Colonel Phillips was so furious he actually laughed.
"Well, kid, let's see if you're really as unbeatable as you say!"
Agent Carter could only shake her head helplessly. These two men—normally the very picture of discipline and authority—had apparently both lost their minds today.
The second round began, and ended just as quickly. Phillips had barely fired two shots when a burst of gunfire, as rapid as a submachine gun, erupted beside him—and then silence.
Startled, he turned to look. Chen Mo had already lowered his pistol. Carter, standing nearby, was staring wide-eyed, her red lips slightly parted in disbelief.
"What the hell just happened?" Phillips asked, utterly baffled.
"So… so fast," Carter stammered, still trying to recover from what she'd just seen.
Ignoring their exchange, Chen Mo calmly handed the pistol back to her and walked away.
"Hey! We're not done yet!" Phillips shouted after him.
"It's over, Colonel," Carter said softly, still looking in the direction Chen Mo had gone.
"Over? What are you talking about? The kid didn't even fire! And who was using the submachine gun?"
"There was no submachine gun. Look." Carter handed him the pistol.
Puzzled, Phillips ejected the magazine. Seven rounds before—now only one remained.
"He fired one shot?"
"And that." Carter pointed to the ground where Chen Mo had been standing.
Two empty magazines lay there. Phillips bent down and picked them up—both completely spent.
A chilling realization crept into his mind.
"You're telling me he fired fifteen rounds… and reloaded twice… in that short of a time?"
He looked at her incredulously. "You expect me to believe that?"
"It's the truth," Carter replied firmly.
Without another word, she saluted crisply and walked away, leaving the colonel standing alone, staring at the empty magazines in his hands like a man questioning reality itself.
After a long moment, he strode to Chen Mo's target—and froze again.
The tight cluster of bullet holes in the very center confirmed it: every single shot had hit dead-on.
The second contest was even more one-sided than the first. Same pistol, same range—but Chen Mo's firing speed was faster, his precision higher, his reloads nearly instantaneous.
Phillips had been utterly crushed.
It wasn't really surprising. The colonel, while a fine marksman, still needed a breath to realign after every shot. Chen Mo, with his immense strength and perfect control, barely let the barrel rise at all—allowing seamless rapid fire. His reflexes and agility did the rest.
The outcome had been inevitable.
Phillips rubbed his face, silently regretting picking a fight with what he now realized wasn't just a soldier—but a machine.
He swore to himself that next time, no matter what insane thing Chen Mo did—even if he drew a sword and charged a machine-gun nest—he'd just nod and believe the man could slice bullets in half.
—
A few days later.
In the laboratory, Chen Mo met Howard Stark for the first time.
The genius inventor was another core member of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, responsible for physics and mechanical engineering. The life-ray generator, the containment chamber—every piece of equipment for the Super-Soldier experiment was his work.
Naturally, Howard was curious about the newcomer—Dr. Erskine's new assistant. The old man was practically singing Chen Mo's praises, calling him a once-in-a-century prodigy who could master anything instantly and even improve on it.
That didn't sit well with Howard. The self-proclaimed genius wasn't about to let someone steal his thunder.
So he decided to test the "super-genius" himself.
From that day on, whenever Chen Mo wasn't studying biology under Dr. Erskine, Howard would bombard him with technical problems—physics, mechanics, even experimental blueprints. He wanted to see how real this so-called prodigy was.
Chen Mo, for his part, welcomed it. He absorbed every question like a sponge, soaking up knowledge at an astonishing rate.
At first, he needed some time to analyze and adapt—after all, many of Howard's designs were decades behind the advanced scientific principles he knew from another world. But soon his progress snowballed, and the speed with which he solved problems left Howard no choice but to keep raising the difficulty.
Even the latest, most complex prototypes from his private projects failed to stump Chen Mo for long.
Howard began to feel a helpless kind of frustration—as if he'd thrown a meat bun to a dog and it had never come back. For the first time, he was forced to admit that Chen Mo might actually be the greater genius.
Of course, comparing a man with supernatural intellect and ability to a normal human genius was hardly fair.
Still, Howard refused to concede out loud. Whenever he could, he'd provoke Chen Mo again—only to get flattened every time.
If it wasn't in theory, it was in words; if not in words, then in practice. And whenever things turned physical, he ended up completely outmatched.
To the rest of the Reserve, the two of them looked like a pair of quarrelsome brothers—constantly bickering, fighting, and yet somehow always working side by side, creating groundbreaking results together.
Dr. Erskine and Colonel Phillips had long given up trying to stop them. As long as the work kept moving forward, they could yell, spar, or blow up half the lab for all anyone cared.
—
"Move it! Faster!"
On the training grounds, the SSR recruits were running yet another grueling endurance drill.
As usual, Steve Rogers was dead last. His stamina still lagged behind the others, but he refused to fall out of line, gritting his teeth with every step.
"Stop!" the instructor barked.
Ahead of them, Agent Carter was waiting beside a jeep. The sergeant pointed toward a flag mounted on a tall pole.
"That flag means you're halfway there! First man to bring it back rides with Agent Carter to camp. Go!"
The recruits erupted into motion, scrambling for the pole. But the flagstaff was tall, thin, and slick; each man slid back down in defeat.
"That all you've got? Pathetic!" the sergeant taunted. "No one's taken that flag in seventeen years!"
Satisfied with their humiliation, he waved them back. "Alright, fall in! Let's move out!"
The men groaned, shoulders slumping—until Steve quietly stepped forward.
"Rogers! I said fall in!" the sergeant snapped.
Ignoring him, Steve studied the pole for a second, crouched down, and yanked the locking pin free.
Clang!
The pole tilted and crashed to the ground. Steve walked up, plucked the flag free, and handed it to the stunned instructor.
"Thanks, sir," he said simply, before climbing into the back of Carter's jeep.
Carter couldn't help it—she laughed outright, biting her lip to stifle the sound as she glanced back and met Steve's sheepish grin.
The jeep rolled off, leaving a cloud of dust and a line of dumbfounded soldiers staring after it.
The instructor looked at the flag in his hands, then at the departing jeep—and could only mutter to himself, "What the hell just happened…"
Once again, Steve had stood out—not for brute strength, but for ingenuity. And this time, he'd won not only the exercise… but Agent Carter's approving smile.