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Breaking Point
“Don’t even think about it!” Spider-Man orders Nate Grey. Seriously, in his case, with all his powers, he means that literally. Don’t mess with their heads!
How did he know what he was going to do? Nate asks. Isn’t this why he telepathically called for him? Spider-Man asks. Because he knows him. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. This is the bridge where Spider-Man lost her years ago. Where he watched a part of his heart called Gwen Stacy slip away and break forever. So he doesn’t come here anymore without a real good reason. And he’s trying not to go out in costume at all these days, what with a murder charge hanging over Spider-Man’s head. But when he heard about Nate—
X-Man interrupts that Peter doesn’t know him. Pete was born in this world, a normal human, later gifted with his power. Nate was created by a madman to be the most powerful mutant on Earth, the most powerful mutant psionic imaginable, even if it eventually kills him. And it will. Soon. Peter is innocent of all charges. Nate is not.
According to whom exactly? Spidey asks. As a freelance photographer to the Daily Bugle, Peter has witnessed Nate’s rise and fall, recorded everything from the psycho Nate took down outside the limelight, to the girl he healed at E.S.U., to those suicidal terrorists who… Who ended up taking along a lot of innocent people, once Nate was finished playing with them, Nate finishes.
And he still doesn’t know half of it. He doesn’t know how Nate gave birth to that psycho Jacknife without even trying. He can’t know about the children he disappointed these past few weeks. And the girl at the hospital was a friend. Another friend he failed.
Nate begins to glow with energy. Spider-Man touches his shoulder, telling him enough! Nate’s power pushes him backward. He really, really thinks they’ll all be better off without him! Nate announces. Nate’s power crackles out towards Manhattan.
Back in the Soho loft, Nate shared with his three friends he finds the girls mourning. Nate is here only in mind and only Jam sees him. The friend he failed who lost her left arm until Nate gave it back to her. Only to discern that the limb was not his to give. She lost her hope in Nate. He offers her the chance to forget about him whereas he forced the rest of the city. A tempting offer which she refuses. She will not sacrifice a single piece of her ever again, even a painful memory.
He leaves her with her friends who forget. Bux will never have the chance to forgive herself for the way she was used to betray him. She will only forget. Marita will never know what she and he might have missed together. They leave.
Bye, Nate says unheard and telekinetically cleans the place up. The loft hasn’t been the same since Threnody left him. Maybe it was her spark all along. The excitement she felt being here with him, the excitement he felt for her. He disappears and hungry black mouths rise from the ground.
His astral form touches everyone in New York when suddenly he senses Threnody in the tunnels underground. He wonders why he didn’t pick up her psi-scent before this and why it suddenly seem to be coming at him from all sides.
Spider-Man touches his shoulder, still trying to snap him out and finally punches Nate in the stomach.
In the meantime, unnoticed, an airship closes in.
Is he nuts? Nate protests. Spidey apologizes but he had to stop him. Look at the blood coming out his nose. He’s killing himself! Firing a psi-bolt at him, Nate asks why would he think he cares anymore.
Spidey dodges the blast and asks even if he succeeds in making New York forget about him and lives, what does he plan then? Do the same to all the commuters from the suburbs who read about him? The couch potatoes who saw him on TV?
Why not? Nate asks. Why not erase his entire existence from the minds of everybody, X or otherwise, everyone who’s ever heard of him? Peter tells him he can’t do this.  Nate apologizes, but Peter doesn’t understand!
Spidey notes his spider sense tingling. Nate’s out of control again, but he can’t touch him in the maelstrom of energies swirling around him. Amidst all the psychic energies taking on a life of their own Spider-Man suddenly sees a familiar blonde taking shape… Gwen Stacy dressed like a freedom fighter, holding a gun.
Where is she? Gwen asks confused. She points her weapon at Peter, asking who he is.
This is the Gwen of another Earth, of Nate’s world, where innocence never really stood a chance.
Peter recalls his Gwen, the sweet girl that he loved in some brighter time, until she died at the hand of his best friend’s father, the Green Goblin. And a good part of Peter followed Gwen right down into that shadowy night. The best part, he believed. But when he finally looked up again, Mary Jane Watson saved him, the light in his darkness.
Spider-Man sees immediately that she isn’t the same Gwen, but he can’t take his eyes off her.
Nate apologizes. He didn’t mean to do this. But a stray thought from Peter shaped Nate’s reality. That’s all it took. That’s all she is. This is what he’s been trying to tell Peter.
Spidey warns him they’ve got incoming. The airship fires at them from above. Nate is surprised. He didn’t sense its approach and cannot “read” anybody aboard.
“Gwen” believes it is one of Apocalypse’s slave ships and fires at it. Fearing they are mutants there to collect her for the slave pens, she tries to fire at Spidey, but a concussion blast from the airship hits her.
Two armored flying beings come attacking. Nate can’t get a grip telekinetically. He stumbles against Gwen who falls off the edge of the building. Not again! Spider-Man moans. Never again! He jumps after her.
Nate raises a TK shield. He creates a psi-flare to take the ambushers apart, but isn’t successful against them.
Spidey shouts at Gwen to give him her hand.
Nate notes the two tin soldiers are hitting him from both sides to keep him off-balance. And they seem to be immune against his psionics directly. He tries the indirect approach, telekinetically grabbing some bridge cables.
Spidey grabs Gwen by the hand. He realizes she doesn’t know him, but promises her she can trust him. She suddenly recognizes him as Peter.
Nate, in the meantime, manipulates the steel cables to trap his attackers. However he is attacked from behind. A third armored being – Gauntlet –  announces he’s been neutralized and flies Nate to the ship.
Spider-Man notes how tricky that was. He just hopes they have a few thousand more of those shiny ships, he really does, because they just cost him a dream come true and two of them won’t be anywhere near enough to take this out on!


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Nowhere to run, Nowhere to Hide…
One of the mysterious armored beings drives Nate Grey underwater and gets ready to finish what he started. Nate is dying, as usual. He tries telepathy which has no effect on his foe, causing Nate to believe there is no real mind in there. He tries a telekinetic scythe next, again to no avail. He cannot touch his foe with his psi-powers.
Instead, he psionically agitates the water molecules around his foe and hyperkinetically superheats the water. No effect.
He tries an electrical charge generated from the current of his own brain. The unexpected feedback explodes from within like a bomb. The last of Nate’s air is expelled with concussive force. His lungs begin to burn now, desperately scraping precious oxygen from their own withering cells.
Meanwhile, above on the bridge, people panic as the battle between Spider-Man and the other armored beings continues. Recalling what happened, Spider-Man swings away, followed by the two flying robot-beings. What actually bothers Spider-Man is how Nate returned Gwen Stacy, not his Gwen, but the one from Nate’s world. But somehow she recognized him just before these two flying bozos hit him out of nowhere, while a third took advantage of their diversion to ambush Nate from behind. And Gwen was just gone again.
Figuring there are hundreds of people trapped on the bridge, he knows he has to stop this. He positions himself in a corner, waits until they both attack and take each other out with their own crossed frequencies.
However, moments later, they attack again with blasters, over a populated area. Spidey sees how the third carries up an unconscious Nate from the river. Spider-Man hesitated too long and someone paid the price gain. He throws a web grenade at the flyer, pinning him.
Nate isn’t unconscious, having switched his psychics to the defense and masking his own lifesigns with a psi-screen.
Spider-Man sees for the first time that there are people in the robo-suits and one of them is already burning free of his webbing. Nate concentrates on cracking the armor, allowing Spidey to finish him off while Nate takes on the second one with a mind probe. She is a single track telepath, he senses, cyber-enhanced, trying to screen her thoughts. Something about her team… called Gauntlet.
The woman orders someone called Fontaine to kill Nate. Spider-Man warns him of the third goon behind him, still fully psi-shielded. He presses some kind of trigger on his uniforms. All three of them disappear.
An emergency failsafe, Nate reveals, activated by the one called Fontaine, according to the last thing he picked up from the other’s mind.
Spider-Man tries to figure out how to trace them, then feels the ringing of his spider-sense. He shoves Nate off the bridge and explains that those canned idiots did more damage to the structural integrity of the bridge than he thought. The suspension cables are under too much stress, the pavement’s cracking and the other side of the bridge is bucking like a bronco beginning to buckle.
A car is going off the bridge, but, united, Nate and Spider-Man save it with Spider-Man swearing nobody will die here anymore, not on his watch!
However, the bridge is still about to come down around their ears. Nate telekinetically reseals most of the fractures which will hold until more permanent repairs can be done. However, the bystanders insult them both, believing the two of them are to blame for the damage.
More than half a world away in India, Marcus Arlington, with the help of Roust and his brother, uses the power Nate has shared with him to save a patient, working one miracle at a time.
On a roof in Manhattan, Nate muses that they were probably out for him. He’ll be ready for next time.  Still, he apologizes about Gwen. He didn’t mean for that to happen. Peter tells him that he opened a wound he thought had healed. With great power comes great responsibility, not great perfection. It took that bridge to give him some perspective tonight. It reminded him that the worst of tragedies can be a beginning as well as an ending. He just wanted to do the same for Nate, if he could bring some perspective to the situation. Best thing he can really do for a friend. He hugs Nate, telling him he can forgive him.
But he can’t forget, right? Nate asks. Maybe they helped each other tonight, Peter suggests diplomatically and suggests they leave it at that. Maybe they finally helped each other to see that they can’t change what happened. They can only change themselves.
Peter leaves and Nate stays on the roof, staring into the darkness, wondering where to turn to. No family. No friends. No past to ground him to his world, no future to speak of.
Maybe, someone states from the shadows, they have to make their own futures. Madelyne Pryor steps into the light. He needed her and she felt it. He called to her whether he knew it or not and she came. He hugs her tight, realizing that she is all he has.


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If Tomorrow Never Comes…
Nate Grey is locked in a fight with a bio-armored man – one who is painfully familiar to him. No longer a boy now, certainly not the boy who fell to this world from his own dying Earth a few months ago, yet barely a man still, Nate has well and truly met his match with this man. Injured, his jeans tattered, Nate rants and raves. He won’t let this madman stop him… not now, when’s he’s so close… he promises he’ll see him dead first!
The two mutants continue their deadly battle, floating in the air, close to an Egyptian-style pyramid. Both mutants wield roiling, raging psionic energies against each other. “You don’t understand what he does… what he’s done already… you can’t defend the World-Ender!” Nate screams at his adversary. Nate’s foe – his eyes red with no visible pupils, his face hidden behind a helmet – stresses that he’s defending the future. Nate doesn’t understand what it would mean for the beast of tomorrow to fall here… today! With this last word, he lunges at Nate, puncturing him in the lower abdomen. Nate gasps and crashes on the pyramid below.
Floating in air, his left eye flashing with psionic energy, the mysterious man argues that he and Nate have more in common than the boy suspects. They both want the same thing; he really hopes Nate believes that much. They both want the Sleeper destroyed, erased from every reality once and for all. The man descends and enters the Egyptian temple, moving swiftly, slipping into the shadows and through the twisted turns of this impossibly ancient tomb, newly-risen at the very edge of mankind’s push for progress.
The man with the helmet spots Nate staggering inside the temple and hides behind a pillar, unaware he is being spied on by another man with white hair and yellow eyes, also hidden behind another nearby pillar. The man decides to ambush Nate and lunges at him, gun in hand. Nate is a stranger to this world, to this timeline proper, and history will brook no interference, he tells him – and then shoots at Nate, who has his back turned at him.
“Idiot!” Nate screams, as the bullets pierce his flesh. No blood streams from the open wounds on his body, only light which becomes brighter and brighter. “History as you know it is over…” Nate asserts. These last few words are never spoken, of course. There is no one left alive in this place to voice them… and precious few survivors on this hemisphere with ears to hear it. For, as Nate explodes and both and his adversary are lost in a searing, all-consuming light, this terrible light expands and destroys first the Egyptian temple, and then, half of planet Earth.
(real life)
“Nooo!” Nate screams, as he opens his eyes and finds himself squatting on the snowy ground, somewhere in the midst of wilderness. Still reeling from his vision, he wonders what he did. Half the world, maybe more, gone, just gone. And the survivors… he caught a flash of something worse for them… man against mutant against man, on an Earth wounded to the core… worse than he ever saw at home… at the Age of Apocalypse… Pressing his head on the frozen ground, he pauses…
“That had to hurt,” a voice catches him off-guard. “Madelyne?!” Nate gasps in surprise. Clad in dark red, Madelyne Pryor stands above him, a mocking expression in her face. Rubbing his head and visibly displeased by her appearance, Nate tells her he just… “Needed some space?” Maddie suggests. She gibes that he’s got that now, far as the eye can see in every direction. That spontaneous outburst there at the end of his little trance left nothing but fused landscape where a good chunk of the Canadian wilderness used to sit.
Nate tells her she doesn’t understand. If he had to leave New York, if he had to abandon the life he’d finally begun to build for himself there, if he had to run again, he wanted direction, at least. So he decided to think about it, Maddie deduces. To use that big, bad brain that everyone else believes is so all-powerful to try and figure out where to go next from here… by looking into the future.
My future, Nate corrects her – as far as he could. He psi-scanned the area a dozen times first, made sure it was clear of any innocent bystanders, and settled in for however long it took. Using meditation techniques taught to him by the Dark Beast a while back, he finally focused his concentration through a crystal given to him by Bux… “To home right in on the very moment of your death,” Madelyne completes his phrase. “You s-saw… you saw it all?” Nate hesitantly asks. Madelyne clarifies she helped – more than he knows. Helping Nate to get him, she stresses that she really wouldn’t advise trying a stunt like that again without her around to…
Flinching, Nate backs away from her and reiterates that he told her to leave him alone. Not last week he didn’t, Madelyne smiles – not when he wanted out of the Big Apple fast. But it has come up quite a few times since then, she admits. Of course, the last time he mentioned it was four days ago. Does he remember? Right before he gave up eating and sleeping to “clear his mind” and all? Well, Maddie knows how hungry he can get – and with a devilish grin, produces an apple from her blouse and offers it to him. Won’t he come home with her now…?
Elsewhere, in a lush mansion in an exotic island, a man lays on a bed with his sleeping mistress. Modern maps deny the very existence of this island. Far from traditional Caribbean trade routes, surrounded by seething seas and shrouded in tropical storm clouds, it is the stuff of myths and legends – the island now known only as the Nest. And for reasons that will soon become all-too crystal clear, the man squirming on this bed – his yellow eyes goggling with terror, his face perspiring with agony – shall be known as the Witness. He is the same man who was secretly watching Nate’s altercation with the armored man in Nate’s vision.
In Canada, Nate disintegrates Madelyne’s fake apple: “Oh, puh-leeze”. A little heavy-handed on the symbolism, doesn’t she think? Maddie insists he wants her, he knows he does. He needs her. Once, maybe, Nate retorts. When he first arrived here, blinded by the possibilities and promise in every sparkling face, every glittering place – when he thought she needed him, too. Now, though, he doesn’t even know who – what – she is.
Madelyne replies that she is what he made her – by mistake, of course. Suddenly making herself appear as Jean Grey in her current costume, she tells Nate she’s well aware that this is what he meant for her to be. Jean Grey, the one true heart’s desire of her ex-hubby, Scott Summers, and every other member of the X-Men who wear pants, as far as she can tell. Mother Theresa of all mutants everywhere. The Madonna herself to Nate, she supposes. This is who everyone wants her to be. But she’s not – and as she says this, the hallucination of Jean Grey ceases and the true Maddie rematerializes next to Nate, compassionately holding him. She tells him she’s so much better than that.
Nate retorts that he’s not interested anymore, he told her that. He socks her, only to strike at empty air: Maddie has already teleported at his other side. She believes Nate has just discovered an explosive truth. Earth-shattering maybe. About himself, his destiny and the grisly fate of yet another world he tried to call home. Nate tries to hit her again and fails, as she teleports around him once more. She asks him where he’s going now. Nate admits he doesn’t know; it doesn’t matter. She can just keep teleporting, all the way back to whatever other trouble she’s been up to for the last couple of months. He doesn’t want her, he doesn’t need her, she can’t help him.
“Wrong!” Maddie bursts with anger. He is already using her far more than he realizes in ways that he could never even begin to suspect… and she will not be dismissed or discarded ever again! Nate asks her to do them both a favor and save the mysterious mumbo-jumbo for the rube…
Suddenly, the earth beneath their feet begins to shake and shudder. Maddie announces that he woke them. Nate is at loss: woke who? When? “Not who. What,” Maddie corrects him. She’s betting he woke half the galaxy with this little trick. Nate still doesn’t understand: when the vision ended, and he came back from the future? But that’s why he trekked way out here to try it in the first place, in case he couldn’t control his own powers… the damage they might do. He asks Madelyne why she didn’t tell him this sooner.
Truth be told, Maddie expected it to be someone else’s problem. She was hoping he’d let her take him to a better place. It looks like she was wrong on both counts. He’ll have to get there on his own, she tells him – and then, without warning, spirits herself away. More confused than before, Nate pleads her to hang on, to wait – didn’t she say them…?
Just then, the one called Tundra emerges behind him, a towering behemoth. And almost twenty miles away already, Kolomaq of the Snows and Somon the Artificer thunder toward the very first outposts of civilization. Without welcome or warning, the Great Beasts once more walk among us.
In the island known as the Nest, the mistress of the man known as Ness or Witness wakes up. She begins calling after him, but he is not on the bed. Indeed, as the sun rises for a new day, Ness is already leaving with his seaplane. He realizes he cannot allow it to happen. The dream came from the North, that much he’s sure of; somewhere in the Canadian Yukon. Whatever it takes now, whatever it costs his people, he must find the one called Nate Grey, and stop him… before he kills them all!


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Nothing Left but the Screaming
Here, at the Canadian Yukon, the top of the world, Nate Grey came to know tomorrow… and scream. Then, mere moments ago, thunder rumbled through the frozen earth beneath his feet, a shadow loomed, eclipsing both the light of the sun and the last of its warmth… and the Great Beast known as Tundra was upon him.
Tundra rises his feet, intent on crushing him. Nate gathers all his strength, and projects a telekinetic field, rescuing himself from being squashed. “Get… off!” he clenches his teeth. An outburst of psionic energy pours out from him and shatters Tundra into tiny fragments of rock.
Nate levitates himself in the air, inspecting the damage he caused to Tundra: the Beast is now flattened to the ground, literally immersed into the Earth. Nate’s thoughts run elsewhere. He knew he’d be taking a risk, trying something new like that, peering into the future to see the end of his life. So he flew all this way north, just to hedge his bets – to make sure he wouldn’t be endangering any more innocents, ever again. However, he wound up waking some kind of local mud-monsters, instead – the Great Beasts, to be precise.
Tundra suddenly rises from the ground, still incorporated into his primary element, the Earth, and grasps Nate with his fist. The Great Beast opens his mouth, roaring at his captive. With his telepathic powers, Nate senses and recognizes in a searing instant that the Great Beasts were released – rather than awakened – from the ravaged, desolate wasteland that was once their lush and thriving nether-plane, rife with life and living. But Nate decides he will not stand for it – not again; not even if it kills him. Bursting forth with psionic energy, he shatters Tundra’s hand into pieces. Aching, the Beast lets go of him. Nate lands in a nearby forest.
“How about now, chum… do you need me now?” Madelyne Pryor sneers. Nate looks up and sees her, comfortably seated on the branch of a tree, clad in dark blue. No, he strongly rejoins, not if he has to beg… never! Empowered by his defiance, he telekinetically propels himself towards the Great Beast and skewers himself right through its throat, effectively decapitating Tundra. Glaring below, he notices Madelyne’s gone again – no real surprise. No help there, anyway. Nothing substantial, that’s for sure, nothing he can rely on. He’s on his own, as usual.
Making an survey of the damage he caused, he confirms that Tundra is indeed headless now – this body may even be down for the count – but has already realized Tundra is connected to the Earth somehow, using it as his physical anchor to this plane, so he could re-form anywhere, come back from any direction, including right…
… below me?” The thought flashes in his mind for a split second, before he sees Tundra’s giant mouth opening up… and swallowing him alive. Tundra feeds. Glowing now, in response to the strange new energies seething within, growing even, fueled by the power of Nate Grey, filled with it… to the point of bursting.
Tundra explodes in a deafening thud and Nate is hurled on the ground nearby. Crawling in pain, he realizes that it felt like that thing, the elemental essence of it, absorbed enough of him, of his distinctly other-earthly energies, to repulse even itself. Tundra won’t be pulling back itself together for a long time – if ever – but Nate himself has got nothing left… nothing…
Madelyne stands above him. She claps in mocking applause: “Well done, hero.” Now what is he going to do about the other two? “Other… two?” Nate wonders. Miles away, Kolomaq and Shomon advance towards civilization.
In the aircraft that serves as headquarters for the Gauntlet organization, one of the agents informs Commander Scanlon that they’ve finally got Nate Grey. According to their computers, he’s in the heart of the Canadian Yukon. But the nano-tracers from last week’s gassing can’t last much longer in Grey’s lungs. And they’re reading a lot of other… activity in this region, as well. They’re going to lose him again – soon. Scanlon orders him to secure a channel for bridge-support. He also orders him to forward the ground-zero coordinates and request authorization for immediate transport, code Goldstar-prime, while Scanlon himself will gather the Gauntlet.
In another part of the base, the Psi-Ops, private soldiers of the Gauntlet, are having a training session. Agents Vise and Barone are fighting off against fellow agent Fontaine. Seeing Fontaine at a standstill, Vise asks her if she’s ready to give up already. Is the coward ready to turn tail and run again, like she did out in the field, dragging Barone and Vise along with her, just when she had the target dead to right? Barone notices that no response comes from Fontaine. Not a word – not even a shot fired in her own defense. He deduces she must be up to…
Vise interjects: something is buzzing through the battle cracks in her helmet… in her head… her wiring! She removes her helmet: the wires in her head are throwing sparks, while blood is streaming from her nostrils.
In the Canadian Yukon wasteland, Madelyne informs the exhausted Nate that the Great Beasts come from an age long before theirs – long before good or evil, right or wrong, for that matter. They’re hellstorms, nothing more or less; living, breathing tornadoes of mystical energy consuming everything in their path without restraint or remorse.
Maddie goes on to reveal that it took the combined might of Canada’s strongest super-players – Alpha Flight – to defeat the Beasts last time out. Madelyne learned about them back when she was on monitor duty for the X-Men, studying their files. It seems the dimensional walls separating the Beasts from Nate and Maddie are at their thinnest up in this area. Best Maddie can figure out, Nate’s explosive little tantrum at the finale of his sneak-peak into the future blew those walls wide open for a moment, just long enough for three of them to come through again. Tundra wanted more of the same, she supposes. More that he could stomach, apparently. But Somon the Artificer and Kolomaq of the Snows are heading south already, straight for what they laughingly call “civilization.”
“So how about it, then?” Maddie asks Nate as she crouches next to him. Just a little of the spark he gave her when he had nothing; he should let her give just a little back to him. She notices he doesn’t even have the strength to refuse her anymore, does he? She can give him that much, at least, whether he wants it or not.
As she touches his head to replenish his energies, Nate weakly implores her to just let him die here already, so he won’t take half the world with him, like they saw as his future. Point taken, pal, Madelyne replies. Of course, who says his death here and now won’t do worse? He doesn’t want her help, she gets that, really… but would it make a difference to know that someone else needed his help? Touching the frozen ground below her, she projects a image of events currently transpiring many miles away and shows it to Nate: the two other Beasts approaching some… sort of outpost?
Maddie deduces it’s a commercial-research. From the look of it, it is large enough to staff dozens. “Directly in the path of the Beasts…” Nate murmurs. And those two take awfully big steps, Maddie adds. Nate wonders how he can know she’s not lying… about the Beasts… about everything… just to get a rise out of him? Why should he trust her?
Madelyne is surprised at the word uttered: trust? Always Nate’s big question, isn’t it? His big issue. Thing is, considering who they are to each other and all – how he brought her back to life, from the very pits of his heart and soul – she may very well be the one single person in this sad, sorry globe who can’t lie to him. She asks Nate to trust himself. Just once. Before it’s too late. With this, she extends her glowing hand to him, prepared to take off with Nate. While elsewhere, the two Beasts manipulate the winds, about to strike at the outpost.
In the Psi-Ops training room, Vise swears to Fontaine that she will kill her! She’ll tear her apart with her bare hands if she…
“Enough!” Commander Scanlon restores her to order. He admits Vise is good – maybe even the best agent what they’ve got. She doesn’t have to prove anything here. Vise groans. Scanlon goes on to add that, as a cyber-psi – as the lone Gauntlet operative requiring artificial enhancement of her natural mental skills – she’s vulnerable to infiltration and disconnection – just like that. He then turns to Fontaine and applauds her: training shows. Fontaine agrees. Scanlon orders everybody out of uniform – now. Their first field-skirmish turned out to be assessment enough for all of them, spotlighting the strengths and weaknesses of target-Grey… and their operation. It was never meant to be anything more than that, of course, and they knew that going in, but…
Baron rejoins that he knew, maybe. Barone doesn’t remember anyone bothering to tell them, though. Perhaps because none of them have yet proven able to shut their trap, Scanlon briskly retorts. He reminds Barone that, despite his recent transfer from field to command-status, he is still a telepath. Barone should try not to forget that… if he expects to be here tomorrow. He announces they’ve been issued a sanction-on-sight order, along with the necessary hardware upgrades. He orders agent Vise to suit up again. Radiation-shields first, unless she’s got a death wish. He advises her to get good with the full range of her new ordnance, and then get better. He then tells Fontaine to come with him, and exits the room.
In Canada, Madelyne admits she doesn’t recall much about Kolomaq, but she remembers that Somon needs people; he possesses them or something. She and Nate teleport in the outpost where the Beasts were to strike… and find the whole area scorched to the ground, completely demolished. Nate is devastated, contemplating the loss of life, until Maddie assuages him: no one was here when the Beasts came through. They’re all out there, all of them, just a couple of miles in that direction, she says as she points him to the location. They are in the field, at an excavation site of some sort, alive… for a few more moments.
At the excavation site, the researchers fill with dread at the sight of the two Beasts, looming at the horizon, steadily approaching. “Monstres!” the project coordinator screams in French. He urges his fellow researchers to wake the workers, warn the others… and protect the artifact; hide it! They all start running in panic.
Nate and Maddie teleport in mid-air, a bit further from the Beasts. Nate wonders why she didn’t just teleport them right on top of the Beasts – why she didn’t stick them straight in their faces already? Maddie replies it’s because she’s not he, he needs to understand that. Her self-sacrificing days are way behind her. There are things she can teach him, places she’ll take him… and places she won’t. And she won’t go up against the Great Beasts unleashed.
Nate retorts that neither will he – not two of them; not if he doesn’t have to. Soaring towards them, he muses that they’re linked to this dimension through the Earth itself – through some kind of mystical thing he doesn’t understand and doesn’t need or pretend to understand. But one he might be able to use.
Just then, Somon detects Nate’s presence in the vicinity and warns Kolomaq to hold it; there is something here. Something pungent, powerful… something he would taste… Nate thinks that he could tear a page from the Gauntlet’s book of tricks here, and try a variation on the stunt they used to escape him: psionically isolate the planet’s gravitational pull on the Beasts, and telekinetically interrupt it.
Nate’s dangerous gambit works: the Beasts are abruptly, violently expelled from Earth’s gravitational field and catapulted in outer space, akin to two fiery heavenly bodies. Strained from the excruciating effort, Nate can’t believe this worked. He never tried anything like it before. He decides he never will again… and then collapses, emitting forth rays of powerful light from holes found all over his body.
In the Gauntlet headquarters, Scanlon is alone with Fontaine. He is aware of her question – a question neither of the other two would ever bother to ask. Why does the new operation-imperative already abandon the first-capture protocol so soon… “Against a boy,” Fontaine completes the question. A teenager, she points out to him. Exactly, Scanlon concurs with a dark expression. A teenager who can do this… with a thought, he adds as he motions outside the window, at the ground below: a giant star-shaped area can be seen where the Beasts previously stood. He gives her a piece of advice: no more questions.
In a thick forest below, the mysterious Ness approaches the edge of this “ground zero” on his snowmobile. He is a strange man, of an even stranger people, who has only recently returned from the shadows into the light from a dream, a nightmare, really. The death of Nate Grey and his new world, screaming and struggling all the way. His snowmobile reaches the edge of the ground zero and Ness is abruptly bumped into the air, landing inside the crater. He feels residual electromagnetic charge within the immediate blast-zone. It is disabling electronics, like his snowmobile. It fused Earth for miles, literally, from what he can see. He decides Nate is here. He is determined not to bear witness to it again.


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Provide a full summary of the comic book.

[Assistant]
Outta Nowhere
The man known as Ness kneels down, amidst a razed, snowy area in the Canadian Yukon. Ness thinks it reeks of him here – Nate Grey. Just a single set of tracks leading away from the “Ground Zero,” though. Grey is still alone, from all indications. Ness has to find him fast and deal with him, before anyone else does.
Several miles away from the area, the French-Canadian excavation researchers that Nate saved from the Great Beasts have gathered in their tents and try to assess what happened. One of them announces that the l’officiers are back from base. “If you can still call it that, doctor,” a fellow researcher, a woman named Salange, replies to that. Nothing left of the long-distance vehicles or the battery-boosters, she’s afraid. Those abominable snowmen or whatever they were didn’t leave enough of the base-camp for kindling, so they’re going to have to make this field-site work for all of them until the next scheduled supply run comes through. Still, she points out that Morelle Pharmaceutique will be expecting a return of their investment. And so far, they’ve got nothing but one heck of a story.
And one red-hot piece of evidence right here in front of them, Salange’s husband, Philippe, reveals as he uses a device to examine the metal they’ve extracted. He warns Salange to keep her distance. Sound advice, Doctor Hidoshi agrees as he uses a similar device for measuring. As their doctor l’officiel can see for himself, the Rotigen-count is running off the scale, indicating extremely high levels of radiation. Salange asks him what it is: gamma, hydrogen, quantum? Pre- or post-half-life? Ambient or trance equivalents? Exactly what kind of radiation are they talking about here? Hidoshi admits it’s hard to say. It’s like they’ve ever seen before, conforming to no known parameters of… Salange cuts him off and sneers at him: so he can’t confirm that it’s dangerous then, either? Hidoshi sighs: no, he supposes he can’t…
Suddenly, they hear explosions outside their tent. “Step aside, eggheads…” an authoritative voice commands them. Three individuals dressed in highly sophisticated, electronic full body suits appear before them – the Psi-Ops of the Gauntlet. One of the intruders announces they have precisely five seconds to deliver the alpha-side codenamed X, aka the boy who calls himself Nate Grey. The intruder starts counting: “Four.”
“The b-boy…?” a terrified Hidoshi manages to stutter. Mustering his courage, Philippe reveals the boy is gone. They’re just a commercial expedition team, sent to recover more of this strange metal, he explains – and presents them with said metal on a table. “Gone where…?” the Gauntlet agent asks with regard to Nate, before he adds “Three.” A second later, he relentlessly resumes his countdown, “Two.”
Elsewhere, Nate Grey slowly – and with effort – wakes up. “M-Madelyne…?” he murmurs as he opens his eyes. He finds himself laid on a sofa, resting his head on Madelyne Pryor’s legs, his lower body covered with a blanket. Having a look around him, Nate instantly realizes he is in the cabin… the chateau in Switzerland, where he and Madelyne first met… “H-how?” he wonders. “Don’t ask, Nate,” Maddie solemnly replies – not yet. “But these people…” Nate weakly protests. She wouldn’t help him… help these people. Resting her hand on his left arm, Maddie clarifies she’s here for him – always.
In the field-site, Philippe recounts to the menacing Gauntlet soldiers that they’d just discovered the artifact, hadn’t even freed it from the ice completely, when the Beasts appeared on the horizon. The boy saved their lives, sent those giant creatures straight into space somehow and collapsed at their feet, leaking energy like blood. Like blood and something else… someone else… And as quickly as this energy form – Madelyne Pryor – came, she was gone again…
“… with the boy,” the Psi-Op known as Vise finishes Philippe’s phrase. The hapless man moans with pain, connected as he is to a wire that is attached to Vise’s suit. Indignant, Salange burst out that they told them all that already… they told them all they know! She demands they leave Philippe alone! Who are these lunatics? What do they want? What in God’s name are they doing to Philippe?
One of the three soldiers – Barone – explains they’re Gauntlet. Top of the class Psi-Operatives, since she asked. And they’re tearing the answers they need, details Salange’s husband may not even be aware of, directly from his mind. Which is more than any of these researchers will remember when this is over, unfortunately. Fellow Psi-Op Cinder Fontaine, though, has her objections over the way Philippe is treated. She points out they won’t get anything from a dead man, and the range of neural risks from Vise’s cyber enhancements…
Barone retorts that he gives the orders here. He decides what actions do or don’t fall within the scope of the mission objective. He commands her to see to the hostages. Fontaine has no choice but to comply.
In the chateau in Switzerland, Madelyne allays Nate’s fears. All those precious people he was so worried about are just fine now. Nate beat the big, bad monsters and saved the day all by himself. But she stresses she’s there for him when it counts. She’s proved that much already. And she’s here now – a mutant and his mistress, if he will. Can’t that be enough for tonight, at least? Who knows what effect they’ll have on each other, given time? she suggestively adds.
Grabbing the mug of hot chocolate Maddie is offering him, Nate admits there’s so much to say… he just needs someone to listen. Of course, Maddie readily agrees. Nate reminds her she was there, she saw what he saw… she shared his vision of the future… the not so distant future, from what he could tell… of his battle with that other… so familiar somehow… even hidden behind his armor… a battle leading to the end of the world as they know it… Nate has been hearing for so long how his own power – his own mind, really – is killing him, slowly but surely, he’d almost gotten used to the idea, somehow. But knowing that he’s destined to take half the world with him in one critical overload of deadly energies at the very end… now he can’t think of anything else…
“Threnody!” he just then spontaneously – and unexpectedly – brings up the name of his former girlfriend. “Excuuuse me?!” a vexed Madelyne exclaims at the exclamation. Disgruntled, she gets up. Weak – he is still weak, she decides. He needs food, a lot more than they have here… she’ll be back.
“Uh-uh, whatever…” Nate murmurs as he’s left alone in the room. He can’t believe this didn’t occur to him before now. He was just so hurt from the way Threnody vanished from his life without a word before Maddie showed up last time – but Threnody’s an energy-leech. She is a mutant who feeds on the energies released in death, draining them, drawing them in herself. A mutant who just might be able to drain Nate’s own equally lethal energies.
He contemplates the possibility she might just have been doing exactly that for all those months they were together. She may have been keeping his powers in check for the master she secretly served, the mad geneticist known as Sinister. It makes sense actually, considering how much damage he’s done since then… and what’s still to come, unconsciously, without control, without Thren around. It makes a lot of sense. Only one way to find out for sure, though, one person who might know the truth. But the psi-bafflers that protect Threnody from madness – from the deafening noise of all those souls she’s sipped – also screen her from direct contact telepathically, especially over any kind of distance.
Nate decides to try another route instead: straight through the psi-plane. His psi-form leaves his body and enters the psi-plane, an innerverse of sorts, where all minds meet as one, according to his old mentor, Forge – without physical restrictions, without limitations, where there is every bit as close as here. Flying along the psi-plane, he is confident that in the deepest shadows of the darkest corner, he’s bound to find the shade…
“…Madelyne?!” he suddenly exclaims in shock, as the vague feminine figure he was seeing ahead of him turns out not to be Threnody, but rather his current companion. Madelyne is visibly mad with him. “Expecting someone else, Natey…?” she snarls.
Back in the camp in Yukon, the unfortunate Philippe drops to the floor, grunting incoherently, his devoid of sanity. “Oops,” Vise comments in a matter-of-fact way, “I forget how easy they break sometimes.” Philippe has only whetted her appetite: “Next…” she suggests, ready to tear apart someone else’s brain. Barone instructs her to slow down. He reminds her that the hostages are non-combatants, and their authorization extends so far into the civilian community. To that, Vise counters that he knows the full score here – they all know what’s at stake if one of these “innocents” doesn’t point them to Grey in time. Undeterred, she grabs Salange, who’s still reeling from the shock of seeing Philippe left in this condition.
“Stay away from her!” Doctor Hidoshi screams at Vise. “A mistake, Doctor Hidoshi, isn’t it?” Barone remarks and fires at him. He warns him it will be a fatal one, if he even attempts to move another muscle in their presence. They are sanctioned for full response to any or all immediate threats. To the squad, or the mission itself…
Just then, Ness catches them off-guard, driving the ice-drill inside the tent!
In the psi-plane, Madelyne confronts Nate. He’s talking to her, using her, and the whole time he’s reaching out to someone else. To another woman. Nate is startled: she read his thoughts?! Maddie insists they have no secrets from each other. His mind, his life, is an open book to her – as hers has always been to him. She suggests he steps right in and see for himself. One favor first, though – if he can promise her he won’t try cutting ahead to the last chapter anymore. No need to ruin the ending for her, too.
Nate refuses to go there again – not into her mind. Not after what happened last time with… “With the real Jean Grey,” Maddie finishes for him. Nate’s mother. “A dimensional alternate of my mother,” Nate corrects her. Of his genetic donor, really. He promises Madelyne he won’t hurt her like that again. Maddie lashes out: doesn’t he get it? Hasn’t he be listening? He is hurting her… he never stopped hurting her!
Meanwhile, pandemonium prevails in the tent in Yukon. Vise shouts at her companions to hit the deck: the ice-drill’s out of control… Before she finishes her phrase, she is trapped in the gears of the drill. Barone realizes it isn’t just out of control: they’re under attack! Taking advantage of the distraction the uncontrollable drill offers, Ness approaches the astonished researchers and tells them to get away from the machine – now. Cinder Fontaine reports to her superiors about the attack: Vise is down already. Down maybe, but definitely not out, Barone retorts and manages to lift the machine off of Vise. Barone points his gun at Ness and tells him to hold it right there. Who is he? What is he doing here? What could he possibly have hoped to gain from this stunt?
Ness replies that all the same could be asked of them – by all the world, in fact. Now that he’s had the chance to insure that this ugly little scene is being broadcast live. Impossible, Barone doubts him. Their people are in position directly above them, jamming all transmissions to and from these coordinates. “Not on my personal frequency,” Ness insists. Not through his personal satellite. He’s locked open a one-way channel, meta-linked to major media networks globally. How do they feel about going public with murder number one? he challenges them. Vise believes he’s lying. Probably, Barone remarks – but command won’t let them take that risk. So, they’re out of there! In a flash, all three agents teleport away.
Not lying. Bluffing, a relieved Ness contemplates – bluffing with nothing but a dead radio and a salvaged battery. After he heard enough to know that these self-styled soldiers call themselves Gauntlet, and their organization’s after the same thing Ness is: Nate Grey.
The researchers are trying to catch a breath. A worried Salange checks on her husband. Philippe reveals he’s fine… just a little headache… Ness deduces that this means one of the other Psi-Ops used his or her apparent talents to trick Philippe’s interrogator somehow, deceiving one of their own, at the end. To protect them possibly, or more likely to…
The researchers finally ask Ness who he is. Why did he save them all? How can they thank him? Ness introduces himself and reveals the boy is his sole concern now. His trail led straight to here, ending abruptly in the snow outside, but if they have nothing more to tell him about where… where he…
His attention suddenly focused on another thing as he notices the strange metal they excavated, he gasps that it can’t be! That metal shard… it’s distinctive… “Where did you find it?!” Ness bursts out and blasts it in smithereens with his gun. A breathless Salange reveals they found it almost forty yards northeast and thirty feet deep, but he can’t just… Ness asks if any of them touched it. Does any of them know the taste of the tainted shasteel now? Salange explains that the others wouldn’t let her.  Ness replies that they owe them their life then. “Be well, all,” he wishes them and abruptly takes off, leaving everyone speechless.
In the psi-plane, Madelyne’s hands stretch out and elongate and reach for Nate, to snatch him possessively. She implores him not to do this to her again… His own psi-form equally liquid and pliable, Nate evades her attempts to grasp him and replies he’s not doing anything to her. He’s doing this for him; for them; for everyone. Maddie, nevertheless, enlarges her hand to a monstrous degree and seizes him in her first. Nate’s body dissolves into incoherent liquidness and rematerializes intact away from Maddie’s fist. He stresses that Threnody might be the salvation to them all.
Now turning his back on her, his psi-form glowing in bright red, Nate promises he will back; he promises her that much. “No, Nate… please…” Madelyne begs him and makes to seize him again. But Nate perseveres and now moves further along the psi-plane, in quest of Threnody. He is sort of surprised Maddie didn’t follow him across the border, after all that, but he isn’t complaining. He needs to see Thren alone first, try and figure out what happened between them, how everything went so wrong…
Weird, he suddenly muses. He feels some kind of vibration, almost a pulse, rippling, surging through the psi-plane itself… building with each wave… tasting of the X-Men, no less. Of Jean Grey…
And then, without warning, he howls with anguish, as he feels the pulse piercing through his psi-form, shattering it in million fragments, forcing Nate violently back to the corporeal world. And with just that, and nothing more, all hope dies, as Nate’s contact with the psi-plane is severed – as he loses his psionic powers.


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Provide a full summary of the comic book.

[Assistant]
Rainbow’s End
The western coast of Ireland
A dejected Nate Grey is standing on a cliff’s edge, gazing at the vast expanse of the sea ahead of him. He can’t take this anymore. He can’t take feeling so broken. He could still move a mountain with his mind, no doubt about that. He can still feel those psionic energies churning, burning him up from within – now, more than ever, for some reason – but his telepathy’s gone.
Two weeks now and counting. Two weeks since the psi-dimension came crashing down around him and he woke up in Switzerland, cold and alone – again. Nothing was the same, all of a sudden. Nothing’s even been remotely recognizable since then, except that last fading echo of the X-Men. New York. Again. He has done this ocean and then some, without ever breaking a sweat before… but mindblind like this, with no way to reach out ahead and touch the horizon, everything seems so distant, so flat and lifeless. In sharp contrast to his emotional condition, a rainbow sets high in the sky.
Nate thinks that this obsessive focus on what’s missing, instead of what’s here – right in front of him – might have more than little to do with Maddie Pryor, with not knowing what happened to her after the psi-crash and all. Same sort of hollow, barren feeling he got from Paris, ever since Madelyne first slipped away from him there all those months ago. The same way the Swiss cabin felt when he woke up there without her again just two weeks ago. The way the loft in New York always felt when Threnody walked out on him. Or maybe this nagging new hole in his gut is just an old-fashioned fear of death, finally. A very real fear of a death he knew would come, sooner, not later. But a death he now knows, which he has seen with his mind’s eye, that will take half the population of this precious planet along with him.
So, Nate continues his morbid musings, if he doesn’t survive this now, for some reason… if his telekinetics gives out like his telepathy halfway across the Atlantic… Or he could stand here till the cows come home – which might just be any minute now, considering what he stepped in to get this far. But nothing’s going to change. The X-Men are still his only lead, his only real hope of figuring out what happened to him. His last chance. Nate hesitantly takes a leap of faith – both literally and figuratively – and jumps off the cliff, telekinetic levitating himself in the air, ready to embark on a flight across the Atlantic and back to the States.
In timely fashion, he hears a voice behind him, pleading him not to go on account of her – she just needed some time to pull herself together. Nate Grey turns to face the speaker – and it is, of course, none other than the missing Madelyne Pryor. “You know how that can be, right…?” Maddie asks, pleading with her smile for his understanding. “Cheap shot, Maddie,” Nate crossly retorts. He told her he was leaving up north… he told her he had something he wanted to do in private… and she…
“Fell apart when the psi-dimension blew up in my face. Gimme a break, already,” Maddie snaps. “Enough with the dramatic entrances then, lady, and more exits,” Nate demands. No more dipping in and out of his life, dancing back and forth, in and out, back and forth, in and out… Madelyne foxily remarks it doesn’t sound too bad to her. Aloof to her banter, Nate continues nagging: always in and out of his life on her terms… “Even better,” an unfazed Maddie quips. She stresses she’s here for the long run now – here to stay. If he wants her…
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shudders and gives way, prompting both of them to remain aloft in the air. Madelyne is taken aback: earthquake?! Tearing across the mountain, heading straight for… “Clifden!” Nate finishes her phrase, as he notices a giant fissure cracking open in the ground below them – a fissure that’s about to hit the small nearby town of Clifden. Flying frantically towards the area, Nate observes that the fissure is about to rip through the construction site at the outskirts of the village.
Following Nate at an equal pace, Maddie believes they’re not going to make it. Not physically they’re not, Nate agrees. But psionically… His left eye glows in response and he exerts telekinetic energy on the fissure on the ground below. However, he quickly realizes he can’t stop it, not from here… he can barely even slow it down… it’s like trying to close a zipper from behind! Landing on the ground, right ahead of the incoming wave of destruction, Nate explains it did buy him just enough time, a few priceless seconds, if nothing else, to push out in front and slam on the brakes!
Indeed, the wave of fissure comes across Nate, just as he tries to constrain it and push it back, hoping to finally halt it with his telekinetic powers. Eventually, Nate succeeds in putting the brakes to it and the destructive wave ceases. Unstoppable force meets unmovable object, Madelyne remarks as she lands on the ground. Shouldn’t have worked, of course. That kind of pressure… Nate guesses he’s just lucky.
All around them, the terrified residents of Clifden slowly come out of their hiding places and scrutinize their saviors, trying to place them. One of them thinks they are friends of the McMurphys. “Which McMurphys…?” another villager asks. “Widow McMurphy,” someone suggests. Some misunderstanding ensues on who this “widow McMurphy” is, until the villager clarifies he meant. “River widow McMurphy,” the one who lives in the west bank – or he could be wrong at that.
Nate surveys the damage. If the construction site had been manned at this hour, or if the quake had slashed another few feet into town… He then pauses, as he notices Madelyne being distracted with something. Maddie explains she almost thought she heard something under the rubble there. Some sort of chittering or…
At that very instant, the mountain, at the foot of which Clifden is built, begins collapsing. “Avalanche?!” Nate and Madelyne gasp in unison. Without thinking twice, they soar towards the collapsing mountain. Maddie grumps that she knew it – she knew Nate’s telekinetic “cease and desist” on Mother Nature would have repercussions. The underground pressure-stop he created had to find release of some sort. Nate demands she give him a break already – there a couple of thousand lives depending on them right now!
The pair reaches the collapsing parts of the mountain and begins telekinetically pummeling them into smaller, more manageable pieces. Madelyne urges Nate to save the locals. She’ll cover him… as usual. Nate advises her to take the big ones first, try and deflect them into each other before… Maddie cuts him off: she wasn’t exactly born yesterday. “Real funny, lady… ‘cept we’re the only ones who get it,” Nate replies. Maddie clarifies it’s called a private joke.
The pair finally makes it through, having broken most of the collapsing parts into smaller pieces, while Nate was telekinetically shielding the houses below. The crisis past, Maddie notices that Nate’s hurt – his nose is bleeding. It looks like minimal property damage for a change, though, so they should be able to find some place more civilized to finish this. Without asking Nate, she spirits them both away. In the fused area, below, shadows of conical-shaped creatures emerge.
Shortly, Nate and Madelyne are having a dance in the Fox Run Inn, in Clifden. The inn is stuffed with guests and customers, many of them dancing at the sounds of the music played by a live band. “Never a dull moment, Nate, that’s for sure,” Maddie remarks with a smile. This kind of stuff, earthquakes and avalanches and all, does it happen to him a lot? “To tell you the truth, Maddie… yeah,” Nate admits. Maddie admirably notes he can waltz, too. Nate explains it’s thanks to the instant lessons he psi-lifted from the minds of New York’s best and brightest, moves borrowed without a second thought at the time, a souvenir of one very special night at the Rainbow Room. Unfortunately, it’s the only dance he lifted, and this band isn’t playing a waltz. He asks Madelyne what they are doing here, anyway. He needs to find out what happened to his telepathy, use it to track down Threnody, see if her body’s mutant ability, its demand for energies released in death, can somehow prevent his own fatal overload before…
Maddie stresses he needs another meal, maybe three, and a good night’s sleep away from the rest of the world. He needs to take care of that body of his. Looking him deeply in the eyes and bringing her face closer to his, maybe to kiss him, she asserts that everything he needs is right here…
Then, the moment they had is gone, as one of the young ladies in the inn pushes Nate away and brings him over to her clique of girlfriends. The forceful gal tells them to take it up a notch or two – it’s payday! The girls circle Nate and one of them instructs him in dancing: shake his shoulders and loosen the hips. “Dangle, boyo, dangle,” the other girl urges him. Hard as he might try, Nate can’t really synchronize with the rhythm of the music. One of the Irish girls giggles: she urges Nate to swing with the beat. Embarrassed, Nate claims that he is usually a lot less stiff than this… really… he’s a just little off its game these days… The girls giggle flirtatiously.
Three guys are grumpily watching the girls courting with Nate. They are still trying to figure out who the stranger is. One of them has heard he’s cousin of the McMurphys. “Mac McMurphy?” another guy asks. “Mick McMurphy,” the third guy clarifies. “Mickey’s Mick…?” the other guy asks for further clarification. Madelyne intrudes in their group and advises them not to get mad – get even. The three boys are stunned by Maddie’s beauty.
A bit further, the innkeeper, a man named Ronan, is recounting to some of the customers that there wouldn’t be a single soul left in Clifden to pay for the pints now, if not for the new McMurphys. “Mutants, wouldn’t ye know. The good kind, sure,” he adds. One of his customers is of a different mind. Next Ronan will be telling them it’s the work of the wee people themselves, causing all the troubles in the first place just to spite the factory, cursing their expansion into the foothills. Unbeknownst to all, scores of the cone-shaped creatures gather outside the inn, peeping inside with glowing eyes.
Meanwhile, the local boys are flirting with Madelyne. “Miss McMurphy…?” one of them addresses her. A smiling Maddie corrects him: “Ms., but…” Another guy asks her if there would be a Mister McMurphy. Nearby, Nate awkwardly tries to come through the joyous, dancing girls.
Suddenly, much to everyone’s shock, fire bursts out of the fireplace and begins engulfing everything in flames. Staff and customers rush out of the inn, in panic. Nate thinks this is getting ridiculous, even for him. Tackling the fire, he notes it’s easy enough to smother the core of the blaze telekinetically, but sparks are popping left and right, and most of this wood is steered in alcohol, so the embers are easily fanned, bursting into full-fledged flames. High above, the strange creatures, assembled in the skylight, spray the flames with some rays. Amidst the commotion, Nate hears Maddie’s voice calling him. Nate wonders where she is – what is going on here? How is this inferno spreading so fast?! He’s telekinetically filtering enough air to breathe, no problem, but the smoke’s thick already, and the crowd’s panicking, logjamming the door…
A hand rests on his shoulder. Nate turns, only to face a silver-haired man – Ness. Calling him an “exile” –suggesting Nate’s status as a refugee from the Age of Apocalypse – Ness announces that he’s been after him for quite some time now. Nate ironically suggests he takes a number and… Studying him more carefully, he suddenly recognizes Ness: he knows him. Perhaps, Ness cryptically replies. He most certainly knows…
Watching their interaction, Maddie also peruses the strange man, his yellow eyes… She interrupts their conversation and reminds Nate that they’ve got a situation on their hands here. Ness agrees: “Yes, Nate Grey. Heads up”. He asks him to think bigger – think broader.
Nate takes heed of this advice and flies outside the burning inn, a new plan in his head. He soars straight into a mass of rainclouds, high up in the sky, charges himself with psionic energy and agitates the clouds. A second later, a thunder crackles – and a downpour ensues. The shower quickly extinguishes the fire below. Incredibly strained from his effort, Nate flies himself down, but eventually collapses to the ground.
At the foothills, the mysterious creatures gather. They appear to be synthetic beings, comprised of metallic armors and drill-shaped helmets. They pause before another mechanical being, one designed like a spider. The spider-like robot reports the findings of its operation: “Impulsive ceasure of regulated earthquake… ignoring consideration of geo-stress release… Direct result: localized avalanches. Increased danger to community. Regulated fire scenario results:  contained by uncontrolled. Testing complete. Results… troubling.” The ‘drill-heads’ embark on the spider-like vehicle, which proceeds to leave.
In Clifden, Ness and Maddie head out of the inn. Ness, clasping the remains of one of the strange creatures, notes that the locals can handle the last of the flames now, but the boy… It must have cost him so much energy, hyper-agitating the rain-clouds like that… And he fell so far…
Maddie tells him he’s seen this before. She’s seen Nate riddled with holes, energy pouring out of him, like blood. Ness claims he’s seen Nate worse. Maddie suddenly puts two and two together and recognizes him from Nate’s vision: that’s it, isn’t it? Ness was the one hiding in the shadows, lurking at the edges of Nate’s vision of the future at the very end, right before…
Just then, they finally reach the point where Nate approximately collapsed. He is nowhere to be found. He is gone, just gone…


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Provide a full summary of the comic book.

[Assistant]
Call of the Wild
A shirtless Nate Grey stands in forest, a large axe in one hand, ‘This BITES!’ he shouts. It is not such a small world, after all. Nate Grey knows this. Although no longer so new to young Nate, this fresh, free Earth still proves strange enough, often enough - and easy enough to get lost in. The forested region of Central France is only one of the many pit stops on this road less travelled - a picturesque detour for rest and refueling. Because, for all the power at this young mutant’s command, all the psionic power of a mind able to manipulate matter itself, he is still just a growing boy.
He hacks away at a tree with the axe with telekinetic fury and tells himself that the harder he works his telekinesis to earn money for food, the hungrier he gets. The hungrier he gets, the harder he has to work his telekinesis to earn money for food. He chops another tree down with a powerful blast, and it falls to the ground, alongside several other tree trunks. ‘A guy’s gotta eat!’ Nate tells himself.
And it doesn’t get much more real than Dallas, Texas. Just ask any Texan. Inside a hospital, someone remarks ‘- passed every test with flying colors, Mrs Jones - checked out healthy as a horse, I’m telling you’. Marlo Thomas-Jones replies ‘And just as stubborn. I don’t care what the doctors said, Mr Jones… that icko-skeleton thingie of yours -’ Marlo begins as she pushes her husband, Rick Jones, along in a wheelchair ‘Exo-skeleton’ he corrects her. ‘Whatever, it stays in the closet - with the underwear you’re not allowed to wear - until I say you’re healthy enough again’ Marlo declares.
‘For the exo-skeleton…? Or the -’ Rick begins, holding a bunch or roses, while his friend Bruce Banner walks alongside them and tells Rick that Marlo is right, the neurology department at this hospital is as good as it gets, which is why he risked being discovered by the authorities by calling one of his contacts up here to get Rick in for a check up.
Bruce tells his friend that he can’t go pushing himself too hard, too fast - not if he wants to have any real hope of walking on his own again some day. They pass some hospital staff, and Bruce thinks to himself that Rick is lucky to have survived a blow from his bitter half at all, even a glancing backhand - luckier than most who cross their path, really.
Rick looks up at Bruce, ‘Point taken, Bruce… and I’m really sorry, bud. Seriously. Can’t imagine what we were thinking, Mar and me - going on like that - back and forth -while you’re still trying to deal with your own wife’s… with Betty’s…’ Rick’s voice trails off. ‘Don’t, Rick’ Bruce asks. He adds that he came here to apologize to Rick, maybe even offer some positive reinforcement about his physical therapy. ‘But now… now I don’t even know where to begin’.
Rick tells Bruce that he might want to work on his changing- the-subject skills to start with, and kisses Marlo’s hand, remarking that he has been there, he really does know what he is going through. ‘I lost Marlo once, too, remember?’ Bruce hangs his head and points out that Rick got Marlo back. ‘You don’t have a clue, kid’ Bruce snaps as he storms towards a door, and slams it open, leaving Marlo and Rick watching their friend go.
‘The beast within you wasn’t responsible for your wife’s death, Bruce thinks to himself as his heartbeat quickens - his pulse pounds, his skull pounds he races up a flight of stairs, telling himself that he doesn’t run the risk of being responsible for a thousand more deaths every single minute of every single day since the gamma-bomb accident. But the seething, raging Hulk cannot finish his thought - not in so many words, at least, as Bruce transforms into the Hulk and bursts through the ceiling of the hospital, finding himself on the hospital’s roof, he lets out a mighty roar.
Back in France, specifically, Auxerre, in a small wooden diner, Nate sits at a table in the room, heated by an open fire, He has already devoured four plates of food, and a waitress is bringing him a fifth. The patrons watch him and comment to each other in French. One of them laughs, and Nate decides that they are laughing at him. He wonders if it is his clothes or his hair. ‘Can’t be my hair’ he decides. He wonders if there is something stuck in his teeth, maybe. He recalls that this time last week, no matter what language the locals were speaking, he could have read their thoughts as easily as their faces. But since the even on the psi-plane, an X-Men sponsored event, as usual, he is sure of that, his telepathy is gone. He is mind-blind, it is all he can do to figure out which way is which now.
Nate is relieved that his telekinesis isstill up to speed - so far, anyway - and wonders if it was because it he was in his psi-form when it all went down, really more of a mental state from a physical one, from the feel of it, but his hard-psi could explode in his face for all he knows. He decides that he can’t afford to waste an ounce of power on anything except getting back to the States and dragging some answers out of the X-Men. ‘Votre crème caramel, monsieur’ the waitress remarks as she opens the lid, revealing the dish. She speaks to him quickly in French, but Nate just looks confused. He realizes she is asking him a question, ‘Si, si… um... I mean… jawohl?’ Nate replies. The waitress doesn’t look too impressed, so she just shoutssomething at the chef, which translates as ‘Henry - he’ll take all four!’ and the chef slaps his hand to his face before rushing out the back, past all the tree trunks that Nate has piled up, he starts to chase a pig.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, The Hulk leaps from one building rooftop to another, smashing part of the building as he goes - before he bounds so hard he crashes into a edifice in the desert, a mighty THOOM resonating around.
Paris, France, Nate rides along the top of a speeding train, he is held in place with his telekinesis so that he doesn’t fall from the train. He recalls the first big city he saw after coming through to this world - the first big city he thinks he has ever seen with so many lights, so many sights, such music, even the smell of it - and it all still reminds him of Madelyne Pryor, the very person he found on this side - the first real friend he made - and lost. ‘Here. Then New York. And now Switzerland’ he tells himself. Nate recalls that by the time he pulled himself back together after the psi-crash last week he was alone in the cabin and Maddie was gone again - maybe even for good this time. He closes his eyes and remembers Madelyne.
Arizona, the Hulk lands again with a mighty THOOM, breaking up the landscape around him, he then leaps into the Grand Canyon and comes to a stop. ‘Needed space all of a sudden…as much as I could get…as fast as I could get it…’ he tells himself. He can still hear her voice so clearly sometimes, calling to him, so softly. He still sees her lips, and if he tries, her eyes. But he can’t see her face anymore. ‘I can’t see Betty’s face’ the Hulk frowns.
Folkestone, England, now, Nate gets out of a man’s car and thanks him for the ride, adding that he doesn’t know how he would have made it through that Tunnel without him. ‘Seriously claustrophobic, right?’ Nate remarks. ‘Oui, oui’ the man agrees, while Nate points out that he is heading west for him here. ‘Must be one around here somewhere, right? Call of nature and all that…’ Nate’s voice trails off. ‘Oui, oui’ the man tells him. ‘Okay, okay, if you gotta go…’ Nate remarks, he turns around, and sees some police officers. ‘English, finally! People who speak English!’ Nate declares. ‘I was afraid I’d never -’ he begins, while one of the officers asks him ‘Passport? Visas, student papers…?’ to which Nate replies ‘Thanks, no. Don’t really expect to be needing any, you know…’. ‘No…we do not know’ one of the officers replies, grabbing Nate.
‘Oops’ Nate thinks to himself, realizing that without the mental mettle to back it up, the soft-psi he is so used to applying without a second thought, what he just said to the officers does sound sort of arrogant. ‘Sorry, pal… my mistake’ Nate smiles, while another officer goes over to the man who drove Nate to the border, ‘Have to ask you to come with us, if you wouldn’t mind, Sir. To answer some questions about your passenger…’ ‘Oui, oui’ is all the driver says.
Back in the Grand Canyon, the Hulk goes wide-eyed, ‘Ah, you heard me then… how gratifying to know someone is finally listening’ a voice calls out. The Hulk looks up and sees a large shadow looming against the rocks behind him. ‘You are… not Betty? NOT BETTY!’ the Hulk roars as he starts to pound the rocks into millions of pieces. ‘NOT BETTY!’ the Hulk roars even louder as the large edifice collapses around him, burying the Hulk in a literal mountain of rock. The strange voice from earlier just laughs, while under the rubble, the Hulk mutters ‘Perfect’.
England again, Nate flies alongside a truck, ‘Simple enough in the end. Just a matter of distracting the border bobbies with a telekinetic feint to the left while slipping away to the right and deflecting the light that makes me visible’ he tells himself, recalling how he got away. Nate boasts that when it comes to avoiding the authorities, hiding right under their noses, it comes right down to this, this is what he know best, what he does best - this is where he is the most comfortable.
The Grand Canyon, ‘COWARD!’ the Hulk booms as he easily punches his way out of the rubble. The voice just laughs, louder and louder, ‘Who are you? Where are you…hiding?’ the Hulk asks, as a strange energy starts to glow amongst several tall narrow rocks which are positioned in a circle.
And in England, Nate flies into the back of the truck he was flying alongside. He is starving again already, but exhausted now, too. He knows he has to catch some sleep when, and where, he can - and then he passes out.
Back at the Grand Canyon: ‘You’re actually beginning to see me now, as well, brute?’ the mysterious voice calls out, before laughing some more. ‘Of all within reach of this dark dimension - all whom the shadows of the night had to offer - I have truly chosen wisely this time’ he decides. ‘Stop it! Stop -’ the Hulk shouts as he leaps towards the energies, but is repelled back.
‘-laughing? Who’s laughing?’ Nate thinks to himself as he suddenly opens his eyes. He peers out the back of the truck, ‘What’s there to laugh about in the middle of - Stonehenge?’ he wonders as he sees the historical site up on the hill the truck is driving past. He flies out of the truck and approaches Stonehenge, ‘Gotta check this out’ Nate decides. He walks up the remainder of the hill towards the rock formation and recalls that it is thousands of years old from what he has heard - a circle of quartz-rich standing stones, dragged here from a hundred miles away, for reasons lost to history now. ‘Heard a lot of theories, though - druid ceremonial site… ancient calendar… even alien observatory’ he thinks to himself, while within Stonehenge, energies glow.
‘Do you not recognize me yet, Hulk? Do you not remember how little your vaunted power - and the so-called powers of all this world’s champions combined - has ever meant against the first consort of Mistress Death herself… Thanos, Last Lord Eternal of Motherworld Titan?’ the cosmic being booms as he materializes within the rock formation, which, looks strangely like Stonehenge in the middle of the Grand Canyon.
‘Ringing a few bells, yeah’ the Hulk mutters as he dodges energy blasts that are tossed his way. Thanos tells the Hulk that playtime is over. ‘Now that we have seen your raw strength measured against a mountain - and humbled by the forces that currently bind me - shall we take this opportunity to discuss what we both might accomplish… together?’ Thanos suggests. ‘I’m listening’ the Hulk replies, narrowing his eyes.
‘Whoa…’ Nate utters as he sees a figure materialize from the energies glowing within Stonehenge. ‘I am the Ebon Void now… my plane of reality is one with yours… offering me a foothold in both worlds, if you would. But this world pretends at condemning such power’ the voice resonates, and both Nate and the Hulk hear it. Thanos tells the Hulk that be is both empowered by it and trapped within it. ‘But there are doors, Hulk… and ley-lines are the key’ He adds that veins of electro-magnetic energies are branching out across the planet’s skin, pulsing with its very lifeblood, and at the intersections of these ley-lines, the most puissant of such intersections, all throughout the galaxies. ‘What - what is it?’ Nate wonders, looking up at the strange figure materializing, its red eyes glowing. ‘Condemning me. Condemning us’ Thanos tells the Hulk.
‘And this world of all worlds, pariah… deserves us!’ the figure at Stonehenge declares, his hand reaching out of the energy, it strikes the ground where Nate is standing, causing Nate to fall into the energies - and an instant later, he finds himself falling towards the Hulk. ‘Who the…? Punching through Thanos’s power field… outta nowhere…’ the Hulk realizes, he leaps up to grab the new arrival, realizing he is creating some sort of energy feedback, that needs grounding, fast. The Hulk lands on the ground with Nate, and he realizes who he has rescued. ‘If you know what’s good for you, kid, stay down’ the Hulk tells Nate. ‘And outta my way’ he adds. ‘Hulk?’ Nate calls out, wide-eyed. ‘Way outta my way…’ the Hulk frowns, declaring that the man-god and he have some business to finish.
‘That Thanos thing you mean? business with him? Are you crazier than you look, monster? Crazier than I am for asking?’ Nate calls out, before asking the Hulk if he has any idea what that demon is all about. ‘Do you know who - what it serves?’ Nate asks, revealing that he was only in contact with it for a moment, and barely grazed the black hole of its consciousness, but he has never been more scared in his life. Nate strikes the Hulk with telekinetic power, but the Hulk doesn’t even flinch. He simply replies that he knows exactly what Thanos is all about, and he knows the mistress Thanos serves. ‘Nobody knows better than me!’ the Hulk roars, as he turns around and readies his powerful fist to strike Nate, who tells the behemoth that he is wasting his time, as he puts up a telekinetic force field.
Nate boasts that no one but Jackknife - another psionic, wielding his own power against him a the time, as ever fully pierced his fully-focussed telekinetic shields. The Hulk tries to strike another punch. ‘No one els-’ Nate begins, as the Hulk throws another punch, this one breaks through Nate’s telekinetic force field, and sends him careening backwards through the Canyon. ‘Until now’ the Hulk mutters, before he turns to Thanos and asks him if this is what he is looking for? Thanos doesn’t respond, he just stares down at the Hulk. ‘Muscle without conscience?’ the Hulk asks, as Nate lands in a river. Thanos leans down to the Hulk and extends his large hand. ‘Enforcer experience preferred?’ The Hulk enquires, while Nate pulls himself out of the water.
‘Now that we’ve seen what my raw strength can do for you - and what you can’t do for yourself - why don’t you take this opportunity to remind me, Thanos… what exactly is it you’re offering?’ the Hulk enquires, staring up at Thanos. ‘Power, beast… nothing more, nothing less. Power that rightfully belongs to you… and you alone’ Thanos responds, while, nearby, Nate surrounds himself in psychic armor. ‘You alone. You - alone.’ Thanos calls out. Nate flies towards the Hulk, who is reaching out to touch Thanos’s beckoning hand. ‘NOOOOO!’ Nate screams, slamming into the Hulk, just in time before he touches Thanos. The Hulk is knocked so far backwards that he lands in the water. ‘Sorry, Hulk…so sorry, I swear! I had no idea, believe me - believe me - no way to know how much this telekinetic psi-armor would magnify my blow!’ Nate calls out. He then adds ‘I mean, that’s the purpose and all, sure, but…I’ve never even tried this before! Never had to! Never faced anything like either one of -’ Nate begins, but the Hulk bursts out og the water, ‘Get outta my FACE!’ he roars.
‘Wait, wait. You don’t understand, Hulk, listen - listen to me, please -’ Nate pleads. He informs the Hulk that there is something else going on with these ley-lines and ceremonial circles, something more than Thanos is saying. Nate points out that Thanos hasn’t stepped outside the natural rock formation that surrounds him yet, almost as if he can’t without - the Hulk then interrupts, ‘DUUH, do I look dumb to you or something, Grey?’ he frowns. ‘You knew? You -’ Nate begins, when suddenly, Thanos’s hand reaches down and grabs Nate. ‘Apparently hoped to trick me all along, brainchild. To somehow prevent me from using him as my corporeal link to this dimension, as my physical anchor outside the ring of stones…and I shall now use you instead!’ Thanos announces.
‘Not so fast, Thanos. Contact goes both ways…and I can still try and use it to go in after you… to take the power you’d never willingly give!’ the Hulk points out as he leaps out of the water and back to the stone circle where Thanos remains. ‘On the contrary, Hulk. Here…taste of it freely!’ Thanos replies as he blasts the Hulk with his cosmic energies, tearing the Hulk to shreds. ‘No…you burnt him alive - seared the skin right from his bones!’ Nate gasps, still in his psi-armor, trapped Thanos’s grasp. ‘Did I? my mistake then…I meant to make it last’ Thanos replies as the Hulk lands beside the water, and struggles to get up. ‘Shut up, devil, shut up! I’ll see you rotting in h-’ Nate begins as he tries to punch Thanos in the face with a telekinetic attack. But Thanos does not even flinch. ‘As I was saying, young one…nobody’s perfect. And every time I get my hands on a new toy, it’s true…I tend to get careless with my old ones’.
The Hulk gets to his feet and slams a foot on the ground, while Thanos tells Nate to shed his armor. ‘Give me more of you to grasp onto, more to cling to here in this dimensional plane…enough to make it permanent’. But Nate declares ‘Never! Never!’ while the Hulk pounds his foot to the ground again and again, ‘Such arrogance and bravado…’ Thanos remarks, while the Hulk utters ‘Bingo’ as the rocks holding back the river topple around him. Thanos turns as the powerful river rages towards him, ‘The river - flooding down through the gorge - tearing though the stones!’ Nate exclaims as the river washes over the stone formation. Thanos announces that the circuit alignment has been destroyed, thanks to the Hulk’s blind rage, no doubt. ‘Bothing holds me back here any longer!’ Thanos booms, laughing, he runs through the river below him. He remarks that Nate and the Hulk have much in common, it would seem.
‘In very different ways…both of you actually fancy yourselves heroes, of a sort. But that, young one… now that is to laugh’. Thanos adds, while the Hulk looks up, and Nate realizes that his psi-armor is starting to crack like an egg as Thanos continues to hold him tight. Nate doesn’t have the sheer strength to keep up against the crushing pressure. ‘And you’re no hero -’ Thanos begins, before crying out in agony, as Nate lets the armor explode, while he is still trapped in Thanos’s grasp. Energy swirls about and wraps itself around the Hulk, who finds himself encased in a cosmic armor. ‘The armor’s all yours now, Hulkster!’ Nate calls out. ‘Oh…yeah!’ Hulk declares as he leaps into the air. ‘Do what you do best with it, big guy. And make it hurt. It’s all I can do now to try and rebuild…to try and pull together the only cage we know of that can hold Thnaos - before those ebon energy-chains disperse completely - before it’s too late!’ Nate exclaims as he uses his telekinesis to lift up as many rocks as he can, and the Hulk, powered by the cosmic energy, slams his fists into Thanos’s face.
Nate announces that he can telekinetically gather up all the same materials and even recreate the stone circle’s configuration, to he best of his ability, at least. ‘But I’ll still need you to drive him back into…’ Nate begins, as he recreates the stone circle, and the Hulk strikes Thanos once more. ‘Enough!’ Thanos calls out, casting a blast of energy, which forces the Hulk back, where he lands in the water. ‘Not yet, freak…’ the Hulk replies, while Nate completes the re-creation of the stone circle. ‘…not by a long shot!’ the Hulk exclaims as he leaps forth and punches Thanos once more, then again, so hard that he tumbles backwards, and falls into the stone circle. ‘Nooooo’ Thanos calls out as Nate flies nearby. The Hulk points out that the ebon energies are reacting to Thanos - overreacting. They start to tear the dimensional wound wide open again, sucking Thanos back in, with a vengeance. Nate floats about near the ebon energies, as the Hulk tells him to hang on to something - anything - but Nate is sucked in, too. The Hulk lands in the river, and an instant later, his cosmic armor vanishes. ‘That bites…’ he mutters.

And, at Stonehenge, Nate is thrown out of the swirling energies within Stonehenge, and he lands on the ground nearby. ‘Hungry’ Nate thinks to himself as he lies on the grass, unable to decide which was more prettifying by the end - going toe-to-toe with the Hulk, even for a moment, or coming face-to-face with an evil like Thanos. But he concludes that he does know one thing, more now than ever - this Earth needs him - as much as he needs it.