Darkness Rises Again
The mansion was in ruins; it looked like a nuclear bomb had hit it.  What hadn't been outright destroyed on a near-molecular level looked as though it had been burned to cinders.  Little pieces of bone were mixed into the ash and rubble, the last remains of what had been friends and family.  An adamantium skeleton lay useless under one of the larger remaining pieces.

Flames crackled and coalesced around a young woman, taking the general shape of a bird of prey.  Her red hair flowing seemingly of its own accord, a satisfied, wicked smile worked its way across her face.  "You are the last," she said, her voice echoing in their minds even as she spoke.  "The last of the X-Men, the last of those I once called friends."

She made a small hand gesture, painfully tightening the psionic bonds around the few surviving X-Men.  "You sought to cage me, to make me less than I was.  But the Phoenix is eternal, power incarnate.  You simple mutants could never have defeated me."

She paused, placing a finger to her chin in thoughtful consideration.  "The one question is whether to simply kill you now, slowly and painfully, or let you struggle and fight for your survival?  Or I suppose I could let you be...  You'll still die, of course, when I consume your sun... but that does lack the immediate satisfaction."

"What to do, what to do...?"