X-Force #78

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WARNING! This title involves language and/or situations that may be found unacceptable by some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

MV1
#78
JULY
Year 4

The Human Rocket. The Weapon X. The Ace. The Seeress. The Explosive Street Kid. The Multiple Man. The Mojoverse Ninja Warrior. Even the Cyborg Lobster.

They have been baptized in crucibles hotter than many of us can even imagine. They have been pushed, tested, hurt, even killed. And they still fight the good fight, in the only way they know how, the only ones who can. They do it their way. They may not know legal from illegal, but they know right from wrong. They are X-FORCE!

Cannonball - Sam Guthrie, erstwhile X-Man and West Coast Avenger, returned to his roots and the woman he loves. A mutant with the power to 'blast', generating explosive energy for rocket-like flight and a near-invulnerable force field.

Meltdown - Tabitha Smith, once called Boom-Boom, with explosive powers and an equally fiery temper. As rather painful events of her past come to the light of day, Tab finds herself more and more unable to control her anger.

Shatterstar - Ben Russell always thought he was a descendant of the X-Men's Longshot, a warrior from the Mojoverse come to enlist the aid of Earth. Lately events have thrown those beliefs into question, but they do not change his incredible warrior ability... nor the fact that his lover, Gomi, was recently brutally murdered by drug dealers in Boston.

Bill - a cybernetically enhanced lobster, arguably Gomi's greatest creation, now lost and alone in a world that is entirely strange to him. If not for the friendship of Shatterstar, Bill might well have gone mad by now... and perhaps he still will.

Serendipity - a shaman and precognitive, this lovely Goth woman has recently learned that she is nothing more than a creation, aflawed attempt to recreate the being of power called Adam Warlock. Who it was that created her, as well as what they hoped to gained, are still mysteries.

The Multiple Man - Jamie Madrox has the mutant power to create 'duplicates' of himself from kinetic energy. Lighthearted and generally somewhat silly, Jamie can be deadly serious when he needs to be. He just doesn't like it.

The Sleeper - Croyd Crenson is not of this world, but from another Earth where an alien 'Wild Card' virus created men and women with bizarre powers. What brings him to this world is still something of a mystery, but it seems to have something to do with Serendipity and her visions of a dark future ahead.

Garrison Kane - a 'graduate' of Canada's infamous Weapon X program, Kane has gone freelance. Just what he seeks to gain from hooking up with X-Force is still unknown, but it seems certain that there must be something.

"The End of Days Part One: Distant Rumblings"

What Has Gone Before: Finally the entire X-FORCE team has been gathered - together, as they were meant to be. Will it be in time to save the world?

Tabitha Smith had never been so happy in her life, looking up at the slim, gangling man clad in blue and gold, who smiled down at her and offered her a hand. "I missed you, you dumb fucking hayseed."

Cannonball chuckled, helping her to her feet. "Such language, girl! Came lookin' for ya. Figured you might want someone t'talk to, that magazine bein' out an' all. Mister Kane got ahold of me, told you I'd find ya here. Ah missed you."

That was Sam Guthrie for you. In the middle of a pitched battle against hundreds of bizarre mutant servants of Apocalypse, he'd still chastise you for using bad language and call people 'Mister'. It was one of the reasons Meltdown adored him.

"I missed you too, Sam. But, umm... can we catch up on the reunion bit after we beat up the bad guys and save Caliban?"

Sam grinned - mature he may be, but he still grinned like a little kid at the drop of a hat - and answered, "Sounds like a plan. I'll hold ya to it." And then he was off, rocketing under the power of his 'blasting field', bowling through a pair of Apocalypse's minions... but Tabitha wasn't worried. He'd be back at her side soon enough, and that made everything okay.

Shatterstar showed his opponents no mercy. He rarely did anymore. A kinetically-charged blade removed the arm of a three-headed mutate with a single clean swipe, the crimson blood spraying onto his face, leaving little red droplets that would be a pain in the ass to wash out later. No matter. He had work to do. He sprang onto the next opponent with a hoarse, wordless battle cry, grinning wolfishly at the twinge of fear that crossed the man's face.

Serendipity, on the other hand, practiced a less lethal, if equally effective, form of combat. Her precognitive abilities told her in advance what moves her enemies would be making and when, and so all were sidestepped and dodged with a liquid, seemingly carefree grace. When she actually made an offensive movement, it was using a form of judo, using her opponent's momentum and strength against them. By pitching mutates into the force blasts of other mutates, she stopped her fair share of enemies without ever using any offensive abilities of her own.

Madrox, however, was lying unconscious on the ground. Actually, twelve of him were lying unconscious on the ground. The other twenty of him appeared to be having no problems, lashing out at mutates with his own inimitable combat style - namely 'let's all gang up and dogpile a guy into submission, then kick him seven or eight times, then move on to the next...' Who needs subtlety when there's eighty of you?

And around them all, the battle raged.

The large blue man grinned. So the pups were here to stop him. Four mutants, a cyborg, a genetically altered man from another dimension, an artificial construct, and a cyborg crustacean.

These eight... children... were here to take on En Sabah Nur.

The oldest known mutant of them all, En Sabah Nur, the Apocalypse, couldn't help but laugh. With the press of a button he vanished... and so did X-Force.

A flash. Darkness. Light. Snow.

Imagine you're Cannonball. You just helped forestall an invasion by the Shi'ar which had been engineered by Doctor Doom*, you discovered your girlfriend had just appeared in a porno mag, you come to see her and are immediately swept into a battle with faceless minions of Apocalypse, and now you're in the middle of a blizzard.

[* Don't tell me you haven't been reading West Coast Avengers?!? --A Disappointed Shawn]

You'd be a bit confused, right?

Well, that's why Sam Guthrie is Cannonball and you're not. He remained calm and collected, pulling out his Avengers commcard. By using the commcard to patch himself through to both the Avengers Mansion in New York City and the Avengers West Coast Compound, the miniature computer encased within the wafer-thin card was able to triangulate his position.

Which is how he was able to make a confusing situation still worse by looking up at the others and saying, "We're in Antarctica."

The new segment was a dream come true for Jane Rodriguez.

Twenty minutes into Marvel Age, the segment's logo came up - Mutant Marvels, with Jane Rodriguez. Name billing, a regular segment, and a twenty percent increase in pay - which was a good thing, since that asshole she married had left her for some stewardess and the legal costs for the divorce were piling up, plus trying to put food on the table for herself and the kids... Jane pushed those thoughts away and smiled for the camera as the little green light came on.

"Hello again, and welcome to the first installment of Mutant Marvels, where we discuss the exploits of the so-called 'homo sapiens superior'. I'm Jane Rodriguez."

Most people don't realize it, but the famed Tele-Prompt-R is just a couple of mirrors. Set up like a periscope, really, reflecting the text from a computer screen twice, showing Jane her script live and in true color. The second of the mirrors, the one Jane actually saw, was a two-way mirror, so when she read from the screen she was actually looking right at the camera. Memorized scripts were a thing of the distant past.

"Tonight we have with us Lilian St. Paul, founder and president emeritus of The Togetherness Group, a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering human-mutant relations. Thank you for being with us, Miss St. Paul."

"Thank you for having me, Jane."

"Now I understand that The Togetherness Group has just formed something of a partnership with the Rainbow Coalition?"

"Over there we'll find shelter."

Croyd shook his head. "Serendipity, one of these days I'm gonna learn that trick." A small vial of pills was in his hand, and he had just dry-swallowed three large red capsules. "What the hell kind of shelter could there be in fucking Antarctica?"

Cannonball chuckled. "An old base of Magneto's, I'm guessing. He built more bases down here than anyone can remember."

Bill, from his perch atop Shatterstar's shoulder, muttered, "Can we get to it, then? I'm freezing my claws off here."

The trek began with no further encouragement.

It was over two hours later when the motley band did, indeed, find the base - a one-story compound, this one was, rather than the enormous gleaming towers that Magneto was generally so fond of building. Freud might have had something to say about that. Tabitha was willing to bet the thing extended into the ground, though, probably at least ten sub-basements.

The door couldn't bar them from entering, not after Croyd forced it open with a display of strength none of them had suspected the wiry, agitated-looking man had possessed. Once inside, Serendipity located a data port, and between Kane and Bill's cybernetics, power was restored to the facility shortly. Shatterstar found a cache of rations while Cannonball set about restoring the heat, and Madrox quickly doubled and redoubled himself, each 'dupe' hacking into a different computer terminal, trying to discover where they were, what base this was, and perhaps what had brought them here.

Which left Tabitha with little enough to do, so she found a parka and wandered outside.

The base seemed to be near the coast - inside, Madrox was discovering that they were only about a mile away from McMurdo Base - and she could see the ocean, in the distance. Her sunglasses had been modified by Bill perhaps a month before to function as 25x binoculars on command, and for the first time she used the feature, scanning the coastline.

She was understandably disturbed by what she saw.

"Conn, come to antenna depth right the hell now!"

Captain Jerome Blackwell was skipper of the USS Idaho, one of the remaining Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarines still in service - most of the Ohios were being decommissioned in favor of the newer Seawolf class, to say nothing of the prototype models Stane Industries was working on. Jerome had seen some of the designs, and was fairly impressed. But though it may be old, Idaho was still his ship, and he believed in decorum. Decorum included things like not swearing at your officers.

If the man at the conn was surprised at his captain's apparent panic, however, he showed no sign. He hadn't seen what the captain had seen in the periscope. "Come to antenna depth immediately, aye, sir."

So it was that a Critic-priority message - a higher priority than even the vaunted Flash traffic, and rarely used - was shortly send off to ComSubLant - Commander Submarine Forces, Atlantic Fleet - that would come as close as theplanet Earth had ever been to causing World War Three.

Tabitha raced back inside the facility. "We have got a very big problem."

Since Madrox had the computer system up and running again, it took only a few moments for Tabitha to access the security cameras outside of the building, and train them on what she had seen just moments earlier.

En Sabah Nur was standing in the ocean. In the ocean, the waves crashing ineffectually against his thighs, grown so tall as to have his head partially obscured by cloud cover. As the team watched, the enormous figure drew in a deep breath, and shouted... shouted so loudly that even here, from easily a mile away, they heard it, felt it even.

"I AM THE APOCALYPSE! I AM THE HARBINGER OF YOUR DOOM! PREPARE, HUMANS! PREPARE FOR THE END OF DAYS!!"

It was Madrox, predictably, who said it first, and best.

"Oh, shit."

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

You may have noticed that it's been awhile since the last issue of X-FORCE. You may also have noticed that I'm no longer writing X-MEN. Well, to be blunt, life kinda came up and bit me on the ass.

Things are a little better now, luckily, and thanks to everyone who gave me support and encouragement through some of the darker times. Will Short has the reins of X-MEN o be blunt, life kinda came up and bit me on the ass.

Things are a little better now, luckily, and thanks to everyone who gave me support and encouragement through some of the darker times. Will Short has the reins of X-MEN now, and I think you'll find that he is doing an utterly superb job with it. And oh yeah - I plan to keep 'em coming on this title, at least 'till they tell me I have to stop. I've been planning on this storyline for a while, and it's been percolating in my head... I think you'll find it's just gotten done, and I hope, in the end, it's been worth the wait.

Thanks your the patience, gang!

-Shawn-

NEXT ISSUE: Well, whatever happens, it's sure to be big... but how on Earth are the merry motley miscreants of X-Force gonna walk away from this one? Or... will they walk away from it? Stay tuned, True Believers!