X-Men: Gold #31

Issue Date: 
December 2018
Story Title: 
Prestige Dark – part 1
Staff: 

Marc Guggenheim (writer), Pere Perez (artist), Jay David Ramos & Matt Milla (colorists), VC’s Joe Caramagna (letterer), Phil Noto (cover artist), Jay Bowen & Anthony Gambino (graphic designers), Chris Robinson (assistant editor), Darren Shan (editors), C.B. Cebulski (editor-in-chief), Joe Quesada (chief creative officer), Dan Buckley (publisher), Alan Fine (executive producer)
X-Men created by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Brief Description: 

Rachel Grey awakes in her hotel room after the ill-fated wedding, to find Mesmero there announcing that he has messed with her head. Colossus, in the meantime, says goodbye to Kitty Pryde, making it clear that he is leaving the team. Rachel has a hallucination of being a Hound again in the future where she chases the surviving X-Men who have just broken out of an internment camp. She has taken down several of them when she faces Pyro and Iceman. She does the same in reality and they tell her this is all in her head.

Full Summary: 

Westchester, the Clarebyrne Hotel. The morning after Kitty and Colossus’ ill-fated wedding:
Rachel Grey awakes in the hotel room she shares with Kurt Wagner to find she is alone in bed. She walks to the bathroom, figuring Kurt is there and wonders how he managed to be up so early. She’s got the mother of all hangovers. Feels like her brain is trying to punch out of…

She breaks off when she sees her nemesis, Mesmero, standing over Kurt’s unconscious body. Rachel angrily attacks, only to find he isn’t where she thought. He turns up again behind her, revealing he has been in her mind for months, making adjustments, improvements really. She’ll thank him…

In the meantime, Peter Rasputin is leaving the hotel. Kitty Pryde calls out to him. She asks if he was going to leave without saying goodbye. He replies that it seemed easier that way. For him? she asks. For them both, Peter clarifies. She realizes he is not just returning to Manhattan. He admits he doesn’t know. Russia, perhaps. He craves home. She urges he doesn’t have to run away. Doesn’t he? Peter asks. They face death every day. It requires focus to stay alive. He cannot focus with things as they are between them.

Kitty simply states she loves him. He asks her not to say that. But it’s true, she insists. He calls it a cruel truth, if they cannot be together. She explained… He interrupts that he knows but it doesn’t make his heart break any less. Does it hers? No. She looks down. He touches her cheek and tells her to be well. Then he walks away.

The future:
Middle-aged Kate Pryde and her husband Colossus are dressed as mutant prisoners in the Sentinels’ prison camp. He asks her if she is well. She apologizes. Her mind wandered. She remembered something.

They turn to their friends, Storm and Nightcrawler. Storm announces they don’t have time for memories. Kurt adds that Forge says he just about got the jammer ready. Once the jammer is operational, they have a three minute window, Storm states.

Kate muses they will lose a lot of people if they go through with this. Not as many people as they will lose when the Sentinels go through with their annihilation plan, comes a new voice. A one-eyed Scott Summers – the older version of the time-displaced younger Cyclops – and Forge join them. The Sentinels are planning on wiping out everyone in the camp at midnight. It’s now or never. In that case, he will need this, Storm points out and hands Cyclops his visor. Scott exchanges his glasses with the visor and Forge gets ready to activate the jammer, again repeating they only have three minutes.

Forge activates it and Scott gives the signal by firing his optic blast up into the air. Others see it, among them Armor, Ink and Anole. Unfortunately, they are confronted by Sentinel guards. Ink orders the others to get the rest to Avalanche, then attacks the Sentinels… only to be killed. Storm order them out of here as she attacks the Sentinels with lightning and witnesses them slaying Anole.

The others find Avalanche, who leads them to a subway promising that Alpha Flight will be meeting them at the Canadian border. Armor’s group come running chased by a Sentinel. Cyclops orders the others into the tunnel and for Colossus and Kate to run interference.

Colossus throws Kate at the Sentinel and she phases through it, scrambling its technology. Cyclops asks Armor about Storm, and she explains Storm stopped the Sentinels and fears correctly she was killed.

Later, they emerge from the tunnels in New Jersey. Peter asks Kate how she is feeling. Tired, cold. Same as everyone, she replies. Not same as everyone he replies. Everyone isn’t pregnant. However, that moment, he is shot in the back by a human guard. Kate attacks him and is felled by a psi-blast. The others realize what that means. It is the Hound Rachel, Nightcrawler’s wife.

Kurt pleads with her trying to reach her and Rachel speaks his name. She apologizes but then strikes him down with a psi-blast. Scott screams and fires an optic blast at her. The human guard kills the others with his machine gun while Rachel strikes down Scott. On the ground, he tries to remind her she is his daughter. She knows, Rachel replies and telekinetically snaps his neck.

Her master praises her and orders her to finish off the rest. However, he is struck by a fire blast as they now face Iceman and Pyro.

In reality, in the present, Rachel has taken out Kitty, Colossus and young Cyclops and Iceman orders her to stand down. This is all in her head…

Characters Involved: 

Colossus, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Prestige, Pyro II, Storm

Mesmero:
In Prestige’s hallucination:
Anole, Armor, Avalanche II, Colossus, Cyclops (time-displaced), Forge, Ink, Kate Pryde, Nightcrawler, Storm

Rachel Grey / Hound
Houndmaster
Sentinels

Story Notes: 

Colossus will be seen next in Astonishing X-Men (4th series) #14.

Written By: