Prosh, the sentient ship, is escaping from a celestial. He must warn Earth of what he has learned inside the celestial.
On Earth, Senator Kelly is giving a speech in which he says that people must meet the new millennium together. Phoenix telepathically asks the X-Men if they are getting all of this, and Gambit confirms. Cable says Kelly is ahead by ten points in the polls. Phoenix scans the crowd and finds Ruckus, intending to harm Kelly. Nightcrawler teleports in and picks him up. Phoenix returns to the Blackbird and finds Cable’s Techo-organic virus acting up.
Elsewhere, Prosh touches down, and inside, he has replicas of The Stranger, Emma Frost in Iceman’s body, Kurt Marko, Destiny, and the cosmic construction worker who confronted Phoenix II after she sacrificed herself on the moon.
Back at the mansion, Phoenix and Cable know that the reason Cable’s virus is acting up is because Prosh must be back. Prosh had left Earth to save Cable’s life, as his frequencies were interacting with Cable’s techno-organic body parts, so they knows that something must be wrong if he’s back. Prosh contacts Phoenix and asks to meet her.
Phoenix meets Prosh, who has taken the form of the cosmic construction worker, at her old gravesite. Prosh says the form is supposed to evoke memories of Phoenix’s, but Jean says that although she has Phoenix II’s memories, it was not her who died on the moon and ancountered the construction worker. Prosh apologizes for having to confront Jean with the things the Phoenix Force did to her, but then tells her she needs to embrace concepts of universal proportions in order to save the future of mankind.
At the headquarters of Senator Kelly’s campaign, Mystique, disguised as Mr. Holt Adler, gets a message that someone named Irene is in her office. Irene Adler, none other thatn Destiny of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is dead for years, so Mystique asks her visitor who she is, and she reverts back to Prosh, while Mystique transforms into her normal appearance. Prosh knows that Mystique sent Ruckus to kill Senator Kelly, and Mystique said she also gave the warning call to the X-Men. Prosh tells her he needs her to be more that she has been; she agrees to play his game.
At Iceman’s parents house in Long Island, Prosh disguised as Emma Frost possessing his ice body visits him. Prosh tells him that his untapped potential can either harm or help the entire world, and he agrees to help.
Next, Prosh visits Juggernaut in prison as his father, while the guards believe that he is a lawyer. Juggernaut refuses to hear him out,. As he never hired a lawyer, much less one looking like his deceased father, and actually he wants to use his time in jail to find a new purpose in life. Prosh apologizes but forces him along as he teleports them both away.
Prosh’s last stop is San Francisco, disguised as The Stranger. He tells Toad that he has wasted all of his chances for advancement. Toad says he’s trying to improve himself with medicine that helps him control some chemical imbalances in his mutant physiology, and Prosh takes his normal form. He said he needed to see which aspect of Toad’s personality he was dealing with, and luckily it is the caring side.
Mystique and Juggernaut are getting impatient and are disappointed when the one they’ve been waiting for turns out to be Toad. Phoenix tells them they need to hear Prosh out. He tells them that they are responsible for the direction of human destiny. Prosh begins to tell them the history of the world.
Millions of years ago, the Celestials visited Earth and created three races :eternal, deviant, and human. This sparked interest in the Kree and Skrull. The Kree genetically manipulated a small group of humans, creating the Inhumans. Despite the tampering with Earth, humamns naturally evolved and mutants were born. Recently, the doings of mutants have provoked interest from the fundamental forces of existence. Charles Xavier and Magneto became lighting rods of activity, and Jean Grey became the template for the host of the Phoenix Force. Timelines have been created and mixed due to mutants like Legion, Apocalypse, Franklin Richards, and Onslaught. Genetic diversity has advanced beyond mutants with the Mannites and the Neo.
Prosh says the embodiments of the very fundamental forces of time and space are not happy with the future of mutants. The mutants will eventually replace them, and remake the structure of reality. This could be thousands of thousands of years in the future, but Prosh wants to take care of it now. Each of the mutants he has gathered are cataclysmic keys. Phoenix has touched these forces and survived; Iceman represents the untapped potential; Mystique embodies mystery and fear; Toad manifests mutation as an aberration; and Juggernaut represents jealousy and insecurity of the human race towards mutants.
Prosh says they must relive past moments to understand how they will affect the future. Their psychic engrams will travel through him, transmitted by electroencephalograph harnesses. If they don’t do this, the universe will come undone. Phoenix says they are not prepared to act as a team, but Prosh says they don’t have to, they are required as individuals. Prosh transmits them while Mystique is in mid-sentence. They arrive in their bodies just a few months before.
(Timejump 1)
Mystique is inside a building looking down on a political stage, Iceman is taking care of his sick father; Toad is in the hospital after confronting Generation X, and Phoenix is talking on the phone to Sam Guthrie, Cannonball. She realizes that today is the day that Mystique assassinated Graydon Creed.
