by Greg Cox
“Wanda?” the Vision added. For the first time, his saturnine voice held a trace of human emotion. Storm recalled that the android had once been married to the Scarlet Witch. The levitating Vision descended to the floor, as if weighed down by mortal concerns. “Are you well? Wanda?”
The Leader smiled evilly. “I’m afraid they don’t respond to those appellations anymore, or to anything else you might care to say.” He snapped his fingers and the three stolen heroes fanned out in front of the Leader, defending him. Claws popped out of Wolverine’s hands, the Scarlet Witch extended her fingers in a mystical configuration, and Rogue peeled off a pair of orange surgical gloves. There was no mistaking the menace inherent in their actions.
“That can’t be them!” Iceman chimed. “Those are just Skrulls in disguise.”
“Nah,” the Hulk spat in disgust. “He’s got them brainwashed. I’ve seen it before. All he has to do is touch you and he’s got you under his control.” He glowered at the Leader, emerald eyes burning balefully beneath his sloping brows. “But your mind-tricks don’t work on me, do they, Sterns? Tell them that, why don’t you?”
“Why should I,” the Leader asked, “when you’ve so helpfully updated them on my mental manipulation and its limitations? Not that it matters. My psychic influence worked well enough on your former colleagues, as you can see.” His smug smile stretched even wider. The intricate convolutions of his swollen cerebellum pulsated like a malignant heartbeat. “Specimen #s 1 through 3, destroy the intruders!”
As the entranced mutants charged at their would-be rescuers, Storm refused to despair. There had to be a way, she knew, to free their teammates from the Leader’s insidious mind control; the X-Men had often overcome foes with similar hypnotic powers: Mesmero, Sauron, the Shadow King, even Dracula, the bloodthirsty Lord of the Undead. Storm had no doubt that, given the opportunity, Professor X could release the Leader’s hold on his victims’ minds, but first she and the others had to defend themselves against their own dear friends, without bringing permanent harm to those they had come to rescue.
That, she realized, is going to be the difficult part…
* * *
THE antiseptic white corridor, reminiscent of something from Kubrick’s 2001, became a battleground. Intent on the Leader, the Hulk bounded at his perennial nemesis, only to be blocked by Wolverine’s flashing claws. Slashing and biting, Logan launched himself at his frequent sparring partner, the force and ferocity of his attack proving sufficient to keep the Hulk, at least for an interval, away from the Leader.
What an irrefutably distressing turn of events, the Beast thought, shaking his shaggy head at Wolverine’s misdirected energy and aggression; given a choice, the Beast vastly preferred to have Logan’s innate bellicosity on his side, not dispatched against him. I certainly never anticipated rooting for the Hulk in he and Wolverine’s latest grudge match!
Deploying along party lines, the rest of the heroes attempted to subdue their brainwashed brethren. Iron Man and the other Avengers converged on the Scarlet Witch, while Cyclops led the X-Men against Rogue. Torn by conflicting loyalties, the Beast briefly hesitated before joining the conflict, then hopped after Captain America. An honest appraisal of his abilities led the Beast to suspect that his preternatural agility might come in handier against the Scarlet Witch than pitted against Rogue’s superior strength and invulnerability. Moreover, as the most minimally-clothed of the various X-Men and Avengers present, the fur-covered mutant realized that he presented a large, indigo target for Rogue’s parasitic touch. Best to keep a safe distance from those voracious fingers, he judged, lest I prematurely find myself in a comatose state.
Perhaps the most powerful Avenger present, Iron Man was also the first to fall victim to the Scarlet Witch’s hex power. In response to her arcane gestures, a sphere of incarnadine light surrounded the Golden Avenger, triggering a highly improbable series of malfunctions in his ordinarily infallible armor. His left boot jet misfired, tossing him sideways into a tank of oxygen. Unwanted bursts of plasma erupted from his gauntlets, carving out an enormous pit beneath him, into which the dazed Avenger began to slide. His steel-sheathed hands grabbed onto the edge of the pit, leaving Iron Man literally hanging by his fingertips above the moon’s newest crater. “My armor!” he shouted, his voice no longer sounding electronically amplified or disguised. “It’s gone dead. There’s no more power!”
Following close behind Iron Man, Captain America almost ran headlong into the gaping pit, but his combat-honed reflexes spared him from the plunge. Taking advantage of the moon’s lesser gravity, he cleared the crater in a single leap. “Beast!” he called out in midair. “See to Iron Man.” His spinning shield flew from his hand before his boots hit the floor, whooshing down the corridor to strike the Scarlet Witch in the stomach, knocking her off her feet. Even though he recognized the necessity of Captain America’s action, the Beast still winced in sympathy for his former teammate. If I know Cap, he assured himself, he didn’t throw his shield hard enough to really hurt Wanda, just enough to pound the wind out of her.
“Vision!” Cap barked. His shield bounced back into his grip as though connected to his glove by an elastic band. “Put her out while she’s down. This is our chance!”
“Understood,” the Vision answered, sounding even more somber than usual as he glided toward his estranged wife. Spectral fingers stretched out for the Scarlet Witch’s head, hovering momentarily over her tumbled auburn curls. All he needed to do was insert those insubstantial digits into the downed Witch’s brow, then solidify them partially, and the resulting shock to her system would render the ensorcelled sorceress out like the proverbial light. “Forgive me, Wanda,” he said in a dour monotone, pausing a second before delivering the incapacitating blow.
“Now, Vision!” Captain America urged, running across the tile floor toward the poignant-yet-suspenseful tableau. “On the double!”
His hesitation cost the synthezoid dearly. Before his immaterial fingers could insinuate themselves into the Scarlet Witch’s brainpan, her own fingers twitched and a luminescent scarlet orb enclosed the Vision. His outstretched hand poked against her pale forehead, but went no further; the Witch’s occult sphere had made him tangible once more. A backhanded swipe from his former wife sent the Vision reeling, giving the Scarlet Witch a chance to scramble to her feet.
“Dear me!” the Beast exclaimed, looking over his shoulder at the debacle as he struggled to pull Iron Man from the brink of his inadvertently-created precipice. Although many pounds lighter than it would have been on Earth, the Golden Avenger’s armor retained all of its considerable mass. Tawny muscles bulged along the Beast’s simian arms as he yanked on his colleague’s iron-clad arm. “I can’t say I approve of the way this particular skirmish is proceeding.”
“You can say that again,” Iron Man grunted, dangling. With the Beast’s help, he hoisted his armored elbows over the ledge of the chasm. “We need Storm, pronto!”
* * *
“ROGUE! It’s me, Bobby! Snap out of it!”
Iceman didn’t care how smart or how powerful the Leader was supposed to be. He couldn’t resist trying to get through to Rogue, to reach the strong, spirited woman beneath the brainwashing. He and Rogue had run off together several months back; things hadn’t worked out, but he felt that he knew the real Rogue, the one no sneaky mind games could keep down for long. “Fight it!” he urged, sliding toward her on a freshly-generated track of frozen moisture. “You can do it! I know you can!”
Her feet lifted from the floor and she flew at him, fists forward. His track angled up to intercept her, on a collision course that brought them barrelling toward each other at top speed. He kept expecting her to come to her senses, swerve away and maybe go after the Leader instead, but, to his dismay, she kept on coming. At the last minute, he threw up an ice shield to protect him from her incoming fists; she smashed right through it like it was made out of sugar cubes. Chunks of frozen shrapnel went flying off in all directions, and Iceman toppled over, sli
ding backwards down his track.
Flat on his back, he coasted to a halt at the bottom of the ramp. His spill left him in a poor position to defend himself as Rogue dived at him. Would her super-strength turn him into a pile of crushed ice before she absorbed his powers? It looked like he was about to find out—until a very familiar red beam came from out of nowhere, blindsiding Rogue and driving her away from the downed Iceman. “Way to go, Cyke!” Iceman cheered his rescuer, grateful for the save. “Perfect timing as usual!”
Cyclops kept his eyebeams focused on Rogue, pounding her with the full force of his optic blast. “Iceman,” he shouted as he kept Rogue at bay, “take care of those gas links so Storm can use her lightning.”
That’s Cyke, always thinking, Iceman thought, back on his frigid feet and heading for the ruptured pipes. Bobby hadn’t even realized until now that pure oxygen and Ororo’s super-sized sparks made a dangerously bad combination. Guess that’s why he’s the leader guy, and I’m just a frozen dessert.
Following Cyclops’s instructions, Iceman sealed the broken pipes with a couple of improvised ice-plugs. The hiss of escaping gas fell silent and Storm diluted the concentrated oxygen in the air by blowing it away with an emphatic gust of wind. “That’s better,” she stated simply, nodding at Iceman. Electricity crackled around her, lifting her long white hair so that it framed her elegant features like a halo. She looked to where Rogue and Cyclops now contended, and lifted her hands to intervene, but a compelling cry from Iron Man seized her attention.
“Storm!” he shouted from across the hall, while the Beast waved his long arms to attract her notice. “I could use a recharge over here.” The armored Avenger knelt near the brink of a deep cavity in the floor, his batteries apparently drained of juice. Iceman guessed that the Scarlet Witch had something to do with Iron Man’s personal energy crisis; he remembered the sort of stunts she used to pull back when she still worked for Magneto. “Anytime you’re ready!” Iron Man called out to Ororo.
“Gladly!” she replied, soaring toward the pit and away from Iceman, who checked to see how Cyclops was doing. Between the two of us, he thought, we should be able to slow down a mixed-up Rogue. I hope.
Against anyone less durable than Rogue, Cyclops’s eyebeams would have already pummelled her into unconsciousness, if not into a pulp. Even Wolverine might be black-and-blue after such treatment; unfortunately, Cyke’s force beams only seemed to make Rogue mad.
A look of major annoyance showed through the zombified glaze in her eyes as she advanced against Cyclops’s eyebeams like a salmon fighting its way upstream. Crimson energy broke upon her orange-clad physique and her fists swung repeatedly at the steadily-shrinking swath of red light between her and Cyclops, pounding away at the incandescent ray as if it was a physical impediment.
Iceman’s crystalline jaw dropped open. He’d known Rogue was a powerhouse, but he’d never guessed that she could shrug off Cyke’s eyebeams like that. A suit of icy armor, separate and distinct from the organic blue ice that his body was composed of, flowed over Iceman from head to foot. A transparent mace and matching shield formed in his hands. Figuring he was now protected against Rogue’s vampiric touch, he circled around her, hoping to club her from behind while she was preoccupied with Cyclops’s eyebeams. The tricky part was going to be not pulling his punch just because it was Rogue. Sorry, babe, he thought, wondering how hard was too hard for someone as tough as the X-Men’s favorite steel magnolia, I hate to say it, but I hope this hurts you more than it does me!
Carried forward by a moving sheet of ice, he swung the mace at her broad-striped scalp. Just then, however, Rogue put on a burst of speed, pulling away from Iceman and breaking past Cyclops’s force beam. Before either X-Man realized what was happening, Rogue’s bare fingers splayed across Cyke’s face, touching his exposed mouth and jaw.
The effect was immediate—and alarming. Cyclops’s nonstop eyebeams conked out like someone had flipped a switch; Iceman caught a rare glimpse of Scott Summers’s brown eyes before Cyclops collapsed, out cold, onto the floor. At the same instant, identical eyebeams burst from Rogue’s green orbs, slamming into everything she turned her gaze upon.
Without the ruby quartz lens in Cyke’s visor, Rogue had no way to control her newly-acquired eyebeams. Not that this seemed to worry her much; inexhaustible amounts of energy pouring from her transformed peepers, she swung her head around and zapped the Vision from a half-dozen yards away. Watching anxiously, Iceman expected the beams to pass right through the android, perhaps hitting the Scarlet Witch by mistake, but something must have happened to the Vision’s powers because the beams struck him squarely in the back. He let out a surprisingly human cry of shock and pain before falling facefirst onto the clean white tiles.
That’s two down, Iceman thought, gulping ice water, and we haven’t even got to the Leader yet.
Rogue’s power-packed eyes found Captain America next…
* * *
THUNDER boomed inside the moonbase for possibly the very first time. A sizzling bolt of lightning lit up the circular corridor. This is more inclement weather, the Beast reflected, than Tycho has likely seen in over three billion years.
Storm’s handmade thunderbolt, striking Iron Man directly against his chestplate, had the desired effect. Newly-energized, Iron Man flexed his armored limbs and waited for his computerized hardware to reboot. Signal lights flashed along the top of his crimson-and-gold helmet. The diskshaped lens in his chestplate lighted up. “Ah, that’s more like it,” the Golden Avenger declared, his voice once more possessed of its unique electronic timbre. He tilted his faceplate up toward Storm, who was floating several feet about the steep chasm. “You’re going to have to send me a power bill sometime.” This was twice, or so the Beast had heard, that Storm’s galvanic prowess had revitalized Iron Man’s trademarked exoskeleton.
“Thank me by restraining Rogue,” she instructed. “Your armor should shield you from her touch, but be on guard. Her strength and speed are comparable to your own.”
“You don’t need to remind me of that,” Iron Man said. “I’ve fought her before, back during that brawl on Ryker’s Island a couple years ago.” His boot jets lifted him off the ground and he spotted Rogue grabbing Cyclops’s face despite the formidable force beam emanating from the X-Man’s eyes. “Leave her to me.”
Good luck, the Beast thought. Then he caught a scarlet flash out of the corner of his eye and cartwheeled away instinctively. An instant later, a hex bolt struck exactly where he’d been standing, causing an entire section of the floor to cave in, sliding like a miniature avalanche into the open pit. He counted at least five seconds before the falling rubble hit the bottom of the chasm. Even allowing for the fractional gravity involved, that was a long way down.
The Beast found firmer footing ten feet back from the expanding edge of the crater. That was an exceedingly unwelcome blast from the past, he thought. Not counting the occasional practice run at Avengers HQ, it had been many years since he had last squared off against the Scarlet Witch in pitched combat—not since those halcyon days of yore when the original X-Men, still a tad green and inexperienced, had often opposed Magneto’s newly-forged Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, including a young mutant sorceress named Wanda Maximoff, who had not yet found a more socially-acceptable and altruistic outlet for her eldritch abilities. Just like old times, alas, the Beast mused.
The Vision, his own powers disrupted by some singularly scarlet witchcraft, remained the nearest to Wanda, although Captain America, shield in hand, was reducing the distance between himself and the enslaved enchantress. The synthezoid, looking as though his positronic synapses had been slightly scrambled along with his powers, was caught offguard by another blow to the head delivered by his former spouse. The Beast expected his computerized confederate to recover quickly, but that hope was unequivocally dashed when a crimson ray streaked across his view to drop the stricken Vision like a bolt from the blue.
Cyke? The Beast was baffled fleetingly, bu
t his understandable confusion evaporated as his deductive faculties quickly reconstructed what must have transpired. Risking a glance behind him, he saw that, verily, Rogue had indeed taken custody of Cyclops’s estimable optic beams. Sans visor, to say nothing of free will, their rambunctious Southern belle showed no compunction against turning those beams upon those who strove to emancipate her from physical and mental incarceration. “Cap, heads up!” he forewarned as the shanghaied eyebeams zeroed in on the star-spangled Avenger.
Rogue’s ocular attack, plus a hex bolt from the Scarlet Witch, struck Cap’s shield at the same moment. Crimson and scarlet energies merged, and the combined beam bounced off the shield, ricocheting straight at the Beast, who somersaulted out of the way with only a heartbeat to spare. The beam struck an oxygen tank instead, denting it on one side. “Lordy, lordy!” the Beast exclaimed, “that was a closer shave than my naturally hirsute hide has seen in years!”
The Beast’s escape still left Captain America under fire by both possessed super heroines. His impervious shield expertly warded off beams and bolts long enough for Iron Man to intercede on his behalf. The Golden Avenger parried Rogue’s purloined eyebeams with his own repulsor rays, deflecting the beams away from Captain America and the Beast. Rogue turned her destructive gaze on Iron Man, but the refractive coating of his armor shielded him from the worst of its effect. “Seems to me, I remember you punching me through a jailhouse wall a few years back,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to return the favor. For your own good, of course.”
Swooping in under Rogue’s unregulated fusillade of eyebeams, he socked her in the jaw with his state-of-the-art iron knuckles. The transistorized power of his punch sent Rogue zooming backwards over the heads of all concerned, with Iron Man flying in hot pursuit. Go get her! the Beast cheered him on as they rocketed out of sight.
With Rogue otherwise occupied, that left the Scarlet Witch on her own against the Beast, Captain America, and Storm. Forced to go on the defensive, Wanda swept her arm in a circle, forming a shimmering scarlet sphere all around her, thereby creating, as the Beast grasped at once, a buffer zone in which the odds were very literally on her side. Double, double toil and trouble, he thought, it’s going to be hard to get past that bubble!
