X-Factor #250 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

In typical Peter David fashion, we get no fewer than four previous plot lines converging in this issue as Darwin, Guido, and Jezebel all return in order to to kill Rahne's son Tier and avert a Hell War.  It appears that the beings that emerged from the volano in the Botanical Gardens last issue were Helllords and one of them has to kill Tier to win the aforementioned war, something that Darwin and Jezebel are trying to avoid completely by preemptively killing him.  David still has a few questions to answer related to this plot, namely:

1) Why would killing Tier "win" the war for a Helllord?  In "X-Factor" #214, a hallucinating Darwin faces down an adult Tier in the Wild West.  In that dream (if it was a dream), Tier reveals that he's the Beast who will bring about the Apocalypse.  I get that part.  But, wouldn't the Helllords sort of want the Apocalypse to happen?  Or, will it upset their power, making them want to avert it entirely?

2) Is Jezebel acting independently of her pact with the Isolationist?  I'm still really confused about her.  We first saw her creating said pact to destroy all mutants, but we've also seen her helping Theresa against the Morrigan and she clearly seems to be trying to do good (at least by her definition of "good") here.  I don't need my characters to be black-and-white good guy or bad guy, but I'm really unclear on her motives.  Sure, preventing a Hell War doesn't necessarily mean that you don't want to kill all mutants any longer, but she's starting to feel a little deus ex machina-y, the character that David uses when he needs to advance the plot a little more quickly than he would be able to do without her.

But, David doesn't make this issue all about asking and answering questions.  He brilliantly uses Tier as our insight into the struggles that we see here, portraying him as a pretty typical 12-year-old boy who's really just looking for stability (as seen by his embrace of Madrox) and who's confused by the adult world around him.  I mean, navigating the New York City subway by yourself as a pre-teen without money is just as scary as facing down six Helllords!

I'm excited to see where David goes with this one.  Given that it's been building for at least 36 issues, I can only imagine what we're going to see here.