Post by thejellyfish on Nov 2, 2015 14:08:07 GMT -5
Astonishing X-Men #11
Assault on Iron Eden
by thejellyfish
Stryker’s Office, Iron EdenPresent Day
“So, Will. You mind telling me why the hell we went and captured these here ‘X-Men?’” asked Dirk Anger as he puffed on his drug-laced cigar, eyeing the crucifix above William Stryker’s desk.
“They’re unnatural. God did not create them and their kind, but rather Satan did,” replied the Reverend as he flipped through a dusty old tome, before pulling out a bottle of scotch and two glasses. He then poured himself and Dirk a glass each. William then offered the other man his glass.
“Oh c’mon, man. Cut that shit out. This is me you’re talking to. The only reason you went into the ‘reverend-ing’ business is because it was easy money from the suckers.” Dirk accepted the glass offered and downed it in one go.
Stryker paused for a moment and collected his thoughts. “Vengeance. The X-Men killed my daughter,” he said, suddenly becoming more morose.
“Five years ago?”
Stryker simply nodded in reply.
“Then that means Magneto killed your daughter. Not the X-Men.”
Stryker crushed the glass in his hand, spilling the scotch on the metal floor. “Don’t. You. Dare,” he said with heavy breathes. “The monster was dead before she died, but the fight would’ve never gotten that bad if the X-Men knew what they were doing. You saw the footage, you know that the battle only escalated to the point that it did because they showed up.”
A tense silence grew in the room. Dirk looked around, trying to find a way to get the conversation back onto a happier topic.
“I think you should go,” said Stryker. And with that, Dirk got up from his chair and walked out the door.
The Blackbird, Above the Atlantic
Meanwhile
“You up for this, kid?” asked Psylocke as she sheathed her katana and placed it on her back. “You can stay up here if you want, nothing wrong with sitting this out.”
Cypher looked up from the random spot he was staring at to face her. “No, I’m going. Someone’s gotta watch your back,” he replied. Psylocke scowled at him.
“Listen here, kid. I don’t know what Remy’s told you, but-“
Cypher stood up from his seat. “I only know what everyone else knows, that you were doing something behind Remy’s back, and now he feels that he can’t trust you. I don’t know – nor, do I care - what it was that you were doing, you could’ve been screwing another man for all I care, because, in case you forgot, I’ve been a little busy for the past three months. I just want to know: can I trust you right now?”
Psylocke sighed. “Yes, you can.” The Blackbird suddenly lurched downward and the exit hatch opened, revealing the metal floor of Iron Eden, the Atlantic base of the Purifiers. Cypher and Psylocke jumped out and the Blackbird sped off. “Now, we just need to make it inside,” she said as the two of them looked up at the tall buildings adorned on the various platforms.
Barracks, Iron Eden
Meanwhile
Deadpool scratched his leg as he made his way down an empty hallway. ‘Where’s the damn Mess Hall? That one fella – what was his name, again?’ thought the first voice in his head.
‘Matthew?’ asked the second voice.
“No,” said Deadpool out loud.
‘Mark?’
‘Nah.'
“Oh, his name was Luke.”
‘Nope,’ said both voices. ‘Ha! You owe me a soda!’
‘Damn, was it John?’
“No, it was definitely a Bible name though,” said Deadpool as he came across an elevator. “Maybe it’s through here.” Deadpool pressed the down arrow and entered the elevator.
After humming a few bars of the elevator music version of ‘Careless Whisper,’ the elevator began to slow and Deadpool could hear screams outside. The doors opened and no one was on the other side. ‘Did we press all the buttons again?’
The screams got louder and Deadpool immediately understood what was going on. Torture.
Deadpool slunk his way out of the elevator and hid behind a crate and then peeked his head over the crate. The sounds quieted for a moment as the torturer grabbed torture victim by his blue fur and pushed him, causing him to swing from the chains holding him above the ground. After a few swings back and forth, the man slugged Beast straight in his cat-like jaw.
“You know, Hank. We’ve been gathering intel on you,” he said cupping Beast’s chin with one hand and holding up a file with the other. “We know about everything you’ve done, everywhere you’ve gone, and everyone you’ve met in the past year. Twice a month, you leave Westchester and rendezvous with this man,” he said retrieving a picture from the file. “We will find him and we will kill him.”
‘I’d like to see you try,’ thought Hank as he growled in anger. Suddenly, he was punched in the kidneys by his tormentor and he could feel consciousness drift away from him. As he slowly began to pass out, he thought back to when he first met the man in the picture.
“Put the mutie *** back in the cage with the rest of them and bring Le Diable Blanc to me next!” ordered the torturer.
Deadpool watched as Beast’s unconscious body was carried away into an unseen area and shrunk even further behind the crate. ‘We’ve gotta do something,’ thought one of his voices.
Deadpool looked around the room and noticed a pair of double doors. ‘Let’s see what’s behind door number one.’
Deadpool made his way to the door and opened them, seeing a large sprawling expanse before him. The floor was the size of an average runway and the walls had gears and mechanisms that could lift the floor upwards to the surface. The Merc with the Mouth noticed a set of armed drones in one corner of the room and strutted his way over to them. He gave the drones a once over and opened a hatch that housed the onboard computers. Figuring nothing good could come from the Purifiers having drones, he then took his two katanas and stabbed the insides of one of them.
Suddenly, something glimmered in his eye. He turned around to see five canisters laying around marked ‘Legacy.’ He picked one up and shook it, testing the contents inside.
“Deadpool, put that down!” ordered a Purifier. The man had his gun aimed at Deadpool’s head.
“Hey, you’re that guy that told me that the Mess Hall had chimichangas,” said Deadpool as he pulled one of his pistols out of its holster and aimed it at the other man, getting a good look at his name tag. “Your name’s ‘Ehud?’ Man, the writer either hates you or wants to milk that Bible names joke a little too much, man.”
“What?” asked Ehud, when suddenly a Japanese woman grabbed him by the neck and placed him in a chokehold, knocking him out and then throwing him at Deadpool. The unconscious body hit Deadpool and he fell and dropped the canister, causing a gas to spread out of it.
The woman then walked into the gas and pointed her katana straight at Deadpool’s neck before asking in a threatening tone, “Where are the X-Men?”
Next Time: Assault on Iron Eden Part 2