In the conference room at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Professor Charles and his X-Men sat in a circle with Kraft and the Ancient One. Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike, who had only joined them that day, were there too.
"Thank you both very much for your help," Professor Charles said first, expressing his gratitude to Kraft and the Ancient One. "Thanks to you, my fellow mutants were spared further suffering at Stryker's hands."
"So what's the deal with this Stryker guy, anyway?"
All Kraft wanted now was to make trouble for that lunatic, so he cut straight to the point. "All I know is that he's a leading opponent of mutants, but locking up a bunch of mutants for human experimentation? Isn't that a little too sick?"
Kraft wasn't the only one who wanted an answer. The X-Men all turned their eyes toward Professor Charles as well.
Professor Charles sighed softly and began telling everyone the story of Stryker's family.
It wasn't a complicated story. As a young child, Jason Stryker had been unable to control his abilities and had caused his mother's death. She was William Stryker's wife.
From then on, William Stryker had hated mutants, believing them to be monsters that shouldn't exist in this world. He had even altered his own son into a semi-vegetative wreck who could do nothing but obey orders.
William Stryker had also carried out the Weapon X Program many years earlier, and Wolverine, Logan, had been one of his test subjects.
That information came from Yuriko Oyama, the now clearheaded Lady Deathstrike. Her father had been the scientist responsible for developing the metal skeleton modification procedure, and he had overseen the injection of adamantium into Logan's body.
Years ago, when Logan escaped from the Weapon X Program's laboratory, he had slaughtered many