Uncanny Spider-Man #2

Kurt Wagner aka Nightcrawler aka currently Spider-Man looks at the woman he believes to be his mother, Mystique, dressed as an indigent and currently not quite sane, as she switches from person to person. He was blue, she recalls. Lack of oxygen, the doctor said. But she held him against her skin and became her true self. She couldn’t help it. He was so perfect.

She turns to her true form, takes out a knife and demands, where is he? What did he do to her baby?!

Kurt reminds her they have been through this. She keeps getting confused, then runs off. She sobs that she left him. Something Irene said. Why can’t she remember?

Kurt corrects her: Destiny wasn’t part of his birth. He reminds her of what he knows of the story. She was posing as the wife of Count Wagner. She had an affair with the villain Azazel…

He was blue, she repeats, blue like her, but… she went back for something in the castle… she left him!

He tells her she is mixing things up. He is about to take off his mask and touches her shoulder, causing her to hit him hard. She calls him a disgusting creature, helping the humans and orders him not to meddle in mutant matters!

He asks her to wait and calls her “meine mutter,” but she has already fled.

He teleports atop a pavilion and sulks. The astral bamf appears next to him and mocks, mutant matters are none of his problems, right? Kurt tells him to #*%& off. The bamf mocks that maybe he isn’t a mutant anymore. He is suddenly invisible to the mutie detectors… And he seems in no mood to investigate. Kurt orders him to shut up.

A voice from below observes that talking to himself is the first sign of madness and calls him by his name. Then she had best throw him in a padded cell - he is seeing angels! he retorts. The other person laughs and asks if he wants some company. From her always! He takes off his mask and asks if she wishes to be alone. It is rare to see Dagger without Cloak.

Dagger looks down and he realizes he said something wrong and apologizes. She reveals they had a fight and he teleported away to sulk. But her costume isn’t great for the subway and the Stark Sentinels don’t make things easier. They stopped her a few times because of false readings: “Mutant detected.”

How humiliating, Kurt replies coldly. That’s not what she meant, she chides him. They’ve been X-adjacent their whole lives! They are not okay with what’s going on. It’s just, what if they’ve pulled that *#%& on Cloak. He is not good at diffusing confrontation. Enough moaning, she decides and asks how he has been. Spidey said he’s been following some muggers all week.

The astral bamf only Kurt sees sarcastically suggests he fill her in on what Xavier did to mutantkind or tell her about his mom. He figures that she resisted Xavier’s push and it broke her mind. Tell her it’s a mutant thing.

Instead, Kurt tells Tandy that it’s a local thing. It’s fine. He will keep an eye out for Cloak. Tandy leaves and suggests he come by to the Jarvis Lounge sometime. No one there will rat him out to Orchis. And she wants to see what happens, when he tries flirting with Jessica.

He pulls on his mask. Local stuff, he repeats. No big deal.

Except, a moment later, the Rhino crashes into him.

The Rhino was sent by Orchis, currently supported by Silver Sable International.

As Nightcrawler battles the Rhino, he is being observed by several members of the Wild Pack, as well as Dr. Travers, working for the Vulture from inside a truck. They note that Nightcrawler is trying to protect civilians on the one hand, but was responsible for murdering several world leaders on the other. Silver Sable orders them to stow the chatter and asks Travers for Rhino’s status. A-plus, he replies and tells them they should consider themselves lucky, Mr. Toomes okayed the deployment of such a valuable Orchis asset. They were under the impression Silver Sable International didn’t need any inside help finishing the…

Skip it, manbun, Silver Sable, who stands behind him, orders. He wouldn’t need her if his organization was half as slick as he pretends. The Rhino she knows is an intellectual subnormal, masquerading as a sentient life form. She doesn’t know what insanity makes them think he is suddenly capable of following orders, but his people begged her to field-test him. They believe the target will be unable to resist a threat to the public.

Outside, Nightcrawler teleports out of the blows’ way.

Silver Sable orders Travers to skip the attitude and direct the idiot to the target section. One of her team points out that Nightcrawler seems to focus on trying to remove a certain piece of tech from the Rhino’s gear. Sable immediately realizes it looks the same as the one Nightcrawler wore during his murder spree… Mind-control technology is illegal, Silver Sable informs Travers. Their rate just went up by another zero. Call it an amorality fee. Traver stammers his assent and warns her not to let Nightcrawler remove that tech. He orders the team to take the shot. He turns silent when Silver Sable holds her gun to his head. Two zeroes? he suggests weakly.

Coldly, she warns him not to order her people. This is first contact. They probe. They surveil. They test. No more. Only an amateur rushes to closure. Orchis is clearly incapable of fieldwork. She orders him to transfer control of Rhino to her suit immediately. Another voice announces that he is down and inside the effect zone. It orders to trigger the dome.

Silver Sable sharply protests that Redsergant Kremer does not have the authority and to belay the order. Travers points out her mic is on silent.

Outside, around Nightcrawler, five pylons appear and they form an energy field he cannot teleport through. Four people in Power Rangers style uniforms with helmets fire at him. The fifth, Silver Sable, races out of the truck to join them.

From further back, Kremer, who has led the attack, deploys a snare that traps Nightcrawler on the ground. Silver Sable berates him, but he interjects that she was right. The plasma field neutralized his powers, like she suggested.

While he rants that a subhuman like that isn’t worth the effort, their backs are turned on Nightcrawler, who manifests his Hope Sword and cuts himself free. After that, Kremer gets a well-deserved kick to the face. Silver Sable dodges his blow, while noting the magic sword. That wasn’t in his file. He tries to flee, but she drags him close by his tail and unmasks him.

A magical, disappearing sword and a surprisingly soft tail, she remarks, while she lies on the ground and aims a gun at him. What a day for surprises, Mr. Wagner.

Within the van, Travers relaxes. However, his cameras cannot see what is going on in the plasma field, as Nightcrawler pleads with Silver Sable, assuring her he is not her enemy. She retorts that her organization doesn’t have enemies, only profits, and orders him to stay down. She warns him that he has been hit by at least one tranquilizer and cannot teleport through her energy dome. Nightcrawler tries to tell her something but can’t get a word in edgewise, as she theorizes he seems to have a fast metabolism. Again she warns him to stay down. Instead, he pulls her aside, before the Rhino comes crashing down into her.

He teleports them somewhere dark. She asks where they are. He thinks it is an old subway. She notes he can see in the dark and clearly did his homework, since he could teleport under her dome. He replies he didn’t know what was underneath. It was a leap of faith. Kind of his signature move. She states there is a lamp on her helmet. He realizes she cannot activate it without letting go of him or her gun. He decides to get her helmet off and notes her accent is Symkarian. He visited there during his circus days.

Actually, he continues, he had a formative moment there as a teenager. He was hiding in the woods – gawkers, lynch mobs, the usual. He hid a lot in his youth, actually. One night he came to a place in the forest, a soft slope above the trees like the thigh of some sleeping giantess. And he sat there just before dawn, watching a flock of starlings. Thousands moving as one, a vast and unknowable space. A living thing, made of living things. And he wept and, just when he felt he could endure no more beauty or awe, the sun rose. He describes the singular beauty of the moment and how he felt for the first time that in the deepest tides of its living heart the world is good.

He switches on the helmet’s light. Sable stands opposite him, still holding both tail and gun. She orders him not to move. Some detonation from above sweeps them both off their feet. Silver Sable leans down and kisses him, then apologizes. They hear a booming noise from above, and Kurt observes that kissing instead of killing doesn’t warrant an apology. She replies, it is unprofessional.

Kurt notices the sound getting closer while Sable babbles she isn’t getting paid to kill him. They want him alive. She mumbles, he has a perfect neck. Addressing herself as Silvija, she orders herself to focus. She accuses him of doing some mutant thing with pheromones.

Kurt tells her the name is beautiful and that isn’t one of his powers.

Redsergant Kremer tries to reach her via a bad comms connection and she explains that the device Rhino is wearing is hurting him. They damaged the control apparatus.

That moment, Rhino howling in pain breaks through the wall. Sable tells Nightcrawler to leave. Her team won’t get paid if he gets flattened too. He suggests he could manage two people again. What happened to feeling drowsy? she demands. He replies that he recovers his stamina quickly. It’s a mutant thing.

Getting closer, she asks where he would take her. Where wouldn’t he? he sighs, but alas he didn’t mean her. He jumps onto Rhino’s back, then teleports high into the air with him and, as they fall, he tries to wedge off the mind control device, hoping it could be proof. The psychic Bamf tells him nobody cares.

When they get closer to the ground, Kurt swears and teleports away. Leaving the Rhino to land on the Orchis van.

Kremer shouts down the hole to Silver Sable, who admits to herself this may be a more challenging job than she thought.