“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.

She started this, he remembered, so he wasn’t about to play sitting duck. Maybe she can explain what this is all about later—after I shut down this meteorological menace of hers.

He fired his repulsors at her, ready to catch Storm before she fell unconscious into the river. “Careful,” he reminded himself; the X-Man was nowhere near as indestructible as the Hulk. He wanted her contained, not a casualty.

He shouldn’t have worried. The orange repulsor rays fell far short of their target, dissipating completely several yards before they came within striking range of Storm.

Of course! he realized, mentally (but not physically) slapping his forehead. The accelerated neutrons that gave his repulsors their punch traveled along a shaft of ionized air projected from his gauntlets; obviously, that conductive shaft had been unable to make headway against the tremendous atmospheric forces controlled by the mutant heroine.

Her own thunderbolts, needless to say, encountered no such resistance. Even as Iron Man watched his repulsor rays fade away, Storm let loose with another concentrated blast of lightning. He tried to evade the bolt, but the jagged electrical spear followed him wherever he flew, drawn by the crystallized iron in his armored suit.

Zap! Sparks flew as lightning struck his helmet, sizzling in his ears. The refractory coating over the outer layer of high temperature enamel shielded his flesh and blood from much of the lightning bolt’s charge. The armor’s internal displays, though, flickered alarmingly, before coming back on-line. Diagnostic routines reported minor malfunctions throughout the sophisticated circuitry of the suit, including damage to the secondary neural net processor, the ventral foot altitude sensor, and even, ironically, the LIDAR weather scan sensor port.

Ouch, he thought.

Storm had drawn both first and second blood. Iron Man realized he had to strike back, ideally with a weapon that didn’t depend on the atmosphere as a conductive medium. His plasma bolts were not an option; they were too powerful to use against an opponent who was neither armored nor invulnerable.

Never mind whose side she’s on, I don’t want to blow her to atoms. Tight-beam sonics were less lethal, but Storm might be able to deflect the sound waves by manipulating the very air through which they traveled.

Magnetism, on the other hand, functioned just as well in a vacuum as it did in a gaseous environment. Maybe that was the ticket. Iron Man arced above Storm, swooping around to catch her from behind. The projector in his chestplate flared brightly as he attempted to snare Storm with his tractor beam, the same beam he had used to pluck that unfortunate shipwreck victim from the river. In theory, the magnetic beam would seize hold of the iron in Storm’s blood, holding her fast within the beam while he towed her back to the authorities.

A little trick I learned, Iron Man recalled, from the X-Men’s old nemesis, Magneto.

The irony was not lost on him.

Catching Storm with the beam proved easier said than done, though. At the last minute, the flying mutant banked to the left, escaping the beam, then performed a graceful loop-the-loop that left Iron Man sweeping an empty swath of sky with the tractor beam while Storm climbed toward the clouds above him. Iron Man hastily adjusted his own trajectory to try to bring her back in line with the brilliant purple ray emanating from his chest. The chase turned into an intricate aerial ballet that tested the limits of Iron Man’s maneuverability. He had always thought that his sleek metal armor was the last word in aerodynamic design, but Storm not only glided effortlessly upon the prevailing winds, the very currents of the air seemed to go out of their way to accommodate her every swoop and spiral. No matter which way she turned, she always had a strong tailwind at her back, whereas he was constantly buffeted by an opposing squall. Iron Man started to feel like he was competing in a game that had been stacked against him from the start. How did you win an air battle when the air itself was fighting for the other side?

All he needs to do is strike me with that ray once, Storm thought, redoubling her efforts to stay one cloud ahead of her mechanized adversary.

She had no idea what sort of energies were at work within that radiant purple beam, but thought it best to stay well clear of its path. Too much was at stake to risk being immobilized once more; her head still ached from the psychic and physical toll of the Hulk’s shock wave while the Beast remained out of commission, so that only she and Cyclops remained to stand against the Avengers, the authorities, and, quite possibly, the Hulk. One mistake, she knew, and she would feel the unguessable effect of Iron Man’s weapon upon her own form and flight. Such a defeat would leave Cyclops alone and outnumbered.

Never! she vowed. Despite the occasional tensions between them, Cyclops was a dear friend whom she was not about to surrender to the uncertain mercies of their present adversaries.    .

And then there was Rogue, who might be at greater risk than them all....

For all that was at stake, the skybome pursuit was exhilarating in its way. Mighty winds blew her through the firmament, drying her hair, skin, and garments as she soared up and down and back and forth, changing direction constantly so as to confound her armored opponent. Bursts of cleansing rain washed the island’s mud from her limbs. Only soaring thus through the open sky did she ever feel truly free, unhemmed by walls or ceilings, and at one with the elements. Thunder pounded in perfect synch with her heartbeat while lightning gathered behind her eyes and within her fingertips. She pitied Iron Man; trapped as he was in his cold metal shell, how could he possibly savor the miracle of flight as she did? He was cut off from nature, not to mention his fellow man.

I could not endure that, Storm knew. The very thought of trapping her body and soul inside a cramped, lifeless machine made her shudder.

A luciferous streak of light fell across her path, and she barely dived beneath its ominous glow in time. Glancing to left, she caught a glimpse of Iron Man zooming toward her on an intercept course, steel-clad fists tearing through the gossamer fabric of her clouds. His gilded mask was surprisingly expressive, the angled slits of his mouth and eyes conveying grim determination. Parallel rows of signal lights ran along the top of his helmet, blinking in sequence according to some unknown computer program.

Computers. Storm had no doubt that computers controlled many of the functions in Iron Man’s armor, just as they did in most technology these days. Despite her reverence for the natural world and its ancient ways, she was not uninformed about modem computers—and their weaknesses. An electromagnetic pulse of the right magnitude, she recalled, could seriously disrupt a computer and its operations. Shadowcat, the X-Men’s resident computer genius, had explained this to Storm rather vigorously after a couple of unfortunate accidents involving Ororo’s powers and the Xavier Institute’s computers. She and Kitty Pryde had even managed to duplicate the phenomenon in the Danger Room.

Let us see, she resolved, if Iron Man’s formidable technology can be as temperamental and touchy as Kitty’s precious programs.

A luminescent white glow filled her eyes, masking her vibrant blue irises and dark pupils. Calling upon memories honed through constant repetition, she released the pent-up electrical energy in her fingertips in a single high-intensity pulse that flared so briefly that it had vanished completely from sight before its effect was felt....

“What the heck?” Colonel Lopez exclaimed as a harsh burst of static assailed his ear.

He yanked his walkie-talkie, which he had been using to converse with the commander of the Canadian forces across the river, away from his head and glared at the malfunctioning device. “Hello?” he asked, cautiously raising the walkie-talkie back toward his ear, but the line was as dead as his chance at a promotion after this fiasco. He shot a blistering glance at his second-in-command, who looked just as befuddled as the rest of his troops.

Judging from the confused and/or irritated faces he saw along the front lines, his walkie-talkie wasn’t all that had screwed up. Suddenly, in a single instant, all their expensive electronic hardware had just gone completely FUBAR: Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.

Playing a hunch, he checked his pocket compass just in time to see the needle swing toward Goat Island, southwest from where he was standing, then back again toward magnetic north.

“Typical,” Lopez muttered. The supertypes’ freakish powers were even messing with his compass. Not to mention the drastic changes in the weather. He felt another layer of stomach lining bum away and searched his pockets for a Turns. Blast it, he thought, why couldn’t all these heroes and mutants and monsters stay in the Big Apple where they belonged?

First, his computer crashed. Then Iron Man did.

The luminescent displays before his eyes blinked out of existence. His glowing chest unit went dark. The limbs of his armor locked into place, the servos that amplified the motion of his muscles grinding to a halt. And, perhaps most significantly, given his current altitude and position, all six micro-turbines in his boots shut down at once, turning the world’s most sophisticated man-shaped flying machine into several hundred pounds of dead weight.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaa—!” Iron Man exclaimed, the single syllable stretched across a vertical drop of over a thousand feet.

He hit the river with an enormous splash. Ordinarily, a Plexiglas layer would automatically drop into place to prevent water from entering through the mouth slit in his helmet. But with the armor frozen until the computer rebooted, Tony found himself coughing and sputtering in a desperate attempt to keep from drowning in the icy water. The wild rapids tossed him about like a piece of driftwood. Rocks clanged against his helmet he took a bumpy ride down the river. Fragmented glimpses of sky and spray spun before his eyes when his head wasn’t dunked beneath the waves altogether. Blurry smears of water speckled his protective lenses.

Have to Jiang on, he thought fiercely, guessing at once what had happened. He knew too well what the right kind of EMP could do to his armor, and how long he needed to recover. Thanks to constant improvements in the software, it took precisely 2.34 minutes for his armor to reboot, a significant gain on earlier systems which had needed a full three minutes to come back to life. All he needed was a couple of minutes and he’d be raring to go again.

Unfortunately, he went over the Falls in seconds.

Using the Internet, Iron Man had scanned the history of Niagara during the flight from Manhattan. Over the years, he had learned, at least fifteen people had deliberately gone over the Falls in barrels and other “protective” devices, five of whom had met horrible deaths. Now, against his will, Iron Man’s armor had become merely the latest high-tech barrel.

Beneath multiple layers of diamond dust, enamel, iron, and micro-circuitry, a comfort layer of firm rubber padding cushioned Tony Stark’s vulnerable human flesh. Tony had never been more thankful for that padding than now, when he abruptly found himself bouncing roughly over the rapids at the crest of the Falls, then smashing repeatedly against the side of a cliff as he plummeted downward, spinning helplessly out of control. A hundred bumps and jolts jarred his bones while the omnipresent pealing of millions of gallons of cascading water drowned out the rest of the world. Frothing chaos was all he could see, rotating wildly before his eyes. Inside the armor, Tony held his breath as he braced himself for the worst, i.e. hitting the bottom.

But which Falls had he gone over? The Horseshoe Falls, which emptied into the fabled Maid of the Mist pool, or the American Falls, which fell directly onto a deadly pile of rocks at the base of the cataract? Not even the most reckless daredevils of yore had ever risked a trip over the American Falls; the unlucky souls who accidentally took that fatal plunge never survived. To his horror, Iron Man realized he had no idea over which Falls he had been flying when the EMP knocked his armor for a loop; his extended dogfight with Storm could have taken him over either drop. Could even his armor, its protective force field off-line, protect him from a crash landing upon those deadly rocks? He had to admit he wasn’t sure.

Thanks to Storm, I’ve gone from super hero to crash test dummy in one fell swoop ... !

An anxious moment of uncertainty stretched on for what felt like forever until he slammed into something hard—and kept on sinking. After falling a hundred-plus feet, the surface of the pool felt like cement, but it was still only water. He’d gone over the Horseshoe Falls after all! His entire body felt like one big bruise, and he was dizzier than the Human Top, but he was still in one piece.

Let’s hear it for Stark Solutions quality control! he thought jubilantly. Niagara could enter an eleventh documented survivor into their record books, provided he didn’t drown in the next few minutes.

His heavy armor weighed him down like an anchor as he sunk to the bottom of the pool, landing with a dull thud upon the silty floor. Holding onto his breath for as long as he could, Tony waited desperately for his armor to reactivate. His lungs ached for fresh air, his cheeks bulged with carbon dioxide. It took all his will and selfcontrol to keep his jaws tightly clenched together, holding onto the stale air pouring out of his lungs. Tiny bubbles escaped through the cracks between his teeth, rising toward the surface, leaving him behind. With his lights and sensors dead, he could see nothing through the murky liquid, not even a glint of daylight. He started feeling light-headed, a sure sign of oxygen deprivation; unlike the infamous Sub-Mariner, Tony Stark couldn’t breathe underwater.

Just when he felt like he was going to have to try, gills or no gills, his armor came humming back to life all around him. The start-up sequence initiated on schedule, redundant circuits and auxiliary systems coping with whatever components had been burnt out by the EMP. The plexiglass mouth shield slid smoothly into place, and none too soon. Automated breathing tanks, utilizing cutting-edge rebreather technology, pumped a precisely calibrated mixture of oxygen and nitrogen into his helmet, which he inhaled as eagerly as if it were the world’s most intoxicating perfume.

When I build a barrel, I build it right, Tony Stark thought proudly. Systems reports scrolled before his eyes and he scanned them feverishly, scoping out the extent of the damage that the armor had incurred during its jarring trip over the violent cataract.

The bad news: the chest projector was thoroughly trashed, the primary lens cracked into three pieces, which meant no tractor beam until he had a chance to make some needed repairs, nor even a spotlight to shine through the murk at the bottom of the pool. A slurry of silt and water, left behind when the mouthpiece sealed itself off from its aqueous surroundings, trickled down through the neck assembly, raising goosebumps on his skin.

He figured he’d probably picked up a few dents as well.

The good news: the jet turbines in his boots had survived intact, meaning he had the means to escape this watery launching pad.

About time, Iron Man thought; he would have to do something about speeding up the whole rebooting procedure. Maybe there was a way to get it down to a minute or less, possibly by streamlining the primary initialization codes....

Part of his mind already grappling with the technical problems involved, he took a few more deep breaths to clear his head, then used a cybernetic command to activate his boot jets. A half-dozen micro-turbines ignited at once, generating over two thousands pounds of thrust, enough to send him rocketing up through the gloom to the churning surface of the pool. Radio signals from orbiting satellites told him where he was and which direction to fly, so that he took the straightest route possible to the open air, emerging dramatically from the Maid of the Mist pool like Excalibur thrust upward by the Lady of the Lake. Cool-air venting, ringing the soles of the boots, mixed chilled air with the jet exhaust, so as to avoid cooking every fish in the pool.

“All right,” the golden Avenger said, searching the sky. Nano-wipes cleared the silt and water specks from his optical lenses. “Where’s that tricky weather witch?”

Storm had not flown far since dropping Iron Man from the heights. Perhaps she had lingered overhead to ascertain whether Iron Man had indeed survived his plunge, maybe even contemplating a rescue attempt. Whatever her intentions, her influence over the environment remained readily apparent; looming gray thunderheads, swollen with unspilled rain, blotted out the sun, throwing a gloomy shadow over the world-famous scenery. External sensors in Iron Man’s armor registered a 15 percent increase in atmospheric ozone; obviously, Storm had lived up to her name.

But how often could she pull off that EMP trick? lion Man decided not to take any chances. The swirling mists at the base of the Horseshoe Falls hid his return for at least a second or two; Iron Man used that momentary surprise to fix Storm within his targeting display, then unleashed a barrage of tight-beam sonics to rattle her nerves and break her concentration.

It worked. The soaring mutant threw her hands over her ears and grimaced in discomfort.

Kind of like what your buddy Banshee did to Nick Fury and his people, Iron Man thought, appreciating the poetic justice of his ploy. He kept up his sonic assault as he flew toward the airborne heroine.

Afflicted by the relentless sound waves, Storm lashed out instinctively, not with a calculated pulse, but with a raw and elemental thunderbolt that lit up the entire sky before exploding in a shower of sparks against Iron Man’s armor. Hundreds of gigawatts crackled noisily, but this time the golden Avenger was ready. The energy conversion system of his armor, running several layers below the enamel and iron plating, absorbed the massive electrical charge and channeled it into the suit’s overall power supply. Energy reserves, which had been depleted during his battles with both Storm and Hulk, filled to capacity, leaving him with power to spare.

Feeling more than a little like a latter-day Benjamin Franklin, Iron Man fired Storm’s own lightning back at her, in the form of blazing repulsor rays.

Displaced by the Hulk’s resounding return to the river, a tremendous wave of cold water washed over the tip of Goat Island. The miniature tsunami knocked both Captain America and Cyclops off their feet, breaking off the tense stand-off that had endured since the star-spangled Avenger landed on the island, surprising Cyclops. Breathless and out of control, both heroes were sent tumbling across the ravaged landscape, ending up sprawled in the mud after the great splash spent itself.

The force of the wave left Cyclops’s visor slightly ajar, and his uncontrollable eyebeams escaped through the gap, blasting the ground near Captain America, who had to roll quickly across the wasteland to avoid being struck by the destructive rays, which sent shattered chunks of rock flying into the air. Cyclops hastily adjusted his visor, cutting off the beam, but feared the damage had already been done. Did Captain America think he had been fired upon on purpose?

/ may have just made a volatile situation worse, Cyclops thought. He didn’t know what the Avengers wanted here, but he doubted it was to invite the X-Men to a friendly inter-team softball game. Slipping and sliding in the now-muddy soil, he scrambled to get back on his feet before Captain America could seize a strategic advantage; even though the legendary hero was only human, with no special powers or abilities, Cyclops knew from experience what a resourceful opponent he could be. He still remembered the way Captain America had led the battle against Exodus during that bloodbath in Genosha a few years back. I can’t let him stop me from escaping with the Hulk, he thought fervently. Rogue’s life may depend on it. Whatever the Avengers wanted, with either the X-Men or the Hulk, would have to wait.

Unfortunately, the Captain’s reflexes were even faster than Cyclops’s. The patriotic colors of his uniform obscured by a clinging layer of slick brown mud, he rose upward from the slippery muck; somehow, despite the power of the unexpected deluge, he had managed to hang onto his shield throughout their headlong tumble. The sturdy metal disk, Cyclops knew, was both a weapon as well as a defense; more than once, he had seen Captain America hurl his shield with devastating effect.

Perhaps the Avenger intended the shield only for his own protection, but Cyclops couldn’t take that chance. He could too easily imagine himself succumbing to a single blow from the Captain’s shield, leaving him helpless in the mud, no good to Rogue or anyone else.

That’s not going to happen, Cyclops vowed. Cool water dripped from his hair, leaking past the top of his visor, only to be reduced to atoms the instant the droplets fell in front of his volcanic eyes. Failing his fellow X-Men was the one thing that Scott Summer had always feared more than anything else, ever since Professor X first entrusted him with leadership of the team. His mission, and his responsibility to the team, took priority over everything else.

“Sorry, Captain,” he murmured. Cybernetic controls within his visor allowed him to raise the quartz lens without lifting a hand, even as he clambered upright. He winced inwardly as his forcebeam sped toward the other hero; firing at Captain America felt, in a very real way, like spitting at the flag. Cyclops was grateful for the mud covering the red, white, and blue emblems on the Avenger’s celebrated uniform, which Scott suddenly remembered seeing on a LIFE magazine cover when he was only seven years old, back when he was just another lonely kid in that orphanage, looking for heroes wherever he could find them.

Shooting Captain America. . . well, there goes my chance of ever running for President, he thought, indulging in a rare moment of black humor. Not that I really expect to see a mutant in the White House anytime soon.

The crimson beam was fast, but Captain America’s shield was faster. The convex surface of the shield leapt between the beam and its target, deflecting the ray back at Cyclops, who barely ducked in time to escape being lambasted by his own mutant power. Cyclops was impressed by the speed with which the Avenger had blocked his eyebeams; he would have thought that only Wolverine could react with such split-second timing.

Guess that’s why they call him a living legend, Cyclops thought. Clearly, neutralizing Captain America’s unwanted interference was not going to be easy.

Then again, he reflected, where the X-Men were concerned, nothing ever was. That’s why the Professor had always trained them to be ready for anything—and never to surrender. Not even to the Avengers.

The Vision, Iron Man, Captain America. Cyclops wondered just how many Avengers they were up against. Last I heard, Firestar and Justice had joined the team.

A clap of thunder reverberated above him and a shadow fell over the island; Cyclops recognized the early warning signs of Storm in high dudgeon. Keeping one eye on Captain America, he glanced upward in time to see Storm flying overhead, lighting streaming from her fingertips. A moment later, one of Ororo’s patented windstorms blew none other than Iron Man himself across the sky. Fiery rockets flared from the armored Avenger’s boots as he fought back against the gale. Repulsor rays issued from his metal gloves, only to falter and fade before striking Storm.

Looks like the battle has well and truly been joined, Cyclops concluded soberly, his mouth a fixed, unsmiling line beneath his gleaming visor. Watching Captain America’s piercing blue eyes, he saw that the aerial contest above them had not escaped the Avenger’s notice. He eyed Cyclops warily, keeping his shield raised in front of him. If nothing else, Cyclops’s eyebeams had dispersed the mud that had been smeared over the shield. Now the famous shield could be seen in all its celebrated glory: concentric red and white stripes surrounded a single white star shining brightly against a navy blue background.

Seen through Cyclops’s visor, of course, both stars and stripes had a ruby tinge, like most everything else in his world. The driven, young X-Man gave the shield his full attention while he calculated the best way to get his eye-beams past it.

“I hope you understand I don’t want to do this,” he said to the other hero. Between Storm’s thunder and the roaring falls, however, there was little chance that the Captain could hear his apology. Without further warning, he aimed his visor at Captain America’s knees, exposed beneath the lower rim of his shield. Extradimensional energy, strong enough to halt a charging rhino, leapt downward like a striking cobra.

Captain America had anticipated the move, though. He leapt high into the air, so that the beam whizzed by underneath him, and flung his shield straight at Cyclops. Like a star-spangled Frisbee, the shield whistled through the empty air, only to be knocked from its path by Cyclops’s eyebeams as they swept upward to meet the spinning shield in mid-flight. Deflected from its course, the shield flew off toward the nearby woods.

Now, Cyclops thought. Keenly aware that his foe was disarmed, if only for the moment, he adjusted his visor to produce a wider beam that spread out like a crimson wedge from where he was standing. Maximum dispersal, he thought. There \v no way he can get out of the way this time.

That might have been true, had Captain America remained deprived of his shield. As if he planned for every alternative, however, the diverted shield bounced off the bark of a standing maple tree and returned to his waiting hand like a boomerang. Ducking his head below the rim of the shield, the Captain dug his heels into the soppy soil, bracing himself against the force of Cyclops’s unfettered eyebeams.

The lambent red radiance, which had battered foes as diverse and dangerous as Mr. Sinister and the Living Monolith, left not so much as a nick on the decades-old shield.

What on earth is that thing made of? Cyclops marveled, pouring on the power. Adamantium? Vibranium? Or something else entirely?

Whatever it was composed of, the metallic disk repelled his eyebeams better than anything that old and outdated should have been able to. Nor was Captain America kept on the defensive; pushing against the unrelenting pressure of the crimson ray, the Avenger advanced toward

Cyclops, marching slowly but inexorably across the slimy, battle-scarred terrain. Cyclops couldn’t see Captain America’s face, but he could imagine the look of stubborn determination that surely waited behind the oncoming shield.

Another tactic was clearly called for. Spotting a puddle of filmy water behind and slightly to one side of Captain America, he narrowed his beam to a thin red streak and fired at the puddle instead. The beam ricocheted off the reflective surface of the muddy water toward the Avenger’s undefended back. But Captain America must have seen the beam coming, perhaps in the polished underside of his shield, and he leapt into the air again, executing a perfect split over five feet above the ground. He brought his shield down between his outstretched legs, catching the brunt of the beam and reflecting it back at the ground, using its propulsive effect to carry him forward. Cyclops saw Captain America flying toward him, surfing the rechanneled force of the X-Man’s own eye-beams!

Cyclops snapped his visor shut, cutting off the beam, but it was too late; Captain America had already acquired too much momentum. His legs swung together and the soles of two bright red boots hit Cyclops squarely in the chest, knocking him onto his back, which splashed down onto the mud and rocks. Cyclops’s head snapped backwards, hitting the ground so hard his ears rang. He gasped once, the air hammered out of him, and blinked in surprise. For an instant, he saw Storm high above, silhouetted against a white-hot burst of lightning, her hands cupped over her ears. Then a pair of heavy knees landed heavily on his chest and a painted white star descended toward his face, blotting out everything else.

His visor slammed into the bridge of his nose, and he realized that Captain America was pressing his shield down on top of the visor, effectively blinding the supine X-Man. Cyclops couldn’t see a thing! No slouch at hand-to-hand combat, especially after sparring with Wolverine in the Danger Room, he tried to throw Captain America off him, but the veteran super hero countered his every move and kept him pinned to the ground. Strong fingers seized hold of his right wrist while the immovable knees pressed down on his ribs. The unbending metal shield pushed firmly against the visor, keeping up the pressure.

If he thinks he can cap my eyebeams with his shield, Cyclops thought defiantly, he's got another think coming.

Abandoning his jujitsu moves, he raised his ruby quartz lens all the way, opening up the floodgates in front of his eyes. The forcebeam erupted like a geyser, tearing Captain America’s shield from his clenched fist and carrying it over fifty feet in the air, where it hovered atop a luminous pillar of unearthly energy.

Caught by surprise, Captain America nonetheless delivered a right cross to Cyclops’s chin, which left the young mutant seeing stars and stripes. His eyebeams required no act of concentration on his part, however; they flowed freely whether he willed it or not. Lifting his head from the mud, he turned his explosive gaze on the hero astride him. Captain America yanked his head out of the way just in time, although the beam tore off one of the miniature eagle wings adorning his cowl. As the beam swept downward, it hit Captain America below the neck like the spray from a high-intensity fire hose, tossing him backwards for several yards, until he ducked behind a ridge of land, left behind by the Hulk’s earth-shaking depredations.

We’re right back where we started, Cyclops realized as he found himself scrambling up from the mud for the second time in less than ten minutes, watching his renowned opponent do the same despite the scintillating forcebeam strafing the air above his head.

The famous shield, no longer held aloft by Cyclops’s unharnessed power, fell from the sky between them, blocking the beam long enough for Captain America to lunge forward and grab the shield before it hit the ground. Once more, Cyclops was forced to dodge his own eye-beams as they bounced off the shield, racing back at him. The rerouted beam dug a deep trench through the dirt he had just climbed out of, and he aimed for the ground at the Captain’s feet, hoping to dislodge him, but that maddening shield darted down to meet the beam, right on schedule. For several minutes they battled thus, the shield parrying Cyclops’s every move, until the empty space between them was filled with a tangled lattice of intersecting red beams, culminating when the beleaguered mutant ended up firing fresh beams to block returning rays, which, striking once more against the shield, then doubled back on him again.

This isn’t good, Cyclops concluded, coolly assessing his ongoing duel with the indefatigable Avenger. From a tactical standpoint, their respective abilities complemented each other much too well. Captain America employed his ubiquitous shield with as much skill and precision as Cyclops had learned to direct his unique eyebeams. No surprise there, he acknowledged. We could be at this all day, before one of us makes a crucial error.

Risking a peek at the sky, he saw lightning bolts colliding with repulsor rays amidst dark, tempestuous clouds. Meanwhile, the Beast remained out for the count beneath that fallen tree. And where had the Vision disappeared to anyway? Why wasn’t the android Avenger coming to aid of his comrades? Had something happened to him?

The habitual scowl below his visor deepened. This entire melee with the Avengers was taking too long, costing them far too much valuable time. Cyclops made a mental note to add holographic Avengers to the Danger Room, so they’d be better prepared for such a clash in the future, but that wasn’t going to do them any good here and now. He had to do something—anything!—to break the stalemate.

Right after he blocked the beam ricocheting back toward his head ...

A rusty metal man took potshots at a self-styled goddess way up high in the sky. On a big rock in the middle of the river, a red-eyed geek of a mutant played catch-the-bouncing-stun-beam with a true blue national mascot. The furry blue guy was down and out and that miserable robot was resting in a couple of pieces at the bottom of the Falls. Standing upon the brink of the biggest waterfall in sight, knee-deep in the impatient torrent, the irascible Hulk found himself without anyone to fight.

Sure, there were always those armies lined up on either shore, but they hardly counted. The Hulk sneered at the tanks and soldiers with contempt; he could wallop the American troops, and the Canadians, too, without working up a sweat. And he’d do it, too, if he had to, but right now he was a lot more interested in the grudge match that had broken out between the X-Men and the Avengers. Not that he was rooting for either team; from where he was standing, they deserved each other. They were both a bunch of yappy, self-righteous pains-in-the-butt, always try to rope him into one of their do-gooder crusades. To heck with all of them! A plague on both their houses, as that overeducated wimp Banner might say.

He was mightily tempted, in fact, to just let them fight it out among themselves, but where was the fun in that? His knuckles itched to crack some super hero skulls. That dust-up with the robot had wrapped up too soon, and OF Shellhead had found another target for his wimpy repulsor rays. The Hulk felt his adrenaline flowing, feeding his perpetual pugnacity. Where did these costumed clowns get the nerve to cut him out of the action? Just thinking about it made him mad, and the madder he got...

“Hey, X-Vengers!” he bellowed, pounding his fists against his lime-green chest like a bellicose gorilla and raising a racket that could be heard over the Falls themselves. “Save a little stompin’ for me!”

He crouched in the river, tearing out the knees of his tattered purple jeans, then used his impossibly overmuscled legs to break every single Olympic jumping record. He left the Falls far below him and catapulted into the clouds, forcibly inserting himself into the pitched battle between Iron Man and Storm. Repulsor rays tapped feebly against his ribcage while thunderbolts tickled the base of his spine.

“You call this firepower?” the Hulk called mockingly, his upward trajectory finally reaching its peak within spitting distance of both the mutant and the mechanic, who reacted to his abrupt arrival with expressions of utter surprise. Both of them looked like they’d seen better days; Storm’s exposed flesh was nicked and scraped in places, while Iron Man had picked up a couple of nasty dents in his once snazzy chassis. These were the best the super hero world had to offer? Hah! The Hulk glanced down for just a second; the armed forces down below looked like toy soldiers from this height. Then he sneered at the airborne Avenger and X-Man, treating them to equal helpings of his colossal disdain. “Try a load of this on for size!”

As he had on the island, the Hulk clapped his gargantuan hands together with unfathomable force. The resulting shock wave momentarily cleared the brooding storm clouds, permitting a shaft of sunlight to shine through, and sent both Storm and Iron Man tumbling head over heels away from each other. The Hulk chortled boisterously at the sight of the two flying heroes twirling helplessly through the skies they’d thought they owned.

“Just call me Hurricane Bruce!” he hollered.

Too bad Wolverine’s still AWOL, he grumbled silently. Where in blazes is that scrappy little Canuck, anyway?

Gravity belatedly called the Hulk back to earth, and he accelerated downward at roughly ten meters per seconds squared, arcing through the sky toward the wooded island where Captain America and Cyclops fought on behalf of their respective teams. Rebounding crimson beams formed a glowing cat’s cradle between them. His emerald eyes alight with barbaric glee, the Hulk waited impatiently to touch down between the unsuspecting combatants.

Boy, were they in for a rude surprise!

A tremor shook the island. At first, Captain America thought that an earthquake had hit Niagara. Then he saw the colossal green figure at the center of a newly-formed crater at the tip of the small isle.

I should have guessed where that quake came from, he chided himself. Who needed earthquakes when the Hulk was around? The ill-tempered behemoth was a walking disaster area.

Cap stepped backward, giving the Hulk a wide berth while he waited to see what the Hulk would do next. So did Cyclops, who reined in his eyebeams, taken aback by this earth-shaking new development. The Hulk’s cataclysmic arrival reminded Cap of a joke that had been old even when a young Steve Rogers had been growing up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression:

Where do you seat an eight-hundred-pound gorilla?

Anywhere he wants.

Like that hypothetical gorilla, the Hulk presented a vastly intimidating appearance. Contemplating Hulk’s bestial visage, Cap found it hard to remember that he and the other Avengers had come to the Hulk in search of advice and information. There seemed to be nothing inside that grotesque green frame but unending hostility and paranoia.

If the Hulk is the best lead we have, then Wanda may have to rescue herself.

“Hulk!” he shouted, unwilling to give up while there was the slimmest chance for success. Perhaps, against all odds, the Hulk could be made to see reason. “We just want to ask you some questions. It may be a matter of life or death!”

Either the Hulk couldn’t hear him or didn’t care. Climbing out of the crater, he stomped toward Cyclops and Cap, his enormous fists swinging at his side. His bare feet left deep footprints in the muddy soil; the immense tracks made it look like Goat Island had hosted Bigfoot. The Hulk’s baleful gaze swung back and forth between the two smaller heroes, his misshapen head turning slowly atop a neck that looked thicker than any tree trunk on the isle.

“Eeny-meeny-meiny-moe,” he rumbled, louder than the Falls or Storm’s deafening thunder, reaching the last syllable at the same time that his malignant gaze settled on Cyclops. “You lose, Cyke,” he announced, then lunged at the mutant leader.

Cyclops fought back with his eyebeams, which shot from his visor before the Hulk took one step toward him. The beams barely slowed the Hulk, who waded through the coruscating red energy like it was nothing more than a stiff breeze. A backhanded slap sent Cyclops flying through the air, his crimson eyebeams trailing behind him like the tail of a comet. Looking on, Cap feared that Cyclops would be flung off the small island entirely, ending up in the raging river, but instead he smashed into the side of a tree with considerable force. His eyebeams shut off abruptly as his body crumpled onto the ground.

Is he out cold? Cap wondered. The sudden cessation of the crimson beams suggested that the X-Man couldn’t keep his eyes open.

But the Hulk wasn’t through with Cyclops yet. He stalked toward the downed mutant, smacking one of his huge fists into the palm of his other hand. From the look of him, Cap doubted that the Hulk intended to administer first aid to his vanquished foe; the Hulk’s idea of CPR probably involved pounding the victim’s ribs to powder, and then smashing what was left.

Not if I have anything to say about it, Cap resolved. It did not strike him as at all odd, or even ironic, to go to the aid of a man he had just fought to a standstill. No matter what the X-Man’s motives were, however misguided they might be, nobody deserved to be beaten while they were down.

And the sooner the Hulk learned that, the better.

“Leave that man alone!” Cap yelled. He hurled his shield with all his strength and it flew like a discus at the back of the Hulk’s head, bouncing off his thick skull. Cap reached out with a gloved hand and the shield slid back into his grip, a move that felt as natural to him as breathing. After fifty years of hard-fought combat, during which he had consistently refused to carry a gun, the shield had become more than just a tool; it was a part of him.

He never expected the shield to hurt the Hulk—a cruise missile couldn’t do that—but he did hope to get the brute’s attention, distracting him from Cyclops’s fallen form. After that... well, Cap figured he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Taking on an outraged Hulk was just a chance he’d have to take; after all, he hadn’t gotten through World War II by playing it safe.

Bouncing the metal disk off the Hulk’s cranium had the desired result. The Hulk looked back over his shoulder, glowering at Captain America, who pointed an accusing finger at the monstrous green giant.

‘ ‘I always knew you were a savage, Hulk, but I never thought you were a bully. If you’re so eager to smash someone, why don’t you try someone who can fight back.” Looking past the Hulk, Cap saw Cyclops stirring upon the mucky ground. Since he couldn’t let the Hulk harm Cyclops before the X-Man had a chance to recover, Cap decided to throw his shield once more for good measure. The weapon sped through the air, on course to hit the Hulk right between the eyes.

Moving with surprising speed, however, the Hulk spun around and caught the shield with both hands, his awesome strength easily overcoming the projectile’s momentum.

“Hah!” he chortled maliciously. “Lose your little toy, didya?” He held up the brightly-colored shield, inspecting it, then twirled it atop a salami-sized forefinger. “This antique belongs in the Smithsonian. Too bad it will never get there—in one piece, that is!”

The historic shield looked alarmingly small in the Hulk’s ample hands. He grabbed the rim on both sides, clearly intending to bend the metal shield in two.

“Say good-bye to your Yankee Doodle Dandy,” he taunted Captain America, who looked on silently, betraying not a sign of anxiety except for the narrowing of his eyes. Cap held his breath, crossing his arms atop his chest as he watched the Hulk test his matchless brawn against the ancient shield.

You may be surprised, he thought confidently.

As Cap expected, bending the shield, let alone breaking it, proved more difficult than the Hulk must have anticipated. Muscles that could easily tear apart an armored truck strained against the lightweight metal disk. Distended veins and tendons protruded beneath taut green skin. A painful grimace contorted the Hulk’s face as he exerted ever more of his renowned super-strength, his face darkening to a deeper shade of green, with no discernible results.

Irresistible force that he was, the Hulk had finally met a genuinely immovable object. As far as Cap knew, no power on earth (or elsewhere) could damage his shield, which was composed of a unique experimental alloy whose exact composition had been lost for decades. S.H.I.E.L.D. had tried for years to duplicate the one-of-a-kind shield, but their best scientists had never succeeded at the task. Neither had Hydra, A.I.M., Zodiac, or any other terrorist group with access to too many brilliant minds and too much advanced equipment. Like the legendary Super-Soldier Formula that had first endowed Captain America with his extraordinary vigor and agility, the secret of his shield had disappeared into the hazy recesses of history. But the shield’s phenomenal durability remained, as the Hulk was now founding out.

Huffing breathlessly, the tip of an emerald tongue protruding from the comer of his mouth, the Hulk slammed the shield down onto his knee, trying strenuously to break it over his leg. Overlapping layers of muscles rippled along his arms and across his shoulders as he hunched over the indestructible shield, refusing to accept defeat.

“This is impossible!” he snarled. “There’s nothing I can’t smash. Nothing!”

That’s what the Axis powers thought, too, Captain America recalled, but American ingenuity and perseverance proved them wrong. If there was one thing he had learned over the years, it was something that tyrants and bullies almost never seemed to understand: that there was more to life than raw, naked power. Maybe the Hulk will figure that out. .. someday.

At the moment, the Hulk was just growing madder, and stronger, by the minute, but still the shield would not yield. Radioactive perspiration drenched his verdant flesh, and his mighty arms quivered with the unimaginable strain, yet the circular shield kept its shape. His huge knuckles turned greenish white where they pressed against the edge of the shield, until, releasing an enormous gasp, the Hulk abandoned his struggle, the shield looking just as pristine and undamaged as it had been when he first snatched out of the air.

“Get this miserable thing out of my sight!” he bellowed, his chest heaving, and cast the invincible shield into the sky. Cap’s heart fell as he watched his trusty weapon fly out of reach, becoming nothing more than a faint red-white-and-blue speck against the dark gray storm clouds.

Tracking the shield’s rapid ascent, he let his attention momentarily shift away from the frustrated Hulk. A potentially fatal mistake. Before he realized what was happening, a gigantic green hand came rushing at his face.

Careless! the Star-Spangled Avenger castigated himself a heartbeat before the hand hit him like a chartreuse meteor.

His boots lost all contact with the earth as the blow propelled him across the island, leaving him stunned and blurry-eyed. Even after he hit the ground, he kept moving at a bobsled clip, skidding on his back through the mud and the rocks, only his blue chain mail tunic keeping his flesh from being flayed to the bone. Finally, he slowed to a stop, his head still ringing from the blow. His jaw ached and a tooth felt cracked. He tried to focus, but dark spots encroached on his vision, nibbling away at the sky above him. He felt his consciousness slipping away... so that he was barely aware of the two vicious hands that roughly lifted his battered body from the mud and raised it high into the air.

As though from very far away, he heard the endless waters of Niagara crashing over the Falls.

“Good Lord,” Colonel Lopez whispered, peering through his binoculars at the scene upon the island. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Captain America, the very embodiment of the American spirit, was clutched in the grip of the monstrous Hulk, who held the defeated hero high above his head, roaring in triumph. The Star-Spangled Avenger, who had defended liberty for as long as the veteran military man could remember, was stretched lifelessly between the Hulk’s unnaturally enlarged fists. The colonel couldn’t even tell if Cap was still alive.

He has to be! Lopez thought. Captain America can’t be dead. It’s unthinkable!

“Colonel,” Lieutenant Russo said, equally transfixed by the heart-stopping drama unfolding before them. He lowered his own binoculars. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

I’m open to suggestions, the colonel thought. He started to open his mouth to reply, only to see something that stole his voice away.

All hope evaporated as the murderous Hulk, not content to brandish the fallen Avenger like a grotesque trophy, pitched Captain America off the island with the same force that he had hurled massive boulders less than half an hour ago. Lopez stared in utter horror as Captain America tumbled through the air toward the American Falls—and a gruesome death upon the rocks below!

Sniktl

The sound of Logan’s claws escaping their sheathes was the first indication Rogue had that her stricken teammate might be awaking from the coma her own powers had induced in him.

Thank goodness! she thought. Wolverine had been out cold for at least an hour or two, long enough for the heightened senses and healing abilities she had leeched from him to fade away. She’d been afraid that their faceless tormentor had done something terrible to Logan while he was in a weakened state, deprived of his special recuperative powers.

“Wolvie?” she called out, watching his lifeless face in the mirror. “Are you all right?”

For a long moment, he showed no sign of hearing her. Then his eyes snapped open, blazing with primal fury. Teeth bared, saliva streaming from his lips, he fought savagely against his bonds, with no better results than before. A savage growl sent shivers down Rogue’s spine. His crazed appearance shocked her; even for Wolverine, who usually lived up to his fierce namesake, he looked positively loco, like a wild animal poked and prodded into a rabid frenzy. Rogue had seen hungry ’gators that looked more civilized.

“Logan!” she hollered, hoping to snap him out of it. “Can you hear me?” She tried to make eye contact with him in the mirror, but he didn’t seem to know her. His claws sprang in and out of his clenched fists over and over again, like some sort of involuntary spasm. His fangs

snapped at invisible foes. “Talk to me, Logan!”

“Wha—?” Finally, she seemed to get through to him. A hint of sanity returned to his bloodshot brown eyes. He stopped fighting against his restraints. ‘ ‘Rogue ... is that

you?”

His claws retracted into his hands and stayed there. Rogue breathed a sigh of relief. Logan was coming back to normal; she wasn’t alone anymore. “Ah’m here,” she assured him. “How you doin’, Wolvie? You okay?”

The metal band across his throat kept him from nodding, but he managed to meet her eyes at last. “I think so,” he said slowly, still a trace of a growl in his voice. “Sorry to give you a fright, kid. Nothin’ personal. I was just... someplace else.”    .

“The vat?” she guessed. Hellish memories of floating helplessly in that tank full of liquid, breathing through a respirator while molten adamantium poured into her bones, lingered in her mind. It seemed like a bizarre nightmare now. Had Wolverine actually endured that ghastly experience for real?

Judging from the somber look on his face, apparently so. “Picked up on that, didya?” he said gruffly. “My apologies, kid. That’s nothing I’d want anybody else to go through.” He glared angrily at the sterile test chamber surrounding them; Rogue decided she wouldn’t want to be the guilty party behind these experiments when Wolverine got his claws into him or her. “This whole screwy setup reminds me too much of that other place—that’s gotta be why you got hit with those particular memories. I keep having flashbacks to the bad old days.” He gave himself a searching look in the mirror, perhaps taking note of his red-streaked eyes or the flecks of foam still clinging to his chin. “Can’t say it’s helping my self-control any.”

Rogue couldn’t blame him, not if he’d really suffered through the nightmare of the tank. She felt awful for invading his privacy, like she’d accidentally stumbled onto one of his most intimate and traumatic secrets. “Logan,” she whispered sheepishly, “you know ah didn’t want to do that to ya.”

“We can spend the whole day apologizin’ to each other, Rogue, and it won’t get us any closer to findin’ a way out here. From where I’m sittin’, you got nothin’ to be sorry for.” A bushy black eyebrow lifted as another thought occurred to him. “Tell me the truth, kid. Did they test you the same way they tested me?”

“Uh-huh,” Rogue admitted. How could she forget the blades slicing into her flesh, the red-hot laser stripping away her skin? The torture instruments had been powerful enough to overcome even her own natural invulnerability. Thanks to Logan’s amazing healing powers, no scars or bums remained on her much-abused body, but the whole grisly exercise had been one of the most sadistic ordeals she’d ever had to endure. “It was pretty bad, as I guess you know, but it stopped when your healing factor went away.”

“Sounds like we’ve both got some debts to settle,” Logan said darkly. He looked past her to the sarcophagus to her right. “What about the Witch?” he asked. “How’s she holding up?”

“Ah’m not sure,” Rogue confessed. “They’re doin’ somethin’ to her, ah think, but ah’m not sure what.” The blindfolded Avenger had seemed caught up in her own private struggle ever since Rogue managed to shake off the last vestiges of Wolverine’s personality and powers, “She just keeps whisperin’ the same thing over and over

Something ’bout keepin’ away the black, whatever that means.”

Even now, Rogue heard the other woman chanting hoarsely, “Not the black, not the black, not the black...” The Scarlet Witch was obviously being subjected to some sort of ordeal. She was breathing hard, her chest heaving like she was running the last leg of a marathon. Her voice sounded exhausted. Rogue could smell her sweat and fatigue. “Not the black, not the black ...”

A momentary flash of resentment surged through Rogue. How come the Witch was getting off easy, with some sort of fancy psychological torture, while she and Logan got literally cut up and burned? Why did that snooty Avenger rate special treatment? The anger passed as Rogue realized she was reacting irrationally. It wasn’t Wanda’s fault that their unknown captors had reserved a different torment for her. Besides, whatever the Witch was going through right now, it was no picnic, that was for sure.

“See what you mean,” Logan muttered, his ears lifting a tad. Recalling the extraordinary senses she had so recently borrowed, Rogue figured that Wolverine could smell and hear the Avenger’s distress better than she could. “Hey, Witch ... Wanda!” he shouted. “You still with us?” When she didn’t answer, he called out again. “Pagin’ the Scarlet Witch. Sound off if you can.”

“Be quiet!” Wanda yelled vehemently, acknowledging her fellow prisoners for the first time in hours. There was an unmistakable edge of desperation in her voice. “Don’t distract me!”

It was too late, however. The damage had been done. Wanda let out an agonized scream as her body convulsed; it looked to Rogue like the other woman was being electrocuted. The Witch’s back arched as much as her restraints allowed, then she sagged limply within the wired sarcophagus.

“She’s out cold,” Logan pronounced. “I can tell by her heartbeat.” Rogue figured that the electrifying shock, combined with exhaustion, had caused the mutant Avenger to pass out.

Even in her unconscious state, however, Wanda could not escape her trials. Her lips kept murmuring the same pitiful refrain, “Not the black, not the black ...”

What did they do to her? Rogue wondered. Whoever they are.

She had only a few seconds to sympathize with the Scarlet Witch’s cryptic plight before her own steel casket began moving again, this time toward the Witch instead of Wolverine. Rogue’s sudden fears were confirmed when the right wall of the sarcophagus slid downward in tandem with the left wall of Wanda’s coffin.

“No!” she protested loudly. “Not again! Not with her!” Not content to have forced Rogue to steal Logan’s mind and powers, if only temporarily, their unknown jailers clearly now intended to have her absorb the Scarlet Witch’s essence as well. Rogue flinched inwardly at the prospect. Wanda already hates me for what I did to Carol Danvers, she despaired. Now I have to do the same thing to her! She could only pray that the transference would not prove as permanent as it had in Ms. Marvel’s case, but how could she prevent that when she didn’t have any control over what was going to happen—and for how long?

Rogue had often wished for a mutant power she could turn on and off at will, like Storm or Iceman had. Hopelessly, she yearned for that impossible blessing again as concealed mechanisms carried her ungloved hand closer to the Scarlet Witch. The curved metal shell enclosing the Witch’s left hand rolled to one side, revealing Wanda’s five fingers resting within a hand-shaped depression; with the Avenger unconscious and unable to employ her mutant sorcery, the unseen experimenter had obviously judged it safe to partially liberate her hand, although a metal band still stretched across her slender wrist. Rogue knew too well the danger of exposing the Witch’s warm skin to her own thirsty touch.

“Please forgive me,” she pleaded as her hand brushed against Wanda’s.

Their minds and memories merged, proving strangely compatible. Rogue found herself experiencing a sort of inward double vision, with faces and feelings from Wanda’s past superimposed upon her own remembrances, two different lives intersecting and amplifying each other, like synchronized waves that meld together to create a single wave greater than the sum of its parts.. . .

Her name is Rogue/Wanda, and she still pines for the lost days of her idyllic childhood in the backwoods of Mississippi/the countryside of far-off Transia. Tragedy consumes that childhood one sunny afternoon/smoke-filled night, and she finds herself homeless and on the run, until Mystique/Magneto offers her refuge within the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The Avengers/X-Men become her enemies, which feels wrong somehow, even as she tests her newfound mutant powers in battle after pointless battle. The life of a super-villain unsettles her conscience, and in time she rebels against her ruthless mother/father, finding a new life with the X-Men/Avengers. A different kind of loneliness awaits her, though, as she loses her heart to an enigmatic thief/android whose flesh/soul she can never truly touch.

Then the puppets/garments attack, pecking at her face and suffocating her, and she wakes to find herself here, entombed in a mechanized sarcophagus and subjected to cruel and seemingly senseless experiments. Knives cut her, lasers bum her, and a clicking white ball bounces endlessly around a spinning disk divided into equal slices of red and black.. ..

“Not the black!” Rogue shouted as, in reality, a metal visor slid into place above her eyes. Metal shells enclosed her hands, immobilizing her fingers. In the darkness into which she had been abruptly thrown, a virtual roulette wheel began spinning before her eyes. A sibilant voice whispered in her ears, but Rogue required no explanation of the test ahead, all she needed to know had already been extracted unwillingly from Wanda’s recent memories. She recalled the pain in store if she failed as vividly as if she already experienced it many times before.

“Not the black,” she repeated, unsure where Wanda’s memories ended and her own ordeal began. They all blurred into a single continuous struggle to keep that accursed ball from landing in the wrong place. “Not the black....”

“Stop it!” Somewhere in the background, Wolverine howled in rage, growling every syllable. ‘ ‘What you doing to her? Stop it, you heartless sleazes!” His words sounded more like snarls with every moment, until she could barely make out what he was saying. “Stop it—or I’ll tear your heart out!”

Who is he roaring at? she couldn’t help wondering. Who is on the other side of that mirror?

“Interesting,” the Leader declared. “Very interesting.”

Once, a lifetime and an identity ago, he had been merely Samuel Sterns, a common laborer making his way through a mediocre and uneventful life with only the limited intelligence and perceptions of any other human drone. Then a fortuitous accident exposed him to the transforming power of gamma radiation, expanding his brain and intellectual capacity until it became increasingly obvious, at least to his superlative awareness and understanding, that he had evolved into the destined master of the earth. On that day, Samuel Stems had died, shed as readily as a monarch butterfly discards its humble chrysalis. and the Leader was born.

Now the mutated mastermind sat behind the one-way mirror, thoughtfully contemplating the unfortunate subjects of his current experiment. His enlarged cranium, swelling above his brow like an overinflated beachball, rested against the padded back of a futuristic metal chair. The bulbous lobes of his mega-brain were riddled with pulsating convolutions. Pale green skin, the sickly shade of some nocturnal fungus, marked him as a product of gamma radiation. Thin, bony fingers were tented above his lap as he watched the experiment progress, clad in a seamless orange labsuit not much different than those worn by his unwilling specimens. The control room was dimly lit, the better to provide an unencumbered view of the highly informative proceedings in the test chamber. The only illumination came from a lighted control panel that stretched before him like the keys of a grand piano. An elegant experiment such as this was like any great musical masterpiece, he reflected; both required a genius composer adept at both conception and execution.

Beethoven would be proud, he decided, as a recording of the German composer’s Piano Concerto No, 5 played softly in the background. On the other side of the glass, three captured mutants displayed any number of intriguing behaviors and characteristics. Yes, this is a true scientific symphony.

“Note,” he pointed out, with the slightly pedantic air of one who preferred delivering lectures to exchanging dialogue, “how the stress of his captivity is triggering an atavistic regression in the subject called Wolverine. The physical and/or psychological trauma appears to be inducing a marked devolution in the subject’s personality, as the facade of civilization gives way to the barely-sentient animal at the core of his identity ... not unlike a certain muscle-bound green primitive of my acquaintance/:” He stroked the thick black mustache above his lip, his sole concession to mundane vanity; in fact, it was the only body hair that still sprouted upon his body. “Interesting indeed.”

“So you say,” his partner said gruffly, standing in the shadows behind the Leader’s chair. His voice was deeper and more guttural than the Leader’s epicene tones. “For myself, I needed no further evidence that these primates are little more than beasts.”

A.v though you are significantly more evolved, the Leader thought sarcastically. He did not bother looking at his belligerent and impatient ally, whom he privately considered his intellectual inferior. But, then again, who wasn’t? As long as his new associate contributed resources that were useful to their cooperative enterprise, the Leader was willing to maintain the polite fiction of an equal partnership.

“In any event,” the Leader stated, “our plans are developing precisely as I predicted.” He consulted his wrist-watch, easily adjusting for the time difference between his present location and the probable whereabouts of his various pawns. Ah, yes. Exactly time for the inevitable altercation.

“Observe,” he instructed.

A greenish-white finger pressed a touch-sensitive pad on the control panel. The transparent window before them turned into a large television screen, their view of the three prisoners hidden behind pirated satellite feed from CNN. The Leader nodded smugly, totally unsurprised by the live footage depicting a three-way battle between the Avengers, the X-Men, and his longtime nemesis, the Hulk.

“You see,” he boasted. “Right on schedule. As I calculated, the clues we left behind when your operatives appropriated our three subjects have drawn their various heroic peers into a pointless contest of arms, while simultaneously inconveniencing the Hulk as well.”

“You worry too much about that brute,” his partner scolded. “He is even less intelligent than the average human.”

“Never underestimate the disruptive efficacy of naked force and aggression,” the Leader replied. His mood darkened as he recalled the innumerable instances when Banner and his monstrous counterpart had interfered with the Leader’s plans for world domination; if not for the untamed violence of the Hulk, he would have long ago achieved all his grandest ambitions.

True visionaries have always been opposed by the mindless vandalism of the barbarian, he consoled himself. The Hulk’s persistent obstruction of my plans only confirms my ultimate destiny as the precursor of a new age of enlightenment.

“I have learned through hard experience that the Hulk must always be factored into my computations.” He gestured toward the screen. “This prearranged imbroglio will serve to keep the infernal creature busy while we continue with our preparations.’⁷

Besides, he admitted silently, beyond all valid logistical concerns, there is an undeniable satisfaction to be found in making that misanthropic monster’s life even more tumultuous and tormented than it is ordinarily. Thankfully, the Leader was not so highly evolved that he couldn’t appreciate the simple pleasure of revenge. All the world is against you again, Banner. How delectable.

The Leader savored the sight of the assorted heroes pitted against each other in a contest he provoked. Niagara, he decided, provided an attractive and enjoyably hazardous setting for such a diverting spectacle. “There’s something to be said for gladiatorial entertainments,” he commented, “especially when conducted amidst scenes of breathtaking natural splendor. I must remember to include a few such coliseums in any world of my devising.”

On the screen, the Hulk tore the Vision asunder, then consigned his separate parts to the less-than-tender mercies of the plunging cataract.

Behind the Leader, his hard-to-please partner grunted in approval. “Good,” he declared bluntly. “Not so long ago, that android came between me and an enemy of my people. I was unable to punish him for his impertinence then. It is well that he suffers now.”

“Yes,” the Leader agreed, glad that something had met with his surly confederate’s approval; he was getting weary of hearing the other constantly complain. “It’s a shame we can’t count on them destroying each other completely, but the odds are dramatically against such a delightful resolution. Their innate heroism and foolish reverence for human life will doubtless prevent them from inflicting mortal injuries on each other, although, where the Hulk is concerned, you never can tell. He can be surprisingly ruthless when he wants to be, which is usually at the worst possible moment.”

As if to prove the latter point, the camera zoomed in on the top of the Falls, where the Hulk appeared seconds away from hurling Captain America to his death. The Leader leaned forward in his chair, a malicious smile revealing his eager anticipation. Captain America was a relic of a bygone past; he had no place in the brave new world the Leader intended to create.

“Hmm,” he said, “this looks like an unexpected bonus. Still, regardless of the final body count, all of Earth’s super-powered defenders are living on borrowed time. Once our plans reach fruition, we will eliminate every one of our enemies from the face of the planet!”

He did not need to look behind him to know that his dour partner shared the same glorious vision. “But what if all these warriors join forces?” the other asked, his metaphorical cup half empty as usual.

“Not if, when," the Leader conceded. That, too, was inevitable; super heroes had a regrettable tendency to put aside their differences in the end. “Have no fear. That is where you assume a personal role in the saga I have scripted, one that will strike at the very heart of our mutual foes....”

To be continued. ..