In the plane junkyard in Cairo, Illinois that Storm
has come to call home, the possessed Dr. Shen arrives with the hounds in tow.
Having tracked Storm’s trail here, she reports psychically to Shadow King who
tells her to bring Storm back to him unharmed. She lets the hounds loose to
hunt, feeling she has a personal score to settle with Gambit. Speaking of,
Gambit senses that trouble is coming, while Storm tries to use her wind in
order to get her plane home airborne. As the plane begins to move, a hound
suddenly crashes through the window! Gambit knocks it right back out with a
charged card as the plane begins to take off. Now airborne, Gambit heads to the
roof of the plane where more hounds have hitched a ride. He kicks one off,
while Storm’s fancy flying saves him from another one. With the threat
seemingly past, Gambit hops back in the plane and tells Storm to follow the
river back to his home. Gambit explores Storm’s home and finds a large,
dangerous knife. A memory starts to seep through for her, as she recalls once
having to use that knife. She had hitched a ride from a man who then tried to
assault her, forcing her to kill him when he wouldn’t back down.
While Gambit tries to console her, telling her she did
what she had to, their plane is suddenly overtaken by Nanny’s strange,
egg-shaped ship! Nanny sends a hologram over to tell Storm to come back,
prompting another memory to flood Storm’s mind. She suddenly remembers the
adult version of herself taken aboard Nanny’s ship, where a Life Model Decoy
copied her appearance. When Nanny commanded Havok to shoot them down, she
instead sent down a decoy ship with the LMD of Storm to make the other X-Men
think she was dead. While Storm is rattled by this, Gambit hits Orphan-Maker
with a charged card, blasting a hole in his armor, and causing Nanny to fly
away to tend to him, just as Gambit hoped. With Storm still reeling, their
plane begins to plummet, no longer being carried by her winds. Gambit snaps her
out of it with some surprisingly encouraging words, and she resumes flying the
plane once more. Later, Storm has a nightmare where she’s overtaken by Nanny
and forced into one of her suits of armor. Gambit comes to check on her, and
still half asleep, she instinctually hurls her knife at him! Before she can
even get out a warning, Gambit casually snatches the knife out of the air,
before revealing that he bought her new clothes.
The two go to get some food, before Gambit takes Storm
sightseeing all over New Orleans. Over the following weeks, the two settle into
a routine of robbing from local crooks and giving their loot back to the
community, just as Storm had been doing in Illinois. Storm can’t remember when
she’s had this much fun and feels this is where she belongs. Until one night,
Storm spots Gambit being chased by Orphan-Maker, before being snatched up into
Nanny’s ship. Storm follows them onto the ship, where she stumbles upon the
cocoon Nanny used to turn her back into a child. All at once, her memories come
flooding back and she remembers being regressed before breaking free!
Orphan-Maker comes to check on the noise, forcing Storm to hide in one of the
suits of armor there. She decides she has no choice but to use it to rescue
Gambit and soon confronts Nanny and Orphan-Maker. Storm and Orphan-Maker shoot
at each other, damaging the ship’s controls, before Storm takes out
Orphan-Maker with a massive punch! The armor gets damaged in the process and as
Nanny aims to shoot Storm, Gambit tags her with a charged card, causing her to
fire into the air. The ship plummets into the river, with Gambit and Storm
seemingly the only two to escape. As they pull themselves out of the river,
Storm reveals that she has all of her adult memories once more and asks Gambit
if he’s ever heard of the X-Men…
Excelsioring your collection