CYCLOPS: Page 18 of 20

Publication Date: 14th Nov 2019
Image Work: sixhoursoflucy and Gremlin.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - Page 18

When the rest of the time-displaced X-Men joined the New Xavier School, Cyclops had a hard time with it at first, not only because there was a younger version of himself, but a younger version of Jean Grey as well. Jean didn't like the man Cyclops had become and couldn't fathom a reality where she married him. However, Cyclops did manage to bond with his younger self, even though he had to field tough questions about what happened to Xavier. [All-New X-Men (1st series) #18]

After Hijack violated Cyclops's rules and used his cell phone during a live training exercise, Scott kicked him out of the school. His defiance had revealed their position to the Avengers and almost gotten them arrested. [Uncanny X-Men (3rd series) #17]

When Cyclops and a depowered Wolverine were both tricked into a Sentinel ambush, they had to fight wave after wave of the deadly machines using their malfunctioning powers. They were exhausted after it finally ended but, luckily, they stumbled upon several cases of beer. They decided to drink together while they recovered. In his drunken state, Cyclops made the mistake of asking Wolverine why he hated him so much. During the conversation that followed, Wolverine told Cyclops he'd become a man who scared people, that he had blood on his hands and was poised to bring down all of mutantkind with him when he finally fell. Logan also told Scott people hate him because he didn't hate himself enough. Wolverine urged Cyclops to let him be the one Jean was afraid of and let Cyclops be the one she loved. They drank to Jean at the end of this temporary truce. [Wolverine and the X-Men (1st series) #38-40]

Wolverine died soon after that. To his surprise, Cyclops took the loss rather hard. Even though the man always made his life hell, he had respected him as a leader and couldn’t help but recall all the times Wolverine's tough love helped him through difficult times. He chose to honor Wolverine's memory not by going to his funeral, but by going to a bar and beating the living daylights out of a bunch of loud and proud mutant-bashers. Scott topped off the butt-kicking by drinking a cold beer in Logan's honor. [Death of Wolverine: Life After Logan #1]

When the time-displaced X-Men were kidnapped by the Shi'ar, Cyclops felt terrible, as it had been his duty to protect them. Eventually, the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Starjammers—whose ranks included Scott's resurrected father, Corsair—brought Jean and the original X-Men back to Earth, but the younger Cyclops decided to stay in space and go adventuring with the father he never got to know. [Uncanny X-Men (3rd series) #18, The Trial of Jean Grey crossover]

After the young Cyclops left, Scott had a heart-to-heart with Jean about a variety of topics. Over the course of their conversation, Jean subtly made advances at him. Cyclops turned her down, firmly telling her what she was hinting at could never happen. Thankfully he made the right choice, as Kitty Pryde was eavesdropping outside the room, ready to pounce if Scott ever attempted anything improper with the young Jean. [All-New X-Men (1st series) #26]

After falling for yet another Sentinel trap laid by their mysterious stalker, Cyclops confronted Maria Hill aboard a SHIELD helicarrier and had the Cuckoos read her mind. They discovered she truly did not know who was behind the Sentinel attacks, but she hadn't ruled out that it might be a different division of SHIELD. Regardless, he told Hill that until they solved the Sentinel mystery, he considered his people to be at war with SHIELD.

Later, deducing that their stalker was using Cerebro to bait them into these ambushes, Cyclops went to speak with the one person he knew who had access to Cerebro and might use it against him: Hank McCoy. Cyclops had a tense conversation with Hank and Ororo on the lawn of the Jean Grey School, during which his powers suddenly went haywire, making it appear he had attacked his friends. Storm had to knock him out. While Cyclops was down, McCoy took him into his lab to diagnose what was wrong with his powers and hopefully discern who was behind the Sentinel attacks. At that moment, their mysterious stalker took control of a SHIELD helicarrier hovering above the school and used it to attack the gathered X-Men. Inside, meanwhile, Beast figured out what was wrong with Cyclops and the others whose powers had gone awry. It had nothing to do with the Phoenix Force at all. In reality, the afflicted X-Men had been infected with Sentinel nanotechnology—and to Beast, the identity of the tech’s architect was blindingly obvious. Hank deactivated the nanotech in the bodies of the infected, stabilizing their powers.

Even with the nanotech neutralized, however, the X-Men were still in imminent danger of being killed by the rogue SHIELD helicarrier. Thankfully, Hijack, the student Cyclops had recently expelled, returned just in time and asserted control over all the machines in the area, saving the lives of the X-Men. Immediately afterward, Beast had Magik teleport him and Cyclops to their mysterious attacker's location, now that he knew who and where he was. It turned out to be none other than Beast's interloping counterpart from the Age of Apocalypse, Dark Beast. Cyclops fired on him with his optic blasts and shattered the life-preserving containment suit McCoy was wearing, inadvertently killing him. With that mystery finally resolved, Scott returned to the Jean Grey School and settled his feud with Maria Hill. [Uncanny X-Men (3rd series) #19-22]

When Professor Xavier’s last will and testament was recovered, a group of Xavier's friends and loved ones were legally obligated to gather for its reading—including his killer, Cyclops. The reading of the will was already tense, but it became even more so when the will tasked Cyclops with finding and monitoring a mutant named Matthew Malloy, possibly the most powerful mutant in existence. Xavier’s will revealed that Xavier had psychically lobotomized Malloy as a young boy because of the danger his powers posed, and had periodically checked up on him to make sure the mental barriers inhibiting his powers were still in place. With Xavier dead, however, he needed Cyclops and a powerful telepath to take on this burden.

Incidentally, around this same time, Malloy’s powers were flaring out of control. Scott arrogantly assumed he could handle the situation and recruit this new mutant to the revolution, but it turned out he was wrong: Malloy ended up killing him, Magik, and Emma, among others. As the situation quickly spiraled out of control, Scott's student Tempus enacted a daring gambit: she traveled back in time and found Charles Xavier as a younger man, and had him use his telepathic powers to prevent Malloy’s parents from ever conceiving the child in the first place. With the situation resolved and the timeline altered, the time-displaced Xavier returned to his own era and wiped his mind of what happened, while Tempus returned to the present, where she berated Scott for his recklessness and endangering all their lives with his arrogant revolutionary crusade. Somehow, her words resonated with him: Scott believed she was right, and that his revolution had been reckless. Meanwhile, in the altered will, Xavier bequeathed the school to Cyclops, but Cyclops signed over ownership to Storm. He gave up his revolution, closed the school he started at Weapon X and sent his trainees to the Jean Grey School. In their absence, he devoted himself to merely doing right by mutants. Thus ended Cyclops's revolution. [Uncanny X-Men (3rd series) #23-31]

After sending the angry students away, Cyclops and Emma had a long overdue talk. Scott explained what he had been trying to accomplish with his revolution: believing he had exhausted every option to get humans to leave mutants alone, he resorted to threatening the world with raw force. He admitted he never had any overarching plan. Sensing that Emma wanted to get back together with him, Scott, still angry about her affair with Namor, rejected her once again. Before leaving, Emma berated him for being so callous toward her and reminded him he would now have to live up to the threats he made against the world. [Uncanny X-Men (3rd series) #32]

Later, Scott's brother Alex, publicly disgraced after having his moral compass permanently inverted by a spell, joined Scott at the Weapon X facility as its only other resident. The two brothers bonded after not seeing each other for a long time. [Uncanny X-Men (3rd series) #32]

Later, Cyclops made one last attempt at a revolution. He gathered all of the world's mutants on the national mall in Washington, D.C., and staged a peaceful demonstration for all of the world to see. He showed the world that mutants could all gather in one place without fighting, plotting to take over the world or attacking humans. The demonstration was largely successful, and even Magneto said Xavier would have loved what Scott had done. [Uncanny X-Men #600]