Doctor Doom stands triumphant, watching an
ever-increasing thunderstorm rage outside. Doom then shows Arcade the
personalized deathtraps he has put each of the X-Men in. Nightcrawler finds
himself in a featureless room, with no doors or windows and no indication of
how far he is from anything. Without that knowledge, teleporting is dangerous,
as he could reappear inside something, leading to a messy death. Colossus is
trapped on a rock in the middle of a whirlpool that’s slowly eroding his perch.
At the bottom of the room are energy weapons that destroy anything that falls
through the whirlpool, making escape that way tricky. Wolverine floats in an
anti-gravity chamber, with flashing lights and op-art walls to scramble his
senses and repeller fields to bounce him around the room if he hits a wall.
Angel simply finds himself on a perch with an array of lasers primed to shoot
him should he try to escape.
Storm comes to offer them some wine, leading a shocked
Arcade to inquire how Doom managed to make Storm into his obedient servant.
Doom reveals that this Storm is a robot he built and that the real Storm is
still stuck as a chrome statue. However, we see that though her body is frozen,
her subconscious cries out for freedom, whipping up the monstrous thunderstorm
currently raging all around them. The storm can even be felt on the island that
Scott Summers and Lee Forrester currently find themselves on. A sudden
lightning strike causes Scott’s blindfold to come loose, and his optic blasts
to fire momentarily, revealing his power to Lee.
Meanwhile, the reserve team of X-Men head to
Murderworld to rescue their kidnapped loved ones. Polaris tracks the magnetic
energy patterns to locate Murderworld beneath the abandoned amusement park it’s
hidden under. Havok blasts through the ground to reach Murderworld and as soon
as they blast inside, Polaris sends out an EMP to fry all of the electrical
systems in the place. However, a hologram of Miss Locke appears anyway,
revealing that the backup generators are still working, and reveals her double-cross.
The floor opens and deposits each of these X-Men into their own wacky
deathtraps. Havok is deposited in a roller coaster car that shoots off into a
holographic space battle. Iceman lands in an ice hockey rink facing a gang of
robot hockey players. He fights back, revealing acid below the ice and heaters
in the walls, making things more unbearable by the second. Polaris is dropped
in a deadly merry-go-round, and Banshee finds himself in a simulacrum of the
wild west.
Banshee explodes the wall with a micro-bomb, revealing
Moira MacTaggert apparently tied to the tracks of an oncoming rollercoaster!
Havok escapes his trap and finds himself in the utility tunnels, blasting an
important-looking junction box. In the control room, the junction box’s
destruction is noticed and Mr. Chambers heads to check it out. Polaris escapes
her trap but is knocked out of the sky by an inhibitor field, dropping her
right into Iceman’s trap. Iceman catches her and they bust through the wall of
his trap, as Havok deals with the investigating Mr. Chambers in the utility
tunnels. Havok eventually makes his way to the control room and shuts down the
whole place, allowing the others to rescue the hostages. They exit Murderworld
to the raging storm going on outside, realizing they must get back as soon as
possible. Back at Doom’s castle, Doom watches as the storm now blankets the
entire northeastern United States! Arcade then smugly comes up to Doom and reveals
that Nightcrawler has disappeared from his prison! To be continued!