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#80 SEPTEMBER Year 4 |
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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!
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"The End of Days Part Three:Riders on the Storm"
What Has Gone Before: X-Force, securing the somewhat dubious aid of the posessed Caliban, is off to fight Apocalypse. Apocalypse, meanwhile, has just engaged his assault of Harbingers - robotic drones that incinerate all life they come across - and is in the middle of being nuked.
Sam Guthrie
Cannonball's thoughts wanted to whirl about, to fill him with confusion. Discipline kept him sane, kept him steady. Three men had made him a hero - Professor X, Magneto, and Cable. He'd gotten still more training at the hands of Cyclops, during his stint in the X-Men, and Hawkeye, when he was with the Avengers. He could do this. All it took was focus.
The girl next to him made it all worth it. Tabitha Smith had been calling herself "Boom-Boom" when first they met, a stupid name if ever there was one, but it was a different world then. Now she was Meltdown, and Sam couldn't tell if the change was for the better.
All he knew was, she was with him now. And once En Sabah Nur* was taken care of, he'd see if he could figure out why she was so angry all the time... and if he could help bring back the gentler girl he'd fallen for.
[* Apocalypse's real name --En Shawn Nur]
Fort Meade
Allyson Tremont couldn't help but shudder. She'd heard the call - "Fox Three."
The signal for an armed, launched air-to-surface nuclear device.
The Secret Service would be running scared right about now - the call of "Marching Order" would have gone out, and the President and his family would be aboard 'Kneecap', a big-ass plane with enough communications equipment on board to keep the NCO in touch with anyone he needed to talk to, while at the same time keeping him from being an easy target. She hoped he was in mid-air by now.
[* 'Kneecap' is NEACP - the National Emergency Air Command Post. --Shawn, Master of Acronyms]
The screens around her showed ballistic tracks from all over the world - the Harbingers, they were called. That much, she knew. Everything else was still a mystery. Little jets with lasers, killing everything they found... the National Guard had gotten ready in damn near record time, she'd give them that.
She hoped it would be enough.
Jamie Madrox
For a man who really can be in two places at once, helplessness is not a welcome feeling. But Jamie was feeling it, all right.
He found himself irrationally wishing Guido* was here - he wouldn't be, of course, but the hope was still there. He didn't see as how Guido's presence would really help, but having his best friend enarby would serve to calm his nerves a bit, and Jamie needed some calming.
[* aka Strong Guy, currently running about in X-Factor, at the fiendish hands of Sam Everett! --plugs-other-authors-Shawn]
He'd thought he was done with the superhero gig. He'd only gone to Boston to see Meltdown, see if she could use a hand, what with all the media attention... but sure enough, he got sucked in.
Maybe it was a form of mutant power, the ability to find wierd stuff happening. It sure seemed to happen to him frequently.
I'm just a regular guy, he thought to himself. How do I keep getting myself into this kind of thing?
South Africa, in a hidden base
En Sabah Nur couldn't help but smile.
He had worked for quite some time to bring matters to this point. The X-Men had been pioneers, true, but it was these children, this X-Force, that was the truest representation of mutantkind.
They had grown up with their powers, in their new environment. The followed the trail that the X-Men had blazed. The world had not come to hate and fear them over time... it did so from birth. Their environment shaped them as much as their powers had.
En Sabah Nur had worked for a long, long time to shape that environment. Seeing to it that people like Graydon Creed learned what he wished them to learn - and in such a way that their hatred would rise against mutants. Making certain that certain scientific studies about mutants came to the attention of people like Robert Kelly, back when that notable had been a Senator. Seeing to it that other studies were kept hidden from him. Subtle manipulations - subtler than most would credit him for, which was in and of itself a sign of his subtlety. The world knew Apocalypse as a powerhouse, a harbinger.
They would never see the puppet master, and that was how he preferred it.
Croyd Crenson
This isn't even my world. What am I doing here?
Croyd knew the answer, of course. He was here because Buddy Holly had asked him to come here and get rid of the Bodysnatcher.
Buddy Holly... wasn't that a trip. A musician decides at the last minute not to board a plane, and the plane crashes. He spends a number of years travelling around, looking for some kind of meaning. Finally he plays a benefit concert in Jokertown - the part of New York City that used to be the Bowery - and the Wild Card virus manifests.
He'd been infected in the first place because of Croyd.
"Typhoid Croyd", they called him at that point - an ace with the ability to infect other people with the Wild Card virus, that alien virus that had been brought to earth by the Takisians, and which had almost been stopped by Dr. Tachyon...
It was too long a story to go through at the moment. Suffice to say that Holly was a shaman, now, and in this... incarnation... Croyd had some kind of link to the dreamtime. That link was going to help him get rid of the Bodysnatcher now.
Croyd remembered when the Bodysnatcher had been a loudmouthed weightlifting chick named Zelda. It seemed like a long time ago.
Of course, Croyd also remembered doing speed with Hunter S. Thompson, watching the Rolling Stones in concert, and sleeping through the invasion of Ellis Island. So, how on earth was he going to call this wierd?
The USS Idaho
"All hands, this is the captain! I want us to run silent, immediately, with all electrics shut down! This is an NBC weaponry* alert, people!"
[* NBC - Nuclear, Biological, Chemical. --NBShawn]
The USS Idaho slowed to a halt as lights, consoles, and speakers all went silent and dark. Captain Jerome Blackwell slumped in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. From here, all they could do was wait, hope they were far enough away from the blast, and pray.
Tabitha Smith
For the first time in years, Meltdown found herself wishing she'd never gotten into the whole 'mutant superhero' business.
She remembered the sharp prick of the needle, the first blissful moment when the drugs kicked in... the only thing that let her work. The times she'd had to endure the punches, the kicks, the foul words... the cold wind blowing across her face as she stood out on street corners...
No. Those times were gone, they were over.
She reached over to squeeze Sam's hand, and he smiled at her. And everything was okay again.
The United Nations General Assembly
To say that the assembled world leaders were a bit put out would be something of an understatement.
It would also be misleading, as very few "world leaders" were present - just their appointed representatives. However, those representatives wielded immense power, and they were, at present - to use the vernacular - going apeshit.
For one thing, the only reason the Harbingers of Apocalypse hadn't turned them all to ash was due to the concerted efforts of New York City's vaunted superhero community - but it had been a close thing countless times already, as Harbinger after Harbinger attempted to dive into the flag-ringed U.N. Building, each carrying a tremendous payload of high explosives. This, in and of itself, would have set anyone on edge.
The fact that the United States had just tried to nuke Apocalypse wasn't helping matters.
The U.N. Secretary-General banged his gavel ineffectually as shouts and accusations in many languages rang through the hall, shouting, "People, please, remain calm! SHIELD informs us that once the electromagnetic radiation has cleared somewhat, they will have video of the area - it should be only a few minutes! Can we not remain calm for at least that long?"
The chaos would have made Apocalypse smile.
Bill Russell
The thoughts of his companions were cluttered, troubled things. The thoughts of the man called Shatterstar were cool, serene - water on the surface of a lake, unmoved by wind or rainfall. Calm.
Deadly calm.
He knew only one thing. He had an enemy. That enemy was Apocalypse.
He had only one plan. To kill Apocalypse, whatever the cost.
Since Gomi's death, Shatterstar hadn't been able to think much more clearly than that. When one finally, after years of solitude, finds love, and that love is suddenly snatched away... it tends to damage one, emotionally.
And Shatterstar's emotions had been kind of unhealthy to begin with.
The Streets of New York City
And.... heave! Spider-Man pulled with all of his augmented strength on the webline - so flimsy, it seemed, so ineffectual - and managed to turn the course of the Harbinger just a few degrees.
That was enough. It slammed into another of the automated drones, sending both into a massive explosion, a rolling wave of heat and pressure and death. If he'd not had his preternatural reflexes, Peter Parker would be one big Spidey-charbroil right now.
Usually, at times like this, Spider-Man would joke. It was that or cry, he'd said often enough. But after having stopped somewhere around thirty of Apocalypse's Harbingers, with no end to their supply in sight, the jokes had run out.
Now it was all he could do to survive, and try to help others do the same.
Parker prayed it would be enough.
Garrison Kane
I hope it will be enough.
Kane, sometimes called Weapon X, flexed his hand into a fist. He watched the gleaming metal that was his arms bend and flow. Some kind of memory-shape alloy, he'd been told; he never pretended to understand.
Excruciating pain. That was what he remembered of his time in the Weapon X Program. Pain and changes. And what did he have now? Metal arms, hands that could detatch and fly around - and wasn't that the king of all superpowers, huh? - and a computer in his head. Terrific.
He'd spent time with Cable, though, here and there, and when Cable had learned of Apocalypse's plans - he'd never divulged how - he had judged himself too weak, to unused to his new situation*, to deal with it. And so he enlisted his old pal Kane, and told them how to contact his former proteges - the X-Force. How to contact Cannonball, too, the very best of his students.
[* Cable was captured by the Phalanx in X-MEN, and as a result of their treatment, was left without his legendary psionic powers a few issues back --Nathan Shawnspring]
Kane just hoped it would be enough.
He had a sinking feeling it might not be.
Romeo Three
Captain James Snow thought he was going to throw up.
That would, of course, be a singularly bad idea in his flight mask, so by sheer force of will he pushed down the bile and muttered, "Jesus. Jesus Christ. What the fuck did we just do?"
His copilot, Max Dufresne, glanced over. "What we had to, Jim. You know that."
Snow sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, Jesus. Jesus fuck, I hope so."
The B-2 Spirit - popularly known as "the Stealth bomber" - was RTB, or Returning to Base, only seconds ahead of the rolling wave of electromagnetic doom that was a nuclear explosion. Behind him, Snow knew, forces were erupting that could strip electrons from atoms, that could reduce the fundamental building blocks of matter he'd learned about in Mister Jaworski's Science class into even smaller components.
He had become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.
Serendipity
The mysterious girl knew what she had to do, and she hated it.
But it was the only way to find out who - what - she was... and save the world while she was at it.
She tried very hard not to look at Tabitha.
Across the World
The video feed came in slowly, staticky. And everyone, all over the world, saw it.
On the floor of the U.N. General Assembly, the shouts died down to stone silence as the images sprang into life on the giant screens.
On the streets of New York, it seemed that even the relentless, inhuman Harbingers slowed their attack for an instant, to allow Manhattan's defenders, both the superhuman and non-powered variety, to see the scene broadcast on the giant screen in Times Square, and on every other television set in the world.
In a mansion in Westchester County, a Professor lowered his face into his hands, the cold metal of his wheelchair suddenly seeming more confining than ever.
In Mexico City, the one member of the Conquistadores, the national superhuman team, still in the base - on monitor duty, coordinating the attacks of his teammates - threw up noisily.
On the USS Idaho, Jerome Blackwell's face went the color of ashes as he stumbled back from the periscope.
All across the world - save in one jet, flying towards Southern Africa, only two minutes away now from the confrontation that would determine the fate of their world - people watched, and saw... and abandoned hope.
The mushroom cloud was beginning to disperse... and through the smoke and debris and electromagnetic chaos, Apocalypse still stood.
He was laughing.
NEXT ISSUE: The penultimate issue of Shawn Connolly's X-FORCE run, and what a doozy it's gonna be! Don't you dare miss this one, True Believers!!!