Appearing in "The First FourSaken Part 2: Family Lies"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- O*N*E*
- Sentinel Squad O*N*E
- Dr. Valerie Cooper
- Colonel Miguel Reyes
- Several unnamed agents
- X-Men
- Jamie Braddock (Main story and flashback)
Antagonists:
- FourSaken (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
- Amina Synge (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
- Ned Horrocks (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
- Godfrey Calthrop (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
Other Characters:
- Uatu the Watcher
- Phoenix (Vision or hallucination)
- First Fallen (First appearance) (Vision or hallucination)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Earth
- United States of America
- Watcher's Citadel, Blue Area of the Moon, Moon, Earth Orbit (Mentioned)
- China (Mentioned)
Items:
Synopsis for "The First FourSaken Part 2: Family Lies"
With James Braddock gone, the effects of his reality warping begin to wear off. Outside, Cyclops and the other members of his group of X-Men wake up, though Scott guesses that their troubles aren't over yet. The fact that Uatu is still looming over the grounds is definitely helping with that.
In the O*N*E command center, Commander Reyes declares the X-Men locked up and questioned about Braddock. Against Bishop's objections, Nightcrawler teleports everyone away, the Watcher disappearing after them. Kurt's team reappears in Central Park, New York, where Kurt promptly collapses from the strain. Betsy speculates that the unusually lengthy jump is the result of her brother's interference. Bishop then chides Kurt for refusing to trust the O*N*E, getting angry when Kurt retorts that he's not as comfortable with their jailers as Lucas. Cannonball interrupts to point out that Uatu is still looming over them, before wondering whether Jamie is behind the oddities the team has been experiencing lately, something Kurt dismisses, as his powers aren't that far-reaching. Rachel brings up the Butterfly Effect, how one effect causes another and another, asking what the end result of Jamie's manipulations could be. Kurt, meanwhile, asks Betsy about her brother's last words before disappearing, the "Foursaken".
The Foursaken, as Betsy explains, was the name Jamie and his school-friends called themselves, being a group of habitual rule-breakers. The last time they were together was during the Trans-Sahara Rallye, which encountered a sandstorm which only Jamie emerged from, completely insane. At this point, Uatu speaks up, declaring there is another meaning. As the Phoenix is the spirit of death and rebirth, it has an opposite, a male entity known as the First Fallen, which seeks to end death itself. The Forsaken are his servants. Betsy quietly notes that Uatu isn't the sort of being to hand out explanations like that for free. Kurt meanwhile just asks what drew this entity to Earth. At that, the Metropolitan Museum of Art lights up with a green column of energy. Rachel screams, apparently having tried to make contact with the energy's source. Floating salamanders appear from the beam, and promptly yank Cannonball's spirit out of his body. They are able to avoid Rachel's psychic blasts, while Psylocke is able to hit them with no problem. However, several dozen more creatures manage to make off with more.
As the team prepare to go after the creatures, a giant robot appears, directed by Godfrey Calthrop, one of the Foursaken. As Kurt and Betsy teleport, the others attack, Bishop being blasted a good distance away, where he meets Ned Horrocks, another of the four. Working together, Bishop, Rachel and Cannonball disable Calthrop's robot, only to be knocked out by Horrocks. Inside the Museum, Kurt and Betsy soon find the last of the Foursaken, Anita Synge, presiding over a strange ritual, with Jamie, Rachel, and Bishop strung up via Jamie's own strings. Evidently Anita requires Kurt to finish the ritual, making no mention of Psylocke. Watching, Kurt gets caught by one of the salamanders, leaving Betsy alone.
As Anita begins the ritual, Betsy decides to grab a guard's gun, using her telekinesis to compress it and turn it into projectiles, reasoning that the iron in its composition will disrupt whatever the Foursaken are doing. It works, though at the cost of sucking everyone present into the portal. Betsy tries pulling her comrades back to her, but to no avail. As a last resort, she grabs onto the Foursaken, dragging them into the vortex, as everything goes dark...
Notes
- Bishop bristles at the implication he's becoming romantically close to Val Cooper, despite no-one directly saying as such. However, Kurt does have a point that Bishop, more than anyone else, has been supportive of the O*N*E and their actions, regardless of their behavior towards the X-Men.
- Cyclop's team are shown to be unconscious elsewhere on the mansion ground as the issue begins, thus explaining why they weren't present at all last issue. The unspoken implication is that Jamie was responsible, wanting only to interact with Betsy's team.
- The Watcher claims that the universe's life is broken up into seven stages akin to days, and that four of these have already passed. This fact has been promptly ignored by every other writer at Marvel.
Trivia
- Rachel mentions the Butterfly Effect, referring to the Aston Kutcher movie, rather than the short novella it was loosely based on. Kurt has no knowledge of either. Evidently his fondness for Errol Flynn movies comes at the expense of any other films, given his remark about anything else being "crap".
- Evidently, when Kitty Pryde is drunk, she begins rambling about chaos theory, according to Rachel's testimony.