Eric J. Moreels
May 24, 2002, 03:23 am
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/covers/parx02.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/covers/parx02t.jpg" align=left alt="Paradise X #2"></a>Fans of <b><i>Earth X</i></b> wondering what happened to the text appendices in the final <b><i>Paradise X</i></b> trilogy can wonder no longer! Series writer Jim Krueger has been providing visitors to his <a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5659" target="_blank">Krueger X</a> forum here at X-Fan with the appendices to <b><i>Paradise X</i></b> after each issue has arrived in stores.
Without further ado, here is Krueger's Appendix for <b><i>Paradise X #2</i></b>.
BELASCO
Written by Jim Krueger
"I apologize for waiting so long. I should have come sooner, helped you sooner."
"Who’s that? Oh it’s you. I haven’t seen you since the Savage Land, since I learned…"
"…that you weren’t Belasco alone, but also Kurt Wagner, the manipulated pawn of Mephisto?"
"…"
"Kurt?"
"…"
"…yes, before I was manipulated by Mephisto and sent unknowingly back in time to strike at the X-Men in the form of a demon from Hell."
"I want to talk to you, Kurt, I want to help you understand what has happened to you."
"I know what’s happened to me. I don’t want be reminded."
"You don’t need to be reminded, Kurt. You damn yourself with this story every waking moment. That’s why you’ve made your home in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. I don’t want to make you relive it, I want to offer you a perspective on what has happened these last three years, a perspective that may allow you to understand not only the amazing things that have happened, but your place in it."
"You sound like Xavier."
"Do I?"
"It really doesn’t matter. I have heard all of this before."
"Of course you have. We all have. Over and over again."
"What are you talking about?"
"There was once a time, Kurt, when all of time was linear. There was a point when time began. And then after a period of measured existence, it ceased to be. This is your belief, Kurt. You were… are a Catholic."
"I take things like that on faith, X-51. Sometimes that means I don’t have to torture myself thinking about it."
"I want to tell you something about your powers, Kurt, something about the nature of your ability to teleport from one place to another."
"What."
"Your power is a linear time-based power."
"I don’t understand."
"For a moment, don’t think of time as something to be measured by minutes and seconds, Kurt. Think of it as a measure of distance. When you teleport from one place to another in an instant, you travel from one point to another as if there were no time to pass between them."
"So?"
"So this means that you have always, to a degree, had a command over time. Mephisto knew this. He knew you manipulated time regardless of whether you were aware of it or not."
"I’m afraid that this is all quite beyond me."
"Look at me. I’m a demon, not a student of geometry."
"Has your appearance changed so much, Kurt, from what you were? Apart from basic color, it is only the arm you lost when the Grey Gargoyle trapped part of you in stone that has changed your appearance. Reed Richards too has lost an arm. He too has been changed by circumstance. He too was manipulated by Mephisto."
"That’s easy for you to say, robot. You have no past life to compare your current one to."
"That's not true, Kurt. I did have a 'past' life. I had a face once-- one the man who built me created for me to wear. It gave me humanity. I called that man father. In all honesty, I’ve had my humanity taken from me in ways you have not."
"Is that what you believe? From what you say, it wasn’t a real face in the first place. I was tricked into committing evil, manipulated into becoming the enemy of my friends. It didn’t matter how I looked, it was about what I became."
"Then don’t call yourself demon if indeed you are just a victim of Mephisto’s tricks."
"You… you’re right."
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/univx_belasco.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/univx_belascot.jpg" align=right alt="Belasco character sketch by Alex Ross"></a>"I reminded you that my humanity cannot be defined by a plastic face, or in your case, a hue. You’re not a demon, Kurt. You never were. Not even when you thought yourself to be Belasco. You don’t have to play the victim. Xavier taught you this when you only thought yourself to be a mutant. He didn’t want mutants to be victims, but to claim their rights. You don’t have to play the victim of Mephisto now. If you do, he’ll still be controlling your actions and you will never be free of him."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to rejoin the world. An old friend of yours, Brian Braddock is marrying soon. You should go and celebrate with him."
"Very well. But I want to know something. Mar-Vell showed me what happened, how I almost died from the loss of my arm, how Mephisto transformed me into Belasco, the villain, and convinced me that I was Belasco, servant of the Dark Gods. But there’s more to this. I know there is."
"You were no villain. When Captain America and the Mar-Vell child traveled to the Savage Land and Limbo to collect Anti-Metal to structure the new Paradise, they came upon your body. It had been frozen in ice in Limbo, a realm constructed out of the infinities created by a time machine."
"Mar-Vell told me all of this. He showed me how Mephisto came to me after my arm had been lost in stone. I saw how I was encased in ice, how I was transformed into Belasco. But how can you say I was no villain?"
"Because even as a demon, you were drawn to saving the X-Men as much as Mephisto pushed you to damning them."
"I don’t understand."
"There was a child once, a girl, Colossus’ sister."
"Illyana."
"Illyana. Have you ever asked yourself why you took her from the X-Men and raised her in Limbo."
"Mephisto told me it was to take advantage of Colossus, to use his weaknesses against him instead of pitting myself against him, to attack his heart in a way that got through his impenetrable steal skin."
"Mephisto would say that, Kurt. But the truth is that you knew you were repeating a history you had already experienced."
"I don’t understand."
"Some people call it déjà vu. The sense that everything that has happened before. You knew there would come a day when a virus would kill Illyana, a virus that attacked only those for whom the mutant seed had been germinated. You also knew that there would come another day when Peter Rasputin would die himself to find a cure for that same virus. Yes, you thought yourself a demon, but answer me this, why would a demon teach a child the power over life and death? Why would a demon unconsciously arm a child with the ability to escape death once she’d succumbed to it, and with the ability to save a brother who himself had died."
"What are you saying, that Illyana is still alive?"
"Perhaps, I don’t know. I cannot see her on Earth, but have not heard mention of her in the Realm Of The Dead, either. Perhaps she is in Limbo now, hiding from a reality she cannot understand, nor wants to."
"I know how she feels."
"But Peter Rasputin is alive again. How was he brought back to life?"
"I don’t know."
"Yes. Yes you do. You taught Illyana how to escape from Death’s Realm. You taught her how to rescue her brother when he’d died as well."
"But that goes against even the power Mephisto has. How could I possibly know how to do that?"
"Because, Kurt, Mephisto didn’t save you from death. He brought you back after you’d already died."
"That’s crazy. How could I come back from the dead?"
"Isn’t that the central belief of your faith, Kurt? That such a miracle is possible?"
"Yes, but not like this. Please, how could you even come to suspect this?"
"I have a friend, one who can see both in this world and those still to come. He told me that you died.
"What Mephisto learned was that the dead could be reanimated if their bodies were not destroyed first. This knowledge was passed onto you, Kurt, as it is to everyone who returns from the dead."
"But why? Why would Mephisto give the knowledge to me of how to get in an out of the Realm of the Dead?"
"He didn’t. You just remembered the way back, and the way in. According to Kyle, he’s the friend I told you about, there are points between every cycle of time that Mephisto knows how to cross into."
"You mean like secret passage ways?"
"Exactly. It is at these points that one recycled reality meets another. Like a labyrinth."
"And Mephisto knows the way into each of these realms?"
"He does."
"How? Does he just have the knowledge or does he have a map?"
"I don’t know. Maybe there’s a map."
"So why are you telling me this?"
"One, because I wanted you to know that when you were transported back in time, you helped Mephisto create another reality for him to escape into. He encourages people in their despair to create alternate realities that he can escape from. I was hoping you’d be willing to help me stop him."
"What’s he running from?"
"God, or at least what he thought existed to judge him at the end of linear time."
"I have one more question."
"What?"
"I died and was brought back and manipulated time just like Mephisto hoped I would. But technically, Illyana and Peter have the same knowledge I do. And, they had access to Limbo. We may not know where Illyana is, but why didn’t Peter ever use his knowledge and Limbo to manipulate time?"
"Who says he didn’t?"
Without further ado, here is Krueger's Appendix for <b><i>Paradise X #2</i></b>.
BELASCO
Written by Jim Krueger
"I apologize for waiting so long. I should have come sooner, helped you sooner."
"Who’s that? Oh it’s you. I haven’t seen you since the Savage Land, since I learned…"
"…that you weren’t Belasco alone, but also Kurt Wagner, the manipulated pawn of Mephisto?"
"…"
"Kurt?"
"…"
"…yes, before I was manipulated by Mephisto and sent unknowingly back in time to strike at the X-Men in the form of a demon from Hell."
"I want to talk to you, Kurt, I want to help you understand what has happened to you."
"I know what’s happened to me. I don’t want be reminded."
"You don’t need to be reminded, Kurt. You damn yourself with this story every waking moment. That’s why you’ve made your home in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. I don’t want to make you relive it, I want to offer you a perspective on what has happened these last three years, a perspective that may allow you to understand not only the amazing things that have happened, but your place in it."
"You sound like Xavier."
"Do I?"
"It really doesn’t matter. I have heard all of this before."
"Of course you have. We all have. Over and over again."
"What are you talking about?"
"There was once a time, Kurt, when all of time was linear. There was a point when time began. And then after a period of measured existence, it ceased to be. This is your belief, Kurt. You were… are a Catholic."
"I take things like that on faith, X-51. Sometimes that means I don’t have to torture myself thinking about it."
"I want to tell you something about your powers, Kurt, something about the nature of your ability to teleport from one place to another."
"What."
"Your power is a linear time-based power."
"I don’t understand."
"For a moment, don’t think of time as something to be measured by minutes and seconds, Kurt. Think of it as a measure of distance. When you teleport from one place to another in an instant, you travel from one point to another as if there were no time to pass between them."
"So?"
"So this means that you have always, to a degree, had a command over time. Mephisto knew this. He knew you manipulated time regardless of whether you were aware of it or not."
"I’m afraid that this is all quite beyond me."
"Look at me. I’m a demon, not a student of geometry."
"Has your appearance changed so much, Kurt, from what you were? Apart from basic color, it is only the arm you lost when the Grey Gargoyle trapped part of you in stone that has changed your appearance. Reed Richards too has lost an arm. He too has been changed by circumstance. He too was manipulated by Mephisto."
"That’s easy for you to say, robot. You have no past life to compare your current one to."
"That's not true, Kurt. I did have a 'past' life. I had a face once-- one the man who built me created for me to wear. It gave me humanity. I called that man father. In all honesty, I’ve had my humanity taken from me in ways you have not."
"Is that what you believe? From what you say, it wasn’t a real face in the first place. I was tricked into committing evil, manipulated into becoming the enemy of my friends. It didn’t matter how I looked, it was about what I became."
"Then don’t call yourself demon if indeed you are just a victim of Mephisto’s tricks."
"You… you’re right."
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/univx_belasco.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/univx_belascot.jpg" align=right alt="Belasco character sketch by Alex Ross"></a>"I reminded you that my humanity cannot be defined by a plastic face, or in your case, a hue. You’re not a demon, Kurt. You never were. Not even when you thought yourself to be Belasco. You don’t have to play the victim. Xavier taught you this when you only thought yourself to be a mutant. He didn’t want mutants to be victims, but to claim their rights. You don’t have to play the victim of Mephisto now. If you do, he’ll still be controlling your actions and you will never be free of him."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to rejoin the world. An old friend of yours, Brian Braddock is marrying soon. You should go and celebrate with him."
"Very well. But I want to know something. Mar-Vell showed me what happened, how I almost died from the loss of my arm, how Mephisto transformed me into Belasco, the villain, and convinced me that I was Belasco, servant of the Dark Gods. But there’s more to this. I know there is."
"You were no villain. When Captain America and the Mar-Vell child traveled to the Savage Land and Limbo to collect Anti-Metal to structure the new Paradise, they came upon your body. It had been frozen in ice in Limbo, a realm constructed out of the infinities created by a time machine."
"Mar-Vell told me all of this. He showed me how Mephisto came to me after my arm had been lost in stone. I saw how I was encased in ice, how I was transformed into Belasco. But how can you say I was no villain?"
"Because even as a demon, you were drawn to saving the X-Men as much as Mephisto pushed you to damning them."
"I don’t understand."
"There was a child once, a girl, Colossus’ sister."
"Illyana."
"Illyana. Have you ever asked yourself why you took her from the X-Men and raised her in Limbo."
"Mephisto told me it was to take advantage of Colossus, to use his weaknesses against him instead of pitting myself against him, to attack his heart in a way that got through his impenetrable steal skin."
"Mephisto would say that, Kurt. But the truth is that you knew you were repeating a history you had already experienced."
"I don’t understand."
"Some people call it déjà vu. The sense that everything that has happened before. You knew there would come a day when a virus would kill Illyana, a virus that attacked only those for whom the mutant seed had been germinated. You also knew that there would come another day when Peter Rasputin would die himself to find a cure for that same virus. Yes, you thought yourself a demon, but answer me this, why would a demon teach a child the power over life and death? Why would a demon unconsciously arm a child with the ability to escape death once she’d succumbed to it, and with the ability to save a brother who himself had died."
"What are you saying, that Illyana is still alive?"
"Perhaps, I don’t know. I cannot see her on Earth, but have not heard mention of her in the Realm Of The Dead, either. Perhaps she is in Limbo now, hiding from a reality she cannot understand, nor wants to."
"I know how she feels."
"But Peter Rasputin is alive again. How was he brought back to life?"
"I don’t know."
"Yes. Yes you do. You taught Illyana how to escape from Death’s Realm. You taught her how to rescue her brother when he’d died as well."
"But that goes against even the power Mephisto has. How could I possibly know how to do that?"
"Because, Kurt, Mephisto didn’t save you from death. He brought you back after you’d already died."
"That’s crazy. How could I come back from the dead?"
"Isn’t that the central belief of your faith, Kurt? That such a miracle is possible?"
"Yes, but not like this. Please, how could you even come to suspect this?"
"I have a friend, one who can see both in this world and those still to come. He told me that you died.
"What Mephisto learned was that the dead could be reanimated if their bodies were not destroyed first. This knowledge was passed onto you, Kurt, as it is to everyone who returns from the dead."
"But why? Why would Mephisto give the knowledge to me of how to get in an out of the Realm of the Dead?"
"He didn’t. You just remembered the way back, and the way in. According to Kyle, he’s the friend I told you about, there are points between every cycle of time that Mephisto knows how to cross into."
"You mean like secret passage ways?"
"Exactly. It is at these points that one recycled reality meets another. Like a labyrinth."
"And Mephisto knows the way into each of these realms?"
"He does."
"How? Does he just have the knowledge or does he have a map?"
"I don’t know. Maybe there’s a map."
"So why are you telling me this?"
"One, because I wanted you to know that when you were transported back in time, you helped Mephisto create another reality for him to escape into. He encourages people in their despair to create alternate realities that he can escape from. I was hoping you’d be willing to help me stop him."
"What’s he running from?"
"God, or at least what he thought existed to judge him at the end of linear time."
"I have one more question."
"What?"
"I died and was brought back and manipulated time just like Mephisto hoped I would. But technically, Illyana and Peter have the same knowledge I do. And, they had access to Limbo. We may not know where Illyana is, but why didn’t Peter ever use his knowledge and Limbo to manipulate time?"
"Who says he didn’t?"