Synopsis & Review by Specter313:
Synopsis: Sam is running through the Marauder’s hit list for Bobby. They started with Vargas, then moved onto the Dark Mother, then took out a whole facility, the Wohnhaus Strucker, in Germany. Then they moved on to the big guns like Gateway, Witness, and Cable, then finally, the X-Men. They don’t know the connection between all of them, but now they’re looking at footage of the mansion and where Providence should be, but there is smoke coming from the school and nothing left of the island. They can’t go anywhere because the jet is next to crippled, but Bobby suggests talking to Sunfire.

Back at the school, Exodus is telling Tempo to maintain the little time differential she has with everyone but the Acolytes moving very slowly. He says not to waist time and leads them to the first target, which is indeed Blindfold, only to find her dead. He reads the student’s minds to find out what happened, but doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, and just tells Frenzy and Random to move on to get the books. During the search, Random questions whether they’re on the right side, which Cargill tells him to cram it all, until they find the books, which he shows to her and asks who the real fool is now.

Shiro wakes up on sheet of ice high in the mountains with Sam looming over him. Sam figures Shiro won’t talk, so he’d rather finish their fight, and points out that Bobby is keeping things cold enough to stop Shiro’s powers from flaring up. They begin to fight, with Sam saying that he believes Shiro now about Cable’s death, and he manages to get Shiro to spill some beans, then knocks the former X-Man out. Bobby swoops in to find out what he learned, and Sam says it was never about killing the X-Men, it was about blinding them.

Exodus is not pleased with what he sees in the books, and tells Tempo to restore the time warp. The kids are shocked, but Rockslide stupidly tries to jump Exodus and ends up with a shattered arm and thrown through a wall, while the Acolyte leader demands to see Kitty Pryde. The woman herself pops up just then, along with Colossus, who sucker punches Exodus as the kids jump into the fight. They get in a few good hits, including X-23 managing to scratch Cargill, before the Sentinels show up, but Exodus takes out their pilots, and then knocks out all the kids as well. He then turns his powers on Kitty, forcing her to stay half phased in a wall, then demands that she tell him where the real diaries are. Turns out, the ones at the school are all blank, but she keeps saying they’re the real ones, until he realizes she actually believes they’re real. Someone has altered her mind to believe this, and he calls for the Acolytes to leave, saying he only knows five telepaths who could do that. Him and Sinister, Jean is dead, Xavier is depowered, so that only leaves one other.

Cut to Emma, still paralyzed, but starting to get some feeling back as the others dig their way out of the rubble. She can only speak through her telepathy still though, and gets back in touch with Sam and Bobby. She wonders how they’re coming with the info, and Sam says they know the Marauders are targeting psychics, precogs, and anyone with a connection to Destiny’s Diaries. She finishes that it’s likely they’re trying to hide some information from them, but the diaries are still safe, and then gives the directions of where to head, and will explain on the way.

Back at the school, the kids are starting to come to and starting to really how bad they were beaten. Kitty doesn’t want to hear Rockslide’s crap, as she has to tell Blindfold’s parent’s she’s dead, but Prodigy thinks she’s not really dead. She told him “thank you” when she touched Elixir, and she likely had a vision of Exodus coming to kill her, so she hid in the only place she could, and Laura even says she doesn’t smell dead, and Kitty immediately calls for a gurney.

Sinister is not happy. Anything less than a successful completely of all missions is considered a failure. Exodus says all the targets except Bishop have been taken out, and Mystique says they’ve taken out at least one team of X-Men and damaged their resources enough to cripple them. Gambit looks at Rogue, pointing out they damaged more than that, but she’ll be fine. Sinister can use her since she has some of the diaries in her mind, but isn’t forgetting that Exodus didn’t find the real ones. Mystique is incredulous since she believes her intel was perfect, but Exodus points out they were fakes. Sinister says it doesn’t matter now, since all it means is one of the X-Men know where they are, and thanks to Xavier, he knows where the X-Men are, he says as he puts on his own version of Cerebra.

Review: So we finally get confirmation, and several more deaths, about the real reason behind the Marauders and Acolytes attacks. Someone like Vargas or the Dark Mother I’m sure a lot of readers aren’t going to get up in arms over, but I was a bit shocked that they offed Gateway so easily. Especially since he seems to have stronger ties to the X-Men than anyone else so far, including Bishop, who is on their hit list as well. It does make sense though that they would go through extra measures to protect the Diaries, because even though Claremont may not have told the best story about them in X-Treme, they have the potential to be a major force in the X-universe.

On the art, I really don’t know what else to say anymore. Ramos has no clue how to do major action scenes period. It’s not just the depth problems anymore, you can’t even tell who’s fighting who in his stuff. And he even waste’s golden opportunities, such as Hisako vs. Unuscione, which could have been a great panel, but we get something of them just glaring at each other. And his Sinister is horrid as well. He looks like a Marilyn Manson wannabe and the crystal on his forehead and chest are way too big from everything we’ve seen of him in the past.