Hot on the trail of disappearing schoolchildren, Generation X have discovered the location of the mysterious House of Correction, the likely destination for the abducted students. Jubilation “Jubilee” Lee, Monet St. Croix, Paige “Husk” Guthrie, Jonothan “Chamber” Starsmore, Angelo “Skin” Espinosa…they are, Generation X!
‘Hey, not so fast. I thought we rented you for the day…’ Jubilee exclaims to the handsome chauffeur, while her teammates look on. ‘Jubilee, leave the poor lad alone. He’s done nothing to yeh!’ Sean “Banshee” Cassidy tells the young mutant as he stands in the doorway of a small airplane at a busy airport. ‘But -’ Jubilee begins to protest, until Sean tells her to not say anything and just get into the plane. ‘That goes for the rest of yet, too. Into the plane!’ he orders, asking for a full report. As the young mutant heroes walk towards the plane, the glamorous Monet informs Banshee that everything went almost disturbingly well. ‘No doubt because Jubilee, Paige and I left Angelo and Jonathan in the van’
‘Maybe me and Jono wanted to stay in the van, M. Maybe we liked it there!’ Skin retorts. ‘Maybe ‘cuz you and the amazing no-mouth might’ve gotten us busted as mutants!’ Paige mutters, when suddenly, ‘WHAT’S THAT?’ Sean shouts, as suddenly, two black cars burst through the airport fence, and men dressed in black, with dark sunglasses leap from the cars, armed with guns. Banshee orders Generation X into positions: ‘Cover Jubilee and go!’ he shouts, to which Paige asks why the are covering Jubilee. ‘You really wanna see me use my fireworks around this much jet fuel?’ Jubilee replies as she runs for safety, shouting that she cannot do anything.
‘No worries, Jubilee. I bloody well can!’ Chamber exclaims as he unleashes a blast of raw energy, which sends one of the cars skywards, and knocks three of the men to the ground. Banshee takes to the air, unleashing his powerful sonic scream, when suddenly, one of the agents shoots his gun, and the bullet races towards him, until Monet suddenly appears beside him, and grabs the bullet with her bare hand, tossing it back to the shooter, it strikes him in the chest and knocks him over.
Skin extends his fingers and wraps them around one of the agents, before flicking his weapon away, though Angelo is unaware that another agent sneaks up behind him - and the agent fires his weapon. ‘Oh no…STOP!’ screams Husk as she suddenly sheds her skin, revealing a strange, dark form underneath, she races forward and catches up with the bullet, ‘I’m experiencing super speed!’ Husk gasps. ‘Another new ability. Great. It just keeps getting weirder and weirder…’. Paige mutters as the ground burns underneath her thanks to her speed, before she pushes Skin to the ground. ‘You okay?’ Paige asks him as the bullet passes overhead. ‘Whoa, alien rubber, chica. Looking good, Paige!’ Skin grins. ‘I just saved you from a bullet, and all you can do is check me out? Real nice, Angelo’ Paige mutters, before they look around at all the destruction they have caused. ‘Everyone okay?’ Paige shouts.
Lying on the roof of the van they arrived in, Jubilee mutters ‘Jeez, I’m disgusted. ‘Not one of them even tried to shoot me. What’s up with that?’ she mutters. As her teammates gather around her, Sean tells her to hush, and congratulates the others on some nice work. ‘All baddies taken down, no casualties on either side’. ‘”Yeh didn’t die. Full marks, aye”’ Skin mocks. ‘Rules of engagement, Angelo. If you’re alive, yeh won. Finding anything useful there?’ Sean asks as Skin searches the pockets of one of the agents. ‘Nada. No I.D., no cash. Figures’ Skin mutters.
Husk, still in her weird rubber form, holds up some papers, and exclaims ‘Umm…my fault. I was so bust looking in this file we stole, I didn’t look at the file!’ Paige holds up a locator, stuck to the file, and explains that they tripped it when they took it from the school, and it started transmitting. Paige remarks that there must have been a team in the area for just such an eventuality. ‘I should’ve thought of it’ she mumbles. Sean tells her that, to be honest, she should have, but reminds her that she is still learning and this is not the sort of mistake she is likely to make twice. ‘Now, into the plane and you can tell me who “they” are’.
Meanwhile, in the middle of nowhere, at the House of Corrections, Warden Coffin sits at his desk, and asks the frightening Baxter for a shift report. ‘Has the Somers boy settled in well?’ he asks. ‘After some modification of his attitude, oh, and he seems to be wetting himself’ Baxter replies, adding that there is nothing else of interest to report this shift, other than the Plunkett girl dying. ‘Really’ Coffin replies, holding up a human skull as he asks if it was the dysentery. ‘Doesn’t really matter, does it, Sir?’ Baxter replies. ‘I suppose not’ Coffin mutters, before informing Baxter that they have a small difficulty, and that he needs him to brief the security staff on this straight away, revealing that the file has been pulled from the school where Somers attended.
Coffin tells Baxter that it is lucky their cover and intercept team were still on hand in the area, but unluckily the team were hospitalized by the perpetrators, and currently only one of them is capable of making speech, only he isn’t making much sense. Coffin tells Baxter to expect trouble, and to put the guards on high alert. ‘And have my special children primed. Oversee that task yourself, Baxter’ Coffin orders. Hesitantly, Baxter asks if he has permission, ‘I mean, it’s the Anderson Device. I killed him myself in 1971. And I’m sure he recognizes me…’ Baxter’s voice trails off, when he realizes that Coffin doesn’t care.
The small jet that Generation X is using speeds across the sky, and lounging in the chairs, Generation X keep to themselves, until Jubilee asks Banshee if he is back here wit them, then who is flying the plane. Sean smiles as he tells Jubilee that Angelo thinks he is flying, but that it is actually on autopilot. He asks Jubilee not to tell Angel, as his ego would probably dribble away to nothing. Turning to Husk, Banshee asks her what she has to tell them. Husk replies that from the information in the file and what is on the web, it appears the House of Correction is a penitentiary for kids. ‘It’s everything we thought it was. And probably worse, from the looks of things here. Might as well be a torture chamber’ she exclaims.
Paige declares that they have gotta get in there, as there are over a thousand kids held prisoner there. Sean goes silent in shock, before asking ‘What sort of kids?’. ‘Innocent ones!’ Paige exclaims, declaring that they haven’t done anything wrong but speak their minds about what bothers them. ‘It’s totally unfair!’ she exclaims, before announcing that she thinks they should wait until dark and find some back entrance, like a loading dock, or a service elevator - suddenly Jubilee interrupts: ‘Nah’ she exclaims. ‘Excuse me?’ Paige asks, to which Jubilee points out that the House of Correction probably knows they are coming, ‘So we gotta do what they think we won’t do’.
‘They know we know where they are. We know they know we know that. So since they know we know what they probably know, we know what to do’ Jubilee exclaims. ‘Perfect. This is all we need. Mission briefings by a spastic on a sugar high’ Monet remarks, to which Banshee asks Jubilee if she cares to try that explanation again. Jubilee picks up a marker and walks over to the whiteboard, where she begins drawing a diagram: ‘Look, obviously we’re going to look for a sneaky way in because we know they know we’re coming’ she begins again, declaring that they have to fool them, so what they think the team won’t do.
Jubilee continues to draw a diagram, while pointing out that the House of Correction probably has all their guys spread out, covering every bathroom window and ventilation shaft in the place, just waiting for them. Sucking on a lollipop, Jubilee tells her teammates that one thing the House of Corrections is not expecting is for Generation X to just walk up the front door and knock politely. ‘So that’s what we do. Except maybe instead of knocking, we just kick the door down and rush ‘em!’ Jubilee suggests as she pretends she is kicking a door down. ‘Something Logan said to me once, I think. Or maybe Cyclops’ Jubilee mumbles. ‘One of ‘em. I dunno’.
‘…the front, aye?’ Sean mumbles, before Paige asks him what he just said. Sean turns to her and declares ‘I don’t think I could stop yeh if I tried’ before telling Paige that if she wants any hope of pulling this off, then Jubilee will lead the team, which causes Jubilee to drop her jaw in surprise.
Darkness envelops the jet as Generation X arrive in the middle of the desert, and descend down upon the House of Corrections. ‘Thar she blows, mateys’ Sean remarks, to which Jubilee replies ‘It don’t look so tough!’. Sean asks Generation X what will happen once they have kicked the door down, beaten the baddies and freed a thousand wrongly-released kids. ‘Then, obviously, we make them pay for harming our peers. We expose them to the world put them on trial, see them punished’. Monet declares. ‘So few of us see justice done, so few of us get that sort of closure. We should do something about that’.
Everyone looks at Monet rather nervously, before Banshee agrees, ‘Aye, well put’ he tells her, before Jubilee tells Monet not to sweat it, as that is what they are here to do. ‘Well make sure they get what they deserve’. Husk remarks that once she is on their network, she will dump every bit of information the House of Corrections has onto the web. ‘Everything they’ve done, I can make it all public. They’ll never be able to cover it up again’ she exclaims. ‘And transporting a thousand kids?’ Sean asks. ‘Still working on that, Mister Cassidy’ Paige replies.
Down below, Baxter tells his look-a-like guards to keep this side secure, and that if the kids start making noise, to fire a few rounds into the cages at random until they shut up. ‘With pleasure’ one of the guards replies, when, suddenly, there is a high-pitched sonic scream. The guards cover their ears, while Warden Coffin announces ‘Baxter! Move to high alert!’ over the intercom system. ‘Warden, what was that?’ Baxter asks as he picks up a radio. Coffin replies that he doesn’t know, and that the security cameras are out all around the perimeter. ‘But the guards…’ Baxter begins, when Husk appears, in a metallic form, tossing the guards about with ease. Coffin reports that the guards are not answering their radios, and exclaims that they are under attack. Baxter tells the Warden to stay where he is, and that he is on his way.
Outside one of the high walls, ‘Okay then. Impress me, rich girl!’ Jubilee tells Monet, who replies that, as she has found in the past, it doesn’t take much to impress her. ‘Counting to ten without using my fingers usually suffices’ Monet remarks. ‘Funny girl. Just hit the door already!’ Jubilee replies, before Monet flies to the large thick steel door, and smashes it down with ease. ‘Hey! Attention all you bald freaks and other assorted losers!’ Jubilee calls out, while the steel door flies down the corridor, knocking several of the guards over. Husk, Chamber and Skin join Monet and Jubilee as they stand in the doorway: ‘You wanna come out and play?’ Jubilee asks with a menacing expression on her face, and Generation X stand, ready for battle….
