"I'll give you ten billion dollars. Go get me more of this. Same quantity, same price. However much you can get, I want all of it."
"Baymax."
Looking at the almost bumpkin-like expression on Klaue's face, Killian suppressed the contempt in his heart and simply turned the Vibranium canister over in his hand as he spoke.
"How do I know that what you said..."
Klaue had just started to push for proof when a rapid series of message alerts suddenly began ringing from his phone.
"Go ahead. Trust me, you'll find it interesting."
Seeing Klaue hesitate between finishing his sentence and checking the messages, Killian smiled faintly and motioned for him to look.
Under Killian's meaningful smile, Klaue slowly took out his phone.
And what he saw left him stunned.
One payment notification after another, each one showing a transfer of one billion dollars into one of his anonymous accounts.
One.
Two.
Three.
Until all ten messages had arrived.
Then the alerts stopped.
When Klaue finally lowered the phone and looked back up at Killian, the shock in his eyes was impossible to hide.
He had stayed hidden for years. Wakanda's people, with all their nearly science-fiction-level technology, still hadn't found his address or phone number. His anonymous Swiss bank details were even more tightly guarded.
Practically no one besides him knew those accounts.
And Swiss banks had built their entire reputation on secrecy. They were not supposed to leak anything.
That was what made this moment so unsettling.
For the first time, Klaue truly felt just how deep the power behind the man in front of him ran.
"So... do you still have any questions?"
Killian kept smiling as he asked.
"N... no. How do we stay in contact after this?"
Klaue asked, stumbling over his words.
"Trust me. Once you've collected the Vibranium, I'll have someone find you."
"No matter where you are. And if you need help, this might come in handy."
Killian pulled out what looked like an ordinary pistol and handed it over.
"Smart handgun. Loaded with fully guided rounds. Built from high-strength alloy. It can punch through any known body armor, and it'll go straight through bulletproof glass too. Each round costs one million dollars, and there are twelve in the magazine. Consider it an advance payment."
"Try not to waste them."
Everything Killian said, along with the solid weight of the gun in Klaue's hand, told him it was real.
And yet it all felt wildly unreal.
Guided bullets?
He had heard of guided missiles. Never bullets.
"All right. I won't stay any longer. Just do the job well."
"Trust me, it'll make you more money than this junk operation ever has."
"A pile of scrap metal. Only barbarians would be impressed by this stuff."
After giving Klaue a light pat on the shoulder, Killian glanced at the crude gunmaking equipment and the half-broken shell production line inside the ship with open disdain.
Then he turned and walked out, taking with him the little girl Klaue had barely even noticed before.
Sevin and the other few cold-faced men and women ignored Klaue completely. They grabbed the containers of Vibranium and jumped down without a word.
Only then did Klaue realize that nobody in this organization was normal.
And when he looked back at Killian's retreating figure, the man only seemed more mysterious than before.
Still, it didn't take long for Klaue to pull out his phone again and start grinning to himself.
To him, none of the rest really mattered.
As long as the money came through, everything was worth it.
And as he stared at the balance on the screen, greed flashed unmistakably across his face.
...
With nobody left to stop them, Killian and his people crossed back over the scattered bodies and returned to their convoy, heading back toward the airport.
But once the vehicles started moving, Killian noticed something.
He could feel at least dozens of eyes on them.
Turning his head slightly, he saw several locals on motorcycles and in cars deliberately glancing their way. They tried to play it off, looking down and pretending to focus on the road, but they kept maintaining the same careful distance behind the convoy.
"Boss, we're being followed. Want me to handle it?"
Sevin, an old military veteran, had already spotted at least dozens of separate tails. He looked at Killian through the rearview mirror as he spoke.
To him, protecting his boss was the top priority. But whether to act or not was still Killian's decision.
"Not yet."
"Let the bullets fly a little longer."
Killian kept his eyes closed and answered lazily, as if none of it had anything to do with him.
The convoy continued moving.
Even Alice, who was still so new to the outside world, could tell something was wrong.
Then the change came all at once.
The convoy had just entered a crowded stretch of road when the packed crowd around them suddenly shifted. The civilians became armed men almost in the same instant, raising their weapons toward Killian's vehicles without any warning.
Farther off, men already lying in wait on a hillside lifted RPGs onto their shoulders. The moment they fired, several rockets screamed toward the armored convoy.
At the same time, the attackers surrounding the convoy felt something flash before their eyes.
A pulse of purple light swept through the area.
In the next moment, every one of the gunmen around the armored vehicles suddenly turned their weapons away from the convoy and opened fire on the men with the RPGs on the hill.
Gunfire exploded everywhere.
As the rockets closed in, Sevin, sitting in the driver's seat, curled his lips into a wild grin.
Then he moved.
In a blur, he launched himself straight out through the window, leapt into the air, and in full view of the men on the hillside, caught one of the rockets in his bare hand.
Using the force of its momentum, he spun once in midair and hurled it right back.
Then he flashed again and again, catching the remaining rockets one after another and sending them back where they came from.
A moment later, the whole hillside erupted in fire and thunder.
"Damn it! These dirt-poor idiots really are useless. We paid them, and they still turned their guns on each other."
Not far away, a group from the Stinger mercenary unit watched everything through binoculars. After seeing the local warlord troops they had paid descend into complete chaos, the man leading them slammed his fist into the ground in fury.
"Haha, boss, what did you expect? They're local militia. The fact that they built up this much force at all is already impressive. Trying to keep a hundred men disciplined under pressure? Not happening."
"I told you they were unreliable. A warlord outfit like this? Our crew could wipe out ten groups like theirs without even breathing hard."
"Looks like it's our turn now."
Beside him, a heavily built man with a heavy machine gun grinned as he spoke.
For them, having the local warlord forces soften the target first was ideal.
If not, then they would do it themselves.
"Damn it. I wanted them to wear down the enemy first so we wouldn't have to step in."
"That's the man the U.S. President personally backed."
"Everyone be careful. Once we move in, watch yourselves. The bald one with powers, priority is capture. If that fails, do what you have to."
"Move!"
"Now, while they're still alive and drawing fire."
"Ash, you handle the sniper angle. Keep the bald one pinned down. If he gets loose, we could have a real problem."
"Everyone else, with me!"
With the plan set, the mercenary leader gave the order and took his twenty-man team forward at full speed.
As mercenaries who operated in the darker corners of the world, they had learned over time that normal humans were not the only kind of people out there.
There were others. People different from them.
And those were exactly the kinds of people certain corporations were willing to pay enormous amounts to acquire.
They had captured enough of them already.
So even after seeing Sevin's display, they were not overly shocked.
As far as they were concerned, anything carbon-based could still be brought down with enough firepower.
At that same moment, the two men and two women riding in Killian's last vehicle seemed to notice something too.
They got out, then vanished from sight.
That left only Killian, Alice, and the purple-skinned man in the front passenger seat inside the main vehicle.
Alice could hear the nonstop crackling gunfire outside, and her whole body had gone tense. Her eyes darted around, afraid that attackers might appear from anywhere at any moment.
With only the intellectual purple man inside and the others gone, she felt that the responsibility for protecting the boss now rested on her small shoulders.
And because of that, she held herself to an extremely strict standard.
Killian, by contrast, looked completely at ease.
He listened to the symphony Baymax was playing through his earpiece and moved his fingers lightly to the rhythm.
Inside the car, he seemed to exist in an entirely different world from the battlefield outside.
"What... what are you?"
Meanwhile, up on the hill where the RPG team had been positioned, Sevin now glowed with a strange orange heat. His clothes were torn to pieces, but he paid them no attention at all as he calmly walked toward the terrified leader of the attackers.
The man had already collapsed to the ground, staring in horror at Sevin and at the bullets still slowly pushing themselves back out of his body.
"Heh. That?"
"When you get to hell, ask Satan."
"Stay still. It'll hurt less."
Sevin's smile burned orange in the smoky air.
A second later, he stepped in close, seized the man, and ended it.
By the time he straightened up again, the entire force of armed attackers on that hill was gone.
Then Sevin suddenly sensed something wrong.
His expression darkened, and he tilted his head on instinct.
A high-powered sniper round tore past his face, grazing his cheek before shattering a rock behind him the size of a fist.
Sevin's eyes immediately snapped toward the direction the shot had come from.
Even from nearly a thousand meters away, he picked out the sniper at once.
Then he moved again, sprinting straight toward her at terrifying speed.
"Oh... my... God. What the hell is that thing?"
The sniper watched through her scope in disbelief.
Her round had nearly hit center. It had even torn flesh from his cheek. By all logic, someone taking a shot like that should have been finished or at least crippled.
Instead, he had shrugged it off like it was nothing.
Then, through the scope, she saw him look straight at her and smile.
And then he started running at her faster than a motorcycle.
Her scalp went cold.
She slung her rifle over her shoulder and ran, laying mines behind her as she used the terrain to buy herself time.
A huge explosion erupted somewhere behind her not long after.
For a moment, that sound made hope surge back inside her.
The distance between them had been a thousand meters. And that was only in a straight line. In reality there were rocks, brush, ravines, and uneven ground between them.
No one could possibly close that gap that fast and survive those mines.
For the first time since the ambush began, she dared to believe she might live.
After running for a long while with no further sounds behind her, she finally collapsed to the ground to catch her breath.
Sweat ran heavily down her face, over skin streaked with camouflage paint and dirt.
Then, before she could recover, her body jerked violently upward.
A force she could not resist lifted her from the ground.
She forced herself to look down.
A glowing arm, red-hot like molten rock, had pierced straight through her chest.
A second later, her eyes closed.
When Sevin pulled his arm free, he didn't even bother looking back.
He simply turned and headed for the convoy.
By the time he returned, the road was already littered with bodies. Between the original attack force and the additional men he had eliminated on the way, nearly a hundred armed attackers had been wiped out.
Not one was left alive.
Sevin, as if none of it were unusual, popped a piece of mint gum into his mouth, opened the car door, and climbed back in.
"Boss. It's done."
Once inside, his whole attitude had changed again. The wildness from combat was gone, replaced by perfect respect.
"Then let's head back."
Killian never even opened his eyes as he answered.
Soon the convoy started moving again, rolling down a road now covered in wreckage and corpses.
Not long after they left, locals who had been watching from the hills rushed out like scavengers, swarming the scene and fighting over anything left behind.
For them, the dead meant nothing.
The weapons, ammo, and even the clothes on the bodies were worth money.
(End of Chapter)
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