X-Men Vol. 1 #397

Description

Chamber begins to have doubts about his brush with fame and his relationship with Sugar Kane. Mr. Clean talks with the Church of Humanity.

Sugar takes Chamber to the fractured Überclub in Manhattan. While she enjoys partying, Jon is met with the same prejudices as before, some people are suspicious of him or think he might have a contagious disease, others ask him about other mutants as if all mutants worldwide would know each other. Finally Sugar introduces him to Colby Lee, an extraordinaire performance artist. Lee is happy to met Chamber in person, actually he is reminded of his own work; he uses various doll bodyparts for his art, one of them being the upper half of a face. Later Sugar and Jono fly back to London.

Kurt, Logan and Bobby are in a pub. Nightcrawler is not in the mood to use his image inducer and the other customers are staring as he drinks his beer while hanging from the ceiling. Logan informs them about recent developments at the school (Xavier publicly announced to be a mutant in New X-Men #116). Archangel calls them on their headphones and says that the portable Cerebra device located a slow-moving signal in the underground tunnels. Wolverine radios him to meet the team at dawn even though Kurt objects, thinking that Warren needs more time to recover from their fight. However before they investigate, Wolverine wants to talk some sense into Chamber.

In Wembley Arena, Sugar Kane is busy with a production rehearsal. Halfway through she asks Chamber to flare up since she loves it when he uses his powers. Sugar’s manager Sim is not too happy about their relationship. Backstage he tells Chamber that he does not like him, and that soon it would no longer matter if Sugar liked him or not.

A small group of mutants are walikng through the subway system. They are Harmony and her baby, Helix, Miss Saccharine, the Burning Puddle and Harmony’s mate. Having survived Mr. Clean torching the underground community they think about escaping to europe. One of them asks if the mutants that visited them shortly before the incident might have been the X-Men, they don’t know for sure; having lived underground they have only heard rumours about them.

Kane and her manager speak to the press. The singer wants to introduce her lover to the media, but Sim stops the interview. Jono leaves for the toilet, where he is met by Wolverine. Chember is angry that the X-Men are now sending the “big guns“, as he refused to come back with Kurt and Bobby, but Logan only explains that the X-men will always be there for him. Right then one of Sugar’s bodyguards comes in and orders “the freak“ to hurry as Sugar wants to leave for her hotel. Logan says that he should not call Jono a freak and a fight starts, of course Logan easily knocks the bodyguard out. He then leaves, leaving Chamber to wonder if his decision is the right one.

Somewhere in the tunnels Mr. Clean is seen. He is in radio contact with his superiors, who mention to have engineered him to compete with mutants at their level. The organisation he belongs to consists of prefects, a vicar general and the Supreme Pontiff. Mr. Clean ensures that he will finish his task. During the whole speech he was holding a knife to his arm, yet decides not to cut himself.

At a train station Kurt, Warren and Bobby wait for Wolverine, who is running late. Suddenly they are provoked by a group of Hitler youth. Iceman quickly deals with the threat by freezing them into one giant iceconstruct, and then the three X-Men head into the tunnels.

In her penthouse, Sugar is happy. She just landed a new gig and wants Jono to be happy for her. Sim storms in, bringing bad news. The latest headlines of the media claim that Kane is pregnant with a mutant baby.

The outcast mutants continue to march through the tunnels. Helix gets hungry and licks some secretion of Ms. Saccharine to compensate. Without warning Nightcrawler teleports in and states that he belongs to the X-Men and has come to help them.