Hello Readers!
Its really frustrating but I'm very caught in daily routine of health, job, home, family etc..
I hope you all understand the daily problem making it difficult to think and write. but I'll keep going.
Enjoy~
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MBH #23 - New Strength & Lamb
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--ALEX POV--
I didn't go back to sleep.
Usually, I woke up with a painful, starving hunger tearing at my stomach. Today, that was completely gone. Instead, I felt a deep, warm power humming inside my chest. It felt like a furnace that was finally full.
But I couldn't relax. I couldn't step outside until I knew exactly what my body could do.
I stood in the middle of my dark bedroom. Dropping to the floor, I shifted all my weight onto one arm. I kept my feet together and started doing push-ups.
One. Ten. Fifty. A hundred.
I didn't even breathe heavily. My muscles didn't burn at all. They moved smoothly and easily, like strong machine parts. I wanted to test my limits, so I pushed harder. I launched my body upward into the air, catching my own weight on the way down.
Crack.
I froze. The old wooden floorboards beneath my hand groaned and splintered. My body was incredibly heavy and dense now.
"Careful, Boss," Silky buzzed in my ear. Her robotic voice sounded amazed. "If you keep that up, you are going to smash right through the floor into the living room."
I stopped and stood up without making a single sound. "Give me the numbers, Silky," I whispered, wiping a drop of sweat from my face.
"Your fast-twitch muscles are twelve percent denser than last week," she replied quickly. "You have zero muscle fatigue. That psionic energy you absorbed acted like magic glue. It instantly healed all the micro-tears in your tissue."
I walked over to my window and peeked through the blinds. The dark street outside looked quiet, but my chest felt tight. My heart started beating a little faster.
"Silky, do a full sweep of the perimeter through 'Occular'." I ordered, my voice tense. "Check for audio bugs, hidden cameras, or thermal trackers. Are we being watched?"
"Scanning..." Silky paused for a heavy second. "The perimeter is clear, Boss. No surveillance detected. You are safe."
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and stepped back from the window. "For now," I muttered. "Those Mutant Hunters have military-grade gear. If they tracked Mindy's energy spike, they might be looking for whoever absorbed her core. If they find me before I am ready... we are dead. We are the prey right now."
"Then it is a very good thing your senses got an upgrade," Silky said gently, trying to calm me down. "Stop looking with your eyes, Boss. Focus on your spatial awareness. It is much louder than before."
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
I didn't just listen to the quiet house. I reached out with my mind. It was amazing. A faint, invisible radar stretched out from my skin in every direction. I could feel the exact shape of my room without seeing it.
I felt the solid, heavy block of my wooden desk. I felt the empty space in my open closet. I even felt the tiny, rhythmic tapping of a small spider crawling up the far wall. It was a mental map painted directly into my brain.
"What is this?" I asked, opening my eyes in pure shock.
"Your brain is pulling double duty," Silky explained. "The psionic soul energy mixed perfectly with your X-Gene. You aren't just feeling physical objects. You are sensing the empty space they take up. It is a low-level telekinetic sense. A radar they cannot jam."
A cold, sharp smirk finally pulled at the corner of my mouth.
The fear was still burning in my chest, but it was slowly turning into a deadly focus. I was no longer just a strong kid swinging a baseball bat.
The Mutant Hunters had elite training, untraceable armor, and high-tech weapons. They were a terrifying, organized threat. I had my newly upgraded body, my mind, and Silky. But against a shadow organization, I was still on the losing side. To actually avenge Mindy—and ensure my own survival—I needed to get ahead in terms of both strength and intellect.
A strike team that well-equipped, capable of covering up kidnappings and murders, had to have a secure operational base in a nearby city. But attacking their base blindly would be suicide. And if I just started stopping their street-level kidnappings, they would get suspicious and hunt me down.
The only way to crush an organization was to use another organization. Only steel can cut steel.
I had to push my plans forward, again. Seriously, what a mess. I guess in this universe, nothing ever goes according to plan. I shook my head, forcing my mind back to the present.
"Silky, did you fully analyze the exact catalyst for this growth?" I asked.
"Yes, Boss," she replied. "It is closely related to pure psionic energy. But to be more accurate, I would classify it as 'soul power.' It is a type of hyper-condensed energy, but one that cannot exist without a strong ego or consciousness attached to it."
Silky projected her husky-dog avatar into the air, dramatically pointing a holographic paw at me. "This phenomenon is deeply tied to your body and likely your own soul. Unfortunately, my civilian-class hardware isn't equipped to measure metaphysical anomalies. It's an entirely new dimension of data."
"So, what you're saying is... you're useless?" I teased, letting a hint of a smile show.
"Boss, you are bullying me," Silky shot back, her avatar morphing into a highly aggrieved, pouting dog face. "I will absolutely be reporting this hostile work environment to Miss Ayrise!"
She then muttered, just loud enough for the earpiece to catch, "If I'm so useless, do your own work next time. Hmph! Calling me useless when you don't even know how to properly format a line of code..."
"Hey, hey, don't be mad, Silky!" I hurriedly backpedaled, holding up my hands in mock surrender. "You're the most amazing AI I've ever seen. It's not you that's useless, it's just the basic Archivor model limitations! How could I ever insult my best, most honest, and capable partner? Among all AI, I declare you the most awesome!"
Hearing the exaggerated praise, the husky hologram instantly perked up, returning to a smug, happy smile.
I let out a quiet sigh of relief, thinking inwardly, Thank you for the dialogue, Madara-sama.
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-- S.H.I.E.L.D. Mobile Command - Sub-Orbital --
"I'm just saying, if a shadow corporation is going to drop millions of dollars into an illegal underground bio-lab, they could at least invest in decent ventilation," Clint Barton muttered. He tossed a cracked data-drive onto the holographic strategy table and sighed, crossing his arms. "The whole place smelled like ozone, burnt hair, and terrible life choices."
Natasha Romanoff stood in the periphery of the command deck, a portrait of predatory stillness. She didn't offer a smile, simply holding an unblinking gaze and letting his dry joke hang in the silence.
Director Phil Coulson stepped up to the table, casually smoothing the lapels of his immaculate suit as if they had just returned from a routine board meeting, not a black-ops raid.
"Judging by the size of the holding cells we incinerated, they were preparing for mass production," Coulson stated smoothly, bypassing the joke entirely. He tapped the data-drive Clint had tossed down, bringing a massive, rotating DNA helix to life in the center of the room. The holographic strands were violently glowing red, twisting and snapping under their own weight.
"And the data we pulled from their mainframe before the purge is highly concerning," he added, his tone as pleasant and measured as a flight attendant explaining safety protocols.
He swiped a finger across the glass, pulling up a video file. It showed a desperate, emaciated street thug strapped to a gurney. A mechanical arm injected a glowing, synthetic serum into his neck. Within seconds, the man's veins turned black. He screamed, snapping the steel restraints as his hands erupted into violent, uncontrollable streams of raw fire.
"They call it 'Catalyst'," Coulson explained. "It doesn't just mimic the X-Gene. It forcibly splices synthetic mutation strands into the host's DNA, granting spontaneous, highly destructive physical anomalies. Pyrokinesis, localized gravity manipulation, extreme density."
"So, instant super-soldiers," Clint grunted, his jaw tightening. "Just what the world needs. More guys shooting lasers out of their faces."
"No," Natasha cut in, her voice flat and deadpan, breaking her silence for the first time. "Super-soldiers survive the war. These are single-use."
Coulson nodded slowly, shifting the hologram to a time-lapse of the same subject forty-eight hours later. The pyrokinesis was gone. The man's skin was sloughing off, his cellular structure completely collapsing in on itself until there was nothing left on the gurney but a horrific puddle of unstable genetic slurry.
"The cellular degradation is absolute," Coulson continued, the sterile light of the hologram reflecting in his eyes. "The human body cannot handle the forced frequency of the compound. The host gets absolute power for roughly seventy-two hours. Then, their biology violently rips itself apart."
Natasha watched the melting man with a cold, unblinking stare, seeing the political chessboard instantly. "It's a false flag. A street thug throws a fireball, the public screams 'mutant menace,' and Congress signs blank checks to mass-produce the Sentinel programs. By the time the guy melts, the narrative is already sold."
"And it gives the organized hate groups exactly what they want," Clint added, his voice hardening with cynical disgust. "Those anti-mutant militias are already marching in the streets, begging for an excuse to start a real war. This serum gives them the spark they need to justify hunting people with active X-Genes in broad daylight."
"While the politicians and hate groups focus on the panic, the grey-market players focus on the profit," Coulson stated, clasping his hands casually behind his back. "Private military corporations, rogue intelligence agencies, shadow tech-firms... If they can isolate and bottle the X-Gene, even temporarily, they don't have to recruit enhanced assets anymore. They can simply manufacture them."
Natasha's eyes remained locked on the horrific genetic slurry in the hologram. "Which makes actual, living mutants the most valuable and vulnerable commodity on the board. They aren't just outcasts to these people. They're raw material. A fresh piece of lamb dropped into a cage of hungry wolves. Everyone wants a bite."
Coulson nodded slowly. "Precisely. Someone is artificially manufacturing a mutant crisis to force the government's hand, while simultaneously auctioning off a monopoly on synthetic powers."
Clint leaned back against the bulkhead, rubbing the back of his neck with a heavy sigh. "So, we've got a mastermind burning through civilians to start a war, every shadow organization in the world trying to steal the recipe, and our only lead is an ash heap in the Midwest."
"Not our only lead," Coulson corrected, a faint, polite smile touching his face that didn't quite reach his eyes. "A product like this requires continuous testing and distribution. They will drop another batch into the streets soon. When they do, we won't just sweep up the pawns. We're going to follow the blood trail all the way up to the hand holding the leash."