X-Men and the Avengers: Lost and Found

by Greg Cox

  Instantly abandoning any semblance of journalistic dignity, Barron darted madly away from the prow, colliding with Muck in his frenzied stampede to safety. They tottered upon the deck, grabbing onto each for balance while the expensive camera crashed upon the wet steel flooring, accompanied by the ominous sound of something crucial breaking inside the apparatus.

  A moment later, the ultra-dense form of the Vision smashed through the deck, leaving a gaping hole in the prow. He tore through the bottom of the hull as well, as evidenced by the huge gush of water that came spewing up from below deck. The river poured through the Visionsized rupture, swamping the deck, which tilted beneath Barron’s feet as the Maid of the Mist rapidly reenacted the last moments of the Titanic.

  “Abandon ship!” the captain cried, giving Barron a murderous stare before leaping from the forecastle to the relative safety of the river. Muck merely shrugged once more,' too much in a hurry to even say ‘ ‘I told you so” as he climbed over the rail, dutifully reclaiming the dropped camera before he splashed into the water, leaving the distraught anchor man alone aboard the sinking tour ship.

  Afraid that it would make him look fat, Barron had declined to wear a life jacket under his plastic wrap. Now he groped desperately for a donut-shaped life preserver, his dreams of network glory supplanted by eyewitness imaginings of drowning beneath the waves.

  So help me, he thought, scrambling off the stem just before it slid beneath surface of the river, the freezing water swallowing him up to his head and shoulders, I knew I should’ve taken that sportscaster job in Poughkeepsie. . . .

  “Good Lord,” Iron Man exclaimed, shocked at what he beheld through the rectangular eyeslits in his faceplate. The Hulk had ripped the Vision’s arm off! Or ripped the Vision off his arm, which amounted to the same thing.

  Iron Man watched in horror as first the severed mechanical arm, then the rest of the heroic synthezoid, went plummeting over the Falls without so much as a barrel to protect him. Thank goodness, he thought, that the Vision wasn’t remotely human; there was always a chance that he could be salvaged and repaired, unlike a flesh-and-blood human being suffering the same fate. I’ve helped rebuild the Vision before, he remembered. I can do it again.

  But first he had to stop the Hulk from hurting anyone else. Already the Hulk’s titanic temper tantrum had yielded collateral damage in the form of what looked like a small tour boat, now foundering below the Falls.

  “That does it,” he decided, diving to the rescue, his arms rigidly held out above his head to maximize his aerodynamic potential. “No more Mr. Nice Guy.” As far as he was concerned, the Hulk had used up whatever sympathy or special consideration he might be entitled to from his days as an Avenger; that karmic investment had been spent. The mutated missing link was a menace, pure and simple, and Iron Man wasn’t afraid to take him on.

  To his relief, the torpedoed ship had apparently carried only three passengers, all of whom were now floating down the river toward the Whirlpool waiting beyond the Rainbow Bridge. Wondering briefly who in their right minds would pilot a boat toward the Hulk, he plucked all three survivors from the current, grabbing a soggy refugee by the collar with each hand while lifting the third victim, who held onto a circular life preserver for dear life, by means of a tractor beam issuing from the projection unit in his chest. The glowing purple ray held the pale, dripping castaway suspended in the air while Iron Man flew toward the nearest shore. Was that make-up, the Avenger

  wondered, running down the unlucky man’s face?

  It took Iron Man only minutes to deposit his three hitchhikers safely on the Canadian shore, where cooperative soldiers quickly took custody of them. Iron Man’s boots barely touched the ground before, his mission of mercy completed, he doubled back into the sky above the Hulk. Going into a power dive, he jetted toward the Falls headfirst, the palms of his gauntlets held out in front of him. Display panels before his eyes charted his acceleration and energy output, the latter spiking dramatically as he unleashed his repulsors from both metal gloves.

  “Okay, Hulk,” he murmured to himself. Laser targeting systems drew a bead on his gargantuan target. “Here’s what you get for mutilating an Avenger, even an artificial one.”

  Orange beams of force struck the Hulk head-on, staggering him. Iron Man upped the intensity, diverting power from secondary systems into the neutron projectors in his gauntlets, each one costing close to two million dollars.

  “Let’s see how you like a trip over the Falls, sans barrel,” he said, wishing now that he had joined the fight against the Hulk immediately, rather than conducting an aerial reconnaissance first. If he had gone on the offensive earlier, maybe the Vision would still be intact. But how could he have known at once who required the most immediate assistance, Cap, the Vision, or even the Beast? He had also wanted to scan the vicinity for the rest of the X-Men, particularly Banshee, Iceman, and the other mutants known to have invaded the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Even now, he kept expecting more of Xavier’s renegades to appear on the scene. If Wolverine shows up, a major brawl is almost guaranteed.

  More provoked than punished by Iron Man’s repulsors, the implacable Hulk struck back, leaping at the golden Avenger as if fired by a cannon, his open hands reaching out for his foe. But Iron Man’s forward proximity sensors detected the oncoming threat even before it registered on Tony Stark’s human brain, and the computerized armor automatically took evasive action. Retro rockets surged in his starboard boot, causing him to execute a sharp left turn at the last minute. Prodigious as the Hulk’s leaping abilities were, he could not change course in midair, so the enraged brute zoomed past Iron Man, missing his intended target by several feet.

  That was a close one, Iron Man thought. If he had been only a few seconds slower, the Hulk would have grabbed him for sure. Have to keep out of his hands or I’ll end up like the Vision. The latest generation of his armor was pretty dam indestructible, but he knew better than to underestimate the Hulk’s phenomenal strength. After all, not even the mighty Thor had ever managed to surpass the Hulk where raw physical power was concerned—and Thor was a bona fide god! Iron Man’s armored exoskeleton amplified his strength a hundredfold, but that wasn’t enough to put him in the same class as the Hulk, so the Avenger intended to take full advantage of his aerial abilities and long-distance weaponry in this particular contest of arms. Against the Hulk, I’ll take every edge I can get.

  Howling in frustration, the thwarted Hulk landed right back where he’d started, at the very crest of the Canadian Falls. His face contorted with savage fury, he glared at Iron Man with crazed green eyes; even though he knew better, Iron Man found it hard to accept that a brilliant physicist was locked away somewhere inside the bestial creature he saw below him. The Hulk looked more like a sub-human evolutionary throwback than a mutated scientific genius.

  Iron Man decided to keep the Hulk off-balance by varying his attack. Giving his gauntlets a chance to cool off, he activated the vari-beam projector at the center of his chestplate. Incandescent blue pulse bolts fired at the Hulk, gaining in power as they accelerated through the open space between Iron Man and his foe. One after another, the plasma bolts hit the Hulk, releasing all their accumulated energy on impact with his head and shoulders. Bright cerulean flashes briefly obscured the Hulk’s face, only to fade within heartbeats, leaving the man-monster looking even more frenzied than before. Bristling green eyebrows, seared away by the hot plasma, grew back instantly while the Hulk rubbed watery eyes with his huge fists. The bolts had hurt him, obviously, but had not succeeded in budging him an inch closer to the steep, watery drop-off behind him.

  “Good God,” Iron Man whispered within his helmet, impressed despite too many past encounters with the Hulk. “What’s it going to take to faze him? A couple of low-grade nukes?”

  The pulse bolts were too energy-expensive to employ for a prolonged period of time, so he switched back to his repulsors, swooping in closer to the Hulk in hopes of increasing their impact. He wasn’t thri
lled about getting any nearer to the Hulk’s destructive wrath, but it was a calculated risk; hopefully, his superior maneuverability would still keep him out of range of those piledriver fists.

  “This would be a lot easier if you’d just change back to Banner,” Iron Man muttered with more than a trace of irritation in his voice. Repulsor rays battered futilely against the Hulk’s impervious hide.

  Right now, Tony Stark wished Bruce had never passed high school physics, let alone heard of gamma rays.

  The flattened forest swam before Storm’s eyes. The pounding of explosives, coupled with the continual tumult of the nearby Falls, matched the throbbing in her head. Blood trickled from numerous small cuts and scratches on her head, arms and legs, stinging every inch of exposed skin.

  What is happening? she wondered, teetering upon rubbery legs as she tried to orient herself. Who is firing upon us, and why? The last thing she remembered was summoning a fog to hide the Hulk from his tormentors. That’s right, she recalled, the painful memory gradually resurfacing through the haze within her mind. The Hulk... he hurt my fog, hurt me. . . .

  “Ororo,” a plaintive voice cried out weakly. Struggling to clear her head, she glanced around her and was distressed to see the Beast, laying on his back beneath an overturned tree trunk several yards away. His eyelids flickered as if he was barely conscious. “I fear I am in unqualified need of a certain degree of succor,” he confessed during a momentary lull in the thundering report of the guns, “as well as extrication from my present circumstances.” His inimitable vocabulary deteriorated as his alertness ebbed. “Help me, Ororo. Help....”

  “I am coming, my friend,” she called out to him. Her own pains temporarily forgotten, she rushed to his aid, dropping down on her knees beside him. Scattered leaves and broken branches littered the ground. The matted twigs and pine needles stung the scrapes on her knees as she promptly took stock of the Beast’s predicament. Bright Lady, she prayed, let his injuries be minor.

  The fundamentals of first aid came back to her quickly, so she hesitated to move him too quickly. Climbing over the heavy log that weighed upon the Beast, she prodded the calloused soles of his hairy feet with a gentle finger.

  “Can you feel this?” she asked, having to repeat her query twice before the dazed Beast responded with a nod. The Goddess be praised, she thought in relief, but carefully checked each limb before returning to the other side of the log and cradling the Beast’s shaggy head in her lap. His bristling blue hair scratched against her already abraded legs, but she made no complaint, instead laying a hand against his neck to check his pulse, which proved to be reassuringly steady. Although she held no medical degree, it seemed likely that Henry McCoy had merely been trapped and knocked unconscious by the falling maple. Grateful, she suspected that he would soon recover, although she might need Cyclops’s assistance to free their comrade from the sturdy wooden encumbrance that pinned him to the forest floor.

  “Hold on, my friend,” she counseled the Beast, raising her head to search for their absent teammate.

  A gush of icy water struck her in the face, soaking her to the skin and chilling her to the bone. Her snowy tresses hung limply over her shoulders as she sputtered and coughed, clearing her lungs of the liquid she had inadvertently inhaled. Water streamed down her body, pooling around her legs.

  “Who dares?” she demanded indignantly; shock, fatigue, and lack of sleep doing nothing to improve her temper. She looked up, surprised to see a gleaming metal figure cruising through the sky above her.

  A Sentinel? she thought at first, blinking against the glare of the sunlight reflected off his shining armor before recognizing the robotic figure as Iron Man. The Avenger here? she wondered. Is he responsible for this affront?

  The deluge had turned the forest floor to mud. Twigs, leaves, and needles floated atop filmy puddles all around Storm. Lying in the ooze beneath her, the Beast coughed up a mouthful of cold water. His furry pelt was drenched, making him look thoroughly miserable if slightly more alert. The smell of wet fur filled the air.

  Nothing like a bucket of water in the face to restore one’s clarity, she reflected ruefully. He mumbled what Storm assumed was an amusing witticism, even if she could not hear it over the renewed fury of the guns. Removing her headdress, she used the stiff crown to cushion the Beast’s head, and lift it above the mire, before she rose to survey her surroundings.

  Iron Man was not alone, she observed. Many yards away, at the very tip of the island. Captain America faced off opposite Cyclops, the two men circling each other warily. Iron Man dived toward the Hulk, who had apparently been driven out into the seething torrent of the river by his antagonists. Storm looked about for the other Avengers, perhaps the Scarlet Witch or Thor, but saw only the costumed crusaders she had already spotted: Iron Man and Captain America.

  It matters not, Ororo decided, ready to defend her allies against any number of new assailants. She knew not why the pair of Avengers had laid siege to the embattled Hulk, and to the X-Men as well, but she determined that they would not strike another blow without suffering the consequences. Rogue, she recalled, had begun her short-lived career as an Evil Mutant by striking out at Captain America, Iron Man, and the other Avengers, permanently crippling Ms. Marvel. Could it be that Rogue’s disappearance, and the Avengers’ unexpected arrival here, were all part of some long-delayed act of retaliation? Stranger things had happened in this uncertain life they led. In any event, she had no intention of remaining soggily upon the sidelines, not while the elements remained hers to command. It is just as well, she mused, that the Thunder God has not accompanied his allies. No Asgardian deity shall dispute my dominion over the skies.

  “Be well, my friend,” she whispered to the Beast. She shook her flowing white mane, throwing off a spray of tiny droplets. Mud caked her long legs from the knees down, but she paid it no heed, throwing out her arms to capture a sudden breeze beneath her wings. Her ascendant will, and eternal empathy with the elements, fed the breeze, lending it strength. “I will return shortly.”

  Disregarding the throbbing of her head, Storm rose upon the wind to a vertiginous height above the Horseshoe Falls. There she saw Iron Man blasting the Hulk with his celebrated repulsor rays, apparently intent on pushing the persecuted brute over the crest of the Falls. Unnatural orange beams, unlike anything in nature, emanated from the Avenger’s metal gauntlets.

  Sentinels wield weapons such as those, Storm thought, finding the armored warrior’s resemblance to those hated mechanical storm troopers quite unsettling. But the heavens harbor weapons of their own, purer and cleaner than those spawned by science.

  She summoned her own power to her, the idea occurring to her that this coming battle might well be what the Fates had intended all along. Perhaps only by defending the Hulk against a common foe could they persuade the surly and suspicious monster that their interests were his own.

  Genuine thunder, like the crashing of gigantic atmospheric cymbals, joined the pandemonium of noises clanging discordantly about and above Niagara. All of Storm’s frustration and discomfort, which had been building ever since her “demise” in the Danger Room, merged with the tempest building around her, flowing out from her fingertips in the form of a crackling lightning bolt that lit up the sky between her and Iron Man. Raw electrical fire converged on the metallic Avenger as if he were a living lightning rod.

  “Leave the Hulk alone!” she commanded Iron Man from on high. “Pit your vaunted technology against the untamed power of Nature herself!”

  No sooner had Iron Man’s repulsors started pushing once more against the Hulk’s immovable bulk, the accelerated neutrons colliding with the densely-packed atoms making up the Hulk’s lime-green epidermis, when the Avenger was struck from behind by a powerful electrical charge strong enough to overload the EMF force-field that was his armor’s first line of defense. Tony felt the shock all the way through multiple layers of tessellated metal tiles.

  “What the devil was that?” he exclaimed
as soon as the muscles in his face stopped twitching. Emergency displays reported that his armor had been subjected to over 350 gigawatts of electrical force. Since when did the Hulk fight back with energy powers?

  Breaking off his assault on the Hulk, he performed a flawless barrel roll that left him facing upward at the sky. Sunlight in his eyes kept him from seeing anything at first, until his polarized lenses kicked in, and he spied Storm aloft above him, angry thunderclouds roiling behind her outstretched arms. The whole sky turned overcast quickly, nearly turning day to night as the sun disappeared behind gray and tempestuous clouds. Thunder rolled across the heavens. Violent winds whipped the clouds into a threatening display of nimbostratus fury.

  Guess there’s no doubt now whose side the X-Men are on, he thought resentfully.

  The cloud cover above the female X-Man grew darker and more turbulent with each passing moment. The polarized lenses lightened automatically in response to the changing light. Sensors in his armor reported an unnaturally rapid increase in the barometric pressure and humidity. Storm’s doing, no doubt; Iron Man wondered if the mounting intensity of the atmospheric disturbances were any measure of the woman’s mood.

  If so, he decided, I’m in serious trouble.

  A gale force wind blew him farther away from his green-skinned quarry, out over the American Falls on the other side of the island.

  Talk about getting the brush-off, Iron Man thought wryly, using his boot jets to halt his involuntary retreat. Gouts of orange flame spewed from the soles of his boots as he fought back against the zealous zephyr, slowing advancing into the wind toward its imperious mistress “Sorry, Miss,” he informed her, even though the deafening clamor made any real attempt at verbal communication a lost cause, “but you can’t blow Avengers away like old leaves.”

  A lifelong ladies’ man, Tony could not help noticing the female X-Man’s exotic allure. The combination of stark white hair, dark skin, and captivating blue eyes produced a singular beauty that Iron Man didn’t need any high-tech sensors to appreciate. It seemed a shame to lash out at such a strikingly attractive woman, but years of contention against the likes of Madame Masque and the Viper had seriously eroded whatever chauvinism and/or chivalry might once have restrained him.