Law of the Jungle

by Unknown Author

  “Only a supposition,” said the Beast. “He plummeted from an aircraft, thanks to a little ‘assistance’ from his sycophantic lackey, the Toad. We never saw a lifeless body as we had with what we believed to be our dear mentor.” Bobby plucked a sliver of dimetrodon hide from between his, front teeth. He chuckled. “I’m still waiting for the Changeling to turn up alive one of these days.”

  “I have long pondered what course history might have taken had the Professor been available when Havok’s power first manifested,” Hank mused.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Iceman said. “Alex hadn’t even known he was a mutant, and then wham, he turns out to be a real keg of gunpowder. We came back from that incident with the Sentinels not knowing what the heck we could do for him. He had almost no control over his power surges. So what did we do? We took him to Karl Lykos.”

  “Lykos had briefly been an associate of Xavier’s,” explained Hank. “He seemed to be one of the few doctors we could trust. Unfortunately I had not yet completed my own medical training.”

  “We didn’t know Lykos was an energy vampire, or that he’d been itching for the chance to see what happened when he got a mutant into his ‘therapy couch.’ When he siphoned off Havok’s raw overflow, he became Sauron.”

  “I remember readin’ the file on that,” Sam said. “I’d say y’all are taking it too much on your shoulders. Sooner or later Lykos woulda run across a mutant or two to victimize. The guy was a disaster waitin’ to happen.”

  “Veritably,” Hank said. “Nor could any value come of allowing Lykos to continue treating patients by milking them of their life force. Eventually his cravings would have mounted until he drained too much and thereby killed innocent victims—as he has since done. In any case, things transpired as they did, and we had to contend with him, then chase him all the way to Tierra del Fuego, and then here to the Savage Land.”

  “Chase him, yes,” Bobby said. “But we didn’t even figure out where he’d gone that first time.”

  , “Indeed not.”

  “Now I’m confused,” Cannonball interrupted. “I thought the X-Men did tangle with Sauron in the Savage Land.” “Eventually. Colossus, Banshee, Nightcrawler, Storm, Wolverine, and Cyclops were the team then. It was a separate journey, all mingled with the business with Zaladane and her god Garokk and so forth. Sauron had been in the Savage Land for quite some interval. But the original five of us never found him.”

  “We found Magneto instead, though,” Bobby said. “How could y’all lose Lykos?” Sam queried.

  “We thought he had met with his demise in a fall.” Beast swallowed a final chunk of lizard steak and waved his paws expressively. “We had been captured by the Sentinels, had come back with Havok and Polaris—actually, this was before Loma was ever called Polaris—to New York to lick our wounds. Lykos drained Alex’s energy, became Sauron, fought with Angel and gained hypnotic control of him. When we located Angel later I regret to say I had to, uh ...”

  “Hank knocked Warren out, to save him from the hallucinations that were still twirling around in his brain.”

  “So that’s why Warren was so touchy about cornin’ along on this here mission. Heck, gettin’ the worst of Sauron ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of. He turned me into shish kebob the first time I tried t’pound ’im, that time he and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants decided to give X-Force some grief.” “Alas, it was not just on one occasion. The mysteries of psychology being what they are, Warren has proven repeatedly to be especially vulnerable to Sauron’s hypnotism,” Hank explained. “In any case, the effect of the initial attack lingered, so rendering him unconscious seemed the most convenient course of action.” The Beast combed frozen mosquitoes out of his fur. “Scott, Jean, Bobby, and I left Warren wjth Loma and Alex in order to look for Lykos. Instead, Lykos snuck into the mansion, drained energy from all three of the group there, and went to kidnap Tanya Anderssen, the woman he adored. We showed up just as he attacked Tanya and her father.”

  “He was going to kill Mr. Anderssen,” Iceman said.

  The Beast nodded. “He might very well have done so if not for our interruption. At that point, his human personality gained a measure of control over the monster. Deeply distraught that he had nearly brought such harm to his beloved, he fled by air. With Angel still unconscious back at the mansion, we couldn’t track him.”

  “But Tanya knew where he had gone,” Iceman said. “She wouldn’t admit to that knowledge,” Hank continued. “She didn’t want anyone hurting him. We had to follow her secretly. She took us all the way to Tierra del Fuego, where Lykos’s father had owned a cabin that he maintained for adventurers who wanted to explore the rugged region. It was long abandoned, and so isolated that Lykos knew he would find no one from whom he could siphon the power that Sauron needed to exist. He reverted to human form and confined himself there, amid the snow drifts and the granite peaks. I believe it was his intention to starve himself to death.”

  “But Tanya found him before that could happen,” Bobby continued.

  “Yes, she did. Lykos was aghast. He knew he wouldn’t be able to prevent himself from vampirically harvesting her if he touched her, so he jumped off a cliff.”

  ‘ ‘Tanya would have jumped, too, except we came around the comer just then, and I threw up an ice wall in her path.” “That was the last we saw of either Sauron or Lykos for quite some time. Jean lowered us telekinetically into the chasm. I’m afraid we hadn’t had the best view when Lykos "flung himself off. We thought he had surely plummeted all the way to the bottom of the cliff.”

  “Actually, he’d only fallen about twenty feet. Aside from a couple of scrapes and braises, he wasn’t hurt at all,” Bobby said. “We just rushed right past him on our way down. Never saw him.”

  The Beast nodded. “At the bottom of the cliff was a snow cave. It showed signs of recent entry, so we concluded Lykos had tumbled into it. We squeezed our way inside and dropped into a tremendous cavern brimming with pterano-dons. The flying monstrosities undoubtedly belonged to the same mutant colony that had infected Lykos when he was a boy. One of them was flapping off carrying a bloody chunk of meat. We thought it might be the remains of our antagonist. We followed. Jean ferried us over crevices telekinetically, and Scott chased away the wildlife with optic beams. The chase led us far down a huge natural tunnel. Eventually the pteranodon stopped to feed, and we realized the meat was merely a piece of mountain goat. We decided to forge ahead. The tunnel, to our amazement, led all the way beneath the Drake Passage—”

  “I like that name,” Iceman said.

  The Beast cleared his throat. “As I was saying, the underground passage seemed endless. It brought us all the way into the Eternity Mountains. We literally dropped down into the Savage Land.”

  “Lykos eventually followed us. He wasn’t able to climb back up, so he ended up in the jungle, too. He lived there a long time, stealing just enough energy from animals to get by, retaining his human shape. He was a good guy for a while. Made friends with Ka-Zar and the Fall People. Helped out.”

  “The irony is, Lykos fared much better than Warren mak-ing'it through the tunnel. Angel had tracked us to Tierra del Fuego, and Tanya told him where we had gone. When he swooped into the midst of the pteranodon colony, they chased and harassed him all the way down the vast passageway, ultimately knocking him senseless. He plummeted into the Savage Land and was killed when he impacted the swamp—perhaps the very swamp in which we sit.”

  “Say what?” Sam asked. “For a corpse, he was acting downright spunky earlier today. If he ain’t alive, then those comments Betsy makes about his cold feet in bed take on a whole new meanin’.”

  Hank grinned. “One of many close calls, actually. A spark of life remained. Magneto, who had been hiding out in the Savage Land for some months, found Warren, took him to his sanctuary, and revived him.”

  “Warren didn’t know it was Magneto at first. We’d never seen him out of his costume. He was running around calling himself the Creator. He
’d rigged up an apparatus that gave natives of the Savage Land altered, super-powered forms. Some of those mutates are the ones we’re dealing with now, like that living pogo-stick we were chasing all day today.” “Now that is a right fancy campfire tale,” Sam concluded. “Who would’ve thought a snowy chasm would lead to any region as hot as this?” Iceman hardened the dripping walls around them. “The Savage Land has got to be the weirdest place I’ve ever seen on this planet.”

  Hank’s bushy brow sprang upward. “My stars and garters!” he growled excitedly. “My dear Mr. Drake, do you remember what Tanya blurted when you threw up that shield and saved her from leaping off the cliff? She pounded it with her fists and—’ ’

  “Lord, I’d never forget that. She said, ‘The cold! He always hated the cold!’ I tried not to take it personally.” “Yes! Karl Lykos hated cold. Sauron has always hated cold.’ ’ The Beast emphasized every word. ‘ ‘We’ve even used cold as a weapon against him. That’s what Storm was trying to do last night when she unleashed more than she bargained for. It’s standard operating procedure against him.”

  “Well, of course. You use what works. I’ve been aching to give him a case of total-body frostbite.”

  “Indeed you have. And we are driven to the paradigm of frigid tactics because we naturally think of reptiles having little ability to deal with low temperatures. What if we are being too narrow-minded? Pterosaurs aren’t like modem reptiles. They are at least halfway to being warm-blooded. Much like dinosaurs in that respect. If Sauron at all resembles the mutant creatures that infected him, he has ample tolerance for chill conditions, however much he might hate them. It couldn’t have been more than forty degrees Fahrenheit in that cave, and the pteranodons seemed to thrive there. Otherwise why would there be such an abundance of them?”

  “Dr. McCoy,” stated Cannonball, “you are, without a doubt, a signed, sealed, and certified genius. I feel so dumb a mule must’ve kicked me upside the head. Human beings don’t like cold, either, but it don’t stop ’em from livin’ in Alaska and places like that. They figure out a way to do it. Sauron could be wearin’ thermal underwear for all we know.”

  “We’ve been looking for him in the wrong places,” Bobby said, assuming his ice form in a flush of outrage.

  “Let us not rush to judgment,” Hank cautioned. “We may yet be chasing will-o’-the-wisps. But I suspect it is past time we considered the possibility that Sauron’s hidden base of operations lies not in the heart of the Savage Land, but up along the cool fringes, in the Ice Age zone just this side of the peaks that cup the terrain.”

  “Remember what Scott and Jean told us about their run-in with Sauron that time Worm and Whiteout kidnapped Ha-vok for him? His fortress was an aerie pretty high up a mountain, near the remnants of Pangea.”

  “Ka-Zar said he checked there. It’s empty,” Sam said. ‘ ‘But if Lykos could handle an altitude like that once, he can do it again.”

  “Such a location would explain a great deal,” Hank added. “The natives don’t care for the heights. They hazard an expedition to hunt mammoth once in a while, but most of the time there would be few possible witnesses to Sauron’s comings and goings.”

  “I say we get out of this bog right now and get our tails to high ground.”

  “Not yet,” Hank said. “A far more significant question remains. Namely, if Sauron is up there, why are we here?’ ’ Iceman and Cannonball looked at him blankly. Then their eyes widened.

  “Because that’s where Sauron tricked us into coming,” Iceman said. “Using Mr. Hippity-Hoppity to lead us on a wild frog chase.”

  “Or worse, into an ambush,” the Beast said.

  “Well, that goes unsaid. What with all that’s happened, that’s always been a possibility.”

  “A possibility, yes. Now I believe it to be a certainty. Since that is so, it’s relatively transparent what sort of counter-strategy we can assemble.”

  “Lay it out for us, buddy,” Bobby said.

  “I said before it’s as if Sauron has been out-thinking us all along. He had enough sense to hide his headquarters. He divided us. He seems to have prearranged each encounter he has had with us, except when Storm happened across him l^st night. Why were we so easily misdirected?”

  “Because we’re stupid?” Sam suggested.

  “Hey, speak for yourself, junior,” Bobby retorted.

  “None of us is dimwitted, but we fell victim to a tendency any bright individual, human or mutant, is vulnerable to. We expected our nemesis to act in character.”

  “Hmmra,” muttered Iceman. “Yeah. Sauron isn’t just being a little cleverer. It’s like he’s a whole new dude.” “Righteo,” Hank said. “In the past, we’ve never had to devote much energy to luring him into a confrontation. The old Sauron would have dismissed us as insects, attacked us impulsively, or surrendered to his craving for energy and become reckless. Or, as has always been his greatest handicap, his human self—the good Karl who once rescued little Tanya from the brink of death in that pteranodon roost— would have emerged to obliterate any dispassionate, carefully executed offensive Sauron mounted. Somehow in the recesses of our minds, we were depending on him to behave as he always has.”

  “But now we’ve wised up,” Bobby said. “Now you’re saying, let’s figure out what the new Sauron behaves like, and maybe if we’re lucky we can second-guess him.” “Yes.” '

  “I see where yer gettin’ at, too,” Cannonball said. “If he ain’t impulsive no more, we know he’s got somethin’ in mind for the three of us. So, do we spring the trap?”

  “Yes and no,” Hank replied. “Yes, in that we want him to commit resources to executing what he has so ingeniously prearranged. No, in that his ambush might be as thoroughly successful as the others, which would eliminate the last free members of the team. That would be most unfortunate.” “We’d have to call for reinforcements,” Bobby said. “In fact, maybe we should.”

  “If we were elsewhere, that would be the obvious choice, but there’s no convenient pay phone with which to call the Institute. Calling in the cavalry will take time that we don’t have at present. The longer this affair lasts, the sooner Sauron is likely to kill one of us, or murder more of those unfortunate savages that live here.”

  “An’ it’s longer that he has th’others for fuel,” Sam added.

  “Somebody’s going to have to take the bait,” Iceman said. “One of us, or two?”

  “Just one, methinks,” Hank said.

  “I’ll do it,” Sam declared.

  “No, Sam. You’re better on offense than defense. If you use your power down in the swamp, the noise and glow will reveal you instantly. Should Sauron get in range, he need only hypnotize you for an instant to get you to drop your kinetic envelope, making you all too vulnerable. I suspect we are best served by leaving Iceman to chase Amphibius. Bobby is able to make paths and get across the boggiest patches without excessive hardship. He will be a hard prey to catch, and likely to elude capture altogether amid all this treacherous footing. You and I, Cannonball, will pay a surprise visit to our enemy’s stronghold, if we can find it. If we manage it soon enough, he won’t realize how much we’ve puzzled through.”

  “He’ll realize it when I take that pointy tail of his and feed it to ’im.”

  “I will do that,” Hank said. “Your job is to pound him into a mountainside until it looks like the rock has acquired a tattoo.”

  “As the good book says, ‘It Shall Be Done’.”

  Hank leaned back and yawned. “I’ll take the last guard shift. I’ll wake you up at first light, and Sam and I will set out for the foothills. Recharge your batteries, my esteemed allies. Tomorrow is a day of reckoning.”

  CHAPTER 11

  As Hank and Sam disappeared between the trunks of the cypress trees, cruising away through the dawn shadows with Cannonball muffling his roar to the stealthiest level he could achieve, Bobby Drake was reminded of all the times he had fended for himself. Quite a few. For someone who had lit
erally grown up within the team, he had indulged in a fair share of solo adventuring.

  .Why then did he feel so isolated? He wasn’t shivering. His powers being what they were, he never shivered. Yet he understood completely the apprehension of the young hobbit, Frodo Baggins, as he set out to throw the great ring of power into the volcano and thwart the Sauron of his world.

  The igloo was melting fast beside him, no longer sustained by frequent refreezing. He accelerated the process, nodding as the salamanders Sam had been so concerned about thawed, flowed into the tepid swamp water, and began wriggling about.

  The way back to the spot where they had diverged from Amphibius’s trail barely matched his memory. Fronds that had formed deep, threatening shadows at night offered cool, green arbors in the richness of morning. The incessant twitters, screeches, and groans of the wildlife, which had been so unidentifiable and ominous hours ago, stood out now as the recognizable and appealing racket of parrots, monkeys, bullfrogs, and honeybees. Even the diplodocus, still browsing

  the treetops, this time with a mate, did not loom as intimi-datingly nor whip its tail so brusquely.

  The land was trying to lull him into a false sense of security, Bobby concluded. Setting him up for a big, bad surprise. Sort of like a quiet stroll through Central Park after curfew.

  Rather rude of the Savage Land, after all he and the X-Men had done to preserve it.

  In due course he came to the set of giant froggy footprints where he had seen them last. They had been obscured by bird tracks and a drizzly, predawn rain, but enough remained to be sure he had located the right patch of mud. It no longer seemed a lucky break that Cannonball had stumbled across the traces the previous evening. In retrospect, the fact that they had never quite lost the trail was glaringly convenient. Iceman had to give Amphibius credit. The mutate had consistently made it seem as though the X-Men had stumbled across a secret place he wanted to keep them away from— one that he dared not abandon even while eluding them. Bobby had wanted so much to believe he and his teammates were on the verge of a breakthrough.