Biography - Part 2
During a training session with Beast and the other New X-Men, the Hulk showed up to the mansion, shortly after declaring war on some of the world’s greatest heroes on television. When Hulk demanded Xavier brought to him, Beast quickly ordered many of the students to evacuate, 
while the New X-Men team bought them time. Rockslide looked forward to a fight with the Hulk, seeing it as making it to the majors, but Beast warned him that this was a much different, angrier Hulk than he had ever seen. Rockslide got a few good punches in and lamented that he used to pretend to be the Hulk when he was a kid. However, Hulk soon stopped toying with the young man by ripping off his arms and throwing them across the state. [World War Hulk: X-Men #1-3]
A day came when hope finally returned to the X-Men. For the first time since M-Day, a mutant was born and a mad scramble of several interested parties rushed to Alaska, the place of its birth, to claim the baby. One of these groups was the Purifiers, who were determined to extinguish this “mutant messiah.” The New X-Men were so irritated about their sidelining that Rockslide goaded Cyclops to the point of receiving an optic blast through the wall. When a tip came through, despite their orders to stay put, over half of the team decided to take the fight to the Purifiers base, as they had personal vendettas with the hate group. They found and invaded the Purifiers church and seemed to be putting up a good fight until Lady Deathstrike appeared and skewered Hellion through the chest. Rockslide fought like a maniac upon seeing his good friend near death and yelled at Pixie to teleport them out, at which she eventually succeeded. Santo managed to help get Julian to the med bay and helped with clean-up after the mansion’s destruction in one of the battles. With little else to do, Rockslide joined Dust and Mercury to a trip out to the graves of their friends and found their corpses snacked upon by a mutant-hunting monster called Predator X. The creature bit Rockslide in half and proceeded to attack the rest of the students in the school. The New X-Men managed to teleport Predator X and themselves directly into the final conflict between the X-Men and the Marauders and thus joined the fight. Santo performed well during the melee but ultimately witnessed the death of the dream when Charles Xavier took a fatal bullet wound. [Messiah Complex crossover]
With no home and no mission, the X-Men disbanded and all the students returned to their original families, if they could. Blindfold approached Rockslide about joining a new team of young X-Men and, despite Blindfold claiming her vision showed one of their future teammates dying, Rockslide’s 
enthusiasm did not wane in joining this new team. The way he saw it, Blindfold was not able to see the whole vision, so nothing was for sure going to happen. However, when Cyclops showed up to recruit Santo, again optic blasting him through a wall due to his bravado, Rockslide only agreed to join if Blindfold was also on the team. The new team headquartered out of the Danger Cave below the destroyed X-Mansion and Cyclops claimed that their mission was to take down the new Brotherhood, all members of the former New Mutants. [Young X-Men #1]
After a disastrous training mission fighting the New Mutants in the Danger Cave’s simulation program, Rockslide was the one to ask the obvious question: why they were targeting former good guys, let alone attempting to kill them. Cyclops answer was that it was all about survival now and that the New Mutants had turned their backs on their own kind. He then sent Rockslide, Dust, and Wolf Cub to take down Magma, while his other teammates were targeting Dani Moonstar. Once again objectifying an attractive woman, Rockslide joked that this was not how he wanted to hit on Magma as he punched her. Her control over earth was not a good match-up for Santo and he soon found himself a pile of rubble, while Dust’s body had turned to glass. It was Wolf Cub’s near fatal slash that took out Magma and let the team head back with the Dust’s glass body. Despite her predicament, Rockslide was not worried, given that Dust was in Blindfold’s vision of the future. [Young X-Men #2-3]
The pressure of being shorthanded started to make Santo nervous about only three of them going up against the rest of the New Mutants, Cannonball and Sunspot. While he expressed these concerns to Wolf Cub, he refused to look weak in front of newly discovered mutant Ink, whom Santo continued to harbor less than warm feelings. Rockslide jumped from the X-jet and crashed through the ceiling of the Hellfire Club that housed the pair of New Mutants at the same time his 
two teammates attacked. The surprise attack started pretty well, with Rockslide getting in some good hits against Cannonball and holding his own against a fully powered Sunspot. However, the fight was interrupted when a restored Dust showed up with Magma and new member Graymalkin to explain that Cyclops had actually been the villain Donald Pierce. Everybody reconciled and teamed up to take down the true threat but not without Pierce fatally wounding Santo’s friend Wolf Cub first. An enraged Rockslide nearly killed Pierce in retaliation for murdering yet another of his friends, but a dying Wolf Cub stopped him by reminding him that X-Men don’t kill. [Young X-Men #4-5]
With the misunderstandings resolved, the Young X-Men team relocated to San Francisco, where the X-Men had started up again. This reunion started with Rockslide attacking Cyclops, partly because of Pierce’s deception but possibly also as revenge for the multiple times being blasted by the leader. This was explained away as PTSD by the older mutants and Santo’s target quickly 
pivoted to Ink, whom he rightly suspected had betrayed the team to Pierce prior to his defeat. Despite Cyclops and new leaders of the Young X-Men, Moonstar and Sunspot, deciding to give Ink a second chance, Rockslide would continue to treat Ink with distrust. Santo went to apologize to Cyclops, who forgave him and even hugged Santo as he grieved over all the friends he had lost recently. [Young X-Men #6]
Colossus had become quite melancholy since the X-Men’s move to San Francisco, so Wolverine and Nightcrawler put Rockslide up to picking a fight with their friend to try to cheer him up. However, this went poorly when Rockslide punched Colossus’s steel face randomly at the breakfast table and was unconvincing in expressing a hatred for the older mutant. Santo called Logan and Kurt crappy friends for trying to make the two of them fight and he even recognized that the reason Peter was so sad was because his girlfriend Kitty had recently sacrificed herself. [X-Men: Manifest Destiny #3] Also while in San Francisco, Rockslide helped the X-Men repel the Skrull invasion during their “Secret Invasion.” He jokily stated that he might be interested in joining their army. [Secret Invasion: X-Men #1-4]
Colossus found purpose with his insistence to travel to Limbo and rescue his sister Magik. Cyclops finally relented and ordered Rockslide and Mercury to follow him and Pixie into Limbo, given the young mutants familiarity with the dimension from the time they were kidnapped by Belasco. Santo demonstrated an uncharacteristic hesitancy about returning to the hell dimension, 
but Cyclops explained that his ability to construct himself out of the Limbo landscape would give the team an edge. Once they arrived, Colossus was quick to destroy Rockslide’s body to force him to do just that, giving him a strong resistance to magic. Despite some struggle against the sorceress Witchfire, the team was able to triumph and Magik restored her body to a more humanlike appearance. Despite their differences, Santo did not protest to her rejoining the X-Men to try to make amends for her previous actions. [X-Infernus #1-4]
For a while, Rockslide had suspected that one of the Young X-Men was not a mutant and he hoped it was his hated rival Ink. While he ultimately turned out to be right, during a mission where the team fought a version of the mutant-eating island Krakoa, Moonstar made Rockslide realize that Ink deserved a second chance and some sympathy about his condition. When Ink did find out that his tattoo artist was the mutant giving him powers, he left the team, despite Santo’s easing up. Anole joined the Young X-Men, a friend that Rockslide had always gotten along quite well with despite showing the occasional homophobic tendencies towards him. Upon the team looking further into the tattoo artist, it appeared that Ink was not the only one he had been giving tattoos and they were able to track down a gang of powered-up criminals named the Y-Men. If not for secret member Cipher revealing herself and convincing Ink to return to the team with a new Phoenix powered tattoo, dozens of thugs would have overwhelmed Rockslide and his team. This save finally got Rockslide over his prejudice against Ink and he started to treat him like a real teammate. [Young X-Men #7-10]
The Young X-Men’s final trial involved Dust freeing Donald Pierce from the X-Men’s prison after he convinced her he was her only chance at surviving her secret condition of slowly turning back into glass. Pierce did not get far after Dust released him and even had the young woman regret 
her decision and attack him at the seeming cost of her life. Rockslide went into a berserker rage at seeing another one of his close friends dying at the hands of this cyborg. He even nearly killed Pierce if not for Wolverine talking him down from taking that dark path. Luckily, Ink was able to use the power from his phoenix force tattoo to cure Dust at the cost of burning himself out, saving Santo the grief of another lost friend. [Young X-Men #11-12]
When the X-Men moved to San Francisco, the team expanded due to so many mutants living in the vicinity. So rather than having a dedicated young mutant team, many of the students would pop into teams and adventures as needed. Rockslide, in particular, managed to insert himself into the action more often than not, usually accompanied by his fellow Young and New X-Men teammates, especially with his best buddy Anole. They angrily confronted Magik when she finally showed up to take up the offer to join her fellow mutants, still fuming from her past treatment of them. [New Mutants (3rd series) #1] Rockslide led a group of the students to confront the Runaways as their mutant teammate explored joining the X-men community. While brusque at first, the two teen groups ended up clubbing rather than fighting. [Runaways (3rd series) #10]
When Hellion and a few other students decided to protest California’s ballot initiative, proposing to control mutant reproduction rights, Rockslide was among the protestors. However, when the protest turned into a riot, Colossus forcibly quelled Rockslide. When Norman Osborn, current head of the S.H.I.E.L.D. replacement agency H.A.M.M.E.R., decided to form a Dark X-Men team to control the mutant situation, Rockslide and a large group of students took down one of the members Mimic, overloading his copy powers with their sheer numbers. Following this conflict, Cyclops moved all mutants to a newly-formed island off the coast called Utopia, thus putting their people outside the jurisdiction of America. [Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia/Exodus]
More minor adventures came in the form of rogue mutants showing up and Rockslide helping take them down. Emplate terrorized the young mutants before being defeated by Rogue. [X-Men Legacy Annual #1] Rockslide helped pacify Sack of the Morlocks [Psylocke #1] and tested the mettle of new X-Men member Dagger in the training facility with his old Young X-Men team. [Cloak and Dagger one-shot] When X-Factor visited Utopia, Rockslide’s confidence was tested when he got into a brawl with Strong Guy. [Nation X: X-Factor #1] When Rogue absorbed some telepathy, she used it to identify and try to help various mutants having a hard time on Utopia. Surprisingly, Santo was silently struggling with his identity as an energy being and Rogue helped him conceptualize his powers as his soul being more tangible and easily identified than most people. [X-Men Legacy (1st series) #234] Never one left out of a young mutant outing, Rockslide found himself traveling the tunnels of Utopia with Magneto to save Mercury from some 
old tech, listening to some advice from a former mutant and X-Man Jubilee, and fighting Warpath during a midnight ice cream raid. [Nation X #1-4] When Pixie and a few other girls mysteriously disappeared, Rockslide, Anole and Blindfold attempted to find them. With the help of Emma Frost and a few other X-Men, Rockslide found the clue that led to an abandoned Dazzler concert and eventually the location where demons had kidnapped the girls. Santo happily jumped into the fray to slay some demons before the team was able to rescue a brainwashed Pixie. [X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #1-4]
It was all-hands-on-deck when Cable returned from the future with the mutant messiah, now a teenager named Hope. Utopia found itself encased in a sphere of impermeable energy and Santo failed to recognize the direness of the situation. He was not present when Hellion had his hands severed in an attack but was able to commiserate with a guilty Surge. Rockslide was chosen for the final stand, in which many of the strongest mutants held the line against an invading army of Nimrods emerging from future portals. Just when things looked their bleakest, Cable and X-Force managed to deactivate the Master Mold, the source of Sentinels on the other side of the portal, shutting down all of the Nimrods. Finally, Hope powered up to take out the dome and finish off the main antagonist Bastion. [Second Coming crossover] The kids were soon back to playing baseball and even invited Hope to join them. However, when Hellion woke up and found his hands missing, he did not take it well. His destructive actions that followed alienated him from Santo and his other friends. [X-Men Legacy (1st series) #242-243] Another time, the original Human Torch came to find Namor on Utopia and Rockslide and Anole interrupted the meeting to confirm that he had actually killed Hitler. Rockslide wanted his autograph after the Torch admitted he had and was proud to do so. [Invaders Now! #1]
When the X-Men went to war with a sect of Vampires, Rockslide found himself teamed with Armor for a supply run into the city. While on the boat, a vampire whale attacked but the heroics of Rockslide saved everyone. When the whale swallowed him, Santo exploded from the inside, but this fantastical feat turned out to be a dream that Santo had after reading Moby Dick. [X-Men: Curse of the Mutants - X-Men vs Vampires #2] Santo did find himself getting more exciting orders soon enough when he was put on the front lines with an assortment of other mutants that vampires would be hard pressed to bite and turn towards their cause. [X-Men (3rd series) #5-6]
Once the X-Men were victorious, Santo tried to connect with Jubilee, who had been permanently turned into a vampire. Given that his body was made of rock, he was safe for her to be around and he felt that he could identify with her situation, even if she did not seem interested. When Wolverine found them, he told “Sanchez” to get lost. Despite not knowing Rockslide’s name, he allowed him to accompany him after Jubilee ran off. Logan warned Santo to back off from Jubilee, upon whom he sensed Rockslide had developed a crush. When they located her, she had an amulet around her neck, which Logan ordered Rockslide to crush. A few days later, the amulet’s outline appeared on his hand and so Santo went back to the site he found it, only to find the shipping 
yard was now a dry cleaning store. He questioned the clerk but she turned into a dragon and attacked him. However, upon seeing the symbol on his hand, she calmed down and explained that it was a claim check. For returning the other half, he was teleported directly to Jubilee, who was currently fleeing from an even bigger, meaner dragon. She was happy to see Santo and asked him to hold off the dragon for her, which he hesitantly but obediently complied. Wolverine, Jubilee and Rockslide managed to defeat the dragon and return home and Santo managed to get a pleasant pseudo date with Jubilee watching the sunset. [Wolverine and Jubilee #1-4]
There was a reunion of sorts of the New X-Men team when X-23 returned from her time serving on the X-Men’s secret kill team X-Force. Rockslide had some offensive comments to say concerning her actions and even balked at the romance of Julian and Laura. [X-23 (2nd series) #1]