User:Gtrmp/X-Men Forever

Plot synopsis
The alien techno-organic entity Prosh (formerly X-Factor's Ship) escapes from his captivity by his former masters, the Celestials. While he was with the Celestials, he learned that the cosmic beings had come to see Earth's mutants as a threat. Prosh returned to Earth, causing Cable's techno-organics to go haywire, and assembled a "team" to help him explore the nature of mutants and prepare for the cosmic beings' actions. Each "recruit" was chosen to represent an aspect of mutants' roles in the world: Jean Grey for her past association with comics power (the Phoenix Force), Iceman for his untapped potential, Toad for his abberrant genetic material, Mystique for the fear that mutants inspire in others, and Juggernaut for the jealousy and anger that humans felt towards mutants. He then sent them back in time to relive key moments in their individual histories, so that he could better understand them both as individuals and as mutants.

The first time jump brought them to the moment of the assassination of Mystique's son, the anti-mutant crusading politician Graydon Creed, a murder that had previously been unsolved. Mystique, under the control of her future self, reluctantly set up the assassination with an automated gun before the group jumped further back in time. They arrived at the moment after the death of Mystique's lover, the precognitive mutant Destiny, at the hands of the telepath Legion. There, Legion revealed to Mystique that he had killed Destiny because he had seen glimpses in her mind of the Age of Apocalypse, a timeline that Legion himself would go on to create via his own time travel. The group jumps back in time further still, giving Mystique a brief reunion with Destiny, whose precognitive ability has already let her know that the Mystique she is speaking to is from a point in the future after her own death. Although Mystique has begun to doubt Prosh's mission, the group has no choice as they go back in time again, to the moment when the Phoenix died on the moon.

Jean Grey, having jumped back into the Phoenix's body as it died, finds herself in Death's realm, where she learns from Death itself that the cosmic powers fear her like nothing else, as they see in her humanity's limitless desire to grow in power. Jumping back further, Jean finds herself in the shuttle where her body died, just before the Phoenix merged with her and took her place. Prosh offers her a way out by refusing to merge her with the Phoenix; when she confesses that she can't choose, Prosh tells her that he only wanted her to consider the choice available to her. Jumping back again, Jean and Iceman find themselves in Professor X's class as members of the original X-Men team, while the Juggernaut finds himself in prison after his defeat at their hands. Jean sneaks into Xavier's office and finds files suggesting that he believed, even at the time, that Xavier thought that Jean and Iceman could be become potentially limitless in power. Jumping back in time again, the two find themselves teenagers and not yet X-Men, while Toad is rescued from a mob by Magneto, who recruits him into the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.