“Uhnn…” Letting out a slightly painful moan, Ororo turned over onto her back. She did not need to open her eyes to feel moisture in the air…moisture not from a sea or an ocean, but from a fresh water source. She seemed to be outdoors somewhere, lying on the softest grass she had felt in a long time. The air was cool, not overtly cold but cool enough to warrant a light sweater…not that she needed it. Being attuned with nature allowed her to wary her body’s insulation, thus precluding her from feeling the affects of warm and or cold weather. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel the cold, just that on a general basis, if required, she could do without warm clothing.
Finally opening her eyes, Ororo slammed them shut as the bright, reflected sunlight (from the water) momentarily blinded her.
----
“Goddess.” The weather witch cursed under her breath as she forced her aching body to follow the call of her mind and to sit up groggily. Taking a deep breath, she shaded her eyes and slowly cracking them open to let them get acclimated to her current situation. Once that was done, she let her hand fall to her side and looked around. Everywhere she turned, it was all water….fresh, blue, life giving water.
‘How did I get here?’ The thought had just risen up in her mind, when the last thing she remembered cropped up…and along with that a worrisome feeling.
‘ORORO!’ Logan’s cry still rang in her ears, as did the buzz she felt at being struck by that energy beam from that accursed robot. Logan had tried to….
“Logan!” Ororo’s eyes widened at the name of her feral teammate escaped her lips. Logan had been with her. What had happened to him? Was he alright? She has seen his healing factor help him rise up from anything, including her lightening strikes (let loose in the danger room), but even she did not know whether it would recover from taking a point blank hit from a sentinel’s canon.
---
“Logan,” The hail rang out in the empty surroundings, that is, except for the wildlife in the area….and they surely didn’t answer her.
‘Where am I?’ Ororo pushed herself into a standing position.
“Logan! Scottt? Anybody?” Ororo chanced calling out to her other teammates, in the hope that they might be looking for her. However, given that that they had been in a city and her current location seemed to be miles away from any human settlements, the solitary Storm once again got just silence in return.
As she would later come to know, she was in the Great Lakes region, more specifically, right next to Lake Huron, around eight hundred miles from where she had been before the energy strike.
---
Getting her bearings and she feeling her energy coming back, the still weakened Ororo checked for any broken bones or any other major injuries.
‘They are going to have a fit,’ she thought of her two teammates who had tried to convince her to stay back….and even included Jean and the Professor in that group.
‘Especially Logan. This will give him enough blackmail material for at least the next ten years,’ she shook her head in amused exasperation, wincing as pain shot out at her actions. Checking for any head injury, she found none except the bump at the back of her head.
“Well, everything seems to be working just fine. Not even a concussion,” she spoke to herself, having just conducted a rough field test to check her comprehension.
“I had better get back.”
Pressing the comm. link in the ‘X’ sewn into the leather of her uniform, she hailed evenly.
“Storm to base, come in base.”
----
**Professor? Jean? Please respond**
Ororo had reached the end of the line as far as any contact with her teammates was concerned. Unable to reach them with conventional communication systems, she then tried to hail the telepaths, but to no avail.
To make matters worse, not only was it getting darker, she was also more than a little hungry, she was down right famished.
Muttering a silent thanks to Logan and the Professor for persuading (forcing) all the X-Men to take a week long survival crash course under the Wolverine, she set about foraging for food and a shelter to spend the night. A smile played on her lips as she recalled how, not only Jubilee and Kitty, the two X-Men with the worse case of city-girl syndrome, but also seniors such as Scott had complained about the slave-master treatment Logan levied on them. While Scott was convinced that Logan was personally getting back at him for all the times he had shown him up, Jubilee swore that she was the one getting treated the worst, as a payback for the few (dozen, hundred) times, she made fun of and or played tricks on the Wolv-shyster.
Forcing herself not to think about the fate of her teammates, not to mention her own, Ororo soon had a small stock of some wild but more importantly, non-poisonous berries. Washing them out in the cool water of the lake, she slowly savored them while contemplating her next move. After a few hours rest to regain her strength, she would start out towards some form of civilization. Even though she did not know where she was exactly, from the surrounding topography, she guessed that it was somewhere in North East United States or South Canada. It that were true, starting early morning, she would be home by noon, evening at the most.
With that thought, and the memory of her family in her mind, she retired for the night.
----
“Logan! Scott?” Her eyes wide in shock, Ororo watched as the people she knew as her teammates, spread out in battle formation around her. “Jean? What happened to you? Logan?”
Starting out according to plan, she made her way to the nearest town and from there on, jet-streamed to New York. Arriving at the mansion in record time, she stopped short as; instead of welcoming her, the X-Men set out to attack her.
“What do you mean what happened to us?” Cyclops had his hand ready at the side of his head, ready to blast the intruder out of the sky. “And who do you think you are?”
“Me?” Ororo could not help feel that somehow, somewhere, things had gone wrong….Big-Time. “I am Ororo. I am…..” she stopped at saying ‘your friend,’ because somehow that word did not quite fit well in the current situation. “I am Storm.”
“If you are Ororo,” Jean Grey, the Phoenix demanded as she floated in the air in front of the strange woman. “Then who is this?”
Turning her gaze towards the sound, Ororo’s eyes shot up even further at the person right behind her.
For there, not ten feet from her, was….HERSELF.
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