by Alex Irvine
Reed was about to greet Xavier and thank him for his timely intervention when the X-Men, as one, headed back to their ship. They said nothing and did not look back, nor did they take Colossus with them. A moment later, their ship arced away over the mountains.
What is Xavier’s game? Reed wondered. But there was no way to know.
Spider-Man was staggering, able to keep his feet only with Hawkeye’s aid. The villagers emerged from the remains of their homes to survey the destruction. Zsaji rushed to Johnny’s embrace, but Rhodey snapped at the Human Torch. “Hey, hotshot. Get your girlfriend over here to help Colossus. He’s in bad shape, man.”
Colossus moaned and struggled to get up. He returned to his flesh-and-blood form, and his deep wounds bled freely down his back and side, the bone showing through in places. Zsaji reached him, but Reed could see Peter wasn’t in full possession of his faculties. He fought back when she knelt next to him. She backed away in fear. “Easy, bud,” Rhodey said. “She’s trying to help.”
Zsaji went to Spider-Man, instead. At her touch, he let out a long sigh. “Oh, man,” he said. “Don’t ever stop that. I should go out and get hurt again, just so you can heal me some more.”
Rhodey was still trying to get Colossus settled down. “Here she comes again,” he said, seeing Zsaji had finished with Spider-Man. “All she’s going to do is touch you. You saw how Spidey liked it. It’s going to be fine.”
She knelt at Colossus’ side again, and this time he didn’t resist.
Reed stood alongside Captain America, looking up at Galactus. What they saw was disturbing. Galactus was moving now, constructing something on the mountaintop by creating pieces of machinery seemingly out of thin air. “This is bad, Cap,” Reed said. “It will take Galactus some time to assemble that machine, but there’s no telling how long.”
“What’s he going to do once it’s together?” Cap asked.
“I presume he plans to consume this planet.”
“Thereby winning the Beyonder’s game?”
Reed had a slightly different idea. “I doubt he’s playing the Beyonder’s game at all, Steve. Galactus has something else in mind. If all he wanted was to destroy us, he could have done that at any time.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Cap looked around. “Here’s another thing. Where’s Doom? He sent out his little army, but he didn’t stick around to watch the show.”
“That’s another thing I don’t know,” Reed said. “But if you want me to guess, I’d say he’s probably not playing the Beyonder’s game, either. If there’s one thing I know about Victor von Doom, it’s that he makes his own rules, and he only plays games for the highest stakes.”
He looked at Captain America in silence for a moment. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Galactus and Doom will take down the Beyonder and each other in the process,” Cap said. “Then we can all go home.”
“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” Reed said. “But I don’t think we’ll get out of this that easily.”
*
Doom waited until his small army met the so-called heroes in battle. He remained in his jump-ship, watching Galactus.
There. As Storm gathered the power of the elements, that upwelling of energy caught Galactus’ attention for the briefest of moments—but that was all Doom needed. He touched a button; in less than one second, his jump-ship shot across the millions of miles separating Battleworld from Galactus’ craft, powered by a tachyon thruster that deformed space-time around the ship— essentially phasing it through the outer hull of Galactus’ vessel. He had discovered this jump-ship inside Doombase, and it had taken all of his considerable skill to begin to fathom its design. Once he had understood it, Doom had known he had found the perfect tool with which to begin the execution of his plan’s final phase.
Now it was happening. He was inside and undetected—for surely Galactus simply would have erased him from existence had he noted Doom’s infiltration. Doom left his jump-ship and stepped out into a space whose dimensions left even his advanced mind—so steeped in the unimaginable—utterly reeling. The vessel was thousands of miles long and tens of miles high, and its walls sprouted a million machines and instruments whose function he could barely begin to guess. A lesser man surely would have gone mad, or at the very least fled. But then, a lesser man never would have embarked on a quest of such grandeur.
For Doom had come here for answers. He, a tiny speck of organic matter inside a mechanical immensity the likes of which no human had ever seen, would master the tools at hand. He would understand this machine, this ship, and turn that understanding into a weapon to confront and overcome first Galactus and then the Beyonder himself. Their secrets would be his. Then their power would be his as well.
Doom would no longer have need of answers, because the universe itself would bend to his will.
TWENTY-SEVEN
COLOSSUS lay on a pallet in Zsaji’s hut. Spider-Man, pronouncing himself shipshape, had already left to rejoin the team. Peter was physically well again, but not yet prepared to rejoin…what should he call them? They were not the X-Men, his true compatriots. He had been abandoned on the battlefield by those he should have been able to count on until the bitter end. The others had made sure Zsaji saw to him. They had come through where Xavier and the X-Men had not. Peter knew there must have been a good reason for Xavier to act as he did, but the action still stung him. Was he not important enough to the team that they would take a risk to ensure his safety? His survival, even? Xavier could have reached out to him telepathically and explained. Why had he not?
Peter had always been loyal to them. It was very difficult to feel that his loyalty was not reciprocated.
Also, he was wrestling with a more intimate conflict. Since arriving on Battleworld, Peter had looked at every possible action with a single priority in mind: returning to Earth, and to Kitty Pryde. His Katya was not here, though her dragon Lockheed was. Although where was Lockheed? Peter had not seen him in some time. But he could not spare the emotional energy for concern over Lockheed right now. Instead, he found himself in a quandary he had never imagined. Zsaji’s touch had sparked not just healing but emotion within him. He thought her beautiful, though he had not paused to consider a woman’s beauty in some years—not since he and Katya had fallen in love and pledged themselves to each other. And her healing touch left him wanting, as though she filled some emptiness in him.
The curtain covering the hut’s doorway swept open. Peter rolled over, expecting—hoping—to see Zsaji. Instead, he saw Johnny Storm, who glanced over his shoulder and pulled the curtain closed again. “So, Colossus, you and I need to straighten something out,” he said.
“What would that be?”
“Zsaji,” Johnny said. “I see how you’re looking at her since she healed you, Big Red. Sorry if you went and fell for her, too, but she’s spoken for.”
Peter let the Communist slur pass, but he was less willing to ignore the claim about Zsaji. He sat up and got his feet on the floor, amazed at how strong he felt so soon after the Wrecker’s savage beating. “Is she saying this, or are you?” he asked.
“I am,” Johnny said. “Back off.”
“Is it not the lady’s choice to make?”
“Funny you should mention ladies,” Johnny said. “Don’t you have one back home? What’s Kitty going to think when she finds out you’re making goo-goo eyes at an alien chick just because she knit your bones back together?”
“Easy for you to ask that question,” Peter said. “But perhaps you, given your history with the fairer sex, should not be so quick to question another’s fidelity.”
Peter smelled smoke, and wisps of flame flickered from Johnny’s fingertips. “Don’t cross me, Colossus,” he said. “And we’re not talking about the past here. We’re talking about right now. Zsaji’s too polite to say it, so I’m saying it for her. You make her uncomfortable—hell, you make me uncomfortable—and we’re going to have a problem.”
Peter stood. He tow
ered over Johnny, as he towered over most people, but he rarely used his size to intimidate others. Now, though, he did. He stepped up to Johnny and said, “Do not threaten me. Do not question my love for Katya. Do not speak to me again. And do not start a fight with me. You will lose, and we will damage this village still further and endanger more of its innocents.”
Johnny took a step back. “You want to play tough guy, that’s cool,” he said. “I get how it feels to put in a bid just a little too late. But that’s what it is: too late.”
He turned around and flipped open the curtain. When it rippled closed again, Colossus was alone in the hut. Johnny was off to gloat over his conquest, no doubt. It was just as well. Peter mistrusted his ability to control his temper at the moment.
He tried to think of Katya, but something about Battleworld was interfering with his mind. All of them were feeling it, and Xavier had even suggested that the Beyonder was influencing them—to what end, none of them could intuit. How would it further the Beyonder’s goals of rewarding the survivor if he were rigging the game? Why not just choose a winner and do what he wished with the rest?
Peter did not know, and he had not the patience to waste time imagining the rationales of alien beings with the power to destroy entire galaxies at a whim.
What he could do was be true to himself. He could try to keep sight of Peter Rasputin, the man who had come here from Earth and who would return. He could remind himself what was important, even when Battleworld confused him and forced him to question everything about himself.
He would focus solely on Kitty Pryde. She would be his fixed point, the star by which he would navigate until he returned to Earth.
I will remain true to Katya, he said to himself. He repeated it over and over again until he fell asleep. But even then, his dreams were full of Zsaji.
JOHNNY STORM
The truth was, he had it all: looks, smarts, charisma—and he was a famous super hero who could fly and shoot fire. Wasn’t much a guy could do to improve on that.
Or so he’d thought until he set foot on Battleworld and saw Zsaji. Something about her…it was like she was brighter, more alive than the world around them. When she spoke to him, it didn’t matter what the alien healer said or what language she used. He understood. They communicated straight from mind-to-mind, almost; for the first time in years, Johnny Storm thought he was really falling in love.
With a cat-eyed alien from another galaxy, who probably wouldn’t be alive in another forty-eight hours.
Unless he made sure she was.
That’s what he would do. That’s what he wanted.
That was Johnny’s fondest desire. Love. He’d begun to feel it, and nobody—not Colossus, not Galactus, not even the Beyonder—was going to get in his way now.
TWENTY-EIGHT
JANET VAN DYNE was good at many things. She was smart, she was funny, and she had a good eye for fabrics and fashion. She also happened to be able to fly, and her bioelectric pulses were powerful enough to incapacitate any normal human.
But one thing she’d never really gotten good at was piloting alien spaceships. She thought she had the hang of it at first because all she had to do was aim the joystick up and straight out of the hangar at Magneto’s base, but then things got complicated. She didn’t know which controls did what, and the weather on Battleworld was a crazed mishmash of microclimates. One minute it was clear sailing over flat desert, and the next there were tiny tornadoes whisking out of slot canyons, and then a minute later she was dealing with powerful downdrafts from mountains. Janet held out as long as she could, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep the ship in the air for long, and she was right.
KRAK-A-CHONG! The ship plummeted. Janet tried all the controls, but the vessel stayed its nosedive course. It bounced and skipped like a flat stone on water before it plowed up a big mound of dirt and came to a stop. At least she was lucky that she’d crashed on a fairly level patch of ground.
“Oh, no! I broke a nail and my manicurist is thirty-seven trillion miles away and it’s her day off,” Janet wisecracked. She’d been knocked out of the pilot’s seat and instinctively shrank to her wasplike size so she wouldn’t have as much mass to bang around inside the cockpit. Now she grew back to her normal size and figured out how to open the vehicle’s side door. Along the way, while poking random spots on touch screens, she turned on what looked like a holographic map. That blinking spot at the center must be my location, she reasoned.
Janet had to find the Avengers and let them know about Magneto’s plan—and about the X-Men, although she wasn’t certain exactly what their intentions were. It was all well and good if Magneto wanted to go after Doom, but she knew he wouldn’t stop there. Magneto had separated himself from the rest of them because he didn’t want to play by their rules. She was sure he wouldn’t care whether every sentient being on Battleworld died, as long as it meant he was in charge at the end. Unfortunately, it looked like Xavier and the X-Men had decided to join up with him. Or had they? It seemed so out of character.
The ship had crashed near what looked like a swamp, and on the other edge of the swamp was what looked like the skyline of a human city. Okay, Janet thought. That’s the place to go. Cities meant technology and communication, at least on Earth, and with luck she’d be able to find out how to get back to the Avengers. She went outside, shrunk to wasp size, and headed toward the city as best as she could figure its direction.
The ship had flown a lot faster than she could flutter her wings, Janet had to admit a few hours later. She was still darting her way through the overgrowth of the swamp, and the city in the distance didn’t seem much closer. She was getting tired. Don’t you wish you were the Eagle instead of the Wasp? Then you’d be more suited to longdistance migration, she thought.
Janet kept an ear out for the sounds of large predatory animals. She saw lots of small snake-like things and a thousand different insectile creatures in a rainbow of colors. ZAP! Once or twice, when larger creatures got too close, she warned them away with a little bioelectric disincentive.
She was taking a few seconds to rest when a huge rock came hurtling over her head to splash into the shallows ten feet away. Janet flinched away from the splash; when her eyes cleared, she saw the Lizard hunched over an outcropping, staring at her. Clearly he had thrown the rock. Uh-oh, she thought. He’d been a gifted doctor and genetic researcher before his experiments with reptilian DNA turned him into an unstable lizard-man. He wasn’t going to fix her manicure, that was for sure.
“Ssssswamp issss mine!” the Lizard hissed, shattering a tree trunk for emphasis.
He hadn’t hit her with the rock, though. It had only been a warning. “Okay, Lizard,” she said. “Swamp’s yours. I’m just passing through on my way to the Ritz. Can you give me directions? Just kidding.”
She saw then that the Lizard was wounded. Blood spattered his filthy lab coat, and there were visible gashes on his left arm. Janet realized she hadn’t seen the Lizard since the villains had first attacked them. “You were in that first fight, weren’t you?” she asked.
He glanced down at his arm and said, “Rawrrr!”
“There, there,” she said, playing the unfamiliar part of the nurturing mother figure. “Let’s not fight. You want the swamp, you can have it. As far as I’m concerned, we should all be teaming up to battle the Beyonder. Let me help you, and we’ll sort things out from there, okay?”
The Lizard didn’t move.
“Come on. Okay?” Janet extended a hand, beckoning him along. After a moment, he came toward her.
She led him to the closest patch of dry ground she could find. “The bad guys didn’t keep you around for long, did they?” she asked. “Or did you see them for what they were and take off on your own?”
“Foolssss,” the Lizard said. “I stay in ssswamp until they are all dead. Then sssseee what to do.”
“That’s one approach,” Janet said. “Once we get that arm bandaged up, we’ll see if we can come up with so
mething else.”
All the while her mind was racing. How was she going to cover the miles—who knew how many?—between her and the Avengers’ base? Could she do it in time, before Magneto and maybe even Xavier did something that would set the Battleworld endgame irreversibly in motion? That’s what she needed to focus on, not a bunch of cuts on the Lizard’s arm. She should have flown away and left him alone.
She knew that, but he needed her, so she got him bandaged up and calmed down. Battleworld was not going to make her a savage. The rest of them might decide to be pawns in the Beyonder’s game, but Janet Van Dyne was nobody’s fool. There had to be a better way.
TWENTY-NINE
VICTOR VON DOOM did not rush, but neither did he tarry. There was far too much technology on Galactus’ ship for him to comprehend in even a lifetime. He steadfastly focused on a few machines that seemed designed to harness energy, for the plan Doom had in mind would require more energy than any human had controlled in the history of civilization. One apparatus, a cylinder the size of a house, piqued his curiosity. It appeared to be controlled from a simple box-shaped monitor. His armor’s sensors had detected a pattern of vibratory energy within the cylinder’s walls, as if its very molecular structure permitted it to be used as a battery of sorts. The readouts on the monitor tracked this energy; after a short period of trial and error, Doom ascertained a way he might corral and focus it.
He went through the control sequence on the monitor, considering it an experiment. Whatever resulted, he would have learned something. From the machine’s construction, he reasoned, it was designed to shape the vibratory energy—but into what? A weapon? A power pack of some kind? If it were the former, he could use it. If the latter, it could serve as a power source for a yet-to-be-discovered weapon elsewhere in the ship.