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When Last We Left Our Heroes:
Angel sacrificed himself to save the world from the terrifying menace of the Apocalypse, destroying the villain once and for all! Scarlet Witch, against the wishes of her overbearing brother Quicksilver, joined the harrowed heroes and became a member of the team. You can bet that didn’t sit well with ol’ Pietro, true believer!
Now, Cyclops sits alone in the Danger Room, brooding over all the events that led the team to this point:
Despite his efforts at distraction and solitude, Cyclops cannot shake the guilt and regret he feels as the role of team leader, without his longtime mentor at his side, begins to weigh upon the cycloptic mutant. Meanwhile, the stubborn speedster - Quicksilver - has other plans.
So face front, True Believer! And read on...
Angel sacrificed himself to save the world from the terrifying menace of the Apocalypse, destroying the villain once and for all! Scarlet Witch, against the wishes of her overbearing brother Quicksilver, joined the harrowed heroes and became a member of the team. You can bet that didn’t sit well with ol’ Pietro, true believer!
Now, Cyclops sits alone in the Danger Room, brooding over all the events that led the team to this point:
- The Death of Xavier in the Onslaught Wars (X-Men: Onslaught Prime Alpha #4).
- The sacrifice of Warren Worthington during the Apocalypse Crusade (X-Men #78-90!).
- The ever-present menace of the Hellfire Club (The Hellfire Attractions storyline in Astonishing X-Men #6, Volume 7!)
- And the strange request for asylum by the Scarlet Witch (The now-classic “House of M” chapter in X-Men 1974 Annual!)
Despite his efforts at distraction and solitude, Cyclops cannot shake the guilt and regret he feels as the role of team leader, without his longtime mentor at his side, begins to weigh upon the cycloptic mutant. Meanwhile, the stubborn speedster - Quicksilver - has other plans.
So face front, True Believer! And read on...
Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters
The Danger Room
Scott Summers - otherwise known as the X-Man Cyclops - stood in the Danger Room, glaring at the wisps of smoke wafting across the horrific scene of destruction around him. He gritted his teeth in a scowl, seething as his ruby quartz visor showed nothing of the scene save the glimmering shades of darkest crimson red.
He scanned the monochrome wreckage for any signs of movement, waiting with dark anticipation. His pulse pounded. His adrenaline surged. His well-trained senses were primed and at the ready. Like a hunter staring down his rifle’s ruby scope, the mutant with the laser eye beams waited for the Danger Room’s next move.
A creak in the floorboards, and a glimmer of motion were all Cyclops needed. Without warning, the ground at his feet exploded as another wave of Danger Room battle droids attacked the spot where he’d once been standing, shooting their cannons and emptying their lasers toward his seemingly helpless human form. Luckily for him, Cyclops’ reactions were much, much faster.
While Professor X had programmed the Danger Room to give the X-Men the best training and the deadliest tactics money could buy, the simple fact of the matter remained - these were still simple machines doing the attacking. Patterns, maneuvers, counter-maneuvers - programmed into each battle droid - which Cyclops had spent so many years studying and watching, learning and adapting to. Even on difficulties as high as this, Cyclops was more than a match for almost any Danger Room attack simulation.
His body on near-total auto-pilot, his tactician’s mind watched the tells of each robot’s offensive capabilities. His body moved rhythmic and fluid, dancing with the sweet ease and grace of a career gymnast, idly dodging every attack the Danger Room threw at him. His legs and hands always where they were needed to be - giving him optimum balance.
Then, he went on the offensive.
He adjusted the ruby quartz visor - which gave him full control of his optic blasts - from a series of surgical razor-thin strikes to a devastating crimson blast across the horizon line of his vision. He launched his attacks against the robots with cruel intelligence, striking at their weakest points with the homicidal precision of a skilled sniper. The Danger Room never stood a chance. When it was all over, Cyclops stood again amidst the wreckage once more. The shapes and appearance of the wreckage was changed, yet his visor painted this simulated world with the same shade of boiling red anger he held bottled up inside.
“There had to be another way,” he growled, tensing his fists as the let loose another blast into the Danger Room, disassembling the last, twitching remnants of the robotic gauntlet with his own brand of cleansing optic fire. Nevertheless, unlike the now-felled gauntlet before him, the nagging thoughts swirling steady in the back of the team leader’s mind would require more than just a well-timed set of optic blasts to deal with.
So much had happened in the last few weeks: Xavier had shut off Magneto’s mind, inadvertently creating a homicidal hybrid of the two mutant powerhouses - the being known only as Onslaught - that the X-Men had barely managed to defeat and send into Limbo, with more than just a little help from the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. On top of that, Apocalypse came calling soon after, just as the team was at its weakest and nerves were at their most-strained.
The cycloptic mutant could still feel what Apocalypse’s Horsemen had tried to do to him - namely merge the dying Egyptian titan into his own strong, virile form. Instead, the Angel - Cyclops’s good friend Warren Worthington - sacrificed himself to stop Apocalypse’s mind-transfer, destroying the mad titan god for good. Scott Summers looked down upon his hands, noticing how badly they were shaking beneath his soot-stained yellow gloves at the very thought of sharing consciousness with the blue-skinned menace.
How many times since then, the auburn-haired team leader sighed, his mind racing with the terrible memory, have I seen that blue-lipped monster’s face looking back at me in the mirror?
The fury of the Onslaught. The agony of the Apocalypse. The loss of Warren and the Professor. And just after that, the weekend with the Scarlet Witch’s powers going out-of-control, causing Wanda Maximoff to nearly re-write the universe with a sneeze?
It had been weeks since all of that happened, and yet Cyclops had never stopped going over it and over it again in his mind. Every last second of battle, every last reversal of fortune, every last mind-numbing setback, and every last moment of loss they’d all suffered during that time. He’d gone over every single decision he’d made. Analyzed - over and over - all the facts he’d had at the time, all the people he’d had at-the-ready, and whether or not he could have made any of those decisions differently.
If I’d brought Phoenix with us down that hallway, instead of just Warren and I -- would he still be alive? Would the others have been able to fight off the Horsemen without her once the walls came down?
If I’d stayed with the Professor when he was fighting Magneto, instead of coordinating the fight against the Acolytes...would Xavier still be alive? Would Magneto’s troops have overwhelmed the others without me?
Did I kill Warren and Xavier? Am I responsible for their deaths? If I’d done it all differently, could I have saved them too...
...or would we have lost someone else as well?
Furrowing his brow, the tension in his shoulders slackened. His hands relaxing all on their own, the leader of the troubled X-Men let out an exhausted sigh. He spoke the words once more, this time without frustration or anger. This time, he spoke the words with the tired ache of an old soul, grief-stricken with the terrible pangs of loss and regret:
“There had to be another way,” Cyclops sighed.
“You’re damn right there was, Cyclops,” a harsh, arrogant voice hummed out across the room. Scott Summer’s eyes opened wide beneath his ruby quartz visor, a sudden gasp escaping his lips. He turned toward the speaker, body tensing all on its own as a rush of mighty wind swept past him.
His fingers were trained on the control slots of his visor as turned to face this intruder, only to discover the intruder wasn’t there anymore. Just as Cyclops came to this realization, the lights of the Danger Room suddenly changed hue, signaling that the third wave of battle droid - which had teetered on the cusp of activation - suddenly powered down. The team leader brought his gaze up towards the control room and saw a blurry figure inside the booth. Almost incorporeal - a mint-green phantom, graceful and ghostly in his movements. Nevertheless, despite appearances, Cyclops knew better than that.
The sound of the intruder’s voice. The rushing of displaced winds. The rushing movements of the intruder. There was no mistake. Scott Summers gritted his teeth in annoyance, at the one mutant who’d done his damnedest (besides that ever-lovin’ Logan) to get under Cyclops’s frayed nerves these past few weeks, and had succeeded many more times than not.
“Pietro,” Cyclops muttered.
In the time it took the syllables to leave the team leader’s mouth, the mutant speed demon disabled the Danger Room controls, left the control booth, and paced his way back into Cyclops’s ruby-quartz sight.
“In the flesh, you tin-plated prick,” he smirked, cocky and abrasive in both tone and temperament.
“What’s this about, Pietro?” Cyclops asked, impatient.
Pietro Maximoff - the super-fast mutant known as Quicksilver - narrowed his eyes. “You know what this is about, Summers.”
The mutant leader clasped the bridge of his nose.
Of course Summers knew what this was about. What else could it have been? It had been about the same exact damn thing since Wanda had joined the team.
“Wanda - your sister - has made her choice,” Cyclops said, pointing a frustrated finger at the arrogant man before him. “She wanted asylum. She wanted help controlling her unstable powers. I granted her that asylum.”
“That’s not your choice to make, Summers!” the green-suited speedster growled, pointing an accusatory finger right back at the team leader.
“You’re right,” he replied. “It was Wanda’s choice to make. And she made it.”
Clenching his teeth, the white-haired mutant gave Cyclops a death-stare. “As her brother, I know what’s best for her.”
Unfazed, the team leader leveled his eyes at Pietro and appealed to his oft-ignored sense of reason: “Would you rather she blew apart half of Midtown with an unstable hex? Or deleted all mutants with a single sentence? That’s the scope of power we’re talking about here, Maximoff.”
“Just as long as she uses the word “humans” instead of “mutants”, all’s well with me.”
So much for the sense of reason, Cyclops thought. “Look, mister. Wanda is free to do as she wants. As her brother, I understand you’re feeling very protective of her right now, so--“
“How about this, mister?” the hot-headed speedster spat back, taking frustrated super-speed steps around the stock-still standing Cyclops. “You and me, right now.”
“What?” Cyclops asked, incredulous.
“Best two out of three. I knock you to the ground twice, you let me and my sister leave. You knock me down twice, I drop it? Deal?”
Cyclops squinted at Quicksilver, doing his damnedest to maintain some semblance of professionalism when dealing with such a loose cannon.
“This is ridiculous. There’s no way I’m going to agree to those--“ Cyclops began, just as he felt a massive blow slam against his jaw at what he could only assume was Mach 1. The team leader went flying, shocked with the suddenness of the blow. While Quicksilver’s punch had only been intended to stun, Cyclops’ well-trained senses allowed him to recover to a kneel in short order.
Scott Summers moved his tongue to the side of his mouth, feeling the familiar copper taste of bruising already happening inside. He rubbed at his jaw with gold-gloved fingers, his eyes alighting the speedster in a red haze.
“That’s one,” the scarlet speedster laughed, cockily pacing back and forth at super speed. “Face it, mister. There’s nobody faster than Quicksilver.”
Pietro was beyond talking. This argument was beyond professionalism. Cyclops knew he would have to settle this Pietro’s way - else it would never be settled.
“Perhaps,” he grunted, standing tall as he touched his ruby quartz visor, eyes flashing bright. “but there’s no one more dangerous than Cyclops.”
PFFFZZZT!!
Fiery red hell escaped from the mutant’s visor, traveling towards Pietro Maximoff at light speed. The mutant speedster’s eyes opened wide with shock, before he bottled it up and replaced that shock with the easy sound of arrogant laughter. He sidestepped the deadly blast, making it look elegant and easy, not caring that he’d only milliseconds to spare. The blast exploded hard against wreckage of spent circuits and twisted gears that had once been mighty Danger Room battle-droids, sending scorched shrapnel spinning out in all directions.
Cyclops glared at the blurry trail of the mutant, his tactician’s mind racing in thought.
He’s cocky, now that he got the first punch in, Cyclops surmised, tracking Pietro’s blurred movements across the room. The cycloptic mutant skillfully dodged all the debris that Quicksilver was idly picking up and throwing at him at super speed, just to taunt him. He won’t hit me the second time until he’s proven once and for all that he’s a better opponent than I am. That means I have a chance.
Cyclops unleashed another volley of ruby visor blasts at the speeding mutant, always seconds too early or seconds to late to score a direct hit. Not that Cyclops was aiming to hit Quicksilver necessarily - that’s not what these blasts were about. It was the ways in which the silver-haired mutant was dodging these blasts that Cyclops cared about.
Reaction time. Reaction speed. Pattern recognition.
Rinse. Repeat.
He clearly has me on speed. Pietro’s mutant abilities put his speed and reaction time well above even the most well-trained soldier’s. Cyclops grimaced, spouting out several optic blasts towards the traveling speedster. But my optic blasts move at the speed of light, so it is possible for me to beat him. I simply have to outthink him.
Each blast Cyclops sent out had a purpose: Lead Quicksilver away from the walls. Deflect his debris throws. Keep him from getting too close. Destroy/melt seemingly random patches of the floor to isolate the possible paths he will be able to run in. Get a feel for his rhythm and patterns, get a sense of his flow, get to know his movements better than he knows himself.
And above all else: Make him think that HE is in control of this fight. NOT the other way around.
It’s the tortoise and the hare, Scott. The tortoise and the hare.
PFFFZZZT!!
BOOM!
HISS...
Dodge.
CRACK!
PFFFZZZT!! PFFFZZZT!!
BOOM!
Sidestep. Melt. Sidestep. Melt.
Deflect. Deflect. Melt. Sidestep.
Cyclops kept up with Quicksilver’s derogatory banter in clipped, broken phrases, seemingly straining himself and his speech to make the mutant speedster think he was in control. Make the cocky, silver-haired bastard think that the cycloptic leader could barely keep up. In reality, he was simply biding his time. Taking stock of the wreckage and landscape, memorizing his patterns, noting the silver-haired mutant’s strategies. All the while just watching, and waiting, setting up the speedster’s fall.
Finally, once things were the exactly the way he’d wanted them, Cyclops touched his hand to his visor, preparing himself for the final strike:
It’s just like a hunter tracks his prey, he thought to himself. Don’t shoot where Pietro is. Shoot at where he’s going to be.
Shoot at where he’s going to be.
Shoot at where he’s going to be.
Only where he’s going to be...
Cyclops dialed open his visor wide and long, unleashing a hellish blast of pure, fiery force right into the direction that Pietro was headed. As the ruby blast moved toward him at the speed of light, Pietro suddenly realized his error: He was moving so fast and carelessly that he was no longer able to either run around the blast, or backtrack away from it. Isolated in the center of the room, he had no wall to run up and escape it. And with the speed and breadth which the blast was moving, even the super-speedy Quicksilver had no time to think of another option:
“Shit!”
PFFFZZZT!!
Pietro was literally knocked off his feet by the astounding force of Cyclops’s scarlet fury, fully-unleashed. Completely taken by surprise by the concussive power of Cyclops’s energies, the white-haired mutant tumbled end-over-end toward the back of the Danger Room. Screaming in pain as he was completely encased in ruby-red fire, the mutant known as Quicksilver finally landed unceremoniously into a pile of battle-droid debris.
It was not a soft landing.
“Uuunnggghh...” the once-cocky mutant moaned lightly.
Shaken and stunned, Pietro Maximoff’s body was frozen in one single perfect moment of stillness and silence.
Now, the team leader thought to himself silently, this time adjusting his visor in the exact opposite direction.
Instead of one massive blast of endless width and brunt concussive force, two concentrated beams of pure red light escaped his vision. The first blast had been the blunt object - the truck colliding with the target to get him down and into position. The second and third blasts were the scalpels - the two surgical strikes that would seal the victory of this needless fight. Cyclops watched through his ruby visor as two razor-thin blasts struck at Pietro’s exposed feet - neatly-severing both of his Achilles tendons, and cauterizing the wounds behind them as they did so.
PFFFZZZT!!
“God!” Pietro shrieked, a chorus of pain alighting his world. Spit flew from the speedster’s mouth as he screamed towards his hated foe. “Summers, you son of a bitch!”
Cyclops paced angrily toward the downed speedster, watching Quicksilver pull his battered body out of the wreckage and tend to his blood-soaked ankles. His once-cocky sneer was now twisted into an expression of pain and outrage. He gazed down at his ruined ankles as the shadow of the Cyclops washed over him.
“I told you, Maximoff. There’s no one more dangerous than Cyclops.”
Quicksilver stood agape as the team leader stood over him, his ruby-quartz visor glowing bright red. Pietro’s nervous system shrieked, blind panic setting in as he tried to figure out what to do next. Then, the leader of the X-Men spoke.
“Let this be a lesson to you,” the auburn-haired man spoke, glancing down toward his bleeding, but cauterized, wounds. “Your metabolism is just as fast as your body. You tendons will heal enough for you to walk by the end of the night. For the next week you’ll be fairly wobbly but, that should give you enough time to think about what you’ve done.”
Quicksilver’s face twisted into a furious grimace. “If you think this changes anything between us, you’re sorely mistak--“
“Is everything alright in here?” a tender, sensuous voice sounded from the corridor. Quicksilver’s eyes darted toward the figure at the door, and his sneer became even more pronounced. Cyclops glared knowingly at Pietro, his point made, before turning in the direction of the speaker.
“Ah, Wanda!” Cyclops smiled. “Welcome back. Pietro and I were just talking about you.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
Later That Night
The Bedroom of Scott Summers and Jean Grey
Even in the tender embrace of his lover, Cyclops’s mind would just not stop its screaming:
If I’d brought Phoenix with us down that hallway, instead of just Warren and I -- would he still be alive? Would the others have been able to fight off the Horsemen without her once the walls came down?
If I’d stayed with the Professor when he was fighting Magneto, instead of coordinating the fight against the Acolytes...would Xavier still be alive? Would Magneto’s troops have overwhelmed the others without me?
Did I kill Warren and Xavier? Am I responsible for their deaths? If I’d done it all differently, could I have saved them too...
...or would we have lost someone else as well?
“There is nothing you could have done differently, my love,” the tender, womanly voice of Jean Grey - the telepathic/telekinetic mutant known as the Phoenix - spoke softly to her husband, cuddled close next to her in the soft linen sheets of their bedroom.
The auburn-haired Cyclops frowned, pursing his lips as his eyes (which were safely covered in ruby-quartz contact lenses) stared off toward the far wall.
“You read my mind,” he muttered.
“I didn’t have to,” she spoke, gently stroking his hair. “It’s all I can do to block out those obsessive thoughts of yours every time you wrap yourself up in an endless cycle of brooding and self-recrimination. And that’s before you get into this strange psychic rapport we seem to share.”
The droll joke brought a smile to his lips. “True.”
“Exactly,” she said, kissing him gently on his forehead.
He smiled up at her before his eyes settled against the far wall again, his thoughts once more turning towards the darkness that had stalked the team these last few weeks. “Nevertheless, it still feels like some strange, awful nightmare. I mean, the Professor -- dead. The merger between him and Magneto and that ungodly Onslaught creature, leaving no trace of the man that made us who we are. Then, just days after, losing poor Warren in that fight against Apocalypse.”
“I know, honey,” Phoenix said, rubbing his head. “It’s so strange - them not being with us anymore.”
“Sometimes, I just wish---“ he began again, until Jean silenced his thoughts with a tender, loving kiss.
“Hush, my love,” she said gently, silencing him with a single finger upon his lips. “What’s done is done. No more brooding in the past.”
Cyclops smiled up at her.
You’re right, he thought, defeated. No more brooding.
She gazed into his eyes, kissing him warmly and deeply. Peppering him with passionate kisses, she telekinetically removed his shirt as the warm thoughts of her mind gently intermingled with his:
We’ve lived enough of the past today. It’s time to live in the present. Let’s do something far more pleasurable with that gorgeous mind of yours...”
Huskily, her thoughts trailed off in his mind as their clothes left them both, all on their own. As the telepathic/telekinetic woman mounted her man, the sheets began to tremble and to levitate beneath them, and all the small objects in the room began to orbit in a loose circle around them as their screams wafted hard and fast into the night.
Some hours later, a glowing Jean Grey allowed her husband some much-needed rest. She did not, however, allow him entry into the secret recesses of her mind.
For how else was Emma Frost to keep up this striking facade of Jean Grey so well? How else was she to keep her beloved Scott Summers from realizing that the true Jean Grey - that haughty wench she knew as the Phoenix - had never returned from the X-Men’s space adventure at all? That fighting alongside the X-Men for past weeks - through the recent Onslaught and against the deadly Apocalypse - was the White Queen of the Hellfire Club? That, aside from her love of Scott Summers, she had a secondary reason for being with the X-Men.
For the Hellfire Club had sent the deadly White Queen to the X-Men for one, sole purpose: To ensure the survival of En Sabah Nur. Currently nascent and nestling within the subconscious mind of Scott Summers. Why else would Cyclops be so vicious with the stubborn Quicksilver and his Achilles heels in the mansion’s Danger Room?
Emma Frost - under the sweet guise of the Phoenix - rustled her fingers through her faux husband’s hair, listening to the light sounds of his snoring. Were she not such a well-trained soldier, she might admit that she was developing feelings for this man - on the surface such a rugged, commanding titan of power and responsibility, yet entwined beneath laid the soulful feelings and messy emotions of a human being, who was just as flawed and vulnerable as any other. A diamond in the rough, just as pristine and sharp as any other, and yet Emma was falling in love with all the flaws.
Were she not such a well-trained soldier, she might warn this great, great man that he was about to become just another vessel for the old soul that was the Apocalypse.
Emma Frost let out a sigh, and wiped a small tear from her soft blue eyes. Tears were not acceptable for this mission: She needed those diamond blues sharp, and hard, and cruel to survive for all the stubborn tasks yet to come. The White Queen of the Hellfire Club pouted gently, kissing her beautiful Scott upon his crown.
If only I weren’t such a well trained soldier, I think I could let myself fall for you, she mused sadly, tousling his hair as he nestled closer to her in his sleep.
If only...
***
THE END
***
Next Issue: The Shadow King torments our mutant titans as Cyclops comes to terms with the possibility that Apocalypse may not be as dead as everyone thinks! Read that, and more in the thrilling Uncanny X-Men #94, out on your local newsstand next month, in May 1974!
ITEM!
Also, catch the soon-to-be-famous limited series: WOLVERINE: AN ORIGIN TALE #1-6. Barry Windor-Smith and Andy Kubert give us a blurb on what’s in store for our favorite, furry mutant:
“Well, the Editors-In-Charge had thought of doing twenty or thirty years’ worth of cryptic hints as to this cigar-munching mutant’s origin story, followed by a six issue limited series sometime in the early 2000’s that would completely contradict most of those hints and finally set the record straight, then have several more years of him remembering-but-not-really-remembering what happened until some Scarlet Witch mumbo-jumbo would give our favorite feral mutant his actual memories back! So Barry and I thought: Why don’t we just cut the crap, save some time, and give the honest, straight origin right-here, right-now in fashionable 1974 style?”
So here it is: Wolverine: An Origin Tale - a six issue limited series starring your favorite Canucklehead. Set to hit your local comic shops in August 1974!
Well, that’s enough out of me, bub. Go read some comics!!
***
Author’s Note: None of the issues or stories mentioned in this tale actually happened or will be happening anytime soon. We save more trees and ink that way. Welcome to Earth 475, the Home of Jason McDonald’s ludicrous M2K Canvas entry! Hope you enjoyed your stay!
:-)
The Danger Room
Scott Summers - otherwise known as the X-Man Cyclops - stood in the Danger Room, glaring at the wisps of smoke wafting across the horrific scene of destruction around him. He gritted his teeth in a scowl, seething as his ruby quartz visor showed nothing of the scene save the glimmering shades of darkest crimson red.
He scanned the monochrome wreckage for any signs of movement, waiting with dark anticipation. His pulse pounded. His adrenaline surged. His well-trained senses were primed and at the ready. Like a hunter staring down his rifle’s ruby scope, the mutant with the laser eye beams waited for the Danger Room’s next move.
A creak in the floorboards, and a glimmer of motion were all Cyclops needed. Without warning, the ground at his feet exploded as another wave of Danger Room battle droids attacked the spot where he’d once been standing, shooting their cannons and emptying their lasers toward his seemingly helpless human form. Luckily for him, Cyclops’ reactions were much, much faster.
While Professor X had programmed the Danger Room to give the X-Men the best training and the deadliest tactics money could buy, the simple fact of the matter remained - these were still simple machines doing the attacking. Patterns, maneuvers, counter-maneuvers - programmed into each battle droid - which Cyclops had spent so many years studying and watching, learning and adapting to. Even on difficulties as high as this, Cyclops was more than a match for almost any Danger Room attack simulation.
His body on near-total auto-pilot, his tactician’s mind watched the tells of each robot’s offensive capabilities. His body moved rhythmic and fluid, dancing with the sweet ease and grace of a career gymnast, idly dodging every attack the Danger Room threw at him. His legs and hands always where they were needed to be - giving him optimum balance.
Then, he went on the offensive.
He adjusted the ruby quartz visor - which gave him full control of his optic blasts - from a series of surgical razor-thin strikes to a devastating crimson blast across the horizon line of his vision. He launched his attacks against the robots with cruel intelligence, striking at their weakest points with the homicidal precision of a skilled sniper. The Danger Room never stood a chance. When it was all over, Cyclops stood again amidst the wreckage once more. The shapes and appearance of the wreckage was changed, yet his visor painted this simulated world with the same shade of boiling red anger he held bottled up inside.
“There had to be another way,” he growled, tensing his fists as the let loose another blast into the Danger Room, disassembling the last, twitching remnants of the robotic gauntlet with his own brand of cleansing optic fire. Nevertheless, unlike the now-felled gauntlet before him, the nagging thoughts swirling steady in the back of the team leader’s mind would require more than just a well-timed set of optic blasts to deal with.
So much had happened in the last few weeks: Xavier had shut off Magneto’s mind, inadvertently creating a homicidal hybrid of the two mutant powerhouses - the being known only as Onslaught - that the X-Men had barely managed to defeat and send into Limbo, with more than just a little help from the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. On top of that, Apocalypse came calling soon after, just as the team was at its weakest and nerves were at their most-strained.
The cycloptic mutant could still feel what Apocalypse’s Horsemen had tried to do to him - namely merge the dying Egyptian titan into his own strong, virile form. Instead, the Angel - Cyclops’s good friend Warren Worthington - sacrificed himself to stop Apocalypse’s mind-transfer, destroying the mad titan god for good. Scott Summers looked down upon his hands, noticing how badly they were shaking beneath his soot-stained yellow gloves at the very thought of sharing consciousness with the blue-skinned menace.
How many times since then, the auburn-haired team leader sighed, his mind racing with the terrible memory, have I seen that blue-lipped monster’s face looking back at me in the mirror?
The fury of the Onslaught. The agony of the Apocalypse. The loss of Warren and the Professor. And just after that, the weekend with the Scarlet Witch’s powers going out-of-control, causing Wanda Maximoff to nearly re-write the universe with a sneeze?
It had been weeks since all of that happened, and yet Cyclops had never stopped going over it and over it again in his mind. Every last second of battle, every last reversal of fortune, every last mind-numbing setback, and every last moment of loss they’d all suffered during that time. He’d gone over every single decision he’d made. Analyzed - over and over - all the facts he’d had at the time, all the people he’d had at-the-ready, and whether or not he could have made any of those decisions differently.
If I’d brought Phoenix with us down that hallway, instead of just Warren and I -- would he still be alive? Would the others have been able to fight off the Horsemen without her once the walls came down?
If I’d stayed with the Professor when he was fighting Magneto, instead of coordinating the fight against the Acolytes...would Xavier still be alive? Would Magneto’s troops have overwhelmed the others without me?
Did I kill Warren and Xavier? Am I responsible for their deaths? If I’d done it all differently, could I have saved them too...
...or would we have lost someone else as well?
Furrowing his brow, the tension in his shoulders slackened. His hands relaxing all on their own, the leader of the troubled X-Men let out an exhausted sigh. He spoke the words once more, this time without frustration or anger. This time, he spoke the words with the tired ache of an old soul, grief-stricken with the terrible pangs of loss and regret:
“There had to be another way,” Cyclops sighed.
“You’re damn right there was, Cyclops,” a harsh, arrogant voice hummed out across the room. Scott Summer’s eyes opened wide beneath his ruby quartz visor, a sudden gasp escaping his lips. He turned toward the speaker, body tensing all on its own as a rush of mighty wind swept past him.
His fingers were trained on the control slots of his visor as turned to face this intruder, only to discover the intruder wasn’t there anymore. Just as Cyclops came to this realization, the lights of the Danger Room suddenly changed hue, signaling that the third wave of battle droid - which had teetered on the cusp of activation - suddenly powered down. The team leader brought his gaze up towards the control room and saw a blurry figure inside the booth. Almost incorporeal - a mint-green phantom, graceful and ghostly in his movements. Nevertheless, despite appearances, Cyclops knew better than that.
The sound of the intruder’s voice. The rushing of displaced winds. The rushing movements of the intruder. There was no mistake. Scott Summers gritted his teeth in annoyance, at the one mutant who’d done his damnedest (besides that ever-lovin’ Logan) to get under Cyclops’s frayed nerves these past few weeks, and had succeeded many more times than not.
“Pietro,” Cyclops muttered.
In the time it took the syllables to leave the team leader’s mouth, the mutant speed demon disabled the Danger Room controls, left the control booth, and paced his way back into Cyclops’s ruby-quartz sight.
“In the flesh, you tin-plated prick,” he smirked, cocky and abrasive in both tone and temperament.
“What’s this about, Pietro?” Cyclops asked, impatient.
Pietro Maximoff - the super-fast mutant known as Quicksilver - narrowed his eyes. “You know what this is about, Summers.”
The mutant leader clasped the bridge of his nose.
Of course Summers knew what this was about. What else could it have been? It had been about the same exact damn thing since Wanda had joined the team.
“Wanda - your sister - has made her choice,” Cyclops said, pointing a frustrated finger at the arrogant man before him. “She wanted asylum. She wanted help controlling her unstable powers. I granted her that asylum.”
“That’s not your choice to make, Summers!” the green-suited speedster growled, pointing an accusatory finger right back at the team leader.
“You’re right,” he replied. “It was Wanda’s choice to make. And she made it.”
Clenching his teeth, the white-haired mutant gave Cyclops a death-stare. “As her brother, I know what’s best for her.”
Unfazed, the team leader leveled his eyes at Pietro and appealed to his oft-ignored sense of reason: “Would you rather she blew apart half of Midtown with an unstable hex? Or deleted all mutants with a single sentence? That’s the scope of power we’re talking about here, Maximoff.”
“Just as long as she uses the word “humans” instead of “mutants”, all’s well with me.”
So much for the sense of reason, Cyclops thought. “Look, mister. Wanda is free to do as she wants. As her brother, I understand you’re feeling very protective of her right now, so--“
“How about this, mister?” the hot-headed speedster spat back, taking frustrated super-speed steps around the stock-still standing Cyclops. “You and me, right now.”
“What?” Cyclops asked, incredulous.
“Best two out of three. I knock you to the ground twice, you let me and my sister leave. You knock me down twice, I drop it? Deal?”
Cyclops squinted at Quicksilver, doing his damnedest to maintain some semblance of professionalism when dealing with such a loose cannon.
“This is ridiculous. There’s no way I’m going to agree to those--“ Cyclops began, just as he felt a massive blow slam against his jaw at what he could only assume was Mach 1. The team leader went flying, shocked with the suddenness of the blow. While Quicksilver’s punch had only been intended to stun, Cyclops’ well-trained senses allowed him to recover to a kneel in short order.
Scott Summers moved his tongue to the side of his mouth, feeling the familiar copper taste of bruising already happening inside. He rubbed at his jaw with gold-gloved fingers, his eyes alighting the speedster in a red haze.
“That’s one,” the scarlet speedster laughed, cockily pacing back and forth at super speed. “Face it, mister. There’s nobody faster than Quicksilver.”
Pietro was beyond talking. This argument was beyond professionalism. Cyclops knew he would have to settle this Pietro’s way - else it would never be settled.
“Perhaps,” he grunted, standing tall as he touched his ruby quartz visor, eyes flashing bright. “but there’s no one more dangerous than Cyclops.”
PFFFZZZT!!
Fiery red hell escaped from the mutant’s visor, traveling towards Pietro Maximoff at light speed. The mutant speedster’s eyes opened wide with shock, before he bottled it up and replaced that shock with the easy sound of arrogant laughter. He sidestepped the deadly blast, making it look elegant and easy, not caring that he’d only milliseconds to spare. The blast exploded hard against wreckage of spent circuits and twisted gears that had once been mighty Danger Room battle-droids, sending scorched shrapnel spinning out in all directions.
Cyclops glared at the blurry trail of the mutant, his tactician’s mind racing in thought.
He’s cocky, now that he got the first punch in, Cyclops surmised, tracking Pietro’s blurred movements across the room. The cycloptic mutant skillfully dodged all the debris that Quicksilver was idly picking up and throwing at him at super speed, just to taunt him. He won’t hit me the second time until he’s proven once and for all that he’s a better opponent than I am. That means I have a chance.
Cyclops unleashed another volley of ruby visor blasts at the speeding mutant, always seconds too early or seconds to late to score a direct hit. Not that Cyclops was aiming to hit Quicksilver necessarily - that’s not what these blasts were about. It was the ways in which the silver-haired mutant was dodging these blasts that Cyclops cared about.
Reaction time. Reaction speed. Pattern recognition.
Rinse. Repeat.
He clearly has me on speed. Pietro’s mutant abilities put his speed and reaction time well above even the most well-trained soldier’s. Cyclops grimaced, spouting out several optic blasts towards the traveling speedster. But my optic blasts move at the speed of light, so it is possible for me to beat him. I simply have to outthink him.
Each blast Cyclops sent out had a purpose: Lead Quicksilver away from the walls. Deflect his debris throws. Keep him from getting too close. Destroy/melt seemingly random patches of the floor to isolate the possible paths he will be able to run in. Get a feel for his rhythm and patterns, get a sense of his flow, get to know his movements better than he knows himself.
And above all else: Make him think that HE is in control of this fight. NOT the other way around.
It’s the tortoise and the hare, Scott. The tortoise and the hare.
PFFFZZZT!!
BOOM!
HISS...
Dodge.
CRACK!
PFFFZZZT!! PFFFZZZT!!
BOOM!
Sidestep. Melt. Sidestep. Melt.
Deflect. Deflect. Melt. Sidestep.
Cyclops kept up with Quicksilver’s derogatory banter in clipped, broken phrases, seemingly straining himself and his speech to make the mutant speedster think he was in control. Make the cocky, silver-haired bastard think that the cycloptic leader could barely keep up. In reality, he was simply biding his time. Taking stock of the wreckage and landscape, memorizing his patterns, noting the silver-haired mutant’s strategies. All the while just watching, and waiting, setting up the speedster’s fall.
Finally, once things were the exactly the way he’d wanted them, Cyclops touched his hand to his visor, preparing himself for the final strike:
It’s just like a hunter tracks his prey, he thought to himself. Don’t shoot where Pietro is. Shoot at where he’s going to be.
Shoot at where he’s going to be.
Shoot at where he’s going to be.
Only where he’s going to be...
Cyclops dialed open his visor wide and long, unleashing a hellish blast of pure, fiery force right into the direction that Pietro was headed. As the ruby blast moved toward him at the speed of light, Pietro suddenly realized his error: He was moving so fast and carelessly that he was no longer able to either run around the blast, or backtrack away from it. Isolated in the center of the room, he had no wall to run up and escape it. And with the speed and breadth which the blast was moving, even the super-speedy Quicksilver had no time to think of another option:
“Shit!”
PFFFZZZT!!
Pietro was literally knocked off his feet by the astounding force of Cyclops’s scarlet fury, fully-unleashed. Completely taken by surprise by the concussive power of Cyclops’s energies, the white-haired mutant tumbled end-over-end toward the back of the Danger Room. Screaming in pain as he was completely encased in ruby-red fire, the mutant known as Quicksilver finally landed unceremoniously into a pile of battle-droid debris.
It was not a soft landing.
“Uuunnggghh...” the once-cocky mutant moaned lightly.
Shaken and stunned, Pietro Maximoff’s body was frozen in one single perfect moment of stillness and silence.
Now, the team leader thought to himself silently, this time adjusting his visor in the exact opposite direction.
Instead of one massive blast of endless width and brunt concussive force, two concentrated beams of pure red light escaped his vision. The first blast had been the blunt object - the truck colliding with the target to get him down and into position. The second and third blasts were the scalpels - the two surgical strikes that would seal the victory of this needless fight. Cyclops watched through his ruby visor as two razor-thin blasts struck at Pietro’s exposed feet - neatly-severing both of his Achilles tendons, and cauterizing the wounds behind them as they did so.
PFFFZZZT!!
“God!” Pietro shrieked, a chorus of pain alighting his world. Spit flew from the speedster’s mouth as he screamed towards his hated foe. “Summers, you son of a bitch!”
Cyclops paced angrily toward the downed speedster, watching Quicksilver pull his battered body out of the wreckage and tend to his blood-soaked ankles. His once-cocky sneer was now twisted into an expression of pain and outrage. He gazed down at his ruined ankles as the shadow of the Cyclops washed over him.
“I told you, Maximoff. There’s no one more dangerous than Cyclops.”
Quicksilver stood agape as the team leader stood over him, his ruby-quartz visor glowing bright red. Pietro’s nervous system shrieked, blind panic setting in as he tried to figure out what to do next. Then, the leader of the X-Men spoke.
“Let this be a lesson to you,” the auburn-haired man spoke, glancing down toward his bleeding, but cauterized, wounds. “Your metabolism is just as fast as your body. You tendons will heal enough for you to walk by the end of the night. For the next week you’ll be fairly wobbly but, that should give you enough time to think about what you’ve done.”
Quicksilver’s face twisted into a furious grimace. “If you think this changes anything between us, you’re sorely mistak--“
“Is everything alright in here?” a tender, sensuous voice sounded from the corridor. Quicksilver’s eyes darted toward the figure at the door, and his sneer became even more pronounced. Cyclops glared knowingly at Pietro, his point made, before turning in the direction of the speaker.
“Ah, Wanda!” Cyclops smiled. “Welcome back. Pietro and I were just talking about you.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
Later That Night
The Bedroom of Scott Summers and Jean Grey
Even in the tender embrace of his lover, Cyclops’s mind would just not stop its screaming:
If I’d brought Phoenix with us down that hallway, instead of just Warren and I -- would he still be alive? Would the others have been able to fight off the Horsemen without her once the walls came down?
If I’d stayed with the Professor when he was fighting Magneto, instead of coordinating the fight against the Acolytes...would Xavier still be alive? Would Magneto’s troops have overwhelmed the others without me?
Did I kill Warren and Xavier? Am I responsible for their deaths? If I’d done it all differently, could I have saved them too...
...or would we have lost someone else as well?
“There is nothing you could have done differently, my love,” the tender, womanly voice of Jean Grey - the telepathic/telekinetic mutant known as the Phoenix - spoke softly to her husband, cuddled close next to her in the soft linen sheets of their bedroom.
The auburn-haired Cyclops frowned, pursing his lips as his eyes (which were safely covered in ruby-quartz contact lenses) stared off toward the far wall.
“You read my mind,” he muttered.
“I didn’t have to,” she spoke, gently stroking his hair. “It’s all I can do to block out those obsessive thoughts of yours every time you wrap yourself up in an endless cycle of brooding and self-recrimination. And that’s before you get into this strange psychic rapport we seem to share.”
The droll joke brought a smile to his lips. “True.”
“Exactly,” she said, kissing him gently on his forehead.
He smiled up at her before his eyes settled against the far wall again, his thoughts once more turning towards the darkness that had stalked the team these last few weeks. “Nevertheless, it still feels like some strange, awful nightmare. I mean, the Professor -- dead. The merger between him and Magneto and that ungodly Onslaught creature, leaving no trace of the man that made us who we are. Then, just days after, losing poor Warren in that fight against Apocalypse.”
“I know, honey,” Phoenix said, rubbing his head. “It’s so strange - them not being with us anymore.”
“Sometimes, I just wish---“ he began again, until Jean silenced his thoughts with a tender, loving kiss.
“Hush, my love,” she said gently, silencing him with a single finger upon his lips. “What’s done is done. No more brooding in the past.”
Cyclops smiled up at her.
You’re right, he thought, defeated. No more brooding.
She gazed into his eyes, kissing him warmly and deeply. Peppering him with passionate kisses, she telekinetically removed his shirt as the warm thoughts of her mind gently intermingled with his:
We’ve lived enough of the past today. It’s time to live in the present. Let’s do something far more pleasurable with that gorgeous mind of yours...”
Huskily, her thoughts trailed off in his mind as their clothes left them both, all on their own. As the telepathic/telekinetic woman mounted her man, the sheets began to tremble and to levitate beneath them, and all the small objects in the room began to orbit in a loose circle around them as their screams wafted hard and fast into the night.
Some hours later, a glowing Jean Grey allowed her husband some much-needed rest. She did not, however, allow him entry into the secret recesses of her mind.
For how else was Emma Frost to keep up this striking facade of Jean Grey so well? How else was she to keep her beloved Scott Summers from realizing that the true Jean Grey - that haughty wench she knew as the Phoenix - had never returned from the X-Men’s space adventure at all? That fighting alongside the X-Men for past weeks - through the recent Onslaught and against the deadly Apocalypse - was the White Queen of the Hellfire Club? That, aside from her love of Scott Summers, she had a secondary reason for being with the X-Men.
For the Hellfire Club had sent the deadly White Queen to the X-Men for one, sole purpose: To ensure the survival of En Sabah Nur. Currently nascent and nestling within the subconscious mind of Scott Summers. Why else would Cyclops be so vicious with the stubborn Quicksilver and his Achilles heels in the mansion’s Danger Room?
Emma Frost - under the sweet guise of the Phoenix - rustled her fingers through her faux husband’s hair, listening to the light sounds of his snoring. Were she not such a well-trained soldier, she might admit that she was developing feelings for this man - on the surface such a rugged, commanding titan of power and responsibility, yet entwined beneath laid the soulful feelings and messy emotions of a human being, who was just as flawed and vulnerable as any other. A diamond in the rough, just as pristine and sharp as any other, and yet Emma was falling in love with all the flaws.
Were she not such a well-trained soldier, she might warn this great, great man that he was about to become just another vessel for the old soul that was the Apocalypse.
Emma Frost let out a sigh, and wiped a small tear from her soft blue eyes. Tears were not acceptable for this mission: She needed those diamond blues sharp, and hard, and cruel to survive for all the stubborn tasks yet to come. The White Queen of the Hellfire Club pouted gently, kissing her beautiful Scott upon his crown.
If only I weren’t such a well trained soldier, I think I could let myself fall for you, she mused sadly, tousling his hair as he nestled closer to her in his sleep.
If only...
***
THE END
***
Next Issue: The Shadow King torments our mutant titans as Cyclops comes to terms with the possibility that Apocalypse may not be as dead as everyone thinks! Read that, and more in the thrilling Uncanny X-Men #94, out on your local newsstand next month, in May 1974!
ITEM!
Also, catch the soon-to-be-famous limited series: WOLVERINE: AN ORIGIN TALE #1-6. Barry Windor-Smith and Andy Kubert give us a blurb on what’s in store for our favorite, furry mutant:
“Well, the Editors-In-Charge had thought of doing twenty or thirty years’ worth of cryptic hints as to this cigar-munching mutant’s origin story, followed by a six issue limited series sometime in the early 2000’s that would completely contradict most of those hints and finally set the record straight, then have several more years of him remembering-but-not-really-remembering what happened until some Scarlet Witch mumbo-jumbo would give our favorite feral mutant his actual memories back! So Barry and I thought: Why don’t we just cut the crap, save some time, and give the honest, straight origin right-here, right-now in fashionable 1974 style?”
So here it is: Wolverine: An Origin Tale - a six issue limited series starring your favorite Canucklehead. Set to hit your local comic shops in August 1974!
Well, that’s enough out of me, bub. Go read some comics!!
***
Author’s Note: None of the issues or stories mentioned in this tale actually happened or will be happening anytime soon. We save more trees and ink that way. Welcome to Earth 475, the Home of Jason McDonald’s ludicrous M2K Canvas entry! Hope you enjoyed your stay!
:-)