Hello! Just popping in here to let you know that this prologue goes over the gist of X-Men: Days of Future Past. If you have not seen the film or are simply in need of a refresher then have fun and continue. However, if you already know what's going on, then feel free to skip to Chapter One to get started, cuz all of this will just be a bunch of stuff you likely already know. That's all, happy reading and thank you for checking out the story!
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"To Homo neanderthalensis, his mutant cousin, Homo sapiens, was an aberration. Peaceful cohabitation, if it ever existed, was short-lived. Records show, without exception, that the arrival of the mutated human species in any region was followed by the immediate extinction of their less-evolved kin."
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A world where humans and mutants coexisted peacefully seemed to be impossible to achieve. The radicals on either side were far too numerous to ever smother the exponential fires of devastation and blood-thirst. A mutant life taken here. A human life taken there. It would never end because everyone desired their own revenge at the expense of ever dissolving the hatred cast over their once serene society. It had its flaws before, yet it never once came close to the new age of gloom.
They'd gone too deep to ever clamor their way out.
At least that was what Logan had thought. Before, the destruction of their mutant lives was far too condemning to give him the slightest glimmer of a hopeful future. Everything around him was dark, shadows full of despair and if he stood in the depths of pitch black for too long... the echoes of death would claw through the void and consume him. He'd seen so many friends succumb to hatred that Logan began to feel hollow inside. He thought he had already reached that point before in his long life, yet only now did he finally realize that those solemn days couldn't compare to how he felt now.
They were living in Hell. But there was a light shining from above. It came to them in the form of an outrageous plan, crafted by both Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. Or you might call them Professor X and Magneto, who were previous arch-nemeses before the world turned on them. While Charles had created the X-Men, a combative team full of the strongest mutants determined to fight for what was right in times of need, far too many of them had fallen to care about old rivalries and bad blood. Now he and Erik were dependent on one another considering the shared havoc of their reality.
Everything that had gone so horrifically wrong for mutant-kind could be traced back to one fatal decision made by Raven Darkholme, otherwise known as Mystique. She was a complex mutant who could take the form of any person, allowing her to disguise herself as whoever she pleased. This allowed her to effortlessly uncover the dangerous schemes of Bolivar Trask.
In the 1970s, Trask was campaigning through governments in an attempt to earn funding for his Sentinel program, which was dedicated to creating weapons specifically designed to counter any and all mutant powers in the hopes of initiating a mutant genocide. It was a grim idea veiled by the positive goal of bringing humanity together, the ultimate unity that humans had never seen before. Of course, it was all a lie.
He'd successfully manufactured the prototypes by experimenting on famed mutants Azazel, Angel Salvadore and Emma Frost, who had once been members of the Brotherhood of Mutants. The group was led by Erik Lehnsherr, who'd also taken Mystique and Riptide under his wing in the early days of the Brotherhood. Their goal was to give a better life to mutants through reckless means, however any success was washed down the drain shortly after since the members dropped like flies.
They were ultimately tortured to death via Trask's cruel research. However it granted him with the blueprints to the Sentinels, which meant far beyond the welfare of mutants for obvious reasons. This caused Raven to ravenously seek out revenge and plan to kill Bolivar for murdering her friends but for also engaging in a wicked anti-mutant agenda. She believed that by ending Trask it would tank his entire operation, thus saving them all.
Had she known how wrong she was, Raven would've stayed far away that day in France where she'd assassinated Trask during the Paris Peace Summit, a meeting he attended to gain support from powerful world leaders. As soon as he dropped lifeless on the floor, Raven was reprimanded by William Stryker and subsequently captured by him, given that he was a commanding operator on a side project commissioned by Trask Industries. With Bolivar Trask gone, it was time for Stryker to take the reins and finish what was started.
Raven was tortured relentlessly. Experimented on like all of the others who she'd tried to avenge.
Stryker was able to gather enough evidence and scientific research surrounding the peculiar ways in which Raven's genes worked, giving Trask Industries the key to making their Sentinel robots nearly invisible. Everything Raven fought to stop had now gotten a twisted upper hand... and it was all her fault.
See, ever since Trask had been assassinated it raised awareness to all nations of the apparent 'dangerous nature' of mutants. In turn, this persuaded them to hand over as much funding as they could to Trask Industries in order to give the poor and helpless humans all the protection they could desire against these inherent monsters. Over time the humans began to oppress mutants more and more. Bullying turned into violent ambushes. Violence turned into mutant homicide rates rising into the thousands. When the horrified mutants fought back, it only served to further implicate them. Dark times followed.
Segregation. High unemployment. Excessive poverty. Zero political representation. The swift and shameless removal of mutant rights. Then the Sentinels were unleashed. Those robots were the worst of all the factors contributing to the quick demise of mutant-kind. The final nail in the coffin.
They were getting erased.
That's where Charles and Erik came in, along with Logan and the remaining X-Men. They'd persevered through all of this turmoil due to sticking together and fighting through the onslaught of adversaries for countless years. But they couldn't keep up with the battles. They were beginning to ask when would it end? The answer was debilitating because each of them knew there wasn't a sunset that they could all skip off into. Death was the only escape.
Unless… they could go back and stop Raven. Because moving forward was no longer viable. But backward? Now that could be the key.
Kitty Pryde. She was a mutant capable of sending the human consciousness back into its former self, effectively allowing someone to travel through time. The X-Men knew that it was their best shot at changing the course of history.
Logan agreed to the risks. Kitty had been unsure of sending him all the way back to 1973, given the sheer amount of power that it took could cause him extreme harm- but they all knew that they needed to at least try. Everyone was tired of evading the inevitable.
The main objective was to interfere with Raven's assassination of Bolivar Trask in Paris. However he couldn't do it alone, so he would have to somehow recruit the younger versions of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, despite both men having complicated situations in 1973. Logan wasn't easily swayed. He'd fight tooth and nail to get the men to cooperate with him in order to keep history from continuing down the same tragic path. Nothing would stand in his way.
With that, Logan prepared to have his consciousness sent back fifty years, which was overwhelming to comprehend at first. But then he thought about the people he'd lost in all of this devastation, feeling a spark of something ignite within him. No later than that inspiring moment did Kitty begin the meditative process of launching him into the year of 1973.
He desperately hoped in that final second that he could end the suffering before it ever began.