One day Angelica Jones, now aged fifteen, finds herself in the training room of the Massachusetts Academy. She is using her mutant power of microwave manipulation to try to finish her training session. The White Queen shouts telepathically for her react faster, as the last laser blast could have severely burned her. Still maneuvering, Angel apologizes to her teacher, with the promise to do better next time. Frost warns in combat there won’t be a next time, and she can’t afford the luxury of thinking through every action. She must hone her reflexes to react to danger automatically. She must let her microwave energy flow out of her body naturally, and instinctively.
Dodging another laser beam, by flying in circles, she admits she’s trying. Frost warns her not to become too off balance to assault the laser beam properly. She must straighten herself out before it can draw a bead on her. Before Frost finishes her commands, Angel exclaims she’s got it. She does, she straightens herself out and fires her microwave energy at the beam, destroying it. Frost compliments her, but warns her that the session is far from over. Angel looks behind her and screams out “Robots!” Giant robots approach her, firing beams at her. Angel thinks to herself she must pull back, and find a proper position to attack. She flies backwards, then upwards towards the robots destroying one of them. She cheers for herself. Frost warns her not to get over-confident, as the other robot has her in its sights already. Angel sees it and destroys it with ease as well. How’s that for a quick comeback, she brags. Frost is impressed, but informs her in the field, never relax your guard, even for an instant. She turns around hearing what sounds to her like a machine gun. She finds a robot that looks like Professor Xavier firing at her, taunting “die mutant witch,” as he fires a machine gun at her. Hit she falls to the ground.
After lying silent and still on the ground for awhile, Angel looks up to see Frost standing above her. Angel admits she didn’t do to well today, did she? Helping her up, Frost admonishes her if those had been real bullets, instead of gelatin dummies, then she’d be cleaning up Angel’s blood from the walls right now. Asking if she is alright, Angel admits she’s sore, but nothing is damaged, but her pride. She feels like a total jerk for losing concentration enough to fall out of the air like that. Frost tells her that a few bruises will remind her of today’s lesson that she must never hesitate when her life is in danger. Strike quickly and efficiently. Angel adds robots and lasers are easy to destroy, but people are harder. She could never use her microwaves to hurt anyone. Frost thinks to herself, that Angel is weak, but in time that will change. Angel tells Frost she was surprised to see Xavier here, she’d met him once, and he didn’t seem like such a bad guy. Taking a computer chip out of “Xavier,” Frost tells her as she has before that appearances can be deceiving.
Walking away with her Frost admits she knows these training sessions are hard on her, but they are very necessary. Anti-mutant sentiment is growing, and normal humans hate and fear them. Someday she might have to use her microwave powers to protect herself or someone she loves. Angel replies she understands and she’ll try to do better. Frost thinks how naive she is, believing everything she tells her. Entering the room, Randall excuses himself for interrupting. The technos had told him her session was over.
Angel waves, telling him it is, her and Frost were just talking. Randall tells her she better hit the showers, as she has dance class in twenty minutes. Before she is gone, Frost tells her one last thing. She has been preparing a little surprise for her, and she should stop by her office later on this after noon. Happy, she tells Randall that Ms Frost is just the greatest, she wonders what it could be.
Randall wonders to himself what it could be as well. Frost doesn’t give anything to anyone, without expecting something in return. He wonders what is wrong with him, if Frost overheard his thoughts he’d be in trouble. Seeing no reaction, he knows she must have more important things on her mind. He’s safe for now, but he must learn to control his thoughts better. He asks her how the kid’s doing and she tells him quite well. Her progress in a year and a half has been phenomenal, and she progresses more each day. Soon she will be able to use her. Randall wonders use her for what as the White Queen exits the workout room. Sealing the room until the next training session, he walks away pondering over Angelica’s safety. As the other mutant children all train as a group in the Hellions, he wonders why Angel is trained alone.
In the locker room a, his co-worker Bruno Stein taunts him about having feelings for young stuff, and they have laws against that in this state. Randall defends himself, explaining his charge is like his kid sister. Randall turns it around and to Bruno, asking about him and the rest of the Dirty Tricks Squad. Bruno admits he likes to think of them as highly motivated specialists in the Department of Social Improvement. He admits something fun is planned tonight, but he can’t share that with him. Randall knows that the only type of fun Bruno has is someone else getting hurt, badly.
Inside the underground complex Sebastian Shaw states Frost’s last report was rather disturbing. She sits relaxed in her chair staring at him on the monitor. After a few of her Hellions provoked confrontations with the X-Men and their mentor, Xavier, they were lucky no one was hurt. She reports Thunderbird II, one of her students, holds Xavier and the X-men responsible for his older brother’s death. That’s something she has fostered within him. Wishing revenge he kidnapped the X-Man known as Banshee knowing this would bring the X-Men. Two other Hellions, Empath and Roulette decided to join him. Empath using his influencing abilities coaxed Firestar into going along with it. After a confrontation with Xavier, Charles was able to convince Thunderbird they had nothing to do with his brothers death. It appears her months of telepathic work was too subtle. Her real concern lies in how Firestar took the whole thing, as Xavier had tried to recruit her as well. While Firestar worships Frost, she is being trained to be an assassin for the Hellfire Club.
As Frost admits Angel’s too weak-willed to be a killer, she is might have a solution for that mindset. From behind Shaw , a mist forms from behind a chair, and lingers over to the chair he is on. The mist takes the form of a hand, reaching for his wine and filling his glass. As he says his goodbyes to Frost, a voice behinds him startles him, asking just how the lovely White Queen is doing. Looking behind him he sees Selene. She mocks that being the new Black Queen it is her responsibility to look after him, even if it’s only filling his wine glass. If the Lord of the Hellfire Club has no further needs, she shall take her leave, she walks boldly out the door. He curses her in his thoughts, as she is growing to big for her role. He knows she will soon challenge his position as leader of the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle. But he knows just the way to stop her.
Back at the Massachusetts Academy, Firestar is understanding the importance of her ballet class, as Frost has told her it’s importance for balance. The dance teacher, Mrs. Cohen tells her is her turn up next. Empath whispers to his teammate Roulette to toss a bad luck disc her way. Roulette knows he hates Angel, lucky for him, so does she. Roulette’s disc makes Angel trip, while Empath enhances the teachers natural annoyance into anger. Enraged, Mrs. Cohen lashes out at Angel, calling her a buffoon, and utterly incompetent. Angel knows she is usually calm and understanding. Just then she spins around knowing Empath is to blame. Now angered, Angel has grown tired of being at the butt of Empath’s jokes. Her microwave power emits from her and sets off the sprinkler system. The entire dance class gets soaked.
Later in Frost’s office, she scolds Angel for letting her powers run amuck like she did. She not only put the class’s life in danger, but possibly revealed her mutant status to the others. Still wet, Angel apologizes. Decided the matter is closed, Frost tells her they have one more thing to discuss. The little surprise she had told her about: she’s going home to visit her father in New Jersey. She hugs her teacher, and is extremely excited. soon after she leaves, a masked Hellfire guardsman enters her office. Frost asks if the arrangements have been made. After he says yes, she tells him this particular assignment is of the utmost importance to her. In her room Angel packs her bags while she tells Randall the good news. This being her first trip since she’s enrolled at the school, and going to see her father as well. Randall wonders exactly what Frost’s angle is.
Later that while Angel sleeps, her bracelet, a present from Frost herself, glows brightly. Her dreams grow to intense vivid nightmares. a monstrous elf known as Nightcrawler and a savage man with claws known as Wolverine attack her viciously .She tries to save herself, but hesitates, the monster strikes, causing fury and pain in her chest. She sits up screaming. Frost enters her room quickly to calm her. Angel tells Frost of her dream with Nightcrawler and Wolverine. Frost assures her it was only a dream. Angel is not convinced, she is sure they want her dead. As Angel covers her face to cry, Frost smiles from behind. the hallucinator on her wrist is doing just the job she’d hope for. Angel doesn’t know what to believe anymore, and she grows even more dependant on Frost.
A few days later at Newark International Airport in New Jersey, Angel spots her father. She runs up to hug him, excited, as Randall follows with her bags. She hugs him, but he seems cold and distant. Randall introduces himself, but Frost had phoned ahead of his arrival, in case of any problems. Bart Jones takes their bags and tells Randall not to call him sir, after all, he will be his guest for the weekend. Angel looks onward, hurt that her father pays more attention to a stranger than to his own daughter.
Back at her house, Angel lets out a yahoo, she’s happy to back home. Randall tells Bart he has a very fine daughter, and he is very lucky. Bart looks at the floor and agrees. Angel sees her cat., Pum’kin and quickly picks him up and hugs him. She holds her cat close, telling him they have a lot of catching up to do. Bart quickly grabs her cat from her, afraid she would accidentally hurt him. He quickly knows he was wrong, seeing the hurt within his daughter’s eyes. He tries to hug her, but she smacks his hands away. He hasn’t wanted to touch her since she got off the plane, he shouldn’t try to start now. She knows he’s afraid of her because she a mutant freak. He begs her not to use such hurtful words. She yells back at him running away, that he cannot accept what she is, and he can’t even accept her. she runs upstairs to her bedroom and slams the door. Bart knows he isn’t quite sure to handle her anymore. While he loves her, sometimes he believes she’d be better off dead than a mutant. Randall looks down, and decides their visit was too premature, and they’ll leave in the morning.
Early the next morning, they wait at the airport. Angel, head down, hasn’t said a word to her father since the previous night. Overhead an announcement is made that Randall has a telephone call on the courtesy phone. Believing it to be maybe the school the school with changed plans, he goes to the phone to discover no one on the line. Fear strikes him, and he knows he has to return to Angel at once. Walking backs towards her, he is confronted by Bruno Stein, a co worker. Questioning his reason, Bruno is just getting a paycheck like everybody else, but Randall needs to stay put for a few minutes. Meanwhile a “punk rock” guy walks by Angel bumping into her. He calls her a bimbo and she should watch where she is going. His oversized radio falls out from his hands. Angel knows he walked into her. As the radio smashes on the floor, is starts sizzling. He starts shouting at her, that she just stared at it and it burst into flame. She wonders if her powers are out of control again as they were in dance class.
Her father tries to calm the situation, offering to pay for the radio. He is elbowed by the man, who warns him to back off, this does not concern him. He continues his verbal attack, guessing she’s one of those mutie freaks everyone’s been reading about. A crowd gathers around her taunting her, telling her should be locked up away from decent folk. He father on the ground is being kicked and called a mutant lover. They grab her, as Angel cries out for them to let them go. Her microwave power heats up and shines around her. Some run in fear, as she flies above them. She fires a few blasts, watching where she aims to scare the people not hurt them. The punk who started it all pulls a gun on her, and shoots twice at her. The bullets melt, and Angel can only think she has Emma Frost to thank for this. That woman has saved her life. As his gun is no use against her, he decides to use it on her father. He points the gun at him, and Angel screams out in fear shooting him with her microwaves. He lets out a gut-wrenching scream.
Back at the pay-phone Bruno and his men hold Randall. Randall wonders what could have caused that scream as he sees people run in fear in the background. He demands to know what Bruno and his goons are doing, they at least owe him that. Bruno looks at his watch and knows the mission is complete. He offers to kindly fill him later, but now he should be with Angel. She needs him now real bad. The goons release him, and he wonders what they could have done to Angel.
Later that night, Emma Frost pours her wine. She gloats over he details of the day’s happenings reporting them to Sebastian Shaw, via the Tele-screen. Their people in the airport did well reacting precisely after the radio exploded. After Angel’s excellent “performance”, Randall got her and her father out before the authorities arrived. The agent who she fired upon is in critical condition, but that is a small price to pay for success. Shaw is pleased but wants her to have a real test. Frost slams her glass behind her, telling him a few months at the least. She knows Firestar will not fail them, and their Black Queen is as good as dead!
