Friend or Foe

by Unknown Author

  The super-powered alien’s torso stretched like taffy as he wrapped himself around Captain America, squeezing the Avenger’s ribs like an enormous anaconda. Gasping for breath, Cap managed to keep both arms above the Super-Skrull’s constricting coils. He tried to slice through the Skrull’s elongated body with the edge of the shield, but the fiendish alien’s flesh was just as pliable as the humanoids’ had been. As elastic as Reed Richards, to be exact. The dark purple coils bent harmlessly before the striking edge of Cap’s shield, readily absorbing the force of his blows. The harder he hit the Skrull, the more the villain’s body stretched. It’s like he doesn’t have any bones! Captain America thought, unable to make a dent in the resilient alien.

  Cap’s own ribs were nowhere near as flexible. Darkness crept up on his vision as the Skrull’s winding anatomy crushed the air from his lungs. A tunic of blue chain mail provided Cap with little protection against the Skrull’s suffocating squeeze play. “Earth will never surrender to you and your kind!” the living legend grunted, refusing to abandon hope even against the overwhelming power of his alien opponent. “Even if you kill me, others will pick up the fight against you. The spirit of freedom cannot be snuffed out, not even by you and the Leader!”

  “The arrogance of your species is truly astounding,” the Super-Skrull exclaimed. His dragon-like visage sat atop his attenuated body, bobbing opposite Cap’s face like the head of a cobra. “The Skrull Empire has ruled over an entire galaxy since before your species even began to evolve from its crude mammalian forebears. Only a perverse accident of intergalactic history has kept your world from our dominion for so long. Far more important threats to our security, such as Galactus and the hated Kree, have kept the Empire from turning the full force of our mighty battle fleets against your insignificant planet.”

  “Plus the fact that we primitive primates have given you a bloody nose everytime you’ve stuck your shape-shifting snoots into our affairs!” Cap reminded the Super-Skrull with the last of his breath. Typically overconfident, the Skrull carelessly let his reptilian face come within reach of Captain America’s free arms, a tactical lapse the Avenger called to his foe’s attention by means of a strong left hook to the Skrull’s jaw.

  “Ackk!”

  The force of Cap’s punch propelled the pointy-eared head.backwards, stretching the Super-Skrull’s scaly neck two feet longer than usual. A pearl-white fang flew from the Skrull’s mouth and went skipping across the floor. With the powerful alien momentarily stunned, Cap felt the coils around him slacken. His gloves pressed down hard on the sinuous purple loops as he struggled to slip out of the Skrull’s python-like hold. He got halfway free before the Leader spoke up, his aloof and caustic tone conveying more than a full measure of condescension toward the Avenger’s David-versus-Goliath struggle against the Super-Skrull:

  “A valiant try, Captain America, but I’m afraid there’s too much at stake to permit your obsolete heroics to interfere.”

  An electrifying mental blast hit the Avenger right behind his eyes, inducing a seizure that caused Captain America to spasm uncontrollably within the serpentine coils of the Super-Skrull. White static and a screeching buzz filled his head from the inside out, then rushed down his spine and out to every inch of his body. His entire nervous system short-circuited at once, and his shield slipped from his fingers. As Cap slumped above the winding rounds of the Super-Skrull’s midsection, his best and only weapon hit the floor with a metallic clang that echoed down the corridor.

  The Super-Skrull?!

  Sitting astride the prone form of the Scarlet Witch, the Beast was appalled by this unwanted revelation. The odds against them had increased geometrically with the addition of another formidable antagonist to the ranks of their enemies. At least that explains Wolverine’s taciturn attitude, he realized. I’d thought that “Logan” was acting more laconic than usual.

  Beneath his substantial, simian corpus, the enthralled Witch wrestled to throw off her beastly burden. Hairy palms covered her eyes while equally shaggy feet held down her hands, making the casting of spells an unlikely prospect at best. An efficacious but not exactly permanent, solution, the Beast allowed reluctantly, evaluating his improvised means of neutralizing Wanda’s highly hazardous hex powers. He could hardly keep the Scarlet Witch constrained thus indefinitely, especially not while his fellow Avengers required his assistance against the rest of their adversaries. Even now, as he looked over his bushy shoulder at the scene behind him, he saw that Captain America was on his own against both the Leader and the Super-Skrull, an unenviable position for even America’s foremost costumed defender. “My apologies, my dear Ms. Maximoff, for the ungentle methods I am about to resort to,” he told his captive; alas, only by rendering Wanda unconscious with a forceful blow to her head could the Beast free himself to come to Cap’s aid. He tilted his head back in anticipation of smacking heads with the vulnerable mutant enchantress. One good head-butt should send the Witch off to slumberland, he surmised.

  An unshakable grip seized him by the scruff of his neck before he could put his pugnacious plan into action. The Beast possessed the size and mass of a mountain gorilla, but he was yanked backwards, and away from the Scarlet Witch, effortlessly, by someone easily as strong as Wonder Man or the Thing; it required no brilliant feats of ratiocination to deduce that the bionically-blessed Super-Skrull had come after the Beast a few seconds before the hirsute X-Man would have preferred. That does not bode well for Captain America, the Beast thought with acute apprehension.

  At the cost of a handful of blue fur, pulled out by its roots, the Beast tore himself free from the Super-Skrull’s hold, somersaulting forward with an Olympics-worthy dismount onto the tiles. He twirled around to see the Skrull’s extendable arm retract back to normal humanoid proportions. The orange, cobblestone fist at the end of the arm bore an uncanny resemblance to the Thing’s mutated mitts, and the bare patch at the back of the Beast’s neck tellingly testified that the similarity was far more than merely cosmetic. A cool draft blew against the exposed pink skin beneath the indigo fur, adding to the chill the X-Man experienced as he witnessed Captain America’s defeat. Five down, three to go, he brooded glumly; with only he, Iron Man, and the Hulk left standing, the good guys had well and truly lost the advantage of superior numbers.

  “As Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham observed at the

  Battle of Taranto,” the Beast mused aloud, “ ‘We are so outnumbered there’s only one thing to do. We must attack.’ ”

  So resolved, the acrobatic X-Man cartwheeled toward the Leader, hoping to lambast the Leader before his prehensile partner could fully unwind from around Captain America. He had no illusions that he could endure long against the Super-Skrull’s one-man (or should that be one-alien?) impersonation of the Fantastic Four, but mayhap there was still a chance to quash the hypertrophic brain behind the alien’s considerable brawn.

  His aspirations to undo the Leader, along with the rest of his shaggy self, collided literally with an invisible wall that brought him slamming to a halt yards ahead of the Leader. Shades of Sue Richards! he realized, recognizing 'a transparent force field when he didn ’t see one. The incongruous solidity of the invisible barrier knocked him back onto his anthropoid derriere, which, quite regrettably, landed him at the feet of the Super-Skrull, whose unmistakable shadow fell ominously over the chagrined X-Man. “Gadzooks!” the Beast said with a gulp.

  The former Avenger yet entertained notions of eluding the Super-Skrull’s bellicose attentions via the expedience of his own unsurpassed agility, but when he strove to bound away lickety-split, he found himself trapped inside a sphere of invisible force that lifted him off the floor as though attached to an ingeniously-camouflaged crane. “You’re not going anywhere, mutant,” the Super-Skrull declared. The unseen globe rotated on its axis so that, his face and hands pressed against the clear concavity of his invisible prison, the Beast ended up staring into the leering countenance of the Skrull, ‘ ‘And some call your kind Homo superior! �
� ’ he said, disgust dripping from his voice. “You look more like some variety of atavistic throwback to me.” “Says the chap who looks like a Crocodilus vulgaris with rhinosplasty,” the Beast shot back. “Considering that your own extraterrestrial species is well known to have reached an evolutionary plateau several thousand millennia back, and been genetically stalled ever since, I wouldn’t be casting stones at any other planet’s more eccentric mutations.”

  “That is outrageous Kree propaganda!” The Super-Skrull’s expression went from disgust to outrage in a nanosecond. ‘ ‘The finest scientists in the known universe have discredited that ridiculous libel.”

  “Those wouldn’t be Skrull scientists perchance?” the Bea&t inquired. If he couldn’t actually conquer the Super-Skrull in a physical contest of arms, he decided he’d settle for thwarting his foe at a battle of wits. “Not exactly the most objective of observers.”

  “As opposed to whom?” the Skrull argued. “The Supreme Intelligence of the Kree, the odious originator of that vile calumny?” For better or for worse, the Beast had definitely gotten beneath the Skrull’s metamorphic skin; fossilized hands gripped the transparent globe, shaking Beast and orb alike. “You would believe that Kree-bom abomination before the greatest minds of the Empire?”

  ' “Well, they don’t call him the Supreme Intelligence for nothing,” the Beast pointed out. Personally, he wouldn’t trust either Krees or Skrulls farther than he could throw them in heavy gravity, but he saw no reason to share that particular insight with so partisan a commentator. “Now maybe if it was only the Fairly Bright Intelligence, or the Occasionally Correct Intelligence, we might have some reason to doubt his conclusions vis-a-vis your long-term evolutionary potential, but the Supreme Intelligence. .. ? Sounds like an indisputable authority to me.”

  “Silence, you jabbering ape!” Losing all patience, the Super-Skrull stepped away from the floating form of the Beast. His scaly forehead furrowed in concentration and his invisible cage began to shrink dramatically. The Beast suddenly felt as though he was being crushed inside a transparent trash compactor. The inward pressure forced him to curl into a ball, with his bewhiskered chin pressed tightly against his furry knees, but the pressure only increased until his bones ached from the stress upon them. He felt a stab of profound sympathy for Ororo and her intermittent bouts of claustrophobia; at the moment, he knew just how she felt!

  Better that I endure this trial than her, he thought, searching assiduously for a silver lining in an unusually dark and oppressive cloud, but that was small consolation as his abused senses sunk beneath the murky waters of oblivion. But, my oh my, where is the Mighty Thor when we need him?

  Locked together like two ends of a bolo spiralling out of control, Iron Man and Rogue slammed into the transparent dome surrounding the Leader’s violated lunar habitat. For a second, the Golden Avenger feared that the dome wall would crack beneath the combined impact of the two grappling super-heroes, but the Leader had built his lair of stronger stuff than that; once again. Iron Man wished he had time to examine the architecture of the moonbase more thoroughly, perhaps even acquire some samples of the building materials for further analysis later on. Maybe a synthetic polymer with augmented molecular bonding . . . ?

  He briefly considered smashing through the dome on purpose; certainly, he was better equipped than Rogue to survive in the vacuum outside. But who knew what the resulting explosive decompression could do to the rest of the inhabitants of the moonbase, including the other two brainwashed hostages? No, he concluded, as tempting as the idea of subjecting Rogue to the void was, breaching the dome had to remain a strategy of last resort. Too bad, he thought. I could use the edge... .

  Despite her diligent efforts, Rogue had yet to penetrate Iron Man’s protective insulation. Thank heavens he kept her away from the Hulk, though; it was all his armor could do to hold together against her astounding base-level strength. He knew he had to discourage her somehow, or it would be only a matter of time before she succeeded in prying off a piece of his iron suit, making him vulnerable to her vampiric touch. This skirmish has to stay the super-brawl equivalent of safe sex, he thought wryly, or I’m done for.

  Taking his cue from nature, specifically the electric eel, Iron Man electrified the outer skin of his armor, sending thousands of volts through the tessellated iron tiles. The powerful galvanic charge made Rogue’s hair stand on end and drove the possessed mutant away, at least for the moment “About time,” Iron Man muttered. With Rogue’s eager fingers finally retreating from his eyeslits, he could see clearly for the first time since the X-Men’s southern-fried succubus latched onto him.

  Outside the dome, Tycho’s mountainous walls rose in the distance while the Earth shined down from above. Within the dome’s see-through walls, broken humanoid fragments littered the paved circular track beneath him. Iron Man wished he could see what was going on deeper within the moonbase, where the X-Men and the other Avengers fought the Leader and his zombified abduc-tees, but keeping Rogue away from that smorgasbord of super-powers had to stay his top priority. The last thing any of them needed at this point was an enslaved mutant possessing all the powers of the X-Men, the Avengers, and the Hulk!

  Right now Rogue remained focused on the armored Avenger. She hovered high above the floor, defying the moon’s meager gravity, while her green eyes searched for a defect in Iron Man’s defenses. His own jets suspending him in the air, Iron Man waited warily for Rogue’s next move. Good thing she doesn’t have Cyclops’s eyebeams anymore, he thought. That cuts down on her offensive options a little.

  Watching Rogue’s face for any indication of her intentions, Iron Man was surprised to see her stiffen noticeably, then cock her head to one side, her eyes looking inward, as if listening to some inner message. A telepathic command from the Leader? he theorized. What diabolical purpose could that heartless megalomaniac have in mind for his high-flying pawn now?

  Without so much as a farewell threat, Rogue zoomed away, abandoning their unresolved duel in favor of a new and more mysterious errand. To Iron Man’s alarm, she dived toward the Hulk’s rough-hewn entrance to the next corridor. He fired his grapples again, aiming to snag the X-Man a second time, but Rogue was not going to be undone by the same trick twice. Zigzagging through the dome’s pressurized atmosphere, she smoothly eluded the grapples and more; as the gauntlets flew past her, she grabbed onto the cables behind them with her bare hands, then gave the tungsten lines a strong yank, jerking Iron Man downward toward the pavement. “Whoa there!” he gasped, pulling out of his unplanned descent only seconds before taking a nosedive into the track below. By the time he stabilized his flight path, however, Rogue had disappeared through the ragged gap in the wall.

  Now what? Iron Man worried, retracting his failed gauntlets, which refitted themselves upon his hands. Leery of flying into an ambush, he scanned the concrete walls of the inner cylinder with his sonar to make sure no one was lying in wait on the other side of the makeshift doorway. His sensors detected nothing of the sort, but any plans to pursue Rogue were forestalled when she came rushing back through the entrance with Wolverine in tow. The savage Canadian dangled below Rogue as the two entranced X-Men climbed toward Iron Man; Rogue’s bare hands, the Golden Avenger noted, gripped the sleeves of her teammate’s orange jumpsuit, avoiding any direct contact with Wolverine’s flesh. Even brainwashed, it appeared, Rogue took no chances with her mind-sapping touch.

  Without slowing her upward velocity by a single mph, Rogue raised her feral passenger above her head, then flung Wolverine at the Iron Man with all her strength. Uh-oh, the targeted Avenger thought, his eyes widening behind his faceplate, I believe the X-Men call this a ‘ ‘fastball special.' ’

  Reacting by reflex, Iron Man tried to deflect "Wolverine with his chest-beam, only to remember too late that Rogue had already shattered the central lens with her fists. Wolverine struck Iron Man like a missile, his ada-mantium claws slicing through the Avenger’s armor like it was made of tin foil. Iron Man grun
ted in pain as the vicious blades scored his shoulders; warm blood leaked between his skin and the padding beneath the armor. That’s way too close for comfort, he realized, biting down hard to keep from screaming. The fresh wounds hurt like the devil, and he used his palm repulsors to blow Wolverine away from him before the mutant’s claws could inflict any more damage.

  Thanks to the minimal gravity, Wolverine fell in slow motion toward the pavement, raising a cloud of pink flakes when he eventually hit the remains of the frozen humanoids. But Iron Man could not spare a second to observe the X-Man’s soft landing; primed to exploit the chiiks her teammate had carved in the Avenger’s armor, Rogue followed up her fastball special with a head-on attack of her own. Iron Man crisscrossed the airspace between them with repulsor rays, but Rogue bulldozed through the coruscating fusillade as if no more concerned about her own comfort or safety than any of the Leader’s soulless humanoids. One eye swollen shut, her face 'bruised and her lips smashed by the cadmium-colored neutron beams, she slammed into Iron Man, her ungloved fingers sliding into the gashes left by Wolverine’s invasive claws. Mutanl skin touched the raw flesh and blood beneath Iron Man’s world-famous armor.

  An overwhelming lassitude swept over Tony Stark as all his energy and concentration flowed out of his body through his injured shoulders. But this was more than simply weakness brought on by shock and loss of blood; the very essence of his strength and genius fled his mind and muscles like air escaping from a punctured balloon. Without even the presence of mind to deactivate his boot jets, he veered wildly out of control, smashing through the concrete wall back into the tank containment corridor before crashing headfirst into the tile floor, creating yet another crater inside the moonbase. Wedged upside-down into the bottom of the crater, the Golden Avenger was dead to the world (and the moon) long before failsafe circuits caused his blazing jets to sputter out.