We start where we left issue one, Kurt and David in the graveyard by Ruth’s grave.
David does some impromptu psychic surgery and goes inside Kurt’s head.
To find himself on a pirate ship (previously seen when Jean and Ororo went into his head way back in Extraordinary X Men) which seems to be under attack.
David goes to the figurehead on the prow and prises something off, then returns to the outside world.
He shows Kurt what he has, a dripping corrupt lump of something, in the form of a coin.
This alien invader has been causing Kurt’s disquiet and is our first concrete proof that someone or something is Up To No Good on Krakoa.
But David also has a problem and needs Kurt to repay him; his body is about ten minutes away from tearing reality apart. He gives Kurt coordinates and instructions to go back to Krakoa and bring back reinforcements.
In the Green Lagoon, Doctor Nemesis is idly buttering up Fabian Cortez (he want to experiment on him with his self grown psychotics). He and Dazzler exchange barbs.
Kurt turns up, he needs Doctors Nemesis’ experience with David.
Pixie is chatting with Loa, they’re discussing Loa wanting to take Mercury to the gala, it’s very sweet.
Kurt ropes Pixie in, she says he doesn’t need her as his teleportation skill has had such an upgrade (ooooh!) but as they’re leaving, Lost (the attenuated gravity controlling mutant from last issue) turns up, wanting to speak to Kurt again. He is unable to stop and talk, due to David’s critical deadline. Kurt ports away, Fabian is Fabian at poor Lost, causing her to lose control of her powers and cause everyone in the bar to vomit. We get an arial shot of the bar showing The Patchwork Man looming over Cortez, no one seems aware of him.
Kurt, Pixie and Dr N bamf to Saudi Arabia to a fully branded Orchis base, it’s in ruins, it’s scientists dead. They have David’s brain in a jar. They have been doing wicked Orchis stuff with it, there’s a datapage. Kurt and Pixie go into David’s mind to help him.
In his head, they find chaos and lots of superheroes fighting each other in savage and fatal ways, it’s a nightmare with rivers of blood in the streets.
outside his head, David tells Dr N that he doesn’t know how Orchis got hold of him, he just remembers Blindfold, Ruth saying one word ‘Inevitable’.
Dr N calls the chaos in his psyche anomie, the hypothetical decline of a society without social limits, Orchis were using David’s multiple personalities to model the decline and fall of Krakoa. Not content in allowing it to happen naturally, they want to introduce an ‘invasive exotic’ to speed the fall up. It looks jolly like a spaceship we’ve seen during HoX/PoX. Nimrod’s colour code. The mutants in the simulation are chanting “Me not We”.
David is losing control, killing his disembodied brain is the only solution to save him tearing reality apart. Kurt tells him how he got the name Nightcrawler and implies that there is nothing wrong with being Legion, he seems to be implying that David should embrace his strangeness, the way Kurt has had no choice but have to do.
Using Dr N’s gun, Kurt delivers the coup de gras. He starts to say “Father forgive me” but doesn’t finish the statement, it’s not clear if this is because of a crisis of faith or because he knows that David will soon be resurrected. It’s still powerful, we don’t see Kurt killing.
And the shit just gets weirder.
There’s a page from Kurt’s Bible about David’s killing which segues into a page of various locations on Krakoa and the important line seems to be “The unmistakable sensation if something descending. The risks were weighed, the precedents against the possibilities. The heart against the head. But no one was listening .”
Somehow, this doesn’t feel good.
The Five spontaneously decide to resurrect David, they’ve being watched over by the Xorn brothers.
Charles and Magneto are there and Chuck out and out says he won’t implant David’s mind in his husk. Don’t worry, says David, did it myself! Magnificent scene!
David is very dismissive of Chuck and Mags, he doesn’t trust either of them, he turns down Mags offer to join with his band of Omegas. He does trust Kurt.
They walk off, Kurt is worried that Orchis has already seeded Krakoa with something to hasten Krakoa falling into chaos. David doesn’t disagree.
Kurt asks him if he knows who The Patchwork Man is.
Oh yeah, Legion knows. Another reason not to trust Chuck and Mags.
The Patchwork Man is
spoilers:
end of spoilers...