Luca Aldine is Blindfold’s brother and he is one unbearable bodiless bastard. He’s a racist %#*& who killed his mother and was executed by the state. He also stole the majority of his sister’s power whilst in a ghostly form. Now, he exists as a telekinetic pair of eyeballs with whatever garbage body he can find. He was last seen flying away after an ass-kicking of a lifetime. He’s not been idle though. You don’t have to be psychic to feel the bitter months on him like a fart stink. He’s licked his wounds for sure, but all good supervillains know that a heroic drubbing is like an equestrian accident… sooner or later you have to get back on the horse.
Luca hates mutants on religious grounds. But he’s got a particular obsession above and beyond murdering x-types and savaging activists. Luca can peer through time and he can see chance and eventuality. Luca knows that David is destined to swallow his own species. He’s been waiting for David to go critical and he’s been keeping himself busy with gruesome assurances of a mutant-free future.
(flashbacks)
Luca, in various constructed forms, hunts down and murders mutant-rights activists and leaves his signature “the X-beast will eat itself” graffiti at each scene. He has been watching David from afar, such as when he went to visit the Church of the Happy Host and the Darwin’s Martyrs. Luca has never been able to properly predict David, so he has been reduced to simply eyeballing him and waiting for his chance to strike. The other part of the horrible prophecy is that the only one who can stop David from causing the terrible future is Luca’s own sister.
(Now)
David is caught along with dozens of other people in the new mutant girl’s powers. They have all merged forms so that only their faces protrude out of the homogenous mass of organic tissue. Blindfold holds Magik’s soulsword high in the air, about to strike the mass. But Luca, in a metallic form, has stopped her from swinging the blade.
Whilst trying to subdue Blindfold, Luca turns to the news crews and addresses them. He tells them the monstrosity will grow until it fills up the sky. But they don’t need to worry, though, as it will eat up every mutant they ever knew. It will then fall apart under its own weight, just like he saw. No genedevils, protesters or X-loving lobbyists will be able to stop it. This is where mutant-kind ends; right here, right now. The beauty of it is that they did it to themselves. He asks the TV crews if it’s worth the life of a broke-brained chick in a blindfold. Before he can finish though, he makes a strange sound and promptly explodes.
David, now out of the mass, stands behind him. As Luca explodes with energy, David tells him he doesn’t think it is. Everyone who was caught in the young girl’s powers is now free. Tempus immediately uses her time manipulation powers to put the unconscious girl in a stasis bubble. David smiles and tells her that isn’t a stasis field. He turns to the fragments of Luca Aldine’s body and captures them in a huge bubble in the air. Blindfold tells Tempus the girl isn’t a danger to them, not really anyway. As the young Angel flies down, he asks if he is the only one completely lost. One of the news reporters turns to Emma and tells her he can’t help but notice half the crowd is fading away.
Emma looks around her to see all the animals and out-of-towners who were caught up in the girl’s powers are now disappearing. David tells her they were never real and apologizes. David waves his hands and Tempus’s stasis field bursts. As Goldballs watches a strange apparition leave the girl’s body, he says he knew there was something strange about the people there. The apparition, enveloped in mist, is dressed in dungarees and has a chimney instead of hair. David introduces everyone to the Delusionist and tells them he has been on vacation from his brain.
When Magik says she doesn’t understand, David tells her he planted him there earlier in the morning. They saw and felt what David wanted them to see and feel. As Magik comes to terms with the fact she wasn’t just absorbed into a Cthulu-blob, David tells her it is very convincing. As the Delusionist reappears in David’s mindscape, it remarks on the fact it seems darker in his head. In the real world David winces at a pain in his head causing Blindfold to become worried about him. He dismisses the pain as Tempus asks who the girl is. He tells her that she’s nothing to worry at as she’s brain dead. He explains there was a thing with the Red Skull a while back and one of the nastier personalities tried to jump ship into the Skull’s brain. The Red Skull had stolen a bunch of flat liners from hospitals, so there was a bunch of bodies left over at the end. He needed a way to make everyone think a new mutant had appeared and he had an idea.
He stops speaking when he notices everyone staring at him in shock. As he asks why people are looking at him, Cyclops comes up and punches him square in the jaw and calls him sick. David replies that he prefers the term “pragmatic” and explains that Luca was killing their people. He needed to draw him out and make him think his prediction had come to pass. He also needed the world’s attention as today he stopped a serial killer with nothing but the empty shell of a poor girl and Cyclops’ egocentric limelight. David asks whom he’s hurt, to which Cyclops replies that he hurt himself. He says that he thought David came to kill him and he thought he hated him. David tells him to grow up as it’s not a popularity contest.
Suddenly, inside David’s mindscape, everything starts to shake and the various personalities run for cover. In the real world, David drops to his knees and clenches his head in pain. As Blindfold rushes over he angrily tells her it’s fine. He continues on and tells Cyclops he has also been lost in power and broken things. He even killed Xavier himself too. He doesn’t hate Cyclops as he doesn’t need to. They both know nobody can hate Cyclops more than he does himself.
Cyclops thinks for a minute and tells him that it is a popularity contest. People won’t fight with him if they don’t respect him and they won’t respect him if he doesn’t trust them. David rolls his eyes when Cyclops tells him that sooner or later he will have to pick a side. David starts mocking Cyclops and tells him there has only ever been one side. Cyclops replies that they don’t have to fight but David tells him it was never a fight. Magik points out that he cheated and David spins around to her. He angrily yells that their species is at stake and they need to stop playing Queensbury rules and get their hands dirty. When it comes to war, cheating is winning.
One again, a huge “earthquake” rips through his mindscape, and David’s nose starts bleeding as he yells in pain. Cyclops apologizes and tells him that they cheated too. David collapses to the floor, screaming, as red energy bursts from his mouth.
Inside his mindscape, the floors start ripping apart as all the personalities run around in terror. He muses that it comes storming from the walls, like something that’s been forgotten or restrained for eons. It shreds out of the cells and strips away the armor and control he has been building up for months. It shreds his mind like a piece of paper.
Cyclops kneels down next to him and asks Emma if they can help him, but she coldly replies that even if they wanted to they can’t. As David’s mindscape tears itself apart, he continues to think out loud at the devastation going on around him. Blindfold yells at Cyclops and asks him what he did. She cannot get inside his head, as it’s chaos. Cyclops tells her it’s called a pyrrhic, it takes too long to mature to be any good in combat. But if someone came along they couldn’t beat then it’s better to take them down after they are done, rather than not at all.
As David struggles, he says that he was weak and flawed and Xavier knew it. Emma and the Stepford Cuckoos explain that the pyrrhic is a psychic poison. It burrows in and it’s secret and sly. When it comes to the core and it has found the weakness inside, it drags it to the surface. Inside his mind, David sees numerous heads of Xavier floating around him. The Xaviers say things like “he’s too dangerous” and “out of sight, out of mind.”
Cyclops yells at David and asks why he didn’t trust him enough to tell him the plan. Blindfold screams for Emma to help David, but she tells her that it was designed too well and it plays on his fears. It makes them feel real and dredges up insecurities, disguising them as memories. Blindfold kneels next to David and mutters she doesn’t understand why nobody is helping him. Magneto tells her it’s not a matter of power or righteousness. When one is called upon to face themselves, then it’s a simple matter of self-belief.
Inside his mind, the Xaviers continue to insult David and prey on all his feelings of inadequacy. As the prison continues to collapse, he sees the Charles Xavier personality standing before him. Now free of his confinement he smirks at David and then disappears. The personalities start to attack David and drag him down to the depths of the now ruined landscape. All that David can wonder, though, is where Xavier will go. He needs an unconscious shell to inhabit and pilot. He wonders if he will take the child’s body as he did. Only now can David see how sick that was. David closes his eyes as he hears Blindfold scream. He guesses that he must have been correct and that Xavier has taken over the girl’s body, as there aren’t any others out there.
But he is wrong. In the real world, the golden skinned Xavier personality bursts through the stasis field containing Luca Aldine’s broken form.
Inside his mind, David’s personalities crowd around him. With his hands over his eyes, he can hear the screaming and shouts of violence in the real world. But it’s hard to know what is going on and it’s difficult to care about. He’s useless… weak… and a disappointment….
