During the Inferno event (X-MEN
#240-243) the X-Mansion was destroyed. Soon after a pair of
mechanical tentacles rose from the rubble....
The police note a rash of thefts of
building materials, usually weighing in the tons; baffled, they call
Damage Control....
John Porter has a team (traffic manager
Robin Chapel, head foreman Lenny Ballinger, comptroller Albert
Cleary, R&D's Gene Strausser, and intern Bart Rozum) go to the
X-Mansion site as it seems to be the center point of the thefts. [The
X-Men are believed dead at this time.] Oddly, while they stand among
the wreckage, only John and Bart see it, the rest are looking at a
lovely mansion. But they all see the metal tentacles carrying lumber.
Then a suppressed memory comes through into Robin's head and as she
talks, Albert, Lenny and Gene start to remember....
Some years ago, D-C was doing some
repair work in the mansion and while Robin and Albert were taking
care of paperwork with Professor X, Gene was downstairs getting into
trouble. Gene burst into the control room where Kitty Pryde and
Cypher were incorporating Shi'ar technology into the workings of the
Danger Room. First Gene started tinkering with the tech, then Lenny
was trapped in the Danger Room, and then it couldn't be shut down
because Gene had gone too far. Wolverine dashed in to save Lenny—and
discovered he was entangled in Silly String. Then Logan was
confronted by a simulation of Groucho Marx, keeping up his familiar
comic patter and confusing the heroes. Suddenly an army of clowns
appeared, throwing pies and nailing Wolverine. Cypher reported the
situation to Professor X who mentally summoned the X-Men
(Nightcrawler, Colossus, Cyclops, Storm, Rogue) to save the day. They
arrived, dashed into the Danger Room, and were trapped like everybody
else. Prof X told them they must use the cut-off switch; Cyclops
blasted it with a beam from his eyes but nothing happened. Prof
dispatched Kitty to address the matter but she was menaced by robot
clowns and needed the help of the others. On the way, Rogue was shot
with a spear from a clown's toy gun; Nightcrawler managed to return
an exploding cigar to its sender but slipped up on a banana peel on
his trapeze. Storm is laid low by a boxing glove on a spring; Groucho
handed her a bomb but Colossus grabbed it and defused it but the fuse
blew up in his face. Albert got nailed by a thrown pie, Kitty put her
hand in the mechanism and found a huge mousetrap (the hard way),
Lenny took over for her. Fed up, Storm called down lightning and
incinerated Groucho, which didn't solve the problem as another one
immediately appeared. Robin decapitated a set of Three Stooges
robots. When it was all over, Professor X wiped the minds of the
Damage Control staff so they wouldn't remember anything that
happened there that day....
And now, Robin, Albert, Lenny, and Gene
(John and Bart weren't there) can see the rubble (though Lenny is
still a bit confused); John realizes that the mechanism of the Danger
Room is trying to rebuild the Mansion and they arrange to return the
stolen materials to their owners. John makes the decision not to
mention the X-Men's involvement to the police as “dead or alive,
the customer is always right.”