"X-Men/Spider-Man:

Tangled Up In Evolution"

Chapter 8: "Days of Future Gone"

Disclaimer: X-Men: Evolution is the property of Marvel Comics and Film Roman Productions in partnership with Marvel Studios. Spider-Man is the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. I make no money whatsoever from the use of either property or their related characters in this story, and this is done solely for fun.

Author's note: It's time to ring in the New Year, and I'm kicking it off with a new chapter of "Tangled Up In Evolution." For those of you with questions about Cable and his "sister" Rachel, those questions will be answered here, as is the point of this chapter. You will see the future that made Cable the man he is today, learn the secrets of his future past, and perhaps see what is in store for the X-Men and Spider-Man should they fail to stop Norman Osborn. Let's begin.


X23 had sequestered herself in the Danger Room, ripping through legions of droids with a seemingly unquenchable fury. The setting was on lethal, although the clawed girl almost didn't notice . . . or even care if she had noticed; her grief was all-consuming. On each droid she cut apart, she imagined Meteorite's cruelly smirking face or Magneto's infuriatingly stoic expression.

She'd kill them. She'd kill them all. That was all there was to it. They had taken Wolverine from her, the one person who truly understood her, the one person who was like a father to her . . . and he was gone. Meteorite had murdered him, and Magneto had taken his body to do who knew what with it. That wouldn't stand, not as long as she was still alive.

And when she was done with those two, Norman Osborn was next on her list. If Peter Parker, Spider-Man, was so much of a coward that he couldn't even bring himself to avenge that girl, then it would simply be up to her to cleanse the world of that particular blight.

Parker, she snarled internally. Why am I even thinking about him right now?

"How am I supposed to know?" she heard a familiar sardonic voice quip behind her. "Not like I can read your mind, y'know?" X23's response was to kick him in the face with her foot claw extended, but the interloper knocked her out of her kick with a chop block.

"Cable . . ." she growled. "You just read my mind."

"Gee, you never heard of sarcasm before?" Cable jibed. "Whatever. You seem like such a sweet girl, and I can tell you're having a hard time."

"You wouldn't understand," X23 growled.

"Better than you think," Cable answered. "I've lost a lot of friends, back when . . . including people I loved, loved a lot . . ."

X23's response was to swipe at him again, this time with the claws on her right arm. Cable grasped her wrist to halt her attack and twisted her arm around so that he had her back pinned to his front. X23 just bent backward as her leg stretched out and back to strike Cable's forehead, glancing against his ruby quartz glasses in the process.

"So that's your coping mechanism," he remarked. "Don't mind that so much, but . . . you cracked my glasses. You owe me." He shifted into a combat stance and extended his foremost arm in a beckoning gesture.

X23 attacked him, intent on wiping that smug grin off his face. She swiped brutally at him with her claws, alternating randomly between her hand claws and her foot claws as Cable's own honed reflexes enabled him to alternately dodge, block, or parry her strikes. X23 was fast, agile, and most importantly ferocious in combat, much like her "father," and that last trait went all the way past eleven when she was angry, something Cable was finding out just now. If it wasn't for the psychokinetic sheath he was fond of using during combat, she would have sliced him apart a thousand times over by this point.

Suddenly, he tried a new tactic, namely wrapping his arms around her tightly for a bear hug. "What are you doing?"

"You need a friend right now," he replied. "Let it out. I'll be here."

"Friend . . . you want to be my friend?" X23 asked.

"Yeah, if you think I'm good enough to be your friend," Cable replied, his sardonic tone taking on an affectionate tinge. He pocketed his cracked ruby quartz glasses, letting X23 see his eyes, the left one dimly glowing with his psychic power. "And even if you don't, you can't stop me that easy."

X23 sniffled, remembering what Wolverine had said to her when he found her after that debacle with HYDRA trying to take her back. "Anytime you're ready, kid, you've got a family waiting for you at Xavier's. You're not a monster, no matter what they tried to do to you . . . and I'll keep telling you that until the day you finally believe me."

And he's gone . . . he's gone . . . Those words repeating almost endlessly in her head, combined with the surprisingly gentle glow of Cable's left eye, made X23 crumple in the time traveler's arms, her body shaking with her quiet sobs. Cable just stroked her hair gently, letting his presence do the talking instead of trying to clutter the thing with meaningless words.

I love you, Laura, he thought.


By the time Cable and X23 had left the Danger Room, the X-Men were assembled in their entirety, including Wraith and Rachel, and all were looking at Cable rather expectantly. "Yeah, I figured this was coming," he remarked.

"Figured what was coming?" Cyclops asked suspiciously.

"That I tell you what's at stake if you lose this thing," Cable replied. "I'm going to show you the future."

"It is all right," Xavier offered. "Cable and I have already come to an arrangement on this. I will use Cerebro's more recent upgrades to link with Cable's mind and project his memories for you all to witness. It won't be an easy thing to bear, as you'll experience his memories as though you were in his place. If it's any comfort to you, it will not be any easier on Cable, as he will also be re-experiencing those same memories, many of which are doubtlessly painful for him."

"Pain is a fact of life," Psylocke admitted resignedly. "Let's get on with it."

The X-Men assembled around Xavier as he donned the helm that allowed his mind to interface with the Cerebro computer. As it was donned, he formed a link with Cable and then expanded that link to all the X-Men, gently drawing Cable's memories to the surface of said link.


A news report was playing in front of young Dean Summers. "Today is the tenth anniversary of the mutant siege that took the lives of Norman Osborn and countless other innocent humans. We will replay the footage of that disaster, but be warned – what you are about to see is not for sensitive viewers or children."

The screen shifted to a video image of Norman Osborn "heroically" confronting the unmasked Spider-Man, whom the teenaged X-Men recognized as Peter Parker. The battle was brutally short, with even Osborn's unnatural accuracy with a handgun unable to deter Peter's vengeful rampage. Osborn was quickly overpowered, and Peter grabbed him by the throat before slamming him into the patio window so hard the glass shattered, leaving Osborn dangling from God only knew how many stories above the ground.

The interesting thing about the video footage was that while Peter's face was clearly seen, Osborn's wasn't, either by accident or by deliberate design. There was silence for several moments, as a verbal exchange was presumably passing between them. It ended when Peter let go of Osborn, leaving him to fall to his death . . . but of course, that footage wasn't shown.


"Peter . . . did that?" Shadowcat uttered, appalled and astonished.

"In my timeline, yeah," Cable confirmed grimly, all traces of his usual humor gone. "But that wasn't the end of it. Not by a long shot."


The footage shifted to a different kind of rampage, as a projection of a fiery bird of prey hovered above the ground, where cars were literally being ripped apart atom by atom. The soldiers that tried to stop this firebird met the same fate, their bodies and souls torn to shrieking, agonized atoms along with their weapons. The worst part of it all was the eerily serene redheaded girl within the center of that bird-shaped inferno, a girl the X-Men recognized as . . .


"Jean?" Cyclops uttered.

"That's . . . that's me?" Jean asked, stunned with horror at what she would become.

"Yeah," Cable confirmed sadly.


Within the memory, young Dean saw someone come up and shut off the screen. "Dad . . ." Dean was about to complain, but he was hushed by what turned out to be a black-clad Cyclops with impressive beard stubble. His visor had been redesigned so that the red lens only covered his right eye, with the left side being utterly blank, and his X-Men suit was a lot more militaristic than before.

"You don't need to be seeing that, Dean," Cyclops growled, his voice a harsh rasp.

"But, Dad, I wanna know what happened!" Dean pleaded.

"You'll know when you're ready," Cyclops answered bluntly.

"I'm ready now!" Dean insisted.

"Are you?" Cyclops interrogated, his lens flaring red.

Dean knew he wasn't going to get an answer. He never got one, not from his father, anyway. He looked away from Cyclops' grim stare with an irritated yet resigned pout.

"Come on. You're almost late for combat training."

"Then that means I'm not late."

"Almost late isn't good enough."


"Now do you see why I have issues with this guy?" Cable asked, gesturing to Cyclops.

"Yeah, Scott, you're even harsher on him than you ever were with us," Rogue remarked.

"What happened to Jean, anyway?" Nightcrawler asked.

"Wolverine had to kill her," Cable replied. "Dad never forgave him for it."

"But how did it happen?" Jean asked, sounding quietly panicked. "Why did it happen?"

"In a nutshell, your powers grew beyond your control and your mind fractured because of it," Cable explained. "Half of you was still you, and the other half was this psychotic destroyer goddess who called herself 'Phoenix.' In the end, Phoenix took over almost completely, and considering the rest of the X-Men wouldn't have survived coming near you . . ."

"How . . . how many?" Jean asked.

"Too many," Cable whispered. "Too many. That's how it all started. The formation of the MRD, the Mutant Response Division, the Prime Sentinels, the ghettos, the camps . . . all because somebody lost control. Everything humans ever feared about us summed up in that one moment, preserved for constant replay every time anyone started saying the new laws were 'a little too harsh.'"

Jean buried her face in her hands, looking like she was about to cry. Cyclops wrapped his arms around her, trying his best to comfort her no matter how futile the gesture.


Another memory snapped into focus, this memory being of crimson energy spilling from a slightly older Dean's eyes. He tried to shut them, but the energy was so powerful that it forced his eyes wide open, punching through every wall, door, or ceiling Dean looked at. Dean put his hands over his eyes, despite the pain in those hands, specifically between his knuckles.

"Stop . . . somebody stop this!" Dean shouted in a voice choked with panic.

Rogue immediately entered the room. She was older, her hair longer and tied back in a semi-spiky ponytail, and dressed in a dark green hooded coat over a skintight black combat suit. Using a telekinetic shield to protect herself from Dean's optic blasts, she came closer to him.

"Dean! Dean! Focus on me! Focus on my voice!"

"Mom . . . I'm scared . . ."

Rogue pulled Dean into her arms, her gloves removed so that she could touch his bare skin and bleed off the excess energy with her own powers. Combined with the empathic link her absorption abilities created, she was able to get him to calm down a little. "Come on, Dean . . ." she whispered softly. "Open your eyes now. You can do it."

Dean slowly but surely opened his eyes, seeing his mother before him and realizing that his vision was no longer covered in a red film. "Mom . . . what happened?"

Rogue looked at Dean's hands, which she now noticed had long – for his size – bone claws sticking out from between his knuckles. "I guess your X-gene finally kicked in."

"So I'm like you and Dad?"

"Yeah . . ." Rogue's voice was tinged with sadness. "You are."


Cyclops regarded Dean's memory with sympathy. "I had the same experience, when I first came into my mutant powers. I caused a lot of destruction, hurt a lot of people . . ."

"I remember," Jean murmured. "You were so scared to get near anyone, when I first met you, because you thought that at any time, your blasts could come out and hurt someone."

"Why does he have Wolverine's claws?" X23 asked.

"Empathic mimicry," Cable replied. "Jimmy was like a second father to me, hell, he was a better father than my actual one."

"So I suppose he didn't die in your timeline," Storm remarked.

"No," Cable confessed.


Another memory played, this time of a barely pubescent Dean in combat with simulacra of the Prime Sentinels. It was hard to look at them, knowing that they had all been human beings once . . . and now they were little more than automatons wrapped in human flesh. Dean almost didn't care, though . . . they were the ones that had ruined his life before he was even born, the ones who'd made the world a living hell for anyone with powers.

Using a trick he'd learned from Psylocke, Dean extended his psychic power into an arm-mounted sword blade and began slicing through the Prime Sentinels. Taking it a few steps further, though, he grew a psychic blade from his knee as he lunged into the air and slammed the blade into one Prime Sentinel's face, carving it up so badly it was unrecognizable as having once belonged to a human. Spinning on that knee, he extended another psychic blade from his leg, slashing another Prime Sentinel apart with one kick.

Dean flipped up onto his feet and whirled to slam a psychic-bladed elbow into yet another Prime Sentinel, pausing only to rip it apart. He jumped into the air for a brutal telekinetically enhanced drop kick that smashed the machine into an unrecognizable mess. Using similarly enhanced punches, Dean beat the remaining Prime Sentinels to mere wreckage.

He looked at the carnage around him with quiet fury surging through him, just as the Danger Grotto's voice whispered: "Simulation over."

"That was better than I expected," Cyclops's voice coolly remarked over the P.A. "I'll finish your evaluation. You just clean yourself off. You're a mess."

Dean scoffed bitterly and left the Danger Grotto, stripping off his training uniform once he was in his barracks, revealing crisscrossing scars all over his back and chest. Training had never been easy on him, and the more he progressed, the harder his so-called father made it on him. The scars were from the wounds that even the healing factor he'd copied from Wolverine couldn't fully manage. He could use a bit of Kiden's power for a localized time reversal that would also do the job, but at the cost of the physical adaptations resulting from that training, as he'd once found out.

Dean popped his claws, pure bone due to never experiencing the Weapon X treatment, contemplating them before retracting them. Physical pain had ceased to have much of an effect on him after all those years of brutal training, some of it even before his powers had started to manifest. Although Cyclops was very harsh on all the junior would-be X-Men, it seemed that he reserved his harshest training for Dean, his own son.

"Why? Why does he hate me so much?" Dean asked quietly, knowing no answer would be immediately forthcoming.


Rogue looked at Cable sadly, wanting to reach out and comfort him somehow, but Cable just stared stoically ahead. The other X-Men looked pretty sad, too, and Cyclops was starting to hate himself. Was this what his grief over Jean's death would turn him into, a monster who couldn't even love his own son the way he needed to be loved? Someone who could only feel anger, hate, and vengeance? Was that his future without Jean?


Another memory flashed into focus, this time of a 15-year-old Dean in a black trench coat over a black triple-weave Kevlar suit with dull gold piping that almost seemed to glow. "What's the mission, Professor H?" he asked.

Professor H turned to face Dean, revealing the face of a blond man with a surprising resemblance to Charles Xavier. "I sensed a familiar psychic aura, flashing intermittently, as though there was something trying to suppress its power. I want you to call in your parents and Logan; they deserve to hear this."

"Sure," Dean answered.


"That's . . . that's David Haller!" Jean exclaimed, startled to recognize "Professor H."

Xavier looked startled as well, but mixed with that was relief and joy. "So I didn't ruin him completely . . ."

"But how?" Cyclops asked. "Last I remembered, Lucas destroyed David's and Ian's personalities!"

"Personalities represent aspects of an individual's character," Xavier responded sagely. "They can be suppressed, but they are never quite destroyed. I suppose that in Cable's time, David was somehow able to reassert himself over Lucas or that somehow, they all recombined into one complete self."

"More or less," Cable confirmed. "I don't pretend to understand it."

"If David Haller's taken over in Cable's time, what happened to you, Professor?" Shadowcat asked.

"Dead," Cable replied grimly. "He was one of the primary targets of the MRD, and yeah, he was a scary powerful telepath . . . but when you can't walk or run . . ."

Cyclops clenched his teeth with pain at the thought of Xavier, the man who'd been like a father to him for so many years, being dead. Mustering his courage, he turned to Cable. "What about Magneto?"

"He raised an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean," Cable replied. "Named it Genosha and claimed it as a refuge for mutants all over the world that were getting sick and tired of human persecution. Him being him, he also used it as a staging ground for terrorist raids against mutant camps. Not that they didn't deserve it, the bastards."

"Camps?" Shadowcat repeated. "You mentioned that once before."

"Yeah, that's where they put the mutants they catch, or at least the ones who won't go quietly," Cable answered. "What they do to them there . . . it's not something I'd like to repeat. It's not even something I like knowing."

"You mean, like . . ." Shadowcat trailed off, unable to completely voice the terrible thought gnawing at her mind, as memories of her own family history came back to her.

"Like that, yeah," Cable confirmed sadly.


Cyclops, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Storm, and Wolverine, along with teenage Dean, had come together before Professor Haller. Like Cyclops and Rogue in the previous snippets of memory, Storm, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Wolverine were garbed in militaristic leather uniforms. Aside from that, another major difference was that Nightcrawler, Storm, and Shadowcat had trimmed their hair, Storm wearing hers short with almost spiky ends, Shadowcat having cut off her trademark ponytail, and Nightcrawler's hair short in the back with longer bangs. "What do you want, Haller?" Cyclops asked bluntly.

"I sensed a familiar psychic aura," Haller replied. "Not identical, but extremely similar . . . and filled with terror."

"Who do you think it is?" Shadowcat asked.

"Jean Grey," Haller answered. He stared hard at Cyclops. "Bear in mind that the psychic signature is similar, but not identical, so don't get your hopes up that it's her."

"Then why do we care?" Cyclops spat.

"Because there is a mutant out there, in pain, suffering at the hands of those psychopaths, and God damn you, we are going to save her," Haller retorted angrily as the other X-Men looked at Cyclops with appalled expressions.

"Fine," Cyclops growled. "Are we taking Dean with us?"

"You're taking Cable with you," Haller answered.

"Who's Cable?" Dean asked.

"You, genius," Haller replied dryly.


"So that's how you got your name," Shadowcat remarked. "Why'd he call you that?"

"Hell if I know," Cable answered. "He's got an odd sense of humor."

"What's with all the black leather?" Nightcrawler wondered.

"It's the grim future," Cable quipped. "Black leather is essential for us hardened badasses."

"Then why's your coat the only part of your outfit that's leather?" Rogue inquired sardonically.

"Touché, Mom," Cable answered with a slight smirk.


The next memory they relived was the future X-Men's battle against the Prime Sentinels. Cyclops's optic blasts ripped through several Sentinels, while Storm unleashed an icy tornado that literally tore apart even more Prime Sentinels. Shadowcat used her phasing ability to jump through as many Prime Sentinels as she could get to, disrupting the nanomachinery that kept their bodies functioning. Nightcrawler jaunted all over the place, exploiting his teleporting ability to occasionally fatally remove or damage various body parts.

Rogue flew through the Prime Sentinels, thrashing them (back) to death with her bare fists at extreme velocities. Wolverine decapitated, eviscerated, and otherwise brutally slaughtered even more Prime Sentinels. Cable was flashing all over the place, his speed making him almost impossible to track as he killed more Prime Sentinels with the kind of coldblooded fury that would frighten even more hardened soldiers. One second, he'd be visible, and when he turned invisible the next second, there'd be clusters of ruined Prime Sentinels in his wake.

In the wake of their carnage, the X-Men made their way to where Professor Haller had directed them, finding a young redheaded girl strapped to a medical cot with machines linked to her brain. "Jean?" Cyclops uttered, with such longing . . . such love in his voice that it made Cable want to rip his father's remaining eye out. He'd never shown his own son that much, if anything, in the way of genuine affection . . . and this girl dredged it out of him?

Wolverine sniffed. "Not quite her, but she sure as hell smells familiar."

"Are you sure?" Cyclops asked.

"I'm sure," Wolverine replied.

"And her aura feels like Jean's . . ." Rogue added. "Not the same, but she's . . ."

"What are they doing to her?" Cable asked.

"Testing her psychic powers or just plain torturing her . . . or both," Storm surmised.

"Let's get her out of there," Cyclops ordered.

Wolverine sniffed again. "There's someone else . . . someone who's been . . ." His expression turned into one of surprise – and relief. "She's still alive."

"Who's still alive?" Shadowcat asked.

"Laura," Wolverine replied.

"Then we split up," Storm instructed. "Half of us to get this girl, half of us to get Laura."

"Rogue, Nightcrawler, and I will retrieve the girl," Cyclops immediately decided. "Shadowcat, Wolverine, Storm, you go find X23. Cable, you come with me."

"Sure thing, Fearless Leader," Cable sniped.


"Where was I all those years?" X23 asked.

"Being experimented on by S.H.I.E.L.D. to test the limits of your healing factor and figure out the cloning process that made you so they could clone their own super-soldiers out of the old superheroes that wouldn't cooperate with the new setup," Cable answered. "And when we found you . . . you hadn't aged a day. They were keeping you in stasis, obviously."

"And what of . . . ?" Storm looked uneasily between Jean and Rachel.

"Her name was Rachel Hope Morgan," Cable replied. "When her mutant powers manifested, they locked her in one of the camps, and all they'd tell her parents was that she was too dangerous to simply be relegated to a ghetto. As it turns out, they were scared of another Phoenix Incident, and the experiments were supposed to keep her docile, mold her into a living weapon of mass destruction they could use on us."

"It's Rachel Summers, big brother," Rachel interjected.

"Only because Dad couldn't get over you looking like Jean," Cable jibed. "God knows what the hell he intended to do with you once you were old enough to really look like her."

"That's just sick!" Cyclops exclaimed. "Sick and wrong!"

"You weren't exactly the shining picture of mental health when I knew you," Cable answered coldly.

"And what about Laura?" Rogue asked.

Cable got a faraway look in his eyes, before shaking it off and staring stoically at her. "She was all right, which was kinda scary. Didn't even occur to me for a while that she felt more at home in a place like that than she ever did when she was with you guys before the Phoenix Incident, but then I was a stupid kid."

"You still are a stupid kid," Rogue rejoined with a sardonic grin.

"Yeah, sure, Mom, mock me in front of your friends while I'm trying to save all your lives," Cable shot back, but he was grinning back at her.

"Why were you so angry when I – the future me, anyway – mistook Rachel for Jean?" Cyclops asked.

Cable turned an icy glare at Cyclops. "Because you loved her more than you ever loved me or Mom . . . if you loved either of us at all."

"Daddy issues," Psylocke murmured. "That about explains everything. And I wouldn't be surprised if you had an Oedipus complex along with it."

"Hey, Betts . . . you mind not wisecracking about that?" Cable asked, his sardonic air belying his wintry expression. "Sore issue with me."


Yet another memory faded into focus, this one of a 20-year-old Cable and a 20-year-old Laura Logan sitting next to each other after an intense practice session in the Danger Grotto. "You make me feel strange," Laura spat out.

"Strange how?" Cable prompted.

"Just strange," Laura replied. "I feel warm, and yet I feel cold inside, when I'm near you."

"That's a little thing called attraction," Cable remarked. "And funny you should mention that, because you get my fire going, too."

"Fire?" Laura repeated. "You're on fire? Why don't I see flames?"

"Because I'm not doing my Human Torch impression," Cable teased.

Against her will, Laura giggled slightly. "You . . . made me laugh."

"Laughter is the best medicine, they say," Cable quipped. "But I always feel a little better after some slaughter, too."

Laura looked away from him, as though ashamed. "So do I. I'm not supposed to feel like that, but that's all I'm good for. That's why I was made at all."

Cable groaned ruefully. "Why did I have to go ahead and say something stupid like that?" he muttered to himself. More audibly, "Hey, killing isn't the only thing you're good for. You're also a good friend, and I can trust you not to laugh at me or coddle me or just ignore me if I try to talk to you about something serious. And it doesn't hurt that you're pretty and you could kick my ass without breaking a sweat."

Laura looked at Cable with surprise, a blush forming on her tanned face. "So how about it?" Cable asked. "Give this thing, you and me, a good college try?"


In reality, X23 blushed when she looked at Cable, who merely smiled gently at her. "Yeah. We were together in my time . . . but that didn't last forever."

"Why not?" Wraith asked. "Looked like you two were really growing to love each other."

"Loved each other so much I was gonna make an honest woman of her," Cable replied dryly, "and vice versa. Then the Sentinel attack happened, and . . ." He trailed off, as though caught in the painful memory, which was starting to manifest visually for the X-Men. Cable turned a hard glare on Xavier. "Cut it off. They know enough."

"I'm sorry," Xavier responded, as he disconnected the telepathic link that had allowed the X-Men to view Cable's memories.

"Don't be," Cable snapped. "If I succeed, it'll never happen."

"You might never exist, either," Psylocke interjected.

Cable stared ahead grimly. "I can live with that."

That was when Professor Xavier decided it was time to intercede. "How did you get your hands on the technology you used to go back in time?"

"We reverse-engineered it from Apocalypse's vessel, the one that came to him from way, way, way into the future," Cable explained. "It took some trial and error, a few body parts lost here, a few dead guys there, but we managed."

"That's horrible!" Jean uttered.

"Wasn't for nothing, babe," Cable answered. "Thanks to all that hard work, we have a chance to set things right, make sure the camps, the ghettos, the MRD, the goddamn Sentinels . . . never even happen."

"But what will happen to your future if you succeed?" Beast asked. "Like Psylocke suggested before, you might never exist . . . or you might accidentally engineer a future that turns out much worse than your timeframe of origin."

Cable snorted. "What could possibly be worse?"

"Magneto rules the world and decides to genocide the entire human population?" Colossus suggested.

"You're kidding with me?" Cable asked.

"I do not kid," Colossus replied sorrowfully. "That truly is something Magneto would do if he had the resources and ability to accomplish it."

"Point taken," Cable conceded.

"How about . . . Apocalypse wakes up again and takes over the world and he's even worse than you said Magneto could be?" Shadowcat piped up, looking at Colossus.

"Yeah, that'd be really bad," Cable agreed.

"And while we're discussing futures no one wants to see happen, how about we try to figure out how to stop this one?" Cyclops suggested.

"We stop Spider-Man from killing Osborn," Cable replied. "Much as I hate to leave that son of a bitch alive, Webs killing him does nothing but play into the hands of his backers and all the other bastards who want an excuse to wipe us all out."

"Wait . . ." X23 spoke up. "He was wearing a different costume."

"Really?" Colossus asked.

"I saw it, too," Rogue backed up X23. "It was black, and it had a lot of glowing red pipes, even around the lenses of his mask."

"Like a Tron suit?" Cable suggested.

"I thought a grim-and-gritty badass from the future like you wouldn't have time for stuff like that," Nightcrawler commented wryly.

"When I was a child, I spoke of childish things, and when I became a man, I put aside childish things," Cable rejoined.

Nightcrawler looked at him oddly, to which Cable stared back before Rogue broke the silence. "So where did that costume come from?" she asked.

"Dunno," Cable replied. "Spider-Man went his own way after killing Osborn. Went underground, too, not that it made that big a difference in the end. They killed everyone close to him to draw him out, and when he came to avenge them . . . he put up a damned good fight, but he didn't last. The one to strike the killing blow was the man that'd become President Osborn."

"President Osborn?" Shadowcat repeated, utterly confused. "I thought Osborn was dead in your time?"

"He had a son," Cable explained. "A son who was Parker's best friend at one time, but he saw Spider-Man as responsible for the girl they both loved getting her plug pulled and when he found out Parker was Spider-Man and that he'd killed his father . . ."

"Betrayal stings," Rogue whispered, remembering what Mystique had put her through, and how her "loving" guardian Irene had been going along with it the whole time.

"Fury was right," Xavier murmured. "Peter Parker, Spider-Man, is the key to all this, the lynchpin. It begins with him."


Endnotes: There you have it; not only have I explained this Cable's roots and what it has to do with the X-Men, it's also good setup for the next several chapters. Where did the future Spider-Man's black costume come from, and what pushed him over the edge? Why is Wolverine alive in the future and "dead" in the present? What secrets hide behind Rachel Summers' eyes, and will they spell doom for Jean Grey?

For those of you who will doubtlessly take offense to my portrayal of future Cyclops, it's based on a blend of his more ruthless behavior as of the last several years of X-Men comics and how he dealt with his grief over Jean's apparent death in "Wolverine & the X-Men," only taken to extremes. Did he directly abuse his own son? No, but he was emotionally unavailable, still caught up in his grief over Jean, and in many cases that's even worse, to which some of you reading this will probably be able to attest.

Speaking of Jean, I've decided to combine the various explanations for her Phoenix alter ego throughout the years in multiple continuities for this version. Basically, Phoenix is a split personality based partly on Jean's own potential for destruction and partly on the concept of destroyer goddesses, which Jean may or may not be an incarnation of. As for her reincarnation Rachel Summers, my version combines the canonical Rachel Summers, who was Jean's daughter from the original "Days of Future Past" timeline, and the more recent Hope Summers, who may or may not be Jean's reincarnation (as Jean is currently "dead" in the comics proper). I gave her the last name "Morgan" as homage to another redheaded heroine named Rachel, this one from a series of urban fantasy novels by Karen Harrison.

More explanations will be coming as the story continues, and for all my reviewers that have kept supporting me, I thank you. Until next chapter, this is Rider Paladin, signing off.