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#10
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“Forgotten Worlds” Part Four
Cavern X
Wanting to be accepted was a universal concern and Angel felt like for the first time in her life that concern had been satisfied. Even taking into account of all their weird quirks and flaws, she felt a certain Zen in their company. There was a balance in herself that she never thought she would have found a year ago. She just wished Gambit and the others were here to really test that theory. If they were all under one roof, would she still feel the same way? Even if she didn’t, Gambit would still be a nice piece of eye candy to have around.
She thought about him in some sexy swimwear when the microwave stated to beep. A quickly made batch of chicken Ramen noodles was waiting for her on the inside of it. She didn’t feel like making anything too complicated. Grabbing the Styrofoam cup, she blew on it gently and saw Doctor Nemesis enter the kitchen out of the corner of her eye. He was looking appropriately smug as always. She could feel his eyes beaming into her so she turned and said, “What?”
“Those things are loaded with sodium. You might as well open up a salt shaker and start swallowing it. Of course, I assume you’re not opposed to that sort of thing.”
Without hesitation, Angel forgot all about her Zen and flung her cup of hot noodles into Doctor Nemesis’ chest. She surged forward and pushed the man over a chair and was on top of him before he could even holler a protest. She leaned in close enough to be able to kiss him. “Let me make something clear: you make another crack like that and you’ll have a face full of acid.”
Nemesis lifted his head off the floor. “You’re a tool, little girl. You’ve always been a tool. Whether for greasy old men or for Xavier, you’re just a mind numbing –”
“Enough Nemesis!” Fantomex said walking into the kitchen, his arms folded across his chest. He looked at the miniature scene of chaos that the two had created and sighed. “Angel, go and take a breath. Nemesis and I need to have a gentlemanly conversation.”
Angel let go of Doctor Nemesis’ shirt, got up off of him and stomped out of the room. Fantomex waited till she was gone. “Seems she made the right choice throwing chicken noodles at you because you’re very much being a coward.”
“What did you say to me?” Nemesis got to his feet wiping the contents of Angel’s noodles off of his shirt.
“You’re a coward. You make it a point to tear down and insult women because you’re scared of them.”
Nemesis laughed. “You’re the last to try and psychoanalyze me as if you were a testament to mental health. I know all about the World and the terrors you were exposed to in it. A man doesn’t walk out of there with a sound mind.”
Fantomex ignored him and started to pace around the kitchen. “See, you’re afraid of them because of your Mother first of all. She really liked to keep her children in the nest far longer than normal, am I right? She treated her sons more like boyfriends than children. Am I getting all right so far?”
“You don’t know me.”
Fantomex’s eyes lit up as if some great idea had just struck him. “And then there was your first wife, Alexandra. Didn’t you find her playing a bit of naked wrestling with one of your colleagues? A much older one at that. I’m sure that had to be a bruise o the ego.”
Nemesis clinched his fists. “Be quiet.”
“Then there was Abigail Fritzer, a spy in the war who seduced you into loving her and smashed your poor, little lustful heart all to pieces. Please feel free to correct me if I’m getting any of this wrong.”
Nemesis tugged at his tie sternly in a seeming effort to compose himself. “You’re not going to rattle me, Fantomex. I don’t care how you found out what you did, but –”
“I make it my business to know everything about the people I work with, James. Now, if you don’t want everyone from the New York Times to Ann Coulter to know about it, I suggest you shape up and fast. I know you’re only here for your precious little device, but that’s off the table at the moment. So until then, play nice.”
“And what if I don’t?”
Fantomex narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “If you really know anything about the World then you know I can flatten you like a tank going over a teddy bear. Consider that your first and only warning.”
Nemesis’ response was to rub a crease out of his stained jacket and walk past Fantomex without a word. Fantomex watched the man go and said, “E.V.A. I have a feeling that’s not quite how Xavier wanted me to handle that.”
He touched a nerve, Fantomex. At the end of the day, you’re still mostly organic.
Hellfire Club (Singapore)
Matsu’o rose up from the ground and looked at a smug Spiral and stoic scribe. It took him a minute to realize that he had pushed himself up off of the ground with his own hands. Hands that he hadn’t possessed when entering this building now he was looking down at fingers he controlled. He felt outside of his body as he did, as if he were watching someone else perform the movements.
“Get me a mirror,” Matsu’o said, looking up at Spiral. Excitement exuded from his every word. He felt like a hollow place in his life was finally be filled back up with the man he once had been. “Now!”
Spiral nodded to Scribe and the woman walked over to shelf to pull down a mirror. She brought it to Matsu’o, who savagely grabbed it and held I up to his face. He would have cried out if not for the discipline instilled in him. He was the handsome man that he once was, all of Wolverine’s scars removed. Gently, he examined his face. The nubs that he once had were confused at the fingers that had been returned to them.
“I don’t know how you did it, but I owe you a debt of gratitude, Spiral.” Matsu’o knew speaking those words carried a heavy price, but she had done him a great service. He was willing to pay whatever malicious price the woman asked for.
“Sebastian wanted you to be something of worth and I had to agree. You won’t be much of a leader over the Assassin’s Guild if all of them found you hard to look at. So consider that your first order of business. Hurry and solidify your grip on the assassins that have walked away from Gambit’s Unified Guild. Consider that the first payment on this gift you have been provided.”
Matsu’o felt invigorated as life flowed earnestly through him. His ego notched itself higher and higher with every breath. The old Matsu’o returned. “Sebastian’s order will be taken care of. But I know you, Spiral…this is not just a simple healing, is it?”
“Nothing in the Crimson Dawn is ever simple, Matsu’o. The creature I had latch itself to you is now connected to your very soul and with this thing inside of you, certain abilities come along with it. As much as the Hellfire Club is beneficial to me, there may come a day when it no longer is such. And when that day comes I want to have allies. Scribe is already one such ally and you are now another.”
Matsu’o smiled. He knew nothing from Spiral came cheaply. “You have my allegiance.”
The Horus Helicarrier
The odor of cigars was prominent in the conference room courtesy of G.W. Bridge. He didn’t expect all of his subordinates to like the smell, but he frankly didn’t care. Bridge was in charge of this floating city and he would do as he pleased while on it. Besides, after the information he had received, a long smoke was probably the only thing keeping him from blowing his top. All of his agents must have been aware of his anger because they looked like they could crumple under his gaze at any moment. “Someone tell me how did this mange to happen?” Bridge asked as all of his assembled agents took a seat. There were about fifty of them and everyone looked like they would rather be bungee jumping into a volcano than be in his company. Their eyes looked like they were either preparing to be verbally crushed or quietly shuffled off to desk duty. Bridge had no intent f doing the second option. These were all good agents, but he wasn’t about to let them off easy.
The first agent to speak up was a twenty-something Portuguese man with disheveled hair and bags around his eyes that said he hadn’t slept in days. Bridge respected that because it meant the man took their current issue seriously. In this case, a disorderly appearance just told Bridge that the man had work ethic. “We’re still not sure how our safe house was located, but we’re running down some theories. Our persons of interest that were caught by our surveillance footage have been identified though. They’re a gang of cybernetic mercenaries known as the Reavers. They’re not cheap to rent so we’re assuming our mastermind has a significant amount of cash to spend.”
“Or they took out one very steep loan,” Bridge said to laughter from no one. He didn’t want laughs right now, he wanted answers. “First, run through all of our assets and contacts in Madrid. See who knew about and who might have had even the slightest idea about what was being stored in that safe house. Then run down all the Reavers’ previous employers and see if any of them would have been interested in what we lost. And if that doesn’t pull up anything then expand the search and look up the associates of those previous employers. I don’t want a stone left unturned.”
Bridge got up from his seat and walked down the stairs in front of it. “I need to make a call to Director Fury and Professor Charles Xavier.”
The disheveled man’s eyebrows perked up. “Professor Xavier sir?”
“Bastion was a deranged cybernetic entity with an absolute hatred for mutants. If there’s anywhere he’d be bound to strike first it’d be the X-Men. As much as I don’t like letting them in on S.H.I.EL.D. issues, they deserve to know that this monster might be loose again. I won’t have any of their deaths on my head because we were trying to cover up our slip-up.”
The Xavier Mansion
Charles and Emma listened to Director Bridge’s news numbly. Bridge could see the flurry of emotions on their faces. “I know this isn’t exactly what you wanted to hear, but my people are working on containing the situation. And there’s no guarantee yet that the purpose of the kidnapping was to reactive Bastion.”
Professor Xavier could barely stomach the gnawing feeling or dread working its way through his stomach. Bastion, through Operation: Zero Tolerance, had nearly destroyed the X-Men and any hope Charles had of creating peace between humans and mutants. His actions incited human hatred against mutants in a way nearly unprecedented. Not even Magneto had brought the world so close to its first all-out war been man and mutant. He could only imagine what might happen if Bastion was given a second chance to fulfill his tainted dreams.
“I insist that my people be a part of this investigation, Director Bridge. We can ill afford the return of a creature with as dark as purpose as Bastion. His kind of savagery would crumble all the hard work my X-Men have made in the past few months.” Charles could only imagine how the global mutant community would react if news of Bastion’s imminent return was made public. It would inflate underlying fears that the X-Men’s progress was only a temporary matter. Xavier just could not allow that to happen.
“I’ve already considered the fact that you would make that sort of request, Professor. And, normally, I wouldn’t want your people involved in S.H.I.EL.D. business, but Fury trusts you. Besides that, the ugly truth of this whole thing is that we all have reason to fear someone like Bastion coming back. So the faster he can be tracked down, the faster he can be dealt with.”
Emma narrowed her eyes. “And why on Earth wasn’t Bastion’s spare parts melted down to slag? Why would anyone want to keep such a grotesque, despicable thing around?”
Bridge wasn’t going to mince words with either of them. “Insurance. In case the day ever came where mutants really did become a threat.”
Xavier leaned forward. “How could you – ?”
“Don’t give me that, Professor. I know all about your Xavier Protocols and how you set up ways to eliminate every one of your associates. If you can take those kind of precautions then what’s to say we can’t? We aren’t saints, but don’t try and pretend you are either.”
Charles couldn’t believe the man’s gall, but he did have a point. “I have been party to many things I deemed necessary, so in that respect I can appreciate your point of view. But could no other weapon have been created? Bastion is an unstable entity that is just as willing to force humans to submit to him as well as mutants.”
Bridge wouldn’t tell either of them this, but he had tried to halt the decision deeming Bastion a potential weapon against mutants, for the very reason that Xavier had just stated. He had harassed every superior that would listen, but all he managed to do was fluster a few of them and with all of his duties as a Director, the matter of Bastion had fallen to the wayside. Now he wished that he had taken the time to address it sooner.
“Again, Professor, your people can help. Hashing out the past isn’t going to get us any results so let’s focus on the present. I’ll be in flight within the hour.”
Xavier nodded. “We’ll be waiting.”
The Outback
Shadow King watched as the Reavers worked on the parts that comprised Bastion. Wires sparked and metal was welded. He stared down from the walkway overlooking the operation. Impatience surged through him. “If you all don’t finish this work faster I might consider garnishing wages.”
A particularly gaunt member of the Reavers named Hustler looked up at the Shadow King with purple cybernetic eyes made for targeting. “We’re working s fast as we can. This is a sophisticated piece of equipment. One wrong incision and you’re looking at a potential shutdown.”
Farouk considered using his host’s reality altering powers to just bring Bastion back, but he knew how risky that was. Young Elliot’s powers had consequences every time they were used. Pulling on the strings of reality was an imprecise art and sometimes in pulling one string you dragged another. In changing one aspect of reality, you altered something else. This young man’s power was too risky to use with any frequency.
“Move faster. If we’re to gain access to the World we have to take advantage of our small window of opportunity.”
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To Be Continued...
Next: In Dark X-Men #11: Matsu’o begins to gather the Assassins Guild while the Dark X-Men begin the hunt for Bastion.
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