TimeBreakers

• Penciler - Mizuki Sakakibara
• Colorist - JC
• Lettering - Dave Sharpe
• Ass't Editor - Sean Ryan
• Ass't Editor - Nick Lowe
• Editor - Mike Marts
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Hyperion stands on Holocaust's armor; Kevin is astonished he just killed him with his nose; Namora and Creed are ready to fight, but Clarice decides on the better part of valor and ports them all away. Creed bows to her leadership, and they retreat, while Hyperion rampages around the complex looking for them. The sovereign caste has been forbidden from interfering, so one gives important instructions to a worker caste bug: go to the stasis gallery and free the operative who can save the multiverse from Hyperion.

  Clarice tries to find her way, but all the doors look alike. Hyperion catches up to them and says he got lost too, the first few weeks; Creed orders the team to stand and fight, but Clarice blinks them away, and Hyperion runs himself into a wall. She finds the room with the ocean, to drop off Namora, but she won't abandon them, and they go together to the desert. Clarice wants room to operate, to hide and think. Creed laughs at her, but she says it's a miracle they're still alive. They can't fight Hyperion, but they can't leave him in charge, or no reality will be safe.

  Hyperion finds them, and Clarice blinds each of her teammates away and faces him alone. He realizes she doesn't know the Crystal Palace well, so she must have sent them further into the desert; she admits it's not a long-term strategy, but she's hoping for a stalemate. He asks if she's faster than his flash vision; she says he knows she'd just turn it back onto him. He admits she's that in five realities the only one who ever beat was "a little girl with a pointy rock" (iss. 45).

  After Gambit died delivering the killing stroke, the Exiles left, but before the military could remove Hyperion's body parts, they disappeared. Turns out the "cosmic busybodies" who recruited them retrieve all their leftovers and encase them in crystal, so as not to damage the timestream. To their surprise, Hyperion's cells absorbed daylight and regenerated his body. Before they could do anything, he blasted out of the wall, learned the Timebroker was just a simulacrum, and took over.

  Clarice asks why he's telling her all this; he says when he conquered his native earth, the humans nuked it, leaving him alone on a dust ball; he doesn't want to be alone again, and the bugs here are no company. He asks if he can keep talking, or should he kill her?

  The worker caste bug goes past the fallen heroes till he finds the right one: Barnell. He asks what happened, and the bug tells him he must save the multiverse.

  Hyperion continues: he realized the bugs didn't build this place; they're explorers who found it outside time and space, abandoned, and they figured out how to use the equipment. It's an observatory that can see every reality, and they used it to explore, till they accidentally did something that cracked all creation. They realized fixing things would be violent work, so they recruited six "suckers," pretending the problems they created were natural and inventing a friendly Timebroker to convince them. The Exiles and Weapon X were fixing what they broke; Clarice realizes that's why the Celestials called them "Timebreakers."

  Hyperion now has his pick of realities to dominate and he wants allies. Clarice immediately rejects him, but he already knows that; he's making his offer to her teammates, who've all snuck back. Namora stands and agrees, as long as he leaves her home world alone. Hyperion says his offer was genuine, but they're treating him like an idiot. He can see Kevin's insides and knows it's not really Namora; he blasts, and Kevin turns to goop. The real Namora punches him, yelling, "Murderer!"