The flash of neon blue took all the X-Men off guard save Wolverine --who even in his throes of combative rage had sensed the arrival of the last of their party -and didn't doubt she was bringing the final firepower.

As united as they'd started, the X-Men ceased as one -sinew and muscle twitching in Wolverine's case, though he was able to hold himself back from sashimi-ing the rest of "Becker".

Paused adrenaline gave way to a varying stunned feeling as they all heard Umbra's declaration.

If a thought was shared among the X-Men in that moment, it would've been: 'Still [alive] after all that?!'

Wolverine popped his claws again, throwing one arm back in prep for another strike

"Wait! The physical form's been taken care of," Cyclops spoke with a perspicacious sense, "now it's a mental fight." And honestly, this rose in Scott a sense of disturbance rather than ease. A mental fight was one he couldn't participate in by his own will. His mentor, his father figure, and Ryder, a kid whose whole life was built around extricating herself from this, a kid who for all her independence Cyclops still counted as in his charge, were now staring this down on their own.

Cyclops breathed in a steadying way, while the X-Men collectively kept at the ready in case this fight wasn't over for them.

Xavier had taken the opening within the fight to exact some existence onto Umbra -- realizing the assault the entity was taking from the experience of pain, Xavier took control of the cerebral scenescape to depict something like an eventide sky, with scenes of emotions and sensations, both random to this situation and specific, streaming past like clouds in a time-lapse video - a disorienting blur of humanity; an awesome weight of feelings.

There was a time in the X-Men's history when the binding of an entity with one of their own, overwhelmed by human sensation, had lead to dark things. . .Though Xavier felt this case would be different. It wouldn't be fuel.

He felt the pressing weight of Ryder just ahead of her appearance. An ounce of his thought flickered to the reality of that weight. An ounce of his heart to the hope that things might've felt more. . .level between them in this moment. But there hadn't been enough time for that.

Understanding on her appearance that his X-Men's efforts had safeguarded Ryder against certain oblivion here, Xavier eased back on his influence. As much as he'd wanted to snuff out Umbra's flame - or would that be, ignite Umbra, to obliterate their darkness with light? -
This was Ryder's conclusion to reach.
As he had realized Umbra was not life, Xavier also realized ending them would not take anymore from Ryder.

In a now starless night of astral space, at once an apparent closeness and expanse of nothingness that was pure, Xavier looked to Ryder.
He did not give a nod, as this was not a situation for him to permit. Though he kept his eyes steadily on her; his body turned exactly towards the mid-point of where Ryder and Umbra were.

Xavier now standing authentically in Ryder's corner. He would interject himself again only as needed.

Here in front of them both, Ryder had a choice.

It wasn't so long ago that this was all there would ever be for her. She was destined to be hollowed up, bereft of everything that she was and would be. Her mutant abilities were pared down and built up, tweaked and twisted, to suit him. The ghost of a man that never truly lived a real life. Ryder never would have known the feeling of sun on her skin, the feeling of real food, if it weren't for the fact that she got astronomically lucky. And now she was back here, in the mind of the man behind it all. The fancy, idyllic head that was somehow meant to accommodate him. Whatever the old man was thinking, they weren't on the same page.

Every telepath had a unique "Feel" about their powers. Ryder's was oppressive, it felt like a person was being rent from the inside when she looked in their head, and it was anything but subtle. Even as Xavier made attempts to soothe Umbra, it felt forced. Not because of Xavier's skill, but because Ryder was in the psychic vicinity. Her unwillingness to relent radiated off of her, and it had a way of smothering the minds of others, as the X-men had learned lately.

At the mansion, Ryder had just enough time to understand a few things. Not so much internalize them, but she certainly understood certain principles. That most mutants, hated as they were, didn't experience what she had gone through. They couldn't relate to her. They didn't have it in them to really get how she felt, even though they tried. But the other half of that was the undeniable fact that Ryder couldn't relate to them.

It was so tempting to eradicate Umbra right now, in the most painful way possible. An agonizing death, a hurtful, spite-fueled one. He could feel every scrap of his mind being peeled away into nothingness. He could feel it over and over again. She had more power than that, she could do so much to him. But there lied the conundrum she was facing.

Ryder couldn't relate to people who lived something that resembled normalcy.

But she wanted to.

The astral form of Ryder raised a hand.

"You wanted me, you wanted to skin I'm in. You wanted to kill me so you could live."

YES, screamed the universe.

"You were going to hurt people to get to me. And when you were done, you'd hurt so many fucking more. I can feel it on you, you inhuman piece of shit. You never learned what it's like to be alive, you never learned what it's like to care. And thanks to you, neither did I."

And the memories overhead quaked. Cracks formed in them, things unable to be perceived much like a nonexistent color. Fissures among thought, the gaps in knowing.

"I'm going to fucking unmake you. And then, I'm going to unmake everything you ever did to me."

She sounded so cold. Ryder had more rage than a hundred people, and she wasn't expressing any of it. Those aphotic lines between the bounds of cognition widened, until cracks began to form.

In the real world, Umbra screamed.

For the X-Men being on the periphery of this battle, it felt like standing inside of a house made of opaque glass; inside yet excluded. Able to discern shadows of what was occurring, yet ultimately cognizant of nothing -- save for the growing cracks -albeit in a more atmospheric sense- which they had no way of determining would hold or shatter; rain down or explode out.

A tense atmosphere of aura.
The "feel" of telepathic power coalescing with the unique energy each person carried, assailing the X-Men like feelings unattached to the specifics of circumstances. Like fear or panic when you don't know what set it off, yet mixing with some known; an ombre piece of thread perceivably coloured yet indeterminate where one ends and the next begins- or in this case, what feelings were their own and what were splash-over.

And Wolverine didn't care for it.

"Screw this. Gonna' go make sure we don't get any surprises." Of course the likelihood was in their favour given his ability to sense someone coming, though he questioned to himself if he could even trust that right now. In any case, he left back the way they came; his part here was done. If he stayed any longer he was liable to go berserk far more primally than he'd already gone.

"Perhaps, at this juncture of uncharted territory, it would be prudent to consider our presence a redundancy." Too, Beast considered it logical that if they were experiencing "splash-over", their could be an osmosis in the reverse - and who was to know if that would be helpful or harmful?

A further tensening of muscle in the X-Men's leader. "I'm not leaving."

"Leaving? Perish the thought. I'm simply putting forth the notion of a measured flight from this fight."

Storm (remaining at the ready): "The weather can always turn."

Beast looked from one to the other before turning resolute eyes back towards the combatants. "Then consider my roots firmly planted."

While inside the mindscape, Xavier's controlled calm was also experiencing a scission.

"And then, I'm going to unmake everything you ever did to me."
"And then, I'm going to unmake everything you ever did to me."

What did Ryder mean by this? A true overcoming of Umbra's "design", or. . .That enigmatic device in her brain. If in a sense it contained her as much as she contained it, could she rend herself asunder?

'Ryder--!' yet Xavier's voice didn't carry - even to his own ears--as if the sound leaked out through the fissures.

And if Ryder did intend to unmake everything, what would that mean for the man presently sharing a link to her mind?
Yes, she had permitted it, and so could obliterate it--kick Xavier out so thoroughly as to render him breathless.

Yet there was a locked intent to Xavier which accompanied his anxiety.
One which in the face of the extreme scenario he feared, could override such revocation. . . . .

The real world scream of Umbra pierced the X-Men's consciousness' uniformly despite any variance in physical distance--
--and on the heels of that, a mental voice of heightened concern--'Scott- the Professor-!'

Everything was becoming a black void. Sound was filling every nanoscopic stretch of this space, all while iceberg-sized chunks fell to reveal the color of the night without stars. The noise was a scream in a voice that lacked a pitch, lacked a voice and a frequency. It could be perceived and not heard, one could only know that it was occurring.

It was strange, the way treating someone with the bare minimum of human decency could change somebody. Stranger still was the gap between what happened in Umbra’s head and what came after.

Human language did not possess a word for the feeling, for humans could not feel anything when they were dead. Its closest proximity would be to call it sleep.

On the outside, it was more simple. The body of Andrew Becker ceased to scream, and collapsed like a doll made of yarn. There was nothing, not even the sound of running footsteps. But in a place only telepaths could go, ot was a much different situation. Ryder and Charles had felt a brain stop functioning from its own perspective. It was different from feeling a consciousness blink off the radar, it was like feeling everything someone felt as their brain began to go offline, while still fully aware until the final second.

By all rights, they should have been snuffed out with him. Their own minds, stuck in his skull, might have been dashed to nothing all the same.

But the last words Umbra heard were not a lie.

Xavier’s mind was shunted back into him. A bit of a rough landing, resting in certain facets of thought not fully settling back in initially, before righting themselves. The feeling was not dissimilar from sharing a mental space with Ryder; Oppressive, imperious, the furthest from gentle.

She came back entire seconds after him.

There wasn’t a scornful glare on her face. Just a tired frown. Ryder dusted herself off, raised her improvised rifle and burnt a hole through the face of what used to be Andrew Becker. Just to be absolutely clear.

And then, she lowered it.

The guards had been ordered to stand down earlier. No one was coming.

”Let’s go home.”

A distinct pressing sensation exerted itself on Cyclops' brain through his link with Jean. . .

. . .as while she'd cut-off telepathically, avoided the brunt of this experience which by basic definition repeated that which unlocked her powers decades ago -dying "with" someone else- Jean was still an empathetic person. Being physically next to Xavier, watching him, she still felt a degree of the sensation.

A scintilla still sizeable enough to elicit visceral responses -bracing, as though against the G-Forces of a mid-intensity roller coaster; a lacrimal release down the contour of her face.

To apply the roller coaster analogy to Xavier, his experience was far more Ultra-Extreme, yet far less grounded. A re-entry into the atmosphere without a parachute-- disassociated, detached from reality the way a fatal experience might feel in a dream; your skin should be burning, your bones should be splitting, yet instead you feel a sickening other sensation until you wake -and even after. A dream that will never quite leave you, even as you've left it.

--a re-entry decelerating in the last seconds - too fast to process, too late to matter. . .and then you look up.
And you can walk away.

Yet on return to his faculties, Xavier didn't move - "listening" - "looking around" for. . .

sigh the tense seconds ended.

Xavier's astral projected form had ceased to be maintained, and he let no more time elapse before he sent out an assuring message -mental voice tremulous yet conveying resilience: 'Mission accomplished. . .Admirable work.'

Across the distance, as one, Jean Grey & Cyclops breathed an eased breath.

Far down the hall, yet within observing distance, stood Wolverine.
"Beat me to it, kid," his gruff voice could be heard following Ryder's absolute finish of Becker.

Her following statement settled like a salve on Xavier's still-connected mind:
Home.

"Yes. I see a break in the clouds." Storm moved to Ryder in a stewarding manner, stopping short of placing her hand on the girl's shoulder in respect to personal space.

As they'd turn to head back towards the elevator, Cyclops would be just in their path. He gave a nod to Ryder. "Everything according to plan." A reference to his words before they'd disembarked from the jet - "When we leave here, I'd like it be with at least as many of us alive as who came. And in case it needs to be said, that includes you."

He stepped aside.
'What are our closing orders?'

Wolverine answered ahead of the Professor: "I can cover what needs finishin'. If Beast wants to join me, so be it."

"Indeed. You can come for us subsequently."

So Storm, Cyclops and Ryder would head back to the jet while Beast and Wolverine would ensure the agents didn't just disappear into the wind, and that nothing salvageable -and misuseable- was left of Umbra Biogenetics.