When the casket is placed over the grave, the Reverend says there will be a few minutes of silent prayer, but Xavier can’t help but listen in to these prayers. Emma knows this, so she thinks of how Xavier thought he had the perfect formula for the future, but there is no such thing, as we see images of the original five X-Men and the destruction of Genosha. She can’t help but think maybe they got what they deserved. Wolverine is staring at the coffin when he sees flashes of Mariko Yashida, Jean, and then Sabretooth inside it, and inadvertently pops his claws at the last one, which Kurt chastises him over. He apologizes, saying he was miles away, as we see him thinking of himself old and standing over the graves of his teammates. Xavier continues his scanning, when he comes across an old man thinking about forcing a vote or trying a coup when he sees Xavier watching him, sighs that there’s no more privacy, the clicks something which blocks Xavier out of his mind.

After the coffin is lowered into the ground, Cyclops approaches the boy’s family to share his condolences and thank them for letting him and the others attend. The mother begins to say it was no problem, but the father snaps that they only came to cross a name off a list and mourn their own problems. Emma telepathically suggests giving this guy a migraine, but Scott says they’re only there to mark the boy’s passing. The father asks if Scott ever lost someone he cared about, and when he says yet, the dad says he knows how private grieving can be, and Scott says they won’t intrude any further.

Rahne and Rictor are walking away from the church with her going on about God’s plan. He wonders who she’s trying to convince, him or herself. She says this hasn’t shaken her faith and asks if he’s afraid for the future. He says this kid died with his powers and knowing who he was, he was one of the lucky ones.

As Bishop makes one last sweep of the grounds and goes to pay his respects, he comes across Bobby and Sam. Things start off friendly, but Sam wants to know why Bishop didn’t warn them of this, being from the future and all. Bishop says his time had its own problems, like many records being destroyed, and asks if they think he’d really hold back on something like this? Maybe he’s just from a different future, but maybe it’s not.

When Nightcrawler informs Mercury and X-23 that their car will be leaving soon, Cessily asks him if he knows how the boy died. It wasn’t a hate crime or anything dramatic, the boy was simply struck by a car by accident. This sends Cessily off, saying that’d she’d punch the boy if he wasn’t already dead, he should have been more careful with mutants now being an endangered species, breaking down into tears at the end.

The old man from earlier is heading to his town car when Xavier approaches him, calling him Sebastian. Turns out, this man was none other than Sebastian Shaw under an image inducer, and when asked why he’s there, he says that it was just to pay respects like the X-Men. If it was so simple, why did he activate a psi-shield when he saw Xavier watching him? Nothing simpler than wanting to keep his thoughts to himself, but when Shaw’s goons try to jump Xavier only to be easily knocked out, Charles finds it hard to believe Shaw isn’t acting like his old self. Shaw tells him to believe whatever he likes, it doesn’t matter to him, and says that he, Charles, and Erik were supposed to be the smart ones, but always ended up fighting each other. He then gets in his car, sending his regards to Emma, and takes off.

Beast and Madrox are walking together with Hank explaining how he’s at a complete loss of what to do next to solve the power loss problem. Jamie wonders why someone doesn’t try some kind of breeding program, but Beast says there are not enough mutants left, to which Jamie simply snaps his fingers to create several dupes. Beast says it’s not that simple, because even with all the dupes, there still isn’t enough genetic variation, and when it’s that low, a species can’t really be saved, but he won’t stop trying his hardest.

Scott has finally made it over to a secluded part of the cemetery to he can let off a big optic blast at the sky. Logan shows up and asks if it made him feel any better. Scott tells of how he tried to recruit the boy in the last year, but was turned down and just moved on to the next kid. Logan goes on to say that it takes a major situation like this to really look at death and life. It’s hard to realize that they’re all fighting the same fight to exist until something like this comes along, and even though they could know that they’re going to lose, it’s a question of how many rounds they last. They both agree that they will never stop fighting because they don’t know how, as lightning cracks in the sky and the clouds part to let the gleaming sun break through.

Review: Well, this was an interesting start. Obviously, this is more of a talking heads kind of issue with very minimal to no action at all, but these are something that Carey can really excel at. Nearly every single X-character who made an appearance got some time to show their own personal feelings towards the loss of so many mutants, and each voice easily flowed with what we’ve seen of these characters in the past and made sense for them to be saying what they did. It was even nice to see some characters we haven’t seen in awhile with Bishop and Shaw. I don’t know how much they’re going to factor into the actual event, but it was interesting to get their thoughts on things, especially Shaw, since he’s one of the villains that has really been teetering on becoming a major villain to the X-Men. Bishop also, thanks to his actions during Civil War, has a lot to make up for, so this event could maybe mend some fences between him and his former teammates.

The art here is really beautiful. I’ve seen some previews from the next endangered species stuff, but it doesn’t quite hold up to this, even though they’re both by Scott Eaton. It’s probably due to different inkers and colorists, but if they can get Dell and D’Armata back to partner with Eaton again, I think they could make a really, really great team on any of the main X-books. Heck, even one of the lower X-books, I just want to more of him in the X-universe because his stuff is just that good.