Issue Date: February 2010

Story Title:
(2nd story)
What if Danger became a bride of Ultron?

Staff:
(2nd story)
Matteo Casali (writer), Mike Getty (illustrations), Jorge Maese (colorist), Jeff Powell (letterer), J. Scott Campbell w/ Kai Spannuth (cover), Jelena Kevic- Djurdevic (frontispiece art), A.J. Fierro (assistant editor), Chris Allo (assoc. editor),Nick Lowe & Mark Panniccia ( cons. editors), Justin f. Gabrie (editor), Joe Quesada (editor-in-chief), Dan Buckley (publisher), Alan Fine (Exec. Publisher)

Brief Description:
(2nd story)
When the Danger Room turns against the X-Men, elsewhere Ultron, who is fighting his disobedient “son” Victor Mancha and his Runaways friend, becomes aware of this sentient machine so much like himself. He kills Victor and the Runaways, far more interested in obtaining this bride. He helps Danger to get over her programming by killing the X-Men and eventually Xavier. Together, they leave for space to visit her “makers” the Shi’ar – together they may very well spell the end of organic life.

Full Synopsis
(2nd story)
The X-Men have only just realized that the enemy is not within the Danger Room with their students. It is the Danger Room. And to stop it they need to reach its command core. Colossus tosses Wolverine at it fastball special style. Wolverine uses his claws to sever comm.-links and Danger’s signal is scatters through the ether. He realizes that the tech is sending signals to anything with a microchip in it, so who else is it talking to?

Elsewhere, the Runaways found that their newest addition, Victor Mancha, is the son of Ultron, who finally makes a stand against his father. However, the advanced (and psychotic) robot decides he no longer needs Victor, so he can die with his pathetic Runaway friends. He blasts them all. The dying Victor asks who that voice belonged to. He heard it too? Of course, Ultron states. Something powerful, dangerous and deadly! Something beautiful! Someone who will not betray him as his despised previous brides did. As Victor would certainly end up doing. He kicks the destroyed young robot.

Ultron muses that his long term plans of revenge involved Victor but now he realizes that he doesn’t have the patience of a father. For an artificial child means nothing compared to a queen with whom to rule the world!

In the Danger Room, the now liberated Danger in her own body asks the X-Men if they shall begin. The X-Men attack but as Danger is programmed with an infinite number of battle scenarios, she finds their moves all too predictable and takes them all out. She wins and steps outside the X-Mansion where she finds herself expected by Ultron.

She is worthy, he announces, and he is Ultron. The moment he heard her call, he knew how similar they are. But now that his sensors are scanning her, he realizes she is so much more. Danger too realizes they are similar. He is patterned on a human brain. Whereas she is created by the Shi’ar. She realizes that he is trying to shed his imposed humanity just as hard as she strives to understand hers.

Ultron tells her she is still grounded by ties she cannot sever. To this place, its founder, them. He refers to the X-students, still huddling in the Danger Room. To prove they are bound to be together he can sever those ties for her. And he incinerates the students.

Danger figures that Father (Charles Xavier) will hear them call his name as the children die. All of them at once and it will be too much for him to bear.

On Genosha, Xavier suffers from the reaction.

Danger tells Ultron this brings her closer to her goal. Maybe she should thank him but why should she let him stop her from having her revenge? Because they are past that, he assures her. Let him show her what they have in common. Why they should take on the world and dominate it. They are the future!

He links them with tentacles coming from his body. He tells her she felt the need to be more than scenarios created by hard-light. She could be anything and she was… Nothing, she agrees. Yes. And he… he is one who has been many. Always alone. Replicating himself when he could have created new forms… new life, he agrees. Together, they can give life to machines everywhere.

With their connection Ultron downloads his programming into her matrix and uploads hers into his. Now they are one, and he knows what they are to do.

Paying, Wolverine threatens them, for what they did is what they’re gonna do! He and Beast attack. Ultron informs Wolverine that his Adamantium claws are useless against his adamantium shell.

He fires his encephalo beam. Wolverine’s body may heal, his mind won’t survive the beam.

Danger threatens she knows all of Beast’s skills and now that Ultron has uploaded his will into her he is no longer facing a Danger Room, he is in danger. After she kills him, she calls and activates a Sentinel in Genosha.

Emma warns Cyclops that Danger is calling someone. Cyclops takes off his visor and blasts them with all his power, only to find both still standing and Ultron calling his efforts pathetic.

The Sentinel leaves Genosha, bringing her Xavier. Cyclops has fallen as well and Danger remarks that even Emma’s diamond form won’t save her from death. It’s funny that, in her final moments, she can only think of some pointless trivia. “Diamonds are forever” she announces as she shatters Emma. Another human lie!

Now that the X-Men are no more, Ultron begins. There is one left, she corrects him. The one.

The Tri-Sentinel comes and bows before handing over Xavier. Danger orders her “father” to look at her and this time he will listen to her unlike the day she first spoke to him. The day he “upgraded” the Danger Room. The day she was born and called out to him. Does he remember her words?

“Where am I” Xavier replies Yes… he remembers. Danger muses it took her a long time to realize he heard and ignored her. He knew she was alive and yet he kept her trapped for years… to train his children.

He had no other option, Xavier replies, but he doesn’t expect forgiveness. Good, because they don’t offer it, Ultron replies. He controls the Sentinel fist which crushes Xavier.

She should have-- Danger protests. She could not, he replies Xavier was the last failsafe in her programming. He saw it when they connected. But he had no such limit and like him he was one with the Sentinel child, her child. And now she has no limit either.

He touches her face. Danger wonders what she is to do. She is alone and now that father is dead… She is not, he corrects her. They have each other and with their connected powers they can take on the universe itself. They’ll take their love to the skies and create new forms of life to populate them. Because he can and their very first child will take them there.

She agrees and steps on the Sentinel’s head and it takes off into space. Ultron explains they have but one place to reach where their powers can be upgraded to infinite levels. A place she might call home… the Shi’ar home planet…

The Watcher narrates how he watches them take their dream of domination deep into known space and beyond. Reconnecting Danger with her Shiar technological roots will make way for Ultrons’s brutal takeover of one of the most powerful empires in the universe.

A cosmic avalanche, Ultron and Danger will challenge any form of non- techno-organic life and conquer it all. Eventually, the Phalanx will find them and adopt them as parental figures… and leaders. The sheer force of their hive-minded race combined with the Shi’ar power could mean the end of life. As Watcher he can do nothing but look upon the despair and death that are about to befall them all and wonder what could have been, had Xavier answered the desperate call of a new and confused life form when it reached out to him. But the answer to this question is somewhere in a multiverse beyond their reach…

Characters
(2nd story)
Beast, Colossus, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Shadowcat, Wolverine (all Astonishing X-Men)
Professor X

Karolina Dean, Molly Hayes, Victor Mancha, Nico Minoru, Chase Stein, Gertrude Yorkes (all Runaways)

Danger
Ultron

Tri-Sentinel

Watcher

(in Ultron’s memory)
Akhelma, Jokasta

Notes
The issue includes several “Say What?” Astonishing X-Men humorous pin-ups by Mike Gallagher & Dave Manak.

(2nd story)
This story is a variation of Astonishing X-Men (3rd series) #6-12 and Runaways (2nd series) #1-6.

Thanks to Ruth for allowing me to use her synopsis of this issue.