Professor X has the misfortune to announce that Kitty's parents have withdrawn her from the school. The X-Men object, but there is nothing they can do - it is Kitty's parents' prerogative. Kitty runs off to her room to cry. Later Storm comes to comfort her, but Kitty refuses to be comforted - her parents have taken her out of Xavier's to enroll her in the Massachusetts Academy, an institution run by Emma Frost![1]
The time comes for Kitty to leave. She says goodbye to each of the X-Men, with an especially fond farewell for Colossus,[2] and Storm volunteers to drive her. The drive is fairly uneventful, and Storm is shown to a lounge while Kitty gets squared away. Storm's stay is not to be uneventful however, as the White Queen drops in to see her...
Kitty sees Storm off, and then goes to get settled in.[3] Storm gets just out of the valley where the Massachusetts Academy is located and pulls over to the side. She gets out of the car and summons up a storm![4] She is heedless, and barely in control, and reveling in her mastery. Finished for the moment, she lands, reveals herself as not whom she seems (by implication, Emma Frost), smokes a cigarette, and places a call to Sebastian Shaw at the Hellfire Club! Mysterious references are made to a phase 2 of their plan, to be started after Emma as Storm rejoins the X-Men.
Beneath the Academy, Storm in Emma's body comes back to consciousness. She feels strange, her body not responding as she's used to, her night vision gone, her elemental powers fail to respond! She finds a light switch, and discovers she is in Emma's body!
The X-Mansion. Nightcrawler and Amanda Sefton are having a romantic stroll by the lake when a Sentinel ambushes them! Cyclops blasts it off its feet from the mansion, the X-Men alerted by Professor X, who felt the terror in Nightcrawler's thoughts. And the other X-Men come to their aid to help withdraw towards the mansion as additional Sentinels emerge from the lake. The X-Men and the Sentinels battle, and Nightcrawler mostly ends the threat by teleporting plastic explosives onto their legs! "Storm" arrives, realizes Shaw has started without her, and swoops into action, blasting a last Sentinel 'carelessly' so that it careens into Wolverine, knocking him unconscious. She defuses the rest of their wariness with a ploy, and then zaps them all to render them unconscious.
Massachusetts Academy. "Emma Frost"'s fingers might be less adept than Ororo is used to, but she still remembers how to pick locks. She opens the door of her cell and escapes into the corridor, only to attract the guard with a cry of pain - she now has Emma's telepathy and now outside the shielded cell she cannot keep others' thoughts out of her head. She forces herself up and pushes past the startled guards to run off. She goes to Kitty's room to gain her aid, but Kitty only sees Emma Frost, and tries to phase through the floor. On instinct, Ororo blasts her with a psi-bolt, knocking her unconscious, although she's afraid she may have killed her.
