Paris:
Idie Okonkwo aka Oya stands outside the famous cathedral Notre Dame telling herself this is dumb. Why does she still care so much? It’s just a building! They cleared it out. There’s no one even in there. Addressing God, she announces he probably thinks that is hilarious, doesn’t he? She berates herself that she should be helping her friends win the fight. Instead, she’s worrying over some gaudy French church.
She turns around. Cyclops, Beast, Iceman and Genesis are battling an enraged Blob. Idie shouts at Iceman that they need to stop the Blob right now. Sarcastically, he replies he thought they’d just toy with him for a while. Seeing how smoothly the fight’s gone up until now.
Why can’t everything be simple? he wonders to himself. Cracking wise. Roughing up Brotherhood trash with the guys.
The Blob shatters his iceslide. Bobby freezes him. Just as he thinks he’s good at this stuff a blow by the Blob gets him. However, he falls on the icy ground and slides towards the cathedral, much to Idie’s displeasure.
She begins to manipulate temperature and the Blob warns her that she does not want to burn him. Instead, she adds to the iceslide, making sure he misses the church as he slides upward. Addressing God, she announces she hopes he appreciates that.
Cyclops silently admires Idie’s chops but decides they are going about this all wrong by fighting as individuals. Nobody is winning on their own. This is a different Blob than back then. He’s a real threat now. Scott tries to think of a strategy when he is run down from behind by a car.
Genesis sees what happened and hurries to Scott’s side. He hesitates when the driver gets out and he recognizes him as Toad. The Toad apologizes, grabs Evan with his tongue and tosses him as far away as possible. Wrong place, wrong time he announces. This is bigger than both of them.
Not far away, Blob beats Beast and mocks him. Beast feels this fight has significance. More evidence the world has truly passed him by. Blob mocks that there isn’t much about him that’s beastly. Just a babyface who’s no match at all for a full grown Blob. He hits him and they land in an electronics store.
He tackles Beast, who wonders if the Blob is right. He compares himself to the older Hank McCoy and the experience he is missing. As he is being pummeled, he wonders if he is doomed to live a life of wasted potential, his supposedly brilliant mind routinely outpaced by cell phone applications and handheld gadgetry designed for children.
Across town, Wolverine berates herself for her actions leading to Angel breaking up with her. She orders herself to focus. The Blob beat her because she came at him straight on, expecting a slow brute. This man is as quick as he is strong. Deceptively agile. She has to take that away if she wants to beat him. Shatter a knee or sever an Achilles tendon. But that weird skin is so thick. Could always just stab him through the eye, but that might kill him.
She sighs. Warren talks to her for weeks about her getting hurt. And now he dumps her? Give her a bullet to the face next time. At least she knows how to heal from that.
She dodges Angel’s firewings as he flies past her at high speed.
In the ruins Oya, faces an angry Blob and tries to appeal to his sense of fairness. Her powers don’t work like people think. She needs fire to make ice and vice versa. Right now, he is looking at a fistfight with a hundred pound girl. He was looking at a gourmet dinner, he replies. Five or six courses. Exotic meats prepared by one of the best!
Idie silently prays, reminding God she just saved his cathedral.
The Blob tells her they insisted on throwing down. Now getting so late, no place will be open. He’ll be lucky to find half decent take-out! he shouts.
When Blob is about to hit her, Idie finds her prayers answered by an Angel with flaming wings no less. Warren hits the Blob and Idie figures as religious signs go that one’s pretty solid.
Warren attacks the Blob while thinking about his relationship to Laura. Angrily, he figures this time he can play the one man band. Laura isn’t fooling him - he knows she can be hurt. When they first met, she slept sitting up in the corner with the lights on. Is he just supposed to forget that?
His train of thought is interrupted when the Blob just slaps him aside. He grabs Angel and squeezes, then throws him against the wall. He gets ready to stomp him. Warren grabs a bit of rubble with a piece of wire protruding and rams it into the Blob’s eye.
He figures he does understand the darkness. There’s darkness in him too. More and more every day. But, unlike her, he chooses to keep that $%&§ in check.
Mindless with rage, the Blob runs at him. Warren’s firewings flare as he rises up into the air. He swoops downward at the Blob and with his flames takes him out, much to everyone’s astonishment.
Laura is shocked to see him cut loose. That was -- she begins. He sharply cuts her off. That was what? Stupid? Reckless? Embarrassing? He makes it clear he is not interested in her thoughts as he announces he’s gonna go lie down somewhere.
Iceman creates an ice cage around the Blob and suggests if he wakes up before the cops come Oya can barbecue his ugly butt. Changing the subject, he asks what it feels like to go from being super duper gonzo Catholic to being not. She laughs, then admits she’s still very Catholic. Uncomfortably Catholic sometimes. He admits he overheard her screaming at God in the cathedral before. Idie explains she’s angry and confused and conflicted. But she still believes in God. If she didn’t, how could she be so mad at him? Her faith doesn’t completely define her. Not like it used to. Everything about it is harder now, more complicated. And she has no idea how she’ll ever reconcile all the contradictions. But she’s working on it. Maybe that’s good enough.
Genesis climbs up from the river and Bobby tells him what he missed. Evan asks where Scott is. They admit they got split up. Evan shouts he ran him over with a cab. Toad! He was super drunk but he looked like he wanted to. What the hell is he talking about? Idie demands. Scott is in trouble! Evan replies. In bad, serious trouble!
And in the catacombs of Paris (closed for the next nine hours), Scott Summers is tied up. All those skulls used to be somebody, the Toad drunkenly mumbles. Used to matter. Now they are just bricks in a wall. He glares at Scott. One life, one death. Don’t matter so much in the end...
