On Earth #3752, the Exiles recently arrived to find Dr. Curt Connors; whose medical technologies may be the last chance for the Exile’s dying member, Mimic. Connors leads a group known as the Science Squad, Earth’s last defense against giant monsters that plague the planet. Currently, they fight Krakoa, the “island that walks like a man.” However, does the sudden appearance of the Exiles mean that they will all die?
In the Pacific Ocean, the Science Squad’s jet avoids Krakoa’s grasp as it flies by to shoot it. Inside, Boliver Trask screams that they are all going to die. The plane cannot take this kind of maneuvering and he should know, as he designed it. The extra weight of these three strangers aboard will surely doom them. Tony Stark tells Trask to shut up and comments that he always panics when things get rough.
Meanwhile, Hank Pym asks the Exiles how they got on board. One minute they are in the paws of that monster and the next minute they are free and with three extra passengers. Blink tells Pym that she teleported them free and it’s the same way they hitched a ride. However, she will explain the rest later as that walking mountain is trying to kill them.
Krakoa follows the jet and notices that something has changed. It senses a new power in the vessel and hungers for it. Blink wonders if Krakoa is talking about them Exiles, and then asks Sabretooth, who still possesses the Tallus, to contact Heather to find out more about Krakoa.
In the Panoptichron, Heather receives Sabretooth’s request and tells him that she is already cross-referencing the reality index, but half the files are unavailable, due to damage. However, there is a mention of Krakoa in Earth 616.
In the jet, Sabretooth informs the others that Heather told him that in another reality Krakoa captured the original X-Men and fed off their life energies, forcing Xavier to form a new team to save their butts.
Meanwhile, Krakoa asks the heroes if they think they are beyond his grasps simply because they can fly. He then sprouts several aerial masses out of his arm, which fly after the jet. Hank Pym tells Stark that they have multiple contacts zeroing in on them. Tony acknowledges this and decides to hit the afterburners. He does so and the jet zooms off, burning the flying creatures behind them. Krakoa calls the humans cruel, and announces that it must feed.
Aboard the jet, Morph tells Sabretooth that they did not exactly save the day. Confused, Sabretooth reminds Morph that the four men were as good as dead before they showed up. Isn’t that enough for him? Pym stares at Morph and wonders how the man can change form like that. Meanwhile, Dr. Connors calls back to his base and asks Sakata if she can hear him.
Sakata receives the transmission, and Dr. Connors asks if she can still track Krakoa. Sakata confirms that she can and she also announces that she has been plotting the monster’s projected path. It was heading directly for Japan, but since their encounter it has changed directions and is now matching their flight plan. This is atypical movement for a kaiju. Why would it follow them when they are out of sight?
Dr. Connors sends the jet’s sensor log to Sakata and asks her to run it through their super computers. Sakata does so and is dismayed by the results. Sensing her fear, Dr. Connors asks her what kind of kaiju Krakoa was. Sakata regretfully informs Connors that it is a class-one global antigen. Blink asks Connors what that means, but is roughly told that she and her friends really messed up their day.
Back at the Panoptichron, Heather asks the Timebreakers if they are done with the temporal forecast models. She cannot come up with an effective strategy against Krakoa until she has more data on it. One of the Timebreakers, still addressing Heather as “Exile-Casualty-Five,” asks her to understand. They did not invent the Panoptichron, so they can only guess how to repair it. Dr. Strange meets up with Heather and asks her if everything is ok. Heather, a bit frustrated, tells Stephen that things are not ok. Blink’s team has run into a rocky start and they haven’t even asked Connors for help yet.
Strange admits that monster planet seemed like a bad place to go in the first place. Heather tells him that they might have made things worse in that reality. Beak comes up and tells Heather that he hates to say he told you so. Heather snaps at him and tells him no to. She is making the best out of a bad situation and she doesn’t need to be henpecked. Annoyed, Beak tells Heather that she isn’t funny. Heather smiles and apologizes for the henpecked comment. Beak tells her that if he is a pain in her butt why doesn’t she send him home? Heather sighs and tells Beak that the Timebreakers are working on it, but there are problems in doing that too.
Heather turns to a worker bug and, addressing it as Shorty, asks him to pull up a visual of Earth 616. Strange questions the name Shorty, but Heather tells him that the Timebreakers recognize each other by scent, so she has to call them something. Beak wonders what the term “Earth 616” means, so Heather explains that it is how the Timebreakers list his reality in their index. Blink is on Earth 3752 at the moment. There are a lot of Earth’s out there.
The Timebreakers pull up a screen of static and apologize. They cannot access reality 616 at the moment. Concerned, Beak wonders if it is because the machines are broken, or if something is wrong back home. Heather calms down Beak and tells him that it is probably a machine glitch. Beak wonders about the fate of his girlfriend and children, but Heather reassures him that they are fine. However, another problem is that they need to find a way to reverse the process that unhinged him from time. Even if he were to go home his family wouldn’t know if he was back. He has to be patient for now.
Strange interrupts and tells the two that, while they deal with that, he wants to go look at the stasis gallery again. Heather tells Strange to go and asks if they can autopsy one of the bodies later on. Strange smiles and tells Heather that it would be lovely. As the two look at each other adoringly, Beak asks Heather what she was saying about the “unhinging” thing, but Heather asks him to hold on a moment as she watches the handsome Strange leave.
Back on Earth #3752, the Exiles and Science Squad return to the headquarters of the Squad, where Dr. Connors tells them that he would be happy to provide help for their injured teammate, but they first must help clean up the mess they made on this Earth. Slightly annoyed, Blink agrees, but asks Dr. Connors to drop his attitude and to explain what the deal is with these monsters.
Dr. Connors turns on a monitor and starts his story at the very beginning of the Science Squad. The monitor displays the four men in the Arctic, battling against a giant green monster that came up from the Earth’s core and smashed an experimental geothermal energy facility, before it could be stopped. Later on, they found out that this facility would have collapsed the tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust. The nameless kaiju saved the world and it has been the first of many to appear in the last ten years. There are two kinds of kaiju: antigenic and pathogenic. Morph transforms his hand into a stop sign and asks Connors what a “kaiju” is.
Surprised and a bit annoyed that Morph doesn’t know, Connors informs him that it is a really giant monster. Morph asks why they just don’t call them giant monsters, but Connors retorts back by asking why they call a giant wave a tsunami. Sabretooth chimes in and asks why they just don’t call all giant idiots “Morph.”
Connors continues and explains that the kaiju are a natural phenomenon. The pathogenic ones are a cancer that must be destroyed, but the antigenic ones are the Earth’s biosphere creating a response to a threat, much like how the immune system creates antibodies. Sometimes a threat is man-made, other times it’s another kaiju. One of the Exiles asks if they just let the good kaiju stomp around whatever is in its way. Connors replies that they essentially do, but they always evacuate civilians and steer the beasts to areas where the least damage can occur.
Pym compares the good kaiju to a wildfire, which renews a forest, or bad-tasting medicine. Sabretooth recalls that they mentioned that Krakoa was heading towards Japan. Is something bad going to happen there? Sakata speaks up and tells them that she has scanned the entire area, but she has not found anything yet. However, their first indication of a pathogenic kaiju may be a cry for help.
In Jigokudani Wild Monkey Park, in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, a group of tourists watch a few monkeys bathe in a hot spring. While the father takes a picture, the mother tells her two children that the brochure tells her that the monkeys started bathing here forty years ago. One of the boys wonders why the heat doesn’t cook the animals, but his father tells him the water only looks so hot, because it is cold up here and it makes a lot of steam. It’s actually a warm bathe.
One of the sons asks what makes the water so hot. The father explains that Japan is a geographically active area, with many powerful underground forces. Suddenly, the father is caught off guard as the water in the hot spring begins to boil out of control. Harold’s wife calls out to him, but Harold thinks that the hot spring may be erupting.
Suddenly, one of the boys calls his father’s attention to the monkey’s who are sucked into the water. A massive green fin emerges, which is attached to a massive dragon head, which resides upon a massive dragon body. Fin Fang Foom towers above the cowering family, and then sets them ablaze as he unleashes an inferno.
At the Panoptichron Stasis Gallery, Dr. Strange looks at the body of Kane and tells the worker drone with him that, before they remove Kane’s corpse, they must double check that he is indeed dead. The drone verifies that Kane is indeed dead, but then suddenly notices something. Strange questions the problem, and then learns that one of the previously recorded dead Weapon X members has recently come back to life. It could be damage to their equipment, but all signs point to Deadpool being alive!
Strange takes the hand held device from the bug and sees Deadpool’s regenerative capabilities are off the chart. What did he die of? The bug explains that his neck was broken, to which Strange replies that it isn’t broken anymore. They need to get him out of the gallery, for if Mimic can copy his power then they don’t have to deal with the monster world after all.
Back on Earth #3752, Krakoa continues his walk through the Pacific Ocean, when suddenly his attention to grabbed by three passing gold and red aircrafts. Krakoa follows the three crafts, which are led by Ronin One, piloted by Dr. Connors, Dr. Pym and Blink. Connors contacts one of the other Ronin crafts, and learns that Krakoa has bought their bait. Slightly unnerved, Blink asks if bait is all they are to him. Connors assures her that if that were true he wouldn’t have let her and her teammates were the official orange Science Squad uniforms. “More like insist,” says Blink.
Pym tells Blink that orange sets off her eyes. Besides, as long as Krakoa is more interested in her than in fulfilling its purpose, why not use her to steer him in the right direction. Blink then asks the status of the new kaiju they picked up. Pym tells her that there has been no visual confirmation, but reports state that it can fly and is heading towards Tokyo. Could she possibly use her teleportation powers to teleport Krakoa to the new monster? Blink, however, informs Pym that Krakoa is too big and the distance is too far for her to try.
Connors calls the Ronin piloted by Trask and Sabretooth and informs them that they will reach Tokyo in three minutes, but it will take Krakoa three hours to arrive. Trask realizes that they will have to keep the new monster busy for a while, but Sabretooth tells him not to worry, as they will be just fine in a fight.
In the last Ronin jet, Morph asks Stark if he noticed how kaiju sounds like cashew. He prefers pistachios, though. Annoyed, Stark reveals that, if he knew Morph talked so much, he would have made him ride with Trask. Morph then asks if he ever noticed that Trask is an anagram of Stark. What is up with that?
The three Ronins reach Tokyo just in time to see Fin Fang Foom ignite a bullet train on fire. They fire missiles at the monster, which is surprised that there is someone in this land who dares challenge Fin Fang Foom. The three jets engage in their alpha attack pattern, but Blink insists that she and her teammates fight on the outside if they must delay this monster for three hours. Connors, however, asks Blink to stay put, as she is going to like this next move. He then orders Stark and Trask to engage in conversion process. Sabretooth asks Trask what that means, and learns that Trask built these jets. When the chips are down Bolivar’s baby is what saves the day. The three Ronin jets soon each transform into different forms.
The three pieces then connect into a massive robot that Trask calls… Red Ronin!
Back at the Stasis Gallery, Deadpool has been successfully removed from the gallery and begins to wake up. Still disoriented, he asks Strange where the others are. Strange asks to who he is referring, so Deadpool tells him that he is talking about Vision, Hulk, Spider, Storm… and Sabretooth. Strange looks at the gallery and tells him that some are right there, but in worse condition than him. The good news is that Sabretooth is fine and is on a mission with Morph and Blink. He should inform Dr. Hudson that he revived him now, though.
Strange helps Deadpool up, but the mercenary asks Strange to give him a moment. He asks where he is. Strange, confused, asks if Deadpool does not recognize this place. It is his headquarters for their whole reality-saving operation. He is still figuring this all out himself. He was called her for his medical expertise, because a few of Deadpool’s teammates were harmed.
Confused, Deadpool asks if this is the Timebroker’s place. Strange informs him that he has not met anyone called the Timebroker, but he is just visiting here after all. Deadpool then asks Strange who he is, so Strange introduces himself. He then admits that he has never met anyone on his Earth with a healing factor like Deadpool’s. There is no apparent nerve damage and his motor skills are nominal. How did he break his neck in the first place?
Deadpool tells Strange that Sabretooth broke it, just like this. He then snaps Strange’s neck 180 degrees. As Strange falls, dead, the worker drone tries running away. Deadpool figures that Sabretooth is still around selling out the rest of his Weapon X teammates, but he will end that. Deadpool then stomps on the running bug and vows to fix Sabretooth good.
