Ten days ago, ‘How long have you had this idea?’ a voice calls out from within darkness. ‘I’ve had it forever. But I didn’t think it would ever come to this’ another voice replies. Light suddenly filters into the darkened facility, as Scott “Cyclops” Summers bids Magneto and Magik a welcome to the New Xavier School. ‘Welcome to the new revolution’ he announces. ‘Wait, uh, what was this place?’ asks Illyana “Magik” Rasputin. Magneto explains that it was Weapon X, the place where man first tortured mutant - the place where Wolverine was created. ‘And now we are going to live here?’ Magik asks. ‘It’s the last place anyone would look’ Cyclops tells her. Unimpressed with the surroundings, Magik jokes ‘So it’s what you’d call a fixer upper’. Magneto asks what they do now, and Scott tells him that they fill it.
Eight days ago, on a deserted road in an uninhabited part of San Francisco, a convoy of vehicles drives along, while a chopper overhead reports that airspace is clear. Another voice orders communication lines to be kept open. ‘Lines are open and we are rolling out’ comes the reply. ‘We have you on satcom’ another remarks, while inside the first vehicle, a soldier asks why they aren’t airlifting. ‘For cargo like this? Ground transport is standard procedure’ his comrade points out. ‘Because if any interested parties come looking -’ ‘They’d rather nothing drop out of the sky’ the first soldier realizes. ‘Exactly’ his colleague tells him.
A voice over the communicator states ‘This is command. Let’s keep the unnecessary chatter down to a minimum’, and the first soldier replies ‘Yes, Sir’ and inquires as to whether they are allowed to listen to Howard Stern. ‘Just keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel’ is command’s reply. ‘Thank you for that, Command. Now I’ll have that song stuck in my head for the rest of my -’ the soldier begins, when suddenly, the vehicle comes screeching to a half, ‘Sir, code 4! We have identified mutants standing in our way!’ one of the soldiers reports. ‘It’s him! It’s Cyclops!’ the other soldier shouts. ‘And Magneto! They just showed up out of nowhere!’
Command orders the soldiers to follow protocol and not to deviate. ‘They weren’t there, and then -’ one of the soldiers announces, while command orders the driver not to deviate, or to pause, before instructing chopper 7 to take action. The driver presses down on the accelerator, and a weapon head appears to load.
‘Erik?’ Cyclops calls out to Magneto. ‘I have it’ Magneto replies, raising a hand, his magnetic power flows and ebbs around them, but for some reason the convoy doesn’t start to slow down. ‘Erik?’ Cyclops asks in a more pressing voice, while the soldiers start firing at Cyclops and Magneto. ‘Erik?’ Cyclops calls out once more. ‘I…I can’t -’ Magneto stammers as he struggles to take control of the situation.
Cyclops unleashes a powerful optic blast, which sends the first vehicle exploding into the sky. But Scott’s optic energies start to act strangely as well, and he falls to the ground, his visor coming off, while the convoy crashes into each vehicle in front of the other, resulting in further small explosions, followed by one very large explosion.
Cyclops starts to crawl along the ground, searching for his visor, ‘Oh no…oh no…’ he mutters, while Magneto rushes forward, ‘What did you do? What did you do?’ he asks Scott. He stops as a soldier looks up at him and begs: ‘Please, don’t…please, I have a family’. ‘Everyone does’ Magneto replies as he holds out a hand. ‘Oh, God!’ Cyclops exclaims as he locates his visor while trying to close his eyes and keep the power from bursting forth.
Magneto locates a certain truck from the convoy, and uses his powers to rip the doors open. ‘What’s - what’s happening?’ Cyclops calls out as he adjusts his visor. Suddenly, Magneto manages to rip the door open, but a soldier appears behind him and holds a weapon to Magneto’s head. ‘Mutie! Not one move! Not one muscle!’ the soldier orders. ‘I just don’t care for that kind of talk’ Magneto replies, using his powers to crush the soldier’s weapon. ‘Never have’ Magneto adds, as the soldier’s weapon explodes and knocks him backwards.
Cyclops rushes over to Magneto and asks him if he is all right. ‘What’s happening to us?’ Magneto demands. ‘I don’t know!’ Cyclops admits, adding that it must be the humans who have done something to them. ‘Maybe she knows something…’ Cyclops suggests, as a woman steps out of the truck that Magneto opened up.
‘What did you do?’ the woman asks. She has a helmet over her head and is wearing prison-standard orange. Cyclops asks Magneto if he can open the helmet, but Magneto replies that he doesn’t know. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Cyclops snaps. ‘Be silent’ Magneto warns his companion. He does indeed remove the helmet, and the woman faces her rescuers. ‘Damn it. Why’d you even bother?’ she snaps at them. ‘All things considered, it’s the least I could do’ Cyclops tells her. ‘All things considered?’ Emma Frost, very unimpressed, snorts. ‘Does that include the fact that everything we built together - everything we were working towards is over? Does that include the fact that you ruined my life by leaving me in the hands of the humans after stealing my Phoenix Force?’
‘It wasn’t me!’ Cyclops claims. ‘It wasn’t you?’ Emma asks. ‘You know it wasn’t me. You know the Phoenix was making us crazy’ Cyclops tells his former lover. ‘So it wasn’t you who betrayed me and left me for dead?’ Emma screams. ‘It wasn’t you that murdered Charles Xavier in front of all of us?’ Cyclops adjusts his visor, and repeats that it wasn’t him. Emma switches to her diamond form, and turns away, walking down the empty road. ‘Yeah…I’m thinking maybe you and I shouldn’t be anywhere near each other anymore’. ‘Emma! Read my mind! You’ll know how sorry I truly am!’ Scott pleads. ‘You’ll know everything!’ Emma spins around: ‘I can’t!’ she screams. ‘You can’t what?’ Scott asks. ‘Dear God…not you too’ Magneto remarks.
Emma walks back over to Scott and Magneto and tells them that her powers aren’t the same as they used to be. ‘And neither are yours from the look of you’ she realizes. ‘What’s happened to us?’ Magneto wonders. ‘You don’t get it? REALLY?’ Emma screams. ‘The Phoenix. It changed us. It broke our mutations. We played with fire and we got burnt’. Scott’s optic power flares up behind his visor, and he clutches his head. ‘But - no - but I didn’t have the Phoenix’ Magneto reminds them. ‘That’s right, but…’ Emma begins, reminding Magneto that Mr “Gee Shucks Innocent” - Cyclops - let him have it pretty good with the Phoenix Force. ‘Oh, that’s right. It wasn’t him. It was the Phoenix!’ Emma mocks, before telling her former teammates that she appreciates the bust-out, but that she will see them in another life.
Emma starts off down the road one more, while Cyclops asks her where she is going. ‘Away from you’ Emma declares. ‘Emma! I can make this right!’ Cyclops promises her, his optic power flickering through his visor. ‘You know I can. You know I will’ Scott tells Emma, but Emma replies ‘I just don’t think you and I -’ she then curses as several police cars speed towards them, lights flashing. Cyclops speaks into his communicator, ‘Illyana! Get us out of here!’ Emma looks at the police cars and wonders if perhaps they do belong in prison. ‘Illyana! Get us out of here now!’ Cyclops orders, while Magneto assures Emma that they will figure this out, that they will fix it, as there are ways. Emma just frowns at Scott, and the police cars come to a halt.
Today, at the University of Texas, a large group of student protesters have gathered, they hold up signs with Cyclops’s face, and with slogans like “mutants are people too”. ‘Hey! Benjamin! Hey, grab a sign!’ a woman with red hair calls out to a young man who is on a skateboard and passes nearby. ‘Nah, I’m okay’ Benjamin replies. The woman informs him that the local news is coming, but Benjamin tells her that this isn’t his thing. ‘You don’t want to make the world a better place?’ the woman asks him. ‘And how is this going to do that?’ Benjamin shoots back. The woman points out that they are letting their voices be heard. ‘And that makes you feel better, maybe’ Benjamin tells her, turning away, while asking what it actually does. ‘It’s better than doing nothing’ the woman insists.
‘I know. I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just being -’ Benjamin begins, when the woman tells him that he is making fun of her now. ‘What?’ Benjamin asks. ‘Stop it. Stop doing that voice’ the woman exclaims, before looking back at Benjamin, ‘It’s not -’ she begins, before going wide-eyed, as she sees that Benjamin now looks like she does. ‘What are you talking about?’ Benjamin asks, unaware that his form has shifted to resemble the woman’s, although his own clothes remain, and he appears to be his original height and weight. ‘Stop it!’ the woman tells him. Protestors start to turn their attention to Benjamin and the woman, while Benjamin asks what is happening, and why he sounds like this. ‘You sound like me!’ the woman shouts. Benjamin pulls out his mobile phone and looks at his reflection on the screen - and is shocked at what he sees. ‘What is this? A joke? What’s going on?’ Benjamin exclaims, as the protestors crowd in around him. ‘I don’t…No! I don’t…understand…’ Benjamin utters, before passing out.
Elsewhere, a serene landscape is shattered by a powerful, spiralling optic blast. Cyclops collapses to the ground. ‘No…’ he utters, before looking upwards, and screaming ‘NOOOOO!’ as he fires another powerful blast into the air. His visor falls off, and he covers his face with his hands, ‘No, no, no…’ he mutters to himself, before a voice calls out ‘Scott, you’re embarrassing yourself’. Scott hears that it is Magneto, and he tells the Master of Magnetism that he doesn’t understand. ‘I don’t?’ Magneto asks. ‘My whole life, my entire childhood…the hell that was keeping my powers under control. All that damage done. And I finally - I finally learn to control them. And now, it’s like I’m back to where I was as a child’ Scott explains.
Cyclops remarks that they are just on the verge, with new mutants popping up all over the world, that they are going to be looking to them for guidance, for leadership, but they are a disaster!
Magneto uses his powers to lift the visor into the air, and asks ‘You think I wouldn’t be able to understand this? At least you did it yourself’. Scott puts the visor back on, and tells Magneto that he is sorry, and that it wasn’t his fault. ‘It was the Phoenix. I know’ Magneto replies, adding that he is older than Cyclops and is going to tell him something he hopes sits with him for a very long time. ‘I have suffered madness in my life, as you well know. And I have done things that haunt my dreams every night’.
Cyclops looks up at Magneto, who continues, remarking that he has suffered blinding rage so intense that he literally does not remember what he has done. ‘And for years I told myself: well that wasn’t me, it was madness’. Magneto informs Scott that, from experience, he can tell him, that it was him. ‘It was all me. There’s no cosmic force that wanted to make the world the way you wanted it - there’s no other thing out there that wanted to kill your father figure for defying you. You wanted it’ Magneto declares. ‘Stop it!’ Cyclops exclaims. ‘You wanted it, and you did it’ Magneto tells him. ‘Stop!’ Cyclops asks. Magneto leans down towards Scott and snaps ‘You want to prove me wrong, boy? You want to make right with the world for all your mistakes? You stripped me of my God-given power…’.
Cyclops gets to his feet, as Magneto warns him ‘You’re going to help me get it back or so help me God, I will -’, when suddenly, a voice calls out to them, asking ‘Are we having a problem here? Do we need a time-out?’. The men turn and see that Illyana has teleported to them. Magneto turns and walks away, while Cyclops tells Illyana that Magneto has finally admitted he is mad at him. ‘I would be too, if you screwed with my powers’ Illyana replies. ‘And you still feel fine?’ Cyclops asks her. Illyana tells him that she feels better than fine, that she has never felt so good in her life. She holds an arm out and explains that she can conjure energies from the Limbo dimension now. ‘Who knows what other yummy treats I have waiting for me’ she smiles. ‘The Phoenix gave you more power’ Cyclops realizes.
They turn and walk towards the dense forest, as Cyclops asks Illyana if she managed to find her brother. ‘Colossus does not want to be found’ Illyana replies. Scott hopes that Colossus is okay, and Illyana does too, but she thinks this is for the best. ‘We need him’ Cyclops tells her. ‘We do…but whether or not he has any of his power…if he finds out what happened to Xavier…he’s going to kill you’ Illyana tells Scott. Emma appears, and walking towards Scott and Illyana asks them if they are in the mood to save a mutant. She holds up a portable device and reports that they have another one.
A fire has started near the protestors at the university, as someone makes a recording of Benjamin standing next to another, whom he has just copied the appearance of, and asks if it hurts. ‘I don’t even realize it’s happening’ Benjamin replies. ‘Well, all right!’ the man he is copying exclaims. The red-haired woman tells Benjamin that this is amazing, and another asks him if he is going on talk shows. Another woman asks if he is going to join the Avengers, to which Benjamin asks ‘The Avengers? I don’t even know what I am yet’. Someone else comments that they can’t believe how much of the media is here.
The red-haired woman tells Benjamin that he is a mutant, one of the new mutants, but Benjamin replies ‘I don’t know if that is exactly…’ when, suddenly, Cyclops and Magneto appear. ‘She’s right, Benjamin…my name is Cyclops. You are a new mutant. And the new mutant revolution is starting’ Cyclops announces.
Suddenly though, another voice calls out ‘Revolution? When did it become a revolution?’ and Scott turns to see, standing amongst the protesters, the original X-Men. Scott and Magneto look confused, while the young Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast and Angel all look less than impressed. Young Cyclops frowns and asks ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
