The woman once known as Mystique had chosen to walk away from the Mutant Nation after the death of Madame Essex and her husband's subsequent rebirth. The entire thing made enough sense for her to piece together a large part of what had occurred, but her conclusions were wrong. She was missing one key piece of evidence, the fact that Apocalypse was once more meddling in the affairs of men. So as she sat in a coffee shop in Soho, near enough to her old New York stomping grounds that she could spit compared to coming from Australia, she was not even wondering exactly what was going on as far as the Essexes were concerned. That book was closed, fully written. Mr. Sinister, Dr. Essex, survived. Mrs. Essex, Poisyn, Chemistry, pick a name and she might well answer to it, did not. Case closed.
Similarly the case of her own adopted daughter, Rogue. She picked up her china coffee cup at the thought, bringing it to her lips and blowing away the steam so that it imitated the smoke from a moving train. Rogue had disappeared years ago, unable to stomach watching the man she had spent most of her young life in a contentious love affair with turn to a woman that she considered her best friend. Lucky for her she didn't stay around to see the beautiful little boy that the two of them had together. Mystique didn't blame her for that. She blamed the others who refused to support her in her pain for driving her away. After all, when everyone is happy but you, who do you turn to for a shoulder? One small sip of coffee and the cup went back to the table. Odd how introspective she was being. Normally, these things would be locked away in the vault of her mind, not truly unconsidered, but treated like rare diamonds. Brought out only on occasions that seemed to warrant it. One partially rainy day in New York hardly seemed to warrant her skipping down the path of Memory Lane.
"Hello, Mama," Mystique did not wear her own face, so how anyone would recognize her, she was unsure, but that voice made that a moot point anyway. Looking up and actually paying attention to the young woman who had stopped at her table, she drew one breath in surprise; then with reflexes honed for decades of work as an undercover operative, she ditched out of her chair and headed for the door, her coffee unpaid for. The older woman didn't need a second glance to know that the woman who wore her daughter's face was not her daughter any longer. She had never seen the marks of Apocalypse up close, but there was no way that Rogue would have allowed anyone to do that to her face were she in her right mind.
Out the door and slam, a gust of wind hit her so hard that the glass front of the shop collapsed around her like a movie prop made of sugar. The wind tossed her backward and into the counter, shards of glass whipping around her in deadly patterns. Then Rogue was there beside her, gathering her up in her arms as the world took on dark edges. She barely felt the skin to skin contact that brought the darkness rushing in to consume her.
War and Famine nodded to one another and rose to fly away, just in time for a member of Johnny Law to come running up to the scene. To him, it was a kidnapping and mutants were involved. Just like that mess in the London cemetery a week ago. Every human settlement on the planet had been alerted to the damage done. So they were supposed to be on their guard. Before he had screeched to a halt and unholstered his gun, he had radioed for backup. He fired one shot that Famine deflected easily before dropping down to his level and extending one hand in his direction. He had not been a portly fellow, officer Derringer, but he was fit and well feed. In a breath, his bones started to show, hands shaking from the sudden seeming lack in his system. He tried to aim for a second shot, but the gun was too heavy. It clattered to the pavement as he dropped to his knees and fragile bones shattered from the impact. The few others about could only watch in sick fascination from behind overturned tables and the coffee shop counter as he screamed. The sound died all too quickly, his throat closing for want of water. Officer Michael Quincy Derringer died in full view of a dozen people without one hand being placed on his body. Then the two women, one of them responsible, simply lifted into the air and were gone.
Backup arrived to find Derringer dead and no one quite capable of telling them exactly what happened. One coherent person, a poet, said: "It was as though a thousand years of poverty occurred in the space of a breath, rotting him before our very eyes. All at the behest of a woman who could only be called an ebon goddess." Poets do have a tendency to dramatize, don't they? Yet no one there, not one single person, contradicted those statements. Most just nodded numbly in assent, eyes full of the murder that wasn't quite a murder. Desiccated, Derringer was gathered up carefully to put in the body bag. Luckily he had no family to notify, no children that he was leaving orphaned. Well, lucky for them, it didn't matter for him anymore. He'd already had the worst luck of his life, being the first respondent to a scene where the Horsemen, a group that the mortal world as yet did not know and thus did not fear, were present. That would undoubtedly change, perhaps far sooner than anyone cared to believe for now.
They were four. The tribe was completed with the addition of Mystique, the many faces of Death.