A Tale of the Marvel Universe
by DarkMark
Part 7
"Let us try that again, Havok," said Professor Xavier. "Calvin, commence firing."
"Wait," said Alex Summers, holding up a hand wearily. "Just wait. I'm tired, Prof. Give me a–"
But before he could finish, a barrage of light-force beams was triggered from the three walls surrounding him. Havok, in his black uniform with the white power discs on the chest, was sweaty, tired, and not in a good humor. Xavier had been putting him through his paces for over an hour.
He avoided three blasts, got tagged by a fourth, felt its bee sting, and slagged it with a pinpoint blast of his spheres of power.
Then Havok felt another of the blasts from behind him, right in the small of his back. He whirled, blasted the small projector from which it had come, and lay flat on the deck in time to avoid another, but not the one which came after it.
He began to get mad.
The dampness on his underarms showed through even despite the black of his uniform. Havok rose to his feet, taking more blasts while he did it. He raised both his arms, pointed them at opposite walls, and emitted a loud, harsh shout. From his fingers, there exploded a series of glowing white power-spheres, forming two rough beams that smashed into the walls and shattered them. He whirled and did the same to the third. Sparks. Smoke. Power failure.
He stood there, arms still raised, panting.
A voice came from the intercom. "Grade: F."
"Shut it, X," said Havok. "Just shut it."
A door-section of the Danger Room retracted into the wall. Lorna Dane, in her green uniform and green hair, and Banshee, the Irish mutant in green and yellow, were there. "Alex," said Lorna. "It's all right. Let me help."
"It is not all right," said Havok, his arms lowered and tensed. "It will never be all right as long as Big Charley keeps riding me!"
"Havok," said the voice of Charles Xavier on the intercom. "Your pain is regrettable, but it will pass. Please believe me. What I have given you in this session is much less than an enemy would give you in the field. Therefore, you must strive to excel. You must perfect your abilities. The unhoned knife is no better than a club of metal. The untrained warrior–"
"I'm not Cyclops," said Havok, looking at the floor. "You want me to be Scott, and I'M NOT CYCLOPS!"
"Oh, god," said Lorna, dully.
"Alex, meboy, the Professor's only puttin' ya through basic training," said Sean Cassidy, putting an arm on Alex's shoulders. "It's no more than the rest of us have ta go. An' all the ones from before."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I've heard it, Sean," grated Havok. "But I'm darned if I'm going to be a stand-in for Scotty, even if everybody seems to want me to."
"Nobody wants you to be anything but what you are, Alex," said Lorna, putting her hands on either side of her face. "Nobody wants you to be anything but you."
He sighed, then favored each of them with an arm about them. "Tell that to Big Charlie up there," he said. "See if he agrees with you. I never wanted to be a super-hero. It just happened, that was all."
"An' ya think that it was any different with us, lad?" said Banshee.
The two of them were gently walking the sweaty Alex Summers out of the Danger Room. The three of them made up three-fifths of the New X-Men, the team formed by Charles Xavier after the original five heroes had left. They hadn't seen as much action as the first team, the one composed of Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Iceman, and Marvel Girl, had in their first two years. That was because, in Xavier's judgment and their own, they didn't hang together as well as his first unit.
But they had performed, and managed to defeat the menaces they faced. They were improving. The only question was: could their enemies wait much longer for the learning curve to point upward at a steeper angle?
Charles Xavier sighed as he watched them from his catbird seat in the observation booth. He had been hard to his first five pupils, and his lessons had taken. With these five, he had tried to be more human. Was that the problem?
"Havok has reached his present limitations," said Sunfire, beside him. "Which seem no further than the ones reached in his last testing."
"That will be enough," said Xavier. "Any evaluation of test performance will be left to me. Join your teammates, Sunfire."
The Japanese mutant arose from his seat with a perceptible arrogance and exited the room. Xavier looked after him a second, and hoped he could keep his poker face as intact as he usually did.
True, Angel in the original group had been conceited. But a lot of that had been rubbed off by working with his teammates. Warren Worthington III had never had the sense of superiority that Toshiro Watanabe possessed, though. The arrogance of race, of caste, of nationality, and, yes, of genetics. Xavier had tried to work that out of him, but Toshiro took all that Xavier could pile on him in the Danger Room and asked for more.
It was that arrogance Xavier had used to trick him (yes, trick was the operative word) into joining the second X-Men grouping. The initial arguments that Professor X had used had been rebuffed, as was expected. Sunfire had no interest in fighting the dangers which threatened the world as part of an American super-team. He had little but contempt for America. He was Japan's hero, their first super-hero since World War II. He would remain such, and the X-Men would have to look elsewhere.
But when Xavier acknowledged that such was his right, and perhaps Toshiro wasn't up to the challenge...after all, how many world-conquering super-menaces based themselves in Japan these days? Or was one thinking, perhaps, of Godzilla?...then a light of anger arose in the solar samurai's eyes.
Professor X kept on in that vein, gently but skillfully, playing Toshiro as a fish on a line, albeit a fish who suspects he is on the line and yet can't tear the hook from his mouth, even though he has the power. What! Imply that one of the Sons of Nippon was unworthy of a gaijin super-team? That the chosen one of the islands was somehow less than the American money-mongering variety of mutant? It was not to be done! If Xavier required proof of that, Sunfire was ready to provide it. He would provide it by putting all the rest of his so-called team in the shadow. The shadow of the sun.
It had taken a bit of fancy dancing to manage Sunfire's transfer to the United States. After all, he had killed the man who had taken the life of his father, on American soil. But with some help from Amos Duncan at the FBI, who was eager to deputize a second klatch of X-Men, the deed was done. It took an application of the "Hawkeye Clause", introduced when the first ex-super-villain joined the Avengers, but it was done.
The main thing was that, for all his arrogance and difficulty in handling, Toshiro was easily one of the best team players in the group. His heritage might have had something to do with it, but Xavier suspected that Sunfire just saw himself as a samurai. Samurai served their feudal lord, and Toshiro probably placed Xavier in that role, no matter what he thought of the gaijin personally.
And sometimes he didn't hide those thoughts too well.
But what a contrast was the man who entered the control room after Toshiro had left. The Mimic, Cal Rankin. Easily the most insufferable member of the pack in his short-lived X-Men tenure when he had first joined, and now? Troubled, agonized, capable of performance, but racked with tension and self-doubt. As he had reason to be.
When Xavier had approached him to rejoin, the Mimic had told him the reason why.
"It's my mimic-powers," he said. "It gets harder to control 'em, the older I get. Sometimes I...I have to really fight to keep from copyin' everyone around me. The power wants 'em, Prof. It wants to mimic everyone. I have to go off by myself and release it, lots of times. Like...you know. Like sex."
"I understand, Cal," said Xavier, and he hoped he did.
"So what do I do? So what do I do?" Cal Rankin was almost on his knees as he asked it.
Xavier put his hands on Calvin's shoulders. "Listen to me, Cal. I will do what is in my power to help you. I will attempt to set up mental blocks, avenues down which to direct your power to greater use. I will teach you meditation techniques. I will teach you self-discipline, the kind which is anything but a cliche, the kind that works because you make it work. But I must have you in the group to do it, Cal. I must have you as an X-Man, and not just as the dilettante you were before. This time, you must be one of the group, and function as such. And, in turn, I will be your tutor, and your friend. Think well on your answer, Cal, for it is no small thing."
"Professor, I'll do anything," said the Mimic. "I'll do it. In spades."
And Xavier had nodded, and had offered his hand. The Mimic took it and shook it.
To his credit, he resisted the urge to copy Xavier's power.
-X-
The five of them sat at the fire Toshiro had ignited from the fallen wood from the forest and held the hotdogs on sticks over it. Ritual.
None of them was wearing a costume now, and all of them seemed grateful for it.
"'Scuse me, guys, there's something I need to take care of," said Cal, and moved off into the woods.
"It's okay, Cal, we understand," said Lorna, and tried not to listen for the cry of near-pain that would inevitably be heard sometime later.
Banshee swirled the whiskey about in his ale jack. "The lad may be the stoutest of us all, in the end," he offered. "What with that thing inside o' him, bangin' around like a boyo in a damned man's cell."
"Sometimes," said Alex Summers, looking into the fire, "it isn't much different with me." Lorna Dane stroked his arm sympathetically.
"You are more the warrior," opined Toshiro. "He is the wounded man. His powers are only what he borrows from others. Someday the borrowing will kill him."
"Toshi, that's a terrible thing to say," said Lorna, giving him a stony look.
"It would only be terrible if it were not true," said the Japanese youth, giving it back.
"That's enough, the both of yez," said Sean, sounding very much like a cop, which he had been. "That's enough, and a measure more than. You feel like apologizin', Sunny, or do you leave the gatherin'?"
Toshiro, in his shirtsleeves and jeans, met the Irishman's gaze for a moment, then said, "My regrets if my remarks have caused undue pain."
"It'd be more appropriate if'n ya remembered not to make 'em before ya set your tongue slingin' like a flappin' door in the wind," said Sean. "Smart-mouthin' where I come from has lost many a man the usual contours of his face. Get me?"
"In my land, it has often lost many a man his head," said Toshiro. "At least in times past. Forgive me, Banshee." He did not look as though he wanted to be forgiven.
But Sean let the matter pass.
"As if any of this mattered," said Alex. "As if a freaking bit of any of it mattered."
"It matters, Alex," said Lorna. "It matters to the people we've saved, the ones who think of us as heroes, and to us, ourselves. If you think you can't be proud of what we've done, you're kidding yourself. And you're not kidding me."
"That's not it, Lorna," said Alex, picking the seared hot dog off his stick and throwing it over his shoulder without a look. "We don't function at the level that matters."
"Oh?" Sean Cassidy settled himself against the bole of a tree, and crossed his arms on his chest. "Perhaps then you could tell me what that level could be, Alex."
Alex toyed with the stick, drawing patterns in the dirt. "Look at the world we live in, Sean. I mean, take a look at it. The Vietnam thing, it's been going on for what, nine years? We lose a hundred men a day in that. Tears the country apart, then folds it up and tears it into littler pieces. Tell me that isn't more important than what we do."
"It's a different thing, lad, and ya know it."
"Then the race thing," said Alex. "Ten years ago, the Klan was killing Freedom Riders and black people were having problems just getting into white schools or white stores. Now it's the whites who live in fear of the Black Panthers. Yeah, there's been progress for them, a lot. But they're just as capable of evil as us. What good are we against any of that?"
"What good are you supposed to be?" said Toshiro, with a touch of annoyance. "Aren't the causes of these things in people's hearts? We cannot fight those things as if they were Magneto."
"And that's the point!" Alex turned on him in a fury. "Our limitations. All we're good for is fighting somebody in a funny suit. The real problems, war, hate, pollution, overpopulation, hell, put in anything you like there, we can't do anything about 'em. We can't hold the country together. It's coming apart at the seams, and there's no super-power that can do a thing about that."
Lorna released his arm and ran her hands through her hair, pushing it back from her shoulders. "And while you're at it, honey, why don't you ask us if we could sweep the beach at Coney Island free of sand if you gave us all brooms? If you don't mind a little Lewis Carroll reference there."
"Again, what would you have us do, Alex?" said Toshiro. "Fight in Vietnam? Break into the boardrooms of corporations and force them to do what we want? Attack protestors? Use my solar powers against your Black Panthers? What?"
"Maybe none of that," said Alex. "And maybe some of that."
Sean Cassidy came to hunker down before Alex. "So. Ya think your country's so unique, laddy? You suppose that these things comin' down on America have never happened to another'n? Is that what you think?"
"I didn't say that," said Alex. "All I'm saying is–"
"Have ye ever seen a movie called 'The Informer'? Or is it too old for ya? Maybe you've never heard the phrase 'Up the Rebels'? Or heard about the Black 'n' Tans, or maybe Michael Collins? And I'm not talkin' about anybody what walked on the freakin' moon when I say that name. Are those names too old for ya, Alex? Well, maybe I can give ya one ya will recognize: Belfast."
"Sean, I know about Belfast," said Alex. "But it's not the same as here."
"Nothing's ever 'the same as here,' boyo, but it's similar. We've been undergoin' the Troubles in Ireland for most of a century. And yet, we're still here. Or at least, still there. We've had political maniacs, religious bigots, assassinations, occupation, whatever ya want, we've got. Still got 'em, for the most part. Yet, for a' that, Ireland still stands. Somehow, I suspect not even she knows how she does it. But she manages.
"Now, from what limited knowledge I have of this country, Alex, seems to me that your present Troubles are s'posed to have started around the assassination a' John Kennedy, God bless his name and rest his soul, am I right?"
"That's the general perception," said Alex. "Mine, too. If only that hadn't happened, maybe this wouldn't have, either."
"Ah, but boyo, there ye're wrong. Seems as though, for ten years at least, and probably more, beforehand, ya had a fine and stable nation. But only on the surface. Below it, just like the rage o' the Rebels against the English, ya had a bunch of resentment breedin'. Blacks 'n' whites, sure. But seems ta me nobody thought to ask the young folk what they thought about what they were bein' handed, either. If'n they wanted that two-car garage an' that house in the bleedin' suburbs and the mortgage payments, and the War."
"Nobody asked us that, Sean," said Lorna. "Nobody thought to. Maybe they thought they didn't have to."
"An' that's the whole problem, Miss Lorna. Smug ya were, an' thinkin' ya had a little Utopia here what would always be the same, or perhaps, God willing, better. Ya never banked on the possibility that things might not work out that way. That they might, in point o' fact, get worse."
"They ignored the things they did not wish to see," said Toshiro, "because they were too satisfied with the things they were allowed to see."
Lorna was silent, as was Alex.
"There's loads of other nations would be glad to trade places with the States right now, though were I you, I would na' make the deal," Cassidy went on. "All those lands what the Commies got under their boot, for example. But that's not even takin' inta account all those little dictatorships down south of yez, which Uncle Sam helps prop up 'cause they help 'em fight Breshnev and his boys."
"There's a reason for that, and you know it," said Alex. "The same reason why we aided Stalin in World War II. Strategy."
"Didn't say there wasn't," said Sean. "But they're dictatorships nonetheless, and some of 'em quite brutal. Wouldja go fightin' them, now? Or perhaps tryin' to liberate the Iron Curtain countries? Or just go after anyone doin' somethin' ya didn't like?"
"You're playing with words, Irish," Alex retorted.
"Sometimes it's better to play with words than with actions," said Sean. "Do nae take that as a threat. But think upon it."
"Okay. Okay, I'll just..." Alex sighed. "It just seems impossible, Sean. I'm supposed to be a surrogate Scott, and I'm not. We're supposed to be carbons of the old X-Men, and we're not."
"That's not what Professor Xavier wants, Alex," said Lorna. "He wants us to be as good as the old X-Men, but he doesn't want us to be them. At least, that's what I think."
"Also, he does not refer to you as 'students'," pointed out Toshiro. "He allows us to live outside the Mansion, except for Sean, who chooses to stay there."
"It isn't a question of 'allows', Toshi," said Alex. "Lorna and I flat out wouldn't live there. We've got our own lives. Scotty told us to keep our own space, and he was right."
"But he's changed a bit, from the old days," said Sean. "Some of it's to the good. I knew him much longer'n you, and I know what a task it was for him ta do that."
"So what're you really saying, back of all this, Alex?" Lorna faced him, point blank. "Do you want to leave the X-Men? Is that what this is all coming down to?"
"No," Alex admitted. "At least, not yet. Maybe I just want to see if we...if I...can really cut it, the way Scotty and the rest did. Mostly, it's you, Lorna."
"I'd go with you if you left," she said. "You know that, Alex."
"And I appreciate it. But if everything comes apart around us...what good is there in being an X-Man?"
Toshiro said, "Exactly the same as there always was. The good of being the man who stands at the center, and strives to make it hold."
There was silence for a time.
"What about you, Toshi?" asked Lorna. "What's your take on this?"
He shrugged. "A different country. Were it mine, I would be more concerned. As it is, I hope it does come through the present difficulty, considering how it and Japan are presently bound together. But America, at least, has been spared the experience of a nuclear bombing. Twice."
"It has that," said Alex. "So far."
"Which was, in many ways, not as devastating as what happened to us directly afterward," Toshiro said. "They lost their god."
"Oh," said Lorna. "The Emperor, you mean."
"Yes."
Alex finally said, "You said, 'they.' What about–"
"I have not lost my god, Alex. Never."
They listened to the crackle of the fire around the hot dogs for awhile, some of them wondering idly if there would be anything left worth eating.
There was a cry of fury and anguish from the woods. The four of them looked in its direction.
In a few moments, Cal Rankin, looking sweaty and somewhat spent, staggered into the circle of light. He was sweaty and his clothes sported grass stains and some mud.
"Sorry," he said. "Did I miss anything?"
"Nothing much," said Lorna, taking her stick from the fire and holding it out. "Have a hot dog."
-M-
In San Francisco, Bobby Drake worked as an accountant, and Hank McCoy was a chemist for Stark Laboratories. Neither of them had much occasion to use their Iceman or Beast identities, though they got together at least once a week. They had been tempted to don the costumes again with the new influx of villains in the Bay Area, but Daredevil, the Black Widow, and even once the Inhumans seemed to be coping with the current crop. So they left their uniforms in the closet.
In Ector, New York, the married team of Cyclops and Marvel Girl fought crime, worked in their respective jobs, and raised their kids.
In Worthington Industries, Warren Worthington III was kept busy as CEO and had left off fighting super-villains in favor of tending to his family. But he still got out on the weekends with Candy Sothern, donned his uniform, and took to the skies for hours at a time as the Angel.
All of them had met the new X-Men team, had congratulated them, and had shared their experiences of working under Xavier. But none of them offered to come back to the fold.
They had left that part of their lives behind.
-M-
In the nation of Wakanda, King T'Challa was almost dressed for the occasion at hand. All but for his mask.
Taku, his communications officer, rapped on the open door with his hand. "My chieftain."
"Come in, Taku," said the Black Panther, taking his mask from a table by his elaborate dressing-stand. He placed it on his head, fastened the clasps at the neck, adjusted it. The lenses in his mask, made of one-way glass, obscured even his eyes to those who looked upon him now. "Come in, and bring me good news."
"If the fact that your ship is charged and ready to take you to Manhattan is good news, then I bring you that," said the other. Taku was almost as tall as T'Challa, but he wore the more usual Wakandan male outfit, including a tunic, kilt-like garment, sandals, sash, and male jewelry. Plus he had a headset and microphone apparatus on his head, and carried a control device in his right hand.
The Panther turned and regarded Taku. "Then you believe that is less than good news," he said.
Diplomatically, Taku said, "What I believe is of little import, my chieftain. What our people believe is of supreme importance, and, you will forgive me for saying this–"
"Say it."
"–I have had more contact with them than you, of late."
T'Challa looked at his aide. It was true, to an extent. He had been back in Wakanda to do the business of kingship for the last few months. But for years before that, he had been in New York, as an Avenger. Now he was going back again. But adventuring with his old friends was only part of the lure.
The main part of it was a woman.
"Then what do they say, Taku? Or, more importantly, what do you think they say?"
"It is said that your constant abscences from the homeland are not good, my chieftain."
"But they have been good for the world, and for the nation, in that my Avengers duties raise the profile and estimation of Wakanda in the world's eyes," said T'Challa. "Say on."
"It is said that you grow distant from the people, and from the difficulties they face with modernization."
"I strive to remain in touch with the people, Taku, as much as I am able. You have seen that."
"Yes, my chieftain, I have."
"And modernization is an onus on many nations, but it is a burden which we have no choice not to bear. We are, after all, part of the 20th Century."
"But, my chieftain, some wish to choose which parts of the century they will accept, and which to leave alone."
"As do I," said the Black Panther. "As do I. Is there more?"
"There are rumors, my chieftain, unfounded, perhaps, of dissidents led by a rebel in the hills. A mysterious person known by the unlikely name of Killmonger."
The Panther turned and fixed him with a gaze. "And have you found the truth or falsity of these rumors?"
"No, my chieftain. Not yet."
"Then do so. And if you cannot, when I return, I will."
"And when will that be, my chieftain?"
"Soon. Hopefully soon. The communicator, Taku."
Without a word, Taku handed over the box in his right hand. It had a small television screen in one end of it. T'Challa thumbed a switch, twisted a volume control. After a few moments, the face of Monica Lynne appeared in color on the screen. "Hello, I'm in, it's good to hear from you, and I haven't got a lot of time," she said.
Taku blanched, inwardly. Of all the people he knew, only Miss Lynne could get away with talking to the king of Wakanda that way. At least, to his face.
"I understand," said the Panther. "A musical engagement?"
"Yeah," she said. "Rehearsals for a new show. You coming in on schedule?"
"You may rely upon it," said T'Challa. "And my word is my bond. Let me make contact with the Avengers, and I will make contact with you."
"Which, I guess, shows where I end up in the grand scheme of things. Okay. Let me know when you get in town. Anything else?"
"Not really, other than I love you."
"Same here. But don't think that lets you off the hook. Bye."
"Farewell." The image faded a second before the Panther switched off his own set. He turned to Taku. "Let us go."
"As you will," said Taku, and led him out of the chamber to the hall, the stairs, and the rooftop above.
A highly futuristic but lightweight vehicle was waiting for him there. T'Challa nodded to the guards stationed around the roof, and they saluted him. He got inside the Magna-Car. "Look after the kingdom well, Taku," he said, clasping the other's hand.
"And pray, my chieftain, that it is here when you return," said Taku, seriously.
The Panther let him go, then sent the car into the air on lines of magnetic force. It shot into the sky and was soon gone from sight.
Taku watched it go, and hoped he would never have to do so again.
-M-
It had not been easy for Magneto to rebuild his alliance, given the time frame within which he had to work...only a short time since his ill-fated encounter with the Inhumans in San Francisco, in search of a new power source in a device called the Universe Machine. But rebuild it he did. There was, all agreed, some degree of assurance in dealing with an Old Firm.
Now he had gathered to himself Unus, the Blob, the Vanisher, and Mastermind, all of them old allies and former members of Factor Three, plus Mesmero, the Maha Yogi, and the Living Pharaoh (who had, as of yet, not had the occasion to turn himself into the Living Monolith). All of them were mutants, all of them had fought the X-Men, and all of them were united in the current Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
"So how come we're throwing in with this geek, anyway?" rasped the Blob in his Texan drawl. "Who says we've gotta share with anybody else?"
Unus said, "The Blob has a point, Magneto. Figuratively, that is."
Magneto scowled momentarily at Unus. The untouchable mutant was, with the Pharaoh, one of the hardest of his associates to rule. But as long as he kept his insolence down a bit, Magneto would overlook it. Until he felt like not overlooking it.
"The operation can be turned to our own advantage," said Magneto. "It will be too big to be ignored. Too big to not be capitalized upon. If this causes the destruction of all of our enemies, the X-Men among them, and all the rest, it would be insanity not to involve ourselves. Afterwards, we will deal for territory and power. For now...we will put our shoulder to his wheel. Agreed?"
Each of them said, "Agreed," singularly, some with more enthusiasm than others.
"It is done," said Magneto, and held out his hand. A portable phone floated from the wall inerringly into his hand. He dialed the number he wished without touching his finger to the digits.
Contact was made, and a voice on the other end said, "Password."
And Magneto said, "Fire."
To be continued...