AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS

CIRCLE THREE, GLUTTONY: (AFTER)LIFE, (HELL)FIRE, AND AN ORDER OF FRIES

What surrounded Scott now was not the acrylic and enamel of the bathtub into which he was thrown a moment ago, but rather the eons-actualized rock foundation that served as the lining of the crater in which he now cowered.

He looked up above, and noticed not the ceiling tile of the "safehouse" of seduction in Russia, but the celestial treasures of outer space instead.

Here, Dad.

Scott looked over, to something coming to him over the right lip of the small hollowing in which he was situated. It somewhat felt like a small grave, and he suddenly felt desperate to climb out.

What clattered itself just enough over the side edge for the man to take was a…dinner plate?

He grabbed it carefully, and gratefully acknowledged the staple of steak and eggs to which he was so accustomed all those years, whether on Earth or in his own personal Limbo.

Take it down, but take your time, said the Cable Virgil as the Clops slowed the cramming of the sustenance he was enjoying. You will certainly need your strength for this next one, as this will be a test on a literally…cosmic scale.

There are some other things with this, Cyke noted as he checked out everything on the platter. Scrapple, parsley, home fries…

…Yeah; Mom thought you might want to try out some new stuff. Cable's projected form was a bit harder to see in the outer space ether; it was much grainier, reducing the presence to much more of a ghostly voice than it was before. Variety's the spice, you know...even in the afterlife, I suppose.

Hmm.

A pause.

You're gonna have to answer for a lot of the…consuming you did here, in this Circle, Nathan's voice went on. Especially based on what happened during that short stint in which you were arguably at your most powerful.

…or at least, at the most powerful that the Cosmic Cockatoo allowed you to be.

What?...

Then a pause of a few beats. Scott's son never answered at this juncture, but rather...

Are you still in there, Scott? You still sleeping?

It's time to get out of that little gorge…and GORGE.

Suddenly Scott found himself being levitated slowly but forcefully out of the small slot into which he was shunted. He was placed gently, supinely on the surface of wherever he was, and gathered himself a second before hushing himself up to face the lady standing before him.

She cut a very comely shape, with her skintight sea green suit with golden sash, the lady going on about gorging and gorges herself very gorgeous.

… …Jean?

Close, replied the frontier-faring frau before him, she setting the table for the two to talk telepathically. I'm the "Jean" you knew for only so long, several decades back. The one who gallivanted with your All-New, All-Different crew, all those years ago…

…then found that there wasn't a place for her anymore…once she became a bit…compulsive, in certain of her habits.

She took a breath, her ubernatural body able to inhale "air" even in a vacuum. She then continued. Yep, I'm the first Phoenix that all you Xers knew, way back when. The Alien Clone Phoenix, to be exact.

For a while, in this afterlife, I've been wearing white (with even a white fiery raptor upon the costume's chest—so as not to be confused with the "Crowny" White Phoenix that the "real" Jean started wearing, a few years after the year 2000 on your Earth).

For a little bit I also took to calling myself "Insane Clone Phoenix"…but upon scanning my beloved Planet Earth recently I've noticed that there is an unbearable musical outfit boasting a similar title, so I just went back to ACP instead of ICP.

But…Scott protested, shouldn't you be nothing but ash?

He recalled that ever-painful memory harrowing for him and maddening for readers everywhere, to be hearing it now for the 676766767667676th time, of how he and the figure he thought to be his Jean had absconded from the vindictive Shi'ar all that time back, how they had found a little cubbyhole shelter to get away in, complete with its own brief, breathing space…and its own little laser cannon. Perfect for an all-consuming suicide.

SCOTT!

JEAN!

Yes, everyone remembers. Yet again.

But this was the afterlife, now, and no matter how much one was atomized…one's spirit reconstructed him or her as he or she was last recalled before said disintegration.

The ACP filled Scott in on all of this as he stood there, stymied to see this lady once again.

But you should really know all about this anyway, as the Phoenix was once in you…right?

Yes…well, I…

And as Scott raised a hand, he noted it coated in a coal-black glove that he remembered wearing during that one certain time.

He raised his fingers to his head, and noted too that the bird-beaky kind of Phoenix Five visor was atop his eyes once again as well. Then he looked down and noted the ruby and onyx effects otherwise to complete the costume.

I'm sure you remember it most vividly now, with the clothes making the man you once were. ACP started strolling off across the Blue Area of the heavenly body the two were occupying, leaving Scott a second to saunter on his own mentally, mulling over his megalomania and its attendant acts he perpetrated in line with it, in this persona so long ago.

Cyclops and four others—Emma, Namor, Peter, and Illyana—they all took on the Phoenix Force ever so involuntarily…it consumed them from within, corrupted them, made them eventually turn on each other, as was the way with all bad guys in time. Scott was the hungriest of the human-super hippos, chowing down on the cosmic comestibles of power that that Phoenix offered, to the detriment and exclusion of the other four, betraying even Emma in the end. And in time, even the insatiable Cosmic Clops was stopped, the Phoenix ultimately abandoning him too to starve for that power again in a penitentiary. In the end, good had prevailed once more.

But oh, all the collateral came that came with it…

So given that you are one who, like me, loves to EAT…

Now the mantis-clad Moon mistress was wending her way back to Scott's position on the planetoid.

…it's ever so PERFECT that you've gotten here just in time for lunch, Scott. Because I just found this great red giant that's just BEGGING, GOADING to be gobbled up…

Je…Phoenix, Scott said, putting up his despotically darkly-gloved hand once more, I'm through with those…compulsions. I consumed enough, during my own Countdown-From-Phoenix Five, Dark days. It wasn't good; the taste was never satisfying. In ended up being, in fact…pretty gross.

It's just not my thing anymore.

But you and I, we could…we could come together, ever so wonderfully through it, Scotty, protested the powerful lady. It's MEALS like this that bring families together!

Come on…I'll get Cable to the table as well. We'll all be a family, the three of us. Just like you, Jean, and Nathan Christopher during the Askani "Adventures Of" days. Just like you, the baby, and Madelyne during Anch…

NO! Scott shouted in his telepathy, unable to withstand this temptation anymore. Just as with Kwannon in the previous Circle, here too the man was feeling an itch again, a pull of a pang to get him to give in to something he wanted so badly. Seeing this place here through his beaky visor again…just the sensation of that made him want to…want to eat again, like that.

ACP just furrowed her brow and frowned at first, giving her love a guttural groan and a glower besides.

Just as Scott turned his head to look to the expanse of stars to the side, to stave off the awkwardness of the moment, as well as the recollect that once wondrous time in which he showed off the same to his beloved first lady in marriage, Madelyne…

He felt the irresistible toughness of a TK shove, oomphing at omega level, as his body was thrown from the Moon he was on, he now hurtling towards Earth, seconds later he feeling the burn of fiery atmospheric reentry.

Fine, spat the ACP in his head, the lady's clothes shimmering red now where she stood in space, as her lover sailed down the layered airy steppes of the Earth's atmosphere. More for me, then.

And you can feel the FRYING that you yourself caused, at the climax of your own cycle as the Phoenix!

Cyke's form felt the infernal agony of hellfire, although his body was not actually being burned, given that ACP was good enough to let him keep the majority of his P5 form all the way down to the surface of Africa, specifically the country of Mbangawi where a newborn infant had flexed mutant power instinctively and leveled an entire hospital, during one Astonishing, Xenogenetic jaunt the Xers had experienced a number of years back, our time.

At least I was willing to SHARE! shouted the ACP, still in the man's head as he worked out the cobwebs on the veldt upon which he now reeled. If *I* had four or more co-Phoenixes, I SURELY would have kept the balance of ourselves!

As the man was gathering himself together after touching down, and trying to marshal all his physical and mental strength, the ACP, yet again:

I could always CONTROL it better than you could, Scott.

Now feast on the blood and carnage that you yourself wreaked upon this population, back when YOU were Dark.

Scott could now note smoke issuing from the tops of trees in the far distance, on the edge of the veldt. Then everything from bark to soil blew up in a blast of flame from above.

This was the start of the cosmic burning that you brought upon the Earth in your last stand, Scott, continued ACP in his mind as the man started up and began to sprint in the direction opposite the frying of the Mbangwian forests. You really cooked a lot of the planet's piecrust. I guess you just prefer barbecue; to each her or his own, I suppose.

Me, you see, I'm more into my yellow dwarves and pulsars a bit more on the rare side…

The sound of even the cosmic Alien Clone Phoenix could not escape being drowned out by the roar of flames all around the man now, circling him and offering no egress, the fricassee fracas that Cyclops made of his Dark reign as Phoenix dawning on him fully in this firsthand experience he never had. The frying that he had ordered in his cosmic madness came to him completely, closed in on him.

"MADDY, HELP ME!" the man screamed, looking frantically all around. "WHAT DO I DO?!"

No answer came explicitly for several instants. He noted for the first time that, in the still-football-field radius of his fire-encircled surroundings, there were some soon-to-be-victimized animals rushing along the circumference of the conflagration, assaying in vain to elude their impending deaths. One that he witnessed not running along was a wildebeest, convulsing, choking…

…vomiting, very graphically, a repast it had taken down earlier in the day.

It had to be a sign. Cyke realized he could still feel slight remains of the Phoenix power still within him, lingering in his guts.

The flames coming ever closer, he looked one more time to the cosmic charcoal gloved hand, with its terrible fingers.

He crammed the index and the middle as far down the throat as he could, thinking to himself all the while of how he rejected all this power, how he renounced the terrible strength and influence of the Phoenix Force.

Scott passed out before he purged, but the miserable cosmicmeal within him commenced to repeat on him, then expelled itself from his mouth just as he sunk into unconsciousness again, just as the inferno all around converged, looking to consume the cowed, crumpled virtual victuals that the man seemed to be right now.

TO BE CONTINUED