House of M

• Writer - Chris Claremont
• Penciler - Alan Davis
• Inker - Mark Farmer
• Colorist - Matt Milla
• Colorist - Avalon Studios
• Lettering - Virtual Calligraphy
• Lettering - Rus Wooton
• Ass't Editor - Sean Ryan
• Associated Editor - Nick Lowe
• Editor - Mike Marts
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Season of the Witch

Summary

  Note: this is part of the House of M cross-over.

  While the X-Men battle the Weaponeers in Zanzibar, their world comes to an end: a flash of light, and everything fades. Rachel thinks it may be a nuke; Betsy is still solid, so she grabs Rachel's hand, and they find themselves alone in an empty, white space. Betsy wonders if she's dead again; Rachel recognizes it as the White Hot Room: the heart of the Phoenix. Betsy: "Oh, for goodness sakes! Does everything have to revolve around that bloody bird?!" Neither of them knows what will happen next.

  Otherworld: Meggan wakes screaming: it's the end of all that is and will ever be. Her husband Brian comes running, as do his guard. Meggan is an elemental, attuned to the timestream, and her presentiment soon proves itself: an earthquake hits Otherworld, and a tidal wave of energy washes over them, shattering everything, stripping away all natural laws of time and space. The boundaries or "branes" between dimensions are removed, and all is chaos.

  At the center is Brian's boss Roma in her Starlight Citadel. She is the Celestial Guardian: doesn't matter; doesn't save her. Species from various realities are mixed together randomly, and those who were supposed to stay dead suddenly aren't, including Jaspers, who's happy to be back. He observes the devastation and finds Roma trapped under debris; planning to kill her he suddenly finds his arm transformed into an energy weapon like the Fury which killed him. He's about to blast Roma when Brian arrives and punches him, sending him flying, and then he frees Roma. They realize that if Jaspers and the Fury have merged, they will be doubly unstoppable.

  Saturnyne accosts Brian, blaming his planet for all this; she punches him but only breaks her hand. Then she goes to erase Earth 616 permanently; Brian follows to stop her, but she has her guard attack him. They're male versions of the X-Men, and Polaris wraps him in metal. *Psylocke is surprised to see his sister as a man; before he can react, Brian flies straight at him, bursts the metal apart, and starts fighting. *Storm blasts him with lightning and then *Rogue tries to sap his power, so he give him all of it, overloading him. *Shadowcat knocks them apart, and his punch phases right through her. *Marvel (Boy?) telekinetically locks his muscles so *Shadowcat can beat him with a club. He breaks free and punches *Shadowcat; *Psylocke stabs him with a psychic knife, putting him in a fugue state. Or so he thought: sibling immunity applies across the dimensions, and Brian tosses them around like rag dolls.

  Saturnyne makes her way to the Celestial Nullifier, which can remove an entire dimension. Brian catches up and grabs her, telling her to think of what she's doing. She insists his dimension has become a cancer, devastating the other dimensions. Jamie Braddock appears, lifts a piece of rubble, drops it on the Nullifier, and disappears.

  Roma gathers her allies, showing them a graphic of the trans-temporal tsunami that originated on Earth 616, so severe that Roma can't identify the cause. Until the breach is sealed, the chaos wave will continue to expand, even to the sundered planes and to the sublimity, perhaps even to the ascension itself, merging all into an amorphous conceptual blob, ending all rational existence.

  Saturnyne still wishes she'd erased Earth 616, but Brian won't allow wholesale genocide. Saturnyne points to Meggan, whose form becomes chaotic and many-limbed; she says that's a taste of the future for all of them. Brian tells Meggan to come back and use him as her anchor; Roma tells him that if necessary she'll sacrifice Earth 616 to save the Omniverse. She'll return him there, but he may forget his purpose; he'll have 48 hours until the Nullifier is repaired, and if the breach isn't closed, she will act.

  Betsy dances through the White Hot Room, and various alternates of her dance behind her; she never knew there were so many possibilities. Rachel can only manifest her past selves; apparently, she's unique. Nothing in her life makes sense; she wants her mother and holds the Shi'ar crystal that contains her memory. Betsy reminds her what Logan said: this is her chance to live a normal life. Rachel manifests past versions of Jean Grey, thinking being dead; Betsy says that's something all three of them have in common and also her brother; she manifests a vision of Brian, but then Jamie appears in it. Both Betsy and Rachel have been seeing him for months; he tells them he broke a lot of rules to bring them together and pulls at reality so they can save the world. They find themselves at Braddock Manor at night, with a Sentinel standing over them.