It is Christmas Eve and Emma, Jubilee, Paige and Monet are in Monet’s chalet home in Monaco. Emma is telling the girls how she loves Christmas Eve because its when everyone, no matter what they are, holds their breaths in anticipation of the dissapointments that will follow. Jubilee pitches in by telling Emma that not everyone celebrates Christmas to receive things, and she never asks anyone for anything, that way she never gets let down.
M, looking bored is not surprised that Jubilee is so cynical. Paige dosen’t believe either of them and says that Christmas should be a time for families and love. Jubilee asks her why she’s in Monaco then and not on the Guthrie farm, like every other year. Paige looks a bit shocked, not wanting to tell the others the disaster she had with Chamber at Thanksgiving last time she went home. M saves her by telling Jubilee to back off, and Paige asks M if she read her mind or talked to Jono. M says she dosen’t usually read minds, and Jubilee tells Paige its blatently obvious that she’s got the hots for Jono. Paige psionically begs Emma to help and Emma suggests a change of subject.
As they all sit down with hot cocoa, Jubilee is saying how they are a team, they are all comrades, they should be able to tell each other anything, even things they have never told anyone else. Emma thinks this is a good idea, and tells Jubilee to start.
(flashback to Jubilee’s past)
Jubilee reminisces about the time her powers first manifested. Her mom and dad were very busy, so Jubilee and her friend, Cynthia Jennifer, would go round the malls on their skateboards causing trouble. One day they were being chased by cops when they were separated. Jubilee ended up cornered and panicked - her powers errupted from her hands, and she made her escape. Cynthia found her washing her hands, as they felt like they were on fire, and Jubilee knew nothing would ever be the same again.
(present)
Jubilee finishes and challenges M. M walks to the window silently. Jubilee tells her she’s not gonna use her autism to get out of this one and M tells her just because Dr. McCoy suspects her to be autistic, it dosen’t mean she is. M then tells them the first time she used her powers - she realised she could be anything she wanted.
(M’s story)
A childlike flashback occurs, where M recounts how her nanny was shocked to discover her levitating one morning and how the masses of Monaco turned out to cheer her as she flew through the streets. She recalls being hesitant towards her father, but how he loved her and was proud of her once he saw what she could do.
(present)
As M concludes the tale, Emplate phases in by the window and tells her that her friends asked for the truth, but how honesty was never her forte. Emplate tells her that he has only returned to their home to talk - to beg. He has somehow frozen time so the others know nothing of their encounter. M looks shocked to see them frozen with auras round them, and Emplate tells her that she is using the portion of her mind that allows her to perceive mutants by their mutagenic auras. He asks her to set him free of his prison, so they may sup together as they did in their youth.
M denies this and Emplate tells her he is only teasing, but she can’t deny the hunger isn’t there. She asks him what he wants- apart from ruining her Christmas. He tells her he wants accountability - for her to at least acknowledge the reason he’s trapped in the dimension while she wanders round untethered by the burden of guilt over what happened to their mother. M loses it and tells him that their mother made her own choice, she did what she did so her children could live.
Emplate then loses it telling her she knows nothing of sacrifice, if it wasn’t for him then she would be the one who was suffering. M tells him she knows how he feels, but he tells her she can never know what its like to know your soul is no longer your own. As he does, the arms return pulling and grabbing. M looks shocked and Emplate tells her they are the souls of a hundred thousand beings, all tugging and tearing at his corporeal form. This is his life - this is what she claims to understand. As he is pulled back into the other dimension, M asks what she can do to help? Emplate tells her to find someone to take his place, but she tells him she cant. As he is pulled away, he tells her he is damned forever then.
Suddenly, M is back and the others know nothing of her encounter with her brother. Jubilee says she dosen’t believe M’s version of events, and the four women walk out onto the beach, lit by moonlight. Jubilee tells M that even for a mutant, M is ‘different’. As the two continue talking, Paige asks who’s next and Emma tells her its her go.
(flashback to Husk’s past)
Paige flashes back to her thirteenth birthday. Sam’s first away from home. She used to read his letters home about life in the New Mutants, training to be an X-Man. She would try for hours on end to trigger her mutant powers, but they would never come. Her mother would tell her that you can’t rush these things, but she didnt listen. She would practice for telekinisis, telepathy all sorts, but never with any sucess. One night, sick of waiting she went out to the fields and told God that if he didn’t make her a mutant soon, she would tear right out of her skin, which is exactly what happened. Falling to her knees in complte happiness, she thanked the lord.
(present)
Jubilee tells her that life must have been awful boring on the farm if thats all she had to get exited about. M tells Jubilee that life on the farm sounds better than life out here. Humans are hating mutants even more - soon there will be no place to hide. Jubilee asks who wants to hide? and Emma tells them Jubilee is right. Generation X, by extension of the X-Men’s point is to provide a means for all mutants to be free to live their lives in peace.
(flashback to Emma Frost’s past)
Emma then flashes back to when she was in her early teens. Her parents had had her locked away in a ‘clinic’, which was actually a lunatic asylum. An exclusive place where the rich and famous sent their problem kids to sit for years on end zoned out on various drugs. In her case she was there because of the voices she heard in her head. 24-7. Inside the asylum, she was fair game for the doctors and the guards. One day she realized that if she could hear their thoughts, then maybe she could make them hear hers, and as one of the guards tried to force himself on her, she seized his mind and told him to take her away from the place. She left the place ablaze and never looked back, having learnt that she would never have to ask for anything twice again in her life.
(present)
As Emma finishes her story, M tells the others she thinks its great that they have all shared these things. Paige asks why they jut couldn’t have sung Christmas Carols like the rest of the world, and Emma tells them its because they arn’t like the rest of the world.
At that moment, back at the School, Mondo trudges through the snow to a shadowy figure in the trees. Asking if its time, Black Tom tells him to be patient, the time will come - sooner than he thinks.
