Chapter 23
Though the Hand's army was vast, Matsu'o harbored no illusions. Ninety percent of those thousand warriors were merely cannon fodder. The real battle was to be fought by the hundred elite who had mastered the technique of Dark Healing.
This ability allowed them to transfer mortal wounds from themselves to another person, but with one critical limitation: the donor had to be someone who already possessed at least a fragment of the Beast's power. They couldn't simply grab a random civilian and use them as a living shield. Unfortunately for the Hand, they could not hand out this power to just anyone to replenish their stock of extra lives. The supply of the Beast's essence was limited and strictly rationed, reserved only for the elite.
They flooded onto the clearing first.
Flame, whose naked body glowed dimly from internal heat, took a deep breath. He performed the Peacock's Breath, and a concentrated, roaring torrent of white-hot Chi erupted from his mouth. The flames engulfed one of the elite ninjas. The warrior caught fire, but instead of falling, he made a sudden lunged toward a nearby rank-and-file soldier and grabbed him.
In that same instant, the fire seemed to flow from the elite warrior to the subordinate. The latter was instantly transformed into a human torch and collapsed dead, while the elite fighter, only slightly singed, charged back into the fray. They had spare lives, purchased at the cost of their own soldiers' lives. Flame, seeing this, did not stop his attack, continuing to incinerate them one by one.
This damage-transfer tactic only worked if death wasn't instantaneous. It proved completely useless against Shaft's arrows. He stood motionless, his heavy bow singing softly. Each arrow, infused with his own Chi, found its mark, piercing through the ninjas. The difficulty lay in the balance. If he shot too weakly, the elite warriors had time to dodge. If he put too much Chi into the arrow, it killed for certain, but it exhausted him quickly. In the coming battle of endurance, Chi had to be preserved.
Stone, despite looking like a clumsy mountain of muscle in his monk's robes, moved with incredible speed. He rushed into the thick of it, his body reinforced by Chi until it was nearly as hard as adamantium. He didn't regenerate like Logan; he was simply indestructible. He became a living battering ram, breaking bones and scattering ninjas like bowling pins, absorbing dozens of useless strikes from their paper swords.
Matsu'o, watching from the shadows, realized his warriors were thinning too quickly. The long-range attacks of Shaft and Flame had to be suppressed.
At that moment, the shadows at the feet of the archer and the pyrokinesis master literally came to life. They ceased to be a mere absence of light. They stretched upward, sharpening like spears of black ice, and struck from below. Both masters, possessing flawless reactions, managed to leap away at the last second. The shadows pierced empty air. Matsu'o hadn't expected to kill them with such a simple trick, but he achieved his goal: both were forced to stop their precision fire and focus on their own defense, moving into close-quarters combat.
Stick, detecting his presence, rushed straight for him. The only instruction Matsu'o had given his men regarding Stick was to stay away and not attack him.
The Hand soldiers parted before Stick like the sea before Moses, opening a direct path to their leader.
— Long time no see, Matsu'o said when Stick stopped a few meters away. — Since World War II, I believe?
— I remember you skillfully stepping in front of a rocket back then, just to avoid dying by my hand.
— That won't happen this time, Matsu'o replied.
A fight broke out between them; a pure, elegant radiance of Chi radiated from Stick, while Matsu'o was shrouded in an impenetrable, light-consuming darkness.
The Hand also had a plan for Stone. Breaking him was impossible, but containing him was another matter. Ten shadow-shifters, acting as a single mind, animated the shadows beneath his feet. Dark tentacles coiled around Stone, binding his movements. He began to struggle, but the shadows held firm. It became a test of endurance, but with a key difference: as soon as one of the ten shadow-shifters began to tire, a rank-and-file soldier would run up, and the master would drain all their life force, using them as a living battery. The fight turned into a duel of quality versus quantity.
Now that the two close-quarters fighters of the Chaste were occupied, Shaft and Flame were left alone against the army. On the whole, they didn't care. Though they specialized in ranged combat, they were no less skilled up close.
But then Matsu'o revealed his true plan. Their initial expectation—that the Hand would try to kill one of them to bypass the barrier—proved wrong. Matsu'o knew that to win, he had to carve his own path. All four Pillars of the Chaste were occupied. The remaining crowd of nearly eight hundred soldiers, ignoring the masters, ran straight toward the golden barrier.
When the first rank-and-file Hand warrior touched the shining barrier, he vanished. Then a second. A third. A tenth. At first glance, nothing changed. Но a careful observer skilled in Chi would have noticed that with every sacrifice, the barrier dimmed ever so slightly. All they needed was to sacrifice several hundred of their soldiers to burn a hole through it.
At that moment, two figures stepped through the golden barrier—which only affected those with the demonic power of the Beast: Xavier in his chair and Magneto. The Professor tensed; his mind felt a powerful, alien, and inexplicable force. If there were only ten or twenty warriors, their auras would have been lost against the backdrop of the city. Но there were hundreds here, and their collective demonic energy created a resonance that was impossible to ignore. That was why he had come.
— Who is the enemy? Magneto asked immediately.
— Everyone in black, Xavier replied.
The Professor immediately tried to read the attackers' thoughts but could not. It wasn't a mental block, but rather a complete absence of a mind in the traditional sense—the Beast's "antivirus" made his soldiers immune to telepathy. Xavier was forced to use telekinesis. Not wanting to kill them, but merely to restrain them, he grabbed a dozen ninjas and threw them back into the crowd. But this only worked on the rank-and-file. When the elites were caught, they immediately dissolved into shadows and reappeared free of their bonds.
At the same time, Kurt materialized beside them.
— Professor! The Institute is under attack!
— I cannot help right now, Xavier replied, tossing another group of ninjas aside. — I am linking you to my mind. You must handle it now.
Kurt nodded and vanished.
Magneto frowned as he looked at the army. None of them carried a speck of metal. No weapons, no buckles, no armor. This suggested they had prepared for him. He detached several metal plates from his own suit, sharpened them in the air, and sent them toward the horde.
However, having assessed Magneto as a serious threat, Lady Bullseye stepped out of the shadows directly in front of him.
— Well, well. The old-timer duo is back together. Now I think the rumors about you two being gay aren't that far from the truth.
— Shut up, cur, Magneto hissed and hurled the sharp pieces of metal at her.
For a normal person, they were moving too fast, but not for her. She alone had mastered the Shadow Ocean to the maximum level, which gave her a form of teleportation. Diving into the shadow at her feet, she vanished and reappeared behind Magneto in the same instant. A steel armor was already forming around him, but her blade, forged from a demon's bone, was ready to pierce it. Magneto didn't have time to react, but Xavier, with his accelerated perception, did. A powerful telekinetic shove struck Bullseye in the chest, throwing her back and causing her to miss.
She landed gracefully ten meters away.
— A pity, she said, licking her lips. — I don't usually kill the disabled. Но today doesn't look like your day.
The arrival of Xavier and Magneto immediately drew them into the whirlpool of the battle. But they weren't the only ones who responded to the threat.
Spider-Man was swinging between skyscrapers when his sixth sense literally screamed, forcing him to change course. It pulled him out of the city toward the epicenter of a battle he knew nothing about. His entire being told him he had to be there.
He arrived at the most intense moment. Shaft, dodging two ninjas, didn't notice a woman with violet hair and a deadly katana materializing from the shadow behind him. Psylocke, the fourth most powerful in the Hand. Her strike was aimed at decapitating the archer.
But Spider-Man, following his intuition, was already moving. A thick wad of webbing shot from his web-shooter and hit Psylocke in the back, knocking her off trajectory. She was pinned to a tree. Shaft, spinning around, was already swinging for a strike, but Psylocke dissolved into a shadow, freeing herself from the webbing. He instinctively struck at the shadow, but she had already materialized to the side, dodging and shedding the webs with the trick.
— Thanks, Spidey! Shaft shouted, jumping back.
— No problem, Robin Hood!
Shaft's face beneath the hood broke into a smile.
— Finally! Someone recognized it! Everyone usually goes with Peter Pan!
Spider-Man landed on a branch beside him. His intuition told him this archer was an ally.
— What do I do?
— In any other situation, I'd tell you to get out of here, Shaft said seriously, nocking an arrow. — Но we really aren't holding them off. Listen carefully. Half of them can step into shadows, so web-restraints won't last long. The elites can transfer mortal wounds to the rank-and-file, so don't be surprised if an enemy you've mortally wounded stands back up. Some, like that purple one, can control shadows, so watch out for attacks from underground.
— Right...
— You have to kill them, Shaft's tone turned hard. — There is nothing human in them in the way you're used to. If you can't kill, then provide support like you just did. And most importantly! — he looked at the Spider. — If you see their leader, a Japanese man named Matsu'o, don't let him touch you. If there is even a drop of darkness in your heart, he can bend you to his will.
— Are there limits to that ability? Spider-Man asked.
— Yes. He can only use it once every thirty years. But the subjugation takes time, depending on willpower and the darkness in the soul. He's unlikely to choose someone weak like you, but stay alert regardless.
The comment didn't sting; for Peter, this was his first truly large-scale battle, and he was intensely focused. His usual jokes died in his throat. He couldn't take a life, so he chose support. He jumped between trees, webbing the ninjas' feet to the ground. They tried to dissolve into the shadows, but a second's hesitation was all Shaft needed to finish the job.
Psylocke jumped out of the shadows again, aiming for Spider-Man. But he wasn't caught off guard like Shaft. His sense warned him of the attack in advance. He dodged her lunge and tried to grab her, but immediately pulled back when sharp shadow-spikes erupted from the tree's shadow.
— This is going to be tough, he said aloud.
---
Meanwhile, near the golden barrier itself, Hawkeye had found his perfect position. He stood on the roof of a building inside the city, fully protected by the Chi barrier from Hand attacks. He tried to shoot Lady Bullseye, who was fighting Magneto and Xavier, but she easily caught his arrow in mid-air and threw it at them. Realizing the strong ones were out of his league, Barton chose easier targets—the rank-and-file ninjas who were sacrificing themselves to weaken the barrier. Calmly and methodically, one by one, his arrows, reinforced by his own Chi, flew into the darkness, and the heads of the Hand soldiers began to fall.