Friend or Foe

by Unknown Author

  His task complete, Iceman withdrew the tunnel from the quinjet, swiftly resuming his usual shape and proportions. Stepping briskly through the gap Cyclops had carved with his eyebeams, the frozen mutant used the excess ice to seal the breach in the wall, then paused along with the other heroes to take stock of their new surroundings.

  For a terrifying moment. Storm thought that they had somehow ended up outside after all, exposed to the deadly lunar environment. Then she realized that the •towering dome was only opaque on the outside; from within, the outer wall permitted a clear view of the surrounding moonscape. She marveled that anyone could find such desolate scenery appealing, but who knew what sort of alien aesthetic the inhuman Skrulls subscribed to? It was possible, she speculated, that they found beauty in lifelessness.

  Or perhaps the forbidding panorama was simply intended to discourage escape attempts on the part of the dome’s captives. Tycho made an excellent prison, she conceded; even if runaway hostages secured the means to survive the freezing vacuum outside, the miles-high wall of the crater posed a considerable obstacle to any desperate trek to freedom. How far could Rogue and the Scarlet Witch get before being recaptured? she wondered. Probably not far at all.

  “Weird,” Iceman commented. “What sort of place is this anyway?”

  They found themselves on a wide, curved track that appeared to circle a large cylindrical structure at the center of the dome. From its vast dimensions, Storm guessed that the cylinder held most of the Leader’s lunar habitat. Stenciled markings, penned in an alien script, labeled various portions of inner wall. A three-wheeled vehicle, perhaps intended for a Skrull maintenance crew, was parked on the pavement not far from where Cyclops had forcibly entered the dome. “Anyone here read Skrull?” the Beast inquired, examining the unearthly signage upon the wall. “Alas, I feared as much,” he admitted when no one stepped forward to translate the indecipherable markings. “Extraterrestrial languages are a neglected field of study, it seems.”

  “Look sharp, people,” Captain America cautioned, holding his shield before his chest. “We have to assume the Leader and his Skrull associates know we’re here, especially after what happened to their saucer.”

  Storm winced at the memory of that fatal conflagration. She took a deep breath of the humidified air within the dome, which came as a relief after the desiccated environment Iceman had created aboard the quinjet. The atmosphere indoors was surprisingly warm, probably eighty degrees or so; a concession, she suspected, to the Skrulls’ reptilian metabolisms. And was that music she heard, playing gently in the background?

  Iceman noticed the lilting refrain as well. “Hey, since when did super-villain hang-outs come complete with elevator music?” he asked. A frown rearranged the icy planes of his face; apparently, he didn’t think much of their adversaries’ taste in music.

  “Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian Symphony,’ Op. 10, to be precise,” the Beast supplied. “The original London recordings, I believe.”

  The Hulk snorted disdainfully. “Sounds snobby enough for the Leader.” He glanced around impatiently. “So where’s the welcoming committee?” Shaking his fists, he bellowed loud enough to be heard all across the dome. “I know you’re watching, Stems!” he shouted, addressing the self-styled Leader by his actual name. “Come on out and play, before I tear this place apart!”

  So much for stealth, Storm concluded reluctantly. Captain America was doubtless correct, though; their coming had surely been noted since the Skrull saucer was first dispatched to assail the quinjet. Perhaps the Hulk has the right approach, for once. Let us confront our enemies without delay. Rogue and the Scarlet Witch had been incarcerated long enough.

  Unwilling to search for an entrance into the cylinder, the Hulk stomped over to the concrete wall and drew back his fist. Before he could deliver a typically earth-shattering blow, however, concealed vents opened above their heads and began spraying a fine pink powder onto the pavement below. “What in the Goddess’s name?” Storm exclaimed. Holding one hand over her mouth to avoid inhaling the pink dust, she brushed the clingy sediment from her arms and uniform. It felt dry and spongy to the touch.

  Iceman and Cyclops looked as perplexed as she, but the unruly Hulk merely scowled in recognition. “Oh geeze,” he muttered, “this stupid stuff again.” He kicked a heap of powder away from him. The loose particles wafted down the track before settling once more onto the pavement. “I know what this means: Humanoids!”

  Storm started to ask the Hulk what he meant, but the shifting sands preempted her query, providing their own

  shocking answer. As if of their own volition, the spreading powder began to clump together, forming rudimentary bodies that seemed possessed of animation and purpose. Even as she gasped in astonishment, a legion of synthetic beings rose from the mysterious pink dust, like mythological warriors sprung from the dragon’s teeth.

  “Plasticform humanoids,” Iron Man explained quickly. Evidently, both the Hulk and the Avengers had faced these soulless creations before. “The Leader’s preferred form of mass-produced minions. They have no will of their own, are incapable of pain or fear, and they never stop coming.”

  So it appeared. Already the multiplying humanoids outnumbered them by many dozens. Their sexless, identical bodies squeaked like rubber as they jostled against each other, surrounding Storm and her confederates in a » sea of smooth, pink figures. The humanoids lacked faces, she noted, having only blank white patches where their eyes should have been. Their heads were pail-shaped, sitting atop immaculate torsos devoid of hair or individuality. They seemed an obscene mockery of humanity as she knew it. Unlike the Vision, or the techno-organic entity the X-Men knew and trusted as Douglock, Storm sensed no true life or personality in these unthinking puppets.

  “Holy homunculi!” the Beast exclaimed, suggesting to Storm that Hank McCoy’s long stint among the Avengers had not included any previous encounters with these bizarre creations. Like her, he was witnessing the birth of the humanoids for the first time. “Freeze-dried flunkies! What will they think of next?”

  Perhaps it was not too late, Storm thought, to dispel

  the remaining powder before more humanoids could take form? She let her mind reach out to the artificial atmosphere of the Leader’s moonbase. The connection was not as strong and pure as that which she felt to the unfettered wind and water of the Earth, but she had raised tempests in controlled, air-conditioned environments before. Kneading the air with her will, subtly manipulating minute differences in temperature and pressure, she summoned a powerful wind that sent a cloud of dust, plus a few semi-formed limbs and bodies, blowing around the curve of the cylinder and out of sight. Even the completed humanoids, standing erect upon the pavement, swayed before her obedient gale.

  “Feel the power of the wind!” she declared proudly. If the.Leader was indeed observing them, as the Hulk surmised, let him know that she would not be intimidated by his unliving horde. “Just as this zephyr scatters the makings of these creatures, so shall the wind of freedom blow away all obstacles that come between us and our imprisoned friends.”

  “Good try,” Iron Man whispered to her in a low voice, “but the Leader’s not going to run out of humanoids anytime soon.” He pointed an annored finger at the vents overhead, from which still more powder spewed in large quantities. The dust, the prime constituent of the thronging humanoids, seemed to fall even faster than she could blow it away. Each new handful only added to the creatures’ numbers. “Here they come,” the Golden Avenger warned prophetically.

  Responding to a single silent signal, the humanoids surged forward, advancing on the hemmed-in heroes, who fought back against the synthetic multitude reaching out for them with plastic hands and fingers. “Avengers

  Assemble!” Captain America shouted as he led his teammates into battle, hurling his trusty shield like a discus at the advancing horde.

  “Ah, how I’ve missed that classic clarion call,” the Beast remarked. Exchanging a whimsical look with Storm, he sh
rugged his broad, beastly shoulders. “Somehow ‘X-Men Exacerbate’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.”

  Then the glut of humanoids was upon them, providing no further opportunity for humorous asides. Storm flung a lightning bolt at the nearest clump of humanoids, but, even at such close range, the thunderbolt had little effect on her targets; the rubbery substance of their bodies appeared to provide excellent insulation against electrical attacks. To her distress, she saw that the pink synthetic flesh of the humanoids was not even scorched. Glancing quickly around her, she saw that the other heroes found their efforts similarly thwarted.

  Captain America’s famous shield rebounded harmlessly off the elastic anatomies of the humanoids, who seemed to be even more resilient than the X-Men’s old foe, the Blob. Like that corpulent mutant, the humanoids blithely absorbed whatever force was directed against them, then sprang back unharmed, ready for more. The star-spangled Avenger retrieved his shield easily, the ricocheting disk sliding back into his outstretched hand in one smooth, unbroken motion, but there seemed little point in pitching it at the undaunted humanoids once more, even if the crush of plastic bodies left him any room in which to throw the shield, which was hardly the case. Captain America was forced to fight hand-to-hand with the humanoids assailing him, combining solid punches with expert kickboxing to keep the artificial creatures from overpowering him, despite their staggering numerical advantage.

  Nor were the humanoids deterred by Cyclops’s inexhaustible eyebeams, even though the concussive force of his beams stretched their malleable bodies like taffy. Storm wondered if Cyclops was reminded of the Blob as well; the best Scott could accomplish was to keep a steadily-shrinking swath of crimson energy between himself and the swarming humanoids. No matter how extensively his beams distorted the creatures’ anthropomorphic contours, turning humanoid midsections into elongated rubber bands, the Leader’s inhuman servitors refused to retreat. “And I thought Sentinels didn’t know when to give up!” he muttered darkly, frustration tinge-ing his voice. “At least Sentinels come apart if you hit them hard enough!”

  Iron Man’s repulsor rays proved equally ineffectual. Like Captain America, he quickly abandoned his specialized armaments to toss the humanoids aside with his mechanically-enhanced muscles. But for every humanoid he sent flying, several more spilled forward, heedlessly throwing themselves against his armored might. “Remind me to remind Mr. Stark,” he asked out loud, ‘ ‘to figure out just what these stooges are made of sometime, and to come up with a solvent to dissolve them!” “We are sorely in need of just such an efficacious emollient,” the Beast agreed, “the better to rid ourselves of the Leader’s manufactured myrmidons.” The acrobatically-gifted X-Man had thus far managed to evade the humanoids’ grasp by bouncing nimbly atop their clustered heads and shoulders, a workable defensive strategy that nevertheless failed to immobilize even one of their teeming antagonists. “I don’t suppose your amply-accoladed employer could fax us a few experimental formulae with all deliberate speed?”

  “I think he’s kind of busy at the moment,” Iron Man grunted through his helmet. A transistorized punch buried his right arm elbow-deep in the gummy chest of uncaring humanoid, who, along with his innumerable cohorts, battered its own plasticform fists against the Avenger’s gleaming armor. Storm could barely catch a glimpse of Iron Man, so dense was the mob of humanoids engulfing him. Only his gilded helmet could be seen above the profusion of identical pink bodies. “But I'll send him a memo if we ever get out of here.”

  “Fascinating,” the Vision observed with characteristic aloofness. As intangible as he was artificial, the android thrust a vaporous hand into a plastic skull. “The humanoids’ internal structure appears to be completely undifferentiated. I can detect no organs or controlling mechanisms to disrupt.” He levitated above the fray, coolly looking down upon the synthetic drones, whose utter mindlessness made his own dispassionate attitude seem positively effusive. Thermoscopic beams radiated from his amber eyes, yet the humanoids neither blistered nor burned. They climbed atop each other trying to reach the hovering Vision, persistently clawing at him no matter how many times their hands passed through the Avenger’s immaterial form. The Vision’s untouchability inevitably reminded Storm of Shadowcat’s phasing power, even though the stoic android was otherwise very different from Kitty Pryde. Ororo felt relieved, for Kitty’s sake, that the young woman was safely back on Earth, not adrift in a sea of hostile humanoids.

  The faceless creatures clung like leeches to the Hulk’s gargantuan frame, which rose above the plethora of humanoids like a green, grassy mountain rising from the ocean. “This is getting real old,” he grumbled. “How many times do I have to wade through you plastic punching bags?” He shook over a dozen humanoids from his head and shoulders, like a wet dog ridding himself of stray water. A stomp of seismic proportions sent still more pink bodies flying through the air. The flung humanoids made a rubbery, slapping sound as they smacked against the walls and floor; that was the only noise the mouthless creatures were capable of making. Storm found the deathly silence of the humanoids’ attack more disturbing than any angry threats or ultimatums could have been.

  “Guess these guys don’t worry much about frostbite,” Iceman complained. The unfeeling mannequins appeared immune to cold, although he trapped a coterie of humanoids by creating an icy carpet, at least a foot deep, that locked the drones’ legs in place. The shackled humanoids stretched their lower limbs out of shape trying to yank them free of the ice, but, before they could succeed in extricating themselves, another cascade of humanoids clambered over their immobilized twins, anxious to apprehend the refrigerated mutant, who fended them off with flash-frozen snowballs. Crystalline spikes sprouted from his shoulders and arms, so that Iceman resembled a human porcupine, but the persistent humanoids fearlessly impaled themselves upon his icy carapace, the points of his spikes blunted by the creatures’ gummy consistency.

  Transforming his right hand into a serrated ice-scimitar, Iceman sliced off a humanoid’s arm just above the elbow. A drastic measure, Storm thought, swiftly reminding herself that the maimed humanoid was not truly alive. Iceman’s other hand assumed the shape of an axe blade, which cleanly decapitated another humanoid. Impressed by the effectiveness of his newly-honed sharp edges, the frigid X-Man began slashing away at the myriad humanoids with a ferocity worthy of Wolverine. Humanoid heads and limbs were scattered like chaff, falling bloodlessly onto the pavement. “Yahoo!” Iceman crowed excitedly. “Just call me Bobby, the Humanoid Slayer!”

  His triumph was short-lived, however. To his chagrin, the butchered humanoids rapidly regenerated their missing pieces. New arms grew from truncated stumps. Fresh craniums sprang from headless shoulders. Even the discarded scraps speedily rejoined the struggle, wriggling across- the floor to link up with other amputated segments to form new, composite humanoids. Each and every stray fragment of pink plastic flesh seemed to possess the knowledge and the will to build another humanoid from scratch. Iceman soon found himself swamped by the same faceless monstrosities he had sliced to pieces moments before. “This is crazy!” he protested, flailing away the neverending horde. “We’re getting creamed by Silly Putty!” - ■ - -

  Storm had no idea what Silly Putty was, but she shared Bobby’s anxiety. Wave after unrelenting wave of determined humanoids descended upon them, the oppressive crush of their ductile bodies triggering a sense of claustrophobic panic in the mutant weather goddess. The humanoids were all around her, smothering her, cutting her off from the world! Desperate to escape the ceaseless flood of synthetic lackeys, she tried to take to the air; in the diminished gravity, it required only the barest of breezes to carry her aloft. Free! she thought,

  her heart pounding in her chest. I must be free!

  But she could not rise fast enough to elude the eager clutches of the humanoid mob. Multiple plastic fingers, slick and clammy in texture, wrapped around her calves and ankles, intent on dragging her down into the serried, suffocating swarm she s
ought so fervently to break free from. “No!” she commanded. “Let me go!” Fanned by her aroused emotions, a swelling wind lifted the latex wings beneath her arms, yet the stubborn, single-minded humanoids would not release her. Her captured legs felt like they were being pulled from their sockets; unlike the extraordinarily flexible humanoids, she could not be stretched so without pain or injury. Any agony was preferable, though, to the thought of being pulled once more into,the tightly-packed mass of humanoid bodies, to being buried alive beneath that unliving multitude. “Gods of earth and air,” she pleaded, “let me be free!” Caught up in her increasingly frantic struggle to shed the humanoids weighing her down, she barely heard Captain America call out to his fellow Avengers. “Iron Man!” he shouted urgently. The edge of his shield divided a humanoid in twain, but the divided halves reconnected immediately without missing a step. “Remember the last time we fought these things? Outside the Leader’s space station?” He used a judo hold to flip the reconstituted humanoid over his shoulder, where it smacked against its identical counterparts. “Captain Marvel used a burst of infrared heat to sear away the humanoids’ outer membranes, leaving them vulnerable to the cold of space!”

  “Right!” Iron Man recalled. Armored knuckles left a temporary impression on the blank face of a humanoid. “I’m on it.” Igniting his boot jets, he blasted off toward the ceiling, dragging several humanoid hangers-on with him. A repulsor blast from his chest projector cleared away the humanoids adhering to the front of his armor, and sent the dislodged creatures raining onto the heads of their invulnerable brothers. With his chestplate momentarily exposed, Iron Man used its central lens to direct a wide-angle heat beam on the combatants below. Storm felt a sudden warmth rush over her. The humanoids’ grip on her ankles loosened for an instant and she kicked her feet from the confines of her boots. A small sacrifice, she thought, to pay for my freedom. Liberated from the humanoids’ hold, she ascended to join Iron Man and the Vision above the heads of their attackers.