Utopia. Suddenly, a large group of Tian citizens is teleported in by Pixie. Is she okay? Firestar asks concerned. Weakened, Pixie replies that she is not sure how much of this she can do. Derek announces there are still a couple hundred Tianese to go. And according to them, about twenty seven minutes until they take out their homeland. Liz reminds him Pixie is helping.
Pixie gets up and tells the evacuees to go up the ramp, follow the wide path about a quarter mile. Her friend Armor is there. She’ll get them someplace safe. Twenty-six minutes, Derek points out. Pixie begins to teleport again and hopes that Kitty and Jean can work things out peacefully.
Any chance she’s right? Derek wonders. Is he serious? Liz scoffs. They’ll probably kill each other!
Colossus watches Pixie teleport away again. Blackheath and Zero inform him that, while they cured the infection and the foliage will recover, the Sentient Seed is dead. Braindead is how Zero put it. They saved Utopia, but couldn’t save her. Which one of them is gonna tell Rogue? Blackheath asks, then figures she probably already knows.
Rogue sits in the jungle mourning.
Tian:
Kitty hits Jean hard and mocks her when she goes down. She thought Jean was supposed to be some sort of warrior. She orders her to pull together. They need to talk!
Jean uses her telepathy for rapid shock reaction and pain suppression. She lashes out at Kitty with her telekinesis, but Kitty holds her ground by going super-dense. Jean flies at her, mocking she is surprised Kitty left her precious Utopia to come here. When did she start becoming so horrible? Kitty asks. She came her to end this… it doesn’t have to be done with punches.
Jean powers down. She gave Kitty a way out, she snaps. By selling out the Utopians? Kitty asks. Jean just doesn’t get it. Mutants didn’t build Tian. They live in it but it’s like a hotel to them. But Kitty’s group built Utopia, literally. It was flat when they got there. It was poisoned. No houses, no buildings, no food… someone’s sick joke inside the government. But they sweated in the sun until they had something. Not a hotel. A home. And Jean expects them to give that up?
Mutants need to be united, Jean insists. Kitty tells her she thought about that. Mutants are united. Just not the way she wants them to be: bowing down to the mighty Jean Grey of Tian.
Jean’s powers flare up again. Tian is a temple! she shouts It’s a holy place! It’s everything Utopia isn’t! Kitty agrees. Jean is the idiot who thinks those are all good things.
She phases through the floor, swings upward again and reappears behind Jean, hearing someone ask where she is. Kitty hits Jean in the back and she goes down.
Nice one, James tells her. He misses the Kitty Pryde who used to hit things. They hug relieved. He tells her how the troll broke all his bones. Upside is: he can survive a lot more than he thought. Downside, there’s a giant troll out there with a club who wants to kill him,
When she calls him ‘James’, he asks her to call him ‘Jimmy’. He hates ‘James’. Tell him she has a plan.
Jean attacks from behind, telepathically taking both out. Sorry to interrupt, but she thinks she just won the war. She telepathically calls Derek and Liz, announcing she needs them right now, her quarters. That might be a problem, Derek replies. Where are they right now? Jean demands. And where is everyone else?
Utopia:
The time has come. Colossus gives the order. Shola and Mach Two begin firing the rocks. God help them, Piotr groans. Any sign of Kitty? Nothing, he is told.
Tian:
Where is everyone? Jean shouts. She’s been evacuating them to Utopia, Pixie who is sitting next to Kitty and Jimmy announces. She mocks Jean for trying to attack telepathically. She’s been resistant to telepathy since she was a baby. Before teleporting, she promises to come back for Jean if she wants her to. ‘Cause 30 minutes just went by. What the hell does that mean? Jean demands, only to see the missile-like rocks one moment later.
Storm watches from the sky as the magnetized rocks hit the floating city islands and bring them down. Some people are still left and fall to their death. Pixie reappears and tries to grab someone, but is hit by a rock against the head. She falls.
Jean is about to fall too, but is saved at the last moment by Storm, who swoops in.
Utopia, two weeks later:
The refugees have become a part of Utopia. Even Jean was welcomed with a governor placed on her telepathic powers. She too has been offered a new start. Tending her vegetable garden, she realizes she got off easy.
She’s guilty, Kitty tells a government official. The other woman, Sgt. Wolman, informs her that no charges are being brought against Kitty. No one cares. The government is tired of policing mutants and their problems. Reconstruction is going slowly and they don’t have the funds or the inclination to spend time on mutants. If they did prosecute, they wouldn’t know what to try Kitty for. And the South-East Asian governments are happy to see Tian gone. So she is free to go. As she understands it, Kitty can phase right out of those cuffs. She is no prisoner. She suggests she take this time to settle her debts with her own people. She wishes her good luck. She’ll need it.
Kitty steps outside on the balcony of her home. Outside, the others are waiting. She recalls they were once more than mutants. They were X-Men. And they will be again.
