Chapter 21
Executing the orders of the Beast, the Hand mobilized.
Gorgon, leading a hundred elite warriors—masters of the Shadow Ocean and beyond—set out for Xavier's School. Genosha, surrounded by thousands of miles of water, presented too great a logistical challenge for rapid army transport. Thus, they focused on their immediate targets: New York and the Xavier Institute.
They moved by slipping between dimensions, invisible to radars, satellites, and human eyes. But it wasn't enough to save them.
In Hank McCoy's laboratory, a siren wailed. His "fourth-dimension" sensors, developed by analyzing Kurt Wagner's spatial fluctuations, detected the intrusion. Originally designed to track unauthorized teleports, they now displayed a hundred anomalies "tearing" the fabric of reality on the mansion's outskirts.
Instantly, a high-level threat alarm echoed through the school. In the dormitories, walls slid open to reveal hidden passages. Panic ensued, but it was a practiced, orderly panic; there was no trampling. The students flooded into the underground tunnels like ants, heading for a deep, fortified shelter.
As soon as the last student was safe, seismic charges detonated, collapsing the primary exit routes to block conventional forces—though this would do little to stop the Hand. Depending on the situation above, an underground train stood ready to evacuate the students to a backup base.
In the event of such an emergency, Kurt had one task: inform the Professor, wherever he might be. He vanished in a cloud of sulfur, teleporting to his location.
Meanwhile, in the med-bay, a regeneration pod hissed as it depressurized. Logan, his body nearly fully restored after his clash with the Red Hulk, kicked the lid open. Fluid spilled onto the floor as he took a sharp breath, his face contorting in disgust.
"What is that foul stench?"
Stepping out onto the mansion's lawn, he saw the welcoming committee. McCoy was already in his blue-furred form. Storm's eyes glowed with pure white light. Cyclops was adjusting his combat visor, and Colossus stood with his body encased in signature organic steel.
Logan unsheathed his claws, staring into the dark woods where the invisible threat loomed.
"Smells like shit," he grunted.
McCoy handed out heavy tactical goggles that looked more like VR helmets.
"Put these on. According to the data, they're hiding in the shadows using spatial distortion. The sensors pick up the fluctuations, and these will render their silhouettes in real-time. Without them, you'll be fighting blind."
Colossus silently pulled the device over his steel head. Storm followed suit. Logan, however, pushed the goggles away with the back of his hand.
"I can smell 'em just fine without the gadgetry."
"Logan, this is no time for your primal act!" McCoy snapped. "Your senses won't give you precise coordinates."
"Good enough for me."
McCoy sighed heavily. He didn't even bother offering the goggles to Cyclops, knowing they were incompatible with his visor. "Wonderful," he muttered to himself, glancing at Logan. "And I'm the one nicknamed Beast?"
Storm, her eyes hidden behind the dark glass of the goggles, snapped her head up. "I see them. They're emerging from the woods."
She rose into the air, wind swirling around her feet. "I need to gain altitude and take position."
"Ororo, wait!" Cyclops called out, a hint of awkwardness in his voice. "I need the high ground, too."
Like Storm, his advantage lay in ranged attacks. His eyes were the source of concentrated optic blasts capable of melting steel and concrete. To use that destructive energy effectively, he needed a clear line of sight. Normally, Jean or Wanda would hold him aloft with telekinesis, but they weren't there.
Storm looked at him irritably through her lenses. "Are you serious, Scott?"
"My beams are less effective on the ground, you know that," he insisted. "Besides, down here, I'm an easy target."
"Get on," she exhaled. "And don't squirm."
Cyclops awkwardly approached and climbed onto her back, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. It was a comical sight: the regal Queen of the Elements forced to act as a packhorse. They shot upward, taking their position.
Lightning and lasers tore into the encroaching ocean of darkness. Storm's blinding bolts and Cyclops's focused beams shredded the front ranks, splitting the mass of attackers. One might have expected panic, but the elite Hand warriors' reaction was flawless. As the first few ninjas fell, the formation instantly dispersed to minimize damage. They could only react after the fact—light was faster than their reflexes—but they adapted in a heartbeat.
Gorgon issued a mental command via a ritual of subordination that bound his will to every warrior. This link didn't work on the truly strong-willed, like Elektra, but for the rank-and-file, it was absolute. Twenty warriors were ordered to break off and infiltrate the mansion to eliminate the young mutants in the shelter. The rest were to engage the X-Men.
On his next command, sixty warriors emerged from the Shadow Ocean, materializing on the lawn. Their shadow form was vulnerable to all attacks; it was only good for stealth and ambushes, not open combat. Ten of the most experienced assassins remained in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Wolverine charged into the crowd of sixty ninjas with reckless abandon.
Dozens of blades immediately pierced him. The Hand's weapons and clothing were metal-free to counter Magneto; their swords, made of enchanted pressed paper, were sharp and durable enough to shear through bone. As Wolverine disemboweled one opponent in a berserker rage, three more blades sank into his back and sides. It looked like mindless fighting, but it wasn't. Every lunge and dodge was instinctively aimed at protecting his head. He knew that as long as his brain was intact, his body would heal. Brain damage meant loss of control and delayed impulses, requiring precious minutes for regeneration to fix.
Gorgon stepped out of the ranks, looking at Logan with total indifference. Killing him was impossible, but it wasn't necessary.
With a burst of speed, he closed the distance. Logan's right claws swung for his face, but Gorgon ducked, the blades passing a millimeter from his cheek. Logan's left hand struck at Gorgon's torso. Gorgon allowed it—the claws crunched into his abdomen. He immediately gripped Logan's arm with a vice-like hold, preventing him from either withdrawing the blades or gutting him from the inside.
Logan roared, frustrated by his trapped arm. He looked up at the man he had impaled. It was a fatal mistake.
Their eyes met. The petrification began instantly. Had it started from a limb, Logan might have severed it to escape. But it spread from the head down. The immortal mutant's body froze; flesh turned rapidly into grey stone.
The entire exchange took less than thirty seconds. The result: ten dead Hand ninjas and a statue of Wolverine.
Gorgon pulled the adamantium claws out of his stomach with a look of loathing. He walked to the nearest Hand warrior and placed a hand on his own jagged wound. Activating Dark Healing, he transferred the injury to the soldier. Gorgon's wound closed instantly, while a gash twice the size opened on the ninja. The soldier gasped, collapsed, and died. One down, forty-nine warriors remaining on the lawn, including himself.
Watching the battle, Hank McCoy saw everything. Twenty Hand ninjas, acting individually, had branched off to storm the building from different angles. Storm and Cyclops tried to intercept them from the air, raining down lightning and lasers, but there were too many targets. They couldn't stop them all.
McCoy pressed a button on his remote. Deep underground, the automated systems engaged, prepping the evacuation train. The students were safe for now.
Twelve ninjas survived the aerial bombardment and breached the institute. It didn't matter; their targets were gone. At least, that's what McCoy thought.
As a man of science, Beast understood what humanity excelled at most: killing its own kind. He pressed a second button. Sections of the mansion's roof and lawn slid back, releasing a hundred combat drones into the air. Automatic turrets rose from the ground. McCoy himself grabbed a large-caliber sniper rifle.
At that moment, he saw Logan freeze into stone. McCoy's brain instantly calculated the options. He shouted an order to Ororo to strike Logan's statue with lightning.
Without question, Storm directed a concentrated discharge at the petrified Wolverine. There were two possibilities: either the shock would break the petrification, allowing Logan to regenerate from the fragments, or the statue would shatter into pieces they would have to collect later to reverse the spell.
Kamikaze drones swarmed the materialized Hand ninjas while the turrets opened a wall of fire. In the middle of this chaos, Colossus was the only ally on the ground, and the bullets and shrapnel bounced harmlessly off his steel skin.
Paper kunai and shuriken flew to meet the drones. About ninety percent were intercepted by precision throws, but the turrets made it difficult for the ninjas to aim. One shadow-shifter dodged a volley and prepared to throw a ceramic grenade at a turret, but before he could, his head was vaporized by a shot from McCoy's sniper rifle.
It wasn't enough. Other ninjas used the distraction to toss their grenades, destroying the remaining fire points. The first line of defense had been breached, but it had claimed twenty more ninjas. Thirty remained on the lawn.
McCoy, firing his rifle, spotted movement. Ten silhouettes were moving directly toward him, hidden in the shadows. He discarded the now-useless rifle and prepared for melee. Simultaneously, ten of the Hand's best assassins lunged from the darkness.
Hank McCoy wasn't just a scientist; he held black belts in Aikido, Judo, Karate, and Savate. But his opponents weren't street thugs—they were killers who had trained their entire lives. In this fight, his experience meant little. As always, it came down to numbers. He lasted exactly five seconds—an incredible feat in itself. He blocked and parried until paper blades converged on him from all sides.
It seemed like the end, but Kurt Wagner was already there, waiting for the moment. He materialized, grabbed McCoy a fraction of a second before the blades hit, and teleported them both to the safety of the roof.
"Where is the Professor?!" McCoy gasped, catching his breath.
"Help isn't coming!" Kurt replied, his eyes frantically scanning the battlefield. "They have their own fight, and it's much bigger—but the Professor has linked me to his mind!"
This meant Kurt's reaction speed and his ability to calculate teleportation coordinates were increased tenfold by Xavier's mental support.
From the ground, Gorgon watched. He didn't feel anger or disappointment at his assassins' failure. He simply played the cards he was dealt. He chose a new target.
Using a shadow technique, he merged into the body of one of his warriors, masking himself perfectly. Then he issued a mental command.
The warriors on the ground grouped together, acting as living catapults. With incredible force, they launched ten ninjas (including the one hiding Gorgon) into the air. They soared like projectiles, aiming for the hovering Storm. Ororo tried to dodge, but her mobility was severely hampered by Cyclops clinging to her back. She jerked up and down, weaving through the flying bodies. One ninja almost caught her, but she veered away at the last second.
The attack seemed to have failed; all ten "projectiles" sailed past. But at that moment, Gorgon emerged from the body of one of the ninjas. He kicked off his own soldier, using him as a disposable stepping stone, and propelled himself straight toward Storm and Cyclops. The "stepping stone" plummeted like a rock.
Storm and Cyclops watched in horror as the leader of the Hand appeared right in front of them. Gorgon reached out, seemingly aiming for them.
But his calculation was far more complex. Since childhood, Gorgon had been a genius strategist. He knew catching a teleporter in combat was nearly impossible. To do it, he needed three conditions.
First: Provoke him into action. Second: Know exactly where he would appear. Third: Convince him that he wasn't the target.
The first and third points were easy—the attack on Storm looked like the primary threat. Predicting the teleportation point was harder, but he had a solution. Storm wasn't alone; she was carrying Cyclops. To intercept both targets at once, there was only one mathematically superior position. Gorgon, with his vast intellect, calculated that point and bet everything on it. He assumed the teleporter was smart or experienced enough to identify that same tactically optimal spot.
Gorgon was right, though he didn't know why his gamble worked so perfectly. Kurt was under Xavier's mental enhancement, which suppressed his instincts in favor of cold tactical calculation. Had Kurt acted on pure reflex, he might have appeared anywhere, and Gorgon would have missed. But the enhancement meant to help him became a trap: it forced him to calculate and choose the "perfect" position—the very one Gorgon had predicted.
Gorgon's hand closed on empty air.
In that exact spot, in that singular tactical coordinate, Kurt materialized. His accelerated perception didn't help him dodge the grip; it was too late.
Gorgon smiled. "Caught you."
Kurt tried to teleport in a panic, but Gorgon didn't let go. A series of rapid, chaotic jumps followed—over the roof, over the woods, over the lawn—but it didn't help. Gorgon held him in a death grip. During one of the jumps, he delivered a short, precise strike with the edge of his palm to Kurt's neck, severing the head.
The final teleport threw Gorgon's body high over the Atlantic Ocean. He hit the water with a massive splash. Surfacing, he shook the water from his hair and looked around. In every direction, to the very horizon, there was only water.
"Now, where am I?" he asked the ocean.