BIOGRAPHY - Page 5
As with many X-Men, death wasn’t the end for Psylocke. One year after she was killed, Betsy suddenly re-appeared in Valencia at the very spot of her death. She even looked just the same as before, though she now lacked the Crimson Dawn mark. Betsy had no idea how her resurrection came to be and, worse, she was taken into custody by the Guardia Civil, who then notified Storm’s team of X-Men, now being referred to as the X.S.E. (X-Treme Sanctions Executive). When they arrived, Betsy angrily lashed out at Bishop for not telling anyone about what he had seen in the dreamtime sequence. After she had calmed down a bit, the X-Men decided to take her home to the Xavier Institute to confirm whether she was indeed who she claimed to be. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #455]
The team didn’t have the chance to check Betsy’s credentials, though, due to an emergency. While left alone in the Blackbird, Betsy had a vision about her mindscape and how it had been altered. More importantly, her brother, mad and powerful Jamie, appeared in there, apparently pulling the strings. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #456]
When the X.S.E. were captured and brought to the Savage Land, it was up to Psylocke and fledgling new student X-23 to rescue the others. Trying to track down her comrades, Betsy bonded somewhat with the young female clone of Wolverine. Eventually, they found and rescued the others and, during the fights with the Saurid race, who were behind the kidnapping, Betsy quickly regained the X-Men’s trust and acceptance. She learned that her still rather untried telekinetic powers were more powerful than anticipated.She also demonstrated a newfound immunity to all kinds of telepathy - whether communication or attacks. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #456-459]
Back at Xavier’s mansion in Westchester, Betsy had a reunion with some old friends like the Beast, who ran quite a number of tests on her only to confirm that it was really she. Beginning to adjust to the many changes that had happened in her absence, Betsy befriended her new teammate, Rachel, who also had experienced several unexplained Jamie Braddock sightings. Quite likely, he had been the force behind her resurrection. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #460-461]
When the Scarlet Witch tampered with the timeline, resulting in the altered world of the House of M, Betsy and Rachel proved to be linked and, instead of being changed like everyone else, they found themselves pulled into the so-called White Hot Room, the core of creation. However, not even there were they safe from mad Jamie’s manipulations, for after claiming that he had bound their lives and fates together, he transported Betsy and Rachel back to Earth. They too ended up caught in the Scarlet Witch’s reality warp, living new lives and unaware of their previous existence, until Betsy’s twin brother Brian was haunted by dreams of the end of the universe. He convinced Betsy and several others to investigate the problem and they stopped said threat to reality in the nick of time. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #462-465]
After reality was restored to normal, Betsy accompanied several X-Men to Great Britain, where they visited Brian Braddock and helped him get his new team Excalibur off the ground. [New Excalibur #1-3]
One day, Jamie Braddock showed up at the X-Men’s door, having fled from a group called the Foursaken. He revealed he had resurrected his sister Psylocke to turn her into a weapon against the Foursaken and their master, the First Fallen. A cosmic force of stagnation in humanoid form, the First Fallen was the antithesis of the Phoenix. When the Foursaken soon after abducted Jamie, the X-Men followed. Thanks to Jamie’s manipulation, Psylocke was invisible to the Foursaken and confronted the First Fallen himself, who intended to kill all of Earth, save for the Foursaken. Using her psychic knife, Psylocke set free the man who had served as the host avatar to the First Fallen. However, as what overtook him was still evil and out for revenge, Jamie teleported everyone back to Earth, apparently sacrificing himself. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #472-474]
Sometime later, Excalibur’s foe, an evil Xavier from another dimension, wanted to see Psylocke. Excalibur and Psylocke left for Crossmore Prison, which had been evacuated as “Shadow Xavier” was playing with people’s minds. When Psylocke confronted him, he revealed himself to be the Shadow King, wanting revenge against her. The Shadow King informed Psylocke that her death freed him and, due to some cosmic whim, he found himself in another reality, where he possessed Xavier and corrupted his students. Due to another cosmic occurrence – hinting at the recent House of M reality shift – he and his pets returned to this world. When he goaded her with her helplessness, Psylocke used her telekinesis to badly damage the brain of the King’s host body. However, when she tried to finish him off for good, she disappeared in a flash of light. [New Excalibur #8]