The deep, thunderous rumbling of a man’s steady breathing was the only harmonious rhythm in Washington, DC. It was total anarchy as the man silently watched the violence, bloodshed, and property damage escalate even further on the streets below. As the fires from the toppled cars and burning barrels crackled in the air, they created a soft glow in the distance.

In that respect, the riot that had ensued after local mutants became invigorated by the Friends of Humanity felt peaceful in a twisted way…if one could see it unfolding from such an objective vantage point as the large, muscular man was.

The man sighed as his mind kept rewinding his memories to a time in Southeastern Asia, to a time of war. He remembered when he returned, the nation itself had changed. Washington, DC, at the time, became a breeding ground for protestors…in the very sect of land dedicated to governing the laws of the entire United States of America.

He had worried he wouldn’t come home when he was drafted…as that was the mindset you get when hundreds of young men were announced to be killed in action every evening on television.

But when he came home from the war, he had changed. The war had given him an unexpected gift…a spark.

That spark saved him from a cave-in, but didn’t allow his step-brother and fellow soldier to look for him in that very same rubble. When he finally emerged from the wreckage, unharmed, he had a new mindset…that of revenge.

From that day forward, Cain Marko became known as the Juggernaut—possessing limitless strength and became virtually indestructible. A bully in his youth to deal with the insecurities of living with an abusive father, Cain took his anger out on others, including his stepbrother…

But now, even as the local law enforcement and national guardsmen attempted to put a stop to it, the riot raged onward. Cain smiled as he ripped the extra-extra-large trenchcoat off of his 900-pound frame, revealing his trademark oxide-colored armor. After securing his telepathy-blocked helmet, Juggernaut excitedly pounded his enormous fists together.

“If this is what you were fighting to protect, Charles...yer dumber ‘n I thought.”

“Oh man,” a young Canadian by the name of Jared Corbo panted as he sprinted across at intersection, ignoring the traffic lights. As he pumped his arms back and forth in a sporadic motion, he almost forgot to finish his thought, “this is not good…Monet did too good of a job and we just…”

“We blew it,” a young British woman by the name of Allison Crestmere huffed as she fought to keep up with Jared’s stark speed. It was almost like he was gliding. It certainly wasn’t his mutant ability, he was just very athletic. Allison was equally as resilient…it was just that the added fear of her life was affecting her adrenaline and found it hard to breathe.

Radius noticed Magma was gasping for breath and stopped alongside the building of a small tourist gift shop. Magma’s arms seemed to dangle in front of her as she gladly slowed down to a complete stop and bent over, resting her hands on her knees.

“Cyclops is gonna be pissed,” Radius said. “Allowing that mob to drop Jacob into that barrel of fire…”

Magma continued to breathe heavily as she eventually dropped to her knees and vomited on the sidewalk. When she had enough, she slowly lifted her head and wiped the side of her mouth, “I certainly don’t remember eating that…”

Radius arched his back and put his hands on his hips to get enough air to his lungs. After looking around, he realized they had forgotten something. Distant sounds of explosions only elated his fears. When that realization sunk in, his face flushed, “Where’s Jubilee?”

Allison ignored the numbing feeling in her throat as she looked behind her, “I thought she was right behind us?”

“This is not good,” Radius sighed. “We don’t even have communicators on us.”

Magma slowly stood up, “We were deep undercover, Jared. We needed to seem like authentic Friends of Humanity brethren. High-tech earpieces courtesy of X-Corp would look pretty suspicious.”

Radius nodded, “What are we gonna do?” The sound of breaking glass, tearing metal, and then the sound of a gas tank exploding in the distance caused him to flinch up, “We can’t stay here.”

Magma nodded, “Let’s just get somewhere where we can contact Cyclops. M is still around. If Jubilee is in trouble, she’ll save her.”

“How do you know?” Radius asked.

Allison smirked, “You don’t know?”

“About what?” Radius implored.

Magma sighed as she bit her lip, “Subtle, non-verbal cues that men apparently can never pick up on…”

“You’re saying Monet and Jubilee are…together?” Jared asked.

Magma rolled her eyes as she began to run in the other direction, “I’ll explain later.”

Radius paused for a moment as he raised his index finger, as if to make a point, “But…” His index finger, however, slowly curled up and clenched into a fist with his other fingers and Radius took off in the direction of his teammate. “Women…,” he scoffed.

“Please, don’t…I-I have kids…well, nieces and nephews, but they’re LIKE kids!” a man with a shaved head pleaded as he backed up against a brick wall. Despite all the man’s efforts, it didn’t stop the fact that his heart was savagely punctured. As the man convulsed, his attacker (perhaps sympathetically) slit the man’s throat to end his pain.

With the last Friends of Humanity brothers slain in the area surrounding the flaming barrel, the avenger threw his arms into the barrel and pulled the infant, Jacob Logan, out of his hellish torment. The man’s skin on his forearms bubbled, but he ignored the pain. The tiny infant’s skin was blackened and decorated with cracks of blood and puss. Jacob’s shrieks of pain caused his savior to tremble.

“Shh,” the savior muttered as he held the infant in his hands. He tried to speak soothingly, but found his voice box had yet to fully repair itself. All that came out was a raspy garble, “It’ll be okay…It’ll…”

But the fire had already done the damage. Jacob’s erratic heartbeat slowed to a stop as one last whimper came from the innocent victim of a riot that had no reason. Jacob’s would be hero shed a tear as he pulled the tiny body close to his own chest.

“I promise I’ll make everyone pay who had a role in this…,” the raspy voice said, speaking to the corpse of the child. He looked around at the other bodies of eviscerated and brutally lacerated FoH members scattered around the barrel, “…you were born for a vessel of evil…but you shouldn’t have died for the crimes you didn’t commit.”

Suddenly, a whoosh of air caught the attention of the hero. He spun around and saw a young Asian girl with tear-stained cheeks and sparks flying from her hands. The girl whimpered, “Get away from that baby…”

The man she saw holding the body of Jacob appeared to be hairless and severely burnt all over his body as well, only the muscle tissue and cartilage were still relatively intact. He wore a pair of pants that were torn at the ankles…perhaps so they weren’t so long for his short body.

“He’s dead, kid,” the man’s raspy voice said. “I guess I have you to thank…”

Jubilee’s explosive pyrotechnics seemed to disappear as she gasped in shock and awe. Up until that point, the man was unrecognizable to her, but his voice…it was unmistakable.

“Wolvie…?”

Flying high above the Atlantic ocean at that very moment was a formerly top-secret, military spy-plane. Its designation was once known as the 'Aurora Project.'

However, when a sentient -- not to mention incorrigibly rogue -- mutant cataloging machine born of Prime Sentinel technology spawned replicas of five powerful mutants, it also hijacked the stealth jet from the military to further its own means.

Thankfully, the computer's actions -- Cerebro's actions -- more or less gained the attention of the X-Men, and the then ragtag group of outlaw mutants were able to put a stop to it before any further damage could be dealt.

It was a somewhat complex scenario, to say the least.

During the account, the X-Men's only mode of transportation -- an especially modified stealth jet, the Blackbird -- was wrecked beyond immediate repair. When everything was said and done, the team decided to confiscate the Aurora permanently, sort of as reparations. That, and they were at a loss for a means of travel.

Now, after being recovered from the near totaled Worthington Estate hangar bay in the Colorado Rockies, the Aurora serves as the transportation for a pocket faction of the X-Men, currently racing its way back to New York from the Egyptian desert.

After a very cryptic and astonishing discovery at one of En Sabah Nur's former base of operations, the aircraft was made a very unexpectantly two passengers heavier.

It was another somewhat complex scenario, as well.

"I just can't believe it..." Alison Blaire said to herself for quite possibly the hundredth time. She was knelt down on the floor of the Aurora's passenger cabin, still in her battle-worn purple jacket, white tank top, and khaki pants.

Beside the former pop star was an old metal bowl that she had found in one of the aircraft's storage lockers, which she had filled with water from one of the spare supply bottles that they had brought with them for their journey into the desert.

Resting in front of Alison on a passenger's bench was the owner of a face long believed lost and dead to the X-Men. Though the woman's eyes were closed, and her breathing meditative and silent, she was indeed awake and very in-tune with her surroundings.

Hers was the face of a woman once thought to be a goddess to the people of her African heritage; but it was now a face tainted of its once standing aura of pride.

It was now a face that was ever-so tired and listless, a mess of pattered, aged dirt and dried up cuts...

Ororo Munroe was once a magnificently built woman, often dressing in the most fashionable, and yet respectable, silks that she desired. Now, through the ravages of a madman's imprisonment, her malnutrition plagued body was loosely dressed in rags of clothing unfit to define her very passion and sophistication...

Yet still, when the strawberry-blonde Alison Blaire dipped an old wash rag into the bowl of water at her side, Ororo's eyes opened and two crystal blue pools of warmth shined down onto her alongside a gentle, reassuring smile.

When Alison looked back up to Ororo, she was almost completely at a loss for words. She couldn't help but allow the tears to come, and when she reached up to tend to the woman's wounds with the tip of the drenched washcloth, one of Ororo's hands intercepted hers, clutching it to her dark cheek.

They were friends and teammates -- no, family -- reunited from despair.

"I just can't believe it..." Alison Blaire repeated to herself for quite possibly the hundredth and first time, though this time with a humble laugh. She leaned up to Ororo just as she leaned down to Alison, and the two embraced, their heaving bosoms tightly pressing together.

"It's been a long time, I know..." Scott Summers said as he looked into the mirror Alison had given him, which rested propped up on one of the Aurora's monitoring consoles. He ran the back of his fist over the outline of his mangy beard, and frowned to himself before making a request of one of the Aurora's pilots. "Dagger."

Domino looked away from the controls, and unsheathed the blade from her leg. Flipping it up from hilt to blade between her fingers, she made a gesture with it to Cyclops. The long lost leader of the X-Men took it with a nod of thanks, raising it up to his cheek and studying the angle he was preparing to bring it down at.

"Scott..." a somber, cautious voice spoke up. Scott, Ororo, and Alison -- along with the glaring eyes of the two pilots of the Aurora jet -- turned their attention towards Hank McCoy, who had looked away from the first aid-kit he was preparing.

The blue-furred scientist took a deep breath as he began to explain, "It's not just that you two have been gone for so long now. There have been so many, many things that you haven't been around to see. So many things that we had thought --"

"-- That I had done?" Scott asked in interjection, looking away from the mirror and to Hank, raising his filth-covered brow. Scott cocked his head as if to urge Hank's response, and a glare ran off the lens of his ruby quartz visor.

"Well... yes..." Hank confirmed, though somewhat reluctantly as he shifted in place. He took out the bandages and first-aid sprays that he needed, and closed the plastic box before continuing. "It was all so very convoluted, and heart-wrenching. So... unjustifiably out of character..."

"But we all thought it was you," Alison confessed to Scott on behalf of the team, noting Hank's inability to continue. Scott turned his sights away from Hank, looking to Alison in an opaque sense of objectivity through his ruby-quartz visor. That familiar, silent rationality of his was almost too much for her to bear once more...

Alison Blaire took a breath, glancing up to Ororo's chilling sky-blue eyes, then back up to Scott's piercing ruby visor. She finally reiterated, in the best cool and collected tone that she could muster in their confrontation of sorts, "It was you..."

"I understand what you're trying to say, Alison... Hank..." Scott calmly stated to them, very much to their surprise. Behind his visor, he scanned over the faces of Alison and Hank, taking in their struggling desire to delicately explain their feelings. "I think I understand what you're trying to say just perfectly..."

With a grunt, Scott suddenly lunged himself towards Hank and Alison, quickly unfolding his arms as his feet came back down onto the deck of the Aurora with a clang. He scowled at them darkly, his brow clenching down tightly, and his upper lip quivering, exposing his filthy yellow teeth as if a rabid animal ready to attack its prey.

Taken aback, Hank's eyes went wide in shock upon sight of this and Alison let out a shaken gasp, her shoulders tensing up. A disturbing moment of silence fell upon them at the first X-Man's actions, and their heartbeats were growing nearly audible to the naked ear.

Hank backed up into Alison -- the gentleman he always was -- and he threw a bulky and long arm out as if to guard her from any attack that may be on the way. But unless said attack was to come from a flailing, dried up and pink tongue, they were to be left even more-so speechless and taken aback.

And that was exactly what they got from their onetime leader. He clenched his lips down hard and a protruding tongue shot out at Hank and Alison as he bobbed his head side to side, mockingly.

"You all think that I FINALLY went PSYCHO!" Scott Summers insisted in a high-pitched and comical voice, one not unlike an entertainer's, as he wiggled around in his spot and flung his scraggly long hair side to side, and waved his hands in the air at the two X-Men melodramatically as he cooed like a spook, "Oooowwhh!"

Scott abruptly stomped his foot down a good foot in front of him, and the loud clang that emanated from the metallic plank of the Aurora caused Hank and Alison to jerk back from their positions. Such behavior was never seen in the man code-named Cyclops -- Xavier's first soldier of peace in the field -- and that was exactly the point.

Ororo, unmoved by his actions like her onetime teammates, just rolled her tired eyes with a sigh and nonchalantly ran a hand over her mangy, white hair. There was a tension-breaking, nervous laugh from the cockpit that caught the quartet's attention.

Sam Guthrie, one of the Aurora's pilots heaved in his nervous laughter, and swallowed back a lump in his throat as Scott, Ororo, Hank, and Alison all turned their eyes onto him. Scott shot Sam a hysterical grin, then repeated the same tongue-slinging gesture at the young Southerner and former New Mutant, warranting another forced, nervous laugh.

"Now I think I know where Nathan got all his problems from..." Domino grumbled, keeping an eye on the quartet from over her shoulder. She shook her head and returned her sights to the cockpit's instruments.

With a bitter sneer, Scott turned back around to Ororo, Hank, and Alison -- more so the latter two -- and continued to rather sarcastically put emphasis on his point, his voice growing more decisive and firm in the tempo of his words.

"Ol' Slim Summers --" he started, almost poetically trying to present his words to them. "Driven by grief after the death of his longtime friend and mentor, and defined by rage at the thought of his greatest enemy raping his wife..." his words ended coolly, and self-sympathetically as if to mimic their very thoughts. "Is that it?"

Usually, Ororo would have been intent on speaking up on behalf of Hank and Alison, but she had knew from their time together that this moment was a long time in coming for Scott. She would let him speak his peace, and Hank and Alison would listen.

"I've had a lot of time to reflect on my past decisions while under the Dawn's imprisonment back there," Scott declared to them. He turned away and set down the dagger Domino had handed him on the console by Alison's mirror, and he sought the proper words for what he wanted to express. "Ororo especially was... an anchor... of sorts, and for that I thank her more than any of you could know..."

Scott turned back around to his longtime friends, his brow smooth and face relaxed as he "And while I can see why you guys may have been concerned by my actions at the time, know that they truly were for the better," he pleaded with them, letting out an exhausted breath, and he swallowed back a lump in his throat. "Know that I really am -- ARGH!"

Cyclops collapsed to the cabin floor of the Aurora before he could finish his heart-wrenching words, and heaved in an overwhelming pain that succumbed his head. With the pain, the flooding of warped and twisted images -- intensely personified by the very thoughts and emotions of those possessing them -- rained upon him....

Fires; they'll all pay for the holocaust of innocent lives.

Death; it's the only way out from this misery.

Claws; spilling blood has never been more painful.

Madness; an uncontrollable disease consuming them all.

The snapping of a chain around one's neck; a lesson to be taught to all those who oppose.

Broken; the hopes for a dream never before so distant.

It was all bearing down upon the world, one way or another. The menacing glare of two red, glowing pupils over the darkness of Washington, DC -- the breathtaking sight of a madman's intentions -- made that clear to Scott Summers.

"Scott!" a voice cried out to the X-Men's first leader, bringing him back from the brink of insanity. Scott's body winded down from its convulsions -- convulsions he never knew had overcome him as he blacked out, but he had expected as much.

He looked up groggily, seeing Sam standing above him and holding him down by the shoulders. Hank and Alison were also hovering over him, and Ororo was standing back behind them all, overtaken by remorse at seeing it happen once again...

"I'm alright," Scott ushered, putting his hands out as if to gesture for some space to get up. He slowly began to stir up from his side, and backpedal up to a groggy standing positioned. He reiterated, "I'm alright..."

"What happened, Scott?" Hank asked, laying a firm paw on the man's flimsy shoulder as if for support. Scott gripped his temple and groaned as a lingering, blunt pain remained foxholed deep in his head.

"His visions have become so much more intense during our imprisonment..."  Ororo somberly answered for him, though keeping her distance confined to that of an observer. She had faced his pain day-in and day-out since their imprisonment, and she no longer wanted to face it anymore then she had to. "It's like some horrible event horizon..."

"Visions?!" Alison yelped in disbelief, shooting her head towards Ororo along with the others. Scott stabled himself against one of the Aurora's consoles, and using his bare forearm to wipe a bit of blood from. "Of what?" Alison almost demanded, though out of sincere concern for both the content of the visions, and Scott's well-being.

"I can't say of what... not for sure, anyway," Scott said, more to them all then just in response to Alison. He coughed weakly -- a side-effect to the visions, no doubt -- and an aimless bit of blood-spittle from the back of his throat followed. He continued through breaths, "But I've had them since Xavier's death. He seemingly handed them over to me in those moments before he passed..."

"Ah don't get it, Scott," Sam stated in his thinly veiled, Southern accent with the shake of his head. Scott stared at the floorboard of the Aurora's passenger cabin, his bearings slowly returning to him. "Why didn't you ever tell the rest of us?"

"Only Jean, Hank, and Ororo ever knew," Scott quickly explained, and he sighed as he looking up to Sam with a laugh of sore desperation. "I think it's understandable that with every thing going on that I didn't want to freak you out with having seizure-inducing visions of the possible apocalypse every other hour."

"Freaky," Domino commented from the cockpit of the Aurora, having been keeping an eye on the situation the whole time.

"That's one way of putting it," Scott cocked his head to the side at Domino's words and leaned back against a nearby console, his hands resting on his thighs.

"Oh, Scott..." Hank's voice trembled in grief for his friend, and he looked away, trying to come to terms with what it must have been like all along to have had such a curse bestowed upon one. Precognition was never pretty, at least not in their world.

"Nevertheless, we still have a job to do," Scott declared as he stood up right, his vigorous health returning to him. He was and forever will be defiant under-pressure, until the end. "I'll deal with the visions after."

"Right," Sam agreed with a steady nod. He cleared his throat, and looked over his shoulder. "But first... Bea, can ya keep the stick level for me?" he asked, finding himself on the verge of tears -- manly, Southern tears that is -- and turned back to face Scott with a drunken grin. "Ah feel a hug comin' on..."

With his own drunken grin, Scott offered a hand out to Sam, in which Cannonball slapped it with his own in a patented handshake. When their thumbs hooked each other's, and their grip went firm, they both pulled each-other into an embrace.

Ororo's eyes gradually lit up in that moment, and she let a small smile creep up on her. Alison herself was overwhelmed with happiness, happiness from the knowledge that Storm's return and Cyclops's could only touch their lives for the better. Hank grinned a toothy grin and crossed his muscular blue arms across his chest.

"Ah knew you wouldn't let that murderin' bitch on the team... Let her into our dream..." Sam said as he hugged Scott and sighed under the stress of so many exhausting, conflicting emotions. "Not after what she did to Paige..."

"Never," Scott vowed as their embrace grew tighter, and he gritted his teeth as to suppress his anger in that moment of reunion between the two friends. "And never again will any outside force keep us from achieving our dream..."

"It's a Kodak moment," Domino cooed with mock tears of joy from the Aurora's cockpit, warranting a few chuckles from the defunct Alpha members. She was starting to feel like she was only there to kick-ass and make sarcastic comments, but hey... there were indeed worse fates. "Tear."

"Err... she's right..." Scott said between soft chuckles, and abruptly cut off man-contact with Sam. He grinned and put up his hands in a defensive position as Sam tried to punch him in the arm. "Any luck contacting the mansion, Sam?"

"Not an ounce," Sam replied with a frown, shaking his head with a shrug as he dropped out of his boxer's stance. Scott fell out of his mock-defensive stance as well, and put his hands on his hips with a frown of his own.

"I have contacted Warren and the X-Corp offices, though," Hank interjected as he stepped up behind Scott, nodding to him reaffirmingly. "He and the others were out, but I was able to leave a message."

"Good job, Hank," Scott confirmed with a nod to Hank. He crossed his arms and touched his chin with a hand, growing silent for a moment of consideration.

Finally, he spoke. "If what you all say is true, about this... impostor... I doubt anyone else could possibly know or have known that he isn't me," Scott observed, his eyes narrowing as a glare ran over his ruby quartz visor. "There's no telling what he could be commanding the prime team of X-Men to do..."

Back in Washington, DC...

Amidst the chaos of the human and mutant race riot, many of the buildings in the downtown Washington, DC area were rising in flames. Some of the fires were started due to the nature of some of the rioting mutants' powers, while most were simply the result of pyromaniacs and anarchists -- consisting of both the human and mutant variety -- letting out their rage in those hours of lawlessness.

One structure remained untouched by the chaos and flames, however. That structure was the First Catholic Church of Main Street. Whether it still stood untainted by the flames of madness and destruction was because of the religious nature of the institution or because of pure luck alone had remained to be seen.

"Quickly!" Father Matthew of the First Catholic Church cried out to the group of local children and their parents rallied outside of the church's doorsteps. He waved his hand to the open doors, ushering them in. "Get inside, every one of you!"

"Mein Gott..." Kurt Wagner uttered to himself in a horrific disbelief as he lowered the hood of his thick, brown robe. He stood not far from Father Matthew on the steps of the church, observing

Many of the innocents fleeing the chaos hadn't even noticed his seemingly demon-like heritage, and likely wouldn't have cared even if they did. A church was a sanctuary in a time of crisis, after all. No matter who was giving the sanctuary, and who needs it.

With peering, bright yellow orbs of mystique, Kurt surveyed the chaos unfolding in the streets. "This is pure madness!" his shaky, German accented voice declared with a tone of easing panic. "Father Matthew, we must --"

*TSSSHH!*

It was the sound of a glass shattering nearby that had cut him off. It would be the sharp yet raspy, huffing sound of oxygen being consumed -- one that signified that of an erupting blaze -- that would further arouse Kurt Wagner's sense of panic that evening.

"Church of Humanity, my ass!"

"Burn in Hell, ya sacrilegious shits!"

Kurt's head shot in the direction where the sounds of cursing voices and shattering Molotov cocktails came from, and there he saw a trio of rioting youths.

The first to have thrown the blazing bottle was a fiery eyed, purple male of lanky proportions, decked out in a Lakers jersey and sweat pants. Another, whose fumbling hands was preparing a Molotov cocktail, was a black male in jeans and a dark hoody.

Behind them both, knelt beside a box of empty bottles and a red, plastic container of gasoline, was the arson group's armory of sorts. He was a third male -- stocky, bald and green scaled, with flailing skinny arms at his sides, each arm quickly and systematically filling up the next glass bottle with gasoline.

They were but teenagers in their final years. Mutants from what Kurt could tell. As misguided as their may have been, they were equally mistaken. The First Catholic Church of Washington, DC had long ago condemned the Church of Humanity.

Something had to be done. While Kurt knew it was not wise to participate in bringing down the riot without back up -- especially with the Police and National Guard taking down mutants and humans alike one by one -- something had to be done to protect the church.

The Nightcrawler took off in a run from the steps of the church, passing Father Matthew and the groups of innocents rushing into the church, and smoke and brimstone engulfed him with a resounding *BAMF!*

At the edge of the church, the very same flash of smoke and brimstone appeared from the church's wall before the teenagers.

The three of them froze in a moment of shock and hesitation upon sight of a new arrival emerging from the smoke and burning sulfur, one of them dropping one of the lit Molotov cocktails from fright as a demon condemned them in a foreign, unheard of language.

"Bitte! Nein!" Kurt ordered the teenagers in an abrupt burst of frightening anger, as waved his tri-fingered hands before them upon approach. The trio recoiled, doubling back as the onetime circus acrobat seemingly flew at them.

In a moment of panic, the black teenager flung the lit, gasoline filled bottle at the creature of the night. Just as the Molotov cocktail left the black teenager's hand, however, Kurt's tail whipped up from out of his robe and caught it, then slung it onto the street pavement besides them.

The glass shattered to bits upon hitting the ground, its splashing contents sharply igniting into a puddle of flame just as Nightcrawler's twin-toed feet caught him in a crouch before the misguided teenagers. The flames rose up briefly behind Kurt as he spoke out in a righteous anger.

"Stop, I said!" the demon-like man of God commanded them once again. Kurt's tone of voice seemingly became more desperate than angry as he spoke, likely due to the shift in languages he tongued. "You do not know what you are doing!"
" -- I said you've betrayed us!" a voice declared from over Kurt's shoulder. His head swirled around to the steps of the church, where Father Matthew was arguing with a man in simple street clothes -- a man standing a safe distance from Father Matthew himself. On his left arm was a red band, with the white letters 'F.o.H.' inscribed on it. In his right hand -- raising up to Father Matthew's view -- was a black 9 mm pistol. "You've betrayed the sect for these... misfits of God! These demons!"

"Shirley, please! This isn't the time nor the pla --" Father Matthew's words died in his throat, as a gunshot rang out from the barrel of the FoH gunman's barrel. "Urk!"

"And now you have the Lord to answer to!" Shirley spat as Father Matthew slumped to his knees, heaving in an itching, burning pain. He reached down to his stomach to feel the blood already beginning to leak out, and then up to the eyes of Shirley as he continued to speak, "The Church of Humanity may have been burned to the ground because of Stryker's insolence, but the Friends of Humanity will soon own this nation, and we WILL make it great again!"

Kurt Wagner was losing control, and the bullet that pierced Father Matthew's stomach was a symbol of that. It was a symbol the truth. The truth that he never had control since stepping out of the church's doors, and trying to even grasp it amidst such tremendous anarchy was but a fool's quest.

But it was a quest he had to do his best to succeed in.

"Father!" Kurt cried out as the priest collapsed to the steps of the church, falling to a prone position on his stomach. A number of the local residents who had been flooding into the church suddenly scattered at the sounds of the gunman's assault. The teenagers themselves were tempted to do the very same, but they weren't of Kurt's concern any longer.

"Get away from him, fiend!" Kurt demanded of the FoH branded gunman as he teleported away from the dying flames of the aborted Molotov cocktail, and reappeared in front of Father Matthew in his defense.

The gunman gasped in shock as the demon's robed body flash in a bright puff of smoke and brimstone. What happened next would be a blur to the gunman's senses, but a careful, sharp eyed observer would note how it all went down...

They Kurt's palm shot down onto the bridge of the gunman's nose. How the palm of his other hand shot up into Shirley's chin, and how the heel of the Nightcrawler's foot came about like a whirlwind, colliding into the assailant's sternum.

Breath exploding from his lungs and blood oozing out from his broken nose, the stunned FoH gunman doubled back down a number of the church's steps, his feet shuffling and his arms waving to aid his balancing.

Nightcrawler stood poised for attack, narrowing his sights on the 9 mm handgun in the gunman's man. Few had stuck around to see what would happen next -- or to even to help the fallen Catholic priest, who had been so insistent on aiding them. Many were quick to take refuge in the church, while others continued down the streets rampant.

And yet still, any careful observer would notice the FoH gunman's steady on that last step before he fell, and then the sigh of relief -- meeting with the grin of rebuttal -- as Shirley lifted up the 9 mm and took aim at the demon he had so preached against just moments earlier.

But in a rush of smoke and brimstone, his target was gone. A swift brush of air, and so was the gun in his hand, and the legs from beneath him. Shirley was sent tumbling backwards from the sweep kick, a cloud of smoke and sulfur blinding him.

When he rolled to a stop down the steps of the church, a fist emerged from the smoke surrounding his visage, and struck him in the forehead. It would be the last he saw before he lost consciousness, sprawled about the steps in a belittled agony. If God had any mercy on his misguided soul, he would still be alive by morning...

Kurt was at the top of the church's steps in an instant, quickly meeting Father Matthew's fallen form and scooping him up into his arms. As he maneuvered back around to face the street, his eyes scanned the area until they found a suitable location to take him, and then he used his powerful legs to propel them both into the air.

Another bright, exotic pink flash of smoke and brimstone lit up the rioting streets. In a mere few microseconds, Kurt was across dimensions with Father Matthew in tow, and safely above the aimless violence, perched on a small three-story building's edge.

"Father, hold on!" Kurt said to Father Matthew as he dropped down from the building's edge and moved across its rooftop. Finding a flat surface near the center of it, he set him down and quickly scanned the entry wound Father Matthew had received. Kurt found that his hands were already stained with blood, and grimaced. "We must get you to a hospital!"

"I'm... unh... I'm alright, Brother Kurt," Father Matthew said between straining grunts of pain, holding onto his bleeding stomach tightly. With the aid of his teeth, Kurt ripped the sleeves of his robe off and began making a makeshift bandage for Father Matthew's wound. The priest reached up to Kurt, and grabbed onto his shoulder, pleading to him, "You have to stop them, though! The lives of those in the Church... and those who've yet to arrive... unh..."

"But how do I know that you will be safe here?" Kurt asked before looking out to the streets below. The mutants teenagers who had been throwing Molotov cocktails were being driven away by riot police who had appeared on scene, and the rest of the church's clergy had began locking down the doors.

"In the hands of God, I assuredly will be," Father Matthew said confidently as Kurt looked back down to him, and sighed knowingly. Father Matthew took Kurt's hand and gripped it tightly, nodding to him with a deafening cough that Kurt knew could foreshadow his passing. However, Father Matthew continued to urge him, "Go, Brother Kurt."

Kurt nodded to Father Matthew reluctantly, and let go of the priest's hand so he could finish tying the makeshift bandage into place over his stomach. "If I am not able to return to you myself," Kurt began with a nod. "Then I will send someone for you."

"Thank you, brother," Father Matthew said in appreciation. He flipped his wrist off in the direction of the riots, and urged to Kurt, "Now go!"

Nightcrawler sharply turned away from Father Matthew and ran to the edge of the building top they were on. The adrenaline in his blood was thickening as the anarchy and strife came back into view upon his reproach.

Father Matthew watched as Kurt hit the edge of the building and dove into the fray, an echoing *BAMF!* following as he disappeared over the night's horizon, then allowed his head to collapse back down against the concrete rooftop. He knew that if he gave in to the pull of unconsciousness, he may not wake up.

But... it wasn't as easy as he had hoped, and he was only in the first few moments of the longest night of his life. The sounds of death and destruction resounding in the distance was like a hellish lullaby, one that the man of God was reluctant to admit chilled him to the bone....

Nightcrawler dropped down from a cloud of smoke and brimstone to the streets of Washington, DC. There was so much to do... so much to stop others from doing... but he wasn't sure where to start. The three mutant teenagers who had attacked the church earlier were in his visage, being confronted by a few riot police officers.

Suddenly, a figure decked in black and gold swooped down as to defend the teenagers. It was a young woman, with bronze skin and flowing black hair. With but a few swings, she had knocked several of the riot officers back and took to flinging them side to side.

The last one standing drew up his shotgun, loaded with rubber bullets, and readied it on her. It was no use, though. Before he could fire, she was on the ground in an instant, snatching the shotgun from his hand by the barrel, and tossing it aside.

It was then, Kurt suddenly recognized the emblem on the chest of her jacket. Suddenly recognized the face of the riot-officers' assailant...

"Monet!" Kurt called out over the sounds of burning chaos and rioting to the woman adorned in the gold and black X jacket. "Monet St. Croix, is... is that you?" he asked as he weaved and dodged the many rioters in the streets, quickly but only gradually making his way towards her.

Just as he closed in on her position, however, his eyes grew large in disbelief at what she was about to do. One of the riot-geared police officers that was pushing back the trio of teenage mutants that had tried to burn down the church was in the young M's hands, gripped at the neck.

The officer tried to his baton up to retaliate, but with a single hand Monet was able to reach out and snap his arm at the wrist before it could connect with her head. He screamed out in pain, a scream inaudible to the world around him, and M prepared to deliver a deathblow with the same wrist-crushing fist to his throat.

"Monet, no!" Nightcrawler cried out. In an instant, he disappeared between the two realms he existed in and in a blanket of smoke and brimstone, reappeared between the small space between M and the riot-police officer, his sudden presence prying the two apart.

The riot-police officer fell to the ground behind Kurt with a painful groan, and M doubled back in surprise as Nightcrawler touched down before her in a defensive pose. The riot-police officer looked up to Kurt in surprise, then down to his broken wrist as he steadily tried to raise himself up with one arm.

Monet hadn't noticed it was Kurt who had pried the two apart. She coughed and hacked for a moment, waving a hand side to side as to clear the smoke and sulfur from her face before she would retaliate. When she saw that demon-like mutant before her though, she found a moment of pause.

"What are you doing, child?" Nightcrawler begged of her, remaining in his defensive position. He wasn't sure what M was doing there, but from what he had saw the police hadn't been the antagonizers in this situation, and that was a cause for alarm.

"Kurt...?" Monet asked, barely recognizing the German born Nightcrawler. From behind Kurt, the riot-officer cringed in pain, and took off into a run away from the scene, cradling his broken wrist to his chest. M ignored him, and simply stared at the new arrival. "Kurt Wagner, right?" she asked in uncertainty, not only in his actions but his presence. "Did Cyclops send you to help?"

"Help?" Nightcrawler spat, looking the young Algerian woman up and down. "Nein!" he disputed the question in his native tongue. Monet's face crew cold and distant as his intentions were revealed to her. "Far from it, in fact. You were about to kill that man!"

"He would have killed those other mutants!" M explained in a fiery passion in her defense, throwing her hand out to the beaten and huddled group of mutants behind her. She reasoned, "I had to!"

"But... but he was a police officer!" Kurt tried to reason in opposition, horror and disgust at the young woman's actions overcoming him. "Surely he was only doing his job! He did not instigate this chaos!" He gestured a tri-fingered hand off to the chaos clearly visible in the night. "They, the misguided mutants of Washington, among the Friends of Humanity, did!"

"No, Kurt... I'm sorry..." Monet said coolly as she turned away, trying to keep her grip on the situation. Nightcrawler eyed her worriedly, but even with his acrobatic prowess he was unable to avoid what came next. "But we did!" she declared as she turned around quickly and shot a balled up fist into Kurt's face, sending him flying. "The X-Men did!"

Juggernaut laughed as bullets ricocheted off of his indestructible body. The rattle of lead against mystical metal produced the same sound stray bullets did in the old Western flicks.

The police officers slowly made their way backwards as tanks began rolling down Capital Hill. The National Guard had arrived. The law enforcement officers failed to cease wasting their clips, however.

“Surrender, mutant!” an amplified voice shouted. The nose of the tank lowered until it was directly in front of Juggernaut’s face.

Juggernaut’s massive mitt crushed the end of the tank’s nose as he grit his teeth.

“I’M…”

He proceeded to then use his other hand to lift up the front end of the tank and flip it end over end, where it landed on two other tanks, causing them to erupt into a fiery blaze.

“NOT…”

The unstoppable man charged like a human battering ram into the other three tanks, driving his shoulder into the armored vehicles as if they were made out of tissue paper. He batted his fists into the mass of random soldiers, snapping their spines in the process instantly.

“A…”

Juggernaut leapt into the air and landed on a police SWAT team van, causing an explosion to spill out sideways from the pressure.

“STINKIN’ MUTIE!!!”

Cain Marko is no stranger to violence, but killing has been something he never considered to be just. He wanted to hurt people, but death…that was something extreme. But now he was extreme. All of his life, he was pushed around…an abusive father, a meandering step-brother, and a partner in crime that seemed to run the show.

But now Juggernaut was not attached at the hip to Black Tom Cassidy, Charles Xavier, and Kurt Marko. Three men who irrevocably shaped him into the man he is today…but there was another group of men that added to his torment.

Addison Falk and Scott Summers, the Grey King and Cyclops of the Brotherhood and X-Men, respectively, were responsible in some part for putting him away. They must have had some way of altering his thinking. But the riot had shaken open the infrastructure of the capital and he was free.

As Juggernaut flattened and felt bone crunch in his grasp, like flies to a windshield of a speeding vehicle, he realized that this was the man he was. For the first time, he WAS free, in the truest sense. Human nature, in its primal form, is the most destructive weapon on the planet…and the vessel of the Cyttorak’s power knew this all to be true.

Whoever touches this gem…

There were those that created and those that destroyed. Juggernaut was the artist of anti-art. He would destroy the modern center of democracy in America.

Shall possess the power of Cyttorak.

Bystanders screamed and dodged chunks of masonry which shook loose from Cain’s display of power as simply stomped the ground with his heel. Gravity and humanity’s inadequate architecture did the rest.

Henceforth, you who read these words…

As his rage increased, the stronger Juggernaut became, the more bodies began to pile up on the streets of Washington, and the more he began to find and accept his niche in the grand scheme of things.

Shall become forevermore a human juggernaut!

He would finally have his revenge.

"You don't understand, Kurt!" M cried out, trying desperately to reach out to the man of God in her own words. She was in tears when she threw out her hands, gesturing to the chaos around her. "This is for the good of ALL humans and mutants!"

"Nein, Sie dummes Mädchen!" Nightcrawler cursed the Algerian girl in his native, German tongue as he landed on the hood of an evidently looted car, immediately falling into a crouch. "Look around you, Monet St. Croix!" he demanded of her as he also gestured to the chaos around them, then looked back to her with spitefully narrowed, intense glowing yellow orbs. "This is for the good of no one!" his accented voice barked, his diamond tipped tail sharply whipping down against the hood of the car, giving off a resounding clank as if to emphasize his point. "No one, I say!"

"I... I didn't think so, either!" M confessed in a stammer as she swallowed back the lump in her throat. Her voice downshifted as she tried to gain some semblance of control over her flaring emotions. "...Not at first..." she explained, wiping away the dry tears from her face before looking back to Nightcrawler. "But then Cyclops explained it to us! And then it all made such perfect sense!"

Kurt Wagner gritted his teeth down hard, and scowled at the young woman with exposed fangs. "Ich sagte Blick um Sie!" he spat as he lunged off the hood of the car he was perched upon, flying towards her like some sort of avenging demon.

Monet maneuvered backwards and drew her fist back to counter his attack, but connected only with a sudsy cloud of smoke and brimstone. Suddenly, a sharp pain drove into her kidneys, and M went breathless as she arched her back.

She twisted around to deliver another devastating blow to her assailant, but Nightcrawler used the momentum from his twin kick into her back, and leapfrogged over her head, once again taking a position behind her while in midair.

As gravity jerked him towards the ground, Kurt grabbed hold of the Algerian woman's long, dark hair, and drug her down with him. While hey spiraled down towards the ground, they both struggled for control of the descent, but it was ultimately the demonic acrobat that gained the upper hand.

M's beautiful and young, bronze toned face was the first to crash into the tar-paved street. Her body followed suit, with Nightcrawler straddling her backside and forcing his weight down onto her as to pin her down, her hair still gripped within his hands. Monet struggled to buck him off, but a violent elbow to her temple put her back down.

"I said look around you!" Kurt repeated to her, only this time in English. He took an even more aggressive hold of her luscious hair, and directed her face to the flaring chaos surrounding her. Of mutants and humans alike in a war of races, while others of their kin looted stores, and desperate riot-police tried to put an end to it all... but to no avail. It was a hell on earth that Nightcrawler had long feared.

"What more do you need to see?" Kurt begged of her, taking an even tighter grip of her hair then before as he preached, "You do not have to know what I've known in my life to realize that this isn't the work of God!"

"Vous bâtard ignorant!" Monet cursed in her own acid, French tongue, and she shot an elbow back into Kurt's jaw, sending him flying off of her body. "There IS no God!" she yelled as she started to get up. "There is no absolute! Can't you see that?!"

Kurt tumbled off the street way, but his uncanny prowess enabled him to roll to his feet and back flipped into a crouch on the edge of a turned over, burning car.

Monet was on her back and to her feet, where she flew into the air to regain her ground over the Nightcrawler. Their eyes connected immediately, both on opposite ends of the passion spectrum. Kurt, full of righteous anger, and Monet, full of misguided drive.

"That's why we're doing this!" she proclaimed, gesturing her arms out wide to the burning District of Columbia, then looking back to Kurt with a clenched fist. "We have to make our own future from the ashes of a miserable and failed past! The survivors of this riot are the deserving! They are the strong!"

M was breaking apart into sobs, tears falling from her eyes as she tried to reason against any reason that the fate of the world was in the X-Men's hands... and that they had the right to do with it what they deemed right.

"Even if there was a God," she started to say again. "this is what he would want!"

"Gott liebt, es ist Mann, der tötet!" Kurt preached an old saying he had once heard in his German tongue, and then recited to Monet as if to pound it into her mind by any means possible. "God loves, Monet. It is man -- and now more than ever mutant-- who kills! Don't you see? Don't you understa -- understa -- unhh..."

Nein. No. She was right...

Kurt's senses began to overwhelm him in those moments, and he bobbed and weaved up and down from his perched position on the turned over, burning car.

The distant screams of a child, slain in the flames of a barrel...

Inaudible cries of a woman ravaged in an alleyway by those who hate her "kind"...

Windows of a dead grandfather's business shattering from the assault of bricks...

And flames, eternal flames aiding to the holocaust of innocents...

God has failed his creations, and Kurt Wagner knows this. The sadness and despair the thought brings him is too much, and he lets himself drop from the edge of the burning, turned over car, sobbing.

Kurt landed on the street on his buckling, shaking knees as his hands went up to cover his eyes. He wiped away the tears that had fell from his piercing yellow orbs, and looked up to Monet, who watched on unmoved.

Suddenly, a blunt pain in the back of his head caused Kurt to crane his neck backwards, and he collapsed forward into a prone position on the ground.

"Hello, Kurt..." came the menacing voice of the X-Men's prime leader as he stepped over Nightcrawler's fallen form. Kurt groaned and rolled over onto his side, peering up at the visage of the man he had often called 'friend' just as a glare ran off his ruby quartz visor.

Just below the visor, Nightcrawler could see that Cyclops was grinning from ear to ear, relishing in the moment of his superiority, just before he exposed a devious scowl and sent a swift boot into the demon's ribs.

"Let me tell you something, Kurt," Cyclops said nonchalantly as he watched Nightcrawler fall into a coughing fit, then roll to his side. Scott knelt down before his longtime friend, Kurt, slowly yet assertively reaching down and gripping his collar with one hand. Scott exerted little effort as he tugged Kurt's bloodied and beaten, prone body up to his face, and analyzed the demon's glazed over, yellow pupils.

"Even if there WAS a God..." Scott began to say as he shook the metal chain he wielded loose from the grip of his free hand, allowing it to clank and unravel at his side. "And even if he WAS absolute..." he continued to say with a deadly sneer, just as he lifted up the chain in hand and whipped it harshly around Kurt's throat. "I'd just about say he was out at the moment..."

Kurt let out a hoarse gasp as he began to come to; began to feel the cold metal tighten around and lock in place the spinal cord that ran up his neck. But he wouldn't be able to come to, or feel any of it in time.

Amidst the horrific chaos scattered across the streets of Washington, DC, a resounding, gross snap broke through it all and eternally penetrated the stricken heart of the riot's latest victim in the final moments of his life.

"Be sure to tell him I said 'hi' if he ever gets back in," Scott Summers said with a murderous bout of laughter that tore through the District of Columbia...

NEXT ISSUE: Wolverine and Jubilee reunite for the first time in months! But in the aftermath of Baby Jacob's death, will Jubilee be met with joyous reconciliation, or the wrath of a scorned father?! Plus, the defunct Alpha crew and Domino race to get to Washington, DC as the mass human/mutant riot continues to unfold!!