X-Men and the Avengers: Friend or Foe?

by Greg Cox

  KILL HIM NOW!

  The command flared inside Logan’s head like a mushroom cloud, stronger and brighter than before. Paradoxically, the clearer the command, the deeper the fog became, wrapping around his thoughts, making it difficult to think anything else except. ...

  KILL HIM NOW!

  Banner’s jugular throbbed a few inches away. Logan could already taste the blood, imagine the man’s life bleeding out through the gashes Logan’s claws would make. It was simple. Easy. All he had to do was cut and slice and claw and tear, just like the voice inside his head insisted.

  KILL HIM NOW!

  The claws leaped from the backs of his hands, sliding out in their grooves the same way his thoughts seemed to be guided in just one direction, channeled inexorably toward a single, inescapable goal. And yet, despite the relentless mental tide togging him toward the kill, something felt wrong. Kill Banner? Why? Banner was no match for him. Tackling the Hulk was one thing; the bonfire at the back of his brain blazed hotter at the thought of pitting his claws against the green-skinned giant’s grizzly-sized bulk. But Banner? This skinny, pink sitting duck? Banner couldn’t even run away from Logan’s claws, let alone fight back with any hope of survival. What sort of prey was that?

  KILL BANNER! KILL!

  Logan wanted to kill someone alright, but not Banner. Whether it was his mutant healing factor at work, or just plain cussedness, he resisted the compulsion to strike out at the helpless man. Killing Banner in cold blood went against his instincts, no matter how inescapable his orders to the contrary. The Leader’s command still shone as intensely as before, but he found he could distance himself from its strident neon imperative, keeping it apart from the other shapes emerging from the fog. The

  blood-red glare of his raw animal will illuminated the fogbound landscape of his mind.

  His gaze flicked from side to side, spotting Rogue and the Scarlet Witch out of the comers of his eyes. He became aware of another presence directly behind him, pressing upon his temples. My Leader, he understood, then corrected himself. No, the Leader. His eyes glanced over at Rogue again, as a plan came together in his mind. This is the Leader’s fault. He’s done something to me, something to all of us.

  Angry veins pulsed in his temples. Logan’s teeth ground together violently. His claws jerked in and out of his clenched fists, while his fingernails dug into the palms of his hands, drawing blood. The pain made it a little easier to ignore the flashing billboard in his head. Fighting his own rage as well, Logan mustered enough sanity to figure out what needed to be done.

  KILL BANNER NOW!

  “No!” Logan snarled. He spun around and grabbed the Leader by the shoulders, lifting the startled supervillain off his feet. Before the Leader could reassert his control, Logan flung the mutated mastermind at another of his brainwashed victims. “Rogue, darlin’, catch!”

  As the Leader barrelled headfirst toward the entranced X-Man, Rogue instinctively threw out her hands to halt the collision. Her bare fingers could hardly miss the Leader’s elephantine cranium and she caught the bulbous projectile with both hands.

  Atta girl! Logan thought, grinning wickedly despite the lingering fog in his mind. Before his eyes, Rogue’s entire body stiffened as though an electric current was passing through her. Her eyes bulged in surprise as the Leader’s staggering I.Q. poured into her brain, w'hich expanded to accommodate her enormous new intellect. Her smooth brow mushroomed in size, both cerebral hemispheres swelling up like balloons beneath her chestnut hair. Her rosy skin took on a greenish complexion that clashed with her ugly orange jumpsuit.

  As for the Leader, he emitted a sickly groan before sagging against Rogue, who hurriedly dropped him like a hot potato. The sound of the villain’s limp body hitting the floor was like music to Logan’s ears, even if the Leader’s final command still reverberated within the X-Man’s skull, freezing him in place.

  KILL BANNER NOW!

  With her newly-acquired super-smarts, it took Rogue less than a second to assess the situation. Zooming past the dumbfounded Super-Skrull, she lightly brushed her fingertips across Logan’s throbbing forehead. He experienced a moment of weakness, typical of hands-on treatment from Rogue, but the brief infirmity passed quickly, taking with it any vestiges of the Leader’s control. The fog lifted in his brain, and the Leader’s intrusive voice fell silent at last. About flamin’ time, he thought; for the first time in who knew how long he could literally hear himself think. Just as he’d hoped, Rogue had used her borrowed mental powers to undo the hold the Leader had placed over both their minds. “Good work, darlin’,” he told her. “Don’t forget the Witch, too.”

  “Right on it!” Rogue drawled, streaking away toward the enslaved Avenger. Wide-eyed and alarmed, the Super-Skrull’s gaze jumped back and forth between Logan, Rogue, and the collapsed Leader. Then he grasped what Rogue was up to, and his extendable arms stretched after her, desperate to stop her from freeing Wanda as well. Flaming stone fists, looking like catapulted mounds of red-hot coals, headed on an intercept course for Rogue’s colossally enlarged skull.

  “Forget it, bub!” Logan growled, leaping at the Skrull. The gravity was so low he might as well have been flying. That’s right, Logan remembered. We’re on the moon. He felt like he had just woken up from a long, uneasy sleep, his brain full of discordant images that he only half-recalled. When in blazes did the Skrulls get mixed up in this mess anyhow?

  He slammed into the Skrull, the weight of his ada-mantium skeleton driving the alien backwards and away from Rogue. The Skrull grunted in surprise, the top half of his body stretching to absorb the force of Logan’s assault while the Skrull’s boots remained firmly planted on the floor. Logan slashed at the Skrull’s face with his claws, o’nly to be blocked at the last minute by some sort of invisible force field. Yeah, yeah, Logan thought, unimpressed. He recognized the Super-Skrull from a barroom brawl in Manhattan a few years back. A one-man Fantastic Four, I remember.

  The force field expanded outward, shoving Logan away from the alien warrior. His back crashed into the wall, but Wolverine endured the impact stoically. He’d done what he’d set out to do; give Rogue time to snap the Scarlet Witch out of her trance. Looking across the rotunda, he saw Magneto’s only daughter blink and shake her head after a glancing touch from Rogue, who hurriedly brought the other woman up to speed. “Watch out for this character!” he warned Rogue and the Witch, nodding at the Skrull. “He’s got plenty of tricks!”

  “More than you can imagine, mutant!” the Skrull bragged, apparently unworried by the former hostages’s three-to-one advantage over him. A thick, blue layer of ice formed over his left fist while his right remained aflame. His eyes glowed an ominous shade of red, and a crimson beam lashed out at Logan, who dodged the beam by diving to one side an instant before the incandescent ray shattered the floor where he had been standing. “Surrender or face the unlimited power of the Ultimate Skrull!”

  What the—? Logan thought. That was just like one of Cyke ’s beams. Alert eyes scanned the arena-sized chamber, registering for the first time that others besides Banner were suspended in the transparent plastic tubes. Scott, ’Roro, Cap, Hank, Bobby, Shellhead, and the Vision, Logan spotted, scowling; looks like the bad guys have half of the X-crew here, plus the Avengers to boot. He wished he could borrow the Leader’s memories from Rogue, just so he had a better idea of what was going down. All he could dredge up now were vague recollections of fighting Iron Man and/or the Hulk. Feels like I missed a good chunk of this flamin ’ yarn.

  “Never!” the Scarlet Witch declared, responding to the Skull’s demand that they surrender. Her accent betrayed her Balkan roots. “When have you ever known an Avenger to yield to the likes of you, Skrull? We’ve beaten you before and we will again.”

  “Ha!” the Skrull laughed harshly. “You three could not even escape my underlings. What hope do you have of defeating the champion of the Skrull Empire?” “Your underlings?” Wanda echoed, sounding puzzled. Confusion creased her brow mo
mentarily, then the truth sunk in. “Of course ... the puppets!” She eyed the Skrull with renewed anger and determination. ‘ “A clever trick, but you no longer have surprise and deception on your side.” Her fingers assuming arcane and esoteric configurations, she cast a hex sphere over the hostile Skrull. A shimmering globe of scarlet light surrounded her foe, but the Skrull looked unafraid. With a gesture from his frost-covered hand, he dispelled the hex, which popped like a soap bubble, leaving the Scarlet Witch visibly shocked. “How did you do that?” she demanded. “It’s impossible!”

  “No, it ain’t,” Rogue corrected her. Her voice even sounded a little like the Leader’s now. “This scaly carpetbagger’s got all our powers, plus our friends’ powers besides.” She tapped her inflated noggin. “Ah know just how the Leader did it—and it works! The Skrull’s a lot more dangerous than before.”

  Nuts! Logan thought. Like the Super-Skrull wasn’t enough of a challenge before the Leader souped-up his powers'. Claws extended, Wolverine warily circled the alien, keeping both eyes on the Skrull as he spoke to Rogue. “Guess that eliminates you putting the touch on him, right?”

  “ ’Fraid so, sugah,” Rogue said, rising into the air above Wanda. “We’d just cancel each other out, like he and the Witch just did.” She cracked her knuckles loudly, then faced the Skrull with her bare fists.

  “The female speaks truly,” the Skrull gloated. “I am the sum of all your talents and more.” Bony claws jutted from his fists like calcified parodies of Logan’s own ada-mantium blades.

  “Watch it, chum,” Logan warned. “You’re gettin’ dangerously close to copyright infringement there.” He risked a glance at the Leader, who had not yet recovered from Rogue’s one-of-a-kind whammy. There’s the brains of this outfit, he reminded himself. Better put him under wraps before we get caught up in a rumble with

  E.T. here. He sprang at the Leader’s comatose body, ready to trade the swell-headed mutate for a ride home, if that’s what it took to get the X-Men and the Avengers back on their native soil. The Skrull wasn’t the only one who could take hostages.

  Logan’s pounce brought him smack against another invisible force field, shielding the Leader from harm. “Believe me, mutant,” the Skrull asserted, “I wish I could permit you to wield those admirable claws against my duplicitous accomplice, but I still have need of that vexing human.” He drove Logan away from the Leader with a concentrated burst of optic rays. “You and the two females, on the other hand, have become expendable.” "

  So what else is new? Logan thought.

  Rogue’s brain felt stuffed to busting by the Leader’s accumulated knowledge and intellect. She doubted if even Professor X had this much raw data and processing power crammed into his skull, even if the Leader’s memories came tainted with an undertone of heartless evil and cruelty that was impossible to mistake. Although it left a bad taste in her mouth, the villain’s sinister inclinations didn’t mess up Rogue’s head too much; she’d zapped too many bad guys with her hungry fingers to be seduced by the slimy underside of the Leader’s soul. The Skrull’s our big problem now, she thought, her allegiances and priorities back in order at last.

  You didn’t have to be a super-genius to realize that the Super-Skrull, endowed with the powers of a whole passel of super-types, was going to be one tough customer. A stolen memory showed her the alien warrior taking out both Captain America and Iceman—and that

  was before the Leader multiplied the Skrull’s abilities!

  “Mine is the ferocious power of the elements!” Commander K’lrt exulted, raising his arms above his head. The Leader’s psyche provided Rogue with the Super-Skrull’s real name. “Feel the coldness of my contempt for you Terran rabble!”

  A savage winter storm awoke within the underground chamber. Biting winds howled in fury, driving Wolverine and the Scarlet Witch back from their alien enemy. Freezing sleet and snow pelted the heroes, coating their limbs with a frigid glaze that weighed them dow'n even as it chilled them to the bone. Must be mixing Bobby and Ororo’s powers, Rogue realized. Only she could make any headway at all against the unnatural blizzard; the southem-bom X-Man flew into the wind, fighting to reach' the all-powerful Skrull at the center of the tempest.

  The wind chill factor had to be a hundred below. As invulnerable as she was, Rogue still felt the awful cold. The arctic wind blew against her face, turning her lips blue and chapped. She shivered uncontrollably as she flew, her teeth chattering loud enough to be heard over the wailing of the storm. Ice covered her outstretched arms and legs; if not for the moon’s lesser gravity, she wasn’t sure she could have stayed aloft. Her fingers lost all feeling, making her pine for her gloves—and not for the usual reason. Brrr! she thought. This is no kind of weather for a Mississippi gal like me.

  Slowly, stubbornly, she jetted into the blizzard. Powerful headwinds fought her every' inch of the way, but she dived toward the Skrull, who started flinging fireballs and lightning bolts at her. Crimson eyebeams joined the Skrull’s anti-aircraft fire, turning the turbulent atmosphere into an aerial obstacle course worthy of the

  Danger Room. Thank goodness for all those training sessions! Rogue acknowledged, banking sharply to avoid K’lrt’s eyebeams as they came sweeping toward her. The familiar red beams reminded her of Cyclops and the other imprisoned X-Men; knowing that her teammates had come all the way to the moon just to rescue her, Logan, and Wanda only fueled her determination to teach both the Leader and the Super-Skrull a lesson they’d never forget. “R-r-ready or not,” she whispered through frozen lips, “h-h-here I c-come!”

  She let a couple fireballs hit her, just to warm up a little. The roiling globes of flame melted most of the frost away, while doing no more harm to her impervious skin than a hot tub; thankfully, the homely orange duds she was wearing turned out to be fireproof, too. She luxuriated in the toasty feeling of warm flames racing over frost-bitten cheeks, which was surely not what the homicidal Skrull had in mind. He’s still not used to his new crop of super-powers, she deduced. His attacks are getting in each other’s way.

  Then a thunderbolt struck Rogue between her should-erblades at the same time that a scarlet hex bolt disrupted her nervous system, triggering an epileptic fit.

  The snowstorm blinded Wanda Maximoff, making it all but impossible to see what was happening, let alone aid in the battle against the Super-Skrull. The fierce wind, excruciatingly cold, whipped her auburn tresses about wildly, so that she was constantly tugging her hair away from her face. Wet, clumpy flakes of snow, mixed with stinging pellets of hail, bombarded her without surcease. New fallen snow, as clean and white as the snowy peaks of Wundagore Mountain where she was bom, piled up past her ankles, burying her bare feet beneath a carpet of frozen moisture. This is ridiculous, she thought angrily, hugging herself tightly and shivering. How are we supposed to defeat the Super-Skrull in the face of this imitation Ice Age ?

  To her surprise and frustration, she glimpsed the unmistakable scarlet glow of a hex bolt through the swirling snowfall, proving that the Skrull was successfully copying her powers even as she searched futilely for shelter from the storm. Who was the target of the imitation hex bolt, she wondered. Rogue? Wolverine? It tormented her to imagine her own mutant magic employed against her X-Men allies, but what could she do to halt the Skrull’s protean onslaught? The remorseless blizzard hid the alien villain from her hexes as effectively as any smoke screen or natural camouflage.

  “Witchie!” a gruff voice called out from nearby. Wanda recognized Wolverine’s raspy tone and attitude even if she couldn’t make out the X-Man amidst the tempest-tossed snow. “Forget the Skrull!” he shouted over the keening wind. “Wake up Cap and the others!” His claws scraped against something hard and crystalline, drawing Wanda’s attention to a transparent tube embedded in the wall behind her. Turning her back on the Skrull and his storm, she peered past the deluge of falling snow until she spied Cap’s red-white-and-blue figure suspended motionlessly within the tube. Similar tubes flanked the patriotic
Avenger on both sides, but Wanda could only faintly glimpse the costumed individuals trapped therein. Had the Leader and the Super-Skrull captured all of the Avengers? she fretted. What about the Vision? She thought she spotted her exhusband’s diamond-shaped emblem on one of the entombed figures, but it was hard to tell in the storm. “Vision?” she whispered, her breath misting in the chill air.

  “Hurry it up!” Wolverine hollered. His claws clacked loudly against the clear plastic cylinder and Wanda discerned his stocky, snow-flecked outline against a stretch of black wall between two tubes. His head dipped beneath his shoulders as he crouched before the vicious wind. “Rogue’s on her own versus the Skrull, so make it fast!”

  Yes, of course, Wanda thought. As deputy leader of the Avengers, it felt odd to be receiving orders from an X-Man, but now was no time to argue about protocol. Although her fingers shook from the cold, that didn’t stop her from gesturing at the nearest containment tube, conjuring a hex bolt that leaped from her numb fingertips to the apparatus controlling the tubes. Eldritch energy lit the vicinity, casting scarlet shadows upon the snow and revealing Wolverine in his orange prisoner’s garb. He nodded with satisfaction as, one after another, the tubes malfunctioned “spontaneously,” releasing their captives. Looking more than a little dazed, Captain America staggered into the snow, instinctively snatching up his shield from where it lay at the bottom of his tube. ‘ ‘What the devil?’ ’ he exclaimed as the first blast of wind now struck his chiseled features. “Where are we?”

  All along the wall, other heroes slowly came back to their senses. Wanda spotted the Vision, just as she’d thought, as well as the Beast, Cyclops, Storm, and more. From the looks of them, they all needed a few minutes to recover from whatever sort of suspended animation the Leader had consigned them to. If nothing else, Wanda guessed, the bracing cold had to be a brutally effective wake-up call.