Dreamwalker - X-Men Days of Future Past

China, 2023

One by one the X-Men descended from the jet into the snow and fog and darkness: Storm, Nina, Logan, Erik, and last but certainly not least, Charles, forever their leader.

"Bobby, Kitty!"

"Hey Storm, hey Ms. Nova." They hugged their former students, hardly children anymore.

"Hey kid," Logan addressed, earning a nod in return.

"You made it," cried Kitty. 

"Is this all that's left?" Nina gasped. The couple exchanged a look and nodded sadly. 

"Then we all must stick together now," Charles said.

Everyone gathered around while Kitty explained their plot and process for evading the Sentinels. 

"Whenever the Sentinels attack, Warpath spots them and I send Bishop back to warn of the attack before it happens. Blink scouts the next site and well, then we leave before they ever know we were there."

"Because we never were," Warpath added.

"What do you mean you 'were never there'?" Logan demanded, brow furrowed.

"She projects Bishop back in time a few days to warn the others of the coming attack," Charles explained.

"So she sends Bishop back in time?"

"No, just his consciousness, into his younger self, his younger body," Nina said.

"Wow."

"Yes, Kitty, that's fascinating," breathed Nina. "This might just work."

"Yes, Charles, it just might," agreed Erik.

"What might work?" Kitty asked the question everyone was wondering.

"The Sentinel Program was originally conceived by Dr. Bolivar Trask," Charles explained. "In the early '70s he was one of the world's leading weapons designers but covertly, he had begun experimenting on mutants, using their gifts to fuel his own research. There was one mutant who had discovered what he was doing-"

"A mutant with the ability to transform herself into anyone," added Erik. 

"Mystique," said Peter.

"I knew her as Raven," Charles recalled fondly. "We met when we were children, grew up together. She was like a sister to me. I tried to help her, but only succeeded in driving her away." Nina reached out to give his shoulder a supportive squeeze, knowing those wounds were still deep for him. She had been close with Raven too, all those years, all those decades, ago. "She hunted Trask across the world and at the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, after the Vietnam War, she found him, and killed him. It was the first time she killed."

"And it wasn't her last," spat out Logan. Now Nina squeezed his hand.  

"But killing Trask did not have the outcome she expected. It only persuaded the government of the need for his program. They captured her that day, tortured her, experimented on her. In her DNA they discovered the secrets to her powers of transformation. It gave them the key they needed to create weapons that could adapt to any mutant power, and in less than fifty years the machines that have destroyed so many of our kind were created. And that brings us here, but it all started that day in 1973, the day she first killed, the day she truly became 'Mystique'."

"You want to go back there," Kitty breathed, uncertainty coating her voice. 

"If I can get to her, stop the assassination, keep her out of their hands, then we can stop the Sentinels from ever being born." Charles was so determined, driven.