Outside the ClareByrne Hotel, Iceman and Pyro try to talk down the brainwashed Rachel Grey, who has just taken out Kitty Pryde and Colossus. Iceman tries to tell her none of this is real.
20 minutes earlier:
Bobby Drake wakes up in his hotel room, hungover, to find Simon Lasker, the new Pyro in the shower after a one night stand. They hear a thumping noise from the room above, from Kurt and Rachel’s room. Inside, they find Kurt Wagner, lying on the floor.
On the hotel’s patio, Ororo and Illyana are having breakfast and Ororo is trying to convince Illyana she is not to blame for Kitty and Peter’s break-up. Kitty is a grown woman who makes her own choices. Illyana insists she gave that choice a nudge. The evening before the wedding, she told Kitty she wasn’t sure they should get married. She planted a seed of doubt and that seed grew into a tree. Which Kitty used to hit Illyana’s brother over the head!
Ororo accuses her of being dramatic. Illyana retorts that Kitty called off her wedding. What’s more dramatic than that? Ororo asks what was her intention when she talked to Kitty? She answers her own question. Illyana was trying to be a good friend. That was her only intention. She shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting what’s best for Kitty.
Illyana raises her coffee cup then drops it as her head sinks down. She is unconscious. The culprit is a Mark I Sentinel. Storm gets ready to fight, while noting that type has been decommissioned for years.
She powers up by calling the Asgardian mallet Stormcaster to her and proceeds to attack, However, the Sentinel impales her with a spear… or so it seems. Storm falls down unconscious but there is neither wound, nor Sentinel to be seen.
Psylocke runs to her side and orders Armor to armor up. Psylocke examines Ororo and sees no traces of any physical attack. She scans her mind. Before she can name the culprit, she is taken out by Rachel, who believes herself to be a Hound in the future. She also takes out Armor. Her handler tells her there are more mutants ahead.
Iceman and Pyro support Nightcrawler as they walk outside, where they find the unconscious Kitty and soon face Rachel. Kurt tries to make her recognize him. In her warped recognition, Rachel believes him to say he is her husband. He asks her to fight this. They haven’t taken all of her from him. She apologizes and psi-blasts him.
Young Cyclops sees this, shouts ‘no’ and fires an optic blast at her. Rachel paralyzes him telekinetically and in her mind snaps his neck. Now she has to face Iceman and Pyro, who inform her none of this is real.
Cyclops gets up and addresses her. Rachel can’t believe it. She just killed him! He admits she packed a wallop but she just believed she broke his neck. He doesn’t know what she thinks she is seeing, but one of this is real. He knows she is from the future. Where she had to hunt her own. Only to come to a time where the people she thought were her parents weren’t even her parents. Where her entire family was slaughtered by the Shi’ar.
Rachel begins to listen.
He knows what it means to be out of time. To see things unfolds so very different from what you expected or hoped. But all they can do is push forward. To forget the past. Or in her case, the future. To live her life, not as it was, but as it is. Right now.
Mesmero’s voice whispers in her ears not to listen.
Cyclops continues that he doesn’t know what’s going on inside of her or even why. All he knows is Rachel has to fight it. Her mother, Jean Grey, gave in to her demons. A part of her surrendered. A part of her was defeated. But that doesn’t have to be Rachel. She isn’t Jean. She isn’t her mother’s daughter. She can be better!
Again, Mesmero tries to influence her. Too late, she tells him. She took the name Prestige to leave the past behind her. No more Phoenix. No more Marvel Girl. No more past. No more future. Just her. Moving forward. She sees reality as it is once more. She damns the fragment of Mesmero inside her for trying to pull her back.
Is she okay? Iceman asks as he, Pyro and Cyclops look at her concerned. Staring at the friends she took out, she admits she doesn’t know…
