New Marvel Proudly Presents
                                                                    What If #115
                                                               Starring Emma Frost



Note: this story begins from the last few panels of the page the X-Men begin to battle Trevor Fitroy in earnest (marked page 23 of the comic book itself, although the story page # [out of 23 pages] is unmarked) --


-- Before I'm Done!"


Jean:  Ororo!!

Storm:  You are clumsy, stranger.  You forfeited an opportunity to take me by surprise because of your egotistical need to make your intentions known.  Now learn the intentions of Ororo, Mistress of the Storm!

Fiztroy:  No!  Hurricane!  Lifting me...!!

Jean:  Hold him...   (panel continues as normal)
 


Emma Frost is angry.  A stranger whom she was already making arrangments to deal with has just murdered two of her students, and this less than an hour after an attempt on her own life.  And now,she is listening to the green-haired Englishman brag to an X-Man about the complexity of his armor's circuitry.
Bragging.
Bragging about circuitry used to murder two of her students.  The arrogance!  
Bragging to a woman whom unlike her students has cheated death more times than she cares to remember.
Bragging while she struggles to focus on the present, and not on how she'll have to break the news to Jetstream's dad or Beef's mom, or how she'll have to lie to Jetstream's mother about the circumstances surrounding his death, so she doesn't have a nervous breakdown, or about her student's funeral arrangements.
No, she's had enough of his bragging.  It's time for payback.

Acting at the speed of thought, she signals both the X-Man Colossus and her own student Bevatron with her plan.

Colossus turns the stranger around in an almost callous fashion.  Is Colossus
as angry at him as she is, or is she using her telepathic powers to cause Rasputin to be overly rough with the accursed Englishman, unconsciously punishing him
for her anger?  She's not sure, and has decided it doesn't really matter.

Carrying out the second part of the plan, Bevatron fires his bioelectric blasts at the stranger's gloves, disabling them and giving his hands some nasty burns in the process.  Another blast aimed point blank at his armor would send him flying through the wall, to a death similar to the one he sent Beef to, if it weren't for Colossus holding him steady.  A quick scan reveals he's been knocked unconscious.  Unconscious, not dead.  Not yet, anyway...


"Frost!"

"What??"  Emma Frost turns around to see an all too familiar face.  Donald Pierce is
stepping through a portal that's materialized on the far side of the room.  A quick
mindscan reveals that he ordered an aborigine named Gateway to send him here.  It
also reveals that Pierce caught a glimpse of the Sentinels that were after him when
he was in that strange dimension in between the starting point and the destination.
Once again, she'll have to act fast.  She knows despite Pierce's rantings, who the
true architect of this madness is.  She telepathically takes control of Iceman and Colossus.

Iceman forms an ice shield between Frost and Pierce.  Through the translucent view of events behind the ice barrier, she can see Pierce being blasted to his death.  She knows she would have shared his fate if it weren't for the Russian X-Man.  Having thrown the English stranger aside, he now stands in between himself and the Sentinels.

"Frost, what are you --"

"Shut up, Storm!  The Sentinels are here!"  As she says this, the Sentinels disintegrate the ice barrier separating herself and Colossus from them.  "We need to stop with the banter, and join forces to stop them before they destro us all."  A Sentinel blasts Colossus.  His armored form is the only thing that prevents him from being completely disintegraed, but he's far from unscathed.

He begins to fall back onto her.

Just as she finishes her sarcastic observation, 'What a way to die', she feels her body being pulled away in a sudden jerking motion, simultaneously hearing a telepathic voice in her head saying, {Don't worry.  Peter's weight wouldn't have killed you.  A few broken ribs would be all.}  She can almost detect a tone of pleasure in the last sentence of the X-Woman's mental reassurance.  She tries to ignore the fact that
the telekinetic motion was like having a clothespin snapped onto her entire body, and then having the tension released suddently.
Or that she is literally slapped onto the floor, face first.  That'll leave a bruise for weeks, or perhaps even a lifelong scar, she barely has time to acknowledge.

The X-Men never did like her much.  Especially Jean Grey, her reluctant savior, whom she watches move on to Colossus, desperately seeking to prevent a second blas, one which would no doubt cause permanent damage, if not death.

"They appear disoriented!  It may take a fraction of a second for their robotic circuitry to adjust to the teleportation!

She now turns to Storm, the designated leader of the X-Men's gold team and apparently
the Hellions as well.

Bevatron never responded to her commands like that, she notes.  Perhaps, the resentment at her telepathically cutting corners at time is showing?

She would jump back into the battle, but what's the point, she asks herself?  Her telepathic powers are useless against the Sentinels.  She concedes that Storm might as well take charge in this situation.

Then she remembers the stranger.  She turns to the corner where the Russian had thrown him earlier.  He's not there, is the last coherent thought she remembers, before the lights go out.

"Ms. Frost?  Ms. Frost?"

She lets out a semi-conscious moan.  More than anything inside her is the desire to remain asleep.  The duties of the waking world are tiring.  How she hated having to make the decision to run to the X-Men, her greatest enemies for help.  Her students?!  

She wants to find out it was a nightmare.  She remembers her dream.  She's still in the midst of watching over them, observing each and every one and how proud she was of all of them.

'Bevatron...'  

'Empath...'

She was leading them into a better place -- safety.  One where mutants were no longer feared and hated.  It seemed fitting -- the name she gave them in the dream.  The Angelions.  That reminded her of one of the Hellions that left her -- Angelica Jones.  She too was in the dream.

'Firestar...'

'Roulette...'

Strangely though, it wasn't through the conquest of everyone she despised.

'Catseye...'

'Tarot...'  

The events that had led to the newfound peace were oddly benevolent.

'Jetstr -- '


The sharp pang of realization that they were in danger when she was knocked out jolts her awake.  That's when it pierces the haziness.  The final thing that brings her painfully back to reality.  Catseye and Jetstream had their first kiss after harboring feelings for each other for over two years.  Her student tries to hide her pain, but now that Emma really looks for her saddened expression, she realizes it doesn't take a telepath to see how much she's hurting.  She notices how Catseye is the only one hanging back as if she is not concerned with her teacher's fate.  But Emma Frost knows that's not why she alone out of the other Hellions wasn't keeping a vigil to see that their mentor is ok.

"Miss Frost, you're awake.  Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm not hurt.  What about all of you?  Are you all right?"  She doesn't know why she asks, considering she sees all of them -- except Beef.  A flash!  One of the servants, tending to Jetstream's delapilated corpse, about to place a sheet over it.  The sight isn't one she sees through her own eyes, but through those of Catseye, who is glancing at the body across the room.

"Yeah, we're fine.  All of us, I mean -- "

To save Bevatron the embarassment of what he said without thinking, that's how she justified moving in to the next question she asked...   "And...  and the X-Men?  Are they hurt?"

"We are unharmed as well, Frost," Storm reports, in a tone Emma can't help but describe as arrogant.  She waits a couple of seconds, and then, "Thank you," sensing the reluctance so obvious in the addition.

'Well, of course.  They would be fine.'

"The Sentinels?"

"Defeated.  All three of them."

"The green-haired assailant?"

"After he knocked you out, Catseye jumped on him before he could ki--  attack you any further.  The X-Men, Roulette, Tarot, and I were all busy stopping the Sentinels," Bevatron relates, "So we didn't notice.  Maybe if we did, we could have helped Catseye prevent him and that underling assassin of his from getting away."

Emma Frost was not happy.  Still, it could have been worse.  Much worse, indeed.  Who knows? What if, in some alternate reality, all the Hellions could have died and she could have been captured and interrogated for Inner Circle secrets.  That's what she had to keep telling herself over and over, as she informed Beef and Jetstream's parents of the losses.  It could have been worse...