The setting is a town called Bayville, New York, about an hour’s drive from New York City. Two decades ago, Professor Charles Xavier founded The Xavier Institute. A school for gifted youngsters, it provided asylum for those to come into their burgeoning mutations, and train to use them for the protection of humanity. It was not just an academic pursuit, but a political one, as well; through years of activism and legal wrangling, Xavier secured assurances from the government that there would be no interference on their end — though there were no guarantees about the anxious public themselves.

For the most part, the school continued to run normally, excepting frequent but ultimately benign protests from the surrounding humans. But as the school grew in popularity amongst mutants, and rumours began to run wild about a super-powered army being trained within those walls, so too did human pressure on the government to step in. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time; shortly after Xavier’s sudden disappearance in 2007, a wave of Sentinels was released on Bayville, decimating a large portion of the city and the school. Many people - predominantly mutants - died in the attacks, including the Second In Command of the X-Men. Many of the school's residents left in the wake of the Sentinel Attacks, believing that the school was no longer a safe haven, but those that remained were determined to rebuild their home.

Two years later, in 2009, Magneto returned after a long absence. He regained leadership of the Brotherhood and immediately began setting his plans for mutant superiority into motion. When his daughter, Wanda Maximoff, returned to his side, Magneto decided the time was ripe. He led an attack against the X-Men, reasoning that with them out of his way he would be free to achieve his goals. Just when victory was within his grasp, things went horribly awry. The Brotherhood was eventually defeated, but at a terrible cost to the X-Men.

That same year, a charismatic young French anti-mutant protestor by the name of Dr. Jacques “James” Manette - known as the Hate Doctor by his followers - appeared on the airwaves. Citing the dangerous mutants who had revealed themselves during the Brotherhood attack, he started a full-out media war against mutants. This led to shutting down the mutant ward in Bayville General and the funding to perfect a serum that Dr. Manette touted as a “Cure” for mutants. It would take away a mutant’s powers by destroying the X genome in their DNA.

In 2010, Xavier returned from the Shi’Ar Empire with the returned use of his legs but without his mutant gifts. He received a warm welcome from his X-Men, though the reception in other quarters was not so friendly. Intimidated by the return of Xavier, Manette pushed for a Mutant Registration Act to be passed in New York, claiming that Xavier was trying to form an army of mutants and needed to be stopped. His ploy worked, and the MRA was passed — with the hard-won caveat that anyone living at the Institute was exempt from registration, so long as they didn’t step foot on public soil.

Fed up with humanity as a whole and seeking to protect his race from their hatred, Magneto led Brotherhood of Mutants to Genosha, an island off the coast of Africa, with the intent to build a sanctuary for all mutants. It was hardly a bloodless campaign, but in the end Magneto had what he wanted and was content to build his island nation. The world breathed a sigh of relief.

Over the course of the next two years, a team called the Mutant Response Division (MRD) was formed. Their job: to round up unregistered mutants and convince them to register, by any means necessary. Since a majority of their paycheck came from Manette, their methods were often harsh - but effective. Manette's Cure had been perfected at the expense of both willing and unwilling mutant subjects, and was beginning to be weaponized and used by the MRD against mutants at the slightest provocation.

Genosha flourished under Magneto's watchful eye, growing into a marvel of modern architecture and engineering, but he was not blind to the growing turmoil in the world, nor the growing hatred of mutants. Meanwhile, the X-Men managed to stay out of any sort of conflict, for the most part — though many of their members refused to register under the MRA, regardless. Following the assassination of Charles Xavier by one of the MRD's agents, however, a rift was created within the X-Men, and when the stance of continued peace failed to appease Jean Grey and many others, the telepath lead them into exodus to Genosha, and into an alliance with Magneto and his Brotherhood.

This rift did not last long, for only a few months after the assassination of Xavier, sensing an uprising in mutant forces, the MRD decided to strike first, sending a black-ops unit supported by upgraded Sentinels to Genosha to destroy any and all possible resistance. What inhabitants were not annihilated in the attacks were scattered to all corners of the globe, becoming illegal aliens in what had once been their own home countries. Back in Bayville, impartial agents of SHIELD — many mutants or metahumans, themselves — were assigned to a shaky security detail at the Institute, their orders to keep the peace on both ends while investigating further possible threats to global security.

Sick and tired of the MRD taking inhuman liberties with its political power, the X-Men decided to act — this time with law and diplomacy — and have decided to take the heads of the MRD to court for premeditated genocide, so the whole world can know what they have done, and they can be properly punished by the same laws that they had so long hidden behind to spread their evil influence.

This goal is far from easy, however, and even with the United Nations backing them and all the proof in the world to support their cause, it's never been clearer that humans and mutants are walking an inevitable path towards full-on war.

Only one question now remains:

Where do you stand?