Original Solicitation:
X-Men the Shattering, Part 4 of 12. Alan Davis/Adam Kubert/Mat Banning , Colossus and Marrow fight their fears as The Shattering continues! The X-Men have been splintered, setting the various team members on divergent paths. Now Colossus and Marrow travel to a place and person that holds great significance for them both, the wasteland ruled by Mikhail Rasputin! For Piotr Rasputin, it¹s a last chance to save his only surviving family member... his supremely powerful and tragically misguided brother. For Marrow, it¹s a return to the hell she hoped to never see again. For the world... well, that would be telling! Cover by Adam Kubert.
Issue Summary:
Marrow dreams of the relentless sunlight of the of her childhood home - Mikhail Rasputin's pocket dimension. It was meant to be a refuge to save the Morlocks when their tunnels were flooded. Instead, it became a battleground – and the constant struggle lead to young Morlocks becoming the ruthless Gene Nation.
Marrow awakens in a Massachusetts hotel, which to her is a foreign land. Peter Rasputin – Colossus! - reclines on the balcony, sketching the sunrise. The pair are on an impromptu vacation after Xavier disbanded the team – perhaps for good.
At a nearby museum, a night watchman is accosted by a ghostly image, hovering near a painting titled “Illyana, by Piotr Rasputin.”
In her hotel room, Marrow flickers between the real her and the brunette stranger projected by her image inducer. Staring down snapshots of the unfamiliar her at local landmarks, with great effort she subsumes the bony growths on her forehead into her scalp. Peter arrives, and complements her on tweaking the image inducer.
Half a world away, a portal opens in the sky. Deathbird emerges from it, as haughty and imperious as ever. She hauls a massive monolithic statue in her wake. Somewhere else, a shadowy figure surveys the crowd around the Illyana painting, and spots Peter.
At the art museum, a young artist won't stop flirting with Marrow. In her frustration, bones grow unbidden from her face and arms. The artist recoils while Marrow flees into a restroom, where she re-engages her image inducer to become the dark-haired stranger.
Peter is surprised to see her return as the strange woman, realizing that she had previously been mingling in public under her own power! Before he can say much else, the two of them fall into a strange portal that appears on the floor in front of Peter's painting of Illyana.
Marrow instantly recognizes their destination – it's the dimension she used to call home. She runs away, chasing a silhouette she believes to be Callisto.
With her gone, Mikhail Rasputin emerges from the shadows behind Colossus, declaring, “Together, we will re-make the world as it should be... and our sweet sister Illyana will soon live again!”
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