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From: parks@noao.UUCP (Jay Parks)
Newsgroups: net.comics
Subject: As the Mutant Turns
Message-ID: <436@carina.noao.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Sep-85 18:06:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: carina.436
Posted: Sat Sep 28 18:06:22 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Sep-85 07:27:09 EDT
Organization: Natl. Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson, AZ USA
Lines: 108

"X-Men, I am not the Jean Grey you once knew !"

(remotely submitted for a friend)

                         AS THE MUTANT TURNS

                     by Symbol-Maker and Maggie
 

     It was a dark and stormy night.  A shot rang out; a mutant fell.
Suddenly the Starjammers appeared on the horizon, dumping Charles Xavier
on the lawn in front of the mansion.  Fortunately, because he wasn't
thinking at the time -- the mentor of the uncanny and despised X-men had
the sense to land on something soft.
     "Okay, Chuck, you're on your own," yelled Corsair.  "We're sick of
being your plot devices.  Besides, old boy, we're running out of
clones."
     "Farewell, Xavier, light of my love; if I never see you again it
will be too soon," cried Lilandra.  "I have worlds to conquer."
     The Starjammers disappeared in a puff of logic, leaving Charles to
pick himself off the mostly soft lump he was sitting on.
     "Yo, Domehead, watch where you land.  You interrupted my lesson,"
growled Wolverine.  He shook the corpse he had been dragging.  "Look,
kid, are you going to let being dead stop you?  If you die once, you
know, you'll never get over it all the rest of your life."
     Xavier looked at Wolverine's unbreakable adamantium claws, which
were lodged beneath the corpse's sternum, in horror.  "Logan, what are
you doing?"
     "What I do best, Chuckie," replied the mutant pseudopsycopath.
"The's just one thing I've been meaning to ask you --"
     "Feel free to ask me, Wolverine,  After all, as we both know, I am
the greatest mutant mind on Earth, despite being clobbered by every
two-bit telepath this side of the White Queen, but I have a doctorate in
science and know more than you do.  Furthermore, I think of you X-Men
and the New Mutants as the children I can never have since Moira dumped
me and Lilandra ran off to conquer the universe."
     "Don't have a spaz, Chuckie.  All I wanna know is, what exactly is
it that I do?"
 
     Meanwhile, back at the mansion that the X-men and New Mutants liked
to think of as the only home they could have in a world rife with
prejudice and villainy, Kitty Pryde, the spunky, yet intelligent,
youngest member of the X-Men searched frantically for her floppy disks.
     "Drat it all, Illyana," she told her roommate, "I just bet that
Henry Peter Gyrich or the White Queen has been stealing my stuff again.
Golly, do you think I should report a possible theft to the police, or
run off and trash someone?"
     Illyana, the tormented mutant demon sorceress, once bound body and
soul to Belasco, considered as she cleaned her fingernails with a bone
that had been part of the ribcage of a particularly loved cat.  How can
I answer her, she thought, being as I am more evil than good, except, of
course, when I'm not?  Would I answer her as friend, mutant, or demon?
I hated my sorcerous life, yet I loved it.  I long for its caress, yet I
do not.  And what of S'ym?
     "Blast them to ions," she replied sweetly, eyeing Lockheed.  *Yum.*
     "Gee, but  you're sensible, Illyana.  Besides, I bet that the
police wouldn't understand.  By the way, what should I do about my
beloved, yet estranged, Peter, your brother?"
     Well might she ask, for at that very moment Colossus, who called
himself Peter, was shivering in the snow, having destroyed yet another
costume.
     "Moscow, Lenin, and five other Russian words!  I do not feel quite
myself this fine morning.  I wonder if having my insides fried by
Firestar's microwaves has anything to do with my illness, or if I merely
feel twinges of incipient pneumonia, not unlike that of my years in
Mother Russia -- how I miss her!"
     At the same time, Storm was wandering at longitude 325 and latitude
45, somewhere in Africa, where she could forget the stigma of her mutant
and punk past and learn to be gratuitously hated as merely a black woman
with a strange hairstyle and impractical wardrobe.  Oh, alas, mused she,
that these simple people, so like my own children, expect me to be a
weather goddess, which I am no longer.  Thank goodness old fashioned
racial prejudice is rampant here, for I left my angst in old New York
and Callisto isn't here to knife me, poor soul.
     Gently she laid a hand on the shoulder of a passing native woman.
     "Child, would you bring me a glass of plain water from your quaint
and National Geographic-like abode?  Then I shall consider how best to
lead you blind and suffering masses into civilization."
     "Get stuffed, bitch," the woman replied.
     Without warning, the X-Men found themselves trapped in Magneto's
secret hideout #657A, which is not in Africa or America at all.  The
so-called Master of Magnetism was gloating over them in a natty magenta
three-piece suit.
     "Cyclops, I thought you were in Alaska!" cried Storm.
     "And I thought you were in Africa!"
     "I was, Scott, silly goose.  I must have had a revelation or
something.  But what are you doing so far from your dear wife?"
     "I don't know.  I suppose I'm being a jerk again."
     "Cease this prattling, fools!"  Magneto thundered reasonably.
"It's time for me to make a patented Marvel role-reversal and become a
hero.  For many years I have longed for more than mere bit parts in
others' magazines; at last I shall dominate more than a few issues -- I
will have character development, a mini-series, a national all-mutant
talk show!"
     "Never, my erstwhile friend!  My X-Men will stand in your way!"
Charles retorted.
     "Not for long, Charles.  I'm tired of complicated death traps that
fail at the last minute.  From now on, I'll stick to the old reliable
methods."  He pulled out the .45 that had been abandoned in the first
paragraph.  "But first, any last words?"
     "Yes," said Nightcrawler.  "I've always wondered why someone with a
basically well-adjusted personality like my own hangs around with these
weirdos.  I --"
     At that, Magneto gunned down the X-men.
     "Wait a minute," came a low voice.  "I hurt.  Don't leave me in
such pain."
     "You're right, of course," the ex-villain responded.
     With that, Magneto shot the reader.


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