First Story :
This main story reprints X-Men (1st series) #97, However there are two additional pages :
One page shows Alex wandering around in the mountains of Rio Diablo, thinking to himself: He randomly blasts bits of rock with his powers, and is quite happy with his live and his relationship with Lorna. He then hears her scream and runs back.
The other added page is in the middle of the battle at the airport. Alex briefly snaps out of the mental control and fights Eric the Red, but he gets zapped by his hypno ray again, ensuring his loyalty.
Second Story :
Piotr is at Brighton Beach in Brooklyn and marvels at the cultural change he has experienced by coming to New York. He knew everybody in the collective he grew up in, and the tallest building he knew would not even be recognized in the skyline of New York, a city filled with eight million people. Here in “Little Odessa“, he at least gets reminded of his native russia, as he can taste the food and hear people talking russian with each other. Piotr is drawing a sketch of two men playing chess, as he suddenly gets aware of a girl being kidnapped.
He jumps on the car that the girl has been pulled into and switching to steel form, he hammers through the roof. The gangsters shoot at him but the bullets bounce off his metallic hide. The driver thinks he can loose Colossus by running the car into a wall, but Piotr is unharmed and he lifts the front wheels in the air, so the car can’t move. The men call him a freak and decide to run away; Colossus doesn’t follow as he wants to check on the girl, who is unconscious in the back seats.
Colossus reverts to human before she wakes up. He introduces himself and she thanks him for saving her. They return to the beach and the chessplayers have kept an exe on Piotr’s bag and sketches. They say that he is very talented and the girl, Anya Makarova agrees. She says she knows abouts art, as she is a famous prima ballerine. That too is the reason why she was abducted, she escaped to the US, but the russians are trying to get her back. Piotr doesn’t know what to make of it, he could never think of defecting from Russia, but Anya says the entire world is her home, and she has to do what her heart tells her.
Later he visits the ballett she stars in and it’s an outraging performance. The crowd cheers at their newest star, and Piotr is told to wait for Anya at the backstage entrance. After two hours she comes out, holding a large bouquet of flowers. Piotr too has a present, a drawing of her while dancing. Anya is impressed and they start to fall in love. They spend the entire night walking around and talking and in the morning they again reach the beach of “Little Odessa“.
They are met by the gangsters again, trying once more to kidnap Anya. Colossus transforms to steel and tosses them around, till they give up and run away. Turning back to Anya, Piotr finds that she is terrified of him. She says that he is not human and that he lied to her by pretending to be something he is not. Piotr says that it doesn’t matter, she should only look into his heart, but Anya gives him back his picture and says that a man of steel has no heart.
Colossus stays at the same spot of the boardwalk for the rest of the day, thinking. Finally as it is night once more, he tears the drawing apart and says that Anya is wrong.
