Summary: Time: some months ago. Mystique recalls the birth of her son Graydon Creed and giving him up for adoption as she prepares to kill him! She realizes that the reason she didn't remember killing Creed before was because it is her future self (transported to the past by Prosh) who actually set the plasma weapon up. Meanwhile, Jean and Bobby, linked by Prosh through their encephalographic harnesses, grapple with the question of tampering with the timestream by stopping Creed's murder or letting history play out as before. At the murder scene, Mystique flips the switch that sets the weapon with a tear as the harness activates and jumps everyone to a new time. As the others adjust to their new settings, Mystique finds herself reliving the day that her companion Destiny was killed. She freaks and ignores Forge's offer of help. An hour later, Raven walks on the beach, realizing that the reason she doesn't remember this portion of this day is because her present (future) self is living it. At the shoreline, figures suddenly emerge from the water, courtesy of Legion, who complains of voices shouting in his head. He tells Mystique that she must kill him and connects with her mind when she questions him. He shows her the events from the future that will lead to the Age of Apocalpyse and some from the alternate timeline itself, and says that he had to kill Destiny to stop her from showing him more. Raven is enraged and threatens to kill Legion now, but Legion says she can't change Destiny and she backs down. The harness activates again. Bobby and Toad get headaches from the increased difficulty of maintaining a link with Prosh this far in the past. Prosh tells them that they have to stop Mystique from accessing certain files at her job in the Pentagon. At the same time, Mystique recalls how Carol Danvers, Wolverine and Storm once infiltrated the Pentagon to wipe out all federal records of the X-Men. It's four days later, and Raven Darkholme is in the process of running a hard-drive scrub on the deleted files. She morphs into Nick Fury to throw off some agents and makes off with the disk. Meanwhile, Prosh has Bobby step into the shower and allow him to access his powers with the harness. On the road, Mystique's car is assaulted by Toad, causing it to crash into a hydrant. While Raven pulls her guns, Bobby shoots out of the hydrant in a spray of ice. Mystique uses the distraction to escape and goes home. She encounters Destiny and Rogue. Destiny senses something different and asks Rogue to leave. Irene reveals that she knows that Mystique is from the future, and that the disk will give Raven answers long-denied. Mystique asks Destiny to tell her how much she's always known, but Irene says the worst is still to come, and that Raven did exactly what Irene wanted. As Raven goes to view the files, Irene breaks down and silently begs for forgiveness. Mystique opens the files to find linkages between early studies of mutation by Xavier, Kurt Marko and Dr. Nathan Milbury to Black Womb and the actual creation of mutants. SHe's avout to read something about aliens when the harness activates again. Jean, who has spent this jaunt in the healing cocoon in Jamaica Bay, body wracked by radiation, gives silent thanks, but her relief is short-lived as she re-enters the timeline on the very day that The Phoenix died!

Review: As the cover suggests, this issue focuses primarily on Mystique. My guess is that this will be the structure for this LS, with each character being focused on in one issue. Still, there were some interesting points brought up about the other protagonists along the way, which was good to see. One of the main things that pleased me about this issue was that it began resolving some of the many dangling plotlines in the X-Men's history. First was the Creed issue. I always thought it was Bastion, who felt a martyr would push his agenda foward faster. The actual explanation of Mystique faking everyone out (including Pyro) does make sense, though I question how she could wake up with the memory of killing Creed when even though he "future" self was now in that time period, she still hadn't done it yet? That was a little out of sequence, by time travel rules. She shouldn't have had any "memory" of killing Creed until she actually DID set the trigger. Anyway, there's another inconsistency built into the descriptions of the event itself too, which was annoying. The other event that has started to clear is Destiny's death. Why did she allow Legion to kill her? Or as was revealed, cause Legion to kill her? Again, I always thought David was acting under the influence of the Shadow King at that point, like when he contracted his shield and let Sunder die. This interpretation makes it seem like Destiny wanted to die, which leads to all sorts of interesting questions. Was she trying to PREVENT the Age of Apocalypse because she knew some villains would cross over? Was she trying to force Raven into killing Legion? And then there's Legion's pointed question about Irene's "innocence." This is supported later on, when Destiny begs for giveness for how she's used Raven. There's still a lot more to be learned about Destiny, which we can assume will be a primary focus of Claremont's new title. Anotehr thing I really liked about this issue was the smaller treatments that some of the other chracters got, most notably Iceman and Toad. I was very happy to see Prosh using Bobby's powers to the max. As Prosh himself noted, it's only Bobby's mind that isn't ready to deal with the full force of what he can do. I hope that by the end of this LS, Bobby is ready to really take control of his powers, and maybe find some direction for his life. Toad was also interesting, in the way that he jumped to different time periods but found himself basically in an unchanged situation. It would be interesting to see what happens if the "present" sympathetic Toad jumped into a hostile version of himself as started acting so differently. Finally, I also enjoyed the twist that has been thrown into the works here regarding Prosh's motives. Why would he send Raven to get the disk and then decree that she shouldn't be allowed to see it? Was it just to motivate her? I think so, because he could have pulled her out at any minute, but chose to wait until she had seen up to the part about extra-terrestrials involved in the dawn of the mutant age. That whole sub-point was very intriguing as well. A word on the art in that scene: I really enjoyed watching Raven's facial expressions change from panel to panel, going form amusement and skepticism to concern, shock and horror. Really nicely done. But what is Prosh's real deal? Why pick these specific moments in time? Good questions. Last, a question about the final scene. Is Jean arriving in the Phoenix-clone's mind as she died? Why wouldn't she arrive in her own body (still in the Bay)? If she can merge with her clone's mind, could she also combine with Madelyne at some point? Also, once the Phoenix-clone is dead, wouldn't its "mind" return to its cosmic state? Will Jean even be able to handle that? Should be interesting. Anyway, this LS is off to a rocking start, and looks like it will have the potential to be one of the classic stories of this year - IF the menace is solid and the story remains consistent.
A note on placement - this LS takes place before X-Men #106. Nice to see that clarified.