BIOGRAPHY - Page 7
In addition to Scott's team and her teaching duties, Emma also became involved with a second X-Men unit on-site. Havok was having trouble maintaining control of his squad due to a number of interpersonal difficulties and relationships, so Emma started to help coordinating the team and assisted telepathically on missions. She also lent her services as a relationship counselor to Rogue and Gambit from Havok's team. Having recently spent several months powerless, the couple were having trouble readjusting to Rogue's powers once more preventing them from touching. [X-Men (2nd series) #161-176]
Emma's anxieties about her relationship with Scott were put on display when the Phoenix Force returned. Attacked and fractured by a vengeful Shi'ar military force, the Phoenix remembered an echo of Jean's love for Scott and sought him out, reanimating Jean's body in the process. The X-Men fought back against the entity to prevent another Dark Phoenix event. The Phoenix wanted the energy from Cyclops' optic blast to feed its own missing energies, and equated this with the 
love Jean felt for him. Emma offered herself up as a host for the Phoenix Force as Scott's current love and, once it was bound within her, Scott and the Phoenix-Emma were then bound in turn inside a containment egg of Beast's design. Quentin Quire intervened, however, back from his Omega-level evolution and hoping to use the Phoenix to bring Sophie Cuckoo back to life. Containment was breached and Emma began to succumb to the Phoenix, unable to restrain its energies or desires. Jean and the Phoenix were reunited and the combined love and respect of the X-Men, telepathically conveyed by Emma, stabilized her mentally enough for Jean to return to the White Hot Room with the Phoenix Force in tow. Mostly. [X-Men: Phoenix -- Endsong #1-5]
Around the mansion, Emma's Hellions continued to have trouble with the New Mutants squad. Emma and Moonstar had largely mended fences and worked well together, but their squads were another story. Emma had allowed Julian "Hellion" Keller to take the codename of her former students, hoping he would rise to the occasion. Indeed, Hellion and the Hellions won the Field Day competition in part due to Julian's leadership and tactical skills. On a personal level, however, Julian remained a bully and a troublemaker at the school. Emma tried to counsel him towards restraining his ego and developing his charisma for more positive purposes, with minimal results. [New X-Men: Academy X #14-15, New X-Men: Hellions #1]
Emma's own criminal past seemed to lurk beneath the surface of her collected exterior. When the Danger Room came to life, it attacked the X-Men for holding its intelligence hostage for all these years. When all the others had fallen, however, Danger convinced Emma to submit to defeat by 
implying Danger knew a secret Emma could not allow to be revealed. After the X-Men followed Danger to Genosha, Emma abandoned the team in the middle of the battle and seemingly made contact with a new and secret branch of the Hellfire Club: Sebastian Shaw, Cassandra Nova, Emma's surprisingly alive Genoshan student Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and a mysterious cloaked figure called Perfection. [Astonishing X-Men (3rd series) #7-12]
Any doubts about Emma's trustworthiness had to be put on hold when the Avengers summoned the X-Men back to Genosha. Wanda Maximoff, the mutant Avenger and Scarlet Witch, had fallen to madness. Her mutant powers had also grown to the point where she could manipulate reality itself, and had already caused the deaths of several Avengers. The Avengers and X-Men found themselves debating whether Wanda was too dangerous to live in her current condition. Her brother Quicksilver heard these debates, and Pietro convinced Wanda to craft a new reality where she would be safe.
This House of M reality was the epitome of Magneto's dream, with mutants as the dominant species on the planet. It all came crashing down as some heroes regained their real memories 
and fought back against Wanda's control. Feeling betrayed, Wanda reversed her changes on reality along with a new edict: No More Mutants. Emma and the X-Men awoke to find that more than 90% of all mutants on Earth had lost their powers. The student body of nearly 200 mutants was reduced to less than 30, and several X-Men were "Decimated" as well. In fact, on a global scale, the number of remaining mutants initially calculated was numbered at just 198. Under the edict of the Office of National Emergency and with the X-Men's reluctant consent, the X-Mansion became a protected reservation for the remaining mutants of the world. [House of M & Decimation events]
Emma Frost saw herself as a teacher at heart, yet she had lost students in the past such as the Hellions, members of Generation X and her school on Genosha. The Decimation pushed her perseverance to the limit. The first child had already died before M-Day was over, when a water-breathing student named Hydro lost his powers and drowned. Emma was determined to protect her remaining students at any cost. This included threats from without or within, and so she was wildly opposed to Wolverine bringing his teenaged assassin clone X-23 into their midst. Emma 
hosted a free-for-all brawl in the empty Danger Room among the remaining students, hoping to forge a team of new X-Men to act as student protectors for the remainder of the class. Privately, she telepathically instructed Hellion to take out X-23 during the match. When the dust had settled, the four powered Hellions left joined Emma's new X-Men, along with Elixir and Surge from the New Mutants and (at Cyclops' quiet but firm insistence) X-23, whom Hellion had failed to eliminate. Emma was monomaniacally focused on X-23 as a potential threat, however, and even tormented her telepathically with visions of her former victims over the years, including her own mother. Emma also named Surge as squad leader to punish Hellion for his failure.
As headmistress, Emma was adamant about locking down the mansion for the students' safety. She dismissed the now-human Danielle Moonstar without consulting Scott, and prepared to sneak out dozens of now powerless students under cover of night, to avoid drawing attention from anti-
mutant groups who smelled blood in the water after the Decimation. Her efforts failed, however, as Reverend Stryker's Purifiers targeted the students' bus with a rocket launcher, murdering forty-two more of Emma's children. Several more students were picked off one at a time in the days that followed, culminating in Stryker leading an attack on the mansion itself. [New X-Men (2nd series) #20-27] When Sean Cassidy was killed stopping a hijacked plane over JFK, it was just one more loss Emma was forced to cope with. [X-Men: Deadly Genesis #2-3]
A surprising development came when the X-Men learned a fragment of the Phoenix Force had remained on Earth, nestled in the souls of the Stepford Cuckoos. The threat of another Phoenix event also brought to the forefront the mysterious origins of the Cuckoos themselves. Emma finally perceived that the X-Men had no idea where the Cuckoos came from, an ignorance perpetuated by a light telepathic recursion placed in their minds by the Cuckoos. By severing the psychic trick, Emma and the X-Men realized no one remembered recruiting the Cuckoos to the school, or had any knowledge of their parents or their past before arriving.
In fact, the Stepford Cuckoos were revealed to be Weapon XIV of the Weapon Plus Program, true "cuckoo eggs" placed in the X-Men's nest as sleeper agents by the anti-mutant John Sublime. At the remains of the World, the X-Men discovered the Cuckoos were created from the reproductive system of Emma Frost herself, eggs harvested against her will during her coma from years earlier. Indeed, hundreds of Cuckoos were found in artificial birthing tubes underneath the World. Already 
her daughters in spirit, Emma learned the Cuckoos were actually her daughters in blood as well. Now Celeste, Phoebe and Mindee were caught between the possessive drive of the Phoenix Force and the anti-mutant nano-programming of Weapon Plus. The Phoenix Cuckoos destroyed the Thousand-In-One to stop Weapon Plus from hampering mutant evolution. However, when the Phoenix fragment refused to leave the Cuckoos, the girls were forced to contain the fragments in their diamond, emotionless hearts. Just as Emma learned the Stepford Cuckoos were her daughters, and they had started to develop as individuals, they were cut off from their emotions entirely, leaving Emma with one more sorrow she owed to Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force. [X-Men: Phoenix -- Warsong #1-5]
Emma's vendetta against X-23 and rigid ideas about protecting her students created a divide between her and her former Hellions. Mercury couldn't understand why Emma allowed Wither to run away from the mansion without bringing him home. X-23 was fatally wounded fighting Nimrod, beyond her healing factor's ability to cope. Hellion desperately reached out to Emma telepathically as he tried to fly Laura back to the mansion and their healer, Elixir. Julian begged Emma to help 
prevent another of his friends from dying, and Ms. Frost temporarily unlocked his greater potential, turning his flight supersonic. [New X-Men (2nd series) 31-32] Laura survived and her former handlers from the Facility came after the students, kidnapping Mercury. Seeing the Facility up close and Laura's guilt over Mercury suffering how she did opened Emma's eyes. She saw that Laura was an abused child who wasn't to blame for what was done to her. Emma personally disabled the threat of Laura's handler and abuser Kimura, psychically sending the mercenary after her own bosses as punishment. [New X-Men (2nd series) 33-36]