Cable told them.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Storm asked.
"You need a leader, that's clear as can be, Storm's admitted as much, you're a fool to deny it. Quite simply, I'm the best equipped for the job." Cable stated.
"Give me a break!" Cyclops said.
"We're not warriors, Cable, and Charles Xavier didn't found this school, or the team's that came from here, to fight wars." Jean Grey added.
"Better look around, Girl, because war is what you've got, in all it's cruel, messy, brutal, bloody glory. Your precious school's in ruins and if you people don't start getting your acts together, an' right quickly...that graveyard up top's going to get real crowded. Warlock and Cypher are dead. Wolfsbane's a Genoshan mutate, a genetically engineered slave. You want to see more end up like that?!" Cable asked them.
"How dare you?!" Storm said, "Who do you think you are, Cable, to speak so?!! You know nothing of us...not The X-Men, nor X-Factor, nor The New Mutants...or of the dream that brought us together!"
"Do you, Storm? Do any of you, anymore? Splintered into a handful of teams--running all over the map, no focus, less direction, half the time doing your enemies job for them. Could be that I'm wrong, I accept that, but it strikes me that I'm your last, best hope for salvation." Cable told them.
"If thats the case, Mister, could be salvation comes with too high a price." Cyclops said.
"Anything's possible. You figure you can do better, Cyclops...take your shot. All I'm saying...is that somebody better do something." Cable said as he turned and walked out of the room.
"They got good hearts, I'll give 'em that. But they're soft." Cable thought to himself. "If only I could tell them what is to come, prepare them for the hard, bloody times ahead, make them see what it's going to take to survive them. But I guess I'll have to settle for training the next generation of X-Men for those hard times and making them over into the world's best hope that those hard times don't come about. It's time to turn these New Mutants into a fighting unit that can make a differance. A Force that can bring about change in this world...and for that, I'm going to need both some new recruits...and a little help from an old friend."
Cable turned into the communications room and activated a frequency that he hadn't used in months. The seconds seemed like years as he waited for a reply. Then a sharp, femenine voice, that he knew as well as his own, said,
"Nathan...is that you?"
"Yeah, Dom....it's me...I could use your help."
"When and where, Big Guy, when and where!"

And so it began. The beginning of the end for The New Mutants.