Story continued from Uncanny X-Men #242.
The X-Men and X-Factor face down the Goblin Queen as
she holds Jean Grey captive, ready to sacrifice baby Nathan to accomplish her
goals! Madelyne blames Jean for stealing Cyclops away from her, as he pleads
for her to punish him if she must, but to let the others go. Instead, she sends
her demons to attack the two teams, and in their zeal, many X-Men both past and
present end up tripping over each other and getting in each other’s way. This
almost causes a fight to break out between the two teams once more as Wolverine
and Archangel aim to attack each other, but Cyclops and Storm shut it down
before turning on each other. The two tell each other to control their
respective team, before Storm sends a gust of wind to blow Cyclops into the
air, accusing them of being mutant hunters! Cyclops tries to explain that that
was their cover story at first, but that they actually helped the mutants they
“hunted” and that it’s been over for months. The Goblin Queen watches the fight
between the two leaders and muses about when they faced each other before (in
Uncanny X-Men #201). She reveals that her nascent powers had subtly influenced
that fight, unknown even to her at the time, and that Storm’s victory over
Cyclops was in fact hers, and just what she wanted!
When Storm tells Cyclops that they saw no footage of
any change of behavior on their part, he asks her who exactly provided that
footage? Storm then realizes that it was Madelyne, being the one who operated
their computer systems, and wonders if perhaps she was manipulating and
betraying them even then! Cyclops and Storm both attack the Goblin Queen and
she uses her demon pet as well as her own powers to block their attacks.
Madelyne then uses the telepathic haze as a result of the inferno spell to manipulate
Dazzler and Longshot into attacking Archangel for her. She tries to manipulate
Archangel and turn him to her side too, absorbing some of his negative energy and using it to increase the size of the already growing Empire
State Building, to act as the bridge between limbo and earth! While Cyclops
can’t bring himself to attack her too fiercely, she decides things need to end
soon, and sends Havok to take care of his brother! At that moment, Archangel is
able to sever the energy bond keeping Jean as the Goblin Queen’s prisoner and
the resulting energy backlash clears Wolverine’s head.
Meanwhile,
Storm and Rogue incapacitate Dazzler and Longshot, still under Madelyne’s
control, while Cyclops and Havok square off. With Jean now free, the Goblin
Queen encases the two of them in a telekinetic energy field while using baby
Nathan to shield against her attacks! Madelyne reveals the truth about herself
to Jean, how Mister Sinister cloned her from Jean’s DNA, as the X-Men and
X-Factor find their attacks absolutely useless against the force field. As Havok
stands poised to finish Cyclops, Archangel instinctively attacks Havok with his
paralytic wing spikes, knocking him off the building! Fighting against both
Apocalypse’s and the Goblin Queen’s influence, he swoops down and saves Havok.
Inside the energy field, Madelyne shows Jean the extent of their connection,
and the memory she acquired from Jean of when her friend Annie Richardson died.
Jean realizes it must have been the Phoenix’s doing! When Phoenix sacrificed
herself on the moon, the bit of Jean’s essence it borrowed made its way back to
her, buried at the bottom of the ocean, but after seeing what it had done, she
rejected it! With nowhere else to go, it circled the globe until it found
Madelyne, and awakened her and her powers!
Outside, the two teams try and figure out a way to
take down the force field. They come up with the plan to have Madelyne stretch
her control thin, and then hammer at a specific weak point with everything they
have, and convince Havok to go along with their plan, to try and rescue
Madelyne. Inside the energy field, Jean’s and Madelyne’s minds meld, showing
everything that led Madelyne to this point. She shows how Sinister set her up
to find Scott, how they fell in love, and produced a child, all a part of Sinister’s
plan. Jean then reveals that even after he found out she was alive, Scott went
back to return to Madelyne but she was already gone, Sinister having erased
every record of her existence. Madelyne then recounts how she took a flight
job, secretly set up by Sinister, in order for his Marauders to capture baby
Nathan and kill her. They failed and she was found by the X-Men, leading her
eventually to this point. Outside, Psylocke checks on Longshot, in a deep
depression of guilt over how easily he was manipulated. She reminds him of the
babies that need help, and he’s able to use his luck to pinpoint the exact spot
everyone needs to focus their attacks!
Madelyne can feel them starting to get through, as she
reveals that she manipulated what the X-Men saw about X-Factor, leaving only
the most negative reports. Feeling like her revenge is all she has left,
Madelyne plans to act as a bomb, to take out everyone who’s wronged her. Jean
tries to get through to her, but Madelyne doesn’t want to hear it. As the two
teams breach the force field, Madelyne prepares to sacrifice baby Nathan!
Cyclops desperately grabs him, getting blasted in the process and Madelyne decides
that the only way to finish things is to kill everyone there, including
herself! She overloads, expelling all the energy she has left, as X-Men past
and present work to protect each other. With Madelyne and Jean still linked, as
Madelyne fades, she tries to take Jean with her. Madelyne dies, and the piece
of Jean’s essence that the Phoenix Force bestowed upon her reaches out to Jean,
offering to save her. Realizing she has no choice if she wants to live, Jean
accepts what she once rejected, becoming whole once more and at the same time
ending the inferno spell. As everything returns to normal, Cyclops cradles his
son and mourns Madelyne. The two teams try to pick up the pieces, and decide
they need to track down the final loose end, the one who gave life to Madelyne
in the first place, Mister Sinister! To be continued!
Story continued in Uncanny X-Men #243.
Excelsioring your collection