Storm flies up carrying the injured boy, Jim Jaspers. She tells her teammates, Wolverine and Beast, that she is taking him out of this. They deal with that. Try diplomacy first, please, but the issue is containing them. She is referring to the strange Fury-like armed beings that appeared in chase for the boy.
Does he want to try diplomacy or does he want him to? Wolverine asks Beast. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen him stab someone diplomatically before. He does believe, however, that he’s quite sick of people pointing guns at him today, Beast retorts.
“Halt!” the alien soldiers order, scanning them. Infestation, they decide. Extreme sanction! They fire their weapons.The two X-Men dodge them, Beast by jumping up and using the trees. While he draws their fire, Wolverine sneaks up from behind and claws the first Fury apart. Beast jumps atop another one.
Another, Fury manages to impale Wolverine with a huge knife it has formed of its arm. Beast tries to run to help but is hit by another Fury.
Wolverine swears at the Fury that tries to behead him but finds Adamantium bones a little too hard. Not gonna be as easy as that, Wolverine figures. It opens fire at him and Wolverine’s body is riddled with bullet holes.
However, before the Fury can finish him off, it and several others are fired at, first by Cyclops’ optic blast, then by artillery. This is his country, Doctor Crocodile announces. And those are his X-Men Cyclops states.
Back in the village, Emma now tries to mentally reach the semi-conscious young man, telling him to relax and let her in. They’ve come for him, he mutters. They’ve come for him and’ll kill all of them too!
Outside, the Furies begin to reform. Cyclops tells the Doctor to have his men stand back a moment and brace. He then orders Storm to strike the one with the arm regeneration. One strike, human-lethal. Let’s find out exactly what they are dealing with here.
Furies! Jim shouts to Emma who tells him to stop. She doesn’t understand! he replies panicked.
Storm strikes the Fury as Cyclops orders… nothing happens. Yeah, okay, he figures. He tells Storm and Armor to get Beast and Wolverine to cover. And then it’s containment and as much damage as they can inflict. N’Dingi orders his soldiers to protect the X-Men until they get their wounded clear. Then concentrate on terminating these… things. These things that he has only ever read about in reports.
Flashback:
Doctor Crocodile thinks back on his past when he was younger and working for the RCX in Great Britain, before his accident. He read reports about this world’s James Jaspers and the horror that was the Fury…
End flashback
In the village, the boy still urges Emma that she doesn’t understand! They are Furies! They were grown to kill people like him. People like her! They have to go! They have to run! They have to hope they don’t see them! Show her, Emma orders.
She looks into his mind and sees a mass grave of murdered superhumans, watched over by the Furies.
Horrified, she withdraws and the boy still begs they have to run.
Outside in the jungle the soldiers are being massacred by the Furies. Armor carries Wolverine away, telling him he looks like crap. She’s a joy to have around, he mutters weakly. She urges him to concentrate on healing. She’ll get him clear. How long does he thinks these wounds will need to close up? She is unaware of a Fury following her.
Her friends are already dead! Jaspers tells Emma.
The Fury grabs Hisako’s armor and some of its spikes begin to penetrate the psychic armor. Hisako screams. Wolverine goes ballistic and tears it apart. Good God, Doctor Crocodile mutters at the slaughter. More Furies fire at Wolverine together.
Even Emma can hear it. What was that? she asks. Ultimate sanction cannon, Jaspers tells her and again pleads to leave. She looked into his mind. She knows that even winning is losing! Emma pushes him back onto the bed. If he tries to move again, she’s going to break his neck and give his corpse to his little playmates out there, she informs him.
She telepathically addresses Scott, informing him they are fighting a surgical strike force designed entirely to kill superhumans. They wiped out superhumans on their parallel world. Except for their little friend who is a reality jumper, a living ghost box. He escaped and was silly enough to try to go home again. A living Ghost Box, Scott repeats. Emma agrees. His very arrival here threw off enough radiation to mutate all these babies in the womb. And she imagines no one here has been tested for cancer yet.
She mentioned he teleported to another parallel world. He was taken in by a superhuman group who killed a Fury team. They sent in another six hundred and turned that world into a wet rock. And if he jumps out of here they’ll get a strong dose of radiation.
So even winning is losing, Cyclops realizes in the battle. They need to move the playing field! Storm retorts they need to keep them right here! They are all that stands between them and the villagers. And the villagers are between them and the boy they are hunting.
Cyclops orders her to get Logan all the way out of the combat theater and then get an aerial position. Storm strikes the Furies with lightning and drags Logan up, swearing at his stupid heavy skeleton. One Fury gathers and absorbs the lightning and sends it back at her…
