"Frightened off the face of the earth!"
X-MEN/ TRANZ (featuring and dedicated to the stern-era uncanny x-men PUBLISHED BY MARVEL COMICS as written by Chris Claremont, drawn by John Byrne)
This story takes up nicely after x-men 124)
(this is my second draft, having redesigned the scenes more carefully to incorporate the individuality of the X-Men)
Written by Lue Lyron
If it weren't for X-men #188 (Dec. 1984)and Amazing Spider-Man in Marvel Tales #156 (Oct. 1983) I might not still be dreaming up stories with the X-Men and Spider-Man.
Truthfully, I've got one good story to tell with each of them this year: Spidey's came about the time of the oil spill on this very blog,
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/06/spill-and-spider-one-for-all-ages.htmlPrelude: “Mama I don’t Wanna Be a Soldier!”
PVT. STEVE HOLT: Any other time, I’d love to be in Southern California. Even coming to this mountain on National Guard fire-training maneuvers with the Canadian Mounties isn’t the worst day I’ve had.
But now I’m sitting in the midst of a blazing ruin, beside a tank I drove over a ...troll or something, cradling a woman who saved my life, wondering if I am in love with her and why won’t she wake up.
I can’t say I’m losing my mind because of all those things. The strangest part, no, no, was all that, in the midst of the sensation I’m feeling the feelings and observing the thoughts of every person I see. I was glad to be apart, as that seem to make it quiet again in my head.
Feels like that’s about to end; someone’s reading my thoughts at this very minute. I don’t think it can be helped.
I know I can’t help how I feel about this chick. Wow: she threw me to safety, right before the hideout for these creatures blew sky high and set off this mess. I feel like she’s fighting the hidden conflict underneath it all, with her spirit, and I don’t know how I know that, but I can almost see her flying into the darkness, towards this sinister plateau of red light.
I don’t even know you, lady. You’re the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. For all I know, you’re married. Maybe I feel this way because you saved my life. Maybe it’s the adrenalin. And you’re hot. Maybe I’ve never known just what I’m doing on this planet, but maybe I’ve always wanted to feel this way.
“All you know is that you want to help her...” His mountie friend Dave Blancley has walked out of the brush, into the bright afternoon sun.
“Damn! Blancley, you read---“
“---That right out of your mind, I know, ‘Sarge’, it’s happening to everyone...is that thing under your tank alive?”
“I haven’t checked...but you know that. I’m just standing guard over this warrior lady’s body.”
BLANCLEY: On that subject, you’ll have to excuse my thoughts, buddy. Maybe she’s just in a trance!
PVT. HOLT: But you know that’s what I think.
BLANCLEY: It’s bizarre: seeing other’s inner thoughts, their loved ones, their frustrations, and every feeling that comes out fighting this wildfire.
One minute, Steve, we’re laughing over the jOYOUS Show and by the end of the day it’s like...the end of the world. Not exactly, but...you can sense it...this is happening elsewhere, too. It’s rather distracting, really; I had to get my head in the game and deal with the fire.
HOLT: I don’t know how else to thank the lady, bro, I just hope there’s more help than me.
BLANCLEY: But you will stick beside her.
HOLT: Damn right.
Perhaps it’s intuition---or some side effect of the increasing ripple effect of the Transmetamorphosis changing the Earth---but the soldier’s aware of another presence suddenly arrived upon the seen.
To stand before such a door way is to immerse one’s self in facing the direction of all one’s fears, and sense, moving forward, your survival’s path, its methods.
Now both soldiers become aware of aid, not only from the strange team of beings diving with Storm into the perilous recesses of the spreading phenomenon...
...but surfing atop turbulence as extra-dimensional energy from the astral plane is the consciousness of Professor Xavier---presently, from the rugged Muir Island!
XAVIER: In the act of discerning, clarity is everything. Sometimes, an act must be made certain with only the most doubtful perceptions.
From the core of his being, Professor Xavier becomes a mental mirror to Cerebro, his mutant detecting apparatus, an eye rolling over events of no less than a reality storm.
XAVIER: This distorting vision of the interlacing consciousnesses of the soldiers and fire fighters in the distance (as well as the Wolverine and Cyclops) suggests why unprepared humanity and Earth seem destined to shatter from this process of Tranz-Rupture. The adaptation of their minds to the accelerated empathy seems achievable---yet what is this? Those who fear most seem to simply ---vanish!
BEAST: I’m incredibly grateful to be back on the scene, myself. Jean and I are “tagging in” just in time, I hope. Cerebro’s keeping up with the team, but this about the people...vanishing!
XAVIER: My scans find a little evidence of them in their passing: traces of energy that radiate outward into the corridors of the fifth dimension, hinting at some existence elsewhere in the beyond.
I think the mystery could be fathomed by someone like you, Hank, who speculates upon the course of evolution--indeed, the hidden nature of the plan’s abandoned now, as pretense is no longer necessary in the face of naked power. I discern the source of power for this change, this rupture of normal reality, even such that it is: the M’Krann Crystal Its energies created a blinking of reality: fantastically, all ceased to exist in a barely detected split second, during a battle for the crystal involving the X-Men.
BEAST: Starcore One reported to the Avengers and FF immediately! It was beyond description...
XAVIER: Each action precedes a number of consequences, and the M’Krann “blink” was no exception. The energy was born in waves which proceeded the end of the universe as we experienced it--- save for the destiny of a universal force which has come to be part of Jean Grey.
BEAST: We’ve barely had time to talk about the artifact source. In fact, you and I haven’t at all; I knew the barest bit about how she’s...changed! (thoughtful pause.)
Glad her Phoenix powers let her join the team in Southern California.
XAVIER: The M’Krann Crystal, lies within the Shi’ar Galaxy. Its existence before the Milky Way existed has been marked with a special stargate alignment occurring regularly but extremely rarely throughout its existence. The alignment was manipulated by the mad Shi’ar Emperor D’Ken, whose ties and plans to involve Earthlings remain unrevealed. How now does an object, dormant throughout most of Eternity, shed consequences all the way from the Shi’ar Galaxy now?
BEAST: Reverberations in that very blinking of existence, as recorded by Peter Corbeau via Star Core One on that occasion have been harnessed, with minimal efficiency, into the necessary transformative power to choose an acceleration of evolution in both man and Earth.
Broken bells rustle by the oak door. Moira MacTaggert has proved a commendable tolerance, even enthusiasm, for these, her two touring guests, Charles XAVIER and The Beast. Their good conversation has led to quite an eventful afternoon.
As she turns from her wood stove top with a tray of tea, she senses something ineffable at stake, yet, she recognizes benevolent, yet awe-inspiring, energy in the traveling couple---even as she suspects they journey from the very place of XAVIER’s vision, dancing within Cerebro. He looks up.XAVIER: Thank you. I trust you to understand the strenuous nature of this emergency.
MOIRA: Trouble at home?
XAVIER: You might say that.
MOIRA: Have no fear. You came to me to speak of other places where dwells the soul, friend. Now I must share my impressions with you, as I see outside you while you concentrate so feverishly.
XAVIER: The Beast seems to be recuperating energy from contact with our friends. The tea is very thoughtful.
MOIRA: Enjoy the ease in its heat, Charley. I feel the need to tell you of the three ghosts who surround the crystal ball’s tempestuous vision. What we gaze upon in this orb seems to be the very dreams of ghosts, lucid in the light of thousand year slumber coming to the threshold of wakening.”
THE BEAST: “Charles, do you recognize?”
XAVIER: Their language is Old Norse. They are adepts of some proficiency themselves; their intentions give me some notion what occurs in the most impenetrable place wherein Storm’s astral self seems to breech. She seems to be responding to her state of being by experiencing an environment about her as she plunges into the dark.
MACTAGGERT: Two are united as one...and the third is united into another pairing, as though merged, captured, contained...by one who is not of this world.
THE BEAST: Cerebro’s actually letting me keep touch with Ororo’s mind as she dives into the inner, exposed layer...his existence is growing so complex as to begin to unfold, as though archeypally.
XAVIER: Yet the wolf is a pawn, I think, to some greater outside presence!
THE BEAST: Nonetheless, Charles, it seems sure that this werewolf enchanter---his body, essences stolen from outside the known universe, yet bonded with something---human. Perhaps it’s a mutant?
XAVIER: If this being is composed of a dual nature, perhaps that way---holds the key to humanity grabbing some stake in the actions that cut and paste
The world we know.
He nods.
He begins to probe where the energies radiate, how they mix with the very fundamental place where human thought becomes human reality. “But should I discern the nature of this Transmetamorphosis,” he asks himself, “what then?”
Indeed---what then?The Beast’s trance reassembles its contact with Storm, and now MACTAGGERT, XAVIER and The Beast all see the two ghosts united of which the Madame spoke.
In bolts of lightning are the two embodied: she, inside of him, and he, the very electricity commanded by the mutant X-Man.
Storm’s lips carry a song from her days as the goddess...adrift in her own
environment, Storm bears down upon the dark arena
where stands the transfixed wolf-man-god: Remus Sharptooth, drawing a techno-sorcerous circuit
triangulating the M’Krann energies and manipulation from the future itself,
as the world of our knowledge shatters.
