Legends

by Unknown Author

  The containment suit was working. A few days ago, the force of the blow would have automatically created a dupe.

  The stranger swore, and drew back his fist to aim another punch. This time, though, Jamie was prepared. The thug’s fist landed on his jaw, but Jamie was unhurt. He had absorbed its kinetic energy. Absorbed it—and used it.

  Another Jamie appeared beside him.

  “You were right, Baz,” cried one of his attacker’s three friends. “He’s a mutie—a dirty, freaking mutant!”

  “Get him!” '

  Suddenly, all four of the youths were running at Jamie. For an instant, he panicked, remembering the four who had fought him in New York. But, this time, he was faced with only brawn and bravado—and he had control now.

  As each punch and kick landed, Jamie stole its energy and used it to duplicate himself. The fight was furious but brief. Within seconds, the thugs were outnumbered two to one, and their expressions changed from anger to confusion to outright fear. One by one, they withdrew, nursing bloodied noses and cut lips. But, if Jamie thought that was the end of the matter, he was wrong.

  “Help,” yelled Baz, “somebody help, this psycho’s laying into us!”

  “He’s a mutant! Look—look what he can do!”

  “Somebody call the Avengers!”

  A crowd had begun to gather, although no one had the courage to draw too close to Jamie and his dupes. Jamie recoiled at the terror and loathing in their expressions. “No, please, they attacked me. I was just. . .” His voice trailed off as he saw that it was having no effect. The minds of the onlookers had been made up.

  A short, heavyset, middle-aged man stepped forward. “Come on, let’s take ’em! Doesn’t matter how many people he can turn into— there’s enough of us!”

  And, for a moment, it looked as if mob mentality might rule.

  Then somebody cried out, “More of them!” and there was an explosion in the street.

  The crowd was scattered by a burst of white energy. A female voice ordered, “Back, everybody back!” And two costumed figures—a man and a woman—raced into view.

  Super heroes. Jamie felt cold. This was going to be like New York, all over again.

  Then he saw himself—or rather, the dupe who had stayed behind with Alex and Loma—straggling behind the newcomers, and he looked again. He saw that the woman had green hair, and he recognized Loma’s face behind a mask that concealed only part of it. So, the black-clad man with white circles on his chest had to be Alex.

  ‘ You were right, Havok,” said Loma. “Jamie is at the center of all this.”

  “What possessed you to use your powers here?” Alex berated him.

  Jamie didn’t know what to say. What was wrong with using his special ability anyway?

  “Never mind that now,” said Lorna. “Jamie, absorb your duplicates. We’ve got to get out of here, before things turn even nastier.”

  A collective gasp rose from the onlookers, as Jamie’s dupes laid their hands upon him and were reintegrated, as if they had never been.

  “Yeah, go on!” somebody shouted, as the trio fled the scene. “Get outta here, ya lousy, no-good mutie scum!”

  But nobody dared to follow them.

  One wall of the Danger Room exploded.

  A second earlier, Bobby and Warren had been exercising their powers against the room’s faceless drones. Now, they whirled to face an attack from three unexpected intruders. From the control booth, Jamie watched in horror.

  The foremost of the three was resplendent in a billowing red cape and a bucket helmet. “Ah, more of Xavier’s whelps, I see. You will fall before the power of Magneto, Unus and the Blob—the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!”

  “In a pig’s eye, mister!” retorted Bobby. He flexed his fingers and released a barrage of snow.

  Another red-clad figure intercepted it; the snow fell to the floor around him, without touching him. “Why don’t you try your tricks on me, Iceman?”

  “Hey, why not make me an offer I can refuse?”

  Magneto gestured, and the wreckage of a defeated drone levitated into the air. Warren twisted and turned as shards of metal darted toward him and attempted to encircle him, to bind him.

  “Nice try, Maggie—but I could dodge these things in my sleep!”

  “It doesn’t matter how ‘untouchable’ you are, Unus,” Bobby crowed, creating a dome of ice around his opponent. “I can still wrap you up nice and snug in an ice shell!”

  Warren swooped toward Magneto, plucked the villain’s helmet from his head and landed a solid blow to his jaw. “Infidel!” Magneto squawked. “You will pay for this affront!”

  Then Warren cried out, as the huge man who could only have been the Blob shot out a pudgy hand and seized his ankle. “Came too low, fly-boy!” The Blob tugged Warren out of the sky, and flipped him hard onto his back.

  Magneto was freed to concentrate on his other foe. As Bobby was floored by an invisible bolt of force, Jamie overcame his paralysis and ran. There were other people in the building—people with powers. They could help. On his own, he could do nothing. “Help,” he shouted, as he ran along the corridors of the mansion. “Help!”

  He had hoped to find peace here. But men in costumes had found him again. Was he never to be left alone?

  Then he heard somebody behind him, and a voice called his name. His heart leapt. Had the men in costumes come for him?

  He turned. To his relief, he saw only Warren and Bobby. They must have witnessed his abrupt departure, must have followed him.

  “Jamie,” Warren called again. “Wait! Where are you going? What’s wrong?”

  “Magneto,” he stammered breathlessly. “The Brotherhood ..

  “Take it easy, pal! They’re holograms, that’s all. They were part of Bobby’s program.”

  “Holograms?”

  “Like the TV,” added Bobby, “only three-dimensional.”

  “Didn’t Bobby explain?”

  “Hey, I didn’t know he’d freak out, did I?”

  “But—but why?” asked Jamie. “Why would you want to create those people?”

  Warren sighed. “Because it’s our job to fight them, Jamie,” he said gently. “That’s what we were training for.”

  “But they said they were—” Jamie straggled for the word— “mutants. Aren’t they like us?”

  Bobby turned to Warren with a wry grin. “Are you going to explain, or should I?”

  As Jamie approached Professor Xavier’s study, he heard voices within. He hesitated, feeling as if he was interrupting something. The bland stranger came to a halt beside him. He seemed much calmer than before, and happy to wait.

  Jamie crept a little closer to the half-open door, and listened.

  “I don’t understand why you felt you couldn’t trust us,” complained a familiar male voice.

  “It had nothing to do with trust, Scott,” insisted Xavier. “I didn’t feel it was the right time to put the X-Men back into the public eye.” “So, you sent us off on a wild-goose chase after Bobby, and called in the Defenders to deal with the Brotherhood instead?”

  “You could at least have told us your plans, Professor.” Jamie recognized Jean’s voice, calm and reasonable.

  “But then you might have insisted on facing the Brotherhood yourselves. I couldn’t take that risk.”

  “What risk?” said Scott. “I don’t understand why we’re still keeping a low profile anyway.”

  Xavier sighed. “We have discussed this before.”

  “But it hasn’t worked, Professor. Listen to the news. People fear and hate mutants as much as ever. We need to be out there, doing something about it, not hiding away.”

  Jamie was beginning to feel that he was intruding. He shouldn’t be here.

  He turned to the stranger—and gave an involuntary yell.

  The stranger’s appearance had changed. He seemed to have grown a little taller and more muscular. His body had taken on a green hue. He was wearing a pair of spectacles, like Scott’s
, only green instead of red.

  “Yes,” the stranger hissed, in a voice full of malice. “Yes, I remember now”

  Jamie shrank away from him in terror. He felt the door behind him and pushed back against it. He almost fell into Xavier’s office.

  The room’s occupants had already been alerted by his cry. As one,

  Scott and Jean pushed Jamie behind them, protectively, as they raced toward the hallway.

  They leapt for cover as a bolt of green power slammed into the floor between them.

  Jamie—the original Jamie—had turned off the television set.

  He stood at his window, looking out at the skeletal trees that swayed in a gentle breeze. Perhaps, he thought, he had made a mistake, sending his duplicates out into the world in his stead. He was bored, and impatient to assimilate what they had learned.

  He thought about leaving the room and exploring the mansion himself. But he was too afraid.

  Then Jamie was startled by a sudden, tremendous crash.

  For a second he sat paralyzed, cold sweat beading his forehead. The sound had come from downstairs.

  Part of him didn’t want to know what was happening. Another, larger part knew that his flimsy door would provide no protection against any serious threat.

  He ran from the room and toward the top of the staircase, his legs becoming heavier and less willing to move with each step.

  There was a green man in the hallway. He stood in the doorway of Professor Xavier’s study, glaring at somebody or something within. A second later, the man took a step back and turned, as Warren flew—literally—along the hall toward him.

  “Another with power?” said the green man. “Come—let me feast!”

  He lifted his green spectacles, and an energy beam erupted from his eyes. With astonishing agility, Warren twisted in mid-flight to avoid the attack. But the cramped confines of the hall gave him little room for maneuvering. He hit one wall and spun out of control.

  “Looks to me like somebody needs to cool off!”

  The voice was Bobby’s, although Jamie was astonished by the appearance of Xavier’s youngest student. All encased in ice, he achieved a terrific speed by surfing through the air on a self-created ice slide.

  Bobby gestured, and an avalanche of snow descended toward the green man. Too late—he had already flown out of its way.

  Yes, flown. For Jamie saw now that the green man had green wings, although he had not possessed them a second earlier. They seemed to have just sprouted from his back.

  “Bobby, keep away from him—he’ll copy your powers!”

  The warning came from Scott. He and Jean had appeared in the doorway to the study. Mirroring the green man’s earlier action, Scott lifted his glasses a fraction. His power beam was red, but no less destructive. But the green man shared Warren’s agility: the blast barely singed his feathers. The green man swung one arm, and Scott was hurled backwards as if struck. Jamie remembered how Jean had demonstrated her telekinesis at breakfast.

  “I remember everything,” the green man roared. “It was beings like you, super heroes, who melted me down. You thought me destroyed— but I cannot be destroyed! I was created to adapt.”

  Bobby had taken Scott’s advice and withdrawn, but too late. The green man demonstrated that he already had the youngster’s powers, by showering his enemies with frozen spikes. His left arm had taken on the appearance of green ice.

  Aloft again, Warren wove his way through the onslaught and landed a solid blow to the intruder’s chin. The green man fell to the ground, and, though the impact must have knocked the breath out of him, his angry words buzzed in Jamie’s head: You are nothing without the one called Mimic!

  “Of course,” gasped Jean. “Scott, this must be the Super-Adaptoid!” “Agreed,” rapped Scott, “and he has the Professor’s powers too. Hit him hard and fast, team—and remember, he’s not alive. He’s an android!”

  “Your puny efforts are as nothing,” the Super-Adaptoid scoffed. “I have defeated you before and I shall do so again. I shall take your powers from you, and then I shall turn them against the accursed Captain America and fulfill my programming.”

  Scott was the first to fall, as the Super-Adaptoid created a localized blizzard and buried him beneath a snowdrift. Warren and Bobby were next, as the android merely gestured and altered the flight path of the former so that he collided heavily with his friend. Jean concentrated and telekinetically lifted a pair of tables, which she hurled at her foe. For a second, it seemed she had the upper hand. But the Super-Adaptoid employed Scott’s optic blast in a wide-angled beam to destroy the makeshift missiles, before winging Jean with a more concentrated burst.

  Fortunately, reinforcements had arrived.

  “What’s going on?” cried Alex, appearing at the main entrance door. The question was a rhetorical one. An intruder was standing over the unconscious bodies of four of his friends. As it turned toward him, he extended both hands toward it. Crackling, white energy radiated from him in concentric circles. The energy shredded his shirt, and Jamie caught a glimpse of a black costume beneath. “Who are you?” Alex bellowed, as his energy struck its target with devastating force.

  The Super-Adaptoid was unmoved. Indeed, it threw back its head and laughed. “You ask who I am?” it boomed. “I am the first of a new generation. Once Captain America has fallen, then you will all become as I am. You will look to me as your leader.”

  Alex stood for a second, dumbfounded by the failure of his attack. Fortunately, Loma was behind him. “Look out, Alex!” she yelled, launching herself at her partner and knocking him out of the way as, with Jean’s powers, the Super-Adaptoid gathered up the pulverized remains of the tables and flung them at him.

  In the meantime, Scott had recovered and dug his way to freedom. Jamie crossed his fingers hopefully. “It doesn’t matter how many powers you adapt,” shouted Scott as he let loose with a tightly focused beam, “there’s only one of you—you can’t fight all of us at once!”

  To Jamie’s joy, the beam struck its target squarely on the back of its head.

  It had no effect.

  The android turned slowly, as if Scott had merely tickled it. “Your attack comes too late,” it scoffed. “I have completed a pantographic tracing of your teammate. I have absorbed his immunity to your power, as I absorbed yours to his.” Jamie saw that, on the Super-Adaptoid’s chest, a pattern of concentric circles had formed.

  A look of alarm crossed Scott’s face. He leapt and rolled and avoided another shower of ice, coming to rest beside Alex and Loma.

  “He’s an android, Loma,” he gasped, “can’t you take him apart?”

  “I’ve tried. There’s no metal in him.”

  “Your magnetic powers might not affect me,” crowed the Super-Adaptoid, “but now I have them too, and I can certainly use them

  against you!”

  Loma fell to her knees and clutched at her throat.

  “Scott,” cried Alex, “her necklace! The Super-Adaptoid’s making it contract—it’ll choke her!”

  Scott and Alex hit their foe with simultaneous blasts, to no avail.

  Loma gasped with relief as her necklace snapped into two pieces and flew from her neck. She must have employed her own ability, Jamie realized. She took a deep breath, tried to stand—and the Super-Adaptoid felled her with Alex’s white energy.

  Left with no other recourse, Scott tried to tackle the intmder physically. The Super-Adaptoid flew upwards, out of his way. It halted Scott in midair and telekinetically flung him into the wall. He slid to the floor in an unconscious heap. Alex fell beside him: Jamie didn’t see what had happened to him, but for a second he had felt an uncomfortable pressure inside his skull.

  There was nobody left to fight the Super-Adaptoid now. Jamie felt a suicidal impulse to race down the stairs and confront it himself—but what could he do against it?

  Another thought occurred to him: what if it came for him next?

  Hold! I will not allow you to do this to
my students.

  Professor Xavier had appeared in his doorway. Even confined to his wheelchair, he exuded power and authority. But what shocked Jamie most of all was the identity of the figure who stood at Xavier’s shoulder: himself.

  The android turned to face its new enemy, and froze, as did Xavier himself. For long seconds, nothing seemed to happen. But the pressure in Jamie’s skull returned, and he knew instinctively that a mighty battle was raging beyond the scope of conventional senses.

  Sweat formed on Xavier’s brow, but he was not the first to stagger. For a moment, Jamie had hope—but only for a moment.

  “Your experience gives you the edge on the psychic plane,” the Super-Adaptoid growled, “but I have the powers of all your X-Men.” It formed a gigantic spike of ice, which hovered in midair and twisted slowly, taking aim at Xavier’s heart. Still locked in psychic battle, the Professor could do no more than stare at the weapon, wide-eyed.

  Jamie knew then that he had to do something—but it was too late. He was too far away.

  “No!”

  With a scream of defiance, Jamie’s duplicate leapt into the hallway and tackled the Super-Adaptoid. Distracted by Xavier’s invisible onslaught, the android actually toppled. But it recovered quickly and brushed off its attacker. “The power within you is diluted—you are nothing!”

  Jamie held his breath. His duplicate had been sent sprawling—but might the distraction have turned the tide? The Super-Adaptoid was almost doubled over, its hands to its temples—but now it could return its attention to the source of its pain.

  This time, perhaps in desperation, it chose a quicker way of dealing with Xavier. Its emerald copy of Scott’s force beam cannoned into the Professor, knocking his chair backwards at the same time as a magnetic field caused one wheel to buckle. The chair overturned, throwing Xavier to the floor. He grunted once and didn’t move again.

  The pressure in Jamie’s head relented, as the Super-Adaptoid drew itself up to its full height and savored its victory.