Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men and the Avengers

by Greg Cox

  With Storm and Cyclops in tow, the Beast hopped nimbly through the lower level of the sprawling mansion that housed what was now called the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Safely locked away from prying eyes, this section of the mansion had the feel of a high-tech research facility. Sterile white hallways connected with well-equipped laboratories, the ground floor of the Danger Room, and an emergency medical center capable of treating everything from radiation burns to bite wounds.

  “Certainly,” the Beast added, “the means to do so is readily at hand.”

  Cyclops nodded. “Cerebro,” he said tersely, leading the way to Professor X’s personal laboratory.

  At the center of the lab, connected to an impressive array of streamlined computer banks and monitors, was a helmet-shaped apparatus secured to the ceiling by two flexible steel cables. This was Cerebro, a cybernetic tracking system designed to locate and identify mutants throughout the world; nearly all of the X-Men had been initially recruited via Cerebro. If the device, the brainchild of Professor Charles Xavier, couldn’t find a missing mutant, then that mutant had gone to enormous efforts not to be found.

  Cerebro worked best. Storm knew, when used in conjunction with a powerful telepathic mind, such as Professor X’s or Jean Grey’s, but, in their absence, any one of those present should be able to use the device to confirm that Rogue was safely on her way home. After all, her unique mutant signature was already on file in Cerebro’s capacious memory.

  Bright Lady, Storm prayed, let our fears be unfounded.

  “Would you care to do the honors, Ororo?” the Beast asked, addressing Storm by her true name. His long arms reached up and pulled the helmet down to eye-level. “I believe you may have the most affinity to our absent compatriot.”

  “Very well,” she agreed. Although she and Rogue came from radically different backgrounds, she and the younger woman had indeed grown close over the years. Storm removed the stiff black headdress that rested upon her lustrous white hair, and placed the metallic helmet over her head. A blinking red sensor fell into place between her eyes, just above the bridge of her nose. It was a tight fit, but not uncomfortable. “You may proceed when ready.”

  “Just give me a second,” the Beast said, the sound of his voice muffled somewhat by the helmet covering her ears, “while I call up Rogue’s profile.” His enormous fingers manipulated a control panel with surprising dexterity, and Storm heard Cerebro hum to life. Cyclops looked on stiffly, unable to relax until he learned the truth. “There we go. Commence scanning now.”

  Storm closed her eyes and visualized Rogue, looking just as she had when Storm had last seen her: casually dressed in civilian attire and enthusiastic at the prospect of a carefree day in the city. Despite the cumbersome apparatus enclosing her skull, Storm did not feel at all cramped or confined. If anything, she felt the exact opposite; she could feel her awareness radiating outward beyond the walls of the Institute, sending out finely-attuned tendrils of thought that spread out for miles and miles in every direction, with herself at the center of an unfolding psionic web. The sensation was not unlike that of calling upon the wind and the rain, except that now she was searching for a single individual spirit instead of a compliant cloud or cold front. Wherever Rogue might have strayed to, she could not remain undetected for long.

  And yet, as the seconds rushed by, becoming minutes, doubts began to assail Storm. In theory, Rogue should have gone no further than Manhattan, merely a couple of hours away from the X-Men’s residence in Westchester County. Why then did she continue to elude the far-reaching sensitivities of Cerebro, which had been known to chart the emergence of an unknown mutant power even half a world away? Her mind was traveling at the speed of thought, yet Rogue remained beyond her reach.

  Where are you, my friend? What has become of you?

  Storm opened her eyes to see her fellow X-Men watching her with growing apprehension. Even the Beast’s natural ebullience appeared dampened by her continuing inability to find their missing friend.

  Finally, after many long minutes that felt like hours, the Beast shook his shaggy head and deactivated the device. The blinking sensor between her eyes switched off and Storm felt the extended feelers of her artificially-amplified consciousness withdraw back into her mind, grounding her within her physical body. She slowly lifted the helmet from her head and let the steel cables retract so that the headpiece ascended toward the ceiling once more.

  If only my fears could be lifted from me so readily, she thought mournfully.

  “It is no use,” she reported to Cyclops and the Beast, confirming what they no doubt already knew. “I could sense no trace of Rogue—anywhere upon the Earth.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “SO, I hear this scream and I come running, and the first thing I see is the puppets attacking the Witch—is it okay if I call her that?”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind,” Iron Man said to the nervous security guard. The Avengers interviewed the man, a retired cop named Rodriguez, in the lobby of the folk art museum. Staffers and patrons looked on excitedly, whispering among themselves, as the armored Avenger, along with Captain America and the Vision, pursued their investigation of the Scarlet Witch’s apparent abduction. The Vision’s knowledge of Wanda’s itinerary had indeed led them to the museum—and to an increasingly bizarre mystery.

  Puppets? Iron Man thought. Wanda was ambushed by puppets?

  “ ’Course I didn’t know it was her at first,” Rodriguez continued, gulping uneasily as he spoke to the costumed heroes, “but then she said she was an Avenger and told me to get that other girl—I mean, young woman—out of there. I didn’t argue the point. I figured she knew what she was doing, especially after she started waving her hands around and all that weird stuff happened. Besides the puppets, I mean.” Despite the museum’s air conditioning, the guard wiped his forehead, remembering. “So, anyway, I made sure the other woman was safe, then hurried back to see if the Witch was okay. But when I got there, they were all gone. The Witch. The puppets. Everything.”

  “And you had never noticed anything odd about the puppets before?” Captain America asked. A patriotic quilt on the wall behind the guard matched Cap’s uniform.

  He’s the only one of us who looks like he belongs here, Iron Man thought, taking in all the quaint and old-fashioned Americana on display. The Vision and I stand out like sore thumbs.

  “No,” Rodriguez insisted, shaking his head. “They arrived on loan from some museum in Europe last week. I watched the curators mount them on the walls myself. There’s been no problem at all, until this morning.”

  When the puppets came to life, Iron Man thought. Blast, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of those weird sorcerous things. A scientist by both training and inclination, he was never comfortable dealing with the supernatural. Past adventures had forced him to grudgingly concede the existence of mystical forces within the universe, like Asgardian gods or the dread Dormammu, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Give me a horde of rampaging cyborgs and aliens any day. Unfortunately, when it came to the Scarlet Witch, whose mutant sorcery derived from both science and the supernatural, an occult attack of some sort was a distinct possibility.

  “You mentioned a security video earlier,” he reminded the guard. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Yes,” the Vision said emphatically. “More data is required.” His sepulchral voice visibly unnerved Rodriguez, who gulped and looked away to avoid meeting the synthezoid’s unblinking plastic eyes. There was an intensity behind the Vision’s eerie stillness, Iron Man thought, that betrayed an unmistakable concern for the safety of his former wife—at least to someone who had known the Vision for as long as Iron Man had.

  The guard signaled to a young aide or intern, who hurried over to hand Rodriguez an ordinary videocassette.

  “We have cameras in the ceilings,” Rodriguez explained, presenting Iron Man with the tape, “to discourage vandalism, you know.” He cocked his head to one side, toward a closed door be
yond the front desk. “If you want, you can use the VCR in the curator’s office, although it might be kind of crowded with all of you in there.” Rodriguez had explained earlier that the office was not a large one, which was why they had chosen to conduct the interview in the lobby, despite the milling spectators.

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Iron Man replied.

  Gripping the cassette gently between his armored fingers, which could have crushed it to powder had he desired, he inserted the tape into the audiovisual communications array built into the collar of his armor. Stark-designed software rapidly converted the information encoded on the tape to his private format, then routed the data to the multi-purpose beam projector embedded in his chestplate. The unbreakable polycrystal lens lit up from within and, only seconds after Iron Man received the tape, it projected a three-dimensional, holographic image onto the empty air in front of the guard and the heroes. The holograph was even colorized.

  “Holy cow!” Rodriguez exclaimed, his jaw dropping open.

  Iron Man peered through the eye slits in his helmet at the instant replay of Wanda’s battle against, sure enough, a bunch of very lively marionettes. He nodded in approval as the Scarlet Witch deployed her hex spheres against Baba Yaga and the other puppets, then frowned as a miniature effigy of Victor Von Doom blasted Wanda from behind with some variety of energy beam. For a second, he wondered whether the real Doom might be behind this unlikely ambush, but no, he decided, this didn’t feel like Doom’s style. Doom could be devious, but he had too much pride to shoot a woman in the back, especially via a puny toy version of himself.

  Then who? Iron Man wondered. The Puppet Master? Mister Doll?

  Before his eyes, the holographic Witch collapsed onto the floor and the malevolent puppets converged on her unconscious body, forming a circle around her. Iron Man held his breath, anxious to see what happened next, when the image dissolved into a blur of incoherent visual static.

  “What is it?” Captain America asked, squinting at the globe of flickering electronic snow. “What’s wrong?” Iron Man called up an immediate systems report. Micro-projectors in his eyepieces aimed facts and figures directly onto his retina, causing the visual display to float before his field of vision. He scrolled quickly through the report, but the news was not encouraging. Switching off his multi-beam in disappointment, he turned toward his fellow Avengers.

  “It’s no good,” he reported. The flexible metal of his golden faceplate mirrored his disapproving expression. “Some sort of intense electromagnetic pulse erased the tape from that point on.”

  “Then we have no idea where they took Wanda,” Cap stated, frustration burning in his clear blue eyes, “or even how they got her out of the building.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Iron Man confirmed. He ejected the cassette from his communications array and handed it back to Rodriguez, who still seemed amazed that such an extraordinary visual display could come from so ordinary a video cassette. “Thank you for your cooperation, sir,” Iron Man said, making a mental note to have Tony Stark donate a sizable endowment to the museum. “Perhaps you can show us exactly where this occurred?”

  When in doubt, inspect the scene of the crime, Iron Man thought. He was a scientist and engineer, not a detective, but maybe the marauding marionettes had left some clue to their origins or present whereabouts. Right now, that was the only chance they had to find the Scarlet Witch, hopefully in one piece.

  I really, really hope we’re not talking magic here, he wished. Anything but that.

  The Vision said nothing at all.

  * * *

  “OH, my stars and garters!”

  Henry McCoy leaped over the camelback sofa toward the television set mounted on the wall of the X-Men’s spacious rec room, the book he was reading—Metaphor and Metaphysics: A New Interpretation of Quantum Reality—instantly forgotten, all thought of its contents driven away by the startling pictures on the TV screen.

  “Scott! Ororo! Make haste!” he called out. “The redoubtable Rogue has made the nightly news!”

  His hairy blue fingers turned up the volume even as Cyclops and Storm, now garbed in everyday attire, rushed into the room. Scott Summer’s eyes remained concealed behind a pair of ruby quartz glasses, but Ororo Munroe’s lustrous azure orbs widened in amazement.

  “Goddess!” she exclaimed.

  On the screen above their heads, a familiar figure appeared to be fighting off a swarm of… angry tee-shirts? Although the woman’s features were obscured by the frenzied layers of fabric clinging to her face, it was obvious to the Beast and his teammates that the lady in question was none other than the X-Men’s very own Southern rebel. The heads and shoulders of fleeing New Yorkers occasionally intruded into the frame as the jostled cameraman struggled to keep Rogue in the center of the picture. As she flailed about wildly, her super-strength tore apart what looked like some sort of flimsy showcase for anti-mutant propaganda, while the typically resonant voice of a local news anchor provided a running commentary:

  “… this amateur video, taken by a quick-thinking tourist from Santa Fe, clearly shows the chaos that erupted today at a Greenwich Village street fair, turning an afternoon of outdoor entertainment into a terrifying experience for dozens of innocent fairgoers. Authorities have tentatively identified the woman in this footage as a member of the outlaw mutant organization known as the X-Men. She is believed to go by the alias of ‘Rogue,’ and has been linked to a number of past mutant disturbances…”

  An eyewitness, so named by the caption that appeared under his close-up, offered his own take on the episode. “What more proof do we need that these mutant monsters don’t care who gets caught in the middle of one of their paranormal power struggles?” Sweaty but self-satisfied, the witness eagerly launched into what sounded like a well-worn spiel. “The Friends of Humanity have documented over 875 cases of collateral damage caused by rival factions of mutant terrorists…”

  “These views do not necessarily represent those of this station or its management,” the Beast interrupted, lowering the volume once more. “Or so one most fervently hopes and prays.”

  Thankfully, the unsolicited editorializing quickly gave way to further footage of the incident in the Village. Her hands and face nearly mummified by the seemingly possessed garments, Rogue lifted off from the street, the jerky eye of the camera tracking her into the sky until she flew out of the frame. This was followed by a somewhat more professional shot of a familiar stone monument that looked like it had been hit by a missile. The Washington Square Arch, the Beast recognized, although it would be better described now as the Washington Square Pillars, the arch itself having been reduced to rubble, apparently during Rogue’s headlong attempt to escape the suffocating fabric.

  Another landmark destroyed, the Beast thought, sighing. Through no fault of their own, the X-Men’s hard-fought battles against evil mutants and other menaces often left a regrettable amount of damage and debris behind. This is not going to help our already dubious reputation.

  Bad publicity could be dealt with another day, however; finding out what had become of Rogue was the preeminent matter at the moment. With Cyclops and Storm, the Beast watched the news broadcast for a few minutes more, until it became obvious that there was nothing further to be learned there. He channel-surfed rapidly, checking out the coverage on other stations, but they all seemed to be repeating the same information and footage over and over.

  “So much for the mass media,” he pronounced, clicking the TV off and hopping over to confer with Scott and Ororo. He perched on the back of a chair, his toes wrapped around the carved wooden ridge atop the seat. “No one seems clear on what transpired after Rogue’s collision with the Arch, but this does not bode well for the ready return of our absent amigo.”

  “We have to assume she’s in the hands of the enemy,” Cyclops stated. He paced behind the couch, his hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks, too engaged with the crisis to sit down. Storm, wearing a floor-length gree
n housedress of African design, stood by the window, looking on with a deceptive aura of serenity. The Beast knew that Ororo was no doubt just as impatient to come to Rogue’s aid as Cyclops.

  “Ah, but which one?” the Beast asked. “Refresh my overtaxed memory,” he said, balancing on one foot while he scratched his head with the other. “Isn’t there some costumed character out west—California, I believe—who’s supposed to have the ability to psychically manipulate clothing and other textiles?”

  “Gypsy Moth,” Cyclops supplied, having done his homework as usual; Scott was the only person Hank knew who read super-criminal case studies in his spare time. “But she’s never had any grudge against us. More likely, we’re dealing with a powerful telekinetic capable of turning inanimate objects into weapons. The Black Queen maybe, or the Shadow King.”

  “It is unfortunate that Phoenix is abroad,” Storm commented. “In her absence, we are ill-equipped to deal with attacks of a psionic nature. Especially now that Psylocke can no longer access her telekinetic gifts.”

  Betsy Braddock, the Beast recalled, had recently departed the X-Men, following her crippling psychic clash with Amahl Farouk. A costly victory, that, he mused, and a reminder that we X-Men do not always emerge unscathed from our various sorties into all manner of peril.

  “We’ll just have to do the best we can,” Cyclops declared grimly. His hands gripped the back of the overstuffed ottoman. “I’ll send out a general alert, but Lord only knows when Jean and the others will wrap up that business in the Savage Land.” He strode decisively for the door, turning his back on the silent television. “Into uniform, everyone. There’s nothing more we can do here. I want to be in NYC by 2030 hours.”

  Already wearing as much of a uniform as he ever did, the Beast headed for the lab to assemble whatever equipment might be required. Somehow, he guessed that finding Rogue was going to take a lot of old-fashioned detective work, including a forensic examination of whatever evidence remained.