A/N - Hello again everyone. Here's the newest chapter. As I said last week when one foe leaves, another arrives. It's a big one. One of the worst foes of the early X-Men besides Magneto finally makes his debut today.
Disclaimer: The X-Men were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and belong to Marvel Comics. Harry Potter was created by and belongs to J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this and the only thing that's mine are the original parts of the story.
Quotes taken from X-Men #12
29) ...HELLO JUGGERNAUT
Lightning, Angel, Beast, Iceman, Marvel Girl, and Mage all ran into the professor's office to see him and Cyclops bending over the professor's desk. The sound was coming from the Cerebro terminal that was installed in it.
"Professor" said Iceman, "we heard that blood-curdling noise! What's wrong? Are you in danger?"
The professor looked very grim, grimmer than anyone had ever seen him look before however no one could focus on that very well because of the noise.
"My ears!" said Angel clapping his hands over them, "the screech is deafening. What is it?"
"Whatever it is it needs to stop now" said Mage who pointed his wand at the terminal and said "silencio!" Immediately the sound cut out and everyone breathed sighs of relief.
"Thank you Sirius for stopping that alarm" said Lightning.
"Yes, thank you" said Angel with feeling.
"I haven't stopped it" said Mage, "it's still going on. We just won't hear it until I lift the spell. Obviously something important is happening but there's no need for us to lose our hearing learning about it."
"You're quite right" said the professor, "we're about to face our most deadly threat. We can have no secrets from each other now. Dobby this means you too. Please come here."
Dobby appeared in the professor's office with a pop.
"What is wise professor be needing?" asked Dobby though he looked much more serious than he usually did.
"You need to know what's happening along with everyone else" said the professor, "this menace threatens us all."
As if also sensing the seriousness of the situation Hedwig flew into the office through the door and landed on Lightning's shoulder.
"We're all here now" said Lightning after giving Hedwig a nod to acknowledge that she was there, "is this menace worse than Magneto? Or Voldemort?"
"Different from Magneto" said Xavier, "but equally powerful, and definitely worse than Voldemort."
"Oh boy" said Lightning with a gulp.
"What is it professor?" asked Beast, "what danger do we face? And why is Cerebro acting up like that? Did it do that when it found us?"
"No" said Xavier, "it reacts like this whenever a menace is nearby. But it has never reacted like this before. The menace we face must be indescribably powerful. There is only one who could cause such a reaction. Quickly! You must do as I say..."
The next several minutes were almost a blur. The professor's orders were quite simple. The mansion needed to be protected so the X-Men spent that time turning the grounds into a strong and even deadly set of fortifications to stop any intruders who might be trying to break in.
Iceman threw up a thick ice wall around the outside of the school property boundaries while Cyclops blasted a trench just inside the school grounds border. Beast laid a live electric cable on the bottom of the trench while Marvel Girl covered it with leaves, twigs and grass to camouflage it. After that Cyclops and Angel set up a couple of rows of hollow logs which were all armed with special grenades although neither of them knew exactly what the grenades did, just that they weren't normal.
While his teammates were building mundane defenses Lightning was working with Mage on a magical one. Having grown up a Black Mage knew a lot of, at best, questionable spells. Under Mage's direction Lightning drew a long pair of parallel lines with a gouging charm that ran alongside the other defenses his teammates were building. The lines were spaced about a yard apart and once Lightning was done making them Mage took out his wand and began enchanting the space in between the two lines with a grim look on his face.
"What are you doing?" Lightning asked.
"It's a piece of old Black family magic" said Mage.
"What does it do?"
"Trust me pup, you don't want to know." He then attracted the attention of the other X-Men and warned them all not to step on the area that he had enchanted.
"if it's that bad" asked Lightning, "how do you even know it?"
"The Black family is an old dark family" said Mage, "you couldn't grow up in my house with my parents and not know some really dark magic. I hoped I'd never have to use a spell like this. I have a feeling that you'll learn what it does soon enough and you won't like it."
The seven of them spent some more time finishing up all of the fortifications before heading back into the mansion and up to the professor's office. While they had been setting up the defenses Dobby had prepared some snacks for them to eat saying that they'd all just returned from a hectic adventure and therefore must be hungry. The X-Men were glad to help themselves to the snack tray. Meanwhile Hedwig had moved to perch on the back of the one of the office chairs.
"Well done my X-Men, come in" the professor said to them as they all approached him, "it's time for you to learn more of the danger that threatens us."
"Is it one of the evil mutants we fought in the past sir?" asked Cyclops but Xavier shook his head.
"No" he said and he seemed very sad as he spoke, "I only wish it were. I hoped you'd never have to learn of this enemy, for his power may exceed my own."
That caused the entire team to pay even closer attention. All of them wondered who could this enemy be that their mentor seemed to be so fearful of. He didn't keep them in suspense and the answer took them all by surprise.
"The one who is about to attack us" he said before hesitating a moment and then spitting it out, "is my own brother!"
There was a stunned silence as everyone tried to assimilate what the professor just said.
"Your brother!" Cyclops finally said.
"I didn't know you had a brother" said Marvel Girl.
"Why would he want to attack you?" asked Lightning, "aren't brothers supposed to like each other?"
"They're supposed to" said Mage quietly, "but sometimes it goes wrong."
"That it does" said the professor, "and in the case of my brother and I it's gone about as wrong as it can go. I never mentioned him before. Perhaps I hoped I would never have to mention him. But now that we all share the same moment of crisis I owe it to you to tell you the whole story."
The professor began at very beginning, during his childhood. His father was a well respected scientist who worked at a nuclear research center. The professor theorized that it was the radiation that both of his parents were exposed to while working there that had caused his own mutation and gave him his powers although those didn't manifest until he was a teenager.
Charles Xavier was born in the early 1950s. In the early 1960s his father was killed in one of the later tests of a nuclear weapon. Something went very wrong and the whole thing had blown up. Although Xavier's father died in the accident his partner, Dr. Kurt Marko, managed to escape although he'd been hurt in the blast.
"I never trusted Dr. Marko" Xavier said to the listening X-Men, "he was always jealous of my father because of his wealth and the admiration of his peers. Marko was a hard worker too but he just wasn't on father's level. I wondered for a long time if maybe Dr. Marko had a hand in my father's death. As it turned out, he didn't. The accident was a real accident. His sin was that he could have saved my father if he'd wanted to – but he didn't."
"Then he as good as killed him!" said Mage pounding Xavier's desk.
"Sirius, please" said Xavier, "thank you for the sentiment but it's too late to matter now. Let me continue."
Dr. Marko had wasted no time in wooing Charles' mother by posing as her supportive friend in her time of grief and some months later he married her and moved into Xavier's family home ("this very mansion by the way") where gradually the marriage deteriorated as Xavier's mother finally realized that Marko had never really cared about her. It wasn't long afterwards that she died too but before that happened Dr. Marko brought Cain Marko, his son from his previous marriage, back from his school to live at the mansion.
"From the very beginning" said Xavier, "we didn't get along. Cain showed himself to be a bully the very first time we met. He was older than me and he took advantage of that. He hit me in the face that first day and things never got better, in fact they got worse as the years went by."
The story went on from there. In a case of irony Dr. Marko himself was killed by an explosion in his lab that was actually caused by Cain when he tried to force his father to give him money. That left the two boys without any parents but they were old enough that the state allowed them continue living where they were with the servants to care for them.
As he entered high-school Xavier's powers manifested and he began to excel in just about everything. He was at the top of his class academically. In addition, his ability to know what other people were thinking meant that he could also excel in sports because he knew when his competitors were tiring or (in football) when and where they were going to tackle him. After a while he gave up sports because he felt that his powers gave him an unfair advantage over everyone else.
"I never told anyone about my powers" said Xavier, "I knew it wouldn't be taken well by others. I thought they would hate me if they knew. Maybe they would have, maybe they wouldn't have, but I didn't want to risk it. It's similar to why magicals have the Statute of Secrecy. Anyway..."
All the time that Charles Xavier was excelling Cain Marko was not. He'd been expelled from his school when he first came to live at the Xavier mansion and later on he just never applied himself. He watched his step brother and grew increasingly jealous of the younger boy's success.
"Oh God" said Lightning, "that sounds so much like Aunt Petunia's attitude toward my mum after it came out that my mum was a witch.
"Does that really surprise you?" asked Xavier, "there aren't very many truly original stories in the world. The relationship that Cain and I had – that your mother and your aunt had – happens a lot more often than anyone realizes. It didn't have to be that way. Cain could have done so much if he'd only tried, but he let himself be defined in opposition to me right from the start. When it finally came to blows between us for the first time I was able to beat him because I could read his thoughts so I knew what he was going to do."
Things never got better. It was clear that they would never be friends no matter how much Xavier might have wanted it to be otherwise and eventually he gave up trying. The hardest thing to change in the universe is another person's mind and it seemed that Cain's mind had long ago been made up to hate him no matter what.
"The last time I saw him" said Xavier, "was in 1970 in Vietnam. We were serving in the army together. Don't ask me how that happened, it just did. Anyway, we came under some heavy fire from the enemy and Cain deserted to try to get away from the bombardment. I ran after him to try to stop him and talk some sense into him. I chased him into a cave and that's where everything went south. The cave wasn't just a cave. It was a lost temple, one I recognized from my studies into esoteric subjects over the years. It was the lost temple of Cyttorak."
"Cyttorak?" Mage asked in shock, "really?"
"You know of him?" asked Xavier.
"I read about him in the Black family library" said Mage, "he's one of the deities of black magic, one of the worst ones actually. The book that described him went into great detail about him and his acts."
"Indeed" said Xavier, "when I caught up to Cain he was standing in front of a table that had a large, glowing ruby on it. I warned him not to touch it but he didn't listen. He picked it up and read the inscription on it. I've never forgotten what it said: 'Whosoever touches this gem shall possess the crimson bands of Cyttorak. Henceforth you who read these words shall become, forevermore, a human juggernaut.'"
Mage had a look of horror on his face.
"Oh no" he said, "professor, please tell me that ruby was a fake. Please tell me nothing happened."
"It was no fake" said Xavier sounding as grim as they'd ever heard him. Mage looked pale.
"What's wrong Padfoot?" asked Lightning, "what do you and the professor know about this?"
"A juggernaut" said Mage sounding equally grim as the professor, "is both an irresistible force and an immovable object at the same time. I read that when Cyttorak was banished from Earth he left behind the Juggernaut Ruby which would transform the first person to find it. The legends say that once a juggernaut decides on a direction to go nothing can stop it from reaching its goal. Nothing at all no matter how big, how strong, how deadly, no obstacle can stop it and it will crush anything that gets in its way. Now imagine a human being who possesses that kind of power."
"That – is scary" said Iceman.
"No kidding" said Mage before turning to the professor, "is that what happened to your brother? Did he turn into a human juggernaut?"
"Yes" said the professor, "the ruby changed him just like you read it would. He grew to be much bigger than he was before, possibly as big as the Hulk, and you all know what he's like."
"Oh great" said Angel, "a second Hulk. Maybe we should get the Hulk to battle him."
"He would lose" said the professor, "the Hulk can be stopped eventually despite how difficult that is. Juggernaut, on the other hand..."
All of the X-Men took a minute to consider a being whom could beat even the Hulk. None of them liked the implications.
"I'd better finish the story while we still have time" said the professor, "right after Cain transformed the whole cave began to collapse. Something had hit the outside of the mountain it was in and caused the cave-in. I was close enough to the exit to escape although just barely. Cain, however didn't get out. He was buried by all of the falling rock and rubble. The whole mountain seemed to fall on him. Who knows how many tons of rock he was buried under."
"But that should have killed him" said Cyclops, "no man could survive that."
"And I hoped it would kill him" said the professor, "but he wasn't a man anymore. He was a Juggernaut and that might save him. Still, it would take years for him to dig his way out from under that pile but if he ever did I knew he'd come for me. It's taken over 20 years but it would appear that he finally did it.
"When I got out of the army I went to college and got on with my life, later lost the use of my legs to Lucifer, and eventually started the X-Men. All this time, however, I've waited, wondering when he would finally come. Now he has."
"Sirius" said Lightning suddenly, "if Juggernaut got his power by magic can't we undo that magic and make him a normal man again?"
"We can try" said Mage, "but I doubt it will work. Not all spells can be undone and the more powerful they are the harder it can be to undo them. Cyttorak's magic is different from ours so a Finite Incantatum probably won't work. We may need to know the exact magic used on him in order to reverse it."
"You're right" said Xavier, "I doubt even Dr. Strange could do it, and he knows the magic of Cyttorak better than almost anyone on Earth."
With his story finished Xavier turned his attention back to his Cerebro terminal. Even though Mage had silenced it the professor could still keep track of their invader's progress. Now he asked Mage to cancel the silencing spell. Mage did so and the alarm was louder than before.
"He's getting closer" said the professor, "the sound is getting unendurable. His power must be greater...than I feared. Cerebro is almost tearing itself apart!" The professor looked at a readout and his face got even grimmer.
"He's reached the first barrier" he said, "quick! To the window!"
None of them wasted any time as they crowded around the window of Xavier's office. It looked out on the front of the school. In the distance they could see Iceman's ice wall and as they all watched in amazement it began to break.
"No way!" said Iceman, "I made that wall so thick three people could walk side by side on top of it. How can he break it so quickly?" No one had any answer to give him but it was happening. The wall shattered completely and ice chunks went flying all over the place. Amid the wreckage the group got a glimpse of whoever, or whatever, had shattered the wall but it was too far away to see in detail. They did see it move forward once all the ice fell to the ground. They could see it a bit better now and it did look human but if they could see it from this distance it had to be very big.
The figure moved closer and then suddenly it fell into the trench that Cyclops had blasted out of the ground and which Beast and Marvel Girl had booby trapped. A bright light exploded from the trench and everyone had to shield their eyes. The professor explained that the trap was an electro-magnetic force field. As they all watched the light from the force field got even brighter – and the intruder was still standing!
"If he's lasted this long" said the professor, "it means the cable can't stop him. He's everything I feared he'd be...and more."
The bright light suddenly got much brighter and the professor revealed that there had been an even greater wave of energy in the trap that had been released when the intruder snapped the cable.
For a few minutes it looked like the intruder might be stopped by the extra energy that was unleashed but then, to everyone's disbelief the intruder broke through the second barrier and began heading towards the mansion again.
Now everyone got their first really good looks at Juggernaut. He was absolutely enormous, just like the Hulk was, maybe he was bigger than the Hulk although without having the Hulk there to compare the two it was impossible to say for sure. He was dressed in a form fitting outfit of some brown material although it was sleeveless. Around each arm were three brown bands and he wore a helmet that covered his whole head and seemed to be attached to his outfit at the shoulders. It had holes for his eyes and his mouth and nose weren't covered either but that was it. Since he was still some distance away they couldn't make out any expressions that the visible parts of his face might show.
As he marched forward Juggernaut reached the next defense. This was the first row of hollow logs that had grenades in them. When he tripped the wire that released the trap the grenades all shot up out of the logs and exploded unleashing clouds of a powerful sleeping gas all around him.
All that did was make him angry. He smashed through the line of logs and headed for the next line of logs. The gas that the grenades in these logs unleashed was even more powerful – the professor had told them it was strong enough to stop a herd of elephants. At first it looked like this barrier would finally stop their attacker. He staggered and fell back a bit from the effects of the gas. Everyone began to hope that at last they'd got him –
– And then he straightened up and made his way past that barrier too.
"This is ridiculous" said Angel, "he's made it past all of our defenses!"
"All except one" said Mage with a hard look on his face.
"The one we made" said Lightning looking at Mage, "what will it do to him?"
"You'll see – if it works" said Mage, "although I'm not feeling too confident of that right now. He's almost there. We'll know any second."
They all watched as Juggernaut continued to approach the house. They all saw him step into the space between the parallel lines that Lightning had made and set off Mage's spell. Suddenly he stopped as if paralyzed.
"It's starting to affect him" said Mage, "so far so good."
Juggernaut began to convulse as it became obvious he was trying to fight the spell. As they all watched Juggernaut it looked like his whole body was beginning to turn inside out. Lightning could swear that he could see some of the man's organs starting to appear.
"Are you turning him inside out?" demanded Beast who was watching in fascination.
"Yes" said Mage, "it's a dark family spell. It turns a person inside out but it doesn't kill them. They're just frozen in place in horrible pain as a person's organs are not meant to be outside of the body. The person will stay that way until the spell is cancelled. When they've returned to normal they'll fall unconscious."
"That's horrible" said Marvel Girl.
"Yes, it is" said Mage, "I never wanted to use a spell like that but desperate times and all that."
"No one blames you" said the professor.
They all watched as Juggernaut fought the spell. Suddenly he broke free of it. His body returned to normal and he stepped out of the enchanted area.
"Wow" said Mage softly, "even that couldn't stop him. If he could beat that spell I doubt even the Killing Curse would affect him. What do we do now?"
"Cyclops" said the professor, "there is another precaution we've forgotten."
"Yes" said Cyclops, "I just thought of it now too. Quick! Raise the steel inner wall."
Angel, Beast, and Iceman all charged off together to do that. The others followed more slowly. The professor told them that they would all go to the front door as that was where Juggernaut had been heading and he was sure to try to break into the mansion at that point. When they reached the front hall they all saw that a thick steel wall had risen up and blocked the doorway. According to the professor the steel wall was fifty times the strength of the steel used in battle ships. None of the group could see any way that anything could break through it. On the other hand nothing should have been able to get through the other traps either.
"Professor" asked Beast, "if he should smash through this last barrier can you stop him by mentally affecting his brain?"
"A good question Henry" said the professor, "but I've a bad answer. I've been trying to probe his mind since first he appeared, but it's useless. When he gained the staggering power of Cyttorak, he also gained a mystic mental defense, against which I am totally powerless."
That stopped everyone cold. The way the professor talked was like he was speaking a death sentence. The professor was the most powerful one of them all. If even his telepathic abilities couldn't stop their enemy, what could?
They all fell silent as they waited to see what would happen. Soon they heard heavy foot steps from the other side of the barrier. As they watched the steel wall began to bulge inward.
"This can't be happening" said Iceman, "it just can't."
"It's like I said" replied Mage, "nothing can stop a Juggernaut. Harry, we'd better throw up some shields. That wall is going to shatter and it will come right at us."
"No" said the professor, "you two save your strength. Bobby, throw up an ice wall." Iceman did as the professor ordered and it was only just in time as the steel wall shattered and sent pieces of metal flying at them. Thanks to the ice wall the metal was stopped but right behind the metal came Juggernaut and he stepped into the mansion.
"Get out your wand pup" said Mage to Lightning, "we'll try a finite on him. Put as much power into it as you can. It probably won't work but who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky." Lightning pulled his wand out of his boot and held it up. While he waited to cast the spell he summoned up as much of his magic as he could. By the look on his face Lightning knew that Mage was doing the same.
A minute later Juggernaut broke through Iceman's wall.
"Now!" said Mage pointing his wand. Lightning pointed his wand too and both of them yelled Finite Incantatum!" The spell leaped out of both of their wands as two bright red beams and hit Juggernaut dead on –
– And did absolutely nothing.
"I hate it when I'm right" muttered Mage.
"So do I" said Lightning. He shoved his wand back into the slot in his boot and straightened up again. Seeing him up close they all saw that Juggernaut was even bigger than they'd first thought he was. He looked to be about 7 feet tall and his build was so big it put the largest body builder to shame.
The one good thing the spell had done was that it had distracted Juggernaut for a few seconds which gave Cyclops time to unleash the full power of his optic blasts on their foe. After a second Lightning joined him and shot a steady stream of electricity at Juggernaut. But none of that stopped him either. Juggernaut raised his hands and blocked both Cyclops' beams and Lightning's electricity and actually pushed them back as if they were solid things. It was clear that no one of them could stop him so Cyclops ordered the whole team to rush him as now they were all that stood between Juggernaut and the professor.
They did. Juggernaut knocked them all aside with ease and sent them flying into the walls. As Lightning slid down the wall after hitting it he saw Juggernaut striding toward the professor. He marched up to Xavier and stopped a short distance away from him. From the expression on the professor's face Lightning knew that he was trying to attack Juggernaut with his mental powers but it didn't seem to be working.
The two step brothers looked at each other for a long moment, neither of them moving, before Juggernaut finally spoke.
"So, dear brother" he said in a voice that sounded both cold and triumphant, "we meet again. What a pity it is for the last time!"
(To Be Continued)
A/N - That's all for this week. In the original X-Men #12 Xavier said that the nuclear accident that killed his father happened in Alamogordo, New Mexico and Cain became Juggernaut when he and Xavier were serving in the army during the Korean war which was from 1950-53. Obviously that had to be moved up for this story to happen in the 90s.
For the most part this chapter followed issue #12 fairly closely. The next chapter, which covers issue #13, won't do so nearly as much. Originally this adventure was all going to be in one chapter but it got to be too long for that so it was split into two. Fitting, I guess, since this was the first time the X-Men had an adventure that took two issues.
As usual please take a moment to leave me some feedback. Constructive comments are always welcome but no flames or trolls please. As always stay safe and well everyone.