Bastion (comics)

Bastion is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Scott Lobdell and Pascual Ferry and first made a cameo appearance in X-Men #52 (May 1996). His first full appearance was Uncanny X-Men #333 (June 1996).

Fictional character biography

Operation: Zero Tolerance

Bastion is a mysterious man who had risen to power in relative short time in the U.S. Government and began assembling the international anti-mutant strike force Operation: Zero Tolerance (OZT). When the X-Men learned about the existence of OZT some months before the operation became public, Gambit and Phoenix, acting on information, snuck into an OZT meeting being held at the Pentagon to learn more about the program and its leader, Bastion, but did not come out with much. Bastion showed that he was more than met the eye as Phoenix couldn't read his mind and Bastion easily identified the two X-Men hidden among representatives of various foreign intelligence agencies interested in supporting OZT.^[1]

When Professor X voluntarily turned himself in after the Onslaught event, Bastion confined him in an OZT facility along with the artificially-created mutant Mannites which revealed later allowed Bastion to take direct control over the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, and gaining possession of the Xavier Protocols, a list of files containing information on killing the X-Men. Bastion also killed a Daily Bugle reporter who was going to report on Graydon Creed's history and later Bastion himself succeeded in capturing Jubilee and taking her to the OZT base in New Mexico.^[2]

As the OZT attempted to reconfigure the Sentinel force assembled by Project: Wideawake, Bastion deemed most of them outdated. Instead, Bastion was able to develop a new type of Sentinel, the Prime Sentinels. The death of Graydon Creed^[3] was the last ammunition needed to initiate Bastion's OZT, which attacked mutants everywhere. The operation soon targeted and succeeded in capturing some members of the X-Men.^[4]

After learning the nature of the Prime Sentinels, the President was convinced by Senator Robert Kelly and Henry Peter Gyrich to suspend Bastion's operations. Bastion was captured by S.H.I.E.L.D., with help from Iceman.

Origin

While in government custody, Bastion managed to escape and returned to the former OZT facility. There, he absorbed the energy from the Master Mold unit with which he had created the Prime Sentinels, regaining his memories in the process. As it turns out Bastion hadn't been born human at all but actually started life out as two separate beings: the Sentinel Master Mold, and Nimrod, a highly advanced Sentinel from an alternate future. While posing as a human construction worker, Nimrod unearthed a module from Master Mold. As soon as Nimrod made physical contact with the module, Master Mold's programming began to co-opt Nimrod's. Shortly after, during a conflict with the X-Men, the two of them, along with the X-Man Rogue, were blasted through the Siege Perilous, a mystical crystal capable of judging any who pass through it and reincarnating them into a new life commensurate in quality with their previous life. It was the Siege Perilous that was responsible for merging Nimrod and Master Mold into a single man of flesh with no memory of his past. Bastion was found and taken in by a woman named Rose Gilberti. Living with Rose, Bastion began to hear about America's mutant problem, which unbeknown to him, re-activated his mutant-termination directives. Bastion fell in with anti-mutant groups, like Graydon Creed's Friends of Humanity soon afterwards.

After regaining its identity as a Sentinel, Bastion would attempt to lead another crusade against mutants by turning Machine Man into a Sentinel Supreme, but Machine Man and Cable were able to defeat him. He was returned to government custody, only to be beheaded later by a brainwashed Wolverine, who served as Apocalypse's Horseman of Death.

Template

Bastion's remains were eventually found by a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Mainspring who headed a project called the Gatekeepers, whose goal is to study and destroy Phalanx technology. Bastion was rebuilt but they then lost control of him. Bastion, with a new body and new programming, became known as Template and killed Mainspring. Bastion fought against the heroes Warlock and Wolfsbane during these incidents.

Some time later, Carol Danvers contacted the X-Men about the current whereabouts of the remains of Bastion/Template. The X-Men sent Shadowcat, Wolverine, and Gambit to break into the government facility, intending to reclaim their stolen computer files. While there, Template showed the three X-Men false holograms of events and lies about their teammates. The X-Men eventually got their files, but they were left with doubts and fears about their teammates.

X-Force

Following the events of the Messiah Complex event, the fundamentalist Purifiers assaulted a heavily-defended SHIELD installation, breaching the tight security with the aid of several double agents within the organization and recovered Bastion's head. At one of their churches, the Purifiers attached the head to the body of the Nimrod unit recovered from Forge's Aerie, returning Bastion to life. Immediately after his activation, the mutant-hunting robot alerts the Purifiers to the presence of the new X-Force.^[5] After accessing Nimrod's database, Bastion concludes that the X-Men are the greatest mutant threat to the Purifiers' objectives in this timeline or any other and that there is no terrestrial force in existence that could guarantee the elimination of the X-Men. However, he reveals that he has found something that could: Magus.^[6]

It was later revealed that what Bastion discovered at the bottom of the ocean was not the real Magus, but one of his offspring in a mindless state. Bastion rewrote its programming and infected Donald Pierce and the Leper Queen, the recovered techno-organic remains of Cameron Hodge and Steven Lang, as well as the corpses of Bolivar Trask, Graydon Creed and Reverend William Stryker with the Technarch transmode virus, declaring them to be the future of humanity and the end of mutantkind.^[7]

His first move was to capture several mutants and inject them with a strain of the Legacy Virus to cause their powers to go berserk and kill themselves and thousands of humans. Current known mutants to have been injected with the virus are Beautiful Dreamer, Fever Pitch, Boom Boom, Hellion and Surge. This would compel the United Nations to form a Mutant Response Division, which is successful, despite X-Force's efforts.^[8]

Bastion also had Pierce act as his mole inside the X-Men's headquarters, all the while building several structures that surround Utopia.^[9]

Necrosha

Mysteriously, mutants thought deceased are amazingly coming back to life. Bastion soon realizes that someone had gotten hold of the transmode virus. This spurs him onto accelerating his mysterious plan.^[10]

Second Coming

Bastion is the primary antagonist in the X-Men: Second Coming storyline. He is seen with Stephen Lang, Bolivar Trask, William Stryker, Graydon Creed, and Cameron Hodge stating that their forces are assembled and at his disposal. Bastion tells them that the Mutant Messiah has returned and gives them orders to kill her.^[11] Later, Bastion attempts to kill Hope on his own, but he is confronted by Rogue and then severely damaged when Nightcrawler sacrifices himself. When rebooting, Bastion takes on much of Nimrod's old appearance, but is finally destroyed towards the end of the crossover when Hope manifests a variety of the current X-Men's mutant powers and obliterates him.^[12]

Powers and abilities

Being a robot, Bastion has super strength, speed, intelligence, and endurance. It can also fly by using jet boots. It is immune to psychic reading from telepaths and has complete command of all Sentinels. It has an artificial healing factor, like Nimrod, and the ability to turn people into Prime Sentinels.

Other versions

Age of Apocalypse

In the Age of Apocalypse storyline a character named Bastion existed. When the X-Men are discussing Abyss, they describe him as the one "rumored to have replaced Bastion." This Bastion has never been seen in the comic and there is no indication whether or not he is related to the 616 Bastion.

In other media

Video games

• Bastion is the main villain in the game X-Men: Next Dimension voiced by Don Morrow. Here, he rips information out of Forge's mind and plants devices in his Sentinels that can depower a mutant. At Asteroid M, either Magneto or Phoenix destroys him once and for all. In his character profile, it is implied that his real name is Sebastian Gilbert.
• Bastion appears as one of the bosses in the video game X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse voiced by Alastair Duncan. He seems to be a mere anti-mutant activist (though his true nature is mentioned in a trivia minigame), yet his ability to control Sentinels is noted, as the mission in question where he attacks the X-Men involved the X-Men teaming up with Sentinels to save civilians. Bastion then took control of the Sentinels to turn them against the X-Men.
• Bastion appears in the X-Men: Destiny video game voiced by Keith Szarabajka. He is said to had killed Professor X in the opening cutscene. Magneto apparently killed him in the same battle. It's revealed that he had uploaded his mind into the Telos orbital satellite where he took control of Luis Reyes and used him along with the Mutant Response Division, Purifiers and U-Men to begin hostilities with Mutants.
• Bastion appears as a Group Boss in the Facebook Game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.

References

External links

• Bastion at Marvel.com