BIOGRAPHY - Page 5
Feeling guilty over the coma Blindfold was left in after the Beast's assault (and more than a little intrigued by her in general), David planned to check up on her at the X-Mansion. Legion recklessly arranged for Dire Wraiths to attack the school as a distraction, allowing his astral form to slip inside and monitor Blindfold's coma in the medical ward. In doing so, David uncovered the secret of "the eyes" -- they were in fact all that remained of Ruth's mutaphobic brother Luca Aldine, who somehow stole a portion of her powers at the moment of his execution. Living on after his physical death, Luca foresaw the death of all mutantkind brought about by Legion, and his sister Ruth was the only possible variable who could/would stop the genocide. Combining his personal hatred of Ruth with his fanatical racism, Luca killed and possessed the body of Sojobo Tengu to enter the mansion and murder his sister before she could stop the mutant reckoning. Ruth awakened from her coma and, together, she and David drove off Luca. However, Karasu Tengu blamed David for her brother's death, and the X-Men remained just as leery of Legion as before. [X-Men Legacy (2nd series) #5-6]
David decided The Dream needed to be more proactive and, incidentally, having self-confidence and a goal in mind helped focus his powers and personalities. His first stop was the Church of the Holy Hosts, the bigoted religious order who first corrupted Luca's mind with mutant hatred. David secretly hoped to score points with Ruth by going after them as well, and he felt encouraged once Blindfold started following him in her astral form, unaware that he could see her. When David first admitted he knew Ruth was present, she screamed at him for taking such fool risks, but he won her over by mentioning he thought of this as their "first date."
At the church, David posed as a "mutie-lover" seeking redemption, tricking the Holy Hosts into performing their laying of hands ritual to cleanse his troubled spirit, which actually allowed him to plant the memory of summoning the Dire Wraiths to Westchester in their minds. Agents of SWORD arrived at the church hunting the perpetrator of the Wraith incident, and their guilt-sensitive psychic equipment pinpointed the Holy Hosts. However, Abigail Brand was no fool and recognized David was manipulating the scenario. When David mentioned her personal relationship with known mutant Hank McCoy, though, the Holy Hosts literally spit on her in disgust. Brand suddenly found their guilt more believable and threw the Hosts into SWORD's darkest of dark space dungeons. Ruth thanked David for taking revenge on the Hosts for her, and for doing so without hurting them. [X-Men Legacy (2nd series) #7]
David and Ruth continued to meet up occasionally for physical or psychic dates, and they started to fall hard for each other. From the vantage point of the psychosphere, they observed the life of a burgeoning young mutant named Santi Sardina, with a low-level psychic ability causing people to automatically give him credit for any accomplishment made in his presence. David wanted to psychically nudge Santi into the debate team, leading to a meteoric rise to the top and possibly the first mutant President of the United States. Instead, he followed Ruth's urgings and nudged Santi towards art class, where the boy's actual artistic talent was nurtured, and ultimately displayed anonymously so it lived and died on its own merits, instead of on his powers.
Unfortunately, their next date was less pleasant. David told Ruth of a precognitive flash he had received. The vision was of an unstable smoke-deity called Aarkus the Aetheric, who would soon begin a nigh-unstoppable campaign against mutantkind, leading to the deaths of the X-Men and many more. David wanted to strike against Aarkus preemptively but, even though she felt Aarkus was wrong, Ruth couldn't approve of punishing someone for something they had yet to do. The point was moot, however, as David revealed he had already incapacitated Aarkus earlier. Ruth was furious, not only with David's actions but how he used her to accomplish them. Ruth's positive effect on David boosted his self-confidence, which in turn gave him the control of his powers necessary to overcome Aarkus. David knowing Ruth would approve of the idea of punishing Aarkus, even if she would reject the act itself, gave him the "boost" he needed. Feeling used, Ruth rejected David and returned to the mansion. [X-Men Legacy (2nd series) #8-9]
David was still concerned about Luca's alleged vision of a final confrontation between him and Ruth. He knew he needed to confirm Luca's visions for himself, but he also knew that would force him to deal with the Beast inside his own mind. Still posing as "Charles Xavier," the personality had been cannibalizing other personalities in the Qortex Complex to assimilate their powers, including David's precognition. In order to gain access to his future-sight again, David was forced to deal with the Beast, promising him absolute control of David's body for 60 seconds at a time of its choosing. Using the precognition, David foresaw the strands of time congregating at an almost inevitable future -- David becoming a "Worldworm" that threatened the lives of every mutant on Earth. The Worldworm apocalypse ended with either every mutant dead, or Blindfold responsible for murdering David before that happened.
After receiving this vision, David visited the Institute of Bio-Social Studies in San Francisco. Founded by Marcus Glove on behalf of his group, Darwin's Martyrs, normal people who had been severely injured by mutant violence, IBSS was a passive but dedicated anti-mutant group dedicated to the slogan "Something Has To Be Done." One of their innovations was a cure for mutancy called X-Cise. Not as advanced as the alien-based cure devised by Kavita Rao, this cure neutralized mutant powers but also caused permanent brain damage, leaving the depowered mutant incapacitated for life. David told IBSS of his Worldworm vision and how he wanted to take the cure to protect Ruth and the rest of mutantkind from that future. He held to that conviction even after Glove was revealed to be the Nazi Red Skull, who had violated the corpse of Charles Xavier in order to steal his telepathic brain.
As David prepared to take the X-Cise on a live video blog, Blindfold showed up with a group of X-Men she had recruited to save David from himself. Their flamboyant and explosive arrival played into the Red Skull's hands, however. He used the opportunity to kill his puppet, Marcus Glove, turning him into a true martyr for the IBSS organization and inspiring its followers to rise up as a justified anti-mutant crusade. Unfortunately for the Skull, this had been part of David's plan all along as well. David had secretly brought Santi Sardina along with him to IBSS. Santi's "credit-stealing" ability caused the IBSS followers to attribute Marcus Glove's martyrdom to Santi, who then publicly revealed he was a mutant. Struggling to reconcile how they were going to blame mutantkind for the death of their martyr, Santi (who was not only still alive but also a mutant), the hatred the Red Skull had tried to ignite in his followers sputtered out in confusion and the anti-mutant revolution failed to begin. [X-Men Legacy (2nd series) #10-12]
Next, David traveled to England, where an oil-rich, anti-mutant Middle East dictator was visiting the country. Using local mutants, David orchestrated a series of mutant-related, goodwill gestures throughout the United Kingdom, including saving the dictator from an assassination attempt. His efforts not only marked a major positive turning point for human-mutant relations in England, they even helped instigate a coup back in the Middle East, leaving the dictator in exile without a country of his own. Despite his success, however, David manipulated a good number of powerful people, including MI-13's Pete Wisdom, to achieve his goals. Wisdom didn't have any actual crimes to charge Haller with, so instead he did the next best thing and called his mother. [X-Men Legacy (2nd series) #13-14]
Reunited with Gabrielle Haller, now serving as Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, David brought the awkward family reunion back to the ruins of Muir Island. David confronted his mother over how she abandoned him to Moira MacTaggert for "treatment." Gabrielle confessed she was lost in his father's world of super-powers, extra-terrestrials and resurrections, but she loved her son regardless of how poorly her initial reaction to his powers was. She also helped David assuage his fears about the Beast in Xavier's form inside his mind, confirming to her satisfaction that the Beast was NOT somehow Charles Xavier himself. Gabi did this by asking the Beast the first thing Charles ever said to her after learning he had a son. "Thank you," she told David after the Beast failed to answer.
The reunion soured in an instant, however, when the deposed dictator from David's British adventure attempted to murder him with a sniper round and hit Gabrielle instead. Legion ransacked the Qortex Complex looking for a healer among his personalities, but his mother told him to stop. She wanted to die like a normal person, not saved by the fantastic and unfathomable world he shared with his father. And so, David Haller sat on the shores of Muir Island and held his mother until she passed on. [X-Men Legacy (2nd series) #15]