X-Force’s headquarters:
Hope Summers sleeps. She isn’t afraid of much, due to her upbringing. But there is one thing she fears. The man who chased her over a thousand years to kill her. The man who swallowed her childhood whole. The man called Bishop. She’s had this nightmare every day this week. Her father is on the ground, full of smoking holes and Bishop is about to kill her.
With a scream, Hope awakes. She decides to drown her sorrows in ice-cream. She hears music and finds Boom Boom dancing in her room. Hope doesn’t mind but wonders why her dad’s megalomaniac clone Stryfe is on Boom Boom’s giant TV screen. There’s nothing good on this late, Boom Boom explains, so she switches to the live feed of Cable’s precognitive visions. When he’s snoozing, it’s all disjointed and caleidoscopy. Mix with fat beat and you get this trippy bleak music video. She calls it “basic Cable.” But what’s with Hope and her little night snack?
Just a stupid dream, Hope demurs then drops her ice-cream when the vision feed shows Bishop. Hope pauses the feed and demands time and location. Tomorrow, thirty-three hours and three minutes from now, Hollywood, California, she is told.
Boom Boom runs after Hope, who is loading up on weapons. A nightmare woke her up, she announces. Only her Boogeyman is real. He haunted her for sixteen years, killing anyone who got in the way. When Boom Boom doesn’t understand, Hope explains the TV just told her Bishop is alive. And she isn’t a scared little girl anymore. It’s time to make the nightmares stop!
When Tabby asks what she’s gonna do, Hope replies she’s going to kill the bogeyman. What will Cable say? Boom Boom asks. He’s fast asleep, Hope replies. When Tabby announces she has to wake him, an unsurprised Hope takes her out with a taser, then leaves.
In Los Angeles, Bishop berates Storm for molesting his mind. She stole a memory from him! She replies this was a kindness. Those memories were haunting him. She was attempting to heal a wound. Nobody asked her to! he retorts. She insists he was broken. Stark raving mad. Forgive her if she didn’t stop to ask the raving lunatic’s permission!
Not helping, Psylocke tries to calm her. She addresses Bishop, agreeing what Storm did was inappropriate. He has every right to be angry. But he has to understand why she did it. He was obsessed. Consumed by the idea that killing one girl would save the world from an unspeakable future. His obsession with killing a child charred his soul and shattered his mind. Billions died at his hand. He became exactly the evil he was trying to prevent. Storm wasn’t trying to steal from him when she took those memories. She was trying to absolve him. To bring back the man he was before.
Do they think he is stupid? Bishop shouts. He knows what they tried to do and why. He’s saying they had no right! Those memories were his to carry. And the man he was before is dead! He heads outside.
Elsewhere. Boom Boom shakes Cable awake and tells him what happened. Soon, Cable sits on his motor bike, loaded for bear. Hope won’t actually off that guy right? Tabby asks. He explains that, to Hope, Bishop isn’t a guy but the devil. Then why not let her have it? Tabby suggests. Cable agrees that Bishop deserves it. But Hope doesn’t. You hunt and kill a man in cold blood, it changes you. She grew up with two strong influence in her life. Him and Bishop. That girl has it in her to be a great soldier and he… won’t happen. If anybody wakes up, tell them he went for groceries,
Tabby asks if he really wants to save Bishop’s life. He corrects her. He’ll try to stop Hope from killing him. Didn’t say anything about letting him live…
North Hollywood:
Bishop takes a walk, still fuming and fearful he cannot be fixed. He scares a homeless man and apologizes, unware that Hope has him in the crosshairs. Fortunately for him, the homeless man is in the line of fire. Hope swears and holds the shot. A moment later, with the line of fire free, she fires and hits Bishop square. Sometimes little girls don’t just grow up, she tells him. They grow teeth. She takes another gun.
Unaware of this, the rest of Psylocke’s team try to distract themselves. Psylocke insists they talk to Bishop. Storm is playing cards with Spiral but is still fuming at Bishop’s outburst. Spiral drolly suggests they completely lobotomize him. Puck has fixed the car. Psylocke scans for Bishop and finds him battling Hope.
Bishop tries to defend himself more than anything else. When he addresses her, she forbids him to say her name and kicks him in the face. She trains a small gun at him. Point made, he tells her. That’s enough! Is it? she snaps and grabs his scarf. Yes! he shouts back. She’s thinking she’ll be the judge of that!
Suddenly, they are blinded by a light and Stryfe steps out of it. Let Uncle Stryfe have a look at her, he tells Hope and draws her close with his telekinesis.
US highway 101:
On his motorbike, Cable is closing in on Hollywood, hoping he can keep Hope from becoming a murderer. He sees Stryfe’s light and calls for Hope as he runs into the alley.
Stryfe mocks him as his two prisoners, Hope and Bishop, float at his side. Cable orders him to put Hope down. Blasting him, Stryfe promises he plans to put both of them down. But he has a big plan with lots of exciting twists and turns. Let’s not get ahead of themselves. He steps into his teleportation portal with his two prisoners.
Cable barely has time to process this when Psylocke’s steam teleport in to find Bishop’s trail gone cold.
Psylocke asks Cable where Bishop is. He berates her for forgiving Bishop and not informing him. Angrily, she asks once more what the #&$% he has done to Bishop, and her team is ready to attack...
