"Damaged."

Is it largely happenstance that Spiral is here? Probably! Also, I have the old Toy Biz Pyro--I'm not sure how, since I didn't buy it new--and don't have the new one since I bought that Rogue at a show; and Avalanche, let's be honest, you can probably hold out a bit for his price to drop. That would get us a fairly solid Brotherhood/Freedom Force lineup, except they're still short Destiny, and I'd really like one of her. Although Kurt doesn't have the history with her that Rogue does, I think he sees her as a not-mitigating influence on Mystique, almost as a bad step-mom. Also, are the Brotherhood crew pals, found-family, work friends? Have we seen them together in the Krakoa era? I get the feeling they don't look back with fondness on their time together; I see them like a band that toured and toured and toured until they hated each other's guts and broke up pretty hard.

We're also dipping our toe in, just a smidge, into current X-book continuity: in the last storyline in Legion of X, Nightcrawler started getting progressively more monstery; starting with horns and going from there. Orchis used him to murder some anti-mutant politicians or podcasters or whatever, to stir up anti-mutant sentiment; but Kurt was more concerned with, if he was the 'soul' of the X-Men, how did he not notice things were so messed up? Which has benched him for the time being, until his turn as Spider-Man coming this fall. The murders weren't really his fault, but probably weigh on him; but I'm more interested in that a very similar plot happened to Elektra in recent issues of Daredevil, where I think she might've been framed for murdering the president of France. I think. Honestly the last few issues have just fallen out of my memory; like they planned on going somewhere, then couldn't and hit a swerve. Still, I really wanna see DD-Elektra and Spider-Kurt team-up; probably going to have to do that myself.