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1st story:The present:Jean Grey aka Marvel Girl, new among the X-Men, finds herself in a fight along with her fellow X-Men. As she uses her telekinesis to stop several fighter planes and helicopters, she muses that this summer heading into her senior year she was worried about A.P. and Calculus. Do they have any idea what she’d give to be doing Calculus right now?! she screams in frustration.
Three weeks ago:Getting her luggage at the airport, Jean is in a heated discussion with her parents on the phone, as she still doesn’t see the sense of shipping her to Xavier’s, or as she calls it, some psychic bald guy’s freak show. Her mother carefully states she’ll be better off with more people like her. Mutants, Jean spells out and asks why they won’t just let her finish out high school with her friends. Her parents point out it isn’t safe. What if she reveals her powers the next time she has a nightmare and brings down the roof on them? Jean gives in as the taxi arrives at Xavier’s School.
Without any doorbell, she just lets herself in. As she looks around, a boy with red glasses and a stange black and gold uniform comes running. He stumbles over her suitcase and falls onto her, losing his glasses in the process.
The two kinds of jokes she can think of right now are lame and dirty, Jean announces. “Pick your poison.” Keeping his eyes shut, the boy demands his glasses. Jean is taken aback but hands them over. The boy gets up. Belated he thanks her and leaves.
A blond handsome boy informs her that was Scott Summers. He’s always like that. He offers her a hand and introduces himself as Warren Worthington. Jean asks what Scott was wearing. Warren tells her she’ll get used to the spandex.
Cape Citadel naval base – today:Amidst the chaos of all kinds of vehicles and weapons flying around, Marvel Girl tries to telepathically contact Professor X and informs him the soldiers think that one guy alone is causing all this damage. A mutant. She stops a jeep from falling on soldiers. They say he walked in a couple of hours ago dressed in what they called a “red and purple clown suit.” He barricaded himself in the command center, and that’s when all the crazy jumped off.
Xavier compliments her on the telekinetic catch and she points out this is dumb. They are so not prepared for this, and if someone gets hurt… Duly noted, he cuts her off sourly. She wonders if he really can’t see the difference between this and fighting video games in the Danger Room.
The Danger Room, three weeks ago:In what looks like a jungle landscape, Cyclops uses his concussive optic blast to level a foe. Sitting in the observation booth, Xavier congratulates him on his control and suggests to keep in mind always plot his next move ahead. He starts a higher threat, several foes together. Scott believes he can’t do that. He won’t know until he tries, Xavier tells him sternly.
All the foes attack. Scott is about to be overwhelmed. Xavier stops the program. After the lesson, Xavier announces he needs to know why Scott is holding back in there. Yessir, Scott replies. Xavier explains he needs Scott to tell him-- Scott admits when it gets to be so much, he is stuck. He can’t see the next move. The next move is to blast them with everything he has, Xavier points out. Scott saw it just like him! Scott admits he’s still kind of afraid. He still remembers what opening his eyes used to mean. Before his special glasses and his visor. When he couldn’t control anything. He hates that feeling!
Xavier assures him he understands. He has such potential and until he lets go of this fear… Mutantkind needs the man Scott is capable of becoming. One day the heroism of the X-Men will show the world that mutants aren’t to be feared. The X-Men will prove that mutants can co-exist with ordinary humans because that’s exactly what they are. He sees Scott leading the X-Men on that day. And a leader mustn’t… Well, they’ll keep at it.
Cape Citadel naval base. Today:Cyclops looks at the command center which has been strengthened with a huge pile of metal. He informs Xavier their foe barricaded himself in there pretty good under tons of armored metal. He tries to blast his way in, but sees it’s gonna take more than that. Xavier said “no holding back” and he uses his optic blast at full strength. The metal blasts apart and some of the debris hits him. His blast goes wide. Jean catches the debris and wonders what Cyclops is doing.
Xaviers school, three weeks ago:Warren tells Jean of how Xavier recruited him. His dad kept calling him”Captain Eyebrows” and tried to get their maid Lucinda to forcibly wheel him out. Then the prof did the whole empathy thing. Ten minutes later Dad’s booking the jet while Lucinda is packing Warren’s socks.
Isn’t he a little skeeved that this guy brainwashed his parents to get him to stay here? Jean wonders. At first, Warren smiles. But it doesn’t take long to figure out that everything he does he does for them, for mutants. Plus, it’s pretty great here, all things considered.
That moment, another stocky teenager comes in bouncing off the walls. Time to get those feathers out! he tells Warren. “Oh my stars and garters!” he exclaims when he sees Jean. He’s seen a vision in scarlet and must know her name! Warren introduces him as Hank McCoy, the Beast.
Beast hurries ahead of them and Jean is amazed by the way he talks. Warren agrees, nicest guy in the world and crazy smart, but he does struggle with normal.
She is about to witness something truly special, Hank promises. She hearts him already, Jean announces. Hank leads them to a strange empty room which Hank introdudes as the technological marvel and masterpiece of science that is the Danger Room.
That moment, a young boy joins them, naked expect for boots and a giant iceblock that surrounds his groin. Cheek chillers by Drake! he calls it. When Bobby Drake aka Iceman sees Jean, he blushes and turns away. He quickly ices up completely. They couldn’t tell him new girl was already in the house? Jean looks at Warren who has dressed in uniform and now displays his wings as the Angel.
Cape Citadel naval base, today:Xavier asks Angel to report. Warren points out he is a little busy being chased by planes. He informs Xavier that the missiles blew up. Now he’s seeing more indestructible zombie fighter jets. No fighter pilots though, which seems odd to him. Are the planes being flown? Xavier asks. Not flown, more thrown, Angel clarifies.
Xavier’s school, three weeks ago:Jean watches her four male teammates battling robots in the Danger Room. Are they making a good first impression? Professor Xavier asks her. Sure, lots of cool toys and weird outfits. Still kind of unclear when and where the school part happens, Jean remarks. Xavier suggests she look at it this way: The purpose of a school is to prepare one for the challenges that lie ahead. As mutants, they have rather unique challenges to think about, so their school has to be different.
How come he didn’t tell her parents what really goes on here? Jean demands. She doesn’t think Mom mentioned co-ed mutant Fight Club. Xavier replies if her parents had any idea they would have never let her come here.
Their mutations are genetic. They didn’t ask for this. They are human like everybody else but different in rather obvious ways. People have always feared difference. He believes that in the future mutants won’t have to hide. People will learn to appreciate them… that world doesn’t yet exist. And creating it will be a battle. That’s why he’s training the X-Men. He can’t protect them from life as a mutant. He can do his vest to prepare them for what’s coming.
Cape Citadel naval base, today:Cyclops tries to enter the command center. He’s gotten here himself? the man inside states. For that at least, he is impressed. Do his worst! he goads Cyclops. He’s earned one shot. Cyclops refuses. Magneto blasts him away with a flying desk.
Magneto elevates himself in the air, introducing himself. He’s a mutant like them. Quite a mess they’ve made here together. Iceman goads him to come down, so they can make another one.
Magneto explains he came her today to show the world what mutants can do. To introduce them to their future masters. He thanks them for their help as he rises upwards along with an ocean liner. Angel and Iceman try to follow. Jean shouts after them not to be stupid. He’s left! It’s over!
Later at the school:Jean isn’t sure about her feelings. She doesn’t agree with any of this. Teenage mutant X-Men is a bad idea, but she likes it here. Seeing Cyclops training in the Danger Room, she figures the guys are messed up.
She spies into Angel’s room, where he tries to cover his wings under the harness. Messed up bad, like her. She admits it feels like home.
She is unaware that, in his office, Xavier is telepathically speaking to Magneto, who tells him he let his children live today out of respect for Charles. Xavier retorts he never expected Erik to commit acts of terrorism. Is that really what he thinks the world needs? What mutants need?
If they could agree on what mutants need, Erik retorts, they’d be standing side by side on the bones of hateful men, the same men Charles has sworn to protect.
How did he fail him? Charles wonders. Charles didn’t fail, he closed his eyes, Erik replies. He’s simply given up trying to force them back open. Now get out of his head! He puts on his helmet, breaking off the telepathic communication. Charles is left alone with his thoughts in his office.
Another evening:Warren returns from a date. Angrily, he slams the door of his car. Date went well then? Jean sitting on the stairs assumes. Hate, he replies curtly. The first part went great. He went all dinner without having to fake laugh or pretend interest. That never happens with society girls. Afte dinner, she snuck them into her parents’ summerhouse and wanted to go swimming. What did he do? Jean asks. He showed her his giant freakazoid bird wings, then they made out in the pool! Wait. No. He ran away with a stomach ache and left her standing there in her underwear!
Jean admits that sucks, then decides he is going to take her to the carnival. It was setting up earlier in town. When he tries to make an excuse she tells him she refuses to let someone sulk whose biggest problem is that rich girls want him to take his clothes off on a first date! She drags him upward, promising they’ll eat fried things and ride rides and he’s going to win her cute stuffed animals. It’ll cheer him up. He finally agrees, then decides to invite Hank and Bobby. Not quite what Jean had intended, who then figures she might as well invite Scott, who as usual is practicing in the Danger Room.
When she enters, the robotic dragon he’s been fighting attacks her. Scott breaks off the sequence. However, since he is sitting on the dragon’s back when that happens, he suddenly falls hard. He berates her, then asks what she wants. Fuming, she leaves, figuring he is a jerk.
The others head to the carnival. Jean confides to Warren how her friends back home never knew about her telekinetic episodes, but they were terrifying. She’d been asleep and woke up to screaming and cracking. It was like a movie earthquake but the shaking started under her skin. If her parents hadn’t been so great about it… It almost broke her. She guesses she’s lucky.
Warren tells her her parents still don’t know. His wings sprouted at boarding school. It’s surpsingly easy to hide amongst the rich and narcissistic. His friends were so self-involved. If they noticed anything at all, it was Warren going through a designer overcoat phase. He didn’t tell his folks? Jean wonders. Never came up, he replies. They try some of the rides.
In some other part of the carnival, Bobby states he used to be into spinning rides. But now he’s thinking fried foods and pretty girls is where it’s at. Does that mean he‘s more mature or something? Or something, to be sure, Hank decides. Such a fascinating slice of Americana, he muses. Early mutants found refuge here. Travelling the countryside fifty or sixty years ago, naming themselves freaks and sideshow oddities.
That’s disgusting, Bobby, who’s moved from corndogs, to a burger and shake, decides. Hank agrees but what choice did they have? Progress may be slow but, as modern mutants, they are lucky. Yeah? Bobby, now eating a pie, doubts. They’ll never have to stay in cages or charge children to poke them with a stick.
Nothing but a bunch of freaks! somebody shouts. The two boys turn around to see a woman with striped skin on the stage. The cries come from the audience, who hurl both insults and bottles at her. He was saying? Bobby asks.
Some young men in the first row call her a freak. Hank and Bobby tell them to show some respect or leave. Does he even know what a mutant is? one of the angry young men asks Hank. It’s freaks like that one up there attacked that naval base a few weeks back. Godless mutants tried to kill a bunch’a troops just to show off their powers. That thing’s no better than a terrorist!
The girl on the stage calls that there is trouble. The man continues he paid good money to sit here and give all the respect she deserves. A reptile-like carny tries to break it off and tells them to enjoy the rest of the show. The angry young man hits him.
Hank tells Bobby they need to end this quickly. The easy way? Bobby asks and begins to ice up. Not here, Hank orders. However, one of the men saw that and grabs Bobby’s iced-up hands. Freak this! Bobby tells him and hits him with the icehand.
Another mutant girl shouts that Billy didn’t do anything as one of the haters kicks him in the face. For the record, this is them winning, Bobby announces as they gain the upper hand.
A young mother from the audience shoots her gun in the air, telling them to stop right there, calling them monsters!
Elsewhere at the carnival, Warren is trying to win Jean a green hippo. Jean suggests an easy solution to his girl trouble. Date one of them. A mutant! Warren point out he knows six of them. And of them she is his only… Is she asking him to…? Jean stammers. Saved by the gunshot. They hurry to join the fracas.
Slamming two heads together, Hank reminds Bobby not to hurt those people. Can someone tell them not to hurt him? Bobby protests.
The mutant girl from the stage calls for someone named Freddie. When someone grabs her, Angel flies into her attackers and gathers her up into the air. She admits that was super and he is flattered. Jean levitates a few attackers. Suddenly, the ground shakes and she loses concentration.
The mini-quake was due to “Freddie” (aka Fred Dukes, the Blob), a giant of a man stomping down. This ends now! he orders and swats several attackers aside.
Impressed, Hank offers his hand, only to be hit in the face. Dukes calls them a bunch of pretty-pretty mutants coming down here to mix it up with their customers. They should run back to their hidey hole to play pretend. Leaving behind those of them who look mutant to pick up the pieces. He grabs the Angel. The rescued girl shouts they’ve been trying to help. She doesn’t like hearing what people think of mutants? Fred asks her. How much they hate them? Tough! Those idiots pay for that privilege! That’s their livelihood!
Cyclops fires an optic blast at him from a distance. Do that again! the Blob challenges him. Enough! Charles Xavier who has come with him orders telepathically and all the combatants walk away, their memories of the fight erased. He explains he tried to defuse the situation and hopes he can help them more later.
Jean is still worrying about her non-date with Angel. The relationship seems a bit clearer defined when Angel brings along the mutant girl he saved – Ginny. She’s one of them, Angel tells Jean, then throws her his car keys. She can drive the boys home. He and Ginny are gonna fly around some before he heads back.
Cyclops tries to apologize to Jean for the way he acted earlier. She tells him it’s okay and brushes him off when he asks for the full story on what happened.
Still confused about what happened, the Blob enters his caravan. Weird night, he mutters. Magneto, who is waiting for him, tells him he quite literally doesn’t know half of it…
Some time later, Jean sits in Xavier’s office and he asks if there is something going on between her and Warren. That’s totally none of his business, she retorts. He apologizes for phrasing this wrong. He only meant that until recently they had seemd good close friends. Jean claims she has just been kinda busy. They are still friends.
Xavier is relieved to hear that, then wants to talk about Scott. The two of them were tripping all over each other in the Danger Room that morning, not communicating at all. He knows Scott can be difficult in there. He takes it very seriously, but it’s important she make an effort to get along with him. Relieved he hasn’t read her mind, she agrees. Was that all?
He tells her he is worried about her. She hasn’t been herself lately. Not since her ordeal in the Savage Land. He was hoping she’d be willing to talk about it. Jean silently figures her “ordeal” consisted of a crazy bald man thinking it a good idea to send five teenager to investigate a sabertooth tiger attack in Antarctica…
Two weeks ago in the Savage Land:Marvel Girl and Angel found themselves captured and tied up on a mountain. Warren tries to tell her while this is not fun, how many people get to see a real life Jurassic Park? Only them lucky folks, Jean agrees. He muses that Ginny and him were supposed to go out tonight. What is she gonna say when he explains why he stood her up. “Sorry babe, Jean and I got captured by these Neanderthals and had to spend the night on a dinosaur mountain.” She will punch him right up the nose.
Annoyed, Jean shouts at him to stop talking. She doesn’t want to hear about his girlfriend. She admits she’s scared and tired of pretending this stuff isn’t crazy. They don’t know who took them, where they went or why they left them up here.They don’t know anything and that’s terrifying! What’s the big hole in the middle for? He tells her they’ll be all right, they are X-Men. The guys are coming to get them. She’s seen all the nutso simulations Scott runs in the Danger Room. He probably has a dinosaur mountain rescue contingency plan. Looking at the hole, she shouts his name as a dinosaur comes forth to attack.
The Present:Was there anything she wanted to talk about? Xavier repeats. No, she’s fine, she assures him.
Bobby runs past the offce and into Hank’s room. He will not believe what he just saw! Hank isn’t interested but Bobby gushes forth his story. About how he went to the city. He was standing in line for a sausage…
Iceman’s story:… when that familiar looking brunette in a scarlet dress walks by. Gorgeous and about Hank’s age, wearing almost like a ren fair sort of red pointy thing in her hair. Weird look but she’s pulling it off. It’s Manhattan. People wear things. He’s not gonna lose his place in line to talk to the girl but he kinda keeps his eye on her as she crosses the street… and the chick meets up with Magneto and his goon squad. Brutus from the carneval (the Blob) that speedy delivery Russian kid (Quicksilver), even the creepy Toad guy with the tongue. It’s like every evil mutant known to man.
They hang around a couple of minutes, then trot into an office front building. He doesn’t like to brag, but he’s pretty sure he just found the Manhttan headquarters of the Broterhood of Evil Mutants.End of story.
Hank seems disbelieving, or rather believes Bobby saw a pretty girl, a man with white hair and a heavy set fellow across the street. About the more colourful details he is sceptical. Bobby asks him to go back there with him. Hank tells him he is busy. If he is convinced he saw mutant terrorists, take it to the professor!
Only way the professor will believe him is with Hank backing him up. He’ll buy lunch. No street meat in the world is worth a seventy minute trainride, is the reply. Bobby ups the ante with a Katz’s deli pastrami sandwich.Throw in an egg cream and Hank is in.
Nearby, Scott holds up Warren, needing advice on how to ask a girl out. You just ask, is the reply. Getting her to say yes is trickier. You gotta kinda bounce back and forth between charm and disinterest. Or make it seem like you got other places to be, so she keeps being interested.
Jean walks by. Warren whispers that none of that’s gonna help Scott because Jeannie’s not a girl. Jeannie’s Jeannie. How did he--? Scott asks. Eyeballs, Slim, he has eyeballs, Warren replies.
Two weeks ago in the Savage Land:Angel suggests Marvel Girl telekinetically break his ropes. It would rip his arms out of the sockets, she points out. She doesn’t have that kind of control. Doesn’t he think she would have done it before otherwise?! He suggests she lift up the dino then. Jean tries but can’t. They both run. He’s seen her toss around fighter jets before, he points out. They’ve been awake for two days! she shouts. And she’s sorry she can’t throw a dinosaur for him!
The present:Hank and Bobby stand in front of the brownstone Bobby believes to be the HQ of the Brotherhood. Looks ominous, Hank mocks. Bobby wonders nervously what to do if evil mutants come out looking for a fight. There is only the two of them. On the off chance that building is in fact full of evil mutants, he’ll stand stunned in silence for a while, then they’ll take the next train back to tell the professor, Hank decides.
Bobby sees his favorite street vendor and tells Hank he’ll be right back to get lunch. Hank sighs, then sees a huge sign announcing the mutant menace. Saddened, he looks down. On the other side of the street, he sees Professor Xavier entering the building. Hank decides to crawl up the wall and look inside where indeed Xavier is meeting the Brotherhood.
What does he want? Magneto asks. He wanted a chance to speak, Xavier replies. The Blob threatens to throw him out of the window, but Magneto orders him to stop threatening his betters. Xavier could liquefy his brain just to watch it drip out of his eyes. He tells Charles this is a waste of time. But he’ll always admire his tenacity. Come on back, he suggests. The least he can do is beat him at chess. Doesn’t it usually work the other way round? Charles smiles. They leave the room.
A moment later, Toad discovers Hank and Blob smashes the wall. He and Toad jumo after Beast while Quicksilver already arrives downstairs followed by the Scarlet Witch. Hank admits they have him at a disadvantage.
On the other side of the street, Bobby calls his name, but a moment later a kid is about to be flattened by a truck. Bobby pushes him aside with an iceslide. Incoming! he warns Hank who catches the boy as he falls. Scared, the boy shoves him away and calls him a mutie freak. By now, a crowd of youngsters has gathered and throws things at the two X-Men, believing they attacked the boy.
Amused at their humiliation, the Brotherhood members leave. The police come and the boy points at the X-Men who decide to run. Bobby mumbles about their lack of gratitude but points out to Hank that he was right: Evil mutant headquarters! Stick a pin in the map!
Back at Xavier’s, Bobby tells Jean it’s still weird to him that she lives down the hall. Being in a girl’s bedroom makes a guy tingly. Gotta keep some of those creepier thoughts locked up in his head, Jean agrees, while playing with her cell phone. He asks if she has seen Hank tonight. He insisted on taking a later train in from the city, but hasn’t come home yet.
Jean recalls the professor was complaining Hank missed one-on-ones, but that was a couple of hours ago. She heard they found Magneto’s hideout. Bobby suggests they call it a lair instead of a hideout.
Two weeks ago in the Savage Land:Marvel Girl is trying to distract the dinosaur with some rocks she floats at him. Angel suggests she whack him in the head a couple of times. She tells him to shut up. Unfortunately that moment, the dinosaur swats her with his tail. He’s about to chomp down on her when he is hit by an optic blast. The cavalry in the form of Beast and Cyclops has arrived.
Cyclops orders Jean to stay down and blasts away at the dino. When he’s down Hank frees them. Jean walks past Angel and hugs Scott, then kisses him.
The present:Three weeks after Hank left, Iceman slides on a chair on an inceramp he created in the hallway, depressed at the loss of his best friend. He slides past the Danger Room when he hears Cyclops give the order “Iceman, left flank!” Surprised, Bobby looks inside the Danger Room to see Cyclops has created an X-Men team of Danger Room dupes to help him fight zombie Nazis.
Bobby orders the programn to pause. He’s kind of in the middle of soemthing here, Cyclops tells him. Yeah, something weird, Bobby agrees. Fake Jean, fake Hank and fake Warren, even fake him freezing Nazi zombies. Here’s a real him who likes freezing zombies.
Cyclops tries to explain it’s a command exercise. It helps him see— Bobby shouts this is frigging awesome! He points at the frozen images of Beast hanging down headfirst from Angel, decapitating two Nazi zombies. Hank and Warren should totally do this stuff in real life! he gushes. It makes both of their powers so much cooler! If Hank ever comes back…
Scott is flattered. Bobby decides he wants in. This isn’t group training, Scott protests. It only works because the virtual X-Men do exactly what he tells them. It’s teaching him—
Does he have any idea how much suck there is in his life right now? Bobby asks. He hasn’t talked to his best friend in weeks. Not since he quit the team by ditching him in the city. The only girl in a three square mile radius thinks of him as her annoying little brother. They haven’t had a real mission in a month and he’s beaten every single video game in the mansion. He ices up. He can be Scott’s Iceman. He’ll do whatever he says!
Another day. Outside the grounds, Jean is supposed to levitate the man-sized pieces of a huge chess game. She doesn’t understand the point of this, she tells Xavier. She couldn’t even beat him at regular chess. It’s not about winning the game, he informs her. They are working on mental concentration while using her telekinesis. She possesses a very powerful abilty even among other mutants. But in order to take full advantage of that near limitless potental, she’ll need to learn to multi-task. Pawn to queen’s bishop two.
Jean moves the pieces accordingly. It would be a lot more fun if they were playing giant floating scrabble.
Her move is interrupted by Hank, who asks Xavier if he could have a word. Jean is happily surprised but loses concentration, dropping all the pieces.
Hank explains the way he quit wasn’t dignified. At the very least, he owes Xavier an explanation in person. Also, he wanted to get his laptop. Hank continues that figihting is part of who he is. The X-Men gave him an outlet for this, soemthng to fight for. But the more he sees of the world and how it currently works, he can’t go on fighting for Xavier’s beliefs. Humans don’t accept this. They hate them. He is done fighting for them!
What does he expect him to say? Xavier asks. That he understands and respects… Hank begins.Oh, he understands, Xavier interrupts him, and obviously he is free to do as he likes. But don’t ever expect him to respect his giving up. To condone walking away from something important because it’s harder than expected. That’s beneath both of them!
In a huff, Hank stomps off before getting the parting shot that he saw Xavier and Magneto together. He sent them out to die at that sociopath’s hands and the two of them run off and have high tea together! That’s why he quit! The professor disappoints him! He slams the door.
Xavier turns to Jean, beginning that Magneto was once called Erik. He doesn’t have to explain to her, she begins. They both know he does, Xavier replies. Erik was like a brother to him once. Always misguided. Always too quick to react. Too angry by half. But a good man whose only sin was wanting the best for mutantkind. Somewhere along the way, he became this villain. His old friend is a terrorist now. He stands firmly in the way of the future they are trying so hard to build. He’ll fight Magneto at every turn but he doesn’t know how to give up on him.
Jean sighs she’s been waiting for months for someone to call him on his crap. She finally gets it and he goes all honest and ruins it for her.
A bit later, Jean meets Warren in the kitchen and wants to tell him about what just happened. But she knows it’s been weird between them lately and wants to make sure this won’t be that. Okay, he agrees, just tell him why she hasn’t wanted to talk to him for about a month and they’ll shoot right past that. Jean warns him that would make them both super uncomfortable. She gives in, admitting she had a stupid crush on him, her rich, charming pretty-boy best friend. Of course she did! She’s an idiot. But she’s completely over it now. She swipes his chocolate milk.
She was into him? he asks and suddenly kisses her. That was mean! she announces. He made it weird again! She stalks off. Smooth, he sighs, then notices Scott has seen them. Without a word, Scott turns around. Real smooth, Warren sighs.
Jean visits Hank in his apartment, which Bobby has sussed out. Jean instantly tells him Bobby misses him. He hasn’t come because Hank hurt his feelings. Beast replies he needs some distance between himself and all things X-Men right now. Focus on his real life getting off the ground. Bobby will be fine without him, so if she came over to—
She interrupts that she came here because Warren kissed her and she is in no way ready to deal with this. He thought she and Scott were… Jean suggests she won’t make him feel bad about Bobby if he doesn’t bring up the other two. Fair enough, Hank agrees. The odd jobs he’s procured don’t exactly allow for great hosptiality but he can offer her one of two tasty variants of granola bars. Jean asks him why he quit.
Hank’s story:Whe he was young everyone thought of him as a brain. He spoke oddly, always had his head in a book or his hand raised with the correct answer. There’s not a lot of respect for that sort of thing in grammar school. But he liked being smart. So he learned to ignore the ridicule.
Then one day his mutation manifested. All of a sudden he was stronger and faster than his classmates. An athlete overnight. Everyone forgot all about his brain and branded him a jock. He didn’t understand it but he liked sports and the popularity that came with them, so he learned to play.
Eventually, when people began to guess why he might be stronger and faster, they changed their minds again. He joined the X-Men because the professor convinced him he could be all of those things. The brain, the beast and the mutant. That he could help open minds. Help show the world they are more than what they’ve labelled them.End of story.
And now… Hank returns to his device. He quit because the professor lied. Jean explains the professor drives her nuts as well, but he told her about the Magneto thing. They used to be friends. Hes not working with the enemy.
Hank interrupts that he’s sure Xavier has reasons for colluding with a known terrorist. But that’s not the lie to which he was referring. He lies to them and likely to himself every time he talks about how the X-Men will change the world with a group of naïve kids dressed like superheroes punching things. If anything, they prove to the already frightened masses that mutants truly are scary and different. Humans hate them and that will never change. And he is too smart to go on pretending differently. If he is going to change the world, it will be as a scientist or an engineer, not a superhero. Not as the Beast!
Jean remarks that she’d be stupid to jump in the middle of an argument between two people way smarter than her. But one of those guys told her today that no matter what he will never give up on his friend. The other said his best friend can do without him. And that he’s pretty much given up on the world. She can hardly believe it, but he just made her proud to be an X-Man!
Some time later.Unus the Untouchable is robbing a bank. The four remaining X-Men are on the scene. A bankrobbing professional wrestler, Iceman mocks his costume. Cyclops reminds him that Unus just took out a SWAT team unarmed.
Iceman creates a spiky icefist and tries to attack Unus who deflects him with his forcfield. Cyclops sighs and asks Angel to catch him. Jean suggests she grab Unus and Scott blasts him. Jean tries to and tells Cyclops to blast him when Unus comes on to her. However, the blast is deflectd at Jean, who is thrown against a police car.
Someone needs to tell the guy wrestling is fake! Bobby shouts. When Angel sees Jean hurt, he wants to attack, but Cyclops orders him to stop. When Angel ignores him, Cyclops blasts him down. What’s wrong with him? Angel shouts. He was acting like an idiot! Cyclops retorts. Rushing Unus didn’t work when Bobby did it and –“You don’t fire at me! Ever!” Angel shouts. They both know what this is really about. And Scott is the diot who just blasted her into a cop car!
Unus laughs at the show, but now he thinks he will beat them, take the money and go.
Iceman nervously points out Unus was doing a good job beating them when he was just standing there. Think Danger Room! he tells Cyclops. He’s got this. What would he do there? Cyclops stammers he doesn’t know. Yes, he does, Iceman insists. He does this every day! Worse stuff than this guy. They need him to lead right now!
Okay, Scott decides. They can’t touch him. Attacking him directly doesn’t work. Unus is about to hit him as Scott wants to announce his plan. The next moment, Unus is captured by a forcefield, courtesy of a weapon Beast is holding.
Beast apologizes for his tardiness. They wouldn’t allow his weapon on the train. Jean hugs him in relief. They were about to get wrestled to death by that guy! What did he do to him? Well, he developed this alternating ion ray and… she’s not going to care about any of this. She tells him she’s so glad he’s back. Hank admits he was behaving like a big selfish fool. Is that so? Jean asks. Besides when you look this good in yellow—
They didn’t need his help! a hostile Iceman announces. He quit and that’s just fine, because they were doing great without him. So don’t stand there thinking he’s saved the day or whatever. He doesn’t, Hank begins to stammer. Get over himself! Bobby tells him and walks away. Welcome back, Jean sighs.
Some time later, Jean and Hank eat in the kitchen where Scott is already having soup like he’s had for every day for a week. Jean figures he hates her. Jean tries to begin a conversation. She saw Bobby this morning on his way out. He seemed pretty excited about Scott’s new Danger Room program. That’s about all he’d say, since he flat out refuses to tell them what it is. Fascinating, is all Scott says. Jean winces.
Warren comes in, bringing pizza. He suggests they eat it, forget all the crap and blammo, friends again! Jean and Hank roll their eyes. Scott just glares, then gets up, announcing he has practice.
What about her? Warren hopefully asks Jean. Accept a guy’s peace offering? Nobody wants his pizza! she shoots back and walks off.
He thought that might work, Warren sighs. It might have, if they were both toddlers, Hank remarks.
Entitled moron! Cyclops mutters in the Danger Room as he starts a dystopian sequence. Gve him six Trask Sentinels! he orders. Safety mode off! Bring on the X-Men avatars! With Iceman not present, that includes his avatar.
Bobby is stuck in the subway, trying to phone Scott who doesn’t pick up. He apologizes for being late and asks him not to start without him. It’s Sentinel day!
However, Cyclops and his fake X-Men are starting the exercise. Suddenly, the roof plates hit Cyclops and the illusion stops. The plates float around and form a cage around Cyclops. Trapped in the darkness, Scott tries to reach the professor for help.
In his study, Xavier “hears” him and asks what’s wrong. Suddenly, a very familiar floating helmet hits Xavier. His wheelchair transforms into metal bonds holding himfast while the Magneto helmet covers Xavier’s head. “Erik… no…” he mutters.
Unaware of all this, Hank finds Jean in his lab. She is unsure if she was waiting for him or hiding. Somersaulting to the ceiling, he informs her Warren stress-ate the entire pizza by himself. Good, she agrees. She has these two boys in quite a state, Hank points out. Has it occurred to her that all of their future lunches might be more pleasant if she would simply—New subject! Jean orders.
Touching a device, Jean remarks that it’s cool that the professor sold all his wines and let him build a lab down here. Hank agrees though it wasn’t entirely his idea. Seems someone mentioned to Xavier that Hank might benefit fom a bit more intellctual stimulation. Somebody awesome, she bets, Jean agrees.
Are they sure it’s safe for them to be playing down here? comes the voice of Magneto. He gestures and the metal flies around, metal cables ensnaring Hank.
Jean orders him to stop and levitates several heavy obejcts. Magneto remarks he’s sure one of these days the world will take her very seriously. But today is not that day. Today they’ve already lost!
Bobby finally reaches the mansion. He runs inside. Warren comes flying forward shouting at him to go. Magneto’s here! Cables burst from the ground and ensnare Angel, who shouts he has the professor, before he is dragged down.
In the darkness, Cyclops hears Magneto addressing him. Magneto informs him he is sorry. He takes no joy in embarassing mutant teenagers. But he has tolerated the X-Men’s interference long enough. That part of their relationship is done. This is a war! Mutant versus human. They are the superior race and it is time to fight for their people. It is time they chose a side.
They are on the professor’s side, Scott replies. Magneto agrees that Xavier is a great man. But he took him out of this fight in seven seconds, because Xavier doesn’t know the difference between a philosophical debate and war. The professor’s side is no longer an option! He doesn’t expect to convince Scott at once. Trust takes time. He is going to open up his cell now and give him a present. He trusts Scott is smart enough to keep those red eyes closed while he does it. Should be an interesting exercise.
Scott agrees, but touches his visor. Luckily, he doesn’t fire, as Magneto is holding Jean in front of him. Magneto congratulates him for not killing his friend, as he pushes Jean inside the cell and then closes it up again.
Scott worries if he hurt Jean. She’s fine, she tells him, but he was choking Hank! What are they going to do? Magneto could kill everybody!
Scott agrees, but this is not what this is about. Magneto is flexing, trying to rattle them or maybe impress them. He doesn’t want to kill mutants but recruit them. He thinks if he shows up and shames the professor, they will switch side.
He didn’t see what he was doing to Hank, Jean points out. Scott replies that was for Jean’s benefit. Because her biggest weakness – her only weakness – is self-doubt. She doesn’t see it, but Marvel Girl is a hundred times more powerful than Beast. Magneto wanted this doen quickly and fighting her would have been messy. He’s betting Hank is fine.
Jean admits he is really good at this stuff. Sarcastically, he replies he’s amazing at getting his butt handed to him, see all the angles and choking when it counts. Freezing up and missing an opportunity! She asks him not to do this.
Magneto walks through the hallway, figuring Iceman shoud have returned by now. Bobby attacks him with a snowball from behind. Magneto fires a metal piece at him and the artificial iceform breaks apart. While Magneto looks at it in confusion, the real Iceman sneaks up and freezez him in a glacier and runs off. Angrily, Magneto uses all metal objects in the house to begin chipping away at his iceprison.
In their prison, Jean announces they are going to have this conversation now because he’s has to get over this. Cyclops interrupts that he gets it - Warren is the kind of guy who gets the girl. It sucks, but it makes sense. She tells him he sounds like an idiot. She couldn’t have expressed more interest with a billboard on the freeway! Scott is the kind of guy who gets her. He’s smart and loyal. He doesn’t ever talk, unless he has something to say. He’s the most dedicated guy she’s ever met in her life. A life he’s saved about a million times at this point! He’s her stupid hero!
What about Warren? he asks. He s almost as dumb as Scott is, she replies. He kissed her because he misunderstood something she shouldn’t have told him. But it’s not Warren’s fault Scott never asked her out. She will make this easy for him. Yes, she will totally go out with him! But only if he blasts them the hell out of this thing. “Your X-Men are in trouble, Cyclops. It’s time to be the leader. Time to step up!” Cyclops blasts upwards.
Further up in the mansion, Iceman and Beast whom he has freed have heard. Hank tries to thank him. He was suffocating there and Bobby-- If he tries to hug him again, Bobby warns, he’s going to freeze his monkey hands together. They’re cool. He is welcome! They find Angel tied up by metal cables. Bobby begins freeing him.
Jean and Scott are in the study and have found the professos. Xavier explains the helmet blocks psychic trespasses. Seems it works the other way as well.
The others join them and Bobby suggests they yank this sucker off. Cyclops states they can’t budge Xavier’s restraints, so they need to move the wall. He orders Bobby to freeze the plaster around Xavier. Hank is to handle the helmet. He’s going to blast the wall and Jean is to lift the professor out on his mark.
Warren asks if Jean fixed Scott. The two of them are going to be great. Jean rolls her eyes and tells him he is an idiot. Warren apologizes about the kiss and before that, about everytihng. Can they forget it and go back to being besties?
That moment, metal explodes in the room. Magneto grabs Xavier, asking how may ways must he prove that they cannot defeat him. Jean notices the professor is smiling in spite of it all. Magneto came here to teach them a lesson, she figures. And the professor is smiling because that’s exactly what happened.
Jean announces that she thinks they got this. Magneto wants them to believe this is the fight of their lives and that they’ve already lost. But he’s been here all day and they’ve taken everything he’s got. This isn’t the fight of their lives. This is their fight of right now! There’s gonna be another one tomorrow and probably the day after that. But this is Xavier’s school. They’ve been taught how to fight. They are X-Men!
And so, the X-Men attack Magneto while Jean figures that punching bad guys in the teeth and changing the world beats the hell out of calculus…


[User]
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Provide a full summary of the comic book.

[Assistant]
untitled
Kavita Rao is about to die. It’s an annoying prospect. She’s been in the X-Club just about one year, R&Ding for the X-Men. Doing some good; saving the world without recourse to costume or codename. Seems downright premature to quit right now. Still, hell of a ride for a gene-jockey from Calcutta. Re-floating asteroids, daytrips to the 1900’s, fundamentalist freaks and a whole heap of eyestrain. All to reboot a dying breed. Ambitious, exhilarating, important – a dream job. Up until the oil rigs arrived. Weird-tech in need of inspection. The science team’s stock in trade. (not that anyone asked her).
So she and her fellow members of the X-club, Dr. Nemesis and Madison Jeffries, examined one of the rigs. When they discovered something… and the countdown began.
9 seconds.“Oh nonono!” Kavita mutters, while Nemesis addresses Jeffries as Neurotic-Machine-Canuck and orders him: “Trap. Unspring.”
8 seconds:Nothing’s working, Jeffries replies. “So help me, redneck,” Nemesis threatens, if they die here, he will see to it that his terminal consideration is Nemesis’ boot up his coon. Try! More! Stuff!
She decides he boys have the gallows-banter covered and gets back to her life flashing before her eyes. It’s pitifully quick.
7 seconds:India, England, America. A passion for knowledge. A talent for hypothesis and the youthful certainty that she’d change the world. All of it numbed, tranquilized by too many years of protein and Petris and paychecks until… Until…
6 seconds:…until the thing she’d rather not remember. So she distracts herself instead, wondering which triumphant memories her colleagues will pick for their own final moments.
Something’s blocking him, Jeffries announces. “Some typa nullfield…” “Save it for the balding thesp, LaForge!” Nemesis shouts back. “Press everything!”
5 seconds:Madison Jeffries. A mechanical telekine. Sort of Rain Man with added diodes, lingering, she figures, on some tech-head moment of cyber success—just one among many.
Jeffries’ memory:What Jeffries recalls is a moment of failure – one of many.
4 seconds:And Doctor Nemesis, biologically and intellectually super-evolved. Pausing no doubt to recall some bygone instant of cerebral brilliance, devoid of all self doubt.
(What Nemesis does remember is being captured by Nazi sharks.)
3 seconds:No such prides for her – and no hiding from the shame either. Her lifetime’s one defining act, forcing its way to the fore.
2 seconds.The Hope serum …changing the world just like she wanted. Well-intentioned, sure, but bitter all the same. Misused, ill-conceived… ugly. Designed to heal what was never broken…
1 second:
And since then? The hunt for redemption. An attempt to atone, to save the race she’d once considered a disease. Too much unfinished business.
0 seconds:“Oh crap,” Jeffries mutters. He warned him! Nemesis shouts and gets ready to kick him.
Energy flashes. Everything turns white and the three of them find themselves somewhere else, in a field of rubble.
An insane-looking man with a wild beard and mane laughs. He knew it! He knew it would be them! But they must act fast -they must wear these, hurry! He throws mechanical collars at them. Is… he God? Jeffries asks. Calling him Box, Nemesis announces he will handle this. Harumphing, he announces they are scientists. Perhaps he’d be so kind as to explain, preferably using logic and sense, precisely what the &%$& is going onhere? No time! the stranger announce nervously. The Hub will already know they are here. It can taste their minds. The drones will be coming, they must put the collar on!
Jeffries tries to scan the collar but his powers seems different. He should be able to sense the metals all around but it’s like he can only feel it close up. It’s the hub, the stranger repeats it’s trying to get into his brain. It craves mutant psyches. Please! he begs.
His back turned to the others, Nemesis snaps his fingers. He has it - they’ve been teleported to the land of excitable cretins! He’s often theorized such a dimension exists. He simply thought he was already in it. Now he knows. Too late, the stranger sighs.
The enemies that have caught up to them seem to be energy forms more than anything else, held together by certain devices, one consists of ruby-red energy, another of mercury, one of ice and another of black solar energy.
The stranger switches the collars onto the three scientists. They are now psychically invisible to them, he explains. Right, good, Nemesis remarks. Just the minor matter of all the regular senses then. Sharp as ever, the stranger agrees and tells them to run, which they do. He is going to draw them off, he announces and tells the two men to protect Dr. Rao at any cost. She’s here to save the world! As he draws their fire, Jeffries mutters that he swears he recognizes the guy. Wouldn’t surprise him, Nemesis remarks. He imagines he’s mentally ill, too.
The next moment, an optic blast of the red energy being almost hits them. Any suggestions, oh, savior of the world? Nemesis asks Kavita who is out of ideas. Remarkable, Nemesis mocks. The planet’s in safe hands. Jeffries? he asks and is told to hold still. Jeffries concentrates, metal rises around them and suddenly the energy being is hit with something and withdraws. Nano-oscillators invert the ambient vibrations, Jeffries explains. Sorta anti-noise. Totally disorienting. Nemesis for once is impressed.
That moment, the stranger shows up again, only to be dragged back, imprisoned by the Mercury being. “Oh… muh… my s-stars and… garters” he mumbles. The three scientists think the same thing. Ridiculous! Nemesis breaks the silence as they walk through the ruins. That deranged old lunatic was not Hank McCoy! But that was his catchphrase, Kavita points out nervously. Phht, by that logic he could grow those sideburns he’s always wanted, by calling people “bub” and shouting “snikt” a lot, Nemesis scoffs. Surely it doesn’t matter who he was, Kavita continues. They have to help him. He could be the last person alive here…
That same moment, they come across a crowd of bedraggled and ragged people. “Any other genius hypotheses, No-Power-Girl?” Nemesis asks. Fed up, Kavita tells him to spare her the mutant-snob crap. That old man was waiting for them. He knows why they are here and how they can get back. He does remember? The minor matter of a war to fight. The one where they are all on the same &/%$ing side?
Jeffries agrees. And if they do rescue him, he can totally explain how Kavita’s supposed to save the world. His points exactly! Nemesis insists. The man’s deranged. Then perhaps he could explain how else they are going to get some answers, Kavita shoots back. They are scientists, madam, she is told. They deduce.
The find a plate in what used to be the Golden Gate Park. Now it is defaced with the writing Hub feeds Hub grows Hub knows. There, he tells them. Still in San Francisco.
They talk to a local who tries to remember the year. Twenny-thirty? Twenny-forty? Whassa difference? Nearby they see the energy beings gathering helpless prisoners. Another stranger offers to sell them a kittensnack. Live or on the grill – best price!
The three scientists stumble through the wasteland finding a crowd gathered around a mad prophet. Finding a headstone, Kavita remarks that this started a few days after they left. Jeffries wonders who won the war between the X-Men and Bastion. Nemesis interrupts that this is painfully obvious. Whatever malign force has overcome this world, there are no X-Men left to oppose this. This is a future without mutants. Now… he proposes they rescue that old man. Perhaps he can elaborate further. He ignores Kavita’s withering glare, considering he ridiculed that idea when it came from her.
They find him at Pier 39, guarded by two of the energy beings. In the meantime, the three scientists have bought a kitten. This doesn’t seem very ethical, Kavita sighs, looking at the cat. Oh please, Nemesis scoffs, if cats had thumbs they’ have done far worse to humans by now. And at least this way the critter has a fighting chance, Jeffries points out. That feller was selling them with ketchup!
Nemesis asks Jeffries for a mirror. He looks into it as he presses a syringe to his brain, seeing his face without any skin. Having extracted psychically active cerebral fluid containing a viable X-gene from his brain, he injects the kitten with it. Behold: the world’s first truly evil pretend-mutant, and an irresistible treat for any psychic predator, he announces. Let’s just hope the little bastard can run! And run the poor kitten does, chased by the two guards.
The three scientists take the opportunity. Jeffries disables the prison and the prisoners flee. Nemesis grabs the old McCoy. “Science ho!” he announces as the four of them run for it.
Finally, the old man has gotten them to his hideout His name is Dr. Henry Phillip McCoy, he begins his tale. Thirty years ago he looked like the illegitimate offspring of Aslan and the Cookie Monster. Today he is an old man. Only an old man.
Dr. Nemesis doesn’t buy it. You can’t demutate! McCoy tells Dr. Rao that’s her cue. It’s not impossible, she explains and finally tells them about the Cure she invented, how it was destroyed and how, when she truly understood what she had made she was glad to see it burn. But there was one sample left. McCoy kept it. Defensively she adds that she should have stopped him but she supposes she was sort of proud that someone like him would be fascinated by her creation. Nemesis scoffs. Why would he want something like that? Just in case, McCoy replies and continues his tale.
McCoy’s story.Thirty years ago, the tech-villain Bastion tried to annihilate the remnants of the mutant race and they beat him. Lord help them, they beat him!
It was a hard-won victory. There were deaths and disasters… collateral damage. They discovered too late he’d corrupted and cloned the X-Men’s own tech. The island’s defenses, the power-grid, even Danger’s hard light systems…. But they won, in spite of it all. Mutantkind rallied behind the savior-child Hope, and they faced a brighter future united.
And… and then she changed changed, and kept changing. Every year another mutation, another energy level. It began to physically affect the mutants around her. Exaggerating their power sets, swelling their strengths. And then it got into their brains. A psychic signal, eating their minds. She meant no harm, just couldn’t control it. They became drones, obsessed with feeding her, keeping her safe.
End of the narration
The mutant race has become a single, self-serving, psychic entity. Its limbs are the creatures they met before – all that remains of the X-Men. And its belly, the great unthinking hub, is the child they thought would save them all. She’s too strong. The world is already cracking up around her and the latest reconfiguration is already under way. He doubts the planet can take it.
They look at the dark sky and thunderstorms. Welcome to the future of the mutant race, McCoy continues darkly. He injected that serum the same day his friends became monsters.
McCoy’s narration:Of course it wasn’t until later he realized how foolish he had been. That sample… it’s the only thing that might have saved them all and he wasted it on himself. Hope’s too powerful to kill… but a cure? It would spread through the psychic network like a cleansing flame, purging every linked cell and end the horror forever! He spent years trying to recreate Dr. Rao’s masterstroke all without success but then he remembered Bastion’s last words: McCoy, … May 4th…2039…conservatory of flowers… Golden Gate Park… help her…End of the narration.
All three men look at Kavita Rao. Then it’s settled, Nemesis announces. Bastion sent them here as a contingency against his failure in the past. Kavita can re-synthesize the serum, and— What? she asks She can’t believe him accepting this so lightly. Intellectual pragmatism, he tells her condescendingly, Unpalatable or not, Bastion’s plan works! Unpalatable? she repeats enraged. It’s the death of a species! It’s abhorrent! No! he shouts, pointing at the darkened sky. That is abhorrent! Curing the planet of a sickness is a virtue, not a crime…
Defensively, Rao replies that someone else tried to excuse genocide that way once. He died in a bunker under Berlin and the whole world cheered! Flabbergasted and furious, Nemesis actually draws his weapon. How dare she compare him to— “That’ll do, James,” McCoy tells him gently and pushes the gun aside. This is nothing like that, he tells Kavita. Nobody need die. An entire race will die, she replies, tears in her eyes. Whether the bodies it lived in keep breathing or not.
What does she care anyway? the still-insulted Nemesis mumbles. It’s not even her race. Jeffries isn’t paying attention. In another corner of the room McCoy still tries to convince Kavita. Mutantkind was a dream. A beautiful beguiling dream but… If he says “it turned into a nightmare,” she’ll set fire to his face, Kavita warns him. Just because it’s corny doesn’t make it wrong, McCoy points out. Some experiments just don’t turn out the way they want them to. Ever scientist knows that. You’ve still got to clean up the lab afterwards.
And so she does it. Heavyhearted, blinking through tears, avoiding the others’ eyes. She slips off her Mala bracelet and begins to decode the formula she encrypted there long ago. She wonders why she kept it all this time. Fascination, maybe. The same reason Hank kept that fateful sample. Or maybe just to remind herself, Well-intentioned or not, naïve or not: she came close to causing an extinction and now she’s supposed to do it again. But then what choice is here?
And so, after some time, she announces it is done, holding a sample in her hand. However, she adds that she left several components out. She doesn’t want it active until they are sure it’s needed. He understands, McCoy replies and praises her. He’s been planning the final stage a long time. He’s afraid it might become rather unpleasant. Nemesis translates: “thanks for the poison, princess, but leave the running and jumping to the pros.”
Hank holds out his hand, but Kavita refuses to hand it over. It’s her responsibility. Her burden. He heard her, Nemesis orders. Frodo wants to come to Mordor.
And so they make their way to the hub through tunnels. She recognizes it of course, Utopia. A corrupted sanctuary. All these places she knows, the community she helped design. Soured, warped, a twisted version of something noble. She knows exactly how that feels. Are these really the X-Men? she wonders. The champions of a new humanity who taught her so much and forgave her sins? Now too busy prepping psychic munchies to notice intruders. Has the dream truly become a disease? Is there really no final tiny trace… no lingering morsel of hope?
They finally reach the Hub, where Hope hangs suspended, glowing with energy. Surrounding the dais beneath her are the victims she is fed with.
All right, Nemesis tells his group cringing in a corner, they stick to the plan. No-power-girl and Not-a-cat-man: they cut round the perimeter. Insane-tech-guy will be running interference with him. Insane-tech-guy? he repeats. But Jeffries shouts that she is in his head. The collar came off! He screams in pain. Run? Kavita asks. Run, McCoy replies. Run! Nemesis shouts as Jeffries finds himself overwhelmed and the energy beings come to attack.
However, soon they find themselves surrounded. Nemesis fires his weapon at them, ordering Kavita and McCoy to go. He calls after Kavita. In the name of progress, justice and not being haunted by the pissed-off ghost of an aging genius, she will finish what they started. Do. Not. Flake! Ha, invisible, is it? he shouts at one attacker. Science-gaze sees all, brainfail! There will be crotch-punching! However, another energy being has snuck up on him and Dr. Nemesis disappears.
McCoy and Kavita climb up the dais. McCoy orders her to mix the serum. They can deploy it from here. There must be another way, she insists. “Oh my stars and garters,” McCoy mumbles as Hope reaches out for them, begging Kavita to help, It hurts and she can’t stop it! The next reconfiguration is about to begin.
Kavita decides and acts. “No more mutants!” she stammers and points the device at Hope, then lowers it. She can’t! She’s done enough, McCoy assures her and takes the device, from it he takes the sample and then laughs nastily as an artificial voice announces it is analyzing the artifact.
Light engulfs them and suddenly there is just an empty room and the X-Club and a smirking man and goons of the Sapien League who have trained their weapons on them. The man orders them not to move. Is he God? Jeffries asks. Nemesis recognizes him as Graydon Creed though. He’s dead, he announces accusingly. Beats being a gullible moron, comes the reply. Meaning he believes he has his first test subject. “Enjoy those eyes while you still can, old man.”
The artificial voice announces that the analysis is complete. Jeffries doesn’t get it. Nemesis does. It was all there! he shouts. Jeffries’ senses being on the fritz. His eyes not working right. Hank “literati” McCoy using a Godawful cliché about dreams and nightmares. They even told them Bastion cloned Danger’s hard light tech. Jeffries still doesn’t get it. It was a simulation! Nemesis shouts impatiently. The whole damn thing! They’ve been &%$/ing holo-decked! He means, the kitten didn’t die? Jeffries inquires. This is all his fault, Nemesis rants. If only he’d realizes sooner!
She did, Kavita replies quietly It’s all pretty obvious when you think about it. These scoundrels want the serum formula for themselves. A lot easier to medicate mutants than kill them all. They simply tricked the science team into giving the formula away.
Top of the class, Creed agrees, clapping his hands. Thanks to her, Lord Bastion’s slaughter of the X-Men is a moot point. Synthesis complete! the artificial voice announces. Actually, it’s not, Kavita insists. The synthesized serum begins to glow. Kavita explains she had no intention of recreating the serum; she synthesized an unstable pyrovirus instead. X-Club, run! she orders, and they do, running outside and jumping off the platform into the water, shortly before the platform explodes.
Nemesis is at a loss for words, finally announcing that when it comes to science the ties that bind collaborators are built on respect and results and he wants her to know that from here on in, he… uh… It’s all right, she interrupts, she understands and thanks him. Now what say they quit destroying things and get back to saving them? She takes off her bracelet and tosses it behind her but it bounces back, bounces off a giant red energy dome surrounding San Francisco. Oh crap! one of them mutters.


[User]
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Provide a full summary of the comic book.

[Assistant]
Second Coming: Chapter 14
Chapter 1:
All the X-Men stand in awe, as Hope has just come into her powers and used them to destroy Bastion. Some feel terror at what they have seen, some relief. Watching them from the helicopter, Xavier thinks all of this feels like a dream somehow. His dream. Then it passes. Hope almost falls to the ground, then staggers to what is left of her foster father Cable, his bionic arm. Holding it, she passes out.
She slowly comes to again, in the medlab where she witnesses how Beast resets Colossus’ broken arm in his armored state. Noticing she’s awake, Beast turns to Hope and begins examining her. She’s been out around 30 hours, he tells her. She seems fine. He’ll be back to check on her in a bit.
He turns to Dr. Nemesis who, like the rest of the X-Club members, is busy treating injured X-Men. Nemesis is trying to help fix Archangel but finds that the wings don’t react like biological tissue. He has doubts Warren can heal in this more grim form. Kavita Rao is tending to Iceman who is healing nicely. Karma is a bit less happy, as Madison Jeffries shows her the prosthesis he made for her leg. He said it was going to be sexy, she remarks accusingly. It is sexy, he informs her as he attaches it to her thigh. Every other cybernetic prosthetic that sees this is going to be so jealous! God, he’s weird, she states disgusted. She’s calling him weird, he informs the prosthesis, not it.
It took her much less than a week, didn’t it? someone breaks Hope out of her reverie as she watches all this. It’s Magneto on the bed next to her. What is he talking about? Hope asks confused. He reminds her of their first meeting. She had told him to give her a week. She was joking, Hope points out. There was truth in her jest, it would seem, he states. He heard she obliterated Bastion as if he were a toy. She doesn’t remember, she claims. Is that bad? Does he think she is dangerous?
Ah, come, why would anyone think that? comes the cynical comment from Hellion, now without hands. He’d give his head a good scratch about it but, well, you know. By the way, does she know where he can get a good bidet? Boy, Magneto addresses him with a cool look and orders him to run along. Okay, Hellion replies in a small voice and complies.
Magneto suggests to Hope they should be resting and adds she shouldn’t worry. It’s sometimes quite beneficial to be thought of as dangerous…
Chapter 2:
Flashback:
Somewhere in a dystopic future.
He’s got him, Hope tells Cable. She thinks this was the last of them. They were setting up an ambush. As soon as Cable walked into the door, they would have opened up on him. Good thing they both prefer the window, Cable remarks and commends her for her work. He then orders her to check the bodies for ammo and water. They are short on both. Both of them get to work scavenging, then leave for the wilderness where they build a fire.
What’s on her mind? Cable asks. Nothing, she’s just tired, she claims. Cable doesn’t believe her. Does she think those raiders are still following them? No, she replies, but he almost died today when that guy turned his gun on him. If he’d been half a second slower, he’d have cut Nathan in two. He wasn’t and he didn’t, Nate replies forcefully and takes her hand. That doesn’t stop her think about it, about walking back across this desert or another desert alone. Not going to happen, he promises. She isn’t getting rid of him that easy.
The present:
All residents of Utopia are gathered for Cable’s funeral.
Cyclops begins to read from a speech he’s prepared. My son… Nathan. He can’t go on, clearly overcome with grief.
Hope steps forward and begins to speak. Nathan Christopher Summers was born into a battle. And his life was a war. All the time she knew him he grabbed sleep in ten minute stretches. Ate with his back to a wall. Never sat long enough to make an easy target. They know what she means… He was a soldier. To the last inch and ounce of him, Cable was a soldier. And there are three blessing a soldier prays for. To fight for things that matter – things that are real. To find comrades who he loves and trusts, to fight alongside him and to die on his feet. Her dad got three for three. So don’t cry for him. Nobody needs to cry for Nathan Summers, she states, her own tears belying her words.
Later, she sits alone on a cliff looking down at the ocean. The younger X-Men members are watching her from a distance. Someone should be with her, Trance suggests. But what do they say? Bling asks. What can they say to her? Doesn’t matter what they say, Prodigy announces darkly. He’s assuming they saw what she did. How her power works. Anything they can do, anything any of them can do, she’s already there. It’s like someone made a voodoo doll for the whole mutant race. That’s what Hope is. She’s them. All of them. So whatever they want to say to her, she probably already knows.
After the ceremony, Cyclops takes Rogue aside. Does he really want to have that conversation now? she asks. Why not? he retorts. It’s never going to be more relevant. Because of Rogue, they could be burying Hope. What Hope said about Cable, Rogue states, she wanted that for herself too. Not to die hiding in a hole. To be with the people who were dying on her account. All of which makes perfect sense, Cyclops agrees, except that Kurt’s death, Nathan’s death, only mean anything if she lives! He thought Rogue understood that, he also thought she could work as part of a team. She always worked as…
Rogue begins to protest. Please, Cyclops scoffs. She made a decision that blew their whole strategy a mile high. And she made it alone. Hope responds to her and trusts her, so he needs Rogue to stay here and help her cope with all of this. But after what she did he has to see her as the worst kind of loose cannon. She’s off the combat rooster until he tells her different, and don’t hold your breath, he advises.
Chapter 3:
Wolverine sits on the floor in Nightcrawler’s room, already having gone through several beers. Leave him alone, he orders when the door opens. She can’t do that, Storm replies and enters. What is he doing? He explains he came down here all lit up. Had it in his head that people were going to come and take his stuff. He nearly killed one of the students, thinking they were taking something like a damn souvenir.  They were leaving a candle making a shrine. He keeps saying Kurt was the only one who treated him like he wasn’t some kind of animal but he died… knowing that’s exactly what Logan is.
Was he wrong? Storm demands simply. No, comes the reply. She walks up to a framed picture, showing better times. Herself, Kurt, Logan, Scott and Jean laughing. She spoke with Scott about X-Force. He said, he ordered Wolverine to do it. He took full responsibility. She laughed at him and at the thought that anyone could make Wolverine do something. She feels old, she sighs. Every time she feels like she’s cried all the tears she has to cry, there he is again. She is taking this picture. He may try and kill her if he likes. Isn’t that what he does now? He hunts down their enemies and murders them before they can act against the X-Men. This is what X-Force does, correct? Because right now he only thing that’s separating him from their enemies is semantics. Tell her she is wrong, she orders.
She isn’t, he replies, but she wasn’t exactly there, was she. Does she want to judge them from upon her throne? Go ahead. But X-Force was out there trying to prevent all this. Trying to prevent genocide any way they could. If that makes them the bad guys, he’ll take the heat for that.
Storm sits down opposite him, reminding him that X-Men don’t kill. That line may have blurred over the years, but what he and Scott did here… and involving Rahne and James and Laura… He didn’t want that, Logan replies. He didn’t even want Summers involved. The thought of him killing people like that… That’s not him. That’s Wolverine… and she knows what? If he had to do it all over again he would kill more of them. Because maybe if he had killed more of them, Kurt would still be alive.
She’s sorry to hear that. Because that means this could very well be the last drink they will ever share together.
Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco:
She’s out! Logan tells Laura Kinney aka X-23. Is she being punished? his sort of teenage clone asks, uncomprehending. No, he protests. She doesn’t understand. It’s over, Logan states, and even if it weren’t he’s not putting her through any of that again.
But Cyclops ordered her to… she begins. She doesn’t take orders anymore, he tells her. He never should have let her be a part of X-Force. Cyclops used her. He used her. What they did to her was no different than the facility or Weapon X or whoever the &%$% bastards were that made her. She makes her own decisions now and there’s only one question she has to ask herself: What does she want?
Laura doesn’t understand. What does she want? He asks. She wants him to tell her what to do. He refuses. What does she want? She doesn’t know! she shouts. She doesn’t know! That’s a start, he tells her. She wants orders. She wants a mission. Give them to herself for once!
Alcatraz:
Cyclops tells Wolverine that they all came and talked to him individually, the old crew, Storm, Colossus, Iceman… Professor Xavier could see in his thoughts that he didn’t regret anything X-Force did. And he looked at Scott like he was seeing a stranger. Storm laughed at him and asked what he thought Jean would think about X-Force. And Hank… he’s not coming back.
Don’t think it’s gonna stop there, Logan warns him. What does he think will happen once the Avengers find out? They’ll deal with it, Cyclops replies, but whatever happens as of right now it’s a new day. And X-Force isn’t a part of it. Did he miss a meeting or something? Logan scoffs. Last time he looked, there are even less mutants alive now than there were a week ago. And Scott’s little messiah…
Don’t put this on her! Cyclops orders. The world is changing. Osborn is gone. The Avengers are back and the X-Men can stand for something again. Mutantkind is going to survive! They took everything that Bastion had thrown at them and made it through.
Not all of them, Wolverine reminds him… After some silence, Scott muses that maybe the Avengers will come and arrest them. That would be funny. Actually, he’d go to jail with a smile on his face. Because he’d do it all again. Because of what they did here, he knows, that somehow they are going to survive. The X-Men will go on and he doesn’t want X-Force to be a part of this future.
Fine, it’s done, Wolverine agrees and suggests he get some sleep. He looks like /&%$. Relieved, Cyclops thanks him. Wolverine tells him he’ll stay behind. He has some stuff to burn here.
With Cyclops gone, he walks to another room in the complex, apologizing that the conversation went on longer than he thought it would. Went different than he thought it would, too, so here’s the deal: This is X-Force, there’s only one rule: No one can know! he announces to Archangel, Psylocke, Deadpool and Fantomex.
Chapter 4:
Iceman enters Scott’s office calling out to him. Scott apologizes. He was just writing a letter to Kurt’s sister. Condolences. Was she his sister or girlfriend? Iceman wonders. It’s complicated Scott replies, rubbing his eyes. Are the Avengers this complicated? Iceman asks.  Probably not, Scott admits. Does he think they are hiring? Probably not. Hesitantly, Bobby remarks there is more trouble. Hank is leaving….
About to leave in the hangar, Beast asks Namor who is carrying a heavy load if he needs a paw. Namor scoffs. The day he needs help from the likes of Beast’s kind is the day he is no longer fit to rule the Seven Seas. And why exactly is Namor deigning to grace “his kind” with his presence? Hank asks. He confesses he’s rather been dying to ask why he’s taking up with mutants her on Summers’ isle. Why should he care? Namor asks simply. He’s leaving. Humor him, Hank suggests. No, he doesn’t think he shall, Namor replies. What kind of man turns his back on his people? Certainly not one he wishes to “humor.” The kind with a clean conscience, Beast replies. Sleep well. He takes off in his vessel.
Cyclops and Iceman look after their old friend while Namor suggests they are better off without him. He knows of what he speaks. In an army… They are an army now? Bobby asks. In an army, Namor continues undeterred, a general has no need for pacifists. He’s known him since he was a kid, Cyclops points out. And now he is a man, Namor replies simply. New playground, Summers, new playmates.
Angel joins them with a basket ball. The kids have started a bonfire at the end of the island and everybody seem to be trying to blow off a little steam. He thought about getting a game going… Does Namor know basketball? He tosses the ball at Namor and explains that he needs to get the ball through the hoop. Instead, Namor fires it through the plate behind it. Scott takes a raincheck and goes looking for Emma and Hope.
He finds Emma in her diamond form, a little apart from the others who are gathered around the bonfire. Diamond form? he asks. She needed a break from feeling so much And she’s fresh out of Ativan. How’s she holding up? he asks, referring to Hope. Her father’s dead, people died trying to save her life and everyone around her hates her on sight or expects her to turn water into wine, Emma enumerates. So, not great.
They were right, weren’t they? Scott asks. Were they right? It doesn’t matter now, she replies. All that matters is tomorrow. Thanks for the help, he replies sarcastically. He’ll be sure to include that bit about tomorrow in his letter to Kurt’s sister. He walks off.
Emma is pensive, then looks at the fire again. She sees Hope smiling and a Phoenix raptor forming in the flames. Her mind flies back to some time ago when she was saved by what seemed to be Jean Grey, telling her: “Well then, little spirit. Prepare.”
“Scott!” she calls out quietly, then runs off to the surprise of the students who haven’t seen anything amiss.
She runs into his office, shouting that she saw something. However, Scott stands in his office transfixed. Quiet, he tells her. He looks at the globe display. Cerebra shows five new mutant lights all over the globe.
“They were right,” he announces with a smile.


[User]
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Provide a full summary of the comic book.

[Assistant]
The Face of Fear
Betsy Braddock aka Psylocke was once an X-Man, now she is a member of the dimension-spanning Exiles, a team responsible for saving the omniverse on a regular basis. There is one drawback, though. Every so often, utterly without warning, she is slammed by a resonance wave of energy that tells her another version of herself is about to die.
One problem about stopping the person responsible for the killings is she has no idea where Slaymaster will pop up next or go from there. And if she does catch him, she has no way of knowing who will win.
In this case, Slaymaster has run across an alternate Asian Betsy in love with – ironically – an alternate Slaymaster. The couple is not happy at having their private moment interrupted.
Alternate, Betsy informs her lover that the Slaymaster analogue has come to kill her. He’s done it before, countless times. She can see it in his thoughts. Her Slaymaster promises her he will kill him.
First, he kisses her, then attacks his analogue, while alternate Betsy waits, eager for blood. Thee other Slaymaster informs him he talks too much, and easily blocks his attack, turning the force of his attack against him. Then Slaymaster kills his local self with a swordstroke.
Alternate Psylocke shouts in horror. What has he done? Slaymaster is suddenly engulfed in energy. A new experience, but then he has never slain another version of himself before. The sensation is fantastic!
Now, the analogue Psylocke tries to attack but finds that neither her telepathy nor her telekinesis has any effect. Slaying his other self has made Slaymaster immeasurably stronger!
Psylocke begins to run, but Slaymaster’s thrown blade hits her in the back. He walks towards the helpless woman, musing that they are a courageous line. He’ll concede that. All of them, fighting for their precious lives right to the end.
Who is he? Why is he doing this? She cries. She doesn’t even know him! There are many dimensions, he explains, each with an alternate version of her. He seeks one among their kind in particular. The only adversary who ever escaped him.
She begs him not to do this, offers herself even. She is not worthy, he replies and strikes.
In the Crystal Palace, the other Psylocke’s connection to her other self breaks off. A part of her died with her. She is left alone with her memories.
Flashback:On her home world, in her dimension, their version of Slaymaster was an adversary of her brother Captain Britain. But Brian had given up being a super hero. Betsy had stepped forward to take his place. She wasn’t good enough to defeat Slaymaster. He felt insulted to be challenged by a woman. To teach her a lesson and thereby hurt Brian, he destroyed her eyes.
Present:Betsy doesn’t sleep much that night nor has she slept well at all recently. She dreams too much about the dead, or worse, about their killer.
The next day, she talks with her teammate, Sage, who has recently merged with the Crystal Palace. Betsy tells her to start running the simulation. Would it do any good to suggest they wait? Sage suggests. For someone else to be slaughtered? Betsy asks. This has gone on long enough. Time to bring it to an end!
Sage accedes and runs a simulation. She observes that Betsy reacts to the solid hologram as though facing the real Slaymaster.
She begins holding her own. Usually, Betsy prefers to fight Slaymaster with her muscles, her human fighting skills. This time, she cuts loose with telekinesis. But it’s almost like the hologram was waiting for her to try this. Before she even knows what’s happening, the strike is deflected right back at her.
She’s off-balance for a few seconds. In that time, he cuts her across the stomach. Things go downhill from there, pretty much at rocket speed. In a panic, she lifts off, figuring to buy herself some space to recover balance. But Slaymaster reacts like he read her mind and yanks her back down to the ground. Before she can get her bearings, he impales her with his sword.
Did she truly think herself his equal? She should have kept running. Until he has the chance to slaughter her again, farewell!
Betsy can hear Sage calling out to her, but can’t seem to find a way to respond. Everything inside of her seems to be shutting down. She actually feels dead. Again.
Later, Betsy jogs through a part of the Crystal Palace. Sage appears, asking her what the plan is – run till she drops? Given her powers and strength, that’s likely never to happen. Betsy doesn’t reply. Of course, she knows, Sage states. She’s just being stubborn.
She changes into runner’s gear herself with a thought and jogs alongside Betsy. She can’t run away from this or her, Sage insists. Betsy stood by her when she needed it, now it’s her turn to do the same. What is it she wants? What is it that hurts? That she sought her whole life to be a hero and now she got the chance she fears she’s not good enough? She should really take a look at what’s happening around her! No reply.
Perhaps later then, Sage sighs. Is she afraid of losing and then dying again? That this fight will go on forever? They pass a mountain landscape turned red by the sunset. Has she ever seen anything so magnificent? Sage exclaims. She’s the soul of the Crystal Palace, Betsy retorts. She thought Sag brought it into being. She wishes, Sage, replies. But she’s only just begun to learn. Suddenly Betsy screams. She tells Sage to look at the sky!
She sees her brother, Captain Britain, in the sky, killed by a detonation! For almost the whole of her adult life, the destiny of the Braddock twins has been defined by Merlyn. He transformed Brian into Captain Britain. The last she saw Merlyn, he seemed totally mad. Watching him now, resurrecting Captain Britain, she finds herself wondering if she could have been wrong.
But the scene shifts. It isn’t Merlyn’s scene anymore, but her brother’s, as Slaymaster does to him what his namesake in her dimension did to her years ago, when he blinded her. It’s almost as though Slaymaster knows she can see this. As he takes up a boulder, ready to smash Captain Britain, he announces: revenge is sweet, my dear, don’t you agree? Consider this the shape of the future fast approaching!
The vision ends. Sage reminds her this wasn’t real. But it will be, and soon, Betsy replies, unless she stops him. She changes into everyday clothes. She explains matters to her lover, Sabretooth. To Brian, Slaymaster is dead. He’ll never see him coming.
Does she want back-up? he asks. What she wants isn’t for public consumption, she jokes. She’ll save it for when she comes home. Referring to her brother, she adds that the poor boy died far too many times. This one may just be for real. But what about her? Creed asks. Betsy just flashes him a mysterious smile.
Earth 616, London. It feels like an age since Betsy’s been home. As a member of the Exiles, she’s helped save scores of alternate Earths, seen so many versions of this city she loves. There’s no real need for them here. This is a world with more heroes, it seems, than they know what to do with. And her brother, Captain Britain, is one of the best. People seem to approve of his new look.
Floating above the clouds, she watches him fly past without notifying him. The world seems to have changed quite a lot while she was gone, but that has nothing to do with her. Local heroes can deal with the fate of this world. She’s here to take care of her brother, and then get back to caring for the omniverse. She hopes.
She indulges far too much that day, visiting old haunts, making her favorite designers very happy, splurging on a delicious dinner and, best of all, a brand-new motorcycle to simply die for. She didn’t try to hide from her old fashion-crowd. Her brother hated that part of her life. It was totally beyond his comprehension. Word would quickly get around that Betsy Braddock was back in town.
She puts on her helmet and gets on her bike. Suddenly, someone fires at her and she falls off it.
From above, Slaymaster wonders why she isn’t dead. Answer: she wasn’t wearing a bike helmet but modified military battle head gear. Betsy kicks his rifle out of his hands. She finds she can’t use her TK against him, so she’ll have to use her physical skills.
He kicks back and she recalls that as hard as she worked to prepare for this night, he’s always been better. And he knows it. She dodges his next blow. Mockingly, he tells her he is impressed when his next kick gets her. She is much better than when they last fought, but then so is he. He praises her for her recovery from his attack but hits her again. He cuts her.
That moment, Captain Britain slugs him away. Thanks to London’s police security cameras, he became aware of a crime being committed, though he wasn’t even aware of the identity of the two fighters. He recognizes his sister and is ecstatic.
She shouts a warning. Behind him! Inwardly, she swears. Sometimes her twin can be so stupid! Brian is shot. He turns around and is surprised at the sight of a foe who should be dead. Slaymaster tells him he isn’t the Slaymaster he fought some time ago. He is rather the one that will kill him.
He fires again. Betsy grabs Brian and pushes him out of the way. Brian’s died way more than her. She doesn’t intend to let it happen again. Now she is hit by the shot meant for Brian, who runs towards her, concerned. At least he is out of ammo, she mutters. Brian tells her to rest. He will handle things from here on. She grabs his arm. This is her fight, she insists. She doesn’t have to do this, he opines. Yes, she does, for reasons he knows nothing about.
It’s good to see in her a woman of courage, Slaymaster comments. It will be an honor indeed to take her life. Talk is cheap, she tells him with a smirk. Come and get her, if he can.
She strikes, he dodges. Then he slams her in the back, right where his energy beam hit home. She hurts. Betsy tries to put some distance between them. He comes after her, figuring she is on the ropes. He unsheathes his sword.
Betsy kicks him in the privates. She follows up with several blows and suddenly for Slaymaster his fight isn’t so much fun anymore. He figures it’s time to run but finds he hasn’t got his teleporter anymore. Betsy reminds him it’s a challenge to the death as she destroys it and kicks him again. So how about they see how good he really is?
This iteration of Slaymaster’s been killing versions of Betsy since she joined the Exiles. She felt each and every death. A part of each and every slaughtered soul became a part of her. Now they manifest ghost-like around her for the first and only time, to witness this battle’s end.
All Slaymaster can see is the score. He can’t help smiling, in pride and triumph. She was counting on this. It makes this so much easier. Live by slaughter - die by the same, as she – all of her – impale him on the sword.
The variant Betsies rise and fly away. They are beautiful, Cap observes. And yet – it’s heartbreaking there are so many. Her cross to bear, she replies. But thank Heaven it’s over. He’s never seen her quite like this before. Saving the omniverse must be good for her.
He suggests he take her to a hospital. No need, she tells him. Once she goes back where she belongs Sage will put her back again, better than before. Won’t be for the first time either.
They hug as she promises she will be fine. She won’t stay? Brian asks. No, she has a life and destiny out there. She goes to her bike. Will he see her again? Who knows what the future will bring, she replies. Anything’s possible. With that, she drives off.
Later, she is back in the Crystal Palace, standing on a cliff, lost in thought. The Exiles get back to saving the omniverse, she muses, one dimension at a time. Teammates come, teammates go. They make new friends. They look in on old ones. She builds a collection of memories she’ll treasure always, yet still eagerly hungers for what lies over the next horizon. But for all her innate wanderlust, the biggest surprise is her discovery how nice it is to have someone to come home to, as Sabretooth joins her and they kiss.
She can’t wait to see what happens next.


[User]
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Provide a full summary of the comic book.

[Assistant]
Untitled
“Where were you on M-Day?” Like many historical events, the wave of energy that de-powered the vast majority of mutants on the planet has become a benchmark event. For Amara Aquilla AKA Magma, she spent the days leading up to M-Day on vacation in Point-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe. Here, she met a young mutant named Antonio who appeared to flame-based powers and began a new romance. Mere days before M-Day, the young couple were dining together and dealing with the inevitable parting that lay ahead for them.
Antonio urges Amara to extend her vacation so they can spend more time together. She in turn invited him to join her at the Xavier Institute as a teacher. He replies that he’s not interested in being cooped up with the “cocky, inattentive, self-obsessed adolescents” that she herself described to him. Instead, he suggests that she stay with him and see if his chosen field, vulcanology might appeal to her. As he says this, he draws the flame from the candle on the table and shapes it with his power into a heart shape and sends it across the table to her. She smiles and agrees to stay a bit longer.
The fiery pair takes a helicopter to La Cumbre, an active volcano in the Galapagos Islands. As they near the crater, they each assume a fiery form and dive into the crater. Antonio appears to have the ability to fly as well as control fire. Side-by-side, they surf the magma flow before exploring the volatile interior of the volcano. There, Magma realizes that in Antonio she has found her soulmate and a lasting passion born out of fire. The young lovers reach for each other as the wave of energy hits them. In an instant, Antonio’s mutant powers are stripped away and he reverts to a merely human form. In seconds, the heat and gases of the volcano take effect. Amara reaches out for him, grabbing his forearm which dissolves to ash in her hand. She cries out in anguish and La Cumbre erupts, a reflection of her primal emotions.
In the famed Wildkat Klub in the area of New York known as Mutant Town, Mortimer Toynbee AKA The Toad sits at a table with one of the many former mutants that now populate the area. He notices the arrival of three fierce-looking humans clad in black leather and t-shirts bearing a stylized symbol: a crimson letter “P” inside a red circle. He asks his companion who they are and she tells him they are members of Purity. He wonders when they got bold enough to venture into Mutant Town and she replies that since M-Day they go wherever they like. She asks where he’s been and he tells her he was in Genosha, which has gone to hell since M-Day. The few remaining mutants have scattered for safer parts. She asks if he was once a mutant, too and he tells her he still is and flicks his prehensile tongue at her and introduces himself as Toad. She tells him to be careful so that the Purity gang doesn’t see him.
The club’s bouncer, Patch approaches the Purity crew and asks if he can help them. They make it clear they are there to find the exotic mutant hostesses the Wildkat Klub is famous for. Patch lets them know that all their girls have lost their mutant powers but the Purity members insist on looking around. Patch lets them in.
 Toad boldly asks a Purity member if it’s suddenly become illegal to be a mutant and says that he expected to find survivors in Mutant Town of all places. The Purity member replies coldly that they don’t call it “Mutant Town” anymore and states that there are allegedly only 198 mutants left worldwide. His female compatriot adds that that’s two million down and one-ninety-eight to go. Toad asks just what these Purity thugs do with mutants when they find them. They note that the Office of National Emergency has set up an internment camp at the Xavier Institute and that they encourage mutants to go there. Toad mentions that he thought going to Xavier’s was a voluntary thing to which the Purity leader replies that it’s for their own protection really and they should all stick to one place. His female colleague adds that there should also be a good strong fence around them. She begins to question Toad’s interest but is cut short as the third member of their group calls out that they have a runner.
As these two were talking with Toad, this third Purity member noticed Lorelei and her unique hair. This spooked her and she made a run for it. The woman that Toad was original talking to is alarmed as they pursue Lorelei and asks Patch to go and help her. Patch just stands there silently. Seeing that Patch isn’t going to take the risk of helping Lorelei, she asks Toad to intercede. He reluctantly agrees to “play hero” and goes outside.
 In the alleyway adjacent to the club, he sees Lorelei being attacked by the Purity gang. He thinks twice about helping since it’s really not his concern. But something compels him to jump in and help. He quickly dispatches Lorelei’s attackers but not before they’ve managed to cut off all of her living hair. She is stunned and her scalp is covered in tiny cuts. Toad asks if she’d like him to take her to Xavier’s and she says she doesn’t want to since all her friends are here in Mutant Town. Toad says “Yeah. Right,” referring to Patch’s unwillingness to stick his neck out for her when she needed it most.
At Bellevue Hospital, Absolom Mercator AKA “Mr. M” goes to visit his friend and neighbor Hanna Levy. At first the nurse refuses to let him see her stating that only immediate family is permitted to see Hanna given her fragile state. Mr. M touches the nurse’s hand and asks nicely to see his friend and she relents.
 Hanna is pleased to see Mr. M and she tells him immediately that they’re putting insects in her food. She tells him she doesn’t want to eat them as she is no longer “The Lizard Lady” and now has a normal human tongue. Mr. M assures her that they aren’t hiding insects in her food. He places his hand on her forehead and tells her she no longer has to worry. She can go back home because he’s cleaned her apartment out and there are no more bugs. She seems as if a weight has been lifted from her and her head has cleared. She thanks Absolom and notes that he’s not wearing his shoes again. She tells him that he should help the others. He asks if she means the ones who have changed and she clarifies that she meant those who are still mutants. She believes that they need him, just as she did.
 As he leaves the hospital, Mr. M asks the nurse where the Xavier Institute is located. She points it out on a map and he begins his journey, bare-foot across the state of New York somewhat oblivious to the world around him or perhaps so in tune that he seems unaware of the distance he has walked or the time that has passed during his trek.
At the Xavier Institute, a chopper approaches the interior courtyard. Inside the headmasters’ office, Cyclops and Emma Frost discuss the new arrivals: Lorelei Travis and Toad. Emma notes that Lorelei took a beating from Purity and Scott expresses concern that they can’t even protect their own from common thugs anymore. Emma clarifies that Lorelei was rescued … by Toad. Scott can hardly believe it and is dismayed that they have to deal with Toad as well. Emma reminds him that it was he who promised a sanctuary for all. He reluctantly agrees and asks if any more have turned up.
 Emma reports that they’ve found Magma who surfaced in Guatemala and now appears to be psychotic and is terrorizing the locals. Emma adds that she sent Empath to retrieve her and bring her home. Scott wonders if this is such a good idea given the history between Amara and Manuel. Emma reminds Scott that they’re low on resources and dealing with a lot, leaving her with limited options.
Outside, Toad and Lorelei descend on ropes to the grounds, which have been filled with tents to accommodate the newly arrived mutant refugees. Among those on hand to witness the new arrivals are Erg, Mammomax, Fever Pitch, Peepers and Jazz. Scott and Emma greet the newcomers and Toad clearly has a grudge against his former adversary, Cyclops. He notes that the “Big House” has clearly been reserved for the “A-List” and Emma lets him know he’ll be sharing a billet with Fever Pitch for the time being. Karma arrives and escorts Lorelei to her quarters and offers what words of encouragement she can.
Emma notes that a flag bearing the logo “198” has been raised in the courtyard without any authorization. Scott wonders what it means. Erg steps forward and explains that it was his idea. His uncle was a Hells Angel and that when some bikers caused trouble in a small town the media noted that only 1% of bikers nationwide had been involved. Some Angels like his uncle took to wearing badges that said “1%ers” to note their involvement. Scott wonders what this means and Emma explains that it means they’re looking at trouble brewing. Erg just smiles with satisfaction.
Suddenly, one of the three Sentinels on patrol signals an intruder alert. On the southern perimeter, Mr. M arrives and easily passes through the walls around the estate which are now topped with barbed wire. As he passes through, the Sentinels move forward aggressively and issue verbal warnings that he is trespassing and to place his hands behind his head. With a mere wave of his hand, Mr. M topples the Sentinel before it can take a step forward. An armed foot soldier approaches, leveling his gun at Mercator.
 Cyclops and Emma rush over and Cyke commands the soldier to stand down and let them handle it. Scott asks Mr. M what he just did and Mr. M explains that the Sentinel was not watching where he tread and was about to step on a rare caterpillar. Cyclops notes that Mr. M must really like caterpillars. Mr. M says that he doesn’t really but does like butterflies, as he looks at the caterpillar in his hand. Emma looks dumbfounded by the mysterious and powerful mutant.