Las Vegas:
As she looks at the blood in the shower, Storm muses she’s felt worse: she’s been taken over by Brood, shot in the head, was devolved by Sauron but this is bad. And she only has herself to blame. Grimly, she corrects herself. She can blame Yukio.
Later, Storm silently heads for the limo while Yukio babbles. She tells her she was amazing and now Oakland has Yukio’s back. No one’s going to challenge her for a long, long time. She got Storm on a charter back to New York. But she can cancel. They can hang. Girls’ night out, just like the old days.
Is she going to renounce her ties to the Four Clans and work with her towards dissolving them completely? Storm finally speaks. She doesn’t—Yukio begins. Then no, Storm replies.
Ororo boards the plane without looking back, still angry. She examines her cracked ankle bones. Her injuries are part of the job. What bothers her is how Yukio killed Kuva behind her back.
The woman sitting opposite her, a nurse with a box next to her, recognizes Storm. She thanks her for what she did for that fishing village in Santo Marcos. She’s from the Philippines. They get a lot of hurricanes. It’s nice to know somebody cares. Ororo thanks her but it looks to her the nurse is the hero in this plane. The nurse looks at the box. She is just helping get it where it needs to go. The donor is the real hero. She’s an aunt. Hasn’t talked to her sister in twenty years. Hasn’t even met her niece. But then a friend calls, tells her the girl needs help. Storm is impressed. The nurse continues that over six thousand people donate a kidney every year. That’s a lot of heroes, Storm admits.
An elderly woman announces her displeasure. She is not going to fly on a plane with a mutant. The pilot asks what the trouble is. The woman replies there is a mutant on board. The African one who controls the weather. She did not pay three thousand to have her life endangered by one of them!
The other passengers are a US senator and his bodyguards. One of them peers at Storm and is clearly nervous. The senator tells him to calm down. This is still America. If the captain assures them everything’s okay…
The pilot snaps everyone aboard passed the TSA and priority transport much more stringent security screens. And they’ve got a kidney in a box that needs to be in New York in less than nine hours. Eight, the nurse corrects him and thanks him. The captain continues everyone aboard is free to leave or stay as they see fit. They are leaving in five minutes.
The plane flies into a thunderstorm which wasn’t caused by Storm. The elderly woman is clearly frightened, so Storm dissolves the thunderhead. The woman looks at her. Storm smiles and the other woman’s face softens.
Suddenly, the plane is hit by something, or rather shot by a group of flying men in wingsuits outside. The senator’s body guards draw their guns and aim them at Storm, telling her that’s enough. She shouts they are on attack from the outside. “Look out the window!”
One man looks outside and claim to see only smoke. She’s lying. The other orders her to put her hands behind her back. Angrily, Storm considers what she could do to them. But then what would happen to everyone else? She looks at the nurse. Suddenly something hits the plane violently. The senator pleads with Storm to stop.
Again, she stresses this isn’t her doing, but she will take care of it. She just needs him and his men to sit down—
That moment, the bodyguard kicks her already cracked ankle. Instinctively, Storm unleashes lightning which takes out the plane’s systems. The senator orders his guards to shoot her. The nurse shouts this was an instinctive reaction after his guard kicked her.
Clearly in pain, Storm gets up and orders everyone to buckle up. She will save them. Just no one shoot her. She stumbles toward the exit. Or they’ll all die, she adds.
A flight attendant shouts that they will be sucked out if she opens the hatch. With a smile, Storm reminds her she told them to buckle up, but don’t worry, she’s stabilizing the plane and evening out the air pressure.
She opens the door and steps outside and at the same time activates the unstable molecules in her clothes to turn into her uniform. She feels the plane dropping out of slipstream and sees one of the attackers. The plane is too close for her to use lightning and she grabs him by the ankle while at the same time keeping the plane in the air. Then she tosses the man against the plane. She grabs him by the throat and shouts who sent him, then she notices the logo on his suit, Eaglestar International, one of the clan rivals of Yukio, run by Davis Harmon. But they are supposed to be at peace now.
Another attacker shoots at Storm and her prisoner. Why are they doing this? she demands as she hits him. Too many balls in the air, girl, he leers.
Storm suddenly realizes she lost control of the plane. She does her best to carry the plane that weighs a hundred thousand pounds while she is still 1800 miles from New York. Her ankle is on fire. She can’t feel her foot. There’s blood in her eyes. The paramilitaries are gone. They know their job is done. She can’t do this for five hours. But she does.
Five hour later, she brings the plane down at La Guardia, New York. And then collapses. When paramedics approach her, she tells them to look after the nurse on the plane with the donor organ. The nurse is brought away. The pilot helps Storm up and informs her they actually arrived 23 minutes early. Storm laughs.
He tells her she saved them all but advises her to fly away as the senator is talking to the press and police, claiming Storm attacked his guards and destroyed the plane’s electrical systems. The pilot assures Storm he will tell the truth. She advises him to keep his mouth shut and back away before he gets dragged into this. The police approach to arrest her and, completely exhausted, Storm collapses.
