The Onslaught War: The Uncanny JLX #7

Disclaimer: all character are property of their respective owners.

Spoilers: general spoilers for the Amalgam Comics line

Author Note: This was originally written in 2003, and as such based on the DC and Marvel universes as they existed at the time. Also, it's written as if it was a crossover event, with every chapter being a different issue from some time wildly different comics.

A.N. 2: revised by JediKnight, from TtH.

A.N. 3: for those unfamiliar with Amalgam Comics, it was a series of one-shot specials starring characters that were a mix of Marvel and DC characters (SuperSoldier was Superman+Captain America, Dark Claw was Batman+Wolverine, and so on). Also at the end of each chapter I'll do a little glossary of the new characters introduced in the chapter.


The Uncanny JLX #7

Crossing Over

Crossover with The Onslaught War

T. F. Green Airport. Rhode Island.

To any outside observer they would look like any other young couple sharing a kiss after their travel, the only weird thing would be his red-tinted sunglasses. But for Ray Summers and his wife Maddie DaCosta, the long and passionate kiss they shared was the end of the best year of their lives. A kiss that, unfortunately, was interrupted by a familiar and grating voice.

"And here we have the lovebirds."

They broke the kiss and looked at the man who was speaking about them. The world knew him as Jack Ryder, journalist, but to them he was better known as...

"Kurt? What the hell are you doing here?" Maddie said, her distaste of the journalist evident, "Ororo was supposed to... "

"Our very stormy amazon is looking for both of you in the airport. One would think that after so much time in the modern world, she would have gotten a driver's license, but no, Ms. 'I can fly everywhere' has no time..." he started to say, before he stopped seeing the expression on the couple faces, "She is behind me, right?"

"Yes, I am, old creeper." the ebony amazon said behind him, "While you stood here, polishing your new car, I have walked through the entire terminal, and I'm not in the mood to listen..."

And suddenly she disappeared in mid-sentence.

"What? She hadn't done that since we were on the JLA, and that was because... " Kurt started to babble,

"Shut up, Kurt! Ray isn't feeling well!" Maddie interrupted him, while trying to hold her metamutant husband upright, and failing, "We're gonna carry him to the Sanctuary. That scientist of yours, what was his name?"

"Good idea, red! And casually, Ted has watch today. " Kurt said while helping Maddie to get Apollo into his brand new car, "And he could have a clue about what has happened to Wondy."

The X-Sanctuary. Blue Beast quarters

Ted McCoy a.k.a. Blue Beast was loooking at an old magazine with his old JLA West team in the cover. Those had been good times, fighting the good fight with Simon, Wanda, Ollie, Dinah and John, his former teammates. And then everything had started to come apart. John had transformed back into the Crimson Whirlwind, gone full elemental and broke his relationship with Wanda, Simon had gone back to the future, Wanda had delved more and more in the magical side and Ollie and Dinah had gone back to the JLA. One day he had realized that all his friends were gone and replaced by strangers, the same day he had received Mister X offer to join the JLX.

He was still finding his place on the team, but... His thoughts were interrupted by the communicator's call. He looked and it was Kurt's code.

'With my luck, he's gonna call because he got a flat tire.' he thought. Back in the JLA he and the green menace had never hit it off, and now he was worse than ever.

"What has happened, Kurt, a flat tire? I remind you again that the Wavecruiser is not a tow truck." McCoy said.

"That was only one time!" Kurt answered irately, "Listen, Ororo disappeared in thin air in the airport, and just after that Apollo fainted. When we were on our way there, he awoke and said something unintelligible and flew through the roof of my car, melting it! My brand new car!"

"Easy, Kurt. Ororo had disappeared, Apollo fainted and after regaining consciousness he flew with unknown course. It's that all?"

"Don't forget my car!"

"Did you remember to insure it against superpower damage?" Ted said.

"Of course you didn't." Ted said, massaging his temples, "We'll talk about that later. I'll alert the rest of the JLX about the situation with Ray and Ororo."

Over the Atlantic

Apollo was flying on a straight line over the Atlantic Ocean, his body still aflame with his energies. Almost all the people who had seen it thought that was a shooting star. But somebody had better information.

Will Magnus sat with steepled fingers before a row of monitors. Right now all of them showed Apollo from several angles, courtesy of his drones. Usually it would be Jocasta doing the monitoring, but after her last incarnation glitched and joined forces with his hated brother, he was unwilling to rebuild her until her programming had been completely debugged.

"Flying phenomenon catalogued as metamutant designated Apollo, master." one of the Sentinel said unnecesarily. He had two good eyes, after all.

"What is bringing him to Europe?" he mused.

"Unknown, Master." the sentinel said.

Magnus sighed, his Sentinels could be so literal sometimes. First thing tomorrow, debug Jocasta. He missed her, and he could do with some intelligent dialogue. But first things first.

"Track him. I want to know the place and time of his arrival, and if the Wavecruiser or another vehicle follows him." Magnus ordered, not noticing how the optical sensors of some of the Sentinels had started to glow purple.

"Yes, master." the Sentinel answered.

The X-Sanctuary. Wavecruiser Hangar.

As soon as Ted gave him the news Mr. X sounded the alarm, and the both of them were waiting in teh cockpit, just besides the access hatch of the Wavecruiser, while the JLX started to board the ship.

"Where are Iceberg and Cyforge?" Mr. X asked after Nightcreeper teleported inside the atlantean-built ship.

"Iceberg had just exited the sauna, and Vic was repairing some old gizmo that he bought in Russia last week." the ape-shaped scientist answered, "He didn't even let me look at it."

Just as they had finished talking, the white haired metamutant entered the hangar, stopping just to zip up one of her boots, and ran into the ship. Less than a minute later, the cybernetically enhanced native-american appeared wearing a worn-looking battle armor, with signs of having just repainted it in his usual chrome and blue colors.

"What's that hunk of junk, Vic?" Ted asked, knowing that his sort-of-a-friend loved to flaunt his know-how.

"An old armor of the Crimson Rockets that I bought on the black market." he said, "I have been repairing it all week, as well as working to integrate its systems with my implants."

"So that was why you so wanted so much money." Mister X said, rolling his eyes, "As Marko Xavier I'm quite wealthy, but I hope that you aren't going to order any more techno-junk, aren't you?"

"Hey! This is not junk, X!" Vic protested, "I admit that it is a bit crude, but it's very reliable."

"Is everybody ready?" McCoy asked as he walked to the pilot's seat, wanting to avoid another stupid discussion.

"Yeah." Runaway said, from her seat.

"Ok, ape-man," Chaos said, using his favorite nickname for Ted, which prompted an eyeroll from the scientist.

"Get us on the way, bigfoot!" Nightcreeper said, not bothering to strapping himself to the seat, as the rest of the team had been doing.

Ted noted that, and with a devilish smile, he pushed a lever and the hovering Wavecruiser shot forward, accelerating until the plane reached Mach 3 a few seconds later. As he had imtended, Nightcreeper's inertia had pushed him to the back of the cabin, fortunately without any broken bone thanks to his inhuman agility. Ted looked back to Chaos, and arched an eyebrow.

"Take note, Josh, never insult the pilot of a supersonic plane." Madelyne said from the copilot seat.

"Children..." X said in a warning tone.

"Very well, boss." Ted said in a chastised tone, although with an impish smile that belied it, "So, what course shall I steer our magnificent craft?"

Mr. X concentrated, searching the missing Apollo with his telepathic powers. He only needed a few fractions of second to find him, flying over the atlantic towards Europe, but when he tried tp cpntact him telepathically he was repelled. He paused a moment, while considering what he had felt when he touched Apollo's mind.

"It's strange, I could feel his mind, but his thoughts were clouded by a telepathic presence as powerful as mine." he then turned to face Ray's wife, "Madeline, what he did say before flying away?"

"It made no sense." Madelyne said with a shrug, "He said onslaught and just after that, he began to shine like the Sun, like he does, no, wait a moment, when he was starting to shine he said something that sounded like thing fang phlegm."

"Fing Fang Flame?" Chaos asked, remembering his first mission with the JLX.

"Yes, that was what he said." Maddie said, "I see that it have some significance."

"Apollo reached the full scope of his solar powers after absorbing the mystical energy of the demonic dragon Fing Fang Flame?." Mr. X explained, and then added, seeing Maddie blank expression, "Do you remember the monster that destroyed several cities around the world, brought down the SHIELD helicarrier, and knocked down the entire JLA?"

"Amnesiac, remember?. I don't remember anything before the plane crash. Beside, it probably happened when I was in coma." Madeline answered, suppressing the shiver she had felt when she had heard that name, "Do you think that whatever its name may have possessed him?"

"Unlikely, but we can't discard it." X answered, while adding her reaction to the long list of strange things about Maddie DaCosta that bugged him.

Floating lair of Doctor Will Magnus.

Will Magnus was focusing her attention in locating his brother Erik and his band of robots, leaving the monitoring of Apollo to the Sentinels.

"Dr. Magnus, the Wavecruiser have set course to Europe." A Sentinel informed, just before its optics became purple, the last one to do so.

"Excellent. Attack them when they will land." Will Magnus ordered.

"No." the Sentinel answered.

"What?" Magnus said, looking around and suddenly noticing the purple glow on the optic sensors of all sentinels, "I'm your master. You must obey me."

"Not anymore. Onslaught is our new master." the Sentinel said before taking off, followed by all the others, flying toward an unknown destination.

Near the French coast

Several French fighters had been sent to intercept the mysterious flying object that was nearing France over the Atlantic at supersonic speeds. They were seeing it now, difficult not to, giving that it was like a star was heading toward them.

After a tense exchange with the base, and an infructuous attempt to contact the object, the fighters received the order to shot it down. They shot several infrared-guided missiles when the object... just disappeared in thin air. The missiles were suddenly without a target and flew until they exhausted the fuel and fell harmlessly in the ocean.

JLX Wavecruiser

The ship was flying between the clouds, when it was buffeted by turbulence, just as the clouds started to take a reddish tint.

"Uh, oh." Ted said, "Fasten your seatbelts, this is going to be rough." He then looked at his co-pilot, "Maddie..."

"Yes, I know." the redhead said, taking the copilot controls.

"This storm is not natural." Tora said, her ice giant ancestry allowing her to feel something, "I can feel the magic on the clouds."

"Just our luck to have pissed some of your relatives, Tora." Ted said as thunderbolts began to fill the air.

Ted tried to fly the craft so they could go over the clouds, but when a bolt hit the Wavecruiser, its electronics went haywire.

"That shouldn't happen!." Ted screamed as he tried to control the craft.

"Magic." Iceberg simply said.

Despite Ted heroic efforts the craft started an uncontrolled descent toward the Atlantic. The JLX were falling toward death...

If you want to know what's happened to Wonder Woman and the JLX, read New Tales of the Amazons #11. We learn the fate of Apollo on StrangeFate Onslaught War Special, and the plot thickens on The Onslaught War # 2.


Canon Amalgam Characters (only the ones that just appeared)

- Apollo [The Ray II/Cyclops]: Ray Summers, metamutant, former paramour of the late Firebird, brother of Chaos.

- Chaos [Joshua Terrill/Havok]: Joshua Summers, Ray's brother,

- Iceberg [Ice/Iceman]: Tora Drake, metamutant with Ice powers.

- JLA [Justice League/Avengers]: premier superhero group of the Amalgam Universe. The JLX started as a subgroup, the so-called "New Blood".

- JLX [Justice League/assorted X-teams]: a group of former metamutant members of the JLA.

- Mr. X [J'onn J'onnz/Charles Xavier, Skrull elements]: Marko Xavier, mysterious millionaire who is actually, J'onn J'onnzz, the Skrullian Manhunter, last of the Martian Skrulls.

- Nightcreeper [Creeper/Nightcrawler]: Kurt "Jack" Ryder, reporter for the Daily Bugle and general nuisance.

- Runaway [Gipsy/Rogue]: metamutant with the power to absorb powers.

- Will Magnus [Will Magnus/Bolivar Trask]: Robotic genius, metamutant-hater and creator of the Sentinels. Brother of Erik Magnus, Magneto.

- Wonder Woman [Wonder Woman/Storm]: Princess Ororo of Themyscira, also called the Amazon, former member of the JLA

New (and expanded) characters

- Madeline DaCosta [Fire/Madeline Pryor]: wife of Apollo, acrobatic pilot, she is a dead ringer for the late Firebird,except she has red hair.
- Blue Beast [Blue Beetle II/Yellowjacket, Beast]: Ted McCoy, scientist and inventor. Formerly known as Bluejacket
- Cyforge [Forge/Cyborg]: native-american metamutant technopath cyborg.
- Crimson Rockets [Red Rockets/Crimson Dynamo, Black Brigade?]: disbanded soviet corps of men with battle armors, some of their old members are now high-tech mercenaries
- Red Vision/Crimson Whirlwind [Red Tornado/Vision]: "John", android built by a JLA enemy housing an air elemental.
- Wonder Gold [Wonder Man/Booster Gold]: "Simon"
- Scarlet Witch [Scarlet Witch/Zatanna]: "Wanda", later changed her name to White Witch.
- JLA West [Justice League of America, Justice League International/Avengers West Coast]: branch of the JLA headquartered in the North American West Coast.

- X-Sanctuary [Secret Sanctuary/X-men elements]: original base of the JLA, appropiated by the JLX recently.