1st story:
Jean Grey is sleeping.
Bobby Drake slides down a snowy mountain and passes Hank McCoy, who is busy in his lab. He shouts at Hank to check him out. Hey, where did his mountain go? he realizes a moment later. He does not keep mountains in his lab, comes the reply. Bobby asks him to come on out and have some fun. This is lame!
Scott will not find it lame if he succeeds. He’s trying to find a way to give his brain complete control of his optic energy. He stares through the microscope at a protein reaction that’s meant to make the mutant chromosomes assert themselves more, repairing discrepancies in the body as a whole. He believes this could give Scott and other mutants not as fortunate as them the consistency of people with a less random evolutionary path.
He’s feeling less complex all of a sudden, he realizes as he is mirrored in the fluid. He’s reducing everything to work, isn’t he?
Suddenly the lab is gone (and the mountain hasn’t come back, Drake sulks). They are in a mesa and everything is bathed in red. Bobby realizes he’s dreaming. Hank corrects him: He’s dreaming. He’s been in the lab for a while and Bobby just showed up. Bobby replies before he was snowsurfing he was in this pool with all the girls from… Wait, maybe he’s not dreaming!
Ha, missed me! Angel suddenly shouts as he’s flying and dodging optic blasts from Scott Bobby shouts that he could hurt Third. Not as fast as he’s flying today, Warren laughs. Scott, not wearing a visor, hits Bobby in the chest with a optic blast the strength of a laser pointer. He has total control.
Hank announces he hasn’t gotten this far with his serum. Oh, of course, this is the dream. With lucid dreaming you have some control over its reality. Dream? Scott states chastened. He guesses he should have known. But usually once he realizes he’s dreaming, he wakes up. That’s cause it’s his dream, Warren claims.
Hank suddenly understands. Do they remember when they were pulled into the professor’s subconscious by Cerebro a couple of years ago? But Cerebro has been working fine, Warren points out. He’s gone through three upgrades since then. No, it’s not the professor, Scott realizes. It’s Jean. This past year her psychic abilities have begun manifesting by leaps and bounds.
Being able to talk telepathically through her on missions is great, Warren adds. But being pulled into her dreamscape could be problematic, Hank hints. How does he mean? Scott asks. Maybe embarrassing, Hank suggests. That’s what he means, Bobby replies and points somewhere. Scott’s getting beaten out by himself! They see Jean in a bathing suit, making out with a dream Scott.
This is kinda weird, Scott admits. He was wondering if she was feeling the same way back to Scott, Warren remarks. Answer? Yes! Scott tells Warren he’s sorry. He knows that for a while there, he was kind of… Dude, Warren tells him, he’s into every girl for two weeks, Don’t sweat it. He’s all about Candy Southern now. He suggest Scott merge with his dreamself and have some fun. Nothing here counts in real life. Scott thanks him and proceeds to do so.
The others walk on. So what mischief can they get into here in Jean Grey VR world? Suddenly, they are in front of Bobby’s house. He expects this is going to involve the babysitter Bobby always mentions when talking about his teen years, Hank sighs. Naw, he just wanted to see old Buddy again, Bobby replies and greets his dog.
Is that his dad inside? Warren asks, looking at a middle-aged man, sitting at a desk. Doing everyone’s taxes, Bobby states, just like he wants him to. That’s why after graduation he has to go take some classes at his dad’s alma mater. Is that what he wants to do next? Hank asks. That’s the deal he mad with him for coming to Chuck X’s school, Bobby replies sobered. Gotta do something, he guesses. No one’s going to pay him for making ice.
The landscape changes again. They are at the edge of a chasm. Some storm clouds are rising in the distance. They see what’s lurking at the edges of Jean’s sleeping mind, images of practically every hardcase they faced over the past couple of years. They’re being contained, Warren observes. Even a literalist like him gets the idea, Hank points out. Jean wants to be able to protect them from, well… everything. He wonders if she’s been forcing her ability to mature and grow stronger subconsciously. Or maybe that’s what happens when a mutant becomes a full grown woman, Warren suggests.
Guess they are all growing up, huh? Bobby ventures. Don’t worry, Drake. You’ll never grow up, Hank replies.
The images begin to swim into another. Hank thinks Jean’s waking up or she’s trying to shoo them out of her head because they are talking too much.
Some hours later, the four male X-Men are in the Danger Room fighting Sentinels. Mutant targeted, the Sentinel announces. Warren dodges its shot and it hits the other Sentinel instead. Anyone can target, deuce, Warren tells it. Hitting is another thing. Now why don’t they fly off and attack the sun, because that’s what causes mutations sometimes.
Cyclops beheads the second Sentinel with his optic blast. Aced it! he shouts. No, he deuced it, Iceman corrects him. Thanks to his deuce ice shooting platform (on which Scott stands with him). The trick is getting up on their level, Scott agrees while he high-fives Bobby. He admits the professor really got those demos upped a few levels. That felt like a real Sentinel battle.
Suddenly, the ice pillar they are standing on is toppled. This is gonna feel real too, the Living Diamond laughs. Get up and face the hardest threat in town! He never got to see what he could do… That’s because he got deuced in about twenty minutes of attacking them, Cyclops retorts.
Beast kicks the Living Diamond in the face and asks them to please get off this deuce kick. He never had a shot at this fellow. How was he stopped again?
The Living Diamond tosses the severed Sentinel head at Hank, which he manages to dodge. Their professor used a machine to shake him apart, he remarks, but now all they got is what they got. That will suffice, Beast replies.
Angel grabs the villain and flies him up. He knows Chuck wants to make them able to think even under stress or taunting, he remarks, but that is just not cool. Oh, the flyboy with just wings is gonna hurt him now? the villain mocks. He gonna sightsee him to death?
No, Living Deuce-mond, Angel replies, he’s gonna try something he always sees seagulls do with clamshells. They drop them. And he does so from a great height.
Iceman, in the meantime, follows Beast order and creates an ice-tunnel. Cyclops shoots his optic blast through it, focusing the beam to a fine point, onto the Diamond, fragmenting him like a jeweler would. Maybe that’s what he’ll go into after graduation, Scott jokes.
Don’t even talk about that, Warren tells him as he lands. His family wants him to come into Worthington Inc. without even a summer to camp around Europe.
Hank examines the fragments. The professor spared no expense on this, he observes. It’s synthetic diamond, of course, but a demo like this must have taken a lot of time and money. But he built it while laying low and preparing to repel the Z’nox invasion, Scott reminds them. You mean when he zapped the aliens with the power of Loooove, Bobby asks. How deuce was that?
Maybe the surface heroes would like to observe the power of hate, comes the voice of a new attacker who tears into them. For that is the only emotion known to Grotesk!
Iceman ices him up. He even made a demo-bot of this deuce, he marvels. Getting up, Hank pleads for enough deucing please.
It’s like a greatest hit medley, Warren suggests. Grotesk breaks free. Has Iceman already forgotten that ice cannot hold his sprit? No, Bobby replies, he’s just making sure Grotesk is standing still so Scott can give him that look. Give him that look, Summers!
Gladly, Scott replies but finds that Grotesk repels the optic blast. Chuck is serious with that session, Iceman observes.
Suddenly, the weapon in Grotesk’s hand turns on Grotesk himself, releasing the leftover energy into his robot face – thanks to Marvel Girl, who has just telekinetically entered the fray.
She apologizes to Cyclops for not getting back in time to send the whole blast back at Grotesk. Scott remarks that most of their enemies don’t tolerate bathroom breaks in the middle of battle. Jean telekinetically lifts up Grotesk and states she had lady issues. And this training session has gone on way longer than they used to. And since when do they get authentic models of recent threats?
Put him down or die! Grotesk threatens. Angel hits him in the face with a Sentinel part. He thinks that’s the point, he tells Jean. The professor must be trying to make the threats as real as possible and fights don’t end conveniently in twenty minute blocks.
Jean drops Grotesk. See, Warren tells Jean. He already did the clam drop, he tells her. She missed it. “No care she,” she replies bored. Grotesk attacks her. Jean is more than ready as she missed the original fight with him, while she was helping the professor. “Toro, toro,” she goads him and then telekinetically shoves him so hard he breaks through the outside wall.
The professor is not going to like having to repair the south wall, Cyclops admonishes as they follow Grotesk. Good thing they don’t have much traffic out there, Beast observes. The demo is still active even out of the Danger Room. Taking up Cyclops, Warren reminds them there’s still Farmer Gus and his tractor who always makes Scott nuts when he takes up the whole highway. He could drive it halfway off the road so people can pass, Scott retorts and orders Warren to get him in front of Grotesk.
Grotesk almost kicks Jean’s head off, because she can’t pay attention as her mask has slid down and she can’t see. Bobby creates an iceshield between her and Grotesk. Cyclops slices off Grotesk’s arm with his optic blast and remarks if Jean had stuck with the black and yellow uniform…
That wouldn’t have happened. They heard, Warren and Jean finish in unison. Mr. short hair has just never gotten that some people find the headmask too hot, Warren adds. It’s also about uniformity, Scott points out. That’s why they are called uniforms.
Hoho! Scott Summers’ semantic schooling, Hank remarks and attacks Grotesk. Scott continues that now it looks like Hank and he are on a team and everyone else is random. They ought to project a unified front. So she’s random? Jean asks annoyed.
They argue while Hank and Bobby battle Grotesk. Maybe he’s forgetting why they started individualizing. The media was talking about mutants as some kind of military organization because of the uniforms. The Fantastic Four have always worn matching uniforms, Cyclops points out. Yeah, blue uniforms, Warren points out, displaying his blue costume. Everyone likes blue. Then what was that wacky pizza-colored get up with the suspender straps Angel tried out before this outfit? Scott asks. Jean designed that, Warren defends himself. He said that’s the kind of uniform he wanted, Jean reminds him.
He always wanted to join the military, didn’t he? Warren asks Scott. Yep, comes the reply. OW! Hank cries in the background and Jean tells him to break it. But he couldn’t because… Angel begins. Cyclops taps against his visor. Right, Warren states.
Got it! Hank announces as he thrashes Grotesk, then corrects himself he means he has done it. Such a setback will never stop the righteous rage of Grotesk, the remains stubbornly announce. Bobby suggests he chew up some of those weeds in front of him.
Warren asks Hank if he can turn him off. There’s usually no off switch, Hank remarks as he examines Grotesk. The demos end when they destroy them. But the Chuckster built these models better than usual, Bobby points out. And specific. Scott muses. It’s like a fight down memory lane. He wonders why?
Jean suggests they ask when Xavier returns in a few days when he’s back from yet another trip to Scotland. She’s thinking he’s got a sweetie over there. Well, he deserves it, Warren decides, just like he deserves all his ladies.
Scott suddenly turns around. Did someone call his name? None of the others heard anything. Warren flies off to check the mail. Again someone calls Scott and the others hear it too. Could it be the professor? Scotland is not in the woods, Jean points out. But there are woods in Scotland, Hank retorts. Who else would know Scott?
Scott runs towards the trees, figuring maybe his brother Alex is back and in trouble. Again someone calls. Suddenly, Scott screams in pain, dangling from the arm of a giant monstrosity. He missed Scott, he states. Frederick! Scott moans.
2nd story:
Scott takes Jean out on a date. He leads her to a fancy French restaurant and she’s excited. She figured that they were going to hang at the Coffee-a Go Go again and they pull up at Chez Voulet instead. Only the best for his Marvel Girl, Scott preens.
A minute later, they walk off again and Jean explains to Scott you have to make reservations for places like this, especially on a Friday night. Maybe they can find another restaurant, Scott suggests but everywhere they are asked for reservations.
Predictably, they end up at the Coffee-a-Go Go, asking if there’s any other food besides muffins.
Suddenly, Jean asks Scott to check out the news. They see the Avengers arriving to deal with a menace.
