X-Men and the Avengers: Lost and Found

by Greg Cox

  “I mean, that’s not me!” O’Donnell amended, pointing accusingly at his doppleganger, who smiled weakly behind his false features.

  Uh-oh, the Beast thought, uncharacteristically speechless.

  Heads turned across the lobby as a roomful of New York cops took in the unexpected sight of twin O’Donnells. The chummy policeman with whom the Beast had been conversing for the last several minutes looked the most flabbergasted of all. His confused gaze swung back and forth between the two identical officers. He rubbed his eyes in amazement, but the paradox remained.

  “Hey!” Forrester yelled. “What’s going on?”

  What was the real O’Donnell doing back here? The Beast was nearly as startled as the befuddled onlookers. He’d felt positive that O’Donnell had left for the night.

  Probably forgot his cough drops, the Beast theorized. How annoyingly ironic.

  Realizing that he had been scammed, Forrester lunged at the Beast, but his ordinary human reflexes could not match the X-Man’s astounding agility.

  “Nice talking to you,” the Beast said cheerily, taking the stairs six steps at a time while simultaneously kicking out with his feet to slam a fire door shut in Forrester’s face. He hopped up the steps with the utmost alacrity, realizing he had only moments before the entire precinct house would be in an uproar. Spotting a fire alarm mechanism at the top of the stairs, he briefly considered triggering the alarm to provide a much-needed diversion, but, upon rapid deliberation, decided that was simply too antisocial a ploy; what if there was an authentic four-alarm blaze going on elsewhere in the city? He’d never forgive himself if lives were lost due to a false alarm.

  “Gangway! Coming through!” the Beast hollered as he careened down a corridor on the second floor, hastily scanning the labels on each door he passed. Plainclothes detectives emerged from doorways in a hurry, only to dive out of the way as the Beast bounced through the halls like an out-of-control rubber ball. One staunch officer, made of sturdier stuff than his fellows, attempted to block the disguised X-Man’s path, planting himself squarely in the center of the hall, beefy arms crossed atop his chest. Without even slowing down, the Beast launched himself from the floor and somersaulted over the detective’s head, landing on both feet at least a yard further down the hall.

  “Alley oop!” he exclaimed.

  Sorely tempted to abort his increasingly disordered and quixotic mission, the Beast nevertheless continued to peruse the label on each door that came within view. If he abandoned his quest now, he knew full well, he might also sacrifice the X-Men’s only lead, however slender, toward discovering Rogue’s whereabouts. He could not in good conscience allow another X-Man to suffer captivity for one instant longer than necessary, not while it remained within his power to do anything about it.

  Fear not, fair damsel, he vowed extravagantly. Help is on the way!

  Footsteps and angry voices pursued him. Doors slammed open in his wake and more officers joined the pursuit.

  ‘ ‘Thy chase had a beast in view, ” he thought, quoting John Dryden, circa 1700 A.D. He was on the verge of giving up when he spotted the stenciled lettering on a glass-and-metal door at the far end of the corridor: property room.

  “Eureka!” he exclaimed, grabbing onto the doorknob and throwing it open.

  A uniformed officer, seated behind a cheap and chipped wooden desk, blinked in surprise, caught offguard by the Beast’s enthusiastic entrance. “O’Donnell?”

  Thank you, trusty image inducer, the Beast thought, grateful for the cop’s convenient case of mistaken identity.

  Before the officer could even begin to reach for his gun, the Beast seized him by the shoulders, pulled him across the desktop, sending notepads and documents flying while the startled cop yelped loudly, and threw the officer out into the hall. Then he slammed the door shut, cartwheeled over the desktop, shoved the entire piece of furniture up against the closed portal, and turned it on one side, effectively barricading the entrance.

  That should buy me a second or two.

  Despite his acrobatic exertions, the mutant hero wasn’t even breathing hard; compared to the Danger Room, this was a leisurely stroll in the park. He quickly inspected the property room, seeing that the bulk of the physical evidence collected by the precinct’s officers was locked away behind a sturdy metal cage that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Peering through the steel bars, which were painted industrial black, he spied a stack of innocuous-seeming cotton tee-shirts resting on a shelf on the right side of the cage. Trying the door, he discovered that an old-fashioned combination lock protected the enclosure from intruders—in theory, at least.

  Beyond the relocated desk, the door to the property

  room rattled in its frame. Determined fists pounded against the blockade as heated voices shouted through the doorway, among them the angry tones of both Forrester and the officer the Beast had just evicted from his post. “O’Donnell—or whoever you are—open this door right now! You’re not going anywhere!”

  We ’11 cross that bridge when we come to it, the Beast thought, contemplating the cage. First, he needed to get at those shirts. Since there was clearly no time to attempt any elegant safecracking (which was more Storm’s specialty, in any event), he was forced to resort to cruder methods to gain access to the cage’s interior. Bracing his oversized feet against the floor, he took hold of the cage door with both hands and strained the ape-like muscles beneath his furry pelt (and holographic disguise).

  While his brute physical strength wasn’t nearly in the same class as, say, Colossus or Rogue, it was nothing to sneeze at, either; the Beast figured he could easily arm-wrestle Spider-Man to a draw, which should be more than enough to overcome whatever elementary metal alloy the cage was comprised of. Fortunately, the N.Y.P.D.’s budget probably didn’t allow for adamantium furnishings.

  The steel bars shrieked in protest as the Beast tugged on them with all his might, baring his jagged canines as he gritted his teeth. The door came free with a wrenching noise and the broken padlock crashed to the floor. Hurrying into the cage, the Beast went straight for the tee-shirts the cops must have confiscated at the scene of Rogue’s apparent abduction. On closer inspection, he saw that the top shirt bore an ugly anti-mutant slogan, and that the entire stack had been stuffed into a clear plastic bag to preserve and protect the integrity of the evidence.

  Excellent, he thought. Let’s hear it for professionalism in criminal investigations.

  Judging from the crashing sounds behind him, however, now was no time to conduct his own examination of the suspect shirts. That would have to wait for a more leisurely and private an occasion. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw several arms and hands pushing past the barricaded doorway, trying to get a grip on the overturned desk. The grasping arms were uncomfortably reminiscent of a George Romero zombie flick.

  Time to go, the Beast concluded.

  Stuffing the entire sack into the deep pocket of his trenchcoat, he glanced about for a plausible means of egress, his gaze quickly landing upon the surprising sight of an antique, standard-issue, U.S. Army bazooka, with accompanying ammunition. I don’t even want to think what criminal or street gang they took that particular piece of hardware off of. His heart swiftly went out to Spidey, Daredevil, and the city’s other urban defenders, not to mention the embattled N.Y.P.D. Since when did everyday miscreants come complete with heavy artillery?

  Still, perhaps society’s loss was his present salvation. Falling back on a bygone crash course in military ordinance conducted by none other than Captain America himself, the Beast loaded the bazooka as expeditiously as possible, then took aim at the ceiling directly overhead. A resounding explosion followed, blowing a sizable hole in the roof of the police station and raining bit-sized chunks of plaster and concrete onto the Beast’s bushy head.

  “Oh, dear,-’ he murmured, wincing at the damage he had just inflicted on the building. “I’ll have to persuade Warren to make a generous donation to the police department on m
y behalf.” His billionaire chum could easily afford a whole new station house if necessary, let alone the cost of repairing a hole in the ceiling.

  His conscience thus assuaged, the Beast returned the contraband weapon back to where it belonged, then crouched down beneath the newly-created gap, tensing the powerful muscles in his lower limbs. He sprang through the ceiling onto the roof—where he found what looked like an entire squadron of police officers waiting for him.

  Well, this is certainly an unexpected and unwelcome development, he thought. I guess I wasn’t the only one who realized the only way out was up.

  ‘‘All right, stay where you are!” a police woman ordered, taking a bead on him with her handgun. Several other officers followed her lead, the real Officer O’Donnell among them. He glowered at the camouflaged Beast with justifiable outrage in his eyes. “Freeze!”

  “I think you have me confused with my friend and associate, the illustrious Iceman,” the Beast declared. Seeing no further point in his appropriation of O’Donnell’s identity and appearance, and hoping for some slight psychological advantage, he flicked off the image inducer in his pocket, appearing before the dumbfounded law enforcement personnel in all his shaggy, simian glory. “Behold, the bouncing, yet benevolent Beast, at your service.”

  As hoped, his abrupt transformation provoked gasps and puzzled expressions. A few of the officers, including O’Donnell, stepped backward involuntarily, the muzzles of their firearms dipping toward the roof beneath their feet.

  “I don’t get it,” the Beast heard O’Donnell mutter. “I thought he was one of the good guys....”

  And indeed I am, he thought, although this hardly seemed the most prudent moment to explicate the matter, given that he had just been caught red-handed, as it were. Or blue-handed, to be more precise.

  Taking advantage of his would-be detainers’ momentary discomfiture, the Beast propelled himself across the open roof, his fists wrapping around the flagpole he had noticed earlier. Legs flying out parallel to the ceiling, he swung around and around the pole, his great feet knocking the guns from the hands of the nearest detectives and uniformed officers. He orbited the pole one more time, building up momentum, then let go, sending his furry form hurtling over the heads of the assembled cops and onto the eastern wall of the five-story brownstone bordering the police station. His nimble fingers and toes found purchase in the brownstone’s red-brick exterior, and he swiftly began to scale the side of the building.

  “Up, up, and away!” he chortled, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the police stranded on the rooftop below.

  But, although taken aback by the fuzzy fugitive’s spectacular gymnastics, New York’s Finest quickly took action.

  “Stop, or we’ll shoot!” a voice (O’Donnell’s?) commanded, followed by a warning shot that sent chips of stone flying off the brick facade only inches from the Beast’s skull. Laser sights surrounded him with dimesized disks of blood-red light. The smell of gunpowder reached his sensitive nostrils.

  Egads! the Beast thought, gulping loudly as a second warning shot peppered him with bits of stone and mortar. I wonder if it’s too late to rejoin the Avengers?

  Suddenly, from out of a clear moonlit sky, a roll of thunder shook the night, drowning out the echoes of the gunshots. A jagged bolt of lightning struck the punctured roof of the precinct house, scattering the throng of armed police officers threatening the Beast and leaving a charred-black scorch mark upon the cement rooftop. A rolling, pea soup fog swept over the scene, instantly reducing visibility to near zero. Immersed in the thick, gray mist, the Beast couldn’t see a thing, but he heard a familiar dulcet voice calling out to him with an exotic West African accent.

  “Are you ready to leave this place, my friend?” Storm asked from somewhere overhead.

  “Ready and willing,” he confirmed, feeling the comforting weight of the purloined evidence in his pocket. Despite a few unanticipated complications, he had gotten what he had come for. “Thanks for the airborne assist.”

  “Your exit could hardly have been more conspicuous,” Ororo chided him. Her strong hands grabbed his wrists. With no fear of falling, trusting completely in his fellow X-Man, the Beast released his hold on the brick wall and let Storm, assisted by a powerful gust of wind, carry him aloft.

  It never hurts to have a mutant weather witch on your side, he reflected. His bare feet dangled in the air, high above the rooftop below. Lost in the fog, which shortly dispersed, the 6th Precinct receded beneath him, along with several understandably thunderstruck guardians of law and order.

  Somehow, the Beast thought, I don’t expect I’m getting invited to the Policeman’s Ball this year.. ..

  Later, in the luxurious back seat of Charles Xavier’s customized Rolls Royce, the Beast shared the fruits of his arduous adventure with his teammates. Storm sat beside him, looking refreshed by her recent flight, while Cyclops manned the wheel, driving the limousine north and out of the city, back toward the Institute. Discarded after the Beast removed his plunder from its pockets, the wadded-up trenchcoat rested on the empty passenger seat next to Cyclops, even though the air-conditioned interior of the Rolls was significantly cooler than the night outside.

  GOD MADE MAN IN HIS IMAGE, THE DEVIL MADE MUTANTS declared the uppermost of the stolen tee-shirts. The Beast could not help scowling at the inflammatory slogan as he removed the shirt from its plastic sheath and unfolded it on the seat between Storm and himself. The tips of his fangs protruded from beneath his lower lip. It was clear from Ororo’s disapproving expression that she was also disturbed by the garment’s hate-filled message.

  “No matter how many times I encounter such unreasoning hostility,” she commented, “it never fails to surprise and sadden me. You would think that such vile sentiments could not endure so long in defiance of all sense and decency.”

  “To quote the late, great Johann von Schiller, ‘against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.’ ” The Beast sympathized with Storm’s disillusionment. Sometimes it seemed like certain regrettable tendencies were never going to change. “I fear the same may be said of prejudice and fear.”

  In any event, he reminded himself, there was little that could be done tonight concerning the thorny and dismayingly intractable problem of human/mutant relations. The most they could hope for was some clue to point the way to wherever Rogue now resided, almost certainly against her will. He declined to even consider the other, unspoken possibility: that Cerebro could not find their absent friend because she was no longer alive.

  I won’t believe that until I see a body, and maybe not even then. If there was one thing the Beast knew, amidst all his vast erudition, it was that X-Men were harder to kill than cockroaches.

  He scanned the shirt with a handheld sensor based on advanced Shi’ar designs. The device, which he had taken care to bring along from the mansion, was several hundred times more sensitive than any equivalent Terran technology, and almost certainly many orders of magnitude more acute than any apparatus available to the N.Y.P.D. If there was anything unusual to be found, the sensor would surely alert them to its presence.

  Granted, these garments were merely those left behind at the devastated fair booth, not the ones that Rogue carried away with her in her short-lived flight toward freedom. Still, these shirts presumably came from the same batch that had yielded Rogue’s textile tormentors. The Beast resolved to stay wary, lest the pilfered tee-shirts suddenly turn on the limousine’s passengers, but so far the cheap cotton apparel had displayed no evidence of vitality whatsoever.

  Thank Providence for small favors, he thought. After successfully evading the eager clutches of the police, he had no desire to tangle with a bevy of belligerent attire.

  Scanning for everything from mystical energy to signs of life, he carefully inspected the read-outs on the illuminated display panel. I am going to feel extremely foolish, he reflected, if my in-depth investigation reveals nothing more ominous than a made in KOREA label.
<
br />   Imagine stealing the shirts from the police for no reason at all!

  But that proved not to be the case.

  “Well, I’ll be a primate’s progenitor,” he declared, staring at the results of the scan with keen scientific curiosity. His blue eyes flared with intellectual excitement. “In more ways than one.”

  “What is it?” Cyclops asked from the driver’s seat. Eagerness and anxiety warred within his voice. “Did you find something?” Ororo listened expectantly as well.

  “Indeed I have,” the Beast announced, switching off the scanner and placing it gently upon the garments in question. “According to our equipment, all of these undeniably insulting items of clothing have been recently exposed to gamma radiation. Not exactly a standard feature of ordinary sweatshop output, I’m certain.”

  “Gamma radiation?” Cyclops repeated in surprise, although the Beast was pleased to see that their erstwhile leader kept his super-energized eyes on the road.

  “With a capital G,” he confirmed. “There’s no mistaking these readings.” He wondered if and when the police would have ever detected the contamination. I didn’t see any Geiger counters around the precinct house.

  “Well done, my friend,” Storm said warmly. She eyed the pilfered garments with a new wariness. “But I don’t understand. How can radiation bring mere clothing to life?”

  “You’ve got me there,” he admitted, considering the problem from every angle. Outside the tinted windows, the lights of the city gave way to a tree-lined highway as the car carried them toward their home in Salem Center. The Beast scratched his hairy chin. Gamma radiation . ..

  The X-Men were often called the “Children of the Atom,” based on a trendy theory relating the rapid increase in human mutations to the spread of nuclear power. There was some truth to this theory, the Beast conceded; indeed, his own parents had been employed in the fledgling atomic industry, which probably contributed to his exceptional characteristics. Subsequent work, conducted by such respected authorities as Charles Xavier and Dr. Moira MacTaggert, had also explored the potential impact of various forms of radiation on human DNA, especially during conception and fetal development. As a scientist as well as a super hero, Henry McCoy had reviewed all the pertinent literature on the subject and even written a few incisive monographs himself, probing the causes and possibilities of human mutation. Consequently, the Beast felt he knew quite a lot about the intertwined mysteries of radiation and mutation.