Fully part of the X-Men again, Storm bested Cyclops in combat, despite her lack of powers, when Cyclops openly challenged her over who should lead the team moving forward.
Sometime later, Storm and Forge’s paths crossed again when his mentor, who was possessed by the Adversary, convinced her that Forge had turned evil. After being tricked into almost killing Forge, the Adversary banished them both to another dimension where they spent a full year together and rekindled their romance, while Forge was able to invent a device to finally restore Ororo’s powers.
Returning home, Storm rejoined her teammates, but soon after, all of the X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary. The team was resurrected by an Omniversal Guardian named Roma, but initially opted to keep their resurrection a secret and operated out of Australia during this period.
After the X-Men were attacked by the Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, Storm was captured and a S.H.I.E.L.D. LMD was used to fake her death. Nanny then transformed Storm into her pre-teens in order to more easily contain her, but Storm’s claustrophobia would then provide her with enough power to overload Nanny’s systems, creating a window for escape.
Storm, in her younger amnesiac form, would meet fellow mutant thief Gambit while being targeted by the Shadow King in New Orleans. She would later introduce Gambit to the X-Men. Storm would also eventually be restored to adulthood on the island nation of Genosha.
When the X-Men split into two distinct strike teams, Storm would serve as co-leader alongside Cyclops. During this period, Forge proposed to her, but her hesitation led him to leave her.
A glimpse of an alternate future, during Apocalypse’s attempt to use Storm to form the prophesied Twelve, revealed just how unbelievably powerful and omnipotent she could be if she gave into the full extent of her powers and became a wholly elemental being.
Following “M Day,” when a deranged Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, caused half the world to lose their powers, Storm was reunited with T’Challa in Africa, accepting his marriage proposal. Together, they opposed the Superhuman Registration Act, and Ororo would go on to juggle her duties as Queen of Wakanda with her heroic duties around the world.
Those duties included joining the Avengers for the first time, though that would end when she sided with the X-Men against her new teammates during a crisis involving the mutants of Utopia. Namor’s destructive attack on Wakanda during this period led to T’Challa naming the X-Men enemies of his country and to the annulment of Ororo and T’Challa’s marriage.
Returning to her old teammates, Ororo took over as Headmistress of the Jean Grey School and fended off attacks from resurrected former Utopia student Kenji Uedo. She also became leader of the first all-female X-Men group, which included Betsy Braddock, AKA Psylocke, Jubilee, Rachel Grey, Anna Marie, AKA Rogue, and Kitty Pryde.
Following the death of Wolverine, Storm would become the X-Men’s only leader. A crisis would erupt after Inhuman Terrigen Mist was released into Earth's atmosphere, threatening mutants on a mass scale with a disease known as M-Pox. Assisted by Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, among others, Storm created a sanctuary within Limbo called X-Haven. Her actions managed to save the lives of many of her fellow mutants.