1st story:
In her office, Storm muses that everything is finally coming together. The X-Men are a team again. X-Haven is growing. They are rescuing more and more mutants from the Terrigen Mists every day. Colossus has taken the young mutants under his wing and the school has become a school again. So why doesn’t she feel relieved? Why doesn’t she feel that things are getting better? It’s because of the Terrigen Mists and the M-Pox it brings, which poisons mutants. Daily, she wonders if anything she does even matters. Will history show that her X-Men were saviors of mutantkind or just witnesses to the end? Unable to stop the inevitable?
Old Man Logan enters and tells her she looks tired. The door was open a crack. She assures him he doesn’t need to make excuses. She is glad he is here. She needs someone to distract her from herself. That bad, huh? he asks. She admits everything is starting to feel futile. She feels they are still going to lose in the end. And the worst part is, she can’t let on to the others. She needs to keep pretending she knows what the hell she is doing. There’s no one she can talk to.
Sitting down beside her, Logan points out she is talking to him. She agrees and wonders why she finds it so easy to open up to him. Maybe it’s because they both got white hair, Logan jokes. He’s known her for a long time. He can see how wired she is, even when the others can’t. She agrees. There is no point pretending with him, there never was.
He tells her that, where he came from, there really was no future. So he just learned to enjoy the little things, his wife, his kids. Maybe she needs to stop focusing on the endgame and focus on one day at a time. One mutant life at a time. He takes her hand and assures her everything is going to be okay.
Storm is doubtful. Logan reminds her he lived through the future once already. He has to believe it will be better this time.
She reminds him he doesn’t have to face the future alone this time. Neither does she, he replies. They look at each other silently, then move closer.
That moment, Forge enters and is surprised at the sight. Storm snaps that he should learn to knock. When he points out the door was open, Storm asks what he wants. They have a situation. He thinks she needs to call the team together. What situation? Logan asks. Forge coolly tells him he’d rather debrief Ororo first. Then he informs them the impossible has happened. Cerebra has located new mutants. Lots of new mutants.
Storm, Logan, Forge and Colossus gather in the workshop where Cerebra explains that, an hour ago, nearly 600 new mutant signatures appeared in Tokyo, each unique, not matching any of the known mutant signatures in the databanks.
Colossus reminds them Beast said the Terrigen stopped any new mutant from being born. How is that possible? Storm decides to send a team to Japan to investigate. Unfortunately, their resources are spread thin at the moment. Magik and Nightcrawler are still in Mexico and Jean and Iceman are investigating a possible mutant hate crime in Toronto.
Forge suggests sending Sunfire. Japan is his country, after all. No way, Logan protests. He wants him right where he can see him. Storm agrees. Logan decides he and Pete will go then but Colossus sees this as an opportunity to take the young mutants he’s been training. This is exactly the kind of mission they need. Logan wonders if that’s smart. They are just kids. Storm replies they are X-Men and there is no sign of danger. The Terrigen cloud is over the Atlantic right now. She thinks this is a perfect opportunity for Colossus’ team. Cerebra offers to take care of transport and Storm asks her to stay in contact with her and Forge here.
Soon, Colossus and his team, consisting of Ernst, Glob Herman, Anole and No-Girl, arrive in Tokyo. As bystanders quickly take pictures, Anole grins and asks who says they don’t have fans? When Glob sighs they probably think they are Inhumans, Colossus orders them to focus.
As the police arrive, Cerebra points out that they are drawing unwanted attention. Should they proceed? She carries them to their target, a warehouse down the wharf. This is where all six hundred mutants are, Cerebra explains.
Colossus wonders how all six hundred mutants could appear in the same location. He smashes the door. Inside amidst technology is the Sugar Man, shocked and displeased at their appearance. They’ll ruin everything! he shouts and attacks. He is doing nothing wrong!
Colossus covers the kids, then grabs the Sugar Man’s tongue and swings him by it. Touching Cerebra, Sugar Man enlarges his biomass and attacks Cerebra.
The kids notice the machine holding a globe begins to glow and Ernst announces Martha is really worried. Cereba shouts that the globe holds the six hundred signatures. Sugar Man shouts that is his ark. What has he done? Colossus demands.
Still fighting Cerebra, Sugar Man retorts those are six hundred perfect mutant embryos which he engineered in isolation, untouched by the Terrigen plague. Activating his machine must have undone the shields he used to hide them. But it matters little now; he is sending them somewhere safe. Somewhere they will be safe from the Terrigen and will grow into the next generation of mutants with him as their master.
Cerebra holds back Sugar Man, while sending a distress call to X-Haven. Colossus tells the kids to get away from the glowing machine but they cannot move. Colossus grabs Glob’s hand. The glow engulfs them. Sugar Man breaks loose, shouting it is starting without him. He races toward the glow.
That moment Magik teleports the rest of the X-Men in. They are too late and witness how their friends disappear.
Storm orders them to subdue the Sugar Man, so Logan, Iceman and Nightcrawler attack. Logan severs Sugar Man’s tongue.
With the machine chamber now empty, Magik wonders where the others went. She demands answers from Sugar Man. While Forge starts examining the technology, Jean reads Sugar Man’s mind and is disgusted by what she finds. She announces he sent them to the future. Logan sighs.
Forge agrees that this is definitely time travel tech and he still has their temporal trace. He can reverse-engineer Sugar Man’s tech and use Cerebra to follow them.
Storm orders Magik to stay behind. When she protests, Storm reminds her she would prefer her to safeguard X-Haven. She repeats this is an order. Who died and made her queen of the mutants? Illyana pouts. Scott Summers did, now let’s go, they are wasting time, Storm orders. Cerebra activates the device and the X-Men, with the exception of Magik and Forge, are drawn through time.
They land hard in the future. Around them are only ruins. Storm asks Cerebra how far they travelled. Cerebra isn’t sure but estimates at least a thousand years.
Jean senses some thoughts in a nearby building but warns their thoughts are clouded. Logan races ahead, claws extracted. He is hit by a pink mass, courtesy of Glob Herman. It’s the four missing students, somewhat older. Anole is now more muscular and Martha has a cybernetic body to carry her brain. The kids are happy to see them and still have the Ark.
The X-Men don’t understand. How can they have change do much in such a short time? Ernst informs them they’ve been away much longer than a few moments. Nightcrawler asks about Colossus. The kids look down, unwilling to answer.
Cerebra shouts a warning. She is attacked and the kids are anxious that they found them. The X-Men look to see the attacker is Colossus and his “Horsemen” – Venom, Deadpool and Moon Knight…
2nd story:
Five days earlier:
Magik teleports herself and Sapna into Greenwich Village. Nobody notices them, thanks to Magik’s cloaking spell. Sapna asks if this doctor Illyana is taking her to will help her with the M-Pox. Illyana explains that seems to be going away on its own. She has no idea how that works. Some mutants die immediately when they catch M-Pox, others seem catch a mild cold. They are here to see a different Doctor.
She leads the girl to the Sanctum Sanctorum of Doctor Strange. An exhausted Strange, armed with an axe, answers the door. He was just settling a little quarrel in the underdimensions between a group of spectral cannibal trolls and the Kirashu tribes. Nasty business, but all settled now. He asks them in.
Illyana thanks Strange for his help in moving the school to Limbo. He and the others magicians (Shaman, Dr. Voodoo and the Scarlet Witch). Without them, X-Haven wouldn’t exist. He smoothly hopes that soon they can help the mutants come home again.
Later, they are having tea. Strange tells Sapna there have been mutants before whose abilities are directly connected to magic, but he senses there is more to her than that. He’d like to do a cursory detection spell. Hesitantly, she agrees
The Eye of Agamotto opens. Strange asks if Illyana can see the shape of Sapna’s power. Illyana sees several alphabets some of which she doesn’t recognize. Strange agrees. Sapna’s mutation isn’t magical but linguistic in nature. Sapna doesn’t get it. Magik explains that at their essence all magic and spells are just language and Sapna’s power manifested while she was in Limbo, so…
Sapna deduces that, if her power had manifested in math class, she would be a math genius. Strange agrees. And in the future, she may be able to decipher more such languages, but he thinks her mind and body are stilled handling all the magic she took in during that initial blast. So for now at least, she is at her saturation point. But he senses something else below the surface of her consciousness… unrelated to her power, but hard to explain. It was very foreign. Like trying to explain a color that has not been invented yet. He’d like to look inside her mind. Sapna asks Magik to come along.
Sapna’s mindscape:
Once they are in the mindscape, Strange is hurled back by an energy blast. Its source is a tentacle, dark monster. Illyana orders Sapna back and attacks it. While frightened, Sapna watches Strange and Magik attack together. Finally, Sapna speaks strange words. She shouts “go away!” and the three of them are back in the real world.
Reality:
Magik asks what that was. Strange doesn’t know, but it’s gone. No trace of it anywhere near Sapna. The girl is frightened. Illyana promises her she won’t let the creature hurt her. Strange tells her she doesn’t understand. The thing didn’t want to hurt Sapna… it was coming after Illyana…
