X-Men and the Avengers: Lost and Found, Page 20

  Displaced by the Hulk’s resounding return to the river, a tremendous wave of cold water washed over the tip of Goat Island. The miniature tsunami knocked both Captain America and Cyclops off their feet, breaking off the tense stand-off that had endured since the star-spangled Avenger landed on the island, surprising Cyclops. Breathless and out of control, both heroes were sent tumbling across the ravaged landscape, ending up sprawled in the mud after the great splash spent itself.

  The force of the wave left Cyclops’s visor slightly ajar, and his uncontrollable eyebeams escaped through the gap, blasting the ground near Captain America, who had to roll quickly across the wasteland to avoid being struck by the destructive rays, which sent shattered chunks of rock flying into the air. Cyclops hastily adjusted his visor, cutting off the beam, but feared the damage had already been done. Did Captain America think he had been fired upon on purpose?

  / may have just made a volatile situation worse, Cyclops thought. He didn’t know what the Avengers wanted here, but he doubted it was to invite the X-Men to a friendly inter-team softball game. Slipping and sliding in the now-muddy soil, he scrambled to get back on his feet before Captain America could seize a strategic advantage; even though the legendary hero was only human, with no special powers or abilities, Cyclops knew from experience what a resourceful opponent he could be. He still remembered the way Captain America had led the battle against Exodus during that bloodbath in Genosha a few years back. I can’t let him stop me from escaping with the Hulk, he thought fervently. Rogue’s life may depend on it. Whatever the Avengers wanted, with either the X-Men or the Hulk, would have to wait.

  Unfortunately, the Captain’s reflexes were even faster than Cyclops’s. The patriotic colors of his uniform obscured by a clinging layer of slick brown mud, he rose upward from the slippery muck; somehow, despite the power of the unexpected deluge, he had managed to hang onto his shield throughout their headlong tumble. The sturdy metal disk, Cyclops knew, was both a weapon as well as a defense; more than once, he had seen Captain America hurl his shield with devastating effect.

  Perhaps the Avenger intended the shield only for his own protection, but Cyclops couldn’t take that chance. He could too easily imagine himself succumbing to a single blow from the Captain’s shield, leaving him helpless in the mud, no good to Rogue or anyone else.

  That’s not going to happen, Cyclops vowed. Cool water dripped from his hair, leaking past the top of his visor, only to be reduced to atoms the instant the droplets fell in front of his volcanic eyes. Failing his fellow X-Men was the one thing that Scott Summer had always feared more than anything else, ever since Professor X first entrusted him with leadership of the team. His mission, and his responsibility to the team, took priority over everything else.

  “Sorry, Captain,” he murmured. Cybernetic controls within his visor allowed him to raise the quartz lens without lifting a hand, even as he clambered upright. He winced inwardly as his forcebeam sped toward the other hero; firing at Captain America felt, in a very real way, like spitting at the flag. Cyclops was grateful for the mud covering the red, white, and blue emblems on the Avenger’s celebrated uniform, which Scott suddenly remembered seeing on a LIFE magazine cover when he was only seven years old, back when he was just another lonely kid in that orphanage, looking for heroes wherever he could find them.

  Shooting Captain America. . . well, there goes my chance of ever running for President, he thought, indulging in a rare moment of black humor. Not that I really expect to see a mutant in the White House anytime soon.

  The crimson beam was fast, but Captain America’s shield was faster. The convex surface of the shield leapt between the beam and its target, deflecting the ray back at Cyclops, who barely ducked in time to escape being lambasted by his own mutant power. Cyclops was impressed by the speed with which the Avenger had blocked his eyebeams; he would have thought that only Wolverine could react with such split-second timing.

  Guess that’s why they call him a living legend, Cyclops thought. Clearly, neutralizing Captain America’s unwanted interference was not going to be easy.

  Then again, he reflected, where the X-Men were concerned, nothing ever was. That’s why the Professor had always trained them to be ready for anything—and never to surrender. Not even to the Avengers.

  The Vision, Iron Man, Captain America. Cyclops wondered just how many Avengers they were up against. Last I heard, Firestar and Justice had joined the team.

  A clap of thunder reverberated above him and a shadow fell over the island; Cyclops recognized the early warning signs of Storm in high dudgeon. Keeping one eye on Captain America, he glanced upward in time to see Storm flying overhead, lighting streaming from her fingertips. A moment later, one of Ororo’s patented windstorms blew none other than Iron Man himself across the sky. Fiery rockets flared from the armored Avenger’s boots as he fought back against the gale. Repulsor rays issued from his metal gloves, only to falter and fade before striking Storm.

  Looks like the battle has well and truly been joined, Cyclops concluded soberly, his mouth a fixed, unsmiling line beneath his gleaming visor. Watching Captain America’s piercing blue eyes, he saw that the aerial contest above them had not escaped the Avenger’s notice. He eyed Cyclops warily, keeping his shield raised in front of him. If nothing else, Cyclops’s eyebeams had dispersed the mud that had been smeared over the shield. Now the famous shield could be seen in all its celebrated glory: concentric red and white stripes surrounded a single white star shining brightly against a navy blue background.

  Seen through Cyclops’s visor, of course, both stars and stripes had a ruby tinge, like most everything else in his world. The driven, young X-Man gave the shield his full attention while he calculated the best way to get his eye-beams past it.

  “I hope you understand I don’t want to do this,” he said to the other hero. Between Storm’s thunder and the roaring falls, however, there was little chance that the Captain could hear his apology. Without further warning, he aimed his visor at Captain America’s knees, exposed beneath the lower rim of his shield. Extradimensional energy, strong enough to halt a charging rhino, leapt downward like a striking cobra.

  Captain America had anticipated the move, though. He leapt high into the air, so that the beam whizzed by underneath him, and flung his shield straight at Cyclops. Like a star-spangled Frisbee, the shield whistled through the empty air, only to be knocked from its path by Cyclops’s eyebeams as they swept upward to meet the spinning shield in mid-flight. Deflected from its course, the shield flew off toward the nearby woods.

  Now, Cyclops thought. Keenly aware that his foe was disarmed, if only for the moment, he adjusted his visor to produce a wider beam that spread out like a crimson wedge from where he was standing. Maximum dispersal, he thought. There v no way he can get out of the way this time.

  That might have been true, had Captain America remained deprived of his shield. As if he planned for every alternative, however, the diverted shield bounced off the bark of a standing maple tree and returned to his waiting hand like a boomerang. Ducking his head below the rim of the shield, the Captain dug his heels into the soppy soil, bracing himself against the force of Cyclops’s unfettered eyebeams.

  The lambent red radiance, which had battered foes as diverse and dangerous as Mr. Sinister and the Living Monolith, left not so much as a nick on the decades-old shield.

  What on earth is that thing made of? Cyclops marveled, pouring on the power. Adamantium? Vibranium? Or something else entirely?

  Whatever it was composed of, the metallic disk repelled his eyebeams better than anything that old and outdated should have been able to. Nor was Captain America kept on the defensive; pushing against the unrelenting pressure of the crimson ray, the Avenger advanced toward

  Cyclops, marching slowly but inexorably across the slimy, battle-scarred terrain. Cyclops couldn’t see Captain America’s face, but he could imagine the look of stubborn determination that surely waited behind the oncoming shield.<
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  Another tactic was clearly called for. Spotting a puddle of filmy water behind and slightly to one side of Captain America, he narrowed his beam to a thin red streak and fired at the puddle instead. The beam ricocheted off the reflective surface of the muddy water toward the Avenger’s undefended back. But Captain America must have seen the beam coming, perhaps in the polished underside of his shield, and he leapt into the air again, executing a perfect split over five feet above the ground. He brought his shield down between his outstretched legs, catching the brunt of the beam and reflecting it back at the ground, using its propulsive effect to carry him forward. Cyclops saw Captain America flying toward him, surfing the rechanneled force of the X-Man’s own eye-beams!

  Cyclops snapped his visor shut, cutting off the beam, but it was too late; Captain America had already acquired too much momentum. His legs swung together and the soles of two bright red boots hit Cyclops squarely in the chest, knocking him onto his back, which splashed down onto the mud and rocks. Cyclops’s head snapped backwards, hitting the ground so hard his ears rang. He gasped once, the air hammered out of him, and blinked in surprise. For an instant, he saw Storm high above, silhouetted against a white-hot burst of lightning, her hands cupped over her ears. Then a pair of heavy knees landed heavily on his chest and a painted white star descended toward his face, blotting out everything else.

  His visor slammed into the bridge of his nose, and he realized that Captain America was pressing his shield down on top of the visor, effectively blinding the supine X-Man. Cyclops couldn’t see a thing! No slouch at hand-to-hand combat, especially after sparring with Wolverine in the Danger Room, he tried to throw Captain America off him, but the veteran super hero countered his every move and kept him pinned to the ground. Strong fingers seized hold of his right wrist while the immovable knees pressed down on his ribs. The unbending metal shield pushed firmly against the visor, keeping up the pressure.

  If he thinks he can cap my eyebeams with his shield, Cyclops thought defiantly, he's got another think coming.

  Abandoning his jujitsu moves, he raised his ruby quartz lens all the way, opening up the floodgates in front of his eyes. The forcebeam erupted like a geyser, tearing Captain America’s shield from his clenched fist and carrying it over fifty feet in the air, where it hovered atop a luminous pillar of unearthly energy.

  Caught by surprise, Captain America nonetheless delivered a right cross to Cyclops’s chin, which left the young mutant seeing stars and stripes. His eyebeams required no act of concentration on his part, however; they flowed freely whether he willed it or not. Lifting his head from the mud, he turned his explosive gaze on the hero astride him. Captain America yanked his head out of the way just in time, although the beam tore off one of the miniature eagle wings adorning his cowl. As the beam swept downward, it hit Captain America below the neck like the spray from a high-intensity fire hose, tossing him backwards for several yards, until he ducked behind a ridge of land, left behind by the Hulk’s earth-shaking depredations.

  We’re right back where we started, Cyclops realized as he found himself scrambling up from the mud for the second time in less than ten minutes, watching his renowned opponent do the same despite the scintillating forcebeam strafing the air above his head.

  The famous shield, no longer held aloft by Cyclops’s unharnessed power, fell from the sky between them, blocking the beam long enough for Captain America to lunge forward and grab the shield before it hit the ground. Once more, Cyclops was forced to dodge his own eye-beams as they bounced off the shield, racing back at him. The rerouted beam dug a deep trench through the dirt he had just climbed out of, and he aimed for the ground at the Captain’s feet, hoping to dislodge him, but that maddening shield darted down to meet the beam, right on schedule. For several minutes they battled thus, the shield parrying Cyclops’s every move, until the empty space between them was filled with a tangled lattice of intersecting red beams, culminating when the beleaguered mutant ended up firing fresh beams to block returning rays, which, striking once more against the shield, then doubled back on him again.

  This isn’t good, Cyclops concluded, coolly assessing his ongoing duel with the indefatigable Avenger. From a tactical standpoint, their respective abilities complemented each other much too well. Captain America employed his ubiquitous shield with as much skill and precision as Cyclops had learned to direct his unique eyebeams. No surprise there, he acknowledged. We could be at this all day, before one of us makes a crucial error.

  Risking a peek at the sky, he saw lightning bolts colliding with repulsor rays amidst dark, tempestuous clouds. Meanwhile, the Beast remained out for the count beneath that fallen tree. And where had the Vision disappeared to anyway? Why wasn’t the android Avenger coming to aid of his comrades? Had something happened to him?

  The habitual scowl below his visor deepened. This entire melee with the Avengers was taking too long, costing them far too much valuable time. Cyclops made a mental note to add holographic Avengers to the Danger Room, so they’d be better prepared for such a clash in the future, but that wasn’t going to do them any good here and now. He had to do something—anything!—to break the stalemate.

  Right after he blocked the beam ricocheting back toward his head ...

  A rusty metal man took potshots at a self-styled goddess way up high in the sky. On a big rock in the middle of the river, a red-eyed geek of a mutant played catch-the-bouncing-stun-beam with a true blue national mascot. The furry blue guy was down and out and that miserable robot was resting in a couple of pieces at the bottom of the Falls. Standing upon the brink of the biggest waterfall in sight, knee-deep in the impatient torrent, the irascible Hulk found himself without anyone to fight.

  Sure, there were always those armies lined up on either shore, but they hardly counted. The Hulk sneered at the tanks and soldiers with contempt; he could wallop the American troops, and the Canadians, too, without working up a sweat. And he’d do it, too, if he had to, but right now he was a lot more interested in the grudge match that had broken out between the X-Men and the Avengers. Not that he was rooting for either team; from where he was standing, they deserved each other. They were both a bunch of yappy, self-righteous pains-in-the-butt, always try to rope him into one of their do-gooder crusades. To heck with all of them! A plague on both their houses, as that overeducated wimp Banner might say.

  He was mightily tempted, in fact, to just let them fight it out among themselves, but where was the fun in that? His knuckles itched to crack some super hero skulls. That dust-up with the robot had wrapped up too soon, and OF Shellhead had found another target for his wimpy repulsor rays. The Hulk felt his adrenaline flowing, feeding his perpetual pugnacity. Where did these costumed clowns get the nerve to cut him out of the action? Just thinking about it made him mad, and the madder he got...

  “Hey, X-Vengers!” he bellowed, pounding his fists against his lime-green chest like a bellicose gorilla and raising a racket that could be heard over the Falls themselves. “Save a little stompin’ for me!”

  He crouched in the river, tearing out the knees of his tattered purple jeans, then used his impossibly overmuscled legs to break every single Olympic jumping record. He left the Falls far below him and catapulted into the clouds, forcibly inserting himself into the pitched battle between Iron Man and Storm. Repulsor rays tapped feebly against his ribcage while thunderbolts tickled the base of his spine.

  “You call this firepower?” the Hulk called mockingly, his upward trajectory finally reaching its peak within spitting distance of both the mutant and the mechanic, who reacted to his abrupt arrival with expressions of utter surprise. Both of them looked like they’d seen better days; Storm’s exposed flesh was nicked and scraped in places, while Iron Man had picked up a couple of nasty dents in his once snazzy chassis. These were the best the super hero world had to offer? Hah! The Hulk glanced down for just a second; the armed forces down below looked like toy soldiers from this height. Then he sneered at the airborne Avenger
and X-Man, treating them to equal helpings of his colossal disdain. “Try a load of this on for size!”

  As he had on the island, the Hulk clapped his gargantuan hands together with unfathomable force. The resulting shock wave momentarily cleared the brooding storm clouds, permitting a shaft of sunlight to shine through, and sent both Storm and Iron Man tumbling head over heels away from each other. The Hulk chortled boisterously at the sight of the two flying heroes twirling helplessly through the skies they’d thought they owned.

  “Just call me Hurricane Bruce!” he hollered.

  Too bad Wolverine’s still AWOL, he grumbled silently. Where in blazes is that scrappy little Canuck, anyway?

  Gravity belatedly called the Hulk back to earth, and he accelerated downward at roughly ten meters per seconds squared, arcing through the sky toward the wooded island where Captain America and Cyclops fought on behalf of their respective teams. Rebounding crimson beams formed a glowing cat’s cradle between them. His emerald eyes alight with barbaric glee, the Hulk waited impatiently to touch down between the unsuspecting combatants.

  Boy, were they in for a rude surprise!

  A tremor shook the island. At first, Captain America thought that an earthquake had hit Niagara. Then he saw the colossal green figure at the center of a newly-formed crater at the tip of the small isle.

  I should have guessed where that quake came from, he chided himself. Who needed earthquakes when the Hulk was around? The ill-tempered behemoth was a walking disaster area.

  Cap stepped backward, giving the Hulk a wide berth while he waited to see what the Hulk would do next. So did Cyclops, who reined in his eyebeams, taken aback by this earth-shaking new development. The Hulk’s cataclysmic arrival reminded Cap of a joke that had been old even when a young Steve Rogers had been growing up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression: