This competiton is brutal. I just spent the last two hours trying to scrub Monkeyboy fur off my body. That stuff just gets everywhere. Perhaps I should have seen if Dark Jedi Kriss could help me with some Force power. Ah well.

Finally feeling human again, I was about to settle in for the night when a crack of electricity had filled the room followed very closely by dread filling my heart. I had been trying to ignore Mephisto's threats to destroy me and the X-Men if I didn't deliver him Jon's soul, that maybe he would just give up if he saw I wasn't going to play his game, but apparently it was not meant to be.

The Dark Lord stood before me. "You have failed me for the last time, Professor," he snarled.

"I will never do your dirty work, Evil One. Why don't you just go back to whatever hole you crawled out of and leave me alone."

"Bah! None my defy my will and live! Now you die!!"

And with that he raised his arms at me. Searing fire flew from his fingertips.

I dove out of my chair, crashing to the floor just under the jets of flame. I fired back a psionic force bolt, hoping to stun him, but his otherworldly shielding was strong. He resisted my attack and with a strange gesture of his hand, lifted me off the floor without actually touching me.

Floating helplessly in the air, I could do nothing as he started spinning me around. Faster and faster I went, getting dizzy to the point that I thought I was going to pass out. And then I did.

Oh my aching joints. This Last Gladiator stuff is more physical than I remember. Perhaps next year I'll send Colossus to represent the school. The boy may not be too bright, dumb as a post really, but taking care of giant robots is kind of his specialty.


I was just starting to relax in the hot tub that I had Private Hudson install in my room, wiping his memory afterwards, of course, when a loud crackle broke the silence. Weird reddish smoke filled the room. This was followed quickly by a deep booming voice.


"Xavier!" Mephisto thundered.


I sunk down in the hot tub until the bubbling water was under my chin. I prefer taking my tubs au natural, if you know what I mean, and didn't appreciate showing the family treasures to the Dark Lord.


"Why have you not fulfilled your obligation to me?"


His question was more of a command than a question. I looked him in the eye and tried to reach into his mind. His psionic shielding is strong. "Forget it, Mephisto. I'm not going to get Jon's soul for you."



"Have you not heard how I've tormented your precious X-Men?" he taunted. "Let me show you."


Suddenly images of my various students struggling with a host of crises filled the room. Cylcops curled into a ball on the floor of his room weeping, Nightcrawler appearing in handcuffs before some judge, Angel locked in the bathroom (his bird-like digestive system can't handle Big Macs very well but he won't stop eating them) and the such.


"Looks like a pretty typical day to me," I sniffed in disinterest.


"BAH!!!" he bellowed. "You have 24 hours Xavier! Bring me Jon, the Intergalactic Gladiator or you and your precious mutants are damned for all time!"


And with that, he vanished.

As I sat in my assigned room at the Hacknor Visitors Resdential Compound, lovingly referred to as "The Swamp," I slowly applied some strange orange goo that Dark Jedi Kriss had given me to my elbow. She insisted that it was "ancient Jedi wisdom" and would heal my bruises quickly. I had bruised my arm during the "beat the giant monster" challenge on Last Gladiator Standing.

Just as the pain started to ebb, my two-way intergalactic sub-space radio set started to buzz. I flicked the "receive" switch.

"Professor!" I heard Cyclops yell anxiously. I could tell it was an axious tone due to the high-pitched girly quality of his voice.

"How are things at the school, Scott?" I asked calmly, immediately regretting leaving him in charge.

"Terrbile! Angel's gone missing! Kitty, Jubilee and X-23 have gone off on some kind of secret mission! And Nightcrawler got arrested for peeping into the girl's locker room at Westchester High!"

"Well actually Scott, that all seems pretty much par for the course at our school."

"Yeah, maybe, but that's not all! During breakfast this morning the table suddenly burst into flames! A large booming laugh filled the dinning room and said we were all doomed!"

Now that is bad. "Perhaps Hank was just playing a trick on you with the audio-visual equipment. You know what a great sense of humor he has."

"No way! He was as shocked as anyone. He peed his blue shorts!"

"Could be Master Mind. What's his status?"

"He's still locked up in the Vault! What are we going to do, Professor?? We're all doomed!!!"

"Now get ahold of yourself boy. It will all be alright. Let me know if there are any other problems."

I switched off the radio and went back to applying my salve. Could this be a warning from Mephisto? Nah.

Oh, who am I kidding. Of course Jon isn't a bad guy. I know that. Mephisto wouldn't care about getting his soul if he wasn't of sterling moral fiber. If he really wants to try and claim the X-Men, then the X-Men will just have to face that battle when it comes.

As for right now, I have to focus on the current challenge on Last Gladiator Standing. Jon has made us get into these horrible metallic exo-skeletons in order to fight some kind of rampaging robotci monster that's in the process of destroying Hacknor City. At the moment I am getting my butt kicked by ones if its smaller drones. You'd think Jon would have given us a bit of training with these things before turning us loose on the downtown.

Say! Maybe Jon is really evil after all! Callous indifference to human like. That's certainly . . no. No, I won't try and justify taking the easy path.

OUCH! Damn those robots pack a wallop. I better focus.

Pokemybootie.

Pokemybootie? This is the name that Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator came up with? What is wrong with that man?

While I admit that Evil Eye Candy my not exemplify the virtues that I have extolled to my students over the years, I must say it is a far sight less offensive than Pokemybootie.

For those of you who don't know, this is the name that Jon randomly assigned to my team on Last Gladiator Standing 2. Obviously there is something very, very wrong that man.

Hmm. Interesting. Maybe Jon is actually evil. Perhaps turning him over to Mephisto in order to spare the X-Men from his diabolic clutches really isn't so terrible. Yes. This could work out just fine.

As the interstellar shuttle flew me to Hacknor, I tried not to think about Mephisto. Was he really extorting me? If I didn't somehow deliver him Jon's soul, would he really kill the X-Men? He is well known to be a liar, among other things.

Maybe I should have warned Scott when I left him in charge. No, he would just worry. The poor boy can't really handle pressure. I wonder why I torture him by leaving him in charge all the time?

The correct answer, of course, is that I have great confidence he will rise to the challenge and be the best Cyclops he can be. The truth is that it's just fun to see him squirm. Not that I would ever tell anyone that.

As soon as the shuttle had landed I exited, only to find that the first challenge of Last Gladiator Standing 2 had just begun. Better late than never, I suppose. Hopefully I'll figure out something to catch up.