The bullets in the magazine were quickly spent. When the Winter Soldier realized that his firearm had no effect on Steve, he tossed it aside without hesitation.
Like a hunting leopard, he lunged at Steve, his iron fist carrying enough force to shatter stone as it swung toward the back of Steve's head!
Natasha had firsthand experience of the Winter Soldier's terrifying strength. Seeing Steve still keeping his eyes on her, oblivious to the danger behind him, she hurriedly shouted:
"Behind you!"
Of course, Steve had already sensed the rush of air cutting in from behind, but he wasn't the least bit flustered.
Boom
With a muffled thud, the Winter Soldier's punch—augmented by his mechanical arm to weigh in at several dozen tons—was caught effortlessly by Steve, who didn't even bother to look back.
No matter how hard the Winter Soldier strained, Steve's arm didn't budge an inch.
With his physique raised to 14 points, Steve's baseline strength started in the dozens of tons, with his maximum reaching up to two hundred tons. The Winter Soldier, with a mere 3 points of physique at best, had no chance of matching him.
Your so-called limit doesn't even scratch my baseline. What do you have to fight me with?
Steve merely applied a bit of pressure, and the Winter Soldier's metal arm immediately began to whine under the unbearable strain.
Crack, crack, crack
Steve had no interest in drawing this out into some exhilarating battle. That was impossible—there could be no thrill in such a one-sided contest.
In the Winter Soldier's stunned gaze, Steve seized his iron fist, then drove an elbow straight into his temple, forcibly powering him down like a machine.
"This… this is it?"
Natasha blinked at Steve, then at the unconscious Winter Soldier dangling from his grip. Her head felt light.
The man who had completely overpowered her—a super soldier—had been crushed just as easily by Captain America?
Then what did my desperate fight just now even mean?
Does that just mean… I'm weak?
For the first time, Natasha began to doubt whether she really was just that outclassed.
To think she had been driven into a corner by someone Steve had one-shotted…
Steve could only shrug. Among super soldiers, there were always gaps.
It wasn't that the Winter Soldier was too weak—only that he himself was too strong.
Holding Bucky in one hand, Steve extended the other toward Natasha with a teasing smile.
"Think you can stand? If you need me to carry you back, that's gonna cost you a bonus fee."
Natasha rolled her eyes. "Hmph. Other people already have to pay to touch me, and you still want to charge me? Forget it, I'll walk myself!"
She tried to push herself up, but having been hit twice by close-range explosions—the second without the help of a kind engineer's shield—her body simply wouldn't obey.
She got halfway up, then collapsed back down.
Seeing this, Steve stopped joking around. Slinging his shield onto his back, he slipped his right arm under her knees and, with a single arm, lifted her into a princess carry.
This time Natasha didn't put on a prideful, self-punishing act. Instead, she obediently wrapped her arms around Steve's neck and rested her head against his solid shoulder.
"...Thank you, Steve."
Steve glanced down at her closed eyes but said nothing. With Bucky in one hand and Natasha in the other, he carried them both toward the Quinjet parked outside the town.
Back on the aircraft, after quickly tending to and bandaging Natasha's wounds, Steve didn't immediately take off. He was still considering how to convince her to keep quiet about the Winter Soldier.
Bucky's existence couldn't be exposed to Nick Fury. That man wanted to control everything—if he learned about Bucky, he'd certainly make a move.
But before Steve could even open his mouth, Natasha, leaning back with her eyes closed, spoke first.
"I don't know why, but don't worry. I won't tell anyone about him. For the record, in this mission I was attacked by a mysterious assailant. He killed the nuclear engineer, you arrived in time to support me, and when he couldn't win, he escaped. That's the entire mission report."
Clever as ever, Natasha had noticed from the start just how much Steve cared about this attacker.
She was good at reading people, and she could see Steve's desire to keep the man a secret. Instead of waiting for him to cobble together some half-baked excuse, she spared him the trouble.
"…Thanks." Steve paused, then gave her a nod before carrying Bucky to the pilot's seat.
Dealing with smart people had its perks—you didn't even need to say anything, and they already understood.
Placing Bucky in the co-pilot's chair, Steve fired up the Quinjet and lifted off.
Natasha's mission to escort the nuclear engineer had ended in failure.
But Steve's mission was complete.
The familiar chime of the system echoed in his mind:
[S.H.I.E.L.D. Mission: Rescue the Missing Natasha (Completed)]
[Mission Reward: 300 Enhancement Points]
The reward wasn't as high as the one for saving Tony—200 points fewer, in fact—but it was still generous. One such mission was worth as much as several, even a dozen ordinary ones.
This confirmed it: missions tied to Marvel's main characters really did yield far better rewards than the average job.
Without hesitation, Steve funneled all 300 points into his physique.
His physique rose from 14 to 17.
His maximum strength increased from 200 tons to 250, and his baseline strength now approached 100 tons.
At this point, his raw power was on par with a junior Hulk.
If only he'd had this level of strength back when that second-dimension "isekai truck" slammed into him, the one who ended up crossing over to the Marvel world might not have been Steve Rogers at all—but the damned pink truck itself!
Trucks were the most common isekai transfer devices, after all. A part of Steve almost wished he could send one on the same trip.
Think about it—a truck as the protagonist of an otherworld story. Wasn't that way more interesting than yet another human hero?
…Then again, considering the Autobots existed in the Marvel multiverse, maybe a truck protagonist wasn't that far-fetched.
Amused by his own wild thoughts, Steve piloted the Quinjet back to America.
After delivering Natasha to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s medical department, he returned with Bucky to one of his safehouses in New York.
Nick Fury wasn't the only one with safehouses—Steve had his own. Not scattered across the globe like Fury's, but enough of them nonetheless.
This time, he brought Bucky to the one located in one of the most notorious places in New York City
Hell's Kitchen.
The kind of place even Satan himself would tip his hat to, it was the perfect hideout.
Here, gangs, criminal syndicates, and street-level heroes all prowled the alleys.
Even the NYPD preferred to steer clear, treating it as a no-man's-land.
Which made it the ideal place to disappear.
Of course, if you wanted a safehouse in Hell's Kitchen, you needed strength—or your "safehouse" would be anything but.
Fortunately, Steve's safehouse was in one of the most secure spots possible: not just anywhere in Hell's Kitchen, but its very heart, inside the tallest skyscraper.
The Fisk Towers.
And the man who owned it was none other than Wilson Grant Fisk.
The underground emperor of New York—of America itself.
Kingpin.