Phoenix Descends

Meanwhile, on the main battlefield in space, the clash between the black and white celestial bodies grew ever more ferocious.

Elsewhere, Jean Grey watched the two godlike beings fight without restraint in outer space, their full power unleashed. She no longer held anything back.

Earth's constraints were gone. So was the fear of destroying a city. She no longer had to fight with one hand tied behind her back or suppress the Phoenix Force within her.

Facing Madelyne, the clone who had copied her Genes and stolen a portion of the Phoenix's power, Jean finally let loose all the anger and wariness she had bottled up.

This was her fated battle, a reckoning between the original and the clone.

"It ends here, Madelyne."

Jean's red hair whipped wildly in the vacuum of space. Scarlet flames surged around her as the pure, ancient, overwhelming Phoenix Force broke free and swept across the entire region.

The Phoenix power within her, far purer than her clone's, surged wildly. Boundless Life Energy intertwined with flames of destruction.

A clear, far-reaching phoenix cry rang across the endless cosmos, shaking the stars!

Behind Jean, a vast, radiant phoenix took shape and spread its wings. Its flames burned through the void, carrying the power of creation and destruction as it locked onto Madelyne Pryor.

Madelyne's expression remained cold and empty. She drove every scrap of copied Phoenix power she possessed to its limit, stacking layers of scarlet Telekinesis in a furious counterattack.

Her techniques, abilities, and genetic template were all copies of Jean's. In the end, though, she was only a clone made by Mister Sinister.

Her genetic template had an inborn flaw. The Phoenix power sealed inside her was incomplete and finite, with no true source to sustain it and no potential for endless evolution.

Against