Twenty-five yards ahead was an intersection. Traffic lights continued their mute exercise of authority with no regard to the lack of vehicles they might command. The voices were loud, one particularly deep and booming, magnified all the more by the haunting absence of noise in a city normally so saturated with it.
“This is the life, buddy!” the loudest voice thundered. “Always knew being a cop was easy. Free donuts, your own little kingdom like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. It’s a pretty good deal.”
“Frankly, Fred, I was hoping for a position with a bit more long-term potential, more responsibility,” said another male voice, this one with a strong Australian accent.
Juggernaut recognized them both. Grey must have been psi-scanning their immediate area almost constantly, watching for an attack or even a chance meeting, as this apparently was going to be.
Pyro and the Blob came around the corner as close to side by side as they could get, considering the Blob’s extraordinary girth. They weren’t alone. At least a dozen other mutants trailed behind them, some familiar to him, most not. Blob and Pyro, though, were easy to recognize. They’d been part of Freedom Force for a while, celebrities, but even before that, they’d made the news. Major troublemakers, hellraisers of the first order.
“Well, well, well,” Juggernaut said, “what’ve we got here?”
As a fighting force, these later-generation Acolytes were untrained. Several seemed to freeze, uncertain how to react. Fully half a dozen spread out in attack formation, those who were armed bringing weapons to bear. Mutant mercenaries. Not criminals, not terrorists, just creeps with powers hiring out to the highest bidder without a moment’s consideration of who they were working for, what they were destroying. Juggernaut had no illusions: he was no hero, he was one of the bad guys. But even the guys in the black hats in the cowboy flicks had dignity, honor.
Mercenaries were scum.
There were a pair of mutants in the back—a big bruiser and a stout guy with spiky hair all over his body—who looked like tag-team wrestlers and clearly worked as a team. They looked familiar, but Juggernaut couldn’t place them. Those two bothered him. They seemed dangerous, far more so than the mercenaries, because these other two were obviously a little nuts.
Pyro and the Blob both merely smiled and kept walking.
“Do my eyes deceive me, Fred, or is that the Juggernaut?” Pyro asked, even as he waved at the mercenaries to be sure they wouldn’t attack … yet. “Why, I’d heard as how he’d turned tail and abandoned the cause. Was kind of surprised, actually. Not a good idea to piss Lord Magneto off these days.”
Lord Magneto, Juggernaut thought with venomous sarcasm. What a load of crap.
“How about it, buddy?” the Blob said, ignoring his partner’s amused babble. “You come back to tell us you’ve changed your mind?”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” Cain replied.
He could feel the sigh of relief that went through the group. The Juggernaut’s reputation had preceded him after all. Who in their right mind would want a battle, no matter what the odds? As Pyro and the Blob stopped a few feet away from him, Cain studied the rest of them, trying to figure out what their powers were. Far as he could tell, the tag-team boys didn’t have any kind of weapon, mechanical or natural, other than strength and, he guessed, agility.
Of the four mutants who were obviously inexperienced, two looked as if they might pose a threat—not to him, of course. One had bony spines lining his body, and the way he stood it seemed likely the teenager could fire the spines from his body or from some natural-flesh projectile housing on the back of his hands. The other was leaking phosphorescent radiation or something from his mouth. The rest of the rookies looked harmless, but you could never judge a mutant just on appearance.
The mercenaries were another story. Three were armed with high-powered automatic rifles, so their mutant gifts were probably more cerebral. Another was nearly feral, with a collar and heavy chain leash held by a seven-foot hulk of a man whose flesh seemed made of granite. Then there was the woman, exquisitely beautiful with her tumble of chestnut-brown hair and a gown of some gossamer material so thin it was nearly impossible for Cain to take his eyes off her, even though he could see nothing of her revealed beneath the dress.
They were dangerous, though obviously those armed with conventional weapons were low-level mutants at best.
“Changed your mind, eh?” Pyro sneered. “S’funny. Harlan Kleinstock told me you insisted you weren’t a mutant at all. You had a few choice words for him, is what he said, and none of them were real nice.”
“That’s true,” Juggernaut agreed. “But like I said, I changed my mind.”
“So now you want to join up—maybe you realized Magneto’s gonna be the only game in town pretty soon,” the Blob reasoned aloud.
“You got it,” Cain admitted. “Magneto’s getting ready to change the world. But you’re wrong about one thing: I didn’t come back to join up.”
The Blob narrowed his eyes in confusion. “But I thought you said you changed your mind?” he asked.
“I did, but not how you’re thinking,” the Juggernaut said, a thin smile splitting his face. “See, I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t a mutant. Now, I figure, I’ve got a lot to lose if Magneto makes every human being a second-class citizen—assuming he’ll even be that kind about it.”
Pyro held up a hand and the mercenaries started to close in, spreading out a bit to be sure that the Juggernaut couldn’t escape. With the rookies along for the ride, they started to circle around behind him. What fools, he thought. They actually imagined he was planning to make a break for it, even after he’d been standing there nearly two minutes already.
“Y’know, you actually are as stupid as you are big,” the Blob said, smiling a schoolyard bully smile that was as obvious a threat as if he’d been slamming a fist into his palm.
Juggernaut snorted laughter.
“Oh, that’s rich,” he said. “I’ve been called big and stupid by a guy named ‘The Blob’! That’s one to tell the grandchildren!”
The Blob began to go for him, but stopped when Pyro held up a hand and mumbled a warning.
“We’re gonna do this the right way, the way Magneto wants it done,” Pyro said. “You have been summoned before the Emperor Magneto, Juggernaut. This is a direct order from an Imperial officer. Will you comply?”
“Yeah, right,” Juggernaut said derisively.
“In that case, in the name of Emperor Magneto, you are hereby under arrest,” Pyro said, one corner of his mouth rising in a bratty smirk. “Okay, people. He’s all yours.”
The Blob took a step forward, precisely what the Juggernaut had been waiting for. As Fred Dukes was in midstep, Cain hauled back and hit him with all the strength he could muster, right in the face. There was a crack, like bone breaking, and the Blob cried out in pain and fell onto his butt on the pavement, accompanied by a minor earth tremor.
The rest of them would probably be a cinch. Even if he’d been alone. Which he wasn’t.
“The X-Men!” Pyro cried as he saw Cyclops, Rogue, and Jean Grey burst from the clothing store.
It got ugly after that.
Pyro tried to flash-fry the Juggernaut where he stood. Cain reached for him, completely unscathed by the flames, and the little man tried to leap away. But the Juggernaut was faster than most of his enemies imagined, and snagged Pyro by the ankle. He tore the gas tanks from the mutant’s back, and tossed them away. Then he held Pyro up in front of him and slapped him once across the face. Pyro hung limp, out cold, and the Juggernaut threw him away as carelessly as he had the gas tanks, not even bothering to watch where the Australian landed.
“Next!” he shouted, thrilled by the fight. It was a real kick to see the X-Men fighting beside him, knowing they weren’t going to try to stop him because, for once, he was on the side of the angels.
Bullets sprayed the X-Men, bouncing off Rogue and the psi-shield Jean had thrown up around herself and Cyclops. I
n seconds, all the rookies were down except the one with the phosphorescence around his lips. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and green chemical fire raged forth, and this time, Juggernaut could feel the heat. This was no ordinary flame, but some mutant combination of normal fire, chemical heat, and intense hatred, a psionic blaze with a formidable mind behind it.
Cain snarled at the rookie, snapping one of the armed mutants up in his hands and using the man for a shield. The guy was lucky, his mutant power was a personal force shield. However, it wasn’t a very powerful shield. It was going to keep him alive, but not from getting burned.
The Juggernaut heard a howl and before he could turn, the feral mercenary was on his back tearing at his helmet, trying to get it off. He didn’t think the thing knew that his helmet protected him from psychic probes and attacks. No, the savage mutant just wanted to tear at his face and eyes, since the flesh of his arms resisted its claws.
Cyclops quickly took out the two other armed mutants, then fired a shot at the ghostly woman who now floated toward him. As Cain looked on, the woman seemed to become a kind of copper mist, sparkling in the sun and yet unmoved by the slight breeze that stirred the day’s heat. It enveloped Cyclops, but the Juggernaut couldn’t see anymore because the feral mercenary was still on his back. He swatted at it, reaching back to try and get hold of it, but the thing, or man if it still was a man, was too quick.
Cain saw Rogue, about to be pummeled by the huge mutant who appeared made of stone. He spun around, reaching for the wild thing on his shoulders, and saw Jean Grey, using a telekinetic shield to hold off an attack by the green fire breather. Spun again, and there was Cyclops, on the ground, clutching at his throat as if he could find no air to breathe. The copper mist that had been a beautiful mutant woman hung around him in a cloud. He blasted an optic charge into the metallic ether, but with no result.
Part of the Juggernaut wanted to watch, to savor the end of an enemy’s life. But that was the part of him, the cruel, sadistic part, that he had been working at eliminating for years. It wasn’t professional, and it didn’t feel very good either. Besides, for now, Cyclops was on his side.
The Juggernaut stopped spinning and bent over fast. The feral mutant was momentarily thrown into the air, though it kept its clawed hold on his armored neck. Still, it flew up high enough so that Cain could grab it by its odd coat, his invulnerable skin splintering a number of spines that might have been tipped with poison.
He tossed the thing into the poison mist next to the writhing form of Cyclops. Immediately, the woman solidified. Though he ought to have been near death after having been so long without air, his lungs filled with some awful poison until she had drawn herself out of him to reform, Scott Summers was on his knees in a heartbeat. The feral thing reached for him, and Juggernaut worried that he’d made a mistake, that he’d saved Cyclops from one form of poisoning only to confront him with another by way of the savage mutant’s porcupine-like spines.
Cyclops toasted it with a full-force optic blast from about three feet away. The savage creature was thrown across the street and through a department store’s plate-glass window. It stirred, alive still, but did not rise.
“Scott, get ready!” Jean shouted.
Juggernaut looked over to where Jean still protected herself against the rookie mutant spitting toxic flame. Suddenly, he realized what she intended. She was going to telepathically force the ghostly poison woman to become solid so that Cyclops could take her down—leaving herself deliberately open to attack.
He moved.
“Now!” Jean said, dropping her telekinetic shield and forcing the ghost woman to solidify.
Cyclops decked the woman with a fist as Juggernaut hurled himself in front of the flames that were about to engulf Jean Grey. He howled in agony, and the thing turned on him, advancing, trying to finish the job.
“Thanks, Cain, I just needed a momentary distraction,” Jean said, and suddenly, no more fire came out of the mutant’s mouth. Even the phosphorescence that had been omnipresent had now disappeared.
The rookie’s eyes went wide.
“What did you do?” he said in horror, then, realizing he had no weapon, turned and ran away.
“What did you do?” Cain asked.
“Unlike most mutants who have energy powers, like Scott or Gambit, that guy’s fire was not merely psionically controlled but psionically generated. I turned it off. He can’t remember how to generate it anymore,” Jean said, her voice harsh, and yet somehow sad.
“Pretty nasty for the X-Men,” Cain remarked. “I wonder if Charley would approve.”
“Probably not,” Jean admitted. “But we don’t have time for manners, or so I’m told.”
“Touché,” Cain said.
“Juggernaut!” the Blob boomed, just to the left. “You hurt me!”
“Good!” Cain replied, smiling broadly.
“What’s wrong with you, siding with them?” the Blob asked, advancing dangerously, clutching his broken face. “You’re a criminal, you’re one of us.”
“One of you?” the Juggernaut asked. “Don’t insult me, man. You haven’t got any class at all. You’ll hire yourself out to anyone with a plan and some cash, or just tear up a town for the hell of it, because you can. I don’t have the time for those tantrums anymore, and I’m not about to become a mercenary. I’m a career criminal, Blob, in it for the gain, not the pain. If Magneto takes over, my career’s over.”
“If that’s the way you feel,” the Blob sneered, then winced at the pain it caused. “But your career is over anyway, right now. I know why they call you the Juggernaut. Story says once you’re moving, you can’t be stopped. Well, try me, buddy. Nothing moves the Blob.”
For a moment, Cain flashed back to the schoolyard of his childhood, to the dozens of similar taunting challenges he’d received from kids, mostly older, who’d heard he was a tough guy, a bully, and wanted to build their own reputations by taking him down. That was when he was filled with rage and hatred, when he passed on the pain his father gave him to any loudmouth or wiseass weakling who crossed his path.
There was joy in it then, and he felt that old joy rising again, the sadistic pleasure he could take in hurting his opponents. But he brushed it away. It didn’t make him want to take the Blob down any less, but in his mind, attacking was a dismissive gesture. Not to cause pain, but to eliminate an obstacle. And the Blob was the ultimate obstacle.
The Juggernaut roared as he sprinted the distance between himself and the Blob. Just before they collided, the Blob seemed to lose his arrogant certainty, and he flinched slightly, to one side. Then Juggernaut slammed into him, at an angle, and spun away to the left. His head was ringing from the impact, but he turned to take another crack at the Blob.
Who was staring down at his feet. He’d been moved at least twelve inches, and there was no telling what might have happened, to both of them, if he hadn’t flinched at the end. The Blob was still holding his shattered cheek, and after a moment, his eyes rolled back in his head and he once again fell to the pavement.
This time, he did not get up.
“What do you know?” Juggernaut said. “Unconscious. Maybe a concussion from the impact.”
As he passed the Blob walking back toward Jean Grey, his mean streak resurfaced, just for a moment, and he turned to glare at the huge mutant’s unconscious form.
“Loser,” he snarled, and kept walking.
“Oh, God!” Rogue shouted suddenly.
Jean and the Juggernaut turned together and ran to where Rogue stood, staring in horror at a pile of rocks on the pavement in front of her.
“Rogue,” Cyclops said in a hush as he approached from the other side. “What did you do?”
“I don’t …” Rogue began, then took a breath before continuing. “It wasn’t one’a my punches. I had just thrown him down. I was purposely tryin’ not to hit him hard ’cause I wasn’t real sure what he was made of. Then he turns around and rushes me, with all he’s got.
&nbs
p; “I just stood my ground, Scott,” she said. “An’ he crashed into me an’ jus’—jus’ broke! I swear I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“You didn’t kill him, Rogue,” Cain said in real sympathy. “There wasn’t anything else you could have done. The man was just a fool.”
After a moment of silence, Cyclops said: “Well, there’s nothing to be done for it now. We’ve just got to move on and get as close to the Empire State as we can before we run into another group like this.”
“You’ve got to wonder how many there are,” Jean said.
“I’m trying not to think about it,” Scott replied.
The comment hit a nerve. Cain looked around and realized that the two tag-team wrestlers he’d seen originally were not there. Had not been there, in fact, since just after the fight began.
“We’d better hurry,” he said. “I think word is already on the way back to Magneto.”
The X-Men looked around. Scott and Rogue didn’t seem to notice anything. Maybe they hadn’t seen the two stout mutants. But Jean realized it right away. She had probably sensed them earlier.
“Hairbag and Slab,” she said.
“Those are their names?” the Juggernaut asked. “No wonder they hang around with the Blob.”
“They never did before,” Cyclops answered.
“Yeah,” Rogue said, looking back once more at the remains of the mutant who had, in effect, killed himself using Rogue as his weapon. “It’s a whole new world.”
SIX
XAVIER and Magneto had been in a philosophical war over the future of the mutant race for decades, a war that had suddenly, explosively, entered reality. Magneto had the Sentinels, the Acolytes, hundreds of recently converted followers, and an entire city at his command.
All Charles Xavier had was hope.
Hope that the President of the United States would act with wisdom and caution. Hope that the world would not be irrevocably turned against mutants by Magneto’s actions. Hope that Val Cooper could take the Sentinels out of the fight. Hope that the X-Men’s small numbers were enough to achieve victory. And, finally, hope that victory would not come at too high a price.
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