BASTION: Page 4 of 4

Part 6: From Savior to Criminal 

Over the next several months of his captivity, SHIELD began to learn more about Bastion than anyone had bothered to do before. During the battle with Iceman at the house in Connecticut, Bastion had held his own against the mutant’s powers, demonstrating strength and endurance which could easily be described as being greater than human. Now, studied by SHIELD scientists, he was quickly being discovered to have physical characteristics which were clearly NOT human. According to sensors, he displayed no electrical brainwaves, instead revealing an intelligence the scientists described as being based solely on a series of binary codes. His flesh seemed not to conform to any known genetic pattern. Likewise, under magnification, his fingerprints demonstrated a strange “pixilation” and his blood contained no real blood or cells, but a series of complex inorganic systems, constantly being recreated by microscopic robots.

In months past, Jean Grey, Cable and even Nina the Mannite had noticed Bastion’s inability to be read telepathically, making them postulate that he was more than human. Whether this had been a byproduct of Bastion’s “rebirth” or some type of manipulation of his own Sentinel tech had never been clear. Likewise, as SHIELD discovered Bastion’s extra-human status, it is not known if Bastion was reverting to some type of pre-rebirth status, or whether he had activated Prime Sentinel nanotech of which he had used upon himself previously. However, whatever the origin of the process, upon completion of his transformation, Bastion broke free of his captivity of SHIELD, displaying deadly abilities he had never before possessed.

Once free, Bastion’s first stop was the house in upstate Severence, NY where he had been nurtured by Rose Gilberti. Finding her there, Bastion was visibly confused, seeming to be unsure of what was happening to his body and mind. Seeing the innocent that she had tried to raise in his face, Rose promised Bastion that she would always be there for him but that he had to turn himself in. However, before she could plead her case, the two were joined by a SHIELD helicopter, attempting to recapture Bastion. Wishing to act before he could use the lethal force he had employed on his captors, the gunman in the copter opened fire on Bastion. Though he was able to generate a forcefield to protect himself, Bastion looked on in horror as Rose Gilberti had been unable to defend herself and had been killed. Incensed at the loss of his last connection to humanity, Bastion incinerated the helicopter and its crew.

With this, Bastion likewise abandoned the last of his own humanity and flew under his own power to New Mexico. There, he made his way to the Prospero Clinic and its Sentinel technology. Over the last several hours, the previously abandoned Prospero Clinic had been a source of intrigue… and death. Since O:ZT’s dissolution, SHIELD’s investigation into Bastion’s bases of operations had led them to the Prospero Clinic. However, the initial squad of SHIELD troops sent there had been massacred by the facility’s guardian – a reprogrammed Machine Man. Sent to investigate by G.W. Bridge when the troops failed to report in, Cable had likewise been attacked by Machine Man and was locked in combat when Bastion arrived. Ignoring the two, Bastion made his way to the Master Mold unit, which had been used previously to transform humans into Prime Sentinels. Now, under Bastion’s silent instructions began to transform him, re-creating him into a new form of Sentinel, which resembled an older form – that of Nimrod. [Cable & Machine Man Annual 1998]

Not only was Bastion’s body transformed and made new, so now was his mind. No longer was he the confused entity which had considered Rose Gilberti’s pleas of surrender, but his mind was whole, along with his memory. Employing new and incredible weaponry against Cable, Bastion imparted the story of his life, of which he had only some inkling before. He explained about how a Nimrod Sentinel unit from the future had traveled back in time on the trail of a fugitive X-Man. After some time in the past, it came across another Sentinel, the Master Mold unit that had possessed the personality engrams of Steven Lang, and had been transformed into something new. That new entity, Bastion explained to Cable, had been wrenched by the X-Men through the pan-dimensional portal called the Siege Perilous, after which it had been reborn by a higher power into a man of flesh and bone.

At the beginning of Bastion’s story, Cable had been fighting both Nimrod’s new power and then by the facility’s security weaponry, which Bastion remotely controlled. Now, with the reactivation of Machine Man, Bastion had the android continue the fight against Cable, while he continued his tale. Speaking broadly, Bastion explained how he had been taken in by Rose Gilberti, how he learned of the perceived threat of mutants and drew from within a feeling of hatred for them, which led to Graydon Creed and Senator Miles Brickman, how his knowledge to create the detailed blueprints of advanced Sentinel technology caused his rise to power. However, with the fall of his organization, Operation: Zero Tolerance, his plan was now to finish the transformation of the humans within the Prospero Clinic into Prime Sentinels to use as an army to begin the same process with all humans on all continents across the globe.

Unfortunately for Bastion, his plans were not to be, as while he spoke Cable had been fighting a battle on two fronts. During his battle with the Machine Man, Cable had been attempted both telepathically and technologically to reach his inner personality. When Cable finally succeeded, the now freed Machine Man turned his control over the facility’s weaponry against Bastion, which held him fast as Machine Man enacted his second plan. Accessing the facility’s self-destruct, the android gave himself and Cable just enough time to exit the clinic before the entire facility was obliterated, leveling it with the New Mexican desert and leaving no trace left. The threat of Bastion, it seemed, was over forever. [Machine Man & Bastion Annual 1998]

Part 7: From Humanity to Less Than So

However, this was not to be the end of Bastion. While the rest of the facility had been leveled, Bastion himself survived and was discovered by government forces some time later. Interestingly, the explosion of the Prospero Clinic had actually worked to reverse the transformation wrought by the Master Mold and, once again, Bastion appeared as the semi-human form he had worn all during his time as head of Operation: Zero Tolerance. Despite this outward fleshy appearance, however, inward lurked a mechanical body, which Bastion’s captors at the Hulkbuster base took no chances in shackling. Though bound and helpless, Bastion was not without extra-human senses and warned his captors of the arrival of a deadly newcomer. Despite his warnings, the army at Hulkbuster base was of no match against the assault of Death, Horseman of Apocalypse.

As Death made short work of the facility’s personnel, other inhabitants of the base, the young entities known as Mannites, dispatched telepathic calls for help to Jean Grey of the X-Men. Upon arrival, the team found the Hulkbuster base abandoned, save for the Mannites who had been hiding since the attack began – and the severed, though still living head of Bastion. Though having been decapitated, Bastion lived, his much vaunted humanity clearly being a thing of the past. Still, while Bastion clearly expressed his distain for the X-Men, he deigned to warn them that “he” – referring to Death, whose identity he did not know – was after the Mannites, who had continued to live at the Hulkbuster base all through and following the rise and fall of Operation: Zero Tolerance. Astonishing X-Men (2nd series) #1]

Ignoring Bastion further, the X-Men scoured the base until they located the rest of the Mannites – and made their escape. However, having been lurking in the shadows, Death shot down the X-Men’s jet, preventing their escape. As the team regrouped, they once again found Bastion’s severed head in the desert, casually left behind by Death. Rather than being preoccupied by his own predicament, he continuously taunted the X-Men about the futility of their plight. However, contrary to his prognostications, the X-Men eventually managed to get the upper hand against Death when the Mannites managed to unify their mental powers and repulse the Horseman. Returning to their headquarters, the X-Men almost absentmindedly left Bastion’s head behind in the desert sun. [Astonishing X-Men (2nd series) #2-3]

Despite being forgotten, it was not Bastion’s fate to be forever lost. Months later, another technological entity called Mainspring required a mech-hybrid entity to interface with a new trans-mechanical robot of his creation. When his sensors detected the head of Bastion in the New Mexican desert, Mainspring immediately hoped that it was the solution to his problem. However, when Mainspring’s robots arrived and recovered the seemingly inert head, Bastion suddenly reactivated and usurped control of the robot, placing his head on the robot’s body and claiming it as his own. Immediately, Bastion sought to resume its primary directive and flew to Manhattan, where he detected from local airwaves reports of mutant activity in a convention center. Upon arrival, he quickly came into contact with the technological mutant called Warlock, accompanied by Shadowcat and the Psi-Cop named Psimon. Despite Bastion’s new and powerful form, the three mutants still managed to destroy it, rendering Bastion once again to the status of a severed head, which Shadowcat phased into the ground below to bury. [Warlock (4th series) #6]

Unfortunately, Shadowcat was unaware of the interest in Bastion by Mainspring, which had precipitated Bastion’s most recent resurrection. Tracking Bastion’s signal, Mainspring recovered Bastion’s head and returned with it to his orbital facility, where he used his computers to begin deleting Bastion’s core personalities of Bastion, Master Mold and Nimrod, leaving only the hardware Mainspring required. With this accomplished, Bastion was successfully integrated with the body of Mainspring’s robot, which he promptly christened as “Template.” Mainspring did not wait long for Template’s trail of fire. Shortly thereafter, other robotic servants of Mainspring detected that someone had hacked into their computer system, from Muir Island in Scotland. Ironically, those responsible were Warlock and his friends, whom Mainspring was unaware had opposed Bastion not long before. Luckily for Warlock and his friends, however, the battle was short-lived, as Warlock dealt a lucky blow, decapitating Template, whose head quickly reverted back to a trans-mech. From this, Warlock realized that the real Template was still aboard Mainspring’s space station, remote controlling the robot that had attacked them. [Warlock (4th series) #7]

With the coordinates provided from their earlier hack, Warlock and his friends made their way to orbit, to deal with both Mainspring and Template on their own turf. Aboard the station, however, Warlock and his friends are quickly captured by Template, whose control over the station was absolute. Unfortunately for Mainspring, he quickly realized that his newest creation had already grown beyond his own control. As he had merged with the trans-mech technology originating from Phalanx origin, so too had Bastion merged with the Phalanx imperative. With Bastion’s own personality deleted, the Phalanx nature of Template began to construct a trans-mech tower in New York City, which would eventually transmit a signal to the Phalanx, informing them that on Earth existed a world ready to be harvested. As he had only wanted the subjugation of the planet to his own ends, rather than its destruction, Mainspring sacrificed himself to destroy the space station, along with the entity which had once been called Bastion. [Warlock (4th series) #8]

Though once again caught in heart of a fiery explosion which destroyed a base around him, the head of Bastion still did not perish. Somehow Bastion’s head was recovered by a segment of the US government for the purposes of accessing the data Bastion had downloaded from the Xavier Institute so long ago. Placed in the heart of a new facility in the desert, what remained of Bastion formed the CPU of the unmanned facility, even running its defenses. Learning of this station via Carol Danvers, Shadowcat, Wolverine and Gambit of the X-Men investigated and infiltrated it, making their way through its prodigious defenses. Upon reacquiring the data that had been stolen from them so long ago, the three X-Men departed, leaving behind the shell of Bastion’s head. [X-Men: Declassified]

After this, the head of Bastion fell into the hands of SHIELD, which kept its existence secret and the head locked away, deep within a facility in North Dakota. Despite their precautions, the secret was not kept well enough and it was learned by the anti-mutant organization called the Purifiers, whose power had only recently begun to rise. Along with the help of a double-agent within SHIELD, the Purifiers managed to steal the head of Bastion and return with it to their own headquarters nearby. There, the Purifiers connected the head with the headless body of Nimrod, which they had recently recovered from the remains of a battle at Forge’s laboratory.

Two years earlier, another Nimrod unit – this one from a reality alternate to that of the one who had been transformed into Bastion so long before – had arrived back in time, badly damaged. Having been found by Reverend Stryker, who used it to build the Purifiers into a powerful organization, the Nimrod unit had eventually used its guile to trick its captors into a suicide mission, after which it escaped and journeyed to Forge’s lab to extort repairs. There, the Nimrod unit had abandoned its body and transferred its consciousness and programming into another robotic body, which it then transformed into a replica of its former form. During the conflict that followed against the New X-Men, this Nimrod involuntarily traveled back in time, leaving its original body to be recovered by the Purifiers. [New X-Men (2nd series) #28-31]

Once connected with the Nimrod body, Bastion was reborn almost immediately, quickly transforming the damaged robotic body into one that resembled the human form he had once worn. However, what remains of the mind of Bastion, which had been greatly manipulated by a technological entity called Mainspring, is unknown. Time will undoubtedly tell. [X-Force (3rd series) #1]