1st story:
Wolverine keeps his fist pressed against the wound in his stomach. He can’t seem to focus on anything, except for the guts he’s touching. Cyber cut him all the way to his guts. Cyber…guts…
hallucination:
“Coach Cyber thinks I don’t have guts,” Logan says while sitting in his hot-dog car outside of the Earl P. Wagner Memorial High School. “I’ll show him who he’s messin’ with.” One of Logan’s lady friends approaches the convertible wiener car and says she heard he has a bone to pick with Mr. Cyber. He just left to get his car, she tells Logan; he’ll never catch him. Wolverine begs to differ. His car is a powerful machine.
Mr. Cyber suddenly pulls up alongside Logan’s ride and punches him in the back of the head. “Hear you’re looking for me,” he says to Logan. “Hear you got a big car. Bad news, punk. Mine’s bigger.” Sure enough, Mr. Cyber’s immense hot-dog car easily dwarfs Logan’s. The decal on its side advertises it as the ‘Blood Sausage Machine.’ He tells Logan it also comes with special, optional equipment. Cyber leans over and puts his arm around Janet. Logan peers in the window and is dismayed to see his love-interest in the company of his worst enemy. Mr. Cyber laughs at him and tells him if he wants Janet, he has to catch her. With that, Coach Cyber slams on the accelerator and speeds away.
Logan follows, determined to teach Mr. Cyber a lesson. Down the road, Mr. Cyber checks his rear and sees Logan quickly approaching. “The little hot dog is still after me,” he sneers. He decides he will have to do something about it.
interlude:
Tyger Tiger apathetically spears another cocktail weenie with her fork. Suppose she were to take Cyber up on his offer, she says to her guest. How much would the sale of the hallucinogenic drugs cost her? Cyber, sitting comfortably across the room, scribbles his price on a piece of paper, folds it into a paper-airplane, and throws it over to Tyger Tiger. As she catches the airplane, Cyber recites her a few lines of poetry. “Tiger Tyger, burning bright. In the forests of the night. Tell me, tell me, tell me today. Have all my friends had fun at play?”
“William Blake meets Romper Room,” Jessan quips as she unfolds the offer. She tells him the price is absurd, and writes her counter-offer. If he wanted a counter, he would be at a diner, Cyber says. However, he allows her to indulge herself. Jessan throws the airplane back across the room.
“Surely you jest,” Cyber says as he reads her offer.
“I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley,” she replies. Crumbling the paper in his adamantium-laced hand, Cyber tells her the drugs are worth twice that amount, if only to keep them out of the hands of her rival, General Coy. He throws the wadded paper at her window. It shatters the glass. Impossible, Jessan shouts; a spitball could not possibly break a window!
Consider it his way of saying she is involved in some serious spit, Cyber tells her. She should be accustomed to that. “After all… he was here recently,” Cyber says. Who, Jessan asks? Logan; he knows his scent. Jessan asks Cyber how he knows Wolverine, to which he responds they go way back. “I have such bad memories of him,” he says. “I wonder how he remembers me?”
end interlude:
Wolverine, still hallucinating, shouts at Mr. Cyber as he gives chase in his hot-dog car. He taunts him for running, but Coach Cyber pulls a U-turn and says he has no intention of doing so. Suddenly engaged in a high-speed game of chicken, Logan declares he has no intention of backing down either. Cyber smirks; he was counting on that.
The two hot dogs collide, and a powerful explosion rocks the road. Logan emerges unscathed. Janet, however, does not. A tear falls down his cheek as he holds her in his arms and whispers her name. Janet…
reality:
Slowly, Wolverine pulls himself out of his twisted fantasy. In spite of his injury, he stands up and begins to run. Burning…burning in the pit of my stomach, he says in his head. Can’t escape it. He runs to the edge of the cliff and jumps. Can’t run from it. Can’t run. “You can’t run, Cyber!” he shouts as he hits the ground.
hallucination:
Before Logan stands the burly, menacing Cyber. This is it, Logan declares as he releases his claws; this is graduation day. He intends to graduate with an Rh.D.: a doctor of blood types. Cyber’s is the only blood he wants.
2nd story:
During his first session in the Danger Room, Hank McCoy’s mind returns to a few lines of dialogue Star Wars. Specifically, he recalls the scene in which Han Solo nags Obi-Wan Kenobi about his leadership. The ancient Jedi asks in response, “Who’s the more foolish? The fool? Or the fool who follows the fool?” As Hank runs for his life from a spiky boulder, all for the purpose of training, he identifies with the latter fool.
Moments from death, Beast asks Professor X if he wouldn’t better serve the world alive than dead. The professor telepathically tells him not to worry. His priority is to survive in the Danger Room so he will later survive similar situations in the real world. Hank ducks around a corner and finds a moment of safety.
Hank uses this brief respite to further speak to Xavier. While he believes the professor’s dream of mutant/human coexistence is admirable, he would like to be allowed to “coexist” as well. Professor X asks if he is again talking about Jennifer Nyles. He is talking about a lot of things, Hank replies, like trust, for example. A missile sneaks up on Hank from behind, but he turns around in time to pulverize it with a punch. It explodes, leaving him covered in red paint. While this missile contained only paint, Hank’s adversaries will not be so concerned about his safety…or that of his friends and family. “I didn’t erase Jennifer’s memories of you to be cruel,” Charles says. “I did so because it was necessary. Someday, I hope you will understand that.”
Several years later, Hank acknowledges that while he did understand Xavier’s motives at the time, he certainly didn’t like it. To this day, he still doesn’t.
Beast suddenly wakes up and shouts Jennifer’s name. The Frenchman from the airplane announces he is awake; Hank tells the man he must be a biologist with such keen powers of observation. He asks what happened to Dr. Jennifer Nyles. It was rather mysterious, the Frenchman says. He asks if Hank remembers being beaten by the Super-Apes. Yes, Hank says, although to him it was more of an ambush than a defeat. Nonetheless, the Frenchman informs him kidnapping Dr. Nyles was obviously their goal. Moments after her kidnapping, however, Lieutenant Commander Courage made an arrest: Dr. Ivan Kragoff, otherwise known as the Red Ghost, leader of the Super-Apes. A tad convenient, Hank asks? The Frenchman claims it might be a coincidence, just as the string of gruesome murders in Brussels might be only coincidentally related to the disappearance of a Belgian colleague of his. It’s all related, Beast asks? The Frenchman replies his colleague’s field was Techno-Organics. The only other scientist in the world capable of understanding his work is Dr. Jennifer Nyles.
An officer from the Brussels police department interrupts and informs Hank he is needed downtown. The Frenchman asks Hank if he can accompany him; Hank insists he does.
“I am assuming you have a plan,” the Frenchman asks Hank as they ride in the back of the police cruiser. Hank begins to repeat the old axiom about assuming, but drops it. It probably loses something in translation anyway, he says. He tells the Frenchman to just relax for now.
The police car pulls up to a security gate. The guard approaches, shines his flashlight into the vehicle, but stops as soon as he begins to ask for identification. He says as he waves the men through without further question. Once the car parks in the garage, Beast makes his move. He reaches forward and bops the two officers head’s together, knocking them unconscious.
Beast and the Frenchman exit the vehicle and discuss their plan of action. Hank will search for clues pertaining to Jennifer’s kidnapping, while the Frenchman will don one of the police uniforms and conduct his own inquiry into why Commander Courage hasn’t investigated the disappearance of his colleague. “You’ve done this before,” Hank says as he bounds toward the nearest ventilation duct. “I can tell.”
As he climbs into the air duct, Beast ponders the absurdity of these current circumstances. Just yesterday, he was dictating his life story to Ship, X-Factor’s computer. Now, he is scouring Belgium’s Ministry of Defense for his childhood best friend who no longer remembers him. Where has the time gone?
Twenty minutes (and three stories) later, Hank finally happens upon the building’s interrogation room. Through the vent he can easily see the Red Ghost tied to a chair. After kicking off the ventilation cover, Hank partially descends into the room and asks for a moment of the good doctor’s time. What have his Super-Apes done with Dr. Nyles, Hank asks? Unfortunately, Dr. Kragoff doesn’t know. The apes no longer obey any of his commands!
“A fairly transparent alibi,” a voice says from behind, “…wouldn’t you agree?” Hank turns and sees none other than Lt. Commander Courage with a squad of gun-wielding, flamboyantly dressed operatives. The commander makes it clear to Hank he was only brought here because of his membership with the Avengers. Remember that fact and the two of them will get along just fine, he says. Hank, however, has his doubts.
