Friend or Foe

by Unknown Author

  “There!” the Leader declared from his perch. “I can now state with total confidence that we are ready to begin. Kindly take your place upon the pedestal, if you please.”

  At last! Keen anticipation filled K’lrt as he stepped onto’the transformation platform. Humming cables, radiating outward from the pedestal, linked him to the prisoners in their clear plastic cylinders. “Are you certain it will work?” he asked anxiously. Now that the moment had finally arrived, he dreaded the possibility of yet another failure. What if the experiment was unsuccessful? What they were trying had never been attempted before . . . !

  “Well, there’s no time like the present to find out,” the Leader answered, rather too blithely for the Skrull’s liking. “Brace yourself.”

  An instant later, a lambent green glow washed over the Super-Skrull, causing every cell in his body to resonate with the arcane energies transfiguring him. K’lrt had not deigned to learn all the technical intricacies of the process—that’s what technicians and other underlings were for—but he understood the basics well enough. The Leader was using a modified form of his gamma-powered trans-mat technology to modify the Skrull’s DNA on a molecular level, using genetic templates based on those of their mutant test subjects, adapted to achieve compatibility with the uniquely meta-morphic properties of Sknxllian DNA. According to the Leader, the process would only work on a Skrull, a happy accident of fate that guaranteed that the Leader could not simply perform the experiment upon himself, even if the mutated human hadn’t also needed K’lrt and his followers to construct the moon base and capture the three mutants required to make this glorious moment possible. Fate intended me for this epic accomplishment, the Super-Skrull felt certain. My destiny is at hand.

  The transforming radiance lasted only a heartbeat, but when it was over, the Super-Skrull felt stronger than he had in years, even more powerful than he had been many years ago, when an entire network of Skrull satellites had beamed cosmic energy directly into the bionic implants in his body, as opposed to the situation in recent years, when his powers had merely been fueled by whatever ambient cosmic energy was available. But all that had changed now. His limbs throbbed with unfathomable might. His eyes glowed with awesome power, held barely in check. He could sense minute fluctuations in air currents and temperature, feel the atmospheric moisture and barometric pressure responding to his whims. His sense of balance, of coordination and poise, felt infinitely heightened. He could see, hear, smell better than ever before.

  “Well?” the Leader asked, looking down on him from his observation bulb. K’lrt could catch the scent of the Terran’s sickly cologne from many feet below the

  Leader’s perch. “Don’t just stand there. Let’s see a test run.”

  Very well, the Skrull thought. He focused his gaze on one of the empty tubes along the wall. Crimson energy, identical to the beams projected by the X-Men’s Cyclops, burst from his eyes, shattering the plexiglass tube into a hundred pieces. Even the Leader’s blank-eyed mutant slaves flinched at the explosive sound of the vacant tube breaking apart beneath the force of the K’lrt’s eye-beams. Impressive, K’lrt thought, pleased by the destructive effect of the crimson rays. He longed to test them against a living target, perhaps even the Leader.

  But K’lrt was just getting warmed up. He bounded from the pedestal, executing a flawless handspring that turned into a series of backwards somersaults, eventually landing him on his feet several yards away. The strenuous gymnastics induced neither dizziness nor shortness of breath; K’lrt found himself in peak physical condition, as though he had just completed a rigorous course in basic training at the Skrull Military Academy. Glancing down at his boots, he noted that his feet had grown significantly larger, and that he had gained an opposable big toe on each foot. He could always change them back the way they were, as any Skrull could, but for now he chose to let the huge simian paws remain, as physical evidence of his transfiguration.

  Thunder echoed in the sublunarian chamber. Lightning flashed overhead as an impossible rainstorm manifested inside the sealed enclosure. K’lrt laughed out loud, letting the cool raindrops stream down his face, throwing out his arms to welcome the torrential downpour. “Careful with those thunderbolts!” the Leader chided him, no doubt uncomfortable with the lightning’s close proximity to his elevated control bulb, but K’lrt didn’t care; he basked in the fury of the tempest, revelling in his effortless command of the elements*

  The sheer power of it all was intoxicating. Testing himself further, he made the temperature drop dramatically, transforming the soaking rain into a blizzard of snow and ice. As a cold-blooded reptile, bred by evolution to thrive in a much warmer climate, the Skrull should have been miserable in the freezing snowstorm; instead, the ice flowed over his body like a second skin, one that felt just as natural as his own. The frosty glaze moved as he moved, as snug and comfortable as his soldier’s uniform. He held out a frozen hand and watched in delight as an icy copy of Captain America’s shield formed out of the falling sleet. K’lrt waited until the frigid disk was complete, then hurled the shield at the hanging bulb containing the Leader. The mutated human mastermind yelped in alarm, but the arctic weapon bounced harmlessly off the bottom of the plastic blister, ricocheting back into K’Irt’s grip with perfect accuracy.

  “Yes!” the Skrull rejoiced. He crushed the imitation shield to powder, then raised icy fists above his head in victor}'. Thunder roared in synch with his exalted spirit. “Success! The power is mine!”

  “So it appears,” the Leader agreed. Like all overeducated pedants and scholars, he could not resist the compulsion to cap his scientific achievement with a lecture. “By combining the essential ingredients of Rogue and the Scarlet Witch’s genetic gifts, along with the shape-shifting capacity of your singular species, you can now assume the form and the abilities of any being you encounter. ’ ’

  K’lrt could not contain his joy. This was almost too good to be true; unlike his deceased soldiers, who had required technological aids to simulate the powers of the X-Men when they raided the Terrans’ airborne command center, he truly possessed the intrinsic abilities of the captured X-Men and Avengers. There were limitations, of course; his altered DNA could not provide him with copies of his enemies’ mechanical armaments, such as Iron Man’s armor, Wolverine’s adamantium claws, or any of the Vision’s purely artificial functions, but that deficiency was of little consequence. With all the organic capabilities of two mighty teams of super-beings at his disposal, plus the raw strength of the incredible Hulk, what need did he have of mere weaponry?

  “Wolverine’s mutant healing factor was also necessary to* the procedure,” the Leader added, continuing his lecture, “to protect your body from the enormous stresses involved, which might otherwise prove fatal even to a Skrull.” K’lrt resented the implication of weakness and fragility on his part, but chose to say nothing, too pleased by the exercising of his new' abilities to bother quarreling with the Leader; there would be time enough to punish the human later, before terminating him once and for all. “As an added bonus,” the Leader observed, “that same healing factor has repaired in you whatever defect prevented Cyclops from turning his optic blasts on and off at will.” The green-skinned human inspected a display on his control panel. “Hmm, a cursory survey of that X-Man’s neural pathways suggests that it was a childhood brain injury that ultimately cost Cyclops control over his eyebeams. You, of course, suffer no such impairment.”

  K’lrt was not surprised by the Leader’s favorable diagnosis; he fully expected to wield the humans’ powers with greater skill and daring than they ever had, just as he had always utilized the special abilities of the Fantastic Four with far more ruthlessness than that hated quartet could ever employ. Unlike Reed Richards and his insufferable clan, he was not restrained by human concepts of mercy or misplaced compassion. As a warrior, he knew there was no place for high-minded scruples on the battlefield.

  Thinking of the many deadly uses to which he had put the streng
th of the Thing or the flames of the Human Torch raised an unsettling doubt in his mind. Had the Leader’s procedure produced any negative effect on his original abilities? He prayed to SFgur’t, eternal God of Battle, that the changes made to his genetic structure had not stripped him of the valuable powers provided by his bionic implants.

  Raising a rime-coated hand before his eyes, he watched with relief as his frozen fist burst into flame. A rocky shell formed beneath the fiery blaze, then his wrist extended halfway across the rotunda before snapping back to its original length. To complete his test, K’lrt concentrated until his entire forearm disappeared from sight, concealed by a veil of invisibility. He nodded in approval; he was all he had been—and more.

  No longer am I merely the Super-Skrull, he concluded with mounting pride. I have become—the Ultimate Skrull!

  Which meant that the Leader had served his purpose. The bottom half of K’lrt’s body ignited, blasting the Skrull off the floor of the rotunda. He rose until he was level with the Leader’s hanging bulb and could look the arrogant mammal in the eyes. Behind the clear plastic of his observation blister, the Leader raised a quizzical eyebrow, clearly unaware of his increasingly precarious situation. By the Sacred Halls of Val’ka’mor, the Ultimate Skrull thought, how could a sentient lifeform be so brilliant and at the same time so unwitting? K’lrt had waited for this moment ever since his first encounter with the Leader, many weeks ago; if anything, the mutated human was even more presumptuous and disrespectful than the rest of his irksome breed. “The Leader” indeed! Even the human’s chosen pseudonym betrayed his overweening ego. As if the accident of his enlarged brain truly made him the equal of a Skrull! K’lrt laughed out loud, a harsh and unforgiving sound.

  “May I ask what you find so amusing?” The Leader regarded his jubilant partner with galling nonchalance. More than that, his tone sounded patronizing in the extreme, as if he too saw no point in continuing the pretense of an equal partnership. “Besides your new and improved talent for mimicry, that is.”

  Mimicry! K’lrt seethed at the dismissive term. Time to teach the ill-mannered primate a lesson he would remember for the rest of his inevitably brief existence. ‘ ‘I have borne your impudence long enough!” he declared. “Let you be the first to feel the wrath of the Ultimate Skrull!”

  Dispensing with the fire of the Human Torch, he let Storm’s tethered winds hold him aloft. Membranous wings grew beneath his arms, the better to glide upon the breeze, but K’lrt was not done exploiting the female X-Man’s gifts. The Leader was frightened by the lightning of a few minutes ago? Let us see how he reacts to being the target of such potent electrical fury. Blue sparks leaped between K’lrt’s gloved fingers, and the scent of ozone entered the atmosphere, as the Skrull kindled the raw galvanic potential of the air and sent a jagged thunderbolt crashing against the Leader’s perch.

  ‘ ‘Et tu, Skrull?’ ’ the Leader responded with transparently insincere regret. To K’lrt’s disappointment, his lightning had no visible effect on the bulb enclosing the Leader; the clear plastic blister was more durable than he had anticipated, a testament to the human’s undeniable scientific ingenuity. No matter, the Skrull resolved; hiding inside his plastic bubble would only prolong the Leader’s demise, giving the conceited monkey more time to tremble at his approaching end.

  “Go ahead, cringe behind your flimsy cage,” he told the Leader, letting Cyclops’s eyebeams join the lightning beating against the hanging bulb. “I don’t want you to perish too quickly.”

  K’lrt’s one concern was that the endangered Leader would call upon his mutant slaves to defend him, forcing the Skrull to waste time contending with Wolverine and the two females before he could satisfy his desire to see the Leader dead. Curiously, however, the human made no effort to sic his super-powered servitors upon the Skrull; the entranced mutant trio remained as they were, standing inertly upon the floor below. A scowl crossed K’lrt’s face as doubt and suspicion cast a shadow over his earlier exultation. Why was the Leader, a physical weakling, not more terrified by the invincible Skrull warrior he had so foolishly created? A wary K’lrt began to sense that something was amiss, even as he redoubled his efforts to demolish the Leader’s elevated sanctuary.

  “K’lrt, K’lrt, K’lrt,” the Leader said reprovingly. The Skrull could barely glimpse his former partner through the dazzling blaze of crimson force beams and white-hot bolts of lightning, but he could too readily imagine the Leader shaking his head like a disappointed schoolmaster. “If I were you, I wouldn’t do this,” the human advised. “I really wouldn’t do this.”

  The Skrull’s ire boiled over. How dare this overreaching aborigine address him so familiarly? A fierce thunderclap shook the underground chamber and K’lrt clenched his fists in rage. To his surprise, he felt something shift beneath the skin of his hands; a moment later, six bony protrusions, three on each hand, tore through flesh and glove alike, jutting out from the backs of his hands like claws.

  Exactly like claws.

  K’lrt admired his lethal new appendages. Although made of rigid bone and not adamantium, they clearly borfe'a kinship to Wolverine’s infamous claws. An unexpected blessing, the Skrull decided. He retracted the claws experimentally, then extended them again, nodding with approval as the osseous blades slid in and out of their subdermal sheathes. There was a touch of pain as the claws sliced through his skin on their way out into the open, but nothing a warrior could not endure. The punctured flesh healed swiftly, too, before a single drop of Skrullian blood could leak from the insignificant wounds. The hurt fled, but the curved talons stayed.

  His vicious-looking claws reinspired K’lrt’s zeal to penetrate the Leader’s seemingly impervious command bulb. How he longed to use his new claws to lobotomize the human’s abnormally large brain, then dissect it one hemisphere at a time! Ruby-red eyebeams blinked out of existence, and the lightning ceased to lighten, as the Skrull took a more hands-on approach to breaching the Leader’s defenses. A forceful gust of wind carried him closer to the bulb so that his arms scarcely needed to stretch to reach the transparent plastic. Upon closer inspection, he was gratified to see that his lightning had partially melted portions of the bulb, creating blurry ripples in the clear material. A promising start, the Skrull thought, leering at the Leader.

  “Take a good look at your handiwork, human!” K’lrt taunted the cowardly scientist. With one hand, he froze the surface of the bulb while his other hand, positioned a few feet away, heated a different section to searing extremes. The clash of contrasting temperatures was more than the sturdy plastic could endure unscathed; spidery cracks spread across the region betwixt the hot and cold zones, leading the Skrull to grin in anticipation. He slashed out with his claws, which sliced through the weakened material with ease, allowing him to carve a circular window in the protective bubble. The excised plastic fell with a crash onto the platform below. “I must thank you for these wonderful new powers,” K’lrt insisted, “before I deprive you of your unworthy human existence!”

  Although backed away from the simultaneously chilled and heated plastic, the Leader still looked disturbingly unconcerned. He made no move to summon reinforcements, even from so close at hand, but simply eyed a digital counter upon one of his black wristbands. “Five, four, three, two,” he counted down calmly, like a humanoid metronome. “One.”

  The wind suddenly fled from beneath K’lrt’s wings and the Skrull dropped like a stone, or at least a stone falling in low gravity. He grabbed onto the bottom edge of the hole in the bulb, but the razored plastic was sharp and cut his fingers before he thought to form a rocky shell over them. Letting go instinctively, he plunged slowly toward the black steel floor. His gradual descent gave him plenty of time to flame on, and he rose again, enveloped in a sheath of red-orange fire, to confront the full implications of his abrupt tumble from the heights.

  He knew at once that something distressing had occurred. Although his original powers remained in place, his magnificent new abilities had vani
shed. His eyes no longer tingled with extradimensional force. His ultrakeen senses had scaled back down to their former levels. He held no sway over the wind or temperature, nor had his muscles retained any memory of their recent acrobatic prowess. Even his skeletal claws sank back into his hands, where they promptly ceased to exist.

  „ The Ultimate Skrull was gone, leaving only a mere Super-Skrull behind.

  “What treachery is this?!” he demanded of the Leader. A barrage of fireballs, directed all around the command bulb, expressed his volcanic displeasure, but K’lrt knew he could not incinerate the Leader just yet, not until he understood the calamity that had befallen him. That this was almost certainly w'hat the Leader had planned did not make it any easier for the Skrull to curb his more-than-justifiable lust for vengeance. ‘ ‘What have * you done?!”

  The flaming Skrull hovered near enough the Leader’s perch that the mutated human did not need to rely on his loudspeakers to be heard. “Just because, unlike some people, I was not bom and raised in the distant Andromeda Galaxy, that does not make me a gullible, provincial dupe,” the Leader said. “Did you truly believe that I would bestow so much power upon you without taking a few sensible precautions to protect my own interests?” The Leader rolled his eyes in scornful disbelief. “Please! If anyone has cause to be incensed here, it should be me, given how insultingly you underestimated my intelligence.”