INTO THE LIGHT

Part I: Remnants

By Ryan Krupienski

Washington D.C.; The Lincoln Memorial

“Just who the HELL do you think you are?”

If there wasn’t anyone else around, Scott Summers would strangle the life out of Cassandra Nova Xavier. She’s pressed his buttons numerous times since arriving at the Xavier Institute months ago, but this time she’s gone too far. Moments ago, the woman who claims to be the long-lost twin sister of Charles Xavier made an incredibly controversial announcement to the world regarding her brother. To Scott, what she did is the ultimate violation of the X-Men’s trust, and he means to make her own up to it.

“ANSWER ME!” Scott yells, his face mere inches away from Cassandra’s.

“Step back, Scott!” Cassandra says, her cold gaze more than a match for Scott’s. “And I suggest you stop speaking to me in such a loud, rude manner!”

“Rude?” Scott asks rhetorically, mocking bewilderment. “Lady, you have a lot of nerve. You’ve just crossed the line again… except this time there’s no coming back. You are GONE, Cassandra! You’re no longer welcome at the Xavier Institute!”

“Scott, please!” Jean Grey cuts in, planting both her hands across her husband’s chest as she tries to get him to look at her. “Just calm down, please! This isn’t the way to resolve anything!”

“Like hell it isn’t!” is Scott’s response.

“You’ve got a nasty temper, you know,” Cassandra says nonchalantly.

“Cassandra, you’re not helping matters, so I suggest you shut up,” Warren Worthington III says, earning him a surprised look from the bald woman. “I think you’ve said enough.”

“Scott, honey, let’s go get some air…” Jean begins to say, but Scott refuses to listen.

“I want an explanation, Cassandra,” Scott says, calmer this time but still just as angry as before. “I want to know what the hell you think you were doing out there!”

“Yes, I’d like to know as well,” Ororo Munroe adds in, crossing her arms as her eyes fix themselves on Cassandra.

“As would I,” Henry McCoy says with a nod.

Jean lets out a sigh as she turns around to face Cassandra as her teammates are. She looks at Cassandra, very clear expressions of uncertainty and sadness on her face, and she asks, “Well?”

Cassandra looks around at the X-Men before her, smiling meekly at each of them, even Scott. “I do suppose I owe you all an explanation. Indeed, I suppose I should have told you about my planned announcement before the press conference, but I knew you’d never go along with it.”

“You got that right,” Scott says, and Jean turns her head and glances at him, silently telling him to be quiet.

“You see, my friends,” Cassandra says, exercising some caution with the last word, “the X-Men are about to go fully public for the first time. Our home, our dream, our operations, everything about us is about to be exposed. It can’t be any other way, what with the campaign being headed up and funded mainly by the institute. In order for this campaign to be a success, we need to convince people that mutants aren’t so bad as it’s long been thought… and that starts with shedding ourselves of our secrets. We must have nothing to hide, we must be open and honest, we must show the world who we really are and hold nothing back. I can’t stress enough how integral these steps are.”

“Do you have a point, Cassandra?” Warren says, his lack of patience showing as much in his voice as on his face.

“Yes, I do,” Cassandra answers. “And that point is, sometimes we must fill the gap. Sometimes where there is nothing, we must create something. You know and I know that the Xavier Institute harbors no ‘dirty little secrets’… that we really have no grand revelations for the public. Therefore, in an effort to show that we are making an effort to practice what we preach, we must twist the truth. We must give them what they want… we must give ourselves, exposed, whether it be fact or fiction.”

“Oh, you can’t be serious,” Scott says, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re going to try and pass off this little announcement you made as being for the good of the school? You just…”

“Cassandra, enlighten me,” Ororo says, interrupting her teammate before he loses his temper again. “I don’t understand how on Earth you plan to explain the logic behind your declaration. If Charles had some sort of physical mutation to go along with his telepathy, it would make sense for a man in his position to shield his true appearance the world, but what would be the point of a woman disguising herself as a man with essentially the same physical form and name? It makes absolutely no sense.”

“Men are more respected in the field of science and philosophy? A person in a wheelchair garners more attention?” Cassandra answers, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s nothing to worry about. It can and will be explained when the time comes. Like I said, though, I did this…”

“To screw us over, basically,” Scott says, cutting the woman off. “Planting your permanent roots at the school for all the world to see.”

“I already have roots there,” Cassandra counters.

“Like hell you do.”

“Look,” Henry says, not wanting the situation to swirl out of control again, “why don’t we just go home. What’s done is done, and the fact is that we’re going to have to deal with Cassandra’s announcement whether we want to or not. Regardless of the various flaws we could all easily point out… now is neither the time nor the place. There are reporters all around this building, you know.”

“Hank’s right,” Jean says, looking around at all her teammates. “Let’s go home, we…”

Suddenly, Jean’s eyes glaze over as a look of shock registers on her face. She tries to speak, but the words won’t come out. She goes limp and her body almost falls to the floor, but Scott manages to catch her. Scott scoops her up into his arms as Henry steps up immediately to assess the situation and motions for everyone to move away.

“Jean, can you hear me?” Henry asks. He receives no response. Jean’s eyes are still open but her gaze is moving about absently.

“What’s going on?” Scott demands to know, focusing solely on his wife.

Jean moans a little, and she blinks her eyes, but nothing else. A worried look crosses Scott’s face, and Henry can’t help but feel baffled. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I suggest we make haste for the Blackbird.”

Everyone agrees, and Henry takes Jean into his arms as the mutants head for the door. It is opened to reveal a swarm of reporters and photographers, who all want a piece of the world’s newest celebrities. All of the X-Men remain silent as they move through the crowd, knowing that they have to figure out where to go from this day before anything else can be said in regard to their school and the campaign.

As they get close to the Blackbird, Jean seems to look up at Henry for a split second, and a couple of words manage to flow out of her mouth. “Oh… no…”

The Xavier Institute

“Oh YES.”

Madelyne Pryor smiles a menacing smile as she launches another pyrokinetic bolt at the mansion before her. It takes a large chunk out of the thick, brick wall, and now almost half of the front side of the building has been demolished. With her power, she could of course level the entire structure at once, but she finds it more satisfying to take it apart piece by piece.

“Nate, dear,” Madelyne says, signaling the young man floating in the air nearby, “how are we doing with those X-Men?”

“Nightcrawler, Iceman, Sunpyre, and some human guy are all down,” Nate answers. “Looks like the rest of them ran underground with the students.”

“Well then stop wasting time and go take care of them,” Madelyne demands of him. “We can’t have them calling in reinforcements, now can we…?”

Suddenly, a barrage of neon-colored explosions surrounds the two telepaths, and they are momentarily thrown off-balance. As her vision slowly returns to her, Madelyne is able to make out four figures in the distance, but for some reason that’s irritating her to no end, she can’t gain access into their minds. She doesn’t know who they are, but is sure that they’re X-Men, and that one among them is a telepath.

“Oh, did I do that? My bad,” come a young woman’s sarcastic words. Standing in front of Colossus, Ever, and Deathbird, Jubilee balls her fists up and prepares to unleash another attack on the intruders.

“Still standing?” Madelyne says seconds later, her vision fully restored. “I’ll have to fix that.”

“Leave it to me,” Nate says as a trail of psionic fire blasts forth from his left eye. The blaze flies directly at the X-Men, but to Madelyne and Nate’s surprise, deflects off of some invisible barrier.

“What the hell?” Nate says, rage apparant on his face.

“Come down here and fight like a true warrior, witch!” Deathbird calls out, unsheathing her clawed fingernails for Madelyne to see. “Face me in direct combat, or continue to display your cowardice at its worst!”

Madelyne lowers herself to the ground, and cocks an eyebrow as she looks right at Deathbird. The Shi’ar royalty steps forward, adrenaline pumping through her veins as she prepares to fight. There’s nothing she enjoys more than putting an unruly misfit in their place.

“Deathbird, what are you doing?” Colossus asks as his teammate walks toward Madelyne.

“Don’t worry, I think I can keep her shielded,” Ever reassures him. “As long as she doesn’t get too far…”

“Better to have sudden telekinesis pop up on ya than no telekinesis, I guess,” Jubilee quips.

Deathbird lets out a battle cry and dives at Madelyne, ready to slash the red-headed woman with her talons. Madelyne manages to move out of the way, and Deathbird does a flip in mid-air, then lands safely on the ground mere feet from her nemesis. Madelyne wastes no time and throws a punch, which Deathbird easily dodges, and then the one-time Shi’ar majestrix takes another swipe at the former Goblin Queen and manages a hit. No blood is drawn, but five parallel scratch marks appear on Madelyne’s face, and she grimaces angrily at Deathbird.

“I’ve only begun, terran,” Deathbird says.

“On the contrary… I think you’re quite finished.” Madelyne raises her hands in front of her and grabs hold of Deathbird with her telekinesis, and lifts the X-Man high into the sky.

A couple dozen feet away, Ever tries to remove Deathbird from Madelyne’s grasp, but to no avail. Nate Grey approaches the trio, and the fire in his left eye begins to burn even brighter as he prepares to launch another attack. Of course they’re protected physically and mentally by Ever’s powers, but those can only keep their enemies at bay for so long.

“Why the hell are you doing this?” Jubilee yells at the young man levitating before her. “You’re supposed to be one of the good guys!”

“Things change,” is the only reply Nate offers.

“Don’t you remember me?” Jubilee asks in protest. “Dammit, what about Scott and Jean?!”

“What about them?” Nate retorts. A field of psionic energy grows from him, ready to consume all in its path. “They’re going to die, too.”

The Blackbird

“Alright, we’re lifting off now,” Ororo calls from the cockpit, where she’s seated next to her co-pilot, Warren.

“How is she?” Cassandra asks as she tentatively approaches Scott and Henry. They are watching over Jean, who lies across one of the benches lining the inner walls of the aircraft.

“Could you do me a favor and just stay away from us?” Scott asks, still angry but at the same time somewhat despondent.

“I only want to help,” Cassandra offers.

Scott averts his eyes from the woman and says, “I think you’ve done enough.”

“Cassandra, Jean doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, she’s just fading in and out of consciousness for now. I’ll be better able to figure out what’s going on when we arrive at the mansion,” Henry explains.

“She could be in immediate danger, though! I need to try and reach her, Henry,” Cassandra tells him. “We have no idea what’s going on, something could be eating away at her mind for all we know.”

Scott scoffs at the idea and says, “Yeah, maybe it’s you.”

Henry sighs and hangs his head momentarily. “Here we go again,” he mutters.

“Stop it! Stop it right now, you horribly selfish man!” Cassandra yells out, waving an authoritative finger at Scott. “Jean could be in trouble, and all you want to do is fight!”

“We wouldn’t even be in this situation if it weren’t for you!” Scott yells back. “You’ve been manipulating her since day one, I know it, and just when the heat gets turned on you, she suddenly goes ahead and faints? Trying to distract us, Cassandra? Too bad, I wasn’t born yesterday! I don’t know what you’ve done, but so help me, if you don’t…”

“ENOUGH!” Henry says with a roar. “Scott Summers, I am ordering you to cease and desist! You are only making things worse!”

“You don’t tell me what to do, Hank!” Scott fires back. “I…”

“You, Scott,” Henry says, calm and cool this time, “really need to focus on Jean right now. I’m sorry for my outburst, but honestly. Again, this is neither the time nor the place.” Henry turns his head to look at Cassandra, then looks back at Scott. “Just ignore her.” He again looks at Cassandra and says, “And no one’s doing anything until we get the mansion, is that understood? As I said, I don’t believe she is in any immediate danger, this could very well be a side-effect of her growing powers.”

“Alright, Henry,” Cassandra says with a nod. “I understand. And I apologize.”

The woman walks away swiftly, not affording Scott another glance. As Cassandra moves towards the cockpit, Henry turns to his longtime friend and asks, “Are you better now?”

“Please don’t patronize me, Hank,” Scott says, anger still audible in his tone. “Like you said, let’s just focus on Jean.”

“Or maybe not, Cyclops,” Cassandra calls out from near the cockpit. She exchanges a few words with Ororo and Warren, then quickly makes her way back to Scott and Hank.

“Oh, what now?” Scott asks.

“This is serious,” Cassandra says, exchanging a glance with each man. “We just received a distress call from the mansion. It’s under attack.”

“What?” Henry says in disbelief. “By whom?”

“Two people I believe you are familiar with, on an intimate level,” Cassandra says, aiming the sentence more at Scott. “Madelyne Pryor and Nate Grey.”

Nebraska

He sits in a chair, one of the few remaining artifacts of the former lab, and watches the events unfolding at the Xavier Institute on a cracked computer monitor. It’s not very easy to make out the image on the screen out, but it’s something to do while he waits for the job to get done.

If it even gets done. He sees a field of psionic energy explode from Nate Grey’s body, expecting it to consume the X-Men nearby, but it does no such thing. The one X-Man, the guy with the brain matter covering his body, is proving to be quite the annoyance. So much for sending two of the world’s most powerful psi’s to take out the X-Men, but then again, they can only withstand these attacks for so long.

The image on the screen changes, now showing Madelyne Pryor holding Deathbird high in the air above her. She’s not doing anything else, though, just holding the Shi’ar woman there and that’s it. Maybe she’s biding her time? Madelyne Pryor has been known for being sensationalistic, maybe she’s waiting to round up more X-Men – maybe waiting for Cyclops and Phoenix to show up – before she makes her grand demonstration of power.

The man here at Sinister’s old lab isn’t amused, though. He didn’t reanimate Pryor and Grey so they could show off, he sent them to the school to destroy it, and so far they’re not making a whole lot of progress. It’s enough for him to want to pull the plug on them, but he knows that at this point, that’s not an option.

“Stop messin’ around,” he growls at the screen, his eyes fixed on the broken image of Madelyne. “Fuckin’ clones… never as good as the originals…”

“Status report, dear.”

Upon hearing the female voice, he unfastens the radio device hooked to the waste of his pants. “What? I’m workin’ on it.”

“Work faster, you lout.”

“An’ why don’t you get offa my case already!” he yells back through the device. “Just be glad I’m helpin’ yer sorry ass!”

“Helping me? That’s a laugh,” the woman says. “Remember, screw this up and you’ll answer to me.”

“Shakin’ in my boots, bitch,” he retorts. “Just leave me alone an’ let me work.” With that, he turns the device off, wanting no further disturbances. He turns his attention back to the monitor, and sees that the small group of X-Men are still standing.

“Hurry up, kids, time’s a-wastin’… and you really don’t wanna keep me waitin’…”

NEXT: The story continues in X-Men 2.0#8! The other team of X-Men race to get home before Madelyne Pryor and Nate Grey do irreparable damage, but what will it take to stop them? And just who is it that’s taken up residence in Sinister’s old lab? Find out in part two of Into The Light!

Author’s Notes

Well, this issue actually got done early! Can you believe it? Guess there’s a first time for everything. This issue was a little shorter than I expected it to be, but it was long enough. I suppose I’m saving my strength for the annual 🙂 Seriously, it’s gonna be a woozy. I’m excited to be at this point now, as things are going to continue to heat up until they explode in a fiery inferno in December. I’ve been raving about the huge UXM/XM for ages and now it’s getting down to the time when it’s actually going to happen. We’re not quite there, but we’re getting closer and closer, and I’m quite excited. You know?!

Anyway. Hope you enjoyed this issue and will enjoy the rest of the crossover. Remember – we love feedback here at MXU!

~Ryan
08/29/03