X-Men '97

Previously on X-Men...

You risk our fates on a mutant who cannot be trusted.

Not merely the first mutant.

The first X-Man.

What is the meaning of this?

This so-called prophet has lied to you.

Destroy them!

Well, I'll be!

Time to get the hell out of this place.

We need you back in the 1990s.

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

Nur cannot live to challenge me for the Temple.

I could only save us few.

Tick-tock, y'all.

Bishop, stay your hand.

Not yet.

How about now?

Charles?

His mind. There's too much rage.

Nur, there has been enough death this day.

Let us explain, please!

Magnus.

You are a prophet of lies!

He has told you the truth, just not all of it.

We are lost travelers.

But we are not from here.

Just give me a chance to explain when we come from.

You survived the Pharaoh's attack.

Such strength merits the chance to say your piece.

But know this.

If your truth falters, my blade will not.

How'd I get stuck playing chaperone to a bunch of martyrs

who tried using the worst mutant ever to rewrite the whole damn timeline?

To be clear,

not all present here were on board with Magneto's plan.

A point made often and to no end.

Tell me, Bishop, the dire situation you've outlined for us in the '90s,

would my plan not rectify matters?

You yourself have traveled back in time

and done similar to save your own future.

This is me doing the same.

Erik's intentions may be noble,

but he is tampering with variables none of us can fully understand.

Bishop's time-bands give us a way to return home.

We should take it.

This isn't just about us anymore.

It has the potential to be about everyone still to come.

And everyone we've lost.

You think of Remy and of undoing his fate.

I'm as skeptical as any of ya.

But if your plan works, Erik,

Nur could pave a way to a future where everyone in Genosha survived.

Thank you, Rogue.

Democracy may be a few thousand years away,

but perhaps we take a vote.

Who would like to return to our time?

Mein Gott!

What have you done?

- I voted. - You madman.

-You just stranded us! - So dramatic.

Charles suspects the lost Temple the Pharaoh seeks

also contains the power necessary to repair your time-band.

It will get us home,

once we've helped set Nur on the proper path.

You all are from the future?

Five thousand years from now.

A time when mutants are not a rarity like you.

But a people, thousands strong across the entire world.

That symbol you hold, it belongs to our team, the X-Men.

It is a promise of a future where young mutants work together,

learning to use their powers to build a better world.

Mutants much like yourself.

My quest to free Egypt has failed,

my people killed.

There is no better world.

No grand future to dream of beyond my own survival.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps we can help rebuild the world that the Pharaoh has taken from you.

General Logos spoke of a lost temple of great cosmic power.

A power I now sense...

may be calling to you.

What would you have me do?

A psychic probe can cause discomfort.

Do your best to relax.

Pain calms me.

Step forward! Strong back, strong shoulders.

Where shall we start the bidding?

Do not mind the color of him.

Look at the eyes.

Come.

Come be eternal.

Eternal.

That constellation.

I saw it in the mind of Rama-Tut's general.

But larger.

Directly above the Temple's hidden location.

The Gardener's Gaze in the southwestern sky.

I can follow the stars across the desert to bring us there.

Like I said, Nur is our path home.

To a new and brighter future we will build together.

Hold! Hold!

Let's camp for the night and steal some rest.

Who knows what dangers await in that cursed temple.

Cannot sleep?

I never can either.

Just hard to believe, is all.

That we might finally be able to punch our ticket home.

And yet you do not seem glad.

What is awaiting you there?

It's more about what's not waiting for me.

Someone I lost.

Someone special.

What about you? You ever been in love?

My mother abandoned me in the desert as an infant.

And ever since, everyone I have ever known, I've lost.

Love is pain.

A weakness I cannot afford.

And the only thing that makes life worth living.

And there's the rub.

I do hope you get to experience it one day.

For all our sakes.

Hmm...

Charles.

Hello, Charles. Wakey-wakey.

Do you want to know the secrets of the Temple?

- -I can tell you.

I know, I know, I know! But it'll be exciting!

You peddle a dangerous history.

Who or what are you?

Oh!

He's going to be so surprised!

Surprise is irrelevant.

Answer me!

Charles Francis Xavier.

Founder of the X-Men.

Patron saint of peace.

Rama-Tut, I presume.

I have so many names.

Nathaniel, Victor, Kang.

Finding oneself can get addicting.

Who am I? Who was I?

Where do "I" end and "me" begin?

Watch! He's not going to get it.

Give him a chance.

Those other voices are you?

Echoes of who I was and who I could be.

This place blurs many lines.

It is an axis around which the past, present and future all dance.

And yet you chose to come to En Sabah Nur's time

and enslave his people.

Why?

Unless you believed he could be stopped.

There is a chance,

if I were able to acquire the celestial power inside that Temple.

And no doubt ensure your conquest across this time

and any other you choose.

A+, Charles!

I see the mind of the Professor lives up to the legend.

Magnus believes Nur can be turned.

And I will not betray Magnus.

Then you shall see for yourself. You cannot stop him.

You never stop him.

There are trace levels of gamma particles.

Were I to improvise a calculation using the radiation's known half-life,

I'd say this rock was melted well over 10 millennia ago.

When a god fell from the skies.

So alien. And yet, familiar somehow.

Those eyes.

It's the Gardener's Gaze.

The same constellation that led us here.

Dang things give me the heebie-jeebies.

Ah-ha!

I'm picking up energy signatures of a celestial origin.

I've encountered something similar before.

It could be just the kind of power we need.

Which way?

It appears the energy is shorting out my scanner.

A lot of power. That sounds promising.

We must split up to find the source before the Pharaoh's reinforcements arrive.

I prefer the company of Charles.

You may make amends for your lies

by at least honoring your word to help your friends home.

As you wish.

I'm with the Professor.

Hope you don't mind my company, En Sabah Nur.

Anyone else gettin' a weird sense of... déjà vu?

This computer bank.

These glyphs.

Oh, my heavens!

It's not déjà vu, Rogue.

We've been here before.

Not in this time but in ours.

This is no temple, but the mighty spacecraft Ship,

designed by creatures from across the stars.

Greetings, traveler.

-Oh, dear. -What's wrong?

In our time, this vessel was a weapon of Apocalypse.

Sort of seems like you know where you're going.

It almost feels like I do.

As if drawn by greater forces.