X-Men #169

Publisher
Marvel
Year
2005
Month
6
LastChanged
2/3/2024 8:20:33 AM
Golgotha

Quarantine
Summary

  Emma locked the students "safely" in their rooms, while the X-Men deal with Golgotha. She's learned the pods the X-Men retrieved are just its old shells; it's an alien which feeds telepathically on craziness for 24 hours and then flies off to begin the cycle elsewhere. She assumes her telepathy will make her immune, but when she looks in a mirror, she sees herself as ugly. Bobby and Lorna search the kitchens for the Golgotha pod; he hears Emma screaming, but she says he imagined it. Rogue and Remy search the sewers and find someone down in the shadows.

  Bobby and Lorna split up to search the X-Jet fore and aft. He finishes, but she doesn't remember having done anything. When he questions her, she lashes out with her magnetism, saying she doesn't like her fugue states or imagining herself slipping into insanity; he wonders if she's taking enough medication. She apologizes, and they go for a bite to eat. In the X-Jet, Golgotha grows.

  In the sewer, Logan lashes out at imaginary enemies; when Remy tries to calm him, he starts choking him, and Rogue has to touch him to weaken him. Remy says he doesn't need her help, and that not being able to touch is the only thing that gave their relationship some spark. Logan promises to hit him when he gets his strength back, but Rogue says it's just the craziness talking. Remy walks away, saying they make a good couple, the letch and the maiden, and Logan says it's not crazy and kisses Rogue until her power saps him. Just then Emma summons Rogue to her office; she has a problem she needs to talk about with another woman: in the mirror, she thinks she's become old.

  Remy cowers in the sewer, wondering at what he just said, and if he really loves Rogue. An enemy approaches.

  Emma decides she's past Botox or collagen and decides on plastic surgery. Not wanting to wait, she picks up a scissors, but then Scott interrupts. She turns on him, saying she knows he's ready to dump her when she gets old and warning him she has his mind in a vise. She squeezes, seeing his desire for Lorna, but it's really Alex, and he powers up to blast her before she kills him. Rogue arrives and tells her it's not Scott; Emma breaks out of it and apologizes. Rogue has absorbed Logan's persona and thinks she's him, till she tries to pop claws and realizes she doesn't have them.

  Lorna and Bobby watch Remy struggle with an imaginary Mr. Sinister, not sure what to do. Lorna has something to do and leaves Bobby there. She puts her hands over her eyes before taking one more look, not sure if she's seeing things, but then decides to tell the others.

  Golgotha has grown to giant proportions on top of the X-jet, and the X-Men wonder how they could have missed it. Alex thinks Bobby and Lorna were making out instead of searching the jet, and he can't understand her attraction to the "dolt"; Emma has to break up the argument to remind them they only have 82 seconds to find the Golgotha pod.

  She later lets Alex convince her to destroy the pods in an incinerator. She wonders how many cycles it had, how many problems it had caused in human history. She gets a call from Gazer, on space station 8, warning of a space storm approaching Earth. She puts it on screen: a swarm of Golgothas sweep past the faint rings of Jupiter.