Getting into Spiral's Inner Sanctum to gain access to the inter-dimensional
gateway
"What the hell happened?" Boomer demanded.
"We've been transposed." Shatterstar replied.
"You haven't been transposed, you ve been juxtaposed."
"What does that juxtaposition mean, Spiral?" Shatterstar demanded.
"It means, dear boy, placing completely opposite ideas or situations in direct contact with
each other. Future time and present time interconnecting in order to accomplish a given
moment."
"That's a paradox." Shatterstar said.
"So what? It worked, didn't it? You're here, your friends are here, I'm here. Benjamin Russell
is and always will be the once and future Shatterstar."
"I don't believe you."
"How else would you have known to call yourself that?"
"Yeah, I say we torch the place." Boomer griped. "Time-travel makes my head hurt."
"Or we'll bring it down around their ears." Rictor said, bringing up the green energy from his
hands.
"Rictor, Boomer, you cannot believe her, she's obviously lying."
"Benjamin, how can you say that? I raised you ... Ah, 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an
ungrateful child.' I trust you recognize the quote."
"Yeah, it's from KING LEAR, by William Shakespeare," Rictor replied.
"Smart boy," Spiral remarked.
"How do you know this stuff?" Boomer asked.
"But we do not surrender! Mojo lives, programmer, by his obsession for power and desire to
extend your own longevity past the point of cancellation! The ways of this world are over! No
longer will we do what you want, Mojo! No longer will you tell us what to do! We will not play
your games, and I will not allow anyone to pull this puppet s strings. My destiny, my identity
may be a thing to you to manipulate. I don't believe in predestination, I make my own
fate!"
"To continue our lesson in inter-dimensional physics, one or the other must occupy the same
space in the confines of the space time continuum. As Mistress of the Wildways, I can bend the
time currents to my will. See how easy that was? No need for threats, Shatterstar." Spiral
smirked.
"No threats, no riddles?" Shatterstar asked, perplexed.
"So, it's just a theory. right? That's what you did with Ben, uh Shatterstar's, life. The whole
time we, you, I mean Rita. Star's essence was drifting around. They're one and the same?"
Rictor asked, trying to assimilate all of this.
"Essentially, yes." Spiral replied.
"So how do we get back to Earth?" Boomer, asked, what, to her was the most obvious
question.
"You go through the portal."
"Then what was the point of bringing us to Mojoworld?"
"To shove the truth of your origins right under your nose, Shatterstar, to show that you will
always be a part of the Mojoverse, and that your presence on Earth is only a temporary exile,"
Spiral replied.
"In other words..." Boom-Boom left her words hanging.
"You've been syndicated," Mojo smirked.
"I thought you said, there'd be no more riddles," Shatterstar griped.
"That wasn't a riddle, but I'll leave you to figure it out," Spiral said and exited through a
sliding metal panel in the wall.
Crashing through the portal, arrival at the X-Mansion Present Day
"Intruder alert!" Cable shouted.
"They all heard it, Nate. In fact, I think everyone in the X-Mansion heard, let alone the entire
Westchester County," Domino said.
"I wasn't that loud."
"Let me at'em!" Domino shouted, pushing and shoving past the bulky, heavily muscled forms of
both male teammates.
"He has a lot frustration to work off, let Jimmy handle it."
"And I don't." Domino snorted.
"Okay, MTV pretty-boys, play-time's over!" Jimmy yelled, big as his body was, he could still
move remarkably fast, a fact that many of his opponents failed to recognize and had come to
grief.
Rushing forward at breakneck speed, the mutant Apache crashed full length into the man with
streaming red-hair bound up into a pony-tail flailing around with a wickedly sharp swords,
neatly slicing through the Danger Room's programmable battledroids designed for training
scenarios.
The other, a blond girl stood off to one side tossing energy spheres at the holographic
opponents, while the other brown-haired kid, literally caused the floor to buckle, like it was
being hit by miniature earthquakes. It didn't faze either the boy or the girl, the redhead
simply leapt over increasingly widening cracks in the floor and proceeded to relieved the
droids of their heads.
"Isn t this where we came in?" Rictor quip, dismantingly another droid by causing a holographic
wall to to collapse under extreme metal fatigue and crush the droid beneath it.
"Not exactly." Shatterstar said, taking the idiom literally.
"So, where are we. This isn't Boston. I thought that time dohickey was, uh,
cali-cali-..."
"Calibrated."
"To send us back to where we started."
"Obviously something went wrong." an acerbic woman's voice finished. Dressed in a blue-white
bodysuit, she had a black patch over one eye, and a rope in the other. "Maybe you should be
backing off. Although, personally I'd rather you didn t. I'm just the obligatory mother figure
around her, so I thought I should give you a chance to save your teeth before I kick them
in!"
"You pay heed to your own welfare, and don't mock me again!"
"Have it your way, then.
"I always have, always will. Fekt, you are fast, white-face. Do you have the courage to face me
without leaping about like a dancer?"
Dropping to the ground, Domino, with blinding speed lanced out with her left leg and kicked
Shatterstar right in the gut, sending him hurtling into the wall.
"Hey, Star, you mind giving me a hand here?" Boomer yelled, having pinned up against the wall
by a very large man who'd run into her like a linebacker in full blitz. Boomer found herself
hovering about six feet off the ground.
"Coming, Boomer!" the other boy yelled, having stopped nailing droids when the holograms
vanished. His headlong dash toward his friends halted midway when he felt arm like steel wrap
around his waist and lift him off his feet. Pressed up against the man chest, he was brought
face to face with a blast from the past. "Stryfe!" he exclaimed.
"What did you say, kid?"
"You're, the man who killed my father!"
"Sorry to hear that, kid. But you've got a case of mistaken identity, I'm not Stryfe. Don't know
what kind of back-story you've got. But he and I are one hundred percent not one and the same."
Cable explained. "You want down?"
"Si, jefe." Rictor gasped.
"Star, Boomer, I think it might be a good idea if we tried talking this out."
"Now, start from the beginning, leave nothing out." Cable ordered.
"It's complicated.
Formally join X-Force
"Shatterstar is stranded in this dimension. In return for helping him fight his war, he will
fight ours," Cable announced.
"Rictor and Boomer will join as well, they've explained about being in Mojoworld with
Shatterstar and how they wound up there. With nowhere else to go, they've agreed to join
X-Force."
"I guess introductions are in order, that's Domino," pointing to the woman with a patch, "that's
Warpath," pointing to the candidate for a linebacker for the NFL. Hell, Boomer thought, he
could probably fill several positions at once.
"That's Cannonball," pointing to a gorgeous blond kid. "And I'm Cable."
"Welcome to X-Force, kiddies, hope you survive the experience."
"Now, there's only one more piece of business before I let you off to hit the showers."
"What's that, boss,?" Cannonball asked.
"We now have the kind of fighting unit I've felt we needed all along. It's best to say it
without beating around the proverbial bush. We can't stay here any longer. We don't have much
choice in the matter. Tolliver knows I'm here.
"The warriors from Shatterstar's world have this location as their last transport point. Rictor
and will have to work out this resemblance to Stryfe matter at a later date. As for Boomer, I'm
always up for new recruits."
"What is it you're really trying to say, Nate?" Domino asked.
"Quite frankly, I don't feel our method of operation will coincide with those of our landlords,
the X-Men and X-Factor."
"Where will we go, sir? Cannonball asked.
"You were first brought here by a man who had a dream, Sam. The dream is dead, it's time to
face reality. You've already how to control your powers, we'll keep working with our new
recruits and honing everyone else's. Now it's time to start using them. It's time we became a
force for change in this world, legal or not, for what's right."
"Take Professor Xavier's dream and fight for it?" Warpath asked.
"An X-Force? A little crude, but it's got some potential." Cannonball said.
"Hit the showers, we be ready to move for a couple of days. And Sam, show our new members the
ropes."
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