Intifada

• Writer - Chris Claremont
• Penciler - Igor Kordey
• Inker - Scott Hanna
• Lettering - Virtual Calligraphy
• Lettering - Randy Gentile
• Colorist - Liquid!
• Ass't Editor - Annie Thornton
• Editor - Mike Marts
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

W.M.D. (Weapons of Mass Destruction)

Summary

  Marie has plastic explosives strapped to her chest; bicycle cops call for paramedics and the fire department; Sam tells Lila to port away with as many civilians as she can and blasts away with Marie; Rogue comes along, explaining she had to grab the detonator in Marie's hand.

  Sam's power is based on physical strength and will-power, and he's never found the upper limit of his speed. Marie assumes the mutants want to kill her; Rogue uses a knife to cut the straps on Marie's back, and they women drop away, leaving Sam holding the vest full of explosives. Marie, plummeting but still defiant, pushes the detonator, and Sam explodes. She tells Rogue she hopes it was somebody she loved; Rogue, still plummeting, starts to doubt Sam, but his blast field kept him safe, and he swoops to the rescue. Lila is glad he survived and teleports away with him.

  The cops don't come because the incident involved mutants, who have taken over the town. Jake and Paint identify Marie as their babysitter; she's still angry the mutants aren't dead.

  At the president's ranch, the weather has suddenly turned, and security gets the heads of state to safety as a tornado heads right toward them. The tornado develops a woman's face and then dissipates; Remy and Ororo laze by a waterfall, and he congratulates her but thinks she should take it easy till she's fully recovered. She strips and dives into the water; he reaches down and kisses her; she thinks Rogue will be angry, but he says it's just a kiss. They are interrupted by a group of government-mutant liaisons; Ororo brings a lightning bolt and dresses herself (huh?). Cooper asks if Ororo caused the tornado or just ended it; she says if she knows her, she doesn't need to ask. Vazhin asks if she's the problem or the solution; she says both, like all of them.

  Marie asks if she's under arrest; Rogue says she's just in her place; she wants to know why she tried to kill her friends. Marie says she can't hold her; Rogue challenges he to leave but first shows her slides of some of the people she was going to kill, mutants and non-mutants, including the people she babysits for.

  Marie takes off her eyepatch and shows the empty socket; she sees Rogue's poster of The Piano and says it's one of her favorite movies; she says her brother was singing a dumb song in the van, and she told him to stop it or she'd kill him, and then he was dead; her parents were good people, and when she pulled her brother from the van, she didn't realize she was on fire.

  The police did nothing, despite her uncle's prompting; X-Corp lawyers warned him he could be accused of hate crimes. A lawyer started buying up all the houses on the block, and when her uncle refused, everyone in the house had nightmares till he sold; the neighborhood has gone all mutant, and it's all legal. She found Purity's web-site, learned to make weapons, and found that Sunspot was going to a bar with some mutant friends. She visited her parents' graves that morning, but they'd been trashed by mutants. She's not sorry, and she'll try again if she gets a chance.