Item Biography
"Still Life With Metal"
The story begins atop the roof of the New York City headquarters of the New Mutants where Cannonball, Sunspot and Warlock get an unexpected visitor.
That visitor is none other than the Cosmic Avenger, Quasar, who introduces himself and gets the trio to answer a few questions about the origin of the extraterrestrial shape shifter Warlock. After Cannonball and Sunspot vouch for their alien friend, Quasar leaves them and reports the results to his cosmic mentor Eon.
With no other plans and eleven ETs still left on earth to identify, Quasar decides to go check out one more before he calls it quits for the day. Zeroing in on the alien’s unique energy signature, Quasar finds himself soaring above the skies of Project Pegasus and begins to take a depressing trip down memory lane.
Quasar had previously held a position as the project’s Security Chief only to fall victim to the Serpent Crown. As with his other previous failures, he had only been saved by the help of other heroes.
Landing at the entrance of the complex, Quasar comes out of his reminiscing to find that the front door is wide open and security seems to be non-existent.
Taking notice that the power to the facility has been cut, Quasar illuminates his path and begins patrolling the dark corridors of the complex to investigate.
Scanning the complex for signs of life level by level, Quasar finds a frightened woman named Helen Carver who explains that there was a power outage and during the evacuation she’d lost her way in the darkness.
After surrounding Ms. Carver with cosmic energy, Quasar sends her to the surface and continues his search of the complex.
Finally reaching the bottom floor of the facility, Quasar sees that the power generators seem to have been eaten away by some sort of acid. Noting a hole in the ceiling, Quasar flies through it to the floor above him and sees what looks like a cocoon in the corner of the room.
Whipping up a stethoscope of cosmic energy, Quasar finds that there is inside the metal cocoon. Not knowing who or what is inside, he decides to open it and finds the current Project Pegasus Security Chief, Blue Shield inside.
Peeling the layers of metallic goo to free the man, Quasar hears something from behind him. Turning around to see what it is, he’s surprised to see a 30 foot tall acid-drooling-metal-monster moving towards him.
The creature spews a stream of acid at our heroes, which is blocked by shield of quantum energy that Quasar erects. Quasar drops an anvil of quantum energy on the monster’s head smashing it against the ground but the monster is right back up on his feet moments later.
Quasar surrounds the baddie in quantum energy, temporarily immobilizing it while Blue Shield fills him in on some details of what happened. Before the two can say too much, the creature breaks free of his restraints, smacks the Q-Man and grabs Blue Shield.
Quasar desperately tries to bolster Blue Shields force field to keep the monster from snapping him in half and asks Eon to get the 411 on this alien baddie.
Quasar tries to overload the monster’s nervous system to shut it down but somehow the Blue Shields force field vanishes, leaving him exposed to the metal grip of the giant creature.
Having enough, Quasar creates a sword and chops the hand of the creature off, sending it into agony. Amazingly, the hand appears to be sentient itself and attempts to crawl away from the battle. Quasar imprisons the hand in a box of quantum energy, grabs Blue Shield and flies to get him to safety.
As they fly through the levels of the facility, Eon gets back to Quasar to give him the skinny on the alien baddie. Apparently, the metal alien evolved from discarded sentient body armor that Iron-Man had gotten from Battle World during Secret Wars.
Arriving on one of the upper floors, Quasar sees a magma tap – a shaft that leads straight down into the magma deep under the surface of the earth.
After opening the tap, Quasar hears Blue Shield scream like a frightened school girl and turns to see the alien creature right behind him.
Taking to the air, Quasar creates a giant sized mace and begins beating the creature with it, driving it towards and down into the magma tap.
Clawing at the walls of the shaft, the creature pulls its head back out and Quasar makes the decision to push the metallic menace deep down into the shaft even if he has to sacrifice himself to do it.
Plunging himself and the creature deeper and deeper into the magma core of the earth, Quasar fights to free himself of the monster’s grip and rockets back up the shaft.
Emerging out of the shaft with a tattered cape, Quasar expels the thermal energy he’d absorbed back into the shaft and caps it, ensuring the creatures demise.
After the Q-Man gives Blue Shield a quick pep talk, he heads back home toward the cityscape of New York feeling vindicated for all of the times he’d failed at Project Pegasus.
Meanwhile, we see that Blue Shield didn’t take too well to the pep talk after all and tenders his resignation as Security Chief for Project Pegasus.