X-Force

It happened again.

The mutant--Domino was it?--she used to be so alive. He hadn’t known her long, certainly not long enough to care about her, but still...

She was destined to die tonight, DEA Agent Michael Jackson finally surmised. After all, he’d lost at least one partner on each of his last three missions for the Agency. He was just cursed like that. It was bad enough that his name evoked muffled laughter from any ignoramus who heard it, and damn the fact that he was a black man in what was in his opinion still a good ol’ boy operation in the Drug Enforcement Agency...but once word of his uncanny misfortune spread around the Agency, it was all he could do to maintain his confidence. And he knew...he knew that sometimes he slipped.

No, there was such a thing as coincidence. That’s what this was. Domino wasn’t killed by some curse of his. She was a victim of coincidence. Random chance. Like all the others.

And even if Jackson was the Grim Reaper, all he had to do was make sure he never turned his sickle on himself. Protect his own neck.

Which was becoming increasingly difficult, as he was bound to a chair, hands cuffed behind his back, the effects of a mutant ambush* just now wearing off. In the basement laboratory of the Hellfire Club’s Los Angeles estate, he was prisoner to the “Mutant Liberation Front”--the pathetic group of mutants he’d been sent to capture. His only allies were the dead Domino and the very mutant who ambushed him in the first place, the Brazilian brat named Sunspot.

(*see #104--Sam!)

Then there were his partners outside the mansion, no doubt getting their tails handed to them by the MLF’s guards. He knew he couldn’t count on them--what was worse, that they were mutants, or government employees?

Michael Jackson didn’t want to die, but it wasn’t looking good.

Across the basement the MLF’s humiliated leader, Shinobi Shaw, dragged Domino’s lifeless body across the metal floor, toward the looming device the Hellfire Club had dubbed the Renewal Machine. And the witch in the corner, Selene--she watched the broken Shaw with delight and anticipation. Domino would be the Machine’s first test.

These mutants, they were a strange bunch of fools. Why would Jackson’s government ever put up with them?

“If the Machine works, Selene...then what?” Shinobi asked as he secured the body into the two leather straps that crisscrossed the massive, steel sphere rested on the floor. The sphere was flanked by two miniature smoke stacks, and a computer panel sat before it.

“Why, I’ll let you deliver the good news to your father when I take you to him,” Selene replied.

“Why would I trust my father to accept me now?”

“He’s wiped the slate clean, as he put it.”

“The only way we’re going to see Sebastian Shaw is if we’re there to kill him!” Dragoness proclaimed from her captive position beneath the hovering Selene.

Selene was amused. “You are going nowhere. Neither the Inner Circle nor Shinobi have need for a love-struck wench like you. I would be wise to deal with you as you dealt with that traitor, Sunspot.” Both women shot fiery glares across the room at Sunspot, who still suffered the paralyzing effects of Dragoness’s bio-electric stings.*

(*see last issue--Sam Strikes Back!)

Shinobi finished placing Domino’s body within the straps of the sphere, and shivered as he stepped away.

“You’ve probably never felt the cold, stiff flesh of the dead, have you my young Upstart? My would-be world conqueror?” Selene teased. “Rest assured that after you take your place beside your father, Domino’s will not be the last lifeless form to pass beneath your delicate fingers.”

Shinobi seemed not to acknowledge her words, but somewhere in his cold heart, he lamented the fact that, only a few minutes ago, he’d been a god among his followers in the MLF. And now, now he was Selene’s pet mutant, as he’d been so many years before.

“Mister Lesmore, is all in order on your part?”

From the controls of the Machine’s computer, Doctor Boris Lesmore nodded uniformly. His respect for Selene was as genuine as the Yugoslav refugee could muster--he’d been the younger Shaw’s lackey, but it had become clear to him that Selene’s was the more powerful party, and so Lesmore’s loyalties were now with her.

For a moment, the room echoed with silence, as the scope of the forthcoming undertaking became apparent. If Selene’s magic combined with the Machine’s circuitry fulfilled their intended tasks, then Domino would awaken from death as though she’d been in a mere slumber.

The whole of the room gazed upon the lifeless mutant with varied measures of hope--some trusted that her resurrection would mark a new era of power, be it for the Inner Circle or the MLF. And one man, he just wanted his friend back.

“It’ll work, ‘Berto. I’m sure of it,” Tempo whispered to Sunspot, as the two young mutants were segregated in a corner of the laboratory.

Sunspot barely had the strength to speak, but he replied with an inadvertent, desperate look. Heather Tucker had been a member of nearly every incarnation of the terroristic Front, but just now, it seemed she realized that she was in over her head.

“Thanks, Heather,” Sunspot muttered as he pulled an errant strand of hair from Tempo’s quivering lip to her long, black mane. His strength was returning.

As Selene’s glowing magicks encircled her, the Machine hummed to life. The sphere magically rose a few feet from the floor and began to spin, slowly, then faster and more sporadically. Domino’s body soon appeared as a glowing streak of light, lost in the sphere’s erratic state. It was no longer clear what hand the computer played and what was the work of magic.

“What’s happening, Doctor?” Sunspot asked feebly. “Is it working?”

“It is hard for me to say. My job is done--her life is in Selene’s hands now.”

The work was taking its toll on Selene, it seemed, as the sorceress operated in a near-catatonic state, waving her hands and mumbling spells with little clarity.

Sunspot and Tempo traded looks of distress.

At last, the witch gave a squeal of exertion, and the sphere was suddenly motionless, and hit the floor with a thud Still attached to the sphere, Domino’s form faced the room’s anxious on-lookers. She didn’t seem to be breathing, but the leather straps around her may have been too tight just then; she wasn’t moving, but maybe she was just unconscious.

Without using her ability to warp time around her, Tempo was the first to arrive at the body. She put two fingers beneath Domino’s ear. Still cold.

Selene announced what everyone else was beginning to realize.

“The Machine--it did not work.”

“Great,” Polaris sighed, wiping a wet clump of green hair from her sunglasses, “first we’re chasing the MLF’s guards all over the perimeter of the mansion, then we’re running from the Hellfire Club’s strike force, and now--now we’ve got a thunderstorm.” She fired a blast of magnetic energy from her palm, blasted Marrow back down onto the mansion’s shingled roof. “Talk about your bad luck!”

“That’s not all,” Mystique reminded her. Fuse had shorted out her laser rifle as soon as she’d reached the third story rooftop, and now she took on the Wakandan mutant in the form of a lithe, clawed gargoyle. She was just about finished pummeling the electricity-wielding mutant. “Strong Guy’s all alone down below against the strike force. And we haven’t even heard from Domino since she and Agent Jackson entered the mansion over an hour ago.”

Black Marvel and his titanium asp gave Forearm four handfuls worth of fight. “I’ve got a bad feeling about the pale-face,” the black-cowled human warned ominously.

“I feel the same way about these pups’ chances against us,” Sabretooth gnarled with a grin as he and the mindless Wildchild rolled about the aged shingles, trading menacing, bloody claws and feral grunts. “You guys sure we’re just s’posed to capture ‘em?”

In her gargoyle form, Mystique trudged across the waterlogged roof to aid Sabretooth when Polaris’s warning resounded over the storm. “Mystique! Behind you!”

The blue-skinned shape-changer’s swift reflexes thrust her out of Fuse’s path, as the Wakandan leapt through the air, crackling with electricity. And as Mystique clung to the edge of the roof, Fuse corrected his errant attack by taking hold of the lightning rod at the end of the roof.

But it was like someone or something was out to prove Polaris wrong--to let her and her compatriots know that luck may still have been on their side, for when Fuse grabbed the rod, a streak of lightning pierced the sky and lit the rod up. And Fuse, his luck was in question.

“Good God!” Polaris exclaimed. “He’s been...fused to the lightning rod!”

The unfortunate mutant helplessly convulsed with an endless stream of electricity, bursts of light pulsating from his body, his hands smoking at the rod. His screams were lost in his own pain.

The rooftop battle ceased, if for only a moment, as the participants gazed in awe at the miraculous happening, the damnable coincidence that had enraptured Fuse.

“We’ve got to help him,” Polaris urged.

“Nice thought, but do you want to be the one to try to touch him?” Black Marvel replied bluntly.

None of them really liked leaving Fuse in such an awful state, but an act of fate like that...you just don’t screw with it.

He was fearless. A warrior. The aging pitcher in the bottom of the ninth who threw his fastest pitch despite the pain, because he knew he would win. Forget the Hulk--he was the strongest there was, and he was only getting stronger!

Guido Carosella--the mutant behemoth, self-styled Strong Guy--had a plan. Too bad for the strike force Selene had sent to dispose of the government mercs. The Inner Circle’s force lay scattered along the rear of the Hellfire Club’s estate. And though Guido stood victorious, he didn’t stand tall. His legs wobbled beneath him. His body grotesquely bulged with the stored kinetic energy of a hundred blows delivered and a thousand received.

He’d been here once before, and he’d suffered a near-fatal heart attack that time.

He’d do it again, if that was what it would take to end it all.

A still, cold disappointment washed over the basement laboratory. All of the Inner Circle’s work, all of Shinobi Shaw’s scheming...for nothing. What would Selene tell her Black King? How would Shinobi look among his peers? And how could Sunspot ever tell Cable...about her?

And then darkness swallowed the lab and interrupted their stunned reverie.

“The storm’s caused a power failure, it would seem,” Doctor Lesmore announced.

A moment later, the lights flashed back to life, dimmed again, flickered back...and the room was captured in a strobe-like trap.

“Maybe...maybe that’s why the Machine didn’t work!” Tempo said hopefully, hesitant to touch Domino’s broken body. “We should try to bring her back again!”

“I am too weak now,” Selene replied, her magicks dimly radiating in the momentary darkness, invisible under the flickering light. “Even more, I believe the Machine’s failure has little to do with the storm, and everything to do with you, Mister Lesmore.”

“You must be kidding,” the gangly doctor shrieked. “You are mad, woman! I wanted the Machine to work as much as anyone!”

“I accuse you not of sabotage--it was simply human error on your part.”

“The strain’s made you crazy, Selene!” Sunspot said as the excitement began to restore his strength, and he stood from the corner. “Something’s screwing with all the power! Of course it was the storm!”

The young mutant’s words did not register with Selene, as her eyes began to glow emerald. “Yes, human error, Lesmore. A problem easily remedied...if you are made no longer human!”

With that, her fist ignited with a bolt of fiery energy that slammed Lesmore to the ground, unconscious.

Using her ability to warp time around her to accelerate herself, Tempo hastened through the sporadic darkness, to the fallen doctor’s side. “Haven’t you done enough tonight, Selene?”

The sorceress’s eyes were wide with incensed dementia. “My home has been invaded by a spoiled brat and his pitiable companions. The device with which the Inner Circle has rested many of its hopes has failed in its first demonstration. I have spent my efforts and received only toil in return. Have I done enough? The wicked smile on my face masks the fact that this has been a very bad day, and I am a very angry witch! I must vent! You must die!” Another, stronger pulse of magic rolled Tempo across the floor. “I am sure Sebastian would understand.”

As streaks of ethereal energy crisscrossed the flickering basement, Sunspot labored across the room toward Tempo.

“Heather, you alright?”

“I think so. I can’t tell if she hit me with a spell or just random, supernatural artillery.”

“Powering the Renewal Machine took too much out of her. She’s crazy, firing whatever she’s got. Can you walk?”

“Uh-huh,” Tempo nodded.

“Good. Shaw and Dragoness seem to be occupying Selene, which means we can escape. Get Lesmore and the agent outta here. I’ll grab Domino.”

But as Sunspot started for the Renewal Machine and his friend, Tempo’s gentle but persuasive hand didn’t let him get far, though her hesitant words put his mind a million miles away. “She’s dead, ‘Berto. There’s no point.”

Of course she was, he nodded. Damn. Damn.

“Then you get Lesmore, I’ll free the Fed,” was his somber reply.

Tempo discreetly dragged Lesmore out of the chaos of the basement, and Sunspot rushed to the captive agent.

“Hold tight, sir. We’re bookin’ it,” he announced.

“Hurry up, man. Get these cuffs off me,” the man barked. “I don’t wanna die here, fool!”

Sunspot grabbed and burned through the link between the cuffs, and he and the agent raced out of the lab.

And then there were two.

Shinobi Shaw did his best to hide behind one of the Machine’s smoke stacks, but still heard Selene’s determined jabs echoing in the basement.

“I don’t sense Dragoness in our vicinity. It would seem she has wizened up and left you, Shinobi, as have the rest of your companions. And my enchantment has disabled your mutant intangibility. You cannot hide forever, pup. Show yourself, and I will be most merciful.”

“I...I learned a lot tonight, Selene,” Shaw’s nervous voice came from somewhere in the lab. “I learned that my father’s determination to leash me only fuels my own to escape his grasp. I learned that I am a survivor.”

“Like a cockroach, you are, stripling!” Selene laughed maniacally. “An overconfident little insect!”

“And foremost, I learned that when you’re angry, witch, you’re not that smart.”

Suddenly, Shaw slipped off of Selene’s mental radar. He’d escaped!

“I’m sure you can read my thoughts. I flew my own plane onto the estate,” came his booming announcement in Selene’s mind, “and the hangar is below the basement. It was only a matter of finding the door to the hangar.” Now, it was Shaw who laughed. A pubescent laugh. An amateur laugh--he wasn’t used to winning. “Tell my father that the hunter just became the prey!”

In the flashing lab, Selene was alone and defeated.

Her angered cry could have risen the dead.

Guido toppled over in pain. The stored kinetic energy was too much, even for his inhuman girth.

Inhuman. How could Abigail ever love him for long before his ghastly genetics took their toll on her fragile psyche. She had aspirations to be a famous singer--what good would a grotesque mutant be standing at her side?

More importantly, what good would he be to himself before long? He wasn’t feeling like the old Guido. The jokester hiding the pain. Nah, these days, there was just the pain.

It was hard, but he returned to his feet. For her.

For him.

Forearm squeezed the air out of Black Marvel’s lungs, causing the arm-ensnared hero to drop his asp. Marvel’s breath came in spurts, his ribcage began to creak beneath his black uniform.

“Forearm, let him go!” came a gentle-yet-frantic voice over the storm. “Everything’s screwed up! We’re getting out of here!”

“Tempo?!” Forearm exclaimed, enabling Black Marvel to free his arm and unload on the unsuspecting mutant until Forearm dropped him onto the roof.

But as he tried to flee from the multi-limbed mutant, Marvel found himself in the midst of Marrow’s attack on Mystique. Instinctively, he swatted the young Marrow’s array of secreted bone strips out of the air with his asp, then took her by the arm and threw her into Forearm. She fell safely into two of his four arms, but before Forearm could drop one feral mutant, another was flung into him by Sabretooth. Wildchild’s form caught Forearm unaware, and the three helpless mutants were thrown from the roof.

“No!” Tempo cried at her friends’ predicament, and hastily used her time-warping powers to cheat gravity and steal their speed, slowing their three-story descent. In mid-air, their motions were prolonged, exaggerated by Tempo’s mutant effect on them, but they were thankful for her quick thinking--happy as they glided safely toward the ground.

THWAKK!!!

With bloody claws, Sabretooth struck Tempo unexpectedly. Her unnatural hold over her teammates was instantly lost.

SPLAT!!!

“Any of them make it?” Mystique asked with uncharacteristic concern.

As he playfully cracked his knuckles, Sabretooth peered over the edge of the roof, upon his three victims below.

“A couple,” he snarled. “Damn.”

In the basement lab, Selene paced about the dying remains of her overworked magicks. Shinobi was not far at all. Still somewhere in the mansion, she sensed--but where? Powering the Renewal Machine had put too much strain on her abilities. Even an obstacle as insignificant as the erratic lights proved nearly insurmountable.

And then, she felt a presence so close to her. In the lab. He was here!

She turned her head in the direction of this new lifeforce. The Renewal Machine flickered in and out of view. It’s unfortunate occupant, Domino, remained secure in its uselessness.

“Wrong direction. Damn my senses,” the witch muttered, then called out, “Shinobi! I may not see you now, but if you hoped to fool me for long, consider those hopes dashed! I know you are still here!” No response, but her own echo. “I feel your lifeforce.” Nothing. “I know...I know I’m not alone.”

“No...you’re not...”

“You?!”

“You had me...killed.”

“How...? How can you...?”

“To test...a machine.”

“Then...the Machine worked?” Selene gasped, despite her veiled fear.

“No,” was the monotone response. “Lightning struck...the same place...twice. I’m...lucky...that way.”

A mechanical fist broke Selene’s jaw. She sensed the life returning to Domino’s empty, brooding eyes. And she knew that, just as fate had put the fight back into the mutant mercenary, it had given the witch warning enough to call it a day.

“Tell me you know your way outta this place, kid.” Michael Jackson grumbled to his partner in flight, Sunspot.

“I would if the lights weren’t wiggin’ out right now,” DaCosta replied.

The two men began to negotiate the stairway, despite the flickering chandeliers and wall-mounted lamps. A moment later, the devious voice at the bottom of the stairs stopped their progress.

“You’re going to trust ‘Berto to lead you out of here, Agent?” Dragoness seethed. “He’s a traitor. A bastard. Sucks for you.”

She fired a cluster of bio-electric stings from her fist, and Sunspot pushed Jackson into the corner of the balcony before diving behind a planter. Dragoness charged up the steps, her angry eyes missing nothing despite the strobe-like setting.

Sunspot tried to power up even a spark of his stored solar energy--something more than mere heat--but the effects of Dragoness’s earlier attack had not fully faded. He tried to concentrate, but the heaving whispers in the corner stole his attention.

“I got this far, dammit,” the agent muttered. “I can’t die. Not me....”

Issues, Sunspot thought quizzically. The man had issues.

“There you are, ‘Berto,” Dragoness said. She’d cleared the stairway in the momentary darkness. Now, Sunspot could feel her angry breath on his face. “Who were you working for? Cable? Maybe even Xavier?”

“I was alone. Only took one guy to infiltrate your bunch of losers.”

“Oooh, I’m gonna enjoy taking your body to Shinobi. Then we’ll see what he really thinks of his ‘bro’ hm?”

Sunspot gazed across the balcony, but the agent was still cowering in a catatonic state in the corner.

Finally...a spark--he felt it!

“You and Shinobi deserve each other,” Sunspot said mischievously. And then, a lonely flash of solar energy from his fingertip bewildered Dragoness.

“But Domino didn’t deserve to die!”

With the fury born of friendship lost, Sunspot rolled his fist across Dragoness’s unprepared chin. She staggered back, and to even his surprise, the balcony railing did not hold and he heard her body crack against the checkered tile below.

He rushed down the stairs and knelt over her prone form. He heard her labored breaths. Better deal than Dom’d scored.

“That’s what I’m talking about.” The agent was standing behind him. “Straight killed that mutie chicken.”

“She’s not dead.”

“Oh! Don’t matter. We’re still alive! I’m still alive!” He vigorously shook Sunspot’s hand. The man’s hand, like his voice, quaked almost violently. “Damn, I made it.”

You’re welcome, Sunspot mused. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Sure! Jackson! Mike Jackson!”

“Michael Jackson, huh? Heh, that’s kinda funny.” As much as anything was, under the circumstances.

Suddenly, Jackson was wearing a new face. An ugly face. An enraged face. His dark skin reddened, and his eyes burned through Sunspot’s own.

“There’s nothin’ funny about it, boy! You live my life and tell me what’s funny! Wait ‘til life takes a crap in your lap, then tell me what’s funny! It ain’t my fault those agents died! I didn’t kill them! But who gets the glares around the water cooler? It ain’t my fault my parents weren’t with it! Who was I thirty years ago? And who was he?”

“Who?” Sunspot asked.

“Color of my skin. Name they gave me. All those suckas. Things just happen! It’s all coincidence!”

Though Sunspot had no idea what Jackson was talking about just then, all he wanted to do was take the angry agent out to cool off around a cup of coffee. De-caf. But before DaCosta could make the suggestion, or say something more profanity-riddled, Jackson clocked him with an unexpected fist. Then another. And another. Until he was motionless under Jackson’s inexplicable ire and couldn’t feel his legs anymore. Until he was bleeding from his ears. Until the world drifted away like a paper hat in an angry ocean.

“You’ve got a chip on your shoulder, Jackson,” came the voice across the room. The voice Jackson was too restless to hear.

“Whatever fate decides, you just have to adapt. That’s life.”

Three chest shots from his own pistol, and Michael Jackson slumped over Sunspot’s still body.

The curse had eaten of itself, and Jackson didn’t walk away this time.

Domino did.

The storm had cleared, and the black helicopters buzzed imminently somewhere off in the SoCal night.

And in the mansion, Tempo found Sunspot’s increasingly lifeless body next to Dragoness’s and the dead DEA agent’s. She altered the flow of time around Roberto enough to slow his descent into death, but she knew he didn’t have much time. She didn’t hesitate to help--escape hadn’t even occurred to her.

At the rear of the mansion, Black Marvel, Mystique, and Polaris had the effortless chore of detaining the unconscious MLF guards. Mystique had sent Sabretooth to retrieve Guido. They’d give the Agents Cooper the unenviable, messy task of gathering Fuse’s charred, skeletal remains from the roof.

“How’s Domino doing?” Mystique asked, peering across the puddle-strewn patio at the near-catatonic merc.

“Hard to say, she’s not very talkative,” Polaris answered. “We may never know what she went through tonight. Besides Tempo, she’s about the only person who made it out of there in tact, and barely. Someone killed Jackson, and Dragoness and Sunspot might as well be dead. And according to Tempo, it’s anyone’s guess where Selene and Shaw got off to. But somebody was certainly looking down on Domino tonight.” She cocked her head toward Mystique. “I’m surprised she’s even a concern to you.”

“Yeah...well...”

As Polaris pondered Mystiques uncharacteristic consideration, a familiar, if strangely feeble voice broke her thoughts.

“Sabes told me you guys didn’t save me none. No wonder he didn’t stick around.”

She turned to see Guido’s near-shapeless form approach painfully. “What...happened?!” She rushed to his side, followed by an anxious Mystique.

“Just playin’ with the boys, Ma,” he smiled. “But they didn’t really wanna play much.”

“But your body. It’s so...”

“Ugly. I know. Too much stored kinetic energy.”

“You need medical attention, Carosella,” Mystique admonished.

“Thanks for caring, but I really just need to hit something.”

Hearing a sudden, whirring rumble across the estate, they noticed flashing lights making their way out of a large complex.

Tempo had been summoned by the commotion, and noted, “That’s gotta be Shinobi. That’s the plane he and Dragoness came in on.”

“Damn. He’s getting away,” Mystique moaned.

“I needed something to hit,” Guido mumbled. “That’ll do.”

“What do you mean?” Polaris asked.

Guido didn’t seem to hear her. “Tempo, give me some speed.”

“What for? I think you guys should just let him go. Roberto needs our help.”

He squeezed her arm with more power than he knew, harder than she could stand. “Just do it!”

“Okay...okay.”

“Guido, stop fooling around,” Polaris demanded.

“For once, Lorna, I’m not.”

He took well to his newly-acquired swiftness as he disappeared into the distance, toward the rolling Piper Saratoga II TC. Sure enough, he found a frantic Shaw in the cockpit, desperate to make enough speed to clear the barrier surrounding the estate. But as soon as Guido reached the plane and wrapped his hands around the landing gear base under the cockpit, the Piper slipped and weaved along the makeshift concrete runway.

From the cockpit, Guido saw Shaw crying, “You’re crazy! Let go!” and so he grabbed tighter and pulled against the struggling craft. He had a plan.

Shaw would need close to fifteen-hundred feet to take off successfully. He had it, but barely, and was losing clear ground every moment. He gunned the engines to their max, made a little progress against Strong Guy’s seeming suicide mission.

The front wheels left the ground until Guido pulled against the landing gear even harder, and the plane kissed the ground violently. Shaw’s repeated attempts to increase speed and climb the sky were thwarted, time and again. But Guido had begun this exhibition drained, and tugging at a speeing Piper Saratoga took a lot out of a guy. Even a Strong Guy. At last, Shaw’s plane got off the ground for good, even if Guido still clung to the landing gear and hung ten feet above the rolling ground.

But fifteen-hundred feet of runway? Shaw had passed that mark about fourteen-hundred feet earlier.

Both men realized this at the same time, as the concrete barrier sped toward them. Shaw wrestled with the instrument panel and cried and squealed. Guido, he just smiled. He had a plan, and as his pulsating body hung perilously from the landing gear, about to join the helpless plane in intruding upon the barrier, he was about to see it through.

He smiled. “Perfect.”

KA-BLAMMM!!!

“No one could have survived that collision, Polaris,” Mystique said as she, Lorna, Black Marvel, and Tempo dug through the debris. The overwhelming husks of concrete scattered over the puny Piper had smothered the flames, but also lowered to near nothingness the chances of Guido’s or Shaw’s survival.

“Don’t count him out, dammit!” Polaris shot back. “He’s survived a lot of things. He’s a fighter.” Consistently, and to the others’ surprise, Lorna found the strength to roll the countless chunks of concrete from atop the smoldering hill of carnage. Still, it would take a crane to completely clear the debris, and only to find two dead men beneath the wreckage, they lamented.

Hrmph...

Hardly audible, but it was something! It was human! Lorna knew.

“It’s what’s left of the plane settling in the pile,” Marvel informed Lorna.

Polaris had her bleeding hands around a mass of debris. “Shut up and help me lift.”

With the portion of wreckage removed, the four of them uncovered the source of the sound. Indeed, it was a person!

He was frail and diminutive, his clothes tattered and scorched beyond recognition. He struggled to move amidst the remains of the collision.

“How the hell did Shaw make it?” Tempo gasped.

But Polaris saw more in the man of fortune. Broken sunglasses beside a hairless head.

“That’s not Shaw.”

She bent over and helped the feeble man out of the pile, carefully onto the ground. If not for the rose-adorned tattoo of Sean Young’s face on his exposed buttocks, she would have never guessed that this was Guido. The stored energy he’d always lived with, the kinetic energy he’d gathered tonight, all somehow discharged in the collision with the plane and the barrier. Now, he was so small. So...normal looking.

Yes, Guido’d had a plan.

Manhattan, a few days later:

The last of the suitcases and junk-filled boxes sat beside the door. Nevermind finding the money to pay the rent--it was going to be hard for Lorna to get used to home life without Abigail experimenting on her piano and Guido rummaging through the fridge. But Hollywood called the two strange-love-birds, and Abigail was leaving Lorna alone in the apartment. Not that she would miss Abigail, but Guido always made good company, even if she wouldn’t admit it to him.

He stepped through the open doorway, wiping a few beads of sweat from his brow. Lorna still had not adjusted to his new appearance, though he seemed to revel in his proportionate size. He stood an average six-feet tall now, sported clothes he didn’t have to order special over the ‘net; where he used to boast a chest a college professor with a marker could explain the theory of relativity on, now he could actually stand to spend a few weeks in the gym. Lorna wasn’t certain if her friend looked better since he’d essentially purged himself of his mutant hindrances--he still looked too different.

Guido appreciated the strange looks she couldn’t help but give him. They meant that he’d succeeded in reversing his mutant nature. He smiled at her perpetual reaction and handed her a check. “There’s Abigail’s share of the rent for the rest of the month. She says she’ll arrange to get her piano moved once we find a place out west.”

Lorna nodded. “Hollywood, huh?”

“Hey, I’ve got a rising star on my hands. A musical genius.”

“I lived with her for three months, Guido. I’m sorry, but she’s far from genius,” Lorna laughed.

“I hear ya, but I gotta take care of my girl, y’know? ‘Sides, I could use a change of scenery myself. Maybe I’ll find something to do out there.”

“So the Agents Cooper, they just let you go, just like that, huh? They’re not even gonna do anything to Jamie as punishment?”

Guido shrugged. “What’d be the point? What good am I to them now? At least Strong Guy could bust heads if he had to. But Normal Guy? I suppose I could pack lunches for all you mercs,” he chuckled.

“What do I tell...people when they ask?” People: Alex. Jamie. Rahne. Maybe Pietro.

“Tell ‘em the truth. Tell ‘em the pain was too much, and I had to do something. Tell ‘em The Dream is a good cause, but it ain’t for ol’ Guido no more. Tell ‘em I’m living my own dream.”

They heard the car horn squeak from outside.

“Sounds like Abigail’s getting antsy,” Lorna rolled her eyes. “Can I get a hug?”

He posed like a model, showing off his new, normal figure. “You can now!”

The two embraced, and he picked up the last of Abigail’s stuff.

“Keep in touch?” Lorna implored.

“Oh, you know it.” He smiled and walked out of the apartment.

As she shut the door behind him, Lorna bubbled with a strange feeling.

Betrayal? That Guido--the only familiar, friendly face among the government’s mercenaries--had taken the selfish route and managed to escape Uncle Sam’s grip without consequence? That he’d abandoned The Dream? No, the desperate measures he’d taken to purge himself of his mutant essence were evidence of the pain he’d endured since that essence had manifested. He deserved to be free--of the burden of their involuntary duties, and of the pain she could not imagine.

Envy? Unlike Guido’s, Lorna’s genetics would not allow her to rid herself of her mutant powers in the same fashion. No matter how hard she’d try, at least biologically, she would be a mutant--and God forbid, a government captive--forever.

Or was it motivation? That there was a way out. That as strong as her captors were, she could be stronger. She already held all the cards--she had from the first hand so many months ago. It was simply a matter of playing her hand, and playing it right. And if there was ever a right time...

It could be done. If anything, Guido was proof that there is such a thing as free will--proof that we make our own fate.

Next issue: Newcomer Ryan Flanagan introduces the Maple Leaves!!! Then in #110, the mercs face the aftermath of this issue, and it won't be pretty.