Summary: A few days after Magneto found him, Toad sits in his leader's hidden base and thinks about how he was mistreated and why he let it happen. He watches as Astra II appears in a teleportation portal with some alien devices. Astra argues with Magneto, saying how he hasn't used anything she's brought him, except to spy on a blue devil in Germany and a brother and sister in Transia. She says she wants to make money from this, but Magneto refuses her, so she leaves, seemingly for good. Meanwhile, Toad has found a small light-blub-like device, which he seems to remember from his time on the Stranger's ship. Before he can completely identify it, however, Magneto turns on him and blasts him away.

At the same time, Juggernaut is digging his way out of the collapsed temple mountain in Korea, raging internally at what a mess he made of his life afterwards.

Elsewhere, Jean meets Bobby. Jean tells Bobby that she has figured out a way to access the enchephalographic harness and contact everyone, because Prosh won't answer her "calls." She starts to access the harness to find the others...

In Germany, Mystique wakes up on top of a truck, having escaped the Hydra agents who had captured her. She realizes that it was the jump that woke her up when she had previously been knocked out. Prosh then appears to her and links them all together, offering to "save Jean the headache."

The five minds again question Prosh's motives and the reasons for these time jumps. Prosh maintains that they are learning important facts that when put in context of the bigger picture, will all make sense. Then he prepares to send them back even further. Jean and Bobby realize this will probably be a jump to a time before they were born and aren't happy about being left out. Mystique says "tough" but Toad promises not to mess up.

A few minutes after the jump, Cain Marko is standing outside a large holding tank in which a baby is floating, hooked up to a breathing apparatus. He senses through the harness that the baby is Toad! Cain recalls that his dad brought him to this consulting project he was checking out in order to get him away from his step-brother Charles. He looks around and sees hundreds of these tanks, each with a baby inside. He wonders what his dad was really doing here. He vows to get Toad out just as a security guard puts a gun to his head and marches him out of the room. Cain protests his innocence, but the guard doesn't care, he just wants to get Cain out of the range of the security cameras in the hall and pushes him inside a small room. The guard then reveals himself as Mystique. Raven mentions that she was here at this time to check up on a old friend...

Cut to Kurt Marko, who is being led through the facility by Alex Ryking (his colleague from Almagordo) and Irene Adler (Destiny)! Marko is amazed by the number of mutants being held in tanks like Toad's, but is curious about the motivations of the projects founder and sponsor, Amanda Mueller, also known as the Black Womb. Irene notes that the tanks they are viewing are only holding cells for genetic sampling - all the births were carried out normally and the children will be released after examination, but these are only the defective ones, whom Mueller has opted not to fix because she is interested in seeing how they will develop. Marko asks why Mueller is doing all this, and in Mueller's secret observation room, a shadowed figure says "For me, of course..."

Meanwhile, Raven and Cain are trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Raven recalls Irene telling her that she was at Black Womb to help safeguard the future. Cain is upset that Raven was in this place 20 years earlier and learned nothing. Raven berates him for his petty jealousy of mutants, which Cain first denies, but then accepts. They realize that Prosh has sent them back in time to learn everything, even if they can do nothing. Then they jump again.

All five travelers' minds now flash throughout time, viewing critical points in mutant history and in the history of the world, journeying back all the way to the first cell and the Big Bang until they come full circle...

Mystique wakes up face down on hte ground in the rain. She is shocked to see her effectively naked body covered in blue scales, with glowing eyes and short red hair. Then she sees a radically altered Toad in fatigues, thinner and also with short hair jumping around evading a Sentinel. Toad says they're in their future. Mystique barely has time to register that when the two of them are cut down by a laser blast. Then the Sentinel explodes. Bobby is floating in midair, wondering how he's able to use his powers the same way he did when Prosh accessed his mind earlier. Then he too is shot, and another Sentinel prepares to terminate Iceman as his shattered body lies on the ground.

Review: This issue rocked! X-Men Forever is shaping up into an incredibly cool LS!

Starting from the top, though, I was a little disappointed with the wrap-up of the Astra plot dangler. There was so much potential in her implied relationship to Nightcrawler and the early days of the Brotherhood that could have led to truly startling revelations, etc., but instead, this scene explains it all away in a millisecond. I mean, I was glad to see the Astra thing resolved, but I was kind of hoping for more.

On the flip side, the running sub-plot with Toad is building, I guess to next issue. What does he subconsciously know that's so important? I'm very intrigued. Admittedly, it is a little strange to see him so concerned for this mission, given his association with the Brotherhood only 2-3 issues later (remember this is before X-Men #106), but the hormonal imbalance does have more validity now that we know that Toad was one of the "defectives" monitored by Black Womb.

The Black Womb scenes were definitely the highlight of this issue. Destiny's presence completely stunned me, and I thought it was appropriate that Kurt Marko joined up, as he does reveal that he knew about Xavier's powers before he died. Maybe this is how. The whole concept of Black Womb was great. All the births are natural, but the kids are being monitored after birth. The only morally ambiguous thing I could see on the surface was the fact that Mueller refused to fix the defectives. The look on baby Toad's face when he heard that was perfect - pained beyond belief to hear that his biochemical problem (which led to a lifetime of suffering and self-doubt and -loathing) could have easily been fixed, but instead he was an "experiment."

Juggernaut's role wasn't really played up so much here. He seems to be coming around to accept the fact that he's wasted his life and his powers. But while in the MC2 universe he did join the X-Men, how many of us really think he's going to turn into a hero after this LS? Unfortunately this plot development will probably be lost and forgotten in a few months when the books are revamped. Too bad.

Finally, moving to the future was great! The movie references worked so well, even for those (pity them) who haven't seen the movie. Actually it makes sense that if Movie Mystique was always afraid of people finding out she's a mutant, or beating her up when they knew she was, that she would develop the protective scaly skin, so if in the future Mytsique was also hunted down, she would develop something similar. Too bad we didn't see more of Toad before they got fried. Bobby's part, while small, was important, as it again has him using his powers to his Omega-level potential. I hope that becomes his norm after this story.

On the whole, a really solid issue, with a lot of strong plot points and a lot of character development. If most of these points can be taken and used by future writers, this LS will really change the X-Universe!
A note on placement - this LS takes place before X-Men #106. Nice to see that clarified.