The End of the World as We Knowit

• Writer - Alan Davis
• Penciler - Tom Raney
• Script - Terry Kavanagh
• Inker - Scott Hanna
• Colorist - Brian Haberlin
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Lettering - Richard Starkings
• Lettering - Saida Temofonte
• Editor - Mark Powers
• Editor in Chief - Bob Harras

Summary

  Note: this occurs after X-Men II:96 and is part of the Apocalypse: The Twelve storyline.

  Apocalypse watches with satisfaction as the X-Men come to him. Xavier has brought Magneto and vouches for him. Apocalypse presses a button and the ground moves beneath their feet, swallowing their aircraft. Skrulls and Monolith's cult attack, weapons set to stun, but they are just a distraction while two Horsemen port in and capture Ororo. Xavier psi-bolts them, and they revert to Skrull. Another distraction, while the real Pestilence and Famine nab Xavier.

  Magneto sees Astra and Joseph and flies to them: nab. Apocalypse has a Skrull recall Bishop from the timestream (from Bishop: the Last X-Man 8). Remy sees him and assumes he's a Skrull; Ororo prevents them from fighting. Then X-Force and Generation X arrive, but Ororo can't be sure they're real. Xavier had Hank make an aerosol that would detect Skrulls (Sinister's formula, iss. 375).

  Lorna sees Havok, saying he just escaped, and flies to him: nab. Skrulls nab Jean, too, who was trying to stop her. Scott blasts, full furious. He blasts Colossus by mistake and goes to him: nab.

  Apocalypse gloats, saying only Cable was hard to nab. He used Astra to stop Magneto from disrupting the magnetosphere (X-Men II:87).

  Bishop sees Deathbird and attacks: nab. Sure enough, X-Force and Generation X are Skrulls and nab Ororo (she should have known, since Jubilee is back in Westchester).

  The rest of the X-Men are expendable, so the Skrulls set their weapons to kill. The head Skrull prepares for victory, but Apocalypse has learned to expect the unexpected. He assembles his "dozen rungs on my ladder to godhood": Magneto and Lorna at opposite poles of magnetism; elementals Iceman, Storm, and Sunfire; the Summerses Scott, Jean, and Nathan; Bishop and Rasputin to control time and space, and Xavier for thought, all channeled through the Monolith and into X-Man's body, which Apocalypse will take over.

  Back in Westchester, Logan is himself again (see Wolverine 146-147). Someone in the nearby town of Valhalla has accessed Cerebro and copied the Xavier Protocols (see X-51 8).