BIOGRAPHY - Page 2
Filling his spare time with mercenary work, Fantomex took a job hunting down a monster in the sewers of New York that killed a young man's mutant girlfriend. He tracked and killed a Predator X, running across the X-Men Wolverine, Psylocke and Colossus as he did so. Logan's crew was tracking the enhanced human group who unleashed five of those predators on the mutant island of Utopia. Fantomex wished them luck and went off to collect his fee without bothering to help any further. After his young client heard the story and suggested the X-Men might be cooler than Fantomex, however, "Jean-Philippe" had a change of heart.
I
nfiltrating the corporate villains at their headquarters after the X-Men arrived, Fantomex found himself at an advantage as an unknown quantity. The enhanced humans had prepared to face the X-Men, complete with tactical cybernetic uploads for most of the members. Fantomex was easily able to sneak into their base and use EVA to shut down the computer remote-feeding them tactics. It was all fun and games until Fantomex learned his opponents were called the Sublime Corporation, the spiritual successors to John Sublime and his U-Men. Suddenly feeling the need for mutant camaraderie, Fantomex and EVA invited themselves to become the newest members of the X-Men. (And hit on Psylocke. He was still faux-French, of course.) [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #519-522]
Fantomex began working with the X-Men on their spectrum of problems. He fought in defense of San Francisco and Utopia when they were attacked by Nimrod Sentinels from the future. [Second Coming crossover] He was also recruited by Emma Frost to help her with a little jailbreak. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #529-534] Most importantly, however, Fantomex joined Wolverine's X-Force, the latest and secret incarnation of the X-Men's black ops team. Logan rightly saw that Fantomex was a man in need of a purpose. Although Fantomex presented himself as a mercenary tied to the purse strings of their sponsor, Archangel, Wolverine recognized that Weapon Plus's programming was still in Fantomex's nano-blood, encouraging him to fulfill his intended purpose to kill mutants. The master thief, the mercenary persona, the decadent lifestyle... all these were masks, distractions Fantomex made for himself to help ignore what he was meant to be. Logan wanted to point that killer instinct towards targets that would do harm to mutantkind, creating an outlet that might do some good for them all. X-Force would be operating independently of the X-Men for deniability purposes, from a secret mountain base called Cavern-X. [X-Men: Second Coming #2, Wolverine: The Road to Hell #1]
X-Force's first mission proved to be a major challenge as they gained intelligence pointing to the reawakening of Apocalypse. Fantomex tried to keep things light, flirting with Psylocke right under Archangel's nose, although none of them were certain how serious his come-ons actually were. Their chase led them to the Blue Area of the Moon and battle with the Final Horsemen, a contingency plan of four mutants gathered throughout time and preserved until Apocalypse needed them most. The Horsemen were not their biggest obstacle, however; it was the discovery that Apocalypse had been reincarnated in the body of a young boy. Unschooled in his own doctrine, En Sabah Nur's followers were indoctrinating the child reincarnation to accept Apocalypse's Darwinian beliefs anew. Upon learning the truth, Psylocke was the first to flip, and stood against her comrades to defend the still-innocent boy's life. Wolverine and Archangel both found that they couldn't go through with the assassination either. They were considering how to raise the boy themselves when a gunshot rang out, and Fantomex completed the mission. X-Force had to flee the moon base before the forces of Clan Akkaba caught them. If any of them looked back, they would have seen Fantomex tenderly closing the dead and bleeding child's eyes with his fingers. They would have seen this because Fantomex is a master of misdirection, even when looking right at him. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #1-4]
In fact, Fantomex intended to gamble that Apocalypse could be raised right, and used the blood on his hands (literally and metaphorically) to put just such a plan into motion. Fantomex still retained possession of the World as a shrunken laboratory in his chalet home. He brought Apocalypse's blood sample into the World and used it to clone his own vat grown version of En Sabah Nur, raised in a virtual reality environment designed to teach him wholesomeness, morality and dedication to the common good. The artificial time of the World allowed Fantomex to progress "Evan Sabahnur" by years in a matter of weeks, growing up on a virtual farm in a virtual Kansas with his virtual parents, aided by the occasional visit from his “Uncle Cluster.” Fantomex managed to coerce Ultimaton to serve as guardian of this project, protecting Fantomex's private lab from anything else the World might have brewing.
As it happened, the Weapon Plus program was moving on to Weapon Infinity. Father, one of the earliest contributors to the program, had come to inhabit the World prior to Fantomex's acquisition of it. Using Deathlok technology left behind by Norman Osborn's raid, Father would extrapolate the tech over the next several years to apply it to other super-beings, turning them into brainwashed cyborgs. The Deathlok superhumans were also fitted with a trans-temporal algorithm, allowing them to communicate throughout space and time as Weapon Infinity. In this manner, Father in the present learned about the success of his weapon the moment the algorithm A.I. was finished and connected him to the future. However, Fantomex's redeemed Apocalypse was destined to become the last standing opposition to Weapon Infinity. Father therefore summoned Deathlok cyborgs back in time to locate the World in the present, killing the Apocalypse child before his threat could be made manifest.
Weapon Infinity tracked the World to Fantomex's chalet in the French Alps. Their attack caught Fantomex by surprise, and Mother was killed by the Deathloks as their home was destroyed. Fantomex managed to convince EVA to leave him behind and get help from X-Force. After his murder of the Apocalypse child, the team only barely agreed to come to his aid. He was also protected by Deathlok Prime, a rogue and benevolent Deathlok from another timeframe. The team learned the situation and entered the World to locate Father and prevent this dangerous timeline. Weapon Infinity made it to the door of Fantomex's private laboratory with Evan inside, but Deadpool killed Father just in time to make the Deathloks vanish from the timeline, fading as the promise of an unfulfilled future. Fantomex nonchalantly guided X-Force away from the lab, keeping his secret intact for the time being. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #5-7]
X-Force was distracted by other intrigue as their co-captain Archangel succumbed to his darker impulses. With Apocalypse gone, a new Celestial Gardener was necessary to take his place, evoking further mutation in the Deathseed that gave Angel his Archangel persona. As Archangel began guarding his mind and drifted apart from Psylocke, Fantomex still picked the worst of moments to hit on Betsy. Her dedication to her lover was steadfast. When Warren began killing innocents and civilians, however, X-Force was forced to lock him up deep inside Cavern-X. They acquired a prisoner, the Dark Beast of the Age of Apocalypse, who informed them a Celestial Lifeseed from his own dimension could reverse the transformation, giving Warren back control of his mind and body. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #8-10]
Dark Beast naturally betrayed and abandoned X-Force when they arrived in the AOA, prompting the team to make contact with that reality's X-Men. Before setting off to acquire the Lifeseed, Fantomex again prodded Betsy about her feelings for him, and this time got a reaction -- first a right cross, and then a tender embrace. Fantomex provoked her by questioning whether Psylocke even loved Archangel, or just loved being needed by him until she failed to keep his alter ego in check. The mission was a success, but they returned home to find Archangel free and in league with McCoy and the Final Horsemen. Fantomex fled Cavern-X aboard EVA with Deadpool, Deathlok, and a severely wounded Wolverine, but Psylocke stayed behind to try and reason with Archangel. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #11-14]
With the World in their possession as well as the Lifeseed, Archangel and Clan Akkaba used a small town in Montana as raw material, killing everybody in it. Next, they re-evolved the site 130 million years with the Lifeseed's energies processed through the World's fast-time membranes. With Fantomex as their unwilling and ad hoc leader, X-Force was too slow to prevent the massacre, but did kill Death of the Final Horsemen and learned from Famine of Archangel's hidden base in the North Pole. Wolverine had healed enough to retake the lead, but other threats from the Age of Apocalypse like Blob and the Sinister Iceman only compounded theIR problems. Fantomex finally gave in to his second brain's tactical assessments and fled the scene, seeking out Gateway to open a portal to the AOA and retrieve that reality's X-Men as their own reinforcements. Psylocke had been exposed to a Deathseed to rise as Archangel's new Death, but Fantomex used his misdirection to make her believe she had killed him, finding a crack in her resolve. The Phoenix-powered Jean Grey of the AOA did the rest, separating Psylocke from the Deathseed's influence. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #15-17]
Fantomex and Psylocke confronted Archangel atop his Doom Fountain, but the clock was ticking. After the test run in Montana, Clan Akkaba now intended to unleash the Lifeseed evolution on the entire world, destroying what was to build a new order. Fantomex had Ultimaton play his trump card, a pre-recorded message in Evan Sabahnur's virtual environment, telling him he was needed. Apocalypse's now teenaged clone awoke in the World laboratory, donning the armor of Genesis to become a hero and battle Archangel. Fantomex had hoped the mere existence of Genesis would have prevented the rise of a new Apocalypse, but even so Evan played his part in the final conflict. He distracted his "successor" temporarily and, while Genesis wasn't strong enough to stop Archangel, seeing Warren about to murder a child was the final push Psylocke needed to stop his madness and kill what the man she loved had become. The Lifeseed penetrated Warren's chest, killing Archangel and causing a new personality to emerge from the body as the fugue-like Angel. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #18]