The White House:
Inauguration aftermath:
2 am, January 22nd, 2061:
Scott Summers has just been inaugurated as president of the United States. Outside, the police are trying to clear the streets of anti-mutant protesters.
Inside the presidential suite, Emma Frost tells her husband Scott that he has to rest. He hasn’t slept in 24 hours. He can’t sleep! Scott replies. It’s just stress, she tries to calm him. Of course, it’s stress, he replies. Has she looked outside? She sees a comet. He sees rioters. Their numbers are growing. They are dangerous.
He muses that, in the old days, people believed comets were harbingers of disasters. They foretold the deaths of kings. Good thing he is not a king then, she points out. Come here, Mr. President. She smiles in a seductive pose. She’ll help him sleep. He sits down and she uses her mental powers to make him sleep.
Suddenly, she sees a light in the room. You! she shouts. “You won’t get rid of me so easily!” The white light engulfs her. Emma screams as it dissolves her. Moments later, all her things disappear. Scott sleeps through it all.
Eight hours earlier:
A private party at the inauguration night:
Among the invited are several X-Men and other heroes. And the party is in full swing.
Triage wonders why winning feels so anticlimactic. Benjamin Deeds aka Amity muses if Shogo Lee will dance with him later. Irma of the Stepford Cuckoos tells him he isn’t Shogo’s type, namely a girl.
Tony Stark asks Wolverine if he and Scott have finally made peace. Logan tells him he told Scott it was time to bury the hatchet. As long as he doesn’t bury it in his head, was Scott’s reply.
Captain America tells SHIELD commander Maria Hill he didn’t think she’d come. She didn’t think she’d be invited, she replies.
Sebastian Shaw kisses Emma Frost’s hand and congratulates her, calling her ‘Mrs. Summers.’ She’s finally outdone her old rival. Emma claims she has no rival. Jean has been dead a long time.
Shaw greets Scott, who is wearing ruby quartz contact lenses as ‘Mr President.’ Unamused, Scott asks how he got in. Emma invited him. Brother mutants and all that. Shaw reaches for a glass of champagne. And what about the Hellfire Club? Scott demands. The last thing they want is equality for all!
Emma reminds him that Shaw fought on their side. Shaw reveals the Club has been taken over by youthful Upstarts. He resigned months ago. He suggests they let bygones be bygones. He doesn’t think either of them wants to be reminded of the sordid past. Scott excuses himself.
He looks outside and watches the antimutant protesters being held back by guards. Over the course of his life he has been haunted by two sayings: “The ends justify the means” and “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
For decades, he believed that the first statement was true but the second not. At least not for him. For years, he was the leader of the mutant revolution, a public pariah and SHIELD’s most wanted terrorist. Then he found himself the protector of a divided nation. He came to power under the motto “Equality for All” and he meant it. He told himself it is what Professor Xavier would have wanted, and that he had finally atoned for the sin of patricide.
A Secret Service agent warns him the protests outside are becoming violent. Scott tells them to use any force necessary.
So what about the force he has just authorized? He muses. Against bigoted citizens, but citizens nonetheless who would wipe out those born different. Sometimes the ends must justify the means because no other choice is open to them. Winning the war was the easy part, now they must win the peace.
The present:
Inauguration aftermath
January, 22nd
2 am:
The protesters see a fire-like light from the White House. Some figure it’s God’s punishment for letting a mutant into the White House. Emboldened, they rush toward the house to attack. The X-Men get ready. Wolverine asks Ben Deeds aka Amity if he can calm the crowd down. Ben fears they are too many. Logan order him to do it anyway and orders Shogo Lee in his armor to accompany him. He tells Triage and the Stepford Cuckoos to get Eva Bell, who might be able to stop these idiots. Get Shadowcat and Beast and check on Cyclops. All this could be a diversion. Then he and Shogo rush toward the crowd.
Kitty, Beast and the Cuckoos knock on Scott’s door. They inform him about the protesters and plan to get him to safety. He tells them it doesn’t matter, someone has kidnapped Emma. Who? they ask, confused. Emma Frost, their mother, he reminds the Cuckoos. They were married yesterday after the inauguration ceremony.
The girls don’t know who he is talking about. Hank picks up a photo. Scott turns to Hank, reminding him he was his best man. He remembers his wedding day perfectly well, Hank agrees, but his wife has been dead for years. The photo shows Scott’s wedding to Jean Grey. There never was an X-Man named Emma Frost, Beast announces.
Scott is sure some anti-mutant extremists kidnapped her, then covered their tracks with a memory wipe. Hank believes only Professor X or Jean could do something that complex, and they are both dead. Why would they erase only one person? Celeste points out. Because Emma never trusted humans, Scott is sure. He has to face her abductors. Hank begs him not to risk himself after all they fought for.
Triage enters having found Eva. Did he miss something?
Scott heads outside, climbs on a car and shouts into a speakerphone, reminding everyone he was elected president under a banner of peace and equality. He promises an America where no one, mutant or human, would ever face prejudice again. But now his wife is missing.
The crowd hurls insults. One of them gets ready to fire a gun. Kitty, brandishing a katana, and Ben see him. Kitty tries to get to Scott but is too slow. The bullet phases through her and hits Scott. Wolverine and Shogo try to get the sniper but have to dodge Cyclops’ optic blasts, which go wild.
Several protesters are injured or dead. Ben laments that he couldn’t stop the sniper. Wolverine orders Tempus to throw a time bubble around the wounded before they bleed to death. She engulfs the crowd and Shogo with her time bubble.
Triage helps up Scott. Kitty phases them inside, making Triage sick. They take him to a secret bunker beneath the White House, where the others are waiting.
Unfortunately, one of the protesters took phone images of Cyclops attacking the protesters before Eva could freeze them, as they soon learn from the news. As soon as Triage finally heals Scott, he immediately wants to go find Emma. Beast tells him he must heal.
The news continues that heads of state all over the world have condemned the president’s actions. Kitty fears their work for peace is destroyed. What do they do now? Find his wife, Cyclops insists. Hank reiterates, Jean is dead. Not Jean, Emma! Scott repeats. Hank tries to reason, Eva can’t hold the people long. The UN, the military, the media will all be here soon.
That’s why they must work fast, Scott replies and calls the Stepford Cuckoos. He orders them to use Cerebro to look for an omega class telepath within a hundred mile radius of the White House. Kitty points out someone who is powerful enough to create a memory wipe could also block Cerebro.
Frustrated, Scott shouts there must be something they can do. Kitty recalls Professor X’s lockbox program, which is immune to any form of memory wipe or PSI attack. Hank adds each year it records the genetic and PSI imprints of every mutant in America.
Kitty asks where this Emma resided before coming to the White House with him. Weapon X compound, Alberta, Canada. Hank believes they have found something and asks the Cuckoos to take a reading of the nation’s present collective mutants psi force. Put the mutants in green. He wants to compare them with the general population.
Suddenly, Celeste screams and Hank announces it is not just this Emma who has disappeared. There has been a tremendous loss of mutant and humans’ psiforce within the last few moments and it is accelerating exponentially.
Outside, Eva Bell and the protesters disappear.
As Hank tells Scott they are blinking out of existence, the effect has reached the bunker and the X-Men disappear.
And finally, Scott finds himself in the White Hot Room, the heart of the Phoenix. He shouts for the others, if they are there. Not anymore, a voice answers. When Scott asks what happened to them, the voice replies they were removed from the space time continuum. Technically, they never existed.
He finally finds the speaker. Jean Grey in the white Phoenix costume. He corrects himself. She is not Jean. She is Chaosbringer. Starchilde. Dark Phoenix. Just Phoenix, she corrects him calmly. Dark Phoenix is born of human desire. And she is the embodiment of eternity.
Has she come to ruin his life again? Why now when he has atoned for so much? She calmly informs him the world isn’t ready for him to lead. His presidency will bring about war and disaster.
Scott doesn’t want to hear it. She tells him to look into her eyes and see the future: he sees ruin. He screams in denial and sinks to his knees. He is a good man, he insists. But even good men make bad choices, she points out. She goes down on her knees too. He still has a chance. He can still change this future. By undoing the past. She reaches out. The past awaits and the possibility of a better future. He takes her hand. The power of the Phoenix combined with the lifeforce of the X-Men can transform time and space.
He asks if he will remember this life and is told he won’t. Will he be happy? He will have his heart’s desire, she promises.
A new reality:
All the X-Men (among them Professor X and Emma Frost) clap to celebrate the anniversary of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. The two of them kiss.
People say in life there are no second chances. But sometimes we get lucky.
