In the present, Moira repeats this last line on the recording, to which Wolverine, Beast, and Nightcrawler all find a bit disturbing. They all felt it is important to see what is so important that Banshee felt the need to hand deliver it, and someone felt the need to kill him to try and prevent that.

In the past again, Xavier is showing Moira telepathically what he last saw of the X-Men. They are on Krakoa, running from one of the giant plant beasts. Iceman tries attacking it, but is soon taken out. Angel is being attacked by the birds and is also taken out by a large vine. Cyclops and Jean are the only ones left, and she’s pinned down by one of the creatures, and when another large one reaches for them, that is when his link cut out. Moira can’t believe it, and wonders if they’re still alive. He says he can still sense them there with Cerebro, and when she asks what she can do to help, he says he’ll need her students.

Back at their mysterious holding place, Rachel wakes up to find her and Scott’s restraints have fallen off. She quickly gets moving and wakes Scott, saying she thinks their captor has fallen asleep. He doesn’t totally understand how she knows this, and she says she still has some of the stuff she picked up when she was in his head earlier. He never used to be this powerful, and he’s not ready to control all this new power yet and is finally making some mistakes. As they head upstairs, they find Scott’s visor, and when the reach the upper floors, he recognizes the place. He’s not sure exactly where or what it is, he just knows that he’s been there before. She asks him again if he doesn’t know who the mystery guy is, and he says again no, and asks why. Well, she picked up that this guy thinks he used to be one of the X-Men.

The other X-Men are now playing the rest of the video of Moira and learning about these students of hers. They are, of course, the mutants that we’ve met in the back up stories of the past few issues. First we see Sway learning to stop certain objects while dodging others, Petra using her powers over earth to take out robots of various sizes, and Darwin being pummeled with flamethrowers and having it feel just like a warm breeze to him. This even impresses Xavier himself. Then we meet the fourth and final student, who looks very familiar to a certain mystery guy we’ve been wondering about. He calls himself Kid Vulcan, and is an energy manipulator with great potential, which Xavier clearly recognized. His past is still a mystery, with the only name he’s ever given is Gabriel, when he was found the only thing he had on him was a copy of Roman mythology, and only wants to be better in the use of his powers. Moira realized that she knew Xavier would be wanting them to put their lives in danger to help the others, and the only thing she could really say was that it was up to them.

Later, Xavier is meeting with them a bit more formally, and Gabriel instantly recognizes him being from the X-Men. Xavier says that the reason why he is there is that he needs their help, which the kids are actually a bit surprised at. He explains the situation and doesn’t lie when he says that it would be very dangerous, but if they agree, he’ll be with them mentally the whole way, and will give them a crash course in their powers to take them to higher levels than they ever thought. Gabe asks if this would make them X-Men, and when Charles confirms, he jumps for it immediately. Moira thinks it should be discussed a bit more, but Gabe, who seemingly speaks for all the others as the leader, says there is no need; of course they’ll do it.

The next several pages are filled with flashes of memories the students get as part of the crash course in their powers that Xavier promised them. Xavier is showing all these to Moira as well in their own mindscape, but Moira is still very worried. She wonders if they know these memories aren’t real, to which he says no, and they shouldn’t find out as it would make them doubt all this. She’s still so shocked that he’d actually actively put kids in danger like this, but he says they won’t be kids for long, and they need to be prepared to go into a world that doesn’t want them. This worries her more, saying he sounds like Magneto, but he argues that the man isn’t wrong about everything, and that these kinds of kids are the future and they can be good examples for those yet to come. But what if they don’t want to be examples, asks Moira, and just want to be normal kids? As the memories finish up with Xavier giving them their own uniforms, he tells her that they don’t have that luxury, as the X-Men are there to help the world and living in denial won’t help. Now, the kids are getting ready to board a jet and head off to Krakoa. Moira says on the recording that she noticed Xavier talk to Vulcan over on the side about something she thought was just last minute details of the mission. The kids couldn’t have been more proud to be X-Men now, and then all of a sudden, they were gone off on the mission. But had she know what Xavier really said to Gabe before they left, then she never would have let them go, she says just as the recording gives out. Wolverine tells Hank to try and get it back, but Beast says they were lucky to get as much as they did, and there’s nothing he can do. They realize that Logan and Kurt weren’t on the first team to mount a rescue on Krakoa and they wonder why haven’t they heard of this team, or better yet, just what happened to them over there?

Scott and Rachel have finally made it outside, and they find a sign on the building saying it was a Muir-MacTaggert Research building. She asks if Moira ever had a property in the states. The memories finally come back a bit for him, saying that this was a place Xavier helped Moira design, only a few hours away from the institute, and that they came her to help Alex once, and one other time but he can’t remember just what for. Why can’t he remember? Because he didn’t want you to, says a voice from above. Down comes Kid Vulcan, saying that this was the first place he met Scott before he saved them from the island. Scott still can’t understand what he’s saying, and Gabriel gets rather angry. He’s saying that Scott’s dear old mentor didn’t want him to know that he sacrificed Scott’s dear long lost brother to save him! So he messed with his head like he’s done to so many before, and then had all the X-Men leave him and his friends for dead!

Back up story: "Kid Vulcan" Gabriel has the same dream ever night. Make that a nightmare, actually. He sees himself as he’s growing up, surrounded by some kind of reddish liquid inside a chamber, and with a strange man with crazy goggles observes him. They always end with some giant pincers reaching for him and he wakes up from the fear.

However, when he wakes, it’s not the end, as memories will flood in, filling in the pieces of his missing memory. He remembers being kept as a servant in a strange fortress like place, with other people that strange hair like feathers, which we clearly know to be the Sh’iar. He remembers one woman in particular who was very kind to him, and we see her giving him the book on Roman mythology where he found his future name of Kid Vulcan.

Moira finds Gabe roaming the halls one night after the dreams, and asks if he’s alright and feels bad for letting someone work with him which apparently caused the dreams. He’s fine with it, however, as bad memories are better than none at all. However, he lies to her when he says that he is still only getting bits and pieces, because that night he remembered when his powers manifested. The kind woman tries to help him, but he ends up unintentionally killing her instead. He then remembers that her name was Dai’andrial. He gets more flashes of him escaping from wherever he was held, killing at least two more Sh’iar, and running through a forest. And then a year later, he was found in the sewers of New York, and then taken in by Moira, who he immediately felt he could trust.

Not long after, he meets Moira’s friend, Charles Xavier, who he immediately knew from the X-Men as they had been talked about all the time on TV as the famous mutant superheroes. Xavier automatically took a large interest in Gabe, and we see that his mind probes are the cause of the nightmares. He apologizes for starting such a horrifying experience, but says that until they learn about his past, he won’t be able to have complete control over his powers.

Soon after, Cyclops even makes an appearance at Moira’s labs, brought by Xavier to meet the youngster. They even got to train together, thrilling Vulcan and impressing Cyclops with the kid’s control.

And a little later, he overhears a small argument between Moira and Xavier. She thinks he’s pushing Gabe too hard, but he doesn’t think so. He is more powerful than she knows, and she wonders just why he has such an interest in the boy. He thinks that there is something wrong about his age, and a bit more, but he also thinks that he could even on day join the X-Men. This is all Gabe needed to hear and all he could think about. Kid Vulcan of the X-Men. I think he liked the sound of that.

Review: Well, probably some of the biggest shockers are finally revealed! Ok, so maybe this isn’t the first place they were spilled, what with all the over press coverage of this series, and we were able to fill in most of the blanks ourselves, it still doesn’t really take away from this issue. The writing was still very smart and enthralling that we’ve come to expect from Brubaker. While the whole situation of Xavier blindly dragging these inexperienced kids into a life or death situation is something I don’t think anyone can totally agree with, you can see his desperation and just why he did what he did. At least so far. So, we know that Xavier basically sent these kids to their deaths, and that one of them happened to be the long lost brother of two of his students. That is something really major and can be quite unforgivable to the X-Men. Especially when you add on the fact that he had to have mindwiped some of them since they clearly had not known about these kids until just now.

Now that these mysteries have been revealed, you may think that we know all we need to know. Wrong. There are still a lot of big questions left to be revealed. What did Xavier say to Vulcan before they left that would have driven Moira to put a stop to it? What did Xavier do that makes Vulcan think that he purposely sacrificed him and his friends to save the others? Just how many others knew of their existence and why was it so horrible that Xavier had to mindwipe them? How often has Xavier had to do something like that? Just what happened to them on the island that caused their deaths even with all the mental training Xaver gave them? What exactly is Vulcan’s lineage now that we know he’s a Summers? You can see that there is a lot left unanswered, so stay tuned.

Also, I must admit, the more that I see of the other kids Moira took in, the more I like them. They have so much potential and even with what little we’ve seen, they each have their own individual personalities that make them more real. Ed, should you ever happen to read this, PLEASE consider bringing them back!

I really cannot wait to see what is going to happen next. What will Scott’s reaction be to finding out this villain is his brother? Will they find Xavier and how will he answer for what he has done? What will Vulcan do next on his quest for revenge? I haven’t been this pumped for something like this in quite some time.