Sunset Grace

• Writer - Fabian Nicieza
• Penciler - Liam Sharp
• Inker - Robin Riggs
• Lettering - Bill Oakley
• Colorist - Digital Chameleon
• Editor - Bob Harras
• Editor in Chief - Tom Defalco

Summary

  Scott and Jean are back after spending years in the future raising Cable (see the Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix limited series, 1994). They are aboard the helicarrier: SHIELD found their bodies on the beach on St. Barts. He shows them Sunset Grace, a local mutant woman who sold crafts on the beach and has now caused a spatial rift, which threatens the whole world. She mentioned "Charles" and asked for his friends to help her.

  They go down to the island, and when Jean calls to her telepathically, she gets sucked into the rift. Scott goes after her, using his blast to angle himself through the weirdly fractured landscape. Jean has found missing SHIELD agents; they push them back out. They deal with the restoration of their mutant powers, Jean more happily than Scott.

  She senses Grace's sorrow; they find her and take a stroll. She had witnessed their abduction by Rachel (Adv. C&P 1), and was caught in Jean's psychic backwash, which reopened her mutant power.

  The sky ripped apart, making a door to the astral plane. As a child, she built a fantasyland there but then outgrew it. She married and had a son; one rainy night their car went off the road. She was thrown free, and she opened a rift to let the car through, but was unable to remember how to get through herself. She was depressed, and her doctors eventually called for Xavier, who put her mind back together, but she could never use her power after that.

  Jean helps lift her guilt, and she finds her family, alive and happy. She sends Jean and Scott back through the rift and closes it from the inside. Jean explains her family was dead before she sent them through the rift; she knows it but prefers to have her fantasy as she dies.