Pakistan
The Brotherhood of Mutants is attacking the Pakistani Army. The huge animal-mutant Sumatran flattens thirty soldiers and breaks into the camp, managing to fracture his skull in the process. Quicksilver complains, that he told everybody, Sumatran should have a helmet like the Juggernaut, but nooo…
In the meantime, the other mutants are attacking the camp. One of them – Orb Weaver, a spider-like mutant, is tying a soldier up with webbing, coming out of his mouth, while Prosimian, a militant ape-man shoots everything in sight.
Scarlet Witch notices reinforcements coming from the south west. Quicksilver asks her to approach the missile silos, while at the same time stating, by the time she’s there, he’ll have them taken care of. He races into the silo, disables the alarms and tells the scientist inside that their machines are now being infected with a self-replicating mutant virus called HHVX.
Scarlet Witch then uses her Hex-powers to have all the missiles disappear in space. Quicksilver states that he hopes that Sabretooth and Toad and all the others who mocked him are watching this. Even Magneto never neutered a country.
The Brotherhood are preparing a videotape, where Quicksilver explains that while they were disarming Pakistan of their nuclear weapons, other mutants did the same to India. Mutants are going to inherit the Earth and -- Quicksilver breaks off and tells Blob to run the autocue faster. Blob answers that Pietro is talking too fast.
Prosimian and the other animal-mutants are disgusted. Magneto never even used a script for his broadcasts and Quicksilver is too dumb to read from autocue. The diverse “animal” mutants start discussing Quicksilver’s tactics – some of them are grateful to him for freeing them, but most of them – especially Prosimian - are dissatisfied with the Brotherhood’s overall goals – they want to be terrorists, not human right campaigners who take on anti-globalization missions. After all, they’re not the X-Men. Besides they – the animal evolutionaries outnumber the old Brotherhood members three to one, ever since Rogue and Juggernaut walked out. The Caterpillar woman Kathleen complains about Blob’s behaviour. He spends all day on the Internet pretending to be a bulimic supermodel. What kind of leader puts up with that? A very temporary one, Prosimian replies, ominously.
At Xavier’s school the Professor and Jean discuss her hallucinatory breakdown four weeks ago. Xavier explains that the CAT scan revealed no unusual brain activity. He tries to calm her believing that her vision was one of a kind, a result of her powers expanding, but they can work on that. If she has to worry about anyone, he jokes, she should worry about poor Beast, who’s been acting like the Phantom of the Opera ever since he broke up with Storm and Iceman left school. He asks Jean, whether she could try to include him more, as she’s been doing with Kitty oh, and perhaps she should spend some time with Wolverine as well. He’s the most dangerous mutant in the world after all, and he’s been taking her relationship with Cyclops very badly…
In the map room Cyclops is studying a map of the Savage Land, when Kitty phases in, asking him, what he thinks of the codename Shadowcat and why he’s studying the map. Scott explains that he and Colossus may be leaving on a mission for the Savage Land the next day. The military spent the last six months there, stripping Magneto’s former base, but 24 hours ago the Pentagon lost contact and Professor X volunteered to help. Kitty asks, if she can tag along. Scott explains that she is at school to learn to control her powers, not to go on missions into jungle hellholes. Is he afraid, she’ll end up injured like Iceman and sue them she asks.
Wolverine, who silently sneaked into the room, sarcastically replies that maybe Cyclops is just afraid of not being able to keep his hands to himself, what with him being the resident ladies man. Scott notices that Wolverine has been drinking and tells him to go to his room and sober up before the Professor notices. Wolverine ignores the order and keeps on needling and provoking him, making fun of his relationship with Jean, until Scott snaps and belts him. Scott then calmly tells Kitty to get the professor, before the two of them will trash the place. Wolverine hits Scott with a low blow, telling him, if it weren’t for Jean, he’d be using his claws. The two men keep on exchanging blows, until Scott uses his optic blasts to blast Wolverine through a wall.
Kitty finds Colossus and Jean in the living room, and asks for the professor. Wolverine and Cyclops are killing each other, she exclaims.
Scott goes looking for Wolverine, telling him to keep his hands of his girlfriend. Wolverine pops his claws out and angrily jumps at Scott. In mid-jump however, he’s telepathically frozen by Xavier and falls down unconscious. Xavier reprimands Scott for landing the first blow. Wolverine could have killed him. What if Xavier had already left for Magneto’s psychic rehabilitation hour?
He places both men into cerebral detention for the night, while slowing time down to an eighth to give them time to think about their behavior.
As Xavier’s consciousness returns from the astral plane, he hears Kitty shouting for him. She crouches beside Jean who is lying on the ground and having another fit. She feels as though she were attacked by a horde of goblins.
