Issue+63+-+'Bargaining'


 * Issue 63 - 'Bargaining' **




 * Plot**

On Friday the school’s proximity sensors go off. Matt warns everyone over comms that there is an intruder on the island. Samantha is with her twins, Kurt and Alex. Alex suddenly says, “She’s here.” David is with the student super team. He sees a yellow blur, and suddenly the student staff are knocked out. Appearing before David is Blitz, the member of the Guardians that killed his protégé, Joni, and the man he sent to a hell dimension called Limbo as punishment. Blitz vows revenge against David. David creates a light platform to move the student staff to safety. Blitz shows he can run on air and grabs Ginny’s throat. He threatens to kill her. David fires a lethal blast of light at Blitz. The former Guardian doesn’t even try to evade. The light blast burns a hole right through him. He drops, dead. Meanwhile, Alex turns to her mother and says, “She’s free.” Samantha is alarmed; Alex looks scared and she never shows emotion. She realizes this could mean only one thing – their former foe and powerful psychic Cassandra Nova is on the island. Sam alerts everyone over the comms that Cassandra Nova is on Utopia. At the same time, Dane is playing with Davan near David’s training class. He sees light blasts through the trees. When he hears that Nova is free, he moves to grab Davan to bring him to safety, but he finds he can’t move… David says over the comms that he was attacked by Blitz. Mac teleports out to the school grounds to see if he can get a visual on David to teleport to him. He sees Davan standing by himself, crying. He hurries over to the young child and notices a strange metallic puddle nearby. He picks up Davan, then is surprised to find himself drained. Davan stops crying and giggles. Meanwhile, David is alarmed when Quentin Quire won’t respond to comm traffic. Quentin is a powerful mentalist and may be their best defense against Nova. David asks Billy to find Quentin. From inside the school, Billy begins his search with super speed. He eventually finds Quentin unconscious and unresponsive on the kitchen floor. Bastienne moves through shadows on the school grounds until she reaches Mac and Davan. She says she’ll take Davan to safety and takes the young boy. Moments later he slips through her hands and disappears! Cameron flies above the school to get a better vantage point. He sees several figures appear out of nowhere behind David. David doesn’t notice them. He is attacked savagely from behind. Cameron warns everyone that they’re under attack and flies down to assist David. With the student staff unconscious, some students step up to organize a defense of the school. Taz hurries into activity building and tells Ethan, Mercy, and Wendy to get to the Danger Room. Dondre herds those in the school towards the basement. Prism runs across the school grounds from where he was creating music videos with his illusion powers. Mystic is alarmed when he sees zombies from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” following him, but then he realizes they are Prism’s creations. Prism notices Davan in the shadows of some underbrush nearby. Mystic creates a portal to the medical lab and sends Davan through. Jessica responds on the comms that she’s helping the students get to the Danger Room, but she then hurries to the lab. She turns into water to slip through the gap in the basketball court that opens for the Blackbird to take off. Prism, Mystic, and Bast are alarmed when the metallic puddle moves, but they are needed to help Mustang. Mystic and Bast teleport to the scene of the battle while Prism runs through the woods. In the clearing by the beach, Vortex arrives first to assist the eXalts team leader. He’s alarmed to see that the attackers are none other than the former superhero team known as the Guardians. Mustang has been injured and stunned by a combination of attacks from Watchman (wielding an electrified baton), Liberty (super strong and tough), Dr. Ohm (creates electricity), and the Badge (wields a shield). Vortex is confused – Mustang killed Watchman during their last battle! Vortex fires a blast at Watchman, but misses. Other Guardians at the scene attack Vortex. Bullethead, a flyer, nearly slams into Vortex, but he’s able to deflect the blow with a blast of air. Beacon, a telepath, injures Vortex with a mental blast. When Vortex is hit by Outcry’s sonic scream, he’s stunned. He loses control of his flight and plummets to the ground. He slams into a rocky patch and is unconscious. Blur arrives on the scene and attacks Beacon. He is surprised by a sudden burst of black smoke – Ethan and Mercy have appeared once again! Mustang has shaken off his disorientation and flown off, so Watchman turns his attention to Mercy. Ethan jumps in the way of the attack and is hurt. Bastienne teleports into the shadow of a palm tree and attacks Outcry from behind. She calls out to Liberty, whom she visited in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s jail on the Triskelion, and tells her to stop this and not to listen to Watchman. Liberty seems unmoved. Mercy flies into a rage and grabs Watchman with her disintegrating touch – but it doesn’t work! She realizes he’s an illusion! A liquid metal form charges into the battlefield and attacks the Badge, piercing by turning his arm into a metallic blade. The metal man is Dane – somehow his mutant ability has changed! Dane realizes the Badge is an illusion, as well. As the battle goes on, the group realizes each of the Guardians are actually illusions. Then Wonder Man arrives on the scene. He’d been listening in on their comms and came to assist. He blasts the Guardians with ionic energy and the illusions disappear. The group is worried that Nova is still on the island and is possessing someone. They need Quentin to scan the area. Mac teleports back to Academy X’s kitchen and wakes the mentalist. Quentin says he made mental contact with Nova when she was first freed and she hit him with a powerful mental blast. He scans for Nova once more, but can’t find her. Meanwhile, Samantha is with Matt and their twins in the security room, and Alex confirms Nova is gone. Down in the medical lab, Jessica looks worse than ever after reforming from her water form. She tries to help Davan, but Davan turns into a puddle of water on the floor after she touches the child. Dane tries to help, but Davan only ends up as a liquid metal puddle instead. Quentin knocks out Davan for now. In the end, they decide to have Shadae, a student whose power is that she sweats sugar instead of salt, touch Davan instead. Davan gains Shadae’s power and goes to sleep. At about this point, the group realizes they haven’t seen Lucius since the battle. He’s gone! Did Nova take his body? Wonder Man says he saw a boat leaving the island while he was flying to Utopia. Cameron immediately flies to the bay between San Francisco and Utopia to check it out. He catches sight of the school’s speedboat, which is going full speed towards San Francisco. Lucius is indeed inside – but he’s seemingly unconscious! David warns Cameron that it could be an illusion. Dane powers up the Blackbird so the team can get closer. The eXalts, plus Quentin, board the aircraft. Ethan and Mercy, in the nearby medical lab, want to go along. David forbids it. As the Blackbird door closes, they jump onboard anyway. Bastienne informs David that they’ve stowed away. Inside the Blackbird, they notice extra eXalts uniforms. Ethan and Mercy grab uniforms and the comms that come with them. David tells Quentin to knock out the twins. Quentin goes into their mind and says he doesn’t want to deal with this – just act asleep. They do so. The Blackbird gets close and reads the boat on its radar. It doesn’t seem to be an illusion. Mac creates a portal to the boat and David and Quentin go along. Quentin doesn’t sense Nova inside Lucius. Following their conversation on his comm while piloting the Blackbird, Dane theorizes that Nova was close enough to “jump” from Lucius to another host in San Francisco and left Lucius unconscious. David turns the boat around and Mac pilots it back to Utopia. They decide to leave Lucius unconscious for now. Since Nova is on the loose and last time she was free she tried to kill Xavier, Sam calls the east coast school. She’s surprised to hear that only Kitty and Piotr have been unaffected by the power-draining flu. Half the students are also sick. Kitty takes Sam’s call and promises to watch out for Nova. Alex then tells Sam that she’s “following her.” Sam isn’t sure what her daughter means, but since Alex is Cassandra’s “daughter”, she trusts her. Wonder Man leaves to warn the Avengers about Nova’s reemergence. Quentin, Ethan, and Mercy wake up Lucius. Lucius is groggy and disoriented. He doesn’t remember anything after hearing that Nova was free and wants to know what’s going on. Quentin can’t bother to explain the whole thing and goes into his mind to share the information. Lucius is agitated that Quentin mentally contacted him. Quentin shrugs and leaves with the twins. Lucius creates an illusion that points a finger at Quentin and says, “You’re a jerk” on repeat. Quentin tries to dismiss it with a wave of his hand, but is surprised to find it’s solid! Lucius later discovers his illusions are solid – Nova must have changed him! Bastienne gets a phone call from an unknown number. It’s a staff member at San Francisco General Hospital. Bastienne’s sister, Georgiana, listed her as her emergency contact. Georgie’s been admitted to the hospital because she attempted to harm herself. Mac creates a portal so Bastienne can get to the hospital quickly. Mac waits outside as Bastienne hurries to Georgie’s room. Inside she’s surprised to find Agape, but she’s focused on her sister. Georgie is unconscious and is hooked up to various IVs. There is no external sign of any trauma. Agape says she heard Georgie was admitted and went to her side. She was admitted with self-inflicted wounds to her arms, and they almost lost her. Then, suddenly, the wounds healed! Bastienne is surprised to hear that her sister can regenerate. Agape also says that Georgie kept saying, “he’s gone, he’s gone” over and over again. Worried, Bastienne calls Georgie’s fiancé, Rafé. He doesn’t answer. Bastienne calls the school to tell them her belief that Nova has possessed Rafé. Agape slips away. Bastienne remains with Georgie as long as she can. When she returns to the school late that night, she and Jessica have a heart to heart talk. Jess admits that she’s lost control of her mutation and there’s nothing she can do. Even Hope didn’t work, and she’s still been unable to control her body breaking down even after she took the Hope cure – the last Hope cure the school had! The two hold each other and talk until dawn. The next day Dane calls S.H.I.E.L.D. to inform them that Nova is lose. S.H.I.E.L.D. thanks him for the information, but doesn’t offer help – Dane keeps putting off S.H.I.E.L.D.’s request to inspect Academy X and Utopia. If Dane won’t cooperate, S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t either. Dane also checks on the door to the hanger, as it wouldn’t open on his first try on the night Nova was freed. It seems to be a normal mechanical defect and he fixes it. As the week goes on, the group isn’t sure what to do about Nova. They decide not to use Cerebra to find her as it’s too risky to contact such a powerful mentalist with the device. Alex informs Sam that Nova is halfway across the country and heading east towards Xavier’s. They’re worried, but there’s nothing they can do. Evangeline Whedon contacts David. She heard that he killed Blitz on Utopia. As Utopia has a basic let of laws that outlaw murder, she informs him that she’ll be investigating the case in her role as Utopia’s Attorney General. Meanwhile, Hellfire Club: Tokyo’s bank begins construction. Hundreds of workers arrive to first create a working port. Tons of building materials and other supplies begin arriving. On Saturday, Shiro “Sunfire Yashida inspects the progress of the construction. He also stops by Academy X to meet with the headmasters. He tells Mac and Bastienne that he’s ready to implement his vampire solution. He has barrels of an unknown chemical that will destroy all vampires under the school. Mac wants to know inside, but Shiro will only tell him that it’s nontoxic and will only harm vampires. Mac is worried – what is Jubilee is below and she’ll be harmed? He asks Shiro to wait. Shiro takes a walk around the school while Mac debates what to do. He asks Quentin to scan Asteroid M below Utopia to see if he can sense Jubilee. Quentin says he’ll try – he knew her from his time as a student at Xavier’s, but vampires are notoriously hard to read and her mind may have changed since she became a member of the undead. He scans below the island. There are hundreds of vampires, but he doesn’t think any are Jubilee. While Mac and Jubilee talk, Ethan and Mercy hear conversation from the library. One of the voices is Aliyah, Paragon team leader. It seems to be a Paragons team meeting, but they weren’t invited. Another voice has a Japanese accent. The siblings listen in as the man with the Japanese accent thanks Aliyah for the information. He says he’ll be by more often now that construction is ongoing on the northwestern tip of Utopia and she can update him on what else is going on at the school when he visits. Ethan goes straight to David and tells him what he overheard. David thanks him for the information. He then calls in Quentin and asks him to spy on the Paragons psychically. David tells Quentin not to tell anyone he’s doing so. Shiro meets with Mac and Bastienne and wants an answer: do the headmasters want him to take care of the vampire problem or not? Mac reluctantly agrees. Matt pumps the barrels’ contents through the hatch in the Danger Room into Asteroid M below. It seems to be successful; there are no longer any sounds coming from below the school and Quentin doesn’t detect any minds. As the week goes on, Mac begins having panic attacks out of concern that he harmed Jubilee. News also breaks that week that Wonder Man raided a Church of Humanity church that was sheltering Purifiers. Is he working for Governor Sangrey? Kitty Pryde contacts Academy X to reveal that someone tried to break into their hangar to steal the Blackbird. It was Rafé! Why was Cassandra Nova trying to steal the aircraft? She was unsuccessful and seems to have fled the area. At the end of the week, Sarah Rabinowitz disappears. She had arrived the night when everyone saw visitors or visions from another reality. Sarah must have finally returned to her time or world. Then, over the weekend, Bastienne gets alarming news – her sister Georgie had an incident at the hospital. Staff from San Francisco General Hospital show her footage of Georgie knocking aside hospital staff and grabbing a bone saw. She cut off her own skin! She was finally sedated and the skin grew back due to Georgie’s regeneration, but she clearly needs more serious help. She’s being kept sedated in the mental health unit for now. In the following week, Dane meets with Samantha alone. He says he received a response to his request for help from Hellfire Club: Tokyo. They believe they have a solution that could save Cordelia. There is one person that has cloned DNA that isn’t breaking down – Samantha’s baby! Sam’s baby is from her clone and half of its DNA is from the clone. Hellfire Club: Tokyo believes they can use stem cells from the baby to save Cordelia. The procedure will be dangerous to the baby, however. Dane says it’s Sam’s decision. Sam talks to Cordelia. Cordelia says she doesn’t want to die, but she understands if Sam doesn’t want to risk the baby’s life for her. Sam also talks to Matt. In the end she decides she can’t do it. Cordelia and Matt accept her decision. Later that week the residents of Academy X hear the sounds of a helicopter. A news chopper has violated Utopian airspace to film footage of the construction of Hellfire Club: Tokyo’s bank and complex. Lucius creates a privacy dome over the construction site. That night on the news the press wonders how much housing is being built on Utopia. The town is dubbed “New Genosha.” The reporter asks if it’s dangerous to allow so many mutants living right next to San Francisco. After the news story, many mutants try to sail to Utopia to live there. Many are those that refused to register that are looking for asylum. Others want Hope or the Hope cure. The mutants are turned aside – at least for now. At the end of the week Cordelia has another heart attack, and this time she doesn’t recover. The staff and students (especially those from Academy M) grieve. A few days later, Matt informs the staff through their comms that visitors have appeared on the Academy X grounds. On the security cameras, Cameron sees that Magik, also known as Illyana Rasputin, has arrived! He’s shocked to see who’s with her. It’s Daniel Robitaille, former Academy X student and eXalt. He died after being shot by his own son, but he’s somehow back to life! The group is happy to meet with them. They hold a staff meeting to talk to the visitors. Daniel explains that Magik was able to bring him back from the shard of his soul that he left in Limbo. The reason they’ve come is that Nova escaped from Limbo. The group shares what they know about her escape. Magik says she bound Nova in Blitz as punishment for both of them. But recently the dimensional barriers have begun breaking down and Blitz Nova was able to escape back to Earth. She says a cosmic force, known as Nidhogg in Norse mythology, is destroying the walls between different realities. Continuing to use Norse mythology as an analogy, she explains that the different realms, like Jotunheim (land of the ice giants), Svartalfheim (the home of the Dark Elves), and Muspelheim (land of the fire giants, also called Limbo) are overlapping now that Nidhogg is chewing through the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Creatures from different realities are crossing over! The dimensional rift must be repaired. But first they must find Nova. Magik can bind her if she’s trapped. While the rest of the group discusses what to do about Nova, Lucius visits his older self. He accuses older Lucius of weakening the dimensional barriers to bring him here. Lucius says he didn’t do it. He was visited by a woman he won’t name months ago and he realized she’d come from another dimension. He created a device to temporarily weaken the dimensional barriers in the area in hopes she’d come through, but young Lucius came through instead. He also planned to use the device to trap the girl here, but instead it trapped young Lucius. Lucius realizes the device was the reason everyone saw visions or visitors weeks ago. Older Lucius wasn’t the cause of the problem in the first place – he just exploited the weakened dimensional barriers. He apologizes to older Lucius and examines what older Lucius is working on now. Older Lucius has been doing genetic research. Some areas, like the United States, have many more mutants than other areas. He’s been tracking the spread of the X-gene in a similar way as other researchers discovered “Mitochondrial Eve”. He’s found a racial group in northern Europe that has never produced a mutant and theorizes that they may be the last group without a potential dormant X-gene. Younger Lucius admires the research but returns to the staff meeting. As the group discusses how to find Nova, Alex reveals to Samantha that her “child” followed Nova to Russia. Alex reveals that she implanted a piece of her consciousness in each of the new adult mutants in San Francisco. She is the one responsible for getting them to behave recently. One of the new adult mutants has the ability to track others, and that “child” followed Nova to Russia. Alex believes she can lure Cassandra Nova back to Utopia so she can be bound. The group comes up with a plan: Alex will bring Cassandra back to Utopia. Magik and Seth, a human student that can bind creatures in jars, will work together to trap Cassandra into an inanimate object. The plan is put into place. It’s the Friday before spring break. A few staff members take the students to Disneyland for the day while the others prepare to trap Nova. The plan works. Nova flies onto the island in Rafé’s body. Magik casts a spell that causes Rafe to freeze. Alex, her eyes glowing, is then able to rip Cassandra from Rafe’s body. Seth begins casting a spell to bind Cassandra in a clay jar. Bastienne suddenly hears a voice in her mind – it’s Cassandra Nova! She makes an offer to Bastienne: free her and she’ll fix Jessica’s mutation so she won’t die. Nova says she just wants to leave Earth. Bastienne tearfully decides she can’t trust Nova and says no. The binding completes and Nova is trapped! Later that day there’s news from San Francisco that monsters suddenly appeared out of nowhere and several people were hurt or killed before the monsters escaped. They were red-skinned humanoids with a strange symbol carved into their forehead. Mac identifies the symbol as the Greek letter Phi. That night Bastienne admits to Jessica that she had the chance to save her, but couldn’t trust Nova. Jessica understands. They spend the night together. In the middle of the night, Jessica finally loses control of her mutation and crumbles into dust. She’s dead…
 * Next:** Issue 64 - 'Depression'
 * Previous:** Issue 62 - 'Anger'