"He… fused them all!"
Stryker's awe flipped to wild elation. This was the weapon he'd dreamed of—the perfect amalgam of mutant powers.
The delight lasted barely a heartbeat.
BOOM—
A thunderclap shook the fortress. Saitama vanished from where he stood.
Teleportation?!
Stryker and Logan both froze. Since when could Saitama teleport?
A blink later, he was behind Deadpool—Wade.
Elbow tucked. Fist clenched.
A pressure like the mouth of a volcano swelled in the corridor. Logan's pupils knifed down to pinpoints. The sensation hauled him back to childhood—small, helpless, the animal knowledge that something far higher on the food chain had fixed its eyes on him. Even the thoughtless Wade locked up under that killing intent.
"Normal Punch," Saitama murmured.
The red glove ballooned in Wade's vision.
BOOOOM—
The feeds in the control room exploded into static. The shockwave rolled for seconds. When the smoke thinned, a terrifying hush fell.
Starting from Saitama's fist, an entire fan-shaped kilometer of reinforced structure had been planed flat—every slab, girder, and bulkhead erased. At the epicenter, Deadpool hadn't even screamed. The wind of the punch ate him whole.
"He's… dead?" Logan stared at the blackened, twisted adamantium skeleton lying where the body should have been, pieces missing, the rest warped beyond recognition.
Adamantium frame. Freak-tier regeneration. Still obliterated in one hit?
What tier was this?
"Are you okay, Logan?" Saitama let his fist fall and glanced over.
"I—I'm fine… Wade's dead?"
"Uh… looks like it. Though he didn't really count as human to begin with—more like a modified corpse." Saitama scratched his head. On his readout, Wade hadn't registered as a living human at all. For a hero who'd spent years pulping monsters, putting down a corpse-creature was… routine.
Outside, chaos.
Kayla led a knot of freed mutants—Pyro, Iceman, Emma Frost, Colossus, and others—fighting the fortress guards. Mutant powers were dazzling, but standard-issue weapons still hurt. And Kayla's rotten luck held; a stray round clipped her.
While the firefight raged, the whole nuclear plant shuddered. Alarms wailed.
"Out—now! Something's wrong!" yelled a woman who could phase through walls, face bleached with shock. "That faceless thing got killed—huge structural damage—this place is going to come down!"
Faces blanched. This was a nuclear facility, built to military-fortress specs, rated to ride out even tactical strikes. And it was collapsing?
"I felt someone… terrifying," said a Black woman, shaken. Her gift was wide-area mutant detection and level appraisal. Most here were Tier One; a rare few had self-evolved to Tier Two. "But that one—too high to see the ceiling. I can't read him."
Ten kilometers out, a black helicopter knifed through the air.
"We're close. Lots of mutants—civilians—we'll need evac. And… an interesting one," said a handsome young man, eyes flashing with sudden delight.
Charles.
The future Professor X. His telepathy had climbed into Tier Three, nosing at Tier Four. Wide-area searches were easy; he'd begun gathering mutants already. He believed in coexistence—mutants living peacefully among humans.
Then his face fell.
"Not good! They're in danger—turn us around, now!"
Back in the plant, Stryker's face had twisted into something demonic. Other cameras showed Wade's ruined remains. Years of work—ash.
"You wrecked my life's work. I'll wreck you!"
He slammed a palm onto a recessed red button.
Self-destruct for the nuclear plant.
A tremor rolled through space itself. Stryker's eyes went glassy—Charles had slipped into his mind—but with a groan Charles withdrew. The kill-sequence was hardwired; not even Stryker could stop it once it started.
"The plant is going critical—run! I'm Charles, a mutant like you. Don't doubt me—get out!" His voice rang in every mutant mind.
"Nuclear— it's going to blow!"
"I can't stop that!"
"Run! Maybe we can make it!"
Panic took both mutants and guards. A nuclear detonation was beyond imagination. Even mutants would die in scores.
"Kayla and the others—what do we do?! Saitama, you have to have a way—please, save them!" Logan pleaded.
"What about you?" Saitama frowned. The air tasted wrong. He was a professional hero; civilians came first. But leaving Logan—
"I'm Wolverine. I don't die that easy. Go!" Logan snapped.
"Fine. Get moving. I'll pull them out." Saitama nodded. He wasn't afraid of a nuke; he'd flown through vacuum on raw durability. The others… would vaporize.
All around, mutants who'd heard Charles panicked, bolting in random directions—only to hit more walls. Inside a fortress-labyrinth, a single bulkhead could be a death sentence—and there were a lot of bulkheads.
KRACK—
Just as despair peaked, the wall before them exploded inward. Saitama shot through the dust like a comet.
(End of Chapter)
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