(The Age of Apocalypse)
Dallas, Texas. Three X-Men have come to this once thriving city to evacuate a few human survivors. Rogue and Morph are two of them, but they are being swamped by the enemy, and Angel’s air support hasn’t shown up like they were expecting. Hiding behind some debris, Rogue orders Morph to take a peek and let her know what the odds are. Being his usual comic self, Morph tries to lighten things up by stating that he was never good at math, but Rogue is not in the mood. Morph stretches his neck and from their hiding place he gazes at hundreds of Infinites on the street below. Rogue suggests to Blink that they teleport the survivors to safety, however Blink has gone. A male survivor says that the purple girl left about five minutes ago. Rogue is very, very angry.
Meanwhile, Blink is spying out one of Apocalypse’s dann
fortresses. A place where experiments are conducted on humans and other unspeakable acts of evil are carried out. They are meant to send a message to the people, telling them to give up and that there is no hope to overcome the will of their ruler Apocalypse. But Clarice Ferguson, aka Blink, charges her way into the fortress, blinking away attacking Infinites and remembering her life. Raised on the Bahamas, her parents brought her to the Unites States when she was four years old, to protect her as she was born with purple skin and strange markings. About four years later Apocalypse appeared and wrested control over America, and in one of Sinister’s raids her parents were killed. Clarice was brought to the pens from where she later was rescued by Victor Creed and taken into the X-Men. One of the Infinites mistakenly calls her Nightcrawler; but she tell them her name is Blink, and teleports him and several guards away. She doesn’t know where she’s sent them to however; which she blames it on Dark Beast’s “tampering” of her. Sometimes the matter she moves reappears elsewhere, sometimes it comes back or in other occasions is held in stasis.
As she fights her way into a dark laboratory, she finds a green skinned alien on an operating table. Blink silently curses at Apocalypse, when she suddenly hears a familiar voice, one that sends prickles up her spine. It’s the Dark Beast, who’s vile face appears on a giant monitor above her, taunting her about how “intimate” they were. He tells her that the green skinned creature is an ambassador for the planet Poppup who made the mistake lots of aliens made. He asked to be taken to earth’s leader and ended up in the Beast’s labs. of Dark Beast goes on to say that every strand of DNA of every member of this species is identical, and he plans on copying the original DNA over and over again to create a vast army!
At that moment, miles away, Rogue and Morph are in the heat of battle, thinking Blink has gone AWOL just when they needed her most. Rogue hopes that wherever Blink is she better show up soon.
Blink holds one of her crystal daggers over the alien’s body, planning to put him out of his misery. The Dark Beast does not believe she has the heart to do it as she is an X-Man now, and they are known for their soft attitude. Blink agrees, but states she was also trained by Sabretooth. The alien begs her to go through with it, but she still hesitates. Yet as the Dark Beast starts laughing, she finally rams the dagger into the aliens chest, who then gets teleported away, a result she did not expect. With his guinea pig gone, the Dark Beast angrily questions her where the alien has been teleported to, but he already suspects that Blink herself doesn’t know. She says that at least it’s better than here. The big monitor screen goes blank and the Dark Beast is gone.
(one week later)
At Grand Central Station, Blink sadly looks at what once was the awe-inspiring entrance into the greatest city on the face of earth. Now it’s nothing more than graveyard of dreams. She wonders whether there is anyplace better than this, any place that has not been turned into nightmare. Right then Magneto shows up, telling Blink that this is not working out. When Sabretooth rescued her from the pens, she said she wanted to help the X-Men, but she doesn’t do what she’s told and puts everyone else in jeopardy, so Magneto can no longer allow her to be part of his X-Men. Blink angrily replies that they are not his X-Men, and that they all have their own feelings and thoughts on everything ! “Don’t think you can get rid of me just because I wont march in goosestep with the rest of your mindless little sold...” begins Blink, before Magneto flattens her with a steel girder. He says he knows how she feels; like her he was raised in a death camp. He can relate the difficulty of believing in something when everything one has loved has been destroyed. Magneto tells her she has one more chance, and if she breaks it she wont have a home with the X-Men no longer. As he flies away, Blink screams at him, saying that maybe she doesn’t need the X-Men, maybe she doesn’t need anybody.
Apocalypse’s stronghold has been build on Manhattan Island, it is several miles long. Apocalypse lets anyone know where he lives, as he thinks that no one is suicidal enough to take the fight to him. Yet someone is - Blink. She wants to take the fight to the source of evil himself, and knows that she will most definitely die in the process; but a part of her wishes that, a release from the pain that has been there since she watched her parents slaughtered. Hiding in the shadows, she makes her way into the citadel unseen. Suddenly she becomes aware of a strange scene.
Holocaust has been alerted to an ambush in his master’s sanctum, by monsters from another world. In reality they are Baluurrians from the Negative Zone, who arrived through a breach between dimensions. Led by Blastaar, the Balluurrians battle the Infinites guard until Blastaar himself feels the power of one of Holocaust’s blasts. Blastaar orders his people to retreat, but he vows to return with an entire army that will crush Apocalypse and his people. Then they leave through their portal. Having witnessed the entire exchange, Blink wonders whether these Baluurrians might help them, as one of the Infinites spot her. Blink is ordered not to move, but the agile young woman outmoves him and before Holocaust or any of the Infinites can catch her, she jumps into the closing dimensional breach after the Baluurrians.
Blink finds herself waking up on a rock, floating though space in the Negative Zone. Suddenly a man points a gun in her face, telling her to speak and name herself. But Blink hesitates, saying she can’t remember who she is ...
