X-Men Mission: A Mirror Darkly
Part 1 of Tomorrow's Children.
| X-Men: A Mirror Darkly | |
|---|---|
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| Dates run: | July 16, 2005 |
| Run By: | Alicia |
| Read the logs: | A Mirror Darkly |
Well now. That's much better. But let's see what you can really do.
When the X-Men are alerted to the existence of a military training camp for mutant children in Chad, they decide to risk a rescue mission. But upon arrival in the country, they are sidetracked by a new enemy.
Contents
Cast
Cable, Dazzler, Jetstream, Polaris, Juggernaut, Sunfire
NPCs: Domino, Gideon Faraday, Saul Morrow
Timing
Plot Summary
Domino, who had been working to relocate refugees from the Sudan into refugee camps in Chad, emailed Nathan to tell him about some distressing information she’d stumbled across. The Chadian government had set up a military training camp in the northern desert, where they had sent a number of mutant children from the refugee camps. Domino had located the camp and gathered intelligence about its layout and security, but decided to come to the X-Men before the Pack, because of the Professor’s extensive connections with people who could possibly resettle the children if they were rescued.
Cable took the information to the Professor and the team leaders, and an operational plan was quickly drawn up. The team flew to Chad, and Cable and Dazzler met Domino in the market in N’Djamena, the capital, only to discover that she had made further progress in her information-gathering in the intervening time. She told them that an American consultant group, involved in setting up the camp, had flown in for further meetings with Chad’s Interior Ministry. When she identified the company as Eris Consulting, the company owned by Gideon Faraday, Cable wanted to investigate further. Dazzler resisted, wanting to stay on-mission, until Domino told them that she had sketchy information that this camp was not the only one Eris had set up in Africa.
The team went incognito to the Le Meridien hotel, where the visitors from Eris were staying, leaving Sunfire, their trainee observer, at the plane to relay the news of the change of plans back to Cyclops at the mansion. Dazzler and Polaris played ‘ditzy foreign secretaries abroad’ to try and get information about the Eris group from the concierge, a strategy that was starting to bear fruit when Dazzler spotted Gideon down the hall of the hotel. She immediately warned Jetstream and Cable, staking out the pool area outside, but by then Gideon had already approached them.
He goaded Cable into a fight, helped along by the reaction of Askani, who took as violent a dislike to Gideon at their second meeting as she had at their first. Unfortunately, Gideon turned out to have an uncanny grasp on the use of telekinesis, and Cable found himself overmatched. Gideon also did massive damage to the hotel and environs by way of distraction, threatening the lives of civilians. Jetstream and Domino worked to evacuate the area, while Dazzler and Polaris emerged from the hotel just in time to see Gideon standing over an unconscious Cable. They managed to pull their teammate away, and Juggernaut chose that moment to arrive, his non-mutant status giving Gideon a nasty surprise. They fought, briefly, but Gideon then distracted Cain by flinging a bus full of civilians and made his escape.
The X-Men retreated to the Blackbird, where Cable soon regained consciousness, though he was clearly disoriented by his close encounter with Gideon’s synching abilities. The team proceeded with the mission as planned, extracting the children from the camp and making a clean getaway into Niger, where they left the children with a contact of the Professor’s, for resettlement. In a misguided decision born of fatigue, Domino attempted to leave, intending to hike back across the Sahara to the Sudan. Cable stopped her, knocking her out and taking her back aboard the Blackbird for the return to Westchester.
In San Francisco, Saul Morrow received a mysterious phone call, clearly relating to both the day’s events in Chad and his son. Angry at the news, he scolded the person on the other end of the phone, reminding them that they needed to wait ‘until the child is born’.
Related Links
X-Men Mission: Trans-Siberian Hustle
External Links
Nathan’s email to the team leaders and Xavier
A phone conversation between Nathan and Domino
Trivia and Meta
Trivia
Domino remained at the mansion for a number of weeks after the events in Chad, recovering from the physical and emotional stress she’d put herself through during the preceding weeks in the Sudan.
Meta
Plotrunner: Alicia
