Roberto is present for the early Cable arrangement, including its uneasy mixture of enthusiasm and suspicion. He has enough experience to recognize a capable fighter, but he als…

Roberto is present for the early Cable arrangement, including its uneasy mixture of enthusiasm and suspicion. He has enough experience to recognize a capable fighter, but he also remains a young man who can be impressed by larger-than-life adults. Madripoor gives that tendency a particularly uncomfortable test. In #93, Cable and Wolverine recognize each other and immediately bring their own hostility into the mission. Roberto is left watching two people he admires fight. Whatever history explains the encounter, it is history the students have not been given. That is a useful little rupture in the fantasy of an experienced mentor arriving to put everything in order. Adults carry their own grudges into the room. The young mutants still have to work out what to make of them while dealing with the danger directly in front of the team. Roberto remains with the rescue effort during X-Tinction Agenda, but the next decisive change comes from his own family. Gideon arrives with news of his father's death in #98. By #99, Roberto leaves the New Mutants to deal with the responsibilities attached to that loss. Sam's reaction gives the departure its weight. These two have shared the group from its beginnings. Leaving interrupts an everyday friendship as well as a fighting partnership, and neither a new mentor nor a new recruit can simply replace that. Roberto now has to consider responsibilities that do not fit inside a training schedule. He knows he has suffered a family loss and believes there is another part of his life demanding attention. His exit helps explain why the team at #100 feels so altered: one of its most familiar voices has gone, for reasons that do not begin or end with Cable.