Thanos's final target was the Mind Stone. Pendragon had to keep a close eye on it. If anything went wrong, all he could do was gamble on luck, and there was nothing fun about that kind of thrill.
Because the king had opened a gap in the electromagnetic shield, Pendragon had not run into many of the four armed alien "orphans" on his way in. The six armed guy in front of him was only the third one.
"Instant Shadowless Sword!"
Calling out your move in battle was every man's romance. The alien in front of him clearly had that "unusual bone structure" vibe, like it was only two extra heads away from running side by side with Third Prince Nezha. Pendragon did not hesitate to pop his ultimate.
His black suited figure split into countless afterimages in an instant, forming a ring around the unlucky alien that had wandered off course. Those afterimages carved into it without mercy.
The silhouettes vanished a heartbeat later. Pendragon stood beside where the alien had been, breathing lightly.
He had no idea how many strikes he had thrown. What he did know was that every scrap of flesh and bone on the victim's body had been vaporized by the heat of the Evil Holy Sword. Only a wisp of black smoke marked the spot.
Maybe "cut it down to the cellular level" was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.
Rumble.
Something in Thanos's army must have gone off. The ground was shaking hard enough that the shock drowned out the gunfire and explosions.
"That red streak that just flew out… that had to be Scarlet Witch, right?"
Pendragon picked up his pace. Princess Shuri should already be in the middle of the procedure to remove the Mind Stone from Vision. He pulled up the lab's exact location on his light brain.
Huh. Another alien?
In his rush to secure the Mind Stone, Pendragon did not think too hard. He simply rolled telekinetic force over it.
Splat.
His body paused for a moment. He turned and looked back.
The humanoid thing he had just flattened into a puddle of green sludge was, if he remembered the movie right, the one who tried to rip the stone from Vision's head. One of Thanos's lieutenants, an elite mob.
"Stop right there."
"State your identity."
Two warriors guarding the royal entrance saw Pendragon walking toward them and immediately raised their spears, pointing them at this blindingly pale stranger.
Someone this good looking, dressed in a sleek suit, with a textbook "European" face? If it were not for the current alien invasion, and if he were just a random human, they would have happily skewered him already.
"I am here to join the raid."
Pendragon answered in an icy, righteous tone, his cool aura cranked up to full CEO mode.
The joke alone made him very pleased with himself. While the two guards were still stunned, he flicked out a wave of telekinesis. Two heavy thuds sounded.
Both warriors slammed back into the wall and slid down to the floor.
Pendragon had controlled his strength, so he did not knock them out outright. With their constitution, their limbs would be numb for two to five minutes. The exact time depended on individual fitness.
Every guard he met afterward got the same treatment. Pendragon did not give them a chance to talk. In the interest of time, he just gave everyone a quick two minute electrotherapy session.
In the lab, Princess Shuri should have needed to carefully reconnect more than two trillion neural connections in Vision's brain to safely remove the Mind Stone.
But Pendragon had already hacked the lab systems with his light brain on the way over. The computations were finished within a few seconds.
"It… actually worked? I did it?"
Shuri was stunned. Under normal protocols this process should have taken much longer. Except she had not actually done anything. Everything had just started moving on its own and the operation had completed itself.
"Thanks."
Before Shuri or Vision could wrap their heads around what had happened, there was a commotion at the door. The guards responsible for security were all down.
A heartbeat later, the Mind Stone, still held in its twin clamps, shot free and flew straight into the hand of a boy in a suit.
Legend said the Stones did not judge whether their wielder was "worthy." A weak lifeform that touched one would have its body torn apart by the power inside.
Pendragon felt nothing of the sort. Warm energy poured from the gem into his palm, flowed up his arm and coiled through his brain in an instant.
"So this is the power of the Mind Stone."
Pendragon's dark golden eyes narrowed. He smiled.
It was not smugness.
It was surprise. Pure, delighted surprise.
The moment he took control of the power, a bold idea flashed through his mind.
At the same time, Shuri's forearms were already encased in vibranium gauntlets and she dropped into a fighting stance.
Vision, whose systems had taken a hit from being stabbed in the back by Corvus Glaive, gripped the edge of the "operating table" and dragged himself upright with a look of grim resolve.
"If you do not mind, could you hand that stone back to us?"
The voice was polite on the surface, but the expression of the speaker was anything but friendly.
"I suggest you do as she says."
The ugly dent in Vision's forehead where the stone had been would drive any perfectionist insane. Right now he looked almost fully functional, arms folded, speaking in a cold tone.
As if nobody knew he was about to crash.
Pendragon stayed quiet. Behind him, out by the lab doors, he could already hear the sound of boots pounding the floor. The remaining palace guards were arriving in force.
That included the warriors he had knocked down earlier and who had since recovered. Once they learned someone had broken in, they had sprinted straight for the most critical location in the palace.
"I am not sure the two of you have the power to protect this stone."
Pendragon still held the Mind Stone tightly, as if this was his last bit of resistance before surrendering.
"Then maybe you should test us."
Looking pretty did not let you do whatever you wanted here. Princess Shuri was clearly unimpressed. The fact that Pendragon was a beautiful boy did not earn him any bonus points.
"All right."
With a crowd of spear wielding warriors at his back, Pendragon very sensibly backed down. He raised both hands and let Vision come over and take the Mind Stone from his palm.
"Notify Wanda. Tell her to come here and destroy this stone at once."
As soon as Vision had the Stone in hand, his tone turned urgent.
"What? You are actually going to destroy it?"
Pendragon, who had been acting very cooperative so far, did his best to put on a "shocked" expression and lunged forward as if to seize the gem.
The Wakandan warriors who had been wary of him from the beginning naturally moved to stop him. One after another, they hurled their vibranium spears without hesitation.
All you can eat spear buffet.
Pendragon's thin body could not take that kind of punishment head on. He dodged agilely through the storm of projectiles, but even he could not slip past every single strike. In the end he snatched one spear out of the air with his bare hand and drove it straight into the lab's glass wall.