A snowy mountain landscape:
Naked, Wolverine runs away from a cave which is Apocalypse-shaped and runs towards a voice telling him that Charles put such effort into helping him overcome the furious thing. But not him. He didn’t try to change Logan, but accepts him. He set him free. Free to kill their enemies. Free to do what he does best. And Logan, parading around indignantly that he didn’t enjoy the work… he liked it so much he went on killing behind his back!
Now this boy will become Apocalypse unless Logan ends him. And as their methodology sinks to meet the monsters on their level, their world crumbles.
Logan reaches the speaker: Cyclops, standing at a precipice next to Evan aka Genesis whose face is turned towards the abyss. Can’t he see? It’s all a consequence, Evan remarks. He can see, Cyclops agrees. He was once Apocalypse. He knows that, doesn’t he? He worries about that. Now especially, Evan replies. Could he ascend to stop him?
Does he know what’s going on here? Cyclops asks Logan. What they’ve done to him, what poison they’ve put into his system? Logan orders him to step away from Evan. Cyclops raises his hand in the air and smiles… relax! He’s not going to throw the boy over the cliff. He’ll jump!
Evan jumps and Logan jumps after him. Turning into Apocalypse, Cyclops tells him it’s all part of a greater plan.
Reality:
No! Wolverine screams and awakes. He is tied to a chair. Opposite him sits his estranged son Daken. Nasty dream? Daken asks. Take your time. Get it together. He offers Logan a drink and fills two glasses with whiskey. Of course he does, Daken answers his own question. He’s a drunk. What a tough and neat drinker he is! Stumbly, the inebriated man slaughter, claw clown. Who better to run a school for confused kids?
He sets one glass down in front of Logan. He’s not judging. He knows the animal intimately. Turns out the “spasming vengeful maniac” gene gets passed down. He toasts to nature and downs his drink.
Watching him with the hero act always made him feel bad about himself, Daken tells his father. The denial of is nature caused self-loathing. Hating the very thing he was genetically intended to be. How can anyone love anything when they hate themselves?!
Logan murders people and can still call himself a hero… a teacher, a good guy. A gussied up lie! Daken’s not trying to fit anyone’s interpretation of what a man should be. And Logan hates him because he is true to what he is!
He doesn’t hate him, Wolverine finally replies. He’s sad for him. So desperate for his old man to see how good he is. Daken’s pain, his needs don’t mean a damn thing. Nothing does. It’s a dance. Short and frantic, through a brief period of time. They ain’t never gonna get another chance at it. They die and they’re dead forever. Till the end of the universe. And this is how Daken chose for it to be between them. Logan gave him pass after pass—
He gave him?! Daken shouts. Who the hell is he to give him--? He’s his goddamned father! Logan shouts back. And he’s got love for him! But Daken got it all wrong! Everything… he’s making such a damned mess. And all he’s leaving behind is a stain…
They look at each other in silence. A stain… Daken repeats and pours himself another glass. Does he ever think about how it could have been? What it would have been like if Logan had been there to raise him? To really be his father?
Logan looks away. When he was growing up, he used to think about it, Daken continues. A camping trip. A game of catch. His old man teaching him to ride a bike. Instead of those cold bastards beating him. His nannies… it was their job to make him love them, as if they were his mother. Once he did, they’d try and kill him. The only way to save himself was to kill them instead. After the third one, he stopped falling for it. He was seven. And he was in hell, so he had time to think. To dream about what it would have been like to have a mother and father who loved him.
Logan looks at him pained. It should have been different, he admits. He’s more sorry than Daken knows. Yeah well, Daken raises his glass, to regrets.
Elsewhere, Omega Black enjoys beating up Deadpool, like he did to her mother before he severed her head (or so her memory implants tell her). She’s making him wish he really did beat up her mom, Wade jokes and earns himself another beating with the crow bar. He made jokes back then too, she recalls. Does he remember the Engel family? The bedroom had a green carpet. He laughed as he beat and cut her. She kicks him, recalling she hid in the closet watching.
Evan stares at the Apocalypse armor. Wade begs him not to. He doesn’t have to be him, he tells the boy. It’s a choice, all of it. Says the paid killer, Omega Black laughs, Says the maniac!
Daken calls Omega Black and asks her to bring him the boy. Wade calls after Evan to believe him and not listen to them. They’re the bad guys.
On the astral plane, dressed in psychic armor, Psylocke battles the Shadow King, who tells her he could do this for centuries. She realizes he is far more powerful than her. She gives it one last push, the sum of her psionic might and he actually falls. She is about to kill him for good and then hesitates. What terrible new thing will that release? What new curse on her soul?
She’s done killing, she announces. She will suffer him in her mind, jailed, but she will not kill again. Such a kind gesture, he mocks and attacks with his psionic sword. How will she make such choices once her psyche is shattered?
Psylocke finds herself back in her body and has no idea where she is… or who she is.
The AoA Blob enters the aquarium, calling out why Mystique wanted to meet him here. This some kinky party time thing? He heard she gets around. So what? Figures she wants to turn on the Freddie Dukes cheese doodle express.
Someone blue does step from the shadows… And Nightcrawler thinks that he is doing all this for her.
Looks like he mixed up which blue-skinned lady wants the big ride, Blob mocks as Kurt attacks him with both swords, neither of which hurt Blob’s hide. Sorry, nothing gets inside ol’ Fred Dukes, ‘less he wants, he remarks as he swats Nightcrawler aside. Just asks most of his wife.
Kurt crashes against a window that breaks, letting in water and a shark. Sleeping with a man’s wife is rotten, Blob remarks, but he ate Nightcrawler’s. Ate legs, face, ate everything!
Perhaps he is still hungry? Kurt grins. He teleports himself and the shark into Blob’s stomach and teleports himself out again. “Linda sends her regards, you gruesome pig!” he tells him.
Blob slowly dies, devoured from within. For Kurt, his death rattle is the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard. Makes it all worthwhile.
EVA addresses him. He’s had his revenge. Time to pay for it.
Elsewhere, Daken remarks that he drank the whole bottle while they caught up. Chip off the old block, eh? Wolverine tells him he can stop. They can start over, it’s up to them!
He’s been considering it, Daken admits. Logan makes some good points. Bu he’s about to cross the point of no return. In fact, he already has. A hatch opens beneath Logan and he lands in a water tank. He sees through a window that Daken is watching with Evan, telling him that all the years no one could kill the old man. Logan shouts at Evan to get away.
They try and try and the little creep heals and heals. The secret to killing Wolverine is frighteningly simple.
Wolverine claws at the window, in vain. Water fills the tank.
You drown him. It’ll take some time, but deprive the brain of oxygen long enough and it suffocates and dies. No healing that. Would Evan kill Daken to save him? He hits the boy. When he doesn’t react, Daken turns more violent, telling him you watch him die as he watches you!
Crouching in his prison, Deadpool hums ‘99 bottles of my blood and teeth on the floor’… Omega Black comes in carrying the unconscious Evan. He’s alive, she tells Wade. She stopped Daken before he killed him.
Wade tries to calm Evan, who moans they can’t stay here. He turns to the armor, explaining he is drowning Wolverine! He’s crazy! He’ll kill them all! Unless he does it.
Wade insists he can’t kill Wolverine. He’ll get them out. It’s the only way these capers go. He’ll get them out and they’ll beat the Brotherhood… he’s done it a million times. He begs Evan to stop. This ends badly! They’ve been warned! If he does it this ends so badly! He has to stop!
Stop? Evan asks, wearing the armor and glowing with energy. He’s just started.
